What it is....
The Gizmo (sometimes called The Gizmotron) was an effects device for the electric guitar, invented ca. 1975 by the English rock musicians Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, whilst they were members of the British rock group 10cc.
The Gizmo first featured on 10cc's second album, Sheet Music (1974) on the track "Old Wild Men", and its ability to create a wide range of sounds was central to the production of Godley and Creme's first post 10cc project, the 1977 triple concept album, Consequences.
According to Paul Gambaccini's sleeve notes for Consequences,[1] 10cc were unable to afford an orchestra for their early albums, so Creme and Godley imagined an effects unit that would enable a guitar to produce violin-like sounds (this was some years before the introduction of the polyphonic synthesiser and long before the development of digital sampling).
The resulting device, a small box which was attached to the bridge of the guitar, consisted of six small motor-driven wheels, whose continuous bowing action was activated by pressing one or all of keys located on the top of the unit. Pressing a key would bow the corresponding string, while the other hand remained free to fret single notes or full chords.
John McConnell, then a senior lecturer in Physics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) assisted Godley and Creme in the development of the prototype. He considered it critical that the instrument retain the natural decay of a note rather than the sharp cut-off often experienced with an electronic synthesizer.
Other Godley & Creme albums featuring the Gizmo include L and Godley & Creme.
The Gizmo can also be heard on:
The Church's "Violet Town" where it is played by Marty Willson-Piper.
The Siouxsie and the Banshees' song "Into the Light", played by John McGeoch.
This Mortal Coil's recording "It'll End in Tears" (4AD), where it was played by Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins.
Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door (1979) .
One of the faults with The Gizmo was that is was very temperamental, and affected by conditions such as humidity and temperature. Additionally, the design of the device used a tiny wheel to vibrate each string through friction; the inherent design limitation was that either the wheel had to have a) small teeth, which also produced a pitch of their own that varied with the speed of the wheel, or b) a smooth surface, which acted as a secondary bridge for each string, thereby making the pitch of each string completely unpredictable. Gizmotron, the company set up to produce The Gizmo, was eventually driven bankrupt as The Gizmo, which never truly worked as advertised, was released at the same time as cheap synthesizers and was unable to find a market.
