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I have to confess that I'm not the biggest Yngwie Malmsteen fan but his olympic white 70's Fender Stratocaster is the stuff of legend and certainly iconic amongst guitarists. Fender's custom workshop have painstakingly put together an identical tribute series stratocaster complete with 70's enlarged headstock, stressed bodywork and aged scalloped fretboard. The attention to detail is quite literally incredible and the guitar even has the "Play Loud" sticker that Yngwie put on back in 1983.

You can watch the making of this incredible instrument at the Fender custom workshop website which provides a fascinating insight into the process of creating such a classic guitar. Enjoy!

Labels: fender, guitarists, guitars, rock, stratocasters

Gibson Guitars have announced the world’s first self tuning guitar which is rather unimaginatively called the 'Gibson Robot Guitar'. Basically its a Les Paul with a modified control knob that enables the tuning of the instrument with a simple push or pull. Each tuner is equipped with specialised servo motors and as the motorized tuners adjust the pitch of the strings they are monitored by means of a Tune-Control Bridge. Gibson say that the guitar weighs the same and playability and tone isn't effected in any way.



To be honest you really need to see this to fully understand how clever this is. Check out the video below for a full demonstration.



I'm not sure whether I think this is a good idea or not to be honest. Whilst it is undeniably an ingenious piece of engineering I think it could also encourage guitarists to be lazy. Learning to tune your guitar is in my opinion a fundamental skill that all guitarists should master and helps develop your ear for music.



Whilst the Gibson robot guitar will be out of most guitarists budgets I suspect we will see a raft of cheaper copy cats before long and I'm not sure this kind of feature will help beginners and intermediates in the long term.

Having said that I think the preset range of alternate tunings is a great feature and this will probably impress more experienced guitarists. This could represent a massive time saving feature for those gigging guitarists how want to add more tonal colour to their playing.

Labels: guitar news, guitar reviews, guitars