No, not that kind of playmate. (Sorry.) The killer feature of Alesis’ new PlayMate Guitarist is (really!) a CD player: pop in a CD of music and you can change the tempo without affecting pitch. Throw in 80 guitar effects and a helping of I/O, and this definitely makes a cool gadget bag addition for practicing guitarists. If you can find an excuse for the US$299 list price by coming up with something to do with the FX, even non-guitarists may want one for transcribing solos. (via Harmony Central)

Vocalists, there’s a vocal version, too — because you can never really practice successfully without reverb.