1920s/2025 Tonaharp/Coburn Quarter-Tone Frankenstein Guitar

Overview: So this instrument is fantastic in many ways. It's a tour-de-force of Ancel's continuing skills-building and thirst for off-the-wall, bizarre contraptions. Its body is from a 1910s/1920s Tonaharp Hawaiian guitar and Ancel repaired its many wrongs and also completely rebraced it to an x-pattern with carbon-fiber-reinforced bracing. Its neck is a parts-grade (but fancy) Bourgeois replacement neck in flamed maple that he picked-up from a dealer in Pennsylvania, as I recall. He fit a non-adjustable truss rod in it and then fit it to the body and installed a bridge, fretboard, and all the running gear.

To top it off, he installed quarter-note half-frets up to fret 5 just to muck with all of our heads -- and then added a "not" to the Bourgeois headstock inlay, done in gold-sparkle fill. I mean -- right? The Weymann-like staining of the flamed maple neck is also right on-point for the look of the instrument and its period of build.

Now that it's been strung-up for some weeks, its sound is really settling-in and opening-up. In the demo video, I played it in open D minor, which seems to suit the dissonant nature of the odd frets. Max did a much better job of using the quarter-note frets to get some truly odd chord voicings in standard tuning than I could get. My brain is so rooted in oud, saz, and bouzouki-like sounds that I immediately opt for some sort of droney music to use such things.

Repairs included: It got all sorts of things mentioned above... but it's ready to play and playing spot-on! There's even a K&K pickup installed.

• Weight: 3 lbs 10 oz
• Scale length: 25 1/4"
• Nut width: 1 3/4" 
• Neck shape: slim-medium C/soft V
• Board radius: 14"
• Depth at first fret: 53/64"
• Depth at seventh fret: 29/32"
• Body width: 13 1/4"
• Body depth: 2 3/4"
• Top wood: solid spruce
• Back & sides wood: solid mahogany
• Bracing type: x -- with carbon-fiber-reinforced bracing
• Bridge: rosewood
• Fretboard: unsure (rosewood-like)
• Neck wood: maple
• Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” bass 1/16” treble (fast, spot-on)
• String gauges: 54w-12 lights
• Truss rod: non-adjustable (steel square tube and carbon fiber rods)
• Neck relief: straight
• Fret style: medium-tall

Condition notes: The neck, fretboard, tuners, and whatnot are all new for the most part. The body has been repaired in all sorts of ways (long cracks, seams, etc.) and the top is entirely rebraced. The bridge is new, too. It has a K&K acoustic pickup installed. There's plenty of medium wear-and-tear throughout the finish.

It comes with: Sorry, no case.

Consignor tag: AC