Thinking about a custom Emerald X20 12-string

[Flying Orca]

Having been well and truly bitten by the CF bug, I am on the verge of abandoning my decades-long dream of owning a Ric 12 and ordering a custom Emerald instead. I'm thinking of a X20 12-string, colour a deep trans aquamarine blue, with Ric string order, a dual-compensated saddle like the Taylor T5 12s, and a pair of Lace Alumitone switchable humbuckers in addition to the usual saddle transducer and pre-amp.

A friend and I have been kicking around the schematics and figure that each humbucker could run into a pull-switchable tone pot (for switching to single coil) and then into independent volume pots. The summed output of these could then be routed (with the preamp output) to a sliding or rotary balance-type (dual gang) pot for blending the electric and acoustic outputs. This should provide a great array of acoustic and electric sounds.

The overall idea is to have a 12-string that sounds great as an acoustic (amplified or not) AND as an electric. My questions: do you think mounting a couple of electric pickups will damp the top too much? How about four T/V knobs on the lower bout? Would I be better off trying to keep the controls on the upper side rather than the top of the guitar? Will string type make a difference to the pickups, and if so, what kind of strings would be best? Have I completely overlooked something? If I can scrape together the cash to do this, I can only do it once, so I really want to get this right!

Any and all advice gratefully considered.

[majiken]

I'm sure mounting pickups directly on the top will affect its performance; I personally would also want the mag polepieces to be adjustable, don't know the alumitones well enough to say if it has adjusting screws per string or if you need to adjust the entire pickup (affects the entire mounting). Pots on the top would have an influence too, which I would view as less critical than the pups depending on their weight.

If your starting point is a Ric, you might think of adjusting the body concept to something with a stiff top like a dobro, which can still be acoustically loud? I'm afraid what you're looking for is not best addressed with a free-swinging top. And indeed, finding strings to cover double duties will not be easy.

I've don't have a CF guitar (yet), but am enthralled by what I've seen Emerald come up with. Don't waste time- contact Alastair asap and run your idea past him. He seems a pretty fearless guy design-wise, and you'll know right from the source what can be done and what not. Good luck!

[Doubleneck]

I have gone down the hybrid road which is really what you are doing. An electric and an acoustic in one guitar. I own a Emerald doubleneck which I put Lace thin stick on pickups in he neck position. The Lace pickups on my doubleneck was to dual source rather than to be "electric".

If you look at all the hybrids I know they do not use a deep body like the X20. I think that is going down the wrong road. I own a thin body chambered hybrid that has a Graphtech Ghost acoustic pickup and a electric pickup. The best hybrid I know of is the Anderson Crowdster Plus 2. Again thin chambered body with piezo acoustic and two electric pickups. The only 12 I know is the Taylor T5 again thin chambered body. Godin, Carvin have examples as well, but all thin chambered bodies.

It also may depends on what kind of music you want to play on the guitar. Alistair made a custom guitar a while back for a guy in England that incorporated electric pickups. He showed it on the Carbon Guitar Forum, I will try to find the post.
Steve

[Gemini11]

Tried two different mag pups on my Rainsong. Does not play well with combination of bronze wound and steel octave strings. Awful actually. I guess you could mess with stainless plains like I think Leo Kottke does? Or maybe use nickel wounds?

[Flying Orca]

Originally Posted by majiken

contact Alastair asap and run your idea past him. He seems a pretty fearless guy design-wise, and you'll know right from the source what can be done and what not. Good luck!

Thanks - I am in dialogue with Alistair and the pickup company he favours, just looking for additional opinions. Not looking for a guitar built by committee or anything, but I want to make sure I don't overlook anything.

Originally Posted by Doubleneck

If you look at all the hybrids I know they do not use a deep body like the X20.

I considered a thinner body, and I would continue to consider it if Alistair recommends same, but...

Originally Posted by Doubleneck

It also may depends on what kind of music you want to play on the guitar.

...what I'm mostly after is an acoustic 12-string, I'd just like to be able to plug it into an electric amp for recording purposes and get proper electric tone out of it. I'm unlikely to use it onstage, although one never knows. My usual night out involves playing rhythm guitar for session tunes and songs.

Originally Posted by Doubleneck

Alistair made a custom guitar a while back for a guy in England that incorporated electric pickups. He showed it on the Carbon Guitar Forum, I will try to find the post. - Steve

I'd love to see that.

Originally Posted by Gemini11

Tried two different mag pups on my Rainsong. Does not play well with combination of bronze wound and steel octave strings. Awful actually. I guess you could mess with stainless plains like I think Leo Kottke does? Or maybe use nickel wounds?

I'm thinking the heaviest nickel electric 12-string set I can find; Ernie Ball makes an .11-.52 set that I figure should work acoustically at 25.5" scale length.

So, half-baked, or completely baked?

[Doubleneck]

This is the custom electric for the guy in England:
http://www.emeraldguitars.com/breaki...fret-7-string/

this is beyond me but it should give you confidence that Alistair can do anything!!!

[Flying Orca]

Originally Posted by Doubleneck

this is beyond me but it should give you confidence that Alistair can do anything!!!

Thanks, Steve - that is indeed my impression as well!

[majiken]

If electric tone is the "add-on", you might consider getting single-string acoustic saddles from RMC, Graphtec Ghost, LR Baggs or so, then split those signals into acoustic and an internal 13-pin outputs. You could run both signals into like a Boss GP-10 or Antares ATG-1, which gives you all kinds of modeled instruments both electric and acoustic. Have 2 outputs, and you get the best of both worlds (I reiterate what has already been said- a full-bodied acoustic is going to almost certainly necessitate heavy compromise on almost every electric tone you are going for, except what is common on fully-hollow electrics like jazz boxes).

Please keep us informed, I have a lot of wierd ideas for my next axe if enough money materializes

[Doubleneck]

You said:...what I'm mostly after is an acoustic 12-string, I'd just like to be able to plug it into an electric amp for recording purposes and get proper electric tone out of it. I'm unlikely to use it onstage, although one never knows. My usual night out involves playing rhythm guitar for session tunes and songs.

I play rhythm guitar as well and I find that I use a 6 more than a 12 for that. I have a doubleneck and use the 12 in that situation maybe 10% of the time and for me the 12 is more interesting flat picked with some individual notes. To me in a band situation a strummed 12 gets lost. You might as said above just get a midi pickup on your bridge and then your guitar can be anything. But I have no experience with midi.

[majiken]

The system I am describing, almost certainly the 13-pin output used by Roland to drive their GK-3 mag or the previously mentioned various hex bridge piezos and feeding hardware like the Boss GP10 or Antares ATG-1, is NOT MIDI- there is no latency. I generally play solo in at least 4 different tunings; I have a brilliant-sounding Landola 12-string that is unfortunately also huge, so that I rarely took it along for the couple of "12" songs that I play. The GP-10 lets me play modeled instruments (including Ric), all of which can be turned into 12s- and IMHO, the Ricky and Martin 12s sound good enough for me to use on stage (I sent back a JTV Variax because the 12s were not good). Its got a bunch of modeled electrics, from Les Paul, ES335, jazz box, Tele, Strat, Lipsticks, & more- you can run the models ore the pickups on the guitar alone or combine them into a preamp with FX that sounds good enough to me to run directly into the PA. I haven't done it yet myself, but you can also record directly per USB into a DAW.

The Antares system is brand-new and not yet readily available, but I hear they are shipping. I also hear they raised the bar on the sound and alternate tunings.

Hmm, now that I've said all that, I'm not sure the hex (=6) systems would work well on a 12-string.... But I agree with Doubleneck, and I actually took the approach to go with a six and add the other strings virtually. Think about it: how many 12-string Strats or Paulas do you hear? Could be a total wash, could be that you come up with something unique

[Flying Orca]

Thanks gents, some good food for thought here. I intend to kick the idea around with Alistair some more, and there is the question of whether I want to spend about $4K CAD on an experiment!

[Flying Orca]

So I reluctantly decided that between the state of my line of credit and the current exchange rate, dropping $4K on an experiment pushes prudence a bit too far. I'm rather bummed, as I was really looking forward to finalizing this design. However, I'm definitely not abandoning the idea - I'm just putting it off while I put the cash aside. I hope to return to the project by next year.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to post their ideas, I'll be working to refine the concept, and Alistair might even take an interest, so don't hesitate to keep the discussion going. Thanks for all your suggestions - I'm not done yet!