Official Luthiers Forum!

I sold the maple mandonaught on EvilBay and the purchaser is asking about a harp guitar.......

what he's thinking about is more the standard guitar shape with two necks, one fretted 6 string, one just to hold the harp strings tuners, not the Dyer style.

the actual guitar he's pointed me towards is the Sedgewick Broken heart.....



I've done a 6/12 doubleneck acoustic so that's not too scary in concept......

so, the question......

I've seen pics where there is a bracket between the two heads. And in the Broken Heart the two are jointed together

surely this messes with truss rod adjustment. OK, it adds strength, but I'm thinking leave the necks seperate to allow individual adjustment,

any suggestions or comments?

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Martin,

Best bet would be to e-mail Stephen Sedgewick or post a question on the builders section of harpguitar.net.

If you are going to build one like that then you would need to have the headstocks joined as the "broomstick" won't support seperated I suspect. The sub-bass strings don't need a truss rod type adjustment - they are not fretted and are held high enough to pluck the notes like on a harp. I also suspect the the conventional neck truss-rod will probably function just fine with the set up shown.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Martin,

    There's no need for a truss rod or adjustability in the harp string
support or neck since there is no action or playability requirement that
would make it necessary.

   The actual six string neck with it frets and the need for the strings to be
be forced against them by the player has all of the typical and obvious
needs for a truss rod's adjustability.

   The sub string support does need to be very rigid and to provide
balanced distribution of the accumulative tension of all of the strings to
that upper bout of the body.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

I dont know anything about harp guitars but I would think that now that carbon fibre technology is widely being employed, perhaps things like that dont have to be "as" scary"... a cf strip in the back of the broom handle section would keep it stayed put no?
I dont know for certain, but I thought mabye Id put it forth
Cheers
Charliewood

Thats www.harpguitars.net

Mike