Keith McMillen Instruments (http://www.keithmcmilleninstruments.com) has released Stringport, which it says is the first computer platform for guitars. It’s a Mac compartible hardware device that processes, converts and conveys to the computer the polyphonic audio from hexaphonic pickups (such as GK, Graph Tek, Zeta and RMC models) through USB 2.

The software suite includes 24 applications including Analysis (for converting every little performance nuance into control data), Polyphonic FX Processing (Wave Guide, PolyFuzz, Phase Vocoder, SMACK), a VST FX Wall (for integrating third party VST plug-ins), Synthesis (Classic FM and direct support for the Synful synthesizer), a Notation application (to capture data for output to music notation software), and MIDI Out (to integrate StringPort into an existing MIDI set-up).

The StringPort is being introduced at special discounted price of US$795; the regular price is $995), plus free software updates for one year. It requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher running on a Mac with an Intel Core Duo 2 2.33GHz processor or better.