Pay $1300, or be a musician and learn to tune?

OK, who let the Good Sense Police in?

famous beagle said:
I think this is getting way too much thought put into it.

It's just a gimmick---another "tool" that you can choose to use or not.

For all of the people defending their stage tuners, guess what? There was a time when those were new as well, and I'm sure there were plenty of haters then too. Just because we can all "tune by ear" (or at least you should be able to), that doesn't mean most giggin musicians don't use electronic tuners for their speed and practicality when on the gig. They get you pretty darn close very quickly.

And for all the people saying that all guitar tuners are different, so you're not going to be in tune with someone using a regular tuner if you play with the Gibson guitar ... WTF? You'd apparently have this problem with any 2 guitar players that are using regular guitars but different tuners, right?

Gibson (and Fender with the VG Strat) are just trying to stay ahead on the innovation curve and make some bucks. It's no big surprise. And of course they're going to try to market it as the new big thing and an incredible innovation and all that. They want to sell the stupid guitars.

It's simple. If you play in a band where you're covering Hendrix one tune, Rolling Stones the next, then Nirvana, then something else, a guitar like the VG Strat or the Gibson might appeal to you.

Obviously, if they're not working consistently yet, then that's certainly a problem. But that's not what most people on here were complaining about first. They were complaining about the principle.

If the technology sticks around, I'm sure they'll get self-tuning guitars to the point of reliability.

Remember, digital sucked a*s when it came out, but now everyone and their dog is recording with it (and this is coming from someone who prefers analog).
Click to expand...

Remember, this ain't about making sense: it's about entertaining ourselves.
 
Not to beat a dead horse...at least, not too dead

I went back and re-read the Guitar Player review of the Robot Gibson.

1. "It actually takes about 15 seconds to go from standard to DADGAD or vice versa, which is pretty incredible." Incredible? I'd think that was a lot of dead air on stage.

2. "At the fastest setting [to retune], Gibson boasts of accuracy of 2.5 cents, until you remember that it means plus or minus 2.5 cents -- which can cause two adjacent strings to be off by 5 cents, which is not only audible, but unacceptable."

3. "...my ears and two different digital tuners said that the Robot Guitar only nailed all six pitches about half the time." Friends, that's a LOT of mistuning! If I had a guitar that I could only get all six strings in tune about half the time, I'd...I'd sell it on eBay with a banner that said ***RARE***VINTAGE***, I guess. It sure as hell wouldn't be on stage with me.

4. "I'd be happy to simply grab the tuning machine, and nudge, say, the the low E, but doing so requires that you disengage the tuner button, make the adjustment, and then reengage the tuner button." I can only say, WTF! A miracle device that fights you when it screws up.

5. "...I still heard (and saw on the tuner) occasional random tuning problems." Random? That certainly makes it more interesting. I mean, if it happened on the same strings on a particular tuning each time, you'd just be standing up there bored while the little motors whizzed around during those 15 seconds. Much better to be up there with an expression of fear and loathing on your face.

6. "In writing this review, we witnessed two Robots go down -- one freezing up after about 15 minutes of tuning, and the other refusing to turn off after about a week of moderate use." Let's see: at a street price of $2199, you'd spend $6597 to get ONE guitar that would reliably (i.e., half the time, on two-thirds of the strilngs) tune up its strings after 15 seconds.

7. "It's chock full Gibson's old-school craftsmanship and the mind-boggling Tronical Powertune technology." So the windshield wipers on my car (which use about the same level of engineering are mind-boggling? Wish I'd known, I'd have stuffed a couple more grand into the hands of the salesman.

8. "It's a slick, elegant device in a kick-ass guitar for a reasonable price." Damn. Even the satirist can't improve on that.

What would say if Consumers Reports told you about a new $40000 car where the windshield wipers worked about half the time, except that they broke on two out of three cars?

No thanks. I can get the same heart-stopping excitement by trying to fire up my old Cry Baby using the wrong AC adapter.
 
lpdeluxe said:
8. "It's a slick, elegant device in a kick-ass guitar for a reasonable price."
Click to expand...

Gee, I wonder if GP is afraid of losing ad revenue? How sad that they have to be bitches to the advertisers who's products (sometimes) SUCK.

A product that works half the time is shit. I know a few guitarists that use lots of alternate tunings and they can tune their guitars within 15-20 seconds and be accurate ALL of the time.

And, to top it all off, the manufacturer is apparently a LIAR!

"The extremely accurate tuning control, guaranteed by using newly patented procedures, provides fast, precise calculation to an accuracy of typically 0.1 cent. The DSP TuneCore-Controller electronics, combined with built-in piezo pick-ups on the bridge, calculates the actual tuning - or rather the necessary corrections - in fractions of a second."
Click to expand...

I'll give it to them, this would be a neat novelty on a lesser used guitar, if it was priced anywhere near what it's worth, AND if it actually worked. I would never trade my Sperzels for it though. Locking nuts and Floyd Rose trems are the damn DEVIL!!! In my opinion, locking tuners are an actual innovation and they actually work and make things more convenient. Hell, I can change a string faster than the Robot guitar can auto-tune!
 
mwthompson said:
Gee, I wonder if GP is afraid of losing ad revenue? How sad that they have to be bitches to the advertisers who's products (sometimes) SUCK.
!
Click to expand...
ummmm GP was ridiculing the statement. It went on to say (paraphrasing) that the statement was so stupid even a satirist wouldn't be able to come up with anything even more ridiculous.

Doesn't seem like GP liked it much and truthfully, you don't see many negative reviews out of them so the ones they got hold of must have really sucked.
 
Lt. Bob said:
ummmm GP was ridiculing the statement. It went on to say (paraphrasing) that the statement was so stupid even a satirist wouldn't be able to come up with anything even more ridiculous.
Click to expand...

My bad. I thought the additional line re: satirist was added commentary by lpdeluxe. :)
 
mwthompson said:
My bad. I thought the additional line re: satirist was added commentary by lpdeluxe. :)
Click to expand...

That's right. The GP statement comes at the very end of the piece, and I couldn't help but add my own smartass comment to it.

Gee, wouldn't it be neat if it really worked?

On the other hand, it's like the Gibson flat tops they made in the '60s with tunamatic bridges: killed the tone, looked silly, started up a cottage industry in retrofitting them with standard acoustic bridges.

The fact is, the acoustic steel string was mature by the end of the '40s. If a player from 1950 picked up the latest Taylor with the trick neck joint, he'd tune it, and hold it, and play it in the same way, and it would sound very similar.

By the same token, the Les Paul was fully mature by 1960 (except for my favorite improvement, the mini-humbucker), and anything done to it now amounts to gilding the lily. And, as Lt Bob is fond of pointing out, the parts the guitar doesn't have are the ones that ain't gonna break.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top