First 'robot' electric guitar tunes itself

An electric guitar that tunes itself even after a string changes and also allows the players to use any of six non-standard tunings at the push of a button. Now you can tune guitars like a pro.

Gibson Guitar is launching a limited edition “Les Paul Robot Guitar” next month that will have this first self tuning feature in a guitar. They said it took them 15 years of research to develop this special guitar.

Gibson Guitar Chief Executive Henry Juszkiewicz told Reuters this guitar will not make anyone a better guitar player but will make average players to access some very sophisticated tunings.

Any one can access the six non-standard preset tunings with a touch of a button. The six non-standard preset tunings were used on hits ranging from "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones and Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" to Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game."

Gibson said this robot guitar will help amateurs as well as professionals, for the former it will make their job easier in tuning a guitar for the latter, they don’t need to hire professionals to tune 100s of guitars. This way it will standardize the tunes.

Juszkiewicz said to Reuters:

Professional guitar players use a lot of different tuning and people who listen to the stars wonder why they can't reproduce the same sound themselves,"

Not everyone welcomes this idea, just like anyone has for a new technology. LettheBassPlay on the www.ultimate-guitar.com Web site forum wrote, "I'm sorry, this is just lazy. With stuff like this, tuning is going to be a lost skill,"

Gibson is however unfazed, will launch 4,000 limited edition guitars, blue silverburst Les Gibson Robot Guitars on December 7th with a price tag of $2,500. It will release more for the public next January.

Gibson said the robot guitar is the biggest advance in electric guitar design in more than 70 years.

The pros may not like, but I think is a novel feature for beginners, but they should also learn to tune themselves.

Do you like this auto-tuning feature in Guitars?