The new Gibson Robot guitar

A company called Transperformance was retrofitting guitars with this feature for about 18 years. I remember watching an interview with Jeff Martin formerly of the Tea Party explaining that he used it to change tunings on the fly, up to three times in a single song! Jimmy Page uses it too, I think. That is primarily what it is meant for.

Transperformance's patent must have expired, allowing Gibson to make their own version. If I could afford it, I'd buy it. Playing lead in alternate tunings is rather difficult.

I'm not saying it's not a cool invention. but I'm pretty well certain it's not worth what Gibson is going to charge for it.

hell, I'd pay $100 for it. I MIGHT even go so far as to pay $200. but you know that's probably going to be a $2000+ guitar (and probably a lot more than that) and I just don't see it being worth it because like I said, the tune-o-matic bridge is pretty simple to work with already. but it WOULD be great if it would work on floating bridges.

also, that looks like a Les Paul guitar. so why is his name not on the headstock? think he's against it?

Not digging the purple one at all. Maybe it will look better up close.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/Robot%20Les%20Paul%20Studio%20and%20Robo/

Pacomc79 wrote:

DAMN!!! Mighty proud of it.

For 900 bucks, I think I'll just get some nice tuning machines a great strobe tuner and give Buzz Feiten a call Hell for that change you could probably just buy another guitar and splitter box to keep an alternately tuned option on stage.

I'm all about technology and I'm jonesing for one of those new great logitech remotes I can rig all my home theatre stuff up with and not have to teach each button what to do but outside of the general coolness factor of automatic tuning, for 900 bucks, I just don't think it's all that practical.

yup, totally agree, that's why I said . . .

ianvomsaal wrote:

Ehh, why not just learn to tune and set up the guitar yourself - it looks like another fancy gadget for
the affluent player that already has everything . . . and just has nothing better to spend his $$$ on.

there is a similar tuning system used by sonny landreth (slide guitarist)

its been around for a few years now and is even cooler than the gibson thing

http://transperformance.com/perform/index2.htm

wow i would love to have that junior.... i had a nonrobot black one when i was starting out years ago and sold it...i have always regretted that because i want something with p-90s in it now....damn...

ScrapeMySky wrote:

Just on a sidenote and only because I think it kind of fits in here (why I do think it fits in here is anyone's guess though...); has anyone tried out the TCE polytuner? I'm curious...

i have tried it before. kind of a cool idea but the one my other guitar player had was very unreliable. he used it for about 5 shows and took it back and went back to his old boss tuner. i thought it was a neat idea but in my experience with it, it took just as long to find out which string was out of tune with that tuner as it did to go through all 6 strings with my boss tuner. i would strum all 6 strings and it is like it took 8 seconds for it to register which string was out and by the time i went to tune that string the display had faded out. the youtube videos make it seem like it is just awesome and is the best tuner out there, but in my experience those videos must be edited because to me it was easier to just use my boss tuner.

ScrapeMySky wrote:

Thanks! I'm certainly not willing to cheat on my good old Boss tuner but a friend of mine has a crappy and cheap tuner and I trought about reccomending it. Well, seems like I'm going to go with my usual recommendation. Or be even sneakier and sell him my old TU-2 and get a TU-3 for myself... But that would be wrong, I guess.

Korg Pitchblack is a god option as well. Huge display and small size!