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I first got the idea for
this back in the mid 90's. Frustrated from emulating slide guitar sounds on the
keyboard element of the
Swiss Army Bass, I got thinking...why not
commit a truly authentic act of self indulgence. At that, I set out to figure out how to play pedal steel guitar
with one hand while playing bass with the other - once and for all. I figured that this could done fairly simply by
mounting a slide on a carriage over the strings and reversing the action of
the whole instrument. This would allow me to rest my palm on the carriage
and fret and pick with the use of just one hand.
The original rig was really
clunky but I did manage to toss it on the back of a cart and go play in the
subway. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I had to overcome
a natural aversion to stepping onto a subway platform and whipping out
this freakizoic instrument and start playing it. I did the best for the Brooklyn-bound passengers at the Lafayette/Broadway stop. It's a relatively quiet
station with low central ceilings (cozy almost). I would sit and play this
improvisational, heroin-ated, down-home country, Indian, Chinese sounding
shit. I tried to keep it as relaxing as possible for the crowd heading home
in the late evening and I guess they appreciated it because I always went home
with a lot more money than I left with. It was cool getting getting paid to
learn how to play this thing...only in New York.
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Players right palm rests on lateral sliding carriage enabling single-handed slide guitar. |
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Bass guitar is
played simultaneously using only the left hand employing a guitar technique
known as hammer-ons . |
 Unlike
conventional guitars, the pickup is positioned toward the
headstock, thus this instrument's tonal operation is reversed. In other
words it's bass ackwards. |
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Magnets on the underside of the slide
carriage mechanism address the two long metal inlays on the face of the
instrument keeping the slide in place. A pair of floating magnets addresses
the smaller metal inlays (ok, they're nails) on either side of the
instrument and act somewhat as frets.
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The pedal
pulls the cable core which pulls the "G' string, increasing its pitch to
different increments.
The guitar is tuned in 5ths
with the "G" string being tuned to a major second. This allows the
instrument to produce a multi-octave major triad when the pedal is fully
depressed and a minor triad when the pedal is halfway depressed.
OK? |
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A bicycle cable pulls the
guitar's "G" string directly from below it on the
bridge.
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The original prototype
employed
drawer tracks mounted on either side of the "guitar" with corresponding wheels
on the slide carriage as a means of mounting the carriage over the
strings. I carved indentations into the tracks that jibed with
where the frets would be on a standard guitar. This allowed me to feel the
exact spot where the slide carriage should come to rest for any given note(s). In the
meantime, controlling the pitch of the "G" string in relation to
the other strings evolved from a crude drum pedal design to a more accurate
system that consists of a keyboard pedal, duct tape, and some extraneous
drum hardware. In the second prototype I replaced the draw tracks with
copper pipe (I was on a serious copper pipe tip at the time). The
mechanism functioned much more smoothly but was outdone by the current
prototype described above. |
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An earlier prototype employed a
copper pipe for the slide mechanism. Jackson: take your shoes off you little
commie |
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| Every few years I pull this
thing out, dust it off, work on it, improve it and play it until my brain
bleeds and I get burnt out and throw the thing in the corner.
As
far as this series of recordings goes, I came up with a set of familiar
cover songs and
perform them in an intimate, stripped down way, sort of the opposite of
the Johnny Skilsaw thing. The Egotar is great for making up songs but my
focus here was expanding as a player while producing some familiar
music that's easy to listen for a change. I intentionally
chose songs I believe to be great songs, many of which
have complex chord progressions and huge poly chords that seriously
hurt my brain.
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