Well, whatever the guy played on; he sounds great! Can't dispute ability... looking forward to seeing/ hearing you on your NS/Stick Steve.

ROIT. Back to practice.

I've been thinking about the NS a lot recently. I've had a railboard and a 12-string for a while now duking it out on which one I want to keep. The loser may turn into an NS after I sell it.

The main thing that really interests me on the NS is the ability to tap, pick and strum on the same instrument. I love the video with Jan fingerpicking it.

But I don't see any videos where people really take advantage of the strumming, which makes me wonder if it isn't quite as adept at strumming more than just a quick downstroke.

"...Russ's instrument doesn't have the headless stock on top like an NS, which is another distinctive feature of the NS/Stick. There's apparently a difference in the dot pattern as well."

My 1st build is headless. Not to copy the NS, but because I am sold on the great balance of headless instruments. If I had good hardware that worked with my string spacing, all my builds would be headless.

As far as the dots ... The NS doesn't have dots at the 24th fret. That bugged me so I put 2 dots there. It was more for aesthetics than functionality.

Got my shipping notice from Cambria. Will be here by about next Monday. I like that the serial number is on the shipping manifest, so I know my NS/Stick is #170130, which I finally figured out was the DATE! I've seen those NS serial numbers before but never realized they were dates of manufacture. That's pretty cool. I like that the date is built into the number and it doesn't give any clue as to the total number of Sticks that are out there. I'm embarrassed that I never noticed that before!

Thanks. That helps.

There are a whole host of chords played on the bottom four strings of a guitar that I think should translate to NS in guitar tuning. From the 5th fret, you can play an A, Am, D, Dm and F just using the bottom 4 strings of the barre chords and the D shape for the F. And when playing power chords, it is easy to mute surrounding strings.

I can hold each of these on my Railboard even higher up with the wider fret spacing, so I would think from a fingering perspective, there should be a good range of possibility on the NS given the right touch.

You can strum it. I gave it a shot on a song once...works pretty great, although it is different than on a guitar.