Self-Tuning Electric Guitar

avirrey writes "The Technology Review has an interesting article on a Gibson Self-Tuning Guitar. Purist argue that you shouldn't need a guitar that self-tunes. Others argue that this will allow an artist to change tuning with one 'favorite' guitar, instead of having to swap out between songs." Ok I know what I think- freakin' sweet. Only technology will guarantee my sucking on the electric will at least be reasonably in-tune suckiness. Dear Gibson, Slashdot really needs to review your guitar. We'll need several review units and we lost your return address.

Comments

I bet this will be a tough sell

[Rizzle_p_Mizzle]

I agree that this looks like a super-neato piece of kit, but I would be willing to bet it will have trouble selling because: 1. It's one more thing that might break on stage. 2. Guitarist love tradition and tend to resist change. How long has the Les Paul been in production in its current form? Something like 60 years. The most revered amps are point-to-point wired vacuum tube models. Most people who are willing to drop this kind of coin on guitar gear would probably go for some aged custom model before they went for this. I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I would be surprised by significant commercial success.

Re:Silly technological overkill

[dgatwood]

Agreed, but there are five situations where it could be useful, IMHO:

• Fast tuning changes mid-song (need to be in drop-D for a stretch).
• If you left it on, the ability to instantly correct minor variations in pitch would make setting up the guitar almost a non-issue instead of a pain.
• If you can make it cheap enough, it wouldn't matter if you didn't let the neck cure long enough (causing the axe to get out of tune constantly) so long as the hardware could keep up, so the crap guitars could get a lot better and/or the good guitars could start to really suck without anyone noticing.
• It would be great when you're playing with four other guitar players and nobody seems to agree on the pitch.
• Twelve string.

Re:determinism finally!

[Cecil]

The specific (and nearly impossible to perfectly replicate) sound that the vibrating strings make is the reason to play a guitar. Get rid of that and you might as well just use a synthesizer instead.