Saturday 19 April 2014

More 1960s innovation: the WEM Fifth Man Project IV guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Here's another all-but-forgotten guitar innovation from the 1960s. From Watkins Electric Music in London, it's the WEM Fifth Man Project IV guitar which could perhaps be thought of as a pre-cursor to the Fernandes Sustainer. Magnets either side of the top (i.e. body end) of the neck are used to create a magnetic field across the strings resulting in a sustaining drone effect. Check out the below video to get a better understanding of what it does.


The guitar pictured at the top of this blog post is currently listed on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £749, but please note that it is in need of restoration, of example one of the neck magnets is missing.

G L Wilson

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5 comments:

  1. Wow, in the immortal words of FZ, that's like an icepick in your forehead.

    Johnny Guitar Watson would beg you to turn down the treble.

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  2. I don't think you could get more of a 60's sound than that. The name and logo are great too rather like a 60's spy movie. I wonder if it would be easy to reproduce the circuitry. any schematics out there?

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  3. Fascinating piece or vintage tech!
    The sustainer feature was probably too noisy to be practical, but I thought the sound at the beginning was very usable (you could turn off the 'sting' treble boost). Seems to be a lot of compression in the circuit, certainly ahead of its time!

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  4. holy CRAP the thing has a STING button....spirits in the material world, indeed....I want a STING button...

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  5. Congrats on finding this! I wonder if Vintage Guitar Magazine has covered this oddball.

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