Given my tendency to like to build everything, Mrs. Graybeard was asking me why I haven't done
like this guy and built one of those guitar kits you find around. He bought his kit from
these guys, and it's rather nice looking once built. Right now, it would be a struggle to figure out where I could put something the size of a guitar so I could work on it. While building a guitar from flat pieces of wood - like real luthiers do - is serious woodworking, this is largely a finishing job meaning you mostly need a clean environment to work. Since I assumed it was all about lacquer or polyurethane, that means as little cat hair as possible. (We swear we'll find cat hair inside eggs when we break them for the first time) But that video sequence and others I've seen use
gun stock finishing oil, and the end results look really nice.
Probably not. I have a nice looking guitar now, and don't see much use for a duplicate of what I own, despite the attraction of building one. Besides, I still haven't finished the
fishing rods. Either I've gotten way less dextrous in the last 30 years, the materials have changed, or... something... I don't know, but I'm having a heck of a time trying to make it all look good.
But being a techno-geek,
these things are cool. They're mini-motors that tune your guitar to any alternate tuning you might want. There are several built in tunings, and room to add some of your own.
Gibson is building these onto some of their guitars, started last year, and it's a neat addition if you're a techie.
I need to retire so I can play with these things. But if I retire, I can't have these things.
YOW! An Auto-Tuning guitar!
ReplyDeleteThat's simply amazing....
This guy is pretty serious, altho he seems stalled lately. Perhaps he's having one of those Life things.
ReplyDeletehttp://bobsarchtop.blogspot.com/
He begins here
http://bobsarchtop.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html
I'd never seen the auto-tune deals before, very cool. Gonna have to pull out the RasPi and ... uhm ... something.
Jim
The archtop project is pretty cool. That's real luthier work, and I could see getting into that if I had more room. Of course, making instruments means either filling your house with instruments or selling them, just like all woodworking.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't looked into the Min-eTune system (Tronical's invention) go spend some time on YouTube. By all accounts, it works pretty well. If you want to play with alternate tunings and don't want to either spend time re-tuning or have a half dozen pre-tuned guitars sitting around, it's really a good thing. Most traveling bands have a stable full of guitars tuned to different tunings, they don't hold up a concert for a couple of minutes to re-tune. I watched a video last night of a guy showing off a rack of guitars he uses, all of them tuned differently.
It's the classic time vs. money trade. If you want to play this way, and only have an hour or less a day to play, spending a little money for the self-tuning guitar instead of the minutes re-tuning may not be a bad idea. Assuming you don't have to go into debt for it.