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The AX 50 is a cut-down AX100 that you can connect to your computer via USB.

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WIDI guitar systems still haven’t caught on in a big way just yet. The concept is certainly appealing, though: play your trusty axe and allow technology to transform your analogue noodlings into digital MIDI data, which you can then use to control the MIDI instruments of your choice, whether hardware or virtual.

The TerraTec Axon AX 50 USB is a guitar-to-MIDI converter, so to use it you’ll also have to buy an appropriate hexaphonic pickup for your guitar and a 13-pin cable. The Axon technology has been around for over a decade now, originally manufactured by Blue Chip, and the classic rackmounted AX 100 has been updated and rereleased in more recent years by TerraTec.

The AX 50 USB is the latest in the range, and, as the name hints, it’s like a cut-down AX100 that you can connect to your computer via USB. Power is supplied via a wall-wart PSU, however. The software editor is easily installed and you also get FL Studio 6 Express and the Wave XTable sample library, which uses Kontakt Player 2.

How it works

Load up the editor and you can choose between settings for magnetic and piezo pickups, guitar, bass, violin, cello and different tunings. You can also set the sensitivity of each string and store these settings for up to eight instruments.

There are 128 preset slots, each of which consist of one or more ‘split zones’. You can route each of the zones to different MIDI channels, as well as any combination of the four virtual MIDI ports or the hardware MIDI port, for easy layering. Each zone can have its own transpose and pitch quantise settings assigned, with the latter determining how string bends are dealt with. You’re also able to set volume and pan CCs, as well as three different CCs of your choosing.

There’s a configurable velocity map, and you can even use the Pick Controller to control any CC in real time, depending on how close to the bridge you pick the strings (the unit can detect this). You’re also able to set the tuning of each virtual string, so you can try out alternate tunings without touching your machineheads.

Let’s get a few things straight before talking about the unit’s performance: if your guitar isn’t set up correctly, and if your playing isn’t clean and precise, then you’re likely to run into tracking issues and the spontaneous emission of unwanted notes. You’ll also get much better results by either routing each string’s MIDI channel (there’s usually a channel per string) to its own instrument, or using one that handles ‘six-channel mono mode’ (such as Poly-Ana). Once you’ve got it all set up, though, you’ll be blown away by the incredibly quick and accurate translation of your playing into MIDI.