Took a shot of my live setup with my iPhone this past Sunday. Thought it might be fun to diagram exactly what I play with.

1. Apple MacBook Pro (GR) – this is my workhorse. In addition to running Guitar Rig I use this for most all my personal work. It’s an older MBP but it gets the job done. 2.33 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD
2. Guitar Rig 3 – After leading worship and playing lead guitar in a lot of worship bands in smaller venues I was sick of dealing with stage volume issues. I was having to turn my amp down so low amp didn’t have the chance to get to the warm part of the tubes. Literally I was having to have my amp down at 1 so the FOH guys would stop complaining. So I was really limited in my tone and sound. All direct options whether software or multi effects had such poor quality and weren’t an option until I found Guitar Rig. I experimented with it on some recording projects, then tried it live and was very happy with the flexibility and sound quality. So this is my rig for small venues and I highly recommend it for congregations 300 or smaller.
3. Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot Controller – I don’t particularly like the foot controller that comes with Guitar Rig, so I just got the software edition and got my own midi foot controller. 2 foot pedals is a must, dedicated volume pedal then the other for trem speed, wah, what have you.
4. Presonus FireBox – “2 out of 3 musicians recommend Presonus for their firewire audio interface needs.” I’m one of the 2.
5. Apple Macbook Pro (Reason) -My newer machine. 2.4Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB Ram, 150GB HD
6. Reason 4 – I talked a bit about how this came to be in an earlier post. Slowly been integrating more synth tracks, live and recorded.
7. M-Audio Oxygen8 v2 – wanted something small and ultra portable with a decent amount of assignable controls and transport. This fit the bill. Great controller for Reason.

Guitars

1. Fender American Standard Strat 3-tone sunburst – not old enough to say the year yet. Over 10yrs old, less than 30.
2. Gibson Super Jumbo Acoustic, J100 Xtra – I love jumbo acoustics, I like them to sound full, deep and rich. Not a fan of bright acoustics.

Some other time I’ll diagram my amp and stomp box setup. So that’s what I play regularly, comment with your setup.

Gibson has released a self tuning guitar, they gave it the unfortunate name of ‘Robot Guitar’. How that name passed any level of critique is beyond me. It’s so very typical of the first iteration of any tech advance, where the name overplays the hand. Sooner or later this feature will probably be standard in most guitars and the name won’t make any reference to it. But for now we’ll be stuck with this I suppose.

I’m glad Gibson took a crack at it. If done well it could be a very useful feature. They packed it into a Les Paul which makes sense, with a name like Robot Guitar you’d almost expect a new model. Gibson claims Billy Corgan and Peter Townshend are already ‘using’ it. Using could mean Gibson sent them a free one and they opened the box and said it looks pretty. So I don’t know how much weight you can give that claim.

Robot Guitar Ultra Machine Deluxe auto-corrects strings out of tune and can store up to 6 different tunings. Also has a really cool way of setting intonation. You can checkout videos of it in action on Gibson’s website. I’m really impressed actually, looks well done. Robot retails for $2,900 which is pretty dang hefty. I’ll wait for the feature to become more standard.