What started as a science experiment could become a lucrative manufacturing business for Karl Brinsdon.
The 13-year-old Taieri College pupil has built his own electric guitar, which creates a unique guitar sound.
And the right sound is everything in music.
Karl said he bought the body of the guitar off the internet, but rather than installing commercially manufactured pick-ups on the guitar, he made his own.
Pick-ups are made with a series of magnets wrapped in fine wire that turn the vibrations of the guitar strings into sound, via an amplifier and speakers.
The sound can be altered by the way copper wire is coiled around the magnets, and there was a special recipe for the sound he had created, he said.
''Manufactured pick-ups sound more compressed - bright, tinny.
''My pick-ups sound vintage, fuller, more resonant and mellow.
''They sound like honey, as opposed to raw lemon.''
Karl built three pick-ups - each wound about 7000 times with hair-thin copper wire. He built a special hand-winder out of wood to help do it without breaking the wire.
Karl said he gained much of the information he needed to build the pick-ups from the internet, but also had help from professional guitarist Andy Parsons and University of Otago physics masters student Dylan Rasburn.
Although Karl had considered the commercial potential of his unique-sounding pick-ups, for now he was keeping the recipe to himself, content to play guitar in his own gigs.
''But who knows, in the future, maybe I will share the secret.''
