Product description: Ripcord is a gaffed headphone which will allow you to do several effects and another gimmick so you can do the headphone through bill with borrowed ones! This is a project led by Tom Elderfield and produced by Ellusionist, it’s perfect for street magic and I’m sure some of you will find a use for it. Versatile, practical (for most effects) and easy to carry, let’s find out if this is worth the asked price!
Price and where to buy it: This is sold at $39.95 and you can find it on Ellusionist Website.
What you get: You get a regular packaging for headphone, which looks like Apple ones. On the packaging, you have a link in order to watch the explanation video, done by Tom, the sound on it is horrible but you can still hear what he is saying. 3 mains effects are taught, the card to headphone is the least practical for me, maybe good for stage or instagram. The gimmick is well made, you get 2 in fact: the headphone and an added one for the headphone through bill (which is my favorite effect by far). I didn’t receive the extra piece like he says in the video, I don’t know what happened with this project but there was something missing for me. Overall, I think the effects are quite good, but the headphone through bill is worth the price alone.
The pros and the cons: Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS:
My package was missing one part which is not cool, every package should come with all the necessary bits in order to perform all the tricks taught.
The card to headphone is not practical, you need to be hidden when you do the get ready, so it is only good for stage or with a camera.
THE PROS:
I like what they did with the gimmick, the idea is very clever and I’m sure you’ll come up with many routines using it.
I’ll say it again: the borrowed headphone through bill is a genius idea, the gimmick is well made and you can add it to any white headphone. I love the concept, it is just a tiny bit too small to be more impressive but still, a solid trick.
The bitten and restored volume bar is good too, but I didn’t receive the extra volume bar so I had to come up with another solution for this trick which works pretty well and doesn’t require any extra part.
The headphone provided don’t work but that’s cool because you can put them in your pocket without the fear of breaking them.
Overall rating: I think the whole concept is good, some tricks are better than other but the headphone through bill is definitely usable in the real world, so just for this trick, I give 3/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, you have to get used to the gimmick but nothing hard, 2/5 stars.
Similar products: Key and Sharpie through bill are common, I think you should check Ignition by Chris Smith.