Oh Gibson, what will you do next.....

[bassilisk]

They are merely trying to do something new and different. How many Les Paul variants can you make? Or Strats for that matter?
 
However, what's disturbing is they are heading in a direction that may eventually become something else entirely. One day during a power surge, your guitar may wake up and decide it no longer needs a carbon-based operator to tell it what to do.....
 
Prepare to be assimilated.

[cozmik_cowboy]

How many Les Paul variants can you make? Or Strats for that matter?
 
How about one variant of each - half as good as the classic ones?  (Which to me is late '53-'60 on the LP, '59-'66 for Strats)
(edited for afterthought - OK, 2 variants on the Strat, to make the maple-fretboard weirdos happy )
 
Peter
 
(Message edited by cozmik_cowboy on November 12, 2010)

[zappahead]

I actually really like the ideas going on. I think guitarists sometimes need to apply some time into thinking outside the box. There are a lot of possibilities with something like this. Its obviously about a lot more than just auto tuning. The 3rd party apps open up doors to new ideas, which are sorely needed in production guitars. Its hard for me to believe that people are threatened by new ideas. The modeling world is actually blowing up right now and Gibson is very smart to try and push ideas out there and they are even smarter for giving people a platform to push their ideas out there. Its one of the main things that drove the Iphone and is driving the Ipad and other impressive inventions that have surpassed all expectations.  
 
I also like the look of this guitar too. I have no idea why people are so out of sorts about this guitar. Its certainly one of the cooler things Gibson has done in years.

[hydrargyrum]

I guess this just doesn't seem that original to me.  There have been many manufacturers who have tried dropping effects into guitars, and they've never done well.  Besides that, I've tried any number of digital effects, and they've all sounded awful to my ears (with the exception of a few digital delays, which are really a different animal all together).  But to be fair, I haven't bothered checking out the stuff that is probably now the leading edge.  They act as though they've turned the guitar world on its ear, but it's really just providing an update to something that people have been doing since the sixties.

[zappahead]

The 3rd party app thing has never been done before. The effects in the guitar and the way they have been done is original as well. The robot feature they have put out is original and is the only company out there doing it other than the company that retrofits that stuff into LPs and Strats for like 5k. The digital stuff out is not awful by anyones estimation. I think people who bash it all are just being biased. Check out the Axe FX, the M13 or Pod HD stuff and if you think its all awful then Id have to call that someone going into the discussion with their mind made up already.  
 
Guys like Steve Howe, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Vai, the Edge, Eric Johnson, John McLaughlin and many others who wont say it are all using digital effects and in some cases use them exclusively. The digital effects world is evolving so fast right now and this guitar is the first attempt to let small time developers push an idea out there for people to test and use. This open source type of idea has worked for a lot of other genres and its not hyperbole to say that someone may be able to create something really amazing with this type of instrument. Maybe it wont happen, but Im glad to see Gibson making the attempt. That being said, I think the guitar is too expensive.

[hydrargyrum]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but the robot feature is overblown, if original.  I'm sure someone will write songs to fit it's abilities, but I've never seen anyone before who felt the necessity to switch to an alternative tuning mid song (I know  this is probably a failing of my poor musical taste, but all the same).  And while it's true that no one has dropped a modeling unit into a guitar before, it's not exactly a great leap of thought to imagine it.  I admitted that I've not bothered to check out the latest and greatest digital stuff, but I stand by the fact that the older stuff didn't inspire me.  And, I do believe that there are folks out there who dedicate their lives to building effects with a much passion as Alembic dedicates to instruments, and that digital clones will never sound the same as an analog unit. But hey, whatever you like is fine. Time will show whether this really works for people, or if it is shelved like so many other innovations. We should all be playing light wave pickups through solid state amps with digital effects if we kept with the edge of technology.
 
(Message edited by hydrargyrum on November 14, 2010)

[David Houck]

Well, technically, I think one could say that on some songs Manring is switching to alternative tunings maybe every four bars or so and sometimes several times within a measure.  But obviously he couldn't do what he's doing with the auto tuners.

[lidon2001]

Parker Adrian Belew Signature - with built in modeling unit:
 
http://www.parkerguitars.com/Signature-Series/
 
Sorry hydra, had to...  
 
T

[hydrargyrum]

Well, like I said, it's a failing of my poor musical taste.    And it was also really cool to see exactly how Michael Manring played that song.    
 
Regardless, the Adrian Belew model does prove my point that Gibson has hardly re-invented the guitar, and clearly other manufacturers have been doing nearly the same thing.  In the end it's all a matter of what works for you personally.  There have been any number of superior guitar players named in this thread who employ these devices, and I'll be honest when I say that I don't enjoy listening to them. They're light years ahead of me as musicians, and I could never aspire to play at their level.  But, I'd still rather hear a dirty out of tune punk song than a fifteen minute guitar solo that was composed for other guitarists.  So I play a guitar with a single P-90 into a germanium fuzz box into a pre-master volume Pro-Reverb. It's pretty raunchy some times, but that's why I like it.

[lidon2001]

Poor musical taste?  My favorite Dead song is Touch of Grey.  Beat that!  lol
 
T

[hifiguy]

Wow, that thing is so aesthetically horrible on so many levels it sorta defies description.  
 
I don't think those built-in effects are going to wear well at all.  But Gibson has a history of trying this before.  I was paging through Tony Bacon's Ultimate Guitar Book last night and saw a pic of a mid-1960s Gibson EB series bass with a built in FuzZTone that you know had to sound like a 60Hz square wave or a ground loop.
 
Gibson and Fender have one basic problem - the classic designs were simply RIGHT and almost impossible to improve on. It's pretty hard to argue that Les', Ted's and Leo's designs can be topped or improved upon by adding faddish gimmickry. And yes, that Reverse Flying V is Onion-level absurd.
 
Judging by the comments on the web page this thing is going over with the Gibson traditionalists like a ham at a Passover Seder.

[hydrargyrum]

I'm fond of some of the stuff Leo did with G&L, but Paul makes a pretty good point.  The Stratocaster and Les Paul both incorporate such incredible innovations that it would be very difficult to create something anywhere near as unique and lasting.  It would be cool to see these companies offer more varieties in terms of pickups, woods, and hardware, but that doesn't fit well with a mass production mentality.

[terryc]

hifiguy..oh yes 'The Ultimate Guitar Book'  pornography for guitarists, the bass section is excellent too..I also bought the sister book 'The Bass Book'
In a nutshell the classic Gibson Les Paul, SG, the Fender, Strat, Tele, P & J bass can never be equalled. Okay so the Parker Fly and Modulus/Status basses solve the 'out of tune because of humidity and temperature' but the classics can never be bettered.

[lbpesq]

One more iconic guitar I'd add to the above list is the ES-335.  The only additional member of that club, IMHO, is the Rickenbacker 360.  
 
By the way, if you want to change tunings during a song, you'll need a Variax or similar instrument that changes tuning electronically (acoustically, the strings remain in standard tuning, only the output is changed).  The robot Gibsons actually change tuning mechanically.  The process involves setting the guitar for the desired tuning and then strumming the strings several times while the guitar senses the pitch and operates the electric motors on the tuning machines accordingly.  It takes about 30 seconds to change tuning - not practical for mid-song.
 
Bill, tgo

[David Houck]

Thanks Bill; yeah that makes sense.