The 3-minute interview: Bruce Jacob

(Courtesy photo)

Jacob, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Maryland, worked with some of his students to invent electric guitars that enable a musician to change the basic sound of a guitar with the flip of a switch -- rather than a change of guitars. By altering circuits in the guitars that pick up and transmit sound, the new guitars are capable of a bunch of different sounds instead of just one. (For more info, go to coil-guitars.com.)

Why did you try to create this new kind of guitar?

What many musicians have wanted over the years is the ability to swap through a bunch of different circuits. I wanted every possible sound a guitar could give me. Usually, people rip open their guitars and rewire them to get precisely the sound they want. I wanted to do it without rewiring anything and come up with the perfect guitar and sell it to everybody.

How will this product affect guitarists?

At performance time, musicians will have something like five or 15 choices of sounds in their guitar. People usually bring a zillion guitars with them to shows or recording studios. This reduces the number they will have to drag around. It sounds like a whole bunch of different guitars in one. We're giving people the ability to define their sound.

How is this different from amplifiers or pedals that change a guitar's sound?

Normally when people want lots of sounds, they buy amps or distortion units. Here's an analogy: A guitar gives you colors you can mess with. [Amplifiers], without modifying the guitar, give you different brush strokes. We went back to the beginning and changed the colors a guitar produces. We're trying to give people a gigantic palette.

- Maria Schmitt