guitron

The guitron was one of the first digital guitars ever built that actually worked, and one of my earliest designs, around 1980. A lady wanted it for her son, who didn't like playing real guitars because the strings hurt his fingers - seriously. I heard about it from the electronics engineer who was designing the circuit boards and I contacted the lady and got the bid to design the bodywork. I made it look very futuristic but cool and usefully ergonomic. I made the prototype out of balsa wood and finished it in black lacquer. The "strings" were brass rods that changed capacitance when you touched them. You couldn't bend notes but it would play notes backwards, and loop notes like Terry Riley's "Rainbow in Curved Air", so we had some fun with it. I was in a band called Polyphony at the time, and our guitarist Glenn Carman learned to play it quite well before we handed it over to the customer. I still have tapes someplace. No idea what happened to it, but you can buy kiddy guitars at ToysRus that pretty much do the same thing for less than $50.

pictures to come