So I found this interesting video about Ernie Ball Music Man's new guitar. Some interesting ideas here. And I think this is something even the old school guys can appreciate. Looks like there's several videos in this series, but so far I've just seen this first one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDuAarSEPcA
Watch and discuss...

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I watched that first segment and it was definitely interesting.I know Steve Morse plays those guitars and has for years. He obviously talks about em in the video and he is a top notch player.I have seen him several times.I'm gonna watch the other segments and see what else they gotta say

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1986 Fender Sidekick Reverb 35
1990 Fender Red Knob - "The Twin"
1992 Fender Newporter - Acoustic
2000 Fender American Series Strat - Natural ash
2010 Fender Mustang 1
2011 Fender Blacktop Jazzmaster -Sunburst
2012 Fender Champion

I think we've all seen these technological "magic bullets" before and have inevitably been disappointed when the hype did note equate to the hope......Gibson's Robo-Pauls, Line 6's Variax, even Fender's own VG Strat are prima facie examples. Ultimately the marketplace will judge this latest effort, as it always does. Meanwhile, I'll just keep my Strats and Les Pauls for the time being.



(knowwhatahmeanvern?)

Arjay

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I don't plan on jumping ship anytime soon either Arjay. I do think this one is a little more thought out than some of the others. I however think the 8.5million different tones they claim are attainable is a bit of a ridiculous statement. I find the whole concept pretty interesting, but it still boils down to simplicity for me personally. I prefer a guitar that requires little extra thought when I'm playing; especially when performing.
That being said...I know precisely what you mean Ernest...lol.

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Like anything else, the more complex something is, the more that can and will go wrong with it over time. I guess the Ernie Ball company hasn't learned anything from Fender and Gibson's previous offerings/failures.

Even if one can have a million tonal options on one guitar, one chiefly relies on only a mere few for his/her personal sound. For those who use a handful of guitars for extended tonal options above and beyond the one guitar, the same applies here too. Further, part and parcel of those who like switching among guitars, like switching among guitars; think about it.

IMO, if one wants a computerized guitar, fine but I'm WAY too "Old School" for such things. YMMV.

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You dig?

Soon as one hit's these shores, I'm off to try it out.
Looks good from this end.

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No no and no

Looks too complicated for my poor old brain to process. I think Iwould rather just play my guitar

thanks for posting Tim. I have always thought of Musicman guitars as good instruments but that vid is a little silly. Les Paul was a game changer, Eric Clapton too, Jimi Hendrix, well, most people consider him a pretty good guitar player. This new product with the magic tone button is a great collectors item

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Very interesting; thanks for sharing that, Tim.

Personally, I prefer to keep things simple and would be happier in the other extreme with a guitar with just one pickup, like a Les Paul Jr. By adjusting how I play, I can sound different enough.

I had a 1996 Jimmy Page Les Paul that had a load of push/pull pots for different sounds. I didn't care for it but I'm not going to argue - sure works nicely for him!

Interesting. However, anybody else wondering why we're now called "users" instead of "musicians" or "players"? I don't like that very much.

Apart from that, the initial idea, and the product, are certainly worth a thumbs up.

cheers

Nutter

I think these would be awesome studio guitars. When we were getting ready for the studio, I sat down for days picking out guitars and sounds for each part of each song, and walked in with 6-guitars. I think it might be possible to have mapped out something similar using just one of these. Of course the tone chasing madness would have probably equated to months instead of days given so many options to sift through.

Studio musicians and cover bands will probably dig this guitar a lot. I definitely think it would be worth a test drive to see what it can do.

I'm a weird guy in this sense: I like to switch things up often as far as what guitars I play live. We have fans that show up a lot, (we're on pace to do the 10-15 shows a month again this year) and I like our fans to see me playing a different guitar when they show up again. I think it just gives that little bit of "different night - different show", even though we might play the same set. Sometimes I'll match a look of a guitar with my attire, sometimes it's purely for performance purposes. Just depends on which show, and how I'm feeling.

It would be really hard for me to just play one guitar every night. I think our fans might get bored of seeing me play.

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Interesting. My Am DLX HSS has 11 positions (normal 5, S1 5, and bypass) I have played all of them but I keep returning to the basic 5.

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Pignose
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60'sTwin Reverb

Oh my! I don't think I'm a very stupid person (well not very, very stupid, anyway). But by about halfway through the explanation of how to save sounds from around 6:20 in the vid I'd already lost track of what he was trying to tell us. OK, that's on first hearing, and we can obviously learn the process. But this is meant to be intuitive for use in a live playing situation? 8.5 million options? C'mon...

"Hey Ceri, your solo is coming up!" "OK, I've just got to press this switch twice, pull this knob out, hold the other one in for two seconds, put the selector switch in position three. Or was it four...? Wait, wait!"

One of my issues with my S1 equipped Strat is that it offers a mere nine different tones and in real-life playing I'm damned if I can remember what half of them are. For instance, position two with the switch down is neck paired in series with the split coil of the bridge humbucker and both connected in parallel with the middle pickup. Did you follow that? No? Exactly.

I can't hold that stuff in my head just for nine different options. They claim we can choose from 8.5 million for this MusicMan - and once we've done so the guitar has no readout or anything to remind us what we've done. So if we like a sound and then overwrite it we have no chance of ever finding it again - unless we write all our thousands of experiments down in miles of notebooks.

Which is not exactly how we use our guitars in the playing environment.

I'm pretty geeky. Yet this is FAR too geeky for me! That's quite an achievement!

Cheers - C

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In line with what's been said so far, one golf club for every situation doesn't see too attractive either. Iv'e changed guitars to suit my mood and/or the music more than once and having a back-up isn't a bad idea either.

My .02 worth,
John.E

I agree Ceri...I got a little lost when he started talking about bank Z and the 15 presets there. It did seem like something I'd be able to learn pretty quickly. But for now I'll stick with one volume one tone and 5way, seems to offer up plenty of options tone wise. I do however think that once of these so-called "Game Changers" hit's the stores I'm gonna check it out. Because really who cares how many different tones you can attain if in general it sounds or feels like crap.

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