Contrarian guitar

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12-string double guitar ("German" version)
15-string Schrammel guitar

The contra guitar or Schrammel guitar is a special design of the acoustic guitar with strings extended into the bass range. Its main distribution area is the alpine region. It is used in Viennese music ( Schrammelmusik , named after the brothers Johann and Josef Schrammel ) as well as in alpine folk music .

Design

In addition to the normal guitar neck with six strings and a fingerboard, the counter guitar usually has a second neck over which 3 to 11 bass strings are stretched freely ( drone strings ). The design with seven or nine contrary strings is typical here. The bass strings are not fingered, but individually plucked open, like on the harp guitar . The neck of the bass strings therefore does not require a fingerboard. The bass strings also vibrate as sympathetic strings passively, thus providing a fuller sound. This is where the double neck guitar differs from other double neck guitars that have fretted fingerboards on both necks.

In many cases, the double neck is equipped with a common neck foot, which is often screwed through the neck foot on the body by a screw and is not firmly glued in, such as. B. on the concert guitar. This allows the string position, i.e. the distance from the fingerboard to the string, to be regulated.

Furthermore, designs with an attached second head plate and rod support (Hermann Hauser, Otwin) are known. There are instruments with the same length (63–68 cm) as well as those with an ascending (63–93 cm) bass scale . The standard gauge of the playing strings is 64 cm (e.g. Reisinger and Wesely), and 65 cm for newer instruments. The bodies of historical contra-guitars are mostly quite flat (8 cm) and, compared to six-string guitars, built over-wide.

A version as a coat of arms guitar is not uncommon for German manufacturers (e.g. Raab from Munich). But you hardly find them at all among Viennese instrument makers.

A good part of the double and Schrammel guitars were originally designed for steel strings. The high tensile load, however - especially with old instruments - often leads to serious damage to the instrument statics.

Types

The double guitar knows two different tunings of the drone stringing:

  • The "German" version with an even number of strings, mostly twelve, is tuned diatonic downwards , like the German bass lute, starting from the lowest playing string . Most of the twelve-string double-sided guitars were manufactured in Vogtland until the 1960s and thus continued the playing tradition of the German bass lute, which was slowly dying out from 1930, for a certain period of time.
  • The so-called “Schrammel guitar”, developed in Vienna around the middle of the 19th century, can be recognized by an odd number of strings (13 or 15, but sometimes also different). The drone strings are usually tuned chromatically from Eb downwards. The developer of this instrument is considered to be the Viennese instrument maker Johann Gottfried Scherzer , who continued the experiments of his former teacher Johann Georg Stauffer from 1848 and made decisive improvements. The most famous Schrammel guitar manufacturers are probably Ludwig Reisinger (born July 15, 1863, Vienna) with his workshop in Westbahnstrasse. and his successor Josef Wesely (born April 9, 1904, Vienna). The workshop was taken over by Richard Witzmann (born June 2, 1953, Tyrol), who still runs it today.
  • Viennese Schrammel guitars have an ascending bass graduation. Typical of the Viennese Schrammel guitar is its swirled headstock on the bass side. A component that is often found is a metal rod inserted into the body, very rarely made of wood, which compensates for the tension of the strings and improves the free swinging of the body.

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