Had to post this guitar...it is just too awesome not to.
It features a lightweight body made from hand-sorted swamp ash, with a rock maple neck and curly maple finger board. This construction not only makes it refreshingly light (allowing you to play for many hours without even noticing), but it also allows the guitar to achieve exceptional sustain and tonal range. Firebird X is capable of very resonant and acoustic-like voicing.
The guitar is a bit more than six pounds in total weight. Special resonant chambers not only decrease total weight, but also allow acoustic-like tones and increased overall sustain. The guitar is louder than a typical solid body with substantial tone from lowest bass note to highest treble note. To get more depth, we use a heavy bottom gauge of string with E being about "10" and low E about a "52" with a custom gauge insuring even, crisp tones for all six strings.
This guitar is clearly evolved from a Gibson Firebird, evocative of a rich history, but with contemporary features. With its hand-applied and unique high-end wood finish, the Firebird X is not unlike a cross between a vintage sports car and a modern sports racer. It is beautiful, historical and yet contemporary and unique.
With a limited run of just 1,800 units, it is sure to become a collector classic.The fingerboard has character with a slightly burnt maple look. The neck inlays are tilted parallelograms, with a very dark wood. The headstock has a classic Gibson dove wing shape, which is bound, and a Firebird-style truss rod cover.
The Firebird X product uses three mini-humbuckers and a vastly improved hexaphonic piezo bridge pickup with an improved low noise, high dynamic-range preamplifier, making this a fully active guitar. The pickups are based on traditional Firebird designs, but have been significantly improved to provide more tonal range and to match the studio-grade preamplifier section. The result is that the signal dynamic analog dynamic range exceeds the specification of the high-end electronics — 110 dB.
Each coil of the electro-magnetic pickup is individually controlled, allowing each coil to be on, off, or on-reverse polarity. The guitar's presets use the best combinations to recreate the world's best tones and some great new tones. New combinations can be made using the Firebird X editor, giving you an unlimited sonic palette.
The piezo pickup has a new, sweet acoustic-like tone, allowing the guitar to replicate a true acoustic instrument.
All controls on the guitar feel like they come from very high-end professional equipment. The pots are silky smooth with just the right amount of friction. All switches feel crisp and final — no wobble. The surfaces are knurled or textured to allow use with sweaty hands.
Robo Tuners - This guitar continues on a tradition of having electronic tuners, and a fourth generation of supporting hardware and software. What this means is that the guitar can change tuners even more quickly and accurately, with an even simpler way to get to multiple tunings.
The tuners can be used manually and have been enhanced to be more robust with a better feel when used manually.
