A 12-18 foot aluminum beam strung with tensed wires and guitar pickups, invented in the 1970s, made famous by Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture V’ger sound.
Key Takeaways
Designed by John Lazelle early 1970s; Craig Huxley built a refined aluminum version and patented it in 1984 (US patent via Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1998).
Played by plucking, striking with sticks, pipes, or large objects; pickups are repositionable to alter timbre, giving it an unusually dark, low-frequency bass character.
Jerry Goldsmith used it for the alien V’ger signature in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979); James Horner followed with Star Trek II and Battle Beyond the Stars.
Also credited for the seismic charge sound in Star Wars: Episode II and Bear McCreary’s 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), showing sustained niche use across four decades of sci-fi scoring.
The instrument sits at the edge of infrasound territory; FM broadcast floor near 50 Hz roughly matches its theoretical lowest frequencies, relevant to reported physical audience effects at live performances.
Hacker News Comment Review
The single substantive comment questions whether the instrument even physically exists, citing sparse and low-quality photos on blasterbeam.com and the Wikipedia article, suggesting the web presence does not match the instrument’s storied film history.
Notable Comments
@analogpixel: “I don’t get it… Does this thing actually exist, or is this some late april fools joke?” – questions instrument’s physical documentation given the near-empty official site.
