Guitar electronics

hexaphone

Cycfi have a prototype with new electronics:

They've added a BOSS GK kit onboard the guitar, so a simple RJ45 cable can be used instead of the 19-pin lemo cable they were using before.   The cable now carries digital audio, MIDI data for the controls, and power.  It probably makes sense to do the digital conversion onboard the guitar, because most people will run it into digital modellers, but the GK makes the onboard electronics more complex and is BOSS-specific unfortunately.

They've also released their electronic whammy bar:

https://www.cycfi.com/product/ewhammy/

ICBM said:

Violins have not changed very much since the early 19th century either.

The 1950s technology in a traditional electric guitar will still work just as well in another 70 years as it does today, wear aside. A lot of other electronics won’t, even if it’s not obsolete in functionality by then.

The way things are heading, the rate of change between now and 2096 will be faster than the last 70 years, and you could even say 1950s technology was excessive.

Perhaps we'd all be happier if we went back to singing and playing the simple instruments humans used for 100,000+ years before civilisation kicked off, but we're faulty creatures, and suffer from GAS.

koneguitarist

I think main reasons are,
1. the sheer amount of pedals and FX units available to tap dance and leave your hands to just play. 
2. On stage simplicity is king, 2-3 sounds is all majority of players use on one guitar.
3. having spare guitars for different tones. 

icarusi

For years I only used the pu selector switch and one volume knob, just for cutting noise between songs. I had a floor vol pedal, so I could control the vol level after all fx, so the guitar tones and vols were always full up. When I ditched the fx for straight into the amp stuff, I got more into the guitar controls, especially the 4 knob varieties, blending the pickups and using the edge of my hand to zero and reset the vols. Now I don't like 2 vol guitars which don't have that layout, eg the PRS DGT SE, which was otherwise ok. In my experience 'stuff fails' so I prefer less tech, or at least an analogue fallback path, for when the tech plays up. The Blade RH4 boost switch was good for having a centre 'analogue-through' mode along with the 2 battery powered boost options.

Brio

I've given up on pickup swaps at the moment abmnd use a Source Audio EQ2 programmable eq pedal to goose the sound in a direction I like.