Those Gibson Robot Tuners, yay or nay?

[Blazer]

Yeah, there's this basket case Les Paul coming my way with Robot tuners, it also has several...erm...disastrous mods to its body.

But I wonder, those Robot tuners, do they have advantages to them? I mean, Les Pauls are notoriously difficult to keep in tune, so I imagine they'd be practical in that aspect.

So people who own Gibsons with Robot tuners, what are your opinions on them?

 

[Dan German]

By ”disastrous mods” you wouldn’t be referring to the Swiss cheese effect to the body, would you?

As for the robot tuners, I have never seen them in real life. If I bought a guitar that had them, I wouldn’t replace them unless they caused problems. On the other hand, I wouldn’t buy a guitar because it had them…

 

[LOSTVENTURE]

2015 was the year that Gibson introduced those. I had a LP Double Cut Special that had those tuners as well as the super wide "soloist" neck profile. Both terrible ideas. Had I kept the guitar, the tuners would have been gone pretty quickly. What Gibson did not tell you was that manual tuning was close to impossible, and setting intonation was a weekend task. That's if you had the patience.
So, Nay for me.

 

[Blazer]

By ”disastrous mods” you wouldn’t be referring to the Swiss cheese effect to the body, would you?

As for the robot tuners, I have never seen them in real life. If I bought a guitar that had them, I wouldn’t replace them unless they caused problems. On the other hand, I wouldn’t buy a guitar because it had them…

They are LED Lights drilled through the body. The previous owner has chopped up the back to install the circuitry.

 

[ScribbleSomething]

I have a lp special dc and a sg special from 2015 and have kept the robot tuners. The tuners work fine for me.

It is true that manual tuning with them is aweful and not suggested (except if you’re try to make a tuning that isn’t included that you want to save).

I have found that I don’t change tunings as much as I thought I might. So I wouldn’t purchase them again new but they aren’t worth changing either.

You should play with them. They’re fun enough. READ THE MANUAL. They are pretty confusing without it.

 

[gridlock]

Nay, I owned two 2015 LP Special’s and I almost immediately changed them out with Klusons.

 

[Mekhem]

Eh - They took a lot of dinking around to figure out BUT... If you want to mess with tunings quickly - they are very convenient

 

[Dufffy1111]

I hated the robot tuners that were stock on my brand new gibson lp junior. I had them removed and new rotogrip grover locking tuners installed. These are smooth and accurate easy turning tuning machines.

In my opinion the Gibson robot tuners are junk, similar to the junk unserviceable pcb board electronic systems that you will find on some Gibsons, amazingly. Some people enjoy these products, but I find them to be distracting, of questionable value, and it is expensive to replace such items.

 

[G3Hanz]

Never tried them and i see these tuners often pop up on Marktplaats (local auction site) without a guitar However it might be cool to experiment with them if they respond quickly enough to change the tuning in the middle of a song?

Shame about the LED-crosses, the colour of that guitar is really nice!

 

[fenderchamp]

I think the problem is that somehow Gibson alienated the maker of those to a degree that the maker quit supplying the batteries for them so once they are dead they are dead.

I might be misinformed but I believe that to be the case.

REPLACING ROBOT BATTERIES

Check out this guy. He replaced his original battery pack with better batteries for his Gibson Robot. The originals have a terrible shelf life and loose power quicker than the metal based batteries mentioned in this article. They also cost around $60 bucks. He describes how he replaced the origin...

forum.gibson.com

it's not nearly as bad as getting stuck with bricked bionic eyes though. I can't quite get over that idea

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

 

[radiocaster]

They're already on there, so why not try them if you're curious?

Unless it's a pain to fix and it doesn't work.

 

[tonyguitargoat]

Les Pauls 'notoriously difficult to keep in tune'? Players have been using them for over seventy years. And robot tuners? If you can't tune a Les Paul you don't deserve to have one!

 

[uriah1]

I thought they discontinued those since players were getting corrections during note bends
and the tuner would occassionally take off and break a string.

 

[gimmeatele]

As per lost ventures post, I have same guitar, robot tuners were off within two weeks, just useless

 

[bendercaster]

I thought they discontinued those since players were getting corrections during note bends
and the tuner would occassionally take off and break a string.

Never heard that one. That's not exactly how they work though, so I can't see how they would correct note bends.

I have them on a 2015 Les Paul Jr. It is probably my best sounding guitar, unfortunately it is kind of heavy and the wide thin neck feels weird to me.

The zero nut is great though. And I found the tuners really helpful on a gig. Push a button and stum and everything pulls back in in tune. I tended to use the mode where you pluck each individual string because it was.more accurate. Everytime I change strings I have to reacquaint myself with the system. It uses locking tuners, which are nice, but it's a couple a button clicks to unwind and wind back up. Manual winding doesn't feel great or do much.

 

[oldunc]

No,no, a thousand times no. I actually bought one of those things- the tuners work pretty well when they work- its pretty entertaining in its way- but are incredibly flimsy and undependable in manual mode. And when they're not working, you can't change strings. I took them off and replaced with some Grover Deluxe and, after replacing the input jack, it's a nice guitar. I like the zero nut; the neck width honestly makes no difference to me.

 

[P-Nutz]

Damn thing is, if’n ya treat’em right, they work …

That said, I hate’em.

 

[Killing Floor]

They are LED Lights drilled through the body. The previous owner has chopped up the back to install the circuitry.

Why?

 

[Hammer of Donuts]

Have a relative that has those on an SG. I don't like it one bit. I'm also a Luddite. We passed it around one holiday and like a previous poster mentioned, one of us popped a string. I wouldn't trust it on a gig. I'm also only a recent convert to those clip on tuners. Now those I like. Around the house a robot might be fun if you want to do a lot of different tunings on the fly. If you don't know how to tune...it'll wind up under your bed like so many '50's Stratocasters that hit the market practically brand new.

 

[gkterry]

Boo! Hiss!

JUNK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!