I'm not sure if Apple copyrighted the lowercase "i" prefix, but if they didn't, they should have. Nonetheless, the new Ovation iDea is such a smart concept that even the most enlightened people on the planet, like Bono and Justin Long, can probably dig on this.

From the front, the iDea is an acoustic-electric guitar with a spruce top on a mid-depth cutaway body. Its dark rosewood fingerboard sits, elegantly perched atop an eastern mahogany neck. Ovation hardware and electronics along with the special iDea elliptical soundhole complete this classy package, but that's not the big idea behind iDea.

What rules hard about this guitar is its built in mp3 recorder. It records from two sources simultaneously -- the pickup and an on-board mic -- so you can capture your ideas when you sing and strum. It stores up to 100 minutes of mp3 and has a USB output for transfer onto your computer, so you'll always be able to iNstantly record your iMpromptu jams without the risk of forgetting your makeshift riffery. The iDea plays back through either a headphone out or a guitar amplifier. Overall, it's the instrument that could have saved Tenacious D from losing the song they claim they wrote.

In addition to these recording capabilities, it's also a neural network processor (i.e., a learning machine). It comes with built-in guitar lessons, and you can download more as they are added to Ovation's iDea website. Furthermore, like popular guitar trainers, you can speed up and slow down sections of songs without changing the pitch. I like doing this to DragonForce songs while noodling over them as fast as I can. I think that'll show Herman Li who's the boss.

Tony Danza.