THEFTS of valuable musical instruments could be a thing of the past thanks to a tracking system being developed by a Darlington company.
MusitraC, developed by Cleveland Studios, is being piloted in music stores across the country.
It has been developed from another of the company's products which tracks high-value personal items such as antiques or expensive sports equipment.
The MusitraC kit enables owners to fit their musical instrument with an identification chip.
Details are held on a register and chips can be read by police scanners.
Ken Campling, managing director of Williams Music Group, is piloting MusitraC in the company's stores, including outlets in Darlington and Gateshead's MetroCentre.
"We are very impressed with it," he said.
"Sales of musical instruments, particularly guitars, are going up and up and buyers spend anything from £99 to in excess of £4,000. The cost of MusitraC is a very small proportion of such an outlay and we are sure it will be well received."
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