EBow EBow Plus Reviews

No need to introduce this little fella or try to explain it's capabilities. It's both easy and cool to use, there's no doubt about it!

I just wanted to notice that the battery compartment is a bit small and it's not easy to introduce a battery without bending the wires quite dangerously. And once you manage to close it you just expect the cover is not gonna fly out at some point.

Apart from this little inconvenience (thankfully the batteries seem to last long enough), everything's working great!

eBow

You use this 9V battery-powered device instead of a plectrum, positioning it above strings one by one – a small electrical charge vibrates the string, providing limitless sustain until you take it away. You can make your guitar sound like a violin, cello, organ, flute, you name it.

The Ebow is stylish and ergonomically well designed. The blue LED also looks really cool, lighting up your guitar on a dark stage - after shows I always get asked what the thing with the blue light was.

Once you’ve had some practice (you need to position and move the Ebow carefully to get the sound you want, whether smooth/aggression, legato/staccato) it’s a brilliant sounding effect. For my purposes, it sounds gorgeous for recording a layered, artificial string section, as well as ambient drones. Use with tonnes of delay, reverb and maybe even a guitar slide.

Sustained experimentation

This litle piece of gear is worth the price only if you are ready to spend some time developing its playing technique... It's for serious experimentacion. If you are just curios don't buy it: You'll have some fun but you'll pay a bit too much for the laugh. I'll tell you a secret: In my case, without pitch shifters involved in the job, I would not dare to use this gadget. I've just envisioned my harmonium-like-kind-of-guitar sound and I'm using it for sonic curtains in my songs. Feel free to patent the idea if you like it 'cause I did not copyryght it.

This new model of E-bow has two diferent playing modes. The new one is good to feedback with ease. Very cool, really. In this version of the engine a blue light helps you to keep in course with the vibrating string. Cool, too.

If only this peace of plastic could be more solid made, have more features and be cheaper, it could become an every guitar players tool.

Great addition to your equipment collection.

This piece of equipment makes an interesting change from your standard picked electric guitar sound. It takes a little bit of practise to get the hang of using it so you can get a note to sound clear, but once you do it really pays off.

The device has 2 settings.

The first setting causes the string you hover over to resonate and produces a sustained tone of whatever note you are fretting. The sound is similar to that of a violin or other bowed instrument. You can fret the string and change note and the emitted tone will never stop until you move the E-bow away from your guitar.

The second setting resonates the string to produce a harmonic relative to the fretted note, which can produce some interesting results when playing a song you're already familiar with.

The use of the E-bow is limited however, as there are not a lot of songs that feature it. However, it is great fun to experiment with, as well as being an interesting way of freshening up your sound if you find yourself uninspired.

Expensive toy

We're addicts !

This thing is way too expensive but it was worth every cent haha.

Too bad this is the only brand with this kind of device, there is no competition.

Also for this price it could have a little better build quality the plastic feels a bit cheap.

Battery lasts forever though.

Must have one!

If you want to give ++++ to your music you deffently need an E-bow.

A little bit expensive but is a must have.

Ebow Review

I think this is a really cool gadget. It's really great for adding subtle features and ornamentation to a piece of music. I found it a little tricky to get used to at first but that's true of most new things I would imagine. I personally really like it and it adds a really cool flavour to things.

E-Bow

The first time I heard of the E-Bow was many years ago, but it's just pretty recent that I bought one. I can't really say how the earlier versions of it has been but this is the newest version and the only one I have tried. I have to say, it definitely needs a bit of practice to fully master this cool thing and I definitely haven't learned to really master it yet but it's fun while practising.

There's not that much to say about the actual construction, it feels pretty solid, but should probably not be dropped that much into concrete floors or something like that. There's a small switch for off and the two different ways of operation, which feels fine to me.

I've used it with my electric guitars, mostly for distorted sounds, but with cleans too (I play and record extreme metal most of the time). I've also used it with my Line6 JTV-89 and the Sitar sound which is way cool sounding. I guess it can be used with a bass also, but haven't tried that yet, but I will. As I said, it takes some time and a bit of practise to get used to it but it can definitely add another dimension to your sound palette and it's definitely something I encourage to check out.

E-bow Plus

Handling:

Fits the hand fine. It can be a bit finicky at first to line up the target string, and the oursides can cause string noise when putting on the surrounding strings. Some rubber at these points would have been great to reduce the surrounding string noise.

Features:

It has a standard and a harmonics mode. Thats it. It is a product designed to do one thing, so there is not too much one can expect from such a unit.

Sound:

Personally, I love the ebow sound. It can sound beautiful on guitar and as an effect for songs. You can get that "Whale noise" sound with this. I am biased as I love ebow sounds and this does not disappoint. Its particularly effective as a background effect. as long as everything in your guitar chain sounds good, it is hard to make this sound bad.

Quality:

This is definitely this units achilles heel (weak point). It feels cheap. VERY cheap. Like "dro this on a hard surface and it will break instantly" cheap. It is essentially a magnet connected to a 9v battery in a cheap plastic case. Every effort has been made to keep the build costs at a minimum and it shows. At e88 a unit, it is very expensive for what it is, but very effective at what it does (if that makes sense). If there is another type of unit out there that could get the sound the ebow gets then I would likely skip this unit in favour of the other one. I presume that the lack of competition is due to a licensing patent owned by these ebow makers. Its a pity, as it allows them to put out a VERY poorly made and cheap feeling device for an exorbitant cost. I know plenty of ebow users whos battery case door no longer closes naturally, caused by general use over time.

Be very careful when using one.

Conclusion:

This is a tough unit to recommend. I love the sound it makes, it is beautiful, but its build quality is so poor that it makes it hard to recommend. It has an almost instant "I paid e88 for THIS?! WTF!" kind of reaction out of the box. Its pretty much the only unit that I know of that can get the sound it gets, so if you want that sound this is the only option you have.

Buy only if you really need or want this sound...as its pretty much your only option. Just be CAREFUL with it :)

Hard to use, and my god - the switch.

I can only confirm what others said: it takes a bit of practice. You might find yourself onstage silently sliding the thing around looking like a dang fool otherwise.

But I really can't get over how cheap and flimsy the on/off switch is. That is a scandal.

By the way, acoustic dude take note: The thing appears to work to some extent on any steel-stringed guitar, with or without pickup.

E-Bow E-Bow Plus

This is brilliant, takes a short while to get used to using it, tutorials on you tube and the E-Bow web site 3 way switch 1/E-Bow normal on 2/ E-Bow off 3/E-Bow feedback & normal on, as used by countless bands eg Def Leppard, The Verb etc

Overpriced

Quality of materials doesn't inspire confidence. I understand that it has to be made of plastic but they could have at least made the casing a little thicker. I also think that it's overpriced for what it is. That's because it doesn't have any direct competitors and there's no need to make the price appealing. It works as advertised but takes some time getting used to. Thankfully, the user's manual is helpful and informative and contains various tips and tricks. E-Bow is a great device to experiment with provided you don't mind the price. It is also easy to overuse and may get annoying after a while.

A must have for experimental guitarists

If you like to create interesting textures, bed of sounds and adding something different to your songs, get an Ebow. It's probably not the kind of thing you'll build a song around but it will add a whole new layer of interesting textures to your music, especially if you're thinking of recording.

It works really well with delay, not so much with distortion/OD as the eBow itself adds some degree of overdrive. You might find it hard to figure out at the beginning but once you do, it's really easy to use.

I have found it works best on the G string and not so well on the high E. You can get some really dark, droning sounds from the low strings if you add some distortion.

It's only real downside is its fragility. It's basically a very light bit of fused plastic you hold in your hand. If you drop it, it could easily break in two pieces. The switch is also very weak so you want to be careful about putting it in your pocket or somewhere where it might get friction.