What is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also try

Hands-on videos

Harley Benton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

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

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

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

Also try

Hands-on videos

Andertons

• Best affordable electric guitars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incredible scenes.

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

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

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

Orange Baby Terror

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

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

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

See Orange Amps for more details

Bad Cat Mod Shop Cub 15 tube combo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s priced £5,049/$5,999.

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

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

See Gibson for more.

Shergold Telstar 12-string

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

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

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

See Shergold for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mooer Audio Meta FX

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

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

See Mooer Audio for more.

IK Multimedia Tonex Brown Panel signature collection

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

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

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

PRS Custom 24 Birds Of A Feather Limited Edition

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

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

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

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

Epiphone Billie Joe Armstrong

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

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

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

Harley Benton CLO-65SE Slate Blue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, the dimensions are pretty user friendly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check ‘em out over at Gretsch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charvel Guitars was right. Wayne Charvel was a visionary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Gibson for more details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bowen says it was love at first sight.

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

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

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

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

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

When should you change your strings

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

1. Broken strings

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

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

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

2. Worn or discoloured strings

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

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

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

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

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

3. You can hear the difference

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

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

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

4. Maybe it’s just time…

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

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

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

You will need…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to restring a guitar: Seven simple steps

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

Let’s get started.

Step One: Remove the old strings

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

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

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

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

Step Two: Clean your fretboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step Four: Thread the string through the tuning peg

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

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

Step Five: Wind the string

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

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

Step Six: Trim away the excess

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

Step Seven: Repeat and tune up

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

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

And enjoy…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The standard grip

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

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

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

Angle matters

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

Experiment to find what works for your style.

How tight should you hold it?

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

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

Wrist position and movement

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

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

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

Pick thickness

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

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

Alternative grips

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

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

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

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

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

Try it. You might like it

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

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

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

And don't panic!

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

Above all, have fun and keep on playing!

What is it?

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

Also try

Hands-on videos

Kris Barocsi

TheGuitarGeek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amp modellers and effects

Darkglass Electronics Anagram Guitar Essentials 

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

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

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

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

Electro-Harmonix Percolator Harmonic Saturator 

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

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

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

Cornerstone Centurio Dual Overdrive

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

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

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

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

MXR Wylde Audio Zakk Sabbath Overdrive

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

Find out more at Jim Dunlop.

Solar Chug Capo

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

Find out more at Solar Guitars.

Signature guitars, pickups and plugins

Jackson Pro Series Rob Cavestany Signature

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

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

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

Find out more at Jackson.

PRS Guitars Jon Jourdan Limited

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

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

Godin 25th Anniversary Steve Stevens Signature Model ACS Multiac Guitar

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

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

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

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

Find out more at Godin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MixWave Yvette Young signature plugin

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

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

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

See MixWave for more.

Epiphone, Orangewood, Blackstar and Two Notes

Epiphone expands Inspired By Gibson Custom Series

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

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

See Epiphone for more details.

Orangewood Melrose Retro

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

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

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

Find out more at Orangewood.

Blackstar Fly 3 High Gain

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

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

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

See Blackstar for more.

Two Notes Genome 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you start with all that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Fender for more details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Also try

Hands-on videos

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.

Also try

Hands-on videos

UP MUSIC STORE

TV Guitar Center

• Best Strat-style guitars under $/£1,000 2023: affordable and mid-priced S-styles you need to play
• “For those who find Strandberg’s space-age designs a little too alien, Ibanez’s Q series is the perfect middle ground”: Ibanez QX527B review

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.

Also try

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.