Now technology has taken it a step farther. To the point that technology is just as essential as picks, strings and tuning pegs, sometimes even fazing out these natural elements of a guitar. No I am not talking about Guitar Hero. While how the game was produced is pretty amazing and it is definitely a lot of fun, we all know Guitar Hero has yet create a real musician. No we are talking about something much more real.

Misa Digital Guitar

First we have the Misa Digital Guitar. While it has some completely new elements of its own and definetly strays from the original design of the guitar, I would venture to say this creation still classifies as an intrument. It is not quite guitar, but it definetly isn’t a Guitar Hero controller either.

This design has completely removed such elements as the strings, pickups and tuning pegs. It uses a touch pad for you picking hand to control the sound. It can be played using finger taps, drags and slides.

Every note on the fretboard is sensed, so as you guessed an actual knowledge of the fretboard, scales and chords is needed. This is a pretty cool little guitar like critter. I don’t think any of us would actually trade our real guitar for the Misa Digital Guitar, but I also don’t think any of us would say no to getting one. You can watch the video below to see it in action.

Gibson Robot Guitar

Our second digital guitar is the Gibson Robot Guitar. This guitar is a guitar through and through. Strings, pickups, the whole sha-bang. I guess the best way I can decribe this guitar is to call it the lazy man’s guitar.

We’ve all played with are guitar just little out of tune because we are too lazy to tune it, or played our guitar with five string because we are too lazy to change the strings, well at least I have.

Gibson has come up with a solution to this, the Robot Guitar. Yep it tunes itself. You simple switch it to the tuning you want (about 10 tunings including standard are programmed in), strum the guitar and it tunes itself. The Tuning machines quite literally turn themselves until the tone is correct.

Need to add new strings? No problem, simply put the string through the tuning machine, tighten the holding screw, cut the string and the guitar will bring the string to tension. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, personally I prefer to tune it myself, but it is pretty cool.

Gibson Digital Guitar

The last and my personal favorite of the 3 is the Gibson Digital Guitar. This one is really quite amazing. It literally gives out an HD digital output. That means it send a signal completely free from interference.

The Hex humbucking pickups can pickup the signals of each of the 6 strings individually and send a separate signal. That means you can record six separate lines at the same time. Change distortion, volume and tone for each individual string. This is a pretty sweet guitar and there are probably not too many of use that would trade our guitar in a heartbeat for this one. To see more you can watch the video to the side below.

That is why no one dreams of playing a $100 Walmart special (no offence if you own a $100 Walmart Special). Not everyone can afford a six or seven hundred dollar guitar, that is where places like Ebay come in handy.

Did you shutter when you heard me talk about buying an instrument off the Internet? I know I would have a couple years back. You might be surprised hear that you can actually feel pretty safe about buying an instruments from Ebay.

The trick is to distinguish from those trying to rip you off and those that are honest. This lesson is all about how you can feel confident about the product you are buying and the person selling it to you on Ebay.

The Description

The first thing to look at is the description and the pictures. They should tell you if it has any problems or scratches. It is important to read the description carefully. If the seller is going to trick you it is going to be in the description.

Here are some tips that can help you to determine whether or not you are being tricked by the description page on Ebay.

Is it Too Good to Be True?

If it seems like it is too good to be true it probably is. If you see a thousand dollar guitar for sale for fifty bucks, it is probably too good to be true.

One time I was on Ebay and I saw an ad that said they were selling 80 gig ipods for $15. I read over the description about 10 times before I finally realized he was trying to con me into buying a raffle ticket that could possibly win an 80 gig ipod.

My point is make sure you are paying $400 for a stratocaster, not a $400 stratocaster case.

Seller Feedback

Another very important thing to look at is the feedback and score of the seller. The feedback is the number with a percentage and basically it is a happiness meter. It represents the average feedback of each person that he has either bought or sold from. If the seller is tricking people in the description, people will give him a negative feedback, which will affect his overall percentage.

The feedback is located on the right hand side under the subheading Meet the Seller (Pictured below) this is the number with a percentage right next to the word feedback. It will say something like 99.7% positive.

Bad Service or a False Description Gets Bad Feedback

Different offences will rate accordingly. If the item comes a day or two late he might get bumped down to a 99% or a 98%. If the item has a false description it may get a 50% or lower and that will dramatically affect their overall feedback.

Number of Sales

Another thing to look at is how many times have they sold or bought on ebay. This is located next to the user name. In the case of picture above the username is Shoguitars and he has sold 1889 items. The larger number of sales and buys a user has the better. This adds power to the feedback percentage the seller got. Shoguitars has an average percentage of 99.7% from 1889 people. You can feel pretty confident he is not going to rip you off.

If you want to look more into the seller’s feedback and see individual feedback ratings you can click on See Detailed Feedback under Meet the Seller. This will show you the sellers record of comments and individual feedback percentages. You can see how many positive and negative ratings the seller got and you can also read why someone gave the seller a good or bad rating.

Hopefully these suggestions will help you in buying items off of ebay and help you to feel more comfortable with buying instruments off of the internet.