In this work, we have implemented an Electric guitar multi effect using an Arduino Due microcontroller as the central processing unit.
Background
Electric guitar have been widely since the beginning of the 20th century. Electric guitar produce small amplitude electric output (around Vpp=200mV) and as such, an amplifier is needed in order to perform. This disadvantage leads to an advantage – the guitar sound can be manipulated electrically, thus allowing a variety of sound effects to be applied.
At first, guitar effects were analog due to speed and quality, but as technology advanced, digital effects became increasingly popular. This advancement led to a new type of component, called "multi effect". As the name implies, the multi effect is a device that can be configured to be any effect the player desires.
However, the multi effect device holds some disadvantages, such as high price and limited choice of effects and customization.
Our innovation
Our idea is to deal with the obvious multi effect disadvantages: we will offer a cheap competent to the market's multi effect with an ability to be any effect you'd like, with endless options of customizations. This will be achieved by using an Arduino microcontroller as a DSP unit, allowing the user to write down in C code any effect he would like to have into our device.
Our demands from this device were:
• Cheap. Maximum target price is 300₪
• Good sound quality, at least as good as our competitors at 700₪ price ranges.
• Easy to use, easy to implement any effect
• Our device should be versatile and offer as much customization options as possible
