Guitorgan

[Basvarken]

You can never have too many knobs on your guitar...

[Dave W]

Too complicated for me!

[clankenstein]

I wonder what it sounded like?

[Dave W]

[clankenstein]

Crikey ! Thanks Dave.

[Pilgrim]

Wolfman Jack would ask if it pulled in the moon, the stars and the outer planets!

[slinkp]

Too bad he only noodled around playing leads on one sound!  Surely with all those controls you could get something else from it?

[Dave W]

You might be surprised at the number of guitorgans made in the 60s and into the 70s, although none of them were ever big sellers. I hadn't heard of this brand before. There were several with a shape roughly like an ES-335. Probably the best known was the Vox. Here's a demo of one where you can hear soem of the different possibilities.

[Highlander]

I think my views on knob-twiddling are reasonably well known, and that's getting dangerously close to Chromium Joe territory...

[Alanko]

There was a member over on TDPRI who wound up buying a gutted MCI Guitarorgan. They didn't know what it was; simply an ES-355 copy with each fret cut into six sections and all sorts of square holes cut out of the body. Apparently MCI started off with a good Japanese copy and worked from there.

The demos I've seen on youtube tend to have the phenomenon whereby it sounds like all the notes are on at once, but quietly in the background. I think this is the same sort of 'leak' you get with transistor organs, like Farfisas, so I imagine the technology is much the same.

The beast I want to know more about is the WEM Project 4/Fifth Man guitar. Prior to any guitarorgans, or at best parallel with the Vox one, WEM came up with some odd sustainer technology that they built into one of their models. The instruments themselves have chunky magnets either side of the strings at the heel of the neck, and a crude hexaphonic pickup arrangement in the bridge. I have no idea how any of that worked, and I cannot find any resources online beyond anecdotal evidence.

Apparently the magnets promote sustain, but I don't see how that would work! If anything I can see two chunky magnets introducing wolf tones and sustain issues if anything.

[chromium]

I think my views on knob-twiddling are reasonably well known, and that's getting dangerously close to Chromium Joe territory...

You'll be pleased to know I've sold off almost all my old Roland guitar synth stuff...

...but I still have the BC Richs and other sources of knob-twiddling-bliss :p