Guitar to MIDI

 Here's something fun that I found at diystompboxes.com (original thread here).

It's a little circuit that converts your guitarsignal into MIDI language, so you can use your guitar with your favourite synths. :) It's monophonic, so it's not good for chords but works ok for single notes, leads, basses ect.

It requires a specific PIC chip and PIC programmer hardware (such as pickit2), software, and code (downloads at the bottom of the post) to be written onto the chip, so it's a bit harder to do then your regular stompbox. More info below.

This is what you will need:

• The PIC16F88 chip. It's an older 8-bit chip, but still easy to find (try ebay). The code is written for the chip so other PICs with not work.
  
• The hardware required is either pickit2 or pickit3. I borrowed a pickit2 from a friend. Pickit is basically a interface that connects to your computer with USB and lets you read/write/erase programs to the PIC chip. Keep in mind though that the chip-socket may not have the same pinout as the chip. I used a breadboard to jumper the connections, as shown below.

• There are alot of choices for the software (all free). I used PICkit 2 v2.60, but MPlab and PICgm Programmer are also good,
  
• Code! Download the required hex files below. Only one of them is needed. Try the second one if you are having trouble writing the code to the chip with pickit2.

    

Guitar 2 MIDI hex files

 All the info is taken from the diystompboxes forum. I just put together the important stuff here, so all credits to the original contributers at diystompboxes. :)

Here's a picture of my completed build