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Post by ccoleman on Aug 21, 2006 7:30:38 GMT -5
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Post by sumgai on Aug 21, 2006 17:40:08 GMT -5
cc, Sonny Landreth has been using the Transperformance for years, and has been instrumental in the "beta testing" of their development. He likes it because it can reach a new tuning much quicker than his hands ever will, and he plays slide guitar in many modes and keys. For him, it's a Gawd-send. I like the idea, but not the price, so far.  I can't comment on the other unit, though. Looks interesting, I'll check it out further. sumgai |
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Post by ccoleman on Aug 23, 2006 6:53:12 GMT -5
the gearwire one is only 799 (?) vs the transperformance around 3000...
is this going to become as popular as the floyd rose tremolo... getting mass manufactured and ending up going down in price ??
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Post by sumgai on Aug 23, 2006 14:18:31 GMT -5
cc, Probably not. It's full of electro-mechanical toys, so the price differential for mass production won't be that great. Or so I predict for the near future (2 - 3 years). The real problem will be attracting enough players to surpass any milestone required for that pricepoint in the first place. It happens that while the two units work quite differently, they both respond to changes automatically. The trick will be to stifle the sensitivity to those changes when such would be unwanted - to wit, bending a note up two or three semitones! I'm not sure how they handle that, other than disabling "auto-tune" mode, but then again, I don't have either unit on my bench to play with.  But wait, there's more..... The Tronical unit claims to make no alterations to your ax that can't be reversed to stock condition. But they make only one size of machine head, and I know for a fact that there are at least four different bushing sizes (the hole diameter in the wood of the headstock), just for Fender guitars alone. I suspect the same variety exists for LP and other Gubsons, due to the variety of machine head makers out there. They all have an idea of what's the best diameter for that bushing, so if you install a m.h. from Brand X into a hole that formerly had a m.h. from Brand Y, then you may be doing some reaming out, or you may be inserting some form of alternate bushing that takes up the slack (a reducer). That said, the machine heads appear to be about the same size as normal, with a little box on the back of the headstock, so I don't think there'd be too much added weight to throw off one's balance. But now I'm wondering, can you manually tune one of these puppies without damaging the internal motor and gears? And Tronical works by sensing the strings vibrations via a piezo pickup in the bridge saddle itself. There's another replacement item that can revert to stock when desired, but I've already installed piezo saddles for my Roland gear (a Ghost system from Graphtech) - what're the chances that I can use my current saddles to drive their system? That's a deal breaker for me, if I can't do that. (All of that data was gleaned from their page at Tronical Info.) On to the Transperformance. These guys leave the machine heads alone, but they replace the entire bridge (and vibrato) tailpiece assembly. It also requires some pretty drastic alteration to the guitar's body, and that makes it irreversible. Plus, the thing works by directly sensing the string tension, which should let me use my own piezo saddles, right? Oh no, they have to use their special saddles that mount to tiny little force accelerometers. As you've guessed by now, no piezo option available, so I'm out on that one too. Net result: limited market for either of them. Their claims are not too outlandish, I've heard the Transperformance in action (on Sonny Landreth's two latest albums), so I know it works..... for a slide guitar player. More to the point, for much less than the price of the cheaper one, I can do the same thing, and much more quickly, with a VG-8 or VG-88. Well, neither of those can do the autotune bit, but I haven't had a string go out of tune in over 10 years!!!! (I mean it, I simply don't have that problem. Must be the fact that I respect my gear, and don't abuse it all to hell and back. But that's a story for a different thread.  ) But when it comes to changing tunings to something different that EADGBE, I've got it covered, and mosh-kosh at that. Bottom line for me is that I'm not interested at this time. Later, who knows, but not right now. Other people's mileage may vary. ;D sumgai |
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Post by ccoleman on Aug 24, 2006 11:47:14 GMT -5
But now I'm wondering, can you manually tune one of these puppies without damaging the internal motor and gears? YEs, the video of the tronical demo at NAMM (on their site) shows the guys manually tuning the tuners like on a normal guitar. |
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Post by sumgai on Aug 25, 2006 2:36:02 GMT -5
cc, True enough, but that's in the instant..... what about down the road? Damage can be "right now" (the so-called "WTF" variety), or it can hide for years, and show up only after you've been lulled into a false sense of security. (aka the "Now what the hell caused that" kind of damage.) Not casting aspersions here, you understand. ;D But before I lay out as many guilders for one of these as I did for my guitar, I wanna know that I'm not gonna be sorry. Been bit too many times by the "Customer-as-beta-tester" syndrome.  sumgai |
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Post by ccoleman on Aug 25, 2006 7:03:21 GMT -5
I would hope they have a long enough warranty that any problem crops up while it is still in force..
otherwise you can demand a specific warranty on the machine heads and see if they accept.
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) But when it comes to changing tunings to something different that EADGBE, I've got it covered, and mosh-kosh at that. 