Ed's interest in instrument design was born out of necessity over several years of developing playing techniques on electric guitars. His first experiments were crude butcherings of existing guitars - removing frets and excess body surface, adding a pickup at the nut and giving each pick up a separate output. This prototype eventually led to Devane building his first proper instrument in 2007.

This zither, with a scale length a fifth of an octave deeper than a standard guitar, adjustable bridge, 3 separately output humbucker pickups, a built-in damper and table feet, bears no relation to a guitar in appearance or sound. This instrument has had a profound effect on Ed's music, enabling him to develope both his playing technique, and instrument building skills.

In designing and building his first zither, Ed developed several new skills - metalwork, woodwork, drawing, CAD and a keener understanding of the physics of sound and music. Since 2010 he shares a workshop space with other artists where he can develop new projects. The largest work so far to come out of this workshop has been Stop/Run, a project that built on the knowlegde acquired from building various small zithers. Devane has little interest in recreating existing instrument types. His instruments, like a lot of his music, are experimental in nature.

Currently Ed is working on a number of instrument projects, and eventually wishes to impliment Arduino microcontrollers into his designs for automatic and interactive sound making projects.