Etienne Rambert

Censorship is a growing problem. The censors should be rounded up, tortured and shot. Likewise those whom they would censor should also be rounded up and shot. But I do not recommending torturing them.  It's against the law and it reflects badly on a compassionate society.  In fact,  the best solution to this very difficult and sensitive problem might be to arrest and execute everyone. It would be a way to make a clean break. A new broom sweeps clean  you know....The logistics and little details, the who's, the how's, the when's, and where's,  can be worked out after we've agreed on the plan above. 

I don't find this design visually appealing. I am seriously looking at the offset 2014 model though. Online retailers are blowing them out at $799 to $899 - with case.  That is a huge bargain for a new US-made Gibson.

Great article. I'm glad to hear about this. I've been using MIDI since before the GM1 standard was established. It rarely gets the credit it's due. I saw in the late 80's that MIDI could be the most liberating technology in the history of music. IMO, it has lived up to the hype. So I'm always happy to hear musicians give MIDI the short shrift.

Really good. Thanks. 

(Emphasis added by me) Chris Loeffler wrote:  

“I don't see the guitar disappearing from the lexicon of modern AMERICAN music anytime soon, †

Not everyone lives in the USA. So what is going on in the rest of the world - for example - the high-growth markets in Asia? How much appeal does electric-guitar centered-music have today in India, Japan, S. Korea,  Indonesia?  How about West Africa & Latin America? Do Marshal stacks & Strats still have futures in those places too? 

I don't have sales figures. Maybe you do. From what I've seen & heard in my travels,  the prominence of the electric guitar has receded internationally. Kids listening to radio are not transfixed by guitar solos so much as by digital prestiditgitatation of vocals on the airwaves.  

Synths & DJ's are becoming dominant in many parts of the world outside electric guitar-centric North America & some of retro-movements like Rockabilly in UK & EU.

(2. Steel string acoustic guitars are still popular for singer-songwriters in Asia.  But the electric guitar & its accoutrements - if they are on stage at all - are just one more instrument in the band. 

(3, The better synths today offer some realistic samples of electric guitars. It is more difficult to find a synth that can fake a strum rhythm on a steel-string acoustic.