Wow, it’s been a long time coming (when was this thing announced… 2002?) but according to at least two different reports, including an interview with Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, the inexplicably-named Les Paul HD.6X-PRO (aka, the Digital Les Paul,) is finally beginning to ship to stores, though apparently still in limited quantities.
I know of a few readers who will be very happy to hear the news, and while most of us will probably never in our wildest dreams be able to afford one, hey––at least we’ll be able to drool over it at the local mega-guitar-mart.
That is, of course, if you even like the idea of a digital guitar… I’m still not sure what I think about this whole push towards digital-everything, but I’ll certainly be interested to take the Les Paul HD.6X-PRO for a test drive. There’s something I find pretty fascinating about the idea of plugging my guitar in via an ethernet cable.
Down with the 1/4“ plug––long live 100Base-T!
- Gibson’s New Website & Forum For The HD 6X Digital Les Paul
- Guitar Player Reviews Gibson’s HD.6X-Pro Digital Les Paul
- Video Demonstration Of The New BOSS MICRO BR
- Gibson’s Official Slash Signature Series Mini-Site Now Online
- See & Hear The Line 6 Spider Valve In Action
- Finally, A Review Of The BOSS Micro-BR
- Gibson Giving Away A Les Paul Goddess!
- Line 6 To Give Away A Spider III Prototype Every Month
- Happy Birthday To Us! EGR Turns One Today
- Line 6 And Bogner Unveil Hybrid Tube/Digital Modeling Amplifier
- King Of The Road: Gibson Announces Les Paul GT
- The Legend Lives: Les Paul Turns 91
November 10th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Every time I plug in my guitar I say to myself “Gosh, I wish there was a computer in here.”
Yawn.
November 10th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Hehe…
November 10th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Cary do you know?
Has anyone stopped to think that most ethernet cards, like my Intel T100, have only one input and that that input is generally dedicated to the DSL/Modem for broadband internet? Plus, the card has to have an IRQ interrupt (at least on PCs) and that just adding another PCI ethernet card may not be possible (eg, my computer is using every interrupt for scanner/printer/mouse/keybd/telephone fax etc).
I wondered from the start if Gibson was going to overcome this problem. Ethernet and GigaBit Ethernet is the way to go but someone better be making dual input PCI cards pretty soon to accomodate instruments.
Do you know?
Dan
November 10th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Hmmm, good question. I’m a Mac user myself, so I have dual ethernet ports built-in. I have to assume that Gibson hasn’t overlooked this basic requirement, but I certainly don’t know that for sure.
I haven’t really followed the specs on the digital Les Paul, but I’ll see what I can find out…
November 15th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Dan, although it is a cable that uses RJ45 connectors like an ethernet cable, I’m not sure that it actually IS an ethernet cable. And even if it is I am pretty sure that even the bandwidth of a gigabit connection would not be able to handle the data transfers that this will require.
From the gibsondigital site “Gibson Labs developed Media-accelerated Global Information Carrier (MaGIC), an Ethernet media delivery system called MaGIC, to open up a new world of possibilities for the musician.”
You will not be able to plug the guitar directly into your computer. The guitar will be connected via this RJ45 cable to a breakout box. The breakout box will then let you output the signal as all of the strings to one amp, output the upper 3 strings to one amp and the lower 3 strings to another amp, OR output all 6 strings to independent amps. This is where gibson is hoping to change the way we play and record guitars.
If you go here: http://www.gibson.com/DigitalGuitarNew/gibsonDigital.html and then go under “It’s a digital guitar” and read “how it works” and “what it does” you’ll get a better idea of what I’m talking about. There are a few videos too.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Hey, thanks for all the great detective work, Matt.
I seem to remember that in the interview with Gibson’s CEO he implies that because the digital Les Paul picks up so many more details than a traditional pickup, if you’re a great player you’re probably going to sound even better on the digital, but oppositely, if you’re not a great player then the flaws in your technique are going to be a lot more obvious.
I love the idea of having that kind of control during recording… down to the string level. Of course, it’s kind of hard for me to conceptualize exactly what I’d do with all that control, but I’m particularly interested to see what 3rd party manufacturers come up with to really make use of a digital guitar’s abilities.
An amplifier that caters to this market should be intriguing, eh?
Picture a cabinet with six speakers.
Now picture a head that features six different inputs, each with its own gain, volume, tone, and effects loops! Oohh, could be fun!
Overdrive & compression on the first three strings, chorus & reverb for the bottom end….
; )
November 27th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Apparently this thing is actually shipping after all this time. Check this out: http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/gibsondigital/ – and they say they now have the guitar in stock !
November 30th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
This is not what I want. I want to have the signal from each of the six guitar strings digitized within the guitar, then transmitted in DIGITAL (not analog) form to my computer. Gibson’s current system requires the digital output from the guitar to be sent to the MaGIC breakout box, where the digital signal is converted into analog. From the analog outputs I could run six wires to a digital mixer, reconvert back into digital, and then record the signals on my computer – but why force me to convert digital to analog and then back to digital? Gibson should let me plug the RJ45 cable directly into my computer, and provide the software needed to capture the 6-channel guitar output. That’s what I want!
December 4th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Gene:
One step at a time. I’m sure this will come in time, but they had to start from somewhere. I’m sure eventually there will be a PCI “breakout card” available from either Gibson or another manufacturer.
At this point I’m sure Gibson was trying to do their best to make it as proprietary as possible. Then other companies will probably have to license the MaGIC technology from them if they want to use it.
December 5th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Having three Line6 guitars (and maybe a little biased), I can say that what folks really want is the ability to make the guitar sound different (perhaps like other guitars…perhaps like synths). All this guitar does is move the Analog to Digital Conversion closer in the chain to the vibration strings and separates them into different channels. It really does not do any processing (like morphing the tone into another instrument ala Line6). Furthermore, you still need to convert back to analog just to record the signal into the computer…..which begs the question, wouldn’t it sound a whole lot better going through a really nice preamp rather than straight from the pickup.
It might make for a neat light show….or some cool separated solo guitar tones…. but for your average gigging musician, there is nothing compelling about this instrument or the entire system. You can pick up a basic Line6 Variax guitar (ethernet out) and a PodXT floorboard that will connect to digitally to your computer….allowing a whole bunch of noise free instrument/amp/effect combinations…and a completely computer controlled environment that works live or in the studio for $850.
December 5th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
and another thing…. from the pictures on the Gibson site… Doesn’t it look like a Les Paul Studio (no binding on the neck or body)?….for $4000, you’d expect a tiger striped sunburst and more of a Les Paul standard/custom look. Is it me, or the the blue sunburst on mahogany look a bit out of place?
December 6th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
does anyone remember the Gittler Guitar from the 80’s?
it also had a hexphonic breakout box that allowed you
to send each string to a seperate amp.
the problem with any guitar that is based on technology is
that it quickly becomes obsolete. unless the guitar is upgradable,
it is likely to end up with the rest of the legacy stuff.