Much discussion has gone on about "stereo pickups". Splitting the three treble and three bass strings. As far as we know, the first split pickup actually applied was the one Ray Butts made for Chet and he did not use it for its "stereo" qualities because, at the time, "stereo" was only available in audiophiles tapes. Chet used the spit pickups to make his recordings interesting by running three strings with effects, three strings dry. Some people say "Wuulll the split pickup is made for thumb style guitar players yada yada" When I play thumb style it's not all 6/4/5/4/ There is a lot of 6/3/5/3 because the third string give it a brighter sound.

So what earthly good is a "stereo" guitar?

It is Perfect for Webster's tap method of playing. His chord tapping focuses on the 6/5/4 strings and the melody focuses on the 1/2/3 strings. I remembered last night I saw him demonstrate the project o sonic WF and a NAMM years ago and on him, playing his way, it sounded great and made sense. I'm thinking now that he had dreams of people wanting to play his way and in so doing the stereo guitar would sell like hotcakes and he'd make a lot of money selling method books.

Nothing else really makes sense

I'd thought it'd be interesting to have the neck and bridge pickups separate, so different effects could be laid on each.

Example: a delay on one pup could really fatten the sound, while keeping it discrete (if that makes sense).

I assume this has been done a lot, but I haven't noticed stereo guitars out there that split up the two pups.

Nah, I think you are reading too much into it. Everybody knows the more things you offer in a catalog, the more potential sales you will have. Simple marketing, more choices, more sales.

Wouldn't hurt amp sales either...

Proteus went to a lot of trouble and expense to rig up his own stereo Gretsch. There is a thread somewhere describing how it is set up. To hear Jimmie Webster play live was an amazing experience. I heard him about 1962. I think Norm is right in that Chet only wanted his guitar set up that way for recording purposes only. The Fingerstyle Guitar album is almost exclusively using that guitar and that method. To have just a smidge of delay on the bass strings only gave a really cool sound. I spent most of my life trying to duplicate that sound only to find out that I didn't have the right equipment (story of my life ).

The 50's and 60's was a time of a lot of innovation. Some of it stuck. Some didn't.

I've been wanting to wire up a guitar in "stereo" with one pickup to it's own amp. I personally don't have much use for the split pickup design, but sending each pup to an amp would give me a lot more control over the sound. I've found with most of my guitars I can't get the sound I want out of each pup without adjusting the amp. One of these days I'll get around to it.

I don't think Jimmie had any ulterior motives, he was just trying something different I think. That seems to be what most of his ideas were, just something no one had done before. The world needs more people like him.

I played Proteus' stereo CG at the Nashville Roundup last year or the previous year, I can't remember which, and it was a weird experience hearing three stings coming out of one amp and the other three coming out of another. It actually threw me off for a bit because it was such a different sonic experience.

I'd thought it'd be interesting to have the neck and bridge pickups separate, so different effects could be laid on each.

Example: a delay on one pup could really fatten the sound, while keeping it discrete (if that makes sense).

I assume this has been done a lot, but I haven't noticed stereo guitars out there that split up the two pups.

Both the Gibson and Epiphone versions of B.B. King's Lucille do this:

And doesn't Rickenbacker's "Ric-O-Sound" do the same thing?

Separate sends on the pickups might be worth packing an extra amp but not splittig the strings, imo, unless you play Webster's style. Tits on a bull!

Dayum Bear, that Gent looks awesome on you!

here's a great explanation and demo of a stereo gretsch falcon

don't miss it

Link...

cheers

Wahhhh...you have to spend enough time with a stereo rig to: 1) get over the weirdness; b) dial in relative amp and effect settings (takes exponentially more time than a one-amp setup); and 3) discover/develop a repertoire to usefully exploit it.

Before you do all of the above, it's easy enough to dismiss it out of hand, but impossible to really judge.

I had stereo capability on my first "good" electric guitar, a Wurlitzer Wildcat (after having had 4 pickups on my very first). The Wurlitzer had the split-pickup system, one to each amp, and I used it whenever I had the chance. This was around 1970.

Once you adjust the amps so each sound goods with the pickup it will be hosting, and position them physically to suit (do you want them in close proximity, or far apart?), it's a fairly straightforward system with predictable results. With both pickups on, you get a wide and enveloping soundfield, you can use effects logically to get a different sound on each side – and when each is used by itself, it comes from a different point-source with its own tone.

With different effects and tone settings on each side, it's possible to emulate the effect of two guitars playing the same part. All cool as far as it goes, but not a game-changer.

On the other hand, splitting treble strings to one side and bass to the other is a whole new world. As Bear says, at first it's very disorienting to play. I saw the same effect literally every time an experienced Chetpicker sat down with the CGP at its introduction at CAAS in 2008. They'd first be surprised that it threw their timing off, then a bit befuddled, and gradually get the stereo grin as they got the hang of it.

It fairly quickly occurred to most to rig up some delay on the bass strings (must have been how Chet used it), and to bring the amps closer together for less separation, a la Jimmie in the studio.

But I've found separating the two sides more than just a gimmick: it obviously works wonderfully for material that's optimized for the technique, with bass thumping in one amp and chord fragments and melody in the other. But as Norm notes, even in a given song the split isn't always 3-and-3, it's sometimes 4-and-2. So you have to work that out.

What's been surprising to me is what results "organically" when I pay little attention to what material I'm playing, and just see what happens: full-chordal and part-chordal parts (incorporating just some of the strings) abound in most styles of playing, and splitting the strings brings out a lot of previously unnoticed inner detail in such parts. Comping on the inner four strings is particularly effective, in that it brings out motion in inner melodies I hadn't focused on before.

The illusion of two guitarists is even more pronounced than when splitting treble and bass pickups, and the enveloping texture can be fascinating.

So I play through lots of material, notice what works best, then hone that if necessary to take best advantage of the string split. The results are often surprising.

Deploying discrete effects on both sides is also interesting, and more of a challenge. For one thing, you double your effect load (assuming you want delay, distortion, compression, modulation, whatever on each side).

Then, the "differenter" you make the effect chain on each side, the more you must attend to what you're playing. (Full-rage distortion on one side and crystal clean on the other, for example, offer opportunities – but the techniques of playing those setups are so different you gotta have your wits about you to take advantage of it.)

I've had the most fun by keeping both sides sounding coherent and homogenous, so that the illusion is of sitting in the middle of a very wide guitar.

For me, it's not that stereo is a gilded-lily breasted-bull gimmick: it can be a truly unique and cool sonic environment. The problem is that it's beastly hard to to deploy in a live setting. The listener (and player) must sit pretty much in the center of the soundstage to get the advantage of it. If you're playing with others (and it does sound great in a small combo), you have to decide where to put the amps, and how other players - not to mention you - are going to hear both amps sufficiently.

Then you gotta tweak the amps' tone and volume to bring the whole guitar into focus and not have it sound like two unrelated instruments. Unless using identical amps, this is harder than I would have thought.

Next, you deal with ground hum. It can be ferocious.

After that, if you're using two effects chains (making the hum problem worse), be prepared to tap-dance with both feet if you have to change on both sides at the same time. Advance planning is called for – and it becomes remarkably easy to destroy the illusion of a single huge guitar (or even two guitarists playing well together) with a pedal setting you've accidentally bumped with your foot, or that you haven't tweaked precisely for the situation.

Then - sometimes you want a wide stereo field, and sometimes you could do with a narrower focus. For my stereo Gent rig, Don Ayers of Stellartone came up with an external breakout box with a "blend" knob that controls separation. I have a single stereo jack in the guitar, and run a stereo cable out to the breakout box. From there, a mono cord goes to each of the amps. All straightforward. The knob on the box blends the output of each side into the output of the other, so I determine if I want 100% of 3 strings in one amp and 100% of the other three to the other, or 20% blended together, or 50%, or 100% of both outputs to BOTH amps. (Or anything in between.)

I'm also not aware of another stereo guitar with all the switching capacity mine has: I can get both pickups in full stereo, with no limitation in selection. Nother words, on the treble side I can have neck pickup, bridge pickup, or both – and the same on the bass side. (Or, neck pickup for bass strings in one amp, bridge pickup for treble strings in the other. Or vice versa.)

All this was done without drilling a single extra hole in the Gent, and by replacing the standby switch with another knob. (There's a ToneStyler for tone control on each pickup.) Don Ayers gets all the credit for coming up with the wiring scheme, and it works amazingly well. We both have a ridiculous number of hours in it, however.

After spending a lot of time with it at home (most of it grinning in a richly enveloping soundfield), I'm as enthused about the reality as I was about the possibility.

It's just damnably hard to deploy live. On a solo or small combo gig in a small room, with enough time to set up amps and effects for the environment, it's a rare and unique treat. In a hastily contrived jam situation, with a lot of players, it can be an embarrassing encumbrance that will quickly convince everyone you don't know what you're doing – and that it's stupid.

So split-string stereo is a technology that must pick its battles carefully.

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I can't speculate on what Jimmie Webster had in mind, or whether he had a commercial scheme to sell method books.

Split-string stereo does lay well with his tap playing technique – but his tapping, like others' who came after – think Stanley Jordan – is limited in dynamic and expressive range. It gives the guitar a certain delicate zither-like character which is fascinating, and then wears quickly on the ear. I'm not sure he thought it would take over the world.

I suspect he developed stereo in this way because, like his other innovations, he just thought it would be cool. (Or "neat" or "copacetic" or whatever his vocabulary would have been.)

It could be done; it therefore had to be done. It was done. It's too cumbersome for universal acceptance, but it remains cool for what it is.

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If someone developed a Universal Stereo Guitar Conditioning Box, it might be more widely adopted. This box would include ground conditioning to eliminate hum, EQ to adjust both sides from a single interface, the stereo width control, and separate-but-equal effects chains for both sides – which could be linked with a switch to send the SAME effects to both sides simulateously, or unlinked for differentiality.

Such a box would take most of the pain out of setting up a stereo guitar rig, and make it more practically tractable.

Good, thorough description. For my own corner I still think Webster was motivated a lot by how neatly it suited his style but on the other hand you are correct that often seemed motivated by an almost impulsive idea that innovation, whether it's practical or not, is cool.

Hey, I haven't posted here in a while, but I thought I could add something to Proteus' post. The Line 6 HD500 has dual inputs/outputs and completely separate and distinct effects chains. That one piece of equipment could solve all of your headaches. You can even mix the sum of both chains to mono and spit it out of one amp.

I've been in contact with Don Ayers, as well. We've worked out a scheme that I have yet to wire up. Most of my ideas were good ones, but he pointed out quite a few things that I hadn't thought of. He was very generous and thorough.

My setup will allow: - stereo in both "stereo" configurations (one pickup per output or split treble/bass), - stereo AND mono capabilities at the flick of a switch - the ability to reverse which set of strings (or which pickup, depending on the configuration already mentioned) is sent to which output, - stereo "image" adjustment (the one Proteus mentioned having in a breakout box) - distinct volume and Tonestyler controls for each output

All of the above will be on-board the guitar with no new drilling needed. The pickups are custom Fralin p92. I'll be doing the wiring myself, which is not as daunting as getting all of it back into a hollowbody. That, as well as my new-found fascination with pedal steel, has resulted in the project going dormant for the last 10 months or so.

I often play the guitar like an oud or sitar, employing open tunings and drone strings. I tend to play melodies up and down the neck on one two strings instead of across the strings in one position. I foresee the split treble/bass capabilities as a creative atmosphere that I can't resist.