Travel guitars are a great way to maintain your calluses while on the road, but some designs can lack modern features. That's certainly not true of the Nexg smart guitar from Enya Music out of Houston, Texas, which packs a built-in preamp, integrated sound card, Bluetooth speaker, mobile app integration and onboard effects into a carbon fiber smart guitar that tips the scales at under 7 pounds.
Enya describes the Nexg as the world's first smart audio guitar, though only last month we covered a Kickstarter for the Mogabi, as well as the Lava Me 3 before it and the awesome Fusion Guitar before that. Still, the Nexg is a different beast, and comes with an impressive feature set.
Its carbon fiber body and neck help toward an all-in weight of just 6.8 lb (3 kg), and it can be pulled apart and packed down for easier between-venue transport. That 23.75-inch scale neck rocks a 16-inch radius and zero-fret design for playing comfort, though 20 fret positions are marked out on the carbon fiber fingerboard.
Up top, an OLED display panel serves as the guitar's control hub. There are five effects to dial in at launch, which can be tweaked via a companion iOS/Android mobile app, with more functions and effects on the way. And there's a built-in tuner to help keep you pitch perfect.
Players can opt for quiet practice in silent mode or go bananas through the included 30-W woofer and two 10-W tweeters. Bluetooth 5.1 is cooked in for jamming along to favorite tunes, and the smart guitar can even remove the vocals from streamed songs to provide instant backing tracks. Or you can just use it as a fancy wireless speaker.
The Nexg comes with a sizable 10,400-mAh battery, and though no per-charge usage figures have been shared the instrument can be optioned with a funky wireless charging stand.
The Nexg is available for pre-order now for a list price of US$899.99, though there's currently a promotion running that shaves a hundred bucks off. The video below has more.
Product page: Enya Nexg