This mind-boggling acoustic has an onboard Raspberry Pi computer, effects and speakers

Lately we’ve had the pleasure of bearing witness to wild electric guitar builds such as a Jazzmaster with a built-in tape delay effect, an Epiphone Les Paul with an onboard joystick-controlled fuzz pedal and the Les-o-caster Les Paul/Strat hybrid.

For those of you that are more into acoustic guitar mod insanity, may we introduce you to Muiota Betarho, who turned his acoustic into an electric guitar-plus by loading it with a humbucker – as well as a Raspberry Pi single-board computer, a built-in FX processor, a sub-woofer and mid-range speakers, an LCD display and a li-ion battery.

There’s also access to a SunVox app, a modular synthesizer with pattern based sequencer, via a touchscreen on the guitar’s side, plenty of knobs and buttons for fun tone tweaking and, just because it looks super-cool, LEDs that flash inside the body in real time to the sound.

To see how Betarho put the whole thing together, check out Part 1 of the video above, and stay tuned to his official YouTube channel for Parts 2 and 3.

Richard Bienstock

Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.