15 Love

This custom built instrument was first strung up at the end of the Wimbledon championships, it has 15 strings, and I love it!
A commission from a US customer which took a year to discuss and build, about 50 emails each way, and a lot of thought. There were many options and possibilities, some of which had to be discarded in order to make any progress at all. The final design has 15 strings in 5 courses, string length of 18 inches, and tuned one fourth above a guitar. We think its either a Tipple or a Cittern, and you can play around with those two words as much as you like.

The top strings are unison, the bottom courses have two strings one octave higher than the note strings, as in the Portuguese Mandola. And- it has two soundboards, the second structure inside the main soundbox is a light diaphragm made from cedar, with a moveable spruce soundpost connecting the two. We need to make a lot of experiments with it over the next few weeks, but so far its very impressive, with a glass like tone. I tuned it once two weeks ago, and it hasn’t moved since, which is just as well, as its rather tricky finding the right tuner button.