A digital filtering approach to obtain a more acoustic timbre for an electric guitar

In this paper we propose signal processing methods to transform electric guitar tones to sound more acoustic. This is achieved by applying digital filtering to the signal obtained from a pickup of an electric guitar. The electric guitar differs from the acoustic one structurally and in the way the final acoustic radiation is produced. Hence, the timbres of the two guitars are distinguishably different. We use two digital filter designs to transform the electric guitar tones to resemble an acoustic guitar. The first one relies on impulse response measurements of the body of an acoustic guitar and the second method builds on deconvolving two spectrally rich signals. We also accomplish an improved controllability over the final timbre by extracting and replacing the lowest resonances with IIR resonators. The presented methods achieve to give the magnetic pickup tone an acoustic guitar-like timbre. The perceived responses have a distinct soundbox effect and simulate the important lowest resonances between 80 and 200 Hz of the acoustic guitar and the reverberant response of the body.