Prepared Guitar - Custom Made Instruments

Custom Made Instruments

Beginning in the 1970s, guitarist and luthier Hans Reichel made some unusual guitars with third bridge-like qualities.

Bradford Reed (pencilina), Glenn Branca, Fred Frith and the band Neptune also made other individually different types of experimental third bridge guitars. Yuri Landman derived a just intoned musical scale from an initially considered atonal prepared guitar playing technique based on adding a 3rd bridge under the strings. He constructed an instrument called the Moodswinger with this scale. When this bridge is positioned in the noded positions of the harmonic series the volume of the instrument increases and the overtone becomes clear and has a consonant relation to the complementary opposed string part creating a harmonic multiphonic tone.