New Weissenborn!
 

I stumbled onto a super good deal on a locally built Weissenborn.

Another name for Weissenborn in my case is "new instrument to distract me from actually mastering the instruments I already had".

It has a repaired crack in the top running down from between the 2nd and 3rd bridge pins (seems very stable, and not very obvious when you look at the top), and this resulted in a dramatic price reduction.

It's beautiful, and has wonderful tone and volume.

I'm not yet a slide player of any sort, but that will change soon.

Thus far the sounds I've gotten out of it range from something resembling music, to sounds akin to the howling of a dog in great pain.
(But I know it is not the fault of the instrument - the guy I bought it from played it for me and it was wonderful.)

It is all koa, and really beautiful!

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...VF1Uks5MXpKNG8

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...zFRZGNSa3BaRFE

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=vi...WpfcnhHNGRpcFk

beautiful guitar! what tuning is it in? depending upon the strings presently on it, try c6 tuning on it just to hear it!

play music!

It currently is in open D tuning, with a set of Pearse strings designed for a Weissenborn in that tuning.

I would think I could go down from open D, but I'd also imagine I would need to be careful to go up because of increased string tension. I don't know the tolerances of the instrument though.

What a gorgeous guitar! I don't know if I would ever use one enough to justify the cost, but I sure would like to have one.

As I noted in my other thread, this video is what initially turned me on to these instruments (and made me aware that they even existed!):



It will be a while before I can play like this!

I feel so fortunate that I found this one available for sale. A local guy (a great guitar player!) was performing with a Weissenborn from the same builder at our local farmer's market last week. I got talking to him afterward, and it turned out he had this one that a friend (who turned out to be the builder) had loaned him, that his friend wanted to sell.

Good things can come from striking up conversations with total strangers sometimes!

Hey Bill,
It looks really nice and sounds interesting. Maybe you should set up an AGF get together so our local group can hear it.

Sounds like a good idea. But I should probably get to the point of actually having something resembling music come out of this thing first!

Actually, even with just an hour or so spent with it so far, I've made some progress. So far I've just been working on getting a clean sound out of it, getting a nice strong tone, working on intonation, and working on playing some simple melody lines with appropriate chordal accompaniment.

The hardest thing for me so far seems to be getting a good sound out of melody lines played on the first string - intonation (and being able to change notes precisely) is a big part of this, but also I just need to get a stronger sound. And I need to get much better at doing vibrato.

Also, muting and otherwise controlling noise from the slide/string contact is a huge thing on these things it seems. It is going to take a bit of work to have that all start to come naturally.

Also, I need to figure out how to get more different chords out of this thing given that everything is played with the slide. Initially it feels sort of like all one can do is sort of play bar chords or partial bar chords, but I'm seeing there is much more that one can do than that. I need to get a better feel for how to effectively play melody lines with appropriate chordal accompaniment (including more than just major chords) and such.

I think what I really need to do to start finding my way around the instrument is find (or create) an actual piece to work on. There is some tablature out there on the web for Weissenborns, and what I've always found on guitar and banjo in the past is that learning other people's arrangements really helps in the early stages of finding one's way around the neck and figuring out fingerings.

Hi and congrats on your new acquisition. I got mine used , from a dealer, but then discovered that it had been built by a guy living quite close to me.

I discovered that there are no standard tunings for these things so you can pretty much do whatever you want, and make up your own.

Someone told me to try C6 but I settled on CGCGCE (bass to treble) - I wanted a different tuning to my Dobro (GBDGBD), and my National (DADF#AD)

I use D'addario EJ17s plus an extra ,17" on the treble, and whilst I prefer Tipton bars on Dobro, I find the easy to get Dunlop Long Dawg tone bar works quite well on the Weissy.

It'sa whole new world, but as I see you play guitar, mandolin and banjo you will prbably be able to adapt quite easily.

The deal with slide is that you can always play flat but should never play sharp.

This guy's well worth a watch, he also give lessons via Skype. He's a lovely guy and a great player.

Weissenborn is wonderful! Who is the builder?

I started playing with an eye toward my arthritis life phase: easier to hold a bar vs. fretting.
Went thru a few makes in the last year. Settled on two Pogrebas (see signature).
I love these things so much that all my finger tip callouses have vanished. I hardly ever play my Everett 6-string.
Indulge in tone bar experimentation! I tried Shubb SP2, Beard Wave 2010, Paloma blue stone, E.G. Smith. The Smith and Beard are my faves. I also prefer Perfect Touch finger picks.
Work on hammer on/hammer off, muting tech behind the slide, intonation and vibrato as needed. Some simple minor forms are to be had (e.g. Covering the 3 low strings at the 9th). Mary Flowers, Kelly Jo Phelps and Steve Dawson have good lap style lessons on Homespun tapes (avail as download).

Have some fun! Although there is a lot of very lush and pretty Weiss stuff (like the vid you linked), I prefer to play bluesy, rhythmic, even minorish Arabic sounding stuff. Sky's the limit.

Thanks folks for all the comments, tips, and links.

This was a very useful comment. Landing the notes when sliding is something I'm really needing to work on (but I'm getting better already), and your comment highlights something I had noticed but had not really thought of as clearly as I should have. Having notes be sharp is indeed a lot more annoying than if they are slightly flat.

I've been working today a bit on "Look so Good", a very simple piece, and perfect it seems as a first piece (recommended to me by the great Weissenborn player I bought this instrument from). Though my family will soon be sick of it (me too maybe!), it really is useful for working on technique.

This endeavor is reminding me a bit of when I first got into 5-string banjo as a teenager, when it was frustrating at first attempting to get anything to sound good at all. It is a good reminder of what it is like in the very early stages with an instrument. A few days ago I was so frustrated and craving a more familiar and more comfortable musical experience that I found myself starting to just pick it up to play like a standard guitar!

But I actually am making fairly rapid progress. Each session (even if a short session) with the instrument has me sounding a bit better. I keep reminding myself how long other skills on guitar or banjo took to develop, and how seemingly impossible things eventually became second nature by just plugging away at them with stubborn persistence.

I'm actually sounding sort of musical today!

I think it will surely be months (or maybe a year) before I'm REALLY happy with how anything sounds on this instrument, but perhaps it will go faster than I'm thinking.

I just need to be careful to not totally neglect my other guitars and lose my callouses!

Incidentally, while I've been joking that some of my sounds are more akin to the sound of a dog howling in pain than to actual music, I think a better way of describing the sounds that frustrate me in my playing is that some of it is sounding far too much like a theramin! Again, I'm already getting better though!

Thanks for your comments.

Regarding this question: This instrument was built by a local guy in the Twin Cities area (Minnesota) by a guy named Troy Marcio.

Incidentally, this is a really light weight instrument - I don't know how much it weighs, but it is much lighter than any of my other guitars. I suspect maybe the hollow neck has something to do with that (?).

That looks really nice and has an interesting tone. I never knew these things were so versatile. Have fun with it! So now there is G.A.S. and W.A.S!

To be clear, that is not me or my Weissenborn in that wonderful video I posted.

I'm still working on the Weissenborn equivalent of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at this point!