Thursday, February 10, 2022

A Sign of Either Obsolescence or Irrelevancy

G-00 HardwareGibson’s ad for their “new” (to them) “Player Port” design is freakin’ hilarious. "The Player Port is an original Gibson concept from the early 1960s that has been refined by our acoustic luthier team to deliver a truly revolutionary sonic improvement that adds a new dimension to the sound. The Gibson Player Port allows you to hear the guitar as you're playing it as you've never heard it before—the same way your audience hears it—maximizing the sonic impact for an immersive playing and listening experience." There are so many things wrong with the claims in this ad, I’m not even going to bother starting ticking them off.

There are almost an infinite number of luthiers and many guitar manufacturers who have been advocating side ports for decades. Almost all of them do it better and with more science, style, and art than Gibson. Some examples:

Guitar Side Sound PortsLinda Mazer Guitar Sound Port Autumn Oval Hole Archtop Guitar

Do a Google search on “acoustic guitars with a side port” and you’ll be overwhelmed at the number of guitar designers who have been working with this design for decades while Gibson just kept craping out the same old junk.

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Wirebender Audio Rants

Over the dozen years I taught audio engineering at Musictech College and McNally Smith College of Music, I accumulated a lot of material that might be useful to all sorts of budding audio techs and musicians. This site will include comments and questions about professional audio standards, practices, and equipment. I will add occasional product reviews with as many objective and irrational opinions as possible.