Bob O’Reilly Guitars shared this intro video for the Expressiv Infinity Guitar – an instrument that they call the “world’s most advanced MIDI guitar system”.
It’s a hybrid electric and MIDI guitar, so you can play real strings, real frets, real pickups and real electric guitar sounds – or use it plug and play with MIDI sound modules.
Here’s what they have to say about the Expressiv Infinity Guitar:
THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED MIDI GUITAR SYSTEM.
The concept behind Expressiv has never changed: to create the ultimate guitar experience and take your performance to a whole new level. The world’s most advanced MIDI guitar system brings thousands of new sounds to your fingertips on stage and in the studio, all within an incredibly sleek and stunningly engineered instrument. It delivers such spectacular sounds that your creativity will take on a whole new life giving an immersive musical experience.
A NEW GENERATION OF SOUND.
It’s simple plug and play system seamlessly connects to virtually any sound generating module, bringing thousands of sounds to guitar that have never been available before now. Expressiv does this all while keeping the traditional guitar you know and love so well: real strings, real frets, real pickups and real sounds.
LIGHTENING SPEED.
An onboard 16Mhz processor handles every creative move you make ensuring you have lightening performance with total control. The sleek maple 22 fret board and professional grade single coil pickups means you have all the beautiful sound and feel of a traditional instrument while taking on a whole new world of technology with Expressiv. And with 3 new modes of playing never before seen on guitar, you’ll feel a whole new dynamic of control
DYNAMIC CONTROL
An incredible amount of engineering was invested to bring Expressiv to real guitar; Sending accurate musical notes in 100th of a second ensures nothing gets between you and your favourite sounds.
The Expressiv Infinity Guitar is available for pre-order via the Rob O’Reilly site for €1,499. See the site for more info.
I won’t even touch this instrument as long as there isn’t any reliable information about latency.
These demo videos don’t even try to address this issue, which seems a little suspicious.
A simple latency shootout like this one would do perfectly:
http://en.lebirne.com/guitar-to-midi-interfaces-shootout/
Chick, the online manual says 10 milliseconds latency. However, as this piece of kit isn’t available yet, I would not trust that figure until some benchmarks have been performed. The site & manual is a little vague on a lot of areas, and the troubleshooting section is 2 empty pages!
Mixed emotions.
On one hand, that demo was not-for-me (let’s just say). I do like the guitar’s shape and general aesthetic. 10ms latency isn’t too bad.
I’m not convinced that they have a quality guitar there. (They might ?) What might convince me is if they mentioned who designed & built the guitar & electronics.
The ONLY think that could convince me to buy a rig like that is if the guitar is really excellent sans the MIDI stuff. That probably would price it out of my range.
I really dislike these product videos where the camera cuts away from the instrument just as one is beginning to assess an interesting feature, or examine a detail of the instrument. Instead, I am left with visions of some dude grokking his rock-out and a lot of ramp wave buzzsaw noises lingering in the room like an unpleasant odor. Think I’ll pass on this one, because I can’t rightly get behind what it’s actually doing.
If people really want to know how this instrument works, they can go to the website and learn more. It includes the user manual. To judge the usefulness of an instrument based upon a brief video seems to me to be a very superficial evaluation.
can’t wait to boo someone off a stage for playing one of these.
it doesn’t look like it would be a very good GUITAR – it looks like it is hollow plastic with single coil pickups – the sustain has gotta be crap and with additional electronics it has gotta be noisy unless the pickups are shielded separately from the rest. Also the pickup toggle is on the top of the guitar which looks really awkward. Not saying it wouldn’t be serviceable but for the price you can either create or buy better options on the market and I know KMI has stuff in the works too – also the balance bar is kinda goofy
Their Tele looks better though and costs only €100 more:
https://www.rorguitars.com/products/expressiv-midi-telecaster
Thanks for the info about KMI. Does ROR’s “smart fretboard scanning” technology work similarly to StringPort?
https://www.keithmcmillen.com/labs/stringport-2/
this is the typical gear, a musician who buys and then resells after a few months because of inactivity.
i hope that flashy led “mirror” can be turned off. it makes it look like a kid’s toy instead of a serious instrument.
The MIDI Guitar Of The Future: As soon as you start playing you can’t hear anything until a few seconds later.
If Roland cannot make it, i doubt anyone can do.
If “The MIDI Guitar Of The Future” looks like this,it’s not my future.
In the other video there is noticeable latency.
Here we go – the latest “Guitar Hero” controller 😉
If anyone is attending Moogfest 2016, I will have an Expressiv Midi Guitar at my workshop, The 10 Minute Music Station. Come by and I will give a demo. I look forward to meeting some of you and passing on your thoughts to Rob O’Reilly.
It looks like they stole someone’s dirty coffee table and didn’t bother cleaning it. Also the multiple OH faces are not a good sell for this. Maybe it can be used for Guitar Hero or Rock Band :p
…regarding the demo there’s this thing called a keyboard for that. To my point I haven’t heard much good stuff resulting from MIDI guitars. I think they should make a midi BASS guitar. It makes much more sense with synth textures, do they have a bass guitar too?
I don’t like this guitar because the guitar in video isn’t pink
This is the future guitar? Glad I will be dead then.
this guitar looks like half a pair of sunglas(ses) I’d NEVER wear!