PolyMap: A 64-Channel Polyphonic Guitar Pickup System

[2608.27522] PolyMap: A 64-Channel Polyphonic Guitar Pickup System Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Electrical Engineering and Systems Science > Audio and Speech Processing arXiv:2608.27522 (eess) [Submitted on 27 Aug 2026] Title: PolyMap: A 64-Channel Polyphonic Guitar Pickup System Authors: David Wieland , Jonas Roth , Christoph Studer View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: In electric guitars, the vibrations of the strings are typically sensed by coils of wire combined with a magnet, called pickups. The pickups and their position along the strings contribute strongly to the instrument's sound. Most guitars feature one to three pickups, each spanning across all strings with fixed positions and generating a single mono output. The work of this Master's Thesis at ETH Zürich introduces a new pickup system called PolyMap, which senses each string individually and at multiple locations. The system is demonstrated with a custom-made eight-string guitar that contains eight pickups per string for a total of 64 pickups. The signals from these 64 pickups are individually digitized inside the guitar and transmitted over a multichannel audio digital interface (MADI), a low-latency digital audio interface, to a computer for further processing. PolyMap enables high-resolution sensing of an electric guitar's strings and enables extensive post-processing capabilities for musicians, audio engineers, and researchers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first polyphonic guitar pickup system with such a complete feature set. Comments: To be presented at DAFx26 Subjects: Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS) ; Signal Processing (eess.SP) Cite as: arXiv:2608.27522 [eess.AS] (or arXiv:2608.27522v1 [eess.AS] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.27522 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Christoph Studer [ view email ] [v1] Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:56:43 UTC (12,721 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: eess.AS < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: eess eess.SP References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

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