> 1. Technologically the instrument ran its course. While the tech was still innovative in the 90s with the new digital effects, it hasn't changed much in 20 years.
This is... whilst not exactly incorrect, it's not the whole truth either. The article touched a little bit on this with the robotic tuner thing, but didn't fully explain why.
In my experience partaking in internet guitar forums over the decades, the vast majority of guitar players are really conservative. Extremely conservative. Especially people who mostly are into Fender/Gibson/PRS. They shun every new material (graphite/carbon fiber necks/fretboards), even if it has clear advantages (torsion/tensile/impact strength, weight, temperature/humidity insensitivity), often with unscientific emotional-based hand-waving like "it sounds too cold".
Headless guitars also stayed niche, even though they have clear advantages (lighter, shorter, more well-balanced, can't break your headstock off — a quite common way to damage your guitar).
It also took decades for 7-string guitars not to get scoffed at. The first 15+ years you had a lot of guitarists making fun of people with 7-string guitars. After they became somewhat accepted, 8-string guitars had an easier time, mind you.
People are very sceptical of True Temperament (http://www.truetemperament.com/) as well, believing that you can't perform string bending (you can, it doesn't really feel any different), and decided that to be the truth without even bothering to try.
There are still many areas on the guitar you can improve and innovate (and some stuff out there already that primarily Ned Steinberger showed us in the 80s could (and IMO should) be standard), but people want fragile, heavy and climate-sensitive "tonewood" in their guitars. They want soft brass bridges. They want maintenance-heavy soft "nickel/silver" (actually brass and nickel) frets. They want headstocks.
Maybe these old people in the article (I'm 37 so I'm one of them as well, I guess) are the problem, and when younger people that don't revere the word "vintage" so much can usher in the era of the truly modern guitar that Ned Steinberger has shown us glimpses of? One can only hope.
>Maybe these old people in the article (I'm 37 so I'm one of them as well, I guess) are the problem, and when younger people that don't revere the word "vintage" so much can usher in the era of the truly modern guitar that Ned Steinberger has shown us glimpses of? One can only hope.
It's already happening. A huge proportion of young guitarists are playing metal, which is a hugely progressive scene in terms of technology. The coolest young guitarists are playing Strandberg Bodens, Kiesel Vaders and the weird and wonderful stuff from Ibanez's Iron Label. 7, 8 and 9 strings, fanned frets, headless, active electronics, carbon and titanium reinforcement, it's all on the table. They're abandoning valve amps in favour of Helix, AxeFX and Bias. They couldn't give a toss about Hendrix and Clapton - they revere the likes of Tosin Abasi and Rob Scallion.
The baby boomers have disproportionate influence because they've got a ton of disposable income, but big changes are afoot in the guitar business.
Sure. Headless designs is going in the right direction IMO, but other than that, don't fool yourself, the Strandberg and Kiesel guitars etc. are still very traditional designs:
Wooden body, wooden neck, wooden fretboard, and in the case of Strandberg, Ibanez AANJ-style neck joint and silver/nickel frets (Carvin/Kiesel have neck-through and SS frets as options, or at least used to have). Most, if not all parts, you can get from Warmoth/All Parts, no custom designed parts there, apart from maybe the Strandberg's string fastening mechanism/headpiece, but that one is pretty crude, to be honest.
Strandberg use stainless frets and carbon neck reinforcement on everything but the entry-level Classic model. Stainless frets are a $40 option on any Kiesel and carbon reinforcement is standard on any of their extended-range guitars. The Strandberg headpiece and bridge is made in-house; Kiesel use custom headless hardware designed in collaboration with Hipshot. Strandberg use fanned frets throughout their range and Kiesel offer it as an option on most of their solid-body guitars.
There are merits to both the neck-through construction used on the Kiesel Vader and the bolt-on joint used by Strandberg. Through-necks are arguably more stable, but bolt-ons are far easier to maintain and repair.
The Strandberg neck profile is anything but conventional:
There's nothing terribly wrong with wood construction. It's aesthetically pleasing, relatively economical and more than strong, stiff and stable enough when used appropriately.
Line6 has created the Variax that uses the piezo signal of each string to model other stringed instruments and their electronic system (and even things like banjos and resonator guitars)
> can't break your headstock off — a quite common way to damage your guitar
Really? Are people using their guitars as hammers? I think it's pretty damn hard to break a headstock off. Much more common damage to a guitar is denting the frets, distorting the neck or busting the tuning pegs. I'd put "breaking off the headstock" as the 99th percentile of common ways people materially damage their guitar.
Gibson guitars are notorious for broken headstocks, due to an archaic and inherently defective design. Modern scarf-jointed headstocks do occasionally break, but they're more prone to cracking around the machine head holes.
I should've said accidental damage. Dropping the guitar. Knocking the stand over. Shipping damage. Guitar trauma, basically.
Tuning pegs don't really tend to fail. Unless you have those "vintage" Les Paul-style ones (yuck), but they're easy to replace.
Frets get worn down, necks tend to bow or arch, or at worst warp (more seldom). Fret recrowning/redressing, truss rod adjustment and fretboard leveling are part of the regular maintenance of a long-lived electric guitar.
Now, headstock breakages are usually pretty easy to fix for a luthier, and the result is stronger, since a glued joint is stronger, just not as strong as a glued scarf joint.
I don't think it's just conservatism. When buying a guitar, most buyers are primarily concerned with three things: does it sound good, is it easy to play, and does it look good.
Graphite and carbon fiber has superior properties in some respect, but substituting carbon fiber for wood doesn't necessarily make the guitar sound or look better or improve playability. Compared to acoustic instruments, electric guitars are low maintenance and durable. People in very humid or very dry environments might prefer carbon fiber to wood, but for most of us, wood is fine.
Robotuners similarly don't solve a significant problem that most players have, and they're complex and probably costly to make and introduce a battery to a guitar that didn't need one before. The convenience of automatic tuners probably aren't worth the costs.
Headless guitars similarly don't solve a particular problem, as far as I can tell. I expect to be able to rest a guitar on leg and not have it tip one way or the other while I'm playing. Most guitars balance fine with a proper headstock. I haven't tried a Steinberger, maybe they're really great guitars, but there's no particular reason for me to expect that I would enjoy playing a headless guitar more than a "normal" guitar. (Note: I have built headless cigar box guitars [1], and I kind of like the design, but that's a bit different than a full-size electric.)
True Temperament is more interesting because that actually is addressing a real problem, sort of. Electric guitars are pretty bad when it comes to tuning, but the problem isn't so much intonation, the bigger problem is that 12-tone equal temperament is a compromise -- you can sound okay in every key (12-TET) or you can sound really good in one particular key (just intonation), but you can't have both. (The latter alternative leads you to some interesting looking fingerboards [2].)
I would be more interested in the TT guitars if they were focusing on temperament rather than intonation errors. (I suspect they may actually be doing that, but their marketing material says they're correcting intonation. I'm skeptical that any normal guitars would need such extreme corrections just to play in exact 12-TET unless the action is set unreasonably high.)
TT also has the problem that normal frets can be repaired or replaced by any competent luthier using ordinary guitar tools, but I wouldn't even know you would do a fret dress on TT guitar. Maybe you'd need a special crowning file that goes around corners or something?
I think there are some ways that the electric guitar could be improved, but to some degree, I think unscientific emotional hand-wavy reasons can be a better guide to making an instrument people want than to approach the problem by using science to optimize specific criteria based on some untested assumption that optimizing that criteria will make the guitar better.
This is... whilst not exactly incorrect, it's not the whole truth either. The article touched a little bit on this with the robotic tuner thing, but didn't fully explain why.
In my experience partaking in internet guitar forums over the decades, the vast majority of guitar players are really conservative. Extremely conservative. Especially people who mostly are into Fender/Gibson/PRS. They shun every new material (graphite/carbon fiber necks/fretboards), even if it has clear advantages (torsion/tensile/impact strength, weight, temperature/humidity insensitivity), often with unscientific emotional-based hand-waving like "it sounds too cold".
Headless guitars also stayed niche, even though they have clear advantages (lighter, shorter, more well-balanced, can't break your headstock off — a quite common way to damage your guitar).
It also took decades for 7-string guitars not to get scoffed at. The first 15+ years you had a lot of guitarists making fun of people with 7-string guitars. After they became somewhat accepted, 8-string guitars had an easier time, mind you.
People are very sceptical of True Temperament (http://www.truetemperament.com/) as well, believing that you can't perform string bending (you can, it doesn't really feel any different), and decided that to be the truth without even bothering to try.
There are still many areas on the guitar you can improve and innovate (and some stuff out there already that primarily Ned Steinberger showed us in the 80s could (and IMO should) be standard), but people want fragile, heavy and climate-sensitive "tonewood" in their guitars. They want soft brass bridges. They want maintenance-heavy soft "nickel/silver" (actually brass and nickel) frets. They want headstocks.
Maybe these old people in the article (I'm 37 so I'm one of them as well, I guess) are the problem, and when younger people that don't revere the word "vintage" so much can usher in the era of the truly modern guitar that Ned Steinberger has shown us glimpses of? One can only hope.