Epiphone Alleykat to Go Digital

The Alleycat, Epiphone's single-cutaway semi-hollowbody guitar, will be the standard-bearer for new digital guitar technology in the Epi line. The Digital Alleykat will feature the MaGIC digital protocol and six-way hex pickup developed by Gibson Labs, the technology division of Gibson Guitar.

The Epiphone Digital Alleykat is currently in development, with the first production models planned for early 2004. MaGIC - short for Media-accelerated Global Information Carrier - makes standard Cat-5 Ethernet cable act like a super cable, with a control stream 100 times as powerful as MIDI, eliminating latency and jitter. The HEX pickup measures both up-and-down and side-to-side string vibrations and delivers a separate signal for each individual string. MaGIC and the HEX pickup were developed by Gibson Labs.

For more information, visit their web site at www.epiphone.com.