AES: Finally, a guitar you can plug directly into your computer — no strings attached.
You may never have heard of BridgeCo, but if you’ve got a FireWire audio interface, odds are their guts are inside. (They make the firmware / hardware platform.) Now they’ve gone and crossed your FireWire interface with a boutique electric guitar. What does that give you? A FireWire electric guitar, that’s what.
Companies have been promising guitars you could plug and play with a computer, but there’s always a catch, like a breakout box — or the thing simply doesn’t ship. Heck, we even got a prototype USB-powered ukelele. But this is real, it’s at AES here in NYC, and thanks to FireWire, each string can be a separate audio channel.
So is the guitar any good? Probably — it’s the product of designer Rolf Spuler, who builds instruments for the likes of Al DiMeola and Bela Fleck. I’ll get to hear it in action this weekend and will report back. And it sure looks cool. (More CDM photos after the jump; thanks, Spencer!)
Alternative to a FireWire guitar: use a computer-based stompbox and plug into that for software effects; see the recent IK / Native Instruments stompbox smackdown.
