Gibson Robot Guitar vs The Infinite Repeating Decimal

The Gibson Robot Guitar was released in December of ’07 and is to date the latest innovation for Les Paul Electric Guitars. It tunes itself! Just pull out the master volume knob, strum once and the machine heads adjust themselves to standard tuning, EADGBE. It also does alternative tunings, such as drop D.

I’m not convinced. The standard western system of music, that is, an octave divided into 12 notes, is erroneous to begin with. Standard A is 440 Cycles Per Second. An octive below is 220 Cycles Per Second. A difference of 220 CPS. 220 divided by 12 equals 18.3333333333 an infinite repeating decimal. You can’t tune a guitar and have all the stings be in tune with each other because an octave doesn’t divide evenly into 12 parts.

Guitarists usually experience this phenomenon on the G string. If you tune the guitar with a tuner and play an open G chord you will have to adjust the G string slightly in order for the chord to sound perfect. This is especially noticeable with an electric guitar cranked through a distortion box, the harmonic resonance is very prevelant. Once the G chord is perfect and you play an E major in open position, the G# is off, that is, the G string is off a bit. You have to get it right in the middle. Anyways, the Gibson Les Paul Robot is pretty cool and the self tuning feature is very convenient though I still have to do slight manual adjustments depending on the tune I’m playing.