To make the Ridgewing guitar fully modular, the guitar's bridge had to incorporate all of the electronics - pickup, circuitry, user interface and power supply. Here a momentary switch on the Rev 1 Ridgewing PCB is used to display battery status, showing 80% charged. The battery holder and other PCB components can be seen through the blue-tinted transparent cover.

In the Ridgewing system, the working assumption for the bridge is that the complete electronics package should be as easily interchangeable as any other instrument component, ie., trading brains for a day or two should be easy, painless and fun. Electronic signal processing technology will continue to grow exponentially in capability into unknown realms, while simultaneously shrinking to ever-smaller size, eventually fading from view. About the same time, the guitar will become sentient. But that is a subject for another day.

In traditional guitar design, the bridge has the character of simply a mechanical anchor for the strings, perhaps including a pickup or two, but with no smarts. In the Ridgewing guitar,  by incorporating all electronic hardware, the bridge takes on more the character of the brain of the instrument, whose expanded responsibilities include: 1) string sensors, 2) power supply, 3) string signal pre-amp, 4) tonality-producing electronics, 5) manual user controls of the tonality, and finally 6) the strings' anchor.

In between the fixed circuit board components, there is about 5 cm^2 space available on both upper and lower surfaces for arbitrary circuitry, roughly the size of a postage stamp.

The Rev 1 Ridgewing bridge circuit is straightforward - a piezo pickup, one-stage op-amp, rechargeable battery, active treble, bass roll-off and volume adjustment, user interface components - LEDs, USB connector, thumbwheel pots, and a transparent cover of one's favorite color.

The "fixed" components of the PCB are shown here, and CAD files are easy to come by.

Using the “standard” mechanical design and basic components of the Ridgewing PCB, it becomes very easy for anyone to try their hand at designing, trying out and selling novel guitar electronics.

We wait patiently for future wizards in the crowd to decide to try their hand at creating the next mind for the Ridgewing guitar, and the next, and the next.