Sky Guitar

In 2004, 50 specially made Sky Guitars were designed by 17^th Street Guitars, each created under the specifications and watch of Uli himself.

Here is what Uli had to say about his Sky guitar: "Back when I was with the Scorpions, a guitar builder in Brighton offered to make me my own guitar any way I would like, and I thought, 'What a concept!'. I questioned everything that had come before and tried to improve on it. I wanted more range, so I came up with a body shaped like a teardrop, but it wasn't visually appealing, so I added an S shape to the teardrop to give it more balance. I had the builder put as many frets on the neck as he possibly could. On my current Sky guitar, the frets above the 24th fret are placed in whole tones because it is too difficult to play above there with the frets placed so closely together. I didn't want to lose the warm sound of the neck pickup, so we mounted the pickup under the fretboard," he continues. That actually worked and sounded good. My pickups (Mega-Wing) are made by John Oram, who figured out how to make a pickup that provides full-sounding tone and great sustain in the guitar's highest range. The next step was to add more range in the bass end, so I came up with the idea of a seven-string guitar."

Excerpt from the April 2001 issue of Guitar Player magazine:

"There are five Sky guitars in existence — three 6-strings and two 7-strings," Uli Jon Roth says. "The 7-strings have a low B and a range of over five-and-a-half octaves. When you have more than 30 frets, it gets very awkward to play in the upper register because the frets are so close together. So one of my guitars is actually fretless at the top. On another, I space the frets out in whole-tone increments. I can still get the half-steps, but I have to jump over to another string to get them. The fretboards are scalloped — which is something I never did to my Strats back in the Scorpions. It's still a hindrance for playing rhythm, but I definitely prefer a scalloped neck for single-note work — it gives me much more control over the notes."

The pickups in the Sky guitars were made by John Oram, who designed the Trident mixing board. In fact, it was the EQ on those boards that got Roth interested in collaborating with Oram. "He offered to design the ultimate pickup for me", says Roth. "We call it the Megawing and it has four coils. It has incredible output, but cleans up beautifully. I can switch it from humbucking to single-coil, and change the output and EQ. This gives me complete control over the amp from the guitar. I even have one of the pickups mounted under the fretboard at the 24th fret. These are unique instruments. I still love my Strats, but I don't play them as lead instruments anymore."