The Moog Guitar

[Ghost Hip]

I wish I had 6,400 dollars to spend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3SsYQrgcyA[/youtube]

[LowWoods]

I wish I had 6,400 dollars to spend.

$6400? That's just because they're new! In a couple of years they will be down to $6200 I'm sure

[Ghost Hip]

Just wait until Squier gets a hold of this technology

[Antero]

It's cool but not 6.5K cool.

[basti moon]

I don't think it's a one-trick pony. Moog don't normally produce horses like that.

However, what is up with that horrible shape? People who like moog (or strange sounds like the ones coming from the guitar in the video) are usually not the speedmetal-type guitar players. Could have given it a jazzguitar shape or something, es 335 or maybe even teardrop just to be funky. Would have had more options on knob and switch placement then instead of having them all piled together in that depressed area (which looks kind of silly too).
Still loves you, though, Moog

[pablo9000]

I wanna mate the Gibson Robot guitar with this one. Then I can uninstall the eBow from my palm.

[glitch]

i can get a lot of those sounds out of an ebow.

Agreed. In addition to Ebow, I've got a Model C Sustainiac. One of those will get you about 80% of the effects in this video too (without having to cramp up your picking hand).

This isn't just sour grapes ('cause obviously I won't be affording one of these anytime soon). I do love the sound of the "Ebowed" chords, and the polyphonic effects. But all the solo stuff shown on this video can be done with already existing technology. This was said earlier, and I'll repeat it too: as cool as the new effects are, they ain't $6,400 worth of cool. Heck, I'll just multi-track a bunch of monophonic lines...

-- glitch.@#$%!

[Suilebhain]

I was just reading about the Sustainiac, which I just learned about from reading your post. How do you use that AND an eBow? Doesn't the Sustainiac make the ebow redundant, or does the eBow just add extra sustaining creamydreaminess?

[glitch]

The Sustainiac is usually an alternative -- rather than a complement -- to the Ebow. Sorry if I made it sound otherwise.

One big difference between the two is that with the Ebow, you're working on sustaining each string individually. Due to the Ebow's size/shape, it's quite difficult to manipulate more than one string at a time -- particularly neighboring strings. With the Sustainiac you're feeding the guitar's signal right back in through the whole instrument again. So, in the middle of a line, you can switch the string you're playing upon just like normal, and it continues to feed back.

Since the Ebow only works on one string at a time, there's a bit of technique that has to be learned when hopping strings. And since it takes the Ebow a second to ramp up the vibration, you've usually got a clanky hammer-on or two in the middle of what would be an otherwise smooth bowed run. Also, many's the time that I've hopped strings only to miss the Ebow's sweet spot and have it's energy run out entirely -- leaving me in the middle of a half-bar of awkward silence as I try to get it ramped back up again.

That's all technique stuff though, and doesn't bother most Ebow masters. Bottom line is that to use the Ebow to its fullest potential, you (erm, I) really need to practice.

And I haven't tried using the Ebow *with* the Sustainiac, but that sounds like it might be interesting. Thanks for the idea!

There are some pretty interesting things you can do with the Sustainiac too, especially since the Model C has an effects loop built in and we all know what kind of trouble that can get you into.

The big thing here is that the Model C's effects loop *only* affects the signal being fed back into the guitar/instrument. So, you can insert a filter or EQ (or even a wah pedal) into the loop in order to "tune" which frequencies will be fed back. I've not actually tried yet, but I was specualating over on another list that it might be possible to emulate the Moog Guitar's "muting" effect using the Model C's loop. Simply insert something to reverse the signal's phase (like the Little Lab's IBP, or any other polarity-flipping widget), so that a 180 degree out-of-phase signal is fed back into the guitar.

It might not work quite as well as the Moog -- since they're doing the exact same thing on a per-string basis, and you'd be feeding back the whole instrument at once -- but I'm betting you could get a darn good approximation. On solo lines, I'm sure the difference would be almost indistinguishable.

-- glitch.@#$%!

[Suilebhain]

I wonder how a flanger in the loop would work....Wavestation, anyone?