http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2013/05/13/iss-commander-chris-hadfield-plays-a-canadian-larrivee-guitar-on-space-oddity/
The backstory here is that NASA psychologists pay close attention to the mental health of astronauts and have considered all aspects of a fulfilling life that would be necessary for extended space travel. If you’re an excellent musician like Hadfield, I can assure you that your mental health would certainly be compromised by the lack of an instrument for more than a few days, much less the nearly five months he’s spent in space.
In deciding on putting a guitar up with Soyuz for I.S.S. astronauts, Hadfield said that NASA representatives headed to Guitar Center in Houston to seek out a small, high-quality instrument. I looked closely on the video to see what kind of guitar made the journey, expecting it to be from a Texas outfit like Austin’s Collings Guitars.
To my surprise, the guitar was also Canadian: a Larrivée Parlor guitar.
Larrivée’s frontpage proudly notes this fact today with photos and a video of Hadfield visiting their Vancouver guitar-building facility and pictures of non-Canadian astronauts Dan Burbank and Steve Robinson wielding the famed instrument on the I.S.S.
Larrivee makes several versions of the Parlor Guitar and I have a query in to them as to this particular model.
The backstory on this particular guitar is told in this Larrivée video with Chris Hadfield — the first two commenters on the video were prescient in noting more than a year ago that it should be used to play “Space Oddity.” Hadfield notes therein that playing in zero gravity has some challenges but the guitar sounds excellent.
Hadfield notes that a second, identical model stays at Mission Control for comparison — you’ll see some squares on the side an reverse of the I.S.S. guitar that suggest to me some experiments have been done on tonality in zero gravity.
