Those who receive the free MegaTapper Newsletter know that we’ve been working on video systems for a couple of months now — specifically videos about guitars and tapping instruments — and it’s starting to pay off.

IF YOU WANT MORE TAPPING VIDEOS …

Then we need to see your comments, votes, and ideas below in a comment you add to this post, if you please, thank you very much!

We did a little survey, and folks taking the survey said that generally they find getting new music info, two-handed tapping info, and general guitar info in the form of VIDEO to be the easiest to use.

Good enough.

Video it is.

A LIST FOR NEW VIDEOS. PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT

Here is a small (and incomplete) list of subjects that might be useful, taken from the list of questions that people frequently ask when they call us …

• • Where can I test-play a tapping instrument?
  • What amps work best for two-handed touchstyle?
  • Twelve strings versus 8 strings?
  • Bassbottom versus inverted fifths
  • Mirror fourths versus parallel fourths
  • Crossed and uncrossed
  • Strengths and Weaknesses of BassBottom and Inverted-Fifths tunings?
  • How does the differing construction of tapping instruments affect the sound?
  • Can you make a left handed tapping instrument?
  • Can you make a straight tuning across all twelve strings?

And here are some questions that people don’t ask (but they should!) …

• • Can a MIDI pickup track bass strings?
  • How easy/difficult is it to play MIDI on a tapping instrument?
  • How is a Roland modeller different from MIDI gear?
  • What does the Screaming-Ghost piezo system sound like?
  • What’s the difference in sound of active-circuits? Why?
  • How does posture and positioning affect your music and the health of your hands and wrists?
  • What’s the easiest way to begin learning?
  • What is the simplest Basic Hand Orientation?
  • Fretboard Mapping – Where are the notes?
  • What’s with big dots on Stick, or double-dots on Megatar?
  • Best Way to tune up?
  • How does Buzz Feiten Intonation System work?
  • How do fanned frets work to give better tone?
  • How to do setup and adjust intonation?
  • How is the sound and tone changed by picking versus tapping, the wood, the type of pickup?

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE?

Surely we can never do *all* of these, and maybe some are of little interest, and maybe others are of GREAT interest to people. You can help guide us.

Please add a comment below and tell us which ones you’d most like to see explained and demonstrated in a video.

Then add any additional ideas that you may have.

Just to make sure we’re not wasting our time making these videos, we’d like to see some activity and participation in the comments, please.

Thank you very much for adding your comments below!

Hello, tappers. Good news! This week, we are unveiling our newest model, the quad-output Mobius Megatar “Nitro” –

ToneWeaver "Nitro" with Screaming-Ghost "Acoustiphonic Sound"

SELECTABLE SOUND SYSTEMS

The Megatar Nitro features two selectable sound systems for bass, and two selectable sound systems for melody.

On the left side of the body in the photograph above, you can see two chrome toggle switches.

One selects melody sound, the other selects bass sound.

RICH BARTOLINI MAGNETIC OR SCREAMING-GHOST ACOUSTIPHONIC PIEZO SOUND

For either melody or bass, your first sound choice is the warm and rich tone of authentic active-circuit Bartolini magnetic pickups. This is the warm, rich sound that has made the Bartolini name world-famous.

But that’s not all, because for melody or for bass, you get a complete additional sound palette … the lush, crisp, and full-frequency sound of GraphTech Ghost Acoustiphonic piezo pickups. The Piezo pickups are embedded in these custom string saddles of Graph Tech’s patented ‘StringSaver’ material –

GraphTech Ghost Acoustiphonic piezo string saddles fabricated from the patented "StringSaver" material

You can *just* see one of the wires at the left side of the first string saddle. The piezo wire is threaded through a hole or slot in the individual bridge plate. Below the bridge plates we have cut a trench, with tunnels through the wood to route the twelve piezo wires into the large pickups cavity beneath the black pickguard.

Also beneath the black pickguard, in addition to the dual Bartolini active-circuit preamps and noise-filtering circuitry, we have installed two GraphTech Ghost Acoustiphonic preamps. These contain additional circuitry which allows you to select the magnetic-pickup sound, or the acoustiphonic sound.

BLENDING YOUR SOUND

In the middle position of your selector switches, you can have both mag and piezo sound, and then the tone/volume knobs act like a mini-mixer right on the instrument.

Here’s a closeup of the tone/volume knobs and dual selector switches –

Megatar Nitro quad tone/volume control knobs and selector switches

The nested tone/volume knobs on the far side control melody and bass for the active-circuit rich Bartolini sound.

The black push/pull tone/volume knobs on the near side control melody and bass for the full-frequency Screaming-Ghost ‘Acoustiphonic’ sound.

‘QUICK-SWITCH’ SOUND SELECTORS

One of the chrome ‘Quick Switches’ selects either mag or piezo for melody, and the other chrome Quick Switch selects either mag or piezo sound for bass. (When you set either Quick Switch in the middle position, then you can precisely blend any mixture of the two sound systems. The tone/volume controls have become a convenient mini-mixer right on the instrument!)

Mobius Megatar quad-output "Nitro" -- The Gigging Pro Instrument

The quad-output Nitro is provided with two mono oxygen-free ‘ClearCables’ made of Japanese Canara Cable with heavy-duty German Neutrik connectors. The cable transmits every bit of the rich active-Bartolini sound and the brilliantly crisp Acoustiphonic sound to your amp, for the ultimate in a voice that’s sweet, and rich, and down, and dirty, and everything in between.

GARGANTUAN SOUND PALETTE

Hear searing solos. Hear crisp choral tones like you’ve never heard them before. Play an acoustic-sounding Nashville sound or a metallic bassline from outer space. It’s all here. It’s all yours.

And for you sound-fanatics out there, the dual outjacks pictured above are actually ‘SmartJacks,’ because if you plug in our mono Clear cables you have bass and melody as usual. However …

SMART ROUTING BUILT-IN

If you choose to plug stereo cables into the outjacks, then the smart-routing circuitry will present you with four separate outputs for the most flexible routing in the world:  Melody Bartolini, Melody Acoustiphonic, Bass Bartolini, and Bass Acoustiphonic.

True quad-output, and outstanding, easy, intuitive control. In your hands.

If you wish to see even more detail of the features pictured above, click on any of the photographs to see a huge photograph with a magnified view. (Caution: dsl connection recommended for humongous detail photos.)

SELECT PARALLEL OR FANNED-FRETS

The fanned-fret ToneWeaver is shown in these photographs, but if you have a tuning that thrives better on standard parallel frets, we can build your Megatar Nitro with parallel frets as on our popular MaxTapper.

HEAR AUDIO SAMPLES

We do not yet have proper recordings of songs using this new instrument. However, the nice folks at Graph Tech were kind enough to supply us with Ghost recordings to demonstrate the startling Acoustiphonic sound –

The instrument in these guitar recordings is a strat; however, the Megatar Acoustiphonic melody sounds very similar. The recordings of a bass are made with the same riff played on normal mag pickups, and then using the Ghost Acoustiphonic system, so you can compare, and discover for yourself the amazing wide palette of tonal colors that will be available to you … only with the Mobius Megatar Nitro.

UPDATE, STARDATE 2009, JAN 30

Faraway sensors report imminent arrival, running at lightspeed, the Nitro Explosion due to arrive Earthside February 1, 2009. And a question that you might ask yourself  –

“Have you Ever Seen $500
Disguised as a Web Page?”

No? Then click here: Nitro Explosion, coming February 1, 2009

.

Mobius Megatar announces … the “Holiday Cheer Touchstyle Club“.

This promotional offer gives hundreds of dollars of discounts on Mobius instruments, between November 15, and December 31 of 2008.

All Mobius Megatar instruments have huge savings available, from the simple Eclipse to the astounding Hammer of Thor.

MaxTappers, ToneWeavers, Storms, Dragons, MidiTappers, PiezoTappers, and customizing to your hearts content, huge discounts available on all instruments and configurations … if you act quickly.

Very probably, you will also find the Holiday Cheer page entertaining, and informative. The posted information shows you how to save money three ways, plus free gifts just for signing up. No obligation, no cost. It’s like free money.

LIMITED TIME

>>> This limited time offer ends New Years Eve at Midnight.  <<<

HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IN DISCOUNTS

Hundreds of dollars of discounts are available on all Mobius instruments, free $90 factory-installed edgedots will be given to the first ten who claim these prizes, and there are also free gifts just for signing up in the club.

FREE GIFTS JUST FOR SIGNING UP …

http://megatar.com/promo/holiday-cheer/

But please remember, limited offer ends Midnight December 31, 2008.

———-

PS: For a bit of fun, go over to Tappistry.Org, and describe what the page looks like when it first appears in your browser … To see the Tappistry.Org discussion thread, please CLICK HERE.

After a few people have looked and then posted there, you’ll see what I mean …

Like any builder of instruments, as time goes on, we want to enhance the design of instruments, while still keeping the features that have made our instruments popular.

As some will recall, at the end of last year our shop was all taken apart so that we could install machinery for greater production and greater precision.

We’ve been producing our new instruments on this enhanced machinery since February, and now all Mobius Megatar instruments are made in this new way, which delivers more value than ever before.

Here are the new enhancements:

NECK-THROUGH DESIGN

Our older bolt-on design was emulating Leo Fender’s breakthrough, because bolt-on design generally provides more instrument for less money.

However, with our new machinery — which wasn’t available to Leo Fender — we can now create the enhanced sound that neck-through design delivers, and at the same pricing as for bolt-on.

On a bolt-on instrument, any imperfection in the join of the bolt-on neck creates some loss of conductivity of the vibration in the wood, the sound changes. The frequencies most lost by reason of bolt-on construction are the lowest ones.

Therefore when you change to neck-through design what your ears hear is a smoother and slightly deeper or more mellow sound naturally coming from the instrument, as it is now delivering all of the natural lowest frequencies.

COMPUTER-PRECISE FRETS

We now own and operate our own computer controlled (CNC) machinery, which cuts fretslots with precision down to about 0.002″. A human with a saw just can’t match it, no matter how careful he is. More precise fretslots gives more precise fret placement.

More precise fret placement means the best intonation for your music.

DARK ABALONE FRET-DOTS FOR TRUETAPPERS

We have upgraded the dark plastic fret-dots, and we now install abalone fret-dots, on all of the maple light-wood TrueTapper models (Eclipse, Dragon, and Storm).

NEW FINISH

In the past, our finish was so-so. It did a good job of preventing water-vapor exchange, which is the number one job for a guitar finish. But it was not as clear and beautiful as we’d like.

So we’ve been experimenting, and now provide finish which is very clear and lets the grain of the wood show through. [Rosewood or Wenge fretboards on dark-wood instruments are still oil-finished, of course.]

SUMMARY

So — Computer cutting for precision, and hand-finishing for beauty. New abalone dot-markers and enhanced finish. Neck-through design at the same price as bolt-on.

Our website pix are not yet updated, but as of today on our EBay Megatar Store, you can see a Storm and a MaxTapper. So you can see the abalone dot-markers, the new finish, and detail photos of the neck-through design.

(Of course these particular listings could easily vanish soon, as these particular instruments can be purchased at any minute on EBay. But we’ll have more up on EBay, as production permits.)

EDIT: Oops! The Storm on EBay sold while I was entering this post. So I’ll put the two item numbers here, so you can see them for some time after they’re sold. (I *think* this will work.) –

TrueTapper Storm with new abalone dots, enhanced finish, computer fretslots, and neck-through construction is EBay EBay Item #290131836371

MaxTapper Dual with enhanced finish, computer fretslots, and neck-through construction is EBay EBay Item #290135409253.

The online store is now operational, meaning that a world thirsty for a cool draft of Megatar music, can now obtain instruments direct from the website, along with accessories, and books, and all common factory modifications.

Now you can build your own custom instrument, just the way you like it. Choose a model, and if you wish add piezos or midi, change the saddles, change the trim from chrome to black or gold. There are well over 2000 possible combinations.

Also be sure to check out our new PiezoTapper “SongBird” model.

And if you’re looking for the popular TrueTapper, MaxTapper, or ToneWeaver just the way we’ve always offered them, then that works, too.

If you need another Megatar instrument around the house, to bring you years of music and fun, please visit the new Mobius Megatar Online Store. Available now at a computer near you.