Here's a curiosity that might be appreciated by our 12-string players especially.
Last summer, my cousin told me she had something for me, "a funny little guitar" that had belonged to our grandfather. She told me that he used to play it, and my grandmother sang, with groups in the 1920s and 30s. My cousin got the instrument repaired, but no one in her immediate family knew what to do with it, so she tapped me to be the keeper of this "family treasure." ("Family treasure" means I'm not allowed to sell it.)
The shop that repaired the instrument told my cousin it's a tiple, usually pronounced "tipple" in English and "teeplay" in Spanish. Like its pronunciations, its tuning traditions vary, but in the U.S. the tiple is usually tuned like a ukelele, G4 C4 E4 A4 (gCEA). The gCE strings are matched with octave-lower strings, and the CEA strings are doubled, so each of the 4 courses has either 2 or 3 strings. Ten-string sets are made for tiple by LaBella and GHS, bless them. Someone also makes the (blingy) 5-on-a-plate tuners the shop used.
Grandpa's "Sterling" tiple was probably made close to 100 years ago for Tonk Brothers of Chicago. The headstock decal retains traces of "T.B.Co." above "Sterling."
The tiple is not a virtuosic instrument. Fretting two strings is hard and three strings is harder. The straight bridge prevents precise intonation. Tuning is difficult. What the tiple offers is volume, and volume was important before electrical amplification.
Before I got Grandpa's tiple, I never knew that he played an instrument, let alone in a band. My family visited my paternal grandparents in Detroit only once or twice a year, and they were immigrants who spoke Croatian to each other, so I didn't feel close to them. Grandpa and I had only one significant conversation, around Thanksgiving 1970, while my parents were out. I was 10 years old and Grandpa had heard that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. "Those guys just make a lot of noise," he said. "If you want to play a stringed instrument, why don't you learn the violin?"
A month later, wailing on my new Teisco, I remembered Grandpa's advice with a smirk. Now, though, I think of Grandpa wailing on his tiple, his band keeping the dance floor busy with polkas and waltzes and rags. I like thinking that Grandpa rocked, and that he somehow knows that I sent my kids to violin lessons.
Last summer, my cousin told me she had something for me, "a funny little guitar" that had belonged to our grandfather. She told me that he used to play it, and my grandmother sang, with groups in the 1920s and 30s. My cousin got the instrument repaired, but no one in her immediate family knew what to do with it, so she tapped me to be the keeper of this "family treasure." ("Family treasure" means I'm not allowed to sell it.)
The shop that repaired the instrument told my cousin it's a tiple, usually pronounced "tipple" in English and "teeplay" in Spanish. Like its pronunciations, its tuning traditions vary, but in the U.S. the tiple is usually tuned like a ukelele, G4 C4 E4 A4 (gCEA). The gCE strings are matched with octave-lower strings, and the CEA strings are doubled, so each of the 4 courses has either 2 or 3 strings. Ten-string sets are made for tiple by LaBella and GHS, bless them. Someone also makes the (blingy) 5-on-a-plate tuners the shop used.
Grandpa's "Sterling" tiple was probably made close to 100 years ago for Tonk Brothers of Chicago. The headstock decal retains traces of "T.B.Co." above "Sterling."
The tiple is not a virtuosic instrument. Fretting two strings is hard and three strings is harder. The straight bridge prevents precise intonation. Tuning is difficult. What the tiple offers is volume, and volume was important before electrical amplification.
Before I got Grandpa's tiple, I never knew that he played an instrument, let alone in a band. My family visited my paternal grandparents in Detroit only once or twice a year, and they were immigrants who spoke Croatian to each other, so I didn't feel close to them. Grandpa and I had only one significant conversation, around Thanksgiving 1970, while my parents were out. I was 10 years old and Grandpa had heard that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. "Those guys just make a lot of noise," he said. "If you want to play a stringed instrument, why don't you learn the violin?"
A month later, wailing on my new Teisco, I remembered Grandpa's advice with a smirk. Now, though, I think of Grandpa wailing on his tiple, his band keeping the dance floor busy with polkas and waltzes and rags. I like thinking that Grandpa rocked, and that he somehow knows that I sent my kids to violin lessons.