[ Billy ] So like the last time we talked about this , the guitar still has to be working like an acoustic guitar . The top has to be resonating , the sound port actually needs to be projecting the voice of the guitar before it ’ s ever plugged in . There are three pickups : the ShawBucker , the under saddle Piezo , and the body sensor . Those are all picking up what the guitar is doing , then that signal is fed to a PCB board that uses impulse responses and imaging to create the sound based on what the guitar is doing on the output . There is quite a bit going on in there . But then you think of what a traditional humbucker pickup would sound like . I thoroughly enjoy Punk Rock music , and I can walk up to a PA system with that humbucker and get that grit with position 1B . And it will feed back just as if it was a true electric guitar feeding back off of an amp . So , it ’ s really working like it should as a stacked humbucking pickup would , and then its altered at the PCB board before the output jack .
[ WM ] The A and the B , explain how this works ? It ’ s not just one or the other , you ’ re able to come up with some really cool blends . How did you do that if you ’ re in fact toggling between two IR ’ s ?
[ Billy ] Rather than give specific points within the blend knob where you were forced to be in one specific position , what we wanted to do was be able to use on either end , or both the A and B side . Regardless of if you ’ re an artist that sits at home on their couch and never plays in front of people , you ’ re creating your own art . Rather than trying to determine what we think people should use . we ’ re allowing the user to go between each of the positions and fine tune it until they find the subjective characteristics they are looking for . The beauty of it goes back to creating guitars that don ’ t exist in physical form . Nobody created a guitar that ’ s like a jumbo and a small body , if you just say those two things together that makes no sense ! We ’ re talking about a really large guitar and a really small guitar , and you can blend them seamlessly and create a unique tone all of its own .
[ WM ] The first thing I thought when I went to play this guitar was , “ What am I going to plug this thing into ?” I would love to hear your thoughts about the different things you ’ ve plugged it into and the logic behind what you went for and why ?
[ Billy ] When Brian Swerdfeger and I went from ideas in our head to the conceptual meeting of what this thing was going to do , then all the way to proof of concept and launching the product , the idea was always that the guitar should have the ability to do whatever we want it to do directly into a PA speaker or a DI or through the Front of House . It should not have the feedback issues that a traditional acoustic guitar would have . It should have multiple voices so you can use different voicings in a song whether live or recording . And third , we ’ re an electric guitar company , we have the permission to go ahead and put an electric guitar sound within the acoustic world , which changes the dynamics of what people think of as an acoustic-electric .
What I ’ ve found is , going directly through a PA speaker gives you the most pure and honest form of what that guitar was designed to do . There are going to be all of these iterations of what you can do , and I think that ’ s also one of the interesting parts . But our intent was , if you just play it through a speaker that is flat , you still get all of the tone characteristics , and even your electric guitar sounds like you ’ re playing through an amp . Then you start to understand the concept , and when people say , “ Who did you make it for ?” our cheeky comment that is imbedded in truth is , “ We made it for guitar players .”
People do everything from plug it into a pedal board with all kinds of crazy effects and then through a bass amp . We ’ ve had our guys do it directly through our acoustic amp . We ’ ve had folks do it just through an electric amp because they really like the drive and things you can do with acoustic tones through an electric amp .
So , when you boil it down , this guitar really accomplished what we set out to do , which is give somebody an inspirational tool and let them create their own art in whatever way it fits . Everybody has their own idea of what the golden tone is . I think with this guitar you ’ ve got the option to kind of test things out . You can find a tone that ’ s in there that you really love without running it through anything else . But then you get all kinds of other sonic options and pockets of little rabbit holes to dive down , because you can plug it into pedals , you can plug it into different electric guitar amps , and every single one of those creates a different environment with the guitar .
[ WM ] Is there some sort of GUI slash preset editor that one could use to load custom versions and blends on the horizon ?
[ Billy ] To be honest , were looking at everything right now . If you really put in context where we ’ ve come in a “ quote unquote ” short amount of time , its been five years in the making since we started the project , but two years ago was when we kind of broke the internet that first day we launched the Tele . Ever since then its kind of like all bets are off , let ’ s figure out how to drive the innovation .
I think if were honest with ourselves and we look at the difference in where the Jazzmaster is versus where the original Tele was , they all have their own unique kind of position within the family of Acoustasonic . We started as a platform that we knew we could turn into a marketplace . We ’ re at that point now where we ’ ve created the marketplace , so how do you grow that marketplace and stay innovative in technology ?
Again , it goes back to staying true to innovation . We ’ re turning over every rock , we ’ re looking at everything , and were excited to launch this one and everything it offers . As far as specifically the timing on what ’ s next , were just excited to get this one out the door and start building it out because it ’ s proving to be more than just a platform . We ’ re creating a completely new environment for acoustic-electric instruments .