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Touch style guitars..


Dan

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I was browsing some guitar sites when i stumbled upon Warr Guitars. Theyre guitars with 8, 10 or 12 strings. No picking is involved its just 2 handed tapping. It has a set of guitar strings, and a set of bass strings, so you can play a melody and bass line at the same time. I would love to get one only theyre in excess of $1500+

The bass strings and guitar strings have seperate pickups so i could have wah on my bass, and distortion on my guitar strings. For extra cash, you can get a roland synth built in.

Other touch style guitar manufacturers :

Chapman Stick

Austin Douglas Guitars

Box Guitars

Bunker Guitars

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I am not sure if you would need something that thick. I would think about using an angled headstock, and then stacking a lamination on right at the heel. Would you make a bolt on neck? For something like this, my first thought would be to run the neck all the way down to the bridge, and just put some wings on it for the body. Takes a bit longer piece of wood, but takes all of the problems of a joint out of the picture. The main thig that I would be wondering abut is the neck contour. I would probably have the bass side a bit thicker than the trebel side. Even so, you would gain a bit of strength, as the middle section would have some extra mass, compared to putting a pair of necks side by side. Looks like two truss rods would work pretty well. You might even get away with making it a tiny bit thinner than a regular neck, depending upon how heavy your bass strings get.

I built a regular 6 string, back in the '80s, and set it up from the start to play two handed tapping style. I had a 24" radius, and almost no relief in the neck, and killer low action. I made it a neck through, with wings, and had both magnetic and piezo pickups in it. I think the guitar was okay, but I never learned to play it very well. Later, I tried the same concept with a seven string model, and had the same problem. I couldn't play it too well. I don't have either one any more, but I keep thinking that an 8 or 9 string model would be cool. I might even make the next one with a stand, and play it seated, like a steel guitarist would.

Just a few random thoughts on the subject,

Dave M.

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I had a chat with Kevan about it, he's played a few of these over in Manhatten and said you should call Warr up. They would probably tell you the dimentions, really friendly folks..........

Never hurts to try plus they would probably tell you about truss support as well in the construction........

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Hi guys, thought this might be a good time to delurk :D

I'm a Stick player, also a six string bassist and occasional k/board and guitar synth noodler. I've been giving some thought to building myself a tapping guitar for a project.

The first thing you'll most likely need is a flat fretboard. The Stick uses (I think!) a non-radiused fretboard, and I have a feeling that the Warr does the same. I'd also completely agree with the thought about double truss rods. You'll need the fretboard almost perfectly flat at all times, as tiny variations can change a perfect tapping surface into something useless so adjustable truss robs would be a massive plus. A through neck (laminated or not) with added wings (if you want ..) strikes me as being the way to go, to get good tone.

I'm thinking of 8 strings, tuned in perfect 4ths from a Low B (ie Five string bass low string) upwards (B,E,A,D,G,C,F,Bb). One of the nice things about the Stick is to route the melody signals seperately from the bass as described above, so having pickups split is important. There is an 8 string Stick (the SB8) and the N/S Stick joint produced with Steinberger, both are good models for the kind of thing I'm thinking of, along with the Artist 8 string from Warr.

For me the biggest challenge would appear to be the bridge .. anyone have any thoughts which would allow the string spacing to not be massive between the two 'sets' of strings?

I'd really recommend talking to both Emmett Chapman and Mark Warr, they're both really top guys, and have answered whole series of dumb questions from me in the past B) Also check out the Megatar site, the owner Traktor Topaz (what a name) is also a great guy. Slightly biased against the Chapmans by the look of the site, but friendly and helpfull.

Anyway, glad to be here,

Ta

Dave

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