General Interest

Jared James Nichols has been offering fans a peek behind the curtain on his new album, Louder Than Fate, and how a visit from Joe Bonamassa reframed both of their views on the amount of gear that should be used on a track.

Bonamassa has quite the reputation as a gear connoisseur, as his mighty Nerdville museum proves, but when he bought an entire rig over for Nichols to use on a track for his new album, the pair eventually settled on a less is more mind set, with a minimal set up.

• READ MORE: “Those amps are part of the DNA of rock music”: Jared James Nichols on becoming a Marshall endorsee

In an interview with Guitar World, Nichols says his use of gear forms not much of a long list “beyond the cable”. Though small and concise, he definitely utilised some pretty cool gems within his rig.

“I had the plexi and this special amp from Blackstar that’s a one-of-one, point-to-point handwired Series One. They’d made it for Jeff Beck but never got it to him. It’s more aggressive than the plexi, like an old JCM800. I used my Tube Screamer and for Runnin’ Hot I borrowed this [Electro-Harmonix Small Stone] big box phaser from the early ’80s,” he shares.

“The main guitars were Dorothy [his 1952 Les Paul Goldtop] and this Korina Futura for all the big-ass humbucker parts. I didn’t have to search when it came to tone. It’s funny; I remember doing this track with Joe Bonamassa, and he brought his whole rig over, saying to use whatever I needed. I brought my Marshall head, Dorothy and my Klon and started testing out tones with my stuff before asking him what I should try. His answer was, ‘I think you should stay there.’ That was it. I try not to overcomplicate things.”

Further speaking on his bond with Bonamassa and the Blues Titan’s connection to rare gear, Nichols looks back on the time he went to Bonamassa’s house to film a video on Gary Moore’s 1989 Soldano SLO-100 amp head (which you can watch below).

“Joe must have balls of steel because the amp hadn’t been serviced or even turned on. It literally just showed up in a shipping crate. It was like finding a classic muscle car, sticking some gas in and firing it up. Joe was cranking it right away with a 1959 Les Paul. In the video you can see the power sizzle down, shut off, then come back. It did that a few times. It’s like we were feeling Gary Moore’s spirit in the room,” he remembers.

Jared James Nichols’ Louder Than Fate is out now. Head over to his official website to find out where you can stream the album or buy a copy. 

The post “I think you should stay there”: The great reason why Joe Bonamassa changed his mind about Jared James Nichols borrowing his guitar gear appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$739/£549, gretschguitars.com

Gretsch guitars have always stood in a fascinating corner of the guitar world. Even music aficionados without a guitar-playing background know what a Stratocaster is, what it does, how it looks, and the fact Hendrix played one upside down. Similarly, fans with a penchant for the heavier side of the rock spectrum know the Les Paul ‘Burst in the gifted hands of Slash and Jimmy Page.

Gretsch guitars, however, have always seemed to exist in their own lane. From George Harrison’s early Merseybeat-jangle, to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ signature songcraft, and Neil Young’s raw, jagged riffs, Gretsch guitars have become the choice for players who prioritise character over familiarity.

Into this comes the new Limited Edition G2622TG Streamliner – a guitar that seemingly offers a very affordable route to that rich heritage, with visuals that lean towards the most famous Gretsch big-bodied guitars, but will the reality match up to the first impression?

Image: Adam Gasson

What is it?

The Streamliner designation of the ever-catchily named G2622TG means that it sits at the bottom of Gretsch’s three-tier production range after the Electromatic and premium Professional, but in truth you’d never notice from a distance. This is a beautiful instrument with the fancy elegance that has set the brand apart from the more utilitarian charms of its competitors.

In practice, that means a beautifully measured double-cutaway design finished in Vintage White (though the Midnight Sapphire option is also lovely), and paired with all the shiny gold hardware you could ask for. Some would say that a Gretsch is never fully dressed without a Bigsby, and here we get a lovely licensed B70 wobbler to pull the whole thing together.

The iconic “G” arrow logo on the control knobs never fails to make me smile, and the master volume knob includes a push/pull coil split option for extra Beatle-y twang when needed.

Image: Adam Gasson

Usability and build quality

When the G2622TG landed in my hands, before I even played a note, I had an immediate sense that Gretsch might have hit a home run. It looks, feels, and sounds far more premium than its asking price would suggest.

The laminated body feels solid, and is wonderfully resonant, providing that airy sound that semi-hollow body players expect. The soft ‘C’ shaped neck nests comfortably in the hand, and the 22 nicely finished medium-jumbo frets give a sense of familiarity to the fingers for long-time Gretsch-heads. Combined with a low, comfortable action out of the box, they never get in the way and are an ideal bed for a wide-style of approaches.

Then, there’s the golden elephant in the room: the Bigsby B70. Many guitar purists still shoot a side-eye towards the B70, and other die-cast, affordable Bigsby ‘licensed’ models. After all, the B70s are manufactured overseas and cost a fraction of their US-made B7 counterpart. However, as we sit here in 2026, I think the B70 and B7 are almost identical in use.

Yes, the B7 is a touch heavier, and feels a tad more solid, but I barely notice a difference when comparing the two. The fact that a vibrato of this quality is bolted on to the G2622TG at this price point is still staggering to me. That expressive wobble is synonymous with thousands of classic recordings and should not be seen as merely an afterthought. It provides exactly what you’d hope – some slight shimmer and movement, without turning tuning into your new full-time job.

The controls are laid out in the typical Gretsch fashion, which is to say slightly different to the classic Gibson four-knob method. What you get instead is a volume knob per pickup, a master tone knob, and the previously mentioned, and extremely welcome push/pull coil splitting master volume knob.

In practice this means that the two pickup volumes are only really needed for blending, or if you want to use the volume to roll some of the gain off a sound on one pickup. The master volume is likely all you’ll need for actually controlling volume.

Image: Adam Gasson

Sounds

This guitar’s tonal palette is fairly wide, whilst never sacrificing its character. That semi-hollow resonance instantly makes itself heard when plugging in – chords ring with authority, and lead lines are clear and articulate, with some satisfying snap about them in coil-split mode. To put it bluntly, this guitar sounds incredible. It just oozes Gretsch DNA and character.

The Broad’Tron BT-3S humbucking pickups are versatile, to a point, offering suitably punchy mids and predictably sparkling highs. Provided that you’re not going to push this thing into high gain territory, it can cover a lot of the rock-adjacent bases with aplomb.

The bridge pickup is clear, bright and spanky, with the sort of cutting midrange that makes it a usable clean twanger while also having plenty of ability to cut through when you start piling on the gain. Again, don’t expect to have your mind blown by the clarity and punch with excessive gain here, but everything up to this point sounds fantastic.

The neck pickup is a much thicker, more rounded affair that really shows its mettle when you add some distortion to proceedings – it’s chewy and meaty, and really suits bluesy lead lines.

The middle pickup offers a nice blend of both worlds that seems to be begging you to lean into the Hermanos Gutierrez vibes, add a bit of reverb and slapback, and start putting the Bigsby through its paces. It’s got a nice compressed quality when you add a bit of fuzz into the mix too.

Speaking of the Bigsby, provided that you don’t throw yourself too recklessly into extreme wangling, it stays in pitch nicely enough, though the nature of the beast means that its best suited to polite wobbles if you want to keep things in tune.

The coil-split does what you’d expect it to, bringing even more spank and twang on the bridge pickup, though you do lose a lot of the low-end – you have to be careful how and when you deploy it because there’s a real risk of things getting a little shrill here.

The middle and neck positions are more forgiving, and the blended sound in particular really opens up the sound, adding in some single-coil airyness to proceedings that can work really well as a contrast. Nobody is going to be mistaking this for a Strat any time soon, but it’s a nice extra option to have.

Image: Adam Gasson

Should I buy one?

The Gretsch G2622TG Streamliner won’t be for players angling for tonal neutrality, or an ultra-modern feel and aesthetic. Instead, those wanting to immerse themselves into the world of Gretsch, with an instrument that is bold in character and elegant in design, this is the guitar for you.

Above all else, this just feels like it has the raw materials to take you on a journey as a musician and a songwriter. It’s a cliche to say that this guitar feels like it has songs in it, but that was my experience every time I picked it up to play.

The quality of its tones, the playability, and the versatility here means that you can easily find yourself coming across fresh inspiration, and there’s something so refreshing about that – especially for a guitar that is so competitively priced.

The $799 outlay not only gets you a guitar that looks, sounds and feels high-quality, but also grants you a lifetime membership into the Gretsch players club. The G2622TG doesn’t just make you want to play it over and over – it reminds you exactly why you fell in love with guitar in the first place.

Image: Adam Gasson

Alternatives

The natural semi-hollow competitor for the G2622TG is, of course, the ES-335, and Epiphone’s version ($599/£599) is a very good guitar for the money. Another affordable take on the semi-hollow with bags of vintage pedigree is Guild’s Starfire I DC ($599/£659), while D’Angelico Premier DC ($799/£699) is another semi with a name from the annals of guitar history.

The post Gretsch G2622TG Streamliner Ltd Ed Center Block Double-Cut with Bigsby review: “there are a million and one songs trapped inside this guitar, impatiently waiting to be unleashed” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Classic 1970's rack unit recreated

The history of the bolt-on guitar neck joint is often told as a Leo Fender story, but it’s really about how replaceability and modularity came to the guitar sphere. Despite that, beneath every argument about sustain and resonance lies a deeper question: what kind of object is a guitar supposed to be?

For centuries, the answer seemed obvious. Long before the electric guitar existed, stringed instruments were built around the assumption that neck and body belonged together. Violins, cellos, lutes, and classical guitars employed mortise-and-tenon or dovetail joints secured with hide glue, creating an intimate union between the instrument’s major structural (and tone producing) components. Early steel-string acoustics and carved archtops inherited this tradition without question. The glued neck was not merely a construction method; it was part of an entire philosophy of instrument making. A guitar was conceived as a singular object, born whole and expected to age as such. Even the cast aluminum Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” from 1932 was a single piece, taking the concept to the max.

In that world, repair itself reinforced the idea. Neck resets and delicate joint work were accepted rites of passage in an instrument’s life. A neck might be removed, but only through a skilled and somewhat invasive process. The relationship between neck and body resembled marriage more than assembly—with all the benefits and arguments.

Then came Leo Fender.

To be clear, guitars with screw or bolt-on necks had been marketed as early as the 1920s. The Stromberg‑Voisinet/Kay Kraft archtops from the 1930s even featured adjustable neck pitch. But when Fender introduced the Telecaster, it introduced a radically different understanding of guitar manufacturing. It was not conceived as an acoustic ideal. It emerged from the practical logic of Detroit industry. Bodies and necks could be fabricated separately, finished separately, inventoried separately, and united at the final stage of production. Repairs became simpler and cheaper. Variability became manageable. Most importantly, the neck ceased to be a permanent partner and became a module. This conceptual shift is difficult to overstate. Fender transformed one of the guitar’s defining structural elements into a replaceable component. Four screws and a neck pocket accomplished what centuries of instrument-making tradition had never contemplated.

The industry soon divided into two distinct cultural camps. Bolt-on instruments became associated with practicality, clarity, and twang. Elsewhere, companies like Gibson, Gretsch, Guild, and Rickenbacker doubled down on set-neck construction. There, the fixed neck remained a symbol of continuity with violin-making traditions, craftsmanship, and legitimacy. Over time, these manufacturing decisions hardened into mythology. But whether or not the physical reality justified such certainty is debatable, the cultural meanings endured and became codified.

As decades passed, both approaches have evolved. Early bolt-ons were bluntly functional: flat pockets, wood screws, and steel neck plates. Still, builders set about refining the concept. CNC machining produced neck pockets of remarkable precision. Sculpted heels softened the once-abrupt transition between neck and body. Machine screws threaded into metal inserts pushed mechanical consistency beyond what Leo Fender (and vintage purists) felt necessary.

Set-neck construction has evolved as well. Traditional dovetails have given way in many production environments to more standardized mortise-and-tenon joints. Technology brought unprecedented consistency to neck angles and joint geometry. As both systems matured, many of the practical differences narrowed. A well-executed bolt-on could feel seamless. A precisely fitted set-neck could be astonishingly consistent. The old assumptions survive largely because they have become part of guitar culture itself.

Repair reveals the deepest distinction. A bolt-on remains fundamentally serviceable. Neck replacements, profile changes, and even scale-length experiments can be relatively straightforward. A set-neck guitar, meanwhile, remains committed to permanence—its repairs are often more invasive, and potentially more expensive.

Existing in the background of this long-standing debate is the neck-through design, the logical endpoint of continuity. Here, the neck is no longer attached to the body in the traditional way. It becomes part of the body, extending uninterrupted beneath the bridge and pickups. Utilized by makers like Rickenbacker, and later embraced by builders in the 1970s and 1980s, neck-through construction represents maximum integration and minimum modularity. If the bolt-on celebrates replaceability, the neck-through celebrates unity. Heaven help you if you need repairs.

Seen from this perspective, neck joints might not be categories, but points along a spectrum. At one end lies serviceability, at the other lies permanence. Today, no approach occupies a higher evolutionary rung. Each method is also at the mercy of a hundred other decisions a builder must make. So, the choice is rarely about quality or sound alone. Instead, the construction choice reflects a builder’s (and therefore the player’s) assumptions about identity, maintenance, sound, and the relationship between parts and the whole. In this subjective battle, where do you stand, and why?

C. F. Martin & Co. has introduced the 00-18 Joe Bonamassa and 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa, two new signature acoustic guitars inspired by Bonamassa's treasured 1937 Martin 00-18 shade-top.

The 00-18 Joe Bonamassa and 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa recreate the look and character of his prized 1937 Martin 00-18

Marking Martin's second collaboration with the blues-rock superstar, the collection includes a handcrafted Nazareth-built model alongside a more accessible version produced at Martin's Navojoa, Mexico facility. Both feature a custom 1937-style sunburst and carefully replicated top wear based on Bonamassa's original guitar, capturing the appearance of an instrument that has spent decades making music.

"If you told me when I was a kid that I'd be sitting here in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, with not one, but two signature guitars, I'd be like, 'You're out of your mind,'" Bonamassa said.

Handcrafted in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the 00-18 Joe Bonamassa pairs a solid spruce top with genuine mahogany back and sides for a warm, clear, and responsive voice. Its compact 00 body offers balanced tone and comfortable playability equally well suited to blues, folk, fingerstyle playing, and songwriting.

Golden Era scalloped X-bracing delivers an open, dynamic response, while faux tortoise binding, the custom 1937-style sunburst, and replicated top wear faithfully reflect the appearance of Bonamassa's original pre-war instrument. A Golden Era Modified Low Oval neck profile with a standard taper provides a comfortable vintage-inspired feel.

Bonamassa brought an early prototype into the studio and compared it directly against his original 1937 Martin. "When we put the mic in front of it, my producer said, 'I like that one better,'" Bonamassa recalled of the Nazareth-built model.

Each 00-18 Joe Bonamassa includes a hardshell case and carries a $3,999.99 street price.

Crafted in Martin's Navojoa facility, the 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa brings the look, feel, and spirit of Bonamassa's pre-war 00 to a wider range of players.

It pairs a solid spruce top with solid sapele back and sides for balanced tone, warmth, and focused projection. Its custom 1937-style sunburst and visually replicated top wear mirror the distinctive character of Bonamassa's original guitar. Scalloped spruce X-bracing supports a responsive acoustic voice, while a Performing Artist neck with a high-performance taper offers smooth, approachable playability.

The model also features Martin E1 electronics with volume, tone, and phase controls, along with a built-in chromatic tuner, making it equally at home onstage, in the studio, or around the house. Bonamassa personally tested the onboard electronics in live performance before approving the final production model.

Each 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa includes a softshell case and carries a street price of $1,299.99.

Widely regarded as one of the world's foremost vintage guitar collectors and historians, Bonamassa has built a reputation that extends well beyond the concert stage. His extraordinary collection of historically significant instruments has made him a trusted authority among players and collectors alike, while each of his signature collaborations has become an opportunity to faithfully recreate some of the rarest and most coveted guitars ever built. With these new models, Bonamassa and Martin turn their attention to one of the most personal instruments in his collection, giving players two ways to experience the sound, feel, and visual character of his beloved pre-war 00-18.

The 00-18 Joe Bonamassa and 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa are available through authorized Martin dealers and at martinguitar.com.

Johnny Marr has opened up about life after The Smiths, including the years he spent treating the band’s songs as too “precious” to revisit onstage.

Following the band’s acrimonious split in 1987, Marr says the idea of performing The Smiths’ material felt “wrong and raw” – until one very casual suggestion from a fellow musician changed his mind.

• READ MORE: “We lost your guitar… deal with it”: Johnny Marr blasts FedEx for losing Ella Feingold’s guitar

Speaking to MOJO, Marr recalls the moment during a 2001 soundcheck for Crowded House frontman Neil Finn’s charity project 7 Worlds Collide, when Finn suggested that Marr play The Smiths’ There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

“[For years], the idea of performing Smiths songs felt wrong and raw and just very, very precious. Too precious,” he says. “He just assumed that it would be absolutely fine me doing a Smiths song that day. He went, ‘Hey, Johnny, how about doing There Is A Light?’”

Finn’s matter-of-fact attitude made Marr realise just how much he had been overthinking it.

“And in that moment I saw how ridiculous it was to be so precious,” the guitarist explains. “He didn’t say it, but it was like I was just up my own arse.”

The realisation came after Marr had already spent years carving out a career beyond The Smiths. After the breakup, he worked with artists including The The and Electronic before joining Modest Mouse in 2006, an experience that reignited his enthusiasm for live shows.

“My role was to be the guitarist in Modest Mouse. It really got me back into playing live,” says Marr. “And it showed me a new way of writing as a lyricist. Modest Mouse and The The were very alike. A lot of testosterone.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Marr also reveals a particularly memorable conversation with former Beatle Paul McCartney after The Smiths’ breakup.

“[McCartney’s wife] Linda was so generous as a person, she was asking me all about my life. And he was sat there so I just told him about the break-up of the band. I looked to him and waited and he just said, ‘That’s bands for you.’”

“It’s such a brilliant answer coming from him,” says Marr. “Over the years, I’ve been asked to give advice. There is just a time to say, ‘That’s bands for you.’”

The post “I was just up my own arse” Johnny Marr recalls the moment he realised he was being “ridiculous” not playing The Smiths songs live appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Joe Bonamassa’s got one of the most impressive vintage guitar collections in the biz, so big that it has to be housed at two museum-style locations in Nashville and Los Angeles. And among his collection sits a 1937 Martin 00-18 shade-top…

Now, an instrument of this calibre tends to be out of reach for most guitarists, but thanks to two new Martin Joe Bonamassa signature models directly inspired by that guitar, the idea is a little more in reach than before.

Meet the 00-18 Joe Bonamassa and 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa, two new acoustic guitars that aim to give players the look and feel of the blues maestro’s treasured pre-war 00-18.

• READ MORE: Joe Bonamassa calls out the guitar community’s “armchair quarterbacks”

Martin’s second collaboration with Joe Bonamassa – the first being an epic $20k recreation of the guitarist’s 1941 000-45 – the two guitars include a handcrafted model built at Martin’s headquarters in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and a more accessible version made at Martin’s Navojoa, Mexico factory.

Both guitars sport a custom 1937-style sunburst and carefully recreated top wear to give it the feel of an instrument that’s seen decades of use.

In terms of build, the pricier 00-18 Joe Bonamassa pairs a solid spruce top with mahogany back and sides for a “warm, clear and responsive voice”, with a compact 00 body suited to blues, folk and fingerstyle playing. The guitar also features Martin’s Golden Era scalloped X-bracing, a faux tortoise binding, and a Golden Era modified Low Oval neck profile with a standard taper for a vintage feel.

Meanwhile, the more affordable 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa features a solid spruce top, sapele back and sides, scalloped spruce X-bracing, Performing Artist neck and a high-performance taper and Martin E1 electronics with volume, tone and phase controls and a built-in tuner. Martin says Joe Bonamassa road-tested the E1 electronics onstage before approving the final production model.

Both guitars come with a case, the 00-18 Joe Bonamassa a hardshell case and the 00-10E Retro Joe Bonamassa a softshell.

Credit: Martin

“If you told me when I was a kid that I’d be sitting here in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, with not one, but two signature guitars, I’d be like, ‘You’re out of your mind,’” says Bonamassa.

He also says the sound of the Nazareth-built model stands up to that of his 1937 pre-war original. “When we put the mic in front of it, my producer said, ‘I like that one better,’” he recalls.

Both guitars are available now from Martin.

The post Joe Bonamassa’s second collaboration with Martin is a stunningly accurate recreation of his prized pre-war 1937 00-18 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

We talk a lot about guitar construction and the components that can have an impact on your tone, but one item is far too often left out of the equation, and they appear on nearly every electric guitar model made today. The pots – these are the things underneath your guitar’s control knobs that control what happens when you turn said knob.

• READ MORE: This is why your guitar’s scale length actually matters

A guitar pot (short for potentiometer) is a variable resistor with three lugs. Inside the case sits a horseshoe of carbon-resistive material and a wiper that sweeps across it when you turn the shaft. It’s really quite simple. The full resistance of the track lives between the two outer lugs, and the wiper picks off a point somewhere along it. The design has barely changed since the 1930s, and the part still costs a few dollars. It also has more say over how your guitar sounds than most of the hardware players actually obsess over.

The Value

Let’s start with the number stamped on the case, usually 250k or 500k. That figure is the pot’s total resistance. Higher numbers mean a brighter guitar, which is backwards from how most people guess. In electronics terms, a volume pot sits across the pickup as a load to ground, and that load bleeds off a little high end constantly, even with the knob wide open. A 500k pot bleeds less than a 250k, so more treble survives the trip to the amp. The load also flattens the pickup’s resonant peak, which is the bump in the frequency response that gives a pickup its character. Lower values flatten it harder.

That relationship explains the standard pairings. Humbuckers run slightly dark on their own, so they get 500k pots to hold onto their highs. Single coils are already bright, sometimes harsh, so 250k takes the edge off. Drop 250k pots into a Les Paul and it plays like there’s a blanket over the cab. Put 500k pots in a Strat and the top end gets glassy, sometimes brittle.

These pairings are just conventions. Gibson has shipped plenty of guitars with 300k volume pots, which splits the difference and shaves a little sparkle off a humbucker. Fender put 1 Meg pots in the Jazzmaster and Jaguar, and that enormous value is a big part of why the offsets sound so open and spiky on top. If your humbucker guitar sounds dull, checking the pot values and replacing them with something brighter is a lot cheaper than shopping for new pickups.

The Taper

Taper is a separate spec, and it governs the shape of the sweep. A linear pot changes evenly, so at halfway around the shaft you’re at roughly half the resistance. An audio pot, also called log, saves most of its change for the last part of the rotation. The curve exists because human hearing is logarithmic. An audio taper feels even to your ear on a volume control even though the resistance underneath isn’t. Wire a linear pot into the volume position instead and the sweep feels bunched, with nearly all the audible change crammed into a narrow slice of the travel. Tone is less settled, and plenty of players run linear there on purpose because they want a slower roll-off.

Get ready for some unavoidable electronics jargon. On modern CTS pots, current Alpha imports, and current Japanese pots, A means audio and B means linear. However, the old European DIN convention ran the opposite way and used A for linear, and the vintage Japanese JIS scheme did the same, so an old European pot, a vintage ALPS or Panasonic, or an unmarked one from a parts drawer can be exactly reversed from what you assume. When you can’t trust the stamp, measure it with a multimeter. Set the shaft dead center and read resistance from the wiper to each outer lug in turn. Roughly equal readings mean linear. A lopsided split, something like 10 to 20 percent of the total on one side, means audio.

Every pot carries a manufacturing tolerance, and even good ones drift off their rating. CTS’s factory standard is plus or minus twenty percent, so a stock “500k” can legitimately measure anywhere from 400k to 600k. The tighter ten percent pots sold by suppliers like StewMac are special-order runs, and some boutique parts houses go further, speccing nine percent tolerance with the nominal value bumped upward so the pot never lands under its rating. This is part of why two guitars off the same rack can sound slightly different. Builders chasing a specific voice will sit with a multimeter and hand-pick pots to hit a target number.

What The Tone Pot Is Actually Doing

A tone control uses the same kind of potentiometer as the volume knob, but wired with a capacitor to ground to create a variable low-pass filter. Turn it down and the pot lets more signal drain through the cap, which only passes high frequencies. The cap value sets how dark the fully rolled-off sound gets. Modern convention puts .022 microfarad caps with humbuckers and .047 with single coils, though vintage Fenders used values as big as .1, which is why an old Strat’s tone knob goes so muddy so fast. With the knob on ten, the cap barely matters.

Fender’s no-load tone pots go a step further. They have a detent at ten where the resistive track is physically broken, lifting the entire tone circuit out of the signal path. The guitar gets a touch brighter and more open at full, and behaves like a normal tone control everywhere else.

Shaft Size Does Matter…

US-made CTS pots use a 3/8 inch bushing. Metric pots use 8mm, so a metric replacement drops loose into a CTS-sized hole and a CTS pot won’t fit a metric hole without reaming. Split knurled shafts differ too: US pots carry 24 splines, metric pots carry 18, and push-on knobs made for one won’t seat on the other. Carved tops like a Les Paul need long-shaft pots to clear the carved maple top. Check all of this before ordering. The right electrical spec is useless if the part won’t mount. So shaft size does matter, no matter what anyone says!

The post What are pots anyway? A working guide to the knobs on your guitar, and what they actually do appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Eddie Van Halen could tap, shred and generally make a guitar do things that seemed physically impossible. But according to country guitar legend Albert Lee, there was one style that had the rock virtuoso briefly questioning whether he could pull it off.

That moment came when Van Halen joined Lee’s Biff Baby’s All-Stars for a handful of gigs. The unlikely supergroup brought together some serious guitar talent, and during one of their shows, Van Halen found himself tackling Lee’s country classic Country Boy – complete with its chicken-pickin’ passages.

• READ MORE: Two of Eddie Van Halen’s Kramer guitars are up for auction – accompanied by his used cigarette butts

Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Lee recalls, “On a couple of gigs, we had Eddie Van Halen playing with us. He said, ‘I can’t play on that!’ I said, ‘Yes, you can – you can do all that tapping!’ And of course he was great.”

Van Halen apparently didn’t see country picking as part of his usual vocabulary, though Lee was quick to convince him otherwise.

“He didn’t think it was his style. I said, ‘Of course it is!’”

That said, Biff Baby’s All-Stars was never really a band in the traditional sense. Put together by Ernie Ball’s son Sterling Ball, the group featured a rotating cast of the era’s top guitarists including Lee, Steve Morse, Steve Lukather and, on occasion, Van Halen for impromptu performances and the occasional “odd gig”.

That included a memorable appearance at NAMM with Van Halen and Morse, a performance Lee says fans still bring up decades later.

“We did one at the NAMM show, which people still talk about,” says the guitarist. “They used to say, ‘That show you did with Steve Morse and Eddie Van Halen was great. Any chance of any more?’ I’d say, ‘I don’t think so!’”

Watch the full interview below.

The post “Eddie said, ‘I can’t play on that!’” Albert Lee reveals the genre that Eddie Van Halen was reluctant to play appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Earlier this year, Peter Frampton released Carry The Light, his first album of all-new rock material in 16 years. Written and produced alongside his son Julian Frampton, the album features guest appearances from Sheryl Crow, Bill Evans, H.E.R., Graham Nash, and Tom Morello.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Frampton reveals how a shared manager and a mutual admiration for each other’s work led to Morello joining the record – and, as it turns out, the Rage Against The Machine guitarist didn’t need much convincing.

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

“I’ve known Tom for a while now – I keep bumping into him,” Frampton says. “We’re managed by the same person, and I’ve been a huge fan of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, and – rest in peace – Chris Cornell. I’m a big fan of his.”

That connection eventually gave Frampton the opening to ask Morello about joining him in the studio.

“So a couple of years ago, I said to Tom, ‘If I’d a song, would you…,’ and he said ‘Yes!’ I didn’t even get the question out! It was wonderful, and he said some lovely things about Frampton Comes Alive! and how it affected him.”

Morello’s contribution ended up on Lions At The Gate, a protest song about the concentration of wealth and power among billionaires. Frampton says the title was inspired by the huge lion statues he saw outside mansions when he first visited Beverly Hills in the late ’60s.

“To me, that always made me feel like they were showing off their power,” he explains. “Basically it’s a protest song, saying that we’ve got to stick together. There’s safety in numbers, and we’re a band of brothers, and we’ve got to fight this.”

For Frampton, Carry The Light also arrives at an important point in his relationship with the guitar. The guitarist revealed in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), a progressive neuromuscular condition that has affected his ability to play.

Rather than stepping away from the instrument, however, Frampton says he has embraced the “challenge” of continuing to perform as the condition progresses.

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

The post “I didn’t even get the question out”: How Peter Frampton convinced Tom Morello to play on his new album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Towards the end of Duane Betts’ video for “Heartache,” a melancholy song about grief written after his father died in April 2024, the 48-year-old guitarist etches the initials “FRB” in the sand. It seems like a riddle, or perhaps a non sequitur, until you realize Betts’ late father, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band, was born Forrest Richard Betts. “It was something that was kind of thought about and plotted out as an easter egg—something very meaningful, but not obvious. We didn’t want to be too on the nose about any of the references,” the singer and guitarist says, speaking to Premier Guitar by phone from a summer home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the night before he’s scheduled to perform with the Allman Betts Family Revival in Vail, Colorado. “Some people don’t know that my dad’s first name is Forrest. They might not catch the initials.”

While inspired by the senior Betts’ death at age 80, “Heartache” is a universal ballad, on the edge of Neil Young-style folk-country and, yes, the Allman Brothers’ soulful southern rock. “I’ll wait, watch over you / Nothing I can do,” Betts sings, then repeats the phrase “there’s nothing you can do” multiple times before playing a solo that is both mournful and hopeful on his cherry-red 1961 Gibson ES-335, a guitar he inherited from his father. “I wrote that song down in Florida, shortly after my dad passed away, with my friend [singer-songwriter] Stoll Vaughan,” Betts says. “I had this haunting chorus melody, and I was mumbling ‘heartache,’ and it just went from there. It’s a universal feeling that everybody can relate to. It’s about loss and acceptance and getting through that process.

“It’s about everything and everyone that you’ve lost, you know?” he adds. “The lyric is simple, but it’s vulnerable and personal to me and I’m very proud of it.”

In the video, filmed in Malibu, California, last March, Betts, slender with long hair and a thin mustache, wears open-collar, earth-toned suits that can only be described as “Allman Brothers chic.” In one of these outfits, he wanders into the ocean; in another, he plunges into a pool. “Actually, I don’t think we wrecked any of them,” he says of the clothes. “The first one turned out okay. We just air-dryed it. It was a lot of fun. The pool was about 10 degrees colder than the ocean, and the ocean wasn’t warm.”

Betts made “Heartache” and the rest of his new album, Isle of Hope, with Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer who has worked with just about everybody, from the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb to pop star Teddy Swims, and has a knack for drawing out the country soul from raggedy-voiced singer-songwriters like Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and Jason Isbell. Betts came across Cobb’s work while recording a session with guitarist J.D. Simo; while Betts was waiting for an Uber, “me and J.D. were getting some quality time,” and Betts played him a new tune called “Reckless.” “You know who would love to do this? Dave,” Simo told him.

​Duane Betts’ Gear

Guitars

• 1961 Gibson ES-335
• Gibson Dickey Betts Les Paul Gold Top prototype #1
• Pre-war Martin acoustic
• Fender Telecaster (courtesy of Dave Cobb)

Amp

• 1961 Magnatone Troubadour

Pedal

• Union Tube & Transistor NeverMORE

Cobb proved to be exactly as advertised while producing Isle of Hope, an album that balances laid-back, hymnlike tracks such as “Silver Afternoon,” “Best Wishes,” and the lead single “Heartache” with more hard-driving numbers like “Pills and Liquor,” “Down to Houston,” and the closing track “Keep My Hands Clean.” The latter songs capture the tight, barrelhouse swagger of early-1970s Rolling Stones, though they are surprisingly concise by the standards of the Allman Brothers diaspora. Throughout the album, potent slide-guitar solos—performed primarily by Betts and Johnny Stachela—add both fire and texture. Their guitar work often recalls Duane Allman’s playing alongside Eric Clapton on Derek & the Dominos’ “Layla.”

“Dave is a genius in the studio. He can frame things in his head while he’s playing in the band and map everything out perfectly and know where everything fits at all times. It’s what a producer is supposed to do—times 100,” Betts says, launching into a technical explanation of which portions of which studio takes wound up in the final track. “I wanted to have a vehicle like ‘Heartache’ to play a little differently. Dave set me up. I had the solo mapped out over different chords, over a different point in the song, and he changed it and gave me a nice path to just go at the end of the song, over those other chords. It turned out to be a great idea.”

Reproducing the album live has proved to be a challenge as the band rehearses for dates through the end of 2026 and early 2027—mostly because Betts’ road band has only two guitarists, which pushes him to play an acoustic or “an electric like an acoustic.” He adds: “You can’t play all the parts on the record. You have to be thoughtful. ‘Maybe the keyboard player can do something.’”

“We didn’t make a ‘guitar record,’ but there’s plenty of guitar playing on the record.”

Discussing the album, Betts has a habit of changing the subject to move the attention off of himself—his own songwriting, his own vision—and onto the other musicians who worked on the album, particularly his friend Simo on rhythm guitar. “I really wanted everybody to have their moments. J.D. doesn’t play any solos per se, but his guitar work on this record is just excellent,” Betts says. “We didn’t make a ‘guitar record,’ but there’s plenty of guitar playing on the record.”

The new album has a rawer, more spontaneous and live-in-the-studio feel than Betts’ solo debut, 2023’s Wild & Precious Life, a more star-studded affair that featured guests like Derek Trucks—himself the nephew of a late Allman Brothers Band member, founding drummer Butch Trucks—plus Marcus King and Nicki Bluhm. On Isle of Hope, Betts mostly plays an acoustic guitar, a pre-war Martin, although he uncorked the 335 in key moments, like the electric solo in “Heartache.” “I cut the solo after the band went home and got it,” he says.

Has Betts’ playing evolved since Wild & Precious Life? Not in his own estimation. “I don’t know if my playing has changed that much—I kind of play the way I play,” he says. “When given the opportunity to play over different chords, or a different style, you might play differently.”

Because Isle of Hope is so clearly—and lovingly—dedicated to his late father, Duane has had even more opportunities than usual to reflect publicly on Dickey Betts’ legacy and influence. Betts was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band in 1969, after he and former bandmate Berry Oakley accepted an invitation from guitarist Duane Allman to join an informal jam session at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That gathering ultimately led to the formation of one of Southern rock’s most influential bands.

Duane was born to Dickey Betts and his then-wife, Paulette, in 1978, seven years after his namesake, Duane Allman, was killed in a motorcycle accident. By that time, the Allman Brothers had broken up, then reformed, and were putting out rock albums like Enlightened Rogue during an era of punk and disco. They were touring regularly, and Dickey brought his son on the road. Duane was home-schooled and had a tutor, as he once told the Marin Independent Journal: “It was great. I loved it. ... It was mainly me and the adults. I didn’t get to socialize with kids my own age. I had to make up for that later.” Eventually, he left his father’s hometown of Sarasota, Florida, for his mother’s home base in Malibu. There, he earned his GED and began playing in bands, including Backbone69, whose lineup featured the sons of Roy Orbison, producer Lou Adler, and Berry Oakley.

Around age six or seven, Betts took up drums before switching to guitar. His first electric was a tiger-striped sunburst PRS prototype with a 5-way switch—a model that Paul Reed Smith had personally given to Dickey Betts and Warren Haynes.

“Most of the guitars I own are my dad’s, and it’s really a beautiful thing.”

“I really haven’t played it much,” Betts says. “Believe it or not, I sold it to a good friend because I just wasn’t using it. Then I bought it back. About 15 years later, I thought, ‘Man, it’d be cool to own my first guitar.’” He approached his friend and asked, “You’re not playing as much anymore—can I buy my guitar back?”

“That’s what friends are for,” Betts adds with a laugh.

“Most of the guitars I own are my dad’s, and it’s really a beautiful thing,” he continues. “He was so good at playing that Delta stuff on the National steel. He was such a master, and a student of those guys, and it was always so thrilling to hear him play that style.”

Children of famous musicians sometimes spend their careers trying to distance themselves from their parents’ work. But Betts is happy to talk about his father, who was his primary guitar inspiration and frequent teacher. Although, he says, “It’s not like we spent an hour a day talking about guitar—or an hour every other day, even. I kind of wanted to learn on my own. I liked the challenge.”

Dickey, he says, “taught me about fundamentals. Like a Chuck Berry rhythm. Like a 12-bar blues. ‘Go listen to Freddie King, “Hideaway.”’ He was turning me on to stuff like that.”

Befitting his own generation, Betts also picked up on the guitar sounds of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, and combined their ideas with the John Coltrane records he was absorbing in his teens. “I forgot who said it: ‘Every rock ’n’ roll guitar player’—whether they’re punk rock, Steve Jones or whoever— ‘should have a little bit of Chuck Berry influence in them,’” Betts says. “That’s how my dad felt. I’m sure Keith Richards feels that way.”

“If you’re being truthful, it can’t be wrong.”

Betts has also forged a creative partnership with fellow Allman Brothers heir Devon Allman, the son of Gregg Allman, who died in 2017 at age 69. The two longtime friends formed the Allman Betts Band in 2018, embracing their shared musical heritage while occasionally inviting other second-generation musicians—among them Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank Zappa, and Tommy Prine, son of John Prine—to join them onstage.

After Dickey Betts’ death, Duane and Devon found common ground in a loss they both understood. “A lot of that goes without saying. We don’t sit and talk about it at length,” Betts says. “He knows. You just look at somebody, and you’re there for them—it’s an unspoken thing. He knows what it’s like.”

Betts says he has found similar understanding among other friends who have experienced the loss of a famous parent. “Alex Orbison lost his father at a young age,” he says. “They’re here in spirit. We’re in the same boat a little more.”

For all the practical lessons Dickey Betts taught his son about guitar—rooted in Chuck Berry riffs and blues fundamentals—it was a more philosophical piece of advice that left the deepest impression. As Duane has told interviewers, his father’s guiding principle was simple: “Go play to nature, and it can never be wrong.”

“He had an abstract way of thinking about art and music and life—the way he wrote some of his songs, like ‘Seven Turns,’” Betts says, referring to the Allman Brothers Band’s 1990 track. “I think what he meant was that god, nature, the universe—whatever higher power you believe in—can’t be wrong.”

“So if you’re being truthful, it can’t be wrong,” he continues. “If you can accurately emulate the movement of water, how could that ever be wrong? That’s god moving right in front of your eyes. He meant that you should try to reflect things that are beautiful and natural. Basically, try to have good taste.”

Nashville studio veteran Kris Donegan was at Nashville’s East Iris Studios earlier this summer when PG’s John Bohlinger stopped in to check out all the gorgeous vintage gear that Donegan uses to make the magic happen. Have a look at some quick highlights below, and tune into the new Rig Rundown for all the details. Brought to you by D’Addario.

Slip Sliding Away

Donegan built this chopped-up, DIY slide guitar himself, using a Strat as a host instrument. The Duesenberg MultiBender gives a very convincing impression of a proper slide guitar. This, and all of Donegan’s guitars, take D’Addario strings.

Bukovac’s Beauty

This 1958 Gibson ES-335, an early model with an unbound neck, 3-ply thin top, and a super-low neck angle, was previously owned by Tom Bukovac.

Four-Headed Beast

Among his studio tools is this quartet of amp heads: a Fender Bassman, Silvertone Model 1484 Twin Twelve, Mesa/Boogie Dual Caliber DC-5, and a late-’60s, 50-watt Marshall head from a transitional period.

Kris Donegan’s Pedalboard

Donegan’s sprawling studio board includes an Ernie Ball VP JR, Peterson StroboStomp HD, Xotic Effects RC Booster, Greer Amps Lightspeed, Ibanez Mostortion, Analog Man King of Tone, Pro Co RAT, Boss GE-7, Boss VB-2w, Boss TR-2, Basic Audio Scarab, Strymon Mobius, Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler, Strymon Brigadier, Mr. Black SuperMoon, JHS NOTAKLÖN, and FX Engineering Mirage Compressor. A Strymon Zuma and a pair of Strymon Ojais handle power needs.

John Page Guitars has introduced the Noah Levine Signature DL Baritone, a new signature model developed in close collaboration with guitarist Noah Levine, lead guitarist for Noah Kahan and a multi-platinum songwriter. The release marks the latest expansion of John Page Guitars' baritone platform, continuing the company's focus on hand-built American instruments designed around the way real players actually use them.

Designed by legendary guitar builder John Page, who co-founded the Fender Custom Shop, and hand-built in Delaware, Ohio by John Page Guitars Master Builder Chase Gullett, the Noah Levine Signature DL Baritone launches in an initial “Batch 01” release of four artist-selected finishes: green, blue, black, and yellow, each finished as a heavy relic and personally chosen by Levine.

Highlights include:

• Heavy relic-finished body in green, blue, black, or yellow: an authentic, road-ready look and feel from day one
• Choice of rosewood or maple neck and fretboard: dial in the exact feel and tone that fits your playing style
• Fishman Fluence P90 or Lollar P90 pickup options: Fluence P90s deliver quiet, versatile tone built for the stage, while Lollar P90s bring classic vintage warmth
• “Noah’s Spec” rosewood neck and fretboard paired with Fishman Fluence P90 pickups: matches Levine’s own touring instrument exactly
• Premium hardware and electronics selected by John Page: reliable performance night after night
• Unique Batch 01 serial designation: marks your guitar as part of its debut run

The Noah Levine Signature DL Baritone carries a retail street price of $5,995 USD (Street Price: n/a). For more information visit johnpageguitars.com/noah.

The breakup of The Smiths at the height of their fame is the stuff of music legend. Famously, Johnny Marr was only 24 when band split, but over three decades later, he still remembers the simple nugget of wisdom Paul McCartney shared with him in the aftermath.

In the wake of the acrimonious dissolution of the band in 1987, Marr recalls meeting with McCartney, and spending “one long, incredible day” with him and his wife Linda. Of course, there could be no better person to go to for wisdom on all the complexities of being in a band – and navigating what happens when they split up – than a Beatle.

• READ MORE: Paul McCartney’s advice to young bands: “Don’t rely too much on gadgetry. Just play it all, learn it all, write it all”

Speaking to MOJO, Marr recalls, “Linda was so generous as a person, she was asking me all about my life. And he was sat there so I just told him about the break-up of the band. I looked to him and waited and he just said, ‘That’s bands for you.’ It’s such a brilliant answer coming from him. Over the years, I’ve been asked to give advice. There is just a time to say, ‘That’s bands for you.’”

Marr also goes on to share how post-Smiths, he found purpose in being a “ringer”, as he didn’t feel ready to form another band right away. In fact, he says it gave him a sense of “sanctuary”.

“I just have to give credit to the people I was working with – [The The’s] Matt Johnson is one of my closest friends to this day. Bernard Sumner and Chrissie Hynde – that collection of people. Because I get very tight with people, you know.

“If you’re looking at it like a CV it seems to be flitting around a lot, but I know when I’ve got a good job – playing with Bryan Ferry and turning up on his records. There’s a time to not look too deeply at stuff,” he says.

Earlier this year, Marr also spoke of what it was like to play alongside McCartney. He told The Overlap podcast, “Paul McCartney on the other hand – and speaking as a musician – I had a mind-blowing experience playing with Paul McCartney when I was younger. He’s like having your 12th man. In a band he really is like having two guys. Because he’s so melodic, he’s so attitude-y, and just [has] amazing musicality.”

Johnny Marr’s new album, The Age of Everything, lands on 2 October. You can pre-order it now.

The post Johnny Marr reveals what Paul McCartney said when he told him about The Smiths’ ugly breakup: “It’s such a brilliant answer coming from him” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

“Waiting has been a theme in my life. This version of ‘Hesitation Blues’ is my way of making that space feel flirtatious, playful, and full of possibilities.”

Everything about Angine de Poitrine seems to flip the script on what a band ‘should’ look or sound like, but it turns out guitarist Khn de Poitrine thinks that you need to have a bedrock of knowledge of the rules of music before you can really get weird.

Known for his microtonal magic on guitar, Khn feels that some musicians have the wrong idea about implementing scales and theoretical knowledge into their playing. While some may argue it stifles your creativity, he likens such technicality to using a map and a compass, while still having a wandering spirit.

• READ MORE: “Would they have that same attention if they weren’t wearing big clown noses?”: Why Devin Townsend isn’t sold on viral guitar duo Angine de Poitrine

Speaking to Guitar World he says, “I think in terms of scales all the time. Or rather, intervals in a context. But it’s just a harmless piece of information that sits there in the consciousness. A lot of people get this idea of someone playing robotically with a straight face, thinking, ‘Now I should play this note, for this reason.’

“Even among musicians, there is this myth of how knowledge might somehow end up hurting your creativity. If I say, ‘I think in terms of scales all the time,’ it does not mean, ‘the things that should be done according to a given set of rules will dictate all of my choices.’ It’s not like I will only act creatively in a sterile and conscious effort to create only using these tools.”

He goes on to add, “When I wander in that space, I have a compass and a map in my pocket. Some areas remain blurry to me since my knowledge is limited, but I can recognise and name some of the sounds and phenomenons that I love. I can use them by choice if I’m looking for a specific taste, but I can also let things happen and analyse as I go or even after.

“Terminology matters to me,” he states. “When someone uses the inappropriate term in a conversation, I become insanely irritated. I make a conscious effort not to bother people too much with that stuff, though. But when you play chords, intervals, melodies in a harmonic and rhythmic context, every aspect of what is happening has a name.

“Why on earth would someone make a point out of not knowing the names of things? Terminology is our only hope at humanity. Without it, chaos awaits. Value terminology. Worship terminology. Or be a monkey.”

Want to catch Angine de Poitrine live? Head over to the band’s official website to view their full list of scheduled tour dates. 

The post Angine de Poitrine’s Khn on why guitarists shouldn’t be afraid of music theory: “Value terminology. Worship terminology. Or be a monkey” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$199/£169, roland.com

It’s no exaggeration to say without the Roland Micro CUBE I wouldn’t be the guitarist I am today. My teenage years were defined by coming home from school, plugging in my Ibanez SA Series, and cranking that 2-watt beauty until it was time to go to bed.

All over the world there are countless guitarists with a similar story about the CUBE series, which has been a staple of the Roland product lineup for decades. According to Roland, over three million of these combo amps have been sold worldwide since the first CUBE’s launch in 1978.

• READ MORE: Orange Outlowd ES3 review: is Ed Sheeran’s signature amp the best compact acoustic combo out there?

And there’s a good reason for this – they might never be the coolest amps on the market, but as a young Sam found out, they do what they do very well indeed, and their ease of use and reliability means that they remain the default choice for many buskers and solo players.

The CUBE has enjoyed various major and not-so-major updates over its long life, with a variety of variants now in the line, but this latest one is tiny, mighty and a little bit different. Let’s get up close with the confusingly capitalised CUBE Street MINI.

Image: Press

Roland CUBE Street MINI – what is it?

The CUBE Street MINI is designed, says Roland, to be the most sophisticated busker-friendly CUBE amp yet, and it does that by packing in such mod cons as a USB-C-rechargeable battery offering up to seven hours of continuous unplugged use, Bluetooth connectivity for backing track playback, a suite of onboard effects and more, all wrapped up in a package weighing no more than 2.2kg and being small enough to fit in a backpack.

The CUBE Street MINI boasts a dual-channel design, with the first channel supporting guitar, microphone or a stereo instrument, and the second – the mic channel – featuring an XLR/TRS combo input for a dynamic microphone. As such, it’s aimed squarely at solo buskers and content creators looking to talk or sing while playing guitar or another solo instrument.

An all-in-one PA solution for buskers and guitarists on the move, the CUBE Street MINI is designed to keep things as streamlined as possible, with a suite of onboard effects – including reverb, delay, chorus and echo – as well as an onboard tuner with panel indicators, and Bluetooth audio for streaming songs or backing tracks from a smartphone.

Of course, if you’re busking there’s a good chance you’ll be placing the CUBE Street MINI right on the floor, so it’s handy that there’s an integrated tilt stand for increased projection – and even an integrated mic stand mount. If you don’t want to shove it in a rucksack, it also has an optional soft case that will keep it scratch-free on public transport or in the back of your car.

Image: Press

Roland CUBE Street MINI – build quality and usability

Like all Roland Cube amplifiers I’ve tried over the years, the CUBE Street MINI feels rock-solid, despite its uber-light weight. With any amp or pedal, or any other music gear, for that matter – there’s a certain resistance to the travel that you’re looking for in the knobs that reassures you about the quality; too loose and the device feels a little cheap, too stiff, likewise. Roland seems to get this right every time, and it’s no exception with the CUBE Street MINI. In fact, the robustness of the design in general makes you confident it could withstand the elements – perfect for a high street performance on a rainy autumn day..

The control panel is beautifully intuitive. After all, this is an amp aimed at buskers looking to plug and play, so there’s no need for it to be endlessly complex. Per-channel volume and tone controls, plus easy-to-understand effects knobs: everything you need and nothing you don’t.

With the exception of the charging port and headphone in, all the inputs are located on the side of the unit – a convenient design choice to get cables out of the way of the top control panel, and perfect for on-the-fly tone adjustments while performing. You get a single combi jack for vocal mics, and a pair of stereo line-level inputs for guitar and keys.

Where the CUBE Street MINI really sets itself apart as a busker’s amp, though, is the addition of a tilt-back stand. With an amp of this size, it’s crucial for the sweet spot of the amplified sound to hit the ears of passers-by rather than their feet, and the tilt-back stand makes this possible while keeping the profile small.

It’s a reassuringly sturdy little stand, too – though not one that is immune from being knocked over, at least compared to the angled bomb-proof stability of the regular CUBE Street. If you want to keep it out of harm’s way, it also has a socket on the bottom for mounting on a mic stand.

Image: Press

Roland CUBE Street MINI – sounds

Part of the reason why the CUBE series has remained so popular is its unflappable ability to deliver rock-solid digital tones at an affordable price point, and the CUBE Street Mini is no different. Projection is brilliant thanks to 10W of power and a 2.1 speaker system (one 5” woofer and two tweeters), so it makes enough noise to have a chance to be heard in busy environments like town centres, for example.

The first channel allows you to select between clean and overdriven lead guitar, Flat and Bright options for acoustic guitar, a flat, full-range instrument setting for keyboards and other instruments, and a mic channel optimised for vocal clarity.

The lead guitar setting feels pretty powerful, but while you can crank up the overdrive via the tone knob, I can’t help feeling that it doesn’t have quite the same oomph as some of Roland’s previous CUBE models. Of course, you could run an external overdrive pedal, but as an amp marketed as something of an all-in-one performing solution, it feels like a little bit is missing here. Meanwhile, the clean channel sounds beautiful – particularly when paired with the onboard effects like chorus, reverb and delay.

On the acoustic front, it’s nice to have two unique settings to play with. I find myself going back time and again to the Bright setting, as it offers superb clarity while maintaining the sonic character of my acoustic guitar.

Image: Press

Roland CUBE Street MINI – should I buy one?

If the regular CUBE Street is a reliable if somewhat unspectacular van, the MINI is effectively its sleek, EV equivalent. It might not be quite as outwardly robust as its sibling, but it packs in enough useful technology to make it a valid option.

With up to seven hours of battery life, Bluetooth backing track playback, a reliable onboard tuner and a healthy palette of sounds catering to electric and acoustic guitarists alike, Roland has pretty much hit on all bases a street performer would look for. My only recommendation would be to ensure you have an overdrive pedal if you’re primarily into higher-gain playing.

And at just $199/£169, you can’t really go wrong with the CUBE Street MINI if you’re in the market for a portable performance amp that can handle both vocals and guitar on a budget.

Image: Press

Roland CUBE Street MINI – alternatives

At $199/£149, the new 3W Orange Outlowd ES3 – developed with busking veteran-turned-worldwide superstar Ed Sheeran – is an obvious alternative here. However, it’s geared squarely towards acoustic guitarists with the absence of a high-gain channel and simple volume, tone and spring reverb controls, so if electric guitar is your weapon of choice, you’ll be better off sticking with the CUBE Street Mini. Either that or go for the Positive Grid Spark Mini ($199/£171), a solid all-rounder offering both electric and acoustic sounds.

If you’ve got more budget to play with, the Katana Air ($499/£329) – from Roland’s subsidiary BOSS – could be a contender. It might be a bit overkill for street performance, but it’s completely wireless with a transmitter that plugs into your guitar, so no annoying cables while performing. That, and the impressive Katana amp models it offers, makes it worthy of consideration.

The post Roland CUBE Street MINI review: a busker’s bestie at an equally friendly price point appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ready to unleash pure tone and road-tested reliability? Enter today for your chance to bring home the Hagstrom Megin!

Hagstrom Megin Giveaway

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This dapper 20-watter delivers a full-spectrum sound that starts at jangly chime before its EL84s natrually overdrive into a musical, singing saturation zinging with overtones and sustain.

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As anyone who has toiled long enough in any art form can tell you, hitting walls is inevitable, even necessary. They exist to remind us that there’s something on the other side, someplace to go that we haven’t discovered yet. We may not see the way over today, but when we start looking, that’s when new ideas reveal themselves (and not always in a way we can anticipate).

Sometime around 2002, up against such a wall, I was gifted a portal into a new way of approaching the guitar. A friend of mine brought me to see the 1993 Tony Gatliff film Latcho Drom. It follows the path of Roma music as it moves from India and Iran through eastern Europe, eventually landing in Spain, evolving and changing along the way, picking up influences yet retaining its unmistakable signifiers. No talking, no written narrative, just people and music. One scene focuses on an older man standing under a tree with a young boy watching on. The man is Nicolae Neacşu (1924-2002), the great Romanian violinist known for his work with the group Taraf de Haïdouks. As he plays and sings mournfully about the dictator Ceaușescu, he begins to tug on a small piece of string, a horsehair from his violin bow that’s tied on to one of his violin strings. The sound is haunting, complex, simple, earthy, and mystifying. I wanted to run out of the theatre right then, grab a guitar, and try it.

Without a horsehair on hand, and after several attempts with dental floss, cotton thread, and fishing line, I landed on a certain quality of polyester sewing thread that was able to produce a similar effect: cheap, thin, textured, stretchy thread. When I finally got the grip and the right tension, and the first vibrations bounced the sound through my fingers, I felt like I’d been handed a secret technique, like a Japanese hiden—a singular masterstroke.

I’ve spent the last thirty years in pursuit of these connections between the guitar and the natural world. Whether it’s through the raw physics of the instrument, drawing from the sounds of animals, looking to other cultures and their instruments, or finding ways to prepare and effect the guitar to break it open, there is no shortage of discoveries to be made. And this one technique, distilled from Roma ingenuity, has been one of the most curious and most useful. I always have a spool of polyester in my gig case. It takes about 30 seconds to tie it on before a show. I most often tie a strand onto the G string and another onto the D (double knots each), so that two arms-length threads are constantly dangling gently and unobtrusively from about an inch in front of the bridge. (You can pull two strings or more at the same time to create harmony.) I can take them up at any time. By scraping my finger nails down the textured polyester thread, the friction creates a vibration that transfers onto the guitar string. It’s similar to the physics of a cuíca, or the feeling you get when you run scissors down a ribbon to make it curl.

It’s really effective. I most often tie thread onto my 1951 Gibson J-45. There’s a clarity, response, and growl that I get from this instrument that blends well with this technique. I also use it on my ’69 Martin N-10, but because the tension is a bit lower on classical guitars, intonation is less reliable when the thread pulls outward on the nylon strings. At low volume, though, the effect can be sublime. Tied onto an electric guitar and multitracked, a lone producer can emulate an orchestra, creating a more unique sound than using VST. Hit it with distortion, delay, and reverb, and you have the four horses of the apocalypse.

Why not just use a bow? Since guitar bridges, unlike violin bridges, are flat, it’s difficult to bow single-note melodies without hitting multiple strings. This technique produces a similar (if creepier) sound as a bow, but allows the player to focus on a single string.

It’s more complicated to talk about and describe this than it is to just try it. So, give it a shot. Make sure the thread can produce a “zipping” sound when you run your nails down it. That’s the most important thing. The wound strings of the guitar work best as anchors; they lock the thread in place. And you can tie it anywhere along the string horizontally, but the closer you are to the bridge, the clearer and more fundamental tone you get (the further away from the bridge you tie it, the more strange harmonics you get). It’s been a really rewarding way for me to experience another side of the guitar. I hope you get to try it.