String Spacing
The sensors on the ōPik are designed for a string spacing of 10mm at the bridge pickup location—or 50mm measured from the middle of the low E string to the middle of the high E string. This works well for most guitars, including models by Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Gretch, and many others that we have tested, where string space is generally in the 50-53mm range.
Assembly
The ōPik is pretty simple on the outside, of course, but inside, there’s a lot going on, as you can see from this animation. At the bottom, there is a stack of printed circuit boards. Above that, we have four banks of LEDs and photodiodes. Finally, on top, there are some optical layers, and some status indicator illumination—they’ve actually been modified in the final version.
One Pickup, Many Tones
Part of the beauty of the ōPik is the ability to really customize the tone of pickup on a per string basis. That includes controlling gains, filters, and individual string volumes—but it also extends to the string material itself. Nylon strings? No problem! Carbon fiber? Yup! Steel? Of course! A mix of all of the above? Go for it!
The App
Our app is going through a redesign that make it look (and work!) better. As you can see, you are able to control the individual string settings, filters and gain settings from the ‘main page’. And you will have the option to ‘favorite’ certain settings and keep them for later. And we have cleaned up the bluetooth linking process to eliminate snags.
Kickstarter Success!
We blasted past our target and finished at 188% of goal on Kickstarter. Thank you to all of our supporters!
We sailed across the finish line, at 188% of goal, and wow, that is a certainly an amazing feeling! We can’t thank all of you enough.
We are incredibly proud of our backer community—you span the globe, and we look forward to sending the ōPik out across the world. We will be adding the names of all our original backers to the ōPik intergalactic t-shirt—a big thank you to all of you.
The Power Pod!
Here at Light4Sound, we have been discussing and testing battery packs for the ōPik—and getting a lot of requests and questions on the topic. After careful consideration, we are ready to launch the ōPik Power Pod.
The Power Pod is a rechargeable battery pack that plugs into the output jack of your guitar and supplies the ōPik with power for four plus hours. The power pack clips to your guitar strap, and can easily be removed and recharged.
We have just added some new reward options, including one with the Power Pod:
ōPik // Pickup with Battery Pack. You can also add the Power Pod to you current reward—simply increasing your pledge by $55 (shipping included).
ōPik // Pickup with Wired Power. This reward includes our standard (and very good looking) power supply. You can also add a wired power supply to any reward by increasing your pledge by $45 (shipping included).
ōPik Pickup // Flex. The Flex doesn’t include a power supply—handy if you want wait and make up your mind on the battery versus wired power options at the end of the campaign.
Thank you for the interest, and for all of the great questions! We’re glad to be bringing battery power to the ōPik!!
The Light4Sound Team
Funded! Now the Journey Really Begins
We crossed the line! The ōPik is fully backed!
We are sort of speechless… it is wonderful to see that there are now over a 100 backers from all over the world, and that the ōPik family is growing every day.
And to broaden that family and to make the ōPik available to even more people, we are announcing a stretch goal for adding Android support. The stretch goal target will be $31,440, and if we can keep the momentum up, we hope to hit that... well, that’s pretty much up to you!
If you have been waiting for Android support, please help us get to the goal, and please pass the word!
Very gratefully,
the Light4Sound Team
75% Funded—Making Progress!
Fantastic support and 75% of the way to our funding goal!
Thank you!
We are very excited about all of the support we have received in the past few days. In less than week, we are up to 75% of our funding goal on Kickstarter, with the support from 76 amazing backers. Thank you to all of you for backing the ōPik!
And if you haven’t had a chance to look at the Kickstarter campaign, please do, and pass it along to your friends! Here are the links to our social media accounts, too:
Quite a few good questions coming in, including a lot about battery packs, MIDI and hexaphonic output and Android support. We’ll add more. on this soon, but in a nutshell, we like all of these things, and they are definitely things we can do with the ōPik, with enough interest. We are looking forward to adding some “stretch goals” on Kickstarter once we get to 100% funding.
Thank you again for the support, and check back for more updates in the next few days…
Yes, even the Easter Bunny put in an order for an ōPik.