Dhani Harrison’s guitar doesn’t gently weep. It sobs loudly, overloaded with pedal effects and synth patches.

Son of Beatle George Harrison, Dhani inherited a lot of his dad’s earthy spirituality. His band, thenewno2 (a reference to the cult TV series “The Prisoner”), dedicated its new album, “You Are Here,” to the yogis of the Himalayas.

But Harrison, whose band opens for Wolfmother Saturday at the House of Blues, is also a major gearhead. From cars to guitars to video games, he’s fascinated with technology and perfecting designs.

“I’ve gone through nine of my favorite guitar pedal,” Harrison said from a tour stop in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s just a badly made bit of technology. I actually threw one into a river in Austin the other day after it failed on me during a show. But it sounds good and no one else makes them. So I’m going to go and work with the company on designing a new one that holds up and works properly.”

This is the type of thing Harrison digs deeply: fixing stuff, tinkering, rebuilding stuff from scratch. He happily admits to being a nerd for most of his life. Growing up around million-dollar recording studios and million-dollar Formula 1 cars (one of his dad’s passions), he was inundated with the latest advances.

“I used to watch a lot of the races,” he said, “and spent time in the pits. It got me into things like race telemetry even as they were inventing it. I designed my degree (from Brown University) around Formula 1 and car design with some physics and visual arts thrown in.”

When Harrison finally took a career stab at music, he brought the science with him. Thenewno2 borrows a lot from Radiohead’s computer rock and modern electro beats.

“To re-create a studio record in the real world, you have to bring a studio onstage,” Harrison said with a laugh. “So we’ve got a lot of synthesizers and software. I’m running four Kaoss pads and a Kaoss mixer onstage. I designed the system myself to run like record decks so I can play samples or do whatever. And then of course we’ve got all the guitar pedals.”

His love of software, design and loud guitars made Harrison a perfect fit to help shepherd the new “Beatles: Rock Band” video game from idea to product.

Years before the game hit the market, Harrison struck up a friendship with Alex Rigopulos, founder of Harmonix, the Cambridge-based company that developed “Rock Band.”

“I saw the technology progress as I was doing consulting for Harmonix,” Harrison said. “That helped me boost the confidence of the people at Apple (Records). Being such a fan of the music gaming genre, I knew the Beatles had to be the first band with its own game. Not just a game that had been re-skinned for a band, but to actually build our own game.

“You don’t want to be playing Beatles songs as the grim reaper, like you don’t want to be playing Bon Jovi songs as Kurt Cobain,” he added, taking a shot at rival franchise “Guitar Hero,” which caused a stink by disrespecting Cobain in their game by allowing the dead icon to do stupid dances and sing cheesy songs.

“That’s not going to make people very happy,” Harrison said. “So we had to do it our own unique way.”

Now Harrison is working on “Rock Band 3” to make it even more realistic. His goal: to get the game to actually teach people to play music, not just to pantomime in rhythm.

A tricky task. But a manageable one for a guy who would rather redesign a guitar pedal than just find another one that works.