 Mobius Megatar ToneWeaver Dual Two-Handed Tapping Musical Instrument | |
| String instrument | |
|---|---|
| Classification | String |
| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 321.322 (Composite chordophone) |
| Related instruments | |
The Megatar is a stringed musical instrument designed to be played using a two-handed tapping technique. It is manufactured by the American company Mobius Megatar.
The Megatar is a fretted instrument with 12 strings, divided in two sections of six, where one set of strings is for bass and the other for melody. Both sides are normally tuned in fourths intervals. Other tunings and setups are common. The scale length is similar to an electric bass guitar. It uses electronic pickups that should be connected to an amplifier to produce sound. The instruments have two embedded, dual-action truss rods and a stereo 1/4" output. The Megatars are usually made with bolt-on necks. However, from 2007, all new instruments are exclusively "neck-through". All models are either built from light-colored maple and alder or premium dark woods like mahogany, sapele, wenge, and rosewood.
A redesigned version was released in 2014. [1]
There are several models of the Megatar available, the "TrueTapper" and the "MaxTapper" being the basic models. One model, the "ToneWeaver", is equipped with the Ralph Novak "Fanned Frets" System. The "MidiTapper" is also equipped with a MIDI pickup system, which can drive synthesizers. The "Piezo-tapper" has GraphTech "Acoustiphonic" piezo pickups installed. A Megatar LapTapper comes with a custom table-top support system built in, so that the instrument can be played on a table or stand, like a keyboard.
The bass guitar, electric bass, or simply bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music.
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals. The vibration occurs when a guitar player strums, plucks, fingerpicks, slaps or taps the strings. The pickup generally uses electromagnetic induction to create this signal, which being relatively weak is fed into a guitar amplifier before being sent to the speaker(s), which converts it into audible sound.
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the fingers/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting with the fingers of the other hand. The sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.
The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and is used to play bass lines, melody lines, chords, or textures. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can also cover several of these musical parts simultaneously.
Tapping, also called tap style (tapstyle), touch-style, and two-handed tapping, is a guitar playing technique where a string is fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion of being tapped onto the fretboard, with either hand, as opposed to the standard technique of fretting with one hand and picking with the other. Tapping is the primary technique intended for some instruments such as the Chapman Stick, and is the alternative method for the Warr Guitar and others. Tapped passages incorporate the techniques of hammer-on and pull-off, but with both hands freed to produce notes. Some players rely extensively or exclusively on tapping.
The acoustic bass guitar is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually larger than a steel-string acoustic guitar. Like the traditional electric bass guitar and the double bass, the acoustic bass guitar commonly has four strings, which are normally tuned E-A-D-G, an octave below the lowest four strings of the 6-string guitar, which is the same tuning pitch as an electric bass guitar.
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly.
The Bongo is a model of bass guitar manufactured by Music Man, a division of Ernie Ball. It was first introduced at the NAMM Show on March 21, 2003. Ernie Ball president Sterling Ball designed the instrument in conjunction with the Music Man Research and Development department and BMW's Designworks team. It is equipped with an 18-volt 4-band preamp designed by Dudley Gimpel with help from Cliff Hugo and other Music Man artists. It also sports a sleek, carved basswood body with high-gloss polyester finish and a satin-finish painted 34" scale maple neck with rosewood fingerboard featuring 24 high-profile wide frets and crescent moon-shaped position inlays. These basses are generally known for their dual humbucking pickup configuration, as they are the first twin humbucker-equipped models released by Music Man since the introduction of their Sabre and Cutlass bass guitars in the late 1970s.
Godin Guitars is a Canadian manufacturing company heaquartered in Montreal that specializes in string instruments. The company is owned by founder Robert Godin.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to guitars:
A solid-body musical instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electromagnetic pickup system to directly detect the vibrations of the strings; these instruments are usually plugged into an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to be heard. Solid-body instruments are preferred in situations where acoustic feedback may otherwise be a problem and are inherently both less expensive to build and more rugged than acoustic electric instruments.
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the guitar family, that projects the sounds of its vibrating strings acoustically through the air. Originally just called a guitar, the retronym 'acoustic guitar' came in use to distinguish it from an electric guitar, that relies on an electronic amplification system. The sound waves from the strings of an acoustic guitar resonate through the instrument's body, amplifying the sound. Typically, a guitar's body is a sound box, of which the top side serves as a sound board that enhances the vibration sounds of the strings. In standard tuning the guitar's six strings are tuned (low to high) E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4.
A guitar synthesizer is any one of a number of musical instrument systems that allow a guitarist to access synthesizer capabilities.
Bradford Reed is an American multi-instrumentalist, experimental luthier, and member of the avant-garde band King Missile III. In the 1980s he invented the pencilina, a custom made string instrument.
The Fender American Deluxe Series was a line of electric guitars and basses introduced by Fender in 1995 and discontinued in 2016. It was upgraded in 2004 and 2010 before being replaced by the American Elite series in 2016.
The Parker Fly was a type of electric guitar built by Parker Guitars. It was designed by Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, and first produced in 1993. The Fly is unique among electric guitars in the way it uses composite materials. It is notable for its light weight and resonance. It was also one of the first electric guitars to combine traditional magnetic pickups with piezoelectric pickups, allowing the guitarist to access both acoustic and electric tones. Production ended in 2016 and the company has not released a new model of any kind since.
The StarrBoard is a stringed musical instrument invented by John D. Starrett and patented on July 23, 1985.
The touch guitar is a stringed instrument of the guitar family which has been designed to use a fretboard-tapping playing style. Touch guitars are meant to be touched or tapped, not strummed.
Experimental luthiers are luthiers who take part in alternative stringed instrument manufacturing or create original string instruments altogether.
The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele, is the world's first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music. Introduced for national distribution as the Broadcaster in the autumn of 1950, it was the first guitar of its kind manufactured on a substantial scale and has been in continuous production in one form or another since its first incarnation.