Gibson's Self Tuning Electric Guitar: Inventing New Hardware

This article is more of an outside-the-box thinking lesson than the other guitar articles I have written for Associated Content (see "A Fast Finger Tapping Pattern for Electric Guitar" and "Improving Your Vibrato on the Guitar," among others). This one involves hardware - the actual equipment that you use when you play the electric guitar- instead of where and how to place your fingers on the neck. But what I'm about to tell you has genuine value with a real life lesson involved, so hopefully you will benefit from it.

Here is the back-story: At the last Thanksgiving family celebration my uncle played me a John Fogerty song in his van and asked me to learn the chord progression and teach it to him, I learned the song in a matter of minutes, simple basic chords, and after I showed it to him, he and I began discussing guitars and various equipment. I mentioned string winders at some point and he said he would like to put a motor on one, to make it automatic, and I suggested that we build one and patent the idea and make some money.

That suggestion reminded him of his latest invention.

He said he wanted to make a self-tuning guitar, a guitar that tunes itself automatically at the press of a single button.

"Great idea," I said. "How did you think of that and how will it work?"

"Well," he said, "My best friend Dudley and I were talking the other day in my shop and the idea occurred to me to make a plastic fold-around piece that fits onto the headstock surrounding the tuning pegs, with little motors running the tuners, and a hammer like a piano hammer striking each of the strings, then a computer chip would be embedded in the plastic wrap-around part which would determine the current tuning of the six strings; if the guitar is out of tune the motors will go to work on the tuning pegs, winding the strings, until they hit the correct pitches. We would need a programmer and an electrical engineer to help us put the whole thing together, but I could handle most of the design and construction myself. In the end we would have it rigged up so that we could just push a single button and the guitar would automatically tune itself."