The rock ’n’ roll arsenal has never been more formidable than it is today. The simple guitar and amplifier have given way to brigades of special effects devices, modular amplification systems and sophisticated electronic enhancements of the raw, biting sound of electric guitar.

This effort at “broadening the horizons” of guitar playing is most evident in the area of guitar synthesizers which, although they have been in production for only a few years, transform the simple guitarist into a horn section, a string section, and an electronic wizard in one mighty stroke.

Guitar synthesis was the logical outgrowth of electronic keyboard synthesizers; indeed, guitar synthesizers might have come first had it not been for the problem of converting the pitch of guitar strings into a voltage that could be processed by electronic synthesizers.

Anyway, after much trepidation and gnashing of teeth, several companies burst upon the scene at roughly the same time with The Answer: a new type of electronic pickup for guitar that effectively isolated the signal of each guitar string and successfully (more or less) converted pitch into voltage. ^