Haydn Williams custom 36-fret

[Svartmetall]

Alder body with a flame walnut top, maple and bubinga neck with a bird's-eye maple 'board. Kent Armstrong Rocker 5X pickup, Schaller lo-pro Floyd.



...

 

[Maniacal]

That looks insane. Good man!

 

[distressed_romeo]

I saw that in your other thread and thought it was one of those old Hamers or Washburns. Looks great! Do you have any soundclips?

 

[Apophis]

Awesome look

 

[Desecrated]

It looks fun to play.

 

[drawnQ]

damn fine

 

[that guy]

those frets are tiny

kick ass dude

 

[Svartmetall]

I saw that in your other thread and thought it was one of those old Hamers or Washburns. Looks great! Do you have any soundclips?

I have one of the prototype Washburn EC-29 Spitfire guitars, it rocks...

...that was very much the inspiration for this one.

 

[bostjan]

That's a pretty deep cutaway! How often do you use the third octave? I've found that having a few frets above 24 makes tapped sequences much easier for me to handle, so long as I don't get lost in a sea of frets. Linear playing is fine, but arpeggios and triads give me some difficulties up there.

 

[Svartmetall]

Visualisation is the key; it takes a while to get used to, especially if you have big thick fingers like mine, but once you have the fingerboard/note patterns firmly established in your head it's not too much of an issue.

 

[Durero]

That's a beautiful guitar man.

Are you able to fret the highest notes with a normal fretting technique? Or do you have to use your fingernails or something different?

I have a 36 fret 9-string Ergo and I find that the top 2 frets are unplayable for me unless I radically change my hand position and dig in with my fingernails to fret the notes. The frets are a bit wide though so perhaps thinner frets would be better for the highest notes.


It would be great to see more pics of that beauty. How 'bout a close-up of the fretboard?

 

[Svartmetall]

Oh yeah, with my hands it's fingernail time after about the high A

 

[distressed_romeo]

How much wear-and-tear does that put on your nails?

 

[Svartmetall]

Erm...lots

 

[bostjan]

If you press really hard, your finger tips can actually conform to the shapes of the preceding frets and stop the string at the desired length, but it makes your hand get really tired really fast.

I've torn up a couple fingernails trying it that way...I like to use the edge of my pick sometimes for a little bagpipey hiccup sound...makes my nails a lot happier.

 

[stubhead]

I googled Haydn Williams and immediately came upon your other thread with pictures of your squeezes:
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/sevenstring-guitars/47610-haydn-williams-custom-7-strings.html

I love scalloped frets, once you're on to them it feels sort of limiting to play a boring old "normie".... This is a picture of my main squeeze, a Warmoth "Tele" with a scalloped ebony board I built in 2001 and just upgraded to rocket-science wiring last year. I just finished the Warmoth fretless P-bass a few weeks ago and I'm like, gone, baby...

Between these and my pedal steel, I'm freed from the tyranny of playing in tune forever! I'm building a high-test Warmoth seven-string right now. I'd love to have a scalloped seven-string, but the Warmoth neck is too thin for me to chance it, almost as thin as my Ibanez RG7421. I have a low-test Ibby AX7221 with a fat neck I could scallop, but I have so many projects right now (incl. practicing 4 hours a day). That AX has about 1/4" of disgusting gray teflon paint on it that would have to go too, sounds like a messy project.

 

[Hcash]

That is gnarly. But may I ask why the pickup is angled funny???

 

[Apophis]

Because sound of the bass strings is little different then

 

[Jongpil Yun]

Stubhead, I've got a 7620 that I scalloped. Very deeply too. Totally removed the face dots (except for the 21st fret and up, damn face dots go too deep, so the sides are still kind of there). I think I might have to give the truss rod an 1/8th of a turn or something but I think it might just be my mind playing tricks on me. I was originally worried about dicking up the neck because it's thinner than my Strat, but it's actually more stable than the neck on my Strat is.

I think it goes without saying that the 7620 neck is probably thinner than the Warmoth one, and from what I can tell, you don't even go deep enough to remove the face dots, so you have nothing to worry about.