Robin's ASAP Solid Steel with MIDI. Robin has a one man stage show where he needs the look and sound of an acoustic guitar at high volumes. The ASAP Solid Steel fits the bill for this as the design resists feedback well and the face shape is the same dimensions as an ASAP acoustic. RMC saddles fitted in the rosewood bridge provide the signal. He also wants to use MIDI so this guitar is fitted with the RMC PolyDrive with which he drives his Axon unit. Additionally this guitar has a two string magnetic pickup that only picks up the vibrations of the bass E and A strings - you can just see this at the end of the fingerboard. The output from this can be fed to an octave divider and so when he fingerpicks he creates his own bass-line accompaniment. The output panel has a 13 pin DIN socket for MIDI and a stereo jack where the tip has the piezo and the ring has the magnetic so that default output with a mono socket would be the piezo. The control layout has piezo volume, piezo passive tone and synth volume in a line with the magnetic volume above them. One mini switches selects between piezo, synth or both, the other allows on-board program selection for the synth. The body is made from Alder with two utile laminations and is mostly hollow to keep the weight down and allow the red cedar top to resonate better. Fingerboard, bridge and headstock veneer are Rio rosewood. The glued in neck is utile and flamed maple. Strings are fitted through the body for convenience and speed.
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