Innovation: have you seen any lately? Everyone, it seems, wants a USA made Fender Strat or Gibson Les Paul from the era when they were made properly (ie: the fifties) and nothing else comes close, to them anyway. So what has happened to innovation in electric guitars in the last fifty years? Well apart from better and more accurate manufacturing, offshore production reducing prices and upping quality, not much!
Having said that we can celebrate active pickups, 7 and 8 string models and road worn guitars (no, really) plus better quality components and strings. Several makers have tried different materials such as carbon fibre but these have not really replaced wood in our hearts and even the ebony substitute Richlite (made from partially recycled paper and phenolic resin), used for fingerboards and bridges has come in for some criticism, although if we didn’t tell you what it was you would never know!
Gibson has brought in the electronic headstock tuner – now called G Force – big style; this year you can’t buy a Les Paul with normal tuners!
And Fender has attempted to join the ‘modelling’ revolution with their American Deluxe Strat Plus, ‘giving you three Stratocaster guitars in one with an innovative design featuring easily interchangeable “personality cards” that instantly give you a wealth of versatile pickup and circuitry configurations’. With our love of anything modelling (more of this below) they should fly out the shops.
Acoustic guitars seem to be having a better time of it embracing both new technologies and different woods and configurations.
Yamaha and Martin have catered for our love of ‘vintage’ tone with their nifty wood enhancements techniques – ARE (Acoustic Resonance Enhancement) from Yamaha and VTS (Vintage Tone System) from Martin which ‘transform new wood to have the rich tone of instruments that have been played for many years’. Over a short period of time, new wood matured with this technology produces a tonal richness like that of well-used vintage instruments.
Martin, one of the oldest guitar company in the world, also gets in on the innovation act with the Fishman F1 Aura Plus pickup system, only available on their guitars, which has image pre-sets and mic simulations to get that amplified tone you want.
Lately makers are also using different tonewoods to the standards with guitars being made from London plane, Pau Ferro, Myrtlewood, Cocobola and Bubinga although the tops seem to be made from spruce or cedar only.
Radical sound hole designs are also coming through with the likes of the LTD TL-6 and the Avian Skylark (which can also be fan fretted)..
Blackstar with their ID:Core series and Line 6 with the AMPLIFi lead the way. These amps allow you to ‘custom design your own sound, store it and then have the confidence that the amp will perform in a live environment’ and ‘patches can be shared, uploaded and downloaded via our online community’.