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Originally Posted by Snorse
Much appreciated! I can't carry a piano (as big as I am), but I do like the idea of a cittern or similar.
Cheers Brick. My Dad was a tremendous mandolin player (as well as fiddle and banjo) and I've inherited his instrument. It's a nameless wonder that he bought at a second hand shop in Hay-on-Wye in the 1960's and I think it's probably Japanese. I'm 'sort of' adept at it but I have massive hands and my paid gigs are all solo. I used to take my mandolin to sessions even though I was invited there for guitar and fiddle, but I was competing with people much more capable so it barely ever came out of the case. Nowadays I live on a tiny Island where there's no sessions to attend, and it's in the attic somewhere.
Yes, I should have been clearer, sorry. All of my paid gigs are solo, and I do about 50/50 originals and covers that range from trad to modern country to folk (Richard Thompson and John Martyn type stuff) and chart songs. I play percussively a lot and switch between fingerstyle and flatpicking and I sing in a baritone although I use my head voice an awful lot too.
That's why I was asking for 'full range', rather than mandolin type register. I do sometimes break out a mandolin (although not in recent years) for something like copperhead road, but I always end up feeling like I can't 'go up' dynamically by bringing the bass in, in say verse two, and I always feel like I should have just used the guitar after I finish!
Where I used to live, there were loads of mandolin players, although less than there were guitarists, and I could never get in sideways on a session because they knew I played fiddle and always asked me to do that instead.
Hmm, not really. I already own and play madolin and banjo, and those don't give me any low end to 'hide' my vocals in in the mix. I always feel quite exposed and wish I'd used the guitar. My daughter had a nice handmade uke, and it's a fine sound, but not what I'm after really, hence the 'full range' part of my question. Tenor 'guitars' are likewise not really what I'm looking for, although Seth Lakeman makes them sound great solo. My voice is heaps lower than his... and I don't have his talent!
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It won't visually say "now here's a different instrument" but what you seem to be asking about sonically says baritone guitar to me. I built a baritone (I tuned it Bb to Bb) electric, but didn't use it as much as I thought I would. I do use my Fender Squier electric Bass VI (tuned E to E, one octave down from standard guitar) a fair amount, but mostly for single note/double stops, not full chords. I know there are a few fairly affordable baritone acoustic guitars out there.
I don't have a low-range voice, but another sonic variation would be a low tuned 12-string (ala folks from Leadbelly to Leo Kottke). Some have extended scale lengths, others just up their string gauges and tune down. Jumbo body sizes often seem to match this style well. I often tune my Guild JF30-12 D to D, but I'll drop lower than that--particularly back when I was exploring pieces where I didn't sing and could explore that register with impunity.
Have a dislike for the octave string sound of a regular 12-string? I keep an old laminated 12-string tuned D to D in "Steve Tibbetts tuning" which pairs more courses with unison string pairs instead of octave strings.
Example of how it sounds: Prolog to the Canterbury Tales
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Creator of The Parlando Project
Guitars: 20th Century Seagull S6-12, S6 Folk, Seagull M6; '00 Guild JF30-12, '01 Martin 00-15, '16 Martin 000-17, '07 Parkwood PW510, Epiphone Biscuit resonator, Merlin Dulcimer, and various electric guitars, basses....
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