3 GUITARS GET SMARTER
While the future of the electric guitar lies in the comforting blanket of its past, there are still plenty of bold innovators beavering away in their sonic laboratories. Line 6 surprised most by using niche technology – its Variax digital modelling engine – to embrace a new mini-trend, the baritone, all aboard a fairly modernist-shaped electric, the Shuriken. Line 6’s president, Marcus Ryle, commented it was “our first artist-designed instrument”, the artist being Stevie MacKay (Twelve Foot Ninja), while its 27-inch scale along with Variax’s alternative tuning feature means conventional guitar tuning is completely out of the window. By design.
Swiss makers Relish revived the ‘concept’ guitar [1], not actually meant for production, but just to show what they can do. Designed with Thomas Nordegg (Steve Vai’s tech), it includes a Sustainiac sustainer, GTC Revpad touchpad control, Line 6 wireless, Antares Auto-Tune ATG-1 all loaded into a hugely innovative Jane model. Less radical is the latest Fret-King/Fishman tie-up to produce three Fluence pickup-equipped guitars. Using Fret-King’s Corona, Country Squire (both £749) and Esprit (£699) platforms with Fluence Strat-style, Tele-style single-width and humbuckers respectively, these dual voice pickups, with their solid-core coils, absolute hum-cancelling and rechargeable battery power, epitomise ‘familiar’ looks but have cutting-edge technology.
After the rather out-there 2015 line, innovations on Gibson’s High Performance range have been reined in so we’re getting a shaped access neck joint, rolled fingerboard edges, a titanium zero fret (conventional width) and the latest generation G-Force tuners, boasting faster and more accurate use. Equally modernist are the electronics. Each of the four controls is a pull/push switch engaging tap or split for each pickup, out-of-phase, and inner or outer coils (for the split function); the options are handled by a row of five internal DIP switches along with high pass filters for each pickup and transient suppression – a sort of passive limiter. Even the selector switch has new gold contacts, a knurled metal cap and is quieter, less microphonic, in use. This array is featured, for example, on the Les Paul Standard (£2,699), Traditional (£2,299) and Classic (£1,999) HP models; the Studio (£1,599) has a simplified circuit.