Just saw a show on discovery channel where these guys built a playable 30ft 8 inch guitar in 5 days.
Weighed in at 2500lbs.
Old Peter Frampton came and jammed with the thing.
Cables not strings.
Lacquered red.
Huge seymour pickup.
Bit extreme.
“sobriety is the root cause of dementia.”, rez,2004
“Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of subatomic indeterminism.”,
Jack Williamson, The Legion of Time
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A bit extreme eh?
Thats ok with me...
would be nice to see a big ol' angel come out of the sky and jam on it proper :)
Handyman, painter, wood floor refinisher, property maintenance in Tulsa, OK
"If yer gonna drive fast on the highway why not go as fast as you can? Like... a hundred miles per hour or more lol."
In days of yore (the sixty's and seventy's) some hippie-type built a big Aeolian harp out of like telephone poles and cables, I think it was on a mountain that got a lot of wind on an Eastern Seaboard state. He then set up a tape recorder and made a record (God, am I old--all these ancient devices). Anyone else hear of this harp? Or is this just another flashback? The album was actually quite good, with tracks like "Before the storm, spring '67".
I've often thought about building one like it--the neighbors would probably run me out of town on a rail. I'm in process (like, I've drawn the plans and cut a couple boards (some of which I cut wrong) of making a 7' tall frame for wind chimes made from electrical conduit and closet poles to put in my garden.
Man, I can't place that LP.
I do have a double album from around that time with a harp on the cover and some kind of continuos sound that went on forever. Totally useless so I doubt that was the one you speak of.
Got me thinking of building one. Roar!"sobriety is the root cause of dementia.", rez,2004
"Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of subatomic indeterminism.",Jack Williamson, The Legion of Time
What you have might be the one--one "track" just sort of faded into the next; and it was pretty useless--not at all "musical" in the normal sense. Lots of humming and buzzing. Mainly gave you the impression of what the wind was doing that day or hour or whatever.
Man, you're tempting me to go dig it out of the stash, but you don't know what all that entails or what day I might return.<G>"sobriety is the root cause of dementia.", rez,2004
"Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of subatomic indeterminism.",Jack Williamson, The Legion of Time
You'd probably like this book then, I think it's called Open Your Mind and it's all about psychodelic music, past and present. It's a new book. Brought back memories, although I'd never heard of a lot of the music mentioned. And, he didn't mention anything by "Spirit" or the album "Touch" (the cover says, "20/20 Sound", so that gives you an idea of what the music was like).
The problem with going big is that the frequency of the vibration you get from something goes down as size goes up. (That's why bass fiddles stand on the floor, and violins go under your chin.)
For strings, frequency goes up as tension goes up. So to get a really long string up into the 20 Hz - 20 kHz range of human hearing, you have to pull on it really really hard. And that means that the structure that supports the string has to be extremely strong.
Compare the frame of a 9 ft. concert grand piano with a spinet.
-- J.S.
That 30' guitar must be pretty sturdy then! Thanks for the info.
They had like a one foot pick that one guy kind of hammered on a string with while another guy was up at the neck pressing the strings down on a fret by pushing in with a hand and leaning into it."sobriety is the root cause of dementia.", rez,2004
"Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of subatomic indeterminism.",Jack Williamson, The Legion of Time