If you saw the music video for the new Scale the Summit single “Jackhammet Ballet”, then you definitely noticed guitarist Chris Letchford’s LED fretboard. You also probably noticed the band has vocals now, but let’s focus on the guitar thing. What’s up with that?
The guitar itself is a Kiesel Chris Letchford Signature Series, but the new fretboard was built by Dave Cohen of Equilibrium Guitars and the LEDs were programmed and designed by Dr. Gore from The Beast of Nod. Dr. Gore explains the fretboard, and the process of making the fretboard, as such:
“Back at the end of 2019, my friend Dave Cohen of Equilibrium Guitars told me about this project Chris Letchford had approached him about and asked if I wanted to take on the circuit design and programming. Chris initially only wanted the lighting on the guitar to follow his fingers, but as we got deeper into the planning phase we realized there was the potential to do so much more with the lighting system.
“Enabling fully customizable, full-RGB lighting meant that we needed much more sophisticated circuity than, say, static LED position markers would require. It took a few prototypes and iterations, but MAN the first time I saw the system playing through the ‘Odyssey’ by Scale the Summit (the demo track I used during prototyping) was fucking awesome.”
Check out in the video below. Scale the Summit will release their new album Subjects on June 25, and pre-orders are available here.
