Wednesday February 19th, 2003

Journeys Neal Schon to play at Gibson Labs Open Jam

Neal Schon, lead guitarist with top arena rock band Journey, will jam with Gibson technicians at a special Conference Party hosted by Gibson Labs, the technology division of Gibson Guitar, on Thursday, Feb. 20 from 7:30-10 p.m. at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif. The performance is part of the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), a four-day technical training conference, Feb. 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center.

Schon, a musical prodigy, joined Santana at age 17 and in 1973 cofounded Journey with fellow Santana alumni Gregg Rolie. Journeys early records were largely instrumental jazz-rock before the addition of lead singer Steve Perry. Schon has released two fusion albums with keyboardist Jan Hammer and has also done several solo albums. He left Journey in 1989 and joined the band Bad English with singer John Waite; the group released two commercially successful albums and then broke up. Schon rejoined Journey in 1993 and continues to tour with the band as the last original member in its current lineup.

Former L.A. session guitarist Chuck Yamek will join Schon in the open jam and demonstrate the worlds first digital guitar, which utilizes Gibsons new MaGIC digital transport standard. Yamek will also periodically demonstrate the digital guitar in the Gibson Labs booth #331 during the conference. The IDF has become a leading industry event for computer designers and software developers.

The MaGIC-enabled Gibson Digital Guitar represents the biggest advance in electric guitar technology since the invention of the electric guitar 70 years ago. Outwardly, the revolutionary new instrument looks very similar to a legendary Gibson guitar. The only differences are an additional “Hex” pickup that separates the guitar's sound into six individual signals (one for each string) and a new jack that will accept standard Cat-5 Ethernet cable.

Inside, the guitar is equipped with chips developed by Gibson Labs along with 3Com and Xilinx that convert the analog signals from the pickup into a digital signal. The signal is transported via Gibson Labs' revolutionary MaGIC(r) technology, which makes standard Ethernet cable act like a supercable with higher bandwidth, lower latency and bi-directional capability. A "breakout box" converts the digital signal back to analog for compatibility with conventional equipment. Gibson is also working with AMD to develop a digital audio workstation interface.

The MaGIC(r) starts here. The Gibson Digital Guitar here and Gibson Labs here.