Quote from: jonbda1492 on Today at 10:30:52 AMHi
I am interested to know if this pickup would work with a Steel string Yamaha silent guitar (SLG 200S)
Thanks
Jonathan

After restring with electric guitar strings - yes

Hi
I am interested to know if this pickup would work with a Steel string Yamaha silent guitar (SLG 200S)
Thanks
Jonathan

https://www.light4sound.com/


Opik Optical Pickup

Welcome to the group EDGibbs2024! 

K-Muse Phi-Tech Photon MIDI Converter System With Yamaha TX-7
https://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/tx7

Pics
https://www.matrixsynth.com/2023/02/k-muse-photon-guitar-midi-converter-sn.html








Optical divided pickup


Henry Juszkiewicz owned Phi-Tech Electronics in Oklahoma since 1981- he purchased the K-Muse brand, renamed it
Phi -Tech Photon MIDI Guitar System. Created a line of Gibson Photon Hyperspeed instruments.  Then dropped it after 18 months



ARCHIVE of Yahoo MIDI GUITAR GROUPS

PHI-TECH  discussion in replies
https://midiguitar.yahoogroups.narkive.com/37NBhFEQ/the-passac-sentient-six-guitar-midi-controller-hex-pickup

Rich Williams wrote>
I'm unaware if Phi-Tech made a "guitar synth" as such. The Phi-tech
units are pretty much identical to the earlier K-Muse units and they
didn't change much even after Gibson bought it up. The pickups have
small clear acrylic bars that project upwards from a black bar that
mounts under the strings, close to the bridge. There is a pair of
bars for each string, one bar housing the LED, and the other the
optosensor. (I dont know what frequency the light is, but its not
visible to the naked eye).( Edit - its IR LEDs ) Ideally, (and this is critical) the string
should dip into the light beam from the top, penetrating about 50%
through for optimum tracking.. There are trims for the string gains
in the little black box, that connects the pickup to the converter.
The pickup outputs to what most folks think is a proprietary cable,
but which in reality is a plain old db15 joystick  connector.

The converters are 2 rackspace units with a keypad, a big 4 digit
LED, six string indicators,, A pickup gain control, and a cartridge
slot. The firmware/software is entirely within the cartridge, so that
the same converter was used for all the different models they sold,
which were called "Standard Guitar", "Hyperspeed Guitar" (All strings
tuned to one pitch ala Yamaha G10), and "HyperOctave Bass". (Piccolo
tuning).

I have a Standard Guitar unit(K-Muse branded) with an early software
revision (1.3) and its usable but fairly primitive, It needs to get a
setup and put in the hands of a real guitar player before I make a
judgement on it (In the meantime I can do a mean Fred Frith
impression with it);-)

I also have a HyperOctave bass that I love, its got a much later
software revision (4.0) and includes a large hardware foot
controller. It has a arpeggiator/phrase sequencer that syncs to MIDI
, and more layering, string splits and harmony options than the
current roland technology.
Whover did the programming of the later software revisions was way
ahead of the curve. I was lucky enough to find a mint Photon-ready
Gibson bass on ebay, restrung it with piccolos and It tracks well
enough for what I do, though I imagine the 64th note crowd would be
disappointed..

I like the converters, they're built big and heavy, like old Oberheim
gear, though every one I've seen has needed a new battery, and the
cartridges are extremely rare, and absolutely neccesary for operation.

You're right about there being virtually no online info about these
things, I was lucky enough to get one unit that included a manual and
a warranty/upgrade history with correspondences that was extremely
helpful, without the key to the 2 letter names of the parameters
you'd be lost.


Rich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Williams

https://catholiccourier.com/articles/bk-grad-instrumental-in-helping-musicians/
Henry Juszkiewicz co-owned Phi-Tech in Oklahoma ( which manufactured law enforcement  audio recording machines) prior to co-purchasing Gibson in 1986.

He purchased K-Muse in 1988, and rebranded it Phi-Tech

QuoteJuszkiewicz got his corporate start by studying automotive electronics in an engineering cooperative program run by the General Motors Institute. He worked at Delco's Rochester plant while moonlighting on guitar in bands that played parties and weddings. He also took night classes at the University of Rochester for his master's degree in business administration and finished it at Harvard in 1979 on a General Motors Fellowship.

After earning his graduate degree, Juszkiewicz worked for a New York City investment bank, overseeing mergers and acquisitions. He left that post in 1981 when he and two Harvard classmates acquired Phi Technologies of Oklahoma City. They turned a profit within a month, and, five years later, they bought the nearly bankrupt Gibson from the Norlin Corp.

Phi-Tech exists today, in El Paso Texas as an A/V /Network cable  integrator
https://www.phi-tech.net/

Hey ASB
Yeah, I remember trying to look up this alien-looking pickup when I took it off of the strat from Gruhn Guitars back then. The guitar was probably a special left-handed build for a Nashville session player. It has a Tom Anderson neck and a quality un-branded body that was routed out to mount the Photon pickup along with a cream-colored custom-routed strat pickguard to clear the Photon pickup and also had a Carvin M-22 cream humbucker in the neck position. Back then, I found one vague reference on a forum to a Gibson synth unit and that was it. So, I put the alien pickup into my parts box and almost completely forgot about it until last month.

My research so far has a few people saying that the Gibson Hyperspeed guitar was a buy-and-play unit with no other pickups/controls on it and it was strung with six "heavy B strings" which made it super easy for it to track your playing. A person could also purchase the Photon system like I now have and have the pickup mounted on their own guitar by sending it to an authorized installation shop.

My rack unit has the "STANDARD GUITAR" plug-in cartridge and I ordered another full K-Muse system this past weekend from Reverb that has the "HYPERSPEED" cartridge in it. This unit that's coming is only the rack unit, Photon pickup, 15-pin D-Sub cable, and some paperwork that doesn't look like the user manual. It doesn't have the foot controller. This second system would be what someone would buy if they planned on getting the Hyperspeed guitar by Gibson.

So far, everything I see says that these systems did actually ship to customers albeit, I dunno how many were ever sold. I still have no idea how much this system cost when new - I can guess that it wasn't cheap but it seems like it had to be in the neighborhood of Roland's contemporary systems. After all, this was just a MIDI controller and a user had to come up with the MIDI samples from something external to this unit

It's time to drop the word "slave" from our audio discussions.


Article by Peter Kirn*


https://cdm.link/2020/06/lets-dump-master-slave-terms/

"It's not waiting for someone to be "offended." It's about why anyone would be defensive about clinging to terrible terms based on horrific inhumane things. Let's just fix this, finally.

And yeah, right now seems like as good a time as any to stop using slavery references when you just need clear, boring technical terms. It's not that fixing something small like language will make a larger difference. It's that it might be good practice to begin thinking about change even with something small."


*Also see this article which which describes Berhringer's attack on this writer 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxe7qx/a-major-synth-company-created-this-fake-product-to-attack-a-journalist

You are literally the first person I have seen in all the years of being on the internet that actually has all of the hardware (pickup, rack unit, etc) for this system and a chance of it working again. 

I never actually saw one that shipped, I saw pictures in guitar player and an article indicating the key to its speed was that the guitar controller used six high-e strings for faster tracking.   Is that true? 

Maybe try that if you aren't getting good results with it.  In fact there was one article indicating "it hadn't shipped" (it was displayed at NAMM) and "if it did ship, it might be the guitar synth everyone was waiting for. "   But I wonder if I'm not mixing this up with the Beetle Quantar which had similar marketing.

So did it ship or are these prototype bits?  Can you actually connect a midi synth to this and trigger it?

Hello All
I recently acquired a K-muse Phi-Tech Photon MIDI Converter rack unit with the eight-button foot controller from a seller on Reverb.com. I took a chance that I might actually have the optical pickup in my old box of parts that came off of a stratocaster copy that I bought from the Gruhn Guitars website back in 2005. It turns out that I actually did have the correct Photon pickup (Guitar 3 version) for this system!

So, I've been scouring the web for every bit of information that I can find about this system and I'd like to share what I have here as I find out more. I've taken pics of everything that I have and I'd like to post the pics here as a repository and for posterity and as a go to for future discoverers of this system and/or it's componentry that may pop up from time to time.

Last week, I replaced all six of the electrolytic capacitors in the rack unit and floor unit. The CR2032 3.0-volt memory backup battery was at 0.6-volts so I of course replaced that as well. There are four 2200uF/35V and one 4.7uF/50Vdc in the rack unit and one 4.7uF/50Vdc in the floor unit. I replaced them all as they are now at least 34 years old

This past weekend, I mounted the Photon pickup on my lefty Chinese Strandberg copy (pic below) and was able to see the individual string LEDs trigger on the front-panel display of the rack unit and was also able to scroll through the cryptic codes on the display using the keypad on the left side of the front panel. I wrote down all of the codes on a list that I can provide here in the future.

I've determined that there are differently-spaced Photon pickups as the strings on my guitar are narrowly spaced (Gibson-spread I think) and my Photon pickup seems to be spaced for a stratocaster-spaced bridge. The Photon pickup has "GUITAR 3" silk-screened on the PCB. I've seen pictures on the web of other Photon pickups silk-screened "Guitar 2". There are also a few pictures of the bass-guitar version of this pickup as well on a Hyperspeed bass, I assume made by Gibson/Phi-Tech who bought the K-Muse company back then.

I'm trying desperately to find a photocopy of the original Owner's Manual for this system and have been unable to so far. Does any one have an original or photocopy of the user manual? If I can get it, I will post it here as a PDF for everyone.

A lot of people over the years say that this Photon system isn't that great but, just like Mike Wolfe of American Pickers says, it's cool because it still exists!

Also, Chuck White is still on the web! His original site (pages referenced elsewhere on vguitar forums) melted down awhile ago so he had to re-create his website which still offers his wonderful insight and experience with the Photon system at:

https://www.chuckwhite.com/photon-midi-controller

More to come

Thanks for reading,
Dan Gibbs
Mid-Michigan