I smashed a guitar once. I don't recommend it.

I was living in China. It was a no-brand, poor excuse for a guitar. The strings were always too high off the neck to play it for more than 2 minutes without developing the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. And the truss rod adjuster didn'’t work. And this was 1994, and there were noelectrici guitar maintenace techs working in Nanjing that I knew about. So ultimately, this was just one frustrating piece of wood with strings on it. Not really fit to be called a guitar. But, being in China, feeling culturally isolated for 7 months, it was nice to pick around on it regardless.

But at the end of my time in the country, some friends and I gathered on the roof of our student dormitory, and in the midst of a farewell China party, someone had the bright idea of smashing the guitar against the bricks on the roof of the building.

My gut instinct was that this was not a good idea, but impulse won out.

We took turns passing it around and slamming it against the building. The neck detached from the splintered body, and the strings held the two pieces together like a marionette. We laughed about it at the time, but soon after, I felt like we had desecrated something.

It was a few years later that I was taking a class in Indian classical music on the Sarod. The teacher was often reminding the students not to leave the instruments laying around, or not to step over them. He said that, in his culture, "“instruments are gods and goddesses. We must respect them."

So, no matter what words you use to explain it, I think it's just better to take care of your instruments. I think it just feels right.

I guess if you really want to explore the theatrical aspect of this, build a mock instrument out of wood, and throw some wire on it to imitate strings. That could be a fun way to get over the impulse, without the leftover baggage of having killed an instrument.