Gibson are touting Ethernet for your electric guitar. Somehow, I think they are missing the point since this seems to be a solution chasing a problem.
If all goes well for a small band of engineers at Gibson Labs in Sunnyvale, Calif., this will be the year they put commercial electric guitars on an Ethernet network for the first time. The next question: Will anyone want a digital Les Paul?
Jeff Vallier hopes so. He is one of about a dozen Gibson engineers who have been working almost three years to craft Magic — a custom digital network technology based on Ethernet — that Gibson will build into future guitars, amps, speakers and other gear.
I guess it is a standards setting exercise, since Line6 has been doing digital amps, and now a guitar for a while.
Also, it doesn't look like this will be adaptable to wireless (bandwidth and latency problems). Not that analog wireless doesn't have it's own problems. I saw Carla Bley and Steve Swallow play about 10 years ago. Swallow was using a wireless rig on his bass, and during a quiet bit, an analog cell phone came crackling through from a car driving past: "Well you tell him, I said he can go fuck himself"! The entire club cracked up.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
Billy, you're about _this_ far from going all Nigel Tufnel on us. "See this finish, listen to the sustain".
I've never really bought into the vintage mystique. I have bought a lot of junk in pawnshops, Kents, Silvertones, and some better guitars like a Strat (autographed by Yngie Malmsteen of all people).
I've tried to avoid the syndrome of "if I buy a better guitar, it will make me a better player." And since I don't have much money lately, that has been easy to avoid.