I know the author! Ben's a great guy. A real treat seeing this on HN. He does really gnarly Caucasus-inspired ambient electronica:

https://mountainsoftongues.bandcamp.com/

https://invertedspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bneleti

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/lurji-talgha

https://sayatnovaproject.bandcamp.com/album/kazbek-field-rec...

These are objectively awful instruments. They were so bad (and hard to get), that it was a common practice to make your own. For these purposes, the public phone booths were frequently vandalized as the pnones contained mics, that could be turned into pickups. Yet, much of the punk and rock stuff of the former USSR has been and, in some cases, are still made with them. E.g. Villu Tamme, legendary Estonian punk still plays a Musima Lead Star and it’s a key part of his sound.

That's a very cool find, thanks!

Jesus those things are big!

> It was unreasonably heavy and made of cheap wood, with a neck like a carved baseball bat.

Guitar necks need to withstand the tension of the strings, and any Russian-educated engineer tasked by the politburo with making a guitar out of fiberboard[^2], will plug tension plus safety margins into the secant formula[^1] and immediately realize that some steel rods from Magnitogorsk for reinforcement are in order, and promptly discover that they only have 1/2'' ones. Oh well.

[^1]: http://www.engineeringcorecourses.com/solidmechanics2/C5-buc...

[^2]: Not that there's anything wrong with fiberboard for guitars; see Danelectro. In fact, if you own a laser cutter and want to make something cool with it, an electric guitar is a great project.

cool stuff!