Why polyphonic guitars ?

Fundamental to the PARADIS concept is the electronically individual treatment of each string.
All guitars are mounted with six perfectly separated high quality pickups.
Up to now, hexaphonic pickups were mostly used to control guitar synthesizer systems. - ours do that too. But it is sad to hear the artist´s subtle playing reduced to the MIDI information "pitch" and "attack". The aim is rather to form rich, broad, and dynamic sounds from the inspired original vibrations of the string. Therefore, the individual  treatment of the strings is basic. Hexaphonic effects or a mixing desk will be your working field.
 

The PARADIS polyphonic piezo pickup (Pat. app.)

In magnetic pickups, it is on principle not possible to combine high string separation with full sound. Therefore, most hexaphonic pickups are built just to control synthesizers while their sound is not suitable for amplification.
PARADIS developed a bridge piezo pickup without loss to reproduce all strings identically and perfectly separated. Also, neither electromagnetic nor electrostatic fields can interfere. The sound is uncoloured (we leave this to wood and electronic effects), but reproduces the exact vibration of the string. The PARADIS polyphonic piezo pickup does not need a guitar amplifier and sounds best on a linear sound system.
 
 

PARADIS POLYSUBBASS (Pat. app.)

POLYSUBBASS is a versatile extension for the PARADIS hexaphonic guitars. It is capable to lower the lowest picked string by one octave and add it to the original sound. Softly added, the result is an amazing full bass sound. Used more strongly it can give the impression of an accompanying bass player. Furthermore, the machine provides the necessary 10 outputs to treat each string and it mixes to mono or stereo for amplification on a hi-fi or PA system.
 

The Bass Effect

The lower three strings are divided by three special versions of the known octave effect. Since they are adapted for this purpose and tuned to the strings, they work very softly and produce no errors. Contrary to a MIDIed bass sound, this effect oscillates synchronously with the string and therefore joins it like a natural part of the vibration. The bass signal is slightly limited to avoid overloading of the equipment and to preserve the natural attack of the instrument. Towards the higher notes of the bass strings the effect smoothly fades.
In the regular mode, all three strings are oktaved at the same time, which produces a particularly heavy bass sound for straight chords. But in general, the mixture of low bass notes produce disliked intermodulation. Therefore we have developed the Priority circuit (pat. pend.) that selects the lowest of the played strings and does not octave the others. In this priority mode, always a single clean bass line appears - a feature that MIDI does not offer so far.
The volume of the effect can be controlled on the front. It can either be mixed to the mono and stereo outputs or wired separately to a channel on the mixer. To bypass the effect, there is a switch on the front and a jack on the back that accepts a common on/off foot switch.
 

Separate String Outputs

On six jacks on the back , you have access to each string. They give you unlimited creativity. On a mixer, they can be equalized and panned individually and put through different effects. The dream might be a MIDIed multi-effect for each string. Playing noises can be filtered effectively with a noise gate on each string. If you provide six channels on the multi-track machine, you can even edit unwanted notes from single chords.

Mixing

In most cases the individual treatment of the strings is unnecessary or too complex. Therefore a mono and a stereo output is provided. Stereo can be wired with two monojacks or one stereo jack (which can serve as a headphones output too). The stereo effect is produced by the following distribution of the strings in space:

This is just one good possibility out of an infinite number. If you find a different personal preference, it can be realized in your machine by changing plugged resistors. We gladly advise you.
 

Guitar to MIDI

Only hexaphonic guitar signals can be converted to MIDI. The various Producers of such systems all use different wiring. Most guitar-to-MIDI converters can be connected to the hexaphonic output on the back. We offer the cable to the ROLAND GR-system.
More about Guitar to MIDI 

Supply of the built in preamp in the guitar

To avoid losses on the cables, high class guitars use a preamplifier in the instrument. But the checking and changing of the battery is a headache for most musicians. Also, the best noiseless chips cannot be used because they draw to much current from the battery. In our system the six high quality preamps in the guitar are fed through a separate wire in the cable, - you note the higher dynamic !