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Gibson Dark Fire
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Gibson Dark Fire

LP-Shaped Guitar from Gibson belonging to the Les Paul series

Hatsubai Hatsubai

« Lots of technology but not worth the price »

Published on 08/01/11 at 18:43
This is Gibson's way of stepping their foot into the future of what they think guitars will be. It has tons of features, but that's really about all it has going for it. The guitar features a mahogany body with a maple top, mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, trapezoid inlays, pickguard, binding, hard tail bridge with a piezo, one humbucker, one P90, a funky knob that can select various tunings/tones and a few other things here and there.

UTILIZATION

This guitar has tons of technology built into it, but it seems all wrong to me. The guitar tunes itself, for one. However, I noticed that people online keep having issues with the high e snapping. I noticed that I couldn't get it into perfect tune with the tuning system it had when I put my strobe tuner against it. To me, it seems like a gimmick thing, and I'm hoping Gibson will realize that this kind of technology really isn't needed in guitars. We're more traditionalists that want a solid guitar instead of a computer. The fretwork was average, but the edges were a touch sharp. The finish looked cool, though.

SOUNDS

The guitar didn't sound that great, to be honest. First of all, the guitar was extremely light, and I found that it lacked the normal resonance that a normal Les Paul has. It had this kind of airy top end to it. The bridge pickup was decent, but that's about it. It didn't sound like the other Les Pauls I had in the shop. The P90 in the neck was pretty cool, but the technology that was thrown into this guitar is really what ruins everything, in my opinion. The piezo was fun to mess around with, but it's pretty limited as to what you can do with it because it sounds sterile when compared to a normally miked acoustic guitar.

OVERALL OPINION

I really don't recommend these at all. They're overpriced, lack the tone of a normal Les Paul and seem to be stuffed with tons of things a guitar player really doesn't need. Maybe I'm too stuck in the past, but I just found myself battling this guitar the entire time. Combine that with some of the issues I've read about on the web, and it's more of a guitar to avoid than a guitar to buy. Maybe I just had a dud. Who knows...