Moog Music has been pretty tight-lipped about it, but information is starting to slip out about the Moog Guitar.
At the Ethermusic Festival in Asheville, NC, Moog’s Jason Danillo demo’d the Moog Guitar. Here’s a first-hand take on the demo:
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.
Moog looks to be building on its strong line of Moogerfooger pedals and expanding into the guitar market.
Moog’s such a name in synths that it’s hard to imagine them becoming more than a niche player in the world of guitars.
I HAVE DREAMED ABOUT THIS VERY THING. I HOPE IT BECOMES SOMETHING SOME WHAT AFFORDABLE.
Interesting as I had thought also why not have a dedicated ebow per string. Reminds me of the Mutron Gismotron. It used spinning wheels that bowed each string instead of magnetics.
All we can do is speculate until we get more info on this….
I really would like to see new real innovative effects vs. the same ol’ stuff reissued or reworked AND stay in the realm of useful, not be one of those bizzare effects that you don’t want to or cannot use often.
Right now Electro Harmonix is doing some cool stuff with their POG / HOG pedals.
EH, MXR and the Moogers are my favorite effects.
So am looking forward to something new from Moog.
They put out some good quality stuff!
I’m very excited about the possibilities here, because this might just kick guitar synths in the butt. It reminds me of my Roland VG-99, which is a similar approach: your strings produce the sound, but the machine warps/alters/filters the sound much like a synth does to the sounds that the oscillators make. Your strings are your oscillators. The VG-99 is awesome, but it’s aimed mainly at covering traditional guitar sounds. The synth-like sounds it makes are so amazing, though, that it makes me want more. Like a Moog Guitar. Wow, that could be very cool.
So my question is is it worth and are you willing to pay the $5895 they want it to sell for?
The first “Limited Edition” model will sell for $5895.00 the next gen will sell for slightly less.
Remember you cannot customize this guitar in any way. You are stuck with their pick ups, their necks, their tuning machines even their “specified metallurgy designed” strings.
Is the sustain feature worth the price and the closed design? Im curious….
I saw the guitar yesterday June 31st, 2008 and it was masterful.
Great neck, excellent action and an incredibly unique design. It is going to be a great addition to guitar synthesis – it’s 100% analog! No DSP to be found anywhere. Pricey? Yeah – of course. But something worth having if you are a pro and do wonderful things musically.
I can’t wait to get mine.
This instrument looks very interesting, six grand as not a small asking price… but I think it would be a great addition to the LAB !