Stefan Sobell bouzouki-guitar (the Bouzar)

Stefan Sobell of Hexham made me this hybrid instrument in 1990. The concept of a bouzouki with a guitar body was worked out by Stefan with Andy Irvine who had the first two. I heard the first one got smashed up somehow. The second bouzouki-guitarist was Ciaran Curran from Altan, who I've known for many years. Once when I was living in Oxfordshire, the band phoned and asked if they could leave their instruments at my house as they had a few days off and were heading for London. So all the cases came in. Ciaran told me, "Don't open that case. you'll be spending a lot of money if you do." I was very good and ignored the cases. He phoned a few days later and asked, "You didn't look in that case did you?". "No, Ciaran." "Good! We'll be there in twenty minutes". By the time they arrived, I'd looked in the case and ordered one...

Spruce top, rosewood back and sides, bouzouki neck, 16 frets to the body (the model 3). Once in Cork, Andy and Ciaran and I were talking about this wonderful new instrument. At the time there were only the three of us playing it. Bouzouki-guitar this, bouzouki-guitar that. Andy said, "Bouzouki-guitar is too long. Let's call it the bouzar". Then we realised that as there were only three of us in the world, we were the top three bouzarists in the world. But by the same token, the worst three...

The body is curved in all kinds of ways. The photos I took of the identically bodied guitar came out better to show this.

The bridge is also made of ebony. There is a Lloyd Baggs piezotransducer under the saddle.

Beautiful detail is one of Stefan's trademarks along with the high gloss finish. You can see the library film I put on the front to protect it from the more energetic sets of tunes...

I use unison pairs of D'Addario custom gauge strings on this: 0.012 plain, 0.018 nickel wound, 0.028 & 0.042 phosphor bronze wound, and I tune it GDAD, like a mandolin an octave down, but with D on top instead of E. Recently I tuned it down three frets for something and it sounded amazing - EBF#B, but to use this tuning a lot, it would be best to have heavier strings on it, and I wouldn't do that without asking Stefan's advice first.

Have a look at Stefan's website: Stefan Sobell Musical Instruments