Jack’s Guitarcheology “COWHELL II” Electric Cowbell (2020, Noise/Experimental Instrument)

I have recently gotten into making experiential instruments for harsh noise / industrial / ambient / etc. music. Behold the “COWHELL II” electric cowbell.

The “COWHELL II” has all of the great tone and functionality of the “COWHELL” original, but now with a tone/treble roll-off control knob. The tone control uses two separate capacitors to roll off the treble tone, then the high mid tone, and then eventually when rolled to zero, chokes out the signal entirely so it can also be used as a modulator/kill. Roll it up for “DANG DANG,” roll back slightly for “Ding Ding” and roll back even further for “Dong Dong.”

It has a 1/4″ input and a simple volume control. It works great as a clean amplified cowbell tone, but can get very interesting very fast when run through a pedal chain. Sounds great with distortion, delay, reverb, etc. The volume allows you to control the feedback.

Another use I have found for it is it works as a lo-fi microphone, you can sing of scream into the bottom of it and it gives your vocals an old school “megaphone / AM radio” tone to it.

Outside of that, the possibilities are up to your imagination. I am sure someone will find a use for it that I have not thought of, and I look forward to it. See the video for a short demo of the original COWHELL so you can get the gist.

Hammered brass “cowbell” finish.

Got questions? Shoot me a message, I love nerding out with other gearheads!