Good or bad?

[Howard Jones]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WetVXbYRfWk

[heathen]

Amazing.

But...... what if your a guitarist with mega long hair and your hair got caught in it and it went berserk. Just picture it, Spinal Tap never thought of that.

[rick]

i remember reading about this thing as a protoype system at a namm show , fitted to a hamer guitar with whatever kind of "magic" super trem bridge they used way back in the mid eighties .
so twenty years later and here you have it .


there was no such thing as a blue LED twenty years ago
maybe that was the design hold up :)

[jkhuri44]

nice innovation, i reckon...

but its exactly like Artificial intellience, its all good and dandy, until some genius invents a conscious robot. with feelings, ideas, and conversation...shit like this is scattered all over the scientific world....and i think its implications are scary...very scary...

i mean, sure, the new ASIMO is really cute....and can do housework and all sorts of boring crap, but who said those things are bad?? i think if modern science keeps going in its "annoying stuff to eliminate from the human experience"....we are going to live in a very unbalanced and unhealthy world.

how does this relate to tuning? good question...but i am going somewhere...

i think just like AI, robots and so on....as human animals, processes, and rituals, whether fun or not, are natural parts of our conscious experiences, and getting rid of them all is to deny the imporance of the balance of fun and work...how are we to put a guage on what is fun and exciting, when all we have are fun and exciting things to do..?

this brings to mind Marge Simpson, when homer gets a job at "Globex"...and they move to a spanking grand new house, marge sitting on the dining table while a robot cleans the house...

"homey, i drink 1 glass of wine a day..."
Homer : "you're supposed to drink 1 and a half"....

enough philosophy for 1 day i reckon....i have to go baby sit my Robot Protools Operator...he cant do anything right!!

[Martin]

the intonation setting mode is pretty crazy!

i reckon the manual for how to use it would weigh more than the guitar itself

[Chris H]

................Yes the blue LED......thats why Avalon wasnt manufacturing 20 years ago or earlier i suppose. If they were i reckon those American know it alls would include them in their must have vintage list. On a more serious note, the thing about guitars is they are not an exact instrument to tune. In my opinion (as an "ex" luthier for maton) a guitar must be tuned by ear to compensate for the minor inaccuracies of any setup. When you tune a guitar to be "perfectly in tune with open strings , it will be slightly out of tune when fretted at various places on the fret board. So by all means use the electronics ( this applies to electronic tuners as well) to tune then finish the job by tuning octaves at different positions along the neck ( i presume the robot guitar has a bypass function). I also hope that simple things like not pressing too hard on the 12 th fret when checking intonation are covered. I am amazed at how many guitarists i have in the studio can't tune their guitars, let alone haven't got a clue how to pull a decent sound...........end of grumpy old man rant!!

[Howard Jones]

Yeah... and how many drummers do you get through who don't even own a tuning key?

[Chris H]

I prefer not to let drummers into my studio.......... but when i have to i nearly always find the need to offer them the pearl drum key i have in my draw, not before handing them a set of rusty pliers though and watching their facial expressions contort in indecision for a few moments..... Then i have them off guard when i try and convince them to use my killer Tama kick and my old Ludwig snare.

[Martin]

though this guitar could be seen as a solution to the enourmously bad luck i've had lately trying to get my guitars/basses setup around sydney

however yesterday i managed to get a decent job done on my new acoustic which is now just heavenly to play, but the setup cost me more than a days pay! for some sandpaper on the bridge and new strings


drummers without drum keys!! i have two of them in the glovebox and another few hanging around the studio for that exact reason :D

i've kept a backup of string sets, picks and tuners as well for the same reasons

[Chris H]

however yesterday i managed to get a decent job done on my new acoustic which is now just heavenly to play, but the setup cost me more than a days pay! for some sandpaper on the bridge and new strings

I'm sure you know this but thought i'd mention it for the casual lurker etc...You would be paying for knowledge and experience as well. Half or more of the skill is in diagnosis of what needs to be done. When i was working on guitar set ups, all except for the top line guitars need to have the nut and saddle have the arris taken off so that they sit tight in the nut or bridge slot. Most were not even square. This job alone makes the nut and saddle sit in the slot with maximum contact and therefore maximum tone and sustain. I also changed the plastic saddle and nut found on most guitars for hand shaped bone. This resulted in a noticable improvement in the sound before even looking at fine tuning of braces ( or adjustment of pickups for electrics.)
Not many players consider the neck angle when buying a guitar, looking only at the action as an indication of the guitars playability, yet it is about the most important factor in seeing if a guitar will be able to be set up with the right string height.

[Martin]

chris it was more a comment on pay more than value of setups :D

fortunately the tax man takes care of them (or at least he doesn't get the setup money...)

its actually got a laminated neck which when talking to the guys that set it up were saying that one advantage (even though its apparently a cost cutting measure) is that the necks are extremely stable

[Chris H]

How many laminations? The way i know this to be used to get stabltity is to rip the neck timbet in half and then lift one half over the other so the saw cut edge now faces outer and then glue the two sides together. Now any movement one half tends toward will be opposed by the other. Any glue join changes the way the timber resonates so with this one laminate the chang is minimized. This all is a bit pedantic and only relevant when you are after ultimate performance.or exelence in the instrument. Also things may have changed with glues etc since i was seriousley at it. I have seen some canadian guitars with many neck laminations that sound great, not rolls royce of guitars but still great.

[Martin]

this many:



it cost about half what my budget would be for a guitar, but they get used heaps and not always gently so maybe in about 14 gigs time i can buy something to stick in the studio and nowhere else!

kinda the guitarists equivilent to a weekend car and everyday car! :D

[rick]

i would not have believed that guitar neck if i you had not posted it , it is either a seriously good idea
for some many reasons or a seriously dumb one.

it looks like a "we cannot get hold of seasoned hardwood at a cheap enough price , so lets laminate green softwood to save bucks and make strong necks and call it sustainable forest management - kind of idea."

any guitar that was never going to be much of a guitar should adopt this approach to building , that will keep the supply of top class luthier woods from being "wasted" so i am thinking its a great idea

but at the end of the day how does this guitar sound/ sustain..? whats the tone like ?
should i be replacing the neck on my gibson j- 200..? :)

[Martin]

rick as far as an every day work guitar, plug it in, rig up some lights, jump around for 4 hours then put it in its case...

it is GREAT! seriously best one i've used and i've been through 4 other guitars in a similar price range (1.5-2k)

it doesn't have the rich, deep, warm, hippy-wrapped-around-a-old-growth-tree type sound to it, but the sustain is impressive and its very easy on the fingers to play, comfortable and light...

I had planned to drop about $3k on my next guitar and get a high-ish end maton or similar, but walked into a shop and had one play of this and spent half that figure and am VERY happy with it

as for what it sounds like, i'll post up a clip of a track we did last week with it...

[Chris H]

[Quote]: plug it in, rig up some lights, jump around for 4 hours then put it in its case... [End Quote] for Di'ed sound workhorse guitar this is a good idea........for reasons rick stated etc but in th price range you mentioned, i would be buying a pedigree used guitar for sure.

[Martin]

an unfinished song, but shows the sound of the guitar well enough

Martin Custom Auditorium Acoustic --> rode NTK --> Avalon 737 --> 002


its called works this time cause its the first only and probably last song i'll ever compose that uses a G to C progression :D

http://www.martinmulholland.com/audio/worksthistime.mp3

192kbps