General Interest

Johnston has replaced Hinds on the band’s current tour

Used by Radiohead, Dimebag Darrell, Tom Morello and countless others, the Whammy was the game-changing pitch-shifter guitar was waiting for

Imagine copping a quality 1960s Fender Deluxe on Facebook Marketplace for under £3,000. You’d already be pretty satisfied – but what if that amp turned out to be a priceless piece of Beatles history?

That’s exactly what happened to 45-year-old James Taylor. When the father of two was picking up his purchase, the seller alleged that the Fender amp was previously owned by John Lennon. “They told me it might have been gifted to someone by John Lennon, but I have heard these stories before and I didn’t pay it much mind,” he tells Manchester Evening News.

• READ MORE: The essential guitar albums of 2025 that you (probably) missed

However, after some digging, Taylor started to believe the seller’s claims. Taylor discovered that the Facebook seller did have some ties to Lennon; the seller was friends with Rob Lynton, a songwriter and guitarist who had worked with Lennon on his 1971 album, Imagine.

Taylor reached out to Lynton to confirm whether the amp was once Lennon’s – and Lynton confirmed that it was.

In fact, Lynton went so far as to hand-write Taylor a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ as proof. “My friend Mal Evans, who was The Beatles’ roadie and general Factotum for many years… initially loaned me the amplified for recording purposes,” Lynton writes. “He advised me that this amp was John’s.”

“In 1971, I was invited to play on John Lennon’s Imagine album,” the ‘certificate’ continues. “Following the recording sessions, I was with John and I mentioned that I had been loaned the Fender amplifier by Mal Evans, as I required a smaller amplifier than the ones I owned at the time.”

“I asked John if I should bring the amplifier to his home, or return it… he responded: ‘No, thanks very much for all the work you’ve done on the sessions. Don’t worry about bringing it back, you can keep it. It’s yours!’”

While Taylor was already happy with his new amp, the news has just made the purchase even sweeter. “I bought the amp because I wanted the amp, and I didn’t pay John Lennon sort of money for it,” he tells Manchester Evening News. “When all the details started checking out, I realised I had something very exciting on my hands. I wasn’t expecting it at all!”

“One of my earliest listening experiences was my parents introducing me to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at a young age… And now I have John Lennon’s amp, which is crazy to think about!”

According to Taylor, the amp still “plays and sounds fantastic”, and he’s already used it for some band practice sessions. Though he does admit he “might have been a bit more cautious had [he] realised the historical importance” of the piece of gear.

Looking forward, Taylor is hoping to further investigate what tracks Lennon might have used the amp on. He’s also thinking he might sell on the piece, as “it would be scary to have something so valuable in the house”.

“There are many parts of me that wish I could hold onto it, but it is a risk to keep in a house with toddlers rushing around,” the father of two admits.

The post Man buys John Lennon’s old Fender guitar amp on Facebook Marketplace… for barely $4,000 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$2,599/£2,549, taylorguitars.com

If you’ve been paying attention over the last seven months, you’ll have probably heard the stir caused by Taylor’s Gold Label guitars. After 50 years of defiantly and obsessively looking forward in its guitar designs, the Californian guitar company – now under the watchful eye of master luthier Andy Powers – decided to look back.

• READ MORE: Fender Acoustasonic Standard Telecaster review: “these are sounds you don’t hear in a live context very often”

The result was a guitar that somewhat changed the conversation about what we perceive as ‘the Taylor sound’. As Bob Taylor himself told me last year, when it comes to the tonality of Taylor guitars, “You have to like it, to like it” – and that for every person who loved the pristine, bright characteristics that are the brand’s trademark, another person would dislike it for exactly the same reason.

But by Powers’ own admission, the people who don’t vibe with the classic Taylor sounds aren’t wrong for doing so – they just have different tastes. The Gold Label Collection was Powers responding to that: “I’m thrilled that many people do love this,” he told me, “But for those who don’t, well, there can be other sounds too.”

The result was an all-new design in pretty much every way – new body style, new bracing pattern, new neck construction, new visual style and above all else, a new sound. Well, I say new – it was new for Taylor, but it was a sound that sprinkled a sheen of something very old onto the formula, and made our reviewer Michael Watts call the 814e an “important milestone” in the evolution of Taylor guitars.

Evolution doesn’t stand still of course, and there was always the sense that it wouldn’t be long before the Gold Label concept expanded further, and here we have it in the shape of another (sort of) new body shape, and a more accessible price point. Meet the Gold Label Grand Pacific.

Image: Adam Gasson

Taylor Gold Label 517e – what is it?

Those of you familiar with Taylor guitars will be aware of the Grand Pacific body shape already. Introduced back in 2019, the Grand Pacific was Powers’ take on a slope-shouldered dreadnought guitar. In a classic bit of foreshadowing, the Grand Pacific was the first Powers-designed Taylor that hinted at his desire to expand the tonal recipe in a more old-school direction.

The GP has since become a mainstay of the Taylor line, but for the Gold Label guitar, the body has been tweaked somewhat. The guitar retains the body dimensions of the original, but has upped the depth by ⅜ of an inch to be a full 5 inches at the soundhole. For reference, that’s deeper than a Martin Dreadnought or a Gibson Super Jumbo: a chunky boi indeed.

Otherwise we have much the same basic specs as the Super Auditorium-sized 814e – including the new fanned V-Class bracing, the revolutionary long-tenon Action Control Neck, and another notable appearance of LR Baggs’ Element VTC pickup in place of Taylor’s proprietary Expression system.

Visually it’s got the same tweaked peghead design and inlays, and the same 1930s-influenced pickguard and bridge shape… but elsewhere things are really rather distinct.

For starters, whereas the 814e was available with a torrefied spruce top, and either rosewood or koa back and sides, you can get a Gold Label Grand Pacific in spruce/rosewood configuration in the shape of the 717e. But the guitar we have here has tropical mahogany back and sides, to go with the neck of the same material.

And then there’s the colour of the thing of course – the initial run of Gold Label guitars were either available in natural or a smoky caramel sunburst, but the 517e also comes in this rather lovely gloss Blacktop.

A casual perusal of the festival stages across the world this summer will leave you in little doubt that shade- and painted-top acoustics are very much Having A Moment right now, and this guitar feels right at home in that world. That painted top is also a nice nod to the Depression-era guitars that informed the Gold Label’s sonic and visual character, and I must admit to being rather charmed by the whole package, visually.

Image: Adam Gasson

Taylor Gold Label 517e – build and playability

Back in that conversation I had with Bob Taylor, he emphasised to me that subjective opinions on sound were not something that concerned him – all he really cared about was that the build quality of his guitars was beyond reproach regardless.

Candidly, that’s often been my experience with Taylor instruments – they are invariably wonderfully and innovatively constructed guitars that reflect the care, craftsmanship and attention to detail that the company has become famous for, regardless of what price point you’re talking about. The 517e is of course far from a cheap guitar, and so you’d expect a first-class degree of build, fit and finish here – and that’s exactly what you get, pretty much.

The satin-finished neck is beautifully applied and supremely comfortable, with Taylor’s ‘Standard’ carve offering a slinky and accommodating palmful that welcomes electric players in the most classic of Taylor ways. It’s a reminder that for all the visual and marketing claims that this is a guitar with an ‘old soul’, it’s still a Taylor guitar first and foremost, and that’s no bad thing from a playability perspective.

String spacing is a fairly generous 38mm at the nut and 55mm at the bridge, giving larger hands plenty of room to operate, while the slim neck and accommodating profile mean it’s comfortable enough playing cowboy chords as it is more deft fingerstyle maneuvering.

I’m not a small guy, but unquestionably the extra depth added to the body here makes the already imposing size of a Grand Pacific feel even more so. Personally, I don’t have an issue with that but it should go without saying that those with smaller frames and shorter arms might want to try one out before you pull the trigger.

Put side by side with the Dreadnought-adjacent Martin HG-28 that I happen to have on deck here at Guitar.com HQ, the 517e looks like something of a kaiju – certainly by the usual svelte standards of Taylor’s instruments.

Image: Adam Gasson

The general finishing is pretty much flawless all over, though I did notice a small but uncharacteristically rough bit of finishing on the top brace. It’s the sort of thing that will have no bearing on the sound, and I likely wouldn’t have noticed if not for the fact that it was the brace sitting directly below the soundhole. It’s honestly nothing that couldn’t be fixed with 10 seconds of gentle sanding, but it’s also one of those things that once I did notice it, I couldn’t stop noticing it every time I picked up the guitar. It’s also in sharp contrast to every other bit of woodworking on the instrument which is utterly flawless.

Before we get into the sounds of the thing though, it is worth talking about the looks – spending time with a Gold Label guitar you can really get a sense of all the charming and unusual little touches that set these guitars apart from the regular Taylor line.

The subtle angled bevel of the headstock edge, the lovely matt-effect parchment of the pickguard, the appealing dark stain of the peghead and indeed the lovely thin application of the Blacktop finish, allowing the straight grain lines of the torrefied spruce top to catch the light in the way a proper old guitar does… it’s all rather lovely.

Image: Adam Gasson

Taylor Gold Label 517e – sounds

So does this guitar have the sonic character that can win over non-Taylor fans? Well, before we get to the subjective stuff, a word about the wood choices here. Spruce/mahogany is of course an all-time classic acoustic guitar pairing, but one that brings certain qualities to the party that we have to consider.

Rosewood, the other option in the range, absorbs soundwaves quite differently to mahogany, and without getting too deep into the weeds of the physics of the whole thing, a guitar with a mahogany tends to have an open and more airy tonality versus the deeper and more complex nature of rosewood.

With that in mind, I sit down with the 517e and the extra power and projection offered by that extra body depth is immediately apparent. It’s a similar basic sonic character to the 817e in that it has a warmth and richness I’m not used to hearing from a Taylor instrument.

It’s not exactly vintage in the way an old Martin or Gibson is of course, but there’s something pleasantly old-school in the bass frequencies – the extra air inside and that long-tenon neck presumably giving them a bit more body than I might have expected. It also doesn’t have the roundness and complex overtones that you’d generally get from a rosewood guitar, but it has more depth to the lows than you might expect.

Mahogany’s natural glassiness is also a good fit for the more Taylor-y qualities of the guitar – that Taylor sheen is very evident upon picking, and the string and note separation is further enhanced by the always-impressive V-class architecture under the hood.

As you move partial chord shapes up the neck or take more elaborate fingerstyle excursions, the remarkable in-tune-ness of the V-Class concept really does show its hand wonderfully. Whether you’re in altered tunings or standard, this thing really does stay in tune impressively and offers wonderfully clear and well-intonated single notes all the way up the neck. I can see this being a very fine recording guitar indeed.

The Baggs Element VTC pickup is a tried and true option, and while it doesn’t offer the fancier pseudo-modelling stuff that some of the more high-end modern pickup systems do, as a quality under-saddle transducer it does a nice job of replicating the sonic character of the guitar without too much of the nasty stuff that nobody likes from piezo systems.

Image: Adam Gasson

Taylor Gold Label 517e – should I buy one?

At this point I should probably confess that I am absolutely one of those people that Bob Taylor and Andy Powers was talking about earlier. I love everything about Taylor guitars – the playability, the craftsmanship, the innovation… the whole bag. But for whatever reason I’ve never truly managed to embrace the sound of them – though I’ll admit I’ve come close with a couple of instruments in the last few years.

From that perspective then, I’m the ideal target for these Gold Label guitars – and I can’t deny that this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played. Part of me wonders if I might personally have preferred the extra warmth and bass response of the rosewood back and sides version, but there’s still plenty to love here for fans of more old-school acoustic guitar tones – and the way it weds that with the precision, clarity and definition that a Taylor V-Class guitar offers is hugely impressive.

Is it going to replace your well-loved old Martin in your arsenal sonically? Of course not, but the Gold Label Collection is still an important and intriguing avenue for Taylor to explore. Because it’s not just about winning over the doubters, though it does a very good job of that. Really, it’s about showcasing that Taylor’s ethos and craftsmanship defies the pigeonholes that we often put brands in, and expands the brand’s future horizons into even more exciting and broad territory.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – alternatives

The sub-$3k market is very much the heavyweight division when it comes to American-made acoustic guitars, so the Gold Label faces stiff competition from all the major brands. One prominent branch of the Bob Taylor coaching tree also occupying this space is Breedlove, and their Oregon Dreadnought Concerto CE ($2,999) – founded by ex-Taylor builders Larry Breedlove and Steve Henderson, the brand offers a smaller but similarly ethos’d approach to acoustic building. If you want a dreadnought guitar with a real retro vibe, Martin’s D-18 Standard Series ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany monster with unimpeachable credentials. Another 50-year-old acoustic guitar company with a penchant for doing interesting things with bracing, the Larrivee D-44 ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany dread that’s made in Oxnard, California – a couple of hundred miles up the coast from Taylor.

The post Taylor Gold Label 517e review – “this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ted McCarty’s finest creation gets the Epiphone ‘Inspired By’ treatment. Featuring Gibson USA Custombuckers, real rosewood fingerboard and top-notch hardware, expectations are high

Albert King played upside down, in a weird tuning, and influenced SRV and Hendrix alike, and he did it without a pick. So it's no surprise Nichols is a huge fan – he breaks down King's magic

Audified releases ToneKnob TinyAmp

Brown Sound limited-edition pedals and new Signature Collections for TONEX

Rotary speaker sound in a compact pedal

Gorham remembers John Sykes, the player who stepped in and stepped up, breathing new life into Thin Lizzy with the super hard rock sound of his Les Paul Custom

The Gibson CF-100E was ahead of its time, and one of the early models of the firm’s lauded Ted McCarty era

If you consider all the ways that the Stratocaster represents perfection, “feel” may not be the very first thing you think of. But while the svelte and curvaceous Stratocaster may be the definitive visual representation of “electric guitar” in a dictionary, and ring like a cathedral chime, the thing that distinguishes a great or priceless Strat from a merely good one is often its ergonomic excellence. Slim, light, contoured in all the right places, it’s a marvel of form following function. I’ve played a lot of old guitars over the years, but the one that I can still feel in my bones almost two decades later was a 1964 Stratocaster. The sight of it was beautiful enough to be forever etched in my brain’s visual cortex. But it was the feel of cradling that instrument, above all other things, that remains.

The Mexico-made Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster does much to underscore the tactile pleasures of Strat-ness. The rounded edges of the maple neck are as comfortable as an old baseball glove. The medium-jumbo frets lend a silky glide to finger vibrato and bends. The tremolo’s sensitivity and stability beckon a player to slow down and indulge in its bouncy precision. But the Player II Modified Strat’s delicious feel is also reinforced and enhanced by the sound of the Player II Noiseless pickups and the way the quiet performance invites deeper exploration of tone detail and dynamics. And the switching, which enables blends of the bridge and neck pickup to offer an even more expansive tone palette. The build quality is just about flawless, the locking tuners are a considerable asset, and at $1,049 it represents a solid deal at a time when new guitar prices are headed steadily northward.

Small Steps Forward, Big Returns

I’m a bit of a Fender traditionalist when it comes to necks. I like the vintage style 7.25" fretboard radius and a profile just on the chunky side. But between owning a few 9.5" radius Squiers that I love, and playing and reviewing enough contemporary Fenders with the same spec, I’ve come to appreciate the feel of the slightly flatter fretboard. For players that prefer the 9.5" radius and know Fender’s modern “C” profile well, this neck might not, at first, feel like much of a revelation. Indeed, Fender’s modern “C” is so ubiquitous it can feel almost generic. But the contoured edges do much to make the neck feel a little more vintage and make the Player II Modified a more inviting instrument in general.

Once you’re hooked on the feel of the Player II Modified, you’ll find the pickups even more alluring. If Fender sacrificed any classic tonalities in making the Player II Noiseless Strat pickups quieter, it’s hard to hear. I sense a little extra warmth and roundness in addition to a lack of 60-cycle hum—and the latter perception may color the former. But the output is anything but suffocated, and the relative quiet means a lot less ear fatigue when exploring overdrive and distortion tones, which are a great match for this instrument.

The real treat, though, is the push-pull switching on the treble pickup knob, which enables the addition of the pretty neck pickup to the bridge pickup and combined bridge/center pickup. And though I dutifully explored every single pickup and combination here (and was smitten with the middle position Jerry Garcia tones in particular), I had a hard time leaving behind the creamy/crispy combination of the neck and bridge together. If, like me, you often go hunting for the perfect crossover of sunburnt surfy top end to brighten up your Curtis Mayfield soul ballad tones, the Player II Modified will serve up this most delicious sonic fruit in abundance.

The Verdict

Fender’s marketplace competition for the very guitar it created has never been more intense. But the Player II Modified Stratocaster offers real, if incremental, improvements that enable Fender to stay at the top of the heap in the circa $1K solidbody segment. It allows players to experience everything that’s great about a Stratocaster without settling for an otherwise capable S-style with a weird-looking headstock. There’s room for improvement here and there: The vibrato could be a little more tuning-stable under heavy use and more softly sprung off the factory floor. And, at least to my eyes, an opportunity to make a really stunning looking Stratocaster was missed by slapping a very ’70s black pickguard on a green that evokes the playful custom colors of the ’60s. But there are plenty of more traditional color options elsewhere in the Player II Modified Stratocaster line. And if they all provide as pleasurable and inspiring a playing experience as our review instrument, Fender is well-prepared to take on all comers in this very competitive segment of the solidbody market.

Jimmy Page often employed dissonant chords with Led Zep and you can, too. You don't even need to know the name of the chord to use them

Legendary rock journalist Steven Rosen was friends with Eddie Van Halen for a long time. And in this time, he learned a thing or two about his relationship with the guitar. Now, in a new interview with Igor Paspalj, Steven recalls how it all began for the “guitarist’s guitarist”, who was only a “local Hollywood phenomenon” when the two first met in July 1977.

• READ MORE: Slayer’s Gary Holt thinks that some modern guitarists don’t put enough “conviction” and “passion” into their riffs

Steven has written a new book Tonechaser on this friendship, providing deep insights into just how far the Van Halen guitarist’s musical obsessions went. It also looks at some of his personal quirks. “[Eddie] was a pretty complex person”, Rosen recalls, and that “the longer I sort of knew him and hung out with him, I realise there were more facets to his personality.” 

“Music was first and foremost and everything for him. I mean, I know you’ve heard it before, but with him, it was everything.”

Steven was able to get to know Eddie on such a personal level because of their proximity: the two only lived eight minutes away from each other. Eddie lived in the luxurious Coldwater Canyon, while Steven lived in the comparatively “funky cheap rent part of Hollywood”. Because of this, it “wasn’t long before he would just sort of come over… Or I’d drive over to his place in Cold Water”, where Eddie lived with his future wife, American actress Valerie Bertinelli.

Whenever Steven would visit Eddie’s Coldwater Canyon home studio, “He was always sitting in the chair and having a talk. He was playing, he was changing strings. It was always about the guitar.”

It was through these studio encounters that Rosen realised that his more musical side was intensely private: “When he was in the musician mode and he needed to work, he needed to be by himself. It was almost an unspoken thing. I mean, I could sense it. He’d kind of be playing, and you kind of look over, and I just knew it. ‘Hey man, I’ll see you later.’”

Because of this key moment, he also discovered how important it was to Eddie that people respected this part of him: “And if you disrespected him, he held on to that for a very long time.”

In other recent Van Halen news, a recently unearthed interview with Ed from 1991 revealed that far from being enamoured with the rise of shred guitar in the 1980s, he seemed to be quite disdainful of the idea – “what’s important to me now isn’t how fast I can solo. It’s the whole picture,” he explained.

The post “There was never a single moment when he did not have the guitar in his hand” Eddie Van Halen’s friend remembers how obsessed he was with guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The off-kilter guitar – christened the ‘Ugly Stick’ – has been in the works for 30 plus years

Take it from the pros: There’s no wrong way to collect guitars.

Let’s talk about collecting.

Guitars, yes. But also … other things.

I’ll admit it—I’ve been a collector for a long time. It really kicked in after I joined the family business. Suddenly, I had a little disposable income and a curiosity for auctions. The kind you actually had to show up for—no internet, no clicking a button in your pajamas. Just paddles, raised eyebrows, and the thrill of the chase. I thought the things I brought home were cool. My wife Diane wasn’t always convinced.

But let’s bring this back to guitars. Yes, I absolutely collect them. Mostly Martins, old and new—as you might guess—but not exclusively. Some are personal, out of my own pocket. Others are for the Martin Guitar Museum collection, which I help curate with a team that shares the same passion. We’ve built something truly special, and I’m incredibly proud of what’s on display (and what’s waiting in the wings).

Like many museums, we can only showcase a portion of our collection at any one time. We rotate pieces, we loan to other institutions, and we keep looking for the next instrument that tells a story worth preserving.

A Favorite Find

One of my most memorable guitar acquisitions happened at Sotheby’s in New York. This time, I was bidding on behalf of the company. Diane and our daughter Claire came with me, though they were a bit less excited about the auction scene. (While I was scoping out guitars, they ducked over to the American Girl store around the corner.)

As luck would have it, the guitar I was there for came up just as they returned to the gallery. I was mid-bid—enthusiastic, focused. Diane overheard the auctioneer call out the latest bid and gave me that look. I was committed. I stayed in. And I won.

She walked over and asked, “What did you just do?”

“I bought another guitar for the museum,” I told her.

She half-smiled. It wasn’t cheap.

The guitar was part of Kenny Wayne Sultan’s collection, built from the same batch of 000-42s as Eric Clapton’s iconic model. Today, it’s an important piece in our museum’s story.

You might think I’d have enough guitars, especially with two factories full of them and a world-class museum in my backyard. But I love collecting. So I keep buying guitars. Full disclosure: I’ve used the employee discount more than a few times. Still do.

George Gruhn: Collector First, Dealer Second

I’m not alone in this. My friend George Gruhn (yes, that George Gruhn) is widely known as a legendary vintage guitar dealer. But first and foremost, he’s a collector.

George first caught the bug back in 1961, as a high school student in suburban Chicago. He didn’t even play yet, but he helped his brother pick out a 1929 Martin 0-28K. That was the spark.

“I became addicted to collecting,” George told me. “For every guitar I found for myself, I’d come across dozens more I didn’t want personally, but they were such bargains I could flip them to fund my next find. Gruhn Guitars is essentially a hobby that morphed into a career.”

When I asked George about a favorite find, he lit up.

“In 1974, a pawn shop near my store called about an old Martin. It turned out to be the most elaborately ornamented early Martin I’ve ever seen—made during C.F. Martin Sr.’s era. I sold it to Steve Howe of Yes, but years later, I had the chance to buy it back. It’s still one of the crown jewels of my collection.”

“You don’t choose what to collect. It finds you—one vintage archtop or parlor guitar at a time.”

These days, Gruhn’s approach has evolved.

“Early in my career, I traveled constantly. Now, I’m more like an angler—I dangle the lure, and people bring guitars to me.”

He also offered advice to new collectors: Always buy from a reputable dealer, and ask for written guarantees or certificates of authenticity. If you’re not experienced, get the instrument appraised by someone who is. And while provenance can be important in memorabilia items, which have added appeal and higher monetary value due to prior ownership by a famous performer, George believes the core of collecting is still about the instrument: its builder, its story, and its sound.

The Passion Play

George isn’t the only one I’ve learned from. Norm Harris of Norm’s Rare Guitars is another kindred spirit. You may have seen the documentary about him—if not, add it to your list. Norm might have a storefront, but some guitars? They’re part of the family.

Closer to home, my friend Fred Oster, who you might recognize from Antiques Roadshow, has been a generous mentor over the years. Fred once told me, “You don’t choose what to collect. It finds you—one vintage archtop or parlor guitar at a time.”

All of these folks blur the line between collector and dealer. Some deal to fund their collections. Some collect to enrich their understanding of the instruments they sell. Either way, it’s about passion.

For me, collecting guitars is more than a habit; it’s a love affair. And if it turns out to be a good investment down the line? Well, that’s just a bonus. You could put your money in a 4% treasury bond, but you can’t strum one of those on the porch.

Keep on collecting.

The PRS Archon amplifier was released in December 2013 and quickly made its mark with modern metal guitarists. In 2021, the amp disappeared from PRS’ product line before being reintroduced as more affordable, Asia-built, 50W combos and heads, which remain in production. The new Archon Classic isn’t merely a rehash of the previous Archon, however. It’s a completely new and very different design. While the original Archon was a study in extremes—with pristine cleans and an ultra-high-gain lead sound—the Archon Classic is more balanced with slightly grittier clean tones and a more mid-rich gain profile.

Designed by PRS’ Doug Sewell, who was a boutique amp designer when he met Paul Reed Smith at the Dallas Guitar Show when their respective booths were adjacent to each other, the 50W, two-channel, Archon Classic head is made in Indonesia and is priced at a very reasonable $1149.

The original Archon 100 used a fairly conventional set of four 6L6GC power tubes and six 12AX7 preamp tubes, but the Archon Classic is outfitted with two JJ 6CA7 power tubes and six JJ ECC83S preamp tubes. I wasn’t too familiar with the 6CA7 power tubes so I reached out to Sewell for clarification. “Performance-wise, this tube sits nicely between an EL34 and a 6L6GC,” explains Sewell. “When voicing the Archon, this tube best fit the circuit and tone we wanted to achieve. The original U.S.-built Archons shipped with 6L6GCs. The 6CA7 Archon Classic gives a touch more British vibe and sweeter mids. Apparently Eddie Van Halen’s plexi Super Lead 100W had 6CA7s. Enough said!”

Less is More

Operationally speaking, the Archon Classic is as straightforward as you can get. The control panel has independent sets of knobs for the clean and lead channels: volume (gain), treble, middle, bass, master volume, and bright toggle switches. There’s also a set of global control knobs for presence and depth (which adds low end).

The original Archon offered power scaling on the 50W and 25W models, but neither the reissue nor the Archon Classic offer the feature. This streamlining of the Archon’s controls is by design. Sewell adds, “As the Archon matured, our objective was to scale down the features, refine the tones, provide a much more cost-effective amp for a wider customer base, and break out of the metal niche many mistakenly perceived that amp to be in.”

While PRS opted for a stripped-down approach with the Archon Classic, the back panel retains the useful bias adjustment jacks seen in the original. This allows you to use a multimeter to assess whether tubes are dead or have drifted out of spec relative to the other tubes in the unit. Adjustments can be made using a small, jeweler’s Phillips head screwdriver.

Pure Tone Machine

Where the original Archon’s clean tones are hi-fi and pristine, the Archon Classic’s cleans are grittier, with more attitude. At its lowest clean channel setting, the output is already slightly driven, particularly when a bridge humbucker is in the mix. Using a single-coil yields a slightly cleaner tone, but with gain settings this low there’s not a ton of headroom to play with, even with master volume up pretty high. But by slightly bumping the clean channel’s volume up to 9 o’clock, the amp feels significantly louder and is much better suited for a band mix.

When I push the clean channel’s volume to noon and bash away on a bridge humbucker, the Archon Classic delivers beautiful breakup that is, to my ears, just right—not too dirty but not too clean. There’s a lot of gain available in the clean channel, and if you turn up the volume between 3 o’clock and maximum, you get various shades of rhythm guitar crunch, from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to “You Shook Me All Night Long.” There’s also enough sustain here for classic-rock lead sounds. It’s not often I can get pinch harmonics to pop on an amp’s “clean” channel, but I did here, with ease.

Switching between channels is seamless and there are no pops or noise when clicking the one-button footswitch. The lead channel sounds voiced with a nod to ’70s and ’80s hard rock, rather than the more modern, scooped voice of the original Archon. With the lead channel’s volume around 10 o’clock, it’s about as dirty as the clean channel with its volume knob maxed. This is a great jumping-off point for creating an all-purpose, versatile two-channel setup, where I dialed the clean channel with the volume maxed for a hard-rock rhythm sound and bumped the lead channel’s volume to just under noon, to get a comparable but boosted sound for leads.

The Verdict

“Archon” is Greek for “ruler” and it’s not hyperbole to say the Archon Classic rules. Its simple design—the amp doesn’t even have a standby switch—makes dialing up killer sounds effortless, and such simplicity is huge when you want to get down to playing. The sole focus of the Archon Classic is tone, and that it delivers in spades.

My wife and I really enjoy living in the Northeast. Rolling hills, all four seasons, close to the coast, and plenty of day trip getaways to keep our summers busy and our vacations peaceful. One of our favorite haunts is Vermont and the town of Bennington. There are historical features there, such as the Bennington Battle Monument and the grave of the poet Robert Frost. Chiseled onto the face of his stone is the inscription, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” This lovely, simple quote perfectly summarizes my relationships with guitars.

When I was young, I started taking lessons in Nazareth, Pennsylvania—right under the shadow of the Martin Guitar factory! I had all the inspiration in the world, and yet I would choose laziness and not practice. My mom would cancel my sessions, and then the itch to play would bubble up, and I’d be on a huge creative bender. This is how it went for most of my life. Fire and ice, playing and not playing. I probably should be an amazing player, but, alas, I remain a caveman. Part of the reason for that is I just don’t have a good ear and can’t carry a tune. My wife, on the other hand, is a music teacher and has incredible musical ability. She can play just about every instrument, even the wooden fifes sold at the Bennington Battle Monument! Seriously, she plays historical music on these primitive instruments while I’m messing around with the pop guns.

In my late teens and 20s, I really went on a creative spell and there was no stopping my insanity for guitar. This was also when I was buying old guitars and piecing them back together. I met Mike Dugan (the guy who plays guitar in all my videos) and started to join bands and go to open jams. Soon I found myself buying and selling guitars and looking for my “tone.” I guess we all go through this search at one time or another, but I just couldn’t be satisfied. For a while, I played a Univox Hi-Flier and then a nice Yamaha SG-1000. Eventually, I was running through guitars like water in a stream. Never ending.

Mike Dugan would always tell me, “When you know, you know,” but I just couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t until I started hearing him play in my studio every week that I developed an ear for guitars. I mean, I still struggled tuning a guitar, but I could sense when a guitar had “it”—that zing, that bite, that crystalline quality that you could hear. Wood didn’t matter. Pickups didn’t matter. It just worked or it didn’t, and I wouldn’t be swayed. And the first guitar where I “knew” was this Kawai S160 dating to the early ’60s. The necks on these are huge, and the pickups have low output, but they all sound great. Really, I like all the Kawai electrics from the early days, but this one is my “one.”

“Have you found your guitar? Your tone? It’s out there somewhere for you.”

Located in Hamamatsu, Japan, Kawai was making pianos before their foray into electric guitars. A lot of the early Japanese guitar makers lacked understanding of the guitar, but what they did have was lovely wood and experienced wood craftsmen. These guitars are robust and solid; they could hammer in fence posts! The truss rods don’t work at all, but the necks are so chunky that it doesn’t matter! And these early S-series Kawai guitars have some of the most beautifully figured rosewood that I’ve ever seen. Simply gorgeous.

The electronics are simple and easy to navigate with just one tone and volume pot, and one on/off switch for each pickup. The pickups handle overdrive or fuzz so well. These guitars also came in three- and four- pickup versions, and all sound fine. The tremolo pictured on mine is really the one to get, because it actually works well! Since most of the Kawai guitars were imported to Chicago, they were found in the hands of many bluesmen, including Hound Dog Taylor.

So my lover’s quarrel with guitars is a real thing. But some guitars just inspire you to play, or in my case, just make some noise. So how about you? Have you found your guitar? Your tone? It’s out there somewhere for you, and here’s hoping you find “the one” … or two!

There’s nothing quite so cumbersome and unweildy as a real, honest to goodness rotary speaker cabinet – it’s probably why most guitarists who appreciate the unmistakable sound tend to use some sort of pedal-based alternative. And now Boss has brought its most compact version ever to the party.

• READ MORE: “We just looked at each other in awe” the truth behind why Jimi Hendrix started smashing guitars on stage

Boss’s original RT-20 Rotary Ensemble pedal was discontinued in 2019, despite its classic replication of the Hammond organ rotary speaker effect. But fans of the original pedal can rejoice, since the Japanese pedal giant has revisited the concept now in classic compact pedal form.  It also comes with a very fun rotating LED screen that emulates the movement of a classic rotary cab. 

Like other rotary ensemble pedals, BOSS’s own seeks to replicate some of the original 1940s combo organ voice sound, based on rotary speakers that create their signature modulation effect. As Boss says, this effect creates “depth and movement” in your recorded and live sounds.

Image: Boss

A rotary speaker sound is probably not something you’re going to use for every song of course, but that’s what makes the dinky size of the RT-2 so compelling – you can introduce the effect into your sound without taking too much real estate on your pedalboard. 

According to the Boss website, the pedal comes with a plethora of classic effects like: “A vintage rotary sound and two modified tones with enhanced spatial effects, virtual rotor display with lights that indicate treble and bass rotor speeds, fast/slow rotor speed control, drive knob to add vintage tube saturation, and a Rise/Fall Time switch [for adjusting] the transition time between rotor speeds” alongside saturation control and volume balance between treble and bass rotors via the Drive/Balance Switch.

The pedal also has four selectable pedal switching modes, making this an even more versatile piece of kit to have with you live, also particularly in its support for controlling external footswitches and expression pedals. 

The RT-2 Rotary Ensemble is available this month and is currently retailing at $239.99.

The post BOSS’s RT-2 Rotary Ensemble pedal offers classic rotary speaker sounds in a compact footprint appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Rare guitar seekers search high and low for guitars owned by the greats, in the hope that they can capture some of the same magic. But for Joe Satriani, working in a guitar shop “disillusioned” him to these collectables, simply because they don’t always sound as good as their price tag suggests.

• READ MORE: “Playing as fast as you can doesn’t really hold much water for me”: Eddie Van Halen pours scorn on shredding

Having exclusive access to some of the “most expensive, the most valuable, rare guitars”, Satriani tells D’Addario, he discovered what they sounded like. And while a dream job to many, the experience made the scales fall from his eyes. “There’s nothing special about it”, Satch admitted.

Satch believes that players should “connect with the guitar” rather than chasing after vintage instruments for the sake of it. It becomes special to them, and the hallmark of their own sound. Unfortunately this would mean that buying a guitar previously owned by a guitar god doesn’t mean that you’ll get much out of it yourself.

This realisation encouraged Satriani to build custom guitars instead, but “it was really to get by week to week” he says, “and to do the gig I was doing at the time.” Outside his “disco band playing around the East Coast”, which was “going nowhere’, his solo music career was beginning to grow. Satch began realising this after receiving a short-but-sweet review of his debut solo album Not of this Earth in Guitar Player.

Despite this, Satriani still has an appreciation for unique guitars, such as the see-through Ibanez Y2K Crystal Planet prototype, designed by Junji Hotta in 1999 to coincide with his Crystal Planet album. Alongside some other gear, he sold this guitar on Bananas at Large to collectors. Even though he’s disillusioned with vintage guitars himself, he still recognises them as artefacts that people love to collect.

In the same interview, Satriani also talks about how he struggles with being extroverted on stage. “I don’t ever feel like myself” he says about the experience of playing to his fans – certainly a surprising thing for someone with as many massive gigs on his CV as Stach.

The post Joe Satriani on why he doesn’t rate vintage guitars “The musician has to connect with the guitar for it to become special” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.