Khn de Poitrine of the band Angine de Poitrine plays a unique, entirely handmade double-neck guitar. It features a microtonal bass neck on the bottom and a microtonal guitar neck on top. The guitar was crafted by Canadian luthier Raphaël Le Breton, owner of Lutherie Le Breton in Alma, Quebec.
The Guitar
The guitar features a Stratocaster-style body on top, joined with a Precision Bass body on the bottom. These operate as completely separate instruments, as they both have their own separate output jacks, and they are connected purely for convenience, since Khn de Poitrine plays both the bass and the guitar live.
The guitar part of the instrument has three pickups, a fixed non-tremolo bridge, and a custom-made microtonal neck. The bass part of the guitar has a Fender Precision Bass layout and also features a microtonal neck. According to Raphaël Le Breton, the materials used to make the guitar were maple (body, necks) and ebony (fretboards). [On a parlé au luthier qui a fabriqué la guitare à deux manches d’Angine de poitrine]
Sometime after Khn de Poitrine received the guitar, he decorated it with black polka dots to fit the theme of the band. He also seems to have covered the bass guitar pickguard with black tape because, as we can see in the photo above, it originally had some sort of white pattern on it.
Microtonal Neck(s)
This custom instrument features two microtonal necks. On the guitar half, every fret up to the 15th is essentially doubled—meaning there is an extra fret inserted exactly halfway between each standard fret. The bass half follows the exact same pattern, but only goes up to the 12th fret.
This setup is the reason the band sounds so unusual to many listeners. Western music is almost entirely built on a standard 12-note system (think of the 12 black and white keys in an octave on a piano). By adding these extra frets, the instrument gives them 24 notes per octave instead of 12.
In this case, there was a specific request to have quarter-tone frets. This was a bit unusual and gives it its sound. We’re talking about twenty-four notes instead of the standard twelve, the standard fretting for a guitar.
Angina pectoris: The manufacturer of the double guitar is receiving international requests
These “in-between” notes are called quarter tones. While they might sound a bit jarring or slightly “out of tune” to ears used to Western rock or pop, they are completely standard in many other parts of the world. Musical traditions in the Middle East (like Arabic and Turkish music) and Indian classical music have used these micro-intervals for centuries to create melodies and emotional nuances that are physically impossible to play on a standard guitar.
Pickups
The guitar original featured what seemed to be a set of rail pickups. There seems to be some sort of branding below the blades, but it’s impossible to read. They are dfinetely not Seymour Duncan, and they had oval blades, that are also radiused. If you happen to know the exact model, the comments below are open.
Sometime, likely in 2025, all three of these were replaced with more “standard” single-coil Stratocaster pickups, with regular bobbins instead of blades. These likely have way less output than the original ones, since the rail pickups are basically mini-humbuckers.
you misspelt know at happy to know as knwo
Fixed, thanks