I have seen Nick Reinhart improvise brilliantly with a set of pedals he was handed less than an hour before. Here, he and Gardner pull off an improv that sounds like a fully composed piece, with Nick using a guitar made of cardboard (including the neck). Check it out, as well as a video on the making of this unusual instrument.
I have been following Deimel Guitarworks on Instagram for a while. With creative wiring, pickups behind the bridge, and Piezos embedded at various points in the guitar, Frank Deimel has been in the forefront of creating instruments for experimental guitarists. His latest, the Firestar LesLee Synchronizer, combines a fascinating, built-in Leslie effect created by automatically switching between pickups, as well as the ability to synch with modular synths, or any device that uses CV.
I have written extensively here and in Electronic Musician about my search for a way to combine the power of Ableton Live with the different but similar power of the many sonic mangling apps available to iOS users. Lewitt’s Connect 6 ($299) might just be the end point of that search.
Eventide’s H9 became one of those instant modern pedal classics like the Line 6 DL4 and the EHX POG. As it basically allowed only one effect at a time, it was not uncommon to see the boards of professionals and more well off amateurs sporting two. This week Eventide revealed the H90, the equivalent of two fully loaded H9s in one box for a bit less money. But the H90 is not only twin H9s; it has some tricks of its own, with new algorithms (notably polyphonic pitch shifting) and routing options. It apparently was an epic undertaking to put together such a complex product during Covid, but that just adds to the Eventide legend.
The original Boss Slicer, the SL-20, was one of those pedals that was ahead of its time. Not enough guitarists were into the sequencer style sounds that it was capable of producing. Or, not into it enough to sacrifice the pedalboard space it required. With the release of the SL-2 compact version of the effect, Boss is betting that the increase of forward thinking guitarists, combined with the new compact size, will entice more people to slice.