Launched on December 15th 2008 with a limited of 2000 made until 2010, the Gibson Dark Fire was the next generation in the Robot Guitar line. The instrument features a rotary potentiometer which is part of the pickup selector toggle switch that controls the blend of the Piezo bridge pickup from full acoustic to full electric. There are 20 separate combinations of pickup tone. It features a battery system and power circuit which provides nearly 500 tunings from a single charge. It is playable while the battery system is being charged.
According to our consignor this particular instrument was awarded to them as payment for the work they did at the NAMM show where it was on display.
While the instrument itself is in good working order, it appears that the proprietary battery is completely dead, even when plugged into the charger which runs the “robot” tuners and electronics. Sans the robot portion of the guitar, it really is a very nice Les Paul and a conversion to standard electronics would be a solid player’s option. For those that want the robot aspects, there apparently are battery conversion systems out there as these rechargeable batteries do have limited life spans.
