There isn’t much that Phil Collen’s new Jackson PC1-E can’t do. It has DiMarzio’s nuclear option as the bridge humbucker, the active PC1 Sustainer Driver at the neck, with Collen’s signature stacked ‘bucker in the middle position...

And there is a push/pull coil-split and a five-way selector switch for making full use of its HSS format.

You half expect that there’s a cigarette lighter push-pull on the volume pot, or that if you point it at the TV you could change the channel. Presumably the electric toothbrush is inside the case. And just look at it. The PC1-E comes fresh out of the Jackson facility at Fender’s Ensenada plant with a distressed nitro finish that makes it look like it has been in active service since 1986, the year the Def Leppard guitarist started playing Jackson's hot-rodded electric guitars.

And for a list price of £1,699/$2,199 it might just stop people complaining to Collen that his USA model is too expensive (well, it is not cheap), which is something he gets all the time. So does it get any better at this price?

“No, it absolutely doesn’t,” says Collen, joining MusicRadar from his home in California, because new model, the PC1-E, is a chip off the old block. It does everything the US model that he’s been playing since the ‘90s does

“I’m actually playing it on tour, actually. It’s just great,” he says. “You can do anything on them. On Hysteria we used EBows, but these things have Sustainers, and you can replicate all of that stuff. And then it’s got a Floyd on it. It’s got…”

Everything?

“Everything you could ever, ever want!” he says. “I’ve used mine and it sounds like a Les Paul. It can sound like a Strat. It can sound like a Tele. You can do all this stuff.”

The fundamentals of the PC1-E are as follows. You’ve got a classic Jackson Dinky body, which of course means that we’ve got a bolt-on build, with a caramelised maple neck reinforced with graphite and topped with an ebony fingerboard.

There are 24 stainless steel frets. The fingerboard is carved into the 12” to 16” compound radius so preferred by Fender’s portfolio of high-performance brands – Jackson, Charvel, EVH Gear – and a truss rod adjustment wheel is conveniently located at the top of the fretboard.

The reverse Stratocaster headstock is very cool. Indeed, Collen is too cool to be bothering with fret markers. There’s one pearloid sharkfin inlay at the 12th fret and that’s that (but fear not, Luminlay side dot markers are available along the edge of the fingerboard).

The hardware is gold, which is kind of fancy but offset by the fact that all that mahogany is poking through the black paint. Collen is 100 per cent okay with that.

“I love relic guitars,” he says. “They feel totally worn in, and you put them on, you go, ‘Ahh, okay!’ And they breathe a bit better. Guitars with brand new paint and all of that stuff, they tend to not sound as comfortable or whatever. This thing, just straight off the bat, you plug it in. It’s like, ‘Yep, woo-hoo! Here we go.

“I know there’s some people don’t like relic guitars – ‘you’ve got to do it yourself’. I’ve done it myself through a lot of my guitars, and they’ve got really worn in, but this one sounds and feels like one of those. So it’s amazing. I love them.”

But the electronics is where this thing really distinguished itself from the rank-and-file in the Jackson catalog. The PC-1 Sustainer unit is driven by an 18V preamp with switches so that it can either infinitely sustain the fundamental note or the harmonics.

As Collen says, if you’re the kind of player who has been frustrated trying to nail those sweet volume swell sounds on Hysteria and can’t be bothered with an EBow, the Sustainer is a godsend.

It would be an amazing tool for the soundscaper, too, and of course those hesher players who’ve long tried to nail Slayer’s Dead Skin Mask intro riff and failed. The Sustainer unlocks all that stuff.

“It’s incredible,” says Collen, who sounds a little like Dirty Harry talking about his magnum when he gets onto his electric guitar pickup choices.

“I’ve got a DiMarzio X2N, which is the most powerful pickup they do,” he say.s “My ones, I actually have a coil split, so you can actually make it sound like a Strat. I mean, it’s crazy the different tones you can get. I’m blown away with some my PC-1s, but yeah, this one actually does it all.”

That DiMarzio Sugar Chakra in the middle position – a pickup co-developed with Collen – is a stacked ‘bucker but it too can pull a double-shift and give you some spankiness.

“Again, it’s really powerful, but you can also split that as well,” says Collen. “The combination of those two, the X2N and the Sugar Chakra, is actually amazing. I’ve done that on some of the Def Leppard albums, and I think it was on was the last one, Diamond Star Halos where I’ve done that, and it has such a unique sound – especially when you keep the Sustainer on for some of the clean stuff.”

That’s right, try sustaining those in-between sounds with a clean tone, with an expensive reverb, maybe, some delay too, or maybe. Rockman X100 to fully embrace the spirit of this guitar. Collen promises that all kinds of things will pop out the speaker.

“It’s like, ‘Whoa!’ Again, a sound I’ve never heard before, so I use that a lot,” he says. “So, yeah, pretty cool stuff! It’s lovely. And especially if you jam it between the two pickups, like on that five-switch type of thing, just between the two, really clean, it’s just incredible. It’s beautiful stuff.”

There is one major difference to the actual PC1s Collen likes to play. The neck will be a lot thinner. Collen has thing for fat necks, and got his tech, John Zocco, to swap his out. As Jackson players go, he’s in the minority on that score.

“Well, the one that I had initially was pretty mainstream,” says Collen. “But the one I play is, yes, it’s a fairly monster neck.”

The Pro Series Phil Collen PC1-E is available now. See Jackson for more details.

Fender CEO Edward ‘Bud’ Cole has addressed the fallout from the company’s cease-and-desist campaign against makers of S-style guitars, admitting that it could have been handled better.

In a recent interview with YouTuber Mary Spender, Cole argues that Fender should have opened talks with certain companies ahead of sending the cease-and-desist letters.

“If I could go back in time with what I have heard, and what I know now, this would have been done very differently, and I think that’s very important,” said Cole.

Letters from Fender’s legal representatives were sent to a wide array of guitar brands, from small independent boutique companies, such as LsL, who were the first to go public, to the world’s largest musical company, Yamaha, and German gear retail giant Thomann, who own the budget brand Harley Benton and stock a range of S-style guitars. Cole said there were sound legal reason why the cease-and-desists were sent

The cat was officially among the pigeons. Thomann launched a countersuit. The reaction was fierce. The ramifications for the guitar industry are huge, and yet so much remains unclear. Just what constitutes an infringement of the Stratocaster design? What defines the Stratocaster design, beyond the headstock that is already a licensed trademark?

Cole speaks with Spender for an 90-plus minutes and yet does not spell that out. He can’t. This will be a matter for the courts to decide.

But the can of worms was opened in March, when the Regional Court of Düsseldorf awarded Fender full copyright protection of the Stratocaster as a “work of applied art” in the EU. The case had been brought against Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co, which was selling S-style guitars on the online retail platform AliExpress.

The ruling was made in absentia. AliExpress did not turn up. Some critics said that this was a cynical move from Fender, that the Chinese company was never going to turn up. Cole pushes back on this, arguing that the judge presided over “72 pages” of evidence before arriving at a decision.

Although Cole regretted how the cease-and-desist campaign was initially conducted, he argues that Fender’s efforts to protect the design of the Stratocaster will ultimately “improve” the industry. He cites the 18 agreements it has reached with other companies to change their designs as evidence that Fender’s approach is working. As per Bloomberg’s report, Fender is working with 32 companies.

Cole does not mention which brands. To do so would be to potentially identify S-style guitars – or double-cutaway electrics to use a less contentious term – that are considered to be “okay” by Fender, thus offering a definition of the Stratocaster.

But he does speaks about reassuring brands whose double-cutaway electric guitar designs as “materially different” from the Stratocaster, but for the others, he says Fender wants to “help” them change their designs.

“We want to have that conversation to over time to help them, or inspire them, or work with them to push their design further, so they have their own unique design to the naked eye,” he said.

“We have to work together, but if they’re willing, that over time pushes their design to something that’s uniquely theirs, and I think our industry will be better because of it. ”

But to whose naked eye? That’s the question, and we might have to wait for the conclusion of Thomann’s lawsuit with Fender to find out.

PRS Guitars has teamed up with Jaguar Land Rover for a special limited edition run of John Mayer’s Silver Sky that refinishes his signature guitar in paint jobs taken from the Defender four-wheel drive.

Mayer is a big fan of the Defender. He doesn’t just use it to do the Friday Big Shop down at Whole Foods, he collects them. This collaboration is a “dream come true” he says.

“I’ve always chosen colourways based on objects and materials that inspire me in the world, and as a collector and lover of Defenders, this collaboration is the perfect crossover between two great passions of mine,” he says Mayer.

Did we see this collab coming (besides the teasers on John Mayer’s Instagram account)? No. But is it altogether bonkers, from way out of left field? Not really, because it’s very much in keeping with the history of electric guitar design.

Guitar manufacturers have long drawn influence from automobile design. Just think of all those classic Fender paint jobs. Or the fact that Gibson hired Raymond Dietrich, whose portfolio was all Chrysler cars and things on four-wheels to design the aerodynamic lines of the Firebird.

The Silver Sky Defender Color Collection Limited Editions comprises four US-made core models in Arles Blue, Willow Green, Portofino Red and Sandglow Yellow – all heritage colours for the 4x4 – and another four Indonesian-made SE modes in Petra Copper, Sedona Red, Carpathian Grey and Woolstone Green.

The SE line is particularly unique in the sense that you’ve got black pickguards and knobs for the very first time on a Silver Sky. The Core models come with the standard white pickguard – but with painted headstocks.

Both editions feature a custom neck plate, and they are limited. There is no figure put on the SE but they are only making them until mid-way through 2027, while 500 of the US model in each finish will be available.

If you are liable to run into Mayer at Whole Foods – perhaps you often find yourself jamming Gravity in the parking lot – then maybe the Core model in Arles Blue is the one for you. That’s the same colour as the Defender Mayer has owned for over 20 years. Just don’t use Turtle Wax on it when it’s time to give it a clean.

There will also be a special version in British Racing Green that are not for general sale, but will be used to raise funds for Jaguar Land Rover’s Defender Service Awards and Mayer’s veterans’ health charity, The Heart and Armor Foundation.

The Silver Sky key specs are the same as before – it’s just a new look. You can find out more over at PRS Guitars.

Fender has long been at war with single-coil hum. With its most-famous electric guitars, the Stratocaster and Telecaster, both predominantly single-coil instruments, there has been no shortage of R&D efforts to put the nix on unwanted buzz.

It has had some success on that front, but it might just have solved the issue once and for all with the Fender Silent System, which is being debuted on a limited edition run of American Professional Classic Teles and Strats.

Over the years, Fender has launched various versions of its Noiseless electric guitar pickups, and the likes of Eric Clapton et al were not complaining. They sounded great.

But the Silent System is something completely different. It’s not a new take on Fender pickup design; these new Silent System Teles and Strats equipped with Fender’s Coastline pickups. Also, it is not some active solution; it does not need a battery.

The Silent System is discrete, mounted under the pickguard, and Fender says the benefits of this patent-pending system are there for all to hear – and what you don’t hear.

“Designed to eliminate single-coil hum from almost any pickup installed, it hands players even more creative control and flexibility over their guitar, sound, and signal,” says Fender. “[It effectively eliminates single-coil hum without sacrificing a single trace of that pure, authentic single-coil tone you know and love.”

The question is how do we define solved? Some players might argue that Fender has already solved the problem with the Gen 4 Noiseless Pickups. It would be intriguing to put the American Professional Classic Strat with the Silent System up against one with the Gen 4 Strat single-coils.

Also, it will be interesting to see when the system will be available on other series, or indeed when it will be available some way down the line as an aftermarket mod.

It works with all kinds of pickups. There’s bound to be an old Strat or Tele kicking around the house that could use an upgrade like this, especially if you are a high-volume, high-gain player. And how much would this cost?

The limited edition American Professional Classic electrics with the onboard Silent System are not that much more expensive than their counterparts – £1,649/$1,599 vs circa £1,439/$1,499 street. The prospect of no hum could make that a sound investment for a little peace of mind.

Fender is offering the American Professional Classic Strat with Silent System in 3-Color Sunburst and Daphne Blue with a rosewood fingerboard, and in Olympic White and Candy Apple Red with a maple ‘board.

The Telecaster is offered in Candy Apple Red and Sonic Blue with a rosewood fingerboard, and Vintage Blonde and 3-Color Sunburst with maple.

These American Professional Classics are available now. Head over to Fender for more details.

Harley Benton has just rolled out a pair of SC-550 Plus electric guitars that come factory-fitted with a pair of Fishman Fluence Classic humbuckers, and many players will greet this news with joy, and no little relief, safe in the knowledge that they can put the power tools and soldering iron away.

Look on guitar YouTube and you will find no shortage of videos showing you how a Harley Benton guitar can be souped up with Fishman Fluence humbuckers.

Swapping out an electric guitar pickup is relatively easy once you get the hang of a soldering iron. But fitting a set of active Fishmans to a Harley Benton is not necessarily an easy mod when you will most likely have to do some routing inside the control cavity to find a spot for the battery.

Power tools might be required, and if the idea of that gives you the heebie-jeebies, you’re not alone. But now you can put down the power drill, with Harley Benton having done all the hard work for you.

The Fishman Fluence-equipped SC-550 looks the same as its siblings. It shares the same single-cut silhouette. There is the AA flame maple on a solid okoume body, ivory binding, the shoulder-mounted pickup selector switch and trapezoid inlays betraying the design influence. But turn it around and you’ll see there’s a little plastic-covered compartment for the 9V battery, and those control knobs have push-pull functions to activate the Fluence ‘buckers’ alternate voicings.

There is pretty much something for everyone here, with Voice 1 is classic PAF-style humbucker. Voice 2 on the bridge humbucker is a little hotter, like the next-gen after market humbuckers of the late ‘70s, while the neck’s second voice is “clean, airy chime”, and Voice 3 offers vintage single-coil tones at the neck, overwound and beefier single-coil sounds at the bridge.

Elsewhere, it’s business as usual for the SC-550, with the glued-in nyatoh neck and roasted jatoba fingerboard, nickel hardware, the WSC LP17 Tune-O-Matic bridge, WSC Schaller-style J07 LKF locking tuners. These are part of Harley Benton’s more high-end Deluxe Series, so we have the 2.7mm Blacksmith stainless steel frets.

The dimensions are very much of the style, with a 12” radius fingerboard and 24.75” scale length, and you’re finish options are very much golden era-inspired, and maybe Slash-inspired too?

Those high-gloss Faded Tobacco Flame and Paradise Amber Flame stains have that vibe. Of course, if you like the idea of active humbuckers and the multi-voice system seems a little too convoluted, well, there is always the EMG-equipped SC-550 Plus.

The SC-550 Plus Fluence is available now, see Harley Benton for more details, head over to Thomann to grab one. They are retailing at £429/$484.

• Want to change your guitar's humbuckers and upgrade your tone but don't know where to start? These guides prove changing pickups doesn't need to be stressful

Every vintage guitar has a story to tell – especially if they've been in the hands of players like Jeff Beck, Jack White and Mike Bloomfield. In her new photography book, Eleanor Jane is sharing 50 remarkable vintage instruments with the world, all with stunningly detailed photography and insight.

The Guitar Chronicles follows UK-based pro photographer Eleanor's acclaimed Superstar Guitars and Gallagher's Guitars books. She's spent years travelling, meeting guitar icons and their beloved vintage six-strings, plus charted dealer and private collectors. So it's no surprise The Guitar Chronicles is filled with a dream roster, including golden-era Les Pauls, acoustic guitars, Teles and semi-hollows.

"I’m beyond thrilled with how this project turned out, the stories I’ve been able to tell, and all the beautiful new work I have to share,” Eleanor says.

Those stories include close looks at the 1958 Jazzmaster gifted to Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore by Patti Smith, Jeff Beck's historic 'Yardburst' '59 Les Paul and Jack White's battle-scarred '50s Kay K6533 Value Leader.

Eleanor's world-class photography gets into the granular detail of these unique instruments, with tireless research and details uncovered about their pasts.

Alongside resurrected and wonderfully worn Gibsons owned by Jared James Nichols and Greta Van Fleet's Jake Kiszka, plus the idiosyncratic likes of Jeff Tweedy's Dinette/Kay Solo King and Mike Bloomfield's brutally modded 1963 Tele, there are key milestones in guitar-building history.

The original Fender Mary Kaye Strat and 1951 Precision Bass prototypes featured in The Guitar Chronicles make for essential viewing. And on the subject of Fender, the rarely seen early design era of Leo Fender, before he changed the electric guitar world, is showcased with a rare 1945 K&F lap steel and amplifier. This is a beautifully crafted book brimming with guitar treasures.

The Guitar Chronicles by Eleanor Jane is out now and published by Welbeck. It's available to order from Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones or your local bookseller.

Epiphone has resurrected one of its most-loved signature guitars as the Joan Jett Olympic Special returns to the lineup, featuring an fresh finish and a subtle but welcome upgrade on its predecessor.

Where the 2022 model had an Indian laurel fingerboard, we now have rosewood. That’s not bad for starters. The other updates are mostly aesthetic, with Vintage Sunburst replacing Aged Classic White, and the pickup now has double-white bobbins.

But does that matter? The Olympic Special is a simple recipe: one asymmetrical double-cut plank of mahogany, a glued-in mahogany neck, one pickup, one volume control, and no fancy stuff.

There’s no coil-taps or switching to worry about. Turn it up and play. That’s its appeal. Don’t mess with it.

Besides, Jett’s take on the Olympic Special does come with a twist. As per the 2022 model, we have a toggle killswitch, located adjacent to the bridge and volume knob, everything within reach of the right hand.

Her signature can be found on the back of the headstock – speaking of which, that 3x3 headstock has got a lot of mojo.

Elsewhere, it’s as simple as an electric guitar gets. The design DNA is quintessentially Gibson/Epiphone, with the 24.75” scale length and the 12” fingerboard radius. The fingerboard is unbound and has dot inlays, betraying its lineage as an affordable electric.

There is one PowerHammer Pro humbucker at the bridge position, high-output, gutsy, voiced for playing power chords and if you want to clean your sound up roll back that volume knob.

It’s a CTS pot so should have a nice taper to it, and that black ‘Speed’ knob has been modified with rubber grips to make it more tactile and easier to grip.

The single-ply black pickguard is present and correct. The MTB605 wraparound bridge is neat and tidy, and helpfully has adjustable saddles. There are sealed die-cast tuners, too.

Would this Epiphone guitar look better with vintage Kluson-style tuners with white buttons a la the Gibson Les Paul Junior? Maybe. But there’s something about this guitar that is perfect as it is, a budget option to beat up onstage, or to fix up.

Young players picking this up could always install a more high-end aftermarket electric guitar pickup over time, or indeed install a new set of machineheads if that’s your bag.

Oh, there is a gig bag included in the price, which, at $599/£499 is very inviting. And you can find out more over at Epiphone. In other recent Epiphone artist model news, the Gibson-owned brand launched a very cool (and quite high-end) limited edition replica of Marcus King's El Dorado.

What is it?

Part Firebird, part Gretsch, and part Telecaster, with a little dash of 12-string thrown in for good measure, the Telstar is something of a Griffin in the affordable guitar space, and one that is most definitely trying to stand out from the crowd.

For those not in the know, Shergold is a British brand that built rather well-liked guitars through the ‘70s and ‘80s, and despite having a fair few famous names who used them, like Genesis axeman Mike Rutherford, it never quite became as legendary as some of its peers.

After falling into relative obscurity, UK distributor Barnes & Mullins, you know, the company behind Faith acoustic guitars, re-launched Shergold with a slate of new designs thought up by UK guitar maker Patrick James Eggle.

Today, I’m looking at a 12-string version of the 2023 model, the Telstar. Like the original, this updated version features a poplar body, a maple neck, and a laurel fingerboard. As for the hardware, we’ve got a 12-way adjustable bridge, where six of the strings are strung through the body, while the others are strung top-loaded through the bridge. At the peghead, we have two rows of closed-gear machine heads and a synthetic bone nut.

A pair of FilterSonic humbuckers handles the tone, with a single volume and tone control and a Les Paul-esque three-way selector switch. The model comes in a high-gloss solid Champagne Gold or Black finish and costs a smidge over £400.

On paper, it’s certainly an attractive little package, but how does it perform in reality, and can Telstar hang with the big guns that it calls its inspiration? Well, let’s find out.

Specs

• Launch price: £409 / $519 / €480
• Made: China
• Type: 12-string electric guitar
• Body: Solid Poplar
• Neck: Solid Maple
• Fingerboard: Laurel
• Scale length: 25.5" / 648 mm
• Nut/width: Synthetic Bone / 44 mm
• Frets: 22 frets, Medium-Jumbo, Hard Nickel
• Hardware: Chrome; closed gear 6-a-side tuners; fixed bridge (6-string through-body / 6-string through-bridge) with 12 individually adjustable saddles
• Electrics: 2 x Page FilterSonic Humbuckers (bridge and neck); controls: 1 x Volume (A500K), 1 x Tone (A500K), 3-way toggle switch
• Weight: 8 lbs / 3.6 kg
• Finishes: Champagne Gold or Black
• Case: None
• Contact: Shergold

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

If ever there was an electric guitar styled especially to my tastes, it would probably be the Telstar. I’m lucky enough to have a Firebird, Telecaster, and Gretsch in my personal collection, so combining all three most definitely appeals to me.

It’s a good-looking guitar that looks classic while still feeling fresh and new. The gilded Champagne Gold is also rather nice, too. So, a job well done by Shergold on aesthetics.

Running my eye over the body of the guitar, everything looks good from a finishing point of view. No overspray, dings or scuffs to speak of. That said, I did spot a small issue with the pickup routes. They seem too large for the pickups themselves. So much so, I can fit more than two plectrums between the FilterSonic humbucker and the body of the guitar.

It’s not the biggest issue, sure, but one that perhaps shows the limitations of such a budget build.

Flipping the model over reveals a nicely rounded heel, with neck screws sitting in recessed cupped washers. The neck pocket is plenty tight too. It’s very neat and tidy and very well put together.

Now, with a 12-string, the machine heads are one of the most important details, as no one wants to deal with a dozen strings that won’t stay in tune. I’m happy to say that, while the Shergold machine heads don’t look particularly special, they do hold strong and turn smoothly.

Overall, it’s an impressively made guitar. Sure, the pickup routes could be better, but that’s a small issue with what is otherwise a tidy guitar that feels nice in hand.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Right, we all know that 12-string guitars can feel a little overwhelming, cumbersome, and, well, awkward at times, but thankfully this Telstar is none of those things. This is actually a rather inviting guitar to play – thanks in part to the nicely rolled edges of the fingerboard.

As you’d expect, the neck is wider than normal to accommodate the extra strings, but it feels pretty comfortable to me. The 25.5" scale length is naturally familiar, and the 14" radius feels flat and, despite its look, fairly modern. I like it.

The action is set nicely from the factory, too. It’s a little higher than you’d want for a standard electric at 1.65mm on the low-E, but I think it’s more than serviceable for a 12-string. It keeps the strings ringing out proudly, and let's face it, you’re not going to be shredding on this thing unless you have fingers like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s arms.

With such a large headstock, it would be easy to think this guitar would be unbalanced, but it sits comfortably on a strap or my lap with no neck dive to speak of, and that’s no mean feat.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

With a set of faux Filter'Trons installed, I’m expecting the sound of the Telstar to be bright, edgy, and with plenty of chime. It may be unfair to pit the Telstar against my Gretsch Doublecut Falcon, but to my surprise, this budget Shergold does a respectable job trying to replicate those classic Gretsch sounds.

Plugged into a Fender Twin, the real Gretsch is certainly more lively and responsive, but the Telstar holds its own in terms of chime with a pleasant top end that perhaps sounds more like a slightly brighter voiced humbucker than a true Filter'Tron.

That said, it’s a nice tone and one that complements the 12-string format. There is enough jangle here without sounding too harsh or brittle.

The neck position is noticeably warmer and rounded, as expected, and turning down the tone control makes it even woollier, perfect for faux acoustic strumming.

​Kicking on my JHS Angry Charlie, these pickups prove they can handle some gain, too. There’s a throaty nature to the bright pickup in particular that makes me want to play octave single-note riffs.

​What’s genuinely impressive is the guitar’s ability to produce a nice range of tones that really brings out the best qualities of a 12-string. Whether strumming open chords, picking arpeggios, or riffing, there’s decent clarity here and pleasant presence that just sounds good.

Verdict

Personally, I think the Shergold Telstar ST14 12-String is a refreshing entry to the world of affordable 12-string electrics. It manages to combine three well-known guitar styles cues into one that looks like it could’ve easily been thought up in 1960.

For the price, the build quality is impressive for the most part, with the only minor flaw being oversized pickup routes, but I don’t think that’s enough to detract from the overall experience I had with this lovely guitar.

To me, it’s a very approachable guitar to play, even for those new to 12-strings, and sonically, the Telstar delivers plenty of bright and chiming tones, with enough versatility to move from lush cleans to rockin’ overdrive.

I genuinely think it more than holds its own within its price bracket and offers a compelling alternative for players seeking something different. So, whether you’re looking to add new textures to your recordings, looking for a quirky songwriting partner, or you’re simply searching for an eye-catching alternative to mainstream brands, the Telstar delivers much more than its modest price would suggest.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Shergold Guitars

Having dropped an exquisite high-end limited edition Penguin a few weeks back, Gretsch has something special for those of us whose budgets are a little more modest, with its Electromatic Jet and CVT remodelled in black limba.

These handsome electric guitars have a Sunburst finish and sprayed in high-gloss, and both feature a lot of the same DNA. They are a modernistic take on the traditional Gretsch guitar, with each housing a pair of gutsy Pure Volt Twin Six humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions.

Indeed, the CVT itself is something of a newcomer to the Gretsch lineup, officially arriving in the lineup in August 2025, evolving out of the cult-classic Corvette, which had in turn been attracting a bit of attention when Jack Antonoff’s Princess signature guitar introduced its body shape to a new generation.

And that’s what Gretsch is trying to do with these guitars – with the Jet, too, but especially the CVT. Of course the brand will always have its association with the OG rock ’n’ roll players, the Chet Atkins devotees and anyone who watched Billy Duffy under the stage lights and thought that his White Falcon looked cool AF. But it needs fresh blood.

These guitars should broaden the appeal nicely. Black limba is an exotic wood choice. To quote Gretsch it gives you “smooth, rich midrange and serious presence”. It’s worth noting that black limba, the actual wood species, is the same as korina – as in the timber popularised by Gibson on its original 1958 Flying Vs.

They typically used the lighter stuff. Here we have the darker stuff, and you can see with that deep grain why Gretsch has chosen it. With a Sunburst finish and gold hardware (sealed die-cast tuners Lockdown wraparound bridge here, folks), it looks the bee’s knees.

Both guitars have a Performance C profile neck and 12” radius ebony fingerboards. We can confirm that these are comfortable indeed, with the arched contours and rounded heel of the Jet and bevelled doublecut body of the CVT more ergonomic propositions than some original Gretsch designs.

There are some fundamental differences. The Jet has a glued-in neck and a chambered body. The CVT is a bolt-on with an all-solid body. The necks are both carved from limba. Limba all round. The humbuckers are interesting.

The Twin Six neck pickup is Alnico IV, the bridge Alnico V, with adjustable pole pieces on both. The CVT offers a simple volume and tone knob, three-way pickup selector control setup, while the Jet has individual volume controls and a master tone.

These limited edition electrics are available now with the Electromatic Black Limba Jet priced £629/$749, and the Black Limba CVT priced £/$549. That looks like a pretty good deal.

For more details head over to Gretsch.

It was the worst kept secret in guitar, but now it’s official: Troy Van Leeuwen and Squier have unveiled the latest addition to the Fender-owned brand’s Paranormal series, a 12-string reimagining of the Telecaster, replete with signature details and a price tag that puts it within reach of a wider demographic.

The Telecaster celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. There have been some sweet-looking Teles in that time. But finished in a metallic Copper Age paint job, with a tortoiseshell pickguard, Squier’s Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII could hold its own with any one of them.

There’s a lot to like; there is a lot to tune. Just look at that 6x6 headstock, outfitted with vintage-style machine heads. But we have been lucky enough to play this unorthodox and quite brilliant guitar, and the best compliment we can pay it is that it’s well worth the effort of tuning a dozen strings before playing. Its wider 1.6875mm nut gives your fretting hand a bit more room.

Also, Squier has made it a little easier than most 12-string guitars with a very user-friendly bridge that is configured for top-loading and stringing up through the body – it’s a design that takes some of the pain out of string changes (and helps tuning stability).

This Telecaster XII has a solid nyatoh body, a bolt-on maple neck, an Indian laurel fingerboard, and has an origin story that takes us all the way back to Queens Of The Stone Age’s …Like Clockwork era. Fender was working on Van Leeuwen’s signature Jazzmaster, but they had other irons in the fire, too.

Speaking to MusicRadar in July, the morning before Queens Of The Stone Age took to the stage at London’s Tottenham Stadium in support of System Of A Down, Van Leeuwen reveals that it all started when he commissioned Master Builder Paul Waller of the Fender Custom Shop to make him a double-necked electric guitar.

There was only one problem: it was going to take some time. Waller said it would be six months, maybe even a year, before the double-neck was finished.

“I was working with Paul Waller because I was like, ‘I need a double-neck for this record, because there’s 12-string and six-string everywhere,’” says Van Leeuwen. “In the process of making that double-neck – which I’ve been playing a lot during this tour – he was like, ‘I really, really want you to play a Fender, so can I make you something in the meantime while you’re waiting for your double-neck?’ And I was like, ‘Sure! I’ve always wanted a Tele 12-string.’”

Waller was well up for the challenge.

“I love him,” says Van Leeuwen. “He’s like, ‘Well, let me just make you a Fender Tele, a simple Tele with a 12-string neck.’”

A 12-string Telecaster is a rare sight indeed. Bruce Springsteen has played one, as has Robin Zander of Cheap Trick. The Fender Custom Shop made a run of them for a short while in the late ‘90s. But you don’t see them every day (little wonder Squier considers it weird enough to release Van Leeuwen’s Tele XII as part of its Paranormal Series).

Van Leeuwen had some requests for his Custom Shop model. He had a Burns 12-string that he really liked, and wanted Waller to copy the neck.

“I’ve had this Burns Double Six for ever,” he says. “Man, it’s a really great sounding 12-string guitar, and the cool thing about it is that the neck is super wide, and you can really get in there and play it like… like the ham-fisted guy that I am. [Laughs] I was like, ‘For that guitar, please copy the neck of the Burns.’ And so I’ve been playing that guitar onstage – and Dean and I share it for different songs – for the last 14 years.”

Fender and Van Leeuwen launched his signature Jazzmaster in 2014. It is still on the market, and has history been a unit-shifter for Fender. Van Leeuwen says it still sells “pretty well”.

When Fender reached out to him to see if he was interested in doing something new they could put out, he had just the idea. The market isn’t over-saturated with affordable 12-strings. What about the Tele?

“I’m like, ‘I’ve always wanted to do a Squier.’ Just because I have that thing where it’s like, when I was a kid, I didn’t have money, and every guitar that I’d have to just scrounge up for was like a Squier,” he says. “Or some cheap pawn shop guitar. And so I just wanted something affordable, ‘cos not many people play 12-string guitars and they’re usually really expensive. Maybe we could do a Squier. It’s a very much a simplified version of that same Custom Shop [Tele].”

It’s a fixer-upper too. If you were of a mind to buy one, there’s also scope for upgrading the Fender-designed Alnico single-coil pickups if you wanted a more premium pairing. But Van Leeuwen is kind of tickled by the fact that you don’t need to do that. It sounds good as it is. He didn’t see any need to do anything to it before playing it live onstage – and on television, too.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because I played on this show, the Jimmy Kimmel show, the other night with Michael Stipe,” he says. “Andrew Watt asked me to jump up there and play, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna break this thing out. See what it does.’ So that was the debut of the Troy Van Leeuwen Squier Telecaster XII. So cool.”

And with that, the cat was out of the bag. Van Leeuwen posted about it on his Instagram page. There would be a new 12-string Telecaster on the market – officially for the first time as a regular production model – and it would bear his signature on the neck plate. It might well be the pick of the litter from this year’s Paranormal Series.

Maybe it’s time Fender took a leaf out of Squier’s book and launched its own Paranormal range. Van Leeuwen agrees. But he argues you don’t need Fender on the headstock to make a guitar roadworthy. His Telecaster XII has already proven it’s one tough beast. This is a 12-string that cannot be killed.

“Well, here’s a funny story,” says Van Leeuwen. “They sent me a prototype, the first of them. Maybe it was the first sort of factory test. And they sent it to my house, and the guy who delivered it, he ran over it on the way out of the driveway, in the box. [Laughs]”

Now, this kind of thing is not considered best practice in quality control, but it does go some way to proving that the hardiness of the Fender Telecaster translates to the 12-string format.

Van Leeuwen says it just needed the twist of an Allen key and it was good to go.

“Yeah, I picked it up, and I didn’t know it until I opened it up,” he says. “And I was, like, ‘I mean, the action’s really high,’ but it didn’t break or anything! [Laughs] It was just like maybe the truss rod needed to be tweaked a bit.

“But I always like stuff like that because it’s definitely roadworthy. I love that. More than anything, I like guitars that are roadworthy. I leave all my vintage stuff at home. Anything that I can just take on the road and it works is something that I will always want.”

The Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII is available now, priced £509/$599. See Fender for more details.

Queens Of The Stone Age’s new album, Perfecth, is out October 30 via Matador.

Ibanez has just totally reimagined the Icemen as a 7-string guitar with a multi-scale design and multi-voiced Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers, and thus, one of the world’s most classic metal guitars has been reborn for progressive metal adventures in super-low tunings.

The Iceman has always been one of electric guitar’s most radical designs. Ever since it launched in 1977, officially becoming known as the Iceman the following year, it has captured the imagination of rock and metal players.

Players such as Paul Stanley of KISS and Tom G Warrior of Celtic Frost made it their own. System Of A Down’s Daron Malakian popularised it for the late ‘90s nu-metal generation. And Paul Gilbert put his own twist on it, with the long-time Ibanez signature artists collaborating on the Fireman, a sort of reversed-Iceman complete with his DiMarzio pickups and all that jazz. Hey, Brandon Small of Dethklok even had a fretless Iceman.

But we’ve never seen one like this monster 7-string guitar from the Ibanez Axe Design Lab, the ICMS721. It’s the first Iceman to have a multiscale fretboard, running a standard Fender-esque 25.5” on the treble side to 27.2” on the bass side. It’s made for super-low tunings, with that Mono-Rail G2 bridge super easy to intonate. Solid. No fuss. Tidy.

Available in Iron Pewter, it has a solid okoume body, a bolt-one five-piece Wizard II-7 neck comprised of maple with walnut strips. The ebony fingerboard has a 15.7” radius and there are 24 jumbo frets.

Those multi-voiced Fishmans are very au courant but who’s complaining? This is the Iceman for those who quite possibly either don’t know nor care who Paul Stanley was but are looking for an aggressive-looking statement guitar that’s built to, as they say, chug.

But that’s not all. Ibanez’s late summer, early fall release has also seen updates for Nita Strauss, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani signature guitars, with Strauss’s DiMarzio-loaded JIVA10 given a Torch Red makeover that makes the quilted maple top really pop.

Red is a theme. Satch’s JS2470CS has been given Cherry Sunburst respray. It’s still the same über-modern S-style we know and love, with the Sustainiac at the neck, the signature DiMarzio Satchur8 humbucker at the bridge.

Its Edge tremolo unit remains one of the best in the business and there is a set of Gotoh tuners to keep this MIJ electric tip top. And note that matching headstock.

And Steve Vai has the most ridiculously brilliant and ornate designs we have seen from a major brand in quite some time, his signature PIA looking super bougie with its 24K gold leaf floral print on black. It has the hand-grips, the PIA Blossom inlay, the DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups.

The PIA77BON2 is another incredible collaboration between Ibanez, Vai and Bonvillain Design Studio.

Last but not least, Angra guitarist Marcelo Barbosa’s MB10 looks like one seriously versatile S-style, complete with dyna-MIX10 switching, Alter Switch, T106 vibrato and locking tuners. Oh, and the frets are stainless steel. Nice.

No prices on these signature models just yet, but that gnarly Axe Design Lab Iceman will set you back £1,539/$1,699 street.

For more information, head over to Ibanez.

What is it?

Donner’s next-generation Hush travel guitar series, the Hush X Pro, takes things up a notch. Recent years have seen the travel guitar market boom as players crave compact guitars – be they foldable or just downright pocket-sized – that they can take with them wherever they go.

Chinese budget brand Donner’s Hush guitars, though, do things a little differently. They build on a silhouette that’s less James Bond gadget and more Steinberger, with detachable frame wings and a headless design that keep it ultra-tiny. At an average weight of 5 lbs, it’s about half a Les Paul.

Its mahogany neck-through design delivers a high-grade, roasted maple fingerboard on the White models and HPL on Black versions, each with 22 jumbo stainless steel frets, a bone nut, and a wheel-style dual-action truss rod. With a 25.5” scale length, it’s designed to feel familiar, even if it doesn’t particularly look like it. But it’s what’s under the hood where it gets interesting.

Two Donner-branded Alnico V pickups – a humbucker in the bridge, and a single coil in the neck – are hooked up to what is designed to be a catch-all amp and effects suite for all your travelling needs. Its Tone Sim feature can also emulate seven classic guitar sounds, from Strats and Teles to Les Pauls and OM acoustic guitars, with 19 built-in amp sims, 30 effects, and an effects loop for those wanting to plug into tangible pedalboards.

Connectivity-wise, it offers headphone monitoring, traditional output jack for use with a guitar amp, on-the-go mobile connectivity, Bluetooth input for jamming along to songs, and an audio interface. And it all packs into a thin case that easily fits in the overhead lockers of trains and planes.

As the quality of budget gear grows, Donner is bidding to stay well ahead of the travel-guitar curve by giving players everything they could need for their next jam session in the mountains. But is it all too good to be true, or has it pulled off a blinder for just under £500?

Specs

• Launch price: £475 / $659 / €699
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: Mahogany, Slim C-profile
• Fingerboard: Roasted maple, circle dot inlays, 305mm - 406mm (12” - 16”) compound radius
• Scale length: 648mm (25.5”)
• Nut/width: Bone, 42mm (1.65”)
• Frets: 22, jumbo stainless steel
• Hardware: Donner Headless Tuning System and Headless Bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 52mm
• Electrics: Lab Custom Alnico V humbucker (bridge) and single coil (neck), three-way switch, double-stacked Tone/Volume control, built-in amp modeller with 19 amp sims, 30 effects, and Tone Sim feature
• Weight: 5.31lbs/2.44kg
• Options: Black, Midnight Glow, and White Luxe finishes, all with HPL fretboards
• Left-handed options: No
• Case: Two-tier soft case
• Contact: Donner

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

The case the Hush X Pro fits into is extremely compact. And it’s very thin, looking more like a violin or a pool cue case than one housing an electric guitar, and that solves one big travel conundrum.

The case has two layers: one holds the guitar, which fits snugly and securely, and the top layer holds everything else, including the metal-frame wings, jack and USB-C cables, a strap, picks, headphones, and a string-cleaning cloth. The guitar body itself weighs 5.38lbs (2.44kg), just over the 5lbs it’s billed as. The frames add 1.1 lbs (.5kg) to that. It’s very light.

Assembly was intuitive enough that I didn’t need the instructions, although there is a bit of a knack to locking the frames into the guitar, and sometimes it takes me a few goes. I also noticed some wear and tear around the frame inserts, which will only worsen over time. The white finish is very unforgiving.

On top of that, it feels a little limited in how it sits on my lap, given the short treble-side frame. And it wobbles a little while playing.

Being headless, The strings are, like the now-familiar Strandberg setup, locked in at the bridge with an Allen key, with the ball end at the bridge end. It’s a reliable locking bridge system with decent quality for the price.

Beyond that, there are some notable blemishes. There’s a chip on the fretboard near the truss rod wheel, and the effect block dial is also chipped. It’s unclear whether this happened before it left the factory, but it’s disappointing to have it arrive at my house looking a little worse for wear.

The guitar packs a lot of features, and its design is well thought out. A few minor niggles keep it from full marks.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★½

While I find the guitar to be a pleasant enough player, it isn’t great for my posture. And its plastic-y neck will divide opinion. It’s got a matte finish that feels pretty thick, and for those who prefer a more natural-feeling neck, this will certainly be a sticking point.

It’s a shame, really, because the neck has a nice speed-friendly profile, meaning even faster passages can feel like a hot knife through butter. Personally, I’m fine with it, but it won’t please everyone.

Posture issues affect me most. I find myself hunched over it because it’s so small, and there’s only one spot on my leg it can rest on, due to the size and shape of the treble-side frame. So it’s quite limited. It’s a standard scale-length, but it feels much more compact. From a transportability standpoint, that is a positive. From a playing point of view, I feel like Quasimodo.

Outside of that, it is a delight to play. Once I get down to it, nothing about it feels too cheap or gimmicky.

Tuning stability is very robust, especially if it’s going to travel through temperature fluctuations regularly. Its lightweight nature is a big plus, and there’s no neck dive because there’s no headstock to cause concern.

The maple fretboard is nice to touch and feels more premium than the HPL (high-pressure laminate) alternatives, especially given the neck. So that feels like a big upgrade over other current and previous models.

Most controls are on the top of the guitar, including the screen, Bluetooth, Tap Tempo/Tuner, effects block, and Value buttons and dials. Occasionally, the frame obscures the screen, so I need to crane my neck a bit, but scanning through the amps and effects and tweaking as I go is intuitive and welcoming.

The biggest downside, is how close its other controls are. The Volume/Tone knob (oddly double-stacked, but I don’t hate it) and the three-way pickup switch (which feels a little cheap) are frustratingly close. Changing pickup position on the fly becomes a game of Russian roulette, considering how many times I roll my volume off in the process. But this isn’t an issue exclusive to this guitar. Of course, Donner is trying to be clever with the limited floor space it has to play with, but this element misses for me.

On the plus side, the preset selector dial, placed alongside those two, is easy to access on the fly. That means, if I’m playing a song with a tone change (as I have done a lot with this guitar), I can even move up or down two presets without missing a beat. The fact that the Tap Tempo button is both tiny and remains on the top, though, feels far less practical.

So we have a mixed bag. Playing the guitar – and operating it for the most part – is a more positive than negative experience. It plays great, even if its diminutive size hunches me up and the neck finish is questionable. Tone tweaking is easy enough, but I wish some of the spacing and button/dial locations were a little more performance-friendly.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★

Despite packing many bells and whistles under its ice-white hood, the Hush X Pro can still be a guitar in the traditional sense. When I plug it straight into my DAW and run it through a variety of Neural DSP, Mixwave, and Universal Audio guitar plugins, I find it’s not the warmest-sounding guitar. It’s by no means bad, but the combination of its treble-forward humbuckers and the single coil in the neck means it’s more bite than cuddle.

As a guitar unto itself, it’s of a decent quality, but it’s all the gizmos that augment the pickups that really take the guitar into its own sphere.

So next, before getting into the weeds of building my own presets, I spend some time exploring the ones baked in, and the bar is higher than expected. The Fender Twin – a cleaner-than-clean tone – feels pretty faithful. It isn’t brittle, and the pickups actually feel well-rounded and higher quality than I previously thought here.

Preset B1 is another clean tone, but this time shimmering with a little chorus, and it instantly gives me Alex Lifeson vibes.

Its stock metal rhythm uses a Mesa Mark V with everything set to 12 o’clock and no effects, then injects a meatier warmth into my veins. Ironically, I feel a little more treble, and mids are needed here. But what it shows is just how different the guitar can sound from preset to preset.

Elsewhere, the Soldano SLO-100 Lead amp feels a little woolly out of the box, but with a variety of overdrive, EQ, and pickup-tweaking options, nothing that doesn’t sit in that ‘Goldilocks’ space right off the bat means it’s game over.

One exciting concept is the Tone Sim feature, which emulates different guitar sounds. If I want to jam along to different songs, I can easily go a little more Les Paul or Telecaster on the fly. It’s the kind of innovation that could, on paper at least, make this a dark horse in the studio.

What’s even greater is that there’s a Blend feature. So, if I’ve got a fat rock guitar tone and want a little Tele or Strat spank, or I want to make a clean tone sound fuller with some acoustic charm, I can dial them in to taste. Going dreadnought acoustic with a high-gain amp isn’t exactly advisable, but it isn’t the worst thing in the world, to my surprise. Mainly, I use it for subtle touches here and there and find it very effective. It’s a great feature for really getting the most out of every setting.

The effects are good enough for the most part. The fuzz is thick and Velcro-y; there are enough character differences between the overdrives to make a difference. The chorus and analogue delays are pleasing to my ear, too. The Hush X Pro is a travel guitar; it’s not built for headlining stadiums, so to my ear, it meets the bar well beyond what’s needed.

But the lo-fi delay is littered with digital artefacts, and the phaser is a real damp squib. With everything cranked, I still question whether it was even on.

Notably, with held notes, the pickups randomly conk out after around six seconds. There’s no subtle fade-out; they just stop picking up sound with a very sudden drop-off. Parisienne Walkways denied.

Verdict

Looking at the guitar for what it is meant to be, it’s very close to nailing the brief. It’s an easy-to-carry travel guitar with everything I’ll need for a practice session in a forest or a hotel room, or a jam with friends. When you're away from your main rig, the Donner Hush X Pro more than fills a void.

The quality and playability of the guitar – despite those back-aching posture issues, which are unfortunately going to be a real issue for most players – are impressive. Its bank of sounds, from its amps and effects to its nifty guitar-voice emulator, covers the basics for many genres and makes it a versatile, enjoyable experience to tweak. Many people will enjoy this.

But of course, no guitar is perfect, and such lofty ambitions are always going to come with a few niggles. Its neck finish is sure to divide; the Tone/Volume knob being so close to the pickup switch is very impractical, and the strange sustain-killing after around six seconds is a little off-putting. So is the placement of the Tap Tempo, but I understand the surface-area constraints.

MusicRadar verdict: As a purebred travel guitar, it’s certainly king of the mountain, with minor drawbacks not doing enough to take the fun out of it. Nearly every facet is smartly designed, and there are some marked improvements from previous generations. The recipe keeps getting better.

Also try

Hands-on videos

DragonForce

Matt Franceschini

Welcome to the monthly MusicRadar guitar gear roundup, where we cast an eye to the month that was and all the best that August had to bring us – the electric guitars, the amps, and the newly minted stompboxes for our ever-expanding pedalboards.

This was the month that brought us the MXR Flanger/Doubler, with the the iconic Dimebag Darrell rack unit rehoused in a compact pedal format. We also so the release of one of this year’s coolest acoustic guitars, the Epiphone Marcus King El Dorado – good luck finding an acoustic with this much vibe (that pickguard!) and LR Baggs electronics for under a thousand bucks.

Well, Martin and Joe Bonamassa might be able to help on that score, at least with the mojo. His latest signature collaboration with the brand features not one but two Martin guitars. One is a high-end 00-18, but the other is the very affordable Mexican-made 00-10E – and both arriving fresh from the shopfloor with that pre-War shade-top look.

We also saw the release of Jam Pedals’ Stu Mackenzie signature stompbox, the Tiny Amp Destroyer. Sleep Token’s first-ever signature collab arrived via Jackson and Charvel, Gretsch dropped a super-luxury Penguin, and Harley Benton expanded its beginner-friendly electric guitar lineup with the SC-Special Hybrid, a smart-looking singlecut with a P-90/humbucker pickup combo.

And of course, the digital transformation of guitar tone gathers momentum, with Line 6 expanding Helix Stadium ecosystem with a plugin, HeadRush adding native Tone3000 integration, and Neural DSP rolling out its biggest-ever update for the Quad Cortex and Quad Cortex Mini.

But there was more. And in this roundup we’ll pick out the highlights. But where to begin? Well, what about Gibson’s first baritone guitar since the early 2010s?

Gibson Victory Baritone

No one quite knew how the Victory would do when Gibson launched the redesigned doublecut in 2024, reprising a design that didn’t really make it in the ‘8os when shred-fever was at its highest. But lo, it worked. It found an audience.

Its slightly offset body shape, the glued-in neck, the six-in-line headstock; it had something about it. And having refreshed the second coming of the Victory with a Floyd Rose vibrato, Gibson now takes the Victory for a Victory lap with a 28” scale baritone, developing an all-new Alnico VIII ELEV8 humbucker for the occasion.

Again, you’ve got the compound radius fingerboard of its siblings, but a lot more low-end to play around in – and there’s a little push-pull coil-splitting for that Vinnie Bell baritone twang to complement the low-end chug.

Head to Gibson for more.

Epiphone Lzzy Hale Explorer Custom 

Let’s stick with the Gibson brands for a moment, because Lzzy Hale’s Explorer Custom just got a refresh that may or may not be visible from space, thanks to that Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle finish. You might have seen this look before. It comes fresh off her Kramer Voyager. But the Explorer wears it well.

Again, this is an Epiphone guitar hovering just under the thousand-dollar mark but jacking the spec up high. Look closely and you’ll notice the multi-ply binding on the body’s top. We have some new Epiphone Ignite humbuckers, too. And that price includes a hard-shell guitar case.

Find out more at Epiphone.

Death By Audio x Rainger FX Amp Crash

Now to the craziest stompbox we have seen this year, and how could it not be given the minds behind it? In one corner of this padded R&D cell you have Oliver Ackermann, head honcho of Death By Audio pedals. In the other, there’s David Rainger.

“David from Rainger is who I always gravitate to at any event,” said Ackermann His effects are bonkers in the best way possible.”

What they emerged with is a pedal with a built-in 3-watt amplifier complete with an onboard 2” speaker and micropone, plus reverb, chorus and echo, and it sounds nuts. Make it your number one choice for fuzzy spaced-out echos, deconstructed twang, “Feedback Inferno” and more. At $395 it ain’t cheap but sonic extremists saw the value, with initial batches sold out. More are on the way.

“When he told me he was coming to NY to work on a collaboration, it was a dream come true,” said Ackermann. “Like cities in the world, Rainger FX is Death By Audio's sister company: weird, wild, and totally extreme. Working on this project with Rainger pushed us to create something so extreme, and then we took it further.”

Yeah, no kidding.

See Death By Audio for more.

PRS Dany Villareal Astryx 

We love a new limited edition PRS signature guitar and the Astryx, a new-look Custom 24 for the Warning’s Dany Villareal is no different.

It’s mostly a cosmetic refresh but it really is stunning, with that figured maple top displaying an Ocaso (Sunset) finish that plays around with the sunburst archetype, and the birds are swapped out for some sweet signature inlays.

Find out more at PRS Guitars.

Catalinbread EG-1 Lo-Fi Delay

There are three modes on this doozy of a digital delay pedal. One emulates the analogue feel of a cassette tape, one a vintage radio unit, and the other a digital TV set. Not devices you might necessarily associate with reference-quality guitar tone but it makes perfect sense here.

You can add modulation to these giving that feeling of mechanical movement and bit-crushing, and all these sort of degradation effects that are so on-trend today, perhaps because they speak to the sounds from a more innocent era.

As a fan of Catalinbread’s sumptuous Belle Epoch tape echo emulation, this looks like a compelling new delay option, all big textures and vibes.

Find out more at Catalinbread.

Fender George Harrison 1967 Bass VI

The Bass VI is one of the strangest and most brilliant of all Fender designs, even if it might forever feel like mainstream appeal will never quite arrive.

At this price (£8,599/$9,500), this version modelled after the model the Beatles used in the studio, the Bass VI will surely remain a niche instrument but it not only presents collectors with an exceptionally well-made offset six-string bass guitar that blurs the line between guitar and bass (it is a bass but still), but a Fender history lesson too. Note the 3-Color Sunburst sunbleached to two on the instrument’s top.

It comes fitted with three custom-wound Jaguar single-coils and has a bound AAA rosewood fingerboard with block inlays, and it is as good a time machine to the late ‘60s as you could find. That tone… Not just for Beatles fans.

Find out more at Fender.

Hotone Pulze Jr

Okay, 21st-century digital amp time, with the Hotone Pulze Jr the latest to roll off the factory floor fitted with some AI superpowers.

It goes without saying that this super-compact little amp (a definite contender for your practice amp needs) sounds bigger than it looks, but it also comes with AI tone creation (voice or text) and AI track separation, and if it does not give you the ick, there are “intelligent backing tracks” you can play to sharpen up those practice sessions.

Other features include 200 presets, and the seven moveable effect modules, all of which deliver your tone in full stereo.

See Hotone for more.

Cort Exotic Series

Those bored of the spruce/mahogany acoustic guitar paradigm might like the looks of these keenly priced Cort Exotic acoustics, which pare the solid spruce top with ash burl, myrtlewood and walnut.

Cort is offering these in its SFX and Grand Auditorium cutaway models, which come stage-ready with aCort’s CE304T acoustic guitar pickup and preamp, which means you have a piezo pickup, and a 3-band EQ and onboard digital guitar tuner. Expect to pay less than 300 bucks.

Find out more at Cort Guitars.

Charvel Pro-Mod Plus DK24

Already, shred heads, here’s something that might be worth loosening the purse strings for, and you know the drill. It’s a DK24, so that means a Jackson Dinky body with a 24-fret Charvel bolt-on neck and build, and a spec that’s pretty damn metal. At least the choice of pickups suggest as much.

The dual humbucker options feature a Seymour Duncan Nazgul at the bridge, a Sentient at the neck, while the HSS version pair a Seymour Duncan Full Shred humbucker with a pair of Custom Flat Strat SSL-6 single-coils.

This is a great drop for fans of green guitars. Just check out that Floyd-equipped Cloaked Emerald Green HH model – complete with black Speed Knobs – and the Zombie Fade HSS model with the recessed Wilkinson tremolo.

Find out more at Charvel.

Blackstar adds Moises support for Beam Solo and Beam Mini

Blackstar’s compact digital amp and headphone amp was already a tech-forward proposition. You have all the effects, the amp models, and you have the Tone3000 integration, and now – as promised at NAMM 2026 – there is Moises support too. The industry leading stem separation technology is available now if you use iOS, and is coming to Android on September 30.

Download it on your app and you can isolate guitars in your favourite songs, or remove them. It’s a superb practice tool, allowing you to isolate the part you are trying to learn then play along.

Find out more at Blackstar.

Walrus Audio Canvas Expression Pedal

The most useful expression pedal ever? Possibly. We’ve got two independent outputs, which can be configured as expression, switch and CV outputs It’s fully customisable (tapers, sweeps, you name it), and can be your MIDI controller too.

Okay, $299 is not cheap but for complicated rigs it could be over-qualified performance-friendly utility pedal you’ve been waiting on.

Head over to Walrus Audio for more.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Beam Splitter v2

The sequel to the 13-knob distortion pedal promises the same madcap take on the distortion pedal. It, too, takes your signal, makes three copies of it, applies three different overdrives to it, then sends a pair of them through two individual delay lines, thus making your sound f____g humungous – the sound of one guitar turned into three.

But this is a lot more user friendly. Enter, presets, expression control over every parameter, MIDI control over everything, mono/stereo output (and trereo as OBNE call it), and switchable buffered trails or true bypass.

If you are the sole guitarist in a rock or metal band – or any band where gain is called for – the Beam Splitter could be transformative. At $379, it’s expensive. But what other pedals on the market do this?

Find out more at Old Blood Noise Endeavors.

DOD Drag Analog Delay

Is this the second coming of the Rubberneck? Well, there is a Rubberneck mode, which extends this bucket brigade delay pedal’s maximum repeat time from 750 ms to 1.5 seconds. And it’s got self-oscillation at its extremes.

With Delay Time, Repeats and Level controls, it might present itself as a straightforward analogue delay, but those mini-dials for Drift and Friction add modulation and a time-warp feature for pitch-shifting repeats and all kinds of strange temporal anomalies. And strange is good.

Find our more at DOD/Digitech.

JHS Pedals AT Mini

JHS Pedals shrinks down Andy Timmons’ signature overdrive pedal and does so with a minimum of compromise. Literally, the only thing that is different is that the wattage switch has gone, with this AT Mini set at Timmons’ 100-watt setting at all times, and we don’t have the footswitchable boost.

But otherwise it’s the same circuit, with Volume and Drive doing their thing alongside an Air control that behaves like presence on an amp, and an EQ dial for a high-pass filter that brightens or darkens your tone.

And there you go: red-hot amp-in-a-box drive tones in a mini pedal format, for just $129 and you can buy the full-fat version for $219 if you really want the boost and alt-wattage settings. Lovely.

See JHS Pedals for more.

Guitar Center and Eric Clapton have teamed up once more for an exclusive collection featuring limited edition electric and acoustic guitars from Martin, Fender, and PRS – plus a special signature set of electric guitar strings from Ernie Ball.

This long-standing collaboration supports the Crossroads Centre, in Antigua, with a portion from each sale going to support the addiction recovery unit. And there are some special guitars in the lineup. Special? Clapton prefers “sacred”.

“Music has always been my most reliable source of inspiration, or salvation,” said Eric Clapton. “These guitars are sacred things to me.”

He might have a point. The Blind Faith Telecaster fits that description, and here it is makes a welcome return. So-called after the hybrid Telecaster with the Stratocaster neck that Clapton played with the short-lived supergroup, it was last released in 2019, a Custom Shop dream machine made by Fender Master Builder Todd Krause, marking the 50th anniversary of the band that only existed in 1969.

This one does not have the aged lacquer on the neck like its predecessor but it is replete with Custom Shop detail, right down to the slight gap in the neck pocket.

Clapton put this guitar together on his kitchen table, swapping out the original Tele neck for a Strat neck, he took it out with Cream. But then decided to take the neck off of his Brownie Strat, that soft-V profile just perfect for this Tele. The Strat’s neck is a smidge thinner, hence the gap.

This comes fitted with a pair of Alnico 2 ’63 Telecaster pickups. You’ll find the ashtray bridge cover in the guitar case, plus instructions on how to return it to ‘50s wiring. It’s amazing, and there are only 130 of them, each priced $4,999.

Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Guitar Center spoke of the gear retail giant’s long-standing support for the Crossroads Festival and the addiction support centre it helps fund.

“For more than two decades, we’ve partnered with Eric Clapton and the Crossroads organisation to create iconic instruments, with powerful stories behind them, and put them in musicians’ hands,” says Dalporto. “The 2026 Crossroads Guitar Collection continues that tradition, with every one sold supporting a cause Eric has championed for decades.”

Think of Clapton and you think Martin guitars, and this year’s collection does not disappoint – not least because, at $1,899, the Martin 000-13E Eric Clapton represents a more affordable option, and a very nice guitar it is too, with its 24.9” scale, the Golden Era 42-style snowflake inlays on ebony, Slowhand’s signature on the fingerboard.

It has a solid spruce top, Ziricote fine veneer on the back and sides, and lots of MTV Unplugged mojo.

At $9,699, the Martin Custom Shop 000-42 Eric Clapton Ziricote is the first of his signature Martins to be made from ziricote. It looks incredible with that shade top 1935 Sunburst finish. Brand-new pre-War stylings for the serious player.

Last but by no means least, we have Martin making a withdrawal from its premium tonewood bank, putting together a $24,999 000-42 with Brazilian rosewood on the back and sides. It does not get any better. They’re only making five of these, for obvious reasons. Clapton has signed the soundhole label and the COA, and this, well, this is the ultimate Clapton acoustic. “See if you can spot this one… [plays Layla].”

John Mayer is among the special guests at this year’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, which takes place over the weekend of September 26 to 27 and also features the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Julian Lage, Joe Bonamassa, Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons… The lineup is incredible.

When you see Mayer take the stage he might possibly be sporting this new-look PRS Silver Sky in Incline Blue. This augments the traditional birds inlay with the Crossroads logo at the 12th fret. It has a commemorative neck plate, too. PRS has only made 70 of them and they’re priced $3,750.

And if you’re not in the market for a new guitar, that’s okay, too, because Ernie Ball has got in on the action with Clapton signature packs for that Stratocaster (or Tele/Strat hybrid, SG, Les Paul etc) in your life, gauges 10-46 as per Slowhand’s preferences, three sets in a tin for $29.

These are all available from Guitar Center and historically all of these limited run guitars sell out in no time. Head over to Guitar Center for more.

This was always going to be something completely different – Sleep Token guitarist IV, and bassist III, working in collaboration with Jackson and Charvel on a signature guitar and bass.

This is their first-ever signature models. The masked and numbered enigmas were never going to just pick something out of the catalogue then slap a signature on it.

But even so, these are pretty darn radical, with IV and Jackson cooking up a Pro Plus Series Monarkh that is tuned down a whole octave, has an EverTune bridge with custom saddles to accommodate this madness, and an extended 30” scale.

And that’s just the half it – wait till you see the pale moon ebony fingerboard, or that headstock shape for that matter. It's all kinds of radical, a true 21-st century metal guitar.

The Charvel Sleep Token III Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Bass V might have a little bit more of what you’d call a classic silhouette – it has the licensed Stratocaster headstock, albeit reversed – and yet with it’s 34.4” to 35.5” multi-scale design, the caramelised maple neck and the custom-voiced Fishman Fluence Bass pickups with 2-band EQ and, y’know, the question mark inlay on the fingerboard. It’s like something the Riddler might play.

Needless to say, these will offer something quite different from your typical built-for-metal high-performance electric.

Justin Norvell, chief product officer, at Fender, who owns both Jackson and Charvel, says they are purpose-built for Sleep Token’s sound – a sound that booby traps celestial electronic pop arrangements with over-sized djent-muscle riffs.

“Sleep Token’s sonic and visual identity is so distinctive, and the Jackson and Charvel signature models are a huge part of shaping that sound,” says Norvell. “These instruments let players tap directly into that tone… We’re always looking for artists who redefine what a signature instrument can be, and Sleep Token does exactly that.”

There are some familiar elements to these guitars. The Pro Plus build and specs are evident on IV’s Monarkh, from the Luminlay side markers to the stainless steel jumbo frets, the truss rod adjustment wheel nested at the top of the fretboard and so forth.

It has a bound mahogany body, its chunky singlecut profile topped with a quilted-maple veneer and the three-piece set neck carved from caramelised maple. It all makes for one of the strangest electric guitars we’ve played this year.

It might be built primarily for low-end work but it has the compound radius fingerboard to invite some lower-register shred. It sounds monstrous, those Fishman Fluence humbuckers doing the business.

Obviously, the appeal is there for Sleep Token fans – and the aesthetics might put some off – but it would be interesting to hear what some extreme metal players would do with with in the studio. It could be the doom metal Excalibur the world has been waiting for.

As for the Charvel bass, we have a poplar body, a bolt-on construction, and it too has the Luminlay side markers and 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard found on most instruments from Fender’s high-performance brands – Charvel, EVH Gear and Jackson.

There are heaps of tone options here, with each pickup offering a trio of modes from a toggle switch.

You can watch IV and III demo these instruments above. Just don’t expect them to do much talking. They’re not much for conversation.

The Monarkh will set you back £1,949/$2,199, while the Charvel five-string bass is priced £1,399/$1,699.

Head over to Jackson and Charvel for more details.

Harley Benton has rolled out a new range of cheap electric guitars that come with a $195 price tag but with their single-cut shape, plain colour tops and P-90/humbucker pairing, they’re making us thinking of something a little more upscale.

Just take a look at these SC-Special Hybrids at the top of the page. Then close your eyes and think of the most dreamiest of dream guitars on the high-end electric guitar market…

That’s right, while most budget models tend to draw inspiration from the archetypes – riffing on Les Pauls, ES-335s, Telecasters, Stratocasters and all that jazz – Harley Benton is coming out with something that makes us first think of Nik Huber’s venerable Krautster II, a guitar you’d pay north of three grand for. And okay, there's a little bit (a lot) of Les Paul Junior/Special inspiration in Huber's Krautster II design but let's not split hairs.

Of course, the price reflects the vast quality differential but still, we dig these. The SC-Special Hybrid has a neat look with that cropped pickguard against a solid colour top, the back and sides left natural – especially with that single-ply binding tying it all together.

The P-90 at the neck and humbucker at the bridge, might just be one of the best electric guitar pickup combinations you could get (here Harley Benton has used its Isola pickups, the VT-500CR Alnico V ‘bucker and CL-P90 single-coil).

These are controlled by volume and tone pots. Selected by a shoulder-mounted three-way switch. And that glued-in neck joint looks like it will be very forthcoming when it comes to access to the upper frets.

The body is solid okoume. The neck is medium-roasted Canadian maple. As with most beginner-priced guitars, this has a mainstream C profile, and sounds like it’ll be fairly accommodating, measuring 20mm at the 1st fret, 23mm at the 12th.

The general dimensions are Gibson-esque, with a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard (dot inlays further hint at the Junior/Special inspiration) and the 24.72” scale.

That wraparound tailpiece looks nice and tidy – the kind of hardware you’d expect on a rock ’n’ roll machine.

There’s also a set of Kluson-style Harley Benton-branded locking tuners.

You colour options comprise Vintage White Satin, Smoke Black Satin, Sherwood Green Metallic Satin and Maya Gold Satin. Looking at these models, Vintage White Satin takes home the Palme d’Or but they all look pretty sweet.

The SC-Special Hybrid is available now. Head over to Harley Benton for more, or indeed straight on over to Thomann.

Gretsch releasing a limited edition Penguin is always something to write home about – maybe also an occasion to check the bank account – and this summer’s release is no different.

This one dresses the classic singlecut electric guitar in Pale Blue Pearl and gives it a host of top-tier appointments that speak to the brand’s history.

The G6134T-58 is the kind of guitar that will look good in any lighting but we can’t help thinking how it might look in the spotlight, with that pearlescent top and the silver sparkle binding the kind of aesthetic largesse that pretty much only Gretsch guitars can get away with.

They have the golden era class to pull them off (revious limited run Penguins have given the singlecut a paisley finish with a gold edge burst, Champagne Sparkle, or with a quilted maple top).

Gretsch signature flourishes abound. This has the classic chambered mahogany body with a maple arch top. Be glad of that chambering because there is a Bigsby B3GP string-through vibrato tailpiece, and that can put the weight on (expect this to weigh between the 8 and 9lb mark).

There’s a glued-in mahogany neck with a Standard U profile. We have the 24.6” scale length, the Space Control bridge with its pinned-ebony base, mother of pearl Neo Classic thumbnail inlays on a 12” radius ebony fingerboard. This being a Japanese-made Professional Series instrument, you can bet the build will be tip-top.

But once you get over that finish and just how good it looks, it’s probably the pickups that are the star of the show. Gretsch has fitted this with a pair of TV Jones Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity Filter’Tron pickups, which are made to Butts’ original specifications and sound…

Well, they sound ridiculously good whenever we have heard them – and Jason Harris gets them to sing in the official Gretsch demo video.

These are the kind of pickups many of us wish we had in our Gretsches but you can’t simply buy these for an Electromatic or Streamliner and drop them in. The bridge ‘bucker has a DCR reading of 4.2K, the neck a reading of 3.8K. They sound like a TV Classic but have a tighter low end and you’ll find more detail in the high-frequencies.

This guitar does not come cheap. It’ll set you back £3,699/$3,799 street. But that price includes a hard-shell guitar case – and one of the coolest guitars we have seen this year so far. Just add a nice tube combo and you’re good to go.

See Gretsch for more details.

What is it?

High-quality, low-priced electric guitars are a dime a dozen these days. That’s a great thing for both novice players and those looking to expand their collection without having to smash open the piggy bank.

Thomann-owned Harley Benton has found itself at the top of the tree when it comes to offering a lot of bang for very little buck, and its latest, modern-minded T-types are very much a case in point. From roasted flamed maple necks to locking tuners and glow-in-the-dark side markers, its spec sheet is generous for a sub-$500 axe.

But times, as Bob Dylan once said, are a-changing. Access to factories and materials is increasing, helping to drive down prices while simultaneously ramping up specs. And the more budget brands on offer – Sire is one of the brands proving a bit of a dark horse here – the more weight firms throw at their cheapest models. This iteration of its successful Suhr-inspired Fusion series is one such beneficiary as Harley Benton bids to remain ahead of the curve.

It sports a nyatoh body, the aforementioned roasted flame maple neck, and a rosewood fingerboard adorned with 24 frets. Its neck is billed as having a modern C-profile, a 12”–16” fretboard radius, and a Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut.

The electronics are also modern-minded, with two gold-covered Tesla Opus humbuckers, one Volume, one Tone control, an Alter mini-switch for a variety of coil combo sounds, and a five-way pickup switch.

Other specs include a Babicz Z-Series FCH hardtail bridge and a heel-mounted truss rod wheel. It’s well appointed, but does it outgun the other guitars at its price point?

Specs

• Launch price: £385 / $433 / €449
  Made: Indonesia
  Type: Six-string electric guitar
  Body: Nyatoh
  Neck: Roasted Canadian flamed maple, C-profile
  Fingerboard: Rosewood, circle dot inlays, glow-in-the-dark side dots, 305mm - 406mm (12" - 16") compound radius
  Scale length: 648mm (25.5")
  Nut/width: Graph Tech TUSQ XL, 42mm (1.65")
  Frets: 24, medium jumbo Blacksmith stainless steel
  Hardware: gold Babicz Z-Serie FCH fixed hardtail bridge, Jinho JN-07 staggered locking tuners
  String spacing at bridge: 52mm
  Electrics: Tesla Opus-1B and Opus-1N Alnico 5 humbuckers, five-way switch, mini Alter switch; 1x volume control, 1x tone controls
  Weight: 7.01lbs/3.18kg
  Options: including EMG pickup model in Satin Black, White Metallic with Babicz tremolo
  Left-handed options: including Flame Bengal Burst, Satin Gold (with Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series C tremolo), Black Metallic Gloss with maple fingerboard, EMG pickup model in Matte Black
  Finishes: options for hardtail include Purple Metallic (as reviewed), Quilt Black Burst Gloss with maple fingerboard, Flame Bengal Burst, Black Metallic Gloss, Satin Grey with maple fingerboard
  Case: Not included
  Contact: Harley Benton

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

In a world littered with T-type copyists, it’s interesting to see Harley Benton colouring outside the traditional lines here and looking to brands like Suhr and Ibanez with its Fusion design. The Purple Metallic colourway, paired with the gold hardware, gives it a regal, premium look, but it also brings to mind Lari Basilio's LB1 Ibanez signature.

The Volume and Tone controls sit in tidy little grooves, and the embossed headstock logo makes it feel more like a premium player than a budget build. Everything fits snugly. It’s very well put together.

There are contours galore too, with the cut around the back of the treble horn, and the slick neck heel cut itself showing a level of detail I’m not used to at this budget.

This guitar has been living in and out of my office during a heat wave during some of the testing, with temperatures reaching 35°C on multiple days, and my office is small. It gets hot very quickly. Yet most of the time I’ve picked up this guitar, its tuning has remained pretty consistent.

A closer look at the bridge, which ditches the traditional ashtray approach, does a lot to instil confidence; this isn’t an own-brand pale imitation of a hardtail; it’s a branded and well-thought-out design.

Most notably, the eCAM system, which replaces small-screw saddles with a rotating cam-shaped design, endeavours to eliminate unwanted gaps between the bottom of the saddle and the top of the bridge plate, thereby improving sustain. As far as functionality and feel are concerned, it’s hard to fault it.

For my money, this Fusion-T II's weight is in that happy midpoint between being back-breakingly heavy and so light it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a guitar. Simply, it feels pretty good slung over my shoulder

I don't think the circle dot are a good design choice from a practical perspective. They’re quite subtle, which goes against what they’re on the guitar for. Thankfully, the glow-in-the-dark side dots are big enough to land a plane on.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★½

The biggest surprise for me is that, contrary to its outward appearance as a modern machine, this Fusion-T II's neck is far thicker than I expected. It’s less shredder/session guitar and more old-school Fender.

Using digital callipers, I measured the neck thickness at the first and 12th frets to be 23mm and 23.3mm, respectively. That's thicker than the 21mm billed at the first fret in the official specs. It also comes in thicker than my Squier Classic Vibe baritone Telecaster (23mm and 23mm) and my Charvel Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 2 24 HH HT CM (20mm and 21mm). It absolutely impacts the playability for me. I found the beefy neck needs to be fought with a little, and it definitely slows me down when I’m playing leads.

The guitar ships with 10-46 gauge Harley Benton HQS EL Coated, which feel quite tight, especially on the higher strings, when in standard tuning. I’d be tempted to try 9s or 9.5s to make bends a little easier. These two features conspire to make playing the guitar a little less forgiving than anticipated for me.

The frets have been finely filed, and the arm contour really thins out the guitar body at the point of contact with my arm. That makes it perfectly comfortable to play, but I’m not sure the Alter switch is in the best place. It feels a little inaccessible to use on the fly, positioned as it is between the two control dials.

Placing it on the bass-side horn like a Les Paul, or offsetting it away from the dials, would have meant I didn’t feel I had to skirt around the outside of the Volume dial or over it to get to it. This is a switch I’ll use in the moment when gigging. Getting to it quickly is vital.

It’s worth mentioning that simplicity in design has paid off elsewhere. With a hardtail bridge and no tremolo bar, there are fewer things to go wrong and negatively affect tuning stability. That’s a smart option for a range with plenty of trem options elsewhere.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Starting with mid-gain Neural DSP plugin amp models to test the sounds, the pink amp on Tim Henson X (based on a Marshall JCM 800) quickly highlights how well-balanced the Fusion-T II's pickups are. There’s plenty of warm, roundness to the lower notes in the bridge position, with the higher octaves not too sharp or fluffy. Digging in, I can get a decent amount of grit and growl, with the guitar holding together so that, when I do, it doesn’t slip out of tune.

Position four thins out the tone, but not to the point of grating brittleness, while the middle pickup does everything it needs to do in providing a clean tone that’s neither too thick nor too thin, and, paired with the Henson plugin's Black amp, does a very impressive steel-string acoustic impression. I did, however, find position two to be a little nasal and generally underwhelming.

Which brings us nicely onto Harley Benton’s party trick: the Alter switch. If I’m honest, I was surprised it went for a five-way switch and the Alter switch. Often, it’s a three-way switch and a mini-switch for coil-split single-coil sounds, so it’s gone the extra mile here. It says the switch doubles the guitar’s total configurations, affecting all five positions, but, more intriguingly, it talks a big game about its “ghost tone”.

This isn’t just a switch in place of a split coil; it delivers “a hybrid tone which blends the warm bass of a humbucker with the bright bite of a single coil and takes on a spectral quality for ghostly playing.”

To me, that sounds like PR gobbledegook. These "Ghost Coil" split modes add partial coil blending in the five Alter-on switch positions, while retaining hum cancellation. Position five becomes a little snappier without draining it of low-end warmth completely. But nothing feels "ghostly" here to me, and the difference it makes feels too subtle elsewhere.

Engaging the switch in position four certainly makes it bite like a traditional single-coil Tele, but from a practicality point of view, going from position five and engaging the Alter switch in one fell swoop isn’t easy to do while playing a riff. I dare say Harley Benton is trying to be too clever for its own good here. I’d have been very happy with a three-way switch and a push/pull coil split.

That being said, I am really impressed with how responsive the Tesla pickups are to Volume control adjustments: in the middle position, with the Alter switch engaged and the Volume rolled back, it’s got a really slinky, sparkly quality that is very satisfying.

Elsewhere, the Fusion-T II can handle metal to a point, but has an innate snarl that’s a little much for my ears; it needs the edges sanded down with a bit of EQ. But with dry-as-a-bone tones - tested through the Henson plugin’s acoustic amp, Universal Audio’s Showtime ’64, and some black panel Fender amp models found on the Mooer GE15 Pro Li- there’s balance, clarity, and a really nice-to-the-ear sound.

Often with more budget-skewed ‘buckers, it’s these moments where their imperfections show themselves, but the Tesla pair pass the test with flying colours.

Verdict

This is a difficult guitar to put a review score on; if a four-star rating feels a little generous in light of the Alter switch and a surprisingly beefy neck that feels out of place with the style of this guitar, a 3.5-star review wouldn’t do it justice. This Fusion-T II is well-built, spec'd to the teeth, and holds up tonally. Yet the neck is too fat for its modern C-profile: billing, the Alter switch doesn’t do enough for me to warrant regular use, and overall, it feels nearly-but-not-quite.

If you find a thicker neck to be an attraction, the rest of the positives are plentiful; its looks are standout, the attention to detail in its build, from its contours to its hardware, goes against the current of its price, and its tuning stability is mightily reassuring.

But the neck makes it harder to play than its specs suggest, and as good as the pickups are, they aren’t a great option for heavier sounds to my ears. The strengths are still significant here, though.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Harley Benton

• Best affordable electric guitars

What is it?

Harley Benton's Aged Series is a work two years in the making, and as such, the guitar brand calls it the "most ambitious series yet."

I understand this claim. There's a choice of five different models, with 20 overall products, fitted with aged hardware and hand-worn finishes.

They may look old, but these guitars are new for Harley Benton with Isola pickups. They also have American alder bodies and caramelised Canadian maple for the neck and (in this case) fingerboard.

Importantly, if you're not looking for a very aged look, each model comes in either a light aged (LA) or heavy aged (HA) finish - although the fingerboard and finish combinations are preset and vary across the models.

The Stratocaster, Telecaster and Jazzmaster-style guitars, specifically, are intensified by the backdrop of the legal dispute between brands like Thomann (the owner of Harley Benton) and Fender over who is allowed to use that iconic shape and styling.

However, what could appear as a timely, punky middle finger to the brand behind some of the most iconic guitars in the world has actually been in the works for a couple of years.

The ST-62LA sports a very classic Strat look and setup, with three single coil pickups, a single cutaway body, and a chunky headstock similar to the Strats of the 1950s, except a little less pronounced.

The model I've got my mitts on is the Black ST-62LA, which is a Light Aged variant, and its relicing is hand-applied. The intention being to mimic what decades of playing would actually do to a guitar.

It's an almost wildly low price for a brand new, aged guitar, and one might wonder about the potential ripple effects of this launch on the guitar industry if it proves popular. I spent a few weeks with the guitar to find out if it lives up to the story and the look. Here's how it went.

Specs

• Price: $238 | £214 | €249
• Type: Six-string solid-body single-cut electric guitar
• Body: American alder
• Neck: Caramelised Canadian maple, C-shape
• Fingerboard material: Caramelized Canadian maple
• Fingerboard radius: 305mm (12")
• Scale length: 648mm (25,5")
• Nut/width: graphite / 42mm
• Frets: 22 silver nickel medium jumbo frets
• Hardware: Kluson-style tuners, six-point tremolo system bridge, 3-ply white pickguard
• String spacing at bridge: 50 mm
• Electrics: Three Isola VT-ST Alnico 5 single coil pickups, one volume and two tone controls, 5-way switch
• Weight: 6.8lb / 3.1kg
• Options: Heavy Aged or Light Aged
• Left-handed options: N/A
• Finishes: Sunburst or Black (both polyurethane)
• Case: N/A
• Contact: Harley Benton

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

To be perfectly honest, I'm not fully in on the artificially aged trend. I prefer to earn the knocks, chips and bumps in battle or while clumsily shredding in my bedroom, so letting someone else do it for me, and then getting me to pay extra for the privilege has never quite sat right with me.

But the light ageing on my review model of the ST-62LA is, dare I say, tasteful. Paint has come off on the body where you'd traditionally place your arm or pop it on your leg, the fretboard lacquer is worn down where you'd land your fingers for a typical D major chord, and the pickups are tinted yellow.

The rest of the fretboard is near brand new, and so is the headstock, but the contrast of new and old certainly doesn't look ugly to my eyes, even though it's not super 'authentic'.

I do think the white and almost orange ageing on the pickguard looks a little artificial, but everything else looks impressive, from the Kluson-style tuners and the aged output jack. The Black model I've got my hands on is a little bit of a beauty, and one I can't help but pick up every time I walk by it.

Under my fingers, it's smooth, with no friction, though I did find the fret ends to be not totally uniform. In particular, if I slide up on the bottom string between around the fifth and the seventh fret, I can feel the edge of the fret. It's not quite sharp, but I wouldn't say it's smooth either.

I feel the same issues on the top end when I'm playing attempting Hendrix- or Mayer-style thumbed chords. If I choose to move that chord shape, thumb and all, I can feel just a little too much of the fret.

The finish is polyurethane, which can largely be expected for the price, and it does give the guitar a bit of a plasticky feeling, but that does make its finish more durable. So, depending on your priorities, this (plus the price difference) could be a worthwhile trade-off.

I found no dead notes (you'd expect as such but still), and though there is some buzz on the B string, that doesn't come through when plugged in. It's just a minor annoyance while unplugged.

At just 3 kg, this Harley Benton is light to hold, and well balanced too. Left on the strap, the neck doesn't dive down, which is a huge boon for long playing sessions while stood up. It also doesn't feel weak in the process. It's the type of guitar I wouldn't mind throwing in a bag and bringing with me to a gig, and what's an extra knock on an aged guitar, anyway?

One thing that does stand out about the ST-62LA is that it has stellar specs for the price. You are getting an American alder body, which is traditionally saved for higher-priced guitars. Similarly, the Caramelised Canadian Maple fingerboard punches above its budget weight, and nicely aged hardware all add to this.

It tops that all off with a surprisingly killer aesthetic that is downright tasteful as far as faux-reliced guitars go.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

While its look often makes me want to pick it up, there's plenty of reason to keep playing because the neck is surprisingly great. It's ultra smooth and clean, and comfortable in the palm. The action is quite low too, which makes fast clean riffs easy to hit. With my finger on the 1st fret, I measured just north of 1.5 mm on the twelfth fret.

Interestingly, the relicing doesn't go past the fifth fret or so, and I suspect thirty years of me playing a guitar would end up in substantially more wear past this point. I do feel that the noticeable fret ends do cut some of that playability, but it's still a very nice guitar to just jam away on.

Playing this guitar makes you realise just how much better budget guitars have become, in regard to feel. Unplugged, jamming on my sofa, the ST-62LA doesn't feel a million miles away from a much more expensive guitar, other than maybe the feel of the poly on my elbow.

Perhaps a testament to both neck feel and a sturdy body, but there are no issues thrashing chords and playing the strings my hardest. That feels like an absolutely necessary use case for guitar, the catharsis of just throwing it at some distortion and making a wall of sound, and it handles it well.

Intonation is perfect here too, so I feel comfortable getting high up on the guitar as I play. It holds tuning decently, though loses it quicker than my PRS SE CE 24 and Fender '72 Telecaster Deluxe. I do find tuning tends to go off at around the same rate.

If you are worried about losing tuning, you may be put you off using the tremolo bar too much, and the stiffness of the bar will only contribute to that feeling. You really have to yank it to drastically change the pitch, and I'm still not comfortable applying that amount of pressure.

Out of the box, it is an impressively playable guitar but one that could benefit from some fine-tuning and perhaps a setup to sort out the fret edges, buzz and stiff tremolo bar.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Coming with three single coil pickups, the ST-62LA has a very typical S-type setup. The Isola VT-ST-N Alnico 5 neck pickup is heavier on the bass, accompanied by a bit of warmth, which is fitting for full underlying rhythm playing, where the bridge pickup is bright, almost jangly and high in treble.

The middle pickup, an Isola VT-ST-M, is intended to bridge the gap between the two. There is a volume difference between the bridge and neck pickup (with the second being louder), but this is something that could be adjusted very easily.

On the whole, I'm rather impressed with the Isolas for the price. Plugged into my Fender Mustang LT25, it can handle sharp, syncopated mathy chords with a light overdrive, or clean delay riffs like a champ.

Bridge pickups, especially more budget-oriented ones, can add a bit of harshness in the high-end, especially for solos and other flashy riffs above the 12th fret, but Harley Benton has good ones in my test model, being bright without being too piercing.

I found myself much preferring the slightly twangy bridge pickup, especially when throwing sharp attack at the strings. The neck pickup does add some fullness but also sounds a tad more muffled. I wouldn't call it bad, per se, but I do like it less. On singular notes, the neck pickup is as clear and bassy as you might want, but with jangly chords or sharp arpeggios, it can lose some clarity, and the low end can overpower.

These Alnico V pickups offer a higher output in exchange for a reduced dynamic range, which means they aren't quite 'vintage' in approach. All three pickups take to punchy sounds well (as one might expect from Alnico V), but that neck pickup struggles somewhat with intricate guitar work as the bass tones tend to drown out the rest.

That can be tweaked with the neck tone knob, and I tend to prefer it cranked to around 7 or 9, to allow the high end of its register to sing through.

As such, the tone knob for the middle pickup is my favourite to use. I find there to be a solid range of sound worth using here, whereas the neck pickup seems more limited. The first four or so layers of the neck tone knob cut away at so much of the already pretty lacking high end that I found them often not worth using.

Interestingly, with only two tone knobs (for the neck and middle pickup), there's no way to control the bridge pickup without going into the EQ of the amp or DAW you use, or throwing some sort of EQ pedal at it.

Swapping over to my DAW of choice (Logic Pro), I set the guitar on a whole pile of amp presets via the Neural Amp modeller, with it taking particularly well to a 1977 Fender Super Reverb. I also found ferocious tone in the Full Rig Peavey 5150 + Mesa 4x12, but it can get a bit messy, especially in the silence in between notes. That's a common single coil hindrance, though.

Where this Harley Benton shines particularly is in twangy country, blues, and rock and roll, thanks to an assortment of bright pickups.

I would, however, advise bringing down the tone knob just a smidge if you are throwing something very heavy and loud, as its brightness can punch through distortion in a way that can almost pierce.

But no matter which pickup you use and in which position, the ST-62LA is bright. And to me that's part of its charm. Overall, it's a solid set of sounds that mimics the more expensive Strat well, and though it won't convince you it's a much more expensive guitar, it certainly doesn't sound as cheap as it is.

Verdict

The ST-62LA is surprisingly well built, but lacking the final touches I would otherwise want, like smooth fret ends and an easy-to-use tremolo bar. And I much prefer the sound of its neck pickup to its bridge one. Still, it feels great to play, has a tone that outpaces its very modest price, and it looks great.

Though I don't think the relicing is perfectly consistent, I do think it looks pretty great, and I don't know how much I care about 'fooling' someone into believing my Harley Benton is actually from the '60s.

Still, despite some QC issues, when I'm throwing riffs at it on that bridge pickup, I'm getting a truly great experience for the money, and one that I would have expected to pay much more for. It's clear that Harley Benton knows how to make a good guitar, and you feel it instantly.

Still, one might expect that if they're paying little for guitars, they might require some setting up, and the ST-62LA's blemishes don't totally dull the shine of everything else. If you're in need of a cheap relic'd guitar, I simply can't think of another option out there for the price, other than the other aged guitars that Harley Benton has launched beside it.

My review model has some annoyances and blemishes, but the overall package sounds good, feels lovely to play, and most importantly, looks the part. I'm particularly fond of its bright, jangly neck pickup, and combined with the smooth neck, feel like I could jam away on it all day.

MusicRadar verdict: If you're looking for a budget aged guitar, there is really nothing like the ST-62LA out there at this price. It's helped by materials that would traditionally accompany much more expensive guitars (like the alder body) and fantastic neck. It offers a great fast-track, tweakable platform for an aged guitar at an accessible price point.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Harley Benton

• Best Harley Benton guitars 2025: Cheap and reliable electric and acoustic models

Fender has given the American Vintage II series a fresh lick of paint, adding seven new finish options to its most popular electric guitars.

The American Vintage II lineup is where Fender endeavours to move beyond the “period-correct” build to create something more exacting, hence why all the models in the range have a specific year in their designation. Over the years we have seen transitional models such as a 1951 Telecaster finished in Prototype White (a real OG option) and the 1965 Stratocaster, which was made available in Shoreline Gold, Candy Apple Red and Sonic Blue.

Well, here is more of the same, with seven new options for seven classic models. It’s the Telecaster’s 75th Anniversary, so maybe we should start with the Teles, and there are three here, with the 1963 Telecaster now offered in Vintage Blonde with a rosewood fingerboard, a 1972 Telecaster Thinline that really pulls focus in Candy Apple Red with a maple ‘board, and a 1975 Telecaster Deluxe in Vintage Blonde with rosewood.

The latter was a game-changer for the Telecaster, with its dual-humbucker configuration a response to a burgeoning rock scene. Everybody wanted humbuckers. Fender obliged. And here we have a pair of Wide Range CuNiFe ‘buckers at the bridge and neck. The 1977 Tele Custom then offered the best of both worlds with the Tele single-coil at the bridge, the Wide Range ‘bucker at the neck.

This one comes refreshed in 3-Color Sunburst. Like the ’75, it has the bullet-style truss-rod nut.

This launch sees the 1973 Stratocaster offered in Olympic White with a rosewood fingerboard, while the 1961 Strat is arguably the pick of the litter with its Surf Green paint job and rosewood fingerboard.

It has all the appointments of the era; the slab rosewood fingerboard with the 7.25” radius, the synchronized tremolo with cold-rolled steel block and bent steel saddles, the clay dot inlays on the fingerboard. Note the aged white pickup covers and pickguard.

That said. MusicRadar was lucky enough to spend some time with the ’63 Tele in Vintage Blonde and it is quite something.

Finally, we have a 1966 Jazz Bass in Lake Placid Blue, featuring the U profile neck, the white neck binding that added a little class to the build, and the painted headstock and tortoiseshell pickguard.

These new models are available now, with prices starting from £2,399/$2,499 (including a hard-shell guitar case).

All of these have been given nitro finishes, and you can browse all colours and finishes over at Fender.

What is it?

Sire might not be the most glamorous name in the guitar market, but when jazz legend and long-time Gibson endorser Larry Carlton ended his relationship with the firm to team up with Sire, it proved a match made in heaven. Together, they recreated the Gibson ES-335 he used to track hits with Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell, and kick-start a relationship that is showing no signs of slowing down.

Carlton believes that the Sire guitars he helps produce can stand up to anything in Fender’s Squier line, and with models like this priced similarly, it’s easy to see why he’s made such a comparison. The X1, in turn, is less jazz rock and far more heavy metal, with a subtly pointed visage for its mahogany body, twin Sire Basic humbuckers with a push/pull coil split, and a two-point tremolo bridge with whammy bar ensuring it’s dressed for the job.

This end of the Sire line may be aimed largely at beginner players, but the collaboration also appeals to modern players looking to expand their collection, be it as an affordable backup, a runaround, or perhaps even as a modding platform. And all the baked-in specs could lend it to that. There’s a C-shaped hard maple neck and rosewood fingerboard with rolled edges and a 14”, serving up a generous 24 frets.

For $299, there, on paper at least, it looks decent value. Players may not look overly kindly on the concept of a jazz great adding his name to a metal-leaning S-type, and for others, the low price point might not instill a lot of confidence, but I'm diving in here with an open mind.

Specs

• Price: $299 | £249 | €283
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Indonesian Mahogany
• Neck: Hard maple, C-shape
• Fingerboard material/radius: Rosewood with rolled edges, 14"
• Scale length: 25.5” / 647.7mm
• Nut/width: PPS (Plastic), 43mm
• Frets: 2.7 mm Medium Jumbo
• Hardware: Sire Basic tremolo, Sire Basic diecast tuners, whammy bar
• String spacing at bridge: 157mm
• Electrics: Sire Basic humbuckers, 1x Volume, 1x Tone control with push/pull split coil, and three-way pickup switch
• Weight: lb/kg: 9.2lb / 4.2kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Satin Dark Navy, Satin Black, Satin Charcoal Metallic, Satin White
• Case: None
• Contact: Sire

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★½

Unfortunately, the guitar hadn’t been out of the box for more than five minutes when the switch tip came clean off – it clearly hadn’t been glued in. But thankfully, that didn’t wholly foreshadow what was to come.

This review example's mahogany body is Les Paul-level weighty, which is a mark against its beginner-friendliness, but otherwise, the build quality is fairly high. The neck is nicely finished, and, while not being anorexically thin, isn’t Les Paul-fat, either, with its contours and fret access as good as I could have hoped for considering its price.

That being said, there are times when the guitar reminds me that it’s right at the budget end, with its tuners and plastic nut making tuning stability average at best during testing, and the bridge can have an almost slap-back delay-type quality to it, especially when I really dig in as the springs in the back rattle like a freight train. It’s a little off-putting.

The weight does at least counter any potential neck dive issues, and the coil split is a really pleasant surprise at this price point to help get the most out of its pickups (more on those below). If this is to be a beginner’s guitar, it’ll teach players about the differences between single-coil-esque and humbucking pickup sounds.

Charvel’s new budget Tele disappointed me with its heavy gloss finish. Those finishes, to my eye, are not only a magnet for dust, but also scream “I’m cheap,” and so the Charcoal Metallic Satin finish here is more aesthetically pleasing to me. It feels premium, and while some may feel it’s a little bland, I think it looks really smart. Plus, there’s a Dark Navy Satin colourway option for those who want something a little more eye-catching.

The Charvel and a cluster of Harley Benton models benefit from the new-standard heel-mounted truss rod wheel, but the Sire and most others at this price – we’re talking the Squier Affinity series, Ibanez Gios, and the Jackson JS Series Dinky JS11 – have the more traditional headstock access point, beneath a cover. That makes it unfair to deduct a point, and so, considering the relative buttons Sire wants for it, it is an impressively assembled $300 axe.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

My focus here is on ease of playing, considering that, at its price point, most players picking it up will be relatively inexperienced. In that regard, everything feels like a happy medium: the Goldilocks build?

The C-shape hard maple neck feels smooth, with a roundness to it that’s comfortable on the hands, without being too fat, and therefore a guitar I have to fight, or too thin, which arguably could give beginners a skewed introduction to guitar builds. It feels like the perfect starting point, and if anything, feels more like a traditional Fender neck than anything else.

The finish is pretty sleek, too. I’m not a fan of gloss necks as I find they can have a bit of friction, but it’s not so smooth that it makes me feel like Bambi on ice all the same. The rolled edges (Sire calls it "Edgeless") are a great aid, too. It feels like it’s built to hold a newbie’s hand; to be their noble steed rather than a wild horse they need to tame.

Fret access, up to the 18^th fret, is plentiful, but it does become a bit of a stretch reaching those highest frets as the neck heel starts to become obstructive.

Its contours are pretty minimal, but the arm carve does make it a more comfortable player, while the weight of the guitar remains a sticking point. I know it's on me, and it starts to feel extra heavy during longer sessions.

In all, its playability is positively vanilla. Nothing is too lacking or too extreme; I can play fast on it without it feeling like I’m in a tug of war, and it never feels like I’m wading through treacle. It’s billed as a rock/metal guitar, but its design doesn’t lean too heavily into that. It plays like a solid all-rounder, which is ideal for a beginner’s platform.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

First off, the pickups pack way more heat than I expected. The cynic in me always sees affordable guitars offering “high output” humbuckers and doesn’t believe it; they’re usually rather meek and mild. This isn’t the case, and even going through a clean 1960s Fender Showman amp model, there isn’t that brittleness I’m used to from cheaper guitars.

The mahogany body and rosewood 'board do a fair amount of lifting here, resulting in a slightly darker, more bass-forward tone that makes it sound far meatier, and reinforces its status as a rock and metal guitar. Stick it through a fairly high-gain amp – I paired it with everything from Neural DSP: Archetype Gojira’s hot amp to Quad Cortex amp models of a 5150, JCM800, and a Victory Kraken – and the balance between searing heat and robustness is pretty easy to strike.

Personally, I like quite a warm and fat tone, but one that still bears its teeth. This achieved that in minutes. I never have to get too specific with amp settings to cover up any glaring weaknesses.

There aren’t many sharp edges to the guitar’s voice, with the neck pickup especially rounding out to make it forgiving for beginners trying their hand at lead phrases and sweep picking, stopping the clean tones from getting too nasally. Crucially, when it comes to chugging through some power chords, there’s a grunt and a grind to it that will satisfy many newbie players. Everything seems tailored to building confidence in lesser-skilled players, while still having worth in the hands of more advanced shredders. It’s a smart move.

The coil split certainly takes a little of the body out of the tone, but it sounds more like a lesser-quality humbucker than a snappy single coil. Still, it’s a surprise addition for the price point, and I’ve found myself engaging it plenty of times. It isn’t show-stopping, but it certainly has its uses to aid dynamic shifts.

The pickups are also really quiet, even when going through a pretty hot signal, which is another pleasing and beginner-friendly aspect, but their high output does hurt how dynamic they are. For newer players, I think this is more of a positive than a negative; even scuffed notes come out with a degree of confidence, but the attack response isn’t overly expressive or dynamic.

Verdict

The budget market, thanks in part to Harley Benton’s constant waves of progress and everything the Indonesian Cort factory is churning out at speed, is getting more and more expansive. For the beginner player – and for the parents who want to buy their child their first instrument – the current timeline means options are plentiful. Yet, despite the competition, the Sire Larry Carlton X1 puts itself proudly in the firing line.

Its price is pretty mind-blowing considering the quality of what’s offered; it’s never a fight to get a tune out of it, its pickups are voiced to be forthright and forgiving in equal measure, and I also think it’s a real looker. The subtle bottom spike is a nice touch. It looks like it means business and offers something just left of centre.

I can imagine a 10-year-old opening this up on their birthday or Christmas, and despite the possible drawback of it not being a big-name brand, being pretty happy. It has the looks and the goods to make it a memorable and beloved present and/or first guitar.

The rattling springs and the sheer weight of the thing do impact its overall score, but I’m thoroughly impressed with it – this is a guitar that can stand up against Squiers, Harley Bentons, and even budget-end Jascksons and Ibanez guitars.

Music Radar’s Verdict: A rugged, easy-playing, and surprisingly heavy (both tonally and weight-wise) rock and metal guitar, the Sire Larry Carlton X1 offers a lot for a low price. Ideal for beginner players chasing heavier sounds, it provides an affordable launch pad into the wild world of electric guitar playing.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Andertons

• Best affordable electric guitars

Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole has clarified his controversial comments that likened cover music to “analogue AI”, insisting that his intent was was to talk about how new technologies could support the development of musicians.

Cole had been the subject of an online backlash after comments made last month to T3, in which he likened the reaction to AI within the music community to the polarised response the Fender Telecaster received upon its launch in 1951.

“There were people that loved it and adapted, and some people that thought it looked like a rope from a rowboat, or it looked like a plank,” said Cole.

The first mass-produced electric guitar was certainly a radical technology but the objections to it were founded upon a very different rationale. The Telecaster cannot quote/unquote create music out of nothing, train itself on other artists’ creations, then replicate it at scale.

Still, Cole went further and argued that, “AI has existed in music as long as there’s been recorded music”, and that guitar players could develop their skills and arrangements by incorporating it into their creative process.

“I actually believe cover music has been sort of analogue AI for a long time,” he said.

Those comments received a lot of pushback online. Understandably. Covering a song, learning the changes and the nuances in another player’s style, then adding our own, this is all a fundamental part of our musical development.

Cole spoke of “freeing” musicians up from the same old cover songs, when it is the cover song that often liberates musicians by broadening their musical vocabulary and repertoire. This is why the quite excellent Fender Play app is populated by songs from Green Day, Nirvana, and the Stones etc.

Not to mention that some of the greatest works of recorded music have been covers, or that a cover song, great, perfunctory or otherwise, is in effect a dialogue between two artists – two humans.

Speaking to Fast Company, Cole did not address the cover song controversy directly but he did clarify his position on AI and its place in the 21st-century musician’s toolkit.

“My intent was to talk about how technology can help artists and players learn and grow,” he said. “Music is an inherently human experience, and great songs are born out of people’s lives, their creative energy and the countless hours spent learning their instruments – something no machine can ever replicate.”

And yet the machines keep trying, and people keep on developing technologies that let them try harder. That threatens artists in a very direct way – their copyright, deepfakes, AI-generated stock music, etc – but also in indirect ways, too, with the incoming tide of AI-generated content poisoning the well, a growing suspicion about what we hear and see online. Is it fake, generated by AI, or is there a real human behind it?

See the D’Addario string demo controversy for an example of how that all plays out.

Cole says he acknowledges those concerns and argues that artists and their work need to be protected, but also that “conversations need to happen about how to advance AI”. The question is whether those two instincts, to protect the artist and to advance AI, are fundamentally at odds with each other.

We already do use AI whether we like it or not. AI technologies often underpin digital amp modelling. Companies such as Positive Grid and Mooer Audio have introduced tone-by-prompt AI features for dialling in tones. We are already being used by AI whether we like it or not, and that's part of the problem, too.

Cole still believes AI can play a supporting role in helping musicians develop their creativity, but, he tells Fast Company, “Music starts and ends with people. It always will.”

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

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

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

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

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

Incredible scenes.

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

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

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

Orange Baby Terror

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

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

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

See Orange Amps for more details

Bad Cat Mod Shop Cub 15 tube combo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s priced £5,049/$5,999.

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

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

See Gibson for more.

Shergold Telstar 12-string

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

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

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

See Shergold for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mooer Audio Meta FX

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

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

See Mooer Audio for more.

IK Multimedia Tonex Brown Panel signature collection

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

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

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

PRS Custom 24 Birds Of A Feather Limited Edition

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

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

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

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

Epiphone Billie Joe Armstrong

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

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

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

Harley Benton CLO-65SE Slate Blue

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

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

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

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

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.

Gretsch has added the super popular CVT its entry level Streamliner series, offering the dual-humbucker electric guitar in four classic finishes, and with a $249 price tag.

The CVT is the Gretsch guitar for players who might never have considered playing a Gretsch before. It’s a little bit, well, it’s different. Is it a metal guitar? It could be. Those HotWire humbuckers you’ll find at the neck and bridge positions have a powerful ceramic magnet and pack a bit of a wallop.

Yes, it seems a little weird to see “Gretsch” on the headstock and think immediately about tuning down to C and dooming out but it’s 2026 and anything goes (and we’d do that with a Chet Atkins, by the way, why not?).

And yet, there’s is still something classic and golden era about the CVT. The cutaways themselves are quite aggro, but the headstock shape and the rounded bouts keep it part of the family.

The CVT is Gretsch’s quote/unquote high-gain electric guitar but it still belongs in the catalogue alongside more idiomatic purveyors of “That Great Great Sound!” such as the Bigsby-equipped G2420TG Hollow Body the G2622T Center Block Double-Cut, and so on.

This would make a great first electric guitar for the serious beginner who’s been weaned on acoustic guitar and is ready to plug in. Firstly, of course, there is the price. You’re looking at $249 in the States, £299 in the UK.

Secondly, the dimensions are pretty user friendly.

The neck profile, a “Fast C” shape, offers the kind of mainstream playing experience we expect from beginner instruments. The neck, incidentally, is also mahogany, and unlike the more expensive – and typical – Gretsch builds it joins the body with a four-bolt joint.

The fingerboard is laurel, has a 12” radius, seats 22 medium jumbo frets with Neo Classic Thumbnail inlays counting ‘em out. And at this price it’s nice to see that Gretsch has bound the neck – it adds a touch of class.

Here the body is solid mahogany, not chambered as per the Duo Jet, but all that bevelling makes it less heavy than it looks on the stand.

The drive is simple. Those dual humbuckers are controlled by a three-way pickup selector, volume and tone. Note the “Speed dial” style control knobs. That makes us thing Gibson Les Paul Custom.

If you look down at your feet to find an array of drive and distortion pedals limpetted to your pedalboard, this is the Gretsch for you.

It’s available in Sea Foam Green, Jet Black, Vintage White and Olive Drab (we’ve seen these in person and it’s hard to pick a favourite but, okay, the Olive Drab is convincing).

Check ‘em out over at Gretsch.

You might remember Harley Benton’s Fusion IV series. No, you will remember them. Launched in May, high-performance S-styles, officially MusicRadar approved, they retailed for under $600 and there were dozens of them, 41 in total.

Well, meet the sequel – or at least its T-style sibling series, the Fusion-T II. You know the drill. These are Harley Benton guitars, so super affordable (prices on Thomann are all under the magic £/$500 mark), and there are options. Go big or go home.

We have 18 of them in total, in a variety of finishes. Some have metallic solid-colour finishes – the green and the purple look pretty sweet – and some come with figured maple veneers.

What is common to them all is the roasted figured maple neck, bolted to an ergonomically sculpted nyatoh body, fingerboards carved into a 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard, and Jinho locking tuners on the headstock. This spec is impressive by anyone’s book; we have 24 stainless steel frets here, people.

The inspiration might come from the Telecaster. That’s the general shape. The scale length is a familiar 25.5”. But it is quite a different beast from the OG mass-produced electric guitar.

There are no single-coil pickups here. Instead you'll find a dual-humbucker pickup configuration hooked up to a control circuit that’s equipped with an Alter Switch, that could get you on the guest list to single-coil sounds

This opens up the possibilities for all those in-between tones that are particularly useful when playing clean, but also for the so-called “Ghost tone,” which is described as “a hybrid tone which blends the warm bass of a humbucker with the bright bite of a single coil and takes on a spectral quality for ghastly playing”.

Pretty neat. We’re trying to think of another as-standard spec item but we have to talk options here, because with 18 different varieties of Fusion-T II, Harley Benton is offering players a lot of choice.

Devotees of the brand will be cheered to learn that its Tesla humbuckers are an option, some covered, some with the open-coil zebra-coloured bobbins.

Those who crave a bit more output – well, metal players – also have an EMG option. This one doesn’t have the Alter Switch but it will have that active humbucker attack that can lend your riffs a certain physicality.

Oh, and it’s a good choice of EMGs, with the Custom Retroactive Hot 70 a nice option for those who still want a bit of old-school warmth in their sound.

The EMG model model is offered as a left-handed model – there are plenty of southpaw models available in this drop – with a Babicz Z Series hard-tail, but the Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series “full-contact” vibrato is available on the Tesla-equipped models.

There is a lot to get to grips with here (we haven’t even told you that the nuts are Graph Tech Tusq XL, or that the truss rod adjustment wheel is helpfully positioned at the top of the fingerboard).

So, the best thing to do is to pop over to Harley Benton where they have the spec configurator and you can look at these in more detail. They are available now through Thomann.

Wayne Charvel, the legendary luthier who kick-started the hot-rodded electric guitar movement, has died, aged 85.

He leaves behind a formidable legacy. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Charvel made guitars for Deep Purple, ZZ Top, the Who, Dave Murray of Iron Maiden, Warren De Martini of Ratt, and a young man by the name of Eddie Van Halen. It was Wayne Charvel who built EVH the original yellow-and-black Bumblebee guitar from the cover of 1979’s Van Halen II.

In a statement, Charvel Guitars described its founder as a “visionary whose creativity and craftsmanship helped shape the sound of modern guitar culture”. And that’s no understatement.

Charvel might have long left the company that bears his name but his design aesthetic is writ large across its contemporary catalogue. And his hot-rodding of the Fender Stratocaster – retooling it as a high-performance instrument spec’d for hard rock, heavy metal and the burgeoning shred scene – gave birth to the Superstrat.

Guitar was in the blood. Charvel started playing them when he was five years old. He got his start at the Fender factory in the mid ‘60s.

“After I got married, I quit playing in bands,” said Charvel, speaking to NAMM in 2010. “A couple of my good friends at Fender knew that I was painting guitars, so they hired me to do all the auto warranty repairs. They didn’t want to take guys off the line when a guitar came in, scratched up, and take them off and stop production to refinish and sand them down.”

This was the perfect grounding for Charvel, refretting guitars, repainting and refinishing them. There he got the idea that these production line Fender guitars could be improved upon. With their bolt-on construction, swapping out the neck would be easy.

Fender didn’t just use him for guitars. He could recover guitar amps, a skill that came in handy when a Rhodes piano came in “all scratched up” for repair.

“It was great for me,” said Charvel. “I was swamped, and I’d go down to Fender at least twice a week.” Back then, Charvel had been using nitrocellulose lacquer. The Fender plant was using “easy buff” poly from Dunn-Edwards. It was an education.

“They used overhead pin routers. Everything was made by hand. They didn’t have CNC machines in those days,” said Charvel. “And it was just great to see all those guitars. It was just so exciting, so motivating.”

By 1974, Charvel was ready to go into business, opening the doors to Charvel’s Guitar Repair in Azusa, California. The Valley was about to become the epicentre of a guitar revolution. The shop was set up to repair Fender guitars that were out of warranty but its brief soon evolved.

Modding, hot-rodding, custom appointments? Charvel was your man. He was making up custom builds using replacement bodies and necks made by his old friend Lynn Ellsworth up at Boogie Bodies, based out of Puyallup, Washington. And it wasn't just Strats. He's soup up your Telecaster, too. This would be the Charvel Type 2 body shape.

The word spread. The late Alan Rogan – legendary guitar tech for the Who – was a client. Deep Purple dropped by. They started sending their friends, too. Charvel was making these rock guys something that no one had ever seen before, putting humbuckers in a Strat-style body, flattening out the radius of the fingerboard and installing jumbo frets. “In those days, you couldn't buy a Fender guitar other than just completely stock,” said Charvel.

He learned how to make the bodies himself from working with David Schecter. Over the course of one weekend, the pair made a hundred bodies at Schecter’s shop in Reseda, California. Charvel was acquiring new skills every day.

He also had an eye for a good luthier. Charvel Guitar Repair was an incubator for talent. Hiring Grover Jackson was one of Charvel’s masterstrokes, introducing another maverick builder. Jackson took over the Charvel company after it went bust in 1978.

That didn’t stop Wayne Charvel. Some of his builds just got wilder, such as the custom electric and bass guitars he made for Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons for ZZ Top’s 1983 Eliminator Tour. They had onboard pyro.

“Billy turned us onto a lot of people, and we just got busy and busy and busier,” said Charvel. “It was a lot of fun work with a lot of nice people.”

He would go on to work with his friend Bernie Rico at B.C. Rich, working on artist relations, building guitars and helping them modernise production. “My job was to set up routers so they could just whiz around those guitars. And we did that,” he said.

He even designed a guitar for Gibson, the WRC, a mid ‘80s HSS S-style with a string-through double-locking vibrato and a configuration of switches. That kind of thing was pure Charvel, totally on-brand. The guitar he made for Michael Angelo-Batio? Not so much.

When Steve Vai appeared on the scene with his triple-necked Heart Guitar (made by Ibanez’s Ibanez Mace Bailey), MAB’s label was pushing him to duel Vai, like some live-action scene in Crossroads. He wasn’t into that but the thought of Vai with his triple-neck inspired him to ante up and get a four-necked guitar. He knew just the man to make it.

“As it happened, Wayne Charvel was building all my guitars,” Angelo-Batio told Guitar World. “I said to him, ‘Can you do this?’ I have a good engineering mind for guitar design, so I designed the Quad. I told him how I thought it should be four separate guitars, and that was that. It was the wildest thing. There was no limit to what we were trying to do.”

No limits was the spirit in which Wayne Charvel approached guitar design. A guitar could always play faster, play better. He later built them under his own name, Wayne Guitar. The history page on its site reads like a who’s who of guitar greats, all of whom have reached out to Charvel to make them a guitar over the years.

Charvel Guitars was right. Wayne Charvel was a visionary.

“Wayne’s ideas sparked a movement that influenced countless players and builders, and his passion for innovation set a foundation that still guides the industry today,” reads Charvel Guitars’ tribute. “Those who knew him remember his kindness, his curiosity, and the way he inspired others to push their craft further. His impact lives on in every guitar that carries his name, and his legacy will continue to resonate with musicians around the world. Our hearts are with his family, loved ones, and every player who keeps his influence alive.”

Yamaha has become the latest target in Fender’s ongoing campaign to win legal protections for the design of the Stratocaster.

Reuters reports that the Japanese gear giant received a cease-and-desist letter in May from Fender’s legal representatives.

Yamaha did not reveal which models were mentioned in Fender's letter, but with only one S-style guitar in the catalogue it is a safe bet that it is the Pacifica that the Big F has taken exception to.

Fender sent a number of cease-and-desist letters to manufacturers of S-style guitars after the Regional Court of Düsseldorf's ruling in March that stated the Stratocaster was “an original creative work”, thus entitling it to legal protections in Germany and the EU.

The case was brought against Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co, which was selling Strat knock-offs on the online retail platform AliExpress. The Chinese company did not attend the hearing. Fender described the court’s decision as “historic”.

In May, it was revealed that LSL Instruments received a cease-and-desist from Fender's lawyers. LSL launched a GoFundMe to support its legal fees. But the campaign was not restricted to small builders. PRS was also in Fender’s sights, its John Mayer signature model, the Silver Sky, becoming the most high-profile S-style electric guitar to be targeted.

The Pacifica has become almost ubiquitous since it officially joined the Yamaha catalogue in 1991. Like the Stratocaster, it has a double-cutaway body shape. Like the Silver Sky, it offers a distinctly different take on the Strat’s double-cutaway.

The Pacifica has an offset waist and narrower, more angular horns. The ergonomics are different, with the Pacifica’s contouring more aggressive.

Yamaha said it was “reviewing the notice and weighing how to respond”. Other recipients of Fender’s cease-and-desist letters have already decided on their response – Thomann has gone on the counterattack and sued Fender. The German gear retail giant owns Harley Benton, which runs a number of S-style guitars in its range.

“After careful consideration, we have decided to take legal action,” read Thomann’s statement. “We have done so because we are convinced that the questions raised here go far beyond a mere legal dispute and affect the future of diversity, innovation and competition in our industry.”

Thomann questioned the legal weight of the German court ruling against Yiwu, arguing that a ruling given in absentia against the Chinese company was a win by default.

“This judgment is based on missed deadlines, i.e. pure formalities, and does not, in our opinion, represent a comprehensive review of the legal claims,” said Thomann. “On this basis, Fender is now attempting to enforce a fundamental copyright claim to the body shape of the Stratocaster and is simultaneously taking action against European dealers and manufacturers. American manufacturers who sell their instruments in Europe, however, are also affected.”

Thomann is the world’s biggest gear retailer, Yamaha its biggest gear manufacturer. Expect some twists to come.

Last month, Fender CEO Edward 'Bud' Cole' addressed the controversy over the legal campaign at a dealer event, and said the company had reached out "thoughtfully and respectfully" and said the campaign to protect the Strat's copyright was a work in progress.

The Gibson Custom Shop has just made a generation of hard rock guitar players very happy with a VOS Reissue of the 1971 Flying V Medallion.

Well, let's make that generations, plural, because this marks the return of one of the most iconic electric guitars in rock history – and one of the rarest.

Gibson only made some 350 of them back in the day, originally to commemorate the 1972 Summer Olympics in Berlin, with each guitar featuring a freshly minted coin medallion on the upper wing.

Michael Schenker, then of UFO, got his hands on one. Schenker is pictured with it on the back cover art of UFO’s 1975 studio album, Force It. This was quite the image, and it caught the imagination of a young metal head growing up in El Sobrante, California. Kirk Hammett was his name.

As fate would have it, he joined Metallica, Metallica got massive, and Hammett ended up owning that very guitar. It’s funny how it goes.

But now Gibson is giving all of us the chance to own one of these. Yes, the 1971 Flying V Medallion is pricey – from nose to tail, it’s a high-end electric guitar – but it’s a really quite exquisite reproduction of what might just be the ultimate rock guitar.

The Medallion-era Flying V didn’t just look cool. There was a functional aspect to its appeal. Its two-piece body is 1.375” thick as opposed to the 1.5” of the original 1958 Korina Flying V, making it lighter. This reissue shares that thinner body.

It also has the same 1971 neck profile, with its three-piece mahogany neck glued to the body and featuring a volute. It has a rosewood fingerboard with a 12” radius and cellulose dot inlays, 22 medium jumbo frets.

This has been a big year for the 1968 T-Top humbucker. Gibson has added them to its electric guitar pickup shop, and it has used a pair of them here.

These run a little hotter than the usual PAF-style sound. They are left unpotted and are hand-wired to their individual volume knobs, and a master tone.

Note the black witch hat style knobs on the white pickguard. All classic stuff. But as Gibson's vice president of product, Mat Koehler, says, the model holds “a special place” in the brand's history.

“As one of Gibson’s earliest limited-edition instruments, it helped establish a lasting legacy within hard rock guitar culture,” says Koehler. “This reissue brings back the details, feel, and sound of the original, giving players the opportunity to experience an iconic instrument with remarkable vintage accuracy.”

Other details of note include the Kluson tuners and the ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge. Gibson is releasing this in Cherry.

Maybe you will refinish it in black and white one day like Schenker, or leave as it is. Either way it’ll be quite the guitar – and collectible, too.

Each medallion is individually numbered. The 1971 Flying V Medallion Reissue is available now priced £4,399/$4,999, and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case.

See Gibson for more details.

Periphery’s Jake Bowen has officially been announced as a Strandberg artist, with the Swedish headless guitar specialist promising that they are now working together on something – stay tuned for more, “artist-driven projects” are underway.

Bowen has been a long-time Ibanez artist, with three signature guitars in the current catalog, all high-performance S-styles (the JBM9999 a particular favourite around these parts). But of late he has been playing various Strandberg’s onstage.

Periphery superfans who have been barnacled on reddit threads, monitoring the progressive metal institution’s movements and gear choices, would have told you this was coming – Bowen’s bandmate, Misha Mansoor, said as much. But still, this is a big coup for the brand, and it is fascinating to see what comes next.

Strandberg does not have a large artist roster. It has the Australian prog virtuoso Plini, Swedish metal stalwart Per Nilsson, and of course that bright yellow five-string that it co-developed with Jacob Collier. Bowen is pictured playing the Sälen Jazz NX 6 semi-hollow in Strandberg’s official announcement, but has been playing other six, seven and eight-string models.

Presumably he would want to bring his signature DiMarzio Mirage humbuckers to the Strandberg platform – would a modified Boden be in the works? The internet is already calling a prospective signature model the Strandberg Bowen. It’s just one consonant of a difference, an easy lift for the Strandberg marketing team.

The market for headless guitars has been heating up in the past few years. This is not the ‘80s. They are a mainstream option. They're just so light. Strandberg has plenty of selling points: including the body shape, hardware, the super lightweight, but especially the EndurNeck profile, which exemplifies the brand’s ergonomics-first approach to electric guitar design.

But when more brands are making their own headless models, maybe Strandberg needed to add a high-profile player just to keep things interesting. Strandberg describes it as “a natural alignment between Bowen’s creative requirements and Strandberg’s design philosophy”.

Bowen says it was love at first sight.

“A great guitar should be inspiring the moment you pick it up – they almost beckon you from across the room to play them – and when I picked up a Strandberg for the first time I knew it was going to be special,” he says. “As a guitarist for 34 years, I’ve had a lot of time to discover what works in the studio and on the road. Strandberg guitars offer a lightweight, ergonomic solution without giving up tone, playability, and most importantly that instant source of inspiration.”

Watch this space. In other Periphery signature guitar news, Jackson released Misha Mansoor’s EverTune-equipped eight-string Juggernaut in May, an extended-range monster that evolved out of a Custom Shop build.

“It’s just a very useful tool to have,” Mansoor told MusicRadar in 2025. “I have a Custom Shop one that I use live. It allows me to dig into the guitar a bit more... It does allow me to have a little more fun onstage.”

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

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

When should you change your strings

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

1. Broken strings

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

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

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

2. Worn or discoloured strings

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

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

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

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

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

3. You can hear the difference

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

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

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

4. Maybe it’s just time…

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

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

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

You will need…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to restring a guitar: Seven simple steps

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

Let’s get started.

Step One: Remove the old strings

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

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

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

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

Step Two: Clean your fretboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step Four: Thread the string through the tuning peg

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

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

Step Five: Wind the string

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

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

Step Six: Trim away the excess

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

Step Seven: Repeat and tune up

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

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

And enjoy…

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

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

A shy 16-year-old Thai musician stunned the America's Got Talent audience and blew away judges, including Simon Cowell and Mel B, with an explosive rendition of The Cranberries' '90s hit Zombie.

The video of Nene Royal's performance, posted on YouTube, has already gathered over 2 million views in just a day, with viewers in awe of the teenager's incredible guitar shredding, vocal range, and stage presence.

Within a minute, she had a packed-out Pasadena Civic Auditorium (the arena where AGT auditions are filmed) singing every word with her, while host Terry Crews went wild to the side of the stage.

The song she chose to deliver has a fascinating backstory of its own. One of the biggest alternative rock anthems of the 1990s, Zombie was inspired by the violence of The Troubles, which at that point had plagued Northern Ireland for decades.

“A lot of people were very surprised at the dramatic change from Dreams, which was the last single they’d heard from us,” the band's guitarist Noel Hogan told MusicRadar. “Dreams and Zombie were completely different types of songs. But look – it worked." (MusicRadar).

Since its release, Zombie has developed into an unstoppable cultural phenomenon, with over 1.8 billion Spotify streams and enormous global reach — as this particular talent show audition proved.

"You are a rock star, young lady, you really are," said Howie Mandel, one of the four America's Got Talent who voted Royal through with a unanimous 'Yes'.

Simon Cowell added: "The tone of your voice is really authentic. Even the fact that it was all a bit messy made the audition for me really good." Meanwhile, ex-Spice Girl Mel B commented: "You've got really good vocal control and you can kill it on the guitar. You're like a match made in heaven. You're brilliant."

The 16-year-old guitar prodigy had travelled all the way from Phuket, Thailand, with her father to audition for the show. The 3,000-cap venue auditorium was by far the biggest stage she had ever performed on. (Loudwire)

"I started playing guitar since I was seven and my biggest dream is that I really want to be a superstar on tour," she told the judging panel. Their response suggests she's well on her way.

"You have a real chance to do very good in this competition," Sofia Vergara said. "That was spectacular."

Picking up a guitar pick (or plectrum, depending on where in the world you are) probably seems like second nature. You pick it up… You hold it… And you’re done.

And while it's perfectly possible to embark on your musical journey from this most basic of introductions, it’s probably a good idea to learn a few pick skills before you develop any bad habits.

Get it wrong from the start and you’ll forever limit your playing speed, tone and stamina without even realising it.

The first step is to – literally – get a grip.

The standard grip

Let’s start with the basics and probably the most natural way that you’re going to be holding your pick.

Rest the pick on the side of your index finger, roughly at the first joint. Bring your thumb down on top of it to hold it in place. The pick should point away from your hand at roughly a right angle to your index finger, with only a small amount of the tip exposed – around 5 to 10mm is plenty.

Your remaining fingers can either curl loosely, relaxed into your palm or extended slightly. What you’re actively trying to avoid here is any unnecessary tension anywhere in the hand or wrist. Keep your hand loose and relaxed.

Angle matters

One thing non-pro players often overlook is the angle of the pick relative to the strings. Holding the pick perfectly parallel to the strings produces a bright, even tone but can feel resistant when you’re seeking to play at higher speeds. Rotating the pick very slightly – so it strikes the string at a subtle angle – reduces friction and allows for smoother, faster playing.

Experiment to find what works for your style.

How tight should you hold it?

The simple answer is ‘tighter than you think’ but ‘not as tight as you probably are’… It goes without saying that a pick that flies out of your hand mid-solo is too loose, while acute hand-ache after ten minutes means that you’re holding it too tight.

Aim for firm but relaxed. If you're ever tensing your forearm muscles noticeably, ease off.

Wrist position and movement

Your grip on your pick should be considered as being part of how your whole picking hand moves – an extension of your own hand and fingers – so for most playing, the motion should come primarily from the wrist rather than the elbow or fingers. A loose, fluid wrist produces better tone and is far less tiring over a long session than using a stiff arm to ‘drive’ the pick through the strings.

Try anchoring your picking hand lightly against the body of the guitar by either resting the heel of your palm on the bridge or letting your little finger touch the guitar body. This gives you a stable reference point without locking your wrist up and helps ‘take the weight off’ your hand.

Some players prefer to float the hand entirely, which works well for strumming but can feel less controlled for precise single note work and will ultimately become more tiresome.

Pick thickness

The best grip and the thickness of your pick are closely related. Thinner picks are more forgiving and suit strumming while thicker picks offer more control for single note lines and lead playing. If your current pick thickness feels like it's working against you, trying a different gauge is often a simple fix.

Most players gravitate toward a medium thickness of around 0.73mm as a good all-rounder, while skilled players swear by very thin picks. Meanwhile others use heavy jazz picks for everything. The motto here is to try different picks for yourself and don’t be afraid to experiment.

Alternative grips

Of course, as with everything, there’s THE way to do it… And then there’s another way…

If you’re playing jazz or undertaking some fingerstyle hybrid picking you may want to try holding the pick between the thumb and middle finger instead. This frees up your all-important index finger for fingerpicking.

Alternatively you may want to try using a three finger grip – pressing the pick between index and middle fingers and thumb for extra picking power and control at high speeds.

And if you're really scraping or sliding, obviously you'll have to change your grip appropriately.

Basically, if you find yourself consistently fighting your current grip, it's worth trying alternatives rather than going with the flow and assuming the standard approach is right for you.

Try it. You might like it

Try to play a fast picking passage and then immediately stop. If your hand feels tense or cramped, something in your grip needs adjusting. Good technique should feel almost effortless with the pick doing the work, not your muscles.

And try playing slowly and paying close attention to what your picking hand is actually doing. It's much easier to gauge what degree of effort and strain you’re introducing to your technique when you slow things right down.

Remember: If it feels natural and easy and you can keep the pace without discomfort then you’re doing things right.

And don't panic!

At this stage, the most important thing is simply to get comfortable. Your grip will naturally refine itself over time as you play more.. Pick up your guitar, try the grips described above, and start playing. You'll find what works for you soon enough.

Above all, have fun and keep on playing!

What is it?

Seemingly emerging from nowhere, Baum Guitars feels like a relative newcomer to the main stage, yet the company has been going since 2015. Founded by Morten Bau, what began as high-end, custom builds out of Denmark has now evolved into mass-produced electric guitars from the Far East under the Vega Series moniker, delivering custom-inspired instruments without the lofty price tag.

There’s no need to state where the Baum Guitars Verve gets its inspiration from, with that lineup of chrome-covered neck single-coil and angled bridge pickup mounted to a metal plate. The pickups are Baum’s own Goldsound Skylark Alnico V pickups, controlled by master volume and master tone controls with 250K potentiometers, and a 3-way toggle switch. Unusually for a guitar remeniscent of a Telecaster, Baum has opted for a mahogany body here instead of ash or alder.

The bridge is a Wilkinson WTB model with compensated brass saddles, which is also unusual as most Baum guitars feature proprietary hardware. This theme returns for the tuners, however, which are Baum Performer tuning machines with an 18:1 ratio. The scale is 25.5 inches, and the roasted maple neck is shaped to Baum’s modern ‘C’ profile. It’s got a rosewood fretboard with a flat, 12-inch radius, and 22 medium jumbo, nickel frets marked with mini ‘Crown’ inlays.

Specs

• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: Roasted maple / Modern ‘C’
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 25.5”/647.7mm
• Nut/width: High-density composite / 42.9 mm
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo, nickel
• Hardware: Baum Performer, Wilkinson WTB bridge with compensated brass saddles
• String spacing at bridge: 52.6mm
• Electrics: 2x Goldsound Skylark, master volume & master tone, 3-way toggle switch
• Weight: 7.05lb/3.2 kg
• Options: N/A
• Left-handed options: N/A
• Finishes: Amber Gold (as reviewed), Dark Burst, Moon Silver, Pure Black
• Cases: Baum Deluxe Gig Bag
• Contact: Baum Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

The Baum Guitars Verve comes in a really nice Deluxe Gig Bag, and when I pull it out, my first impression is that it’s an eye-catching guitar with its metallic Amber Gold finish and retro modern body shape. It’s sort of Telecaster-shaped if you think of it as a shallow, single cutaway, but I do get Danelectro vibes from it as well. It manages to stand on its own without feeling too alien, which is a definite design achievement.

The single-ply, black pickguard cuts a diamond shape across a body that’s pretty much devoid of comfort carves, apart from a very slight flattening where my picking arm rests over the body. There’s no neck heel carve either, giving it a decidedly retro feel. Flipping it over, I spy there’s no plate on the back for the controls, so if you do want to dive in, you’ll need to take the strings off.

The paint is very well applied, and although I spot a couple of dark flecks on the back side of the guitar, these are only noticeable when the guitar is held up to the light and inspected closely. The neck pocket is neatly done, and all of the electronics and hardware are robustly applied. It feels worthy of gigging and ties in with other Indonesian-made guitars I’ve had in my hands recently in terms of the quality of the build.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

As soon as I sit down to play the Verve, I feel right at home. As a regular Telecaster player, it doesn’t feel much different at all from my number one guitar. It’s lighter in weight as the body is markedly slimmer, but the neck feel is pretty similar. It doesn’t take me long to get up and running with it, and my favourite licks and riffs come easily.

The medium jumbo frets feel lovely to bend against, no matter where I am on the fretboard, and the overall feel is slinky and smooth. There’s nothing that gets in my way, whether I’m playing legato, open chords, barre chords, or any other technique. It’s not a shred neck, but the profile feels buttery smooth, and alternate-picked scale runs fly around the fretboard.

It’s nicely balanced both in my lap and when I put it on a guitar strap at rehearsal, but I do notice when standing that it’s easy to accidentally hit the toggle switch. This only happens when I perform some aggressive strumming of chords, but it just means a small adjustment is required to my admittedly aggressive playing style, so I can’t rapidly strum near the higher frets of the guitar.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

I start off my sound testing by plugging the Verve into an audio interface and loading up an instance of Neural DSP’s Tone King plugin. Using a totally clean tone with a touch of a spring reverb, I notice that the high E doesn’t quite ring out true here when played on its own, which I didn’t notice when I play-tested it unplugged. My first instinct is a nut issue, but pressing behind the nut while playing the string doesn’t resolve it.

Moving up and down the E string to see if I can find a culprit, I notice it buzzes at the 9th fret, and getting my bank card out, I determine that the 10th fret is sitting ever so slightly proud at the treble end. This can happen with guitars when they get shipped from place to place and subjected to drastic changes in temperature, and I’m easily able to remedy it by raising the bridge saddle slightly. The open-E issue proves trickier, however, and I’m unable to make it better without really getting into the weeds with the nut slot.

Undeterred, I continue to play in the bridge position, and there’s plenty of Tele twang on tap here, with an output I’d put somewhere between vintage and modern. There’s loads of spank and attack when I dig in with some country-inspired leads, and it bites when I strike open chords hard, giving a nice balance of low-end weight and treble cut.

Moving to the neck pickup, there’s a noticeable volume drop, but it’s that tried-and-tested T-style sound, warm and a little woolly. It feels really smooth when I play leads with it, but there’s still plenty of articulation when playing full chords hard. The middle position is really nice when played clean, though, and due to the volume difference between the two pickups, it’s got a delicious balance to the overall tone.

Next, I load up an overdriven guitar amp tone with a Bluesbreaker-style overdrive pedal in front of it, and the bridge pickup really comes into its own. It’s really full-sounding and cuts through nicely without getting into icepick territory. The more modern voicing gives more midrange with a smooth high end. When strumming punky power chords, it really sings, and adding in a reverb pedal and delay pedal while I play lead licks delivers a very satisfying and modern-leaning guitar tone.

Moving back the bridge pickup, it’s straight into Tom Morello riffing tone. It’s warm and round, a little dark, but not so much that it sounds dull. It manages to stay pretty articulate when I strum full chords, although I do lose a little of the treble strings under the weight of the low end and mids here. In the middle position, again it’s nicely balanced as it was with the clean tone. There’s a little more of the bridge pickup than the neck, giving a very usable tone that blends the good parts of each pickup’s character.

Verdict

There are a lot of T-style guitars on the market right now, so the Baum Verve needs to do something very special to stand out from the rest, and it succeeds in most ways. The roasted maple and rosewood combo of the neck plays really nicely, with a profile that encourages faster playing and felt super comfortable no matter what I attempted on it.

The bridge pickup is really great too, offering that Tele twang with a little extra heat for the modern player. It’s probably not the best for those after 50s or 60s Tele tones, but it can deliver a wide range of tones that will cover funk, country, rock, blues, and more. I did find the neck position a little uninspired when played clean, but it held its own with overdriven tones and works great alongside the bridge pickup in the middle position.

The QC on this model wasn’t the best, however. An issue with one of the frets and the nut needed to be resolved to make the guitar play perfectly, which, while admittedly par for the course when it comes to import guitars and sometimes, even American-made instruments, to be totally fair, is nonetheless a little disappointing. Granted, these weren’t issues that made the guitar unplayable, but small hurdles that needed to be jumped over.

Guitar World verdict: For me, the real strength of the Baum Guitars Verve lies in its playability. The neck profile is fantastic, and I never felt like any playing style was out of reach in my time with it. The pickups are nicely versatile, although I wanted a little more from the neck position; for the most part, it’s capable of a huge array of styles. That said, the QC on my review model wasn’t perfect, with a couple of issues that needed resolving to get it to where it should be.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Kris Barocsi

TheGuitarGeek

Kirk Hammett makes no secret that he is a collector. He can’t help himself. He’ll buy guitars, he’ll trade them. If there’s something about an electric guitar that speaks to him then he’s an easy mark. It’s in the blood.

But he has an eye for this stuff. Hammett has acquired of the rarest vintage guitars around, such as the Bigbsy-equipped 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that left the factory with a black finish. He had Joe Bonamassa to thank for that one, giving him a heads up text after he spotted it in Carter Vintage Guitars. There is only three of them in existence – with rumours that a fourth is out there somewhere, like Bigfoot.

Hammett also owns one of the most famous Les Pauls of all time, Greeny, the ’59 Les Paul Standard once owned by Peter Green then Gary Moore. It has quite literally become his signature guitar, with Gibson and Epiphone both releasing replicas of it.

But speaking in Dublin at one of his The Collection in-person events, sandwiched between Metallica’s performances on the latest leg of their stadium-packing M72 Tour, Hammett introduced one guitar of special significance, a Les Paul previously owned by one of his heroes, and is another super-rare Factory Black unicorn.

So why then did Hammett have mixed feelings about owning it?

“This guitar used to belong to one of my all-time star heroes, a huge source of inspiration, Neal Schon,” says Hammett. “And I got this in an auction, and I don’t know what was up, but I got this for, like, half the price that it was worth!”

Many players would be happy. It is not often you can get a bargain on the vintage market, doubly so if the guitar has an association with a platinum-selling artist. Hammett adores Schon’s playing. He loves Schon. None of this sat easy with him.

“I felt kind of bad about it because I should have paid a fair price,” says Hammett. “But I paid a price that was lower than it should have been.”

Who can say what was going on in Schon’s mind at the time. This was 2021, the Covid era. The auction was a big deal in the press. This was a huge consignment of guitars, some 112 in total, with some of the rarest – and most valuable – vintage guitars being auctioned off.

This was the auction in which Schon’s Grainger 'Burst 1959 Les Paul Standard sold for $350,000. His 1977 Don’t Stop Believin’ Les Paul went for $250,000. And there were some bona-fide vintage curios, too, such as his ’87 Superstrat prototypes that had a body like an upside-down Jackson Soloist. There was even a super-weird 1967 Coral Sitar Vincent Bell.

Hammett Schon’s P-90 loaded 1957 Les Paul Standard was unusual. It had left the Gibson factory with a custom black finish rather than its regular Goldtop. A unicorn, and at $87,500 from Heritage Auctions, a bargain. But it wasn’t the only unicorn to sell for what many believed was way under the estimate.

In his Guitarist column, Dave Davidson of Well Strung Guitars in NYC highlighted a 1960 Les Paul Custom in a Cherry finish, supposedly the last surviving instrument in a consignment of six that were custom-finished for Hägstrom.

He said Schon got really unlucky and “missed the boat” on the vintage guitar market boom. Schon should have waited until the pandemic was over.

“It turned out to be the worst time to do an auction because his guitars really undersold,” said Davidson. “I remember having a conversation with Joe Bonamassa afterwards, and he felt Schon should have waited. I was amazed he didn’t just get a storage place and put it off for a year or two, but nobody knew where the market was going to go at the time. It was a brutal auction to watch.”

All this was bothering Hammett, so he thought he’d do the decent thing. He’d call Schon up. If the Journey guitarist had been sweating over the auction, he didn’t show it. He was totally cool.

“So, I actually called Neal,” recalls Hammett. “I said, ‘Neal, do you want the guitar back?’ And he said, ‘No, man, you keep it. You buy it; you keep it.’”

This, says Hammett, is typical Schon. There were no hard feelings. A year later, Hammett joined Schon onstage to play Wheel In The Sky. He left the ’57 Les Paul behind though, taking Greeny along for the night.

“Neal Schon, he’s such a cool, cool guy,” says Hammett. “If you guys ever, like, really get to know Neal Schon, I mean, he’s an amazing guitar player. He’s amazing. He lives and breathes music. And to me, he’s just such a inspiration, ‘cos I see him, and I see how he conducts his life, and how he plays, and his commitment and dedication to music, and I was just like, ‘Yeah! That’s what I want to do, too.’ So I’m doing it.”

And he is. You can catch Metallica in London this weekend (July 3/5) before they head back to the US in for their residency at the Sphere, in Las Vegas, opening night October 3. See Metallica for ticket details. And you can watch the conversation about his collection in full above or at Kirk Hammett's YouTube channel.

Gibson The Collection: Kirk Hammett, written and edited by MusicRadar alumnus Chris Vinnicombe is available now via Gibson.

Brandon Ellis and Jackson have unveiled the latest in their long-standing signature guitar collaboration, with the Cannibal Corpse touring guitarist’s Kelly getting a Gold Crackle glow-up, and a spec reworked to make it even more amendable to fretboard pyrotechnics.

That, of course, means that we have return of the now familiar 27-fret platform. Ellis is a big believer in extra fingerboard real estate for upper-register gymnastics, and five minutes one of these might convince you, too.

But he has also asked for some choice tweaks for this new Pro Plus model. If there is a Custom Shop vibe to the Pro Plus Series KE7, which pairs that Gold Crackle finish with a maple fingerboard, then that’s because it was inspired by a Maserbuilt Kelly in Ellis’ collection.

“This guitar is based off of the Custom Shop Kelly that Metal Joe Williams built for me some years back,” says Ellis. “I just thought that maple and gold would look really cool together. I thought it would be kind of a striking regal look that wasn't common, and [it] exceeded my expectations.”

This new model should feel a little different to previous Ellis Kellys. It has the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard, but we’ve now got stainless steel frets (these are the kinds of upgrades you get with the Pro Plus Series).

It also has a slightly shorter scale than the 25.5” you find on most Jackson guitars, and the R2 locking nut is slightly narrower, so the string spacing will be a little tighter up there as per Ellis’ preferences.

“I was gonna design a guitar that was for soloing, specifically, so I made it a 25.1-inch scale length, and that allows the strings to be bent a little bit easier,” says Ellis. “And it also affects just the sound of the guitar. There’s a maple fretboard.

“That has a nice, snappy, kind of sound to it that people know, and the body is nyatoh, which I find to be just a really well balanced, bold-sounding tone wood. It is not too bright. It’s not too dark.”

Speaking of too dark, there are the Luminlay side-dot markers that illuminate in low light situations, which is always helpful onstage. Fretboard navigation is a big thing with this guitar.

We’ve got the typical Jackson shark tooth inlays, black on maple, easily visible, but there’s a neat visual cue where they run as standard from frets 1 to 11, there’s a double inlay at the 12th, and all frets above that the inlays are reversed so there’s more inlay on the treble side.

Ellis says this makes it a little easier finding your way around, though we have never seen the former Black Dahlia Murder guitarist having any trouble with that.

As for the pickups, we’ve got his Seymour Duncan Parallel Axis Dyad humbucker at the bridge, a hum-cancelling Seymour Duncan Parallel Axis Stack single-coil at the neck position.

“This [humbucker] is unique because it features asymmetrically wound coils,” says Ellis. “So one of these coils is a lot hotter than the other one, and it opens up the sound of a humbucker when the two coils don’t perfectly cancel each other out. And we gave it gold magnets and gold logos to just match the cosmetic of the guitar, which is really cool.”

These are selected by a three-way switch, and there’s a single volume control with a push/pull function for series/parallel modes.

This would not be the über metal guitar it is without a double-locking vibrato, and so we have a top-mounted Gotoh GE1996T vibrato system here, in gold, because this is a classy guitar. Hey, a Kelly is a radical electric guitar, especially with that reverse six-in-line headstock and that shape, but this wears this gilded finery better.

“I’m just honoured that we’re able to present this product, and that people are gonna buy my guitar,” says Ellis. “It’s kind of insane.”

The Pro Plus Brandon Ellis Kelly KE7 is out now, priced £1,799/$2,199, and that includes a gig bag. For more details, head over to Jackson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amp modellers and effects

Darkglass Electronics Anagram Guitar Essentials 

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

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

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

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

Electro-Harmonix Percolator Harmonic Saturator 

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

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

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

Cornerstone Centurio Dual Overdrive

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

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

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

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

MXR Wylde Audio Zakk Sabbath Overdrive

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

Find out more at Jim Dunlop.

Solar Chug Capo

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

Find out more at Solar Guitars.

Signature guitars, pickups and plugins

Jackson Pro Series Rob Cavestany Signature

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

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

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

Find out more at Jackson.

PRS Guitars Jon Jourdan Limited

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

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

Godin 25th Anniversary Steve Stevens Signature Model ACS Multiac Guitar

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

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

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

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

Find out more at Godin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MixWave Yvette Young signature plugin

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

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

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

See MixWave for more.

Epiphone, Orangewood, Blackstar and Two Notes

Epiphone expands Inspired By Gibson Custom Series

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

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

See Epiphone for more details.

Orangewood Melrose Retro

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

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

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

Find out more at Orangewood.

Blackstar Fly 3 High Gain

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

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

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

See Blackstar for more.

Two Notes Genome 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you start with all that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Fender for more details.

Some electric guitars were simply just ahead of their time. Guild’s S-300 was one of them. It was probably too much guitar for the mainstream, all those angles, the offset waist, a phase switch at time when the standard configurations for pickup switching were being set in stone. Nonetheless, it became something of a cult item.

And yet, launched in 1977, futuristic, “radical” – what better time to launch a forward-looking guitar than the year when George Lucas transformed pop-culture with Star Wars?

Well, what about now? The S-300 is back, returning as part of Guild’s Newark St. Collection, this Deluxe edition offered in the choice of Vintage Sterling Metallic and Neptune Blue Metallic finishes, and with the same super-cool silhouette as its late ‘70s forebears.

With the trend for offset guitars showing no signs of abating, the very idea of a dual-humbucker guitar with an out-of-phase voicing most appealing in an age of abundant options, the S-300 Deluxe could be one of the hits of 2026.

“The S-300 was viewed as fairly radical when it was introduced nearly 50 years ago,” says Nick Beach, product manager, Fretted Instruments, at Guild. “The guitar’s offset body had dramatic cutaways and contours that gave it a futuristic look, and its phase switch was also unusual at the time – but since then it has become increasingly popular and collectable.

“With the new S-300 Deluxe guitar, we’re bringing back a classic with a few key changes to make it even more comfortable and giving players a choice of eye-catching metallic finishes.”

These guitars have solid mahogany bodies, those double-cutaway contours just on the right side of bonkers without making them look like pawnshop oddities. The angle of the compensated tailpiece adds another bizarro touch.

The necks are in matching mahogany, carved into soft vintage U profiles, and we like that the metallic finish is reprised across the neck and model’s back.

They have a 24.75” scale, with bound rosewood fingerboards inlaid with pearloid blocks. The drive on these is straightforward enough. Guild puts everything close to your picking hand.

There’s a three-way pickup selector switch, volume and tone for each humbucker, and there’s a mini-toggle switch that puts them out of phase, a useful tone option for many, but certainly not a deal-breaker if you have no need for it.

The pickups are Guild’s HB-2+ humbuckers, which are Alnico V designs, wound to be a little hotter than your typical PAF-alike (hence the plus sign in their designation).

The hardware looks quality, open-gear tuners with metal buttons, an Ultimate Angle Tune-o-matic-style bridge, and that “Peak” logo and Chesterfield inlay on the headstock is vintage Guild, very cool.

The S-300 Deluxe is available now, priced $799 street. See Guild Guitars for more details.