The Harp Guitar that I’ve Always Wanted
A custom designed Emerald Guitars Synergy X10 in Royal Ebony veneer top and with custom inlay
Hey folks. This is initial review of my brand new Emerald Guitars Synergy X20 Harp Guitar. Let’s start with a trip back in time.
I had never heard of a harp guitar until some years back when I saw a video for some long forgotten Coverdale-Page tune where Jimmy Page walked about playing a Gibson Style U harp guitar. What is that my brain screamed? Whether Mr. Page actually played the Style U on the record is not known by me, I just thought it looked really cool. About ten years after, I started doing some research into harp guitars. I learned that they were rare critters with most being made in Asia, and most having 6 or 7 sub bass strings. The uniqueness of the harp guitar is the set of sub bass strings, tuned by default to whole notes in accordance with the standard western scale. I claim very close to buying an Asia built guitar from a shop in California, but backed out before committing to the purchase. I cannot remember specifically why but I did.
In that time, I watched and listened to all the harp guitar videos that I could find on YouTube. There were more than I expected and I learned that the harp guitar community, while small, was composed of very dedicated musicians with a real love for the harp guitar. I also learned of guitarist Jamie Dupuis who arranged modern rock tunes for harp guitar and played them in his videos. He is a really talented fellow, and you might want to lock at his channel on YouTube.
One of the challenges of the traditional harp guitar is the amount of strain placed on the guitar top. You want the wooden top to flex, but not be ripped apart by string tension. Moreover, as wood is sensitive to temperature and humidity, keeping a harp guitar stable was going to be an act of real commitment.
The photo below is of a Style U once for sale at The 12th Fret Guitar Shop in Toronto Ontario. I was in for something else and it was leaning against the wall. The sales professional told me that it was selling for just over $6K CAD (this was before the stupidity of pricing in old guitars wearing a vintage badge, earned or not) and it was in the kind of shape one might expect of an oft played instrument built in 1914.
Image copyright The 12th Fret.
I was in love, or at least guitar lust, but my bank account was not and while I knew that the luthiers at the 12th Fret were more than capable of bringing the instrument to well setup playing condition, it was out of my range and I had to pass.
I still wanted a harp guitar but the used market was very lean, and I was concerned about a guitar from a builder with no reputation. So time passed and then an advert in Guitarist magazine out of the UK showed an Emerald six string. It was a striking green and in the photograph, I could tell that the guitar used carbon fibre for the top and body. The soundhole was on the upper bout near the neck projecting both forward and up. It was to my eye a completely innovative design, and I filed the company name for future reference.
About two months ago, I was on my search engine (DuckDuckGo) and did a search on harp guitars. Emerald Guitars was a top hit after the usual plugged ads for Amazon that doesn’t actually sell harp guitars.
I went to the Emerald site and saw that you built your guitar to order. They have an amazing build tool on their site and you pick the body, whether you want native carbon fibre or a rare wood veneer, a colour, whether or not you want pickups and what type of inlay you want if any. To say I spent far too much time building guitars there is an understatement. I also learned that they kept finished guitars in stock and after some excellent communications with their sales executive Mr. Kevin Quigley bought an in stock Synergy X20 in Red carbon fibre, with 7 sub bass strings and Ghost Piezo pickups for both necks.
In my buying process, I did some research into carbon fibre guitars. Most reviews referenced sub $500 instruments on Amazon and while some were positive, most were not. There was a lot of hate for the idea of carbon fibre in the guitar community but some basic research determined that those who bitched the most, had the least or no actual experience with a carbon fibre guitars.
I’ve been a photographer for fifty years and a videographer for the last fifteen. Carbon fibre was somewhat esoteric and very limited in use, most particularly for tripod leg sets. Really Right Stuff and Gitzo offered carbon fibre legs sets and they were very expensive, yet the combination of incredible durability, reliability and very light weight earned them accolades from working professionals, particularly those who did most of their work in the field. I spoke with a couple of engineers and learned very quickly that all carbon fibre is not the same. The core components can vary, as can the weave used. Some sheets are thin while others are thicker, but all are pliant and need layers glued together properly and then to be set to be strong.
In my photography life, I was able to readily prove the differences in carbon fibre. About that time, carbon fibre tripod legs became more widely available as some Asia based factories began delivering products at very compelling price points. It was very easy to demonstrate the difference between a Gitzo leg set and an off brand leg set of the same diameter just by pushing down on the head mounting plate. The cheaper units flexed and twisted. The Gitzo legs did not. I recommend Gitzo and my current preference, Really Right Stuff, to all professionals wanting the best tripod leg sets around, with the understanding that you do get what you pay for.
I learned that the carbon fibre used in most of these inexpensive guitars on Amazon was not of the finest grade. It would flex too much and shatter under impact and snap under pressure. There is a video produced by YouTube presenter KDH of an Emerald Guitars factory tour where Emerald founder Mr. Alister Hay stands on the neck of an Emerald guitar where only the headstock and the body are touching the ground. Mr. Hay is not as big a fellow as I am to the best of my ability to judge, but I would never do that on any wood guitar.
Carbon fibre instruments are not impacted by temperature or humidity. They do not have truss rods, because simply the necks do not move. The bridges on the Emeralds are carbon fibre, the fingerboards are also carbon fibre. Basically the entire instrument is molded. The Emeralds offer a choice of tuners from Gotoh (model 510) in black, chrome or gold. You can choose pickups from Graph Tech (Ghost Piezos), LR Baggs Element. Ghost Piezo with K&K Pure Mini or their own HyVibe pickup system. You can also get humbuckers fitted to the top on some models. By using the Builder, you can see all the options.
Pickups
I have to confess that I was concerned about the pickups. I tend to find piezo pickups nasal with loss of bass and often icepick in the ear strident. In the samples below I used the Ghost Piezos on both necks for track one and an Aston Element microphone about six inches away from the top of the guitar, not aimed at the soundhole for track two. My results when soloed sounded better I think than the samples on the Emerald site, where the piezos are definitely missing low end. My results are much more like the results in this excellent video put together by independent artist and producer Paul Casey from Cable Junction Studios in Derry, Northern Ireland who recorded the guitar professionally in the studio using high end gear. I strongly advocate watching his video found here. I do find the Ghost Piezos to lack the bass response of the Aston Origin microphone, but not so much as a little bit of eq doesn’t fix this. I was surprised and massively pleased at how good the Ghost Piezos sounded through my AER amplifiers having no spiking or icepick tendency. I did my recordings direct into a Clarett 8pre with minimal post, but I would consider a notch filter to address any room specific oddness. I did get a bit, and it is in the sample, but it’s not particularly disturbing.
Playability
The high gloss finish on the neck never got sticky. The neck curve is pleasant and did not cause any frustration or pain when played over time. The strings bend easily and the stainless steel frets are perfectly smooth. Personally I could not feel any difference between a great ebony fingerboard and the carbon fibre board. This was really nice to me, because I can feel the difference between real wood and the papier mache feeling of Richlite. I don’t like Richlite myself and wish that .strandberg was still using real wood as I can tell the difference on my new 7-string over my older 6 and 8 strings. The carbon fibre board feels so normal, you don’t notice it, which is how it should be.
I had heard and read all finds of horror stories, unsupported by science or data, about how carbon fibre could never sound like wood. I would say that such claims have the same validity of the other bullshit bingo words like authentic or iconic. I will say straight up that my Synergy X20 sounds like a traditional wood guitar. It’s somewhere in my opinion between rosewood and ebony as back and sides wood, and more like Sitka spruce on the top than Adirondack spruce. Simply put, it sounds brilliant.
The sub bass strings are completely new to me and on those strings I remain at the level on unconsciously incompetent, which means I don’t know I badly I suck at using them. So I have work ahead of me to build competency and skill, and I am really looking forward to it. I know that my guitar with seven sub bass strings is not as many as a Gibson Style U, but I expect that I will get along just fine.
Compared to a Style U, which I have played (briefly and poorly) the Synergy X20 is a feather weight. I cannot believe how lightweight it is and even with the sub bass neck assembly I do not find it nose heavy at all. Less I think than an old Gibson SG and definitely less than a Thunderbird bass. I always use straps on guitars, and added a Walker & Williams deep red full leather strap which holds the guitar perfectly and even though there is no suede on it (I don’t like suede as an underpaid) the guitar is very stable. The pickup jack is not at the strap pin, it is lower on the lower rear bout so plugging in a 90 degree plug and looping the cable over the strap makes for a reliable and unobtrusive positioning for playing while standing or sitting.
There is an acclimatization to the presence of the neck for the sub bass strings but you get through it quickly. Anyone with anyone experience on double necks will have that sorted in less than 10 minutes, maybe 20 if you are completely new to the idea.
Buying Experience
Emerald Guitars sell direct. I completely understand this. They are a smaller shop based in County Donegal in Northern Ireland. They take credit cards as well as PayPal. You find or build the guitar you want and my recommendation is to contact a sales executive. My only interaction was with Mr. Kevin Quigley and he made the entire purchase experience incredibly easy. Communications flowed readily and they use an Ireland based delivery service that provided tracking from the factory to Heathrow, to Canada, to my local Canada Post office. I received my guitar eight days after paying for it. I knew what was going on, all the way as well. A really great experience.
Upon unpacking (which was superb) an Emerald soft sided gig bag was revealed. This is a very good gig bag and a very usable one. The build quality on the bag is excellent. My guitar does not live in the bag, it is on its own stand and I don’t have to worry about humidity, although my location has a custom humidification system specifically to keep my guitars in good stead when not in cases. I really appreciate that the carbon fibre is not affected by temperature or humidity.
Audio Samples
The samples are very short. The first sequence is just a really basic chord progression using the sub bass whole note for each chord. The second is just the individual sub bass strings plucked with my thumb. The final track is an equal mix of the Ghost Piezo output and the Aston Origin microphone. The guitar and the microphone went direct into the two front inputs on a Clarett 8pre and from there directly into Logic Pro. After recording the tracks simultaneously with no processing I added UA Avalon VT-737sp preamp to each track. The settings are shown below. Very neutral overall with minor compression. No other post processing was done before bouncing the tracks down to a single MP3. I give full credit to Paul Casey for the idea to go with the Avalon pre instead of my typical Neve 1084. I liked the results a lot and will be using it for recording acoustic instruments as I move onward.
Conclusions
I’ve had the guitar for almost two weeks as I write this. I have a lot of personal work to do to build aptitude for effective use of the sub bass strings, however, I would play this instrument as just a six strong because of the lovely drone overtones that come subtly from the sub bass strings, much like playing either neck on a double neck with both sets of pickups live. It is so light, so comfortable and sounds so good, plus the Ghost Piezos are just so much better than I expected. Would I recommend a carbon fibre guitar? Let me be very specific. I absolutely recommend an Emerald Guitars carbon fibre guitar. I don’t speak of any others. Emerald does more than harp guitars. They do six strings in a variety of body sizes, twelve strings, four and five string basses as well as guitars designed to be true electric acoustics, where the recordings sound really good naturally. Anyone considering one of those Fender Acoustasonic things (working on being polite) should instead look at the Emerald Virtuo which has Ghost Piezos, a pair of Fishman Fluences and full MIDI/Synth capability on a thinline style body. I have not played one, but based on my experience so far, I would buy a Virtuo over ANY Acoustasonic or Taylor T5z model based on my experience with the Synergy X20.
Will I be buying other guitars from Emerald? My bank account cries in terror because the answer is yes. Next up is a Chimaera 6/12 double neck because I enjoy excellent double neck guitars and all my attempts at a decent acoustic double neck have been abject failures. I would put a Virtuo on my list as well as one of their Amicus models which is a short scale 12 string tuned as a regular 12 string capoed at the 10th fret with the high sparkle of a mandolin. Having listened to the samples of each, I am really impressed. Have a look for yourself at https://emeraldguitars.com
