mos6507

I'm having one built right now. Doubleneck Personally, I dislike the "splayed" look of the BC Rich type doublenecks, regardless of any ergonomic advantage. I also don't like it when the 12-string neck is pushed forward an inch or two so that the bridge and nuts don't line up. There are ergonomic challenges when making doublenecks. The most obvious one is the tuners. Because you have two necks so close together, the tuners that face eachother are going to be hard to get to without bumping into the other neck's tuners. My solution to this is to use Gibson Firebird banjo-style tuners for that section, so the tuners point backwards instead of towards eachother. That way I can even use a stringwinder on all of them without bumping into the other neck. A big problem with the Gibson doubleneck design is that the necks only have 20 frets. I don't know why they still make them that way. Even the clones from Ibanez and others duplicate the 20 fret limitation. Mine is going to have the standard 22. Another gibson problem is the cutaways. If you follow the Gibson body design and just extend by 2 frets you are going to have a harder time reaching the upper frets. So my body shape is offset farther in. I am aware there are balance problems when you don't have a long top horn to attach the pickup strap to, but in my case I wanted to maintain a symmetrical body so I'm just going to have to deal with it. Another problem is control placement. Some doublenecks with coil tapping and other controls have a very busy control layout that is probably ripe for accidents and is awkward to use. The only really safe area for switches is below the six-string neck. You can bump switches too easily when strumming or with your forearm if you put any controls between the necks or toward the top rear end of the body. My solution to that was to order the builder to put in recessed rotary switches behind the bridge area. If he can't wire that up he'll use flat toggle switches that can't be easily bumped. The only regular toggle is the pickup selector which is in the bottom area. I will use unified volume and tones with push-pulls for coil tapping so I'm willing to put up with having the same settings for each neck in exchange for added simplicity. Also, you have intonation issues with the Gibson doubleneck because of the standard tune-o-matic bridge on the 12-string. There actually are 12-string tune-o-matic bridges with independent saddles. This isn't a major limitation because you can, of course, swap out the saddle if you bought a Gibson, which is why I'm listing this last. However, I have noticed that most if not all doublenecks I've seen online do not have 12-saddle bridges. If anyone wants to find out how this instrument turns out for me when it's done, let me know.

A Fender Bass VI type instrument uses a 30" scale length. If you want to duplicate the Fender Bass VI tremolo bridge you'll probably have trouble finding parts. The Hellcat VI uses a standard Tone Pros Tune-o-matic style guitar bridge and standard guitar tuners. Maybe they route slightly larger holes in the tailpiece and tuner for the bass strings. Not sure. Selecting pickups for an instrument like this is going to be tricky. Because of the narrow string spacing you are stuck with guitar pickups and I don't think the bass response is where it needs to be with them. The Hellcat VI uses Seymour Duncan mini humbuckers but I doubt they are THAT customized for bass response. I've been on the verge of getting a Hellcat VI for a while now but wanted to try it out first, so I've been studying the specs.