2014 is looking like it will be quite the year for gear. I’ll have to let you know when I get back from NAMM, but my confidence is high that my mind will be blown by a great many things. One I am really looking forward to putting my grubbies on is the 2014 line of .strandberg*s (and maybe asking Ola what the deal is with pluralizing that word, what with the asterisk) because they all look pretty sick.
The multi-scale or fan fret guitar is not a new concept by any means. Ralph Novak holds a patent for it from 1986, which makes it just slightly younger than myself. But as the saying goes, pioneers are never masters, and now on your .strandberg* for 2014 you can get a headless, multi-scale 8-string guitar that ALSO has True Temperament frets. :drops the mic and walks away: WHAAAAAAAAA??
True Temperament frets are those wiggly frets you may have seen on Mattias Eklundh’s signature Caparison guitars that make up for some of the weird intonation issues that plague guitarists (why does a second fret A chord always sound like garbage?). It makes your guitar look a little weird, but it’s supposed to make it sound like butter all over the neck, and I hope that we’re not THAT shallow.
But if you are, there are also a number of very metal-sounding finishes available for this year’s production Boden models, including Perpetual Black, Redrum, Fangorn, Lava, and Space. Scale the Summit‘s Chris Letchford’s signature CL-7 model is also now available in a chocolate brown finish, which I can’t fathom choosing over the original blue, but what do I know.
In the future, only grandpa’s guitars have frets that go straight across.
Check out the catalog here.
