We all want to be guitar heroes, but most of us have to settle for letting a MIDI board play our riffs using a MIDI controller. [Joris] thinks a MIDI controller should look like a cool instrument and thus the Ni28 was born. Honestly, we first thought we were looking at wall art, but on closer look, you can see the fretboard and the soundhole are festooned with buttons.
Actually, they aren’t really buttons. The Ni in the name is because the buttons are nickel-plated brass plates that act like touch switches. There’s virtually no activation force required and you can easily touch more than one plate at a time.
We didn’t see any plans or build details available, but this is the kind of thing you’d probably want to make with your own custom touches anyway. It seems like you could build the frame using a variety of techniques and the MIDI controller itself isn’t hard to figure out.
We were a little surprised there was no video of the Ni28 in action. But if you build your own version, send up your best MIDI air guitar video, please.
This did remind us of the synthfonio. Or, maybe start with a real guitar.
Thanks for the article! Since some people asked I decided to publish the Kicad files for my prototype even though I shelved the project: hackaday.io/project/185427-ni28-electronic-midi-guitar
Yay!
Doesn’t need all those buttons though… just needs the strummer from a Rockband guitar and few “force trainers” to read which one of these 10 tunes the dude picking it up to noodle had in mind…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7lQm3ZmDOU
If “Stairway to Heaven” hadn’t been #1,
I would have been disappointed!
Gorgeous instrument, and contact switches great idea, but why 4 strings?
Most stringed instruments have 4 strings and we have just 4 fingers on one hand. You could take on a renaissance lute with their extra wide necks?
Audio, or it never happened! :)
Actually, after many years fighting with keyboards, I recently picked up guitar, and learned how much easier it is to improvise on, so maybe a guitar-like MIDI controller might be good for me.