My buddy Travis sent me a link to Gibson's new automatically tuning "Robot Guitar" which I was ready to dismiss as expensive overkill, when I happened to see Van Halen's meltdown version of Jump from a live gig in North Carolina last month. So maybe there is a need after all.
Watching the YouTube video from the gig (below), It's hard to tell if the guitar is out of tune or, more likely, the synthesizer is playing back at the wrong speed. Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog polls some leading band techs and musicians and they are sharply divided. I think it's a synth playback issue. Because if it was just a guitar out of tune, EVH would have just walked back and picked up another guitar with the right tuning. There's always at least one backup guitar ready in the wings, even if its a non-standard tuning. Also, considering the amount of panic that appears to be taking place between Eddy and his son Wolfgang at the beginning, I think they were probably both out of tune. If it was any other song, they could have just killed the keyboards. They probably should have just turned down the volume of the keyboards completely during the solo and killed the guitar for the rest of the song.
The whole thing is a train wreck of a performance, but they rolled with the punches. David Lee Roth did an admirable job singing vocals and keeping the audience focused on something other than the guitar. Guitar problem or synth playback issue? You decide...
- Entertainment Weekly: Van Halen's Jump Meltdown
- Gibson: Robot Guitar
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