GIBSON RELEASES SELF-TUNING GUITAR
Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 3:59pm by Vince Neilstein
So it’s come to this; Gibson has released a self-tuning guitar, which according to a Reuters report [via Idolator] is “aimed at amateurs who have a hard time keeping their guitars in tune, as well as professionals who now use technicians during concerts to keep about 100 guitars tuned to different keys.” The guitar will not only tune itself after string changes but will also allow players to access six non-standard tunings at the push of a button.
So in addition to auto-tuned vocals, we now have this atrocity. Now if only they’d make a version for what really matters — Guitar Hero — we’d be all set.
-VN
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I don’t think it’s much akin to Auto-tune. It is, however, pretty lazy. A good guitar, especially a Gibson, doesn’t go out of tune easily and for the normal of us, tuning a guitar takes, what, 8 seconds? And if you’re playing in multiple tunings, chances are you have multiple guitars ready to go.
I say mehhhhhh
Not every ‘professional’ can afford a guitar technician or the bill for putting ten guitars on a plane. Your average Willowtip techdeath guitarist will probably love this thing.
this thing is pretty expensive though… theres an article about just the tuning system in the decibel that came out a couple months ago… I wonder if it works properly with thicker gauge strings…
I think the guitar player in my band has a mild case of OCD and generally spends 10-15 minutes every time we jam tuning his guitar. I think he tunes it, then “un-tunes” it so to speak. He’s a great guy and an excellent guitar player, but as a drummer, his tuning issues make me want to ram a drumstick through my skull. He blames his excessive tuning on the “explorer” he plays and that guitar strings go out of tune fast, and that he plays very heavy. Are any of these legit arguments? Does the dime influenced explorer and its unusually large bridge make the guitar prone to going out of tune?
Addendum: While recording an acoustic overlay on one of our songs, I counted that he tuned his guitar 47 times over a 15 minute span. This cant possibly be neccessary.
This is nothing like the auto-tune used by vocalists in the studio.
I used to play in a band, and if you’re really into it, you NEED to tune up your guitar. This makes more sense for the dudes who play in bands and can’t afford a roadie to tune the guitars between songs. Granted, like Sammy said, it’s pretty lazy.
As a side note, I think the first thing a novice should do is learn to tune a guitar. If you can’t do that, you’re going to make an awful racket and you shouldn’t be playing guitar in the first place.