Moog Guitar

Lou Reed’s guitar from 2008: a feedback loop into the pickups, so the notes seem to start out of nowhere.

The Moog Guitar is an electric guitar from Moog Music, designed by Paul Vo and released at the Summer NAMM show in 2008, where it won Best in Show. Its pickups carry six transducers that feed energy magnetically into the strings, or pull it out: a full sustain mode that holds a note at any volume on any string, a mute mode that shortens everything to staccato, a controlled mode that sustains what you play and damps what you do not, and a foot pedal that blends between them. Moog called the sustain Vo Power. The Model E1 came in black, red and butterscotch, the E1-M added MIDI, and Paul Vo made a Collector Edition of three hundred.

Lou first tried it at the Moog factory in Asheville on April 30, 2008, the day after his band played the Orange Peel there on the spring 2008 tour. They demoed it for him, and he bought one immediately. He played it in many, many shows, including Metal Machine Trio, where some of the notes seem to start out of nowhere: no pluck to hear, just the note arriving. Lou loved that guitar and used it a lot.

The Moog Guitar is really interesting because it creates an actual feedback loop into the guitarist’s pickups, which can cause it to re-vibrate the strings, so you get infinite sustain, or … ways of playing with some of the Metal Machine Trio stuff where the notes seem to start out of nowhere. So there’s no hearing of it plucking; just goes “meh,” and it’s very distinctive sound. Lou loved that Moog Guitar and used it a lot.
Sarth Calhoun, September 26, 2026

What the record says

Moog announced the guitar on June 6, 2008, and its launch video showed Lou trying it. The Bob Moog Foundation later quoted what he said on first hearing it: This is amazing… this opens the door. He played it on Late Show with David Letterman that fall. In December 2009 the Foundation auctioned, and in March 2010 raffled, a Paul Vo Collector Edition, serial 005, that Lou had played and signed on the front, with his own control labels and strap brackets still on it; Moog Music donated it, and its president said Lou had been an inspiration while the instrument was developed.

The creditThe Moog Guitar was Lou Reed’s from the day he tried it at the Moog factory, April 30, 2008, with Sarth Calhoun and the rest of his band there; Calhoun played beside it in Lou Reed’s band and in Metal Machine Trio, processing the band through Kyma.

My thoughts

The guitar’s facts are Moog’s and Wikipedia’s. The factory day, the shows and the sound are as I said on September 26, 2026, spoken; the transcription’s “mood” is corrected to Moog and one tangled phrase is elided. The Letterman appearance, the auction and the raffle are the Bob Moog Foundation’s and Synthtopia’s posts, linked below.