You get what you pay for. What I like about Krappies is that you can get your hands on one quickly and the cost isn't too high. A nice alternative for new players.

I still think that the Chapman Stick is THE most ideal tapping instrument. I recall that Michael Johnson stated that Emmett was the Les Paul of his era and I would say that is a pretty accurate description as the craftsmanship and quality is the defining characteristic.

AnDroiD,
There are hundreds of Just Intonation (JI) intervals of all possible sizes.
However, one of the most common forms of JI is called '5-limit JI' which is the JI version of the standard 12 Tone Equal Temperament (12TET).
Assuming 5-limit JI is what we are referring to, then that differs from 12TET by up to approximately 16 cents on some intervals, so would cause significant pitch differences when playing with standard instruments. These 2 tonal systems are rarely combined.

Yes, fixed-pitch tuning systems (frets, keys, etc) need to be pretty much matched or else everything will sound honky-tonky. So, besides making honky-tonky sounds, you gotta get all-matched instruments besides playing with non-fixed instruments (fretless, vocals, etc) or non-pitched (percussion etc).

So, my Krappy Tapper will work with other 41-equal instruments or with percussion and non-fixed-pitch instruments.

So, yes, I'll give away the riddle answer: my Krappy is a Krappy Kite. That's short for Krappy Kite-fretted Tapper. And Kite-fretting is the absolute miraculous solution I was hinting at. It's stupendous. It's a bizarre mathematical coincidence. Take 41-note-equal-temperament, use only *half* the frets, tune the strings to and odd-number of the 41-equal notes. By insane miracle, every single one of the close near-JI harmonies from M2 to P4 are an *odd* number of 41-equal. Thus, for harmonic combinations (notes on two strings next to each other), every single fret is harmonically solid, and the out-of-tune notes from 41 are *missing* so you can't play them accidentally. To use this practically, it has to be tuned in 3rds, not 4ths or 5ths. But the result is the first instrument ever that has the complete system of equal temperament while being able to practically play effectively-enough-JI chords. All the harmonies up through 16th harmonic are far better tuned than in 12-equal.

More at https://kiteguitar.com/

And sometime I'll make videos with my Krappy and show this off. Arrives Tuesday.

And either it'll not be quite as nice tapping as guitar or I'll love it. And either the Krappy will be really just fine or I'll have long-term someday-maybe plans to get something even better after I've gotten comfortable with the basic concepts in this context.

For everyone who wants to just hear the wonders of JI: just detune a string that plays a M3 of a chord about 14 cents and detune the string that plays a 7th of a 7 chord about 31 cents. Then you can play one good chord shape (but other shapes will be out of tune. You can also try bending up from below to get specific tunings locked. I do that on my Stick all the time. That works well enough but only in some contexts. It's enough to hear it (and potentially to recognize that it's not so nice in plain 12-equal).

Hi Aaron,

Glad you may have found a potential fix for this thing that has bothered you for so long. There are two downsides I see to go along with the upsides you see:

1. a general lack of range, because tuning in 3rds greatly reduces what you have available.
2. a lack of melodic flow. with only one or two notes per string in a scale, you will not have the kind of melodic flow that three or four fingers on 4ths allows.

I've set up and played a Grand Stick in both major and minor 3rds, so I have a little experience with these issues.

These may seem like minor inconveniences in the quest for perfect pitches. To me range and flow are essential elements of our "orchestra on a 2x4", so I would be loathe to give them up.

Anyway. I hope you find what you're looking for.

Hi Greg! Yeah, everything always has trade-offs. I really like everything else about the flow of the Stick except the 12-equal tempered tuning. Even there, bending is dramatically more practical than even on a guitar (one hand can bend while the other does not, or in opposite directions). If fretless could somehow have the *tone* of fretted, that would be great for its own reasons.

I'll see how this whole experiment goes. But all the other potential solutions that have ever been figured out, they all were worse in terms of tuning because I'd be stuck with certain keys or certain harmonies and lack others. This is the first solution where all the pitches are available. And fretting all 41-equal notes would seem too insane, too hard to tap extremely tight frets accurately… though that's probably the only way to get regular 4ths/5ths sort of set up and have all the notes.

On the RANGE question: I'm getting a 14-string, so that helps. But it's worse than you may imagine. Because each string has only half the notes (for any particular octave), there's a need for many strings just to get whatever I want. I will have to accept 2 out of 3 of the possible combinations of melody+chord+bass. The instrument will be set up well for two at a time, not easy to even change let alone play all three at once.

On MELODIC FLOW: you're right, there's no way to have quite the same melodic flow. The very best melodic flow is fretless though.

This instrument will not be able to do everything a Stick could do but suddenly be in tune. Instead, it will be it's own thing that plays in tune nicely and can still do two-hand interactive things. It's a huge improvement in many ways over regular guitar still in terms of capacity to have chord and melody solos and so on.

Although it will be relegated to a special technique, bending will still work, so I could still play more notes on a string and tune them by bending.

I do think the Stick-but-closer-to-harmonic-tuning is effectively impossible.

Man, I totally forgot about this thread !!

I did get that Railboard 8, and well... once I got it, I was kind of second guessing if that was a wise move or not.

I eventually tried no less than three different string arrangements, to see if I could some how make it work for me, but then once I saw how the frets were factory machined down, I realized I was stuck with what I ordered, which I still defend - Crafty tuning - so I put it back to the arrangement and set up as it was received.

What was the problem ??

The huge space running down the middle, which is much bigger in real life than what the pictures show.

At one point, Emmett was giving me a good well deserved teasing as to my complete inability to decide if I wanted the headstock to have the extra 2 holes plugged or left open - should I desire to convert it to a 10 string.

This caused great anexiety and in the end, I went with plugged because that's the only way I knew the instrrument.

It's a phenominal instrument, but the space still bothers me.

Funny, the space on the Megatars and Warr Phalanx don't bother me, but I guess I assumed the Railboard space would have been tighter.

Now - if this was a Krappy, easy... I'd convert it into a 9 string.
But it's a Stick Enterprises instrument, and I feel very funny about doing such a mod, almost like committing a major sin - but on the other hand, the mod would not be all that hard for me to do, and as far as tuning, I'd have the new middle string tuned somewhere between the strings on either side of it, so nothing else would change.

Again, I'm a huge fan of instruments others consider garbage, because of the ease of making modifications without feeling guilty of doing something that changes the instrument.

So, decisions decisions.......

One thing is for sure - if I do decide to convert my RB 8 to an RB 9 so all strings are more or less equally spaced, I will not do anything that would cause damage to the RB, other than remove one of the plugs on the headstock - everything else would be designed to pick up existing hardware, inserts etc.

Of course, now - which plug do I knock out ???

Cheers Everybody !!
This is a real good thread, with a lot of good info for me anyway through out.

If I do decide to go though with my plans, I will post pictures as I go along, as the parts come together and are fabricated, and I promise I will consult with Emmett before I actually assemble this, because if this works, there will be nothing like it out there

Tapping is fun!