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The never ending useless gear rant.


dem00n

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And there is your answer. Because they fail.

 

My '83 Elite Strat was supposed to be the "HOLY GRAIL" of cutting edge guitar technology.... it failed.

 

 

Do a little research on all the "new and innovative" music products that have fallen flat.

 

For some weird reason, companies just don't keep making things that have no monetary return. Go figure.

 

true temperment frets, those squiggly frets, are supposed to correct intonation 100%. that's a question i'd asked when dumping a whole lot of money on a guitar. Can there be perfect intonation on a guitar, the more money i spend? the guitar is wood and it expands and contracts which takes it in and out of tune. there isn't such a thing as 'perfect intonation', wishful thinking or not? it might be a bit of an adjustment to play a guitar with squiggly frets. the point of the improvement is to gain correct intonation all the way up the fret board so every note and chord is in tune. ask the question 'what i want is ... ' maybe the manufacturer will listen and even respond to the demand. i want a 100 watt tube amp that weighs two pounds and costs .99 cents. hahaha cannot be done.

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Gibson-Firebird-X-Bluevolution.jpg

 

In my opinion the producers hastened to build a lot of the superfluous, for example, EQ, Dist, Piezo, Tuning… etc. Of course, it may even scare guitarists and the price was probably crazy.

I don't want to tell that each of these things separately isn't necessary. But guitarist besides his guitar as a rule has the preamp that already has some of these things and more the best than they can be contained in a guitar. Guitar should contain only what is really needed there.

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Well, in the first place I'd say that guitar players TODAY may be conservative - although I question that given the marketplace for 8 quadrillion stomp boxes - but that ain't been true in just my lifetime.

 

The electric guitar itself was an incredible leap into musical future in the late 1940s and through the 1950s.

 

The point has been made elsewhere that essentially all of our guitars today are variations on the themes that were pretty well solidified circa 1960.

 

So then... we got bigger, louder and sometimes more controllable amps. Decent AE flattops evolved. Then stomp boxes. Then...

 

After that pattern was set, as Dem notes, it's been variations on a theme - different frosting patterns made of the same stuff on the same old cake recipes.

 

Actually I like the concept of the FirebirdX. I don't care for it so much on a solidbody vehicle. It may well have gone farther and at greater cost than most of us "here" would buy. But that doesn't mean that the concept itself is all wrong.

 

I think that as "wood" goes the way it's going - out due to various population and political pressures - we're more likely over the next half century to see some of that FirebirdX technology almost mandatory in order just to have a flattop that sounds like a flattop or a "semi" that sounds like today's semi. That depends, of course, that we will want our plastic or whatever guitars to sound like wood guitars.

 

Frankly I've found I can get a huge range of tones from an electric guitar just by changing technique, not even amp or pup settings. And that's just using bare fingers and fingerpicking.

 

The whole thing, though, comes down to playability.

 

My guess? I'd love to see a computer program/ap that lets me mess with my guitar settings, has my playlist with on-screen idiot cards for lyrics and jokes/banter for an audience, and functions as an amp to plug into a PA. That might almost work best with no traditional pups at all, but with an improved piezo for each string.

 

How dat? And note it still won't make a pure acoustic of some sort obsolete.

 

m

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All right, the electric guitar has a great potential as regards a huge range of tones, I agree, but it can be for the electric guitar not only using playability. I think launching such models of guitars with the electronics twists, before this, it can take into consideration the experience of distribution (or non-distribution ) of EMG active pickups. There is quite a lot of Anti-EMG’s people :) and it seems they are the majority among guitarists. I have not tested FirebirdX guitar or similar, but if its sound with all EQ and Dist differs little from the EMG guitar sound then this is the risk to making a new guitar with the said electronics “goodies” (and with the price about $5000) because this niche in the market (the sound through electronics) already occupied by the EMG pickups and similar the price of which about $100 or less. I.e. the sound of FirebirdX guitars and similar should be much better than the EMG sound. But I doubt that this can be done by conventional EQs.

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All right, the electric guitar has a great potential as regards a huge range of tones, I agree, but it can be for the electric guitar not only using playability. I think launching such models of guitars with the electronics twists, before this, it can take into consideration the experience of distribution (or non-distribution ) of EMG active pickups. There is quite a lot of Anti-EMG’s people :) and it seems they are the majority among guitarists. I have not tested FirebirdX guitar or similar, but if its sound with all EQ and Dist differs little from the EMG guitar sound then this is the risk to making a new guitar with the said electronics “goodies” (and with the price about $5000) because this niche in the market (the sound through electronics) already occupied by the EMG pickups and similar the price of which about $100 or less. I.e. the sound of FirebirdX guitars and similar should be much better than the EMG sound. But I doubt that this can be done by conventional EQs.

 

oh good point about 'niche' markets ... how many buyers are there that can afford a twenty thousand dollar reissue? that's a small high end market, like the porsche dealer ... but there are buyer's out there aren't there?

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I want a guitar that has the exact measurements and tones and is made of the same stuff as my LP but weighs 3 lbs.

I'm serious, that beast kills me.

It would be nice if every time I played it underware and bras got thrown at my face too...and fire shot out behind me. [flapper]

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Izzy...

 

Gibby used to make a hollow LP.

 

Now.. I think Guitar Fetish has something that's close enough... but it's still 7 3/4 lbs. Lighter than a semi-hollow, though. Cheep cheep too for a try. $240... general LP versions apparently are around 9 pounds - which is about the same as a 335.

 

m

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Hey I got one,, how about a guitar that tunes itself?

I think that would be so cool that they would put it on every production guitar available so nobody will ever have to hear a sour note again....

Hey,, if yer gonna dream,, dream big [wink]

 

 

And since sarcasm doesn't translate well into written word,,, end here.

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It's not the industry that's broken--they are in the business of making what people will buy.

That's how we got Marshall stacks to begin with--a few visionary guitarists in search of tone and volume had a few custom-built...

Other guitarist heard them and said "Hey man. that's really cool! I want me one of those!" and voila!!!

James Marshall goes on to sell a sh*tload of stacks...

Some guitarist will have to come up with a new innovative tone that requires new gear and then dear Dem00n you will get your wish.

I suggest you get to work on this immediately... [lol][lol][lol]

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It's not the industry that's broken--they are in the business of making what people will buy.

That's how we got Marshall stacks to begin with--a few visionary guitarists in search of tone and volume had a few custom-built...

Other guitarist heard them and said "Hey man. that's really cool! I want me one of those!" and voila!!!

James Marshall goes on to sell a sh*tload of stacks...

Some guitarist will have to come up with a new innovative tone that requires new gear and then dear Dem00n you will get your wish.

I suggest you get to work on this immediately... [lol][lol][lol]

 

On that note, the Marshall stack as we know it, were due to Pete Townsend of The Who.

They were originally 8x12 cabinets, but I guess you can figure out that cabinets of that

size and weight were prone to kill your back, so they cut'em in half [biggrin]

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Having played rock in the '60s I'd say that powerful guitar and bass amps probably were the worst possible idea that became a fad whether practical or not. Note that the fad was simultaneous with souped up bikes and cars, and then the era of factory super-horsepower.

 

Those instrument amps were not matched by equally or more powerful PA systems and any consideration of acoustics. See Vetruvius for recognition that's been a professional concern for over 2,000 years - yet "we" have tended to ignore it.

 

I think - I'm not sure, but I think - some of the bigger venues I played saw the crowd hearing enough rhythm to dance to, but I'm not sure that they could tell much about the quality of any of our playing beyond recognition of a given song.

 

I still hear too many weekend warriors handling their gigs the same way.

 

On this forum I always hear this or that picker seeking greater power and specific tone and yet I'd wager a year of what's left of an old man's life that if they're playing "out" for money, their crowds are hearing mostly mush. The crowd may be happy with the mush because they're there to drink and dance rather than hear a concert, but it's only too often mush regardless.

 

I'd rather see more discussion of smaller amps and how to project the best sound for a crowd in different sorts of venues and gigs, AE to various sorts of bands.

 

But that's perhaps just a grouchy old man who's heard too much mud but watched too many pros, big names to little regional names, do it right.

 

m

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When you think about it the greatest players that changed the lexicon used existing techology.

Let's say:

Chuck Berry in the '50's

Jimi in the '60's

Van Halen in the late '70's

 

They all used generic gear but had the vision to change the way you think of what the guitar can do. It was the player not the gear that created a revoution.

You forgot about Marty McFly... he gave the idea to Chuck Berry first. [flapper] [flapper] [flapper]

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