Review: Gibson Dark Fire

After what seemed like months of waiting a batch of Gibson’s almost mythical Dark Fire Les Pauls finally arrived at my store last month. They were originally due to arrive way back in December 2008 but the boffins at Gibson refused to release the stock until they had got it just right, well, apart from those over in the States that were allegedly released and then recalled…

It took me ages to unpack it, first I had to tear past the industrial sized staples and cut through the heavy duty security tape on the outer cardboard box, one of those plain brown affairs that gives very little away. From this I removed the inner box, a smart black number with the Gibson logo emblazoned on the front in giant lettering. Within this box were two packages, one was the glorious white Gibson case that boasted the fact that it was a limited edition first run (of 4000) guitar and the other was a smaller black box containing a few goodies such as the RIP interface which I’ll speak about later on and the charger which needs to be employed before the guitar can be used.

I gently lift the guitar out of it’s case and hold in my hands what feels like a hybrid in terms of Gibson design. The top is a nice piece of book matched figured maple stained a beautiful glossy blood red and bound with black binding. The mahogany body and neck is left with a satin finish and is painted to look as if at some point in it’s life it had been set on fire (see what they did there) which of course it hasn’t because that would be quite foolish. The headstock looks great with the flaming torch logo from the old jazz models of yesteryear but I found the red metallic red truss rod cover a little garish, a black one would have been smarter. The carbon fibre style inlays on the ebony fretboard which also adorns the pickup covers looks great and adds to the modern ‘supercar’ feel of the guitar.

It didn’t feel too heavy despite all the extra gubbins inside, the body is chambered and the overall weight of the guitar is very well balanced with no drooping headstocks to be found. The neck is big and chunky which suits me and my oversized palms but several wimpy UK players prefer the pansy thinner 60’s neck and I’m sure they’d moan about that given the chance.

First of all I tried to use it without reading the instructions, 15 minutes later the guitar was back in its case and I had declared it to be the shittest thing ever. Two days later I read the instructions and it all made sense. The guitar offers 18 different tunings from standard to delta blues all the way to drop B sharp for the beardiest among us. The guitar tunes itself using 6 tiny piezo sensors under the bridge (which you also use to get the guitars acoustic sound) which pick up the vibrations of the strings and then tells the guitar to tune it using 6 motorized machine heads. What’s clever about the Dark Fire is that it can tune all 6 strings at once very quickly where the original Robot Guitar tuned 3 and then the other 3 a little bit slower. The guitar I tried was having trouble with its intonation but you can use the same on board technology to intonate the guitar but this seemed quite time consuming so I didn’t bother, it was time to rock.

Plugging into a Marshall JVM410 Head I quickly tested the clean sounds of the guitar. Gibson opted for a Burstbucker 3 humbucker in the bridge which is supposed to sound like an overwound PAF and it gives a full rich ‘hot vintage’ clean sound with plenty of bite and just sending the amp into a nice warm overdrive when I roll up the volume control on the guitar. The neck pickup is a P-90H which is a stacked version of the standard P-90 single coil, essentially this means it is one P-90 sitting on top of another and the second coil acts as a hum canceller without affecting the sound. The tone is essentially P-90, fat, round and clear like a transparent hippo (the African savannahs biggest killer) and when overdriven gives wonderful clarity and bite without the usual hum associated with these pickups.

When I switch the amp onto one of its overdriven channels the sounds are unmistakably Gibson but my ears tell me that this guitar sounds a touch more open and modern than a Les Paul Traditional for example but yes, it’s definitely a Gibson.

Pulling up the Master Control Knob or MCK activates the guitars Robot controls which operates tuning but also lets you activate the chameleon tone circuit which gives you access to a host of other sounds. The first of these is the acoustic sound from the piezo sensors which you can cleverly blend in as much or as little as you want using the pickup selector switch (however this control did feel a little flimsy). Through the Marshall stack the acoustic sound sounded weak and glass like but through a DI box into a PA system it sounded quite pleasing and useable but I do think it would have been nice if the piezo had a separate output so that you could send your electric sounds to your amp and your acoustic sounds straight to the front of house. Still having it wired the way they do makes it very easy to do a stirring rendition of Pinball Wizard.

Finally I tested some of the chameleon tone settings which include options such as metal, blues and twang etc and if I’m right works by re-voicing the pickups somehow. Still, twang didn’t sound quite like a Telecaster and L5 seemed to just sound like the acoustic setting but the sounds were definitely useable but surely if you were in a studio you’d just use a different guitar?

The one function I didn’t have the opportunity to test was the RIP interface which is a firewire audio device that not only is a good sound card and an easy way to record this guitar to your computer but also uses the output of each piezo transducer to record the output of each string individually. Now I didn’t see this work but combined with the free Guitar Rig 3 software (excellent amp and effects modeling package from the guys at Native Instruments) you could get some seriously crazy things going on and really does give the recording musician some interesting options when recording guitar! Imagine being able to play a staccato chord and then manipulate the audio so that it sounds like an arpeggiated chord, genius! Or you could just play an arpeggio like you wanted to in the first place, it’s your call.

So all in all I do think this is a very cool guitar but if I had this kind of money to spend on a Gibson I’d much rather have one of their historic custom shop models. I don’t think I’d have the confidence to gig this guitar either but for the avid guitar collector who also fancies himself as a bit of a studio wizard this might just be the guitar for you, maybe.

Les Paul: 1915 - 2009

It is with great sadness that I write that Les Paul, inventor, pioneer and forward thinker has passed away today at the ripe old age of 94. It's hard to put into words what this means to a guitarist such as myself, only two weeks ago I finally managed to try the new Les Paul Dark Fire, one of the most forward thinking instruments on the planet at the moment and now the man whose very name adorns each and every one of these instruments is no longer with us.

I've not much more to say other than my love and condolences go out to his family, to all those his brilliance has touched over the years and to all my fellow guitarists who no doubt will be feeling a bit like I am at the moment.

Needless to say I shall be playing 'How High the Moon' on repeat at work tomorrow.

The Trouble with Gibson

There was a time in my life when I disliked Gibson guitars, I found them clunky, unattractive and generally old hat. Mind you when I was 17 all I wanted was an ESP that I could tune to drop C but now my go to guitar is my '62 reissue Telecaster. So as you can see times change and as I've recently discovered, so have Gibson...

A couple of years back I worked at the Oxford Street branch of the now sadly defunct Sound Control and I remember finding the wall of Les Paul's and SG's distinctly unappealing and spent most of my time lusting in the direction of our Fender Custom Shop stock. Eventually I remember deciding to try out a couple of Gibson's just for the hell of it first plumping for a White Les Paul Custom that we'd had in stock seemingly forever. It was horrible, the intonation was so bad nothing above the 12th fret was in tune, and the sound coming through my go to test amp (an Orange Rocker 30 which I would later go on to purchase for myself) was dull and lifeless. Dissapointed I went for an Ebony Les Paul Standard which advertised itself has having a '60's neck but with it found no satisfaction and decided that maybe Gibson guitars were just not for me. Later investigation on a few Guitar forums soon led to the discovery that there were many dissapointed Gibson fans out there and talk of poor quality control in recent years that seemed evident in the instruments I had tried.

In the last 12 months there have been many changes, apart from entering a global recession which robbed me of my previous job it seems that Gibson have managed to completely restructure their entire European dealership as well as some of the key parts of their business. Choosing to go direct to a few select dealers that can make the most of their product rather than sell as much as they can to a UK based supplier whose telesales staff didn't seem to know their arse from their 335. A new spangly website has also appeared which has to be one of the most exciting guitar websites on the 'net. Pristine photos and audio demos of all their guitars are all present and correct as well as extensive, accurate write-ups for all of their instruments but that's not all, oh no! You can barely keep up with all the interesting, educational and amusing articles, posts and blogs that appear on the site daily that all seem totally relevant, a recent highlight for me being the well photographed tours of their Nashville and Memphis guitar building facilties. Plus their product line-up continues to expand and impress, the Dark Fire looks to be the most forward thinking instrument since someone first decided to strap a magnet to a piece of wood and I find myself waiting with baited breath for the next 'Limited Run' instrument to be announced, exciting stuff indeed.

I'm now fortunate enough to bask in the glory of working for one of these fabled UK Gibson dealers and stock is arriving thick and fast. True sometimes we have to wait a few months to get what we want but who cares when every single guitar you remove from that white fur lined case, as you are hit with the smell of nitrocellulose and vanilla is set up beautifully and screams at you to strum the living daylights out of it. It seems that Gibson have rediscovered their pride, oh and the PLEK machine which electronically simulates string tension whilst setting up the frets to perfection. The Les Pauls have been given new life in the form of the classic 'Traditional' and the forward thinking '2008 Standard' the latter being my favourite of mine for the record. The Archtops are as beautiful and versatile as ever, the specials and the studios scream like rock-pigs and a special mention must go out to the historically accurate 'VOS' (Vintage Original Spec) series as these truely special instruments sing like nothing else.

So I lay my hat down, I take back every bad thing I ever said about these guitars but just answer me one thing; How the hell am I going to afford that 1961 SG VOS in Faded Cherry?