Whoa. An 18-string Guild.

[Jahn]

Lookit that Chesterfield!

http://laurawarmheart.com/the_guitar.html

 

[john_kidder]

Hard to see from this pic, but the archtop has 14 strings, and the sitar-type thing (actually a "satvik veena") has 20:

My friend Doug Cox, a superb slide player, partnered up with Salil Bhatt to produce "Slide to Freedom". I've listened to them together in performance a couple of times, and they're just dazzling. Here's a little soundclip Doug and Salil and a partial review:

• SLIDE TO FREEDOM – Doug Cox & Salil Bhatt (Northern Blues Music NBM. 0039) This is brilliant! Can you imagine a fusion of country-blues with Indian classical music? Well, something like it has been tried before, and I’ve got several examples in my collection, eg most recently the famed Waterlily Acoustics titles from the 1990s where slide maestro Vishwa Mohan Bhatt teamed up with a series of blues/roots celebrities such as Ry Cooder or Taj Mahal. VM’s instrument was the 19-string mohan veena, which in effect he invented by a redesign of the western Hawaiian guitar – to which he added drone and sympathetic strings to enable the assimilation of sitar, sarod and veena techniques. VM’s son Salil here plays the 20-stringed satvik veena, which allows him to incorporate both vocal (gayaki) and instrumental (tantrakari) representations from Indian classical music within his dynamic and exhilarating playing style. But we’re eased in gently with a version of Mississippi John Hurt’s Pay Day, where Salil’s instrument is introduced gradually – yet once his presence is established in the aural picture nothing could sound more natural working in with Doug’s resonator guitar (dobro to you and me!) and the scintillating tabla rhythms provided by Ramkumar Mishra. The disc contains two further examples of blues-type pieces given the gentle-spirited fusion treatment: Blind Willie Johnson’s Soul Of A Man (some fine syncopated drumming here too) and Doug’s own determinedly wry composition Beware Of The Man

 

[Jahn]

That's awesome. I'd love to develop my skills to the point where I'm confident enough to venture out to new stringed instruments. Perhaps a modded Guild could ease the transition!