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Feast your eyes and ears on these 6-cord mutants, monsters, and mooncalves—approved by Dr. Frankenstein, but ready to make great music.

The great American journalist Hunter Southward. Thompson famously said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." So, heeding an expert'due south advice, when we went looking for the world's weirdest guitar mods and builds, we turned to the pros—guitarists and builders with an otherness to their aesthetic sensibilities.

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We found a sampling of some truly outstanding and uncommon instruments fabricated or modded by a diverse group from the U.S. and away, and from urban and rural locales. Some are famous; others obscure. A few are deceased. Only all of these axes reflect their highly personal vision of what a guitar tin do, or fifty-fifty be. So let'south swoop into a mind-expanding trip into the globe of beautiful fretboard weirdness.

Bo Diddley's Amoeba

Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

Bo Diddley was no stranger to guitar edifice, but it'south difficult to observe conventionally played guitars stranger than Bo'due south. This axe's amoeboid shape reminds me of the tentacled menaces from the 1968 science fiction motion-picture show The Light-green Slime. Even the color exudes a kind of conflicting putrescence. And while the neck feels and plays killer, this is, indeed, a spacey beast.

Photos past Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

The foundational rock 'n' gyre giant congenital his starting time truly playable homemade axe in 1945, fashioned from a cigar box, and he continued to build guitars from slabs of wood and whatever crossed his workbench for the rest of his life. He likewise deputed creations. One of the more than famous is a drum auto with a Fender Stratocaster built into information technology. The guitar is now Thousand.I.A., but you tin find a photo here.

Photos past Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

After his clave-based Bo Diddley crush became a staple of rock guitar via a series of hits starting with 1955'due south "Bo Diddley" and '56's "Who Do You Dearest?," Bo convinced Gretsch to expand his beloved of cigar box guitars into a full-sized, rectangular signature model: the famed firebird cerise G5810. Altogether, at that place take been 7 differently numbered box-like Gretsch Bo Diddley models over the years. The original is featured prominently on the encompass of his 1960 LP, Accept Guitar Will Travel.

Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

In '59, Diddley induced Gretsch to besides make the G6199 Jupiter Thunderbird model—another oddity with a scooped tail and lower end that Diddley requested because he felt the wider trunk of his Gretsch 3161 got in his way. Its latest iteration is Gretsch's Billy-Bo, based on an example Diddley gifted to Billy Gibbons.

Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

The evidence of Diddley's passion for edifice and commissioning oddball 6-strings is in photos all over the net. And it'southward also at present on the wall at Nashville's Carter Vintage Guitars, where the 2001-built amoeba guitar hangs with a $30,000 price tag.

Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

Its lines are less-than-elegantly carved, and the body is plywood with a plywood elevation that'southward mounted in place by forest screws. The weight? Well, it seems heavier in my hands than my '68 Les Paul, which comes in at 12 pounds.

Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars

Likewise the CD player—which works—the other sound sources are a pair of humbuckers and a Roland GK-2A synth pickup. The Lotus cervix is cardinal to the guitar'southward playability, and its tuners hold their ground, making this dark-green alien more than functional than might be predictable.

BO DIDDLEY 1965

Here's Bo Diddley rocking like a damn freight train on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, with 1 of his specially sculpted Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbirds.

Lewis Waters' Harmonic Hot Rods

Harmonic Isolator

Blend a guitar with a celestial choir, a Theremin, chimes and bells, and a synthesizer and you'd be merely approximating the about-mystical tones created by the instruments Lewis Waters builds in Perth, Australia, under the New Complexity name. For nearly a decade, Waters sought to expand the sonic palette of his conventional half-dozen-strings with pedals and amps and extended technique, both solo and in bands. But, as he explains, the sounds he was hearing in his caput were calling for something more organic—a fresh take on the instrument itself.

Inspired primarily by the improvising guitarists and instrument creators Hans Reichel and Yuri Landman, Waters was determined to build the guitars he imagined. (Check out Landman'southward pace-past-step instructions for recreating the drone guitar he congenital for Thurston Moore, in our May 2016 issue.) Offset, Waters enrolled in a ii-year course in woodworking, while standing his inquiry into pickups, sustainers, tuners, bridges, and other elements essential to his vision. Then, seven years ago, he began simultaneously edifice two of the guitars he imagined: the Harmonic Master and the Harmonic Isolator. The sounds both make are otherworldly and solidly of the guitar at the same fourth dimension.

New Complexity - Harmonic Isolator Demo

Harmonic Master

The Harmonic Master has an extended bridge that adds an independently tuned harmonic overlay to the notes played on the instrument'southward neck. And thank you to a behind-the-bridge pickup, the resonating notes in that independent section can be separately amplified. With two string fields, in that location's a lot going on, only Waters covers all of it with volume controls for each side of the bridge, a 3-style switch for the standard cervix and bridge pickups, 3 output jacks (for guitar only, harmonic tones only, and a mix of both), and pickups by Lace Sensor. The body and neck woods available for all his guitars are Queensland maple, Tasmanian blackwood, and alder. Plus, the Harmonic Master tin be ordered with a tremolo arm.

The Harmonic Isolator is a sonic step up from the Principal, thanks to the inclusion of a Sustainiac electronic string sustainer and frets calibrated specifically to encourage harmonic resonance, inspired by the designs of the late and wildly inventive Hans Reichel. Those atypically spaced frets correspond to the notes in the harmonic serial.

New Complication - Harmonic Main Guitar Demo

This guitar has the same three-output-jack array equally the Harmonic Master with volume controls for each side of the bridge. There'southward also an on/off toggle for the Sustainiac and a push/pull command for the device's 4 modes. In add-on to the Sustainiac pickup in the neck slot, there are two Lace Sensor pickups between the guitar'southward two bridges.

This Reso Harp Special increases the harp portion's cord array from the Reso Harp'southward 10 to a dozen.

Waters' third cosmos is the Reso Harp, which has an onboard fully tunable string reverb for creating notwithstanding another variety of exhilarant soundscapes. Essentially, the string reverb is a mini-harp-like configuration of strings adjacent to the six strings aboard the guitar's neck. Thanks to a Sustainiac, the harp strings tin either resonate with the string vibrations generated by playing the instrument conventionally or they can be plucked every bit their own sound source. Again, there are two volume controls for each side of the central bridge, a 3-way toggle for the standard neck and bridge pickups, the sustainer on/off switch, and the push button-pull for its iv modes. At that place are four Lace pickups in all, to cover the guitar and harp portions of the musical instrument. Also, the Reso Harp has the same three output jacks as its cousins. And it'southward worth mentioning that Waters makes a hybrid version, blending elements from all three guitars and including a pickup merely over the nut, à la Fred Frith.

Demonstration | Harmonic Master Reso Harp Hybrid by New Complexity

Capable of putting out four signals at in one case, the Harmonic Master Reso Harp has the greatest sonic potential of New Complexity's current offerings.

Reso Verb Prototype

Whether your musical tastes run toward an early gospel-blues blind cave fish like Washington Phillips or an avant modernist similar Henry Kaiser, it's obvious a resonating harp offers a lot of potentially interesting textures, tones, and pads onstage and in the studio. So the ceaselessly exploring Waters is about to unveil a standalone version of the cord reverb section of the Reso Harp, called the Reso Verb.

It's a box with ten strings and two pickups—one sustaining—and book controls for the input and reverb levels. There are input and output jacks, and dials marked treble, bass, and stage. It as well has an insertable bridge, so players can create their ain harmonic ratios. Heck, y'all don't even need a guitar to make absurd sounds with this box. Whatever instrument with an output could be plugged into the Reso Verb.

Not surprisingly, New Complication guitars are labor intensive. It takes Waters 200 to 300 hours to make each 1, although he's contemplating ways to create his ain version from stock parts in the future. For the boilerplate guitarist, getting a handle on playing i of his creations might besides require many hours of written report and practice. In addition to mastering the two-sided bridge concept and the harp-like approaches required to bring the nigh from these guitars, tuning is subjective. What'southward most important, says Waters, is that the harmonic ratios for creating overtones are locked in.

Vaughn Skow'southward v-Pickup Frankenstrat

We've all seen Frankenstrats earlier, but the wall-to-wall pickup configuration on this beast looks like something hatched in one of Kenneth Strickfaden's mad-scientist-movie laboratories. In fact, it was brought to life in Nashville by pickup maker and amp builder Vaughn Skow, who's also got a long resume of sessions, Boob tube work, and product.

"I was worried at one bespeak that a wall of pickups would seriously dampened sustain." —Vaughn Skow

Skow purchased this Japan-made '62 reissue Strat about xv years ago and started tinkering immediately, although he wasn't its first modder. The guitar came with a roller nut and Sperzel tuners, and, more important, a Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker in the neck slot and a Duncan Hot Rails in the span, plus the usual Fender unmarried-ringlet in the middle. "I started messing with the pickups as presently equally I got abode, because that'due south kind of what I exercise," Skow says. "I like buying guitars that are adept, merely are already a little messed upwardly and so you don't have to worry about doing anything you want to them.

"I liked those pickup flavors, though I missed the honest-to-goodness single-coil sounds of a Strat. But I liked the audio of the Hot Rails, too, considering they're a really mid-forward pickup, in the 200 Hz to 400 Hz range. So I decided to put one of my single-coils in next to the Hot Rails. "The body already had an ashtray routing washed, so I started thinking about calculation a single-coil to the span as well," he continues. "The thought became to become as much tonal versatility as possible from a single guitar. I was worried at one point that a wall of pickups would seriously dampen sustain, merely and then I figured that 3-pickup Les Pauls take a solid wall of pickups from the span to the neck, and so why not?"

One time all five pickups were in place, Skow swapped the tone control closest to the bridge pickups for a toggle switch. Now, when the guitar's v-position switch is in the bridge or neck spots, that toggle can activate or conciliate the single-coils. The finishing touch was replacing the Fender bridge with a Wilkinson VS100, and the guitar has been Skow'due south No. 1 ever since.

Of course, the inveterate experimenter has gone on to many other mods. Recently, he's been in demand among Kay archtop collectors for the minimally invasive pickup install he's developed, and for installing T-style pickups on banjos.

Vaughn Skow 1959 Historic Stratocaster Pickup Set - Jazz

Hither's a demo of Vaughn Skow'southward vintage unmarried-curl Strat-style pickups, which he added to his '62 reissue's 3 existing pickups.

John Cipollina's Horned Stack and Batwing SG

Photo courtesy of johncipollina.com

The lead guitarist and cofounder of Quicksilver Messenger Service may be the granddaddy of electric-guitar-era mods. By 1965, when the band was emerging as a leading proponent of San Francisco's psychedelic audio—alongside Jefferson Plane, Big Blood brother and the Holding Company, and the Grateful Dead—John Cipollina was already using a ferocious assembly of combos, heads, and horns to amplify his guitars. And his famed batwing SG—named for its custom pickguard—was wired to send separate signals to bass and guitar amps, so he could encompass the sonic waterfront.

His amp setup and the batwing SG were, until recently, on view at the Rock and Scroll Hall of Fame for many years. And they were designed to be inseparable. The stack—a alloy of tube and solid-state power—consists of two Standel bass amps, a Fender Twin Reverb, and a Dual Showman head that drove half-dozen Wurlitzer horns. Cipollina used a footswitching system for reverb, tremolo, an Astro Echoplex (to the right of the Twin, in the photo), a Standel Modulux vibrato, and the horns. Truck running lights indicated which elements were in utilise.

"I like the rapid dial of solid-country for the lesser and the rodent-gnawing distortion of the tubes on top." —John Cipollina

Non but the batwing SG, only all of Cipollina's guitars had the separate bass/guitar wiring setup. I'm non clear exactly how the wiring worked. Was it bass and guitar pickups in the unlike slots? Did he simply have specific routing for each pickup? The details at johncipollina.com aren't illuminating and efforts to contact a spokesperson for the late guitarist's legacy were fruitless. Withal, what is clear is that one pickup'due south point hit the ii Standel bass amps supporting the stack. The other went to the Twin and the Dual Showman, and one of the pickups was reversed.

Cipollina'due south often-quoted summation of his setup's strategy is simple: "I like the rapid punch of solid-state for the lesser and the rodent-gnawing baloney of the tubes on top."

Who Exercise You Love? (1973 B&Westward) - Quicksilver Messenger Service

With his batwing SG, John Cipollina and Quicksilver Messenger Service get full-tilt psychedelic in this live 1973 performance of Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom.

Debashish Bhattacharya'south 22-String Slider

At commencement listen, the Chaturangui sounds like a cross between a slide guitar and a sitar, only its inventor, Debashish Bhattacharya, explains that it is, indeed, a guitar. It certainly looks and plays like i, with a tone bar—albeit a guitar that'due south grown a multiplicity of strings and some of the sweetest decorative work ever set to an musical instrument. And the Chaturangui has become a cornerstone in Bhattacharya's pioneering development of the genre of Hindustani slide guitar. It is indisputably a matter of great beauty, sonically and visually.

This 22-string instrument's invention, Bhattacharya says, began gestating when he was iii, after his mother gave him a solid-cervix Hawaiian-way lap-slide guitar. "Since so, the lap guitar and me have been inseparable," he says. Simply the Hawaiian guitar didn't allow the long sustain, swelling overtones, percussive assail, and wide diversity of sounds he was hearing from the long-established instruments in the Due south Asian musical tradition, like the sitar, sarod, violin, and veena. In search of those sounds, he began cartoon out plans for the Chaturangui and congenital his first model at age fifteen, in 1978. This was not an easy task. "I had to go information on building this instrument in a world where Wikipedia and Google did non exist," he relates.

"The Chaturangui allows me to exercise at least a dozen things that can't be dreamt of with a 6-cord Hawaiian guitar." —Debashish Bhattacharya

Initially, he was rebuked for his invention by both the Indian guitar institution and the raga customs. Only as his career progressed, Bhattacharya won an international post-obit for his wildly inventive playing, with John McLaughlin and Jerry Douglas amongst his fans and collaborators.

The hollowbody Chaturangui has a solid Poma toon neck. The sides and backs are made of mahogany and Poma toon, and the top is Canadian spruce. It sports contumely frets and a resonating bridge made of deer horn. The carving on the neck and fretboard are washed in yellowwood. Eight strings extend to the headstock. Six are melody strings played with a tone bar and the ii on the lesser are used for low, percussive tones.

Two boosted strings on the tiptop—set apart from the neck—are plucked for high percussive tones. These are called chikari strings. A dozen sympathetic strings are set apart from the neck on the reverse side from the chikari. These can simply resonate with the melody or exist raked. And the neck is scalloped, which allows the microtonal inflections and bends that give the Chaturangui its sitar- and sarod-like qualities.

"The Chaturangui allows me to practice at least a dozen things I do, including tone modulation fingerpicking and resonating sounds that can't be dreamt of with a 6-string Hawaiian guitar," says Bhattacharya.

He's remained ceaselessly inventive as both a role player and a builder. 9 years after making his first Chaturangui, Bhattacharya modified a Hofner guitar that was a gift from his guru, Ajoy Chakrabarty, into a Chaturangui-like instrument he simply calls a Hindustani slide guitar. And he'southward planning to debut a new instrument design at the 2019 Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival on November 30.

Indian Slide Guitar | Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya | Raag Shuddh Sarang | Music of India

Debashish Bhattacharya takes on a traditional Indian raga with his Chaturangui at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall with Yogesh Samsi on tabla and Unnati Dasgupta on tanpura.

Elliott Precipitous's 2-Headed Transplants

Elliott Precipitous, who was profiled in the April 2019 issue of Premier Guitar, has been a leader in the international cut-edge music scene for 40 years. The New York City-based virtuoso has also been an inventor of anarchistic instruments, largely motivated by necessity, since 1969. He refers to his creations, like the three-string violinoid and the triple-grade bass pantar, every bit "proof-of-concept prototypes."

"The metal body is the peak from a 50-gallon sweeping chemical compound tin that I had found while walking through Chinatown." —Elliott Sharp

Two of the most applied and intriguing instruments I've seen Precipitous play over the decades are his bass/guitar doublenecks. Sharp explains: "Doubleneck i was built to my specs in 1984 past Ken Heer [ of now-gone St. Mark's Music Substitution]. I had been using both bass and guitar in my band I/S/M from 1981 to '83, and and so with Carbon from 1983 on, and wanted to combine them."

Sharp adamant the hybrid would be compact and headless, with a Schecter Strat neck and a medium-calibration Fender Coronado bass cervix—both with the headstocks removed. The pickups: a Fender Tele span and Strat cervix, and a DiMarzio P Bass and J Bass set. At that place are no volume or tone controls—only 3-way switching for each of the necks with the outputs routed to effects through individual book pedals. There is too an IVL hexaphonic pickup on the guitar that fed an IVL Pitchrider 7000 guitar-to-MIDI converter through a 13-pin cable, to trigger samples or interface with the interactive composition software, Yard. The body is laminated rosewood, maple, and mahogany. In 1992, it was painted black by New York City-based producer and guitarist Doug Henderson, who as well added the aluminum pickguard and roll bar.

Sharp's Doubleneck 2 was built in 1992 by Henderson. "While I very much liked the bass on Doubleneck 1, the guitar was less centered in its tone, which would exist remedied with Doubleneck 2," says Abrupt. "The body is African limba with a bird's-centre maple pinnacle. Over again, a Schecter Strat neck was used, simply a Fender Musicmaster bass neck went on the depression-stop side. Pickups were DiMarzio all around—3 Strats plus P and J bass units—and the bass span is a massive Wilkinson. The guitar bridge is of unknown origin, merely made of brass and very solid. Doug used deck plate for the pickguard. Again, there were no onboard controls except for switching: five-style on the guitar and iii-style on the bass. The necks were each routed to effects through individual book pedals. There was no MIDI pickup."

Just wait! There'southward more. Versatile and powerful as they are, these doublenecks are not light. Just wait at their slab bodies. "By 1996, the doublenecks—not to mention their associated furnishings racks—were taking their toll on my back, so I decided to create a meaty 8-cord extended range instrument," Sharp recounts. That's the Henderson-Greco guitarbass, built to E#'s specs by Henderson and luthier Carlo Greco, who had once been Social club'southward main designer. This guitar covers the waterfront with much less existent estate. Greco carved a chunky maple neck with an ebony fretboard. Henderson ascribed to Sharp's request for a streamlined V-shaped body made of limba and a bird's-eye maple top. The three pickups are all Bartolini J Bass, for a sound Sharp describes as "very hi-fi." There's a 5-way switch and a volume command, but no tone controls, since Abrupt ordinarily does that with his fingers or pedals. The brass bridge was manus-machined by Henderson and stainless-steel Strat saddles were added.

"Although the calibration length is 25.5", the bass strings put out some massive low stop and the guitar strings have a sweet snap," says Sharp. "For the first few years of its use, I had a trackpad Velcro'd to the body to interface with a computer for triggering samples in the STEIM software LiSa and afterward for MAX/MSP use."

Amongst the other unusual instruments in Sharp's arsenal is his doubleneck Arches H-Line, which, like New Complexity'southward instruments, opens upwardly the harmonic possibilities of guitar and was inspired by the work of Hans Reichel. But perhaps the most novel is the triple-class bass pantar, which Sharp built in 1990 with the assist of woodworker Andrew Zev Weinstein.

Over again, Precipitous explains: "The metal body is the top from a fifty-gallon sweeping compound can that I found while walking through Chinatown. It was fitted to a wooden construction that would likewise serve as the base for the three fingerboards, salvaged from musical roadkill. All 12 strings were bass strings and they could be tuned to diverse open scales or chords. The rim of the metal peak served as a natural span. I had planned to mount magnetic pickups under the strings, simply opted instead for a piezo. It may be played continuing with a strap or horizontally using mallets to create a wide range of sounds reminiscent of steel drums, marimba, gamelan instruments, and string bass."

Dark Music #203 Elliott Abrupt

Elliott Abrupt plays his Doubleneck i—likewise using it to trigger samples—during an appearance on the television series Night Music, hosted by David Sanborn. Cheque out Abrupt'southward insane tapping, and the wild sounds it creates, at the 2:00 marking.

Super Chikan's six-String Tone Fryers

Fans of hard-core modern Mississippi blues know Clarksdale'south James "Super Chikan" Johnson for his ferocious tone and entertaining, full-throttle live performances. But over the past decade, he'southward also earned a reputation among collectors and players for the funky guitars he builds. They're essentially playable folk-art, and what'south truly strange is that no affair their origins and mismatched parts, they all bark like junkyard dogs when they're plugged in.

Johnson has made one-string diddley bows and guitars from gas cans, cigar boxes, and even an erstwhile shotgun, but my favorite is the 6-cord in the photo hither. The body is a bedazzled motor housing from an antique ceiling fan. Johnson calls information technology his Chikantar, and it has a tone that is rude, loud, quick to break upward, and—when he gets by the twelfth fret—caput-slicing, only without losing its corpulent tonality. Mayhap that'south because, as Johnson once confided, it weighs in at near 20 pounds. It also takes to fuzz pedals like a bird on a caterpillar.

Photo past Beak Steber

Typically Johnson's instruments, including the gas cans he fashions into guitars that are sometimes painted and decorated to look like chickens—a breed of fowl he claims to talk to and control—are much lighter. And in recent years he'south also begun to build or reclaim and redecorate solidbody guitars.

A look at the mismatched pickups on the solidbody in a higher place reveals his parts-sourcing strategy: anything goes. Johnson scours pawnshops and junk stores and trash heaps for everything from pickups to, well, ceiling fan motor shells, and whatever is bachelor in his workshop when he's building a guitar goes right into the pot, similar a fat hen.

Super Chikan | Mississippi Roads | MPB

Super Chikan and his instruments, including the ceiling-fan-motor-bodied Chikantar, are profiled in this segment of Mississippi Public Idiot box's Mississippi Roads serial.

[Updated 9/14/21]

Source: https://www.premierguitar.com/gear/guitars/weird-guitar-mods?rebelltitem=28

Posted by: morrislible1943.blogspot.com

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