Gibson Ushers in Digital Guitars

[Panamark]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=5924

[Panamark]

Digital guitar set to rock and roll
13:59 AEST Tue May 4 2004


AP - As Gibson Guitar Corp launches a new digital model, company CEO Henry Juszkiewicz can close his eyes and almost hear the music.

"The defining moment will be when a certain lick in a popular song is out there, and it can't be done with anything else but a digital guitar," Juszkiewicz says.

"It only takes one example to really inspire people."

That, Juszkiewicz hopes, will usher in the age of the digital guitar - much the same way as the Beatles and Rolling Stones inspired a generation of young people to pick up a standard electric guitar in the 1960s.

"It opens a whole new palette of possibilities," Juszkiewicz says. "It's a little bit like hearing stereo as opposed to mono."

Juszkiewicz knows guitars. A Harvard MBA who played in garage rock bands, he bought Gibson with two buddies for $US5 million when it was struggling in 1986 and built it into a company with annual sales of $US250 million ($A347.08 million) in 2001. At one point, Gibson had fewer than 60 employees. Today, Juszkiewicz says it has 3,000 worldwide.

In the waiting room of his office at Gibson's Nashville headquarters, the walls are lined with guitars and photos of Sting, Neil Diamond, BB King, Madonna, Hank Williams Jr and Brooks & Dunn. His secretary answers the telephone wearing dark lingerie and black boots.

The advantages of the digital guitar come down to sound and control. For 70 years, the electric guitar pickup has translated string vibrations into an electrical signal fed to an amplifier. The player can control the tone and volume, but output is limited to a mono or stereo signal. The signal itself is noisy by today's standards, and stray frequencies often cause an annoying hum.

"Some of the guitar pickups popular today go back to the 1920s," Juszkiewicz said. "We have not changed a lot in terms of the instrument."

The digital guitar uses computer chips to clean up the signal - Juszkiewicz describes the new sound as traditional but "on steroids."

It also allows the player to control the sound of each string. For example, the guitarist can have a heavy metal crunch on the low strings, medium distortion on the middle strings and a clean sound on the high strings.

"You'll be able to record all these different sounds and textures. It's unbelievable, I think," said Dave Cleveland, a Nashville session guitarist who planned to buy one of the new instruments.

"It's going to revolutionise the whole recording part of guitar playing."

Cleveland said technology already exists to do some of the same things as the digital guitar, but it's bulky, inconvenient and limited.

"With this, you're getting the sound of the pickups and can run analog into a regular guitar amp, plus you can monitor everything through the guitar. It's like having a mini recording studio," he said.

[Panamark]

Fuck hey ?? What do you all think of that ??

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Panamark
His secretary answers the telephone wearing dark lingerie and black boots.

Interesting article.

So is she just wearing dark lingerie or did the reporter get her kit off or what?

[Mr Grimsdale]

that's my kind of secretary!

[Panamark]

So we are talking about a supposed history making change to guitar pickups, and Sesh is mainly worried about the secretaries lingerie !

LMAO !

[GAR]

There's always some stooge out there proposing their electromagnetic "string-to-digital" conversion solution as being the best, and I haven't seen any of them produce the claimed results yet.

Digital signal conversion involves a lag-time in the signal chain which is slower then your picking hand PLUS the slowdown of any string response sounds like a bad amp, or one with bad capacitors.

I haven't seen the "new" Gibson digital solution, but they're all pretty much based on the Roland hex pickup model which IMO sucks and is way too slow - I believe it's still a miserable 85millisecond delay, which to the normal untrained, unmusical ear is about the speed you hear a slammed-shut car door in a parking structure echo from the other side of the lot.

[Panamark]

Thanks GAR, I didnt know anything about them. That article made it sound exciting. 85 milliseconds is a big delay ! That would be very disconcerting when you are playing..

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Panamark
So we are talking about a supposed history making change to guitar pickups, and Sesh is mainly worried about the secretaries lingerie !

LMAO !

The essential difference between being a musician and being a rock guitarist...

[Panamark]

What if you like both the technology and the lingerie ?
Are you like a crossover artist ?? :p

[BITEYOASS]

FUCK ANYTHING DIGITAL! ANALOG RULES!!!

[Panamark]

I tend to Agree ..

[GAR]

I agree too, nothing beats a couple cabinets and heads full on.

But you know what I've always wanted?

I wished like a lot of people since the synth guitar systems came out, that you could have just one Universal standard for a MIDI pickup.

I mean, you can interchange the thing from guitar to guitar, its active enough to track the string response fast enough like analog, and until a new system comes out and its an OPEN standard much the way some computer OS's are, its never gonna happen the same way you can just take ONE universal guitar cord and plug into any universal guitar amp.

Its been a standard now that way for analog pickups for over 60 years. You'd think someone would have figured this shit out by now in the digital age. Fucking LAME.

[Panamark]

MIDI and guitar. Two words that should *NOT* be used in the same sentence..

[Cathedral]

I'm against all this bullshit from the start. Just pick up the guitar and play the sum bitch.

Now, back to the lingerie thing......I'll forego calling the office and just drop in on them and offer her a job with a future.