Meet ‘Melisandre’ — by leaps and bounds the most beautiful instrument in the collection (apart perhaps from the sitar). A fiery redhead to be sure.
With the body of an L4, the harp guitar has two necks — one to handle the normal 6 string guitar strings and a second to contend with the 10 sub-bass strings which are, surprisingly, not tuned chromatically below the low E string of the guitar. They start at the G above the low E and then descend chromatically skipping where the low E would normally be. I will probably devise a more user friendly tuning at some point. Between the two necks is an adustable metal truss rod — there is a whole lot of tension going on.
The body is beautifully carved with F-Style mandolin scroll work; a decorative diamond-pattern inlay and the standard ‘The Gibson’ inlay on the headstock.
She didn’t arrive so beautiful though — at some point somebody must have dropped her, because there was some cracking/buckling of the wood at the tail as well as a few side cracks. Missing a few of the harp string pins. Happily Steve Morrill took on the job and over the course of the year got the body very well in order. Has the original purple-lined case (I had to replace the handle).
Missing the tuning key, instead I have a clock key which while not an exact match for the harp strings, is close enough to tune them without damaging the posts.
Serial # 38100
SOLD
