You don’t go to watch a band play live for the audio quality — most venues are atrocious in that regard. No, you go to enjoy the show as a whole and that includes the visuals. The more a band can do to make the performance look exciting, the more you’re going to enjoy it. To that end, Luigi Morelli helped luthier (and fellow Italian) Gianluca of Nadar Guitars build this one-of-kind LED-lit electric guitar.
This guitar’s body looks like a left-handed B.C. Rich Warlock merged into a teardrop. It is a very unique design made all the more special by the LED lighting. Several strips of LEDs on the body resemble the traces of a circuit board, while additional LEDs run the length of the fretboard. There are eight different effects/animation programs and it is possible to switch between them using an infrared remote — a well thought-out feature, because a tech can control that along with the stage lights.
These are WS2812B individually addressable RGB LEDs that operate under the control of two Arduino Nano boards. One controls the lights on the neck (which only follow a single program) and the other controls the lights on the body. Power comes from a 5000mAh lithium battery.
In his writeup, Morelli mentions that the LED circuit produced a hum around 1kHz. We assume that the guitar’s pickups would amplify that, but Morelli says that they were able to solve the problem — they’re just keeping the solution “a little industrial secret.” Hum or not, the guitar looks fantastic.
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