Recently, guitarist and A Little Thunder founder Andy Alt visited Guitar World to shoot a demo video for his new guitar pickup, A Little Thunder.
A Little Thunder, which was designed to replace a humbucker, adds a bass signal to the two lowest strings on electric guitars, leaving the signal of all six guitar strings in tact.
The addition of the bass feature requires no physical modifications to the guitar: no drilling, routing or adding strings. Nor will guitarists need to replace 9-volt batteries or use MIDI. They just need to remove their existing humbucker, and—with about five minutes of installation time—they'll have the ability to push a button to activate A Little Thunder.
The three controls are on the custom-designed pickup ring: an on/off switch, a -1 or -2 octave switch and a polyphonic (two bass notes at once) or “low note priority” mode (The pickup detects the lowest note being played and applies the bass effect only to that note).
Because the technology is housed within the pickup, players will experience virtually no latency or tracking issues, which they might experience with external technologies, such as octave pedals.
A Little Thunder was conceived, patented and created by Alt, the online marketing director for Steve Vai and, along with Vai, co-founder of GuitarTV.com. Alt is also the lead guitarist for Drake Bell of Nickelodeon’s Drake and Josh.
For more information, check out the video below and visit alittlethunder.com.
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Damian is Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World magazine. In past lives, he was GW’s managing editor and online managing editor. He's written liner notes for major-label releases, including Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'The Complete Epic Recordings Collection' (Sony Legacy) and has interviewed everyone from Yngwie Malmsteen to Kevin Bacon (with a few memorable Eric Clapton chats thrown into the mix). Damian, a former member of Brooklyn's The Gas House Gorillas, was the sole guitarist in Mister Neutron, a trio that toured the U.S. and released three albums. He now plays in two NYC-area bands.
