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| Click here for videos from the seminar |
I recently attended an Egnater amp building seminar to experience the gearhead’s version of fantasy camp. People have been raving about the experience in forums across the net, and I was curious to answer the question, “Why would Bruce Egnater do this?”
With a solid following of tone connoisseurs, Egnater is no stranger to the boutique world; fortunately, his secret is beginning to spread among the masses. Since his days with Rocktron (remember the Vendetta?), he has collaborated with Randall (his proprietary modular design is featured in the MTS series) and more recently designed two foreign-made, but custom shop-sounding Egnater amps sold exclusively at Guitar Center – the Rebel and the Tourmaster. These amps are just starting to show up in stores across the country, helping the chain attract the elusive boutique player with some serious street cred.
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Bruce’s modular design allows you to pop modules – essentially small circuit boards modeling classic amp tones – in and out of an amp, just as you would cartridges in an old-school video game console. Many a designer would sacrifice a digit, Yakuzastyle, to invent that kind of slap-on-theforehead breakthrough, which is why Bruce ranks somewhere between genius and celebrity among the people who flock to his amp-building seminars. Any of us can buy the components to make a tube amp; new ideas separate your average solder monkey from a true tone artist.
Located just north of Detroit, the Amp Lounge in Berkley, Michigan, is easy to miss. The converted coin shop is smaller than you might expect but it transforms from a snug, professional amp-building setup to an instructional setting quite nicely. The first day of the two-day seminar is when the actual build takes place; the second day is reserved for lectures and eureka moments. Having previously conducted seminars with the theoretical load on the first day, Bruce claims that the current framework is much better. Expecting to grasp everything before soldering every resistor and capacitor in place tends to hang people up.
Bruce says most of his students come in with minimal soldering experience, but that rarely matters – people pick it up fairly quickly. The group of eight I was part of came in fairly proficient with the iron.
It was a diverse group, ranging from a blues-playing hobbyist in his fifties to a proud eighties hair metal fan who, believe it or not, was only in his twenties. One guy’s $1600 tuition was a birthday gift from his wife. Another was getting back into music after taking years off when his first child was born. Students drove and flew in from Pennsylvania, Utah and many points in-between.
After a few minutes of introductions and pastries, Bruce addressed the question that I had come to answer right away. “I have nothing to hide,” he told us. “I simply enjoy passing along what I’ve learned.” Each person’s workstation had a soldering iron, an amp chassis, a schematic, bags of components and a turret board with some parts already soldered in. Before we knew it, we were bolting transformers into our otherwise empty chassis. Within minutes the unmistakable aroma of tin/lead alloy filled the room as we melted it within a maze of wires, pots, caps and tube mounts.
The build was based on a JTM-45-inspired Mojo kit but souped up with a few JCMstyle touches and, of course, many custom Egnater mods. There were some nice surprises, like the cathode follower – a circuit where the output is taken from the cathode instead of the plate, making it easier to drive the tone controls while creating killer harmonics when overloaded – and a choke, which filters some of the DC hum before the juice hits the screen grids.
We followed the schematics as Bruce and his staff explained what we were doing for eight solid hours – even longer for those of us who weren’t technically inclined to begin with. As each person finished up, Bruce went through their amp and tidied things, correcting mistakes like the red and green wires that my slightly colorblind eyes misread on the schematic, rerouting connections under something instead of over it, or even resoldering buzz-prone areas like pot grounds.
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Our moments of truth came during a final check. Every circuit was tested with a voltmeter, which ferreted out additional problems that some of us had to correct. Tubes were matched and biased. Bruce also showed us how to read a scope and plot output signals.
When all systems were go, it was on to the sound booth in the back of the shop where our still cabinet-less amps were plugged into a 4x12 cab and put through the paces. Each person stole away to that little room like a purse-snatcher slipping into an alley to check out the loot. We’ve all test-driven amps before, but nothing compares to plugging in and firing up your own creation for the first time. After 10 or 15 minutes of the happiest noodling you’ve ever heard, each person walked out of that room cradling their amps like newborns.
To sift through amp building theory on the second day was indeed well thought out. The hours of assembly and instruction from the day before were put into macro and micro perspective. We also spent significant time talking about future mods – the changes in tone that would take place by switching this cap here and that resistor there. The last thing we did was drop our amps into their cabinets – a process akin to mounting a prized image into a frame, complete with the desire to take a few steps back and look at the finished product from different angles. Talk about a room full of swelled chests.
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Building your own amp is a powerful experience that is especially rewarding when instead of sounding like a run-of-the-mill kit amp it sounds better than anything you’ve played through before. It’s also an invaluable process for personal growth as a player; after building an amp from the ground up you’ll suddenly hear things that you’ve never heard before. I’m already jonesing to build another one.
 But there''s more!Click Herefor a photo gallery of the experience. Click Here for a video of Bruce Egnater''s shop. Click Here for a video of the amp in action. Click Here to see Bruce Egnater talking about effects loops. Click Here to see Bruce Egnater explaining the Bright Switch circuit Click Here to see the Tourmaster 4100 demo''d. |
Bruce Egnater
egnater.com
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Enter Chris Willcox and the small crew behind LightWave Systems. With the help of infrared technology, LightWave Systems have brought the pickup kicking and screaming into the 21st century. With several bass and guitar models, Chris has dispensed with age-old magnetic principles in favor of new technologies that promise to make players think carefully about how they interact with their instruments and what exactly they should expect from them. And while they may not sound like magnetic pickups, that’s exactly the point.
We spent some time with Chris discussing LightWave’s newest products, what players can expect from these pickups and the challenges of introducing new technologies into a market smitten with the past.
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I did an apprenticeship in New Jersey when I was 17, learning how to build guitars with John Vile, who was a Master Craftsman from C.F. Martin. He was an expert in pearl inlay and did all of the inlay work on the D-45s and the top-ofthe- line Martin models. Then he went off on his own to start his own custom shop and hired me on as his assistant. He built the guitars and I did a lot of the operations. I also learned how to do repairs, and that partnership lasted until I moved to California in 1976.
How old were you when you headed to the West Coast?
21 years old. I had played in bands back East, but I was never that serious about becoming a musician – I preferred working on the instruments. But I moved to California and by the early eighties I had gotten settled and started up a little guitar shop. It was a part-time gig; I still had regular day jobs. Towards the end of the decade I initially got the idea to build some primitive prototypes of optical pickups, and I quickly realized I was onto something, so I started applying for U.S. and international patents in the early nineties.
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We started out providing only the electronics. We were providing systems for mostly boutique and custom builders, and we were focused on product development. We did that for a few years, and a little over two years ago I started designing complete instruments. As we speak, I’m currently working on developing a new division of LightWave Systems called LightWave Guitars, which will be dedicated to the instrument side of the business – it’s still an exclusive and proprietary system for us.
What initially drew you to the idea of optical pickups – did it begin with an interest in traditional pickups?
Well, just like your magazine’s tagline, I was experimenting in the never-ending search for tone and sustain, mostly with electric guitars. I began with the usual ideas, trying various wood combinations, building techniques, bolt-on necks versus through the body designs and so on. What I found was that the voice of the instrument was so dependant on the type of magnetic pickups on it that I began to wonder if there was some other way to sense string vibration that was non-intrusive and not so heavily voiced as magnetic pickups are.
Of course, I like magnetic pickups to this day – I have great respect for them – but I thought there might be something different out there. At the time, infrared technology was beginning to proliferate. A lot of it began in military applications and was really expensive, but it started to trickle down into consumer goods – these days it’s everywhere and quite affordable. I got interested in the fact that you could look at a string and the string didn’t realize it was being sensed.
Did you envision the optical pickup as a response to a perceived need within the industry, or was it more of an attempt to push the bounds of existing pickup technologies?
I perceived it as a desire rather than a need. I’ve always believed that players want alternative tones and experiences from their guitars and I got such a positive response from the early prototypes that I just couldn’t help but launch it into fullscale product development. I went on to believe that this is an important contribution to the continued evolution of guitar technology.
It could actually become an industry standard for some segments – for example, it could be identified as a need in terms of electrifying acoustic instruments. Piezo pickups are well entrenched in that segment, but they have a lot of drawbacks. People have accepted them for what they are but we offer some serious advantages in that area.
In electric string instruments, we definitely want to emphasize our differences as an alternative. We’re not saying, “We’re gonna replace magnetic pickups,” we just want to be another option in the mix. You know how guitar players are as collectors. We’re not saying you’re gonna get rid of all of your guitars, just that you’ll want one of these too.
How does the infrared technology actually “look” at the string, as you’ve described it, and how does that make it to the amplifier?
Each string has its own array of infrared emitters and photodetectors; the emitters cast a shadow of the string onto the detectors. When you vibrate the strings, the size and shape of the shadow changes, which in turn modulates a standing current in the detectors. That signal, just like most transducer signals, is very small, so it goes immediately into a motherboard, which is in a cavity at the back of the guitar, and contains preamps. The motherboard amplifies the signal and also has a socket for a daughterboard, which is where all of the tone controls happen. From there it goes directly to your standard 1/4” jack and cable. It’s a completely analog system, and the overall sound is clean, balanced and natural.
It might sound like rocket science, but we’re not doing anything exotic. For what it does, it’s a very robust and dependable system, and it really isn’t that complicated. This system is compatible with all preamps, amplifiers and signal processors in the marketplace, and it provides you with a kind of high-definition string signal to start with, so any amplification and signal processing you plan on doing is noticeably enhanced.
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All analog, all of the way. There’s no digitizing anywhere.
The words “transparent response” are all over your marketing materials. Can you describe the tone that these pickups generate in comparison to a traditional magnetic pickup?
Well, let me start with magnetic pickups since you’ve made the comparison. All magnetic pickups have built-in voicing – they cannot be flat by nature. Even the flattest model adds 6 dB of gain per octave across the entire spectrum, so they are really changing a lot of what the string is actually doing. You can think about it this way: there is nothing richer than the sound of the vibrating string itself. Any means of transducing it is going to be a subset of that. Magnetic pickups also dampen sustain and make sustain and decay sound somewhat unnatural, especially towards the end. They alter the actual harmonic structure of string vibration, choking some of the harmonics – Stratitis would be an extreme example.
Optical pickups have no inherent coloration, so if you set all of the controls flat you’re really getting the sound of the string, the instrument and whatever the player is doing. You get a really rich, fullbandwidth signal with extended frequency response; really long, natural sustain; and a nice, even decay. It’s kind of like a grand piano and the nice, natural decay you get when you hit a note. You’re really starting with a truer and more accurate string signal source, and that’s just the direct clean sound of the pickup. You’re free to add EQ without fighting existing curves. You get a lot of versatility and your downstream effects will be enhanced because you have a better signal at the front-end. Another thing you will notice as soon as you plug in is that the system is dead quiet and doesn’t generate any of the annoying hum and buzz associated with magnetic pickups. Recording engineers love it.
So the wood and components still play a critical factor in the instrument’s tone with the LightWave System?
Absolutely, and perhaps even more so, because you’ve taken the pickup out as a primary voicing generator.
Does this transparency help create an honest instrument?
I think that’s a really good word. A lot of players also tell us that it improves their technique. The sensitivity provides a more honest playing experience. Also, fretless bass players seek out the most realistic upright bass sound they can get, and they are really attracted to our fretless models.
What are the tradeoffs for these benefits?
The obvious one would be that you pay a slightly higher price, especially in the early stages of development, just as you do with any new technology. We have lower volume production, so we haven’t achieved economies of scale. Magnetic and piezo sensors have been around for a long time – they’ve become commodities with a very low cost of entry.
What about powering the system? Could that be seen as a drawback?
It is a rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battery system. Some people – before they learn how it works – consider it a drawback, but this actually functions like any other active pickup system. By now most people are familiar with recharging batteries in pieces of equipment, and once they learn how simple and reliable it is consider it more convenient than 9V battery systems. There’s no more running to the store for a battery or finding your replacement battery is also dead.
It’s a rapid recharge system and takes about one hour to charge, giving you 16 hours of playing time. The battery and charger are very reasonably priced, so buying spares and replacements isn’t hard on your wallet, and the batteries have many charge cycles, so it’s a very easy technology to get used to.
As far as power running out mid-set, there’s a battery status LED right on the bridge that begins to dim, giving you better than a two-hour early warning. And the instrument never just dies – it fades out over that two-hour period. If need be, you can play and charge at the same time, with the charger plugged in.
Who is the target audience for your technology?
There’s no narrow focus here – we’re going after all string instrument players and all styles of music. There are advantages here and certainly the majority of players are looking for something to differentiate themselves. We’re also aiming at anyone who wants to capture a natural acoustic string sound at any volume for live performance or recording. Players will come to find that they’re more intimately connected to the strings and the instrument when they’re getting this level of sensitivity from our transducer.
It seems that your efforts to date have centered on the bass guitar. What’s the reasoning for that?
Bass was a good starting point, mostly from the standpoint that they’re bigger strings and are spaced wider apart. Bass players are fairly open to new technology, and they were very impressed with the extended frequency response here. It really shows up on 5-string basses; the low B has never sounded this tight and focused. All of those things came together and bass was just our first product.
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Actually, that was mostly requested by players, and to be honest, I resisted at first due to the fact that if you put the magnetic pickup on there – even if you’re not listening to it – it’s still doing string damping stuff. But a lot of our boutique builders began building instruments with both, and I became rather enamored with the combination. There’s also a novel set of tones you can get by mixing the optical and magnetic pickups with the pan pot. Some players also wanted the convenience of having both systems on one instrument. We listened to our customers and found there was enough demand for it.
The bridge designs on your basses are quite striking. Who did you work with to develop them, and do they provide any benefits over a more traditional design?
The bridge was originally a LightWave design; we call it the “monolithic bridge.” We did work closely with Graph Tech to develop the actual product and they helped us create it out of a proprietary blend of Graph Tech materials, which offers sonic benefits as well as being very rugged and dependable.
Design-wise, I was looking for what you might call a mechatronic approach, where each one of the monoliths integrates everything. It contains the mechanical termination of the string, the electronic and transducer functions, and action and intonation adjustments all in one assembly. It looks cool, too.
We wanted to draw some attention to the fact that the guitars look different from the standpoint that you don’t see any magnetic pickups, which gives our instruments a real clean look. But then it draws your eye down to the bridge and the fact that you’ve really got something different going on.
You’ve also been promoting your new Atlantis ElectroAcoustic guitar – could you tell us a bit about that?
The Atlantis will be shipping within a few weeks – the first production run is underway. We were able to transfer the technology to the full range of string gauges. Wire strings were a challenge, but we’ve found a way to work with them and now the system can be adapted to any instrument we choose. We certainly plan on many guitar variations.
Why were wire strings such a challenge for your system?
Well, they’re just so small that the shadow I was telling you about actually gets lost when we used the bass transducer assembly. So everything has been miniaturized and fit into a much tighter spacing. But we’ve solved that problem – we can pretty much sense any string gauge that’s out there now.
As you know, guitarists are notoriously traditional. Has it been difficult to get guitar players on board with the design of the Atlantis ElectroAcoustic?
It certainly plays a part – vintageitis is what you’re talking about and it certainly has an effect. But we’ve really focused on getting guitars into the hands of players, in terms of expanding our dealer network, because you can write about it and advertise and do reviews, but until a player actually gets it in their hands, they won’t understand that it’s a new tool, a new means for expression. Granted, there are players who are not going to be early adopters, but there’s a large segment of players that are interested, and I think that’s an advantage in many ways. Magnetic pickups have been around since 1935 and the primary guitar designs on the market are from designs created in the fifties. The last real development in pickups happened in the eighties when they went active. So obviously there’s room for something new and different. Look around – every other segment of this industry has experienced technological evolution in the last 20 years that you can barely keep track of, so why not the pickups?
The ElectroAcoustic has a unique blend of radical and familiar aesthetics – are you looking to come out with a more traditional approach for those players suffering from “vintageitis?”
With my guitars, I try to give them a modern, recognizable design, but nothing that’s too out there. I try to create them based on the tradition that I learned how to build guitars in. I carefully choose the woods and don’t use any radical materials – the proper woods for tone generation don’t change. It’s just that with the optical pickup you get more tone generation from the instrument, the choice of string and the player’s style and technique.
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It can have a much greater importance. The pickup is very sensitive to different string materials and types because there’s no more interaction between the pickup and the string. You don’t need a ferrous string anymore – you can use any type of string you’d like, composition-wise. Eventually we plan to come out with some custom string options once the instrument base is larger. For instance, a copper-wound string would give you a piano sound, which you could not do with a magnetic pickup. There’s certainly a lot of uncharted territory here. Players who buy our instruments typically put their favorite brand of strings on there to start, but they’ll often find that they can experiment a lot more.
You currently market your own instrument designs, something you don’t see from most pickup manufacturers. Did that arise out of a desire to create an entirely integrated solution or out of sheer necessity?
It’s actually more interesting for me as an integrated solution. I’m very quality and detail-oriented and like having control over the instrument design. The pickup system is not a retrofit at this stage, so even when we worked with boutique and custom builders, they had to learn how to integrate the system into their instruments. I also believe that a complete instrument helps us to build our brand identity – it’s not a LightWave pickup on some other guitar. We offer an integrated system where the instrument and pickup are designed together for maximum performance. It puts the company in control of the growth and development of the entire technology.
Are there any plans to work with manufacturers in an OEM capacity?
Long-term, yes – there are a lot of manufacturers that are interested, but it’s too early to name names. We went through an OEM phase early in the beginning, working mostly with boutique and custom builders, and that was a great experience for us, in terms of product development and working with some great builders – Joe Zon, Harry Fleishman, Jens Ritter, Michael Spalt, really too many to name. LightWave pickups ended up on a lot of fantastic guitars out there and I think eventually we’ll get back to it on a bigger scale where we’re working with large, global companies. It’s one step at a time; we definitely felt that doing our own instrument lines was the logical next step.
With the nation’s economy seemingly headed for a soft patch – if not a full on recession – has it affected your plans? Do you expect players to scale back?
We’re not planning on it – you know how musicians are. The electric guitar industry has been resistant to economic fluctuations over the years and we certainly didn’t position ourselves to become a huge company overnight. We’re just trying to go after a reasonable share of the market so that we can continue to grow and offer the technology to more players on more stringed instruments.
How many people are involved with the company now?
We’re keeping it lean. This facility [in Carpinteria, CA] is mostly design and final assembly. To keep the price reasonable, we farm out a lot of the manufacturing – PC boards, guitar necks and bodies and a lot of the sub-assembly. So it’s less than ten people here right now but that’s certainly going to change. We do intend to do all of the final assembly here and the proprietary transducer work is always done in-house.
Are you relying on overseas manufacturing?
Just for the necks and bodies. We assemble, setup, test and QC every instrument here with the highest standards. We manufactured in the U.S. for a while but the price was so high that it was really a great point of resistance in getting this into a player’s hands. Now we’ve got a great manufacturing partner with really high quality and reasonable pricing. Our basic models go out the door for under $1000, which was a dramatic change for us. When we were doing production completely in the U.S., our instruments were in the $2000-$3000 price range and that kept it out of a lot of players’ hands.
What’s in store for the future of LightWave Systems?
Many electric stringed instruments. We’ll make a version of the Atlantis guitar with nylon strings, a solidbody electric guitar and maybe an archtop. We’ll definitely get into bowed string instruments – violins and cellos – since magnetic pickups don’t work with them and piezos have their shortcomings. We also envision add-on pickups for acoustic instruments. Thinking long-term, probably even a system for grand piano, which would be pricey but in a live concert or recording situation would be a great transducer solution.
We’re also very excited about hex effects (trademarked as HexFX), which is our implementation of MIDI and Hex technologies. The motherboard has a second socket and if you plug in another daughterboard, it can route the individual string signals to a 13-pin connector. From there the signal is compatible with pretty much any MIDI equipment, the Roland V line and any variety of synth boxes, as well as fan-out boxes for individual string signal routing. And when I say individual string outputs, there is a totally separate transducer for each string with zero electrical crosstalk. That gives us some real, noticeable differences like chords that are never muddy – they’re very clear and well articulated. Even when playing tight intervals like minor seconds and double-stops you can clearly hear each note. So that’s another exciting opportunity for us. Ultimately, we aim to be the dominant force in an entirely new segment of the guitar industry.
LightWave Systems
lightwave-systems.com
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The benders available today run the gamut from the relatively non-invasive Hipshot – requiring little more than removing and reinstalling the rear strap button and a fresh set of strings – to the Parsons/White system, which requires a skilled installer to remove a good-sized chunk of wood from the body. Other notable systems – such as those from designers Joe Glaser and Charlie McVay – are similar to the Parsons/White in being irreversible propositions for the guitar in question while requiring comparitively less-invasive installations.
Whatever they’re called, in the hands of skilled pickers, bender-equipped axes can melt minds. A nearly imperceptible shrug becomes the basis for a dead-on Ralph Mooney impersonation. A neck being pushed away from the player – looking like a simple strap adjustment – produces an incredible-sounding one-up/one-down bend that is impossible to replicate on a standard guitar. If you’re looking for a new way to wow your bandmates, look no further.
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The overall way in which the effect is achieved is common to all of the systems – a mechanical bending of a specific string or strings by a predetermined amount allows the fretting hand to remain stationary (or not). When picking up a B-Bender equipped guitar for the first time, it takes a while to wrap your head around the need to rely on chord shapes instead of familiar modes and scales, but once the light goes on, you’ll be resolving A-shaped add 9 chord fragments to vanilla voicings and back in no time. A short while later – after realizing how much work and effort is needed to truly master a pull-string guitar – you’ll wonder who had the chops to need one in the first place.
That person was Clarence White, a phenom in L.A.''s burgeoning bluegrass scene during the early-sixties. Clarence was fundamental in the development of what we today recognize as "hot" bluegrass picking before reaching his twenties. After nearly single-handedly defining a genre, Clarence began pursuing a studio career on the electric guitar - at the urging of James Burton, no less. The drummer for many of these sessions, as well as fellow future Nashville West and Byrds member, was Gene Parsons.
"One of Clarence''s innovative guitar techniques was to chime the high E or B string and bend it up a full tone by pulling the string down above the nut." Gene explains. "This worked great in open position, but on a particular tune he wanted to play the lick up the neck. He needed another hand to do it." Even though Gene was able to lend his help that time, he was able to foresee the need for something that allowed the player to retain their bending autonomy.
"I knew there had to be a way for Clarence to bend the string himself. I offered to install pedals and cables like those used on pedal steel guitars. Clarence refused because he wanted something that would fit inside his guitar case," Gene recounts. "After a couple of weeks of thinking about it, I came up with the idea of using the shoulder strap to actuate a string-pulling, note-bending mechanism. Not only would it fit into the guitar case, it would actually go inside the guitar! I drew up some plans that incorporated a steel guitar bridge that Sneaky Pete Kleinow procured for me. After a little convincing, Clarence bravely agreed to let me install this contraption in his beloved Telecaster. He said, ''Just don''t show me until it''s done.''" The result of Gene''s hot-rodding skills was the famous maple necked, sunburst Tele with the Plymouth Satellite badge and "Germany" decal adorning its face that routinely delivered seemingly impossible bends. The guitar is now cared for and played by Marty Stuart.
Today, Gene''s StringBenders are available in three different models. The original Parsons/White, which is the direct descendant of Gene''s first bender, is available directly through stringbender.com for $985 installed on your Telecaster or ASAT. Gene can fit these contraptions to Les Pauls or other types of guitars, as well as install additional features such as the popular long-throw option, for a slight up-charge. There is also a StringBender system available for acoustic guitars and Gene has worked with Meridian Green to develop the Parsons/Green bender. The Parsons/Green system was originally developed for Fender''s B-Bender Tele. The Fender Custom Shop had released a limited edition Clarence White Tele, which, while popular, also proved to be a challenge to manufacture consistently, with the added time needed for proper StringBender installation, equating to high costs for Fender. When faced with the task of coming up with a less-expensive, easier-to-manufacture solution, Gene enlisted the help of Meridian Green to come up with a design which mounted the moving parts on the backplate. Their completed design made installation much less of a chore, with more weight and a less smooth feel than the Parsons/White being the trade-off. While Fender is no longer producing a Bender Tele, Hipshot has picked up the slack by offering the Parsons/Green system for $380, installable by the end-user - provided the end-user is comfortable taking a router to their favorite Tele.
The feel of a Parsons/White StringBender is arguably the most comfortable for novice string-pullers - the front-strap actuated lever retains its familiar position, leaving the guitar''s inherent balance unscathed. Tuning duties are handled by a small screw on the bass bout of the guitar which is easily adjusted with a pick, limiting how far the strap can be pulled, and therefore the pitch at the end of the lever''s travel. The Parsons/Green system will feel right at home to anyone familiar with the Parsons/White system, with some minor variations, such as a scroll-wheel on the back instead of the screw on the guitar''s bass bout. Despite the added heft and not being as smooth as the Parsons/White, the P/G bender makes a fine choice for entering into the bender club.
Both systems have spawned two distinct schools of thought in regards to tuning. One is to tune a few cents sharp, leaving some wiggle room to nudge complex voicings at various spots on the neck into tune. The disadvantage to this approach is losing the point-and-click simplicity of exact tuning. Going the second route - precisely tuning a whole step up - helps when starting out by taking your ear out of the equation, allowing the player to concentrate solely on the new physical movements needed to make the bends flow. This is assuming that you are starting out with a single bender on a single string - B being the most popular, with G quickly gaining ground due to Brad Paisley''s prowess.
Another thing to be mindful of when strapping on a bender-equipped guitar is how much weight you are (perhaps unintentionally) placing on your neck via your fretting hand, making in-tune open D and A chords a challenge. Watch Marty Stewart or Brad Paisley''s posture a little more closely the next time you see them on CMT - they let the strap hold the guitar, making sure to avoid inadvertent pushes or pulls on the neck. This tends to be more of an issue for pickers who like to wrap their thumbs over the neck to fret notes, but is easily overcome once the player becomes comfortable with letting the guitar simply hang there.
Shake Those HipsBut what if you''ve got more motion in your hips than in your shoulders? Hipshot offers the Hipshot String Bender on its own for folks who like to dip their toes in the water before they dive in. Designed by David Borisoff, the Hipshot consists of an outboard system that sits on a plate mounted behind the guitar''s bridge via the rear strap button. The Hipshot is unique in that it provides full pull-string functionality with no permanent modification to your guitar and is available with an assortment of palm levers and toggle tuners in a modular configuration. This design gives the user the final say in which strings go where, ultimately allowing “Honky Tonk Woman,” “Cinnamon Girl,” and “Mama Tried” to co-exist peacefully on a set list without any undue stress or the need to constantly re-tune or swap axes. While it doesn’t feel as integrated as the other more invasive systems, the Hipshot delivers impressive string-bending capabilities. The “hip lever” is operated via a bar mounted at a right angle to a lever, to which the bended string is mounted; a thumbscrew is provided for tuning chores. The device is engaged by either pushing the neck away or swaying your hip, hence the “Hipshot” moniker.
The toggle-tuner’s ability to effortlessly shift from standard to open G to drop D tunings cannot be overstated. In addition to changing tuning from one song to the next is the ability to switch to drop D for the bridge of a tune and back to standard for the chorus. Although much of the same capability is available by installing Scruggs pegs – banjo tuners with two stops adjusted by set screws to provide two tunings on the same string – the toggle tuners require a much simpler and less invasive installation, proving less fussy for guitar duties.
Although the Hipshot can initially seem a little awkward, the process quickly becomes second nature. Ease of use, low-cost and simple installation counter a notchy feel and added difficulty when trying to hit half-step, in-between bends (compared to other systems), although both the hip lever and palm levers can be specifically set for half-step bends if desired. But there is no mistaking that the Hipshot is a highly functional, fun and easy solution for turning your guitar into a genuine pull-string machine. Although it is often thought of as the gateway drug to more expensive and integrated systems, the Hipshot is an extremely viable end-all/beall solution. With high-profile pickers like Will Ray and Dave Edmunds putting them to good use, it would be wrong to assume the Hipshot is a toy. Additionally, the Hipshot may be the only solution for guitarists who suffer from commitment-phobia yet want to cop some pedal steel licks.
For the consummate string bender, the option of using both Hipshot and P/G systems in one guitar is intriguing. In this setup, the Hipshot actuates the G string while the Parsons/Green handles the B bending chores, delivering the familiar push-down-for-B, push-away-for-G set up. With toggle tuners installed on both E strings and the A, open G tuning is achievable in a grand total of three seconds. The combination of both systems on one guitar is less schizophrenic than one would think, offering up surprising flexibility, with the Parsons/Green and Hipshot systems working relatively seamlessly in tandem.
| The Lick That Started It All Early in 1967, Gene Parsons had the foresight to bring his mono, reel-to-reel tape recorder from home to record his combo playing at a local El Monte, California club called the Nashville West. The band, consisting of Gib Guilbeau on vocals, Wayne Moore on bass, Gene on skins and Clarence White on electric guitar, was also called Nashville West. In 1978, this recording was released on vinyl as Nashville West on the Sierra-Briar Records label, and eventually showed up on CD in 1997 on Sierra Records. The first track on the CD is called – what else? – “Nashville West,” and it demonstrates the technique that ultimately spawned Gene’s development of the StringBender. With the high E string tuned down to D, Clarence pulls off a behind the nut bend up to E the second time through the main theme. The following is an extremely simplified example of the Clarence’s technique. His sense of time is unparalleled, so the main thing you should take away from this is how something as simple as a whole step bend behind the nut can make your guitar sit up within a part, as well as offer a little taste of what is possible with a proper, bender-equipped axe. |
Glaser’s Bender
No overview on pull-string systems would be complete without mentioning Glaser benders. Developed by Joe Glaser in the late-seventies, his benders use an ingenious installation method requiring several small routes rather than one large one to lessen the removed wood’s impact on the instrument’s original sound. These routes are located under the pickguard, neckplate, and bridge. There is also a single, small diameter (3/8”) hole drilled through the length of the guitar. The small lever actuating the device resides on the neck plate, altering the guitar’s strap location, although the change in feel is fairly negligible. According to Joe, he places the lever here because it results in a more effective pull due to the straighter angle of the strap in relation to the lever. Accordingly, the Glaser system is the smoothest of the bunch, featuring a screw at the guitar’s lower bout for adjusting the lever’s resistance, allowing the player to select from breath-and-it’ll-go-sharp easy to my-shoulder’s- sore hard and all points in between.
Glaser’s ingenious and unobtrusive installation leaves little doubt why players like Jimmy Olander and Brent Mason rely on his benders. With smooth, effortless operation, the only negatives that can be leveled at the Glaser system are the change in feel due to the strap’s new placement and installation waiting times. Joe installs the bender systems in his shop, but benders are just one of the items Glaser’s business handles. The resulting turn-around times can end up being counted in months rather than weeks.
The biggest difficulty when trying to choose a pull-string system of your own is lack of availability. Since Fender quit producing the B-Bender Tele, the question of where to try one out has become even more pertinent. Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – pull-string systems aren’t for everybody, so they often pop up used. Keeping an eye on TDPRI.com’s classified section and eBay can turn up the occasional deal. Putting the word out on your favorite Tele forums and dutifully perusing your local Craigslist classifieds can also help unearth hidden gems.
If sleuthing around isn’t your cup of tea, the Hipshot system is hard to beat and can easily deliver journeyman-level bender fun without demolishing the Christmas club funds. By the same token, if you have the extra cash and don’t mind jumping right in, give Gene or Joe a buzz and tell them what you’re looking for. Both are passionate about what they do – choose the one who speaks to you.
| Bender Resources If you’d like to learn more about these pull-string systems, check out the following websites.
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