What is it?

In 2025, Gretsch reignited its solidbody Corvette design – spurred-on by the success of the Jack Antonoff Princess CVT – with the production model Electromatic CVT Double-Cut. This dual-humbucker rock machine turned heads worldwide, proving once again that there’s more to Gretsch than grease.

However, while the retro looks and middleweight tones ticked a lot of boxes for standard-tuned players, the overall identity of the CVT (especially when decked-out in Havana Burst and Wychwood finishes) positively screamed for a trip downtown.

An excursion made difficult (as I noted in my review) by the one-size-fits-all 24.6-inch scale length. Well, contrary to philosopher Jagger’s claims, it turns out that sometimes you can get what you want, because Gretsch has gone back to the bench and given the CVT a little more road with the 27-inch scale Electromatic CVT Baritone.

Specs

• Launch price: $599/£599/€649
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string solidbody baritone electric
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: Maple, bolt-on, Performance C shape
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 27"/686mm
• Nut/width: Graph Tech Nu-Bone, 42.86mm
• Frets: 22, medium
• Hardware: Gretsch die-cast tuners, Adjust-O-Matic bridge and stoptail, nickel finish
• String spacing at bridge: 52mm
• Electrics: 2x Gretsch Twin Six humbuckers, master volume, master tone, push/pull coil splits, treble-bleed circuit
• Weight: 8lb/3.62kg
• Options: N/A
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Bristol Fog
• Cases: No
• Contact: Gretsch

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

On the face of it, this is the Electromatic CVT Double-Cut with a longer neck - it obviously features the same CVT outline, here cut from mahogany and bevelled at the edges producing a weight of 8lb, edging towards the hefty end of manageable for some. It uses the same Twin Six humbuckers as the regular-size version too. But look a little closer and you’ll discover a few spec changes. First up is the fingerboard which is rosewood for the baritone version, marked neatly with Neo-Classical ‘Thumbnail’ inlays and bound tidily at the edges.

Next up, the humbuckers are wired to enable coil splitting via the single volume and tone pots. These, along with the selector switch feel purposeful with their chunky metal design, making quick engaging/disengaging easier than some plastic control knobs. They’re fastened with grub screws too, so you’re not going to end up yanking it off the guitar by mistake when you go looking for single coil tones. The bridge has been swapped as well, changing from the wraparound bridge of the regular CVT to an Adjusto-O-Matic bridge and tailpiece.

There really isn’t a lot to complain about here, that is, until you realise that the Bristol Fog finish (a sort of trans-brown ’burst we’ve seen throughout Gretsch’s line-up) is the only available colour option. That’s right, no Wychwood, and no Havana Burst that caught the eyes of so many with the Electromatic CVT.

To counter that, Gretsch has done a superb job. It’s a bit of a chameleon, stylistically, being simultaneously dark, moody and totally beardcore-friendly, while also unlikely to look out of place in more classic settings. So, a limited palette, but a potentially diverse application.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

The great thing about a baritone guitar is that everything you learned in standard tuning is immediately transferable. Standard baritone tuning shifts your tuning down by 5 semitones, so the open strings now become B E A D F# B. To accommodate this, Gretsch has fitted the CVT Baritone with 14-68-gauge strings.

If you’re used to playing 9s or 10s, this is obviously going to require a bit of getting used to, but it’s not entirely alien, and as a result the tension is maintained for the lower register - refreshing if you’re used to down-tuning a regular scale-length guitar and discovering that your lower-pitched strings lose their tuning and intonation due to being too flappy.

Of course, the trade-off is that it’s still six strings across 22 frets, so the same interval range applies, but it starts lower and finishes at a lower pitch too. The heavier strings also take a bit more shifting when it comes to string bends, and the review model feels a bit draggy at a few of the frets. It’s nothing a quick polish wouldn’t fix, but does mean that this review model leans slightly more towards the riff/rhythm side than shredding.

The ‘Performance C’ neck profile is a continuation of that offered on the normal CVT, which to my hand feels like the Goldilocks C-shape found on many guitars from the Fender stable, but slimmed down a touch to feel a bit more ‘modern’. The Gretsch tuners feel particularly smooth, and there’s a softened feel to the edges of the Adjust-O-Matic bridge and saddles that makes palm-muting very comfortable. All of which adds up to a stable, well intonated and comfortable low-end riffing platform.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Played clean, the Twin Six pickups react ‘fine’ in humbucker mode. These are Alnico V magnets, and while the output is punchy, they are a touch one the dull side.

This guitar is fitted with a treble bleed circuit, so, turning down the volume control allows the higher frequencies to pass direct to the output jack. Doing this helps to even out the balance slightly. The biggest impact, though, comes from splitting the coils.

Removing some of the low end heft makes for a much more satisfying clean tone, bringing back the definition and giving some of that scoopier articulation to the neck position.

But it’s when you start feeding the Twin Sixes to some overdrive that the CVT Baritone reveals its heartland. That extra wool that’s a slight hindrance to clean tones comes into its own with big, beefy overdrive.

I played the CVT through a Way Huge Pork and Pickle - a bass gain box which provides selectable overdrive and fuzz, as well as the option to blend some of your clean tone in parallel, and the result was huge, doomy tones that still had some clarity.

One of my favourite things about baritone guitars is their ability to make ordinary progressions sound immediately more interesting, in the same way that a capo does, but in reverse. With that in mind, it makes exploring tunings a lot of fun.

Take that B down a tone and you’re into drop-A, making all of those ’90s one-finger powerchords sound fresh again, with the added benefit of being more menacing to boot. Go the other way and the CVT excels in C-standard too. Add some fuzz, start chugging and you’ll feel like you’re riding along with Josh Homme’s desert road trip.

At this register, the CVT’s heavy, hairy firepower is given plenty of room to stretch out, and playing it through the Universal Audio Knuckles (a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier amp and speaker sim) and EVH 5150 models on my Line 6 HX Stomp, it’s a joy to play way down without fear of the strings giving out.

Dedicated metal players might want to investigate a pickup upgrade if that’s the full-time aim of this guitar, but there’s no denying that it’s tailored for rock and metal straight out of the box.

Verdict

While baritone guitars have a long association with trem-soaked surf rock, but the CVT isn’t going to be hanging-10 anytime soon. The lack of a vibrato and the overall blend of a chunky mahogany body and those Twin Six pickups lay out its brief from the go.

And it meets it brilliantly, for the most part. So much so that the baritone format might just be the CVT’s natural home. It suits it so well that it all just makes sense - it’s comfortable to play, handles the lower pitches without stuttering or warbling, and, dare I say, looks the part too, even if one or two finish options wouldn’t go amiss. Then consider the price and it’s very hard to find fault.

MusicRadar verdict: For many, a baritone guitar is a commitment rather than a ‘play it for a couple songs’ type indulgence. But here, Gretsch has managed to check both boxes at once by delivering a quality example of the baritone configuration at what is rapidly becoming the new ‘affordable’ price point.

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Gretsch

• Best baritone guitars

Kramer is celebrating 50 trips ‘round the sun with a special anniversary collection that refinishes its high-performance electric guitar lineup in a metallic gold finish. And we’ve got to say that Kramer guitars have never looked better.

Okay, there will be some devotees of the brand who can’t look past some of the graphic finishes – who wouldn’t want a green cobra on the front of their guitar – or any of the more lurid paint jobs that were its stock-in-trade in the ‘80s, back when Kramer was the premier shred brand in the US.

And okay, maybe the Eddie Van Halen red-black-and-white striped Kramer takes the cake. It’s Edward Van Halen.

But c’mon… Look at all that gold.

This 50th Anniversary Collection has got us like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, and there is plenty to choose from here.

Six of the current Kramer lineup is represented. There’s the neck-thru SM-1 HH, the Volante, the NightSwan, the 84, the Pacer Carrera, and the Baretta. All come in Anniversary Gold, with contrasting black hardware, black pickguards on the Volante – no pickguards on the rest because there has always been something utilitarian about the Kramer aesthetic. Speed above all else.

That sort of thing caught the imagination of legions of players in the ‘80s, among them was Aljon Go. Go is now the product manager at Kramer and he has lost none of his affection for the brand

“I’m incredibly proud to be celebrating Kramer’s 50th Anniversary with this stunning collection of limited-edition guitars,” says Go. “Performance has always been at the core of what Kramer stands for, and that spirit is deeply personal to me.

“My very first electric guitar was a Kramer, a Christmas gift from my parents in 1988. That guitar lit the spark for a lifelong passion, and when I pick up these 50th Anniversary models today, I feel that same sense of excitement and inspiration.”

There is everything a growing shredder needs. There is the 10” to 14” compound radius ebony fingerboard, jumbo frets, skinny necks, the Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking vibrato.

Kramer isn’t playing around with the pickups. The Volante comes with a pair of Kramer USA Neptune humbuckers, the rest with one or two Evolution PRO humbuckers.

“These guitars honour our legacy while delivering the tone, playability, and reliability today’s players expect,” says Go. “I hope guitarists around the world connect with them as strongly as I always have.”

All ship with a gig bag, and the price is amenable too, with the range starting from £949/$999 street for the single-pickup Baretta. The Volante HHFR will set you back £1,199/$1,1299.

Find out more over at Kramer.

Finding your way around your guitar’s fretboard might seem like picking your way through a maze of letters and notes but, once your guitar is in tune, it's surprising how quickly you’ll pick up just what lies where and what your best next move will be.

Keyboard players have it simple, with a string (virtual or otherwise) for every note they play - that’s 88 strings on a piano (not including unison strings…). The ‘low’ ones are on the left and, working your way to the right, they just get higher… Simple.

Guitarists, however, don’t have the same luxury of space and size, instead using just six strings to represent the full gamut of notes available. Thus, with such a shortcut in place, there’s a few tricks that have to be played in order for your guitar to present all the notes you need.

At this point, it's probably best not to ask ‘why’ but simply go with the tried and tested flow that’s worked for hundreds of years. Trust us – it really does all work out for the best.

Why does a guitar have six strings?

As you’ve probably noticed, your guitar features six strings and, with it sitting in your lap – from the fat one at the top, to the thin one at the bottom – these play the notes: E, A, D, G, B, E.

Or they should if your guitar is in tune…

That’s right, there are two E strings, two octaves apart – a ‘low E’ and a ‘high E’. Don’t fret (no pun intended) about ‘why’ now, just know that this setup allows you to reach an insane range of notes from a fretboard that’s literally within an arm's reach.

So all you need is six strings and you can play anything. The looser the string, the lower the note. That’s because a loose string vibrates slower than a high string. Notes are measured in Hz – the number of vibrations per second. Sounds complicated, but be grateful that this is all so scientific, as it means that tuning a guitar is easy to accomplish with your choice of hundreds of modern electronic tuners.

Or your amp may even have a tuner built in. Or simply go for one of the countless guitar tuning apps you’ll find for your phone.

So, from the fat E string nearest you to the thinnest E string furthest away:

E string: Should vibrate at 82 Hz and play the E2 note

A string: Should vibrate 110 Hz and play the A2 note

D string: Should vibrate 147 Hz and play the D3 note

G string: Should vibrate 196 Hz and play the G3 note

B string: Should vibrate 247 Hz and play the B3 note

E string: Should vibrate 330 Hz and play the E4 note

The ‘2’ or ‘3’ number is the octave number – aka where you’ll find the identical note on a piano keyboard.

And with your six strings in tune, then, by holding down a fret on the fretboard, you’re effectively shortening the string so it will vibrate faster when you pluck it. And it will sound at a higher pitch. Get it?

How to tune a guitar

Simply fire up your tuner/app of choice, ensure that its mic has clear, unimpeded access to the sound of your guitar and pluck each string in turn. Your tuner will tell you the pitch it’s listening to and then you simply rotate that string’s tuning peg (which you’ll find on the head of the guitar – at the end of the neck) until it plays the pitch listed above.

Turning the tuning peg away from you (counter-clockwise on the top strings, clockwise on the bottom) tightens the string and gives you a higher pitch. Turning the peg toward you (clockwise on the top strings, counter-clockwise on the bottom) will loosen the string and give you a lower pitch.

Remember the old adage: Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey as you look directly at each tuning peg. Go slowly as small adjustments will make a bigger difference than you expect.

And – top tip – Always tune UP to the correct note rather than DOWN to it. This keeps the string under consistent tension as you’re tuning, and so, when the job is done, will help it stay in tune for longer.

How to tune a guitar without a tuner

It’s also possible to tune a guitar using a method known as ‘relative tuning’. I.e. You can tune all the strings to each other so they’re the correct number of Hz apart from each other and will sound chords and melodies correctly.

Do be aware that this method means that your guitar isn’t necessarily in tune with every OTHER guitar… So perhaps get at least one string in correct tuning before using it to tune the others. Or use relative tuning only when you’re practicing or playing solo (and perhaps only for emergencies)… But it can be done.

Relative tuning works by using one string as your reference point and tuning the others to match it. Start by assuming your low E string (the thickest one) is roughly in tune, then work your way down:

Step 1: Fret the low E string at the 5th fret. This produces the note A. Now tune the next string – that open A string – to match that sound. Simple.

Now just keep going.

Step 2: Fret the A string at the 5th fret. This produces a D. Tune your open D string to match.

Step 3: Fret the D string at the 5th fret. This produces G. Tune your open G string to match.

Step 4: Fret the G string at the 4th fret. This produces B. Tune your open B string to match. (Note: this one is the 4th fret, NOT the 5th, remember!)

Step 5: Fret the B string at the 5th fret. This produces E. Tune your open high E string to match.

Top tip. Try to pluck both strings — the fretted note and the open string — together, and listen carefully. If you hear a slight wavering or wobbling sound, the strings are close but not quite matching. Adjust the tuning peg slowly until that wavering disappears and the two notes sound smooth and stable together.

It takes a little practice but is a genuinely useful skill to develop and you’re training your ear and to recognise notes at the same time!

Why does my guitar keep going out of tune?

Don’t worry. New guitars – and new strings – go out of tune frequently at first. That’s because your strings and the neck and body of the guitar need time to stretch and settle under tension. This is completely normal. Simply retune and just keep playing. After a few weeks things will stabilise considerably.

Temperature and humidity also affect tuning. If you've moved your guitar from a cold car into a warm room, give it a few minutes to adjust before tuning up.

More top tuning tips

Get into the habit of tuning every single time you pick up your guitar, before you play anything. It takes less than a minute and makes everything sound immediately better. Your ears will gradually learn to recognise when something sounds slightly off, and that's the beginning of developing a musical ear.

Tuning might seem like a chore at first, but it quickly becomes second nature. And there's something quietly satisfying about a perfectly in tune guitar which invites you to play.

Have fun!

Gibson has unveiled a pair of jaw-dropping Custom Shop ES-330s that take the hollowbody back to the Golden Era of electric guitar design, with a 1959 first-year reproduction, and a 1962 model that subtly refreshes the instrument with a SlimTaper neck.

The ES-330 often gets overlooked. Blame the Beatles. But we’ll get to Lennon/McCartney/Harrison in a second. Perhaps it is only the success of Gibson’s semi-hollows that put the ES-330 in the shade. Just as rock was turning up the volume, the fully hollowbodied ES-330 got a reputation for feedback that centreblock-equipped models such as the ES-335 and ES-355 effectively killed.

And yet it remains one of the most compelling instruments in the Gibson catalogue, past or present, precisely because you can play petty much anything on – jazz, blues, rock ’n’ roll, indie, pop, fusion, shoegaze, alt-rock and whatever. To think that Gibson went some years without making them.

Cast your mind back to 2024. The ES-330 was the electric guitar comeback of the year, and it wasn’t even close, as Gibson officially brought it back into production, offering the original hollowbody in Sixties Cherry, Natural, and Tobacco Sunburst nitro finishes, with Ebony available direct from Gibson.

The only question was why it ever went out of production in the first place? Dog-ear P-90s, trapeze-style tailpieces, that hollow construction that means it will squeal if you really jack the gain, there's nothing quite like the ES-330 – except maybe the Epiphone Casino.

But, as Gibson notes, the ES-330 got there first, unveiled in 1959, two years before the Casino. If the Beatles had been wedded to the ES-330 like they were the Casino, guitar history might have been different. No one would talk about the Casino first, the ES-330 second.

The Gibson USA ES-330s are no cheap date. They are serious high-end electric guitars. But these Custom Shop Historic Reissues dial up the level of detail with VOS finishes and, crucially, era-specific specs.

The 1959 ES-330 Reissue is offered in Vintage Natural and Vintage Burst, has the classic thinline maple/poplar/maple build with a glued-in mahogany neck, shaped into a rounded 1959 profile.

It has the celluloid dot inlays on a once piece 12” rosewood fingerboard. Many will credit the Historic no-wire ABR-1 bridge and trapeze tailpiece help for boosting its sustain – though the long neck tenon on both of these guitars will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting too.

The 1962 model is not that different. Here the neck has the more svelte SlimTaper profile, while the gold Top Hat-style tuners now have silver insets. There are mini block inlays instead of dots, and Gibson is offering it in Vintage Burst and Sixties Cherry.

At £5,249/$5,999, the prices on these are hefty but include a Lifton guitar case, and one special guitar. Head over to Gibson for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Head over to Christie’s for more information.

What is it?

MIDI was first introduced in the early 1980s and kick-started a revolution in the composition and production of music.

From easy programming of synthesizers to creating complex multi-instrument scores, it allowed musicians to streamline their processes to a degree that would have been unthinkable before. It’s still the technical standard for music programming, with millions of users worldwide.

For all this ubiquity, and all this ease of use, MIDI still exists on the fringes of consciousness for many guitarists. There are plenty of MIDI-capable amplifiers and effects out there, but the proportion of buyers that use those features is anyone’s guess.

And what of the MIDI electric guitar? In theory, a fantastic crossover instrument that allows guitarists to communicate in this universal musical language, creating notation that can be read instantly by any other MIDI instrument, and allowing notes played on the guitar to be heard in the voices of other instruments.

In practice, though, dedicated MIDI guitars are often quite a compromised proposition, with tedious setup procedures, plus latency and triggering issues severely hobbling the guitar's expressive potential.

In theory, these are the problems Jamstik is here to solve. The company has become known for its MIDI guitar architecture, and now its technology finds a new home - in an instrument by Swedish ergonomic guitar mainstays Strandberg.

Specs

• Price: $2,199 | £1,799
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string MIDI-enabled electric guitar 
• Body: Meranti
• Neck: Roasted maple, EndurNeck profile
• Fingerboard material/radius: Rosewood, 20”
• Scale length: 25.5”/648mm
• Nut/width: Plastic, 42mm
• Frets: 24, DHP 28HFS stainless steel
• Hardware: EGS Arc fixed bridge and tuners
• String spacing at bridge: 52.5mm
• Electrics: Strandberg Custom Hot bridge humbucker, Strandberg Custom Vintage neck humbucker, 6-channel hexaphonic MIDI pickup, Volume, Tone, 5-way pickup selector
• Weight: 4.7lb/2.1kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Chameleon gloss
• Case: Strandberg gig bag included
• Contact: Jamstick

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

I’ve reviewed a couple of Strandbergs in recent months, their design and execution impressing each time. In order to sit at a similar price point to its non-MIDI stablemates, this model is based on the more affordable Boden Essential; it concedes some features to the Standard models, but the essence is still there.

The body is meranti and the roasted maple neck is capped with a light-coloured rosewood fretboard - and this is the first Strandberg I've played with straight, rather than fanned, frets. Two own-brand magnetic humbuckers mix it with Jamstik's six-channel hexaphonic MIDI pickup, with all its processing built in - no need for cumbersome outboard gear here.

The usual excellent build, feather-light weight and fantastic balance is present and correct and, of course, the company's ergonomically-optimised EndurNeck profile makes an appearance too.

Rather than the usual satin, here we’ve a tasty gloss ‘Chameleon’ finish, for which the guitar is named. True to its namesake, the finish changes in the light between shades of green, grey and purple.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

All the guitar parts of this MIDI guitar feel as good as you’d hope. Every Strandberg I’ve met has been fantastic to play, and the Chameleon is no exception. It's a delight to sit, or stand, with it for hours on end, the lightweight ergonomic design exerting minimal strain on your body.

If you’re new to Jamstik or to MIDI guitar in general, though, you might expect the mental strain of setting up the tech to make up for it.

There’s certainly the question of exactly how to connect the guitar to the computer – Jamstik supplies a MIDI-TRS cable, and a USB-C data cable, but if you've no MIDI interface or no USB-C input on your computer, neither will be much use. Luckily, I had a data-enabled USB-A to USB-C cable to hand.

In practice, the Jamstik Creator app (and its extensive associated sound library) works very well, and provides easy access to an impressive range of sounds. It can also be used as a plugin on your DAW – I loaded it into Logic, and was able to record straight away using sounds chosen from the library.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

There’s quite some novelty to the Jamstik experience. As a fairly hopeless keyboard player, it was very gratifying to hear myself finally sounding competent through a variety of synth sounds. A key part of Jamstik's USP is the promise of extremely low latency, and indeed it is barely noticeable; it should pose no functional issue at all for most users.

And of course, everything you record is able to be read by any other MIDI instrument – so if you want to create a large score but guitar is your only instrument, it’s a whole lot easier to achieve that goal.

It must be said that, in my experience, the tracking and triggering were good but still not perfect – and even the best MIDI guitar still requires you to play differently than you otherwise might. Machine-like precision is paramount when recording accurate MIDI and, though the clever processor recognises bends, slides and vibrato, for some players, the expressiveness of the guitar can still be lost in the process.

Further tweaking of sensitivity settings, pickup heights and so on will all steer you closer to an ideal setup. It's more involved than ‘just’ recording guitar tracks, of course, but never lose sight of how much more utility is on offer here.

And in all of this, the quality of the Chameleon shines through – making the aforementioned precision that much easier. And it can still be used as a normal magnetic-pickup guitar, with all the aplomb of other Strandbergs we’ve seen recently.

Verdict

The Chameleon is significantly more expensive than the non-MIDI Boden Essential on which it's based, but the tech creates so much added value that there's little use comparing the two.

It has all the strengths of the usual Strandberg experience, with a huge amount of extra utility, and with that in mind, the price makes more sense.

Is it a foil to all the issues with previous MIDI guitars? Perhaps not – but with this technology, and the strength of the instrument it's mounted in, it's the MIDI guitar to beat.

MusicRadar verdict: The Strandberg x Jamstik Chameleon certainly lives up to its name – providing access to sounds you'll never have heard from a guitar before. The MIDI guitar remains an esoteric idea for most, but that idea has been executed to an extremely high standard here.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Strandberg

Charvel has unveiled the American Neo-Classic series, a range of San Dimas Style 1 hotrods that take the brand’s story back where it started, in California.

These US-made S-styles are offered with the choice of Floyd Rose double-locking vibratos or hardtail bridges, and the spec is suitably premium, with Seymour Duncan electric guitar pickups as standard.

This is a big deal. Sure, these past few years, the Mexican-made Pro-Mod range has been knocking it out the park, ditto the MIJ line. But Charvel production returning to the USA, it’s a spiritual homecoming. This is where the hotrodding began, when Charvel established itself as the name the ‘80s virtuoso set gravitated towards in search of a high-performance take on the Fender Stratocaster.

“Charvel was born in California and so was this guitar,” says Jon Romanowski, VP of Product at Charvel. “The American Neo-Classic San Dimas is a direct line back to where it all started, the shop, the craft, the obsession with making instruments that players actually want to play.

“Building it in Corona feels like coming full circle. The JB/'59 pickup pairing delivers on every level, and the finishes feel as iconic as the guitar itself.”

And that is very much what the San Dimas Style 1 is. It even has the licensed Fender headstock (Fender owns Charvel).

But this is a go-faster Strat, with a quartersawn bolt-on maple neck that is actually listed on the spec sheet as a Speed Neck profile (which, from memory, struck us as an emaciated C shape).

Besides being quartersawn, this neck is reinforced with graphite rods. Charvel has always been about having fun with the electric guitar, pushing its limits, but when you think about it these builds are thoroughly practical.

Little touches such as the rolled fingerboard edges enhance playability, others such as the heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheel are just, well, useful.

Many of the more high-end specs of the Pro-Mod range are carried over here. We are talking about the aforementioned rolled fingerboard edges, the Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side markers, satin neck finishes, Charvel branded die-cast tuners and whatnot.

But we’ve got stainless steel jumbo frets, a single knurled metal volume knob that’s housing one of those 500K low-friction Bourns pots you find on EVH Gear instruments, which makes it easy (or easier) to roll back the volume for those Eddie Van Halen-style swells.

Charvel has kitted out all of these with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker at the bridge, a Seymour Duncan ’59 at the neck. Now there’s a tried and tested pickup combo if ever there was one, especially if tone-wise you’re reanimating the spirit of ‘80s hard rock and heavy metal.

And while you don’t have a tone control to worry your head about, there is five-way switching which gives players plenty of in between tones to work with.

You get gold hardware on the hardtail version, chrome with the Floyd. Speaking of which, that’s a Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibrato, which is a little strange – the Jackson American series comes with the 1500 Series, which has the stainless steel screws and the push-in arm (if you’re of a mind to upgrade the unit yourself, these parts are available direct from Floyd Rose).

The Floyd version – aka the SD1 HH FR – is offered in Robin's Egg Blue, Ivory Blitz, Gloss Black and Racing Red and it is priced £2,399/$2,799. The hardtail model is offered in Gloss Black, Racing Red, Velvet Midnight and Ivory Blitz and is priced £2,249/$2,749.

Both models are available now. For more details, head over to Charvel.

To see them in action, check out Dweezil Zappa's demo video above. He's shredding in a skatepark.

Epiphone and Alex Lifeson have unveiled a replica of the Rush guitarist’s iconic ‘Whitey’ ES-355, and it is as high-end as Epiphone guitars get.

Based on the Alpine White 1976 ES-355 that can be heard right across the Rush catalogue, this Inspired By Gibson “reissue” comes with Gibson USA pickups, a signature hard-shell guitar case, and stays faithful to the original design with a Varitone and the guitar’s dual outputs.

The gold hardware isn’t to be sniffed at either, with a gold Harmonica-style Tune-O-Matic bridge paired with a Maestro Vibrola. This is Epiphone going premium, so there are all kinds of specs that you would typically associate with high-end electric guitars, such as the CTS pots and Mallory capacitors, the Switchcraft jacks and pickup selector switch, premium sealed die-cast tuners with metal tulip-style buttons.

Also, the Gibson Custom livery is all over the instrument, from the split-diamond inlay on the headstock to the block inlays on the fingerboard, plus multi-ply binding to the body’s top and headstock.

Lifeson had hinted that something special had been in the offing, and that he had been working with Epiphone on a signature guitar. And it could only really be the ES-355, aka Whitey, aka the electric guitar that – arguably – most Rush fans would first think about when they think about The Ultimate Rush Guitar®.

“The ES-355 has always been a really special guitar for me,” says Lifeson. “It’s got this incredible balance of elegance and power.”

Lifeson says this one is a chip off the old block. But even if the first thing you want to play on it is Freewill, consider this a blank canvas for your own prog rock peregrinations.

“What I love about this Epiphone “Whitey” recreation is how faithfully it captures that original spirit while still feeling fresh and alive in your hands,” says Lifeson. “It’s a guitar that invites you to explore, to take chances, and to find your own voice. I’m genuinely thrilled that players everywhere will have the chance to experience it and make it part of their own musical journey.”

Lifeson’s ES-355 comes with a pair of Gibson USA T-Type humbuckers at the neck and bridge.

These are hooked up to the usual three-way selector, dual volume and dual tone controls, plus you have the Varitone rotary dial running in mono, and a mini-toggle to bypass it.

Each notch on the Varitone removes a select band of frequencies giving you five filtered options that make the ES-355 one of the most versatile semi-hollows out there.

The rest of the specs are as you’d expect. This has the 24.75” scale length, the 12” radius ebony fingerboard, a Graph Tech nut and the tortoiseshell pickguard as per the original.

The Alex Lifeson 1976 ES-355 is available now, priced £1,199/$1,499. See Epiphone for more details.

• “It was the record that changed our lives. The record that won us freedom of creative expression”: Rush frontman Geddy Lee recalls how the band's 1976 prog classic 2112 transformed their fortunes

Teased at NAMM 2026, launched today, and retooled by popular demand, Gibson’s Victory is now officially available with a Floyd Rose vibrato, which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense.

The Victory was an ‘80s experiment by Gibson, the brand behind the Golden Era icons dipping its toe into the unorthodoxy of high-performance design at a time when shred fever was gathering.

Having brought the revised and refreshed Victory back in 2024 with a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpiece, Gibson had found something that worked.

It was a hit. There was something about that offset double-cut shape, allied to the recognisably Gibson design touchstones – the six-in-line Explorer-style headstock, a figured maple top, and the SlimTaper neck – that resonated with players.

But why not a Floyd Rose? For many players, a high-performance electric guitar is not a high-performance electric guitar without one. Well, the Victory has one now – and besides that, it’s pretty much an identical guitar to its 2024 forebears.

Gibson is offering it in Iguana Burst, Translucent Ebony Burst and Deep Ocean Burst, all finish options which flatter the guitars’ AA-grade figured maple tops. The bodies are solid mahogany, as are the necks, which are glued-in, with a sculpted heel to aid upper-fret access.

The Victory has the look and feel of a guitar whose design was signed off on a Friday afternoon. To hell with it. Here are some off-brand specs, such as the 24-fret ebony fingerboard, with a compound radius to boot. The fret-wire is not regulation Gibson gauge. As befitting the style of the guitar, the Victory has fatter jumbo frets.

It also has ‘80s Tribute pickups, a humbucker pairing designed around an Alnico V magnet, hotter at the bridge, more traditional at the neck, and you have a push-pull function for splitting the coils.

And given that we are effectively in competition with and chasing the Superstrat dollar, why not extend that scale to a Fender-ish 25.5”? Why not indeed (but then it’s not that unusual for a Gibson to have a 25.5” scale – see the SJ-200, Songwriter Recording Artist acoustic guitars, etc).

Other details include the Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners – note the acrylic dot inlays on the fingerboard, all aligned towards the bass side of the ‘board. It’s a quietly radical detail on a guitar that us unquietly radical.

The Victory Floyd Rose is available now, priced £2,399/$2,799, and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case.

For more details, head over to Gibson.

There are all kinds of signature guitars out there in the world. There are those for metal players, indie players, funk, jazz, rock and blues. PRS Guitars’ latest is based on an artist who is wholly fictional, Lilisa Suzunomiya, aka Lily, the protagonist of the hit anime Rock is a Lady’s Modesty.

There is a lot of IP to navigate so, deep breath, the SE Rock Lady is a collab between PRS Guitars and AMC Global Media’s Sentai and HIDIVE. The guitar in question is a dead ringer for the guitar Lily plays onscreen – and in the manga from which it was adapted.

And fundamentally it is a hybrid of two signature designs from the PRS archive, Paul’s Guitar, the electric guitar spec’d up by the brand’s founder, Paul Reed Smith, and the KANAMI of BAND-MAID’s limited edition Custom 24-08, which debuted in 2024.

Having KANAMI involved brings us neatly back to the anime. BAND-MAID recorded the show’s theme song, Ready To Rock.

“When I wrote the opening theme Ready To Rock, I wanted it to feel like the moment you decide to step onto the stage and let everything out,” says KANAMI. “It’s exciting to see that energy carried into a real PRS guitar inspired by Lily’s instrument, and I hope players and fans can plug in, turn it up, and experience the world of Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty for themselves.”

PRS is only making 690 of these SE Rock Lady electrics. Each comes fitted with a pair of TCI “S” electric guitar pickups with custom purple bobbins.

Those familiar with the PRS lineup will tell you just how versatile the TCI pickup is, with tones covering full-fat rock humbucker and single-coil snap, courtesy of a pair of individual coil-taps and three-way pickup switching. Further tone shaping can be had via the instrument’s volume and tone pots.

As someone who has a weakness for pink guitars ever since Jeff Beck picked up a flamingo-coloured Jackson Soloist, the Rock Lady’s Pink Pearl finish (a solid colour top on a natural finish guitar) looks the bee’s knees.

Another additional signature aesthetic detail can be found on the truss rod cover, which is engraved with a Lily.

Ed Sheeran, Dave Grissom, KANAMI, John Mayer, Herman Li… The PRS Guitars artist roster has players of all stripes. But designing one for a fictional character was a change of pace.

“This project has been one of the most creative, out-of-the-box things we have done in a while,” says Jack Higginbotham, COO at PRS. “Developing a guitar with a fictional artist is not something we do every day. It has been a lot of fun, but this is far more than a commemorative display piece – it’s a true player’s guitar, designed for performance and durability. Ultimately, it’s a musical instrument that is made to be played.”

The SE Rock Lady Limited Edition is available now, priced £/$999. See PRS Guitars for more details.

What is it?

The Ibanez RG is one of the enduring miracles of electric guitar design. You can find it at all price points in the Ibanez catalogue and, as a general rule, the performance-to-price ratio remains reassuringly high.

It has been in production since 1987, initially as a more affordable alternative to Steve Vai’s JEM, with which it shares that offset double-cutaway silhouette but lacks the cut-out Monkey Grips and Tree of Life fretboard inlays (and Vai’s DiMarzio pickups).

This player-friendly unit-shifter has gone forth and multiplied over the years. There are super-premium Japanese-made J Custom and Prestige RGs that push the envelope of high-performance. There are über-metal RGs in the Iron Label series, electric guitars for beginners in the entry-level GIO series, and all in between.

You can find 7-string guitars bearing the RG designation, 8-strings, too. There is even a 9-string with a 28” scale. Beastly.

What we have today is a little more conventional – six-strings, the usual 25.5” Fender-esque scale length, the super-skinny Wizard neck – and yet the RGR431PB still speaks to the constant evolution of the RG concept.

The RG made its name on the back of that aggressive S-style body shape but also the Gotoh-designed Edge series double-locking tremolo units that drew inspiration from the Floyd Rose. Here we have a six-saddle hardtail instead.

We also have dual-humbuckers, as opposed to the traditional HSH configuration. Had anyone heard of meranti as a tone wood in the early ‘90s? Or jatoba for a fretboard? The very best guitar designs endure reinterpretation.

This Charcoal Gray Flat stain over a poplar burl top is far removed from the solid colour finishes of ’92, Laser Blue, Grape Ice, Purple Neon et al, and from a distance, with that reverse headstock, this looks of a piece with the Iron Label’s blackout aesthetic. Until the light hits it, revealing the details of that poplar burl top.

With a street price that offers change from 500 bucks, the Standard series RGR431PB is absolutely a budget-friendly purchase, and yet, it has the name Ibanez on the headstock, the design DNA of its forebears…

And at this point I should declare a certain bias here – an abiding affection for the RG. My first quote/unquote good guitar was a ‘92 RG770 in Laser Blue with one of the original Edge Floyd-style vibratos. The RGR431PB has a lot to live up to.

Specs

• Launch price: $499 | £429 | €459
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Meranti with poplar burl top
• Neck: Maple / Wizard III profile
• Fingerboard: Jatoba with dot inlays
• Scale length: 25.5"/648mm
• Nut/width: Plastic / 42mm
• Frets: 24, jumbo
• Hardware: Sealed die-cast, F106 hard-tail bridge, black
• String spacing at bridge: 10.5mm
• Electrics: 2x Ibanez Quantum ceramic humbuckers, 5-way pickup selector, volume, tone
• Weight: 6.46lb/2.93kg
• Options: There are 20-plus RG models in the current Standard Series, including the RG470PB [$649/£549/€659] has a Red Eclipse Burst poplar burl top, HSH pickups, and Edge-Zero II vibrato, and the ash-bodied RG470AHM, which has a maple fingerboard and similar configuration and is priced $649/£499/€530
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Charcoal Gray Flat,
• Cases: No
• Contact: Ibanez

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

Guitars at this price point tend to pull the eye one way then the other. There are details here that might fool you into thinking this is one of those high-end RGs, such as the top. Poplar burl is not AAAAA figured maple but it’s still a premium appointment on sub-$500 guitar like this – and it is not a veneer.

Ibanez gives us a generous 6mm cap, and it’s meticulously applied, left with an open-pore finish as on the back of the body. Matte finishes can attract fingerprints but not this.

Unlike early RGs, this has no neck plate, just four recessed screws securing the neck, and it makes for a more ergonomic heel (more on that shortly). It’s noticeable around these recessed bolts that the Charcoal Gray stain does not extend down to the entirety of the holes – but no one is going to see a little exposed wood.

Concessions to budget mean that we have an unbound neck and headstock, and that exposes a little untidiness with the headcap paint job. Again, no one will notice but still.

If the prospect of a jatoba fingerboard does not fill you with joy – it’s lighter in colour than rosewood, with a brickish redness to it – it is at least, uniformly coloured, dense and hard, and not quite as dry as some rosewood alternates feel.

The knurled metal knobs have a nice action. The five-way switch is solid. The bridge is a tidy little six-saddle job, strung through the ferrules on the underside of the body, and it has recessed grub screws so that you don’t scratch your palm when muting.

These are all good signs.

The sealed die-cast tuners aren’t great. There tends to be a little travel before the string changes pitch. But these can always be upgraded.

One thing about any electric at this price is we are looking for a solid foundation, perhaps your second guitar or first electric for a player who is going to stick with the instrument. We want a guitar that we can future-proof through mods.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

This where the RG excels. Those prudes who take offense at a neck measuring just 19mm at the 1st fret and swelling out to a less-than-tumescent 21mm at the 12th, look away now. The Wizard III is a neck of indecent proportions. There are some guitar-playing civilisations that would call for it to be banned on account of its skimpyness.

Not this one. We’re all in on it, and allied to the 15.7” fingerboard radius and fat frets, it really is an easy instrument to have fun on.

All joking aside, some players might find a little more timber on the neck to be a more comfortable proposition, particularly if playing chords for a long period of time, but that comes down to individual preference.

What we can all agree on is that this neck heel is an improvement on those early ‘90s RGs. The upper-fret access is top-tier.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Ibanez’s Quantum humbuckers have been kicking around in one form or another since ’94 but came back into production about 10 years ago and are one of these passive ceramic winds that are aimed at high-gain players, perhaps even the kind who might silently harbour fixations on having an active humbucker doing the Lord’s work at the bridge.

Personally, I lean towards the passive designs. The smoke alarm, TV remote, Blu-ray player remote, kitchen scales, bathroom scales… there are already too many batteries to change. But also my favourite pickups are passive. And while I am quite sure the Quantum ‘buckers won’t be dethroning the Seymour Duncan JB any time soon, they suit this RG well.

They remind me of the Quest series humbuckers, in that their bright and punchy, abundantly clear, if a little strident at the bridge. However, with the gain jacked up on the trusty Blackstar tube combo there is that harmonic volatility that you need from a shred guitar. That almost goes without saying.

What is really impressive, however, is the tone pot’s ability to take some of that treble off without muddying everything up. There’s so much travel in it that the bridge pickup can do a decent impersonation of the neck pickup when you roll it all the way back.

The five-way switching presents you with options. You can run the neck pickup full-fat, or in parallel, run both humbuckers in series in the middle, run the inner coils of both humbuckers together, and have the bridge pickup on its own.

Positions 2 and 4 yield are a godsend for cleans, not quite single-coil snap but more elasticity, great for playing triads with a little chorus. Just note that there is a drop in output volume in the in-between settings.

Verdict

The question I find myself asking is whether I miss the vibrato unit. The RG has always wore it well.

You see the name on that reverse headstock, the sharpness of the cutaways, and there is a Pavlovian response, this great urge to play a harmonic and let it squeal as you pull on the bar. But there is no whammy bar.

And yet, this bridge, easy to intonate, comfortable, tidy, is more than fit for purpose, and no one misses setting up the Edge tremolo when tuning down to D standard.

This presents players – especially those new to the instrument – with a fuss-free high-performance performance instrument with a touch of class with the poplar burl. Yes, we’d swap those tuners out over time. Most likely we’d upgrade the pickups, too.

But there is a lot to enjoy in the here and now. Divebombing might be off the menu but there’s nothing stopping you from bending the notes yourself, there’s nothing stopping you, period. For this is an RG and it’s all about the tearing it up on that fingerboard. Steve Vai wishes he started out on something like this.

MusicRadar verdict: Ibanez serves up another RG that is built for stunt guitar, priced for virtuosos-in-training, and with enough sounds to please the fusion kid and headbanger alike, and that has always been its USP. And that neck – the Autobahn for the fretting hand – is not going to put the brakes on you.

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Harley Benton guitars are notoriously affordable but even so the German budget gear brand’s latest drop raises the bar for the spec we could expect to see on an electric guitar for beginners, as the ST-Modern HH, list price approx 185 bucks, arrives resplendent in metallic finishes with roasted maple necks as standard.

This kind of luxury is most welcome. Indeed, the return of the ST-Modern HH, featuring dual humbuckers (hence the “HH” designation), is most welcome. Harley Benton offers it in five metallic finishes: Red Radiant Metallic, Root Beer Metallic, Desert Metallic, Tangerine Metallic, and Purple Metallic.

It’s hard to pick a winner out of that lot but that Root Beer finish, the tortoiseshell pickguard and the gold coverings on the pickups has a certain custom shop je ne sais quoi.

Though the black ‘guards on solid metallic colours is also a strong look.

As for the fundamentals, these have classic Strat-style guitar dimensions and builds, with 25.5” scale, bolt-on necks (of roasted maple, it’s worth mentioning again), solid alder bodies, laurel fingerboards with a performance-friendly 12” to 16” compound radius, 22 premium jumbo silver-nickel frets and Harley Benton-branded locking tuners.

These all have a tidy six-saddle hard-tail bridges, and those humbuckers? Well, they are a pair of Isola Hydrazine Alnico Vs, hooked up to a three-way selector switch, volume and tone, and there is a coil-split, too. You can’t say fairer than that.

Those looking for a more high-end S-style but plenty change from 500 bucks could always check out the ST-Modern Plus HSS, which has just been released in Dark Purple Sparkle for right-handers. It had hitherto been a southpaw exclusive.

This takes the ST-Modern template – the scale, fingerboard radius, the design ethos etc – and it pumps it up, giving us VR-Nitro pickups, a five-way pickup selector and a coil-split, and there are all kinds of luxurious such as stainless steel jumbo frets, a quality Babicz FCH tremolo, a Canadian maple fingerboard with rounded edges, and a neck with a ‘Smooth D’ profile.

The ST-Modern Plus HSS in Dark Purple Sparkle is priced £304/$408, and is available now from Thomann.

If that was the story of a popular left-handed model being made available for right-handed players, the latest update to the solid-topped CLP-12SM acoustic guitar sees a top-seller getting a left-handed version.

This parlour acoustic electric guitar has a solid Sitka spruce top, layered mahogany on the back and sides, a nyatoh neck, and HB-03 Piezo with tuner, and a high-gloss Brown Burst finish that really complements that old-school headstock.

It has a purple heart fingerboard, a C profile neck, 43mm nut width, and a very compact body that makes it the ideal companion on the couch.

It is priced £260 ($349 approx), and is available now from Thomann. For more details on these new models, head over to Harley Benton.

Another huge auction went down in Beverly Hills, California, and by the end of it some legendary acoustic and electric guitars found new homes.

This was another blockbuster Music Icons event from Julien’s Auctions. Eddie Van Halen’s Charvel Art Series Strat-style guitar went for $112,500. The 1956 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar that Johnny Cash played on his Grand Ole Opry debut sold for $192,000. But the star of the show was the 1975 Les Paul Custom that the late Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley played at the B Budokan, which sold for $512,000.

For a generation of Kiss fans, this could be the Ace Frehley guitar. The fact that he had many Les Pauls – some notably modded to fire rockets, others fitted with onboard smoke machines – might mean everyone has their own idea of what the ultimate Ace guitar is but if you were in Tokyo in 1977 for any one of Kiss’ four epic shows at the Budokan then this Cherry Sunburst model, complete with three double-white humbuckers, would be the one.

It doesn’t need the pyrotechnics; it’s already 100 per cent smokeshow, with that sunburst lacquer, gold hardware and all the inlays and Custom livery that comes as standard.

Frehley used it extensively throughout the late ‘70s. Once the Rock and Roll Over Tour of ’76 was wound up, Kiss entered Record Plant in New York City to track Love Gun with the help of producer Eddie Kramer, and this guitar was there.

So, too, were the after effects of Frehley’s onstage mishap the previous year, when, on December 12 1976, a grounding issue electrocuted him – just as he was standing on a wall of Marshall amps.

“I should have been dead that night,” Frehley told MusicRadar in 2025. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward – but I didn’t. If I fell forward, I would have broken my f**king neck. But I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my hands for five to 10 minutes.”

But he lived to tell the tale. He finished the show, too, and the feeling would return to his hands. Frehley he got the idea for Shock Me from the incident, which became the first Kiss track that he sang lead vocals on.

The Les Paul Custom would soon be supplanted as the '80s dawned. Other guitars entered the fray. Frehley made some modifications, installing a Washburn Wonderbar vibrato. But the guitar had been restored to its original spec for the auction.

Gibson has made a number of Ace Frehley signature guitars based on this Les Paul Custom, giving it the VOS treament in 2011, complete with the 'pancake body' and rash on the top. While it has always been billed as a 1974 model, Julien's says there is a date stamp visible via the neck pickup routing placing its build at August 13, 1975.

Gibson has resurrected its cult classic T-Top humbuckers, offering the electric guitar pickups with the choice of black or white bobbins – and it makes a compelling modding option for anyone who is a fan of those early ‘70s Gibson tones.

These are wound to 1968 specs. Look closely at the pictures and you’ll see how they got their name, with the letter “T’ stamped on the top of the bobbins to show who’s installing them which end is up.

For fans of Michael Schenker – especially those with a Flying V in need of a pick-me-up – these might well be worth checking out.

When Gibson launched its Murphy Lab replica of Schenker’s black-and-white 1971 Flying V, it came with a megabucks price tag that left the majority of us with our noses metaphorically pressed against the glass.

But the Nashville-based guitar giant has just offered us a workaround, because the the T-Top humbuckers from that model are a much more affordable option, priced at $149/$$229 each. In theory, you could grab yourselves a 70s Flying V in Classic White, swap out its Tribute humbuckers for a pair of T-Tops, and tone-wise – vibe-wise – you’d be halfway there (don’t ask us about how much a black-and-white refin would be).

But the T-Tops are not just a Michael Schenker pickup. As Gibson notes, they are a Randy Rhoads pickup, an Angus Young pickup. Nancy Wilson of Heart, BB King, and Peter Frampton all played electric guitars with T-Tops, too.

Produced between 1966 and 1979, the T-Top was seen as a modern update of the OG ‘Patent Applied For’ humbuckers that gave early Gibson electrics their voice.

They were designed to be similarly versatile. But given that they ran a little hotter than the PAF, it’s no surprise that the players who gravitated towards them were rock players. Pete Townshend, Tony Iommi… the list goes on and it included one of the men who started it all, Chuck Berry.

The T-Tops are based around an Alnico V design, have two-conductor wiring, and they can be fitted at the neck or bridge position, and have an average DCR reading of 7.5k. As per their vintage counterparts, they are left unpotted.

Given that anything vintage and Gibson and out of production tends to be super collectible, it is no surprise that the original T-Tops became highly sought after, and Gibson rolled out the T-Type pickups as a next-generation version of the T-Top.

It’s the T-Types that you will find in the new Jake Kiszka SG Standard, for instance, or the Jim James ES-335. Gibson sells these too, with nickel housings and they are each voiced for the neck and bridge.

Find out more over at Gibson.

Nobody needs to explain to Jared James Nichols the appeal of a vintage guitar. He has an appreciation of the kind of magic an a electric guitar’s history gives it, the scars in the finish, the cigarette burns and buckle rash, maybe even the wonkiness of its electrics that make it scream when the amp is dimed.

And he understands the collector’s mindset, even if he doesn’t share it. He also knows you need deep pockets to go shopping for Golden Era Gibsons, pre-CBS Stratocasters, all that stuff. But as he sees it, people have lost the run of themselves when it comes to these instruments, obsessing over their value, the kudos that comes from owning them.

As a guy who plays one of the first Les Pauls ever made, a 1952 Goldtop destroyed in a tornado then restored and named Dorothy, and Ol’ Red, a ’53 Goldtop refinished in red, Nichols believes people are forgetting what made these old instruments special in the first place.

“This is almost clickbaity but it’s like a lot of people lost the plot with the vintage guitar thing,” he says. “It went [away] from being a tribute to the music, and an honour to the music, and the sounds that you love, and the sounds that are timeless in your life. Like, literally, when I pick up Ol’ Red, or Dorothy, or any of these guitars, and I plug them in, I go, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s the sound’ You know what I mean? It fills my heart but it is also inspiring.

“But I think a lot of people started to say to themselves, ‘Well, do you know how much this one’s worth? Do you know how rare this is?’ Then it almost got like trading cards, or coins, where it didn’t really matter about the sound. It was, ‘Oh, that one, someone broke the headstock…’ To me, ‘Okay! Awesome, they broke the headstock? Let me play it. What does it sound like?’”

Joining MusicRadar from the front seat of a beat-up Chevvy Suburban, Nichols says this old wagon of his tells us a lot about his taste in guitars.

“Everything I own is a beater, and I know that sounds funny,” he says. “Right now, I’m in an old Suburban. I have an old [Chevrolet] Chevelle, and all of these things that I own, the guitars – everything – they have a story way before me. And you can see that, and they’re weathered, and they’re honest… I just think all my stuff, it has a story. And Dorothy? Forget about it, that’s the vibiest guitar I’ve ever come across.”

Nichols releases his fourth studio album, Louder Than Fate, on June 5, via Frontiers. Recorded with Jay Ruston, it saw him rock up at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 and tear the paint off the walls with a 100-watt ‘68 Marshall Plexi that was so loud he they had to remove two of the power tubes to knock it down. “It was shaking the walls so bad that you were able to hear it in the tracking,” he says.

And this is very much his style, the ‘Blues Power’ sound as Nichols calls it. Its muscular. Its physical. There’s more than a little pro wrestling to this style of playing, as though he’s trying to choke out the strings with those bends. Some collectors like the idea of lending Nichols a vintage guitar for a show and having the pictures that go with it. He’s particularly juiced about the prospect of playing the late Leslie West of Mountain’s Flying V’s when he plays New York.

Nichols says he gets collectors turning up at shows with golden era Les Pauls and asking if he wants to play them onstage. But all this holy grail business has him saying no a lot of the time. Things have gotten too strange.

“I don’t really feel comfortable playing people’s guitars, anymore, unless they’re friends, like Joe [Bonamassa] or whoever, because it’s a little bit… it just gets a little weird with me now,” he says.

Nichols is no Pete Townshend. At the end of the song, he’s not going to send the guitar through the kick drum. He’s going to respect the instrument, whether it’s off-the-shelf new or a pristine survivor from the late ‘50s. But some of these guys who turn up with their ’59 Les Paul Standards for him to play just don’t understand the full implications of what it’s like to actually play rock guitar under the lights.

“I was in Florida, and a guy had one, and he wanted me to play it for a song, and he was emailing us, emailing us, and he wanted me to play it,” says Nichols. “Totally cool!”

Only it gets less cool as the show gets closer.

“They go to hand me the guitar, and he looks at me and goes. ‘No rings!’ I’m wearing a ring,” says Nichols. “He’s like, ‘Don’t wear a ring when you play my guitar.’ And I’m literally about to take it onstage, and I look at him, and go like this [shakes head], ‘Oh no, I can’t. We’re not having this conversation right now.’ [Laughs]”

This minor diplomatic incident gets smoothed over. Nichols takes to the stage with the ’59 ‘Burst, and it’s a typically aerobic activity, all that pentatonic jiu-jitsu on the fingerboard, and those lights… Those stage lights are hot.

“I play the guitar, and man, like you know, when I’m onstage, I’m kind of a sweaty beast,” continues Nichols. “I’m doing my thing. I don’t ever, ever beat up guitars. I respect them, and I love them – and especially a guitar like that. I play it, and I just have a little bit of sweat. I finish the song, and the guy is LOSING it! Because there’s now sweat on the top of his ’59 Les Paul.

“Afterwards, he’s over there and he’s wiping it down and everything, and I went, ‘Are you all good?’ And he goes, ‘Well, I didn’t realise you were gonna sweat on my guitar.’ And I just said to him straight up, ‘Man, what do you think this is? You want to get pictures of me playing your guitar to tell your friends or whoever, and then I sweat on your guitar because I’m literally in a performance?’ So, all I’m saying, is just people lost the plot a little bit.”

And this is the thing about vintage guitar collecting and an inflated market that makes one of these instruments more valuable than both of Nichols’ Chevvys put together, we’re quite far removed from the culture that gave them the allure in the first place.

We’re a million miles from Eric Clapton using the string tree of his Stratocaster as a cigarette holder. No one is chill. People need to be cool again.

“Yeah, dude, you nailed it,” says Nichols. “These things were meant to be used, and I believe that no matter how expensive they get – I get it, it’s collecting – I just love to use them as intended, and that isn’t an abuse thing, or whatever, it’s just to hear those guitars and a loud amp going for it, it’s beautiful, and when I think about Dorothy, or Old Red, or any of these guitars, I go, ‘That’s what I’m into it for.’”

Louder Than Fate is available for pre-order via Frontiers, and is out June 6.

Wes Borland has been playing King Vs onstage for years but today the Limp Bizkit guitarist officially joins the Jackson artist roster, making his debut with a signature guitar that offers a quietly radical take on one of the high-performance brand’s most iconic shapes.

Silhouetted against the light, the Pro Series Wes Borland King V KV looks regular enough.

In contrast to the Jackson Rhoads, this has that more symmetrical V shaped body, and we have a reverse headstock, too – always a welcome sight on a metal guitar. But look closely at that headstock. The Jackson logo is upside down.

This feels like the kind of subversion of the typical metal design that we could firmly get behind, and it’s subtle enough that it won’t alienate the wider metal community.

Limp Bizkit and nu-metal, all that jazz divides opinion but in the cold light of day Borland’s King V, with its white bevels on black finish reminiscent of the recently released Christian Andreu Rhoads EverTune, the stripped-down single-pickup platform, and the highly respectable Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking vibrato unit, this is an electric guitar with everything you need for any style of metal – and, for that matter, nothing that you don’t.

That, says Borland, was the idea.

“It’s taking me a long time to figure out what I need as a guitar player. For me, you just need volume, pickups, locking tremolo system and 24 frets, that’s it,” says Borland. “Live, it just needs to be as bulletproof as possible. You know, I’ve been very rough with guitars over the years. I’ve come to realise that the more streamlined our guitars are, the less problems we have on stage.”

And this is stripped-down. We have a single Seymour Duncan SH-8 Invader, a bona-fide haymaker and as hot a passive humbucker as you could find, and a single volume control. It’s the pragmatist’s shred machine, even if it was built to an exhibitionist’s specifications.

“ You know Jackson is fun, the over the top, shred-a-copter shapes and my outrageous stage costumes pushing the boundaries, this fits in more with that,” says Borland. “The way people dress, it affects how you behave, and I think it also changes how I play guitar.”

As per the King V’s style, you’ve got a neck-through build. A lot of tonewood real estate. It takes a while to get used to playing them seated, wedged on your leg. But it’ll be a ripper.

The only question we have is what’s going on with the headstock? This, as it turns out, is kind of a weird accident.

“When our artist rep Mike Tempesta introduced Wes to some Jackson Custom Shop guitars, he picked a left-handed King V and modded it for his right-hand playing, which left the headstock logo upside down,” says Peter Wichers, product development manager, Jackson Guitars. “He loved it, so we kept it. That happy accident became one of the most iconic details of the whole build.”

You can see all the details of this build over at Jackson. The Pro Series Wes Borland King V is available now, priced £1,199/$1,299.

What is it?

Considering headless guitars have enjoyed an exponential rise in popularity in recent years, it was no surprise to see Ibanez crash the party. Its Quest series, first launched in 2021 alongside a signature model for Ichika Nito, saw it decapitating its headstocks for the first time in its history.

The Japanese firm has since doubled down on its mission to conquer a headless market that frontrunner Strandberg once ruled with little to no challenge. Four more lookers came in 2024, with Nito again its poster boy. While he’s been used to help launch its all-new Alpha model – built as a modern progressive metal guitar to rival Abasi Concepts – Ibanez has reprised its 2026 headless line-up a little more quietly.

The none-more-black QX527B, which also has a six-string counterpart, is one of two extended-range models on the list, alongside the HSS-configured Q547PB. of the two, it is decidedly more metal.

Yet while its Quest series guitars are visually distinctive in the Ibanez lineup, their genetics are a little less so. An Okoume body and Parallel Wizard-7 five-piece neck made from roasted maple and bubinga, and ebony fretboards don’t deviate from its current go-to tonewoods.

Elsewhere, an Ibanez Mono-Tune bridge, which locks in Strandberg and Floyd Rose-style after-the-nut tuning, slanted frets, and luminescent side dots also feature.

With the wiring, Q58-7 passive ceramic humbuckers are augmented by Volume and Tone knobs and a dyna-MIX10 switching system, replacing a push/pull coil tap for a different approach to achieving single coil sounds.

On paper, at least, it’s very much everything the world has come to expect from Ibanez save for the obvious. Does this latest prog-metal-leaning axe increase the intensity of competition for the likes of Strandberg, or is this a coup that will fail to dethrone the king?

Specs

• Price: $1,299 | £1,069 |€1,223
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Headless seven-string electric guitar
• Body: Okoume
• Neck: Five-piece Parallel Wizard-7, roasted maple/bubinga
• Fingerboard material/radius: Ebony, 20”
• Scale length: 25.5”
• Nut/width: Black plastic, 47mm
• Frets: Jumbo stainless steel frets
• Hardware: Ibanez Mono-Tune bridge, custom string lock machine heads
• String spacing at bridge: 68mm
• Electrics: Ibanez Q58-7 passive ceramic humbuckers, Volume knob, Tone knob, five-way pickup switch, dyna-MIX10 switching system w/Alter Switch
• Weight: 5.4lbs/2.3kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Weathered Black
• Case: Black gig bag
• Contact: Ibanez

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Put simply, this guitar is another shining example of why the narrative that Indonesian-made 'affordable' guitars are low quality needs to stop. From the fretwork to the neck carve to its comfort-forward contours and robust, user-friendly bridge, the build quality is pretty immaculate.

There are no discernible flaws, and it’s really tightly put together with high-quality materials, with a special mention to the rather lovely neck joint.

The concept of headless guitars may be a little daunting for some, but what I think is the Q Series’ biggest trump card is that it really smartly bridges the gap between alien design and something most players are intimately familiar with.

Restringing is less fiddly than a Strandberg because the tuner caps stay on at all times – losing them and the washers is a nightmare, trust me. The neck profile, while fairly flat, is more traditional than trapezoidal, and making minor adjustments to the truss rod and individual saddles is really easy, with both the truss rod wheel and saddle screws easily accessible.

With it being a headless guitar, the “ergonomic” buzzword is naturally being bandied around with abandon. But Ibanez has the receipts to back it up here. The guitar sits comfortably and perfectly balanced on my leg with absolutely no neck dive, and has a really inviting contour for my right arm. It screams, “play me for days.”

The Mono-Tune bridge is a simple-yet-effective design, with the tuners being really responsive and holding tuning steadfast. Putting it through the wringer by dropping and changing the tuning in regular intervals over an hour or so, it rolls with the punches. Test passed.

My one small gripe here, however, is that the tuners are spaced very close together. With my Strandberg Boden, it feels easy to jump from one to the next when tuning. These are tightly packed together and are so surrounded by black that I can foresee minor issues on a darkened stage. But I also feel it’s something that I’d get plenty used to in time.

It’s like Ibanez has seen the Strandberg recipe, accepted that it’s selling like hot cakes, and decided to dial-down some of the weirder features to broaden its accessibility. And with a comparatively low price point, these factors feel like a big win in Ibanez’s mission not to scare off non-headless players.

Elsewhere, I’m really impressed with the cutaway; my hand slides easily all the way up to the 24th fret, and from those frets on the lower strings, the neck is thin enough – without being gaunt – to make playing them just as easy.

Fans of super low tunings might be a little disappointed to see it retain a 25.5” scale, but it’s a smart move to make its subtly slanted frets, and extended-range feel familiar to those wading into such waters for the first time. I’d recommend a slightly thicker, 12–85 string set for tunings as low as drop F#.

It feels a little clichéd when a metal guitar is decked out in all-black, as Ibanez often does with its Iron Label line; this is another example. The Weathered Black finish showcases the beauty of the wood grain while maintaining a sleek, understated look. It’s a beautiful guitar, but you really have to look closely to admire it.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Anyone vaguely familiar with Ibanez guitars will know its Wizard necks are designed for speed merchants, and are known for just how flat they are. Unlike Jackson and Charvel necks, which are thin and curvy, Ibanez takes a different approach, and the neck here is particularly flat. Still, it feels great in my hands.

It takes a short while for me to find the sweet spot for my picking hand that really let palm mutes either bloom or choke out at will, but since then, playing has become a real joy. The flatness of the neck does, personally, become more noticeable when playing the higher strings, but, honestly, it’s more about getting used to it than it is a drawback, because at no point do I find playing this guitar a chore.

Where Strandbergs are best seated on a right-handed player’s left leg with the neck angled upwards (although I freakishly buck that trend quite often), the QX527B is comfy on either leg without fuss.

Meanwhile, the dyna-Mix switch for “more realistic” coil-splitting is a dream. One of my biggest annoyances with push/pull pots is that they really aren’t geared for changes mid-riff. I have to stop playing to get my hand on the knob and activate the split coil. To that end, push/push knobs are frustratingly rare with off-the-shelf guitars. Here, it’s a quick flick of the wrist.

It is a little easier to activate humbucker mode by pushing it away from the strings than to flick it towards me for split coils. But with a small bit of practice, I’ve got the movement down to a fine art.

What I will say is that the metal switch itself has a little sharpness to it. I find myself flicking it with my middle finger near the cuticle, and it can start to hurt over time. Maybe I’ll grow a callous there in the long term, or I’d look to add a tip of sorts to it that both made it a slightly larger target, and also make hitting it a more gentle experience.

Compare it with the plastic, thumb-tack-like tip of the pickup switch, which is very user-friendly, offers a little resistance, and is controllable. The concept of a dedicated mini switch is genius, but its execution is just a little bit off.

On the whole, though, it’s really hard to fault its playability, with the dyna-MIX switch a wonderful quality-of-life addition.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Being an Iron Label, made-to-metal machine, it’s no surprise that the pickups pack some serious heat. The Q58-7 passive ceramic humbuckers hold their own more than I gave them credit for going into this review, ringing with lots of individual note clarity even at high-gain settings.

It can punch hard, as I found churning it through Odeholm Audio’s unrelenting Thall Amp, but the bridge pickup does have a fair amount of bass heft, especially on the seventh string, and that’s worth keeping in mind. Paired with Neural DSP’s Fortin Nameless amp, for instance, which prioritises a little more bite than sheer, caveman brutishness, stops it from getting too ground-shaking.

The neck pickup, on the other hand, smooths the edges of the tone, without getting too muddy, lending itself to really buttery, fast-flowing lead lines, and cleans with a sparkling quality without the fluff.

The bridge, in both humbucker and single-coil modes, is a little brittle for cleans, to my taste, but excels at icy, cab-free djent tones a la Tesseract and Spiritbox.

Again, though, the dyna-MIX switch is its secret weapon. Notably, it only affects the bridge, middle, and neck positions, meaning it simply doesn’t do anything in positions two and four. What’s clever about the system is that, while it turns humbuckers into snappy single coils, it prevents any volume discrepancies between the two. It ultimately makes the switch a great way to add a little more delicacy to my tones.

That feature does, as a small consequence, also amplify their noise, but it’s worth it for the extra versatility they imbue this headless warhorse with. Because the mileage I get out of it is mad. The split coil in the neck is spanky. Still, it provides plenty of body, especially with a modern clean amp like the Roses amp or Tim Henson’s signature Neural DSP plugin, with the bridge split coil shining with naturally warmer amps like Henson’s Pink amp, based on a Marshall JCM800.

If I want the guitar to be a real firebreather, the Victory Amps Kraken on my Quad Cortex proves a real doozy, but if I were to pick holes in this broad range of tones, it would be for two things. Its crunch tones need to be run fairly hot – with gain around seven – to satisfy me properly, as it’s a bit too meek otherwise, and the dyna-MIX switch does positions two and four, in positions one and five, better. I would be tempted to rewire it to a three-way switch and abuse the dyna-MIX a lot more. Still, there’s a lot of versatility to be had from this guitar’s stock pickups.

Verdict ★★★★☆

I often find myself double-checking the price when playing this guitar. I know that $1,299/£1,069 is still a fairly substantial outlay, but it certainly performs beyond its pay grade.

For players intrigued by the scary realm of headless guitars, especially those a little scared to dive in because of how weird they seem on paper, this is a wonderful entry point. But beyond its headstock-free guise, it’s a very well-built, slick-playing guitar that can handle all the metal tones I could need.

Would I say it could shine outside of metal? Not really. Mid-gain amps aren’t the best match, which is odd considering how nice its cleans are, but let this guitar do what it was born to do, and it’s a real standout for the price. The Ibanez QX527B is a modern metal djent stick that’s ready to take names.

MusicRadar verdict: For those who find Strandberg’s space-age designs a little too alien, Ibanez’s Q series is the perfect middle ground. Harnessing some of the greatest tropes of modern headless guitar designs with more traditional guitar-like features, the QX527B is an accessible and ultra-playable, modern metal beast that I can’t get enough of.

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Hands-on videos

Ibanez

Adam Ironside & IbanezGBI

There are travel guitars and then there are travel guitars like Donner’s all-new Hush-X Live and Live Pro, and yes, we said something similar when the Hush I-Pro was launched (and it’s still incredible) but this takes the concept further with a fully detachable speaker module.

Donner launched the Hush-X Live and Live Pro at Sound Messe Osaka, presumably with a mic drop, because it’s hard to see where they take the series next. I mean, this is your electric guitar and guitar amp and your pedalboard all in one radical instrument.

Both guitars are very similar. Though the Live Pro version is a little more high-end and was co-designed by Japanese percussive guitar virtuoso MIYAVI, who also serves as the brand’s creative director. It features a custom-voiced Alnico V humbucker/single-coil pickup pairing, a MIYAVI custom neck and headstock design, and you get a 13.7” radius HPL fingerboard, a roasted maple neck with maple strips, a Canadian maple body.

The standard version has a 15.7” radius and you get the choice of HPL or maple fingerboards. It has a mahogany neck with maple strips. And it has Alnico V H/S humbuckers too.

What’s particularly impressive about these guitars – before we get to the fact they have an actual amp and speaker onboard! – is the neck-build, the truss-rod adjustment wheel at the top of the fingerboard, the stainless steel frets. These retail for $439 and $599 respectively and yet the build is very impressive.

But yes, these have a detachable five-watt speaker module – a speaker that Donner says is compatible with other guitars, too. We’re just getting out heads around the idea of it being used on this one for now. The standard edition Hush-X Live’s onboard amp has five different amp models and cab sims, plus delay, reverb, modulation, and noise gate. You even get tap tempo on the time-based effects.

The MIYAVI edition has seven amp types, custom-voiced to his specifications, and it has revised custom “high-output” circuitry. Charge this up via USB-C and you’ve got up to nine hours of playing time, all wireless, and a speaker that you can take off the guitar and place down in front of you.

At the top of the page we called this a travel guitar – and it most certainly is. It ships in a gig bag, in which you've got a guitar tuner, a guitar strap, polishing cloth and guitar picks, and even at a full 25.5” scale length it is a super-portable proposition.

But it’s also a superlative practice tool, with a headphones output that allows you to woodshed in relative silence, and there’s Bluetooth so that you can stream audio to the guitar itself. It’s pretty far out.

Check them out over at Donner.

What is it?

Eastman’s move away from well-received and very respected ‘inspired-by’ designs began back in 2019 with the thinline archtop-inspired Romeo, which – as good as that guitar is, not least its LA and NYC variants – seemed a little like a toe-in-water indication of what might come.

But clearly a fire had been lit and next we saw the solidbody Juliet models with their Firebird-like raised centre yet otherwise very classic-inspired original style.

The gauntlet was thrown down with Eastman’s head designer Otto D’Ambrosio’s eponymous mini-range of USA-built boutique-style electric guitars: really classy original designs and high-build level but with a price to match and limited availability.

A wrong turn? Not at all, as the essence of those guitars was distilled into the two-guitar FullerTone range introduced last year. Made in China at Eastman’s own long-running Beijing facility, and named after the unique neck joint first seen on those D’Ambrosio models, these dropped into a far more affordable everyman category and stood out in a market dominated by copies with the wrong headstock. Seriously good guitars.

Catching up with the story, at this year’s NAMM Show, Eastman launched the Kauffmann series based on the D’Ambrosio designs but artfully aged and relic’d by Albert Kauffmann: “Made in Holland, Born for Tone.”

It was these guitars that grabbed the show headlines and so many missed the intro of the third FullerTone model, the Offset we have here, which references the design that already features in the much higher-end D’Ambrosio and the newly launched Kauffman ranges.

So, the third FullerTone model introduces the very Juliet-like body shape, a single-cutaway like the SC’52 but with an offset lower bass-side bout. That aside, there’s plenty of commonality, not least the Fender-scale 24-fret roasted maple neck with its unique two-bolt fixing.

This complex design means that the neck remains curved as it goes into a similarly shaped body pocket; there’s no extending body heel. And, although the neck joins the body at the 16th fret on the bass side of the body, access is easy to the 22nd fret, and a little stretch to the 23rd and 24th.

The Offset is offered in two new colours, Dakota Red and our satin metallic Gold (the SC’52 and DC’62 models come in three choices each), which we have to say is pretty classy. Under the finish is a roasted black limba body with a standard 45mm Fender-like thickness, a light ribcage cutaway and stylish forearm chamber.

While the Offset’s treble side is pretty much identical to both the SC and DC models’, albeit with seemingly a slightly more pointed treble horn, the large scratchplates of all three appear identical. Here, the anodised aluminium scratchplate contrasts the gold colour, while the Dakota Red model goes for an equally contrasting gold. We get the same three controls, too – master volume and a tone for each pickup – with their amp-style white plastic knobs, and at the lower tip is the output jack.

Last year, we enjoyed the Tonerider soapbar-sized humbucker with its Gold Foil-style cover used in the neck position of the FullerTone SC and bridge position of the DC that we tested. We get the same here but in the bridge and neck positions, both directly mounted to the body and not attached to the scratchplate.

Unlike either of the earlier models, which use a three-way lever pickup selector switch mounted on the scratchplate, the selector switch here is toggle-style and is rear-mounted on the bass-side shoulder.

As the name implies, the two-piece vibrato system, unlike the Strat-style wiggle-stick of the DC, is offset in style with a tune-o-matic bridge and lower mounted vibrato.

Both parts come from the extensive Göldo catalogue and are designed by Duesenberg founder, Dieter Gölsdorf. These are typically well-designed pieces, but the ‘DG Tremolo’ plays with the offset style considerably.

While it’s a direct retrofit for that Fender classic, instead of the pivot point being at the base of the unit it’s much closer to the separate bridge, meaning that the string length behind the bridge is considerably reduced, as well as giving a slightly steeper back angle.

The strings top-load into keyhole cut-outs directly behind the two pivot points, and behind those is a tension screw – for the large single spring – and the mounting for the fully adjustable arm.

The ‘3-Point-Vario Tunamatic’ bridge is well used by Eastman and Duesenberg, and aims to reduce any rattle from the saddles, which are spec’d as stainless steel. In use, the bridge lightly rocks with the vibrato and the saddles appear to have been carefully filed.

Certainly, for typically light use, the system retains its tuning very well, obviously once the strings are stretched (and out of habit) we added a touch of lubrication to the saddle slots.

The actual plating of the vibrato has been abraded slightly perhaps to match in with the dull, old-looking pickup covers, although the actual bridge looks brand-new. Hey, we can live with that.

Specs

• Price: $999 | £899 | €999
• Origin: China
• Type: Offset single-cutaway solidbody electric
• Body: Roasted black limba
• Neck: Roasted maple, ‘medium round’ profile, ‘2-bolt long tenon’ body join
• Scale length: 648mm (25.5”)
• Nut/width: Bone/43.2mm
• Fingerboard: Rosewood, pearl dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• Frets: 24, medium-jumbo (Jescar 47104)
• Hardware: Göldo DG Tremolo and ‘3-Point-Vario Tunamatic’ bridge, unlogo’d Kluson-style tuners – chrome/nickel-plated
• String spacing at bridge 51.5mm
• Electrics: Tonerider Soapbar Humbucker w/ custom Goldfoil cover (bridge & neck), 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, master volume, individual tone controls for neck and bridge pickups only
• Weight (kg/lb): 3.1/6.75
• Range options: Also in the FullerTone range are the SC’52 (£799) and the DC’62 (£899)
• Left-handed options: No
• Case: Gigbag
• Finish: Gold (as reviewed), Dakota Red – Truetone satin
• Contact: Eastman

Playability and sounds

As with the FullerTone SC and DC, the feel of the Offset is really good. It’s light in weight with a lovely balance, and every facet seems player-informed, not least the neck.

It certainly has a roomy feel, a relatively big classic ‘C’, and while we’re told that its inspiration comes from the archtop world, we can’t help thinking ‘old Telecaster’, especially in upper positions. It’s 43.2mm wide at the nut (with 36mm string spacing), 22.2mm deep at the 1st fret, increasing to a hand-filling 25.7mm by the 12th.

Along with a good setup, the medium tall frets really suit the guitar, which feels lively in the hand from the off.

Whether or not it’s the physical size of the pickup – think mini-humbucker like a good Les Paul Deluxe and you’re in the ballpark – the bridge isn’t overblown in output or midrange focus; one reason we found it worked so well in bridge position on the FullerTone DC.

It veers on the single coil side of the tracks, with a little smoothness to the high-end, plenty of clarity but little spike. It’s very responsive to pick strength and position, too.

At the neck the clarity stops the mud, but, of course, it is a thicker voice, and it’s actually worth spending some time balancing the outputs of the two (via the easy height adjustment).

On receipt of the guitar, the neck overpowered the bridge a little, giving the impression that the latter was a little thin and weedy, but very small adjustments bought a near-perfect balance. As a consequence, the mix is very good, nicely Fender-y with a welcome sparkle and good depth.

Adding some hair and grit to our amp works superbly, too; the low-output ’bucker voice at the bridge means plenty of definition, rootsy and country tinged. We’re back in Laurel Canyon in the late 60s. There’s certainly some Gretsch in here, too, not least the slightly snappy response, and we can’t help thinking the vibrato is helping that.

There’s less of those typical offset artefacts, especially with its shorter behind-the-bridge string length; it’s a little more direct-sounding but less ‘firm’ than a stronger anchor.

That said, these are still humbuckers, and particularly at the bridge you can pile on some pretty heavy and fuzzy gain and that smooth clarity keeps things nicely defined.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

The Offset expands the FullerTone line-up to a trio that references the flavour of those Fender classics but in such a classy and original style.

As with the SC and DC models, there’s an almost played-in vintage feel to this new Offset that’s appealing: it doesn’t feel like a glossy new guitar. There’s also a lot of experience evident in the design.

MusicRadar verdict: From the innovative neck join and the great-sounding Tonerider pickups, the quirkily efficient Göldo vibrato to the really good neck shape, feel and playability, it’s a proper guitar, no question. For those of us who are bored with the increasing number of lookalikes and clones of the classics, the FullerTones really stand out. We can’t wait to see what’s next.

Hands-on videos

Jason Mays

• Best offset guitars: Our top choice asymmetrical axes for every budget
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

PRS Guitars and Ed Sheeran have teamed up once more to add his hollowbodied baritone signature guitar to the regular SE lineup.

You might remember the PRS SE Ed Sheeran Hollowbody I Piezo Baritone from January. This was a limited edition version of the electric guitar he had custom made for the F1 soundtrack, featuring on the video for Drive and used on Sheeran’s live performance of the track on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

It was finished in a graphic finish designed by Sheeran himself, with custom inlays on the fingerboard.

These new SE models have a similar build. You’ve still got the an electric guitar pickup pairing of PRS 85/15 “S” humbuckers, the long 27.7” scale length, the piezo pickup for acoustic guitar voicings, and once more you have the full hollowbody design with centre block to kill the feedback – only this time they are offered in PRS exclusive finishes Kaleidoscope and Pink Ombre, and in Orange Tiger Smokeburst.

Also, PRS enthusiasts will be glad to know, we have birds returning to roost on the fingerboard inlays.

This is a guitar that might confuse some. Who is it designed for? Sheeran urges us to think of it as a blank canvas. He used it for the F1 soundtrack. He plays pop music.

But the invitation is there to use it as a jazz guitar, a blues guitar, or even as a metal guitar.

“Metal guitarists will absolutely shred on this, jazz guitarists will love this, and it will be able to fit into so many great scenarios,” says Sheeran. “For all the guitar people out there who look at me as not an electric player, don’t let the person behind the guitar fool you. This is an incredible instrument and will fit in many, many guitar players’ collections.”

If the longer scale puts you off, PRS has also announced a regular 25” scale SE Hollowbody I Piezo, which similarly has the PRS x LR Baggs designed piezo system, the same pickups, and will be a similarly versatile platform.

It is a little different to the superlative SE Hollowbody II Piezo, with these new models featuring a carved top and a “slimmer, contoured ‘flatback’ design” on the player’s side.

“This guitar is a fantastic example of what happens when you have real partnerships with 100 per cent of the group like-minded and on a quest to do something special,” says Jack Higginbotham, COO, PRS Guitars. “Everyone involved at every level has the goal to deliver to musicians an experience that we would want as a player.

“We are trying to give somebody a thing that we would want to get. It’s all about what’s best for the instrument and the player. That’s a big reason why our partnership with LR Baggs is working,”

The release of these two electrics is joined by a refresh of the SE guitar amps, with PRS offering the Sonzera 20 combo and HDRX 20 amps, and the matching HDRX 1x12 cabinet, in limited edition new coverings, Indigo, with wheat grill cloth, and Black Paisley.

The PRS SE Ed Sheeran Hollowbody I Piezo Baritone is priced £1,499/$1,499. The SE Hollowbody I Piezo is priced £1,449/$1,449. For more details, head over to PRS Guitars.

Misha Mansoor and Jackson have unveiled the latest evolution of his Juggernaut signature guitar series and the Periphery riffer-in-chief has taken the concept to its logical conclusion with an 8-string monster equipped with an EverTune bridge.

A limited edition drop, the Pro Plus Series Misha Mansoor Juggernaut ET8 arrives in a Nardo Gray finish, and makes history in being the first Jackson 8-string to be equipped with an Evertune, the bridge that does not go out of tune.

Mansoor has teased that something like this might be in the offing. For some time now, he has played a Custom Shop 8-string electric guitar with an Evertune. Speaking to MusicRadar this time last year, he explained the thinking behind it.

“Oh! We are not supposed to know about that or talk about that!” he said. “No comment! [Laughs] That was the only thing I didn’t have, an EverTune eight-string. It’s just a very useful tool to have. 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.”

It also allows Mansoor to get really bang-on intonation and tuning in the studio, and when playing in a band with three guitarists, that matters.

“It is [about] picking the right guitar for the part,” he explained. “If you feel like it’s more important for that part to be really in tune, we can reach for the EverTune. If the tuning stability doesn’t matter quite as much and we want the tone, we go for the regular bridge in the studio. Sometimes we do both and A/B them to see if one sounds better than the other.”

The 8-string Juggernaut might take you way down into those lower registers but it is still recognisably a Juggernaut. It has the same aerodynamic silhouette, with a 4x4 arrowhead headstock. It has a 27” scale, a solid poplar body and bolt-on caramelised maple neck. Mansoor likes his fingerboards flat. This ebony fingerboard as a 20” radius, and seats 24 stainless steel frets.

We’ve got all the Pro Plus pro touches such as the rolled edges on the fingerboard, the oiled finish on the neck and the Luminlay side dot markers, plus the heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheel for making set-up changes on the fly. Mansoor says it has been a long time coming.

“I’m so excited to finally have an eight-string signature model, and it’s a special one, too,” he says. “We have been working on the design for a while now, and I think the Evertune was the final piece of the puzzle. Periphery uses eight strings quite a bit, and both live and in the studio, the Evertune has made it so I can focus more on my performance and tone and let the bridge handle the tuning stability.”

You also have a lot of onboard tone-shaping capabilities. As per previous Juggernauts, we have a pair of Mansoor’s signature Jackson humbuckers, both left uncovered, and here they are hooked up to a five-position blade selector switch, volume and tone, with a push/pull on the tone pot for alternate voicings.

The Juggernaut ET8 ships with Jackson-branded locking tuners and Dunlop dual-locking buttons so your guitar strap won’t let it fall and hit the ground, and it is available now, priced £1,699/$1,899.

For more details, head over to Jackson.

Fender has ramped up its legal campaign to protect the Stratocaster design by sending a cease and desist letter to a US-based boutique guitar company, ordering that it stops making, selling and marketing its S-style guitars.

The Tone Nerds YouTube channel reports that LSL Instruments, based in California, received a letter from Fender’s lawyers. LSL subsequently launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for a legal defence, arguing that the case sets a precedent that could upend the industry, restricting competition and creating a monopoly over guitars with a Stratocaster-style double-cutaway body.

Furthermore, YouTuber Phillip McKnight claims that he has been contacted by a number of small builders in similar positions, and says that “apparently Fender has decided to go nuclear on all small builders – and just builders period”.

The news follows Fender’s historic legal victory in March when the Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruled that the Stratocaster was “an original creative work”, and as such was covered by a range of legal protections in Germany and the EU. Fender could take action against any company who made guitars with the Stratocaster body design and sold them into the EU market, regardless of where the guitars were made or the company is based.

At the time, Aarash Darroodi, general counsel and chief administrative officer at Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, said the ruling supports “fair competition”.

“This ruling is a meaningful affirmation of the Stratocaster as an original creative work and an important step in continuing to protect the integrity of Fender’s designs and intellectual property,” said Darroodi. “It reinforces our commitment to originality, supports fair competition, and helps ensure that when players encounter these iconic Fender guitar shapes, they can trust the craftsmanship, quality, and heritage behind them.”

LSL, whose staff includes former Fender master builder Chris Fleming, argues that the Stratocaster body design was never copyrighted by Leo Fender, only the headstock. It says the German legal ruling will have far-reaching consequences beyond the EU.

“This threatens not only our business, but also the future of S-style guitars for builders and players across the European Union,” reads its statement on GoFundMe. “However, the demand stated that we stop making and selling S-style guitars, period. If successful, it would establish a monopoly, limiting sales and restricting choice for musicians everywhere.”

Fender had previously lost its legal campaigns to trademark the Stratocaster and Telecaster bodies, with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office ruling that the Stratocaster body was now a “generic” electric guitar design. That campaign lasted five years and comprised of over 20,000 pages of evidence.

The question these cease and desist letters raise is just how far and how deep will the impact from the German court’s ruling be?

Could we see a situation in which all guitar makers who have an S-style model in their lineup will be prevented from selling them in the EU? Also, what other manufacturers have received letters? Would Fender try to stop the PRS Silver Sky from being sold in the EU?

Boutique builders such as Suhr and Xotic could be at risk. There are a number of Harley Benton guitars with S-style bodies, too. Presumably, these, too, could similarly be at risk of legal censure.

The reaction in the guitar community has not been positive. Tim Pierce uploaded a video to his YouTube channel saying it was “brand suicide”.

But the court of public opinion is ultimately not what matters. When the Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruled against Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments Co in absentia, with future infringements making it liable for fines up to €250,000, it might just have changed the guitar industry for good.

Fender has been approached for comment.

What is it?

The new Charvel represents a bit of a departure from the norm for the company. Typically, the home of high-end, hot-rodded guitars, the new Charvel Standard Series San Dimas Style 2 SD2 HH HT has the potential to bring the brand to a totally new audience, thanks to its price point hitting just above the $550 mark.

Promising professional performance at a much lower price, it’s interesting that the company, owned by Fender, is looking to enter the incredibly busy $500-$750 price point. In researching for this review, I had a look at how many guitars were available at this price point, and just on Sweetwater alone, there are well over 300 guitars.

There’s also the question that it might step on the toes of the Squier guitars with more modern appointments, but perhaps it’s going to be the line that replaces the now-discontinued Squier Contemporary series.

The Standard Series San Dimas has some very appealing specs, like rolled fingerboard edges, a compound-radius fretboard, locking tuners, and a heel-mounted truss rod adjustment, all of which are found on the company's higher-end guitars. It also has an unusual 25.1” scale length, closer to a PRS guitar than a Fender or Gibson.

It’s a very simple guitar, with two of Charvel’s own humbuckers controlled by just a single volume knob and a three-way pickup selector. There are some less high-end features to help keep the cost down, with the obvious ones being the nyatoh wood used for the body and neck, as well as an amaranth (aka purpleheart) fretboard.

A Charvel hardtail bridge strung through the body rounds out the hardware offering, and it comes in Satin Gray or Gloss Black, and both options have a painted faux-binding in black or white, respectively.

Specs

• Launch price: $569.99 | £449 | €489
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Nyatoh
• Neck: Nyatoh / speed neck profile
• Fingerboard / radius: Amaranth with rolled edges / 12"-16" compound radius
• Scale length: 25.1”/638mm
• Nut/width: Black plastic / 42.86mm
• Frets: 22, jumbo
• Hardware: Charvel die-cast locking tuners, Charvel HT6 string through body bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 52.4mm
• Electrics: Charvel Custom Humbucking pickups, master volume, three-position toggle switch
• Weight: 6.39lbs / 2.9kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Satin Gray (as reviewed), Gloss Black
• Case: No
• Contact: Charvel

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

There’s something that immediately screams out as soon as I unbox the Standard Series San Dimas, and it’s the amaranth fretboard. It’s decidedly red/purple in appearance, and a far cry from the typical dark woods or light maple I’m used to seeing. Amaranth is also known as purpleheart, thus the colour, but it’s a bit of a shock to see something so radically different from the usual fretboard fare.

The other side of the nyatoh neck is interesting too. It’s an oiled finish, which to my hand feels very dry at first. Running my hand up and down the neck, I can feel the texture of the wood grain; it’s a very slight feeling, but noticeable coming straight from my regular Telecaster neck with its satin urethane finish.

The neck is attached to a nyatoh body via four bolts, with a lightly sculpted neck heel for better upper fret access. The lower horn features a cut on the back side of the body to assist here, while a belly cut and forearm rest offer additional comfort features. The painted binding of the body is very nicely applied in razor-straight lines, although I do spot it going ever so slightly skewiff near the neck join.

The hardware is very nicely applied, with the single knob and pickup toggle switch offering a firm operation. The bridge has four screws attaching it to the body, while the locking tuners feel very robust and offer a similarly firm and reassuring travel.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Sitting down to play, the neck immediately feels ready for fast playing thanks to the slim, ‘Speed Neck’ profile and the very flat feeling 12-inch radius, which evolves to 16 inches as I get further up the fretboard. Despite the weird colour of the fretboard, it doesn’t really feel any different to any dark wood ‘board I’ve played, and naturally I’m drawn to speedy licks and chunky power chords thanks to the overall feel.

I’m playing unplugged, and it’s here I notice there’s a bit of chorusing effect going on whenever I hit the ‘D’ string open, caused by either the cut of the nut slot itself or the break angle going over the nut. It’s not noticeable when I plug in later on, but something to note with regard to the overall setup of the instrument. There’s also some serious neck dive as soon as I take my right arm off the guitar body.

The action is just north of the 1mm point at the 12th fret on the low ‘E’ with my finger on the first fret, helping aid that speedy feel and overall gearing towards more technical playing. The 25.1” scale length also aids that slinky overall feel. The jumbo frets offer plenty to bend against, and with a relatively light gauge set of strings on it from the factory, it’s very easy to achieve full tone and more bends even without a supporting finger.

However, when I do this on the ‘B’ string, I somehow manage to pull the ‘G’ string out of the slot in the locking tuner, presumably as it wasn’t clamped down with enough force. I also notice that it doesn’t seem to hold its tune as well as my other guitars with locking tuners. I have to retune relatively frequently during the initial playtesting session, and it’s the same when I take the guitar to practice with my band.

In the rehearsal room, we play our set front to back twice in a row, and I use my normal Player Plus Tele for one and the Standard Series San Dimas Style 2 for the second playthrough. The neck dive when I put it on a strap is even more noticeable than it was when I had it in my lap, with it diving as soon as I take my hands off the guitar.

It’s a really comfortable feeling guitar overall in terms of playability once I get going, and I don’t feel like I need to do much adjustment to my playing style despite the very different feel from my usual instrument. The neck dive disappears with both hands on the guitar, but it could probably benefit from a leather strap if you’re really sensitive to that kind of thing.

Everything from the chugging power chords to measured lead playing feels easy, and now that I’ve played in the neck a bit, that raw feeling is gone, leaving a very fast playing instrument in its wake. It’s really interesting because I wanted to write it off after seeing the fretboard and feeling the back of the neck initially, but it won me over with its overall phenomenal playability.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

In the rehearsal room I play the Standard Series San Dimas through my pedalboard and Orange Rocker 32 tube amp, and there is a noticeable jump in volume from the Noiseless single coil pickups on my Fender, so much so that I have to drop the master volume on my amp a touch. They’re seriously high-output humbuckers, and my initial assessment is that they sound great considering it’s a relatively cheap guitar.

Charging through our set, the bridge humbucker dealt with oodles of gain via multi-stacked overdrive pedals and still remained articulate, even when I start adding in a phase-shifted overdrive, as well as some tube echo and spring reverb via my HX Stomp. I do find it lacking a bit of sophistication during a clean interlude, though, sounding a little bit sterile and dull versus my usual, sparkly single coils, particularly as I move higher up the neck.

Switching to the neck pickup for the clean stuff takes away a bit of the edginess from the bridge position, but it’s not an overly warm or dark sound in general. There’s a decent bit of bite to it when I start digging in, and I unlock some warm, round tones in the lower registers when striking the strings more gently. It’s a much more pleasing sound as I get higher up the neck versus the bridge position, taming a bit of that harshness.

Moving back to the overdrive channel, it’s not quite sludgy doom territory with the neck humbucker, but for single note riffing it offers a very satisfying, thick tone. It’s a guitar that definitely excels more in high-gain stuff, sounding great with metalcore riffs and ripping leads. When I try to do some more soft touch bluesy stuff, it just lacks the sophistication, sounding a bit brittle at times.

Verdict

I was pretty excited when Charvel announced these guitars. The idea of more high-end inspired instruments at a lower price is definitely something that will appeal to a lot of players, and in terms of playability, the Charvel Standard Series San Dimas Style 2 definitely delivers. The rolled fingerboard edges, compound radius fretboard, and oiled neck make for a heavenly playing experience.

The humbuckers also delivered, provided you like things heavy. For rockers and metalheads, I can see you getting along very well with the dual Charvel pickups, but it does lack a bit of sophistication for clean and mid-gain stuff. I doubt beginner players would notice this, but those more experienced players wanting a cheaper guitar or a backup definitely will.

There are also some questions around the setup, which is unfortunately a feature of a lot of guitars at this price point, and I do think a lot of guitarists might be surprised at the fretboard colour. It was enough to make me do a double-take, and I’ve had a lot of guitars pass through my hands in the past few years. Those looking for a classic, dark fretboard wood may find it a bit too garish for their tastes.

MusicRadar verdict: Overall, I think this is a good guitar for the money. Stick some better pickups in it and give it a good setup, and you could definitely have something on your hands that competes with guitars in the $1,000+ range. The fretboard colour may be a shock to some, and it is a little one-dimensional in terms of tone, but the playability is the real standout here.

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Gretsch has expanded its mid-priced Electromatic range with a pair of baritone guitars, reimagining a ‘60s cult classic played by Rory Gallagher and Jack Antonoff and the single-cut Jet as low-end machines capable of twang, rock ’n’ roll and, y’know, being a straight-up metal guitar.

Metal is not the first thing we think about when we think about Gretsch guitars – but then check out the demo video below. The Electromatic CVT Baritone, in its muted Bristol Fog finish, sounds pretty metal in the hands of Loathe’s guitarist Erik Bickerstaffe – as does the Jet for that matter.

Which came as a bit of a shock to us. The Baritone Jet has been one of our favourites over the years. Play it through a tube-driven Fender amp with a splash of spring reverb and it’s got that early rock ’n’ roll rumble to it, a rubbery, elastic twang. But brutal riffing… that was for the Jacksons of this world, surely.

Apparently we were mistaken. This one comes in Imperial Stain with a pair of PureVolt Twin Six humbuckers, which are not your granddaddy’s Filter’Trons. The 29.75” scale length is nigh-on a short-scale bass guitar and it will absolutely eat up those lower tunings.

Elsewhere, it is, reassuringly, very on-brand, very recognisably a Jet, with the chambered mahogany body, the glued-in mahogany neck (carved into a Performance C shape, again, alluding to its metal aspirations) and 12” radius rosewood fingerboard with Pearloid Neo Classic inlays.

It’s got binding. It’s got a GraphTech NuBone nut. It’s got an Adjust-O-Matic bridge and stop-tail and a lot of class for £609/$699.

The CVT Baritone is quite different; different for Gretsch, a different feel from the Jet. It’s got the same pickups, the 12” radius ‘board, etc, and it too has an all-mahogany build, with that heavily contoured solid-body a very distinctive shape.

With a 27” scale we might imagine it to be a little more manageable than the Jet. It shares that Performance C neck shape, too, perhaps an invitation to shred.

It completes what is quite a remarkable comeback/reinvention for the Corvette, a model that was played by Rory Gallagher back in the day, and brought back as the CVT as Jack Antonoff’s signature guitar, the “Princess Antonoff” CVT.

With its vibrato, its Vintage White finish, its FideliSonic P-90 pickups, it was a more gentle beast.

This CVT’s vibe is big riffs, doom, sludge, alternative, whatever you like, and we’d say that Gretsch might well have a hit on its hands, because it sounds – and looks – killer. It’s also priced very attractively at £/$599.

For more details, head over to Gretsch.

• “The perfect marriage of brilliance and brute force”: With high-output humbuckers, an onboard Lumen Filter, compound radius fingerboards and a contoured body, Gretsch unveils the reinvention of the Jet

Seymour Duncan continues its 50th anniversary celebrations with another limited edition electric guitar pickup drop that presents us with a Custom Shop replica of a humbucker that helped launch the sound of high-gain electric guitar, the Duncan Custom.

This ceramic humbucker has been meticulously reverse engineered, gently aged, and arrives in a set that pairs with it a hand-wound ’59. It’s one of the classic aftermarket pickup pairings; it’ll sound great in your Les Paul, in your Jackson, in any dual-humbucker guitar in need of a pick-me-up.

In today’s money, the Duncan Custom would be considered a medium-output pickup. But with a DCR rating of 14.1k, it is no slouch, and upon its launch it was one of those humbuckers that players sought out to give the front end of their guitar amp something to think about.

“Its small ceramic magnet and custom-wound coils deliver tight, focused lows, a pronounced upper-mid presence, and top end that cuts with clarity under gain while remaining articulate in clean settings,” says Seymour Duncan.

For all its extra juice, more harmonic detail, it still retains that sense of being a vintage pickup (and by all rights it is).

The set is limited to 500 units worldwide, and each pickup’s base plate is signed by Seymour W Duncan and the legend of pickup winding and head of the Custom Shop, Maricela “MJ” Juarez. It comes in a commemorative box, with original replica “Seymourized” stickers – and you can get the set with black or zebra bobbins.

The Duncan Custom is one of the originals, dating back to the ‘70s. It has evolved over the years – notably, it is bobbin design has made it more suited to wax potting. But this reproduction returns it to factory settings, using butyrate bobbins, long-leg base plates and maple spacers.

It should look like it was made in the ‘70s and kept in the box. It will still sound every bit as compelling as it did when they first started making them.

As will the the ‘59 Model at the neck. This has a slightly more scooped EQ profile, a DCR reading of 7.60k, and is hand-wound in the Custom Shop around an Alnico V magnet. This was Seymour Duncan’s “ideal” PAF-style humbucker – open, airy, three-dimensional, and over the years has been used by the likes of Trey Anastasio, Ben Harper and Paul Stanley.

The Duncan Custom Limited Edition set is available now, priced $375. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Gibson has refreshed its electric guitar lineup with two takes on its iconic ES-335 that bring it in line with the Les Paul Standard, as players can now choose between ‘50s and ‘60s models, each with their own “decade-correct” specs and details.

This makes perfect sense. And you wonder why Gibson didn’t do it sooner. Everyone has a preference, some preferring the thicker Rounded C neck profiles of ‘50s instruments, others the SlimTaper neck that Gibson rolled out in the ‘60s. And there are little details that call out to their vintage counterparts, such as the longer pickguard on the ‘50s model.

These come fresh out of Gibson’s Nashville facility with a trio of classic finishes for each model. You can get the ‘50s ES-335 in Vintage Natural, Vintage Tobacco Burst and Ebony, and its ‘60s sibling in Dark Walnut, Vintage Burst and ‘60s Cherry.

Fundamentally, both guitars have got a lot in common. For one, these are ES-335s no matter the year, which means they are among the most versatile electrics you will find on the market. The ES-335 is a great jazz guitar. It’s a superb rock guitar (after all, the original ’58 and ’59 models were called ‘Burst killers – many thought they blew the Les Paul Standard away).

With that maple centre block one of the undisputed genius inventions in guitar design, taming feedback, promoting sustain, creating a guitar that was ready for rock ’n’ roll’s gradual radicalisation – more volume, more gain, Marshall stacks up back, fuzz pedals down on the floor.

And yes, there are many similarities in the build and dimensions. Both have the 24.75” scale length, the 12” radius rosewood fingerboard, the 3-ply maple/poplar-maple body, and the ABR‑1 Tune‑O‑Matic bridge and an aluminum Stop Bar.

But there are some crucial differences – the electric guitar pickups for a start.

The ‘50s ES-335 has a pair of Custombucker Alnico III humbuckers at the bridge and neck positions, the ‘60s model comes with T-Type Alnico V humbuckers.

You’ve got dot inlays on the ‘50s model, ‘small block’ inlays on the ‘60s. As per the Les Paul Standards, you’ll find gold ‘Top Hat’ knobs on the ‘50s ES-335, black knobs with silver inserts on the ‘60s version.

There are Vintage Deluxe tuners with ‘Keystone’ buttons on the ‘50s model, with Grover Rotomatics with metal ‘Milk Bottle’ buttons… The differences are subtle but they all add up.

Either way, you’ve got a hell of a guitar – maybe the greatest blues guitar you could find. Both models ship with hard-shell guitar cases, and they are available now, priced £3,099/$3,499.

See Gibson for more details.

What is it?

The Kelly is one of those Jackson guitars that looks like the sort of instrument Conan the Barbarian might play at an open-mic night, its headstock and lower horn serving as examples of how electric guitar anatomy could be used as a means of impalement.

Popularised by Marty Friedman in his early ‘90s Megadeth days, with signature guitar variants in today’s lineup for Brandon Ellis and Jeff Loomis, the Kelly is unapologetically a metal guitar.

But clearly not metal enough. And so, for the second year running, Jackson has given it the Pure Metal treatment, stripping it down to a single pickup, giving it a stealth black finish and a Floyd, grey binding on the body, neck and headstock, grey Jackson logo to make it dark and brutal.

This year’s version swaps out the Fishman Fluence for a Bare Knuckle Holy Diver humbucker, and swaps nickel/chrome hardware for black, and Jackson has performed a Linda Blair move on this Kelly and reversed the headstock for extra heavy points.

Specs

• Launch price: $1,599 | £1,449 | €1,699
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Poplar
• Neck: Maple / three-piece through-neck
• Fingerboard: Ebony with sharfkin inlay, 12”-16” compound radius
• Scale length: 25.5”/658mm
• Nut/width: Floyd Rose 1000 Series locking nut / 42.86mm
• Frets: 24, jumbo stainless steel
• Hardware: Jackson sealed die-cast tuners, Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking vibrato, black
• String spacing at bridge: 55mm
• Electrics: Bare Knuckle Holy Diver humbucker (bridge), volume
• Weight: 8.07lb/3.66kg
• Options: The Pro Plus Pure Metal RR1 Rhoads ($1,649) and SLA1 Soloist ($1,499) are included in this limited edition run; the Pro Series Brandon Ellis Kelly ($1,779) is offered in Green Crackle, the Jeff Loomis Kelly ($1,699) is offered in Black with a basswood body and sandblasted ash top.
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Satin Black
• Cases: Gig bag included
• Contact: Jackson

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

This Kelly has an all-over shell matte finish that makes it feel like it was turned out of a mold, or is of extra-terrestrial provenance like the Monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

We are assured there is wood under it, and that wood comprises poplar wings glued to a three-piece maple neck that runs through it.

While Jackson necks such as this are super-thin, they’re tough as old boots, with graphite rods reinforcing them. The jumbo stainless steel frets are immaculately installed.

The Pro Plus range is Jackson’s premium Indonesian line, and its meticulous when it comes to the fit and finish, even if that Satin Black is murder for attracting fingerprints.

There is no heel-mounted truss rod wheel as found on the American Series and some other Pro Plus models (i.e. Christian Andreu’s Rhoads). Adjustments need to be made the old-fashioned way, at the headstock.

The Floyd Rose 1000 Series is largely similar to the 1500 Series vibratos found on US Jacksons, only the latter has the push-in tremolo arm and stainless steel screws. The Floyd Rose website sells these parts if you wished to upgrade it yourself. They share the same smooth action.

Now, yes, this is a common complaint we have for Pro and Pro Plus series Jacksons, but the gig bag really is a little on the flimsy side. These are serious guitars, and this is not one of those super-padded gig bags that are really soft cases in name. Talk to your local music store. They might cut you a deal.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

In profile, the Kelly is a lot of guitar; you’ve got to be mindful of what’s behind you. But at a hair over 8lbs this is a good weight.

Minimalism is the order of the day. The electronics are super simple. That Holy Diver humbucker is wired to a single volume control. Just turn it up and play.

You get full access to the fingerboard. The neck is the lowest of lower-case C profiles, barely there, flat behind the thumb, reminding me how Jackson guitars can take a bit of getting used to when you’ve been playing a thicker vintage-style neck.

The tendency is to rush, to overplay, to speed ahead of the beat, and it's remarkable what those slinky stainless steel frets can do for adding an extra bit of zip, and a greasiness for string-bending.

Like the Rhoads, the Kelly is an odd shape that balances perfectly on a guitar strap. Unlike the Rhoads, you can sit on your backside and work through the Tomb of the Mutilated tab book in comfort.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Bare Knuckle describes the Holy Diver as “a celebration of the original ‘80s hot-rodded humbuckers” and with its Alnico V design, it strikes me as more in the style of a Seymour Duncan JB than the DiMarzio X2N that Vivian Campbell preferred when performing Holy Diver with Dio.

There might be some progressive metal players who are disappointed that we don’t have an active humbucker, or who miss the Fishman, but this does not lack muscle, and with the stripped down controls, this dynamic, slightly mid-forward electric guitar pickup might be the perfect choice. It cleans up better than you might expect.

Still, the Kelly is for those who park themselves at the bridge position and run everything on 10. Through a Blackstar tube amp, with extra juice from a Fulltone OCD overdrive pedal and a little squeeze from the compressor pedal, it eats the gain up.

Personally, I don’t miss a neck pickup but a tone control would be useful for rolling some top-end off on busy lead passages. Sweep-pickers might well agree.

Verdict

Like the best Jackson designs, the KE1A stays out of your way. The 12” to 16” radius fingerboard feels like the platonic ideal for high-performance electrics.

You’ll find it across most Jacksons, and its Fender-owned high-performance sibling brands, EVH and Charvel. And yet on this Kelly, with that neck – with its awesome reversed six-in-line headstock offering some weird psychosomatic aerodynamics – it just feels faster.

Speed isn’t everything, of course. The Pure Metal Kelly works because its Bare Knuckle humbucker is a pickup with depth. It can be percussive when you’re palm-muting. It breathes when playing open chords, those black metal open Emin to Cmin chord progressions sound on point.

Together with that neck-through build boosting sustain, you can hit a natural harmonic, pull down on that Floyd, and you’ve got a squeal that sounds… Well, like the lamentations of your enemies? Maybe. But a few hours throwing riffs around with this and perhaps the answer to the riddle of the steel will become clearer in the mind's eye.

Guitar World verdict: Just when you thought the entire Jackson catalog was already “Pure Metal,” the Californian high-performance specialist goes and makes something like this – a pro-quality limited run beast with speed, with firepower, with everything you could want from a metal guitar – just as long as you don’t need a neck pickup.

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• “This is the guitar you turn to when it is time to become death, the destroyer of worlds, for adventures on the frontier of extreme guitar tone”: Jackson Pro Series DR24MG EVTN6 Diamond Rowe Signature review

EVH Gear has rolled out a refresh of its Wolfgang Special line, offering the high-performance electric guitar with a baked maple neck – and the choice of an EVH compensated bridge and tailpiece or Floyd Rose vibrato.

If you’re thinking the latter option is the most Eddie Van Halen, well, of course you are right; it even comes with the D-Tuna for on-the-fly drop D tuning (handy for Van Halen classics such as Unchained but also for, well, Spoonman, Killing In The Name Of… et cetera).

But then all of these Wolfgang Specials are inextricably linked to the man who designed the, whose initials are on the headstock – these roasted maple necks are quartersawn and graphite reinforced for extra stability, and have the very same shape and profile as those approved by EVH when the model was developed.

These necks have also been given the satin urethane treatment so that they don’t gum up on you when you sweat, and they’re paired with a 12” to 16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard, with 22 jumbo frets to explore. Dot inlays count ‘em out.

Furthermore, for a mid-priced high-performance guitar, the specs are pretty neat. Compared to previous Wolfgang Special TOM, these have the fine-tuners on the tail-piece – a touch of BB King on an Eddie Van Halen guitar.

All models feature a pair of EVH Gear’s flagship electric guitar pickups, the direct-mounted Wolfgang Alnico II humbuckers.

As per the Great Man’s preferences, these humbuckers are hooked up to a three-position toggle switch, a 500K EVH Bourns volume pot, with a low-friction action for easy swells (e.g. for when playing Cathedral) and a high-friction 250K tone pot so you don’t accidentally roll off some treble in the heat of battle.

Both the fixed bridge and Floyd models share a lot of DNA. You’ve got the same neck, the same basswood body, with single-ply binding. They both have EVH-branded sealed die-casted tuners.

The Floyd models have solid-colour headstocks – matching on some finishes, contrasting on others, such as the black headstock on the Ivory model – while the Wolfgang Special TOM Baked Maple models have natural finish headstocks.

The contouring and ergonomic flourishes are the same, and they’re prices include an EVH Striped Series gig bag. EVH Gear is offering the Wolfgang Special Baked Maple in Smoked Mesquite, Caution Yellow, Ivory, Stealth Black and Gloss Black, with chrome hardware on the Smoked Mesquite and Ivory models, black on the rest.

These are priced £1,299/$1,499.

The Wolfgang Special Baked Maple is offered in Gloss Black and Husk White with black hardware, and Kandy Green with Chrome Hardware – and if you’re looking for a really upscale looking option then the Oxblood version ships with with gold hardware and matching ‘Speed’ knobs. These will set you back £1,099/$1,399.

In other EVH Gear news, the brand has also expanded its Hypersonic series of digital modelling amps with a 2x12 version of the 5150III 6L6 combo amp. Again, it’s a super-lightweight option – 25.5kg is nothing for a 2x12.

No super heavy transformers and plate of tubes here. And yet you get that same face-ripping high-gain performance. Metal amps don't get much better, or more convenient.

Check it out in action above, and find out more over at EVH Gear. This is priced £1,399/$1,699.

• How to play guitar in drop D tuning

What is it?

Unlike much of the tech in wider society, guitarists haven’t changed their habits much since the 50s and 60s, when classic designs like the Strat and Les Paul first emerged. While gear like guitar amps and pedals have gotten smaller and more powerful, the guitar itself hasn’t diversified much from those 70ish-year-old designs that brought it into the mainstream.

When I first brought the Strandberg Boden Original N2.6T to some of my rehearsals and practice sessions, the reactions were pretty varied, and definitely much more intense than those I get bringing a more regular-looking guitar. From comments like ‘it makes me uneasy’ to ‘that is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen’, it’s understandable that these headless guitars polarise people because they are just so different from the norm.

It’s like when the internet relentlessly mocked the look of AirPods when they were first announced. Or how people dubbed the first commercial steamboat ‘Fulton’s Folly’ back in the early 1800s because they never thought it would replace traditional sailboats. It makes me wonder if this type of guitar will be the norm 70 years from now, or whether we guitarists will still be clutching our S-types, T-types, or our LPs and SGs.

The Boden Original N2.6T still has many of the features you’d expect from a regular guitar. It’s a chambered swamp ash body with a flame maple veneer. The roasted maple neck features a roasted birdseye maple, multiscale fretboard with 24 stainless steel frets. It’s got dual Strandberg POWR:D by Fishman USA humbuckers with active and passive modes for tonal variety, engaged via a push-pull tone knob. So nothing too untoward here.

That’s where the similarities to your average electric guitar end, though, as the headless, multiscale fretboard helps set it apart, along with that eye-catching body shape. The EndurNeck profile features here, with its alien, asymmetrical carve looking different from pretty much anything else on the market.

It’s also got a totally redesigned Arc Tilt tremolo bridge, with Strandberg EGS 'barrel' tuners, bridge saddles that sit exactly in the correct intonation positions for a set of 10-46 electric guitar strings, and a radiused base plate that aligns with the radius of the fretboard. It’s got a wider range of movement compared to the original Strandberg tremolo systems, and features an improved whammy bar design with no deadzone or wobble.

Specs

• Launch price: $2,599 | £2,499 | €2,899
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string, multiscale, headless electric guitar
• Body: Swamp ash
• Neck: Roasted maple with titanium reinforcement, EndurNeck
• Fingerboard: Roasted birdseye maple
• Scale length: 25-25.5"
• Nut/width: Neutral stainless steel fret, 42mm
• Frets: 24 frets, stainless steel
• Hardware: Arc TILT 6-string multiscale tremolo bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 52.5mm
• Electrics: 2x Strandberg POWR:D by Fishman USA humbuckers, master volume, master tone with push pull, 5-way pickup selector
• Weight: 5.73 lbs / 2.6 kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Black Denim Burst (as reviewed), Sunset Coral Burst
• Cases: Strandberg Standard gig bag
• Contact: Strandberg

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Unboxing the Boden Original N2.6T, it ships in a Strandberg Standard gig bag, which looks comically small next to my other guitar cases. It’s a grey colour with the Strandberg logo in bright green, a small Swedish flag near the zipper, and a reflective patch on the top to make you easier to spot in the dark, I presume.

Opening up the case and pulling out the guitar, there’s an immediate difference in weight versus many of the other guitars I’ve tested out over the past few years, with the N2.6T weighing in at 2.6 kg on my scales. The body’s alien design isn’t just aesthetic either, with the carve to allow for playing in different seated positions, such as over the right leg, over the left leg, and classical positions over either leg.

Looking at the back of the body first, the swamp ash features a light, 3D grain with a very slight belly cut. There’s no plate on the rear side of the tremolo for easy access, and the neck joint features another light carve that gets thinner the closer it gets to the neck itself. The output jack is also visible from the rear of the guitar, which is unusual, and has been redesigned from previous models, joining the thin, metal electronics plate.

On the front of the body, there’s another slight carve on the upper bout, with the lower bout staying flat. The words ‘Strandberg Boden’ are embossed subtly above the fretboard. The flame maple veneer is subtle, and looking at the edge of the guitar body, there’s a smooth line where the solid maple top has been applied.

The neck is a fairly deep roasted maple with some dark knots on it, and there’s a visible difference between the birdseye variant, which sits on the fretboard when you look at it side on. The fretwork is ultra-smooth, with the edges feeling like they’ve been rounded off.

The Luminlay fretboard markers sit on the bass side up until the 12th fret, before moving to the treble end for notes higher in pitch. Interestingly, the side dots seem slightly skewiff due to the multi-scale, but we’ll get onto that in the playability section.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

Sitting down to play it sans guitar amp, I try my hand at the classical, or ninja pose, as it’s better known in the internet age. It feels weird, to be totally honest. Near the nut, the multiscale isn’t so noticeable, but as I get into lead work, I find myself occasionally hitting the wrong notes as they’re not quite where I expect them to be. The side dots above the 12th fret also feel misleading, as they’re in line vertically with the treble side of the neck, which makes them look off-centre versus the bass side of the neck.

Despite these initial complaints, I find myself continuing to play, emboldened by the asymmetric neck profile, which feels peculiar for the first five minutes, but then seems to disappear in my hand completely. I stop feeling the trapezoidal shape of it, because my thumb naturally wants to rest on the flat part of the neck.

Moving the body to a regular position, the guitar balances perfectly on my right knee, even when I take both hands off it. Diving into some prog metal acrobatics courtesy of Between the Buried and Me, now that I’m up to speed, the neck is lightning quick for extended scale runs, sweep-picked licks with tapping, and some twisty technical riffing. All previous qualms about the multiscale are gone, and especially with lead work, I feel like I’m playing faster and smoother than I would on a regular-scale instrument.

The lack of a headstock has a few other benefits too. For example, while I’m sat at my desk, it feels less cumbersome moving around to tweak various components of my home studio, whether it’s the amp I’m recording, an audio interface on my desktop, or leaning over to tweak settings in my DAW on my laptop. Similarly, when I sit down to play on the sofa, there’s less guitar to get in the way, making it a surprisingly comfortable instrument to play with a guitar headphone amp.

When I took it to a rehearsal and put it on a strap, the headstock-less design meant it pulled less on my left shoulder, which is a very unfamiliar feeling for me, and I imagine most other guitar players. Once I’d run through half of the set, that feeling disappeared, and the Boden Original was less a weight on my shoulder and more like an extension of my body.

Utilising the new tremolo design, I find it very responsive to even the slightest touch, which is really nice, as with a lot of cheaper trem designs I find you get a little bit of dead zone. It’s not quite Floyd Rose territory in terms of room to maneuver, but there’s a good bit of movement either way, and it can handle some pretty extreme dives. I find that heavy use does take the guitar out of tune by a few cents, which is easily remedied by raising the bridge up sharply to knock it back into perfect tuning.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

The active Fishman pickups, exclusively designed for this particular Strandberg model, are supposed to give players the best of both worlds with a ‘dynamic voice’ for a medium output, more responsive tone and a ‘precision voice’ that’s higher output, and better for high gain playing. These are accessed with the tone knob with the down position giving the ‘dynamic’ mode and the opposite giving the precision voice.

Starting with the ‘dynamic voice’ through a reissue Fender Princeton, I’m surprised at how organic the tone feels. With some spring reverb and a touch of vibrato from the amp, the tones I’m able to get feel far removed from any other active pickup I’ve tried. There’s a lot less compression than I expect, with it responding really nicely to softer playing, allowing me to really eke some bite out of it when I dig in.

Moving through the split coil modes, the pups deliver a very satisfying single coil tone, with plenty of trebly bite. They’re not overly spanky to my ear, lacking a little sweetness versus a true single coil guitar, but through the Fender amp, it’s close enough that I can trick my brain into thinking I’m playing a passive pickup rather than an active one.

Pulling the knob up for the ‘precision voice’ and switching to the high gain channel of a Mesa/Boogie MKVII combo, the difference between the two modes is less than I initially expected. There’s a boost in the low end and more midrange emphasis that makes it much more satisfying to chug power chords and play palm-muted riffs, with less harsh high-end than I find doing the same thing with the ‘dynamic voice' engaged.

The jump between the two isn’t huge though; it’s not like going from a PAF to an EMG, but something nestled in the middle of those two extremes of sound. There’s plenty of sustain on lead work, and adding on some octave pedal tones with some reverb and delay makes it great for long, drawn-out bends. Drawing back on the delays and letting rip with alternate picked runs and the occasional sweep delivers a very shreddy tone that will please those looking to play fast.

It's overall an interesting palette to play with, and the Boden Original N2.6T is capable of a lot more versatility than you'd think based on the looks alone. I don't think it will please those looking for a true single-coil sound, but for those who prefer humbuckers and occasionally want to stray into that territory, it does the job.

Verdict

Playing the Strandberg Boden Original N2.6T is quite unlike any other guitar. The lightweight and ergonomic design makes it a really great option for those playing at home and regularly gigging guitar players, taking up less room and being easier to carry around than a guitar with a headstock.

It’s not just a gimmick either; the body shape is genuinely well-balanced, and the neck profile is incredibly comfortable, despite feeling slightly unnerving when you first grasp it. I found the playing experience to be super comfortable once that initial adjustment period was quickly out of the way, and I found I kept reaching for the Strandberg whenever the urge came for me to play guitar.

These ergonomics do have a downside though, and one is that it’s basically impossible to lean the guitar like you would with a regular body shape. Its asymmetry means that having it in a regular stand doesn’t work, nor can you lean it up against a desk or a guitar amp. I also appreciate that for some, the look will be too extreme, and it certainly divided opinions when I took it to rehearsal and for a recording session.

MusicRadar verdict: If this is the future of guitar, then sign me up. Doing away with design for tradition's sake, the Strandberg Boden Original N2.6T is a guitar that pushes the boundaries with the sole aim of providing a better playing experience, and it succeeds on pretty much every front. With sounds versatile enough to cover a vast array of styles and an incredibly comfortable playing platform, once you’re willing to get over the strange looks, you’ll find one of the most satisfying instruments you’ve ever played.

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Harley Benton has announced a dramatic expansion of its Pro Series with the launch of 41 Fusion-IV S-style guitars.

The scale of this launch is a little bamboozling, but when you get down to it, these Harley Benton guitars are gathered in five core models, offering a variation in fit and finish across each, and a lot of spec options, too.

These Pro Series Fusion-IV models all generally retail under the $600. There are a few things you can take for granted.

One, they all come with roasted figured maple necks, bolted to the body in the time-honoured fashion of the OG S-style.

Two, the bodies are nyatoh, with neck profiles a mainstream C profile measuring 21mm thick at the 1st fret, 23mm at the 12th.

Three, they are built for performance. We’ve got stainless steel frets, the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboards.

And look at the the hardware, such as the Harley Benton-branded Jinho JN-07 staggered locking tuners, and the Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series tremolo that is available on the HH, HSH and HSS models, or the Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking vibrato on the Fusion–IV HH FR. We get Graph Tech XL nuts as standard, and there are heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheels.

The specs are pretty impressive indeed – there’s even a dual-humbucker model with a pair of EMG Custom Retro Active Hot 70 humbuckers. That model comes with a tidy no-fuss six-saddle hardtail.

And the little details, such as the glow-in-the-dark side dot markers, the sculpting on the back of the body, and the natural wood binding that ties it all together, all add up to an impressive instrument.

If the core inspiration was once upon a time the Stratocaster, these make us think of “affordable boutique”; and okay, that reads totally oxymoronic, but just look at the prices on these, and then the design influence behind the specs and the finishes. It is more Suhr (and Charvel) than anything Jimi Hendrix played back in the day.

There’s even an Ibanez influence. Look at those Fusion-IV models with the Tesla electric guitar pickups; they have an Alter Switch that allows you to run the HSS model’s single-coils in series, or to activate Harley Benton’s hum-free ‘Ghost Coil’ voicing on the dual-humbucker model. The HSH model’s Active Switch gives us split-coil modes. So many options…

And there are too many models to run through here. Life is too short. But Harley Benton has made a handy online tool for choosing specs and making sense of all these models and their myriad finish options.

Head over to Harley Benton for a closer look – where you will find lots of left-handed options – and pop over to Thomann where these Pro Series Fusion-IV models are now available, priced from £435/$530(approx).

What is it?

It seems almost inconceivable that an electric guitar we still view as cutting edge and modern first saw the light of day as far back as early 1951.

To put that in historical context, six years ago in early 2020 Covid-19 was preparing to ravage the planet, whereas that self-same period prior to 1951 we had not yet emerged from World War II.

That reveals just how advanced Leo Fender’s thinking was, especially given that the guitars he saw around him were mostly large, old-fashioned, hollowbody jazz-style boxes.

In its seven and a half decades, the original Tele has proved a brilliant workhorse that’s found a home in virtually every musical genre. Yet it’s also shown itself to be a superb platform on which to introduce special releases.

Think of the Thinline Tele, Pink Paisley and Blue Flower models, as well as all-rosewood, humbucking, bound-bodied and so many equally enticing variations. Several of these have either remained in circulation, or seen limited-edition reissue success.

The instruments before us today traverse all of the Telecaster’s glorious history: the 75th Anniversary Vintera Road Worn 1951 echoing the first ‘Blackguard’ instruments to roll off Fullerton’s humble, hand-assembly production line; and the 75th Anniversary American Professional Classic Cabronita Tele sporting TV Jones Gretsch-style humbucking pickups, a belly cut, simplified controls and six-saddle bridge assembly.

Plucking the Cabronita from its impressive moulded flight case, we behold a beautiful thing indeed. Dressed in metallic Candy Apple Red, offset by a cut‑down single-ply white version of the original Tele pickguard (with matching rear-mounted control cavity cover), those Filter’Tron-style pickups, and a set of attractive pearl-buttoned tuners on a tinted all-maple neck and fingerboard, it really is a thing to behold.

The guitar’s alder body and maple neck are classic Tele fare, even though the latter’s Modern C profile is pretty skinny and the fingerboard radius the more modern 241mm (9.5 inches). Its pickups, pearloid tuners, nickel/chrome brightware, and a finish of urethane – gloss for the body and satin on the neck – lend the instrument a definitely more ‘today’ vibe.

The switching is simple – possibly too simple as it involves just a single volume control but no tone. Hence you are always left with the pickups’ tones wide open, when you may like to tame the top-end on rockier numbers where a bit of SG-like grunt might be welcome. Siting the switch Les Paul-style on the top shoulder and giving us that missing tone control would surely have been better?

butterscotch-tintedThe Road Worn, on the other hand, is the traditional, ‘plain Jane’ journeyman instrument adored by legends. Springsteen, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, anyone?

So what you see is what you get with this one. The expected ash body, whether it’s two-piece or three, is almost impossible to tell, so perfectly matched and disguised it is beneath the butterscotch tinted and beautiful checked nitrocellulose lacquer.

This is complemented by a similarly nitro-finished all-maple neck and fingerboard, a chunky ‘U’ shape that’s nicely aged in the familiar Road Worn fashion. Frets are ‘tall narrow’ style and the ’board the original 184mm (7.25-inch) radius.

Tuners are six-a-side Kluson-alikes and truss adjustment is, as usual on vintage-style Fenders, via a cross-head bolt secreted at the body end of the neck. The pickguard is a plastic take on the original Bakelite/fibre one.

Pickups here are Fender Pure Vintage ’51 Nocaster neck and bridge, the latter let into the bridge plate and offering three saddles, each carrying a twin set of strings anchored through the body onto rear-mounted ferrules. It’s one of the simplest setups of any electric Fender, only the single-pickup Esquire trumping it in that regard.

Both instruments feature Fender’s usual 648mm (25.5-inch) scale length, of course, plus we get genuine bone nuts and the company’s exemplary zeal for fit and finish.

Specs

Fender 75th Anniversary Vintera Road Worn 1951 Telecaster

• PRICE: $1,899 | £1,599 | €1,795
• ORIGIN: Mexico
• TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric
• BODY: Ash
• NECK: 1-piece tinted maple, 1951 ‘U’ shape with walnut skunk stripe
• SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42mm
• FINGERBOARD: Integral maple with black marker dots
• FRETS: 21, tall narrow
• HARDWARE: Tele-style ‘ashtray’ bridge (cover in case) with brass barrel saddles, ‘75th Anniversary’ neckplate, chrome control plate, knurled dome-style chrome volume and tone pots, rear string ferrules, single-ply black plastic pickguard
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm
• ELECTRICS: Pure Vintage ’51 single coil Tele (bridge), Pure Vintage ’51 single coil Tele (neck), master volume, master tone, three-way pickup selector switch
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.35/7.39
• RANGE OPTIONS: In the standard Vintera II range there’s the ’50s Nocaster and ’60s Telecaster (both £979), plus the Limited Edition Road Worn ’60s Telecaster (£1,189)
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• CASE: Tweed hard case
• FINISH: Classic Butterscotch Blonde

Fender 75th Anniversary American Professional Classic Cabronita Telecaster

• PRICE: $1,999 | £1,799 | €2,015
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric
• BODY: Alder
• NECK: 1-piece maple with walnut skunk stripe
• SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone /42.8mm
• FINGERBOARD: Integral maple with black marker dots
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Cut-down hardtail bridge with 6x solid steel saddles, chrome neckplate with ‘75th Anniversary’ model designation, knurled flat-top control knobs, rear string ferrules, single-ply white pickguard
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm
• ELECTRICS: TV Jones Filter’Tron Classic neck and bridge humbuckers, master volume, three-way pickup selector switch
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.45/7.6
• RANGE OPTIONS: The American Professional Classic Telecaster costs £1,509; a Limited Edition version in Mystic Ice Blue Metallic is £1,539
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• CASE: Hard case
• FINISH: Candy Apple Red (as reviewed), Ice Blue Metallic
• CONTACT: Fender

Playability and sounds

Grabbing the Road Worn first we find a chunky old baseball bat of a neck. While it does look scary when first gazing down at it on your lap, it’s surprisingly comfy and not at all tiring to play, especially with the ultra-thin, satin-feel lacquer that apes the worn away look and feel of actual vintage guitars.

Although you might presume it feels clunky and of its time, the small-radius fingerboard is definitely very comfortable and friendly to the rhythm hand than flatter ’boards, especially when playing barre chords where the first finger wraps over really nicely.

Even big bends right at the top of the neck don’t choke off here, reflecting the good setup.

The Cabronita couldn’t be less rooted in the '50s. Its stated ‘Modern C’ neck feels very slender indeed, as far this way as the Road Worn is the other. Both necks are sure to put certain players off, so perhaps Fender would have been better to meet somewhere in the middle. That said, give it a few minutes and it’s certainly slick and quick.

We didn’t yet mention the guitar’s ‘secret weapon’ 22nd fret located on a fingerboard overhang. While not something the average player will use every day, for that final full-tone bend to the octave E on the top string it’s a godsend. The bigger frets, too, lend a distinctly different feel to that of the more vintage-flavoured Road Worn. And we love the body’s belly cut, which, of course, Leo first used on his Stratocaster in 1954.

Sonically, they’re different beasts. The Blackguard model brims with all those tones that have made it the stalwart of so many fabulous players. You want twang? You’ve got it. Need sweet jazzy tones? No problem. Funky rhythm? Hell yeah! Dark, blues-rock leads? Just dial ’em in! You will need to be au fait with the guitar’s controls, though, as they respond magnificently whether flipping between pickups or combinations thereof, or feathering the tone pot for warm neck-pickup jazz, throaty bridge-pickup roar or out-and-out banshee wail.

Although the Cabronita offers twin humbuckers in the form of TV Jones’ remarkable Filter’Tron remakes, it’s not the broody beast you might imagine.

Instead, it’s full of bright, musical sounds that would feel comfortable in so many musical settings. It’s tricky to quantify these things, but while the sounds it emits are familiar and incredibly attractive, they’re not pure Tele.

Yet neither are they pure Gretsch. And definitely nothing like any Gibson we could mention. The big downside here is the lack of any tone modification.

So while every clean, crunchy or dirty sound from neck, bridge or both pickups together is classy, distinctive and also great to play to, it would have been so nice just to back things off here and there.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

They both look and sound fantastic, and let’s remember these are limited editions for the 75th anniversary of this earth-shattering musical instrument.

So it’s perhaps churlish to score points against them based on what we’d want in everyday ‘mainline’ instruments.

However, were these indeed production models then we’d definitely suggest Fender met the skinny neck of the Cabronita and chunky bat of the Road Worn somewhere in the middle.

We’d also advocate a tone control for the Cabronita, as this would make an already lovely guitar a great one. In fact, with a bigger neck, shoulder-mounted switch and tone control added, this reviewer’s order would most certainly be going in today.

MusicRadar verdict: There’s no doubt that Fender has achieved exactly what it set out to do with these guitars. One is the archetypal vintage workhorse, while the other – introduced as La Cabronita Especial by the Custom Shop in 2009 – aims to be a hot-rodded example that any custom builder might devise.

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• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

Harley Benton’s Fusion series of electric guitars represent superb value for money, and have quickly become the modding platform of choice for guitar players who want an instrument that looks and feels more modern than the low-cost vintage throwbacks offered by Squier or Epiphone. This latest iteration, the Harley Benton Fusion IV HH, looks to tempt those players who want that hot-rodded S-type experience without having to fork out north of a grand.

It’s a nyatoh body topped by a maple veneer, with a body that features an arm rest, a belly cut, and sculpting near the neck joint for more comfortable upper fret access. The roasted Canadian maple neck comes paired with a rosewood fretboard and a compound radius that starts at 12” and then flattens out to 16” as you move nearer the upper frets. It features 22 jumbo-sized, stainless steel frets, marked by circle fret markers and glow-in-the-dark side dots.

Pride of place on the body is a black Floyd Rose Original locking tremolo, with a matching locking nut. Die-cast tuners adorn the headstock, completing the hardware lineup. It’s got two Tesla Opus Alnico V humbuckers, with a five-position blade switch to unlock single coil sounds. There’s also a new addition for this series, an ‘alter switch’, which opens up some alternative pickup sounds, while the master tone and volume knobs are recessed inside the guitar body.

Specs

• Launch price: $494 | £438 | €499
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Nyatoh
• Neck: Roasted Canadian flame maple, modern ‘C’
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 25.5” (648mm)
• Nut/width: Floyd Rose locking, 42mm
• Frets: 22 stainless steel frets, medium jumbo
• Hardware: Floyd Rose FRT 1000 Original tremolo, Jinho JN-03M tuning machines
• String spacing at bridge: 53.4mm
• Electrics: Tesla Opus-1B Alnico 5 humbucker (bridge), Tesla Opus-1N Alnico 5 humbucker (neck), 1 x volume, 1 x tone, 1 mini switch, 5-way blade switch
• Weight: 3.3kg (7.27lbs)
• Options: Also available with Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series C Bridge ($444), HSH and HH configurations at Thomann
• Left-handed options: Yes
• Finishes: White Metallic Gloss
• Cases: No
• Contact: Thomann

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

From first glance, you’d definitely be forgiven for thinking that it’s more super Strat than cheap guitar. It’s immaculately finished, with the pop of metallic gloss white offset against the dark fretboard wood and similarly deep brown of the roasted maple visible via the headstock. It certainly appears a lot more expensive than it actually is, and the all-black hardware and electronics make this a very good-looking guitar in my opinion.

Turning it over to the back, you can see that the body is three-pieces through the clear coat finish, which shows off the wood grain. It’s not particularly well matched on my review model, but then you wouldn’t expect it to be at this price. The neck join feels very solidly put together with no hint of movement, with quite a deep cut around the neck bolts and a slight asymmetry to the join itself.

The tremolo and control plates are also nice and flush with the body of the guitar, and taking off the control plate, it features shielding on the other side. The wiring itself looks relatively neat and tidy, but there is a lot of it packed into the cavity thanks to those additional switching options. I don't find any qualms here, however.

Moving to the neck, my model has a really nice, dark roasted maple on the back with just a couple of knotty spots, and a very smooth satin finish. The fretwork is immaculate on both sides of the neck, no sharp edges to contend with here, and the dark rosewood looks fantastic.

The stainless steel frets are marked by circle dots, which look very premium, while the side dots are glow-in-the-dark for extra visibility on dark stage lighting. The hardware feels very solidly applied, with the switches offering a snappy feel, while the recessed knobs have a good bit of resistance when I turn them.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

With it being a Floyd Rose guitar in a super Strat format, when sitting down to play, my first instinct is to go with some shredding. Already warmed up from a previous review, I start by playing the opening lead lick from In The Fire by Roadrunner United, which features some generous whammy bar use, full tone bends, and plenty of alternate picked scale runs. It’s certainly a fast-feeling fretboard in the higher registers thanks to the compound radius, and I don’t have any issues getting up to speed here.

I do think the action is set a little high from the factory, however, and getting my ruler out to measure, it’s just shy of 2mm at the 12th fret with my finger on the 1st fret. Not uncomfortable for an experienced player, but there’s definitely room here to lower it and get it feeling a lot more slinky in the upper registers. The medium jumbo frets feel really nice to bend against, and I can control my vibrato with ease as they give plenty of feel when moving the strings up and down.

To my hand, these seem a bit taller than what I’d typically expect from a medium jumbo, but that’s no slight, as most players would expect this from a super-Strat style guitar. Barre chords feel comfortable on the lower frets, and switching to some riffs, I find the neck profile to be very sweet indeed. It’s not super skinny like an Ibanez, but the modern ‘C’ profile offers a nice bit of feel without being so big it becomes cumbersome.

I start to lean properly on the Floyd Rose tremolo next to see how it holds up, and I’m impressed with its stability straight out of the box. For flutters and more general use, the tuning stays pretty much perfect, with perhaps a few cents either way depending on whether I dive or raise with it. Getting into some more Dimebag-inspired dives and harmonic squeals, I do find it shifts a bit more, but this is understandable considering the load it’s under, and easily fixed with a small adjustment at the fine tuners.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

The Fusion IV HH features an ‘alter switch’, which means an additional 5 variations of sound to play with alongside the five standard sounds it features. With the alter switch facing towards the tone pot, I start by plugging straight into the front of a Mesa/Boogie MkVII combo amp, on the high gain channel, of course.

In position 1, it’s the typical mid-heavy gut punch you’d expect from an Alnico V humbucker in the bridge position, delivering plenty of chunkiness when I dig in with power chords, and boatloads of sustain for leads.

Moving onto position 2, I get split coil sounds with one coil from each humbucker engaged, which is a little thinner than the bridge ‘bucker on its own. The middle position activates both humbuckers, which is a really thick sound that I can see going down well with lovers of sludgy riffs, while position 4 activates the other two single coils in each humbucker, and to my ear sounds a bit fuller and more pleasing with ladles of gain.

The final position activates just the neck humbucker, which is very thick and warmer-sounding than the middle position but offers a little more clarity and articulation with barre chords.

Flicking the alter switch towards the volume knob unlocks a series of tones inspired by the Ibanez ‘Power Tap’ feature, by which one of the humbucker coils is ‘tapped’ and connected to the other coil via a resistor and capacitor. The idea here is to produce a sound that combines the spank of a single coil with the low-end heft of a humbucker.

Position 1 activates the ‘tapped’ bridge humbucker, which indeed has some of the heft of a humbucker in the lower registers, but sounds a little harsh on high gain in the upper portions of the fretboard. The overall tonal quality is more single-coil than humbucker to me.

Position 2 gives me a single coil of the bridge humbucker alone, which again feels a little harsh in the trebles, especially with the excessive amounts of gain from channel 3 of the amp. Position 3 doesn't give me much to write home about either, sounding very similar to the standard middle position. It offers both humbuckers in a tapped configuration, which sounds tonally similar but ever so slightly duller to my ear.

Position 4 unlocks a single coil from the neck humbucker, which continues the theme of sounding decent on the bass strings, but getting harsh and icepicky on the treble side. Finally, position 5 gives me the ‘tapped’ bridge humbucker, which ends up being my favorite of all the ‘alter’ positions as it leans much more towards low-end and midrange response, without any of the harsh high-end I encountered in the other positions.

Switching to the clean channel of my amp with a Fender-esque mid scoop, to get a better picture of the alternate sounds, I’m able to eke out some more of the spanky sounds. As I move to the higher registers, they just don’t sound as sweet, ending up getting clouded by harsher resonances, particularly as I play triads above the 10th fret. There are some great sounds here, like the tapped neck humbucker, but there are also some that I just don’t think sound all that good.

Verdict

Considering the price, there’s a lot of guitar here for those players who aren’t afraid to look beyond the big brands. It’s a really well put-together guitar, and with a setup, the playability is superb. With the locking tremolo, I can see this model attracting a certain type of player who wants more extreme sounds, so having ten different pickup combinations could be very appealing to those who want some more explorative tones at their fingertips.

That said, the pickups are the real weakness here. The ‘stock’ sounds are pretty great, but the ‘alter’ positions are a bit uninspired for me. Could more expensive pickups solve this problem? They could certainly elevate the tones of this guitar to match the build quality and playability. But then players would have to factor in an additional cost alongside a setup.

It's still a good guitar if you're looking for value for money, and if you're willing to spend a little extra time and money on it, you could definitely push it into the realms of greatness while still saving the cash you'd spend buying from a bigger brand. That said, those who want a complete guitar from the off might find a better match looking elsewhere.

MusicRadar verdict: If you’re looking for a rock-solid modding platform, the Harley Benton Fusion IV delivers enough improvements over its predecessor to make it a tempting proposition for those who don’t mind getting stuck into soldering. If you’re after a great value guitar, it also fits the bill, but you might find that the additional switching doesn’t offer as much as you might think on the face of it.

Also try

Harley Benton has unveiled a budget bruiser that offers the full-on extended-scale baritone guitar experience for under 250 bucks – and it doesn’t hurt that the body has that on-trend offset guitar shape.

The JA-Baritone HH BK comes with a poplar body, a bolt-on maple neck, and there’s a heck of a lot of neck. This has a 762mm scale length, which by the old measures is a roomy 30” – as in, short-scale bass territory.

But this is not that. It’s an electric guitar, all be it one that will be invading upon the bass guitar player’s frequencies, especially if you get creative with your tunings.

And why not? the JA-Baritone has got a fuss-free six-saddle hard-tail bridge. There’s no vibrato to worry about. Just step on your guitar tuner, turn those tuners, and see where it takes you.

We have not had our hands on it yet but guitars at this price not only make a solid entry-level option but can be upgraded over time. Who’s to say that a better set of tuners would improve its performance over time, and then there’s the pickups, too.

This is a dual-humbucker platform, kitted out with a pair of high-output ceramic humbuckers at the neck and bridge, with volume and tone knobs and a three-way pickup selector switch. Again, these could be replaced over time.

Harley Benton is shipping this with a set of 14s on it. It’s a heavy duty proposition. But that C profile neck is sure to be mainstream. It seats a purpleheart (aka amaranth) fingerboard with pearloid block inlays.

Your finish options include Black with a matching pickguard, and… Well that’s it. But Harley Benton does also have a P-90-equipped version in the catalogue, which could be a better option if you’re looking for that more traditionally alt-rock range of sounds.

As usual, you’ll find these exclusively through Thomann. The JA-Baritone HH BK is priced £182, with a guide price of $246 for the US (Harley Benton sadly closed its Reverb store from 1 February). You can find out more over at Harley Benton, or via Thomann.

In other Harley Benton does low-end, the budget gear giant just recently launched a signature bass co-designed with Gregor Fris of the BassTheWorld YouTube channel. And there is a but. This was not your typical Harley Benton guitar.

Fris challenged Harley Benton to make a more high-end instrument, and created a J-style with hand-wound Kloppman pickups, Gotoh hardware and premium tonewoods.

You can read more about the Harley Benton BassTheWorld MV-4JB Plus here.

Fender has rolled out the Brian Fallon ’59 Telecaster Custom, a super high-end Custom Shop replica of the electric guitar that was Fallon's favourite Tele, his go-to guitar during the early days of The Gaslight Anthem.

This limited edition signature guitar arrives in Black with the Corona Custom Shop’s meticulous Journeyman Relic finish.

It has the Righteous Sound “Fourth Man” pickups, a humbucker at the neck, a single-coil at the bridge, as per the Telecaster Custom’s now classic configuration – and it’s got the all-important Dual Stack HS Tele Wiring that helps keep the humbucker clear and some of the harshness out of that bridge single-coil.

Fender promises “midrangy snarl and bite from the bridge pickup and warm, clear note definition from the split-coil neck pickup”. Park the three-way pickup selector switch in the middle position for a more balanced “shimmering” tone.

Typical of the breed, this very much a do-it-all guitar, a w_____rse electric; it’s a rock guitar, a blues guitar, a jazz guitar… A metal guitar? Why the heck not!? Fallon? He describes it as a hammer – a $6,825 hammer but a hammer nonetheless.

“There’s only the switches, and the volume and the tone, and that’s really all you got so you better figure it out,” says Fallon. “It’s about taking what you can do and making the best of that, and I think this is the guitar for that. If you need a hammer, that’s a hammer, and everyone needs a hammer. You cannot build a house without it.”

If the Telecaster is historically a simple dish then rest assured the Fender Custom Shop is giving us our money’s worth by pulling out all the stops with the build. Here we have the double-bound alder body, a ‘60-Style Oval “C” rift-sawn maple neck and flat-laminated dark AAA rosewood fingerboard with a 9.5" radius.

By this point you might be wondering why it is called a ’59 Telecaster Custom – and has some of that era’s appointments, such as the ‘wing-style string tree on the headstock – but Fender didn’t launch the humbucker/single-coil variant of the Tele Custom until 1972, when the Deluxe was also released.

So it’s, what? A little confusing that this is called a ’59 Tele Custom. Yes. But it ties in with The Gaslight Anthem theme.

The ’59 Sound was the New Jersey rock stalwarts breakthrough album. And this was the guitar Fallon had gravitated towards having weaned himself on Bruce Springsteen and The Clash. Though we have to credit a Fender amp for providing the actual '59 Sound.

"I remember my dad had loaned me some money for a Telecaster, so I got that," said Fallon, speaking to MusicRadar's Rob Laing in 2018. "I had the Bassman that I built – the '59 Bassman. It was literally the '59 sound. So I just built one and I found these crazy parts. I kept going and playing through old ones in different stores, then I would go home and correct mine to sound closer to that and I would keep doing it for two years before I got it right."

The Brian Fallon ’59 Telecaster Custom is available now, priced £6,199/$6,825, and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case, guitar strap and COA. Watch Fallon demo it above – and find out more over at the Fender Custom Shop.

Not everyone has a life-changing moment. We can't all be Spider-Man. But sometimes these things happen. There are occasions when something cosmic occurs, kismet strikes, and it happened for Jake Kiszka in Chicago.

Picture the scene: Greta Van Fleet were not the band they are now. They were just getting started.

“It was maybe a decade ago now, about 10 years ago, Greta Van Fleet was leaving Michigan for the first time, where we’d really played shows and gigged and done all sorts of work there,” explains Kiszka, speaking to MusicRadar over Zoom. “It was really the first time out in North America, nationally… Setting out into the infinite horizon, trying to find manifest destiny or something. [Laughs]”

They did not have much gear. They had emptied the garage and took what they could. Chicago was an easy schlep, just across Lake Michigan. They stopped by Chicago Music Exchange (CME).

Greta Van Fleet’s manager was good friends the CEO, Andrew Yonke, and arranged for Kiszka to visit ‘The Vault,’ where CME keeps all of the good stuff. And while it sells new electric guitars by the boat load, it has also got quite the archive, vintage unicorns, old gnarly tube amps, and Yonke brought them all out for Kiszka to try.

“I was looking through all these guitars, and we were trying to pick up some gear if we could, some serious, good gear. I wasn’t really that familiar with the early ‘60s SGs. I didn’t know much about them. I stumbled upon this one.”

If you play the guitar, you will know the feeling. When you find a guitar you love, it is as though the molecules in the air change. “I was just immediately mesmerised,” says Kiszka.

There were a lot of instruments there. But the SG, with its double-horned silhouette, had something about it.

“The visual element of it, the weight of it, the slimness of the neck,” explains Kiszka. “And it was like, ‘I’d really like to play this and maybe see if I could take it with me.’

“And so the owner said, ‘Let’s walk back to my apartment. We’ll plug it in. I’ve got a Plexi JTM, early Marshall.’ So we did, we went back, and I plugged it in.”

Fast forward to now and Kiszka sees this guitar a little differently. It sure doesn’t look like it did when it left Chicago. It’s known as Beloved, and it is the inspiration behind the Jake Kiszka SG Standard that Gibson just released in limited quantities (this signature guitar comes with a spare backplate signed and stamped by Kiszka, and it might be collectible but as a Gibson USA model it is priced sensibly).

The Beloved has acquired its own legend. It has acquired a lot of wear and tear. “It’s seen a lot of battle,” says Kiszka. But back then it was just another vintage doozy in wait for a well-heeled collector to come swinging through the Windy City, and whatever the young Jake Kiszka was, he was not that. That didn’t stop him falling for it hard.

“It was, like, immediately, from the first strum, it was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above,” he says. “I really did feel like this was sort of a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for in terms of the sound of something. I’d been searching for that my whole life up to this point.”

If this was a shopping trip, there was no question, no doubts in his mind. Take it to the cashier and ring it up. Add to cart. Shut up and take my money. Except, he didn’t have any money.

“There was no question I yearned to take it on the road with me,” he says with a laugh. “The caveat was it was a $25,000 guitar. So of course I wasn’t gonna be able to afford that being a poor kid coming out of Michigan, you know?”

Yonke had an idea. From the point of view of the CME business model, it could have been seen at the time as a very bad idea, or at least cavalier. But he liked Greta Van Fleet, he liked Kiszka, and maybe he knew something that they didn’t at the time. He let him take it on the road and it has been with Kiszka ever since.

“Thankfully and gratefully I’m humbled that the owner perhaps saw something in me, and, and us as a band, and allowed me to take it on the road,” he says. “He said, ‘Do you know what? Just pay me back for it later, when you can afford it.’ And I did.”

This story is not quite the same as Nile Rodgers and the Hitmaker Strat. For a start, the Chic guitarist reluctantly traded his Gibson Barney Kessel at the pawnshop for what was the cheapest Stratocaster on the wall, receiving 300 bucks in cash, too.

This deal worked out well in the end, with Rodgers writing hits that crossed an estimated $2bn in record sales. And yet, Kiszka’s purchase was money well spent.

He has played the ’61 Les Paul SG into the ground and it’s only looking better with age. It has been immortalised in a Gibson replica and who is to say that there won’t be an Epiphone guitar version some time soon, or maybe even a 1:1 Murphy Lab replica assuming they approve all the overtime in the Custom Shop (the Beloved is one weather-beaten electric)?

The only trouble is that it has given him a taste for the finer things in life.

“It's interesting, the question for me is, ‘Was I drawn to expensive guitars, sort of organically prior to my ’61 SG or was it something that maybe would have been a byproduct and came later?’ And, I guess I don’t know,” he says. “Because whether I like this or not, I think I’m drawn to expensive guitars, not knowing they’re expensive.

“I’ve done lots of these sort of shootouts, in many music stores, and back to Chicago Music Exchange many times, and someone will put me in a room full of guitars, and say, ‘Tell me which one you like the most… give me some feedback.’ I’ll play through whatever, 15, 20 guitars, and I’ll always, almost every single time, pick the most expensive guitar.”

Maybe CME's Andrew Yonke did know what he was doing after all. He was playing the long game.

It’s Jake Kiszka’s birthday. Many happy returns, Jake. And to mark the occasion, Gibson has launched a signature guitar based on the Greta Van Fleet’s much-loved SG, aka the Beloved.

This is a limited edition model, but crucially, it’s not a Murphy Lab megabucks deal. At £2,149/$2,499, the Jake Kiszka SG Standard is priced not dissimilarly to Gibson USA electric guitar range.

Kiszka’s SG standard comes with all the extra metalwork of that modified sideways Vibrola (under which you’ll find a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpiece), a pair of T-Type humbuckers, and ships in a signature hard-shell guitar case, where inside there is a signature guitar strap bearing the doubloon sigil that Kiszka designed himself. And there’s also a signed back plate and a plain, making this a real collector’s item.

It’s finished in Faded Vintage Cherry, spritzed with gloss nitrocellulose lacquer, and what you will notice is that this finish is pretty much pristine.

Unlike Kiszka’s original ’61 Les Paul/SG, you will have to put your own wear and tear into it. Speaking to MusicRadar, Kiszka he agonised over the question of how exact he wanted it to be to the Beloved.

“The question was really between whether it was going to be an exact replication of my number one, the Beloved, my ’61 SG – which is quite torn to bits, aged, and it’s seen a lot of battle [laughs] – or is it time to, in some ways, redesign the original Les Paul SG? The early ‘60s ones, the Les-G, if you will!” he says. “I was quite keen to take that guitar in its essence, as it was as a creation of the Gibson company in the early ‘60s, and I guess personify it, but also reconstruct it for modern sensibilities… So there were a lot of design elements that had to be altered for it to come into the new age.”

The T-Type humbuckers are another interesting choice. They are a vintage electric guitar pickup wind, and maybe have a little more something in the upper-midrange that your garden variety PAF-alike doesn’t have.

“That’s something that I really gravitated towards, that upper midrange,” says Kiszka. “The T-types had that. There’s definitely some sort of harmonic overtones as well that sort of give you this very strange, almost voice-like quality. Gibson is really quite brilliant at the replications of these pickups.”

The beauty of the SG – besides that double-horned shape – is the simplicity of the platform. It’s a plank of mahogany. Mahogany body. Mahogany neck, glued-in, SlimTaper neck.

If it didn’t have that 12” radius rosewood fingerboard (yes, with the 22 medium jumbo frets and acrylic trapezoid inlays) you’d swear it you could make one from the ground up all from the one tree. It doesn’t get better than that.

Unless, say you're a young rock musician who has just discovered a vintage unicorn and someone has offered to let you take it on tour with you... And then said guitar becomes your number one, aka the Beloved. Kiszka says it was love at first sight.

“It was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above,” he says. “I really did feel like this was sort of a divine intervention. It was everything that I was looking for in terms of the sound.”

You can read our full interview with Kiszka, coming soon to MusicRadar. You can grab one of these beauties over at Gibson.

Jackson has rekindled its partnership with Blizzard Entertainment for another special edition electric guitar with a gnarly graphic finish inspired by the Diablo IV videogame franchise.

Blizzard Entertainment will launch the concluding chapter of Diablo IV’s Age of Hatred Saga on 28 April, a momentous day when action role-playing dungeon crawlers will once more throw themselves (or crawl themselves) unto the breach and do battle with Mephisto, the self-styled Lord of Hatred.

And you know, you do not really want to approach a battle with a man/metaphysical monster such as that with a Shell Pink ukulele in your hand. Hello Kitty Strat, we love you, but please sit this one out. Jon Romanowski, Jackson’s vice president of product agrees. You need something like this the Kelly.

“The Jackson Kelly is the perfect platform for this sort of endeavour as its sharp angles and horns give it a weapon-like appearance,” says Romanowski. “It’s a physical crossover between metal culture and gaming lore that feels authentic, collectible and built for the same audience.”

The Kelly has always been one of Jackson’s more weaponised metal guitars – the postmodern X-style shape that TSA officials might not let you onto a flight with, on account of all those sharp edges (I guess we’ll find out when Joe Bonamassa starts playing one and buys it a seat on the 14:15 Delta flight from New York to Nashville, but anyway…)

In June 2023, Jackson and Blizzard Entertainment unveiled a super limited edition Diablo IV Kelly that was Masterbuilt by Pasquale “Pat” Campolattano, its Demon Blood Drip finish featuring hand-painted artwork from Dan Lawrence. This was limited to just 10 units.

This time around, the price tag is a lot more affordable at £1,199/$1,299, and it might be the most OTT graphic finish we have ever seen on an X Series instrument. Jackson has gone to town here on a Kelly that is ostensibly black, with all kinds of dark red on it – and of course Mephisto on the front.

There are custom blood red inlays. The headstock logo is in deepest red. There is blood red binding.It even has “Lord of Hatred” on the back of the neck, which would be very cool if that was your actual job title. It’s just as Prop Joe said, look the part, be the part, melon farmer.

Perhaps wisely, there’s not messing around with the spec here. We’re already in Hell, so no need to dig further and have to set up a double-locking Floyd Rose vibrato after someone wiseacre suggests tuning down to C# at rehearsal.

Here we have a no-hassle six-saddle hardtail, a pair of high-output Jackson-brand humbuckers, three-way switching and a volume knob. Elsewhere it’s largely on-trend for Jackson in 2026, with 24 jumbo frets, a 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard (amaranth, in this instance).

As per the Kelly’s traditional build, there is a neck-through construction, with a nyatoh body, one-piece maple neck. Price includes a gig bag.

“This guitar is the essence of Diablo forged in the real world,” said Gavian Whishaw, executive producer and vice president of Diablo IV. “Jackson has captured the metal, infernal power of the battle between good and evil with the sleek red and black design.

“This collaboration is for those who stand at the crossroads of Hell and rock and roll, and turns that passion into something you can hold, play and unleash. It’s a crossover we’re proud to crank up to 11.”

The X Series Diablo IV Kelly is out now. Head over to Jackson for more.

Gibson’s Les Paul Standard Double Trouble was a hit. The limited run take on Gibson’s most-famous electric guitar was big with players, and it was a favourite of MusicRadar’s, too. It looked cool. It played well. And it sounded good.

But has Gibson just improved upon the recipe with the launch of the Studio Double Trouble, a more stripped-down, more modern, more affordable version of the single-cut with “double-whites”? That’s the question. And there is a case to be made.

This Les Paul Studio Double Trouble loses the body binding of the Standard, and yes, that is to be missed. The AA figured maple top is now a plain maple cap. Well, we’re on the fence with that one – a plain top is pretty cool, and just consider the advantages that come with the Studio.

The Studio is a lighter guitar, with Gibson’s Ultra Modern weight relief tactically removing some of the mahogany chonk out of the body, making it easier on the lower back. It is super-approachable.

Gibson offered the Les Paul Standard Double Trouble with the choice of ‘50s or ‘60s variants, the former with a more rounded Vintage ‘50s neck profile, the latter with the speedy come-hithers of the SlimTaper. Here you just have the latter option, arguably a more mainstream proposition but your mileage may vary.

Gibson has also changed the pickups here. Whereas you had the Burstbucker 1 and 2 in the Standard, the Studio comes with the Burstbucker Pros that its siblings in the range carry.

With their Alnico V design, the Pros have a bit more meat, are tighter, more modern sounding. And you’ve got push/pull functionality on the volume controls to give you some single-coil snap should you need it. As much as we loved the Double Trouble Standard, it did not offer that.

Elsewhere, Gibson hasn’t changed up the recipe that much. You’ve got two finish options to choose from, Dirty Lemon Burst or Cherry Sunburst, and hardware appointments are the same whichever one you choose, i.e. Gold Top Hat controls as standard, Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons.

There is the aluminium Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge and the stop-bar tailpiece, and a whole laundry list of on-the-money Les Paul specs; the 12” radius rosewood fingerboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets and acrylic trapezoid inlays to count ‘em out, the 24.75” scale, the glued-in neck.

The Les Paul Studio Double Trouble is priced £1,549/$1,599, which is not bad when you compare it to the $2,599 for a Gibson USA Les Paul Standard. Price includes a gig bag.

For more details, head over to Gibson.

Today is a good day to be a Gretsch guitar fanatic with a little money to burn because the Nashville-based brand has just dropped a pair of limited edition high-end electric guitars in a Nightbird Emerald finish that is 100 per cent guaranteed to quicken the pulse.

We’re talking about the 1958 G6134TG-58 Custom Penguin and its bigger-bodied avian sibling, the G6136TG-58 Custom Falcon. Both come with gold hardware, a Bigsby B6GP vibrato, the Space Control bridge with pinned ebony base, Grover Imperials for that art deco vibe, and a pair of TV Jones Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity Filter-Tron electric guitar pickups.

Indeed, these birds of a feather share a lot of design DNA, both that which we can see (the finish, hardware, Neo-Classic thumbnail inlays, splotches of gold livery) and feel (the Standard U neck profiles, 22 medium jumbo frets).

Another little detail that we really love on these contemporary Gretsch models is the accommodation of modern luxuries, such as the Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side dot markers. Who doesn’t want that?

For all their cosmetic and spiritual similarities (if you love one, surely you’ll love both), these are fundamentally quite different instruments.

The Falcon is a full hollow-bodied electric guitar, arched top and back, comprised of laminated maple with old-school 1959 trestle bracing under the hood. It measures 2.75” deep. The neck is maple and glued-in.

Gretsch classes the Penguin as a solid body but as with the Duo Jet this, too, has been chambered, taking a bit of weight out of its single-cut mahogany body.

That body is complemented – and protected – by a thick piece of gold plexi with the “ghosted” Gretsch logo and a Penguin. You’ll find the same on the Falcon, but with a different bird.

Now, the very mention of Gretsch makes us think vintage country guitar, OG rock ’n’ roll, and all the rock that came downstream of these ‘50s post-War pop-cultural phenomena. Gratifyingly, these speak to that era. Oh, to have a tweed Fender amp with a big splashy spring reverb tank and some slapback echo from a tape delay… That would be one serving suggestion.

But these are mightily versatile. What is interesting is Gretsch’s choice to leave the pickups unpotted. Without that baptismal dip in hot wax they might let off a little more squeal in certain high-volume circumstances, but, as Gretsch notes, it makes for a “more open, three-dimensional sound with truly unique sparkle and exceptional dynamics”.

These pickups are based on Ray Butts’ original schematics, and promise a tighter low end and a bit more top end – is that Gretsch’s way of saying they are a little scooped in the EQ?

Well, the only way to be sure would be to plug one and play it. But there are many other reasons to want to do that. Just look at ‘em.

You can look at them some more at Gretsch. These are priced £3,739/$3,699 for the Penguin, £4,399/$4,299 for the Falcon. Price, of course, includes a deluxe hardshell guitar case.

We’ve seen a lot of Epiphone guitars but not quite like the Futura series. Unveiled at NAMM 2026, much hyped ever since, and now officially launched and in stores worldwide, these take Epiphone’s Gibson-inspired electric guitar designs and take them… Well, into the future.

The Futura Series has the retro-futuristic resonance of some Atomic Age marketing term, the kind of thing they spoke about when the Jetsons was on the TV, but the only thing 1950s about these are the shapes themselves, the curvature of the single-cut Les Paul, the clean arrow-head symmetry of the Flying V, same as it was when it first came off Seth Lover’s sketchpad, or the devil-horned SG…

Epiphone has reworked these designs and more into a series that provides stainless steel frets as standard (hello, slinky feel), debuts an all-new electric guitar pickup design, the ProBucker Ignite humbucker, with an expanded control setup for coil-splitting and phase switching.

And there are playability and aesthetic upgrades, too. These come with with compound radius ebony fretboards, Chromashift finishes that colour-shift in the light, and Super 400-style pearloid inlays.

The Futura range comprises the Futura Flying V Custom, SG Custom, Les Paul Custom, ES-355 Custom, Explorer Custom and Firebird Custom – and the cult-classic RD Custom, which has never looked as good as it does in Midnight Ember Shift.

With the longer 25.5” scale length, the RD Custom – a model that is celebrating its 50th anniversary next year – is the one to choose for down-tuned riffs.

The finishes really are something. These really do look the part, with the Les Paul Custom arriving in Twilight Shift, which sort of looks like a deep metallic blue head-on, purple from an angle, the SG in Nitro Shift (metallic red-pink or yellow, you decide!).

The Dragonfly Shift Explorer is all kinds of green and green blue and shades in between.

The Solaris Shift looks like a colourific reversal of the Nitro Shift, and suits the Flying V aesthetic to a tee, while the ES-355 in Firestorm Shift is a familiar in a sense, but like nothing BB King ever played.

Finally, last but not least, the Futura Firebird Custom in Quicksilver Shift looks silver at first but it's more complex than that.

Epiphone is offering two finish options per model. You can see why Epiphone applied the custom livery – split diamond headstock work, the aforementioned Super 400 inlays, multi-ply binding… These finishes deserve it.

Elsewhere, you’ll find top-end Epiphone specs such as the LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpieces, plus the Posi-Lok strap buttons, and a set of Grover locking Rotomatic tuners with kidney bean buttons.

The necks have a mainstream Modern C profile across the board. Note that sculpted modern neck heel on the Les Paul [above]. These look fun to play.

Yup, this is a modernised range, and you can find out more over at Epiphone, where each model is priced £849/$899.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

There’s something inherently retro about 12-string electric guitars. There was a time when the humble 12-string reigned supreme as the ultimate studio secret weapon, laying down added jangle to fill out a song, but for whatever reason, it’s just not something that you see (or hear) as much today. Which makes it all the more exciting when a big-name manufacturer goes for the dozen.

Introducing the Danelectro Dan O. Cool 12 String. Unveiled as part of Danelectro’s bold new Dano lineup at NAMM 2026, this isn’t just another reissue of a classic model. Rather than simply raiding the archive, Danelectro has gone for a slightly different approach, pulling together a collection of its most iconic vintage design elements, some not seen on a production guitar since the 1950s, and combining them into something that feels genuinely new while remaining unmistakably Dano.

The 'Full Bell' headstock, originally introduced in 1954, makes a triumphant return, now hosting twelve 'Skate Key' tuners from 1958. Unlike other models in the new series, the 12-string doesn’t feature a rosewood saddle; instead, it opts for a more modern adjustable bridge. Six of the 12 strings feed through the bridge as normal, while the others are strung through the body.

In terms of pickups, we have a double-lipstick humbucker in the bridge position, promising more bite and output than the single-coil version. That said, this pickup can be split (contrary to Danelectro calling it a coil-tap) via push/pull, too, so you can get those chimey single-coil tones when needed. This is complemented by an angled P90 in the neck.

As expected, in Danelectro tradition, the guitar features a masonite (high-density fiberboard) construction with a 14-inch radius fingerboard, and comes in an eye-catching Aqua finish.

Specs

• Launch price: $852|£699|€740
• Made: Korea
• Type: 12-string electric
• Body: Solid spruce frame, with hardboard back and sides
• Neck: Hard Canadian Maple
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 25"/635 mm
• Nut: Aluminium
• Frets: 21
• Hardware: Fixed bridge with adjustable saddles, 'Skate Key' machine heads,
• Electrics: 1x P90 Single Coil (neck) and 1x Dual Lipstick Humbucker (w/coil-split, bridge)
• Weight: 6.6 lbs/2.99kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Aqua
• Cases: No
• Contact: Danelectro

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★½

Personally, I think the Dan O. Cool 12-String is a genuinely handsome guitar. Yes, the light blue and burgundy colour combination has a certain Aston Villa energy, but the overall silhouette is strong, and I like the retro charm.

The oversized 'Full Bell' headstock, loaded with 12 'Skate Key' tuners, could easily look ungainly, yet it somehow works, adding to the guitar’s vintage swagger. Danelectro has always had an eye for retro cool, and visually at least, the Dan O. Cool delivers.

Weight-wise, this is classic Dano territory, and exactly what you’d expect from the brand. It’s light and easy to wear for long periods. Impressively, despite the considerable mass of that enlarged peghead, neck dive is less of an issue than you might expect. The balance isn’t perfect, but it’s far better than feared.

Unfortunately, that’s where the goodwill starts to run dry. Look closely at the transition from headstock to neck, and you’ll find evidence of finish overspray and drip marks. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but on a guitar at this price point, it’s the kind of thing that should never make it past quality control.

I’m pleased to say that the fret work is neat and tidy at the ends, with no sharp edges, but they could use a polish. You can feel the strings scratching against the frets when playing, and it’s not a particularly nice sensation.

There’s also the control cavity cover, which sits proud of the body. Ideally, I’d prefer to see this sit flush with the body of the guitar. Right now, it feels tacked on, and it also has a habit of catching your belt when playing standing up.

More concerning is the vinyl body binding. On both review guitars I’ve received, (this model and the Golden 50s), the vinyl wrap has begun peeling away where it overlaps near the strap button. Both guitars seemed fine on arrival, but after two weeks, the issue became apparent. Whether it’s a glue issue or a material issue, I think it’s something Danelectro will need to address on the next batch.

I’m sorry to say that at £699, this simply isn’t good enough. Guitar manufacturing standards have risen dramatically across all price points in recent years, and Danelectro’s finishing falls noticeably short of what the market now expects at this level.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★½

Okay, despite the build concerns, when I pick up this guitar and play it, things take a more positive turn. This is, quite simply, a pretty comfortable guitar to spend time with.

The neck is wide, as you’d expect from a 12-string, but it avoids the chunky, hand-straining profile that puts so many players off. It’s broad without being thick, and navigating chord shapes feels surprisingly natural, even for those more accustomed to a standard six-string neck.

Action comes set at 1.50mm on both the high and low E strings straight out of the box, and I think that feels just right for the model. Low enough to keep things comfortable and fast, without any buzzing or intonation issues creeping in.

The frets are on the smaller side, which might frustrate lead players used to more modern builds. But honestly, they don’t bother me in the slightest; in fact, it’s what I want to see on a retro-style guitar like this.

The Dan O. Cool 12-String is, at its heart, a rhythm and texture instrument. It’s a guitar for laying down shimmer and jangle rather than firing off solos. For that purpose, the fret size is perfectly adequate, and the overall playability is well-suited to the role.

Comparing the model to my own Squier 12-string Jazzmaster, I’d say the playability out of the box is pretty similar, with the Danelectro being a touch more manoeuvrable when put against the Squier. That said, the Jazzmaster certainly has it licked when it comes to build quality.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Plugged into a Fender ‘68 Custom Twin Reissue, the guitar opens up beautifully, and it quickly becomes clear that Danelectro has put real thought into the pickup configuration.

The bridge humbucker delivers a fat, full tone with plenty of body. There’s a warmth and thickness here that you might not expect from a 12-string, or even a Danelectro for that matter. Engage the coil split via the push-pull pot, however, and the character shifts dramatically. Suddenly, you’re in chime territory. Bright, airy and dripping with that classic 12-string jangle, it’s a joy to play, especially with copious amounts of spring reverb.

The angled P90 at the neck is a welcome addition, lending this guitar (at least visually) a Mosrite flavour. It has a slightly raw, midrange-forward quality, perhaps in-part owing to the angle of the pickup, and sounds very good indeed playing into Danelectro's garage-rock heritage when introduced to a Big Muff.

I think with the pickup options on board, for recording, this guitar becomes a great studio asset. There’s such a great range of tones available.

Verdict

You know, I really want to love this guitar. As someone who has a penchant for vintage-style instruments, I consider myself the target audience of a guitar like this. I’m also a big fan of Danelectro, having owned an NOS 59 a number of years ago. I think that’s why I feel so let down by this model.

​At almost £700, this is not a cheap guitar; it’s a significant investment, and as such, I expect a certain level of quality control, and so do the people making a purchase.

​In terms of playability, the guitar is more than serviceable, and it certainly has the tone you’d expect from a Dano, but none of that is enough to make me want to recommend it.

If this model is something you’ve got your eye on, I’d say you're best off playing one in person at a guitar store so you can thoroughly inspect its build before you drop your hard-earned cash on it.

MusicRadar verdict: The Dan O. Cool 12-String brings together Danelectro's iconic design elements and a clever pickup configuration to deliver genuinely versatile tones. But unfortunately, persistent build quality issues, including finish drips and peeling vinyl binding, make it hard to justify the near £700 asking price.

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Hands-on videos

Guitar Interactive Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When ZZ Top hit the stage on The Elevation Tour you will see Billy Gibbons sporting all kinds of custom-made electric guitars. But he’s got a new one for this run of dates that is particularly worthy of note – because this one is the latest to have been designed and built by Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian.

This is CEO#11, and it is an off-menu Explorer (the designation CEO#11 is found on the truss rod cover) with a stunning two-piece figured maple top, all finished in a Vintage Cherry Sunburst. The full spec hasn’t been shared for this one yet, but this is the boss man’s guitar, we can well imagine that maple being AAAAA grade. Even from Gueikian’s Instagram post, you can see the three-dimensionality.

If you’ve been following Gueikian’s builds, the most famous of which, the “Ghost Burst” CEO#4 SG that famously ended up in the hands of Kirk Hammett of Metallica at Back To The Beginning, you might recognise some of his signature flourishes.

This custom Explorer, officially on loan to Gibbons, and which will, like its predecessors, be auctioned off at a later date to support the Gibson Gives charitable foundation, bears all the hallmarks of Gueikian’s design proclivities.

Note the Custom livery, the pearl block inlays on what looks like an ebony fingerboard, the multi-ply binding applied to the body’s top and headstock, and the pickups, left uncovered to reveal the “double white” or double cream bobbins.

The only thing missing is the diamond split block inlay on the headstock but there’s no room for that with the Explorer’s six-in-line profile. Other details we particularly like are the slimmed down controls, with just a single volume and tone, plus three-way selector switch serving both pickups. There’s the Tune-O-Matic bridge and that’s all we can tell from this distance.

Gibbons is presently taking the Texas trio’s hot blues-rock shuffle across its home state, and the lineup sees John Douglas sitting in for Frank Beard, who is temporarily out of commission owing to a medical issue. Elwood Francis is on bass guitar. Have no fears about Douglas; he should know the set down pat. A) he’s from Texas, which helps, but B) more importantly, he’s been Beard’s tech since forever.

“Always a pleasure to host BFG in my office, and even better when he decides to take one of my CEO builds on tour!” wrote Gueikian on Instagram. “Stay tuned for more info…should we auction it off for Gibson Gives when the tour is done?”

Gibson Brand Ambassador and Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash signalled his approval in the comments. As did Adam Jones of Tool (that is if a gif of Stone Cold Steve Austin smashing two cans of beer into his face is a sign of approval… But we’d say so, sure).

But something else caught out eye on Gueikian’s page, which has historically been the go-to news source for Gibson teasers of forthcoming attractions.

It was there we first saw the return of the Les Paul Supreme, the Marty McFly Back To The Future ES-345 replicas (the real one is still in the wind), and Mark Morton’s debut Gibson signature guitar, the Mark Morton Les Paul Modern Quilt. And now, has Gueikian revealed the first of his DES series of guitars?

There is a video of him playing a Ghost Burst SG, much like the CEO#4 Hammett played onstage that sold at auction for $76,800 in November 2025.

It has “DES” on the truss rod cover, and looks like a more refined version of the finish. Speaking to MusicRadar ahead of the auction, Gueikian revealed that there would be a Gibson range based on his specs.

“The ones that we’re going to be releasing are going to be based on these guitars that I built, with these features, in the Ghost Burst finish,” he said. “And so I guess it’s not a signature model, but they are built on the basis of the specs of what I did.

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

Gueikian says had been a modder all his life but it wasn’t until he took the hot seat as Gibson’s big boss that he decided he wanted to learn how to make one from scratch.

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

Initially, he just wanted to know how to make them. But more importantly it would give him an appreciation of the work done by his team on the shop floor.

“What I really enjoyed was learning from them, and putting myself in a vulnerable situation and having the team in the craftory teach me how to do something,” he said. “That was my favourite thing.”

There was a lot of learning to do. Luckily, he had Gibson’s master luthier Jim DeCola as his coach. Each Friday morning, when time allowed, Gueikian would get hands-on. It wasn’t always so easy.

The first build taught him a hard lesson. He had spent months on this guitar and thought he had one last job to finish it off, only for disaster to strike.

“I happened to be in Nashville then, so with Jim DeCola, I went to a craftory between Christmas and New Year’s. It was just the two of us,” he said. “And I finished buffing it and I was going to assemble it that day. I finished. It took me about three hours to buff the guitar, which probably takes the team members there about 15 minutes for a guitar. It took me three hours. And that was done.

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

You can read more about Cesar Gueikian’s CEO guitar builds here, a conversation in which he talks about how it felt to see Kirk Hammett play the SG he made at the Black Sabbath tribute show. For full dates and details of The Elevation Tour, head over to the official ZZ Top site.

• Gibson gives three of its most-iconic acoustic guitars a Special makeover

Jackson Custom Shop has announced a Misha Mansoor limited-edition ‘Surfcaster’. The pioneering metal guitarist of Periphery brought out a range of signature Juggernaut baritone 6-string electric guitars with Jackson Custom Shop just last year. The relationship between Misha and Jackson continues with this limited edition baritone Surfcaster.

Jackson Custom Shop says the Surfcaster, available in a striking Army Drab Green Nitro-Relic finish, was born from the mind of Misha and brought to life by Principal Master Builder, Pat Campolattano.

The guitar doesn’t just look cool though; it should sound the part, too. Loaded up with Bare Knuckle Juggernaut Pickups for loads of high-output grunt with punchy low-mids for a “tight, aggressive, yet balanced tone”. Jackson says the pickups provide low notes that thunder, chords that articulate, and highs that cut straight through the mix like a "recently sharpened machete".

Also on the spec sheet is a 30” baritone scale length to accommodate thicker string gauges and be tuned down, commonly used for playing metal or djent.

The body is roasted ash, while the neck is quartersawn maple with the wood grain running perpendicular to the fretboard for excellent stability, warp resistance and “enhanced resonance”. The neck also sports a caramelized flame color, oozing character and adding to the aged relic’d vibe.

But the hardware is anything but old school – the Baritone Surfcaster boasts stainless steel frets, a Hipshot fixed bridge, locking tuners, a 3-way pickup switch with phase switching and Luminlay Position Markers on the fretboard.

The extended fretboard has a 20" radius which is considered to be almost as flat as a table. This will be perfect for fast shredding and technical playing. Notes also have significantly less risk of 'fretting out' when playing high up on the fretboard because there's very little curve in the neck to block the strings when they're bent.

In a video posted by Jackson, Misha talks passionately about the new guitar, saying, "I’m really glad I was able to work with Pat on this. I feel like he’s able to take my crazy ideas and bring them to life." He goes on to say, "the guitar had to exist between two worlds," referring to its aged, old-school aesthetic and modern hardware and capabilities, and that it's turned out to be a bit of a "sleeper" for shredding.

He goes on to explain, "This is a very different guitar from what we usually do, I usually do my super strats." Misha experimented tuning the low E string down to a ridiculous B-flat and says "it shouldn’t be audible, but it’s something we worked on and it is – the clarity out of this thing is kind of insane!"

Misha revealed that a "substantial" amount of the upcoming Periphery album was tracked using the new signature Surfcaster due to its low tuning capabilities and reliability. He adds, "I didn’t expect it to inspire me so much", and that fellow bandmates Jake and Mark also couldn't help but experiment with the guitar, too. The album, A Pale White Dot, is due to be released on May 15 on 3DOT Recordings.

The Jackson Custom Shop USA Signature Misha Mansoor Baritone Surfcaster is available to buy now, but you'll need deep pockets as it has an RRP of £8,099 or about $9K. Though Misha reassures, "This guitar is rare. This guitar is going to continue to be rare because this is a master built custom shop run" and urges anyone with the opportunity to check it out and he hopes it will end up in the hands of people who will play and be inspired by it.

PRS has refreshed six of its top electric guitars with a mango top finish. But if you’re interested in buying one, you’ll need to be fast – they’re part of a limited edition run, with just 1200 units available in total.

PRS founder, Paul Reed Smith, says “There’s a new kid in town – there’s a new kind of extraordinary figured wood that we’re starting to use here at PRS called mango. It’s wild looking – everything about this stuff I’m enjoying”

Mango wood is known for its unique figuring, which Smith describes as having it’s own “fingerprint”. He adds, “All of the mango wood that we use on these guitars are figured in a different way. I’ve never seen the same exact top, it just doesn’t happen. They’re all wildly different”

Commenting on the wood pattern, PRS Body Sand Manager, Max Elcik said it can take the pattern of anything from “natural chevrons” to “zigzags of grainline going all over the place.” He added, “It’s become one of our favorite woods to work with”.

Director of Manufacturing, Paul Miles explained that because the mango figuring has such a wide variation, PRS has decided to “spread it out through many models.”

The guitars receiving the colorful overhaul include the PRS Custom 24, Custom 24-08, Studio, Special Semi-Hollow, McCarty 594, and Paul’s Guitar. Each will be available in a run of 200, with two colorway options (100 each), making a grand total of 1200 limited edition axes all in.

The limited edition guitars all receive a mango wood top, ziricote fretboard and a headstock veneer to make them stand out from the regular editions.

PRS Guitars Senior Wood Manager, Michael Reid says “Mango wood (Mangifera Indica) is similar to maple but a bit lighter in weight and a little less dense. There is quite a bit of variety in the figure, which very often shows what is referred to as a ‘bee's wing’ pattern,”

Mango not only looks great but PRS tells us it’s a very sustainable wood, too: “In recent decades, it has been favored for guitars due to its sustainability as a “farmed” tree.

"When the tree is old and declines in fruit production, it is then harvested and the wood is salvaged.”

Known for its organic movement, every individual mango top boasts its own personality, ranging from softly flowing patterns to dramatic, high-contrast figuring.

Smith concludes saying, “I’m interested in the caliber of the curl and the way it looks, but I’m also extraordinarily interested in how the guitar’s going to sound. My experience with this mango is that it makes really good musical instruments, because in the end that’s what really turns a musician on.”

For more info, see PRS.com.

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

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

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

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

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

1. Naphtha is a cleanser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Other alternatives are available for cleaning and conditioning

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

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

4. Pick the right cloth for the job

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

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

5. Don't forget your toothbrush!

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

6. Maple needs love too

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

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

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

If you’re on a strict budget and are looking for change from 500 bucks then – inevitably – a Harley Benton guitar is in the conversation. For many players, this is the go-to budget gear brand. But what does $400 buy you if you’re looking for a shred-friendly high-performance electric guitar?

Launched in 2025, the ST-80FR was the answer. It came with the choice of single or dual-humbucker models, all with a Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking vibrato – yes, the same unit you find on Charvel’s Pro Mod range, or on Jackson’s Pro and Pro Plus lineup.

Now, these “unapologetically ‘80s” models have been given a refresh with six new Sparkle Burst finishes: Sparkle Burst, Silver Sparkle Burst, Gold Sparkle Burst, Emerald Sparkle Burst, Amethyst Sparkle Burst, and Holographic.

The latter has that crackle-style metallic Spark Burst for those occasions when it’s time to go over the top. As Harley Benton says, when it’s time to “grab your hairspray and slip into your spandex”.

Besides a can of Aqua Net, there’s everything the disciple of ‘80s shred needs.

“Its compound 12 to 16-inch radius and 22 stainless steel frets will have your fingers cruising across the scale like it’s a neon highway,” reads the excited PR bumf from Harley Benton, and who can blame them? This is the kind of guitar to encourage excitement.

Those roasted Canadian figured maple necks look befitting a high-end electric guitar. As per the Stratocaster-inspired design, these are bolted to double-cut bodies. Harley Benton is offering these with a choice of maple or rosewood fingerboards.

And there are more upscale touches here, with rolled fingerboard edges, glow-in-the-dark side dot markers. You’ve even got the truss rod adjustment wheel located for easy access at the top of the fretboard.

We’ll get to the electric guitar pickups in a second, but first, that neck? It’s an asymmetrical C, something a little different to your common or garden variety S-style.

“The asymmetrical C neck profile is a joy to fret on,” reads MusicRadar’s review of the single-pickup Harley Benton ST-80FR MN from October 2025. “Admittedly, it’s a fair bit thicker than some of the Wizard-style necks out there, but the rounder profile makes it feel more rewarding to hold – even more so on stage, thanks to the glow-in-the-dark side dots.”

Okay, the pickups, here the dual-humbucker models pair a Tesla Plasma-X1b Alnico V with a Plasma-X1n at the neck, the single-humbucker models leave the Plasma-X1b to its own devices with a single volume control for rolling things back (note: you get a tone control with the dual-humbucker model, so that’s worth considering, but then do you often use your tone pot on a guitar like this?)

This bridge humbucker is a hot one, as per our review, it “packs a DC resistance of around 14.6k and is more than capable of providing unholy metallic thunder at full throttle, as well as less extreme sounds with the volume backed off”.

So there you go. Throw in the Jinho J-02 locking tuners and that’s a lot of guitar for £304/$400. These are available now – grab one at Thomann, find out more at Harley Benton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone, everywhere was tense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does your electric guitar lack a certain something, say, a tone that could level an entire city? Are you discontent with your metal guitar’s tuning stability? Is that double-cut just too “Granddad’s Stratocaster” for your technical death metal project?

Jackson, with a little help from Gojira’s Christian Andreu might have just the thing.

Yes, it’s new signature guitar time again, and a refresh for Andreu sees his 24-fret Rhoads retooled with an EverTune F6 bridge – set it up, tune it up and it stays in tune – and painted in Black with White bevels, plus inverted pearloid Ghost Fin inlays on a super-shreddable ebony fingerboard that has the 12” to 16” compound radius as per the Pro Plus Series house style.

This is a big moment for the Rhoads; it is the first to leave the Jackson factory fitted with an EverTune.

That six-in-line headstock… Magnificent. Then there is the simplicity of the single humbucker pickup, and yet the complexity of this Fishman Fluence Modern Open Core multi-voiced platform – three distinct voicings from one 3-way pickup selector switch. A single volume knob completes your electronics. It’s a simple drive.

In part, we have Kirk Hammett of Metallica to thank for Andreu's long-standing signature Jackson collab. He says he has been besotted with the Rhoads every since he saw Hammett play one.

“It started as love at first sight when I was 15, seeing the legendary Kirk Hammett wield this iconic shape. It was the most metal thing I’d ever seen, and I was hooked,” he says. “Twenty years later, holding my first Jackson RR signature model turned that teenage dream into reality. And now, I’m even more excited to introduce my brand-new RR signature guitar.

“This instrument isn’t just something I play live; it’s an extension of who I am. It’s also an honour to represent the first‑ever RR model equipped with an EverTune bridge! With an unbelievably smooth neck, perfect balance and effortless playability, this guitar feels like it was built for me. I couldn’t be prouder of how it turned out.”

And what you have left when you take all this into consideration is a mid-priced pro-quality shred machine, built for a player who specialises in progressive yet monstrous neo-death metal – pick scrapes and harmonic squeals a-go-go – but similarly weaponised for any of the dark arts.

Necro black metal nastiness, Stockholmer Swedeath with a dimed Boss Metal Zone, hard-rock, trad heavy metal, NWOBHM… You name it. Hey, if you get a gig at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, why not give this a whirl?

Elsewhere, it’s a Pro Plus Jackson Rhoads RR24. That means alder body, with a neck-through build, maple neck, Speed profile, a 25.5” scale length, 24 big fat stainless steel frets on that ebony ‘board and Jackson-branded die-cast locking tuners.

And if you are reading all this, looking at the pictures and thinking that you have seen this somewhere before, then that is because you have. This has been hiding in plain sight, with Andreu road-testing it in Gojira’s live show.

Now, don’t @ us, but we would argue that this Pro Plus signature Rhoads looks cooler than the Jackson USA model that retails for £3,489/$4,399; the Gojira graphic and 12th fret inlay is probably overkill for casual fans or those just looking for a high-end electric guitar for high-gain thrills.

This will set you back £1,849/$2,429. For more details, head over to Jackson.