The Gizmo

The Gizmo, also called Gizmotron, is an effects device for the electric guitar and bass guitar, invented ca. 1973 by the English rock musicians Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, whilst they were members of the British rock group 10cc. Clamped onto the bridge of a guitar, the Gizmo uses small, keyed plastic wheels inside which press down on the strings, yielding resonant, synthesizer-like sounds from each string.

In addition to 10cc, Godley and Creme themselves continued to use the Gizmo after they had left the band, and it was also famously used by Jimmy Page on parts of the Led Zeppelin album In Through the Out Door. The company originally licensed to manufacture the commercial version of the Gizmotron released the product to the public in 1979. Quality was inconsistent with both some good and some bad units being produced. With quality control variance, and cost related manufacturing problems, the Gizmotron did not live up to expectations and became an infamous commercial failure. The original manufacturer of the Gizmotron filed for bankruptcy shortly after its disastrous release. Three decades later, in 2013, Aaron Kipness of Gizmotron LLC assembled a small team of engineers to restore, reverse engineer, and ultimately design a new and improved version of the Gizmotron using modern materials and manufacturing methods.

The Gizmo was first featured on 10cc's instrumental "Gizmo My Way", a song arranged as a type of laid back beach music, where it appears as a slide guitar effect and sustained background effect. "Gizmo My Way" was the B-side to "The Wall Street Shuffle", and appeared on 10cc's second album, Sheet Music (1974), which included more uses of The Gizmo, most notably on the track "Old Wild Men". Its presence is heard throughout most of the track as a unique shimmering background guitar effect. The Gizmo was also used on the Sheet Music track "Baron Samedi".

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