I came a cross this youtube video Tronical Powertune Systems http://youtu.be/rCAxUxwQrrM I didnt know they had this but I thought it was crazy

that is actually pretty damn cool.

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wow.....what a cool concept

http://www.tronical.com/tronical/home.html

Yeah, engineering from Germany. Gibson uses that for the Robot guitars.

Cheers,
Robin

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yeah its cool but what does it cost?

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

The Powertune system is only item I've ever seen a guitar mag give a bad review of.

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No no and no

the idea is cool but its a bit like a automaticly driven sports car.
you climb in and it drives itself.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

What were the bad review on it?

Ha. Interesting vid, thank you goodinbed.

It raises some questions: if there's no routing how does the bridge talk to the tuners? Is that a wireless system? If so, how can plugging the output jack into a charger recharge the battery that drives the machineheads? (Which seems a cute idea.) I'm not challenging it: I just want to know how it works.

Nick: I'd be fascinated to read the bad magazine review. As you say, that's a rare phenomenon! Was it in Guitarist? If so, I must have missed it.

I'm not widely experienced with these systems, but the "manual tuning mode" was a fascinating aspect, which was new to me at least.

I don't feel the urge to rush out and buy such a system. But even if there are glitches in this one I suspect we're getting closer to the time when this stuff seems just normal in an electric guitar, rather than out-there jackassery (hi, Screamin' A! ). After all, I'm old enough to remember a time when seasoned players scoffed at the new-fangled electronic tuners; "Hey, who needs a tuner, right?"

Cheers - C

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Howdy, Ceri! I'm glad to see my new favorite word being adopted into the Forum lexicon...

If this worked as advertised and the cost was within reason, I would go out and buy one today. I use several different tunings, both fingerstyle and slide playing, and I would love to be able to grab one guitar and not have to retune between certain songs. As it is, I have to write the setlist up to where there's several songs in the same tuning, so I only have to retune a couple of times a night...either that or take two (or more) guitars.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

With the battery in the body and the motors in the tuning machines, my understanding is that the guitar strings carry the current and signal to the machines. I've heard that the cost for PowerTune is around $800US. The newest version of the system does require a stereo plug refit, so the charging system can recharge the battery without the guitar having to "know" that it is being recharged. The older (first) system needed a charge on the batteries to "know" that it was being recharged instead of played, and there were "emergency recharge" directions were included with every guitar. The newer system with the stereo plug is less elegant, but removes this issue.

From a technical/design point of view I really like this, but....
Imagine all guitars coming out with this system. I am afraid that 15 years from now we would have a generation of musicians that isn't able to tune by ear. Think about it for a sec, how did we started training our ears? Well, by tuning our guitars. First with the help of a tuner and as you get better there comes that day that you don't even need that tuner any more. Because many thousands times you have tuned that guitar to perfection. You know when the tone is spot on. I think that knowledge would be lost when this would become standard. It's a nice gimmick nonetheless, but I think it will interfere with developing your musical skills. Maybe they should prohibit beginners to buy these. For their own good.

Ha, is that it? How elegant! Thanks for the explanation, digby.



Hi Salsario: I find this a very interesting point. In the friendliest spirit I think perhaps I disagree. I heard the same arguments made when affordable electronic tuners first came along, but my experience was completely the opposite. I found that using a tuner vastly improved my sense of pitch - and people did tell me I had quite a good ear to begin with. Having that little gizmo to insure the note was spot on instead of nearly spot on trained my ear to notice the difference. Which was good.

In just the same way that (speaking as a hopeless speller) the spell-checker on computers has massively improved my spelling. Some of the older Forum users will remember the days when it was taken for granted that many players' guitars were fairly out of tune most of the time - like many people regard bad spelling as normal. Erm, Jimi Hendrix, anyone...?

I suspect these gadgets will help improve the performance of our ears, which is a good thing. Though another interesting question is, supposing these widgets become mainstream, will people use them to tune their guitars perfectly - and then override it to "sweeten" the pitch of some of the strings, as many players like to do currently?

Cheers - C

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That is an interesting point of view from you also! I don't have any experience with these systems and you do... So maybe, when I would use it, I might agree with you. The way you put it, doesn't sound illogical to me at all. I guess this is going to cost me a lot of money to find out for myself Thanks for pointing that out!

id go with the former opinion, that this is the first step down the road towards people not having to train their ears in the same way we all have had to. On an electronic tuner you still have to actually turn the machineheads and feel the tension of the string etc. If this unit does that for you then the whole process will be taken out of the players hands. Surely as this techonology gets cheaper and more commonplace it will spread and the consequences will become felt.

Now dont get me wrong, i may sound negative, but man would i like one of these. It actually tunes whilst youre playing?!? I sweat buckets on stage and nearly every gig i have at least one song where i can hear my guitar slipping in the heat mid-song. Unless i have an oppurtune time to try to quickly fix it by ear mid-song i always have to wait until the end of the song and keep my band waiting whilst i retune. To eliminate this completely would be an amazing thing. Wow, pretty mind blowing stuff. Anyway, back to the grumpy critique. Its all wrong, the kids today, etc. etc.

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`I prefer not to listen to music that I can't rip off or improve on` - Ian Dury