In Case anyone want to hear it.

[tazzboy]

[happydog]

Maybe it's the fact that it was recorded off a cell phone (apparently), but it really does not sound all that good. It may be the audio quality, but the effects don't sound any cooler than the Electra MPC's I played in the 1970s until he gets to the looping stuff at the end - and I already have pedals that will do that.

[LarryUK]

He has to pay a lot of attention to the controls. That would be no good for gigging situations.

Just buy a Les Paul and a multi effect pedal board and buy a new amp eith the change.

The new amp could be a Mesa Boogie with the change.

Nuff said.

[guitarkid]

thanks for ruining the firebird gibson

[DRIFTER]

Actually I like this one a whole lot better. Isn't this the model that Henry so subtly indicated that he doesn't like very much. I don't know. Maybe you guys can help me out here and tell me which guitar has the best tone going for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gibsonfreak909]

If Gibson made a Supreme Les Paul in Neon pink, with pink dot inlays, a b-bender equipped with two tele pickups.... they'd be the MOST SOLD guitars ever!

 

That's about as clever an idea as the Firebird X. ;)

[Tman5293]

I would rather play one of these:

 

 

 

Than that piece of sh!t!

[tbonesullivan]

Looking at it more... It's just a bad call. The robot guitars with auto tuning: that's awesome. Really useful to EVERY gigging musician, pretty much negating the need for a tuner, tuning, and also helps you set the intonation.

 

The effects on this guitar are simply limiting, and the interface to control them is cluttered and not intuitive. far better would have been a buncha buttons with a display screen on the top of the guitar where you could just press the buttons for various effects and either turn them on or off, or switch sound profiles entirely. Instead you have to deal with a bunch of toggle switches, sliders, with mix controls around the toggles, and the "gear shift" knob, which has a nice display that you can't even really read while playing.

[happydog]

The robot guitars with auto tuning: that's awesome. Really useful to EVERY gigging musician, pretty much negating the need for a tuner, tuning, and also helps you set the intonation.

 

Actually, looking at the Dark Fire, Dusk Tiger, and Original Robot forums, I am somewhat amazed at the sheer number of posts from people reporting malfunctions in their robot tuning. The tech support responses are equally amazing in their complexity; punch this button and that button, plug into this and that, hit XYZ, then hit ZYX twice...and if that doesn't work ship it back to the factory. I am not at all convinced from the evidence that robot tuning is going to be any more viable in the long term than Fender's VG Strat, which seems to have vaporized off the face of the earth.

 

Add into this a quick survey of Ebay listings for used Robot-equipped guitars. Check out how many of them have problems. I think for the time being I might want to stick with turning the knobs by hand for a while, until they get the bugs worked out. Whenever anything is introduced for the first time it's always buggy.

[tbonesullivan]

well, I guess I should qualify that with "useful if it works"

 

A possibly MORE useful guitar would be one with a modular midi controller built in that could work with outboard effects unit, as opposed to an effects unit built into a guitar with a bizarre switching system.

[Zonkers]

Most useful and accurate tuning tools I own:

 

Something very off putting about the robot tuners.

[matbard]

Most useful and accurate tuning tools I own:

Something very off putting about the robot tuners.

 

Curiously, this guy thought very differently about it:

 

[turtle]

holy crap!!! this guy playing in the video for over "9" minutes totally ruined anything positive about this guitar.....wowowowowowowowowow who would buy this after watching that 9 minute video? my stomach hurt like i ate bad sushi> lol

[Zonkers]

Curiously, this guy thought very differently about it:

 

 

 

Yea, I bet that's a part of his regular arsenal, or maybe he was paid a shitload of cash to stand there with it. I'm gonna put my money on option b.

[matbard]

Yea, I bet that's a part of his regular arsenal, or maybe he was paid a shitload of cash to stand there with it. I'm gonna put my money on option b.

 

I saw some videos of Jimmy using it onstage.

[Zonkers]

I saw some videos of Jimmy using it onstage.

 

I stand (or sit, right now) corrected.

[BLONDE_TROUBLE]

Actually I like this one a whole lot better. Isn't this the model that Henry so subtly indicated that he doesn't like very much. I don't know. Maybe you guys can help me out here and tell me which guitar has the best tone going for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll take that S.G. anyday.

[ironlung40]

Most useful and accurate tuning tools I own:

 

Something very off putting about the robot tuners.

 

 

Huhhhh, that patch chord is a bit short don't ya think?

[ironlung40]

Ya know, how many guys do you see having trouble just adjusting their guitar volume to go from a clean to dirt dynamic? I see this a lot, and many use a 2 channel amp for footswitching to be able to do this without screwing up.....how in the hell could most players effectively use this guitar live? Not saying some can't, but the majority couldn't....I'll leave my effects on the floor. All I need is a good dynamic amp, to tweak with my tone controls, and a couple of pedals on the floor and I'm feeling blissful.

[Enmitygauged]

I am sorry but to me Gibson have made a new guitar that doesnt really solve any problems. See a robot with bigsby tremelo or a robot with a b bender that makes sense to me. How awesome would it be to have a guitar always stay in tune after youve bent and stretched the hell out of the strings. Rather than develop a version of a Virax. I actually like the neck on the Firebird this way. I wouldnt say no to it but i think they could done some R&D into issues for guitarists.

[ironlung40]

This guitar certainly is not my style, not by a long shot. What really p's me off, as seems to be the case with everyone, is how Henry trashed the SG to kick off the presentation for this guitar. I've read all the retorts to this too, about how the SG was going in the bin anyway, etc., etc., but the symbolism of that is what aggravated me more so, than scrapping a guitar. The classic SG and Les Pauls will always be the foundation of this company, and should always be highly respected by any person in Gibson especially in a public capacity.

 

Now the flipside to this new guitar is that if it had of been the first thing Gibson made in the 50's, and now they were making "simple" guitars like the straight up SG or LP, then we'd be saying the opposite, "these new guitars don't have onboard effects!!!??? WTF? Gibson missed the mark on this one!!" My point is, this guitar is so vastly different from what we're used to and that is why it is a tough pill to swallow for some. On a long enough timeline, some of the up and coming guitarists may view these types of instruments as "standard". That doesn't mean I like it though.

 

It does seem to have some snap to it, and I'm sure the maple neck helps this, but I'm still not in favor of this at all.

 

Bottom line, I hope that Henry's demo of smashing the SG isn't indicative to what the future holds for Gibson. I hope that even with the new tech gadgetry coming out on some of these new models, that Gibson will still be able to realize the importance of past classic models and recreate them with accuracy and not loose their attention to detail, but in fact increase their quality control on them. I guess what I'm saying is that, it seems that QC has gone downhill in some areas over the past few years, and I hope that the business model at gibson isn't the reason for this. I mean if the main focus is robot guitars and gadget guitars, will the QC on the classics begin to fade?

 

 

 

 

the quality issues I've seen are, poorly cut nuts, bad factory setups with poor intonation, rough edges w/out enough prep sanding before finish process, finish issues that seem to come from not enough cure time between coats, overspray from headstock over nut(on a custom shop guitar too) and also on a custom sg, I saw a crevice in the wood below the plastic cover between the neck and neck pickup....unacceptable to me....

 

 

This post is a rant, for sure. Hopefully, you don't think I'm crazy.

[doctorbonkers]

Now the flipside to this new guitar is that if it had of been the first thing Gibson made in the 50's, and now they were making "simple" guitars like the straight up SG or LP, then we'd be saying the opposite, "these new guitars don't have onboard effects!!!??? WTF? Gibson missed the mark on this one!!" My point is, this guitar is so vastly different from what we're used to and that is why it is a tough pill to swallow for some.

 

Guitar with built in multi-effects was done before with the same design flaw of having the effects parameters in an inaccessible position to vary them while in the process of playing. Please see: http://www.rivercityamps.com/electra/history.php

 

 

I own one of these Electra guitars, so I burst out laughing when I saw the Firebird X presentation on the "new revolution". Making essentially a beefed up Electra in a different body shape with bluetooth access and computer programmability does not a revolution make. You would think either Henry, a designer, engineer, or marketing professional would study all the past attempts at this "holy grail" of effects to guitar signal purity to see what did not work in the past or what was not accepted by players about the designs and actually solve those fatal flaws.

 

I guess I expected more from Gibson. Too bad, if they had done some research, they really might have had a revolution on their hands.

[martinh]

I must admit I'm thoroughly confused as to what Gibson are trying to do here.

 

[1] It's inherent to the nature of technology that electronic effects evolve rapidly and become obsolete rapidly. When I look at my 73 Les Paul, It has been hooked up through the following:

 

1970's Electro-harmonix Bug Muff and small stone, with old echoplex

 

1980's Green Ibanez disortion, Boss chorus, pink Ibanez analog delay

 

1990's Digitech GSP2101 with foot pedal, later supplemented with a POD

 

2000's started miking the amp straight, and putting the effects on from the board at mixdown

 

2010 - started miking the amp straight, and putting the effects on the individual channel in the DAW.

 

The same guitar lived though all these ages of technology. But what If I'd bought it with a Big Muff and Small Stone built in? It would have been obsolete within 10 years, and I'd be looking to find a way to remove the electronics. Surely the bells and whistles of the Firebird X will appear just as dated in 2020?

 

[2] we have "foot pedals" and not "hand pedals" for a reason. Both hands are on the bloody guitar! I'm with the poster who noted how difficult it is even to accurately change a volume knob in the middle of a song. The guitar is not a good place for the controls.

 

[3] Support for proprietary on-board electronics is almost always short lived and very expensive. If the neck cracks I can take it to a luthier in town. If the XYZ9000 processor chip fails, I'm left totally dependant on how many spare boards the manufacturer held back when the line closed. I've been able to work on the PC board of my own Peavey MidiBase a number of times, but not everyone has an electronics degree.

 

On-board guitar electronics are typically just a bad idea.

[j-dub]

seeing that i'm still a noob as far as play goes, i will say this.

 

i like the concept of having one guitar and amp to lug about, it cleans things up imo.

 

i have nothing to say other than, i am interested in this, now if it came in a lp configuration, i'd probably be on it like a fat kid on a smartie

 

i think this will soar, and i'll take bets

 

eta. i guess i should of said, i wish the les paul had those gizmo's

[matbard]

You completely missed the point. Having a FBX is like having a guitar with a big multifx floorboard together. The difference is that the processing path is waaay much shorter because the pickups output is routed immediately through the A/D converters and then to the DSP. The guitar I tried yesterday is dead quiet even with a lot of effects on ot! For the controller's concern, every function is duplicated by the Bluetooth pedals, so you don't have to stop playing and put your hands on the switches...