Knutsen Harp Hawaiian Guitar    

Another very nice, fancy harp steel built within Knutsen's last three years.  This one was doubly confusing, in that I received information and photos of it from two different owners at different times, and each set was incomplete.  I had actually archived it as two specimens!  When Ben Elder bought the instrument (from Gruhn Guitars) in July, 2008, he noticed that it was like "both" of the specimens.  He and I were anxious to decipher the strange hodgepodge of clues, which I think we did.

This specimen is another instrument that was altered not once, but three times.  Some alterations may have actually been done by Knutsen, but the details and quality would better indicate later modifications.

As first built, this was a standard 12-course HHW harp steel.  The bass attachment with two strings is original.  The four treble strings were strung from the four existing bridge holes to four pins inserted into a "puzzle-piece" section in the upper right bout.

Later, someone tried stringing treble strings in two alternate locations (in what order is unknown).  One was on the opposite side, in place of the bass strings.  They used the two bass pins and added two more in between, and ran the trebles up to a new puzzle piece in the upper left bout (as noted on all inspected Knutsens, these are never inlaid, but full "puzzle" inserts into a hole in the top!).  It is possible that Knutsen may have had a blank decorative piece here already, or it may have been solid (it is difficult to tell from inside). 

The other stringing experiment was to install four zither pins on the right side of the neck and string much longer "trebles" to the existing four holes in the bridge.  From the original owners' photos, this appeared nonsensical - the strings could not clear the corner of the top!  But when we ran a straight-edge from the wire saddle to the top of each side pin location, we realized that, in new condition - before the top sunk about 1/8"- each string would have just cleared the guitar body.

Someone was clearly determined to make those four treble strings useful!  Yet in the end, they gave up, plugging the side pin holes, the two extra bass side holes, and replacing both puzzle piece top inlays with new solid pieces.  All this was done without taking off the back - the insides are a mess!  The bridge is the original one - it was never replaced to accommodate and/or hide any of these experiments, as it was (almost certainly by Knutsen himself) on HHW18.

Other endearing Knutsen features on this are the tuners and one of the pearl dots.  The small dot just above the treble bridge is not an inlay - it sticks into the guitar body almost 1/4" (like he shoves stuff into the top and just sands it flat)!  The tuners look original, but note how the holes in the shaft are way down the length.  It looks like these were the last pair of random tuners Chris had in his drawer, so he thinned down the headstock quite a bit, but then still had to bevel out the front wood so the strings would thread!

Click on  a picture to enlarge
(images copyright Gregg Miner)

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