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

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

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

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

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

Incredible scenes.

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

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

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

Orange Baby Terror

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

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

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

See Orange Amps for more details

Bad Cat Mod Shop Cub 15 tube combo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s priced £5,049/$5,999.

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

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

See Gibson for more.

Shergold Telstar 12-string

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

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

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

See Shergold for more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mooer Audio Meta FX

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

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

See Mooer Audio for more.

IK Multimedia Tonex Brown Panel signature collection

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

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

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

PRS Custom 24 Birds Of A Feather Limited Edition

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

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

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

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

Epiphone Billie Joe Armstrong

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

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

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

Harley Benton CLO-65SE Slate Blue

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

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

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

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

What is it?

Home practice sessions are something that benefit every guitar player and there’s plenty of gear options out there to facilitate that when it’s not possible to use a full rig, whether that be a headphone amp, affordable amp modeller, guitar plugins or a small practice amp that can be run at a reasonable volume. The latter being dominated most recently by the likes of the Positive Grid Spark and Boss Katana series and most comparable here, the Positive Grid Spark Go.

Blackstar has had the Beam Solo guitar headphone amp available for a while, and now that has been joined by the Beam Mini, a tiny desktop amp with speakers and a comprehensive set of practical features.

The Beam Mini looks and feels classy with a textured rubberised finish and sits solidly on any table with its controls easily accessible on the top. It takes its power from any five-volt (500A) USB-C charger like you would use to charge your phone – a cable is provided with the unit.

A full charging session will give you 18 hours of playing time. You plug your guitar into a socket on its right cheek, and there are headphone and USB sockets on the rear.

The headphone socket will also handle headsets with mics should you wish to input vocals, while the USB socket facilitates recording via the built-in audio interface with multiple audio inputs and outputs.

The unit is not only a source of guitar tones but also uses a Bluetooth connection to function as a speaker for music streaming, which you have a choice of playing along with.

Blackstar has really paid attention to acoustic design here and the combination of the sealed, acoustically-tuned cabinet with two full-range drivers and auxiliary bass radiator units puts out an extremely powerful sound for such a small device, with expansive imaging courtesy of Blackstar’s Super Wide Stereo technology.

Specs

• PRICE: $229 | £169 | €189
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Portable practice amp
• FEATURES: 5x presets, Bluetooth audio streaming, removable carry strap, USB audio interface, app with tuner, metronome and more 
• CONTROLS: Power button, Bluetooth pairing button, Patch, Gain, EQ, FX, Volume, SpeedDial
• CONNECTIONS: Standard instrument input, 1/8” stereo headphone output, USB
• POWER: Internal Lithium-ion battery charged via USB (18 hours’ use on a full charge)
• DIMENSIONS: 152 (w) x 89 (d) x 79mm (h) 
• CONTACT: Blackstar Amplification

Usability and sounds

The full functionality of the Beam Mini is accessed wirelessly via the Beam app, which is available for iOS and Android, but the physical unit itself is usable straight out of the box and perfectly capable of standalone use without a phone in sight.

There are five user-defined patches stored onboard and accessed from the top panel, which has a small array of buttons to access various aspects of the sound to be adjusted by a rotary SpeedDial. Basically, you can choose your patch and adjust the Gain, EQ, FX and Volume – the white light Beam intuitively illuminates in line with any changes you make.

The patches are constructed in the same way as those in the ID:X Floor pedals. You get a Pre-FX in front of your chosen amp, then the amp followed by a fixed chain of three effects (modulation, delay and reverb), all passing through Blackstar’s proprietary IR-based CabRig DSP. All of this is easily set up in the app, which has very clear visual representations of everything – just pair up your phone and the Beam Mini over Bluetooth and you’re good to go.

The 12 modelled guitar amps include several Blackstar models such as the St James, plus the brand’s Ampton range of modelled classic amps, which includes Fender Twin, Vox AC30, Marshall Plexi and JCM800, Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier and Peavey 5150. All have fully adjustable conventional controls and you get Blackstar’s ISF to adjust the tone stack characteristics from UK (Marshall) to USA (Fender) sounds.

You also get some bass amps and an acoustic preamp. The CabRig facility gives you a choice of six cabinets with either a mic’d sound via a choice of virtual mics, or the ‘In the Room’ option, which works really well in a practice situation, offering more of the experience of standing next to an amp while you play.

With 35 effects available to populate the pre- and post- effects slots, there’s a wide range of flavouring to complement the amps and create quality, playable tones for a wide variety of musical styles – something that is reflected by the factory-programmed patches provided by Blackstar in the app.

What really sets the Beam Mini apart, though, is that besides all of the modelled sounds provided by Blackstar you also get access to a humongous range of amp captures. Blackstar has teamed up with Neural Amp Modelling pioneers Tone3000 for access to the open-source NAM platform, including the recent A2 capture technology.

Scroll down to the bottom of the Blackstar amp menu and you can engage NAM and scroll through its range of snapshot captures of physical amps and rigs for selection for placement in your signal chain (at the moment you can’t have a Pre-FX with it, but you can add the post-FX).

Checking out the captures, I found some excellent tones among them ranging from staple amps to weird-and-wonderful curios. Yet, as anyone can upload their own captures, there are also plenty that are a bit lacklustre. However, sort out the wheat from the chaff and you’ve got access to a cracking range of sounds, playable straight from the hardware for free.

The Beam app also comes with a metronome and a range of backing tracks in various styles that you can stream into the unit and play along with, but you can also stream any music you want into it, which is where an update expected in late summer will offer even more potential for practice.

In August 2026, Beam Mini will be able to integrate Moises AI stem separation, letting you isolate or remove instruments from any song, thus you should be able to take any song and remove the guitar part, allowing you to play your own part along with the band instead.

The other side of that coin is that if you’re struggling to learn a particular guitar part, you may be able to isolate it from the backing and the vocals to hear it with clarity.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★★

The Beam Mini packs all the elements you need into a fully portable practice amp and does it in style for a very reasonable asking price.

MusicRadar verdict: It’s a somewhat different take on a dirt pedal, and probably not designed for chasing what we generally think of as traditional guitar/amp tone. But it offers an alternative set of flavours and textures and is especially useful for anyone who records DI guitar. More colours in that paintbox is no bad thing.

Hands-on videos

Blackstar

The Studio Rats

Peach Guitars

• "The amp and effects modelling unit for those who’d rather play than get bogged down in too many details" Blackstar ID:X Floor Two review
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Blackstar Amplification have taken Doug Aldrich’s super-juicy, super-hot 100-watt signature Ruby head and turned it into a compact five-watt tube amp combo that’s loud enough for the studio and small stages, quiet enough that you can crank at home without bothering the dog.

If you need any more proof that pets – neighbours, spouses, sensitive houseplants, too – will not be bothered by the new DA5 Ruby, just look at the picture at the top of the page; Aldrich’s magnificent dog endorses this new amp, too.

Aldrich insists the new amp might be smaller but it has all the same electric guitar tone as its larger sibling.

“I’ve always believed that great tone shouldn’t be reserved for the big stage,” he says. “The DA5 Ruby changed everything for me – all the character, all the punch, all the attitude of my live rig, but something I can plug in at home and just play.”

Blackstar has retained the same push-pull tube architecture of the larger head, using a using a 12BH7 power valve to give you the same dynamics, feel and compression as the larger amp. And there is onboard power scaling for those late-night sessions (and anyone who is woodshedding in an apartment block).

“Combined with Blackstar’s Power Reduction, players can enjoy authentic valve performance all the way down to 0.5 Watts without sacrificing tone,” says Blackstar, who describes the “core signal paths” of the DA5 as being directly based on Aldrich’s touring amp, the DA100.

The speaker, however, might well be the star of the show. This 50-watt 12” driver was co-designed with Aldrich, with the former Dio and Whitesnake guitarist involved with voicing it. It allows the DA5 Ruby to punch well beyond its weight.

“The speaker is the secret weapon,” says Aldrich. “It just has this size and weight to the sound that you don’t expect. That’s the magic.”

The DA5 has two channels with four switchable voices. You have Blackstar’s patented ISF feature, its onboard CabRig DSP simulator with three user presets for direct recording. You can record direct via USB-C or balanced XLR.

There is also a stereo headphones output for silent practice. And Ruby by name, ruby by nature; it shares the same red vinyl aesthetic as its sibling. Each amp ships with a footswitch and a COA hand-signed by Aldrich.

“It’s killer,” says Aldrich. “It’s got all the tones from the original DA100 Ruby but in a five-watt combo and I love it so much.”

The DA5 Ruby is priced £669/$849 and is available now. See Blackstar Amplification for more details.

Marshall has unveiled its first signature guitar amp in 14 years with the launch of the Billie Joe Armstrong 1959BJA.

This is one tube amp we did see coming; everyone saw it coming after the Green Day frontman used it onstage during the Super Bowl LX show. Who couldn’t fail to notice that alongside those oversized Marshall stacks there was a Super Lead finished in baby blue vinyl, with a badge on the front that looked very much like a signature plate. Even Marshall shared the image.

Well, the amp is here, and while it is a Super Lead, built from the same cloth as the 1959HW, it arrives with the so-called “Dookie Mod” – which gives you a master volume on what would have traditionally been a non-master volume head, and an under-the-hood tweak that gives you Armstrong’s signature tone, namely more gain, and a bit more meat on the tone.

This is for overdriven power chords that have been down the gym, and it is the sound that Armstrong and long-time Green Day producer Rob Cavallo were chasing when recording Dookie.

“Billie Joe’s guitar sound is instantly recognisable,” says Steph Carter, culture marketing director at Marshall. “From the moment you hear those opening chords on Dookie, you know exactly who it is. Working with Billie to create an amp that captures that punch, aggression and clarity was an incredible project for our team.”

It’s a tone that a lot of people want to nail. Though they will need the space to play this thing; at 100-watts, with a quartet of EL34 power tubes, this amp will be loud.

Definitely, it is worth considering if you have been booked for, y’know, a sports stadium or similar.

The 1959BJA has a trio of ECC83 preamp tubes, the control surface – is your classic Plexi with the aforementioned twist, with controls for Presence, Bass, Middle, Treble, Master and Gain, the latter two marked in red.

Other aesthetic updates include the Dookie signature plating on the front, the BJA designation on the control panel, and that baby-blue finish matches Armstrong’s Blue, the Fernandes Stratocaster copy he has played since he was a kid. Right now Armstrong is feeling a little like a kid with this new amp hitting stores worldwide on 21 July.

“I’m so overjoyed to have my own signature Marshall amp,” he says. “These amps have been a part of my musical life, from my heroes down to little old me. Turn it the f**k up! …This amp is my ride or die. Play fast! Die trying.”

The Billie Joe Armstrong 1959BJA is priced £3,099/$3,999. See Marshall for more details.

Marshall says this is its first signature amp in 14 years, but it has released a few artist tie-ins recently, including the Sex Pistols 50th Anniversary JCM800, all pink and yellow like the Never Mind The Bollocks cover art, and the Jimi Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection, which comprised a hand-wired head and amp in black and purple, and a matching Dunlop Fuzz Face.

What is it?

There aren’t many who don’t know at least a little about who Ed Sheeran is. With his own album sales totalling over 200 million, and having written/collaborated with the likes of Taylor Swift, One Direction and Justin Bieber, he is one of the most recognisable musicians on the planet.

He is also a pretty handy acoustic guitar player and has delved into the world of gear with products such as the Sheeran by Lowden guitars and the Sheeran Looper. Now it’s acoustic amplification that is getting his attention, this time in the form of a collaboration with Orange with the Orange Outlowd range of acoustic amplifiers.

The range features 3W, 60W and 100W amps named the ES3, ES60 and ES100 respectively. It's the diminutive ES3 that I have in front of me for review - an amp with very few bells and whistles, built to facilitate home practice with your acoustic guitar.

You may be thinking, as I am, what is the point here? Acoustic guitars are, for the most part, more than loud enough to use at home without an amp, and generally speaking sound great on their own too. So, why would anyone need an acoustic amp designed only for home practice?

Well, let's keep an open mind and find out.

Specs

• Launch price: $199 | £149 | €179
• Type: Acoustic amplifier combo
• Origin: China
• Output: 3 Watts RMS
• Speaker: 4” full range
• Channels: 1
• Controls: Volume, Reverb, Shape
• Connectivity: ¼” input, Bluetooth connectivity
• Power: Rechargeable battery, charged via USB-C
• Weight: 3.18Lbs/1.44kg
• Dimensions: 165x145x125mm/6.5”x5.71”x4.92”
• Contact: Orange

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

For something that measures only 165x145x125mm, the amp is surprisingly weighty. At 1.44kg, it's not problematic, but instead gives me confidence that the ES3 is built to last. The three controls and single button (for Bluetooth) follow suit and feel robust in use, as does the leather strap that the amp comes with. So far, so good.

The amp sports the classic bright orange finish associated with the brand, and it’s an aesthetic that pleasingly oozes the iconic nature of Orange Amplifiers.

The thick sides are finished in a rather bougie feeling tolex, and the tough metal grille on the front makes the unit feel like a real amp. I point this out because a lot of products of this size can come across a little toy-like, but not the ES3. It feels like a high-end, miniature version of a quality amp, rather than a budget version of something nicer.

Lastly, looking at the bottom of the unit, there are thick rubber feet to stop the amp from sliding about a desk. Alongside those feet is a join in the Tolex that could perhaps be a little neater; however, this is definitely within nitpick territory. What we have is a little amp that is very well put together, and perhaps importantly, won't look out of place in your front room.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

In use, this amp is almost as easy as it gets. Three controls: Volume, Reverb, and Shape. Volume is self-explanatory, and Reverb adjusts the overall reverb level without cluttering ther mind with more in-depth parameters. This works as long as those parameters have been calibrated well, which, in this case, they have.

Shape is a little interesting, as Orange says that turning clockwise reduces mid-range frequencies and brightens the sound, whilst turning anti-clockwise adds mid-range and reduces brightness. Honestly though, most are just going to approach this like a tone control.

I say ‘almost as easy as it gets’, because indicating what each control does, are Orange’s trademark icons rather than text. These are a long-established part of the Orange brand, but, to be blunt, I'm not a fan.

There is a whole suite of these icons across the gear in the Orange catalogue. Some are easy to figure out; others use things such as sine waves that beginners won't understand or abstract symbols that are annoying in the, admittedly small, amount of thought they take to translate.

I know that it saves space and gives the amps something that is aesthetically interesting, but other brands have no problem using words or abbreviations to get the function across in similarly tight spaces. Let’s just do that.

On the ES3, the speaker icon above the Volume control is pretty clearly indicative of the control's function, but I’d argue that the use of a spring icon to indicate the reverb may not be obvious to some beginners, and the shape used to indicate the Shape control even less so.

Having said that, it won't take long for anyone to figure it out, and if you do find yourself stuck, a quick gander at the manual will see it concisely explained to you.

Beyond its function as an amp, it also operates as a Bluetooth speaker and is dead easy to connect to a device. Press the Bluetooth button, find it in your chosen device's list of Bluetooth connections, connect, and go. Handy for playing along with tracks, or as a standalone way to listen to music.

The ES3’s battery-powered nature makes the amp super portable, which, combined with the carry handle, gives it a massive tick in the convenience column. I didn't need to recharge the battery at all during the multiple hours of testing, so there is plenty of juice here too.

And that is it. Very few 'extra features', but as a result it’s a pretty straightforward piece of gear.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Testing with my Taylor 214CE and my Faith Venus, the general tone is surprisingly full for a 4-inch speaker. As expected with an amp of this size, there is not a ton of low end, but there is enough to keep the guitar sounding big when strumming those open chords.

With the Shape control set in the middle, it is a relatively full sound, with a nice midrange body that I find is often lacking in acoustic guitar amplifiers. The high end does not sound too ‘plinky’ at this setting, which is impressive for such a small thing.

Turning that shape control clockwise does exactly as earlier described, but I find that it quickly gets into the aforementioned plucky, thin high-end thing often associated with acoustic pickups.

Similarly, turning anti-clockwise quickly gets too dark, resulting in a loss of definition. So, for best results, keep that shape control in the middle and make only small adjustments to suit your guitar. In my case, I left the control untouched for my Taylor's impressive ES1 system, but turned slightly anti-clockwise to roll off some highs for the Faith's Shadow pickup.

The reverb is the highlight for me, as it is a lovely, bright-sounding hall-like 'verb that wraps the guitar in a very rewarding sense of space. Even at the higher settings, which is more than most will ever need, the reverb manages to stay out of the way of the dry signal. Impressive, and a lot of fun.

Furthermore, it’s the reverb that answers my earlier question - what is the point here? The amp starts to distort the signal on both guitars with the Volume control around 75%, meaning that while it’s enough to get over the acoustic sound of the guitar, it's not enough for anything more than home practice.

As acoustic guitars project plenty of volume on their own, arguably we don’t need an acoustic amp at home unless it’s adding something inspiring or extra to the tone. And that’s where the reverb comes in.

I can see many finding the space that it adds to be an inspiring sound to play with, leading some to get more out of their home acoustic sessions. For those people, this amp will be worth it.

As a Bluetooth speaker, it again does an impressive job for its size. With my Google Pixel 9 Pro on full volume and streaming from Spotify, the speaker begins to distort with around 75% of the volume dialled in. Enough to fill a small room for casual listening, or a solo jam session.

Just like with the guitars, there is not an excess of low end here, but there is more than you would expect given that it’s a small 4-inch speaker. I also felt that, in this context, the midrange sounds a little scooped - hyping the hi-fi listening experience a bit too far. But, again, impressive for its size and a pleasant listening experience.

Verdict

From my own experience and a previous life as a guitar teacher, it didn’t take long before I concluded that the biggest hurdle for a lot of players is in the gap between the thought of playing and the action of doing so.

Whether you are getting some practice in or just playing for fun (I’d argue the latter is more important than the former), that gap usually involves some form of setup, for example, digging out the leads and amplifier for an electric guitar. One of the joys of an acoustic guitar is that it amplifies itself; you can just pick it up and go, therefore minimising that gap.

Plugging an acoustic guitar into an amp at home removes this benefit.

But the other side of the coin is that a good sound is always more motivating and inspiring to use. The Orange Outlowd ES3 undeniably improves the experience through its excellent reverb, and although it’s only loud enough for home use, it’s still loud enough to increase the volume of the acoustic you are using. As the simple creatures most of us are, more volume usually equals more fun.

So, whether this amp is worth it for you will depend on how much of a kick you get out of that fantastic reverb and the little extra volume. Some will find it pointless; others will find it to be a brilliant addition to their home setup.

MusicRadar verdict: The Orange Outlowd ES3 feels like a quality bit of gear that is built to last. It’s surprisingly full-sounding for a small amplifier, and does a good job moonlighting as a Bluetooth Speaker. The highlight is the lovely reverb, pleasingly adding some space to your home sessions. Yes, we don’t need to amplify our acoustic guitars for home use, but this amp makes it fun to do so.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Thomann

Guitar Center

Orange

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.

Ed Sheeran has joined forces with legendary British guitar amp brand Orange on a signature line of acoustic guitar amps, and they have launched global grassroots music campaign to support venues and encourage young and emerging musical talent to get out and play.

The Outlowd ES series comprises a trio of amps: the super-compact and portable ES3 acoustic amp, the flagship 100-watt ES100 acoustic guitar amp, and the ES60, an amp Orange describes as “the ultimate busking amp”.

Sheeran helped launched the Outlowd: Play It Home campaign – and the amps – on the streets of Ipswich, when he performed with music teacher Lianne Kaye on June 5. Sheeran gave his amp to a nine-year-old boy after the performance, with a year’s worth of music lessons.

Kaye cut her holiday in Malaga short for the opportunity, but didn’t realise she would be playing Ipswich Waterfront with Sheeran until the night before.

“I was sat in the airport and my flight was delayed,” she told the BBC. “My best friend sent a screenshot to our group chat and it was Ed [Sheeran] he put on his stories he was going to be in Ipswich and she was like ‘I don't think you're going to be on your own’. That’s when the penny dropped.”

The streets were where it started for Sheeran. He might pack out stadiums nowadays but he has not lost his love for busking, and urges other young and up-and-coming musicians to put themselves out there and take their sound to the street, to coffee shops, live music venues – to anywhere they can play in front of an audience.

“I think tiny venues are super important to learn how to perform and busking teaches you not to sweat the big stuff,” says Sheeran. “I wanted this project with Orange to feel honest to that – celebrating local musicians, local communities, and the idea that anyone can start somewhere.”

The key word, says Sheeran, is fun. Sometimes that gets forgotten.

“Playing music is a really fun thing to do and it should always be fun. It should feel like an escape,” he says. ‘Now I’m in my 30s, I just want to do things that I enjoy and get excited by. With this collaboration, it was like, would I use this? Is this something that I need in my life as a musician? And the answer was yes.”

The Play It Home campaign will travel to Guildford in England, Toronto, Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Bamberg in Germany, where local artists will perform in places of interest, with support from retailers. Cliff Cooper, founder and CEO of Orange Amps, says Sheeran wants to get more people playing.

“It’s a real pleasure to work with Ed,” says Cooper. “He is such a talented and caring person who does so much to introduce people into music”.

And he was also closely involved in the design of this Outlowd series. Each comes in the traditional citrus-coloured vinyl covering with a signature Ed Sheeran badge. And there’s something for all players here.

At £149/$199, the ES3 is the an eminently affordable option, a simple low-powered three-watter – just three dials for volume, tone and reverb – with Bluetooth and USB-C playback, and the option to run it off of a lithium-ion battery. Its slanted cabinet design should help it sound bigger than it looks.

The largest in the series is the 100-watt ES100. Priced £1,099/$1,499, it has two channels, a comprehensive suite of EQ controls, has an XLR input for your vocal microphone, and those 100-watts drives a lightweight Celestion neodymium 12” speaker.

There’s an effects loop too, and handily everything you need to access is on the control panel, with the on/off switch on the back. Again, the cabinet is slanted.

Finally, we have what Orange is calling “the ultimate busking amp”, the ES60. As the name suggests, we’ve got 60-watts under the hood, and this is the amp Sheeran used to launch the series in Ipswich. Again, you’ve got two channels, reverb.

There is a headphones output and an aux-in, and a balanced input with phantom power for your vocal microphone – in short, everything you need to play in the street, in the park, anywhere, and all for £499/$699.

And who knows where all that busking might take you. Ed Sheeran did all right for himself.

For more details, head over to Orange Amps. If you are in the US, note the Outlowd Ed Series is available exclusively via Guitar Center.

Here is some good news for all users of the Tone Master Pro – and for anyone with one in their shopping basket right now – Fender has just expanded its flagship amp modeller’s capabilities with a serious firmware update.

The update is free, available now, and comprises eight new amp models, eight cabinet emulations, and 15 guitar effects – plus there is a whole bunch of utilities, such as a second page of footswitch assignments (that means you have a total of 16 footswitches per preset),

This is Fender-heavy update, with some cult classics from its tube amp archive, digitalised for all your electric guitar tone needs. And with the Rumble 800 included in this version, maybe your bass guitar tone needs, too.

There are five Fender guitar amps in the update: the ’57 Champ, which could be the compact studio pinch-hitter you’ve been missing all your life; some silver panel combo royalty in the shape of the ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb, ’68 Custom Princeton Reverb; and there is the ’65 Twin Custom 15, which is a Twin but with a 15” speaker.

Your expanded cabinet options now include the compact 8” driver of the ’57 Champ, the 1x10 formats of ’65 and ’68 Princetons, plus the 1x12s from a ’65 and ’68 Deluxe. The aforementioned 1x15” of the Twin is also available plus there’s the Celestion G12H from an EVH 5150 1x12 and a 4x12 “British” cabinet loaded with G12Hs.

Speaking of EVH Gear, Fender has added all three channels of the 50-watt 5150 III 6L6 head here, which will mean fun times for any rock or metal guitar player.

There are lots of effects here, some of which will be familiar. There are guitar and bass overdrive pedals inspired by EarthQuaker Devices Plumes and Blumes respectively, a “Seventy Sixer Compressor” which, no prizes for guessing, is inspired by the UA 1176 compressor.

There’s also a Rockbox 100 inspired by the Scholz R&D Rockman X100 headphone amp, so all your Def Leppard tone dreams might indeed come true.

Some will be less familiar, with eight Fender-designed effects including Step Tremolo, Prismatic Delay, Step Filter Delay, Spectral Reverb, Cirrostratus Reverb and Cirrostratus Synthverb.

As for the rest of the new features, search has been improved, there is a new favourites filter, and there has been a redesign of the looper pedal function and the guitar tuner now allows you to toggle between needle and strobe modes.

For more information, head over to Fender.

What is it?

To say AI is everywhere right now is one hell of an understatement. It’s writing our e-mails, editing our photos, generating unsettlingly convincing videos, and now it has wormed its way into our guitar amps, too.

Okay, before we get into that, let’s rewind to 2019. It’s fair to say that Positive Grid didn’t just enter the practice amp arena; it crash-landed in spectacular fashion with the Spark. Here was an amp so clever, so downright fun, it turned the entire practice space on its head. Since then, Positive Grid has been tinkering away, spinning out multiple Spark variations, from the pint-size Spark Mini to the pocket-sized Go and the gig-ready Spark Edge.

​Fast forward to 2026, and the folks at Positive Grid have dropped the Spark moniker for its latest release, in a move that we can only assume is to diversify its lineup a little. The new Reactor is somewhat familiar to those who have used any of Positive Grid’s amps already, but it is different in some pretty significant ways.

This is Positive Grid flexing its creative muscles and taking a wild swing at the next big thing in digital amplification with a helping hand from AI – because it wouldn’t be a 2026 product release without the mention of Artificial Intelligence, would it? Except in Positive Grid's world, that means Amp Intelligence.

Available in 50W and 100W options, both Reactor models come loaded with custom 1x12 speakers. It’s worth noting that this is not an FRFR, like other Spark models; instead, Reactor features a standard guitar speaker. Both amps can also be switched from full power, 25W, or 1W.

Now, what really sets Reactor apart is its Amp Intelligence (perhaps a phrase the company is pivoting to in order to avoid some of the negative connotations around Artificial Intelligence in the guitar community lately). The company is focusing on something it calls Tone Memory here. The idea is more you play, the more this amp gets to know your style, helping you zero in on your signature sound faster every time.

Like Spark, this new amp runs on an app, but it is its own dedicated application. Where the Spark leans more into practice, Reactor is all about crafting, saving, and sharing tones. Within the Creator Hub, you have multiple ways to generate a tone by describing what you want, uploading a photo, sharing a song, and even asking the app to “fix" elements of your tone you're unhappy with.

Out of the app, the amp itself features a Boss Katana-esque top panel with a slew of tactile knobs for when you want to get hands-on with your tweaks. The rear panel is packed with everything the modern player wants: USB-C for recording, MIDI, an FX loop, Bluetooth, line-out, and headphones.

On top of that, two unique switches, Push/Smooth and Heat, let you sculpt your tone and gain structure further. Now, if you want to switch patches mid-performance, you’ll want to grab the optional Reactor Control footswitch. This is being sold separately for $149.

Specs

• Launch price: $349 | £349 | €349
• Type: Digital combo amp
• Origin: China
• Output: 50-watts
• Speaker: Custom 12"
• Channels: Clean, Warm, Grit, Crunch, Hi-Gain, Extreme
• Controls: Amp selector, Push/Smooth, Heat, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Master, Effects, Volume
• Connectivity: Guitar Input, Foot Control, MIDI In, Power Amp In, Line Out, Headphones, FX Loop, USB-C, Bluetooth audio, Bluetooth control
• Footswitch: Reactor Control six-button switch available separately for $149
• Weight: 22.9lbs / 10.4kg
• Dimensions: 460x420x200 mm
• Contact: Positive Grid

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

If you’ve handled any Positive Grid amp before, you’ll know the company doesn't really mess around when it comes to construction, and the Reactor keeps that tradition alive. It’s lightweight enough to schlep to rehearsal without breaking a sweat, but still feels solid and robust. The large rotary selector switch for selecting the various channels is stiff and turns with a satisfying click, and the Heat and Push/Smooth switches are equally tactile to use.

The optional footswitch – connected via cable or Bluetooth – balances a rugged dependability with a premium feel. That's just as well for $149. The switches have a smooth, confident action, and the layout’s intuitive enough that you won’t be tap-dancing in a panic mid-gig. Everything here feels like it’s built for the long haul, not just a few bedroom sessions.

That said, the looks are, well, perhaps controversial. Gone are the sharp red and gold accents of the Spark series; instead, you get a silver “R” badge and a metallic grille that perhaps leans a little too hard into a ‘90s solid-state aesthetic for me. It’s got a sort of Gallien-Krueger vibe. Honestly, it feels a little bland.

What’s more curious is that you have to search for a tiny Positive Grid logo tucked away in the corner. Sure, they want to distance Reactor from the Spark family, but visually, it’s not winning any beauty contests, and I think the majority of players wouldn’t know this was a Positive Grid product just by looking at it.

If you're going to use it live, though, rest assured. If you can get past the looks, I think the Reactor’s build will take a beating from the rigours of venues.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★☆☆

The first thing that comes to mind when using this amp for the first time is the ever-popular Boss Katana. The big channel selector knob is clearly labelled, and for the most part, this is an easy amp to navigate, but the effects section can be a little clunky at first. You’ll probably find yourself double-checking which knob does what, at least until muscle memory kicks in.

Each effect has two variants to select from, but instead of a colour change to indicate which one you have selected, here you have a solid colour and a blinking colour. I’ll be honest, that system isn't particularly intuitive for me, and I found myself referring to the manual to try and work it out.

The app is where things get both wild and a little weird. The interface feels like it was dreamt up by an AI art generator from last year. Some of the images look a bit off, and very, well, AI-generated. We have see-through Marshall-style stacks covered in roses, skulls coming out of combos, and cyber punk neon lights; it all feels a little tacky, and in a practical sense, it makes it difficult to understand exactly what style of amp you’ve selected.

As I mentioned before, there are a number of ways to generate a tone, but the one that I was the most excited to try was showing it a photo of my guitar and seeing what it would come up with. Sometimes it nails the model, as it did with my Gibson Les Paul Special, generating a ‘Bogner Blue P-90 Bite’ tone as well as a punk-inspired searing high-gain JCM-800 patch that actually rips.

Other times, the AI hallucinates and just makes up stuff that doesn’t exist. Showing it a photo of the new Epiphone RD, it came up with a fantasy Jackson signature model for Bill Kelliher of Mastodon, and spit out a “Stoner Crush Tone” that sounded more like a wet Marshall with chorus than anything truly heavy.

Using a song for generating a tone yields better, more consistent results. Loading up a couple of Tom Petty classics, the AI correctly gets that I want a clean-ish Fender-style combo with lush reverb and a touch of chorus to give me that faux-12-string jangle. This is where the Reactor could be a great starting point for players, and especially beginners, who want help getting the right tone to play their favourite songs.

When you tap on the “describe it” tab, you are greeted with a few prompts to help get you started. “A tone that sounds like a relaxing waterfall” is the first suggestion. Of course, I click it. I have absolutely no idea what that could possibly mean.

What is returned is three ambient, crystal clear, clean amps swamped with copious amounts of reverb and delay. I suppose that matches the prompt pretty well.

Having your entire amp built around AI is a bold approach, especially since the technology is still in its infancy, and as such, the AI’s results are a mixed bag. When it’s on, it’s magic. When it misses, you’ll probably just want to dial in your own sound the old-fashioned way.

There’s a learning curve for sure, and the ambition sometimes outpaces the execution. Like any AI, it takes time to learn which prompts work and which don't, but I feel like the learning curve would be eased by a cleaner, easier-to-navigate app. Having clear images of the pedals and amps would make a big difference to the user experience, like, why does the Dyna Comp compression need to be a transparent box with a glowing red heart? Show me a two-knob red compressor, so I know instantly what sound to expect when loading the patch. In my opinion, the app feels a little too chaotic and out there, which distracts you rather than helps you.

As for the Reactor footswitch, it’s a fairly simple and satisfying thing to operate. You can hook it up the traditional way with a cable, or if you want to feel like you’re living in the future, it also works with Bluetooth MIDI for wireless use. You can have it in one of two modes. Preset Mode allows you to switch between your favourite tones saved in your banks, or Effects Toggle Mode enables you to run it like a pedalboard, where you can turn on and off effects at will. It’s just a pity that it’s sold separately.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Once you wrangle your way through the app menus and AI hijinks, the Reactor actually sounds fantastic. Like the Spark, there’s a ton of great tones in this box, everything from sparkling cleans to gnarly high-gain dirt, all with that familiar Positive Grid polish. The high-gain models in particular are absolute standouts, keeping up with the best of the digital crowd.

The amp selector knob at the start of the control panel cycles through various amp modes, starting clean and working its way to the Line 6-esque Extreme setting. I must say, I like this approach a lot, and the Grit setting with the Smooth switch pressed and Heat setting three engaged is delightful. It's well, reactive, dynamic and just plain fun to play through and even better with a touch of reverb.

Moving away from the hardware and over to the app is a different story. Yes, there's a lot of sounds to choose from, but a lot of those killer tones are buried behind an ambitious AI system that sometimes feels more like a hurdle than a helper. Navigating through layers of preset folders and tone suggestions can get needlessly complicated, especially if you’re just trying to grab a quick, classic rock crunch or bluesy edge.

Still, it’s hard to stay mad when the amp actually delivers. BIAS fans will feel right at home with the tones at least, and the overall tonal quality is every bit as good as what you’d expect from Positive Grid’s top-tier Spark series. Annoyingly, you’ll find yourself wishing the interface just let you get to the goods a little quicker, but if you’re willing to put in a few extra minutes, there’s a goldmine of usable, gig-worthy tones here.

The effects are top-class too. Again, like the Spark, you have an abundance of stomps you can switch in and out, from utility essentials like gates and compressors to drive pedals, delays, modulation, and even a programmable wah pedal – and they all sound ace. Genuinely, the effects here give most of their competition a run for their money.

I do need to mention that while it looks like there is only one reverb available on the app - in stark contrast to the nine pedals available with the Spark app - there are actually multiple to choose from under the mode dial. You can choose from Room Studio A, Room Studio B, Chamber, Hall Natural, Hall Medium, Hall Ambient, and a collection of Plates. What is noticeably missing is a decent Spring, but we can live with that.

Double-tapping the effects icon in the app gives you access to different options. For example, with the drive section, you can choose from an OB Drive to a Rat Distortion and my personal favourite, the Big Muff. It is worth noting that the photos of the pedals are again AI-generated and look pretty horrendous. The Rat clone has a literal nose and teeth, while the Muff Fuzz looks like the inside of a Hoover bag. This is perhaps something Positive Grid can address over time.

Verdict

A gig-ready combo with a Katana-like layout and a handpicked set of Positive Grid’s greatest hits should’ve been a slam dunk. On paper, the Reactor ticks nearly every box. It’s portable, roadworthy, stacked with tones, and ready to slot straight into rehearsal or the stage. But what could have been a breakthrough is instead tripped up somewhat by its own ambition right now, saddled with an AI-powered app that pulls focus away from what it does best.

Of course, the hardware itself is hard to fault. The tactile knobs and rugged footswitch are built for more demanding gigging scenarios, not just bedroom noodling. Sure, the visual style might be divisive, and the branding’s a head-scratcher, but once you plug in, those gripes fade away.

The core issue is the app right now, which tries to be your sonic sherpa but too often leaves you scrambling through menus and oddball AI art in search of the tones you want. When the app’s AI gets it right, it’s genuinely impressive, but when it misses, you’re left scratching your head as it conjures up fantasy gear or nonsensical patches. There could be real magic here, but it’s buried beneath layers of novelty and a learning curve that some players simply won’t tolerate.

What’s more annoying is that sound-wise, the Reactor absolutely delivers. The amp models and effects are as good as anything in Positive Grid’s arsenal. The high-gain options are standouts, and there’s a goldmine of usable patches if you’re willing to dig. The effects roster covers everything from basics to boutique, and the tactile controls mean you can still go old-school and dial in with your ears, not your thumbs.

The Reactor is an amp with real potential, offering killer sounds and a robust chassis in a compact package. But with an app that’s more of an obstacle than an asset, Positive Grid’s bold leap into AI perhaps proves that the technology hasn’t quite caught up yet. Fix the interface, and this could be a modern classic, but as it stands, it’s a glimpse of the future that’s not quite ready yet.

MusicRadar verdict: A killer-sounding, road-tough amp that’s currently hampered by a clunky AI app, which is brilliant in flashes but not quite the revolution it wants to be. Fix the interface, and the Reactor could be a winner, but for now, it’s a rare work-in-progress for Positive Grid.

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Hands-on videos

Positive Grid

• Best practice amps: the best amps for guitar practice

Having redefined the practice amp with the Spark, Positive Grid is now applying its digital R&D magic to louder, high-output guitar amps for the stage, studio and home with the all-new Reactor series – 1x12 combo that lets players design tones via AI prompts.

This Reactor comes in 50 and 100-watt versions, each offering switchable single and 25-watt operation, and is one amplifier that you might want to take you phone out of your pocket to make full use of.

Out of the box, players have 24 amp types to play with, and then you would be forgiven for thinking that these Reactor combos were more of the same, digitally enabled modelling amps with a cornucopia of amp sounds to work with, presets to save your favourite sounds, yadda yadda yadda. But the accompanying app changes the calculus somewhat.

Under the hood, the Reactor amps tone-shaping powers are provided by Positive Grid’s Amp Intelligence technology, which has digitally taken apart and “decoded” more than 200 amplifiers at circuit level and can then use this secret knowledge to create tones out of the ether. It has analysed millions of tones.

These amps look familiar enough from the front. They have that clean modern design, the Reactor badge on the front of the grille cloth, the control panel on top. There is a lot going on, with Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble and Master knobs all holdovers from the analogue era, and a 6-way rotary dial with LEDs for amp type (Clean, Warm, Grit, Crunch, Hi-Gain, Extreme).

There is another 6-way dial for effects and a couple of mod switches, Heat, changes its feel and harmonic response without boosting the volume, and a Push/Smooth dial for lead and rhythm playing. "More heat means your tone is tighter," says Positive Grid. "Faster attack, richer harmonics."

But the Reactor combos are anything but familiar. They present us with an all-new way of dialling in an electric guitar tone.

Pick up the app, type in the kind of sound you want, and the amp will create it. You can be vague with this and type in an idea or you can get quite exacting, say, with the name of a track or a favourite artist. If words fail you – and with all the Reactor does, right now they are failing us – then you could upload an image. “Snap or upload a photo of gear, an object, a selfie or anything that inspires sound,” says Positive Grid, and the amp will do the rest.

There’s more. You can upload some audio or a screen recording and, like some digital myna bird in the Reactor’s brain, the Amp Intelligence technology will mimic the tone.

And we are not just talking about modelling existing tones, creating sounds from gear you can buy down the local guitar store. The Reactor amps can also create sounds out of nothing, effectively designing an amp that has never existed before.

It’s pretty wild and be sure to check out MusicRadar’s review of the amps for an idea of how this shakes out in practice.

Positive Grid has designed these with all the connections you’d expect. There is USB-C for direct recording, a line out with cab sim, an effects loop for bringing your pedalboard along for the ride and full MIDI connectivity.

We also have a power amp input, a headphones output, and your phone connects to the amp via Bluetooth.

The Reactor combos are also keenly priced, with the 50-watt version available for $349, the 100-watter for $449. The footswitch is sold separately for $149.

For more details, head over to Positive Grid.

What is it?

Fractal’s flagship Axe-Fx III amp and multi-effects processor may be a bit overkill for most of us, not just in its £2.5k asking price (and that’s without a foot controller) but also in the facilities it provides.

However, Fractal is, of course, aware of this and does provide more affordable stripped-down iterations of its modelling technology with the likes of the FM3, FM9 and the (effects only) VP4 Virtual Pedalboard.

The current FM3 MKII Turbo (retailing at £1,149) has been the entry point into the full Fractal amp and effects world up until now, but that’s all changed with the release of the new AM4, which makes the sounds more accessible to a larger audience.

It still has the same four-footswitch form factor and the same price point as the VP4, but where the VP4 has no amp modelling, the AM4 has a full quota of Fractal’s finest amp models alongside a choice range of effects.

Specs

• Price: $699 | £789 | €925
• Origin: USA
• Type: Amp and effects modelling floor pedal
• Features: Buffered bypass, 104 presets, tuner, tap tempo, noise gate and EQ on each preset
• Controls: Level, Select, Soft knobs (A, B, C, D), 6x buttons, Footswitches (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Connections: Standard instrument input, standard outputs L (mono) & R, Standard Send, Standard Return, Pedal 1 & 2, 1/8” headphone output, SPDIF In & Out, MIDI In & Out, USB
• Power: Supplied 9V DC adaptor, 1500 mA 
• Dimensions: 252 (w) x 162 (d) x 62mm (h) 
• CONTACT: Fractal Audio

Usability and sounds

The AM4 falls neatly into the ‘compact modeller’ category with a size and shape that’s both eminently portable and suitable for slotting into a pedalboard alongside your other pedals. While its main use in a live scenario is direct connection to a PA system or an FRFR speaker, there’s no reason you couldn’t use it as an effects processor with a conventional guitar amp.

What you’re getting is a unit with 104 presets onboard in 26 banks of four, each preset comprising a signal chain of four blocks – one amp and three effects is the norm, but you can have four effects blocks.

Now, while four blocks may seem paltry to anyone who is used to longer signal chains, it really can be enough to cover many contingencies because those blocks have an inherent flexibility. Every block has four channels, each with a different model or parameters.

This means you can have four different amps in your amp block and four types of delay, for example, or simply one delay with four different delay times in your delay block. The amp block is of particular note as it has facilities that might otherwise have used up several blocks – it doesn’t just have the amp but also contains the full associated cabinet modelling with built-in stereo room ambience, plus a footswitchable boost.

For each preset you also get four Scenes, each Scene basically a snapshot of which blocks are active and which channel is selected for the block – this means you can call up a wide variety of sounds by switching Scenes.

Everything in a preset can be quickly set up or tweaked from the unit itself – there’s no touchscreen, but using the buttons and soft knobs is intuitive. Alternatively, you can use the excellent AM4-Edit software on a connected computer.

Changing between the three primary modes of operation (Preset, Scene, Effects) is implemented by pressing footswitches 1 and 2 together and then making your selection via one of the other footswitches, each corresponding to a different mode shown above in the display. In Preset mode you can gaplessly select the four presets in a bank with the footswitches, and bank changes are implemented by a press-and-hold of footswitches 1 or 4.

Scene mode lets each footswitch call up the different scenes within a preset, while Effect mode is for turning effects blocks on and off and, in the case of the amp block, turning its boost on and off.

There’s also an Amp mode of operation that assigns each of the four channels from the amp block its own footswitch, so you have access to four independent amp-and-cab setups.

While the signal chain may not be as complex as that of the Axe-Fx III, the AM4 still has its component-level physical amp modelling and DynaCab cabinet emulation, which makes for a classy range of sounds with excellent playing response.

You get more than 240 different amp models – albeit some being different channels of the same amp – with all of the big hitters covered, as well as a wide selection of more obscure and boutique examples. As for the cabs, there are more than 45 DynaCab models, all with real-time visual mic positioning, and there’s also the option of using your own IRs.

Effects are well represented by a selection of 80-plus drive models, loads of reverbs and delays, many modulation types, and compressors and wah pedals. While there’s no dedicated pitch shifting, there is some for shimmer in the reverb block.

The AM4 comes well stocked (22 banks) with usable pre-programmed presets for use straight out of the box or as advanced starting points for your own tweaks. A lot of these are in the format Drive>Amp>Delay>Reverb, which may be all you need. You can also choose from 16 different effects blocks (a maximum of two of any type) to easily set up your own chain, and if you need to free up blocks it’s useful to know that you can have reverb and delay in a single block by choosing one of the Echo models for your reverb block.

If you want to use other effects pedals with the unit, there’s nothing to stop you placing them before or after the unit, but there is also a send and return loop with a fixed position just before the output.

This would allow you to use external pedals in the chain while taking advantage of the AM4’s balanced outputs or the headphone output for a bit of silent practice. That headphone output also comes in handy for recording, taking advantage of the AM4’s ability to function as a 4-in/4-out audio interface.

Comprehensive MIDI capability is available for those who wish to take advantage of it, and there’s also provision to connect up to two expression pedals for real-time control of effects – essential if you want to use the onboard wah options.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

MusicRadar verdict: If you want to get into the Fractal amp-modelling universe, the AM4 is your entry point – but we’re in no way describing it as ‘entry level’. Make no mistake, it could grace any professional stage with its superb range of sounds, rugged build and great flexibility in how you use it.

Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Fractal Audio Systems

Ola Englund

• “The effects from the Axe-FX III are so good that simply putting them in a standalone box is already a knockout product”: Fractal Audio Systems VP4 Virtual Pedalboard review
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

The Hot Rod Deluxe was forged in the musically chaotic post-grunge era of the mid-90s when electronica and alternative rock were vying for pole position and bands such as Radiohead – to name just one example – featured edgier, brasher guitar sounds from valve amps.

With 40 watts of valve power, dual channels and two footswitchable levels of boost, the Deluxe seemed a great fit for the times. And indeed, the enduring success of this guitar amp speaks to the wisdom of Fender’s design.

Through the years we’ve seen a number of models and variations of the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, with a range of different speakers deployed including the Eminence Legend (1996 to 2010), Celestion G12P-80 (HRDx III, 2010) and Celestion A-Type (HRDx IV, 2018); however, this 30th Anniversary edition sticks with the Celestion G12M-65 Creamback choice with its ample 65-watt power rating.

The overdrive circuit, with its two stages of boost, has been massaged over the years to refine its saturated character. Another important improvement over the early models is that the clean channel volume control now has a more gradual operation, rather than the rapid ascent to full volume that could be reached with the knob turned up to 2! Final tweaks were made to achieve a smoother reverb sound from the onboard spring reverb tank.

The styling is in line with the 30th Anniversary Blues Junior amp cosmetics, including the ‘western’-styled tooled leather-look commemorative covering, a brown-and-gold Bassman-style grille cloth and the smart chrome top panel complete with those distinctive black ‘chickenhead’ knobs.

Unboxing the amp from its carton, its fancy looks are worth appreciating for a moment. If you’re not familiar with this model, it’s perhaps somewhat large for a 1x12 combo amp due to chassis-sharing with the 2x12 Hot Rod DeVille. The weight is kept down by virtue of its pine cabinet, another improvement from the particle board of previous incarnations.

The chromed control plate has a premium look, printed with helpful player-facing control lettering in white. Channel 1, the clean channel, employs a single volume control alongside a Bright switch before moving on to Channel 2 with its overdrive functions. Two preset levels of drive can be selected in addition to Drive and Master knobs.

The three-band shared EQ – ordered Treble, Bass, and then Middle – precedes the Master, Reverb and Presence controls.

Unusually, the top panel also houses the effects loop in and out jacks and the footswitch jack, which might normally be placed on the back of the amp. But this quirky positioning has obviously not hindered its popularity in any way.

Specs

• Price: $1,299 | £1,269 | €1,489
• Origin: Mexico
• Type: All-valve combo
• Valves: 3x ECC83, 2x 6L6
• Output: 40W
• Dimension: 61.6 (w) x 27.3 (d) x 53.3mm (h)
• Weight (kg/lb): 25.28/55.75
• Cabinet: Pine
• Loudspeaker: 12” Celestion G12M-65 Creamback
• Channels: 2
• Controls: Volume, Bright Switch, Volume, More Drive, Drive, Treble, Bass, Middle, Master, Reverb, Presence
• Footswitch: 2-button switch included
• Additional Features: Effects loop
• Options: None
• Range Options: Hot Rod Deluxe (non-anniversary) is £1,049. 60W 212 Hot Rod DeVille 2x12 is £1,369
• Contact: Fender

Usability and sounds

Going in with the Telecaster on Channel 1, with the EQ controls at half mast, I can assess the range on the clean volume. I would say it comes to life a little more progressively now than on previous iterations, and the amp is pretty much at full clean headroom around 3 to 4.

The cleans sparkle with the help of the Bright switch for the classic smile-EQ sound where the full body and the sparkle take precedence over midrange grunt.

It’s the essence of the Fender clean sound and feel beneath the strings, and while at this price point we may not achieve highly sweetened boutique-style tone, this amp is aimed at players in bands, rather than YouTube cork-sniffing aficionados.

Continuing upwards volume-wise from there, it starts to deliver a thicker response with some bloom from the 6L6s. Indeed, switching over to a Les Paul you can get thick slabs of classic rock overdrive with the volume towards the higher numbers alongside a little push from the Bright switch.

It is actually possible to create a makeshift master volume for this channel by placing a pedal with a volume control in the loop if you wish to get a little more bloom at lower volumes. If this floats your boat, you will find devices on the market made for this specific purpose, comprising two jacks and a volume control in a simple moulded plastic unit.

Over to the second channel with its dual levels of diode-induced saturation. The first level of drive brings that US-style overdrive reminiscent of Money For Nothing-era Dire Straits. It’s overdrive, for sure, but with a gritty tough edge when digging into the strings. This sound really does evoke those recognisable 90s angular overdrive sounds on guitar hits from the era.

Pushing on the More Drive switch ups the gain stakes just a smidge, nothing particularly earth-shattering but it would certainly provide a little confidence boost for solos. A decent ZZ Top-style raspy drive comes naturally with a little reduction in bass level and a push in the mids.

Working further with the EQ, its powerful range helps achieve some interesting tones such as a fluid fusion sound reminiscent of the late great Allan Holdsworth, by using the More Drive function and a lower treble setting.

The reverb does indeed now have a smoother sound than the early Hot Rod models due to some specific circuit tweaks.

However, it’s fair to say it doesn’t have the magic, splashy presentation that one might expect from a valve-recovered circuit of the type that made Fender’s name. Conversely, it does sit in the background well giving us a deep and rich halo.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

This updated classic is the very essence of the Fender aesthetic: that of a solid and reliable workman-like tool, commonplace everywhere from showrooms to rehearsal rooms and stages of all sizes.

It reigns supreme for its no-nonsense approach to a dual-channel, giggable package.

MusicRadar verdict: The improvements leave little to nit-pick about, with the smoother reverb and overdrive sounds and the improved clean volume taper. And it certainly looks a treat, too, in its black western vinyl. The slightly quirky choices of the external jack-socket furniture mounted on the top control panel can easily be overlooked for the overall benefits that this amp packs.

Hands-on videos

Fender

• Best Fender amps: From all-tube classics to cutting edge modelling options
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Harley Benton has expanded its DNAfx practice amp lineup with a super-compact 10-watter with an entry-level $92 price tag.

The DNAfx AmP10 is very much like the MusicRadar-approved DNAfx AmP20, only smaller, and more affordable. Those 10-watts drive a 6” full-range speaker. It is but one Class D guitar amp but with its digital brain it contains multitudes.

Players can avail themselves of four onboard amp models (Clean, Blues, Rock, Lead) covering all the main food groups of electric guitar tone. You know the drill – “sparkling cleans and warm blues tones to aggressive rock crunch and saturated lead sounds,” read the official Harley Benton tasting notes.

And you get some effects to sauce your sound. There is flanger, phaser, tremolo and chorus all nested under the Modulation dial, with spring and hall reverbs, delay, and delay-and-reverb all nested under the Delay/Reverb knob. These multi-modal effects knobs have LEDs to let you know what setting you are in and there is tap tempo for the delay.

There are controls for Bass, Middle and Treble, plus Drive and Master Volume, and once you have dialled in a sound you like you can save it down to one of four user presets.

The idea here is that you’ve got everything you need from a practice amp. So of course we have a stereo headphones output for silent practice. We also have a line in and Bluetooth for playing external audio sources through the amp.

There is also a built-in chromatic guitar tuner. We had a few reservations with the DNAfx AmP20’s tuner – it doesn’t give you a reading of the not, only if it is flat or sharp, but it is better than having nothing.

Other features we like are the weight, or lack of it. The DNAfx AmP20 was no heavyweight at a hair under 6kg but at 4.5kg this really is a grab-and-go option (and the kind of amp you might find yourself taking into the office or the kitchen to snatch some practice time.

We often bemoan LED menus (an invitation to tinker and mess around that we often don’t need) but they can make dialling in sounds a little easier, ditto with online apps.

You don’t have that here but if its bigger sibling is anything to go by, dialling in a sound is pretty easy, even if you don’t quite have such exacting control over the effects. And, again, those presets will come in handy.

The DNAfx AmP10 is available now, priced £69/$92 (approx). Heck, we’ve spent more on that on a tuner. In today’s money that’s loose change. You can pick one up direct from Thomann and see more over at Harley Benton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm Audio has just released a serious bit of analogue kit for any recording enthusiast looking for an all-in-one routing and reamping solution. It’s called the Reamper, and, sure, reamping is what it does. But it’s got a few more tricks up its sleeve, too.

It allows players to take a dry electric guitar track off their DAW and run it through a tube amp (or, for that matter, bass guitar). Can’t decide between AC30 chime and a classic Fender amp tone? Record both and decide later what to do with them, because Warm Audio’s Reamper allows players to daisy-chain a pair of amps and then record two different tones for the one take.

You can also record a tube amp (up to 50W at eight ohms) silently, straight to your DAW – just add an IR cab sim to give it that sense of "real room" ambient space.

You can add some warmth to your direct signal via a JFET setting, or keep it clean via the op-amp. And Warm Audio presents us with separate Preamp Out and Reamp Out gain controls so that you can control how loud that dry signal is when it hits your studio gear and how loud it hits your amp.

We are talking about the Reamper within the context of guitars but it is similarly designed to work with synths and keyboards.

These past few years have seen Warm Audio quietly stocking up the world’s pedalboards with affordable versions of vintage stompbox classics, and so it is no surprise to learn that the Reamper is designed to accommodate your 'board.

You can take any track from your DAW and stick effects on it, which can be especially useful for the time-based effects such as delay and modulation that can be a little tricky when recording a take.

The reamper allows you to apply stompboxes to the balanced line-level signal, say, putting phaser on drums, or a little hair from a fuzz pedal to keys, or vocals even. It has a variable impedance control (120kΩ -1MΩ) to accommodate active and passive instruments equally, without noise, no fuss.

“Warm Audio has built its reputation on premium analogue gear inspired by the most beloved studio classics, and the Reamper represents an exciting step forward as we apply that same design philosophy to original tools that solve real problems for today’s music makers,” says Bryce Young, founder and president of Warm Audio. “With Reamper, you can track a performance through your favorite tube amp while simultaneously capturing a dry signal as a safety.

“You can send DAW tracks back through real amplifiers, run guitar pedals across vocal chains or drum busses, or drive a 50-watt tube amp into its sweet spot without making a sound. It’s a creative tool designed to easily route signals between instruments, gear, and the studio.”

The Reamper is available now and is priced £459/$499. For more details, see Warm Audio.

Marshall has unveiled a special commemorative collection to celebrate Jimi Hendrix plugging into its guitar amps and changing the course of music history – and the fortunes of the brand itself.

The Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection comprises a hand-wired 1969 JMH Super Lead-style tube amp head, partnered with a matching hand-wired 4x12, featuring a commemorative badge and a black-and-purple cosmic swirl finish, to which you can put a matching limited run Dunlop Fuzz Face fuzz pedal in front of and have at it.

The collection also includes a special cosmic purple swirl Hendrix signature edition Acton III Bluetooth speaker.

“We built the amps, Hendrix made them scream,” says Marshall. “From the moment Hendrix plugged into a Marshall guitar amplifier in ’66, they became an unstoppable creative force.”

Look at any archive footage of Hendrix – at Woodstock, Maui, Monterey, Atlanta – and behind him would be a this black tower, the Marshall Super Lead head sitting on a pair of 4x12 speaker cabinets.

It is an indelible image, and it helped put Marshall on the map.

“Jimi was a formidable musician, a real force of nature,” says Terry Marshall, co-founder, Marshall Amplification. “He took everything to a new level and carried everybody with him. When he played, it was an emotional time for everybody because everyone was thinking, if he can do it, I could maybe do it.”

Seeing Hendrix inspired new players to pick up the electric guitar. Seeing Hendrix with banks of Marshall stacks behind him, well, that made players want a Marshall, and Terry Marshall believes there can be no questioning how important Hendrix was to the Marshall story.

“It was a really special time for us all and there’s no doubt that we grew with him and his fame, it was a natural tie-up,” he says. “The rest is history as they say.”

The tones (and the volume) coming out of the 1959 JMH and its matching speaker will be familiar. It is built in the same spirit as the original Super Leads that Hendrix et al played back in the day. But it looks very different.

The black-and-purple swirl on the control panel and matching grill cloth speak to Hendrix’s psychedelic sound (and his love of psychedelics). The LED even illuminates purple.

“From his fashion to his lyrics and of course, his music, there are so many different stories we could tell when it comes to Hendrix,” says Emma Rydahl, senior industrial designer, Marshall Group. “We started with materials and pattern exploration, looking at different fabrics and running test prints with a psychedelic track in mind. We spent a lot of time adjusting the final design to get it just right across the whole collection.”

The Acton III speaker, which is officially available to order from 14 May, priced $299, even has a plush crushed velvet covering – it's like they made it out of an old jacket from Jimi Hendrix's wardrobe.

The rest of the Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection is available to now, with the half-stack and Fuzz Face bundle priced $4,999. See Marshall for more details.

Jared James Nichols wasn’t looking for a new guitar amp but the amp found him anyway. A longtime endorsee of Blackstar, with whom he had worked on a range of signature amps, he had no complaints.

“The thing with the Blackstar stuff is there’s literally no – how do I say this right? There’s no drama,” says Nichols. “No, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to leave!’ I’ve had an amazing relationship with Blackstar for almost 15 years, which is crazy.

“It’s crazy to say! And those guys, before I was doing any touring, they were letting me play amps, and they were letting me borrow stuff, and then eventually giving me amps. So, like, my whole tone, truly, was built with these Blackstars.”

And yet, lately, Nichols had been curious. He had been curious about Marshall amps. He felt there was “a taboo” about even speaking about this with friends. Blackstar, after all, was founded by Marshall alumni. Maybe it felt like cheating. But he couldn’t escape the fact that when presented with a vintage Marshall tube amp – specifically a non-master volume (NMV) 100-watt 1959 Super Lead ‘Plexi’ that he used alongside its contemporary descendants to record his latest studio album, Louder Than Fate – it brought out something in this playing that he hadn’t fully heard before.

“I was trying other things, and in my heart, every time I would plug into a Plexi, I’d be like, ‘God, man, this is just that thing,’” he says. “Because, as a fingerstyle player, and as someone that plays this dynamic range, I could always hear my fingers with a Plexi. No matter if I put on a Tube Screamer, or a Klon, or a wah, or a fuzz, I could still hear my fingers under it.”

It also got him thinking about electric guitar tone in 2026, when there are so many options available to us, many of which are great, and this great agglomeration of stuff, transparent this, high-gain that, multi-channels with different modes, onboard cab sims and MIDI-controllable electric toothbrushes. It all gets a bit much.

“In my gut, I kept going back to these old, non-master volume Marshalls, because there’s just something so pure, and they’re so raw,” says Nichols.

And they really are so raw and so gnarly. These amps were originally designed as public address systems. The volume is… Well, let’s just say, the vintage Plexi is not for everyone. They are a challenge.

“They’re almost scary in a way to a lot of players, because it’s like riding a fucking bronco, man! It’s like you really have to harness this amp,” says Nichols, who gets noticeably louder when talking about the Plexi. “It’s not an easy amp to just plug into and be like, ‘Oh yeah!’ It’s bone clean, and then it’s like you have to figure out how to almost be at one with the amp in order to make it really work.”

Amps like that are like an MRI scan. Nichols found the Plexi articulated every detail in his playing, good and bad.

“When I started to really dig into it – like I said, when I got that ’68 – I just noticed that something changed in me as a player,” he says. “Something was being a little more honest, something was not shying away from any note I was playing – it wasn’t shying away [from anything]. Even when I’d hit something wrong, I’d be like, ‘Oof!’

“Even when I’m simply hitting a single note line with the band, it’s just the physicality of it and the weight of the tone. It does something to me psychologically as a player where it puts me somewhere else. When I’m playing through these amps, I can’t lie, because I always have to deliver, because it’s not like I have this über-delay setting, or, there’s this built-in reverb.”

Such amps reward expert players and punish sloppiness. Not all are like that. There are some amps – and every experienced player will have a preference – that flatter your playing, with a natural compression and a feel that is forgiving. A little spring reverb can be the elixir you need, a way of letting a bit of air into your playing. There is nothing wrong with that.

It was only when Nichols went in for a session with Joe Bonamassa that he realised he might have been hiding behind his amp, and he was paying the price.

“With the Blackstars, man, I got so used to, playing with so much reverb and so much compression,” he says. “I remember, one time I was playing – and I was playing with Bonamassa – and he plugged in, and he was playing a Dumble-modded Twin, but he just plugged it in, and he hit a low E, he went ‘BONK!’ And he went, ‘WAH WAH WAH’. And then I hit something, and it was almost like his amp was punching me in the face, and it felt like mine was in the corner in the back.”

So, Nichols bit the bullet. He made the change. And when he rocked up to record Louder Than Fate under the watchful eye of producer Jay Ruston, he had the ’68 Plexi, and he got to work, and it was a learning curve.

There is a golden rule of recording guitars in the studio that small amps are worth their weight in gold. Turn them up, stick a good microphone in front of them and it can be the sound that unlocks the session. You will find a Fender Champ in every recording facility for this very reason.

Nichols was recording an album titled Louder Than Fate. He went in the other direction.

“Ooh, man! [Laughs] It’s funny. I’m smiling and I’m laughing because I’m thinking about the absolute domination of big amps I used,” he says. “It was so insane. Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m with you; a Champ, a Supro, a Deluxe, a little Tweed, whatever it is, you turn those things up, man! You put a good compressor on in the studio – even live, man – and there’s nothing you can’t do with them. They’re just incredible amps, right?

“But what I noticed, especially for this record, was I had this ’68 Marshall Plexi alongside these newer Marshall Modified Super Lead Plexis. Dude, those are my jam, man. Those are the amps. Out of all the new stuff that I was able to try – and Marshall’s been amazing letting me try all this different stuff, a lot of great stuff – what hit me right away was those modified Plexis. So a lot of this record, you hear a ’68 and these Modified Plexis.”

There are a few key differences between the original late ‘60s vintage tube head Nichols was plugging into and their modern counterparts. The new models ship from the the factory with Clip and Bright switches.

The biggest difference, however, is the addition of the master volume. Nichols’ ’68 belongs to a more innocent time, the NMV era, and it was a real grizzly bear in the studio. They had to take two of the power tubes out the back to run it at 50-watts and it was still, to use a technical term, “insanely loud”.

“I mean, all the amps I used were huge, 100-watters, man!” says Nichols. “We had to kick the ’68 down because it was so rowdy, bro. It was so rowdy! We had it in a room, like, in a booth, and it was shaking the walls so bad that you were able to hear it in the tracking, and I was like, ‘This amp is a monster.’”

This is the kind of anecdote that will have digital advocates showing up in the comments, reasoning – not unreasonably – that the amp modeller can put a choice of tube amp tones at your feet and it won’t take the paint off the walls. Nichols gets that. Totally.

But he’s looking for a very particular experience. He’s like a storm chaser hauling ass in a pickup across an Oklahoma highway in pursuit of a twister.

He believes there’s something magical, quasi-epicurean from all this volume

“There’s something really, really beautiful that happens – especially when you’re using unpotted pickups, old-school stuff guitar-wise,” he says. “And I’m not saying just vintage guitars, but when you have volume, and you have these pickups that are reacting to what’s coming out of the speaker that’s hitting you.

“Obviously, we know there’s this whole debate of digital versus tubes. The thing that I feel is the digital cannot produce in a certain way is that power of a tube amp absolutely screaming through a speaker, just hitting you and hitting your guitar. And in turn, that’s making these guitars react and do different harmonic stuff that they wouldn’t do at a lower volume – or with a smaller amp. A lot of these tones I’m getting, and these overtones, did come from the amp.”

And that takes us back to why Nichols made the switch and nailed his colours to the Marshall mast.

“When I hit these Marshalls, man, it just literally gets me closer to the sun, if that makes sense,” he says. “It’s closer to the sounds that literally keep me up at night, which is, honestly, it’s exactly where I want to be.”

And even in this day and age, of sound limits onstage, in-ear monitors, all that pro audio stuff, Nichols argues that the old-school ways – an amp that turns 70 in a couple of years – still has a place in the modern rock player’s backline, and it still has the power to make guitar playing an act of transcendence.

“I played a Plexi onstage with the band. I’d already been playing it in the studio. I’d already had all of this knowledge of the way it was going to sound, so there was no surprises,” says Nichols. “And I’m telling you, man, I felt like I was levitating off the ground, because I was just going for stuff. I felt like I was in Cream in 1968. Like, the tone was so raw, and I just said, ‘This is exactly where I want to be. And sometimes, what’s the phrase? The heart wants what it wants. That’s what I wanted.”

Louder Than Fate is available to preorder, shipping 5 June via Frontiers. You can read more from Nichols coming soon to MusicRadar.

Jared James Nichols has announced that he as officially joined the likes of Slash, Billie Joe Armstrong and Yngwie Malmsteen on the Marshall artist roster.

There had been rumours that the burly manger of electric guitar strings, the resurrector of vintage Gibson Les Pauls, had made the switch. When photos emerged of Nichols with the unmistakable sight of the gold-panelled tube amps behind him, video footage on social media too, the affable blues guitar maestro, took to his Instagram to confirm the news was true.

“Over the past 24 hours I’ve received hundreds of messages about my current amplifier situation,” wrote Nichols. “So yes, it’s official: I’ve made the move to Marshall amps.”

Nichols had hitherto been a long-time endorsee of Blackstar Amplification, developing a range of signature guitar amps with the British amp company, including the JJN-20RH MkII tube head and matching cabinet in racing green, and a combo amp version, then a signature JJN 3 practice amp, and the daddy of them all, the St James JJN50H, a 5o-watt head complete with Blues Power boost circuit.

Blackstar, which was launched in March 2007 at Musikmesse Frankfurt by alumni of Marshall amps, had been providing Nichols’ backline for over 14 years. And Nichols has always relied on the amp to be doing a lot of work. He’d close mic a Blackstar Artist 100, stick a Klon in front of it, add a little tape delay from an Echoplex and have at it.

Clearly, he felt the need for a change – or was it all that vintage gear he has been playing through lately that has turned his head

“Simply put, my heart beats for the roar of a cranked Plexi and a Gibson guitar,” he explained. “It just had to be.”

Time will tell whether Marshall is spec’ing him up a signature amp – but could there be a new signature guitar on the way from Gibson? A teaser video on Instagram suggests we might know the answer to that question on the 16th June. If it's not a guitar, it's going to be something coming soon to GibsonTV.

What we can say for sure is that Nichols’ new album, Louder Than Fate, will be out 5 June via Frontiers, and there are some smoking tones on it.

We’ll soon find out what he was playing through in the studio for, but judging by the video for Running Out, he’s got some sweet vintage Gibson electric guitars on the album. That three-humbucker Les Paul Custom with the Bigsby is a beaut.

And still, he’s ripping on them with no guitar picks. Nichols describes his fingerstyle approach – his brawny, ursine style – as akin to being a boxer.

“I came from that school of Leslie West, Stevie Ray Vaughan, early Clapton, all of that where it was very grab-you-by-the-throat guitar playing,” he said, speaking to MusicRadar in 2021.

In other words, it's going to get physical. Little wonder he took the Klon Centaur off his pedalboard.

Blackstar Amplification has launched the Beam Mini, super-compact take-anywhere guitar amp that blew minds at NAMM 2026 with its state-of-the-art “component-level” digital modelling, AI stem separation tech, and access to more than 200,000 community-created Neural Amp Models via Tone3000.

If the prospect of having all those sounds at the touch of a button sounds inspiring, just imagine how the Beam Mini's onboard Moises AI stem separation technology could spice up your practice sessions. We'll have to wait for a software update in August before the stem separation is available on the Beam Mini, but it is a tantalising prospect.

“Want to play along with a classic track? Remove the guitar and step into the player’s shoes, or isolate a part to study every detail of the performance,” says Blackstar. “This works for all instruments, giving musicians a completely new way to practise, learn, and play along with their favourite music.”

With all this 21st-century functionality, access to user-created tones and AI tools for enhancing practice sessions, Blackstar is heating up a market that already has some very clever digital desktop amps, such as the JBL Bandbox range, which offers similar AI stem isolation, and the Positive Grid Spark Go, which similarly offers a huge bank of user-created tones sourced from its ToneCloud community

But AI and the NAM captures are just the headline features. There is a lot going on under the Beam Mini’s impossibly tiny IP66 dust and weatherproof cabinet, a lot of sounds.

It ships with 12 electric guitar amps, six modelled on classic Blackstar amps, with six Ampton models of classic guitar amps – and Blackstar promises authentic tube amp tone thanks to the “component-level” modelling tech that engineered them. We’ve also got a trio of bass amps, two acoustic guitar amps, an acoustic simulator – and what would a Blackstar amp be without the patented ISF feature for dialling in that Transatlantic voice? There are 35 “studio-grade” guitar effects.

Under the hood there are two full-range drivers and a pair of passive bass radiators. Blackstar says its Super Wide Stereo tech gives you “immersive, room-filling tone” that belies the Beam Mini’s size.

Beam Mini is also equipped with Blackstar’s CabRig technology, so you have all those IR-based speaker cabinet and mic placement options to work with. With a USB-C connection, you can also use it as a guitar audio interface for recording.

And you can even use a headset mic for tracking vocals and content creation. It ships with Ableton Live Lite.

This is one of these practice amps you can take to the park, the beach, the office, wherever, and you’ll get up to 18 hours of playtime from a full charge. You can stream audio via Bluetooth. You can increase the intensity of numerous effects at once via the SpeedDial.

The SpeedDial dominates a control panel that has just the essential buttons for Patch, FX, Gain, EQ and Volume. Simply press the button then turn the over-sized SpeedDial to adjust the parameter.

Deeper edits and patch creation executed within the Beam app. It is via the app you can access artist-created patches and share your own.

The expandability of the Beam Mini is something that is unique to the digital era. Be warned: your tone options just got bewildering. In practice, players have access to the 200,000 open-source Neural Amp Models that Tone3000 users have created and shared in its online library.

You can access presets created by Blackstar artists such as Gus G, Doug Aldrich and Will Sergeant.

And it has the essentials, too. Hold down the volume button and you have a guitar tuner. You can store up to give patches on the Beam Mini. Swap ‘em out via the app.

The Blackstar Beam Mini is available now, priced £169/$229, but remember: the Moises AI stem separation tech will be available via a software update on August 2026. For more details, head over to Blackstar Amplification.

Gear shopping with Jake Kiszka is not for the fainthearted. It’s not that he’s a high-roller but by his own admission his tastes skew towards the pricier end of the market.

Hand the Greta Hand the Van Fleet guitarist a bunch of electric guitars and nine times out of 10 he will pick the most expensive one – and he doesn’t even mean to.

“I’ve done lots of these sort of shootouts, in many music stores,” he says, joining MusicRadar over Zoom ahead of launch of his new signature Gibson SG Standard. “And someone will put me in a room full of guitars, and say, ‘Tell me which one you like the most… give me some feedback.’ I’ll play through whatever, 15, 20 guitars, and I’ll always, almost every single time, pick the most expensive guitar.”

What Kiszka is unsure of is whether or not the vintage ’61 Les Paul SG he calls his number one, aka The Beloved, is to blame for all of this, for giving him a taste. “I guess I don’t know,” he sighs. Because that was a pretty expensive guitar – eye-wateringly so for a young kid coming fresh out of Michigan.

At $25,000, he couldn’t afford it. But as the story goes, Chicago Music Exchange CEO Andrew Yonke was friends with Greta Van Fleet’s manager, loved the band, yadda yadda yadda he lent Kiszka the $25,000 '61 SG for a tour and said pay him back when he could. And the rest is history (and Kiszka did pay him back).

But what about guitar amps? Having established his tastes for vintage electrics, what about the holiest of holy grail tube amps, the Dumble, has he crossed the Rubicon and tried one?

“Yeah, you know, yes, I have,” he says with a wry chuckle.

Kiszka, however, admits that he is in no position to be bidding on them, and he remembers the moment he learned that when he went amp shopping in Osaka.

“There’s a few scenarios where we were travelling and doing some shows in Tokyo and Osaka,” he says. “And this is an interesting one, because, yes, I’ve run into Dumbles, in Nashville, and in New York – and Chicago Music Exchange has them – and they’re rare, few and far in between. But this particular time in Japan was interesting. We were in Osaka, and I saw that there was a little music shop up the way, and I heard from some friends that there’s some really valuable stuff up there.”

If you know, you know. Osaka is a repository of vintage US culture. In Amerikamura you might find pristine vintage Levi’s shrink-wrapped and retailing at Murphy Lab Les Paul prices. You might also find the kind of sight that would empty Joe Bonamassa’s checking account. Something brought Kiszka out in a cold sweat – and it wasn’t the humidity.

“I walked up the hill and and this guy had everything that you could think of,” says Kiszka. “American amplifiers and pedals – and British as well – like some of the most rarefied ‘60s Plexi Marshalls, Klon pedals, and all kinds of stuff.”

But that wasn’t the good stuff. The really fancy stuff was kept out of sight. As Kiszka explains…

“He’s like, ‘Would you come with me? I’ve got the reserves in the basement. I guess he might have recognised me – he might have just trusted me. I don’t know. But he let me into the basement with all his sort of secret stuff and he had, like, 10 Dumbles down there. It was the biggest collection I’ve ever seen in person!”

If the store owner was thinking that Kiszka was going to be tempted to buy one, he’d be right. But he might have over-estimated what kind of budget the GVF guitarist was working with. That cold sweat returned to Kiszka’s brow once they started talking dollars and yen.

“He was like, ‘Would you like to buy one?’ And this was probably before me really knowing the value that’s associated with those amps [laughs]. Because I was like, ‘Well, yeah! How much? How much which is one of these?’ He’s like, ‘Well, you know, this guy over here,’ whatever model it was, he’s like, ‘It's not as expensive as the rest of them, so I probably could go 60, 70K on that, 60, 70,000 USD?. I was like, ‘Jesus, man! Yeah, no.’ I’ve run across them, but I am not in that area yet?”

Maybe when Greta Van Fleet’s fourth studio album hits record store shelves, Kiszka might be in a position to say yes when in Osaka. If not, well, at least we know his credit is good at Chicago Music Exchange.

“Yeah, that’s it! They’ll hold me up there! [laughs]”

The limited edition Jake Kiszka SG Standard is available now – see Gibson for more details.

Here is something novel, fresh out of Finland, it’s a web app from Fukkaudio that allows guitarists to dial in electric guitar tones by text prompt.

Fukkaudio describes it as a “guitar amp and effects app that runs directly in your browser – a playable guitar rig in real time”.

Simply plug in your guitar via a guitar audio interface, write in the dialogue box what kind of sound you would like to hear, click ‘Apply’ then Fukkaudio’s proprietary amp modelling tech will do the rest, dialling in the effects and IRs. And you can get really descriptive, asking for longer delays, more gain, more treble… Knock yourself out.

A trio of knobs allow you to tweak the sound further, increasing, say, the intensity of the effects, adjusting the output, giving you one other parameter (e.g. drive) to control. Players can then share their sound, or get serious with it and actually use the sounds to record something. Why not?

Fukkaudio hints that a guitar vst version might be rolled out further down the line but for now, point your browser to Fukkaudio and have at it. The free trial is exactly that, full functionality. Pro price plans are available from €6.90 per month.

This, plus the recent developments in generative AI tone design launched by the likes of Positive Grid and Mooer Audio, points to a brave new world for tone design. Why turn the dials yourself when you can ask the machine to do it for you?

Okay, there are many reasons why you would want full control over all of the parameters but text prompts can be a useful shortcut when practising or spitballing ideas to be refined layer.

Also, the better your prompt, the better the result. Fukkaudio says its web app responds to “vibe” or specifics.

“Be practical (‘tight low end, bright attack’), ask for effects (‘more reverb / delay’, ‘crunch overdrive’, ‘clean with chorus’), or describe direction (‘modern metal’, ‘shoegaze wall’, ‘ambient shimmer’),” it advises. “You can also prompt artists, bands, genres, gear, pickups, or mixing intent – in any language.”

Default prompt suggestions on the Fukkaudio platform read as so: “glassy clean chords,” “tight modern metal rhythm” and “‘80s hard rock soaring lead” – and there is even a ‘Surprise Me’ function for those in the mood to shake the Magic Eight-Ball and play something with a random tone.

If you want to save your favourite sounds, you’ll need to go pro. For best results, use an audio interface with a small buffer size. Check it out over at Fukkaudio.

Lyndon Laney, the founder of Laney Amplification, has died, aged 77. Announcing the news, the Laney website described him as “one of the true pioneers of British musical equipment manufacturing” – and there can be no disputing that.

He leaves behind a formidable legacy, not only within the music industry but in pop culture at large, where his designs helped transform electric guitar tone.

It was a Laney amp that give heavy metal its foundational tone, as Tony Iommi, became an early adopter of his tube amp builds on Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut. This was a Promethean moment for rock music, and it had emerged from an unlikely source – the garage of Lyndon Laney’s father.

Like many talented electrical engineers with a passion for amplification, the garage was where he started out at the beginning of the Laney Amplification story. In the Midlands music scene, Lyndon Laney’s name was getting around. He was an electronics whiz. But he was a musician, too, playing bass guitar in The Band of Joy alongside future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and frontman Robert Plant.

In 1968, he made Plant a PA system for Led Zeppelin’s debut tour of North America, where they stood in for the Jeff Beck Band, opening for the likes of Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly, creating a name for themselves before the release of their debut album.

Laney's amps would really take off once Iommi discovered them. He had written much of Black Sabbath’s debut on a 50-watt Marshall but he had got wind of a local amp builder who was transfixed by vacuum tube technology and the prospect of a distorted guitar sound. It would be the start of a lifelong friendship.

“I switched to Laney because they started up around the same time as us and they're a Birmingham company,” said Iommi, speaking to MusicRadar in 2010. “To be honest, they offered to give us all this gear when nobody else did. What do you say to that? ‘OK!’ So I used them.”

The circa ’67 LA100BL amps that Iommi was using with Black Sabbath had a simple design, driven by a quartet of EL34s in the power section, But with Iommi’s modded Dallas Rangemaster in front of it, with the treble booster hitting pushing it into overdrive – now this simple amp yielded complex harmonic overtones.

It was perfect for Iommi’s needs, and it put Laney on the map. Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler was using an LA100BL head, too (as the Laney Amplification website reminds us, the “BL” in the 100-watt head’s designation stood for “Bass or Lead” – Lyndon Laney was not going to let his fellow bassists down).

By 1970, Laney amps were being used by Black Sabbath, Clem Clempson of The Pinch/Bakerloo and later Colosseum, Jeff Lynne then of Idle Race, Tony McPhee of The Groundhogs, and Russ Ballard of Argent.

Iommi’s approach clearly gave Laney ideas. In 1973, Laney expanded its range. Joining the so-called Supergroup heads, LA100BL et al, Laney launched the KLIPP series. An early example of the hot-rodded tube amp, the KLIPP series incorporated an onboard treble booster.

Just as Laney had changed rock guitar, helping to inaugurate metal guitar as a sound, he also changed Christmas. Slade were big fans of Laney amps, and the KLIPP series were used for the ubiquitous Merry Xmas Everybody.

The evolution of the Laney brand continued apace as production moved to the Custard Factory in Birmingham’s Digbeth area. Today’s series of bass amps assumes the Digbeth name.

New designs were forthcoming, such as the AOR (Advanced Overdrive Response) series, which accommodated players’ growing appetite for more gain. Ace Frehley and Vinnie Moore were among those who used them in the early ‘80s.

Four preamp tubes were better than three, so read the marketing campaign. Like the KLIPP series, the AOR did something different with the tube amp paradigm.

In the mid ‘90s, the Tube Fusion series offered the best of both worlds at a time when tubes vs solid-state was the biggest debate in guitar amp circles. This offered a hybrid of both. But Laney was not afraid to return to the tube amp’s classic designs. His VC range brought back Class A tube tone in the mid ‘90s.

Lyndon Laney knew the industry inside and out. His Headstock Group portfolio included Laney Amplification and HH Audio, and would also be responsible for distributing Ibanez guitars and Tama drums in the UK, alongside DiMarzio pickups, Truetone pedalboard power supplies, and drum brands Zildjian and Vic Firth.

Iommi, who recently teamed up with the brand for a limited run of his TI000 signature amps to mark Black Sabbath's farewell, was one of the first to pay tribute to Laney.

“I’m so sad to say that I lost my very dear friend Lyndon Laney to cancer on Friday,” wrote Iommi on Instagram. “I am absolutely devastated. We go back to the late ‘60s when I first met him and I started using his Laney amps. He was a really lovely guy and his great passion was building valve amps.

“He also loved his cars as I did as well, we had so much in common. We’d sit talking about ideas and what to build into my amplifiers. I am so honoured to have known him and his family. James, his son, has been running the company for some years now and he has carried on the business and has pushed it forward with some brilliant ideas. My deepest condolences go out to Lyndon’s wife Jan and son James.”

In a statement, Laney Amplification spoke of the company’s “deep sadness” and saluted the contribution its founder’s vision and “uncompromising commitment to quality”.

“Lyndon’s influence extended far beyond business success; he was admired for his warmth, integrity, humour and quiet determination,” said Laney. “Lyndon was not only a founder, but also a creator, innovator, and trusted figure whose passion for industry was at the heart of his working life.

“His legacy continues through the business he built and through his son, James Laney, who proudly carries that vision forward. He will be greatly missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and the wider music community.”

Nirvana’s Bleach-era touring backline is being sold off, offering Kurt Cobain obsessives a rare opportunity to nail the Promethean electric guitar tones that would become the bedrock of the Seattle sound as the rising tide of the grunge revolution swept all before it.

The collection is being sold from tomorrow (10 April) at 5pm UK time via London’s Denmark Street Guitars, based out of Hanks Guitars, which is a place packed with grail-worthy items.

This is where Peter Capaldi found Doctor Who’s “junk shop” Yamaha electric. A few weeks back they had Eric Clapton’s 1939 000-42 acoustic guitar – no, not the MTV Unplugged 000-42 that sold for $4,101,000 as part of the record-breaking Jim Irsay auction, but a “twin” that Slowhand got just for recording.

Indeed, the last time we walked by – en route to speak to Zakk Wylde – there was one of those stunning (and über-rare) Jimmy Page Les Paul Custom Shop replicas calling out from the window. It's that kind of place.

Anyway, back to the Nirvana amps. Given their live-in-a-dive history, might well be quarantined behind some plexiglass – they look like the kind of tube amps that would get a restaurant shut down on a health code violation.

The collection includes Cobain’s black and silver-panelled Fender Twin Reverb combos, all loaded with JBL speakers, plus a Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinet, and bass guitar players aren’t left out either, with Krist Novoselic’s Ampeg SVT head also included.

Cobain’s Bleach tones are one of the gnarliest sounds every committed to tape. Raw, barely tamed yet unusually eminently listenable – certainly when compared with the totally hostile noise-rock engineering of In Utero, when they went all in clang and feedback, and used every bit of Steve Albini’s nous to get a sound to unsettle the mainstream.

Bleach? According to producer Jack Endino, that was his ’67 Fender Twin that had been loaded with a pair of Utah speakers – until Endino fried them. At the time, Cobain had preferred a solid-state Randall, using it on the 1988 recordings with Dale Crover playing drums.

Endino remembers this as a febrile time for the band. Nirvana did not mess about in the studio.

“The first demo I did for Nirvana took five hours and they did 10 songs, and it was recorded and mixed in one afternoon, and then they went and played a show that night,” recalled Endino, speaking to Guitar World in 2022. “That was the one and only show of that era that they played with Dale Crover on the drums, January, 1988. The songs were one take. If a band is really good then all you have to do is get out of their way and make sure the sounds are good, hit ‘record’ and let them do their thing.”

When Cobain’s Randall went in for repair he used Endino’s Twin through a 2x12 cab loaded with a pair of Celestions. This particular guitar amp would assume a certain notoriety.

“In fact, I still have it,” said Endino. “It’s called ‘The Bleach Twin’ because Kurt used it on Bleach. I can tell you Kurt, using my amp on Bleach, was using a Boss DS-1, the orange [distortion] pedal with three knobs. That was his sound in 1989.”

Cobain tracked Bleach with the Mosrite-esque Univox Hi-Flyers, then embarked on Nirvana’s US tour with an Epiphone ET270, using his Randall head through a Bullfrog 4x12. That was in his Bleach-era touring rig for the US. The Boss pedal made it out unscathed, the guitars, not so much.

In Europe, the touring for Bleach was supplied by Protone backline rental in Holland, and comprised the complement of amps being sold via Denmark Street Guitars.

You can register your interest at sales (at) londonvntageguitars.com.

What is it?

We all live busy lives, so finding some time to sit down and play guitar is often a little tricky. This makes convenience important, and when it comes to amplifiers, there is little more convenient than a tiny, portable practice amp that can happily and discreetly live on a desktop. The likes of the Blackstar Fly 3 and Positive Grid Spark Go have made some waves in this space, and now Laney is upping its game with the Laney Prism-Mini.

In short, it’s a tiny, lightweight, digital amp modelling practice amp with multi-effects in an eight-block, highly tweakable signal chain. It’s got the expected 1/4” instrument input, as well as an 1/8th” headphone out, Bluetooth connectivity, and a USB-C port for charging and operation as a recording interface.

Perhaps the highlight, and unusually for a small, affordable practice amp, is the 1.77”, full colour LCD screen. For making some noise, it sports two 1.5” speakers and kicks out six watts of power.

Everything has an app nowadays, and the Prism-Mini is no different, with its Tone-Wizard app allowing control of all the parameters from your preferred iOS or Android device, as well as the use of a drum machine.

And all of this comes in at a very affordable price point, potentially making the Prism-Mini a bargain for those looking for a convenient practice tool, as long as Laney hasn’t made too many compromises to fulfill this budget-friendly remit. So, let’s plug it in and find out.

Specs

• Launch price: $149|£99|€125
• Type: Desktop digital practice amp
• Origin: Designed and engineered in the UK, made in China
• Output: Six watts RMS
• Speaker: 2 x 1.5”
• Features: Digital amp and cab modelling, 50 user and 50 factory presets, multi effects, nine block signal chain, Tone-Wizard app
• Connectivity: 1/4” input, 1/8” headphone output, USB-C, and Bluetooth connectivity
• Weight: 1.1Lbs/0.5kgs
• Dimensions: 170x113x80mm/6.6”x4.4”x3.1”
• Contact: Laney

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

The Laney’s lightweight plastic construction does not scream of a premium build, but at this price point, it would be unreasonable to expect one.

A nice surprise is the full colour screen that is neatly set beneath that hard plastic on the top panel. It looks vibrant and is a bit of a treat considering the Prism-Mini’s budget credentials. It’s susceptible to a bit of glare if viewed directly under some lights and at the wrong angle, but outside of this specific circumstance, it is easy to read.

Alongside the screen lies a Back button and a Global button for navigating through the menus, a Bluetooth pairing button, a Volume knob, and a multi-function Parameter knob for selecting and adjusting settings. Again, they all feel quite plastic-y, as you would expect for the price point.

When it comes to the aesthetic, I rather like the Prism-Mini. The front features that famous Laney logo with a black grill cloth, giving it a proper, mini-amp look, rather than the mini Bluetooth speaker vibes from the likes of the Positive Grid Spark Go.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★★

The stumbling block with mini devices, especially those that deal with multi-effects and therefore have a host of editable parameters, is often in cramming all the required controls into a miniature format whilst keeping it easy to use.

In the case of the Laney Prism-Mini, this is where it benefits from its LCD screen. It clearly displays the name of the preset I am on, and as I use the clickable Parameter knob to scroll through and edit blocks and parameters in the signal chain, the screen does a good job of displaying what I’m editing.

This is thanks to the easily-understandable icons, helpful abbreviated text, and brackets that keep track of what’s being edited by turning blue once a parameter/block is selected.

There are a few menu levels here, so I appreciate the Back button that makes navigating through them simple, as well as a separate button for accessing the Global settings. These are small things, but splitting controls and menus up like this helps separate operations into easily digestible chunks.

Holding down single buttons or pushing two in unison to get to certain tools and functions (in this case, the tuner and save function) is something that can often lead to confusion in units that try to achieve a lot with only a few controls. This pit fall that is avoided here by a simple text that concisely explains how to get to these functions on the top panel.

That tuner also makes great use of the screen, making it easy to read, and it is both responsive and accurate, which is all that is needed from a tuner.

All of these things can be done on the Tone-Wizard app too, but honestly, I don’t really feel the need to use it. The screen and controls are intuitive enough that I am happy doing everything from the hardware.

But the bigger screen of a separate device does have its advantages. The app is equally simple to use with identical icons to those displayed on the hardware, easily-understandable drop-down menus, and access to a straightforward drum machine to boot.

Connecting your device is as simple as holding down the Bluetooth button and selecting the Laney from your device’s menu, which makes streaming audio to the Prism-Mini seamless.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Getting plugged in and making some noise, I find that it is loud enough for solo home practice, but not much more than that. However, as home practice is the intent here, I don’t see this as a problem.

There are 50 uneditable factory presets to choose from, which are mirrored in a further 50 editable user presets and run the gamut from shimmering '80’s cleans to djenty distortions and everything in between.

Playing through them and bearing in mind that I am not expecting bass that will shake the earth in this tiny format, the Laney still feels on the thin side compared to its competitors, like the Positive Grid Spark Go and Boss Katana Mini X. However, it avoids sounding too boxy (again, relatively speaking), which is quite the feat given the size.

A couple of highlights for me are the Ambient preset, which is a wonderfully full, delay-soaked tone, and the Solo AyIt preset, which is a tight distortion, perfect for those soaring leads.

At this level, I’m not expecting amp models that are super-reactive to dynamics, and this is indeed the case. And when it comes to medium-gain, some of the presets like the “Crunchy” struggle for note definition, but otherwise, it's a good selection of sounds to have fun with.

The eight-block signal chain has plenty to play with and consists of Pre, Drive, Amp, Cab, EQ, Mod, Delay, and Reverb. In a nice surprise at this price, some of these blocks are movable as the Pre, Mod, Delay, and Reverb blocks can be reordered and placed either before the Drive or after the EQ, which adds a fair amount of versatility.

It would be unreasonable to expect hundreds of options, but there is enough here to cover all the basic food groups. For example, the modulation boasts a Phaser, Vibrato, Tremolo, and two Choruses, and the Amp block provides 15 Laney-themed guitar amps and two Bass amps.

I’m not expecting the sophistication of pro-level products like the Quad Cortex, but the effects offer some great value and are surprisingly rewarding. For example, I am particularly enjoying the Secret Path reverb with its shimmery, shoegazey vibes, and the 808, although not quite as mid-forward as a real Tube Screamer, does a great job of some bluesy crunch.

The only effects that are on the avoid list are the Auto-Wah and the Octaver, as the former is a little unpleasant at the ends of its sweep, and the Octaver doesn't quite get the pitching correct.

This is a stereo amplifier, which leads to some nice space when playing around with effects like the Ping-Pong delay. However, I find that getting the benefit of this requires sitting quite close to the Prism-Mini, as the left and right sides begin to merge after a few feet of distance. Still, for a tiny amp on a budget, it’s impressive to have it there at all.

Verdict

When gear is this affordable, we can expect a bit of a trade-off on some aspects in order to keep the price down. Here, the biggest compromise is in the build. The amp has a plasticy feel, and on our test model, one corner of the top panel kept popping out slightly, and the Parameter button does not always register when it is being pressed.

The amp modeling sounds good for the budget, if not quite as full as some of the Prism-Mini’s competitors. Where it begins to shine, however, is in its full complement of capable effects, and a screen that makes editing them a delightfully straightforward experience, with or without the app.

This ease of use is rare in such a small practice amp that covers so much tonal ground, and is the reason the Laney is worth considering as your desktop companion.

Music Radar verdict: While some money has been saved on the build, the Laney Prism-Mini boasts a host of capable effects and decent amp modeling considering the budget. However, the biggest win here is in the ease of use, thanks to the full colour, 1.77” LCD screen that makes editing these tones a breeze, with or without the app. A rare treat in something that does so much, in such a small format.

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Laney

Victory Amps has unveiled the PowerValve 200, a 200-watt tube-driven power amp that is designed to make your amp modeller feel, well, even more real, giving players the kind of response and tone that only tube amps can give you.

There is no question that the digital revolution of electric guitar gear has put more tones at our fingertips than ever before in history. But no matter how successful the amp modeller has been in transforming our tone journey, there has always been that nagging feeling that it is just that, a modeller.

Can the ear tell the difference when it comes through the FRFR speaker? Can your fingers feel the difference, that’s more to the point.

Victory Amps’ chief designer Martin Kidd says the PowerValve 200 was created to put an end to these questions – and to restore some of the more base pleasures of playing the instrument, adding a little analogue je ne sais quoi to the digital pot. Pair the PowerValve 200 with a speaker cabinet and you have a that old-school tube feel that FRFR speakers can’t give you.

“Players told us they still wanted to feel a guitar speaker cabinet moving air on stage – something that doesn’t quite happen with FRFR cabinets,” says Kidd. “The subtle harmonic content generated by a valve stage creates slight asymmetry in the waveform – and that’s where the feel comes from.”

And that feel, as any player will tell you, is fundamental to our enjoyment of a guitar amp. The PowerValve 200 is a compact little unit, with controls for Headphones level, Resonance, Body, Presence, Input Gain and Output level mounted on a vented black metal enclosure. Resonance, Body and Presence act like a 3-band EQ.

At the heart of its design is the Valve React Circuit, which introduces an EF91 (CV4014) tube to proceedings to give you a “richer, warmer, more driven, touch sensitive feel”.

Rabea Massaad, who is both a Victory Amps endorsee and a big fan of the Neural DSP Quad Cortex, is officially a fan of this circuit, arguing that it “really brings my presets to life and gives them that extra tube-amp style thump that feels great under the fingers”.

John Connearn is another who has giving it the the thumbs up, saying that it allows him to have a “vallve-powered digital rig with huge hi-fidelity sound”, adding that it’s more “portable, powerful and affordable” than any tube head he’s seen on the market.

You can switch the Valve React Circuit out if you like, running the PowerValve 200 as a solid-state head. It has a balanced 1/4 input, a 3.5mm headphones output, and XLR output for running direct to a desk or recording. There’s a switch to turn the cab sim on and off on the control panel.

The idea is simple; run the output from your modeller into the input of the PowerValve, adjust the input levels and EQ, switch the Valve React Circuit on and away you go

The best of both worlds? The early signs are promising. Sure, a lot of these signs comes from Victory. Of course it is going to be giving it big licks about the PowerValve 200’s capabilities. But it has sought out some independent feedback from the makers of the Quad Cortex to see what they thought, and Ryan Morgan, head of global sales at Neural DSP, give it a two thumbs up, admitting that it “exceeded” expectations.

“The response, feel and tone – especially when paired with the Quad Cortex – were outstanding,” says Morgan. “With the flip of a switch, the added tube stage delivers an immediate improvement to the signal. This is a seriously impressive piece of kit.”

The PowerValve 200 is available now, priced £499/$599. See Victory Amps for more details.

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

What is it?

With the proliferation of amp modellers that have flooded the market in recent years, many companies are starting to get ahead of the curve with what they believe to be the next Big Thing in the world of digital tone – FRFR cabs.

Full range, flat response speakers, in their simplest form, are designed to work alongside your modeler and project your meticulously dialed-in tones without coloring them in any way. Instead, they hope to provide a valuable monitoring solution for gigging guitarists, and recreate the ‘pushing air’ phenomenon that amp modelers lack.

In other words if you prefer the portability and convenience of amp modelers, but want some stage volume with an amp-like feel, a powered FRFR is for you.

Fender, Laney, Line 6, IK Multimedia… these are just some of the names that have made new strides in their FRFR departments in recent months. Blackstar can now be added to the bunch, having recently dropped the Artist FR Standard. Joined by the larger and more powerful Artist FR Special, the FR Standard is a 50W 1x12” cab, pitched primarily for home and studio use.

The trick with FRFR cabs is, because of their relatively simple design objective, how do you make yours stand out from the crowd? Onboard IRs? Speaker simulations? Specially designed speakers? There’s not a lot to play with.

Blackstar’s Artist FR, like the Fender Tone Master range, has gone down the ‘amp-inspired’ route, with an FRFR that looks and operates like a regular amp. Laney and Positive Grid, by comparison, have gone down the ‘PA’ route, with more rugged wedge-like FRFR solutions.

This here is designed by the same team that designed Blackstar’s amp range, and promises the dynamics and character you expect from an analog setup. It does this, among other ways, by leveraging a speaker set that promises extended highs, zero harshness, full and defined lows, and the full dynamic character of a tube amp.

In all, it is marked to be the most ‘amp-like’ non-amp out there. Is that the case when paired with a variety of modelers?

Specs

• Launch price: $399 | £289 | €309
• Type: Full range, flat response guitar speaker cab
• Origin: China
• Output: 50 Watts
• Speaker: 1 x 12"
• Channels: N/A
• Controls: Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence
• Connectivity: 1/4" / XLR combi input, XLR out
• Weight: 23.6 Lbs/10.72 kgs
• Dimensions: 461 x 387 x 230 mm
• Contact: Blackstar

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

In typical Blackstar fashion, the Artist FR is a really rugged speaker, with a reassuring rubber handle on the top – just like you’d find on an actual amp – to help carry it around the house and beyond. To that end, it’s delightfully lightweight, and while some may think an FRFR defeats the purpose of going digital (in other words, eliminating the need to lug an amp around) it really doesn’t feel like it’d be cumbersome to port about.

In fact, at 10.72kg, it undercuts the competition. Laney’s smallest FRFR (the LFR-110) is 13.1kg. Fender’s Tone Master FR-12 is 12.5kg. At just shy of 11kg, the Blackstar is especially back-friendly. Likewise, with its 461 x 387 x 230mm size, it doesn’t take up much space in a bedroom or on a stage. No more so than my Blues Junior.

The black tolex feels pretty premium (although our review model had a weird ‘sticky’ patch, perhaps from the packaging) and the rear stand doesn’t feel like it’s going to fly loose, which is reassuring. The pop-button mechanism can be a bit fiddly to reach around and undo, but it’s there if you want it.

Overall, it’s sleek, looks like an amp, feels robust and lightweight, and looks classy as hell thanks to the Blackstar styling. What more could you ask for?

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★★

Contrary to some other brands, Blackstar has opted to go down a more amp-inspired route with its FRFR cab. That means, unlike some alternatives that feature awkward rear-mounted controls that look more akin to a PA speaker or wedge monitor than a guitar amp, the Artist FR offers top-mounted panel controls much like your regular Blackstar combo.

It’s a great design choice, and one I think all FRFR cabs should use. Having the active 3-band EQ immediately accessible is a fantastic idea. Not only does it make it feel more amp-like, but purely from a usability perspective, it’s a vastly superior design choice.

What’s even better is that the EQ controls are all notched at the 12 o’clock position. That means you can quickly and easily lock into neutral and reset your FRFR ‘tones’ with zero fuss. It’s a nice way to go back to square one, especially when you’re testing different modelers and patches, and easy for those who are completely content with a flat setting.

The addition of a presence control is a nice touch, too, and further adds to Blackstar’s claim of this being an especially amp-like FRFR. I love a presence control. I think they’re a valuable tool on tube amps, and having one in the context of digital amp modelers helps tailor some of the more pronounced digital-y-ness, or bump some of the lacking higher frequencies. Having the input jack on the top panel would have been the icing on the cake.

As it is, though, the input jack is on the back, which is blissfully sparse in the best way possible. There are no cab sim outs and IR connections here. Instead, you get the input, an XLR out – with a ground-lift – and the IEC power port. It’s very ‘analog’ and just the thing those coming from a conventional amp world would appreciate.

There’s a rear-mounted single stand leg, which is held in place by a pop-button mechanism. I don’t see why side-mounted stands wouldn’t have worked, and would argue they’d have been even easier to operate, but at least there is a stand – a lot of the rival FRFRs don’t offer this practical option to angle the cab towards the player's ears. Rather than their legs!

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

As luck would have it, the Artist FR arrived at my house for testing at the same time I had something of a stockpile of review gear. That meant I was able to test it through a range of different modelers – including the Neural DSP Nano Cortex, Neural DSP Quad Cortex mini, and Line 6 Helix Stadium XL. Oh, and I also had the Blackstar ID:X Floor One. Fortunate timing, eh?

The ‘too long, didn’t read’ of it is, the Blackstar Artist FR Standard is a very versatile and convincing speaker that did really well in projecting the nuance of each individual digital modeling patch that was thrown its way.

Furthermore, the onboard EQ section is really helpful in fine-tuning those patches. As someone who plays entirely through headphones – apart from when I rehearse or gig – it’s sometimes hard to get an accurate reading of what my tone will sound like ‘in the room’. In other words, how it will behave when fed through a speaker or PA at higher volumes.

I find the Blackstar to be really valuable in really honing in on my modeling tones, and the controls really did level up the experience. All the controls were impressively responsive, and the treble was especially good at introducing some high-end that never gets uncontrollable or fizzy. Likewise, the Artist FR Standard packs a hefty bass punch without ever sounding muddy or washy.

It retains the clarity of my patches with considerable ease, and, in some instances, also helps highlight what was lacking. Too much reverb on my clean patch, for example, or some unruly gain on my drive settings. In other words, I’d say it makes my giggable modeler tone better.

To that point, I’ve tried so many combinations and patches to try and get a really genuine-sounding, authentic-feeling edge-of-breakup tone from my modelers, usually coming from any number of overdrive, compressor, amp and IR combinations. Having finally landed on something that feels bouncy and responsive under my fingers, I live in fear of that not translating to a wider room at amplified levels.

Well, my fears were unfounded with the Blackstar Artist FR. My tone is exactly as I'd dialed in, just louder and more usable. I didn't quite do a strict blind A/B running my Blues Junior combo next to the Artist FR while running a capture of the amp on the QC mini (that would've been logistically challenging for a sole reviewer) but I was really impressed at how lively the digital companion speaker felt.

As a minor point, I find the speaker to be somewhat noisy, especially at mid-high volume levels, especially when using the tilt-back stand. In smaller rooms, when sat close to the Artist FR at an angle, there is some audible noise leakage. Of course, the bigger the room and the further away you’re positioned, the less of a trouble this would be.

By comparison, when I wasn’t using the tiltback speaker, the FRFR was angled away, so that leakage wasn’t as apparent. There is a helpful input clip on the top panel, too, to make sure you aren't cooking on too high a heat.

Verdict

At the end of the day, whether you go for the Blackstar Artist FR or not will depend entirely on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for something with cutting edge IR tech, an expanded feature set, and a more industrial, PA-like vibe, this isn’t for you.

However, if you’re looking for the most ‘amp-like’ FRFR out there, one that can enhance your digital modeler experience and bring back some of that good ol’ fashioned analog feel, then this definitely is.

What I like most about the Artist FR is how intuitive and fun it feels. It’s like having an amp behind you, and as someone who’s pretty skeptical about the whole FRFR thing – purely because I switched to a modeler so I didn’t have to have any physical speakers to worry about – I am very impressed.

It does feel like I am actually playing through an amp, both physically and sonically, and Blackstar’s amp engineering expertise does really shine through.

The overall design and layout feels really familiar and a natural extension of the digital modeler experience, and I see this appealing particularly to two camps of players: those looking for something amp-inspired to bolster their digital rig and bring back the ‘pushing air’ feel; and those skeptical about making the switch to digital, who might need something tangible to help ease the transition.

As for the size, the 50-watt Standard here may be fine for the home, studio and jamming with another player sans drummer, but as Blackstar has designed it, the 100-watt Artist FR Special would be the one to go for when it comes to gigging.

MusicRadar verdict: If you’re looking for the most ‘amp-like’ FRFR out there, one that can enhance your digital modeller experience and bring back some of that good ol’ fashioned analog feel, then this is probably for you. The Artist FR Standard feels like having an amp behind you, and as someone who’s never taken to the whole FRFR thing, I am very impressed.

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Blackstar

Noisegate

Fender sure knows how to give its favourite guitar amps a glow up to mark a special anniversary, and has just treated the Hot Rod Deluxe to a limited edition makeover that marks 30 years of the much-loved 40-watt combo.

If you have been following these launches closely, you’ll notice something familiar about the 30th Anniversary Hot Rod Deluxe – it comes with the same western-style textured vinyl covering and that vintage ‘50s-style grille cloth, looking just as the 30th Anniversary Blues Junior IV did last year. And there’s an anniversary badge and a vintage leather handle to complete the look.

The similarities between these tube amps don’t end there, either. This, too, has had a fresh speaker, with Fender swapping out the original’s 12” Celestion A-type speaker for a G12M-65 Creamback, both ceramic speakers, but the latter has a more “vocal” midrange, not to mention a heritage that goes way back to classic rock’s formative days of Beck, Clapton et al.

And just as Fender took the opportunity to make some tweaks to the Blues Junior’s circuit, here we have some refinements to the preamp in pursuit of “increased overdriven note definition” and the spring reverb has been modded to make it smoother. These modifications worked gangbusters on the Blues Junior so we’ll be intrigued to hear how it it sounds on this 40-watt platform.

For many players, the Hot Rod Deluxe screams ‘pedalboard platform’. There is an abundance of clean headroom, with that speaker upgrade was made with pedals in mind, and there is an effects loop so you can place your time-sensitive effects – your modulation and delay petals et cetera – after the preamp, before the power amp.

The Hot Rod Deluxe presents us with three channels to choose from – Normal, Drive and the evocatively titled More Drive. A three-band EQ serves all channels, and there are Volume, Drive, Master, Reverb and Presence controls, plus a Bright switch should you need to spritz up the treble.

It certainly looks the part, with black chickenhead knobs mounted on a high-shine stainless steel control panel. All your 1/4” connections, including that for the two-button footswitch, can be found here.

As for the tubes, there are a trio of 12AX7s in the preamp, a pair of 6L6’s doing the heavy lifting in the power section, and it should be said that this is a loud guitar amplifier, which is a good thing. It’s part of its charm.

The 30th Anniversary Hot Rod Deluxe is out now, priced £1,269/$1,299. See Fender for more details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

Victory has certainly come a long way in just 13 years. The brand launched by Chief Engineer Martin Kidd – whose prior work with Cornford resulted in partnerships with six-string greats like Guthrie Govan, Justin Hawkins and Dweezil Zappa – now sits among the big players of the guitar amp world.

This latest lunchbox head inspired by 2024’s handwired flagship MK Overdrive is undoubtedly his most daring design to date, squeezing in the most functionality I’ve ever seen on an amp head of this size.

The company states that the MKX “redefines what a compact amplifier can achieve”, and though it’s a bit of a bold statement to make, Victory has proved time and time again that it's not a brand to be underestimated.

Specs

• Price: $1,659 | £1,399 | €1,699
• Type: Amp head
• Origin: UK
• Output: 50/9 watts RMS
• Channels: 3
• Controls: 3-Band EQ, Gain and Levels for clean and overdrive channels, Reverb Decay and Level, Power Amp Presence and Resonance, two Masters
• Connectivity: 1/4" input and outputs, effects loop, two footswitch inputs
• Footswitch: Both footswitches included
• Weight: 15.76 lbs/7.15 kg 
• Dimensions: 350x180x190 mm
• Contact: Victory Amps

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Visually, the overall design is exactly in line with the other Victory lunchbox heads.

There’s a classy cream-on-black aesthetic with the upper grill giving users a glimpse into the magic encased within – if you like seeing valves glowing next to a big transformer, this will put a smile on your face.

More importantly, however, this one robust bit of kit. The metal chassis will protect the circuitry well enough on the road and should guarantee many happy years of playing.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

Though the MKX is very much a three-channel amp, its two overdrive channels share the same three-band EQ located directly underneath the clean controls.

The interface is pretty straightforward, perhaps a bit much for the kind of player who wants an ultra-streamlined two-knob design, but the large majority of users will welcome the possibilities for tonal shaping.

That said, this amp is not trying to compete with the digital world. It’s an old school tube amp at heart, so you won’t find any USB connectivity or direct recording outs.

A big plus with all of the Victory lunchbox heads is the ability to run them in high or low power modes, this particular model coming all the way down from 50 Watts to just nine, which means it will be loud enough for live shows while also being quiet enough to use comfortably at home.

At just over 15 lbs, it’s pretty light and easy to move around, so you won’t need the additional gym membership to help you get around from gig to gig.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

For this review, I plugged a Schecter USA Nick Johnston HSS into The Duellist twin overdrive pedal by Kingtone, with the head going into a Victory 2x12 cabinet loaded with Vintage 30 speakers, as well as a Boss RE-202 Space Echo providing some delay in the loop.

The clean channel is impressively punchy with the gain set fairly low, but as you increase the amount of signal running through the three ECC83 preamp valves, it becomes even more lively.

If you want that glassy Stevie Ray Vaughan sound heard on famous tracks like Lenny, this is a high-gain amp that can actually do it, and even provide the right kind of reverb at the same time.

That sense of depth also runs through both of the overdrive channels, the first of which focuses on more of a crunch variation that will suit all of your favourite AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses riffs. If you are more accustomed to metal riffing and screaming leads, OD II will probably be your go-to.

With a pair of EL34 valves in the power section, the MKX has a distinctly British voice that harks back to the modded Marshalls of the 80s, but you could always scoop the mids and use a pedal in front to get more of an American kind of flavour.

Verdict

This is undoubtedly the most versatile lunchbox amp Victory has ever made and I’m pleased to report it performs incredibly well across the board. High-gain amps rarely come with clean channels this good – many have tried to house the sounds of Fender and Marshall inside one product and very few have come this close.

The functionality is very impressive, given how you get four footswitchable controls plus two types of stunning digital reverb, high and low power modes, plus more knobs at the back.

But it’s also not trying to be something it’s not, either – there’s no USB or Bluetooth connectivity to be found here – which makes this more of a classic amp inspired by the glory days of high-gain circuits.

Another big plus is just how sonically tidy everything is, even when you have the gain high up, there’s very little buzz or electronic interference but still plenty of sustain, feedback and saturation. In short, it screams every bit as well as it sings.

If you want to focus just on clean tones or more of an American-sounding 6L6-driven high gain, perhaps other Victory options like the Duchess and Kraken will be of more interest. But if you’re looking for something that can do it all – and do it all to an exceptionally high standard – the MKX will be worth checking out.

MusicRadar verdict: Given that the handwired MK Overdrive retails for over three times as much, it’s amazing just how close Victory has got here. The MKX Lunch Box combines the same kind of features and controls with breathtaking tones at a fraction of the cost, while also adding in two types of reverb.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Victory Amps

Sweetwater

American Musical Supply

• Best high-end guitar amps: Our pick of the best, for experts and pro players

For what seems like forever the Neural DSP Quad Cortex has been number on in our best amp modeller buyer’s guide – but could all this change with the arrival of the Line 6 Helix Stadium Floor?

This more compact sibling of the MusicRadar-approved Helix Stadium XL Floor, the Stadium Floor shares the same expansive 8” touchscreen and a user experience that is incredibly intuitive, and boasts the same state-of-the-art DSP, with its an all-new Agoura modelling technology presenting us with the next generation of electric guitar tones from Line 6.

It, too, has the Showcase feature that is going to be a game-changer for gigging musicians, allowing players to automate their entire live show (not just the presets in your set, switching between guitar amps, but synthesizers, stagelights, slideshows…).

Even in our digitally transformed gear eco-system, Showcase feels like a radical proposition. And, as Eric Klein, Line 6’s chief product design architect, this is the Stadium unit that you can throw into a backpack.

“Helix Stadium Floor gives players the same powerful DSP, entirely new Agoura modelling methodology, Showcase automation capabilities, and other tone-crafting and performance tools found in our flagship Helix Stadium XL Floor processor,” says Klein. “Except in a notably smaller and lighter chassis that is compact enough to fit in most backpacks.”

Okay, the Stadium would need to shrink some more to beat the Quad Cortex Mini on portability – the latter offers the full-fat QC performance, complete with the 7” touchscreen, in a glass-topped unit just 228mm × 118mm × 65mm, weighing 1.5kg (the Stadium Floor weighs 3.4kg and measures 408mm x 241mm x 82mm), But still, this is the conversation players will be having.

As Klein mentions, the Stadium has the same firepower as its larger sibling. It might lack an expression pedal but it has got an abundance of connections, and similarly can be hooked up to your DAW and used as a studio-quality USB guitar audio interface.

The Augora modelling tech used to create its sounds takes a component-by-component level approach to recreating the sounds of a hardware amp or guitar effect.

“Our powerful new platform isn’t just for more stuff; it was mission critical to help us deliver the single biggest leap Line 6 has made in its near 30 year history of modelling amps,” said Klein, when the Helix Stadium platform was first announced in summer 2025. “We call it Augora. But Augora isn’t HX on steroids. It is an entirely new subcomponent behavioural modelling methodology.

“There’s all-new tube emulation where we actually measure detailed parameters of the actual tubes used in these amps – voltages, currents, capacitance and more.”

Some features are not ready yet. The Proxy amp and effects capture feature will be arriving in a future firmware update (Showcase wasn’t ready upon the Stadium XL’s launch).

But from the Hype control, the wi-fi, the Bluetooth, the capability to import up to eight stem files, mute on and play over the others in the track, plus your Helix/HX presets can be used here… Well, this is a formidable platform.

You can read MusicRadar’s review of the Line 6 Helix Stadium XL here. You can now officially buy the Helix Stadium Floor for £1,549/$1,799. And see what we thought of the recent competition. Our Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini review is right here.

For more details, head over to Line 6.

Guitarists spend a lot of time thinking about electric guitars, thinking about amps, thinking about which overdrive pedal is going to be the one that unlocks everything for them, revealing the tone they have been seeking all these years.

It might be no exaggeration to say that we can often spend as much time thinking about about this as we do playing. Josh Middleton, frontman/guitarist of Sylosis can relate. He’s been there, too.

But speaking to MusicRadar about the UK metal stalwarts’ forthcoming album, The New Flesh, out 20 February via Nuclear Blast, Middleton says we should be paying more attention to our guitar speakers – because that’s where your tone lives or dies.

“The speakers are so important when it comes to like a good tone,” he says. “Because you can have a great amp, but if the speaker sucks, it won’t sound good, whereas you can have an okay amp and an amazing speaker, and you’ll get a better sound.”

And it just so happens that Middleton has a great cabinet loaded with four great speakers. This oversized Mesa/Boogie 4x12 is pretty special, and no small amount of research went into sourcing it. Middleton has former Periphery bassist and now progressive metal über-producer/engineer Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood to thank for it.

“It’s from the year 2000. Quite nerdy info, but it was my friend Nolly, who I actually bought the cab off,” says Middleton. “He was into looking at serial numbers and stuff, and we were really obsessed with all these old Andy Sneap productions from back in the day, and he spoke to Andy Sneap, and this cab is one serial number way from Andy Sneap’s.”

Andy Sneap, for the uninitiated, is the co-founder of and guitarist of UK thrash icons Sabbat guitarist, whose History Of A Time To Come (1988) remains an unimpeachable genre classic, and who has gone on to become one of metal’s most respected producers, with credits including Amon Amarth, Judas Priest, Megadeth and more.

Sneap’s body of work, whether engineering/mixing or as producer, is a big influence on Middleton and how he produces Sylosis.

This cab, coming off the Mesa/Boogie production line next to Sneap’s in 2000, loaded with four Celestion V30 12” drivers, is the secret sauce. “It has the sound of all the stuff I grew up listening to,” says Middleton.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2020, Middleton admitted that he had fallen down the rabbit hole when it comes to speakers. And as any speaker geek worth their salt will tell you, not all are created equal – and sometimes the same make and model will vary in quality from year to year.

“I’ve gotten really nerdy about ages of speakers,” he told Guitar World in 2020. “There was a period where V30s where sounding incredible in Mesa cabs, between 2000 and 2005.”

This is the cabinet we hear on The New Flesh. Middleton’s rig was simple. He used his ESP/LTD JM-1 signature guitar, a Horizon-esque double-cut loaded with a pair of Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers.

There was his trusty Maxon OD-808 doing its Tube Screamer thing. All this was going into a Peavey 6505 (“with barely any mids!”), into the cab…

But there’s a catch. What Middleton used for the recording was an impulse (IR) response of the cabinet, a precise engineered virtual capture of the cabinet and the Shure SM57 and Sennheiser MD 421 microphones in front of it. It sounds exactly the same, only it allowed Middleton to record his guitar parts at home and still stay on speaking terms with the neighbours.

“It’s my cab and it is how it would sound, but I moved house since doing the last record and I don’t have a home studio,” he says. “I just couldn’t make noise at home – and tracking guitars is loud!”

Middleton makes a great point. For all the time spent obsessing over the brands of strings we use, our electric guitar pickups, making sure we have the best quality guitar cables we can afford (still important), speakers arguably get the short end of the stick.

If you have a 1x12” cabinet, be it standalone or in a combo, it can be a relatively cheap mod (you’d pay about 150 bucks for a Celestion V30 these days), and not that difficult to do at home.

Just remember to follow the instructions carefully, unplug the amp first, match polarity and impedances and, if swapping out a speaker on a tube amp, let the tubes cool down first and don’t turn it back on until the speaker has been installed (that load has to go somewhere... Also don't be opening the chassis – there's no need, there are lethal voltages, and that's a job for the pros).

But a 4x12” is a more considerable investment, and that’s where the digital transformation of guitar gear offers players options. Sure, you can use your quote/unquote real amp, keep that pedalboard stocked, but with IRs readily available – and cheap – you don’t have to be limited anymore.

And maybe, after all this time, what was really missing from your metal rhythm tone was an IR for an early 2000s over-sized Mesa/Boogie slanted cab loaded with V30s.

You can read our full interview with Josh Middleton, coming soon to MusicRadar.

Fractal Audio Systems, the brand behind the Axe-Fx range of amp modellers, is moving into the guitar plugins market with the ICONS series, with its first drop inspired by golden era Fender amps.

The Fullerton Collection comprises 36 guitar amp models in total, plus effects imported from Fractal’s Axe-Fx.

“Deluxes, Bassguys, Double-Verbs, Vibrato Verbs, Supers, Princetones, Champlifiers...” You can guess from these pseudonyms that all the classics are present and correct, and the user interface is faithful to the plug-in-and-play appeal of these classic amps.

Whether chicken-head dials a la the vintage tweed set, or the ‘witch hat’ skirted knobs of later years, they are recreated here on the ICONS GUI.

Expect the same level of sonic detail and behaviour as you would from Fractal’s hardware units.

Fractal says it takes a component-level approach to engineering these analogue circuits as a digital replica, analysing and copying the response of “the preamp, tone stack, cathode follower, power supply, power amp, phase inverter, amp/speaker interaction” and so on down the list.

We don’t need to know all of the mathematics and science behind these endeavours, only that Fractal promises that “each model sounds, feels, and responds just like the real thing at any setting”.

Fractal’s ICONS series amp models are paired with custom-engineered DynaCab HD models; you can pair these virtual cabinets with a mic, move the mic position and monitor the sound in the real-time. There are 11 microphones to choose from, 13 DynaCabs in total.

Plugins might not push the air about the room but they certainly take some of the pain out of miking up an amp – you can experiment at pace.

Players can upload their own or third-party IRs and you have two slots to mix and blend. The ICONS cabinet section also includes a stereo room simulator, virtual mic preamp, and master high-cut and low-cut filters.

“Even with all of this power, ICONS stays fast and intuitive, with a simple interface that lets you dial in without distraction,” says Fractal. “Amps and effects have familiar controls, plus a few carefully chosen extras, while a modern preset manager, complete with tags, favourites, and metadata, keeps you organised and focussed on creative…

“With support for automation, MIDI control, and essential tools like a built in tuner, ICONS is designed to fit seamlessly into modern recording and performance workflows.”

The ICONS Fullerton Collection is offered in four individual volumes or as a set, available now at an introductory price of $299 (regular price $396), all of which can be run as a standalone app or in your DAW.

See Fractal Audio Systems for more details.

Green Day did not play for long during their Super Bowl LX performance but it was just long enough to set the internet ablaze – just what were those guitar amps behind Billie Joe Armstrong?

No, not the over-sized ones. They were just for show. We are talking about the blue Marshall 1959 Super Leads that all but confirm that – and some might say, at last – we have a new signature BJA amp, and upon closer inspection, these look like they will ship straight from the factory in Milton Keynes with the legendary Dookie mod.

These amps haven’t shown up with retailers, they are not on the official Marshall site, but the British amp brand isn’t keeping them a secret either, posting some more detailed pictures on its Instagram account, and even giving us a look, albeit a blurry look, at the back of them.

The brass plate on the front tells us that these are the Dookie 1959 / BJA Super Lead signature models incoming, with the Green Day frontman’s signature on the plating. The power-blue Tolex will pair nicely with his Fernandes S-style, aka Blue, i.e. the heavily stickered, heavily modded electric guitar that he has had since the start. It certainly pairs nicely with that fawn grille cloth, with white piping finishing the amp off.

As one Instagram commentator noted, ““Ah man I’m so ready to go broke. When are these launching?”

That, we do not know. But judging by the broadcast footage, they certainly sound ready. What we do know is that the Dookie mod is going to get the Green Day tonehounds all hot under the collar. It’s a BFD.

While the original Marshall Super Leads did not have a master volume, Armstrong’s Dookie mod, performed by the late Martin Golub, retroactively gave him one, repurposing his Super Lead’s High Treble volume for the master control, and turning the Normal Volume into the gain.

From the pics posted by Marshall, these mods are helpfully emblazoned in red above the original knobs.

Some might know it as the Crunch Mod, because that’s what you get from those cascading gain stages; and it’s the sound you hear on Dookie.

While tube amp mods are absolutely, 100 per cent best left to a qualified tech – the risk of electrocution is real – these kinds of mods for the NMV Marshall in your life are available on the market. There is no shortage of talented amp technicians out there, e.g. Chicago Amp Mods will do this for you, with prices ranging from $220 to $250.

Some modded Marshalls have entered the realm of legend, such as anything that the late José Arredondo worked on. Arredondo’s was friends with Eddie Van Halen, modded amps for Steve Vai and George Lynch. And James Hetfield used Arredondo-modded Marshall Super Lead from the late ‘60s, early 70s during the sessions for Metallica’s latest studio album, 72 Seasons.

But modded Marshalls straight from the factory? You have to be Billie Joe Armstrong for that. The question is when will we see his Dookie amp in stores?

Mooer Audio has expanded its Intelligent Amp series with a 40-watt stereo powerhouse that might just redefine what the 21st-century desktop amp is capable of.

Hyperbole? Maybe for some. But if you are the type of guitar player who likes the idea of opening an app on your smartphone, prompting it via text or speech (e.g. “I would like James Hetfield’s rhythm tone from Blackened,” or maybe “can you find me Brian May’s Bohemian Rhapsody solo tone?”), and then having Mooer AI serving up three signal chains to choose from then saving that down to one of the 80 preset slots available to you, well, the F40i and F40i Li might just be the game-changer you are looking for.

The F40i and F40i Li are identical in most respects, the latter has an onboard lithium-ion battery for wireless operation – take it anywhere.

Both have 40-watts driving a pair of 4” FRFR speakers, a 1.3” circular touchscreen dominating the control panel, and a clean and tidy build with a carry handle for easy portability. Battery or no battery, these are compact and portable, and can be deployed for a myriad of uses.

As with previous editions of the Intelligent Amp series, there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to tones.

These modelling amps have 55 amps, 69 effects, an onboard drum machine with 60 grooves and 10 different types of metronome (no excuses for not sharpening up your time-keeping on practice sessions with these amps), and you can sync up the 60 second looper with the drum machine. Hook it up via the iAMP app and you can share and download tones via the user community.

Other utilities include a guitar tuner, Bluetooth 5.0 for cueing up backing tracks, a headphones output plus two line-out jacks, and a USB-C so you can use it for recording.

As the pictures suggest, it has almost everything you need to create guitar-related social media content if that is your bag.

There’s even an XLR and 1/4” combo input so you can use it with a microphone. And like the best of these next-gen desktop amps, you can also use it as a Bluetooth speaker.

Both the regular and battery-equipped versions are compatible with Mooer Audio’s F4 wireless footswitch.

You can get them in black or white. And they are available now, priced from £203/$279 street. See Mooer Audio for more details.

NAMM 2026: Welcome to our roundup of the best guitar gear to hit the hallowed halls of the Anaheim Convention Centre, featuring the likes of Neural DSP, Gibson, Taylor Guitars, Yamaha, and many more.

All the big-hitters return for the annual North American Music Merchants Show, which feels like it's getting back to its best, with plenty of new gear for us all to salivate over.

We deployed our very own guitar-nut, Rob Laing, to scour the halls and floors for all the latest finery the guitar industry has to offer. In our best efforts to try and distil his thoughts and experiences into one easy-to-read format, we bring you our best guitar gear of NAMM 2026.

For more NAMM news, insights and oddities, head over to our rolling live blog.

NAMM 2026 guitar gear highlights

Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini

Neural DSP has taken its smash-hit Quad Cortex amp modeller and shrunk it by more than 50 per cent, and despite all this the unit is for all intents and purposes unchanged.

None of the processing power of the original unit has been lost in this downsizing project. The 7” touchscreen remains in place, dominating the enclosure a little like a smartphone, and you still have the four stainless steel rotary footswitches, plus a heap of connections around the back.

In so many ways, it really is the same MusicRadar-approved Quad Cortex, using the same Neural Capture tech (V1 and V2), the same access to the ridiculous number of guitar amp and guitar effects pedal captures in the library, compatibility with the same Archetype guitar plugin suites, it is just that it is really small. How small? It weighs in at 1.5kg. It measures 8.9” x 4.6” x 2.5”.

You can check out more on the Quad Cortex Mini in our first look video over on YouTube

Blackstar ID: X floor modellers

Is any amp brand as busy as the Brits at Blackstar? Turning up to this year's show with the mighty little Beam Mini practice amp, its first FRFR cabs with the Artist FRs, TV-10 tube amps and... modelling pedals?

Yes indeed - three affordable options with sleek metal chassis that really impressed us. The new ID: X Floor One, Two and Three range are lean into physical controls rather than screen real estate and we like that being reflected on the value front with prices starting at under $200.

There are six models of tried and true Blackstar amps, like the St James, alongside six of the Ampton classic-influenced choices. There are also three bass amps, two acoustic voices, and an acoustic simulator to widen your horizons. Players can also select virtual valve responses between EL84, EL34, or 6L6 with the IR side covered by the company's excellent CabRig editing.

Oh, there are effects too, of course, with 35, and an expression pedal for the Floor Two and Three. Blackstar continues to impress us with its willingness to confidently enter new spaces.

Mentha Works Monk Echo

Monk Echo by Mentha Works was spotted on day one of the show, and we already had an inkling that this was going to be a very strong candidate for our favourite new pedal of NAMM 2026.

The company is formed by some of the key people behind Gamechanger Audio and has all the hallmarks of that esoteric vibe brought into the industry from the Latvian firm.

Monk Echo is a delay and reverb pedal that features unique vowel voicing, called the Monk Voice, which enables you sculpt your reverbs with the character of the human voice. You'll also find responsive modulation, granular pitch-shifting, and distortion via a special degradation effect.

The effects unit is already sold out with all preorders from the initial backers being honoured, so we hope that we get to see this time machine in full production very soon.

Gibson Atomic Age concept

In the corner of Gibon's invitation-only room of Custom Shop delights at NAMM, sat something very different - a brand new guitar design. The offset Atomic Age.

For now it's a concept guitar, and not a production model, but we're told the reaction from dealers has been so enthusiastic, it's making the prospect of a production model more likely. We like the shape and would be really interested to see it with different finish options one day. Big fans of the single G logo on the headstock, too, while there's an unexpected raised Gibson logo on the pickguard.

From the design mind of Custom Shop Product Engineer Darron Dubose, the Atomic Age features a solid Korina body with unusual contouring. The pickups (the neck humbucker is a split coil) are accented with a bowtie-style surround. The Atomic Age has string-through construction too, and it's great to see Gibson trying new things here with a surprising preview. Let's hope it's not the last we see of the Atomic Age.

Epiphone Futura

Even without a full stand that's open to the public at the NAMM Show, Gibson and Epiphone have still made a massive splash here with a host of new models the public can see.

Value and specs are levelling up for core models, and the Futura Epiphones enter new territory with stainless steel frets. But on the Gibson acoustic side, we were also blown away by the super light and super resonant Century Collection, celebrating 100 years of its flat-tops.

There are also stunning signatures for Michael Schenker, late legend Mick Ronson and a new version of the Alex Lifeson Epiphone ES-355 that's creating a lot of excitement.

JBL BandBox

JBL has dropped its BandBox Solo and Trio speakers which feature modelling as well a stem separation feature.

At the heart of JBL's BandBox is Stem AI: an intelligent vocal and instrument separation technology that lets you isolate or remove vocals, guitar, or drums from any track in real-time.

This technology makes it easy to turn any track into a custom backing mix, whether you’re trying to learn a solo, jam with friends or improvise over songs.

The stem separation works really well, with only a short delay to compensate for the processing. It was demoed on the JBL booth running Spotify via Bluetooth, with the stems dropped out of the mix with relative ease.

We didn't have much time to check out the modelling side of the BandBox range, so we can't give our opinions on that side of things just yet, but stem separation feels like it could be the next must-have feature in guitar gear of this ilk.

Also worth checking out…

Eastman Guitar

We need to give a shout-out to Eastman Guitars with its new Fullertone shape - the Offset '62. The best Fullertone so far, aesthetically? We think so. Typically for Eastman, this £899 model felt premium in our hands, with satin Gold and Dakota Red finishes - though we're interested to see what more colours may follow in the future.

Spec includes Tonerider soapbar humbuckers, roasted black limba body and the Fullertone's two-bolt long tenon design that you can really feel helps the guitar resonate, even acoustically. The tremolo is a Goldo DG and we're loving the anodised backplates and pickguard. There's only one thing for it - we need to get one in for review and investigate further!

Chris Buck signature Yamaha Revstar

It's been in the works for a while, but Chris Buck finally has a Yamaha Guitars signature Revstar to demo for us on a very busy NAMM Show stand.

The RS02CB Honey Gold is based on his trusted custom shop model. Chris worked with Yamaha to voice the P-90s here with a lower output for a more detailed response at lower volumes.

A chambered body helps lighten the load and the neck is carbon-reinforced to provide stability in changing environments, which is just as well, because Chris's band Cardinal Black are touring far and wide, including playing two gigs at the gear show.

Taylor Guitars

Resetting an acoustic guitar neck to help lower or raise its string action and improve playability is a tricky job for experts only - until now. We met Taylor Guitars CEO and design mastermind Andy Powers to see how you can do it in a few seconds on the company's new Next Generation models. It's another showcase of Andy's vision for constantly evolving the company's designs to help players play better.

The new Action Control Neck for the Next Generation 300, 400 and 800 series Grand Auditorium guitars features a long tenon and this shimless adjustability, alongside scalloped V-class bracing for enhanced resonance as well as warmth. There's also the new Claria pickup system. Next generation indeed!

NAMM 2026: JBL announces the BandBox Solo and BandBox Trio: two AI-powered speaker system for live instrument and vocal separation, rich signature JBL sound and built-in effects.

AI might be the buzzword you’re tired of hearing, but JBL has just dropped two new speakers that deploy it in a rather interesting way.

You only have to cast your mind back to 2023 when AI made it possible to separate John Lennon’s voice from a 1970s demo recording, allowing the remaining members to complete and release the first new Beatles single 'Now and Then' in nearly 30 years with Giles Martin using AI de-mixing.

Fast forward to the present day, and JBL has dropped its BandBox Solo and Trio speakers which use AI in a similar way to separate vocals and instruments, bringing the technology to the mainstream.

At the heart of JBL's BandBox is Stem AI: an intelligent vocal and instrument separation technology that lets you isolate or remove vocals, guitar, or drums from any track in real-time.

This technology makes it easy to turn any track into a custom backing mix, whether you’re trying to learn a solo, jam with friends or improvise over your favorite songs.

JBL BandBox Solo

In the new BandBox range is a small BandBox Solo for musicians and individual players looking to “level-up” their practice setup without sacrificing sound quality or creative control. The BandBox Solo features a single guitar/microphone input so you can plug in and play with ease.

Songs can be streamed to the device to automatically engage JBL’s Stem AI and you can then choose which elements of the track you wish to keep or remove – for instance, if you want to remove the original guitar part, and play your own over the top instead. Even more features can be accessed through the JBL ONE app.

JBL BandBox Trio

But the Solo has a bigger brother with the JBL BandBox Trio. While you can of course play it solo, it’s designed with four inputs for playing in group settings. It’s considerably larger than the smaller BandBox Solo, with powerful 135W JBL Sound 1x6.5” woofer and 2x1” tweeters making it powerful enough to gig with and uses the same powerful AI tech.

The JBL BandBox Solo and Trio will be available in the UK from February priced at £199 and £529 respectively.

NAMM 2026: The Lil’ Viper makes its debut at NAMM 2026 with Slash’s continued partnership with Magnatone resulting in a portable 8-watt combo that the legendary Guns N' Roses guitarist says “kicks the ass of amps three times its size”.

Established in 1937 in LA, California, Magnatone is famous for inventing the stereo pitch-shifting vibrato effect using a non-moving part. The boutique amplifier manufacturer has worked with legendary artists over the years, including Buddy Holly, Jeff Beck and Slash of Guns N’ Roses fame.

The Lil’ Viper is the latest amp coming to Magnatone’s Slash Collection and developed with Top Hat himself to produce a remarkably powerful 8-watt amp in a lightweight, portable combo design.

Magnatone says the Lil’ Viper will be perfect for home, studio and of course, backstage use.

Obeid Khan, Magnatone’s Chief Engineer, collaborated with the GnR star to create this super portable amp for practice and show prep. “The Lil’ Viper is Magnatone’s smallest, most portable offering in the Slash line-up,” says Khan. “Slash wanted a big-sounding backstage solution so we worked together to literally create a big amp… in a little box.”

Slash adds, “I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the most kick ass amp of its size I’ve ever heard. Its sound actually kicks the ass of amps three times its size.”

The Lil’ Viper is made in the USA, as with all of Magnatone’s amplifiers and it features a single 12AX7 preamp tube and a pair of NOS 6AQ5 power tubes for 8 watts of push-pull Class AB output through a custom Magnatone 8” ceramic magnet speaker.

Its High/Low gain switch allows players to choose Low Gain for a classic, slightly broken up gain structure or switch over to High Gain which is a modified type of saturation tone.

At Slash’s request, the Lil’ Viper was kitted out with a speaker-emulated 1/4” headphone output to mimic the internal speaker while allowing players to access full control of the amp’s features. A 1/8” line input allows backing tracks to be played with ease.

For someone as stylish as Slash, the Lil’ Viper also needs to look the part, so Magnatone has dressed the cabinet in Slash’s signature Purple Python cosmetic which has a super cool snakeskin effect, while the Magnatone logo has a backlight to stand out in dark pubs and clubs and gold accented hardware provides a premium finishing touch.

The Lil’ Viper is available exclusively through Purple Python and costs $1,899. If you’re attending NAMM 2026 be sure to swing be Booth #5237 in Hall D to see it in action.

NAMM 2026: California’s very own Synergy Amps is a leader in modular tube amplifier technology and is set to push the envelope once more with its patent-protected Machine-Learning Power Amp technology, which makes its debut at the Anaheim Convention Center this year.

Known for crafting award-winning amplifier designs and collaborating with amplifier engineer heavyweights such as Dave Friedman, Mike Soldano and Tone King, the company has never shied away from breaking boundaries.

Synergy calls its Machine-Learning Power Amp technology “revolutionary” and claims it can deliver the highly efficient, smaller designs and heat-saving qualities of Class D amplifiers while delivering the tone of a 'true' tube amplifier.

The company says vacuum tube amplifiers have long been the gold standard for tone due to the inherent nonlinear behaviour of vacuum tubes and the complex real-time interaction between the amp and speaker cabinet. Class D amplifiers have improved efficiency and portability over the years, but they have low impedance – an obstacle when attempting to recreate that sought-after tube amp tone.

Synergy’s powerful new Machine-Learning technology makes its debut in two new products. The first is Dave Friedman’s IR-LOAD – a collaboration with Pete Thorn, that is an all-in-one 360W (90 tube watt equivalent), stereo power with amp, attenuator, IR loader and MIDI.

It has feet but can also be placed in a rack if you prefer. A metal ‘Learn’ switch takes pride of place on the front center of the amp and this is where you’ll switch on the machine learning to achieve its “true tube amp sound”.

The second Synergy product to get the machine learning treatment is Brian Wampler’s PEDALHEAD – a super-compact pedalboard-friendly 240W (60 tube watt equivalent), stereo power amp with IR loader, MIDI and 6 power amp models.

Pricing and availability for both products are yet to be announced, though if you’re lucky enough to be attending NAMM 2026 in California this year, be sure to head over to the Boutique Amps Distribution booth (#4626) for a live demonstration.

NAMM 2026: You can officially stop scrolling if you want to nail Billy Corgan’s electric guitar tone, because Laney Amplification has teamed up with Brian Carstens, the designer of the Smashing Pumpkins frontman’s signature tube amp, to effectively house his entire rig in a compact amp pedal, the Supergrace.

The latest in Laney’s series of Loudpedals, the Supergrace pairs the high-gain channel from Corgan’s Carstens Grace amp with the circuit of a 1969 Supergroup, offering a wholly analogue replica of Corgan’s tone – and it is so good that he used it when sitting in to play Pumpkins classic Bullet With Butterfly Wings in front of 60,000 My Chemical Romance romance fans in Chicago. That's confidence. Corgan left his "real" guitar amps behind and just rolled with this on the night.

It is all kinds of remarkable. So, too, is the origin story. Apparently Corgan had a sit down with James Laney, just walked into his office and asked him what he wanted.

“Give the average guitar player the chance to own my live rig,” he said. “My tone. The tone worth $100,000s.”

For that, Laney reached out to Carstens. You cannot get Corgan’s live tone without his input. Carstens was more than happy to oblige.

“Laney is a family-run company with an obvious passion for creating things that inspire musicians,” said Carstens. “That alignment matters. We wanted something that would be used night after night on the world’s biggest stages-not as a compromise, but as the real thing.”

The Supergrace has a lot going on but it looks user-friendly enough. Two amp channels, each with their own side of the pedal, each with their own Volume and Gain knobs. There’s a three-position Bright switch, a Dimed/Clean switch, three-band EQ plus Tone and Reverb dials.

Like many of Laney’s Black Country Customs amp-in-a-box pedals, there is a footswitchable boost, its level set by the bright red dial – red for danger. Besides the Boost footswitch, there is a footswitch for toggling between the channels and another for the reverb.

The Grace side is where you’ll access Corgan’s high-gain sound. Carstens design gave him as much saturation as he could ever need – but with definition. “It’s really solid,” Corgan notes. “There’s so much body to the notes.” The Supergroup channel, well, that gives us Tony Iommi vibes as much as it does Corgan.

Laney promises a “faithful recreation of the legendary Laney circuit that helped define early heavy metal… Gain here is organic and uncompromising. No digital modelling. No shortcuts.

“Push the input and power section and you’re rewarded with an uncompressed, wide-bandwidth response defined by clarity, punch, and visceral connection. Even the famous ‘transformer rub’ sub-note heard on countless vintage Laney recordings is preserved intact.”

Okay, you might still want an Electro-Harmonix OpAmp fuzz pedal just for that early Smashing Pumpkins vibe and because why not, right? Well, you, and anyone else with a pedalboard, is in luck; an effects loop is present and correct here, and it is transformer-isolated which should ensure a low-noise floor.

There is an aux in, headphones out, Laney’s Advanced Impulse Response (LA·IR) tech is under the hood, and the Supergrace comes pre-loaded with Corgan’s IRs. You can, of course, upload your own.

This is designed as a fly-rig but it could serve you well for recording, with USB-C connection offering latency-free performance when hooking this up to your DAW.

For more details, head over to Laney Amplification.

NAMM 2026: Northampton-based guitar amp manufacturer Blackstar, known for its ability to blend British valve tone with modern technology has revealed its compact Beam Mini desktop amp on booth #6802, Hall C at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.

Blackstar has squeezed decades of its amp manufacturing expertise into a portable acoustically-tuned, IP66 weather-sealed cabinet for accurate, articulate guitar tones and exceptional music playback, whether you’re jamming at home or on the road.

But it is its partnership with Tone3000 that makes the Beam Mini big news in the small amp market, because it is the first amp – ever – to allow players to load Neural Amp Modeller (NAM) captures. Players can access more than 200,000 "hyper-realistic" captures created by the community at Tone3000.

Sound-wise? Well, don’t be fooled by its slender proportions, inside features powerful tech including two 60mm full-range drivers, two passive bass radiators, DSP (Digital Signal Processing) and advanced component-level digital modelling.

The British amp company promises “immersive sound in a small, portable format suitable for home, studio and on-the-go use”. Those who have heard it in action tell us Blackstar is as good as its word on that score.

There are no less than 12 component-level electric guitar amp models split 50:50 between Blackstar and Ampton designs, plus a further three bass amps, two acoustic voices and acoustic simulator and Blackstar’s patented ISF (Infinite Shape Feature) control.

So whether you play electric, acoustic or bass guitars, or just want to experiment with different guitar sounds, you’ll have plenty of options. There are also thousands of user and artist-generated patches from the ever-growing community accessible through the Beam app.

The portable Bluetooth amp has an 18 hour battery life and is charged via the USB port on the rear. There’s also the standard 1/4” guitar jack on the side of the cabinet and a ‘SpeedDial’ on top for quickly changing settings. In addition, there’s a Light Beam display with five simple dials for Patch, Gain, EQ, FX and Volume as well as buttons for power and Bluetooth.

Blackstar says every Beam Mini is meticulously voiced by its engineering team to deliver authentic tone and responsiveness, and that its Super Wide Stereo technology can deliver expansive, room-filling sounds that defy its dimensions.

If you think it would make a neat addition to your desktop you won’t have to wait much longer as the Beam Mini hits the shelves in Spring 2026, and will retail for £169/$229/€189.

If you’re attending NAMM 2026 this year you can head on over to the Blackstar booth (#6802, Hall C) to see it in action before it goes on sale.

NAMM 2026: We are more than a quarter of the way through the 21st-century and while digital technology is taking us to the point of delirium with so many options, menus to dive through. It can be great. It can be exhausting.

But some brands are going in the opposite direction, such as Orange Amps, which has just launched a tube amp head that goes over-the-top with 60-watts of wall-shaking power and a super-simple single-channel layout.

The OR60 is the 21st-century amp with a design steeped in the 20th-century. Analogue all the way, a pair of 6L6 power tubes in the engine room. The design is classic Orange Tolex with the white panel and the slightly arcane glyphs under the controls. It’s old-school.

And yet Orange says it is the most versatile single-channel guitar amp it has ever built.

One channel to rule them all? Orange has received some celebrity kudos for the launch, with Pepper Keenan of Down and Corrosion of Conformity giving it two thumbs up.

“It bounces, chugs great and cuts really well. Love the Presence/Resonance knobs. Sorcery,” he says. “There’s a lot of intel in here. I can go in any direction. Orange kills, no doubt!”

And if ever there was a player to appreciate the caveman-friendly layout of such an amp, it is Keenan. No messing around. Plug it in and crank it. It’s like Orange says, the OR60 is “simple, solid, and seriously loud”.

There is a lot of headroom. This would make an ample pedalboard platform, and has a tube-buffered effects loop for that purpose. But even with a boost in front of it (or an overdrive pedal, why not) there’s a lot to dig into.

The OR60 might be a single-channel design but it does have a second volume control that is footswitchable, allowing you to set it differently and kick it in for leads, extra volume to cut through the mix.

There is also a half-power setting that lets you run it at circa 30-watts, giving you overdrive at lower volumes – emphasis on lower, not ‘low’ volumes. This going to be loud no matter what.

A single-channel amp needs some tricks up its sleeve to be versatile. Here, a three-position Bright switch will help you add some top-end sizzle, helpful if your electric guitar pickups are on the muddy side. Orange says it doesn’t affect the character of the gain.

“When engaged, it lifts the treble response giving extra clarity and presence, which is particularly useful with humbuckers or darker-voiced guitars,” says Orange. “When it is switched off (middle position) the tone is smoother, warmer and rounder. This small tweak has a big impact when players move between guitars or genres mid-set.”

You know the drill, clean chime, British crunch, Orange tone – and, as Keenan says, you can shape the low and top-end response easily enough via the Resonance and Presence controls.

The OR60 is made in the UK, available now and priced £2,099/$2499. Yes, it also comes in black. See Orange Amps for more details.

Victory Amps has started 2026 strong with the launch of its all-new flagship lunchbox head, the MKX, a compact 50-watter inspired by the British guitar amp company’s MK Overdrive – but, crucially, without the five-grand price tag.

The MKX is also a lot more portable, scaling down the MK Overdrive into the accessible lunchbox format that Victory has made a specialty of under chief designer Martin Kidd.

When the MK Overdrive was launched in January 2024, it was described as Kidd’s “ultimate overdrive amplifier,” with a clean channel that was every bit as compelling as the drive channel. But at $5,699/£5,099 street, it was not for everyone. The MKX? Well, Victory says the MKX “captures the heart and soul of the MK Overdrive” and it does so at a very competitive price point.

Kidd says there haven't been any sacrifices in the design. There's a lot going on here. For $1,699/£1,399, you get a tube amp that's hand-built in the UK, with three channels – Clean, OD1, and OD1 – and a heap of features that bely its modest size, including two reverbs, both with level and decay controls, two master volumes, power scaling that toggles between the full 50-watt operation and 9-watts, and this being 2026, there is the all-important effects loop for incorporating your pedalboard.

And it ships with two footswitches. The channels, reverb and master volumes are footswitchable. The clean and overdrive channels are served by their own independent EQ and level controls.

The Clean channel can give you a pristine glassy chime “ideal for everything from funky chord work, jazz standards” and that kind of thing, and takes you up to the edge-of-breakup blues guitar tones where those oblique and double-stop bends sound that bit hotter.

The OD1 is “classic crunch” while OD2 dials up the saturation for leads, and, should the mood take you, heavier fare – drop-tuned riffs, the rough-and-tumble of metal guitar, and so on, so forth…

As for the reverbs, you've got the choice of a vintage spring-style reverb or the more contemporary reverb as heard on The Deputy.

Under the hood, the MKX ships with a trio of ECC83 preamp tubes and a pair of EL34 power tubes. There are global Presence and Resonance controls on the back of the amp, alongside outputs for 4, 8, 16-ohm speaker cabinets.

All in, this weighs just 7.15kg, and there are 1x12 and 2x12 cabinets loaded with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers to go with it.

If portability is your chief concern, there is also the matching MKX LB 112 cabinet, which is purpose built for lunchbox amplifiers and houses a single Celestion Seventy 80 12” driver. It weighs in at just 8.8kg.

The MKX is available now, priced £1,399/$1,699 street.

See Victory Amps for more details.

What is it?

A few short years ago, a headphone amp was something you used in a recording studio or in audiophile circles. Headphone amps for guitar are a different beast entirely though, and could well make a case for replacing the traditional practice amp entirely thanks to the advent of modern modelling tech. The Blackstar Beam Solo represents the latest entrant into an increasingly packed field, where nearly every major manufacturer is offering a practice-friendly product of their own.

The Blackstar Beam Solo isn’t exactly pushing the boat out when it comes to design either. It looks very similar to offerings from Fender and Boss amongst many others, giving you a large rotary dial to control parameters alongside a selection of buttons for changing various functions. Bluetooth connectivity lets you jam along to music, and an online community is accessible via the web to provide custom tones.

Blackstar’s bigger competition has an ace in the hand in the form of small screens for displaying information, but that might not be the boon they think it is, thanks to the clever ‘light beam’ display that gives you various visual cues in order to aid usability - more on which later. It also offers the ability to record vocals alongside your guitar playing by using a headset microphone with its own preamp and reverb.

With so many manufacturers jumping into the world of guitar headphone amps, the Beam Solo has certainly got its work cut out to make a mark, but that’s no bad thing for us guitarists. The amount of choice we have for compact, silent practice is really incredible these days, and it appears we’ve now got another contender.

Specs

• Launch price: $129.99 | £119 | €139
• Type: Headphone amplifier
• Origin: China
• Channels: 5 presets
• Controls: Patch, gain, EQ, FX, volume, rotary control
• Connectivity: 1 x 1/4" (instrument), 1 x 1/8", 1 x USB-C
• Weight: 0.45kg (0.99lbs)
• Dimensions: 67 x 37.2 x 20.5mm
• Contact: Blackstar

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★½

I’ve tested quite a few different headphone amps for guitar, and the Beam Solo unfortunately falters a little bit in this department. Compared to offerings like the Mustang Micro Plus and Boss Katana Go, Beam Solo feels a bit cheap and plasticky. It’s more lightweight, but larger, although this doesn’t affect how the guitar feels when it’s plugged in, nor it’s ability to fit into multiple different guitars.

The output jack offers 270 degrees of rotation, and I tried it in a Strat, Tele, Jazzmaster, and a Gretsch semi-hollow without any problems. Unless you’ve got a really weird input jack like those you get on some Strandberg guitars, I can’t see there being any issues plugging the Beam Solo into yours.

The chassis itself is fairly solid despite the plasticky feel, but the large rotary knob on the front face, which more than resembles a speaker cone, feels quite flimsy under my thumb and forefinger. When I press down hard on it the rotation becomes jerky which affects how the knob moves, and there’s a lot of give in it, which doesn’t exactly reassure me it’s going to stand the test of time.

The five buttons on the side of the unit feel much more robust, albeit their rubbery texture means they’re not quite as tactile as those I’ve tried on the Mustang Micro and Katana Go. They click when you push hard to let you know they’ve engaged, and on the opposite side you have switches for turning the unit on and pairing via Bluetooth.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★½

Plugging the Beam Solo into my number one Telecaster, I start by navigating my way through the unit via the buttons and jog wheel. Just above where you press the buttons there is an LED light strip that illuminates the control labels to let you know where you are. The display adjusts depending on what you’re doing, with the volume function gradually filling from left to right to show you what volume level you’re at.

The gain function works very similarly to the volume one, filling as you turn it up, while the patch setting lights up five different increments to let you know which one you’ve engaged. The FX button can be used to set a tempo by pressing it in repeatedly, while the large jog wheel sets the mix level, giving some very nice control that doesn’t require me to access a phone app, a massive plus for me.

It’s incredibly intuitive and I don’t need to look at the manual to start finding my way around the unit and dialing in tones. You also get a basic tuner when you hold down the volume button, which uses the LED light strip to show you whether you’re note is flat or sharp. It doesn’t tell you what note you’re on however, so you’ll need it to already be in the ball park in order to get the correct note.

Heading to the Google Play Store I set about installing the Beam app on my Pixel 9 phone. Installation is lightning quick, as is connecting the Beam Solo to the app, but unfortunately it doesn’t stay connected for long. After no small rigamarole with the Blackstar tech team, we eventually work out that it’s due to having used an earlier version of the unit, which was causing an issue that was preventing it from staying connected.

The app is presented really nicely, with some excellent high-resolution graphics to display the amps and effects, and an overall very slick feel when tweaking settings or moving between menus. Much like the Positive Grid smart amps, you can set five hardware presets that can always be recalled regardless of whether you’re using the app, and download user-generated presets that cover a wide variety of sounds.

The signal chain runs along the bottom, with editable sections for pre-fx, amp, post-fx, cabrig, and music streaming. When in these menus you can interact with the different amp and effects settings by sliding a finger or tapping on the various switches, and it’s a similarly smooth feel here, so you can make fine changes with little difficulty.

There's also a bunch of backing tracks and lessons in the music streaming section of the app, and I have great fun jamming along with the Midnight Drive Rock Guitar one. Currently it's heavily weighted towards rock and blues, and I'd love to see Blackstar expand the choice here as they make for really great practice tools.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

Putting on my favourite studio headphones I start with the five presets that come as standard on the hardware. They go from pristine clean to all-out high-gain lead tones, so all the basic guitar tones are well covered here. With eleven guitar amps, one acoustic preamp, three bass amps, and thirty-six different effects, there’s plenty of choice too, whether you’re a fan of Blackstar amps or you want some classic guitar tones.

The tones are absolutely incredible too. Turning up the volume on my Telecaster I’m greeted by an incredibly articulate tone on the Super Clean preset. Delivered via a model of the St James 6L6 clean channel, it’s definitely giving tube amp from the 60s vibes with ultra clarity at the high end and some lovely depth and warmth on the lows.

The Artisan 30 is the next amp model, with the preset named Super Crunch. It’s actually a little too crunchy for my tastes, but disengaging the overdrive pedal from the pre-fx menu sorts it right out, delivering those classic Marshall crunch tones that pair perfectly with power chords and double stops.

Moving on to the High Gain Stack I get an appropriately chunky guitar tone. So chunky in fact, that I immediately have to reach for my baritone tuned to drop G# in order to get some properly heavy tones. There’s plenty of low-end heft here, with a very pleasing distortion that doesn’t suffer from the fizziness I’ve encountered on other amp models.

Of course, the Blackstar amp tones are the star of the show here, but if you want some different tone profiles, they are available. There’s a classic Fender clean amp, a modelled Marshall, Vox, Mesa, and a 5150, each of which has plenty of the characteristics that make them such iconic tones in the world of guitar. It means plenty of choice for the tone connoisseur, no matter what your preferred poison.

There’s a bucketload of effects to add to the mix, with plenty of choice when it comes to gain stages and fuzz pedals. I find myself particularly enjoying the reverbs though, despite the fact there are only three to choose from. You get a plate, hall, and spring algorithms, which covers the most popular guitar-specific sounds.

You can also set a room reverb via the cabrig section, setting the size of the room, how much of it you hear, and the overall width of the space. This gives me a very realistic amp in a room feel with my headphones on, which paired with excellent modelling quality means an incredibly immersive playing feel.

Verdict

With so many guitar headphone amps available nowadays, it’s especially difficult to stand out. The Blackstar Beam Solo does so much so well however, that it definitely makes itself a worthy competitor against some rather large brands in the space. Although it’s been released much later than others, this has allowed Blackstar to pack it with some very nifty features.

The one place it doesn't cover itself in glory is the build quality. When holding it side by side with the Mustang Micro and Katana Go it definitely feels cheaper, lagging behind the more established competition. In particular the large encoder wheel feels as though it won’t stand up to much abuse. That said, the Beam Solo does get the most important thing right, which is how is sounds.

MusicRadar verdict: Blackstar Beam Solo can absolutely hang with the more established brands when it comes to its headphone amp offering. The modelling offers sumptuous guitar tones with plenty of variety and the addition of some useful features like recording via USB-C helps set it apart from others in the field. The build quality may not be the best, but it gets the important stuff spot on.

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Choosing the right guitar amp is just as important as choosing the right guitar, especially once you build up your chops and establish a sense of your own style.

Some amps just feel right. Others make you feel like you have never played the instrument before. And then there are those that make you see the electric guitar in a totally different light. That’s how Mark Tremonti, riffer-in-chief for Creed and Alter Bridge, fell head over heals for Dumble tube amps.

We’re in a hotel in west London, discussing the finer points of what it is like to actually record in 5150 Studios, the purpose-built LA recording studio of Eddie Van Halen’s now owned by his son, Wolfgang. Alter Bridge just tracked their new self-titled album there, which is out on 9 January 2026. And, inevitably, the conversation turns to amps. Tremonti is famously a Dumble devotee.

Speaking to AMS in 2024, he said it’s like… like this big, warm hug. “You plug into a great Dumble and it is this awe-inspiring warm feeling you get,” he says. “Dumbles, to me, are the best amps ever made.”

But it’s not just how they make Tremonti feel; it’s how they make him play, too. Choosing an amp is as much about that connection as it is about the sound itself. Dumbles? People debate if there really is a quote/unquote Dumble sound, and yet what they can agree on is that the dynamics are godly, and the note response super-fast.

Tremonti can’t get enough of that.

“I like a very quick attack. And a lot of people have said that about the Dumbles is that it’s uncomfortable because it’s such a quick response, but the quicker the better for me,” he says. “I love it, and the reason why I like Dumbles is that it makes me play differently.”

Tremonti says the Dumbles encourage him to take a moment and breathe with his playing. They’re not shred amplifiers.

“If I sit down with a Dumble, the last thing I’m going to do is do any kind of fast techniques,” he says. “I just want to express with a Dumble. You want the amp to sound good, so you are playing chord voicings, doublestops, things that bring out the best tones out of the amplifier – it’s not the shreddy techniques.”

It’a about letting the note breathe, too.

“It’s the bloom. It’s an addiction,” he says. “I love it. Dumbles are definitely my addiction, and they’ve gotten so pricey it’s tough. The only reason why I can keep on buying and selling is because I can trade one.”

Tremonti blames Paul Reed Smith for giving him the Dumble bug, which is ironic given that Smith designed and manufactures Tremonti’s signature amps, the MT100 and its lower-wattage sibling, the MT15. It was a 50-watter. Tremonti will never forget it – not least that Smith did promise to give him it and yet it slipped through his fingers.

Not all of them have been to Tremonti’s taste. His sold his first Dumble after finding it “too bright and hard and stiff”. His favourite is a prototype Overdrive Deluxe that’s believed to a prototype.

His friend, amp tech and Dumble expert Brandon Montgomery, had a client who was willing to sell it to Tremonti and it ended up all over his latest solo album, The End Will Show Us How.

“It’s an Overdrive Deluxe, not an Overdrive Special,” said Tremonti, speaking to MusicRadar in 2024. “So when it was in the mail I was like, yeah, it’ll be cool. It’s just a cool thing to have. I love everything Dumble but when I got it, it blew me away. What it's best for is like an over-driven percussive [sound]… I got a lot of use out of it. Anything that’s not full-bore, high-gain and anything that’s not clean I used that Dumble amp, and it’s just beautiful – I love it.”

And everything else was the MT100. The moral of the story is try before you buy, and try as many different amps as you can get your hands on. The one that sounds right? It will invariably feel right, too. Or maybe get a feel for them all in an amp modeller.

Alter Bridge's self-titled album is available for pre-order via Napalm Records, shipping 9 January. The band just shared the latest single from it, Playing Aces, which you can check out above.

EVH Gear has turned its fire-breathing 5150III 6L6 guitar amp into an all-digital 50-watt modelling 1x12 combo that weighs 16kg lighter than its tube-driven sibling.

This is what EVH Gear calls the 5150III Hypersonic 6L6 1x12, and the Fender-owned brand will be hoping the Hypersonic’s super-lightweight digital versions of the O.G. tube amps will be a similar success to the Big F’s Tone Master series, which digitalised some of the most classic Fender amps in the catalogue.

EVH Gear promises the same dynamic range, the same chewy, hot gain, and the same saturation of the original 5150III 6L6. Tone-wise, they are “virtually indistinguishable”.

But there are some differences to the control setup. As before, we have the three channel format – Clean, Crunch and Lead – but the Hypersonic has concentric EQ controls for Clean and Crunch.

Each channel also has its own noise gate and trim control, which could be very helpful when running with super-high gain, high volume. And there is a heap of tone-shaping power, including global Resonance and Presence controls to respectively fine-tune the amplifier’s low-end and high-end response, plus reverb.

Perhaps we should have seen these coming when EVH Gear debuted the 1,000-watt Hypersonic FR-12 FRFR speaker in July for players using amp modellers. It was a sign of its digital transformation.

Here, the DSP architecture of the Hypersonic model allows EVH Gear to present players with six different power modes, one at full power, five attenuated and a mute switch for use on a silent stage or when using to record direct.

It has a balanced XLR output, plus onboard IRs, MIDI and USB-C inputs on the back of the amp. EVH Gear has also updated the five-button footswitch, making the reverb and effects loop switchable.

But if you were to look at it from a distance, it’s only the Hypersonic badge on the grille cloth that would let you tell the difference between the original tube and the new digital modelling amp.

We still have the chicken head knobs on the top-mounted control panel, the same closed-back design with a cabinet constructed of 11-ply 15mm ply, inside which you’ll find the same Celestion EVH G12H 30W Anniversary Series 12” speaker as found on the tube equivalent.

EVH Gear described that tube amp as “arena-sized sound” in a 1x12, as “a culmination of Eddie’s career-long chase for the holy grail of tone”...

Well, if the Hypersonic 5150III 6L6 sounds just the same, then that holy grail just got a lot easier to carry up the stairs, because this weighs just over 39lbs (17.75kg to be exact) – and it is available now, priced £1549/$1,699.

For more details, head over to EVH Gear.

Electro-Harmonix has just dropped a new solid-state guitar amp that packs 100-watts into a super-portable head that weighs little more than a couple of bags of granulated sugar.

Named for a tank, built like a tank? This compact EHX powerhouse (it weighs just 2.5lbs) is called the ABRAMS100, and it’s a simple, single-channel amp that the NYC guitar effects pedal brand’s supremo, Mike Matthews, promises makes a superb platform for your pedalboard – or indeed the amp modeller in your life.

“The ABRAMS100 packs a whallop and it’s perfect for pedals!” says Matthews.

Headroom is the order of the day. The ABRAMS100 is clean and mean, though you will get a hint of warm low-gain breakup when the gain is turned up high. Just add whatever gain you need from the overdrive, distortion or fuzz pedal on your ‘board.

The front panel is gloriously uncomplicated. There are dials for Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Reverb, and Volume, plus a Bright switch for extra presence and trebly sparkle, i.e. the button you press when you have an electric guitar with a muddy humbucker, or a particularly difficult mix to fight through.

The reverb is a digital spring reverb that judging by the demo videos has an unseemly degree of splash at extreme settings. It’ll do just nicely. Was this algorithm exported from EHX’s Holy Grail reverb pedal? The website does not say, but it kinda sounds like it.

Around the back of the amplifier you will find an effects loop plus a speaker output for 4-16ohms, plus the on/off switch and AC input. And that’s that.

For $299, you have a fuss-free solid-state 100-watter that you can throw into a backpack and take to a gig.

In other recent Electro-Harmonix news, the brand expanded its Pico series of guitar mini pedals with something really kind of strange, the Atomic Cluster – a stompbox described as a “spectral decomposer” that was engineered with soundscapists in mind.

EHX said it was dipping its toe into “the cosmic pool of glitchy synth pedals” with an algorithm programmed to reduce the frequency resolution of your instrument, and thus creating a “wide range of unique effects from rhythmic lo-fi glitch and auto-arpeggio tones to ambient synth pads and more!” Quite. It sounds pretty nuts, and you can read more about the Atomic Cluster here.

You can find out more about the ABRAMS100 at Electro-Harmonix. It’s priced $299. UK price TBC.

Today is a good day to own a Quad Cortex or Nano Cortex. Neural DSP has rolled out an update to its amp modellers’ operating systems that debuts sounds created with its next-gen capture tech and delivers a host of performance upgrades.

The CorOS 3.3.0 update brings Neural Capture Version 2 to Neural DSP’s flagship hardware unit, the Quad Cortex. A cloud-trained capture platform, accessible via the Cortex Control 1.4.0 update (launched simultaneously), Neural Capture Version 2 processes your device captures in the Cortex Cloud, and replicates them with a higher-resolution and higher degree of dynamic accuracy.

For tube amps, overdrive pedals, fuzz pedals and compressors – anything that’s touch-sensitive and responsive your electric guitar’s signal – it doesn’t get much more real without being something you can actually physically touch.

What Neural DSP is saying here is that this update is a game-changer. All those hard-to-define qualities that make a great guitar amp – as Neural calls it, the “expressive behaviours” such as sag, bloom and so on – they are recreated in more detail than ever before.

As though to prove it, among the many (many) new virtual devices included with this update is a Dumble Overdrive Special, a holy grail unicorn. Neural calls it the Dumbbell ODS.

And there’s plenty where that came from; this update comes with 669 V2 Captures from 17 amps (the Dumble joined by vintage doozies such as a 1987 Marshall JCM800 and 1964 Vox AC30), two tube combos, 11 fuzzboxes, four compressors, seven overdrives… Oh, and 17 cabinets. There is also an expanded mono synth based on the synthesizer in Rabea Massaad’s Archetype guitar plugin suite.

And of course you can create your own V2 capture. Simply open Cortex Control, log in, select which type of capture you want to create (you can still create V1 captures), and away you go. Because V2 captures are processed in the cloud, you need to be online during the process. It will take a little longer to complete because of the higher resolution. V1 captures can be performed offline.

“Neural Capture V2 represents a generational leap in modeling technology and unifies the next stage of innovation across both Quad Cortex and Nano Cortex,” says Francisco Cresp, CPO and co-founder of Neural DSP. “With new virtual devices, V2 Captures, expanded creative tools, and meaningful workflow enhancements, these updates deliver more realism, more capability, and a better experience for every musician.”

Now to the Quad Cortex’s half-pint sized counterpart, the Nano Cortex. You can’t perform V2 captures with it, but the NanOS 2.2.0 update allows you to load and play them on the unit. All of the new 669 V2 captured are available now via the Cloud Cortex.

And there’s a lot more, with Neural DSP making tremolo available in Post Effects Slot 1, automatic sum to mono operation that sums all outputs when using a single cable.

There is an offline Cortex Cloud for accessing settings without an internet connection, cloud backups, drag and drop functionality in the Cortex Cloud for presets, and you can audition captures in the Cortex Cloud.

This was also an opportunity for Neural DSP to do some housekeeping, addressing some intermittent issues, making the unit more stable. There should be no more pops when switching between captures.

The audio output doesn’t mute after you download a new capture. Expression pedal and external footswitch issues have been fixed, and the IR scrolling on Cloud Cortex has been cleaned up.

Doug Castro, Neural DSP’s CEO and co-founder, says these updates make good on the company’s promises to provide regular updates that “exponentially” increase the hardware’s capabilities and performance. All in all, across both units, the performance has been improved.

“CorOS 3.3.0 and NanOS 2.2.0 deliver major technology advances while refining the everyday workflows musicians depend on,” he says. “The result is simple. More realism. More capability. More time spent creating.”

These updates are available now, for free. Head over to Neural DSP for more. Also in Neural DSP, well, something is coming. What we do not know. But it's premiering tomorrow on the Neural DSP YouTube channel at 4pm UK time. Watch this space...

The official Black Friday deals from Positive Grid are some of the neatest we've seen this year. With discounts of up to 30%, this is the company's biggest sale of the year, making it the perfect time to grab that smart amp or amp modelling software you’ve been thinking about.

Among the highlights is a fantastic £/$50 off the Spark 2. It’s one of the best amps I’ve ever tested, featuring a built-in looper, a stunning variety of amps and effects, and AI-powered tone generation.

Also on offer is a £/$50 discount on the Positive Grid Spark Mini, one of our go-to portable practice amps - in fact, it's my main practice amp at home. I even use it when I'm reviewing guitars for MusicRadar. For me, it’s the ideal mix of volume, portability, and functionality, plus it offers a ridiculous amount of tones.

Nearly all of Positive Grid's smart amps and accessories are part of this mega sale, so it’s definitely worth a scout around if you’re after something new. Check out a few of our top picks below.

Shop more Black Friday sales

• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Gear4Music: Early Black Friday deals are live
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Thomann: Up to 70% off Cyber Week sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

Joe Bonamassa and Fuchs Audio have just unveiled a signature tube amp that promises much of that holy grail Dumble amp tone without the astronomical price.

A 100-watt combo built by Andy Fuchs, numbered and signed by Fuchs and Bonamassa, the JB-ODS adds reverb to the classic Overdrive Special recipe, and shaves a whole lot off the price. A Dumble in the wild is a six-figure guitar amp. This is $3,999, a high-end guitar amp but sensibly so.

“It’s not $175,000, which is a big deal,” says Bonamassa. “Not everybody has $175,000 for an amplifier, so here we go.”

Bonamassa says he got the idea for the amp about two years ago. He wanted a bougie runaround amp he could throw in the back of a cab and take around New York. Nothing too heavy. But something with a bit of guts, too. Andy Fuchs of New Jersey-based amp brand Fuchs Audio Technology picked up the phone.

“I called Andy and I said, ‘Andy, I can you build me an amp? I’ll send you a speaker. I’ll send you a speaker – I’ll send you a Celestion speaker. Can you build me a 100-watt combo so I can drag it around in New York City if I have a sit in or something like that?’ And he built me one of these ODS models,” says Bonamassa. “And, to be honest with you, it blew me away. And everyone who hears it and is around it goes, ‘What is that amp?’”

What this is is a serious amp. It’s go two onboard boosts for a start. One bypasses the tone controls. The other keeps them in play and hits the front end harder. It has selectable mids.

There are all kinds of EQing options, such as the Deep switch for fattening up your single-coil tone, the 3-position Bright switch, and three-position EQ switch that offers two EQ settings plus the option to bypass them. It has an effects loop you can use in series or parallel. The 16-Bit Spin Semiconductor reverb is "the finest modern digital reverb available".

Under the hood, you'll find Ruby Tubes selected JJ's. The amp’s circuit has been engineered to maximise dynamics. And Bonamassa has road-tested it.

“Some of you have seen this amplifier onstage in California, maybe here in New York when I was sitting in last year with Oz Noy, with Will Lee and Steve Ferrone,” he says. “We’ve been beta testing them, and used it in a session with Marcus Miller.”

The speaker Bonamassa speaks of is one of his signature Celestion JB-85 12” drivers (the same speaker that’s in his Fender signature amp, the High Powered Tweed Twin), and it sits in a white pine cabinet, covered in black tolex.

“It really, really sounds great,” says Bonamassa. “And to be honest with you, it really does tick all the boxes. The great thing about it is it’s really a plug-in-and-play amp. There’s no real pedal needed. There’s nothing that you really need other than a cable and a good guitar, and there’s so many different settings.

“I mean, we just have settings set that you can play around with this thing. It’s very much like an ODS, like an Overdrive Special, in the sense that there’s so many different sounds that you can kind of elicit from it, but it’s really got a great combination of sounds, and it’s got reverb.”

The Fuchs JB-ODS is available now, priced £3,199/$3,999. Head over to Joe Bonamassa for more details.