just say this GIBSON Electric solid body, Harp Guitar

[darrylicshon]

GIBSON Electric solid body, Harp Guitar, Custom Shop 1992, 18 strings,
the 'Aircraft Carrier' rises from the deep, one (long) zebra Humbucker, one of a kind, '68 pots, and huge case lined with '60s Gibson Yellow lining, made by Roger Giffin, pluck it, slide on it, ebow it, display it, needless to say- one of a kind. They are selling. It is just under $10g. I am not selling, but i would love to own it.

[mrmando]

Appears to be all harp and no guitar.

[darrylicshon]

Your right that's what they were calling it maybe because it's shaped like one

[allenhopkins]

Really an electric zither -- but if they called it that, no one "cool" would want to buy it.

Just what the music world needed, eh?

[Jim]

Really an electric zither -- but if they called it that, no one "cool" would want to buy it.

You mean No one would be cool enough to buy it

[catmandu2]

Just what the music world needed, eh?

Well, this to me is worlds more evocative than another $500 imported mandolin. I would like to hear what Thurston Moore, Fred Frith, Keith Rowe et al would do with this thing..

But six strings provides ample and vast potential - hard to imagine the racket you could make with that wild thing -

[Jess L.]

Pics look like geared tuners on all the strings? If so, cool!

Eons ago I owned a Gibson harp guitar (with an actual guitar neck, old archtop oval-hole black-top model from the early 1910s), the guitar-neck tuners were sweet but the zither pins on the other 10 strings were a nuisance. Geared pegs are a much nicer idea. This, coming from someone who also used to own a boatload of late-1800s fiddle-peg banjos that had solid wood pegs with no gears or metal tuners at all... but that was just a phase. Nowadays it's nice to have modern conveniences like geared pegs.

[slimt]

That would be a expensive wall hanger.. Not very Practical either..

[Timbofood]

I kind of like the "zither" concept but, I see no frets at all. Am I missing them? I don't see too much for reference as far as any position markers either. The question I have is "why?" And for Whom was it built? It's pretty interesting, I will admit.
Since its from the custom shop, and there have been no major fires at the company since this was made, maybe Big Joe can ask someone from the shop?

[Petrus]

I sort of got my eye on an Italia Modena electric sitar at the moment. I just found out about these ... they only cost around $700 +/-. I had thought only Danelectro made an electric sitar (the Baby Sitar and the much more expensive Coral from the '60s.)

[Petrus]

GIBSON Electric solid body, Harp Guitar, Custom Shop 1992, 18 strings, the 'Aircraft Carrier' rises from the deep, one (long) zebra Humbucker, one of a kind, '68 pots, and huge case lined with '60s Gibson Yellow lining, made by Roger Giffin, pluck it, slide on it, ebow it, display it, needless to say- one of a kind.

I'm surprised there's only two knobs on that thing. For all those strings, I'd want more pickups (maybe further up the neck) and more control over which strings you want to emphasize at a given time. Notice that the Italia sitar pic in my post above has six knobs.

And I think it'd be cooler in a quasi-mandolin configuration. Mandolin or mandola scale, maybe 16 strings in double courses, tuned in fifths. A smaller size would also be lighter and easier to hold and play.