We first looked at Indian slide guitars here on Guitarz back in 2008. The Indian slide guitar is a hyrbid instrument, a musical chimera if you will, where quite literally East meets West and could be considered a cross between jazz guitar, slide guitar and sitar.
This Pro-grade Mohan Veena w Tumba Indian Acoustic Slide Lap Guitar claims to be the first such instrument to be offered for sale via eBay. It appears to have four main playing strings, four drones, and 13 sympathetic strings with machine heads along the length of the neck.
Hear it in the hands of Harry Manx:
Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $799.99 (plus shipping).
The "upside-down Strat" body shape of this bizarre looking guitar may look familiar, especially following from Bertram's recent blog posts featuring Mosrite guitars. This 10-string Melobar is indeed a Mosrite-built instrument, one of a quantity of 500 that Semie Moseley produced circa 1965 for the Smith Family, the company behind the Melobar name. Apparently 500 of this design were built: 50 finished in white, 50 in blue, 100 in black, 100 in red, and the remaining 200 in sunburst finish. We previously looked at a sunburst example here.
One very quirky feature is the out-of-place 10th machine head (see photo, right). Forgetting the fact that the Melobar pictured has been strung with 6 strings, these were originally designed as 9-string instruments, but were then quickly altered at the factory for 10 strings. So, that odd looking extra machine head is factory original, and is not a later addition by some former owner. It's not the most elegant solution, it must be said.
This intriguing instrument - I'd love to have a go on one but never really got on with slide guitar - is currently being auctioned on eBay with a starting price of $875.
We've looked at Melobar guitars here before several times. For those new to the concept they allow the steel guitar player to stand up and move around the stage by having a 45-degree angled neck mounted onto a slab body.
However, here we see a doubleneck with regular 6-string Tele-style neck at the top and a 6-string Melobar steel at the bottom. Note the way in which the necks are angled to allow the player unhindered access to the slide neck.
This particular pearloid-covered example has been listed on eBay UK (although the item for sale is actually located in The Netherlands) and has a But It Now price of £2,500.
Why do I feel that someone is about to mention Junior Brown and his Guit-Steel in the comments?
This 8-string Vega console guitar (basically a lap steel with legs!) has more than a touch of the Art Deco about it, with decorative chrome accents and bakelite knobs. The feature that I find most intriguing, though, is the tuning apparatus. I've not seen anything quite like that on a guitar before. Compact, it isn't!
The five bakelite-topped tone controls are labelled "Contra", "Bass", "Normal", "Treble" and "High".
A fascinating instrument; I'm sure you could make a whole blog on the subject of slide guitars alone. Unfortunately I know precious little about them.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
Guitarz reader Greg Haehl says: "I thought you might enjoy this Berklee grad slide player I came across while surfing." And why not? Thanks for sending that, Greg, it's an impressive performance.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
This 3-stringed biscuit tin guitar is yet another variation on the cigar box guitar theme, and illustrates nicely the spirit of inventiveness.
This seller has been listing such homemade instruments on eBay for several months now and has assembled a number of rustic-looking resonator guitars. It's a pity his eBay listings are let down by a lack of attention to detail in the areas of spelling, grammar, punctuation, use of capital letters (i.e. total disregard for), and even basic sentence construction.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
This highly decorated 1930-era Dobro Model 66 seems to be a very appropriate guitar to show during this festive season. It's a wooden-bodied resonator guitar with a square neck for lap steel playing. The decorative design has been applied through the process of sandblasting. The body would have been made from mahogany plywood with a neck of mahogany and an ebonized (i.e. artificially blackened) rosewood fingerboard. In its day this would have been Dobro's top of the line instrument, and was also available as a roundneck guitar for what we nowadays consider to be the more conventional "Spanish" style of playing.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
Paul Hammersley has sent us these photos of a 3-string electric slide guitar, built - very much in the tradition of cigar box guitars - from 1/2" alloy plate, P-bass pickup, and a few bits and pieces found in his garage.
I'd love to know how it sounds.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
First of all I want to make an UNRESERVED APOLOGY to Gavin for turning his blog into a circus with an ill considered and childish remark which upset quite a few people. I feel like the guy who gets invited to someone's party and proceeds to pee in the plant pot. I hope this entry goes some way to make up for the stress I caused and restores some harmony to these pages. Sorry Gavin.
Talking of harmony: This very nice looking Ball McIntire guitar on ebay caught my eye as much for it's own intrinsic beauty as for the lengthy and detailed description, not to mention almost enough photos to crash eBay's servers. The seller of this instrument obviously has a great deal of knowledge and interest in guitars. Definitely not one of those who are "selling it for a friend and don't have anything to plug it in to so can't say if works or not". Did I mention the sound clips? Seven (count em) nicely recorded little pieces which showcase the great tone of this, more than seventy year old, guitar. It's worth checking the listing just to read his description while listening to him play.
David in Barcelona
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
Here's another Melobar - or at least a Melobar-styled guitar with an angled playing surface so as to facilitate slide playing whilst wearing the guitar on a strap. I don't know for sure if this is an actual Melobar-branded instrument. I have only been aware of solid-bodied Melobars previously.
If anyone can read the Japanese of the auction listing, or can tell me any more, please get in touch!
Thanks to Ken Shima for bringing this unusual guitar to my attention.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
This Mosrite Melobar is one of the most exciting instrument I've posted here.
I was aware that something such existed but (thanks one more time to David B. who regularly send us his Internet finds) I've made some research lately about it and I discovered a cool hybrid guitar, allowing a musician to play lap steel style while standing / moving / dancing - that makes it a great instrument for the kind garage blues I particularly like lately (that's also the kind of instrument that was played in Captain Beefheart's Magic Band).
The instrument was conceived by Melobar in the 60s and built by different brands - this one by Mosrite with its classic design that fits particularly well (there is also a Flying V version with accurate ergonomics but ill-looking in my humble opinion). It has a neck with 70° angle to the body, that is then almost horizontal when the body hangs from the strap in a standard guitar position (the strap is connected to the headstock to allow uncompensated pressure on the neck). You play it like a regular lapsteel, though probably with more energy!
This is the 9-string version of the Melobar - they existed also in 6 and up to 10. For some obscure and un-understandable reasons, the Melobar was short-lived and never reissued (I have a doubt though, there's been a Melobar.com website that is now closed, so I can't tell if it was a vintage fan site or a new company one - like Jolana...). So who will resuscitate this little marvel?
Did you ever see a guitar as sleek-looking as this Halua acoustic lapsteel? It's like a spaceship out of a SciFi movie where the whole craft is perfectly seemless and smooth. The bridge is integral to the body as is the fingerboard (it's not a "fretboard" in this instance, because being a lapsteel it has no frets, just markers).
Although it is based loosely on the Weissenborn acoustic slide guitars of the 1920s and 30s, this 21st Century reinterpretation is constructed of carbon fibre (or "carbon fiber" if you will) and comes in its own carbon fibre case that doubles as a stand.
This particular guitar - currently for sale on eBay - formerly belonged to Ben Harper, and was apparently surplus to requirements because he had somehow ended up with two.
Halua guitars are handmade by Hans Jorgen Jahr, a Norwegian now relocated to Australia.
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guitarz.blogspot.com: This 3-string slide guitar has been made from an old Villiers's petrol tank, a Pearl high hat stand and cymbal stand, and some aluminium box section! I'll let the following YouTube video do the talking:
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As I write this, this small handmade acoustic has just 3 and a half hours before its auction finishes on eBay, and bidding is currently at £15.
The seller rather curiously descibes it as a "Handmade Lapsteel Guitar". I can't see why he thinks it might be a lapsteel guitar as it has a round-backed neck and it has FRETS. Perhaps, he's an estate agent and used to trying to turn negatives into positives, so that when he says it's a lapsteel what he really means is that the action is horrendously high. (He does mention that the bridge has lifted).
It also appears to be strung left-handed.
It's a pity the photos aren't better, as it looks to be quite nicely made, despite the dodgy bridge.
Edit: Sold for just £15. Someone got a bargain. Perhaps.
This 3-string slide guitar features an aluminium neck and a body made from the engine casing from a BSA Bantam motorcycle. According to the seller, it's the "little brother" to a similar 6-string guitar built for Seasick Steve. I'll look out for Steve playing that one when I go see him play the Royal Albert Hall in October.
Born to musician parents Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, a child prodigy, was initiated into Indian classical singing, but was drawn to the guitar because of the ability to emulate the human voice by using the slide.
He is the inventor of the Trinity of Slide Guitars:
The Chaturangui takes the guitar and gives it the tonal resonance of traditional Indian instruments, Rudra-veena, Violin, Sarode and Sitar. It has six primary sliding strings, twelve or more sympathetic strings, and two chikaris - a pair of strings located beyond the treble main strings, and tuned an octave apart from one another.
The Gandharvi is a 12-string slide guitar with an additional pair of drone strings, and which melds the tones of the Saraswathi-veena, Santoor and Sarangi with the guitar.
The Anandi is a simple 4-string instrument, and is more akin to ukulele played with a slide.
These are absolutely fascinating instruments, and I'm very curious to hear what they sound like.
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Born to musician parents