Jeri Ellsworth is pictured above holding her one-of-a-kind Commodore 64 bass guitar and keytar. Ellsworth is a Valve Software employee and electronics genius who is learning how to play the bass guitar in the awesomest way possible: by building her own bass out of a Commodore 64. She bought a broken Commodore 64 and broken bass guitar then reconfigured and rewired everything to make a custom Commodore 64 bass guitar and keytar powered by eighteen AA batteries. The batteries lasted about eight hours while she was at Maker Faire in San Francisco last May. She was also wearing a portable amp and roller skates. She is cooler than you.
You can watch her demonstrate all the Commodore 64 bass guitar’s features about two minutes into the video below. The bass uses the C64’s original sound chip (SID 6581) connected to an FPGA. Since the Tesla coils present at the Maker Faire would interfere with a guitar’s magnetic pickups, she replaced the pickups with customized piezo sensors. Meanwhile, I can’t even keep my balance on roller skates. She wins.
[Sources: MAKE, Nerdcore, Hackaday, Synthtopia]