2010s Soares'y Faux-Gibson 8-String Electric Hollowbody Tenor Guitar

So -- this is an 8-string, 22 3/4"-scale, electric instrument tuned in fifths. If it were tuned to GDAE low to high that would make it an octave mandolin. Because it's strung CGDA that makes this an 8-string tenor guitar. Classification, folks!

It was made by Soares'y in New York (at the time), and I believe the maker builds his own necks and affixes them to import bodies and hardware. The tailpiece on this, however, is '60s or '70s vintage as far as I know, while the rest is new-ish. For reference, here's another Soares'y I worked-on recently.

Because they're built along the lines of '60s Japanese hollowbodies (with bolt-on necks), I found that in the case of this guitar it desperately needed some reinforcement added so I did my usual "add a dowel through the blocks" thing that I do on the imports and it shored this one up nicely. 8 strings at tenor pitch is a bunch of tension, as you might have guessed, and that puts a lot of strain on a bolted joint with a hollow center.

After that I just had to seat and level/dress the frets, tweak the pickup height so I could crank it up closer to the strings, and adjust the bridge and its saddle fit.

In the end, the instrument now plays fast and has its own distinct, almost electric Greek bouzouki-like sound to it. I wish I'd had time to take a video but I've been way behind on work these days and had to get it into a box and out.