Conference napalm::guitar

Gee Joe,there have already been several attempts at doing this remember the
Sears Silvertone Danelectro with the amplifier in the case?(Well it wasn't a 
Marshall)Also in the late seventies St Louis Music Co.put out the Electra MPC 
series which had plug in effects modules. I played japanese Strat copy the 
other day which had switches for distortion,phase shifting,delay,chourus,
compression and tone boost. Pretty cheesey if you ask me! Plus there are those
korean Les Paul copy guitars with the amplifier and speaker installed in them. 
	Gibson put a compressor in there RD series guitars and Gretch put a 
phase shifter in there Chet Atkins solid body but they all seem to die a slow 
death. I read somewhere that Gibson put a Fuzz box in one of there double neck's
at one point.
	Ya,that is a good question even though no one has been especially suc-
cessful in doing fretless guitars or even guitar's with built in effects,amp's.
	Even the amplifier stuff is pretty ho hum. Seymour Duncan Convertable's
are the most innovative thing I've seen for a while excluding the Rockmans. 
	Maybe the midi revolution will take hold in amplifiers, and like you
once said just type in at your keyboard what sound you want.
	I'd rather just write and play without having to worry about innovative
hardware. How about you? I wonder what the next music idiom is going to be?

       Look at Roland's synthesizer guitar....Steve Stevens plays one
    for Billy Idol.  I saw a guy playing one at the Shooter's in Hudson,
    and it had a miniature synth hooked up to it to play.  Mighty demonic
    sounds eminating from that axe....
    
    						Phil
    

    Re .0 - hmmm, good question.
    It certainlly looks like the only place for improvement is in sound-
    processing electronic bits.  Flipping through 'Guitar Player' or
    browsing around this notes file, it seems to me that guitars are
    becoming more and more alike.  The only thing that distinguishes
    one guitar from another is the quality of workmanship and materials.
    The best new ideas quickly get adopted by every manufacturer, but
    there have been relatively few quantum leaps in guitar technology.
    The electronics get more sophisticated, but the guitars themselves
    don't change much.
    
    In the end, I suppose it boils down to how the thing feels and plays.
    So who's going to be first to provide a guitar interface to a VAX?
    DECaxe???
			leon

    re: -.3
    
    I think that the current trend for companies to cop each other's
    designs (everyone has a Strat, a Tele, a PJ bass, ho-hum) is a drag.
    
    Back when every company had their own unique designs, the player
    had a choice.  Now the choice is gone....OK, who cares if a Danelectro
    has no sustain and is made out of plywood, it has its *own* sound
    which a Strat just can't duplicate.....whether that sound is useful
    to *you* is another question, but at least the option used to be
    there.
    
    The saddest part is when companies like Fender, Gibson and Guild
    who started the whole industry are lowered to copying other people's
    axes....do you really want a Guild Telecaster and a Gibson Strat???
    
    I think the future lies with the Steinbergers, Alembics, etc. who
    are pushing the state of the art all the time.
    
    Which brings up a curious point....all the real high-tech stuff
    in instruments and amps these days seems directed toward *bass*....
    is this because guitarists are happy with the way things are and
    bassists have yet to find the ultimate sound????  As a bassist,
    I have to say I'm glad that all this bass evolution is going on,
    but why is the guitar side of things so stagnant?
                                                     

    
    	Perhaps the next significant change will only get rid of the
    necessity to use steel strings - the advent of optical pickups,
    fiberoptic strings, ect.
    
    	On the Heavy side, you could always have 2 hex pickups with
    a programmable Digital Signal Processor subsystem on each of 12
    outputs. 
    
    	JJJ
    

    How about an on board electronic tuner or strob affair. Could be
    on the top edge and sensitve to the string being played and tone
    and frequency desired. How 'bout electric tuning machines, like
    the same as electric car windows, that would wind the string for
    you and have a 'fine' tuning mode of operation.
    
    Ah, what the h..., how 'bout a guitar that will stay in tune.
    
    :^=)D.

    re .6
    
    Someone (I think Guild) just put out a bass with "Rubbery" strings
    and a short scale.  It uses some kind of transducer.  Sounds neat
    to me. Anyone know what I'm talking about ?
    

    
    The bass you are referring to in .7 is the Guild Ashbory bass
    (spelling?). The scale is only 18" ???? and the entire bass is only
    30'' from head to toe.  It has a 24 fret-marked fretless fingerboard,
    no body, banjo-like tuners, a bridge transducer pickup, silicone
    ???? strings and active electronics.  Price is about $500 list with
    a gig bag.  Rich MacDuff says he may be getting one in soon.  I
    definitely intend to check it out.
    
    Could it be?   Ashbory bass + Polytone Mini-Brute = ultimate GB
    bass outfit???  You could carry it on a bicycle....   :-)

    Aha, that must be what I saw at Daddy's in Nashua.  It was hanging
    on the wall, had the Guild label, and generally fit the descriptions
    in .7 and .8.  Didn't have time to mess with it, so I can't add
    anything useful here other than the fact that Daddy's in Nashua
    has (or at least had) it.
    
    But this seems an appropriate place to mention a slightly different
    strain in the evolution of the electric guitar: the electric classical.
    Maybe they've been around longer than I realize, but within the
    last year I've seen more and more acoustic-electric single-cutaway
    classicals.  Seems everyone's making one now.
    
    But the one that really surprised me is Gibson's solid-body electric
    classical, designed (at least partly) by Chet Atkins and bearing
    his name as signature.  I just played one for the first time last
    night, but found out (coincidentally, also last night when I read
    the June issue of Guitar Player) that Atkins has been using it almost
    exclusively for the past 4 or 5 years.
    
    I was real impressed with the overall workmanship, playability,
    and sound.  It lends itself real nicely to jazz, blues, soft rock,
    etc.  The bottom strings, which are wound, tend to sustain considerably
    longer than the top ones, but some players will consider that an
    advantage as the sustain of those strings provides a nice bottom for
    melody lines played on the top strings.  
    
    It'll be interesting to see what kind of string sets evolve to support
    this kind of instrument.  For that matter, it may be interesting
    to see what kind of playing styles evolve around it, assuming it
    catches on to any extent.  Some classically trained player is bound
    to come along and show what you can do with it (okay, WJB, let's
    hear your $00.02 worth!). %^)
    
    steve
    

    
    
    Well, 4 and 1/2 years after the base note was written, it seems like
    the electric guitar took a big step *backward* in terms of new
    technology. 
    
    60's and 70's reissues are all over the place. Gibson is reissuing
    almost everything and will probably start doing reissue reissues any
    day.
    
    Maybe whammy technology has improved, and pickups are a little hotter. 
    
    Anything else?
    
    Kevin
    

    The use of composite materials in guitar construction seems to be
    increasing.  There's still only one major maker using them for mass
    production (Steinberger), but I've been reading some luthiers
    literature that suggests it's on the rise.
    
    Greg

I'd think that the  use of composites has less to do with the availability of 
the materials/technology and more to do with the unavailability of some
traditional materials like brazillian rosewood.

I've found that for me, the new composites like Steinburgers use leave me a 
bit cold. I played a strat with a graphite neck a while back and it didn't
do a thing for me...give me a maple/rosewood neck anyday.

Pickup technology changed somewhat with the introduction of the lace sensor
which are pretty hot using low power magnets. Less string pull etc. Duncan
introduced active pu's which are supposed to be very nice, but that's
note necessarily new technology, just new to them. Finishes continue to
improve. Jackson's "Eeeriedesent" is just too cool for words...but won't
sell me a jackson despite the cool finish.

dbii

    FWIW I saw a photo of an ACOUSTIC guitar built entirely of composite
    materials.  Wild!
    
    There is a luthier (who's name I forget) up in Washington state doing a
    lot of advnaced work with composites.  He wrote an article for
    "Guitarmaker" magazine (the A.S.I.A publication) which was very
    interesting.  What I got out of the article was that he was attempting
    to create composite materials which more fully duplicated the
    characteristics of the wood in the guitar pieces they replaced.  He
    says he has an ebony substitute which is much more like the original
    wood then previous composite materials had been. 
    
    I've never played a Steinberger, but I played a Washburn electric with
    a graphite fretboard a couple of years ago and hated it.  Felt like
    cheap plastic to me.  For all I know it was, the clown showing me the
    guitar (who I wouldn't trust to get within arms reach of me) said it
    was "graphite" when I called it "plastic".  Whatever it was, it was
    sick feeling.
    
    Greg
                 

    I don't know that I've played a graphite neck, but I have played on
    necks make from a composite called ebonol. It looks so much like ebony,
    the only way I can tell is the price of the guitar. If its a less
    expensive guitar, and the neck looks like ebony - its ebonol. I had a
    a Hohner bass with such a neck. It was every bit a fine instrument.
    
    One thing in particular that I like about enony or ebonol is that it
    doesn't get all munged up as the crud has no tiny creavases to collect in,
    like it does on a rosewood neck. 
    
    "sakman"

	Daddy's in Manchester has a couple of Modulus Graphite basses
	for sale.  They're quite attractive, and certainly lighter
	than my Ric, but I tried one out and couldn't see that it was
	all that much better than anything else I'd ever tried - it
	didn't bowl me over or anything like that, and it would have
	to for me to justify the price - they're both over $2K.

	Sandy