Image: Chris_Carter_
Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter reports that “Our only (and as far as we know the last) surviving original Gristleizer died today, it was Cosey’s own model from 1977.”
“We were about to start running some LFO test on it for Charles Howes, who is designing and making the new Gristleizer reproductions, when it spluttered and stopped working. No amount of coaxing, fiddling, tweaking, encouragement and new batteries would revive it. Pretty good going for a 32 year old hand-made unit but a sad day nevertheless.”
If you’ve got ideas on how to resuscitate the Gristleizer, leave a comment on Chris Carter’s photo at Flickr.
About The Gristleizer:
Carter’s original Gristleizer units were based around the Roy Gwinn ‘GEP’ design published in Practical Electronic and sold in kit form (just the PCB & components) by Phonosonics in the UK in 1977. This LINK takes you to the current location of the schematic (look under Effects\PE Stuff\Guitar Effect). Carter added some mods and designed a new case and made units for himself, the band (TG) and friends.
via the Synthtopia Flickr Pool
Does this mean a new TG album…..? I hope so. The last Psychic TV tour sucked so bad that Genesis owes us a real show now. As far as fixing this unit, perhaps DIJ or NON can do a ritual, it may or may not help, but it would be cool nonetheless. Even in broken shape, I want it!
Considering where it’s from, maybe it just needs to be lubed with the blood of a young virgin boy, sporting a mopish hair cut and some liquid eyeliner.
The death of the last original Gristleizer is kind of sad. Probably time to start a web page somewhere tracking how all those originals died. Before I knew there was more than one, I had previously lamented the passing of Gen’s unit in that fire at the house Love & Rockets were recording in (did Gen ever settle that lawsuit he filed?). That the line is truely dead is very sad indeed (imagine the horror the day the last ARP2600 or CS80 finally gives up the ghost/magic-smoke and passes into historical footnote land)
On the up side, hopefully this will encourage Chris to more closely involve himself in the rebuild project with Charles Howes and speed the arrival of the new 21st century Gristleizer (Bigger! Brighter! Full of nuts!).
Expose it to a massive burst of Gamma Rays or have it bitten by a radioactive spider?
Gen was rumored to have started the fire, he is a mad scientist so who knows…? I think that maybe the Gristleizer circuitry/blueprint should be posted, I am certain that some Synthtopia reader could assemble one.
Put it in a box, add some Kid Robot stickers and voila!
Hmm. Needs more gristle.
(As they say at the sausage factory.)
I cannnot take full credit for bringing back The Gristleizer. It is a team project from Endangered Audio, a division of Smashing Guitars in Asheville, NC. We have spent long hours on perfecting this. Trying to get rid of the “TICK” on the square wave. Which has now been cleared. Roy Gwinn has been very helpful with the project as well. Many thanks to him and Chris. I will be posting info soon for the website. Complete with pictures, sound bites………etc. So get ready.
hallo.. any one have good info for a website like this?
what is Gristleizer ?