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You can now hear one of the last guitar solos Brent Hinds ever recorded, thanks to a newly released collaboration with Marcus King that has surfaced online.

The late Mastodon guitarist’s work appears on Red Door, a track featured on the expanded edition of King’s Darlin’ Blue/No Room For Blue release. News of Hinds’ involvement was shared by Banker Guitars, who posted behind-the-scenes photos from the recording sessions alongside a tribute to the guitarist.

• READ MORE: “If we have disagreements, I’m able to send him to his room”: Tom Morello on working with his son, Roman

Hinds – best known for his decades-long run with Mastodon – died in a motorcycle accident in Atlanta last August, just months after departing the band earlier that year. Since then, it’s been revealed that there’s a sizable archive of unheard material left behind by the guitarist, with Banker Guitars suggesting the Marcus King collaboration sits among the very last recordings he completed.

“For those who may not know, this song you are listening to has one of the last guitar solos Brent Hinds recorded,” the company writes on Instagram.

“He slept on the living room couch for a week (or two, whose counting) with The Marcus King Band at the house they rented down in Macon, Georgia, while they were writing and recording their latest record, Darlin’ Blue at the legendary Capricorn Studios,” the post states.

Red Door ultimately became part of the expanded double-disc edition of the album, which chronicles King’s sobriety journey.

“Red Door was one that Brent collaborated on and performed on,” Banker explains, “Ever the stubborn perfectionist, he managed to do 278 takes before landing on the one he liked best. These are some photos I took while hanging out and watching it all unfold for a couple of days.”

The collaboration also continues a long-running partnership between Hinds and King. Back in 2020, the pair teamed up for a livestream performance of a Black Sabbath classic, while King later paid tribute to Hinds following his death last year.

Following Hinds’ passing, Canadian prog virtuoso Nick Johnston stepped into the guitarist role for Mastodon’s live lineup, and is expected to appear on the band’s next studio album.

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The post Hear one of the “last guitar solos” Brent Hinds recorded on Marcus King’s new track: “He managed to do 278 takes before landing on the one he liked best” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ernie Ball Music Man has unveiled the new John Petrucci Majesty Premium Select collection – a high-spec evolution of the prog metal titan’s long-running signature electric guitar lineup, now available in 6-, 7- and 8-string configurations.

Designed in collaboration with the Dream Theater guitarist, the Majesty Premium Select line has been shaped by Petrucci’s decades of touring and studio experience, and is said to bring players the “highest level of tone, precision, and versatility”.

• READ MORE: “The world doesn’t need another Tele or Strat clone – it just doesn’t”: Why Guitar Center is launching its own guitar brand that’s “meaningfully better and differentiated”

Across the lineup, the guitars pair a mahogany neck-through-body design with alder wings and a thick maple top – a combination EBMM says delivers “exceptional depth, sustain, and articulation” while retaining the clarity needed to cut through any mix.

The Majesty Premium Select also packs in the sort of premium appointments fans have come to expect from Petrucci’s flagship models. There’s a 24-fret ebony fingerboard fitted with stainless steel frets, glow-in-the-dark side markers for low-light stages, Schaller locking tuners, and a piezo-equipped Music Man floating tremolo system capable of blending electric and acoustic-style tones.

Electronics come courtesy of Petrucci’s signature DiMarzio Rainmaker and Dreamcatcher humbuckers, while stereo and mono output options allow for more flexible live and studio routing setups. Players also get an onboard 20+dB gain boost for instant lead tones and extra tonal firepower on demand.

As EBMM puts it, the collection is aimed at “progressive rock and metal players, recording artists, and touring guitarists who want a high-output, articulate instrument with both magnetic and acoustic (piezo) tonal options in a single guitar.”

The collection is available in five finishes – Carnelian Red, Ka’anapali Dream, Mystic Dream, Purple Nebula II and Strawberry Moon – with pricing set at $4,999 for the 6-string model, $5,199 for the 7-string, and $5,399 for the 8-string version.

For more information, head to Music Man.

The post More precision, more versatility, more everything: John Petrucci’s Ernie Ball Music Man signature range gets the luxury treatment with the new Majesty Premium Select collection appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Earlier this month, the Greta Van Fleet left their fandom in shambles after posting a cryptic “thank you” message on social media, which led many to believe the band might be calling it quits.

A few days later, the Michigan quartet moved quickly to shut that speculation down with a studio clip captioned “We’re back, baby!”, showing the members working on new material and confirming they were still very much active.

Now, the group have followed that up with an even more concrete statement of intent: a one-off intimate show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on 27 May.

• READ MORE: What’s the point of painting a guitar anyway? And does it make any difference to the sound?

The 600-capacity venue marks a dramatic step down in scale from their previous New York headline show at Madison Square Garden, offering fans a rare chance to see the band in a much smaller setting.

Tickets will be sold in person only at the Bowery Ballroom box office from 26 May at 9am ET, priced at $20 with a strict two-ticket limit per person.

The show will be Greta Van Fleet’s first live performance since wrapping their 2024 tour in support of their most recent album, 2023’s Starcatcher.

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In related news, Greta Van Fleet guitarist Jake Kiszka has recently partnered with Gibson on a limited-edition production run SG Standard modelled after his well-worn 1961 Les Paul SG.

Handcrafted in Nashville and released in strictly limited numbers, the model pays tribute to Kiszka’s “Beloved” guitar, capturing its double-cutaway design and vintage-spec details.

Recalling the moment he discovered the instrument while the band were still early in their career, Kiszka said, “It was maybe a decade ago now, about 10 years ago, Greta Van Fleet was leaving Michigan for the first time…I was looking through all these guitars, and we were trying to pick up some gear if we could, some serious, good gear.”

“I stumbled upon this one,” he continued, “I was just immediately mesmerised. Immediately, from the first strum, it was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above.”

The post Greta Van Fleet calm breakup rumours with $20 New York City show announcement appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

I recently had an argument with a friend who was remodeling their kitchen, and they decided to paint over their beautiful hickory cupboards. As a longtime woodworker, I love the look of woodgrains. Each piece is unique and has character – painting over it with a solid latex color seemed to me to be a real shame.

• READ MORE: This is how your guitar’s truss rod actually works – and here’s what you’re doing wrong with it

But then I had to catch myself – I don’t love the look of wood so much that I’ve stripped all my guitars back to the grain, have I? I love the look of a guitar with a stunning colourful finish on it, but should I? The whole argument brought to light one question I had never actually asked myself… what’s the point of painting guitars, anyway?

Wood is beautiful. A nicely figured slab of maple or a clean piece of swamp ash is arguably prettier than anything you could spray over it. So why do the overwhelming majority of guitars leaving factories today get finished in something that obscures this entirely, or at the very least buries it under a thick coat of clear lacquer?

The short answer is that a guitar finish does three jobs at once – protection, looks, and, arguably, tone – and the industry has been tweaking the balance between those three since long before most of us ever plucked a string.

The Boring Answer

Let’s start with the boring answer, which also happens to be the most important one. Wood moves. A guitar body is organic material, and left to its own devices it’ll absorb moisture from the air and from your hands, warp with humidity, and gradually soak up every drop of beer sweat that lands on it.

A finish seals it. Whether we’re talking about a thick coat of polyester on a modern Squier or a wafer-thin layer of nitrocellulose lacquer on a Custom Shop Strat, the coating is a barrier against moisture, dust, skin oils, UV light, and the general indignities of being played.

Guitar finishes as a category have evolved in roughly chronological order – from barely-there oils and shellacs that protected very little but preserved the wood’s feel; to French polish, which Martin used for more than a century; to nitrocellulose lacquers starting in the 1920s and ’30s; to polyurethane and polyester from the late 1960s onward. Each step up the chain trades something. Thinner finishes let the wood breathe and feel more organic under your hand but scratch easily and age quickly. Thicker ones form a glossy armor that shrugs off pretty much anything you throw at it.

Hiding Place

The second reason for painting a guitar is one the marketing department won’t put on the spec sheet. Paint hides things. Bodies, especially at the affordable end of the market, are often made from multi-piece blanks, woods with inconsistent grain, or cuts that wouldn’t look particularly impressive under a transparent finish.

An opaque color – Fiesta Red, Olympic White, Surf Green – does the double duty of looking fantastic and politely ignoring whatever’s happening underneath. This is why you’ll occasionally see an old refinished Fender stripped bare to reveal a body that was clearly never meant for the spotlight. A solid color lets a manufacturer use more of what comes in the door.

Standing Out

Which brings us to the third reason: identity. When Leo Fender started offering custom colors in the mid-1950s, he wasn’t being precious about tonewoods – he was looking at car dealerships. Detroit’s postwar boom had turned the automobile into a symbol of personal style, and the paint codes pouring out of DuPont’s catalog offered a shortcut to that same glamour.

Fender’s custom colors were, quite literally, car paints. Fiesta Red came from Ford. Lake Placid Blue from Cadillac. Daphne Blue, also Cadillac. Sonic Blue was lifted from a ’56 Cadillac color chart. In fact, Fender’s only truly in-house mixes during the 1950s and ’60s were sunburst, blond, and eventually Candy Apple Red – everything else was borrowed from the automotive world, mixed by DuPont under the Duco (nitrocellulose) and Lucite (acrylic) brand names, and sprayed onto guitar bodies at a five percent upcharge.

The Real Impact

Which leaves the question everyone wants answered: does paint actually affect the sound of a guitar? I would imagine that this is the section of the article that will inspire the most debate because for decades now, musicians have been divided on it.

The traditional claim – that nitrocellulose lets the wood “breathe” and therefore resonate better – is mostly myth, at least on solidbody electrics. What actually matters is thickness. A thin finish, whether it’s nitro or a carefully-applied poly, interferes less with the wood’s vibration than a thick one.

Early poly finishes on Fenders and other production guitars were laid on heavily because it was cheaper and more efficient, and those thick plastic coatings probably did dampen things a bit. According to most luthiers I’ve spoken to, modern polys, applied in properly thin layers, are largely indistinguishable from nitro in practice.

On an acoustic, where the top’s vibration is the whole engine of the sound, finish thickness matters a lot more – which is why Martin spent more than a hundred years using shellac and why boutique builders still obsess over the thinnest lacquer they can get away with.

On a solidbody, though, the finish’s effect is minor compared to the pickups, the wood itself, the strings, and your hands. That’s why the long-running “nitro sounds better” debate is mostly about feel and aesthetics. Nitrocellulose checks, yellows, and wears into the patina vintage buyers chase. Polyurethane and polyester stay looking brand new for decades. Both ideas are completely defensible.

Personal Preference

Personally, when I build necks out of roasted maple, I don’t finish them unless it’s requested. I use a combination of wax and oil to protect the neck – but that has to be re-applied a couple of times per year. I do like the feel of it, but the real reason I do that is that I customize the neck shape to the player, and if at any point the neck needs to be reshaped, I can do it without having to reapply a finish that needs to cure. So even the decision not to use poly or nitro has a practical purpose, not necessarily a tonal one.

So when someone asks what the point of painting a guitar is, the honest answer is all of it, at the same time. It keeps the wood alive. It hides what you don’t want to see. It signals the brand, the era, and the player you want to be associated with. And then, in some small percentage of cases, it might even nudge the tone – though far less than the folklore suggests. The next time you pick up a guitar and admire the finish, you’re not just looking at a coat of paint. You’re looking at a century of trade-offs between chemistry, craftsmanship, and the car industry.

The post What’s the point of painting a guitar anyway? And does it make any difference to the sound? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Fuzz is one of those effects that I love to hear but struggle to make it fit in my playing.

Over the years, I’ve tried a lot of different fuzz pedals. Like most guitar players that start chasing fuzz tones, I began by exploring the “classic” circuits and the countless variations that builders have created around them. I started out trying some Fuzz Face variants, then went through some Big Muff derivatives, and then finally tried out some Tone Bender circuits.

Each type of fuzz circuit has its own distinct personality. Fuzz Face-style pedals tend to have a raw, open sound that responds well to your guitar’s volume knob. Tone Bender-style fuzzes generally sound more aggressive and cutting, with a bit more midrange character. And then there’s the Big Muff, which has a smoother texture to the sound, but also sounds huge.

For a long time, I preferred the Big Muff sound as it seems better for riffing and playing chords. This circuit doesn’t seem to get as harsh as the Fuzz Face circuit can sometimes get. I ended up really liking the EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Fuzz for Big Muff sounds, which as I understand it is based off of Dan Auerbach’s Russian Big Muff. It sounds great and has a lot of midrange flexibility thanks to the Shift knob.

The downside to the Big Muff circuit is that it doesn’t clean up like the Fuzz Face, and there’s definitely something about the glassy character of a Fuzz Face with the guitar volume knob turned down. That led me to keep searching.

When I wanted to try the Tone Bender circuit, I ended up trying a Basic Audio Scarab Deluxe fuzz, which is based on the Tone Bender MKII circuit. I’ve found it to be an extremely flexible fuzz. However, I found it also didn’t clean up like I wanted. But, this one is probably my favorite Tone Bender variant.

I tried a number of Fuzz Face variants, but never really found one that I loved. The Skreddy Lunar Module Mini Deluxe is a nice variant, but I never felt like it captured the Fuzz Face tones I was going for. What were those tones? I wasn’t really even sure, but I kept looking.

What I’ve finally settled on is the Kingtone miniFuzz v2. It’s a Fuzz Face variant, but, in my opinion with all the options it has, I’ve been able to get it to sound like a nice in-between fuzz. That is, to me I can tweak it so that it sits in the middle between a Fuzz Face and a Big Muff. It sounds smoother than the traditional Fuzz Faces I’ve played, but can also clean up well.

I don’t know if my search for fuzz will ever be over, but for now I’ve been happy with the miniFuzz for quite a while.

Chaos Audio – the innovative guitar gear brand behind the compact multi-FX Stratus pedal, which we gave a strong 8/10 in our review last year – has launched its new AI FX Builder, a platform which allows guitarists to describe the tone they want in a text prompt and bring it to life in seconds.

Text-to-tone audio platforms have been cropping up with greater frequency in the last year or so, with Positive Grid launching its AI-enabled BIAS X platform in September, as well as smaller projects like the FUKKAUDIO browser-based text-to-tone generator.

• READ MORE: I tried using an AI-powered amp and effects suite to create my guitar sound for me – here’s what happened

Now, Chaos Audio throws its hat into the ring, with a text-to-tone generator of its own, AI FX Builder.

Each text prompt yields a unique effect, enabling guitarists and musicians to build out their effects libraries with “unprecedented ease and speed”, the company says.

Additionally, users have full access to the FAUST code used by AI FX Builder, enabling them to edit, learn from or rewrite code if they wish. Chaos Audio reassures users that they retain “unlimited rights to the code” and are free to use it on their own hardware, in commercial products or as a starting point for their own designs.

“Vocalists, violinists, guitar players, trumpet players or others, prompt the AI FX Builder by typing in a description of their desired effect, and watch it come to life,” says Chaos Audio founder and CEO Landon McCoy. “Now, your gear listens to you, not the other way around.”

He goes on: “The platform is not an artist. It doesn’t generate music or artwork or replace a musician’s creativity. You describe what you want, evaluate the result, design the interface and decide whether it’s good enough.”

In terms of pricing, AI FX Builder is available on a monthly subscription of $9.99 per month for 20 AI builds per month, or $29.99/month for 80 AI builds per month. You can also buy packs of AI builds if you wish not to commit to a monthly subscription, with 10 builds for $9.99, 30 for $24.99 and 100 for $49.99.

Learn more at Chaos Audio.

The post This new AI FX Builder from Chaos Audio might just change the way you craft your tone appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

At just 15 years of age, Tom Morello’s son Roman has developed into quite the formidable guitar player. Back in 2023, the young musician borrowed the 1982 Fender ‘Sendero Luminoso’ Telecaster his father used on Killing in the Name to play the track during a Rage Against the Machine soundcheck.

Though stealing him away from Fortnite to play guitar was initially a difficult task, Roman Morello ultimately fell in love with the guitar, and his father last year admitted that he’s now the “rhythm guitar player in the household”: “I just play some chord progressions, and he shreds over it,” he said.

• READ MORE: Deep Purple guitarist says Smoke on the Water is a “challenging” song to play: “It is easy technically, but it’s not easy to play”

And in a new interview with Guitar World magazine, Tom Morello reveals his son has become a “collaborative partner” on a number of his recent projects.

“That’s something I’m most excited about, continuing the collaboration with my son, Roman, who has become quite a technical guitarist. He’s been a collaborative partner on a couple of songs, and that will continue. [laughs]

“One of my favourite parts about working with Roman is that if we have disagreements, I’m able to send him to his room!”

Elsewhere in the interview, the guitarist explains the sheer number of requests he gets from other artists looking for him to add his characteristic chops to their music, but says being a father often gets in the way.

“It happens all day,” he says. “I do a lot of it, too. I’ve donated guitar solos to younger bands. They’re fans of Rage Against the Machine of Audioslave, and they want me on their songs.”

As for why he can’t help out every band that comes across his desk, he goes on: “Hey, I’ve got a lot going on! These days, I’m driving my kids to a lot of high school baseball games.”

Recently, Tom Morello teamed up with metalcore stalwarts Beartooth to contribute music to the latest update of Final Fantasy XIV.

Listen to Everything Burns below:

The post “If we have disagreements, I’m able to send him to his room”: Tom Morello on working with his son, Roman appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Taylor Guitars

Throughout his long and illustrious musical career, it’s safe to say that Ben Harper has come to understand when he’s going to connect with an instrument. “It never takes me longer than three chords to know if I’m gonna spend a lifetime with a guitar or not,” the Grammy-winning musician explains.

For nearly a decade now, the acoustic guitars that have inspired Harper most of all have had Taylor inlaid in the headstock. Harper was also an early convert to the more vintage-accented charms of the Gold Label Collection, which launched last year. He was road-testing the GL Grand Pacific body shape before it even launched, and so it’s perhaps no surprise that Gold Label’s spirit of artist collaboration has now birthed Taylor’s first ever Ben Harper signature model.

What’s interesting even if you aren’t a fan of Harper, however, is that just like how Trey Hensley’s 2025 signature model paved the way for the first ever Gold Label dreadnought-sized guitar, this new instrument adds a familiar but different silhouette to the line, and it’s one that everyone should pay attention to.

Concert Pitch

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Grand Concert body shape changed everything for Taylor guitars. When Bob Taylor designed the shape in 1984, he did so to cater to the needs of a new generation of adventurous and dynamic acoustic fingerstyle players.

These players needed something that was not only a little smaller than traditional shapes to enable them to fully explore the guitar’s wider neck, but they also needed an instrument that reduced the boomy overtones, and offered a brighter, clearer overall sound.

The Grand Concert quickly became Taylor’s defining instrument and informed much of the boundary-pushing evolution that the brand embarked on over the following decades. For many players, the Grand Concert remains the defining example of what sets Taylor apart from more traditional guitar brands.

Gold Standard

The Grand Concert-sized Gold Label 512e, then, is a very interesting guitar to add to the range – especially given that Gold Label guitars have generally been focused on bigger-bodied instruments. For players who prefer a more compact instrument, like Harper, the 512e is a godsend – though it does reimagine Taylor’s smallest full-size guitar in some interesting ways.

Visually, the most notable thing about this guitar versus most of the Grand Concert guitars you’ll see is the lack of a cutaway – something that was virtually unheard of with GCs past, but ties the whole Gold Label Collection together.

That isn’t the only place the 512e adds some extra air inside, however – the Gold Label Grand Concert follows its Grand Pacific stablemate in adding a little extra depth to the body. Now, don’t worry – this is still a svelte and comfortable instrument. But it’s one that –  combined with the classic spruce/mahogany tonewood pairing and Fanned V-Class bracing – offers a warm and woody midrange voice that combines a strong fundamental focus with impressive articulation and no shortage of power across the frequency spectrum.

Common Goals

When you pair this mature and refined sonic voice with the Grand Concert’s more compact scale length, you get an instrument that is as effortless to play as any Taylor guitar on the market. And thanks to the inclusion of the revolutionary Action Control Neck, you can tailor your playing experience in seconds – without even having to retune.

The Action Control Neck has recently brought its impressive adjustability to the Next Generation Grand Auditorium guitars, and so it’s fitting that a piece of technology developed from that range has in turn found its way into the Ben Harper 512e. While standard-line 512e guitars spec the same impressive LR Baggs Element VTC pickup, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Harper has been charmed by the simplicity of the brand new Claria pickup system.

“Incredible guitarists have struggled with the bridge saddle pickup,” Harper explains. “This is the first pickup that sounds as good as my favorite acoustic guitar heroes without the dog and pony show. You plug it in, one input, a DI, house, and it blooms.”

For Harper, the 512e has clearly been a dream project – but it’s also one that further expands the design and tonal palette of the Gold Label range to cater to even more players. That’s something that’s great news for every acoustic guitarist. “If I could dream up a way to be in collaboration and communion with a guitar maker,” Harper enthuses. “This would be it”

Find out more about the 512e and the entire Gold Label Collection at Taylor Guitars

The post How Taylor reimagined the Grand Concert for its Gold Label line – with the help of Ben Harper appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Following on from its legal victory regarding the Stratocaster trademark in March, a law firm claiming to represent Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has reportedly sent cease and desist orders to a variety of guitar makers demanding they stop producing instruments that use the Stratocaster design.

In March 2026, Fender scored a default judgement against Chinese-based Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co in the Düsseldorf Regional Court in Germany, that set out that the Strat was no longer a simple trademark, but “a copyrighted work of applied art”.

While this default judgement was made because Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co failed to turn up for the trial in question, and only covers instruments sold or imported into the European Union, it seems Fender may have wasted no time in beginning to use this ruling to attempt to police the use of the Strat body shape more overtly.

Guitar.com understands that in recent weeks, multiple guitar makers have received letters from the law firm Bird & Bird, informing them of the EU ruling, and demanding that as a result, the brands in question cease producing guitars that use the Strat body shape, recall and destroy any existing unsold inventory, provide sales data on how many of these instruments have been sold, and provide financial restitution for damages and legal fees.

What’s been alleged to have been said?

Guitar.com has seen a redacted version of the letter seemingly sent by Bird & Bird on behalf of Fender to one anonymous guitar company, which has also been shared with other outlets and guitar influencers. The letter appears to lay out Fender’s position on the design of the Stratocaster being a unique, artistic creation developed by Leo Fender in the 1950s, and the various ways in which the guitar’s body shape was more than simply functional practical design.

The letter then appears to lay out Fender’s position thusly:

“It has come to our client’s attention that you are marketing electric guitars under the brand [REDACTED]… instanced by the model [REDACTED]… 

“The design of the body of these guitars is nearly identical to the design of the body our [sic] client’s ‘Stratocaster’ guitars. They are in particular not less similar to the Stratocaster guitars than the guitars which were subject of the Düsseldorf judgment. 

“You are therefore infringing our client’s copyright in the Stratocaster body shape. As a consequence, our client has claims against you to cease and desist from further marketing such guitars, disclosure of information about your sales and marketing, damages, destruction of the infringing products, recall of the infringing products, and reimbursement of our legal fees.”

The letter then appears to go on to set out Fender’s position on the Stratocaster body shape, and how it has changed in light of the EU ruling:

“We appreciate that copies of our client’s famous ‘Stratocaster’ have been in the market before. However, with the judgment of the Court of Düsseldorf, it is now clear that our client has a copyright to the shape of the ‘Stratocaster’ guitar body, and that copies of these guitar body [sic] constitute copyright infringement. 

“Our client is resolved to assert its rights and will enforce them consistently in order to keep the market free of infringing copies of the ‘Stratocaster’ body shape. Your company, as well as any other manufacturer of copies of the ‘Stratocaster’, will of course be able to continue to market electric guitars which are sufficiently distinct from the “Stratocaster”.

“Our client therefore insists that you immediately stop manufacturing, marketing, selling and producing the infringing products and confirm this to us [by] 25 May 2026. If you confirm that you will comply with our client’s claims, our client would in turn be prepared to make concessions in relation to their claims for e.g. damages, and also possibly in relation to phase-out and transition periods.

“However, should you fail to respond accordingly within the deadline, we will advise our client to commence the required further judicial steps against you without further hesitation.”

How is the guitar world reacting?

Notably, even though this is an EU judgement, at least one of the companies that has received these letters is based in the USA. LSL Instruments – a boutique, family-run guitar company based in California – is currently the only brand to have publicly revealed that they’ve received this cease and desist.

The brand launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for legal fees over the weekend, and has currently raised over $7,000. Guitar.com reached out directly to LSL about the situation, and they provided a short statement in response, as well as pointing us to a blog laying out the brand’s position.

“We appreciate all the support shown directly to us and to the entire boutique guitar world,” the statement read. “To every builder affected by this, we want them to know that we are thinking about them and support them in spirit.”

LSL’s blog explained the reason for their fundraising efforts, and the potential impact legal action would have on the brand.

“We received demands from Fender Musical Instruments to stop selling, recall and destroy all Saticoy guitars worldwide,” it read. “We make less than 500 guitars a year, while Fender makes 500,000. Our small business poses no threat to them in any way whatsoever yet here we are.”

“If we fight this solely on our own. There is a very good chance we could be bankrupted, out of business quickly, and we are not alone in this position.”

While there has been speculation across the online guitar space about other brands that may have been sent these letters, currently LSL is the only brand who have publicly claimed they have been sent one.

How does this affect the wider guitar industry?

Back in 2009, Fender lost a high-profile US case when the brand attempted to file trademarks for the Stratocaster, Telecaster and P-Bass body shapes. At the time the filing was protested by a group of other guitar makers, who ultimately succeeded in having the trademarks cancelled.

In the years since, it was widely assumed that this defeat – following on from Gibson’s 2005 loss in a lawsuit against PRS in 2005 – gave other builders the freedom to use classic body shapes, provided that they didn’t infringe on things like headstock shape.

However, Gibson’s protracted but ultimately successful battle against Dean Guitars over the Flying V body shape showed that the big brands still have the ability to win these cases in the right circumstances.

When the ruling was made, Fender put out a press statement, including quotes from Aarash Darroodi, General Counsel & Chief Administrative Officer Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, stating that the case: “reinforces our commitment to originality, supports fair competition, and helps ensure that when players encounter these iconic Fender guitar shapes, they can trust the craftsmanship, quality, and heritage behind them.”

The Fender ruling, crucially, was NOT a trademark dispute – Fender and Gibson have both lost trademark cases on their body shapes in the EU in years past – but sought to reframe the Strat’s body shape as an artistic work, subject to copyright, instead.

Furthermore, while the Dusseldorf ruling only impacts guitars sold in or imported into the European Union, the global nature of the industry means that Fender is using this ruling to try to enforce their claims on any brands that do business in the EU.

The bigger question is how robust the original ruling will turn out to be. As we explained in our initial analysis of the Dusseldorf case, it’s standard procedure for the court to side with the plaintiff when the defendant does not appear in court.

But the default nature of the judgement means that Fender’s claims – the language of which it is seemingly now using to pursue enforcement against other brands – have not yet faced any legal counterarguments in court. That said, Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co does not appear to have taken any steps to have the judgment set aside.

In that original statement, Fender was keen to stress that, “the ruling does not restrict innovation or healthy competition within the guitar industry but rather that it represents targeted enforcement against clear cases of infringement”.

These alleged legal letters appear to set out exactly what Fender believes is classed as “clear infringement” – it remains to be seen whether LSL or any of the other allegedly impacted brands will be able to test this in court.

Guitar.com has reached out to Fender for comment on the accuracy and authenticity of the legal documents that we’ve seen – but they had not replied by time of publication. 

The post Fender reportedly demands boutique builders stop making Stratocaster-style guitars: this is what it means for the industry appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The world’s first generative AI guitar is here, and lets users generate original songs, play any track, and learn through guided gameplay without any prior musical training.

Made by music technology company TemPolor, which is focused on making music creation “more accessible through AI-powered instruments and interactive design”, the Melo-D guitar is its flagship product, and combines generative AI and guided play with a patented foldable design for portability.

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

Melo-D has a built-in 2.4-inch LCD touchscreen and functions alongside an external app. Using TemPolor’s proprietary TemPolor.AI engine, it can transform humming into guitar solos and generate complete original songs with lyrics from text inputs.

Users can also paste a song link or upload an audio file, and Melo-D will transcribe it into fingerstyle tabs or chord charts in under 60 seconds, with on-screen guidance and light-up strings to help beginners play with no music theory required. You can see how it works in the videos below:

“Our goal with Melo-D was to lower the barrier between inspiration and creation,” says Jason Jia, founder of TemPolor. “We wanted to build an instrument that feels approachable to beginners, useful to creators, and exciting from the very first interaction, whether someone is playing, learning, or generating a completely original song.”

The guitar is soon to launch on Kickstarter, and early backers will have access to a Super Early Bird price before full retail availability.

To find out more, head over to the TemPolor Kickstarter page.

The post The “world’s first generative AI guitar” is about to launch on Kickstarter appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Following the death of Neil Peart in 2020, drummers were in a bleak ‘Rush’ to pick up the phone and ask whether the band were looking for a replacement. While Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have since recruited Anika Nilles to fill in on drums for their comeback tour, the pair stand by the fact the “bombardment” was inappropriate.

In a new chat with Guitar World, Lee reflects on how insulting it was to receive a wave of drumming applications while still mourning his late bandmate. “There were many other drummers who reached out to me in the aftermath of Neil’s passing that were pushing themselves, and that was so distasteful to me,” he says. “It was completely inappropriate timing.”

• READ MORE: “Twice a night we’ll pick a song to play for him”: Geddy Lee reveals how Rush will pay tribute to Neil Peart on reunion tour

Of course, not everyone was quick to reach out. Many amazing drummers held back, because they respected that Rush needed time to handle their grief. “People who are close to us – good friends that are successful drummers – would never [have tried to do] something like that,” Lee explains. “They have too much respect, not only for Neil and for the situation.”

“They were grieving as well, so they wouldn’t be so selfish as to say something inappropriate like that,” he adds.

Back in 2024, Lee also admitted on Strombo’s Lit that those “inappropriate” drummers got put in his “little black book” of people he didn’t want to work with in the future. “I was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s just so inappropriate right now,’” Lee said. “Dude, wait two months. At least two months.…”

Last year, the world was shocked to discover Rush would be reuniting for their massive Fifty Something tour, along with new drummer, Anika Nilles. Elsewhere in the Guitar World interview, Lee explains why Nilles was the perfect fit: “When Al and I finally said, “Okay, I guess we’re getting serious. Who’s going to sit in that impossible seat?” How do you ask someone to replace a guy who’s irreplaceable? It’s daunting… [but] she brought a lot to the table.”

“More than her chops, more than her guts and her willingness to sit in that hot seat, she brought an intelligence and a story,” he continues. “I love her story. This is someone who grew up in Germany in a family of musicians. Her dad was a drummer. She played drums her entire life. She doesn’t even remember the first time she picked up sticks. It’s who she is.”

While Peart’s family has given Nilles their blessing, Rush are also certain that she has more than proven her worth. “The fans love her right now, but they’re going to scrutinise her, and she’s up for it,” Lee says.

The post “That was distasteful to me”: Geddy Lee confirms “many” drummers contacted him following Neil Peart’s death offering to join Rush appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s bread and butter for Guitar Center goers, and the kryptonite of employees who work at those same stores. As far as all-time ubiquitous riffs go, Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water is right up there with Sweet Child O’ Mine, Seven Nation Army and Enter Sandman.

But while it may seem like one of the easier riffs you could bust out to impress – or infuriate – your fellow shoppers, Deep Purple guitarist Simon McBride says it’s actually deceptively difficult to get right.

• READ MORE: “The world doesn’t need another Tele or Strat clone – it just doesn’t”: Why Guitar Center is launching its own guitar brand that’s “meaningfully better and differentiated”

In a new interview with the dopeYEAH talk podcast, McBride – who joined the legendary rock outfit in 2022, replacing Steve Morse – explains why Smoke on the Water isn’t quite as simple as many deem it to be.

“Generally, the most challenging ones are the simple ones, like Smoke on the Water,” he says [via Blabbermouth].

“People always say, ‘Ah, it’s easy.’ It is easy technically, but it’s not easy to play. It’s like any of this stuff. It’s the delivery, it’s the force of how you play it, it’s your timing. It’s what not to play. A lot of guitar players, when they play the riff of Smoke on the Water, they play it like a guitarist. They wanna add stuff to it. They wanna vibrato it. They wanna do this.

“But the beauty of the riff of Smoke on the Water is its simplicity… So being disciplined enough just to – don’t play anything else, just what’s there. ‘Cause when you’re standing there, and I start the riff, and then Don joins me, then Roger joins me, this explosion of power comes out, which you would not get if I was fiddling around with it, or Don was. It’s the four of us just doing this riff, and it’s like, ‘Oh, God, here we go.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, McBride reflects on how the simplicity of a lot of Deep Purple’s most timeless songs has contributed to their success.

“The thing is with the Purple stuff, it’s not overly complicated, but that’s the beauty of it, and that’s why it was so successful,” he says. “Smoke on the Water is three chords, really. And all the great songs, even Perfect Strangers, it’s two or three chords. So it is quite simple.”

Smoke on the Water remains one of the top riffs heard in Guitar Center stores, as was recently revealed by CEO Gabe Dalporto in an interview with Rolling Stone. He revealed Metallica’s Master of Puppets also gets a large degree of sonic real estate, as does Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, and even Tool’s Schism.

The post Deep Purple guitarist says Smoke on the Water is a “challenging” song to play: “It is easy technically, but it’s not easy to play” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Les Paul may as well be in Mark Morton’s DNA at this point. The guitarist is 52 years old as of 2026, and he’s spent almost 30 of those years on the frontlines of heavy metal music, first in his university band Burn the Priest and then in its Platinum-selling, five-times Grammy-nominated successor Lamb of God. And, before those outfits even kicked off, he was lugging Gibson’s flagship model around.

• READ MORE: “I play a lot harder than most” Kashus Culpepper’s guitar is a lightning rod for feeling, community and the sounds of the American South

“My first main guitar was a Les Paul Deluxe ’75,” Morton remembers, talking to Guitar over the phone from his home near Richmond, Virginia. “It was chopped up for PAFs and refinished – just a total beater! But I played it until the frets were flat. I was playing that guitar in punk bands all around town, just kind of dragging it around on the floorboard of my truck with no case. It was just like my security blanket.”

It was the simple things that made the model so appealing to him. It was comfortable to play, it was easy to access every part of the fretboard, and he was impressed with the sustain and reactivity. Beyond that, he didn’t overintellectualise it – and he still doesn’t.

“These are all very basic things that are still paramount for me, and I think for most players,” he says. “Some guitars are a little dull and flat. I think even then, despite having an unrefined understanding of instruments, I knew when something was jumping out, versus when something was dull and flat.”

Full Circle

Even though he’s long since traded Virginia punk rock gigs for arena-size metal shows all over the world, Morton’s come full circle. He’s endorsed by Gibson after years with Jackson, and he has a new signature in the form of the Gibson Mark Morton Les Paul Modern Quilt. It’s true to his love for traditional Les Pauls: its slim taper neck helps with speed and comfort and evokes designs from the 1960s, and it uses passive pickups, as opposed to the active pickups that are a dime a dozen in the metal scene.

“I’m just a big proponent of passive pickups,” he says. “I said in an interview a while back that [Black Label Society singer/guitarist and longtime Ozzy Osbourne collaborator] Zakk Wylde is one of my favourite guitarists, and he uses active pickups, but I find passive pickups to be far more dynamic. I feel like it just allows for a more fluid voicing of the guitar than an active pickup does. When I play an active pickup, it sounds like the pickup, which is very consistent. But I always say, you could put that on a skateboard and it’s still gonna sound like that pickup.”

It’s not all old-school, though. Morton’s model is customised to the preferences and demands of a constantly on-the-road metal player. For starters, its mahogany body uses Gibson’s Ultra Modern Weight Relief.

“I’m in my 50s now and bouncing around onstage for as long as we do, it’s nice to have a guitar that’s a little bit lighter,” he explains. “But I can’t really moan when we’ve got [vocalist] Randy Blythe, who’s a year older than me, and he’s running around the stage like a lunatic and jumping off the drum riser and jumping off of amplifiers.”

Other standout features include the model’s namesake AAA quilted maple top, plus the Translucent Ebony Burst Satin finish, which makes it look sleek and suitably ‘heavy metal’ without seeming ostentatious. It has 22 medium jumbo frets to make bending easier, as well as a Modern Contoured Heel to help with upper-fretboard access.

“I find it to be pretty practical and convenient for soloing,” he explains. “It gives you easier access to the higher registers there. I can accomplish that without a heel contour, but it does make it nice and comfy. So that’s definitely one thing I do enjoy about this guitar.”

Mashing Up

If it sounds as if this model is a mash-up of the traditional and the cutting-edge, then that’s good, because Mark’s playing is the same. Along with his Lamb of God cohort Willie Adler, he was one of 2000s metal’s freshest guitarists, laying down incredibly athletic leads that pushed mainstream heaviness forward. But, he’s said before that his greatest influences are actually in vintage blues.

“The cornerstone of my playing is classic rock and Southern rock and British blues and that kind of stuff,” he elaborates today. “When I’m playing for myself, that’s the kind of player I am, which is not a slight on heavy metal. I adore heavy metal, and I spend so much time playing it and writing it, and I just think it’s wonderfully expressive and dynamic and very technically challenging, but it’s not what I play when I’m in my living room. My first loves musically were the Allman Brothers and Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page.”

Morton was exposed to these artists – as well as Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Aerosmith and 70s country – through his family, hearing his parents and his older brothers play them on the radio while he was growing up in James City County, Virginia. He remembers discovering heavy metal “probably around the advent of MTV, which would have been when I was 11 or 12”. By the time he was 14, he had friends who brought Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer tapes along when they hung out at his house.

“Even in our little town, there were [metalheads],” he recalls. “MTV had much of the same effect that you’d see the internet have later, whereby it was streaming this culture into areas that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to it. It was right there on the TV! I found out about Motörhead in James City County, Virginia because of MTV.”

Then, Burn the Priest. Randy Blythe, who joined the band a few months after their ’94 founding and remained as they transformed into Lamb of God, has spoken before about how the band’s don’t-give-a-shit attitude is what inspired him to become their frontman. He tells a great story about seeing the police crash a house party they were playing, only for the members to refuse to put their instruments down. Was it as chaotic as it sounds like it was?

“It was more chaotic than it sounds like it was,” Morton answers. “We were, in every sense of the word, a punk band. Burn the Priest started in a mouldy basement. We really had no ambition to be some worldwide touring act. That would have been laughable to us, because it seemed impossible.”

Centre Stage

Nonetheless, they pulled it off. Lamb of God released some of the essential metal songs of the 2000s, with Laid to Rest and Redneck especially becoming MTV mainstays, and time has done nothing to dull the band’s jagged edges. Their new album – Into Oblivion, which features Mark’s signature guitar and its prototypes all over the place – is another stab to the jugular, laced with venomous lyrics and hellfire riffing.

“What we went to achieve with our records has largely stayed the same for us,” says Morton. “Lamb of God have established this long and in some cases very celebrated body of work over the decades we’ve been doing this. So to make a Lamb of God record, and call it a Lamb of God record and add it to that body of work, it has to feel to us like it’s worth doing, like we have something relevant to say. The process of making a record has to feel like it’s something we deem necessary to do for ourselves, for the five of us.”

He adds that whatever happens after an album’s release is out of the band’s hands, but one part of the process that Morton’s excited for is returning to the UK’s Bloodstock festival in Catton Park, Derbyshire in August. They’ll bring their new material, and Morton’s signature, for a headline set which will mark their third time at the top of the bill there. It seems like it’s become something of a home away from home for them.

“We’ve always enjoyed that audience,” Morton agrees. “It’s a very, very solid, through-and-through, metal-oriented festival. We haven’t really gotten into the production or the setlist or anything this far out, so we’ll have to see, but we will certainly give Bloodstock our best – and we expect the same from them!”

We finish by asking if Lamb of God have anything left to achieve, after the decades of dominance and now that Morton has his own version of the guitar he hauled during his underdog punk rock days. He doesn’t know. But, the band will continue for as long as it’s fun.

“We enjoy playing music together,” he says. “We’re all really close friends and we enjoy our time together. I feel like we don’t have a lot left to prove to ourselves or to anybody else, and at this point, we just do it because we enjoy it and because it’s fun, and because we feel like we’re good at it.”

Lamb Of God headline Bloodstock on 6-9 August. Find out more at bloodstock.uk.com

The post “It was just like my security blanket” Lamb Of God’s Mark Morton on his love affair with the Les Paul appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Most Fretboard Journal readers, whether players or collectors, have been afflicted by the incurable disease of Guitar Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). No matter how good the instruments in our possession are, we have an insatiable hunger for something better, be it a holy grail of tone, a rare combination of woods, the work of a legendary builder, or an historic instrument from a favorite brand. For many of us, certainly for me, this longing lives in the uncomfortable land between unquenchable and unaffordable.

So, how is it that a 1944 Martin D-28, a wartime wonder of perfect wood (straight-grained Brazilian rosewood and Adirondack spruce) and symphonic tone, is on a stand in my office, beckoning me to play it again?

Truth be told, it’s an instrument so far beyond my ability that it’s laughable. I literally can’t pick it without giggling.

My modest instrument collection includes a 2001 Martin 12-fret 000 and a rosewood OM I built last year in partnership with a luthier (see that story in Fretboard Journal 59). They are both lovely-sounding instruments, as fellow players and audience members regularly tell me. But compared to this D-28, they might as well be cigar box guitars.

What’s a fellow like me doing in (temporary!) possession of a guitar currently selling for more than I made in annual salary most of my 35 years working in human services?

Every February, the Fretboard Journal collaborates with the Wintergrass Music Festival to present the Vintage Instrument Tasting Workshop. This event, a highlight of the four-day festival, features some of contemporary acoustic music’s top players demonstrating guitars and mandolins from the 1840s to the 1940s, ranging from Lloyd Loar F-5 mandolins to Regals, an 1848 James Ashborn parlor guitar to, you got it, this 1944 Martin D-28.

The roster of instruments is curated by Mark Demaray and Bill Clements of the Wintergrass Board of Directors. Instruments on loan come from FJ readers, collectors and players across the country and, sometimes, from stores in Western Washington.

This particular D-28 is a loaner from Mike & Mike’s Guitar Bar in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where it is on consignment.

Its historical significance is described on the store’s website.

“An exceedingly well-kept Wartime Martin with sparingly few repairs and a limited service history, this genuine vintage herringbone D-28 has the transitional feature set consistent with late ’44 production including tapered X-bracing on the Adirondack spruce top, ebony neck reinforcement, and one of the first ebony fingerboards on a D-28 to feature dot inlay  (a shift from the notched diamond inlays seen earlier in the year).”

Wintergrass needed someone to transport the guitar from the store to the festival in time for Friday’s Tasting and return it to the store when they open on Tuesday. FJ publisher Jason Verlinde was out of town on Friday. So, I was lucky enough to be asked to play courier. As of this writing, it’s Monday. Guess what I’ve been doing all day? Hint: My callouses are worn out.

And my nerves are a little frayed. I was volunteering all weekend at the festival, and the guitar was in my house, alone, for much of that time. Sitting at Wintergrass on Saturday, it was all I could do not to imagine the break-in, the difficult phone calls to my insurance agent and to Mike & Mike’s, the shame…Why didn’t I handcuff it myself?

History aside and forgetting the fact that for an 82-year-old, this thing is in stellar condition, what does it sound like?

I expected a boomy, bass response befitting the appellation “a cannon” we often hear applied to vintage dreads. Nope. The low end is sweet and focused; the notes have a rounded bloom, like an organ’s pedal tones. There is incredible resonance and natural reverb. The trebles are the real highlight. You could chime a note, go get a kombucha from the fridge, and come back to the sweet ringing tails of tone hanging in the room like contrails from a jet. Chords sound like a choir, each note distinct but vibrating with the others. A D-28 is perhaps best known as a bluegrass guitar, so often flatpicked at 120 beats per minute or more. But played slowly, the projection and tone of this beauty really shine, making a modest rehearsal room sound like a cathedral.

Here’s a little taste of the tone. Please forgive the mediocre picking and listen to the notes bloom. Recorded sans any effects via an AT 2035 mic, through a Focusrite Scarlet into Ableton.

Like most of our readers, I love to visit guitar stores and sample the wares. I usually leave a little jealous of some box or another, but mostly happy for the guitars waiting for me at home. I could never afford this D-28 and will say goodbye to it soon. But it will forever be lodged in my memory, the supermodel that deigned to spend the weekend with me, a queen of tone whose voice I will never forget.

Watch our 2026 Wintergrass Vintage Instrument workshop (including this guitar) here. 

The post Babysitting a Super Model (D-28) first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

First, the backstory: Fender recently won a significant legal victory in Germany regarding the Stratocaster body shape. The Düsseldorf Regional Court ruled that the Strat body qualifies as a copyrighted work of applied art under German and broader European law, giving Fender new leverage to pursue manufacturers selling Strat-style guitars into the European Union.

Now, Fender has sent out cease and desist letters to manufacturers who are selling Strat-style guitars in Europe.

As a fan of Fender guitars, this has been disappointing to see.

It’s hard not to think of Fender as the company that Leo Fender created 70+ years ago. However it hasn’t been that same company since the mid-60s after the sale to CBS.

For years, Gibson has largely occupied the role of "bad guy" in the guitar industry's intellectual property discussions. Gibson aggressively pursued Dean, PRS, Kiesel, and seemingly anyone else building a guitar that vaguely resembled one of its classic designs. Guitar players rolled their eyes. Builders got frustrated. Forums exploded. It often felt less like protecting intellectual property and more like trying to litigate entire categories of guitars out of existence.

Through all of that, Fender was mostly absent from the conversation.

The Stratocaster and Telecaster are probably the two most copied guitar designs in history. Entire companies were built around S-style and T-style guitars. Boutique builders refined the formula. Some of the best guitars I’ve ever owned have been refined versions of Leo’s designs. Fender, for the most part, appeared content to compete through brand strength rather than courtroom filings.

The reality is that nobody buys a Suhr, Anderson, Nash, or other boutique guitar because they think they're secretly buying a Fender. The guitar community largely understands what these instruments are. In many ways, the Stratocaster and Telecaster transcended Fender decades ago. They became foundational industrial designs for the electric guitar itself.

Which is exactly why this feels disappointing.

To be clear, Fender absolutely has a legal responsibility to protect its intellectual property. Once the German court handed Fender a favorable ruling, it would have been surprising if the company didn’t act on it. Shareholders expect companies to defend valuable IP. Executives are obligated to preserve brand equity and market position. From a corporate standpoint, Fender's actions make complete sense.

And if we're being fair, this isn't quite the same thing as some of Gibson's more questionable lawsuits. Fender's recent case involved direct copies sold through AliExpress by a Chinese manufacturer, not an established builder making a clearly differentiated instrument. Fender has also emphasized that the ruling is intended for "targeted enforcement against clear cases of infringement" rather than an attempt to eliminate healthy competition.

Still, once the legal precedent exists, it's difficult to believe the scope remains narrow forever. And, I think it’s clear that the guitar-buying community wants these options to exist.

The guitar industry has benefited enormously from the open ecosystem surrounding Fender-style instruments. As mentioned above, some of the best guitars I’ve ever played were inspired by Leo Fender's original designs while still improving upon them in meaningful ways. Different neck profiles. Better tremolos. Compound radiuses. Stainless steel frets. Modern electronics. Entire segments of the boutique guitar market exist because Fender historically tolerated a fairly broad interpretation of what constituted a Strat- or Tele-style guitar.

If Fender has their way, that’s going to change in Europe. Maybe the impact ultimately ends up being limited. Maybe this only affects blatant counterfeit-level copies. Maybe larger boutique builders adjust body contours slightly and move on without issue. Hopefully that's where things land.

But it still feels like the end of an era.

For a long time, Fender occupied a unique position in the guitar world. They were the company that invented the most copied electric guitars ever made and somehow managed to coexist with the derivatives without turning every disagreement into a courtroom battle. That restraint bought them a tremendous amount of goodwill among guitar players. And, goodwill is hard to quantify on a balance sheet.

But to disregard it completely is, I think, a mistake.

And while I understand why Fender is doing this, I also think many guitar players are going to view these recent cease and desist efforts with the same frustration that Gibson has faced for years.

Not because Fender is necessarily wrong. It's just disappointing to see them become part of the same conversation.

By the power of Greyskull, Brian May has the power! Thanks to the Queen legend, the soundtrack for the new He-Man movie, Masters Of The Universe, is ridiculously epic – and it features one of May’s coolest Red Special guitar solos in years.

Working with composer Daniel Pemberton, May serves up riffs for the track Eternia, named after He-Man’s home planet. Talking to The Wrap, Pemberton promised that this project had his most “maximalist score” to date, notably being even more ambitious than his work on this year’s box-office hit Project Hail Mary. And we can safely say that Eternia is a grand, triumphant track that perfectly embodies the machismo and might of the titular hero.

• 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’”

And it seems like May is absolutely chuffed to be working on the project. He first announced the collaboration in March, sharing the news alongside a photo of him posing with director Travis Knight, sound designer Sam Okell, Pemberton and a plethora of vintage He-Man memorabilia. “I have the POWER!!!!” he wrote. “Great joy to work tonight on the scrumptious, brand new He-Man movie.”

This isn’t the first time May has helped soundtrack a movie, having famously worked on 1980 sci-fi flick Flash Gordon. However, posing with his son Jimmy May’s collection of action figures spanning back to as early as 1968, you could argue this is the most excited he’s been about film project yet. “What fun! “ he adds. “This movie will make a lot of people smile a lot!!!”

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Most notably, the collaboration sees May whipping out his iconic self-designed Red Special. “Yes – my ol’ Red Special is all over [Eternia]!!! Watch out!!!”

May’s iconic Red Special was a DIY project, pieced together between 1963 and 1965. Speaking to Premier Guitars in 2014, he noted that the project came about because he simply couldn’t afford a pricy axe from Fender or Gibson – and this homemade effort has served him very well. It boasts 27 basic tones, and features on essentially all of Queen’s discography.

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When the guitarist first teased Eternia last week, he joked on Instagram, saying “Just a bit of guitar in here…” We’d certainly argue it features more than ‘a bit’ of riffage!

The film itself has been in the works since 2009, with plenty of setbacks until this year’s release, spanning from numerous script edits to directors stepping down. However, it’s finally set to hit cinemas this June, and will see the likes of Thirty Seconds To Mars’ Jared Leto taking on the role of villain Skeletor, beloved actor Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms, and Nicholas Galitzine, an actor typically known for his roles in rom-coms, starring as He-Man himself.

Masters Of The Universe is set to have an exclusive premiere today in Hollywood, before hitting cinemas 5 June across the US.

The post “My ol’ Red Special is all over it!”: Brian May has added some epic guitar solos on the new Masters Of The Universe soundtrack – and he’s not holding back appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When news of Van Halen’s reformation dropped in 2006, nobody was more shocked than bassist Michael Anthony. Not only had he not been made aware of the reformation, but Eddie Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen had taken over his bass duties. However, Alex Van Halen insists that the band did try to reach out to their former bassist – but they got ignored.

Speaking to YouTuber KazaGastão, the Van Halen drummer explains that the band tried to recruit Anthony for the band’s revival. “Just to put the record straight, we did call Mike, because we owed him that,” Alex insists. “We did call him, he just didn’t answer.”

• READ MORE: “Makes me feel closer to Pop”: Watch Wolfgang Van Halen use Eddie’s Frankenstein guitar to record his new single

He goes on to add that he’s “not angry” at Anthony, despite any bitterness the miscommunication might have caused. “I love Mike,” he adds. “He was important for the band too, his backing vocals. And he was my drinking buddy!”

According to Alex, the band only began considering a replacement when they heard nothing back. Famously, that’s when they took a chance on Wolfgang, who was only 15 at the time. He explains that it wasn’t a simple case of handing Eddie’s son a job just because he was “family” – Wolfgang was just really goddamn talented.

After not hearing back from Anthony, Wolfgang decided to showcase some surprising bass skills to his father and uncle. “One day Ed and I were playing [in the studio] and this bass comes in… and behind the curtain it was Wolf,” he recalls.

Elsewhere in the interview, Alex explains how “proud” he is of his nephew for following his own path. “He doesn’t want to be Ed Jr,” he explains. “He could have just continued with the Van Halen stuff, but he decided he was his own man.”

Despite the murky circumstances of Wolfgang taking over Anthony’s role in Van Halen, the former bassist holds no ill will towards Wolfgang. Speaking to Sally Steele in 2024, Anthony said that “Wolf is a great guy, great musician, and his band [Mammoth] kicks ass”. But, yeah. So at least we were able to do that.”

“We’ve always been friends,” Anthony added. “Eddie, he wanted to play with his son. The way I kind of feel is that Wolfgang probably wasn’t excited, really, about being in Van Halen. That’s why in his band, he doesn’t play any Van Halen, ’cause he wants to carve out his own niche. But just to be able to get up and play with his father, I can totally understand that.”

The post “We did call, he just didn’t answer”: Alex Van Halen pushes back against the narrative that Michael Anthony wasn’t told he was being replaced in Van Halen appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.