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Misa Digital Guitar Sports Touchscreen Instead of Strings

by Terrence O'Brien on January 19, 2010 at 09:30 AM

Misa Digital Guitar Sports Touch Screen Instead of Strings
Call us musical Luddites if you will, but we're wondering why people can't seem to leave the venerable, and long-ago perfected, electric guitar alone. Gibson just keeps jamming more and more robotics inside, EverTune has developed a potentially sustain sapping bridge that never falls out of tune, and Worst of CES honoree YouRock Guitar puts half stings and cheesy MIDI tones inside a video game controller. So we're understandably skeptical when we hear that a company called Misa has developed a digital guitar that looks to us like a combination keytar and Kaoss Pad.

The neck is divided into rows of buttons for each of six "strings" and the 24 "frets." Where normally you would find a bridge and pickups, instead there is a large touchscreen that not only allows you to play notes but control effects and filters.

The Misa Digital Guitar is merely a MIDI control unit, powered by Linux, that is must be plugged into a sound module to produce any sound -- so don't expect to pick one up and plug it into your tube amp to jam out.

There's no price listed on the site, but the device apparently is available to purchase. The 30-second demo video (below) shows some of the potential of the digital guitar, but we're waiting to see a little more before deciding if this is awesome or ridiculous. [From: Misa, via: Engadget]

Tags: digital guitar, DigitalGuitar, guitar, Guitar-Hero, misa, misa digital guitar, MisaDigitalGuitar, music, musical instruments, MusicalInstruments, top

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