A 7 string archtop built for Van Eps (low A) tuning. It has a standard
ASAST body with wider neck (50mm at the nut) and the headstock adapted
to take the 7 machine heads. Normal acoustic archtop jazzer construction
with spruce top, flamed maple back and sides, laminated maple neck
with ebony used for the fingerboard, scratchplate, bridge and tail.
Bindings are flamed maple and the silk finish has a tint. Internally
the customer asked for a spruce soundpost under the bridge to reduce
feedback. Many of the features on this instrument are mirrors of
an earlier semi acoustric version that
I made for the same customer.
The pickup systems are a bit trick in that there is a custom made
floating magnetic with individual pole pieces and scratchplate mounted
volume and tone controls with the output to a jack socket. In the
bridge are 7 RMC saddles which are connected to an 8 pin DIN socket
which feeds an RMC external RMC Poly-drive II G that can be used
to drive a pitch to MIDI converter (AXON, Roland or Yamaha). So
you can have a magnetic sound, a piezo sound and any MIDI sound
all at the same time (if you wanted!) or any combination. All 7
strings are piezo enabled but only the top 6 are MIDI. The customer
who ordered this guitar performs alone creating arrangements in
Band in a Box and then plays over them with the possible outputs
from the guitar. All a bit clever!
The beauty of the external Poly-drive II over the internal Poly-drive
I is that you can have several instruments fitted with the RMC saddles
and DIN output and just switch the Poly-drive II between them.
Nice bit of maple in the back which is worth a pic I think. You
can see the jack and DIN outlets.
For more about the Archtop guitars go to the
Archtop Page
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