By David Ponce

This is not a new product by any means, but I got to hear a demonstration of the Evertune guitar bridge at The Startup Debut and was really impressed. It’s a specially designed guitar bridge that keeps it in tune at all times. The way it works is as follows. The frequency of a string is determined by three factors: its length, weight and tension. Two of these, length and weight, are pretty constant. But changes in tension will cause changes in pitch. So the bridge features springs that pull on the string with a constant force. It you turn the tuning peg one way or the other, the spring in the bridge adjusts to keep the tension the same, thus staying in tune. And it works. Really, really well.

Now, you have to understand the system’s limitations. There’s an effective range outside of which turning the pegs will change the frequency, so you have to stay within that. But there might be times when you actually want to get to the upper edge of that range and play there; if you want to bend your strings for example. And this is somewhat of a weakness in the system, in my opinion. Most guitar playing involves bending of some kind, so you’d want to stay at the edge of the effective range most of the time anyway. But if you’re spending time finding that edge, you might as well spend it tuning the guitar in the first place. It’s a fundamental flaw, but not one that dimishes the Evertune’s effectiveness. If you want to play chords for example, this is perfect. It’s for more bluesy stuff that you’re going to run into trouble.

In any case, the device itsellf is around $330 but you will need to spend more money on having someone install it for you, and this typically costs an extra $200-$300. The company is working to have guitars with Evertune pre-installed.

[ Product Page ]

By David Ponce

Lovely hand made tribute to the classic game, the Pac Man ukulele is $600. It’s made to order so you have to contact Celentano Woodworks on Etsy for an ETA.

The Pac Man ukulele is 12″ wide and 28″ long. The scale length is 19″ with 18 frets. Made out of maple with an ipa fretboard.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ LikeCool ]

By David Ponce

It’s a fully functional drum set in a T-Shirt, which comes with its own powered mini amplifier that clips to your belt and “goes up to 11.” Better yet, there’s a looping functionality with unlimited tracks and loops that can last up to 3 minutes. With 9 synthesized sounds like “Rock drums”, “Discotek” and “Scratchy”, you’ll be tapping your chest like a lunatic while laying down some rhymes in no time. Don’t believe us, check out the below video.

The shirt is washable as the electronics are removable and the best part is the price: $29. It’s currently out of stock but will be ready to ship on the 10th. That’s tomorrow, folks.

[ Product Page ]

By David Ponce

Not the first such video where someone takes a bunch of old timey electronics and hacks it into an improbable orchestra. But not all are good. This rendition of The Animals’ House of The Rising Sun is decent and was made using the following:

a. HP Scanjet 3P, Adaptec SCSI card and a computer powered by Ubuntu v9.10 OS as the Vocals.
b. Atari 800XL with an EiCO Oscilloscope as the Organ
c. Texas instrument Ti-99/4A with a Tektronix Oscilloscope as the Guitar
d. Hard-drive powered by a PiC16F84A microcontroller as the bass drum and cymbal

VIA [ Geekosystem ]

By David Ponce

If you believe the above video, a traditional conversation between a microwave manufacturer and its advertising agency led to the creation of a new product. Or if not en entirely new product, then at least to the addition of one cool feature to the same old product. The BGH Quick Chef features a USB port that allows you to upload any song you like and use that as the chime that alerts you to your food being ready.

It’s cool.

And while there aren’t any pricing details, the video claims the Quick Chefs will be produced in 2012. As this is an Argentinian company, we’re not too sure about stateside availability. Heck, all we know is what you can see in the video for yourselves.

VIA [ Technabob ]

Over the top DVD and Blu-ray packaging are not uncommon these days, but you don’t see much being done for new vinyl releases. It might be because the format has been supplanted 3 or 4 times over by now, or it could be the fact that bands who still do produce vinyl pressings just don’t care about their fans. Clearly that’s not the case with the hardcore group Graf Orlock though.

Their latest release, Doombox, comes on a very cool, clear 10-inch piece of vinyl in a box set that also includes CDs of not only their current release, but their last 3 trilogy records as well. Giving you 42 tracks of Graf Orlock goodness. (With ‘goodness’ being a relative term.) But as you can see in the photo, who cares about the music when the vinyl’s packaging includes instructions for turning it into a fairly convincing cardboard (non-functioning) boombox. All for just $15! (I’m fairly certain that’s not just the pre-order price.) Goodbye reference texts, I’ve suddenly got the need for more shelf space.

[ Graf Orlock "Doombox" ] VIA [ ALBOTAS & OMG Vinyl ]

The BPM is the fourth design in Crispin Jones’ ‘Master of Time’ series where he asked creative professionals with “an interesting relationship to time” to collaborate on a watch. This time around it was DJ Tom Middleton who not surprisingly created a watch that allows DJs to quickly calculate the BPM of a track. Now I’m not going to pretend to know anything about DJ’ing besides hitting shuffle, but apparently all it takes is some quick counting and a bit of multiplication to figure out a given track’s BPM.

To calculate the bpm of a track: wait until the seconds hand aligns at 9, 12 and 3 on the watch (denoted by a full white circle) and start counting the quarter notes/beats as you’re listening to the music. It’s much easier with House/Techno music as the bass drum usually falls on these quarter note beats.

You’ll see the white circles gradually filling up with red and blue, stop counting when the white circle appears again. Multiply the count by four and you have the bpm.On the rear of the watch are some basic bpm ranges for a selection of current dance music genres.

The BPM watch is limited to just 100 pieces, but with a price tag of $199 it’s not outrageously expensive. And you don’t have to be a DJ to buy one, but the next time you’re at a club and hear a crappy mix just remember that it could be because you took a handy tool away from a real DJ.

[ Mr. Jones Watches - BPM ] VIA [ Cool Hunting ]

Office music politics always ends up being either a dictatorship, whether ruled by a local radio station or that guy with the really nice speakers, or a collection of independent states where everyone simply wears headphones and listens to what they want. Neither seem that beneficial to fostering a teamwork mentality, so BreakfastNY created the Office Music Democratizer which gives everyone a vote regarding what they do or don’t like when it comes to music.

Their solution is a light up set of buttons on the wall that allows anyone in the office to either like or dislike the song currently being played by LastFM or Pandora. Hitting the like button increases the song’s rating, while hitting the dislike button immediately causes it to jump to the next track. I can still see this solution as being problematic as haters will readily jump up to skip the current song, but since everyone in the office has the same powers, hopefully it will indeed lead to some manner of democracy among the people.

[ BreakfastNY - Office Music Democratizer ] VIA [ swissmiss ]

While Glee has gotten a bit more dramatic this season, I don’t think anyone should ever take it too seriously. At least not seriously enough to listen to advice from a talking/singing over-sized billiard ball. Now I’ve seen ‘themed’ versions of the Magic 8 Ball before, but never to the extent that something like Monopoly takes it, but maybe this is the beginning of a trend? This Glee themed prognosticator provides 20 different predictions that are either spoken or sung, so if you know someone who likes to hear short, edited, highly compressed clips from the show, your gift hunt is already over. $12.95 available from the Fox online store.

[ Glee Magic 8 Ball ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Chris Scott Barr

My life is generally pretty hectic between class, work and all the things in between and I sometimes like to take the stress volume down a notch or two with my trusty Les Paul Custom. The problem is it’s generally 3am or later by the time I have a chance to sit down and do such a thing, so cranking up a Marshall full-stack to 11 is not an option. That’s why when Peavey’s AmpKit LiNK, a portable electric guitar interface for the iPhone, came across our desks a few weeks ago I was immediately interested (and by interested I mean I went running around the office with a replica Highlander sword shouting “There can be only one… reviewer.”).

The AmpKit experience begins with the free AmpKit app (or it’s feature packed paid version AmpKit+) from the iTunes App Store. The application itself is very sleek, the primary interface is a virtual view of the amp head/cabinet, microphone and effects that you currently have set, giving you a good overview of all your settings. The interface also provides a number of preset configurations, a metronome and tuner, and an interface for recording clips and transferring them wirelessly to your PC or Mac.

The second piece of the AmpKit experience is the AmpKit LiNK device. Just plug the device into the headphone jack on your iPhone and then plug in your guitar (via standard guitar cable) and a set of headphones into the AmpKit LiNK. Next, select one of the presets from the AmpKit app and you’re ready to go.  You can also use a standard 1/8in stereo cable to hook the device into your PC or Mac, a feature I found particularly useful for recording tracks in GarageBand. After spending a few days playing with the different amps, mics and effects I have to say I’m impressed by the overall quality of the sounds produced, particularly when considering the cost of the unit.

Which brings me to the final point on this device, with a price point of $39.99 for the hardware, the AmpKit LiNK is an affordable tool for any guitarist with an iPhone. New amps, effects and microphones can be purchased from within the AmpKit app for $4.99, $2.99 and $0.99 respectively which may seem a bit pricey when compared to other downloadable media. However, considering the costs of their real world counterparts and the quality of the sounds they produce, these prices are a bargain.

[ Peavey ]