Emerald Synergy Carbon Fiber Harp Guitar

The Harp Guitar of the Future is Here Today!  

SOLD

For those of you who haven’t yet heard about this amazing creation, check out my blog from last May and also my report of its debut at the 11th Harp Guitar Gathering last fall.

The carbon fiber Synergy harp guitar is the brainchild of Alistair Hay of Emerald Guitars in Ireland (though I am officially claiming partial credit for goading him into it!).  After three years of pondering it, he decided to jump into the project just over a year ago.  Having received a serious request and commitment from one of our Gathering participants, Michael Belotto, Alistair decided to incorporate Michael’s specific requests into the first harp guitar prototype.  Notably, this would be a small instrument with a shorter scale length.

Here you can see it side by side with the popular full-size Dyer.  It’s 13-½” wide, 4-¼” deep and 37-½” long at the arm tip.  The scale is 24” (shortened but not “short-scale”), while the subs range from 26-¾” to 31”.  Nut width is a comfortable 1-¾”.  I’ve received many queries about “smaller harp guitars” – of which there are extremely few – and this fills the bill perfectly for those shoppers.

In our discussions, we agreed that this decision “killed several birds with one stone.”  Carbon fiber guitars being near-indestructible, it was already perfectly suited for travel and airline manhandling.  By being so much smaller, it would easily fit into an overhead compartment.  Finally, the size rendered it much less expensive to produce, resulting in what is almost an “entry level” harp guitar. 

It also looks really cool. 

The first one I received for this U.S.A. listing is actually secondhand.  The owner decided to trade it in for a custom 7-bass instrument.  You can see the former owner playing this very instrument here.  It is “near mint,” having light finish scratches here and there as its only flaw.  For that, we’ve knocked $550 off the price, so this is a great deal on this particular model, which normally retails at $3050. 

This is Emerald Guitar’s “Artisan series” model with an upgrade of the Celtic knot, which goes nicely with the dark green color.  If you want to know how all this is accomplished, don’t ask me...how these things are made still remains mostly a mystery to me – Alistair’s been working with this stuff for ages and apparently knows all the tricks (and has invented many).

IMAG0962_885x657.jpg (171418 bytes)

IMG_1127_885x590.jpg (178239 bytes)

IMG_1134_885x590.jpg (148027 bytes)

IMG_1139_590x885.jpg (176388 bytes)

IMG_1140_885x590.jpg (167586 bytes)

IMG_1141_885x590.jpg (189395 bytes)

IMG_1183_885x590.jpg (93154 bytes)

IMG_5874_880x657.jpg (95664 bytes)

OK, OK (I know the suspense is killing you)...how does it sound?! 

As I was infamously quoted after my first time playing one at the Harp Guitar Gathering, “It actually works.” (Alistair wanted to put that on the T-shirt, I think).  This was of course simply alluding to my naiveté about carbon fiber guitars in general, as I’ve personally had no need to explore them so have little experience.  True, it doesn’t quite sound like wood, but it does of course sound like a “real” instrument, and a quite good one (and I bet it would fool some in a blind test).  The balance of the neck across all strings and frets is exemplary, and only suffers acoustically in a live environment by being quieter than, say, a full-size Dyer (which is not an unexpected tradeoff, I imagine).  The subs are similarly quieter, and while they cover the range all the way down to a low F (supplied bass strings are a custom Newtone set for standard tuning FGABCD), they don’t project or boom like the better full-size harp guitars (You can actually see and hear a great acoustic clip of this very instrument by its original owner, the talented Jon Pickard, here).

However, plugged in, the Synergy harp guitar can compete with the best (amplified) instruments, and you can presumably crank it to 11 (or feedback threshold).  This one comes with a stereo B-Band system (the battery under a handy flip-out opening near the end pin, with the subs and neck fully separated for balancing and EQ-ing each section separately.  It sounds glorious through my Behringer guitar amp.

A sturdy flight case is included (optional gig bags are coming soon), which measures just 40" x 17" x 7-1/4" (shown at right in front of my Dyer in its gig bag).  It consists of aluminum frame with laminated plywood sheeting, with foam insert.  Case and harp guitar weigh about 27-28 pounds total.

You’ll definitely be the first on your block if you snag this eye-catching beauty.  Operators standing by.

-       Gregg (Sir Gregory) Miner

Specifications: 

  • Full Gloss finish

  • Gotoh tuners 

  • Custom Hard case

  • B-Band A2 stereo pickup system (features individual pickup for each saddle coupled to a stereo output jack.

Dimensions

  • Overall length 950mm (37-½”)

  • Max body width 335mm (13-½”)

  • Max body depth 110mm (4-¼”)

  • Max body length 420mm (16-½”)

  • Scale length 610mm (24”)

  • Nut width 44.5mm (1-¾”)

  • Bridge spacing Guitar neck 57mm (2-¼”)

  • Weight 2.5kg (5-½ lbs)

  • Sub Bass scales

  • 680mm (26-¾”), 705mm (27-¾”), 730mm (28-¾”), 750mm (29-½”), 770mm (30-¼”), 785mm (31”)

Price: $2500 SOLD


CDs & DVDs by Stephen Bennett, John Doan, Muriel Anderson, Andy McKee, Stacy Hobbs, Tom Shinness, Dan LaVoie, James Kline, Larry Berwald, Bill Dutcher, Gregg Miner, Pasquale Taraffo
To learn more about harp guitars, please visit Harpguitars.net
Harp-guitars, harpguitars, guitar-harps, bass guitars, contra guitars, kontraguitars, arch-guitars, theorbo-guitars, one-arm guitars, chitarra-lyras, doubleneck guitars, double neck guitars, one-armed guitars, hollow arm guitars, hollow-armed guitars

Site Map Return Policy

Privacy Policy

All Site Contents © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

PO Box 573155
Tarzana, CA 91357
USA
(818) 884-7937