Where do we start with a month in gear when the new releases just keep on whizzing by, with July 2026 opening to the Gold Crackle lightning of Brandon Ellis’ 27-fret Jackson Kelly, and the month’s release cycle keeping its foot to the floor with signature guitar refreshes for Jim Root’s Telecaster and one really cool Epiphone Hummingbird in Cobra Burst for Eric Church?

And it kept coming. This was the month in which Guild relaunched the S-300 in style, presenting us with a $799 offset guitar with incalculable vibe, meanwhile Gibson gave the 1971 Flying Medallion a VOS Custom Shop reissue, Gretsch brought the CVT to the Streamliner Series, and Harley Benton threw a T-style party – and it finally launched its Aged Series, offering hand-relic’d electric guitars and basses for under 250 bucks.

What a time to be alive. Live, love, laugh, and so say all of us...

Then there were the pedals. Wowee! There was the MXR Textures, a “Granular Synth Engine” for adventurist players, or the Walrus Audio Lüm, a “Texture Engine” – two pedals we have to A/B at some point…

But then Electro-Harmonix gave its Big Muff Pi 2 the Deluxe treatment, and (we’re burying the lede here), Strymon unveiled the TimeLine MX, quite possibly the most advanced digital delay pedal we have seen.

Incredible scenes.

Oh, and it was the month Marshall launched the Super Lead with Billie Joe Armstrong’s infamous “Dookie” mod. The ultimate punk rock amp? Quite possibly the ultimate modded Marshall, period, full-stop, and good luck playing that at volume at home, with neighbours and pets within earshot of its matching 4x12 in baby blue Tolex.

That’s a lot to be getting on with. But there was more – and here we are going to take a closer look at some of the other highlights from another bumper month for new gear.

And we're going to kick things off with a look at a pair of guitar amps that showcase the best in amp design from both sides of the Atlantic.

Orange Baby Terror

Say hello to the Baby Terror. You can throw it into a backpack. Unboxed, it only weighs 1.5kg. But don’t write off Orange’s latest micro-sized lunchbox amp – it’s a serious option for the home, rehearsal room or the stage.

We’ve got 20-watts of solid-state power, an onboard effects loop and a balanced XLR output for playing without a speaker cabinet or going direct when recording. And there is so much tone-shaping capability here, not least with a 3-band EQ plus global Presence control, plus a Tubby switch for giving your clean tones extra low-end.

There is also a second footswitchable volume for solo boosts, and it comes with a gig bag. £199/$249 makes it pretty easy on your pocketbook, too.

See Orange Amps for more details

Bad Cat Mod Shop Cub 15 tube combo

Another stunning tube amp from one of the most-hallowed US boutique amp brands, the Cub 15 is another Vox-inspired doozie based upon the late Mark Sampson’s original 1999 design, only this is smaller, more lightweight, with its EL84 power stage revoiced to help cut through a mix.

Despite its single-channel platform, footswitchable gain stages, dual master volumes and superlative EQ’ing make this one versatile combo, complete with onboard reverb and a buffered effects loop.

It ain’t cheap at £/$2,199 but it’s pretty special. Find out more at Bad Cat.

Gibson Les Paul Custom Long Scale and 100th Anniversary Limited Edition Acoustics

At first blush, this latest addition to the Les Paul lineup looks like any other Custom. It is finished in Ebony, has the usual aesthetic appointments that dress the famous single-cut in its tux and have it ready for the awards season. Lovely.

But pick it up and you’ll feel something a little off. Not off, as in wrong, but the string tension is a little different, your hand position adjusted slightly, because Gibson has extended the range of this Custom to a Fender-esque 25.5” scale. T

his is not unheard of on a Gibson instrument; the Victory has a 25.5” scale, as does the SJ-200. But on a Les Paul it’s pretty cool, especially if you like a drop tuning or prefer the response from the longer scale.

It’s priced £5,049/$5,999.

This year marks 100 years of Gibson’s flat-top production and we have seen the launch of the Century Collection rolling the clock back to golden era specs.

But this month the Custom Shop got in on the act with a limited edition run of the J-45, SJ-200, Hummingbird, Dove and Advanced Jumbo, all finished in Cremona Burst, abalone rosettes and LR Baggs electronics come as standard, and each model is limited to just 100 units worldwide. Prices start from £3,949/$4,499

See Gibson for more.

Shergold Telstar 12-string

The Shergold Telstar is one of the most perennially underrated guitars on the market. We, too, are sometimes guilty of forgetting about it, that is until you see one of these slightly off-kilter T-styles, pick it up and play it.

Designed by Patrick James Eggle, featuring a pair of toaster-style FilterSonic humbuckers, a fully adjustable 12-saddle bridge, this 12-string version offers change from 500 bucks and is a compelling option for anyone looking for some electric jangle on the side.

Could be up there with the Guild S-300 as one of the sleeper hits of the year.

See Shergold for more.

Greer Amps Mori or the Vemuram Las Lunas Distortion – why not both?

Okay, here’s a question. Well, here’s two. The first: What do you get if you cross a Klon with a Tube Screamer but then serve it up in a simple three-knob drive box, painted green with the Japanese word for forest written on the front in white Kanji? You get the Mori, of course.

These are small-batch boutique overdrive pedals and the excitement you just felt there at the prospect of some TS-K-style hybrid with ample volume and a handsome enclosure means that, yes, these are sold out – but Greer Amps is making more of these. So head over to Greer Amps for more. It’s priced $249.

The second question is whether your Mount Rushmore of tone is more late ‘70s, early ‘80s hard rock, the molten tube heat of the LA sound. In which case, the Vemuram Las Lunas is worth further investigation. At £399/$415, it’ll cost you.

The Tokyo-based guitar effects pedal specialist’s builds do not come cheap. But with an amp-in-a-box control surface offering a two-channel setup, 3-band EQ, Las Lunas sounds ridiculously good. See Vemuram for more details.

Two quite different dirt pedals, doing quite different jobs, but both could add some gourmet heat to your sound.

Mooer Audio Meta FX

We’ve got another effects pedal here, but this is from the other side of the technological divide, an avowedly digital stompbox described by Mooer Audio as a “multi-firmware stereo effects platform”. Which is to say that it can be configured to handle multitudes: reverb, delay, modulation and more, with features such as infinite sustain and a Kill Dry mode that turns your signal 100 per cent wet.

The Reverb, Delay and Modulation firmware modules are all interchangeable. Just download whichever one you want to use, et voila, you have an all-singing, all-dancing reverb, delay or modulation station, with USB, MIDI connectivity, presets, all kinds of magic, and all for £149/$169.

See Mooer Audio for more.

IK Multimedia Tonex Brown Panel signature collection

It’s summer, 2026, and the Tonex ecosystem just keeps on growing, with the latest amp modelling software package focusing on those hard-to-find transitional Fender amps that came between the Tweed and Black Panel eras.

Again, these have been modelled using IK Multimedia’s proprietary AI modelling tech, and features original speaker options (JBL, Oxford and Jensen) and 80 Tone Models all in.

This bundle is available now at the introductory price of €79, regular price €99. See IK Multimedia for more.

PRS Custom 24 Birds Of A Feather Limited Edition

This has been a big month for PRS Guitars. It appointed its first ever CEO, with Jack Higginbotham graduating from COO. He’s come a long way in his 41 years with the company, starting out in the woodshop and working in every department across the company. It has unveiled the limited run Custom 24 Birds of a Feather model that exemplifies how its Private Stock models inform its US-made Core series lineup.

It is named for the fretboard inlays which were designed by the brand’s director of manufacturing and head of Private Stock, Paul Miles.

“I wanted to design an inlay that was simple and easy to read from across the room or on a stage but was also uniquely PRS," says Miles. "I have always been fascinated with inlay work and PRS has afforded me the opportunity to see the evolution from hand cut shell to intricate CNC work. For me, this was a new way of looking at inlay design, using the woods to create movement and space.”

These are priced £6,849/$6,850. Find out more at PRS Guitars.

Epiphone Billie Joe Armstrong

There is something quintessentially authentic about Epiphone’s signature take on the Gibson Les Paul Junior.

This has always been a guitar of simple pleasures, one slab of mahogany, a mahogany neck, one P-90 pickup and no binding anywhere because it had to be affordable – and here we are, with the Green Day frontman’s own version, his John Hancock on the back of the headstock, retailing for under 500 bucks.

You will know the one in white. This one is in Radical Red, launched in time to go with that red hot but Baby Blue Marshall of his. It has the Epiphone P-90 PRO, the same spec as its sibling, and it also comes with a signature hard-shell guitar case that's lined with faux leopard print fur. At this price it is a steal. See Epiphone for more details.

Harley Benton CLO-65SE Slate Blue

I’ll be honest, I had to do a double take when the email came in with this one. As soon as the picture rendered of this non-cutaway orchestra-sized acoustic electric guitar, it was uncanny – this looked the spit of the John Mayer 20th Anniversary signature models that Martin launched in 2023.

There was this Slate Blue ‘burst acoustic, with the exuberant reflections of its abalone rosette, the natural stain on the back, sides and neck (not to mention the open-gear tuners), a dead ringer for the Gray Sunburst of Mayer’s model.

Upon closer inspection, okay, there’s no getting them mixed up – the CLO-65SE has layered sapele on the back and sides, we’ve got Guatemalan and Indian rosewood on the Martin – but but for an acoustic retailing for 150 bucks, i.e. priced for beginners, this is a truly compelling alternative. And, best of all, it has a solid spruce top. Incredible.

Check it out at Harley Benton. Buy it at Thomann.

Is your guitar drifting out of tune too often? Does your playing suddenly feel random and loose? Plagued with mis-hit notes and poor lifeless tone? Then it could be time to treat your guitar (and your ears) to a new set of strings.

Get ready for seven simple steps to guitar-playing greatness.

When should you change your strings

There’s a whole bunch of tell-tale signs that let you know when it’s time for new strings.

1. Broken strings

Oops. You broke a string. It might be that you knowingly picked it or bent that particular string too far, a bit of over-zealous tuning peg-turning, or it could be a sign of invasive wear and tear all across your guitar.

Either way, you need to replace it and only you will know if it’s a simple matter of swapping out that single string or if it’s high time for an entirely new fresh set.

If you’ve been playing regularly and it’s been six months since you last replaced your strings, take that broken string as an indicator that it’s time to change all six. ‘Upgrade’ one string and chances are you won’t feel or hear the difference. Change ALL your strings and you’re certain to feel (and hear) the benefit.

2. Worn or discoloured strings

Compare the strings on your guitar with a new set (or new-er set on another guitar). If you can SEE a difference then it’s time to change your strings. You may see such symptoms as visible rust, discolouration or corrosion.

Alternatively the strings may feel rough or gritty under your fingers rather than smooth. Putting up with rough strings will not only have a detrimental effect on your ability to play but will produce a dull and lifeless sound.

Also, watch out for a build up of dark gunk under your strings, particularly around the frets. Be under no illusion. This is dead skin and oil from your fingers and it’s a real tone killer (and hygiene turn-off)…

And – believe it or not – you can smell when your strings are worn. If your old strings have a smell then they’re on their way out. New strings smell clean and new because they are exactly that. Let your nose judge!

Smelly, dull, rough strings? Time for a restringing (and a good clean up too).

3. You can hear the difference

New strings will help your guitar sing again. If your guitar is sounding less bright and less ‘lively’ then it’s time for a replacement. Fresh strings have a brighter sound and will sustain notes longer.

Also they will stay in tune for longer (once they’re past their initial wearing-in phase). So if your guitar won’t stay in tune or goes out of tune quickly after tuning it might be that your strings can no longer take the strain.

Alternatively if individual notes sound slightly off even when the open strings are in tune, then your intonation is starting to drift. Tuned up but fretted notes are out of tune? Time for new strings.

4. Maybe it’s just time…

If you want to make sure your guitar is always firing on all cylinders then it could simply be a matter of marking when you last changed your strings on the calendar and then strictly sticking to a string ‘time limit’. I.e. Don’t wait until the signs above start to surface and ruin your performance. Take the pro-active approach instead.

Professional players will consider a new set of strings before every performance or recording session. Regular players should get a new set every three months minimum. While casual players should replace their strings every six months.

Don’t wait to sound bad. Do something about it.

You will need…

A guitar multi-tool will be handy for getting the broken string parts out of the machinehead posts. Such things are available for a few dollars/pounds from your favourite online retailer or trusty local store.

A good guitar multi-tool will combine various sized hex and Allen keys for adjusting the truss rod and bridge saddles, screwdrivers for pickup height adjustment, tightening strap buttons, and turning tuning machine screws

You might even get a string action gauge for measuring the height of strings above the fretboard. And a string winder (either solo or as part of a multi-tool) and a string cutter will come in very handy as well.

You'll also need new guitar strings too, of course.

Picking strings can be quite bewildering for newcomers, but don't worry - your friendly local guitar store will be delighted to serve you with the correct strings. They come in different gauges (thicknesses), which will affect how the guitar sounds and how the strings feel to play.

Generally speaking, most electric guitars will be strung with .009 or .010 gauge strings, which is the thickness of the top (thinnest) E string. The more you play, the more you'll understand string gauges and get a feel for which gauge works for your fingers.

Once you've got all your bits and pieces together, you can get on with the business of re-stringing.

How to restring a guitar: Seven simple steps

Of course, it looks hard but then, with so many moving and delicate mechanical, physical parts, it was always going to. But the good news is that it’s easier than you think and – as discussed above – the benefits are well worth the expense and hassle.

Let’s get started.

Step One: Remove the old strings

Start by loosening your first string using the tuning pegs until it’s completely slack. Once a string is slack you’ll be able to unwind it fully and remove it. Do this one string at a time rather than slackening and then removing all six at once as gently and methodically relieving the tension on the neck is better for your guitar.

On an acoustic guitar, you'll also need to remove the bridge pins (the small pegs holding the strings at the bridge end). If you have a string winder they often have a notch specifically designed for this. Pull them out carefully and don’t lose them as they can be fiddly to keep track of.

On an electric guitar, the strings either feed through the bridge from the back of the body or sit in individual saddles. Have a look at how the old string is attached before you remove it so you know what to do with the new one.

If in doubt, take photos on your phone before you begin, and refer back to them when putting in the new string. If your new string sits in the same place as the old string then you’re on the right track.

Step Two: Clean your fretboard

With the strings off, you’re afforded unfettered access to your guitar’s fretboard. Thus it’s a perfect opportunity to give it a much needed clean.

First, wipe down the fretboard with a slightly damp cloth then focus in on the frets and give each a good rub either with that cloth or brush with an old toothbrush to help dislodge any long-term ‘gunk’.

Maple fretboards should only ever be polished with that slightly damp microfiber cloth, but unfinished woods like Rosewood or Ebony, can come up like-new with a little Naphtha (aka lighter fluid) to remove grime, followed up with a specialized conditioner.

There are all kinds of cleaners and potions to try here and, again, your local guitar shop will be happy to take a look and give you tips and products here.

Step Three: Attach the new string(s) at the bridge

Feed the new string through the bridge in the same way that the old one was attached. On an acoustic, this means inserting the ball end of the string into the hole and replacing the bridge pin firmly on top to hold it in place. Give the string a gentle tug to make sure that it's seated properly.

On an electric, feed the string through the bridge or tailpiece according to your guitar's design.

Step Four: Thread the string through the tuning peg

Pull the string up the neck and thread it through the hole in the appropriate tuning peg. Leave a little slack — about five to eight centimetres of extra string beyond the peg. This gives you enough to wind around the peg several times, which helps keep the string stable and in tune.

Bend the string slightly at the peg to stop it slipping while you start winding.

Step Five: Wind the string

Turn the tuning peg to wind the string on, making sure the string winds neatly onto the peg. Each successive wrap should sit below the previous one. This isn't just for show, having a neat wrap all in a line will help keep the string in tune too.

You’ll find that a string winder makes this process much faster and easier. Wind until the string is roughly in tune.

Step Six: Trim away the excess

Once the string is wound on and roughly up to pitch, use your string cutters to snip off the excess wire close to the tuning peg. Leave just a small amount – about five millimetres. Loose ends left too long can scratch your hand or rattle against the headstock as you play, ruining your recording sessions.

Step Seven: Repeat and tune up

Repeat the process for each string, then tune the whole guitar using your tuner. We’ve an entire article on how to tune your guitar right here.

New strings stretch considerably in the first few days, so don’t be surprised when you have to retune a few days later. You can speed up this settling process by gently stretching each string as you’re placing it on the guitar. Grip it in the middle and pull it away from the fretboard a few times to stretch it, then retune.

And enjoy…

Remember, the first time you restring your guitar will be the hardest. It’s a process that gets easier with practice. And if it’s been a few years before you’ve changed your strings, perhaps don’t leave it so long next time?

Your guitar and your playing will only ever thank you for it!

Epiphone has unveiled a limited edition signature Hummingbird for country star Eric Church, based on his 2016 super-limited edition Gibson Custom Shop model that reimagined square-shouldered dreadnought in Cobra Burst.

The Eric Church Hummingbird Dark is one sweet acoustic guitar. It arrives in the Inspired By Gibson lineup, retailing for a very approachable £699/$799 street, with that price including a hardshell guitar case with Church’s John Hancock on it.

The pickguard is typically exquisite, a Carolina Blue refresh of the classic Hummingbird design. It has a solid European spruce top, layered mahogany on the back and sides. And for your open-mic pleasure, there’s also a Fishman Sonicore acoustic guitar pickup system. We’ll drink to that.

And helpfully, Church and the Gibson higher-uppers have already thought of this, and have teamed up for a collaborative whiskeys, Tonewood Vol 1 and Tonewood: The Collective, made by Church’s own booze brand, Whiskey JYPSI.

This is MusicRadar, so we should keep things on topic and rattle through some of the key features on this guitar without further delay, but Tonewood Vol 1 is an expression of special interest to any guitar player with a penchant for the amber nectar, because it was finished in offcuts of toasted maple from the Gibson factory.

It is available direct from Whiskey JYPSI and comes with Gibson glasses. Tonewood: The Collective, will be released more widely via select retailers, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Gibson Gives charitable foundation.

The Gibson Gazette has been similarly charitable in knocking these back to provide the tasting notes. It’s tough work but someone’s got to do it.

Expect “mature oak, vanilla, toasted grain, warm baking spice, honey, polished hardwood, caramelised sugar, roasted nuts, seasoned oak, and a long, structured finish” with the Tonewood Vol 1, with the Tonewood: The Collective “a lighter, more lifted character, with vanilla, graham cracker, light caramel, toasted grain, and a clean finish that fades to gentle smoke”. Don't be drowning it in cola, folks.

And perhaps a hint of nitrocellulose in the aroma? Well, not with the guitar at least. It’s finished in high-gloss poly. You’ll find Church’s signature on the back of the headstock.

It has a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard, inlaid with split parallelograms, matching rosewood bridge in the narrow ‘belly down’ style. The neck sounds like it might be comfortable, leisurely affair – a thick C profile that should fill the hand nicely for chords. It joins the body with a tapered dovetail joint. The nut is plastic, 43mm wide. The guitar’s scale is 24.76”.

And that’s that. The Inspired By Gibson Eric Church Hummingbird Dark is out now. Head over to Epiphone for more details. Or if the sun is sufficiently over the yard arm, to Whiskey JYPSI. Bottom’s up!

What is it?

There aren’t many who don’t know at least a little about who Ed Sheeran is. With his own album sales totalling over 200 million, and having written/collaborated with the likes of Taylor Swift, One Direction and Justin Bieber, he is one of the most recognisable musicians on the planet.

He is also a pretty handy acoustic guitar player and has delved into the world of gear with products such as the Sheeran by Lowden guitars and the Sheeran Looper. Now it’s acoustic amplification that is getting his attention, this time in the form of a collaboration with Orange with the Orange Outlowd range of acoustic amplifiers.

The range features 3W, 60W and 100W amps named the ES3, ES60 and ES100 respectively. It's the diminutive ES3 that I have in front of me for review - an amp with very few bells and whistles, built to facilitate home practice with your acoustic guitar.

You may be thinking, as I am, what is the point here? Acoustic guitars are, for the most part, more than loud enough to use at home without an amp, and generally speaking sound great on their own too. So, why would anyone need an acoustic amp designed only for home practice?

Well, let's keep an open mind and find out.

Specs

• Launch price: $199 | £149 | €179
• Type: Acoustic amplifier combo
• Origin: China
• Output: 3 Watts RMS
• Speaker: 4” full range
• Channels: 1
• Controls: Volume, Reverb, Shape
• Connectivity: ¼” input, Bluetooth connectivity
• Power: Rechargeable battery, charged via USB-C
• Weight: 3.18Lbs/1.44kg
• Dimensions: 165x145x125mm/6.5”x5.71”x4.92”
• Contact: Orange

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

For something that measures only 165x145x125mm, the amp is surprisingly weighty. At 1.44kg, it's not problematic, but instead gives me confidence that the ES3 is built to last. The three controls and single button (for Bluetooth) follow suit and feel robust in use, as does the leather strap that the amp comes with. So far, so good.

The amp sports the classic bright orange finish associated with the brand, and it’s an aesthetic that pleasingly oozes the iconic nature of Orange Amplifiers.

The thick sides are finished in a rather bougie feeling tolex, and the tough metal grille on the front makes the unit feel like a real amp. I point this out because a lot of products of this size can come across a little toy-like, but not the ES3. It feels like a high-end, miniature version of a quality amp, rather than a budget version of something nicer.

Lastly, looking at the bottom of the unit, there are thick rubber feet to stop the amp from sliding about a desk. Alongside those feet is a join in the Tolex that could perhaps be a little neater; however, this is definitely within nitpick territory. What we have is a little amp that is very well put together, and perhaps importantly, won't look out of place in your front room.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

In use, this amp is almost as easy as it gets. Three controls: Volume, Reverb, and Shape. Volume is self-explanatory, and Reverb adjusts the overall reverb level without cluttering ther mind with more in-depth parameters. This works as long as those parameters have been calibrated well, which, in this case, they have.

Shape is a little interesting, as Orange says that turning clockwise reduces mid-range frequencies and brightens the sound, whilst turning anti-clockwise adds mid-range and reduces brightness. Honestly though, most are just going to approach this like a tone control.

I say ‘almost as easy as it gets’, because indicating what each control does, are Orange’s trademark icons rather than text. These are a long-established part of the Orange brand, but, to be blunt, I'm not a fan.

There is a whole suite of these icons across the gear in the Orange catalogue. Some are easy to figure out; others use things such as sine waves that beginners won't understand or abstract symbols that are annoying in the, admittedly small, amount of thought they take to translate.

I know that it saves space and gives the amps something that is aesthetically interesting, but other brands have no problem using words or abbreviations to get the function across in similarly tight spaces. Let’s just do that.

On the ES3, the speaker icon above the Volume control is pretty clearly indicative of the control's function, but I’d argue that the use of a spring icon to indicate the reverb may not be obvious to some beginners, and the shape used to indicate the Shape control even less so.

Having said that, it won't take long for anyone to figure it out, and if you do find yourself stuck, a quick gander at the manual will see it concisely explained to you.

Beyond its function as an amp, it also operates as a Bluetooth speaker and is dead easy to connect to a device. Press the Bluetooth button, find it in your chosen device's list of Bluetooth connections, connect, and go. Handy for playing along with tracks, or as a standalone way to listen to music.

The ES3’s battery-powered nature makes the amp super portable, which, combined with the carry handle, gives it a massive tick in the convenience column. I didn't need to recharge the battery at all during the multiple hours of testing, so there is plenty of juice here too.

And that is it. Very few 'extra features', but as a result it’s a pretty straightforward piece of gear.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Testing with my Taylor 214CE and my Faith Venus, the general tone is surprisingly full for a 4-inch speaker. As expected with an amp of this size, there is not a ton of low end, but there is enough to keep the guitar sounding big when strumming those open chords.

With the Shape control set in the middle, it is a relatively full sound, with a nice midrange body that I find is often lacking in acoustic guitar amplifiers. The high end does not sound too ‘plinky’ at this setting, which is impressive for such a small thing.

Turning that shape control clockwise does exactly as earlier described, but I find that it quickly gets into the aforementioned plucky, thin high-end thing often associated with acoustic pickups.

Similarly, turning anti-clockwise quickly gets too dark, resulting in a loss of definition. So, for best results, keep that shape control in the middle and make only small adjustments to suit your guitar. In my case, I left the control untouched for my Taylor's impressive ES1 system, but turned slightly anti-clockwise to roll off some highs for the Faith's Shadow pickup.

The reverb is the highlight for me, as it is a lovely, bright-sounding hall-like 'verb that wraps the guitar in a very rewarding sense of space. Even at the higher settings, which is more than most will ever need, the reverb manages to stay out of the way of the dry signal. Impressive, and a lot of fun.

Furthermore, it’s the reverb that answers my earlier question - what is the point here? The amp starts to distort the signal on both guitars with the Volume control around 75%, meaning that while it’s enough to get over the acoustic sound of the guitar, it's not enough for anything more than home practice.

As acoustic guitars project plenty of volume on their own, arguably we don’t need an acoustic amp at home unless it’s adding something inspiring or extra to the tone. And that’s where the reverb comes in.

I can see many finding the space that it adds to be an inspiring sound to play with, leading some to get more out of their home acoustic sessions. For those people, this amp will be worth it.

As a Bluetooth speaker, it again does an impressive job for its size. With my Google Pixel 9 Pro on full volume and streaming from Spotify, the speaker begins to distort with around 75% of the volume dialled in. Enough to fill a small room for casual listening, or a solo jam session.

Just like with the guitars, there is not an excess of low end here, but there is more than you would expect given that it’s a small 4-inch speaker. I also felt that, in this context, the midrange sounds a little scooped - hyping the hi-fi listening experience a bit too far. But, again, impressive for its size and a pleasant listening experience.

Verdict

From my own experience and a previous life as a guitar teacher, it didn’t take long before I concluded that the biggest hurdle for a lot of players is in the gap between the thought of playing and the action of doing so.

Whether you are getting some practice in or just playing for fun (I’d argue the latter is more important than the former), that gap usually involves some form of setup, for example, digging out the leads and amplifier for an electric guitar. One of the joys of an acoustic guitar is that it amplifies itself; you can just pick it up and go, therefore minimising that gap.

Plugging an acoustic guitar into an amp at home removes this benefit.

But the other side of the coin is that a good sound is always more motivating and inspiring to use. The Orange Outlowd ES3 undeniably improves the experience through its excellent reverb, and although it’s only loud enough for home use, it’s still loud enough to increase the volume of the acoustic you are using. As the simple creatures most of us are, more volume usually equals more fun.

So, whether this amp is worth it for you will depend on how much of a kick you get out of that fantastic reverb and the little extra volume. Some will find it pointless; others will find it to be a brilliant addition to their home setup.

MusicRadar verdict: The Orange Outlowd ES3 feels like a quality bit of gear that is built to last. It’s surprisingly full-sounding for a small amplifier, and does a good job moonlighting as a Bluetooth Speaker. The highlight is the lovely reverb, pleasingly adding some space to your home sessions. Yes, we don’t need to amplify our acoustic guitars for home use, but this amp makes it fun to do so.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Thomann

Guitar Center

Orange

The world of guitar gear is always turning but June 2026 was an especially febrile time for hot new gear. It all began with Positive Grid unveiling an AI-enabled combo that let players design “any tone imaginable” by text or even image prompt, and did not let up.

Orange Amps teamed up with Ed Sheeran for a trio of signature guitar amps designed for acoustic players to play live, and to play live anywhere. On the street, in a coffee shop, onstage, at the beach, whatever. It was a range that included “the ultimate busking amp” and was designed especially for younger players and those getting started, and maybe those players were playing Epiphone’s super-affordable version of the Gibson Hummingbird.

This was the month in which the Fender Tone Master Pro was upgraded, Eventide brought us the next-gen H9 Harmonizer, Harley Benton expanded its cheap electric guitar lineup with an $185 shred machine with a roasted maple neck, and PRS Guitars made a signature model for an anime character. There was a Gibson Victory with a Floyd, Alex Lifeson’s Epiphone ES-355, and Charvel unveiled an all-new US-made range.

JHS Pedals found a use for the circuit it released by mistake with its original Dumble-inspired NOTADÜMBLE DIY pedal kit, launching the Fumble as an $89 clean boost. The Kansas-based brand is primed to release the NOTADÜMBLE v2 DIY pedal kits. This features the officially corrected circuit, and those wanting to get their hands on the first batch (6,000 units all in) will have to wait now until July 16. Mark the date in your calendars and take yourself to the JHS Pedals website for the launch.

And the gear kept coming... There were gold Kramers, ES-330s from the Gibson Custom Shop, and Meris being Meris and throwing the kitchen sink at lo-fi signal processing with the Ottobit X.

Here, in time for pay day, we are going to try to make sense of it all, gathering all the big releases, the sleeper hits and the essential gear that was unveiled this June in one place.

We will finish with Fender's big half-year drop. There is a lot to get into there. The question is where to begin?

Perhaps that has to be with the freshest drop, and the news that Darkglass Electronics has teamed up with Sweetwater and Andertons for an Anagram amp modeller and multi-effects that is made especially for guitarists.

Amp modellers and effects

Darkglass Electronics Anagram Guitar Essentials 

Bass guitar tone got a whole lot more interesting in April 2025 after Darkglass Electronics unveiled its all-powerful Anagram Bass workstation with a hexacore DSP engine, Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) integration, heaps of preamps and effects and full control of your signal chain. In other words, all mod cons.

Well, the nature of these things is such that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and teaming up with retail giants Sweetwater and Andertons, Darkglass is now offering an Anagram designed for guitarists.

It’s still the same hardware, refinished in black, and it ships pre-loaded the Guitar Essentials plugin. And it’s still very powerful, capable of running up to 24 simultaneous effects blocks.

It’s priced £999/$1,299 and available now via Sweetwater and Andertons.

Electro-Harmonix Percolator Harmonic Saturator 

The iconic NYC stompbox brand has had a busy summer. Earlier this month it added the Pico Shimmer to its DSP lineup, and then there was the Percolator, a fuzz-drive inspired by the Interfax Harmonic Percolator favoured by the late Steve Albini.

This shares all the gnarly character of the original, has a pleasingly punk aesthetic too, but it comes with a few helpful tweaks, including a bias control and a secondary clipping mode. Given that June also saw the release of EarthQuaker Devices’ HalfLife, the latest octave fuzz in its collab with drone metal pioneers Sunn O))), this has been a good month for stompboxes for underground pursuits.

Percolator Harmonic Saturator is priced $99. Find out more at Electro-Harmonix.

Cornerstone Centurio Dual Overdrive

While our eyes are trained at our pedalboards, let’s run take a look at one of the more boutique additions to your local guitar store’s pedal cabinet. It’s from Cornerstone, it’s called the Centurio, and yes, it is another Klon-inspired overdrive pedal.

But wait. This isn’t just a straight-up Klone. Cornerstone presents it as a two-channel drive box, one a faithful clone circuit, the other a Hot mode with this second – and fully independent – gain and volume stage.

There’s also a Clip dial to give you the “full range of Klon clipping behaviour”, from the high-headroom open response of the early Klons to the tighter and more compressed of more modern units, and all points in between.

The Centurio is priced €299. Find out more over at Cornerstone.

MXR Wylde Audio Zakk Sabbath Overdrive

All the same sounds of Zakk Wylde’s signature MXR overdrive, with the same Volume, Tone and Gain control surface, now in a limited edition Black Sabbath-inspired black and purple paint job, a la the Black Label Society frontman’s Zakk Sabbath tribute band.

Find out more at Jim Dunlop.

Solar Chug Capo

Solar’s first digital guitar effects pedal is a pitch-shifting capo pedal that can move your guitar’s pitch up or down an octave, one semitone at a time, effectively acting as an actual guitar capo does as you move your tuning up, and as super low-latency pitch shifter as you tune down. Some might ask why you don’t just tune down, but this is easier, and this is a thousand times easier if you are playing a guitar with a Floyd Rose.

Find out more at Solar Guitars.

Signature guitars, pickups and plugins

Jackson Pro Series Rob Cavestany Signature

Jackson has a long history of co-creating with its artist roster. It’s a story that takes it back to the beginning, when Randy Rhoads had some ideas for an asymmetrical V shape and that led to the creation of iconic metal guitars of all time got created.

But it wasn’t just Rhoads. Rob Cavestany of seminal Bay Area thrashers Death Angel did something similar, jotting a sketch of this X-shaped electric on a napkin and Jackson just being nuts enough to put this thing into production.

This year sees the neck-thru beast refreshed in Snow White with black hardware, and it has never looked more classic. This will look great under stage lights. Key details include the EMG 81 at the bridge, EMG HA at the neck, the Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibrato, and the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard that typifies contemporary Jackson playability.

Find out more at Jackson.

PRS Guitars Jon Jourdan Limited

The touring guitarist for Mammoth wanted an electric guitar with no passengers. No features that he didn’t need. No Floyd Rose, no onboard Kaoss Pad, not even a second pickup. And that’s what makes his limited run (just 200 units!) signature model with PRS such an refreshing proposition.

This has a PRS Metal humbucker at the bridge, a wraparound bridge/tailpiece, and just a single volume control. Note the position of the volume. It’s where the tone pot would ordinarily be, so that Jourdan doesn’t knock it out of place in the heat of battle. It’s available in Platinum and Gunmetal metallic finishes. Each instrument comes with a signed backplate. Head over to PRS Guitars for more.

Godin 25th Anniversary Steve Stevens Signature Model ACS Multiac Guitar

The nylon-string acoustic electric hybrid guitar has been having a moment in recent years, with Polyphia’s Tim Henson and Scott LePage introducing it to a new generation of players with Playing God.

But Godin and Steve Stevens have been up to this sort of mischief now for 25 years, and have marked the occasion with this Mutliac model with a purple quilted maple top. It’s not just a cosmetic glow-up. We’ve got upgraded electronics, too.

The Billy Idol guitarist says Godin’s Multiac platform changed the way he thought about guitar.

“I wanted to merge flamenco, rock, and electronic music into something cinematic and modern,” he says. “And Godin was the first company that truly understood that vision.”

Find out more at Godin.

Seymour Duncan The Philip Sayce “Big Daddy” Stratocaster Pickup Set

We like the idea of Sayce’s signature electric guitar pickup doing premium Stratocaster tone but making it super juicy, oversized, with a tonal footprint that conjures images of a burly fella in a blue leotard throwing grown men about the ring. But the changes are that, growing up in Canada, Sayce will not have spent his childhood watching ‘80s wrestling on UK TV.

Big Daddy, as it happens, is in reference to Sayce's ’63 Sunburst Strat, a guitar that almost makes Rory Gallagher’s number one look pristine, and Seymour Duncan have duly reverse engineered its pickups so you can give your Strat a tonal makeover.

It wasn’t easy. The original bridge pickup had been worn over the years, its wire making direct contact with the Alnico V magnet. How could Seymour Duncan recreate this?

Well, the solution was a micro-capacitor soldered to the back of the pickup. “This gently shifts the resonant peak, producing the sweet treble response needed to round out this balanced set,” says the brand.

The first 630 sets come aged by the Custom Shop. Find out more at Seymour Duncan.

MixWave Yvette Young signature plugin

Yvette Young and MixWave team up for to offer the signature tones from her live rig in a guitar plugin – what’s not to like?

There are few players today with a better ear for how delay, modulation, reverb and compression can come together to create this ambient, super-textured world for the electric guitar to inhabit.

Sometimes Young’s tone can sound of the earth, organic and elemental, other times not of this world. Available now at an introductory price of $99.

See MixWave for more.

Epiphone, Orangewood, Blackstar and Two Notes

Epiphone expands Inspired By Gibson Custom Series

There is not great mystery to the Inspired By Gibson Custom range. It is what it says it is, high-end Epiphone guitars designed in partnership with Gibson’s Custom Shop, featuring Gibson USA pickups, premium appointments such as CTS pots and long neck tenons… All serious stuff, and unsurprisingly it has been a big hit for Epiphone.

New models include an IGC Les Paul Custom in Sedona Burst and Amethyst Burst, a 1963 Firebird I Reissue in Cherry, and a 1959 Les Paul Standard in Poppy Burst, while the 1960 Les Paul Special Double Cut Reissue is now available in TV Yellow, Cherry Red, and TV White.

See Epiphone for more details.

Orangewood Melrose Retro

Okay, so Orangewood is offering one slope-shouldered dreadnought, a grand concert and a parlour acoustic guitar, all with solid tops, all with LR Baggs acoustic guitar pickups, with prices starting from $545 for the Nash Retro Live parlor, $695 for the Dylan and Brooklyn. Those prices also include a gig bag. This does not sound like a bad deal.

We especially like the look of that LR Baggs M1 soundhole pickup on the Dylan and Brooklyn models. Orangewood says these are not time machine instruments per se. The goal was to create an accessible acoustic that today’s player wants to play.

“We weren’t interested in nostalgia for its own sake, or in adding modern features that overcomplicate the instrument,” says Eddie Park, co-founder of Orangewood. “The goal was something more grounded – taking familiar forms, refining what already works, and pairing them with the features today’s players actually need.”

Find out more at Orangewood.

Blackstar Fly 3 High Gain

You all know the Fly 3. It’s the tiny, take-anywhere Blackstar combo, and there have been all kinds of different versions – the Jared James Nichols and Bones signature models, the Bluetooth model, the Shell Pink model and so on.

Now for something a little meaner. Enter, the Fly 3 High Gain, the tiny, take-anywhere Blackstar combo with a newly designed Nitro channel for heavy metal freaks on the move. At £85/$99, it’s an affordable little practice option, and just the thing if you want to want to impress your office colleagues with a performance of Morbid Angel's Chapel Of Ghouls arranged for solo guitar. And which office wouldn't welcome that?

In other Blackstar news, this month it expanded its partnership with Tone3000 to bring Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) tech capture support to its Beam Solo headphone amp, allowing players to access the massive online open-source library of tones and upload NAM A2 Lite captures to their device.

See Blackstar for more.

Two Notes Genome 2

Two Notes Gemone 2.0 is an upgrade but the word upgrade feels a little insufficient. This expansion of its entire digital rig building ecosystem presents players with some truly cutting-edge tools for the studio, such as the onboard AmpNet tech.

Not only can you create static NAM captures of your hardware amplifiers, you can create multi-parametric captures, giving you a full digital presentation of how your amp sounds across irs range.

The fully integrated amp, effects and virtual cab engine is now also now available on iPad. For more details head over to Two Notes.

Fender goes big: Highlights from the Big F's big summer gear drop

No player left behind was the message from the Big F as it announced its mega-drop for the summer, an announcement that welcomed the return of Squier’s much-loved Paranormal Series, the debut of its limited run high-performance Fusion Series and a lot more.

There was fresh colour options for the American Vintage II and Player II lineups, new California Deluxe acoustics, a ’62 Deluxe tube amp combo that is bound to thrill purists, 75th Anniversary models for the Telecaster and Precision Bass respectively, and the intriguing prospect of American Professional Classic series Teles and Strats featuring Fender’s all-new Silent System – an all-passive system (no batteries included, nor are they needed) that removes the hum from single-coil pickups.

Now, take a breath, because there was more… There was a refresh for the Santa Ana Overdrive, Bends Compressor, The Pelt fuzz and Pugilist Distortion, with v2 delivering a heap of new features.

We particularly like the sound of the Octave/Chaos footswitch on The Pelt, which allows you to apply a traditional octave-up effect or this Chaos mode, which is described as an "assymetrical octave for sputtering artefacts".

Where do you start with all that?

MusicRadar was lucky enough to get hands-on with some of these guitars already, and it’s hard to look past the Paranormal Series’ return as the big headline from the drop, because these guitars are, well, kinda nuts.

That’s part of the appeal. It’s the world’s biggest guitar manufacturer creating strange hybrids, the electric guitar as a cryptid.

Take the Paranormal Strat Deluxe. This is a Strat like no other, it swaps out the boring old three single-coil configuration for a humbucker at the bridge and, wait, a Tele neck pickup at the neck, and you can split the humbucker via a push/pull on the pots. It’s a strange fish but with familiar elements; we have the the 2-point tremolo, the larger ‘70s style headstock, the amp-style knobs, and that might all feel a little familiar, but then look at that pickguard.

The Paranormal Troublemaker Telecaster Deluxe Bigsby is even more off-menu. The B50 Bigsby speaks to the aftermarket souped-up vibe, but this is a Tele with dual humbuckers, both of which are splittable, with an Adjust-o-matic bridge and the block inlays, there’s almost a Fender Custom Shop vibe with regards to how out there the specs are.

Then you have the Coronado headstock, the short Gibson-esque 24.75” scale length and the split-coils of the Electric VI offset, an the Paranormal Baritone Jazzmaster, a dual-humbucker bruiser with a 27” scale length that ships in Oxblood and Sea Foam Green. All of this is too cool, and prices start from just £449/$479.

In a sense, Fender’s Player Fusion lineup is just as radical, perhaps borrowing from Charvel for a limited edition hotrodded series that have 12” radius ebony fingerboards and black hardware as standard. The Strat comes with an HSS configuration and a 2-point vibrato.

It’s a little reminiscent of the Iron Maiden signature models for Dave Murray and Janick Gers. But for the Tele if you want a full-on shred machine; it has the Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibrato and a pair of high-output humbuckers as as standard, and it comes in Black and Aura Metallic.

Bassists are not forgotten about either. The dual-humbucker Fusion Precision Bass looks like a solid candidate for rock and metal players, while rounding out the series is the Player Fusion Jaguar Baritone Special.

At first blush, this feels like a specialist instrument exclusively for low-end riffing (it ships tuned B to B and has a 27” scale), but the ‘spin-a-split’ wiring means that those humbuckers are gradually turn into single-coils as you turn them, putting twang on the table, jangle too, and with an onboard TBX Tone circuit it could be a deceptively versatile instrument.

Okay, those looking for more traditional fare can find it in an expanded American Vintage II lineup, which brings you more colour options, as does the Player II Series, whose Strat looks neat in Rallye Orange (with a Rosewood ‘board) and Cactus Gray (with maple).

The Telecaster and Precision Bass both turn 75 this year, so we have more anniversary models to mark the occasion.

The pick of the litter for us had to be the American Vintage II 1951 Nocaster which is a tribute to the brief moment in guitar history when the decals were snipped off the headstock as Fender had to find a different name for the Broadcaster. Famously, Gretsch had the ‘Broadkaster’ name already registered. Telecaster? Well, it had a ring to it. It did not bad. Seventy-five years later, still going strong.

The 75th Anniversary Player II Baritone Telecaster continues what has been a strong year for extended range Fender, while the regular Player II anniversary Tele and Precision Bass bring us some classic finishes (Aztec Gold FTW).

These – and especially that '51 Nocaster – are sure to sound good through the '62 Deluxe, which even without onboard reverb still sounds quintessentially Fender, with a brilliant tremolo circuit.

Before we finish up, we should save a word for the revised California Series acoustics. Prices start from £259/$319, solid Sitka spruce tops are complemented by laminated mahogany back and sides, X-pattern bracing, with Fender kitting these out with Fishman's CD-1 acoustic pickup system. And they come in all shapes and sizes, with or without cutaways, and there's the California Deluxe Kingman Bass CE as well too.

See Fender for more details.

The red “Meat Is Murder” Les Paul, the 1982 Rickenbacker that is heard all over The Smiths’ debut album, his Roger Griffin Green Burst T-style… Johnny Marr is selling them all off at auction.

And there is more. The 1960 Cherry Red Gibson ES-355 that Sire Records founder, Seymour Stein, famously bought him, the 1971 Martin D-28 that Marr used to write Cemetry Gates and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, when he wanted to add more acoustic guitars to The Smiths sound during the Queen Is Dead era, all of these and more will be going under the hammer at Christie’s, in London, on September 17.

Approximately 80 acoustic and electric guitars will be heading to the auction block – along with a consignment of guitar amps from Marr’s personal collection.

The question is how can Marr bear to part with these guitars, some of which were used only recently to track his forthcoming solo album, The Age Of Everything, which is out on October 2 via BMG. There is no small measure of sentimental value here.

The Griffin Tele was an engagement gift from his wife. But Marr says it’s time. Having documented them in Marr’s Guitars, had them photographed and told their stories, he felt maybe it was time they found new owners.

“The book turned out to be a cathartic experience and when it was time for these beautiful instruments to go back into storage, I couldn’t imagine them being put away and left unplayed,” says Marr. “It’s bittersweet to be parting with these guitars but I want them to go to new homes and new people who will love them as much as I have. I hope they bring as much joy, inspiration and fun – and new songs – as they have given me.”

We’re not auctioneers, but some of the estimates on these seem a little low given their cultural significance and how the market for such guitars has exploded in recent years. Marr’s Bigsby-modded 1984 Gibson Les Paul Standard is estimated to go for £80,000 to £100,000, and this is arguably the Johnny Marr guitar – there has not been another guitar in his collection that has been used more widely.

He bought it in time for the recording sessions for the Smith’s sophomore album, Meat Is Murder. As the lot notes, it was used on The Headmaster Ritual, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore and What She Said. It was played during The Smiths’ final show, in Marr’s time with The The and the Cribs. Bernard Sumner even borrowed it to track New Order’s Regret.

Last year, Gibson unveiled a super limited edition Gibson Garage exclusive ‘84 Les Paul Standard with Bigsby in tribute to it, with each guitar signed by Marr and proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Amelia Walker, Christie’s Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections, London, says Johnny Marr and The Smiths “changed the face of modern guitar music”.

“When Johnny Marr co-founded The Smiths at the age of 18, the music world had never before heard such a unique and melodic style of guitar playing, nor such original and fresh sounding songs,” says Walker. “His far-reaching influence on countless guitar-driven bands such as Oasis, The Stone Roses, and Suede cannot be overstated.”

And of course this would not be a Johnny Marr guitar auction without a Fender Jaguar.

His 2017 signature Jag in Comet Sparkle is the pick of the bunch – and for Fender custom finish fans, it’s pretty special.

Its paint job was developed especially for his 2018 solo album, Call The Comet.

Like all of these guitars, it has a bit of history. This was used to record the James Bond Theme with Hans Zimmer for No Time To Die – and Marr’s Oscar-winning collab with Billie Eilish.

These guitars will go to New York from June 25 to July 1st, before heading to auction in London on September 17.

Head over to Christie’s for more information.

Epiphone has unveiled the Hummingbird Tribute, a beginner-friendly version of one of Gibson’s most famous acoustic guitars, offering it in three classic finishes, and at an entry-level price of $229.

This is big news for any acoustic player on a budget, or someone looking for their first guitar. Gibson Hummingbird is one of the all-time classic acoustics. It has the the pop-cultural cachet that comes with being used by the likes of Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow, the Rolling Stones, and Billie Joe Armstrong.

You can also count Thom Yorke, Dave Grohl and Jerry Cantrell among those who have picked up a Hummingbird, and country star Miranda Lambert loves them so much that her signature Gibson Bluebird and its Epiphone version was inspired by one.

The Hummingbird Tribute has much of its high-end Gibson USA counterparts’ DNA. It, too, features the same square-shouldered dreadnought shape, a similar pickguard shape, and we’ve got the Kalamazoo open-book headstock that betrays its lineage. But, at a tenth of the price, it is a cheap acoustic guitar.

Okay, there are some concessions to economic realities. There are no electronics (no deal-breaker on a beginner instrument). We’ve got a laminate build, too, with select layered spruce on the top, layered sapele on the back and sides.

There are dot inlays on a laurel fingerboard as opposed to split parallelograms on rosewood. And we don’t have the multiply binding of the Gibson model. But for £/$299, we can live with that.

What the Hummingbird Tribute does offer is the vibe, and more crucially, the dimensions. That big bodied shape will put some volume and oomph into your open chords. It has a Rounded C profile neck that is nailed-on to be a crowd-pleasing shape. And on that reverse belly bridge we have a compensated saddle that should help keep the intonation on point.

These are fitted with Epiphone Deluxe sealed die-cast tuners. All come with gloss finishes as standard – three finishes that complement a tortoiseshell pickguard quite nicely. You can find out more over at Epiphone.

In recent times, it's not just Epiphone offering more affordable Hummingbirds. Gibson is at it, too.

In March last year, Gibson launched the Hummingbird Special alongside the L-00 and J-45, all featuring satin nitro finishes and a build not dissimilar to their Standard counterparts. At $2,199, however, the Hummingbird Special offered quite a saving over the $3,999 that the Hummingbird Standard is priced at.

If you are in the market for something a little cheaper than those Gibson’s, more upscale than the new Tribute models, the Epiphone Inspired By Gibson Custom Hummingbird Deluxe EC is well worth checking out – especially if you prefer a cutaway acoustic.

“Not only is it one of the handsomest guitars around, it plays great, and punches well above its weight in the tone stakes,” wrote Neville Marten in his five-star review for MusicRadar. “It’s loud, punchy, and sounds like an instrument of genuine quality.”

There is a general rule when it comes to Gretsch guitars and that is if you see one you like and you’ve got the bread then buy it before it is too late, because the lineup is always getting refreshed.

And if ever there was a day to buy one on impulse it is today, because Gretsch has just rolled out its latest Jim Dandy parlour-sized acoustic guitar, and it’s super affordable at $249, and it’s as cool a retro-inspired acoustic as you will see all year.

We could actually just repost this story annually, because a new Jim Dandy comes along every year, inspired by the old Rex catalogue model of the 1930s through ‘50s, boasting some old-timey finish.

Around this time last year we saw the launch of a pair of upgraded Jim Dandy acoustics, one concert-sized, one a parlour, both with solid spruce tops and dressed in a Heritage Burst finish.

This time that old-timey finish is a very agreeable Vintage White, complemented by the black tuner buttons, pin-stripe purfling (subtly so – this ain’t a Jackson Rhoads in Ivory), and the layered sapele back and sides left in a dark natural stain. As you can see in the pics, it is a looker.

Now, we must register a little disappointment. Last year’s Jim Dandy’s had solid Spruce tops, whereas this year’s are all laminated sapele. Perhaps in these straitened times, et cetera, a solid-wood top is too much to expect for $249 (incidentally, the 2025 Jim Dandys also retailed at $249)

But still, this looks like it will be a more than respectable couch buddy – or porch, should you be lucky enough to have a space where you can throw some chords around in the open air. And the small-bodied Jim Dandy is always a fun time with its 24” scale length, the easy C neck profile and the 12” radius walnut fingerboard.

Speaking of the neck, this one is nato, and it is finished in semi-gloss. You get 18 frets on these little guys, with the neck joining the body at the 12th fret (but unless you are pie-eyed, what are you doing above the 7th fret on one of these?).

There is X-pattern bracing under the hood. We’ve saved one of our favourite details till last – yes, those open-gear three-on-a-plate tuners are too cool, especially with the black tuner buttons in contrast to the top’s finish and the matching headstock.

So yeah, very cool, with the only minor disappointment being the lack of a solid top.

The Gretsch Jim Dandy Limited is available now, priced £239/$249.

See Gretsch for more details.

What is it?

It’s fitting that one of the most idiosyncratic artists of this decade, Jacob Collier, is a fan of the seldom seen (outside of Keef) five-string guitar.

His route into it, however, is not – as you might think – that of a six-string guitarist seeking a simpler, more direct expression of the instrument. In fact, Jacob says he grew up playing the four-string tenor guitar and “used to dream of augmenting the tenor guitar with an extra string.” Well, now he need dream no more, because Taylor has done the honours.

The five-string GS Mini is one of two new affordable signature guitars Taylor has released with Collier. There’s an Academy Series 22E five-string made of walnut and smoked eucalyptus (if that was a salad, I’d buy it) plus the Jacob Collier GS Mini that I have here, which features a torrefied Sitka spruce top and layered sapele back and sides, Taylor’s genteel term for ‘laminated’ though, by any name, it’s a perfectly good material for acoustic bodies.

Like other guitars in the highly popular GS Mini range, the guitar has a 23.5-inch scale length and a body that’s essentially a 7/8th scale version of its Grand Symphony (GS) guitars, hence the name.

Specs

• Price: $699 | £699
• Made: Tecate, Mexico
• Body shape: ⅞ size Grand Symphony
• Body top: Torrefied Sitka spruce
• Top bracing: X-bracing
• Back & sides: Layered (laminate) sapele
• Neck/shape: Tropical mahogany / standard carve
• Scale/length: 23.5” / 597mm
• Nut/width: NuBone / 1.65” (42 mm)
• String spacing at bridge: 14 mm
• Fingerboard wood/Radius: Crelicam ebony / 15-inch (381mm)
• Body depth: 4” / 101mm
• Finish: Natural with Jacob Collier soundhole graphic
• Bridge/pins: Black plastic
• Tuning Machines: Die-cast chrome ‘paddle’ type
• Weight: 3.7lbs / 1.67kg
• Case: Taylor padded gig bag
• Left-handed options: No
• Contact: Taylor Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

As mentioned, the Jacob Collier GS Mini’s Sitka spruce top is torrefied – a carefully controlled baking process that makes tonewood more stable and simulates the effect of natural ageing, giving a brand-new instrument the voice of a mature guitar (or at least that’s the idea).

The soundboard, meanwhile, is supported by traditional X-bracing, rather than Taylor’s innovative V-Class or C-Class bracing.

Styling wise, the Jacob Collier GS Mini is a mixture of plain, functional elements – it has no binding at all, for example – mixed with a flash of Collier-esque flamboyance via the colourful geometric rosette design, which appears to be a well-executed decal applied under the topcoat.

Overall, the scrupulous tidiness of the build lends the Jacob Collier GS Mini a plain integrity.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

As always, the 20-fret Taylor neck is easy playing and electric-like, with a hint of a soft V to its profile. The string spacing feels quite natural under the fingers and there are surprisingly few fumbles getting used to it.

The only time I reached for something and missed was when I went to use the tuners on the lower side of the headstock – you’ll search in vain for the third tuner there.

And again, that compact GS Mini body tucks right under the arm and, combined with the short neck, makes this guitar so easy to engage with.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

The GS Mini is not a D-35 by any stretch but it definitely jabs above its weight.

In its intended tuning, the guitar’s sound is full, warm and surprisingly loud and, with fingerstyle in particular, notes really pop without losing composure.

Top end is slightly attenuated but in a pleasant, sweet-toned way. And then there’s that Collier-approved DAEAD tuning that avoids thirds to offer a kind of airy, open canvas for chordal improvisation.

I found it easy to get modal sounding, drone-like riffs going and make mercurial shifts between major and minor moods – and while there’s a learning curve it’s quite an approachable, attractive tuning scheme.

Collier's GS Mini ships without electronics but Taylor's ES-Go soundhole mounted magnetic pickup is specifically designed as as an easy install aftermarket option (you can pick one up for $99/£74/€84). The review model shipped with an LR Baggs VTC pickup with soundhole mounted controls, however this is a non-standard addition and doesn't contribute to the overall scoring of this review.

Verdict

This is quite a hard guitar to categorise – and perhaps Jacob Collier likes it that way. Its big voice (for its size) and no-frills build quality are impressive and the torrefied top works brilliantly here.

The advantages of the unique tuning and the five strings are harder to buy into. Collier has said he wants new players to be able to conjure up unique and inspiring chord voicings more easily and that is indeed possible on this guitar.

But it also disconnects you from the vast body of established guitar traditions and the ability to learn directly from them.

Nothing’s stopping you from tuning your six-string differently, either, if you want to try something new. At this price we’d love to feel this unusual platform offers something undeniably, uniquely valuable. In that much, at least, it feels like a beguiling solution in search of a real problem.

MusicRadar verdict: The Jacob Collier GS Mini 5-String is quirky, great-sounding and unique – but it’s hard not to feel its limitations are at least as great as the musical vistas it opens up. For the right player, though, it could be the key to experiencing guitar anew.

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Guitar World

Peghead Nation

• Taylor GS Mini review
• Best 3/4 acoustic guitars 2025: Portable playability from Taylor, Martin, Yamaha, and more

What is it?

To mark 100 years of acoustic guitar design, Gibson has launched the Century Collection, a family of instruments that reaches back to the very roots of the company, pairing retro aesthetics with a vintage tone to match. The series spans everything from an L-1 to a J-45 and J-185, but the model we’re checking out today is the new L-00.

Not as showy as a Hummingbird, not as revered as the J-45, and certainly not as bombastic as the SJ-200, the humble L-00 can often fly under the radar when discussing Gibson’s famous flat tops. Dating back as far as the ‘30s, the Gibson L-00 has found favour with blues players and folk singers thanks in part to its compact feel and mid-forward tone.

As you’d expect, the compact body sticks to the tried-and-tested formula of a mahogany back and sides, a Sitka spruce top, and a single-ply cream binding running around the perimeter. Where things get interesting, though, is the shift to a 12-fret neck-to-body joint rather than the familiar 14-fret layout. That change nudges the bridge into a more central position on the soundboard, and Gibson reckons it makes a real difference, helping the top work more efficiently, improving playing comfort, and delivering a warmer, more articulate, livelier tone. Hard to argue with that logic, but we’ll need to wait and see if it makes a difference in practice.

Up at the headstock, open-back Golden Age tuners with cream buttons sit beneath an early-1900s-style Gibson script logo decal, a lovely period touch that ties the whole look together. That retro sensibility carries through to the sloped-rectangle closed-slot rosewood bridge.

Rounding out the spec sheet is a mahogany neck with Gibson’s SlimTaper profile, a compound dovetail joint held fast with hide glue, paired with a rosewood fingerboard, and mother-of-pearl dot inlays.

Finishing touches include a bone nut and saddle, TUSQ bridge pins, and a classic L-00-style pickguard, all wrapped up in a satin nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Each guitar ships in a premium Century Collection tweed hardshell case, because of course it does, and is available in both right- and left-handed configurations.

Specs

• Launch price: $2,299 | £1,999 | $2,299
• Made: USA
• Body shape: L-00
• Body top: Sitka spruce
• Top bracing: X-braced
• Back & sides: Solid mahogany
• Neck/shape: Mahogany Slim Tapper
• Scale/length: 24.75-inch / 628 mm
• Nut/width: Bone / 1.725 inches (43.8 mm)
• Fingerboard/Radius: 12 inches
• Body depth: 4.25 inches (10.8 cm)
• Finish: Ebony (as reviewed), Vintage Sunburst, Vintage Amber
• Bridge/pins: TUSQ
• Tuning Machines: Golden Age Strap Tuners
• Weight: 4 lbs/1.81 kg
• Case: Gibson Tweed Case
• Left-handed options: Yes
• Contact: Gibson

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

Picking the L-00 up out of that gloriously retro tweed case, and the first thing that strikes me is just how light this model is in my hands. At around 4 lbs, this is a small-bodied guitar in the truest sense, and Gibson has done a fine job of making it feel like something genuinely special rather than just a shrunken-down dreadnought.

The satin nitrocellulose finish looks the part, lending the guitar an understated, almost worn-in quality straight out of the box. It’s the kind of guitar I suspect will look better with age, and I can already imagine how good it’ll look with a few years of honest playing on it. That said, the black satin finish does have one notable weakness: it picks up grease and fingerprints at an alarming rate. A quick wipe-down after every session is going to become part of the routine, whether you like it or not. Just don’t wipe it too heavily, or you’re in danger of buffing the matte finish into a shiny one.

The overall construction feels solid and well put-together. The binding is clean, the rosewood bridge sits neatly, and the headstock with its period-correct script logo and cream-buttoned Golden Age tuners is a genuinely handsome thing to look at.

Where the finish does let the side down slightly is at the fret ends. The third fret in particular has a touch of sharpness to it. It’s not enough to ruin a practice session, but it’s the sort of thing you’d hope Gibson’s quality control would catch on a guitar at this price point. A light fret-end dress would sort it in minutes, so it’s not too much of a problem. None of that detracts from what is, on the whole, a beautifully considered instrument.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

I’ve been living with this miniature Gibson for a good few weeks, and I must say, it has been a rather welcome house guest. My go-to acoustic is a Gibson J-45, and while I love it to death, it’s not the most comfortable when lazing around on the sofa.

This is where the L-00 Century really earns its keep. Sit down with it on the sofa, and it just fits. The compact body tucks in naturally, the scale length feels effortless to manoeuvre around on, and the SlimTaper neck profile is comfortable and familiar from the first chord. It’s a guitar I find myself constantly going back to, meaning to noodle for ten minutes and then put down an hour or two later.

The action deserves a particular mention. At 2.0mm on the low E, and 1.25mm on the high E, it’s set up nicely low and stays consistent all the way up the board, which makes everything from open chord strumming to fingerpicking up at the dusty end feel easy and precise. There are no dead spots, no buzzing, and no sense that you’re fighting the guitar to get a note to speak. It just plays.

For anyone coming from a bigger-bodied acoustic, I’d say the transition is pretty seamless, and it’s arguably easier to play than a full-sized dread. The 12-fret neck join does change the geometry slightly compared to a standard L-00, and if you spend a lot of time above the 12th fret, you’ll notice the body gets in the way sooner than you might expect. In practice, though, this guitar isn’t really asking to be soloed. So it’s a bit of a moot point.

Personally, I think fingerstyle players in particular will love this guitar the most. The string spacing, the action, the response, everything about the way this guitar is set up feels tailored to that sort of play, in my opinion.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

So I’ll be upfront about one thing: this is not a loud guitar. If you’re after something that’ll fill a room, rattle the windows, and compete with a belting singer, look elsewhere. That said, what it lacks in volume it more than makes up for in character.

The tone is warm and woody, with a mid-forward quality that sits beautifully for blues and fingerstyle playing. The mahogany back and sides give the low-end a rounded, mellow thump rather than a booming bass response, and the Sitka spruce top adds just enough brightness to keep things from getting muddy.

Yes, it could be described as a little boxy when hit with a pick, especially if you strike it enough to get the top to compress, but after a few hours of playing it, I found myself warming to its vintage-style tone.

I’m not the world’s most powerful singer, and for that reason, I really enjoyed my time singing a few songs with the L-00 on my lap. I find that this guitar doesn’t compete with you. The mid-range sits in a frequency range that supports rather than overwhelms a vocal, and the natural compression of the small body means your voice can sit on top of the guitar without having to fight for space.

That said, I do find myself looking for a little more oomph from the L-00. Maybe it's the lack of low end, more so than any definition in the mids or highs, but it can feel lacking in tone when hit with a pick.

However, for blues players, it’s almost unfairly well-suited. Play a slow Delta shuffle on it with your fingers, and it sounds like it was built for exactly that purpose, because, in many ways, it was.

Verdict

Overall, I’m pretty taken with this guitar. It has charming good looks, very nice playability, and bags of character in the tone department. Yes, it’s not the loudest acoustic on the market, and yes, the black satin finish is a fingerprint magnet, but neither of those things is a dealbreaker when the guitar is this enjoyable to spend time with.

To me, the Century Collection L-00 12-Fret is a guitar for the player who values a unique voice over sheer projection. It’s a noodler’s guitar, a songwriter’s guitar, a late-night-on-the-sofa guitar. For blues players and fingerstyle enthusiasts especially, it’s hard to imagine a better-suited companion at this price point. The Century Collection’s promise is to reconnect with Gibson’s roots, and on the evidence of this L-00, it’s a promise well kept.

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Martin has unveiled a special commemorative acoustic guitar to mark Earth Day and to support penguin preservation worldwide.

No, not the Gretsch guitar, we're talking about the loveable flightless bird in the tuxedo, and the Nazareth, PA company has also made a donation to the Global Penguin Society to help habitat conservation and raise awareness.

Who among us doesn’t love a penguin? They are magnificent creatures. But if you really love penguins, you’ll really love the Biosphere IV 00-L.

Martin’s regular artist Robert Goetzl (he painted previous years’ Biosphere models) has gone to town on it, painting a family of emperor penguins on the guitar’s top, a domestic scene on ice in their home eco-system of Antarctica.

Goetzl’s depiction of a chick being sheltered by its parent is inspired by the idea that “when your environment is at threat, you feel very protective of your offspring… and the creatures around you that need protecting”.

This graphic is laid atop an FSC-certified Sitka spruce top with a custom ink top colour, on a guitar that is sustainable across the board, from the message behind it to the actual build itself.

All the woods used are FSC-certified, with sapele on the back and sides, a mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard.

There’s something fitting about this, a tribute to penguins, being a little more compact than previous Biosphere models.

Last years’s was a D-14 dreadnought, a larger canvas to accommodate the polar bears, while 2024’s was a DSS slope-shouldered tribute to Hawaii’s humpback whale population. Size matters when it comes to the sound.

Where Martin’s family of dreadnoughts gives you that signature boom, whopping bass response, big lungs for big chords, the more compact 00 grand concert Martin guitars are a little sweeter on the ear, more treble presence, more detail in the midrange, and a subtle voice that rewards fingerstyle playing.

The details on this Martin acoustic are really something. The ebony ‘board is inlaid with sapele dots. Flamed maple binding ties the body together. The Biosphere IV 00-L is available now, priced $2,399, and there are left-handed models available, too. Check it out at Martin.

Today, Martin is also shared its 2025 Impact Report, tracking its sustainability efforts and community engagement, with the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation awarding more than 100 grants, totalling $594,750.

You can read the report at Martin Guitar, and watch a highlights reel above.

This has been a busy year for Martin, with NAMM 2026 seeing a comprehensive refresh of its mid-priced Road Series acoustics, with 20 new Retro and Modern models added to the lineup.

Yamaha has expanded its second-generation TransAcoustic lineup with concert and dreadnought acoustics, with or without cutaways, which look every inch the regular acoustic guitar and yet promising something altogether more modernistic thanks to the Japanese brand’s very smart onboard technology.

Over the years, Yamaha has enjoyed a long, storied reputation for building acoustic guitars that punch way beyond their price point, offering beginner to pro models, in all shapes and sizes, but none were quite like the TransAcoustic range.

These were different. These were acoustics with onboard effects, and in the case of the cutaway models here, Bluetooth support. The range of sounds you can get out of these is quite something.

The new models comprise the dreadnought cutaway TAG1C and concert-sized TAS1C, which are available in Natural or Sand Burst finishes, or the non-cutaway TAG1E and concert-sized TAS1E, which also offer Ultra Marine and Translucent Black as finish options.

The TAG1C and TAS1C present players with three different types of reverb, two types of chorus, and two types of delay, all controllable via mobile app. The TAG1E and TAS1E gives you two reverbs and one chorus.

These all share similar build DNA. All four models in this update have solid Sitka spruce tops with layered mahogany on the back and sides, mahogany necks and walnut fingerboards, and a measure up with a scale length of 25.59”. The nut measures 44mm wide. The nuts and saddles are fashioned from urea, bridge pins are ebony, and the pickguard is one of those minimalistic see-through jobs.

Yamaha has always shown good discipline in reining in the aesthetic – it is saving the fireworks for the tones.

Sound-wise, well, fundamentally the dread is the big-voiced boomer for the strummers, the concert-size tighter sounding, a bit more balance and top-end sparkle.

But the big story is that TransAcoustic tech. Definitely check out MusicRadar’s review of the TransAcoustic TAG3 C for more (the all-solid flagship model also has the looper function that these more affordable models don’t).

But in short, you have a rechargeable battery, actuators inside of the guitar, a set of simple controls mounted on the guitar’s shoulder and mobile app for deeper editing.

When the effects are dialled in, the actuators respond to your playing, creating a reverb, chorus or delay effect that resonates through the body and through the soundhole. No acoustic guitar amp required – this is sorcery.

Those with Bluetooth support allow players to play external audio through the guitar, too.

The TAG1E and TAS1E are priced £689/$879 street, the TAS1C are £1,129/$1,399, and a hard gig bag is included with all models.

For more details, head over to Yamaha.

Guitar Center has been selling other people’s guitars for so long that it’s getting a little, y’know, nuts, and so it has announced that its plans to create an all-new “revolutionary” guitar brand.

Furthermore, it wants guitar players to help them. Taking to Guitar Center's Tik Tok, CEO Gabe Dalporto adopted an Uncle Sam/Lord Kitchener-esque stance and declared that Guitar Center needs you, yes, you, to help with the design of the brand – and of whatever acoustic or electric guitars it creates.

Is this a hinge moment in the history of guitar design? Dalporto thinks so.

“Guitars haven’t changed that much in the last 50 years, and we’re about to change that,” he says, adding that this is where the Guitar Center customer base comes in. He wants player’s ideas.

“Our customers are incredible musicians, and we’re gonna work with you in public, out loud, and share our designs, take your feedback, iterate, and make the best guitar that has ever been made,” he says, asking for said feedback on Instagram and on a sub-Reddit where feedback is indeed arriving – not all of it that positive, some of it crazy.

An AI-generated mock-up of a prototype electric guitar featuring a Fishman Fluence Modern humbucker at the neck, a P-90 and Strat single-coil pairing at the middle, and a Gretsch Filter’Tron at the bridge seems a little overkill, but then people like overkill! Oh, wait, a Bigbsy and a Floyd Rose vibrato, retractable headstocks… Dalporto did say “crazy” but this might not have been what he meant.

There are all kinds of legal caveats surrounding the ideas; they must be original, yours alone, and by submitting these ideas you’re transferring the rights to these ideas to Guitar Center to do with as they please – i.e. make a guitar based on some of these suggestions. This is where much of the aforementioned negativity is coming from.

But is this the kind of endeavour that can give Guitar Center a competitive advantage in a well-established market? That is the big question.

Like many other retailers, it carries exclusive lines that are effectively own-brand guitars, a portfolio of “private label brands” made under license overseas, such as the Mitchell brand of beginner guitars which has been sold exclusively through Guitar Center since 1986.

Setting aside the crowdsourcing, this move suggests a new game plan that, on the face of it, is not too dissimilar to what Thomann is doing with its Harley Benton guitars.

But time will tell how it will all shake out, and whether or not we will see a four-pickup guitar with dual vibratos and retractable headstocks. Let’s hope it comes in Sea Foam Green.

You can direct such suggestions and more to Guitar Center's GuitarLab sub-Reddit.

Any wood that comes into regular contact with foreign bodies needs to be kept clean, conditioned and protected – your guitar's fingerboard is no different. But I've read some conflicting advice when it comes to the best ways to look after different types of fretboard for acoustic and electric guitars – including rosewood, laurel, maple, pau ferro and ebony. It's time to simplify and demystify this essential piece of guitar maintenance.

As with a lot of things in the world of guitars, there isn't one correct answer. But we need to understand what substances perform different functions for our fretboards before we can experience the satisfaction of seeing and feeling them at their best.

Firstly, there are two main types of fingerboard wood; finish and unfinished. An unfinished fretboard has no protective lacquer over the wood and examples include rosewood, pau ferro, laurel, walnut and ebony.

Finished fretboards tend to be maple – though unsealed maple 'boards do exist. The finished type will only need cleaning and no conditioning because they have a thin lacquer that acts as the protective layer to keep things like sweat from seeping into the wood.

So before you condition a guitar's unfinished fingerboard, you need to clean it first. And a seemingly unlikely substance is good as a starting point.

1. Naphtha is a cleanser

Guitar techs first recommended Naphtha (petroleum distillate and most commonly referred to as lighter fluid) to me and I was initially confused. Surely a flammable substance and wood are a hazardous pairing?

It can clean finger oils out of your wood by breaking them down before it evaporates. This process will often make your unfinished dark fretboard wood look dry and even slightly opaque after application to work its magic. Don't worry – it's not a conditioner and this is supposed to happen. It's simply removing the foreign bodies in your 'board before you use an oil conditioner to rehydrate it.

It's also a safe body cleaner for nitrocellulose finishes when used sparingly – and like rubbing alcohol, it's good for removing residue from stickers that you might have regretted customising your guitar with.

2. Lemon oil isn't what you might think it is

Lemon oil is what comes up most frequently when the subject of fretboard care is mentioned. Some people even advise against using it. But if you are using it, is it a cleaner or a conditioner? Taylor Guitars co-founder Bob Taylor suggests it's both.

"I’d have no worries about using lemon oil on my fretboard," he stated in a Taylor Q&A with regards to acoustic guitars. "It’s safe. Use it only on the unfinished wood like the fretboard and bridge. The wood can dry out over time, and an oil like this, or linseed oil, or even mineral oil, can protect the wood and beautify it as well.

"Don’t overdo it," added Taylor. "Once a fretboard has been oiled a few times, you can slow down the frequency. The nice thing about lemon oil is that it cleans while it oils, so it won’t build up as easily, but be sparing. I don’t think your fretboard will need oiling more than twice a year, and eventually, once a year."

But a lot of the confusion around guitar lemon oil is due to assumptions about what it actually is. Despite the name, most guitar lemon oil is actualy often more mineral oil with less actual lemon oil than you'd expect. It's more for scent.

So it's actually mineral oil that's the more effective conditioner. This helps to break up the kind of unwanted oils from our hands, for the cloth to wipe away.

I like to do a clean, then add a little more on a second sweep over for a little conditioning – removing any excess with the cloth. And if you notice a guitar lemon oil that's actually yellow coloured, it's because artificial colouring has been used. This can actually help enhance your fretboard's "warm tone", as Gibson Master Luthier Jim DeCola points out in the video above.

3. Other alternatives are available for cleaning and conditioning

Aside from lemon oil, some of the big names in guitar accessories have their own takes on the ideal recipe for fretboard conditioner. MusicNomad F-One Oil is a cleaner and conditioner to be used on unfinished fretboards. It uses natural seed and tree oils and it smells nice too, I have to say!

Elsewhere, Daddario, Taylor, PRS and Dunlop all have their own takes on fretboard conditioning oil too.

4. Pick the right cloth for the job

In my article on how to clean your guitar, I pointed out why two different types of cloth are good for specific jobs when it comes to applying polishes and creams to the guitar. And this idea extends to the fretboard.

You only need a small dab of oil on each fret, then use a microfibre short pile lint-free cloth to move it around the surface of the fretboard without the cloth absorbing too much, too soon and before the oil can seep into the unfinished wood. Then use a different part of the cloth to remove any excess oil after a couple of minutes.

5. Don't forget your toothbrush!

Using your cloth to get into the edges of the frets and clean where grime can gather usually does the job, but for fingerboards that have been neglected for a while (and might be due a fret polish as the next step in a proper spring clean), a clean toothbrush can help with a little oil applied to it.

6. Maple needs love too

Finished (sealed) maple fingerboards don't need conditioning but are still due a clean every free months. Use your clean microfibre cloth with guitar cleaner to wipe away any grime from the 'board that may shorten the life of your strings.

I like to use MusicNomad's Guitar Detailer, because it can also be used on satin and matte body finishes too, plus its anti-static formula helps to repel dust and is has UV protectants to help sun damage for those summer days when your guitar is sitting on the stand.

• For more information on MusicNomad guitar maintenance and cleaning products, check out musicnomadcare.com, Thomann and Sweetwater.

Gibson has enjoyed some high-profile launches already this year. In recent weeks, we have seen the release of Mark Morton’s much-anticipated Les Paul, Mick Ronson’s stunning Bowie-era Les Paul Custom replica, and Gary Clark Jr’s Bigsby-equipped ES-355 in Cobra Burst sure caught the eye.

But set aside the electric guitars for a moment. We could argue that it’s most exciting releases have been acoustic.

There was the return of the Beatles-approved J-160E as the Original Collection was expanded to mark 100 years of Gibson flat-top acoustic guitars.

The LG-2 50s and SJ-200 60s made a fairly iconic trio. And now this week, Gibson has unveiled the Songwriter Recording Artist series – two dreadnoughts, offered with the choice of a square-shouldered non-cutaway body or with a Venetian cutaway, with LR Baggs HiFi acoustic guitar pickup and preamp systems as standard (controls mounted in the soundhole) and a very impressive Sitka spruce/rosewood build.

There is also no shortage of finery. For the player looking for the sweet spot between the decorative Hummingbird and the blue-collar unit shifting J-45, this could be a compelling option.

The Songwriter Recording Artist has the gold open-gear Grover tuners, MOP diamond inlays on an ebony fingerboard (a touch that’s a little, dare we say it, reminiscent of a Martin guitar), and there’s an abalone rosette to contrast that tortoiseshell pickguard, multiply binding of course, and just look at the mother of pearl inlays on that “belly-up” ebony bridge. Classy.

Your finish options comprise Antique Natural and Rosewood Burst. Some of the most interesting spec choices, though, are invisible to the naked eye.

The Sitka spruce top has been thermally aged, heated to give it that extra sweetness you get from an older acoustic – but with an all-solid build, these will only appreciate sonically over time. Under the hood, that top is buttressed by traditional scalloped wide X pattern bracing

The necks are mahogany, have a round profile, and join the body with a compound dovetail joint, set with hot hide glue, and you have a 25.5” scale length.

Gibsonologists will tell you that these have their roots in a ‘90s design, but with Sitka spruce and rosewood perhaps the soul of the instrument is the Advanced Jumbo of the mid 1930s. In the here and now they look like a serious high-end acoustic guitar for a serious player. They don’t have the lore of Gibson’s most-celebrated songbirds – the Hummingbird and Dove – but they have something about them. Those headstocks with the rosewood facings and crown inlay… Not bad at all.

These are priced accordingly at £4,399/$4,999, with the price including a hard-shell guitar case. For more details, head over to Gibson.

What is it?

We all know how much a great-sounding 12-string acoustic guitar can transform a recording, beef up a solo performance and even aid the songwriting process. There’s just something about a jumbo 12-string that makes you want to dig in and let rip with a big open chord. That said, purchasing a 12-string can feel like a wasted investment for those of us who may not use one for every session. Well, the Harley Benton Custom Line King-12 CE NT may well be the answer.

Harley Benton’s new addition to its popular Custom Line range is a full-bodied, maple-and-spruce, cutaway acoustic-electric designed to put that classic 12-string shimmer and jangle within reach of just about every guitarist. At first glance, you’ll notice its nod to the grand old king of the flat-tops, with more than a passing resemblance to Gibson’s SJ-200. The King-12 features a bold jumbo silhouette, a gloss natural finish, and enough binding and inlay to make you double-take at this price point.

Spec-wise, it’s loaded for bear. The top is solid spruce, while the back and sides are layered maple. The maple neck is capped with a rosewood fingerboard, and it joins the body at the 14th fret, while the large cutaway makes those upper frets fully accessible – even if you would be a little mad to attempt a solo on a 12-string.

Rather surprisingly, there’s a real bone nut and saddle on board, a Moustache-style rosewood bridge adorned with pearloid inlays, and multi-ply binding throughout the body and the neck completes the look. At the other end of the guitar is a dozen gold die-cast tuners proudly displayed on a rather massive headstock.

For plugging-in, the Fishman Presys-II preamp system gives you a built-in tuner, EQ controls, a phase switch and a volume knob, all conveniently mounted on the upper bout. With the Custom Line King-12 CE NT, Harley Benton is promising a big sound, big style, and big value, but is it too good to be true? I take it for a spin to find out.

Specs

• Launch price: £259/€297
• Made: China
• Body shape: Jumbo
• Body top: Solid spruce
• Top bracing: X-bracing
• Back & sides: Laminate maple
• Neck/shape: Maple
• Scale/length: 652 mm
• Nut/width: Bone, 48 mm
• Finish: Natural
• Bridge/pins: Plastic
• Tuning Machines: Gold die-cast
• Electronics: Fishman Presys-II with built-in tuner
• Weight: 2.5 kg (5.4 lbs)
• Case: None
• Left-handed options: Yes
• Contact: Harley Benton

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

First impressions count for a lot, and the King-12 CE NT definitely delivers when it comes to build quality. Straight out of the box, this 12-string feels reassuringly solid. I must say, it’s a handsomely good-looking guitar, too. I’m a big fan of the light maple aesthetic, and the gold hardware certainly pops when it catches the light. Okay, so there is maybe a little too much faux mother-of-pearl for my taste, but still, it looks the business.

The gloss natural finish is applied with care, with no dings, marks or unsightly blemishes to speak of. The pearloid inlays are neatly set, the bridge is well-seated, and all the hardware is properly aligned. Moving on to the fretwork, and I’m happy to report that all is right. They are tidy, with no sharp ends or uneven frets, which, let’s be honest, is not always a given at this price point. The nut and saddle are cut well, and the action straight from the factory is surprisingly comfortable, even for a 12-string.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that the King-12 is notably neck-heavy – like, very neck-heavy. The headstock, oversized to accommodate all twelve tuners, does pull the neck down when played, so you’ll want a grippy strap or a bit of adjustment to your playing position if you tend to stand.

Still, for a guitar that comes in at this price, the overall build is impressive, with a level of attention to detail that’s more than respectable.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

A 12-string jumbo might look intimidating, but the King-12 CE NT goes out of its way to be pretty inviting. I’d say the neck profile feels like a comfortable modern C to my hands. It’s chunky enough to support the extra tension and width of twelve strings, but not so thick as to feel unwieldy for players used to just six. The 48mm nut width gives each string pair enough room to breathe, minimising the accidental muting that can plague narrower 12-string necks.

I must say, fret access is excellent, thanks to the generous cutaway, meaning you can get all the way up to the top frets without contorting your wrist. Not that I spend much time up there on an acoustic, never mind a 12-string.

The setup out of the box is surprisingly forgiving for a 12-string. The action is low enough for comfortable chording but high enough to keep buzz at bay. Intonation is solid, and the tuning stability is better than expected in this price range. Those gold die-cast tuners do their job well, and the bone nut certainly helps reduce friction for smoother tuning.

The only real downside is the aforementioned neck dive due to the heavy headstock, which is more noticeable when played standing, but still an issue even when I'm seated on the sofa.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Sound-wise, the King-12 CE NT delivers that unmistakable 12-string shimmer. Strum a big open G or D, and you’re instantly rewarded with a lush, chorus-like wash that’s both bright and pretty well-defined.

The solid spruce top ensures a punchy, projecting top end, while the layered maple back and sides keep the lows tight and the mids mellow. To my ears, this Harley Benton never gets boxy or muddy, even when you dig in with a heavy pick.

There’s a clear chime to each string pair, with just enough warmth to keep things musical, whether you’re accompanying vocals, layering in the studio, or filling out a band arrangement.

Now, despite its massive size, the lows are controlled and less pronounced than you might expect from a jumbo. Yes, this prevents the low-end muddiness that can plague larger-bodied guitars, but I can't help but want a little more out of this guitar.

Plugged in to an acoustic amp and audio interface the Fishman Presys-II system does a solid job of translating the acoustic sound. It should be a fairly familiar preamp to many players, having found its way into models from Epiphone and many more budget acoustic guitars. While it won’t win awards for the most natural or nuanced reproduction, it’s more than serviceable for open-mics, pub gigs or even a bit of recording in a home studio.

All in, the King-12 CE NT delivers a ton of jangle and sparkle, both unplugged and amplified, making it a fantastic addition to any guitarist’s arsenal.

Verdict

So, what’s the bottom line? Well, for me, the Harley Benton Custom Line King-12 CE NT is a bit of a unicorn. This is a 12-string that’s genuinely fun to play, looks the part, and won’t break the bank.

Sure, it’s a little neck-heavy, okay, a lot neck-heavy, but honestly, I can live with that as the build is solid, the playability is shockingly good for this price, and it sounds exactly like you want a 12-string to sound. For me, the King-12 sounds lush, sparkly, and actually kind of inspiring.

So, whether you’re beefing-up tracks in the studio, looking to spice-up your solo set, or just want to have that classic jangle in your collection, this guitar punches well above its weight.

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Harley Benton

• Best acoustic guitar for beginners: Strum your first chords with our choice of beginner acoustic guitars

Epiphone has just refreshed its acoustic guitar lineup for 2026 with the Inspired By Gibson range, and what’s new there? Gibson’s designs have forever been an influence on Epiphone’s range. But this is a little different.

Like the Epiphone Inspired By Gibson Custom 2025 range, these new models are closing the gap with their US-made counterparts – and at a more accessible price. This is the collection that offers a Hummingbird with an all-solid build and a rosewood fingerboard for just £849/$899.

And it’s the same story as you go across a range that comprises the cutaway Hummingbird Standard EC, the J-45 Standard and its J-45 Standard EC cutaway version, and the small but perfectly formed L-00, which is arguably the star of the show here, all dressed up in Vintage Sunburst with that tortoiseshell ‘guard.

It’s a 21st-century instrument. As per the series specs, it’s decked out with a Fishman Presys VT preamp and Sonicore undersaddle acoustic guitar pickup to make it stage-ready. But it doesn’t look a day over, well, 91 years old, bringing us that 1934 vibe for £749 street.

Again, it’s all-solid. Here we have a solid spruce top, solid mahogany on the back and sides, and a one-piece mahogany neck carved into a Rounded (read: old-school) C profile. Bravo.

Other details include the 12” radius rosewood fingerboard, with, like the J-45 dot inlays. The two Hummingbirds offer a bit more bling with those split parallelogram inlays – and of course the decorative pickguards.

Across the board, we have Grover Rotomatic tuners; nickel plated Mini Rotomatics on the L-00, regular Rotomatics on the J-45s, and you have the Kluson-esque Epiphone Deluxe tuners on the Hummingbirds.

If the L-00 is the quintessential parlour guitar – this looks every inch the couch buddy you’d spend hours noodling on – the J-45 offers us that classic slope-shouldered dreadnought power that Gibson’s best-selling acoustic is famous for. Your Bob Dylan songbook could get a work out with this one.

Once more we have the spruce/mahogany tonewood cocktail, the rounded profile on the mahogany neck for that vintage feel. And over time, considering these J-45s – this entire range – is all solid, we can only look forward to hearing how they sound some decades down the line.

Epiphone is offering the non-cutaway J-45 in Vintage Sunburst, while the cutaway EC variant is presented in Vintage Sunburst and Honey Burst.

As for the Hummingbird, the O.G. non-cutaway Hummingbird Standard is resplendent in Cherry Sunburst, with multi-ply binding on the top of the body, plus the bound fingerboard and gold hardware… It’s a looker.

The cutaway has a Cherry Sunburst option, too, but we’ve got to say it looks good in Natural. Whether a Gibson or Epiphone guitar, the Hummingbird always looks good.

These Inspired By Gibson acoustics are available now, and a premium gig bag is included in the price. Head over to Epiphone for more details.

What is it?

French guitar maker LAG has always done things just a little differently, from the faintly gothic styling of its popular Tramontane acoustic guitars to the crisp, modern lines of its designs.

With the HyVibe 10, it's gone quite a bit further. As the name hints, the guitar sports a unique HyVibe preamp using technology developed by acoustic scientist Dr Adrien Mamou-Mani at the IRCAM Institute.

Like Yamaha’s TransAcoustic tech, the HyVibe preamp allows the user to add digital effects to acoustic playing – with the guitar’s own soundboard acting as a speaker. Essentially, the guitar becomes its own pedalboard and amp.

Specs

• Price:  $999 | £949 | €1,050 
• Made: China
• Body shape: Cutaway Auditorium
• Body top: Solid red cedar
• Top bracing: Spruce X-brace
• Back & sides: Khaya mahogany (laminated)
• Neck: Kyaha mahogany
• Scale/length: 25.6” (650 mm)
• Nut/width: Graphite / 1.7” (43mm)
• String spacing at bridge: 0.4”/ 10mm
• Fingerboard wood/Radius: Brankowood / 13.8 inches (350 mm)
• Body depth: 4.1”/ 105mm
• Finish: Satin natural
• Bridge/pins: Synthetic
• Tuning Machines: Sealed die-cast, 1:18 ratio
• Electronics: Undersaddle piezo / HyVibe preamp
• Weight: 4.9 lbs/2.23kg
• Case: Premium gigbag
• Left-handed options: Yes (LAG HyVibe 10 HV10-L-DCE)
• Contact: Lag Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★☆☆

Before we get into that, let’s first examine the acoustic guitar that provides the ‘chassis’ for the HyVibe tech. Based, as far as I can see, on the Tramontane 118 Series of guitars, the HyVibe 10 is an Auditorium-sized cutaway electro (think OM or 000-style) with a solid red cedar top, typically associated with a warm, rounded tone, plus laminated Khaya back and sides.

Sometimes known as African mahogany, Khaya is a commonly used substitute for the South American mahoganies that were used in the 20th-century golden era of guitar making.

And while solid body woods would have been a premium touch, many top makers – such as Takamine – place a lot of faith in the structural and sonic benefits of laminated woods for the back and sides, so it’s not necessarily a downgrade. Contours are crisply carved, including the raised centre section of the headstock, adding to the guitar’s quirky elan.

The feel and styling is crisply contemporary and the HyVibe 10 is an attractive, distinctive build. The body is Auditorium sized but the cutaway makes it feel somehow a touch more compact in use than traditional OMs and the like. The headstock is attached to the neck with a neat but quite steep scarf joint and the heel is also two-piece, as far as I can see. But it’s all deftly done and represents solid modern production luthiery.

The 20 frets are nicely polished and crowned and the fret-ends have been attentively rounded - especially important with chunky frets like these if they aren’t to feel like jagged roadbumps under your fingers. Inside the soundhole, braces and linings look good and only a few minor smears and glue marks here and there spoil the overall picture of a very tidy mid-market build.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Considered just as an acoustic instrument, the HyVibe 10 is a taut but comfortable drive. As mentioned, the cutaway design does make the guitar feel a bit more ergonomic in the lap than a traditional Auditorium-size guitar.

The feel is modern, a little Taylor-like perhaps, and the satin finish on the neck and body feels pleasantly tactile. There’s good access up the neck and the guitar intonates well past the 12th fret.

As fitted with 12-54 acoustic guitar strings, the guitar feels set up as a capable, approachable all-rounder – fingerstyle players might want to experiment with 11s to get extra slinkiness from the setup.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★☆☆

Played purely as an acoustic instrument, the HyVibe 10 has a clear, well-defined modern voice that emphasises upper mids. There’s a good, direct initial attack when playing a strummed chord then a strong upper midrange and treble presence that stops short of ‘honk’ but leaves me wanting just a little more sweet low end.

However, a cushion of bass is more the province of dreadnoughts and, overall, the sound is in line with what a decent, modern auditorium-sized acoustic should be.

But it’s the innocuous looking control panel, with an OLED screen, on the guitar’s shoulder that holds the key to what makes the HyVibe 10 strikingly different, sonically.

The HyVibe preamp (here in the newly updated, more powerful H2 form) takes the signal from the undersaddle piezo pickup and runs it through a powerful processor that then uses the guitar’s body as a speaker for effected sounds as well as the unplugged voice of the guitar itself – and the system runs off a rechargeable lithium battery offering up to a quoted 10 hours of play time.

It won’t be a surprise to learn that digital reverb is one of the primary sound-enhancing effects it offers, expanding the natural voice of the guitar with an aura of smooth hall-style reverb.

But you can also apply echo, tremolo, chorus, phaser, octaver, distortion, boost and ping pong delay – and there’s also a looper function, metronome, tuner. You can even turn your guitar into a Bluetooth music playback speaker you can play along to.

A quick tap on the datawheel-style knob in the centre of the preamp switches the HyVibe on, with only a second or two of boot-up time and you can use the onboard guitar tuner to get things started tunefully. I’d like to see a more positive indicator of correct pitch than aligning a ball between two vertical bars on the OLED screen but it works perfectly well.

Using the two left/right cursor buttons just under the screen, you can scroll away from the tuner and onto the Effects page, where things get really interesting.

First up is Reverb and I was impressed by the spacious ambience it creates via the guitar’s body - and hitting the central Option button lets you choose the Decay time of the ‘verb – as you might expect, different parameters are called up by this button when using the other effects.

There’s also an accompanying app that interfaces with the guitar and permits more detailed control of each effect – but more of that shortly.

Moving through the other effects, with default settings, I found the Chorus a touch thin and cold, the phaser quite strident and more like an auto-wah – but the tremolo and the echo (delay) effects proved inspiring as writing tools, generating ambience and rhythmic movement.

The Octaver effect also sparked creative ideas, turning the guitar into a quasi-bass if desired. And even though the Distortion effect won’t trouble the Klon for natural drive tones, its Mike Oldfield-style biting sizzle proved oddly addictive as a lead tool, more like a fuzz in some ways, while Boost provided a subtle and flattering lift.

However, plugging into my Boss acoustic amp, I'm rewarded with a real uplift in the substance and warmth of all the effects sounds on offer here and it’s a salutary reminder that the guitar body itself, while doing a remarkable job as a ‘speaker’, is always going to have certain limitations that a purpose-made amp or PA won’t.

In short, if you enjoy the effects from the guitar alone, you’ll enjoy them yet more when the LAG is amplified, making this a really tempting tool for touring solo acoustic artists who don’t want to lug effects boards around from gig to gig.

Whichever way you choose to hear them, the effects are fun, a bit baffling at times but also creatively empowering. But they really show their full potential in conjunction with the on-board looper.

With no floor pedals to operate the looper (the HV-S4 footswitch is an additional purchase), this function relies on the player setting the BPM and time signature in the HyVibe’s Metronome page then scrolling back to the Looper page (a slightly clunky bit of U/I) then activating record using the right-hand button under the screen.

You then get a one-bar count-in with a click and then the guitar records what you play for a pre-selected number of bars, then ceases recording and begins playback automatically at the end of that cycle.

By hitting the record button again, you can record up to three overdub layers on top of the original loop with recording for each overdub commencing the next time the loop cycles round to its start point once again.

The base loop layer is recorded using the effect you currently have selected for normal play - but thereafter you can select a fresh effect (or none) to use when overdubbing on top of the previous loops, opening up the possibility of building layers of different sounds as you go, to create a looping performance that sounds more like a full band.

The accompanying HyVibe app for iOS and Android plus MacOS (versions 11.0 and higher) really opens up the editing and tone sculpting possibilities of the effects and functions above – and, as it connects to the guitar via BlueTooth there are no clunky USB cables to plug in.

As well as letting you set the metronome tempo (which governs the looper) from the app’s main page and also trigger recordings, it displays the nine effects that appear in the guitar’s OLED screen and permits you to deep-edit them, opening up functions like dry/wet and EQ controls on the Echo for example.

There are also a few extra effects you can select such as a 12-string emulator and things like noise gates and Notch filters can also be added to the setup of your default effects.

You can also combine effects together using the ‘Modify’ function to create a distorted version of the default phaser, to take but one possible example.

As with other apps that perform a similar editing function, the app really is the easiest way to get the best from the HyVibe and using it alongside the guitar is recommended – although the guitar is also MIDI compatible.

Verdict

The Hyvibe 10 offers an awful lot to explore and there’s serious potential here, especially for solo performers who want to maximise their sonic firepower on stage.

I can see some players building an entire set around what this guitar can do while, for others, it could obviate the need to bring along a pedalboard and acoustic amp to gigs where effects play a big role.

On another level, it’s a great writing tool to develop ideas on, especially when the looper is brought into play, and really shines during practice sessions, permitting you to sharpen soloing skills over self-record backing loops.

The only things to weigh against those benefits are the sometimes slightly synthetic quality of some of the effect tones – though on the whole the sounds are good – and potential buyers also want to consider if they really need quite this much sonic variety, as you can get a basic self-generated effects guitar with reverb and chorus from other makers such as Yamaha, for less. Overall, though, it’s a very compelling sonic exploration tool.

MusicRadar verdict: Powerful, extremely versatile and creatively refreshing, the HyVibe 10 offers a ton of inspiration if you click with it. Yes, it’s not for purists, but that should be obvious and while up against stiff competition in purely acoustic terms in this priceband, the sheer breadth of its idea-making sounds makes it a really compelling choice for sonic explorers and bold solo artists.

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Lâg Guitars

• Best acoustic electric guitars: 9 budget to high-end guitars from Epiphone, Martin, Taylor, and more

Oceans rise, empires fall, yadda yadda yadda, but no matter the remorseless churn of constant change the budget-conscious guitar player can always count on Harley Benton to deliver the goods, year on year, and the German gear giant has started 2026 with intent.

It has expanded its extended-range lineup with a left-handed version of its eight-string multi-scale electric, the R-458MN.

It has refreshed its SC-Custom III Series, dressing its £259/$357 single-cut series in Purple Satin, Moritz Yellow, Silver Sparkle and, for those who go weak at the knees at the sight of some figured maple, there’s a Quilt Midnight option that applies a AAAA quilted-maple veneer to its solid meranti body.

And it has added a baritone option for those who might enjoy the sound of the electric guitar but prefer it a perfect fourth lower (some maniacs might choose to tune it down further, and why not).

This one is quite explicitly a metal guitar, housing a pair of Tesla TM VR-Nitro Alnico-5 humbuckers, 22 medium-jumbo stainless steel frets for the slinky feel, and the Army Burst matte finish.

A detail worth noting about these SC-Custom III models, whether your regular 25.72” scale or 28” a la the baritone, the bodies have ample contouring on the back, with belly cuts, scoops taken out of the cutaway to aid upper-fret access. They are very much a modern take on the single-cut paradigm.

Harley Benton’s Strat-style guitars have been given a makeover, too, with the MusicRadar-approved Modern Plus HSS now available in Dark Red Metallic with a rosewood fingerboard, and in Gun Metal Blue with a maple fingerboard.

As per the hot-rodded Stratocaster vibe, truss-rod adjustment can be made via a spoke wheel at the top of the fingerboard, and like their siblings, we have the black pickguard. Some looks from the ‘80s still look fresh; these give us Jake E Lee/Charvel vibes – and just look at that neatly sculpted heel.

And last but not least, there is more good news for southpaw players with left-handed versions of the Victory-BK V-style electric and the Thunderbird inspired Deluxe Series TB-70VS bass guitar.

With the gloss black finish and white pickguard, not to mention the dot inlays on the roseacer fingerboard the Victory-BK is the kind of instrument a Michael Schenker or Kirk Hammett fan might dig.

Of course, the design inspiration is obvious but there are some key points of difference on this Harley Benton guitar, with the notches in the V cutout giving it a more aggressive silhouette than its forebears in the late ‘50s golden era.

The HB Classic ceramic humbucker pairing should run hot, too, pairing well with a hard-driven guitar amp. The Victory-BK is priced $130/$177. Those are beginner prices. Just remember if you’re starting out, the V-styles are best played standing – though wedging them against your thigh, you can play them seated.

As for the TB-70VS, it’s a big ol’ hunk of Okoume with a glued-in mahogany neck. That body seats a pair of active active Roswell GB4 mini-humbuckers. Harley Benton is offering this left-hander in a Vintage Sunburst finish with white pickguard. And it is ridiculously affordable; expect to pay £175/$238 at Thomann.

Priced £299/$407, the ST-Modern Plus HSS is a solid contender in the keenly contested market for electric guitars under $500.

For that modest outlay you get a guitar with an American alder double-cut body, a bolt-on roasted Canadian maple neck, shaped into a Smooth D that has a little more meat on the shoulders but has a very mainstream feel, measuring 20.5mm at the first fret and 22.5mm at the 12th.

These have an Tesla VR-Nitro Alnico 5 at the bridge position, a pair of Tesla TV-S1 Alnico 5 single-coils at the middle and neck, and if that’s not versatile enough then bear in mind we have a coil-split for that humbucker. The hardware isn’t bad either.

You’ve got a Babicz FCH 2-point Z-Series tremolo system and staggered machine heads to improve the break angle as the strings approach the nut (though we also have a pair of string trees here, too, for that).

If all of this sounds great but you’re wondering where the acoustic guitar options are, you’re in luck. The Custom Line series has just added a pair of all-solid acacia models, the CLD-65E ASA NT and CLO-65E ASA NT, with the former a dreadnought, the latter a slightly more modestly sized orchestra body.

Both models come equipped with the HB-03 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system – and with an onboard guitar tuner too. They’ve got bone nuts and saddles, pau ferro fretboards and bridges, abalone rosettes and a beginner-friendly C profile nato neck.

Acacia is not a tonewood we see all that often. Harley Benton describes it as having a “warm and rounded” character – and it looks good with that natural stain revealing all the details in the wood grain. Multi-ply binding and those open-gear tuners with the metal buttons give these an upscale look, and yet at £174/$237, these are cheap acoustic guitars.

For more details, head over to Harley Benton.

Gibson has expanded its Original Collection with three acoustic guitars inspired by the quote/unquote golden era of the ‘50s and ‘60s – a time when the electric guitar got popular, youth culture exploded, and Beatlemania was just around the corner.

And this drop of high-end flat-tops – released as Gibson celebrates 100 years of making them – includes the regal, big-bodied oomph and class of the SJ-200 60s Original, the compact small-bodied mojo of the LG-2 50s Original, and one hybrid acoustic electric guitar that speaks to the enduring power of Beatlemania, the J-160E.

Think of the J-160E and you might think of the Ed Sullivan shows, or black-and-white archive photos of a mop-topped John Lennon in the studio. Lennon’s 1962 model sold for $2.41 million in 2015. Or maybe George Harrison in his pomp, Paul McCartney in chunky woollens singing about the west coast of Scotland (although Macca’s was a square-shouldered model, and this has a more round-shouldered profile).

It comes complete with a hum-cancelling P-90 DC pickup mounted on the top of the soundhole, gold Top Hat volume and tone controls on the body’s top.

Available in Vintage Sunburst, solid mahogany on the back and sides, solid Sikta spruce on the top, it is the spit of its '60s counterpart. There’s something undeniably cool about the J-160E, which has this sort of factory-modded look with that uncovered P-90 DC and the gold dials with silver inserts on the body’s top.

Leaving the radicalism of augmenting an acoustic an electric guitar pickup and controls, this is fundamentally a big-lunged dread with many familiar Gibson elements, from the 12” radius rosewood fingerboard with trapezoid inlays, the 24.75” scale, the mahogany SlimTaper neck that joins the body with a compound dovetail joint set with hot hide glue.

It’ll make your chords sound huge. But put it through an amp – maybe even with an overdrive pedal – and it’ll sing, too. It’s priced £3,499/$3,999.

The SJ-200 60s Original is a more traditional offering, with the King of the Flat-tops offered in Heritage Cherry Sunburst and Vintage Sunburst. At a sobering £4,999/$5,699 it is the most expensive of the three.

But for that you get one opulent guitar, with AAA figured maple back and sides, a AAA Sitka spruce top, and it comes heavily bejewelled in mother of pearl, from the crown fingerboard inlays to the ‘Moustache’ bridge.

The decorative pickguard, gold hardware, and multi-ply binding completes the look. Even the neck – a two-piece construction of maple with walnut stinger – is a work of art.

The LG-2 50s Original is the most unassuming of the three, the smallest, but anyone with experience of these compact little Gibson acoustics will tell you they typically have an over-sized personality.

The LG-2 is also the oldest model of the three, having first been introduced in 1942 as the success to the L-00.

The 2026 model is offered in Antique Natural and Vintage Sunburst, and does not mess with the O.G. recipe, pairing a Sitka spruce top with mahogany on the back and sides. Its mahogany neck has a historic V profile. The three-on-a-plate Grover tuners with white buttons are too cool.

All of these acoustics are finished in nitrocellulose, all made in Bozeman, Montana, and the price includes a hard-shell guitar case, and they are available now. Check ‘em out at Gibson.

NAMM 2026: Welcome to our roundup of the best guitar gear to hit the hallowed halls of the Anaheim Convention Centre, featuring the likes of Neural DSP, Gibson, Taylor Guitars, Yamaha, and many more.

All the big-hitters return for the annual North American Music Merchants Show, which feels like it's getting back to its best, with plenty of new gear for us all to salivate over.

We deployed our very own guitar-nut, Rob Laing, to scour the halls and floors for all the latest finery the guitar industry has to offer. In our best efforts to try and distil his thoughts and experiences into one easy-to-read format, we bring you our best guitar gear of NAMM 2026.

For more NAMM news, insights and oddities, head over to our rolling live blog.

NAMM 2026 guitar gear highlights

Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini

Neural DSP has taken its smash-hit Quad Cortex amp modeller and shrunk it by more than 50 per cent, and despite all this the unit is for all intents and purposes unchanged.

None of the processing power of the original unit has been lost in this downsizing project. The 7” touchscreen remains in place, dominating the enclosure a little like a smartphone, and you still have the four stainless steel rotary footswitches, plus a heap of connections around the back.

In so many ways, it really is the same MusicRadar-approved Quad Cortex, using the same Neural Capture tech (V1 and V2), the same access to the ridiculous number of guitar amp and guitar effects pedal captures in the library, compatibility with the same Archetype guitar plugin suites, it is just that it is really small. How small? It weighs in at 1.5kg. It measures 8.9” x 4.6” x 2.5”.

You can check out more on the Quad Cortex Mini in our first look video over on YouTube

Blackstar ID: X floor modellers

Is any amp brand as busy as the Brits at Blackstar? Turning up to this year's show with the mighty little Beam Mini practice amp, its first FRFR cabs with the Artist FRs, TV-10 tube amps and... modelling pedals?

Yes indeed - three affordable options with sleek metal chassis that really impressed us. The new ID: X Floor One, Two and Three range are lean into physical controls rather than screen real estate and we like that being reflected on the value front with prices starting at under $200.

There are six models of tried and true Blackstar amps, like the St James, alongside six of the Ampton classic-influenced choices. There are also three bass amps, two acoustic voices, and an acoustic simulator to widen your horizons. Players can also select virtual valve responses between EL84, EL34, or 6L6 with the IR side covered by the company's excellent CabRig editing.

Oh, there are effects too, of course, with 35, and an expression pedal for the Floor Two and Three. Blackstar continues to impress us with its willingness to confidently enter new spaces.

Mentha Works Monk Echo

Monk Echo by Mentha Works was spotted on day one of the show, and we already had an inkling that this was going to be a very strong candidate for our favourite new pedal of NAMM 2026.

The company is formed by some of the key people behind Gamechanger Audio and has all the hallmarks of that esoteric vibe brought into the industry from the Latvian firm.

Monk Echo is a delay and reverb pedal that features unique vowel voicing, called the Monk Voice, which enables you sculpt your reverbs with the character of the human voice. You'll also find responsive modulation, granular pitch-shifting, and distortion via a special degradation effect.

The effects unit is already sold out with all preorders from the initial backers being honoured, so we hope that we get to see this time machine in full production very soon.

Gibson Atomic Age concept

In the corner of Gibon's invitation-only room of Custom Shop delights at NAMM, sat something very different - a brand new guitar design. The offset Atomic Age.

For now it's a concept guitar, and not a production model, but we're told the reaction from dealers has been so enthusiastic, it's making the prospect of a production model more likely. We like the shape and would be really interested to see it with different finish options one day. Big fans of the single G logo on the headstock, too, while there's an unexpected raised Gibson logo on the pickguard.

From the design mind of Custom Shop Product Engineer Darron Dubose, the Atomic Age features a solid Korina body with unusual contouring. The pickups (the neck humbucker is a split coil) are accented with a bowtie-style surround. The Atomic Age has string-through construction too, and it's great to see Gibson trying new things here with a surprising preview. Let's hope it's not the last we see of the Atomic Age.

Epiphone Futura

Even without a full stand that's open to the public at the NAMM Show, Gibson and Epiphone have still made a massive splash here with a host of new models the public can see.

Value and specs are levelling up for core models, and the Futura Epiphones enter new territory with stainless steel frets. But on the Gibson acoustic side, we were also blown away by the super light and super resonant Century Collection, celebrating 100 years of its flat-tops.

There are also stunning signatures for Michael Schenker, late legend Mick Ronson and a new version of the Alex Lifeson Epiphone ES-355 that's creating a lot of excitement.

JBL BandBox

JBL has dropped its BandBox Solo and Trio speakers which feature modelling as well a stem separation feature.

At the heart of JBL's BandBox is Stem AI: an intelligent vocal and instrument separation technology that lets you isolate or remove vocals, guitar, or drums from any track in real-time.

This technology makes it easy to turn any track into a custom backing mix, whether you’re trying to learn a solo, jam with friends or improvise over songs.

The stem separation works really well, with only a short delay to compensate for the processing. It was demoed on the JBL booth running Spotify via Bluetooth, with the stems dropped out of the mix with relative ease.

We didn't have much time to check out the modelling side of the BandBox range, so we can't give our opinions on that side of things just yet, but stem separation feels like it could be the next must-have feature in guitar gear of this ilk.

Also worth checking out…

Eastman Guitar

We need to give a shout-out to Eastman Guitars with its new Fullertone shape - the Offset '62. The best Fullertone so far, aesthetically? We think so. Typically for Eastman, this £899 model felt premium in our hands, with satin Gold and Dakota Red finishes - though we're interested to see what more colours may follow in the future.

Spec includes Tonerider soapbar humbuckers, roasted black limba body and the Fullertone's two-bolt long tenon design that you can really feel helps the guitar resonate, even acoustically. The tremolo is a Goldo DG and we're loving the anodised backplates and pickguard. There's only one thing for it - we need to get one in for review and investigate further!

Chris Buck signature Yamaha Revstar

It's been in the works for a while, but Chris Buck finally has a Yamaha Guitars signature Revstar to demo for us on a very busy NAMM Show stand.

The RS02CB Honey Gold is based on his trusted custom shop model. Chris worked with Yamaha to voice the P-90s here with a lower output for a more detailed response at lower volumes.

A chambered body helps lighten the load and the neck is carbon-reinforced to provide stability in changing environments, which is just as well, because Chris's band Cardinal Black are touring far and wide, including playing two gigs at the gear show.

Taylor Guitars

Resetting an acoustic guitar neck to help lower or raise its string action and improve playability is a tricky job for experts only - until now. We met Taylor Guitars CEO and design mastermind Andy Powers to see how you can do it in a few seconds on the company's new Next Generation models. It's another showcase of Andy's vision for constantly evolving the company's designs to help players play better.

The new Action Control Neck for the Next Generation 300, 400 and 800 series Grand Auditorium guitars features a long tenon and this shimless adjustability, alongside scalloped V-class bracing for enhanced resonance as well as warmth. There's also the new Claria pickup system. Next generation indeed!

NAMM 2026: Epiphone has a launched a comprehensive refresh of its core lineup of electric and acoustic guitars, with the all-new Inspired By Gibson series seeing rosewood fingerboards as standard on all but the entry-level Tribute Plus models, and some fresh colours and designs.

Those designs, of course, take their cues from Gibson, and just as the Inspired By Gibson Custom range applied some of that Custom Shop high-end magic to Epiphone guitars, this new range does something similar at a more affordable price point, and the $599 Epiphone Les Paul – available in its ‘50s and ‘60s style – has never looked so good.

If we’re talking upgrades, consider this; these Inspired By Gibson Les Paul Standards now come with a long neck tenon for your sustained pleasure. So there’s that.

We also Epiphone Probucker have electric guitar pickups, the CTS pots, the maple cap with figured maple veneers on the translucent finishes that might, just might, tempt you away from that ‘50s Goldtop…

With the bound rosewood fingerboards, the premium padded gig bag, these look like serious Les Pauls. Ditto, the Custom variants, with dress the iconic single-cut up in its tux.

This is Epiphone playing the greatest hits of Gibson. There are SGs, SG Specials, Les Paul Juniors and Specials – P-90s for you’re rock ’n’ roll pleasures. There is a Firebird with a nine-ply mahogany and walnut through-neck plus solid walnut wings.

Available in Wine Red or Vintage Sunburst, it comes strapped with a pair of Probucker FB720 Firebird humbuckers. At $799, the Firebird – like the Les Paul Custom – is towards the upper range of the Inspired By Gibson series but it is a lot of guitar.

That super-cool reverse six-in-line headstock is equipped with Grover Mini-Rotomatic tuners.

Grovers are a commonly found appointment across these more upper-scale models, though you will find Epiphone Deluxe tuners on the Juniors and Specials.

There are some very interesting additions to the lineup. The ‘70s Flying V – available in a bright Maui Blue with a white pickguard or direct from Gibson in Ebony – is pretty neat. Note the spade-style buttons on the Grover Rotomatics.

That blue model has strong Richie Faulkner vibes; it is impossible to look at the Ebony one and not think Kirk Hammett. Though his signature Flying V, based on his 1979 model, remains in stock.

Keeping with the Metallica theme, Epiphone has also just proven that you don’t need to release a signature guitar to give the fans what they want. Perhaps the most eye-catching electric guitar in this entire series is the ‘80s Explorer with EMGs, especially in Classic White (it is also available in Ebony as a Gibson exclusive, online and at the Gibson Garages).

With an EMG 81 at the bridge, an EMG 60 at the neck, this is as mid ‘80s James Hetfield as it gets without it being a James Hetfield model.

Although you might not get the rosewood fingerboard on the Tribute Plus models, these bolt-on beginner-friendly electric guitars look the part with AAA flame maple veneers and bound fingerboards – the Les Paul Tribute Plus even has a bound body.

The acoustic guitars in this Inspired By Gibson range – and there are many – share in the upgrades. We’re talking solid Sitka spruce tops across most models, Fishman Sonicore/Presys II acoustic guitar pickup and preamp systems, again, rosewood fingerboards, bound bodies, and decorative pickguards for the SJ-200, Hummingbird and Dove.

Epiphone promises something for everyone here. With its 22.68” scale length and 7/8 body size, the J-45 Express would make an excellent beginner acoustic guitar at $299.

Check them out over at Epiphone.

Harley Benton is closing its US Reverb Store, admitting that changes in economic conditions in the past year have made it “no longer feasible” to operate in the US.

The Harley Benton Official US Shop, which was opened in October 2024 to offer shipping direct from its warehouse in the US, will close on 31 January.

“This has been a difficult decision for us, as we have greatly appreciated the enthusiasm and support from the guitar community across the United States,” reads the brand’s statement on Reverb. “The changes in economic conditions over the past year have made it increasingly difficult for us to operate in the US, to the point where continuing the operation is no longer feasible – at least not in a way that allows us to offer you our products at the value you deserve.”

This does not mean players in the US won’t be able to get their hands on Harley Benton guitars in future. They will still be able to order them via Thomann, with the gear shipping from Germany.

But this will mean that US guitar players will have to pay more for them, because not only will players now have to pay for shipping to the US, these goods will be subject to tariffs – import duties levied on the goods shipped from overseas. These are payable to the courier, either upon delivery or invoiced separately.

Once upon a time, this was no big deal when talking budget gear. There was the de minimis exemption which excluded low-value shipments of up to $800 from any tariffs. But this was suspended on 29 August 2025.

For the guitar players, these tariffs can be expensive and more than a little complicated. The tariffs will be levied depending on where the product was made. Some of Harley Benton’s electric guitars are made in Indonesia.

Many of its guitar amps, and peripheries such as its superlative PowerPlant pedalboard power supplies, are made in China.

Harley Benton signature artist, Maxxxwell Carlisle, host of the Guitar Max YouTube channel, posted a video in May 2025 addressing the subject of tariffs and how they may affect US customers who wanted to buy his signature guitar, the Guitar MAX Fusion S-style, which was launched this time last year.

Carlisle did a good job of explaining the additional costs that could be incurred when US players buy their guitars overseas.

It reflects just how dynamic the tariff situation is that only months later, the de minimis exemption was suspended for all countries.

Its guitar starter packs, which bundle beginner electric guitars with an amp, guitar tuner, guitar picks et cetera, might all feature multiple countries of origin, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and China.

“We want to thank our entire US community for your trust, enthusiasm, and incredible support,” continued Harley Benton's statement. “This isn’t an easy decision – and who knows what the future may bring once circumstances become more stable again.”

Harley Benton says it will no longer be listing new products in the Reverb store from 1 February but players can still get in touch with warranty enquiries, repairs and customer service issues.

And until then, the Farewell Sale is officially underway, and presently “exceeding all expectations”.

Harley Benton says orders might take a “little longer than usual” to process but you won’t have import duties to worry about. You can browse its listings at Reverb.

NAMM 2026: Abasi Guitars debuts its long-awaited Córdoba Stage 7 nylon string guitar at Booth 4230, Hall D, and pre-orders have opened for a summer 2026 release.

The firm was formed in 2017 when Tosin Abasi left Ibanez to create his own high-end ergonomic and extended range of 6-, 7- and 8-string guitars.

The Abasi Córdoba Stage 7 fuses electric and acoustic elements with its seven-nylon-string design and traditional headstock with Fishman Stage pickup system and body sensors for live performance.

Other key features to note about the Abasi Córdoba Stage 7 are that it’s based on the Abasi Concepts Larada ergonomic platform and has a thin, chambered body to reduce feedback and enhance resonance, too.

Somewhat of a unicorn for a guitar in its category is its full 24-fret access and 7-string multiscale design tuned from B to E for piano-like low-end depth and an articulate, expressive treble response.

Narrow spacing across its seven nylon strings is said to help the guitar play more like an electric and will help players transition between electric and acoustic seamlessly.

The top of the guitar is made from solid spruce with an exotic wood veneer, while the side features controls for volume, EQ, and body blend for live and studio tone shaping.

Pre-orders are now open for the Abasi Córdoba Stage 7 which costs $1,499.99 in the US or £1,126 in the UK and is available in Ziricote, Acacia, and Whiteburst colors. Pre-orders are fully refundable up until 1st April 2026 and can be paid either as a deposit of $249.99(US) which will secure the Abasi Corboda Stage 7 complete with signed certificate of authenticity for the first run designation plus an Abasi Concepts Nylon Mini Course. Alternatively if you pay in full you will get priority allocation, plus a Micro-Aggresor Pedal worth $249.99 US or £188 UK.

The Córdoba Stage 7 is due to start shipping in summer this year and also comes with a Córdoba Abasi gig bag.

NAMM 2026: Faith Guitars holds no bars at NAMM 2026 this year with not one but three big updates to the company’s electro-acoustic guitar line-up and you can see them all at the Faith Guitars Booth (#7007, Hall C).

Designed in the UK by Patrick James Eggle and handcrafted by a team of expert luthiers in West Java, Indonesia, Faith Guitars are known for their handmade quality, British designs, ethically sourced materials and superb quality control. They've been used by musicians around the world, including Rob Chapman, as well as Frank Turner and Jake Bugg, who have both been known to use PJE Customs.

The British guitar company is a force to be reckoned with in California at this year’s NAMM 2026, with its updated FX series making its first international debut and a new PJE Legacy FG4 Earth Satin Sunburst, though it was the upgraded Faith Nexus 2026 series that really caught our eye.

The refreshed line of Nexus electro-acoustic guitars sit between Faith’s Pro and Legacy lines and are made from solid mahogany and trembesi tonewoods. While its predecessor was formerly available in a copper black colorway, the new Nexus models are available in either thru-black or thru-cognac – not only is the mahogany wood grain finish mesmerising to look at, the Nexus series has a distinctive mid-range driven sound which Faith says "responds beautifully to expressive playing".

All of Faith's new 2026 Nexus guitars feature a brand-new cutaway on the guitar body which makes it easier to play higher up the fretboard compared to its predecessor, they also take on a black and white ABS binding.

The new Nexus Venus features an undersaddle piezo pickup with a Fishman Presys 2 & Sonicore on-board preamp system with a 2 Band EQ and tuner on the side of the guitar for ease of use, plus a phase switch to control feedback on stage. The output jack is part of the battery box panel at the base of the guitar.

The Neptune, however, has a discreet soundhold-mounted Fishman S-Tone for a cleaner, more traditional appearance – volume and tone controls are hidden out of sight and accessed by two dials that sit just inside of the soundhole. It's also the more budget-friendly of the two designs.

Both Neptune and Venus models feature an ebony fingerboard, bridge and headplate as well as the company's signature decorative mother of pearl 'F' inlay on the 12th fret.

Faith says the new Neptune "loves to be played and strummed hard" and has "an enourmous amount of volume and projection", while the Venus is "comfortable to play for long periods of time yet doesn't sacrifice tone or acoustice power" and this is largely thanks to its shallower body and 15" lower bout.

The upgraded Faith Nexus models for 2026 include a Venus Cutaway Electro Thru-Black (FPVECK) or Thru-Cognac (FPVECG). The Thru-Black model is also available left-handed (FPVECKL). The Neptune Cutaway Electro is available in Thru-Black (FPNCECK) or Thru-Cognac (FPNCECG).

All models are available from Faith Guitars’ authorized dealers now with prices starting at $1,019 US or £805 in the UK.

Norman’s Rare Guitars has been sold. The legendary Los Angeles guitar store, founded and run by the equally legendary Norman Harris, has been bought by TNAG Global, the owners of Nashville-based heritage gear retail powerhouse Carter Vintage Guitars.

TNAG Global will take ownership of the store and its inventory of a thousand-plus guitars, plus Harris’ own personal collection. After over 50 years, there are bound to be a few holy grail electric guitars in there.

All of said gear will be onboarded to TNAG Global’s “instrument management system”, The Exchange, which is described as a “fully integrated environment to buy, sell and consign legacy instrument brands, in-store and online”.

In the store at 18969 Ventura Blvd, LA, there will be no discernible difference. The team at Norman’s Rare Guitars will remain unchanged. The vibe will be the same.

“Norman’s Rare Guitars is the most iconic guitar shop in the world, and we are honoured to help extend its story into the future,” says Ben Montague, founder and CEO of TNAG Global. “Our responsibility with this acquisition is simple: Protect what makes the shop special, ensure the business thrives beyond its founder and give Norman the freedom to step back whenever he chooses, knowing the legacy is secure.”

Harris will still remain onsite, “actively involved” in the business for as long as he wants. It is nigh-on impossible to imagine the store without him. His and the store’s story was the subject of a recent Netflix documentary.

Harris says the acquisition puts the legacy of the store in safe hands for generations to come, and says there was no one better to take the company forward than Montague and his team at TNAG Global.

“The goal has always been to share my love of great guitars with the community, and this partnership allows that community to grow, while protecting everything that makes the shop special,” says Harris. “I feel a deep sense of comfort knowing the shop, its history and its values will still be here for future generations of my family and for guitar lovers around the world.”

TNAG Global’s ambitions are to do with Norman’s Rare Guitars what it did for Carter Vintage Guitars, growing business globally without changing “the soul” the store. After the acquisition of Carter Vintage Guitars in 2022, sales have increased by 233 per cent. And Montague sees plenty of room for growth for Norman’s Rare Guitars.

“California is one of the most important guitar markets in the world, and we believe there is enormous opportunity to bring a truly dialled-in, trusted consignment model to the West Coast,” he says. “At TNAG Global, customer obsession is the driving force behind everything we build. We create environments where guitar lovers, collectors and musicians can walk into an iconic store – in Nashville or Los Angeles – and feel taken care of at the highest level, both in person and online.”

But what do the regulars at Norman’s Rare Guitars make of it? Like all great guitar stores, it is a hang-out spot, it’s a home from home, a place where fellow obsessives can talk gear, and buy gear come pay day.

One such regular knows all parties involved in this acquisition deal, and he gives his unqualified blessing to the deal.

“I am extremely excited to see my Uncle Norm enter into this new chapter in his life and career,” says Joe Bonamassa, blues guitar superstar and regular at Norm’s. “We all know that he will still be around, being the master of ceremonies and dealing the coolest guitars in the world.

“Congratulations to my friend Ben and the entire team at TNAG Global on securing the legacy of the greatest guitar store in the world.”

NAMM 2026: Martin has announced a wholesale refresh of its Road Series acoustic guitars, unveiling 20 models and dividing its mid-priced lineup into Retro and Modern streams.

The idea is that there will be something for everyone in this collection, and that maybe noviciates to Martin guitars will find it a little easier to choose which instrument suits them better.

The Retro models mine Martin’s illustrious history for inspiration, present today’s players with traditional body styles – i.e. Dreadnought or D-shapes, and auditorium or 000 shapes. The Modern lineup is where you’ll find cutaway acoustics and bold new designs such as the SC-10E and SC-13E acoustic electric guitars.

“This is a great example of how we have one foot firmly planted in tradition, but one foot always stepping forward into the future,” says Rameen Shayegan, international instrument design manager at Martin. “In this way we are hoping to serve both sides of the modern guitar player’s needs, whether that’s a traditional guitarist, or a modern guitarist, both of which are going to need extreme playability and great tone.

“But from an aesthetic and and maybe access standpoint and feature set, [they] are maybe looking for very different things in their instruments.”

Just take a look at how two acoustics comprised of similar materials can also be so different under the Retro and Modern house style.

Below, we have the all-sapele D-10E, that redoubtable square-shouldered dreadnought shape quintessentially Martin, and the SC-10E, which transposes this sapele look and build to the Pennsylvanian brand's most modern design – an instrument that bestows some electric guitar playability to the acoustic-electric paradigm.

The 2026 Road Series organises these Retro and Modern across four distinct styles, each infused with Martin DNA. The 10 Style models have all-satin finishes, solid sapele on the back and sides, the choice of solid sapele or spruce tops, Martin’s E1 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system, and they draw their inspiration from Martin’s more upscale Style 15 models.

The 12 Style takes its lead from Martin’s Style 18 (e.g. a D-18), and so it’s largely the same as above, except with gloss finishes as standard. The 13 Style presents us with a few more options, with gloss finishes and solid spruce tops across the board, and the choice of solid black walnut, aka “Pennsylvania rosewood,” or black walnut with koa veneer on the back and sides.

These take their design cues from the Style 28 models, and have Martin E1 electronics on all models, save for the SC-13E, which has an LR Baggs Element installed.

And saving the best for last, certainly if you’re looking for some of that old-school Martin aesthetic at a more affordable price point, there are the Retro Plus models, which are described as “elevated interpretations of the Style 12 and 13 models”.

With torrefied spruce tops, scalloped spruce X-bracing and solid granadillo on the back and sides, they’re all kinds of fancy, and you can get the smaller-bodied 000 or the big-lunged Dreadnought, both with ebony fingerboards, both mighty fine, for £2,149/$2,099 street.

That’s a high-end acoustic guitar in our book, but the 2026 Road Series has plenty of affordable options, with prices starting from £949/$899, and the series doing exactly what Martin says it would, bridging the gap between its entry-level X Series and the dream machines of its mainline models coming out of Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

These new Road Series will be on display at NAMM 2026. But they are also with Martin dealers worldwide, available to order.

Browse the full range at Martin Guitar.

Taylor has unveiled the Next Generation of its flagship Grand Auditorium acoustic guitars, taking the opportunity to also expand the “heritage-inspired” Gold Label range with a trio of square-shouldered dreadnoughts – and launching a couple of super high-end 900 Series models for good measure.

Many players will argue that Taylor's Grand Auditorium is the Goldilocks acoustic, big enough to be a strummer, lithe enough in the upper-midrange to show up beautifully for fingerstyle, capable of all styles. And Andy Powers, CEO and chief guitar designer at Taylor Guitars, would agree.

“This has been a go-to instrument for a lot of players, across a lot of genres, a lot of different musical environments,” he says. “Because it’s that ‘just right’ size. It fits so many players, across so many different styles of playing, across different music forms.”

And it has just got better. This Next Generation run of Taylor acoustics improves upon their design in three different ways: it has next-gen scalloped V-Class bracing pattern, Action Control Neck systems across the lineup, and an newly designed Claria acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system as standard.

V-Class bracing was a game-changer for Taylor, and here it argues that it has just got better, lightening “key brace zones for increased top movement and responsiveness” – all of which translates into more “warmth and richness”, an enhanced low end, while preserving the same level of projection and sustain, i.e. that sort of pre-EQ’d mastered quality that made the V-Class bracing such a success in the first place.

“On these guitars, you have this incredible, brilliant, real vibrant upper register – great accuracy, great balance – and yet, when I come down to the lower register, all the notes have this classic warmth, a nice presence,” says Powers. “It feels great when you’re strumming chords, you’re a rhythm player, you’re accompanying a vocalist, something like that. It works really well.”

As the name suggests, the Action Control Neck system allows players to adjust the action via a simple adjustment via the soundhole.

The long tenon aspect of its design will make Gibson electric guitar fans' ears prick up; again, Taylor says it promotes “enhanced sustain, warmth, and resonance” – every little helps. It also should be said that neck repairs, should you need one, are a lot easier than if your guitar has a traditional dovetail neck joint set with hide glue.

“We want the guitar to be playing an optimum condition, no matter where in the world you go, how old the guitar is, what the environment’s like,” says Powers.

Finally, there's the Claria pickup and preamp, arguably the most intriguing Next Gen update. It is an under-saddle piezo design with the onboard preamp’s controls relocated to inside the soundhole.

Nice and discrete, it's a simple drive, too; players get a Volume control, a Tone control, and a Mid-Contour control that can dramatically change the character of your sound when going through an acoustic guitar amp or mixing desk.

These Next Generation improvements can be found on a wide range of Taylor’s Grand Auditorium models, with prices starting from $2,499 and rising to, well, serious money. The limited run Next Generation Builder’s Edition 914ce will set you back a whopping $6,999. But it’s the 900 series, that's the going rate.

The Next Generation models include the “entry level” 314ce, the 414ce ($2,699), the 814ce (okay, at $3,999, we’re getting serious), the neo-tropical mahogany and sapele Builder’s Edition 324ce ($3,299), the Indian rosewood and Adirondack Spruce Builder's Edition 814ce, complete with bevelled armrest ($4,499), the regular, i.e. no bevelled armrest, 324ce, ($2,699), the 454ce ($2,799) and 854ce ($TBC) 12-string guitars, both of which feature standard V-Class bracing, plus the Honduran mahogany and sinker redwood Builder’s Edition 814ce ($4,499, see above) and its Adirondack spruce Blacktop sibling ($4,499).

But Taylor is not finished for its New Year announcements. The Gold Label series, a range inspired by classic non-cutaway acoustics, reimagined in the Taylor house style, has been expanded with a trio of square-shouldered dreadnoughts, the Gold Label 510e, 710e, and 810e, prices TBC.

As Powers says, these Gold Label models are a change of pace for the company.

“It’s like players are stepping into a different musical skin with our Gold Label guitars,” says Powers. “Songwriters, bluegrass players, Americana players, rhythm players, weekend strummers, worship leaders, all kinds of different players saying, ‘Wow, I love this sound. This is a whole different face of Taylor.’”

Rounding out the new models are a pair of collector-grade 900 Series doozies, the Gold Label 914e, which has a non-cutaway Super Auditorium body, and the Grand Pacific 917ce, both featuring Adirondack spruce on top, Honduran rosewood on the back and sides, LR Baggs VTC electronics, and they are priced at $5,999.

For more details, head over to Taylor Guitars.

What is it?

When you think of Gibson’s most iconic acoustic guitars, chances are your mind drifts to the slope-shouldered J-45 or the grandiose SJ-200. But lurking just outside that spotlight is the humble L-00, a pint-sized troubadour’s companion that’s been favoured by everyone from Bob Dylan to Eddie Vedder. With its compact, ultra-comfortable body and that unmistakable, laser-focused midrange, the L-00 is a secret weapon for songwriters. Of course, if you’re hoping to add one to your stable, you’re looking at a starting price of around $1,699, a figure that’ll send many budget-conscious players searching for alternatives. That’s where Epiphone steps in with a wallet-friendly solution.

​Introducing the Blues King Studio, a fresh face in Epiphone’s acoustic lineup, taking major cues from the L-00 lineage. This compact acoustic features a layered mahogany back and sides, a solid spruce top, and is tastefully wrapped in single-ply cream binding.

True to form, the Blues King Studio sports a classic mahogany neck with Gibson’s time-honoured 24.75” scale length and a player-friendly rounded C profile. Topping the neck is a rosewood fretboard with 19 “standard” frets and understated pearloid dot inlays. Capping it all off is a '60s Kalamazoo-style headstock, which brandishes the Epiphone logo in a gold silkscreen.​

If you’re planning to take your new axe to the stage, you’re covered. Epiphone equips the Blues King Studio with Fishman electronics, including an S-Core under-saddle pickup and a Fishman Presys VT preamp with intuitive soundhole-mounted volume and tone controls.

​Other notable specs include a compensated plastic saddle atop a rosewood bridge with ivory-coloured pins, and vintage-inspired three-on-a-plate tuners with matching ivory buttons. You can grab the Blues King Studio in two throwback finishes, Ebony and Dark Burst, with options for both right- and left-handed players. Each guitar ships with a lightweight, non-padded gig bag to get you on the road.

Specs

• Launch price: $399/£349/€389
• Made: China
• Body shape: L-00/Parlour
• Body top: Solid Spruce
• Top bracing: X-braced
• Back & sides: Layered Mahogany
• Neck/shape: Mahogany, C-profile
• Scale length: 628.65mm / 24.75in
• Nut/width: White Plastic, 43.0mm / 1.69in
• Fingerboard/Radius: 304.8mm / 12.0in
• Finish: Dark Burst/ Ebony
• Bridge/pins: Rosewood Rectangle/ivory plastic
• Tuning Machines: Three-on-a-Plate with Ivory Plastic Button
• Electronics: Fishman Presys VT/S-Core
• Case: Gig bag
• Left-handed options: Yes
• Contact: Epiphone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★☆☆

In recent years, I’ve been quick to sing the praises of Epiphone’s build quality. There’s been a noticeable leap forward, and, if you ask me, the brand has been churning out some of its most exciting models to date, which is probably why my disappointment with the Blues King Studio stings a little more.

​Unboxing the Blues King Studio, I’m met with a guitar swaddled in a no-frills gig bag. Let’s be honest, at this price, nobody’s expecting a tour-ready case, but the total lack of padding is worth flagging. If you’re headed out to a jam or rehearsal, don’t count on this bag for real protection; it’s more of a dust cover than a shield. Still, it’s better than nothing, and hey, it’s a freebie.

But as I lift the guitar from its bag, trouble rears its head. The battery compartment for the pickup system is rattling loose inside the soundhole, a decidedly inauspicious beginning. A few attempts to reseat it prove futile, so I resign myself to the rattle.

Casting my eye over the body, another flaw jumps out. Around the soundhole, right by the rosette, the finishing work leaves a lot to be desired. Patches of spruce peek through the black, lending a distinctly unfinished look that feels a bit careless for a brand on the upswing.

​Aesthetics aside, the fretwork is solid, no sharp edges or rogue high frets to be found. Sure, they could stand a polish, but the installation is top-notch, which is what counts. The nut is well cut, and the tuners are surprisingly good, gliding smoothly and holding pitch without complaint.

I’m very much hoping that I can chalk this up to bad luck and not an indication of what the entire series will be like. Let’s hope this is just one guitar that slipped through the cracks.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Sliding into playing position, the Blues King Studio feels instantly approachable. Thanks to its compact body, the guitar nestles comfortably against you, a refreshing change if, like me, you’re accustomed to the broad shoulders of a J-45. I’ve always had a soft spot for the L-00 body. To me, the smaller frame invites long sessions, making it a perfect sofa companion for late-night songwriting or extended practice stints.

The neck deserves a nod as well. Epiphone has dialled in a smooth, rounded profile that sits pretty naturally in the hand. It is a little thicker than expected, but I must say, I like how it feels. There’s enough meat on the bone to really dig in. It doesn’t feel spindly or thin.

The factory setup delivers a respectable action of around 1.8mm on the low E and 1.7mm on the high E string. For me, it’s low enough for easy fretting up and down the board, but not so low as to invite dreaded fret buzz or compromise dynamics. Barre chords and intricate fingerstyle passages come off cleanly, and transitions up the neck are fairly effortless.

All told, the Blues King Studio nails that elusive balance: it’s forgiving enough for newcomers, but responsive and articulate enough to keep seasoned players engaged. Whether you’re strumming, picking, or exploring some delta blues licks, this guitar rewards your touch with comfort and clarity.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Soundwise, the Blues King Studio makes no secret of its sonic pedigree. There’s that signature midrange punch you’d expect from a compact, parlour-style body. The attack is focused, immediate, and pokey. Yes, there’s a hint of boxiness to the tone, especially when you dig in with a heavy strum, but that’s part and parcel of the smaller footprint. If you’re looking for the cavernous, room-filling resonance of a jumbo, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Where this guitar truly shines is under the fingers of a blues or folk picker. The voice is bright and articulate, with a crisp attack that brings out subtle nuances in fingerstyle playing and bluesy bends. Single-note runs and classic licks pop with clarity, and the guitar responds well to dynamic shifts.

Strumming, on the other hand, exposes the Blues King’s limitations. The sound lacks the low-end depth and open bloom you’d find in larger-bodied acoustics. Chords can feel a bit compressed, and the guitar doesn’t quite fill the room on its own.

Plugged in, the story is much the same: the Fishman system delivers a sound that, while a touch scratchy and somewhat raw around the edges, remains more than serviceable at this price point. It’s gig-ready for coffeehouses and open mics, capturing the instrument’s natural character without any major surprises - flaws and all.

In short, the Blues King Studio is purpose-built for players who value character over sheer volume. It’s a natural fit for blues pickers, fingerstylists, and anyone seeking that old-school, rootsy vibe in a modern, affordable package.

Verdict

There could be a lot to love about Epiphone’s new wallet-friendly parlour. It boasts charming good looks, inviting playability, and that unmistakable small-bodied tone that’s become a hallmark of blues and roots music. For players seeking a comfortable, portable acoustic with vintage flair, the Blues King Studio certainly ticks several boxes.

However, those appealing features are counterbalanced by some glaring finishing issues. The lack of attention to detail, whether it’s rough edges, patchy finishing, or loose hardware, can’t be glossed over, even at this price point. These aren’t just minor quibbles; they’re the kind of flaws that separate an instrument you love from one you merely tolerate.

Yes, it’s an entry-level guitar, but that doesn’t mean it gets a free pass on quality. In a market crowded with affordable acoustics that deliver both style and substance, Epiphone needs to bring its A-game in every department. The Blues King Studio comes close to being a standout, but ultimately, it falls just short of greatness.

If you’re after a bluesy, compact acoustic for casual jams or songwriting, and can look past the cosmetic missteps, you’ll find plenty of inspiration here. I'm hoping the QC issues here are not indicative of the general Blues King standard out there.

MusicRadar verdict: This is a handsome parlour-sized acoustic that certainly has potential, but as it stands, poor finishing and a battery compartment that’s trying to make a break for it every time you strum leave us less than impressed with this test example of Epiphone’s latest offering.

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Hands-on videos

Long & McQuade Musical Instruments

• Best acoustic guitar for beginners: Strum your first chords with our choice of beginner acoustic guitars

The future of Höfner, one of guitar and bass’s oldest brands, famous for Paul McCartney’s 500/1 bass guitar, is under threat after it filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Furth Local Court, in Bavaria, announced the provisional insolvency on 10 December, appointing a provisional administrator, Dr Hubert Ampfer, to secure the company’s assets.

These proceedings do not affect day-to-day trading. Höfner is still in business, and continues to make and sell instruments, employ its staff and purchase materials and services from its suppliers.

But it is not a good sign, pointing to financial distress, and the need for legal procedures to safeguard its creditors’ assets.

Although there is not a great amount of detail on this announcement – Höfner itself is yet to make a statement – No Treble reports that “a longtime former employee” says the company has longstanding financial issues.

Höfner’s history stretches back to the late 19th century, but it was the rock ’n’ roll revolution and Beatlemania that made it famous worldwide.

It was its 500/1 Violin Bass that changed the course of popular culture, when Paul McCartney picked one up in Hamburg, 1961, making it his instrument of choice, putting it to work onstage and in the studio. Love Me Do, She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand… All were recorded with the 500/1. He played it on the Ed Sullivan Show.

That particular Höfner has famously had its turbulent history. After McCartney’s bass was stolen from the back of a van in London, 1972, (some reports say Ladbroke Grove, others Notting Hill), it was missing for over 50 years. Enter, The Lost Bass Project, a search-and-rescue team led by the investigative journalist team of Scott and Naomi Jones (who right now are working with Gibson in the hunt for Marty McFly’s ‘Back To The Future’ ES-345).

They found the Höfner in an attic in Sussex, England. It was returned to McCartney and he played it on the final show of his Got Back 2024 Tour. Fellow Beatle Ringo Starr sat in on drums while Ronnie Wood guested on electric guitar.

McCartney might have played the odd Rickenbacker over the years but the Höfner Violin Bass has forever been his main squeeze.

“I found a nice little shop in the centre of Hamburg, near a big department store called Karstadt,” said McCartney, speaking with Tony Bacon in 1994. “And I saw this bass in the window, this violin-shaped Höfner. It was a good price, because my dad had always said I shouldn’t do the never-never [buy on credit], but we were earning reasonable money. I liked the Höfner’s lightness, too. So I bought it, and I think it was only about 30 quid.”

It was the best £30 he ever spent.

Höfner doesn’t just make Violin Basses. Its 500/2 bass offers a singlecut treatment of the hollow-bodied 500/1. There are acoustic guitars, electrics, classical guitars and ukuleles in its lineup, and true to the company’s formation, it stocks double bass, cello, viola and violins. You can browse its current lineup at Höfner.

There was a time, not so long ago, when having the UK Christmas Number 1 meant an awful lot to bands and artists. And, back in 1996, it was the Spice Girls who sat atop the festive chart with 2 Become 1, their first big ballad.

Their two previous singles - Wannabe and Say You’ll Be There - had also hit the top spot, but 2 Become 1 showcased a softer side to Scary, Sporty, Posh, Baby and Ginger. Much of the tender mood is set by Greg Lester’s nylon-string acoustic guitar work, and he recently looked back on it in a conversation with Vertex Effects.

Lester says that, when he was drafted in, the musical reference point he was given was British singer-songwriter Des’ree, who he’d worked with previously and had had acoustic-tinged hits earlier in the ‘90s with the likes of Feel So High and You Gotta Be. On 2 Become 1, you can hear little flourishes from him at various points, but it’s his solo that has embedded itself in the memories of a generation of pop fans.

Lester remembers that he took several guitars along to the session so that songwriters/producers Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard had plenty of tonal options. “They opted for the Chet Atkins [a Gibson acoustic guitar with electronic pickups], because they wanted nylon string,” he recalls.

Discussing the origins of the solo itself, Lester says: “It was quite exciting - in most sessions in those days it was always rhythm. There was an idea there, and most of it was on a keyboard. It was actually very well conceived but it didn't sound guitaristic at all.”

So, Lester set about putting his own sonic stamp on it. “I tried to make it as guitaristic as I could and make it mine in a very short amount of time,” he remembers.

What’s more, although the majority of the solo melody was in place, the ascending scale that finishes it and leads into the final vocal bridge was all Lester’s own work.

“They said, ‘Well, that's all we've got, but if you could round it off and complete it, that would be great,’” he recalls. “They had the melody lines up to the bit at the end which was when I [played the scale] and they just thought ‘that's great’, and it worked.”

As in so many cases, then, success was achieved by not overthinking. “It was keeping it simple and trying to keep it breathing and keeping the space there,” says Lester. “I was sort of marking time on that penultimate bit… and the scale just came out!”

Harley Benton has expanded its Custom Line range with a 12-string jumbo acoustic guitar that’s all dressed up in maple, spruce and gold, with a vibe that nods to the original King of the Flat-tops, and a look that puts country, folk, and big open chords on the menu.

The clue is in the name, the King-12 CE NT, but also in the aesthetics and the build, with the big-bodied acoustic featuring a solid spruce top with layered maple on the back and sides – plus you have the gold die-cast tuners and that rosewood bridge that’s dressed up with pearloid inlays and carved into a moustache-esque profile.

This model has been offered by Harley Benton as a six-string version for about six years now. Now it’s doubling up the strings with a 12-string guitar those jingle-jangle mornings, et cetera.

There is multi-ply binding on the body, and the neck, headstock and fingerboard are all bound, with ornate inlays on the fingerboard and headstock and a decorative backstrip to make this all kinds of fancy. Go big or go home, right?

This is one for strummers who like their big-bodied acoustic to be just on the right side of ostentatious – the black pickguard dials it down nicely. There are some nice details on this one.

But unlike the O.G. Gibson Super Jumbo that inspired it, this is a cheap acoustic guitar by today’s money. You’ll get plenty of change out of 400 bucks.

As a budget strummer with 12-string mojo for all your Roger McGuinn/Tom Petty manoeuvres, it looks the part – a typical Harley Benton guitar.

Harley benton has even given this a bone nut and saddle, and you have an onboard Presys-II acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system from Fishman, complete with bass and treble controls, phase, volume, and an onboard guitar tuner – the controls for which are all mounted on the instrument’s shoulder.

As for the vital stats, the nut measures 48mm – a little more room to accommodate that second set of strings. The scale length is 25.66”. And there are 20 frets, with that cutaway opening the upper registers up should you want to go up the dusty end of the ‘board.

It’s not everyday you see a 12-string cutaway jumbo acoustic electric guitar like this, and not at this price.

The Custom Line King-12 CE NT is available now, priced just £265/$350 exclusively via Thomann and the Harley Benton Reverb Store in the US.

For more details, head over to Harley Benton.

What Cesar Gueikian is doing is highly unusual. It is not unheard of for a guitar maker to migrate to the boardroom and take on an executive role. But the Gibson CEO is moving in the opposite direction.

Every week, typically on a Friday morning, he clears some precious calendar time, puts on a pair of safety glasses, and gets hands on in the Gibson factory, and with a little help from his team, he builds an electric guitar that he designed to his one-of-one custom specs – and he has been doing this for nigh-on four years now.

“Definitely, my favourite time of the week is when I am in the factory building,” he says, joining MusicRadar over Zoom from his Nashville HQ.

Gueikian has been playing the guitar since he was 10 years old, but it was only after he became Gibson CEO that he decided that it was time to learn how to make one from scratch.

“I had tinkered anchored with them, changed things, opened [them] up, changed parts and things like that,” he says. “But I had never built one.”

If you have been following Gueikian on Instagram, you will have seen his handiwork. If you caught Metallica’s set at Black Sabbath’s farewell show at Villa Park in July, you will have seen and heard it in action.

Metallica’s lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett, played CEO#4, an custom SG, during a cover of Sabbath’s Hole In The Sky – and that guitar, along with CEO#8, a custom Flying V that Gueikian himself played onstage with Mana, are going under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions, alongside a trove of artist-played and signed guitars. All proceeds from the auction of CEO#4 and CEO#8 be going to support Gibson’s charitable arm, Gibson Gives.

The question is why did he decide to build the instruments himself, what has he learned from working alongside Gibson’s master luthiers, Jim DeCola and Tom Murphy, and their teams, and will we ever see a Cesar Gueikian signature guitar? Here’s his take on it…

What was the first guitar you built at Gibson?

“The first one was actually a Les Paul Standard that I built maybe a little bit over three years ago, three and a half years ago or so. That was a Les Paul Standard, a purple-looking quilt top Les Paul Standard [with] almost like a velvet looking top. That’s what I was going for.

“I remember I started it in September, and I finished it in December. It’s going to be four years ago almost. That was the first one and it was a big learning process.

“I mean, that one was really difficult to make and it has several cosmetic flaws. It plays well. And that one I called CEO#0, and then from there on, CO#1, et cetera. Some of them have been auctioned.”

Why did you start building your own?

“My intention, originally, was I wanted to learn how to build a guitar from the beginning to end, and then have it, because I wanted that finished product.

“And during the process, between September and December, building with the help of all of our craftsmen and craftswomen in the factory – and we call them craftories, I labelled our factories craftories from the very beginning because I couldn’t get my head around the name factory – you know what? What I really enjoyed was learning from them, and putting myself in a vulnerable situation and having the team in the craftory teach me how to do something. That was my favourite thing.

“And so, since then, what at the beginning was, ‘I want the guitar that I built’ is no longer about the guitar. It’s about spending time in the craftory, working with my team, learning from them, having them teach me.”

“I really, really enjoy that, and it’s been one of the most powerful moments, I think, for me as a leader, for lack of a better word, at Gibson. I realised that you can talk, you can say and do things, and you can inspire people, but this was the most powerful one in terms of my craftsmen and craftswomen, because I feel like I earned a different level of respect from them. It was ultimately a process that taught me a lesson in leadership.”

And like you say, it’s humbling to put yourself out there. These CEO builds are getting more and more ambitious…

“They get more ambitious, yes! Yeah, one thing I was going to tell you about the first one… I worked all those months. We give time off to where people between Christmas and New Year’s. They get time off. But I happen to be in Nashville then, so with Jim DeCola, my master luthier, him and I went to a craftory between Christmas and New Year’s. It was just the two of us. And I finished buffing it and I was going to assemble it that day.

“I finished. It took me about three hours to buff the guitar, which probably takes the team members there about 15 minutes for a guitar. It took me three hours. And that was done.

“Then I noticed a little something, a little orange peel from the lacquer on the headstock, and when I put the headstock on the buffing wheel, it threw it out of my hands, and in a fraction of a second, it was on the floor with the broken headstock. That day I learned how to fix a broken headstock.”

I was going to ask if you had Jim DeCola on speed dial for this. We’re concerned for his work/life balance here.

“He taught me how to fix the headstock. We fixed the headstock, and then I assembled it – later, of course, because we had to then do retouches with more lacquer on it. And I [still] have that guitar. That guitar is with me, and that’s the only one I keep. The rest, everything after that, has been auctioned off, has been sold, proceeds to the foundation, or will be auctioned off soon.”

Talking about the builds getting more ambitious, have you attempted a Murphy Lab Custom Shop build – or what about a semi-hollow electric like an ES-335?

“Yes! In my office here, I just got it today, [and] I just finished a Murphy Lab Les Paul. I worked with Tom [Murphy]. I was working with Tom on his desk, and I can’t remember if it was four or five days working on the ageing, and I just completed that one. I will be doing more Custom Shop Murphy Labs.”

I want to get onto CEO#4, because it’s seems right that someone has put an SG into Kirk Hammett’s hands, especially given that he’s almost playing through Angus Young’s rig on the last Metallica album, with the SoloDallas boost and the Marshalls.

“He has a ’61 Les Paul, the one that’s on the cover of the record – the white one, the two pickup white SG-shape Les Paul that belonged to Les Paul. He owns that guitar.”

I feel like he should be such a natural SG player. Did you have Kirk in mind when you made it?

“Well Kirk and I talk all the time, at least weekly, so we knew that the show Back To The Beginning was on – before it was announced – when I started building it, so I had that show in mind with this SG. And I will walk you through the specs in a second but I did have that show in mind.”

“I knew that somebody from the artists that we work with was probably going to be interested in playing it, and it was more sort of natural, because I speak with Kirk regularly, we are very good friends, we talk about guitars, we talk about shows, when we are going to see each other, when we are going to have dinner, and just in conversation with him, I brought it up.

“He was the first one I brought it up with, said, ‘Hey, this is what I am building and I think it’s going to be great if someone uses this at Back To The Beginning. Would you like to be the one?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m in. I definitely want to do that.’ I sent him the picture when I finished it, and he was very excited. So that’s how that happened.”

What were you thinking with regards the specs?

“I wanted to build something that would have a bit of a hybrid sound between an SG and a Les Paul, so I used maple, so a mahogany and maple body, with a highly figured maple top. And I’ve always loved the… They’re not called this but I call them Super 400 inlays.

“We use them also on the Supremes, and they've been used in many other acoustic instruments as well, acoustic Gibsons. So it’s those inlays. And I love the the headstock of the Les Paul Custom with the split diamond. That has always been my one of my favourite Gibson looks, and so that’s what I decided to do – have a bound fingerboard with the Super 400 inlays, and a bound Gibson Les Paul Custom-style headstock.

“For the hardware, I went with not fully black but slightly darker hardware, and I used pretty high-output ‘80s-style Gibson pickups, which are the same pickups that we use on the 80s Explorers and Flying Vs. They’re a modified version of Burstbuckers, still passive, but higher output. So you have the Burstbuckers, the ‘70s pickups which are little bit hotter, and then the ‘80s pickups that are a little bit hotter so I went ‘80s, overwound.”

And we have to talk about the finish, the Ghost Burst.

“Well, how that happened, I also talked to another dear friend of mine, Adam Jones from Tool, and I sent him the picture of the finish – of the guitar already finished – because I knew he would like the finish, and he replied immediately saying, ‘I love that finish! It looks like a ghost burst.’ And so I told him, ‘That’s the name. I love it. You named it.' And that’s what we call it.”

We also see this finish on CEO#8.

“When I did #8 and #9, that’s the Flying V and an Explorer [respectively], I did them based on the same finish. Now, CEO#4, I wanted it to be a perimeter burst, so it was very much on the perimeter, but I didn’t do it the way I wanted.

“I mean, I had something in my head, and when I went to execute on it with a spray gun, I went in a little more than I wanted, and so a CEO#4 has that look. Now with more practice, #8 and #9 are very much perimeter bursts, which is how I envisioned it.

“And so we’re going to be releasing this finish next year, and they’re gonna look a little bit more like CEO#8 and #9.”

You anticipated my next question. Because this is also a great testing ground for new products, what you could add to the Made To Measure programme and so on.

“Yeah, we are going to be releasing several models, different shapes with the Ghost Burst finish. I don’t know exactly when. It might late summer of next year. But, yeah, I’m excited about making them available because we’ve had a lot of comments from people saying, ‘Please release this finish.’ People seem to have liked it.”

It’s a great finish. How did you feel when you saw Kirk Hammett, with Metallica, playing a Black Sabbath cover with this guitar? It must have been mind-blowing?

“I guess there are many reasons why the answer to that question is yes. First, because of Kirk; he’s like a brother to me now. We’re really close. I love him. I really, truly love the human being that he is. He’s such a kind, amazing person.

“So, beyond all of his musical accomplishments, to have him who is, obviously, the lead guitarist of Metallica, with everything that he and Metallica have accomplished, but also such a close friend of mine, play it, but then also that he played it at Back To The Beginning, which is the tribute to Black Sabbath, where everything started, and paying tribute as a result of that to Tony Iommi, who is the reason why I play guitar.

“I picked up a guitar because I heard Black Sabbath when I was 10 years old. So, all of that coming together, the guitar that I built with the help of all of my staff, in Kirk’s hands for Hole In The Sky, Metallica’s song on the set, paying tribute to Tony and Ozzy, and Black Sabbath, everything was amazing and strange, humbling and epic.”

These guitars are going up for auction, CEO#4 and CEO#8. How much to you think they will fetch?

“I have no idea. Honestly, I don’t know what this will get. I hope it raises a lot of funds for the foundation. One hundred per cent of what we get out for this will go out.

“I really hope that, because of everything that we just talked about – the historic moment, Kirk, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Back To The Beginning, the fact that I built a guitar – I hope that because of all of that this becomes a highly coveted, highly bid guitar in the auction. I hope it’s the one that raises the most of all of the CEO builds. [currently it is sitting at $17,500]”

It almost feels like, like we’re kind of building up to the point where you might have a signature model in the Gibson collection. Is that something that you would be interested in?

“I don’t know. I don’t think I will do a signature model, but the ones that we’re going to be releasing are going to be based on these guitars that I built, with these features, in the Ghost Burst finish, and so I guess it’s not a signature model, but they are built on the basis of the specs of what I did.”

It’s like you are caretaker of that series almost, because we can see your design aesthetic running through them.

“I didn’t want to name them the Cesar line or CEO line. So what we agreed with the team is that we’re going to call them DES, which is what I love on everything, which is ‘Do epic shit.’ So they’re gonna be the DES collection. And then that, one day, if it keeps going and it keeps growing based on other things that I build, hopefully it will outlast me.”

• For more information on the Gibson Gives auction, which sees CEO#4 and CEO#8 go under the hammer, head over to Julien's Auctions

What is it?

The latest offspring in Fender's California range of acoustic guitars are defined by a few key factors: all-laminate construction, a stunted price tag, and, most controversially, a headstock usually reserved for Strats and Teles.

The range was first introduced in the 1960s, and Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were early supporters of guitars built, above all, for comfort, durability, and versatility. Fast-forward several decades, and affordability stacks onto the pile.

Indeed, the new series comes in considerably cheaper than most California predecessors, even coming in close to half the price of some of its California Player acoustics.

With the rise of firms like Harley Benton and Cort, there are more budget acoustics on offer than ever before, but by dropping its price to such a point, while still being a Fender, rather than a Squier, the reputation these new instruments come with could do enough to tip the balance in its favour.

Of the specs, Fender has opted for laminated sapele back and sides and a spruce top, which is also bestowed with ivory binding. That combo marries an okoume neck and walnut fingerboard, and the company has gone heavy on the gloss finishes. That's Polyurethane gloss icing its body, and Urethane for the neck.

The C-profile neck promises a homely Fender playability, and its fingerboard gets 20 vintage-sized frets and pearloid dot inlays. It's topped with a micarta nut and die-cast sealed tuners, and tailed with a walnut Modern Viking bridge with plastic pins.

It all comes together for a 25.5" scale build that its creators hope comes across as an “undeniably timeless, and quintessentially Fender” guitar. Buying one won’t break the bank, but does it still pack plenty of Elvis-approved charm despite the shrinking price tag?

Specs

• Launch price: $241.99 | £169.99 | €199.99
• Made: USA
• Type: Dreadnought acoustic guitar
• Body: Laminated sapele back and sides, spruce top
• Neck: Okoume
• Fingerboard: Walnut
• Scale length: 25.5”
• Nut/width: Micarta, 1.6875" (42.86 mm)
• Frets: 20
• Hardware: Modern Viking walnut bridge with plastic pins, die-cast sealed tuners
• Electrics: None
• Left-handed options: Yes, in Natural
• Finishes: Natural, Three-color Sunburst, Black (as reviewed)
• Contact: Fender

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

First impressions are always very telling, and after strumming a few open chords and running my hands across its luxurious-looking fretboard, it was clear that the bar is higher than the Redondo's price may insinuate to the casual observer. But then again, this is a Fender after all.

Unfortunately, I find the tuning pegs to be a little unresponsive. Fortunately, however, tuning stability is impressive through my testing, even when taking the guitar from room to room, exposing it to different temperatures and conditions. That’s a big positive.

Elsewhere, the heaviness of the gloss is a little off-putting. I’ve never really liked guitars that distract from the fact that what you are playing is made of wood, but the neck gloss, at least, doesn’t lay it on too thick. The edges of the soundhole are also a little messy with rogue flecks of white paint. It’s a minor defect, but a defect nevertheless.

As for the Fender headstock – in this case a Jazzmaster silhouette – opinions are sure to be divided. As it has been doing for a few years now, with everything from the Acoustasonic to its Highway Series, its latest cohort of acoustics sees Fender sticking to its guns, seemingly priding itself on the brand identity benefits it brings, even if it’ll turn some people off.

Honestly, I don’t hate the headstock on an acoustic, and the wood grain on the neck upwards is absolutely gorgeous; it looks far more premium than the guitar's cost would suggest. I do feel, however, that the Black model would benefit from a colour-matched headstock. The Natural version makes the headstock work far better in that regard.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

I play electric guitars far more than acoustics, and I've got plenty of Fender and Fender-styled axes in my collection. As such, there’s an incredibly welcoming and homely feel to this guitar. The neck feels like it’s been lifted from a Stratocaster, and the action as shipped is incredibly slick; you won’t need bodybuilder strength to lay down barre chords here.

At times, with my eyes locked on the neck and fretboard, it can be easy to forget this isn’t an electric guitar because of how smoothly it plays – even if the neck is a smidge thicker than a standard electric – and that makes it far more inviting to less experienced players. It's good for far more than cowbody chords alone.

The gloss finish of the neck actually encourages gliding across the fretboard, but the size of its neck heel – it’s like the hull of a cruise liner, in truth – does greatly hinder access to the upper frets, particularly on the bass side. But that is to be expected on non-cutaway models, and with that context in mind, it isn't all bad news.

For those wanting greater upper fret access, there is a £210 cutaway version with a built-in preamp/pickup (the California Standard Redondo CE). But even still, reaching up to the 15th fret is pretty accessible, making pentatonic soloing an octave higher than the open position pleasant enough.

Ultimately, this is aimed at appealing as a beginner’s acoustic guitar. In that sense, its playability is top-notch; it does a job, and does it well. If my first acoustic guitar were as easy to play as this, I’d have been insanely happy.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

With this being void of any in-built electronics, it relies on the chosen tonewoods and general craft of the guitar for its tonal characteristics, and they coalesce for a guitar that’s very bright and cheerful-sounding. It’s more campfire sing-along than brooding gothic companion. But it isn’t sickeningly sweet-sounding, either.

Brightness aside, it’s got a fairly neutral character to it, and for those new to the world of guitar playing, that’s good – players at that point needn’t get bogged down in tonal nuances.

But if you’re looking for a really bright or really dark sound, or any other particular niche for that matter, this is a little too vanilla to be a contender.

The Fender California Standard Redondo projects nicely — lively enough to fill a room, but not so boomy that things get muddy, or neighbours complain. It strikes that Goldilocks balance of being ‘just right’, and that’ll no doubt keep beginners motivated to stick with it.

When strumming stacked, complex chords, every note rings out with pleasing balance; there’s no overemphasis on bass or treble. There’s also a subtle shimmer to wrung-out notes as the sound swirls around inside the body. It’s quite charming, even if it feels like an unintentional quirk.

Verdict

For an authentic Fender acoustic — especially one that plays this well — the price really doesn’t feel steep. Sure, it’ll appeal most to newer players or anyone after a reliable campfire companion, but that’s no bad thing. And for a first guitar, you could certainly do a lot worse.

When it comes to affordable Fender experiences in the acoustic world, there’s plenty of bang for your buck here. More importantly, it’s the kind of guitar that’ll still see plenty of play even after you’ve levelled up to something more premium, which says a lot about its quality and charm.

At this price point, its effortless playing, balanced sound — and, for those who are into it, a headstock that really stands out in this crowd — give it plenty of pulling power.

The real value lies with players earlier in their journey, looking to level up on an instrument that forgives as much as it inspires. Not every acoustic at this price can make that promise.

MusicRadar verdict: For its price and familiar, inviting playability, it’s hard to criticise what this guitar stands for. It’s a budget-friendly acoustic that delivers Fender-level craftsmanship that'll help beginner guitarists hone their craft quicker and easier, and may even tempt a few more experienced strummers to bolster their collection.

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Hands-on videos

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Gear4music

Taylor Guitars and musical polymath genius Jacob Collier have expanded their signature guitar collaboration with a pair of five-string acoustic guitars that are designed, built and priced to take his unorthodox DAEAD alternate tuning to the masses.

Typically, we think Taylor and think high-end acoustic guitars, but Collier’s new models are released as part of the GS Mini and Academy Series lineups, and as such make a serious acoustic guitar for beginners and young players serious about the instrument.

And serious, absolutely, about playing a guitar that offers something quite different from our standard EADGBE six-string configuration.

For Collier, this collab has been a dream come true. Quite literally. The tuning, the idea of a five-string guitar (he also has a signature five-string headless electric guitar with Strandberg), came to him in a dream.

“I dreamed of this guitar tuning for many, many years before it existed,” he says. “I asked Taylor, ‘How would you feel about putting a five-string guitar on a six-string neck tuned in a very strange way, with exactly the same range as a normal guitar, but just with a different set of intervals? ‘And they said yes, which changed my whole life.”

The new Taylor x Jacob Collier models comprise the Jacob Collier Academy 22e, a Grand Concert acoustic with a solid walnut top, layered walnut on the back and sides, and a Fishman Presys VT acoustic guitar pickup system, and the Jacob Collier GS Mini, which has a solid torrefied spruce top, layered sapele on the back and sides.

Solid tops at these prices are just the half of it. These are replete with signature details. As you’d expect from Collier, there is a splash of colour, with the GS Mini featuring a rosette graphic co-designed with Collier himself.

The Academy 22e ships with either a mahogany or maple neck, has a smoked eucalyptus fingerboard and matching bridge. The GS Mini has a West African ebony fingerboard and bridge, and a mahogany neck, and it’s a compact little guitar with a 23.5” scale compared to the Academy 22e’s 24.875” scale.

And there is luxury to these builds, with the Academic 22e featuring a bevelled arm-rest to improve ergonomics. It’s the sort of feature we are using to seeing in higher-priced instruments.

We like the muted, classy aesthetic on this, with the matte natural finish and the Baltic birch marquetry three-ring rosette, plus the small 4mm dot inlays on the fingerboard.

Collier says he hopes these guitars, which ship in his DAEAD tuning, will take this alt-tuning – and the five-string concept itself – mainstream.

“These new 5-string models are a total dream come true for me,” he says. “Each is so distinct in their own right. For them to be accessible to more people, while maintaining the same spirit that inspired the original designs, is a wonder. I’m so looking forward to more folks having the opportunity to discover this five-string world and make their own magic with it.”

Why DAEAD tuning? Collier believes it opens up the fingerboard. Some have said it has reimagined guitar completely, which seems hyperbolic but that’s what alternate tunings do as they making chord voicings and intervals that were hitherto out of reach easier.

Can Collier’s success – can these Taylor signature models make DAEAD as popular in pop-music/singer-songwriter circles as, say, DADGAD is in folk? We shall see. What is beyond dispute is that we’re dealing with a guitar custom-built for a wholly unique guitar player.

“Jacob is so gifted – a one-of-a-kind musician,” says Andy Powers, chief guitar designer, president and CEO of Taylor Guitars. “After hearing him write and perform music on these instruments since their creation, we're excited to expand this collaboration with models that make the acoustic guitar accessible for entry-level players while offering an inspiring new sonic palette for experienced players to explore.”

The Jacob Collier Academy 22e is priced $999, while his GS Mini is priced $699 (UK prices TBC, prices include a gig bag). For more details, head over to Taylor Guitars.

What is it?

The Harley Benton CLG-650SM-CE is a Grand Auditorium style electro-acoustic guitar from their ‘Custom Line’, boasting some pretty premium specs without the higher price tag. Made using all solid woods (spruce top, African mahogany back and sides), this guitar should age well as you play it, with the instrument gradually breaking in, sounding richer and more complex over time.

The body has been designed with comfort in mind, as well as sound. It’s got a Venetian-style cutaway allowing easy access to the highest notes on the fretboard, and a bevelled armrest on the top side of the lower bout.

At this price point, you’ll usually find acoustic guitars featuring solid tops, but the rest of the body will likely be made from laminate, layered wood - it’s rare to find all solid-wood construction at well under $500. But that feature alone doesn't necessarily equate to a good guitar. The CLG-650SM-CE sits towards the top end of Harley Benton's Custom Line, so how does it perform?

Specs

• Price: $339 | £299 | €349
• Made: China
• Body shape: Grand Auditorium
• Body top: Solid spruce
• Top bracing: Scalloped X-bracing
• Back & sides: Solid African mahogany
• Neck/shape: Okume, C
• Scale length: 25.6” (650mm)
• Nut/width: Bone, 1.69” (43mm)
• Fingerboard/Radius: Ebonol (composite), 400mm radius
• Finish: High Gloss Black (as reviewed), Ultra High-Gloss Vintage Sunburst
• Bridge/pins: Composite
• Tuning Machines: Closed WSC DLX
• Electronics: Fishman Flex Plus-T pickup system with built-in tuner
• Case: Not included
• Left-handed options: No
• Contact: Harley Benton

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

The CLG-650SM-CE feels considerably more premium than any other Harley Benton acoustic I've played before. The smooth gloss finish coats the body and neck. There aren't any blemishes; it all feels reassuringly consistent. The aesthetic wood binding around the body - top and bottom - has all been applied well too.

Running my hands along both sides of the neck, it’s clear that real care has been taken to finish this guitar to an impressive standard. All fret edges are smooth and the nut has been cut well with all six strings sitting perfectly in place.

It’s quite a statement to have an armrest on a relatively budget guitar, and it's a well-designed inclusion that genuinely improves the playability of the guitar for picking arm comfort. The edge of the body transitions into the flat surface of the armrest smoothly, and the shiny gloss finish gives it a premium touch.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

The CLG-650SM-CE is a lot of fun to play and inspiring in the way you never feel like you’re working against it. The C-carve neck has universal appeal – neither too thin, nor too thick. But one thing that is worth mentioning is the gloss finish on the back of the neck – not everyone will like that, with some players preferring the more natural, worn-in feel of a satin treatment.

Where you might find other acoustic guitars starting to dig into your arm, particularly during long sessions, that armrest means your arm is sat comfortably against the instrument without any edges digging in.

The test guitar I have received has been set up nicely too – in no positions does it feel like you have to really press down on the strings, but there are no buzzing issues either.

Having previously worked in a retail store, I’ve played my fair share of guitars. In terms of build quality and playability, this Harley Benton can hold its own against some instruments with more recognisable names on the headstock at twice the price.

Having previously worked in a retail store, I’ve played my fair share of guitars. In terms of build quality and playability, this Harley Benton can hold its own against instruments with more recognisable names on the headstock at twice the price.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

The CLG-650SM-CE has a bright character, with crisp, articulate detail in the top end. If I’m being picky, I’d like to have a little more power from the bottom E, but that might be because I’m used to playing a deeper-bodied acoustic that has a more prominent bass response.

However, there's certainly a pronounced mid-range that is excellent for harmonic detail in chord-work - likely a result of the mahogany back and sides. This also makes it an excellent guitar for cutting through a live and recording mix. The spruce top aids the crisp articulation and a quick, bright attack that complements the defined mids well.

Grand Auditorium-style guitars tend be chosen by players who want their instrument to do a lot, so I tried a variety of playing styles on it.

Big, bold strumming allows for a super wide dynamic range, with notable volume being projected when really driven. It also responds well to softer chordwork and gentle fingerpicking, yielding a more delicate sound without losing its high-end qualities.

Flatpickers will love the fast and bright attack that you can get from it with a guitar pick as it means that quick lead lines and melodies are clear and distinguishable. All of this helps make it a solid choice for players looking to cover a lot of ground with just one guitar.

Though the onboard pickup is badged as Harley Benton – the company lists it as a Fishman Flex Plus-T pickup system. At this price you're getting the piezo experience with all its quacky pitfalls, but these can be addressed to some extent by rounding off some of the more abrasive highs with the three-band EQ. The built-in tuner is certainly handy.

One small thing to note regarding the sound is that I do lose a little bit of power on the B string when playing melody lines across the treble strings. The G and top E seem ever so slightly louder than the B. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable in a live context, but it’s worth a mention.

Verdict

I'm genuinely impressed with the CLG-650SM-CE. The build and sounds really do perform above what many will expect at this price point, and the playability could find favour with a wide range of players – especially with the cutaway's potential.

There are a few things tone-wise I'd like a little more of, but if you're looking for a do-it-all acoustic guitar for well under $500, then there aren't many better options than this.

MusicRadar verdict: A guitar that looks, sounds and plays like a dream and outperforms some models that are notably more expensive. Its premium features, such as the armrest and all-solid wood construction, really contribute to this guitar being fun and inspiring to play.

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Harley Benton

• “Some might say a guitar at this kind of price point has no business resonating so well”: Harley Benton ST-80FR MN review

Jason Isbell has teamed up with Martin once more for a pair of signature acoustic guitars, and a set of artist series acoustic guitar strings, and there’s something for the high-end collector and the regular strummer alike.

The headline act here is the Jason Isbell 0-17, an all sinker mahogany 14-fretter featuring a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard that is a replica of the serial Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s 1040 0-17 that you can hear all over his latest studio album, Foxes In The Snow. It is a beaut.

But at $4,999 and limited to just 50 units worldwide (the label in the soundhole is signed by Isbell), it is not for everyone.

That’s where the 0-10E Retro comes in. It’s the spit of its super-premium sibling, and it’s made of all-solid mahogany, retailing at a more approachable (but not cheap per se) £1,069/$1049.

Not bad. And you get the onboard Martin E1 acoustic guitar pickup system – with the onboard guitar tuner – and everything you would need to play a gig. Isbell says one of the non-negotiables with this acoustic electric guitar’s design was that it should be an instrument you won’t outgrow.

“If you’re a beginner player, a guitar this size and the shape works for you because it’s easy to play, but the more advanced you get as a guitar player, the guitar still works because it’s easy to control,” he says.

Furthermore, it is a guitar that does not get in your way. As Isbell notes, there are enough challenges when it comes to making a record, or even writing a song.

“A guitar like this meets the artist criteria that the instrument can’t be the challenge. The quality of the instrument should not be the challenge,” he says. “What the guitar should be is an extension of your own physical self, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you play it well enough to where it feels like you’re tying your shoes, but it can mean that you play it well enough to where you don’t notice it after a while.”

Isbell says this state of semi-consciousness is when the songwriting magic starts to happen. He just plays and plays a riff or motif over and over and then it comes to him. “For that to happen, I don’t need to be interrupted by the quality of the instrument,” he says. Quite so.

Other key specs? Well, the 0-10E has open-gear nickel tuners, a 24.9” scale, a 44.45” nut width, the “select hardwood” neck that you would expect from Martin at this price with a Performing Artist profile and a High Performance Taper.

It’ll be a crowd-pleasing, mainstream feel. As Isbell promises, it’ll play easy, with its small-bodied concert-sized acoustic proportions not getting in the way.

The Jason Isbell 0-17, as you might imagine, is a little bit more involved. It shares that sort of simple aesthetic – it looks like a no-brainer for Delta blues and folk, designed for putting some vintage acoustic sounds to your open chords and fingerstyle arrangements. But putting this together was no gimme. The neck itself is a work of engineering. And Isbell says it matches his original 1940 model exactly.

“I can’t really feel a difference. And I know that was not an easy thing for Martin to do because they were all handmade, obviously, back in those days,” he says. “And this one gets sharper. It’s the slightest V, but down here, there’s really none of it at all, and then it gets sharper as it goes up the neck.

“So I think that that was probably a beast for them to recreate in the Martin factory, but they did a beautiful job of it. It’s a very simple guitar to look at and to play, but certainly not simple to put together.”

And Martin dug out the good stuff for it. The Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and matching bridge is where a lot of your money is going here. Brazilian rosewood is thin on the ground. There is not much left of it in circulation, so little wonder Isbell is so pleased to see it on his guitar.

Why is Brazilian rosewood better than the more commonly found Indian rosewood? As Isbell says, it’s darker, and it might be just be an aesthetic preference – can anyone, honestly, hear the difference between Brazilian and Indian rosewood on a fingerboard, surely, not. But it sure looks the part.

“That actually the fact that Martin was able and willing to do that for these guitars makes me really, really happy,” he says. “And the price point of this guitar, I don’t know if it’s the least expensive acoustic you can get with Brazilian rosewood on it, but it’s certainly one of them. So that’s going to make it more collectable.”

Jason Isbell also reveals that he has a strange ritual that he puts all of his new acoustic guitars through. It’s like an initiation ceremony. He comes in, he takes them out of the guitar case, and he places them in front of his hi-fi system’s speakers. Then he blasts them with hip-hop.

No, seriously, this is what he does. He does not elaborate as to the tonal benefits of this, whether this is a sort of ancillary torrefaction process that further ages the guitar, drying out the wood, helping its tone mature, but we like the sound of this anyway – and are intrigued to try this home.

We might try it with Illmatic or Liquid Swords but your favourite hip-hop record should work similarly.

“I recommend putting it in front of a couple of stereo speakers when you leave the house and turn it up really loud,” explains Isbell. “I normally use, like, OutKast or something, just so when I come home, OutKast is playing on the stereo – it makes me happy. But all the guitars, all my new acoustic guitars get to listen to Outkast for about 40 hours the first week they’re in the house.”

There you have it. Maybe it gets the soundboard going, too, with that aged sinker mahogany top buttressed by scalloped Adirondack spruce bracing, and all those good vibrations. Our tone tip? Just keep it in good working order and remember that a good set of strings can make all the difference.

These guitars ship with Isbell’s new signature set of 12-54 Martin Era treated phosphor bronze strings, which have the patented Lifespan treatment, but with the “more traditional SP core construction.

Find out more over at Martin. Jason Isbell's Foxes In The Snow is out now via Southeastern.

Gibson and Kirk Hammett have expanded their signature guitar lineup with a seasonal update on the classic Hummingbird acoustic guitar that channels Edgar Allan Poe at his most morbid.

It’s called the Raven, and it is really rare bird. They are only making 100 of these, and they come hot out of the Gibson Custom Shop at Bozeman, Montana, in a custom black guitar case with a raven skull inlay, foreshadowing the necro mother of pearl headstock inlay on the guitar itself.

Fundamentally this is a Hummingbird and we won’t be told any differently. It has the solid Sitka spruce top, mahogany on the back and sides.

Scramble around for it in the dark and you will feel something – a shape in the gloom – quite familiar, square shoulders, a dreadnought-sized body. But it if is a Hummingbird, well, this one was found some way down the Left Hand Path.

It’s like the Hummingbird only evil. Of course, rosewood would have been too bright for a guitar like this. Hammett’s Raven swaps that out for ebony, and we have star inlays here. There is also a double pickguard and tailpiece accent that’s just too cool. The mahogany neck has a rounded profile – happy days for chord work.

The Metallica lead guitarist is reported to have been heavily involved in its design, and it shows. As we all know, Hammett is a horror movie fanatic. His number one ESP signature model features graphics from The Mummy (not the Brendan Fraser one, the original from 1932 featuring Boris Karloff). Pre-code horror is a theme on his electric guitars.

He also has ESP signature models with White Zombie and Bride Of Frankenstein graphics. This approach would not have worked on an guitar like the Raven.

Again, we’re working with Hummingbird DNA. But the aesthetic is very on brand with Roger Corman’s The Raven, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price and all that. Play some spooky chords on it.

Or lean into the considerable lung power from its build – that scalloped advanced X-bracing under the spruce top – and hit an open G chord with gusto. When you do you’ll appreciate some more of Hammett’s custom appointments.

This has a flatter fingerboard radius than your common or garden variety Hummingbird, 16” as opposed to the Gibson standard 12”. It’ll be a good player. Like the Hummingbird it has a 24.75” scale length.

Other details worth noting include the 43.82mm nut width (Graph Tech TUSQ), the nickel Rotomatic tuners with kidney bean-style buttons, the compound radius dovetail neck joint, and the LR Baggs Element VTC +4 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system, with its controls nested in the soundhole. Lovely.

Priced £4,399/$4,999, the Kirk Hammett Raven is available now. See Gibson for more details.

The internet-breaking, cult-classic Hello Kitty Stratocaster is officially back – back in limited edition white as part of an all-new Fender collection alongside a new-colour fuzz pedal, guitar strap, and merch range.

And it is back in a form that we have never seen before, with Fender and the Japanese pop-culture icon teaming up with beginner guitar specialist Loog for a ridiculously cute three-string version to introduce young players to the instrument.

And Loog’s collab with Sanrio’s most famous global ambassador of kawaii also extends to a pair of mini acoustic guitars, again with three strings, a short-scale build, and a design that is ideal for mini guitar players.

Now we said that this Loog Hello Kitty Fender Stratocaster is not as we know it, and that’s because of the short 20.6” scale length (remember, parents, a full-size adult Stratocaster has a 25.5” scale), the fact it has just three strings, with one single-coil electric guitar pickup that has been custom wound for the model.

Loog makes its Strats with Pawlonia bodies. They weight just 1.1kg, just 2.4lbs on the old scale. That’s light.

But in many ways it is the Hello Kitty Strat. We still have the Stratocaster body shape. The milkshake pink solid colour finish is on-brand for the Hello Kitty Strat, and the eponymous bow-wearing feline graphic takes pride of place on the body’s top.

The dot markers are in a shade of Hello Kitty pink, and – something that’s unique for a Loog design – the headstock matches the body, adding an extra splash of pink.

If the O.G. Hello Kitty Strat was a no-brainer, a must-have collectible for kids of all ages, then Rafael Atijas, CEO of Loog, hopes that this win will follow suit and encourage more children to pick up the guitar.

“We couldn’t be more excited and honoured to bring this true pop icon into the world of Loog Guitars,” he says. “Hello Kitty is all about creativity, joy, and imagination – exactly what we want kids to feel when they pick up a guitar.

“The Hello Kitty Strat has become a beloved collector’s piece in the music world, and I’m thrilled that we can now offer a playful and accessible version designed especially for kids.”

There are a number of child-friendly learning materials bundled with this electric guitar, from a learning booklet to chord cards, and there is a specially designed learning app to get them started.

The guitar is strung in standard tuning with just the top three strings – i.e. GBE low-to-high – with a light-gauge .11 string for the high E. So what they learn on this they can later apply to a six-string.

And you’ll find a similarly strung setup on the Loog Hello Kitty Mini-Acoustic, which is available in Pink or White. These double-cut acoustics double down on the graphics, and aesthetically, that white double pickguard is a work of art, with or without the Kello Kitty logo.

Available now, the Loog Hello Kitty Fender Stratocaster is priced $229, while the mini-acoustics are $149. For more details, see Loog Guitars or Fender, where the Strat is available as a web-only exclusive.

This news follows just a month after Loog announced its new collaboration with Gibson on a range of child and beginner friendly SG and Les Paul. There is also a long-running Loog x Fender collab, where you can get a Loog reimagined take on the Telecaster and Strat.

Harley Benton has expanded its acoustic guitar lineup with the CLF-50E, a parlour-sized model with a solid Canadian Sitka spruce top with a solid metallic colour finish that the budget gear brand describes as a “statement piece”.

And if you choose the Ocean, Purple or Jade finish options, we’d definitely agree – but even the more muted Anthracite and Black finishes will catch the light nicely. Those finishes and the slotted headstock, it’s quite the looker.

We often think of parlour acoustics – especially at this price point – as couch buddies, runaround six-strings for the home, and this, offering change from 200 bucks, would fit the bill.

But this being a Harley Benton guitar, we’ve got a bit more besides, with an HB-03 acoustic guitar pickup and onboard guitar tuner making it ready for open mic night, pub gigs or high-street busking.

A solid top at this price is no trifling detail. That top is complemented by what Harley Benton calls “sonokeling mahogany” on the back and sides, and we have sonokeling rosewood for the bridge, rosewood for the fingerboard.

“Sonokeling mahogany” is a head-scratcher – let’s call it an enigmatic descriptor for a tone wood that is most certainly grown in Indonesia, that has a nice tight grain, and has been left with a gloss natural finish to show it off here. The cream binding ties it all together nicely.

The neck is mahogany, joining the body at the 14th fret with a dovetail joint, and it is shaped into a D shape.

You can bet your bottom dollar that it will be an easy, crowd-pleasing profile. With a cheap acoustic guitar, manufacturers play the percentages; this will have a mainstream build, with crowd-pleasing dimensions.

We have a 15” fingerboard radius, 43mm wide bone nut, and a 24.8” scale length. Under the hood, the top is braced with scalloped X-pattern bracing. The tuners are open-gear, high-ratio 18:1 jobs.

Yeah, those are the essential details, but again, we are called back to the aesthetics – just look at those “elliptical” fingerboard inlays, marking out the CLF-50E’s 20 “premium” silver-nickel frets.

The saddle is bone, matching the nut. The cream bridge pins match the binding. It’s a tidy looking guitar, with a tidy looking price. Expect to pay £192/$256 from Thomann.

For more details and pics, head over to Harley Benton. To buy one? Well, Thomann is the place to go, or if you're in the US, the Harley Benton Official Shop at Reverb should sort you out..

Given his broad-minded and inventive approach to composing and arranging, you’d expect Jacob Collier to have a view on the use of AI in music-making, and indeed he does.

Speaking to Rags Martel, Collier says: “I think an AI can learn skills but it can't learn a perspective or a sense of humour or an attitude. It's almost too perfect to be interesting.”

Of course, critics of Collier's music might argue that it can sometimes come off as technically proficient but difficult to connect to, but he says that he's actually been trying to ‘break’ AI in a bid to bend it to his creative will.

“I think a person needs, like, an imperfect wiggly person to relate to,” he argues. “That’s my theory. And so I've spent a lot of time sort of trying to bully AI into being interesting because it's quite hard to do, creatively.”

We don’t learn what kind of hi-tech wrangling Collier has been doing, but his view is that, at this stage, it’s better to get involved with AI than it is to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

“You can't sit outside of something and criticise it or be afraid of it,” he says. “You have to just muck in.”

Collier was speaking in support of the release of The Light For Days, his new album, which was created using just his voice and 5-string acoustic guitar and produced in just four days. It features six original Collier compositions alongside covers of songs by the likes of James Taylor, John Martyn, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

Guitar has lost one of its great innovators as Ken Parker has died, aged 73. Parker was the luthier who designed the Parker Fly, an electric guitar that was truly ahead of its time – and still is – and brought a similarly fearless design sensibility to his archtop guitars.

Parker passed away peacefully at home in Gloucester, Massachusetts on October 5, following a battle with cancer.

In a statement dated October 3rd, posted to Ken Parker Archtops, Parker thanked his fans for their support and vowed that the company would continue through Sam Krimmel.

“My time here is about to close down and I won’t be part of the show anymore. What I have done with all my heart and soul is to put together a situation where my work can continue unabated and begin to bring some serious fruit to the things that I’ve been working on for the last 50 years,” he wrote. “My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to all of you. It’s been the experience of my lifetime being able to share my life’s work and knowledge with each of you through my instruments and via Archtoppery, and see that you get it.

“My hope is that you all build on what I’ve learned and shared, and take everything to the next level.”

Parker was born on August 25, 1952, and through his parents he inherited not only a love of music, but the idea that you could fix things up or make something new out of whole cloth.

“In my home, everybody seemed to be able to make everything that we needed,” he said in a 2024 YouTube feature with D’Addario. “My dad was pretty good with a saw and a hand plane, and my mom was a pretty good dressmaker, and I would say that my mother, Grace, was responsible for my first understanding of how a project takes place and how it moves ahead.”

The D’Addario interview is gold. Parker’s excitement at seeing a fine piece of tone wood is infectious.

His workshop offers many insights into his thinking, and he readily gives up some of his techniques, paying homage to Orville Gibson as a pioneer for archtop design. A hand-written note in Parker’s workshop bears a Picasso quote that reads, “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” Words Parker lived by.

Inspiration soon came knocking. With a family who liked to make do and mend, it was only a matter of time before Parker followed suit. He was only 13 when he tried to make his first guitar.

“I was one of those kids who took everything apart and put it back together,” he said. “The first guitar-esque project was I made a guitar out of wood and corrugated cardboard, which didn’t work, because I didn’t know enough about corrugated cardboard at the time. But now I think I could take that same bunch of materials and make an instrument. I was pretty bummed out that it wouldn’t hold strings.”

Things took off for Parker once he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with the furniture maker Richard Newman, whose expertise and influence accelerated his mastery with a piece of wood.

He built his first archtop then. Moving to New York, Parker was engaged in the business of repairing archtops, and once you put enough of them back together, it’s not long before you know how to make them yourself. Moving back to Connecticut, Parker started making various stringed instruments – most notably a five-string bass guitar for Steve Swallow.

Parker was now long way from his early improvisations with corrugated cardboard. Great minds think alike. He and Larry Fishman, now president and founder of the pickup superpower Fishman, got together. Parker Guitars was founded in 1990. The guitar that Parker made his name from did not comprise corrugated cardboard but it was just as radical a proposition, the Parker Fly.

Launched in 1993, the Fly had a wooden body with a carbon fibre and epoxy exoskeleton, a double-cutaway shape that still feels cutting-edge with its minimalist six-in-line headstock and trademark horns. The Fishman collaboration makes total sense once you consider the electronics on a Fly. This allowed players to mix magnetic and piezo tones.

The Parker Fly was something else. Its build made it super lightweight. The Fishman electronics made it super versatile. Its futuristic profile made it an acquired taste, but one that players such as Adrian Belew, Eddie Van Halen, Reeve Gabrels, Matt Bellamy, and, perhaps most famously, Joni Mitchell all acquired. The late David Lynch was also a fan of them, and Steve Vai [below] had a good time whenever he played one.

It is crazy to think that the Parker Fly Concert that Mitchell played was reportedly factory seconds, fished out of pile at the brand’s Massachusetts HQ. Parker fixed it up, modded it with a Roland Hexaphonic electric guitar pickup system so that Mitchell could pare it with a VG-8 processor for virtual alternate tunings, and Mitchell liked it plenty.

Speaking to Tony Bacon for Reverb, Parker said she wanted a lightweight guitar and got one – thought Mitchell wasn’t entirely sure where Parker got it from.

“She said, ‘Looks like you found it on a beach. But then it also looks like it came from outer space,’” recalled Parker. “I always liked the idea that it looked like a bleached bone, or driftwood, I guess. And that guitar just worked like a magic wand for her. She performed exclusively with my guitar for six years, and that makes me very proud.”

The Parker Fly evolved over the years, becoming more accessibly priced with the Nitefly bolt-on. Mitchell’s was case in point; the Concert was a piezo-only model. The Spanish Fly was a nylon-string guitar. And the composite/wood hybrid build would successfully translate to bass guitar, too.

In 2004, Parker returned to his first love, archtops, releasing his first, Olive Branch, in 2006. No one could fail to see the designer’s hand in these new builds. And he would share the process on his Archtoppery YouTube channel, which remains a hive of insight into how Parker’s mind works, and how a well-made guitar works.

Now it is in the hands of Krimmel. But Parker vows to help in whatever we he can: “Sam is a natural co-conspirator and he and I will be will be working together down the road through some sort of psychic medium. We’ve already got some amazing new things underway and soon we’re going to show you what that is all about.”

The Friends of Ken Parker have launched a GoFundMe to support his family with medical costs.

Mikael Åkerfeldt and Martin have teamed up for a signature OM acoustic guitar that the Opeth frontman insists is even better than anything the storied Pennsylvanian brand has at their museum.

The holy grail acoustic from the 1800s, Kurt Cobain’s "haunted" D-18, aka Grandpa? Åkerfeldt has played them both – reluctantly in the case of the 1800s heritage survivor, for fear he’d break it – and no, none come close. He says his OM signature guitar is better than them all, and looking at it, you can see why he has fallen hard for it.

“Is this the best guitar I’ve ever played?” he says. “Including the ones in your museum? I believe so.”

Åkerfeldt started playing Martin acoustics regularly around Opeth’s Damnation-era, when he swapped out his old Seagull for one. He co-developed this OM with the luthiers at Martin, and knows his stuff.

He used to work at a Stockholm guitar store that was a Martin dealer, and spent the downtime playing them all.

“I was playing a lot and writing a lot for our second album [Morningrise] and developing my technique as an acoustic guitar player,” he told MusicRadar in 2010. “That’s something that made a lot of difference to me as a songwriter, guitar player and musician overall. The years in that store helped me to develop our sound.”

Åkerfeldt joins the likes of Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa, David Gilmour, Johnny Marr and John Mayer in the Martin signature artist roster. The thought of it tickles him.

“To be rubbing shoulders with so many esteemed musicians who’ve been graced with the honor of having their own Martin signature guitar is beyond comprehension,” he says. “But enough of that! I’m sat here with this incredible instrument that resonates through the walls of my old house every time I pluck a string. It is truly a beautiful instrument with a beautiful sound.”

This would be many players’ idea of the ideal Martin guitar, a modern-day instrument constructed with an old-world sensibility, with the VTS torrefied solid spruce on top, buttressed by scalloped Adirondack spruce bracing – again, given the VTS treatment, giving it the lungs and sound of an instrument with some decades of play behind it.

The back and sides are constructed of Guatemalan rosewood, with the back a three-piece construction with an East Indian rosewood insert – it is a work of art – and then come the subtle aesthetic flourishes. This is understated without being dowdy.

Åkerfeldt has resisted the urge to have golden tuners. Instead, we have black open-gear tuners with ‘butterbean’ buttons. We have herringbone purfling and flamed maple binding. He has gone for roman numeral inlays on that pristine ebony fingerboard. That Golden Era block headstock logo is just too cool.

But it’s not all vintage, vintage, vintage. This, says Martin, is the first “traditional build” to feature one of its Low Profile Velocity neck shapes – a speedy neck profile that was designed to emulate the slinkier feel of an electric guitar on acoustic, just the thing for negotiating Opeth’s tricksy prog-metal compositions.

Limited to 74 units worldwide, priced £/$6,999, including a hard-shell Harptone guitar case, the Mikael Åkerfeldt OM Signature is available now. See Martin Guitar for details.

• “What we are after is not perfection. You’re looking for the flaws… the noise… earth hum. You’re looking for the arm-tight playing… the human aspect”: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt on inspirations, intuition, shred, and the problem with modern metal

Jacob Collier is known for his intricate productions - he once said that the 316 tracks he used in the Logic Pro session for his acapella cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water was “quite chill by my standards” - but for his latest album, he’s stripped things back and is focusing on just a single instrument: the acoustic guitar.

Jacob being Jacob, though, there are a couple of twists.

The Light For Days will be released on 10 October and features six original Collier compositions alongside covers of songs by the likes of James Taylor, John Martyn, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

We’re told that, after the completion of his four-album Djesse project in 2024, Collier wasn’t necessarily thinking about making a new record, but on a rare return to his London home studio, he was drawn to his 5- and 10-string signature Taylor acoustics in a way that he hadn’t been before.

So, using his trademark ‘DAEAD’ tuning, he set about recording and producing an album in a matter of days.

“Since completing the Djesse album series, my imagination has been brimming with all sorts of ideas of things I’d like to do and create,” says Collier. “One of the things I’ve wanted to really focus on, and zone into, is the limitation of a single instrument.

“The acoustic guitar sound world has been a foundational aspect of my music universe for as long as I can remember, and so I set myself the challenge of making a full-length album, using almost entirely the five-stringed guitar, in just four days.

“As a result I had to work so fast that I couldn’t second-guess anything - I just had to roll with and trust the process. The results are warm, scrappy, imperfect, but very close to my heart.”

Having previously previewed the album with a cover of Brian Wilson’s Keep An Eye On Summer, Collier has now released an original track from the record, called I Know (A Little).

You can check it out below (the video goes live at 5pm BST on 12 September) and pre-orders for The Light For Days are now open.

Gibson has been raiding the archive for inspiration and emerged with a handful of meticulous Murphy Lab reissues of classic acoustic guitars of yesteryear.

Light Aged in at the Bozeman, Montana acoustic Custom Shop, these all bear the hallmarks of the Murphy Lab M.O., offering a box-fresh, just-made version of a vintage instrument with a hefty but not vintage price tag for the collector’s market, and it’s a collection that takes us all the way back to when Herbert Hoover was in the White House with the 1929 Nick Lucas Special Reissue.

A compact 12th-fret acoustic, finished in Argentine Grey, is is an L-00 that manages – somehow – to both look upscale and blue collar.

The blue-collar vibe could be attributed to that porch-friendly L-00 mahogany body shape, the white buttons on open-gear tuners.

With that old-school Gibson headstock logo, inlaid in MOP, it looks like it’s got Delta blues and folk tunes in it. And yet it was built for one of the original jazz guitar soloists – it was built for pizzazz. Those Waverley tuners are gold, there is gold sparkle binding, gold sparkle in the rosette, and just look at those custom inlays on the rosewood fingerboard.

In other words, it’s complicated. And it might be small but it has a deep-depth mahogany body, and so maybe bringing a bit more to your chord work, with a thermally aged red spruce top, traditional scalloped X-pattern bracing under the hood. It is priced at a cool £8,749/$9,999, so not really blue collar at all.

It should be said, all of these have aged tops. The build is on-point as far as vintage reproductions go, with necks with a period-appropriate shape and feel, all glued to the body with hot hide glue. Their guitar cases are also faithful to the era.

The other Pre-War delight from this new drop is a very different beast. This is an early example of the King of the Flat-Tops, an SJ-200 with rosewood on the back and sides and again with the red spruce on top.

This is a bigger, bolder, dressed to the nines in all the finery you’d expect from the “Super Jumbo” – four-bar moustache bridge, the floral pickguard, the gold Grover imperial tuners and mother of pearl graduated crown inlays on the ebony fingerboard.

Even the neck is a work of artistry; two-piece, AAA maple, with a walnut stringer. In the real-world of vintage guitars, these rosewood Pre-War SJ-200s are unicorn rare on account of the straitened economic times in which they were originally made, so all things considered, £7,399/$8,499 for this Faded Vintage Sunburst model looks pretty decent.

Moving on chronologically, the 1955 J-45 Reissue in Vintage Sunburst strikes us as the high-end strummer for those looking for a big-lunged round-shouldered dread for folk, and doing the whole Bob Dylan thing.

Now, this is a blue-collar guitar – yes, it’s the quintessential GIbson w******se [cliche redacted] acoustic.

Here we have the acme of acoustic tone wood combos, with thermally aged Sitka spruce on top, mahogany on the back and sides. Details that we like include the Grover three-on-a-plate strap tuners with cream buttons, the 20th fret (which was a 1955 update to the model as the J-45 went from 19 to 20), and that round profile mahogany neck is sure to be as comfortable as worn-in denim. This is priced £5,249/$6,499, the most affordable of these new models.

Next up is an 1957 SJ-200 that’s available in Vintage Sunburst and, for a premium, Aged Natural. It makes a neat compare-and-contrast with the Pre-War model.

This is all AAA flamed maple on the back and sides with Sitka spruce on top. A a checkerboard marquetry strip runs down the back of the guitar.

Again, it’s ostentatious, would match your most decorative western shirt, and might remind you of players such as Jimmy Page, Gene Autry, Elvis, etc, and it’s priced at £6,799/$7,799 for the sunburst model and £7,299/$8,299 for the Aged Natural with the latter arguably the classic example of the type. Arguably.

Rounding out the new models is another aesthetically audacious work of lutherie, and a guitar that has been used by the likes of Tom Petty, Elvis, Alex Lifeson, etc, and that’s the 1963 Dove Reissue.

Again, in Aged natural, Sitka spruce on top, flamed maple on the back and sides, the pickguard grabbing all your attention until you notice the rosewood bridge with MOP doves. It’s a classic.

A square-shouldered dread that wasn’t quite as popular as the Hummingbird but could certainly hang in that company and similarly had songs in, the Dove has always been cool.

And having recently been reissued as an Epiphone guitar in the Gibson sub-brand’s Inspired By Gibson Custom series it was only fitting that the Gibson Custom Shop upped the ante. The Dove is priced at £6,899/$7,899.

For more pics and details, see Gibson. And if these are a little, well, let’s say you wanted something really high-end, the Bozeman Custom Shop did just release the one-of-one Monarch SJ-200 #100, yours for just $99,999.

What is it?

The Hummingbird model dates back to 1960, when Gibson introduced this big, bold flat-top as its first square-shouldered acoustic guitar.

It found instant success, with famous users over the years numbering Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Sheryl Crow, and Taylor Swift.

Sporting a mahogany back and sides with Sitka spruce top the Hummingbird made a fabulous strummer, and its strikingly engraved ‘hummingbird’ pickguard, double parallelogram fret markers, and cherry sunburst finish lent the guitar almost unmatched stage presence.

In some respects Epiphone’s Inspired By Gibson Custom EC version modernises and moves the Hummingbird on. So, here, instead of mahogany, I find perhaps the most classic wood combo of solid rosewood back and sides topped with X-braced spruce.

The spruce has been thermally treated, or torrefied, to open up the tone and give the impression of decades of natural ageing. Like the original though it features a comfortable C-profile, one-piece mahogany neck.

The ‘E’ in our Hummingbird Deluxe EC’s title signifies that it comes loaded with LR Baggs’ trusty Element Bronze pickup/preamp with soundhole-mounted volume and tone controls. So the guitar is stage-ready right out of its superb Epiphone Protector Ultralite gigbag.

To top things off it also boasts the legendary Gibson ‘open book’ headstock, with Epiphone logo and crown inlay in genuine mother-of-pearl, plus gold plated Grover Rotomatic tuners, and Deluxe logo truss rod cover.

Specs

• Launch price: $1,299 £1,099 €1,299 
• Type: Six-string electro-acoustic with cutaway 
• Made: China
• Top: Thermally aged spruce with quarter sawn spruce X bracing
• Back & Sides: Solid rosewood
• Neck: Solid mahogany
• Fingerboard/Radius: Ebony with mother of pearl split parallelogram markers/304.8mm /12.0”
• Scale length: 628.65mm/24.75in
• Nut/width: Bone/43.82mm / 1.73in
• Frets: 20, fine to medium
• Bridge: Gibson style reverse belly, ebony
• Weight: 2.35kg/5.180lbs
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Autumn Burst (as reviewed), Natural
• Case/gig bag: Epiphone Protector Ultralite
• Contact: Epiphone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

A thorough inspection of the Epiphone reveals an instrument that’s been beautifully put together, inside and out. Build, fit and finish are flawless, even though the frets might benefit from a light polish after the instrument’s journey from Qingdao in Eastern China, all the way to our shores.

Fretting is otherwise exemplary, and all the binding and inlays, including the elegant abalone soundhole rosette, are perfectly executed. The polyester finish is not ultra-glossy but redolent of Gibson’s own VOS process that gives the guitar a slightly matte sheen.

It’s a pleasing effect, and overall the impression is of a guitar that’s been put together with proper care and attention. Epiphone’s collaboration with Gibson’s Acoustic Custom Shop in Bozeman, Montana, will no doubt have been a big factor in this.

The inclusion LR Baggs’ ever dependable Element Bronze pickup system, the use of bone nut and compensated bone saddle, and even the gentle rolled edges of the gold-etched faux tortoise pickguard, all add to this sense that Epiphone is serious about the quality of this guitar.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

Strung with 12-53 gauge phosphor bronze acoustic guitar strings and with an action that’s set for comfort but not so low as to buzz or rattle, the Hummingbird Deluxe feels like an instant pal.

The deep cutaway means that top-end forays are available should you wish to venture there. But if acoustic lead guitar is your main purpose for buying a cutaway electro, you might want to come down a string gauge, which in turn would lower the action slightly for a smoother, faster response.

But strumming, fingerpicking, licks and fills all fall comfortably under the fingers on this guitar.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

Words like ‘balanced’, 'strident’, or ‘clear’ could all describe the Hummingbird Deluxe EC’s unamplified tone. To that you could add ‘crisp’, ‘full’, ‘projecting’, and ‘classy’. It certainly sounds a whole lot more expensive than its very reasonable price tag would suggest.

With a Martin OM-28 and vintage Taylor Jumbo on hand for comparison, the Epiphone gives them both a serious run for their money – and their money is about four times that of this review guitar.

LR Baggs’ Element Bronze is a tried and trusted system that’s balanced across the spectrum, not spiky like some piezo systems can be.

And through an acoustic guitar amp, small PA or full front-of-house system will prove itself a reliable ally. I usually find that knocking the soundhole tone control back a touch is enough to hit the sweet spot. Through my Yamaha THR-10 its voice rings sweet, clear and satisfying.

Verdict

This Epiphone didn’t disgrace itself even next to instruments costing several times more. It looks fabulous in the Autumn Burst finish, plays like a quality acoustic should, and sounds top class.

So, whether you’re seeking a smart sofa noodler, a dependable open night companion, or a fully professional stage instrument, the Hummingbird Deluxe EC fits every bill.

MusicRadar verdict: Verdict 
The Epiphone Hummingbird Deluxe EC hits bullseye in so many respects. Not only is it one of the handsomest guitars around, it plays great, and punches well above its weight in the tone stakes. It’s loud, punchy, and sounds like an instrument of genuine quality.

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Gibson has just made its 100th SJ-200 Monarch and quite possibly the most opulent acoustic guitar it has ever made.

A one-of-one, totally unique SJ-200 in Tri-Burst, with Brazilian rosewood on the back and sides, gold, diamonds, abalone and mother of pearl liberally applied, the SJ-200 Monarch #100 is the Bozeman, Montana Custom Shop working at the peak of its powers, making a super high-end acoustic guitar that deep-pocketed Gibson aficionados might well consider the ultimate collector’s instrument.

Available exclusively via the Gibson Garage Nashville, Serial #23424138, it has a price tag of $99,999, and when you read the spec – when you see this thing – you can see where that money is going. The HR resources to make this were considerable too.

The luthiers that worked on the project have a combined experience of over 160 years in guitar-making. Indeed, the guitar comes with a commemorative wooden plaque signed by all involved.

The guitar case itself is a work of art!

Where to begin? The headstock. This is one Gibson headstock you do not ever want to repair. If it breaks off, just hang it in the Louvre. That crown inlay is hand-engraved, set with set with nine 0.1 carat natural diamonds and “crowned” with a 0.25-carat diamond. There are 1.2 ounces of solid 18K gold, which might add a bit of weight to the headstock but then you do have some open-gear Waverley tuners with hand-engraved buttons.

Decorative touches abound, from the aforementioned tuner buttons to the hand-inlaid and engraved rosewood shield with MOP and abalone crown detail on the back of the guitar, a detail that’s mounted handsomely on a strip of AAAAA flame maple that offers a contrast with that Brazillian rosewood.

The top is AAA Sitka spruce. The neck is a two-piece AAA maple neck with Indian rosewood stringers. All of these woods were sourced from the Gibson Custom Wood Library in Bozeman, Montana, i.e. where they keep the good stuff.

We still can’t get over those tuner buttons.

Take a peep into the soundhole and you’ll find a label embossed in gold. The binding really ties the whole thing together, with 14K gold rope binding across the body’s top, and double-width abalone purfling on the rest of the body. Gibson saved some of the Brazilian rosewood for the fingerboard, a fitting setting for those MOP/abalone Monarch Crown inlays.

And what about that bridge? Again, Brazilian rosewood, with real diamonds set in gold end pins, abalone on the inserts, gold to finish it – this ‘Moustache’ has been expertly groomed.

But, y’know, fundamentally you’ve got a big-lunged Gibson acoustic that should have songs in it. If you’re brave enough to take it out of its case.

And you should. Because when you parse the history of the Monarch, it all goes back to 1937 and a cowboy singer named Ray Whitley, who, in the words of Don Ruffatto, project manager at Gibson’s Acoustic Made to Measure programme, wanted a “big guitar, bigger than anything you are making”.

Go big or go home. Gibson duly obliged. The SJ-200 was born.

“They went in and found a body mould from one of the big archtops and built the SJ-200 acoustic guitar around it and it was the beginning of what became the flagship of our line,” says Whitley. “We’ve made many different configurations over the years, and in different woods. In 1994, we wanted to put a stamp on what we were creating in Montana, and our builders, designers, and engineers decided to take the SJ-200 to the ultimate level and do things that have never been done before.”

“The Monarch guitar was incredibly well-received, and it became a rare, but staple part of our builds from ’94 onward, and as we have been inching towards our #100 build, we put in the hours and designed a new Monarch 100 to create what we consider, is the ultimate Gibson acoustic guitar to date.”

That doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. Yours for $99,999. See Gibson for more details.

Worrying news from Northern Ireland where it appears – according to reports in the Belfast Telegraph – that Lowden Guitars is struggling financially and is preparing to lay off staff.

According to the Telegraph: “Sources close to staff at George Lowden Guitars Ltd told Belfast Telegraph some employees have been informed their jobs are at risk because of ongoing losses due to a decline in demand.”

In response to this, Managing Director Aaron Lowden has said in a statement, “We are carefully assessing how best to navigate current industry challenges," following a slowdown in the global guitar market and “the natural end of the acoustic guitar boom experienced during the Covid-19 period.”

“No decisions have been made, and we are engaging closely with our entire team to explore all viable options, including cost-saving measures that could help us avoid redundancies wherever possible and strengthen the company for sustainable future growth.”

However, according to the Telegraph report, many members of staff have received a letter signed by the Managing Director which states that Lowdens “has a business need to become more efficient and reduce operational costs due to continued loss-making because of demand reduction in the market.”

Apparently, meetings were held last week with staff whose jobs are thought to be under threat. The individuals in question were asked to make suggestions as to how they could avoid being made redundant and explain why they should not be let go.

The Telegraph’s report also included research that showed that Lowdens owe £3.8 million to creditors and currently hold £3.1 million in assets. Concerningly, they are said to hold just £262,000 in the bank and in hand.

Lowden’s reputation has grown over the years to the extent that it is now regarded as one of the leading names in acoustics. Lewis Capaldi, Eric Clapton and Ed Sheeran all play Lowdens and indeed Sheeran partnered with the company in 2018 on the Sheeran by Lowden range.

The company celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year by launching a limited edition anniversary collection.

Epiphone has expanded its high-end collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop with six top-tier acoustic guitars, all inspired by Gibson classics of yore, each presenting that vintage aesthetic without the vintage price tag.

Many of the acoustics in the latest Inspired By Gibson Custom drop will need little introduction.

These are replicas of some of the most famous – and most sought-after – Gibson guitars of all time. Guitars like the SJ-200, which we have two versions of, one a Pre-War Rosewood Reissue, the other a 1957 variant in Antique Natural and Vintage Sunburst.

There is a 1963 Dove Reissue, presented here in Natural finish, replete with all the decorative flourishes of the original model that was played in anger by the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty.

Continuing with the avian theme, we have not one but two Hummingbirds; a Hummingbird Deluxe EC cutaway that looks the part in Autumn Burst and Natural finishes, and the classic 1960 Hummingbird Reissue that is finished in Heritage Cherry Sunburst and is a chip off the old block. The open-book headstocks on these Inspired By Gibson Custom models helps sell the illusion.

Those who want something more blue collar have got it in the Banner Era 1942 J-45 Reissue, which is presented in a hue of Vintage Sunburst that should be all but guaranteed to find favour among disciples of Bob Dylan.

The Inspired By Gibson models are a change for Epiphone to offer Gibson USA specs to a wider demographic, and these are no exception.

Across the board there are all-solid builds, with thermally aged tops to give you that vintage acoustic tone profile, LR Baggs acoustic guitar pickup and preamp systems, rosewood and ebony fingerboards and bridges (no laurel here, thank you very much), and they ship in commemorative hard-shell and Red Line-inspired guitar cases.

Let’s start with the King of the Flat-Tops, the SJ-200. The 1957 Reissue is the one that most of us will be more familiar with. This has thermally aged Sitka spruce on top, figured maple on the back and sides, and an abundance of detail.

Just look at those engraved celluloid pickguards, those two-bar moustache bridges, and the MOP graduated crown inlays. The neck is made from two pieces of flame maple with a walnut stringer up the middle. The gold Epiphone Deluxe tuners look the part.

Lesser spotted, and thus perhaps even cooler, the Pre-War version of the SJ-200 comes with ebony fingerboard and bridge – again, the latter is a moustache-style with MOP inlays – and a set of Grover Imperial tuners that make it look even more old-world.

The biggest differences here, however, is that the Sitka spruce top is complemented by solid rosewood on the back and sides, the neck is two piece maple with a rosewood stringer, and it has a Rounded D as opposed to a C profile.

The details on these Epiphone guitars are exquisite. Even the J-45, the supposed “workhorse” of the bunch, is full of them, from the banner-style logo on the headstock and the three-on-a-plate tuners with cream buttons, to the V profile mahogany neck, it is all mojo.

As for the fundamentals, it’s the time-honoured J-45 recipe, solid Sitka spruce on top, solid mahogany on the back and sides, single-ply binding because we’re not all fancy like the SJ-200s, or indeed the Dove.

Where do you start with the Dove? You’ve got the square-shouldered silhouette, the solid figured maple back and sides, thermally aged spruce top, multi-ply binding and the fireworks courtesy of that traditional pickguard – an “acrylic/celluloid sandwich with mother-of-pearl Dove inlays – and MOP-inlaid bridge.

This has been set up with some Kluson Waffleback tuners with metal Keystone buttons, and, like the Hummingbirds, here we have a rounded profile mahogany neck. Note, the Dove is a 25.5” scale instrument. The Hummingbirds measure up at 24.75”.

Ordinarily, those Hummingbirds would be the talk of the town but the Dove… Well, they are all brightly feathered. This collection features two Hummingbirds, one a cutaway electro, the other more typical of the species.

They share a lot of DNA. The LR Baggs Element Bronze VTC electronics ready them for the stage – controls, as with all of these, are secreted in the soundhole.

You’ve got thermally treated solid Sitka spruce on top, solid mahogany on the back and sides, multi-ply binding on the top and back of the body, single-ply on the fingerboard, and said fingerboard is inlaid with MOP split parallelograms. It’s quite stunning.

Under the hood, Epiphone has applied traditional scalloped X pattern bracing, comprised of quartersawn Sitka spruce.

Speaking to the Gibson Gazette, Epiphone brand manager, Lewis McKinney, said he couldn't be any more excited by the launch. This was a new chapter for Epiphone acoustics.

“In close collaboration with the Gibson Custom team, we’ve reissued a new wave of era-accurate acoustics,” said McKinney. “Rebuilt from the ground up with precision and care, these guitars embody our ongoing commitment to quality, accessibility, and innovation. This launch marks a fresh chapter for Epiphone acoustics, and we can’t wait for players to experience them. Happy playing.”

The prices are as follows. The 1942 Banner Reissue J-45 and the Hummingbirds are £1,099/$1,299, the Dove £1,099/$1,399, while the SJ-200s are £1,399/$1,499.

These new Inspired By Gibson Custom acoustics are available now. See Epiphone for more details.

PLUGIN WEEK 2025: The issue of digital vs analogue and the pursuit of great guitar tone is a debate without end, but maybe we should take note from Steven Wilson who argues that the technology allows us to have it both ways.

Turns out that Wilson’s favourite guitar plugin, which was used across most of the electric and acoustic guitars on his audaciously epic prog album, The Overview, is a tape emulation that applies lo-fi cassette textures, and while it might be digital, it is analogue-inspired, and Wilson says it is ideal for adding character to his sound.

Speaking to Guitarist, Wilson said Aberrant DSP’s SketchCassette was on “almost all” of the guitars on the album – and he has used it on some of the keyboards, too.

“You can choose the brand of tape, you can choose Ferric, Chrome, or Metal, how much wow and flutter, how much saturation, how much hiss, how old the tape is,” said Wilson. “I love it because sometimes the problem with digital sounds is they just lack a little bit of character, and a little bit of what you would think of as an imperfection can make things have character.”

Wilson is not the only high-profile artist/producer to declare his love for SketchCassette. Finneas used it on Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For?, a song from the smash hit Barbie soundtrack.

Aberrant DSP describes SketchCassette as “cassette inspired degradation” and now in its second version (priced $36) it offers users a dozen different tape types, which effectively apply filters to your tone, with four different qualities of tape – Cheap, Value, Standard, and Master – each adding its own flavour to the mix, with the higher quality options typically giving you more high-frequencies.

You can also bypass these filters altogether and just use the wow/flutter, saturation and NR compression. Also, there’s a handy mix control so you can dial in just how pronounced you want it.

Wilson explains that often he's looking for that rerecorded tape vibe.

“Very often, I just load up this cassette plugin and add a little bit of flutter or warble or saturation, or just make it sound like it’s coming off a tape that’s been recorded over three or four times, and suddenly it gives the sound character,” said Wilson. “It gives the sound just a little bit more grain and that organic quality that you associate with analogue tape.

“This is what I mean when I’m talking about using the best of both worlds: using the best of digital technology, but then also bringing in some of the characteristics of analog that we love so much. On a lot of the guitars I do, I used that plug-in just to give them a little bit more grain and character.”

And you can hear this all over The Overview. The album’s title is taken from the disorientated effects astronauts feel upon their return to Earth. Its arrangements are Wilson at his most ambitious.

Speaking to the NME in February, he described it as an “old-fashioned piece of conceptual rock, in the tradition of The Dark Side Of The Moon and Tubular Bells”, on which he put lead guitarist Randy McStine to work on reinventing the “extended classic rock solo”.

“I told Randy: ‘This is going to be the not ‘Comfortably Numb’ solo,” said Wilson. “I wanted something with the same feeling of drama, but which is a million light years away from it. What Randy did is one of the highlights of the record.”

The Overview is out now via Fiction. If you like the sound of SketchCassette, v2 is available now for $36, and definitely check out Aberrant DSP's Lofi Oddity, which is a free plugin it describes as a "degradation toy box".