Welcome to Cycfi Research!

Cycle of Fifths. A structure used by music theorists to depict the harmonic relationships among the twelve notes in the chromatic scale as a tool for composition.
Cycfi Research is an Open Source software and hardware company based in Manila, Philippines. We are committed to bringing high-tech design and engineering into the production of innovative musical instruments such as carbon-fiber-bamboo electric and electronic guitars, active polyphonic pickups, acoustic synthesizers and state-of-the-art digital signal processing systems.

Our projects are entirely Open Source. The designs (schematics, PCB layout, software, bill of materials, CAD drawings and source code) are freely shared, 100% free, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. That means you can use the designs in your own projects, even in commercial ones.

Joel de Guzman is the principal architect and engineer at Cycfi Research. He is a software engineer specialising in advanced C++ and an advocate of Open Source. He has authored a number of highly successful Open Source projects such as Boost.Spirit, Boost.Phoenix and Boost.Fusion. These libraries are all part of the Boost Libraries, a well respected, peer-reviewed, Open Source, collaborative development effort. The Boost Libraries are being used by organisations and companies all over the world from CERN to Adobe. There’s a big chance that the very computer you are using to read this now is using the Boost C++ Libraries.

Joel is an artist and a craftsman by heart and the C++ libraries he creates reflect this inherent artistic desire. He has been writing software since the mid-80s, but long before his first program, he was already into building electric guitars, amplifiers and effects processors. He has been building electric and electronic musical instruments and effects processors for more than 30 years now. In fact, it was his passion for music that led him to becoming a software developer in the first place. Almost immediately after teaching himself electronics, he began to realize that, slowly, software began encroaching into and somehow engulfing his world of music.

Fast forward 2014. The emerging Open Source hardware revolution became the perfect chance for Joel to unite music with his passion for both software and hardware. Joel is a DIY guy. He loves building stuff. In his early years as a musician, he got inspired by people like Craig Anderton, who wrote DIY electronics articles in magazines such as Guitar Player and Electronic Musician and Brian May who, together with his father, built a one-of-a-kind electric guitar which gave the band Queen its own unique sound. This same DIY culture fueled the rise of Open Source hardware. This is evident in the popularity of DIY sites such as Make, Hackaday, and Instructables.