Exotica: TogaMan GuitarViol.(GEAR)(Product/Service Evaluation)

If you have ever tried to emulate a certain '60s rock star by stroking your electric guitar with a violin bow, you know that the results can be less than mind-blowing. For starters, guitar pickups are not designed to capture sounds created by bowing, so chances are the tone will be scratchy and thin. More significantly, because the guitar's fretboard and bridge are on a level plane, it is impossible to play individual strings other than the first and sixth. Sure, you can make some cool sounds--particularly if you add lots of echo and reverb and maybe a wah pedal--but the bottom line is that you will never be able to play arpeggios and single-note lines in the same way a cellist or viola player can. Or at least you couldn't until now.

Wanting to have his guitar and bow it, too, TogaMan (a.k.a. Jonathan Wilson) created the GuitarViol ($2,998-$3,598 retail/street N/A), a hybrid combining elements of the guitar and traditional bowed instruments. It has six strings, a fretted neck, and is tuned like a guitar, but its fretboard and bridge are curved to allow access to individual strings, and there are cutaways on either side of the playing area to accommodate a bow.

Predictably, the electronics used in the GuitarViol are not your standard fare. The proprietary BOWD Horizon pickup is built directly into the bridge, and it's connected to an EMG 6CH 6-channel mixer with individual gain trim-pots for each string (accessible from the rear cavity). There is also a modified EMG 4SW active magnetic pickup system with a single sensor for each two strings. The two pickups are routed through an EMG active BTS System, which combines individual Volume controls for each pickup (stacked), active boost/cut Bass and Treble controls, and a Master Volume control. And if you want to move even further into uncharted musical realms, you can add the optional Graph Tech Hexpander MIDI pickup for an additional $350.

Each instrument is hand-built to order and ...