Gibson Guitar introduces limited edition Dark Fire
Firstly, I must apologise because I’m writing this article from the perspective of a keyboard player, not a guitarist, so if you are a guitarist I hope you’ll cut me some slack if I foul up on the lingo – and if you can’t, correct me in the comments below.
OK, so Gibson (makers of extraordinary guitars) has created the Dark Fire guitar, inspired by its previous digital guitar innovations: the Gibson Digital and the Robot guitar.
With a nod of the head to the Byrdland and the 1911 F4 Mandolin, the Dark Fire features a flowerpot inlay on the headstock and is made from mahogany to make it lightweight and acoustically louder with increased sustain and resonance.
To the playing: it has a super fast, comfortable asymmetrically carved neck and Perfect Setup – a computerised PLEK system that can scan and dress the guitar under playing conditions and tune it to pitch. The Dark Fire has a tune-o-matic piezo bridge that’s sleeker and locks to the studs with new technology.
Pickups? OK. The Dark Fire combines two popular pickups: the P90h in the neck position and a Burstbucker 3 in the bridge position. With six low noise relay switches the player has access to over 20 separate combinations of pickup coils which means greater variety of tonal possibilities.
It’s possible to mix the acoustic sound from the piezo bridge pickup with the sound from the traditional pickups, and each string can even be output on its own audio channel.
Finally, the Master Control Knob (MKB) features a full colour display and allows the player to set and recall complete banks of settings, even while playing live.
The guitar even comes with the Robot Interface Pack for connecting up to a computer, and there’s supplied software including Guitar Rig 3 and Ableton Live 7 Gibson Studio Edition.
Oh, there’ll also be an Internet site set up so that the handful of users able to get their hands on this limited edition beast can share tips, and probably do a bit of gloating as well.
How many guitars will be produced? Just 2,000 – five in each of 400 dealers around the world. Available from 5pm on 15th December. Price? Oh c’mon, you don’t ask the price of these babies any more than you get a catalogue price on an acoustic grand piano. (Oh OK then, “under $3,500” apparently.)
Gibson (via Akihabara News)
Related posts: Gibson’s first look at Dark Fire | Gibson high-def guitar album
