Frequently Asked Questions

General

Your instrument is hand built with passion in the South West of Ireland. Each instrument is built to order. Currently, the build time is approximately 12 months from the time of first deposit payment. A 10% deposit will reserve your place in the queue.

Shipping rates vary depending on country and the exact amount will be confirmed at the time of actual shipping. The approximate amounts for UPS tracked courier are:
To European Union €139
To USA €189
To Rest of World €189 - 299

USA: We ship to any location in the USA using UPS Express tracked service.
Europe / EU: We ship to any location in Europe using UPS Express tracked service.
Rest of the World: Any other location outside the USA and the EU will have variable shipping rates. Please contact us via our contact page with your delivery address and we can confirm details for you then.

Shipping to EU countries:

If you have a registered EU VAT number, then you are eligible for a 0% VAT rate. In this case, your instrument must be delivered to the registered company address
If you do not have a registered EU VAT number, the standard Irish VAT rate of 23% must be added to the total cost of your instrument

Shipping to USA, Asia, Australia, North America, South America, Africa (and all countries outside the European Union):

All orders delivered to countries outside the European Union have 0% EU VAT but are eligible for local taxes in the delivery country

Shipping to Ireland:

A VAT rate of 23% must be added to the total cost of your instrument
Customers with a registered EU VAT number normally claim back the VAT after the order is received

We are flexible with our payment options and will do our best to suit your needs, just let us know what works for you. Our normal payment structure is:

A €385 deposit (approximately 10%) secures your place in the queue and is non-refundable once the build starts. This can be done through our online store or you can provide us with your credit card details and we can process the agreed deposit amount.
A second deposit of 30% when your instrument begins its production journey; required for custom colour builds.
A 20% deposit when your instrument is ready for electronics installation and final testing.
The final balance prior to shipment when your instrument is ready to ship.

Further payments can be made by any of the following options:

Electronic bank transfer
Online store - if you wish to send further payments by credit card, we can send you a direct link to do this

Each Expressiv MIDI Pro product is warranted to be free from defects in material and workmanship under normal use and service, however, accidental damage and regular wear and tear is not covered. The warranty period is 12 months and begins on the date of shipment to you. Parts and product repairs are warranted for ninety days.

Please note that if any modifications are made to the instrument after receiving it, this will void the warranty and we cannot guarantee how this will affect the MIDI tracking.

We are so confident you will love the experience your MIDI Pro brings that we offer a money back guarantee. You can return the instrument to us for a refund within 14 days of receiving it. Please note that custom builds will incur an additional restocking fee.

Technical

Before you even pick a note, our groundbreaking fretboard scanner knows what notes you are fretting through the electrical contact between the string and the fret giving an immersive, virtually real-time experience.

Picked notes are sent in as little as 2 milliseconds. This setting is adjustable in the onboard menu and the default setting sends MIDI notes in 5 milliseconds which is incredibly quick.

Expressiv is a Plug & Play controller with virtually any DAW including

Ableton Live | Ableton
Logic Pro X | Apple
MainStage | Apple
GarageBand | Apple
Reason | PropellerHead
Pro Tools | Avid
Sonar | Cakewalk
Cubase pro | Steinberg
Studio One | PreSonus

Expressiv is a Plug & Play controller with virtually any hardware synthesizer that has a 5 pin MIDI input. There are hundreds of hardware synthesizers available. Here are just a few that we like:

JV1010 | Roland
MicroKorg | Korg
JV1080 | Roland
Minitaur | Moog
Minilogue | Korg
Crave | Behringer

Yes. You need a separate wireless MIDI or USB system which will plug directly into your guitar. For professional use, we recommend MIDIjet Pro (www.MIDIjet.com) which transmits to a range of 500 ft. For home use, the WIDI Master (https://www.cme-pro.com) sends over bluetooth.

Unfortunately, due to the complexities of our building process, we do not currently manufacture left handed models.

Finger Pads are 6 (guitar) / 4 (bass) pressure-sensitive pads below the strings that are an optional hardware feature. They are a new and alternative way to trigger MIDI notes. They also support MIDI aftertouch which allows you to vary the parameters of the sound after the synthesizer note has been triggered. They can be used for Touch Control to send control changes,after touch changes or channel pressure messages. These, in turn, can be used to effect synthesizer sounds, trigger samples, and switch on-off/vary effects. They do not improve the guitar's MIDI performance, but they are a fantastic extra way to trigger and adjust notes while playing.

For the analog guitar sounds, tuning works the same as any standard guitar. The MIDI tuning is completely separate from the analog setup and is set in the menu; any tuning can be saved to any preset. In MIDI, there is no limit to how low or high each string can be transposed which gives you the freedom to explore the entire musical range with endless possibilities.

You can play both MIDI and normal pickups at the same time. In fact, you can play all of the four outputs at the same time (including the standard electric guitar output, the piezo acoustic output, the 5pin Din MIDI and the USB MIDI output). There is an individual volume for each output and it allows you to blend and transition between each.

Expressiv is a MIDI system which brings uncompromised control over synthesizers from a guitar. It instantly tracks which musical notes you press on your fretboard, similar to pressing a key in a keyboard, while following most other parameters of how you play. The 16MHz controller sends all this information to your synthesizer with incredible speed giving you, the musician, a fully immersive synthesizer experience.

Expressiv is a MIDI controller, meaning it does not have onboard sounds. You can play anything that can be controlled with a MIDI keyboard i.e. hardware synthesizers, software synthesizers, DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and everything with a MIDI-over-USB or regular MIDI input. Think of it as MIDI keyboard functions in the form of a guitar. It also has an analog output jack from the pickups, just like a normal electric guitar.

Our guitars do not have MIDI pickups. There is NO pitch detection to send the MIDI signals. The contact between the frets and the strings in our fretboard scanning technology is what generates the MIDI notes. Our software instantly and accurately detects notes using the string and fret contact like a switch.

Our system has many advantages, some of these include:

You can play by tapping since there is no need to pluck (but there is a pluck mode that tracks velocity also)
There is no latency and it's fully polyphonic
Low strings are tracked as well as high strings
You have a regular MIDI output directly from the guitar so there is no need for a dedicated pedalboard
With the XY pad, you can control MIDI CC (control changes) while you play with your left hand
You can play vibrato and string bendings

There is a menu which appears on the LCD screen when the joystick is pressed and held. The octave and toggle buttons allow you to easily navigate through the options. From there, you can change many parameters such as control changes and MIDI channels etc. All of the parameters can be stored to memory and there are 30 presets to save to.

There is not a specialised cable required to play the instrument. As standard, it requires a separate MIDI or USB cable along with a standard guitar cable to play at one time.

All of our instruments are Plug & Play with any hardware synthesizer, DAW or computer/laptop. They have both a USB and 5pin MIDI output along with a standard guitar jack. This means that you can plug directly into any computer or synthesizer without extra drivers, interfaces or other equipment. All you need is a standard cable.

We always build with Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings (10-46 gauge for guitar and 50-105 for bass) and recommend them for optimum performance with our Expressiv MIDI system.