The Chameleon Guitar

Natural wood gives traditional acoustic instruments a unique sound quality. In electronic instruments , on the other hand, the sonic richness is less, although they are much more versatile and offer almost unlimited control of all parameters. But can you have everything ? Now yes, thanks to a guitar developed in the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that combines the advantages of analog and digital instruments.

This is the Chameleon Guitar , and it combines an interchangeable centerpiece with a sophisticated electronic mechanism. This allows, on the one hand, to use different woods to generate the sound, thus integrating several guitars in one . “The original signal is not synthetic, it is acoustic,” explains Amit Zoran, creator of the instrument. Afterwards, the music that is generated analogically is processed by a computer that can simulate the effect that soundboards of different shapes and sizes would have. “Digitally we can” create ” a guitar the size of a mountain , something that would be physically impossible.”