Tag Archives: Smart Guitar

Award-winning Smart Guitar comes with a foldable design and a beginner-friendly interface

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A winner of both the Red Dot Product Design and iF Design Awards, the U-Lab 001 isn’t your average guitar. Sure, if you glanced at it, you’d recognize it as one, but the U-Lab 001 is far from the traditional Spanish-style guitar you’ve come to love. For starters, it has a hollow cutout, doesn’t have any strings, and folds in half on demand. The reason why the U-Lab 001 does all these things is because it’s designed not on the principle of acoustics or electromagnetics (in the case of an electric guitar), but rather on the framework of a smart electronic music device.

Designer: inDare Design Strategy Ltd. for Unknown Galaxy Ltd.

Designed for novices with little formal training in guitar-playing,  the U-Lab 001 provides the perfect launchpad in strumming, chords, finger-picking, and all-around musical theory. For starters, it comes with an impressive folding design that allows it to occupy 1/3rd of its original space when closed down (made possible thanks to the absence of strings). Open it up, however, and the U-Lab 001 becomes a blank canvas for you to sonically paint on with your left and right hands. The right hand rests on two rocker switches that emulate the act of strumming all strings or picking on individual strings, while the fretboard under the left hand comes with a touch-sensitive light-up surface that teaches notes, chords, and overall music theory, along with a companion smartphone app.

The U-Lab 001, being an electronic device, also comes with a built-in speaker that plays back the audio, allowing you to listen in on your performance without needing an amp. A rotary knob above the speaker lets you control volume, and instead of tuning keys at the end of the fretboard, a single knob lets you change your guitar’s scale on command. Want to practice/jam solo? There’s even a headphone jack built into the U-Lab 001 for silent jamming!

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The LAVA ME 3 ‘Smart Guitar’ comes with its own built-in touchscreen that lets you add effects and view tutorials

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Turning the humble stringed instrument into an entire ecosystem, the LAVA ME 3 is easily the most advanced guitar you can get your hands on. Aside from being a semi-acoustic guitar that works equally well as an analog instrument and a standalone electric one, The LAVA ME 3 also comes with its own dedicated touch-sensitive tablet panel on the top that lets you access a host of features for both amateur and professional uses. From simply learning chords and playing the metronome to actually letting you create loops and add effects, the ‘Smart Guitar’ packs everything you need in a guitar… whether you’re jamming in a room or performing on stage.

Debuting just 7 months after the LAVA ME 2 was announced, the ME 3 sports the same iconic carbon-fiber body with the vivid color schemes and the offset acoustic chamber-hole that makes the guitar so unmistakably memorable. Like its predecessors, the LAVA ME 3 sports a honeycomb internal structure that gives the guitar its sheer strength (there’s no smashing this bad boy on stage) while also creating an acoustic chamber that emits a rich, balanced sound when you play the instrument. However, the most significant upgrade as far as the LAVA ME 3 goes is the iPad-esque tablet that comes built right into the guitar’s upper surface. This tablet is what effectively turns the ME 3 from a regular semi-acoustic guitar into a smart guitar… probably making it the first-ever guitar to have its own dedicated Operating System – and while that sounds incredibly gimmicky, in reality, it’s probably the most game-changing feature a guitar could have.

The 3.5-inch touchscreen interface runs LAVA’s HILAVA OS, equipped with a myriad of apps that let you do everything from tune to learn, practice, jam, perform, compose, and even record. While there’s a lot to unpack there, the guitar itself is still quite traditional in the way it works. You can use it as an acoustic instrument, jamming on the guitar just like if it were a regular wooden Spanish guitar, or you could ‘switch it on’ and have the guitar’s internal speakers play your music with amplification, just like an electric guitar. The internal speakers pump music out of the offset acoustic chamber hole, or conversely, the LAVA ME 3 even sports a traditional 1/4-inch audio output like most electric guitars, letting you hook it to an external amp.

Onto LAVA ME 3’s most exciting feature – its ‘computer’. The touch display measures 3.5-inches diagonally (about the same as an iPhone 4) and runs on LAVA’s own HILAVA OS that packs a treasure-trove of features. Just off the bat, the touchscreen lets you do the basic stuff like providing a metronome and helping you tune your guitar (to even alternate tuning arrangements), but it also unlocks a bunch of other features, notably working as a tutorial machine that lets people learn notes, scales, arpeggios, chords, and even songs. A built-in microphone can even track progress in real-time, alerting you when you’ve made a mistake and ensuring you hit all the right notes. The LAVA ME 3’s Practice App turns the guitar into a teacher, helping novices learn chords to their favorite songs while also guiding them through chord transitions, strumming patterns, and scales… all skills needed to go from amateur to seasoned veteran.

For the seasoned veterans, the LAVA ME 3’s touchscreen practically functions as a built-in DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to let you experiment with effects, loops, and even multitracks. The Effects app is an ever-expanding library of filters and effects that you can layer onto your sound (making the guitar effectively sound like any instrument you want), and you can modulate each individual parameter too, from EQ to frequency, envelope, etc. Once you’ve got the sound you want, you can either jam to preset background music preparations (almost like guitar karaoke), or create your own by designing loops, layering samples, remixing riffs, and creating multitrack arrangements… all without a laptop, a phone, or a single cable. The guitar handles everything internally and even lets you record your sets and export them as stems or tracks, or even share them with LAVA’s own online community of budding artists and musicians.

The Smart Guitar comes priced at $999, which sounds absolutely batshit outlandish to begin with, but makes sense when you realize what you’re paying for. It’s not just the carbon fiber outer body, the semi-acoustic nature, the touchscreen, or that diverse ecosystem of features housed within the HILAVA operating system, it’s all of them combined, which effectively turns the guitar into a one-stop piece of equipment that replaces every other musical gear you’d need, from amplifiers to microphones, expensive pedals, software, or even a guitar teacher for that matter! The LAVA ME 3 also comes with a built-in 8000mAh battery that provides 9 full hours of continuous play-time or 2 weeks of standby… although when it’s discharged it can still be used as a regular acoustic guitar. The ME 3 also sports a USB-C charging port on its side (right near the 1/4-inch audio input), and if all that jazz wasn’t fancy enough, LAVA also sells an uber-futuristic $129 wireless charging dock for your fancy smart guitar!

Designer: LAVA

The post The LAVA ME 3 ‘Smart Guitar’ comes with its own built-in touchscreen that lets you add effects and view tutorials first appeared on Yanko Design.

Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar Brings String Instruments to the 21st Century

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Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar 01

Musicians who think that string instruments could use a modern touch should definitely check out the Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar that’s available via Walyou Deals at a special price.

Made by Zivix, an American start-up based in Golden Valley, MN, the Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar can function like a conventional guitar, enabling you to apply vibrato, bend strings, or even fingerpick. However, should you decide that the classical guitar sound is a bit too bland for your or your band, you can easily connect this device with Apple music apps and software.

Two of the main advantages of the Jamstik are its light weight and small dimensions. At 16.4″L x 3.5″W x 1.8″D and 1 lb, 9 oz in weight, the smart guitar is an instrument you can take with you anywhare. The 3.6v Lithium replaceable and rechargeable battery also contributes to the device’s portability, since it allows you to play anywhere for up to 8 hours.

Setting up the Jamstik isn’t difficult at all, as it doesn’t require any tuning. Combine that with its extreme portability and you’ll realize just how convenient this smart guitar really is.

Jamstik comes with some quality teaching software that was also developed by its creators. This means that it doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a guitar player who has been familiar with string instruments for decades. All-level guitar players of all ages could learn to have fun with it.

Infrared light technology enables guitar players to see their hands while using the Jamstik. That will lead to better coordination in the future, not to mention the cool effect.

As far as compatibility is concerned, the Jamstik can be paired with Apple devices running iOS 7.0 or later (iPad 2 or later, iPhone 4S or later, iPod Touch 5th Gen or later), or Mac OS X 10.6 or later.

The package includes the Jamstik itself, an USB charging cable, an adjustable guitar strap, a rechargeable battery, 2 guitar picks and 3 downloadable iOS apps, specifically jamStik Connect, jamTutor & jamMix. The following video should give you a pretty good idea about how the Jamstik and the companion software look and work in real life.

Besides JamTutor and JamMix, the smart guitar is available with literally hundres of iOS MIDI-capable apps such as GarageBand, which is Apple’s flagship music production app.

If you decide to buy yourself a Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar within the next four days, Walyou Deals offers it for $149.99, which is 40% of the original price. Referring a friend can get you $10, so that will lower the price even more. The product benefits from free shipping in continental US.

Feel free to also browse the other categories, as Walyou Deals features many incredible items at heavily discounted prices that could prove useful not only to modern musicians, but to geeks, in general. The Jamstik wireless smart guitar could make an excelent Christmas present, but in case it’s too expensive for your budget, you might find something else in our store.

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