8-bit Guitar is the love child of a six string and arcade game

Geeks tend to make all sorts of gear for no other reason than because they can. Such is the case with this cool 8-bit guitar that is made from hacked up parts from an arcade game and some ingenuity. The thing was built by Mike Davenport as a senior project.

It uses touch strips for strings and has a FPGA for logic control and function. A joystick modifies the pitch and the gadget has selectable waves and other parameters to change the sound. Mike even built in save banks.

The requisite YouTube video shows the builder rocking out to what could be the soundtrack to a video game from the 80's. If you are inspired to build your own you will have to pretty much go it alone, there are no instructions or notes offered on how exactly the guitar was made. Check out the video below.