Justin Hawkins launches Gibson's Dark Fire guitar

Justin Hawkins, Dark Fire and jukebox
Justin Hawkins, Dark Fire and jukebox

Last month, MusicRadar took a long, hard look at Gibson's new Dark Fire guitar. It was, and still is billed as a "marriage between Chameleon Tone Technology and Second-Generation Robot Guitar Technology." Yesterday, the mysterious axe was available to see in the flesh, modelled by ex-The Darkness and current Hot Leg frontman Justin Hawkins.

Hawkins took to the stage at the Gibson Guitar Studio in London to road-test the self-tuning wonder, delivering Hot Leg's new single I've Met Jesus in the process.

Gibson will ship limited quantities of the Dark Fire in the coming weeks, with more promised for early 2009 to meet the high demand. Understandably, the production process of such a technology-heavy instrument takes time.

Photos from the event are below…

Dark fire

Dark fire

Dark Fire's automatic tuning system tunes up in less than a second.

Dark fire

Dark fire

Justin playing a Gibson Les Paul Custom.

Dark fire

Dark fire

When in Rome...

Tom Porter worked on MusicRadar from its mid-2007 launch date to 2011, covering a range of music and music making topics, across features, gear news, reviews, interviews and more. A regular NAMM-goer back in the day, Tom now resides permanently in Los Angeles, where he's doing rather well at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).