Milwaukee Servoelectric Guitar is an ingenious experimental instrument. Individual servos for each string control the string tension, with a clever compensator wheel arrangement. The servos are powered by low cost home made amplifiers. The tension / frequency sensing circuit is a novel design incorporating a potentiometer and springs.

This projects shows how to make a 3 string slide guitar from a  single birch board 1x3x30 inches, and bits of scrap. The good thing about this guitar is that there are no frets to worry about, no truss rod, in fact it is really just a plank with a bridge, pickup and some tuners. You can make markers where the frets would go, to help you get your bearings when you are playing it.

Guitar robots anyone? Take a look at GuitarBot – built as part of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) project by Eric Singer, Kevin Larke and David Bianciardi.

This is the first in a series of 16 free videos about learning electric slide guitar, by John Armstrong a professional guitar teacher.