Willy said:
Here's a video of the mod's, too bad I don't speak French! Maybe someone out there can fill us in on the details.
http://youtu.be/RNSRDSAxkuM
Here’s what my rather rusty franco-ears picked up (it helps that he speaks with a French-Canadian accent
):
He’s a Canadian luthier, Michel Pellerin. He modified the guitar for Gino Fillion
The Guild is the second attempt at these modifications. His first was on a Norman guitar.
The fingerboard was widened, and scooped between the frets, to allow extreme bending of notes. The strings that are “above” the fingerboard obviously cannot be fretted. He calls these “supplementary” strings. They can be tuned to add the desired notes to the piece that’s being played – eg to construct a minor or 7th chord.
He did the cutaway, cutting the pickguard as well. A larger nut and saddle were used. He mentions that they had trouble finding an undersaddle pickup that was long enough to fit under the longer saddle – they used an LR Baggs.
The guitar has 10 strings; only 2 are doubled like you’d see on a regular 12-string. On the head, extra pins were added to allow the supplementary strings to be wound onto the existing tuners.
He turns the guitar over to show the extra-wide fingerboard from the rear. Interestingly, when the camera zooms in on the back of the head, I can see clearly the logo “Steve’s” meaning Steve’s Music, a large store in Montreal, Toronto & Ottawa.
