Too cool

[marcoloco961]

Has anyone seen the videos on this new guitar set-up. Way awesome sounds, ungodly number of combination's. Check out the out of phase wiring sounds.


http://gamechanger.music-man.com/

click on the video on the right.

[Firestorm]

Oh great. Eight and a half million possible settings ... so if you played ten hours a day it would take about three years to wander through them. And then you'd be like "Wait. Was it setting 3,272,396 I liked for that solo? Or was it 6,347,282? Arrrgh!"

Seriously, pretty cool tech, but I wish they'd thought to take the 100 most "useful" permutations and put them logically end to end on a rotary encoder.

[marcoloco961]

Oh great. Eight and a half million possible settings ... so if you played ten hours a day it would take about three years to wander through them. And then you'd be like "Wait. Was it setting 3,272,396 I liked for that solo? Or was it 6,347,282? Arrrgh!"

Seriously, pretty cool tech, but I wish they'd thought to take the 100 most "useful" permutations and put them logically end to end on a rotary encoder.

LMFAOROTFPIMP

[Reeltarded]

I collect BC Rich. Does that thing have a preamp? A varitone?

They left out 80% of the sounds.

[marcoloco961]

I collect BC Rich. Does that thing have a preamp? A varitone?

They left out 80% of the sounds.

It looks like 36 individual pickup sensors. with the ability to wire them in any configurations of series or parallel, in, or out of phase via programing software.

Neat idea, I wonder if he will market it for other guitar brands, or if it will be exclusive to Music Man guitars.

I see it being a much bigger money maker if you could use it on any brand of guitar.

[Structo]

The pickup selection is really cool
To be able to have the neck pickup only pickup the first two strings then the bridge pickup get the rest is pretty cool technology.

I for one would have a hard time keeping track of it all.

On my current favorite gutiar which is a Schecter C1-Classic with two humbuckers and a 5 way switch.
Instead of trying to put into words how it switches, a picture is much better.

[img:276:161]http://lh3.ggpht.com/_MHnI-B0pJ8k/TTSNP ... ection.JPG[/img]

It makes it very versatile and the in between positions, which are parallel, are much lower gain so they work well for rhythm playing.

[img:209:640]http://lh4.ggpht.com/_MHnI-B0pJ8k/TTSOG ... 2B3TSB.jpg[/img]

[surfsup]

I recently wired up my LP with a jimmy page wiring harness I think it gives me 32 possible sounds? Maybe 22...whatever I don't use em all but I do love the flexibility in recording!

Personally, I'd rather see the guitar feed 36 individual inputs to a recording software, and then be able to mix it afterwards. The reason is if your guitar pickup arrangement sounds great jamming solo but IN THE MIX if your pickup arrangement doesn't sound good, you have to re-record. Sending everything to a mixer is better. I don't know if that is possible but I am lately thinking of wiring up my guitar for at least a cable for each pickup, so I can record them individually and at least I have the flexibility after the recording to use either neck or bridge. Or blend them.

After all no one listening to an MP3 is going to sit there and go, wow, at 2:11s the guitar sound is totally cool, sounds like setting #23,147 on the pickup mixer. All that matters is if the song sounds good and if you can get there with less takes.

[iknowjohnny]

Once i achieve best player on earth status, maybe then this will appeal to me. Till then, how well i play and getting a killer basic tone is all that matters. I just don't see this as being a "game changer". It's a lot of tones that aren't necassary. I get all the tones i could ever need out of a good amp and a SSH strat, and if i DO want more i'd rather get truly different tones from a different amp. I think it's more gimmick that some incredible new "game changer". 8 trillion tones from the same guitar are all going to still contain that guitar's basic character anyways. I think this is going to appeal to inexperienced players, not so much to experienced ones. We've already seen digital amps come and go and the only people that really used them aside from bedroom practice are inexperienced kids mostly. Pros stuck to thier single channel fenders and marshalls and for good reason....simplicity with a great player and one killer amp always wins out. Playing and a great simple amp and guitar beats technology every time. Always has and probably always will.

[marcoloco961]

Once i achieve best player on earth status, maybe then this will appeal to me. Till then, how well i play and getting a killer basic tone is all that matters. I just don't see this as being a "game changer". It's a lot of tones that aren't necassary. I get all the tones i could ever need out of a good amp and a SSH strat, and if i DO want more i'd rather get truly different tones from a different amp. I think it's more gimmick that some incredible new "game changer". 8 trillion tones from the same guitar are all going to still contain that guitar's basic character anyways. I think this is going to appeal to inexperienced players, not so much to experienced ones. We've already seen digital amps come and go and the only people that really used them aside from bedroom practice are inexperienced kids mostly. Pros stuck to thier single channel fenders and marshalls and for good reason....simplicity with a great player and one killer amp always wins out. Playing and a great simple amp and guitar beats technology every time. Always has and probably always will.

I agree that the player is where it all starts. And obviously no one on earth needs, has time to sample between, nor would ever use 8 millions tone combinations.

But having the ability to basically "re-wire" your pick-ups to any wiring scheme on the fly, to me, is a notable option. Some of the tones this will make available previously could not be achieved without tearing the guitar apart and physically re-wiring the Pick-ups. This means literally dozens of "useful" tones that were not available without switching guitars or amps have now been brought to your fingertips. The guitar has 5 memory banks in the A position and 5 more in the B position. 10 saved patches, right at your fingertips. Then between sets, you plug into your laptop and switch patches to the next 10 presets.

IMO, this new option (while somewhat overwhelming with its 8 million configurations) IS a gamechanger. I was very impressed with the wide range of Bass tones they achieved in the short video. There were endless tonal capabilities. True they could have narrowed the options down some, but as the owner said, they wanted to let the user decide just how far to go with it. I have to agree with that, the more they limit it's range of configurations, the less they went away from the old technology. Now you can have three single coil pup's , touch a switch and have a single coil/ humbucker blend. I personally think it borders on brilliant.

[Structo]

Any ideas how they are doing it?

I mean, is it all in the guitar or do you need an interface of some kind.

I imagine they use logic circuits to configure the selections on the fly like that.

I also didn't see how much it will sell for.

About nine years ago I bought one of the first Variaxe guitars that Line 6 put out.
It was a neat concept but what I found was there was a miniscule lag between the picked string and the note out of the speaker, just enough to bug me enough to return the guitar for my money back.

I did however keep the Line 6 POD XTL which I used for several years.
Kind of neat to be able to walk in with a guitar and pedal board and be ready to gig in seconds. (it really helps to have to have a great PA on tap)

[marcoloco961]

Any ideas how they are doing it?

I mean, is it all in the guitar or do you need an interface of some kind.

I imagine they use logic circuits to configure the selections on the fly like that.

I also didn't see how much it will sell for.

About nine years ago I bought one of the first Variaxe guitars that Line 6 put out.
It was a neat concept but what I found was there was a miniscule lag between the picked string and the note out of the speaker, just enough to bug me enough to return the guitar for my money back.

I did however keep the Line 6 POD XTL which I used for several years.
Kind of neat to be able to walk in with a guitar and pedal board and be ready to gig in seconds. (it really helps to have to have a great PA on tap)

I would think you are probably right about the logic circuits. The way I am seeing it is 3 Pup's each with 2 rows of 6 individual feeds. Through a routing program you can choose on or off, series or parallel connection. Even out of phase wiring for each of the 36 inputs. Basically allowing you to walk to the computer and designate the (wiring harness) for the tone you want. I watched all but 1 or 2 of the videos. There were some pretty decent tones and quite a wide variety of usable ones. Let's say open the pic (control panel) you posted earlier of your set up and click on which configuration you like then, hit save, play, bang, re-wired. One string too loud, turn off the feed for one of the Pup's on that string.

Mid scoop, no problem. The options are endless. I really like the out of phase sounds, but I wouldn't want my guitar wired like that permanently, so this is perfect. There is just so much to choose from.

[iknowjohnny]

But having the ability to basically "re-wire" your pick-ups to any wiring scheme on the fly, to me, is a notable option.

I agree. My point is simply that there are some benefits like that, but to call it a game changer....well, to me there is no game changer untill the music requires it. In other words, for most players the important thing is thier ability to play well and to be able to get most of the basic sounds that to date all music has been recorded with. So yeah, it could be useful but i just don't see it as a game changer at all. To me a game changer would be an amp with a rotary switch that selects any of the 10 or 20 most popular amps of all time and every one of them sounds and feels exactly like the original. Some day maybe that will be a possibility, but i doubt it. Todays modelers try and do that, but you take one on stage and what comes thru the mix either doesn't sound or feel or both nothing like the real thing works in a mix. The day you can switch like that with a single amp and every sound and feel is exactly like the real thing, THAT will be a game changer. This thing IMO is a long ways from that because for one thing every guitar has a voice of it's own, and no pickup combo can change that. So you may be able to use it to get every strat sound there is to a degree, but even then the tones will be limited by the wood. No strat that sounds much different than SRV's did is going to sound like it with a pickup combo no matter what it is.

So yeah, it may be useful but game changer.....not remotely IMO.

[NEjoe]

I like it.

Unfortunately I don't play very well on just 3 settings........this will make me 2.8 million times worse!

[vibratoking]

I would guess the implementation is a microcontroller with some NV memory and some relays of some sort. Implementing USB takes a micro or some very sophisticated dedicated logic, which I would guess Ernie Ball does not have the resources to implement. So probably a micro.

A design like this could suffer from some noise issues if not done properly. I don't know if the system has a battery supply or if it is powered only from USB. It could be that the micro is only active when connected to USB and is shut down otherwise. This could alleviate most of the potential noise issues.

[TheGimp]

Solid state switch matrix using CMOS analog switches.

Microprocessor based with a series of switches monitored by the micro controlling the switch matrix.

With that comes the possibility of adding different capacitor values in a network to control tone as well.

If done properly, no amplifiers are involved at all. You are just configuring the pickups and feeding them through low Rds-on switches.

No signal delay, no added distortion.