Smarter and friendlier automatic electric guitar for your next musical show

To control the settings of the guitar, swiftly and automatically, two students of Cornell University have come up with a digitally composed electric guitar that might possibly be a most useful partner for your next musical show. The guitar enables instant tone, volume and pickup setting changes, and replaces the complexities of the sound modifications by musicians while performing live or otherwise.

Digital Electric Guitar

We know that electric guitars are comprised of a range of sound pickups, tone knobs, volume knobs, and the pickup switch that enables a guitarist to control the guitar by adjusting variable resistances, and mix and connect different pickups. While performing, the guitarist, however, faces quite a juggling act between these knobs and results often in an erred performance. These musical dilemma caught the attention of two students of the Cornell University, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Adam Jackman and Pouria Pezeshkian. They took up the challenge of resolving this aspect for their spring project and the result is an innovative digitally controlled electric guitar that could be the next best thing possible on any musical concert.

With a newly designed circuitry that integrates a microcontroller to an external controller, they have replaced the analog knobs of a guitar that alters or adjusts sound accordingly. This integration was brought about by rotary encoders that controls the programmable digital potentiometers. Now whenever the performer stumbles on a desired note he can save it as a preset sound for later use. He can also flip between these presents with an array of push buttons provided for the purpose. Through an analog multiplexor, a 5-lever digitalized switch was enabled to communicate with the microcontroller to control these pickups. The setup also includes a small 2×16 character LCD display to view and select the tone and preset configuration.

However, in spite of this digitalization, the one aspect that keeps its flavor and warmth intact is that the final sound is still kept warm, free from any digital effects. This was possible by allowing the signal to pass through the circuitry in its analog form, and thus minimizing any digital effects in the final tone. The digitally controlled analog mechanism ensured that the sound signal never got transformed to digital format. Although the project was designed on a typical Fender Stratocaster Guitar, Adam and Pouria claim that the same circuitry would work on all possible manufactured guitars with little or no modifications. The commercial viability of the project is justifiable and its potential and possible contribution to the future musical compositions is undeniably going to be path breaking.

Via: HackedGadgets