GO GO GADGET GUITAR
The first time someone fitted fancy gadgetry to a guitar, it unleashed terrifying satanic forces upon the world and turned an entire generation into gibbering delinquents. In other words, it was a wonderful success. So can you blame people for spending the best part of a century trying to match it?
That first gadget was, of course, the electro-magnetic pickup – a little innovation that, after a few decades of tweaks, was powerful enough to turn the gentle six-string into the driving force of that ungodly phenomenon known as rock ’n’ roll. Not a bad starting point for our history of guitars with built-in technological enhancements.
However, this is a story with far more misses than hits. You might look at the new Boss Eurus GS-1 – which packs an advanced polyphonic synth engine into what looks like an otherwise traditional two-pickup S-type – and speculate that its odds of globe-straddling success are perhaps on the long side. But there’s evidence to suggest that us plank-janglers aren’t quite as conservative as we often think we are…
ARE TRENDS ELECTRIC?
First, we ought to nail down our definition of ‘tech’. Here, we’re focusing purely on the electrical and the electronic, otherwise half of this feature would be dedicated to whammy bars. We won’t be dwelling on Doc Kauffman’s pioneering vibrato system of 1929, nor on single-string pitch-changers such as the B-Bender, nor even on the barmiest-looking doohickey ever screwed to the face of a guitar: the Rickenbacker ‘comb’ of 1966, which let you switch between 12-string and sixstring formats by physically pulling half the strings out of the way.
