Harley Benton is now officially making relic’d guitars for under 250 bucks, unveiling its much anticipated Aged Series of electric guitars – and basses – with five models, finish options aplenty, and vintage mojo the beginner player can afford.

This is in many ways a historic moment for guitar. The Fender Custom Shop, then Gibson and a host of boutique manufacturers, have pioneered relic’d guitars with perfectly distressed finishes but only for high-end electric guitars. If we wanted a battered and bruised cheap electric guitar, we had to do it ourselves, playing them hard, or getting creative.

The launch of Harley Benton’s Aged Series, with a list price from Thomann of €249, reminds us of halcyon days, a misspent youth performing ill-advisable modifications to the beginner guitars in our life (we can’t be the only ones who remember putting a no-brand S-style into the oven, no?).

The Aged Series saves us from such madness, offering Light Aged and Heavy Aged finishes across five different models, with 20 finish options in total. That’s right, Light Aged and Heavy Aged finishes... These Harley Benton guitars offer Murphy Lab-style options without the price tag.

These models have been in the works for a few years now. Back in 2024, Harley Benton had something special to show us at Guitar Summit. The budget gear brand had been putting together some prototype electric guitars that were brand new but looked like they had decades of touring behind them.

“We cannot say too much about them,” said Harley Benton’s Bene Schlereth, holding a TE T-style guitar with what looked like a distressed Lake Placid Blue finish. “They are finished in nitro… It just feels very organic and I really, really like it.” There was a JB Bass, too, with a similar finish.

Here we have them, and unsurprisingly they were not easy to make.

“The worn finishes, the aged hardware, the instant vintage cool… this might just be our most ambitious series yet!” says Harley Benton

There’s the T-style TE-62, the S-style ST-62, and the JA-60, an offset guitar that looks incredible in Shell Pink but even more gnarly in Heavy Aged Candy Apple over 3-Tone Sunburst – it’s like it really was a ‘60s instrument that someone had refinished before trashing on the road.

Interesting, back at the prototype stage, Harley Benton said these were nitro finishes, but they are applying these ageing techniques to the harder-wearing poly finishes. Even the hardware is aged.

Elsewhere, you get the typically high-end for the price point specs – e.g. the caramelised maple necks, US alder bodies– and Harley Benton’s vintage-voiced ISOLA alnico V pickups as standard.

You get a choice of caramelised maple fingerboards or laurel. All for £214/$238 (approx)/€249. Note: deliveries to the US might be subject to import duties.

Other finish options include Olympic White, Olympic Black, Lake Placid Blue over 3-Tone Sunburst, 3-Tone Sunburst, and Seafoam Green – and they look great.

Check them out at Harley Benton. Buy one via Thomann And don’t do anything too drastic to your first guitar. It has sentimental value.

A very sad update on a story we brought you last week: L7 bassist Jennifer Finch, who had been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, has died, aged just 59.

The LA grunge rockers announced the news on Saturday (July 18) via Instagram, saying: “With a very heavy heart we announce that our beloved bandmate, friend, and fellow troublemaker Jennifer Finch has passed away today."

“She had a long courageous fight with brain cancer and was loved by many wonderful friends, musical peers and fans worldwide. We love you Jennifer.”

The band later posted another statement, saying: “We are shattered by the loss of our beloved bandmate, sister and friend Jennifer Finch, whose fierce spirit, humour and boundless creativity helped shape L7 and changed all of our lives forever.

“Jennifer was a true original who lived entirely on her own terms, and the impact she made on music, art and everyone lucky enough to know her cannot be measured. We love her beyond words and will carry her with us always. Rest in power our dear friend.”

The extent of Finch’s condition was only revealed last week, when the band announced that they were launching a GoFundMe campaign for her ongoing care and medical expenses. In the week the campaign was live it raised nearly $400,000.

Finch wasn’t quite a founder member of L7 – she joined in 1986, after a stint in Sugar Babydoll, a short-lived band that also featured Courtney Love and future Babes In Toyland guitarist Kat Bjelland. She stayed all through their period of greatest success, including their Bricks Are Heavy and Hungry For Stink albums, from 1992 and 1994 respectively, before leaving in 1996, citing money and health issues.

The bassist then worked as a photographer, graphic designer and digital media professional though she continued to keep her hand in with music, playing in the bands OtherStarPeople and The Shocker.

But when L7 reformed in 2014, she returned to the fold. The group recorded one more album, Scatter The Rats, in 2019, and had continued to do what heritage bands of their vintage do: tour classic albums in full, reissue their back catalogue and enjoy a less-pressured second wind.

Earlier this year, L7 had announced The Last Hurrah 2026, which they were spinning as their final North American tour. Last week the band confirmed that that would go ahead with Finch’s blessing. It will now surely double-up as a celebration of both the bassist’s life and the fondly-regarded band she played in.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert has become a pop-cultural staple of the internet era, a rite of passage for hot up-and-comers, a venue for the mega-stars to drop in and play in an intimate setting – like when Bono and the Edge swung by to rework U2 classics for acoustic guitar.

Taylor Swift has played one, as has Dua Lipa. The Wu-Tang Clan, IDLES, BTS, Alicia Keys, and the Foo Fighters have all done their bit. PinkPantheress played her first show without Auto-Tune on it.

But NPR Music broke new ground today; it just broadcast it’s most extreme performance ever, welcoming UK grindcore pioneers Napalm Death to the studio, to pitch up in support of public access broadcasting, and to maybe introduce some people to the restorative magic of the blast beat, brutal riffs, death growls and screams.

There was no stagediving. But then there was no stage, no wedge monitors to leap from. This, after all, is an office. But frontman Barney Greenway, guitarist/vocalist John Cooke, drummer Danny Herrera and touring bassist Matt Sheridan made themselves at home, and did what they always do, tore the place apart, and were nice about it, too.

“We are Napalm Death, for the uninitiated, just in case you might be wondering,” says Greenway, addressing the crowd out of shot. “So welcome one and all. Nice to see you. Let me say we are here to heartily support public access broadcasting. Unfortunately, it is under attack from all sides, in the UK as well as over here. And we have to take care of it – it’s precious. It has to be preserved.”

Greenway has given public access radio some iconic moments over the years, like when he gave the current UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, a lesson in death metal vocals.

Greenway’s vocal style is straight from the gut, a leonine roar in the classic death metal style. He made his full-length Napalm Death debut on 1990’s Harmony Corruption, when the Birmingham grind institution explored a more death metal direction under the watch of legendary producer Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios, in Florida. In this NPR segment Greenway is kind of like the MGM lion in a Crass T-shirt.

But public access radio has been good to Napalm Death, too. It has been good to grindcore. The late BBC Radio One DJ John Peel was an early champion. Napalm Death recorded a number of sessions that were later compiled in The Peel Sessions. And there were others; Carcass, Extreme Noise Terror, and Bolt Thrower all tracked at the Beeb (and there were other grind-adjacent sessions with Unseen Terror and others – check out the 2009 compilation Grind Madness At The BBC).

Today, Napalm Death brought the old classics to NPR, opening with Instinct Of Survival, the Side One classic from their 1987 debut LP, Scum, dropping the title track later in the set before closing with their one-second ur-grind track, You Suffer.

They’d call that something silly like "micro-grind" these days but back then it was just grindcore, and it was calling card that made Napalm Death notorious.

But not everything was head-down-and-blast.

“This next little ditty perhaps approaches the merest hint of musical beauty,” says Greenway, introducing Amoral from 2020’s Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism. Before pausing to add another qualifier: “The merest hint!”

He was as good as his word. Check it out at the top of the page.

And you can catch Napalm Death at this year's ArcTanGent Festival on 21 August. See the Napalm Death for full tour dates.

Some awful news from the '90s grunge band L7 – bassist Jennifer Finch has been diagnosed with an ‘aggressive’ form of brain cancer.

Her bandmates – Donita Sparks, Suzi Gardner and Demetra Plakas - confirmed it in an Instagram post yesterday (13 July), with frontwoman Sparks adding in a separate statement: "We are all devastated by the news and are surrounding her with love, protecting her privacy and dignity, while helping raise the resources she urgently needs for the care ahead.

"Jennifer is family, and we want her to feel the full strength of the community that has loved and supported her for so many years.”

The band were to head out on their supposedly-final Last Hurrah tour in October. This will still go ahead, though without Finch, understandably. The bassist has given her colleagues her blessing to go ahead without her.

They have also directed fans to a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of her treatments and ongoing care.

“When she first heard the diagnosis, there was reason to believe that treatment, including a full course of radiation, would get her back to some version of normal living. Unforeseen complications led to multiple surgeries and a string of difficult setbacks,” the page explains. “The cancer and everything that comes with it have left her with significant physical limitations so she’s handling this the only way she knows how: one day at a time.”

Finch’s friends and family are no longer able to cover the level of around-the-clock care required for her and so donations will cover physical therapy, in-home nursing care and other home care, medical expenses, legal fees and more.

Among those who have so far contributed to the fund is Michael Stipe who has written on Bluesky: “Punk rock and alternative music would not be what it is or where it is without Jennifer Finch. We send loving energy to her. Please - if you can - every contribution helps. Thanks, xx Michael.”

L7 were formed in Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, with their greatest period of success coinciding with the grunge era of the early '90s. You’ll, of course, know them for Pretend We’re Dead, a pop/rock gem that hasn’t (yet) been ruined by over-exposure: it sounds as daisy fresh now as it did in 1992. They reformed in 2014, with their most recent album being 2019’s Scatter The Rats.

The Cure are keeping it in the family. The band have announced that whilst long-serving bassist Simon Gallup is ill, his son Eden will be temporarily taking his place in the band.

Robert Smith and co are currently on tour in Europe and played the first of a three-night run in Berlin last Friday (July 10). However, fans noticed that Gallup was absent, even before Smith dedicated Lullaby to him. After the show, Smith posted on Instagram - all in caps for some reason - about the bassist’s illness.

“Shortly before the first of our three Berlin Wuhlheide concerts yesterday, Simon was taken ill,” Smith wrote. “His son Eden shifted sideways to save the show.

"Unfortunately, Simon is still not well enough to play, so Eden will be filling the bass breach again tonight. Hope you will join us in wishing Simon the speediest of recoveries. And Eden – thanks.”

The nature of Gallup’s illness has not been revealed. The 66-year-old bassist, though, is almost as near to a permanent fixture in The Cure as Smith himself. He first joined the band in 1979 and aside from an eighteen-month period between 1982 and 1984 when he fell out with the frontman has been with them ever since. He’s played on every Cure album since 1985’s The Head On The Door.

Anyway, the band’s tour of Europe’s festivals continues until August 30 when they play Rock En Seine in Paris. Then at some point the band will doubtless release the follow-up to 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World, which Robert Smith confirmed last month is “done”.

Este Haim has been telling the story of how she came to be a bass player, a tale that involves sibling rivalry, parental encouragement, Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth, and the frequently-kidnapped Nintendo character Princess Peach.

Este, of course, plays bass guitar in Haim, the band she ended up forming with sisters Danielle and Alana. However, as she recently revealed while taking Track Star’s Perfect Song Challenge, this wasn’t her first choice of instrument.

“I grew up hearing my mom sing and play guitar,” she explains. “So when I was eight and Danielle was five, my mom started teaching us how to play guitar.”

For Este, though, this turned out to be dispiriting. “Danielle, like, flew past me when it came to technical skill, musicality,” she remembers. “Like I, as an eight-year-old, was like, ‘My fucking five-year-old sister is better than me at guitar. Like, she's five. How is this even possible?’ She was like a savant.”

Enter Este’s father, who spotted that something was up with his eldest daughter.

“My dad saw this and was like, "My daughter is ‘Depr-Este’. That’s her new name.’ I was like walking around, moping around, like ‘I don't have any talent. What is my place in the world?’ At eight years old! Existential crisis. So my dad was like, ‘I got an idea. I think Este should try to play bass, another stringed instrument.’”

After assuring Este that it was easier to play, a second-hand bass guitar was purchased, but its recipient wasn’t keen. Recalling her reaction to her dad’s idea, Este says: “I was like, ‘I don't even know what that is. I don't want to do that. That sounds lame.’”

Mr Haim, though, came up with a plan: “My dad was like, ‘OK, I know what's gonna change your mind. Este loves Nintendo. Loves. Mario loves Princess Peach – I'm gonna show her [1984 Talking Heads concert movie] Stop Making Sense, and she's gonna see this magical, beautiful lady playing bass with her blonde hair, and she's literally like… the most ferocious, she's having the most fun.’”

And guess what? The plan worked.

“So my dad takes me to Blockbuster, gets the movie, puts it on, and I was literally, like, transfixed. I was like, ‘I get it now. I get it. This is for me. This is what I want to do. I want to be Tina Weymouth.’ And that's the start of my love affair with bass.”

Smart thinking from dad, then, who realised that what Este needed was a bass playing role model who she could relate to.

“He was like, you need to kind of see it to be it,” she says. “That was the correct way to go. And then, you know, from Stop Making Sense, then I started researching all the other music that she was involved in. Tom Tom Club being one of them [Este and Track Star host were sharing their appreciation for that band’s Genius Of Love]. And yeah, she's so cool and such a good bass player, and so tasteful. And again, I love the way she performs. She's having the best time.”

With any luck, Este herself will now have inspired the next generation of girls to start playing the bass, but she insists her father was wrong about one thing: that bass guitar is easier than guitar.

“Dad – that was incorrect,” she says. “Not true.”

As we approach the release of Foreign Tongues, the new album by the Rolling Stones, frontman Mick Jagger has been discussing Paul McCartney’s contribution to it.

Macca plays bass on an as yet unheard song called Covered In You, and Jagger has told the NME that he recorded his part in the same session that yielded Bite My Head Off, from the Stones' 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds.

However, in the case of Covered In You, he says that he had to seek assurances from producer Andrew Watt, who would go on to work with McCartney on his recent album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, that the former Beatle was the right fit.

“Obviously, I've known Paul for ages – he’s not a stranger – but I mean, he’d never played bass with us before,” says Jagger. “It's a different thing, you know? I’d sung with him before, done harmonies and stuff. But you were thinking, well, it's a punk tune.

“I said to Andy, ‘Is he into this?’ Because it's really a punk tune, and it's going to go really fast, and I want it to do that, and it's going to be… I want overdriven bass. It's gonna be simple. No mucking about, you know.”

We’re guessing that means hammering away on the root note rather than taking the bassline ‘for a walk’, so to speak, but Jagger says that Watt set his mind at rest.

“He said ‘No, no, no. Paul can do that,’ and he did it,” he remembers. “He did exactly what was needed in like, 10 minutes.”

Also speaking to the NME recently, McCartney shared his own memories of that Stones studio experience.

“It was really exciting, because I normally don’t play as a session guy,” he said. “And it's really nice to just show up at a studio with your bass and say 'Right, where do you want me? Where do I plug in?’ And you start playing and they show you the song and I start thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones.’ And I’m well chuffed, you know? You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick! Ooh, there’s Keith! Woah, there’s Ronnie!’ It was exciting. It was really good. And the great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”

Foreign Tongues is released on 10 July.

Ask any bass player to name his top 10 bassists and you'll find that Jaco Pastorius almost always features in the top three.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but whether devotees or not, nearly all players agree that Jaco was unique, with an extraordinary ability to make his basslines fluid and significant, no matter what he was playing or who he was playing for.

As with any genius - as he surely was - his destiny ran close to insanity and sadly much of what has been written about him centres on that element, yet all that really matters in the grand scheme of things is what he brought to the world of bass playing.

Early days

Jaco started out as a drummer but barely into his teens he broke his left arm, lost the ability to play properly and was kicked out of the band he'd originally formed. At 15 he was invited back, but only if he could play bass, so he bought one. "I didn't know where the notes were or anything, I just started grooving and I've never been out of work since," he once recalled.

Interviews with Jaco were few and far between - he lived in an era when singers and lead guitarists commanded far more interest than mere bass players. It's only now, years after the death of many a great bass player, that we are aware of the short-sightedness of this 'frontman' approach.

However, anyone taking centre stage is only as strong as his or her supporting team and Jaco was enormously strong. It wasn't always appreciated though, as Bob Bobbing, a bass-playing friend from their teenage years, recalls: "He really did impress people, even though band leaders at that time didn't appreciate what he was doing that much, because if you were lead singer it would get in the way, interfere with the agenda of the band leader or possibly other players."

Joe Zawinal, leader of Weather Report, would no doubt agree with that, as the heated disagreements between him and Jaco over musical policy were legendary. Never the less Jaco got plenty of opportunity to take centre stage himself during his time with the band where his bass features on tracks like Teen Town and Birdland, (where Jaco used pinched harmonics), became nightly highlights.

In demand

His recording career was actually pretty short, spanning from 1974-1986, but during that time he was able to enjoy working with a variety of artists and was able to leave his distinctive mark on all that he touched. He could be a fearsome personality, often accused of trying to dominate the music in which he was involved, yet he was also charming and witty in person, although obviously (rightly) super-confident in his own ability.

Early on, he played on Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life album but it was the release of his own album in 1976 that brought real success. With tracks like Portrait Of Tracy, Donna Lee, Continuum and Come On, Come Over this was a bass album like no other.

After hearing his eponymous solo album, Joni Mitchell invited him to play bass on her Hejira album which proved to be a very useful introduction to a wider audience. In fact, widening his appeal almost became the game plan for 1976 as it was a truly monster year for Jaco's recording calendar.

As well as the Joni session he was invited to join Weather Report and made a guest appearance on Al Di Meola's Land Of The Midnight Sun album. He was on just one track with Al, Suite Golden Dawn, a piece that moved from frantic to sublime so ideal fodder for Pastorius.

It was also the first time he played with drummer Alphonse Mouzon. Mouzon commented recently, "This was a difficult piece to play. This was the first time Jaco and I played and recorded together and also the first time Di Meola and I played and recorded together." Naturally, it still sounds fantastic today.

And so it would go on; Weather Report albums, Joni Mitchell albums (including her famous Mingus album dedicated to the late great jazz bassist Charles Mingus), guest appearances with some of the greatest jazz musicians and continual gigging.

He also became more involved in arranging and musical direction but gradually that constant work ethic would take its toll. However there has been a book or two written about that subject, so what of Jaco simply, (if that's not a contradiction of terms), as a bass player?

Jaco the virtuoso

Jaco is, of course, famous for using a fretless Fender Jazz Bass but whether he removed the frets himself or they had already been removed when he bought the bass secondhand has never been fully resolved.

However in a rare interview during his time with Weather Report, Jaco stated, "I have a standard Fender Jazz Bass, 1962 I think it is, that I took the frets out of. I've been playing the bass guitar for almost twelve years and fretless for about nine, so I've got quite a bit of mileage in my hands already.

"I play in tune like a cello player and use legitimate vibrato. There are no tricks; it's just all in the hands! In the studio I don't use an amp, I just go direct into the desk. It's virtually acoustic, what I'm doing."

At that time, when he was performing he was using a pair of Acoustic 360 amps. "It's a whole different thing on stage… you get into all sorts of fun."

The Weather Report line-up at this time was Joe Zawinul on keys, Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophone, Jaco on bass and 'new boy' Peter Erskine on drums. Pastorius: "We're just playing quartet, it's pretty dangerous. The album (Mr Gone, 1978) is more or less quartet anyway so we're out on the road in the same fashion."

Jaco, of course, also played drums on the album along with Steve Gadd, Tony Williams and Erskine so was he tempted to take over from Peter? "Nah, this guy's got chops like nobody else. I think my right foot is a little funkier than his - ain't better, just a little funkier", he laughs.

"He's been playing drums since he was four and he's been to music school whereas I'm pure street kid, never had a music lesson in my life. I learned everything from my friends and just constant gigging in night clubs, eight sets a night!"

Legacy

Jaco has influenced and inspired so many people to take up the bass during his lifetime and beyond so he has to be considered as one of the greatest ambassadors of the instrument as well as one of the very best players.

"It's hard to overestimate the impact that Jaco had as a player", said old colleague Pat Metheny, "And also as a force in music." Certainly during the '80s and early '90s when fretless bass was at its height, Jaco's influence could be heard on basslines, phrases and general execution on tracks across all musical genres.

Metheny again, "Fretless bass was an instrument that had been around for a few years - he certainly wasn't the first guy to do it - but he just raised the standard of it to a completely different level. I mean, fretless bass is an instrument that, even to this day, post-Jaco, is rarely played with the kind of intonation and precision that he brought to it.

"Jaco did all those things with an incredible eloquence that is especially unusual for somebody who, at the time, was between 18-23 years old!"

As time went on the pressure and drive to be the best affected Jaco's mind and he became depressed and difficult to work with. One of the last people to see Jaco alive was Carlos Santana: "We played Fort Lauderdale and Jaco came backstage. I think he was having a hassle with the security or something, but it was almost like he was inviting trouble.

"We talked for a little bit, then we went to play and after Alphonso Johnson's solo he ran up on stage and held Alphonso's hand up like he was the champion or something, and the security didn't know who he was, and they started hassling him again."

He was outside, sitting on a fence when Carlos left the club and they exchanged a few words. Later that night of 11 September 1987 Jaco tried to gatecrash a club and was beaten unconscious by a bouncer. Ten days later he was dead.

"When he died, I cried," said Carlos, "And I actually jumped into the ocean at San Francisco, and let me tell you, the ocean at San Francisco is cold." It was his way of saying goodbye to a friend who he'd tried to help on several occasions and to enable himself to move on.

These days with video clips on YouTube, reissues on CD of all the regular albums plus a host of rare tracks and live performances becoming available, it's easier now to see and hear the man in action than ever before, and that includes when he was alive.

We certainly recommend you explore these opportunities and bask in the bass glory of an incredible musician. His ability, tonality and musicality still shine as bright today as ever so let's just remember him as the star player and innovator that he most definitely was.

Roland LaPread, co-founder and bassist for classic funk-soul band the Commodores, has died at the age of 75.

The band was formed in the late ‘60s when all six original members attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama. The combining of two groups resulted in the original line-up of Lionel Richie on saxophone, keyboards and vocals, Walter “Clyde” Orange on drums and vocals, Milan Williams on keyboards, William King on trumpet, Thomas McClary on guitar and vocals, and LaPread on bass.

Originally known for hard funk cuts such as Machine Gun and I Feel Sanctified, the Commodores also became renowned for their ballads, such as Easy, Just To Be Close To You and Three Times A Lady.

It was on the more upbeat songs that LaPread’s playing came to the fore, though – 1977’s much-loved Brick House, for example. However, in an Instagram post from just a few weeks ago, LaPread revealed that this now classic track almost didn’t make it to the Commodores’ eponymous album from that year.

“They said, ‘oh man, it’s too black,” says LaPread, recalling the moment that he first played the other Commodores that iconic bass groove. “I said, ‘I tell you what,’” continues LaPread, “‘I will give this song to the group – just put it on the album. They said, ‘OK.’”

Of people's reaction to hearing the finished song, LaPread says: “They went crazy. When you hear a hit song it sends goosebumps all over your body. Before anything happens, you feel it. And that’s the history. The song’s been played almost three billion times since it was put out.”

LaPread’s death was confirmed by his daughter on social media, who encouraged fans to “do as he did and be kind to each other.”

Lionel Richie, meanwhile, said: “Pread, you will be missed my dear brother. What a ride!”

Thom Yorke made a surprise appearance with Flea last night in London, the first time the two Atoms For Peace bandmates have played live together for some time.

Flea was appearing at KOKO in Camden, the only UK date on his current Honora tour and brought out Yorke to play Traffic Lights, their recent collab on Flea’s solo album. Check out the footage below:

And they followed that with a 10 minute version of Marvin Gaye’s funk classic Got To Give It Up, with – as you’d expect - the Radiohead singer bringing the falsetto vocals.

It comes a week after Yorke was honoured at the Ivor Novello Awards with their Academy Fellowship Award. In time-honoured Thom Yorke-style, he used his acceptance speech to bemoan all those horrible music industry people, saying: “This industry will die and arseholes with it, if all you do is devalue the next generation of artists and their fans. Just remember: without us, you ain’t shit!”

Lovely.

At the Ivors, he also revealed that he’s putting together a new solo album. “It’s been a really fun process, and it’s pretty f***ing different for me.”

Yorke added: “I’m too close to it to know for certain. I get moments of going, ‘This is good, I like this’. That’s enough for me. What else can I say about it? There’s a song called Arse-Kissers.”

The Precision Bass is 75 years old and to mark this landmark occasion Fender has unveiled three anniversary editions of the bass guitar that transformed popular music.

Many instruments – and their makers – overstate their impact on popular culture, but the Precision Bass quite rightly is regarded as a hinge moment for popular music. Taking design cues from the first-mass produced electric guitar, the Fender Telecaster, the P Bass completed the transition from bulky stand-up basses. A new era arrived.

Appropriately, the 75th Anniversary Precision Bass Collection offers three distinct takes on the P Bass. There is the American Vintage II 1951 Precision Bass, which is inspired by the OG model and its Butterscotch Blonde finish and single-ply black pickguard borrowed from the Telecaster. Note the headstock on this, too.

Like the Tele, it’s a primal affair, a slab of ash, a bolt-on maple neck with a thick U profile. We’ve got one 75th Anniversary '51 Single-Coil Precision Bass pickup plus volume and tone controls, a nitro finish, and the Pure Vintage 2-Saddle Precision Bass with fibre saddles and a chrome cover.

Then we have the Player II Precision Bass in Diamond Dust Sparkle, a disco and glam-rock friendly refresh of the top-selling Mexican-made model. The pearloid pickguard tops this off nicely.

It has a solid alder body, maple neck, rosewood fingerboard and a single 75th Anniversary Thunderbolt Precision Bass split-coil pickup with oversized pole pieces for extra oomph. Expect all the usual Player II Series luxuries – the rolled fingerboard edges, the crowd-pleasing Modern C neck profile, the adjustable four-saddle bridge with single-groove steel ‘Barrel’ saddles.

Rounding out the collection we’ve got an American Professional PJ hybrid with dual pickups, a figured maple top, gold hardware, a ’63 P Bass neck profile and a HiMass bridge, and a 2-Color Sunburst finish. This really is exquisite. We’ve got tapered-shaft tuners. The neck is reinforced with Posiflex graphite rods.

And with a 75th Anniversary V-Mod Jazz Bass single-coil at the bridge position and a V-Mod P Bass split-coil at the middle, you’ve got heaps of tone options.

All three in the collection have a commemorative neck plate. Though note the neck plate on the AmPro model; it has been machined as has the heel so that you can get the fretting hand all the way up that rosewood fingerboard.

“The Precision Bass didn’t just change how bass guitar sounded, it changed what was possible in popular music,” says Justin Norvell, chief product officer, Fender. “Seventy-five years later, that legacy is still alive and evolving. With this collection, we wanted to honour every chapter of that story: the swamp ash body and single-coil pickup of the 1951 original, the purposeful evolution that kept the P Bass at the center of music for generations, and the Thunderbolt pickup that suggests the best chapter may still be ahead.

“These are serious instruments built to be played hard, and we’re proud to put them in the hands of the players who will write what comes next.”

All three look and sound pretty special. Sean Hurley is one of the players who has got his hands on them, and the John Mayer bassist certainly does a great job demoing them. Fender’s 75th Anniversary celebrations continue with a video series featuring a number of bass icons all paying tribute to the instrument. The players involved read like a who’s who of bass guitar.

There’s Freddie Washington, whose perspective on the instrument is fascinating given that he transitioned from the upright bass to the Precision Bass.

“When I started playing [the] P Bass, I was hearing this sound on records… I was hearing this thick, rich sound,” he says. “It had a profound effect on how I play coming from the upright bass. It inspires me to play the way I play, the way it sounds, the way it feels. I’ve played on a lot of different records, and I’ve played lines on records that I probably wouldn’t play this way if it was another bass. This bass has given me the ability to go places that I can go any time I want to go.”

Washington played with Herbie Hancock, Michael Jackson, Elton John, BB King and the list goes on. The P Bass served him through all these different gigs, with different styles, just as it did for Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler. “I tried other basses, but nothing had the balance of a P-bass,” he says. “It becomes part of you.”

Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters describes the P Bass as “the center of gravity for the bass world”, while Leland Sklar argues that it was life-changing for the player and music fan alike.

“It really made the lives of bass players change,” he says. “It made the lives of audiences change. It really changed all our lives as bassists.”

Tal Wilkenfeld might have been one of those players that Norvell had in mind when he talked about the Precision Bass still having its best years ahead of it. The former Jeff Beck bassist believes there’s a lot more to be discovered on it.

“The idea that the electric bass is only 75 years old is amazing to me,” she says. “It’s such a baby compared to every other instrument. So there’s so much more to explore on the P Bass.”

Everybody loves the Precision Bass. Everybody had something good to say about it. But perhaps the legendary session bassist Bob Glaub (Bruce Springsteen, Steve Miller Band) said it best: “It’s the bass you think of when you go to pick a bass. It’s magic and it really has no limits.”

The 75th Anniversary Precision Bass Collection is available now. The American Vintage II 1951 Precision Bass is priced £2,699/$2,899. The American Professional PJ Bass will set you back £2,549/$2,699, while the Player II P Bass is the most affordable of the three at £999/$1,099.

See Fender for more details.

Just like George Lucas, Rush had their heads in “a galaxy, far, far away” in 1976 as they put together a sci-fi epic that would change their lives.

But while Lucas turned the clock back to a distant past, the Canadian prog-trio were imagining a dystopian future in the year 2112. All roads led to Megadon.

At that stage of their career, Rush badly needed a hit. They needed something, anything – some gift from the cosmos to reverse their fortunes. And in 2112 they had something.

Its predecessor, 1975’s Caress Of Steel, was an audacious statement of intent. Rush’s progressive mores were coming to the fore – not least on The Fountain of Lamneth, which occupied the entirety of Side B.

In hindsight, the critical consensus says that Caress Of Steel was the sound of Rush stretching their wings musically and flying a little too close to the sun. They had the ambition but hadn’t quite shed their influences and become themselves. These things take time.

The touring cycle brought forth the unedifying prospect of total failure, though not without a little gallows humour. Rush called it the ‘Down the Tubes Tour’ and even had it printed on the passes.

Guitarist Alex Lifeson admits he was considering strapping on his tool belt and becoming a regular working man again.

“That was a very difficult tour. We were already extremely in debt, and it was just getting worse and worse,” said Lifeson, speaking to Guitar World in 2013. “The crowds were getting smaller and there didn’t seem to be much interest in the album at the time. Everybody around was concerned about what the future was going to be. So there was a lot of reflection. I thought, Well, you know, I guess I could be a plumber again if I had to…”

But that is not how this story ends. Rush had ideas and they were letting them cook night after night on tour, writing whenever they could.

Drummer and chief lyricist Neil Peart always had something stirring in his brilliant mind, and as the tour rolled on, the songs rolled out – the concept for 2112 was taking shape. And the concept was pretty far out.

Peart had been reading a lot of Ayn Rand. With its neo-Dark Ages theme, Rand’s 1938 novella, Anthem, seemed to have catalysed something brilliant in his mind.

“As the record was coming together we all truly were very excited about it,” Lifeson told Guitar World. “I don’t know if we thought we had quite what we ended up with, but we did feel it was something special.”

The 20-minute title track, partitioned into seven movements, imagines a dystopian future that had been roiled by interplanetary warfare.

The Red Star of the Solar Federation now rules a union of planets, and by the time you stick the needle down on the album there is peace under the iron grip of totalitarian rule. The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx rule every aspect of life in the city of Megadon. All art is created by the temple.

The story’s anonymous hero is about to make a discovery that changes all that. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, bassist/frontman Geddy Lee explained how the narrative – and the music – flowed, once the Overture, the last piece of music to be written, welcomed us into this world.

“The Temples Of Syrinx sets the scene, because 2112 is about a totalitarian society that controls everything about your life, including the music that you hear,” said Lee. “It manufactures it all, so that’s what we wanted to say with this track. It sets up the hierarchy in this futuristic world that we’ve arrived in.

“Discovery is where the hero of the story finds a device in a cave. It’s a guitar, but he doesn’t know it because they don’t exist in his time period. So he picks it up and realises that it’s a device that can make music and create sounds. Previous to that point, everything he’d ever heard had been provided to him by the people that run his world.”

And this is just three songs/movements in...

“And the meek shall inherit the earth”

News that Rush were making a high-concept prog record was not received with the popping of champagne corks at the record label. It was widely reported that the band’s long-time producer Terry “Broon” Brown and their manager, Ray Danniels, were engaged in the urgent business of managing expectations as the record was being made.

Fast-forward 50 years and Geddy Lee is sitting in a London hotel with MusicRadar and laughing at the memory.

“We told the record company people to back off,” says Lee. “They didn’t understand that record. They didn’t understand Caress Of Steel, but Caress Of Steel didn’t break through because it was ultimately a record of experiments, not all successful. We managed somehow to correct that with 2112, and make a more cohesive, powerful statement.”

It says a lot of Rush’s confidence in themselves and the material that they doubled-down on those experiments. This was just the kind of creative derring-do that generations of Rush fans were weaned on. The record company sat back and waited. What else could they do? “And so they said, ‘Well, we don’t know what it is you’re doing, but just fucking keep doing it!” says Lee.

It didn’t take long. The album was written over six months on the road, workshopped at soundchecks, and so by the time they entered the studio they were well prepared. The songs were all but done. There was no time to waste. There was no money to waste. The album was all but done in a month, much of it recorded live in the room.

Lifeson’s main guitar was his Gibson ES-335 but he had borrowed a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Hummingbird for the sessions. Amps were his usual complement of Marshall heads plus a Fender Twin. He had a Tom Oberheim-designed Maestro Phase Shifter, an Echoplex tape echo, and a Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal. All classic Rush gear.

There was a weird kind of Stanislavski method to the madness – can actually hear Lifeson tuning up his Strat at the beginning of Discovery, just as the anonymous hero of 2112 finds his guitar in the story.

Lee played his 4001 Rickenbacker bass guitar through Ampeg or Sunn amps. Hugh Syme provided the cover art; he also played on the record, too. Syme operated the ARP Odyssey synthesizer on the title track, and returned to play Mellotron on Side B’s Tears.

“This song marked the first time we used a Mellotron,” said Lee. “The gentleman that does all our album covers is called Hugh Syme, and it’s actually him playing Mellotron here.

“Tears is a romantic ballad to give the album even more variety and depth. Mellotrons are very unique-sounding; they sound sorta electric, but also kinda stringy, they have this real resin-y sound to them, which is very cool and unique to that period.”

With Side A housing 2112, Rush put together five tracks for Side B, all with a very different vibe. “We made it so you’d flip the record over and then you’ve got five individual songs that are stand-alone,” recalled Lee. “Back in the day of vinyl, it was very normal to have a different experience on side two.”

Passage To Bangkok kicks it off with a paean to smoking pot, written as a “travelogue” to the various terroirs of marijuana cultivation across the world. “It’s sort of comic relief in that sense,” said Lee. “All kinds of places get mentioned – the first stop is in Bogota in Colombia then you’re in Bangkok, Thailand.”

It could also be taken as a commentary on the writing and recording process. Rush were no strangers to the leaf. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016, Lifeson testified to its inspirational properties in the studio. Rush were having the time of their lives making the record.

“When we worked on Discovery, I think it was honey oil [marijuana] that was around at the time, so that was a wonderful inspiration,” said Lifeson. “And I do remember working late nights ’til six or seven in the morning with our feet up on the console and suddenly all of us waking up to the flapping of the reel going around and around on the tape machine. It was just the feeling of being in a wonderful place.”

The Twilight Zone came together late. They had room for one more song and wrote it in the studio as a tribute to the TV show. Apart from Lessons, which was written completely by Lifeson, and Tears, written by Lee, all the lyrics came from Peart’s notebook and it is a heroic achievement of world-building with rock music.

2112 inspired many to follow in Rush’s footsteps. Dream Theater’s John Petrucci was one of them.

“Beyond his incredible drumming, there’s Neil Peart as a lyricist. I would say he’s been the biggest influence on me in that respect,” he told MusicRadar in 2019. “The way the tale evolves is astonishing, using the guitar as an actual part of the story – that really drew me in. To this day, 2112 is one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard.”

How Lifeson plays guitar was also not lost on Petrucci. He has studied it closely, and like all responsible artists has borrowed/stolen where appropriate.

“I love Alex’s choices, the way he plays power chords with open strings on top,” said Petrucci. “And when you combine that with the way he uses the chorus effect – to this day, I apply all of this information to my own style.”

If there is a secret to Rush’s sound it can surely be found on 2112. It could be the rosetta stone for understanding everything; how they transform a rock song into a work of sci-fi theatre; how play what Steve Vai likes to call “high-information music” and yet present it as digestible and human, shifting through styles as though you’ve turned the dial on the radio.

The band themselves were a little split on where 2112 stands in their catalogue. Peart thought Moving Pictures was the album on which Rush truly found their sound. Lifeson could see that, but argued 2112 was the one

“Really for me it was on 2112 that I felt that we were becoming us,” he told Guitarist in 2010. “Our influences were less obvious and we were thinking in our own terms.”

Would Lee change anything about it now? He’s not sure.

“If I was gonna change anything in 2112, I would change some of the, y’know, the whole record goes up and down and up and down,” he says. “I maybe wouldn’t have so many down, and more ups, but other than that, it’s kind of a fool’s errand to try to reimagine a record that was made so long ago.”

It was written, recorded and released 50 years ago and yet 2112 retains its fizz. It is animated by the electric possibilities of a band just hitting its straps, the weight of a bleak future imagined, and the release after you turn the record over.

Great recordings have a strange magic; they store the energy from the room like a battery. They build a world that the audience will return to in search of answers.

“Rush are my biggest influence and favourite band,” said Petrucci. “Just the idea of this concept album, of a story being told and songs as vehicles to tell the story – it’s unbelievable. I would get lost in this album. I wanted to know what they were talking about. ‘Who’s this guy? What’s happening?’ It took you to another world.”

And it got Rush back in the game; 2112 was proof of concept that their musical adventurism applied to Peart’s novelistic lyrics could reach a wider audience. It took them to another level, laying the foundations for the experiments in synthesizers to come.

From Megadon, Rush beat a path to Xanadu, road high upon Lifeson’s fever dream en route to La Villa Strangiato.

Having proved the record label wrong, Rush would have the confidence to dream bigger, to close 1977’s A Farewell To Kings with sci-fi epic that is concluded on the opening track to 1978’s Hemispheres. Tune in for the next thrilling instalment…

Rush’s concepts would become too big for one record. Prog legend status was unlocked.

This was what 2112 did for them – multi-album storytelling arcs, freedom, longevity. Attention all planets of the Solar Federation, Rush have assumed control, and there was no letting go.

“There would not be Rush, a long history of Rush, without that record, so I owe sort of everything to it,” says Lee. “It was the record that changed our lives. It was the record that gave us, won us freedom of creative expression, or, shall I say, reinforced our right to creative freedom.”

Try to think of something new in bass guitar design and it’s hard. It’s all been done. Active circuits, passive circuits, concentric stacked knobs, extra switches, you name it. But Joe Dart had an idea – and he and Sterling By Music Man have really come up with something new.

It wasn’t just Dart, to be fair. The bassist credits his Vulfpeck bandleader, Jack Stratton, with this too. They got to talking about bass design. They had a “vision”. What if someone just pared the bass guitar down to its very essence, just four strings and the truth. “Nothing extra, not even a volume knob,” says Dart.

Sterling By Music Man Made it happen. It is the first bass Dart knows off to do away with these controls, to run the pickups full, with nothing in between them and the output jack.

“We call this bass The Vision,” says Dart. “It strikes the perfect balance of punch and warmth that I’m always chasing, and it sits in the pocket like it was built for it.”

The Joe Dart headlines SBMM’s Dart signature pairing for 2026. The other big news is that the Joe Dart I is back.

“That bass has history,” says Dart “It belongs in people’s hands. I’m thrilled to share both of these with the world.”

But there is a catch; you’ve got to be quick. These are not limited edition instruments per se, but this is a timed release; they are built to order, and once the deadline passes, Sterling By Music Man will stop making them.

It’s probably a better idea than the limited run instrument. Those who wanted one, get one. Die-hard fans are less likely to be scalped on the second-hand market. Everybody wins.

Also, these basses are a good deal. The returning Joe Dart I is priced £409/$549 (in a sign of the times, it was just £325/$399 when it first launched in 2024), and that’s pretty minimalistic, too (the Vision, in fact, was the original idea but they never went through with it at the time). The Dart I has a single ceramic humbucker and one toaster-style volume knob, the lightweight maple body build left in a natural finish.

The Joe Dart Vision, meanwhile, arrives in an Olympic White finish, it has the same soft maple body, a gold egg-shaped pickguard, and ceramic humbucker, and the vital statistics (34” scale, 9.5” radius maple fingerboard, 22 frets) remain the same. Only this time there are no knobs. It’s priced £447/$599.

You have until the end of the May 2026 to order these, and you can do so right now by heading over to Sterling By Music Man. Instruments ship from September.

Neural DSP has just expanded its plugin range with the Darkglass Ultimate, a comprehensive in-the-box solution for bass guitar players based around a pair of the Finnish bass amp brand’s most-famous preamps and complemented by a bewildering array of effects and features.

For your contemporary bass sound, super-aggro, with “controlled low end and clear articulation”, we have a digital version of the Darklgass Microtubes series B7K Ultra preamp/distortion pedal.

Modern rock and metal bassists will have a field day with that. And for a more old-school analogue tube amp sound, there is the Vintage Ultra, which, if you remember the hardware pedal, you’ll recognise for its “warmer, more rounded” and a sound that had full-throated thump and growl.

Neural DSP has digitalised these Darkglass Electronics preamp pedals before. Remember its “algorithmically perfect” Darkglass Ultra plugin?

Well, there’s good news for anyone who owns that – the Darkglass Ultimate plugin is available as a free update. But the Darkglass Ultimate is a little different. This time Neural DSP is promising everything you need in one package, effects, cab sims, et cetera, all with bassists in full control over their entire signal chain.

“With Darkglass Ultimate, we’re expanding the Darkglass sound into something more comprehensive,” says François Barrillon, lead product manager of plugins at Neural DSP. “For many players, that sound has been a reliable starting point – something they shape around and build on. This release brings more of that process into the same place, so you can experiment, refine, and carry a sound further without stepping outside of it – while preserving the clarity, power, and character that define Darkglass.”

Those two preamp/distortions are joined by a quartet of pre-effects: compressor, auto-wah, octaver, and fuzz. You can had chorus and delay pedals in post.

And this being a Neural DSP production you’ve got ample EQing options courtesy of a 9-band graphic equalizer voiced for bass guitar.

There is the DG210C 2x10 and DG810ES 8x10 cabinet simulations, complete with free microphone placement tools, plus all kinds of tools, metronome, tuner, transposer, and presets to get your started.

“Darkglass Ultimate represents how we continue to build on what players already know and love,” says Douglas Castro, CEO and co-founder of Neural DSP. “We’ve taken the core Darkglass tones and expanded them into a more complete setup, bringing more of the signal chain within a single environment and making the process of shaping and developing a sound more fluid – so players can spend less time managing their tone and more time creating with it.”

Darkglass Ultimate is available now at a sale price of €59.50 (rising to regular price €119 after 6 May), and remember it’s a free update for Darkglass Ultra users.

See Neural DSP for more details.

You may have seen the BBC documentary about Paul McCartney’s original Hofner, how it was lost and - incredibly - found 51 years later. Now the sound engineer and driver who worked for the Beatle in the early 1970s has talked about the awful moment he realised it had gone missing.

The fellow in question is Ian Horne, a 79 year old who now lives in Gloucestershire. It was Horne who drove Wings during their first university tour in February 1972. In October that year, after a recording session he and another crew member parked the Wings van in Ladbroke Grove. Locked inside were two guitars, including the Hofner bass.

In an interview with the BBC, Horne recalled what happened when he returned to the van the following morning. "The first thing I saw was the padlock on the floor. My heart skipped a beat. Shock, horror, horrendous feelings. Yeah, it was traumatic, really. It was that bad it was like someone passing away."

Horne hot-footed it round to McCartney’s home in St John’s Wood, where he gave the ex-Beatle the bad news. "I must have looked like a beaten man when I knocked on the door, expecting the worst. But he just very calmly said 'It's okay, Ian, I've got another one', and didn't freak out at all, which was fantastic.”

A remarkably restrained reaction, given that it was his favourite bass, one that he had bought in Hamburg in 1961 and had been a constant companion all through his incredible creative journey with the Beatles.

Though its owner took the loss calmly, Horne was quietly devastated by what had happened: "I was looking for it all my life, for 50 years. If I saw a tribute band or if I saw a Hofner I'd immediately go and have a look at it".

As we know, there is a happy ending to this tale. In 2023, it was discovered by Cathy Guest in her attic in Hastings, East Sussex, coincidentally a short drive from one of McCartney’s homes. The Hofner was dusted down and restored, and Macca ended up playing it live once more – for the first time in more than half a century – at his London O2 shows in December 2024.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it already, McCartney: The Hunt For The Lost Bass is on BBC iplayer now.

Peter Hook has said he will turn up to New Order’s induction into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame later this year. But he won’t perform with them, or even stand with them at the podium unless he gets an apology from Bernard Sumner and co.

Hook left the band in 2007 and there has been no love lost between the two parties since. It remains unclear what actually went down between the bassist and his ex-colleagues, but a reunion seems unlikely if an interview Hook gave this week to Rolling Stone is anything to go by.

When asked if he’d stand with his three ex-bandmates at the Hall Of Fame do, the bassist said: "No. No. Not after what they did to me and my family, no... I won't stand with them."

According to Hook, any rapprochement would have to be initiated by them: “I haven’t spoken to Bernard for … I didn’t even speak to him. He spoke at me. That’ll be 15 years. Steve and I spoke about four or five years ago, but that wasn’t a friendly moment. And I haven’t spoken to Gillian in 15 years. So, it doesn’t look good, mate. Are you going to have a bet?”

“If Bernard pops his head around and goes, ‘Hey Hooky, sorry about that eight-year legal battle that cost you six years’ wages. I’m really sorry about it. We should maybe have just had a chat about it.’ So you never know, dear. Life is full of surprises. I’m sure that could be a lovely one. Let’s face it, you couldn’t have better mentors than Liam and Noel.”

By chance, Oasis are being inducted at the same time. “Maybe Liam and Noel could be the intermediaries that you’re looking for,” quipped Hook. "They might be like, ‘OK, you two. Let’s shake hands and get up there and play Transmission, Love Will Tear Us Apart, and Blue Monday.”

It’s not known yet whether the current lineup of New Order will attend the ceremony. If they do, the Rolling Stone interviewer suggested it could be a ‘tricky evening’. “We like tricky evenings, don’t we?” the bassist replied. Some of my best evenings have been tricky, right from going to see the Sex Pistols (in 1976) to this. My God, whatever. It’s just one of them things, isn’t it?”

Just when you thought you had Harley Benton guitars all figured out the Thomann-owned budget gear giant goes and rips up the rule book, teaming up with Gregor Fris of the BassTheWorld YouTube channel for a signature bass guitar that does something very different for the brand.

Yes, the first thing we think of when we think Harley Benton is affordability, and, oftentimes, a cheap electric guitar, or a cheap bass guitar; instruments at a price for beginners and students, and a vast range of budget-friendly instruments that stack the specs high for the price.

But what if it really pushed those specs one step further, using custom hand-wound single-coil pickups from Kloppman Electrics, hooked up to a control loom using CTS pots (just like, say, premium Gibson USA builds), used premium tonewoods such as a deeply caramelised piece of Canadian flame maple for the neck – roseacer stripe for that classic aesthetic – alder for the body and a rosewood fingerboard, and paired a Gotoh bridge with lightweight open-gear Gotoh tuners?

Well, then you would have a pretty fancy bass in your hands. And that, says Fris, was the idea.

“I’ve been a fan of Harley Benton for a long time,” he says. “In the budget bass territory, there is just nothing like it. But when we sat together and started talking about this project, we figured out early that we wanted to try something different. This is Harley Benton but the features on this bad boy are very different… “It’s all premium. As premium as it gets.”

The MV-4JB retails at a cool £718 ($971 approx) via Thomann, with that price including a gig bag.

But Fris and Harley Benton have made a compelling case that this, albeit at a midrange price point, is simple Harley Benton doing Harley Benton things again – there’s value here.

Those hand-wound Kloppman JB-61 Alnico 5 bass pickups are, for Fris’s money, the best single-coils you can stick in a J-style bass. There are player-friendly appointments such as a Modern “soft D” neck profile measuring 21mm at the 1st fret, 23mm at the 12th.

There are practical touches, too, such as the heel-mounted truss-rod adjustment wheel.

And there are some details that are simply friendly to the eye, such as that metallic Burgundy Mist finish and matching headstock – not to mention the pearloid block inlays on the fingerboard, and the cream-coloured binding finishing it off.

Find out more over at Harley Benton, or head to Thomann where it is on sale now.

Fender has unveiled the Vintera III series, a comprehensive refresh of its vintage-inspired electric and bass guitar range that presents players with a change of direction for the lineup.

Where previous editions of the smash-hit made-in-Mexico range focused on specific eras of Fender production, making instruments that replicated the look, feel and sound of, say, a ‘60s Telecaster, this time around the Big F is taking a more granular approach.

It's reverse-engineering the electric guitar pickups, basing neck shapes on classic vintage pieces, and the idea is to endow the Vintera III models’ on with“distinct, era-defining designs” that will make for a more historically accurate playing experience.

“We set out to capture the defining moments that shaped Fender’s legacy,” says Max Gutnik, chief product officer at Fender. “Rather than broadly representing entire decades, we focused on the most iconic specifications that players continue to seek out today.

“By zeroing in on these historic designs – from era-correct pickups and neck profiles to period-accurate aesthetics – we’re giving today’s musicians an authentic connection to the instruments that helped define modern music.”

And without the heft price tag. The Vintera III series is not priced for beginners per se, but with the most expensive models in the range priced at $1,499, these are serious bass and electric guitars at an accessible price point.

The range comprises 14 models, two of which are limited edition takes on the ‘50s Stratocaster (ash-bodied in White Blonde, gold hardware, stunning with 1958 Strat single-coils) and the Early ‘60s Custom Telecaster (double-bound alder body, 1953 pickups, vintage-style tuners).

This Late ‘50s Strat is also available with an alder body. It shares the Classic D profile neck and has the one-ply parchment pickguard, yet this one has regular nickel/chrome hardware, and your finish options include Dakota Red, Aztec Gold and 3-Color Sunburst.

But there is something for all tastes here. Say the steeper shoulders of the ‘50s neck was not to your liking, you have options, with the Early ‘60s Stratocaster offering that ‘60s C profile neck, and the Late ‘60s Strat pairing that with the larger paddle-style headstock.

And, once more, the finish options are exquisite, with the Early ‘60s Stratocaster offered in Sea Foam Green, Sonic Blue, and – for the Clapton fans – Black, while the Late ‘60s Strat comes in Ocean Turquoise and 3-Color Sunburst with a maple ‘board, Olympic White with a maple ‘board for that Hendrix-at-Woodstock vibe.

This entire range is a vibe. And it is a vibe that’s deepened by the attention to detail – just look at those clay dot inlays on the Early ‘60s Strats. Across the ‘board these Strats have got the 2-point synchronized tremolo units, and the old-school 7.25” fingerboard radius.

The Telecasters look pretty special, too. The aforementioned limited run Custom is joined by a Late ‘50s Telecaster, which, in Blonde with the white one-ply pickguard, looks a dead ringer for Robben Ford’s trusty 1960 Tele, and is gloriously retro with its ‘50s Soft V-profile neck. It’s also available in Sherwood Green Metallic and Dakota Red.

This collection would not be complete without offset guitars. There are Mid ‘60s takes on the Jazzmaster, Jaguar and Mustang. The bass lineup includes Jazz Basses modelled on the Early ‘60s and ‘70s, a Late ‘60s Precision Bass, and – drum roll, please – the coolest of them all, a Bass VI with floating tremolo.

There are a number of updates across all models. Decals are now applied over the finish. Synthetic bone nuts are not real bone. Inlays are period-correct. Finishes have been redeveloped. Rosewood fingerboards are now slab and round-laminated.

But, in lieu of plugging these in and playing, we’d expect the biggest deal being those pickups.

The Vintera II pickups were “decade specific”, inspired by the sounds, these have been based on winds found in the Fender archive.

Prices start from £1,049/$1,249, with prices including a deluxe gig bag. For more details, head over to Fender.

Thundercat has a new album out this week, Distracted. And the bass maestro known to his mom as Stephen Lee Bruner has been talking to Spin about it, singing on record for the first time and the posthumous appearance Mac Miller makes on one track.

Bruner and Miller were close buddies, and the rapper’s death in 2018 from an accidental overdose hit the bassist hard. She Knows Too Much, on the new album, features a verse from Miller, though it’s not the first time Thundercat has sampled his friend since 2018 – he also turned up on his 2020 album It Is What It Is.

“I’ve been working through it,” he says of his grief. “I’m grateful that the family allowed me to use the song. It’s been complicated, but I guess it always was.

"There’s been many moments in life that have had this tone to them, but I think this one hit harder. With Mac, I would see myself, I’d see my friend, but something about this one. It was just really painful, and I had to work through it in front of everybody. The world felt that one.”

Losing Miller was a key factor is embracing sobriety, he explains. Shortly after he died, Bruner went vegan, quit drinking, and lost over 100 pounds.

“Mac’s death was an extremely traumatic experience for me,” he says. “And it was kind of a combination of things at the time that really brought about that level of change. I’ve gotten better at processing it as time kind of heals things. But that was definitely a very key element and fundamental in my sobriety.”

Distracted also marks the first time Bruner has stepped up to the mic and sung on one of his own records. Apparently, it took some convincing from his friend (and now label manager – he’s signed to Brainfeeder), Flying Lotus.

“That was weird as hell to me,” he admits. “It tickled me a bit, but it was also very, very, very weird. It was like, ‘That’s me, lol.’ Like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is who I am, I guess, or something.’ It weirded me the hell out. Seriously, at first, I was like, ‘Guys, I sing,’ and it’d be like, ‘Huh?’ I’m no longer just the bassist. It’s like I have something to say. I did not pay attention in school. I’m the last person to have something to say.”

Flea’s solo album Honora was released last week and the Chili Pepper has given an interview to Apple 1’s Zane Lowe about it, his recent collaborations and the next Chili Peppers' album.

One of the highlights of the record is a cover of Wichita Lineman with a guesting Nick Cave. “I’ve been a huge fan of his forever,” Flea said. “He always gets right down to it. Initially, it [the track] was going to be an instrumental – I had no plans for anyone to sing on it.”

As he explains, he had originally had just a trumpet there for the top line. “(But) I was sitting back listening to it and I recalled the few times in my life I had conversed with Nick, we had spoken about Jimmy Webb.. and I just thought ‘Oh man, maybe Nick would want to sing on this?’"

"(So) I sent it to him, and he responded within a half hour, you know, ‘I’m leaving to go on tour in two days but I’ll try to get in the studio right away tomorrow and do it’. And he did and he was like ‘it’s my gift to you – take it.’”

"He recorded it right away. He sent it to me and I'm, like, sobbing… in tears, because it was so… I mean, he's a poet"

“He’s such a kind, soulful, heartbeat of a man,” the bassist summarised, revealing that when he heard Cave’s vocal he ended up sobbing. “He was in touch with the narrative of the story, in a soulful real way. You can tell – he feels every word. He is a very humane, in-touch person.

"When I spoke to him afterwards, I could tell it meant a lot to him to do it and he really cared about it. And that he saw the song itself as this infinitely powerful vehicle, and to inhabit that vehicle meant he had to really bring it. And he did.”

Another guest was Thom Yorke, who appears on the track Traffic Lights. “Again I had no intention of having any vocal on this song. I was sitting listening to it through the speakers, thinking ‘this is cool’ and then having the thought ‘I can’t wait to play this to Thom – he’s going to love this. This is right up his alley’, which segued to the next thought, which is ‘maybe Thom would want to sing on this?’ And he did. And he sang and it was beautiful and everything that Thom does.”

And the inevitable Chili Peppers' question? The band are “writing” according to Flea. “(We’re) getting together, putting songs together, feels really good, feels different. All I can say is that it’s different… really different,” he says, wondering if he’s already said too much. “We’re putting together music, and it feels beautiful.”

Everywhere you looked there was bad news, tumult and tragedy. It was late summer, 1983, and the world thrummed with anxiety.

Rush had decamped to a lodge in the Horseshoe Valley, an easy 90-minute drive north from Toronto, where the peace and quiet of an off-season ski resort would give them some time and space to put some songs together. The outside world arrived by post.

Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart would pore over the newspapers, digesting the day’s events for inspiration. If the artistic mission behind the Canadian prog trio’s follow-up to Signals was their search for a more perfect union between synthesizer and Alex Lifeson’s electric guitar – and wherever Rush’s fathomless musical curiosity would take them – front-page events helped establish its emotional cadence.

Lifeson and bassist and frontman Geddy Lee would study Peart’s lyrics and let them guide their melodic choices. The question was how was all this going to sound? How was it to come together?

Rush had made the difficult decision to part ways with producer Terry Brown, who had handled all their albums from 1974’s Fly By Night to 1982’s Signals. Sitting in a suite in The Connaught, one of the more salubrious locations in London’s Mayfair, Lee explains why it was time for a change.

“We decided to move away from Terry for that album because we had gotten to the point on Signals that when Terry said something we all kind of knew what he was gonna say,” he says. “We were too able to read his reactions. And that told me that we were not learning anything from him any longer. What he would normally say was already part of our process, let’s put it like that. So we needed new input.”

Things were going well for Rush. Signals had gone platinum. The New World Tour of America sold out, with than one million tickets sold. London’s Wembley Arena was sold out for four nights straight, New York City’s Radio City for five.

But there was change in the air. The bands Rush were listening to were trafficking in intoxicating new sounds. The synthesizer was disrupting the rock idiom and Rush were already halfway down the rabbit hole. They wanted to see how deep it would go.

And, as Lee admits, they were still ambitious. Rush believed they could get better, and they wanted someone who would push them.

“We needed new opinions. We wanted new influences. We wanted to challenge our brains,” says Lee. “We wanted to write better songs. We needed to learn how to write better songs. We didn’t think we could do that in the same setup. So we wanted to bring somebody in that was fresh, challenging.”

They drew up a list of candidates. On the strength of Signals, Rush were hot property. Chris Squire of Yes was in the frame, as was Trevor Horn. Famously, they found their man but he bailed on them. He blew them out in favour of Glasgow’s hottest band.

“We had made an agreement with Steve Lillywhite to produce that record. Unfortunately, he pulled out at the last minute, and then sent us into a bit of a panic,” says Lee. “He went on to do Simple Minds. I just think he wanted to work with Simple Minds and that came up, and he said, ‘Oh, fuck. I already committed to these Canadians but…’”

With the studio deadline advancing, Rush cast the net wider and hired Peter Henderson as a co-producer. Henderson had worked with Jeff Beck and Paul McCartney, and helmed the previous three Supertramp albums.

By the time they arrived in Le Studio, up in Morin-Heights, Quebec, to record, winter was closing in and the world was in no better shape. The Soviets had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks, and tit-for-tat ballistic missile deployments upped the ante as the Cold War simmered.

Everyone, everywhere was tense.

How else could Grace Under Pressure open other than the restless, fitful energy of Distant Early Warning; it’s a vibe. We have Lifeson’s zero-gravity chord stabs, hanging suspended in the air, cold and frigid, slightly alien with the echo and reverb. Lee’s bass guitar is warmer, conversational, more human.

Lee can’t remember if this was a conscious decision but they had very clear ideas about what they wanted from the guitars on Grace Under Pressure.

“I’m not sure, and not in the way that you describe it so beautifully. I can’t take credit for approaching it that way,” says Lee. “But we definitely wanted to equal the role of keyboards and guitar. On Signals, we felt that the keyboards got a little dense, and the guitar got a little small, and Alex was a bit hungry to have the size, the guitar size back, and I thought, ‘Well, why not? Why can’t we trade off? Let’s have everything. [Laughs] More of everything, please!’”

There was more gear to be acquainted with. There was the PPG wavetable synth. You can hear that all over the place (like on the volume wells on Afterimage). This was the first time they would really layer the keys, hunting out different textures to complement Lifeson’s guitar.

That, too, was undertaking an evolution of sorts. Grace Under Pressure would be all electric; Lifeson’s acoustic guitars stayed in their cases. He had discovered the Roland Jazz Chorus guitar amp during the making of Farewell To Kings and ever since chorus had become the bedrock to his sound.

For Grace Under Pressure, he used the chorusing function on a pair of Loft Digital Delay rack-mounted units, running one with 25 per cent wet, with the rate at noon, the depth just over half-way. The other would be more lush, running 50 per cent wet, depth maxed out, rate the same.

An MXR distortion pedal would be a pinch-hitter in the studio. He’d use his trio of his modded Sportscasters – the red, black and white S-styles – going into his trusty Marshall 4140 combo amps, or on occasion his Carvins. As ever, there would be echo. For the first time on record, Lifeson would use a Fender Telecaster, often using it to double a part already recorded on this Hentor Sportscaster S-styles or his Gibson ES-355.

Lee says he wanted “more of everything” but physics dictates that there are only so many frequencies to work with. The engineers had their work cut out.

If Lifeson was streamlining his guitar sound, taking a more judicious approach to multi-tracking and not being afraid for the sounds to a little leaner and rangy, then the evolution of Geddy Lee’s bass offered ballast.

“My bass had a lot of twang in the early days,” he says. “Moving to the Steinberger was, as you suggested, moved it to a slightly different register to allow the guitar and some of the keyboard parts to poke through, and so all those things are dependent on the other.

“But, yeah, Distant Early Warning is a Steinberger. I’m playing Steinberger on that. I don’t think I played on every song. There were other experiments going on, obviously, and it was all about we have only so many frequencies you have to share, and if everybody wants attention you better have a good engineer to push those frequencies away in the right way – and that also went into the decision to change producers; we were becoming more adventurous, sonically.”

No adventure comes without risk. Grace Under Pressure was notoriously difficult to make.

Speaking to Jas Obrecht in 1984, a conversation you can listen to on Obrecht’s superlative YouTube channel, Talking Guitar , Lifeson said he nearly gave himself a “nervous breakdown” when tracking the solo to Kid Gloves. That was one that came together in the studio.

“The solo section starts with that one held note, and I kept thinking, you know, what the hell am I gonna do? I spent a long time on that, and I was really on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” said Lifeson. “Again, it was one of those situations where I just go crazy, just do something, and one thing led to the next. Each one of those sections of the solo led into each other.”

After a couple of days back and forth he had a solo. His leads on Body Electric were a similar story, with Lifeson driving himself to distraction before the dam broke and it all came together. Forty minutes later, it’s on tape.

The search for a producer, the practicalities of getting new sounds down, the damned weather, Grace Under Pressure was uphill all the way. “I did feel the record was very difficult to make, for all those reasons and more,” says Lee. “We were holed up in Morin-Heights, Quebec, in the dead of a very cold winter. Fuck, it was hard to make that record.”

The struggle was real. But they were reaping the rewards when they listened back to it in the control room. Lifeson had some weird kit with him, and some uncanny sounds coming through the speaker. He used the octave-up feature on his Delta Lab DL-5 HarmoniComputer to give the Distant Early Warning solo its unnatural quality.

The Enemy Within is another case study in how Lifeson has always been master of disguise when it comes to tone.

“That was kind of unusual. I split the guitar in half, and played a lower line and a higher harmony line,” he told Obrecht. “And we tried to get, a balalaika-type effect to it.”

Why should a guitar always sound like a guitar? Sometimes player can engineer a sound so weird it fools the ear and forces the audience to lean into the recording. This has always been Lifeson’s MO. Speaking to MusicRadar in March 2025, Lifeson said it is a sensibility he has to this day.

“I’ve always moved outside of what typically the job of the guitar is,” he said. “I have always looked at trying to manipulate the sound; it’s obviously played on the guitar but it doesn’t sound anything like one, so I am already set up for that sort of thing.”

Lee remembers Grace Under Pressure as another chance for Rush to prove themselves as songwriters, to take another stab at sonic expansionism with experiments conducted upon the Jupiter-8, Oberheim and PPG synths.

Pitched somewhere between nightmare and hope, inspired by Lee’s mother’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, Red Sector A finds Lee dispensing with bass altogether in favour of propulsive yet haunting synth.

Here, again, Lifeson’s DL-5 throws his guitar sound off its axis, just as Rush throw us off ours, reminding us that barbarism runs deep just beneath the thin skin of civilisation.

One of the leitmotifs of Grace Under Pressure is how Rush play with the new sounds and rhythms that were augmenting popular music at the time. The Enemy Within moves to a ska beat, punctuated by the polished steel splash of Lifeson’s guitars.

“We were listening in bands like Ultravox, like the Police, like Propaganda,” says Lee. “There were so many bands that were happening around that time. And the English music scene, especially, was really vibrant. The studio scene was really vibrant, and Trevor Horn and all these great producers were breaking down barriers. Now, at the same time, recording budgets were getting huge.”

This truly was a golden age for studio experimentation. The record companies would bankroll it, then the artists would do as artists do and make the most of it. “People were spending a year making art of noise,” says Lee, a note of awe, maybe nostalgia, too in his voice, citing Tears For Fears as a reference. They, too, were making it up as they went along. Everyone was.

These technologies – samplers, drum machines, the evolution of synthesized sounds – had never really been used like this before.

“It just seemed to me to be a really fascinating time in production,” says Lee. “Record production had taken another attitude; electronic gear was expanding, the Fairlight was being used all over the place. There were devices being invented that could affect the sound of the snare by using that gated noise.

“All those things were going on and we felt we wanted some of that. We want to learn about that shit and see what’s appropriate to our music, and what’s not. And being sponges, we knew if we had the right guy we could soak up a lot of new techniques and have a different perspective on writing a song.”

And that’s what they were looking for from Henderson. As it turned out, he was more hands-off. Speaking to Guitar World, Lifeson said the band got more involved with the engineering of the sounds than they might have liked.

“Peter had a good track record, but while he was qualified, he just didn’t seem to be focused,” he said. “That left it up to the three of us to really focus on production. We like to work with a producer that’s sort of like the fourth wheel, where we do what we do and they add just a little bit of direction and deal with some of the stuff we don’t want to deal with. That way we can focus directly on the music. But that wasn’t quite the case.”

Still, Lifeson was happy with how the album turned out. And Lee agrees. Henderson did the business. Rush left a dedication to Terry Brown in the liner notes to Grace Under Pressure. But if there were any hard feelings on Brown’s part, they didn’t last. Brown volunteered a remix for its 2026 super-deluxe reissue.

“I didn’t think it needed remixing,” says Lee. “But I said, ‘Sure. Have at it, you know? Nothing to lose, everything to gain.’ It’s not gonna change that version that fans love. But it’s another take, and I think it sounds great. He did a great job because he is a good producer, and because Peter Henderson did a terrific job recording that record. So it’s a win win.”

Even if it isn’t a concept record per se, with no over-arching narrative from start to finish, Grace Under Pressure could be treated as such.

There is an emotional consistency that ties it together, contemporary anxieties, past traumas and grief (Afterimage was written as an upbeat tribute to Le Studio’s tape operator Robbie Whelan who had died the previous year).

• Geddy Lee on why he and Alex Lifeson chose Jeff Beck drummer Anika Nilles to fill the late, great Neil Peart’s role in Rush reunion tour

The title, borrowed from Hemingway, speaks to all of that. Furthermore, it speaks to what was happening inside that studio as the snow fell outside and the weeks went by, and three guys from Canada nursing what could be diagnosed as some kind of cabin fever.

“I mean, Grace Under Pressure does not refer to the music, it refers to the situation we were in, and it’s very much about our emotional state,” says Lee. “That title was borne out of our emotional state, and the difficulties making that record. And the songs were quite varied, but there’s a sense of unity on that record, from one song to the other, because of the fact it was written in isolation, and performed in isolation with those same people. And it’s a time capsule of that moment.”

So, then, another difficult Rush album. Plus ça change! But just between us – entre nous, if you like – they weren’t all like that.

“You said a lot of our records were painful to make – not all of them!” Lee protests. “You know, Hemispheres was a bitch. Urgh! [Laughs] Grace Under Pressure. But Permanent Waves, one of our best records, was a joy. Easy peasy! I don’t know why. Farewell To Kings was a joy. Moving Pictures was fun to make.”

• Rush's Grace Under Pressure Super Deluxe box set is out now via Mercury
• Rush's Fifty Something Tour visits the UK, Europe and South America in 2027. See AEG Presents for UK ticket details. Head to  Superfan Rush VIP and Superfan Rush Travel for VIP and deluxe travel packages

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea is a man of many talents. Making his entrance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night, he proceeded to walk about on his hands for a bit before sitting down to discuss Honora, his new jazz-leaning solo album. This sees playing not only bass guitar but also trumpet.

Before getting to all that, though, Flea had to address his obvious head injury, which was covered by a plaster. After initially claiming that he’d suffered it while seeing off a gang of hoodlums who were robbing old ladies, he admitted that it was the result of a “bizarre peeing accident” – after going to the toilet during a radio recording session, he was rushing back to the studio and ran straight into a glass door. Ouch.

With that out of the way, talk turned to the why and how of the new album, with Flea revealing that the trumpet was actually his first musical love.

“I played the trumpet when I was a little kid,” he explained. “I was in love with it. I wanted to be Dizzy Gillespie when I grew up.”

In fact, it turns out that Flea actually had a real-life encounter with his then hero.

“I met Dizzy Gillespie when I was a kid,” he confirmed. “He hugged me into his suit. I still remember the smell of his cologne, his nice suit, and his kindness with me.”

The course of Flea’s musical life changed when his friend Hillel Slovak – subject of a new Netflix documentary – asked him to play bass in the band that would end up becoming the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but it sounds like the trumpet was an itch that Flea could never quite resist the urge to scratch.

“Every once in a while I'd pick it up and kind of want to play,” he told Fallon. “It's always alive in my head and my heart.”

Warming to his theme, Flea said: “For me, the jazz musicians – Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk – these are the guys that gave the greatest gift that this country ever gave to the world. They raised the bar, the cultural bar, so high that people like me are always yearning and trying to reach it all their lives. And a few years ago, I decided, 'I'm just going to play trumpet every day, no matter what. And after a couple of years of doing it, I'm going to make a record. And what comes, comes.'

“You know, it wasn't really about the means to an end. It was just the process, the learning process. And I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to do it.”

Flea’s passion for the project comes across in his musical performance on Fallon – a cover of Frank Ocean’s 2012 debut single Thinkin Bout You, which features him switching between bass guitar and trumpet. Other members of the band include Jeff Parker on guitar, Anna Butterss on bass, Deantoni Parks on drums and Josh Johnson, who produced the album, on keyboards

Honora is released on Friday 27 March on Nonesuch Records, and features contributions from Thom Yorke and Nick Cave. It features both original songs and covers, including one of Jimmy Webb’s Wichita Lineman.

Les Claypool has been talking to the Guardian about Primus, his unusual career and the new record he’s made with Sean Lennon, which he’s given the typically head-scratching title The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg Of Empathy.

Primus have been a going concern since 1984, but a couple of years later, after Cliff Burton’s passing, Claypool auditioned for the bass-playing vacancy in Metallica. “I didn’t know how popular they were,” he says and clearly wasn’t up to speed with what the thrash metallers required. “We played a song or two and I said, ‘Hey, you guys want to jam on some Isley Brothers?’ Nobody laughed.”

(Incidentally, according to James Hetfield in the Behind The Music documentary, it wasn’t the Isley Brothers suggestion that lost Claypool the Metallica gig. It was because “he was too good.”)

Instead, Claypool and Primus found fame as the jokers in the '90s alt-rock pack largely through singles like Jerry Was A Race Car Driver, the Grammy-nominated Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver and their surprisingly faithful cover of XTC’s Making Plans For Nigel.

“There was always this element of embracing our childhood to Primus,” Claypool says of that era. “Anytime we were near a Disneyland, me and Ler (LaLonde) had to go. Usually on some mind-altering substances!”

Outside of Primus, Claypool has indulged his more out-there musical tendencies in a succession of wackily-titled side projects. There was a funk rock band called Sausage, a ‘supergroup’ with Trey Anastasio of Phish and Stewart Copeland called Oysterhead, an experimental outfit named Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, and an improvisational combo with Buckethead and ex-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, entitled Colonel Claypool’s Bucket Of Bernie Brains.

More recently, he’s collaborated with Sean Lennon as The Claypool Lennon Delirium on the new concept album about a robot that turns the world into paperclips (yes). Of working with Claypool, Lennon says that: “I can be funny in life, but it can be hard to be funny intentionally in music.

"Being in a band with Les brings out that side of me. There’s these deep layers of irony to everything he’s doing. He’s one of the best lyricists I’ve ever met.”

And the now 62-year-old Claypool certainly seems content with his picaresque passage through rock n’ roll: “If I was my 16-year-old self looking at me now, I’d be way more impressed by the roster of heroes I’ve gotten to meet, befriend and work with. That’s what it’s all about.”

Melissa Auf der Maur, the Canadian bassist best known for her stint in Courtney Love’s Hole, has written a memoir, and has been talking to the Guardian about it and her time at the centre of 1990s alt rock.

She stepped, knowingly, into the eye of a hurricane; the biggest rock story in a generation. Auf der Maur joined Hole in mid 1994, just after previous bassist Kristen Pfaff had died of a heroin overdose and, of course, just a couple of months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

Bassists are often known for their solidity, but Auf der Maur sounds like exactly the sort of bandmate Love needed at that time. “Courtney was not OK,” she remembers. “She was grieving, she had a young daughter to raise alone, and she was on drugs. On top of that, she was the most famous widow of the most famous dead rock star in the world. She was a raging, rolling tornado.”

Of the record labels who were supposed to be in charge, she says: “No one was taking care of these people who were in major trauma. No one was helping them. They were just pushing Courtney and her daughter on tour, which was insane.”

“Was Courtney impossible, difficult, a drug addict, terrifying, and even mean sometimes? Yes, she was. But it took me one second to understand that she was also a survivor.”

After Auf der Maur left Hole in 1999, she dated – of all people - Dave Grohl (a regular critic of Love around this time). “I had assumed that having both of us come out of such dramatic, painful experiences in Hole and Nirvana, we’d share in a ‘let’s get out of here. I’m done with this party’ way of living. But he had unfinished business in show business,” she says, adding she thinks he wanted a “wife waiting for him back home, while also being a gigantic superstar.”

The pair went their separate ways, but of Grohl these days, Auf der Maur says: “He really is very sweet-hearted and pure,” though adding: “I don’t know how pure you are after a lifetime of fame.”

As for Love, Auf der Maur says: “I’m incredibly proud of a woman who should be dead, who instead is evolving.” Her new songs, she says, “are going to be a gift for anyone who wants to understand a woman like her – and it’s essential that we have a better understanding of complex women like Courtney”.

Auf der Maur’s book is called Even The Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir and is out on Thursday 19 March.

Alex James is taking his Britpop Classical charabanc on the road this week, starting off with a date at the Royal Albert Hall tonight (March 11) and he’s been talking to the NME about the project and the prospect of another Blur reunion.

For Britpop Classical, James has hired a full band and orchestra (of course) and roped in Gary Stringer of Reef, Saffron from Republic and good ol’ Phil Daniels. And the bassist-turned-cheese farmer has promised some “big surprises” too.

So far, there’s only been one show, last year at James’s own Big Feastival festival: That “exceeded all expectations,” the bassist said. “The phone was literally ringing from Live Nation the next day, asking if we wanted to take it on the road.

“We’ve got some brilliant special guests and I think it’s going to go next level. I’m really looking forward to a springtime jaunt around the UK.”

Apparently, the show begins with songs from Britpop’s progenitors – The Beatles, The Kinks, David Bowie et al, before they move on to all those big 90s hits, by Pulp, Elastica, Supergrass, Nirvana (who aren’t Britpop, but – hey – never mind), Radiohead and Oasis.

“The moment I knew it was all going to work was the one rehearsal ahead of Feastival,” James revealed. “I was cacking it, I really didn’t know if it was going to work or not. We did Creep by Radiohead and I noticed I was crying halfway through. It’s so emotive.”

Inevitably, there are a few Blur classics in there too. “Those shows we did back in 2023 were definitely the best we’ve ever done,” he said of the band. “They’re such a part of me and of all of us. I hope I’ve done them (the songs) justice.”

He suggested that, having wound up their most recent reunion on good terms, they won’t be in any rush to return. “It’ll be three years this summer since Wembley,” he said. “That’s the first time we’ve ever got to the end of a tour or album cycle without at least one of the band going, ‘Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, fuck off’. It was a good place to leave it.”

Blur’s last official gig was the now-infamous Coachella show when Damon Albarn berated the crowd for their – supposed lack of enthusiasm. In interviews since, Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon have suggested that they’re in no hurry to return to the festival, but James sounds open to the idea, saying: “The booker from Coachella loves British rock music. It’s popular all over the world. South America are loving the Britpop, which is what made me think this might actually work. These songs resonate all over the world 30 years after they were written, so who knows what’s next?”

Marshall has launched a membership scheme to raise funds to support grassroots music venues.

Sign up to the Amplify initiative, and the British guitar amp giant will donate 1 per cent of your order on its official web store to partner venues.

Amplify members get a number of benefits, including free shipping on all orders, plus priority support on customer service and early access to limited run launches and special offers. Marshall CEO Jeremy de Maillard described the Amplify scheme as a long-term model to support partner venues.

“For over 60 years, Marshall amplified live music, from local independent venues to the world’s biggest stages” says de Maillard. “Small venues are where the next generation of musicians turn first time listeners into lifelong fans. Through Amplify, Marshall is building a long-term model to support the future of live music.”

The scheme arrives at a time when grassroots music venues are struggling. In the UK, the Music Venue Trust’s annual report made for stark reading, describing the sector as “fragile” and just “one shock away from a crisis” – and independent venues face similar challenges across the world.

In the US, the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) says rising costs, such as artist fees, insurance and rent, are “eroding already razor-thin margins” and pushing many small venues to the brink at a time when ticket revenues are being threatened from “forced ticket transferability, unchecked secondary resale, and unfair platform practices”. Income from beverage and alcohol sales are “under pressure” too.

“When both of these primary revenue streams are squeezed, there’s no backup plan,” read NIVA’s 2025 report on the independent live sector.

Marshall says it will support grassroots venues by funding live events, providing backline and by establishing long-term partnerships, with partner venues selected for their contribution to local music communities and emerging artists.

“Independent venues aren’t just part of music history - they’re where the future is written,” says Nick Street, CMO, Marshall. “Amplify is how we connect our community more closely to that future. As Marshall grows, grassroots music will grow with us.”

• “Marshall has knocked it out of the park with this one”: Marshall Studio JTM ST20H 20W head & ST212 cab review

Supersonic, in Paris, is one of Marshall’s grassroots partners. Its comms director, Cecilia Sparano, says its partnership with Marshall provides “genuine support for the fragile economy” of small venues, and is vital for the Parisian venues festival programming.

“This partnership represents genuine support for the fragile economy of small concert venues,” says Cecilia Sparano, communication director, Supersonic. “It plays a key role in allowing festivals such as Supersonic’s Block Party and They’re Gonna Be Big to continue to exist. It is a real pleasure to work with a brand that truly respects our DNA and places full trust in us when it comes to both the actions we lead and the programming we curate.”

Amplify is free to join – and you can sign up over at Marshall.

There had been so shortage of speculation that Rush could one day take to the stage again, that frontman/bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson would once more perform the songs that made the Canadian trio one of rock’s most beloved institutions.

A lot of this was wishcasting. Rush had played their final show on the 1st August 2015, said their farewells. Whatever rumours had circulated in the interim were shot down by Lifeson in 2018; Rush were officially disbanded. The death of the band’s beloved drummer and lyricist Neil Peart in 2020 made all this tragically final.

And yet all this did not stop fans gaming out the scenarios. Whenever Lee and Lifeson appeared together in public – especially when they performed Closer To The Heart at the South Park 25th Anniversary Show with Matt Stone on drums, then played at both Taylor Hawkins tribute shows – it made these scenarios more plausible. Still, Lee and Lifeson remained coy. There were a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous.

And there were a lot of good reasons why not to do it, not least because they would have to find someone to sit in for Peart on drums. Well, here we are, sitting across from Geddy Lee in a suite in Claridges, one of London’s most storied Mayfair hotels, and he is officially all out of good reasons why not to do it.

He is here to talk about Rush’s epic Fifty Something Tour, which has just been expanded from the US to include 2027 dates across the UK, Europe and South America. As for the drummer, Anika Nilles, formerly playing with Jeff Beck, has got the gig. And it will be an occasion for them to come together with the fans and celebrate Neil Peart’s life and legacy.

“During the show we will pay tribute to Neil a couple of times with film footage, and playing appropriate songs that we feel point to him more than other songs,” says Lee. “We’re going to try to learn 40 songs. We won’t play 40 songs a night, because... I am forbidden by law after the age 70 to play a three-hour show. I think it’s a law in many countries. [Laughs] The three-hour show is done for us, but we can certainly play 2 hours 20 minutes, and I think that’s a substantial thing.”

The Fifty Something Tour lineup will be further augmented by Loren Gold (the Who/Roger Daltrey) on keyboards and backing vocals, and with Nilles behind the kit, Gold on keys, four players onstage, Lee believes it will be reassuringly different.

The plan is to play the songs as recorded. As he relays said plan, Lee he sounds more and more excited about it; there is also a note of trepidation. The first show picks up where Rush left off in 2015, at the Forum, in Inglewood, CA. It’s going to be emotional.

“I have great trepidation about the first show,” he says. “I suggested that we do the first gig where we did the last gig – and I must have been high or something, ‘cos I’ve just made it even more difficult to hit that stage that night.”

But why now? What changed? “Quite a bit changed,” says Lee, smiling.

It was a good way to honor an old friend. It was a way of taking care of some “unfinished business”.

“Obviously, Neil retired in 2015. Not a happy decision for Alex and I,” says Lee. “Although we were torn because he was our friend, no one was more deserving of a life to himself than he was after all the shit that he had lived through and survived. And he had a second lease on life with a new family, so, of course, we were torn, and sympathetic. At the same time, we felt we had unfinished business.”

How could Lee have felt otherwise? The R40 Live Tour had been an unqualified success, proving that 40 years on from Peart joining the band in the summer of ’74, making his debut on record the following year with Fly By Night. It wasn’t just his drumming that transformed the band, Peart’s lyrics broadened their horizons. But a deal is a deal.

“We hadn’t taken this tour we were so proud of to England to play – or Scotland – to play for our fans,” says Lee. “We hadn’t taken it to Europe, and there were parts of North America we hadn’t covered. We hadn’t taken it to South America, We were more ambitious in that regard, but Neil didn’t want to do the tour at all. He committed to 30 shows, and he was a man of his word. He played 30 shows, and he did what he promised to do.”

Lee and Lifeson wanted more and yet they understood that Peart had already given more of himself than he wanted. That did not go unappreciated.

“Any bad feelings or frustrations subsided fairly quickly,” says Lee. “After a month or two of living a normal life we were communicating again, and all was good. And then we moved on with our lives. Neil, unfortunately, had only barely a year of that idyllic life before he was diagnosed. And then everything changed. The mood changed. Feelings about things changed to the point where our music kind of was put in a box.”

Rush as a band was most definitely over. Lifeson hooked up with his old friend Andy Curran, the co-founder and bassist/vocalist for Canadian rockers Coney Hatch, forming Envy Of None in 2021, with Alfio Annibalini on keyboards and the preternaturally gifted Maiah Wynne on vocals. Their self-titled debut arrived in 2022; its follow-up, Stygian Wavz, was released last year.

And it was something completely different to Rush. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2025, Lifeson said he was doing what he always did, in a sense, chasing fresh sounds, subverting expectations of how his electric guitar could sound.

“I’ve always moved outside of what typically the job of the guitar is,” he said. “I have always looked at trying to manipulate the sound; it’s obviously played on the guitar but it doesn’t sound anything like one, so I am already set up for that sort of thing.”

Lee didn’t have a musical project but he did have a book to write. His autobiography, My Effin’ Life, was released in 2023. The producers of long-running Canadian TV drama Murdoch Mysteries, cast him as Tom Sawyer for one episode.

There were other endeavours. Lifeson and Lee launched a Rush beer. Lifeson started a gear brand, Lerxst, partnering with Godin for replica editions of his classic Hentor Sportscaster S-styles, working with Mojotone on the limited edition RCHI50 tube amp, and a range of guitar effects pedals. Rush’s tones would live on in the hands of other players. Fans could drink Rush beer. The music stayed in the box.

But Lee says they were kidding themselves. When Dave Grohl asked him and Lifeson to join the 2022 Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts, one in California (again, at the Forum in Inglewood), one at Wembley Stadium, they dug out Working Man, 2112 Part One: Overture and YYZ, and they were to perform them with a cast of drummers.

There was Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, session legend Omar Hakim (David Bowie/Weather Report etc), Danny Carey of Tool, and Grohl himself.

Just looking at these guys, the penny dropped. The music was not over; it’s never over.

“Mistakenly we felt with the band over, the music was over, but that’s not how music is. Music has a life of its own,” says Lee. “Bands come and go, but when a band ends, it doesn’t mean that music isn’t still vibrant and alive and require some attention. But that was a lesson that was hard to learn, and we didn’t realise that until we played the shows in 2022 in tribute to Taylor Hawkins.

“When we did those shows, and we taught those songs to four different drummers, that was the greatest example of how alive those songs were, because those guys were so happy to play that music with us. That it was infectious, and we got happy again.”

Rush’s dynamic duo had a well-rehearsed answer to the question of whether they would perform together under the band’s name. It was always “no”. Prevarication became second nature but things were different now.

“The idea of playing those songs went from being verboten to, ‘Why not?’ And the high we felt after that concert – especially the one in London – lasted when we got home,” continues Lee. “We started talking about maybe a reunion is not such a bad idea.”

A better idea than reality could provide at that point. Lee had his book tour booked in. Lifeson had Envy Of None, Lerxst. More seriously, he had some health concerns that had to come first before they could realistically talk about actually rehearsing, booking shows and getting back out there.

“He has arthritis. That doesn’t go away,” says Lee. “And he has very serious health concerns. He’s had a couple of surgeries. He has digestive issues, and he wasn’t sure that his body could handle the work. Fair enough. We put it to bed, and I said, ‘Don’t talk to me about it again, unless you can do it!’ [Laughs] Well, late in 2024, it came up again.”

Lee had finished his book tour in early 2024. He had ants in his pants. He needed to do something, and that something had to be musical. “I was getting my fingers in shape again. I was writing lyrics, and I was pretty happy to do that,” he says.

He had been neglecting his bass guitar collection. He had been neglecting his chops. It felt good to feel a set of fresh Rotosound Swing 66 bass strings under the fingertips again. Lee was enjoying making some noise again – then the phone rang.

“My fingers needed some attention. My basses were lonely downstairs in my studio without me as company!” he says. “When Al got wind that I was prepping for something, he just called me, said, ‘Hey, let’s jam.’ I said, ‘Yeah, great. Come on over.’ So, we fucked around, recorded some stuff for fun, jammed.”

They were just about to finish, it occurred to them that they hadn’t played a Rush song. Would they still know the notes, the changes? Only one way to find out…

“We fucked it up, of course,” says Lee, smiling. But it was a start.

The pair only live five minutes away from each other They are often in each other’s company anyway, so why not jam, why not make it a regular thing. They did. Much of 2024 was spent going back and forth. But if they were to get serious about a reunion, Lifeson needed to get fit.

“In the New Year, we decided to get him to a wellness clinic in Europe,” says Lee. “There was this one a friend of ours had recommended that deals with his kind of issues – not the mental ones, the digestive. I went with them for moral support, and we both left there feeling great!

“He had a new regime, a new diet, a new positivity. And he looked to me, and he said, ‘Yeah, I can do this if you want to do it.’ I said, ‘Fine. But if you don't follow through on this we’re never talking about it again.’ He said, ‘Deal.’ And that’s when our trouble began, ‘Cos we had to find a drummer.”

Luckily, Lee had someone in mind…

• Rush's Fifty Something Tour visits the UK, Europe and South America in 2027. See AEG Presents for UK ticket details. Head to  Superfan Rush VIP and Superfan Rush Travel for VIP and deluxe travel packages
• Geddy Lee on why he and Alex Lifeson chose Jeff Beck drummer Anika Nilles to fill the late, great Neil Peart’s role in Rush reunion tour

Rush are officially taking their Fifty Something Tour to the UK, Europe and South America – announcing 24 shows across 13 different countries in 2027.

Guitarist Alex Lifeson and frontman/bassist Geddy Lee will put sets together from a pool of 40-odd Rush classics, playing two sets a night that celebrate the life and legacy of their late drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart.

This will be the first time Rush have played in Europe since 2013, and they will do so with the former Jeff Beck drummer Anika Nilles behind the kit, with Loren Gold (The Who, Roger Daltrey) playing keyboards – though we’d expect Lee to be playing some keys too.

“We can’t wait to get back to all these cities we haven’t played in so long, as well as hitting some new places we’ve yet to play,” says Lee. “Both Alex and I are loving the hours of rehearsal time we’re spending with Anika and now Loren, learning around 40 songs which will enable us to keep the shows evolving, playing some different songs on different nights.”

After months, nay, years of speculation, coy statements on whether a reunion could actually be possible, Rush made it official in October 2025, initially announcing 12 shows in seven cities across North America, before realising that this would not do. A few weeks later they expanded the Fifty Something Tour to 17 cities. Tickets sold like hotcakes and then it became 58 shows across 24 cities.

Rush have already sold over half-a-million tickets for their 2026 North American dates. Ticketholders can expect something special. Will there be rotisserie chickens in the backline? Washing machines? Who can say… But it will be a big production.

“We are thrilled that many of our longstanding crew have come back to help us design the kind of Rush show that fans have grown accustomed to expect from us,” said Lee. “We dearly hope you will come along and help us celebrate 50 years of Rush music, while giving Neil the long overdue tribute he so richly deserves.”

In a statement, Peart’s widow, Carrie Nuttall-Peart, and his daughter, Olivia, said it was a chance for Rush fans to celebrate the legacy of the band – and of a drummer and lyricist who was peerless.

“We are thrilled to support the Fifty Something tour, celebrating a band whose music has resonated and inspired fans for generations, and to honour Neil’s extraordinary legacy as both a drummer and lyricist,” they said. “Neil’s musicianship was singular. Compositions of intricacy and power that expanded what rhythm itself could express. As both drummer and lyricist, he was irreplaceable.

“Inimitable in his artistry, and unmatched in the depth and imagination he brought to the lyrics that inspired and moved so many, he profoundly shaped how fans connected with him and the band, giving voice and meaning to their own lives. As the band enters this new chapter, it promises to be truly unforgettable. We are excited to see how their new vision unfolds, and to hear this legendary music played live once again.”

Various VIP ticket and travel packages are available. Travel packages include a two-night hotel stay plus premium tickets, a limited edition gift, a Rush Welcome Pack, transportation and assorted goodies. Visit Superfan Rush Travel for more details.

VIP packages can be found at Superfan Rush VIP, and include premium tickets, with meet-and-greets, production tours, rig rundowns [yes, please!] exclusive merch, VIP bar and so forth.

See below for full dates and venues, and head to AEG Presents for UK ticket details. Tickets will go on sale Friday, 27 February at 10.00am local time.

In other Rush news, the band will release an expanded box-set edition of 1984 studio album Grace Under Pressure, featuring remixes from long-standing producer Terry Brown alongside the originals. Lee tells MusicRadar that the Brown appeared out of the blue with the offer to remix the album, and described it as a "win-win" for Rush fans.

“Terry called Alex and I, and he said, ‘Guys, I’d like to remix this record. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Sure. Have at it!’ Nothing to lose, everything to gain,” says Lee. “It’s not gonna change that version that fans love. But it’s another take, and I think it sounds great. I think he did a great job because he is a good producer, and because Peter Henderson did a terrific job recording that record, it’s kind of a win-win.”

Grace Under Pressure Super Deluxe Edition is available to pre-order.

Rush Fifty Something Tour 2027 dates

• 15 Jan – Buenos Aires, AR – Movistar Arena
• 22 Jan – Curitiba, BR – Arena da Baixada
• 24 Jan – São Paulo, BR – Allianz Parque
• 30 Jan – Rio de Janeiro, BR - Estádio Olímpico Nilton Santos (Engenhão)
• 01 Feb – Belo Horizonte, BR – Estádio Mineirão
• 04 Feb – Brasília, BR – Arena BRB
• 19 Feb – Paris, FR - La Défense Arena
• 21 Feb – Berlin, DE – Uber Arena
• 23 Feb – Amsterdam, NL - Ziggo Dome
• 25 Feb – Munich, DE - Olympiahalle
• 28 Feb – Cologne, DE - LANXESS Arena
• 02 Mar – Hamburg, DE - Barclays Arena
• 04 Mar – Stuttgart, DE - Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle
• 08 Mar – Glasgow, UK - OVO Hydro
• 12 Mar – Manchester, UK - Co-op Live
• 16 Mar – London, UK – O2 Arena
• 18 Mar – London, UK – O2 Arena
• 27 Mar – Kraków, PL - TAURON Arena Kraków
• 30 Mar – Milan, IT – Unipol Dome
• 01 Apr – Basel, CH  – St. Jakobshalle Basel
• 04 Apr – Copenhagen, DK - Royal Arena
• 06 Apr – Oslo, NO - Unity Arena
• 08 Apr – Stockholm, SE - Avicii Arena
• 10 Apr – Helsinki, FI - Veikkaus Arena

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.

Original Metallica bassist Cliff Burton would have turned 64 this week and the man currently holding down that position in the band – Robert Trujillo – has been honouring him and talking about some of the band’s biggest songs on the Metallica Report podcast.

Talk turned to Master Of Puppets and the eight-minute instrumental track Orion. Trujillo let slip a little nugget, that the bass solo on the track was originally supposed to a Kirk Hammett guitar solo.

"He was originally supposed to play the solo there, Kirk was," Trujillo said of the track. "And he was away from the studio, came back the next day and Cliff had laid the track. He played the solo there, and there was no solo for Kirk."

Trujillo said that it was Hammett that explained the story of Orion’s bass solo to him.

"Not that Kirk doesn't get enough solos, but Cliff took his solo, which I think is just so cool."

Metallica still play Orion live occasionally and Trujillo noted that it remains a favourite not just of fans, but of the band members themselves: "This is a song that automatically brings us together and it has to do with the emotion and the personality of the song," he said. "It's so infectious that you have to be together and you also have to be together with the fans."

Part of that is that it reminds everyone of Burton. "Is it the spirit of Cliff? Absolutely. The song is probably the closest thing to the spirit of Cliff, and that's why you need to be together."

Meanwhile, back in 2026, Metallica recommence their M72 world tour, which has been going on for three years now, in May in Athens. They return to the UK in late June for dates at Glasgow’s Hampden Park, the Principality Stadium in Cardiff and two nights at the London Stadium on July 3 and 5.

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.

Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus has been talking about his favourite bass players.

Hoppus was being interviewed by the Guardian in their 10 Chaotic Questions section, one of which asked him who his top three bass players were.

In actual fact, he named four: “Peter Hook from New Order. Simon Gallup from the Cure. And the two bass players from Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, who are the best, because they had two bass players.”

(Older readers may dimly remember Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, who were briefly successful in the early 1990s. Aside from having long crimped hair and a penchant for wearing shorts, their main claim to fame was indeed having two bassists in their lineup. It’s never really been established how that worked – did they both play the same notes at the same time or job-share the basslines?)

Anyway, Hoppus didn’t seem to know, simply adding: “Bass players are just cool. Bass players are the glue – we’re the one that brings it all together. We’re the bridge between the rhythm of the drums and the melody of the guitar and the vocal.”

The interview reveals some more interesting things about Hoppus. Apparently, he sold his Banksy because owning it was too stressful, saying: “We worried it would get damaged. People would come over, lean in way too close with a glass of red wine and say: ‘Is that really a Banksy?’

"The more money it was worth, the more precious we got with it. Eventually, it was so much stress, we sold it and gave some of the money to charity. My charity is haematology oncology research.

"My wife volunteers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. It was right after the fires in LA, so we wanted to donate to the Firefighters Association. I also wanted to take some of the money and invest in new up-and-coming artists.

We also find out he kept chickens – named after Blink 182 songs, wouldn’t you know – and bees, when he lived down in Somerset. “A guy from the British Beekeeping Association, who worked at the local church, would come over and help me open up my hives and harvest the honey. It was crazy how much honey we got – up to 150 jars a season. It was the best honey I’ve ever tasted.”

NAMM 2026: Squier has announced that a comprehensive refresh of its Sonic Series of beginner electric guitars and basses is incoming, and that means more Fender designs in budget-friendly formats – and it has expanded its range of miniaturised classics with Stratocasters and Precision Basses scaled down to 3/4 size for young players.

These new models have been announced in time for that big old gearapalooza in Anaheim, California, but the dust from NAMM will have settled by July, when these hit stores and online.

The Mini Stratocaster is refreshed in California Blue and Sea Foam Green, both with maple fingerboards, no-fuss hard-tail six-saddle bridges as standard, and are lightweight and accessible with a super-manageable 22.75” scale length.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as usual, with a trio of single-coils, a five-way pickup selector switch, with volume and tone controls serving all pickups. These are great guitars for kids.

The Mini Precision Bass does something similar, shortening what would ordinarily be a 34” scale instrument to 28.6”. Players have one split-coil to work with, with volume and tone knobs to dial in a sound. New for this year is the 2-Color Sunburst model with an Indian laurel fingerboard.

These mini models all have very mainstream C profile bolt-on necks and a very reasonable price, with the Mini Strat retailing at £179/$199, and the Mini P Bass a bona-fide cheap bass guitar at just £189/$209.

For beginners looking for a full-sized instrument, the Sonic Series provides all kinds of cheap electric guitars. A lot of these models share key appointments.

They all come with lightweight poplar bodies, bolt on maple necks – again, the profile is a crowd-pleasing C shape, none too thick – and the option of Indian laurel or maple fingerboards, depending on the finish. Chrome hardware comes as standard, with sealed tuners on all models but the Precision Bass, which has open-gear tuners.

The collection offers both traditional and off-menu takes on their Fender forebears. Take the Esquire HH (£189/$249). Esquire takes the Fender story back to the beginning; it could not be more simple, a Telecaster with just one pickup.

But here Squier has given it a contemporary makeover, refinishing it in Olive (a finish we will forever associate with Chris Cornell, and a more muted option compared to the Ultraviolet and Arctic White models in the catalogue) and equipping it with a single high-output ceramic humbucker at the bridge.

Contrast this with the Sonic Telecaster, which besides the Canary Yellow finish, new-to-the-series for 2026, reverts to the established Tele recipe; i.e. dual single-coils, three-way switch, volume and tone knobs mounted on a metal control plate. Like the Esquire, this has a six-saddle string-through-body bridge, and it’s priced the same.

Now, let’s talk Strats. Again, you’ve got options. The Sonic Stratocaster in Sienna Burst presents in the the classic Strat format – three single-coils, five-way switching, tremolo – and gives you a bit of that Fender American Professional II look on a guitar that’s fractions of the price (again, we’re talking £189/$249 for each of these).

The Sonic Stratocaster HT does away with the bar in favour of a six-saddle hard-tail bridge, and is offered in a cool Sea Foam Green with a maple ‘board and white pickguard.

Those looking for some more muscle at the bridge pickup have options, too, like this new maple fingerboard HSS Strat in Midnight Blue with a black pickguard looks the bee’s knees, or the hard-tail Sonic Strat HT H model that kind of does that Tom DeLonge Strat thing with a single ‘bucker at the bridge – because sometimes nothing beats the simplicity of a single-pickup electric guitar.

And there are offsets, too. The Mustang is available with its usual dual single-coils, its Daphne Blue finish all early ‘60s Fender Custom Colour cool, and in black with a pair of humbuckers at the bridge and neck positions.

Finally, there’s a Sonic Precision Bass that – again – reminds us that Midnight Blue is a slept-on Fender colour, and actually looks more classic with that white pickguard complementing it. As per the O.G. electric bass guitar template, there’s a single passive split-coil pickup, volume and tone controls, on a full-scale 34” instrument with an Indian laurel fingerboard.

And, rounding out these 2026 releases – at last for now – there is the short-scale Bronco Bass, refinished in Daphne Blue. The Bronco’s lightweight build and 30” scale makes it a viable option if you can’t decide between between the Mini P Bass and a full-size model.

So yeah, the bad news is you will have to wait for July for these, but then the summer is a pretty good time for anyone to start playing guitar.

Browse the current Squier range at Fender and see the MusicRadar buyer’s guide for the best Squier guitars you can buy today.

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.”

If you caught Myles Kennedy live in concert in 2025, you will have seen a bass guitar in action that few people outside of the EVH Gear inner circle have even laid eyes on – a prototype four-string that may be coming soon to a guitar store near you. Some day. But not today.

For now, this bass is owned by Kennedy’s bassist, Tim Tournier, and at last summer’s Norway’s Tons of Rock Festival, he gave us a guided tour of its features, and explained how this was a first.

No one had ever given him an instrument before, but courtesy of his good friend Wolfgang Van Halen, here was this, a one of two prototype EVH Wolfgang bass, custom-built by EVG Gear master builder Chip Ellis.

The other one? That’s owned by Wolfgang, and presumably that’s the relic’d one that we have seen being played live by Mammoth touring bassist Ronnie Ficarro. As Tournier explained, Ficarro has been a willing guinea pig for this EVH bass.

“There’s two earlier versions of this that Ed [Van Halen] was working on for years that then got taken out with Mammoth,” says Tournier. “And the bass player in Mammoth, Ronnie, really put it through its paces – which has been the EVH mantra forever, ‘cos if you’re gonna develop something and put out a product, it needs to go out on the road, be toured, learn everything you can about it, how you can make it better.

“I played it, just at Mammoth show, and fell in love with it, so Wolf and Matt Bruck, who run [the] EVH brand, made this one for me.”

And Tournier is busy putting this one through its paces. It is similarly spec’d to the white prototype. His is finished in gold, matching painted headstock FTW, dual humbuckers and there’s – what’s that? – over-sized selector dial dominating the controls. That’s too cool.

What gets Tournier really excited, however, are the pickups. We’ll let him explain why in the video above, and also explain how a lifelong guitarist ended up on bass, and playing bass for one of rock-and-metal’s blue chip stars.

But then Tournier has done pretty much every other job in music (he's current filling in on guitar for Sevendust while managing Alter Bridge, Creed and guitarist Mark Tremonti’s solo band) so maybe it was just a matter of time before he ended up playing bass with Kennedy.

Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Yungblud and more have been confirmed for Tons Of Rock 2026. See Tons Of Rock for ticket details. Myles Kennedy's Art Of Letting Go is out now via Napalm.

• Myles Kennedy on why karaoke “terrifies” him, the secret to a perfect take – and the hardest Guns N’ Roses song to sing live with Slash
• Burned out recording vocals? Myles Kennedy shares his top for getting the perfect take

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.

With so much attention being focused on the sheer scale and spectacle of the thing, it was sometimes easy to forget that, working away in the engine room, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour also featured an actual real-life band.

Thanks to a new six-part documentary on Disney+, though, we’re getting to learn a little more about the musicians who accompanied Swift on her record-breaking jaunt. The first two episodes of Taylor Swift: The end of an Era dropped on Friday (12 December), and in episode 1 we cut to bass guitar player Amos Heller in what initially appears to be a rather strange situation.

Heller is shown slapping his bass in a communal shower block in the bowels of one of the stadiums that Swift performed in. Strange behaviour, you might think, but he was there for a reason.

“I usually practice in the shower because I’m trying to respect the space and peace of everyone else,” he says, aware that his frenzied slapping might not be to everyone’s taste. “I go somewhere that people aren’t that much in,” he continues. “Showers are a good enough bet. I’m just trying to get some distance from everybody. It’s a lot.”

Heller has been playing with Swift since 2007, so has been able to witness her rise to superstardom first hand. “I think if I look back at it now, the thing that remains really constant is there’s not a challenge that she isn’t going to meet head on and kind of decide to conquer,” he says. “And having that kind of energy in the lead spot has inspired – I can say me personally – to do a lot of the same things.”

Despite being well aware of Swift’s work ethic and determination, though, Heller says he was still taken aback when he learned what she was proposing for the Eras Tour. “We got a list of about 40 songs,” he says. “Internally, certainly, I scoff - that’s almost three hours. This is insanity. What are we gonna cut? And I think we added three songs.”

In the end, of course, the tour was a triumph, but Heller admits that such a big swing could easily have missed the mark. “It seems obvious now, because it did work, but at the time, it’s a big risk to decide ‘we’re gonna do a three-hour-plus show, we’re gonna do it in stadiums, and we’re gonna do it all over the world,” he says.

Episode 1 of the documentary shows Swift in rehearsals not only with her band, but also Ed Sheeran, who came on stage during the ‘surprise songs’ section of the show at Wembley Stadium to duet with her on a medley that featured Everything Has Changed and End Game (both of which Sheeran co-wrote and featured on) and Thinking Out Loud. Backstage prior to the performance, we see Swift and Sheeran working out their vocal harmonies and reminding themselves of the chords for the songs as they strum on acoustic guitars.

The next two episodes of The End of an Era will be available from Friday on Disney+, with the final two arriving on 26 December.

Flea has been part of one of the world’s biggest bands for over four decades, but one thing he has never done in all that time is a solo album.

That will change next year – the bass icon’s solo debut is in the works and the first single from it has been released this week. It's called A Plea. You can see the video below.

Don’t expect it to get heavy radio rotation though. It’s a seven-minute track, with plenty of bass (surprise!) which includes a three-minute intro before Flea’s spoken word vocals come in. And as you can hear, it’s seriously jazz.

The video – directed by Flea’s daughter Clara Balzary – is something else. For the long intro, the Chili Pepper indulges in a bit of mime artistry before indulging in some impressive dance moves. With his pink hair and bright yellow DUB T shirt, the 63-year-old looks very much the original rave grandad.

The bassist has also talked a bit about the lyrics. In a statement accompanying the single, Flea said: “(They tap into) yearning for a place beyond, a place of love, for me to speak my mind and be myself. I’m always just trying to be myself. I don’t care about the act of politics.

"I think there is a much more transcendent place above it where there’s discourse to be had that can actually help humanity, and actually help us all to live harmoniously and productively in a way that’s healthy for the world. There’s a place where we meet, and it’s love.”

Also featured on the single are Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and percussionist Mauro Refosco, who’s best known for his work with David Byrne.

It’s not technically Flea's first solo release – that was a 2012 benefit EP for the Silverlake Conservatory Of Music. He has had a few extracurricular side projects in his time though – with Thom Yorke in Atoms For Peace and in Damon Albarn’s shortlived band Rocket Juice And The Moon. And over the years there have been plenty of guest slots on other people’s records by Alanis Morissette, Tom Waits, Jane’s Addiction and Patti Smith.

Ex-Megadeth bassist David Ellefson was one of over 1,000 musicians who joined together for a version of Paranoid a week or so back in Mexico City as Latin America’s rock and metal community paid tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne.

The happening took place at the Rockland festival at the CDMX Arena. It was the brainchild of the organiser Rodrigo Renovales, who brought together 200 bassists, 200 singers, 200 drummers and so on to create a wall of noise unlike no other.

That enormous ensemble played 26 songs throughout the evening, celebrating the legacy of Latin American rock and playing tracks by Caifanes, Fobia and La Cuca. But there was also time to pay tribute to those icons we have lost this year, including Ace Frehley of Kiss and, of course, Ozzy.

Ellefson was effusive about the event afterwards on Instagram, saying: “Performing Paranoid at Rockland in front of 12,000 excited fans alongside 1,000 musicians as we honoured the late, great Ozzy Osbourne at the Arena CDMX was an experience unlike anything else. The energy, the passion, the unity - absolutely unparalleled. Only in Mexico do you find a concept this bold and this powerful. That was truly one of the most fun things I've ever done.”

"With performers ranging from age 5 to 83, I fit comfortably somewhere in the middle — and the energy from every corner of that stage was absolutely electric. Grateful to have been part of something so massive, so joyful, and so truly rock 'n' roll. I'm truly honoured and incredibly appreciative of the invitation to perform with all of you.”

The bassist played at the Back To The Beginning show in July and, appearing on the Logan Show podcast a few weeks after Ozzy’s passing, reflected on that day. "I think there's a few things that we can all agree on," he said. "It's so much better to celebrate someone's life… 'Cause look, Ozzy knew he was dying. We all knew the day was coming here. I think we all thought it was going to be some time off in the distance — not so soon. That was, of course, shocking.”

“But to celebrate with him rather than just this heavy mourning after the fact. The fact that we got to celebrate with him - all of us, not just those of us who are at the show, but everybody around the world - it just showed the significance of what he meant to all of us.”

A prototype Warwick bass guitar that was co-designed by the late Who bassist John Entwistle is headed to auction, 22 years after it was originally sold, but this time its value has sky-rocketed after some analysis of its woodgrain revealed it to have also belonged to Queen’s John Deacon.

This isn’t the kind of bass that you would miss, or easily forget. The Warwick Buzzard is a real vibe, a big mood, a shape that looks more metal than ‘80s Queen, and yet it somehow managed to be auctioned off via Sotheby’s in 2003 for just £3,500 (approximately $4,629).

It was later discovered that this bass is a super-rare prototype, and the current owners unearthed the connection with Deacon after getting all CSI with the instrument. The natural finish on the zebrano body shows up all the grain and they were able to make a positive ID.

“The wood grain of a guitar is like a fingerprint so thank goodness the bass wasn’t painted,” says Luke Hobbs, auctioneer at Gardiner Houlgate. “If it had been, the current owners probably wouldn’t have been able to prove the connection to Queen.”

You can see this bass in action. If you are a Queen fan, as Hobbs is, you most likely already have, as it was played by Deacon at the band’s 1986 performance at Montreaux, and it was used in the promo video for Friends Will Be Friends.

“I’m a Queen fan and the 1986 Montreux Pop Festival was one of their high points,” he says. “They were at the peak of their powers and had just released their classic album A Kind Of Magic.”

As to the value? Well, it has tripled. Gardiner Houlgate now puts it up there between £20,000 to £40,00, after initially valuing it at £10,000. It could go more.

There is a lot of attention on it now, and it is available for public viewing at Gardiner Houlgate’s Wiltshire HQ on Friday 28 November and Monday 1 December, between 9am and 5.30pm. It goes under the hammer on the 2nd.

“Bass guitars generally aren’t seen as being as cool as regular guitars so tend to attract lower prices,” says Hobbs. “However, this instrument with its history with The Who – and now Queen – is pretty special. These were both huge British bands with international followings so we’re expecting considerable interest.”

Whoever picks it up is getting a heck of a bass. It has a pair of split-coil EMG active pickups, gold hardware, a wenge through-neck topped with a wenge fingerboard, inlaid with Arabic numerals. And it has a heck of a headstock…

It ships in a fitted flight case, and you can check it out at Gardiner Houlgate.

Founding member and bassist of the Stone Roses, Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, has died, his family have confirmed this afternoon. His brother, Greg, posted on Facebook, “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.”

Ian Brown, Stone Roses vocalist, posted, “Rest in peace Mani”, while Liam Gallagher wrote “In total shock and absolutely devastated on hearing the news about Mani my hero”. Rough Trade Records also paid tribute, calling him “the perfect example of how a bassist can be the beating heart of a band”.

No cause of death has been shared.

As part of the Stone Roses, Mani brought the swagger back to British rock in the late '80s and early '90s, becoming Madchester royalty in the process. Their debut album, one of the defining records of its era, was released in 1989. The Stone Roses released one more album, Second Coming, before finally splitting in 1996. The band reformed in 2012, but released no significant new material before disbanding again in 2017.

In between, Mani joined Primal Scream, recording and touring with them until 2012. Mounfield had recently announced a UK 'in conversation' tour, recounting his experiences with both bands.

Mani's wife, Imelda, died of bowel cancer in 2020, and he is survived by twin boys, born in 2012.

Speaking on the Rockonteurs podcast just last month, Mani said, "I'm in a great space at the moment. Itching to get back, bro. I'm ready to get back."

"Johnny Marr's always trying to get me to do stuff. Liam (Gallagher) was always trying to get me involved with stuff before the Oasis thing.

"I'm feeling now that I could pick up again, you know?. I’ve been in the lock-up having a look at stuff and weeding out my collection.”

Epiphone and Mike Dirnt have teamed up for a signature bass guitar inspired by the Green Day bassist’s long-serving Gibson G-3 Grabber.

Available in Silverburst or Natural, the latter a Gibson exclusive, Dirnt’s new Grabber has been extensively tested on the road with Green Day and is outfitted with all kinds of high-end appointments.

We’ve got Gibson USA pickups, a Leo Quan Badass II bridge, an ebony fingerboard with abalone dot inlays on the Silverburst model, maple on the Natural, and a serious bass on our hands. Both finishes have a solid maple body, the V-style Grabber headstock that distinguish the model.

And hey, this might be a Dirnt Grabber but we can well envisage some Kiss fans picking this up and pretending they are Gene Simmons. Dirnt says he and the G-3 go way back. Like, all the way back, to the beginning of Green Day.

“My original Gibson G3 bass came into my life when we were on tour, touring for 39 Smooth, our first full-length record,” says Dirnt. “It was right after high school. I was 18. That was the first Gibson bass I had ever played. That became my sound for a long time – and my look. I’ve always wanted to do a version of the G3.”

Replicating the magic of his original Gibson Grabber was not easy. Dirnt had a laundry list of specs that were non-negotiables – and he didn’t want it to just be a straight-up replica, certainly not for the Silverburst model.

“We were very specific about the pots that went in it, how the pickups had to sound,” he says. “They had to go over my original bass and analyse the heck out of it, and say, ‘OK, what is it about this that makes it sound so special?’ And then we wanted to play with some new things too, like the ebony fretboard. Ebony just has a buttery feel to it, and it’s tough as nails.”

Other cool features include the black Speed knobs for volume and tone. A three-way toggle switch is close at hand to select your pickup configuration, with a trio of Gibson USA G-3 wired up “buck-and-a-half” style so all three positions are humbucking (handy when playing punk).

Choose from all three engaged, neck and middle, or middle and bridge. This bass should sound gnarly through an overdriven bass amp.

Both models have a four-ply black pickguard. The signature details are really all there in the spec, right down to the bone nut, but Dirnt’s John Hancock is etched into the truss rod cover. These have a bolt-on build, with three-piece maple necks, 20 frets and a 34" scale length.

“This bass sounds every bit as good as my original,” says Dirnt. “Nothing changes when I play these onstage. These basses are proper from day one. What’s crazy is I didn’t have more G3s back in the day to take into our new sound, when Green Day’s sound evolved, but it’s amazing how good they sound on some of the new stuff.

“That’s where I was blown away. Like, ‘Wow!’ Our sound guy loves these basses. It’s all there. At this point, I’ve played them in clubs, and I have played them in front of 180,000 people, and they perform, not just perform but excel.”

The Mike Dirnt G-3 Grabber is available now, priced £1,199/$1,299, and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case.

For more information, head over to Epiphone.

What is it?

Much more so than electric guitar, bass really isn't a whole lot of fun without an amplifier. You sit there diligently plucking away, but all it takes is a slight increase in the volume of the TV in the next-but-one room and you lose everything except the sound of your fingers hitting the strings.

All the floor-shaking power and majesty of this most fine of instruments simply isn't apparent, and you end up feeling a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Trouble is, historically, the entry-level bass amp has struggled to bring much of that power back. It can be a sad and thankless life for the overwhelmed, underpowered beginner's bass combo, the little speaker farting indecorously as you practice Hysteria.

It'll allow you to at least hear the notes you're playing, but a 1x8 combo the size of a box of matches is always going to struggle to transmit the low end needed to make playing bass feel good.

Or is it?

Northampton's well-respected Blackstar Amplification has sent over a new bass variant of its popular Debut entry-level guitar amp range, and it's time to see if it hits any different.

Specs

• Price: £179 | $299 | €239
• Type: Solid-state bass combo
• Origin: China
• Output: 25 watts
• Speaker: 1x8"
• Channels: 1, with switchable overdrive effect
• Controls: Volume, Overdrive button, Bass, Middle, Treble
• Connectivity: Instrument input, 3.5mm headphone output, 3.5mm line input
• Footswitch: None
• Weight: 8.45kg/18.6lb
• Dimensions: 348 x 348 x 251mm
• Contact: Blackstar Amplification

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

The bass range consists of the Debut 15 and this Debut 25, but even this bigger model is a compact thing indeed.

It’s light at 18.6lb, but feels satisfyingly well-constructed and solid. The quality of finishing is excellent, and the small row of controls all feel pleasing.

These Debut Bass models appear to be aimed squarely at providing competition for Fender’s two smallest Rumble bass combos, trading blows on feature set and price point; there also seems to be little to choose between the Blackstar and Fender offerings in terms of build quality, even down to the Velcro’d removable grill cloth.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

The control set is simplicity itself, offering nothing you don’t need. There’s a volume control, naturally, and a three-band EQ, and… that’s it. In between, there’s a button triggering an overdrive effect, although with no further controls to adjust that.

Importantly, for a home-oriented amp, there’s also a pair of 3.5mm jacks on the top panel; a headphone output, and a line input for music to play along with.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Time to fire it up, then. For testing, a good Fender-style bass is as suitable a ‘control’ instrument as you'll find, so I sat down with my single-pickup, passive, P-alike 1983 Ibanez Roadstar and turned the Blackstar on. Now surely, with such a wee amp, there's no problem having the volume control around 9 o'clock to begin with? Wrong.

Make no mistake, the Debut 25 is loud – startlingly loud. Surprisingly so for an entry-level practice amp, I immediately had to duck the volume almost all the way back in order not to antagonise my neighbours. This amp could easily be enough for a rehearsal or even, possibly, a small gig. If anything, that volume control might be too much of a hair-trigger for low-level home use.

You might expect a dearth of low-end, but the Blackstar belies its tiny stature and punches out a strong, clean and even tone with a good amount of bass content. The three-band EQ does a solid job of cutting and boosting the right frequencies, and even at higher bass settings there’s no suggestion that the speaker or enclosure are struggling.

Introducing lower notes into the equation, there are no worries either - my five-string Warwick Thumb’s distinctive mid-heavy growl was ably transmitted right down to the lowest notes, while the back pickup of my Yamaha BB punched through with all the power I’d hoped for.

Don’t forget, there’s overdrive to be had as well. Although it’s only a simple circuit without even a level control, it's well-judged and certainly earns its place; a good general-purpose drive, with enough attitude to satisfy most bassists while practising. It’s not adjustable like an external pedal would be, but it’s great to have access to overdrive without fuss.

Verdict

In a world where even entry-level amps can be confusing and unintuitive as a result of too much being packed into too small a format, it's refreshing to use a practice amp that encourages you to stop messing around and... you know, start practising.

That said, the Debut Bass 25 also packs a hell of a punch that you might not be expecting.

It might actually be too difficult to control the volume accurately for quieter home use, but its solid quality, punchy tone and its surprising amount of headroom might make it a secret weapon for rehearsals, or even gigs.

MusicRadar verdict: Blackstar has created something surprising here – a practice amp that might annoy the neighbours a little too much. Its headroom, its build quality and its tonal power all suggest the Debut Bass 25 has the potential to break out of the bedroom and into louder, more demanding environments.

Also try

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Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers sadly died over the weekend, aged just 48. Members of the group and many in the rock world have paid tribute to the founding member of the nu-metal outfit. But now respect has been paid by a modern bass icon you wouldn’t necessarily assume would be down with Fred Durst’s crew: Thundercat.

In a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone, the musician, born Stephen Bruner has been talking about what Limp Bizkit’s music meant to him and how Rivers’ playing influenced him personally.

“(Rivers’) work in Limp Bizkit is very defining to a number of generations, and for me personally,” he told the magazine. “I am a kid that grew up listening to Limp Bizkit.”

Thundercat said that he first heard Rivers’ playing on Nookie, the lead single from their 1999 album Significant Other. “It reminded me of Sly by Herbie Hancock. For me, that’s where it registered. And I’m pretty sure if you ask Wes, and if you asked Sam… They probably loved Herbie Hancock.

"The lines for me… there’s gaps in sound and time that when they show up it’s like, ‘Oh man, that feels like this.’ So, there’s a special place in my heart for Sam.”

He said he felt that Rivers - like most great bassists - was the anchor in his group: “Said roles as bassist and drummer: we’re very locomotive parts of music. When you think about it in terms of engines, you could have a V12 and you can cover a lot of ground really quickly with a big engine like that. The better your engine’s running, the better the car is. That’s what that represents.”

"And again, Sam held it down. That’s proof that you couldn’t deny his contribution to the music, because he played the role of a bass player very musically. It would be like water, formless, and then crash, and then shape mountains. It takes a different type of musician to be able to do that, no matter what anybody says.”

He continued: “You can’t discredit it. You can’t overlook it. And this his death is a reminder of how great he was. And it’s unfortunate that sometimes you only see it in that.”

“The music is there for all of us,” Thundercat concluded. “Wes Borland would be out here, kicking ass. He was like Sonic the Hedgehog. And Sam, he held it down, he’s just a legend.

"He had a distinct sound. You knew who he was. I’m very blessed to have experienced Sam’s music and his creativity while he was here."

Anthony Jackson, the bass player described as 'a beast' by fellow session bass ace Nathan East here in MusicRadar's pages, has passed away, aged 73. The news was confirmed by Fodera Guitars, the high-end bass luthiers with whom he had a long-standing relationship.

Posting on Instagram, they wrote, "We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Anthony Jackson — one of the most visionary and influential bassists in the history of our instrument.

"Anthony’s impact extended far beyond the notes he played. He pioneered the concept of the six-string “contrabass guitar,” revolutionizing the role of the electric bass in art, jazz, funk, and beyond.

"Back in 1984, we began our collaboration by building prototypes and signature models that embodied his vision

"Rest in power, Anthony. The bass world is forever richer for your contributions."

Jazz fusion guitarist Al De Meola, a long-time collaborator, also paid tribute, writing, "Anthony was one of the most extraordinary musicians I’ve ever had the honor to play with — a true innovator whose genius on the six-string contrabass reshaped modern music. His sound, precision, and soul were unmatched.

"From Land of the Midnight Sun, Elegant Gypsy to countless unforgettable moments on stage, he brought a power and sensitivity that could move anyone who listened.

"Rest in peace, my brother. Your music will resonate forever."

Michael Camilo wrote, ‘Heartbroken by the loss of my longtime dear friend and great bassist Anthony Jackson. One of a kind, a true Genius and an innovator.

‘I was honoured to share with you so many wonderful years of music making and close friendship. “Antonio” you will be greatly missed but the beautiful memories shall live forever in our hearts. Rest in peace my dear friend until we meet again.’

Jackson was a passionate exponent of six-string bass, first approaching makers to commission custom builds in the mid-70s, before deploying them on recordings and tours with, amongst others, Roberta Flack.

"Why is four strings the standard and not six?", he once said. "As the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family, the instrument should have had six strings from the beginning.

"The only reason it had four was because Leo Fender was thinking of an upright bass, but he built it along guitar lines because that was his training.

"The logical conception for the bass guitar encompasses six strings."

He forged a massively successful career as a sought-after collaborator and session player, appearing on albums across the jazz, fusion and pop spectrum, including for Flack, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Madonna, The Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkel and many, many others.

Fender has debuted an all-new electric guitar (and bass guitar) range. It is US-made, built for serious players, priced competitively, and presents some refreshing twists on long-standing designs, and it is called the American Professional Classic Series.

This next-generation AmPro lineup comprises a Stratocaster and its HSS sibling, a Telecaster and a triple-pickup Hotshot Telecaster, plus offset guitars in the inimitable shapes of the Jazzmaster and Jaguar, with Precision, Jazz and Mustang basses rounding out the collection.

US hardcore champs Turnstile has done the honours road-testing – and demoing – these guitars. There is a chance that some people will have had a sneak peak of these already and not even noticed.

In between ducking stagedivers and crowdsurfers, you might have caught Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory playing the American Professional Classic Strat HSS. In fairness, there is a lot going on at a Turnstile show.

Fender has dressed these AmPro Classics up in some sweet finishes (Faded Firemist Gold on the Stratocaster is hard to beat) but as McCrory explains, when you are playing in Turnstile, there is a utilitarian in picking up a Strat like this.

“When you’re in a different place constantly, sometimes the most familiar thing is the guitar that you bring every single night,” says McCrory. “We look for something that sounds the same every time, sounds exactly how you want it, but also has versatility because spaces change. Sometimes you play outside, sometimes it sounds different, sometimes you play inside or there’s noise, lighting. Having some durability but flexibility is very important.”

But what is the American Professional Classic series? Who is it for, y’know, besides Turnstile? With ‘Faded’ finishes as standard, giving them a box-fresh vintage look, with all-new Coastline pickups to give them a fresh vintage voicing, it is a range that’s references the aesthetic of yesteryear. But that isn’t the whole story.

Here, Fender is splitting the difference. We could call it a ‘vintage-modern’ kind of deal but maybe ‘vintage-modded’ might be more appropriate – especially considering that these electrics all have Fender's Greasebucket tone system, not to mention some of the hardware upgrades on these new models.

As Fender’s chief product officer, Max Gutnik, says, there are some modern updates that will make these feel more like a 21st-century build.

“The American Professional Classic is all about delivering a great playing experience,” says Gutnik. “We focused on every detail: from the all-new Coastline pickups, which offer clear, punchy tone across every register, to the Modern-‘C’ neck with rolled fingerboard edges that feels comfortably broken-in from day one.

“We combined vintage-inspired finishes and hardware with thoughtful upgrades like staggered ClassicGear tuners, Mustang saddles on the offsets, and slotted Telecaster barrel saddles. The result is a guitar that’s easy to play, sounds incredible and adapts to any style or stage.”

One for the blues guitar troubadour and bomb-throwing hardcore riffer alike? Why not. That Stratocaster HSS would cater to both, with its Coastline bridge humbucker and Coastline ‘57 Stratocaster single-coils playing the field as far as tones go.

It is available in Faded Sherwood Green Metallic with a rosewood fingerboard, and in Faded Lake Placid Blue, Faded Black and 3-Color Sunburst with maple ‘boards, and at £/$1,549, it is sensibly priced for a US instrument.

There are even more finish options with the regular Strat. It has a trio of Coastline ‘57s.

Its finish options include Faded Black, Faded Dakota Red and Faded Sherwood Green Metallic, all with a rosewood fingerboard, and Faded Firemist Gold, Faded Lake Placid Blue and 3-Color Sunburst, all with a maple ‘board. It is priced £/$1,499.

The American Professional Telecaster might look older than the Strats here but it shouldn’t sound it. Fender has fitted these with Coastline ’63 Telecaster pickups, offering the maple-boarded models in O.G. Butterscotch Blonde, Faded Sherwood GreenMetallic and Faded Lake Placid Blue.

You can get a rosewood fingerboard model in Faded 3-Color Sunburst, Faded Black, and Faded Dakota Red. Again, the asking price is £/$1,499, and as Gutnik notes above, you’ve got slotted brass saddles in the bridge as standard.

For those who can never decide between a Strat and a Tele, there is always the Hotshot Telecaster, which adds a ’57 Strat single-coil to the middle position for that hot-rodded Nashville Tele vibe.

Given how this range is all about remixing old-school Fender archetypes – finishes, hardware, etc – this feels like the AmPro Classic’s signature instrument, and for an example of its quiet radicalism we need look no further than the anachronistic finish option that pairs a Butterscotch Blonde body with a rosewood neck, making for one Blackguard with a difference.

Pretty cool. Your other rosewood option is Faded Sherwood Green Metallica. Maple ‘boaded Hotshot Teles ship in 3-Color Sunburst and Faded Lake Placid Blue. All are priced £/$1,549.

Now for the offsets. The Jazzmasters all have rosewood fingerboards, with four colour options comprising 3-Color Sunburst, Faded Firemist Gold, Faded Sherwood Green Metallic and Faded Dakota Red. Tone-wise, we’re representing a golden year for the cult-classic offset.

The Coastline ’65 Jazzmaster should be right on the money for surf-rock twang, adventures in alt-rock, and if you wanna jazz like Joe Pass then, yes, the Jazzmaster is still very much fit for purpose as a jazz guitar. It is priced £/$1,599.

Its kissing cousin, the Jaguar, shorter of scale (24” to the 25.5” found across these Fender electrics) similarly has a pair of Coastline single-coils tuned to 1965. This is going to be a real sweet one for chord work and rhythm-lead Johnny Marr-style players.

Finish options here include 3-Color Sunburst, Faded Sherwood Green Metallic and Faded Firemist Gold, all rosewood, or if you must have maple under the fingertips then the Faded Lake Placid Blue model looks the part. It is priced £/$1,599.

Looking at that Mustang in Faded Dakota Red, it could be we have left the best for last. There’s something about that short-scale four-string Mustang platform that is so approachable. Simplicity plays a part. Like the Precision Bass, this is a single split-coil instrument.

But there are all kinds of styles you can tease out of that Coastline ’70 pickup. If you prefer rosewood, the AmPro Classic Mustang is also available in 3-Color Sunburst and Faded Sherwood Green Metallic. All are priced £1,499/$1,599.

The Precision Bass is priced £1,549/$1,599. Like all of the American Professional Classic basses, it comes with ‘Lollipop’ tuners, and again Fender has a specific vintage tone in mind with its pickup, promising “depth, punch and articulation” from the ’60 split-coil.

Finishes are on-point again. It’s hard to look past a P-Bass with 3-Color Sunburst with a slab rosewood ‘board but it also comes in Faded Sherwood Green Metallica, and with a maple ‘board, there is a Lake Placid Blue version.

Finally, there’s the Jazz Bass, with a pair of Coastline ’62 single-coils, options including Faded Firemist Gold and 3-Color Sunburst with a rosewood fingerboard, and Faded Dakota Red with Maple. It’s priced as per the P-Bass.

All prices include a gig bag. Who is this series for? Well, one-and-a-half grand for an instrument made in Fender’s Corona, California facility looks a decent buy for the jobbing pros.

“This series is built for players who demand reliability, versatility and performance at the highest level,” says Fender, all but using the W-word. Maybe the finishes are too fancy to call them that. But we all know that this “perfect blend of vintage charm and modern performance” was made for.

Find out more over at Fender.

Ashdown and Reverb.com have teamed up for the ultimate limited edition second hand bass amp sale, with 15 of Geezer Butler’s Head Of Doom heads from the rehearsals for Black Sabbath’s final show being sold exclusively via the online gear retail giant.

Butler has signed each of the control panels in silver marker pen, with each amp shipping with a certificate of authenticity from Ashdown’s managing director Dan Gooday.

“This is your chance to own the sound that defined heavy metal,” says Reverb. “Don’t wait, once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

They Reverb marketing bumf couldn’t say it any plainer; this is a unique opportunity to own a piece of heavy metal history, and, y’know, an amp that should make your intro to N.I.B. really come alive.

Butler used these amps in the run-up to July's Back To The Beginning show at Villa Park, when Black Sabbath bowed out with a four-song set, War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid bringing down the curtain on the career of a band that invented heavy metal from the ground up, closing what was arguably the biggest metal all-day of all time.

This was Villa Park at capacity, with the show streamed online to more than five million people. Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Pantera, Gojira, Alice In Chains, plus various supergroups assembled by the musical director for the day, Tom Morello, rolled in. Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne played a solo set. It was all going on.

The estimates as to how much was raised for charity vary. Sharon Osbourne scotched rumours that circa $190mn was raised but a number of millions was raised for local children’s hospitals, Parkinson’s research and other causes.

As for the Head Of Doom itself, this is a built-to-order, UK made Custom Shop build, priced ordinarily at £1,499. It has a 9-band EQ, a Sub-Harmonic Generator, and (this is too cool) a Doom control.

Butler's tech, Terry Welty was closely involved in the design, and upon its unveiling in 2018, Gooday said it was a proud day in his career.

“What a moment for me personally. Having grown up playing Sabbath with a band in school and learning all the bass lines with my mate Phil, who could play any guitar lick back after hearing it once," he said. "Geezer’s sound and tone was part of my bass upbringing and has stayed with me until this very day."

There are 600-watts under the hood. The pre-amp is driven by a 12AX7 for that old analogue grit. And those VU meters on the front panel always makes Ashdown amps look the part, too.

You will need something to play it through. Ashdown has the thing, and will be taking orders for the 2x15” and 2x12” ‘Cabinets of Doom’, the COD-212-8 and COD-215-8.

These are rated at 300 watts RMS at 8 Ohms and look the exactly the same as Butler’s originals because they are built the same, made to order in the UK, and featuring the custom medal grille that comes screen-printed with Butler’s artwork.

And if all of this is a little steep for your budget, remember, Ashdown does the Hand Of Doom pedal.

For more details, head over to Reverb.

• Note: this article originally stated these Hand Of Doom amps were the same as those used at Villa Park during Black Sabbath's set. But Reverb has since clarified that they were used for the rehearsals.

Former Metallica producer Flemming Rasmussen has been talking about his work on the band’s 1988 album ...And Justice For All and the notorious absence of bass in its final mix. Essentially, he’s still baffled by it.

The album – Metallica’s fourth – was the third that Rasmussen had worked on. He came into the project late. Recording had begun with Guns N’ Roses producer Mike Clink before Rasmussen reshuffled his schedule and came onboard. As he explained to Chilean radio station Futuro, the band’s decision to eschew bass puzzled him.

“Lars (Ulrich) has a thing that every time they've done an album, he comes and plays it to me," the producer said. "And he always hopes that I nod and say, 'That's a good lad.' And when he came and played … And Justice For All for me, I just looked at him and said, 'What's that?' He said, 'That's the mix.' I said, 'No, it's not. You forgot the bass.' But there's no bass on there."

He continued: "By the time I got there, they already got some hotshot Los Angeles mixers, Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, to mix it," Rasmussen recalled. "And the story is that Metallica flew in, listened to what they'd done, and they went, 'No, no, no.' 'Where's my drum sound?' 'Where's my guitar sound?' And actually Lars said, 'Now take the bass down so you can just hear it.'

Part of it, Rasmussen speculates, was that the band were still grieving bassist Cliff Burton, who had died in a bus crash in 1986. "I think half of it is because they were on tour with Van Halen, and they flew in and heard the mix," he said. "And I think that's the point where Lars and James realised, 'We don't have Cliff anymore. It's not his bass. It's a totally different sound.' And I just think they couldn't relate to that at that point."

There was also an element of Ulrich and Hetfield testing out new bassist Jason Newsted, Rassmussen suggests: "What they hated most about Jason was that he was such a Metallica fan. So every time they asked him anything, he just did it. So I think they took it down just to piss him off, 'cause they were expecting him to say, 'Can you turn the bass up?' And he probably never did. That's why the bass is so low."

There is an irony in all this, Rasmussen says. "I read somewhere recently that …And Justice For All is the number one album in the world that people say is the reason why they started their own band," he said. "So … And Justice For All has created more new bands than any other album in the world. So if you want to start a new band, don't be a bass player."

IK Multimedia’s Tonex amp modelling eco-system has brought guitarists an embarrassment of riches, with signature collaborations with Joe Satriani, software suites inspired by Eddie Van Halen’s incendiary electric guitar tone, the superlative Tonex and Tonex One hardware pedals – plus the Tonex Cab, the FRFR speaker to play them through.

But not it has come for the bass guitar, assembling 150 Tone Models that bring you digital emulations of some of the most iconic bass amps in history, and all the mod cons and functionality that the Tonex platform provides.

Described by IK Multimedia as “the ultimate library of bass tones,” the Tonex Bass Signature Collection was assembled in a similar fashion to its guitar equivalent, with classic gear captured with a little help from the brand’s AI technology.

You can use these Tone Models across the Tonex eco-system. You could keep it all in the box, all on your laptop, or you can get yourself the Tonex or Tonex One mini-pedal for bass, and download these sounds to your pedalboard for a high-functioning and super-portable fly-in live rig.

You might never need to take an amp the size of a refrigerator up three flights of stairs again. All the big names are modelled here: Ampeg, Aguilar, Gallien-Krueger, and more. All styles are catered for. The demo videos offering a taste of the plugin’s Funk, R&B, Rock and Slap sound just scratch the surface.

There are the American Classics such as the Ampeg SVT-CL and SVT-VR, and Fender’s Bassman 100 and Bassman 300. “These captures give you the unmistakable thump, roar, and authority of these stage and studio legends,” says IK Multimedia. “Whether you need deep, clean low end or gritty tube drive that fills the mix, these classics deliver the foundation of modern bass.”

There are the US-voiced combos, ideal for those plummy R&B and soul sounds. Then you’ve got the models of high-wattage contemporary powerhouses from Orange, Trace Elliot, Marshall et al, and there is a range of modelled stompboxes to further shape your tone. You know the drill. There are options, presets, user-sharable tones, and IK Multimedia promises “perfect” dry/wet phase correlation for top-class sounds when mixing DI and amp sounds.

The pedals themselves have an aluminum-silver enclosure, with the full-sized Tonex Pedal Bass Edition priced at $/€429, which arrives preloaded with 150 “gig-ready” presets, and the Tonex ONE Bass Edition priced at $/€199, arriving with 20 presets. The pedals come bundled with licenses for the Tonex Signature Bass Collection, Tonex CS, Tonex Modeler, and Tonex Editor, AmpliTube 5, plus AmpliTube SVX 1 and 2 Collections.

The Tonex Signature Bass Collection can be used as standalone software in your DAW and is priced $/€99.

For more details, head over to IK Multimedia.

Miley Cyrus, Questlove and Jools Holland are among those who’ve been paying tribute to Pino Palladino after confirmation that he’ll be this year’s recipient of the Welsh Music Inspiration award at next month’s Welsh Music Prize ceremony.

The awards ceremony, presented by BBC Radio 1 presenter Siân Eleri, takes place at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 6 October. Shortlisted artists Gwenno, Sage Todz, Panic Shack, and Melin Melyn are among the artists who’ll be performing live ahead of the award of the £10,000 prize for the best album made in Wales or by Welsh people around the world this past year.

Palladino’s lifetime achievement award is thoroughly deserved. Born into a Welsh-Italian family of restaurateurs in Cardiff’s Whitchurch area, the 67 year old has played with everyone from The Who and Eric Clapton to Don Henley and D’Angelo. He’s viewed as a fretless bass pioneer, but remains as relevant as ever thanks to his appearances on hits by the likes of Adele, Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran.

One of Palladino’s more recent projects was with Miley Cyrus on her 2025 album, Something Beautiful. He played on all of it and, as Cyrus explains in her award presentation video, made such an impression that he may have influenced the running time of one of the songs - Lockdown, which also features David Byrne.

“It was such an honour to have Pino play on my last record,” she begins. “He’s on all of the songs, including one that’s 13 minutes. Don’t know if we would have ever made that if it wasn’t for the fact that we just didn’t want Pino to ever stop playing. Working with you Pino is a dream, it’s always the best.”

Questlove, meanwhile, who played with Palladino on D’Angelo’s seminal albums Voodoo and Black Messiah as part of the Soulquarians, simply says: “If I only had one person to choose to play bass with for the rest of my days, I would choose Pino Palladino”.

One of Palladino’s first gigs was with Jools Holland, back in 1981. Freshly out of Squeeze, Holland enlisted him for his Jools Holland and His Millionaires album, and is effusive in his praise.

“I can think of nobody more deserving of this award than Pino Palladino,” says Holland. “He has played with everyone and is constantly in demand around the world. Some musicians have a great touch, some have a great ear, some have a great technique, some a great feel. Occasionally a musician will invent a new style or sound with their instrument, but Pino is the only person I know who can truly lay claim to all of the above.”

Reacting to news of his award in typically modest fashion, Palladino simply says: “I’m humbled and honoured that my work has been recognised in this way.”

Founded in 2011, the Welsh Music Prize celebrates its 15th anniversary this year and, to mark the milestone, BBC Cymru Wales has commissioned a special highlights programme of the 2025 event, which will also explore the prize’s impact on the Welsh music scene. The programme will air after this year’s ceremony on BBC One Wales and BBC iPlayer.

The Welsh Music Prize is supported by Creative Wales, Cardiff Council, PRS for Music, PPL and Help Musicians. You find out more and buy tickets for the ceremony on the Welsh Music Prize website.