What would happen if you took an electric guitar, made it as thick as an acoustic guitar, and stuffed the extra space not with boring old air, but with speakers and an electronic brain that works with your iPhone?
Then, you might put in a cutout on the guitar top to hold that iPhone, and a rechargeable battery to power it all. If you did all that, then you’d have invented the Fusion Guitar.
Fusion Guitar
Photo: Fusion Guitars
First, the Fusion Guitar is a regular electric guitar. It has a proper maple guitar neck (with maple or rosewood fretboard), two humbucker pickups (which can be switched between parallel and series routing — a pretty neat feature on its own), and the usual guitar hardware.
Then, things get odder. The fat body houses an amp, plus a pair of speakers, and a battery with a four- to six-hour life. On top of the guitar (when you’re playing it) is an iPhone dock and a 24-bit/96kHz audio interface. This interface is the same kind we used in our guide to plugging a guitar into an iPhone, only built into the guitar.
Fusion Guitar blends digital and analog
This interface is the most important part. It lets you use the Fusion Guitar with any music apps you already have. That could be a recording app like Apple’s Music Memos, a tuner, a DAW (digital audio workstation) app like GarageBand or any of the amazing effects- and amp-simulation apps available for iOS. You can even use an app like MIDI Guitar to turn the Fusion Guitar into a keyboard (or any other instrument).
Photo: Fusion Guitars
This leads to a pretty neat setup, with everything you need right there in the guitar you’re playing. At the very least, it’s cool to be able to record an idea as you have it, without digging around for your iPhone and balancing it in front of a speaker. You can also use the guitar and the various companion apps to perform, putting every effect and sound at your fingertips. What about a looping app, for instance?
Use any apps and effects you like
Photo: Fusion Guitars
There is also a class of effects app that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer as a controller. With one of those, you could wiggle and wave the Fusion Guitar to affect the effects, as it were. I’m also interested in hooking up a Bluetooth controller pedal to this thing and seeing where that gets me.
There’s a Fusion Guitar currently winging its way to Cult of Mac‘s test labs, whereupon all its secrets will be unearthed. You never know, it might even be good for busking, which I shall try if the New Year temperatures ever climb above freezing.
