Self-tuning guitars: innovation is everywhere.
It’s tempting, if you keep your head in the tech blogosphere, to think that the only meaningful pools of innovation to be tapped are in the traditional fields attached to computing and telecommunications — hardware, microchips, software, wireless transmission, etc. Then you read something like this:
Gibson shows new self-tuning guitar
. . . Nashville, Tenn., guitar maker Gibson and Tronical said Powertune is the world’s first self-tuning technology, and Gibson says it is particularly useful for beginners, who tend to find tuning a headache.
Musician Ichiro Tanaka, who tuned and played a sample guitar at Gibson’s Tokyo office Monday, said the technology is handy for professionals too. If they use special tuning for just part of a concert, as he often does, it means they don’t have to lug around an extra guitar with the second tuning ready.
“It’s more than just convenience,” said Tanaka, of Japan. “It’s a feature I really appreciate.” . . .
Kudos to Gibson for continuing the tradition of guitar innovation embodied in every Les Paul it makes. And thanks to my Hoover’s colleague Paula Smith (a hard-shredding guitarist herself) for pointing this out.
Category: Entertainment, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, TechnologyIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
3 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
Indeed, but the difference of $900 I think is too much for this feature. I rather tune it myself and spend the money on something else.
Well, but you’re *already* a guitarhead, yes? I think that this product will appeal to two types of customers:
1. Less-good guitarists who find tuning difficult or a chore, so if they have the cash they’d rather buy a self-tuning model.
2. Serious guitarists who want to have one good guitar that can switch tunings immediately, potentially saving them the cost of a second good guitar.
I keep seeing misinformation concerning this product. “. . Nashville, Tenn., guitar maker Gibson and Tronical said Powertune is the world’s first self-tuning technology,” this is erroneous to the extreme. A company called Transperformance created a superior self tuning guitar that has been in use for almost 20 years now.
See also:
http://news.cnet.com/Tuning-tech-catches-on-with-guitarists—page-2/2100-1027_3-6014002-2.html
Compared with that, Gibson’s version is just a toy.
Here’s Jimmy Page’s take on the Performer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsVb91dxrJw