“An extended range guitar of course calls for extended range pickups.”
Here’s Chris Varnon’s gorgeous guitar: an Agile Septor 827, 27″ scale equipped with two 8-string XR quad-coils. He tunes it in all 4ths, with the lowest string as a bass low E. The highest string is D#, a half-step below guitar high E. He says the tuning and the scale works very well together.
“WOW! It is like my guitar was dying before and now it has come back to life with great vigor. Even the lowest strings are so much more distinct. It really is an incredible difference.”
Look, no pots! The three toggle switches are, neck pickup dual/single, power, bridge pickup dual/single. Chris has no need for volume or tone knobs on the guitar! The dual/single switches are a nice touch. I personally love the single-width sound. And no worries about nasty noisy singles. It’s humbucking either way you flick the switch.
“The output is stereo, so both pickups are recorded simultaneously. I use Propellerhead Reason as my audio workstation. I have a patch for the stereo input that can control both pickup levels, blend them together, and apply comb filters and equalization separately. I can also put the signals together out of phase. I am still tinkering with the sounds, but I have come up with some nice clean, acoustic, and bass like sounds.”
Click to zoom in! Notice how Chris raised the poles on the lowest string. At 27″ scale, the lowest string can never be as tight and heavy as a bass guitar with a longer 34″ scale. Raising the poles balance out the response.
The pickup rings were printed at shape ways in the black dyed strong and flexible nylon plastic. Chris shared the 3D STL file in if anyone’s interested: pickup ring.stl.
Splendid!
Share your Cycfi XR builds and installs with us here. We’d love to see your creations!
Thank you Chris for sharing pictures and for the kind words! I guess the obvious response is: Ermmm… Sound clips please 🙂