Eight-string Guitar - Semi-acoustic Guitar (hollow-body Guitar)

Semi-acoustic Guitar (hollow-body Guitar)

See also: Semi-acoustic guitar and Archtop guitar

Inspired by the jazz of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane and the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg, jazz-guitarist Ralph Patt sought a guitar-tuning that would facilitate improvisation. In 1964 Patt introduced major-thirds tuning. Patt's tuning is a regular tuning, in the sense that all of the intervals between its successive open strings are major thirds; in contrast, the standard guitar-tuning has one major-third amid four fourths.

Major-thirds tuning has a smaller scope than standard guitar-tuning, and so seven-string guitar are needed for major-thirds tuning to have the E-e' range of the standard tuning. Eight-strings enabled Patt's highest string to have G♯ (equivalently A♭) for its open note. Patt purchased six-string archtop hollow-body guitars that were then modified by luthiers to have wider necks, wider pickups, and eight strings. Patt's Gibson ES-150 was modified by Vincent "Jimmy" DiSerio circa 1965. Luthier Saul Koll modified a sequence of guitars: a 1938 Gibson Cromwell, a Sears Silvertone, a circa 1922 Mango archtop, a 1951 Gibson L-50, and a 1932 Epiphone Broadway; for Koll's modifications, custom pick-ups accomodated Patt's wide necks and high G♯ (equivalently A♭); custom pick-ups were manufactured by Seymour Duncan and by Bill Lawrence.