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Gibson's Digital Guitar Finally Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-lust-on dept.

tdiman writes "The world's first digital guitar, using Gibson's MaGIC digital transport standard, was introduced February 20th at the Intel Developers Forum." We've been following this one for awhile, I'm really curious to see what something like this can do.

8 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Damnit! by DaPhoenix · · Score: 5, Funny

    What I really wanted was an ethernet port on my toaster...

    Oh well... Imagine a beowulf... No no... i'm not going there. :)

    --
    -- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
    1. Re:Damnit! by FCAdcock · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wouldn't that be called a band?

      --
      --Forest C. Adcock--
  2. Re:Benefits? by MankyD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another quick question:
    This product would seem to go "anologue-digital-analogue", two conversion processes on top of whatever effects/amplifcations are being applied. Wouldn't this hurt sound fidelity? I certainly don't see how it could benefit.

    --
    -dave
    http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
  3. Big Whoop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The grateful dead have had midi/pickup hybrid guitars for years. Jerry Garcia (may he RIP) often made his guitar sound like an entire orchestra.

  4. I can hear the sound checks by apeleg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Roadie - "I can't ping the guitar! Better reboot."
    Guitarist - "Man, that's kill my uptime."

  5. Pretty cool by Hao+Wu · · Score: 5, Informative

    But it's not the first!

    --
    I suggest you read Slashdot
  6. That was quick... by mooniejohnson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdotted Gibson.com pretty fast... anyone want to bet they only had one guitar serving the site?

    ;-)

    --

    Elmo knows where you live!

  7. Not the first, and not extremely different either. by 109+97+116+116 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First of all, since a vibrating string is probably the most simple to understand analog signal, this is basically a guitar with pickups that have an extra set of coils (This isn't the first HEX pickup in the least) to detect string height and an AD convertor or two. Or perhaps twelve. Not too difficult to design, but certainly difficult to implement in a sonically usable manner. Kudos to Gibson if it works well!

    Most likely this is the patented pickup:
    http://makeashorterlink.com/?U47833293

    For one example of a so called "digital" guitar there is of course the Line 6 Variax.
    http://www.line6.com/Variax/home.html

    But that wasn't the first to meld guitar and digital conversion.

    There are many previous designs, one involving pressure sensitive fretboard sections that would close switches and cause signal processing changes.

    Even the Gibson design seen in this post isn't radically different than any past MIDI guitar.

    It's all semantics as to what kind of signal you create or whether you performed AD to DA conversion inside or outside the guitar or on each string or the entire signal together or whatever.

    Here's a very well done approach to a guitar type instrument that has since been discontinued, but is used by many famous artists. Allan Holdsworth to name one.
    http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/synthaxe.html