Ten String Grand™ Stick

First published April 16, 2001 on Stickwire
(revised to reflect new developments like the new standard extended scale length of 36 inches)

To: stickwire-l@netcom.com
From: stick@earthlink.net (Stick Enterprises, Inc.)
Subject: Ten-String Grand Stick

To those of you who might like to play on ten wider spaced strings across a wider board, I'd like to announce availability of a new model now added to our Touchboard® line of instruments, the Ten-String Grand™.

It's basically the size and shape of a twelve-string Grand Stick, but with bridge and nut modified to space the strings as well as the two groups of strings further apart.

The fully adjustable bridge is of the same design and appearance as that of the Grand Stick, but with ten Slide Blocks™ instead of twelve for setting individual string heights and intonation (true octaves), and with ten wider spaced tailpiece slots. This new bridge is of the same patented construction as with other Stick models, and accommodates any size string at any position in any sequence of pitch, thus allowing all tuning configurations.

The Flaps™ dual nut unit (US pat. no. 6,462,259) is smoothly adjustable in a rocking motion on a stable tripodal base, allowing precise setting of each string group for minimum clearance over the first fret. String spacing here is also wider to match the bridge, thus aligning the strings strictly parallel in Stick fashion.

Both bridge and nut are machined in aluminum, sandblasted and hard black anodized as on all other Stick models.


Graphite Ten String Grand with ACTV-2™ Block® pickup, smokey gray tuners, and white pearl inlays.

Pickup modules presently available for this Ten-String Grand fretboard tapping instrument include the ACTV-2 Block with its two active EMG pickups (normally used on the 12-string Grand Stick) and the PASV-4™ passive Block with its amazing magnetic circuitry by Villex and co-designed by both of us. Both Block models are interchangeable on any Stick that has the larger pickup channel cut into the hardwood body beam structure.

Center to center string spacing is .350" as opposed to the standard ten-string Stick's .310". The larger center space between melody and bass string groups is .500" (a half inch) as opposed to .420" on the standard Stick.

The Ten-String Grand has all the features and dimensions of a Grand Stick, with the same total length of 44 1/2", width of 3 5/8", and scale length of 36". Only the hardware has been modified in a special machined production run of bridge plates and dual nut units to accommodate the spread configuration of ten strings.

This instrument is meant to be an accommodation to those musicians with larger hands and/or fingers, and for those who want more of a guitar like string spacing. It's a step in the direction of the SB8 (Stick Bass), which spaces all eight strings uniformly .400" apart, measured from center to center of each string. The SB8 has the typical Stick stereo placement of strings into two groups of four, but the string spacing is uniform all across a single sequence of perfect fourths. The Ten-String Grand, on the other hand, preserves the wider physical gap at the center between the two groups of strings, as with other Stick type 4ths/5ths tunings.

Those who have played this new Stick model, myself included (I play 'em all), have adapted to it with very little effort. I play it with a more percussive approach, still sustaining notes of course, and I gravitate toward broader gestures in the fingers and hands. This model seems to free up my playing, drum style.

All the Best, Emmett.