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

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.

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.

NAMM 2026: 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, no dominating the enclosure a little like a smartphone, and you still have the four stainless steel rotary footswitches, plus a heap of connections round 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”.

“Quad Cortex mini represents our belief that size shouldn’t dictate what a professional rig is capable of,” says Francisco Cresp, co-founder and CPO, Neural DSP. “It carries forward the same sound quality, the same processing depth, and the same creative control that define Quad Cortex, while opening up new possibilities for how and where that level of performance can be used.

“The goal was to ensure that whether a player is in the studio, on stage, or on the road, they can rely on the same technology, the same results, and the same level of trust in their rig, regardless of form factor.”

It is a big day for Neural DSP hardware, but so too for its CorOS operating system, which has been updated to v4.0.0, a move that welcomes some new sounds to the party.

There is a big ‘ol “cinematic” hall reverb (named Nordic Concert Hall), Blossom, a reverb with swell, “a smooth, vintage plate reverb tailored for musical decay and mix integration” named Studio Plate 70, and Phase Doctor, which will come in handy if you are running a stereo or multi-amp rig.

When you consider all this with the usual features – there are so many that we haven’t even mentioned the fact you can use this as a 16-channel USB-C guitar audio interface, or the myriad features that streamline your workflow – the Quad Cortex mini might make you wonder why you’d want to choose its larger sibling.

Both could be all you need for a live-rig, and as Douglas Castro, Neural DSP’s co-founder and CEO, explains, that was the whole point of the Quad Cortex in the first place. Sound-wise, feature-wise, the mini measures up.

“Since the introduction of Quad Cortex in 2020, our goal has been to define the standard for what an all-in-one digital rig can be,” said Douglas Castro, CEO and Co-Founder of Neural DSP. “We set out to combine machine-learning-based modelling, studio-grade audio quality, and a fast, performance-focused workflow in a single unit.

“With Quad Cortex mini, we’ve carried that same philosophy forward, preserving the processing architecture and Neural Capture technology that allow us to create ultra-accurate digital replicas of amplifiers, cabinets, drive pedals, fuzzes, and compressors, now in a more compact form without compromise.”

The Quad Cortex mini is out now, priced £1,129/$1,399/€1,299. See Neural DSP for more details.

Neural DSP has closed out 2025 with an almighty mic drop, announcing a signature Archetype X guitar plugin suite for John Mayer that captures all of his high-end guitar amps, and the über-rare pedalboard candy that makes his tone a grail for countless players.

This is one for the Silver Sky ownership club. That goes without saying. But there’s a lot of treasure in a bundle that marks Neural DSP’s most high-profile artist collab so far.

Even if there is an actual Gravity Tank device that combines Mayer’s spring reverb and harmonic tremolo in one unit, this plugin is not just for those who spend their Saturday afternoons trying to nail Mayer’s Gravity solo.

Digitally adventurous blues guitar players could get a lot of use out of Neural DSP’s forensic captures of Mayer’s 1964 Fender Vibroverb, a one-of-one Two-Rock prototype Signature tube amps (serial #83), or [drum roll] his Dumble Steel String Singer (serieal #002).

Let’s face it, who but the major league pro has the kind of bread to have that in their backline? And who has the space in back of their car?

Those amps would do a trick for rock, pop, jazz, for anyone looking for those touch-sensitive dynamics. As Neural DSP co-founder and CEO Douglas Castro says, Mayer’s rig “breathes”.

It’s alive. Castro and his team wanted to capture all those nuances in this Archetype X package.

“John’s sound has inspired guitarists around the world, and it was a privilege to work with him directly to recreate the rig that anchors his tone,” said Castro. “There’s an intimacy to the way his rig responds – it breathes, it opens up, it carries emotion – and capturing that behaviour was one of the most meaningful projects we’ve taken on.

“John’s tone comes from a chain of choices made over years of playing and recording. We preserved those choices so players can begin where he begins – with a sound that feels settled, expressive, and familiar – and then make it their own.”

What’s particularly cool about the three guitar amps bundled with this software is the capability to blend them and their associated cabinets (the cabsims are on point here) just as Mayer does IRL

.

“All three amplifiers run at once, routed in parallel; each perfectly matched to John’s exact settings,” says Neural DSP. “Cabinets, microphones, and routing follow the same structure as his studio setup, preserving the interaction that makes the system feel complete.”

Then you have all of his guitar effects, such as the Justa Boost, a capture of his Keeley Electronics boost pedal that’s typically used as an always-on tone sweetener, adding some beef to the snap of his single-coils, though you could of course dime this an use it to push the front end of the amps.

Mayer’s Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron+, as heard on tracks such as I Don’t Trust Myself (Loving You), is digitalised here as the Antelope Filter. There are no prizes for guessing what the Halfman OD overdrive pedal is emulating (but here’s a clue: gold box, oxblood-coloured knobs, the top half of a man, the bottom half of a horse).

The Tealbreaker combines TS-style and Bluesbreaker-style overdrives in one dual-drive unit. And then there’s the Millipede Delay aping the BBD analogue mojo of his Way Huge Aqua Puss delay pedal. And that concludes your pre-effects, the virtual stompboxes.

The post section gives you plenty of tools for gussying up the tone, with the Dream Delay and Studio Verb, a 4-band semi-parametric equalizer, a studio compressor based on Mayer’s own, and the global utilities you would expect from an Archetype package – Doubler, Transposer, guitar tuner, comprehensive preset management, and the promise that eventually this plugin will be able to run natively on a Quad Cortex unit.

The Archetype: John Mayer X comes in 64-bit VST2/VST3/AU/AAX/Standalone. It is priced €199. See Neural DSP for more details.

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...

By popular demand, Universal Audio has revisited its smash-hit UAFX lineup of effects and amp modeller pedals, adding user-requested features such as MIDI connectivity as a free update.

The UAFX 2.0 update is a free software update to all UAFX pedals – its amp emulator and dual-footswitch effects pedals alike – and it is available now. Adding MIDI connectivity over USB is officially a BFD. It has been something that users have requested since the pedals’ launched.

It was, for many, one of the few caveats on a series of pedals that have been a huge success for Universal Audio, with the likes of its Dream ’65, Lion ’68 and Ruby ’63 pedals meticulously recreating the sound and feel of vintage tube amps from Fender, Marshall and Vox and housing them in compact dual-footswitch pedals (the brand later released them as guitar plugins).

Indeed, it was one of MusicRadar’s few caveats when sitting down with the Woodrow ’55, Ruby ’63 and Dream ’65 amp pedals, all of which provided “benchmark” performance for an amp modeller, with “some of the most impressively nuanced amp modelling of tone and touch sensitivity we’ve ever heard”.

With MIDI connectivity, players have real-time control over their sound, allowing deeper edits and instant preset switching on the fly.

The UAFX 2.0 update also improves your options for presets, allowing you to store four user presets, and on the dual-footswitch amp emulators you can now switch between your guitar amp tones “instantly”.

Universal Audio has also souped-up its UAFX Control app connection so that you can connect your pedals via a “rock-solid” Bluetooth or direct via USB.

The engineers on the UAFX line can officially take a bow for all this, but, Universal Audio’s, director of product, Rodrigo Ibieta, says the company’s user community can share some of the credit for the update. This is the kind of thing people have been asking for.

"With UAFX 2.0, we’re delivering the biggest update to our pedals yet,” Ibieta says. “We’ve listened to our users. By adding MIDI over USB, expanded presets, and smoother app connectivity, we’re giving them more creative freedom to shape their tone, whether they’re on stage, in the studio, or at home.”

Note, you’ll still need a compatible USB MIDI host/controller/interface to access these new features – but then if you’ve been requesting MIDI all this time you’ll no doubt have one. The new MIDI CC parameter controls are released under open beta.

The UAFX 2.0 update is available to all users now, free – just pop on over to Universal Audio.

IK Multimedia has entered the headphones amp market with the Tonex Plug, and pocket-sized guitar rigs don’t get more powerful than this.

The form factor is familiar. The Tonex Plug has the integrated 1/4” input for your guitar cable in that swivels to accommodate most (all?) electric guitars. There is the 1/8” output for your headphones. And there is a USB C input for charging the device. You can also use it as a guitar audio interface.

There are buttons for cycling through your presets, accessing its onboard guitar tuner, an on/off switch that doubles as a battery status check, and there are two volume buttons that also let you connect it to a device via Bluetooth.

But this is a device built around IK Multimedia’s AI Machine Modeling tech; the range of tones it presents guitarists – and bass guitar players – is off the charts.

It’s just as IK Multimedia says, the Tonex Plug gives you “instant access to over 40,000 free amps and pedal rigs in your pocket”, including the Premium and Signature Collections – plus there are some onboard essentials such as EQ, gate, compressor, delay, modulation and reverb.

It's not just the amount of tones; IK Multimedia says you won't be able to tell the difference between the modelled gear and the real thing.

“From the first note, you'll notice and feel the difference – rich, dynamic, touch-sensitive tones that respond like real gear,” it says. “Practise late at night, rehearse in silence, or warm up on the go – all without losing the soul of your sound”

Ever since launching the Tonex platform, IK Multimedia has been refining it, making its Tonex devices smaller – giving us a full rig in guitar mini pedal with the Tonex One. This personal amp, which lets you play your guitar silently anywhere, anytime, perfect for late night practice, travel, whatever, and it is as compact and portable as it gets.

If the controls on the actual device are the essentials only, connecting to the Tonex Control app (iOS/Android) accesses all the deep editing features you need to dial in an electric guitar sound, from amp settings to customising your IRs and cab sims. You can even model your own rig and save it down to a preset.

You can browse other Tonex user’s presets and download them, tweak them, share your own for others, and with the Tonex Plug Bluetooth-enabled, you can steam external audio to the amp to practise to – that could be music or a YouTube lesson.

The Tonex Plug allows you to cycle between 30 presets on the device, all arranged over 10 colour-coded banks. There is an onboard metronome. What doesn’t it do? Well, it’s one amp you couldn’t rest a beer on.

One last point worth noting is that you get a generous six hours of playing time from a full charge. Priced £/$/€149 (add 10 bucks for a carry pouch), the Tonex Plug is available now. See IK Multimedia for more.

What is it?

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

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

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

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

Performance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Studio software

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

Hands-on demos

Fender

Alternatives

Specifications

Those who made the trip to Guitar Summit in Germany at the weekend were treated to a much-hyped star making one of their first public appearances, as Line 6's all-singing, all-dancing new Helix Stadium amp modeller was on show, blowing minds with its AI-powered performance.

You need something to play it through if you want it to feel like a traditional amp, pushing air, lots of volume, real feedback. There is no shortage of quality FRFR Speakers on the market.

Line 6’s Powercab Plus was one of the first, and remains a superlative option. But you have options, with Line 6 expanding its Powercab active guitar speaker range with the Powercab CL, which offers multiple virtual speaker voicings for the first time.

“Unlike other Line 6 Powercab products, the CL is not an FRFR system, but is intended to provide the tonal equivalent of running your modeller or effects processor through a traditional guitar-voiced speaker,” says Line 6. “Combined with our patented speaker voicing technology, this allows you to approximate six classic speaker responses.”

The switchable speaker voicings that interact with the real speaker and are selected by six-way rotary dial.

These virtual speakers emulate classics of yore – and are given names such as Crisp, Vintage, Jetson, Essex, Green and Jarvis, which makes us think of the Iron Man movies, and Tony Stark’s AI assistant, but is really based on a Jensen P12Q alnico speaker, i.e. a Fender amp classic with a slightly scooped profile. An LED lights up to let you know which one is selected.

One giant leap for digital rigs? Perhaps. And yet the aesthetic is reassuringly familiar, as are the controls. The open-back cabinets are loaded with one or two 12” drivers. There is ample power, with the Powercab CL 212 packing 200-watts, the Powercab CL 112 100-watts.

Both are equipped with a 3-band EQ with dials for Low, Mid and High (boost/cut), and that all seems very welcoming to recent converts to electric guitar’s digital transformation.

As for the virtual speakers, Line 6 really are giving us classics.

Alongside the Jarvis’s Jensen emulation, we have a Roland JC120 combo (Crisp), a Jensen C12K (Jetson), a Celestion Alnico Blue (Essex) for that diamond grille cloth vibe, a Celestion G12M Greenback (Green) for your Marshall Plexi-style models, and the Celestion Vintage 30 (Vintage), because everyone loves or at least has loved one of them in a guitar amp at some point in their playing lives.

You can, however, choose to switch the virtual speakers off and run with the unfiltered response of the Powercab CL’s hardware speaker.

There is a balanced XLR output with ground lift and switchable IRs (six factory IRs, six user IRs), plus a MIDI input, USB for firmware updates and managing your IRs via the Powercab CL IR Loader app. The speaker voicings and EQ tone stack can be switched on or off when going direct.

The Powercab CL 112 is priced £427/$449, the CL 212 will set you back £538/$549. See Line 6 for more details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Walrus Audio Canvas Tuner review

Harley Benton has added a compact tube amp switcher to its range of budget-friendly essentials, and retailing at under $100 the Tube Head Switch could be a gig (and amp) saver when running a dual-amp setup either live or in the studio.

Yes, get the best electric guitar strings you can afford – they’re reasonably cost-effective anyway. Absolutely, saving up that little bit extra for the electric guitar of your dreams is rarely a source of regret and a good amp will make anything sound good.

But we are big fans of not spending too much money on the more utilitarian components of your rig, particularly when the quality is on point, and if the Tube Head Switch is engineered to the same standard as Harley Benton’s PowerPlant pedalboard power supplies then this looks like a solid choice.

Harley Benton says it is constructed from “premium Class A components” to ensure a noise-free and consistent performance. The design is nice and clean. Our only quibble is whether we should call it the Tube Head Switch, as it is mentioned on all Harley Benton and Thomann materials, or the (Tube) Head Switcher, as the graphic on the enclosure suggests.

It has everything you need to switch amps safely, with its onboard load management system ensuring that the correct impedance is maintained when switching. There are two inputs to the Tube Head Switch.

The buffered input is designed to preserve the signal of your guitar, handy if you’re using a long guitar cable runs or deploying a well-stock pedalboard. There’s also a direct input for preamps or line-level instruments that don’t need a buffer.

“This setup ensures optimal performance and audio quality, whether using standard guitar setups or more advanced configurations,” says Harley Benton.

But is it idiot-proof? It should be. Plug your guitar in. Both your A and B amps have their own dedicated inputs and outputs. To Amp A and To Amp B sends your signal into the amp’s input. The From Amp A and From Amp B inputs then take the signal from your amp’s speaker output, and then there To Cabinet output sends the signal to the speaker cabinet.

Use the footswitch to toggle between both amps, an LED will let you know which is going through the speaker, and that’s that, an A/B rig with a minimum of fuss, at a minimum of expense.

The Tube Head Switch is priced £86/$96/€99. See more of it at Harley Benton. Order it exclusively from Thomann.

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

Is it just us or are amp modellers and digital profilers getting smaller? We had the Quad Cortex then there was the Nano Cortex. Line 6 sized down with the HX Stomp and then again with the "pedalboard chameleon HX One". All the big players have been at it – IK Multimedia even shrunk its Tonex down into a mini pedal.

Well, the same thing is happening to our FRFR speakers. The cabs that are designed with that full range, flat response to produce uncoloured electric guitar tones hot and fresh from your modeller, they’re getting smaller, with Laney refreshing its LFR series with the super-compact 1X10 LFR-110.

It might be small – more portable, more bedroom friendly than its siblings – but Laney still promises “studio-quality” sound from the 250-watter, and a similar performance to the LFR-412 4x12 and LFR-212 2x12 – speakers that have enjoyed the popular support and patronage of Devin Townsend, Guthrie Govan and Jack Gardiner, and have been used in live shows by the likes of Alice Cooper and Duran Duran.

“Whether you're using a Neural Quad Cortex, Headrush boards, Boss multi-fx, Line 6 Helix, Axe Fx, Kemper profilers or any digital rig, the LFR-110 delivers studio-quality sound in a portable package,” says Laney.

The LFR design DNA is all present and correct. This too has illuminated piping around the grille clothe that makes it look really cool when the speaker is turned on. Laney-owned HH Acoustics has once again designed the speaker, with that 10” custom-built driver complemented by 1” LaVoce compression driver so all of those high-end details are not lost.

The LFR-110 is a creature of the digital era so it is no surprise to learn that it is Bluetooth equipped. You can stream audio to this. Better still, you can hook up two LFR-110s and run it in True Wirelss Stereo.

Alternatively, you can hook it up the old fashioned way, with a mini-jack auxiliary input for playing external audio.

As for the controls, there’s nothing too fancy here. There is a high-frequency trim, it’s a single-channel affair. You’ve got an XLR DI output with switchable speaker emulation – basically, go direct with this and you can pretend it’s an LFR-412 or LFR-212. And again, it might be small but it is making the most of its assets. A rear-ported design helps ensure that bass response is on point.

The LFR-110 is out now, price TBC. See Laney Amplification for more details.

There are 1,001 theories about how to nail Eddie Van Halen’s electric guitar tone. There is no shortage of gear out there to help you get there. But even before you get to the problem of actually playing like him – impossible – there’s the question of which era of Van Halen guitar tone are you talking about?

If there is something that could be considered a silver bullet for Brown Sound adventure it’s from IK Multimedia, which has just completed its Brown Sound Anthology, available across three of limited edition Tonex One amp modeller and multi-effects mini pedals, and also as standalone Tonex plugin suites.

These sounds collect three different eras of Van Halen tone, and were designed in collaboration with ‘Brown Sound’ tone guru Jim Gaustad, and modelled using IK Multimedia’s proprietary AI Machine Modelling technology.

You won’t need a Variac. No need to open up the back of your tube amp and start some questionable DIY modding (never do that, please). The hard work has been done and rendered digitally

The limited edition Tonex One pedals come in three colours, white, yellow and red, each with 20 presets from all three collections in IK Multimedia’s Brown Sound Anthology, plus full access to its 79/80 Brown Sound collection, which is modelled on the sound heard on Van Halen I and II, plus another Brown Sound collection of your choice, and Tonex SE. That will set you back €249.

There is, however, a box set of these, super limited edition, with all three pedals, all three collections, plus Tonex Max. That’s priced €599. And with Tonex Max, you can model your own gear, access over 1,250 Premium Tone Models, and customise the Brown Sound collections.

The 79/80 Brown Sound collection is designed around a modelled 1968 Marshall Super Lead with the quasi-mythical #12301 mod. Inside the pack you’ll find “50 Tone Models shaped by period-correct gear, creative miking techniques, and voltage-controlled amp behaviour for unmatched feel and realism”.

Taking things darker, the Brown Sound 80/81 has more gain, less reverb, meaner. “Key changes included switching to a straight 1960B cabinet with G12-65 speakers, re-biasing the amp, and experimenting with lower Variac voltages (down to 68V) to add sag and harmonic complexity,” says IK Multimedia.

Finally, the 82/84 collection takes us into the golden era of box-office guitar tone. As with previous editions, it engages with the rumour and conjecture – as to the mods, the hardware, the studio outboard gear and Variac settings et cetera – to offer a comprehensive range of sounds across its 50 Tone Models.

“The anthology fully captures an artist's tonal journey as he changed rock guitar forever,” says IK Multimedia.

The Brown Sound Anthology is available to preorder, shipping from August. Each of the individual Brown Sound Tonex collections is available at an preorder special price of €79, regular price €99. For more details, head over to IK Multimedia.

Blackstar Amplification has unveiled its next-generation of digital guitar amps and promises that the ID:X is the “most natural-sounding modelling amp on the market today”.

It goes without saying that the ID:X is loaded with features. We have grown accustomed to electric guitar’s digital transformation, but even so, there is a lot to get into here.

Available as a 50- or 100-watt 1x12 combo, the ID:X presents players with six core amp voices, each selectable via a rotary dial, and a comprehensive suite of tone-shaping features.

Some of these features are reassuringly old-school. You still have the 3-Band EQ, with Gain, Volume, and Treble knobs doubling as Gate, Resonance and Presence respectively.

Long-time Blackstar aficionados will not be surprised to see the British amp brand’s patented ISF dial, which adjusts the overall EQ voicing from UK to US style, offering all points in between.

Fans of the Silverline series – aka, Blackstar gives digital amps a boutique makeover – will be pleased to see that the ID:X combos similarly feature a switchable tube amp response emulation, so you can “swap out your power tubes” on this 100 per cent digital amp, have it with EL34s one minute, 6L6s the next. EL84 power tube emulation is also on the menu.

All this is made possible by digital signal processing but so far we’re not actually dealing with anything that’s conceptually alien to tube amp purists – indeed, the goal is not to alienate these players but convert them.

Things really get interesting once we get to the effects. Blackstar offers heaps (i.e., over 35) of them. It also presents us with an OLED display screen so that we can do all the editing on the amp.

But note: you’ll want set aside some of our amp budget for the FS-12 and FS-18 footswitches, which are sold separately and will make this a more performance friendly proposition.

There is, of course, an effects loop, so you can easily integrate your hardware pedalboard. As much as we love our tube amps, there is something inherently practical in these digital designs. Blackstar has endowed these with MIDI outputs, USB, a 3.5mm line in. Maybe they’ll bundle it with an electric toothbrush should they ever launch a 2x12 version.

There is power scaling available on both models, so you can get it down to 10-watts or a single-watt for domestic practice with no drama. A single Anthem 100 speaker handles all business in the cabinet.

But the the ace in the hole might well be the onboard CabRig technology that presents these as more than just high-functioning practice amps. Hook the ID:X up to the device of your choice and you can swap out speaker cabinets, adjust the room size etc, then go direct when playing live or recording.

And… These are not expensive. US price is still TBC but at £349 for the ID:X 100 and £269 for the ID:X 50, that’s a lot of amp for the money. For more details, head over to Blackstar Amplification.

Line 6 has just upped the ante in the battle for amp modeller supremacy with the launch of its flagship Helix Stadium series, a pair of amp and effects modelling units for which the term “feature-packed” does not quite do them justice.

Ten years on from the launch of the first Helix Floor unit, Line 6 has radically reimagined the platform, upgrading the hardware, increasing the connections, and boosting the dynamic range on all of its analogue inputs. Even the headphones output has been improved.

Available as the huge Stadium XL Floor, complete with 12 footswitches and accompanying OLED scribble strips, and an integrated expression pedal, and the slightly more compact Stadium Floor, both with 8” touchscreens, the Stadium series is a quantum leap for Line 6’s amp and effects modelling – perhaps for electric guitar tone itself. And it is all delivered upon the back of Line 6’s revolutionary new AI modelling technology.

“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,” says Eric Klein, Line 6’s chief product design architect. “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.”

Line 6 promises unparalleled authenticity in tube amp emulation. And yes, we have heard this before, but with each new flagship release from the leading amp modelling companies – be it from Line 6, Fractal, HeadRush, Neural DSP or Kemper – that has typically been the case.

Digital technology is capturing more details of what makes our beloved old-school analogue gear tick. We'll let Klein explain what makes the Helix Stadium different.

“We’ve invented a new way of modelling power stages, both push-pull and single-ended, in conjunction with the power supply so we can sample accurately capture the interaction between the signal and power supply,” he says.

“Agoura also models circuit feedback more accurately than has been possible before," continues Klein. “Even things like capacitance between runs of wiring within the chassis were accounted for.

“There’s also detailed plate and grid voltage data, all-new sag, bias, ripple behaviour simulation, double-precision tone stacks, inter-block communications so cab blocks can communicate back to the amp block for dynamic speaker impedance curves. And a lot more.”

There is a lot more. Like the tantalizing prospect of a Hype control that “morphs between ultra-authentic and idealised amps sounds”. Both units will come strapped with a proxy guitar amp, speaker cabinet, and effects cloning engine based in the cloud (yes, has wifi and Bluetooth, and an automation/playback engine called Showcase).

This might be Line 6’s great evolutionary leap of the 20ele20s but it isn’t leaving the legacy Helix platform behind. All of your old Helix and HX presets are compatible with the Helix Stadium units.

The Stadium XL is described as the “most comprehensive and integrated guitar processor” that Line 6 has ever made, and it has the stats to back it up. It offers a pair of variable impedance instrument inputs, with over 126dB of dynamic range. There is an XLR mic preamp with 128dB of dynamic range.

There is a ridiculous – read “professional” – amount of inputs/outputs, with support for four effects loops (again with 120dB of dynamic range), four external expression pedals (remember, this already has an integrated expression pedal), four external amp control outputs and up to four drum trigger inputs.

Although smaller, the Stadium similarly shares the dynamic range bona fides, and it has a cornucopia of connections around the back — where the XL supports four effects loops et cetera, the smaller unit supports two. That’s still a lot. Integrating your hardware pedalboard should be a breeze either way.

Perhaps the most newsworthy connection is the Nexus port. Both Helix Stadium units have one, and this connects to the Expand D10 (sold separately, priced $219) digital input/output expansion unit via a Cat6 cable and – as the name suggests – expands how you can use them with peripheral devices, guitar audio interfaces, mixers, Powercab active FRFR speakers and so forth.

The Helix Stadium range also includes a padded and water repellant gig bag backpack ($249) and the EX2 expression pedal ($149).

The Helix Stadium XL Floor is priced $2,199 while the Stadium will set you back $1,799. UK and European priced TBC. The Stadium XL ships in the autumn 2025, with pre-orders open from 25 June. The Stadium ships in winter.

For more details, head over to Line 6.

Kemper has unveiled the Profiler MK 2 series, upgrading its Head, Rack, Stage, and Player with a new-and-improved processing engine, adding seven effects blocks, bumping up the looper recording time to two minutes, and promising a Kemper Profiler that feels “more like a complete rig than ever before”.

That’s how CEO Christoph Kemper describes the MK 2. “With instant access to essential effects, full USB audio integration, and improved playability, we’re giving our users a platform that adapts and grows with them,” he says

The updates have been visited upon all of the products in the range, and you can expect them to boot up faster and to do more. As is the case with these state-of-the-art profilers and amp modellers, the most significant of these upgrades are invisible to the naked eye.

Even the hardware upgrades do not call attention to themselves, such as taking out some of the bulk on the Stage Profiler and making it lighter, the modest refresh of the front panel aesthetics.

Or adding native 8-channel USB audio support to all of the units in the series, which allows for “seamless” multi-track recording. Players now do not need an external interface to reamp their electric guitars – or bass guitars – just stick it straight into your DAW.

For many, the guitar effects is where it gets really exciting. With seven additional effects blocks, you now have 20 effects blocks that you can run simultaneously – and with zero latency when switching presets. If you can hear a pop, that’ll be fans of complex signal chains celebrating.

“It’s like having an entire, fully integrated pedalboard with pedal essentials at your feet – but one that boots in seconds, never needs rewiring, and always remembers your settings,” says Kemper.

The “boots in seconds” point is one of the benefits of a more powerful unit. It should boot up in 20 seconds or thereabouts. But the success of the unit will depend upon the quality of its sounds. It was ever thus.

Kemper promises “unparalleled precision and feel” from the MK 2 profilers from an all-new profiling approach that combines “deterministic” analogue measurements with its digital profiling intelligence.

The Profiler MK 2 analyses more than 100,000 frequency points to create your captures, with the goal that the digital reproductions of your favourite guitar amps sound real and dynamic. Just like the real thing, only you can have more of it, instantly recallable via a footswitch.

The question is how these second-generation units will measure up against stiff competition from the likes of Neural DSP and Line 6.

The Profiler MK 2 series arrives with various bundles for filling out your digital rig. Expect to pay £920/$1,348 for the Head alone, £920/$1, 398 for the Rack,£1,026/$1,498 for the Stage, $485/$699 for the Player. The Power versions of the Rack and head are priced £1,190/$1,798.

For more details, head over to Kemper.

Neural DSP has announced a dramatic expansion of the Nano Cortex’s features and functionality as the company rolls out its free NanOS 2.0.0 update to the compact guitar effects pedal and guitar amp capture pedal’s operating system.

MusicRadar’s verdict on the Nano Cortex declared that this was the “best all-in-one capture device for value, portability and usability” on the market. Well, this little pedalboard powerhouse has just got a lot better.

The digital transformation of electric guitar tone promised days like this, when an update to an operating system is as significant as the launch of new hardware. NanOS 2.0.0 transforms the Nano Cortex, adding 47 new effects and utilities, with more features to make it easier to dial in and manage your sounds, and there are more sounds direct from Neural.

There are new effects based on classic MXR, Universal Audio, TC Electronic and Boss pedals. There is enhanced control of your signal path; players can now choose from two Pre and three Post Effects slots.

“Nano Cortex was designed to deliver professional sound in a radically compact form – and with NanOS 2.0.0, it’s now even more powerful, flexible, and inspiring to play,” says Douglas Castro, CEO, Neural DSP. “This update reflects everything we believe modern gear should be: uncompromising in sound, intuitive in design, and ready for any studio, stage, or session.”

Some of these new effects are straight out of the recording studio’s tool-kit, such as a compressor based upon the Universal Audio 1176.

One of the smartest updates is the the onboard input gate which allows you to deploy the noise gate without using up one of your Pre Effects slots. There is also a convenient IR Loader Global Bypass function.

Ordinarily, when you expand your rig with 40-odd effects your rig increases in weight accordingly. The Nano Cortex still weighs in at 620g. It still fits in the gig bag.

“As a musician, you never stop evolving. Neither do we,” says Francisco Cresp, co-founder of Neural DSP. “NanOS 2.0.0 is our answer to everything players have asked for and more. This is your tone, your way, with no compromises.”

Besides the new features, you still have all the old. We are sometimes guilty of referring to this as an amp modeller but that is what Neural DSP’s guitar plugins and its flagship Quad Cortex is for.

This is an amp and effects capture pedal. Hook up an overdrive pedal to the unit and your done in five minutes. For amps with speakers, you’ll need a mic. For capturing amps without a speaker, you’ll need to put them through a reactive load box. But the process takes no time, and now Neural has done some of the work already.

All these new effects have been captured for you. So too have 20 guitar amps, eight bass amps, plus eight guitar cabinets and two bass cabinets that all ship preloaded to the unit. The pedal has memory space to store up to 256 captures.

The Nano Cortex is priced $549/€569. The NanOS 2.0.0 Update is free. See Neural DSP for more details and for a full list of the new effects captures.

• "This is not a mini Quad Cortex, but it could become your most used piece of gear": Neural DSP Nano Cortex review

Two Notes has unveiled the Torpedo Reload II, a feature-packed sequel to its reactive load box and attenuator, and it is a serious piece of kit for any player who has a tube amp and needs some extra control over it.

That control might begin with attenuation, and being able to crank up your amp at more neighbour-friendly – or indeed mix-friendly – volumes is one of the fundamental duties performed by the load box. As much as we love tube amps, you’ve really got to turn them up before they start to sing, giving you all that extra harmonic content.

The Reload II has a two-channel design and is “scalable from a whisper to a full-throttle onslaught” and boasts a full transparent dual-mono amplifier/attenuator rated at 215W. Two Notes describes its attenuation as “surgical”.

Its paired speaker outputs “preserve every facet of your tone”. In short, you’re getting a reactive load box that lets the guitar amp be the best version of itself. That’s the theory.

But it has got some serious tricks up its sleeve – in its enclosure – to differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive market; chief among them a Celestion Approved load response, an “industry-first” feature that engineers the same sort of feel that you would get if your amp had classic Celestion guitar speakers in it, featuring switchable impedance from four, eight and 16-ohms.

Except, those speakers are not there; the load box’s impedance curve is playing tricks on your amp’s power section making it think they are.

This is a scalable piece of kit in the sense that you can make use of its speaker outputs to expand your rig, and it also has a stereo effects loop so that you can easily integrate your pedalboard.

You can route them in series or parallel, adjust the wet/dry mix on the return, and if you do have a second speaker cabinet at your disposal then that Eddie Van Halen-style Wet/Dry/Wet live rig of your dreams is an option.

On the front panel there are some controls for shaping your electric guitar tone, with Depth and Presence on-hand to apply a gloss-up to your global EQ response. Our favourite control – or button – is for Mojo. Yes, a Mojo button. It’s the guitar amp equivalent of a “press for Champagne” button.

There are dual mono line inputs, an amp input with level control. Each channel has its own XLR outputs with groundlift.

The unit can be mounted on top of your amp or in your rack, and this being a Two Notes design it ships with a license to Genome, so you can use its DynIR speaker simulations, amp capture tools and built a bespoke hybrid rig, the sort of thing the 21st-century tube amp user might do.

The Torpedo Reload II is priced £849/$1,199, and is available to preorder now, shipping June 2025. See Two Notes for more details.

Tone King has unveiled the Imperial Preamp, a “high-voltage tri-tube” preamp pedal that takes the tones of the Baltimore, Maryland high-end guitar amp brand’s Imperial MKII combo and repackages them in a pedalboard-friendly format.

This is a serious bit of kit. The tones on offer range from classic Tweed and black panel Fender amps through to vintage British tube amp sounds.

The product itself is 21st-century meets golden age amp design, with onboard Impulse Response support on a unit that’s powered by a trio of 12AX7 preamp tubes operating at high-voltage. The design is resolutely faithful to the amp that inspired it.

“It features the exact preamp section and phase inverter circuitry of the Imperial MKII amp, as well as Reverb, Tremolo and Attenuation, resulting in a pedal that sings with harmonic richness and blooming touch response,” says Tone King. “This preamp delivers the amp’s sound, responsiveness, and exquisite interaction with your pickups and effects.”

This has all mod cons. There is a headphones output. There is MIDI connectivity. There is a cornucopia of input/outputs on the back of the unit that make it easy to integrate it within your setup, with balanced XLR connections with ground lift and a stereo effects effects loop.

There are two channels to work with, both serviced by the digital stereo convolution spring reverb and tremolo. The Rhythm channel is inspired by ‘60s Fender combos. You know the drill: reference-quality cleans and spankiness, dynamics, and the warm heat of overdrive when you turn up the volume.

The Lead channel is a little more gnarly. Think Fender Tweed amps. It has controls for Mid-Bite, Tone and Volume, and if you dial up the Mid-Bite it’ll take on a classic British voicing, “focusing the low-end, while adding high-end presence and gain”.

The design of this is on-point, cream chicken-head dials on a black panel, three footswitches, and it looks relatively straightforward. Dial in your spring reverb via the Reverb and Dwell knobs. Tremolo is controlled by Depth and Speed. Each channel has a three-way toggle switch for your cab sim.

There are 15 IRs included with the Imperial Preamp, all made by OwnHammer, and each channel is pre-loaded with three Tone King favourites. Further IR edits can be made via the Tone King Editor software, and you can use the software to manage your sounds, with up to 128 presets available via MIDI.

The Imperial Preamp is available now, priced £/$599. Head over to Tone King for more pics and details and watch the venerable Pete Thorn demo it above.

What is it?

Long before the current plethora of ‘rig-in-a-box’ pedals there was the Rockman. Anyone who played electric guitar in the 1980s will be aware of it, and anyone who’s listened to Def Leppard’s Hysteria album will have heard it in action.

In 1982, Tom Scholz of US rock band Boston designed and released the Rockman X100 headphone amp via his electronics company Scholz Research & Development, putting amp sound and effects for silent guitar practice into a portable unit that could also be connected to a recording console.

The distinctive compressed sound, with its integral analogue chorus, soon found its way onto various recordings in the 1980s.

Now, over 40 years on, the range of Rockman units is apparently in demand, so MXR is catering to that with a new addition designed to revive the sonic character of the original headphone amp.

Usability and sounds

The new pedal features four different presets (CLN2, CLN1, Edge, Dist) as found on the original, and has switchable rich, shimmering chorus courtesy of a MN3007 bucket brigade chip.

There’s no sign of the original’s switchable ‘Echo’, which was basically reverb, but that’s not a problem as there are better options these days to partner the X100. The output (mono as shipped) can be switched internally to stereo, which gives you really spacious chorus.

An A/B test with our original unit proves that the new pedal has the vintage sounds down accurately. Overall sonics are very compressed with a bright top-end and some bottom-end roll-off.

The two cleans each have a different EQ contour and offer sparkly clarity. The Edge sound offers crunchy raunch all day long and is sensitive to input gain settings for variation, while the Distortion is full on with loads of sustain – just right for those wailing leads.

We liked the X100 best for DI recording, offering up flavours and textures that are entirely its own, but it could work plugged into an amp for radical tonal shifts.

The two cleans each have a different EQ contour and offer sparkly clarity. The Edge sound offers crunchy raunch all day long and is sensitive to input gain settings for variation, while the Distortion is full on with loads of sustain – just right for those wailing leads.

Verdict

We liked the X100 best for DI recording, offering up flavours and textures that are entirely its own, but it could work plugged into an amp for radical tonal shifts.

Specs

PRICE: $229/£249/€299
ORIGIN: USA
TYPE: Analogue tone processor pedal
FEATURES: Buffered bypass
CONTROLS: Volume, Input Gain, Mode switch, Chorus switch, internal mono/stereo switch, Bypass footswitch
CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, CTRL input
POWER: 9V DC adaptor (supplied)
DIMENSIONS: 62 (w) x 110 (d) x 47mm (h)
CONTACT: Jim Dunlop

Hands-on videos

Sweetwater

Pete Thorn

R.J. Ronquillo

Leon Todd

• "The Layers is a subtle and unique pedal, with a lot of expressive depth": MXR Layers review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IK Multimedia has expanded its Tonex digital ecosystem with a free app for players to manage, save and audition electric guitar tones and get the most out of the guitar plugins specialists’ stompboxes.

The Tonex Editor is just that. It is an editor, one-stop access point for your Tonex library, allowing players to pull together sounds from their own presets and Tone Models, plus sounds shared on ToneNET by the IK Multimedia user community and then save them down to their Tonex pedals.

One of the biggest advantages of digital tone-chasing is the options it presents. There are thousands upon thousands of tones to find. But managing these great abundance is not easy, and that’s where the Tonex Editor will come in handy.

It is designed to streamline your workflow, allowing players to audition sounds and edit them in real-time; simply load up the editor, call up a preset or Tone Model, make some adjustments and save them straight to the pedal.

For touring guitarists, it makes it much easier to organise all the sounds needed for a set; players have full control over all parameter presets. Users can import and export entire libraries.

The Tonex Editor can be used to apply global setup and performance modes on the “tiny but mighty” MusicRadar favourite Tonex One mini pedal, and like everything in this Tonex family of products, it is fully compatible with your library, stored settings and presets, and can see all of the Tone Models and IRs stored on your hardware, in your computer library, and on ToneNET.

IK Multimedia says special attention has been paid to the GUI, with a new “floating window” design making the most of screen space and making it easier to browse through your Tone Models, IRs, etc.

“A straightforward drop-down menu provides quick access to hardware-stored Tone Models, conveniently sorted by type and character,” says IK Multimedia. “Additionally, the editor offers full control over all key parameters, including FX, Tone Model Amps, Tone Model Cabs/IR/VIR, and tempo and global setup options, delivering comprehensive, real-time control over all settings.”

And it is free. It comes bundled with Tonex 1.9.0 and newer, and is compatible with PC/Mac. You can download the Tonex Editor now direct from IK Multimedia.

Synergy has unveiled the SYN-20IR, a tube amp head with a revolutionary design that allows players to swap preamp modules in and out, making for a fully customisable guitar amp – and this head has onboard IRs so you can run it direct without a speaker cabinet.

The idea behind Synergy’s modular approach to guitar amplification is genius. The SYN-20IR has one onboard “American-style” clean channel. Get yourself a two-channel Synergy preamp and plug it into the front, hey Presto! You have three channels to play with – that's a lot of electric guitar tone.

And say you’re done recording a high-gain lead part with a Diezel VH4 preamp module, you could swap it out for some vintage British crunch by way of a Friedman DS “Dirty Shirley” module.

This interchangeable preamp has a number of high-profile fans, with Synergy’s artist roster including Javier Reyes, Mikael Åkerfeldt, and most famously Steve Vai. Vai is a fan, and an endorsee. He has designed a signature preamp model with Synergy. Vai's touring rig for the recent BEAT Tour comprises of a quartet of Synergy preamp modules paired with a Fryette power amp.

The SYN-20IR is Synergy’s second head in the lineup. The SYN-50 has space for two preamp modules, the SYN-20IR one. But the latter is Synergy’s first to be equipped with IRs.

Fundamentally, it is an EL84-driven 20-watter. Without the preamp module, the front panel looks a little like a VHS player with no cassette in it. Plug in your module and it just looks like a regular amp.

Of course, the controls will change determining on which preamp module you use. But these will be accompanied by the SYN-20IR’s onboard Tone, Volume, Master, and Reactance knobs, the latter a dynamic presence control that shapes middle and treble.

There are also push buttons for channel switching, IRs, and power amp structure.

There are three modes in the structure section: Mode A has balanced negative feedback for a “clear yet punchy” sound; Mode B is a vintage-style phase inverter with balanced, “relaxed” midrange and bright high-end; Mode C is a modern hi-fi phase inverter with low negative feedback, and this will give you a tight response, solid low end, less high end, and with the appropriate preamp module that sounds like it will chug.

No question, a lot of these Synergy preamp modules run hot and offer a lot of gain. There is no shortage of metal and rock-friendly options, with Synergy offering preamps designed with Bogner, Diezel, Engl, Friedman, Soldano, Peavey and more. But there’s some high-end guitar amp cleans and crunch here, too, with boutique brands such as Dr. Z and Morgan also available.

Players can upload and manage their own IRs using the free software editor. The SYN-20IR ships with 13 IRs. It uses an “oversized” MHz ARM DSP processor to bring you these IRs with under 1ms of latency.

Other features include a headphone output with volume control, an ultra-transparent series effects loop, and XLR balanced output with ground lift. The unit is also MIDI programmable, allowing you to save up to 128 presets. The amp ships with a three-button MIDI footswitch that allows you to save your settings.

“With the tap of your toe, you can, for example, switch from your module’s high-gain crunch with a 4x12 IR and Structure Mode C to the amp’s onboard clean channel through a vintage 1x12 IR and the open-sounding Structure Mode A,” says Synergy.

The SYN-20IR is available now, priced £/$999. Preamp modules are sold separately, but many retailers, are offering deals on these. Andertons is offering 10 per cent off Synergy Modules when you buy the amp. Sweetwater is offering the SYN-20IR as a bundle for $1,329. Preamp modules are priced £375/$399 individually.

For more details, see Synergy.

Having rolled out switching systems for touring and recording pros, developed a fully modular pedalboard power supply system plus various accessories to keep the power coming without the noise, building custom ‘boards for the likes of Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien along the way, GigRig has finally started making its own pedalboards.

There are three sizes available, with the medium and large variants offered with customisable single-tier or double-tier designs, and a gig bag is available as an optional extra. They don’t come cheap (the medium double tiered version is £429, approx $549) but for those using pedalboard switching systems they have everything you need for creating the ultimate board.

Dan Steinhardt, GigRig’s founder and co-host of That Pedal Show, says the small pedalboards will accommodate one of GigRig’s Atom switchers, while the medium will take an Atom with an expression pedal or the G3 switcher.

The large can take a G3, an expression pedal and two “full-sized” tiers. The medium and large GigRig pedalboards have a Short Wah Tier and Wah Riser for accommodating the volume, expression or wah pedal in your life.

“We have developed this eco-system around your effects and the last piece of the puzzle has been developing a pedalboard that enable you to really focus on playing, especially if you are using a pedalboard switching system,” he says. “The ‘boards are all made here in the UK and they are lightweight but they are strong where they need to be. Every ‘board has four ports, two on each side, with removable access plates giving you all the input and output configurations you could need.”

The ‘boards have been from aluminium and steel and are finished with matte black powder coating. They come with a lid to protect your hardware. The small single-tier ‘board measures 331m x 335mm x 120mm and weighs 4.5kg. The medium single-tier version is 460mm x 335m x 120mm, weighing in at 5.5kg, while its double-tiered sibling weighs 7.5kg and measures 460mm x 485.7mm x 120mm.

If you want to go large (and who among us has ever regretted getting a ‘board that was too big?), then the single-tiered model stretches out the footprint to 593mm wide.

Go large with two tiers and you are talking an 8kg pedalboard that measures 593mm x 485.7mm x 120mm and will cost you £575 without a gig bag, £709 with. Not cheap, but if you are serious enough about pedals to use a pedalboard switcher, then working towards a fully integrated 'board build is the logical next step.

The only problem is, what happens if you get one, arrange it just how you like it, and never have to think about how your guitar effects pedals are arranged again? Oh, just kidding. That’s one journey without end. Though perhaps with one of these, it might expand your options and make that customisation journey a little bit easier.

For more details, head over to GigRig.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firewind’s shredder-in-chief and former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Gus G has joined the likes of Alex Lifeson and Joe Satriani by teaming up with IK Multimedia for a signature Tonex collection.

The Gus G Tone Asylum collects 27 Tone Models, each designed and captured by the man himself in his studio, and it offers a one-stop shop for nailing his high-gain electric guitar tones.

“High-gain tones is what I've been into my whole life,” says the G man. “With Tonex, I captured the amps from my collection, the amps I’ve used on recording sessions, and my live rigs from the past 15 years to my most recent ones. I also took the opportunity to capture my favorite stomp boxes and all the signature overdrive pedals I’ve released so far. Where I go, Tonex goes.”

That is very much the idea. IK Multimedia has created a digital eco-system so that these sounds can be used on any of its Tonex devices, so you can run it out of your DAW, in your AmpliTube 5 suite, the Tonex app itself – or load its sounds onto the Tonex pedals and your new favourite power metal guitar tone is good to go for the stage or studio.

As for the guitar amps themselves, we’ve got seven in total, and it is no surprise that we’ve got some Blackstar amps here. There’s a model of the HT-5 Metal, the St James 6L6 and of the the Series 200 Gus G signature amp. These are joined by an Engl Powerball, an EVH 5150 III lunchbox amp, a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier and a Marshall JCM2000 TSL60. Fire-breathers, one and all.

If you are looking for Gus G’s Ozzy-era tone then fire up the Series 200. That signature model is hard to find these days – and it’s also a monster. This digital representation of that sound is a lot easier to housetrain.

“This was my signature amp back in 2012. We only produced 250 of them,” says Gus G. “They’re based on Blackstar’s Series One 200 amp, but my version has more high gain. I toured the world with it when I was with Ozzy Osbourne. It was the core of my sound at that time, and I wanted to capture it for the first time.”

The tube amp models alone put a lot of gain on tap, but we’ve got six drive and dirt pedals to dial in some more. Choose from the J Rockett’s esteemed Klon clone, the Archer, Gus G’s signature Crazy Tube Circuits pedal, the Speed Demon, his signature BBE Green Screamer, a Boss SD-1, a Blackstar Dept 10 Dual Drive, and another CTC custom build in the shape of the Fire & Fury.

All of this is of course made possible by IK Multimedia’s AI Machine Modeling tech. What a time to be alive. The Gus G Tone Asylum is available now at an introductory price of €49 (regular price €69) – see IK Multimedia for more details.

Boss has unveiled a newly refreshed version of its MusicRadar approved Katana:Go, redesigning the exterior of the headphone amp while offering all the same sounds and features.

It seemed only yesterday that we had the Katana:Go in for review. It was “a triumph” that injected classic Boss tones right into your ears, with the guitar effects pedal giant’s spatial audio tech making the Stage Feel feature a real game-changer for electric guitar tone as experienced through a set of headphones, making it sound three-dimensional, immersive and, for the want of a better word, real.

Indeed, we had no gripes with the unit’s design expect for the lack of tap tempo. Alas, Boss retired the old design and set the R&D department loose on a new one, moving the big (well, relatively speaking “big” as everything on this unit is small) level control to the side besides all the other controls.

The original Katana:Go’s display remains in place, showing you which of your 30 user-defined memory banks is active or the guitar tuner. That tuner, by the way, is exceptional.

The sounds are, too, and there are lots to choose from. In guitar mode, you'll find 10 amp models and 60 effects. Bass mode has three amps and 60 effects.

Boss uses the word “infinite” when it comes to tones, which seems hyperbolic but when you connect to the Boss Tone Exchange, sharing Livesets and sounds with other users, then factor in all that tone design allied to the sounds you can cook up with the Boss Tone Studio app (iOS/Android) then, perhaps, infinite is the operative word.

Compatible with bass guitars, too, the Katana:Go ships pre-loaded with 30 different presets. Connect via Bluetooth to the device of your choice and then edit the sounds – or create all-new ones – with the Boss Tone Studio app.

This is all part of the Katana guitar amps eco-system, which means you can import your tone settings from other Katana amps and run them here.

The obvious benefit of the headphone amp is how it transforms practice. Especially for anybody in a flat share, or with small children at home, being able to woodshed silently at all hours is a godsend.

There are all sorts of ways you can use the Katana:Go as a practice amp, particularly when you run Tone Studio in Session mode, in which you can loop challenging parts, play allowing with timestamped YouTube tracks, and set the amp up to change settings automatically as you play along to a song.

You can also use it as a guitar audio interface, which in old money is a great tool for recording your ideas before you forget them, and in new money – the age of the social media – it makes content creation a little easier.

“Users can simply plug it into their instrument, connect earbuds or headphones, call up a memory, and go,” says Boss. But you can also expand the experience and pair it with Boss’ FS-1-WL wireless footswitch and/or EV-1-WL wireless MIDI expression pedal, both sold separately.

That’s a lot of amp for £109/$129 – a lot from an amp that you can stick into your pocket. You will get up to five ours of playing time from the rechargeable battery. Head over to Boss for more pics and details.

We’ve all been there, turning up to a gig only to find out that all the guitarists will be playing through the same backline, cue the onrushing panic as we try to get a decent tone out of an unfamiliar guitar amp. It is some comfort to learn that the greats are no different – even Brian May has a war story to share.

In a recent interview with Guitarist, the Queen guitarist recalls an evening in the early days in which he had to play through a Marshall tube amp and the experience was so bad he sounded like “an angry wasp” and struggled to play a lick.

To make matters worse, Jimi Hendrix was the headliner that night at the Olympia, in London, and we all know how the Marshall stack and Hendrix’s unearthly style made for an era-defining electric guitar tone.

“We played one show at Olympia. Top of the bill was Jimi Hendrix and everybody essentially played through the same gear,” said May. “So I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster. Turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play.

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”

This was a familiar story for Queen back in the day – and it wasn’t just May who suffered. When recording their eponymous debut album at Trident Studios, Roger Taylor had to make do the studio’s drum kit and it killed his game.

Speaking in October last year at the launch of Queen’s rebuilt and restored debut, retitled Queen I, May said he could see Taylor struggling.

“I remember Roger getting angry because he was in such an unfamiliar situation,” said May. “He has been drumming for years, and he’s pretty good as a drummer, he can do a thing or two! Instead of playing in a room with his kit, which he knows inside out, suddenly he is in a tiny little room with a foreign drum kit, which was tiny and transparent as I remember.

“It was plastic, all covered in tape, literally covered in all this tape. They’d taken most of the skin off the bass drum and it’s got a cushion inside. He’s trying to play this thing and he hates it!”

“Yeah, there was no resonance or anything,” replied Taylor. “Not what you want.”

In 1971, Taylor had used his own drum set to record the demos for the album at De Lane Lea Studios, and though nothing fancy – his kit was cheap, too – they sounded much better. The drums sounded like Taylor. And that sound matters. Just as May was thrown by the Marshall, Taylor couldn’t play with his usual freedom.

“We were told: ‘This is the Trident sound’. But we didn't want the Trident sound. We wanted our sound,” said Taylor. “I really had a bad time playing that kit, which is why, actually, if you listen to the demos – which I played on my relatively cheap kit in De Lane Lea – it's a higher standard of drumming. It’s quite busy, but it makes sense. And it’s just better to listen to.”

Queen ultimately swapped out every single one of Taylor’s drum beats for the Queen I reissue. And May, well, he too made his choice, finding his sound with the Vox AC30 combo. With that, his treble booster, and his home-made Red Special, he had his tone. And Hendrix sure had his.

For the avoidance of doubt, May assures Guitarist that Hendrix and the Marshall did not disappoint.

“After we’d played, I stayed behind backstage and I looked through between the amps as Jimi came on stage, plugged into that same amp – and it sounded like a cataclysm,” said May.

You can read the full interview with May in the latest issue of Guitarist, available now via Magazines Direct.

NAMM 2025: IK Multimedia has launched a Joe Satriani signature edition of its Tonex One amp modeller pedal that ships with 20 of the electric guitar virtuoso’s signature presets.

The presets were designed by Satch himself, and place the AI-modelled tones for some of his most-famous tracks right there on your pedalboard; Ice 9, Always With Me, Always With You, The Extremist, Cryin’ – they are all there and then some.

And there really is more here. This limited edition run unlocks the Joe Satriani Tonex Amp Vault, giving you access to all 67 Tone Models from his collection.

Some 28 of Satch’s favourite guitar amps were used to put this together, with Satriani dialling in the settings, the captures taken at Sammy Hagar’s Red Rocker Studios, then modelled using IK Multimedia’s proprietary AI technology

When you consider the Joe Satriani TONEX Amp Vault Collection is priced $/€99.99, this new Tonex One signature edition begins to look like an even better buy at €229.

As with the regular Tonex One, functionality is the name of the game. Despite the guitar mini pedal format, you can use this in all kinds of ways, and as Satriani can attest to, the digital architecture under the hood maintains the sound quality.

Satch says it “roars and shimmers like its full-size big brother”. “You can use it as a standalone amp, a recording interface, or even a headphone practice amp,” he says. “And it looks amazing!”

Ah, yes, it does look amazing. Now, looks aren’t everything, especially not when it comes to a pedal, but there is something special about a chrome mirror pedal that is finished to match Satriani’s JS3CR Chrome Boy signature guitar.

And, of course, this has all the same functionality as your regular Tonex One, with customisable LED micro-knobs, “studio-grade” EQ, delay, modulation, compressor, reverb, noise gate and smart guitar tuner.

It is designed to work with all the other devices in the Tonex eco-system, such as the Tonex Cab that IK Multimedia launched just last week, offering an FRFR speaker to pair with one of its hardware units (or indeed any other modeller or preamp pedals you’ve got).

Run it in preset mode, run it in stomp mode. Its output can be sent in mono, stereo or to a set of guitar amp headphones.

Also, why content yourself with just Satch’s tones? You can avail yourself of more than 40,000 Tone Models available via IK Multimedia’s ToneNET user community.

The Joe Satriani Tonex One ships in February, with preorders open now.. Existing owners of the Tonex Joe Satriani Amp Vault or AmpliTube Joe Satriani guitar plugin suite are eligible for $/€50 off during the pre-order period. See IK Multimedia for more details.

• IK Multimedia Tonex One review

NAMM 2025: AmpRx has unveiled Brownie, an voltage optimising power supply that’s designed to give your tube amp exactly what it needs to perform at its best.

Now, AmpRx has made voltage attenuators for tube amps before. Its Brown Box series offered an over-the-counter remedy for those looking for Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Brown Sound’, the chance to dial in their own Variac-reduced voltage, run their Marshall head on 10, and apply an MXR Phase 90 to taste.

Brownie can do that, too. But this is different, because Brownie is the first of its kind that allows you to dial in exactly the voltage you need, allowing you to increase or decrease “with volt by volt precision” the supply to your tube amp.

This means that you know exactly what power is being fed into your amp; it will be consistently the same, whether you are playing in Rio de Janeiro, Berlin or Slough. Ask any touring musician – or better yet, ask their guitar tech – and they will tell you that on one night your amp might sound incredible, or on another there’s something missing. That is often down to the voltage.

Kirk Hammett from Metallica caused a bit of a stir when he told Total Guitar that Marshalls sounded better when you ran them in the UK.

“You plug a Marshall straight into the wall in London and it will sound 30 per cent better than the same Marshall hooked up to the wall in America,” he said. “It’s everything to do with the voltage. And it would drive me crazy because it would sound different from show to show!”

Joe Bonamassa backed him up on that. And that is one example where the Brownie could help, allowing players to dial in the exact voltage night after night.

AmpRx promises not only a consistent sound and performance from the tube amp in your life, but also says that feeding it the correct voltage consistently can extend the life of your gear.”

The design is simple, too. There is one knob. There is a digital display screen. You can decrease the voltage in 1V increments, increase it in 3V and 5V increments. And there are 2A and 4A fuse options to match your guitar amp.

Brownie is compatible with modern and vintage tube amps alike. It is hand-wired in Nashville, TN, available now, and it is priced $299.

For more details, head over to AmpRx, or, if you happen to be visiting the Anaheim Convention Center, you can see it in person at the AmpRx stall at Show Booth #5630.

NAMM 2025: Mooer Audio might have just blown the market for amp modellers and profilers wide open with the launch of its new flagship unit, the GS1000 Intelligent Amp Profiling Processor.

Embedded with its MNRS 2.0 tech, with AI-enabled EQ and a 5” touchscreen, this compact little unit looks set to offer stiff competition to industry leading units from the likes of Kemper, Neural DSP and IK Multimedia, enabling players to “fully capture the essence of their favourite guitar gear without owning the physical hardware” and offering storage for a generous 120 sampling profiles.

The GS1000 is eminently expandable, compatible with third-party IRs, with the Chinese guitar gear specialist promising “studio-grade” sound quality.

And it goes without saying there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to effects, shipping with over 350 effects models and the capability to save these down and group into “sub-patches”.

But why Intelligent Amp Profiling Processor? Maybe that’s Mooer referencing the AI EQ Master, which listens to your playing to make “intelligent adjustments in real-time” that fine-tunes the tone to the player’s style – EQ tweaks that can also be made manually.

The GS1000 can also be run in Groove Station mode, with a drum machine and looper comprising 56 different virtual drum kits and a 480-second maximum looping time.

“Overall, the Groove Station acts as an all-in-one suite for creating full arrangements, without having to depend on additional backing tracks or bandmates,” reads the Mooer Audio blurb. There are four metronome types, infinite overdubs, and a plethora of ways you can synchronise your playing to the loops and beats.

The GS1000 uses the same dual-chain effects architecture from previous modellers and guitar multi-effects units in the Mooer lineup. It is designed to present players with a lot of options for setting this up just how they like it, with four multi-function footswitches and the aforementioned 5” touchscreen for easier editing.

You have options around the back of the unit, too. There is an expression pedal input. It can be hooked up to the wireless F4 footswitch (sold separately). Available in two version, in white and black, with the latter equipped with a lithium-ion battery for up to six hours of wireless performance (a boon for buskers etc).

The spec list is mightily impressive for a unit that retails for under 500 bucks. UK list price is £449 (approx $549).

You can share electric guitar tones with the Mooer Audio user community; the GS1000 is fully compatible to work with the Mooer Cloud app.

"Essentially, this cloud integration facilitates infinite upload and download possibilities, giving users access to a global community of shared tones, widely expanding the number of accessible tones," says Mooer.

Other key features include MIDI connectivity, an effects loop that can be set up in series or parallel, Bluetooth for external audio, a low-latency ASIO 2-in/2-out USB sound card, and a USB-C port for managing your sounds via your laptop.

There are a pair of balanced TRS stereo outputs, a 1/4”/XLR mic combo input, and a headphones output for silent practice and monitoring… And, well that’s a lot to be getting on with.

For more details, head over to Mooer Audio.

NAMM 2025: IK Multimedia has unveiled the Tonex Cab, a 1x12 FRFR speaker that is both compact and generously powered to push air around the room and get the most out of your digital guitar rig.

This was always the final frontier in the age of the digital amp modeller: just how could we get them to sound as inspiring as an old-school guitar amp, with a speaker that actually makes noise, real feedback, and all the time-honoured thrills of playing the electric guitar?

Our amps can colour their tone. They don’t play to their strengths, while the FRFR speaker (“full-range, flat-response”) presents a true representation of your tone – the detail, dynamics, the whole nine yards. As IK Multimedia puts it, the Tonex Cab offers “unmatched realism”.

Of course, as part of the Tonex ecosystem of products, IK Multimedia has designed this with its range of amp and guitar effects modellers in mind. But you don’t have to own a Tonex product. Line 6 Helix, Fractal, Quad Cortex, Kemper… Whatever. This will have you covered.

“Tonex Cab works equally well with any other digital amp sims, adding muscle, articulation and a rich multi-dimensional sound that makes playing live an electrifying and immersive experience,” says IK Multimedia.

Tonex Cab is rated at 350-watts RMS, with all that Class D power driving a single 12” Celestion speaker and a 1” Lavoce high-performance compression driver. It is capable of generating 132dB, and yet it is super-compact, weighting in at just 12.7 kg (28lbs on the old scale).

All the state-of-the-art FRFR features are here. You can upload custom IRs to the speaker, with eight onboard presets. Its onboard IR loader allows you to connect analogue preamps to the cabinet.

Tonex Cab can be configured with the accompanying software, making preset editing easier. It has a 3-band EQ (on a control panel that is reassuringly amp-like). But its USP is the Amp Tone control that gives you the “amp-in-the-room feel and response” that many digital rigs can lack.

Make that amps, plural, in the room, because you can link the Tonex Cabs by XLR and expand your rig. The cabinet has a wooden construction with integrated legs so you can tilt it at an angle. You can use it as a wedge monitor, or place it at an angle onstage so that it projects its sound across the stage.

Around the back of the speaker you will find a 1/4”/XLR combo input, a 1/4”/XLR combo aux input, MIDI and USB connections, XLR output with ground control and pre/post switch. If you don’t fancy the grille cloth colour you can swap it out.

The Tonex Cab is available at the introductory pre-order price of €699 (reduced from €799) and ships in April. See IK Multimedia for more details.

NAMM 2025: Boss has launched the Waza Tube Amp Expander Core, a “streamlined” and more compact version of its feature-packed reactive load box that promises “world-class recorded tones with no engineering experience required” – just what the home recording musician wants to hear.

This is a serious piece of kit for any guitarist who owns a tube amp. As much as we love our tube amps, it remains an iron law of electric guitar tone that they only really start to sound great once you’ve got them turned up, making those power tubes work for their money, but in doing so you have got to deal with all that volume.

Great for the stage. Not great for flatmates, neighbours, the Noise Abatement Society. AC/DC posited that rock ’n’ roll was not noise pollution but in the real world it has consequences. Well, the Waza Tube Amp Expander Core allows you to run your tube amp hot and access those sweet spots while playing at practice-friendly (and neighbour-friendly) volumes.

Furthermore, it has a suite of features that could make it an essential part of your home recording setup. This is an increasingly competitive market, the Waza Tube Amp Expander Core, $699 RRP, is priced somewhere between the Two Notes Engineering Torpedo series and more expensive units such as the original Waza Tube Amp Expander and the Universal Audio Ox Amp Top Box.

Boss says the unit takes the heavy lifting out of creating “mix-ready” guitar tracks. “The advanced Boss Tube Logic design approach harnesses the complete output of a connected tube amplifier, supported by premium cab emulation and studio processing to craft impactful, mix-ready guitar tracks,” says Boss.

Players tracking at home can use the Mix Assist feature to apply one of sound contour curves to their parts, with a variable transient control to make sure these parts sit well within the mix.

Direct recording needs a sense of space to make it sound real, and that’s where the Air Feel control comes in, applying spatial technology to make it sound like it is being recorded in a physical space.

There is a parallel/series effects loop for pedalboard integration, and this being Boss there are some onboard effects, too, with compression, EQ, delay, and reverb.

The editor software really expands the functionality. There are 22 Boss cabinet emulations and five recording microphone types to choose from. You can use two mics simultaneously.

The editor is your friend when it comes to designing and arranging these sounds, and you can save 10 of your favourite settings to the unit, selecting them via the Rig rotary dial. There is a headphones out with level control, plus controls for speaker out and line out volume. You can switch between combo and stack reactive load modes.

Around the back you’ll find a pair of XLR outputs (left and right), a connection for the Bluetooth adaptor (sold separately), a MIDI input, 1/4” tube amp input with selectable input level switch, a USB connection and the effects loop send and return.

The Waza Tube Amp Expander Core is available now. See Boss for more details.

Boss has been busy today. Earlier we saw the release of Boss' V-800 V-Guitar Processor, a virtual instrument unit that allows players to make their electric or bass guitar sound like another model, and acoustic guitar, a sitar, banjo, synth and a whole lot more besides.

Guthrie Govan made recent appearance at a Charvel guitar clinic in Dubai and once more made a persuasive case why he, a lifelong devotee of the tube amp, has fully digital guitar rigs as he tours the world with The Aristocrats.

This is the great 21st-century guitar rig conundrum as amp modellers have got better and a growing range of FRFR (full range, flat response) speakers have been launched to maximise their performance.

As ever, the debate is couched in terms of which is better, the amp modeller or the tube amp. Maybe both is the answer. Or that it really depends. But for Govan, he told those in attendance that all comes down to the F-word, freedom.

“Yes, I’ve sold my soul,” he said. “I grew up, what, using single-channel valve amps and here I am with this digital monstrosity, and I still want to feel like I have a real amp behind me. And that [points to Laney 4X12 FRFR speaker] creates that feeling and it inspires me. It makes me play differently – hopefully better.”

Laney leaned on Devin Townsend's feedback when developing its new range of LFR cabinets, a range of FRFR speakers that were designed to give players using amp modellers that same sort of feel as quote/unquote real guitar amplifiers, with air moving out of the speaker.

Govan was an early adopter, taking one of the LFR-412s on tour with The Aristocrats. As he noted in the Laney press bumf, the “real feedback” was what he was looking for.

Laney’s LFR-412 can take some of the credit for pushing Govan over the edge. There is one onstage with him during the clinic. The world’s first 4x12 FRFR speaker is a real beast, a 2600-watter, with a maximum volume that Laney says rivals a jet airplane at takeoff. You can see the appeal.

But it is not just that Laney has made it appealing, as Govan demonstrates. Not only is a practical piece of kit when touring, and especially so when with an orchestra as he is with Hans Zimmer, the options that Guthrie's Fractal FM-9 presents for creative adventures are too much for him to ignore.

“Why am I using this digital monstrosity when it flies in the face of all my principles that I have acquired over decades? Because it gives me freedom to do other things,” he said. “I figured out that you can load the impulse response of a violin body into the speaker block of the Fractal unit, and you can do [plays violin tones through his guitar].”

And when you hear him play those sounds, sounds far removed from the electric guitar’s usual range, it all makes perfect sense – especially since Govan has always been a player whose musical curiosity is aroused by the sounds he is hearing from the speaker.

“I’m a big believer in that kind of thing – if you listen to the sound coming out of the speaker, it tells you what kind of player to be,” Govan told MusicRadar in 2019. “I’m very responsive to how the rig is reacting. It’s nice to meet a new side of myself, especially like how I did towards the end of Last Orders. That all happened because it was an unfamiliar rig.”

Sometimes that’s the sound of an amp modeller loaded with the IR of a violin. Other times it could be the guitar itself, like when he got turned onto the Fender Jazzmaster after touring with Nile Marr on a Hans Zimmer run.

That’s how he ended up writing Spiritus Cactus from 2019's You Know What...? “I felt it was my duty to investigate his world just for one song,” he said. “It definitely made me play differently.”

Sometimes, that’s all we are looking for from our gear, digital, analogue or both.

Behringer is officially in the zone. Last month alone it unveiled a Tone Bender clone and an audacious replica of the legendary Klon Centaur overdrive pedal, both offering change out of 70 bucks. And now this, the ’69 Vibe, Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe clone that offers those Jimi Hendrix-approved psychedelic tones for just $69.

In sum, for under $200, you could stock your pedalboard with the sounds of three classic stompboxes – and Behringer says it isn’t done yet.

Responding to online critics who have accused the brand of being a “vaporware company” – unveiling products before they are available to buy, ultimately not releasing them at all – Behringer struck a bullish note, arguing that it is “one of the most prolific manufacturers in the industry,” promising more before the year’s out.

“No other company delivers as many innovative and affordable products as we do,” it continued.

Those critics might be responding to its Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble clone. The chorus pedal was teased but has yet to make it to market.

But then there could be a very good reason for that, especially when you consider the case of Behringer's Dual-Phase, its clone of the ‘70s analogue dual phaser from Mu-Tron Bi-Phase that Frank Zappa used to great effect. It was originally introduced as the Bi-Phaser, the name change might have been a way to tip-toe round any IP copyright issues.

The ’69 Vibe certainly delivers on affordability. As for the sound, they're timeless, and date back to when Hendrix was in his pomp and looking for a guitar effects pedal that could emulate the woozy swirl of a rotating speaker.

The Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe did just that, and gave tracks such as Machine Gun the three-dimensional movement he wanted.

It wasn’t just Hendrix who fell under the Uni-Vibe’s spell. Robin Trower created another candidate for the definitive Uni-Vibe track with Bridge Of Sighs. David Gilmour used one, notably on Time and Breathe.

The ’69 Vibe has a familiar look, black enclosure, white text, controls for Volume, Intensity and Speed, one footswitch for engaging the effect and another to toggle between its chorus and vibrato modes. The latter might come in handy for nailing Chris Cornell’s electric guitar tone on Black Hole Sun. And there is an input for attaching an expression pedal so you can control it on the fly.

You will find all the connections on the top of the unit. A pair of 1/4” input/outputs, the input for the pedalboard power supply, and the aforementioned input for the expression pedal.

Behringer suggest placing the '69 Vibe in front of your fuzz pedal, behind it, either side of your drive pedals or straight into a dimed amp a la Jimi. We’d endorse that message.

So there you have it, a £59/$69 Uni-Vibe clone, and once again we have a metal enclosure form Behringer. For more details, head over to Behringer.

Mesa/Boogie has brought back one of its all-time classic tube amps and quite possibly ended your epic quest to find a super-rare vintage model with the reissue of the Mark IIC+ as a 100-watt head and a 1x12 combo. Which is just as well, because it might have financially ruined you.

Given its designation, you could be forgiven for thinking the Mark IIC+ was simply a transitional model for the Californian high-end guitar amp brand. It didn't last long, and was only in production for a couple of years before being discontinued as the Mark III arrived in to take its place. But what an impact it left in that time.

Just ask Metallica fans – such as Dream Theater’s John Petrucci – and the players who have used it over the years, a roll call that includes Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Neal Schon, Blue Öyster Cult’s Buck Dharma, Bruce Springsteen and, yes, Petrucci himself, it is one of the GOATs. Prince reportedly used one. Petrucci’s signature model, the Mesa/Boogie JP-2C, is based on the Mark CII+.

Even the team at Mesa/Boogie were surprised by the legacy of the Mark IIC+. Doug West, director, Tone Lab, Gibson Amplifiers and Mesa/Boogie, said they had been besieged by requests to do a reissue.

“Since the Mark IIC+’s replacement by the Mark III in late 1985, players have asked the question ‘When will you do a Re-Issue of the Mark IIC+?’” says West. “Little did we know then that the Mark IIC+ would continue its rise in popularity long after its production lifespan and become one of history’s most sought-after and coveted amplifiers, synonymous with rock and metal’s biggest artist’s iconic tones.”

But putting together the reissue was not as simple as reaching into the drawer and fetching all the components. West says this was three years in the making. There were “countless hours of brutal comparisons”. Those components from way back were not readily at hand.

Clearly, a lot of details had got lost in the shuffle as the Mark Series evolution continued apace. We are on Mark VII now. Also, why let those evolutionary discoveries go to waste? What the Mesa/Boogie R&D team had learned over the past years – “tone tricks” and construction epiphanies – was brought to bear on this “Mark IIC+ redux”.

Speaking of which, the Mark VII is quite possibly one of the most feature-packed guitar amps on the market, a “greatest hits” Boogie with Multi-Watt power, three channels (and yes, with three modes each), a 5-band graphic EQ, onboard CabClone IR tech, yadda yadda yadda. The Mark IIC+ presents a relatively more streamlined presentation of what the Mark Series is all about.

It faithfully reproduces cutting-edge amp design from the ‘80s Mesa/Boogie shopfloor that somehow still seems cutting-edge today.

West promises it “delivers all the explosive attack, dynamic excitement and percussive intensity of the originals”, and you have the peace of mind that comes with a brand-new build and the warranty that comes with it.

“Any Mark IIC+ fan owes it to themselves to try one of these new IIC+s before going on the daunting quest to find an original,” says West. “We feel sure you’ll agree that this new build is as legit and as inspiring as the legend demands. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be doing it!”

The Mark IIC+ is a serious amp. As the name suggests it evolved out of the Mark II (which is now known as the Mark II-A), the world’s first dual-mode amp. Unlike some more contemporary Mesa/Boogie amps, the Mark IIC+ presents its controls in a single row. Like many Mesa/Boogie designs, you can really take a forensic approach to sculpting your electric guitar tone.

Technically, it is a single-channel amp, but the two Clean and Lead modes are footswitchable and allow the amp to behave like a dual-channel design. One set of tone controls serves both modes, with push-pull functions for fine-tuning your sound. Some of these behave differently depending on what mode you are in.

Then you have the 5-band graphic EQ, which can come in especially handy for shaping the Lead mode. You can switch the graphic EQ in and out on the fly, via the Auto EQ toggle on the front panel, or, more efficiently, with the footswitch.

The Mark IIC+ can be run at a full 75-watts in the Simul-Class setting, in which all four power tubes are deployed and the amp uses a hybrid configuration in which two of the power tubes are wired in Class A, the other in Class A/B, bringing you the best of both worlds.

“Combining these two types of wiring and operating classes creates a superbly musical and harmonically rich character that filters out the harsher artefacts associated with Class AB, while the more pleasing elements are accentuated and showcased from the Class A-wired tubes,” explains Mesa/Boogie.

Alternatively, you can run the amp Class A at 25-watts, which will give you less volume but a “warmer, smoother transition into clip”. You might also notice some more upper-harmonic action in Class A operation.

Also on the back of the amp there is a buffered series effects loop, Slave Output for use with Wet/Dry/Wet rigs and external IR readers, Reverb and Presence controls, plus a pair of four-ohm speaker outputs, and one at eight-ohms. The tube-driven spring reverb is also footswitchable.

It is one heck of an amp, and it is available now, priced £3,699/$3,599 street for the head, £3,999/$3,899 for the 1x12 combo, which comes fitted with a Celestion-designed Mesa Black Shadow speaker.

For more details, head over to Mesa/Boogie.

IK Multimedia has teamed up with Alex Lifeson to help you nail the Rush icon’s electric guitar tones with a TONEX signature collection that collects four digital models of his most-loved tube amps.

If the machine learning TONEX tech behind this guitar plugin suite is complex, the idea behind it is simple; Lifeson picked four favourites from his guitar amp collection and IK Multimedia deployed its proprietary AI machine learning to engineer 25 tone models that give you tones from all stages of his career.

Been searching for that Moving Pictures “clean-yet-dirty” tone? You will find it here with a digital reproduction of Lifeson’s open-backed Marshall 4140 Club and Country 2x12 combo.

As IK Multimedia notes, Lifeson made full use of this lesser-spotted Marshall amp’s capacity for pedalboard accommodation. Pair this with a Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble or an EHX Electric Mistress, add a delay pedal of your choice and you’ll be on the guest list for Xanadu.

Next up is another Marshall and a cornerstone of his tone. Lifeson calls this one “Curly”, and it’s a Marshall 6100 30th Anniversary head that’s paired with a 1960BV straight 4x12 speaker cabinet.

“One of the most versatile amp designs yet produced, ‘Curly’ played an essential role in providing Alex with every era of ‘British’ guitar tone on stage and in the studio,” says IK Multimedia, and no one here is going to argue with that.

These three-channel 100-watters were launched at Winter NAMM 1992. If you attended one of the guitar expos of that year you too might still be lucky enough to still have your 30th Anniversary poster signed by Jim Marshall. Ours is sadly long missing in action. IK Multimedia presents 10 amp and cab tone models from this special edition tube head and cab.

This collection would not be complete with a Lifeson signature amp, and we’ve got two. His first, the all singing, all dancing Hughes & Kettner TriAmp, which IK Multimedia describes as “the backbone of Rush guitar tones from the late 1990s through the early 2000s” is replicated with five amp and cab tone models, and a super-wide range of tones, from gin-clear cleans to super-saturated lead tones.

The second signature amp brings us right up to the present day, and Lifeson’s signature Lerxst amp brand, with the Omega and its matching 4x12 offering you all the tone and feel of the amps he used on Clockwork Angels.

Again, versatility is the watchword. This is a two-channel amp with switchable clipping, a greatest hits of all his previous amps in one, and in Lifeson’s words, “These plug-ins sound just like the amps or better!”

They are also designed to as a standalone plugin in your DAW or anywhere within the TONEX eco-system, meaning you can access Lifeson’s signature Rush tones via your TONEX pedal.

The TONEX Alex Lifeson Legacy Signature Collection is available now, priced €99.99. See IK Multimedia for more details.

Orange Amps and Orianthi have unveiled the White Crush 20RT, a limited edition solid-state combo that has 20-watts driving a single eight-inch speaker, and a heap of cool features and a cool aesthetic.

Like Orianthi’s signature Oriverb, a fire-breathing 2x12 tube amp inspired by the Rockerverb MKIII 50 NEO, the White Crush arrives resplendent in a textured leaf Tolex with a black grille clothe – and there’s even a signature bronze plaque on the top of the amp.

The amp was designed as Orianthi’s practice amp. It is what she uses to warm-up with backstage. But that’s the thing with the White Crush, and with the regular edition Orange Crush; these guitar amps might be compact, modestly powered, and very affordable at £189/$219 street, but you can dial in some respectable electric guitar tones on it.

“I wanted a portable amp I could use anywhere,” says Orianthi. “There’s a soaring tone you get from this amp despite its small, compact size. Plus this amp is really diverse – from the clean channel to the dirty channel – there’s warmth and there’s grit, it’s really quite incredible. I think everyone is really going to dig it!”

Orianthi says she has even recorded with it, and why not? Sometimes the best studio tones are the ones that are staring us in the face, and there is a certain magic about small 1x8 solid-state combo dimed to the limit.

There are two footswitchable channels here, Clean and Dirty, with the latter served by a high-gain preamp. A three-band EQ serves both, and each channel has its own independent volume control. Crank the Gain dial to squeeze all the juice out of the Dirty channel’s aforementioned high-gain preamp.

There is also digitally emulated spring reverb. All controls are laid out with Orange’s hieroglyphic-style icons, which can be momentarily bewildering but ultimately is part of the charm when using the iconic British amp brand’s designs.

The footswitch input is on the back of the amp, as is the on/off switch. Everything else you need can be found on the control panel – including a mini-jack aux-in to accommodate an external audio source, an onboard guitar tuner with LEDs to guide you, the all-important headphones output for silent practice.

And those practice sessions with the guitar amp headphones will be made all the more rewarding with the onboard CabSim tech that replicates the response of an Orange 4x12 speaker cabinet. And who doesn’t want that?

The White Crush 20RT weighs 6.55kg/14.44lbs, is available now. Watch Orianthi put it through its paces in the video above, and find out more at Orange Amps.

It has been a banner week at Wampler Pedals with the launch of not one but two pedals, the Catacombs delay/reverb twofer, and Syntax, a mini-pedal that’s designed to make your life easier, giving you greater control over your rig.

When it gets down to it, both the Catacombs and Syntax are designed to make a player’s pedalboard life easier. They just approach it from different points.

The Syntax is what you might call a utility pedal, not as glamorous as a multi-featured reverb pedal but nonetheless with the potential to be a life-saver, particularly for those with lots of different things happening on their ‘board at once.

Catacombs, meanwhile, is like a greatest hits of delay and reverb, packing 11 classic sounds into one housing, digitally powered with the capacity to program the unit and save your favourite sounds down with a minimum of fuss, no deep-dives into the manual or menu scrolling required.

In short, Brian Wampler designed this pedal to make his own gigging life easier, and he hopes it will make your gigging life easier, too.

As he says in the video below, he designed this for himself, and at first wasn't sure if he was going to release it or not – and that might sound remarkable, far-fetched, but Wampler once told MusicRadar that he will often sit on a Saturday night and build a circuit just for fun.

“One challenge kept coming up, both for me and the countless musicians I've talked to: the struggle to have a wide range of sounds with complex editing capabilities while keeping the pedal interface manageable,” he says. “We either compromise on versatility or sacrifice precious space. I knew there had to be a better way. That’s why I created the Catacombs – a pedal that eliminates the compromise altogether. It packs 11 of the most popular delay and reverb sounds into one intuitive, powerful package.”

Catacombs has six different delays and five reverbs, and you can run one of each simultaneously with the other, saving them down into one of eight presets. All of these programmed settings can then be controlled by tap tempo – and you can run them in mono and stereo, in parallel or in series.

Hook it up with MIDI and you can access (and control) 128 presets, and there is an input for a user-assignable expression pedal to control any or multiple parameters.

The delay modes comprise analogue, BBD, tape echo emulation, an “other-worldly” space-echo, Wampler’s Faux Tape Echo algorithm and a digital model of the ‘80s classic TC Electronic 2290 delays. The reverb modes, similarly, serve up some familiar favourites, such as hall, a “warm, vintage” plate sound, spring reverb emulation, shimmer, and a room mode that’s described as “the perfect studio reverb”.

Extending the range of this ambient powerhouse, Wampler is also offering it as a free guitar plugin for owners of the unit – you can otherwise purchase the Catacombs plugin for $49.99.

Syntax, meanwhile, is a mini-pedal that is be a dual-sided MIDI program selector, tap-tempo controller, and amp channel switcher all in one. It does all this with just two footswitches, both of which can be operated in momentary or latching modes, and are served by a pair of independent 3-way slider switches.

Set the slider to tap tempo and the corresponding footswitch works operates the tap-tempo feature on the time-based guitar effects pedal of your choice. Turn the other to MIDI and you can cycle through and change presets on the fly. Connect it to your guitar amp in latching mode and use it two change the channels.

It is no accident that Wampler launched Syntax on the same day as Catacombs, because it is designed to be part of that same effects pedal eco-system.

Syntax allows you to hook up Wampler’s digital multi-modal units such as Catacombs, Metaverse delay pedal and Terraform modulation, and use the Syntax to change presets on any or all three at the same time. All this from a pedal that measures 1.5”x3.5”x 1.5”.

Both Catacombs and Syntax are made in the USA and ship with a limited five-year warranty from Wampler. Catacombs takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and draws 130mA. Syntax can be run on 9V or 18V. Catacombs is priced $/£299 street. Syntax is priced £/$99.

For more details, head over to Wampler Pedals.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd caught the Dumble bug during the sessions for his 2004 studio album, The Place You’re In, when he rented one of the legendary tube amps and couldn’t believe what he was hearing coming out of the speaker.

He had to get one of his own. But how? Well, he did the obvious thing and asked the guy who rented him the amp if he was open to offers. No dice.

“The guy wouldn’t sell it to me,” says Shepherd, checking in from Texas, hours before showtime on the Experience Hendrix Tour. “So I said, ‘I want to meet this guy! I want him to build me an amp.’ And the guy says, ‘Oh he doesn’t build amplifiers anymore, and even if he did, he wouldn’t build one for you.’”

This conversation wasn’t a dead loss. No, Shepherd didn’t get to buy the amp, nor did he get a contact for the legendary Alexander ‘Howard’ Dumble. But he did get the next best thing; a contact for Andy Fuchs, a venerated builder of guitar amps in his own right who has made D-style amps something of a specialty.

Fuchs helped Shepherd out, building him a couple of amps to take out on tour. Although they were close enough for the stage, there was still a difference in the studio.

Everything changed when Shepherd finally met Dumble. Now it all made sense, and this explained why the clones can’t compete with the original, and why a lot of players who dream of playing through a Dumble let alone owning one can sometimes be disappointed by what they hear.

“I realised why none of the clones actually measure up to the real thing – because there’s so much information!” says Shepherd. “Those guys get ahold of a circuit, they get ahold of one of his amps and they are able to de-goop it and then they go, ‘Okay! This is how you build it.’ But there is so much about building those amplifiers that was all in his head.”

Shepherd became friends with Dumble, and regards him as a genius who applied this sort of computational sensibility to his custom amp designs that made the difference.

While many amp builders will take a schematic and work from as though it were Julia Child’s recipe for boeuf bourguignon, Dumble would pore over the components, and the way Shepherd describes it, he had this almost epicurean approach to amp design.

“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,” says Shepherd. “I don’t even know how many of them he would toss aside because they didn’t have the right value. Like, he knew. It’s printed on there what it is supposed to be but he knew, in his head, what it needed to be, and it’s not necessarily the same number.

“He was like, ‘No, this needs to measure this number in order for it to be any good in my amplifier, and he was the only guy who knew all of this stuff, so that was one of the small but actually important reasons why the clones just never actually measure up.

“Now, for the guys who are trying to get that sound, and can never get access to a guy like Dumble, to the man himself, that’s the next best thing. But if you actually had the real thing and compared them to the clones it is never going to be the same thing. It’s just not. There was so much intellectual property that resided in his brain and nobody knew it.”

But what can players expect should they be lucky enough to get the chance to put their electric guitar through a Dumble amp? For better or worse, they are going to get a true representation of their playing, and that can be a chastening experience.

“The misconception is that everyone thinks the amps are going to make you sound great because they are so expensive and they are so highly regarded,” says Shepherd. “But the truth of the matter is that the Dumble amplifier is so transparent that, if you’re not a very refined player, it’s going to expose all of your flaws in your playing.

“That’s why I think some guys get an opportunity to play through a Dumble amp – or maybe a clone came kind of close to the sound – and they don’t like it. ‘I don’t get it!?’ It might be because it is exposing some things about their playing that they are able to cover up better by using other amplifiers.”

Shepherd believes Dumble amps offer a “great platform” for any player but part of the magic of their design was how they were tailored to each individual player’s needs. Dumble, who passed away in 2022, would take the time to learn each player’s style before fine-tuning the design for them, to ensure the amp feels right as well as sounding right. All of Shepherd’s Dumbles were made by the man himself, and he had a very particular process.

“I would go to his house and he would plug me into different amplifiers to see how I would interact with the amplifier,” says Shepherd. “he goes, ‘Well how do you play? What’s your style? What’s your approach? How hard or soft [do you play]? What are you trying to get the amplifier to do?’ And then he goes and he builds that amplifier to suit your needs and your playing style. That’s why he was very particular about people not selling the amplifiers to other people, because they weren’t intended for that person.

“My amplifiers, he built every one of them. They are tailor-made to my guitar playing. He would base it off the design of an amp that he had built for many other people, but he would fine-tune each one of those amplifiers to my playing style, and so they naturally react the way that I would want them to. That frees up so much more creativity for me because I am not struggling to get certain sounds from my amplifier.”

Pickup a copy of Shepherd’s new album, Dirt On My Diamonds Vol. 2 and you’ll hear what he means. There are some ridiculously hot and greasy tube tones courtesy of those Dumbles, with a few choice drive pedals in the mix, too.

Those tones are part of the Dumble legacy. But Shepherd also sees that legacy from a friend’s point of view. There was no one quite like Alexander ‘Howard’ Dumble.

“I just felt really honoured to have the friendship that I had with him, because it went beyond just amplifiers,” he says. “He and I became very close. He was a genius. I am absolutely convinced the guy was a bona-fide genius – and everything that came along with that, because oftentimes people that are that smart specialised in their field are different individuals to your everyday person. And he certainly was incredibly unique.”

You can read more about the making of Dirt On My Diamonds, the gear behind it, why he wrote the album in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and how Shepherd approaches performing Jimi Hendrix’s material in the full interview, coming soon to MusicRadar.

Boss has unveiled the GX-10, a typically feature-packed amp modeller and guitar multi-effects unit that packs all the processing power and sounds of the GX-100 into a smaller format – and it also has the same LCD colour touchscreen as its larger sibling.

The GX-10 is designed for guitar and bass guitar alike, and presents a bounty of sounds for both. All in, there are some 32 amp models, nine for bass and 23 for electric guitar.

This being a Boss production there is an abundance of effects here, with 170 options including various drives, distortions and boosts, all the modulation family – including those industry-standard Boss chorus pedal sounds that have arguably never been bettered – reverbs, delays and some of the Japanese brand’s more off-road and cult classic sounds.

Dial in some staccato chop with the Slicer. Take your guitar’s signal two octaves down with the Octave.

And while you’re at it, take that vintage SG-1 Slow Gear out of your cart; there’s no need to be spending over 500 bucks on an out-of-production pedal when you can have those violining and volume effect sounds right here – and you can program them into a preset. The looper can record 38 seconds in mono, 19 in stereo.

Boss says the GX-10 is designed for the stage, studio or practice space… In short, you can take it anywhere, and at 2.2kg you can throw it in your backpack and use it as a fly-rig. Dual-function footswitches allied to the touchscreen should mean little is compromised just because the pedal is smaller.

You can assign any of the three footswitches to perform a number of functions, from turning an overdrive on for a solo to for changing numerous parameters with one click. There are 66 preset banks and space onboard the unit for 198 user-programmed presets.

The GX-10 has an integrated expression pedal that can similarly be assigned to any number of effects parameters – and right out of the box it is configured so that you can toggle between using it as a volume or wah pedal, and to turn the onboard guitar tuner on and off.

We were big fans of the GX-100’s amp sounds and these are the same sounds that you will find here, with Boss’ proprietary AIRD technology doing a sterling job of emulating tube amp tone and feel with a digital model.

Those whose chosen medium positions them out there on the outer limits of metal guitar have some options with the high-gain trifecta of Boss’ X-Ultra, X-Optima, and X-Titan models.

Around the back of the GX-10 you will find a send/return for the effects loop, allowing you to use it with your pedalboard. There are outputs for running in mono or stereo, plus inputs for expanding the unit with an external expression pedal or control pedal.

There is a USB-C connection that allows you not only to make deeper edits and organise your sounds via the Boss Tone Studio app but to use the GX-10 as a guitar audio interface. And there is a 1/4” headphones output for monitoring and silent practice. You can also connect to the GX-10 via Bluetooth and edit settings and stream audio through it. But you will need the BT-DUAL Bluetooth Audio MIDI Dual Adaptor for this. Sold separately, the BT-DUAL will cost you £44.

Players also have access to the Boss’s Tone Exchange platform, where you can share Livesets with other GX-10 users and download player presets to your unit, and because the GX-10’s digital brain is the same as the GX-100, all the Livesets that had been created for the latter are compatible on the former.

This is the year 2024 so of course there are numerous options for cab sims and IR uploading. The sound quality is premium. The GX-10 has a 48kHz sampling rate, 32-bit DA conversion, 32-bit floating point processing, and there is a superb signal-to-noise ratio thanks to the 24-bit AD conversion that uses Roland/Boss’ proprietary Adaptive Focus method.

The price is not bad either – expect to pay £349/$399. The Boss GX-10 is available now. See Boss for more details.

Blackstar has unveiled the Series One MK II, applying more than 30 modifications to its flag-ship high-gain guitar amp and promising a “world-class” performance from the four-channel monster.

This update has been a long time coming but then the Series One has been a huge success for the British amp brand since its launch in 2007.

It has been the go-to tube amp for metal players such as Ishahn, with even Neal Schon (one of the few occasions to imagine a shared universe between Emperor and Journey) declaring himself a fan of the amp.

But then if it’s not broken… right? Well, there’s always something that can be improved upon and Blackstar has done a lot here, comprehensively tweaking the circuit and the voicing of the channels. Aesthetically, too, this is a big update, with a smaller Blackstar logo sitting on a metal badge, the honeycomb patterned metal grille showing off the tubes within.

The idea is that the Series One MK II has everything you need for metal guitar, with more gain than you could want and, crucially, “best-in-class” note definition so that your downtuned chugs don’t turn to mush. “This amplifier delivers crushingly tight rhythm tones and thick, saturated leads without the unwanted fizz often found in other high-gain designs,” says Blackstar.

There is the power, 100-watts, provided by a quartet of 6L6 power tubes, with a set of four 4 ECC83s and a single ECC82 in the preamp. There are the channels with six modes: Clean Warm, Clean Bright, Super Crunch and OD1, OD2. The amp is MIDI-enabled, with an effects loop that has its own level control.

And there is an accompanying 4x12 PRO 412B MK II guitar speaker cabinet to match it with, featuring a “road-worthy” finger-jointed birch-ply construction and four Celestion Vintage 30 speakers for “a perfectly balanced midrange response with superior articulation and power”.

Signature Blackstar details remain. There is the brand’s patented ISF feature allowing you to give the overdrive channels a more US or more British flavour, or somewhere in between. Once more there are Resonance and Presence controls sitting alongside the master volume. Overdriven and clean channels are served by their own 3-band EQ.

This amp is of course designed to push a lot of air about the room but it is housetrained by Blackstar’s patented DPR (Dynamic Power Reduction), a power scaling feature that allows players to dial the volume down and get face-ripping metal tones at 10-watts. A speaker emulated output extends your options when playing live or in the studio.

The Series One MKII head and cabinet are available now, priced £1,999 for the head, £999 for the cabinet. For more details head over to Blackstar Amplification.

Ask any touring pro and they’ll tell you the same thing; the road is tough on tube amps, and it is not just the constant moving around and hot and cold environments they are exposed to.

Not all mains power is created equal, and so when travelling across borders – or even from venue to venue in the same city – the power your amp is receiving is not always going to be the same. And if the amps are not receiving the same power each night, they won’t sound the same.

What is a touring guitarist to do? Joe Bonamassa has the answer. He uses a power conditioner made by the Japanese electronics specialist Kikusui to keep his amps running at a consistent 120V, at 60Hz. No more, no less. And he got this idea from the crown prince of high-voltage rock ’n’ roll, AC/DC's Angus Young.

“I watched Angus Young’s rig rundown, and he said, ‘Angus prefers his Marshalls, and he has nine stacks, at 240, at 50 Hz, worldwide. And I said, ‘You know what? That makes so much sense,’” says Bonamassa, himself speaking in a rig rundown, offering American Musical Supply a guided tour of his stage setup. “Because when I would bring this stuff over to Europe, we’d be running at 115, 120, but 50 Hz – such a huge difference in harmonic [content]. And so I bought one, and now we have two because we’ve got to split the rig because we were flaming out a couple of times.”

Before you head over to Electronics-R-Us, take a moment. These Kikusui power conditioners are serious pieces of kit.

“They are also $6,000/$7,000 apiece,” says Bonamassa. “They’re heavy. But when you have something of this magnitude you want to just go to Walgreens and get a power strip.”

And they were not designed for the touring musician. Bonamassa and his team have become acquainted with the people at Kikosui and they were taken aback that their tech was being used onstage. Kikusui had the operating theatre in mind when they made these.

“They’re like, ‘Joe, we’ve heard about guys like yourself and Angus Young, and people like that using them,’” says Bonamassa. “‘You realise these things are designed for hospitals, and MRI machines? We never thought they were going to tour.’”

When you consider that they were designed for clinical settings it is little wonder they are so reliable, capable of generating power and making up a shortfall to ensure the amps get the juice they need to keep JoBo's electric guitar tone on point. “I want 120. I like 120,” says Bonamassa. “It keeps it at 60Hz, at 120. If it is seeing 110 it makes it 120.”

Check out the full rig tour above. There is some great insight into the practicalities of a touring rig, and why he won’t be shelling out mega-bucks for NOS Mullard tubes when a good set of JJ tubes gets the job done. You can subscribe to the American Musical Supply YouTube channel for more.

In other Joe Bonamassa news, the blues guitar superstar has announced a third date to his Rory Gallagher Celebration concerts at the Marquee, in Cork, Ireland. Bonamassa will now play on the 3rd July 2025. He will be playing Gallagher covers all night. You can get your tickets here.

Having been originally launched as a bass amp before becoming one of guitar’s most beloved tube amps, Fender has now reimagined the Bassman for its Tone Master series.

This makes the notoriously hefty 4x10 combo a much lighter proposition, and one that will deliver the goods at low volume, with onboard power scaling to make it friendly for bedroom and stage alike.

The Tone Master ’59 Bassman follows the same design principles as its predecessors, with Fender pairing a meticulously accurate digital model of the original amp’s circuit with a Class D power amplifier.

In the Bassman’s case, we have 200-watts of solid-state power to emulate the 45-watts generated by the original tube-driven guitar amp – a reminder, if needed, that tube watts are louder.

Not that you would notice too many differences from a distance. Besides the Tone Master badge on the grille cloth, from the audience's POV, this could pass for a pristine, box-fresh example of a Bassman 4x10 from 1959. You have the lacquered tweed finish and the brown and gold grille clothe. And based on previous Tone Master releases, it will have the tones.

There’s even a moulded Rubber “Dog Bone” Style handle on the top of the amplifier – and maybe with this version of the Bassmaster you will have the occasion to use it.

Anyone who has tried lifting one of the originals – or any similarly proportioned tube combo – will attest to how little help the handle on the top is, especially when confronted with a set of stairs.

Well, there’s less of a worry on that score here. One of the Tone Master’s USPs is that lightweight design. With a quartet of 10” Jensen P-10R Alnico speakers housed inside a pine cabinet, you’re not lifting it with your pinkie — but it’s going be a lot more manageable.

It is also a more versatile amplifier, with Fender seizing the opportunity presented by this digitally modelled, solid-state powered design to fit the Bassman out with an effects loop and an XLR output with ground lift and level control, and cab sims to allow for direct recording or sending to a PA speaker system. The latter are selectable via slider switch.

The five-position rotary dial for power scaling is one modern update that will get a lot of use. Players can select from a full-powered 45-watt setting (the power output options are listed in tube wattages), 22-watts, a Princeton-esque 12-watts, Champ-esque 5-watts, with your single-watt and half-watt settings giving you the opportunity to drive the amp at practice-friendly volume.

There is also a switch to alternate between Vintage and Tight modes, the latter doing exactly that, tightening up the low end, which could be especially useful if you've got some dirt pedals on the go.

The control panel has volume controls for the two channels (Normal and Bright), plus Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, and while it might not be vintage-accurate for a ’59 Bassman or the reissue, we have reverb on the control panel.

No one is going to complain about the addition of reverb. This one is a convolution reverb, meaning it is an IR emulation of classic Fender amp reverbs from the mid-60s.

The Tone Master ’59 Bassman is available now, priced £1,429 / $1,499. See Fender for more details.

Universal Audio has added some unicorn tube amp tone to its UAFX lineup with the launch of the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp, a compact amp in a stompbox that emulates the holy grail tones of a Dumble – or as Universal Audio puts it, “the heavenly guitar sounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer, Robben Ford, Joe Bonamassa, and Carlos Santana”.

If this compact amp modeller is as successful in emulating the ODS as the UAFX series has been with other classic amps, then this could be the bargain of the century. 

Let’s face it. Most reading this and all writing this will never be able to afford a Dumble, and most of us will have come to terms with that fact. Besides, spending six figures on an amp seems a little OTT unless your day job involves headlining the Royal Albert Hall or Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

But the prospect of having that tone in a pedal format, with some modern functionality that the UAFX house style offers us is tantalising. This is a D-style amp pedal for the 21st-century, with nine onboard classic mic/speaker emulations, deep edits via the app, Jazz, Rock and Custom modes at the touch of a switch, and an intuitive control layout that is, yes, just like an amp. 

You need not be in deep with pedalboard culture to get to grips with the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp’s charms. Before you touch the knobs, the Jazz presents these D-style tones as “cloud-like cleans” with scooped mids for tightness, while Rock is all about “blooming overdrive”. 

Custom is where things can get very interesting; that’s where you design your own ODS, tweaking the circuit to your liking. Choose between Classic and Skyline tone stacks, add the “Hot Rubber Monkey” preamp mod. This is as close to an open-source Dumble in a box as you’ll find. 

As for manual controls, we have dials for Volume, Overdrive, Output, Bass, Middle and Treble. Like the others in the UAFX series, the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is eminently tweakable, with many of these dials having secondary functions. It’s worth noting what they do here because it gives you an idea of just how much tone-shaping control is at your disposal here. There are a lot of electric guitar tones in this compact package.

In Amp mode, the Volume control adjusts the first gain stage of the amp circuit, which then cascades into the second. In Alt mode it is used to dial in Room ambience when you are using the amp with a speaker cabinet. UAFX advises starting with Room at noon and then adding or subtracting to taste.

Overdrive controls gain when in Amp mode, and Ratio when Alt mode, whereupon it sets the level of the Overdrive channel. Besides dialling in your low-end response in Amp mode,  the Bass knob also selects the Deep setting when choosing the Classic Tone Stack, and the Mid setting when using the Skyline Tone Stack, both of which can be selected from the UAFX App.

Middle doubles as a Presence control while the Treble knob’s Alt mode setting allows you to choose from four bright cap settings that have been modelled on original Dumble amplifiers (150 pF, 196 pF, and 300 pF, in ascending order of brightness).

Cabs can be selected via the onboard toggle and you there are artist presets to explore via the app. All in you are looking at 30 years of Dumble tones, in a small box priced £379/$399 street. 

“We wore out the rolodex to find Overdrive Special amps spanning three essential eras,” says UAFX. “From the 1970’s Santa Cruz models that brought the amp into the spotlight, to LA iterations from the ‘80s and ‘90s used on legendary sessions, Enigmatic ’82 gives you the sound of the most wildly expensive and coveted guitar amps in history.”

Yes, at just shy of 400 bucks, the Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is not cheap but then it does present you with over a million dollars of gear reproduced with UAFX’s dual-engine modeller. That, for many, is the holy grail. The Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special Amp is out now. Find out more over at Universal Audio.

Sonicake has just dropped its new flagship amp modeller and is offering it for a bargain price of 299 bucks.

At this price we might expect the Matribox Pro II to be lacking features. But the vital statistics say otherwise. Under the hood you’ve got 63 different guitar amp models and there are more than 93 guitar effects pedal simulations. That’s a lot of sounds.

Oh, maybe there there will be no IR support? There is, with the Matribox Pro II shipping with 61 onboard cab sims and space for 20 of your own third-party IRs.

There is even a colour touchscreen to take the heavy lifting out of signal chain design, and six footswitches with two customisable footswitch modes to set the unit up just how you like it.

We have become accustomed to this surfeit of features on amp modellers but every now and again it is worth taking stock and reflecting upon how digital technology has transformed electric guitar tone.

Ever since the amp modeller and guitar multi-effects pedal rose to prominence the raw economics of the guitar rig was laid bare; here were these compact units packing dozens of amps, dozens of effects, and if you were to have bought these sounds the old-school analogue way it would have set you back thousands. It was an open-and-shut case for monetary rationality; all these sounds for less!

But the modern-day guitarist cannot live on tone options alone. We need functionality and usability, and on that score the Matribox Pro II presents us with six footswitches with two customisable modes. There is an onboard expression pedal with an input for adding an external control pedal or switch. 

You can also integrate your pedalboard via the stereo effects loop, which is very 2024. What is even more 2024 is the capability to stream your audio in stereo, with an on-the-go function that connects directly with your smart mobile device (iOS/Android). 

As is often the case with these digital modellers, the user experience of the accompanying app will be all important in performing deeper edits and keeping your myriad tone options in good order.

There are plenty of connections here, with MIDI, USB for recording, and a pair of balanced XLR outputs for sending your signal direct to PA, DAW or the FRFR speaker in your life. And can you even call yourself an amp modeller if you don’t have a headphones output for silent practice? Yes, there is one here, too. And there is an aux in.

Priced £/$299, the Matribox Pro II is available now. For more details, head over to Sonicake.

Ed Sheeran has launched a new portable PA system for the singer-songwriter on the move, with the Sheeran Busker offering 200-watts and everything else you need to take your acoustic guitar performance to the high street.

The Sheeran Busker, or to give it its full title, the Sheeran Busker Special Edition, was developed by Sheeran Loopers and is designed for players at all levels – the beginner, the serious player and weekend warrior alike – which means it has no shortage of features and yet presents them in an easy to use format.

And it doesn’t get much more easy or convenient than this, a battery or mains-operated PA system with everything you need to dial in a sound right there on the control panel, and deeper edits available via smartphone.

With an onboard three-channel mixer, it’ll handle your vocals, your guitar and the external audio from an external source. Each channel has its own volume, with combo inputs and studio quality effects on Channels 1 and 2 for the live vocal microphone and instrument of your choice.

Those effects are provided by Alesis and comprise room, plate and hall reverbs, various modulations including chorus, flanger and rotary speaker emulator, and delay.

Channel 3 is where you will send your backing tracks and external audio, and you can do so via Bluetooth, simply pairing the Sheeran Busker with your smartphone or mobile device, or you can do it the old fashioned way via a 1/8” aux input. 

The Sheeran Busker setup is expandable, and you can use Bluetooth to connect it with another Sheeran Busker. Hey, you might be playing Dylan covers outside WHSmith but you can still treat it like it is Madison Square Garden. 

Also, just because it is portable doesn’t mean it has to be used outside. You can plug it into the wall and use it as your take-anywhere PA. We’ve all been at open-mic nights where we wished we had our own system.

But should you run this via the battery, there are LEDs clearly displaying how much battery life is left on your charge. With the Battery Eco Mode you can get up to 24 hours of playing time, which is very respectable.

“Whether performing as a street artist, solo singer-songwriter, or live looping musician, this versatile PA system delivers reliable sound in any setting,” says Sheeran Loopers, noting that it is configured for easy pedalboard integration, and effects such as the Sheeran Looper+. Well, of course it would work gangbusters with a looper pedal.

The Sheeran Busker’s 200-watts drives a 6.5” woofer and 1” tweeter, and the speaker can be positioned horizontally or vertically, or similarly mounted on a pole for greater projection. There are XLR and RCA outputs. Everything else you need can be adjusted via smartphone by using the accompanying Alto App (iOS/Android). 

Priced £299/$349, the Sheeran Busker Special Edition is available now. Head over to Sheeran Loopers to find out more.

The Ocean have an immense live sound – they're one of the greatest heavy progressive bands around when it comes to delivering their ambitious concept albums onstage, and their musical mindset carries through to their rigs too. Now, thanks to this exclusive new rig tour video below they've shot on tour in the US, we can find out exactly how it all works. 

At the centre of the guitar rig is a MacBook running Logic Pro that has the whole show's setting in sequence via a session file – "This machine controls the Quad Cortex which is our amps and effects via a MIDI program and control changes," explains The Ocean's Robin Staps. 

Filmed at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco (camera & edit - Drew Storcks) in March, 2024 during the band’s recent North American headline tour with Shy Low and The World Is A Beautiful Place And We Are No Longer Afraid To Die, the rig tour offers a fascinating glimpse into the challenges and considerations behind gear choices of a touring band, which are to a large degree defined by the logistics of flying between the continents and the implication of being able to bring only minimal gear along.

The move to digital modelling was a result of Robin's Diezel VH4 tube amp then Mesa/Boogie TriAxis and 290 power amp becoming unfeasible for costly global freight travel. He and fellow guitarist David Ramis Åhfeldt first moved to comparatively featherweight Kemper profilers but last year switched to the Neural DSP Quad Cortex to further reduce weight. The Kempers weighed in at 7kg each, now the two guitarists share one 2.5kg Quad Cortex. "It's allowed us to eliminate one entire rack from our travel setup so that's great, and the unit sounds fantastic," Robin adds.   

The role of Logic Pro goes much further in The Ocean's live shows too. 

"It also controls our synchronised lighting which is in time with the music,"adds Robin. "It plays the backing tracks of a a bunch of instruments that we are not bringing with us – like all the brass on Holocene, for example, or the strings on the 'Centric records. And, most importantly, it's giving us the click track which is not going to the PA, obviously, but only to our own ears, making sure we play in sync with this. We don't need to touch it during the show at all, it just plays."

The Berlin-based post-metal band has a different Logic session for every tour with a dedicated setlist. In the video above, the band explain how they have to make sure the volumes for tracks are consistent through the set, and then they can rehearse with it ahead of a tour. 

The results certainly deliver the goods, and there's much more revealed in the video above.

The Ocean are on tour in Europe right now and play the following dates:

09/09 - DE, Karlsruhe - P8

10/09 - CH, Winterthur - Gaswerk

11/09 - DE, Munich - Backstage

12/09 - DE, Aschaffenburg - Colos-saal

13/09 - DE, Dresden - Beatpol

14/09 - AT, Vienna - Flex

15/09 - PL, Krakow - Kwadrat

More info at theoceancollective.com