Moonlander

The Moonlander is a biheaded electric guitar with 18 strings: 6 normal strings and 12 sympathetic strings. The guitar is a custom-made instrument, built in 2007 by Yuri Landman for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Although it closely resembles an electric version of a harp guitar it is actually an electric sympathetic string guitar, because the droning strings are not meant to be plucked, but resonate on the played tones from the six normal strings.

Technical information

The guitar has four separate outputs:
# The output for the bridge pickup, like on any other normal guitar
# The output for the droning strings pickup
# Output 3 for the upper rotated neck pickup, for a stereo option
# Output 4 for the lower rotated neck pickup, for a stereo option

Sympathetic strings
Based on a biplane, Landman combined the theorbo with the electric guitar. The 12 droning strings create a natural reverb, with specific desired frequencies, depending on in which tones the strings are tuned. The standard tuning for the droning strings is a circle of fourths divided over two octaves.

Stereo coursed guitar
Besides this acoustic reverb possibility the guitar is also a stereo guitar. The two rotated pickups individually send out different signals coming from different strings, to make it possible to play two different guitarparts on one instrument at the same time. The nut and bridge allow repositioning of the strings, modifying the moonlander into a coursed instrument.

Design
The Moonlander is visually a hybrid of the offset-waist body shaped lake placid blue Fender Electric XII with matching headstock and the Vox Mark VI. The name is derived from the 1973 computer game Moonlander aka Lunar Lander.

Similar to the Liars' Moodswinger, two blue copies of this instrument have been made, one for Ranaldo and one for Landman himself. Currently Landman is finishing another experimental instrument for Jad Fair of Half Japanese.

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