I knew Steve Ripley from Paradise Records.  He moved out to California from Tulsa at the same time as Leon Russell, so we worked together at Paradise.

Steve had a lot of ideas about how to improve guitar pickups.  One innovation he came uup with isputting a separate pickup on each string.  He modified his guitar with 6 separatge pickups, six outputs, and six voume controls.  A "HexaPhonic" guitar!

Each string had a separate output, so he could line uup 6 amps across the stage from left to right.  I remember is was a monster sound!  Sounded like six guiar players!  You wouldn't think it made that much difference, but it did.

The only drawback was that most guitar players don'e want to pay for 6 guitaar amps!  I'm not sure who else used it with 6 amps.

So Steve figured he could sum all 6 channels into two, with a pan pot for each string.

Steve got me to make a small circuit board with 6 preamps, 6 pan pots and 6 volume constrols, so each string could be panned btween left and right amplifiers.  It was maybe not quite as impressive as with 6 amps, but almost.

Steve sold a few including to Eddie Van Halen (pictured on the brochure).  It was actually very well received.  With Eddies help, he made a deal with Kramer Guitars to manufacture and market the product.

Steve also made a 5 string bass.  We had at one time talked about manfacturing pickups.  It turns out that separate pickups on each string has some pretty profound effects:  Lack of intermodulation distorion, lower impedance, etc.