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robo or normo!

AaronJames

By AaronJames
in The Gibson Lounge

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Thundergod

Thundergod

Posted
Posted

The dark fire is not an improvement over the dusk tiger, it's suposed to be the other way 'round (seeing as the dusk tiger was released later).

 

Anyway, I own a robot les paul and like it very much. Can't compare to my #1 guitar but then again, no gibson can anyway. [biggrin]

 

The robot tech doesn't change the sound or playability, just let's you change tunings fast that's all. It's not for everyone tho, I can guarantee you most people will damage it beyond repair due to their inhability to read instructions (and follow them).

 

Now about the dusk tiger and dark fire's other features (chameleon tone and all that stuff) I don't really care about that stuff, I like my guitars to have 1, 2, or 3 great tones (switch positions included) the rest I can do with the volume and tone knobs and the amp's knobs. But I can see it as an important and integral part of a session musician's rig.

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milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Jocko...

 

I'm pretty sure your old Canon glass will work with the digital SLR, at least if they're AF lenses. In theory even older glass should work on all manual but I haven't even diddled with some of my older Nikon glass on the DSLR.

 

The difference is that the old glass will be more "telephoto" than glass designed for digital. E.g., a 50 mm. "normal" will be more like a 70 mm "portrait" type of lens.

 

I was telling a new photog young lady how in the reeeeeal olden days... If it appeared I'd be dating a young lady more than a couple of times I'd buy her a nice, big but lightweight purse. <grin> Then she could carry my extra film and flashbulbs to banquets and such. OTOH, I think the "gift" scared away a few which wasn't all bad, either.

 

m

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mrktwn

mrktwn

Posted
Posted

Auto tuning technology - robotic or virtual - has now been around for years. And don't forget, a large part of the Dark Fire, Dusk Tiger, and Les Paul Standard 2010 Limited is the onboard audio technology and output selection. If you don't like it, that's cool. But using the "players should learn to tune their guitar manually" argument misses the point of the technology - quickly switching between alt tunings.

 

You guys probably want to throttle Jimmy Page and his TransPerformance guitars (video).

 

It's very likely that if some of you guys were around in the 40s and 50s, you'd probably have thrown insults and tomatoes at Lester Paul and Leo Fender for making solid body guitars.

 

Roll with the changes. B)

This is more like the difference between the Bigsby and the Gibson Vibrola tailpieces. I much prefer a Bigsby!
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mrktwn

mrktwn

Posted
Posted

Acutal your wrong.

At one point the flying v ones were cheaper then the regular ones and sounded better to.

So no. [flapper]

... 'Cause(I'm geussing)nobody would buy them and Gibson was trying to get rid of them.

Seriously, a Robot V is cheaper to build and market than a regular Flying V??

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Tman5293

Tman5293

Posted
Posted

Meh, no battle to my mind. Robo=expensive toy. Normo=real instrument.

Everybody with a lick of sense knows this!

 

 

+1!!!!!!!!! msp_thumbup.gifmsp_thumbup.gifmsp_thumbup.gif

 

Acutal your wrong.

At one point the flying v ones were cheaper then the regular ones and sounded better to.

So no. [flapper]

 

 

No dem00n once again your wrong. msp_thumbdn.gifmsp_thumbdn.gifmsp_thumbdn.gif

 

 

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milod

milod

Posted
Posted

I dunno...

 

In the olden days the idea of a whammy bar was kinda wild. Frankly I still don't care for the things and when I had a couple of guitars with Bigsbys on them I blocked the things entirely. Granted, I started as an acoustic player.

 

I don't really see the difference. Some folks like this sort of thing, some don't. Frankly the robo and the piezo bridge make pretty good sense to me for several pretty functional reasons - and more than a Bigsby or equivalent that may add to sound potentials, but also can put you out of tune without locking nut and bridge and - Hmmmm, is there really much difference in those add-ons?

 

It makes better sense to me to have the ability to change tunings even in the middle of a song than to do dips and dives with a whammy that's only a few years older in "total guitar" concept. But maybe it's because I remember all the old archtops folks worked on madly to get electrified and often to add Bigsbys to.

 

I also remember the first supposed "EA" guitars. They'd mess with either trying to hid a magnetic pickup somewhere or would figure some way of connecting a pickup. A lotta purists hated that then, and hate it now. I think EA is fine by me and don't even mind the idea of a modern EA having both mag and piezo ability.

 

A built-in tuner on an EA along with volume and various tone controls hasn't caught much static from anybody, either. It certainly makes performance easier on stage.

 

Don't get me wrong, at this point I can't justify the cost of a robo. But if I were given one, especially on a semi-hollow body, or better yet, one of the even fancier variations like that tiger jobbie, I think my other guitars would be in the case most of the time and I'd be doing more in open G, open E and drop D.

 

m

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pippy

pippy

Posted
Posted

The Robot technology is a great idea for a gigging musician who uses alt tunings.

 

Even with the Variax all one would need to do would be make sure there are spare batteries to hand.

 

The sound modelling idea is very interesting. There is a whole world of tone to be discovered by those with the time and inclination.

 

With the exception of the Dusk Tigers hardware I really like the look of the last 3 generations of robots. The Dusk Tigers wood-finish, IMHO, looked really good...

 

I have absolutely no problem with accepting them as bona fide Gibson instruments.

 

If the tech details had been fully resolved and more of the buyers had been more technically au fait - even if they had simply read the manuals with more care - then the instruments would be held in higher regard.

 

I'm sure that if I was a practicing musician I'd give them a very good opportunity to prove themselves worthy of a place in the Transit van.

 

Going off on a tangent and just to clarify something Milo mentioned earlier.....

 

Jocko...

 

I'm pretty sure your old Canon glass will work with the digital SLR, at least if they're AF lenses. In theory even older glass should work on all manual but I haven't even diddled with some of my older Nikon glass on the DSLR.

 

The difference is that the old glass will be more "telephoto" than glass designed for digital. E.g., a 50 mm. "normal" will be more like a 70 mm "portrait" type of lens.

 

m

 

The current Canon bodies have a different breech-mount when compared to the AE-1. It may be possible to buy an adapter but the auto stop-down and focus features would almost certainly no longer function.

 

It's possible to buy Canon bodies, such as the EOS-1 and EOS-5D, where the chip is 24mm x 36mm, which is to say exactly the same size and proportion as a frame from a 35mm stills camera. On these cameras there is no change in the focal length.

 

On a theme which is a parallel to the Robot Vs Manual guitars;

 

If we take a 'stills' camera body such as a Canon EOS-7, fit (by using an adaptor) an old-series manual Nikkor lens and use the camera in HDMI capture mode we get a digital movie camera where the cameraman has fantastic control over depth-of-field. This feature is very desirable but, until very recently, was impossible to achieve on sub-$50,000 dollar movie cams as the recording chips were too small - therefore, to all intents and purposes, everything was in focus all the time. The camera can be plugged into a monitor and, using the 'Live View' feature we get a full HDMI digital camera for under $3,000.

 

Isn't technology wonderful?

 

(I'm still hanging on to my R0)

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BigKahune

BigKahune

Posted
Posted
... you are now trying to tell us that some piece of sh!t robot guitar is better than a real Gibson. I think not!

 

The robots are real Gibson guitars. You can use the robots without ever using the robotics - they also tune manually. And yes, some people don't like them for valid reasons. But Gibson is selling plenty of them, so there are plenty of people that like them. Here's a 'Gibson robot' search from ebay - http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=gibson+robot&_sacat=0&_odkw=gibson+reason&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313 - Not very many for sale, less than 1 page.

 

BTW - You're making quite a name for yourself as a big mouth that doesn't know what he's talking about. You need to dial down your over the top rhetoric, as you're just making it more obvious a lot of the information you're spewing has no basis in fact. [flapper]

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milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Pippy...

 

Thanks for Canon info. I've been a Nikon guy over 40 years - not counting medium and larger formats and stuff from prior to 1970. (My first published color shot, excluding postcards, was with an old press graphic, swings and tilts and all.)

 

I do find it interesting that price tag is the major objection to robo among "older" guys, not the concept of technology. Maybe it's because we've seen so much change in the guitar world otherwise.

 

OTOH, my early days in rock, late 50s and early to mid 60s were an incredible time of change in guitars and guitar/sound tech that continued into the solid state era, so maybe I, and others a bit younger, simply consider that part of the tradition.

 

There's always a bit of a tradeoff, and I think that complex interfaces to program a guitar may be a bit much. But then some of that probably is in people's heads that work differently. For example, my Dad never did get computerized word processing, but quite easily adjusted to arcane key combinations on an electronic typewriter that I needed a cheat sheet to function with. I, on the other hand, even wrote a word processor back in the 8-bit olden days and love a GUI word processor concept. Different people's heads work differently.

 

m

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pippy

pippy

Posted
Posted

I remember when all-transistor amps like H/H came out and all the dealers were trying to promote them with a 'You've just got to get with the times' hard-sell.

 

Funnily enough for the Punk scene they fitted in very well!

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milod

milod

Posted
Posted

Luckily I never got hit with the transistor amp hard sell. But my main "using" amp nowadays is SS. It's lighter and, I think, a bit more reliable. It does what I need better than some more expensive tube stuff. I'd have to get back to an old Deluxe Reverb at 5 times the cost and perhaps some questionable reliability.

 

OTOH, new tech always brings a degree of question of reliability. I know some of the earlier "personal" computers with lighter circuit boards didn't last all that well, either. An engineer/patent attorney acquaintance said his major concern was with cheap power supplies on computers people bet their businesses on in comparison to minis. But... try to find a mini nowadays...

 

m

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Tman5293

Tman5293

Posted
Posted

The robots are real Gibson guitars. You can use the robots without ever using the robotics - they also tune manually. And yes, some people don't like them for valid reasons. But Gibson is selling plenty of them, so there are plenty of people that like them. Here's a 'Gibson robot' search from ebay - http://shop.ebay.com...6.c0.m270.l1313 - Not very many for sale, less than 1 page.

 

BTW - You're making quite a name for yourself as a big mouth that doesn't know what he's talking about. You need to dial down your over the top rhetoric, as you're just making it more obvious a lot of the information you're spewing has no basis in fact. [flapper]

 

Please try to remember that everything I say on this topic is completely from my own personal opinion. msp_blink.gif

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BigKahune

BigKahune

Posted
Posted
Please try to remember that everything I say on this topic is completely from my own personal opinion. ...

 

Of course, but I'm not just talking about this topic. [blink]

 

Having an opinion has got nothing to do with having taste - and your's is really bad. I see a ban coming in your near future and I hope it's a long one.

 

 

<edit Sept 11, 2010 * Tman5293 - the word "SUSPENDED" looks real good under your avatar. Now we won't be forced to deal with your "outrageous outbursts" for a week. Too bad it's not permanent. If you're ever allowed to return, maybe you'll tone down your rhetoric and use some discretion. But I seriously doubt it.>

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