Well, that’s a first. Must be the one Mike was talking about in the interview of “nobody doing it before”. Is there any other products coming out? Nice to see something new.

What about the Danelectro Sitar Swami?

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/danelectro/60s/sitarswami

Hopefully Flick will get in here to answer some questions.

Here’s my first one. Sitars are tuned in just intonation while guitars are tuned in equal tempered intonation. Are the sympathetic sounds in just or equal? If I play just scales with a slide or on a fretless, would it work out, or sound out of tune? Would the effect work well with a microtonally fretted guitar?

It’s a rather fringe question, but I’ve been considering making a fretless guitar for more eastern sounding music & I’m wondering if this would work well with it.

how do you think it sounds on synth or drum machine?

Since you asked for me… Here’s a little background on the Ravish.

LEAD VOICE
The LEAD voice will track your playing very well, if you play with a slide it will track it. Basically whatever you play on the guitar, the LEAD voice will make it sound like a sitar is playing it. The more your playing mimics how a Sitar player would actually play, the closer it will sound to a real sitar. You have control over the LEAD’s timbre, kind of like a tone control and its volume or level.

SYMPATHETIC DRONES – here’s where I try to answer Julian’s question
This is where the Ravish really begins to shine. As you play your guitar, the sympathetic strings start to resonate in whatever key you have chosen. Let’s start with E Major. No matter what you play, the sympathetics will ring out in E major. They will track your pitch a little bit, if you play lower notes, the sympathetics will resonate lower notes in the chosen key, if you play higher, the sympathetics will produce higher notes in that key. Minor mode does the same thing but in E minor instead of E major. The exotics scales we are still working on and are disabled on the units we sent to NAMM. If you were to play with a slide, within the given scale you have chosen, I think it would sound great. When playing your guitar more traditionally, in most situations, having a tuned guitar when playing along with the sympathetics, is essential. For the sympathetics you also have control over their Timbre and volume Level as well as a dedicated output just for the sympathetics so they can go to their own effects and amp if you want.

MORE ON SYMPATHETICS – both of the following functions require you to be in KEY mode
You can tune the sympathetics to your instrument. First you choose one of the three types of scales: Major, Minor or Exotic, then hold down the DRONE/TUNE FSW. You play one note, that note will set the root key of the sympathetic’s scale. If the guitar is a little out of tune, that’s ok, the Ravish will track to the tuning of the root note you play. So if you want to quickly change to F# major, as long as the Ravish is set to major, you press and hold down the TUNE FSW, then play an F#, now the sympathetics are in F#.

In addition you can input your own scales for the sympathetics strings. You press and hold the DRONE/TUNE FSW, then play each note you want the scale to contain. The Ravish will track each pitch and recreate it when the sympathetic strings ring out. If you then save a preset, your scale will be saved along with the all the other knob and parameter settings. If you only play just one note while holding down the DRONE/TUNE FSW, the Ravish retunes the currently selected scale to that note but if you play more than one note then it begins creating a new scale from the notes you play.

DRONE/TUNE FSW
This footswitch allows you to freeze the sympathetic strings if you press and hold the FSW, except when you are in KEY mode. While in KEY mode this FSW allows you to tune the sympathetic strings. If you press and release this FSW, it will load the current preset or move up to the next one.

whoa.
That’s huge.

so say I have something that doesn’t use some sort of standardised pitch like the Korg ER-1 [where all you have is a ‘pitch’ knob and a remodulating option- no defined values or anything], I can tune the sympathetics to be drones of whichever drum patches [provided I initially set it up/train it to the drum kit i’m using]?

If so, kind of an interesting method of doing the reverse of a slicer effect.