Norse Guitar Feeds

While there’s certainly innovation in guitar building, time-honoured designs like the Stratocaster and Les Paul still rule the roost. So much so that Fender and Gibson – the two largest guitar companies in the world – have gone to great – often legal – lengths to ensure they hold onto their market share.

Launched in 1954 and 1952, respectively, the Stratocaster and Les Paul are the two most iconic guitars in history, picked time and time again by many of the world’s top guitar players. And as most of us get into guitar after being inspired by our heroes, is it any wonder that we often start by reaching for a Strat or an LP – or a guitar which closely resembles these designs?

• READ MORE: Fender CEO responds to cease-and-desist backlash, says company is “not suing anybody”

So while it could be argued that the guitar world is just crying out for some real innovation, is the fact we keep going back to Strat- and Les Paul-style guitars a symptom of market demand, as opposed to a lack of innovation on the part of guitar builders?

In a new conversation on Guitar Center’s Inside the Noise podcast, YouTuber, gear demoer and guitar repair expert Phillip McKnight shares his opinion as to why guitar designs that push the boundaries too far often fail to catch steam.

“I have a collection of innovative guitars that died,” he explains. “I have Parker Flys, I have an Ibanez Maxxas – the first guitar Ibanez ever designed as a true guitar, not a copy. Which was a colossal failure for Ibanez. It’s a hollowbody, it’s amazing. It has a great neck. It did everything great, but unfortunately, when they released it, everybody just wanted RGs.”

He goes on: “I like these guitars, because you get to see where somebody’s said, ‘I’m gonna fix this.’ It’s never the guitar’s fault [that they become commercial failures]. It’s just the market going, ‘Oh, but I just want a Strat [or] a Les Paul.”

McKnight is chatting with Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto, who is currently spearheading the company’s initiative to design its own guitar brand from the ground up.

Guitar Center landed itself in hot water when it announced the project, after it called upon its customer base to submit ideas, and some objected to how this would involve sacrificing their rights for limited compensation.

Dalporto later explained why Guitar Center was determined to make a guitar that was “meaningfully better and differentiated”, saying: “The world doesn’t need another Tele or Strat clone – it just doesn’t”.

Now, in the latest Inside the Noise episode, the CEO calls the market “super traditionalist”, and elaborates: “The question remains, ‘How far can you push innovation and still resonate?’ And I think that’s what we’re trying to push ourselves.”

Catch all the latest Inside the Noise podcast episodes at Guitar Center’s YouTube channel. Stay up to date with Phillip McKnight via his .

The post “It’s just the market going, ‘Oh, but I want a Strat or a Les Paul’”: Phillip McKnight explains why innovative guitar designs often fail appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The idea of making your own effects pedals is as enticing as it is intimidating. The world of DIY pedals is in a fantastic place right now – there’s not really been a better time to start making your own effects, with a huge selection of kits out there to try your hand at, and plenty of resources for designing your own circuit. But before you hastily reach for a soldering iron and doom your first attempt to the “to-fix” pile, I’d like to share some tips for making DIY pedals both work and look great, on the first try.

First things first – the kit itself. Today I’m assembling a StewMac Sun Face kit – a Fuzz Face-derived circuit with an added tone control. Pedals based around the Fuzz Face circuit are fantastic for a beginner, as they have a pretty low parts count – but the reward is oodles of fuzzy fun.

I’d also recommend using a kit with a PCB for your first pedal. I started out on stripboard, also known as veroboard. And while buying a bunch of stripboard can afford you some flexibility down the line, it’s also very fiddly to work with and pretty unforgiving if your soldering isn’t pin-neat to start with. How do I know this? Well, the less said about the total car-crash that was my first attempt at a veroboard Meathead fuzz, the better…

What you’ll need

Alongside the kit itself, you’ll need a few other things. First and foremost – a soldering iron (ideally one with a relatively small tip and temperature control), and some solder. You’ll also need some needle-nose pliers (seriously – don’t try and do this with the big chunky kind), a screwdriver with both a philips head for the enclosure screws and a small flathead for the knobs, some flush cutters for component legs, and some wire cutters/strippers. And finally – a multimeter. This is more essential than you’d think – it will save you a lot of time when troubleshooting, and in component identification.

And, while it’s not totally essential, some way of holding the board off your work surface is a game-changer. I like a set of helping hands (just insulated crocodile clips) on a stand, as these can also be good for wire tinning and splicing, and a few other things. You can get something like StewMac’s PCB holder, too, which lets you spin the board around when you’re ready to solder the other side. Whee!

What’s included

Being a kit rather than just a PCB, the StewMac Sun Fuzz comes with a pre-drilled and pre-painted enclosure (doing this yourself is a guide for another day), as well as some wire and the needed off-board components (a power jack, two audio jacks, and a footswitch), potentiometers for the pedal’s controls, and, of course, the board itself – plus all needed resistors, capacitors, transistors and diodes.

Get on board

The Sun Fuzz comes with a handy set of instructions which will tell you where things go – the PCB also has the required component values printed straight on it. First off – resistors. These are components that restrict current flow, and their resistance is measured in ohms, or Ω. You’ll also see KΩ and MΩ, or just K and M, standing for kiloohms (thousands) and megaohms (millions). So, for example, the spot for a resistor on the Sun Fuzz PCB labeled “100k” wants a 100 kiloohm, or 100,000 ohm, resistor. For values below 1,000 ohms you might occasionally see “R” used to make it clear that there’s no missing modifier – if a kit or a schematic indicates a “100R” resistor, it just means 100 ohms.

Resistors show their values via a system of coloured stripes, and the Sun Fuzz instructions include a lookup table to read this value. But this is my guide, and I’m colourblind as hell – and even if you do have full colour vision, it’s easy to be sure by reading the resistors’ value with a multimeter. I do this by holding the component with my thumb so that each leg touches one lead of the meter, and then cycle through the meter’s setting until I get a consistent reading. Multimeters need to be set to an order of magnitude (this lets them read a wide range of values accurately), and so if you try and read a 1M resistor on the 20k setting, you’ll get an error. If the meter reads as very close to zero, try bumping the setting down to a smaller order of magnitude.

Once I’ve figured out the resistor’s value, I bend the component legs to a sharp 90 degrees (as close to the body of the resistor as possible) and pop it in its respective slot, using my helping hands to elevate the PCB so I can get each one nice and flush to the board.

If you’ve looked at the Sun Fuzz’s manual, you might have noticed it doesn’t start with the resistors. So why am I doing so? Well, they’re the smallest components on this board, which brings us to my first trick for a neater look. Once you’ve got all of your resistors in place, find something flat (the back panel of the enclosure is handy for this), and hold it against the board so that it’s keeping the resistors in place. Then, release it from the helping hands or PCB holder and turn the whole thing over. You should now be looking at a forest of unsoldered and untrimmed component legs.

Resistors that are yet to be soldered. Please ignore how messed up the insulation is on that helping hand – it’s been through a lot…

On to soldering. I’m using the Pinecil, an affordable little iron that’s great for jobs like this. Once it’s good and hot (I set it at around 375 degrees C, which I’ve found works great with the particular solder I use), I hold it against the component leg and the PCB pad for a moment, and then go in with my solder – not too much, just enough that it floods into the pad and wicks up the component leg to make something roughly the shape of a Hershey’s Kiss. Then after a second or so I remove the iron and let it cool. You may be tempted to blow on it – do not do this. The ambient air temperature will cool it down fast enough, and, yes, there is the risk of blowing molten metal off the board and onto your laptop/notebook/cat. Ideally we avoid this situation.

Good soldering skills come with practice – this is one of the reasons a low-stakes kit is good – and if you’ve never done it before, you will doubtless mess up a few times. And sometimes, bad solder joints are hard to spot – just look out for cold joints, where the solder is in a little ball that’s lifted from the pad, and try to avoid making too big a ball. Where PCB pads are close, check you haven’t bridged any gaps with solder. The main tip here – ha – is patience.

I go in from the legs that are near the sides (allowing the most clearance for the iron), and once I need a little more room, I trim the soldered component legs with my flush-cutters. Keep an eye on the component legs – wear eye protection if you’re worried about them flying into you, and/or hold onto the legs themselves as you trim to keep them in check. They’re technically waste, but keep a hold of two of them – we’ll need them for later.

As we’ve started with just the resistors, which are all the same size, they’ll all be held against the board, and so once they’re soldered and trimmed, and we flip back over, it’ll look nice and neat. For more complex builds with more components, you can then work up the sizes – do diodes next, then box capacitors and so on. For larger components there’s another trick that we’ll get to in a second.

So, onto capacitors, the components that store charge. In guitar pedals they are most often used for filtering certain frequencies and blocking direct current. The non-polarised variety don’t care which way they go into the PCB, and will often be little droplet-shaped things or boxes – here we’ve got a single box capacitor, so we don’t need to distinguish its value. If you do, capacitors often just have their values written on them (or a value written in a simple numerical code).

Their value is technically measured in farads, but unless you’re plotting a very elaborate murder, you won’t see anything close to a 1 farad capacitor in a guitar pedal. Pedals instead stick to picofarads (pF or p, e.g. 100pF or 100p), nanofarads (nF or n) and microfarads (μF, or μ, occasionally written as uF or u).

So, having identified the box capacitor, I whack it into its slot – but how to keep it neat? Well, here’s where our good friend masking tape comes into play. Grab a small strip and tape the capacitor down. The tape will keep it nice and flush to the board as you follow the same procedure as you did with the resistors – flip, solder, trim.

Our old friend masking tape is being used here to keep some trimpots flush to the board, before I flip and solder.

The rest of the board population goes much the same way. The electrolytic capacitors are the cylindrical ones – they’re polarized, and therefore do care about which direction they go in. They’re luckily pretty foolproof in a lot of ways, as they have their values written right on them, and a set of minus symbols indicating their negative side. The negative lead – the shorter one – goes in the round hole – their positive side goes in the square hole.

The transistors are those little three-legged things that look they came from Mars equipped with heat-rays (they didn’t, though – the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one). They have a collector, base and emitter. The BC108s in the Sun Fuzz have a little tab on the case indicating the emitter, and so it’s easy to match that to the diagram on the PCB.

There’s also a diode for reverse-polarity protection. It has a stripe to match the negative side, which can also be matched against a diagram on the PCB. For the diodes and the transistors, heat can damage them a little easier, so be sure not to hold your iron to their legs for too long. To be extra safe, you can clip a crocodile clip onto the legs as you solder them – this acts as a heatsink, so you don’t dump all of the heat of your soldering iron into the sensitive parts of the actual component.

Finally for the on-board stuff, there are some trim-pots. These are smaller versions of potentiometers, the same components that make up the pedal’s actual knobs. There are two here, of different values – 50k and 5k. But, you’ll notice on the trimpots themselves, the values are 503 and 502. What’s going on here? Well. for codes like these, that last number can be substituted with that many zeroes to find the value in ohms. So for 503, that’s a 50 with three more zeroes – 50,000, or 50k. For 502 it’s 50 with two more zeroes – 5,000, or 5k. Easy!

For these and the other larger components I do the same masking-tape trick to keep things neat – again, you can bend out component legs to keep things in the board, but I like to avoid doing that, as when you flip over, this can lead to things moving about a little bit, giving more of a chaotic and cluttered look to the pedal you’ve spent so much time on. Obviously, a messy circuit that works still works, but it’s nice to be proud of what you’ve made.

Gaining control

For the potentiometers, I defer to the technique described in StewMac’s manual. Sometimes when building a pedal you’ll need to run three wires off to the pot – here, the pots are just right-angle PCB mount ones. If your pedal is symmetrical like this one is, you can put the pots in the top of the enclosure (facing upwards), and then pop the PCB on top, with some insulating tape on the back of any pots that might hit the back of the board. This means that when we solder the pots in place, they’re guaranteed to fit the enclosure we’re using. If the enclosure is asymmetrical, you can do the same thing, just with a few extra steps – you’ll just have to actually screw the pots into their final places, and solder the board inside the enclosure (taking care not to melt any components!) – then, unscrew the pots to continue to work on the board.

Placing the PCB like this can make soldering the pots a lot easier.

Off the board

The next step is to prep your populated board for its new home. The Sun Fuzz has, handily, multiple attachment points for ground, and a power input that’s right where the socket will be – we want to solder some shortish (7cm or so) lengths of wire into these. Right now I’m just focusing on the wires at the top of the PCB – here’s another point where I diverge from the instructions. We’ll come back to the wires for the footswitch.

For each hole, cut the wire to length, and strip a small (1-2mm) length of insulation off both ends. Then – importantly – tin the loose ends of wire. My personal technique is this: first, I give the ends a little twizzle with my thumb and forefinger to consolidate the loose strands. I then place the length of wire in a helping hand, or, if I’m feeling lazy, the upturned empty screw hole of a pedal enclosure. After this I heat the exposed part of wire with my soldering iron (taking care not to melt the insulation), and touch some solder to it – if the wire is hot enough, the solder will wick into the strands.

This may seem excessive when you’re starting out, and yes, it’s a pain, but it’s worth doing – when you thread the wires through PCB pads or the power/audio jacks, it keeps the strands from fraying outwards. This fraying not only looks a bit rough, it can (more crucially) lead the wire to break, or short out against something it shouldn’t.

Once tinned, you can pop the wires into their respective holes (ignoring the LED for now) and solder. What side you solder doesn’t really matter, in my opinion, as long as you have enough length to reach what you need to reach.

How to wire a true-bypass footswitch

Onto the footswich wiring. Now – here I’m going to go rogue again, and ignore the little daughterboard. If you are using it, it’s pretty self-explanatory (wire each thing on the daughterboard to the thing on the PCB) but I want to demonstrate how to wire a footswitch without one. It’s a handy skill to have, especially if you end up repairing any hand-wired pedals that need a new footswitch. Looking down at the footswitch, with the lugs oriented sideways, here’s what’s going on:

A standard footswitch we use for true bypass is a latching 3PDT, or triple-pole double-throw, footswich. What do all of those words mean? Well, latching means what you hopefully think it does – press it once, the switch goes one way. Press it again, it goes the other way. The other mode of operation would be momentary – IE, only switching when your foot is actually on it. Triple-pole means that there are three columns of connectors, and double throw means that each column of connectors has three connectors in it – one central row, and then two rows that are ‘thrown’ to, as you can see above.

There are a few ways to wire a footswitch, but below is my preferred method. Let’s go through how it works, starting with your plain old input signal, which we connect to the central lug on the leftmost column. The input jack is on the right of the pedal, but we’re looking down on an upside down pedal as we wire it, so we’re working left-to-right for now. When the pedal is in bypass, the central row is connected to the bottom row – so, this connects the input signal straight to that little jumper wire that goes past the middle column, and to the lug on the bottom-right of the switch. As the bottom row lugs are connected to their respective middle-row lugs, this will be sending our input signal straight to the rightmost middle lug. Connect this lug straight to the output jack, and hey presto, we have true bypass! We’ve effectively wired the input and the output of the pedal straight to each other using the switch.

When the footswitch is pressed, the middle row is connected in the other direction – to the top row. So, let’s follow the input again. It comes into the middle row and the switch sends it upwards, so we can feed that to the input of the pedal’s actual circuitry. The output of the circuit can then be connected to the top lug on the rightmost side of the switch, which will send the output of the pedal straight to the output jack. Which is, presumably, what you want when you press the footswitch.

So, let’s look at that middle column – and that jumper from pin 1 to pin 6. The central lug is connected to ground, the zero-point for voltage and return point for current in the circuit. The top lug of the middle column is connected to the negative side of the indicator LED. We then connect the positive side of the LED to the 9 volt power supply – with a 2.2k resistor somewhere along the way to limit the current and keep our LED from immediately burning out. This means that when the pedal is on, current has a path to ground through the LED, and hence – light. When the pedal is bypassed, the ground lug is connected in the other direction – current can’t flow through the LED, as the lug it’s connected to is no longer connected to anything.

This is where that jumper comes in. All it does is connect the input of the pedal to ground when it’s bypassed, using the same ground connection as the LED. This isn’t needed for every pedal, but for higher-gain circuits, this just makes sure the input of the pedal isn’t going to oscillate or pick up noise, as this can make its way into the output of the signal, even in bypass. This is due to a fun quirk of physics that means electrical signals are only kinda contained by wires.

Having a good understanding of the signal flow of your switch is very handy – particularly if anything goes wrong with it. Being able to look at a footswitch at a glance and go, “oh, I’ve wired this wrong” could save you hours of troubleshooting the board itself.

Putting the footswitch theory to the test

We can solder the footswitch a little like how we soldered the pots – place the pots through the top of the enclosure again, and then put the switch in its hole upside down. If you’re not using a daughterboard, use your pliers to bend a component leg into the required shape for the bypass jumper, and also feed another leg through pin 1 to pin 6. To get the bypass jumper to stay put, you can feed it through the middle row as well to hold it in place, solder the bottom row, and trim the excess. Once the jumper from pin 1 to 6 is fed through, you can solder its pin 6 connection, but leave the pin 1 connection to be soldered at the same time as the circuit input wire.

It won’t win any awards for looking overly snazzy, but it’s no rat’s nest either.

Speaking of wire – you can then measure out enough wire for each connection (note – some kits label the negative side of the LED simply as “Sw” or “Switch”, so that’s what needs to be wired to pin 4), cut, strip, tin and solder. You can use your needle-nose pliers to make sure you thread wires neatly into their respective footswitch holes. Here you can also solder in wires for the input and output – they’ll need to reach the top of the pedal’s enclosure, plus have a little bit of slack. Thinking about how long each wire needs to be, and then giving it just a little bit more so it’s not taking any strain, is how you avoid the insides of your pedals looking like the bit at the end of Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

Approaching the end

So, we’re nearly there – we’ve got a populated pcb and a hopefully working footswitch. Into its new home it goes – for the LED, there are different approaches that kits take, but here, the best thing to do is attach the bezel to the case, and then insert the LED (in its little jacket) so that it’s oriented correctly – long leg towards the round pad. Then, drop the PCB into its new home and finger-tighten the nuts and washers for the footswitch and the potentiometers. As it goes in, you can tilt it to “catch” the LED leads so they go up through their pads, or you can then use needle-nose pliers to fold them over and then solder them in place.

We also don’t need to add a current-limiting resistor (sometimes abbreviated to CLR) here, as we already have – it’s part of the actual circuit design. Keep in mind, though, if you are wiring your own LED up off-board, you’ll need to put one somewhere in between the switch, LED and power.

So, time for the power and audio jacks. The power jack here is unswitched, and so simply takes the nine-volt power straight from the supply and passes it to two lugs – the short lug for the centre of the barrel jack – used for ground/negative, in the case of 99.99% of pedal power supplies – and the long lug for the positive. Two of the wires from the top of the PCB are labelled + and -, so these need to go to the long and short legs of this power jack. Take care when soldering these to the lugs – it’s easy to accidentally push the iron into the plastic body of the power jack and melt it.

Each audio jack has two connections – sleeve and tip. The tip is for signal, and the sleeve for ground. Here, we’ve got mono open-style jacks, which are nice and simple – a connector each for tip and sleeve. Which one’s which can be seen visually, but if you’re unsure and/or you’ve got a different style of jack, you can check with the continuity mode on your multimeter.

The sleeve of each jack can be wired to the ground connections on the PCB we soldered earlier. Soldering the wires through the tabs here can be a little tricky – take it slow, and remember you can always loosen the jack to get it to a more convenient orientation for soldering. The tip connectors can then be soldered to the respective input/output wires we soldered to the footswitch earlier.

It’s good practice to run the input and output wires close to the walls of the enclosure, along opposite sides – this is another thing that helps reduce noise and oscillations. We’ve soldered the circuit’s ground connections to the sleeve of the audio jacks – and as they’re metal jacks, these are in contact with the enclosure, connecting it to ground as well. Like the shielding in your guitar, this helps reject any electromagnetic interference (EMI) that might come in from the outside. Keeping the inputs and outputs close to the enclosure also helps stop them acting as antennae, and running them on opposite sides helps prevent feedback – don’t be tempted to twist the in and out wires together and run them as a single unit from the jacks to the footswitch. This will just mean you’ll get a load of squealing oscillation, particularly with a high-gain circuit like a fuzz.

So, that should be everything wired up – take some time to do a visual inspection before you tighten all of the jacks. Are any exposed wires touching? Are there any spots on the PCB missing any components? Do the audio jacks let you plug patch cables in without the plugs hitting any wires? Is the power definitely wired the right way around?

Once everything’s tightened up, you might want to do a quick test before you close the enclosure. Just remember two things – firstly, if the pedal is still open and upside down, the input is on the other side than it normally is. I cannot tell you how many times I thought a pedal was dead after I finished building it, only because I tested it with the cables plugged in the wrong way. Also remember – you’ve soldered in a volume control, and it may be set to zero. Check it’s turned up before panicking!

The stickers go on! The disparate ways of applying artwork to pedal enclosures could fill a book – but stickers are nice and simple.

So, hopefully you get a nice fuzzy sound when you press the footswitch, and the LED lights up, and the controls all do what you want. Brilliant! One last thing for the Sun Fuzz – setting the trimpots, which I do a quickly by ear and then close everything up. Screw on the knobs with a small flathead screwdriver, apply the stickers, and, well, you’re finished. You have a fuzz pedal – one you made yourself, that, if you take the right care during assembly, should last a lifetime.

The post Building a DIY pedal kit? Here are some tips for neatness and reliability appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Add flavor to this beloved traditional melody with strums, arpeggios, and cross picking.

As Metallica’s lead guitarist for decades, Kirk Hammett has been behind some of the genre’s greatest riffs and hits. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t classic metal tracks he also wishes he wrote.

Most of today’s metal guitarists can trace one of the tendrils of their inspiration tree back to Randy Rhoads, and Hammett is no different. In fact, he looks up to Ozzy Osbourne’s former sideman so much that he wishes he wrote one Ozzy classic, in particular.

In a VH1 interview recently resurfaced by Far Out Magazine, the Metallica guitarist said: “I know this might sound weird, but you know, I’m really into jazz.

• READ MORE: Sunn O))) and EarthQuaker Devices launch compact version of the acclaimed Life Pedal: “Half the size, just as heavy”

“I learnt Diary of a Madman sometime last year and was just amazed at all the great jazz voicings that that song has.

“And as I was scratching my head, I thought, ‘This is a brilliant piece of work.’ Randy Rhoads really, really showed a lot more depth, other than, you know, just rock licks and power chords.”

Despite its arguably inaccessible and pop-unfriendly jazz voicings and off-piste chord progressions, Diary of a Madman remains one of the quintessential tracks in Ozzy Osbourne’s catalogue. The title track from the singer’s 1981 effort, it continues to rack up millions of plays across streaming services.

Randy Rhoads remains one of the foremost inspirations for today’s metal players. Despite only playing with Ozzy Osbourne for just shy of three years – ending with his tragic death in a plane crash in 1982 – Rhoads’ impact on metal music was immeasurable, performing on Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981). Rhoads was part of the songwriting team behind the riff of Crazy Train, Ozzy’s most iconic song.

Randy Rhoads was so influential that many suggested there was a rivalry between him and his contemporary at the time, Eddie Van Halen. But W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes recently went on record to dispel that there was ever any animosity.

“The rivalry was between the fans, more,” he said. “The fans of Quiet Riot versus Van Halen fans. That was where the rivalry really was. But between the bands…it wasn’t between Ed and Randy. Ed would never say he hated the guy or disliked him.”

The post “I was just amazed at all the great jazz voicings that song has”: The Ozzy Osbourne classic Kirk Hammett wishes he wrote appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Drone metal band Sunn O))) and EarthQuaker Devices have launched a compact version of their collaborative Life Pedal, an octave distortion and booster, aptly named HalfLife.

Like the Life Pedal, HalfLife is designed to represent the core front end chain used in the writing sessions for the band’s 2019 album, Life Metal, to drive the tubes of the Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s multiple vintage Sunn O))) Model T amplifiers “into overload ecstasy”. It will remain part of the EQD lineup for good, as opposed to the original three versions.

• READ MORE: “I’m driving home right now and it’s in the back seat!”: Inside John 5’s relationship with his number 1 guitar, Ghost

Offered as a pedalboard-friendly alternative to the Life Pedal, HalfLife again features a fuzz/distortion circuit with an analogue octave-up effect, as well as a MOSFET-driven clean boost in the “Magnitude” section. In addition, HalfLife features reworked circuitry, with switchable op-amp, asymmetric and symmetric clipping modes.

The first position uses no diodes for a “full, grinding Op Amp assault at maximum volume”. The second utilises two silicon diodes and one LED in an asymmetrical clipping configuration, while the latter is the standard double silicon diode configuration for a more classic tone.

“An octave fuzz inspired by the Shin-Ei FY2 & FY6 units leads the circuit into a brutal big-box rodent-inspired distortion recreated with the best components and including a three-way clipping switch,” says EarthQuaker. “The second stage is a purely clean boost to further overdrive the preamp tubes of your vintage system into scaped harmonics and feedback overtone bliss.”

And thanks to the fact the HalfLife is made using modern components – as opposed to the NOS (New Old Stock) components used in the original Life pedals – it’s now a permanent staple of the EQD lineup.

“I’m ecstatic for the continuation of this LIFE-affirming collaboration with EarthQuaker Devices,” says Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson. “May the sounds you create from the HalfLife be as deep as the forests and massive as the mountains.”

Back in 2022, we tried out the Life Pedal V3, and gave it a stellar 9/10 in our review. And you best believe us when we say we’re excited to get our hands on the new HalfLife pedal…

The HalfLife is available now for £265/$259.

Learn more and hear audio samples at EarthQuaker Devices.

The post Sunn O))) and EarthQuaker Devices launch compact version of the acclaimed Life Pedal: “Half the size, just as heavy” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Press Release

Source: J. Tempchin

“Hi Folks, 

I’m putting together a short film and album called, On The Spot May 2026. No release date has been set yet for the album, so stay tuned! 

I went to the beach that day and with a few folks that dropped by I made up songs on the spot. It’s filmed in fantastic iPhone color and called, This Guitar Is My Best Friend.

Lead guitar by Jesse London and acoustic bass by a a guy named Mateo. He was walking by and went to his car and go his bass. I never saw him before, or since. Mixed by the great Craig Parker Adams.

Thanks! Jack”

Click here to view the embedded video.

******

About Jack Tempchin: Signed to Arista Records by Clive Davis, the now legendary songwriter, Jack Tempchin, composed the song, “Slow Dancing (Swayin’ To The Music) that was recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1977. The song. reached the No. 10 spot of the Hot 100 and No. 8 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Tempchin’s songwriting attracted the attention of such major artists as: Buck Owens, George Jones and others who recorded his compositions. Jack would form a collaborative relationship with the Eagles that boosted his songwriting reputation by his songs such as, “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” and “Already Gone,” both featured on The Eagles 1917-1975 greatest hits album that was highlighted by RIAA

as the Best-Selling Album of the 20th Century. He’d partner with the Eagles’ Glenn Frey co-writing major hits, including, “The One You Love,” and “Smuggler’s Blues”. The songwriter’s songs would find themselves in film and television to be featured I such iconic films as “The Big Lebowski,” and “Thelma & Louise”. Jack would also co-write the theme song for the tv series, “7th Heaven”. 

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019, Tempchin’s songwriting lyrics have been displayed at both The Grammy Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And in 2024 his full-length film, Midnight: Jack The Movie, attracted critical acclaim, with Jason Mraz noting it as “an amazing movie, a master class in songwriting and in life”. 

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Electro-Harmonix releases the EHX Percolator

Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi has been made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the King’s Birthday Honours for his services to music and charity.

An MBE is awarded for an achievement or service within and for a community that is outstanding and has delivered sustained and real impact. They are awarded each year as part of the monarch’s birthday celebrations.

• READ MORE: Kirk Hammett says Tony Iommi uses “smart chords” – this is what he means

Not only is Iommi known for co-founding Sabbath, which paved the way for the heavy metal genre to expand and grow, he has also worked on humanitarian projects such as international disaster relief and cancer patient advocacy, after being diagnosed with lymphoma in 2012.

Speaking to the BBC, Iommi says it is an “unbelievable honour to receive an MBE”, adding: “Music has been my life and I’ve been very lucky to share this journey with many amazing people and fans. I’m very grateful for all the support along the way.

“It’s been a privilege doing something I love and then to see that music connect with so many over the years. And, to be able to help raise money for charities close to my heart has meant the world to me.”

Iommi learned of the news when he collected his mail upon returning from a holiday, and at first assumed the letter to be a speeding fine. You can watch his interview with the BBC below:

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In other Iommi-associated news, Ozzy Osbourne’s son Jack has shared a fresh update on the long-awaited biopic about his father.  Speaking during a livestream on his YouTube channel, Jack confirmed that the script is complete and the project is now actively moving forward.

“I can tell you this: we are moving ahead,” he said. “I was on calls today about it. The script is right there. We are good. This movie will absolutely happen.”

The post Tony Iommi awarded an MBE for services to music and charity appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

In the age of social media, it seems there are more guitarists than ever with ungodly playing chops. Algorithms are designed to surface and show you the best of the best, so it can often seem like there are insanely good guitarists everywhere you turn.

But has social media encouraged the pursuit of speed and technicality at the expense of what actually makes music enjoyable? In a new interview with the Mighty VH Podcast discussing the history of Van Halen, guitarist Richie Kotzen explains how he believes this may be the case.

• READ MORE: “He didn’t want the association with hair metal”: Richie Kotzen explains why Trent Reznor backed out of hiring him as Nine Inch Nails’ guitarist

Describing the current landscape of guitar as a “very bizarre situation”, he explains [via Blabbermouth]: “I don’t wanna say anything that’s discrediting or it sounds like, ‘Oh, Richie, you’re just too old.’ But back in the day when I was coming up, with Van Halen, you had [Eddie] being him and innovative and all that, in the context of great songwriting, which he was giving and doing…”

Kotzen cites the likes of Eddie Van Halen – and others including former Ozzy Osbourne sideman Zakk Wylde and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt – as guitarists who are the “complete musician”: “There’s artistic value there in the creativity.”

But he says we’re now in a “strange land” where guitarists are playing more technically than ever, but at the expense of creative value.

“You have gifted musicians that are actually executing at a level that’s much more complex than the stuff that was happening when I was young growing up but it’s completely stripped of the artistic creative value, as we would have defined it, which would be song, the craft of creating song…” he says.

“‘Cause you can listen to someone improvise over changes or giant steps or whatever it is, and your mind can be blown with how quickly and efficiently and expressively one can weave through these changes. But what’s missing to me with many of the folks is the stuff that was there with the names that I mentioned — Eddie and Zakk and Nuno and others.”

Kotzen describes the shift as “very strange and unfortunate”: “I find that very disheartening. I don’t know the exact word, but I don’t like it.”

The post Richie Kotzen says guitarists are playing “more complex” nowadays, but at the expense of “artistic creative value” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Rolling Stones have got another new album on the way, and these days they work in a much more timely manner to how things used to be. As guitarist Keith Richards says, working under the influence was a significant part of their story.

The band’s forthcoming album, Foreign Tongues, was announced in May. It marks their first release since 2023’s Hackney Diamonds and their 25th studio album overall. Just like their previous record, it has also been produced by Andrew Watt, and features appearances from Paul McCartney, Robert Smith, Steve Winwood and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith.

• READ MORE: “Call my guitar man if you want the exact number”: Keith Richards reveals the astonishing number of guitars in his collection

In an interview with MOJO, Watt confirms that for the making of Foreign Tongues, Richards (now living a clean lifestyle) would arrive at Metropolis Studios each day at the allotted hour – a far cry from the years of what became known as “Keith Time”, when sessions could be held up for hours or even days.

Richards now says, “Working under the influence is a part of the story because it’s the one job where you can get away with it. I’m not driving, you know. But this idea of everyone being befogged by drugs… it wasn’t like that.”

He adds, “We worked very meticulously, with a little hit here and there, and drugs were used either so we could stay awake to finish a song, or to go: ‘Gimme a break.’ And it was the era. The ’60s and ’70s were wide open for it.”

The team who were around the band during this “wide open” era remember often have much more chaotic memories of working with The Stones. Celebrity publicist Alan Edwards once recalled how a very drunk Richards couldn’t be woken, and was loaded right onto a plane to fly to the next country while the band were out on tour.

In Edwards’ memoir, I Was There, he shares: “The tour manager couldn’t wake Keith up in a hotel room to fly to the next country. So roadies carried the bed, with Keith sleeping in it, out of the hotel, loaded it onto the plane then hauled it off when the plane touched down again.”

The new Rolling Stones album will be released on 10 July, and is available to pre-order now.

The post “We worked very meticulously, with a little hit here and there”: How “working under the influence” was part of life for the Rolling Stones appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

John 5 has a very close relationship with his Ghost Telecaster. The guitar inspired the name of his most recent album, and he travels absolutely everywhere with it.

The guitar was launched as a signature model by Fender in 2023, featuring a top-bound alder body and one-piece maple neck finished entirely in an Arctic White gloss, coupled with red appointments and a mirrored pickguard/control plate. The unique model is also equipped with a pair of DiMarzio D Activator humbuckers that are designed to “replicate the sound of active pickups in a passive format”.

• READ MORE: “It’s your phone – I don’t mind”: Why John 5 is against phone bans at live shows

Speaking to Guitar World, he says of his beloved axe, “My Ghost is Number 1. It was put together when Fender did a collaboration with [NYC skateboarding and streetwear brand] Supreme. I thought, ‘This guitar is strikingly beautiful. I want to do a guitar like this.’ That’s where we came up with it, and it’s by far my favourite. I even named a record after it! [2025’s Ghost]

“I feel safe with the Ghost. I know I’m not gonna have problems live or in a studio. It’ll stay in tune and sound and feel great. It’s like when you’re getting on an airplane, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know about this,’ but then you get on a really nice one, a beautiful double-decker, and you think, ‘This is gonna be amazing.’”

He adds, “That’s how it is with the Ghost! I travel with it everywhere. In fact, I’m driving home right now from Joshua Tree, and I have my Ghost in the back seat. So yeah, it’s important.”

John 5 is one of very few rock artists to play a Tele, and he previously likened it to “wearing a cowboy hat to a Slayer concert”. On an episode of The Kenny Aronoff Sessions, he said, “I loved music just like any kid, and I loved TV. I would see clips of bands playing on TV, and I was really drawn to it, for some reason. You know, it kind of picks you.” He later added: “It’s just weird, and I wasn’t trying to be weird. It’s just what I’ve always played.”

You can catch John 5 on the road this summer with Mötley Crüe for their Return Of The Carnival Of Sins tour. Find out more via the Mötley Crüe website.

The post “I’m driving home right now and it’s in the back seat!”: Inside John 5’s relationship with his number 1 guitar, Ghost appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Johnny Marr will release a brand-new album, The Age of Everything, later this year.

Arriving 2 October via BMG, the album comprises 10 new tracks, each written in London, developed while on the road during live shows on the east coast of North America, and recorded in Marr’s hometown of Manchester.

• READ MORE: Johnny Marr reveals that he turned down an “eye-watering amount of money” for a Smiths reunion – despite Morrissey agreeing to it

The former Smiths guitarist has kicked things off with the album’s lead single and “urgent opening statement”, Spin, which tackles the theme of overwhelm in our collective consciousness in 2026. Check out the official music video below:

“This is the record that’s been the most cathartic,” says the 62-year-old guitarist. “The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it’s not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.”

In addition to the album’s launch, Johnny Marr has announced some of his biggest live concerts of his solo career to date, with two massive shows planned at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl on 9 July, and London’s Wembley Arena on 24 October. The Smiths guitarist will also play a number of festivals in Europe this summer, with more dates to be announced.

The two headline shows in Manchester and London will be preceded by two intimate warm-up shows in early July, at Leeds’ Stylus on 6 July and the O2 Academy Liverpool on 7 July.

Fans who preorder The Age of Everything will receive access to an exclusive fan presale for these dates, which will run from 10AM 17 June to the start of general sale, at 10AM 19 June.

Check out the full tracklist for The Age of Everything below:

1. Spin
2. Beyond the Rain
3. It’s Time
4. How Come
5. Ophelia
6. That Feeling
7. In and Out of Love
8. Just Once More
9. Fire With Fire
10. All in a Life

A full list of Johnny Marr’s upcoming live dates – excluding those that are yet to be announced – is available below:

• June 28th – Live is Live, Antwerp, BE
• July 4th – Down The Rabbit Hole, Ewijk, NE
• July 6th – Stylus, Leeds, UK
• July 7th – O2 Academy, Liverpool, UK
• July 9th – Castlefield Bowl, Manchester, UK – SOLD OUT
• July 10th – Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, IE
• July 16th – Verona, IT
• July 17th – Rome, IT
• July 18th – Pugila, IT
• July 20th – Udine, IT
• July 21st – Sardinia, IT
• July 23rd – 1001 Musicas, Granada, ES
• August 9th – OFF Festival, Mysłowice, PL
• August 21st – Parken Festivalen, Bodø, NO
• October 24th – Wembley Arena, London, UK

Head to johnnymarr.com for more info.

The post Johnny Marr announces new album, The Age of Everything – along with his two biggest solo shows to date appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Amid the squalling notes, Zoh Amba was trying to get somewhere else. Their tenor saxophone, buffeted by clashing free jazz percussion and popping bass, was a hand reaching out. “It was like this deep plunging together to really get close to God,” they say, reflecting on records that made them a key figure in New York’s avant garde scene; both a critical darling and a collaborator capable of pushing more seasoned players to the edges of their capabilities.

• READ MORE: “We don’t write things that would be boring live” Guilt Trip on why they’re committed to keeping hardcore as intense as possible

Their new record Eyes Full is, at first, a more terrestrial proposition, its guitar-and-vocal heart beating through a series of character studies drawn from the margins of an imperfect America. But, Amba insists, there’s more in common between her two creative identities than there initially appears.

“With the songs it was more of a long process of thinking about that same thing,” they say. “It’s just a different type of journey to it. I don’t think we succeeded in reaching those places yet, but I think we tried.”

Amba grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, and played guitar before they ever picked up a sax. Even as a teenager, wandering the woods around the home they shared with their family, their first instinct was to explore. They have discussed at length the influence of experimental jazz great Albert Ayler on their music, but the guitarists who informed their early approach, from Michael Chapman and Bert Jansch to John Martyn, were cut from a similarly unconventional cloth.

“I could play in standard but it didn’t really feel like me,” they say. “I found these other tunings and I really started finding my way in it, with different finger-picking. They fingerpicked so clean, but being from the Blue Ridge Mountains I felt like a dirty-ass right hand was my only goal.”

Image: Angela Betancourt

Full Hearts

The songs on Eyes Full, which will be released by the indie-rock institution Matador, are lit up by the antic energy of Amba’s playing, given a sense of restlessness that seems to capture the nomadic nature of their author’s recent past. After leaving Kingsport in their late teens, Amba played and studied music in San Francisco and New York before eventually winding their way back home. “I could see how it looks like that on paper,” they say when this observation is put to them.

In reality, the record was written on the floor of their apartment in the undertow of a difficult year, a sense of isolation offset by the places that Amba was able to travel to by picking up their guitar. “Sometimes I’d start with a tuning, find a little thing and keep at it,” they recall. “Other times I’d have the words come with it or I’d run in the park, because I was really disciplined at the time. For a reward, I’m gonna get a big beer at my favourite bar. I’d go in there and sit, and I would be thinking for a while by myself, staring at the wall, writing down stuff that I’d put back on these guitar parts.”

On the streets outside the bar were people just like the ones who’d eventually populate the songs – medicated children, dreamers, and broad-spectrum fuck ups who don’t deserve that being the only thing written on their gravestone. There is enormous compassion here, with the feeling that Amba is reaching out to past versions of themselves as much as they’re extending a greeting to others. “You only can really understand what you know,” they say.

“I’m just gonna have a nasty right hand, and be a great guitar player, and write words that are really sincere,” they continue. “[Words] that feel like things other people are chasing in their lives, or trying to chase words to figure out how they feel. I think, especially being a kid, you are looking for something to connect with. I know I found certain things that really kept me looking forward to being alive, and looking forward to keeping going. I’m hoping that this music reaches these kids who need to hear a little something.”

Image: Eleanore Hendricks

Friends Indeed

After a couple of attempts in Brooklyn that didn’t work out for one reason or another, bringing Eyes Full to life required Amba to call upon the services of two old friends: guitarist Kevin Hyland and drummer Jim White, whose loose-limbed style with the Dirty Three and as a member of Bill Callahan’s band seems to perfectly mirror Amba’s approach.

Recording at Drop of Sun studios in Asheville, North Carolina, around 90 minutes’ drive from Kingsport, they liked things lean, largely eschewing overdubs and keeping takes to a minimum. “We made it in two days or something like that,” Amba says. “It was a pretty quick turnaround. I wish we had a little more time but time is money for people. It was beautiful — we stayed upstairs, we ate meals together, and it just felt like we were in this bubble together, which was really sweet.”

“I’ve never recorded a record before, so I didn’t really know you could do it any other way,” they add. “Honestly, just get in there and do it. I think I’m interested in other forms now, but at the time I didn’t know anything. I overdubbed some stuff on Child You’ll See, I went in there with this Gibson guitar and I was bowing this SG through all this shit. I put an old saxophone recording that I played solo years ago on top of that. We overdubbed in a creative way, not in other ways. But people should do whatever they need to do. That’s just how it fell for us, I guess.”

There is real chemistry between the trio, with Hyland’s electric deployed in washes and waves against the woodiness of Amba’s acoustic. White lopes beside them like a labrador in a rumpled suit, always on the balls of his feet in case something fun comes his way. It’s naturally less improvisational than Amba’s jazz work, with plenty of time spent woodshedding ideas with Hyland, but when White’s snare tumbles into the room on Dead End Street, suddenly there as the guitars egg each other on, it retains the sense of art coming to life in real time.

“With the jazz stuff, when you’ve been doing it for so long, you learn [people’s] not cheat codes, but different ways to get into certain things,” Amba says. “I feel like Jim and I are so similar — my right hand is really like the way he thinks on the drums. Kevin is a really great guitar player in a different way, so it all worked. Me and Kevin spent a lot of time together. Me and Jim didn’t, but we’ve known each other and have played together through the years. Baby tours a lot so we didn’t rehearse too much, but me and Kevin just, like, wiped it out, you know?”

Image: Eleonore Hendricks

Tattoo You

Aside from borrowing a Dillion DTT-72 from Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman, Asheville royalty and no stranger to Drop of Sun, to deliver the squalling, Wednesday-esque freakout on Dead End Street, Amba leaned heavily on a characterful Martin D-18, which they picked up while on the road shortly after inking their Matador deal. “When I signed I got a Telecaster and a tattoo,” they say. “Honestly, people love Telecasters, and I was like, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’ It was so sick but, you know what? I actually don’t think I’m a Telecaster person.”

“I had a cheap Guild — it wasn’t cheap for me, by the way — and I wrote most of the record and demos on that,” they continue. “I love that fucking Guild, but I wanted something that’s going to hold up. I asked a buddy what guitar I should use for what I’m trying to do, and they said a D-18. I went in there, and I tried the old ones, I tried the new ones, and it was so fucking expensive.

I was trying to trade everything in the car at the Chicago Music Exchange to get the money down. I was going to trade my Guild too, with the Telecaster, and they’re like, ‘That guitar is $200.’ I was like, ‘That can’t be real, you’re lying to me!’ I ended up putting the rest on my credit card that I’m paying off for the rest of my life. But I have this D-18, and I love it.”

Rick Rolling

Of late, Amba’s credit card has added a Rickenbacker 330 to their live rotation, helping them move between acoustic and electric renderings of songs from Eyes Full while keeping one eye on what comes next. “People been like, ‘Don’t beat the fuck out of that guitar!’ But I’m gonna do whatever I want with that guitar, it’s my guitar,” they say.

“We went all over the place looking for Ricks in New York, and they’re too expensive. We ended up going to Guitar Center in Brooklyn, and we found this one — it was a very affordable guitar for what it is. I’ve been playing the Rick with a Big Muff. I was like, ‘I’m never gonna be a pedal motherfucker, I like being an acoustic motherfucker.’ But here I am fucking with pedals, you know?”

Out among the trees, Amba found their place through alternate tunings. Out in the world, rekindling that feeling requires time and patience. We all have to go on the ride with them if we want to get to where they’re going, which feels fitting.

“I play some new songs with the Rick because it’s in standard,” they say. “So it’s easy to turn back. I do Smile With Your Eyes, which is DGDGBD, and I have to tune the guitar. Then there’s this other one with everything down a half step, then there’s C#F#C#EBC, then C#G#C#F#BC#…I’m getting really good at stage banter. I’m like, ‘Hang on, everyone, we’re gonna get there together.”

Zoh Amba’s Eyes Full is out now through Matador.

The post “I’m just gonna have a nasty right hand, and write words that are really sincere” Zoh Amba on their journey from avant garde sax to an indie-rock guitar phenom appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

EarthQuaker Devices Sunn O))) HalfLife is half the size but just as heavy

Otherworldly reverbs in a pocket-sized pedal

Press Release

Source: Clyne Media

Following weeks of controversy surrounding Fender’s cease-and-desist letters over alleged infringement on the Stratocaster body shape, the company’s CEO Edward “Bud” Cole has sought to clarify Fender’s position in a speech to dealers.

• 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

The speech took place at a Fender event for dealers. It was filmed and published to YouTube last week by Bananas At Large, a musical instrument dealer based in California, and brought to wider attention in videos posted by Phillip McKnight and Rhett Shull.

Cole initially seeks to reassure the crowd that Fender has not sought active litigation against anyone, saying: “First and foremost, Fender is not suing anybody.” Referring to the cease-and-desist letters received by several companies, he adds: “What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and [respectfully] to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design.”

Cole then seeks to further clarify which guitars Fender views as potentially “replicating” the design, taking issue with a common piece of phraseology used when marketing double-cut guitars. “We’re talking specifically about the Stratocaster, because that’s what this is really about – calling it simply the ‘S-style’ or the ‘S-shape’ is an attempt to diminish and whitewash the immeasurable game-changing contribution that Leo and his team made to the entire industry that all of us have built so much of our success and careers around.”

In the full speech, Cole also seeks to clarify the nature of Fender’s ownership – in response to online comments that have chalked the recent cease-and-desist actions up to the brand being owned by “private equity.” He also reassures the room that this issue has been raised in the EU, and therefore will have less impact on dealers selling American brands.

It is worth noting, however, that while Fender does not seem to be engaged in active litigation over this issue, the cease-and-desist letters sent out do still contain the threat of litigation, if the request is not met. Additionally, while the cease-and-desist letters have been sent regarding instruments being sold in the EU, this still includes US-based brands such as PRS.

Cole’s intention was clearly to quash at least some of the intense controversy that has circled Fender since LsL first revealed that it had received a cease-and-desist. However, commentators seem unconvinced by the walk-back – Rhett Shull, for instance, called Cole’s speech “insulting”, and took issue with the idea that the initial threats were “thoughtful and respectful”. Phillip McKnight had similar issues with the clip, going so far as to say Cole was lying when he characterised the cease-and-desist letters as thoughtful and respectful.

While the furor over the issue rolls on (particularly in Fender’s own social media comments) it remains to be seen what the material outcome for the wider guitar market will be. While only LsL and PRS have gone on record as having received letters, one other global brand – that we cannot name due to confidentiality reasons – has received a letter, and has rebuffed Fender’s demands via its own lawyers. PRS also told the Wall Street Journal that it “disagrees” with Fender’s assessment, although it’s unclear whether the brand intends to take this disagreement to court.

The post Fender CEO responds to cease-and-desist backlash, says company is “not suing anybody” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

You’ll know him as everyone’s favourite gun-toting, knife-wielding assassin, John Wick, but when he’s not participating in high table duels and racking up ludicrous body counts, Hollywood A-lister Keanu Reeves handles bass duties in Los Angeles-based alt-rock trio Dogstar.

And this weekend, Download festival goers had the chance to see Reeves perform live on the second stage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, crowds flocked to see the Matrix star and his bandmates, drummer Robert Mailhouse and guitarist/vocalist Bret Domrose.

• READ MORE: Sick of tuning issues on the road? These new guitar cases from D’Addario feature integrated humidity control

The band’s set marked their first-ever appearance at Download Festival, widely regarded as metal music’s spiritual home.

The trio performed a half-an-hour set on the Opus stage on Sunday (14 June) – later headlined by Florida pop-punk/metalcore powerhouse A Day to Remember. The stage also saw performances from Mastodon, Tom Morello, Social Distortion and more.

Watch footage of Dogstar’s set below:

This year’s Download Festival hosted headliners Limp Bizkit, Guns N’ Roses and Linkin Park, with sets from a who’s who of metal’s elite, including Trivium, Bad Omens, Ice Nine Kills, Pendulum, The Pretty Reckless, Architects, Behemoth, Periphery, Black Veil Brides, Hollywood Undead and many, many more.

Keanu Reeves and Dogstar are currently on tour in Europe, with dates planned in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and more. Later this year, the trio will head back to the states for a US leg.

Tickets and tour dates are available via dogstarofficial.com.

The post Watch Keanu Reeves perform with Dogstar at Download 2026 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Martin Guitar.

Few bonds exist like the one between an acoustic guitar and its player. Special chemistry occurs when you find the right instrument – so much so that it can teach you more about yourself as a musician than any book, video or guitar teacher ever could.

“An acoustic steel-string guitar will faithfully reproduce the physical energy that you give it by the simple act of touching the strings, and it will turn that energy into sound. There’s a purity to this relationship – one that I have loved for many years,” explains Guitar.com’s Michael Watts, who offers some expert tips to make better music with your acoustic guitar in a new video made in partnership with Martin.

This may be true, but it’s important to take considered and intentional steps in finding your own unique voice as an acoustic guitarist, as that’s how you’ll learn the most about yourself. So, we’re here to guide you in the right direction.

Come with us as we take a deep dive into the characteristic playing styles of iconic guitar players like Johnny Marr, Jimmy Page and David Gilmour, and show you how you can adopt their sus4 and open-string embellishments to enhance your own acoustic accompaniments.

Next, we’ll take a look at how you can incorporate the techniques of some of the most revered flatpickers in the game right now, like Martin artists Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings, who find their own style in open string drones and double-stops.

Dipping your toes in the world of alternate tunings can completely transform the way you play your acoustic guitar. A simple drop of the low E string to D can open up a whole world of new textures, while favourites like DADGAD can open up entirely new soundscapes ripe for exploration.

And this is all well and good, but how do you select the right acoustic guitar in the first place? Every guitar is different, and the best way to find your perfect instrument is to “try as many guitars as you can, and don’t rush into a choice”, says Watts.

“I would advise you to take your time getting to know an instrument. Listen to how it responds to your touch. Explore the dynamic range between quiet and loud, and the different sounds you can make as you move your picking hand position.”

“It’s great to absorb the work of players that you love, and to feel inspired and learn from that,” Watts goes on. “But even more important is that aspect of your playing which makes you feel the most vulnerable – the bit that you’re least sure of because you haven’t heard anyone else do that. That’s the good stuff. That’s you. Lean into it.”

Watch the full video above.

The post “Take your time getting to know an instrument”: Top tips to find your own unique voice as an acoustic guitarist appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Positive Grid

If you’re a guitar player, there’s a very good chance that on more than one occasion you’ll have found yourself stumped trying to think of a guitar sound that is authentically yours. Despite the huge gamut of guitars, amps and effects available for us to play with here in 2026, sometimes the sheer wealth of choice can be overwhelming, and as such we end up leaning on accepted gear combinations and tried and true solutions.

Most of the time that’s fine, but sometimes you just want to push yourself out of your comfort zone, right? It’s no fun ploughing the same furrow forever, and unless you’re very lucky, it’s unlikely that such an approach is going to help you develop a sound or guitar style that’s truly your own.

Positive Grid has been trying to help guitarists get over this hump in a variety of ways over the last few years. First, they built an AI helper into their impressive Spark 2 practice amp that could help you find your sound with just a few words, then they built a more powerful and advanced version into the Bias X software that helped make in-the-box guitar playing less intimidating for newbies. Now however, they’re taking things to the next level.

REACTOR is PG’s brand new gig-ready amp aimed at those who want to sound good without breaking the bank. While it has all the usual impressive features and onboard sounds you’d expect from a Positive Grid amp, the most intriguing feature might be Amp Intelligence.

Amp Intelligence is, essentially, a guitar-centric intelligent tone engine designed to help you take the sound that’s in your head and make it a reality. Using the companion REACTOR smartphone app, you can interact with it in a variety of ways: whether it’s via a text-based prompt, an image or a sound sample. You can simply hand it over to Amp Intelligence and in no time at all, it’ll fire out a bunch of presets for you to audition on the amp in real time.

The useful potential of this is pretty clear from just a few minutes of using it. For starters, it’s pretty dang good at recognising a played guitar tone and reproducing it. We threw an old band demo recording into Amp Intelligence with very little clue what exactly had been used to record the original, and within a minute or two it had presented three very usable, very decent sonic approximations of what it heard. It also can do that trick with instruments, too – if you show it a picture of a certain type of guitar, it’ll pull out some classic tonal pairings to go with them, and they’re very impressive.

The amp can also act as a really interesting creative tool, creating tones based on pretty much anything that can be typed, photographers or captured via audio.

With something as broad and powerful as Amp Intelligence, there’s also the potential to get rather silly, and well… that’s where we’re going today. Let’s take the most leftfield nonsense we can come up with and see how Amp Intelligence handles the task. It’s time to get weird.

Cat’s Entertainment

Image: Positive Grid

The logical place to start, if we’re really going to try and get weird, is to pick something that really has got absolutely nothing to do with music and see what happens. It’s convenient then, that a rather handsome and entirely unknown interloper of the feline variety decides to wander through an ajar kitchen door and into the house just as we’re mulling over exactly what kind of flora or fauna to choose.

A quick photo of this incredibly majestic creature is duly snapped wandering around the kitchen like he owns the place – how will REACTOR’s Amp Intelligence handle a picture of a cat?

Well, pretty amusingly well actually. “You wanted a ‘pur-fect’ jazz’ tone inspired by a playful Balinese or Siamese cat,” it responds, before handing me a bunch of warm, soft and smooth jazzy tones with names like “Playful Jazz Cat” – they all sound good, especially when I start pulling out the ninth chords and switch on my Jazzmaster’s rhythm circuit.

Interestingly, when I put the same prompt in a second time it offered me something completely different – this time offering me ‘Meow-y’ wah-based sounds instead – showing the potential for Amp Intelligence to offer so many unique options no matter what you ask it – and of course you can then tweak these tones to taste in the apps conventional tone editor.

Orange You Glad I Called?

Right, we’ve done animals, it’s time to take something even weirder – food. We did contemplate giving Amp Intelligence a delicious burger or even a perfectly stuffed gyros to work with, but quite frankly nobody should have such things to hand in the middle of a working day, and so we had to work with what was at hand instead… Hmm, what about the fruit bowl?

I half wish I’d made the oranges a little more prominent in the photo in the hope that it would really go route one, but instead the image of fruit sent Amp Intelligence to sunny climbs and tropical paradises, offering me a “fruity bossa” tone in various flavours.

Of these, the mellow, mid-boosted Apple Jazz was very fun for more of those comped chords, while Tropical Fruit Clean gave a strident but enjoyable fruit punch (sorry) to proceedings.

Chapter and Verse

Image: Adam Gasson

Okay, it’s done a pretty impressive job with the first two weird things, but let’s push things really outside the box. We wanted to give the Amp Intelligence something truly odd – like say, this writer reciting William Blake’s seminal 1794 poem The Tyger?

Now Positive Grid is pretty clear that this function is designed for you to play actual music into in order to generate the tone. We don’t expect that they ever expected Amp Intelligence to have to make a tone present based on someone theatrically reciting an early-Romantic verse on the duality of beauty and ferocity in their spare bedroom.

So despite not missing a beat in terms of actually crafting the sounds, the created presets don’t exactly feel hugely grounded in the subject matter. Perhaps the amp’s generation of four “sledgehammer high-output lead” tones speaks to the potent metaphor of the tyger, burning bright in the forest of the night? It’s pretty metal, you have to say. Either way, all the tones sounded good, even if they were working with some suitably unhelpful subject matter.

Real World Benefits

Over the course of our little experiment, it has become abundantly clear that not only can Amp Intelligence handle the weirdest stuff you can throw at and turn that into some surprisingly usable and logical guitar tones. If you’re really struggling to find a new sound for a song, or just feeling creatively underwhelmed, there’s an element of Brian Eno’s legendary Oblique Strategies to chucking random objects at Amp Intelligence and seeing what it spits out.

What’s more, it’s worth remembering that the REACTOR is an amp priced in the realms of beginners who are moving into playing live and taking the instrument seriously. It’s so easy to imagine Amp Intelligence helping them discover how different amps and effects work together by creating presets that they can then edit and dig into – without having to build from the ground up. It can even create wholly original amps using its component-level modelling and understanding of hundreds of classic circuits. The sky’s the limit.

Maybe you’ve never thought about whether you might need an amp that you can have a conversation with before, but Amp Intelligence and the Positive Grid REACTOR makes a case that you should start asking questions…

Find out more about the REACTOR at positivegrid.com

The post I used an animal, a fruit and a poem to make guitar tones using Positive Grid’s REACTOR… but which one sounded the best? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.