MATRIXSYNTH: Moog Guitar review spotted


Thursday, May 01, 2008

Moog Guitar review spotted

via Cikira of Cikira.com and RedMoon Music:

"this was posted to Loopers Delight:
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'Hello to all!

I just returned from the Ethermusic Festival, sponsered by Moog Music, in Asheville, NC.

Prior to my set on Thursday night, Jason Danillo from Moog Music expertly demo'd a new product from Moog Music that is simply called:
"The Moog Guitar".

I am not a guitarist myself however I was very impressed with what I learned and heard about this product. I run the risk of sounding like a "salesperson" however I want to share with you what I learned and heard regarding the Moog Guitar.

My first impression of this instrument is that it was an electric guitar with built in (software driven) fx in the body of the guitar. And I would add, super CLEAN fx. And the infinite sustain, for example, was INFINITE with no noise, glitches, etc. However, my guess about the theory of operation was mistaken.

The guitar utilizes built-in ebows -- I'm not sure how many are built into the guitar however there is a least one per string. As many readers here know, the ebow imparts energy to a string to set it into vibration and keep it vibrating forever. The engineers at Moog took things to another level -- for ebow technology can do the opposite: it can be used to remove energy from a string, too.

Each string is independently settable -- some can sustain, others can sound in the normal (unsustained manner), others can produce a staccatto pluck -- in fact, on [sic] of the sounds is a strum followed by a bow. This is all user-settable. Jason strummed a chord and as the chord died down a "bowed string chorus" came up -- as if an entire string section was doubling Jason's guitar part.

My first thought was: Ohhh... my looping friends would LOVE this.
And the tone was really clean. During Jason's demo, he mentioned that some people can't believe that this is all being done on the strings until he unplugs the guitar and folks listen to the strings themselves.

I look forward to hearing the "buzz" about this product among the looping community as well as the theremin community (which includes many guitarists and loopers).

While ebows have been around for awhile, this new product takes things to another level.

Best wishes to Moog Music. May the new Moog Guitar inspire many musicians and be another success story for Moog Music.

All the best to one and all.'"

8 comments:

  1. Wow. It's not a synth. That is a surprise. Being a guitarist, I've gotta say I'm a little skeptical as the whole sustainer concept has always sounded better in theory than in practice.

    I do hope it is a success, the electric guitar is in dire need of innovation.

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  2. Agreed, though I wish they'd spent some time innovating the design, too. The teaser pics for this thing make it look like an early 90s Carvin.

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  3. This is not too suprising, as Dr. Bob had worked on a similar project in the 70s, I believe named the Gizmotron? And if I'm not mistaken, had something to do with Lol Creme.

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  4. I've seen a Gizmotron Godley and Creme gadget up close. It's different than an Ebo or Sustainiac. There are little contact wheels spinning around that touch the strings. Newbie Brad

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  5. umm all a bit strange, this pic was posted on the Moog website on April Fools Day.:)

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  6. It wasn't clear from the post that this review was written by Kevin Kissinger.

    The original post is available here:
    http://www.loopersdelight.com/LDarchive/200805/msg00027.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was at Etherfest 2008. The Moog Guitar is not an April Fool’s Day prank, it's for real. I am not a guitarist, but let me tell you that when I strapped that thing on and I fingered it, it kind of knew I was there. That note sustained without letup, perfect, pure, and clear. Let me tell you first hand, practice has met theory with the Moog Guitar. Flip a dial or switch and wham, that note comes back, vibrating the guitar in my hands. And the only two words that came to my mind were "It's Alive!" You can feel, I mean really feel this guitar. It is so responsive. It takes and it gives back. This guitar is all a guitarist could ask for, absolutely revolutionary.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I played it a little. It's different than an ebow - it has positive AND negative sustain controls; you can make it KILL sustain too, so it sounds like a banjo. I like how you don't have to play differently at all, unlike gtr synths, it just works like a normal guitar, but with different overtone sustains or decay. The guitar plays well - I'm not fond of how it looks, which could end up being a big deal to a lot of people. It does work flawlessly, and polyphonic sustain in various octaves is an amazing sound. It can also "mono" your playing if you want and mute all the nonplayed strings so they don't sustain or ring at all.

    ReplyDelete

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