The Smart Guitar

The first Smart Guitar built in Romania

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 16.12.2025, 14:00

The origin of the Hora factory in Reghin, goes back to the year 1951, when master Roman Boianciuc, founded a small workshop, which at that time produced 37 violins masterfully crafted. A year later the number rose to 435 violins and the output continued to grow together with the demand for the new instruments appreciated for the high quality of the Carpathian wood. In late 1950, the factory started producing guitars, mandolins as well as other instruments that are traditional in various countries.

The factory is producing around 70 thousand musical instruments out of which 8 thousand string instruments with bows, such as violins, violas, cellos and 60 thousand string instruments without a bow such as classical and acoustic guitars, mandolins, bouzoukis, ukulele and others.

The secret of this factory to produce such high quality instruments is that it capitalizes on the local resources of highly-resonating spruce and maple wood, which is stored for 5-10 years for natural aging. The process is meant to increase the wood’s long-lasting acoustic properties.

Exotic types of wood, such as ebony, rosewood, mahogany, red cedar and Brazilian wood are also used in the manufacturing process.

And besides the mass-production, the aforementioned plant also produces top-notch professional instruments. Here is Doru Alexandru Radu, co-founder of the Nobl project in partnership with Hora of Reghin, who created the first SMART guitar in Romania

Doru Alexandru Radu: “This is the first SMART guitar made in Romania, a high-quality electro-acoustic guitar, which has a built-in sound processor and two speakers. So, this guitar can record and play sounds in its speakers. We are practically using the guitar’s sound-hole as cabinet for one of the speakers and we can also attach another speaker. I am going to show it to you right now.”

Says our interlocutor and started to perform an improvised beat, which the guitar recorded and played afterwards.

At Go-Tech, and artificial intelligence fair in Bucharest, Doru Alexandru Radu, showed us what the aforementioned Smart Guitar can do.

Doru Alexandru Radu (with live music insertions): “This is the first layer, and what you are hearing now is the result: I first registered the beat, then the harmony, and now I can play upon these notes and create one solo. That’s how the smart guitar works and this is only one of its features. It also has a lot of sound effects such as chorus, delay, river; it also has Bluetooth connectivity, we can do streaming, play phone tracks on the guitar’s speakers and other features such as Metronome, tuner, pedal and so on.”

But where did Doru Alexandru Radu get this project’s idea from?

Doru Alexandru Radu:” I saw it on the Internet that it is possible and that there is interest in this area. Then I visited the Hora plant in Reghin and saw what can be done here in our country and I also learnt more about the plant and its capabilities. They boast an expertise of roughly 70 years in manufacturing string instruments. And I decided that we can do things together, we can help each other out and come up with an innovative product.”

A young project as Doru Alexandru Radu told us:

 Doru Alexandru Radu: “It was produced almost one year ago; we launched a limited edition of 10 guitars, tested this edition and then we got a bigger series of 50 units, which we want to sell in Europe and the United States. We have customers. And our first order came right from New York; we have a lot of customers in Romania, people who believed in us and enjoy the product very much! Several local artists are going to play the instrument shortly, like any other instrument, which I believe will make this technology increasingly popular.”

The plant in Reghin is producing top-notch professional instruments for famous philharmonic orchestras and instrumentalists from Romania and abroad, which are manufactured in a special luthiers workshop. 80% of the plant’s output is being exported all over the world, selling to big and small retailers alike.

And since behind every successful enterprise there are a bunch of dedicated enthusiasts, we should mention the company’s director general, engineer Nicolae Bâzgan, who has been working at Hora since 1965 right after his graduation from the woodcarving machines department of the Braşov University.

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