If you’ve screwed around much with an EBow—you know, that battery-powered plastic thingie that you slide against your guitar strings to magnetically invoke infinite sustain—you may have also noticed that it works on steel-string acoustic guitar, especially on the unwound first and second strings. It’s hardly an earth-shaking tone— just a thin whine, really— though you can sometimes use it to good effect, compressed and processed within a mix.
But when I got my first Dobro last year (okay, I was a little slow getting around to it) the technique really came alive for me, and I’ve been using it on tons of tracks ever since.
The Dobro’s metal cones amplify the tone and emphasize its eerie resonance, and the technique sounds fab when playing with a tone bar (FWIW, I dig the wooden-handled Shubb GS). It’s probably the closest you can come to making a guitar sound like a Theremin. Which, of course, should be one of the ultimate goals of any guitarist.
Here’s an example excerpt, along with regular acoustic guitar and some other instruments:
Acoustic EBow DemoI think it sounds coolest drenched in weird delay and/or reverb.
Any other EBowniacs out there? Got any tips, tricks, or trenchant observations? Let’s hear ’em!
Leave a Reply