Chameleon Guitar | Hacker News Reader

Chameleon Guitar

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16 pointsNonEUCitizen4 comments

That's a very cool idea, but the video would be much more compelling if they showed the range of tones that come from the different insets.

Am I wrong in thinking that the tone of a guitar isn't going to be affected that much by swapping out a small wooden inset? I mean, I get that a flat top guitar may or may not have a different wood on the top than everywhere else, but I feel like you need the entirety of the top to get the full effect of the sound.

Past that, I guess it's a good idea. The pickups look on the cheap side though. And while I would definitely be into a way to quickly switch out my pickup configuration, that's why there's a toggle switch.

It'd be neat to pit this against a Line 6 Variax.

I think you've missed the point of what they are doing. Of course, I may be wrong as well since this is the first that I've seen of this instrument, but here is my take of what they are doing. They are sampling the vibrations of the small guitar top in strategic places using piezo sensors. From this information, they are extrapolating the information using a digital computer to emulate the sound of a complete guitar. What you are hearing in the video is not just the sound of the small wooden inset. If you skip to ~1:55 in the video, you will see their animation of the vibration patterns on a full-sized guitar. My question would be whether they would really be able to determine and emulate the vibration patterns of any guitar top while only sampling 5 (?) locations relatively close to the bridge of the guitar.

As far as the pickups go, even though they might look cheap, they are insignificant and operate completely different than electric guitar pickups. All they need to do is provide the frequency information which is processed by the digital computer. You aren't actually hearing the analog output from the pickups.

I also don't see this guitar as a competitor to digital amps with effect processors.

I suppose I did. Thank you for the clarification. Perhaps I missed the boat by not watching the video.

As for the digital amp comment, is that in regards to the Line 6? The Variax is a guitar, with on-board CPU and synth modelling. It isn't a Pod crammed into a guitar, from my understanding (though I could again be wrong, and will voluntarily revoke my posting privileges for the day.)

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