When we first saw the Jamstik at CES this year we called it amazing. Now you can call it yours. → Read More
Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city. → Read More
One of the benefits of the web is that you can eschew traditional models of distribution and talk to your customer one-on-one. In what I consider a first for ecommerce, guitar makers MacKenzie & Marr have taken this model to heart and are building handmade, unique guitars in China and shipping them out of their warehouse in Canada. We profiled them a few weeks back and they let me take one of… → Read More
Guitar-making is a noble and beautiful art and it’s high time luthiers started thinking about the web. MacKenzie & Marr is a tiny company in Quebec that designs and hand makes relatively inexpensive but amazingly handsome guitars. While they do outsource much of the manufacturing to China, there is not a single robot involved in the building of their cedar-top git-fiddles and guitarists can… → Read More
Announced at CES 2011, the Gibson Firebird X has been a fascinating example of a traditional instrument maker building something that, arguably, is quite revolutionary. The Firebird X is essentially a computer inside a guitar. The guitar itself contains a Freescale processor and can run apps approved and sold through the Gibson website. The guitar can model over 2,000 different sounds and styles… → Read More
Our buddy Bill Ruppert just shared another Effectology video with us, this time creating spooky sounds from the haunted house. The effects he creates here are pretty wild including Alien Bells and an X-Files whistle, all built on effects pedals and a standard git-fiddle. → Read More
Not content to totally rock your face off with their current Paper Jamz offerings, WowWee has created a new version of the paper-thin guitars complete with downloadable content, more power chords, and special waa waa function that bends notes when you shake the neck.
The new guitars have downloadable songs as well as downloadable guitar sounds including heavy metal and twanging country. They are… → Read More
This crazy guitar is handmade – in a way. Designed on a computer and 3D printed by Bård S D, the guitar works quite well and looks like something Starchild would use to blow up an alien invasion force. → Read More
Sanyo keeps on adding products to its eneloop brand of eco-friendly, rechargeable batteries. Today the company announced the so-called KBC-9V3U Pedal Juice for the US and other markets, a 9V lithium-ion battery unit designed for charging multiple guitar effects pedals at the same time (it features two 9V outputs and can power multi-effect units and portable recorders, too). → Read More
Stage aesthetics all contain a common trend. Generally, the equipment should be seen as little as possible, leading to pretty much every guitar amplifier in existence being black. Orange Amplifiers said, “To hell with all that nonsense” and proceeded to create some of the most visually offensive and sonically powerful amps on the market. Their latest release, the Thunder 30, should… → Read More
Good old Bill Ruppert posted another Effectology video showing off the creation of Uilleann pipe and drum sounds with EHX gear and a guitar. The actual settings are here including all the pedals he used. What are uilleann pipes, you ask? Well look no further than Riverdance! → Read More
Who doesn’t love some reverb? EHX’s Effectology explores reverb in all its forms in this charming post. It sounds pretty boring at first but listen to Bill Ruppert go surfy on that git-fiddle then add a little something that sounds like a nice weekend out for the Doves or Blue Oyster Cult. Check out the Infinite Sustain at the end. It’s amazing, if a little Kenny G. → Read More
After hearing Brad Paisley say that a Fender Telecaster “is nothing more than a cutting board, a baseball bat, and strings,” Zachary Custom Guitars decided to put that idea to the test — minus the part about the baseball bat. → Read More
If you’re a big shred head, why not totally show off your rockstar moves with this odd, $750 Fender-headstock coffee table complete with machineheads and enough power to tear up the Lindberg Air Force Base in Seattle and then some. → Read More
A major drawback of multi-effect processors is that they are digital. The sound coming out of them usually lacks the analog warmth. The ME-70 is easy to use, has knobs for every parameter so you can edit your sound quickly. → Read More
This video from Pud (the guy who started F_ckedCompany and AdBrite) shows us the difference between expensive Monster guitar cable versus $10 cable he bought at check-out. The difference, needless to say, is pretty striking, and not in the way you think. → Read More
If you have any friends in really weird bands, like I do, you must know that there’s a certain amount of improvisation that goes on in their audio setups. Experienced sound guys like my friend Andrew have been cobbling together instruments from stray pickups, necks, and strings for years. This fellow Ziv seems to have combined this habit with the ideas behind open-source software, and has… → Read More
The Blackbird Rider Nylon is a completely travel-proof guitar with a hollow neck and a sound port at the head, creating a big guitar sound in a carbon fiber body. It weighs a mere 3 bounds and is a full guitar – not one of those odd wooden travel guitars. Interestingly, the guitar has the string spacing of a standard nylon string guitar which means you can do all the same flamenco picking… → Read More
http://blip.tv/play/hVbIpGMA TechEBlog has a cool little pair of guitars that also happen to be PCs (or are they PCs that also happen to be guitars? Go ask Chuang Tzu). The one in the video above is actually a touchscreen laptop embedded into a guitar body and appears to have working frets and all. I’m thinking he needs to take it easy on the delay a little bit (bwee-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow), but it… → Read More
http://www.liveleak.com/e/415_1217073788 To those who are about to connect their electric guitars and amps directly to a Tesla coil and change the amplitude of the sparks based on the audio generated by the guitar to create huge bitchin’ sparks in your garage, we salute you. via BBG → Read More
If you find yourself feeling like half a man while using the sorta-cheap standard-issue Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars BUT you don’t think you’re quite ready for the responsibility of owning and learning to play a real guitar, here’s a nice little baby-step along your path to self-realization. It’s a real-feeling, full-size guitar for Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band (the PS2 or PS3… → Read More
Maybe only music nerds will understand why this is significant, but it’s pretty amazing. Moog, the company known for making some of the most innovative musical products every, especially synthesizers, has turned its sites towards guitars. This video shows some legendary musicians loving on the the first Moog Guitar. What’s cool is, like original Moog products, it’s analog. → Read More
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=2428099895122454679&hl=en The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (I’m still not convinced that’s a real word) is running a bit on a new built-in guitar tuning doodad. New in the sense that it’s a new product but not new in the sense that foot pedal tuners or Gibson’s robot guitar have filled the tune-your-guitar-easily void for a… → Read More
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x3sdgg Guitar Rising will do for your real guitar playing skills what Guitar Hero and Rock Band did for your fake guitar playing skills. It’s a game/lesson teacher (“lesson teacher” sounds vaguely sadomasochistic) that uses electric guitars—everything from MyFirstElectricGuitar to the double necked Gibson Jimmy Page used—instead of toy… → Read More
http://progressive.playstream.com/playstream/progressive/flashplayers/FLVPlayer.swf The SoundTech Ediface is an interesting device. It’s basically a pickup that attaches to any guitar and then converts what you play to digital format. It comes with a game called Guitar Wizard that “allows users to jam along to popular songs while learning to play a real guitar.” The Ediface is… → Read More
Your guitar is old and busted. Do you repaint it? Get a new guitar? Or figure out a way to cram your old laptop into it, making a guitar with an ever-changing face? If you’re a true nerd, you don’t even have to ask the question. This is considered a case mod, we guess, but we call it a guitar mod; since it’s still a usable guitar, and not so much a laptop, it’s a guitar… → Read More
$400 can buy a lot of things. You could buy a video game console, several pairs of warm socks, some RAM… you could also buy a Guitar Hero controller. Yeah, it’s a pretty substantial controller, but at the end of the day you’re still holding a $400 toy. Your call. Such is the dilemma you face when considering Art Guitar’s AG Riffmaster. Unlike the standard, mini plastic… → Read More
What’s up with Rock Band? We know, thanks to Peter “Surfing magazine is synonymous with surfing” Ha, that the game will “rock and roll” into our hearts on November 23 for $170. That price includes the game itself, guitar, drums and microphone. Don’t expect the game to be available sans-bundle, however, since the one bundle-only configuration helps keep costs… → Read More
I can’t really shred anymore. I sold my Gibson axe after I finished college and figured out that unless you’re really talented, being in a post-graduate band isn’t even a little bit cool. But maybe one day I’ll throw in a copy of Six String Samurai and get motivated to start playing again. If I do, I’ll surely need one of these headphone amps while I work on my killer… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
