NGD: 9 string content inside (RG9-QM)

[Elias_Kapravelos]

Pics first!

Not a bad quilt top for an Indo

Ironing board looking ahh

BIG headstock, should I unwind the low C# ? I am afraid it will unwind the whole string, but I am sure it's not right as is

And a night pic with better focus!


The good: This thing is hilarious, it's sooo much guitar, extremely resonant and all the "bones" of the guitar feel super solid, neck is extremely comfortable (way better than a C9 I had for a very brief period), intonation wasn't an issue besides the low A0 (who cares I only play the first 5-9 frets on it) sound isn't half bad but I do feel a disconnect on the first 8 strings compared to the 9th. Also it's super light and passes the "grab it by the top strap and see if it neck dives test", good since I want to use it live. Finally I think the price was a steal, 600EUR WITH the hardcase.


The bad: Previous owner completely assed the bridge radius, it was set up as a lap steel slide guitar in a weird open D tuning, right now I wanna set it up in ADADADEAD, it holds the tuning fine but I have no 37 inch radius gauge (does such a thing even exist ?) so I have eyeballed it to not a lot of success. Also there are some dead spots on the high E if i lower the action to anything below 2.3mm (not great, I like it slammed down). I am waiting on my tech to come back from Summer brake (god damn Greece) and I'm taking it over there ASAP. Also tension is all over the place, the .100 isn't cutting it for A even for me ( I use 10-46s for C#), the low D with an .80 though, phew sounds deadly with the 28" scale, just enough slack for it to get nasty. In general

I also made a quick demo with it to get a bit more used to it, mix came out pretty solid imho:


That's it! Any tips on action and setup would be greatly appreciated, especially in regards to pick-up height. Also has anyone tried putting a Lundgren M9 in one of these ? Is it a drop in replacement ?

 

[Rubbishplayer]

Pics first!
View attachment 148559Not a bad quilt top for an Indo
View attachment 148560
Ironing board looking ahh
View attachment 148561
BIG headstock, should I unwind the low C# ? I am afraid it will unwind the whole string, but I am sure it's not right as is

View attachment 148562
And a night pic with better focus!


The good: This thing is hilarious, it's sooo much guitar, extremely resonant and all the "bones" of the guitar feel super solid, neck is extremely comfortable (way better than a C9 I had for a very brief period), intonation wasn't an issue besides the low A0 (who cares I only play the first 5-9 frets on it) sound isn't half bad but I do feel a disconnect on the first 8 strings compared to the 9th. Also it's super light and passes the "grab it by the top strap and see if it neck dives test", good since I want to use it live. Finally I think the price was a steal, 600EUR WITH the hardcase.


The bad: Previous owner completely assed the bridge radius, it was set up as a lap steel slide guitar in a weird open D tuning, right now I wanna set it up in ADADADEAD, it holds the tuning fine but I have no 37 inch radius gauge (does such a thing even exist ?) so I have eyeballed it to not a lot of success. Also there are some dead spots on the high E if i lower the action to anything below 2.3mm (not great, I like it slammed down). I am waiting on my tech to come back from Summer brake (god damn Greece) and I'm taking it over there ASAP. Also tension is all over the place, the .100 isn't cutting it for A even for me ( I use 10-46s for C#), the low D with an .80 though, phew sounds deadly with the 28" scale, just enough slack for it to get nasty. In general

I also made a quick demo with it to get a bit more used to it, mix came out pretty solid imho:


That's it! Any tips on action and setup would be greatly appreciated, especially in regards to pick-up height. Also has anyone tried putting a Lundgren M9 in one of these ? Is it a drop in replacement ?

Hey, sweet guitar, I almost sprung for one of these, but decided it wouldn't get enough use.

Regarding radius, the old-fashioned way to do this would be to work out what the optimum action on the top and bottom strings would be at 12th fret, calculate what the interim string actions would be, and then dial-in each string according to that sliding scale using a simple height gauge.

That'll give you a good starting point, but it'd be best to ensure your frets are level and you've got proper relief set in the neck first, so you don't get distracted by random buzzes. That should deal with any deadspots, unless you've got some more fundamental issues (e.g. poor fretboard - though Ibby's usually don't have those issues).

A good tech should be able to do this for you, but it'd be worth checking the frets for high spots, as you may find there are none, which means you could have a really good stab at fixing this yourself.

As for the "disconnect", I think that's likely an issue with this being a fixed scale, rather than multiscale instrument: the bottom string is usually flappy, unless you go up in gauge, whereupon you may find the tone/intonation suffers a little.

Sorry I can't help you with the Lundgruns (no experience) but my instinct would be to fit a good (SD, Dimarzio, etc) ceramic pickup on the bridge for clarity.

A very happy NGD!

 

[Elias_Kapravelos]

Thanks for the insight! I have checked for high spots and there were two indeed, hence the action comments. My tech has done a lot of 8 strings so I trust him. The relief is decent, dual truss rods are working really good. I will check out the radius tip though for sure. A very happy (and chuggy) NGD indeed.

 

[Shawn]

Beast. Congrats!

 

[odibrom]

Rock that beast!

 

[Alberto7]

Jesus, these things are monstrous. I cap out at 8-strings, but this is cool!

As for the action... yeah, like Rubbishplayer said, first just make sure frets are good and level, and the relief is set properly, then I'll just set the action individually for each string as low as I can. I don't "plan out" or calculate the optimum action for each string. I only know I want to keep the highest string between 1 and 1.3 mm, and the lowest (on my 8 strings) at around 2 mm. Everything in between is as low as it can go with my prefered amount of buzz, if any. It usually takes me about a couple of days to settle on an action I'm comfortable with for each string, since my dynamics may vary throughout the day and depending on what I play. It generally ends up increasing progressively from 1-1.3 mm all the way up to 2. My J. Custom 7 and Oni Essi 8 both have impeccable fretwork, so the lowest string for each is set at ~1.7 mm.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

Not even a half turn of the string on that low A tuner