Sirion
Well-known member
I would venture to guess that quite a few of you are familiar with the Kramer Ripley guitar. For those who aren't, it was a short-lived attempt at creating a guitar with a pickup where the signal from every string was picked up separately and could be panned in stereo separately.
It obviously was not the most practical idea, owing to the amount of pots needed, but what opportunities! There was a bass model too, which I suppose might have been even more useful.
However, I can see why the idea didn't catch on. Would it be possible to build something like it today, though? I suppose one would first have to get a pickup to pick up the signal from every string separately. Bartolini made the original pickup, but it doesn't seem like they are making anything like it today, at least not for the open market. Are anybody else? Could you find a base pickup for a project like this without going CS?
And perhaps the most interesting question: are there any other guitars who have been running with ideas like this? I think something like this something I might like to explore in more detail at some point, but the idea might have been carried much further since the 80s. (I am aware of guitar synths and the Roland GK pickups, of course, but those are something slightly different.)
It obviously was not the most practical idea, owing to the amount of pots needed, but what opportunities! There was a bass model too, which I suppose might have been even more useful.
However, I can see why the idea didn't catch on. Would it be possible to build something like it today, though? I suppose one would first have to get a pickup to pick up the signal from every string separately. Bartolini made the original pickup, but it doesn't seem like they are making anything like it today, at least not for the open market. Are anybody else? Could you find a base pickup for a project like this without going CS?
And perhaps the most interesting question: are there any other guitars who have been running with ideas like this? I think something like this something I might like to explore in more detail at some point, but the idea might have been carried much further since the 80s. (I am aware of guitar synths and the Roland GK pickups, of course, but those are something slightly different.)
