COIL GUITARS--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING...

[jingle_jangle]

It's so seldom that the national media breaks any sort of news involving guitars that my ears really perked up last night on the brief drive home, listening to NPR. It was a double-whammy: First a report on the "United Destroys Guitars" viral phenom, and then, after the station ID, a feature on a NEW, REVOLUTIONARY approach to electric guitars.

I turned up the radio.

The announcer actually talked about how, when the inventor--a faculty member at an East Coast university--couldn't find the guitar sound that he wanted on the market, he decided to build his own!!! This really piqued my curiosity, so I listened on, believing I was going to hear a background piece on the development and marketing of the Variax, which, though successful and conceptually impressive, is already old news five years after its release.

Nope. What listeners were treated to was a fluff piece that NPR apparently thought was radical enough to spend a full five minutes plus on. The guitar (which, of course, I couldn't see on the radio!) had one claim to fame--two switches, a three-position and a five. The switches controlled pickup selection, coil selection, taps and blends. That's it.

We've all seen it before, except in the old books from the '70s on "How to Wire Your Electric Guitar", it shows how to do this with a bunch of SPST switches. We've all seen homebuilts and brand name guitars converted with about ten or fifteen mini switches on the lower bout, which the tech geek/player owner can manipulate like a vault combination to yield various sounds.

My own favorite involves a selector switch and a "decade" switch as on my old low-impedance Les Paul Personal.

Now, pardon me if I don't consider the approach that these guys take as anything new or unusual. In fact, it's "old school" in the extreme, dealing as it does with a switching scheme for passive electronics. And, compared to a digital Variax, conceptually it's underwhelming, and something that any tech or savvy luthier could put together on his workbench in a matter of hours if not less. But, this company seems to be milking it at warp speed...

Then came the demo. An NPR engineer who also was a semi-pro guitarist was brought in to demonstrate the available sonic options. No mention was made of the amplifier used, but the drill called for the guitar to be played and cycled through each of its switch position combinations. About a dozen times, the switches were manipulated and the player struck the same major chord twice or three times. I suppose the idea was a sort of A/B test--to underscore the difference in sound quality using the same source material.

Well, although there were about a dozen combinations struck, I could detect exactly three sounds that were really distinguishable from each other: a very typical humbucker overdrive sound, a clean single-coil tone (called "Strat-ish" by the developer, in a throwaway line that he was not encouraged to expand upon or explain) and an out-of-phase dual single coil "quack" sound. Note that my car has a pretty decent 240-watt factory H-K sound system with four mids, four tweeters and a subwoofer, so the sound quality is better than fair.

Wow. These guys started a guitar company based upon a stale concept, with a less-than-dramatic product presentation. The tail end of the piece mentioned that the MSRP was "about a thousand dollars", and, finally, that the guitars were being manufactured in South Korea. NPR has given a good deal of air time to offshore employment issues over the last couple of years, so this was a bit strange, too.

Anyway, here's their website:

http://www.coil-guitars.com/

...and what we have here is a very slick, Flash-animated site with lots of detail, human interaction, and professional presentation. And all for a product that is, frankly, a has-been before it is even unloaded from the shipping containers. The guitars look very conventional, PRS-ish and one looks like a stereotypical swiss-cheesed metal axe. Emphasis is placed on "these guitars ROCK!", so who their market is, has been defined, although the price point is a bit high for youngsters and the concept too boring for pros with decent ears.

Note all of the different options...this, combined with the model variations and finish options, indicates that, besides the Korean plant that no doubt makes these under contract, there will be a facility Stateside that will do the wiring mods and install the multiple options.

There's obviously money behind this enterprise, and that should give them some staying power so we can see how they do in the next year or two. I suppose we'll be seeing a NAMM booth in January, and I look forward to a live demo, but for now I'm puzzled and, most of all, disappointed...

[cjj]

P. T. Barnum's old adage still applies...

[deaconblues]

Well, as a student at that particular east coast university, I'm quite familiar with Coil guitars, and I've had the opportunity to play a few. I don't know if the technology is outdated, but I personally thought it was a pretty cool idea - they get rid of the complicated active/computer stuff and have a simple control layout with a few switchable effects - not just coil-tapping and the like. I was told the sounds can be programmed differently for each user, so you can have a completely unique pallate. The guitars themselves, however, leave a little to be desired...and they all have super-thin "shred" necks.

As for the P.T. Barnum thing, I disagree...they're really nice guys in person.

[longhouse]

Generic sounds. They bleed completely grey -at least according to the video performances on the Coil website. Only the 'rhythm' clips sounded palatable.

[paologregorio]

My goodness! I feel terrible for the trees that have to die in order to be cut into some of these hideous guitar shapes.

[jingle_jangle]

As for the P.T. Barnum thing, I disagree...they're really nice guys in person.

I don't agree with the "Barnum" viewpoint. I merely commented on much ado about nothing. A bit of distance does lend objectivity. They sounded like really nice people on the radio, too.

[marc61]

Stylistically, the guitars all seem to have...well..for lack of a better term...huge butts! They look very wide at the bottom, and I imagine bottom heavy

[kiramdear]

Infomercials now on NPR? Oh, great! Just when I was considering tuning in again once in a while.

[longhouse]

But wait, there's more....

[jingle_jangle]

Infomercials now on NPR? Oh, great! Just when I was considering tuning in again once in a while.

You nailed it. Kira...it DID feel like an infomercial...

[cjj]

The P. T. Barnum reference was in response to Paul's statement:

"...and what we have here is a very slick, Flash-animated site with lots of detail, human interaction, and professional presentation. And all for a product that is, frankly, a has-been before it is even unloaded from the shipping containers."

Yes, I'm sure they are nice people, they might even be nice guitars, but it sure doesn't sound like we're looking at some sort of revolutionary new advancement in guitar technology. Hence, the flashy advertising to hype up what they have to offer...

[wayang]

Do we know for a fact that P.T. Barnum wasn't a nice guy?

This whole thing smacks a bit of the equivalent of repackaging a rheostat as a revolutionary new 'in-home light-show controller'...

[weemac]

Shades of Gibson MIII and L6s and PRS custom switching. It's been done before, it's been done before, it's been done before!

The problem with a guitar that does everything is that most folks use one or two favorite sounds. (the PRS sound is not just the HFS Humbucker you know.....)

Guitars with too many sounds just confuse me, thats why I (if I have to play guitar) will often pick up my SG junior...

However, good luck to Coil Guitars, may they really strike a chord with someone..

Eden.

[jimk]

The problem with a guitar that does everything is that most folks use one or two favorite sounds.

Yup, that's for sure.

Guitars with too many sounds just confuse me, thats why I (if I have to play guitar) will often pick up my SG junior...
Eden.

That was kind of my feeling after hearing the report myself. I was just talking to a friend about this sort of thing in reference to amps. I told him "All I want is an amp with volume, tone, reverb, and tremolo controls. All those other bells and whistles on those modeling amps would likely never get used by me, so why bother?" Keep it simple for me.
JimK

[jingle_jangle]

All makes sense to me. However, my disappointment with these "revolutionary" instruments was that, despite all the mumbo-jumbo about switching that gave so many options, in reality I could only distinguish three (very pedestrian, I might add...) distinct sounds.

Obviously, they're marketing this as a thrash guitar, and all the slick presentation and verbal obfuscation disguises the facts that, in addition to there being nothing new here, what IS here is rather boring.

Yeah, I know they're nice guys. But they aren't running this enterprise out of their pockets. So, what I'm curious about is: Where's the money coming from, and what is the agenda of the money men? It seems to already taken a turn in a direction AWAY from the musician and TOWARDS promotion and profit. Otherwise, why not a better product with wider appeal? Why not more R & D and less flash animation?

In other terms, I'd say that there is no here, here.