guitar

Ever since digital technology took over in guitar amps, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to eke an analog tone out of modern tech.

The quest for good old-fashioned tube tone has been fairly successful, but let's get down to what's really important: retro good looks. … Read more

If you're a fan of old electric guitars, then axes that have been modified to look like they came out of a steampunk fantasy could be right up your alley.

Guitar enthusiast Tony Cochran (who's also the man behind the comic strip "Agnes") is selling a range of instruments that have been meticulously modified to look like steampunk creations. The guitars also come with interesting, and sometimes macabre, stories behind them--some that are linked to famous personalities from the past. … Read more

Auto-Tune: Love it or hate it, it's certainly made its mark on pop music. And now it's in a guitar: the Peavey AT-200 Guitar Featuring Auto-Tune For Guitar Technology, to give its full longer-than-a-Skynyrd-solo title. We'll just call it the Auto-axe. Rock on!

It looks just like a regular guitar, but push a button on the Auto-axe and you can play with perfect pitch, the adjustments made live in real time. Peavey reckons you'll never stop playing to retune your guitar ever again, and every chord will sound perfect.

The onboard Antares Solid-Tune intonation system monitors the precise pitch of each individual string and electronically corrects pitch to ensure every chord, riff, and lick is in tune. Peavey claims it's even smart enough to know when axemeisters intend to manipulate pitch, so bends and vibrato rock as hard as the plank-spanker intends.

Read more of "Peavey AT-200 is the first Auto-Tune guitar" at Crave UK. … Read more

Do you want to become a real-life guitar hero, instead of just a virtual one on your gaming console?

Gibson Guitar, the world-renowned guitar maker, has an Android app that will help you learn to play a real guitar. Available for free in the Android Market, the Gibson Learn & Master Guitar app has just about everything a beginner could ask for. It even has video lessons for intermediate and advanced guitarists.

Tuner The first tab of the Gibson Guitar app is a guitar tuner, which you can use in chromatic or simple mode. You can also set the tunings … Read more

Imagine standing in a silent room, posed in the classic air guitar stance. Swing your strumming hand down, and the sound of a guitar chord rings out from your iPhone or iPad. Thanks to augmented-reality app GhostGuitar, you can live this best-of-both-worlds scenario. Play air guitar and make actual music (or something like it).

GhostGuitar uses the front-facing camera on your iOS device to track the positions of your hands. You prop up the iPhone or iPad so you can stand or sit in front of it hands-free, and the app overlays an image of a guitar on the video feed of you. You can strum one of five chords by moving your left hand to one of four marked positions or leaving it off the guitar neck. You can also pluck any of the six individual strings. (See the video below.)… Read more

I have a Gibson guitar. I have to tune it myself. It doesn't have onboard effects. I can't load third-party apps onto it. My guitar is so old-fashioned, it has a hole in the top for the sound to get out. In short, it's no Firebird X.

The limited-edition Firebird X launches on September 30 with a list of specs that reads more like a Dell computer than a guitar. It even has system requirements for Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

The guitar retains the classic look of a regular Firebird, but stuffs the innards with enough technology to make your poor roadie's head spin. This may be the geekiest guitar ever made.

The latest version of Gibson's RoboHead tuners takes care of pesky tuning chores for you. An onboard multiprocessor spews out sounds and effects. It has its own preamp and Bluetooth for connecting to its pedals.

Gibson declares that all this digital stuff won't affect the guitar's "tube mojo." If you have a tube amp, then you know exactly what that means.… Read more

Too many people who teach themselves to play the guitar end up learning how to form chords and strum, but not the theoretical underpinnings that are critical to understanding how music actually works. If you want to go beyond playing your favorite songs and gain the skills to improvise and write your own music, try Guitar and Bass. This comprehensive program will teach you plenty of music theory as it applies to fretted instruments and help you take your musicianship to the next level.

When we first opened Guitar and Bass the program asked us to select our instrument--options include … Read more

Plenty of musical gadgets have popped up in the news recently. None of them, however, lets you shred guitar notes on a messenger bag.

That's where the Electronic Rock Guitar Bag comes in. It combines a typical everyday bag with an electronic guitar.

To start using the "guitar," you'll have to press one of the three frets located along the guitar's neck. These act as buttons to select pretuned chords that you can strum to. This means you won't need to have a music background to start playing songs from Bon Jovi.

Turn on the mini amplifier (located at the bottom right of the bag), and you're ready to start making music.

The bag--which sells for $49.99 on ThinkGeek--is big enough to store a 17-inch notebook and various other accessories that you need in school. We're guessing it'll be pretty funny if you start jamming in the middle of lectures--just don't blame us if you get kicked out of one of them. … Read more

How often do you see guitars equipped with lasers?

M3i Technologies has come up with a guitar that uses lasers to record chords even before your fingers touch the strings. Talk about enhanced precision.

The instrument makes use of Laser Pitch Detection (LPD) technology. A set of laser diodes are placed on the bridge of the guitar and each string has its own laser beam extending across the frets. Once your finger passes through the light, the system in the guitar takes note of the laser beam's length and calculates the string's pitch.

Theoretically, these signals could be used to control just about anything (Pac Man, anyone?) or used as a controller for music-based games such as Harmonix's Rock Band.

Watch this video for more: … Read more