Anyone using an Ebow for violin/cello effect?

Right now I use a volume pedal to do swells that sound like a cello but I am considering buying an Ebow. I searched all the YouTube videos and couldn't find any good examples of simulating a cello.

The work great for that, but you can also enhance the cello effect more with some vibrato also! (manual or electronic)

Ebows are fun. Kind of one of things that is nice to have in the gear bag. I don't use it much, but every now and then it makes for a nice change up.

Example, I use it on How He Loves.

Great for slide work too!

Whoa, I've never tried slide with ebow. Interesting... I'm gonna give it a shot. BOTH hands will be confused!

I use ebow when the song has it. I love it. At first it was difficult to get it to behave. But now it's easy. To get the best, use the neck pup, maybe even dial the tone back - you want a dark tone - it sustains better. Lots of delay and reverb. Start out just staying on a single string - B is a very nice sound. After a while you'll get good enough to jump around on strings without missing a note. But you can cover a lot of ground staying on one string. It's really hard to make an ebow sound bad.

http://youtu.be/JoC1ec-lYps

Jesus Culture covering How He loves Us... nice eBow work, shows some of it up close. You can definitely hear how its being used too.

Cello or violin? no, but I use it on a few songs. In Christ Alone/Solid Rock and Revelation Song come to mind.

Hmmm....Great info. I may have to pick one of these up today for funsies.
I wonder if any of the local stores have one for sale. If not, I'll be making the journey to GC 50 miles away....*bleh*

EDIT: I guess I WONT be getting one of these as they are currently $100.00!
When I last tried one 2 years ago in Killeen, TX they were selling them on blowout for $20.00

Now I feel like an idiot for not grabbing one.
:sad:

I have one and do use it, but it's something that takes a lot of practice. People that are good with them blow me away.

They also work on acoustic which can sound cool. Seems to work better on a smaller body than say, a dread. Maybe less mass? Dunno, still fun.

I got one awhile back and am still trying to get the hang of it.

I got one awhile back and am still trying to get the hang of it.

If you're having trouble getting the string to start vibrating, help it along by hammering on a note - that'll get it started. Then the ebow should be able to maintain that vibration easily. As said above - start by just staying on the B string the whole time. It seems to work really well.

I still have an use my original ebow I got back in the 70's. The main thing (other than learing tos use it!) is to be aware of the huge volume jump while using it. You can scare the beejeebers out of people if you're not careful!

I still find uses for the ebow, but for swells, violin/cello, etc type sounds, I find my volume pedal works best. I do dig that ol ebow though!

I used to use it quite a bit, but we've been without a rhythm guitarist for a couple years, so I haven't had the freedom to have fun with "sound effects" like I used to.
Phil Keaggy is one of the absolute masters of it though...

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Sorry a little getting back to everyone...

Based on the comments I think I will stickwith my volume pedal for now and I will try adding some vibrato as someone suggested.

http://youtu.be/JoC1ec-lYps

Jesus Culture covering How He loves Us... nice eBow work, shows some of it up close. You can definitely hear how its being used too.

Thanks for that link. Big fan of Kim Walker and Jesus Culture.

I use my EBow a good bit, love it. I had an early one (which I foolishly sold - they're valuable now) and bought a current model 3-4 years ago. It doesn't get used every week, but it's a way cool effect.

We used to have a girl in our band that used a cello for a cello effect. It sounded very realistic.:mrgreen:

We used to have a girl in our band that used a cello for a cello effect. It sounded very realistic.:mrgreen:

I would love that! None to be found, at the moment, though. :sad: