Sophie Lloyd has marked the first anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne’s death with a full-shred YouTube tribute to the late Prince of Darkness.

If you are familiar with the English virtuoso’s treatment of the popular canon of rock and pop, then you know the drill. This is Lloyd, backed by Marshall and Randall half-stacks, her Kiesel signature guitar in hand, reworking a classic as a guitar instrumental.

She has done Oasis, Pink Floyd, Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden and Metallica – she’s reimagined the Pokémon Theme Song, too. Now you can add Black Sabbath’s Paranoid to the list.

It’s been a minute since Lloyd has posted one of these Shred videos. There has been a lot filling up her calendar, not least her touring schedule as Machine Gun Kelly’s guitarist. Yesterday, one year after we lost Ozzy, was a fitting time to return.

“In loving memory of the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne,” writes Lloyd. “Thank you for being such a huge inspiration to me from such a young age. Thank you for everything.”

Lloyd’s version is far removed from the eponymous single from Sabbath’s 1970 sophomore album, Paranoid. Her guitar assumes Ozzy’s role as vocalist. Her style is more pyrotechnic than Iommi’s. But as Lloyd explained to MusicRadar in 2022, her process always preserves the melody.

“It’s like having reference points to go back to,” said Lloyd. “I’ll venture out and then go back so the melody is still there. We did Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd, and I really stripped back my shredding and played a lot more melody stuff, and I’ve been playing more with harmonies as well, so that’s been quite fun. It’s something new I’m trying out a little bit because, you know, a lot of those things you don’t want to oversaturate with shred, even though it’s fun.”

Lloyd wasn’t the only player to post a solo guitar tribute on social media. Alex Skolnick of Testament performed a medley of Randy Rhoads’ classical piece Dee and Ozzy power ballad Goodbye To Romance for solo nylon-string guitar, performing it on his Cordoba Iberia GK Studio through a Henriksen Bud 6.

Lloyd is one of the most high-profile YouTube guitarists to have landed high-profile gigs after building a huge audience on the platform.

Her advice to any young player looking to grow their online following: find your own niche and go for it. Posting your first video is the hardest part.

“My first videos look like they were filmed on a potato and the audio quality is awful,” she said. “You’ve got to start somewhere, so I’d say, just go for it as much as you can and have fun with it. Try and develop something unique to you. Look for some sort of gap in the market and try and fill that.”

Lloyd released her debut album, Imposter Syndrome in 2023. You can join 1.27 million others and follow her on YouTube.

What is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Specs

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

Usability and sounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★★

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

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

Hands-on videos

Blackstar

The Studio Rats

Peach Guitars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charvel Guitars was right. Wayne Charvel was a visionary.

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

Dirty Boy is opening a new chapter in the boutique guitar effects pedal brand’s history by teaming up with Warm Audio for the Junior Series, offering a compact $169 reimagining of three of its classic stompboxes.

Founded by Alex Saraceno, who wanted to make pedals for his son, the former Poison guitarist Blues Saraceno, Dirty Boy has built a formidable reputation for high-end pedalboard candy.

Over the years, the likes of Neal Schon, Phil X, John Frusciante and Tom DeLonge have all used its pedals. Each is handmade. But at $349 a pop they don’t come cheap.

Danny Gomez, who now owns the Dirty Boy brand, believes this collab gives more players the chance to get those same sounds onto their ‘board – and Warm Audio was the obvious choice to work with.

“For me, choosing the right partner was everything because these circuits have a history and personality that I wasn’t willing to compromise,” says Gomez. “Warm Audio understands how to build authentic circuits the right way. They know that quality components, careful manufacturing, and thorough testing all play a critical role in preserving the character of the original design.

“Just as importantly, every pedal is individually hand-tested before it ever reaches a player. That level of quality control and accountability is very similar to what we do at Dirty Boy.”

The Junior Series comprises three pedals. There is the Dirty Boy Jr Booster is based on the original Ball Buster and presents players with 10dB of analogue boost – plus amp tone-shaping controls with a three-way “H-M-L” Freq switch, Bass and Treble controls.

The Jr Fuzz presents the Dirty Boy Afro Fuzz in a more compact housing, and has a simple drive with Fuzz, Level and a 6-way Freq switch. It sounds a little like a good vintage Fuzz Face that cleans up nicely.

Finally, there’s the Jr Overdrive, which houses the Preamp circuit, which was the first pedal to be launched under Gomez’s stewardship.

With his Tube Amp Emulation technology under the hood, think of it as an all-analogue amp modeller preamp in a box that can be used as an overdrive pedal, preamp pedal, or as modeller, with an emulated output allowing you to go direct into a mixer, guitar audio interface or FRFR Speaker.

Dirty Boy will still be making its hand-built pedals. But Gomez hopes the Junior Series’ “faithful” recreations of these circuits will get more players using the.

“The goal was to preserve the tone, response, and personality of the hand-built originals,” he says. “Warm Audio is the partner we trust to help us do that without compromise.”

The Dirty Boy Jr Series is available now. See Warm Audio for more, and see Dirty Boy for the hand-built pedals that inspired them.

Pete Townshend would be the last person you would lend your electric guitar to.

No offence to the great man but he does have a bit of a reputation, and it goes right back to the beginning of his career and those explosive performances with the Who during which instrumental destruction was de rigueur.

Simply, Townshend relished in smashing guitars, in speaking 4x12 speaker cabinets with the headstock of a Fender Telecaster, in relieving a Rickenbacker of its structural integrity. It was part of the show. In a sense, it was Townshend’s attempt to make the Who viral in an analogue era – and it works.

“The guitar smashing was basically marketing,” he told Guitarist magazine in 1990. “I knew it was going to work, but I had to use real guitars and that was because I am primarily a musician and I wanted it to be real.”

This, he explained, was a form of art – performance art, art as destruction or vice versa, a convulsion in “vengeance” at consumerist society.

Townshend learned early on not to get too attached to his musical instruments after saving up all the money from his paper round for his first “real guitar” only for it to get stolen after he lent it to the late Who bassist John Entwistle, whose mother compensated him with £3. “I think I swore then that I would never get attached to another instrument as long as I lived,” said Townshend.

Though Townshend would sound a note of regret that his Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar got ruined during the making of his 1989 musical, The Iron Man, he was as good as word. He admitted that he even smashed them out of the public eye, fury getting the better of him.

But where did Townshend get the idea? That urge to destroy – that volatility – was in him. That seems sure. He was an experimentalist.

The Who’s high-volume show embraced feedback almost as a means of provocation, drowning out the boors at the back of the show who had been drinking pints and were wanting to hear Cindy’s Birthday or some other chart-bothering fare. They were pushing the envelope.

Townshend’s guitar-smashing epiphany arrived one afternoon when he was a young student at Ealing Tech, watching a guest lecture from the late Malcolm Cecil, who was then a player with a growing reputation on bass guitar, but who would go onto become a longtime collaborator of Stevie Wonder’s and help introduce synthesizers to popular music in the ‘70s.

“[He] beat me to the punch,” recalled Townshend. “He went on to co-produce Innervisions for Stevie Wonder and he was bass player with the Johnny Scott Quintet. A girl in my class went out with the flautist and she invited Cecil to come and give a talk. Halfway through the talk he started to get carried away, saying, ‘There are lots of different ways you can play the bass; you can play it like this, or like that.’ And then he started to bang it.”

This was an early indication that Cecil would know what works for a crowd. His blood was up. He started looking around to see what else was at his disposal to underline his point that how you play an instrument does not need to have been mandated by what you read in the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method series.

“Somebody had been doing something on the stage with a saw, and it was still there,” continued Townshend. “He picked it up and said, ‘You can even saw at the bass’, and he started to saw through his strings and we all stood up and cheered! It made a fantastic noise, and the fact that he was sacrificing his strings! And he just carried on sawing, right through the strings and through the belly of the bass!”

Townshend and his classmates were smitten. The campus was electrified by this display, by all these new possibilities. All bets were off. Things would never be the same again.

“The whole college was full of it, so that wall had been broken and it seemed perfect, natural for me, a couple of months later, to find myself doing the same thing.”

If someone would have told Sammy Duet in 1993 that Acid Bath would be stepping onstage to play in front of more than 60,000 people at a stadium show he would have told them they were tripping. Or he would have thought that he was the one who was tripping.

More often than not he would have been. When the Louisiana sludge pioneers were workshopping their sound, jamming wherever anyone would have them, they were often “chemically enhanced”. Sure you’ll see frontman Dax Riggs wearing a Roky Erickson T-shirt onstage but Duet says the psychedelic influences you are hearing on record were more literal.

“The psychedelic thing just came out, because we were, uh, how can I say this? We were on a lot of psychedelics at that period of time in our lives,” he says with a chuckle. “We were, literally, nine times out of 10 on psychedelics.”

But Acid Bath’s triumphant second act is no trip, no flashback. They got back together in 2024, played a string of festival shows, then booked some headlining dates and found themselves playing the biggest gigs of their lives. They were hand-picked by System Of A Down to open their stadium tour with Queens Of The Stone Age. This comeback is very much real even if it is one of the most unlikely stories in underground metal.

Acid Bath recorded just two albums before splitting in tragic circumstances when bassist and co-founder Audie Pitre was killed by a drunk driver in 1997. Pitre and Duet were friends since childhood.

Pitre’s bass guitar was integral to Acid Bath’s volatile sound, the mercurial complement to Duet and Mike Sanchez’s guitars, alternating between fuzzed out (Cheap Vodka) or with that bright tri-chorus modulation (Scream Of The Butterfly). They hired Pitre’s friend Joseph Fontenot on bass and tried to continue but soon called it quits and went their separate ways.

Riggs and Sanchez formed Agents of Oblivion. Duet formed New Orleans black metal stalwarts Goatwhore and joined up with Crowbar for a trio of albums. And that was it for Acid Bath, until 2024, and the death of keyboard player Tomas Viator brought home that they had to do this now or never. Former Crowbar bassist and longtime Acid Bath fan Shane Wesley stepped into the fold. Goatwhore’s Zack Simmons took Jimmy Kyle’s spot on drums. And it was all systems go.

“Yeah, it started because we just realised that we’d better do it sooner than later because we’re not getting any younger,” says Duet. “So while we’re still physically able to do this, that was the catalyst for doing this. Because there was always talk about us doing it, but other things came up, all that stuff, so I guess the timing was right this time.”

Acid Bath’s audience had grown in absentia. Thirty-two years since their seminal debut LP, When The Kite String Pops, their notoriety and influence grew over the years to the point where we have to raise the question as to why they weren’t swept up in the major label boom of the ‘90s, when grunge broke the glass ceiling for ugly guitar sounds, when somehow the Melvins ended up on Atlantic for three LPs – and as Duet notes, Morbid Angel were on a major, Cannibal Corpse were in the movies.

Maybe the suits were spooked because Acid Bath were so hard to categorise, or because they had an illustration of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in his killer clown suit on their debut album’s cover. For its follow-up, 1996’s Paegan Terrorism Tactics, they used artwork by Jack Kevorkian.

They were too raw for the mainstream. Still, Paegan Terrorism Tactics proved that When The Kite String Pops was no fluke. It was heavier, and yet Acid Bath retained the capacity for surprise, opening the record with a salvo of low-end sludge, closing it out with the aggro riot of 13 Fingers and New Corpse then the acoustic closer, Dead Girl.

Acid Bath could change styles on a dime. Duet names Tom G Warrior, Tony Iommi and KK Downing on his Mount Rushmore of players but he says they would listen to all kinds of styles, and it all seeped in.

“Yeah, man, it’s like, at the time, there were no bands like us at all, anywhere,” says Duet. “I hate to make this comparison but the only thing that even came remotely close to what we were doing was some of the more experimental death metal.

“We were listening to a lot of different stuff. We were listening to death metal, doom metal, any sort of psychedelic music, all kinds of goth music. At the time, I was listening to a lot of death metal, and a lot of black metal, a lot of doom. The first Cathedral album was on repeat for a very long time on my stereo. Anything that was dark, we were into. It didn’t matter if it was metal or whatever as long as the music was dark.”

Of course, some things are not a mystery; we know why Acid Bath didn’t end up on Roadrunner. The label’s legendary A&R Monte Conner couldn’t hold his drink.

“Monte came to see us,” says Duet. “I guess he had been drinking with the Exhorder guys before the show, and he fell asleep during our set, so that’s why we didn’t get signed to Roadrunner. So that blew that fucking idea right there, you know? It’s like, well, the head of the record company fell asleep during your set, you’re probably not impressing him much. That’s what happened.”

That gig became something of an underground legend, that the fans tore the place up, that the staff at the venue were injured. It was like a hurricane blew through it. This was par for the course with Acid Bath; they were born in the post-storm devastation of a Cat 5 hurricane that devastated the state.

Where better to inhale everything that was being passed around underground – proto-sludge, hardcore punk, death metal, doom and gothic rock – then set nihilistic poetry to riffs to come out with a sound that was totally unique? Houma, Morgan City, the whole of Louisiana was in a mess. Acid Bath played around in the wreckage.

“Oh, man, we never really had a set practice room. Every time we jammed, it was always in a different place,” says Duet. “Hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana and devastated the state, and there were these bikers that lived in a trailer park. So they got their money from the hurricane and they had one nice trailer.

“All the rest of the trailers were just fucking fucked up! One of the trailers had electricity in it. They would let us practise in this abandoned trailer. It was falling apart but it had power, so we practised there for a while.”

That’s where their sound came together, on the trailer park, in whatever practice space was available, and some of these locations were pretty gnarly, or just plain weird. That had to have had some effect on their aesthetic disposition.

“It was just wherever we could find a spot,” says Duet. “In Morgan City, there was an old abandoned porno theatre, and we would practise in there. I think one time we practised in a church. Wherever anybody would let us practise, that’s where we would go.”

Acid Bath cut a pair of demos in ’93 before heading into the studio to track their debut with Greg Troyner at his studio, and Spike Cassidy of crossover champs DRI.

For a band with two guitarists, both of whom were maximalists with gain, tuned down to C standard or lower, When The Kite String Pops is a miracle of sound engineering. There is space between the instruments. It’s wide open and dynamic.

“It was a combination between Greg and Spike, because Greg had the studio, and he had put out a bunch of records from some New Orleans bands,” says Duet. “But we didn’t want it to sound like that, we wanted to have our own identity as far as the production goes, and that’s where Spike came in and helped out, and kind of made it sound – like you said – not squashed and just big and open.”

They knew the material inside and out. They had played these songs for years. In the time between recording the demos and the album sessions, the songs had evolved onstage. “It was just like they took on a life of their own,” says Duet.

But then these songs had come straight off the floor in the rehearsal space. What we are hearing came together on the trailer park, in the derelict porno theatre, the church, from minds addled by all that subtropical swamp air and humidity, LSD and pot. They just played until they found something.

“It was all accidents!” says Duet. “No one ever really came into the rehearsal room and said, ‘I have this song, or I have this idea for this song.’ It was always a spontaneous jamming. Very seldom, somebody would come in with a riff or something and we’d build a song around that. But the majority of the time we would just be getting stoned and jamming. The music just came out of us. That’s just the way we wrote.

“When the five of us got in a room together to write, the music just came out. There was no pre-planning or anything. We were just jamming and having fun and writing music that we liked to hear. We were just going with the flow, letting the music flow out of us.”

These days, Duet plays his ESP/LTD SD-2 signature guitar through a Lichtlaerm Audio Prometheus head, with “too many pedals” but always his MWK Audio Dybbuk signature overdrive in the mix, plus chorus, reverb, wah.

Back when Acid Bath were cutting their teeth, Duet’s rig was more rudimentary. He used his Ibanez Rocket Roll II V-style for the Kite String sessions, modded with EMG humbuckers and running through a Marshall JCM800. Duet recalls a Randall RG100ES solid-state head in the mix, too. Sanchez was playing through a Peavey Butcher. They didn’t have the money for anything better.

“We just played whatever we could get our hands on, whatever worked, and whatever we could afford,” says Duet. “We wanted nice stuff – don’t get me wrong – but we couldn’t afford the nice stuff. We had to play what we could find at a pawn shop for 50 bucks.”

And that never really changed while they were together. Acid Bath never made it rain during their first act. They would pack them in on home soil. They would do well below the Mason-Dixon, but the rest of the US – the rest of the world – wasn’t quite ready for them.

Their influence travelled after they split. Those two records had a second life. System Of A Down were fans. Slipknot’s Corey Taylor was a fan. You can hear how all that whipsawing from sludge riot to hypnotic down-tempo reveries might influence both.

Now it’s time to collect some dues and give these songs an airing again. Acid Bath is taking this chaos to stadiums and Festivals across Europe, and has just extended its US headlining tour, with Neurosis just announced as support for its Asheville, NC, date. Two great bands, two great comeback stories, both on one bill. Duet says there’s no question Pitre would give his blessing to all this.

“Absolutely, I mean, wherever he is right now, he’s probably smiling at us,” says Duet. “And it’s more of a tribute to him. Me and Audie grew up together, since we were kids, and I know how he was. He would probably be pissed if we didn’t do it.”

• See Acid Bath for dates and ticket details.

A very sad update on a story we brought you last week: L7 bassist Jennifer Finch, who had been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, has died, aged just 59.

The LA grunge rockers announced the news on Saturday (July 18) via Instagram, saying: “With a very heavy heart we announce that our beloved bandmate, friend, and fellow troublemaker Jennifer Finch has passed away today."

“She had a long courageous fight with brain cancer and was loved by many wonderful friends, musical peers and fans worldwide. We love you Jennifer.”

The band later posted another statement, saying: “We are shattered by the loss of our beloved bandmate, sister and friend Jennifer Finch, whose fierce spirit, humour and boundless creativity helped shape L7 and changed all of our lives forever.

“Jennifer was a true original who lived entirely on her own terms, and the impact she made on music, art and everyone lucky enough to know her cannot be measured. We love her beyond words and will carry her with us always. Rest in power our dear friend.”

The extent of Finch’s condition was only revealed last week, when the band announced that they were launching a GoFundMe campaign for her ongoing care and medical expenses. In the week the campaign was live it raised nearly $400,000.

Finch wasn’t quite a founder member of L7 – she joined in 1986, after a stint in Sugar Babydoll, a short-lived band that also featured Courtney Love and future Babes In Toyland guitarist Kat Bjelland. She stayed all through their period of greatest success, including their Bricks Are Heavy and Hungry For Stink albums, from 1992 and 1994 respectively, before leaving in 1996, citing money and health issues.

The bassist then worked as a photographer, graphic designer and digital media professional though she continued to keep her hand in with music, playing in the bands OtherStarPeople and The Shocker.

But when L7 reformed in 2014, she returned to the fold. The group recorded one more album, Scatter The Rats, in 2019, and had continued to do what heritage bands of their vintage do: tour classic albums in full, reissue their back catalogue and enjoy a less-pressured second wind.

Earlier this year, L7 had announced The Last Hurrah 2026, which they were spinning as their final North American tour. Last week the band confirmed that that would go ahead with Finch’s blessing. It will now surely double-up as a celebration of both the bassist’s life and the fondly-regarded band she played in.

Electro-Harmonix has super-sized its Dual Op-Amp Big Muff Pi 2, giving this once lost fuzz pedal the full Deluxe treatment, which means the more features, more versatility on the Muff that offers more… Well, oomph.

There’s something about this Dual Op-Amp Big Muff Pi 2. Unearthed from a “lost” schematic while Josh Scott of JHS Pedals was researching his Electro-Harmonix book, this circuit was more aggressive, more physical in its fuzz.

The core sound is fantastic. The Nano three-knob edition was one of our favourite guitar effects pedals of the year so far. There is a three-knob version with a Wicker switch and switchable Tone. But this with the Wicker switch, expanded EQ options, footswitchable mids, an onboard noise gate and – crucially – a Blend control, this Deluxe edition might well be worth an upgrade.

It is a lot of pedal, the “final boss” of a Dual Op-Amp series that also includes Nano and Deluxe versions specifically designed for bass guitar.

Here you have options. There is a Volume control, a Blend for adjusting how much of your input signal you want to leave unfuzzed. There is the Tone and Sustain controls from the original. The noise gate is controlled by a single knob. Fully counterclockwise and it is off.

There are two knobs for those aforementioned footswitchable mids, with one controlling the level of the mids, the other selecting the centre frequency of the mids control, with a range approximately from 310Hz to 5kHz.

There is another High Q/Low Q switch for selecting narrow or wide bandwidths of the parametric Mids EQ. And you toggle all of this midrange sounds in and out with the dedicated Mids footswitch.

Some guitar players do not get along with fuzz pedals. Some complain about how it interacts with other effects, such as wah pedals, but oftentimes it’s a question of EQing, and finding the right sound to complement your electric guitar’s pickups.

Here, you have many options for tweaking, for blending more of that clean signal in so that your chords retain clarity and note separation, for adjusting the fuzz so that it blooms in those mids, a big thick fug of hard clipping, or that it’s narrow and scratchy.

The Wicker switch offers two alternate high-end voicings plus the original stock setting. Again, more EQ options, more versatility.

You can also hook up an expression pedal to control the Mids EQ by foot, which is pretty cool.

The pedal can be set to run with latching or momentary action. It has a buffered bypass and is powered by 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply – though an adaptor is included in the box.

All this might be worth the extra outlay, that little bit extra space on the pedalboard. The Deluxe Dual Op-Amp Big Muff Pi 2 is out now priced £189/$188.

For more details, head over to Electro-Harmonix.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert has become a pop-cultural staple of the internet era, a rite of passage for hot up-and-comers, a venue for the mega-stars to drop in and play in an intimate setting – like when Bono and the Edge swung by to rework U2 classics for acoustic guitar.

Taylor Swift has played one, as has Dua Lipa. The Wu-Tang Clan, IDLES, BTS, Alicia Keys, and the Foo Fighters have all done their bit. PinkPantheress played her first show without Auto-Tune on it.

But NPR Music broke new ground today; it just broadcast it’s most extreme performance ever, welcoming UK grindcore pioneers Napalm Death to the studio, to pitch up in support of public access broadcasting, and to maybe introduce some people to the restorative magic of the blast beat, brutal riffs, death growls and screams.

There was no stagediving. But then there was no stage, no wedge monitors to leap from. This, after all, is an office. But frontman Barney Greenway, guitarist/vocalist John Cooke, drummer Danny Herrera and touring bassist Matt Sheridan made themselves at home, and did what they always do, tore the place apart, and were nice about it, too.

“We are Napalm Death, for the uninitiated, just in case you might be wondering,” says Greenway, addressing the crowd out of shot. “So welcome one and all. Nice to see you. Let me say we are here to heartily support public access broadcasting. Unfortunately, it is under attack from all sides, in the UK as well as over here. And we have to take care of it – it’s precious. It has to be preserved.”

Greenway has given public access radio some iconic moments over the years, like when he gave the current UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, a lesson in death metal vocals.

Greenway’s vocal style is straight from the gut, a leonine roar in the classic death metal style. He made his full-length Napalm Death debut on 1990’s Harmony Corruption, when the Birmingham grind institution explored a more death metal direction under the watch of legendary producer Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios, in Florida. In this NPR segment Greenway is kind of like the MGM lion in a Crass T-shirt.

But public access radio has been good to Napalm Death, too. It has been good to grindcore. The late BBC Radio One DJ John Peel was an early champion. Napalm Death recorded a number of sessions that were later compiled in The Peel Sessions. And there were others; Carcass, Extreme Noise Terror, and Bolt Thrower all tracked at the Beeb (and there were other grind-adjacent sessions with Unseen Terror and others – check out the 2009 compilation Grind Madness At The BBC).

Today, Napalm Death brought the old classics to NPR, opening with Instinct Of Survival, the Side One classic from their 1987 debut LP, Scum, dropping the title track later in the set before closing with their one-second ur-grind track, You Suffer.

They’d call that something silly like "micro-grind" these days but back then it was just grindcore, and it was calling card that made Napalm Death notorious.

But not everything was head-down-and-blast.

“This next little ditty perhaps approaches the merest hint of musical beauty,” says Greenway, introducing Amoral from 2020’s Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism. Before pausing to add another qualifier: “The merest hint!”

He was as good as his word. Check it out at the top of the page.

And you can catch Napalm Death at this year's ArcTanGent Festival on 21 August. See the Napalm Death for full tour dates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Gibson for more details.

Queens Of The Stone Age have just shared their first new song since 2023’s Times New Roman, and it finds frontman/guitarist Josh Homme joined by the Highway Queen herself, Nikki Lane.

The song is called Easy Street, and it’s a majestic tangle of acoustic guitars, hand-claps for rhythm, seasick synth swirl and Homme and Lane playing Bonnie and Clyde, their voices riding off into the sunset.

““It’s kind of a funny song,” says Homme. “It’s like hitting your funny bone, where it’s funny because it hurts and it hurts because it’s funny. You’re serious, but it’s funny.”

QOTSA fans might already have heard Easy Street live. The band played it during their 2025 Catacombs tour. Lane is fantastic, returning the favour and guesting on a Queens track after Homme played guitar and drums on her 2022 studio album, Denim And Diamonds. He also handled production and mixing.

He does so here, too, sharing the credits on Easy Street with QOTSA bassist/keys player Michael Shuman. This is a shambling psych-country ballad. There was no need to overwork the production, and they didn’t. Homme says they played fast and loose with it. And that was the point.

“We made it the way you’d make a demo,” he explains. “No click track, mistakes left in. It speeds up, it slows down, the claps aren’t great, but they’re not bad, and a bad clap adds this human thing you can’t fake.”

Truth. Also, that disembodied skirl of synth is untethered to any grid. It’s an element of melodic anarchy that seems to have a similar effect on the rhythm. QOTSA want us to revel in the accidental happenstance of it all.

We live in a world of quantized metrics, truly weird shit like looksmaxxing, and people being conspicuously online, optimising their lives for the edification of strangers, people they will never meet – and for machines and bots too – and that seems weird.

Easy Street, says Homme, is a reminder to celebrate the messiness of being human.“It’s not just about silliness. It’s about understanding the imperfection of your life,” he says. “The song, like your life, is in the mistakes. Its imperfections are unbeatable.”

The video, directed by Tony Wolski and Christopher Gruse, is pretty cool too. You can check that out above, and save/buy the single here via Matador. Queens Of The Stone Age’s stadium-filling tour with System Of A Down and openers Acid Bath continues tomorrow night at Tottenham Stadium, London.

See Queens Of The Stone Age for full dates and ticket details.

Some awful news from the '90s grunge band L7 – bassist Jennifer Finch has been diagnosed with an ‘aggressive’ form of brain cancer.

Her bandmates – Donita Sparks, Suzi Gardner and Demetra Plakas - confirmed it in an Instagram post yesterday (13 July), with frontwoman Sparks adding in a separate statement: "We are all devastated by the news and are surrounding her with love, protecting her privacy and dignity, while helping raise the resources she urgently needs for the care ahead.

"Jennifer is family, and we want her to feel the full strength of the community that has loved and supported her for so many years.”

The band were to head out on their supposedly-final Last Hurrah tour in October. This will still go ahead, though without Finch, understandably. The bassist has given her colleagues her blessing to go ahead without her.

They have also directed fans to a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of her treatments and ongoing care.

“When she first heard the diagnosis, there was reason to believe that treatment, including a full course of radiation, would get her back to some version of normal living. Unforeseen complications led to multiple surgeries and a string of difficult setbacks,” the page explains. “The cancer and everything that comes with it have left her with significant physical limitations so she’s handling this the only way she knows how: one day at a time.”

Finch’s friends and family are no longer able to cover the level of around-the-clock care required for her and so donations will cover physical therapy, in-home nursing care and other home care, medical expenses, legal fees and more.

Among those who have so far contributed to the fund is Michael Stipe who has written on Bluesky: “Punk rock and alternative music would not be what it is or where it is without Jennifer Finch. We send loving energy to her. Please - if you can - every contribution helps. Thanks, xx Michael.”

L7 were formed in Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, with their greatest period of success coinciding with the grunge era of the early '90s. You’ll, of course, know them for Pretend We’re Dead, a pop/rock gem that hasn’t (yet) been ruined by over-exposure: it sounds as daisy fresh now as it did in 1992. They reformed in 2014, with their most recent album being 2019’s Scatter The Rats.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bowen says it was love at first sight.

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

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

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

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

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

When should you change your strings

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

1. Broken strings

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

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

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

2. Worn or discoloured strings

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

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

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

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

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

3. You can hear the difference

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

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

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

4. Maybe it’s just time…

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

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

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

You will need…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to restring a guitar: Seven simple steps

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

Let’s get started.

Step One: Remove the old strings

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

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

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

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

Step Two: Clean your fretboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step Four: Thread the string through the tuning peg

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

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

Step Five: Wind the string

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

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

Step Six: Trim away the excess

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

Step Seven: Repeat and tune up

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

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

And enjoy…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cure are keeping it in the family. The band have announced that whilst long-serving bassist Simon Gallup is ill, his son Eden will be temporarily taking his place in the band.

Robert Smith and co are currently on tour in Europe and played the first of a three-night run in Berlin last Friday (July 10). However, fans noticed that Gallup was absent, even before Smith dedicated Lullaby to him. After the show, Smith posted on Instagram - all in caps for some reason - about the bassist’s illness.

“Shortly before the first of our three Berlin Wuhlheide concerts yesterday, Simon was taken ill,” Smith wrote. “His son Eden shifted sideways to save the show.

"Unfortunately, Simon is still not well enough to play, so Eden will be filling the bass breach again tonight. Hope you will join us in wishing Simon the speediest of recoveries. And Eden – thanks.”

The nature of Gallup’s illness has not been revealed. The 66-year-old bassist, though, is almost as near to a permanent fixture in The Cure as Smith himself. He first joined the band in 1979 and aside from an eighteen-month period between 1982 and 1984 when he fell out with the frontman has been with them ever since. He’s played on every Cure album since 1985’s The Head On The Door.

Anyway, the band’s tour of Europe’s festivals continues until August 30 when they play Rock En Seine in Paris. Then at some point the band will doubtless release the follow-up to 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World, which Robert Smith confirmed last month is “done”.

Este Haim has been telling the story of how she came to be a bass player, a tale that involves sibling rivalry, parental encouragement, Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth, and the frequently-kidnapped Nintendo character Princess Peach.

Este, of course, plays bass guitar in Haim, the band she ended up forming with sisters Danielle and Alana. However, as she recently revealed while taking Track Star’s Perfect Song Challenge, this wasn’t her first choice of instrument.

“I grew up hearing my mom sing and play guitar,” she explains. “So when I was eight and Danielle was five, my mom started teaching us how to play guitar.”

For Este, though, this turned out to be dispiriting. “Danielle, like, flew past me when it came to technical skill, musicality,” she remembers. “Like I, as an eight-year-old, was like, ‘My fucking five-year-old sister is better than me at guitar. Like, she's five. How is this even possible?’ She was like a savant.”

Enter Este’s father, who spotted that something was up with his eldest daughter.

“My dad saw this and was like, "My daughter is ‘Depr-Este’. That’s her new name.’ I was like walking around, moping around, like ‘I don't have any talent. What is my place in the world?’ At eight years old! Existential crisis. So my dad was like, ‘I got an idea. I think Este should try to play bass, another stringed instrument.’”

After assuring Este that it was easier to play, a second-hand bass guitar was purchased, but its recipient wasn’t keen. Recalling her reaction to her dad’s idea, Este says: “I was like, ‘I don't even know what that is. I don't want to do that. That sounds lame.’”

Mr Haim, though, came up with a plan: “My dad was like, ‘OK, I know what's gonna change your mind. Este loves Nintendo. Loves. Mario loves Princess Peach – I'm gonna show her [1984 Talking Heads concert movie] Stop Making Sense, and she's gonna see this magical, beautiful lady playing bass with her blonde hair, and she's literally like… the most ferocious, she's having the most fun.’”

And guess what? The plan worked.

“So my dad takes me to Blockbuster, gets the movie, puts it on, and I was literally, like, transfixed. I was like, ‘I get it now. I get it. This is for me. This is what I want to do. I want to be Tina Weymouth.’ And that's the start of my love affair with bass.”

Smart thinking from dad, then, who realised that what Este needed was a bass playing role model who she could relate to.

“He was like, you need to kind of see it to be it,” she says. “That was the correct way to go. And then, you know, from Stop Making Sense, then I started researching all the other music that she was involved in. Tom Tom Club being one of them [Este and Track Star host were sharing their appreciation for that band’s Genius Of Love]. And yeah, she's so cool and such a good bass player, and so tasteful. And again, I love the way she performs. She's having the best time.”

With any luck, Este herself will now have inspired the next generation of girls to start playing the bass, but she insists her father was wrong about one thing: that bass guitar is easier than guitar.

“Dad – that was incorrect,” she says. “Not true.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epiphone has unveiled a limited edition signature Hummingbird for country star Eric Church, based on his 2016 super-limited edition Gibson Custom Shop model that reimagined square-shouldered dreadnought in Cobra Burst.

The Eric Church Hummingbird Dark is one sweet acoustic guitar. It arrives in the Inspired By Gibson lineup, retailing for a very approachable £699/$799 street, with that price including a hardshell guitar case with Church’s John Hancock on it.

The pickguard is typically exquisite, a Carolina Blue refresh of the classic Hummingbird design. It has a solid European spruce top, layered mahogany on the back and sides. And for your open-mic pleasure, there’s also a Fishman Sonicore acoustic guitar pickup system. We’ll drink to that.

And helpfully, Church and the Gibson higher-uppers have already thought of this, and have teamed up for a collaborative whiskeys, Tonewood Vol 1 and Tonewood: The Collective, made by Church’s own booze brand, Whiskey JYPSI.

This is MusicRadar, so we should keep things on topic and rattle through some of the key features on this guitar without further delay, but Tonewood Vol 1 is an expression of special interest to any guitar player with a penchant for the amber nectar, because it was finished in offcuts of toasted maple from the Gibson factory.

It is available direct from Whiskey JYPSI and comes with Gibson glasses. Tonewood: The Collective, will be released more widely via select retailers, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Gibson Gives charitable foundation.

The Gibson Gazette has been similarly charitable in knocking these back to provide the tasting notes. It’s tough work but someone’s got to do it.

Expect “mature oak, vanilla, toasted grain, warm baking spice, honey, polished hardwood, caramelised sugar, roasted nuts, seasoned oak, and a long, structured finish” with the Tonewood Vol 1, with the Tonewood: The Collective “a lighter, more lifted character, with vanilla, graham cracker, light caramel, toasted grain, and a clean finish that fades to gentle smoke”. Don't be drowning it in cola, folks.

And perhaps a hint of nitrocellulose in the aroma? Well, not with the guitar at least. It’s finished in high-gloss poly. You’ll find Church’s signature on the back of the headstock.

It has a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard, inlaid with split parallelograms, matching rosewood bridge in the narrow ‘belly down’ style. The neck sounds like it might be comfortable, leisurely affair – a thick C profile that should fill the hand nicely for chords. It joins the body with a tapered dovetail joint. The nut is plastic, 43mm wide. The guitar’s scale is 24.76”.

And that’s that. The Inspired By Gibson Eric Church Hummingbird Dark is out now. Head over to Epiphone for more details. Or if the sun is sufficiently over the yard arm, to Whiskey JYPSI. Bottom’s up!

U2 were already a big deal in 1984 - 1983's War LP and its global tour, which also spawned the band's well-regarded live album Under a Blood Red Sky, had made the Irish band one of the world's hottest, if not hippest, tickets.

But it was The Unforgettable Fire that pointed the way to the band's record-breaking future as Steve Lillywhite's upfront rock production gave way to Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno's more nuanced soundscapes.

Eno, in particular, seems to have struck a career-chord with The Edge during the album's Slane Castle sessions. "He's not a great keyboard player, he doesn't write great songs really, he doesn't have the craft that say Bowie has to write a song, or Paul McCartney,” he told One-Two Testing magazine in 1984.

"His engineering and technical abilities are limited as well. In fact, he knows very little about an awful lot, but it's how he applies that knowledge.

"I suppose it's down to confidence, too."

That pragmatic creativity was something The Edge took confidence and inspiration from, as he'd told Hot Press the year before:"I could see how Eno had shaped his career not around any one particular overriding talent but through a collection of, I suppose you would say second-rate, abilities.

"But the way he used them, that he'd been so determined to follow the areas in music he found stimulating to create a career - that must be totally unique.

"Now I don't think I'm a particularly talented guitar virtuoso. My talent if it's anything is my approach to the guitar by the use of effects, by non-acceptance of the usual approaches to the guitar".

There were other, similarly pragmatic forces behind the U2 man's signature style, which was well in place pre-Eno, though.

Back with One-Two Testing: "My guitar style has always been the product really of the rest of the group. Adam is a very ostentatious sort of person, y'know, very extravagant, so when he started playing bass he wasn't interested in taking the bottom end of the sound spectrum at all.

"He wanted to be right up there in the mid-ranges, so his bass sounds were always extremely full with a lot of top end — very different to say Simple Minds or any of the other bands around that era, the Bunnymen or anybody like that.

"In order to give the group any sort of clarity, therefore, I had to stay away from the bottom end of the guitar as much as I could. So I tended to work around those high chords, that ringing sound...

"So when we started writing our own songs it just developed, this style of using high chords with that sort of ringing quality, not particularly rhythmic but more just a harmonic wash over little hook lines picked out within the songs, essentially very much as it is now.

"Then we started making a bit of money on gigs so I bought an echo unit and various other boxes, and most of the other boxes I discarded very quickly. I hate effects, the kind of things that jump out at you."

"I'm not an incredibly versatile guitar player, but I've made best use of what limited talents I have. I think my talent is possibly applying my abilities in a new way, so that could be production, it could be songwriting, it could be guitar playing, it could be anything. I enjoyed Eno because I could see he did that as well."

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Strymon might well have raised the bar for pro-quality delay pedals with the launch of the TimeLine MX, looking to do for delay what it did for reverb when the BigSky MX blew our minds in 2024.

It’s calling the TimeLine MX “the most powerful delay pedal ever” – and there is a body of evidence to back that claim up.

The TimeLine MX comes strapped with a suite of new features, including a five-minute stereo looper with added functionality of one-button mode, and an all-new reverb engine that can be used to add ambience to your repeats.

Strymon has spruced up many of the delays from the original TimeLine, wholly reengineering the MultiTap engine (you can add up to eight taps with individual level and pan controls, opening up the possibility of super-complex rhythmic repeats), and adding new delays.

There are some very cool news sounds, such as the vintage-sounding Oil Can and Drum Echo, and the tantalising Spectral, a granular delay that can split your signal up into little fragments and render it in “glitchy patterns” and weird textures.

Swell and Duck were once separate delays but not they can be added to every delay engine on the menu here. Add Swell to a delay to soften the attack with a fade-in effect applied to the repeats. Choose Duck when you want the repeats to fall back in the mix when you are playing and come forward a little when you’re not.

Thanks to the tri-core 800 MHz ARM processor is more power under the hood. The TimeLine MX now allows players to run two delay engines at the time – hitherto you would have to use the Dual delay engine on the original TimeLine if you wanted to combine delays.

Strymon has expanded our routing options, with the new unit configured to run the delay engines in series, parallel and split – and you can really manipulate that stereo field with its independent panning mode.

This is a $679 unit, a delay for pro players’ pedalboards and serious amateurs, so it’s no surprise we have full stereo support with switchable I/O configurations to accommodate all kinds of setups, including wet/dry and wet/dry/wet rigs, or that there’s full MIDI control over your parameter changes and presets.

The pedal is expandable. There is a 1/4” input for an expression pedal, and a configurable insert loop so that you can place pedals in between delay engines, presenting players with another rabbit hole to fall down. Imagine the possibilities…

Things could get really weird when adding modulation between the delays.

But it also allows you to do some studio-style audio tricks from the, err, comfort of your pedalboard, applying a mild overdrive to the repeats while your electric guitar’s signal stays clean. You could use an EQ pedal to fine-tune how those big delays sit in a mix… And so on.

There is a lot going on. Those demo videos sound incredible. The TimeLine MX is officially here and priced £699/$679. For more details, head over to Strymon.

It is the Telecaster’s 75th anniversary, and Fender is keeping them coming, the latest finding Jim Root’s signature Tele refinished in Shoreline Gold. And he loves it.

“Fender guitars have been a cornerstone of my rig since the earliest days of Slipknot and continue to be today,” he says. “Seeing my signature model in Shoreline Gold gives it a completely fresh character. It’s the same guitar I’ve relied on for more than two decades, but this new finish makes it feel exciting all over again.”

Yes, of course, he does. Because Root is nothing if not a traditionalist, and Shoreline Gold is one of the truly old-school custom colour finishes from the Fender paint room, one of some 14 colour offerings in the 1960 custom colour chart (alongside the now familiar Daphne Blue, Sonic Blue, Olympic White, et al).

Spend any time with Root talking about guitars and he will invariably start talking about Persol sunglasses, Levi’s, Marlboro… And so on. Classic brands. He loves it. And the Telecaster fits in with that ethos.

His signature model, however, has had some modifications. This is not a 1951 Blackguard. We’ve got a mahogany body for starters, with a slightly sculpted neck heel, a belly cut for comfort.

The neck is maple, bolted to the body, kind of traditional in that sense, and yet it is carved into a slim Modern C profile, topped with a 12” ebony fingerboard – the kind of fingerboard you’d more regularly associate with a Gibson Les Paul Custom if it weren't for the more subtle dot inlays. Also, this comes with 22 jumbo frets.

The pickguard is black, single-ply, but look at the controls. There’s only one volume control, a skirted black plastic Strat-style knob, a three-way pickup selector, and they don’t sit on a metal plate as they do on traditional Telecasters.

Traditional Telecasters also don’t have active EMG humbuckers, like the 81/60 at the bridge and neck positions here. Or the six-saddle string-through bridge. Or locking tuners. Or the Bi-Flex truss rod that is adjustable at the headstock.

Wait, what was that about Jim Root being a traditionalist? This is quite far removed from the kind of thing James Burton played. But then James Burton didn’t play Psychosocial for fields full of people who self-identify as maggots. You need something a little more agricultural for that.

Previously available in white, this looks the part in Shoreline Gold.

Available now, for a limited time only, the John Mayer-approved Jim Root Telecaster is priced £1,599/$2,099. See Fender for more details.

Sometimes guitar effects pedal companies launch something limited edition and it sells out and you never see it again, maybe because there were some NOS germanium transistors, some old component they couldn’t get more of.

Other times, they’ll launch a limited run stompbox as a test balloon. Like, would guitar players really put something this weird on their pedalboards? Walrus Audio did just that the Lüm Texture Engine, made 600 units, they all sold out and it was discontinued.

And what did you know, players actually did want this weird descendent of the Slö Reverb, Lore Reverse Soundscape Generator and Fable Granular Soundscape Generator.

Well, the Lüm has officially returns, in two colourways, and it is no longer limited (“It’s digital, baby, you can’t run out of algorithms,” said no one ever). And this is a big deal for players who’ve grown a little tired of their electric guitar tone.

Maybe they want to add some quote/unquote granular texture to their sound, fragmented little glitches for spice. Or they want to add some granularity to the reverb tails – “Almost as if the grains just took a bath in reverb,” says Walrus.

Alternatively, select Mode III and you’ve got the Forward / Reverse Verb sound, a forward reverb algorithm colliding headlong with a reverse reverb algorithm. Hilarity ensues.

The Lüm Texture Engine does all that and more, and even has three onboard presets so you can save down all of your favourite radical sounds.

For the soundscaping guitar player, this is obviously an essential pedal to check out. Though many will already be aware of it. For everyone else, consider this as some next-gen reimagining of reverb, and an altogether new genre of pedal.

Walrus Audio is calling the Lüm a “Texture Engine” but give it a year or so, these glitchy, grainy, lo-fi effects will be officially a thing – texture pedals sitting alongside delay pedals and modulation, overdrive, etc in the cabinet.

Think of them has a weird plugin in a hardware format, a studio trick that’s jumped the fence, out of the DAW and onto your ‘board. We’ve heard how these things can work so well in indie, alt and experimental rock, but there is much untapped potential for other styles, for metal guitar, or jazz guitar even? Who can say.

Other features include real-time parameter control, adjustable ramp time, a Stretch Engine that allows you to change the sample rate between 0.5x to 2x speed, and selectable trails modes.

The Lüm Texture Engine is available now, priced $279. See Walrus Audio for more details.

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

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

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

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

The standard grip

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

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

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

Angle matters

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

Experiment to find what works for your style.

How tight should you hold it?

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

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

Wrist position and movement

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

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

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

Pick thickness

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

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

Alternative grips

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

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

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

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

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

Try it. You might like it

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

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

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

And don't panic!

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

Above all, have fun and keep on playing!

What is it?

Electro-Harmonix has been doing a grand job of reissuing the different versions of its Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal, with all of the major circuit revisions now represented in the brand’s roster.

The Big Muff Pi 2 is the latest to hit the stores, but there’s a twist with this one in that it was never available in the first place.

This pedal is a dual op-amp version by designer Bob Myers that dates from the late 1970s.

Its existence, as a hand-drawn schematic, only came to light when Josh Scott of JHS Pedals was interviewing Bob for a book, Made On Earth For Rising Stars: The Electro-Harmonix Story.

While EHX did produce an op-amp-based Big Muff in 1978 (also known as the IC or V4 Big Muff), celebrated for its use by Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, this new one has a different clipping arrangement and an extra gain stage.

Specs

• PRICE: $122 | £125 | €119
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Fuzz/distortion pedal
• FEATURES: True bypass, latching/momentary footswitching
• CONTROLS: Volume, Tone, Sustain, bypass footswitch 
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
• POWER: 9V battery (supplied) or 9V DC adaptor 15mA
• DIMENSIONS: 65 (w) x 111 (d) x 47mm (h) 
• CONTACT: Electro-Harmonix

Usability and sounds

A Nano-sized pedal that will fit snugly on any pedalboard, the Big Muff Pi 2 features the familiar triumvirate of Volume, Tone and Sustain knobs, but, brilliantly, comes with a dual-action footswitch that – besides standard latching operation – can also be used momentarily for a burst of dirt for as long as you press and hold.

Plugging in, there’s no doubt that this is part of the Big Muff family, but the differences from the usual four-transistor models are immediately apparent.

There’s a fuller midrange in place of the regular scooped sound and that fullness extends to the low frequencies with a bigger bottom-end grunt.

There’s plenty of variation via the Tone knob, with the sludgier stuff to the left, but we found our sweet spot at around the two o’clock mark and beyond where the upper mid presence makes itself apparent.

There’s also a nice clarity to the top-end, which, incidentally, doesn’t get as fizzy as a standard Muff when the Tone knob is maxed.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

With a gritty textured edge to its fuzz/distortion, this is a pedal for big riffs and endless sustain.

MusicRadar verdict: This dual op-amp version was never released back in the day as EHX boss Mike Matthews felt that it strayed from the traditional Big Muff voicing. But these days we positively embrace fuzz varieties across the board and the Big Muff Pi 2 is a valid choice, particularly for players who value something heavier and more aggressive.

Hands-on videos

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• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save

Eric Clapton was on a mission from the start and there was no time to waste. He joined the Yardbirds in ’63, left in ’65 to join up with John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers, and within 12 months he had co-founded Cream to establish a new paradigm for blues-rock, the power trio.

He had reconfigured guitar in just three years. Little wonder it would go to his head. When some oik spray-painted “CLAPTON IS GOD” on a wall in North London the list of suspects was long but most definitely included Clapton himself. “I thought it was quite justified to be honest with you,” he told Guitarist in 1994. “I suppose I felt I deserved it for the amount of seriousness that I’d put into it.”

Clapton was serious.

His mission was to spread the gospel of blues guitar. He had been weaned on early rock ’n’ roll just as his peers were. That’s what made him aware of the electric guitar as an instrument, seeding its potential in his mind. He found his calling after hearing Freddie King for the first time.

“Listening to him had an effect on me similar to what I might feel if I were to meet an alien from outer space,” said Clapton, in his 2007 autobiography. “It simply blew my mind.”

The record in question was the 7” for Hideaway. The B-side, I Love The Woman, contained an “earth-shattering” moment, a guitar solo in which King demonstrated just how rich and wide and musically literate the blues could be. Clapton said it took his breath away.

“It was like listening to modern jazz, expressive and melodic, a unique kind of playing in which he bent the strings and produced sounds that gave me the shivers,” he said.

Eureka! The electric guitar could be the lead instrument, on an even keel with the vocals.

There were other formative influences. George Barnes’ playing on Connie Francis’ Lipstick On Your Collar made an impression. James Burton’s countrified styled jived with Clapton’s sensibility, too, and it fit in with this recognition that it was all interconnected, and the blues held it all together.

Not that the world was paying attention. A four-piece modern beat combo out of Liverpool was having much success. They were making the weather. Clapton thought this was “despicable”. Seeing all these young people succumbing to Beatlemania was a ‘hello, sheeple!’ moment. How could the music buying public at large confer godlike status upon them when Clapton’s heroes went to their graves unsung?

We shall allow ourselves a wry smile at Clapton taking umbrage at people deifying another artist then move on.

This pique played its part in refocusing a young teenaged Clapton when he got back in the rehearsal room with the Roosters, talking about the blues, honing his chops alongside fellow guitarist Tom McGuinness – who can take the credit for introducing Clapton to King.

“I was interested in the white rock ’n’ rollers until I heard Freddie King – and then I was over the moon,” Clapton told Guitarist. “I knew that was where I belonged – finally. That was serious, proper guitar playing and I haven’t changed my mind ever since. I still listen to it and I get the same boost now that I did then.”

Back then the gigs came easy. Clapton made his bones playing clubs, “his spiritual stomping ground”. They all did. There were not enough bands to go around. If you were good enough, you got a gig, and those who could really play could make a bit of money. As a student of the blues, Clapton operated as though he had secret knowledge, a deeper cultural wellspring to draw from.

He says it was the only education he got, falling down the rabbit hole, learning these cats’ names and their stories, and how blues and soul, R&B and jazz all fit together, knotted with the histories of those who created the sounds.

“I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music,” Clapton told Guitarist. “But for some reason it did something to me – it resonated.

“Then I found out later that they were black and they were from the Deep South, and that started my education. In fact the only education I ever really had was finding out about blues. I took a kind of elementary fundamental education in art, but it didn’t rivet my attention in the same way blues did.”

As any teacher will tell you, a motivated student is a good student. Clapton applied himself. This education went hand in hand with learning to play the guitar, developing a musical vocabulary and playing style that would soon be turned lose on the Yardbirds, that great mid ‘60s petrie dish of percolating guitar genius from which Jeff Bech, Jimmy Page and Clapton all emerged.

“I wanted to know everything,” Clapton continued. “I spent all of my mid to late teens and early twenties studying this music; studying the geography of it, the chronology of it, the roots, the different regional influences, how everybody inter-related, how long people lived, how quickly they learnt things, how many songs they had of their own and what songs were shared around…”

Clapton found a place to put this knowledge in the autumn of 1963. The Yardbirds would be the perfect vehicle for his obsession with Chicago blues. It was a band who took this stuff seriously. They would play Willie Dixon, Billy Boy Arnold and Sonny Boy Williamson tracks, Clapton taking over on lead vocals for Williamson’s Good Morning, School Girl. They would jam out Bo Diddley’s I’m A Man, “rave-ups” as they called it then.

This was when Clapton acquired the sobriquet Slowhand. He’d break a string onstage and change it right there and then, and the crowd would treat it like a tennis pro challenging a line call, a slow hand clap would ripple through the audience.

Unfazed, Clapton got straight back at it. But he had itchy feet. When people actually started to really like the Yardbirds (the Graham Gouldman-written For Your Love went Top Ten) it was time to leave. The self-styled “anarchist” wanted to back underground, there he would find John Mayall waiting for him.

And more often than not, wait for Clapton is what Mayall did.

“I was so unreliable, so irresponsible,” recalled Clapton. “I would sometimes just not show up at gigs and that’s how Peter Green was asked to play with John – because I wasn’t there.”

Clapton was just 20 years old when he joined the Bluesbreakers. His Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amp sound was making waves all the way over the Atlantic.

The similarly minded Billy Gibbons’ ears pricked up. The Texan was moved by ‘the Beano Album’, and this being the pre-internet era he did what everyone else did at the time and scanned the back of the album sleeve to for idea on how Clapton got this thrilling tone.

“The sound was just so fierce and so attractive,” said Gibbons, speaking to Guitarist in 2021. “The appeal drew everyone’s curiosity to attempt to suss out where this sound was coming from. The photograph of Eric on the back cover was a clue. We said, ‘Ah, look in the background, there’s a Marshall, but it’s not very big, and ah, look at that. They don’t make those any more – but it’s one of those Les Pauls!’”

The Beano ‘Burst Les Paul became infamous. It helped establish the sound that everyone was chasing. Clapton had been searching for something to compete with Freddie King’s tone and had eventually found it in a cranked Marshall 2x12.

That alchemical combination was broken up after the Beano went AWOL, stolen from a church hall in ’66. Gibson only made these sunburst Les Pauls from 1958 to 1960.

There were not that many of them, making each and everyone precious in its own right. And yet this one, which had acquired mythical status in Clapton’s hands, was gone. That’s the thing when people think that you’re God, they all want a piece of you.

Speaking to Classic Rock, the Beano album’s producer, Mike Vernon, remembers Clapton as Clapton himself did; he was difficult. He was particularly uncompromising over how they would record. It had to be live, but at the volume he played at the guitar would bleed into mix.

“It took a while to get a sound that everybody was happy with, especially Eric,” said Vernon. “But everybody had to take on board that we were going into an unknown era, nobody had ever witnessed in the Decca studios somebody coming into the studio, set up their guitar and amp and play at that volume.

“People in the canteen behind the studio were complaining about the noise. Normally they would never hear it, but it was travelling round the studio complex. People were coming down to the studio to see what was going on.”

What was going on was a miracle. Mayall had called the tunes. He was the leader. Clapton applied is magic, heaving the blues into popular culture, inspiring generations of players. Nothing would be the same again. His successor in the Bluesbreakers, Peter Green, had a few ideas also how to take it further. The British blues boom had officially started.

For the record, Vernon believes Lonely Years, the seven-inch that Clapton and Mayall cut in ’65 for he and his brother’s imprint, Purdah, was Slowhand’s definitive recording.

“Lonely Years was the finest effort Eric ever put on record,” he told Classic Rock. “It just sums up exactly what Eric was about at that time – that real down-home feel. That record was the closest I came to a real Chicago sound.”

That was exactly was what Clapton was chasing. And if that made him an elitist with a god complex, so be it. At least it was with the best intentions.

“I thought everyone else was either in it just to be on Top Of The Pops or Ready Steady Go, or to score girls or for some dodgy reason,” he said. “I was in it to save the world. I wanted to tell the world about blues and to get it right. Even then I thought that I was on some kind of mission, so in a way I thought, ‘Yes, I am God; quite right‘.

“My head was huge. I was unbearably arrogant and not a fun person to be around most of the time because I was so superior and very judgmental. I didn’t have time for anything that didn’t fit into my scheme of things.”

Keep in mind his next project saw him team up with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for a project he envisaged as a straight-up blues trio but was anything but.

Cream was another miracle, musically and existentially. How did they manage to hold it together for three long years?

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

What is it?

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

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Hands-on videos

Kris Barocsi

TheGuitarGeek

George Harrison is sitting in a vast soundstage at Twickenham Film Studios, explaining to Ringo Starr and film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg how a BBC2 sci-fi series called Out Of The Unknown, that he watched the previous evening, has inspired a new song. Harrison is sporting the same black fur coat he wears on the iconic rooftop concert and perched on his knee is John Lennon’s 1965 Epiphone Casino.

It’s mid-morning on Tuesday 7 January, 1969 and the next Beatle to arrive is Paul McCartney. “Good morning,” says the bearded bassman chirpily as he strides across the floor. “Do you wanna hear a song I wrote last night?” Harrison asks him. “It’s just a very short one, called I Me Mine”.

What follows is a beautifully plaintive and sparse rendition with Harrison’s voice sounding particularly pure. “Lovely” exclaims Lyndsey Hogg. McCartney, with hands in pockets, stands beside Harrison and stares down at his fingers on the fretboard, but says nothing. Then John Lennon arrives. Harrison, now standing, runs through the song again but speeds it up. “Run along son, see you later,” jokes Lennon. “We’re a rock and roll band you know”.

If one incident highlights the tortuous position that George Harrison found himself in as part of The Beatles then this is it. It’s just one of a number of incidents captured in Peter Jackson’s three-part 2021 documentary Get Back, in which Harrison employs impressive levels of tenacity and tact to push his own songs forward to Lennon and McCartney. Their songwriting partnership was a source of both inspiration and frustration for George. They are ostensibly the gatekeepers, two strong personalities locked into an even stronger autonomous partnership.

Only in the months leading up to The Beatles’ break-up was Harrison’s contribution and his songwriting abilities finally acknowledged by its two principal songwriters. “Until this year our songs have been better than George’s,” said McCartney bluntly in the Get Back film. “Now, this year, his songs are at least as good as ours."

In the years and decades following the break-up of The Beatles, George Harrison’s contribution to the band would be completely reassessed and his songs, such as Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, would be recognised as some of The Beatles’ greatest works.

As Frank Sinatra said of Something in his introduction to the song during a performance in 1982: “It’s one of the best love songs I believe to be written in 50 or 100 years… it really is one of the finest.”

Despite such accolades, Harrison possibly felt undervalued within The Beatles at times. Subsequent comments also suggest that he may have contributed to more Beatles songs than he is given credit for.

In a 1987 interview for the TV series W. 57th Street, the whole issue of songwriting credits came up when broadcaster Selina Scott asked Harrison for his reaction to a comment from John Lennon.

“In an interview before his death, John Lennon said he was really hurt by you, that you’d never mentioned in your autobiography any of the influences that he had on you,” said Scott.

“He was annoyed because I didn’t say that he had written one line of this song, Taxman,” replied Harrison. “Did you tell him that?” asked Scott. “Well I didn’t because he was already dead after that” replied Harrison, “but the point to that was that I also didn’t say how I wrote two lines to Come Together or three lines to Eleanor Rigby, you know, I wasn’t getting into any of that. I think in the balance I would have had more things to be niggled with him about than he would have with me.”

Scott then cited Lennon mentioning that Harrison had idolised him as a young boy. “Well that’s what he thought,” laughed Harrison. “I liked him very much, he was a groove, he was a good lad, but at the same time he misread me. He didn’t realise who I was and this was one of the main faults of John and Paul. They were so busy being John and Paul, they failed to realise who else was around at the time.”

In the same interview Harrison touched on the legacy of being a Beatle. “It just annoyed me that people got so into The Beatles. It’s not that I don’t like talking about them, I’ve never stopped talking about them… in the end it’s like ‘Oh sod off with The Beatles’ you know?’'”

By 1969, Harrison was feeling smothered by his existence as a Beatle. Things famously came to a head when Harrison said to McCartney: “I’ll play whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I’ll do it.”

It took Harrison leaving the band on 10 January 1969, with the witty, parting riposte of “See you ‘round the clubs”, for McCartney and Lennon to really take stock of his contribution. Although as Paul McCartney says in Martin Scorcese’s documentary Living In The Material World, he and John were well aware of George’s talents.

“We didn’t underestimate George. We knew that he was peaking as we got to those records. He’d not been really interested in the beginning I don’t think. And because John and I did so much of the writing he could just leave it to us. But I think he realised you know that there was something in this, [that] artistically and financially it was a good thing to get into. At that time we realised that he was really coming up with the goods.”

Few issues will drive a wedge within a band faster than the subject of who wrote what on which song. And when that band is The Beatles, the creative and commercial stakes couldn’t be higher.

After the Beatles’ break-up, Lennon took a number of verbal swipes at his former band members, and uncredited songwriting contributions were a theme. In a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine, Lennon talks about the writing of Eleanor Rigby but refers only to McCartney. George’s own alleged contribution to that song is not mentioned.

"It's his first verse,” said Lennon about McCartney, “and the rest of the verses are basically mine. But the way he did it was... he knew he'd got the song, so rather than ask me, 'John, do these lyrics' because, by that period, he didn't want to say that to me, okay..."

But this is not how Paul McCartney remembers it. “John helped me on a few words but I'd put it down 80–20 to me,” McCartney said in Barry Miles’s 1997 biography Many Years From Now. “So what he said was, ‘Hey, you guys, finish up the lyrics', while he was fiddling around with the tracks or arranging it, at the other part of the giant studio and EMI.”

A number of accounts cite Harrison coming up with the intro/bridge line for Eleanor Rigby. In David Scheff’s book All We Are Saying, Lennon is quoted as saying: “I do know that George Harrison was there when we came up with ‘Ah, look at all the lonely people’. [Paul] and George were settling on that as I left the studio to go to the toilet, and I heard the lyric and turned around and said, ‘That’s it!’”

There is no firm evidence that George came up with the line, only that he was there when it was written. But it’s one of the Beatles songs on which all the band had an input. All were present when McCartney presented the first verse and melody, as was Lennon’s childhood friend Pete Shotton, who in Kenneth Womack’s 2014 book All We Are Saying, remembers Lennon’s contribution amounting to “virtually nil”.

In Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, George talks about writing credits for Lennon/McCartney songs and he uses Eleanor Rigby as an example of a track on which his name is not credited, despite having made the contribution.

Of course, ideas and suggestions often occur spontaneously and quickly. No-one is sitting there logging who has contributed exactly what and it’s often difficult to remember in retrospect who came up with a particular phrase, motif or chord. It’s clear from Peter Jackson’s film that The Beatles helped each other out with ideas, as is the case when George Harrison works with Ringo on Octopus’s Garden.

Similarly, it seems quite possible that Harrison could have contributed a line or two of lyrics to Come Together although there is no documented evidence to suggest that he did. When he mentioned in the 1987 interview that he contributed lines to Come Together, he may simply have been using a random song to demonstrate a broader point.

One song that George certainly did have a hand in though was She Said, She Said, the final track recorded for the Revolver album, inspired by an LSD-influenced conversation between John Lennon and actor Peter Fonda.

In The Beatles Anthology, Harrison recalled helping Lennon construct the song from "maybe three" separate segments that Lennon had. Harrison described the process as “a real weld”. In his 2017 book Who Wrote the Beatle Songs?, author Todd Compton credits Lennon and Harrison as being the song's true composers.

It’s been claimed that Harrison didn’t want a co-write credit. It’s also been claimed he became thoroughly disillusioned when he didn’t receive one. Whatever the truth, it demonstrates that on at least one occasion, George Harrison had a hand in co-writing a song for which he received no songwriting credit.

For George, the break-up of The Beatles signified creative emancipation. He was soon revelling in his post-Beatles life and the solo opportunities it brought him. He topped the UK and US charts with the hugely acclaimed All Things Must Pass triple album (1970) and his 1973 album Living In The Material World was a critical and commercial triumph.

Speaking on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, Harrison said he was overcome with relief when The Beatles’ broke up and compared it to leaving the family home.

“Some people can’t understand that, you know, because The Beatles were such a big deal. They can’t understand why we should actually enjoy splitting up, but there’s a time. People grow up and leave home or whatever they do. They go for a change, and it was really time for a change.”

It was a view echoed by Harrison in an interview with Musician magazine in 1987. “I just got so fed up with the bad vibes,” he said. “I didn’t care if it was The Beatles. I was getting out.”

• The 5 George Harrison post-Beatles songs you need to hear

What is it?

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

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

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thomann

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Orange

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

Following on from its ID:X series of modelling amps, Blackstar has expanded the ID:X range with a release of three floor processors, the ID:X Floor One, Two and Three. All of these have the same onboard DSP so are capable of the same sounds, but each delivers it in a different way.

The small One unit features three footswitches as does the Two, which adds a treadle for control of wah, volume or effect parameters. But our focus is the Three here, which ups the flexibility quota by having eight footswitches and adding an effects loop among other features.

The ID:X Floor Three gives you amp and effects modelling with 99 onboard patches to store your sounds. It features 12 guitar amp models, three bass amps, two acoustic voices and an acoustic simulator. In addition, there are 35 onboard effects in various categories.

While the (very) affordable price is a major factor of its appeal, another is that it is gloriously easy to use with a proper hands-on aesthetic: there are some screen parameters to navigate, but there’s no deep diving into the menu, and operation is really intuitive.

Specs

• PRICE: $399 | £279 | €279
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Amp and effects modelling floor pedal
• FEATURES: Buffered bypass, 99 presets, tuner, tap tempo, noise gate, hardware FX loop, 2 in/4 out audio interface
• CONTROLS: Voice switch, Gain, Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, ISF, Master, 10x buttons, 2x turn/push encoders, footswitches (Channels 1, 2, 3, Tap, Pre FX, Modulation, Delay, Reverb), treadle
• CONNECTIONS: Standard instrument input, Standard Send, Standard Return, Standard ‘To Amp’, XLR Outs (L/Mono, R), TRS stereo line out/phones, 1/8” stereo line in/streaming, MIDI In, MIDI Thru, USB
• POWER: Supplied 9V DC adaptor, 500 mA
• DIMENSIONS: 397 (w) x 195 (d) x 68mm (h)
• RANGE OPTIONS: ID:X Floor One ($269 | £169 | €189), ID:X Floor Two ($319 | £219 | €235)
• CONTACT: Blackstar Amplification

Usability and sounds

Although the treadle is plastic, the ID:X Floor’s bent sheet-steel chassis offers confidence that it’s rugged enough for use underfoot, and has the connectivity to take care of all the common onstage, studio and home tasks.

There’s a single guitar input with a pair of main XLR outputs for connection to a front-of-house mixing desk or PA, plus a single output to connect to an amp or FRFR speaker.

You also get a stereo line output that’ll take headphones for silent practice and, tied in with that, there’s a stereo line input for an external audio source – Bluetooth streaming is not supported.

Send and Return sockets allow you to connect external pedals into the system (with the option of having them pre- or post- the amp modelling), and there’s a pair of MIDI sockets for implementing MIDI control.

A USB-C socket enables connection to a computer to take advantage of the unit’s audio interface capability for recording, along with Blackstar’s Architect software editor and librarian, which offers a quick way to set up sounds with a few mouse clicks, and also gives you access to any firmware updates.

The onboard patches are arranged three to a bank and are instantly recalled with the first three footswitches on the lower row, which are also used for scrolling through the banks by pressing two simultaneously – something that requires a slight angling of the foot. The fourth lower row footswitch offers tap tempo or calls up the tuner. The footswitches in the upper row turn the effects in a patch on and off.

These are arranged in a fixed but logical order with one effect before the amp block, and modulation, delay and reverb effects coming after the amp.

There is a choice of two compressors, auto wah and envelope filter to select before the amp, as well as a comprehensive range of dirt options that includes models of Tube Screamer, Klon, Rat and Big Muff, among others.

The modulation slot offers chorus, flangers, phasers, tremolos, UniVibe and vibrato, while there are five different types each of delay and reverb.

The amps are chosen by a six-way rotary Voice switch allied to a button that selects one of three banks of six. The first bank has signature Blackstar amp sounds including various St James models, and the second bank features the company’s Ampton models, which cover classic tone builders: a Fender Twin, Vox AC30, Marshall ‘Plexi’ and JCM800, Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier, and Peavey 5150.

The usual array of controls (Gain, Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble) are available as easily grabbable knobs for the amps, but you also get some extra tonal variation from the ISF knob, which is designed to morph from British to US sound. On top of that you have a selectable choice of modelled output valves – EL84, EL34 and 6L6 for Vox, Marshall and Fender flavour respectively.

Each amp has the CabRig IR-based speaker simulation that offers a selection of cabs with adjustable mic’ing and room options, or ITR (In The Room), which gives you more of a feeling of playing through a real amp in a real space, rather than listening to a mic’d cabinet.

Plenty of options, then, to dial in a range of tones. But it’s worth starting with the factory-programmed patches that have been carefully curated to be usable for common guitar tasks straight out of the box. Alternatively, you could switch to Manual mode where the sounds are purely down to the position of the physical knobs and switches.

What you get is an effortlessly usable unit that delivers dynamically playable amp sounds. The complementary effects are suitable for a wide range of styles, and also give you a passable simulation of acoustic guitar that will fit in nicely with a band mix, as well as alternative acoustic voices if you use an electro-acoustic.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

The ID:X Floor Three costs just £279. Just think about that – there are plenty of boutique dirt pedals that do one simple task and cost around the same.

With the Floor Three you get a full amp/cab and effects chain, fully footswitchable. It can be used as your sole onstage item if required or fulfil the at-home roles of being a practice tool and the source of all your recorded guitar sounds when connected to a computer.

Where’s the catch, then? Well, there isn’t one. Okay, you can’t experiment with the effects order and the sounds aren’t quite in the same class as the (much more expensive) Neural and Fractal units, but they are good, eminently playable sounds from clean right through to high-gain.

MusicRadar verdict: All three ID:X Floor units should attract the attention of anyone who wants to get into the world of modelling processors, but this model is the one that is most capable of making the graduation from bedroom to stage.

Hands-on videos

Blackstar Amplification

The Studio Rats

Cameron Cooper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we approach the release of Foreign Tongues, the new album by the Rolling Stones, frontman Mick Jagger has been discussing Paul McCartney’s contribution to it.

Macca plays bass on an as yet unheard song called Covered In You, and Jagger has told the NME that he recorded his part in the same session that yielded Bite My Head Off, from the Stones' 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds.

However, in the case of Covered In You, he says that he had to seek assurances from producer Andrew Watt, who would go on to work with McCartney on his recent album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, that the former Beatle was the right fit.

“Obviously, I've known Paul for ages – he’s not a stranger – but I mean, he’d never played bass with us before,” says Jagger. “It's a different thing, you know? I’d sung with him before, done harmonies and stuff. But you were thinking, well, it's a punk tune.

“I said to Andy, ‘Is he into this?’ Because it's really a punk tune, and it's going to go really fast, and I want it to do that, and it's going to be… I want overdriven bass. It's gonna be simple. No mucking about, you know.”

We’re guessing that means hammering away on the root note rather than taking the bassline ‘for a walk’, so to speak, but Jagger says that Watt set his mind at rest.

“He said ‘No, no, no. Paul can do that,’ and he did it,” he remembers. “He did exactly what was needed in like, 10 minutes.”

Also speaking to the NME recently, McCartney shared his own memories of that Stones studio experience.

“It was really exciting, because I normally don’t play as a session guy,” he said. “And it's really nice to just show up at a studio with your bass and say 'Right, where do you want me? Where do I plug in?’ And you start playing and they show you the song and I start thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones.’ And I’m well chuffed, you know? You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick! Ooh, there’s Keith! Woah, there’s Ronnie!’ It was exciting. It was really good. And the great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”

Foreign Tongues is released on 10 July.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amp modellers and effects

Darkglass Electronics Anagram Guitar Essentials 

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

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

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

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

Electro-Harmonix Percolator Harmonic Saturator 

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

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

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

Cornerstone Centurio Dual Overdrive

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

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

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

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

MXR Wylde Audio Zakk Sabbath Overdrive

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

Find out more at Jim Dunlop.

Solar Chug Capo

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

Find out more at Solar Guitars.

Signature guitars, pickups and plugins

Jackson Pro Series Rob Cavestany Signature

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

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

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

Find out more at Jackson.

PRS Guitars Jon Jourdan Limited

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

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

Godin 25th Anniversary Steve Stevens Signature Model ACS Multiac Guitar

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

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

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

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

Find out more at Godin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MixWave Yvette Young signature plugin

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

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

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

See MixWave for more.

Epiphone, Orangewood, Blackstar and Two Notes

Epiphone expands Inspired By Gibson Custom Series

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

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

See Epiphone for more details.

Orangewood Melrose Retro

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

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

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

Find out more at Orangewood.

Blackstar Fly 3 High Gain

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

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

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

See Blackstar for more.

Two Notes Genome 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you start with all that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Fender for more details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you're Paul McCartney, picking favourites is a thankless task – the sheer breadth of his seven years of writing songs with the Beatles would be enough to dodge the question. But he does have a special place in his heart for one particular Revolver creation, and it showcases why his songwriting could be so different… and yet familiar.

As he admitted with the remarkable dream state account that conjured up the song Yesterday, the influence of the previous generation would often seep into McCartney's creative mind. This was the music of his parents and music-loving family that were embedded in his childhood memories.

"One of my favourite songs because of its structure is Cheek To Cheek," revealed McCartney of the 1930s influence of American songwriter Irving Berlin in the podcast McCartney: A Life In Lyrics. "As sung by Fred Astaire. And I liked it very much before it starts off, 'Heaven, I'm in heaven… then the middle eight, 'Will carry me through to… heaven…' It's just like, yes! The way it just resolves up its own tail I always found wonderful. And I think somebody said I do it in this.

This being Here, There And Everywhere. This is a cornerstone moment in McCartney's rapid evolution as a songwriter in the 1960s, and a frankly staggering piece of work for a musician who was just 24 years old when Revolver was released in 1966.

McCartney likens the song's structure to a journey with an unexpected destination. "I like the fact that we think that we're on a path on the Moors, and we think we're going for a walk and then suddenly we've arrived where we've started," he explains in the podcast. "And it's not like we've gone around in a circle, it's more magical than that – we've come to another beginning of the path."

"It's this trick where you're suddenly where you were but it's surprising – you're where you were, but you're not. Because you can see back where you came from and you're definitely not there. You're at a new place, but it's tricked you and it's got the same scenery again."

Nevertheless, the song has a defined introduction before its verse in eight measures that are never repeated. And again, it's the influence of the past that's very clearly being referenced by its writer.

"John and I were fascinated by this idea that in the old days they did this complete ramble that didn't appear to be like [the rest of] the song at all," explains McCartney of his and John Lennon's mindset. So while much is made of the Beatles' revolution in pop music in song and production approach, it was also partnered with clear nods to the past at times.

It was Lennon who indirectly facilitated Here, There And Everywhere in the first place. "I remember writing this song while waiting for John one day," recalled McCartney in the podcast. "I'd gone out to his house in Weybridge for a writing session and he wasn't always up so I would have 20 minutes, half an hour while someone told him I was here, and he would get up."

And that's seemingly all it took for McCartney to start the ball rolling, alone with an acoustic guitar. "I remember sitting out by his swimming pool at his house in Weybridge and I had my guitar because I was ready for the writing session. And so I sat out and started something… I just went nice and smoothly so by the time I came to write with John, by the time he deigned to get up and have his coffee, I would have something to go on. "

Lennon is also credited on the song, but it's a McCartney composition… as far as he remembers.

"It does sound like something I might have done by the poolside and just sort of delivered to him," he told Muldoon. "Because it doesn't sound like anyone else's work – it sounds like one head."

So why the credit for both musicians?

"Paul and I made a deal when we were 15, Lennon told Playboy magazine in an interview three months before his murder. "There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what." Notably, Here There And Everywhere was a song Lennon also deeply admired. In 1 1972 interview with Hit Parader he confirmed the song was written by McCartney alone, and described it as "a great one of his." But unusually, he also told his bandmate similar in person.

"I was rooming with John… in the hotel we were staying at," McCartney told Howard Stern in 2018 about filming skiing scenes around Obertauern in Austrian Alps during March 1965 for the film Help! with the other Beatles. "And we had – it was a cassette I think, in those days – of the album [demos]! And we play Here There And Everywhere and he said: 'Wow! That’s a really great song!'"

That would place the song's writing to when McCartney was only 23 years-old, and it's surprising that the demo was in existence over a year before the song was recorded at Abbey Road for the Revolvr album in mid-June, 1966. By his own admittance, this kind of direct compliment was a rarity amongst the members of the band ("Because we're guys!"), but coming from McCartney's main songwriting partner/rival it was a huge moment.

"It was really nice! I remember it to this day, you know, exactly where I was when he said it! Uh, it was great, yeah! It really gave me a lot of confidence in that song, and in my writing."

McCartney spoke about the incident before in the Beatles Anthology book from 2000. "John and I shared a room and we were taking off our heavy ski boots after a day’s filming, ready to have a shower and get ready for the nice bit, the evening meal and the drinks," he recalled. "We were playing a cassette of our new recordings and my song Here, There And Everywhere’ was on. And I remember John saying, ‘You know, I probably like that better than any of my songs on the tape.’ Coming from John, that was high praise indeed."

Even McCartney himself is somewhat fascinated with his own work on this song in retrospect. "I like the line 'Changing my life with the wave of her hand. I look at those kinds of lyrics now and think, where did that come from? What was I thinking of – the queen, waving out of a royal carriage or just my love [who] can just do it by hardly doing anything… it says a lot in a line."

Here, There And Everywhere remains McCartney's favourite song he's written, when under pressure to answer, running Yesterday to a close second. "I'm often asked what my favourite song I've ever written is and I don't ever really want to answer it," McCartney told Muldoon. "But when pushed I'd go to Here, There And Everywhere."

• Rubber Soul: How The Beatles raised their game in 1965 to create a masterpiece that "broke everything open"

Gibson are looking for a new CEO with the news that Cesar Gueikian will step down at the end of July.

He’s not leaving the iconic guitar brand altogether, though. Gueikian will remain on the company board and will serve as global artist ambassador as well as ‘a strategic thought partner’ to the Gibson leadership team.

In his place, Anne Rohosy is set to step in as Interim President and Chief Executive Officer while the board searches for a successor to Gueikian.

In a statement announcing his decision, Gueikian said: "Gibson is part of my DNA. It has been the honour of my life to help lead Gibson and to work alongside the people who bring this Company to life every day. Gibson is something special – to musicians, to fans, to everyone who has ever picked up a guitar and felt that connection. I am incredibly proud of what we have built together: our team, our culture, our artists, and our global community of artists and fans.”

“I hope to have left a legacy that will be remembered in Gibson's history as a progressive era. I have enormous confidence in Anne and in the future of this Company, and I look forward to my next chapter as a shareholder, Board member, and artist ambassador. Gibson's best years are still ahead, and I'm excited to be part of what this Company will go on to achieve."

Gueikian spent three years in the CEO role, during which he refocused the company on his core business, ie guitars. On arriving in the role in 2023, he said that the previous leadership had been “losing focus of what makes Gibson Gibson – which is making the best guitars ever made.” So diversions into the consumer electronics and audio were ended and significantly Gueikian changed the company name back from ‘Gibson Brands Inc’ to simply ‘Gibson’.

Paying tribute to Gueikian, Nat Zilkha, the company board’s Executive Chairman, said: “For 13 years, Cesar has poured his passion, creativity, and relentless commitment into Gibson. On behalf of the Board, we thank Cesar for his transformative leadership and the important role he has played in rebuilding the foundation of the company.”

He continued: “Cesar came to us ready to step back from the day-to-day operating role and focus his energy where he has always been most passionate – working directly with artists and being close to the music.

"We are grateful that he will remain part of the Gibson family through his continued service as a Board member, strategic advisor, and artist ambassador.”

What is it?

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

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

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

Specs

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

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

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

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

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

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

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

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Hands-on videos

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• Best baritone guitars

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

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

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

But c’mon… Look at all that gold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find out more over at Kramer.

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

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

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

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

Why does a guitar have six strings?

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

Or they should if your guitar is in tune…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to tune a guitar

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

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

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

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

How to tune a guitar without a tuner

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

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

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

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

Now just keep going.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does my guitar keep going out of tune?

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

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

More top tuning tips

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

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

Have fun!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmy Eat World were feeling pretty good about The Middle when they were recording it, but if you had told them then that the song would become a breakout hit that would later be covered by Taylor Swift and Prince, they would have told you you were out of your mind.

Even today, 25 years on, that’s kind of crazy to think about. The look on Jimmy Eat World frontman/guitarist Jim Adkins face when we ask him what it actually feels like when the world’s biggest pop star covers your song suggests that he still hasn’t quite processed this – or at least there are no words that could possibly do it justice. He had no idea that it was going to connect like it did.

“No, are you kidding me!?” he says. “Oh, it’s still weird. [Laughs] It’s so weird. The Middle was a song that I feel came together pretty easily. There wasn’t a lot of scratching our heads trying to crack the code. Right off the bat, it felt like there’s nothing wrong with it; we’ve just got to take it where it wants to go, and it felt like all the decisions to make it get there were pretty easy.”

Adkins is joining MusicRadar alongside drummer Zach Lind to talk about the making of Bleed American, a conversation you can read in full soon, but we had to ask him about its second single, and its freewheeling guitar solo.

Because, yes, The Middle showcases Adkins’ masterly command of tension and release, the explosive verse/chorus dynamics that make a song work on the radio, in a stadium, and as an anthem of mass appeal. It has all the pop mechanics it needs for Adkins’ melody to get take flight. It has a message, too, written in response to a fan who was getting bullied because her friends didn’t think she was punk enough. But it also has a ripping guitar solo.

“It just got ranked – what? – 75th or 76th best guitar solo of all time by Rolling Stone,” says Lind.

“Yes, thanks!” laughs Adkins.

So, how did it come together?

“Yeah, for guitar solos in general, I’m not the kind of player – like John Mayer – that just instantly can connect the dots without even thinking of where I’m taking something over what scale,” says Adkins. “I stopped studying jazz before all that really clicked.”

Before Jimmy Eat World was a touring concern, Adkins was a jazz guitar student. He also studied classical guitar. In an alternate universe, maybe there’s a Jim Adkins playing conservatoire jazz, or in bow-tie and tux performing recitals. On our timeline, he bundled himself in the back of a van and set off to play punk rock and it worked out okay in the end.

Adkins says he got close to understanding the music theory that could have held all this together, the book smarts that have served Mayer so well. And yet, how he came up with The Middle’s solo – in the studio, with the song all but written and completed – instructs us that you don’t always need to know exactly the theory behind the solo just as long as you have a plan.

Adkins says The Middle was just like any other solo. He had an idea of what he wanted to say with it.

“What I basically do, or what I remember doing, was I wanted to chase a form, and then it was about messing around until something gave me the next idea,” he explains. “So, it was like, ‘Theme, repeat, theme, repeat, escalation, closing with more intensity!’ And it’s about chasing that. Theme, repeat, variation, ascension, escalation… tight ending.

“And that was the form that I was chasing, and then literally just dicking around until something popped out at me, and then doing it again and seeing where that would go from there.”

Adkins cites the influence of Doug Gillard from Guided By Voices. Gillard’s solo on the skronky slacker wheeze I Am A Tree was what Adkins had in mind, and you listen to both tracks back-to-back and you can hear the similarities.

Both have the rolling and tumbling of hammer-ons and pull-offs, though of the two, Adkins’ solo is more white knuckle, with the recognisable twang of the Telecaster giving it a slightly countrified flavour.

“I want to say that that was most likely an American Standard Telecaster into a Fender Champ. That was probably the thing. We discovered that as as you are doing the guitar overdub pyramid, your amps get smaller and smaller by the time it gets on top, so usually a Fender Champ is what most of the solos are on all of our records actually.”

Adkins is one among legions of players – the Stones, Eric Clapton, Don Felder – who have leaned upon the compact Fender amp as their studio pinch-hitter. There’s nothing quite like it.

“Oh yeah. You can make an album with a Champ and a [Shure SM] 57, for sure,” says Adkins. “For Shure! We had just enough [gear] to give us options without A/B’ing for hours.”

And that was it. The Middle was in the can, ready to be mixed and mastered with the rest of the songs. Bleed American was chosen as the lead single, released in August. The Middle was released a couple of months later. The band liked it fine. But maybe it was too easy for them to truly appreciate it.

“I feel like, as a musician, songs like that, there’s this thing in your mind that it’s not worth as much to you compared to songs that you had to really struggle with, a creative puzzle and then – all of a sudden – you solved it, and ‘Eureka!’ And it’s like, ‘Oh man, I did it!’” says Adkins. “For some reason, those songs carry more weight, and you forget that a listener doesn’t have any of that, and they’re just going to take it as it’s served, and it was really surprising… We always thought The Middle was a strong song but, I mean, how much it resonated with people is still baffling. It’s still surprising.”

And for the record, it’s number 76 on Rolling Stones’ 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time list, which places it ahead of Steve Vai’s For The Love Of God (80th spot), Megadeth’s Hangar 18 (97th) and John Mayer’s Gravity (85th). Hey, it might tickle Adkins to know that knowing all the theory doesn't matter all of the time.

• Catch Adkins and co live on the Bleed American 25th Anniversary Tour. See Jimmy Eat World for dates and ticket details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Head over to Christie’s for more information.

Thomann, the world’s largest musical instrument retailer, is tackling Fender head-on in an effort to see off the US giant’s controversial wave of Stratocaster cease-and-desist demands, launched last month in an attempt to curb the production and sale of ‘S-style’ guitars.

The German firm, which also operates the Harley Benton brand - itself hit with a cease-and-desist - has posted a lengthy statement on its blog, explaining the push-back.

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

Of the specific ruling underpinning Fender’s push, issued in March, Thomann says, “Fender recently obtained a so-called default judgment at the Düsseldorf Regional Court against a Chinese company trading in S-style guitars. This judgment is based on missed deadlines, i.e. pure formalities, and does not, in our opinion, represent a comprehensive review of the legal claims.

“On this basis, Fender is now attempting to enforce a fundamental copyright claim to the body shape of the Stratocaster and is simultaneously taking action against European dealers and manufacturers. American manufacturers who sell their instruments in Europe, however, are also affected.”

It also admits that, “Of course, the current escalation of the situation also affects us.

“We want to be able to offer you the entire range of the guitar world in the future. As a retailer and a manufacturer, we are experiencing the effects of current developments from a number of perspectives. Our Harley Benton brand is affected, too.

Thomann CEO Hans Thomann himself comments, “We used to be a small music store ourselves and know exactly where we have come from. Diversity, fairness and respectfully dealing with each other have always been part of our philosophy.

"Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute.

"We therefore see it as our responsibility to have this matter clarified in court not only for our own company, but for all parties involved.”

Concluding, the German firm’s statement says, “We urge Fender to stop issuing cease and desist demands against manufacturers, distributors and dealers and to return to a fair, cooperative partnership.

”Because we are convinced of this: The future of the guitar world depends on diversity, innovation and the freedom to create.”

In May, Fender launched its campaign to prevent other firms making and selling ’S-style’ guitars which closely resemble its original Stratocaster design. The firm had previously lost a legal campaign to trademark the Stratocaster and Telecaster bodies, with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office ruling that the Stratocaster body was now a “generic” electric guitar design.

Following a public backlash to the campaign, Fender CEO Edward ‘Bud’ Cole last week told an audience of dealers that, “First and foremost, Fender is not suing anybody. What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and respectfully to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design.”

You can read Thomann’s full statement at its blog here.

As debate rages over Fender’s much-publicised legal campaign over the rights to the Stratocaster body shape, the company’s CEO Edward ‘Bud’ Cole has spoken out at a dealer event in the US to clarify the reasoning behind this controversial strategy.

Following a copyright ruling earlier this year, Fender issued cease-and-desist letters to other guitar manufacturers – alleging infringement on the Stratocaster design.

In the wake of a public backlash, ‘Bud’ Cole told the audience at the dealer event: “First and foremost, Fender is not suing anybody. What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and respectfully to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design.”

He continued: “Let’s also be very specific. We’re talking specifically about the Stratocaster, because that’s what this is really about.

“Calling it simply the S-style or the S-shape is an attempt to diminish and whitewash the immeasurable game-changing contribution that Leo [Fender] and his team made to the entire industry that all of us have built so much of our success and careers around.”

Cole also expressed regret that the cease-and-desist orders issued by Fender included a clause threatening inventory destruction for any rival manufacturer proven to be infringing on the Stratocaster design.

“Our preference is practical, reasonable solutions,” Cole stated. “Design modifications where needed, generous transition periods to sell through existing inventory.

“No inventory destruction. Those comments were unfortunate. We are not asking anyone to destroy inventory,” Cole asserts. “No immediate financial demands. This is a work in progress.”

He concluded: “Fender has no intention of going after artists, players, collectors, or anyone who simply loves to make music. To the contrary, we are protecting those players who play Fender, who buy Fender, who love Fender, who collect Fender, and who continue to invest in Fender.”

EarthQuaker Devices has unveiled an all-new version of its cult classic Life Pedal, offering the Sunn O))) signature octave fuzz and boost pedal in a more compact housing, and adding it to the production lineup for good.

That’s right. No more searching on the resale market for one of the original three variants, the HalfLife is officially part of the EQD lineup for good, and EarthQuaker Devices Founder and President Jamie Stillman has even made a few refinements to the pedal that has become the must-have stompbox for fans of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s electric guitar tone.

As before, you have a fuzz/distortion circuit with a blendable analogue octave-up effect and a a discrete MOSFET-driven clean boost for smashing the front end of your guitar amp – “harmonic saturation and feedback bliss” await you.

Again, you can use these effects independently. There are switchable op-amp, asymmetric and symmetric clipping modes, too. For many metal guitar players – certainly those who don’t have the space or budget to amass Sunn O)))’s formidable backline – this is the ultimate doom pedal. But the HalfLife has a refined octave effect; Stillman’s modifications should make it more noticeable without losing any low end frequencies.

The circuit has been reworked; one of the reasons the original Life Pedals were limited run was because EQD was making them with NOS components. Here, we have modern components and – touch wood – a steady supply of them.

And the HalfLife is just that; it’s approximately half the size of the Life Pedals. Owing to this, you cannot switch the octave and fuzz separately as you could on the originals. But EQD says the control surface is more intuitive now that the Amplitude and Octave knobs have swapped places.

There were many signs that EQD’s Life Pedal was a success. Firstly, it sold out immediately. Secondly, it was not just being used by drone and doom guitarists. Musicians were using it on bass guitar, with synthesizers, and it became a staple in studios.

It is also EQD’s most-cloned pedal. The general public were not slow in letting EQD know that they wanted more of them. “At one point I felt like people were genuinely angry that we didn’t make more,” recalls Stillman.

What players were jonesing for was something quite different. The original Sunn O))) Life Pedal was designed to recreate O’Malley and Anderson’s front-end signal chain when they were tracking Life Metal under the auspices of the late, great Steve Albini.

The fuzz is inspired by pure stompbox unobtanium, rare circuits from vintage Japanese Shin-Ei FY2 and FY6 units. This then is fed into a “brutal take” on a Rat-style distortion.

Thereafter you have the boost, and on your pedalboard, the means to level the first few rows. You can add an expression pedal to control the octave. You can blend the octave effect to taste.

As per all EQD pedals, the HalfLife is made in Akron, OH. It has a lifetime warranty, and ships with EQD’s Flexi-Switch Technology.

“I’m ecstatic for the continuation of this LIFE-affirming collaboration with EarthQuaker Devices,” says Anderson. “May the sounds you create from the HalfLife be as deep as the forests and massive as the mountains.”

O’Malley says the pedal is steeped in Sunn O)))’s audio and visual aesthetic preoccupations, and urges those who add one to their ‘board to “enjoy this filthy pleasure”.

And you can do just that now. The HalfLife Octave Distortion + Booster is available now, priced £265/$259. Head over to EarthQuaker Devices for more.

How Tony Iommi got his electric guitar tone in Black Sabbath is the stuff of legend. It is the origin stories of origin stories.

There was the brutal machining injury to his fretting hand, requiring the use of thimbles to play again. If Django Reinhardt was an inspiration, the determination to continue came from within. Iommi sized down his electric guitar strings, mixing them with super-light banjo strings to go easier on his fingers. He would arrive at his downtuning epiphany soon enough...

Initially, Iommi played a Fender Strat. He had tracked Wicked World with one before it crapped out and he switched to the SG. Happenstance, a quirk of fate, and lo, Iommi would go on to become one of the most famous SG players.

Like most players, Iommi was an early adopter of Marshall amps. But a local amp builder by the name of Lyndon Laney made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. There began a lifelong collaboration and lifelong friendship until Laney’s passing in April 2026.

“I think I was using Marshall early on, and then Laney on the first album, but when we first wrote [Black Sabbath] songs I was using a Marshall 50-watt,” Iommi told MusicRadar in 2010. “I switched to Laney because they started up around the same time as us and they’re a Birmingham company. To be honest, they offered to give us all this gear when nobody else did. What do you say to that? ‘OK!’ So I used them.”

He had found the Gibson SG. He had found a way of playing that circumvented his injury. He now had the amp. What tied it all together was a piece of kit he was introduced to in 1968, the year before Black Sabbath formed, when he was cutting his teeth in Mythology. A drugs bust over some hashish in their practice space brought fines upon on Mythology. The band soon split.

We have to remember that this was a different time. When you went into a guitar store, there was no pedal cabinet. Okay, you might have been able to pick up a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone, but most players faced the similar conundrum; if you wanted distortion, you got it the old-fashioned way, you turned your amp up.

But someone turned Iommi onto a unit that sat on top of your amplifier and worked some magic with it. Enter, the Dallas Rangemaster…

“When I lived in Cumberland, when we did the Mythology thing, there was a guy up there and I used to use his treble booster called a [Dallas] Rangemaster to give my sound a bit more oomph,” recalled Iommi. “A guy from another band up there said, ‘I can make that sound better for you’. So he took it off me and brought it back the next day.”

This was a febrile era for homespun guitar electronics. If something didn’t sound quite right, there was always someone who had a soldering iron, a handful of spare transistors and capacitors, and some ideas on how the circuit could be improved.

In this case, Iommi had the guitarist of Spooky Tooth, Luther Grosvenor, on hand to give him exactly what he needed. It worked gangbusters with his Laney tube amp, and better still, no one had one like it.

“I don’t know what he did to it, but it was really good,” said Iommi. “I used that treble booster on all the early Sabbath albums and put it into the Laney because it boosted the input and gave it the overdrive I was looking for, which amps in the early days didn’t have.”

Other gizmos would enter the picture. In 1970, when he tracked the solo to Paranoid under the watchful eye of producer Rodger Bain, Iommi applied a ring modulator to the solo. Iommi would become a fan of the Tychobrahe Parapedal wah pedal. His touring rig grew, and for the post-reunion Sabbath shows it is monstrous, controlled by a custom Pete Cornish routing and control unit. But this this modded Range Master was the secret sauce to Iommi’s sound.

Not everyone appreciated it. Iommi’s good friend Brian May of Queen also used the Rangemaster, having watched Rory Gallagher use one. He understood its appeal and urged Iommi to stick with it even if other people in the band and crew would complain about its eccentricities. It wasn’t unknown for the Rangemaster to have a Spinal Tap air base moment onstage.

“I used to rely on Brian a lot because I’d constantly have problems with people saying there was too much interference coming through my booster,” said Iommi, speaking to Guitar World in 2024. “I’d have to explain, ‘I know, but that’s part of my sound!’ In them days, you’d pick up bloody taxis and everything. There was no isolation. Brian would back me up and say, ‘That’s the sound – don’t change it.’

“Sometimes you’d get some boffin come along telling me, ‘I can get rid of that for you,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, can you?’ But it would always change the sound and I didn’t want my sound to change. The only person who understood how I felt in those days was Brian, because he had the same problem. We both had a bit of noise but were ultimately getting the sound we wanted.”

Iommi used that same modded Rangemaster right up into the Heaven And Hell era, when Iommi started experimenting with Marshalls in his rig, with the late John ‘Dawk’ Stillwell working on his amps.

Stillwell famously designed Joey DeMaio of Manowar’s bass guitar, and had worked with Ronnie James Dio in his Elf days before doing jobs for Rainbow and Deep Purple.

Stillwell knew his stuff but made a grave mistake with Iommi’s rig.

“I used that treble booster up until 1979 when I had a guy come in to build me some Marshalls,” said Iommi, in his 2010 MusicRadar interview. “They gave me a whole stack of Marshalls and this guy came in and rebuilt them. In the meantime, while he was building these things, he threw my treble booster away. I didn’t know until it came to the time when I was looking for it and he said, ‘Oh that? I threw it away. It was crap.’”

Iommi was devasted.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve never seen it from that day on and my amps didn’t sound right without it.”

There are no shortage of treble booster clones. In 2001, Analog Man’s Mike Piera sent Iommi the company’s first Beano Boost. Iommi’s signature Laney amps have their own boost section.

But the Rangemaster behind Iommi’s Black Sabbath tone has long been consigned to landfill, and only one man knows the real secret of what went in that Dallas Rangemaster all those years ago…