Even if you’re not a guitar nerd, you know what Electro-Harmonix’s Big Muff guitar pedal sounds like. Since 1969 it has been the dirty fuzz coating for countless guitar solos and backing tracks on songs by everyone from Santana to Dinosaur Jr. Today, Electro-Harmonix hand-assembles and tests 75 different effects pedals in its New York headquarters.
This time-lapse video called A Strat is Born (get it?) takes a behind-the-scenes look at how Fender makes its famous stratocaster electric guitars at its factory in Corona, California. And it’s less dependent on machines and robots than you might think.
If you suck at guitar, there are plenty of solutions. Give up, practise more, or maybe just join a punk band where nobody will notice. Whatever you do, don’t get a pneumatic guitar like this one to play for you.
It’s easy to make fun of Guitar Hero now that the craze is over, but one thing is for sure: It created a new enthusiasm for the guitar as an instrument, in these days of DJs and remix artists. We’ve seen a rash of startlingly innovative new ways to teach people how to play the guitar, from the Rock Prodigy series to Wild Chords. Those are great, but Tabber could be better.
It’s not the first Millennium Falcon guitar mod we’ve seen, but Brian Fisk’s creation goes the extra mile with an R2-D2 themed headstock, sound effects and even glowing engines. And, unlike that previous creation, this guitar is very much playable.
Why should Akon have all the fun? This new guitar has a built-in Auto-Tune feature that can change the pitch and tuning of any note played — in real-time — at the press of a button.
The Gibson Firebird X is the first digital guitar that even the most fervent analogue luddite won’t write off as a gadgetar. Lots of guitar technology claims to offer you infinite sounds and disappoints. This is what infinity feels like.
