You would think that attaching a cell phone to a guitar would have been something people jumped on in the early days of wireless. Of course, using a flip phone wouldn’t have been practical, so what the world was really waiting for was the iPhone. Castiv is one of the first, if not the first company to manufacture a device that attaches your iPhone to your guitar. I will admit to scoffing a bit when I first heard of it, but it turns out, it’s pretty darned useful.
The device has a few different parts, but it basically comes down to clamping a bracket inside the neck of the guitar. It took a little fidgeting to get it secure at first, but once you’ve got that done, it’s solid enough. The phone slides into a holder that is attached to a knob on the bracket that can pivot, allowing you to set it to any position you want.
With the hardware in place, I opened a guitar tuning app and…..tuned my guitar. I have other tuners that work quite well, but I did appreciate the added mobility this setup provides when I had to answer my door, and could take everything with me. You could also use guitar lesson apps, though I found it was a bit more difficult to find a comfortable position for the Sidekick and be able to use the frets at the end of the neck.
Overall, it’s a nifty device, and could certainly benefit mobile musicians. I’m not sure that the $30 price tag is perfect, but the device is worth a look.