The guitar was sold at a benefit auction held by U2’s The Edge at New York’s Hard Rock Cafe and according to Reuters brought in $400,000. Some other items that sold in the auction include former President Bill Clinton’s saxophone ($54,000) and a pair of John Lennon’s round, blue-tinted sunglasses.

The money was raised to help support musicians who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. A total of $2,436,900 was raised.

[Via Reuters]

A big announcement at this year’s NAMM Show was that of the release of the Stratocaster VG, Fender’s first modeling guitar. After spending a few days researching Gibson’s digital guitar, I figured I might as well take a look at what Fender is offering.

The Guitar

This guitar starts off like any other American Stratocaster. It has an alder body, maple neck, and rosewood or maple fingerboard. It has 22 medium-jumbo frets and three American Strat single-coil pickups in the standard fashion. You get your familiar master volume and tone as well as a 5-way pickup selector switch. The bridge is an American 2-point synchronized tremolo. The hardware and pick guard are all in standard Strat form. Like I said, it is exactly what you would expect from a regular tried and true American Strat. The sound is output through a standard 1/4″ analog jack on the front of the guitar.

In addition to all that normal Strat stuff, there are a few extra components which make this a modeling guitar. First there is a Rolland VG hex pickup right between the bridge pickup and the bridge. This hex pickup allows for each string to be individually sensed and processed. There are also two additional 5-position knobs; one for selecting a modeling mode and one for selecting a tuning. The last difference is a little blue battery indicator light. That’s right… I said battery. The VG requires 4 AA batteries to power the internal processing unit. So what does all this jazz do? Well, each string is individually processed and modeled depending on which tone and tuning you select, then that modeled signal is output through the 1/4″ analog jack just as it always has. This means that you don’t need any extra equipment to use the modeling features, just plug it into your amp and go.

Continue reading Fender VG Modeling Stratocaster Guitar In Depth

I came across this demo video that someone recorded at NAMM this year. The Fender rep goes through all the functionality of the Stratocaster VG guitar pretty quick.

Essentially what we have here is a standard American Strat that also has digital modeling hardware built in. It runs off of 4 AA batteries. The guy in the video says “if you get the high voltage ones that you put in digital cameras it will last about 10 hours.”

Anyway, check out the video.

Video found via Zillinois

Well, it’s that time of year again and NAMM Show has come and gone…. and I missed again. It’s not like I missed the actual show, because I’m not a NAMM member, but I did miss all the fresh news about products and such.

For those of you not in the loop, NAMM used to stand for “National Association of Music Merchants”. These days they have dropped the full name and just go by the acronym. Basically they are a global organization for the musical equipment industry. Each year they hold a trade show that exhibits all the great new music making products from every company. It is not open to the public, you have to be a NAMM member to attend and to be a NAMM member you have to make, buy, and/or sell musical instruments and products. Right now I am just playing a little catch-up, so lets see what I can find about this years show.

On the official NAMM Show website they have a recap of each day including pictures.

Play Guitar Now has a load of great pictures from each day of the show.

Cary at Electric Guitar Review linked to another NAMM 2007 picture gallery at Modern Guitars Magazine that also has a whole bunch of great shots.

Line 6 unveiled the Floor POD Plus basically combining a POD 2.0 with a huge list of premium effects in a portable stomp box floor set.

Gibson announced 11 new guitar models including the digital HD.6X-Pro. Modern Guitars Magazine has all of the details.

Fender showed off the VG Stratocaster, a modeling guitar. It is equipped with a digital pickup, a modeling dial with 37 different models, and a tuning knob that allows you to select from 5 alternate tunings.

Eddie Van Halen and Fender announced a signature EVH Frankenstein replica. The replicas play like a dream but physically feature every nick and mark the original has.

Man, I could probably go all day reading up on all the great stuff to come out of the show… I guess I still have a lot of reading to do.

I know this is a few months old but Popagadget has a post about the new digital internet enabled guitar by Fender and Intel.

Fender and Intel have partnered to create a concept of an internet-enabled super guitar. The new revisited Fender Telecaster will incorporate Intel Centrino mobile technology to allow Internet access on the go. The TELECASTER guitar contains a Hewlett Packard TC1100 tablet laptop with 1.25ghz RAM and an Echo Indigo I/O soundcard.

With the new Fender every musician will be able to download music directly on their “super-guitar”, record new ideas on it and email them directly to whoever they want. It is supposed to even incorporate a webcam, so you can stream yourself rocking onstage to the whole Internet world.

The guitar has a full computer in it with the LCD screen in the back of the body. Watch out for those belt buckles, cause that’s right where the display is.

It sounds like an interesting enough idea to me, but I don’t think it is really innovative enough to sell. I am much more interested in the Gibson digital guitar.

Here is a link to the Intel/Fender Telecaster Concept Guitar on Fender’s website.