Perhaps the biggest thing that came out of the new product announcements in March was the T1 ToneMatch™ Audio Engine. That's the tiny mixer that can be mounted on your microphone stand. It is terrific that this mighty little marvel is designed to work with the older Classic L1 as well as the Model I that replaces it, and of course the new Model II.

Now that I have been using my T1™ for a few months, I cannot imagine wanting to work any other way. Having all the controls right in front of me is a dream come true. That is control for  volume, EQ, presets, effects and signal routing, a tuner and mutes on individual channels is right at my fingertips. But with all that comes some new considerations for setting the stage and thinking about how things look.

There is an interesting discussion about this on the Bose Musicians Community Message Boards.

Sight Lines and the T1™

John Nell is enjoying his new NS Designs Electric Upright Bass, and I was reminded of my stand-by 'broken string' axe, a Steinberger GM7TA.

When I found it back in the early 90s I thought it was the most technically perfect playing machine I had ever encountered. But try as I might I could not find its voice. I had gotten it at a great price, it was lightweight, fit in a tiny gig bag and seemed indestructible. Even though I wasn't playing it, being an optimist I thought that maybe someday I would grow to appreciate it. But it seemed cold, almost sterile.


The Guitar to the right is a dead ringer for mine.

It was the perfect backup axe so I faithfully slung it over my shoulder to every gig. Since I tend not to break strings it never came out of the bag.

For the past several years I have tended to take an acoustic and an electric to every gig so there was no need to take the old standby. It hasn't seen the light of day since long before I got my first L1™ in 2004.

When John mentioned his NS WAV4 it shook loose a cobweb and I dug out the old gig bag. The Guitar emerged unscathed, and in tune.

Earlier today I plugged it into the T1™.

This has a EMG Humbucker-Single-Humbucker set-up with a five-way selector and coil tap. Add active electronics, Steinberger's Trans-Trem and this headless wonder should be able to do anything. But for all that it has built-in it wasn't until I plugged it into the T1™ that I and found its elusive voice.

I was getting caught up on some of the new things at Gibson.

I found Gibson's two recent offerings,

• Digital Les Paul (HD 6XPro)
  Gibson makes a point of telling us that this is a great traditional analog Guitar with new digital features. The digital features include a new hex pickup that connects to a breakout box providing summed output, stereo output, and individual outputs for the six strings. I'm still trying to figure out how you might use these. I can see running the analog output, or summed output to the T1™. Stereo into two L1™s, or individual outputs to six?
  
  
• Robot Guitar
  
  Robot?
  It has servos that drive the tuning pegs so it physically turns the tuners on the headstock to string-up and tune the Guitar. There is also digital assist for setting the intonation. Those features seemed novel, but not particularly compelling to me. I didn't buy into the argument that intonating a Guitar was a task that required you to surrender your instrument to a guitar technician and wait until your name came up on the waiting list.
  
  Alternate Physical Tunings
  What is interesting is the preprogrammed alternate tunings. (open E, DADGAD, Drop D, Open G, E flat, Double drop D). The strings actually change pitch. This differs from the virtual approach of using a hex pickup and doing the pitch conversion electronically. With this, you don't have the dissonance between hearing the strings on the instrument in one tuning, and hearing the amplified version in another that you get with the Line6, Roland VG, and guitar-synthesizer or midi approaches to alternate tunings.
  
  

And yes, they do look a lot alike.

Digital Les Paul and the L1™
Craig Anderton has a nice blog about his experiences as he is discovering ways to use the Digital Les Paul.


The nice win for the L1™ is that Craig Anderton tells us that his amp of choice, the L1™ serves both expressions of instrument, analog and digital.

 

Discussion: Gibson and the Digital Les Paul and the L1™