The technology inside the electric guitar has been set since the 1930s: Magnetic pickups convert string vibrations into electrical impulses. Gibson's new Les Paul, with proprietary Magic technology, does something else altogether, something no other guitar does. An audio converter inside the instrument's body translates string vibrations into a digital signal that can travel over a standard Cat-5 Ethernet cable. The company will continue to sell the traditionaltraditional Les Pauls, but Gibson's CEO thinks it won't be long before all guitarists go digital. "We're improving the electric guitar for the first time in 70 years," he explains.
If Henry Juszkiewicz didn't build a digital guitar, I can assure you the digital guitar would still happen." Like Sony and Philips with the compact disc 20 years ago, Gibson is making a big bet on Magic, whose success hinges on nothing less than the reinvention of an entire industry. But unlike the recording business, which has a history of using innovation to fuel growth, most guitar companies live comfortably in the past. "The business is incredibly conservative," says Adrian Freed, research director at the Guitar Innovation Group at the UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. "One thing I can say about Henry without reservation is that he desperately wants to introduce some innovation."
The desperation isn't driven by sales. In the US alone nearly a million electric guitars were purchased in 2002 - three times as many as a decade ago - to the tune of $477 million. Most of the guitars - roughly 85 percent - were knockoffs of the Les Paul and its only real competition, the Stratocaster. And since Juszkiewicz took control of Gibson, in 1986, revenue has soared. The Music Trades, an industry journal, estimates Gibson's annual revenue increased from $12 million to $130 million in 2002.
Despite sales success, Juszkiewicz says there's more work to do. The Les Paul may not be connecting with the generation whose idea of a garage band is a youngster hunched over a laptop with Pro Tools. Since Guns N' Roses imploded in the mid-'90s, no Les Paul player has commanded the cross-genre visibility of Slash in his heyday. Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, both Les Paul players, don't have Slash's following or showmanship. Juszkiewicz is banking on his digital strategy to reignite excitement for the Les Paul.
It won't be easy. For starters, the Magic guitar's Ethernet output is incompatible with traditional guitar gear. No amplifier or effects pedal on the market today works with the instrument. For now, musicians will need to plug the guitar into a "breakout box" that converts the digital signal back to analog; a standard guitar cable plugs into the box's output. Second, guitars that work with the digital world via MIDI, the universal language of musical instruments, do exist. Guitarists like Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood already make all kinds of digitally enhanced music onstage.
The magic about Magic is it's portability Greenwood may have a digital world at his fingertips, but his guitar still delivers an analog signal, requiring mediating devices to make it digital. The goal of the Magic guitar is to be fully plug-and-play, so a musician can simply jack it into a PC - no USB cables or external devices necessary. And while MIDI is just a sequence of instructions, Magic transmits real digital audio. The signal is digitized at the source and remains digital thereafter. What you get is what you keep, without the noise, interference, and other vagaries of the messy analog world. "Magic just sounds better," Juszkiewicz insists. "It sounds more authentic."
Guitars have typically been paired with digital technology to create various kinds of synthesizers. More recently, advances in sound modeling, using complex algorithms that simulate other instruments, have created a sort of identity crisis in the guitar world. In 2002, California-based Line 6 unveiled its Variax, which mimics 26 classic guitars - everything from a 1935 Dobro Alumilite to a 1968 Rickenbacker - with remarkable precision. Juszkiewicz is taking Gibson in the opposite direction. "We're not synthesizing sound," he says. "We're putting out a much better original signal." His claim, in essence, is that Magic makes the Les Paul sound more like itself.
By: lyndon
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Lyndon is a self confessed Gibson Guitar nut. Check out his website at for articles, advice and sales
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