Sympitars

Healdsburg guitar festival. I visited the acoustic guitar geek festival. The designs some of these custom made guitars have are amazing. In particular I want to talk about sympitars. Sympitars are six string acoustic guitars with (usually) 12 sympathetic strings strung tightly together just behind the six. These strings produce a sound not much unlike a sitar. It makes an interesting combination of guitar and sitar in one. To add to the complexity, there is a harp sympitar, which is a sympitar with around 18 additional harp strings!
Some beautiful photos of the flying dream are here.
I had the privilege of witnessing performances with this instrument and it was breathtaking. Dude by the name of Erik Hinds has played his version of Slayer's (!!!) album Reign in Blood using a sympitar. Samples available on cdbaby.

While we are on the subject of new instruments with beautiful sounds, here you can find a video clip of DT's Jordan Rudess playing the Haken Continuum.
Ah, the endless possibilites.