The soundtrack of Blade Runner, then Ghostbusters, and then almost any movie from the mid-1980s plays, and even though they are written and performed with many more instruments, I can't help but think of Neville Marten wielding a SynthAxe and giving the conventional guitar a musical expansion very characteristic of that era. Created by a British company, the 100 revolutionary guitars that could be manufactured went unjustly unnoticed by the world of popular music; they were MIDI-controlled synthesizers whose potential we still have time to discover.
The music cemetery is full of young stars, promises interrupted by drugs, failed albums, one-hit-wonder bands, forgotten songs, and obsolete or, worse, forgotten or never-known instruments. As if he were a musical necrophile, Alec Stanfield, a musician and electronic engineer, decided to dust off his strange guitar and show the current world and the new generation of young people and adults who look at retro with a love that might be assumed circumstantial but isn't, what they had missed knowing for so many years.
https://old.neoteo.com/como-funcionan-los-sintetizadores-aprende-de-sintetizadores-online/SynthAxe (synthesizer + axe)
Named very intuitively as SynthAxe (Synth, from synthesizer, Axe from axe, for the colloquial name given to guitars because of their shape), it is a MIDI-controllable synthesizer in the shape of a guitar that was built in the mid-1980s by a company from England. With unprecedented construction, the electric guitar and synthesizer earned the applause of thousands of people who saw it live in each of the presentations, conferences, shows, and exhibitions where Alec Stanfield took it and played it with harmonious satisfaction for more than 10 years.
But it never got beyond that, a passing entertainment. An ephemeral wonder for musicians with a suspicious love for colorful things and a simple but bizarre toy for the powerful music industry, which only bet on the safe. Not even the promotion by great musicians like Allan Holdsworth or Lee Ritenour could get more than 100 SynthAxe made in total, and that is already a matter of curiosity for us.
For that same reason, the company had to close and Alec Stanfield lost his job, although as payment he was given one of the 100 SynthAxe. He was tempted to sell it for a long time and prepared several of the videos we include in this article, but after reconsidering the history, seeing what he had, and understanding that this synthesizer guitar is not dead yet, he canceled his sales intentions and set out to make the SynthAxe known.
How does it work?
As soon as we access the SynthAxe manual, we are told to forget everything we know about MIDI guitars, because this is another type of instrument. First, MIDI guitars work by trying to convert the sound of the strings' vibrations into MIDI data. That is, they work by converting analog to digital. This, as its complexity dictates—although it has now been considerably reduced—implies considerable levels of delay between the performance and the interpretation as data.
In contrast, in the SynthAxe, the strings themselves are sensors, and the fretboard uses a diagonal system to separate each fret into six different zones. In this way, the fret matrix is scanned by a microprocessor and combined with information provided by the string and its bend sensors to determine the pitch of the note. For electronics enthusiasts, note that the SynthAxe uses a system in its bending sensors that passes current through each string and measures changes in the electromagnetic field of each using tiny coils.
The equipment
The complete system includes a console with 99 memories to save your compositions, 2 sustain and effects pedal boards, and of course the SynthAxe controller. In addition to all this, Alec also has available for viewing the original SynthAxe manuals, circuit diagrams in case someone wants to remake it (wouldn't that be a good Kickstarter project?), some spare parts, all documents concerning the guitar and its construction, demonstrations on vinyl, covers and protective cases for transport, and even the original VHS that came with the SynthAxe system, where famous musicians created incredible songs in a matter of minutes, just as Alec does in the following video.
Having learned about the guitar-synthesizer that could have opened a new genre in music because of how revolutionary it was for its time, we tell you that in those days of 1985 it was sold for $13,000 (another cause of its failure), and that the last change of hands was recently made at $5,000. Its owners and fans have opened a Facebook group to share information, documents, photographs, and everything related to this guitar-synthesizer that could have revolutionized music. From here, this was our tribute, remembrance, and attempt at resurrection for the SynthAxe.
SynthAxe
