Steve Shaver rocks out with a Db9.

(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Steve Shaver

MSRP: $32.95

http://enfinitar.com

Steve Shaver wants you to rock out, hardcore. Just do it quietly.

Shaver’s patent-pending Enfinitar is the sawed-off business end of a guitar, which makes it easy to practice your power chords without annoying your neighbors. Fretted and strung with real strings, the Enfinitar looks and feels just like a real guitar—er, the top eight inches of a real guitar. The frets double as clips, allowing you to slide in cards with the proper fingerings all marked out in color-coded dots.

Steve makes every Enfinitar by hand in Buffalo, and they are available for both guitar and bass, with banjo and violin models in the works. They come with an instruction manual and a starter set of 12 chord cards. Additional chord cards and an instructional DVD are available separately.

For those of you who like things that blink and beep, Steve is already in discussions with Yamaha and Casio for the Infinerator electronic version. Preliminary designs feature a headphone jack so you can hear what you’re playing, lights on the fretboard rather than cards and replaceable memory sticks with additional chords.

So how did Steve come up with the idea for the Enfinitar? “I was playing a lot of Tiger Woods Golf and thought maybe I should be practicing guitar instead. After I invented the Infinitar, I could do both at the same time.” Who ever said Xbox was bad for productivity?

Pros: The neighbors won’t know when you hit all the wrong notes.

Cons: The neighbors won’t know when you hit all the right notes, baby.

Dave feels his biggest contribution to the art of guitar playing was his, um, innovative use of a rolling ruler as a slide. Email your musical innovations to webmaster@artvoice.com.