Specimen Electric 10 String Tiple

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The first time I'd ever heard of a tiple was years ago when a guitar repairman friend of mine showed me a box full of wooden shards and pieces that at one point was a turn of the century Martin Tiple. It had always been in my periphery as an instrument I'd like to try. With two sets of triple course strings and two sets of double course strings it has a bizarre outsider appeal.

I recently acquired a K. Yasuma Martin Tiple copy in a trade deal and have yet to play it. It requires a little work to get going and I just don't have the time these days for my own projects. I'll feature it here someday.

To the Specimen Electric Tiple above. I came across this while doing a little googling and think it would be great to try. I'd heard of Specimen before, mostly from Guitarz, but knew very little about them. This tiple is nice in that it maintains a lot of the acoustic aesthetic, but is an electric. 

You may want to check out their guitars as well.

Very nice Specimen indeed.

R.W. Haller

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1978 BC Rich 10-string Bich

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One of my favorite guitars ever is the 10-string Bich by BC Rich, with double four higher strings for rich harmonic sound and single lower ones for heavy riffs... Designed by Neal Moser in 1977, it's part of the early BC Rich models that were so cool and so good at proposing alternative designs after the 1960s creative boom waned and had left rock musicians with 4 or 5 dominant guitar designs... Moser also created its electronics - there are plenty of knobs and switches as you can see, to split, boost and phase the humbuckers, plus a varitone à la Gibson, for a wide range of sounds.

The guitar on the picture just sports 6 strings - that is a mystery to me, why downgrade such a brilliant guitar, but you know very well that rationality is often overlooked when it comes to the magic land of electric guitars... Anyway, I love how design and ergonomics collide to create a new form that becomes instantly just obvious: that is really the genius of 20th century, and 21st still has to prove that it has better to propose to mankind (iPad is definitely not enough!)

Bertram D

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Cubist 10-string classical guitar built by Juan Garcia Ojeda in Las Palmas Spain in 1957!

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I do hope that this 10-string classical guitar does not sound as boxy as it looks. According to the information on the label inside the soundhole it was built by Juan Garcia Ojeda in Las Palmas Spain in 1957. I have to wonder if perhaps he was an apprentice luthier at the time because the construction methods with the straight-edged sides and the flat neck profile make for a much simpler design than the classically-shaped classical guitar. It looks like something inspired by the Cubism art movement of the early 20th Century. I wonder also how well this shape would work for a seated classical guitarist.

10-string classical guitars can be considered as a form of harp guitar, in that despite all 10-strings being on the same fully-fretted neck, the additional four strings are sub basses and intended to be played as open strings rather and are not fretted with the left hand. I'm not saying that this isn't possible with the correct tuning and piece of music, but that music written for 10-string classical guitar has always dictated that the sub-basses are played open.

This guitar is currently being offered for sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £550.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Gérard Audirac "Cathedrale" 10-string classical guitar

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The Guitarz blog is supposed to cover all kinds of guitars, but there are certain guitars that I don't blog about very frequently simply because I don't know a lot about them. These include resonators, lap-steels, pedal steels, antique guitars, and classical guitars.

Here we see a classical 10-string by French luthier Gérard Audirac, currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $7,350. This model is known as the Cathedrale and is known for its powerful projection, rich tone and long sustain. As you can see from the photos, this is quite a contemporary design with its distinctive headstock and elongated soundhole, which is positively conservative compared with the soundholes on Audirac's Conservatoire double bouche model.

For those wanting more information, there's an interview with Gérard Audirac here, and for French-speakers, the first installment of an interview on YouTube here.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage 10-string acoustic

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Is this a guitar? I'm not entirely sure. It certainly looks guitar-like. Although it's currently strung with just six strings, it appears to be a 10-string guitar and the slots in the nut show that it would have had six courses as on a guitar but with first and second courses as single strings and the remaining four courses as paired strings. (The same stringing as the B.C. Rich Bich 10-string guitar!)

Of course nuts can be re-cut, bridges and tailpieces can be replaced, so we can't be certain if this would have been the original set-up. Does anyone out there know for sure?

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

10-string Santucci TrebleBass

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OK, time to reactivate the too-many-strings war, with this 10-string Santucci TrebleBass that adds 4 bass strings in E A D G to 6 guitars strings in E A D G B E A - the standard bass and guitar tunings but with a gap between them (though I heard that some people tune it in C# F# B E A D G B E A) - all on one wide neck and with one scale (dunno how they do that). The TrebleBass can be played as a tapping guitar but also in regular style.

This is the kind of instrument that can easily be considered as a pure show-off tool, since it requires obviously the kind of virtuosity that often puts aside creativity and feelings - but for a few geniuses... One can wonder what kind of music you can play on this, so I add this video and the music is unsurprisingly some competitive muzak. But I still think that put in the right hands, this TrebleBass can be a terrific instrument and open new horizons - what would Frank Zappa have done with it? There are several instruments out there that didn't find their users yet, but after all, who was betting on the saxophone 150 years ago...

This reminds me of an anecdote: a few months ago I was at a colloquium about contemporary music, and there was this Italian composer making extremely complex computer music, and complaining that nowadays music (that means her music) was way ahead of human perception, implying than genetic manipulation should accelerate human evolution to allow us to perceive nanotonal variations... That was scary and reminded me how historical fascisms were rooted in aesthetic radicalism! Anyway the next composer presented a beautiful piece based of the transcription for a string orchestra of the effects of layered ring modulations, that was stunning and reconciled me right away with brainy experimental music.

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

OMG! Another Mel-O-Bar. But what a Mel-O-Bar!!!! Naugahyde!!!!

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We've had a few vintage Mel-O-Bars recently but this one is 1980s, unused with just a couple of small scratches on the neck and a liberal coating of shop dust. That's like fairy dust but more expensive. The sellers say it's been on display in their shop since the 1980s. The body is foam padded "for comfort" and, it's covered in Naugahyde!!!!!!! Sorry, more exclamation marks and bold type, I just can't help it.

It was Tom Waits who introduced me to the subtle, sticky and seductive texture, the clammy and clinging faux leatherette-ishness and the sweet, heady vinylious aroma of Naugahyde and I've been a sucker for it ever since.

I checked out Naugahyde on Google and they are still in business! www.naugahyde.com 

"There is only one Naugahyde and it's proudly made in the USA." Well, for that I'm glad! They do have a somewhat skewed take on eco friendly though, which is kind of fuzzed over with their story that Naugahyde comes from the sloughed skin of naugas - "No naugas were harmed in the production of this material". But as Naugahyde is actually made of PVC, the welfare of cute little fictional critters is the least of our worries. Slight digression... Guitar making is, in the mainstream at least, an industrial process and, even apart from the timbers that are used to build guitars, there are glues, paints, varnishes, plastics and heavy metals (yeah! I'm talking to you Ozzy) used in their manufacture so... Where art thou, eco-guitar?

It also has another interesting though somehow less, well, tactile feature (if you get my drift) which I've never seen before. Along the edge of the neck is a guide bar to help position the slide. I guess you would feel the notches with your finger tips as you play. I tried searching for more info on this but with no luck so far. It may well be an innovation unique to Melobars.

I'm pleased to say, that as it's clearly not everyones cup of tea, I had little opposition in the usual bidding frenzy over there at eBay Towers and it will be winging its way to sunny Barcelona (into the loving arms of the Spanish customs department so they can determine how much to fleece me for this time) very shortly. I stayed up till 4.30 in the morning to bid for this, by the way.

David in Barcelona

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!