The Big Playable Guitar

The engineering problem is genuinely hard and worth appreciating. A guitar works because string tension is balanced against a body stiff enough not to fold up, and both the tension and the structural demands scale badly. Making something nearly six metres long that is still tuneable, still resonant and still able to be fretted and strummed is a real feat of instrument building, not a matter of enlarging a drawing.

It is now displayed inside the Narrandera Destination and Discovery Hub at 24 Cadell Street, where it is described as Australia's biggest playable guitar – the world record having passed elsewhere in 2000, which the town states plainly rather than quietly dropping.

In 2025 a musical projection experience was added to the display, bringing the instrument to life in a new way for anyone who cannot themselves reach across a two-metre fretboard.

Because it lives indoors within a council facility, this entry marks it restricted rather than roadside. Thirty-seven years old, still playable, still the biggest in the country.

Plywood is the surprising part. It is cheap, workable and acoustically respectable, and choosing it over solid timber is what made a six-metre instrument achievable for one person working alone in 1988.