Hi all,

In the 16 years I've been playing my mirrored 4ths Grand Stick there were a couple realizations I had - I hardly ever use the lowest melody string, and there are times when I thought an extra bass string could help out (particularly when playing keyboard or classical guitar music).

So last year I talked to Emmett about the possibility of a custom Grand Stick with 5 melody and 7 bass strings - basically the same tuning I've been using, but with an added higher bass 4th. This is the result! Really pleased with it and can't wait to dive in - it's been a long time since I've had a Stick with a Stickup so I'm getting reacquainted with that sound, and the extra chord voicing possibilities with the extra high bass string is really nice.

Many thanks to Emmett, Grace and Jeff for making this happen! More impressions and hopefully some recordings/videos when time permits...

Rosewood
Bass side: EADGCFBb (low to high)
Melody side: EADGC (low to high, starting an octave above bass side)

Hey Rob.

So amazing to see something new like this. Congrats!

Nice!

Mad Monk.

Wow, nice! Maybe I'll get to see it in person in the not too distant future...?

You can never have too much bass, am I right?

Cheers,
Nick

Mmm... just catching up on this - nice!

And a custom Stickup as well! I knew you can sort of regroup the strings on a standard modern stick but playing mostly in mono for live stuff I completely forgot about the practical split between melody and bass side with regard to two signal chains. Emmet thinks of everything.

Very cool!

Yes, hopefully we can have some sort of Scotland Stick gathering in the not too distant future! Happy to show off the instrument. Not getting much free time to play at the moment with family commitments and a long home renovation reaching its conclusion, but so far I find that having 7 bass strings in fourths is as great as I had hoped for. The Stickup is quite different in sound to the PASV-4 so I've worked a bit on dialing in my preamp/EQ settings.

There's an interesting spacing setup with this custom nut flap arrangement. The 7 bass strings have Grand Stick spacing and the 5 melody strings have slightly wider 10-string spacing - not sure if this sacrifices a little distance between the string groups but the extra space between the melody strings is nice, a bit roomier feeling (and I believe the width of Grand Sticks in general got slightly wider since my 2004 model).

Yep - a Scottish Stick meet is definitely happening- just got this last little Covid hurdle to get over...

Interesting the difference in sound between the pickups- I don't tend to change any settings live whether I'm using the PASV-4 stick or the Stickup stick - am I just being lazy? Probably.

I'm the same with my basses- I don't really change the amp eq etc. when I swap between basses- they all just end up sounding like me playing a bass anyway. Who knew!?

So the pickup is rewired so that 7 strings bass on ch 1 and 5 melody on ch 2?

Yes!