Putting More Sexy In Your Guitar

COLLEGE PARK, Md (WUSA) -- Michael Jackson never played much guitar. But if you think back to your favorite guitarist, you probably think of a particular sound, a particular tone.

BB King's "Lucille" -- thick and throaty blues. Eric Clapton's squeeling riffs.

A University of Maryland engineering professor has just launched a line of high-tech guitars that claims to capture that magic thing called "tone" -- and make it infinitely variable.

Lots of rock stars rock with a half dozen guitars -- each with a different sound, each painting a different color. The sound comes from the interplay of steel strings over electromagnet pick ups.

"A lot of guitarists will take the back off the panel and change it," as soon as they get home, says University of Maryland computer and electrical engineering professor Bruce Jacob. They want to tailor the sound.

But they're still left with just one sound. "Here's a humbacker sound," says Jacob, demonstrating. "Here's a Fender strat sound."

Jacob has poured nearly $100-thousand of his own money into launching a line of guitars built around a circuit that can pack tone, the color, of a hundred different guitars into just one.

"If you give a guitarist red, blue and green," says Jacob, "they can make any color."

"I just change it there," says Justin Ahmanson of Coil Guitars, pulling out a circuit and changing it. "Bang, it is ready to go."

The middle of the worst recession is a half century is a tough time to launch a new company. If you're worried about your next paycheck, who's going to want to pay a thousand dollars for a guitar.

"If it works, it will sell," says Jacob. "And it works."

Coil Guitars just launched on the web, and Jacob and his former students have already sold ten of their remarkable new guitars.

"It's getting a little sureal, at this point," says Timothy Babich, who got a bachelors in electrical engineering from Maryland, and signed on when Coil needed a little extra work on the power flow.

Coil's may not make you sound like Jimi Hendrix, but they may give you something else. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say they're a 37 sexy," says guitarist John Brisentine. "Very, very sexy!"

And sexy sells.

Maryland is so confident that Coil Guitars will suceed, it has kicked in 135-thousand dollars in economic development money, which is supposed to help Maryland professors turn their research into profitable -- and taxable -- businesses.