Saturday, December 5, 2015

New Complexity's Reso-Harp and Harmonic Master


I usually don't post about other people's guitars but I've been following for some years the remarkable work of Lewis Waters, the man behind New Complexity - a guitar company located in Melbourne, Australia (so unfortunately I never had the opportunity to try one of his instruments...) I posted already about them on Guitarz - here, here and here.

Lewis is mostly busy with expanding the range of acoustic sounds one can get out of an electric guitar. He built several instruments with third bridges and pickups amplifying harmonics that are usually hidden within the main sound. New Complexity's new instrument, the Resonant Harp Guitar, adds ten sympathetic strings to the usual six strings, activated by a Sustainiac (electromagnetic sustainer system that keeps the string vibrating endlessly) responding to the main pickups. 





There is also an updated version of the Harmonic Master with an angled tuning bridge that allows to tune the strings behind the main bridge -  that can used either for the harmonics or as a small harp. The different string portions have their own pickups and outputs and can be amplified and effected independently.

I hope that someday a contemporary music composer (someone reading this blog maybe) will notice Lewis' instruments and compose pieces specially for them and exploit all their possibilities - though they would also fit very well for psychedelic pop - or whatever music that will come in the future, inspired by these guitars (remember that telecasters were created for country music, but spawned unexpected music styles!)




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