This picture, or set of pictures, is not particularly about guitars. Nevertheless, it is one of my favorites  – a general-purpose “Well that escalated quickly!” kind of image, suitable for framing with a title about a situation of your choosing.

This could be every entrepreneur’s vision of how their new business will take off. Or every investor’s dream of how their investments will do. Or how driving a Tesla feels like if you step too hard on the accelerator. Or how life changes for you when you get out of school and enter the real world. Or how it feels to be a parent of children who have grown into teenagers.

This set of pictures was taken in the 1950s when the military was trying to figure out how to design pilot-ejection seat systems for supersonic aircraft that wouldn’t kill the pilot outright. To test their limits of endurance, test pilots were strapped into all sorts of test rigs including high-acceleration rocket sleds in the New Mexico desert and subjected to all manner of extreme vibrations, accelerations and decelerations. Here it looks like they wanted to see how your face would work if you lost your helmet in an air stream at velocities of 100 mph, 200 mph, etc. up to 500mph. I really like the symmetry of the last picture, and wonder how it might inspire a car designer looking for a new grill concept. I have never seen a set of human teeth with such lethal-looking lower canines.

Given all the standard rock star expressions of pain and ecstasy you see at concerts, has anyone ever seen a guitar that could do this to a player’s face? We are working on it.