Blues Guitar DVD

This is the other Guitar I scalloped myself – an electric Ibanez . NOTE – This was not intended to be tasteful blues solo , its a demo video , so the idea was to cram alot of things in for purpose of showing what its like to play this sort of gtr.
THE HISTORY.
One of earliest players players to scallop guitar was Ritchie Blackmore who in the early to mid 70′s had a lightly scalloped Strat . About that time American inventor Allen Gittler produced the Gittler guitar , a metal skeleton of a guitar with just a rod with attached frets and no fretboard. ( more info about Gitttler guitar can be found with Google or Wikipedia) Also in mid 1970′s John McLaughin played a Abraham Wechter drone string acoustic with deep scallops . Late he played a scalloped Gibson ES 345 electric guitar iin the One Truth Band . In the 1980′s Ygniwe Malmsteen played a Strat he scalloped himself.
REASONS FOR SCALLOPING.
There are 2 reasons why some players like scalloped boards . Some like the feel of not having any friction with a fretboard , they don’t play or sound any different , they just like for want of a better word the slinky way it feels without fretboard.
Other players prefer it because it allows them to play deeper more micro tonal bends than would be possible with conventional guitar. Also some players feel they get a bigger and wider vibrato with scalloped board.
SHALLOW OR DEEP SCALLOPS.
Players who just like the feel don’t need deep scallops . Rock players will usually have shallow scallops , and some people prefer the look of this aesthetically .However for big Indian sounding bends , your fingers need more space Even though you don’t press inward that much , the wood will get in the way of your fingers . Deep scallops do not affect strength or stability of neck nor do they affect tone.
INWARD BENDING.
Guitars have have much thicker strings than a sitar , so with scalloped gtr you don’t bend inwards much as the string tension prevents you . However it would be possible if you used extremely light strings , but then it wouldn’t sound like a guitar anymore. The bending is still done by bending up or down , with a limited amount of inward pressure to shape the sound .
PLAYING CHORDS.
It is more difficult to play chords and is inevitable that there will be the odd time where notes in chords will sound out of pitch. With string guage 009 strings , it can be a bit tricky , altho you get used to it with practise . With 010 or 011 strings then its not so difficult , but again there will be times when some chords sound slightly out of tune. Its a trade off between not being able to play chords as well in order to have the unique feel of scalloped board.

Strings on this guitar were 0-49 – 011. It took about a total of 8 hours work to scallop this guitar . For players who have strat style guitars and don’t want to do it themselves , its possible to buy pre scalloped necks as someone has pointed out in the comments pages.

TIP – Altho the scalloping worked well with this gtr , it would have been better if the gtr had a wider and flatter neck . With big bends sometimes the notes fret out with the slightly curved board , and the neck is not quite wide enough to easily execute bending without banging into the other strings . My advice for those who are going to scallop their own guitar is to choose a gtr that has wide fat neck with flat fingerboard. Scalloping an expensive guitar not recommended as it affects the value of the guitar so much.

Duration : 0:3:7

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