- in Guitar , New Music Gear Monday , Video by Bobby Owsinski
New Music Gear Monday: Yamaha TransAcoustic Guitar
OK, this is pretty wild. What if you want to add some extra ambience to your acoustic guitar, but hate the idea of plugging into an amp or adding effects pedals. If that’s the case, then the Yamaha TransAcoustic guitar might be the thing for you.
The Yamaha TransAcoustic guitar lets you add reverb and chorus to the guitar sound, but incredibly uses no external amplification or processing to do so. The way it works is that an actuator installed on the inner surface of the guitar back vibrates in response to the vibrations of the strings. The vibrations of the actuator are then conveyed some DSP, then back to the body of the guitar and to the air in and around the guitar body, generating authentic reverb and chorus sounds from inside the body.
Three knobs let you adjust the degree of effect applied and as well as the volume level at the line out jack. There’s one control for Reverb (the reverb type automatically switches from Room to Hall at the 12 o’clock position), and another for Chorus, and finally an on/off – Line Out Volume Control called a TA Switch (for TransAcoustic, I guess). Pressing the TA Switch for more than 0.3 seconds activates the TA function. When a cable is connected to the line-out jack in the strap knob, the volume can be adjusted by rotating the TA knob.
The TransAcoustic guitar is pretty new so there’s not much info available on it yet, but you can find some here on the Yamaha Europe site. There’s also no U.S. price yet, but the European one is around $1,500.
