This is mainly a Guitar but with a lot of unique features like an illuminated Fretboard and actuators to excite the strings.

Motivation

My two main driving forces to invent and build things are music and education. Often, my projects are to some extend usable in both areas. The ElektroCatser is a perfect example of that.

(Hardware-)Features and Design Goals

Here are some specs and design goals I have/had in mind when building the ElekroCaster. This list will evolve.

• Maker friendly construction (3d-printer, CNC-Router, Vslots)
• Modular construction and easy access to the electronics to make it a smooth prototyping platform (You'll be in like Flynn!)
• Parametric OpenScad modelling (changable string count, scale, space between strings,...)
• Playable like a normal electric guitar

• Fully controllable RGB-Led-iluminated Fretboard (Only the first 17 frets for now, but easily exendable)
• Touch-sensing-frets
• Long scale (700mm) for low tunings
• Two micros, one for audio an one for everything else.
• Per string signal path
  • hexaphonic pickup
  • hex-preamp
  • Teensy 3.6 microcontroller

Here are some video Demos:

To learn more about this project and the design process, take a look at my project logs:

The Led-Fretboard

Touch-Sensitive Frets

Body-Neck-Construction

Audio Hardware

Connection and Communication

The KickUp

The MultEBow

Designing the Control Interface

Application Ideas

Power

Openness

This project is fully open source. It uses only open source libraries and all the design files can be opened with open source design tools. A git repository is also on the way to make this project better to collaborate.