Hohner Guitaret

Introduced in the early 1960s, the Hohner Guitaret is one of the strangest and most charming instruments Hohner ever released. Designed by Ernst Zacharias, it is essentially an amplified lamellophone - closer in spirit to an electric thumb piano than to a guitar - but packaged as a small, holdable stage instrument.

The Guitaret never became a mainstream success, which is part of why it feels so intriguing now. Its short, percussive, metallic plucks sit in a space between kalimba, music box, and prepared electric instrument. It is more of a color piece than a bread-and-butter keyboard, but it has a sound modern producers still struggle to fake convincingly.

Plugin Emulations

How It Works

  • Uses tuned metal tongues rather than strings or reeds
  • The tongues are plucked by hand and amplified through an onboard pickup system
  • Produces short, bell-like notes with an unusual metallic and slightly toy-like attack

Legacy & Evolution

The Guitaret was short-lived, but it became a cult object because nothing else feels quite the same. It belongs to the same family of offbeat Hohner inventions as the Pianet and Clavinet: practical enough to be a product, strange enough to become legend later.

Key Specs

  • Introduced: 1963
  • Type: Electric lamellophone / thumb-piano-style instrument
  • Designer: Ernst Zacharias
  • Character: Short metallic plucks with a picked, chiming attack
  • Known For: Rarity and unmistakably odd mid-century electric tone