16ET "Xavian" Guitars

I don't know if you folks might be interested, but guitarist Steve Vai has recorded using a guitar with a 16ET scale, which he calls "Xavian" for some reason. The guitar was built by Steve Ripley, and there's a picture at http://www.vai.com/Machines/html/gtr045.html .

The song he used it on, "Deep Down Into The Pain"... well, I've heard it, and I still don't quite believe it. Think heavy metal mixed with the sound of childbirth...

I was on this list some years back, and posted a bit on modulating 19ET scales with a sine function to improve the "fit" of the major intervals... I'm going to have to regenerate the formulae and get an instrument capable of playing it - at the moment I'm generating pure intervals with the CoolEdit audio editor, which is extremely preceise, but not very spontaneous. More later when I get it together. Cheers,

Brian Thomson, London UK
bnt@email.com
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