John Hasbrouck started playing guitar in 1975 and since the late 1980s has been accumulating a collection of peculiar--and often rare--gadgets for acoustic instruments. Last time he talked about the Ragamaster and the Aspri Natural Acoustic Reverb. But those are not the only oddball effects in Hasbrouck's collection.

There is one he refers to as the "the non-ambidextrous Hammer Jammer." The "non-ambidextrous" part of the name was added by Hasbrouck,

"I'm a little upset that the Hammer Jammer is designed for a right-handed player, since I play left-handed, and so the fun I've had with this thing is somewhat limited. This gadget retrofits over the strings where the neck joins the body," says Hasbrouck. "It has six felt-covered hammers which are identical in concept if not design to the hammers found inside a piano. And it works just like a piano: the player strikes a button which mechanically causes the hammers to hit the strings and then immediately bounce away, causing the string to vibrate and a note to sound."

He notes that these gadgets come with a cassette recording of someone Hasbrouck describes as an "insane virtuoso musician" who is a master of the gadget in question (and likely the inventor). Since Hasbrouck says these, invariably, have the virtuoso playing otherworldly tunes you will never be able to duplicate you might want to never listen to them.

Another piece from Hasbrouck's collection is the Enhancr (and no this is not a typo). This is a piece of wire the length of the saddle with six tiny metal cones. The cones each have a hole from tip to base and the wire goes through these holes. One side of the cones is flat. Then there are little blobs of rubber which prevent the cones from falling off.

"The Enhancr is placed beneath the strings between the saddle and the bridge pins so that the cones are wedged between the strings and the bridge, with the flat side of each cone resting on the bridge. The theory is this: the sound of a flattop acoustic guitar comes from the energy of the vibrating strings being transmuted to the bridge which results in the top of the guitar vibrating, which moves air molecules creating sound. When the cones are wedged between the strings and the bridge, additional energy from the vibrating strings is transmuted through the cones to the bridge and thus more energy goes to the top of the guitar, resulting in greater volume and a richer tone," says Hasbrouck. "I have to admit, the effect is very subtle. In fact, I am reminded of a Monty Python sketch about public housing: John Cleese is interviewing Eric Idle, who is a resident of a new, cheaply built high-rise. The building will only stay up as long as the occupants believe in it. When Eric Idle momentarily questions his belief, the building begins to fall down. What I'm saying is that this gadget requires you to believe in it for it to work."

Yet another gadget Hasbrouck uses, is the Varichord capo.

"The Varichord capo is so cool that I almost don't want to tell anyone about it. Actually, you first need to know about the Third Hand Capo, which was developed about 25 years ago by some friends of mine. The Third Hand is actually six individual pieces of rubber that can be used in combination to capo fewer than six strings over a given fret. It is similar to, but more versatile than, the partial capos on the market which can capo two or three adjacent strings," says Hasbrouck. "The Varichord capo goes one step further. It's nearly impossible to describe what it looks like, except to say that it has the appearance of a medieval torture device. Better is to describe what it does: like the Third Hand capo, the Varichord can capo individual strings. But it can do this over a span of up to three frets. So with the Varichord you can, for example, capo a first position C chord in standard tuning. I use the Varichord capo on my recording of the Doc Boggs tune, False Hearted Lover's Blues on my second CD, Some These Days. "

Both songs can be found on Hasbrouck's website. He is also a guitar teacher and details on lessons can also be found on the site.

Hasbrouck is involved in four different CD projects with bands including Hardscrabble, The Northside Southpaws, The Lawrence Peters Outfit as well as his own third solo CD.