Electric musical instrument having rear mounted speaker

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10770047-B2
Application number	US-201916248301-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 15, 2019
Priority date	Jan 15, 2019
Publication date	Sep 8, 2020
Grant date	Sep 8, 2020

Abstract

An electric musical instrument includes a body having a front side and a rear side, a plurality of strings extending across at least a portion of the front side of the body, and at least one electric pickup to detect vibrations of the strings and generate a pickup signal. The instrument includes at least one speaker mounted at the rear side of the body, in which the speaker includes an acoustic driver and an acoustic deflector. The acoustic deflector is configured to receive acoustic energy propagating from the acoustic driver and deflect at least a portion of the acoustic energy. The instrument includes an amplifier to amplify the pickup signal to generate an amplified pickup signal, and drive the at least one speaker based on the amplified pickup signal.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An electric musical instrument comprising:
a body having a front side and a rear side;
a plurality of strings extending across at least a portion of the front side of the body;
at least one electric pickup to detect vibrations of the strings and generate a pickup signal;
at least one speaker mounted at the rear side of the body, the speaker comprising an acoustic driver and an acoustic deflector, and the acoustic deflector is configured to receive acoustic energy propagating from the acoustic driver and deflect at least a portion of the acoustic energy; and
an amplifier to amplify the pickup signal to generate an amplified pickup signal, and drive the at least one speaker based on the amplified pickup signal.

2. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the acoustic deflector comprises a ring radiator which causes the acoustic energy to be radiated along a circular opening.

3. The electric musical instrument of claim 2 in which the circular opening is disposed along an outer circumference of the ring radiator.

4. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the acoustic deflector comprises an acoustically reflective body, and at least a portion of the acoustically reflective body has a truncated conical shape.

5. The electric musical instrument of claim 4 in which the acoustic deflector comprises a cap and an acoustic resistive material,
the cap, the acoustic resistive material, and at least a portion of the truncated conical shaped reflective body define a volume, and
the acoustic resistive material is configured to enable at least a portion of the acoustic energy received from the acoustic driver to pass the acoustic resistive material and enter the volume between the acoustic resistive material and the cap.

6. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the acoustic deflector comprises an internal volume and an acoustic resistive mesh positioned between the acoustic driver and the internal volume of the acoustic deflector.

7. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the at least one speaker comprises a first speaker and a second speaker mounted at the rear side of the body, each of the first speaker and the second speaker comprises an acoustic driver and an acoustic deflector, and the acoustic deflector is configured to receive acoustic energy propagating from the acoustic driver and deflect at least a portion of the acoustic energy.

8. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 , comprising:
an electronic circuit to process the pickup signal, in which the electronic circuit comprises a tone control unit configured to adjust a tone of the pickup signal, and a terminal of the tone control unit is electrically coupled to an input of a high impedance buffer configured to generate an output signal having a voltage level that is substantially the same as a voltage level at the input, wherein the high impedance buffer has an input impedance of at least 10 Mega-ohms,
a switch to select between a first mode and a second mode, in which when the first mode is selected, the electronic circuit is configured to provide the pickup signal that is adjusted by the tone control unit to an output jack of the electric musical instrument, and
when the second mode is selected, the electronic circuit is configured to provide the output signal from the high impedance buffer to the output jack of the electric musical instrument.

9. The electric musical instrument of claim 8 in which the first mode comprises an electric guitar mode and the second mode comprises an acoustic guitar mode, the electric guitar mode produces at the output jack an audio signal that resembles an audio signal produced by a conventional electric guitar, and the acoustic guitar mode produces at the output jack an audio signal that resembles an audio signal produced by a conventional acoustic guitar.

10. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which there is no speaker at the front side of the body.

11. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 , comprising air adsorbing material disposed in the acoustic chamber to produce an apparent volume that is larger than an actual volume of the acoustic chamber.

12. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 , comprising a digital signal processor configured to process the pickup signal by applying a selected frequency response curve to the pickup signal, in which the selected frequency response is selected from a plurality of pre-stored frequency response curves.

13. The electric musical instrument of claim 12 , comprising a user interface configured to control an amount by which the digital signal processor suppresses signal components representing acoustic feedback from the speaker to the pickup.

14. The electric musical instrument of claim 12 in which each of the plurality of frequency response curves is configured to enable the digital signal processor to modify the pickup signal to cause an output of the speaker to resemble a particular guitar or a particular group of guitars.

15. The electric musical instrument of claim 12 , comprising:
a storage device configured to store data representing the frequency response curves, and
a communication module configured to communicate with a computing device to enable downloading the data representing the frequency response curves from the computing device.

16. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the electric musical instrument comprises at least one of an electric guitar, an electric bass guitar, an electric violin, an electric viola, an electric cello, an electric double bass, an electric banjo, an electric mandolin, or an electric ukulele.

17. The electric musical instrument of claim 1 in which the speaker protrudes from the rear side of the body, the speaker has a top surface that is substantially parallel to a portion of the rear side of the body adjacent to the speaker, and at least one opening is provided between an edge of the top surface and the portion of the rear side of the body adjacent to the speaker to enable sound to be emitted through the at least one opening.

18. A method comprising:
detecting, using at least one electric pickup, vibrations of strings that extend across at least a portion of a front side of a body of an electric musical instrument and generate a pickup signal;
amplifying, using an amplifier, the pickup signal to generate an amplified pickup signal, and driving at least one speaker mounted at a rear side of the body based on the amplified pickup signal, in which the front side and the rear side are at opposite sides of the body, and the speaker includes an acoustic driver and an acoustic deflector;
emitting, from the acoustic driver, acoustic energy; and
deflecting, using the acoustic deflector, at least a portion of the acoustic energy received from the acoustic driver.

19. The method of claim 18 in which the acoustic deflector comprises a ring radiator, which directs the acoustic energy to be radiated along a circular opening.

20. The method of claim 19 , comprising directing, using the ring radiator, the acoustic energy through openings disposed along an outer circumference of the ring radiator and propagating the acoustic energy from points along the circular opening.

21. The method of claim 20 in which driving at least one speaker mounted at a rear side of the body comprises driving at least a first speaker and a second speaker mounted at the rear side of the body, each of the first speaker and the second speaker comprise

Assignees

• Bose Corp

Inventors

• Litovsky Roman N
• Ioffe Mikhail
• Tiene Michael
• Lituri Robert Alan

Classifications

• G10H3/186

  Means for processing the signal picked up from the strings (filtering G10H1/12) · CPC title

• G10H1/32 Primary

  Constructional details · CPC title

• G10H3/18

  using a string, e.g. electric guitar {(mechanical features G10D1/085)} · CPC title

• G10H1/047 Primary

  by acousto-mechanical means, e.g. rotating speakers or sound deflectors · CPC title

• G10H2220/461

  Transducers, i.e. details, positioning or use of assemblies to detect and convert mechanical vibrations or mechanical strains into an electrical signal, e.g. audio, trigger or control signal · CPC title