It's always exciting to see what effects pedal ideas will surface on Kickstarter next and UK designer Gareth Whittock has a prototype that has all kinds of potential for slide guitarists… and indeed any electric player.
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As you can hear in the demo above, the Vibraslide nails the style of David Gilmour's ethereal sustaining lap steel tones in Pink Floyd's Breathe (In The Air) from Dark Side Of The Moon.
"Sustain has always been the Holy Grail for lap and pedal steel guitar players," Gareth tells MusicRadar. "Well now you can have as much as you want under the player's control via a foot switch or pedal.
"Not only that but by inserting other stomp boxes / pedals into the feedback network, hitherto unheard sounds can be heard emanating from the instrument, ranging from ethereal harmonics to gross intermodulation distortion to theremin sounds, all under the player's control."
It's the Bristol builder's first pedal design after his innovative Aum and Chaos Guitars designs.
After mostly making his own parts for his past guitar designs, Gareth needs to get PCBs and new bespoke parts manufactured for the Vibraslide to go into production.
"I've always been into expanding the sonic palette of my guitars," he tells us, "and after I got into making my own strange guitars, I decided to make a guitar pedal that could change the guitar sound but in an organic and musically useful way but a way that was unique."
The pedal itself is only part of the equation; the Vibraslide includes a special active slide, hand made by Voodoo slides in the UK.
"I don't believe in doing something I'm not proud of and designing an original pedal puts a bit of a smile on my face," Gareth adds on his Kickstarter page. "I want people to be making amazing music with these pedals. It makes me feel I've contributed to the sum of musical exploration in a small way."
He's offering two different versions of the pedal to backers with estimated delivery in October and November 2020, each including a glass active slide.
For more info about the Vibraslide, head over to kickstarter.com
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