Sorry my guitar crashed
Published January 27, 2003
Gibson are touting Ethernet for your electric guitar. Somehow, I think they are missing the point since this seems to be a solution chasing a problem.
If all goes well for a small band of engineers at Gibson Labs in Sunnyvale, Calif., this will be the year they put commercial electric guitars on an Ethernet network for the first time. The next question: Will anyone want a digital Les Paul?Jeff Vallier hopes so. He is one of about a dozen Gibson engineers who have been working almost three years to craft Magic — a custom digital network technology based on Ethernet — that Gibson will build into future guitars, amps, speakers and other gear.
I guess it is a standards setting exercise, since Line6 has been doing digital amps, and now a guitar for a while.
Also, it doesn't look like this will be adaptable to wireless (bandwidth and latency problems). Not that analog wireless doesn't have it's own problems. I saw Carla Bley and Steve Swallow play about 10 years ago. Swallow was using a wireless rig on his bass, and during a quiet bit, an analog cell phone came crackling through from a car driving past: "Well you tell him, I said he can go fuck himself"! The entire club cracked up.
- Sorry my guitar crashed
- Published: January 27, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Music
- Writer: Jim Carruthers
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Billy, you're about _this_ far from going all Nigel Tufnel on us. "See this finish, listen to the sustain".
I've never really bought into the vintage mystique. I have bought a lot of junk in pawnshops, Kents, Silvertones, and some better guitars like a Strat (autographed by Yngie Malmsteen of all people).
I've tried to avoid the syndrome of "if I buy a better guitar, it will make me a better player." And since I don't have much money lately, that has been easy to avoid.
Nah, Jim, it's really not about that. I have some beginner pals who bring around cheap little guitars that I think are pretty cool, in fact, for their utility to beginners. A buck-&-a-half Yamaha from some garage sale, a Mars Music package, you name it. I cheer 'em on.
But there really is a place in the world for serious refinement. And when it comes to guitars, my own conviction is that it's as nearly as very personal a thing as sex. It's about the chemistry of the touch. Blindfold me and run fifty necks through my left hand, and I'll sort the Fenders from the Gibsons every time. It's not necessarily about the money: my old acoustic was the cheapest model in the Gibson catalog the year my Dad bought it with money he made delivering newspapers and setting blowing pins, but it's just got the touch.
[shrug] Ford or Chevy? Who knows but the afficionadoes of each? They know, and that's really the point.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/2879)
I would dispute any insinuation that the value of a Gibson foray into this arena would be merely derivative. The Line6 Variax is significant for its leading digital-guitar integration, but guitars -- as things to touch with the human hand -- are extremely sublime things. The world is filled with Les Paul copies of quality that varies from rubbish to splendid, but there is nothing in the world exactly like the feel of the genuine article. The particular qualities of Gibson's digital implementation might be open to question, but however that goes, its first and most serious quality has to be the axe, itself. I remember when Roland first introduced MIDI guitars in the early 80's: they were technically interesting, but they just didn't touch like a Gibson neck.
Nobody else can bring that to the table.
Billy (1952 Gibson L-47, 1977 Les Paul Custom)