A Little Thunder Surprises Customers with D-String Bass Signal Activation

Leave it to Steve Vai’s marketing director to successfully invent, patent, crowdfund and ship a new pickup concept with a bonus hardware feature, just waiting to be unlocked with a firmware update.

By now, you might know about A Little Thunder, a humbucker that adds a powerful drop octave bass signal to the bottom E, A and now D strings, while still preserving all six strings with an 8.2k DC humbucker.

No 9V battery, MIDI or modifying the body of your guitar. Make three simple soldering connections, charge the onboard battery with a Micro USB cable and you’re shaking the room with a powerful low end from your guitar! Battery provides 12 hours of bass signal uptime, or about two weeks between charges with one hour/night playing time.

Customers can download the new firmware through their user account login at alittethunder.com and choose between having the E/A strings or E/A/D strings as bass signals by double pressing the capacitive touch controls. If you purchased your A Little Thunder in 2016, your unit already has the latest firmware. Simply press both cap touch areas and the unit will activate the D string.

Alternative firmware includes the ability to disable -2 octave mode & a third firmware download disables the capacitive touch controls all together in favor of running a wire from the back of A Little Thunder to a push/pull pot, button or toggle switch to turn the drop bass on/off.

Guitar World readers can save $25 on their order and receive free worldwide shipping by using code “guitarworld” until the end of the month!