Circa 1911 Knutsen Harp Guitar

This Knutsen harp guitar looks pretty wild but you may be surprised to learn this is actually a fairly tame design compared to some of his other creations. Chris J. Knutsen was a luthier who mainly worked in the Pacific Northwest in the early part of the 20th century. He was obsessed with expanding the sonic possibilities of fretted instruments and he came up with a bewildering array of harp guitars, harp mandolins, harp ukuleles and Hawaiian guitars. (I wrote about a Knutsen harp mandolin a while back.) Even though he made lots of instruments he is not that well known in the instrument world, even though two of the designs he licensed to other builders, the Dyer Symphony Harp Guitar and the Weissenborn Hawaiian steel guitar, are both highly regarded. (For more on Knutsen’s amazing instruments, please check out Knutsen pages at Harpguitars.net.)

This particular guitar has three sub-bass strings although the label boasts of Knutsen’s patent for an 11-string guitar, which was a harp guitar with five sub-bass strings. Knutsen’s designs have interesting lines, with an almost free-form, organic feel. His guitars were well-constructed overall, but they can sometimes be a little rough around the edges. (He cranked out quite a few instruments over the years.) This example, however, looks to be very neatly done and it has survived in excellent condition. I’ve played a few Knutsen’s over the years and they usually sound very good. Even if you don’t play the extra harp strings they do add some intriguing sympathetic vibrations to the overall tone. If you’d like to add this Knutsen to your collection, it’s priced at $3750 and it’s at Carter Vintage Guitars.