Who Needs Knobs? New Electrick Spray Can Make Your Guitar Touch Sensitive

If you're like me, you spend your days and nights dreaming about a space-age spray that can coat pretty much any object and turn it into a gigantic touch screen. Well, our dreaming days are over!

Three forward-thinking gents—Yang Zhang, Gierad Laput and Chris Hanson—have been working on a new touch-sensitive spray called Electrick, which essentially eliminates the need for knobs. This, of course, includes the knobs on your guitar or bass.

As Zhang puts it, the spray is a “versatile sensing technique that enables touch input on a wide variety of objects and surfaces, whether small or large, flat or irregular. This is achieved by using electric field tomography in concert with an electrically conductive material, which can be easily and cheaply added to objects and surfaces through a variety of fabrication methods such as painting, 3D printing, injection molding, etc.”

As demonstrated in the video below, Electrick could allow guitarists to control almost any parameter on their instrument with a mere flick of a finger. If you want to change your volume or tone, just touch the guitar. This also works for whammy-type—and other—effects.

If you're interested in all aspects of Electrick, be sure to watch the entire clip below. If you want to skip right to the guitar section, jump to 4:08.

For more information and photos, step right this way.