Is this “The World’s Most Advanced Guitar”? Gibson certainly thinks so, and going on the amount of tech squeezed into the Les Paul-shaped body of the Dusk Tiger, it just might be true.
First, the body. It might look like a Les Paul, but the top is flat, not contoured, and the mahogany back of the marblewood body covers a chambered interior which reduces weight and tweaks tonality. The neck is pretty standard, made from mahogany and featuring tiger-tooth shaped markers on the fretboard.
But let’s get to the real meat, which is inside the guitar. This thing has enough gadgetry to put a tin-can of people up on the Moon. The tuning keys are smaller versions of Gibson’s “Robot Tuners”, and can quickly switch between various alternate tunings on-the-fly, or just tune the guitar for you (500 times on a single battery charge).
The bridge is pretty much a standard Tune-o-Matic bridge, but incorporates a piezo pickup into each saddle, and has separate outputs for all six strings. God know what kind of devilish effects that will allow.
The regular pickups also differ from the Les Paul standard setup. The neck pickup is a hum-canceling single-coil model (P-90h), and the bridge pickup is a Burst Bucker 3, a slightly over-wound humbucker.
Then things go crazy. You get an internal pre-amp and parametric EQ, and if you hook up the Dusk Tiger to its companion “Robot Interface Pack (RIP)”, a little box of magic, you can send a FireWire output to any computer. Software, like Ableton Live Lite 8, is even included in the package.
But best of all is the Master Control Knob, a single circular knob which not only controls the guitar but lights up like a Daft Punk helmet thanks to an integral LED display.
All this doesn’t come cheap. For this handsome piece of gizmo-stuffed craftsmanship you’re looking at $4,150. We suggest you fire a roadie or two.