Powertune: Gibson’s Self Tuning Guitar
October 3, 2007 - 6:57 am - Posted by iDunzo
Guitar maker Gibson has a history of innovation. The company is responsible for the Humbucker pickup and the legendary Les Paul electric guitar.
Now it is selling the Self Tuning Guitar, which actually has servo motors on the headstock to turn the tuning heads.
The Powertune system, developed over 10 years by German company Tronical, uses a set of piezo-electric pickups to determine the pitch of each string.
These are separate from the regular guitar pickups, which rely on the string vibrating in a magnetic field to cause a current.
The information for the pickups then goes off to the computer brain, which sends its instructions up the strings to the tuning pegs.
The system comes pre-calibrated for concert pitch, but you can tune one string yourself and have the guitar set itself around that.
Best of all, the Powertune can store custom tunings, from alternative open-string tunings for slide guitar to, well, anything you like.
A quick flick of the knob between songs will switch smoothly between them. The rig is an add-on for existing guitars, and will cost $900.00 USD.
And of course, guitar purists are already whining that “real” musicians should be able to tune their own instruments.
