[Otto]Y’know those guitars that are like, double guitars, y’know?[/Otto]
I was just watching a Led Zeppelin special and it Jimmy Page was playing one of those guitars that have two necks. Now, whenever I saw one of these things I always figured it was some useless, wanky thing and it had no practical use. I’ve seen many famous bands using these things, from the Eagles to all those generic 80s hair metal bands. Thankfully, it now seems to be obsolete. However, maybe I’m mistaken about the whole thing. Did these… double guitars really have a practical use that I’m not aware of?
The whole double guitar thing was spoofed pretty well in This Is Spinal Tap, with the double bass guitar.
And while we’re on the subject, what’s the deal with 70s rock drummers and gongs? Keith Moon, John Bonham, Nick Mason, they all seemed to have one. Did any of them actually use one?
Arg, sorry about the double post.
A double neck guitar allows the performer to seamlessly transit between 6-string and 12-string passages. Six string electric guitars are most versatile for lead and rythym lines that require melodic or basic harmony expressions. A twelve string guitar’s tuning contains several spare octave-separated string groups. This permits voicing of work that is more similar to the sound of an acoustic guitar. The extra resonance and richer timbre of the twelve string neck allows the guitarist to play folk-style music without having to physically exchange instruments.
Plus, there’s something of a sitar-like effect that comes from the strings acting as drones when you play just the six-string board, for instance.
You can also do whatever you darn well please with them, as I’m sure you’re well aware – I’ve seen a bass on one neck with a guitar below, that five-necked one with all sorts of tunings that I think Slash owns, and Junior Brown’s Guit-Steel, which is a regular six-string guitar with a lap-steel guitar attached.
The drummers-and-gongs thing was popular in the big-band era, when pomp, flash and lots of percussion instruments were the rule for a few of the drummers playing then, AFAIK. I can only assume that the 70’s drummers simply revisited this era either by chance or actual knowledge, as is the case with double bass drums – most sources agree that Louis Bellson was the first to use them.