ELECTRO-HARMONIX

OVERALL RATING
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
USEABILITY
S U M M A R Y
OVERALL RATING
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
USEABILITY
S U M M A R Y
Are you sitaring comfortably?
Active punch on a budget? Go on then
IRONGEAR VOLT £67.50
ELECTRO-HARMONIX
RAVISH SITAR
£205
IRONGEAR
specialises in aftermarket pickups
with low price tags and names
such as the Hot Slag, Pig Iron and
this, the Volt active humbucker.
£67.50 bags you a bridge and neck
set: about half the going rate of the
competition.
Visually, the pickups aren’t as
nice as their rivals; the plastic
covers look inexpensive but
not enough to diminish our
confidence. You’ll need to solder
the pickups in to fit them and
replace your guitar’s standard
pots with 25kΩ models. A whole
set (depending on your control
layout) ranges from £5.25 to
£10.95 from IronGear’s website,
which also has wiring diagrams
for most common control
configurations. Don’t forget, you’ll
ROCK
music has flirted
with the sitar
since the 60s, with some bona fide
legends – and Kula Shaker –
employing its droning twang over
the years. The Electro-Harmonix
Ravish Sitar opens the door of
psychedelia to guitarists at the
stomp of a switch, by recreating
the sitar’s lead and sympathetic
resonances.
You get a Level control for your
dry signal, plus Level and Timbre
controls for the Lead and
Sympathetic sounds. The Ravish
also includes five modes: Key;
Decay (for altering the decay time
of the Lead sound); Modulation
for emulating the sound of a
tanpura; Pitch, which bends the
Lead sound’s pitch when you plug
in an expression pedal and Freeze,
for holding the Sympathetic
IRONGEAR VOLT/E-H RAVISH SITAR
REVIEWS
need enough space inside your
guitar for a 9-volt battery.
The Volts are voiced with a push
at the high and low ends, and a
strong midrange. The output can
be a little overbearing: if you like
your cleans crystal, you might
need to back off the volume. This
is particularly true of the neck
pickup, which pumps out a lot of
bass, while the bridge has less low-
end and more grunt around the
high mids. The flipside is that these
pickups excel for hard rock and
metal – and blending the two gives
a good trade-off of body and bite.
We’re surprised. They aren’t
going to convert non-active fans,
but IronGear’s Volt pickups give
you sound quality that’s usually
out of reach for this money. Get
some before they up the price.
Stuart Williams
resonances while you continue to
play over the top.
We found ourselves using Key
mode the most, which lets you
taylor the sympathetic resonances
to the key you’re playing in. With a
little tweaking, the Ravish
produces a convincing sitar
simulation. The Timbre controls
can take it from being authentic to
synthetic sounding; so if you’re
after a realistic sound, you’ll
probably want to keep them below
the two-thirds mark. Playing style
also has a big influence over the
sound. This means throwing in
bends and sliding into notes rather
than hammering on or pulling off.
It’s a lot of fun, and once you plug
in you’ll probably find yourself
dead-legged from hours of sitting
and playing with it.
Stuart Williams
AT A GLANCE
TYPE: Active humbucker set
POSITION: Neck/Bridge
MAGNET: Alnico bar
WIRING: 2x signal, 1x power
CONTACT: IronGear
01539 755015 irongear.co.uk
AT A GLANCE
TYPE: Sitar simulator
CONTROLS: Dry level, lead level,
sympathetic level, lead timbre,
sympathetic timbre, mode/preset dial,
preset switch, bypass
SOCKETS: Instrument input,
expression pedal inputs, sympathetic
out, main out, power
POWER: PSU (supplied)
CONTACT: [e-mail] ehx.com
168 DECEMBER 2011
TGR221.gear_halves.indd 168 10/11/11 10:51:08 AM