Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This post is inspired by this comment by Wormdiet:

"Dropped D droning string and a long-period, shallow phaser will also get a cool bagpipe sound going, for those of you into weird textures."

I thought I'd start a new thread because I love this kind of stuff. I'm not a purist when it comes to Rics and jangle and I'm curious to know what interesting sounds people are pulling out of their guitars.

My personal favourite is a 380L PZ with chorus, delay, my amp's reverb, and a volume pedal to completely negate the attack. Big swelling clouds of modulated sound.

I can get some lovely flute sounds with an Ebow and my 381's bridge pick-up, too. Just play the unwound strings around the twelfth fret. A bit of delay helps to smooth the sound out and make it more mellow. I also love to run the Ebow over the pick-up with a big delay on it. You get a nice volume swell that then repeats in a nice vibrato pattern.

Hi,

I've used my 330/12 as a lead on a few songs. And I'm not talking chimey/jangley here! I dialed up some crunch and went with it. It worked great. Not for all things, but you have to experiment.

Hey John.
What's an Ebow exactly?


I don't really have effects pedals myself but I enjoy playing with my volume pedal, if I put all three pickups on my 370 on with max volume you can get a cool sound that you can control with the volume pedal.

It is an "electronic bow" like a bow is for a violin. You hold and move it over the strings.

Oh...

My friend nails Dazed and Confused from The Song Remains The Same everytime, so I'm actually quite familiar with it... It's ****ing crazy to watch someone do it in person!

But is there actually a difference from the "electronic bow" and a standard violin bow?

I tried it once on my 370 but the pickguard was in the way...

The Ebow uses an electric magnet and can only vibrate one string at a time.

Also, you can only use it on the 2,3,4 and 5 strings effectively. You can't really use it on either of the "E" strings. The response time is too slow. The Ebow (as near as I can figure) contains two small electromagnets that set the string in motion. If you use it on the 1 or 6 string, it's tough to position the Ebow so that it gets the string ringing properly. It can be done, but it's hard.

So am I the only noisenik on the site? No Sonic Youth, Spacemen 3, Nurse with Wound, Merzbow etc. fans around? Heck, even the Edge does some pretty weird things with his 330/12 ...

Would the e-bow work with a 12?

My *other* trick works best with a 12. basically, choose a nice, complex chord shape to finger about 1/2 way of the neck. pull a pick slowly (but firmly) across the strings as near to the bridge as possible, from High E to LOw, making very audible clipping sounds. Suspensions and added 9ths/11ths work best. Hard to describe but it's neat.

THis is my harpsichord imitation.

The Ebow does work with a twelve, but it doesn't yield a sound that's any different from a six string, which is kind of disappointing. Thanks for the tip, Wormdiet. I'm going to try that. Love those gorgeous "add 9" chords.