Wait, this might free me of some brain crack. I’ve considered building a “synthetic guitar” - like an electric piano. Same action, different mechanism, no tuning.

The simplest version looks like an electric guitar with no pickup. There’s a piezo sensor on each string, at the bridge. These sensors can also cause vibrations.

All sound comes from a model of a string, not the string itself. Induced vibration is needed to find the current tuning of the physical string - but only to detect what portion of it has been picked / strummed / tapped / whatever. Induced vibration also means you can always detect when the string is later muted. Which means the model can have infinite sustain.

The major benefit of all this is that the guitar itself can sound like shit. It might work with twine.

So… is a Synthaxe anything like that? It kinda sounds like the frets detect contact electrically.

Oh hey, video. Yeah seems like the strings just touch the frets. There’s a whole second set of strings that just take “velocity.” I guess it’s vaguely similar. It just cost ten thousand pounds, instead of being possibly an aftermarket conversion kit for a thirdhand Yamaha.