Gibson Harp Guitar

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Gregg's Blogg » Blog Archive » Harp Guitar Medley

by Gregg

This one is in reference to a fellow named Keith Medley – a new, 30 years-in-the-making harp guitarist.

He was discovered by the our community some time last year by a Harpguitars.net member, but then recently, when I wanted to add his unique instrument to the Luthier page, I couldn’t locate the posting.  Last week, alert HG.net member Cedric Verglas found him again, and we’ve subsequently communicated a bit.

Medley, who lives north of Nashville, built and plays his own distinctive harp guitar; he has photos of the build up on his site, as well as full audio clips from the first CD he recorded with it.  The impressive tracks have a lot of production, with percussion and synthesizers, so I was happy to see a couple nice videos that (though dubbed) show that Keith has already mastered his creation.

Currently, he calls it simply his “27-string” – there is nary a “harp guitar” connotation anywhere on his site, and he seemed to intimate that he had no idea what they were until very recently.  So is it then a complete coincidence that Keith’s instrument looks like a natural evolutionary offshoot of John Doan’s Sullivan/Elliott prototype, or resembles some of the other post-Doan harp guitars, like the late Doug Whittier’s and Takahiro Shimo’s .

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