I have been talking about this one for quite some time, I have been slowly working away in the background and finally have some progress to show.
Don't expect perfection, I have only done a bit of acoustic stuff and am making a lot of this one up as I go along
A few key requirements I was asked for:
- 9 Strings, strung double course on the high strings
- some kind of pickup system
- Fanned fret - pushing to baritone scale length on the low strings
- Quirky shape
Its made from variegated bloodwood back and sides with a port orford cedar top.mahogany neck with ebony fretboard.
Scale length is 25" on the treble and 27" on the bass side, fanned out from the 12th fret to give an even fan at nut and bridge. I was a bit torn on this because on the fanned fret electrics I have built i have fanned out from closer to the nut to make first position chords feel natural, but if I did that here the bridge would be too fanned.
The neck join is a bolt on system I have dreamt up, kinda like a low brow version of the taylor neck joint. i routed that out today so can finally put the parts together
here you can see the neck set with quite a high angle, I have just been playing with it and can get a bridge height between 10-25mm using shims in the pocket - all feeling solid. you can see i nicked some of the cedar along the bass side, annoying but an easy fix. Youc an also see the access for the control panel - its not a sound port on this... unless the electrics get junked
and a couple of internal shots - where it all gets a bit funky
the tailblock in not centered as the electrics have a big jack unit which I wanted to put in a similar location, so i pushed that join around to the bass side by about an inch. that and the weird bracing make everything look very odd.
The neck block is stacked, the top layer forms the neck pocket, although you can see part of the neck peeking though so that really should have been a bit longer. the top and bottom parts of the neck block have limbs which extend around to the cutaway to help keep that in shape. reminds me i still need to add some side reinforcement
Who knows how it will sound??? TBH i have been winging it a bit with this pattern - but the constructions style should allow me to get a couple of strings on and have a play before I attach the back
tap tone is already quite nice, just need to be a bit more scientific before I close it up.
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I should also mention the neck design is closer to an archtop. The neck wood carries on under the whole fretboard. There is a truss rod and dual cf rods running the whole distance too. All this, coupled with a nice deep cutaway and the ability to accurately adjust neck angle should give electric style playability all the way up the neck..... Hopefully
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And incredible.
its still relatively unknown territory for me and I am purposely doing things in the wrong order to maximise the chance of it working.
the two other fanned frets were to test out different fans for the acoustic.... There is a compromise between playability and tone to think about with a fanned fret acoustic
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It's a very interesting idea not putting the back on yet. Mmm....got me thinking
I'm a big fan of baritones, I've owned 4 acoustic ones, 6 electrics, and an 8 string
I'm wondering what your thoughts are on these issues:
Taylor make baritones with just 2 strings doubled, yours will be more flexible, since you can un-string when needed
i think many miss the point of fanned frets on standard tuning, it's not as obvious as with ERG's, but the same benefits are still there.
i will expand on this once I am at a computer and can type easier
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there are two important decision with a fanned fret - the outside scale lengths and which fret is going to be perpendicular to the centre line
My first fanned fret about 10 years ago was rather conservative, 25-26" scales with the 5th fret as the perp. having the straight fret closer to the nut means less fan near the nut and a greater angle on the bridge. Anyway, it worked really well, well enough to convince me fanned frets on 6 strings work pretty nicely.
I followed that up with a 26.5 - 28" baritone and a 25-27.5" normal guitar - both with perps between the 3rd and 9th fret for easier first position chords. so 3 fanned frets, all take very little adjustment to get used to because the perp is relatively close to the nut
Then i was asked about the possibility of doing an acoustic and it introduces another variable in the choice . I was concerned because the extreme bridge angle could affect the tone of an acoustic, whereas it has no affect on the tone of an electric. The solution is to move the perp closer to the bridge, but this then creates a more angled nut
So i built the white fanned fret and thinline to test the scales. The perp on the white one is at the 12th fret and the nut and bridge have equal but opposite angles - not accounting for compensation. I tried it on this style of guitars because if first position chords are affected, who really cares. Anyway, it was good news. playing an f takes a bit more adjustment than my previous fanned frets, but nothing worth worrying about. and it goes from standard to drop C with a set of 10-56, obviously can go quite a bit lower with heavier strings
I also built the thinline with the same scales and the perp at the 7th fret. you can see the bridge is really angled... probably too much for a proper acoustic. it would start to push the high string coupling into a relatively dead area of the fretboard
anyway, all this has taught me i really like a low E on a 27" scale length... so whereas many would want to down tune this, my instinct is to go straight for standard tuning
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Obviously it also meant attaching the bridge earlier in the process than would normally happen
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I agree: 27 inch would be excellent with a normal E.
I think fat strings tuned lower on normal-ish scale lengths lose something in the tone
My sweetspot is 30 inch for dropped-B, 28.5 inch for dropped D
I have a 27 inch baritone tele tuned D-D too, which is OK