Robot guitar terminates tone deaf axe murderers

PURVEYOR OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, Gibson, has come up with a guitar than can tune itself. For £1,400, the Les Paul-style Robot Guitar features servo-driven machine heads that can automatically tune the instrument either to standard A440 tuning or a selection of six commonly used altered tuning presets. The axe can also set the correct intonation, ensuring that it plays in tune all the way up the fretboard.

The Blue Silverburst Les Paul model certainly looks the part, but with a hefty price tag and limited availability (just 4,000 will be available when it launches next month with volume shipments not due until the end of 2008, when hopefully the price will drop somewhat. Gibson says the technology will also appear on an SG model, although there are currently no plans to build it into its bass guitars or its less-expensive Epiphone models.

A control knob (which also serves at a volume control) enables the tuning with a simple push or pull. Each tuner is equipped with servo motors. As the motorised tuners adjust the pitch of the strings they are monitored by means of a Tune-Control Bridge.

Gibson says the guitar is aimed at guitarists who don't have the luxury of a guitar technician to take care of tuning their instruments, although for the £1,400 asking price, a player could buy two ordinary Les Pauls, or two and a half Fender Stratocasters and keep them in different tunings. While the technology is impressive, it remains to be seen whether it actually proves to be cost effective and reliable.

There cannot be many professional musicians who would be happy to go on stage with only one guitar and there cannot be any who do not own several - I'm a pretty talent-free amateur and I've got six of the things.

But we'll find out on December 3rd when we pop along to the guitar's UK launch in London, although at the moment, there appear to be no music stores in the UK where one of the limited edition Les Pauls will be available. The nearest one is in Paris, which makes perfect sense as the number of world famous French rock bands is obviously far higher than those from the UK.

The limited edition version of the Gibson Les Paul Robot Guitar will go on sale at 5 PM on December 7, 2007 at 400 dealers throughout the world. Each store will only have 10 instruments. µ

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