Music

This mad scientist built a programmable flamethrower guitar

by Richard Howard

Even if you haven’t seen the excellent Max Max: Fury Road, you’re likely familiar with one character due to his explosion as an internet meme: the almost-too-insane-too-exist flamethrower guitar player known as the doof warrior.

It’s no surprise when some enterprising individual heads into the basement to recreate this sort of stuff, but some things are just too dangerous/house insurance-voiding to tackle, right? Not if you’re British mad scientist Colin Furze.

Combining his love of recreating movie gadgets and a caveman-esque obsession with fire, Furze has constructed what’s likely to remain the most tricked out fire-breathing guitar you’ll ever see.

Anybody familiar with Furze’s previous work would know this wouldn’t be a junkyard flamethrower strapped to his dad’s $80 Fender Stratocaster knockoff. After breaking the hearts of guitar purists everywhere by hacking apart a beautiful white Les Paul, he added the necessary electronics, the flamethrower apparatus itself and bunch of chrome (non-functional but undeniably bad-assed). The real genius, however, might be his work on the amplifier. Rather than having the player walk around with a tank on his back like a tool, Furze modified a Marshall combo amp to carry the gas tank, control the size of the flame, and even the pattern of fire tossed out using a programmable circuit and the amp’s own footswitch.

So how badass is Furze’s creation compared to the Mad Max original? Well, it’ll be hard to match the showmanship that comes with being strapped to a speeding semi truck in front of a wall of speakers whilst wearing a red onesie and metal mask – but considering the ability to perfectly sync your flamethrowing guitar to your band’s cover of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Fire,” it’s pretty much a tie.