General Interest

A handsome 3-in-1 boost, EQ, and filtering stomp offers unique tonalities.

Mile End Pique Demo Vid

Mile End Effects’ Justin Cober, who runs the one-man operation out of his Montreal basement, advertises the Pique as a “dynamic preamplifier, buffer, and harmonic enhancer.” That’s a mouthful for what looks like a fairly simple stomp with single knob and four rocker switches, but the Pique lives up to the billing. It’s one of the more creatively stimulating and inspiring boost/EQ/buffer combos I’ve encountered.

Pique Behind the Curtain

The Pique’s design is rooted in the company’s Preamp 150, which is an homage to the preamp in the Roland RE-150 Space Echo. But the Pique has a much wider range of capabilities. Rather than just boosting one frequency or another, the Pique creates, as Cober puts it, “higher-order harmonics by implementing filtering, very slight phase shifts, and musically related harmonics to the audio signal.” Each of the three EQ-related switches functions a little differently.

The brilliance switch employs a capacitor to filter low-end frequencies and emphasize midrange. The “high freq” control runs upper frequencies through an op-amp circuit that generates distortion and extra harmonic content, while lower frequencies remain unaffected. “Low freq,” on the other hand, uses a phase-shifted low-pass filter to achieve similarly targeted saturation and compression on the opposite end of the EQ spectrum.

The boost switch activates the Preamp 150 section, and the unit’s prominent knob controls the effect’s level. This all makes the Pique a cinch and a pleasure to use: four switches, one knob, less overthinking, more playing. Keep in mind that the pedal requires 250 mA to operate—a much higher draw than most boost or EQ pedals. It’s more than the draw from most simple boost or EQ pedals.

Pique Performance

The Pique’s buffer can be activated alone by turning all the rocker switches off and turning the pedal on. It gives a just-noticeable lift to a dry signal, especially in the airy high frequencies that drip away over a lengthy signal chain. Switching on the Preamp 150 boost circuit takes that lift further, lending presence, chime, and breadth to whatever you feed it. It’s a great always-on effect, but the extra clarity and sparkly high end make it a great lead boost if you kick up the level.

The harmonic excitement aspect of the pedal, though, is where the Pique opens up new avenues. Cober’s design considerably thickens selected frequencies, which feels like the sonic equivalent of turning a fine-tip pen into a broad, inky marker. And rather than simply a surgical, colorless EQ bump, the Pique’s frequency boosts often feel like distinct, specialized effects that blend overdrive, clean boost, and EQ. They accentuate certain elements of your guitar’s signal, for sure, but they also stretch them with subtle harmonics and sometimes delicate, almost imperceptible distortion.

These functions are especially rewarding when the Pique is applied after your dirt pedals, where it excites and texturizes certain elements of other pedal tone profiles. If you’re missing bottom-end heft, flip on low freq, and instead of a blunt bass boost, you’ll perceive a more powerful and immediate low-end character. Add in brilliance and your mid frequencies will experience a similar metamorphosis, yielding much grittier prominence. High freq can yield the same pleasing effect, though some players will want to be careful about how it highlights rogue high frequencies from gain devices in front of the Pique.

The Pique isn’t your average boost or EQ pedal. It’s full of unique sounds that are clearly a product of inventive circuit-tinkering, but also hits the mark for many basic EQ, buffer, and boost functions. To top it off, Cober’s circuit design is matched by his aesthetic eye. Pique is definitely one of the best-looking stompboxes on the market.

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PRS Guitars today released the first episode of a new video series on the PRS “Rules of Tone.” The Rules of Tone is a document written by Paul Reed Smith back in 2006, in which he documented 21 “rules” that he and the guitar makers at PRS follow in order to ensure instruments of the highest quality.

“It was meant to be a guide so that I/we always build the best instruments we can possibly make. There are 21 rules – each one the culmination of decades of experience in guitar-making, design, and repair work. While no set of rules can guarantee a perfect instrument, a guitar should improve with each instance of a rule followed – in the end becoming greater than the sum of its parts,” said Paul Reed Smith.

The video series will be published as six episodes in total. Episode 1 focuses on woods and is available now at this link. Remaining topics include: necks, pickups, finish, hardware, and setup. In each video, Paul Reed Smith is joined by a member of the PRS Guitars manufacturing team to talk about how the guitar-making philosophies are applied in practice on the manufacturing floor. To see each episode as soon as it is released, subscribe to the PRS Guitars YouTube channel and click the bell for notifications.

“Since 2006, I have spent a lot of time teaching these guitar-making principles to the teams here. The teams have, in turn, become stewards of the rules to every person who makes guitars for PRS. Please enjoy these videos. It is my hope that they give you an idea of the amount of care and constant improvement we dedicate ourselves to, so that you receive our best,” said Paul Reed Smith.

PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.

Set your phone on silent, your brain on shuffle. JoBo has a blues lesson coming in hot

Glen Campbell’s sound is inspiring on many levels—in addition to his distinctive voice, his nuanced and virtuosic guitar playing allowed him to interpret some of the most iconic songs of his era. Among them, the songs of Jimmy Webb stand out immediately. Classic pieces such as “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman” are instantly recognizable for their vivid storytelling and unforgettable melodies. It’s interesting to note that Webb composed on piano, utilizing the instrument’s vast harmonic capabilities to craft structures less conventional than the typical radio single.

In the hands of Campbell, his guitar playing truly shines as much in his comping as in his famous soloing during live performances. I composed my piece, “Jed’s Theme,” based on a character in a novel written by my sister, Christina Rauh Fishburne, with Webb and Campbell’s influence very much at the center. It can be heard on my album with Cameron Mizell, Local Folklore (Destiny Records).

Note: I play this piece with hybrid picking (pick/middle/ring), but it can also be played fingerstyle if that’s more comfortable.

Ex. 1 (Measures 1–8)

The beginning of the tune establishes a simple melody line over a harmonic bed that utilizes inversions and substitutions for color. An element of Campbell’s accompaniment style that I love is his ability to sculpt emotion to support the melody. In an instrumental context like this, using a Gm as a passing thought in measure 2 is a way to emote harmonically while only briefly straying from the key of D major. The decision to use F# in the bass of the tonic D chord also provides a chromatic line as we move through D/F#, Gsus4, Gm, D/F#, and G6. These nuanced voicing movements help to create an atmosphere for the melody beyond the typical options. The rocking back and forth of the bass notes also provides a momentum to move up to the V–IIIm–IV cadence that ends with a first position line over Gmaj. Adding such lines in an instrumental tune can be a fun way to insert “guitar” back into the melody. By this I mean that until then, think of the melody as a voice. The melody sings its entrance and comes to a pause, leaving space for the guitar to respond before moving on.

Ex. 2 (Measures 9–16)

Here, we find ourselves back in the “voice” melody but now E/G# is introduced as a harmonic shift to bring light into the melodic narrative before closing out the phrase by resolving to a Dmaj walk up. At the start of the song, the melody hangs on the G6 chord before extending tension over the V and IIIm chords and settling on the IV chord before beginning its next statement. This time, we bring the melody to a secondary dominant with the V of V (E/G#) before finally resolving to the I chord. This is a mechanism often found in the Webb/Campbell songs that allows a melody to remain consistent while simultaneously offering emotional development.

Ex. 3 (Measures 17–23)

We begin here with a higher melodic line voiced over the V chord before descending out of the key briefly to Fmaj7–Fmaj9–Cadd9. Following this, another “guitar” line enters to lead us back into D major by closing out the phrase on A7, further utilizing harmonic movements under the melody to introduce new emotive colors and support the melody.

Ex. 4 (Measures 9–13, coda ending)

To bring the song to an end, we take the D.S. al Coda and introduce a final harmonic shift with the G/Ab beginning the coda and ending on the unresolved Gm. These choices are both ways in which a song can be brought to a closing that feels open-ended, which is different than incomplete. Rooted in the key of D major, the song remains mostly grounded in the tonality with various harmonic divergences to accent the melody. By ending the song on the Gm, or the IVm, we may insinuate that a story is still being told after the song is finished. This is a mechanism often used to accentuate unresolved tension in vocalized lyrics and can have the same effect with instrumental music when thoughtfully placed.

Ex. 5

For Ex. 5, we’ll play the complete piece, keeping in mind that it’s important to hear the melody lyrically, and the harmony as emotional color in support of it.

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Why Jason Newsted got the call from Ozzy – and what lay in store for Robert Trujillo, who signed with Newsted’s old band, Metallica

While fans didn’t know it at the time, Black Sabbath’s final show on 5 July would also prove to be the late Ozzy Osbourne’s final ever live performance – and Geezer Butler believes that the Prince Of Darkness knew the show was his last chance to say goodbye.

Speaking in the latest issue of Uncut, the Sabbath bassist explains that Ozzy seemed to sense his hourglass was running out. Ozzy was a notorious hellraiser throughout his life, chomping down bat heads and snorting lines of ants, but he was relatively quiet at the final show. “At the final show, he was much quieter than I’d ever known him,” he reflects. “Looking back now, I think he knew he wasn’t long for this world.”

• READ MORE: “We’ve lost our brother”: Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy would eventually pass on 22 July – just over two weeks after Back To The Beginning took place. While Butler believes that the frontman knew his clock was ticking, Ozzy apparently didn’t seem to sense that “he’d leave [this world] so soon” after the performance. The Sabbath frontman had only just moved back to the UK after years in the US, and Butler explains how “Ozzy was looking forward to spending his days back in England”.

Elsewhere in his tribute to Ozzy, Butler reflects on how thankful he is to have been able to perform with his Sabbath bandmates one final time. “I am so grateful that we were able to play one final show together, the original four of us, back in our home town,” he says. “[Ozzy] held on so he could do that gig, to say farewell to the fans.”

“He was emotional, it was so important to him to say goodbye after illness had prevented him from touring for the past six or seven years,” he continues. “He wanted to see his fans one final time, play with his own band and with Sabbath one last time.”

Butler closes off with a heartfelt farewell: “Ozzy was larger than life and his legacy will live forever… He may have been The Prince Of Darkness, but for me he was a family-loving, soft-hearted, and the best friend anyone could ever have.”

Sabbath’s Tony Iommi has also gone on record stating that he believes Ozzy knew that Back To The Beginning would be his grand send-off. “I think he really just held out to do that show,” he told ITV News last month. “Me and Geezer were talking about it last night – we think he held out to do it. Just after [the show], he’d done it and said goodbye to the fans. And that was the end of it, really.”

“He’s built up for it for a while now,” Iommi continued. “He’d been training and trying to do what he can, so he could do this gig… I think he must have had something in his head that said, ‘Well, this is gonna be it, the last thing I’m ever gonna do.’ Whether he thought he was gonna die or what, I don’t know. But he really wanted to do it and he was determined to do it.”

The post “He was much quieter than I’d ever known him”: Geezer Butler thinks Ozzy Osbourne “knew he wasn’t long for this world” at final Black Sabbath concert appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

During his time in Deep Purple, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore lived by his own rules – even if it meant denying fans an encore.

Speaking in the latest issue of Classic Rock, Glenn Hughes reflects on his experience working with Blackmore. According to the ex-vocalist and bassist, his former bandmate was sometimes a tough nut to crack. “When we were going down really well at shows, he would refuse to do an encore,” Hughes recalls. “He would have to be forced to go back on stage!”

• READ MORE: “That was my cue to do a ten-minute keyboard solo”: Deep Purple’s Don Airey recalls the time Ritchie Blackmore fell over onstage while soloing

Even if Blackmore was coerced out for an encore, he would do so rather unwillingly. “He’d play behind his equipment,” Hughes explains. “It was so ridiculous. You couldn’t make him do anything.”

This stubborn behaviour wasn’t strictly limited to encores, either. Hughes recalls the guitarist as an “isolator” and lone wolf. “He had his own dressing room, his own car,” he says. “It wasn’t a band, it was us and it was Ritchie. That’s been his thing for ever. It was uncomfortable for me. I missed the family aspect of all of us together. It was a strange situation.”

This isn’t the first time Hughes has spoken out about how “strange” it was working with Blackmore. Last June, Hughes described his relationship with Blackmore as “difficult” in an interview with Guitar Interactive Magazine.

“When I joined the band, he flew me to Hamburg for a ‘boy’s night’ weekend,” he recalled. “We didn’t sleep… drinking coffee and alcohol. We were great together. [I had a] great time with him – alone. As soon as he was around other men, he wasn’t personal. It was difficult.”

“[He was] difficult, but very intelligent,” he concluded. “Smart, but a difficult person to know and play with.”

Following the release of Nature’s Light back in 2021 under his Blackmore’s Night project, the guitarist has unfortunately been facing a number of health issues. Over the past few months, Blackmore’s wife, Candice Night, has revealed that he is suffering with a slew of problems, ranging from a heart attack to gout.

Her most recent update came last week. “There are three main issues with him that are going on,” Night tells the Iron City Rocks podcast [via Rayo]. “He has a heart issue – he had a heart attack a couple of years ago, so we stay on top of that.

“He’s got gout, so that’s difficult,” she adds. “It’s affecting his feet really badly. And it’s starting in his forefinger, so it’s hurting the mobility in that. He just had an injection for that. And his back, of course, which has always been an issue.”

Despite his health issues, Blackmore seems to be keen on performing some shows down the line. Fans will be glad to know that the classic Blackmore stubbornness persists. “With Ritchie, if you try to pressure him to do something, he instantly says no,” she says. “He’s like a teenager… So I wait for him to come to the realisation, or I drop little seeds, wait for him to be ready to talk about it. But he did just say, ‘What about doing some Blackmore’s Night dates in the fall?’”

The post “He would have to be forced to go back on stage!”: Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes reveals why Ritchie Blackmore would refuse to do encores appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

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Verso demo

Over the course of electric guitar history, there have been many experimental builds. Some have been successful and changed the path of guitar design, while others have come and gone, surfing the seas of change. The Verso Sine, though, lives in a third, less common category—an artistic realm populated by names like Wandre and Manzer, where visionary builders rule the roost.

Since launching Verso a handful of years ago, Germany-based builder Robin Stummvoll has caught the attention of intrepid design fans with his minimal, sheet-metal-bodied Cosmo guitar, Orbit baritone, and Gravis bass. His distinctive style is based on future-leaning aesthetics that also draw on the early history of electric guitar design—specifically Rickenbacker’s sheet-metal lap steels—as well as mid-century furniture and architecture.

With the Sine, Verso pushes further ahead. Aesthetically, this model would sit nicely in the design wing of a modern art museum, maybe across the hall from an Eero Saarinen exhibit. That alone is cause for excitement. But the Sine, described by Stummvoll as an “expressive guitar,” offers a playing experience unlike any other guitar I’ve laid my hands on. And that is the real experiment at the heart of this fantastic instrument.

Rethinking Guitar Design

Unlike its metallic siblings, the Sine is actually made of a solid ash body with a set neck—available as ash, maple, cherry, oak, or walnut—with the option of a 16" or compound 9 1/2"–16" radius. The Sine Pad, a 1 mm-thick piece of bent sheet metal that’s affixed to its body, serves as the guitar’s top and home to the pickups.

The Sine Pad opens up a world of possibilities that are game-changing, highly innovative, and practical. First, there’s the pickups. Since the Sine Pad is powder-coated steel, the magnetic pickups cling to the top without needing to be permanently affixed, so they can be moved in any direction. That means they can be shifted in relation to the strings to shift the tone. But thanks to stereo-output options (which are configured on the back of the guitar, where the guitar’s input jack is located, and where the pickups plug in via mini audio jacks), both of the Sine’s single-coil pickups can be moved so one pickup captures only the top strings and the other captures just the bottom. The resulting stereo imaging effects can be pretty wild.

Because the Sine Pad is a floating, spring-loaded piece of sheet metal and the brass bridge is independently situated on the body, you can also create volume-swell effects by pressing on the top without changing pitch. I found that a different kind of musical intuition comes into play when working with the Sine Pad. The control it offers is more nuanced and directly tied to my picking hand technique than what I would achieve with a volume pedal or knob. It’s a great tool for quick, expressive swells.

Volume isn’t the only control the Sine Pad has to offer. An onboard LEHLE EXPRESSION module is connected to the Sine Pad, with two expression outs (it’s also compatible with CV and USB MIDI) that I used to control pedals with expression options. Plugged into my Red Panda Tensor or Moog Minifooger MF Delay, I experienced a sense of effect control like never before. I tapped into delay times both subtle and extreme with the same intuitive gestures that controlled my chord and note attack. It’s something I haven’t been able to emulate without the Sine—a unique feeling almost like playing with a whammy bar for the first time.

The Essential Guitar-ness of the Sine

The Sine’s wild innovations wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t an excellent guitar. Sure, it looks completely unlike anything else. But holding the Sine in my lap, closing my eyes, and putting fingers to frets and strings, it’s a comfortable, playable instrument. It’s a little body-heavy, and the lack of curvature on the lap side means it can drift if you don’t sit with it centered. But those issues aside, the drawbacks are few.

The fretboard feels great, and there’s plenty of access to each of the Sine’s 22 nicely rounded Jescar frets. Acoustically, it’s loud and resonant, with warm but metallic overtones similar to my Jazzmaster with an aluminum pickguard, or a fuller, bigger guitar version of my sheet-metal Rickenbacker NS lap steel. The pickups certainly play a role in balancing the metallic overtones, and their wooden housing even gives a little extra sense of warmth, at least visually. Yet as fun as it is to lean in and dose the Sine with enough effects to match its futuristic tendencies, this well-rounded sonic foundation demanded I spend just as much time using its clean tone to play complex voicings across the neck.

The Verdict

The Sine is essentially an experimental instrument for daring players looking for something different. It absolutely succeeds, however, not only by offering a range of expression unlike any other guitar, but by doing so in a way that is simple and practical—a combination that defined the greatest mid-century guitar-design icons. I’ll share one warning for those who experiment with this guitar, though: Since parting with the Sine, I’ve missed the sense of expression it put at my fingertips, and there’s only one way to experience that feeling again.

The S-style – which was used on Around the Fur – has been verified by Carpenter himself