Dingulator
Dingulators are guitar sculptures made out of recycled automotive steel. They are a class of musical instrument invented by Charlie Nothing and each construction is unique with its own sound.
Dingulators are steel-string acoustic guitars having typically seven or eight and sometimes up to 21 strings. They have friction pegs and raised frets like those on a sitar. Tuning a dingulator is "variable, organic and evolving." According to Nothing, "the ideal would be to never tune them, to just find where they are going and go with it ... but sometimes I do make adjustments." Nothing, a skilled artisan and welder, used old cars as his material because "cars have the right kind of steel ... got very soulful steel." Nothing was also making a political statement with his artistic recycling. "It's a sword-to-plowshare kind of thing," he said. "Cars to guitars."
When Nothing began touring, he found taking his big and bulky dingulators aboard aircraft problematic. To overcome these difficulties he developed a smaller portable version with a detachable neck that could be stored in the body, making a compact steel carrying case he could take on airlines.
Folk singer-songwriter Josephine Foster, who featured on the same bill as Nothing at the Two Million Tongues Festival in Chicago in 2005, described dingulators as "folk-art masterpieces". She said they sound like "tuned percussion animate and punctuate spoken-word diatribes." They are also reminiscent of Hans Reichel's pre-daxophone modified-guitar recordings, and of Derek Bailey's improvised music, although Nothing was unfamiliar with both these musicians. Nothing described his musical influences as "everything ... probably as much by the stuff I don't like as the stuff I like."
A photograph of one of Nothing's dingulators appears as the back cover art of Hearts and Minds, Musical Instrument Makers of America by editors Nancy Ellis and Robert Bailey, and photographer Jake Jacobson. A dingulator is also the cover art on the "The Western Region" section of the book.
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