LED Bargraph chip (guitar LED bling-age) ..do with a PIC?

[HankMcSpank]

Hank and all,
I still think a PIC is overkill. Even if U have "extra pins" LOL!!
It's the software that will drive U insane!!! LOL!!!!!!!
The 3915 (and 3914) **are** A-2-D converters!
They are known as "flash converters" cause they just use a bunch of
comparators and convert the input V either to a bar or a dot...in a FLASH!
Really cool (and complex) would be to use a hexphonic guitar like a Roland-Ready Stratocaster and tap off the six preamps inside and split to six bargraphs!! IIRC, the bargraph IC just needs 2.5V for max level.
I'm using an expanded scale to measure a narrow voltage range for my BMS.
I also use a divide-by-2 attenuator to scale the approx 6V down.
For regular strat PUs, U should still use a singlesupply opamp as a preamp/buffer. I think either lin or log ICs would work fine.
The trick is to dial the gain of the preamp(direct from PUs), and dial in the bargraph to make a responsive looking display. Then, if U ran to 3 filters, low, mid, hi, U would have a triple LED bargraph lite show on your Axe!
But, where would U put all those LEDs?!?!?!?
LOL!!! <shakes his head> :-)

Funny you should mention Roland GK (as it goes I'm well into midi guitars - this is me )...becuase I'm presently designing a 6ch HEX sustainer driver to bo on my guitar (note: not a pickup.....the very opposite in fact), furthermore, I'm having to design my own bobbins in CAD, then cut them on a CNC machine I built (out of dot matrix printers!), so I can therefore cater for 6 LEDs to be mounted within the bobbin itself. (I already intend having an LED light under each string when it's plucked but figured an LED bargraph might be cool too!)

Re getting the guitar signal level up ....well my sustainer driver circuit alreeady does that. I simply want to go ther PIC route to save PCB real estate (there's not a lot of room in a guitar for big PCBs), & like I say, I'll already have a PIC on the PCB. I use the PIC for digital AGC for my sustainer (basically I AtoD the amplified incoming analogue signal then make some gain decision based on the corresponding DC level....with that in mind, I guess I'm 70% of the way there for LED bling already!

I think I'll give it a pop regardless...it ought to be fun....& like I say, you can never have enough LED bling!

Thanks for you comments.