On the retuning theme, has anyone tried a Variax?

It claims (and the website shows a demo) that it can electronically change your EADGBE tuning to behave like DADGAD or any other tuning you want. Of course, acoustically it'll still sound like EADGBE, but what comes out of the jack plug is in the altered tuning of your choice. It doesn't mention auto-tuning though, so I would guess it just pitch-shifts each string up or down as needed.

This beastie is *so* on my wish list - just need to save up a bit first!

And maybe that'd actually result in a Martin Carthy performance being 80% music and 20% chat, instead of the other way round.

Graham.