The Vo-96 Acoustic Synthesizer is one of the most innovative musical instrument products created in years. Strap one onto any acoustic guitar and you can transform the way it sounds by breaking—or at least manipulating—the laws of physics.

Here's the story of how inventor Paul Vo made a device that sounds like magic.
Vo is best known as the inventor of the infinite sustain technology inside the Moog Guitar. In one of its settings, if you strum the strings of that beauty, they'll keep vibrating forever. It's a hugely impressive technical accomplishment, but that's just a fraction of what Vo's acoustic synthesis technology is capable of.

The Vo-96 builds on those concepts and explodes them; it's a hugely sophisticated add-on for an acoustic guitar that basically transforms that old wooden box into an entirely new instrument. Depending which setting you're using, the Vo-96 can sound like everything from a violin to a woodwind to an analog synth.

Vo, 61, has been developing the technology for nearly a decade. In 2004, after 20 years of working in product development in the audio industry, Vo turned his sights to the vibration control technology behind the Vo-96. He says he'd been convinced the technology could work since 1979 but that it wasn't realistically possible until about 2000.

Vo moved to Raleigh, North Carolina from California, set up a lab and got down to work. In 2006, he first presented the technology to Moog in nearby Ashville, North Carolina as a gnarly but functional acoustic prototype. A cobbled-together electric prototype of the instrument came the following year after which Moog and Vo officially began the 18-month process of designing and building the Moog Guitar. The resulting instrument is a masterpiece of engineering inside and a work of art outside.

Now, Vo has turned his attention back to his orignal concept with the Vo-96, which he sees as the purest expression of his technology. Initially, the thing itself looks sort of monstrous, like, "How the hell am I going to attach this to my guitar?" There's a lot going on in this diagram below, but after you've installed the Vo-96 in a guitar, the only portion that's visible is the top user interface piece. The box containing the Vo-96's electronics goes inside the guitar's body.