For over a hundred years, one thing has been true of music – whether you’re a writer of complicated songs, a master of improvization who just doesn’t know what key will come next, or just an obsessive completist, you need a six-sided harmonica.

A few fancy facts:

• This beauty has been in constant production by Hohner Musikinstrumente since the 1800s;
• It can be dismantled into six individual harmonicas, tuned to C, D, F, G, A and B♭;
• We’ve never been tempted to even pick a harmonica up until seeing this thing…

We can’t imagine Roland will still be pumping out the 808 in a century, so don’t even waste your time thinking about one. However the world has always had a need for six-sided harmonicas, and probably always will.

Hohner six-sided harmonica [via Hammacher Schlemmer]