At the 2018 NAMM Show, Industrial Radio made the NAMM debut of their Fretsense MIDI Guitar and MIDI Bass.
Here’s an overview from Industrial Radio’s Steven Chick – and a quick demo from bassist Dominic Gale, who wasn’t working with Industrial Radio, but just happened to stop by the booth while we were there.
Details on the Fretsense technology and their MIDI guitar and MIDI bass instruments are available at the Industrial Radio site.
The guitar starts at $4000 and there’s a 6-month build wait. Hilariously out-of-reach for me, but a girl can dream!!
On one hand, the price tag is “intense”, but getting a near-zero latency MIDI controller that tracks string energy, string-bends, and outputs individual string audio is pretty great. If the instrument they build is of super high quality and can double as a regular electric bass/guitar, then that seems like a pretty fair price. Individually wired frets, individually sensored strings, and all the development can’t be cheap.
For 4 kilodollars I’d have liked a 5-string bass.
This is high on my wish list for when a bunch of money just falls in my lap.
Have you tried the Fischman Triple Play? It’s the best midi guitar system I’ve come across after many bitter years of searching, but it’s by no means perfect. I bought the Boss SY-300 several months ago and the tracking and play-ability is fucking amazing… I’m blown away by that aspect… but the synthesizer still sounds electric guitar-ish no matter what you do! There are no “clean” oscillators and no ADSR. But if Boss can parlay that technology into midi conversion, then… game-changer!!!! I was hoping they’d announce it at this year’s NAMM but no such luck. Anyhoo… if this device works flawlessly, it might be worth the money to a handful of people. We’re stuck in the realm of diminishing returns and “close-enoughs” when it comes to midi guitar and you’re right… the price goes up exponentially after that. But what’s troubling is how many times the dude in the video said “virtually,” as in….. “close enough.”
I see you point about “virtually”, however, another way to interpret that is “it’s not zero, but for all practical purposes, it might as well be.” I prefer that to someone saying zero when it isn’t zero.
With respect, there is no such thing as zero latency. All electronic midi equipment will have some latency even when we aren’t aware of it. In the case of the Midi bass the latency is between 5ms and 8ms. I can live with that.