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Is the guitar and rock music dead? It’s an accusation that’s been levelled quite a bit in the past decade or so. But former Ozzy Osbourne sidekick and Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde reckons there’s nothing to worry about.

In a new interview in the latest issue of Guitar World magazine, the guitarist waxes lyrical on the current generation of players, saying the instrument is very much alive and well.

• READ MORE: Parliament-Funkadelic legend Michael Hampton on the secrets of funk guitar, and playing a 10-string BC Rich

He wastes no time in firing off a list of his favourite guitarists right now. “I’m friends with Richie Faulkner, who I think is the full package,” he says. “We’ve toured with Judas Priest a bit and he’s a phenomenal player. He also has his own band, Elegant Weapons. He’s got vibrato, technique, tone everything. I feel that way about Dario from Black Label Society.”

Naming some more contemporary players, he continues: “Jared James Nichols is awesome. I love hearing younger guys like him and Tyler Bryant playing the blues. They clearly love it and have such an amazing grasp of it. Tosin Abasi has been doing it for a while now, but he’s phenomenal. I think Tim Henson is insane. My son Hendrix is a huge fan of Polyphia and Tim’s playing.”

As for those who question the vitality of guitar as an instrument in 2026, Zakk makes his opinion clear: “Whenever I hear people saying, ‘Guitar is dead,’ I think, ‘What are you talking about? What rock do you live under?’

“Guitar is doing just great. There are so many young players who love the instrument, and they’re really going for it.”

Those words are coming from one of the most accomplished and well-travelled musicians in rock music, so you have it on good authority…

In a hilarious anecdote earlier this year, Zakk Wylde recounted the time Ozzy Osbourne was mistaken for singer Meat Loaf by an air stewardess.

“He’s sitting there, bummed out, and the stewardess is like: ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it’s you!’ She’s giving him drinks, getting him food, and he’s just floored by it. He’s going: ‘Maybe things aren’t so bad.’

“As the plane lands, she says: ‘Can I get a picture?’ So she takes the photo, and then she goes: ‘Oh, wow, thank you Meat Loaf!’ Ozzy’s like: ‘I really fucking need to cut back on the calories…’”

The post Is guitar dead? Zakk Wylde doesn’t think so: “What rock do you live under?!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Martin Guitar

Martin’s 16 series has been loved by gigging players since the 1980s, delivering instruments that sound great, feel very comfortable, and if they look amazing, too, well, that doesn’t hurt. The newly revamped 16 series guitars are quite a departure, however.

Now, when you picture a Martin in your head, you’re probably thinking of an iconic dreadnought or orchestra model. But the shapes of this revamped 16 series are rather different to the norm. So instead of a classic square shouldered silhouette, we have the DSS-16E slope shoulder dreadnought, the slope shoulder small body 00L-16E and the J-16E model Jumbo.

And then of course we have the colors. Now, while Martin’s shade tops do have a cult following, and the likes of Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton have had signature models with painted tops, the company is primarily known for its elegant natural finishes.

The 16 series stands out from the crowd by offering a trio of eye-popping semi-transparent gloss tops paired with matte back and sides to ensure that these head turning colours stand out even more. Let’s take a closer look at these bold new offerings.

The 16 series has always had a reputation for comfort, and this is just as true with this new release. We have a modified low oval carve on the select hardwood necks – a super comfortable neck shape that feels fast and immediate. The neck joins the body at the 14th fret on all these guitars, giving you plenty of room for capo use.

Furthermore, all three models have a 1.75-inch nut width, making clean fretting a breeze. The guitars all come stage ready with an LR Baggs Element active pickup system, and a soft shell case to ensure that you can take it to your gig or open mic in comfort and security.

Meet the DSS-16E

Slope shoulder dreadnought guitars are popular for their versatility across a variety of styles. They typically give you a warm, rich sound that works beautifully for both finger style and flat picking. This is particularly true when the design combines mahogany back and sides with a 24.9 in scale length. And this is the first time that Martin has paired a shorter scale with a slope shoulder dread.

The DSS-16E is available in three striking colourways. The classic 1935 Burst, the brooding Black Smoke, and the unquestionably eye-catching Cherry Cola finish  Whichever colour you choose, you will enjoy the response and musicality of forward shifted X bracing and scalloped braces. This is a classic combo in terms of sound and a stage commanding look.

Command the stage with the J-16E

The J model is Martin’s big body powerhouse. Famous for filling a room with huge chordal strumming. The J is a flatpicker’s dream, especially with scalloped bracing like we have here. The combination of a full 25.4-inch scale and rosewood back and sides do make the J a fantastic choice for altered tunings and finger style as well.

The J16E is available in a more restrained 1935 Burst and Black Smoke options, but this Cream top really shines against the rosewood back and sides, and it’s picked out with double binding.

Get close with the 00L-16E

If you’re looking for a versatile small body guitar, then the 00L-16E has you covered. The mahogany back and sides and 24.9 in shorter scale make this a gentle, intimate strummer and a snarling little blues machine with a lot to explore in between.

We’ve got scalloped bracing and a 14 fret neck, giving you plenty of room to use your cappo. And despite its smaller body size, it does offer a surprising amount of projection when you give it some. Like the other newbies in the range, you get a choice of 1935 Burst and Black smoke, plus the addition of Blue Denim. The great thing about all these finishes is that being semi-transparent, you still get to appreciate the grain of the beautiful spruce underneath.

With a GPC cutaway and a Jumbo-size 12 string rounding out the range, the new 16 series is a fascinating and exciting addition to the Martin pantheon. The 16 series has always been a great choice for gigging players looking for a dependable instrument that will deliver on stage and in the studio, but with these new shapes, they also offer a subtly different sonic experience.

While still being quintessentially Martins, in an era where acoustic artists are always looking for ways to stamp their individuality on stage, these striking new colours and shapes offer something quite different from any other Martin guitar. And that’s quite exciting, too. The only question left is which one is for you?

Find out more about the 16 Series at martinguitar.com

The post The colours and the shapes: take a tour of Martin’s new 16 Series appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme has always had an unconventional approach to his guitar rig – in fact, earlier this year the frontman revealed that his Them Crooked Vultures bandmate, former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, once called his setup an ‘entire piece-of-shit’. However, Homme prefers the challenge of piecing together cheaper gear and janky guitars, as it often leads to more exciting results.

In a new interview with Rick Beato, Homme explains that he’s often drawn to the gear that is often overlooked; rather than opting for the big brands, he’ll hunt down the underdog. “I’ve seen a lot of Marshalls and Les Pauls in my life, and a lot of Strats… what I don’t see, that’s what I’m interested in,” he reveals.

• READ MORE: Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme on why his first guitar experience was playing polka: “In the desert there wasn’t a lot of guitar teachers”

While he labels his system as “dumb”, the mindset is to steer clear of any gear that’s been pre-approved by other musicians. “There’s a lot of ‘unsupply and undemand,’” he jokes. “If I see a lot of something… I just won’t do that. We have plenty of that… [that approach has] largely been quite good to me.”

Homme’s affinity for using quirkier, more obscure gear was initially a decision based on cost. Just as Homme shaped his unique tone due to his inability to afford a tuner, instead doubling down and styling out a detuned guitar, a cheaper guitar was often more accessible for him. However, it’s since become a conscious choice as those guitars can often muster more unique, unexpected tonal qualities.

He also reveals that a lot of his earlier gear was acquired through scouring the depths of eBay, as well as being “an avid pawn shop guy” while on the road. “[Whenever I bought a guitar] I did not normally see, it turned out, six times out of 10, to be fucking amazing,” he says.

Some of his best purchases were often dirt cheap, too. “Some were like 50 bucks,” he says. “So the experiment to find yourself in what you do not see became this obsession that was really rewarding!”

“It made me feel very proud, because it was almost like confirming my own ridiculous metric for making choices…” he adds. “I didn’t need that confirmation, but I was like, ‘See? If you use my dumb system it’ll work out this way.’”

Back in March, Homme pulled back the curtain and allowed a glimmer of insight into his quirky rig. In an interview with Guitar World, he recalled how some of his cheapest guitar rigs would provide him with an “instant Kinks” vibe, noting that some of his most interesting tone comes from old school, cost-efficient Japanese guitars.

“As I got older, I realised that the Japanese – because of the post-World War II economy – couldn’t get the best stuff, so they had shitty beginnings,” he explained. “They did the best they could. It’s really well-made shit, and it creates this unforgettable sound. I went through this phase of buying Japanese guitars; they were cheap, so it was an easy experiment.”

In terms of Queens Of The Stone Age, the band’s latest record, Perfecth, is due to drop October 30. Three singles are currently out, with the latest tongue-in-cheek release, Where The Goth Girls At? joining Insignificant Other and Easy Street.

Queens Of The Stone Age’s Perfecth drops on October 30. You can pre-order it now.

The post “There’s a lot of ‘unsupply and undemand’… If I see a lot of something, I just won’t do that”: Josh Homme on his “dumb” approach to picking guitar gear appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Pay and Display is for parking, not guitars. For years, artists from across the board have preached this sentiment, from Slash criticising uber-expensive display-only axes to John McLaughlin insisting that an unplayed guitar will get “sick” like a malnourished human being. Now, Jared James Nichols has shared his own thoughts on leaving a pricy ‘collectors’ guitar untouched.

In a new interview, Nichols inspects a gorgeous vintage Les Paul to Solar Guitars’ owner Ola Englund. While discussing the axe, Englund poses Nichols with the ultimate dilemma: is it safe to bring a flashy, $100,000 guitar out on tour? You’ll probably lose your warranty and earn a few scratches sure. But a few dings are far better than the alternative of leaving it hanging on a wall.

• READ MORE: “It was just so difficult and insane” Joe Satriani tells the story of his favourite guitar solo

“You would see this hanging at the guitar store, never to be played again, or in someone’s collection…” he says. “[Collectors will say], ‘This is a ‘59 Les Paul. Oh, don’t touch it!! Don’t even look at it!!’ You’re a dentist and your value is based on a guitar that is worth something.”

He adds that real guitar pros know that a good guitar shouldn’t be left to gather dust. In fact, he even believes that the biggest collectors often don’t even know how to tackle a riff. “90% of these vintage guys… you hear them play it and you go, ‘Dude you can’t even play the guitar…’” he sighs.

“It’s like having a sports car, and you can’t drive it!” he cries.

Often, this brand of guitar owner will just be someone with more money than sense. Nichols emphasises that the only thing that matters to this brand of collector is the ego-boost of asking strangers “do you know how much this is worth?”

“After you see the same person do this over and over, you’re like, ‘I’m not into it, bro’,” he continues. “But is it responsible to bring this [guitar he is holding] on the road, spill beer on it, sweat all over it and scratch it? No, but you know what? It was made for that.”

Jared James Nichols is currently on a US tour up until December. For more information, head to his website.

The post “It’s like having a sports car, and you can’t drive it!”: Jared James Nichols on guitar collectors that never play their instruments appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

As a veteran of American funk rock outfit Parliament-Funkadelic (widely known as P-Funk) guitarist Michael Hampton has been bringing the six-string funk to the group’s feel-good cocktail of rock, blues and jazz in spades for over five decades.

• READ MORE: “It was just so difficult and insane” Joe Satriani tells the story of his favourite guitar solo

Hampton first joined the group as a seventeen-year-old after impressing band leader George Clinton with a face melting solo take on Funkadelic’s 1971 ten-minute instrumental opus Maggot Brain. Hampton went on to become a crucial part of the group’s musical oeuvre.

Appearing on the group’s 1978 album One Nation Under a Groove, which many consider to be the greatest funk album ever made, Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock? is one track Hampton contributed in co-writing and which showcases his guitar prowess, and why his musicianship is held in high regard by many.

“I basically played off the changes that Walter ‘Junie; Morrison [keyboardist] wrote,” reveals Hampton today. “When I went in to do the overdub, there were also some vocals on it before I started playing and so I played off of them too and I pretty much doubled the lines that the bass was doing. And because a lot of the people in the band felt I did such a great job on the solo; they gave me a co-writer’s credit.”

Hampton believes P-Funk’s unique sound was developed through a combination of blending various musical styles together.

“George [Clinton] envisioned it having many different styles and then then putting them all together,” he says. “So, you will hear some country and western, some slide stuff, some funk, some jazz and even some classical. I mean it is all over the place. He came up with the concept for P-Funk from having written so much different music, and so, he just threw that all in there together.”

Loud and Proud

Hampton’s guitar style and tone is fiery and loud, and plays an integral role within P-Funk’s musical format. At the core of his sound is a ten-string BC Rich Bich.

“It has a neck-through that has four of its strings on top, the E, B, G and D which are doubled,” he explains. “And the tuning pegs are at the other end of the guitar where you would pick the strings. It has a really cool shape, kind of a gothic thing. And being a one-piece neck, I love it and it is great to play, because it resonates a lot.

“And when it comes to the electronics, it has two preamps, with different switches for putting the pickups in and out of phase. I tune it kind of like in fourths and fifths which gives me an interesting sound. It is sort of like having a harmonized effect but without a whammy pedal or some effect like that. It’s basically just all down to having that different tuning.”

When it came to amps to pair his BC Rich with, Hampton says it’s always dependent on whatever is lying around on stage. “It was Marshalls at one point,” he explains. “Then later on, they got a wall of amps, like the old Aerosmith speaker wall, that was comprised of double-stacked Music Man amps.

“It was wall to wall amps with speaker cabs. And then they got Crown power amplifiers too, which are run in a way to have us placed in stereo, so I will have a cabinet running to the other side as well. And the Crown amplifiers are also used to boost the Music Mans.”

Follow The Muse

Rather than having songs already written by the time the group went into the studio to record, much of the music P-Funk has created over the decades has evolved through spontaneous jam sessions.

“We used to go and do shifts at United Sound Systems in Detroit,” he says. “It seemed like it was always a big jam session. And then from that, they would decide what they would use. Either it’d be based off of somebody that did some vocal thing, or had some lyrics or melody written. And it was a studio that was right across the street from our hotel. We would just get a room, and be there, practicing and practicing and then go into the studio and do the graveyard shifts. And sometimes it could be during the day too. All of us were basically on call.”

Playing funk guitar is an art form in itself, and the ingredients required to play funk guitar boils down to one very important element. “If there was any secret to it, it would be syncopation,” reveals Hampton. “It has a lot to do with it when playing all the different rhythms. With funk guitar, you’re trying to play something off of a drummer or off another player, and so the purpose of that is for you as a guitarist, to gel together.

“A lot of that was influenced by a Pentecostal church I would go to. There would be a lot of hand clapping and it’d be those multi-rhythms that kind of made it funky for me. You start with one simple rhythm and then someone comes in with another rhythm that’s playing off of that.”

P-Funk’s influence has been wide spread throughout music and many artists have cited the influence of the group upon their own music. The list of names runs the gamut from Prince to Red Hot Chili Peppers. And funk music in general continues to have a hold on similar sounding groups today.

“It’s definitely very flattering to hear that,” says Hampton proudly. “If I were to listen long enough to most of the tracks that a lot of other artists have done, musicians, guitarists, after a while I’d be like, ‘Yep, that is funky right there’. Or ‘That right there is a funky lick’. I might not know where it comes from, but whatever influence, the influence is just really a feeling.

“It’s just kind of like when people dance, they hear something and it makes you do something else or you make up a funky move. Some of the most-funkiest stuff I’ve ever heard, is the James Brown song Super Bad [1970]. It’s just a one note on one string lick, yet it’s super funky!”

The post Parliament-Funkadelic legend Michael Hampton on the secrets of funk guitar, and playing a 10-string BC Rich appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Fender has embarked on an ambitious redesign of its website, signalling an evolution from an online store and commerce destination to a “connected global digital ecosystem”.

Designed to “deepen Fender’s relationship with players and fans at every stage of their musical journey”, the new Fender.com introduces a number of bold new features aimed at making guitarists’ buying journeys more streamlined. 

They include Ask Fender, a new AI-powered chatbot-style tool which helps musicians find the perfect instrument for them via natural language prompts, as well as new sound demos that showcase the sound of Fender gear directly on Fender.com.

• READ MORE: Fender says it’s cancelled pickup hum forever with its potentially game-changing new Silent System

There’s also the new integration of My Fender and Fender Play to enhance the experience of customers beyond the point of purchase, as well as new “enhanced artist content”, via a planned five-show concert series with performances from Dinosaur Jr., Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, Steve Gunn, Thurston Moore Group, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Mike Kinsella of American Football and Snail Mail.

Ultimately, the newly relaunched Fender.com is built around six core pillars:

1. Discover: Brings together products, artists and stories to make it easier for players to discover what inspires them
2. Understand: Improved product education, navigation and comparison tools to ensure buying with confidence
3. Choose: New AI-powered Ask Fender tool – launching first in the US
4. Experience: Hear instruments via integrated sound demos
5. Buy: Simplified shopping journeys, improved product pages, streamlined checkout
6. Connect: CRM, My Fender, product registration, Fender Play and personalised content all under one roof

“This is about more than a new website. We’ve reimagined Fender.com, empowering players to shape their own journey. Moving beyond a traditional ecommerce platform, it’s a place where people can discover new gear, find what’s right for them and connect with the brand,” says Kelly Magrath, Fender Interim Chief Marketing Officer. 

“Fender.com is also a destination for fans and music lovers, with original stories and content that celebrates the artists, players and culture that make music so meaningful. Our new digital experience is designed to create a deeper connection with players and fans everywhere.”

“For 80 years, Fender has been part of the connection between musicians, fans, artists and the music culture that brings people together,” adds CEO Edward “Bud” Cole. 

“As the way people find inspiration continues to evolve, so does Fender. The new Fender.com brings that experience full circle, making it easier to find the right instrument, explore the artists and stories that inspire us, and connect with Fender in entirely new ways. It’s an invitation into our world, built for everyone who loves music.”

Check out the new Fender.com now…

The post Fender’s new website has an AI chatbot that helps you find your perfect guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

To some, purchasing an intentionally-aged guitar is a faux-pas. But whole you may think they’re corny, if you approach them with the right attitude, relic’d instruments can be great fun to play. And while you can pay top dollar for an ultra-authentic aged finish, maybe the answer to your aged guitar desires lies at the other end of the price spectrum.

Take, for example, the new aged JA-60 from Harley Benton. The JA-60 looks great out of the box, with a lightly-aged shell-pink finish with some classic offset vibes, at a very reasonable price for its spec-sheet: it’s loaded with Alnico pickups, a caramelised maple neck and high-quality hardware. Might a more affordable relic like this be what you’re looking for?

More than meets the eye

Cynics will tell you that relic’ing is just a cheesy aesthetic choice – but that’s not quite true. Features like an aged neck aren’t just for show – they can really change the playing experience, with a smoother, satin feel. And because of the pre-aged look, you won’t be ‘ruining’ the aesthetic of your shiny new guitar if you take a scotchbrite to it for an even more played-in feel.

But, one of the most appealing aspects of aged guitars – authentically or otherwise – is the stories they can tell. A high-end ageing job can be a fantastic work of art in itself – but if it set you back by half a year’s salary, you might still be trepidatious about adding your own wear and tear to the picture. A more affordable relic, on the other hand, may prove to be a more inviting canvas for your own story, leaving you free to play it how and where you want to.

A different attitude

In a lot of ways, relics and affordable instruments go hand in hand – they both encourage you to play them hard, and not to worry too much about messing them up. This unlocks a bit of a different attitude on stage or, indeed, when walking through doorways holding the guitar.

Even if you don’t have an ultra-heavy picking hand or intend to put a guitar through its paces, gigs are gigs – guitars get put down on messy stages, headstocks knock into mic stands, audience members throw various drinks and sharp objects at you – this is the sort of stuff you might not want to subject a high-end custom-shop guitar to – even if its a heavy relic.

Plus, for something like the JA-60, an offset that evokes some noise-rock heritage, you can really lean into some more aggressive and extended playing techniques without fear. You may feel a little less keen to kick a five-grand guitar across a stage or play it with a screwdriver…

The best thing a guitar can feel like is yours, and a played-in look and feel goes a long way to you bonding with an instrument. More affordable relics can be a really cool unique playing experience that lets the guitar itself start telling your story sooner. So next time you’re looking for an aged guitar, maybe try chopping a zero off the end of your budget – you might find yourself having a lot more fun.

Find out more at Thomann.

The post Is an affordable relic more fun? Exploring Harley Benton’s new Aged Series appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Plenty of acts in the punk/post-punk era had something to say about the generation that came before them, typically uncomplimentary. Not known for keeping his opinions close to his chest, Elvis Costello has revealed he’s kept that fire burning in a new interview, in which he expresses a general displeasure for Pink Floyd‘s music.

Speaking to The Guardian, Costello admits to a dislike of Pink Floyd, calling their music “dreary”. When quizzed about the song he can no longer listen to, the singer-songwriter reveals (and perhaps overshares) that he avoids “anything by Pink Floyd”, when asked about the song he would no longer listen to. “Never could, never will. I find their music dreary. I love the imagination and playfulness of See Emily Play, but after Syd Barrett left they just never appealed to me.”

• READ MORE: The time Cliff Burton broke up a massive brawl at a Metallica show with a hammer: “It was f**king legendary”
  

Costello’s hits started to arrive in the late 1970s, most notably with Oliver’s Army in February 1979. Coincidentally, Pink Floyd’s biggest hit single, Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2, also appeared in 1979, and both are essentially protest songs.

To Costello’s credit, his dislike of Pink Floyd is not a general rejection of that generation of music – Elvis Costello and the Attractions emerged in the post-punk/new wave era – as he’s far more generous about Jimi Hendrix. When quizzed about the first song he fell in love with, Costello cited The Wind Cries Mary, stating that it “came out in 1967 when I was 12. Hendrix was known for outgoing music, but I was a romantic soul, so the emotional side of his music led to that strain in my own writing.”

Costello is promoting a new release of his 1977 debut album, My Aim Is True, which was produced by Nick Lowe. While the original UK version of the album was issued without the song, the US release included Watching The Detectives, his first hit on both sides of the Atlantic. My Aim Is True – 49th Edition includes multiple versions of Watching The Detectives, including the original single.

In other news, Pink Floyd recently teamed up with the Royal Mint to launch a limited run of 18-carat gold picks worth nearly six grand apiece…

The post Elvis Costello calls this iconic ’70s rock band “dreary” and claims he can’t listen to anything by them appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Moshing is a staple part of most heavy metal shows. But for the most part, they remain a relatively peaceful affair. But that’s not to say they don’t sometimes descend into madness.

Back in 1984, a fledgling Metallica – James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Cliff Burton and Lars Ulrich, all in their early 20s at the time – made their first foray to Finland, and arrived in style with a raucous show at the Tarvashovi rock club near Lieto in the southwest. 150 punters had turned out to attend, unaware many of them would later take part in a massive brawl.

The fray was sparked by an altercation between the band’s lighting technician, Tony Zed and a Finnish schoolgirl, who was startled by Zed whooping loudly upon his entrance, and stood up and punched him in the face [via Metal Hammer]. Zed returned a blow, and chaos, understandably, erupted.

• READ MORE: “F**k you! I wanna talk to Gates!”: A drunk Van Halen fan once got so angry trying to build a fan site he rang up Microsoft and demanded to speak to Bill Gates

Local metalheads, upon hearing of the altercation, set out to find Zed and dish out vengeance, and a massive brawl ultimately took place between them and the band and crew.

“The whole fucking place was just this big scrap going on, and everybody was in the audience, all the band and crew. It was madness,” recalls the band’s sound engineer “Big” Mick Hughes.

And how do you bring a heap of brawling men under control. As Cliff Burton discovered, with the threat of escalation…

As the story goes, while on tour, the late bass player – who passed away in a tragic tour bus crash in 1986 – carried with him a hammer. “You never know when you might need it,” he once told a French customs officer who quizzed him on his need to carry the item upon entry into the country.

“When you might need it” turned out to be during a brawl in southwest Finland in ‘84, and Burton called upon James Hetfield’s guitar tech Andy Battye to fetch his weapon. Armed and ready, Burton entered the fray with the hammer above his head, warning all around to back off and calm down.

“The sight of Cliff slowly and surely wading into the insane mass of scrapping people with a hammer was fucking legendary,” Mick Hughes recalled.

Miraculously, it worked, and the fracas dissipated, allowing Metallica to play their set and end a fraught debut Finland show on a high.

Metallica have come a long way since those early days, and recently commence their highly anticipated residency at the Las Vegas Sphere. Check out a clip from some of their first shows at the mega-venue below:

The post The time Cliff Burton broke up a massive brawl at a Metallica show with a hammer: “It was f**king legendary” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

€299/£259/$349, crazytubecircuits.com

I’ve just spent half the morning staring at the Crazy Tube Circuits White Whale Junior, trying to decide whether it’s a big small pedal or a small big pedal. This combined spring reverb and analogue tremolo unit doesn’t look large enough for something with ‘Whale’ in its name, and it doesn’t look little enough to be a ‘Junior’. What it does look is… slightly weird.

• READ MORE: Source Audio Pathways review: “a pedal that sits comfortably between the worlds of modernity and tradition”

You see, this is a cut-down version of a very large pedal indeed – the White Whale V2 – and there’s only so much shrinking you can do when you’re getting your reverb from real springs. So what we end up with is something in the form factor of a compact stompbox, but one that’s been going hard on the protein supplements. That could still be a winning formula for a lot of players – as long as it sounds right.

What is it?

CTC describes the White Whale Junior as “possibly the world’s smallest fully analogue real spring reverb and amp-style tremolo” – and I’m not sure the ‘possibly’ is really necessary. For the record, it’s about 15cm (6in) long by 8cm (just over 3in) wide, and 5cm (2in) deep, not including the knobs and switches. You might be thinking that’s too small to hold a reverb tank, but the pedal is the tank, with the three-spring Accutronics assembly mounted to the baseplate.

Tremolo and reverb each get their own soft-touch bypass footswitch, and these have been pushed right to the edges of the enclosure to leave a lummox-proof gap between them. The control knobs are actually the same as on the full-size pedal: speed, intensity and output volume for the tremolo; dwell, mix, tone and output volume for the reverb.

The only thing you don’t get is the White Whale V2’s trio of toggle switches – so the effect order is fixed at reverb first, the tremolo only has one mode instead of three (a sort of optical/bias hybrid), and the reverb length is fixed. Mind you, seeing as the dwell knob controls the gain going to the springs, pushing it will naturally make the vibrations audible for longer.

Build quality and usability

The White Whale Junior looks like a brick and it feels like one too – I’ve never had an issue with a CTC pedal, and this one is as solidly built as ever despite the unorthodox stuff going on inside. And the spring unit is a miniature work of art, even if some purists might bemoan the fact that Accutronics reverbs are made in Korea these days. The pedal itself is of course built in Greece.

The control array all looks pretty straightforward except for the indulgence of having separate volume knobs for the tremolo and the reverb. Wouldn’t a single one have done? Or even none at all? Well, yes. But as we’ll see a few paragraphs further on, that would be much less fun…

Sounds

One of the joys of real springs is that they can be set a-jangling by any kind of movement or impact, and that’s very much the case here – ker-splash, cha-clang, pi-zoinggg! You might consider this good news if you’re a fan of Joey Santiago’s amp-whacking noise effects (or the ‘kick pad’ on the old Danelectro Spring King), but it does have a downside: an accidental knock to the side of the enclosure will make it resound like a nuclear explosion in a tin bath, and even tapping one of the footswitches too hard can set it off.

So this pedal needs to be treated with a certain amount of care and respect… at least until you plug in a guitar and get playing. Then you can really start enjoying yourself.

I’ve hardly mentioned the tremolo up to now, so let’s start with that. It’s supposed to be amp-like and it absolutely is, with a smoothly organic shape that’s instantly engaging. The speed and intensity controls give you all the scope you could wish for, covering everything from a lazy throb to a rapid-fire judder, but the secret weapon here is the volume knob.

Plenty of tremolo pedals let you bump up the output to compensate for a perceived drop in level, but this one goes much further, packing a proper clean boost that could be almost as useful as the trem itself.

Even better, the reverb circuit’s volume knob does exactly the same thing – so even if you set one or both effect mixes to zero, you’ve got a mighty tasty boost pedal offering three footswitchable settings: a slight lift on one side, a bigger one on the other, and a bandmate-frightening option with both at once.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the reverb. It’s full of the joys of springs: bold and bouncy, with lashings of spanky character, and easily balanced with the dry signal for just as much surf-ready splashiness as you need. The absence of a switch for changing the decay length really doesn’t feel like a major issue.

The dwell control lets you crank up the intensity if you want to, but the only disappointment is that this reverb doesn’t have a mellow setting. Turning down the tone knob will take the edge off, but even at minimum it sounds brighter and lighter than the full-size spring reverbs in my amps. Maybe a lack of tonal depth is the price you have to pay for smallness – but that won’t bother you if you’ve only come for the surfing.

Should I buy one?

If you’re tempted by the grown-up White Whale but have been put off by its pedalboard-hogging dimensions, this is probably the solution you’ve been waiting for. That is, as long as you don’t need harmonic tremolo, which the Junior doesn’t have – arguably the biggest compromise CTC has had to make here.

The only other reason to avoid this pedal is if you like your reverb on the warm and subdued side – for that, you might have to go digital (or much bigger). But step this way for zingy springs and sweet tremolo in one relatively manageable box.

Alternatives

The aforementioned White Whale V2 (€349/£299/$385) is a whopper, but not a whole lot more expensive than the Junior model – and it has a harmonic tremolo mode. The zany Gamechanger Audio Light Pedal (€379/£329/$399) uses springs for reverb, tremolo and more; but if you just want real spring reverb on its own, you do have an even smaller option in the Danelectro Spring King Junior ($199/£179).

The post Crazy Tube Circuits White Whale Junior review – real spring reverb and analogue tremolo in a compact pedal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ahh, technology. When it works it’s wonderful. But when it fails… Is there anything more annoying in the world?

If you’ve ever tried to build a website in the days pre-Wix, Squarespace and other all-in-one website builders you’ll attest to how much technology can have a tendency to ‘not play ball’.

A particularly devoted Van Halen fan once discovered this for himself while trying to create a fan website for the band, and became so frustrated with Microsoft’s FrontPage service that he ended up calling Microsoft, and ultimately demanding to speak to the head honcho, Bill Gates.

• READ MORE: Chibson pokes fun at the state of the guitar industry with new Cease & Desist knobs

In a story told by Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen speaking to The Register, the Van Halen fan – apparently getting progressively more drunk as the call wore on – vented his frustration with FrontPage, a now-discontinued web editor that let users create websites without having to write code.

“Man, was this person lit,” Chen says his colleague reported upon answering the call. “The sound of ice clinking in a glass was readily apparent, and as the call went on, the customer got more and more drunk.”

The caller apparently even ended up shouting: “You’re not even a real f**king fan of Van Halen!” before, at his wits end with the software, demanding to speak to none other than Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. “F**k you! I wanna talk to Gates!” He apparently said.

We’re highly doubtful the fan was ever transferred to Microsoft’s commander-in-chief, and have no idea if he was ever able to make the site work. But it’s a funny story nonetheless.

In other Van Halen news, David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen appeared at a recent event together and touched on their famously tumultuous relationship over the years. “There should be a star in front of three different clubs in Hollywood where we practiced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu over the setlist!” Roth said.

The post “F**k you! I wanna talk to Gates!”: A drunk Van Halen fan once got so angry trying to build a fan site he rang up Microsoft and demanded to speak to Bill Gates appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Chibson USA is hardly a company known for taking things seriously. In fact, the brand exists to poke fun at the weird and mockable that exists throughout the guitar world.

Some of its parody releases have included the Cease & Desist pedal – which celebrated Mickey Mouse’s entry into the public domain – the Humbuckle, a humbucker-inspired belt buckle that actually made it to market, and the Chibson Drive, a Google-inspired overdrive pedal made in collaboration with Acorn Amps, designed for the “data-driven results musicians dream of having”.

• READ MORE: Harmony Standard Series Comet with Tremolo review: “This is a cool guitar that allows you to do your thing without trying to look like anybody else”

Indeed, “cease and desist” is a term a little too familiar in the guitar industry, with some of its biggest players often pursuing legal action to stop competitors making guitars which they believe infringe upon its intellectual property.

Gibson, for example – the company after which Chibson is humorously named – has a long history of using legal avenues to protect its trademarks and intellectual property. After a long and bitter legal battle, just yesterday, it was announced that Dean’s parent company must pay Gibson $4 million in legal fees following a trademark loss. Also recently, Gibson issued a cease and desist to Donald Trump-backed Trump Guitars, saying it had infringed upon the classic Les Paul body shape design.

And a wordmap of most-used terms in the guitar world this year wouldn’t be complete without “cease and desist” front and centre in massive letters, amid an ongoing legal campaign from Fender to reclaim the Stratocaster body shape and stop other builders from making instruments that resemble it. So far, PRS, Yamaha, Thomann, Amazon, LsL Instruments and more have received cease and desist letters from Fender.

Yep, the guitar industry has been a whirlwind in 2026, so what could be better than a little comic relief from Chibson?

Originally conceived for Chibson’s social media pages, the new Cease & Desist knobs were thought up to “celebrate this new lawsuit era”. And they’re now a reality, available in a 3-pack of knobs to customise your guitar.

“If anything can be learned from lawsuits of the past, it’s that guitarists love a little frisky controversy and now with the release of Chibson’s Cease & Desist knobs, guitarists can support their favorite illegal guitar manufacturer while making a bold statement!” Chibson says.

In a not so subtle nod to Spinal Tap, the knobs have also been designed to go to 11. “These are one louder!” Chibson says, reference the iconic line from Nigel Tufnel.

Chibson’s Cease & Desist knobs are available to order now, priced at £16. Learn more at Chibson.

The post Chibson pokes fun at the state of the guitar industry with new Cease & Desist knobs appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$1,899/£1,899, harmony.co

Since its renaissance in 2018, the Harmony Guitars brand has earned a reputation for intriguing, retro-coded instruments that aim to offer a different personality to a crowded and often conservative guitar buying scene.

• READ MORE: Fender Vintera III Late ’50s Telecaster review: “this guitar has really surprised me”

While the brand has mainly concentrated on modernised tweaks of its original solidbody guitars over its first decade of rebirth, it’s arguably the esoteric semi-hollow designs – beloved by the likes of Dan Auerbach, Jack White, Courtney Barnett, and many others – that people associate with the brand.

Therefore, it made all the sense in the world when Harmony then introduced the H72-inspired Comet in 2021 (the brand also launched a full H72 reissue later that year, but that was made in Asia rather than Kalamazoo, Michigan), and very nice it was too. Now, however, the Comet is getting an overdue bit of wobble, courtesy of a Göldo LT1 tremolo – can it make a good guitar even better?

What is it?

The Comet is a double cutaway semi-hollow electric guitar – think of it as an inflatable SG with twin f-holes. With the exception of the rosewood fretboard the whole guitar body is made from genuine mahogany. So far, so traditional.

We have a cheeky 25” scale which sits nicely between the Gibson and Fender standards and makes for a guitar that balances well and feels comfortable across the player’s body. The neck has a gentle C carve, a 1 11/16” nut width and a 12” fretboard radius.

As with previous Harmony models, the electronics offered are also very retro-flavoured: a pair of custom gold foil humbuckers with single master cupcake knobbed volume and tone controls and a three-way selector switch which is set to the rear of the control array. Hidden in the volume control is a push-pull coil tap giving the player access to slinky single-coil content, which is very welcome.

The main attraction to this model, however, is the Göldo LT-1 vibrato (which Harmony insists on calling a tremolo) system. Göldo originally developed the Les Trem vibrato for its sister brand, Duesenberg, but in recent years the unit has become a popular aftermarket alternative to the mighty Bigsby for Gibson-accented instruments, while also seeing OEM use on a variety of other guitars, most notably Eastman’s Romeo and Juliet electrics. Needless to say, we’re expecting emotive wobbles rather than full dive-bombs here.

Finally, we have a sturdy MONO Vertigo gig bag (MONO and Harmony are both part of the same parent company) which will get you where you need to go and keep the guitar safe and sound.

Build quality & usability

Given that it’s almost unheard of to see a USA-made instrument hitting the market without a “2” at the start of its four-figure price tag these days, we could reasonably expect to see some compromises in fit and finish in one coming in at $100 under that bar. However, the quality of the build here is impressive – it’s clean, tidy and well-sorted throughout. It must be said that alone is a huge improvement on many of the original Harmony guitars churned out in the 1960s.

Despite the retro stylings, this does feel like a modern instrument – sleek, immediate and responsive. It is noticeably comfortable. The nitrocellulose finish is well applied, though the Midnight blue finish is definitely a choice. I would have expected something several shades closer to black for ‘Midnight’ personally, it’s all rather royal to my eyes, but that’s all down to personal taste.

Now, if you are expecting Bigsby-like action from the Göldo LT-1 system, you may be in for a surprise. While the Bigsby has a firmer response, the Göldo feels a lot more like the sort of floating vibrato more commonly found on Fender offsets.

Plenty will enjoy how it responds to the slightest touch, though I found it rather too easy to move accidentally – especially given how close the mechanism is to the bridge. Still, if you’re looking for something that allows for a lighter touch, it certainly does that.

What it also does, regrettably, is get in the way of the controls. The bar and the spring are right in the way of the volume control, so it’s much harder than you’d like to adjust on the fly, and it makes activating the coil-split downright fiddly.

Sounds

Let’s be real here – no one really knows what a gold foil pickup is supposed to sound like. Yes, we’ve seen them all over the place in recent years – although that fervour seems to be dying down a little now – but the fact that so many USA catalogue guitars and Japanese oddities came with starkly differing versions of these pickups has muddied the waters in terms of what to expect from a guitar toting these retro beauties.

Quite whether these pickups are ‘real’ gold foils then, is rather academic. What we have here are two very capable humbuckers with gold foil covers, which offer a pleasing variety of semi-hollow tones.

The neck pickup is warm and velvety with a smooth jazz voice. Smacking it around a bit with a Bigfoot Engineering King Fuzz reveals dark delights, and a quick flick of the tone knob gets us well into chaotic fuzz territory with added beeps and octaves.

The bridge pickup is snappy enough to get the point across. This is not a 335, but it does still growl when you dig in, even when clean. Slipping a Thorpy Bunker into the equation reveals enough aggression for retro-flavoured grunge and blues–rock at best, but it’s extremely unlikely that our cloven-hoofed brethren will be looking at this guitar to get their thrills.

Popping the push-pull volume knob gives me a voice that is closer to a Tele than a Strat – it’s up to you to decide whether that is what you’re looking for. It’s a useful enough sound within a full band mix, but it doesn’t carry like the full-fat humbuckers when it’s soloing time.

The vibrato system does work well in practice, and thanks to the locking tuners the whole experience is very solid no matter how irresponsible you get with that awkwardly placed bar.

Should I buy one?

Are you looking for someone outside the norm that still delivers in both sonics and build quality? Are you sick of sunbursts and Cadillac-inspired finishes? Fancy some vibrato action but in a guitar that can easily be converted to a stop tail if you like? How about a modern take on a design that goes back to the 1960s? Well, the Harmony Comet with Tremolo will give you all of this in a comfortable and engaging instrument.

This is a cool guitar – and let’s not pretend that isn’t important – one that allows you to do your thing without trying to look like anybody else. And as Wallace Stevens reminds us: “Things as they are, are changed upon the blue guitar.”

Alternatives

Looking for a bright blue semi on a budget? The non-trem Comet ($/£1,799) is a very good guitar without many of the usability issues the retro-fit trem has added. The Chinese-made Epiphone Emperor Swingster ($/£799) in Delta Blue Metallic features retro styling, a Bigsby and a pair of Retrobucker pickups. Eastman Guitars offer the strongest direct competition to the Comet with the Romeo LA ($1,979/£1,769). This Chinese-made guitar has build that can go toe to toe with most US makers, and even sports the same LT-1 trem. Feeling flush? The Duesenberg Starplayer TV Phonic model gives you semi-hollow maple construction, gold foil pickups and an own-brand version of the LT-1, while gently relieving you of $4,599

Editor’s note: Guitar.com and Harmony Guitars are both owned by the Caldecott Music Group.

The post Harmony Standard Series Comet with Tremolo review: “This is a cool guitar that allows you to do your thing without trying to look like anybody else” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Dean’s parent company Armadillo has been ordered to pay over $4 million of Gibson’s legal fees, after its loss in the dispute over infringing body shapes.

• READ MORE: Gibson denied opportunity to appeal court ruling that its ES body shape is generic – but the final terms of its legal victory over Dean have been laid down

Earlier this year, the final result of the retrial between Gibson and Armadillo was declared. The second jury broadly agreed with the first, finding that Armadillo had infringed on a number of Gibson’s body shapes, and that Gibson was overall the prevailing party. However, it was not a total victory for Gibson, as its ES shape was ruled to be generic.

But, despite that one trademark decision, the rest of the ruling was still very much levelled at Dean and Armadillo. This march ruling declared that Armadillo must foot a $170,000 bill for at least some of Gibson’s legal fees, with the judge further stating that “all costs of court spent or incurred in this cause are adjudged against Armadillo”. This figure was unclear at the time, but following recent filings from Gibson, it has now been calculated as a total of $4,046,444.05: $235,417.92 in litigation costs, and $3,811,026.13 in attorney’s fees. Armadillo has until next Friday (9 October) to pay.

The $4 million payout comes just months after Armadillo declared bankruptcy, something the current company leader Pamela Keris-Rubinson blamed on extensive alleged fraud by her son, former CEO and president of Armadillo Evan Rubinson. In a bankruptcy filing made in June, Pamela Keris-Rubinson alleged that Evan’s appointment as company leader (following the death of CEO Elliott Rubinson) saw a previously successful Armadillo Enterprises start to decline severely. The rest of the bankruptcy filing revealed that Armadillo holds assets within the range of $1 million and $10 million – but owes $50 million in liabilities.

This fraught financial position wasn’t helped by the initial result from its spar with Gibson – even before the retrial, Dean was ordered to stop selling some of its most popular designs back in 2022. The disruption to the business was somewhat felt by customers – sharper, non-infringing Vengeance models were announced in 2021, but would not make it into stores for another two years. Dean has also recently entered into a legal conflict with the estate of Dimebag Darrell, who have also launched a new guitar brand in collaboration with Dean’s namesake, Dean Zelinsky.

Overall the recent filing is, of course, not good news for an already embattled Dean and Armadillo. Given the disparity between the company’s assets and its liabilities, an order to pay another $4 million in legal fees makes its future even more uncertain.

The post Dean parent company must pay Gibson $4 million in legal fees after trademark loss appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Johnny Marr is known for his distinctive look as much as his guitar playing in The Smiths and as a solo artist, but it was no accident.

As he explains in a new interview with LIFEJACKET on YouTube, the Mancunian legend recalls how his distinctive mod-crop hairstyle was inspired by the “Beatle who never made it”, Stuart Sutcliffe, and how he chose his look to complement a specific guitar in his arsenal. 

That guitar was, of course, his famous Jetglo-finished 1982 Rickenbacker 330, bought at a Manchester guitar shop in ‘83 and used extensively across the Smiths’ self-titled debut album and on tour.

“One of my heroes at the time was Stuart Sutcliffe,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I really wanna look like Stu Sutcliffe.’ V-neck jumper, white polo neck, Ray-Bans. The shop I worked in, we were the first ones to sell the Wayfarers when they came back. So, I was like, ‘I’m having those.’

• READ MORE: Johnny Marr reacts to Andy Burnham playing the Smiths with Ukrainian soldiers: “It’s a victory for the guitar”

He continues: “The Smiths had the quiffs, the ‘ 50s thing. But because I was into Stu Sutcliffe, he combed his hair down and did the Beatle cut. So that’s where that came from. He looked even better when he combed his hair down.”

Marr remembers the first time he showed up to a Smiths photo shoot rocking his new look. “The rest of the band were like, ‘What have you done?’ I just rocked up and I had the bowl cut then. I thought it went better with the guitar. 

“I knew I was gonna get a Rickenbacker, so the bowl thing and the Rickenbacker. All of these obsessive little details came into play.”

Everyone’s influenced by someone, of course, and the Smiths quickly noticed following their rapid success that their fans were beginning to adopt their look themselves.

“The fans all dressed like different members of the band, which is kinda cool,” Marr continues. “So when you rocked up at Bangor University or Loughborough or somewhere like that, there’d be a bunch of kids outside, and you’d be like, ‘Okay, there’s Andy, there’s Johnny.’

“We’d look out the window of the bus and there’d be these kids dressed like us. And because we were kids ourselves, it’s kind of a bit of a buzz up there. Because you’re building a culture. You’re missing a trick if you think a band is just about the music. If you look at Fontaines D.C. now, they’ve got such a strong look. You’re always drawing from someone, it’s never entirely original.”

Marr’s ‘82 Jetglo Rickenbacker 330 found a new home last month, selling for a respectable £358,400 during a Christie’s auction which saw the Smiths guitarist sell off a bunch of guitars and other items from his personal collection.

The auction – which took place on 17 September and brought in £3,649,280 in total – also saw the sale of Marr’s Cherry Red 1960 Gibson ES-355, which sold for over £200,000, and the 1971 Martin D-28 acoustic used on Rusholme Ruffians, What She Said and Meat is Murder, which brought in £128,000.

The post “I thought it went better with the guitar!”: Johnny Marr reveals he chose his famous hairstyle to compliment this specific guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Positive Grid

Positive Grid’s Spark smart amp has been one of the most revolutionary new guitar products of the last decade. With its great sound and ease of use, it has completely changed what people expect from home practice amps, while the range has expanded to ensure that no matter what musical situation you might find yourself in, the Spark can help you sound great with minimal fuss. 

The latest addition to the range is the Spark Pedal, and it might be the most versatile and useful Spark product yet. With its compact pedal-based form factor, it has the potential to be a wonderfully useful bridge between home, stage and studio. These are our top five reasons why you need to give the Spark Pedal a try next time you’re in a guitar store. 

Its sounds and usability are as good as ever

The reason that so many guitar players have been charmed by the Spark ecosystem is how remarkably easy it is to build your own sounds, with rugged and clear multifunction knobs that make it easy to dial in sounds in a heartbeat. 

But that’s only part of it – the benchmark-setting companion smartphone app that controls all of the complicated stuff, you can easily build your signal chain in moments, hearing them in real time on the device. And what good sounds they are too – with 33 high-quality amp models and 43 effects using the same HD Tone engine as the Spark 2, you can run the gamut of all the classic amps and effects you’d ever need – and they all sound remarkably faithful and organic, whether running through a PA or headphones. 

It’s truly a Spark for any situation

While the original Spark was designed for relatively quiet home practice and recording, the various other models in the range have expanded the offering to cover any scenario – from full-on live performances and busking to bedroom headphone jamming. The Spark Pedal however, manages to be everything in one. 

Of course, if you want to play at home, you can either plug into the headphone jack and enjoy impressive sounds in cans, or you can run it into your PC speakers or a powered cab. If you’re recording? Well the built-in USB-C recording interface makes going direct a doddle, but there’s more. For gigging guitarists, the Spark Pedal might be the most versatile box yet – you can choose to run it direct into a powered cab or PA live, or you could bypass the amp models and use the onboard effects going into a traditional amp. Indeed, the Spark Pedal plays nicely at the end of your existing pedalboard, with stereo outs, an expression pedal jack, and even MIDI control to ensure that you can program any element of your performance to go off without a hitch. 

And with a built-in 60-second looper, the Spark Pedal is the perfect companion for solo guitarists looking to build their song from the ground up. And with simple and easy to understand controls for the looper built right into the Pedal’s three footswitches, you won’t have any trouble when it comes to overdubs and syncing your playing up just right. 

You don’t have to worry about powering it

If you’re trying to run light at a gig, or you’re performing at a location where plentiful supplies of power sockets are not forthcoming (and we’ve all been there) the Spark Pedal takes the stress out of your set-up. With its built-in rechargeable battery that offers up to 7 hours of playing time, you don’t need to fumble around looking for a power outlet – simply turn it on, plug it in, and you’re ready to rock. 

You can find your tone in a heartbeat

One of the most exciting features about the whole Spark ecosystem is how easy and fun it is to find the tone you’re looking for. Thanks to the busy folks on Positive Grid’s ToneCloud platform, there are now over 100,000 different user-created presets that you can search through, often ones aimed at nailing the tone of a specific song or artist. If you’re playing covers, this is an absolute godsend, and means that you can be as flexible in your set as your songbook allows. In addition to the onboard presets, if you don’t want to use something someone else has made, Spark AI’s Text to Tone feature lets the computer do the hard work, building a totally new tone from your prompt. 

It’s built for the road

The build quality and smart physical design of the Spark amps has always been a huge strength, and the Spark Pedal takes this and makes it even more useful. With its compact form factor, you can easily fit it in the pocket of a gigbag, but with a metal chassis and rugged metal footswitches, you don’t have to worry about it getting damaged. What’s more, a rubbery neoprene shell and rubber feet mean that you don’t have to worry about it moving around on stage too much either. 

Another reassuring thing about the Spark Pedal’s design is its stripped down control layout. There’s no LCD screen to worry about treading on here – with the deep editing done via the app, what’s on the pedal is designed for those moments where you need to make quick changes on the fly, and you can do those without worrying about how it’s going to mess up your sound if you get it wrong. 

With versatility, connectivity, portability and durability the Spark Pedal would be great anyway, but add all that to the great tones and ease of use that we’re already used to from Positive Grid, and you have a gigging guitarist’s new best friend.

Find out more about the Spark Pedal at Positive Grid. 

The post Five reasons why you need to try the new Spark Pedal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

With his work alongside some of rock’s most notable legacy acts including Deep Purple, Kansas and Dixie Dregs, Steve Morse has been instrumental in shaping the world of rock music and guitar as we know it today. His career has exclusively been in music, though. For a brief period in the late ‘80s, the guitarist served as a regional airline pilot.

A longtime pilot and aviation enthusiast, Morse started flying as a teenager, and bought his first plane for about $4,000 while attending the University of Miami in the ‘70s. And his passion for flying ultimately led to a six-month stint as an airline pilot. But what prompted such a radical career shift amid a hugely successful music career?

• READ MORE: “The jazz people were laughing when they saw me at the audition with my Telecaster”: Steve Morse reflects on his early guitar journey

As the 72-year-old guitarist explains to Guitar World’s Matt Owen in a new interview, it came down to a disillusionment with the music industry and the increasing demand from record labels and management for music to have MTV and mainstream TV appeal.

“[MTV] had developed into this thing. I was in the band Kansas, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna write a bunch of cool instrumental stuff like Kerry Livgren did… I thought that was gonna be what we were doing.

“But there was a big push from management and the record company: ‘We need a hit single that could play on VH1 or MTV.’ And so these platforms were kind of ruling the musical decisions that were happening. And it was happening everywhere. You saw heavy metal bands doing power ballads just to have a video on VH1.

“And I was just at the point in my life where I said, ‘You know what, I knew the music business would change. I didn’t know what it would change to.”

Morse ultimately left Kansas in the late ‘80s to work on his own music. “I’m gonna record whatever I wanna record,” he remembers thinking to himself. “So it just became, ‘I’m gonna work on my own music. I don’t care what it is. I ended up writing some of the best stuff I ever did for High Tension Wires [his 1989 solo album], because I just didn’t care anymore.”

“It’s not that I didn’t care about the music, I just didn’t care about whether the record company or the manager liked it or not. I just said, ‘I know some people will like this, and I will find where those people go and play gigs where they are.’ It was very liberating.”

It was during this stint as a solo artist that Morse decided to obtain his licence to be a commercial pilot. He ultimately qualified and worked as a pilot for an Atlanta-based regional airline for six months, but notes his short time in the position was down to it being a “really bad time to be a pilot”.

“They had so many pilots applying for the positions that they could do anything they wanted, and they did,” he remembers.

“They didn’t pay us anything to start with, so I was broke. I was booking gigs on my days off. I had to work Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Ever and New Years. And on the days in between I booked a solo gig so I could make enough money to keep the electricity on in my trailer.”

Morse ended up in a face-off with his bosses: “They drafted me, and said, ‘You have to come into work.’ I said, ‘I can’t, I have a gig.’ They said, ‘You have to.’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ They said, ‘Well you’re gonna have to quit.’ And I did.”

The decision to quit being a commercial pilot was influenced, however, after he received an invitation to perform with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“Gary Rossington had called me up right before that and invited me down to the Omni [venue in Atlanta, Georgia]. He was getting back together with Lynyrd Skynyrd… He said, ‘Morse, bring your guitar.’ And I get down there, they’re already on stage. The crew says, ‘Alright, go up now.’ And they said, ‘Alright we’re bringing out special guest Steve Morse!’”

Watch the full Guitar World interview below: 

The post “You saw heavy metal bands doing power ballads!”: Why MTV nearly made Steve Morse quit music for a VERY different career appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

There are few individuals who can definitively say that they have redefined the guitar industry, but Lloyd Baggs is one of them. Baggs has played a huge part in the evolution of amplified acoustic guitar sound over the last four decades. In fact, you can make a very strong case that, were it not for the innovation that Baggs and his counterpart Larry Fishman a few years earlier brought to the industry, the state of our live acoustic guitar sound might be a horribly unsatisfactory one.

• READ MORE: LR Baggs AEG-1 – is this the new best-sounding electro-acoustic on the market?

Since Baggs first transitioned from making carbon fibre guitars to designing his first pickup in his California garage in the mid-80s, Baggs has been on a quest to improve the sound we hear when we plug in an acoustic – whether that’s via the pickup, preamp, all the way through to building a game-changing instrument of his own, the AEG-1 in 2024.

Things are changing at LR Baggs, however. Earlier this month, the company announced that it would drop Lloyd’s initials from the company name and just be known as “Baggs” going forward. And then came the announcement of a partnership with Gibson on the new HiFi DNA pickup system that the man himself described as “a big leap forward” for acoustic pickups. So, what’s going on…?

First up, why did you decide to change the company name after such a long time?

“That’s some news! We just rolled out our new website, and it is LR free, except for the history and friendships. It’s Baggs moving forward mostly to honor the team. Our daughter joining the company as creative director is huge. She’s been working on this for about a year to really tell the story of who we are.”

Most companies would be nervous about changing their name with such a long legacy and brand value…

“The change in name is not a change in philosophy. I think it’s more externalising the philosophy that the Baggs company already had. Jenny [Lloyd’s daughter] is just telling our story better. And the last thing I ever wanted us to be doing is relaunching and rebranding. It’s like, the three Rs brand management are: rebrand, relaunch, and resign! [laughs]. It’s funny, a lot of people have been calling us Baggs forever and we started it when we brought out the AEG guitars. We’ve been wanting to do this for about 10 years.”

The partnership with Gibson is a really exciting one, how did that all come about?

“Well, Gibson is our longest abiding vendor. They’ve been with us longer than any other OEM customer we’ve ever had. We started back in ‘87 with the just steel-string, and we just kind of rolled it forward through all the various iterations of the company.

“They became our biggest customers during the Henry [Juszkiewicz, Gibson CEO until 2019] years. And with the new administration, Cesar really opened it up and empowered the great people at Gibson. So, fast-forward to today and Cesar was giving us credit for being in their guitars and talking about it. I guess about three years or so ago, we introduced the first HiFis.

“It took Gibson a while to figure out how good the original HiFis was, and they started loving it, and their artists were asking for them. It made its way onto some models, and Cesar [Gueikian, former Gibson CEO and current board member] fell in love with it. And I asked Gibson if they would have any interest in expanding our business relationship with the HiFis on an exclusive level. But unfortunately, the horse was already out of the barn and, and several other Gibson competitors were already adopting the HiFi on their guitars. So, Gibson threw it back over the fence and said, ‘Well, how’d you like to create something for us that we could have on our own for a while and it might even be better?’”

When the original HiFi pickups were launched, there was a real buzz around the industry because of both the design of it, but also sounds and the affordability of the system, but this is something a little different right?

“Well it’s still a bridgeplate transducer, and let me back up here a tiny bit into what a bridgeplate transducer offers. Placing a transducer on the bridgeplate puts it further from the strings and from the saddle. It’s got more body in it, and it just sounds better to me. Plus the bridgeplate’s just a nicer place to pick up energy from than right directly underneath the string.

“There have been many bridgeplate pickups in the market over the years, of course. Some of them were more successful than others, but some were really feedback prone. But this new HiFi DNA is something brand new.”

How so?

“It’s got an upgraded, lighter, more flexible transducer, and it’s more sensitive. The first thing we wanted to see was if we could improve the sound of the pickups themselves. And I believe we’ve made a big improvement there. The sensor is 25 per cent of the mass and about 20 per cent of the thickness of the original sensor.

“But I think the most significant part that really puts it over the top is that the original HiFi sensor A and sensor B are summed together and then sent into the preamp. Now think about two nice big mic diaphragms sitting next to each other for a vocalist, you’re recording in stereo, only instead of each mic diaphragm having its own preamp, you wire them together and you put them into one preamp.

“The HiFi DNA system treats it as though each microphone diaphragm has its own preamp built into the microphone. We created an individual, all discrete, class A, studio quality preamp for each pickup, and we voiced it for that specific location.

“They don’t share an EQ; they’re not quite the same in gain. Basically, each one is doing its job maintaining the purity of the signal from that voice on that side of the guitar versus the other. Each preamp is maintaining the purity of each signal and conditioning each signal to be more ideal before they’re summed together actively after the preamps. You’re able to mix those independently instead of as the original HiFi where both were summed into one.”

And this is going to roll out to the whole Gibson range?

“They’re putting them in a lot of guitars right now – the Hummingbird, Dove and J-45 from the Modern Collection, and the SJ-200, Songwriter, L-00 and LG-2 in the Original Collection. It’s going to be a Gibson exclusive for three years.”

Hearing it in action, it seems to offer a very natural sound without the muddy bass or high-end brittleness that acoustic pickups can deliver.

“I believe this is the best thing that we have ever done, and what I’ve been trying to do since my experience of Ry Cooder swearing at his rack in the early days. Those were painful days of acoustic amplification, and the goal was to make the process of playing an acoustic guitar rewarding and enjoyable. It’s been our career goal to make that a reality. And I believe that the HiFi DNA is the closest that we have come to that goal.”

The LR Baggs HiFi DNA pickup system is available exclusively from Gibson, and can be bought as an upgrade kit for $299. Find out more at gibson.com.

The post Lloyd Baggs on developing a revolutionary new acoustic pickup with Gibson, and why it’s the fulfillment of a lifetime of searching for better acoustic sound appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Calling all Iron Maiden fans – you can now get your hands on the signature Iron Maiden x Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal that launched earlier this year at The NAMM Show for less.

Now reduced to £169 at Thomann as part of its Guitar Day deals for a limited time only, fans and collectors alike can own the crucial wah tone used across the band’s landmark Killers album from 1981, which is certified Gold in both the US and UK.

• READ MORE: The best picks for electric guitar and acoustic guitar, from Jim Dunlop, Fender, Ibanez and more

The pedal has a rather cool design on its face, featuring none other than the band’s skeletal mascot, Eddie, taken right from the Killers album artwork. It also features the Killers title in the same font it appears in on the album’s cover, while the band’s logo runs along the side of the unit.

At the time of its release earlier this year, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett was one of the first artists to get his hands on the pedal. He shared a video to Instagram opening the pedal, in which you can also get a glimpse of its packaging – also worthy of display.

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Beneath its Iron Maiden design and fittingly metal exterior, the pedal itself is essentially the classic GCB95 Cry Baby Standard Wah. Find out more and get a better look in the short video below:

Iron Maiden were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, five whole decades after their debut. But interestingly, the band haven’t felt like making much of a fuss about it.

Speaking to Metal Hammer in June, bassist Steve Harris and frontman Bruce Dickinson made it clear that while they’re grateful for the recognition, it’s never been something they’ve spent much time thinking about.

Harris said, “It’s never really bothered me one way or the other, because awards aren’t what we do this for. But in a weird way I’m glad it’s happened so the Americans will stop banging on about it. To me, if you get offered something, you say, ‘Thank you very much.’ But did I lose sleep over getting it or not getting it? No.”

Shop the Iron Maiden CryBaby pedal at Thomann now.

The post Unlock the crucial wah tone of Iron Maiden’s Killers album with this discounted signature Cry Baby pedal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s the stuff dreams are made of. Just months ago, 16-year-old Rattikarn Amloy was a relatively unknown guitar player. But following an audition on the 2026 season of America’s Got Talent – during which she performed a blistering cover of Cranberries classic Zombie – her life changed forever.

Performing as Nene Royal, the guitar sensation – who originally hails from Phuket, Thailand – stormed her way through the competition, dazzling audiences and the nation with covers of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun, The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army and Muse’s Hysteria, and even joining Linkin Park themselves for a performance of their track The Emptiness Machine, before going on to win the entire show last week.

Yep, Amloy is just 16 years of age and she’s already achieved success most musicians only dream of. But she’s just getting started. In fact, her whirlwind story continues, as she’s been invited to open for one of metal’s biggest bands, Avenged Sevenfold, for their upcoming Singapore show on 13 October.

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In the past few months, she’s gained considerable experience performing to large audiences – not to mention millions viewing from home. But opening for A7X, one of her favourite bands? The pressure’s on…

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Speaking to Metal Hammer in a new interview, the guitarist explains how she landed the gig to open for Avenged. “The managers in Singapore text me: ‘Oh, I hear you wanna play with Avenged Sevenfold?’” she recalls.

“I was like, ‘Yeah!’ They said, ‘Well, Avenged Sevenfold want you to support them.’ They asked for me, ‘Do you wanna do it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah!’”

As for her feelings in the runup to the show, she confesses she’s both excited and scared in equal measure.

“It’s my first time playing support to Avenged Sevenfold, so I was like, ‘I’m scared!’ And I’m going to play in front of how many? 40,000!”

Elsewhere in the interview, the Royal reveals she had no idea she was going to perform with Linkin Park before doing so during the AGT final. “I was practising on my own. I thought I was going to play alone,” she says. “But when I practised, a cameraman just came in, and then Linkin Park came in. I was like, ‘What’s going on?!’ I don’t know if Linkin Park are just gonna come and take a video, some shot, that’s all. But actually, [they] say, ‘We’re gonna join together onstage,’ and I was like, ‘There’s no way!’ My dream’s come true.”

You can catch Nene Royal opening for Avenged Sevenfold on 13 October at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Tickets are available via the Avenged Sevenfold website.

The post “I’m going to play in front of how many? 40,000?!”: America’s Got Talent winner Nene Royal on being invited to open for Avenged Sevenfold appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.