Rock Out With Guitar Tech @ CES : Guitars A Plenty

By Douglas Mechaber , published on January 13, 2009 at 1:31 PM
Picture 1 of 17
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

At first glance, CES doesn’t seem to have anything to do with computers.  There's just so much other stuff to see. For example, in the last few years, Gibson has set up a large tent in the parking lot, and had musicians of note play in evening concerts.  Yet consumer products, making good use of technology and computers, abound.  Various small companies launch clever products, such as Pacemaker’s Tonium hand held scratcher and mixer last year. The Tonium has now dropped two hundred dollars in list, and is a mere $599. 

Ask any music student, and the worst thing for the beginner is learning to tune the instrument.  Gibson’s Roboguitar from last year attempted to solve the problem for $3,495.  Too pricey for the beginner, perhaps, but a convenient way for the professional to change tunings.  This year, the Roboguitar has been reborn as Dark Fire.  Replete with new features, Dark Fire resembles Roboguitar in concept only. Take a look at the following images to get a sense of how CES has become a haven for Rock-Tech newbies and gods alike.
Sponsored links
Comments
Anonymous 01/14/2009 12:13 PM
Hide
--1+

Just thought i would point out the spelling error in the 2nd paragraph "replete". but i DO like the idea of a Roboguitar, it would be mucho helpful. :p

teaser 01/14/2009 2:31 PM
Hide
-1+

that dark fire is one sweet Les Paul

robertito 01/17/2009 8:55 PM
Hide
-0+

^Ya it's sweet if you want a guitar with crap pickups, MIDI which you'll never use, and a ridiculously processed tone. That and Gibson's QC is in the absolute shitter. I played one in a guitar center recently, your better off with a nice LP custom, the P90s kick the crap out of that thing.

/end rant
Sorry about that, I play guitar so I see the robot and Darkfire and just get aggravated that Gibson won't try to make something useful(auto tuning and intonation is cool though) or at least try to fix the QC.

Sidecar 01/20/2009 6:53 PM
Hide
-0+

I actually think the idea of a piezo pickup for midi out is awesome. I have a magnetic pickup that I will be using for a guitar that I am specially building for it. The real advantage to midi is when you are a one man guy trying to record an album and you don't have the time to learn how to play keyboards and all of the other instruments you may need, especially if you are doing something complex like progressive metal, where each part can have very difficult parts to them. The automatic tuning seems like a nice idea, but it would be helpful if you could save your own setups (tune the guitar to standard E with a set of .010's save that as a patch, then drop D it, save as another patch, etc, etc. If you put on different strings (.009's or .011's for example) you'd have to redo it all over again, but since there's 500 configs you could have them set per string set. Needless to say I do play guitar. Seems like alot of potential with this... better than the Yamaha G10 concept from the 80's anyways!

And to the guy saying about pickups, it may be possible to put in your own pickups. It seems like everything is done in a converter, so the pickups are probably the stock crap Gibson ones.

teaser 01/27/2009 7:20 PM
Hide
-0+

Robertito,I was talking asthetics,I already have a nice gibby,a few years ago I bought a Les Paul Studio AAA Flame top in root beer,and no quality control probs here,the axe is a beauty and plays fantasic,but I know what you are talking with Gibsons sometimes suspect QC.....

Comments are closed on this page.
Sponsored links