Toy Store: Yamaha TH-20ME Electric Taishogoto

Tested, working fine and sounding great. Complete with soft case and hand rest attachment. Yamaha Taishogotos are beautiful – the build quality shines through – and the TH-20ME is one of their better models. This is a serious instrument for the discerning player.

The Taishogoto or Nagoya Harp is a Japanese stringed instrument dating back to the early 20th century. To enable ‘quiet’ practice with headphones,  an electric pick up was added which of course means you can now plug this into your pedal/effects chains, guitar amps, echoes etc. Played by strumming or plucking the strings with a plectrum while  ‘fretting’ the notes using the keys, this could be viewed as an electric guitar for keyboard players. It’s very similar to India’s Bulbul Tarang, though happily not in build quality: I bought a Bulbul Tarang direct from India some years ago and it arrived with multiple issues caused by a combination of poor manufacturing and shoddy packaging. This is a delight to play and quick to get pleasing results.

I’ve been enjoying investigating these for a while now and have created some astonishingly huge electric guitar style walls of sound. I’m particularly fond of using it with a treble boost, germanium fuzz and tape echo. Traditionally the strings are all tuned to G, but it’s worth experimenting with alternative open tunings (try slide, folk or lap steel tunings) as this can really open up the possibilities. If you have a few guitar pedals to hand you can very quickly create a massive sound from this humble little instrument. I’ve recently read that Harmonia apparently used one, which goes some way to explaining why I’m so smitten with them.

The pickup output is on a standard 1/4″ socket.