Before I try to describe this thing, just watch the fucking video.
Okay, do you get it? Pretty damn awesome right? Apparently this thing was actually invented in the 70’s, but they fucked it up. The technology for design and production back then was apparently not up to the task, so they were terrible (I guess the old “they don’t make ’em like they used to” is bullshit), but the concept was sound. So these guys reverse engineered the idea and resurrected it from what could have been eternal obscurity.
Like the Hammer Jammer we covered more than a year ago, the Gizmotron brings you a texture to the guitar you could never achieve otherwise. It uses motorized textured wheels that essentially bow the string without ever stopping (until you let go of the lever). So you get truly infinite “sustain” because it’s perpetually being played.
Sure, it’s a tiny bit like the E-Bow, but the key difference (aside from the absolutely different mechanism by which it works) is that the Gizmotron is like an on/off, whereas the E-Bow has a very slow attack. The E-Bow and other similar ideas that work on magnets (like the Sustaniac and Fernandes Sustainer pickups) also simply cause the string to vibrate without any physical contact, whereas the Gizmotron is mechanically playing the string like a violin bow that never runs out of horsehair.
I think this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in the world of guitar in some time, and I’m a jaded cynical dick who’s seen a lot of guitar shit. I hope this thing succeeds and holy crap do I want to try one.
You can get yourself on the waitlist here, they are supposed to be out sometime this year.
