14 DAY TRIAL // Of course, electro-acoustic guitars are no novelty, but the design set forth by MIT Media Lab master student Amit Zoran is nothing short of revolutionary. It answers precisely the requirements of versatile musicians, who need more than one such instrument during a gig, but have trouble with either purchasing the number of guitars they require, or with getting used to the endless combinations of hardware each of these musical instruments possesses. For them, the possibility of playing the same guitar throughout the show, while changing different sounds, would be awesome.
Naturally, they can get an almost unlimited amount of tunes by digitally processing their sounds, but most musicians are aware of the fact that such processing can only do so much, and that the quality of the input signal is what matters the most. Thus, Zoran has created a guitar with a detachable central section, which fits into a body sculptured like an electric such musical instrument. The catch is that the removable soundboard can be built out of various types of wood, and that the high-tech electronics that adorn it are capable of picking up the various nuances that each variety can generate.
To guitar players worldwide, the wood their instruments are made of plays a major role in their overall audio. But most of them want to incorporate many different sounds in a show, so they need various types of guitars, ranging from hollow-body acoustics to full-body electrics. Zoran's device is capable of supplying all sorts of timbres, and also, most importantly, to generate that perfect input tone, which is then grabbed and processed by pick-ups located under the strings.
As opposed to regular guitars, which only feature 2 or 3 pick-ups, Zoran's prototype has 5 such devices, whose sole role is to capture the vibrations and sound consistency specific to every type of wood. This ensures that none of its qualities are lost in the process. In addition, a built-in processor can emulate any kind of guitar construction ever built, and even some that are physically impossible to do. "We can make a guitar the size of a mountain," Zoran says.
The exciting part about the new invention is the fact that the soundboards themselves are inexpensive, and that they can be easily shaped to fit the guitar's no-mid-part construction. Hopefully, after Zoran finishes his studies, he will apply for a patent, so that all of us could enjoy the ever-changing sounds of our guitars.