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Crossing the Electronic Divide

Guitar synthesizers gained prevalence in the 1980s thanks to the work of guitarists such as Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, and Allan Holdsworth. This chapter explores how the guitar synthesizer challenged prevailing ideologies of technology, technique, and tone in the guitar community and was ultimately a commercial failure. It traces a brief history of the electric guitar and the synthesizer and their subsequent conjoining. The chapter discusses three cases in detail: Metheny’s use of the Roland GR-300, McLaughlin’s use of the Synclavier II, and Holdsworth’s use of the SynthAxe. The chapter concludes with an examination of the critical reception of the guitar synthesizer and speculates about the future of technological synthesis across the analog/digital divide.