Hasta La Gadget!

Users of the iShred Live iOS app (no relation to this thing) now have a pedal board to do the job of, well, a pedal board. Up until recently, the app allowed players to connect their electric guitars to an iPhone or iPad, and use said device as an amplifier, with a near endless array of pedal effects at their fingertips. Looking for a way to make the experience more authentic, Griffin teamed with the folks at Frontier Design Group to create the StompBox, which, according to Griffin’s website, “effectively recreates the experience of an actual pedal board.” It features four separate foot switches, which can be assigned particular effects by the user, and connects to the iPad or iPhone with a 1-meter-long dock connector cable — guitar connection cables are sold separately. Now the future Peter Framptons of the world can scale back on setup time and concentrate on making their guitars talk.

Griffin StompBox pedal board brings authenticity to iPad rocking originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ambidextrous, capacitive, programmable, open source, five simultaneous touch inputs. The Misa Digital Kitara has quite the laundry list of goodies to boast about, but we couldn’t let it slide through CES without getting our fingers on it and exploring for ourselves. The first thing that strikes you about this guitar-shaped synthesizer is its weight distribution — it’s no heavier than a good electric guitar, but a lot more of that weight is contained within its neck — and the second will inevitably be its lightning-quick response to touch. Misa tells us latency is less than 5 milliseconds and it felt like it.

There are two main modes of operation: a string mode, as seen above, and a ball mode allowing for even more adjustability. Both modes can then be further tweaked by choosing between the red and blue setting, with the former allowing for the performance of hammer-ons. Sliding your finger around the 8-inch touchscreen can do all sorts of wonderful things as well, such as altering pitch, tempo and volume, while those fearful of having no tactile feedback in string mode can apply a clear sheet over the screen that has tiny little ridges where the strings would usually reside. We say “usually,” because you’ll be able to configure the distance between the imaginary strings for yourself. The Kitara runs an open source Linux OS, which will be updatable via USB and is already compatible with Mac, PC and, naturally, Linux machines. It also has more than a hundred sound presets and we’ve been promised the option to customize them and create new ones by playing around with the algorithms in the future.

The black Kitara is made out of good old plastic (but it’s made very well) and costs $849 whereas the silver one you see in the gallery below is constructed out of a single block of aluminum and will set buyers back $2,899. Pre-orders are going on now through Misa Digital’s online store and shipping is set to start on April 3. Video follows below.

Continue reading Misa Digital Kitara hands-on preview (video)

Misa Digital Kitara hands-on preview (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 10:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so it’s not one of the greatest guitar battles of all-time, but it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so we’ll take what we can get. Guitar maker Gibson has scored a win in its fight against PaperJamz manufacturer WowWee.

Gibson got an injunction after suing WowWee and a number of high profile retailers, including Walmart, Amazon, eBay, Target, K-Mart, Toys “R” Us, and Walgreens, arguing that the musical toys are much to close to Gibson’s iconic guitar body shape. The defendants in the case are, naturally, set to appeal the decision.

A win for Gibson, whom TechDirt refers to as being “notoriously litigious.” The company has pulled in a good deal of money over the years licensing its decision to third-party companies. Of course, it’s got to sting that the decision came right after the Christmas holiday. The damage (that is, if one can really successfully argue that promoting the Gibson icon really constitutes “damage) has already been done, right?

Best Buy nabs exclusive Rock Band 3 Squier Stratocaster originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let’s face it, the daddy of all motion-controlled gaming is the humble art of air guitar. There’s no question about it, creationists and evolutionists all agree, the genesis of our modern craze for motion sensitivity was your uncle rocking out to Jimmy Page’s face-melting solo in Stairway to Heaven. Now that we’ve got the history lesson out of the way, someone’s gone and programmed Kinect to recognize the fine craft of your air strumming and deliver concordant chords in response. Excellent!

Continue reading Kinect meets its maker with new air guitar hack (video)

Kinect meets its maker with new air guitar hack (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 10:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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