An Idea For A Guitar

[suregork]

Well anyways, I have a crazy idea for a training guitar, where I would place a LED under every single position on the fretboard. Then I would connect together all LEDs which 'have the same note', and connect them to a switch. Then say you want to practice a scale, a flick on all the switches of the notes in the scale, and they would light up on the fretboard, and you more easily practice . The only problem is that 22*6=132 LEDs , and it would become quite tight under the fretboard..

But do you think something like this is possible?

edit: and the leds would probably need a lot of power

Edited April 17, 2005 by suregork

[Papa_Shank]

hmm, it's possible sure but a few things

alternate tunings would cause a problem and to be honest I don't think it's all that great an idea, it could cause problems with visualising the fretboard without the led's...

[Marzocchi705]

You would need a fat neck thats for sure. What about the truss? surley the LEDs would get in the way of the truss rod. It sounds like a good idea, i dont think it will work tho.

[JimRayden]

to think of it, it's pretty possible to do. Using super-small super-bright Leds, with some smart wiring, programming a PIC chip to make a digital control for the leds, then program all the alternate tunings, scales and stuf on the chip and add a few numerical LED-displays for easy selection... it's a cool idea actually.

Actually I think it's extremely dumb and unpractical. Or not.

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Jimbo

[suregork]

It wouldn't have to be anything advanced and digital.. just for normal tunings, and then you could say have all LEDs red, except those on frets 1,3,5,7,9,12,15,17,19,21 which would be blue to make it easier to visualize the fretboard....

Maybe I'll try it someday...

[Marzocchi705]

You know i compleatly forgot about thos small 3mm LED's. They might work.

[marksound]

It's been done before. I can't remember what company, but I know I've seen it somewhere.

Not to discourage you or anything.

[sepultura999]

Everything I say is a lie. I'm lying now.

liar lol

[Marzocchi705]

I think you may be thinking of thoes yamaha learner things that pop up on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...7314830767&rd=1

[Jehle]

It's been done before. I can't remember what company, but I know I've seen it somewhere.

Not to discourage you or anything. 

←

That would be the FretLight. That was done about 20 years ago. Seems like there was a dual pot that would select the scale and the root note. Then the whole fretboard would light up like the "Roy Clark Big Note Guitar Song Book" (another idea from about 30 years ago).

I think it can be done. If it were me, I'd find a way to program a microcomputer to control all the LED's in much the same way. It's an ambitious project. I think someone like Ansil or Lovekraft could develop a controler like that given their expertise at all things electronic. Perhaps they may be able to help.

[RGGR]

Looks like cool idea........in theory.

http://www.optekmusic.com/newhome.htm

In practise I don't see it working that well.

Specially going from lights to a no lights guitar.

And how hard is it to memorize a couple of major and miror scales.

[lovekraft]

The electronics are fairly trivial - any good PIC programmer would make short work of it. The implementation of the fingerboard is the problem - that's a lot of work for something you're only going to use to learn the scale positions. It can be done, but the heroic effort involved hardly seems worth the results.

How many of you actually stare at your hands while you play? Like my instructors told me in college, you'll never learn to sight-read if you don't stop watching your fingers!