Carillion Nexus - Microtonal Baritone Warrior/Death Kelly

I'll keep it as brief as possible - Chris is my favourite builder and I can't say much about the quality other than it is absolutely flawless and plays like butter! After some convincing he designed this shape for me and fretted it with too many frets in all the wrong places. A real dream come true for me and a culmination of many years learning and experimentation.

- Nexus 7 baritone.
- Reaver headstock.
- Set neck construction.
- 28.75" scale length - 31 microtonal frets (in the space of 24)
- SERIAL #180.
- Burl English Sycamore top.
- 5,300 year old Bog Oak body.
- 5 piece Ebony / Purpleheart laminate neck.
- Burl Sycamore head veneers (front and back).
- Birdseye Maple fingerboard, bound in Ebony.
- Hipshot locking tuners.
- Graphtech Black Tusq nut.
- Jescar Stainless Steel frets.
- Luminlay side dots.
-BKP Painkiller / Supermassive P90 pull split bridge + hum cancelling middle pos
- Hipshot Tone-A-Matic bridge.
- Dunlop Duo strap locks.
- Polyester lacquered / Vortex purple.

-Monstrously clear tone with the P90 neck delivering all the punch you could ever want
-This design is exceptionally comfortable in both positions. Balances perfectly which I was not expecting! Relatively lightweight all things considered. Lovely thin 35mm(?) body
-Favouring TOM bridges these days (enough to sway me from my usual multiscale preference) with a slight height/neck angle - This bridge is extremely comfortable and has a ton of intonation range. Hadn't tried it before - couldn't be happier with the choice. Excellent bridge

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The microtonal frets! Brief explanation
This is not a quartertone guitar for Eastern music which is what many people assume microtonal to mean. Quartertone is a pretty awkward system for the most part and is only so popular because it allows you to keep what you already know exactly the same. Here, all frets aside from the octaves are moved at least slightly from their normal positions - standard function is however retained and tuning resonance improved. It could be thought of as 'True Temperament Extreme, Extended Edition'. It is based on a historic tuning called Meantone, extended out to be more flexible with extra notes (Meantone was abandoned due to lack of flexibility and we moved toward 12 equal - more flexible but worse intonated).
A simplified explanation for this guitar may be to imagine a piano where the black keys are split in half to make Ab and G# etc. different notes. Such pianos did exist!
Some information videos and audio example;


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String tuning - a bizarre one I've been in love with for a year. It's 5ths but the top two strings are tuned down an octave to control the extreme range of 5ths and create some fantastic condensed voicing opportunities. I got the idea from Pat Metheny and Frank Gambale who occasionally do something similar but in 4ths. The overall range is the same as a typical baritone 7.
F1 .076
C2 .052
G2 .034
D3 .022
A3 .013
E3 .020
B3 .0115
~17.5-15lbs

 

Thanks, dudes!
For sure - I am super busy at the moment but I intend to record a demo+explanation video when I have a chance. Aside from that I do already have 20 minutes of progdeath written for this instrument and drums are done, so it will be heard in a full context asap! It is very much a goal of mine to bring microtonality in metal more exposure.

I'm so stoked on the new shape from Chris, the singlecut tweak was a surprise I really dig as originally it was going to be more of a straight up Warrior.

Nice! Yeah I wouldn't want F and G on a straight board - 27-25 is probably what I'd suggest for that (longer than 27 if you dig wider fans).

It is actually most simply viewed as a subset of 31 EDO (thought it's not quite), or a 'skewed' 19EDO. I removed the weirder frets of 31 for practicality and to keep the guitar largely normal sounding haha. The notes on it can mostly be named with just naturals, flats, and sharps - not quartertones. But for sure there are some notes in there that are roughly quartertones from other notes. 31EDO, alongside 19EDO, are kind of the most 'normal' microtonal tunings and direct expansions of typical western theory method