Today’s ridiculous brand mash comes courtesy of VW. Press release via Yahoo Business:
AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire/ — In a move only Volkswagen could conceive, the iconic brand has teamed up with guitar industry innovator First Act Inc. for a first-of-its-kind musical collaboration that will rock potential car buyers and create a whole new segment of players. Beginning October 3 and continuing through December 31, any customer that purchases or leases a designated Volkswagen model from the new 2007 line — including Jetta, Jetta GLI, GTI, Rabbit, New Beetle and New Beetle Convertible — will receive their own completely customized First Act GarageMaster electric guitar that will play seamlessly through the car’s existing audio system. The 2006 Jetta, Jetta GLI, GTI, Rabbit, New Beetle and New Beetle Convertible will also come with a custom-made First Act GarageMaster guitar. Each electric guitar is a wholly unique, one-of-a-kind instrument and is available exclusively to those who purchase or lease one of these Volkswagen models through a Volkswagen dealer. No other manufacturer offers a musical experience quite like this to its customers.
Check out the axes in action at guitars-for-douchebags.com.
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Hold on, this set-up might serve a useful function. How many times have you seen Steve Vai playing his guitar on top of a mountain and thought to yourself:
“this is utter nonsense. There is no way that this elfin axesmith could have brought the necessary gear for his quite unbelievably epic solos up on to this mountain unaided. See, look, the camera has just circled him 360, and there was no sign of visiblle support at all, I mean he could have secreted the relevant kit up his billowy shirt, but then that would have left him looking not unlike Motley Crue’s Mick Mars.”
Well, those good Fuhrer-equippers at Volkswagen have gone and solved this conundrum and all you can do is laugh. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
that’s retarded. why would anyone need to play guitar in their car?
It’s not so silly.. I have my car wired up to play my guitar through it. I have a pretty nice soundsystem: Awesome Alpine headunit, Polk 6.5″ coax speakers driven by a dedicated amp, 12″ MTX sub with dedicated amp, and it sounds sweet.
I always wanted to practice guitar on my lunchbreak at work and thought “What better way than in my car?”. Seeing as there’s a local park nearby, I often drive over to the park and plug my guitar in and play for an hour.
I have a set of stereo component cables running from the headunit, under the dash, and coming out in my center console’s cupholder area. Those normally plugin to my Rio Karma 20GB MP3 player’s dock, which I have custom-mounted to one of my cupholders. When I want to play guitar, I just unplug the dock and plug the component cables into a dual RCA to 1/4″ female jack, to which I connect a coiled guitar lead cable (1/4″ male/male). Plug the other end into the guitar, set the headunit to AUX input and it’s done – easy as pie!
I might say that it sounds fantastic as well! Totally clean since there’s no preamp or anything, but man does is shine – beautiful clarity and tone. For more fun I can throw a pedal or simple preamp in front.
And, coincidentally, this is all in my Volkswagen Golf
didn’t Ford and Fender do this in the 60′s…hence the fender mustang?
Yeah Jesse, that setup’s not nearly as silly as one of those ridiculous pocket amps. This way all those other people playing tennis or reading can enjoy your fantastic, totally clean sound:)
@ deadtech:
I have a custom-built pocket amp as well, I keep it in my guitar case and do use it in my car from time to time as well. However the sound quality is really, really lame in comparison. And I don’t have the car stereo cranked to an extreme level – the pure stereo soundstage in the car is what is great, not the ability to crank it to 11. I don’t ever even play it as loud as I’d play a CD, so it’s in no way an annoyance.
It should be noted that First Act makes such “fine” instruments as those tiny drum kits for toddlers that are made out of kindling wood that line the walls opposite to the cash registers at Wal-Mart.
I’m not knocking toy drumsets, but are these guitars going to be GOOD quality guitars or similar to something that I could buy at Target for 100 bones?
It might be fun to throw a random concert by driving up somewhere and not having to worry about where to plug in the extension chord. This might be an expecially handy diversion while camping.
Makes me glad I sold my VW.
They need something to get people to buy these overpriced, unreliable little cars.
I really like their commercials, slash and spinal tap are an interesting mix. I saw on their website that guys from franz ferdinand, nin, and others use first act guitars and I don’t think they would be playing something you buy in target. Besides, you don’t have to be camping or on a lunch break, I can’t imaging a better thing to blow off steam in the middle of a road trip (with or without mountain top).