By now if you've been reading everything we've put up on this site about Dark Fire, you are probably at least curious to get your hands on one. Rumor has it this first shipment is going to be sold out pretty quickly, so I'll wish you luck in finding one to demo. I found the wide array of on-board tones was astounding. What has really got me excited about Dark Fire is the chance to play it with Guitar Rig. Since Dark Fire itself has a myriad of tonal choices built into its EQ system that combine with the pickups to provide startling aural exuberance, by itself plugged into my old-school pedal board is cool enough.
Where things get really interesting are the wide-range of possibilities waiting for the user who engages the revolutionary Guitar Rig 3 modeling software. For instance, splitting the rear humbucker on Dark Fire and calling up the Texas Blues setting (no doubt meant to emulate Stevie Ray Vaughn) produces an incredible spot-on sound of a vintage Stratocaster raging through a pair of Tube Screamers and classic Fender tube amps. You'll have a lot of these "aha" moments with Dark Fire and Guitar Rig when you are jamming along and then suddenly remember that this Strat tone is coming out of a Les Paul and the effects and amps are really your personal computer. Call up another patch that models the Roland Jazz Chorus amp, put Dark Fire into a fat EQ setting with your front P90H and dial in a hair of piezo and suddenly your comping chords and playing runs from Joe Pass or the master himself, Les Paul.
Gibson promises "chameleon technology" with Dark Fire, and that's what it delivers. But when you submerse the Dark Fire's native tone in the modeling wizardry of Guitar Rig, the sonic possibilities just continue to amaze. Five more days and the world will find out what I'm so excited about.