There are a number of ways of exciting standing waves in ropes and springs using non-commercial vibrators such as loudspeakers,1 jigsaws,2 motors,3 or a simple tuning fork,4 including the rhythmical shaking of a handheld Slinky. We have come up with a very simple and cheap way of exciting stationary waves in a string, which anyone, particularly children, can try at home. It consists of using an electric toothbrush to produce a regular sideways motion that can be easily transmitted to an elastic cord. Most suitable for this experiment is the kind of unit that has a metal rod protruding from the front (see Fig. 1, which shows our Braun Oral-B®) to which a brush is normally affixed. The ends of the cord are attached to stands. Elastic cords that come with some school notebooks work well for this experiment, but a longer cord allows the observation of a larger number of modes. The toothbrush unit is placed near one end of the cord, which is wrapped once around the rod. As the toothbrush vibrates at a fixed frequency, standing waves (see Fig. 2) may be tuned by changing the tension of the cord while keeping its length constant. We have found up to five harmonics with a 150-cm cord. The toothbrush can be connected to a small potentiometer to reduce the dc voltage and hence the frequency of the motor, allowing the tuning of the standing waves with a fixed tension.