The equilateral triangle is among the most emotionally packed forms in Western visual culture. It appears on currency, on occult diagrams, on the cover of the best-selling rock album of all time, and now, with exact white planes and amber gem controls, on the body of a custom-made synthesizer guitar made by Swedish instrument designer Love Hultén. The Magicos-2, unveiled in late 2025, carries that shape with complete awareness of its freight. Hultén has built Darth Vader synths, bonsai MIDI sculptures, NES-inspired keyboards, and a circular Video game Boy for clients over the years, and we have actually covered the lot of them here at YD. Each one takes a form that feels conceptually wrong for an instrument and makes it feel inescapable. This one takes the prism from The Dark Side of the Moon and turns it into something you can actually play.
Commissioned by a personal client and explained by Hultén himself as a “triangular curiosity born from psychopathic imagination and psychedelic fandom,” the Magicos-2 is a double-necked instrument housing a 1010music Tangerine module on one arm and a Lemondrop on the other. The detachable base system, a trapezoidal piece that sits listed below the main body and separates cleanly for transportation, contains the effects chain: Walrus Audio Lore for reverse reverb and ethereal drones, Accident Gadget TARs for fuzz and distortion. A rose quartz crystal pyramid sits at the center of that base, lit from within. Hultén calls it the crystalline emitter, and at this moment, questioning the nomenclature feels beside the point.
Designer: Love Hultén
Alexis Mardas, better referred to as Magic Alex, was the Beatles’ internal electronics wizard throughout the Apple Corps years, a guy who promised John Lennon wallpaper that played music, a force field for your house, and an amplifier that would go to a million. Almost none of it worked. What he left was the irresistible idea of a device that operates somewhere between real innovation and pure mythology, an object whose existence in a space alters the space’s frequency before it ever produces a sound. Hultén name-drops Mardas straight in the Magicos-2’s description, and the invocation lands. This instrument carries that same energy: technically rigorous, aesthetically imaginary, and spiritually someplace between a laboratory prototype and a spiritual relic.
The Tangerine and Lemondrop, both 1010music modules, sit one per neck, each a thick and malleable synthesis engine with its own voice and specification set. Having 2 discrete sound sources installed symmetrically on the triangular body means the player can run parallel sonic worlds concurrently, layering Mellotron-style string leads against drones, or pressing both into the Tradition’s reverse reverb to develop the kind of sustained wash that makes people stop and stare at the ceiling. The fretboard grids running along each white arm checked out visually as pure geometry, equivalent parts instrument neck and architectural elevation illustration. 2 necks, 2 engines, one triangular chassis: the type follows the function with a directness that many instrument designers would kill for.
< img src ="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%20959%22%3E%3C/svg%3E"data-src= "https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_3.jpg"alt= ""width=" 1280" height="959 "/ > Walrus Audio’s Tradition pedal handles the reverse delay and ethereal glow, celebrated amongst ambient and drone players for its ability to turn almost any input into a continual, backward-breathing environment. Crash Devices ‘TARs sits together with it, including the fuzz and harmonic density that filters the entire signal into what Hultén memorably describes as a carpet of sonic moss. The base links to the triangular body via a tidy physical joint noticeable as a horizontal seam in the silhouette, separating totally for transport or for reconfiguring the signal chain. That modularity strengthens the instrument’s identity as a system rather than a single item, which matters almost when you are bring something formed like a pyramid to a gig.
< img src="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%20959%22%3E%3C/svg%3E"data-src ="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_5.jpg"alt=""width ="1280 "height ="959"/ > The 9 amber teardrop manages embedded in the triangular face, warm brown and orange versus the flat white surface, are the one minute of color in the entire instrument, and they bring the weight of that duty well. They read like something between a control board and a constellation. The crystal pyramid in the base glows gently underneath them. The chakras, per Hultén, are aligned. I believe him.
< img src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_6.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="960"/ > < img src ="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%20960%22%3E%3C/svg%3E" data-src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_6.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="960"/ > < img src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_7.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="960"/ > < img src ="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%20960%22%3E%3C/svg%3E" data-src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/627868/magicos-2_7.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="960"/ >