Imagine being able to add real-time effects like delay, distortion or reverb to your acoustic guitar, while still enjoying the flexibility that the instrument offers over its electric counterpart — meaning no amps, wires, or electricity. That is what a new device called the Pulse promises to bring to your strumming experience.
The battery-powered Pulse attaches to your acoustic guitar and modifies the vibrations within the instrument, adding and subtracting vibrations where necessary to create the effects. It attaches to the front end of the guitar, with one end on the bridge pins and the other looped over the strap peg. You don’t need to modify your guitar in order to use it, so there’s no expectation of you drilling into its body to attach it. Nor will it leave any marks once you take it off. The sound modifications are made using four sliders and an LED strip makes clear which effects are being implemented at any one time.
“One of my specialties while working as a product designer was to help large companies analyze their industries, and develop innovative products to help them disrupt that space,” Mike Coyle, founder of U.K.-based startup Tonik Sound, which developed Pulse, told Digital Trends. “I’ve been a musician all of my life and was amazed at how much the music instruments industry resembled some of the industries I had shaken up. I decided to start Tonik as a way to breathe new life into the way in which musicians interact with their music. The Pulse was developed in collaboration with many guitarists, most of them electric guitarists who used their acoustic guitar for its ease of use and flexibility, but still wanted the effects from their electric guitar. We decided to tackle this problem, and the Pulse is what we came up with.”
The Pulse made its debut this month at the National Association of Music Merchant (NAMM) Show, an annual trade event for the music products industry. Starting March 12, it will be available via a crowdfunding campaign. If you want to keep track of what is going on with the product, you can head to Tonik’s website to sign up for Pulse-related alerts.
