Info and News about Guitars

Electric guitars -- like most instruments -- are analog. The sounds come from vibrations and modulating electrical fields, not data and computer chips. It's hard to fault an instrument that has given us a range from John Lee Hooker's beehive licks to the sounds of Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain and Carlos Santana. But an electric guitar has some hang-ups. Like, its tone can be affected by the length of the cord from the guitar to the amp. Plus, as versatile as an electric guitar is, it's not always versatile enough.

The guts of Gibson's digital guitar would be the few high-tech chips inside. The cord you plug in would be an ethernet cable, which would run to a digital amp, or into a laptop that becomes the mixing board.

The sound, once set, would never alter by even a shade. ''I tried it with 200 feet of cable, and there was no change in tone,'' Schon says ecstatically. This is a big deal to musicians who want to roam a large stage, which Schon will do this summer as Journey tours with REO Speedwagon and Styx -- concerts sure to be packed with more middle-aged moms per square foot than a suburban bunco card-game tournament.

Performers' sound checks would no longer be necessary, Devin notes. The artist could set up preferences for how the guitar should sound, then a laptop computer could listen to the way the guitar reverberates in that room and automatically make adjustments so it sounds exactly right. The system could adjust the sound as the number of people in the audience changes, thus changing the room's acoustics.

A digital guitar could assign a different effect to each of the six strings, so maybe the two bass strings could have a crunchy fuzz tone while the four higher strings mimic a mellow jazz guitar. Today's electric guitars can't do anything like that. And no one's even started to talk about what it would mean if you could plug a guitar straight into the Internet. Could you sell guitar licks on eBay?

Under it all, Gibson promises to preserve and even improve on the basic guitar that's been a part of rock 'n' roll for decades. ''People aren't looking for a new instrument,'' Juszkiewicz says, ''but for new capabilities.''

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