What do you electric players think of this thing?
 

Cool concept - butt ugly guitar.

I don't get it.

Many have tried this concept, and many have failed.

Electric guitar players are just as much traditionalists as their acoustic counterparts.

And their audiences don't care what they are playing.

Solution to a non-problem. The market has repeatedly shouted "I Don't Care!"

Acoustic guitar forum isn't really the best place to look for opinions on something so out-of-the-box. I was ready to dislike it too, and not that I really want one, but if I had a large enough income and a place to hold lots of guitars on the walls, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, if it felt and played well enough, which I'm assuming that anyone doing the homework to put all these concepts into play would have likely have already been obsessing over.
Maybe I'd end up selling it eventually, but really, there are some pretty cool concepts at play here.

I like some of the ideas just from a technology/gadget standpoint, but it is a solution in search of a problem.

I can see if you needed to follow a heavy metal tune with a country tune this might be helpful, but who is really doing that?

In the studio, I guess you could bring only one guitar, but again most studio players are used to having 2-3 minimum, so... why?

It reminds me of the Line 6 modelling guitars. Sounds like a great idea (on paper) but in practice they aren't the most awesome of instruments (actually very generic in my experience).

Gretsch Bikini (1961) - folding slab body into which any combination of 6-string guitar/4-string bass necks could be loaded, and every bit as ugly as the Boaz:

https://images.reverb.com/image/uplo...yhq36vbmfr.jpg

FYI it was also available in a single-neck version, both of which were mercifully discontinued in 1962 after less than one year of production:

https://images.reverb.com/image/uplo...be5lgo8tru.jpg

I can't even imagine the question for which someone thought these were the answer... :confused:

I think it's cool enough, just not my thing.

I'm no expert on guitar marketing, so I'll mostly leave that to folks who know more about that. Speaking generally, most "new ideas" fail, it's not just new guitar ideas.

The guitar that this is most reminiscent of to me is the late Sixties Dan Armstrong Lucite guitar, which was originally sold with the idea that one could easily drop in various modular pickups.

Even further back, Leo Fender had modular ideas for serviceability and ease of manufacture decades before that. Have a problem with your neck? Here, screw a new one on. Or how about the Strat all the electronics on the control plate except for the output jack idea? What Leo probably didn't plan is that over the decades that serviceability idea became a huge platform for mods and aftermarket parts.

Of course the modularity concept only works to the maximum after it succeeds in the marketplace so that a wide variety of parts is assured. If Dan Armstrong had sold tens of thousands of guitars, many of us would assume in an alternate time-line that trying out a new pickup would be easier than trying a new set of strings.

As the owner of a JTV era Variax, I'd have to say it's not a bad guitar just as a guitar. The modeling of various guitars is middling* at best in my experience, but the instant open tunings are super neat.


*How much of this is psychological? I can't say, When I play my Gretsch I feel like I'm playing a different instrument, same with a Les Paul, or Stratocaster. Some of that is just acting in costume, some of that may related to physical attributes of the guitar (how easily can one induce feedback, where are the volume and tone controls, what kind of bridge does it have). That probably makes me play differently and hear what I play differently. When I turn the dial on the Variax between models no such different object is in my hands. It looks like the linked guitar tries to imitate some of the physical layout to mitigate this.

It's an interesting idea and makes a bold aesthetic statement. Of course, that opens you up to not dovetailing with every taste. I still haven't adjusted to Steve Howe switching from Rickenbacker to Steinberg headless to play "Awaken" but he says the Rick couldn't stay in tune and the Steiny was the only thing that could.

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/67/c0/b1/6...ar-players.jpg

Bob

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but this project is doomed to failure. History has demonstrated that guitar players, as a group, are very conservative and highly resistant to innovation. Many companies who produced cutting edge products which addressed current guitar design issues have come...and gone. Both Fender and Gibson produced subjectively better new models...but the guitar buying public rejected them. These companies learnt their lesson the hard way and now only produce variants of their core models. Steinberger (RIP) has already been mentioned, a perfectly balanced instrument, with a stable neck and you only tuned it ONCE. Then that was followed by Ken Parker who designed the most well thought out, and perfect electric guitar...or so he thought. Paul Reed Smith is on record stating he was very close to going under during the late 90s/early 2000s...and I think we all know the consensus on guitar synths, modelling, robo tuners, piezos and solid state amps!

It would appear that guitarists, as a group, are only interested in guitars designed during the 1950's (Ok I know the Les Paul was designed in 1941, but it was released in 1952!), and amps designed in the 1960's.

I agree that it’s not visually appealing. Also, the design assumes that the pickups are the main determinant of guitar sound, not body material, or kinds of construction like having chambers, semi hollow, etc. While definitely utilitarian, would enough players want to give up three of their favorite guitars for one modular one to make this worthwhile? I don’t think so. Maybe it could be a travel alternative if taking multiple guitars wasn’t a good option.

Yep, not my thing but it doesn't mean that it won't appeal to some.

For whatever reason it provoked in me how Leo would have felt introducing his Stratocaster back in 1954. (Space age at the time but now considered timeless beauty).

It’s butt ugly, and looks more like A mid evil battle weapon, but a somewhat interesting idea. The price is not outrageous all things considered. That said, I don’t see it catching on because I feel guitarist or a very traditional breed.