Everything you’ll need to transform your Stratocaster® to an unpretentious master control center! 

The essential list:

• A powerful but friendly PJRC Teensy 4.0 USB microcontroller
• A Cherrystone Designs’ BlackPearl™ stereo codec & special feature circuit board
• A Cherrystone Designs’ WhiteGold™ Strat® interface & special feature circuit board
• Two Cherrystone Designs’ Cinnamon™ RGB LED rotary encoder circuit boards
• Two compatible RGB LED rotary encoders, with integral pushbutton shafts
• All the connectors you’ll need to solder the circuit boards together
• All you need to splice three noiseless Seymour Duncan 4c shielded cable pickups
• A USB Jackplate
• A Panel Mount USB-B female to Micro-B Male Cable
• A Micro USB-B connector to splice on the end of the USB cable
• A virtual push button in the form of a ground-able solder lug to force the Teensy into programming mode to recover from bad code

For More Information

The short answer:

• It’s better. Waaaaay better.

The long answer:

• Your 1950’s telephone switchboard era cable only carries monophonic audio, & it’s lossy.
• Digital signals transported by the USB protocol are intrinsically lossless.
• USB can transport MIDI messages along with the digitized audio.
• The digitized audio format supports stereo, unlocking your creative processing options.
• Your lame euphemistically labeled “Tone” controls can be replaced with anything controls.
• There are multiple ways to process your sounds before it leaves your guitar, or
• You can process your signal using highly-acclaimed 3rd party VST plug-ins in your laptop.
• You can dump your big, clunky, heavy effects pedal board with all those knobs you never change.
• The replacement for your obsolete hardware pedal board can fit inside your Stratocaster®.
• Your virtual effects can fit inside your laptop which can fit inside your gig bag with your guitar.
• Your virtual effects pedal boards don’t weigh very much. At all. Bring them all to the party.
• The number of virtual pedal boards are countless, growing and customizable.
• You can swap entire virtual pedal boards using your stock 5-way switch, or not.
• You can customize what your old school tone controls control. And can quickly change what they control.
• Do you want noiseless or single-coil pickups? Why choose? You can have both. Automatically.
• Do you want to blend your neck pickup with the others, or process them differently? Doable!

• “You can have everything I can fit in the bubble bag for $495.00
• But you’ll need to provide your own laptop, stereo audio interface, VST host and plugins.

I personally use a 1.5m (5′) Audio Optimized DJ TechTools Chroma Cable right-angle USB-B cable [found price: $17.99], but to access the USB-C port of my laptop, I’ve added an Insignia™ – 5 Gbps 7″ USB-A to USB-C Adapter [found price $9.99] and for a little more useful range, a UGREEN USB C Extension Cable USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps (3FT) [found price $14.99]. To keep them secure when you move about, I recommend wrapping the joints with Spiral Cable Zip Wrap [found price: $1.85]

I also use Dunlop U.S.A. 1.5mm “Gator” guitar picks, but your choices are your own.

There are many VST hosts that work well. Native Instruments has a FREE download of their Guitar Rig 7 Player, Apple’s Main Stage 4 works [found price: $39.99], Cockos Reaper [$60] is worth considering, Guitar Rig 7 Pro [Found price $199.00] is very good,  and Blue Cat Audio’s Axiom 2 [Found price $199.00] is amazing! There are probably many other very good ones. Some are free and very good. Some are very good and not so free. Everyone will have their favorites. That’s what makes you you.

..

VST Hosts and VST Plugins. (Virtual Studio Technology)

Line 6, now a brand of the Yamaha Guitar Group, pioneered software modelling of real amplifiers & stomp boxes beginning in 1996 with their AxSys 212 amplifier. In 1998, they followed up with their Pro Tools® captive Amp Farm software plug-in and their stand-alone POD digital effects unit. Software modelling exploded in 1996 with Steinberg’s introduction of their VST interface specification and SDK (Software Development Kit) democratizing software implementations.

IK Multimedia released their first iteration of their Amplitube (I love clever portmanteaus) in 2002. Native Instruments followed with their Guitar Rig* in 2004. Apple released MainStage in 2007 and many others have jumped on board.  Blue Cat Audio gave the world Axiom on April 19, 2018. Given Will C. Pirkle’s book Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ and others like it, I’m predicting that the trickle of options will soon becoming a deluge.

Though Cockos Reaper is primarily a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), it can be set up as a live VST host for guitar effects plugins. The great advantage of Reaper, MainStage, and Blue Cat Audio Axiom 2 is that they each allow plugins from other companies, so you can experiment with “best-of” guitar voices!

Reaper will set you back $60 but constantly sends out updates as they improve things. I’ve never noticed anything that needed improvement, though. It’s quite powerful and would take a long time to learn all the crazy stuff you can do with it.

Reaper comes with a long list of their own visually spartan but very useful plugins. Several companies offer FREE downloads to establish you as a customer. That’s a great deal! Search for “free VST plugins” on YouTube and your favorite search engines.

You’ll also need a basic audio output device. That can be as simple as a stereo headphone jack or a stereo output USB-C Audio Interface like Focusrite’s Scarlett Solo to (I assume) Blue Cat Audio’s Fader Hub LAN link or Connector to a monster PA.

Note: Some VST programs allow you to specify different audio in and out devices. Apple OSX requires you to define an aggregate device. Our input device shows up as “Teensy MIDI_Audio”. Your output device will be different. An exception might be if you discover the hidden headphone and stereo outputs on BlackPearl’s J3.  If this interests you, ask about it on the contact page.

*I won a free copy of Guitar Rig (1) in a Native Instruments Promotional Photo Contest. “Moosic!”

Moosic!

No, but if you do, you can make it your own. Simply download Arduino’s free IDE software with the Teensyduino add-on, then download our default sketch BP_A1_WG_A1_R061025 which you can use out of the box and never write a line of code. Updates will be available from Cherrystone Designs and perhaps 3rd party hobbyists and entrepreneurs.

For more advanced DIY’ers, enter “Teensy 4.0 Neural Amp Modeler” or “TGX4” in your search window, and have fun! Or snag a copy of one of the VST programming books on the market, or watch some how-to tutorials on line. 

PJRC has included a powerful audio effects gui graphic interface which I have yet to explore, but they have a video that demonstrates how you can create your own guitar effects before the signal even gets to your laptop. Our BlackPearl™ circuit board uses the same SGTL5000 codec as PJRC’s audio cape. Even that hardware device has powerful built-in audio processing features.

There are other useful tutorial links on their website.