The Duesenberg Multibender
Duesenberg Guitars designer Martin Huch takes some time with Gearwire to show off his eye-popping and ear-pleasing Multibender. The invention is a replacement tailpiece (installation holes drilled to fit standard Telecasters Martin says, even though in this demo vid he uses a Duesenberg Double Cat) that installs string-slackening levers for use with the heel of your pick hand. These levers act the same way as the pedals of a pedal steel guitar, allowing you to get frighteningly good pedal steel play out of an ordinary electric. Given how difficult pedal steel is to learn to play, the Multibender represents a gigantic advance for players, cutting weeks or months off of the time it normally takes to get competent at traditional pedal steel. Check this out!
ROB WARMOWSKI: Hey everybody. Welcome to the floor of Musikmesse 2007. I'm Rob Warmowski and we're here in the Duesenberg booth, and speaking with Martin, the player for Duesenberg, and also Martin, I'm sorry, what was your last name, Martin?
MARTIN HUCH: Huch. Martin Huch.
ROB WARMOWSKI: Martin helped design the Duesenberg Double Cats Pedal System. We just heard -- We had a chance to hear him play, and it sounds like an amazing slide guitar. Tell us a little bit about how you got a slide guitar sound out of a normal electric guitar.
MARTIN HUCH: Yeah. It's very simple. With this system to get -- for instance, this guitar is now tuned to E major. If you engage both pedals to get to come to an A major...,
[MARTIN HUCH DEMONSTRATING USAGE OF THE DUESENBERG MULTIBERGER]
...and that means it's the same as the two main pedals of the pedal steel guitar.
ROB WARMOWSKI: And the mechanism there, this is a rocker mechanism?
MARTIN HUCH: Yes. It's developed by Duesenberg Guitars.
ROB WARMOWSKI: Very nice. And so, you go from E major to A major, and is that G maybe or no.
MARTIN HUCH: You can get even minor chords on a major tuning. I'm going to show it yet.
ROB WARMOWSKI: Yeah. Let's take a look.
[MARTIN HUCH PERFORMING SLIDE GUITAR WITH THE DUESENBERG MULTIBENDER]
ROB WARMOWSKI: Real nice stuff. Real nice. Thank you so much.
MARTIN HUCH: And it's quite simple to learn compared to a pedal steel. You need a very expensive instrument and 10 years of practice, and this is to be checked in two weeks. It's very simple.
ROB WARMOWSKI: Terrific. Well thank you very much for that.
MARTIN HUCH: You're welcome.
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