I ran into this rather interesting story about a custom made acoustic guitar called the Stereo Acoustic guitar created by a guitar luthier named Paul Kinny. I found the story on Gizmag.
At first, the appearance of the Stereo Acoustic, looks like it’s a guitar right out of an Austin Powers movie. Then when you take a closer view of it you go hmmm … interesting indeed! With a large top or face of the guitar, it gives you the impression that what you have here is one loud acoustic! In my travels, I have found that the larger the surface an acoustic guitar has, the more area it has to vibrate, thus achieving a loud sound. There are other factors in play here that will make you instrument louder overall.
Like the inner bracing of an acoustic, like the OM technique in creating fantastic sounding acoustics, that give you this effect.
Unfortunately you can’t see exactly how deep the Stereo guitar is in this particular video. If you could, it would help you quickly determine if you are looking at a loud acoustic. The greater the distance between the top and the back of an acoustic you have, the more area your sound has to bounce around giving you a deeper, warmer sound, generally speaking that is.
In the video that I’ve included below, do you notice something else that was different with this guitar than with others you’ve seen or played? Where is the sound hole located on it?
Traditionally sound holes are circular holes placed in the front of the guitar. If you look at where the microphones are in the still picture of this video, you’ll notice that they are positioned right above the guitarist, both to the left and right of his head. I noticed a mic in front of the Stereo Guitar that would pickup other ambient sounds, but what they would sound like is anyone’s guess. Anyways, these two sound holes are called guitar side ports.
I’ve touched on the topic of guitar side ports before, but this guitar has something about it that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd. This one has two guitar side ports on it. By having the side ports in this location of the guitar, they focus the sound to both of your ears. You will achieve a stereo effect with something like this, this is really interesting to me.
I’m not sure what the sound would be like to a person sitting in the same room. Would it be too tin-ie? Too Airy?
If you’ve seen one of these guitars in your local watering hole, please tell us what you think about the Stereo Acoustic Guitar?
Keep on Jammin’
