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Guitar players, as a whole, are a very conservative bunch when it comes to their instruments. Most luthiers are simply building very careful copies of designs t
by beat 8y ago
Guitar players, as a whole, are a very conservative bunch when it comes to their instruments. Most luthiers are simply building very careful copies of designs that have existed for over 50 years. This is true from both a visual and a mechanical/electrical perspective. We're inspired by our heroes, and want to play what they played.
I have a custom made guitar myself - an acoustic by Running Dog Guitars (now defunct, I think the builder retired), a quasi-original design modeled after certain Gibson models from the 1930s. Different woods, more careful construction, but... it's an acoustic guitar, with the same X-bracing that Martin developed over a century ago.
On the other hand, there's no good reason for guitar technology to improve, either. They work really well. Modernist guitars like these are still relying on traditional electronics - these pictures have modern copies of PAF pickups designed by Gibson in the 1950s! Even active electronics are something of anathema to most guitarists. Visually, these are modernist - but technically, they're not much more advanced than what Gibson and Fender were building 60+ years ago.
Even amplification, which unlike guitars, has improved since the 1950s, is pretty static. We still buy tube amps - often slavish copies of amps from 50 or more years ago. I personally play a 1977 Mesa amp, tubes and all. I can't find a modern solid-state amp that touches it tonally. But then again, my tastes are kind of conservative. I am, after all, a guitarist.
- TylerE 8y agoI think that's slowly starting to change. Over the last decade or so both headless guitars and multi-scale (fanned fret) designs have become semi-mainstream. Sure, you won't see such designs from Gibson or Fender, but companies like Kiesel are making them widely available and relatively affordable. I've personally also moved away from traditional amps to an all-digital full range modeler. The gap between modeling and tubes is pretty narrow these days.
- beat 8y agoModeling suffers a lot from bad interface design. It's not the digital that's the problem, it's the interface. I recently picked up a Boss SY-300 guitar synth. It sounds great, but I hate it. It's almost impossible to manipulate its behavior in realtime. It really needs a computer plugged in, and a lot of clicking around with a mouse. It's completely outside my music-brain. I don't have these problems with a traditional analog synth, with knobs for everything (I play an Arturia Microbrute regularly). It CAN be done, though. I use a digital tape-modeling delay, and it works beautifully and sounds amazing. It just respects how we work things with our hands.
- TylerE 8y agoThe Line 6 Helix UI is pretty great. That's the unit I'm running. Everything easily tweakable from the unit, or connect it to a PC via USB and use the their software which is even easier since you have a mouse, drag and drop, etc. Way way better than, say, Fractal. This video shows what the UI on the unit itself is like... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-i_i1nrRy0&t=295
- beat 8y agoA bandmate of mine was using a Helix (with an electric cello). He replaced it with a board full of cheap Chinese mini-pedals and analog amp sims. It definitely sounded better than anything else of its ilk I've heard, though.
- TylerE 8y agoTHe thing I really like it not having to deal with a board full of pedals, and all the cabling, power supplies, etc.
- beat 8y agoI wish I could be there. But I'm too fussy about the tone of my drive systems (amp and pedals), and too into knob-level manipulation of delay and reverb pedals.
- TylerE 8y agoActually for knob-fiddling the helix is great... you can have up to 3 expression pedals, and ANY parameter can be mapped to them - so you could have say delay time on one pedal (with user definable bottom and top range), and a wet/dry blend on another.
- jdietrich 8y agoMetal guitarists seem to be largely unafflicted by guitarist conservatism. They're eager to play guitars with seven, eight or more strings, fanned frets and unusual pickups like Fishman Fluences or Lace Alumitones. They've embraced amp modelling and digital effects. They're the main buyers of headless guitars. They were the main buyers of Floyd Rose bridges back when they were exciting new technology and they're the main buyers of Evertune bridges today.
- adw 8y agoUnorthodox guitars are being made, though. Have a look at Yuri Landman's instruments, Electrical Guitar Company, etc.