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.
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Figure it’s time for some gear talk on here since I’m really excited about my new foot controller purchase. A couple years back I switched to Guitar Rig(GR) for my live rig. I never imagined I would be using a complete software rig ever in my life, but that was until I heard Guitar Rig. I used to be, still am I suppose, a collector of as many classic pedals as I could get my hands on. With my Matchless Hotbox being my pride and joy. All multi-effects pedal boards, amp simulators, software solutions I’d heard up until GR sounded sooo bad, I never even considered them. Then my brother begged me to start using GR on a few recording projects we were doing and I was really impressed. My huge complaint with multi-effects units and software apps has been that the sound is so obviously a digital signal, there’s no cabinet breathing, no warmth, no peaks that you can pick out. It’s just all washed and over compressed and just too cute and nice.
One thing GR lets you control in addition to any combination of amps and cabinets you wish is mic placement. I can’t tell you how important that is for sound and GR really hit it out of the park there. So once I realized that the amp/cabinet selections were actually really good, I then got to enjoy the wide selection of other effects. It’s super handy being able to get such a wide tone swing during a live gig. Not to mention the flexibility afforded by the other effects. But sound quality is of the utmost importance and I can honestly say that GR is the only software/multi-effects unit I’ve heard that makes me say “wow” (yes those are quotes around wow). And GR2 has made me even more pleased, but I’m upset that they continue to release major upgrades at a blistering pace, GR3 already is out. Ever heard of minor FREE updates Native Instruments???
So now onto my purchase. I originally bought GR 1 which came with a 4 button (not really banks) 1 expression pedal foot controller. 2 of those buttons are reserved for switching presets, so really you’re left with 2 buttons. That really made things tough, lots of preparation needed to be done on the presets making sure from song to song you could quickly get to each preset. Not an enjoyable situation. So I needed a bigger foot controller and found a Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot controller (actually a lot of them) on ebay for dirt cheap. 10 button, 2 expression pedals AND 2 dedicated preset/amp switches. So now I don’t have to use any of the 10 buttons for switching presets and the 2 expression pedals is huge. You always want volume control but many times I need tremolo speed or wah control or other such timings that can’t be tapped out. I can’t wait for it to arrive and get it all setup.
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