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SMART dampers may solve one of performing guitarists’ most excruciating problems: feedback. The screech of feedback has become more widespread as the tone of the acoustic guitar is increasingly sought by musicians.

“Feedback has been a major problem ever since acoustic musicians decided they wanted to be able to hear themselves onstage,” says Scott Nygaard, editor of Acoustic Guitar magazine and one of the best known guitarists in the US.

Now researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have developed a way to banish feedback without affecting the sound of the guitar. An acoustic guitar’s soundboard – the holed,…

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