Gibson USA has released two new models dubbed Robot Guitars. I LOVE the SG with the metallic purple. And now, thanks to 21st century technology, I don’t have to actually tune my guitar. The guitar will tune itself via servo motors in the tuning knobs and some fancy electronics!
Opinions?
Very cool… I wonder how much they cost!
The SG is retailing for $3599 and the Les Paul for $3999. A bit out of my price range, but I’d love to play with one for a bit.
I can’t even consider that axe at that price… speaking hypothetically though, it depends on exactly how the tuning works. If the tuners are “on” all the time and making minuscule adjustments even as you play (constantly getting feedback from your playing–I doubt this) it would be awesome. If the tuners only work when you stop playing and play the open strings one at a time, it would be much less attractive.
There’s a wiki page (seriously?) that tells the details. Basically, pull the knob and strum (no pun intended).
Target practice. Why am I paying a zillion dollars more so that the guitar can do what it tkes me 20 seconds to do?
There was a review in Guitar Player. The verdict was kind of meh.
Can you preset different tunings into it and then swich tunings at the push of a button? If it doesn’t do that, it’s worse than useless. Learning to tune a guitar trains your ear. I can imagine a garage full of teenagers in the year 2042 all with self tuning instruments that, while each instument is in tune, the tunings across instruments are just a bit out and they don’t even notice.
Personally, I’d like the guitar without the BS with just the metallic purple finish. I think it’s just a way to throw in a bit of technology into an instrument for the fuck of it. I imagine the guitar itself would sound the same as a regular SG or Les Paul (provided they are in tune).
Yes. See the cited wiki article above.
I cannot see paying $3k+ for an instrument of this sort. I would guess the Robot will stop working at some future time, and there’s no way I want to keep charged batteries in my guitar body in any case.
It’s a very cool idea, but by the time you’re ready for a guitar that cost more than my first car you should know how to tune the thing without some sort of help beyond a $10 tuner, if even that. Plus how much does that thing weigh with all those doodads in there? Les Pauls weigh enough without any extras as it is.
The guitar gets great reviews in concept - personally, I would love to be able to to physically re-tune my guitar to alternate tunings in a few seconds - I would value that feature vs. using a Line 6, say, where alternate tunings are available, but the guitar itself doesn’t physically change tuning - it just digitally manipulates the pitch of the strings. Yuck, IMHO.
But on the Les Paul Forum, the Robots have been getting trashed. The biggest issue has been quality/workmanship - simply put, the Robot knob comes off. And since it is not something that can be fixed by a local tech, you are stuck. I could try to find the multi-page threads on the LP Forum if you want…
**Cluri ** - the guitars don’t weigh more than a normal LP. The Robot tuners weigh less, I believe, vs. normal tuners. Again, in concept, they got a lot right. If someone’s just looking to keep their guitar in tune, meh, but if you want to quickly switch from standard to Open G to DADGAD or some other alternate, this could be a great way to do it - if the knob connected to all the circuitry was robust enough to handle a little rough treatment…which all guitar players would subject it to…
Yeah, my reaction was kind of a big ‘meh’ - I’ve never found a tuner that got everything exactly where I like it anyway, so even after I’ve got a green light on all six strings, I tune as many of the open fifths as I can before I call it ready to go. And $4000 for an axe - that’s getting into luthier kind of prices as far as I’m concerned. Especially when I can run the cable through my tuner if I want that kind of mechanical opinion. I won’t be running out to get one of these anytime soon.
Now an 8-string archtop… RRowr!
Odd that the Robot doesn’t make the guitar weigh more, that’s a pretty nifty chunk of engineering then. I’d love to take one through it’s paces.
Here’s the deal though…while tuning alternates on the fly sounds cool, you really just bring more guitars to your gigs if this is such a concern. If it worked for Jimmy Page it’s good enough for me. Secondly, I used to have a little dealy on one of my Jacksons called a D Tuna that let me go from standard E to drop D in the blink of an eye. I never tried it on the other saddle nuts, but you could in theory make more of these that let you pop tune the rest of your strings in the same fashion. No Robot needed.
I can’t see the point. Going to dropped D or G/(Keef tuning) on a non-whammy guitar is trivially easy, going to anything more extreme than an open E or A would really need different string gauges, you’d probably do that to play bottleneck and then you’d want a completely different action/setup. The Wiki article says it’s calibrated for 010s - punch in dropped C and watch the strings fall off the guitar :rolleyes:
If you can’t tune your guitar - bloody learn how. If your guitar doesn’t stay in tune chuck it. And if it cost a couple of thousand quid it really ought to stay in tune.
Would it cope with a floating whammy, or would it just seek up and down until the batteries died?
Seriously, I tune my guitars when I change the strings not every time I pick them up. Pointless tech. And it will break.
I suggested exactly this idea to a friend of mine - about 15 years ago. He laughed at me.
AFAIK, the Les and the SG have never been offered by Gibson in anything but a fixed bridge so that’s not that big of an issue, and the Robot only tunes when you tell it, not constantly.
This thread is reminding me of the band that lived downstairs from me for a few months. Their big number was a thing that I called ‘Tuning while Stoned’, and it represented the first half-hour to an hour (or so it seemed) of every rehearsal. Seeing the only other piece in their repertoire was a medley of half-learned Sex Pistols covers (never with every band member playing the songs in the same order, and usually taking a couple of verses for everyone to notice, followed by some heated discussion, followed by more dope, followed by a reprise of ‘Tuning while Stoned’), the Gibson Robot Guitar could have cut their repertoire in half…
Well, it was one of the few places I’d ever lived where no one complained about me singing too loud.
On rereading: it would be more accurate to call the tremolos on SGs “floating tailpieces”. So technically, you’re right, Claurican, no Gibson had floating bridges. But they did have a tremolo.