Nine Volt Audio has announced Solo Guitaret, a free instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt.
Introduced in 1963 and discontinued only two years later, the Guitaret was an invention of Ernst Zacharias, the mind behind other Hohner instruments like the Clavinet, Cembalet and Pianet.
Marketed as an easy-to-play instrument to mimic guitar or banjo, the actual sound sits somewhere between an electric kalimba and electric piano.
The Guitaret is held like a guitar, with the player holding the “neck” or handle to engage the sustain/dampening mechanism. The other hand is used to pluck the 36 metal keys, which barely protrude out of the instrument’s body. The vibration of the plucked keys is then captured by a series of internal pick-ups.
In recent years, the Guitaret has been used on a number of new recordings, perhaps most notably on the soundtrack for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
For Solo Guitaret, the instrument has been sampled at five different velocity layers, with three groups of round robin. A custom interface allows for control over a variety of sound sculpting tools, as well as access to load and save custom presets within a single patch.
Solo Guitaret features
- Over 120 MB (uncompressed) of 44.1/24bit samples. Download is approximately 76 MB.
- User interface provides a pull down menu of custom patches. The ability to save user presets directly into the main patch is also provided for.
- User interface controls include: convolution reverb (with 34 custom IR .wavs), saturation, amp modeling, tremolo, pan, chorus, ADSR and three band EQ.
- Solo Guitaret is compatible with full retail versions of Kontakt 4.2.3.4914 and higher.
The sample library is a free download (valid email address required).
