Autotune Guitar Revealed by Peavey – Gimmick?

Peavey have teamed up with Antares to bring you the AT-200 — a guitar that simulates tuning — is this a gimmick?

Regular readers will recall that we announced nearly a year ago that Antares was working on this technology – and I had a somewhat skeptical view of their approach back then. My views are so far unchanged by Peavey and Parker launching Auto-Tune Guitars at NAMM.

My position is this: A robotic guitar actually tunes your strings – Auto-Tune doesn’t, but gives you a digital output that sounds tuned while your strings continue to vibrate in dissonance. My conclusion is that experienced guitarists may use this for ‘effects’, but not for tuning – beginner guitarists on the other hand may enjoy the great sounds they get, but at the price of failing to learn about tuning and harmonics.

So here it is: if you are a beginner and don’t mind the ‘tax’ added by the DSP technology from Antares, then go ahead and have fun.

If you are more than a beginner – then you’ll be interested in the DSP effects, meaning you’ll be comparing the Peavey AT-200 offering to alternatives like the Line 6 Variax and Gibson Firebird X.

Peavey haven’t announced a price yet (they’ve only said it will be under $500) – but they have said it won’t be available until July 2012. This delay in delivery, or what I’d prefer to call a some-what early announcement, indicates some desperation to me (perhaps they think this is a category killer product and are worried about Parker or another guitar manufacturer getting something out earlier) – they could have waited to make the announcement during the lead up to Summer NAMM 2012 which starts on July 12.

Perhaps Peavey have also seen the problem in market segmentation and targeting that I outlined above, because in their press release and NAMM demo they stressed “intonation problems” (something beginners don’t understand) and the ability of the AT-200 to overcome them – that suggests to me even more that this is a guitar that is strategically missing all probable target markets.

But I’ll be the first person to admit I’m wrong about the Peavey AT-200 if I see some good arguments to the contrary – so go ahead and post your ‘for’ or ‘against’ arguments below in the comments area. Source: www.GuitarSite.com

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