Norse Guitar Feeds

In this lesson, you’ll learn to make creative choices in reharmonizing a simple eight-bar melody, discovering methods that may open new doors in your own songwriting.

The world of extended range guitars is no mystery here at Guitar.com, having previously taken a detailed look at baritones and seven-string guitars. Believe it or not, there are more strings to be had – although an essential guide to nine-string guitars is not (currently) on our features idea board, as eight is really the limit before you get into completely niche djent oddities.

Much like our guide to seven-string guitars, the applications of an eight-string guitar are overwhelmingly stacked towards the metal world, so a big proportion of the guitars we’re highlighting will be geared towards that genre. That’s not to say that a lot, if not all of them, couldn’t be used for other genres, but some of the hardware will be chasing tones that are very metal-centric.

Is an eight-string guitar right for me?

Progenitors of the eight-string guitar movement like Meshuggah and Deftones have been bolstered in the last 10-15 years by the likes of Periphery, Animals As Leaders and the explosively popular Sleep Token. Hell, even Muse entered the ring with 2025’s Unravelling. Regardless of your route to eight-string guitars, it’s important to make an informed choice before adding one to your collection.

We’ll start by saying that “I just want to go lower,” is not the best reason for an eight-string, especially if it’s one string stuff you’re primarily playing in that register. Baritones and multi-scale fretboards across six and seven-string guitars can help achieve the low tunings you’re craving. Equally, pitch shifting down has gotten so good, that many bands use it on six and seven-string guitar, while also automating downtuned sections/songs using MIDI when touring live.

As well as your needs, there’s also your comfort. The jump to an eight-string can be incredibly jarring. The shift in ergonomics, most notably the wider fretboard and profile of the neck can be a big roadblock, especially if you skipped playing a seven-string guitar.

That being said, an eight-string can be a fantastic creative tool, allowing you access to another register of bass notes to create new voicings and change the flow and feel of a composition. While the leap from a six-string can be daunting, that challenge and leaving your comfort zone is very appealing to a lot of players, and can often result in some previously untapped inspiration.

As always, our best advice is to play as many as you can before making a purchase and really hone in on what you want from an extended range guitar before assuming an eight-string is the answer.

What is a multi-scale guitar?

As most of the guitars in this guide are multi-scale, it’s worth giving a little refresher on what this means before continuing. A multi-scale neck ‘fans’ the frets so that each string has a different scale length; applying heavier tension to the lower strings, allowing extreme detuning without sacrificing intonation, while applying lower tension to the higher strings, allowing for easier playability. It can look intimidating, but actually takes very little time to get used to.

When you look at a multi-scale guitar, you will notice they all have a ‘neutral’ fret – a position in which the fret is level across all strings. The location of the neutral fret changes how extreme the fret fanning is across the fretboard. If your playstyle is centered on low, chuggy riffing, a neutral fret around the 7-9 mark is the sweet spot, whereas a neutral fret at 12 is more comfortable for shredding higher up the neck. This is by no means a universally accepted opinion, but it’s another aspect to be aware of and research when shopping for an eight-string guitar.

Our favourite budget eight-string guitars

Our first recommendation is Harley Benton’s R-458 BK, especially if an eight-string is something of an experiment for you. It’s available with either a 26.5” straight-scale length (£156) or 25.5-27.2” multi-scale (£175). We favour the multi-scale, as it ensures those low tunings sound full, without sacrificing playability on the higher strings. Yes, you’ll want to change out the stock pickups and do a proper setup, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an eight-string guitar that does this much for so little.

For £100 more, Gear4Music offers their very own eight-string, the 529 Pro (£279). While it does suffer from some build quality/finish issues and not the most expressive pickups, it plays like a £500+ guitar. Clean and distorted tones perform well with a little dialing in of effects (pedals or digital signal chain), and the multi-scale fretboard and single saddle bridge mean consistent tuning and intonation. One word of warning, you may need custom strings for the low end as regular eight-string sets aren’t quite long enough for the level of tension required for those lower tunings.

Our favourite midrange eight-string guitars

Starting at the low end of the price scale is the Ibanez RGMS8-BK. Costing less than £600 and rocking the iconic RG shape, this is an excellent entry point to the world of eight-string guitars. While the neutral fret at 12 can be a little uncomfortable for certain playstyles, the stock pickups perform fantastically across distorted, overdriven and clean tones. A more colourful version is available – the Cosmic Blue Stardust – however, it’s almost £150 more and the hardware is exactly the same.

Just under £800, Cort’s KX508MS packs a punch, both in high gain and clean tones, thanks in no small part to the Fishman Fluence pickups, and remains the 9/10 we gave it in our review back in 2022. “Even though the KX508 is not in the current entry-level price range for eight-string models, it rivals guitars three times the price and as such represents a great investment for newcomers and beyond,” said Darran Charles in his review. “You can now satiate any extended range fantasies you’ve been harbouring at a relatively affordable price for the quality this delivers.”

At the top end of the scale, we have the Schecter Omen Elite-8 MS (£869). We recommended the Omen Elite-7 in our last guide, and the Elite-8 features the same excellent Diamond Heretic pickups, poplar burl top and eye-catching colour options. However, the addition of the multi-scale really elevates this into a supremely versatile guitar.

Our favourite premium eight-string guitars

We’re into the big leagues now and we mean that literally with our first recommendation; Ibanez’s M80M Meshuggah (£1,399). This mammoth eight-string has a 29.4” scale length rather than a multi-scale neck, so it’s more like playing a Bass VI. While that scale length may take a little getting used to, it means you can use a lighter gauge string and still intonate well on these low tunings. You will however need to hunt down a special set of strings to meet the scale length. The Lundgren M8P Humbucker is super clear and bright, so even at your lowest, the notes are clearly articulated. The fixed bridge and nut make restringing and custom tuning changes unnecessarily fiddly, but it’s the only real downside of this guitar.

Sticking with signatures – and enormous necks for that matter – there’s Stephen Carpenter’s signature SC-608 Baritone from ESP LTD (£1,899). Drenched in supercar yellow, there’s heaps of diversity in tones here, thanks to Steph’s updated 3-voice signature Fluence pickups. This is really bolstered by neck-thru construction and really elevates the playability and delivers fantastic resonance. It’s a massive guitar, so definitely try it out before buying if you can, even if you wouldn’t consider yourself to have small hands.

Lastly, we have Strandberg’s Boden Standard N2.8 (£1,859). Immediately recognisable, Strandberg’s dedication to ergonomics is what drives their striking appearance, and for the most part those design choices pay off. The EndurNeck may not be to everyone’s tastes, but if you gel with it, it’s a pretty special instrument to play. The resonance and haptic feedback from the titanium rods in the neck is like nothing we’ve experienced before. While the neck is chunky, it’s one of the less ‘out there’ multi-scale fretboards – of this list and eight-strings in general. We really love the passive Seymour Duncan Pegasus/Sentient pickups, which are fantastic for both heavy and clean tones.

The post The best eight-string guitars for all styles and budgets appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Following the news in December that Höfner, the maker of Paul McCartney’s iconic Violin Bass, had filed for bankruptcy, it appears the company has been rescued, according to a press release obtained by YouTuber and guitar industry journalist KDH.

While few details about Höfner’s financial woes were made public when it was revealed it had filed for bankruptcy at the Fürth District Court in Bavaria in December, it was revealed that an insolvency administrator had been appointed, tasked with rectifying debts over a three-month period.

Beatles legend Paul McCartney – with whom the Höfner brand became most commonly associated – called the news of the company’s bankruptcy “very sad”

• READ MORE: Gibson unveils shred-ready Victory Floyd Rose – and it “excels with drop tunings”

Now, YouTuber KDH has apparently uncovered big news regarding the company’s future.

Upon discovering that the contact information on the Höfner website had recently been updated to Thomann’s contact details, KDH reached out to the German retail giant for further information. He says the company sent him back a statement apparently confirming it had acquired the storied musical instrument brand.

If the press release obtained by KDH is legitimate, it confirms a “successful investor solution”, which will ensure the “continuation” of Höfner’s headquarters in Baiersdorf, Germany.

“The transaction not only secures the long-term preservation of the globally renowned brands Höfner and Paesold, but also the preservation of the Baiersdorf site and 24 jobs,” the statement continues.

The document reveals Höfner “most recently employed a staff of 52 producing stringed instruments, bows, guitars and basses and marketing them internationally”, so if the details are legitimate, that could mean the layoff of 28 employees.

It is revealed that GEWA music GmbH took over the operational business operations of Höfner’s Baiersdorf headquarters on 1 April, 2026. Meanwhile, Streetlife GmbH, a subsidiary joint investment company of Thomann’s and GEWA’s has taken over and acquired the trademark rights for Höfner and Paesold.

“This ensures that both brands will survive and be further strategically developed in the long term,” the document reads, adding that distribution rights for the Höfner brand in Europe will be “held exclusively” by Thomann GmbH, and outside of Europe by GEWA music. GEWA holds distribution rights for the Paesold brand.

“Höfner instruments, including the legendary Beatle basses, string instruments and bows, will continue to be manufactured in Baiersdorf,” the statement goes on.

“As part of the transaction, 24 jobs were also preserved at the Baiersdorf site. In addition, it has been possible to place some of the remaining employees in new positions. All in all, this represents a very pleasing result – especially against the backdrop of the challenging market situation in the musical instrument industry.”

“In a complex and demanding process, we have succeeded in reaching a solution that ensures both the continued existence of the Baiersdorf site and the future viability of the Höfner and Paesold brands in the long term,” says insolvency administrator Dr. Hubert Ampferl.

“The [fact] that operations can be continued seamlessly and jobs are preserved at the same time are an important signal for the location and the region.”

Founded by Karl Höfner in 1887 in the then-Austrian-Hungarian town of Schönbach – now Luby in the Czech Republic, Höfner grew to one of the largest suppliers of stringed instruments in the region in the following decades. Operations were scaled back during World War II, when its facilities were repurposed for making supplies for the German army.

Germany’s postwar reconstitution meant Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, and Höfner relocated to West Germany, opening a new factory in Bubenreuth in 1950.

While the brand has manufactured countless different instruments throughout its nearly-150-year history, it’s undoubtedly most known for the 500/1 bass guitar – the Violin Bass – long championed by Paul McCartney.

Guitar.com has reached out to Thomann to verify the legitimacy of the press release provided to KDH.

The post Höfner has reportedly been saved from bankruptcy by Thomann and GEWA music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Electro-Harmonix has expanded its lineup of mini pedals with the pocket-sized Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb.

Boasting a tiny footprint that’ll be at home on even the most crowded pedalboards, the Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb is inspired by the Shimmer settings on EHX’s much-loved Canyon Delay and Oceans 11 Reverb, and offers three settings: Intergalactic, Off-World and Etherdust.

• READ MORE: EHX Pico Intelligent Harmony Machine review: impressive tracking hampered by inevitable compromise
  

Each of these combines a different blend of reverb, delay and modulation effects, as well as an octaves and string synth engine, EHX says.

Intergalactic is described as a “classic shimmer” made up of polyphonic octaves, reverb, modulated delay and compression, plus a string synthesis engine. “Morph between plate reverb, classic shimmer, and ethereal strings to create cinematic atmospheres beyond time and space,” the brand says.

Meanwhile, Off-World is a more mellow shimmer effect with enhanced delay modulation, while Etherdust is a glitch shimmer effect in which the delay time is randomised, offering stutters ranging from “short granular sparkles to distinct glitch echoes”.

Credit: Electro-Harmonix

Controls on the pedal include a Blend knob for setting the overall wet/dry mix, a Tone knob sets the brightness of the effect, Time, which controls decay time, a Voice knob for morphing the reverb character, and a Scene mode button for toggling between the pedal’s three main settings.

The Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb ships with a standard EHX 9V power supply, and is available now for $149.

Learn more at Electro-Harmonix.

The post “Otherwordly reverbs in a compact package”: Meet the Electro-Harmonix Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Chances are none of us really know as much about guitar as we think, or that we’d like to. That being said, it can still be awkward or embarrassing to ask our bandmates, friends, guitar techn or local shop assistants about stuff that we feel like we should know by now but don’t.

• READ MORE: Answered: more technical guitar questions you were too afraid to ask

If that’s you, don’t fret – after rattling through two full articles of common guitar queries already, we’re back with another tranche from you, the reader. Read on and learn!

How often should I change my guitar strings?

Does the gunk keep the funk? For many guitarists, the question of when is an appropriate time to change your strings is a key one to their overall sound. Answers can range from “as often as you can afford” to “when they break,” and both are valid answers. But from a tone perspective, there is a certain sound that you get from old strings, and it works really well for certain genres of music.

James Jamerson – the Motown bassist whose fingerprints are on more classic records than most people realize – used to go absurdly long stretches without changing his strings. His whole explanation was four words: “gunk keeps the funk.” Whether that’s a philosophy or just a guy who couldn’t be bothered, you can’t really argue with the catalog he built on those nasty strings. Jeff Tweedy has basically said the same thing about his preference to record with old guitar strings.

What’s happening physically is pretty straightforward. New strings are bright – they have lots of overtones, lots of sustain, very alive. Then you sweat on them, dead skin cells fill up the windings, they stretch out and stop holding tension evenly, and eventually the whole thing just kind of… settles into itself. Less sparkle, more thud. For some genres of music, that sort of sound works very well.

Funk bass is a good example. You want a tight, punchy fundamental – overtones and ringing sustain are actually in the way. Dead strings aren’t a flaw in that context; they’re doing exactly what the music needs. So, sometimes not changing your strings isn’t laziness. Sometimes it’s just the right call.

What Makes a Guitar Feel “Fast”?

I hear a lot of people use the term “fast” to describe a neck and as far as I can gather, a “fast neck” is a neck that feels effortless to play. Again, this is something that is the result of several different factors, and since we’re talking about “feel” different necks will feel different to different players. That being said, there are a few factors that universally result in effortless playing for the vast majority of hands.

One major factor is string action. Lower action means the strings sit closer to the fretboard, so your fingers don’t have to press as far to fret notes. That alone can dramatically change how effortless a guitar feels.

Neck shape also plays a role. A thinner or flatter profile may feel quicker to some players because it allows the hand to wrap around the neck more easily. Others actually prefer chunkier necks because they provide more support for the thumb.

Fret size can influence the sensation as well. Larger frets reduce the amount of fingerboard your fingertip touches when you press down a note, which can make bends and vibrato feel smoother.

Finally, the fingerboard radius affects how chords and single-note lines feel across the neck. Flatter radii often make bending easier, while rounder ones can feel more comfortable for chord playing.

Put all of those factors together and you get something players loosely call a “fast neck.” But in practice, what feels fast to one guitarist might feel awkward to another.

Do Heavier Guitars Have More Sustain Than Lighter Guitars?

The short answer here is no. While there might be some heavy guitars that sustain very well, correlation does not equal causation. There are plenty of light guitars that sustain as well if not better than their heavier counterparts. The real determining factor in a guitar’s sustain is far more complex than just overall weight. It has much more to do with the wood itself, the neck and body stiffness, neck joint design, bridge and hardware, and pickups and amplification.

If sustain the most important quality you’re looking for in an instrument, the best way to test it is to simply play the guitar before you buy it – something I would always recommend anyway. You can always record a guitar into a DAW and watch the waveform, but I find it much more fun to just play it and see if you like the way it feels and sounds.

What’s The Best Way To Power Your Pedalboard?

Power adapters are one of those things that seem simple until they’re not. The basics: an adapter takes AC power from your wall outlet and converts it to the lower DC voltage your pedals run on. Most pedals use 9V DC, though some require 12V, 18V, or higher – and that difference matters more than people think. Some pedals don’t come with an adaptor, or if you’re buying used pedals, it’s worth knowing a bit about adaptors before plugging things in.

The plug itself has a polarity, either center-positive or center-negative, which just refers to whether the inner or outer contact carries the positive charge. Grab a random adapter from the hardware store and you’re gambling – wrong voltage, wrong polarity, or AC instead of DC and you’ll likely kill the pedal outright. Too little voltage and the pedal may not turn on, or will run noticeably degraded. It’s not a forgiving system.

The other variable worth understanding is current draw, measured in milliamps (mA). Digital pedals tend to pull more than analog ones, sometimes significantly more. To figure out what your board needs, just add up the mA rating for each pedal – usually printed on the bottom or in the manual, and easy to look up if not – and make sure your power supply can handle the total. If you’ve got a tuner pulling 35mA, a fuzz at 5mA, an analog delay at 150mA, and a few other pedals in between, you might be looking at 300mA or more just for a modest board. A supply rated above that total gives you headroom and keeps everything running cleanly. Match the voltage, match the polarity, and give yourself enough current – and you’ll mitigate the risk to your pedals, which, as we all know, are expensive.

The post Answered: Even More Technical Guitar Questions You Were Too Afraid To Ask appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Editor’s Note: Jazz, funk and blues guitar legend James “Blood” Ulmer passed away on June 3, 2026 at the age of 86. We profiled Ulmer in a lengthy Fretboard Journal 50 profile penned by contributor John Kruth (with photos by Stan Schnier). To pay tribute, we’re sharing the story here in its entirety. 

Tuning to Your Head

Free language with James “Blood” Ulmer

The eldest of nine children, James “Blood” Ulmer was born in 1942 and raised in rural St. Matthews, South Carolina. Brought up in the church, Ulmer’s father, a Baptist preacher, showed him his first guitar chords at the age of 4.

“My daddy played guitar and good harmonica and would sing to me and put my fingers on the guitar strings. When I was a kid, the only instruments around were an organ and a guitar,” Blood recalled. “We had a pump organ that was maybe a hundred years old. Somebody would be down on the floor, pushin’ the pedals while someone played the bass keys and somebody else played the high part.”

In elementary school, young James joined his father’s gospel group, the Southern Sons, and traveled the South over the next seven years, where he was inspired by vocal groups like the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Dixie Hummingbirds. “There were four of us,” Blood said. “And we got pretty good…playing church songs.”

While the Carolina Piedmont region is famous for its distinct brand of fingerpicked blues and rags, played and recorded by guitar masters Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis and Brownie McGhee, Blood claimed to be unfamiliar with their music. “I don’t know nothin’ about that music!” he groused. “We didn’t have no records and nothin’ to play ’em on. Even if I did, my mama would’ve whipped my ass if it wasn’t a record about Jesus. We came from the church. We couldn’t play no stuff like that. They were playing that music in order to survive and make an identity for themselves. So, I didn’t play like that. Copying another man’s style could get you killed,” Blood stressed. “You were messing with their livelihood.”

Ulmer’s lifelong relationship with the instrument began with his “first real guitar, a Stella.” When I mentioned that Lead Belly also played a Stella, Ulmer replied: “Lead Belly! It was a damn shame the way people treated him. Those musicians never could travel anywhere without somebody making a threat on their life…made them ride in the back of the bus. They could have done so much more. They mostly played what record companies wanted them to play, what they thought would sell. The business has crushed the real American music. They don’t want you to know where it came from. Their idea of what music is supposed to be comes from Europe! Those musicians never got the chance to express themselves and play the real American music. I couldn’t put up with that kinda shit. I woulda been dead if I had to live like that.

“After I graduated high school, I wanted to get outta South Carolina. My father told me, ‘I can’t send you to college, but you can go into the army, and they’ll put you through school. So, I went downtown, and flunked every test they gave me ’cause all those questions were made for people living on a farm. I didn’t live on no farm! All I had to do was go to school and church and sing!”

Classified 4F by the Selective Service, Ulmer headed north to Pittsburgh and lived with his aunt. “She told me to get a job. ‘I’m gonna charge you six dollars a week for rent and I don’t want you stealing!” Blood’s cousin found him work at a local hospital cleaning pots and pans. “And that’s where I met my first wife. She was a cook,” Blood said, chuckling. But after receiving a check for a lousy 15 dollars after two weeks of work, Ulmer made a solemn vow to never live as a wage slave.

“Damn! That’s the last time I looked for a job! At the time, there were all these doo wop groups singing all over the streets on each corner and they were making some money. So, I went up and asked, ‘Y’all need a guitar player?’ They said, ‘Yeah!’ I said, ‘But I ain’t got no guitar!’ They got me a Silvertone guitar and a Silvertone amp! I went to the rehearsals and right then and right there—boom! [claps his hands loudly] I had a gig with the Savoys! I stayed with them for a while and then got me a gig playing with the Del-Vikings [one of the few racially integrated doo wop groups at the time, best known for their hits “Come Go with Me” and “Whispering Bells”]. That was 1958. I was 18 years old when I started playing guitar for my living. Been doin’ it all my life!”

Around this time, Blood crossed paths with a young George Benson playing guitar in front of his house in Pittsburgh. “George Benson was a bad motherfucker! He played like any guitar player you could name when he was 13 or 14 years old. You’d say ‘Gimme Wes,’ and he’d do it. He could play like anybody, but he could only copy somebody else. He didn’t have his own song!” Ulmer emphasized. “He was giving lessons, but you only needed one to get it. Then he went on the road with [jazz organist] Jack McDuff.”

Blood recalled playing an early prototype Fender Stratocaster around the same time. “When I was 18 or 19, they were just about giving them away, just to get people to play them. But it’s the way you got the guitar tuned that makes a guitar a guitar. It’s got six strings and frets. Does it feel right in your hands? Does it play smooth? It don’t matter what name is on top. The important thing is to play music!”

In 1965, Blood got a gig playing in organist Hank Marr’s group at The 502 Club in Columbus, Ohio. By the end of the 1940s, Columbus had transformed into a red-hot boiling pot for R&B and jazz. Saxophonist Rusty Bryant, who sold a million copies of the funky, chugging “Nite Train,” and jazz diva Nancy Wilson were regarded as local royalty. The city was a regular stopover for the touring big bands of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton as well as Miles Davis, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Dizzy Gillespie’s groups. Lights from theaters, restaurants and nightclubs illuminated the Ohio night sky like a small Las Vegas. Nightclubs like The 502, The Regal and The Cadillac Club were the hot spots where the musicians played for keeps and the crowd dressed to kill.

Hitting the road with Hank Marr’s band, Blood toured the States and Europe, while making his recording debut on the organist’s 1967 release Sounds from the Marr-Ket Place. Built on Marr’s soul grooves, the album features a slinky guitar lead from Ulmer and a robust tenor sax played by George Adams, best known for his work with Charles Mingus. While echoes of Wes Montgomery can be heard in Ulmer’s playing, the choppy, angular phrases that would soon define his style added fire to a set of otherwise cool lounge vamps.

“When I first heard Wes, I thought, wow! He’d really found something on the guitar! I wasn’t a copycat or trying to figure out how to play like him. I just liked the sound he made! It was just like somebody talking,” Blood said.

Ulmer eventually crossed paths with his inspiration one night during a week-long gig with Marr at The Hubbub Club in Montgomery’s hometown of Indianapolis. “We played two sets and Wes walked in and stood at the bar all night long.” Meanwhile on the bandstand, Ulmer grew anxious, hoping Montgomery would complement his guitar playing. When the band took their break, Blood strolled past his hero a few times and even deliberately stood beside Montgomery at the bar, but Wes never uttered a word. “He never said anything. And after that gig, I just made a left turn and stopped trying to play that way [in the typical style of jazz guitarists of the day].” Montgomery’s silent snub inspired Blood to no longer look towards others for encouragement or inspiration but to develop his own voice. “After that, I didn’t follow other men. I just followed the guitar!” he said.

In 1967, Blood headed for Detroit, spending the next five years there. “That’s a baaad town—full of great music! I got a job teaching at a guitar workshop for about two or three years.” While best known for the Motown sound of the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, the Motor City also had a great jazz scene, providing venues for Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. The Jones Brothers—Hank, Elvin and Thad, multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef, pianist Alice McLeod (Coltrane) and guitarist Kenny Burrell—all called Detroit home.

At a session for Blue Note Records in August 1969, Blood could be heard comping choppy chords and adding snaky, fiery licks to the cool groove of organist Big John Patton’s album Accent on the Blues. Around this time, Ulmer was jammed with a crew of wild musicians at The 20 Grand club who later become world-known as Funkadelic.

Following a six-month gig at the Bluebird, the club owner kindly staked Blood the bread to go to New York in hopes of meeting and playing with Miles Davis.

“When I came to New York, I was 31 years old, and never thought nobody could make no money playing free music So, I always played structured blues and R&B and dance music. But then I abandoned it. I just totally went another way and got my own group together, ‘Blood and the Blood Brothers!’ Ulmer said with a chuckle.

Jamming with a cast of improvisers from Joe Henderson, Rashied Ali and Arthur Blythe to Paul Bley, he still kept one foot in the straight-ahead jazz world, gigging with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. But his stint with Blakey’s band didn’t last long, not with the likes of their star trumpeter Woody Shaw scowling at him every time he soloed.

At the same time Miles Davis bent the heads of hippies at The Fillmore with the electric funk of Live Evil and On the Corner, and Sun Ra transported free-thinking jazz passengers to the outer reaches of Aldebaran, organist Larry Young (aka Khalid Yasin) mixed up some musical marmalade of his own with the help of Ulmer and free-jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders on his 1973 album Lawrence of Newark. This obscure disc remains an unsung gem in the jazz canon while revealing aspects of Blood’s music to come.

While Ulmer never ran into jazz’s “Prince of Darkness” (as Miles was sometimes known), he did cross paths with Ornette Coleman’s drummer Billy Higgins in 1972, who introduced him to the enigmatic free jazz saxophonist. For six months, Blood lived at Ornette’s lower Manhattan loft, studying and playing harmolodics—Coleman’s unique philosophy of making music.

“With Coleman, I had to go through a whole lotta changes and think about the way I was playing the guitar, to figure out what the harmolodic theory was—the avant-garde way of playing. Then one night I had a dream that I was tuning the guitar… How ya gonna play it if you don’t dream it?”

Blood’s fortuitous dream would liberate him from all past musical conceptions. When he awoke, he began tuning to the notes he’d heard in his head while asleep.

“I was living with Ornette and couldn’t wait to show him what happened. So, I went to his room and woke him up and said, ‘Coleman, listen to this!’ and started playing the guitar with all my strings tuned to one note. He listened for a long time and said he never heard nothin’ like that before. The music was jumping out! He said, ‘Blood, you have moved the tonal center, making the treble clef a transposing note for the guitar.’ Then he picked up his horn and said, ‘Play B flat.’ I said, ‘I ain’t got one!’ He said, ‘Play E flat.’ ‘I said, ‘I’m not tuned to E flat!’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He didn’t know, ’cause he didn’t play no damn guitar! So, I had to figure out how to fit with what he was doing.”

Ornette considered Blood “a natural harmolodic player” and produced his album Tales of Captain Black, cut in one session on December 5, 1978, at RPM Sound in New York.

When I interviewed Ornette Coleman a year before his passing in 2015, he marveled at how Blood “scientifically broke down playing [notes] in unison. He knows that shit backwards!” Ornette enthused. “When he plays the blues, he can make you think what you’re hearing disappear.”

“Coleman was amazed. He made me feel like I graduated from his harmolodic school of music. But I just play the music!” Blood shrugged. “And that’s enough. Y’know, you can spend a whole lifetime just trying to get the timing right!”

So, what’s this mysterious system of harmolodic music all about? What are the secret ingredients behind Coleman’s sonic recipe? The word “harmolodic,” I should point out, is a mash-up of one part harmony, one part motion and one part melody, of which melody, as Blood stresses, is the key component.

“The harmolodic system is based on the e-lim-in-a-tion of chords and scales, so you can just play the music,” Ulmer stressed. “In harmolodic music, the instruments are all in the same key. We play all 12 notes at the same time, while European music is mostly chords and scales. The harmolodic tuning gives you a whole ‘nother structure of how to go. Y’know, I should be charging you for this lesson,” Blood said with a laugh.

“This one is tuned regular,” he said, reaching for his black 1954 Gibson Byrdland Custom (strung with medium-gauge flat-wound strings) and began firing off a series of rapid, splintered riffs and fractured phrases.

Blood plays hard and his instruments bear the beating they’ve taken over the years. On the cover of Ulmer’s 1981 breakthrough album Free Lancing, he’s seen playing a big beautiful blonde Gibson Byrdland. But after years of wear and tear from constant gigging, he had it painted black to cover the visible signs of distress.

“About eight or nine years ago, my wife bought me this guitar,” he says picking up his “new” 1962 blonde Gibson. “They’re both the same, but tuned differently,” he stressed, brushing the strings with his thumb. “This one is tuned harmolodic [and strung with medium-gauge wound strings].”

Over the years, Ulmer has employed various tunings, with both a low E or A as the root note. The A tuning, which this guitar was in, was tuned (from high to low): E A E A A A. Blood can be seen explaining the intricacies of “The Unwritten Theory of Guitar Harmolodics” on a YouTube clip where he also tunes his guitar in E (from high to low): E B E B E E.

The blonde Byrdland also boasts a big, brassy Bigsby tailpiece. “I never use that thing! Whadda ya call it?” he asked with a husky chuckle. “A whammy, a tremolo or a twang bar,” I replied. “Never use it. I don’t even know how you do it…it’s just there.”

“So, the tunings provide a couple of languages or set of directions to start from,” I reply, trying to break down Ulmer’s rootsy yet abstract theory. Blood laughs at my attempted analysis.

“Yeah, I hear you, but I don’t think about it like that. I just wanna make it through the night!” he said. “Y’know, it’s a fight to play the real American music, ’cause most people in America are playing European music. I don’t care what you’re playing. It all comes from the keyboard, from Europe. That’s what they respect. In America, our families all came from somewhere else. But this country has its own music without going to Africa or anywhere… And it’s guitar music! Not keyboard music. The Africans got their own tribal music and their own way of playing.”

Blood’s comment suddenly triggers something a Nigerian guitarist named Idowu Awe once told me back in 1978. He strode into my February-cold Berlin pad like he owned the place and laid his guitar case on the kitchen table. Pulling up a chair, he sat down, set his guitar on his lap and began tuning his guitar, starting with the low E string, which he loosened until it was slack. Then he began tightening it back up again. I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was doing or if he was messing with me. So I just sat there watching as he tuned his strings in what seemed to be a totally random fashion. While the E string was tuned to the lowest pitch, the rest of the notes didn’t follow any logical or conventional order.

“I tune to my head!” Idowu said, smiling. “That way, every time I play the guitar, it is fresh and new.” After finally settling on his latest tuning, Idowu began to chop a syncopated rhythm that I could find neither the top nor the bottom of. Once I tossed out any rational, Western approach to music, I picked up my mandolin and just fell into the groove, intuitively playing along. We wound up jamming happily for the next couple of hours.

“Music is not an instrument!” Blood emphasized. “It’s much bigger than that. You gotta figure out what it is. But you also gotta figure out what it ain’t. Don’t look down—look up! Look forward and get all the obstacles out of the way,” Ulmer said. “People want to hear music. They need music! But they don’t really know what it is. It’s not about a flat four or a flat nine!” he said with a laugh.

As Ornette Coleman often pointed out to his fellow musicians, “That’s not just a saxophone you’re playing—that’s music! That’s not a guitar! That’s music you’re playing!”

Blood also designed (and copyrighted) a chart of the harmolodic clef, which illustrates how the theory works. “He wrote it all down. It shows how each note relates in harmolodic law. I will find it for you,” Blood’s wife, Eva, said, returning a moment later with what looked like a cryptic treasure map comprising three intersecting angles with notes written on both sides, indicating how they interrelate with each other.

“That’s just harmolodic theory,” Blood said, shrugging. “You need to hear the sound. Music is a language. It’s information. Different people make different music. I’m different from you! So, why would my music sound anything like yours? [laughs] The instrument might help to break it down, but that ain’t music. If you can find it, then you can play it!

“You’ve got to remember, the instrument did not come first,” Blood emphasized. “That tells you something right there. Music came before instruments. People made instruments, but music was here before the instruments! Y’see, that’s the problem. You can play the instrument, but that don’t mean you’ll find the music.”

Ulmer’s unique system of tuning helped him to blow open doors of new possibility, inspiring him to stretch beyond the well-worn cliches and the pitfalls of patterns employed by most blues, jazz and rock guitarists. Blood’s harmolodic approach to playing gave him an incredible range of expression and the unique ability to construct harmonies as no other guitar player has, before or since. But what about the music he first learned to sing and play: gospel?

“Now gospel is something that don’t always come into you but comes out of you. They always want to teach you something to put it in your brain, without givin’ a damn about what was in your brain before.”

Speaking of shuffling the deck of your mind, Bill Frisell recalled seeing James Blood Ulmer play for the first time in Ornette Coleman’s group at the 1978 North Sea Jazz Festival. “It was wild…psychedelic…mind altering,” he enthused. A few months later Frisell caught Blood playing the small [now defunct Manhattan jazz club] Sweet Basil with saxophonist David Murray, and again with Arthur Blythe. “Any chance I could get,” he said. “With [his band] Odyssey, or solo. I love Blood. He changed the way I think and inspires me every time I hear him. He showed me a whole ’nother world. The past and the future. Deep, deep down into the earth and way, way far out into outer space at the same time. He is for sure one of the true one and onlys.”

Experiencing James Blood Ulmer live in New York punk clubs in the early ’80s was an intense and unforgettable experience. Onstage, the natty electric griot projected an imposing presence The music was loud and aggressive. Notes chimed and jabbed, blurted and shrieked from his amp (either a Roland Jazz Chorus 120 or Fender Twin Reverb), casting a spell over the crowd. For young, adventurous punk rockers exhilarated by Captain Beefheart’s fractured grunge and John Lydon’s edgy Public Image, Ulmer’s music connected all the dots, from Delta blues to free jazz to punk.

While Ulmer respected tradition, he had no use for convention. “My music came from a different direction,” Blood explained. “I call it modulating funk. We were the first black band [drummers Shannon Jackson and Calvin Weston, bassist Amin Ali, David Murray on sax and trumpeter Olu Dara] playing that kind of music at Hurrah and Danceteria. That shit was happening! But you don’t have those kind of gigs anymore.”

For better or worse, Blood was crowned the “New Hendrix” by a pair of reputable critics—the New York Times’Robert Palmer and Robert Christgau of the Village Voice, who appreciated his “catchy themes” and deemed Ulmer’s playing “the densest guitar improvisations anyone has put on record since Hendrix.”

Along with Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew’s innovative playing on King Crimson’s Discipline (released September 22, 1981), Ulmer was one of the few guitarists to extend the vocabulary of the guitar beyond Hendrix’s lexicon of sonic inventions.

It’s difficult for most folks to grasp harmolodics. It’s chaotic and revolutionary stuff. Metaphorically speaking, it’s like standing under a waterfall, a kinetic shower of notes and rhythms. If your brain doesn’t freeze in the headlights of analysis, you’ll be transported to another realm by the sound rushing over you as it scours your ears, mind and soul.

“People like art they understand,” the great American modernist composer Charles Ives once said. After an audience booed experimental pianist Henry Cowell [whose unique tonal clusters inspired Hungarian composer Béla Bartók], Ives allegedly leapt to his feet and shouted, “Shame on you! Sissy ears! Learn how to listen to real music!”

So, how does Ulmer feel about those folks that don’t get what he’s putting down? “I don’t give a shit,” he laughs. “I’d tell ’em to shut up and get out if they don’t like it!”

While Blood performed in various New York jazz clubs, it was the burgeoning downtown experimental No Wave scene that initially embraced his sonic onslaught. “I never did one thing at a time,” he explained. “I’d play one way and then another and another. I can get a blues gig, but…” Ulmer cracks up laughing at the notion of playing for the House of Blues crowd of musical tourists wanting to boogie and chow down on hand-crafted beer and high-rent plates of ribs.

“Look at the computer and you see some young fat kid singing old-time blues and people think that’s where it’s at!” Blood cackles with laughter. “That’s blues? Talk about the rise and fall of America’s music! What is music in America?” Blood asked rhetorically. “The only thing I can call it is prayer. That’s the music you take to the stage with you and play. That’s the music people will sit and listen to and like. But that’s the same damn reason you’ve got to take the music somewhere and change it. But if you make too many changes, it can’t exist. Nobody [record companies, radio or the media] will make room for it. I don’t hear no horn players that can play like John Coltrane anymore. John Coltrane was prayin’ so hard with that saxophone…but nobody will talk about that. A whole lotta horn players trying to play like Coleman or Coltrane, trying to sound like someone else they heard, thinking maybe they’ll make some money.”

“Absolutely no one sounds like Blood Ulmer on guitar, and I think we all know how near miraculous that is, especially in these times of tutorial homogeneity,” exclaimed Nels Cline (guitarist with Wilco and Plastic Ono Band). “But I must add that no one sings like Blood Ulmer either! Listening to him sing and play is like hearing an electrifying merging of past, present and future musics; front porch story songs, spiky iconoclastic improvisation, a whole other kind of blues.”

In 2001, Ulmer embarked on a series of blues-based albums produced by Living Colour’s Vernon Reid. Memphis Blood (recorded at Sun Studios) and No Escape from the Blues (recorded at Electric Ladyland) offered Ulmer’s reworking of Son House’s classic “Death Letter Blues,” and Willie Dixon and Lightnin’ Hopkins numbers like “Spoonful,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Trouble in Mind” (which featured this author on a droning tanpura).

Was it an attempt to simplify his music by playing something people were more familiar with, and not forcing them to think or listen too hard to understand and appreciate?

“I don’t play blues to get recognized. Blues is about language. It’s not about being a guitar player or a saxophone player,” Ulmer emphasized. “It’s scripture! Now, I don’t mean that it reads like or comes from the Bible. It’s a language that was taught to man. But I ain’t got no proof!” he said with a raspy laugh. “But I don’t like to talk about [that] because it don’t make sense.”

Speaking of not making sense, after two cutting-edge albums for Columbia in the early ’80s, the powers that be suggested Blood cover a Bruce Springsteen song in hopes of reaching a larger audience. Hare-brained as this scheme sounds, Ulmer’s cover of Neil Young’s “F*!#in’ Up” which he performed at Hal Willner’s Neil Young Project for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was smokin’ hot and heavy as a steamroller on a July afternoon. Ulmer’s ferocious version was in part enhanced by employing a Steinberger guitar.

“I don’t like it. It’s too cold,” he groused. “If you weren’t playing one of them, you didn’t have an avant-garde gig back then. The Gibson is more like a woman. But that guitar—well, it’s easy to travel with,” Ulmer allowed, referring to the Steinberger’s trademark missing headstock. Then he chuckled and recalled an odd moment in Vancouver when Lou Reed showed up with a Steinberger over his shoulder and saw Blood playing one as well. “He went and got something else!”

Back to the Columbia debacle: After Ulmer handed in his third album, Odyssey, the label unceremoniously dropped him. “They wanted a hit, but I don’t play no E, A minor, B major kind of thing. They wanted some Springsteen, and I gave ’em an album with no bass player!” Blood said, laughing. Odyssey, the album and the trio named after it, featured Ulmer’s choppy, rhythmic guitar riffs contrasted by Charlie Burnham’s languid, gooey, wah-wah-laced electric violin and propelled by Warren Benbow’s muscular polyrhythmic drums. (If you need a reference point, think a black, rootsy version of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra—but make sure to listen to the album!) But here’s the twist—Ulmer, who has a deep, soulful, bluesy voice, delivered a funky, foot-stomping rendition of his trademark song that asked the question “Are You Glad To Be in America?” three years before Springsteen’s smash “Born in the USA” in 1986. (Ulmer had previously recorded the song and titled his 1980 Rough Trade release after it.)

As Blood pointed out, there was no bassist on the session, as his detuned low strings covered the bottom end most effectively. In keeping with the freedom principle essential to the harmolodic creed, each instrument retains an equal voice and presence. The rhythm section is no longer forced to sit in the back of the musical bus, designated to serve the “lead instruments,” and are free to play and interpret the music as they feel.

More startling collaborations followed with Ulmer’s bands, Music Revelation Ensemble and Phalanx. ButBlood’s most unusual project came in 1993 with Harmolodic Guitar with Strings, which featured Ulmer’s voice and guitar a string quartet comprising violinist John Blake, Akua Dixon on cello with violinist sister Gayle Dixon, and Ron Lawrence on viola. Ulmer’s yearning, bleating vocals on “Maya,” buoyed by the transcendental strings, sounds like a lost song from Porgy and Bess.

“That was a wonderful session,” said Akua Dixon of Quartette Indigo. “My sister Gayle and I and John [Blake] had worked together before on sessions with [saxophonist] Archie Shepp and Ornette [Coleman] when he premiered a new piece at the Harlem Philharmonic. When you work with some people it’s about rehearsal, then hit the gig, and you don’t really absorb that much about the person and their music—and sometimes you’re glad you didn’t!” Akua laughed. “But in the case of Blood’s music, that was the only way you get to play it. It’s not about just what he wrote on the paper. Blood was very specific and unique. He didn’t write tunes, he wrote compositions. That whole album was a composition. It’s not a tune here and there. There are tunes within it and things you can take and make into a tune. It was all notated music, written by him. But it was written to a certain point, like a guide. It wasn’t like European music, with exact numbers of measures. But I understand it, because to keep the music growing, as a science, the system of notation that’s allotted in European classical music is no longer enough. Even on Charlie Parker with Strings, those were union musicians who got paid well, and were hired by the record companies for the gig. But they sure didn’t swing!” she emphasized. “But Blood? He is totally unique. His music is about moving on.”

As a composer, Blood translates the music playing in his head in various ways. Although he rarely plays flute live or on recordings, he uses the instrument for composing. On an earlier visit to his Soho loft, Ulmer sat on the couch, the sound off on his television, playing breathy melodies, silvery and blue. “I can write and read music faster on the flute than I can with the guitar,” he explained. “I don’t like to read music,” he grumbled. “I play music! I’ll read for hire! It’s hard to read someone else’s music. It’s just there to help you remember.”

So how has the 82-year-old iconoclast of harmolodic music fared during the dark days of the pandemic, holed up in his downtown loft?

“I mostly play in Europe now. They sat two here, two here…” Blood said, referring to the solo gigs he recently played in Holland, despite the threat of COVID, and by the time you read this, his band, Odyssey, will have returned to play Detroit for another epic harmolodic hoedown.

This article originally appeared in the Fretboard Journal 50, now sold out. Subscribe today and never miss out on a future issue.

The post Tribute: James Blood Ulmer (1940-2026) first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

After reviving the cult classic Victory electric guitar model in 2024, Gibson has expanded the lineup with a new Floyd Rose-equipped model.

The addition of a Floyd Rose vibrato system to the Victory blueprint was reportedly the result of consistent requests from Gibson fans. Like the previous model launched in 2024, the Gibson Victory Floyd Rose features a Victory AA figured maple top on a mahogany double-cutaway body, plus a 25.5” scale mahogany neck with a SlimTaper profile for “fast, articulate playing”.

Elsewhere, the guitar sports a 24-fret ebony fingerboard with a compound radius, as well as simple acrylic dot inlays in line with its “streamlined, performance-driven design”.

• READ MORE: Anime fans can get a real-life version of the guitar from Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty thanks to PRS

Pickups come by way of a pair of uncovered ‘80s Tribute humbuckers with zebra bobbins, wired to push/pull master volume and tone controls for coil splitting and selectable inner/outer coil options when split. These are paired with a three-way selector switch.

Credit: Gibson

And finally, the guitar features a six-on-a-side Explorer-style headstock, fitted with Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners and a Floyd Rose locking nut for rock-solid tuning stability, as well as chrome-plated hardware, black top hat knobs and a black five-ply pickguard.

“Designed for expressive modern playing styles and musicians seeking extended creative range, the Victory Floyd Rose continues the journey every Gibson begins in Nashville and carries into the hands of players worldwide,” says Gibson.

Credit: Gibson

“It excels with drop tunings thanks to its 25.5” scale length and is available in three gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes that highlight the figured maple top – each hand-sprayed for depth, individuality, and character. The result is an instrument as unique as a fingerprint, built to be played, pushed, and ultimately passed down.

“Like every Gibson, it’s more than a guitar – it’s a future legacy instrument. The final chapter begins the moment it leaves our craftory: to your hands, your sound, your story.”

The Victory Floyd Rose clocks in at $2,799, and is available in three colourways: Iguana Burst, Translucent Ebony Burst and Deep Ocean Burst.

Learn more at Gibson.

The post Gibson unveils shred-ready Victory Floyd Rose – and it “excels with drop tunings” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Rush have officially kicked off their Fifty Something world tour, and Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy is certainly not alone in feeling emotional about the band’s return.

In a post on social media, Portnoy shares that through watching a livestream of the show he found himself in tears, and believes that it’s now “very obvious” that the tour “needed to happen”.

The Fifty Something global trek celebrates over 50 years of Rush music, and sees Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee and new touring drummer Anika Nilles all paying tribute to the late Neil Peart, who sadly passed away in 2020.

• READ MORE: “He would go, ‘What riff?’” Geddy Lee says he had to record all of Rush’s songwriting sessions because Alex Lifeson would forget “great” riffs just minutes after playing them

In his post, Portnoy – a huge Rush fan – says, “So many feelings and emotions today…I wasn’t there in person last night, but like so many of us around the world, I was glued to YouTube all night long…I watched the RushCon live stream in real time for the entire show as it was happening.

“What can I say that hasn’t been written already by everybody online today…? It was magical! The setlist was absolutely PERFECT! (and to think they still have around three other variations up their sleeves to come…) Anika absolutely KILLED IT in the best way imaginable.”

He goes on to add, “I was so happy for her…nailing all of the big Neil moments with a giant smile on her face the whole time! She really is the perfect choice for this! The tributes to Neil throughout the show were so tasteful and emotional. (Yes I’ll admit I cried at a few points).

“The production was absolutely INSANE (Major props to Howard Ungerleider), and most importantly of all, I am so happy for Geddy and Alex to be able to do this again! Seeing this tour come to life, it is very obvious this needed to happen. As not only a proper tribute to Neil, but most importantly to honour the legacy of this band. Geddy and Alex deserve it. And the fans deserve it as well…”

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The show took place at the Kia Forum in LA, the very same venue that hosted their fateful 2015 departing gig. Performing before 18,000 fans, the band honoured Peart with a rendition of Bravado, and a series of tribute montages were also shown onscreen throughout the entire evening.

The post Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy cried watching Rush’s first reunion show: “Seeing this tour come to life, it is very obvious this needed to happen” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

PRS Guitars has teamed up with AMC Global Media’s Sentai and streaming service HIDIVE to bring fans a real life version of the pink guitar featured in the coming-of-age drama series, Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty. 

The 2026 SE Rock Lady Limited Edition guitar is limited to just 690 units, and is based on both the PRS SE Paul’s Guitar model and PRS Artist KANAMI’s Limited Edition Custom 24-08. The model recreates the guitar used by the series’ main character Lilisa Suzunomiya (“Lily”).

• READ MORE: Fender claims social media has led to “a lot of misunderstandings about the nature and the scope” of their cease and desist blitz… as PRS confirms they were one of the brands affected

Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty was originally created as a manga series, written and illustrated by Hiroshi Fukuda. The opening theme for the hit anime adaptation, Ready to Rock, was written by KANAMI and performed by her band, BAND-MAID. Both she and her band mates provided motion capture for the anime production.

PRS’ real life model recreates the featured guitar as closely as possible, with a Pink Pearl top, black headstock face, natural back, and purple-toned pickup bobbins. One notable difference, and a key fingerprint of PRS instruments, is the inclusion of its trademark bird inlays.

It hosts TCI “S” treble and bass pickups paired with a three-way toggle pickup selector and two mini-toggle switches. These mini-toggles allow players to coil-tap the pickups independently, providing a total of eight pickup combinations.

Anchoring this guitar is a PRS Stoptail bridge, and it also features a line-drawing of a lily flower on the truss rod cover as a unique finishing detail.

“This project has been one of the most creative, out-of-the-box things we have done in a while. Developing a guitar with a fictional artist is not something we do every day. It has been a lot of fun, but this is far more than a commemorative display piece – it’s a true player’s guitar, designed for performance and durability. Ultimately, it’s a musical instrument that is made to be played,” says PRS Guitars COO, Jack Higginbotham.

Credit: PRS Guitars

KANAMI adds, “When I wrote the opening theme Ready to Rock, I wanted it to feel like the moment you decide to step onto the stage and let everything out. It’s exciting to see that energy carried into a real PRS guitar inspired by Lily’s instrument, and I hope players and fans can plug in, turn it up, and experience the world of Rock is a Lady’s Modesty for themselves.”

The guitar is available from major PRS Guitars retailers in North America and select international markets, including Japan. For full details, head over to PRS Guitars.

The post Anime fans can get a real-life version of the guitar from Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty thanks to PRS appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The estate of Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell says it “respectfully disagrees” with a court ruling in favour of the Dean guitar brand amid a trademark dispute, and says it intends to appeal the decision.

In Dime We Trust, led by Dime’s longtime girlfriend and estate trustee, Rita Haney, has issued a press release in which it argues against a summary judgement that dismissed “the majority” of the estate’s trademark, fraud, and breach of contract claims against Dean and its parent company, Armadillo Distribution Enterprises.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, argued unlawful use of the Stealth and Razorback guitar body shapes that Dimebag (real name Darrell Abbott) made in collaboration with Dean, and “unauthorised fraudulent trademark registrations” for the two.

• READ MORE: The history of pinched harmonics, divebombs and squeelies

The press release, issued this June, states (via Lambgoat): “The Trust respectfully disagrees with the Court’s ruling and believes the decision conflicts with the clear language contained in the agreement Darrell Abbott signed with Dean Guitars in 2004.

“Specifically, the agreement states: ‘The Company [Dean Guitars/Armadillo Enterprises] shall acquire no rights in the trade names or designs Stealth Guitar or Razorback Guitar by virtue of this Agreement, and upon termination of this Agreement shall cease the production of Stealth and Razorback style guitars.’”

The statement goes on to address a Non-Disclosure Agreement, reportedly executed two months prior to the 2004 agreement, “in which Dean Guitars CEO Elliott Rubinson acknowledged that the Razorback and Stealth guitar designs, along with the associated headstock designs, were created by Darrell Abbott.”

A statement from Rita Haney reads: “The Agreement Darrell signed in 2004 stated Dean Guitars shall acquire ‘NO’ rights in the designs Stealth or Razorback Guitar, and…No means ‘None…’ Darrell would never have signed away ownership of his designs, and the documents clearly support that.”

She adds, “He had Dean Guitars sign an NDA to even look at his Razorback Guitar. His Stealth guitar was previously sold during his relationship with Washburn, and when that relationship ended, Darrell retained his designs and expected the same arrangement to be upheld by Dean Guitars.

“Dean Guitars did not make or sell a single Razorback nor Stealth before their formal relationship with Darrell. They never used the shapes without Darrell’s endorsement and in no way should be allowed to make these guitars after the relationship was terminated… We continue to fight for the return of Darrell’s guitar designs as well as their unauthorised use of Darrell’s name, likeness, and intellectual property.”

The Trust says that the litigation is ongoing and that the “recent ruling does not resolve the broader dispute”. The statement outlines that it intends to appeal the summary judgment decision and continue pursuing additional claims.

Guitar.com has reached out to Dean Guitars for comment.

The post Dimebag Darrell’s estate “intends to appeal” against court ruling in favour of Dean amid trademark dispute over guitar designs appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

A fake version of dotty duo Angine de Poitrine has been spotted (pun intended) playing a show in Russia, but with one tell-tale sign: their ‘Khn de Poitrine’ has been playing a single-neck guitar.

The real duo, which consists of the anonymous Khn de Poitrine on guitars and Klek de Poitrine on drums, has caught the attention of Dave Grohl and Lars Ulrich, and amassed millions of views online with their viral live session for the US radio station KEXP.

This fake version has caught the attention of the band’s team, specifically art director Sam Murdock, who claims they’re tagging the real band in social media posts and have not disclosed that they are not the real deal themselves.

• READ MORE: “It was the perfect choice to make fun of guitar heroes”: The story behind Angine de Poitrine’s ridiculous double-neck guitar

Speaking to Exclaim!, Murdock says, “We’re living in a weird time where everyone’s trying to make money off the band. Right now, there’s like 1,500 fake T-shirts online already, and I removed 700 fake T-shirts on Tee Republic and on Red Bubble, but they keep on popping up.

“It’s crazy that so many people would [make these]. There’s a fake [version of the] band touring Russia already, with the costumes and everything, and they keep tagging the band [on socials] and they don’t even say it’s not a real band. And they just have a one-neck guitar.”

Further addressing the band’s surge in popularity, he adds: “Things that would happen over five years are happening over five weeks.”

You can watch the imposter Angine de Poitrine playing a show at a venue in Moscow in the video below:

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In a recent interview with The Guardian, the pair said they don’t plan on changing their costumes or stage set up as a result of their growing fame.

“People have fallen in love with the band as it’s always been,” said Khn. “So we’re not gonna change everything [because] we have a bigger budget now. We’re emotionally attached to our old beaten-up costumes that have been in car accidents and are full of snot. We think people love the fact that you can feel they have lived.”

The post This fake Angine de Poitrine band has been pretending to be the real thing – but they’re using a single-neck guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$149/£139, ikmultimedia.com

As a guitarist, few experiences transcend that of plugging in to a big, heavy tube amp and cranking that thing to 10. But in reality, this is not always possible – or appropriate. There are times when you want to practice long after noise levels are generally curtailed – and moments when you want something portable you can just plug into and play – so a headphone amp is an important piece of kit to have in your repertoire.

• READ MORE: Positive Grid Reactor review: does your guitar amp really need an AI chatbot?

IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – what is it?

The TONEX Plug from IK Multimedia is an intriguing entry to the category, and competes with already-loved devices like the Boss Katana GO and Fender Mustang Micro Plus with tonnes of amp and effects emulations, Bluetooth audio streaming, plenty of preset storage and a well-designed free companion app, TONEX Control, offering granular control over your tone patches.

Image: Press

IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – build quality and user experience

Props must be given to IK Multimedia for the design of the TONEX Control app. It’s quick and snappy, and responds to input pretty much instantaneously. In a technologically advanced world, even the slightest degree of lag can be hugely frustrating, so it’s nice to see this isn’t a problem at all with TONEX Control.

Navigating the app is equally straightforward. Simply select a preset, and it’ll load up a full signal chain complete with an amp and effects, all with fully adjustable parameters. Again, the responsiveness of the app is what really wins points here, as there’s no lag whatsoever between app input and what you actually hear in your headphones.

You’ve also got access to the IK Multimedia ToneNET platform, where users upload their own tone creations to the cloud. So you’ve basically got an ever-expanding range of tone profiles at your disposal from within the TONEX Control app.

Bear in mind, though, that you don’t need to use the companion app. You can cycle through presets using just the TONEX Plug, your guitar and a pair of headphones; using the app just offers control over the many parameters of your tone.

In terms of the build quality of the actual TONEX Plug device, it’s lightweight at just 70g – carry it in your gigbag and you won’t even know it’s there – but still manages to feel premium thanks to its sleek design, subtle aesthetic touches and sturdy side buttons.

My only flag to raise here is the swivel of the input jack. It could do with being slightly stiffer, as it’s prone to moving around with accidental tugs of your headphone cable, which are common if you’ve got a longer lead that drags on the floor.

Image: Press

IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – sounds

The most important thing about any headphone guitar amp is how it sounds, and the TONEX Plug serves up an impressively professional range of tones that rival any category-leading amp plugin or practice amp.

There’s a certain mental sacrifice that goes on in the brain when dealing with headphone amps: “It’s not a ‘real amp’, so I’m prepared for the tones to not be as good.” But that’s not the case with the TONEX Plug. Once you get stuck in, you don’t wish you were playing through a real practice amp instead. If anything, this might even become your go-to practice solution.

The range of amp models on offer is impressive; I’m particularly admiring of the digital tube amp emulations, which have an authentic responsiveness, courtesy of IK’s AI Machine Modelling technology. Not too shabby for a 150 bucks of headphone amp.

You’ve also got onboard EQ, gate, compressor, delay, reverb and modulation effects which you can add or subtract from your signal chain at will. It’s all very intuitive and easy to use, so big points here.

IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – should I buy one?

As guitarists we don’t always want to plug into a tube amp and crank it to 11. And your neighbours or roommates definitely don’t want you to. The TONEX Plug is a terrific option for quiet practice, loaded with thousands of top-quality presets that are fully tweakable via the TONEX Control app. So if you want to continue practicing guitar outside of curfew hours without sacrificing great tone, this little device is just the ticket.

You might also be looking for a practice solution that doesn’t involve a huge degree of setup. I’m a huge fan of in-the-box guitar playing – playing through plugins within a DAW. The only problem is that it involves switching on your computer, plugging in your audio interface, loading up your DAW and so on. Basically, it’s a lot of work if you just want to practice right away. The TONEX Plug is a great idea in this regard, as you just need the device, a pair of headphones, your guitar, your smartphone on the coffee table and you’re good to go.

IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – alternatives

There’s some stiff competition in the guitar headphone amp market, and conveniently for you, the consumer, there are a number of great options at similar price points. The Fender Mustang Micro is probably the king in this category, which we rated a strong 9/10 in our review. You’ve also got the Boss Katana GO, which is priced around the £100 mark, and earned a cool 8/10 in our review, in which we debated whether it was the “perfect headphone amp”. The Positive Grid Spark NEO is an interesting over-ear take on the headphone amp that sounds truly fantastic, while if you want something that you can actually hear in the room, the Blackstar Beam Mini might be the new king of practice solutions.

The post IK Multimedia TONEX Plug – coming for the headphone amp crown? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll? Keith Richards would prefer an early night in after playing dominoes with his dad, thanks. Despite the ‘70s painting rockstars as insatiable, hedonistic maniacs, the Rolling Stones frontman admitted back in 1988 that the phrase was just “good PR”.

In an old interview shared by Freeport Traveler, Richards explained that, while he loves the sentiment, the saying couldn’t be further from the truth. “It’s a neat phrase… but I’ve been doing this gig for a long time, and to me that’s just a good PR phrase,” he said [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar]. “[Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll] has very, very little to do with the day-to-day life of making music and making records.”

• READ MORE: “It’s the beginnings of the development of the electric guitar, it’s iconic” – Gina Gleason on 75 years of the Telecaster

While he admitted that the phrase can “encapsulate an image” of a rockstar, it’s not that simple, he said. “If it were that easy, I’d be very happy – but it isn’t that easy!”

Of course, the Stones were hardly angels; the band infamously got raided in 1967 and faced a subsequent trial for drug possession. However, Richards explained that the band were just an easy target, high-profile target for the police and media hungry to fuel a moral panic story.

In fact, in 1988, Richards said that the police were more-or-less tired of hounding him now. Instead he had found himself signing more autographs for cops than getting raided – a welcome change…

However, he explained that he knows the media will associate them with the “PR phrase”, no matter how untrue it is. “I’ve got a public image,” he explained. “So I don’t really think about self-image. I just try to live as normal a life as possible [off-stage]. This is what I want to do. I have a lot of friends. I enjoy sitting around, and I enjoy playing dominoes with my dad.”

“The image of myself – I realise that there’s a certain amount of the ‘Keith Richards rebel lord, junkie freak, rock and roll, sex and drugs,’” he continued. “I understand that that’s there, but it’s only a part, and I find that your image is like a shadow.”

While his ‘shadow’ self will always follow him around, he noted that the public impression will always be on his past actions. It essentially takes a few years of being on the straight-and-narrow for people to catch up. “[The media is] always ten or fifteen years behind what you actually are,” he said. “Images just sort of stick. They have a lot of glue on them, and it’s hard to get them off. Images – they’re like acne.”

Ultimately, Richards explained that trying to live by the lazy rockstar checklist is something that would just end up hurting you. “You’ve got to grow up, or it can kill you if you don’t,” he said.

Thanks to the Stones being good lads and not going too wild in their youth, they’re still going strong. 2023 saw their mega comeback with the Hackney Diamonds, and this year will see yet another record, Foreign Tongues, drop in July. You can hear lead single In The Stars now.

Foreign Tongues is set to drop 10 July 2026.

The post Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll was just a “good PR phrase” if you ask Keith Richards – he prefers playing dominoes appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

How important is it as a guitarist to be versed in music theory? While knowing your way around the fretboard from a technical standpoint no doubt gives you a stronger roadmap in terms of understanding why certain note choices and chord progressions work together, many high-profile guitarists have made successful careers without knowing lots of theory.

Former All That Remains guitarist Jason Richardson – known for his jaw-dropping shred chops – said last year that knowing music theory is not essential: “I know plenty of players who write the craziest-sounding stuff, and some of them don’t know anything about theory.”

Indeed, some players have been able to mark their stamp on the world of guitar with somewhat limited theory knowledge. Take former Scorpions and UFO guitarist Michael Schenker for example, who tells Guitar World in a new interview that he “doesn’t care about that stuff”.

• READ MORE: Peter Frampton says he likes “the challenge” of playing guitar as his neuromuscular disease gets worse

“I’ve never known about anything technical,” says the guitarist, who released his 13th album with the Michael Schenker Group in October last year.

“When I put a musical sketch together for a song, I can’t say if it’s major or minor. People say I switch between the two, but I don’t know.”

He goes on: “Maybe I play parts of scales, but I don’t know the names of them or the modes or whatever. I just don’t care about that stuff.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Schenker reveals how he comes up with guitar riffs, and how they’re not always with a specific song in mind.

“It’s interesting because when I write riffs, I don’t know what songs they’re for,” he says. “And then I start randomly putting them together. I don’t even look for the best piece of gold, I just start playing something in my collection, and if it works I use it. If it doesn’t, I reach for something else.”

Earlier this year, Michael Schenker revealed why he chose not to join Ozzy Obsourne’s band upon being invited to, following the death of Randy Rhoads in 1982.

“I’ve always believed in doing exactly what I feel like. That’s freedom of expression. If I did something just because it was what people expected, or if I stopped what I was doing because I was blinded by fame and money, that would be selling my soul,” said the guitarist, whose latest MSG album is fittingly called Don’t Sell Your Soul.

In other news, Michael Schenker’s famed 1971 Flying V was recreated earlier this year by the Gibson Custom Shop, and reportedly sold out in a single day.

Listen to Don’t Sell Your Soul below:

The post “I don’t know the names of the modes or whatever. I just don’t care about that stuff”: Why Michael Schenker isn’t interested in becoming an expert in music theory appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When Brian May revealed that his Red Special was “all over” the soundtrack of the new Masters Of The Universe movie, we knew we were in for a treat. Eternia is riling with killer riffs, fuelling He-Man with the ultimate power of a rock god – and the Queen guitarist was giddy with excitement to offer his services.

Speaking to Polygon, director Travis Knight recalls how he was out-fangirled when meeting the Queen guitarist. While Knight was basking in the “surreal moment” of watching a legend perform on his Red Special, May couldn’t help proving how much he loved He-Man. “At the end of the session, he disappears,” Knight says. “I thought he was just tired, but then he shows up and he’s carrying two giant boxes of He-man toys that he still had in his attic from his son Jimmy.”

• READ MORE: Steve Vai struggled to play Brian May’s Red Special guitar due to its strange neck: “I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t play this thing’”

Despite the toys belonging to his son, May was totally familiar with the He-Man collection. He rallied off the story arcs, character names and lore with ease. “He put them on the ground in his recording studio, pulled out the characters – and he knew who they were,” Knight explains.

“It was a crazy bizarro moment for me to be sitting there with Brian May as he’s talking about Skeletor and Man-E-Faces,” he continues. “It was so weird and also so cool.”

May has posted the moment on his personal Instagram. Alongside Knight, sound designer Sam Okell, and composer Daniel Pemberton, May shows off his his vintage toy collection. And he’s smiling like a kid on Christmas that has got absolutely everything he wanted. “I have the POWER!!!!” he wrote in the caption. “Great joy to work tonight on the scrumptious, brand new He-Man movie.”

View this post on Instagram

Elsewhere in the Polygon article, Knight explains why enlisting May was so important for the soundtrack. He reveals that a “big musical touchstone” throughout the process was the score of 1980 sci-fi movie Flash Gordon – a score written, performed and produced by Queen.

“I loved Flash Gordon as a kid and I think one of the many reasons was that incredible, iconic score that Queen famously did,” the director says. “It was amazing. It had such joy, such spirit, such theatricality – this operatic, larger than life feel – but it also had real sincerity at its core. And that comes down to those incredible musicians. So Queen was definitely a touchstone for me and Daniel.”

Masters Of The Universe is in cinemas now.

The post Brian May’s playing on the Masters of the Universe soundtrack has a touching personal element: “He shows up carrying two giant boxes of He-Man toys that he still had in his attic” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After more than a decade away, Rush are officially back. Returning to the same Californian venue as their fateful 2025 departing gig, Rush’s Fifty Something Tour has kicked off with a bang – and the tour is dutifully honouring their past, their future and the late Neil Peart.

Performing before 18,000 fans in the same venue that hosted their final gig with Peart was always going to be emotional – but Rush did it with class, and even a bit of humour. The evening opened up with a light-hearted poke at how long it’s been since the band has been away; an intro video shows fans creeping through a haunted mansion to find Rush, only to discover them aged and covered in cobwebs.

• READ MORE: Rush have performed for the first time since reforming – and you can watch it right now

On their journey to find Rush, the fans also peek behind doors that show different versions of the band. But it’s not quite what they expect – from a nod to Rush’s 2009 tour intro, which sees the kids of South Park performing as Lil’ Rush, to actors Jason Segel and Paul Rudd reprising their Rush fangirl personas from a 2011 Funny Or Die skit.

After Rush eventually put on some ‘absurdly prophetic robes’, they are symbolically brought back to life. That’s when, onstage, the real Rush appear – and they open with 1977’s Xanadu, a track that, rather fittingly, centres around rebirth and “immortality”.

In the gap since Rush’s final performance in 2015, a lot has happened. Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have both released solo records, while Lee also released a memoir, My Effin’ Life, in 2023. But the pair sound great together, as if there’s been no time away.

Throughout, new drummer Anika Nilles does do a smashing job on drums. She often causes the crowd to erupt in a wave of clamorous applause for her drum fills, and an online clip of Vital Signs has earned her plenty of praise too. “Geddy and Alex struck gold finding Anika, she’s perfect,” one YouTube commenter writes. “Neil would be proud.”

Though, of course, the absence of drummer Peart is felt. The band go all-in on honouring their late bandmate, dedicating a bittersweet rendition of Bravado to his memory. A series of tribute montages are also shown onscreen throughout the entire evening, making sure Peart’s presence is felt.

Plenty of other great cuts make it onto the setlist. For instance, 1987 track Time Stand Still is performed, with singer Aimee Mann finally performing her vocals live for the first time ever. Three chunks of 2112 are also performed, along with Tom Sawyer and a climactic finale on Working Man.

View a full list of dates for the Fifty Something tour at Rush’s official website.

The post Rush finally kick off their Fifty Something Tour – and they made sure to honour Neil Peart appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Back in 2019, guitar legend Peter Frampton revealed he’d been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), a progressive degenerative muscle disease which has since affected his ability to play guitar.

IBM causes gradual muscle deterioration in the arms and legs, and has forced Frampton to rethink the way he plays guitar. But despite his condition, the guitarist remains infectiously optimistic, and even says he enjoys the “challenge”.

• READ MORE: “I was scared to death with the situation I was in”: Peter Frampton explains why the incredible success of Frampton Comes Alive was the “scariest thing”

“I can’t complain about my life at all,” he tells People in a new interview. “Yes, it’s not the most pleasant thing to have. It changes your life. It’s not going to end it, but yeah, it’s a little difficult. But really I’ve gotten used to it, and I like the challenge of being able to do what I do as it progresses.”

After revealing his diagnosis years ago, Peter Frampton announced a farewell tour, anticipating that the disease would render him unable to hit the road any longer. But he continues to tour even now in 2026. And he’s still recording new material, too, having just released his latest album Carry the Light last month.

“I’ve always been very positive,” he continues. “My parents were like that, especially my mother. My feeling about my IBM muscle disease is that I have been dealt some wonderful cards in my life, and life is life and you get some trials and tribulations along the way.”

Indeed, Frampton’s optimism and determination in the face of his disease is nothing short of inspiring.

“People say, ‘Oh, you must be so upset,’ and, yeah, I am,” he recently admitted. “But you can fix the little things.

“But big things never worried me, because the big things you can’t do anything about. If I don’t accept what I have. I’m going to be mad for the rest of my life.”

Listen to Peter Frampton’s new album Carry the Light below:

The post Peter Frampton says he likes “the challenge” of playing guitar as his neuromuscular disease gets worse appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

For many guitar makers, seeing their instruments being played alongside some of the most popular musicians on the planet – and in the hands of their own favourite players – is often an “end goal” kind of deal, or, within the first few years of the brand at least, not something to worry about.

Despite the small size of the operation, and the fact the brand only started in 2020, the eye-catching offset shapes of Fairlane’s flagship models – the Zephyr and Cardinal – can be seen in the hands of everyone from Dallas Green to Beabadoobee, from Ed O’Brien to Daisy Spencer, and many more besides. The full artist roster is absolutely not to be sniffed at, and is notably all a result of word-of-mouth, thanks to the hard graft of the two people behind the brand.

The Fairlane Zephyr on the Guitar.com Cover. Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

Fairlane guitars are made in a south east London workshop by Kevin Williams and Reuben Gotto, both of whom have been involved in the music industry in some way for their whole careers. Williams had always been interested in building – he made his first guitar with his dad when he was 16 – but his career across the music industry was more focused on playing, teching and tour management. He retrained in luthiery in the mid-2010s, and started working as the “main repair guy” for Monty’s Guitars.

“I really enjoyed that,” Williams recalls. “Matt [Gleeson, founder] was great to work for, really supportive and encouraging. I was making guitars at that time, and Matt told me, ‘This stuff is really good – you should be working for yourself.’ But it’s hard to take that plunge when you’re comfortable – guitar-building seemed like a side hustle, a hobby.” But when Covid hit – “usual story,” Williams sighs – Monty’s furloughed him, and the brand decided to leave London. “I didn’t have a job, didn’t know what to do – and that’s where Reuben comes in.”

Gotto was – and is still – on the road as a touring guitar tech for a laundry-list of notable artists. “I had been playing in bands in my early 20s, and then did that thing where you accidentally fall into teching for your mate’s band,” Gotto says, “And then the balance becomes more teching than playing. So I spent a good 15 years out with some amazing artists – I was on the road with Lana Del Rey when the pandemic hit.”

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

During lockdown, Williams and Gotto found themselves doing guitar repairs at home, working from their kitchen tables. There was no sign of their work slowing down, nor of normalcy returning any time soon – and so they moved their business into a dedicated workshop space.

“We had worked on a prototype, and developed it into something that was a little bit more our own,” Gotto explains. “When people came into the shop for setups and repairs, they’d ask, ‘What’s that weird, cool thing on the wall?’ That led to inquiries as to whether we’d make them for other people. We went deeper down that route – and because our clientele were coming through the workshop from our other lines of work, we were very lucky to have our guitar designs in front of a lot of cool people very quickly. That helped us hone them, and get opinions from people who we trusted to be honest with us.”

“It’s hard to take that plunge when you’re comfortable – guitar-building seemed like a side hustle, a hobby”

Best Of Both

The first prototype (the brand was originally named Providence Guitars) was an early version of the Cardinal – an alternative take on the Non-Reverse Firebird, a style of guitar that Williams had long been, in his words, “obsessed with”.

“As much as I love the Non-Reverse Firebird shape, it has a lot of issues,” he says. “It’s not like you can sit down and play that guitar. And it’s also not that comfortable when you’re stood up. So I wanted to see if we could address some of those issues, and that was the first one I made – even before we had started Fairlane.”

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

From there, the Cardinal’s set-neck design was reconfigured into a bolt-on – in the process, creating the Zephyr. “It was a challenge, that change,” Williams explains. “The neck approaches the body in a different way, and pushes things down into its own shape, its own whole thing really. So on top of the non-reverse Firebird thing, there’s some offset and Jazzmaster-inspired elements mixed in there too.”

A lot of Fairlane’s design philosophy involves crossing this bridge between Fullerton and Kalamazoo – alongside the hybridised offset looks of the Zephyr and Camino, the guitars mix the scale of a Fender with the fretboard radius of a Gibson. The pickup combinations – bespoke sets made in collaboration with Monty’s Guitars – often mix and match disparate styles in the bridge and neck positions.

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

“Some of it is knowing what works best for people live and in the studio,” Gotto explains. “We try to combine everything that we think is best about guitars. That’s the beauty of the history of them: you’ve got so much cool stuff to pick from and everything has its merits in different situations.”

“The initial decisions were made purely because we liked those things,” Williams adds. “Rather than trying to go, ‘I think this is what people will want.’ But, what we do see right now is that most people play Fender-style guitars more than they do Gibson-style guitars – that’s just where the world’s at. So people will be more used to that 25.5” scale length. So it was good to incorporate that, and still have the 12” radius for easier bends – it was all about mixing and matching until we found our formula.”

Thanks to the agility of a two-person operation, some playability decisions can be folded in straight away from custom orders. Gotto recalls one from Emily Rosenfeld, guitarist for Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and more, who visited the workshop and tested a bunch of guitars. “One thing she said was, that when she played open chords, she wanted her hand to be round further, so could we shave a little more off the bottom of the headstock. We tried it, it worked great, and now that’s just our design!”

“When people came into the shop they’d ask, ‘What’s that weird, cool thing on the wall?’”

Organic Produce

Fairlane’s guitars are offered in a range of relic’d options, and indeed many Fairlane players and artists have opted for at the very least lightly-aged guitars – and, in some cases, guitars that look like they’ve been played every day for 50 years. But for Gotto and Williams, ageing an instrument isn’t just about the cool factor. “Whether you like relic’ing or not, the fact that you pick it up and it feels like it has been played, that is what people want,” Williams says. “You can do it without relic’ing, that’s fine, but there’s a place for everything, I think, and I don’t know anyone who’d opt for a totally brand-new guitar rather than something that feels played-in.”

“If you’re playing guitar and it feels like an extension of you, something you’ve been playing for decades – it’s almost this passive thing,” Gotto adds. “Where you don’t even notice the instrument – you don’t feel every fret, you don’t have that gummy, glossy poly paint on the back of the neck. It’s nice to have something that just feels like an extension of you when you’re playing it. But there’s also this really organic experience, the enjoyment of texture and wood – there’s nothing wrong with liking that.”

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

Relic’d or not, the guitar in particular is obviously a great vector for this more organic experience, and both Gotto and Williams are clearly excited that the guitar as a whole has returned to have such a presence in the mainstream. “I think everyone chases that organic thing, even when it’s within the really solid structure of modern production,” Gotto says. “Everyone’s desperate to inject the human feeling into things, at this point.”

“There is this pushback against AI, as well,” Williams adds. “As much as you can’t avoid it everywhere else, when it comes to AI music, people can hear it, they can feel it – and they will push against it. And one way to do that is to just pick up an instrument and actually play it! I’ve seen the ‘rock’s dead, music’s dead’ cycle so many times – and it never really worries me. Having the other side of the business, doing setups, we can see how many young kids are coming in having just started a band – and getting really excited about being on that path.”

“I don’t know anyone who’d opt for a totally brand-new guitar rather than something that feels played-in”

Good Tempered

Gotto and Williams are clearly passionate about attention to detail, and foregrounding what matters to them and to their players about their guitars. Just as how they’ve picked from all corners of the history of the electric guitar, they both have a wealth of experience in luthiery and teching between them, informing their intentional decisions about things like tonewoods.

“We use a tempered white pine from the Minnesota region,” Williams says. “The first prototypes were made out of pine – it worked really well, it was light, it felt great, but it’s very soft. Going back to having guitars on stages, there was a question of how long they’d survive! So if you temper it, you reduce the moisture, and tighten up the structure – it makes it a little more durable. It’s still a soft wood, but it’ll take a knock. But it also just opens up the sound, too. So it was a choice made initially out of experimentation, and it worked.”

“It’s a really interesting wood,” Gotto adds. “It allows the string vibration to bloom, and kind of move through different vowel sounds as it rings out. I know there’s all this talk of ‘does tonewood matter’ – and everyone wants to have a nice, quotable, one-sentence opinion on where all the sound in an electric guitar comes from, but it just doesn’t work like that! It’s all of these one-percents that you put together and combined, they make a huge difference.”

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

Fairlane’s straightforward approach to controls comes from a similar place. “Having worked on tours across thousands of shows with bands that have had a dozen or more Jazzmasters – not once have I ever known anyone to turn on the rhythm circuit. They tape them up so they don’t switch to it!”

“We tried to keep everything on that side as minimal and as simple as possible,” Williams explains. “Less wiring inside the guitar, less switching – a clearer, more direct path for the sound. Some people ask for extra bits and bobs, which we’re happy to do, but as a general rule, we try to keep it as straightforward as possible!”

“These days, everyone’s got a pedalboard bigger than their house,” Gotto notes, “so you don’t need so much stuff on the guitar, it’s nice to just have a good starting point for shaping it later.”

“It’s knowing what works best for people live and in the studio. We try to combine everything that we think is best about guitars”

Star Treatment

You might think that having teched for and toured with some of the biggest guitar names on the planet, Gotto and Williams might be used to seeing world-class artists pick up a Fairlane guitar – but their excitement about the success of the brand remains palpable.

“If you were to ask me my favourite bands, they’d be Radiohead and Mogwai,” Gotto says. “And they both have our guitars now! It’s like, ‘Amazing, job done there!’ It’s great when the guitars take on a life of their own, definitely a pinch-yourself moment when that happens.”

“For me, Quicksand was a massive band for me when I was younger,” Williams adds. “And now Walter Schreifels has a Fairlane. So that’s a very satisfying moment, when, for those artists that inspired you, you get to give a little bit back to them – and then they create something on the instrument that you made, and then it inspires other people. It’s kind of mad, that circle, and once you’re in it – it’s amazing.”

Image: Fiona Garden for Guitar.com

Going forward, Gotto and Williams tell me their main focus is keeping up with an ever-growing order book – without compromising on the handmade, custom nature of their operation, or ballooning the price. Fairlanes are notably affordable for UK-made custom instruments, and the intention is to keep them as accessible as possible. “Our own ethics keep us from becoming too wealthy off this!” Gotto laughs.

Both Gotto and Williams are clearly proud of how they’ve built Fairlane – almost entirely through applying themselves the best they can to making great guitars, and getting them into the right people’s hands. “We really enjoy being a company where it feels like a well-kept secret – every guitar we’ve made for someone has resulted in somebody else seeing it and playing it, and then ordering one – and that’s how we’ve progressed,” says Gotto. “There haven’t been any cynical marketing campaigns. Well… not yet!”

Words: Cillian Breathnach
Photography: Fiona Garden
Photography Assistance: Ben Ashton, Hiero Ashton

The post How Fairlane Guitars built a brand beloved by some of the coolest artists on the planet appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Jackson Emmer offers a practical introduction to bluegrass jam etiquette, aimed especially at players attending their first jam session

When you think of the iconic look and sound of an Orange amplifier, chances are you’re probably not thinking about Ed Sheeran, but it seems that the megastar guitarist is about to change that – as he’s soft-launched his first ever signature amplifier with the brand.

• READ MORE: What guitars does Ed Sheeran use? The instruments and gear behind the Mathematics tour

Ed is no stranger to signature gear of course – the guitarist was a Martin artist for years before starting his own guitar brand with Lowden back in 2019. Since then, he’s also partnered with Headrush to build his own Sheeran Looper pedals to enable one-man band approach, and earlier this year he partnered with PRS to release a signature baritone electric with his own artwork on it.

Now, however, he’s completing the set-up by launching his own amp – albeit one that’s squarely aimed at the busking/small acoustic gigs audience.

The tease for the amp happened when Sheeran performed an impromptu outdoor busking gig on the harbour of his hometown of Ipswich, UK on Friday morning. Sheeran teased the gig the night before on Instagram with a Google Maps pin for the location of the gig, and tagged Orange Amps in the post.

Then on Friday, he rocked up with a mic stand, his trusty Sheeran by Lowden guitar and one of the new compact amps in tow. We have no information on the spec of the new amps, but from photos and videos taken of the performance, we can see that it’s an angled cab design, that as you’d expect seems to be comfortable with both guitar and vocals. The amp sports the Sheeran Loopers badge on the top of the classic orange-tolex’d cabinet.

Ed referenced the amp in between performing a short set of his many, many chart-topping hits, saying, “So the reason we’re here is because I used to busk as a kid. And I used to do it just acoustically without an amp. So I’ve made this Orange amp that is a busking amp. And this is the first time I’ve given it a go.”

Interestingly, this isn’t technically Ed’s first signature amplification product. Back in 2024, Sheeran announced portable PA system that was designed for a similar purpose. The Sheeran Busker boasts built-in effects, Bluetooth connectivity, and a three channel mixer – but it is very much more of a PA system than a guitar amp.

While no official news about the Orange amp has been revealed yet, clearly a launch is imminent – Ed had two of the amps with him for the performance, and even gifted one of them to a fan in the crowd who, as the video below shows, was understandably stoked about it.

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Keep an eye on Sheeran Loopers and Orange amps for an official announcement of this amp, or stay tuned to Guitar.com where we’ll have the news as soon as it drops.

 

The post Ed Sheeran debuts his signature Orange guitar amp: and it’s designed for busking “I used to do it without an amp, so I’ve made this one” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.