The Twister Guitar

John Schmersal of Enon and I had a lot of fun thinking out a special instrument for him. We worked out the ideas of his guitar in the last 6 months of 2008. John asked quiet something from me, but I like to be cornered when the requests make sense.

Based on Laura-Mary’s Springtime Guitar we figured out what could be adapted. The Twister is like a complete bling bling version of the Springtime with so much extras in it. The instrument has 9 tuning pegs, of which 8 are used and 1 as reserve peg. John's has 4 fast rotating tuning pegs to allow him to fastly pitch up & down with a string, creating overtone glissandos. It's a funny sound. Normally tuning pegs have 20:1 rotation, these have a 5:1 rotation.

The neck is partial scalloped, to allow pitch bending with pulling up the strings. Not partial in the way of just a few frets like the Yngwie Malmsteen guitars, but only the aera under the thin strings to not mess up the wound string chords aera. The 12^th fret is completely scalloped. I've read a lot of forums about the advantages and disadvantages of scalloped necks. Only thing I can say is hurts your fingers a bit more while you rapidly more your hand with barre chords, but you get used to it. The playing (pressing the strings) however is very easy to manage.

The Springtime has an enlarged tail. It is much larger than a Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster. I did this because I like the 3rd bridge positions 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 and 1/6 on the Moodswinger. When the counter value of the fraction is higher the overtone is very high. On Jaguars, Jazzmasters and all other tailed bridges like the Teisco’s the tail is somewhere around 1/7^th, 1/8^th of the total string length. The Springtime has a 5:1 ratio. On John’s Twister I went a level further up to a 1:4 ratio, causing a double octave tone instead of the Springtime's higher double octave + major third tone (G sharp if the open string is an E). This was for me the biggest improvement discovered until now, because the behind the bridge area fits very convenient with the dotted frets, making it work very logical. The most consonant fret positions (3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 7^th, 12^th, etc.) create a beautiful harmonic resonance, while the more dissonant tones (6^th, 11^th, etc.) give a dryer less humming, more percussive multi tone. So there is a kind of natural self-selection present in the overtoning spectrum, tending automatically towards harmonic consonant sound. (This self-filtering is one example of the Helix of Consonance.)

A lipstick pickup is used as a 4^th pickup near the neck, for playing mono, if you have only one amp around. The 5^th pickup, to emphazise the behind the bridge area, worked out perfect like John and I had hoped and John was very surprised about the acoustic sound of the final instrument. The odd tail generates a wide spectrum of all kinds of strange dry or resonating sounds when you only amplify the behind the bridge pickup, almost like a Kalimba.

Mauro Pawlowski of dEUS owns a blonde Springtime with 5 pickups, configured identical like on the Twister. The Burner Harp Guitar of Finn Andrews of The Veils is a copy of the Twister with an additional harp field.

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