Do you enjoy supplementing your guitar playing with electronic sounds from your favorite music software? While you can split your attention between the six-string on your hand and a MIDI keyboard on the table, we imagine the ACPAD will offer a much more convenient solution.
A MIDI controller for acoustic guitars, it mounts right on the guitar’s face, giving your strumming hand access to a variety of controls without taking it off the instrument. That way, you can easily add beats, loops, and effects to your three-chord ditties (just kidding, we all know you can play five chords), putting the full power of a rich, full sound right on your instrument of choice.
The ACPAD has eight gold-plated pressure-sensitive touch pads that can be assigned to any digital instrument, effect, or sample, along with 19 preset buttons, two looper channels, and two sliders, making for a pretty generous MIDI add-on. During play, it can sync wirelessly to laptops and mobile devices via a USB dongle, so you can work the guitar without any extra wires hampering your mobility, although it can also function with a regular USB tether if you’re just practicing at home. The pad, by the way, adheres to the guitar surface using a suction mat, so you can easily detach it without leaving any residue.
Features include an onboard battery that allows for up to five hours of continuous play, a super-thin profile that makes it unobtrusive to your guitar playing, and a bundled PC software that allows users to edit their own MIDI data for assigning sounds. It can fit most full-size acoustic guitars, unless, of course, you have other gear already attached to it (e.g. a Shamp amplifier).
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for ACPAD. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at €249.