Got my Landscape Ferrous today.
The ultra-quick review is: it's not an eBow (which does magnetic feedback), it just spins magnets on a disc. So the frequencies that it excites are determined by the speed of rotation. You have a dial, an inconveniently located touch plate, a button, or CV to control that speed.
In my testing so far it works best on instruments that (A) has lots of potential vibration modes and (B) really wants to resonate acoustically and (C) has ferrous strings/tines/etc. The best were:
Bowed psaltery: chromatically tuned and closely spaced strings, so there are almost always multiple strings within the magnets' influence excited at whatever spin rate is happening at any given time. Change the rate and shift the chord and harmonics. But it never vibrates so hard it gets into trouble. Neat.
Acoustic guitar: six nice longish strings to choose from and a good acoustic resonating body to let them ring.
17-tine kalimba: those tines are willing to bend their pitch to sing out, and in fact if you tune it in too closely it resonates a bit too much and starts rattling. There's more metal mass here and you have to be careful not to let the magnets pull the gizmo into the tines. But if you can finesse it it's pretty great.
Hasn't been that exciting on bass guitar (but the pickup definitely picks up the spinning magnets!), dulcimer (not enough different resonances), small or large steel tongue drums. It did nothing at all with my marching xylophone (probably aluminum bars) or Remo ocean drum (no idea what the shot is in there).
I didn't try the shakers I have to see if any of those have steel shot. Or the snare of my mini cajon, or the lap steel guitar.
The ultra-quick review is: it's not an eBow (which does magnetic feedback), it just spins magnets on a disc. So the frequencies that it excites are determined by the speed of rotation. You have a dial, an inconveniently located touch plate, a button, or CV to control that speed.
In my testing so far it works best on instruments that (A) has lots of potential vibration modes and (B) really wants to resonate acoustically and (C) has ferrous strings/tines/etc. The best were:
Bowed psaltery: chromatically tuned and closely spaced strings, so there are almost always multiple strings within the magnets' influence excited at whatever spin rate is happening at any given time. Change the rate and shift the chord and harmonics. But it never vibrates so hard it gets into trouble. Neat.
Acoustic guitar: six nice longish strings to choose from and a good acoustic resonating body to let them ring.
17-tine kalimba: those tines are willing to bend their pitch to sing out, and in fact if you tune it in too closely it resonates a bit too much and starts rattling. There's more metal mass here and you have to be careful not to let the magnets pull the gizmo into the tines. But if you can finesse it it's pretty great.
Hasn't been that exciting on bass guitar (but the pickup definitely picks up the spinning magnets!), dulcimer (not enough different resonances), small or large steel tongue drums. It did nothing at all with my marching xylophone (probably aluminum bars) or Remo ocean drum (no idea what the shot is in there).
I didn't try the shakers I have to see if any of those have steel shot. Or the snare of my mini cajon, or the lap steel guitar.
Statistics: Posted by foosnark — Wed Aug 28, 2024 3:21 am