Here’s a bit of guitar tech for you. A University of Maryland professor and a couple of students have formed a guitar company, Coil Guitars, based around their innovations in guitar switches and electronics.
In a nutshell, they’ve created a way to increase the number of tones from a set of humbuckers well beyond what normal [...]

Here at Guitarbalooga, we believe that if you want your kid to play the guitar, you must start the brainwashing early. You don’t want the kid picking up an accordian or, God help you, a tuba. No, your little EVH-to-be needs to be, ahem, encouraged with soft cuddly toys like this one from The Grateful [...]

Jack Black, 1/2 of the rock power duo Tenacious D, has a starring role in a new Double Fine Productions/Electronic Arts game, Brütal Legend, due out for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in the fall of 2009. Brütal Legend is the rock-child of Tim Schafer, a video-game designer with a sense of humor who also brought us [...]

I’ve never been a big fan of guitar pedals, preferring instead rack mountables like the old-school ADA-MP1. I think most mass-produced pedals sound terrible. But lately, I’ve heard some great boutique pedals, some of which I’ve posted about before. Hell, people have probably been doing this for years, so forgive me if I’m just catching [...]

Want your very own Pick of Destiny?
Don’t have any idea what the hell I’m talking about? Check it out.

I posted about GarageBand ‘09 about a month ago but just today stumbled across this in-depth review of the new guitar-centric features like amp modeling.

First off, it no longer feels like GarageBand was designed primarily for keyboard players. With a fancy new interface, GarageBand now gives users more visual cues to make adjustments to their [...]

This thing looks like it might be fun if you have an iPhone.
Introducing the world’s rockingest, jamtasticest, funnest, pocket-able electric guitar ever to be squeezed into an iPhone. iShred sends the highest quality guitar sounds through a bank of crazily configurable stomp box effects, rendering the result into screaming, distorted, wailing, looping, feedback-fueled audible gold!
Here’s [...]

A while back, I wrote about guitarist/tinkerer Rob Morris, who connected his Wiimote to his guitar to create some cool effects (follow the wrote-about link for a video). At the time I posted it, I thought he had to hack the thing to accomplish this. He didn’t. Boston.com posted the steps today. Seems actually pretty [...]

Found this on the tubes today. The Make Believe Company makes this awesome toddler’s (2-years-old and up) play guitar. From Fawn and Forest:
Powered by a kid’s imagination and voice, the Guitar by Make Believe Company is a miniature version of the real thing. Forget fancy electrics + squeaky sounds, the wood Guitar is a naturally [...]

I must get one of these things:
The harmony processor creates 2- to 4-part harmonies directly from your vocals, in the same key as your accompanying instrument. Studio-quality reverb lets you independently add depth to your dry and harmony vocals.
The focused 256-band articulate vocoder, designed by the same EMS genius who made vocoding famous, features adjustable [...]

It seems that high-tech guitar-lesson technology has taken a jump forward. iPerform is a company who uses motion-capture technology to record the exact movements of guitar professionals to produce 3D guitar lessons that let students zoom and rotate around their virtual teacher, slow things down without affecting pitch, and play licks again and again. And [...]

Apple announced at MacWorld 2009 that the new version of GarageBand (’09) includes a couple of nifty new features:
Basic Lessons:
GarageBand ’09 introduces Basic Lessons: the easiest way to learn piano and guitar, right on your Mac. Follow along at your own pace with interactive lessons that teach you the fundamentals through HD video instruction, synchronized [...]

Zoom is set to release the Zoom H4N portable recorder. The H4N is the next generation of the H2 and H4. Features include:

Simultaneous 4-track recording
Hi-impedance inputs for recording guitar/bass
24-bit/96KHz
Up to 32 gig capacity

These things make for a great way to record shows. Remember the days of lugging around those bulky shit-sounding cassette 4-tracks that could [...]

This is pretty cool. A guitarist named Rob Morris connected the accelerometer from his Wiimote to his guitar for some pretty cool effects. One thing I thought was pretty funny was that in the live performance in the second half of the video, you can clearly see that he left the Wiimote wrist strap on [...]

I’m not a big Guitar Hero fan, partly because I’m just sick of everyone talking about it, and partly because of the grotesque plastic doo-dads you have to buy to put on the Wiimote. But this thing might prompt me to finally break down and buy a version of Guitar Hero.