NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE ...
Neville Marten wonders why some manufacturers, who otherwise do sophisticated, musically wonderful things, sometimes fall at the final fence
They say that with 12-string guitars you spend half the time tuning and the other half playing out of tune. They should have added, “and lifting the neck up because it’s dropped due to the weight of 12 cast metal tuners!”
As someone who’s ironed his own clothes since he was about 12, I can’t count the times I’ve cursed the iron’s creator: “Did the idiot that designed this ever actually try it?” The cables always foul up, and the one I currently use has a space where you’re supposed to coil the cord, but the space isn’t big enough unless you spend five minutes meticulously wrapping it, and there’s no clip to stop the thing simply unravelling.
And driving. My old gig travelling companion Rog used to say, “The trouble with ‘smart’ motorways is, they’re only as smart as the people who design ’em!” One time, we were gigging in England’s North West, and Rog was driving. It was a Friday, I think, and traffic was heavy. A sign over the motorway suddenly read, ‘Long Delays Ahead’. I said to Rog, “So how long is long?” 20 minutes we could live with, but if it’s an hour we’re stymied. I found the local Highways Agency number and actually got through. I said to the guy: “Why don’t you say how long the delay is, then we can decide whether or not to find another route? You think that by writing ‘Long Delays’ you’ve done your job, but that doesn’t help drivers at all.” He hummed and hawed, but, no kidding, a little further along the overhead sign was reading, “70 Minutes Delay.” I’d like to think it was my doing. Needless to say, we exited the motorway as soon as we could.
This general beef with everything arose because I have tried a few 12-string acoustics recently, and looked at lots more online. So can the manufacturers tell me why, when adding a third as much again onto the headstock’s length to accommodate six extra tuners, do they almost invariably fit a dozen heavy cast metal machineheads? Especially when they don’t use these on the six-string version?
“Oh look, the headstock on my new 12-string has dived towards the floor. Could it be that the headstock is carrying an extra half pound of metal?” Yes, perhaps that’s it! A few, like the American-built Guild 512, have 12 open Waverly-style tuners, and open six-a-sides are readily available. So, surely it’s not beyond the wit and buying power of other big acoustic companies to address the issue? True, some like Takamine often fit lighter plastic buttons, which certainly helps, but Schaller and Grover-type tuners – which
