Taylor GT8 Baritone 8 String acoustic guitar.

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I'm not necessarily a fan of Taylor guitars. I've played a lot of them and they are actually quite playable, I've just never played one that sang to me in anyway and they really aren't offering anything unique. At least I thought they weren't.
It seems I was wrong.

This now discontinued Taylor GT8 is a baritone guitar and the middle 2 strings ( A and D ) are double coursed with an octave string. The result is rather piano-esque (or rather pianistical?) sound and I can see a lot of applications here for an acoustic performer. I'm a little surprised that it's no longer made. Perhaps the $3500 list price was too much for most.

You can get this one for $2500 Canadian.

Check out a demo here.

R.W. Haller

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Shergold eight and four-string doublenecked bass from 1980

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Founded in 1967 by Jack Golder and Norman Houlder, both former Burns London employees, Shergold were arguably Britain's most forward-thinking guitar manufacturer of the 1970s and 1980s. Innovations included guitars with modular electronics that could be swapped out and changed depending on the sound desired. They were also champions of more unusual instruments such as their own take on the Bass VI and they had a particular affinity for double-necked instruments, the most famous of which was probably the 12 string + bass combination as used by Mike Rutherford of Genesis - a particularly clever design in that it was a modular instrument that could be configured as a doubleneck or else two separate single-necked instruments.

Here we see another Shergold doubleneck - a configuration that I haven't previously seen from this company - with 8 and 4-string bass necks. The eBay seller tells us that this is one of only three such instruments produced.

Currently on sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £985.

G L Wilson


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Please read our photo and content policy.

Rickenbacker 4003S8 8-string bass from 2002

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This 2002 Rickenbacker 4003S8 8-string bass is quite scrumptious. What would you call that finish? It looks like Fender's Aztec Gold but what is that in Rickenbacker-speak? Aztecglo?

However, bearing in mind the eBay seller has slapped a $3,200 Buy It Now price tag on this bass, I can hear alarm bells ringing when I read that:

Owner kept it tuned down a step to relieve tension on the neck, which we recommend, too. Tuned up to pitch bows the neck a bit more then usual on the bass side.

C'mon guys, this is a high quality professionally-made instrument from a world-renowned manufacturer, it's not some cheaply-made plank from China. The prospective buyer should NOT have to compromise. If the neck bows more than usual on the bass side, that says to me that this instrument has a problem that needs to be sorted. Don't Rickenbackers have two truss rods? At a guess I'd say, hey, maybe the bass-side truss rod needs adjusting.

This shouldn't be a big ask. After all, other manufacturers produce 12-string basses and these can be tuned to pitch, i.e. standard bass tuning (plus octave strings, obviously).

The moral of this story? If you want to earn big bucks selling your guitar/bass on eBay, how about spending a few bucks getting it set up properly in the first place?

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Kramer KL8 bass - aluminium neck and eight strings

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It always kind of annoyed me that no-one seriously took notice of Kramer guitars until Eddie Van Halen started using them, mainly because by this time - in my eyes - they had stopped being cool by abandoning the aluminium necks that made their early instruments so very interesting in the first place. The company was founded in the late 1970s by Dennis Berardi, Gary Kramer and Phillip J. Petillo and produced their first aluminium necked guitars in 1976 from a plant in Neptune, New Jersey. They switched to producing more generic wooden-necked guitars in 1981. Notably, Gary Kramer, had left the company by this point.

Unlike Travis Bean guitars and basses, Kramer's aluminium neck was basically a T-shape in cross section with a fillet of timber to either side so as the give warmth to the back of the neck against the player's hand. Kramer produced more basses in their early period of metal-necked instruments in a ratio of approximately 4:1, mainly because bassists for some reason seem to be more willing to experiment with new ideas than guitarists (which is something I have often complained about - c'mon guitarists, stop being so conservative!).

The above-pictured Kramer KL-8 bass is an 8-stringed beauty (OK, it's only strung with 4 strings in the photo, no need to point that out in the comments), has a pair of DiMarzio pickups and a whole bevy of switching options. Note the wooden inserts (looks to be walnut, maybe?) in the back of the neck. Note the four machine heads at the body end for the octave strings. This concept of tuners at both ends of the instrument was also used around the same time on 12-string guitars and 8-string basses built by the likes of Wasburn and BC Rich (also 10-string guitars in the latter case). Actually, speaking of BC Rich, the whole design is rather reminiscent of their guitars; only the forked headstock gives the game away that it's a Kramer.

The eBay seller has listed this bass as being from the 1980s, but I think it's more likely to be 1970s, although conceivably it may have been from the last year of production of aluminium necks in 1980.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,500.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Ergo Instruments one-off doubleneck bass, 4 + 8 strings, fretted/fretless

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Here's another intriguing one-off from Ergo Instruments, who normally specialise in upright electric basses (we've previously looked at a couple of their guitars based on Prince's Cloud design).

It's a doubleneck bass guitar with fretted and fretless necks. Also, the fretless neck is strung as an 8-string bass (i.e. four doubled courses with octave strings), which surprised me as I would have expected the fretted neck to be the 8-stringer.

The necks are of hard maple/figured bubinga, and the body is 3-piece hard maple, thinner than usual so as to keep the weight down. Pickups are P-bass units by Dragonfire.

Currently listed on eBay with a stating bid of £999.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Vintage & Rare Guitar of the Week: 1960s Hagstrom 8-string bass

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This original 1960s Hagstrom 8-string bass in cherry red finish is currently being offered for sale via Vintage & Rare by New Kings Road Guitars in the UK who comment that as this model was the world's first 8-string bass, it's "probably Sweden's greatest contribution to popular music ... (YES, including A**A)."

The Hagstrom 8-string bass was probably most famously played by both Jimi Hendrix and his Experience bandmate Noel Redding (check here for further info).

This particular example is listed at £1995 / €2,500.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!

Porl Thompson's one-off 8-string guitar

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You might have heard that The Cure's former guitarist Porl Thompson currently auctions some of his instruments - including this strange 8-string hybrid bass/guitar. 

I cannot figure out what is the device under the strings - my first idea was some kind of adjustable buzzing thing turning it into a guitar sitar, but it seems much more complicated that the buzz bridge or saddles one can use for that purpose (as you can see here). 

The instrument has 6 guitar strings and 2 bass ones with a much longer scale - hence a fretboard divided in two parts with two different nuts - simple but effective (though much less elegant than fanned frets)  - and it makes sense - when I play bass I mostly use the 2 lower strings... It's quite an inspiring instrument in my opinion, anybody know anything about it and its features - and was it ever used with The Cure?

Edit: thanks to our Facebook page, this guitar has been identified as a Carter Custom Hybrid 8 - there are no detailed explanations about what they call the "Dampler Strikers" but the photos show a.o. that there is more room under the strings that it seems... More comments are welcome!

Bertram D

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

A rather generic Kent-branded dreadnaught acoustic guitar customised into an 8-string

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I've spent the best part of today converting this unsuspecting acoustic guitar into an 8-string. It's a (possibly 1980s/1990s) Kent-branded acoustic that I bought very cheaply off eBay recently because I wanted a back-up guitar for my main acoustic guitar. However, for one of the songs we are doing at the guitar club I attend, I've been hankering after a 12-string sound. But as I don't currently have a 12-string acoustic (to to be honest I don't really get on with them too well as they can be hard work in a number of ways) and also because I have very limited finances, I decided to make use of bits and pieces that I already had and convert a 6-string into an 8-string. That's an 8-string with 6 courses - octaves accompanying the G and D strings. It's a compromise in some ways, but one which I think will work for what I want.

The Kent's tuners were really rather dreadful, so I swapped them out for a set coming off a donor acoustic I have lying around (on which the bridge has lifted, so I'm just using it for parts now and maybe a future project). From all the screw holes in the back of the Kent's headstock, it seems that someone has previously swapped out the tuners - I'm guessing in that instance they were taking nicer tuners off for another project and replacing with something really quite nasty and ineffective because the ones I had to remove were ghastly.

For the two additional tuners, I used a pair that originally came off a Washburn guitar I used to own. You may notice in the above photo what might at first seem like an odd placement of these tuners. My reasoning was to use the two different tuners for the two octave strings.

Anyway, I've strung it up, tuned it, and it's really quite effective with a sound that's not quite as rich as a fully-fledged 12-string guitar, but which comes close - and that's just from adding octave strings to the G and D.

Hopefully it should be less trouble than a 12-string. Easier to re-string, easier to tune, and what's more it doesn't have that annoying wide fingerboard that many 12ers have. I'm aware that it looks a bit "Heath Robinson" perhaps, but I don't care too much about the aesthetics in this instance. It's the sound that I was after.

This conversion cost me nothing. I used a guitar, parts, strings and tools that I already had.

G L Wilson

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

Novax Charlie Hunter 8-string guitar

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It's been a while since we last fed our too-many-strings category - and today no many-necked harp, no video game title song tapped on a 16-string bass, no Meshuggah-like juggernaut riff performed on an 8-string hyperstrat, but a very classy 8-string Novax Charlie Hunter Solidbody 8 guitar with a strange but ergonomic Les Paul extrapolation body in beautiful natural finish and a fanned fret neck.

It combines 5 guitar strings and 3 bass strings with separate electronics including 2 jack outputs and Bartolini pickups specially conceived fort it. Jazz musician Charlie Hunter contributed to its conception and used it extensively as you can see on the video below (there is also a semi-hollow version of this guitar).

So it there still someone who thinks that a 8-string guitar is a gadget?

Bertram

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

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Vega console guitar from the 1930s

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This 8-string Vega console guitar (basically a lap steel with legs!) has more than a touch of the Art Deco about it, with decorative chrome accents and bakelite knobs. The feature that I find most intriguing, though, is the tuning apparatus. I've not seen anything quite like that on a guitar before. Compact, it isn't!

The five bakelite-topped tone controls are labelled "Contra", "Bass", "Normal", "Treble" and "High".

A fascinating instrument; I'm sure you could make a whole blog on the subject of slide guitars alone. Unfortunately I know precious little about them.

G L Wilson

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

Crimson 8-string fanned-fret guitar

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I've been meaning to write about Crimson Guitars for ever. The guitars are painstakingly handcrafted by Ben Crowe and his trusty assistant Igor, and if you've ever had any interest in the construction procress then I recommend you follow the Crimson Guitars workshop diary on the website or alternatively on Facebook as Ben seemingly documents every step of the build for each guitar. They also produce their own hardware including tremolos, headless tuning systems, control knobs, bridges, etc, whilst pickups are often by Wizard, but of course they can be whatever the customer requires.

Past instruments have included those made from exquisite tonewoods with highly controured ergonomic bodies, touch style instruments, carved perspex guitars and basses, and clients include (appropriately enough) King Crimson's Robert Fripp and Charlie Jones, bassist with Robert Plant, Goldfrapp and Siouxsie Sioux.

This particular instrument is a fanned-fret multi-scale 8-string guitar which is suitable for touch-style playing. Crimson guitars are bespoke instruments built specifically to a customer's requirements, but they do produce the occasional stock instrument. I'm sure Ben won't mind me saying that this guitar, now being offered on eBay, only became available as a stock instrument because the customer changed his mind and decided he didn't like the slanted pickups. Unperterbed, Ben began the whole process again and built a second 8-string fan-fretted instrument for the customer. I have to say, the original that we see here with the slanted pickups looks much much better, but if the customer wants straight-aligned pickups that's what he gets!

If I ever come into money, my dream is to commision a Crimson guitar. I think they are so fantastic, I included two in the "500 Guitars" book.

G L Wilson

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

Agile Intrepid 8-string

Well I have to say that I have this thing with 8-string guitars - maybe that will stop when I actually played one - and I have it now for the Agile Intrepid here... I like it better in 'bloodburst' (that's macho talk for good old 'transparent cherry') but I didn't want to use a catalogue picture...

Tried to find a demo of it on YouTube but each time it was someone playing Meshuggah (I have nothing against Meshuggah, they're quite good but I find them girlie - probably because that's the kind of music that my girlfriend likes...). But I say it again: you don't have to play metal when you have more than 6 strings! 

Bertram D

the more strings, the better: Brooklyn Gear GB8

I've never had the opportunity yet to put my fingers on a 8-string guitar, but I hope that one day I can have something like this Brooklyn Gear GB8. It must be like playing with the thunder! I guess that it's not a guitar you should play like a regular one - with just a lower and a higher string. I'd rather use it in open tuning in a modal scale like a zither or something.

This one is nice because it doesn't look like another pointy superstrat like ESP's or Ibanez's, since - and it's a pity - over 6-string you're supposed to play metal. 

Bertram D