Guitar Info

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Eight necks and supposedly fully playable... just so long as you have seven friends to help you out!

G L Wilson

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

guitarz.blogspot.com:

OK, this is slightly off-topic because, of course, the double bass is NOT a guitar but rather a member of the viol family; however most would agree it IS a parent of the modern bass guitar and so is worthy of including here on Guitarz. Anyway, this isn't any old double bass. It's the creation of sound designer and composer Diego Stocco. As he explains:

I had an idea in mind for an instrument I wanted to build. My curiosity was to hear the sound of violin, viola and cello strings amplified through the body of a double bass. I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental "something" that I thought to call Experibass.

To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you'll like it!

While the music produced is mostly percussive, there's no denying the drama within it.

For more, see www.behance.net/Gallery/ExperibassHans-Zimmers-Score-for-Sherlock-Holmes/366637

G L Wilson

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

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Multi-necked instruments were nothing ususual in the world of steel guitars - and later - pedal-steel guitars. They allowed the player to have each neck set up with a different open-tuning, and unlike our more usual perception of double- (triple-, etc) necked guitars, they are not cumbersome instruments that you wear on a strap and which end up giving you serious backache. These babies have legs of their own!

With 4 necks, 32 strings and 8 pickups, here we have a Fender Stringmaster also know as the Quad or Q-8. The eBay seller claims it is from the 1940s or 1950s, but a little basic research would have revealed that the Stringmaster was first introduced in 1953, so all this talk of "1940s" is lazy unsubstantiated guesswork.

This particular example has 22.5" scale necks. Stringmasters were also available with 24.5" scale necks, although in their first year of production a long 26" scale was used.

The Stringmaster was available in two, three and four-neck versions. The single-neck equiavalent was known as the Fender Deluxe and was available in 6 and 8-string variants.

Currently being auctioned on eBay with a starting price of $1,999.99.

G L Wilson

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

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Scott from RockGuitarLife.com brought this crazy instrument to my attention. It's a five-neck electric bass/guitar/banjo/mandolin/fiddle and with a harmomica attached at the top too just for good measure! The guitar belongs to Steve Puto and is on loan to the Cantos Music Foundation in Calgary

Read about it here.

Photo by Steve Puto.

G L Wilson

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

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've looked at this beast before. Just two years ago this ridiculous instrument was selling for £549 - now it's being listed at £899. That's inflation for you!

It's also a lot of money to spend on an "instrument" that is more or less a display item. Let's face it, it's not really going to be possible to even reach let alone play any of the lower three necks, and even if you just played the uppermost necks, can you imagine the weight and sheer awkwardness of that thing?

You could use it as a stage prop perhaps, just on the one song, but even then it's going to be an inconveniently-shaped piece of gear to cart around to gigs. It'd need one hell of a flightcase. I believe it only comes with a tent-like "gig bag" (see previous post on this guitar).

This seller suggests that even if you can't play all six necks it would still make a good "wall peice" (sic). I don't know about you, but if I hung that up in my house, I'd be worried about it bringing the whole wall down.

G L Wilson

NB: Please make sure you are reading this Guitarz post at guitarz.blogspot.com and not on a Scraper blog that copies posts without permission (and steals bandwidth) so as to profit from advertising. Please support original bloggers!

The six-necked behemoth which we featured on this here blog only yesterday is now available in the UK on eBay with a Buy It Now price of £549.

What a bargain, eh?

Check out the gig bag that it's lying on in the picture. You could use that as a tent and live in it.

So, if you want to outdo Cheap Trick's Rick Neilsen (Huh! Five necks? That's nothing!) and are looking for an OTT stage prop, then why not go for it? You might also want to enrol at your local gym and prepare yourself with a little weight training, because I'd wager that that thar Beast is darned heavy.

Of course, you could always go for the ultimate in multinecked guitars, and have a word with Japanese artist Yoshihiko Satoh and ask for a loan of his 12-necked Stratocaster.

A stepladder might come in handy too!

This six-necked monstrosity from the Hutchins brand is named "The Beast" and was recently sold in a Weymouth music shop thanks to a news item in the Metro newspaper. (See the comments at the bottom of the Metro item).

From top to bottom the necks are 12-string, 6-string (with tremolo), 5-string bass, 4-string bass, 7-string guitar, and another 6-string.

Allegedly, "there are only of 12 of the US-made instruments in this country".

ONLY?

Surely one is too many!

Here's one from the Archives. I originally linked to this one back in the early days of this blog (the first English-language guitar blog and longest-running guitar blog ever, I hasten to add). I'm featuring this wonderful Flamingo Guitar again, because it's a favourite of mine and you may have missed it first time around.

In case you think I can't count, this guitar does indeed have five necks - mandolin, nylon string guitar, banjo, electric guitar and a Flamingo neck (of course!) and apparently it is fully playable. (That's a Bird of Paradise capo clamped to the banjo neck's 5th string machine head, by the way.)

It was built by luthier Bernard Lehmann, maker of fine acoustic and jazz guitars, as well as one or two oddities like this, two dreadnought guitars joined by one neck, a water-powered electric guitar, and a guitar that is part telephone. Wish I had photos of those!