Maybe i'm a traditional kind of guy but i don't care if the "firebird x" can play itself or teach you to play like Vai.....I don't care if it comes in 87 robotic tunings......

That has got to be one of the ugliest guitars i've ever seen, it has no reasoning to it's asthetic....and i lived through the Jackson Roswell Rhoads.....

Seriously i cannot take it seriously. I'm fine with advances in guitars but there is a reason why the Strat, Tele, and LP's are still the chosen ones....if it's not broke don't fix it. Heck even Ibanez really hasn't changed much since the 90's. Mod's like split coils, different pickups, neck sizes are great, but this is something else, something just ugh.

Guitars have curves and are attracktive that way (save v's, explorers) but for the most part there is an elegance to them. This is like the fat friend who has a good personality, but there is just no way no matter how drunk you get.

I guess the G in Gibson now stands for Gimic. I loved the Apple press conference...that was a nice touch!

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2007 Fender MIM Strat Midnight Wine
1965 Univox HR-2 "Lawsuit" ES-335 Knockoff
Ovation Celebrity Shallow Bowl

Don't buy one
I don't see what the big deal is. Yeah it's ugly and yeah it's another overpriced gimmick. This whole thing is really getting beaten to death.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

I think my biggest problem is I don't see why we need a digital guitar.

What's wrong with tuning guitars?
What's wrong with tweaking amps?
What's wrong with having floor effects?
What's wrong with pricing something close to the $500 it actually costs to make?
Why would someone claim to change guitars forever by combining technology that isnt that new to guitars?
What's wrong with tradition?
What's wrong with actually learning a craft and developing skills? Instead of making everything impersonal and easy.

Just things to think about.

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2007 Fender MIM Strat Midnight Wine
1965 Univox HR-2 "Lawsuit" ES-335 Knockoff
Ovation Celebrity Shallow Bowl

Gibson is wasting too much time and money trying to build the "perfect mousetrap" as it were.If they put just a fraction of that effort on quality control they wouldn't be taking all the flak regarding their poor quality issues.These fad guitars are all going to go the way of the Edsel,Bricklin and DeLorean ,hailed by the makers as the way of the future only to go down in history as major flops.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

I'm with you on that Firebird X.
For Solid Body Electric my choices are:
Fender: Strat & Tele
Gibson: LP & SG

As for Gibson's hollow body electric:
ES 350T
ES 335

Then a few choice Gibson archtops here and there
I honestly don't have that wide of a field of guitars that I care for.
That's pretty much the list for me.

my problem with it is that the robotic technology will get cheaper soon and appear on more guitars...meaning some kid will just pick up a guitar and have great tone and be in tune straight off, there'll be no struggle like we had persevered when we began.

im partially jealous yes i admit that but we learn so much through the struggles we face.

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A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski~

The solution is easy. Dont" Buy One
No one if forcing you to buy one or even look at it. Every guitar manufacturer has their share of so-called "Brilliant" ideas. Ibanez led the pack way back, but Fender and Gibson had their share too. The Stratocaster VM? Yow, that was digital tuning with a battery eating circuit and digital artifacts if you hit the strings too hard, The new Blacktops turn me off, as well as the Roadworn's and Tele's with Buckers too. I just don't buy stuff like that. The good thing is there are tons of alternatives so I don't waste my time worrying about it. The difference with the Gibby scarryass Robot guitars is it actually re-tunes the guitar it doesn't do it digitally. Still stupid to me. It takes me roughly 30 seconds to switch my guitar to open tunings unless I bring two guitars.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

After a good bit of time with the VG I thought it was a great guitar, really. The idea of guitar modelling wasn't introduced by Fender though, Line6 did and the Variax still sells well.
I'd like to see any one of us using this forum take 12 guitars to a gig.

I do however think that I'd prefer that module outboard of the guitar. Nothing more than a couple of midi controler knobs on the guitar.

Still if the VG came back tomorrow, I'd buy one. I certainly didn't experience any problems with the circuit over the couple of weeks I borrowed one for. Yeah it eats batteries, no more than a old battery powered zoom 9000 does though.

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No no and no

Hey Niki, you might appreciate this one. I used to own and old Roland 707 guitar synth way back. The one with the trapezoid shaped guitar and the handle that connected the body to the neck. It also had a huge pedal board that weighd something like 30 lbs. If you played a note the latency was so bad the notes would come out 5 minutes later.LOL Still cool stuff.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

See outboard is better isn't it? Whoever makes it. I was always fascinated by them space age things.
It just proves the point I made on another thread. Guitar companies are limited by their heriatage.

How would we feel if Martin or Taylor released this



Yet Roland and Steinberg could get away with it, for a few years atleast.

I really think you gotta look back on this stuff with a good attitude. Ok they all had their faults, but some variation of that technology will be what we play tomorrow.
No matter how much we love it, folks aint gonna be playing 54 strats into tweed champs in 100 years time.

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No no and no

That is all very sound and smart, however you would be surprised (in Toronto at least) how many talentless, stock quote and sports results re-hashing all day long, "guitar hero" loving S.O.B's there are. Trust me this product will be an welcome upgrade from the guitar hero toys.

This product might take off as many BS products there are in the market. It is just too bad that they decided to put a Gibson brand behind them. Henry is on a hunt for sheeple as many other CEOs, which is their choice. In the process he is damaging his main brand, at least in my more traditional view.

I would put a different brand name on the experiment product and maybe slap a Gibson family of products.

Yeah Man, I had the silver job. The guitar played surprisingly well too.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

While i agree with many of you about Fender's attempts etc. I feel Fender does the product testing more discretely than Gibson and has a balance. Fender keeps the tradition but adds to it I.E. Blacktops, color schemes, the new American series. All with something new without bastardizing their product name. I remember the self tuning guitar and didn't like it very much, isn't it enough i gotta worry about batteries in my stomp boxes?

And yes i believe in multiple guitars, because i love guitars. I don't want just one to do everything. I build a relationship with each one i own. Any passionate guitar player has their favorite sure, but they also have a fleet of saucy wenches on the side..or what we refer to as our "harem"!.

What Gibson is producing is just gimic after gimic. Ugo after Ugo. Their R and D department needs a beat down. I mean it started in 2008 with changing the neck shapes of the guitars and has snow balled into the overpriced garbage we are discussing in this forum. Their "toy" guitars they are producing (which all are sporting a piezo pickup) are not to the asthetic standards i've come to love about Gibson. And all these complications they are adding are just something to break. I wonder how many dings and drops it'll take to mess something up.

BTW that guitar above is something else....wow...

and kudos to bringing up variax, parker fly should be mentioned and moog. all of which have already done what gibsons attempting to do just in a different form.

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2007 Fender MIM Strat Midnight Wine
1965 Univox HR-2 "Lawsuit" ES-335 Knockoff
Ovation Celebrity Shallow Bowl

The beatdown is people not buying them. Gibson and Fender both need to concentrate on building high quality preferably American made instruments.

Fender has what a bozillion models of the Stratocaster? Plus a ton of Signature guitars? How many John Mayer guitars do we need? Gibson's the same way. How many Slash guitars do we as musicians need? For me the answer's zero. LOL All this variety add to the cost of manufacturing cost of every guitar they make. Years ago we modded our own guitars to get what we wanted for a special tone. Now it's all cookie cutter garbage. Don't get me wrong, I own a couple imported guitars. They didn't cost much. But for companies like Gibson, Fender, ect that were started here, I feel they should keep America working.

Variety cost money in manufacturing and warehousing. I'd rather have the money in my pocket or invested in another quality guitar.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

I'm with you. Ugly as homemade sin and basically irrelavant. What Gibson really needs to do (and Fender to a much lesser degree) is focus on making high quality AFFORDABLE instruments. My main issue is the affordability. No production guitar should cost $5k that is just robbery.

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"Life is like eating jalapenos. What you do today may burn your arse tomorrow"