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December 2025
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41 articles
- December 3
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- EVH Gear turns its “holy grail” Eddie Van Halen amp Hypersonic with an all-digital 5150III 6L6 modelling combo that weighs a whopping 16kg less than its tube-driven equivalent
- "It's the most influential drum machine ever created – and has likely featured on more records than any other": A history of Roland drum machines, from the TR-77 to the TR-1000
- “When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blops of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree”: Adrian Belew on how he and Seymour Duncan made one of the first relic’d guitars
- “We’re in an era of conformity in electronic music – very few people get celebrated for doing anything outside of it”: How TEED went back to basics with a bedroom set-up and a borrowed synth for third album Always With Me
- “People were going, ‘Hey man, I saw you’re on that Avril Lavigne record.’ I went, ‘Nah, I didn’t play on that.’ They go, ‘Your name’s on it!’”: The drummer who’s played on 400 albums has made one of his own – full of one-minute tracks
- “The ABRAMS100 packs a whallop and it’s perfect for pedals!”: Electro-Harmonix presents 100-watts of serious solid-state power in a compact guitar amp head weighing just 2.5lbs
- “It taps into yearning for a place beyond, a place of love, for me to speak my mind and be myself”: Flea teases his first solo album with a seven-minute jazz rave single
- "When culture is allowed to move freely, people discover that their common ground is far wider than the borders that divide them": Level 42's Mark King, Jools Holland and Dame Evelyn Glennie join alliance to remove barriers to UK-EU touring
- December 2
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- Fender and Jackson celebrate 50 years of Iron Maiden with limited run signature models – including a Masterbuilt Dave Murray Strat that’ll leave you losfer words
- “They said, ‘Well, that's all we've got, but if you could round it off and complete it, that would be great”: Greg Lester on how he used a Gibson Chet Atkins to turn a keyboard melody into a classic nylon-string guitar solo in the Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1
- “I just walked off the stage. I wanted Jake to have his moment. And Jake nailed it”: Nuno Bettencourt on why he handed Shot Of The Dark over to Jake E Lee at Ozzy's farewell show
- "I've always thought that plagiarism is creative": How The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds showed the world that sampling could be an art form
- Brian Wampler just reimagined a bona fide modern classic with The Compulsion Drive – but is this OCD-inspired dirt pedal an overdrive, distortion or both?
- "This isn't just about Jorja. It's bigger than one artist or one song”: Jorja Smith’s label claims royalties on AI track, allegedly trained on her voice
- “He was speaking through his eyes. He just gives us a nod. He mastered the art of communicating without using words”: Jon Batiste describes his “gloriously awkward exchange" with Prince at one of his legendary after-hours jam sessions
- “If I’d had a producer and I was simply an artist, I don’t think they would have had the patience to listen to what I wanted to do”: We catch up with the man who rewired the charts in 1979 - and is now blowing up on TikTok - with Pop Muzik
- "We stand for love over hate, hope over fear... join us and be a part of it": Paloma Faith, Fontaines D.C., Brian Eno and Kneecap join campaign group Together Against The Far Right
- "All the way through, I never stopped the tape once. He'd just go through the whole song and say ‘give me another track'. We did that nine times and then he said ‘I’m outta here’": Steve Porcaro on the two unreleased songs he wrote with Michael Jackson
- Still on the hunt for a bargain? These 58 Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for musicians are still live - but they'll be gone soon
- “It’s the biggest song in the set and it wasn’t a single. It wasn’t anywhere close to being a single”: The classic track that defines John Mayer as a guitarist and a songwriter
- If you were wondering if the deals aren't as good this year, then this saving on Ableton Push 3 Standalone is all the proof you need
- December 1
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- Get the most out of your pedals and save £422 on one of the best pedal platform amps I've played - the Victory V40 Duchess Deluxe MKII Head
- Quick! You still have time to grab the Yamaha PSS-A50 for only $59 at Thomann! I love the Refaces, but this is the best Cyber Week ‘couch keyboard’ deal I’ve seen
- Who needs the £10,499 Gibson Dave Grohl signature DG-335 when the excellent Epiphone version is just £777 today?
- Jeff Beck's 1954 Oxblood Les Paul is the most expensive Les Paul of all time. This Epiphone version comes in at a fraction of the price, and with a further 20% off at Thomann, it may be an irresistible deal for the Jeff Beck aficionado
- “We built Paradise to make any guitarist feel like they’re playing in a dream studio": Universal Audio releases Paradise Guitar Studio – and it's 25% off for Cyber Monday
- I’ve tested 13 studio headphones this year and my top choice just landed a serious Cyber Monday deal - save $110 on the Sennheiser HD 490 Pro
- “Got many requests for this one from a few years back”: Aphex Twin uploads two previously-unheard tracks to his Soundcloud page
- “A clear winner”: The best Cyber Monday TV streaming deals for music fans, ranked
- I love the Elektron Syntakt, mostly because it’s like a Rytm, but cheaper, and it’s got one of the biggest savings I’ve seen this Cyber Monday
- 17 outstanding plugins that you can still get for under $50 this Cyber Monday - but be quick, the sales end soon!
- “We are devastated - Thom’s infection has made it impossible for him to sing”: Radiohead postpone two of their four Copenhagen dates
- It’s an open secret that the MXR FOD Drive is the Dookie Drive circuit under a different name, and for just $99 you can get the tones from Green Day’s best album on your pedalboard this Cyber Monday
- “What we’ll do is maybe just take an acoustic, get the song done, upload it and say, ‘OK, I want to hear this song as a country song’ or ‘I want to hear this song as a rock and roll song”: Teddy Swims admits he’s used AI on his own material
- I switched to Ableton Live from Logic Pro, and I've never looked back. If you want to do the same, you can still score 25% off in the Sweetwater Cyber Week sale
- "Years of unprofessional behaviour from people above us led to our decision”: Six ex-members of Cradle Of Filth sue frontman Dani Filth
- “That was truly one of the most fun things I've ever done”: David Ellefson joins a band of over 1,000 musicians to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne
- “My main influences? Love, anger, depression and Zeppelin": It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is coming to HBO Max later this week, and this is your last chance to subscribe for just $2.99 a month
- “I said to her, ‘I think people love you and root for you more than you know or believe’”: We speak with Lily Allen’s co-songwriter and executive producer about the storm of creativity that led to West End Girl
- “Miles Davis and all those guys would just record right to the vinyl. And I was fascinated by that. So I got that feeling in my stomach – butterflies”: Why Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry loves to record with no safety net
- “He wanted it to sound tinny, so he literally put the mic in a tin. That’s the way he would chase ideas”: When Justin Hawkins and The Darkness teamed up with Queen’s eccentric producer, strange things happened with champagne buckets, panpipes and more