Carillion Nexus - Microtonal Baritone Warrior/Death Kelly

[Millul]

Face meltingly amazing!

And yes, slightly lowered tune-o-matics are great!

 

[rikwebb]

That is beautiful!

 

[JimF]

Incredible build! Can't wait to hear it!

 

[Noodler]

Congrats on the new guitar.

Not my taste at all but I'm glad you love it.

 

[akinari]

Absolutely love the look of it. That tuning is something I've been thinking of adapting to my 34" 7 string since I saw you mention it awhile back. Can't wait to hear it in action.

 

[Winspear]

Absolutely love the look of it. That tuning is something I've been thinking of adapting to my 34" 7 string since I saw you mention it awhile back. Can't wait to hear it in action.

I'm really attached to that tuning and have even come to enjoy it for lead even though I never expected to. The ability to sustain notes in melodies so easily is a lot of fun, and scale shapes play out really nice for hybrid picking if linear runs are still desired

 

[nsimonsen]

This thing looks absolutely insane.
With that said, I concept of wrapping my head around trying to play it hurts hahaha.

 

[ixlramp]

This is one of the most impressive microtonal guitars i have seen, perhaps the most impressive. I like it even more due to the fifths tuning, long scale, large range and spikyness.

This uses an extended meantone tuning, is it the precise pitches generated by a chain of tempered fifths, or an approximation of that?
If precise, what size is the tempered fifth, is this Quarter-Comma Meantone?
How long is the chain of fifths, how many pitches in total?
Presumably, as you are using straight frets, each string has a different subset of the overall tonal system? And perhaps, not every fret on every string is actually part of the tonal system?
Are all the intervals between the open strings identical to the generating tempered fifth (ignoring the octave-down of the top 2)?

Sorry for lots of questions, if there is a post elsewhere in the forum that explains the tonal system technically, i would appreciate a link to it, then you may not need to answer all the questions above.

 

[Winspear]

This is one of the most impressive microtonal guitars i have seen, perhaps the most impressive. I like it even more due to the fifths tuning, long scale, large range and spikyness.

Glad you dig it! It's certainly a great feeling to have gone all out on my first real dabble into micro haha - couldn't be happier with it.

I did go over it in this thread https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/general-microtuning-thread.340098/ - post #16 was where I first developed the idea - not sure how I expanded on or advanced it in the thread from there but safe to say post #16 is not the final version though is certainly the gist of it.

Happy to explain it more here now finalized. First I'd ask out of curiosity what you meant by your first question - what would 'an approximation of that' be? You mean some kind of unequally spaced well temperament or such? But no - it is indeed an exact chain of a tempered fifth - which is why I can use straight fret positions at all.

The size of the fifth is that from 112EDO (696.428571429c) - it is extremely close to 1/4 comma Meantone (even on the far ends of a chain this size) and I may as well have just gone with that - but 112 gives me something easily tangible when I'm working on computers and such (both for DAW work and when designing fretboards).
I came to it before actually understanding what Meantone was - I knew 31EDO had nice thirds, harmonic 7th and such, and figured that a less cluttered subset of 31EDO would be useful and versatile enough. I then decided to see what other EDOs could host a similar subset with the goal of a slightly wider Small interval for comforts sake. Checking those up to ~120EDO, I found 112EDO to have a favourable Small size of ~43 cents, ~75 cents for the large. As opposed to ~39/77 of 31EDO. A big enough difference to feel in the small frets? Probably not - but swing the balance much further and you start to head toward 19EDO/ 1/3 comma meantone and destroy the accuracy of the far ends of the chain (that tasty harmonic 7th and subminor 3rd!).

It's pretty reasonable to call it a 31EDO subset guitar still or a 1/4 Comma Meantone guitar , as it's audibly compatible with both of those just fine (just a few cents out from 31 on the far ends of the chain). But yeah, extended meantone from 112EDO.

Chain size - the goal is prettymuch 31EDO without the doubleflats/doublesharps (that's how I came to it - deleting columns in excel!) - if you're familiar with that notation? So ~20 pitches total, extended out evenly either side of D natural as traditional meantone does. However due to having all straight frets we do push into the doublesharp/doubleflat territory here and there. Pictured are the lower and upper halves of the board - 19 and 12 frets respectively. The lower frets prioritize naturals/flats/sharps on the lower strings, then heading toward the upper frets that priority shifts to the treble strings. The 12 second octave frets are placed to provide as many naturals as possible and then prettymuch all the flats/sharps in one position or another (If A# is on one string, Bb is on another, and so on - couldn't have both like I do on the lower half of the board without the frets getting extra cramped).
Note the cents in the below image are roundings from 81EDO before I settled on 112EDO - though it's prettymuch exactly the same.

And yes, every string has 696.4c between. I tune it on a regular tuner with the C string, aim for -18 cents on the top B (checking with the 2nd fret C too), and then work inward from there with ~3.5c steps on the needle, checking my octave fingerings sound right.

 

[ixlramp]

Thanks for so much detail.

First I'd ask out of curiosity what you meant by your first question - what would 'an approximation of that' be? You mean some kind of unequally spaced well temperament or such?

No idea, ha.
I asked because your system was described in various non-technical ways: 'not quite 31EDO', 'skewed 19EDO', 'based on meantone', and i was wondering what it is exactly, if it was precisely a chain of identically tempered fifths (i am happy to see it is).

 

[Forkface]

oh thats nasty, well done.

 

[bostjan]

Absolutely fantastic! So happy for you!

 

[Winspear]

Thanks guys!

(i am happy to see it is).

Me too! I took a bit of a gamble on this build as I had no idea what fretting I wanted at time of order. There are a whole bunch of options I considered (both other EDOs entirely, and other ways to approach fretting for 31) that I would have been significantly less happy with as I continued to experiment this year. I to try tweaking after this board was finalized but still find nothing I would change about it on paper or in hand, so that's great!
Really digging broken-chain extended meantone this way and don't feel that the more cluttered fretboard of full 31EDO for further flexibility, or the different intonation of some notes in 19EDO for equal-ness, would be worth it for me.
I have an aluminium bass neck on the way

 

[Musiscience]

This is so interesting. Congrats on the epic NGD!

Any chance you might do a demo or soundclips?