Oscar Schmidt OG1CE alto guitar
Oscar Schmidt OG1CE alto guitar
Monday, April 1, 2013
After getting used to my Squier and De Rosa baritone guitars, I've gotten to be quite enamored with the idea of transposed guitars. Just like a baritone saxophone is voiced lower than a tenor or an alto sax, but uses the same fingering, a baritone guitar voices down a fourth from a "tenor" guitar, but uses the same chord shapes. The player of a baritone guitar needs to transpose his part to make his voicings sound proper with the tenor guitar's, but the effect is quite breathtaking.
Of course, the easiest way to transpose a guitar (up, anyway) is to use a device called a capo. The capo clamps down on all six strings, effectively moving the nut of the guitar up to whatever fret you'd like. Don't like using all the bar chords to play in F# major? No problem. Just capo up two frets, and play in E major instead: It voices in F# major. The downside of using a capo is that as you move the capo further up the neck, you obviously don't replace that range at the top of the neck. If I capo at the 5th or 7th fret, I lose 5 or 7 frets of range.
So, I thought, if I can take a guitar with an extended neck and thicker strings, and tune it down a fourth (BEADF#B) to make a baritone guitar, why can't I do the reverse? Start with a shorter-scale guitar and very thin strings, then tune up a fourth to ADGCEA. The resulting instrument would voice as if I'd capo'd at the fifth fret, but I'd still have the full upper range of the guitar -- a full 20 frets to play with.
I did a bit of thinking before jumping on the idea. I could use a student-scale electric or acoustic guitar, and those are easy enough to find. Since I'd more recently gotten my acoustic DeRosa baritone, I thought that an acoustic alto guitar might be a better choice for the experiment. Thus began the quest for an electrified, student-scale acoustic. You'd think this wouldn't be too much to hope for, but as it turns out, most student-scale acoustics do not have electric pickups. The only manufacturer I could find who does is the old reliable Oscar Schmidt, so I asked my friend Dave at Uptempo Music to order the student model OG1CE for me.
The OG1CE is a small guitar built for small players. The body is significantly smaller than an adult Oscar Schmidt acoustic, and the neck is built on a 3/4 scale length. This does make for some tight spacing when adult fingers try to make chords. The electronics are the same as the ones in my Oscar Schmidt acoustic 12-string, so I knew what to expect there. Even if the OG1CE had not been the only available guitar to meet my criteria, I likely would have chosen it out of simple familiarity. The OG1CE is available in the natural finish you see here, or in a black finish. A sunburst finish was available for some time but has since been discontinued.
The next hurdle was the strings. It's easy enough to find a set of electric strings as light as a .08 gauge, but by my calculations, even this would put too much strain on the neck when tuned up a fourth. Even online, I couldn't find a set of strings that went down to a .07 gauge. So I looked to the De Rosa baritone again for inspiration. Terry Bair, who did the original baritone mod on what started as a De Rosa bass, took a standard set of guitar strings for the first 5 strings on the bari, discarding the high E string, to get EADF#B. For the low B string, he repurposed the bass' original A string. When I change strings on the De Rosa, I match Terry's gauges, rather than buying a set of "baritone" guitar strings.
Again for the alto, I did the reverse. I discarded the low E string of a .10 gauge set, using the remaining strings to get ADGCE. For the high A string, I purchased a single .07 gauge string I was able to get online (I buy them 6 at a time to save on shipping, and to have spares). The result is a very bright, bell-like tone that simply has to be heard to be believed.
As it turns out, the upper four strings of the alto guitar (GCEA) are tuned the same as a tenor ukulele. This makes it easy to switch back and forth between an alto guitar and a uke (chord voicings are very similar), with the added benefit that the alto guitar has two lower-pitched strings that a tenor uke lacks. It's easier to keep in tune than a uke, easier to fret without bending the strings out of pitch, and the bright sound of the steel strings really cuts through a mix.
I do have to be very gentle when strumming the strings, however. A .07 gauge string is incredibly thin and very easy to break. I usually strum just with fingers and thumb, almost never with a pick. Wild bends, thrashing and speed picking are out of the question. But the tone! I've truly never heard anything like it before. Although it would be out of place in most arrangements, I feel there definitely is a place for the alto guitar, particularly in an all-acoustic album like the one I'm planning after my current project. Keep your ears open.
Photo by Rose Wallace-Smith