Alquier Gnossienne
For three years now, French builder Jean-
Yves Alquier has surprised and delighted
fans of forward-thinking guitar design
with the instruments he’s shown in
Montreal. This year, he showed the third
guitar in a series he began in 2009
with the Air Mail Special, followed by
2010’s Papaleocada.
“My concept was to make three hot-rod
style guitars that pay tribute to
Charlie Christian, the Dopyera brothers
[John Dopyera invented the resonator
guitar and created the Dobro with his
siblings Rudy and Emil], and Erik Satie.
This guitar, the last of my triptych, is
inspired by Gnossienne No. 1—one of
Satie’s compositions that I like very much.
So I call it the Gnossienne.”
This 8-string acoustic-electric has a
handful of beautifully unusual design twists.
“It has nylon strings,” explains Alquier,
“and it’s tuned A–E–A–D–G–B–E–A. The
two outside A strings expand the standard
6-string tuning in both the bass and treble
registers. I was inspired by the timbre of
a 17th-century lute. But the difference is
I designed this guitar to have all its sound
remain inside, rather than project out, as
you would with a traditional lute or classical
guitar. I use a Highlander pickup system
to amplify this interior sound. Essentially,
the amplifier allows the listener to venture
inside the instrument.”
The Gnossienne’s spruce soundboard
is tucked inside the red body, which is
actually a shell that surrounds the top
and its bracing. “I use a fan bracing pattern,”
Alquier continues. “The braces are
made with two spruce strips surrounding
a carbon-fiber center. The strings sit on
carbon-fiber saddles that penetrate through
the exterior body and attach to the interior
top, driving it like pistons.”
Left: The fan-braced spruce soundboard of Jean-Yves Alquier’s Gnossienne 8-string is inside the red
outer shell. Note the carbon-fiber string saddles.
Middle: The way the Gnossienne’s neck joint melds
seemlessly with the outer shell is a thing of beauty. Right: The instrument is tuned A–E–A–D–G–B–E–
A,
and the only parts Alquier didn’t build are the Rodgers tuners and the Highlander pickup.
Other construction details include
fanned frets and multiple string-scale
lengths that range from 640 mm (high A)
to 670 mm (low A). The frets sit on a concave
fretboard, which makes them look like
little arched bridges. “I was inspired by the
sitar,” says Alquier, “which has tall, curved
frets.” But unlike the sitar, each of the
Gnossienne’s frets is embedded into a tiny
pedestal. “That’s because I didn’t want the
frets to collapse. I first carved the fretboard
from basswood and then made a mold from
that sculpture and poured in a composite
material to form the fretboard. Actually, I
made two fretboards. The first was graphite,
which looked beautiful. But it’s very hard
to glue anything to graphite because it’s so
slippery. So I abandoned that idea and used
a composite consisting of black powder suspended
in a resin base.”
Except for the custom Rodgers tuners
and Highlander pickup system, Alquier fabricated
all the parts and assembled the guitar
himself. Finding low- and high-A nylon
strings wasn’t a problem. “Both are made
by Savarez,” says Alquier. “The low A is for
nylon-string baritone guitar and the high A
is a lute string.”
Needless to say, the Gnossienne is a
one-of-a-kind instrument that stands at the
crossroads of guitar, lute, and sculpture.
“We have the guitar, so now we must create
the guitarist,” says Alquier. “This has
been my concept from the beginning: Build
an instrument for a musician who has not
yet appeared. Maybe the guitarist is alive
already, maybe not. Whoever it is, the player
has to be drawn to this guitar and has to
think differently.”
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