Automatically tuned musical instrument

Claim 1

A stringed musical instrument comprising: a. an instrument body, the body comprising a trunk and a neck; b. a plurality of tensioned strings removably attached to the body; c. a plurality of tuning system pickups, one of said plurality of pickups corresponding to one of said strings, each mounted to the body adjacent to said one of the strings; d. frets on the neck for manually altering the pitch of the strings; e. a plurality of guidereel assemblies coupled to the body and one of said plurality of guidereel assemblies associated with a respective one of said strings to provide mechanical coupling and tensioning of each of said strings; f. a motor coupled to the body and to one of the guidereel assemblies g. means electrically coupled to the motor for automatically and continuously tuning the instrument comprising i. a magnitude comparator to receive frequency signals from the pickups indicative of the frequency of vibration of selected ones of said strings and to distinguish the frequency of vibration of one of the selected ones of said strings from the frequency of another one of said selected ones which is adjacent to said one and to develop and output a tuning signal when a string of said selected ones of said strings requires tuning; ii. an audio tuning system to receive the tuning signal from the magnitude comparator and develop a motor control signal at an output; iii. a manual/automatic switch assembly to receive the motor control signal from the output of the audio tuning system and to provide a motor actuation signal at an output; and iv. a motor control circuit assembly to receive the actuation signal from the output of the manual/automatic switch assembly and to energize the motor to tune said string of said selected ones; and h. a switch means coupled to the motor control circuit assembly to disable the motor control circuit assembly when said string is in contact with one of said frets.

Claim 18

A method of automatically tuning a string of a musical instrument comprising the steps of a. vibrating the string; b. detecting the tone created by the vibration of the string to develop a detection signal indicative of the tone of the vibrating string; c. turning a stepper motor coupled to the string to vary the tone of the string at a first speed until the string is vibrating at a predetermined frequency that is a melodic interval from a predetermined reference frequency; d. turning the stepper motor at a second, slower speed until the string is vibrating substantially at the predetermined reference frequency; and e. disabling the automatic tuning of the string when the string contacts a fret.

Claim 19

A method of automatically tuning a string of a musical instrument comprising the steps of a. vibrating the string; b. detecting the tone created by the vibration of the string to develop a detection signal indicative of the tone of the vibrating string; c. turning a stepper motor coupled to the string to vary the tone of the string at a first speed until the string is vibrating at a predetermined frequency that is a melodic interval from a predetermined reference frequency; d. turning the stepper motor at a second, slower speed until the string is vibrating substantially at the predetermined reference frequency; and e. disabling the automatic tuning of the string when the string contacts a fret.