GUITAR HERO

The GUITAR HERO project is a collaboration between CSAI and NOAH Guitars, an Italian handicraft enterprise specialized in the design and manufactoring of high quality electric guitars. The aim of the project is the definition of innovative methodologies and tools to support experts of small and medium enterprises leader in the development of products characterized by high levels of creativity.

In this sense, the electric guitar produced by NOAH is a very important case study, since its main component (i.e. the body) is made of aluminun rather than wood like others. This is due to many reasons: First of all, aluminum is an inert material, thus it is less subject to deformations than wood; moreover aluminum has interesting properties from the quality of sound point of view. NOAH experts have noticed that the use of aluminum allows avoiding the generation of noises that are typical of wooden guitars.

There are also interesting advantages in the production process: an aluminum body is produced starting from a CAD model that is the input for a dedicated machine. The CAD model allows the definition of a very precise morphology of the final product, by identifying the location of important components like pickups, controls and so on to be mounted on the body as well as the position of the neck.

The NOAH products are used by some of the most important players in the world, like Lou Reed and Saturnino, and they reresent an ideal subject for the CASI research in the DesArts area. The GUITAR HERO project is currently in its first year, during which a complete model of guitar components and relationships among them have been designed and implemented exploiting the NavEditOw framework.