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!

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

From pocket-sized amps like the Quad Cortex Mini to chocolate bars, we’re in an age of shrinkflation; things are getting smaller by the minute. Wireless guitar systems are not exempt from this trend, and many now boast a footprint small enough to hide down the back of the sofa.

In recent years, the wireless market has heated up considerably; with historical heavyweights Line 6 and Boss now challenged by fresh faces a la the Positive Grid Spark Link and Fender’s debut foray into the market, the Telepath.

All these systems look like toys in comparison to the once-industry-standard offerings from Audio-Technica, Sennheiser, and AKG, which required a larger box and a whole lot of cabling to get grooving.

The differences are night and day, and though Blackstar is a little slow in entering the ring, it does so with fair confidence. Several manufacturers have pivoted from the arguably overcrowded 2.4 GHz bandwidth to 5.8 GHz of late, and Blackstar has done likewise to try and gain the upper hand, but it takes things a step further; its built-in anti-interference algorithm automatically switches frequencies should its turf get encroached upon. Peace of mind is at its core.

Beyond that is a nine-hour battery life (with a 2.5 hour charging time via USB-C), bolstered by a self-powering down feature that kicks in after 10-minutes of inactivity to avoid wasted juice. It can beam a signal 100 feet with a minuscule <6ms latency, and there's a Cable Tone feature to appease the purists who feel that ditching the cable comes at an aural cost.

And with this being Blackstar, it remains in an accessible price range with its £149/€159/$169 price tag, undercutting many of its competitors.

Specs

Launch price: $169 | £149 | €159 |

Type: Guitar wireless system

Controls: Power, Pair, Cable Tone (receiver only)

Connectivity: 1/4" mono jack, USB-C 5V port

Range: 100 feet

Battery life: 9 hours from a 2.5-hour charge (via USB-C)

Contact: Blackstar Amps

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★½

Easily mistaken for a vape, the two devices – transmitter and receiver – are unassuming, with the hinged jack folding in for easy transport. But its plastic housing doesn’t strike me as being quite as sturdy as some systems I've tried, especially given that it arrives in a velvet pouch. It could certainly be a little vulnerable with a finish that's quite susceptible to scratching.

There are four channels on offer, meaning four band members could use the devices simultaneously without issues, and hitting the Pair button simply changes the channel number, cycling back to 1 after 4. In all, it makes for a sleek, no-nonsense approach to matters; it’s as plug-and-play as you can get.

Being colourblind, I do personally find that the colour differences between the channel lights being on/off to be a little unclear, especially glancing down to my guitar's jack, but it's a minor grievance.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

Save for the very easy-to-miss markings on their sides, the two units are identical – and those labels are not only easy to miss, but only useful in a well-lit space. On stage, it could be a very different story. I would like a more foolproof way to differentiate between the two, but that aside, getting moving couldn’t be simpler.

Plugging into my Focusrite interface, hooked up to Reaper and various Neural DSP plugins, I'm able to walk around my house with no signal dips or latency. Walls are no object, and recording some chugs as I walk around, there is a small dip in signal strength – and therefore the volume coming out the other end – the further I travel, and one unexpected screech of feedback which quickly subsides, ultimately conks out at around 50 feet, which isn’t too bad considered the amount of material that stood between my computer and Charvel. Your average gig space doesn't tend to have those issues, of course!

It’s worth noting that there is no spluttering as I reach the cut-off point; it works until it doesn’t. Operation is as silent as your rig, meaning it doesn’t give off any extra buzz or hiss, and feedback is minimal, even when the two devices are centimetres apart.

Moreover, the generous battery life means I can play without dread – I even spend a few hours writing and recording on my computer without thinking twice about needing to charge. So there are plenty of benefits here, but it’s not flawless. Its lack of an active/passive switch may irk some, especially those who gig with several electric guitars, meaning that, for a small upcharge, the Telepath might edge it out for that user case.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Compared to playing and recording with a cable, the output I get is slightly lower, though not enough to be particularly noticeable unless you're analysing waveforms. The Cable Tone switch also slightly boosts the signal.

I find that with the Cable Tone feature the signal becomes a little warmer and a little less scratchy than without it engaged, but neither is quite as full-bodied as playing with a cable. In a live environment, I don't see it as a major issue, and it's not something that minor EQing couldn't fix.

Even then, I’m splitting hairs, looking at the minute differences; nothing here is unexpected. Honing in though, what I will say is the Cable Tone feature is too good to turn off, otherwise, the signal tends to sound a little too digital for my liking.

Verdict

It’s hard to criticise what the AirWire i58 offers for the price; it’s easy to use, packs a tiny footprint, and, through the Cable Tone feature and its anti-interference algorithm, looks to counter two of the biggest drawbacks of going sans cable.

There are a few minor gripes, like the difficulty of telling the transmitter from the receiver, and casing that I feel could be more robust in case of mishaps, but there is nothing overly crucial here – save for the lack of an active/passive switch, which lets down its otherwise commendable spec sheet, especially for the price. That might sway some players to shop elsewhere.

However, to add one more small negative: When plugged directly into my Quad Cortex, the receiver tended to fall to the ground rather than sit upright. It’s not the end of the world, but I’d have liked it to be hinged upright at all times

MusicRadar verdict: The Blackstar AirWire i58 is incredibly easy to use, packs a tiny footprint in an era of super-compact gig rigs, and tries to offer solutions to two of the biggest drawbacks of wireless systems.

The Cable Tone feature prevents the signal from sounding too scratchy or digital, and the anti-interference algorithm adds greater peace of mind to its performance.

I’ve got my first gig of the year coming up in a couple of weeks, so I decided it was time to give my pedalboard a spring refresh to get it gig-ready. Aside from putting some fresh pedals on, I wanted to rearrange my cabling, tidy up my patch cables, and ensure I’ve got everything I need to survive the rigours of playing live on stage.

Thankfully for me, the Amazon Big Spring Sale launched this week, which means plenty of discounts on pedalboard essentials for guitar players. These useful items, often found beyond the musical instruments section of Amazon’s Narnia of domestic goods, are crucial for turning a home pedalboard into a pro-level one, and as well as making things look great, they provide some useful hacks for live playing.

I’ve searched far and wide in the sale, picking out 9 of the most useful items you can add to your pedalboard, with every item costing less than $22 each.

Shop more sales

• Save up to 35% on live sound at Sweetwater
• Over 25,000 deals at Musician’s Friend
• Save 15% on Spark Neo at Positive Grid

The Amazon Big Spring Sale has arrived, and with it, we’ve seen the usual slew of savings on essential accessories for guitar players. Whether you’re spring cleaning your collection or preparing for a fresh wave of gigs, it’s an excellent opportunity to pick up strings, picks, and other essentials for a lot less.

Of course, there’s the usual array of tech on offer in the sale, so if you’re in the market for a laptop, tablet, or smart device, then this is the sale to shop at, but look elsewhere if you want a deal on an electric guitar, pedal, or guitar amp. It’s not known how long the sale will last, and some deals are stock-limited, so once they’re gone, they’re gone. So, if you see something you like, make sure to act fast before someone else snaps up the best deals.

I’ve had a look through all of the musical instruments department in the Amazon Spring sale, and picked out 7 of the very best deals on accessories for guitarists:

Shop more sales

• Save up to 35% on live sound at Sweetwater
• Over 25,000 deals at Musician’s Friend
• Save 15% on Spark Neo at Positive Grid

What is it?

Though it's made waves for its affordable acoustic and electric guitars, Harley Benton has consistently proved it has much to offer when it comes to accessories too. Having previously impressed me with its pedal power supply offerings, it's now time to see what it can offer in terms of forward-thinking pedalboards.

The Spaceship Power 40-B I have here is an ideal example; a lightweight pedalboard that's part of a range housing its own rechargeable power supply. Sizing up around 45 x 30cm, it’s almost the same size as a Pedaltrain Classic Jr and you can fit around 8-10 pedals on there, depending on size.

There are seven isolated outputs with different voltages and currents for powering a multitude of pedals, from analog fuzzes to high-powered digital reverbs. There are also some non-isolated outputs, including some for USB connection – ideal for charging tablets and phones, but most notably a 9V, 3A output for power-hungry multi-effects pedals like the Line 6 HX Stomp.

Included with the pedalboard are a variety of accessories and cables for connecting the power supply to your pedals, a padded gig bag with shoulder strap and mains power supply.

Worthy of note here is its ability to run your entire rig without mains power. The unit has a rechargeable lithium battery, which Harley Benton claims will operate a fully loaded board for around 50 minutes after a 1.7-hour charge.

For decades, players have been purchasing pedalboards and pedalboard power supplies separately. There are many ways of neatly integrating the two – many people attach their PSU to the bottom of their board, either with a purpose-made clip or cable ties. Others have the power brick sat on their board in place of a pedal, or maybe even have it separate from their 'board.

It only makes sense then that manufacturers would figure out a way of incorporating the two things together in one product to save hassle, money and aesthetic. So, does the Spaceship do the job of both things just as well, or is it just a novelty?

Specs

• Price: $155 | £139 | €159 
• Type: Powered pedalboard
• Features: Robust powder-coated aluminium frame, built-in lithium battery, LED monitoring at each output, voltage and current display, gig bag, selection of pedal power cables including 3 x 30 cm, 3 x 60 cm and 3 x 90 cm, 200 x 4.5 cm hook and loop fastener included
• Power: Isolated: 2 x 9 V / 250 mA, 3 x 9 V / 500 mA and 2 x 9/12/18 V / 500 mA. Non-isolated: 1 x 9 V / 3 A, 1 x 24 V / 2 A, 1 x USB-A, 1 x USB-C, total power output must not exceed 31.5W
• Dimensions: 450 x 305 x 75.5
• Weight: 1.67kg / 3lbs 11oz
• Options: 40, 50C, 50M, 60, 60XL
• Contact: Harley Benton

Usability and sounds

Upon getting the Spaceship Power 40-B out of the bag, I'm impressed by the build quality of it. The powder-coated aluminium frame is sturdy and the rubber feet gripped nicely on the tiled floor I have it on.

I also notice that it doesn’t weigh much more than my current, power supply-less board (a Pedaltrain Classic Jr). The scales confirm it too with the PT coming in at 1.36kg and the Spaceship weighing 1.67kg.

I move all my pedals over and actually managed to fit a couple of extra ones on, in total, I have nine pedals on there. For reference, they are: Korg Pitchblack tuner > Magnetic Effects Lonely Robot fuzz > MXR Custom Badass Modified > EHX Soul Food > Orange Kongpressor > EHX Micro Pog > MXR Phase 90 > TC Skysurfer > JHS Colour Box V2.

Fitting the pedals on is easy. The bars of the 'board are already covered with the soft loop side of hook-and-loop and the unit comes with a long strip of the corresponding hook-and-loop adhesive material for you to attach to the bottom of your pedals to secure them in place.

One slight grievance is that the hook-and-loop doesn’t go right to the edges of the board – there’s about a 2cm border on each side, so you miss out on that extra space.

Getting them plugged in is relatively fuss-free. You get nine cables for connecting the board to your pedals – three 30cm, three 60cm and three 90cm. You do have to plug the power cables into the board from the underside of it, but if your pedals are securely fixed in place then that shouldn’t be an issue.

For power, the 'board has seven isolated outputs. Two of them are 9V and 250mA each. Three are 9V and 500mA each and the other two have switchable voltage - 9/12/18V with 500mA each. This means you’ll be able to run some really power-hungry pedals with this pedalboard, including some amp modellers.

The addition of a non-isolated 9V 3000mA output will even allow you to run some high-powered multi-effects pedals.

Underneath each of the power outputs is an indicator LED that lights up when voltage is present. If you overload it or there’s an issue, the light will go off so you’ll quickly be able to identify the problematic output. That said, when the 'board is full of pedals, it’s quite hard to see the lights properly – you have to tip it upside down to get a good look underneath.

Once everything is set up and connected, I plug my Jazzmaster in at one end and hook up my Orange head and cab at the other and I am greeted by beautiful silence. No 60-cycle hum, no mystery buzz; nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

I have had the JHS Colour Box cause some noise with lesser power supplies in the past, but having this on its own isolated output with 500mA of current meant it's comfortably taken care of. Being able to run my Kongpressor at 12V instead of 9 also gives me increased headroom.

Testing this Spaceship Power 40 out makes me realise a couple of things: blasting your favorite guitar through a loud tube amp and a selection of pedals is tremendous fun, and convenience really is king when it comes to wiring up pedalboards. Spending money on a power supply isn’t particularly exciting, but having that power built into a board does tick a few more boxes and makes the purchase seem more worthwhile.

Not only does the board house a power supply, it also has lithium battery built in. I tested it further and didn’t notice any difference in performance with it running off the battery.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t risk going battery-only at a gig, given that it only gives you up to around 50 minutes, but it is nice to have the option for added flexibility. There’s a battery indicator light on the back of the board that has four stages but when you’re playing and operating the Spaceship 40-B you can’t see that, plus even when you can see it, it’s hard to see how many stages are lit.

There’s a small display screen on the back of the board too. This shows what voltage and current is being supplied. I didn’t find this to be a particularly useful feature, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away from the overall positive impression here.

The Spaceship Power 40-B even boasts AC switching so if you’re travelling to countries that run on different voltages, it will detect that and automatically switch.

So, would I take this to gigs and use it with confidence, knowing that my pedals are being powered sufficiently and safely? I absolutely would, yes. It’s great that it comes with a gig bag too. It’s of a decent quality – chunky zips, sturdy accessory pocket, a bit of padding and a rigid bottom.

However, if you’re doing lots of gigging, or if you’re travelling with a van or trailer, it would be prudent to find a more knock-resistant hard case that offers increased protection.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

This is an excellent pedalboard option for any level of player. Its comprehensive selection of power outputs provides enough juice for all manner of digital and analog pedals; from power-hungry Strymons and the like, to old fuzz boxes.

It also makes for a great choice for guitarists and bassists using hybrid setups containing traditional pedals and amp modellers. For example, you could fit a Line 6 HX Stomp XL along the bottom and have some of your favorite pedals above it, whilst still being able to power it all from the Spaceship 40-B.

The fact that you have multiple 500mA outputs does give some real peace of mind that you can run more than one high-powered pedal without the fear of unwanted noise or hum impacting your tone.

The build quality and usability is impressive, though there a couple of features that could be improved upon. It would have been nice to have the pre-installed hook-and-loop stretch the entire width of the board, and the battery indicator light could be a little easier to read. I’d also be wary of using the board without mains power for more than 30 minutes or so.

MusicRadar verdict: Harley Benton has delivered again with a powered pedalboard that will genuinely save players time and money. You can neatly and safely run a bunch of different pedals without the need for an external power source, plus it really holds its own against the bigger names in this arena.

Hands-on videos

Harley Benton

Desire Guitars

John Nathan Cordy

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

IK Multimedia has just expanded its Tonex One amp modelling lineup with a mini pedal that puts 20 models from two classic Dumble tube amps right at your feet – and, for that matter, serves up tones from six Overdrive Specials in the software pack that comes bundles with it.

Limited to 1000 units worldwide, with a warm brown enclosure, the Double Special is the Tonex One for the blues guitar tone connoisseur, the player who enjoys the finer things in life, and, perhaps, like the best of us, the one whose guitar amp budget doesn’t quite stretch to six figures.

The price of Dumble tube amps is beyond the average player – beyond most players – and also could you really justify it even if you had the bread? They need to run loud, free, big lungs. They are the kind of backline option best left to the pros; Joe Bonamassa, Robben Ford, Carlos Santana, John Mayer…

But for €249, a pedalboard-friendly option that gives you instant access to the tones from a 1978 Overdrive Special Export Combo (Serial #0038) and a 1980 Overdrive Special Combo (Serial #0080) nicknamed “The Don” is a very attractive proposition – and it gives you access to a further 40 tones from the pair, plus all the sounds featured from the the four Overdrive Specials in IK Multimedia’s Tonex ODS Legends bundle.

Alternatively, you could just buy the software… The choice is yours. IK Multimedia captured these sounds using a variety of dynamic, ribbon and condenser recording microphones, which were then rendered by its proprietary AI-driven Tonex V2 modelling tech.

Amps were captured with and without the speaker engaged, and in the company of some boutique overdrive pedals, including the similarly grail-worthy Klon Centaur, the JHS Pedals’ modern classic transparent drive pedal, the Morning Glory, and the ubiquitous TS10 Tube Screamer.

And these are two very special Dumble amps. Yes, all were special, but as a pairing, “The Don” and the Export-era ODS present two distinct flavours of what an amplifier built by Howard “Alexander” Dumble could do. They were both 50-watters, 6L6s in the power section. They both have their charms.

As IK Multimedia notes, the Export-era amps were “more immediate and organic, with an open top end, blooming midrange, and a raw, touch-sensitive response that feels highly connected to the player” while “The Don” was more “focused and refined, with tighter low end, quicker transient response, and better note separation at higher gain”.

As avowed Dumble enthusiast Kenny Wayne Shepherd told MusicRadar in 2024, the late Howard “Alexander” Dumble was a “bona-fide” genius. “There is so much about building those amplifiers that was all in his head,” said Shepherd. ““I have watched him take a bag of these little capacitors and measure each one of them and see what the value of it was. I don’t even know how many of them he would toss aside because they didn’t have the right value. Like, he knew.”

Shepherd says amp builders could build boutique clones but they didn’t really capture the essence of what made the amps so special.

Perhaps, then, if you find yourself without an Overdrive Special to hand, digital modelling technology is the best way to savour that Dumble tone. If so, with the Tonex One Double Special Signature Collection out now, IK Multimedia has us covered.

• “A brilliant option if you need quality ‘board-mounted amp tones that don’t take up too much space”: IK Multimedia Tonex One review

Gibson has launched a limited edition Custom Shop replica set of the Greenybuckers, the iconic PAFs found in Greeny, the 1959 Les Paul Standard owned by the late Peter Green, then the late Gary Moore, and now Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.

These electric guitar pickups have been aged by the Murphy Lab to be exactly the same as those found in the original guitar, and have been developed in close collaboration with Hammett.

Available as a set of two, priced £/$449 and strictly limited to just 100 sets worldwide, available exclusively via Gibson, these are the exact same pickups that you would find on the mega-bucks replica of the Murphy Lab Greeny Les Paul Standard, list price $19,999.

Now, this is not the first time Gibson has launched a humbucker cloned from the original holy grail PAF blueprint created by Seth Lover in the mid ‘50s. But there’s something a little different about the Greenybuckers. There’s something different about Greeny.

It is one of the most storied electric guitars of all time, battle-scarred, modded, and one of the few vintage guitars that seems all the more valuable because it is quote/unquote player grade, with its original tuners swapped out for Sperzels, the mismatched control knobs… And all that distress to the finish.

But its magic lies in its pickups and that sui generis out-of-phase tone that comes from the neck pickup’s reverse magnetic polarity. In the middle position, it gives it a sound all its own. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2016, Hammett said it made him think of a Fender Stratocaster when he first tried it out.

“I plugged it into the vintage Marshall amp, turned it up and played it. After about 30 seconds, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is not your standard Les Paul…’ and I went to the middle position, because, you know, that’s the revered sound and I started ripping out and I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit, this is a total contradiction.’ It sounded like an incredible Les Paul in the bridge position and in the neck position, but when you put it in the middle position it kind of sounded like a Strat through a 100‑watt Marshall stack!”

The Aged Greenybucker set is not cheap. But say you have one of the Gibson USA Greeny replicas, or even the Epiphone Greeny, and you have begun to put your own wear and tear on the finish and hardware; these could be a primo mod.

Or forget about the Greeny replicas, any Les Paul – and especially any Murphy Lab Les Paul – would be a prime candidate for these.

Under the aged nickel housings, you’ll find a pair of humbuckers with a pair of black bobbins, designed around Alnico II magnets, with two-conductor wiring, unpotted as per the originals. They have a DCR reading of 8.3k at the neck humbucker, 8.7k at the bridge, mojo off the scale.

And they’re available now. For more details, head over to Gibson. And if the price is a little steep, or if you miss out on the limited drop, fear not, the Gibson Pickup Shop still carries the regular Greenybucker Set for $299/£319.

Chris Buck has become the latest musician to become a victim of gear theft.

The acclaimed guitarist was in the US at NAMM launching his signature Revstar when his car was broken into back in Bristol. The thief made off with a Schmidt Array SA450 pedalboard and two Peli cases – a 1510 and a 1640 filled with accessories. The Peli 1510 case contained guitar cables, capos, guitar straps, two Audix Cab Grabber microphone stands, guitar picks, and a lid organiser.

Buck has taken to Instagram in an attempt to retrieve his gear. He says the 1510 case had two Telefunken stickers on it at the time, but he suggests that they could be “fairly easily removed”.

Meanwhile, Buck’s stolen Peli 1640 case is adorned with a sticker with the words ‘Let’s Get Loud’, a Mythos Pedals sticker, as well as purple tape and ‘heavy’ tape from airport travel. The foam inside the case is moulded to fit a Schmidt Array pedalboard.

Buck posted that he thinks the stolen items are still in the Bristol area, and urges anyone who comes across them, in person, “at a Cash Converters/car boot sale or online”, to contact him at chrisbuckguitar@gmail.com. “If we could make this stuff too hot to handle, that’d be great!” he said. “Very much appreciated.”

The guitarist is in good company at least. Last year saw a number of artists fall victim to gear theft. New Zealand indie band The Beths had instruments and their entire backline – which was rented – stolen whilst on tour in France. Aussie jazz funkers Hiatus Kaiyote had “thousands of dollars” worth of gear snatched from their studio space in Melbourne. Most brazen of all, DJ duo the Menendez Brothers had their record bag stolen right under their noses whilst they were playing at Fabric last summer.

NAMM 2026: Seymour Duncan has unveiled a multi-voiced electric guitar pickup set that gives players the tones inspired by two of its most-loved humbuckers, a “clear, articulate single-coil” voicing – and delivers an all-new voicing that promises totally brutal electric guitar tone for those occasions when you need to take your tone nuclear.

At first blush, the MortalCoil Multiple-Voiced Active humbuckers are a serious upgrade for any metal guitar. And they sure throw down the gauntlet to Fishman, whose Fluence humbucker series has established itself as the industry standard for multi-voiced pickups.

The MortalCoil’s primary tone is this all-new MC1 voicing. This is an all-new sound for a Seymour Duncan pickup, and it’s for sonic extremists. No matter how far you push the gain dial, it promises “uncompromising tightness, note separation, and cutting presence for modern metal applications, maintaining clarity and balance without fizz or nasal midrange”.

We could get down with that. It will be interesting to see how many electric guitar manufacturers agree and have these installed in their new high-performance models, the likes of ESP/LTD, Jackson et al.

The MortalCoil set is an easy, drop-in mod for those with multi-voice pickups installed. But if you’ve got a guitar with active pickups already installed this should be an achievable upgrade for those proficient in gear DIY, or your local store’s tech could help.

Versatility is one of the set’s obvious advantages. You have the MC1 voice, then you have the Seymour Duncan Jazz humbucker alternate voicing at the neck, and the JB humbucker at the bridge, both of which need little introduction. The Jazz/JB is one of the all-time great pickup pairings for rock and metal. And then you’ve got that single-coil voicing.

What many metal players will tell you, however, is that what matters is the attack. They want zero latency from their guitar amp or amp modeller, and from their pickup.

The MortalCoil pickups are designed around a a low-resistance, high-density copper coil to enhance your guitar’s attack.

And then you have the preamp. For this project, Seymour Duncan had to start from the beginning.

“Our all-new preamp utilises advanced audio op-amps that contribute gain, rich harmonic detail, and dynamic feel with extremely low distortion, while the efficient circuit design supports superior battery life for reliable performance on stage and in the studio,” says the Californian brand. “The result is crushing attack and surgical control under modern metal gain.”

The MortalCoil set is available for six or seven-string guitars, and is available now. You can hear ‘em in action at the top of the page, and see more over at Seymour Duncan.

NAMM 2026: What would January be in the guitar calendar without a new release that makes us question everything, that there is a new way of doing things and it might change how guitar players perform for good?

Casio might just have that release, with a gizmo that allows you to control settings on your guitar effects pedals via your guitar strap.

The DN-SE10 Dimension Shifter is a wireless controller that’s integrated in your strap. It’s a world first. Install this and you no longer have to crouch over your pedalboard to adjust parameters – you don’t even need your expression pedal.

“For more than 40 years, Casio has expanded the possibilities of musical creativity through technology,” says Brian Piccolo, senior general manager of sales at Casio’s Electronic Musical Instruments Division. “With Dimension Shifter, we’re giving guitarists an entirely new way to interact with their music, merging the energy of live performance with the precise control of digital effects. It truly transforms how a guitarist commands the stage.”

If this sounds a little familiar then that's because Casio did offer a preview of this tech a couple of years back, when it was going by the working title of Dimension Tripper.

The Dimension Shifter comprises two key devices. One is attached between your strap and electric guitar, and features an in-built spring. Pull downwards on your guitar’s neck, the spring stretches out or compresses, et voila! It’s working just as any other dynamic controller might.

“Whether tilting the neck to swell a delay, raising the body for a filter sweep, or leaning back to unleash distortion, Dimension Shifter opens a new world of expressive, intuitive stage performance,” says Casio. “no hands required.”

The spring has a range of 20mm, and via the push of a button players can calibrate its active range, which gives you a little more control over how the transmitter responds, ruling out accidental adjustments and so forth.

And, unlike, say, the expression pedal, the Dimension Shifter does all this wirelessly, pairing with the receiver (the second of these key devices) over Bluetooth. Just mount the receiver on your pedalboard. It has a TRS switch that is compatible with any effects pedal.

You can even use it alongside an expression pedal, which means you have dynamic control over two effects at once. Just try that doing that with two expression pedals; you’ll end up in traction.

Watch Yvette Young of Covette demo it above. It really looks something. The DN-SE10 Dimension Shifter is available now, priced $299.

For more details, head over to Casio.

NAMM 2026: Slash and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickups in their long-standing collaboration, with the 3.0 humbuckers offering a slighter hotter take than the Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s previous pickups.

But while they’re hotter, don’t expect then to send smoke billowing from your amp. They’re tastefully hotter, raunchier without an X-rating, and they come almost three years since the 2.0 APH-2 pickup set.

“There are a little bit more output than PAFs, but they’re clear,” explains Slash. “They don’t have a lot of gain to them, and they’re very honest and true sounding to the guitar.”

Designed around an Alnico V magnet, wax-potted, available with single or four-conductor wire, and with the choice of chrome or gold coverings, or with black, white or zebra-style black and white bobbins, the 3.0 humbuckers could be the pick-me-up your Gibson Les Paul has been waiting for – or maybe you have an Epiphone guitar that you have earmarked for a US-made pickup (Seymour Duncan hand-winds its pickups in Santa Barbara, CA).

They are offered in standard widths and trembucker sizings, the latter particularly useful if you have an HSS Strat-style guitar in need of hot PAF mojo (Slash has installed them in his BC Rich Mockinbird).

“[The] 3.0 has an Alnico V magnet in it, so it’s just got a little bit more oomph to it,” he says. “You still have that same clarity and cleanliness in the actual tone, and the honesty of the sound of the guitar, but you just have a little bit more output. The 3.0 is obviously a little bit raunchier than the 2.0 regular Alnico slash pickup. It gives you that extra boost that I need in certain guitars.”

That’s exactly what Slash needed for Guns N’ Roses’ set at Back To The Beginning, the mammoth all-star farewell show for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne.

“Sometimes I’ll need a pickup that has a little bit more output but without changing the overall character of the pickup sound,” says Slash. “So what we did was we did 2.0, which is an Alnico II pickup, which has a tiny bit more output, and the three is basically just one more step up from that. The SG that I had at the Ozzy gig, that guitar needed a louder pickup, but I still wanted to have that sort of true-to-life guitar sound that I like in my guitars, and so that’s where the 3.0 idea came from.”

Where the design came from was Seymour Duncan’s ace in the hole, Maricela “MJ” Juarez, manager of the Custom Shop, trusted pickup guru to the stars.

Ask Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons, Peter Frampton, and of course Slash, who might be good friends with Seymour Duncan, having used his pickups since 1987 and the recording of GNR’s incendiary debut LP, Appetite For Destruction, but he just calls MJ direct when a project like this comes up.

“She’s an unparalleled talent when it comes to pickup wiring,” says Slash.

The Slash 3.0 humbuckers are available now, individually or as a set, and are priced from $129. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Seymour Duncan has unveiled a new signature electric guitar pickup that it has co-designed with Fear Factory’s Dino Cazares, and to the surprise of no one the Machete is an active, high-output humbucker that could take your head off.

But wait, says Cazares, there is more than meets the eye. For a start, the Machete doesn’t even look like an active pickup.

“The Machete looks like a traditional passive pickup, but it’s actually an active pickup with a preamp hidden inside the housing, right underneath the pole pieces,” he says. “That design gives this pickup extra bite, precision, and clarity – built to cut through any mix, like a blade.”

Of course, the Machete humbucker is built for Cazare’s bread-and-butter, huge, mechanised riffs, the hyper-kinetic judder of Fear Factory’s stock-in-trade.

That, however, is only the half of it. Some active humbuckers only do one thing and one thing only. Split the atom. Pure crunch. Saturation. They have that super-compressed quality that squeezes every riff into a fist. The Machete humbuckers eat up high-gain scenarios, but they are also wound to give you sweet clean tones.

“The machete pickup is an incredibly diverse pickup,” insists Cazares. I designed it to sound great for any style that I play, and for any type of player. It delivers beautiful, open, clean tones without that heavy, active compression, but it also gives you the precise, aggressive staccato attack that I would need for Fear Factory or Divine heresy, and anything in between.

“I wanted of the best of both worlds. The open, less compressed feel of a passive pickup combined with an aggressive bite and articulation of an active preamp. It delivers the raw clarity, but still hits with the force of an active pickup.”

If you are a long-time Cazares fan and are thinking just about now, wait, you’ve heard this Machete before, it’s because technically they’ve been around for some time now, only you would need to get your hands on one of Cazare’s Ormsby signature guitars.

This is the first time they have been released as a standalone aftermarket pickup, that you could stick in whichever metal guitar you’ve got sitting around waiting for a power-up.

The Machete is designed around a ceramic magnet, and are available for six or seven-string guitars. They are handmade at Seymour Duncan's HQ, in Santa Barbara, California.

The six string humbucker is available with black, white or red bobbins, and will set you back $149 per pickup. The seven-string set comes in with black, white or zebra bobbins and is priced $159 a pickup.

For more details, head over to Seymour Duncan.

What is it?

While its FRFR Spark Cab signalled Positive Grid's ambitions for its Spark range beyond the home, the Spark LINK wireless guitar system in early 2024 was a clear step beyond amplification and software for the company. The LINK XLR system is now a step further outside expectations - aimed predominantly at vocalists.

The LINK XLR is designed for dynamic microphones, and features internal rechargeable batteries for its transmitter and receiver – up to seven hours of battery life from a single charge via USB-C . It can also be used with other XLR devices with a mic level out, but is not compatible with those that require phantom power.

Positive Grid states 24-bit/48kHz audio with 103.7dB dynamic range and a stable 2.4GHz wireless connection. Up to four LINK systems can be used in one area and a sight line distance of 21 meters of wireless range is claimed, so I'll be putting all that to the test in a couple of band rehearsals.

It'll be my first as a vocalist/guitarist with a wireless mic, and I thought I'd commit further with a wireless guitar system by borrowing Positive Grid's LINK system for guitar too. Let's plug in!

Specs

• Launch price: $169 | £149 | €179
• Type: XLR wireless system for dynamic microphone
• Audio quality: 24-bit/48kHz
• Latency: Less than 3ms
• Frequency response: 20Hz ~ 20kHz
• Dynamic range: 103.7dB
• Wireless band: 2.4GHz
• Channels: 4
• Distance range: Up to 21 metres (70ft) line of sight
• Power: 500mAh internal rechargeable batteries offering up to 7 hours of continuous use, 5V 1A or higher USB-C charger required
• Dimensions: L x H x W Transmitter 98.99mm x 27.6mm x 25.4mm
  Receiver: 93.96mm x 27.6mm x 25.4mm
• Weight: Transmitter 55.9g Receiver 50.7g
• Contact: Positive Grid

Usability and sounds

I'm not exactly old school with guitar gear, but on reflection, a pattern has emerged between me and some areas of technology. I was later than most in abandoning wired headphones for Bluetooth with my listening, and I had an MP3 player when everyone else had already switched to streaming services on their phones. Even when I'm tripping over cables in my testing space, I still haven't tried going wireless with my guitar.

So this is a great opportunity for me to embrace a new approach to see if it convinces me. And first impressions are good; the LINK XLR system couldn't be simpler.

A receiver and transmitter are in the box, along with a braided gold and black USB-C to USB-C Y charging cable to enable both to be charged at once (charging time from empty to full is around two hours).

The colour scheme is now a familiar site for anyone who has used the Spark range of practice amps as well as the larger units – and I've reviewed a couple myself. The matte black is sleek but if you're looking for stealthy and low key, the gold plastic front panels of the transmitter and receiver aren't quite that vibe. But they are distinctively Positive Grid Spark.

The matte finish isn't ideal for avoiding scratch marks from general use either, but they only show close up and directly under light. The casing itself feels sturdy enough – though I wouldn't call it rugged like PG's Go amp – and with a pairing button / LED combo on the front and USB-C port on the back, along with a recessed reset button, it's all a simple plug-in-and-play deal. Though Positive Grid does provide a downloadable user guide on a scannable code.

When the receiver and transmitter are turned on they'll flash blue and then pair, the next colour their LEDs show will depend on battery status; green for battery level 16%-100%, yellow for 5%-15% and red when the battery is below 5%. So that green range is quite wide and something you can't really assume to rely upon as a 'good to go' colour ahead of a lengthy practice session or gig. I would have expected a narrower range so you'll really need to keep a mental note of usage time to be safe.

Helpfully, the transmitter will power down if no signal is detected for 15 minutes to conserve battery life, and the receiver 15 seconds later. This occurred a couple of times over the two band rehearsals I tested the LINK XLR for when we took breaks.

The quoted latency of "as low as 3ms" checks – throughout the practice sessions I was never really conscious of any difference to my usual wired performance with my trusty ol' Shure SM58 until one specific issue elsewhere…

When I'm not playing guitar on certain songs in the grunge covers band I'm singing for, I sometimes take my microphone off the stand. It feel like it helps me with certain demanding songs, but with the Spark LINK XLR fitted it's not possible to take the mic off its usual holder without removing the transmitter first. Any vocalists who want to take their mic off the stand mid-performance are going to find this a potential obstacle. But this isn't a unique issue to the Spark LINK XLR.

I tried the Spark LINK XLR with a Zoom LiveTrak L-20R digital mixer running three XTUGA IEM1200 wireless in-ear monitor systems (including my own), and also separately with my Laney A1+ acoustic combo serving as a portable PA.

The stated 21-metre maximum range wasn't possible to test in the rehearsal situation I was in, due to walls impeding the radio signal – but a test outside confirmed its accuracy. I can say the same for the seven-hour battery life – the Spark LINK XLR lasted through both rehearsal situations I used it for.

Using it alongside the loaned LINK system for my guitar, I didn't encounter any signal issues or dropouts with both using 2.4GHz transmission – both LINKs were able to take advantage of the maximum of four exclusive channels available. Indeed, the performance was so seamless I will probably be investing in a wireless guitar system for home and live use too soon.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★☆

The main potential issue with the LINK XLR are for those vocalists who want to be able to easily hold their mic and return it to the stand via a holder. Because the transmitter essentially blocks the mic from getting free of the holder without it being removed first. This is not an unusual issue for wireless mic systems, and a question for individual users at how much of an issue it will be. But in terms of audio and signal performance, the LINK XLR delivers everything I would want as a vocalist with the only caveat being remembering to recharge it!

But I say that as someone who will only be playing smaller gigs. While its line of sight distance range is under some of the pricier competition, including Boss, Sennheiser and Xvive, and it doesn't offer the larger 5.8GHz band functionality of some, the Spark LINK XLR's battery life and performance stack up for the price and should deliver for a lot of gigging vocalists in smaller venues out there.

MusicRadar verdict: The LINK XLR represents competitive value in the market for vocalists, and is a good way to go wireless – especially as an alternative to a full-blown digital wireless mic rig.

Hands-on videos

Positive Grid

• “Every bit as clear and crisp as a cable”: Positive Grid Spark Link review

• Launch price: $169 | £149 | €179
• Type: XLR wireless system for dynamic microphone
• Features:
• Contact: Positive Grid

Gibson has unveiled a meticulously aged Murphy Lab replica set of its era-defining ‘Patent Applied For’ humbuckers, shipping them in a custom brown Lifton case – just like the guitars – and promising holy grail tone from its late ‘50s golden era.

The 1959 Humbucker Collector’s Edition Series 3 are not the first electric guitar pickups to replicate the PAF. There is no reliable data on such things, but Seth Lover’s original design has to be one of, if not the most, copied pickup design in history – it is the O.G. classic humbucker.

And if, say, you were to find a set of originals in your attic, well, it’s the guitar parts equivalent of owning a pristine “Butcher cover” copy of The Beatles’ Yesterday and Today in stereo. You would be in the money. You might want to invest in a safe.

Given that original PAFs do not grow in trees, and are more than likely not in your attic, these collector’s edition replicas from the Gibson Pickup Shop might be the next best thing.

Gibson pulled out all the stops, using 3D scans of originals and every trick in their arsenal to reverse engineer the PAF. Jared Brandon, pickup product manager at Gibson, describes them as a “time capsule” hack for your electric guitar that pushes “the boundaries of historical accuracy and tonal integrity”.

“Every detail – from the Double Vintage White butyrate bobbins to the Alnico 3 roughcast magnets – was chosen to honour the spirit and sonic magic of the original ‘Patent Applied For’ pickups,” says Brandon. “This set is not just a tribute; it’s a time capsule for tone purists and collectors alike.”

These humbuckers were developed and produced onsite at Gibson’s Nashville HQ. They feature the “double white” butyrate bobbins, Alnico III roughcast long magnets, historically accurate nickel covers, and they sit in cream M69 mounting rings.

And they don’t just sound as though they are 1959 originals. Tom Murphy’s crew has worked their magic on them to make them look like it, too.

“Every metal component – from the silver-nickel covers and baseplates to the screws and springs – has been expertly aged by the Murphy Lab team,” says Gibson. Note: those cream mounting rings have also been aged.

In an era of spiralling vintage guitar prices, most players need to box clever if they want to give their tone some golden era mojo. A quality set of aftermarket pickups can be our best hope of giving a 21st century instrument some ‘50s flavour.

For Les Paul players – or ES-335 players for that matter, or any guitar routed for a humbucker – these could be the power-up your tone has been waiting for. It would be fascinating to hear them A/B’d in a 2025 Gibson Les Paul Standard to see how they compare to today’s Burstbucker pickups.

It would be doubly fascinating to hear how they could transform the tone of an Epiphone guitar; these limited edition doozies are priced similarly, at £849/$999.

These are the third in the 1959 series. You can also get them with Alnico IV and Alnico II magnets. Get them direct from Gibson, online or in person at the Garages in Nashville and London.

• “I put the headstock on the buffing wheel. It threw it out of my hands. That day I learned how to fix a broken headstock”: Cesar Gueikian on building the SG Kirk Hammett played to honour Black Sabbath and how his designs might shape future Gibson releases

Ernie Ball has teamed up with Paleblue on a mission to turn your guitar rig green, unveiling a range of USB-C rechargeable batteries – each one of which can do the job of a thousand single-use batteries.

That’s the idea, that these premium lithium-ion batteries can replace the traditional single-use battery in your setup, saving you money – and with most conventional batteries heading to landfill once used, these also tread more lightly on the planet.

Ernie Ball says the pros are already all-in with them. Doing its market research and its bit for sustainability, Ernie Ball gave packs of these away to a bunch of touring techs working with some of the biggest names in rock and pop – My Chemical Romance, Billie Eilish, Jack Johnson, Zac Brown Band, Jason Mraz, Turnstile, Nine Inch Nails and more have all used them on tour.

Henry Trejo, who looks after John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ touring rig and Jerry Cantrell’s (not at the same time), road-tested them and is a big fan.

“I think rechargeable batteries are the only way forward in this industry. There’s too much waste when it comes to conventional batteries. You also have the added benefit of carrying less bulk which also reduces weight, especially when touring on a budget.

“I love the charging indicator lights on these new Ernie Ball batteries and absolutely love the included charging dongle to be able to recharge multiple at the same time.”

Just think about a touring setup – or even the domestic guitar setup. There’s invariably one or two guitar effects pedals running off a battery, because of course you have maxed out your pedalboard power supply’s outlets.

You all know the drill. Single-use batteries consistently, reliably die far too fast – and they always let you down at the most inopportune moment.

Now, that dying battery effect can yield momentary blessings upon your electric guitar tone, starving a fuzz pedal of voltage, giving it that choked, gated sound. But that’s a fleeting phenomenon – and why many 21st-century fuzzboxes have a bias control.

These rechargeables could be your pedalboard pinch-hitters. Besides the more planet-friendly qualities of the rechargeable platform, what makes these especially good for musicians is that they deliver a consistent full-voltage power until they need recharging. No dying battery here, and an LED lets you know their charge status.

But batteries, batteries, batteries… You can’t live without them. If you don’t need the 9V battery for your stompboxes, you will for your active electric guitar pickups, or for your acoustic electric guitar’s pickup and preamp system, or you will need them for your guitar wireless system, metronome, guitar tuner… And you can use them in the home.

They come in AA and 9V packs, bundled inside a storage case with charging cables – again you can hook the whole pack up and charge them simultaneously. The AAs will be fully charged within two hours, while the 9Vs will be charged fully in 205 minutes.

Find out more at Ernie Ball.

The Seymour Duncan JB humbucker is one of the all-time great electric guitar pickups – especially for rock and metal.

The JB is hot. It’s juicy. It’s rich in harmonics and designed to hit the front-end of your guitar amp hard, but not too hard – it’s versatile, excelling at gently pushed blues guitar tones. And it is now available for your Fender Telecaster’s bridge position.

Slimmed down in a single-coil footprint, with all the same output, the JB Jr For Tele will take some beating as far as Telecaster mods go. It has the same four-conductor wiring setup, putting series, parallel, and split-coil wiring options on the menu. And it takes the Seymour Duncan story back to the beginning.

As Kevin Beller, Seymour Duncan’s VP of engineering and new products, notes, the original JB humbucker was one of the pickups that put Seymour Duncan on the map.

“The JB was one of our original seven humbuckers,” says Beller. “People were still working with pretty much vintage Fenders, vintage Marshalls, and the JB offered considerably more output compared to a PAF, so it enabled players to be able to hit the front end of those amplifiers a lot harder to create more sustain. The JB was instrumental in bringing people some new tonalities.”

But those people were not Telecaster players – at least they were not those Tele players who voiced concern at the idea of rerouting the body for a humbucker.

Understandably so, that’s major surgery. And you could imagine the opprobrium these days if anyone had such sacrilegious intentions with a vintage Telecaster. So yes, the JB humbucker, hitherto been out of bounds for the Telecaster’s bridge position.

Enter, the JB Jr For Tele.

“With any replacement pickup, you’re constrained by the shape of the pickup that you’re trying to replace,” says Beller. “If you’re trying to replace a Tele [pickup], you can’t really deviate from a Tele shape very far. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re trying to fit two coils into the space where one big single coil used to occupy.”

Making the pickup to fit was one part of the equation. The other was making sure it had the same output as the regular full-sized humbucker. This required a change of the JB recipe. Where the original dual-coil JB was designed around an Alnico V magnet, Seymour Duncan is using ceramic magnets on these JB Jr models.

The DCR figures compare similarly at 16.28k for the JB Jr, 16.6k for the JB. Both have been vacuum wax-potted to cut down on the squeal… Helpful given the high-gain, high-volume environments these will be deployed.

Is this a new era for Telecaster tone? It’s certainly one of the coolest aftermarket pickup options we’ve seen for some time. Priced $129, the JB Jr For Tele is available now. See Seymour Duncan for more.

• Guitar modding: how to change pickups on a Telecaster
• “You can turn an Epiphone into the Tommy Bolin Burst!”: Seymour Duncan unveils Joe Bonamassa 1960 ‘Bolin Burst’ Les Paul Standard humbucker set

Fender has given the cutest cult-classic electric guitar of all time a limited edition makeover that is guaranteed to be a smash-hit – particularly of fans of the single-pickup rock machine.

Yes, yes, yes, you guessed it, it is the Squier Hello Kitty Stratocaster, it's back, and it has been refreshed and refinished in white.

And you know the drill. File this one under “Hurry while stocks last,” because if history has told us anything, it is that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes, and the Hello Kitty Strat selling out. It has ever been thus, well, since 2006 when it was first launched.

This all-new white one is just an aesthetic refresh. It is still the same Squier guitar that Fender launched in November 2024 to celebrate 50 years of this feline global ambassador for Japanese pop-culture (there was a limited edition white one then, and it didn't last).

That means you have a high-output Fender-designed humbucker at the bridge position, controlled by a single skirted Strat-style volume knob, a six-saddle hardtail bridge for zero-fuss setups, an easy-to-play C profile maple neck – bolted-on as per the classic recipe, 25.5” scale, yadda yadda yadda – plus the vintage tuners with white buttons, and all those signature Hello Kitty details.

Details such as the painted headstock to match the body, a headstock which has a miniature Hello Kitty graphic plus the Squier logo in red to match the dot inlays. Even the numbers on the volume dial are pink, not gold as you’d typically find. The Squier Hello Kitty Stratocaster is priced £439/$579 and is available now.

It does not come alone. This is an expansion of Fender’s Hello Kitty pawprint. We have the Hello Kitty Fuzz refinished in black – again with the Hello Kitty graphic, the pink, skirted amp-style controls, with the legends written in Japanese and English, and the same super-versatile op-amp sound.

It’s… A serious fuzz pedal with a simple three-knob drive. It’s reasonably priced, too, at £99/$124. You might even say it’s the cat’s pyjamas.

Now, what else? There’s loads here. There’s a new poly guitar strap (£30/$34). Better still there’s a pink and white Hello Kitty guitar cable (£25/$37), which looks really need with that woven finish. And there is also a clothing range comprising T-shirts and a crewneck sweat.

And there you have it. Where does this rank in the pantheon of pop-cultural feline collabs? We’d say this is the best since Gloria Yip Wan-Yee teamed up with a cat from outer space to fight an murderous extraterrestrial in Lam Nai-Choi’s crazy cult sci-fi actioner from 1992, The Cat. That cat’s superpowers were kung fu. Hello Kitty's? Cuteness. C'mon, look at the demo video from 2024 below... that's too much.

But it if you can handle all that cuteness, head over to Fender to check out the collection.

• “This series is built for players who demand reliability, versatility and performance at the highest level”: Fender gives its US lineup a retro-modern makeover with the American Professional Classic range
• “A pro-quality tool for hard-working musicians who like the guitar to do the heavy lifting”: Fender American Ultra II Stratocaster HSS review

Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days have finally arrived, and with it a flurry of sales activity from other retailers across the music industry. To be totally honest, you won’t find many great deals on typical music gear like studio headphones, audio interfaces, or electric guitars, but if you’re after essentials and accessories to augment your home studios, it’s a great way to pick up some absolute bargains.

• Shop early Amazon Prime Day deals (US)
• Shop early Amazon Prime Day deals (UK)

I cover deals for MusicRadar year-round, so it’s safe to say that I know exactly what’s worthwhile in the Prime Day music deals, and what’s worth skipping. To that end I’ve looked through over 280 deals in the Musical Instruments section of Amazon, and put the very best ones for you right here.

Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled a new signature humbucker set based on the very same electric guitar pickups that are in the blues guitar superstar’s 1960 Gibson ‘Bolin Burst’ Les Paul Standard.

The Bolin Burst is one of Bonamassa’s most legendary electric guitars in his collection, named for Tommy Bolin, famous for its Stars and Stripes pickguard, and kind of weird in the sense that Bolin never actually owned the instrument, and yet it was his go-to electric when playing in Zephyr, Deep Purple, James Gang, and so on.

It was Bolin’s tech, David Brown, who owned the guitar, lending it to Bolin, even going as far as to – and look away vintage purists – modify it, retrofitting a Bigbsy because, all things considered, Bolin liked vibratos on account of him favouring a Stratocaster.

What complicates this story even further is that Bolin only started borrowing this vintage doozy because his own Gold Top got stolen.

“One of the most distinctive things about this guitar is the pickguard, which was hand-painted by David in an American flag design,” explained Bonamassa in his Guitar World column. “There’s a little part of the paint that’s scratched off; when Tommy performed with Zephyr on the TV show American Bandstand, one of the producers went to Dick Clark and said, ‘Hey, that long-haired hippy guitarist has the word, Fuck on his guitar!’ So they made him scratch it off!”

Bolin passed away in 1976 following a drug overdose. The guitar returned to Moab, Utah, with Brown. It’s quite the tale; like Bonamassa says, he does not collect guitars, he collects stories.

He also takes good care of them, even if they’re on regular rotation in his stage show. When you see him playing the Bolin Burst on stage, he’s using a replica pickguard to preserve the original.

Anyway, that’s pretty cool, and because few of us can afford to enter the market for vintage electric guitars, nor do we have the connections that would help us sniff out a unicorn find such as this 1960 LP (it took Bonamassa the best part of a decade to find this one), Seymour Duncan’s Bolin Burst humbucker pairing is a good a workaround as you’ll find – and it might just be this year’s essential Les Paul mod.

As per the original Les Paul, these are modelled on Seth Lover’s PAF pickups. As per Seymour Duncan’s other PAF replicas – Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates pickup set springs to mind – we have Alnico II magnets for both the neck and bridge pickups. The pickups are left unpotted, using “long-leg” vintage-correct construction.

“The bridge pickup provides a dynamic and barky sound, while the neck pickup sings with warmth and clarity – especially through your favorite overdriven amp,” says Seymour Duncan.

“To be able to recreate pickups that can go into a replica that’s $500, that sound equally as good, if not somewhat better than a guitar that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can turn an Epiphone into the Tommy Bolin Burst!” says Bonamassa.

Sweet. Now, these are a custom shop deal. Bonamassa and Mr Seymour Duncan himself will sign the baseplates of the first 500 sets. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Tommy Bolin Endowment and Tommy Bolin Memorial Fund.

The Bolin Burst set is the latest in a long-standing collaboration between Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. A non-exhaustive list of their signature pickup sets includes the Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster pickups, the “Greenburst” Stratocaster set, the Cradle Rock ’63 Strat set, the Bonnie Strat set, and the Blonde Dot 1960 PAF set, which is definitely a last but not least kind of deal because they might just be our favourites.

That right there is a lot of options for modders to soup-up the electric in their life, with these Bolin Burst humbuckers potentially giving the Epiphone guitar in your life a US Custom Shop power-up.

Priced $375, the Bolin Burst Humbucker Set is available now. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

What is it?

For a lot of budding guitarists, the aim isn’t just to become a world-class shredder, but also to write and record music. Getting ideas down quickly or taking the first steps into this world can be just as difficult as the first time you try a barre chord or attempt to figure out what a mode is, but thankfully, there are solutions.

Focusrite and PreSonus have their simple Solo and AudioBox Go interfaces, whilst GarageBand and Audacity serve as straightforward DAWS. Enter Fender, looking to make this process easier than ever with the Fender Link I/O audio interface and Fender Studio software.

The difference with what Fender offers is that these products are specifically aimed at guitarists, allowing for a streamlined experience that, on paper, has the potential to make recording musical ideas easier than ever.

The main aim behind both these products is to create a portable method by which a guitarist can capture ideas as and when they strike. As such, they seem intended primarily for use with smartphones and tablets, turning devices that we almost constantly have around into tiny portable studios.

Performance

Starting with the Link I/O, the benefit of it being aimed primarily at guitar players is immediately apparent with its slimmed-down inputs and outputs. There is a ¼” jack for your guitar, a USB-C to connect it to your device, a headphone jack, and a blend control to go between direct monitoring and audio from your device. That is it. Super simple and easy to use.

The downside of this, of course, is the lack of flexibility. It really is built to serve us guitarists, with this furthered by a high impedance input jack to – in Fender’s words – “react like an amplifier”, so perfect for its intended market, but perhaps not for much past that.

As a very affordable interface, we can’t expect anything too fancy in terms of build, but the link I/O feels sturdy nonetheless. It’s mostly plastic with a thin layer of a softer, rubbery material at the bottom to stop it sliding around a desk as you use the main level control, which is a nice touch.

That level control is the point at which its affordable nature is most apparent. It feels a little grainy to use, so it gives the impression of being cheap. However, at this price point, it’s still an impressive build.

Getting the Fender Studio software up and running is equally straightforward. Leaning into the portability aspect, we install it on both our iPad and Samsung Galaxy phone with no issues at all. Plug the Link I/O in with the included USB-C cable, and we’re up and running in seconds after installation.

Our testing of this happens to coincide with our writing of a track for a demo of the new Peavey Decade Too. Tasked with coming up with some Queens Of The Stone Age-style riffs, we fire up Fender Studio and set the Link I/O to work.

The input gain is set for you with a switch on the interface to bring in a pad if you are using anything with a higher output. This makes it a genuinely plug-and-go experience with nothing to do on the interface side except plug your guitar, headphones, and included USB-C cable in.

Fender Studio detects and automatically selects the Link I/O, and after choosing an Amp, Fuzz, and Reverb within Studio, we are away and recording some ideas in about as quick a time as one can reasonably expect. Adding to the speed here is the low latency, which is low enough that we don’t feel the need to blend in any of the direct signal via the blend control. As much as having the option to blend in your dry signal is great, it’s not exactly an inspiring sound; therefore, latency low enough to monitor from the models within Fender Studio is a major win.

All this is directly replicated on our Samsung Galaxy Android phone, so those of the anti-Apple persuasion (we're indifferent either way) won’t be trapped in Apple Prison with the Link I/O.

So far, we are using a Fender product within its intended capacity with a Fender DAW – let’s try and trip it up with GarageBand. Short test, as it turns out; it worked exactly as expected with no issues. Taking it further out of its comfort zone and moving away from portable devices, we try it with our PC and a fully-fledged DAW in PreSonus Studio One (another company in the Fender stable). The only additional step needed here is the installation of the Fender Universal driver. After this, it’s the same story with the Link I/O working just as it should.

Speaking of having portability in mind, we imagine that it is this endeavour that led Fender to choose to limit the outputs of the interface to headphones only. As much as we would have liked the option to play along with the included Jam tracks within Fender Studio using a set of speakers rather than headphones, it’s hard to imagine how Fender could have kept the Link I/O at its diminutive size whilst adding speaker outputs. Moreover, if you have studio speakers, you’re likely doing work that requires a more advanced interface, so it is an understandable compromise.

Studio software

Moving on to the software, upon opening, we are greeted with four options – Open, Jam, New, and Record. In a meeting with Fender ahead of Studio’s launch, one of the aims made apparent was to have zero barriers between a creative thought on the guitar and recording said thought. The Record option is built to serve this, as it takes us straight into the Daw, recording immediately from the default audio device. Mission accomplished.

New and Open are fairly self-explanatory, but the most interesting one to us is Jam. Here, the software opens up a choice of well-produced and completely free Jam tracks, including separated stems that allow for the muting of instruments and parts as well as guidance as to the Key and Tempo, which can be changed, making for a useful practice tool.

In our previous life as a guitar teacher, this would have been invaluable. A fantastic option for those learning to jam along to backing tracks, with options to change and edit things to zone in on exactly what is being worked on. Or for more accomplished players, it’s just a fun activity for the evening, with the benefit of being able to target some of the more complicated aspects of playing along to chord changes or whatever gap in your knowledge or skills you are looking to fill.

Adding to the fun is the selection of Fender amp models and effects available within Studio. Sticking only to Fender models, it lacks the sounds from different brands on offer over at GarageBand – perhaps Studio's closest competitor – however, it still covers all the basic food groups of clean amps, overdriven amps, reverbs, delays, modulations, and drives.

It seems that Fender modelling its own products has resulted in sounds that are particularly impressive for a free piece of software. It would be unreasonable to expect the tones to be on par with paid plugins from the likes of Neural and ToneX, however, it’s hard to argue with the quality here for the grand total of £0.

The only real criticism is that some aspects feel a little clunky on first use. For example, the tuner is a little hard to find hidden within the guitar effects section, and once you’ve zoomed in on an amp or effect to edit the parameters, it’s not obvious how to get back out to the previous screen. Despite issues like these, the saving grace is within its cut-down nature, meaning that once these things are figured out, it’s an easy piece of software to navigate.

As a DAW, it is limited. You will not be using complicated chains of studio effects or fancy routing here, nor will you be creating drum loops like can be done in GarageBand. However, the benefit of this guitar-centred functionality is a very focused tool for a guitarist’s use in both practice and getting ideas down.

Verdict

What we have then is a portable duo that is highly capable within its intended functions, providing guitarists with a convenient means of getting ideas down and perhaps an introduction to the world of recording music for guitar players taking their first steps within it. Both the Link I/O and Fender Studio are slimmed-down pieces of gear, but what is lost in terms of versatility is gained through providing an ultra-focused experience that does exactly as promised.

If you are looking to go beyond just recording guitar, it may be best to look at more fully-featured options. But as a tool exclusively for guitarists and at an affordable price point, it’s impossible to go wrong with the Fender I/O. Pair it with the free Fender Studio software, and you’ve got yourself an invaluable little setup that can accompany a player pretty much anywhere.

Hands-on demos

Fender

Alternatives

Specifications

What is it?

As Black Sabbath say goodbye, Tony Iommi's guitar story continues – and the return of his signature humbucker is great news for those of us looking for some added Ironman in our diets, without stumping up for a full-blown signature guitar.

Tony Iommi’s return as a Gibson signature artist actually came about as a result of these pickups, after the request came in for Gibson to make him some more bespoke humbuckers. Things moved on from there and restarted officially with production models based on Iommi's first "Monkey" SG Special starting in 2020.

Those models stayed authentic to the original with P-90s. But the Black Sabbath legend has previous form when it comes to signature humbucker pickups with Gibson – his was the first signature humbucker set launched back in 1997, based on a design he was using in his UK-made Jaydee guitars. Ten years later Iommi put his name to another first with the first Epiphone signature model, an ebony version of the G-400 – and its Sabbath crucifix inlays weren’t the only notable addition.

“I insisted they put my signature pickups on it,” Iommi told me in 2011. “Which were expensive really to go on that, but I didn’t want them to just put my name on the guitar and that was it. I wanted it to be at least something that I’d use. And that was my deal all along with Gibson.”

The guitarist has carried that commitment on for his return to the Gibson fold, and now players have the chance to upgrade their own SGs (other guitar models are available) with his current choice. But Iommi’s tone has undeniably changed over the years, so where do his humbucker sit as an option for other players as well as those compelled by the power of the tritone?

Specs

• Launch price: $229/£199
• Type: Alnico 2 / ceramic humbucker pickup
• Features: Four conductor wiring as standard, wax potted,
• Contact: Gibson

Build

The thoughtful folks at Gibson UK have saved me getting my trusty ol' soldering iron out by sending an Epiphone SG with the Iommi pickups preinstalled. I specifically asked for this model from the “Inspired By Gibson” Standard range rather than a full-fat Gibson SG Standard because ickups are the obvious upgrade choice for more affordable guitars. Though I’ve been mightily impressed with the stock Probuckers I’ve encountered from the Epiphone range.

With no visible polepieces like most Gibson ‘buckers, the look is more sleek and minimalist for the chrome covers – but the construction here is different too.

Under the cover is a combination of Alnico II and ceramic magnets with blades rather than pole pieces designed to offer a more consistent sound for the magnetic field when Iommi is bending strings. Something that plays a huge role in Sabbath songs such as Iron Man and Into The Void.

The other key requirements for Iommi were sustain and clarity in the high-gain scenarios he thrives in. There were also distinct needs that have been consistent through his career; “We had to make sure it worked with my light gauge strings and low tunings, but still pack a punch,” notes the man himself. “The result has got some serious output.”

With this in mind the humbucker is waxed potted and epoxied to prevent a feedback fest at high gain and volumes, and the 15.7k pickup (our reading) features four-conductor wiring for series, parallel, and split coil options if the player desires. Notably, there is no Iommi humbucker ‘set’ available to buy – the pickups I have here are the same, designed for bridge or neck positions just like Iommi has.

Sounds

Alongside the Epiphone SG Standard I have some added context with an Epiphone SG Modern and my own 2005 Faded Special (with a stock 490T humbucker in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan ‘59 I installed in the neck). I need to get around to installing a JB in the bridge, but maybe this pickup might present serious competition for the slot?

Iommi’s origins lie in the bite and punch of the P-90 from his original “Monkey” 1964/’65 SG Special, and there’s an unmistakable growl to the midrange of the bridge here that feels linked to Sabbath’s trailblazing early ‘70s era. But compared to my own SG Special and the Modern Gibson has loaned us for ProBucker comparison, the highs sound a little rolled off from the Iommi pickup and it makes for a distinct sound that is much more obviously reminiscent of Iommi’s own lead tone than even I was expecting. It’s also quite appealing for a lower gain crunch blues tone through a UA Lion '68 Plexi modelling amp pedal.

Moving back to the SG Modern's ProBuckers and the difference is stark; the Iommi is so much more focussed and articulate compared. The low end is tighter for palm muting and it’s a real upgrade to the Modern for power chord-based playing because the highs aren’t creating unwelcome transient distraction and the clarity for low note bends is undeniable.

In the neck this pickup is a notable change; neither flutey or flabby, and it’s actually an excellent clean sound to my ears. The loaner Modern sounds thinner and more jangly through a Fender Deluxe Reverb compared. There’s a mellow character from the Iommi that’s quite distinct with the mid focus, unlike the usual humbucker experience for me. Perhaps there's something in opting for a neck pickup that isn't designed for that role alone.

Verdict

With the price here on the premium side for a pair – and it should be noted the construction process of these pickups is probably unique for Gibson – only Iommi diehards will probably do the double. But even as a fan, and someone who has drifted from traditional ‘buckers towards the brighter clarity of Firebird and Wide Range options for my guitar mids, I was genuinely delighted with just how distinct and impressive Iommi’s signature humbucker is.

The real cherry on the cake was when I tuned down to drop D; even with guage 10 set of strings the sense of snarl and definition with the expected thickness was really satisfying as I rolled through some Sabbath, old Silverchair and Helmet riffs. A lot of fun! Then bringing in the bite rather than chime of the middle strings for some discordance with the low end is a real weapon to wield, while extended chords in higher gain levels don’t seem to suffer from a clash of frequencies because the highs are rolled back so judiciously.

The return of the Iommi Signature Humbucker is a welcome one. It's unlike any humbucker I've tried before, probably because the blueprint has evolved from a hum-cancelling take on a P-90 into the demands of higher gain levels as Iommi's rig has changed over the years. But the voicing is so well considered that cleans aren't overcooked with compression and those drive-drenched E string bends really do sound great. Should we have expected anything less from Iommi and Gibson?

MusicRadar rating: This humbucker is a must-try if you’re looking for an upgrade and play heavier music, or indeed just want to try something a bit different in the humbucker stable. Because just like Iommi was capable of exploring far more with Sabbath than juggernaut riffs, this is more than just a heavy metal pickup.

Hands-on videos

Sweetwater

Walrus Audio has expanded its Canvas series of utility pedals and accessories with a tiny 3.68” by 2.12” device that allows players to power their rig using a USB-C cable, meaning they can use a laptop charger, high-powered phone charge, or even to go wireless with a USB PD battery pack.

Designed to integrate seamlessly into the modular Canvas eco-system, the Canvas Power USB can be the “bridge” between your Canvas pedalboard power supply (or other unit with a 24V EIAJ input) and its power supply, be it a power brick, charger, or USB battery.

The idea is that it allows you to take your electric guitar rig anywhere without having to worry about where all the power outlets are. Worst-case scenario: get yourself a USB Power Deliver pack and throw it in your gig bag – or mount it on your pedalboard to have it all set up for wireless performance.

Simply place it before your usual power supply, then hook it up via the 24V Thru output to the corresponding 24V EIAJ input on your power supply.

The Canvas Power USB can take 24V from an EIAJ cable or via USB-C. It will prioritise the DC coming from your regular power supply but if it detects none it use the juice from the attached USB PD input.

Blue LEDs let you know which power source is being used and if you are using a USB PD battery pack there are status LEDs for when the charge is at 100 per cent or 50.

Other things to note: Battery packs are not included. If you intend to use this wirelessly, make sure you get a PD “Power Delivery” power bank. Inside the box you will find a C style mounting bracket with screws and an M3 hex key. There is a 12” EIAJ link cable, an 18” straight-to-right-angle DC cable, and a three-foot USB-C to USB-C cable.

Of course, the Canvas USB doesn’t necessarily need to be mounted on your ‘board. Alternatively, the Canvas Power USB can be used for desktop use, powering a single guitar effects pedal.

It has a variable output power delivering 250mA at 18V, 375mA at 12V, and 500mA at 9V. The unit weighs just 136gm.

Priced $179, the Canvas Power USB is available now. See Walrus Audio for more details.

• Walrus Audio Canvas Tuner review

Seymour Duncan has wound a custom shop electric guitar pickup to celebrate the release of the much-anticipated Spinal Tap sequel, and this one-of-one design might just be the most powerful active humbucker ever made.

The release of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is a momentous moment for rock history. We’re some days yet off its theatrical release on Friday 12 September, but the movie has already unveiled some awesome custom electric guitar – awesome in its original meaning, too.

How else could you describe lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel’s custom Marshall amp, a head that goes not to 11 – that’s oh so 1984 – but to infinity?

To work an amp like that, you need something to hit the front end hard, and this unique Seymour Duncan Spinal Tap humbucker is just the thing, with a “eye-watering, earth-shattering” 111k DCR reading. For reference, Seymour Duncan’s dynamic SH-8 Invader, a thoroughly weaponised take on the passive ‘bucker, clocks in at 16.6k for the bridge pickup. What will this one sound like?

Seymour Duncan is coy if we’ll ever see one in production. But it would be kind of weird the Goleta, California pickup company would go to all this bother and not plug it in, fire up a tube amp, and document the evidence for posterity.

“Our Custom Shop wound this humbucker to deliver an eye-watering, earth-shattering 111k DCR – because of course, it had to go to (one hundred and) eleven!” reads Seymour Duncan’s post on Instagram. “And yes, that means it's louder. In fact, it has one of the highest outputs of any passive humbucker, ever! This was such a fun project for our Custom Shop team, and while it’s not currently headed for production, we’d like to have a little fun with it. [Eyes emoji] So stay tuned!”

Maybe, just maybe, it is in the film. Who can say? Though judging by the picture, the sheer size of those coils would certainly suit an IMAX presentation.

If you take yourself to the cinema this weekend, you’ll find Spinal Tap engineering a comeback gig, with director Marty Di Bergi capturing all the drama in his fly-on-the-wall rockumentary style, and there will be a lot of guitars, with Tufnel playing a St Vincent’s Goldie signature guitar refinished in a Union Jack, and guitarist/vocalist David St Hubbins playing a matching James Valentine HH.

What we want to hear is this new Marshall that Tufnel has added to his backline – the JCM Infinity?

“Marshall has made for me an amplifier, the head, and if you look at the dials, it now goes to Infinity,” said Tufnel, speaking to Guitar World. “Just think about that for a moment. Think about infinity – oh, my God, that’s literally infinity.”

Tufnel has always been the maverick. But he has been living the quiet life of late, running a cheese and guitars shop in the north of England, playing the pub circuit. Maybe this reunion will sharpen his appetite for high-volume, high-gain adventure.

Certainly, you won’t find him rocking up at a Tap gig with a Line 6 or Neural DSP amp modeller. He assures Guitar World still a real guitar amp man.

“No, no. People use it in studios to make records, but I like my amplifiers,” said Tufnel. “Occasionally I’ve gone direct when I record at home. There’s something about pushing air, as they call it. I’'ve got this great Marshall at home, a Studio Marshall, and it’s hard to beat.”

It is hard to look at our pedalboards today and think anything other than we are living through a golden age for guitar effects pedals.

The past decade has been a boom time for stompbox design; from a Bigsby-style vibrato to a Peavey Decade practice amp, or from high-functioning digital delay pedals from Strymon et al to genuine spring reverb, you can get almost anything in a pedal.

But the evolution of digital modelling and profiling technology is here and it is disrupting the market, and Brian Wampler warns that pedal manufacturers are facing a Napster moment.

Speaking with Adam Wakeling for the Products of Music YouTube channel, Wampler, whose pedal company has developed signature pedals for the likes of Brad Paisley and Andy Wood, and made some of the finest dirt pedals on the market (we’re looking at you, Tumnus overdrive pedal), says the traditional business model is under threat in an era when you can “capture” a pedal or amp and use it digitally, either in a hardware unit such as a Neural DSP Quad Cortex or Kemper Profiler.

Digital might just be getting started, but Wampler says it is already eating into the pedal market – and tube amps are on the menu, too.

“I think really, everyone in the pedal market is kind of, I would say, concerned,” he says. “I think it’s going to take a big chunk of the market. I mean, it is, really. It’s not, ‘Is it going to?’ It is [already], as well as the tube amp market.”

Wampler believes pedal brands have two options; they can pretend it isn’t happening and wait for the inevitable. “You can always stick your head in the sand and ignore it and think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me. It’s not going to happen to me,’ and then wonder what happens in five or 10 years,” he says.

Or they can adapt and evolve, and work out what it is that they can create and offer players to keep them engaged with the brand. This is something he has had to for with Wampler Pedals, and has branched out into guitar plugin design. When Wampler launched the Catacombs delay and reverb pedal, it made the plugin available free with each purchase, and simultaneously releasing the plugin for $49.99. The first step is working out what to do, what to design.

“I’ll just write it out, just get everything in my brain out onto paper,” he says. “And I am looking for what are the possible pivots that I can make that might make a dent? What are the things that I can do that might be a unique spin on things to keep me, and keep others interested in my product? Or if I need to start introducing something that I don’t know how to do, how do I get to the people that know how to do that?”

Neural modelling would be a prime example of what Wampler’s talking about. He could learn how to do it, or he could hire someone who did. What Wampler doesn’t see happening is the market returning to its analogue norms. Some of the prices make it harder to compete.

“The day of buying a kit online of some pedal and selling it on Reverb, others will do it, I just think that that method is gonna be really, really much harder to sell as time goes on,” he says. “And it is now! It’s just going to be a lot tougher sell as time goes on. I mean, you can buy a $30 pedal now that’s based off a Rat, right? Or whatever you want.”

• Wampler’s Tumnus Germanium becomes the latest $500-plus pedal as the sold-out limited run overdrive commands eye-watering prices online

But Wakeling poses the real question here. What does it mean for a pedal manufacturer when someone could theoretically go into a music store, buy a bunch of distortion pedals, capture them and then take the pedals back? Or simply access those captures online?

“Well, yeah, I mean, it’s analogous to Napster, for those who remember that,” says Wampler. “Everybody had music that you just uploaded on Napster, and now no one needs to buy any more music. So, I mean, the question is, well, what do you do? Well, eventually, Spotify forms. [Laughs] You know? I mean, is that good? Not if you’re an artist.”

Hence, the Wampler plugins, the pivot. But it might eventually come down to a question of taste and player preference. Wampler is no analogue purist. That might be where his passion lies but he’s not dogmatic about it.

He argues that the differences between analogue and digital gear actually affect his playing. And there’s nothing like the direct playing experience that comes with playing with a tube amp.

“For some reason, if I’m mainly recording for a month or something, I’m just playing direct in the box, whenever I play into a tube amp, my timing is off,” he says. “And it really messes with me a lot. Maybe that’s a me being me thing. Maybe I’m just hypersensitive to that. I’ve never really heard that many people complain about that. But I definitely notice a big difference.

“If I’m mainly focussing on playing this through my plugins, then go to something that’s truly analogue, just the entire analogue signal path, it really messes up, especially with picking fast.”

Gibson has unveiled a new signature electric guitar pickup for the Godfather of Heavy Metal, Tony Iommi – or rather it has unveiled an old one, reissuing the Black Sabbath icon’s much loved signature humbucker after a number of years out of production.

Developed in the late ‘90s by JT Riboloff, Gibson’s then head of R&D Department, it was a piece of history – Gibson’s first ever signature pickup, and featured in Iommi’s signature guitars with Gibson.

Is this the ultimate aftermarket mod for anyone looking to give their electric guitar (preferably, an SG) a power-up for premier cru riff-work. Paraphrasing Tony Iommi here but it’s one to file under “You know it makes sense”.

“I’m really excited that Gibson’s bringing back my signature humbucker, they were getting pretty hard to find!” says Iommi. “This pickup came about after a lot of time spent in Nashville, just experimenting with different setups to get that perfect tone and sustain from my favourite guitars.”

He’s not exaggerating. At the launch event at the Gibson Garage London, Iommi said Riboloff had them locked in at the Nashville factory for the night. All the other staff had gone home. “Couldn’t we go and get something to eat, just to get out of here?” wondered Iommi. No, sorry. Riboloff was cooking.

But what he was cooking up was something special, a bespoke wind, inspired by Iommi's John Birch custom pickups, but reaching for something better – or at least incremental improvement, the leitmotif of Iommi's career – featuring Alnico 2 and Ceramic magnets, voiced for sustain and clarity in high-volume, high-gain scenarios. Like everything in Iommi’s rig, it was tailored to his specifications.

“We had to make sure it worked with my light gauge strings and low tunings, but still pack a punch, and the result has got some serious output,” says Iommi. “They’re on my signature guitars too, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they turned out.”

Gibson CEO and president Cesar Gueikian is a fan of them. He has had them on his guitars for 15 years and counting.

“I was blown away with the distinct Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath sound I was able to get out of them,” he says. “They have such a great, clean look with the unique pickup cover, and we are excited to bring the Rifflord’s signature humbucker back as we continue to pay tribute to Tony.”

And Gibson is paying tribute to Iommi throughout August, with a documentary series featuring the likes of Scott Ian, Zakk Wylde, Steve Vai and Iommi’s good friend Brian May to debut on its GibsonTV YouTube channel.

“It’s great to have the first signature pickup from Gibson back, and there really isn’t a more fitting artist than Tony Iommi,” says Lee Bartram, head of commercial and marketing EMEA, Gibson. “Tony is synonymous with the Gibson SG, but now the volume, presence, and overall power he produces through his playing can be experienced in other models too, whether at home, in the studio, or on stage.

“Thanks to Tony for his continued support and trust; these pickups are the result of our constant collaboration, and we look forward to what’s next for our partnership.”

As for the specs, they are wax-potted. Back in the day, Iommi used to horrify Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward as he would wax-pot the pickups himself.

On one occasion, they were staying in a caravan in Cumbria, Iommi experimenting with wax-potting to try and reduce the noise from his Gibson SG, Laney tube amp, and Dallas Rangemaster setup. The smell was overpowering.

Well, here, Gibson has done all that work for you. Average DCR readings for these are 16k. They come in chrome housings as standard, with four-conductor wiring.

Available now, priced £199/$229, the Tony Iommi Signature Humbucker is available now. See Gibson for more details.

With Black Sabbath about to play their last ever show at Villa Park this weekend, Laney Amplification has unveiled a super limited edition replica of Tony Iommi’s signature tube amp head to mark the occasion.

The Black Country Customs TI100 is handmade in the UK, and is an exacting replica of Iommi’s 2012 signature head, complete with the grille plate with crosses backlit in red. Each amp comes with a signed and numbered backplate, plus a certificate of authenticity, limited edition guitar picks and commemorative postcards – and everything you need to nail his electric guitar tone.

A dual-channel amplifier, the TI100 is made for metal guitar, with its Lead channel voiced for down tunings, and does not want for high-gain saturation. But it does a lot more.

The Rhythm channel handles all your cleans, right through to blues guitar crunch. And with an onboard boost section, one per channel, it gives you a footswitchable hotter voice for each channel.

The engineers at Laney’s Black Country Customs workshop configured the boost so that it works just as would in the pedal. When activated, adjust the bright red Boost dials accordingly and they will hit the front end of the guitar amp with some extra decibels.

As Laney's product manager, Simon Fraser Clark explains, when he was co-designing the original TI100 with Iommi, he wanted something different.

“Tony is very much one of these people who hasn’t rested on his laurels,” says Clark. “In 2012, Tony came to us to start talking about his new signature amp, the TI100, and that was used on the 2013 tour, for the album 13, and it was a departure in his sound from pervious tours – he wanted something that was a bit more heavier, had a bit more compression to it, a bit more gain. So that led to the TI100.”

Each channel has its own three-band EQ and controls for Enhance and Presence. The latter is something most players will be familiar with; it allows you to adjust the high-end response of the output section, a little post EQ spritz and polish – it can sometimes give your electric guitar tone the extra sparkle it needs to make harmonics and feedback pop out.

Enhance does something similar for the low end frequencies. Again, it sits in the output stage, and shapes the response. Fully counterclockwise, that response is tight, the kind of tone you might use for contemporary metal styles, full-bore chug and all that animalistic business.

Turn the dial clockwise and it opens up a bit, letting those chords bloom – fine-tuning for doom. It is nice to see independent Enhance and Presence controls for each channel; it is more common to find them as global controls serving both.

Under the hood there is a quartet of 6L6 power tubes, with 8 2AX7 preamp tubes. Altogether you get 100-watts to play with. Laney are only making 50 of these. They come with a protective covering, and all the case candy and extras mentioned above.

But this is an amp that was designed to play. It’s built for the road. Those integrated grab handles are a super practical feature when lugging a 21.5kg amplifier up a flight of stairs.

Other nods to pragmatism include an “ultra transparent” effects loop that can accommodate your pedalboard – and/or rack equipment. The loop has an FX Return Gain dial so you can compensate for any change in gain when effects are applied, and you can bypass the loop altogether.

The TI100 ships with an FS4-TI footswitch for changing channels and turning each channel’s boost on and off. Again, this is replete with signature details, with Iommi’s signature and cross logo on the enclosure.

Around the back of the amp there are all the 1/4” speaker outputs you’d need – 4 Ohms, 8 Ohms, 2x 8 Ohms, 16 Ohms, 2 x 16 Ohms… It’s a serious piece of kit, and they’re only making 50 of ‘em. And Sabbath have only one show left, Back To The Beginning, Villa Park, Saturday July 5.

As Laney says, it was Laney in the beginning for Iommi, the LA100BL pressed into service as he inaugurated heavy metal with Black Sabbath’s eponymous anthem, and it has been Laney all the way since.

Priced £2999, the Black Country Customs Tony Iommi TI100 is available now. See Laney Amplification for more details.

Monty’s Guitars has unveiled a signature electric guitar pickup set that it co-designed with the legendary Pretenders and Paul McCartney guitarist Robbie McIntosh – and it will expand the range of sounds you can get from your Telecaster.

Named for McIntosh’s long association with The Pretenders, the pickup set comprises a pair of single-coils that will fit any Telecaster. But that bridge pickup has been designed to make your momentarily forget the neck pickup is even there, giving you the sound of a Fender Esquire.

Yes, you might ask what is an Esquire if not just a single-pickup Telecaster? Fender even routed the bodies for a second pickup, and it would be one of the most common aftermarket mods for Esquire players – they would lift up the pickguard, cut it for a neck pickup and double up. But what you gain in a second pickup you lose in feel. Or as Monty’s calls it, the vibe.

“The funny thing is even though they are very close in design, Esquires do sound different than Telecasters, even when just the bridge pickup is being used,” says Monty’s. “It may be hard to believe, but the magnetic pull from the neck pickup on a Telecaster affects not only the sound of the guitar but the feel too, removing it really does do something interesting to the vibe of the guitar.”

Monty’s needed some custom-made magnets for the project. They were to have a very low magnetic field, staying out of the way as much as possible, but still sounding “vibrant and full”.

McIntosh wanted it to sound like a classic ‘50s Telecaster, with enough about it to sit in a mix.

The bridge pickup was a more straightforward proposition. It is based on the pickup on McIntosh’s favourite electric guitar, his 1953 Esquire.

“When it came to the bridge Robbie explained that the pickup in his old Esquire had a nice woody character and was really fat for a Tele,” says Monty’s. “We designed the pickup so when the volume is at ten it is plump and aggressive, but then with a slight turn of the knob, it can go full snap and twang of a classic tele bridge pickup effortlessly.”

Monty’s is offering The Pretender set with a variety of options. You can get the neck pickup in nickel, raw nickel, chrome or gold. The price is £231 per set.

It is often said about the Telecaster that Leo Fender got it right the first time. But maybe you could say that about The Pretender pickup set. The finished pickups are the same as the pair McIntosh has been road-testing for the past year. For more details, head over to Monty’s Guitars.

Strange things can happen to our gear in the heat. It can play havoc with a vintage germanium fuzz pedal. It can do all kinds of unwelcome things to our guitar’s setup. Oh, and on some occasions it do something even more drastic – like what happened to Richard Fortus just the other day.

Fortus was playing at the Mohammed Abdu Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Guns N’ Roses took to the stage just after 10pm, the sun long gone over the horizon, the temperature a little more amenable to a three-hour rock concert on the Arabian Peninsula.

During the day it was a different story, with the mercury reaching 45º Celsius/113º Fahrenheit. Not all of the gear came out of the GNR truck in the same condition it went in. Fortus’ signature Gretsch Falcon looked like it needed a bit of work to get it ready.

“Well this is a first,” Fortus wrote on Instagram. “It was so hot in Saudi Arabia that the wax in my pickups melted!”

Alex Skolnick metaphorically spoke for all of us here when the Testament guitarist left an open-mouthed emoji. Horror is the only appropriate response.

Melting wax is a new one on us. Wax-potted pickups are commonplace, and for good reason. Wax potting reduces mechanical vibrations in the pickup, which in turn helps nix unwanted microphonics.

Also, just think how sweaty you get during a show. Wax potting prevents moisture getting into the pickup and corroding the pole pieces, preserving the lifespan of your pickup.

But just look at front of Fortus’ Gretsch guitar. It’s like a candle has been dripping onto the guitar’s top. The V-Stoptail looks like it could be caked in it.

The good news is that this is easily enough fixed by a qualified tech. Guns N’ Roses will have at least one or two on the payroll with them. Also, it’s rare.

Indeed, when MusicRadar spoke to Fortus in 2022 about the Falcons, he said “They’ve proven to be incredibly stable on this tour”. But then maybe a June/July run through Europe is not quite as hot as the an-Nafud desert.

The Filter’Trons you will find on Fortus’ signature guitar are not your garden variety Filter’Tron. He tried every variant before co-designing a pair with Gretsch that suited his Falcon to a tee.

“At first, we tried all the boutique Filter’Trons – Lollar, Mojotone, TV Jones… We went through everything including the Arcanes, which is what I use in my [hollowbody] Players Edition Falcons,” said Fortus. “I love the Arcanes in those guitars. They sound amazing.

“In fact, I’ve just recommended them to Charlie Starr from BlackBerry Smoke. He ended up putting them in an old White Falcon he has – like a late ‘60s model. But in the end, it was quite the process. We had the luxury of being able to wind pickups and test them in Guns N’ Roses rehearsals.

“I had several guitars on rotation and John Gaudesi was winding pickups on the spot. We were listening in fine detail through in-ears and in the control room and tweaking them as we went along until we found the perfect sound.”

Guns N’ Roses concluded the Middle East run of their tour in Abu Dhabi, UAE, yesterday and start their European run on 30 May in Georgia. They play Birmingham on 23 June and London on the 26 June. See Guns N’ Roses for full dates and ticket details.

The violin bow has long been a fascination for guitar players. It was Eddie Philips of the Creation who started it all, before Jimmy Page made it a cultural totem. Now there is a bow that you can buy that is a lot more user friendly, specially designed for acoustic guitars – and it sounds pretty incredible.

It’s called the Pickaso Guitar Bow, and it is a 6.3” mini-bow with synthetic hairs on either side, and it even has an integrated guitar pick so that you can alternate your techniques. It can make your acoustic sound like a cello or a violin.

Oftentimes a new accessory comes along and it looks neat but feels like a gimmick (from a distance, the Pickaso looks like a nail file). But just watch the demo video; this is very cool, and while it has been designed for acoustics, some enterprising players are even using it on electric guitars, too – one, a bowed guitar specialist by the name of Octavio Ocampo, went as far as to route a hole in his guitar’s body where a bridge pickup might have been.

The Pickaso Guitar Bow is the brainchild of Jonathan Shenhav, who unsurprisingly got the idea after watching Page use one onstage with Led Zeppelin.

“I saw Jimmy Page using a violin bow on his guitar – and it clicked,” writes Shenhav. “What if I could do this on an acoustic guitar? In that moment, it felt like my path had revealed itself. I grabbed an old violin bow and tried it. It sounded beautiful, but something wasn’t right – I kept hitting the guitar, and it felt limited. That’s when I thought: I’m going to invent a bow made specifically for acoustic guitars.”

Applied to the lower two strings, the Pickaso can make your acoustic sound like a cello. On the top two strings it sounds like a violin. Hearing the mini-bow in action is a little like seeing a talking dog in a live action movie. It might make you question reality itself.

Now, there are some realities you do have to take into account when using the Pickaso. Firstly, it only works on non-coated acoustic guitar strings. Sorry, Elixir fans. Also, it won't work on nylon string guitars. That new set of Earthwood Bell Bronze that Ernie Ball designed with John Mayer would work a treat, though.

Secondly, you’ll need to apply some rosin to create the musical friction between bow and string; handily, this comes bundled with the bow, and is specially formulated for guitars. Pickaso says it leaves 85 per cent less residue on your strings and offers better string grip than regular rosin.

The Pickaso Guitar Bow is available now for a sale price of $47 (regular price $79), and you can pick one up direct from Pickaso Bow or from Guitar Center.

This, says, Shenhav is the only guitar mini-bow for acoustic guitars. But it’s not your only option. If you’re not getting much joy out of a regular violin bow you could always use a an actual violin. It worked for Nigel Tufnell – even if the Spinal Tap guitarist had to tweak its tuning mid-solo. And Jimmy Page? He tried a hacksaw once. That didn't go well.

A different approach

On the face of it, electric guitar strings don’t seem like they should be that engaging a subject, but we guitarists are a very particular bunch, and debating the benefits of one set vs another often inspires fairly impassioned discussion. Preferences are many and varied, but luckily, so is the array of choices.

One proprietor of such options is Ernie Ball. A long-time maker of strings, guitars, and much more, the company has a storied history and an impressive roster of players, with the likes of John Mayer, Slash, Paul McCartney, and Eric Clapton adorning their artists page. Joining them is Polyphia’s Tim Henson with an interesting signature set of strings.

Polyphia are impossible not to mention in any conversation regarding the progression of modern guitar music and how it sits in the current landscape. Intricate composition combined with mind-bending musical chops has, rightly, catapulted the band to fame with G.O.A.T., The Worst, and Playing God being just a few of the songs that have captured the imagination of a new breed of guitar player.

Beyond that, Tim has worked on various projects as a composer, which he discusses with Guitar World's Michael Astley-Brown in a recent interview, and has gotten into the guitar building game with his signature Ibanez electric and nylon-strung acoustic guitars, and now turns his head towards strings.

As he put it in an Ernie Ball promo video, he had a few “unreasonable requests”. A set of strings that are "lighter than a 10, but still retains that stability", having an “air of percussiveness, but not being too shrill” and a “low string that doesn't overpower the harmonics” of the higher string, to name a few of them.

In short, we have a discerning player, impressive in his musical accomplishments and ability, teaming up with a company backed with decades of know-how at the forefront of what they do.

So we can be safe in the certainty that what we have here is going to be a quality product. However, the interesting thing about guitar strings is that it’s a personal choice, without a right or wrong.

My preference has been in 10-46 gauge strings, which I have stuck with for around 15 years, but this doesn’t mean I haven't experimented a bit. Working as a reviewer, guitars frequently come out of their boxes strung with 9s, with the reduction in string tension meaning fluid bends and liquid vibrato coming off the fingers with markedly more ease.

With this and B.B. King's “Why you working so hard?” quote in mind, I have periodically given the lighter gauges a shot, only to come crawling back to 10s for two main reasons.

Firstly, playing live and getting a little carried away at times, it is a lot easier to get that unwanted wobble when hitting an open low E on a thinner gauge. Secondly, once the novelty of the ease has worn off, I find myself wanting a little more resistance when pushing the strings around.

Looking at Tim Hensons' new custom strings from Ernie Ball, we have a thin top, heavy bottom set of 9.5 gauge strings - 9.5, 12, 16, 26, 36, 46. For context, my usual set of 10s consists of 10, 13, 17, 26, 36, 46.

Whilst I am no Tim Henson, on paper, his signature set may give a little of that fluid feel that inspires my infrequent experiments with a lighter gauge, whilst stopping short of being too skinny and retaining the relative stability of 10s on the lower strings. It therefore felt worth a test to see if these strings could change a habit of well over a decade.

The premise is simple. Stick them on the guitar I use most - a Fender Telecaster, live with them for a few weeks, and see if I'm tempted to keep using them.

Road Testing

After restringing the guitar, the strings were worked hard over the two weeks I would usually get out of a new set. Used across my everyday playing, in review for other gear, the little bit of teaching I do outside of reviewing, and for video demo shoots with Guitar World, they had a tough term covering pretty much every genre of music.

The first thing I notice is a bit of surprise. I am used to both 9 and 10 gauge strings, so I expected to feel relatively at home on this set, which is somewhere in between. But for the first few minutes, I didn’t.

Having strings that feel like 10s at the bottom seems to have the effect of putting my fingers into 10s mode. This means that it initially feels a little odd when the B and E strings are looser than my muscle memory is expecting.

This is more of an observation than a criticism, and is something that takes no time at all to get used to. After this adjustment, the slight reduction in tension on the thinner strings does indeed lend itself to that easier feel.

However, the real test in this aspect is whether I miss that extra tension from 10s after getting used to this new gauge. The quick answer is that I don’t. The slightly thinner top strings seem to sit nicely between 9s and 10s for my taste, giving a smooth feel without too much compromise on the little bit of tension that I like.

So far, it’s looking promising. Next, I hit those lower strings to see if they wobble any more than a normal set of 10s. Given that the lower strings of the Tim Henson set are of the same gauge as my usual, I didn’t expect that they would act any differently here, which is indeed the case.

Moving on to how they sound, it’s a little difficult to comment objectively as the small differences between sets of well-made strings result in entirely subjective preferences. What I can say is that they sound great, as you would expect from a company like Ernie Ball.

It’s also worth mentioning that two weeks in, they still sound bright and lively, which is a worthwhile benefit of high-end strings that tend to be a little more expensive, like these ones.

Final thoughts

The question now, then, is, will I keep using them? Yes. It’s not that what I have used up until now falls short in any way, it's just that I enjoy this Ernie Ball Tim Henson Signature set just incrementally more.

At least on a 25.5” scale length guitar, they suit me a little bit better by allowing the thinner strings to be slightly more slinky without getting too skinny, whilst retaining the gauge and stability of the lower strings and therefore solving the issues I mentioned earlier.

Keeping them on the Telecaster is a no-brainer. When it comes to my guitars of a 24 ¾ scale length, however, I don’t want those strings holding any less tension, so I’ll be sticking to my usual there.

What’s happened here, then, is a refinement of a preference rather than a correction of any issue.

Obviously, for fans of Tim Henson or Polyphia, the name will be a draw. However, I would reiterate how personal string choice is, and suggest ignoring the fact that they are signature strings, and instead, thinking about what your preferences are, and whether there is room for refinement in what you are using.

If this thinking leads you to believe your ideal strings may be somewhere in between a set of 9s and 10s, give these a go.

• For more information on Tim Henson's signature sets check out Ernie Ball

Ernie Ball knows a thing or two about making acoustic and electric guitar strings but every now and then it is good to get a consultant in, just to see if it will spark some fresh inspiration, and for its new range of Earthwood strings it brought John Mayer onboard as co-designer.

The Earthwood Bell Bronze acoustic guitar strings, available now in a variety of gauges, are not signature strings. Mayer’s face is not on the packaging – we’re not too sure if his name is even on there, not even in the small print. But he helped steer the design, and is mighty proud of them.

The promo video finds Mayer in typically philosophical form. The strings, themselves, sound great. But then again it’s John Mayer’ playing a Martin guitar and that is always going to help.

Still, Mayer believes you can make your guitar sound divine, too. Maybe it’s all those Grateful Dead songs he’s been playing of late, but he is especially Zen here. This not so much a promo for these new strings as it is a pep talk for anyone pickup up the instrument.

“The only thing you have to feed it are two things, guitar strings and ideas,” he says. “For the most part, acoustic guitars are the great equaliser of ideas. If your idea works here, you can change the world.

“It wasn’t until the last 10 years or so that acoustic guitar has really stood at the forefront of pop culture, of youth culture, of really what I would call like high energy creativity from young people.

“f you pick up an acoustic guitar and you write some songs on it, and you play them for people, there is no stage in the world that's too big for the music that you play on an acoustic guitar. The story begins here, the story is told here, and the story ends here.”

Thank you, John. We needed that. Now, as for the strings, the “Bell Bronze” speaks to the new alloy that they’re comprised of. Forget phosphor/bronze, these are inspired by the same alloys used to make bells and cymbals.

Cymbals? That makes us think high-end musical information. But the frequency profile of the Earthwood Bell Bronze is described as having a similar top end to the 80/20 Bronze set, and a fuller and “richer” low end than the phosphor/bronze without going all dark and muddy on you.

There is a patent-pending on the alloy. But you can grab the Earthwood Bell Bronze acoustic strings now. You can get them in all the popular light to medium gauges, from 10s to 13s. See Ernie Ball for more details. See above for your acoustic guitar pep talk from big bad John.

If you are looking for a stompbox stock tip, go long on Dirty Boy pedals, because Linkin Park has just revealed that the Ball Buster boost was the secret sauce in their electric guitar tone on comeback LP, From Zero.

This, of course, was the first studio album since the death of frontman Chester Bennington, featuring Emily Armstrong on vocals alongside guitarist/keyboardist and co-producer Mike Shinoda. Collin Brittain co-produced the album with Shinoda, and made his debut on drums for the nü-metal trailblazers, replacing co-founder Rob Bourdon.

All things considered, From Zero was officially a big deal. And Brittain has revealed that biggest deal on the pedalboard – used right across the album – is a boost pedal designed by Alex Saraceno, father of former Poison guitarist Blues Saraceno.

Intended to hit the front-end of a mid-gain guitar amp hard – think Vox AC30, Marshall Plexi, Hiwatt – the Ball Buster is now sadly out of production, and if you own one, you’re probably sitting on quite an asset. Those original stompboxes are worth quite a bit of money. You also own quite a serious pedal.

Dirty Boy is now being operated out of Madrid by Danny Gomez, and Brittain had to text Gomez to tell him the Ball Buster is all over From Zero – it is “especially noticeable on Heavy Is The Crown” – and invited Gomez out to meet the band in Paris, all of whom have been using Dirty Boy for years.

“Dirty Boy pedals are the most musical, unique and dynamic distortion effects I’ve ever used, hands down,” said Brittain. “I use them on almost every single project. I’m so happy Danny is continuing to build on such an iconic legacy.”

This begs the question whether Gomez, who took over the company in 2024, will bring the Ball Buster back. This is a clever boost pedal. It does not just dump a whole ton of gain on your amp – though it sure does that – but it offers some tone-sculpting features, bass and treble controls that really do some heavy lifting, and an H-M-L three-way switch that acts a little like a mastering control.

Saraceno’s original design work is still writ-large in the current Dirty Boy lineup. The Buzzy Boy, Germanium Boy and Afro Fuzz pedals are all Saraceno designs.

The new Dirty Boy Preamp is a Gomez design, but was based on an amp designed by Saraceno Sr. for Saraceno Jr. Expect it to turn up on Shinoda et al’s Linkin Park pedalboards soon. Gomez gave them all one to take home.

You can check out the range at Dirty Boy. Who knows, Gomez might reinstate the Ball Buster.

Darkglass Electronics has just dropped some serious pedalboard firepower for bass guitar players. It’s called the Anagram Bass Workstation, and it is a multi-effects pedal with hexacore DSP tech under the hood and the capability to support NAM and AIDA-X neural models and IRs.

It is also pretty damn stylish, with its road-ready anodized aluminium metal enclosure, its seven-inch hi-def touchscreen, and six high-resolution endless rotary knobs for making exacting adjustments to the many parameters.

The Finnish bass amp and effects specialists has designed the unit to be endlessly customisable, promising ultra-low latency performance with the DSP engine and its operating system processing audio at 32-bit/48kHz, working hand in hand to present players with a bewildering array of effects and how to configure them in real-time.

Perhaps that’s where it gets the name Anagram; it is set up for swapping around sounds in blocks, making it easy to put together some seriously byzantine signal chains.

Players can run 12 blocks in series, 24 in parallel, and as per the current style of tricked-out digital multi-effects – be they for electric guitar or an octave lower – you can run the Anagram in Preset, Scene and Stomp mode.

“Anagram represents the culmination of years of research and development,” says Marcos Barilatti, managing director, Darkglass Electronics. “We set out to create a product that not only pushes the boundaries of bass tone but also inspires musicians to explore new sonic territories.”

The Anagram ships with a whole bunch of preamps and more than 50 onboard effects, including overdrive and distortion, EQ, filters, compression and noise gates, modulation and pitch-shifting, reverb and delay.

The Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) integration extends your amp and effects options considerably, allowing you to choose from "thousands of high-quality amp and effect models, expanding tonal possibilities from analog warmth to futuristic textures".

Apportioning so much of the enclosure’s real estate to the touchscreen is a real statement of intent; this should be a hands-on experience, allowing you to switch between views and control every aspect of your signal chain. But you can also hook it up to the accompanying app to make deeper edits via the Darkglass Suite, where you can manage your speaker cab IRs and neural models.

On the rear of the unit you’ll find a 1/4” instrument input, an effects loop that also facilitates an expression pedal input, MIDI connections, headphones out, USB-C, a pair of 1/4” outputs, and a pair of XLR outputs – the latter featuring an “integrated, software-controlled” ground lift. A 9V DC power adapter and case is included in the price.

Other features include a tuner and global tempo feature for time-based effects, a looper that runs independently of the presets and an onboard mixer that allows you to adjust line levels for headphones, 1/4” outputs and XLRs, and to adjust global EQ.

The Anagram Bass Workstation is priced £899/$1199. See Darkglass Electronics for more details.

Seymour Duncan has just dropped a super-hot modding option for one of the most modded electric guitars of all time, with the electric guitar pickup specialist’s Jazzmaster Silencer offering players with one of the offset those classic tones without the hum.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available as a Vintage pairing, which presents you which a period-correct range of tones, surf rock, indie, the whole nine yards. But if you want to hit the front-end of your guitar amp a little harder, there is the Hot Jazzmaster Silence, which packs a bit more punch.

Both are “drop-in” options that will fit any standard Jazzmaster, and they are available individually or as a set, with parchment covers as standard but Seymour Duncan also offering a range of Jazzmaster covers for $5.99 each (choose from Black, Cream and White) if you wanted to switch things up.

The Jazzmaster Silencer pickups were designed by Kevin Beller, vice president of engineering, Seymour Duncan, and while they give you that big single-coil voicing of a Jazzmaster pickup they are technically a triple-coil design, in which one inner coil handles the tone, while another two get to work in nixing hum.

Both sets have an Alnico V magnet design. You can see the pole pieces poking through the plastic housing just like a regular Jazzmaster pickup – there is a good chance that no one will be aware that you have modded your guitar, but they might be wondering where all that 60-cycle hum has gone.

Jazzmasters, like any single-coil guitar, are vulnerable to unwanted noise and hum, especially when played through a well-stocked pedalboard, at high volume, and with a fuzz pedal or some drive in the mix.

All that noise adds up and gets in the way. And let’s face it, that’s pretty much the Jazzmaster’s target audience – the offset guitar crowd are pedal stackers, the indie-rock soundscaper. It’s not hard to see the appeal here. Can they do for the Jazzmaster what the P-90 Silencer did for the Les Paul Junior?

The Vintage Jazzmaster Silencers are described as “perfect for surf-inspired riffs, shimmering indie textures, modern pedal-driven explorations” with their hotter siblings doing much the same with a bit more oomph for “gritty surf riffs, glimmering melodies, grungy fuzzed-out rock, reverb-drenched shoegaze, and beyond”.

You’ll find a DCR reading of 11.39k at the neck, 9.30k at the bridge on the Hot Jazzmaster Silencer set, while Seymour Duncan lists the Vintage set at 9.19k for the neck pickup, 10k for the bridge.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available now, priced $278. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors has unveiled the Black Fountain Stereo, a delay pedal emulating the vintage sounds of a mechanical oil can delay in a pedalboard-friendly format.

Actually, forget pedalboard-friendly for a second, because this goes way beyond that. How about simply an oil can delay sound that’s practical for 21st-century guitar players. There’s a lot of functionality here that would have blown Ray Lubow’s mind if you were to show him it back in 1959 when he filed the patent application for his oil can delay. And it expands upon the original mono versions of the Black Fountain that OBNE has released over the years.

At its core, the oil can sound has a certain character to the repeats that sets it apart from its tape, analogue or digital counterparts. It has the warmth of an analogue delay but there’s some inherent modulation with it, and a little grit, too, that works so well with an electric guitar signal. Black Fountain presents players with a lot of ways to shape their repeats.

There are a lot of dials. That is the OBNE way. Little wonder OBNE gets designer Dan Pechacek to “explain it all” in a video whenever they drop a new design.

But here are the essentials. You have two separate controls for the left and right channel delays, Time L and Time R, plus the choice of six rhythmic subdivisions when you hold down the tap tempo footswitch (yes, there’s tap tempo).

Tone dials in the warmth of the repeats. Grit dials in the amount of grit there in the repeats. Rate and Depth are there for adjusting the modulation. Between these you will find some sweet spots for sure.

There’s also a Feedback control, for setting the number of repeats, Dry and Wet controls to adjust how much unprocessed and processed signal is in your sound, and there is also a Space control that might be one of the three mini-dials but seems integral to how this will sound, allowing you to set the Black Fountain up for mono operation, to adjust the stereo width, and to add diffusion once you turn it past noon.

There are two soft-relay footswitches. One turns the pedal on and off and the other is a tap tempo/aux footswitch that, if you hold it down, gives you infinite feedback. A cool feature.

It also operates as a preset switcher. That’s right, we have presets here. We also have full MIDI connectivity, and you can assign any one of these knobs to an external expression pedal.

Black Fountain is not so much a straight-up oil can delay simulator, it’s a full-on workstation. And it comes in three different colourways: Terracotta, Cream and Slate. Feed it 9V DC and a minimum of 350mA from a pedalboard power supply and you’re good to go.

Priced $299, it is available now. See Old Blood Noise Endeavors for more details.

Lollar has got something special for Stratocaster owners looking for a tone pick me up for their guitar, and even in a world in which there are countless aftermarket electric guitar pickup options for the Strat in your life, the Tacoma, Washington-based company’s Super-Caster set might just be something different.

If you were in Anaheim this winter you might have seen these already. Lollar was showing them off at NAMM, attraction plenty of attention from the likes of Mateus Asato. For a start, they don’t look anything like your typical aftermarket Strat set. Lollar is housing these in an open-topped metal ring, and has given them a sort of gold-top vibe courtesy of a brash mesh insert.

There is something kind of Coodercaster about the Super-Caster pickups and we we are very much there for that – and for all that these are really quite different, they’ll occupy the same footprint as a regular Strat single-coil.

The Super-Casters are designed around Lollar’s “Broiler” pole pieces, which are larger and longer. Lollar says its unique wind will give you a “punchy, present sound” with more output, and altogether a bit more meat on the bones.

But it depends where your five-way pickup switch is sitting. That middle position is underwound for more clarity and definition, and that “classic chime and glassy Strat ‘quack’” that works so well on its own and mixes up nicely when combined with the neck or bridge pickup for those in-between tones. You know the ones, playing triads and rhythm-lead through a tube amp just on the edge of break-up, they'll give you John Mayer guitar face.

Kevin Moe, production manager at Lollar, says the Super-Caster started out as an experiment in trying to make a humbucker. It wasn’t working for him but when transferred the idea of a single-coil platform, stacking the two coils to make “basically one big magnet” suddenly they had something promising to work with, and it sounded good when they stuck it on an electric guitar.

“It was pretty clear when we put it in a guitar that the thing just lit up and we had something on our hands,” he says. “The coil itself is fairly similar to a lot of other Strat designs that we make but the magnets really set it apart. It’s a really large diameter. It is a taller magnet, so that gives it a distinctly different sound.”

The Super-Caster pickups are available individually ($135, gold $145) or as a set (from $405), and you can choose from chrome, nickel and gold rings.

The DC resistances read “Neck 5.8K, Middle 5.4K, and Bridge 6.2K” but don’t read too much into that, says Lollar. These are “loud and proud”. Check ‘em out over at Lollar Pickups.

Crazy Tube Circuits has just dropped one of the hottest overdrive pedals of the year. It’s called Venus. It made its public debut at NAMM 2025. It was inspired by the iconic BK Butler Tube Driver, and as such, it really is a crazy tube circuit featuring an actual vacuum tube under the hood.

The BK Butler came as a rack-mounted unit and as a pedal, and was famously played by the likes of Eric Johnson, David Gilmour and Joe Satriani. Venus should get you those tones but in more compact and pedalboard-friendly format, with top-mounted jacks on the Metallic Amber Sand die-cast enclosure.

You don’t need any special power supply either; feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and you are good to go – just make sure it is a high-current output that’s supplying a minimum of 500mA.

The controls setup is, well, much like a guitar amp. There is a three-band EQ. A Fat/Tight push switch adjusts the pedals low-end and lower-mids response, which can come in hand when switching between electric guitars with different types of pickups on them.

Volume adjusts the overall output. Drive dials in how much overdrive and saturation you want, while Bias might be the most interesting control of all, adjusting how much current is passing through the cathode tube. Run it fully clockwise for the smoothest sound. Below noon you can get some gnarly gated sounds. This will be a hard-working drive pedal.

“With ultimate versatility and tone shaping in mind, we set out to recreate a classic tube tone sculpture with modern refinements,” says CTC, “generating anything from a smooth, light tube overdrive, to a high-gain, nasty distortion within the realm of fuzz.”

Finally, there’s a Line Driver push button that makes sure you don’t lose any tone as your guitar’s signal passes through the pedal to the next pedal or your amp.

Note, no matter whether the line driver is active or not, Venus is always in true bypass.

Now, as to the tube itself. Crazy Tube Circuits has chosen an ECC832 for the job, a preamp tube it describes as an “oddball” mix of an ECC83 and an ECC82.

This should get you started, but players are encouraged to to experiment with alternatives. Venus will welcome a wide range of dual triode tubes, such as the ECC83/12AX7, 5751, ECC81/12AT7, 12AY7, and ECC82/12AU7. Judging by the demos, it sounds sweet indeed.

Venus is available now, priced £265/€299. See Crazy Tube Circuits for more details.

Benson Amps has unveiled signature pedal developed with Seattle-based indie-rock stalwart Jessica Dobson that will help you nail her Deep Sea Diver electric guitar tones – and a lot more besides.

The Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo was a lot time coming. It took over three years it took to design this. Dobson says the original idea was simply to pair a vintage fuzz with an vintage-sounding echo, but she and the Benson R&D team went down the rabbit-hole, delivering a pedal that turned out to be a platform for tone adventurists.

“One of my favourite pedal configurations has always been running my echos and delays before my dirt pedals to get unorthodox sounds,” says Dobson. “So, we started there and it morphed into a pedal than became bigger and wider than what we initially had imagined.”

You will be able to dial in that “skronky” gated fuzz sound that is all over the Deep Sea Diver canon. But what seems more likely is that you’ll find some strange tones to call your own. Dobson assures us that her fuzz-echo twofer contains multitudes.

“To call this simply a ‘gated fuzz pedal with an echo feature’ would be an injustice to its essence!” she says. “Beyond the splatty gated sounds, I wanted a fuzz that could get wooly and straight forward, or shake hands with my favourite gauzy My Bloody Valentine textures.

“I wanted it to clean up nice and work as a treble booster for my guitar solos, or sound like a foreign landscape of oscillation and interrupting textures. Simply put, it has become the most interesting and versatile pedal on my ‘board.”

The Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo pairs a three-transistor silicon fuzz circuit, inspired by mk1.5 and mk2 Tone Benders, and an echo circuit designed around the PT2399 CMOS echo/delay processor chip, a digital chip that was given a tweak by Benson so that it plays especially nice with the fuzz circuits

Although the PT2399 might be digital, it can be put to work on a delay with an old-school analogue quality, and that’s what we have here. It has been designed to be placed anywhere in the signal chain.

That footswitch does a lot of work. Hold it down and the pedal will oscillate on command. Players can switch up the order of the fuzz and echo effects by simply holding down the footswitch while powering the pedal up.

Benson recommends the echo into fuzz setting, in which the LED illuminates in orange. The LED is green when the fuzz circuit is before the echo. There are dials for Bias, Gate, Volume, Echo, Feedback and Rate. It takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing 100mA.

Priced £259/$249, the Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo is available now. See Benson Amps for more details.

Harley Benton has unveiled a pair of super-affordable pedalboard power supplies that feature an integrated lithium-ion battery that makes them rechargeable, your pedalboard portable, and could well be a life-saver for buskers or anyone who needs juice for their stompboxes but is not near a mains outlet.

The Thomann-owned budget gear brand is offering these new PowerPlant PowerBanks in two sizes, both with the capacity to serve high-current stompboxes such as feature-packed digital delay pedals and guitar multi-effects pedals.

The PowerPlant ISO-Li05 promises noise-free power from four 9V isolated outputs – two at 300MA, two at 500mA – and one non-isolated. The PowerPlant ISO-Li09 gives you eight isolated outputs and one non-isolated.

The non-isolated outlet on both units has a switchable 9V, 12V, or 18V output offering 2000mA, 1500mA and 1000mA respectively. One of the PowerPlant ISO-Li09’s eight isolated outputs has switchable 9V/12V/18V voltages supplying 500mA, 375mA and 250mA respectively, the other seven comprise five 9V/300mA outlets and two at 9V/500mA.

Each outlet has an LED status lights, taking some of the pain out of pedalboard troubleshooting. There are LEDs along the top of each unit to display the status of the battery.

The power bricks have a low-profile design that should make them easy enough to mount underneath many pedalboards. Both will also charge your smartphone, too, with a handy USB-C output.

Both PowerPlants are served by a 12V/2000mA adapter, which can charge the PowerPlant ISO-Li09 in three-and-a-half hours, and its smaller five-outlet sibling in approximately two hours.

When fully charged, the PowerPlant ISO-Li05 should give you a solid hour of playing time – that is with all outlets in use and the power brick operating at full capacity. The PowerPlant ISO-Li09 will give you around one hour, 45 minutes under similar operating conditions.

These PowerPlants ship with a bunch of cables for feeding your pedals the juice and the wall wart adaptor for charging the units or running them from the mains.

While we all recognise the importance of good, clean power for a reliable, noise-free pedalboard experience, few of us enjoy spending a lot of money on it.

Harley Benton’s ridiculously low pricing should takes some of the pain of out of power procurement. You can pick up the PowerPlant ISO-Li09 for just £99/$128/€118, while the PowerPlant ISO-Li05 is a snip at £75/$97/€89.

These are available now direct from Thomann. You can check out more details at Harley Benton.

There are all kinds of guitar tuners in this world. You’ve got your stompbox tuners, chromatic and strobe, rackmountable and clip-on, but have you ever seen a tuner that gives you that look of peak Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, EVH or Keef with a cigarette on the headstock – without the deleterious effect on your health? You have now – meet the Tunerette.

That’s right, the Tunerette is a clip-on chromatic headstock tuner that’s designed like a cigarette. No, it’s the sort of thing you would want to give to a 20-a-day smoker who is trying to quit, nor to an impressionable minor. And yes, it has a questionable public health message.

But quite honestly, anyone who doesn’t think smoking is bad for you is for the birds, and whatever gets people hooked on tuning their guitar, cravings first thing in the morning to get up and make sure their Stratocaster is bang in tune, that’s got to be a good thing.

The Tunerette was dreamed up by Dave Hinson. You might recognise the name – Hinson is the owner of Killer Vintage Guitars, in St Louis, is editor of the Vintage Guitar Price Guide, and a contributing editor to the Blue Book of Guitars. He knows his vintage apples.

He doesn’t strike us as the second coming of the Marlboro man but a man in his profession will absolutely consider being in tune as simply good hygiene – a mark of a sound grooming regime and a sign of good character. We would agree.

Hinson got the idea while driving through Oklahoma.

“Inspired by the legends of rock like Clapton, Hendrix, and Van Halen, he envisioned a tuner that not only paid homage to the golden age of guitar but also addressed all the gripes he had with existing headstock tuners,” says Tunerette.

The Tunerette might come in a box that’s like a pack of cigarettes, vintage tobacco marketing is the vibe, but this thing is serious about tuning. It has a bright LED display, is fully rechargeable via USB, and weighs just over an ounce.

“We advise removing any clip-on tuner before a performance,” reads the Tunerette disclaimer. “But with Tunerette if you leave it on, at least you won’t LOOK like an idiot!”

Well, quite. It does not say if it is compatible with Matchless amps but only a fool would try playing Smoke On The Water without sparking this little tuner into action. The Tunerette is available now, priced $49.95. See Tunerette for more details.

The BEAT Tour is a musical high-wire act. Here was Steve Vai, Tool’s Danny Carey and King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin performing ‘80s-era King Crimson classics Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair.

Nothing about that is easy. Vai had most of the songs down pat but even he couldn’t get to grips with the Frame By Frame riff at first, and had to reach out to Robert Fripp for advice. Following the tour, Belew had to get surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome – and what does that say about the material?

This was a very special kind of tour with a very special set of demands. Accordingly, it also required a very special rig, and in a video segment for Sweetwater’s YouTube channel, Vai reveals all, offering a guided tour of his epic pedalboard, the dual guitar amp setup that runs behind it, plus the guitar synthesizers needed to present that classic King Crimson material onstage. And, he says, his meticulously put together pedalboard was all the work of his long-serving tech Doug MacArthur.

“I don’t have anything to do with this,” says Vai. “I just say to Doug, ‘I would like that. I would like that. I would like that. And all of this beautiful looming and construction – the colour – he built everything. It is beautiful, but even more so, it’s clean and it works great, and it does everything I need.”

This footage should come with a warning. You will want to rewire your pedalboard after watching this. You might also be in the market for a new pedalboard power supply. Vai gives his CIOKS DC7 the highest commendation.

Of course, most player’s – even those performing live night after night – won’t require a ‘board like this. It’s not that Vai's is necessarily complex; it's that he has some powerful hardware on it.

Many of Vai’s stompboxes are commonly found, such as his trusty Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal and the Xotic EP Booster. Vai admits he was late to the party with the latter.

“This little EP Booster, I have never used it before except for this tour and I am so surprised by how often I’m using it,” he says. “It gives you a boost but it accentuates everything above 4kHz in a way that’s not painful, so that’s nice!”

There’s also an MXR Phase 90, his ever-present DigiTech Whammy, a Universal Audio UAFX Max preamp and dual compressor pedal and most intriguingly a custom-made MXR overdrive pedal that has no name as yet but it is finished in a Vai-friendly shade of green. Could this be a coming signature pedal, a take on his favourite green box, the Tube Screamer, or is it just a custom-job pinch-hitter? Watch this space.

That, however, is that as far as outboard pedals go. You’ll notice there are no notable absentees. There are no Boss digital delay pedals here. Typically, Vai would have two in his setup, each set to a different delay time.

Here, however, his Fractal Axe-Fx III amp modeller is driving the bus as far as effects go, with the centrepiece of MacArthur’s epic ‘board build a Fractal FC-12 MkII foot controller. And it’s really down to Vai’s discretion should he choose to use it and do the switching himself.

“Doug navigates it. He has another pedal like this right over there. And it’s quite a pleasure because throughout the whole show I don’t have to touch it. Doug does it. And there’s like what? 50 switches per song. That’s really nice. That, you can’t buy.”

Compare and contrast this rig with his usual touring setup, or with the stripped-down rig MacArthur put together in 2023 for Vai’s dates with the Metropole Orchestra, and you’ll find a lot of differences. But one thing remains constant. The most important footswitch of them all is the one that turns on Vai’s fan.

Check it out above, as Vai explains why he needs not one or two of his Synergy preamp units but four, all running in tandem with a Roland Jazz Chorus, and why this gig called for two Roland guitar synthesizers and a laptop onstage to program them. You can subscribe to Sweetwater’s YouTube channel here.

Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickup set for the blues superstar, and it is a Custom Shop replica of the ‘gray bottom’ single-coils from his “Greenburst” Stratocaster.

The competition is steep, but even so, the Greenburst is surely one of the coolest electric guitars in Bonamassa’s huge collection, even if it violates the established rules of vintage guitars – don’t have them refinished.

Well, all that stuff is for the vintage nerds, cork-sniffers and price watchers to argue over. Frankly, whoever had the idea to refinish this three-colour sunburst Strat from 1964 in Greenburst is a genius. It is beyond cool.

Bonamassa says he watched Michael Lemmo demo the Strat for Norman’s Rare Guitars and called the shop immediately. He was coming down. And it was love at first sight.

But it’s not just the finish that makes it special. This Strat was equipped with the hallowed ‘gray bottom’ pickups, and that made it a bona fide tone machine.

“The ‘gray bottoms’ have a little more high output – they have a punchier sound to them,” says Bonamassa. “[They] are indicative of the transitional logo ’64, ‘65s, and even into ’66, early ’67 Strats right before the Hendrix era.”

These Seymour Duncan replicas are wound to the exact same spec and, ceteris paribus, will sound exactly the same as Bonamassa’s Greenburst. They have period-correct wiring, staggered Alnico V magnets. There are of course some signature details.

The grey bottoms of these signature pickups are pad printed with Joe Bonamassa’s John Hancock. If you are among the first 500 to grab a set, you’ll find them in limited edition packaging, inside which will be a certificate of authenticity signed by Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. And you might just have the hottest Strat mod of the year.

If you’ve got a Strat – or a Strat-style guitar – whose tone could use a gloss-up. The Seymour Duncan Greenburst set could be it. It’s priced $375 and available now. Bonamassa says you will hear the difference.

“When you play, you feel there’s a weight and a sustain underneath the strings, which doesn’t always happen, especially if you’re pretty clean,” he says. “Sometimes if they overwind a Strat pickup if they they lose the clarity, but you get the power. The ’64, ’65, ’66, those tend to have a nice combination [of clarity and power].”

For more details, head over to the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.

Keeley Electronics and US gear retail giant Sweetwater have joined forces for an exclusive guitar effects pedal series that offers overdrive, fuzz and reverb pedals at a most-agreeable $99 price point.

The range comprises the Super Bass Overdrive and Distortion, the Suns Ultravoid Fuzz and Soft Reverb and it is available now.

All three are original designs with some familiar hallmarks. Longtime fans of Robert Keeley’s designs might recognise some of the Suns Ultravoid Fuzz from his Moon Op Amp Fuzz, a fuzz pedal that entered our orbit in 2022 promising rich, saturated Pink Floyd-style fuzz sounds for the David Gilmour obsessives out there.

The Suns Ultravoid Fuzz is like this but with a tweaked lower-end response. Expect a tighter fuzz, “sharper and more focused” with LED clipping that responds to your picking dynamics and yields lots of juicy harmonic content.

One of the themes of this collaboration is simplicity. You’ve got Level, Filter and Fuzz dials, and a footswitch to engage/bypass the effect.

The Super Bass Overdrive and Distortion is an amp-in-a-box overdrive pedal and there are no prizes for guessing which legendary British guitar amp brand inspired it. Once more we have a simple control setup with Level, Tone and Drive dials plus a toggle switch for Open and Closed voicings. “

This supercharged amp-in-a-box pulls no punches in channeling the hallmark haymaker that inspired it,” says Sweetwater, so expect vintage Marshall-inspired tones – Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, EVH et al – from this JFET-driven circuit. This should be one hard-working dirt pedal.

But maybe we have saved the best for last with the Soft Reverb. Again, it’s so simple. Just two dials, Dwell and Level? Brilliant.

And there are three different reverb algorithms to choose between, with a three-way switch offering spring and plate voicings for your everyday reverb needs, and the Soft Focus ‘verb that gives the pedal its name.

You’ve got dreamy shoegaze, old-school spring and the ever useful plate reverb all in one pedal.

Guitarists looking to fill some spaces on their pedalboards would do well do check these out. All three are designed and built in the USA. For more details and specs – and to order – head over to Sweetwater now.

They say you learn a new thing every day. So here’s yours for today: have you ever wondered why guitar strings are colour-coded? Not really? Anyway, in a recent interview with Billboard, D’ Addario CEO Jim D’Addario has revealed the real reason – and there’s an environmental friendly premise behind it.

"In the early 1990s, a package of strings had an envelope for each of the six strings," Jim recalled. "A paper envelope for each one, identified for each note, in a vinyl pouch with a fancy label. So there was a minimum of eight pieces of packaging."

"Sometimes there was a little advertisement as well," he added. While, a guitar string package might look just like any other, the secrets are on the inside. As D’Addario explained, cutting down on all the unnecessary waste was actually an idea that originated from his daughter.

"My daughter Amy was in high school, and they were studying environmental friendliness and recycling and packaging, and I was changing my strings on the bed and I had all this garbage when I was done. She said, 'You should really do something about that, that's really criminal, you're putting so much junk in the waste-stream just to change a set of strings.’”

So what has this got to do with the colour-coding on the ball end? Well, D’Addario came up with an ingenious ploy: "I came up with a system of colour-coding the ball end on the string a different colour, then coiling those together in one corrosion-resistant plastic bag and having them colour-coded, so the silver one is this note, and the brass one is this note."

In Jim’s estimation, his scheme eliminated around 75% of the packaging. Multiply that by all the thousands of string packages that are sold around the world every day and you have cut out a hell of a lot unwanted packaging waste. Amy D’Addario was doubtless very proud of her dad.

So now you know.

D’Addario has launched the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit, a wireless pedalboard power supply that offers over 10 hours of playing time from a single battery charge.

At the heart of the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit is a rechargeable 10,000mAh Portable Power Cell, a real beast of a battery that can handle all the power needs of an average-sized pedalboard.

Not only can it be used to run your pedalboard wirelessly, you can hook it up to USB-C and use it as a regular power brick. D’Addario promises a low-noise performance, courtesy of its its patent-pending Gateway hub, which applies some advanced noise filtering to make our dreams of ultra-quiet – not to mention consistent – 9V power a reality.

The kit has everything you need to supply outboard power to your pedalboard. Alongside the power cell and the Gateway you have the obligatory hook and loop fastener, and best of all there is D’Addario’s adjustable daisy chain that allows you to adjust the length of the power plugs and cables, measuring them to fit with your pedalboard setup without excess wires everywhere. Neat freaks rejoice.

Being ever-concerned with noise, we would like to hear all this in action to see how it copes with external electrical sources and the noisier pedals on the ‘board.

D’Addario has a solution for the latter; it's XPND Noise Isolator, sold separately for £43/$55 can be placed between the power supply and the problematic pedal, taking the noise out of your signal path with "true galvanic isolation".

Given the modular nature of the XPND accessories eco-system, many of these products can all be used together. D’Addario says the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit should fit most pedalboards, and it looks easily mountable on your typical rail-style ‘board.

Also available in the XPND range is the XPND DIY Pedal Power Cable Kit (£62/$79), which wireless power or not is a godsend for tidy ‘board setups, allowing you to create custom cable lengths to connect your pedals to your power supply. If you want something adjustable, then the aforementioned daisy chain system is available at £54/$69.

For more details, head over to D’Addario.

Electro-Harmonix has expanded its pedalboard space-saving Pico series with a tiny looper pedal with a big performance. The Pico 360+ offers a maximum loop recording time of six minutes – or 360 seconds, as the name suggests – and a heap of features that bely its modest enclosure.

And this thing really is small. Just look at the picture below of the Pica series lined up alongside each other. All but the most crowded pedalboards would have space for this little guy.

As you’d expect from EHX, the Pico series is accessibly priced at $137 street and is packing a few surprises.

Somehow, the New York-based guitar effects pedal specialist has managed to squeeze four knobs on here, with controls for Loop Level setting the output level of your loops, while Dry Level adjusts the output level of the dry signal coming from your instrument. It should be as easy as pie finding a useable mix between your loop and your guitar’s signal.

The Loop dial, meanwhile, is indented so you can cycle through loops 1 to 11. If the memory slot has a loop the little (everything is little) MEM LED glows orange.

Another cool feature regards overdubs. When the Pico 360+ is in Overdub mode, turn the Overdub dial to control the output volume of previously recorded loops, or even set up the unit as a long echo delay pedal.

But the control was designed for people to get creative with loops beyond laying down a foundational rhythm and playing over it. EHX plants the soundscaping suggestion, so perhaps pair it with some fuzz, delay and reverb and see where that takes you.

There are also some super-practical features, like user-assigned Overdub/Playback order so that you can change the mode after your loop – choose Overdub for layering on more sounds, Playback to use that loop as your accompaniment.

Furthermore, you can smooth out transitions by setting a fade out time for your loops between one and 10 seconds.

This being a mini pedal, the footswitch has to do a lot of work; press it for loop record, playback and overdub; hold it down for undo, redo and erase functions. Another LED at the top of the pedal lets you know whether you are recording, playing or in overdub mode.

In terms of its technical bona fides, you've got quote/unquote high quality, uncompressed audio, with 24-bit A/D/A, 44.1kHz Sample Rate.

The Pico 360+ Looper is powered by a 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply (no room for a battery), will draw 100mA, and it is available now.

For more details, see Electro-Harmonix.

fBehringer has launched another super-affordable clone of a holy grail vintage stompbox, this time recreating the legendary Maestro BB-1 Bass Brassmaster for the princely sum of $69. And this repro, the Bass Brassmaster Fuzz, is a dead ringer for the original fuzz pedal.

Dead ringer? No pun intended. That could describe the effect itself, an octave fuzz, originally voiced for bass guitar but a circuit that does some magical things to electric guitar too. The BB-1 was nasty, weird, brilliant, a threat to your amp’s speaker cone and a radical thing to expose your bass signal to. The Bass Brassmaster Fuzz recreates all this.

Even on paper, the circuit sounds nuts. This is an octave bass fuzz with an onboard dual-voice ring modulator, opening up a full spectrum of harmonically unorthodox overtones.

There pedal has three knobs and two slider switches. The Sensitivity knob dials in how much fuzz is applied to your signal. The Brass knob controls the level of the fuzz. The most important control is the Bass Volume control, because controls the wet/dry blend, allowing you to keep as much of your clean signal as you like, giving you the option of having full-on chaos but clarity too.

The Brass slider switch toggles between two voicings, with the second packing more midrange, which could be in invaluable when trying to make yourself heard in a mix.

The Harmonic switch selects your filter, toggling between high-end harmonic content and low-end. It’s this sort of tweakability that makes it work whether your playing bass or guitar, rhythm or lead.

Behringer is often known for its use of plastic housings but these vintage reproductions have them reverting to heavy duty metal enclosures. The connections can all be found on the top of the unit. The Bass Brassmaster Fuzz takes 9V from a DC pedalboard power supply and is true bypass.

It follows a busy period for Behringer with the company recently launching a the Centaur Overdrive, a $69 clone of the Klon Centaur overdrive, and the ’69 Vibe, a similarly priced clone of the Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe. And it’s not just guitars.

Only yesterday it launched the JT Mini, a $99 analogue synthesizer inspired by the Roland Jupiter-8, and the company has been in bullish form, calling out its critics who have accused it of being “a vaporware company”, in other words announcing products but not releasing them.

It wouldn’t be the first company in recent years to suffer from chip shortages that have affected synth producers worldwide, but Behringer says it is just getting started.

“Behringer – the ‘Vaporware Company’? Maybe. But only if vaporware means delivering more music-making tools than anyone else,” read a statement on Instagram. “Stay tuned. The journey has just begun!"

For more details, head over to Behringer.