Amazing Emerald 9 String Fan Fret

Custom Made Carbon Fibre Harp Guitar

This is a guitar that almost render me speechless, when you look at this guitar it will give you one of them moments were you go "aaaww" "ooohh". Or something like that. This creation is made by Alistair Hay he is the President/Manager of Emerald Guitars. You can also follow him on his blog Inside Emerald Guitars

Now Emerald Guitars is a guitar maker from Ierland that have made many custom guitars over the years. Emerald are most known for their Carbon Fibre Acoustic guitars and now they have taken this even further.

Because carbon fibre is a very light and strong material, much more so than wood. It gives the makers more freedom to create more radical shapes and forms. If you would make anything like this from wood, the guitar strings would just break the guitar.

Emerald have now 6 different guitars in their line of acoustic guitars and all of them are carbon fiber. The one that I am talking about is the custom made one called The 9 String Fan Fret Harp Guitar. That's right this custom guitar have 9 strings.

Now don't get me wrong, the other guitars are very nice also. Just have a look at some of them here.

If you look at the price, they really are not that expensive.

Emerald Guitars T20 Dreadnought

I'm going to show you a video of the 9 String Harp Guitar in action. And then have the pictures of the guitar for you below. But first this is what Alistair Hay have to say about the guitar:

One of the great things about carbon fibre is the freedom it gives you to create unusual designs that may not be possible in any other material. This 9 string Fan fret guitar is one of those guitars made possible.

It’s a 25.5” to 29” scale with a regular 6 strings and three lower bass strings. The customer tunes it ADGEADGBE but many tunings are possible. Its built on the body of the XB bass to take advantage of the offset soundhole. This in turn gives a great vibrational surface on the soundboard and also makes it stronger to resist the extra tension.

The customer wanted the neck to be wide stating that the string to string spacing should be similar to a 1.75” nut 6 string as he plays fingerstyle and wanted plenty of spacing between strings. To keep it manageable we decided to keep the neck exceptionally thin and added 2 truss rods to keep the neck stable and allow for minor adjustments.

The other issue was to get good access to the upper registers yet I still need a heel for body joint stability so I came up with the half heel idea. The heel is undercut on the treble side allowing the players thumb to get right up into the body. The result is both beautiful and functional.

Its amplified with 4 K&K contact pickups with no onboard battery or preamp and then he runs that into an external preamp and mixer.

The overall tonal range of this instrument is spectacular with bright clear trebles and earth shaking basses. The whole instrument is alive and you can just feel its power. It almost has a piano like quality.

It’s a guitar that perhaps is intimidating to many but in fact it is very playable and gives a great tonal palette from which to perform.

UPDATE 19-5-2011:
I found a very nice picture of this guitar that would be perfect for a wallpaper also. 

So here you go. Size 1024x683.

Guitar Wallpaper - Amazing Emerald 9 String Fan Fret Harp Guitar - Carbon Fiber Composite

Great Guitar Sound