My Favorite Axe with the MCI Guitorgan

I’m Martin Newman, the guitarist for Boston’s dreampop band Plumerai and sole member of ambient, drone experiment GODDAKK.  I’m also a guitarist in To The Wedding.

MAKE & MODEL

Late ’60s MCI Guitorgan M300

WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU

Two for one; a great addition to the arsenal to create bigger sounds without a bigger band.

WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE

The guitar half is a standard semi-hollow body.  So it has a nice full tone, similar to a lower-end Gretsch or an Epiphone Dot.  Nothing extraordinary, just a solid reliable tone.  What’s nice about the instrument, though, is the special feature. Each fret creates contact switches for each string that then creates an organ sound.  There’s an expression pedal so you can blend the sound of the organ with the sound of the guitar.

OTHER NOTES

There’s a variety of switches to adjust the tone of the organ, they’re labeled things like Flute and such but they don’t sound anything like what they’re listed as, just basically tweaked versions of the organ sound.  There’s also a control knob for sustain and two vibrato options to sweeten the sound.

The only major con is that due to the nature of the instrument, open strings are not an option for the organ feature.  That and the required expression pedal is bulky (like an oversized Cry Baby Wah)