page_title: Multi-neck guitar
section_title: Customization
hierarchical_section_title: Multi-neck guitar / Customization
caption_attribution_description: English: Mike Rutherford (with Phil Collins) of Genesis live in concert @ Empire Theatre, Liverpool
context_page_description: A multi-neck guitar is a guitar that has multiple fingerboard necks. They exist in both electric and acoustic versions. Although multi-neck guitars are quite common today, they are not a modern invention. Examples of multi-neck guitars and lutes go back at least to the Renaissance.
  Today, the most common type of multi-neck guitar is the double neck guitar, of which the most common version is an electric guitar with twelve strings on the upper neck, while the lower neck has the normal six. Combination six-string and bass guitar are also used, as well as a fretless guitar with a regular fretted guitar, or any other combination of guitar neck and pickup styles. There are also acoustic versions. Two necks allows the guitarist to switch quickly and easily between guitar sounds without taking the time to change guitars.
context_section_description: There are many ways to customize a multiple-necked guitar, such as the number of strings on a neck, frets or no frets, the tuning used on each neck, etc. One of the earliest designs still in regular use is the acoustic contraguitar, invented around 1850 in Vienna. This guitar, also known as the Schrammel guitar, has a fretted six-string neck and a second, fretless neck with up to nine bass strings.
  One of the more common combinations is where one neck of a double-necked guitar is set up as for a 6 string guitar and the other neck is configured as a 4 string bass guitar. Guitarist Pat Smear of the Foo Fighters utilizes a double-necked guitar during live performances (bass guitar top neck, six-string electric guitar bottom neck) in order to perform Krist Novoselic's bass part in the song "I Should Have Known," from the album Wasting Light, in addition to his own duties. Rickenbacker International Corporation and Gibson Guitar Corporation in the US have both manufactured production models of these configurations in the past.
  A less common configuration has a 12 string guitar neck combined with a 4 string bass guitar neck: Geddy Lee of Rush is well known for using the 4/12-string Rickenbacker 4080/12 production model live in the 1970s.
  In the 1970s and 1980s Mike Rutherford of Genesis was known for playing a custom-made Shergold Modulator twin-neck guitar-bass unit in live shows, as he frequently changed between lead guitar, 12-string guitar and bass guitar, depending on the arrangement of the song. The unique design of this guitar set is that it consists of several modular elements, that could be separated and combined by a system of dowels and thumbscrews, including an electrical connection. The complete set originally consisted of a 6-string guitar "top-section", two 12-string guitar "top-sections" to have different tunings readily available, and a 4-string bass "bottom-section". The bass section could be attached to any of the top-sections to create a variety of twin-neck combinations. (Additionally there was a smaller lower-body-section which could be attached to any of the top-sections when they were not in use as part of a double-neck configuration, to complete the shape of a single guitar.)
  As a tongue-in-cheek reference to Rutherford's frequent use of this double-neck guitar, the puppet version of Rutherford in the video for Land of Confusion plays a four-necked guitar.
caption: Mike Rutherford of Genesis, circa 1980, playing his custom Shergold guitar in its twelve-string/bass double-necked configuration
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