Guitar

The guitar craze that's been sweeping the land of late--even in truncated form--is apparently expanding well beyond computer games and middle-aged rockers. It's even influencing the design of MP3 players in Japan.

The MPIO FL500 was inspired by an electric guitar, according to TechFresh, and is priced at $56 and $72 for the 1GB and 2GB versions, respectively. Our esteemed colleague Jasmine France thought that was too high, but we were just grateful to see at least an attempt to create something different because nearly all music players today look the same to us. Besides, as we've … Read more

With excellent advances such as the Rock Band Stratocaster controller on the horizon, we've been hopeful that popularity of the dreaded air guitar might finally begin to fade. But we were disappointed to learn that the "Air Guitar Pro" will be shipping July 25.

As if air guitarists needed any encouragement, this $27 device uses infra-red sensors to read finger movements and blast the resulting notes on its built-in speaker, according to Technabob. It looks like the end of a guitar neck that's been broken off and embedded with seven chord buttons. Worst of all, it … Read more

It's hard to imagine anything that could be more popular than Guitar Hero, but this could be what tips the scales: a guitar controller modeled after the legendary Fender Stratocaster.

Rock Band--the upcoming Harmonix release that will add bass, drums and vocals to the whole guitar game genre--will feature a licensed Stratocaster controller that, for our money, looks close enough to the real thing. "Like other Guitar Hero controllers, it has colored buttons on the neck and features a pickup selector and three volume knobs like a true Strat does," CrunchGear reports.

This restores at least part … Read more

A partial track list for the long-awaited third installment of Guitar Hero was released by Activision today.

As usual, the 11-song list offers a nice blend of time-tested rock anthems by the Rolling Stones, Fog Hat, and Alice Cooper, as well as new classics by the likes of the Beastie Boys, Weezer, and Smashing Pumpkins.

In keeping with the inclusion of a Spinal Tap song in Guitar Hero II, the new game will include a song by Tenacious D.

Notable is the fact that seven of the songs on the list are original recordings. In previous versions of Guitar Hero, … Read more

Some rockin' San Francisco geeks have taken Guitar Hero, and heroically programmed the system to produce live, concert-ready music. With due humility the quartet calls themselves "The Guitar Zeros." Take a listen, we think they're at least a seven on a scale of one to ten.

As programmers, these guys are definitely a ten.

It may not be a gadget by the purist's definition, at least not a high-tech one, but guitars seem to have found a special place in the hearts of Crave readers so we couldn't pass this one up. The "Centerfold" by DeVillain is an electric guitar that can do Cirque du Soleil contortions, folding in half for storage in a sack that can be slung over the shoulder, Coolest-Gadgets says.

That could be particularly handy for easy transportation to whatever street corner or tourist area is getting the most foot traffic on any given day. (There'… Read more

Last week, the Guitar Hero truck was on the streets of San Francisco. This Saturday, it was spotted across the country in Manhattan's crowded Union Square, outside the Virgin Megastore.

(For the sake of environmental awareness and fuel efficiency, I hope it wasn't actually the same truck.)

The truck is equipped with giant video screens and speakers so that random passersby can participate in the wildly successful video game that, as I'm sure you know already, lets you rip it up to the tune of classic, and not-as-classic, rock songs from artists ranging from Cheap Trick to … Read more

Crave loves tech arguably as much as we do music, so we can be excused for nearly soiling ourselves when the iAxe 393 USB Guitar showed up. It is, as the name suggests, a guitar that connects to your PC via a USB cable. How crazy is that?!

Don't let its computer-ness fool you--the manual says it's a proper 22-fret maple neck rock stick with a solid body, chrome machine heads, three single-coil pickups, 5-way switching and a vintage vibrato bridge. We don't even know what half of that means, but it sounds like it'll let … Read more

Microsoft was out Friday helping people channel their inner Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen.

To promote the availability of Guitar Hero II on Microsoft's Xbox 360, the software company rigged up two moving vans' video screens and invited the public to rock out in front of real crowds.

The Microsoft vans made stops this week in San Francisco, including in front of CNET's South of Market headquarters. Another van cruised the streets of Boston.

Next week, the vans will be in Los Angeles and New York.

Guitar Hero is a guitar-playing simulation game that challenges users to … Read more