Di Donato Guitars is a Venetian guitar maker who offer handcrafted and customizable instruments. Their main model is an electric guitar with a cast aluminium body, woodenbody  attachments and a hand finished neck.

The Zoybar is a collaborative project launched in 2008 by industrial designer Ziv Bar Ilan. The aim to create a comfortable and and playable instrument that was easy to assemble but efficient to manufacture in small numbers.

Zoybar instruments are built around a central bar. The headstock and tuners, the body wings, the pickups and electronics, bridge and even the neck and fretboard all bolt on to the bar. This means that every one of those components is inter-changeable, so you can experiment with lots of configurations.

Ray Matter  founded the AlumiSonic guitar company in 2008, combining his background in manufacturing engineering and custom luthierie. AlumiSonic use 6061-T6 aluminium (aluminum) for their guitars. Their instruments have hollow bodies, which helps with lower tones. They claim that, with the correct amount of overdrive, their aluminium guitars can sustain a note infinitely.

Construction techniques are obivously completely different to traditional luthierie methods. Metal body parts are laser cut then seamlessly welded together. The aluminium can be polished and clear coated or chrome plated (shiny!).

The aluminum bodies are grounded to the bridge, strings and input jack (perhaps this is not ideal but most guitar manufacturers use this technique). Aluminum also provides RF shielding of the electronics helping to cancel hum.