cool knew developments in guitar construction.

i was just wonderin if anyone knew any new exciting things going into guitars. i am at the moment interested in the piezo pickup technology and the steinberger trans trem, which is a tremelo , but when it is used the notes stay in tune. eg u can hold chords and use the tremelo and the strings dont go out of tune.i imagine it would be a good imitation of a slide.

i am interested in just about anything from knew neck joints to bridges to pickups to graphite necks ,so feel free to post and share anything you heard about.

There was some invention contest on the other night. Sorta like American Idol with inventions. One guy had a guitar that had the guitar plug at the back of the guitar instead of the front & got really upset when they didn't pick him as having Americas best new invention or something.
Good for a few laughs but kinda sad too cause the guy was really serious about it.

That would relly suck if the plug happened to collide with the testes area with that great new improvment.

I saw that on American Inventor as well... That guy was an idiot... The whole "point" to his invention was so the plug wouldn't get pulled out. It's easier to take the chord and lay it between where your strap meets the body of your guitar down buy the rear strap button... The weight of the guitar pulling down on the strap pulls the strap against the cord... you have to yank super super hard to ge that baby out of there.

As far as new inovations... hm... well the piezo pickups have been around for quite some time... the earliest I can recall is since Slash used one in his Gibson Les Paul in the early 90's. The Steinberger guitars are pretty ahead of their time I think... I like the moving capo that they put on the end. That's pretty slick. The fact that they had the presence of mind to make it on a baritone scale guitar is that much better. You just roll the capo up two frets and it's in standard tuning... roll it back to the end and you're dropped down a whole step...

I think the biggest strides the last few years have been on engineering better sounding guitars. Some different concept guitars have been released... One company has been making guitars out of a new material called Vibracell... and Yamaha has made a new guitar out of some wierd material and have used an enigineered chambered body to help it resonate more than any other electric out there.

Floyd Rose came out with there speedloader guitars that load and tune from the other end....

And Steinberger makes gearless tuners now.... check those out at stew-mac.com. They're pretty smooth looking.

As far as acoustic guitars go... I would have to say that they're going to stay mostly unchanged for quite awhile. But Taylor has tried to make a stride toward some new innovations with their T5 series of guitars... They mix electric playablity with acoustic tone...

Not a lot has changed in regular pickup configuration in about a decade... but manufacterers keep producing more specialty pickups that are basic variations of the same old pickups we've always known.

I did see a guitar with an onboard preamp and onboard effects.... But I guess the biggest thing in guitars to me right now is the new Line 6 Variax modeling guitars. Coupled with the software you can model any guitar you want pretty much and it allows you to change pickup configurations and all that jazz...

> I saw that on American Inventor as well... That guy was an idiot... The
> whole "point" to his invention was so the plug wouldn't get pulled out.
> It's easier to take the chord and lay it between where your strap meets
> the body of your guitar down buy the rear strap button...

I was wondering what this guy was thinking.
It's kinda like, if you took a lightswitch and just moved it up to the ceiling would that make it a new invention?
All he did was move the plug to the back of the guitar.

Hey, I've got an idea... put the plug on the headstock, that way you can swing the cord around while you're on stage!!
I'm gonna be a billionaire!!

you know what would be the best invention ever? a sandwich making machine... like you just push a few buttons telling it the kind of bread you want, and what kind of meat and stuff, and then it makes it for you. now THAT would be cool!

*disclaimer: this idea is copyright of 6strngs_2hmbkrs, if anyone steals the idea and actually does become a billionare off it than I am entitled to 30% of the profits

as far as new guitar tech goes have toy seen the Variax ? I reviewed it recently and thee is tones of info on the Line6 web site.

If only they had put the inputs on the back !!!

I'm sure you've heard of the stringsavers graphite saddles, I just got them and they are amazing. I have never broken a string on my guitar with these things on. They just simply go dead and then I need to change them. I play a Gibson Les Paul, and with my original saddles, I was breaking strings almost weekly. So if you haven't checked out the graphite saddles, do it.

p.s. If you're worried about them altering your sound, I have not noticed any kind of change in my sound.