Manuel Gardner Fernandes equipped Tim Henson’s Ibanez nylon-string signature with a virtual whammy bar – and turned it into a different beast altogether

Arguably one of the biggest gear drops this year arrived in the form of the Ibanez TOD10N – a nylon-string signature guitar for Polyphia’s Tim Henson, who used the six-string heavily throughout the band’s most recent studio album, Remember That You Will Die.

Both before and after its official release, we’ve seen plenty of TOD10N action on the internet. Not only has Henson himself given fans an up-close glimpse through numerous unplugged playthroughs, some of the prog virtuoso’s fellow Ibanez signature artists have also had a chance to test-drive the unique instrument.

After Ichika Nito treated it to one of the most technical 18 seconds you’ll ever hear, Manuel Gardner Fernandes put the guitar through its paces with a harmonic-heavy fingerstyle performances.

Now, Fernandes has picked up the TOD10N once again for another playthrough – but this time he’s introduced a twist.

Remember the FOMOfx Virtual Jeff? The innovative digital whammy bar that promised to provide genuine whammy tones for any electric guitar or acoustic guitar, while simultaneously eradicating tuning instabilities?

Well, Fernandes attached one to the TOD10N, and turned the humble nylon-string into a totally different beast altogether.

In the 64-second video, the German fingerstyle innovator reminds us of the sharp tone and percussive quality of the TOD10N, but takes things up a notch by littering his expansive chords and dizzying fingerboard runs with both whammy bar pull-ups and push-downs.

For our two cents, the TOD10N sounds pretty darn good with a Virtual Jeff whammy bar attached, which begs the question: will Henson have a go with one himself sometime in the future?

The Virtual Jeff was first introduced back in 2016, but was upgraded last November as the Virtual Jeff Pro. Key among its goals was to eliminate the tuning gambles that come with aggressive tremolo arm action, and to give players an easily attachable whammy bar that could assimilate with acoustic guitars and electric guitars alike.

In operation, it attaches to the body via a machine-groove mounting plate and adhesive strip, and works alongside a stompbox that offers two distinct pitch-shifting sounds and an array of tweakable effects.

To find out more about the Virtual Jeff Pro, visit FOMOfx and head over to Ibanez for more info on the TOD10N.