Harp Guitar Family Tree by Gregg Miner

The Galleries:
Photo Reference Library of all Harp Guitar Forms and Examples

Harp Guitars

Form
1a

Form
1b

Form
1c

Form
2a

Form
2b

Form
2c

Form
3a

Form
3b

Form
3c

Form
4

Form
5

Composite
Forms

Other Forms

Related Instruments

Note to the casual reader

The Reference Galleries in the row below feature historical instruments that are NOT harp guitars,
but “relatives” or distant “cousins” – presented on Harpguitars.net for historical and organological comparison.

NOTE: My Harp Guitar Family Tree is organized by instrument form and characteristics.
It does not represent an evolutionary or linear progression of invented forms.
It is a snapshot of only those instruments involved in the discussion of harp guitars, and in no way represents a full categorization of guitars or related instruments.
I’ve broken this down into what I feel are the best general, identifiable categories. There will always be experimental instruments, both historical and yet-to-be-imagined, that fall outside these convenient boxes. Likewise, there are, and will be, many examples of hybrids which combine elements from different boxes.
The concepts of the entire Harp Guitar section may understandably also be applied to other fretted instruments, such as mandolins, ukuleles, steel guitars, etc (some photo examples may include other instruments for the sake of presentation).
Red text indicates instruments that in basic form and function share the harp guitar’s combination of fretted strings alongside diaspon strings. Note also the two places where the name “harp guitar” occurs outside the “true” Harp Guitar family.
A picture is worth a thousand words, therefore rather than list or describe examples, I include all known representative samples in the Photo Reference Library of Examples above.

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