Discover the Emerald Amicus – Your Next Musical Obsession

Your Next Musical Obsession

Throughout our 25 years in building carbon fiber instruments, we have developed a range of innovative new designs that take the guitar to new realms of tonal possibilities. We have taken the best of what we have created for custom projects over the years and added them to our range along with a few models which we have designed to meet a specific need. For the guitar player who wants all the sounds available in a mandolin, and more, we created the Emerald guitars ‘Amicus’.

What is the Amicus?

The Amicus brings together the playability of a short scale (18”), small bodied guitar with the brilliant tones of the mandolin family. For those who have tried playing a mandolin before, you’ll know that the small neck and fretboard leaves those of us with bigger fingers and hands struggling to fret the strings. 

Unlike a regular 12 string guitar which has octave pairs in the low register, the Amicus is strung like a mandolin with 6 pairs of unison strings, giving you the tone from a mandolin with the familiar tuning system found in a guitar. The Amicus is tuned the same way as a guitar in standard tuning but from D – D (D standard), like having your guitar capo’d on the 10th fret. This gives the guitar player the ability to use all their knowledge of the instrument and effectively sound like another one. All of your knowledge on the guitar transfers to the Amicus with the new range of tones on offer, giving the guitar player the ability to open up a new world of tonal possibilities without having to learn a new instrument.

What can I use it for?

One of the comments we hear regularly after someone tries out the Amicus is how they can’t seem to put it down after picking it up. Many players keep coming back to it because of how fun it is to play and how it gives them such a great range of sounds in such a small package

“Every studio in the world should own one of these” – Seamus Devenny; Multi-Instrumentalist, songwriter, producer.

Whether adding new texture to other guitar tracks and instruments or being the main melodic instrument, the Amicus fits in around existing textures with ease and is a fine addition to fill out any production. For jams, recording sessions and live performances, the Amicus is a great addition to any player’s or producer’s arsenal.

Why not take them to trad sessions and fake being the mandolin player, use them in the studio for a new range of textures and even bring them out in live bands to fill in sonic gaps where the guitars are missing.

Carbon Fiber Construction

As with all of our instruments, the Amicus features our signature one-piece carbon fiber construction. Using carbon fiber in our designs allows us to create new and innovative designs that can be difficult or even impossible to create through traditional woodworking techniques.

One of the problems that people have with wooden-made 12-string guitars is usually the tuning stability, as many struggle to keep all 12 strings in tune. This problem is especially troublesome when traveling to and from different locations or in and out of performance environments; even the slightest changes in temperature and humidity can affect the tuning.

With our unique one-piece carbon fiber construction, all of our instruments offer incredible strength and stability; tuning worries become a thing of the past. With wood instruments, the changes in air pressure can damage the guitars in transit if tuned to pitch. At Emerald, we even ship our guitars in tune when leaving the workshop!

The neck and body are also all built as one with no joins to fail or come apart meaning that our instruments are ideal for those who travel or tour or live in harsh climates.

Customize Your Amicus

We offer a range of customizable options for each of our models, and the Amicus is no different. With a range of aesthetic and practical options available to suit the individual and help you design something that not only fits your personal look but also your playing preferences and style

We have a selection of 40+ real wood veneers that we build into the front of our instruments, providing some strikingly beautiful visuals that cannot usually be found in acoustic instruments.

One of the downsides to traditional wooden guitars is that a lot of the most stunning woods are reserved for the back and sides of the instruments, here we have the opportunity to show off the best woods to your audience. 

Each veneer is individually photographed and cataloged on our system and then available for use in the 3D builder. Using real wood veneers from a variety of different species of wood means that there are no two pieces which are exactly the same. This means that when you choose a specific veneer in the 3D builder that you will be the only one with that unique piece of wood.

You can choose to have a pickup included in your Amicus with the option of adding an LR Baggs Element undersaddle pickup with built in onboard preamp also. This pickup works great with the Amicus, giving a strong and detailed amplified sound that fits in well in any live mix.

We offer custom inlays on the 3D builder with four different options of styles and also a range of colors available. We even offer the Amicus for left-handed players too so everyone can join in on the experience.

If you’ve ever dreamed of playing the mandolin but you never had the time to learn a new instrument or had trouble with the small frets and neck then the Emerald Guitars Amicus is the solution.

You can build your own in our 3D builder here https://builder.emeraldguitars.com/amicus

Or email our experts Kev and Davy at sales@emeraldguitars.com, and they’ll take you through your build.