Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Finished this beast a couple of weeks ago and now I'm figuring out what to do with it playing-wise.

It's Blackwood with a Swiss Spruce top, Madagascar Rosewood bridge and Honduran Rosewood bridge plate.

My main concern was how to brace the top adequately given the string tension. It sounds OK with not too much bridge roll so I guess it's in the ball park. If it retains it's geometry in 12 months I'll conclude that I could have lightened up the bracing.

As you can see the braces are quite "chunky"

It is quite difficult to play compared with a "single necker" (but that is probably due to my limited ability). However it does offer a whole heap of opportunities tuning-wise. I started with the set closest to me in D major and the furthest set in D minor. Then I reversed that. I've also tried D major with G minor and G major with Dminor. It also works with both in different major tunings. So the possibilities are endless.


The problem I found is moving the slide cleanly from one set of strings to the next (without getting buzz or any percussive sounds from the steel.

The furthest set of strings is a little awkward on the wrist as well so I'm going to angle those strings with the thin E string lower than the thicker strings.

This has promoted a fair bit of discussion with everyone who has played/inspected it about how to refine it. I've got a good player coming to pick up his new 6 string Weiss in a couple of weeks so it'll be great to get some input from him.

The next prototype will have a wedge body (with the thin side away from the body to facilitate an ergonomic wrist position)
and nine strings (the bottom 6 play a major chord - the top six play a minor chord)

Enough of the ramblings of a demented instrument designer bring on the pics.

I don't know about anything else, but it certainly looks very cool!

Good luck with figuring how to play it!

Looks great Bob. I reckon if you devised a stand like Santana uses to play his acoustics on stage sometimes that would work other than that seven foot tall and bloody long arm and upper legs would be an advantage.

Cheers

Alan

Bob,

That looks mighty fine - well done. I thought that the playing style might be "interesting" but just persivere. The bridge can roll but as long as the instrument holds together you'll be fine - that's the beauty of lap slides

Looking forward to some soundclips.

Hey Bob, that's fat! cool sweep on the fret board end.

Jim

Bob

Have you thought of tuning major and relative minor? For example G and Em. You can play a 12 bar sequence following the relative minor of each major.
Get a lefty to sit on the other side .....

Regards Peter

Ahhhhh my Blackwood fix for the week Nice job Bob, love the 'fingerboard'.

Hi Bob
Amazing looking instrument shoud be interesting to play.
Regards Steve

Peter Young wrote:Bob

Have you thought of tuning major and relative minor? For example G and Em. You can play a 12 bar sequence following the relative minor of each major.
Get a lefty to sit on the other side .....

Regards Peter

Thanks for the suggestion Pete.

I put the closest set of strings into a B minor last night Pete. Makes it much easier to get around.

I originally had it tuned to D B D F# B D but really don't like having a D as the root note of a B minor chord so I dropped the low D string down to a B so it's quite growly now in the bottom end.

Regards