change tunings with a switch

[Lupacante]

last year i went to see greg koch demonstrating a fender strat vg. he talked a bit about its awesome sound, and then told us that it had a switch which you can turn and it changes your tuning! so he got out his slide and played in open g, then turned the magical switch and played some rock in standard tuning.

does anyone know of this? is it possible to fit it onto any guitar? could i get one to put on my ibanez? if yes, how much will it cost?

please reply

thank you,
marco

[bertie]

there was a Lester with such gubbins on about 10 years ago IIRC............wasnt it something to do with Pagey ?

however isnt the 'vg' part of the strat a 'roland ready' one ? so the ptich changing is all computery sorcery done in the little box ?

[Rocker]

Hipshot make a Trilogy, http://www.hipshotproducts.com/cart....oduct_list&c=9 which does exactly that. Never saw one myself but it looks interesting if a bit bulky.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Originally Posted by bertie

however isnt the 'vg' part of the strat a 'roland ready' one ? so the ptich changing is all computery sorcery done in the little box ?

There's two ways - there's the VG Strat which has the sorcery inside it, but relatively restricted options, or the Roland Ready Strat which just has the hex pickup and 13-pin out and you then plug that into an external dohickey such as a VG-88.

[Lupacante]

ok thanks. but my ibanez has trem locks (i think that's what they're called...those things that are supposed to keep your guitar in tune)...will it work anyway?

[Sporky_McGuffin]

The Roland VG system will - it doesn't actualyl change the pitch of your strings, just pitch-shifts the signal coming out of the guitar. You do need the hex pickup though.

[bertie]

thats what I said...................ish

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Indeed it is; I was just elaborating a bit.

[Danny1969]

You could use the guts from a VG Strat and implant them into another guitar. Some of the sounds are superb like the 12 string and open tuning but the other guitar models wouldn't be worth the effort.

The Roland ready Strat has the hex pickup but isn't the pitch shifting done in the floor unit ? I have one of these in my studio at the mo with the huge cable and floor unit, great fun.

Another option is the Robot gubbins & tuners .... but for a double locking trem you would need another robot arm to undo the allen bolts before it could turn the pegs

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Originally Posted by Danny1969

The Roland ready Strat has the hex pickup but isn't the pitch shifting done in the floor unit ?

Ayup.