"It's cool playing guitar in space because it floats in front of you.You don't need a strap!"
Commander Chris Hadfield
Back in 2001 a Larrivée parlour acoustic guitar was delivered to the International Space Station on NASA's space shuttle Discovery mission STS-105. Since then it has orbitted the Earth tens of thousands of times, making it almost certainly the world's most travelled instrument.
We posted a story last year in which Commander Chris Hadfield talked about the guitar, playing the guitar on the Space Station, and the fact that he was working on plans to showcase more music from space!
Today, his beautiful cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity from the International Space Station as he prepares to return to Earth has hit the mainstream media, including coverage on BBC Breakfast, Sky News, The Guardian, Independent, Telegraph and many more. This story is currently trending on Twitter.
The Guitar
The guitar is a now discontinued P-01 model, originally delivered to the Space Station over a decade ago. The nearest equivalent today is a P-03 model which has an RRP of £899.
All Larrivée Guitars are hand-built in Canada and the USA, featuring stunning attention to detail and critically, all solid-wood construction using the very best tonewoods, still often sourced personally from around the world by company founder Jean Larrivée.
The line-up ranges from small Parlour guitars (such as the one on the Space Station) to exquisite one-of-a-kind custom shop models costing multiple thousand pounds. Most popular in the UK is the highly acclaimed Larrivée -02 Series which offers sensational all-solid-wood quality starting at £849.
Playing Guitar in Space
Larrivée Guitars are distributed in the UK and ROI by Sound Technology Ltd.
