Yamaha EZAG

[dagosto]

I got this thing on an exchange for a broken reverb pedal and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it. It has one nylon string looped around to simulate the six strings, the picking action is very convincing, much like a real nylon string. There are twelve sets of six elongated bottons to simulate an octave of frets. They feel a little weird at first but any guitarist can still hop right on and play this thing. There is a speaker inside where the soundhole would be and the platic body acts as an acoustic chamber. Just playing the open strings on the first acoustic patch is pretty suprising. There are a bunch of soungs that you can strum along with while the guitar lights up the frets that need to be pushed down but all the songs are incredibly cheesey. No matter though,I intended to use it just as a MIDI controller.

There are some issues with this controller that are unavoidable. One cannot strum chords with muted strings in between played or fretted strings, the open string will just sound. This is one thing that requires an adjustment of playing style. Also when I connected it up to an outboard synth or plugin just pressing frets would trigger a nearly ful volume note. To deal with this I had to do some adjusting of velocity curves but after that was doen this was a pretty powerful tool for me. I was playing as a full orchestra on this thing in very little time and loving it. I think it will be a great tool for my scoring and for any guitarist who uses midi but does not have killer keyboard skills

This thing also got me out of a jam I was recording a cover of an old Irish tune and needed a banjo sound. I was supposed to borrow one from a friend but that fell through and my deadline was quickly approaching. Thats when I saw the EZAG in the corner. I plugged this think straight in and set it for the banjo sound. It even had an different open string tunings so I just had to use straight bars. It wasn't a great sound but in a thick mix it added just what the mix lacked.

It definitely not perfect but considering the cost of other options of converting guitar to MIDI I believe this was a worthwile purpose, even if it is marketed as sort of a toy.

[dolivas]

i have to admit Im very intrigued by that controller now. Would it be sorta like the old Casio guitars? I think the only major difference is how you fret. Im right now looking into other cheap alternative controllers. Here is another one that came to mind which is the Suzuki QChord (as opposed to the older Omnichord) which is basically a midi autoharp/synth thingamajig:



Which is found quite cheaply on the eBay right now. Ill buy one soon and post my comments about it. It's just cool to see midi controllers that aren't key-based in use.

[GearJunkie]

i had an omni-chord for a while until someone stole it. the thing was outstanding. the newer versions look so freakin cool.