At the Acoustical Society of America’s 151st meeting in Providence, RI, Sophie Léger of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Université de Moncton, Canada, presented a paper on "A New Family of Stringed Musical Instruments". She’s one of the inventors of the Tritare, which has triple-ended strings – one string goes up the fretted neck, and the other two resonantes on the second, and third, fretless necks.

Obviously, the interesting bit is the sound, and this page contains several samples, which are amazing. Presumably they’re uneffected, but sound alternately like bells or reverb-covered ‘Paris Texas’ slide guitar. They’re trying to market the Tritare as a product – there’s a homepage at Tritare.com, and here is a report from the launch, in 2003 – but meanwhile, they’re experimenting with networks of strings, which at the moment are more at the clanking and atonal end of things.

Of course, if three necks doesn’t sound hardcore enough, you could always build a double body guitar.