Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder says he practices the Hotel California solo every night before stepping out on stage.

The 78-year-old left the Eagles in 2001, but hasn’t left the track he co-wrote with Don Henley and Glenn Frey behind him. He says that nailing the iconic guitar solo, as it is on the record, every night is an obligation to his fans.

“I’ve played it so many times,” he tells Ultimate Classic Rock. He played it “hundreds of times” with the Eagles, and has always included it in his solo shows, his trademark white Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck in hand. He never takes it for granted.

“The one thing I do at every show, before I go on stage, is work on Hotel California, because I don’t want to disappoint anybody,” he explains. “Everybody knows every note in that solo, and I’m afraid if I started jamming on it people would go, ‘What is he doing? That’s wrong! That’s not the solo! Is he having a moment? Or maybe he’s just too old to remember it?’”

That’s an understandable concern. With the solo rightly regarded as one of the best, he understands its appeal is just as big as it was half a century ago. Fans are paying big money to hear the track live.

“I think people want to hear it as they remember it from 50 years ago,” Felder adds. “So I do my best to play that, and it really takes the most amount of intense concentration to execute that solo over and over. You never want to just go on autopilot with it.”

He’s also jokingly blamed “lugging that beast [double-neck] around for the last 50 years,” as the reason for his back problems. Angine de Poitrine, take note.

Chris Holt is the Eagles' latest guitar recruit and has called trading solos with Joe Walsh on Hotel California a “terrifying” experience.

The 1976 track centers on its elongated guitar solo, and though it is now considered a masterpiece, its composition relied on a heavy dose of luck and vision. There were some strange gear picks behind the scenes, too.

Keith Urban’s guitar, Clarence, has been a core part of the multi-decade career. The 1989 Fender 40th Anniversary Telecaster is now road-worn and battered, but still holds a special place in his heart – and his touring arsenal – because it harks back to a time when Urban, as an aspiring country star, was trying to make it in the States.

“Clarence would have to be the moment that a Telecaster really grabbed my attention,” he tells Fender.

“Clarence came about from my very first trip to America, which was in 1989. My manager at the time and I were coming to Nashville to bring my really crappy demo tape over to anybody who'd listen to it.”

During this grueling trip, which also required Urban and his manager to attend a music seminar in New York, the guitarist took the opportunity to visit the mecca of guitar stores: Manny's Music.

The iconic shop on 48th Street was in business for over seven decades and saw its fair share of stars or would-be stars pop in to acquire their dream guitars – including Urban.

“I got in a cab and went to Manny's. I was hoping to find a really good Tele. That was kind of the goal,” he continues.

“I guess because this [referring to Clarence] had just come out that year, for the 40th anniversary of [the] Tele, it was in a glass case right near the entrance when you walked right in. Talk about getting your attention!”

Urban admits he was immediately “obsessed.” He was already trying to figure out a way to buy it.

“So this guy came over, and he says, ‘Can I help you?’ And I go, ‘Ah, can I play that guitar?’ And he condescendingly looks at me, and he goes, ‘Take your ring off. You got a belt. Take your belt buckle off.’ It was like take off everything that could scratch the Mona Lisa,” he adds with a laugh. “And he pulled it out, and I played it, and it was just like it was butter.”

However, Urban quickly realized that the guitar was way out of his budget – costing a cool 2,300 bucks. But, as luck would have it, Urban had done some production work back in Australia which he hadn’t yet been paid for.

“My manager was managing him [the other artist],” he explains. “I produced the whole album, and I guess my manager was trying to figure out how to pay me for producing the record.

“So he basically went, ‘Oh, what about I give you that guitar for producing the record?’ I went, ‘Perfect.’ So that became my payment for producing this guy's record. Went back, bought it. The best feeling ever is going back to a snarky sales guy and going, ‘I'll buy that guitar.’”

And it was definitely worth the investment. As Urban relates, when he was crafting his self-titled debut record the next year, he used Clarence on every single track. However, he wasn’t as keen to take it out on the road with him…

“To me, it was just too beautiful and priceless and gorgeous and expensive,” he says. “I kept this under my bed, and I'd pull it out in a nice tweed case. I'd get the guitar out, and I'd play it and play it and play it, and I'd be like, ‘Oh man, wish I could take this on tour.’

“Then one day I was like, ‘What are you doing? It's your guitar, man. Just fricking take this one.’ And I took it out, and I think within a night or two, it fell off the stand and got a chip somewhere. I was like, ‘Ah, gloves are off, road guitar.’ And it just became my number one.”

If you’re wondering why he christened it Clarence, well, it’s got nothing to do with Leo Fender, whose full name was Clarence Leonidas Fender.

“The reason I called it Clarence was from It's a Wonderful Life – the Christmas movie, and there's a scene where Jimmy Stewart is going to jump off the bridge, and then this angel appears, and the angel's name is Clarence,” Urban relates.

“In a kind of reverse way of looking at that story, what Clarence says to Jimmy is, ‘I'll show you what life would have been like if you hadn't existed,’ and it was just chaos. And I thought, ‘That's what my life would have been if this guitar hadn't existed.’”

Prior to embarking on an unplugged tour, Cardinal Black guitarist Chris Buck decided he needed a really good acoustic guitar. He chose a lovely used Atkin OM37, but there was one slight hitch: it needed a pickup system. After doing some research, Chris decided on LR Baggs HiFi Duet and asked me to fit it for him.

Although some of the procedures are specific to LR Baggs, much of the work required applies to acoustic pickup systems in general. The HiFi Duet comprises two pickups and a small electret microphone, all of which attach to the bridge plate. There’s also a control unit with an internal preamp and an output socket that doubles as a strap button.

Holey Moley

The scariest procedure in most acoustic pickup system installations is making and/or widening holes in the body.

The first hole I’m referring to is the one that often needs to be drilled through one end of the saddle slot to install an under-saddle piezo pickup. Thankfully, there’s no need to do so with this system, but some under-saddle pickups require an angled hole and care must be taken not to drill through the X-brace.

Most pickup systems have the output socket mounted through the tailblock and that usually means widening the strap button hole to around 12.5mm or ½ inch. Loading a ½-inch bit into your drill and just going at it is dangerous because the bit will most likely bounce around before it gets a grip and chip the finish.

Granted, the Atkin is reliced and that takes some pressure off, but I’m sure all but the most ardent anti-relicers can agree there’s a difference between tasteful ageing and damage.

To avoid the latter, my advice is to use a step cutter because they’re easy to get hold of, inexpensive and ideal for the job. I bought my first set from the ‘middle of Lidl’ several years ago and they’re still going strong.

The existing strap-button hole will help to guide the step cutter and the hole should get incrementally wider while retaining a crisp edge.

Once the step cutter has opened up the outer part of the hole to the required diameter, I swap over to a regular drill bit of the same diameter to continue through the tail block. If you can get your arm inside, try pressing a scrap chunk of wood up against the tailblock to minimise tear out and don’t forget to vacuum out any debris.

LR Baggs suggests fitting the output socket assembly after installing the pickups and before the microphone. Given all the messing around inside the body needed to install the socket, I decided to fit it first, rather than risk knocking the pickups off the bridge plate.

The entire socket assembly is threaded and a cover screws onto the inside end to protect the solder joints. A nut fixes it in place, and both can be adjusted to match the depth of any tail block so that about a millimetre of the wider threaded section protrudes outside the body.

It may take a few attempts to get it just right, but you can make things simpler by placing a long screwdriver or a piece of dowel through the hole that’s thin enough to enter the socket.

You can use this to guide the socket assembly through the tailblock hole and slip over the first washer with the wider aperture followed by the second one, which goes over the narrower threaded section.

The small nut goes on next and, once it’s finger tight, you can push an Allen wrench through the holes in the narrow threaded section to prevent the assembly from turning as you fully tighten the nut. Lastly, the outer collar/strap button is screwed on to cover the small nut and washers.

Fixing The Bug

LR Baggs specifies a minimum ¾-inch of bridge plate in front of the bridge pins for mounting the sensors. I used my phone camera to look inside the Atkin’s body and found there was just enough space to mount the pickups. After ensuring the surface was smooth and free from glue, I gave it a wipe down with isopropyl alcohol as instructed.

Speaking of instructions, none are included with the product, but you can scan a printed QR code and follow the link to a video demo explaining the installation procedure. Like other LR Baggs pickup systems, the HiFi Duet comes with a jig for aligning and installing the pickups.

This comprises a clear Perspex plate and two pairs of rods. Each pair of rods has a different diameter and you should choose the pair that is closest in diameter to your guitar’s pin holes. The rods mount onto the plate and can be adjusted to align with the outer pin holes before you tighten them up.

The short end of the rods are placed through the outer pin holes, and the pickup positions should be aligned with the saddle with the leadout wires running between the top E and B pins and the low E and A pins. They are then temporarily fixed to the Perspex plate using small sticky pads that are stuck over the LR Baggs logo.

If you’re feeling confident, you can peel off the adhesive pad coverings and go ahead with the installation. I chose to perform a dry run before exposing the adhesive to assess the difficulty of getting the rods to go through the pin holes. It turned out to be fairly easy and I just went ahead with the installation.

After pressing the pickups firmly against the bridge plate, the alignment jig can be pulled clear leaving the pickups in situ.

Power Stations

It’s suggested that this is a good juncture to test that everything is working before installing the microphone. In order to do that, the pickups must be connected to the control unit and the battery pouch must be installed so the system can be powered up.

To make battery changes easier, the pouch is secured by Velcro so it can be taken in and out. The conventional location is up against the neck block, but you should ensure that the pouch doesn’t obstruct truss rod access. For this guitar, I decided to put the pouch in sideways, rather than upright.

The control unit has a moulded notch to clear any braces placed in the vicinity of the soundhole. If the braces are unusually thick, it may prevent the control unit from attaching firmly, so you need to find out if it will fit and identify the best position. I had no problems finding a workable location and I used low-tack masking tape for a visual reference.

After connecting the battery, pickup and output wires, I peeled off the adhesive pad coverings and stuck the control unit under the soundboard. I put the strings back on the guitar, tested it through an amplifier and everything worked as it should with an even string-to-string balance and a strong output level. The strings were then removed once again to install the microphone.

Final Hook Up

Installing the microphone is done by feel, rather than jig. It’s positioned between the two pickups, and the leadout wire passes between the D and G bridge pins. When positioning it, try to leave sufficient space for the ball-ends of the strings. The microphone cable must also be connected to the control unit by feel, but again it’s not tricky at all.

The final part of the installation involves tidying up all the cables that are loose inside the body. Pliable metal hooks with adhesive pads are provided and LR Baggs is very generous with both the hooks and spare adhesive pads.

In fact, if you store all the spares in the box, you’ll be able to transplant the entire pickup system to another guitar if you ever decide to. I have also seen identical metal hooks at B&Q if you need more.

I prefer to partially pre-bend the hooks prior to installation because it makes it easier to gauge when the wires are in position. After all, this is yet another part of the installation that is done by feel. I placed the first hook just behind the bridge plate and used it to secure the pickup and microphone wires.

Although some fix the hooks to the soundboard itself, I prefer to keep that to a minimum. Instead, I attach the remaining hooks to the side just under the kerfing, with the second hook placed as far inside the body as I could reach to retain the output wire.

The third hook was positioned on the bridge side of the waist to grab the pickup, microphone and output wires, with a fourth on the other side of the waist. The object of the exercise is to ensure that there are no loose cables inside the body that can rattle about and create unwanted noises.

Plug & Play

When testing the sensors without the microphone installed, I had noticed that I was still getting signal when the mixer control was fully set to ‘Mic’.

That’s because the mixer also acts like a crossover to attenuate the pickup’s highs while retaining some of the low-frequency content to beef up the tone in microphone mode.

The mic level control provides additional tone shaping and, overall, the system delivers a dynamic and natural acoustic tone that’s pleasingly devoid of piezo quack.

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

Las Vegas is set to play host to the fourth Gibson Garage location. It will be the fourth Garage in total, and the third on US soil.

The original Gibson Garage launched in Nashville in 2023. A London location – the first overseas – arrived in 2024. As recently as last month, Gibson announced the opening date for a Miami store.

Now, “a new Gibson Experience” will hit the Las Vegas Strip in 2027. And it will give players the chance to make a whole different kind of drunken decision on the strip. Who needs an intoxicated wedding when you can wake up next to a five-figure Murphy Lab Les Paul?

The fourth Garage will be located at Miracle Mile Shops on the Las Vegas Strip, and it continues the firm’s brick-and-mortar expansion plans. It will feature “rare and collectible instruments, immersive artist experiences, and the first-ever Les Paul ’59 Experience.” We're not quite sure what that means, but color us intrigued.

Spanning 9,000 square feet, Gibson Garage Las Vegas has been dubbed Gibson’s “boldest” yet. It will house brands from across the growing Gibson family, including Gibson, Epiphone, and Kramer, as well as the amplifier brand Mesa/Boogie, Maestro, and KRK.

Visitors will be able to pick up and play gear from across the store and experience its Made to Measure and Custom Shop builds up close. Its centerpiece, however, will be a special Acoustic Murphy Lab Collection Room to showcase its uncanny aging process.

“Las Vegas is one of the most exciting entertainment destinations in the world, and the Gibson Garage Las Vegas will be designed to meet that energy at full volume,” says Anne Rohosy, Interim CEO of Gibson.

“This will be much more than a place to buy a guitar – it will be a place to play, discover, perform, connect and experience the Gibson legacy in a way that can only happen in Las Vegas.

“Building on what we’ve created in Nashville, London and Miami, Gibson Garage Las Vegas will take experiential retail, artist culture and music to an entirely new level.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome Gibson Garage Las Vegas to Miracle Mile Shops,” adds Robert Buchanan, Vice President and General Manager of Miracle Mile Shops. “Gibson is one of those brands that needs no introduction, and what they’re bringing to Las Vegas is more than a store.”

The move will see it neighbor Planet Hollywood and several boutique clothing and jewelry stores.

If Billy Gibbons and his near-mythic Pearly Gates Les Paul aren’t the star attraction of its opening night, a trick has been well and truly missed.

The rapid expansion of Gibson’s Garage locations, coming so soon after the announcement of Miami’s launch, signals the firm’s commitment to embedding itself in local communities and ensuring its physical retail presence.

Bob Dylan has brought an end to his hectic US tour by recruiting one final guitarist to his ever-changing live lineup: blues legend Jimmie Vaughan.

Dylan finished his tour with one more guitar player rotation after a dizzying few months that have seen him flanked by five different foils.

The folk legend has been keeping the guitar community on its toes with his appointments. One of the world’s greatest jazz players, Julian Lage, was the first surprise addition. Lage quietly stepped into the shoes of outgoing Doug Lancio, who first joined in 2021.

Three weeks later, there were two more stealth recruits in Jad Tariq and Joel Patterson. Fans have speculated that Tariq was filling in for Lage, whose solo commitments prevented him from playing certain dates with Dylan.

Vaughan, brother of the late blues great Stevie Ray, has a deep-rooted relationship with Dylan. He supported him on a 2006 tour and has since shared the stage with him in 2024, replacing Lancio for nine songs in Austin, Texas.

Performing at the Ascend Federal Credit Union Amphitheater in Nashville, Tennessee on August 1, opening act Vaughan reemerged for three songs during Dylan’s set. He first played False Prophet, and a cover of Bo Diddley’s I Can Tell, before returning for the penultimate track, Goodbye Jimmy Reed.

According to Dylan superfan Henry Bernstein’s review of the evening, Vaughan “started off quiet but then got more and more brave with his solos.”

He adds that, during False Prophet, “Jimmie got very close to Bob, was playing to him and Bob was smiling, laughing and actually singing some pointed lyrics at Jimmie.”

This final twist in the tail doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding why Dylan is going through so many guitarists, but the 85-year-old is proving to be full of surprises nevertheless.

Interestingly, Lage had spoken to Guitar World just weeks before his first show with Dylan, but didn’t hint at what was on his horizon. He did, though, talk about his ‘pinch me’ moment of sharing a stage with Derek Trucks.

Dylan is back on the road in Europe in October, November, and December. Who knows who’ll be flanking him across the tour. Rest assured, Guitar World will be keeping a beady eye on proceedings.

A young folk guitarist has been praised by several guitar greats after posting an original song on Instagram.

16-year-old Todd Crozier, from Liverpool, England, is winning the hearts of many on social media. His nostalgia-tinged piece, Horned Creature, has received over 230,000 likes since it was posted last week.

Steve Vai, Dave Navarro, and Chimp Spanner are among those waxing lyrical about his talents. Queens of the Stone Age, Vernon Reid, and H.E.R. have also showered Crozier with likes and comments.

Everyone is praising the teenager for his chops and lyricism that extend far beyond his years.

“You obviously have what it takes,” Vai writes. “Now, go boy go!”

Dave Navarro adds: “Count me in as a new massive fan! You are simply amazing, and in this day and age, with the state of the music business, it’s such a refreshing thing to hear something so new, vulnerable, and dissonant. I wish you all the luck in the world, buddy.”

He’s also garnered comments from Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, while the official QOTSA account went as far as to say: “It’s an honor to listen to you free yourself from the difficulties of this life. My deepest respects.”

Horned Creature is not yet on streaming platforms, but we expect it to land in the near future as Crozier’s music continues to draw eyes and ears. He is a raw talent; it’s easy to be swept into the emotionally potent atmosphere of his music.

As another user says, Crozier feels like an old soul in a young body. His future is bright, and the reaction to his vulnerable songwriting online is nothing short of heartwarming. Remember the name.

In related news, Nuno Bettencourt has been left spellbound by another young guitar prodigy on Instagram. Elsewhere, Bay Melnick Virgolino has followed up his stellar America’s Got Talent showing by jamming with Slash and Joe Bonamassa, and playing Jimmy Fallon with Phoebe Bridgers.

It’s a dreary April afternoon, and we’re getting ready to talk to slacker indie hero Kurt Vile about his new record, Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me. The lead single, Chance to Bleed, begs to be blared from a car stereo at dusk on a humid August night.

Here in Michigan, a few 70-degree days in March had us hopeful we could place ourselves in Vile’s snapshot of Philly summers by taking the call from our back porch. But with grey skies and temperatures back in the mid-40s, we opt for the living room – a space mostly commandeered by this writer’s one-year-old daughter.

As we clear the books and toys she’s scattered across the floor to make room to move around during the call, we’re reminded of how often Vile has written about his own daughters.

“Girls are the sweetest and the best,” he says. “As soon as the kid shows up, life is completely changed. It’s psychedelic and beautiful, because that kid is part of you. They go through all the phases that you went through, and you watch through them.”

As we pace up and down our living room, we talk gear – we had to ask about the Gretsch Tennessean he picked up from Travis Good of the Sadies – but the conversation keeps circling back to a word Vile uses more than once to describe the record – “homespun.”

Much of it was written and recorded after dark in his basement studio, when he could lean into what he calls the natural cycle of life – catching up with himself and creating the loose, sprawling music he’s known for. That balance between family life and the habits of the past shows up in the lyrics, too.

On Zoom 97, you sing about trading substances for time with your girls. Are you sober?

I quit drinking in 2018. Alcohol is a tough one. You think it’s casual – which it is, because it’s ingrained in us – but before you know it, that’s kind of the nastiest one.

That concept – “my baby girls, they keep me high. Ain’t on no trips, no LSD, pure love drug for me” – it’s true. I definitely don’t party the way I used to, but I’m not straight edge. I like weed, probably because it makes me hear music like I was in high school. I don’t do it all the time, but it’s a nice vacation for anyone who plays music.

How do you come up with lyrics?

Sometimes the lyrics come out fast, but obviously it’s my trade. Zoom 97 is one I’m really proud of, because that one is actually the first song we got for this album that I knew was a quality song. I had that Gold Tone mandolin riff on a recorder. The people at Gold Tone down in Florida, they’ve hooked me up a few times. They gave me this little, tiny guitar. It sounds like a mandolin, but it’s just six strings.

Anyway, it was summertime. My new bandmate, Matt [Jugenheimer], was there – there’s always got to be something new to keep you going, or a new guy in the fold – and I just heard [the riff] back. I had some melody in there, but then I didn’t have the words. I just said, “I know this is catchy; let’s add synth here.”

And then, literally, just because I was there and because the mics were on, I sat out back and wrote the lyrics. They came to me because I was there to catch them. It turned out cool. If my brain is open, one thing leads to another once I start writing.

What do you do to try to get your brain open?

Ideally, you want to be present. There are so many different ways to write a song, and there’s no rules. In the old days, I’d think about it too much. “Why am I not writing a song?” You can’t force anything.

What about when you’re in the middle of recording and have to pick up the kids?

Yeah, that happens. You get used to that. You’ve got to embrace that. I’ve always been a nighttime man. After a certain point, everybody’s asleep, and then you’ve got the whole nighttime to yourself. But the reality is that during the day, ideas come.

It might be fragmentary. There are times in your life where you’ve got to think ahead or you’re just tired. In those interruptions, you get ideas from being in flux.

You’re at a point in your career where some of your heroes have become your collaborators. What’s it like to make that transition from fan to peer?

I’m definitely a shy person, so whenever I meet somebody at first, I’m nervous. I can’t help it, but you’ve got to make yourself uncomfortable. It’s similar to playing live; you’ve got to fuck up in front of lots of people to get it right. You’ve just gotta be a sponge – take it in and try to be chill.

What was it like recording with John Prine?

John came into the studio last minute. I know people that work for his label and I had played with him on stage enough times. He heard my version of Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, and I knew he liked it. Over time, he would remember who I was.

When he showed up at the studio, he was so nice. He said, “You know, I’d love to sing with you, Kurt,” and we recorded that song [How Lucky from 2020’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV EP] in two takes. That’s the way they do it over there in Nashville. It was unbelievable.

How did you meet Neil Young?

I finally did see Neil up in Toronto with my friend Travis from the Sadies, who’s one of my favorite guitar players of all time, and a good friend of mine. Neil loves Travis. Travis was the first person I ever was standing next to who knew me while Neil was around and actually said, “This is Kurt.”

The beauty of Neil is he’s 100 percent his own world. He’s got friends, but he’s just in his own realm. So you just say hi when you can, and you assume he won’t remember who you are until maybe one day he does. You see Neil on stage – he’s the same Neil Young he ever was.

Is that Travis’ Gretsch Tennessean you’re playing on the new record?

Yeah, and if you ever see him play, he just shreds so hard. When you watch him play, it’s unreal. If you look at the fretboard of this guitar, it’s just so worn in from his playing. He sat in when we played Toronto and lent me the guitar to see if I wanted to buy it. I immediately laid down something with the band.

Some guitars just sound and feel great and play themselves. It’s a genuinely great guitar. I just kept playing it. It sounds so good in the studio. It’s got really hot pickups. It’s the lead guitar on Zoom 97, 99th Song and Every Time I Look at You. It really cuts through.

Are you bringing it out on the road?

Yeah, I’ve started bringing it on the road. One of my favorite live guitars – I’m not sure if it made the record – is a sunburst 1965 Jazzmaster that J Mascis put into my hands when I was working on his record up in Massachusetts. He went to some store and the guy was trying to peddle this Jazzmaster, and J has so many of ’em.

He actually showed up at J’s studio and put it in my hands, which was the coolest part of all. I have reissue Jazzmasters that are made to seem vintage. I got them from Fender and I love them – but to have an old one is… it really plays. That was another example of a guitar that plays itself.

As far as guitars on the record that I played, shit, there were so many. I’m spacin’! [Laughs] There’s another Gretsch, an orange 6120. That’s my favorite lead guitar that I’ve played. I was playing the Travis guitar nonstop, but I wasn’t changing the strings, so they were dead.

Rob Schnapf came down to my studio and put the orange on the lead guitar in 99 bpm because the strings on the Tennessean were so dead, and he was right. The lead guitars really cut through and shine. We’ve since changed the strings on the Travis guitar.

Do you prefer the sound of dead strings?

I do. I have this Gibson J-45 that was my main acoustic at the start of the Watch My Moves tour. We had a new guitar tech, and the first thing he did – I wasn’t thinking about it – but the first thing he did on the first day was cut all the strings off.

It was devastating. [Laughs] Rob Schnapf is all about that too; I sort of learned that about him. New strings take a while to break in, especially when you’re playing live. When you’ve got to change the acoustic strings, you’re gonna have a weird show at first. They just sound so different, like bells or something.

What about practice? What does your practice routine look like?

I kind of just pick up and play whenever I want when I’m feeling psychedelic. Lately, I feel weird because I haven’t, but then you just get a show and you’re forced to play again, and your fingers get blistery.

That’s all part of it. It’s interesting now, because I have a career, there’s going to be a moment where all of a sudden I have to play. My music’s not like Led Zeppelin or anything too technical. In some ways, my songs feel a little more simple all the time, so I don’t sweat it.

What’s on the horizon?

I put everything into this record. It did take a lot out of me by the end. They always do. It’s my most organic record. It was homespun. I worked with other studios, people I really liked, who similarly work in an organic way.

I’ll definitely try to make other records, but I do feel in another way that this might be my last conventional record for a long time, and I’ll just get weird for a while. But yeah, you never know.

• Philadelphia Has Been Good to Me is out now via Verve Forecast.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

The JHS-3 Series has been going strong for a while now and was recently bolstered by the release of three new effects in the form of a bit crusher, glitch delay, and oil can delay. Today’s focus is an older pedal which has become a staple on the ‘boards of players who only need a single reverb pedal tone: the JHS 3-Series Reverb.

Recently, some of my colleagues on the Guitar World team decided to pit all of the best reverb pedals against one another in a YouTube video (linked below). As well as testing those properly expensive workstations containing myriad reverb algorithms and impulse responses, we had to look at those at the other end of the spectrum. There’s all manner of cheap reverb pedals available these days, and the 3 Series Reverb is one of the cheapest out there at just $99.

The 3-Series pedals all feature the exact same chassis and lineup of 3 controls plus a toggle switch. On this pedal, we have a verb control, an EQ knob, and a decay control. The single switch is a pre-delay, which slightly delays the time it takes for the reverb to start by a few milliseconds, making the start of your notes much clearer.

It’s got a simple 1-in, 1-out connectivity via 1/4-inch connectors, and takes a 9V DC pedalboard power supply that draws 74mA. You can’t run it on a 9V battery, so pedal power is your only option here. And that’s your lot. It may not sound like much, but as we’ll find out, it’s very much a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Specs

• Launch price: $99 | £90 | €114
• Type: Digital reverb pedal
• Controls: Verb, EQ, decay, pre-delay
• Features: N/A
• Connectivity: 1 x 1/4-inch input, 1 x 1/4-inch output
• Bypass: True bypass
• Power: 9V DC, 74mA
• Dimensions: 112.27 x 60.45 x 30.99mm
• Weight: 0.46 lbs, 0.21 kg
• Options: N/A
• Contact: JHS

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

The chassis is very simple with its all-white build and plain black writing. It looks like those generic store-brand items you used to get in the 80s. All-white packaging and exactly what it does written on the tin or the carton in big, black, bold lettering. Some will love it. Those who like their unique-looking pedals with intricate artwork will likely hate it.

One thing I can say about it is that it certainly feels robust. Like those cans of generic pork & beans, this pedal would definitely survive an apocalypse with its die-cast aluminium construction. The powder-coated matte white finish is textured and feels durable enough to put up well with on-stage abuse.

The knobs are all firmly attached with a travel that’s not too soft or too firm. The pre-delay switch clicks satisfyingly into place, and the footswitch offers a similarly sturdy feel that leaves me in no doubt it can survive some serious stomping. It gives a satisfying click when you depress it, not the clacking sound of a super cheap pedal, but not a soft-touch, silent switch that you might find on something pricier.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★☆

Actually using the 3-Series Reverb is a doddle, even if it’s your first reverb pedal. The verb control dictates how much of the reverb you hear, while the EQ makes the reverb itself brighter when you turn to the right, or darker when you move it to the left. The decay control determines how long it takes for the reverb to stop reverberating. It doesn’t have spillover, so ambient users be wary: when you turn the pedal off, your reverb tails will cut off.

With just the three controls, it’s super easy to start dialing in tones, and I can’t see many struggling here. For complete beginners, it would be nice if it was clearer when the pre-delay is on or off. A new ear might be well-honed enough to understand what’s happening here, and the graphics don’t make it super clear. For clarity, putting the toggle switch in the up position engages the pre-delay.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Plugging in a Sire S7 HSS Strat-style guitar and running the pedal through the clean channel of my Orange Rocker 32 tube amp, I start with all of the controls at the 12 o’clock position, and the pre-delay switch set to off. As you might imagine, it’s quite a neutral reverb sound, present, but it doesn’t overwhelm your tone.

I’d describe it as a medium room setting, adding a nice tail to what I’m playing without completely masking the original note. Setting the EQ all the way to the right brightens the reverb up, making it a lot more present during my playing. Heading the other way darkens it, which has the same effect as pushing it back in the mix and making it more subtle.

With the reverb and decay settings on max, the tail takes a good 15 seconds to die off. It makes it great for those cavernous post-rock noodlings, although on this setting it drowns out your initial pick attack. Putting the decay back to the middle point and turning the verb all the way down, the pedal gives you complete zero. With the verb back up to 9 o’clock, it’s a very subtle room sound, great for adding a touch of life to the tone without it being obvious it’s there.

With the pre-delay engaged and the settings back at 12, the pedal delivers a very short reverb, almost delay-like in its quality. It’s subtle when I arpeggiate chords gently, but strike the strings hard, and it comes back at you like the reflection of a snare drum off the back wall at a live show.

The pre-delay makes things much more well-behaved with the verb and decay settings cranked, too. That milliseconds pause before the tail kicks in lets your notes cut through while still keeping those synth-like pads of the reverb tail undulating beneath your playing. It makes moody tremolo-picked guitar lines stand out much better, while still sounding like you’re playing them from a glacier cave.

Verdict

It’s hard to knock the JHS 3-Series Reverb when it’s so cheap and does its one job perfectly. I was surprised at how much variety of sound there is in it despite the simple design, and that’s exactly the thing that people will either love or hate about it. For beginners or those with simpler needs, this is a lot of pedal for just $99. It can go from barely there room sound to a drawn-out blooming reverberance, making it a very versatile option for those on a limited budget.

For more experienced players or those who love to endlessly tweak, you’ll probably run out of things to do with this pretty quickly. There’s no preset saving, no expression functionality, no MIDI, nor any of the other fancy features we often associate with a modern reverb pedal. If you’re gigging a covers band and need something that can play a lot of roles, this isn’t the reverb pedal for you.

Guitar World verdict: Simple to use, cheap, yet great quality, it’s easy to see the JHS 3-Series Reverb as one of the best budget reverb pedals going. It’s got a surprisingly big range despite the simple 3-knob layout, and the pre-delay function makes the really ambient stuff a lot more usable. Those after really tweakable delay sounds probably won’t find much here to love, but if you want a single reverb tone for your pedalboard that doesn’t cost much, this is a low-cost way to add it to your rig.

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Hands-on videos

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Another mainstream modeler is now offering native support for the fastest rising digital amp technology – and it could mark a watershed moment for the gear industry.

HeadRush has announced a major firmware update for its Prime, Core, and Flex Prime floorboard modelers, which now support direct integration with TONE3000 and Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) captures.

TONE3000 has revolutionized the modeler space over the past few years, having worked with engineer Steve Atkinson on the open-source AI NAM platform. Recently overhauled as the Architecture 2 tech, it has changed the way players access tones.

In practice, TONE3000 and NAM lets players create and share digital captures of amps, pedals, cabs, rigs, outboard gear, and more. And, because it’s open source, it’s completely free to use.

The movement has gained strong momentum recently. TONE3000 has steadily grown its industry partners, bringing NAM to a growing range of modelers, practice amps, and headphone amps.

The list includes the LAVA Studio Smart Amp, Blackstar Beam Solo, Blackstar Beam Mini, Valeton GP-50, NUX Amp Academy Stop, and more. HeadRush has now joined the lineup.

What’s even more significant in this particular case is that HeadRush’s pedals have become the first to allow players instant access to TONE3000 and NAM captures directly through the onboard touchscreen on the pedal, no computer connection required.

The opportunity this presents to the player shouldn't be understated. When TONE3000 announced the NAM Architecture 2 platform, it released a research paper that showed it beat the market’s biggest players in a blind-listening competition.

It quantitatively outperformed the likes of Neural DSP, Fender, Line 6, and IK Multimedia.

The fact that such cutting-edge tones can be accessed for free directly from a modeler of HeadRush’s cost and caliber (the $499 Flex Prime scored a near-perfect review from us), is a huge step towards the democratization of digital guitar tones.

Before, the perception was that premium digital tones had to come at a premium financial outlay, and that budget floorboards were objectively tonally inferior to the industry’s big guns.

That no longer seems to be the case. The HeadRush Flex Prime, for instance, costs under $500, and thanks to this new update, statistically proven market-leading tones are within reach.

“I'm very proud of the level of quality that NAM offers,” notes Atkinson. “Seeing HeadRush affirm this by bringing it to their product line is a win for open-source technology in the music industry and, ultimately, the artists that industry serves.”

The sky is the limit for TONE3000 and NAM. We fully expect more companies to offer direct integration in the near future. The market’s big guns will no doubt be looking over their shoulders at what’s happening here. Whether they too will hop on the trend remains to be seen.

In the meantime, head over to HeadRush and TONE3000 to find out more.’

What is it?

Relic’d guitars: you either love 'em or hate 'em. Most guitarists baulk at spending thousands on an electric guitar that looks like it’s already taken a beating, which is understandable, but paying less than $250? Well, maybe you don’t mind getting something that looks a little aged when it costs so little. The Harley Benton TE-62LA is exactly that, an inexpensive, relic’d guitar. What a world we live in.

It's part of the new Harley Benton Aged Series, which breaks down into two sub-lines: HA (Heavy Aged), and LA (Light Aged), the latter being the subject of this review.

Harley Benton’s budget-busting antics are nothing new to most guitar players; the brand, owned by Thomann, has made a serious dent in the affordable guitar market over the past ten years, and, as you may be aware, big players in the guitar game have started sit up and take notice.

Aided by cutting out the middleman and going straight to the manufacturer, the brand manages to deliver great-quality guitars at prices much lower than the competition. Thomann has marketed clever, realizing nobody wants a retailer’s name on their headstock, and HB has blossomed into a genuine brand-offering that’s reaching household status in the world of guitar.

The original Harley Benton TE-62 has some very favorable reviews online, and this guitar is similarly spec’d, but it’s not just the same instrument with aged hardware and a distressed look. It’s got an American alder body, with a caramelized Canadian maple neck and fretboard combination. It’s a ‘C’ profile, rather than the TE-62’s modern ‘D’, with both guitars featuring a more modern, 12-inch radius with 21 medium jumbo frets.

The electronics have changed too; previous models had Tesla single coils in the classic T-style lineup, but here we have Isola pickups. The controls are arranged in the typical lineup with a master volume and tone, as well as a three-way toggle switch for selecting pickup combinations. The bridge features three compensated brass saddles, with the classic ashtray-style layout, while at the other end are Kluson-style tuners, with the vintage tops to poke the end of your electric guitar strings through.

Specs

• Launch price: $238 | £214 | $249
• Made: N/A
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Selected American alder
• Neck: Vintage caramelized Canadian maple, C profile
• Fingerboard: Vintage caramelized Canadian maple, dot inlays, 12-inch (305mm) radius
• Scale length: 648mm (25.5")
• Nut/width: Graphite, 42mm (1.65")
• Frets: 21, premium nickel silver
• Hardware: B01 bridge with brass saddles, Kluson-style machine heads
• String spacing at bridge: 53.4mm
• Electrics: 1 Isola VT-TE-B Alnico 5 (bridge), 1 Isola VT-TE-CR-N Alnico 5 (neck), master volume and tone, 3-way pickup selector
• Weight: 3.2kg, 7.05 lbs
• Options: Heavy relic available
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Sea Foam Green (as reviewed), Lake Placid Blue
• Cases: Not included
• Contact: Harley Benton

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

Picking the guitar out of the box, it’s a bit lighter than I’d expect from an alder body, and taking it to my scales, it comes in at 3.2 kg. I have my own Mexican-made Telecaster with an alder body, and it’s much heavier than this one. Like a Formula 1 car, maybe taking the finish off really does save some weight.

The finish itself is poly, but it hasn’t been glossed over, which means it will age quicker with new scratches, scrapes and dents as you inevitably add them over time.

Up close, it’s pretty easy to tell that this isn’t genuine wear, but from further back you could definitely be fooled into thinking the guitar is much older than it actually is.

The aged hardware looks really good, with that yellowing of the pickguard and tarnished chrome of the bridge plate and tuners holding up even under close inspection. There are giveaways, though. The frets look brand new, as does the pickup selector and the bridge pickup. I doubt Harley Benton could have done these and kept it under $250 to be fair, but these details stand out more when the rest of the guitar looks well aged.

On the back of the neck, the wear looks almost genuine. I have a Squier Strat that's over 20 years old and has taken an absolute beating over the years. The neck on that is tarnished similarly to this. I will say the TE-62LA is a bit too uniform. Part of the aging is that guitarists tend to spend a lot of time in particular positions. The heaviest wear on my Squier is all around where you’d play open chords, and up near the 12th fret, as it’s the guitar I honed my chops on when I was first starting to play.

The fretboard wear does not look very good. It makes the guitar look like it’s only been used to play an open major D chord and its variants for 20 years. It’s too clean as well, and would look much better if it’d been dirtied up at the spots of wear so it looked more like it’d been made by sweaty hands. You’d think if a guitar was this worn at the top of the fretboard, it would have some wear elsewhere, too, so it feels a little out of place only being in one spot.

Despite the aged look, it’s a very solidly put-together instrument overall. There’s no movement in the neck pocket, the knobs and switches all feel well installed, and despite the artificially aged hardware, everything is neatly and tidily applied to the guitar.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Sitting down to play the guitar unplugged, I’m reminded that Harley Benton really has nailed the playability of its guitar necks. It’s something I’ve noticed on quite a few HB guitars I’ve reviewed over the past year, where the feel of the neck is just superb. I don’t need any warming up coming from my Mexican-made Telecaster, and the profile feels just as nice as that, despite the guitar costing significantly less.

The fretwork is neat, although I think this guitar could really benefit from some rounding off of the fret edges. It’s not sharp, but you can feel the frets as you move quickly up and down the neck. A little sanding would solve this quickly. The action is nice and low out of the box, measuring in at 1.5mm at the 12th fret with my finger on the 1st fret. You could get it touch lower and have a real speed machine in your hands.

It means whether I’m playing licks inspired by Don Rich or doing the simple, heavy riffs from my post-punk band, the guitar is supremely playable. It feels comfortable with open chords, and moving further up the neck, I’m easily able to lay down my favorite lead lines without any adjustment required. As a vintage-style guitar, there are only 21 frets, but the medium jumbo size feels nice to bend against, and there’s no noticeable scratchiness as I do.

As you might expect from a hard-tail T-style design, the tuning stability is impeccable. Despite some seriously rough playing, plenty of bends, and really thrashing it with my picking hand, I seldom have to retune throughout my playing. When I do have to, the tuners feel a little stiff, but they operate as normal without any slipping.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Sitting down with the guitar at my home studio desk and plugging into my audio interface, I load up the Neural DSP Tone King guitar plugin to see how the TE-62LA handles the clean tones. I’m immediately impressed by the bridge pickup on my standard clean sound with a dash of tremolo and a dollop of spring reverb. It’s nice and trebly without being overly harsh, and open chords sound really articulate across the strings.

Single-note licks have that classic twangy attack that’s sharp and dies off quickly, ideal for country or surf-inspired lead lines. It’s got a nice bite to it when you dig in, and really encapsulates that classic Tele sound well. Switching to the middle position and turning the tone knob down a touch gives a Strat-like tone perfect for surf-style tremolo picking.

The neck pickup on its own is a bit woolly with open chords. There’s a muffled feel to it that makes it a bit lifeless compared to the bridge position. On single notes, this isn’t so noticeable. It sounds a bit warmer here rather than dull, and it’s a similar feel with arpeggiated chords. With barre chords, the low end again feels dulled rather than warm.

Adding a simulated King of Tone and dialing up the gain on my amp sim, the neck pickup wooliness is amplified. Adding a little 1 kHz boost with an EQ plugin gives it a bit more clarity and bite, but as is, it’s noticeably dark and muddy sounding. When I switch to the middle position, it takes over the bridge pickup a bit more, overwhelming it with that wooliness that wasn’t so present when played clean.

The bridge position still sounds great with added gain though, aggressive without ever getting too harsh. When you get really far up the neck it can sound a touch ice-picky, but this is easily remedied by rolling back the tone knob a little. For power chords and lead lines, it’s really open and articulate, and stays that way when I try some open chords. It can handle punk, rock, blues, math-rock, and pretty much anything else I throw at it.

Verdict

I’ll be the first to admit relic'd guitars aren’t my thing, but this one is done pretty tastefully. For the untrained eye, it will definitely fool audience members into thinking it’s a guitar that’s much older than it actually is, although a close inspection will reveal some tell-tale signs. If relicing is your thing, this is a great example for not a lot of money, and you'll be able to add your own damage much quicker than you would with an unblemished, regular guitar finish.

Harley Benton has really nailed their neck profiles and overall feel, making the TE-62LA a brilliantly playable instrument. Honestly, it’s worth the entry price for that alone. Stick in a pair of better pickups, and you’d have yourself a gig-worthy guitar for less than $250. An absolute bargain in anyone’s book. It is a shame that the neck pickup underperforms, but the bridge pickup more than makes up for it.

Guitar World verdict: Relic’d guitars are polarizing, but aesthetics aside, the Harley Benton TE-62LA is an awesome guitar for the money. It plays fantastically well, feels really nicely put together, and that quick aging finish is a neat touch. It’s a little let down by the electronics, with the neck pickup being vastly inferior to the bridge, but this is expected at this price point.

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Harley Benton

Former Whitesnake guitarist Adrian Vandenberg has been forced to cancel his tour dates this year due to health issues that have left him unable to travel or perform.

The tour, dubbed My Whitesnake Years, was set to kick off today (August 3) in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

“Never in my roughly 60-year-long career as a touring/ gigging guitar player [have] I had to cancel a show or tour,” writes Vandenberg in a social media statement.

“Not even when in 1987 I had my face totally ripped open in an early morning traffic accident in New York, and I still played the show that evening because I absolutely did not want to miss playing a sold-out show at the legendary Madison Square Garden.”

However, Vandenberg has now been forced to cancel his upcoming tour, after being “strongly urged by the medical specialists involved to not do this upcoming USA tour at this point.

“Right now, it’d be just too short after a bacterial infection that invaded my body and that needs to get taken care of right away,” he details. “Those creepy bad boys need to get their treacherous asses kicked out of my body asap.”

Vandenberg goes on to reassure fans that he’s in “great, very capable, expert hands in the hospital, and things are fortunately moving in the right direction.”

According to the guitarist's statement, the tour is expected to be rescheduled for a later date, and he encouraged fans to visit his official website for the latest updates on the postponed tour.

Eric Johnson is a bona fide modern day guitar great, so every time he talks tone and technique, we listen.

In a new interview with Guitarist, the Stratocaster master offered some sage advice for players that feel “trapped in patterns”, and shared a valuable lesson in the quest to achieve total fretboard freedom.

“I think most guitar players, except maybe a few, are still addicted or somewhat trapped in patterns,” he reflects. “But I think the less you are, the better. We’re all trying to get out of that, to become more liquid, as it were, and just be able to just play melodically.”

For Johnson, the best way to break out of a rut and become a more fluid player is to learn the notes on the fingerboard off by heart. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s an exercise that will set you up for success.

“When I started playing guitar, I taught myself by sitting at the piano with the guitar in my hand and taking the notes and moving them over,” he remembers. “So what I had to do with this strange way of learning guitar was I had to learn all the notes on all the frets.

“I think that that helps – if you look at a string on a fret and you immediately know what note it is, you're not so bound by those patterns.

“Sometimes I do these classes, and one of the first things that I say is really paramount is to just sit down and to learn where, without thinking, you can look at any fret on your string and know what note it is.

“It is a daunting task, but it’s not undoable. It’s totally doable. And then once you get it, it’s like breathing. We don’t think about breathing, we just do it. And it really helps free you up, you know, and not be so stuck on the pattern thing like a time.”

Given Johnson’s voice on the guitar is defined by liquid-like melodicism and effortless phrasing, there’s a lot to take away from his guidance here. The ability to recall notes is a priceless ability that will make you both more responsive in improvisation, and more adept at connecting boxes across the neck – not that we’re thinking in patterns.

Like Johnson says, it's a daunting task, but fear not: we have a step-by-step deep dive into mastering the entire fretboard to help you.

And, for those who graduate from this particular lesson, Johnson is also an excellent case study in leveling up your soloing.

For more advanced tutorials, see GW’s lesson on how to create fluid streams of notes by combining economy picking with legato pentatonics, and Joe Bonamassa’s tips on connecting lead phrases like Eric Johnson.

The Smashing Pumpkins reunited with former bassist Melissa Auf der Maur during their Lollapalooza set this past weekend. It also marked their first performance at the festival since its traveling edition back in 1994.

Billy Corgan and co. – guitarists James Iha and Kiki Wong, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and touring bassist Jack Bates – went head to head with headliner Charli XCX. They delivered a 17-song set that paid homage to their most beloved records.

Opening with 1979 from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995), they dove straight into Bullet with Butterfly Wings from that same album, and Today from 1993’s Siamese Dream.

The Pumpkins balanced nostalgia with their more recent era by incorporating Edin, War Dreams of Itself, and Pentagrams from 2024’s Aghori Mhori Mei.

Speaking of contemporary, Olivia Rodrigo – albeit guitar-less – joined the band for Thirty-three, their fifth and final single from Mellon Collie.

Ozzy Osbourne protégé Yungblud was also summoned to the stage to take over vocal duties on Luna from Siamese Dream.

The previous evening, the fast-rising rock star – wielding his vintage “voodoo” ES-330 – shared the stage with a Flying V-laden Corgan at his own Lollapalooza aftershow at Chicago’s Riviera Theater. They performed a live rendition of his track Zombie, which the two had collaborated on earlier this year.

However, the biggest surprise for Pumpkins fans came by way of a lineup addition on bass.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have one more special guest – our former bandmate, a former member of Hole, Miss Melissa Auf der Maur,” Corgan told the audience. Auf der Maur held down the low end on The Everlasting Gaze, from 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God.

It was a fitting choice, considering the single's music video was the first to feature Auf der Maur following the departure of original bassist D'arcy Wretzky.

The band had road-tested the collaboration at their July 29 pre-Lollapalooza show at the Riviera Theatre, marking a reunion that came just over a year after the bassist performed with the band in Montreal for the first time since 2000.

In a Bass Player interview earlier this year, Auf der Maur referred to her stint with the Pumpkins as her “‘Master’s in Music’” – a notion she details in her recently released memoir.

As for the Pumpkins, they’re about to embark on The Rats in the Cage Tour – kicking off on September 30 in Columbus, Ohio – which celebrates the career-defining Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Before the arena run, Corgan will also set out on his own European tour – dubbed A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness – which promises to be an operatic and orchestral rendering of the album.

Leo Fender couldn’t have foreseen John 5 when the first Telecaster rolled off the line 75 years ago. But since going public in the late-’90s as the chalk-faced sideman for Marilyn Manson, the Michigan-born shredder has been arguably the heavy mob’s greatest ambassador for the model.

As 5’s career has twisted and turned – from early shifts with David Lee Roth, Manson and Rob Zombie to his solo career and recent stunt-guitar duties for Mötley Crüe – his appreciation of the Tele has evolved in lockstep.

Scan 5’s rack through the years and you’ll find a musician plainly in love with the Tele foundation but constantly pushing the envelope. From his paddle-headed, Bigsby-fitted custom curio of the post-millennium, and early Fender and Squier J5 signature models, all the way to 2023’s top-dollar Ghost and recent lava lamp-inspired models few modern players have done more to keep this ancient design so eye-poppingly relevant.

Now, choosing just a fistful of favorite Teles from his personal arsenal is a challenge that 5 gladly takes up for Guitar World.

“It’s funny,” he says. “I have different guitars, like Les Pauls and things like that. But aside from the Tele, I don’t know what I would play. I try to think about it, and I really don’t know! Maybe a Strat? [Laughs]

“It’s so strange because when you’ve done something a certain way your whole life, it’s so weird to think, ‘What would it be like?’ It’s so hard to think about because I’ve always played a Telecaster.”

2022 Fender Custom John 5 Ghost Tele

My Ghost is Number 1. It was put together when Fender did a collaboration with [NYC skateboarding and streetwear brand] Supreme.

I thought, “This guitar is strikingly beautiful. I want to do a guitar like this.” That’s where we came up with it, and it’s by far my favorite. I even named a record after it! [2025’s Ghost] I feel safe with the Ghost. I know I’m not gonna have problems live or in a studio. It’ll stay in tune and sound and feel great.

It’s like when you’re getting on an airplane, and you’re like, “I don’t know about this,” but then you get on a really nice one, a beautiful double-decker, and you think, “This is gonna be amazing.” [Laughs] That’s how it is with the Ghost! I travel with it everywhere. In fact, I’m driving home right now from Joshua Tree, and I have my Ghost in the back seat. So yeah, it’s important.

2025 Fender Custom Tele, aka “The Phantom”

Number 2 is the Phantom. That’s my 100-percent Number 1 guitar with Mötley Crüe. It’s just a monster. It sounds and feels so good. It’s got this beautiful cutaway and this contour, and a Floyd Rose, of course.

Fender Custom Shop Tele, aka “Goldie” 

Goldie’s been on a zillion recordings, and it’s one of those special guitars. I’ve played it so much, so I’m always worried about getting him re-painted or re-fretted or something. So whenever it’s time for a really major re-fret, I just retire it and search for another. I got Goldie after I stopped using my black-and-chrome Telecaster.

I wanted a gold Tele, but I wanted the Shoreline Gold Fender used in the ’60s when they used car paint on guitars. Alex Perez [at Fender] found that paint – and it’s still the real paint – and now Goldie has chipped so much that you can see the wood.

When it was put together, we did a kill switch for the first time – that guitar was an epiphany for me; it changed my life. I played it until it wasn’t safe to play anymore because I don’t want anything to happen to it. It’s on so many records and was used at countless shows.

2003 Fender J5 Telecaster

I had this black Tele with a chrome pickguard for so long, 13 or 14 years. I used it forever. It was just that amazing connection you have with an instrument. I really enjoyed playing that guitar, and it’s when I knew I wanted a beefed-up Telecaster.

I was thinking, “I really love this sound,” and when it came down to how it would look, I was thinking of a beautiful Harley-Davidson motorcycle that’d shine up strong. I would see chrome and black and think they look just gorgeous together. When it all came together, it had this double binding because I love the ’60s Teles that had that, and I thought, “This is beautiful.”

This was before the kill switch, so it was an early Tele for me. I played it on everything, a lot with Marilyn Mason and Rob Zombie. It was a monster guitar that could also do jazz and country. Squier did a version of that guitar and Goldie.

In fact, they were closing their doors, and I’m proud of the fact that they kept open for another year because they had so many orders for those two guitars. You couldn’t tell the difference between the Squier and the Fender. I played the Squiers live, and I couldn’t tell because they were so well done. If you find one, grab it!

1990s Fender ’52 Telecaster 

I used this ’52 reissue through my David Lee Roth and Rob Halford eras. It’s exactly like a ’52. It was just that magical thing where you walk into a Guitar Center, which I did in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, and said, “Let’s just look at the Teles.” This was before I was endorsed by Fender. I saw this Tele and thought, “This is incredible.”

I took it off the shelf, bought it, put a stack pickup in it and that was it. I played it forever, and I still do. It’s the guitar that really got me endorsed with Fender because I’d play it so much that they had a picture of me playing it and put it up at the NAMM Show.

It was this big display with all their other endorsees – but I wasn’t an endorsee! [Laughs] I went to the Fender booth, and they said, “We want to give you an endorsement deal.” I was like, “Yes!”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

Buying a pedalboard is usually a compromise between size, portability, and having enough room for adding pedals in the future. With the XPND series, D'Addario attempts to remove some of that guesswork by offering a 'board that adapts to your current setup while also expanding as your pedal collection grows – or as you move between different projects that require different effects. After all, pedalboard design hasn't changed dramatically in decades, and D'Addario leans into that with a telescopic system that is, notably, patented.

This pedalboard is aimed at players who regularly need to switch between setups, whether that’s switching between bands, moving from studio to stage, or simply wanting a more portable rig without committing to multiple boards.

The XPND 1 is the single-row model in the range and the most compact option available. It measures 14 inches when closed and extends to 24 inches when expanded, offering a flexible footprint without committing to a permanently large ‘board. Players with more extensive setups will naturally gravitate towards the dual-row XPND 2, but the inclusion of multiple sizes is a smart move from D’Addario and makes the system feel more considered than gimmicky.

Balancing portability with durability is always a challenge in pedalboard design, but here D’Addario opts for ultra-durable aluminum construction. The surface is fully covered in loop Velcro on both the top and underside, so it’s ready for pedal placement straight out of the box. Also included is a cable management system that doubles as a structural support between sections, while helping keep power and patch cables neatly routed underneath the ‘board.

When D’Addario first launched its XPND pedalboard range in the early 2020s, I wasn’t entirely convinced of the need for a telescopic design. But after joining two bands with very different pedal requirements, the appeal quickly became much clearer. One setup demanded a stripped-back ‘board, the other a far more effects-heavy rig, and suddenly the idea of expanding and contracting a pedalboard to suit the gig made a lot more sense. Add in the fact that several guitarist friends had already adopted the system and were full of praise, and I was keen to finally put it to the test for Guitar World.

Specs

• Price: £79 | $64.99 | €79
• Material: Ultra-durable aluminum
• Features: Telescopic row expansion, pre-installed loop Velcro, adjustable feet for height, cable management clips
• Dimensions: 356-610 mm (extension range) x 149 x 65 mm
• Weight: 51.85oz/ 1.47kg (without pedals)
• Contact: D’Addario

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

Having recently moved house and discovering the XPND arrives flat-packed, I did feel a fair amount of trepidation. However, it was actually fairly straightforward to assemble. There are a few moving parts that are slightly fiddly, but it only took about 10 minutes to complete, after following the supplied instructions.

Four of the six rubber feet and side brackets are attached with countersunk hex screws, tightened with the supplied hex key. Everything lined up neatly, and there were no problems to report.

The top two rubber feet work slightly differently and are secured with a washer system that lets you adjust the pedalboard height between 35mm and 50mm. This adds a bit more angle to the unit and some additional clearance for larger power supplies, though it’s by no means generous.

In practice, I found this limited height a bit of an issue. My T-Rex Fuel Tank had absolutely no chance of fitting underneath the XPND 1. To be fair, it is chunky, so I wasn’t expecting miracles, but it’s still worth noting if you’re running a larger pedalboard power supply.

D’Addario does provide a compatibility list for power supplies that do fit underneath, which is helpful, but in my case I had to either place the unit on top of the board – which ate into pedal space and made cable routing a little messier – or leave it on the floor.

Once built, I was impressed by the heft of the thing. The aluminum feels genuinely durable as D’Addario claims, and I’m confident it’ll easily stand up to being thrown in and out of a car on the way to gigs. The telescopic mechanism is also pleasingly smooth, so adjusting the size between rehearsals and gigs takes only a few seconds, and when fully collapsed, the board tucks away very neatly.

On that note, the XPND 1 weighs 1.47kg without pedals, making it light enough to carry without much issue. One slight omission, however, is the lack of a gig bag. For a product clearly aimed at active and gigging players, that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. D’Addario does offer a dedicated bag separately, but it’s priced at nearly the same as the XPND1 itself, making it a harder sell, in my opinion.

On the underside, there are two plastic braces on each rail that need to be flicked open when extending the board and closed again once you find your desired length. These don’t feel quite as sturdy as the rest of the construction, and I’d be slightly wary of heavy-handed use here, as they feel like the most obvious potential weak point in the design.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★☆

Having loop Velcro installed on both the top and underside was a win for me. Although my T-Rex Fuel Tank didn’t fit underneath, being able to mount a power supply with Velcro would have avoided the awkward attachment issues I’ve had with my Palmer Pedalboard 40, which lacks a pre-velcroed underside.

In its unexpanded state, you’re realistically looking at three, maybe four pedals at a push. I found compact, top-mounted pedals worked best here, as they allowed for tighter spacing without clashing with knobs or switches. I was initially unsure whether my Way Huge Pork Loin and Angry Troll would fit comfortably, being quite chunky and large, but thanks to their top-mounted controls, they slotted in without too much trouble next to my guitar tuner, a Boss TU-3.

I managed to squeeze four Boss pedals onto the board in its compact form – a TU-3, BD-2, RV-6 and CS-3 – but only just. That setup was only achievable thanks to my low-profile pancake patch cables. With standard cables, it would have been too tight to be practical.

Extending the XPND1 to its full 24-inch length opened things up considerably, replicating the effects of a more effects-heavy rig. In this configuration, the pedalboard remained stable, although there is a slight amount of flex. It didn’t bother me in use, but heavier-footed players should take note.

I managed to squeeze on seven pedals, including the Boss models above, my Way Huge Pork Loin and Angry Troll, plus an MXR Carbon Copy, making for a pretty versatile rig.

Although I don't typically play with a wah or other expression pedals, I also threw my Cry Baby wah pedal on to see how the single-row layout coped. Here, the XPND1 showed its biggest limitation. The length of the pedal caused the board to rock back and forth more than I'd have liked, making it feel a little awkward underfoot. If you regularly use a full-sized wah or expression pedal, it's definitely something worth considering.

I also found the playing angle a little flatter than I’m used to. Personally, I prefer a more pronounced tilt, as it makes pressing the pedals feel more natural. The standing height also feels slightly elevated, meaning I had to lift my foot a bit more than expected when switching pedals. These are, of course, preferential things for me, but I thought it’d be worth mentioning.

Verdict

For guitarists who regularly swap between different pedal setups, I think the XPND1 is a genuinely clever solution. With the ability to go from 14 to 24 inches, it has the flexibility to run a compact, everyday board and expand when a bigger gig or project demands more effects. As expected from D’Addario, it's exceptionally well built, thoughtfully designed, and feels like it'll survive years of gigging.

There are compromises, though. Under-board clearance is limited for larger power supplies, and full-sized expression pedals don't pair particularly well with the single-row layout. Even so, if flexibility is high on your priority list, the XPND1 is one of the smartest pedalboard designs I've used.

Guitar World verdict: Simply put, the D’Addario XPND 1 Core pedalboard is a clever, flexible solution for gigging guitarists who need to switch between compact and expanded setups. Its telescopic design and durable aluminum construction allow you to adapt your board to almost any situation, and the pre-installed Velcro means you can get up and running quickly. That said, there is limited clearance underneath, and a single-row layout restricts which stomps will fit comfortably on it.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Ola Englund

• Best pedalboards: perfect platforms for your pedals, tested

For more than 25 years, Billy Howerdel’s A Perfect Circle has blended alt-rock, heavy metal and progressive elements to seamless perfection. The latest example of this is Starless, a new single released in May ahead of their 2026 tour dates.

Thankfully, Howerdel says that Starless is an appetizer that will eventually lead to the band’s first LP since 2018’s Eat the Elephant. For a player who started his career as a guitar tech before forming A Perfect Circle, the group’s continued success is a dream come true.

But he doesn’t let his ego get in the way. “I do sometimes underestimate that I’ve played or written music that people seem to be inspired by,” Howerdel tells Guitar World. “It’s the greatest compliment when someone says, ‘Your music made me pick up guitar, and it’s changed my life.’”

As for what A Perfect Circle’s yet-to-be-announced fifth record might sound like, Howerdel says, “Even our last album, Eat the Elephant, when we played it live, I thought, ‘These are the best songs we’ve done…’ I’ll think that, but then I have to let it go.”

“You’ve got to be a Buddhist about it,” Howerdel says. “You’ve got to draw the picture in the sand, and then let the waves wash it away, so to speak, and move on. Then you look for the next piece of art you’re going to draw in the sand but not get too captured by what it used to be.”

What’s the story behind the latest single, Starless?

In a very distracted way, I had this little practice amp I’d been using a lot, and in the middle of watching a TV show, probably sitting around with the family, an idea would strike, and that’s where it started. This little amp was inspiring, and just a little different than going into the lab, flicking everything on, and making sure everything’s just right. It was more about capturing a moment.

Do you have a typical riff-writing process?

Recently, I haven’t been allowing myself to touch the keyboard, even if that could inspire things. Sometimes I’ll write a keyboard riff and replace it with guitar, but I’m sticking strictly to guitar right now. Having a decent-sounding amp at your disposal at all times is really inspiring and useful, but I don’t have a magic formula – just the mechanics of accessibility. [laughs]

Is there an album on the way?

Yeah, it’s underway. I’m sitting here looking at my rig in my hotel room right now, so… it’s being written and recorded. I’ll probably go back and finish the tracks in my studio once I get home from this tour in a few weeks, but I’m kind of right in the middle of it.

Is Starless a good indicator of what the rest of the record will sound like?

I don’t know what to say, except for the turns it [the upcoming album] takes. It’s always interesting to me when a song takes a turn that I’m not expecting, you know? It can just get you out of your modes and patterns.

What does that mean exactly?

For me, it’s looking at little riffs, of things that I’ve done from years past that I forgot I did. I have this big, long library of ideas that I’ll grab from, and I’ll listen through things, and I’ll not hear anything. But then, you pick it up on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday, and all of a sudden, that idea you had seven years ago is suddenly interesting, whereas yesterday, it wasn’t.

Are there any quirks or habits that, like them or not, have become integral to your playing style?

I’m trying not to get too good. [laughs] But I don’t know… there was a time when I was like, “I’m gonna try and become a much better player,” and I am a better player than I used to be. But I don’t let acrobatics get in the way of the song, you know?

There are things that I’ve done that were aggressively technical, and I’ve just stripped them back a bit. I’m not trying to be cool. It’s just that sometimes it doesn’t move the song forward. But then again, I do listen to things that are technical and enjoy them. It’s just different strokes.

Ultimately, you can be a great player, but can you write a song?

Yeah, but then again, there’s also the thrill of different appetites for different times. I very much appreciate Steve Vai, you know, the fluidity, and the gorgeous technique that guy has. It’s inspiring. But when I break it down, I want to write songs, so I might go more towards Will Sergeant from Echo and the Bunnymen, or David Gilmour.

Was there a lightbulb moment for you that brought you to that conclusion?

When I started playing guitar, there was this guy, P.K. Lavengood, on the [New] Jersey club scene who gave me a talking-to when I was getting into the lighting and guitar-tech world. He talked to me for probably three minutes, and it was about not being shy when you play guitar and to really give everything you’ve got in the moment.

It did a lot for me to kind of play harder, which lends itself to not playing technically very fast. So, I play really hard for better or worse. And after we released our first record, and were doing the second, I fell in love with The White Stripes. I think Jack White is like the last rock star that I can think of.

How so?

He’s very dangerous, and it [the music] feels dangerous. His approach to playing… you just don’t know what’s going to happen. He’s leading the band, but is the guitar in tune? Is he pulling it in? It was really exciting to me, and that was a reminder of what P.K. said to me years ago. It’s about what makes it the most human experience. When you’re seeing something almost come off the rails, and it doesn’t, but you’re at the edge of your seat.

So, is that sort of a mantra that you live by guitar-wise?

No. [laughs] Those things just happen through time. If you’re asking me to reflect on it, that’s the best I can do. But there’s nothing that sticks with me day to day, you know? But certainly, with playing live, it’s your job to eat, sleep, rest, and get ready for the show.

Do you have a favorite guitar at the moment?

Yeah, that’s easy! I’ve been playing the same 1960 reissue [Gibson] Les Paul Classic with Tom Anderson pickups. I play that ninety-nine percent of the time live. I also use it in the studio, but sometimes I dive into some other things and am starting to look at other colors with guitars.

How about amps and effects?

Amps are inconsistent. My Friedman is my main dirt sound, unless I’m using my Gibson amp, which is a more pirate-based sound. It’s like a gnarly, very squishy sound. And for pedals, I use a Prescription Electronics Experience pedal, which I don’t think they make anymore, so I just got a clone from a company in Europe. That’s the only pedal I lean on.

As a so-called “super group,” what’s kept A Perfect Circle together?

I don’t know… the “super group” thing, even back then, I was a little bit like, “What? I don’t know what that means exactly.” I mean, I was a guitar tech, so I don’t know if I count as defining any “super” part. [laughs] But it’s an interesting band.

The parameters of [vocalist] Maynard [James Keenan]’s schedule dictate when we’re going to do something. He’s always looking to create and move things forward, but he’s got three musical projects that he oscillates between, so I don’t know, it’s always exciting.

How would you say A Perfect Circle has progressed from where it started?

We’ve progressed a lot. I’m as guilty as a music listener with the negative comments that come our way that say, “Why don’t you make the same music as the song that I first fell in love with?” But we’re always trying to move things forward because it’s about capturing where you are today.

It can be Maynard lyrically, or me musically; it’s about the melting pot that’s coming our way. Recently, that’s been things I’ve listened to forever, so I’ll revisit things that were first inspiring and see where they bring my writing.

When Eddie Van Halen burst onto the scene in the late-’70s, aspiring players and professional virtuosos alike were all lining up to watch him up-close.

Like Hendrix before him, the Eruption mastermind was changing the very fabric of guitar playing in real time. He needed to be seen to be believed.

But not everyone was swept up in the hysteria. The late Jeff Beck, for instance, was full of admiration for the virtuoso’s ability, but kept a level head about it – this not being his first brush with a generational guitar talent.

“I love it, I think it’s the greatest,” Beck said of Van Halen’s music in the January 1985 issue of Guitar World. “I've been there, y'know, but he lives and dies for that whereas I don't – I'm not really a heavy metal boy, through and through.

“I’d love to go and see him but I probably wouldn't stay for the whole concert: I’d just get a flash of brilliance and then I’d go, saying to myself, ‘That guy is really great.’”

At the time, Beck appeared to believe Van Halen – as has often become a criticism of the shred scene, though rarely EVH himself – was prioritizing technicality and showmanship. Beck was all about expression and storytelling. He didn’t get that from Van Halen.

“I wouldn’t want to get bored with it, which I could easily do with that style of music,” Beck continued. “I like rock concerts, concerts in general, to go through different moods, but there aren’t too many concerts like that now.

“I mean, those guys like Van Halen are so great, but they seem to be stuck in that kind of stuff. Still, he’s got the most amazing technique, you’ve got to take your hat off to him for that – the speed and the frantic element. I could do well to learn from him some of those tricks he pulls.”

It wasn’t the only time Beck praised Van Halen, even if he couldn’t see himself sitting through a whole show.

“He brought tapping to the forefront, and I still think he was one of the tastiest players doing it,” he gushed in Van Halen: A Visual History (via Van Halen News Desk) “It wasn’t his fault that all these other horrendous people tried to emulate him.

“I actually saw Eddie play some blues once and it was really beautiful. It would be great to hear him play more in that style.”

The two heroes certainly met in later years and were photographed together in 1987, albeit not in a show setting – and the respect was mutual.

Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2011, Van Halen noted, “I didn’t get into him until [1975’s jazz-fusion album] Blow By Blow. Just the instrumentalness of it. And [1976’s] Wired. Interesting stuff in there.

“I guess it was just the experimentation in there that I liked. Jeff Beck is definitely a standalone. You never know what the hell he’s gonna do.”

Seven decades since it rolled off the production line in Fullerton, California – and whatever your personal tastes – you’d have to agree that Leo Fender’s deathless doublecut is the quintessential electric guitar.

It’s the shape a kid would draw if you handed them a crayon. It’s the model you’d show to a visiting glow-fingered alien curious about humanoid rock ‘n’ roll.

To sling a Strat is to experience the ultimate collision of tone and ergonomics.

Respect to the Telecaster (born three years earlier, in 1951), but it’s a caveman’s club next to Leo’s next great lightbulb moment.

Sleek as a surfboard, contoured to the body like a well-cut suit, with stellar access and the first bulletproof tremolo system. Sonically unique, with an unmistakable singlecoil ‘cluck’ that could be fattened, starved, or stacked via a cluster of idiot-proof dials and a five-way selector (from the mid-’70s on).

Back then, in 1954, the Strat seemed to come from the future, and even now, if you pause and consider it afresh, it still does.

But the Fender Stratocaster would just be a glorified carpentry project without the players who danced across its neck and gave it life. Here we celebrate 25 of the very best Strat-o-masters, from the worlds of blues, rock, funk, disco, prog, shred, grunge, metal, and beyond.

Buddy Holly

It’s December 1, 1957. Buddy Holly is performing That’ll Be The Day on his Ed Sullivan Show debut, and the great American public is seeing the Fender Stratocaster in action for the first time.

He might look like a librarian on uppers, but the Texan bandleader’s piston-pump rhythm work is not to be sniffed at, and to a generation that has known nothing but horn bands, that hard, biting jangle is a clarion call announcing that things will be different from now on.

Jimi Hendrix

Admittedly, the defining image of the Strat’s greatest Sixties ambassador sees him torching the damn thing onstage at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. But the instrument’s real pyrotechnics happened before Jimi lit the match.

Exploring the outer limits of its mischief-ready sonic scope and easily abused tremolo, he couldn’t have conjured the same black-magic cacophony – or the beauty of Little Wing – from any other model. Jimi’s trademark flip ‘n’ restring, meanwhile, was an audio-visual WTF that only cemented the impression he’d just stepped off a spaceship into Swinging London.

Hank Marvin

You Americans don’t know how lucky you are. It wasn’t until 1959 – a full five years after US production began – that Shadows bandleader Cliff Richard bought and gifted to his guitarist what is believed to be the first Strat on British shores (a Fiesta Red stunner with gold hardware). Those gorgeous, glassy, plaintive melodies on Apache and Wonderful Land wouldn’t have shimmered the same on anything else.

Jeff Beck

Sure, a Telecaster (in the Yardbirds) and Les Paul (on Blow By Blow) were fine for the punch-your-lights-out early stuff. But when Beck really found his voice and fell into his signature techniques – the volume swells and whale-song whammy tickles, exemplified by Where Were You – only the Fender doublecut could get the job done.

“What is it about the Strat that I love so much?” he mused in an interview with Malcolm Gerrie of Sky Arts. “Its endless color…”

Eric Clapton

Like Beck, EC played ’em all, from his Yardbirds Tele, through the revved-up Les Paul of the Bluesbreakers, to the SG-fueled ‘woman’ tone showcased on Cream’s Disraeli Gears. But like so many Sixties galacticos, as the decade turned, he was drawn to the Strat, retooling a clutch of second-hand models bought from a Nashville music store into the fabled Blackie mongrel that drove everything from Cocaine to Wonderful Tonight.

“I felt like Blackie had become part of me,” Clapton once told Guitar Player. “A guitar like that comes along maybe once in a lifetime.”

David Gilmour

Compared to his ’70s-gunslinger peers, the Pink Floyd man didn’t play too many notes. But the sweetness of his phrasing, twinned with the haunting, bell-like quality of his ’69 Black Strat, meant each one was a symphony (revisit the shivering four-note starburst of Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part II).

That Black Strat was just recently auctioned from the private collection of late Indianapolis Colts boss Jim Irsay for $14.5 million, making it officially the world’s most valuable guitar.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

The Texas bluesman picked up his early-’60s Strat – known as both Number One and First Wife – from an Austin music store in 1974. As a man who played so hard he had to perform DIY on his own tattered fingers, the instrument probably deserved its retirement in 1990 – while SRV’s tragic death that August meant he never saw Fender’s signature replica launch two years later at NAMM.

Ritchie Blackmore

Deep Purple’s dark wizard got his wings on a Gibson ES-335, but a fateful 1969 encounter with Eric Clapton’s roadie changed everything (“He brought a Strat, so I said to him, ‘Do you want to sell that guitar?’”).

In a 2024 GW interview, Blackmore told us he tracked Smoke On The Water on a mongrel, before summing up the Strat’s pragmatic magic: “It’s a way of paying the bills. It also happens to be an incredible guitar.”

Nile Rodgers

Just for a moment, consider how many unfathomable millions of dollars must have flowed through the Chic legend’s ‘Hitmaker’ Strat.

Seeing action with everyone from David Bowie to Madonna, the sonic character of its unusually light alder body is perfect for Rodgers’ muted hits and zingy chord fragments. But he might never have picked it up from a Miami pawn shop in ’73 were it not for the curt advice of wingman/bassist Bernard Edwards (“Get a Strat, motherf***er!”)

Yngwie Malmsteen

Before the Scandi shredder broke out with 1984’s Rising Force, ‘scallops’ were something you gagged on at posh dinner parties.

Inspired by a 16th century lute with carved-out frets, Malmsteen recalled that “people thought I was crazy” when they saw his teenage handiwork. But there was no arguing with the added velocity of scalloping, which made this already-lightning-fast player even speedier, like strapping rockets on Usain Bolt’s sneakers. Only Clapton was offered a Fender signature Strat before him (but Malmsteen’s ’88 model was the first to feature his signature on the headstock).

Dave Murray and Janick Gers

Given all that demon iconography, you’d expect Iron Maiden’s three-guitar frontline to reach for something macabre from the B.C. Rich brochure. In fact, the British metallers’ gallop is largely underpinned by a pair of workhorse Strats, with Janick Gers favoring a Seymour Duncan JB JR-bolstered model and Dave Murray driving a pair of Hot Rails (Adrian Smith is more of a dabbler, mostly wedded to his Jackson San Dimas).

Tom DeLonge

The Blink-182 man has bounced between Fender and Gibson his whole career, and lately seems sworn to his signature Starcaster. But after retiring the iconic early “Sticker Strat”, the Enema Of The State period saw DeLonge punch out parts like All The Small Things on a pastel-hued Custom Shop Strat with a lonely Seymour Duncan Invader bridge ’bucker (it was released in 2001 as a production guitar).

Albert Hammond Jr

Beset by bowel-tuned nu-metal, it felt like we hadn’t seen a Strat in years when The Strokes broke out with 2001’s Is This It.

While Nick Valensi was all studied cool on an Epiphone Riviera, his corkscrew-curled wingman hammered thrillingly at a high-strapped 1985 reissue of a ’72 Strat (that instrument was also behind the feral, Freddie King-inspired solo on Last Nite).

Billy Corgan

Alt-rock will forever be associated with a sticker-coated Jazzmaster, but look closer and the Strat appeared in the hands of everyone from Kurt Cobain (at the ’92 Reading Festival) to Mike McCready (the out-of-phase shimmer on Yellow Ledbetter). Amongst these, Corgan was arguably the greatest virtuoso and most committed Strat-o-phile.

In his words, the Smashing Pumpkins leader “walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton ’57 reissue. That became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched a thousand ships of people chasing that sound.”

Mark Knopfler

Before he settled back into the molten Les Paul solos of Brothers In Arms, the Dire Straits leader was the fastest gun on London’s post-punk scene, revered for the quicksilver bob ‘n’ weave outro to 1978’s Sultans Of Swing.

Tellingly, the red ’61 he played it on (supposedly something of a partscaster) was one of the few models that Knopfler chose to ring-fence from his 2024 guitar auction.

Bonnie Raitt

The Californian slide goddess and 13-time Grammy winner picked up her first Strat on the street following a 1969 gig – immediately falling for the often-neglected third position. “It’s all about that middle pickup,” says Raitt. “You just can’t beat it.”

Eric Johnson

The Cliffs Of Dover virtuoso could easily have followed his G3 brethren into an Ibanez endorsement. But Johnson is a Strat diehard with a very specific wishlist, insisting that models from ’54, ’57, and ’58 are best (“I think Fender had a shipment of wood that was real special”) and adding an offbeat f-hole to his 2018 signature thinline.

Cory Wong

Funk belongs on a Strat – don’t argue – and Wong’s kinetic grooves with Vulfpeck have moved more feet than anyone on the modern scene. He’s proved price isn’t everything with his dedication to his teenage Highway One model – also the inspiration for his 2021 signature model – and should really be taking a salary as Fender brand ambassador.

Wong was led to the aforementioned Highway One Strat by his father, who – Wong said in a 2023 Guitar World interview – told him, “‘Listen! You love the Chili Peppers, you love Stevie Ray Vaughan. Look at Jeff Beck, look at Jimi Hendrix, look at Stevie Ray and Eric Johnson.’ He gave me this lineage of the Stratocaster and basically said: Look at all the things this guitar is capable of.’”

H.E.R.

The Strat’s generation-leaping appeal is underlined by Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, whose breakout 2021 album, Back Of My Mind, bends the backbone of vintage R&B into bold new shapes.

“The Strat is an iconic guitar, just because of the look and shape,” says the 28-year-old Californian (who got her own signature model in 2020). “But the tone, the heaviness… to me, it’s the unicorn. It’s classic, but it’s new at the same time.”

Rory Gallagher

Bought on credit in 1963, and beaten like a dog through the ’70s and ’80s, the Irishman’s ’61 looked set for a quiet retirement. Instead, it now enjoys an afterlife as a blues-rock Excalibur, loaned out to wide-eyed fanboys like Joe Bonamassa.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna take so much shit for this’,” recalled the US bluesman of test-driving Rory’s doublecut at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2011. “Because everyone on the Internet will go, ‘Who do you think you are?’ But anybody would have done it…”

The Edge

U2’s sonic maverick has built up quite a rack since 1980’s Boy (you could argue he’s equally associated with the Explorer). But hands-down the most neck-tingling moment of any show is the delay-drenched jewelry box tinkle of Where The Streets Have No Name, and for that, a Strat on the middle pickup is non-negotiable.

Mdou Moctar

If your first guitar had been built from driftwood, bicycle cables, and the keys used to open sardine tins, you’d be glad to get on a Strat too. The desert-blues figurehead’s only stipulation is that the strings on his American Professional left-hander are at least two years old.

Steve Lacy

Every time you think you’ve got the Strat all figured out, a twenty-something gunslinger comes along and flips it on its head.

Take the Californian alt-R&B phenom, who splits his licks between solo work, The Internet, and a billion guest-spots with everyone from Vampire Weekend to Tyler, The Creator. Then there’s Lacy’s rulebook-shredding People Pleaser signature Strat – complete with an onboard fuzz circuit.

Ry Cooder

There’s a case that the Californian slide man barely qualifies as a Strat player. His trademark ‘Coodercasters’, after all, are so heavily modded that Leo Fender would barely recognize them as his children. But Cooder demands inclusion for his beyond-spellbinding, desert-baked, and dust-blown tone.

Buddy Guy

When the great Louisiana bluesman headed north in ’57, he assured his ailing mother he’d return from Chicago at the wheel of a polka-dot Cadillac. Guy couldn’t keep that promise, but made amends by commissioning his spotted Fender signature model.

He’s never strayed from the Strat, and even on the brink of his nineties, used it to dig out a gorgeous fingerstyle blues in the credits scene of last year’s Oscar-winning Sinners.

An often overlooked aspect of playing guitar that many beginners aren’t aware of is the importance of silencing the open low E string when moving from an open Em chord to an open D chord, or from E to D.

In most cases, you do not want to have that ringing open low E note “lingering” into the D chord because it will sound dissonant, muddy and sloppy, as the note does not musically “agree” with those that make up the D chord (D, F#, A), especially in that low register.

Check out FIGURE 1, which has us changing from Em to D a couple of times. If you look at the fretboard frame for the D chord above the tablature, you’ll see that the low E and A strings each have an “X” above them. That signifies that those two strings are not to be included in that chord voicing.

A hollow circle, on the other hand, indicates that the string is to be played open, and a black circle indicates where a string is to be fretted, such as at the 2nd or 3rd fret, with the fret-hand finger indicated below.

So, the open D chord is officially only on the top four strings, with the open D string being its low root note. However, inadvertently sounding the open A string, or allowing it to linger from a previous chord, such as Am, doesn’t sound bad at all, as A happens to be a chord tone of D major – its 5th – and the open low A note can add warmth and “fatness” to the chord voicing, which is sometimes desirable. But not the low E note. That just sounds like doo-doo under a D chord, with all six strings ringing.

When you pick an open string, it will continue to ring for a while unless you actively stop it from vibrating. This can easily be accomplished by lightly touching it, a technique known as muting, or dampening. One way to do this is to lightly touch the low E string with the tip of your fret-hand thumb, briefly hooking it around the top side of the neck at the 2nd fret as you form the D chord shape with your fingers.

Alternatively, you could mute the low E string with the palm of your pick hand, a technique known as palm muting (indicated in guitar music by the abbreviation P.M.)

While palm muting “after the fact” like this achieves the objective of muting the string, it could in some cases disrupt the flow of your strumming. So I recommend using the fret-hand-thumb muting method first and foremost, to help ensure a smooth, flowing change from Em to D, or E to D.

Another commonly committed error beginners typically make is they inadvertently strum their open low E string when playing an open C chord, which in the vast majority of cases should only include the top five strings, as opposed to the rarely used C/E (“C over E”) chord illustrated in FIGURE 2. Again, note the “X” over the chord frame for C and the “O” over the frame for C/E.

An effective way to prevent your low E string from sounding or vibrating sympathetically when playing an open C chord is to lightly touch it with the “paw” of your fret-hand ring finger (3) as it frets the C root note on the A string’s 3rd fret.

Doing this will ensure that the chord sounds pleasing and proper and allow you to strum a little more loosely, casually or aggressively, without having to worry about accidentally grazing the low E string with the pick because, even if you do, the string will remain silent.

Malina Moye has recently made history as the first woman of color to partner up with Kramer on a signature guitar. This is far from her only accolade – having released four studio albums, dominated global stages spanning NBA and NFL events, major festivals, and international tours, and even collaborating with Bootsy Collins.

However, as Moye explains, her hard-earned journey to the upper echelons of the guitar world wasn't without immense sacrifice.

“I came out to Los Angeles with $20,” she tells Gibson TV. “I was homeless. I lived off of two tacos and water a day.

“I used to wash up in a gas station. I would sleep in between the front and back seat of my car, and I would take a knife and a Bible. Someone ended up hitting the back of my car, and you know what? I ended up buying a guitar.”

As Moye put it in a 2019 interview with Guitar Girl Magazine, “I was looking on the ground for pennies to just buy a sandwich. Life is going to break you down. You get up and keep fighting every day.”

And fight she did. Years later, thanks to her relentless dedication, she found herself performing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – an experience that was nothing short of surreal.

“I remember I was getting on a plane and I remember going, ‘Who is this?’ And he’s like, ‘Hey, I’m actually the president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I just saw your video.’ Then next thing I know I’m on a plane to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to honor Chuck Berry and to have a chance to play in front of him!”

Through her signature guitar, Moye hopes to “incorporate lots more people” to tell their own story, as she was able to tell hers.

“I'm saying, with this guitar, play me your story. I hope that this guitar shows you that magic is real. If something like this can happen to me, with this instrument, maybe it can happen to you too.”

One of the great benefits of playing 7- and 8-string guitars in various tunings is that they continually inspire me to discover cool and unusual chords and voicings. A great example of this is the song Keep Sweet, which I recorded with Spiritbox for 2025’s Tsunami Sea.

For this track, I play a 7-string guitar tuned to drop-A, transposed down a whole step, what’s often referred to as “drop-G” tuning (low to high: G, D, G, C, F, A, D). This is not a tuning I use often, but it turned out to be perfect here.

Figure 1 illustrates the song’s initial, primary riff. This part is not played very fast and is fairly easy to navigate. The tonal center for the song is B minor (concert key of A minor, due to the whole-step-down tuning transposition), and I begin with an unusual B5b6 chord voicing on the 6th, 5th and 4th strings, which requires a finger stretch between the 9th and 5th frets (allow your wrist to rotate as needed).

As shown in Figure 2, The G note sounded on the 4th string serves as the b6 (flatted 6th) above the foundational B5 chord and lends a dissonant and somewhat atonal quality to the chord.

I then shift to a bassline-like riff on the 7th string that includes a whole-step bend from B to C# at the end of bars 1, 3 and 5. At the ends of bars 2 and 4, I play D5 power chords that set up the return to the top of the phrase. After playing bars 1-4, bars 1 and 2 repeat and are then followed by the second ending (bar 5), which culminates with natural harmonics (N.H.) sounded at the 5th fret of the 5th string.

The key to playing this song well is to have clear separation between the dissonant B5b6 chords and the consonant D5 power chords. Additionally, when playing the B octave notes at the 2nd fret on the 7th and 5th strings, you want to keep them separated.

The trickiest part of playing this riff is transitioning smoothly between the D5 chord and the B5b6. This is highlighted in Figure 3. Strive to keep the transitions clean so that each chord will sound sharply defined.

Figure 4 shows the riff I play during the first verse. In bars 1-6, I shift between referencing the chords D5, A5 and B5, starting with full power chord strums and then following with arpeggiated chords and two-note voicings.

In bars 7-9, I outline Bm and A chords with arpeggios and, on beat 3 of bar 10, make brief reference to Asus4, followed by a 5th-fret natural harmonic on the 5th string, ending the phrase with an open low A note.

I like to present “themes” as I structure the guitar parts for a song. In this case, the initial theme is based on the contrast between B5b6 and D5, and the second theme is the balance between B5 and A5. Another theme is the reiterations of the whole-step bends on the 7th string, which serve to tie the riffs together.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

The Hazee Delay, the first in the Pollinator series, is a bit of a departure for Beetronics in that it’s the company’s first totally digital pedal.

In true Beetronics style, though, this is not just a standard digital delay pedal but one that’s designed to deliver textural delays and ambient sounds.

This is a pedal solely for modulated delays, not simply delays where there’s a bit of wobble on the repeats – we’re talking delays where the modulation is a totally integrated component of the sound as the modulation comes first in the signal chain and is then delayed.

There are eight modes of modulation available – four tremolo and four filter – each mode featuring a different type of repeat, giving you a choice of forward repeats, octave up repeats, reverse repeats and octave up reverse repeats.

There are just four knobs to adjust the effect: the delay pedal staples are Time, Mix and Feedback, and the Mod knob controls the modulation rate.

Specs

• Price: $249 | £229
• Type: Digital delay pedal
• Origin: USA
• Features: Buffered bypass
• Controls: Time, Feedback, Mix, Modulation, Mode selector, Bypass footswitch
• Connections: Standard input, standard output
• Power: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 80 mA
• Contact: Beetronics FX

Build quality, usability and sounds

The Hazee Delay controls are very interactive – small changes can have a big effect on the sonic outcome – so experimentation followed by considered adjustment is the key to getting the pedal to work for you.

It can be an inspirational and creative tool in that certain modes may encourage you to adapt your playing in reaction to what you’re hearing, rather than adjusting the controls to fit your playing.

There’s quirky stuff here, for sure, but the modes that are most conventional are those that offer the non-pitch-shifted forward repeats.

For example, the filter will give you auto-wah effects and even something that sounds like a rotary speaker at fast Mod rates, while the tremolo offers a nicely rounded pulse; keep the delay time at minimum if you want something closer to a straight effect.

With the pitch-shifted and reverse repeats, the other modes offer a more ‘out there’ take on things and are capable of pulsing and shimmering sonic layers with rhythmic movement as the repeats and modulation interact.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★

Guitar World verdict: This pedal encourages you to twist the knobs until you find a favoured sweet spot and offers plenty to explore in the realm of strangely voiced repeats and finely textured ambient soundscapes to sit with your core sound. Not your average digital delay by any means, the Hazee Delay is a vibe machine that could help get those creative juices flowing.

Hands-on videos

Beetronics

Kris Barosci

The Studio Rats

• “Lo-Fi and Pitch modes take you well beyond the usual analog delay paradigm”: Beetronics Bee Bee Dee review
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery, but from a guitar perspective that has never sat right with The Edge. In fact, he’s never been that impressed by those who look to copy his sound and style.

In a 1996 interview with Guitar World, the U2 icon reflected on the guitar scene at the time, and discussed the fact many were settling with imitating a style as opposed to developing their own.

“It is so hard to really pull something out of yourself,” he conceded. “If you think about guitar players down through the years who have that fire, who have that ability to play and really, really connect with you, there aren’t that many.

“The odds are really stacked against you doing it, so most people settle for the imitation – that’s reliable at least, and kind of impressive, if not life-changing.”

He turns to Jimi Hendrix for an example. Trailblazers will always have their imitators, but he questions what value that actually brings.

“Jimi Hendrix’s work was life-changing, astonishing,” The Edge observed. “But all the people down through the years who’ve played his style have been, at best, impressive. Is it craft and not art?

“I tend to cringe a bit when I hear people who’ve obviously taken my style. I think it’s a joke that’s often played on me in that it’s the simplest of my ideas that ends up taking off – it’s my one-note solos that work! And the problem is you cannot argue with something if it really works.”

Naturally, many players will always wear their influences, perhaps a little too proudly, on their sleeves. Wolfgang Van Halen, for instance, once suggested his dad ruined ‘80s guitar because of the legion of copyists his magic conjured.

The Edge was getting tired of imitation, which is perhaps why, in 1997, U2 made a stylistic U-turn and embraced electronica on Pop, peeling away from the blues rock pool.

In the same GW interview, The Edge spoke out against the stupid mentality of the “white blues rock thing”, and shrugged off players who commit to 15-minute guitar solos.

But musical brilliance doesn't always mean virtuosic prowess. As he found out while tracking one of the band’s biggest records, sometimes the simplest ideas work for a reason.

“I remember on Achtung Baby [1991], I wanted to “fix” the solo in The Fly, and I just wasn’t allowed. ‘No! You cannot touch that! You cannot argue!’” he reports. “As much as my pride would have loved me to go back and do something more elaborate, I knew that this thing did work.”

It proved a valuable lesson for the guitarist. Blazing virtuosity and fanciful fretboard dances aren’t always the answer, even if most players have that urge to do so. Sometimes, it’s better to leave an itch unscratched.

This feature was originally published in the January 1995 issue of Guitar World.

Punk lore has it that British punk began on the 4th of July, 1976, when the Ramones played the Roundhouse in London. They shared the bill with the Flamin’ Groovies; the Stranglers were the opening act.

The following night Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy played another London rock club, Dingwalls. It’s been said, only half in jest, that everyone who went on to be in a major London punk band was at one of those two shows. Steve Jones certainly has fond memories of the shows: “The Ramones were rocking. It was great!”

“We met all these kids there afterwards,” Johnny Ramone recalls, “and they said, ‘Oh, we’re starting our band this week. We just formed, but we haven’t rehearsed yet. We were waiting to see you guys.’ And it was the Damned and the Clash.

“We thought it was cool that all these kids were forming bands. I think one of the Damned said, ‘You want to go back to the Sex Pistols’ loft? They’ll play for you.’ We said, ‘Oh no, we can’t do that. We don’t wanna.’ We thought kids would be asking us this everywhere we went. We didn’t know they were gonna be famous or anything. We just thought they all looked cool. They looked like little kids to us.”

There was also a dark side to this leather-jacketed children’s crusade. The London bands, recalls Johnny, “all hated each other. Like, the Damned hated the Sex Pistols, and they all hated the Clash. They all hated each other, like little tiny gangs.”

It was the second night, at Dingwalls, says Johnny Ramone, that he first encountered Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten. “He comes up to me and says, ‘You know, I think Patti Smith sucks.’ I go, ‘I don't give a shit. I don’t like her either.’ And he goes, ‘Oh you don’t?’

“He was trying at first to be, you know, like, nasty. And when he heard what I had to say, he was all friendly. I guess he wanted to get a reaction out of me with that stuff about Patti Smith or something. Like I cared.”

Actually, British punk rock had begun to develop long before the Ramones arrived in 1976. In the early ‘70s, a growing pub rock scene had resulted in a “back to basics” vibe in British music.

In 1974 Malcolm McLaren had taken on the management of the Faces copy band that the kleptomaniac Steve Jones had formed with his friend, drummer Paul Cook. Together with Vivienne Westwood, McLaren ran the Sex shop on London's fashionable King's Road, selling bondage gear and underground designer wear.

McLaren had also had a brief stint managing the New York Dolls at the end of their career. He returned to London with a white Gibson Les Paul that had belonged to the Dolls’ Syl Sylvain. In what retrospectively seems a heavily symbolic gesture, the instrument was passed on to Steve Jones. Originally the group’s singer, Jones was to become the definitive punk guitar stylist.

By 1975, the name and original lineup of the Sex Pistols had fallen into place. Musically, Cook and Jones didn’t have too much in common with the two new Pistols. Singer Johnny Rotten had wide-ranging tastes – everything from reggae to Captain Beefheart to experimental ‘70s German groups like Can.

Bassist Glen Matlock was an avid pop fan. His love for the Beatles was to prove a constant source of conflict with the others. As his main guitar influences, Jones lists Ron Wood, James Williamson, Johnny Thunders, and Free’s Paul Kossoff.

The pub rock scene had given rise to acts like the Stranglers, Eddie And The Hot Rods and the 101ers – whose singer, Joe Strummer, would eventually go on to lead the Clash. These acts would later become more associated with punk; but Jones maintains that the Sex Pistols’ sound and approach developed independently of any outside groups or punk “agenda.”

“I just thought of the Sex Pistols as a rock band. When we started, we didn't say, ‘Okay, we're gonna call ourselves “punk” and it’s gonna sound like this…’ I just couldn't play very well and John couldn’t sing. And that’s the sound it created – purely by accident, I guess.”

“I’d only been playing for like three or four months before we did our first show. All I could do was just play a barre chord and move it up and down the fretboard. One chord, you know. It wasn’t until about a year later, until we did Never Mind The Bollocks, that I loosened up a bit.”

Judging from the incredibly powerful guitar work on Bollocks, Jones developed very quickly. So quickly that it was widely rumored that guitar veteran Chris Spedding actually played on some or – depending on who’s telling the story – all of the tracks. But if that’s true, then Jones learned to imitate Spedding’s work awfully well later on.

Jones has his own explanation of how his bruising, rhythmically precise chordal style developed so quickly: “It's ‘cause I was doing a lot of speed at the time. I would just practice for hours and hours, literally over and over again. I’d practice to records and all of that – wake up, take me little Black Beauty and just play for 12 hours.”

The interplay between Jones and Cook is another factor in the Sex Pistols’ tremendous power. Together they took the Ramones’ muted, down-picked eighth-note feel and somehow made it sound 10 times larger. “I think it came from masturbating too much,” Jones suggests.

Jones and Cook never really seemed to need a bass player. When the two of them played together – whether in the Sex Pistols or, later on, in the Professionals – they instantly got that sound. And, like the Patti Smith Group, the Sex Pistols were without a bassist at certain critical formative stages in the band’s career. Musical differences with Glen Matlock led to his expulsion just as sessions for Never Mind The Bollocks were getting under way.

“He was into the Beatles too much,” Jones says. “He kept trying to teach me these weird, funny chords and it just didn’t sound good. He kept saying, ‘Play a B7,’ And I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.”

Matlock’s replacement was Rotten’s friend, John Ritchie, who took on the name Sid Vicious. Selected mainly for his look and his compatibility with Lydon, Vicious couldn’t actually play the bass when he joined. As a result, for most of Never Mind The Bollocks, says Jones, “whenever we put tracks down, it was just me and Paul. We didn’t have a bassist playing with us; it was just guitar and drums.

“Except for Anarchy In The U.K. – Glen Matlock was still around for that one, and he played bass with us at the same time we put down guitar and drums. But on the rest of the songs, it was just me and Paul, and I would put the bass on afterwards.

“Sid wasn’t around and he couldn’t play anyway. He was in the hospital or always fucked up. Which was a godsend, really, because he kept wanting to play on the record, and we were trying to think of ways to get him out of the studio. He was just making a fucking mess. And then he got hepatitis and had to go into the hospital for a few weeks. So it was a perfect opportunity for me to play the bass. God bless him.”

Yet another reason why the Bollocks tracks are so tight and have such devastating economy of arrangement is that they were heavily demoed. Each of the songs was recorded numerous times in various studios. As the Pistols and McLaren led the British media on a mad chase, getting booted off major record labels more quickly than they’d been signed, there was ample time to polish the tracks.

But Jones bristles at the suggestion that he overindulged in guitar overdubs on the final version of the album. (Rotten used the phrase “21 tracks of guitar” to describe the venture.) “Lies!” Jones cries. “What the fuck does he know, anyway?

“I mean, there are guitar overdubs on there – like on Anarchy In The U.K., there’s mainly two guitars doing the rhythm with some kind of flange or phase on them. And then there’s one playing chords here and there; not throughout the whole song, but coming in at certain places. There’s one doing a feedback thing near the end, and another doing power chords at the end. I would say there were about six guitars on there. A far cry from 21!”

Most people assume that Jones got his wall of guitar sound by plugging his Les Paul into one or more Marshalls. But he’s keen to set the record straight on that point as well. “All I was using was one Fender Twin Reverb, which I stole off Bob Marley at the Hammersmith Odeon.

“It was an older one with a silver front. I put Gauss speakers in, which took away the real trebly Fender sound and gave it a lot of midrange. It was a nice, warm sound, but it had a lot of distortion on it. I just had it turned up to 10 the whole time.”

Jones complains that latterday guitarists are clueless when it comes to playing punk. “A lot of people just don’t know; they get it completely wrong. They say, ‘Okay, we’re going to do a Sex Pistols song.’ And they play it three times faster than the actual song was.

“But that’s where the power is – when it’s slowed down, when it’s paced. Everyone thinks punk has got to be fast and stupid. They get it all wrong.”

The artists and crazies within McLaren’s social circle created a bold new visual style around the Pistols and punk itself, including a style of album graphics that’s now routinely taught in university art history courses.

McLaren made the Pistols the center of a media circus that was much like a performance art piece in its own right. But the whole thing wouldn’t have meant doodley-squat if the Pistols hadn’t been an absolutely great rock ’n’ roll band.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

You could forgive Blondie for soaking in the incredible run of success they were enjoying in 1980.

They’d certainly paid their dues – spending years slogging it out in New York City’s dingy punk spawn point CBGB’s and throwing spunky guitar-pop darts at a wall to no avail, before they hit it (really) big in 1979 with the irresistible Heart of Glass.

Disco-tinged as that song was, Blondie were and are still a guitar band first and foremost, and six-stringers Chris Stein and (at that time) Frank Infante were heartily enjoying their much-expanded tools-of-the-trade budget.

“By the time I got to CBGB’s. I didn't have any money or resources,” Stein recalled to Guitar World in a 1980 interview. “I used this old Supro Ozark guitar. I played it for a long time but it was only on loan; I had borrowed it from this guy who later had a sex change operation and decided he wanted his guitar back.”

By the end of 1980, though, those trying days were three chart-topping hits behind Blondie, and the sort of kid in a candy (guitar) shop stories we all dream of were now well within reach for them. And, when asked by GW during that peak-era interview where the Burns Ampeg guitar sitting on his living room couch came from, Stein had a story to tell...

“We’re in Indianapolis and we’re staying in this hotel across from a huge, gigantic pawn shop,” Stein recounted to GW. “So Frankie [Infante] or somebody went over there and came back with this really weird story. He said, ‘This guy in the pawn shop says he has a roomful of Les Pauls upstairs, but he won't let me see them.’

“So we went over to the store and there were lots of guitars all over the place, and the guy said, ‘Yes, there is a room upstairs filled with guitars, but you can’t see them because we’re only selling them all at once.

“So we finally came back and we waved hundred dollar bills in his face and said, ‘Let us in and we’ll buy the guitars individually.’ We were on tour with Rockpile. We had two bands and roadies there ready to spring for them. Finally he let us into the room which was filled with guitars.

“It was sort of like a dream, you know,” Stein continued. “We spent the whole day opening up these dusty guitar cases. They had been saving them up for years. A lot of them were brand new. I got six guitars all together. They weren't all Les Pauls. There were some really old Epiphones, in great condition. I got a Gibson Trini Lopez custom model. And I also got that Burns Ampeg.”

Offbeat in design and origin story, the Burns guitar in question appealed to Stein's punk roots.

“I mostly used to use Strats before this, and I still use Strats,” Stein explained. “But I like Burns [company founder James Ormston Burns] and I like what he is about.

“I was immediately attracted to it because it looked like a Telecaster I once carved up with two sets of horns and painted black. I had to sell it because we were out of money. Burns has been fucked over by the system so much that he says this guitar is against the system. He says it's the devil’s guitar.”

Don't get me rambling about Drive-By Truckers. They're one of my favorite bands, and if I've had a beer or two and they come up, you might be in for an excruciating tangent about how, as good as their records are, the triple live album It's Great to Be Alive! is really what best captures the spirit and power of the band, and how... Ah, see, there I go.

I bring this up because the Truckers' two leaders, singer/songwriter/guitarists Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, happen to be my favorite guitar duo of all time. The vivid stories they tell of the South – of rotten politicians, dirtbag romances, gut-wrenching tragedies, and larger-than-life figures from the history books – wouldn't be what they are without Hood and Cooley's glorious call-and-response playing.

Cooley has an answer for all of Hood's barreling rhythm work – swaggering fills, sneering solos, sweet or nasty phrases. And never mind when they were fully a guitar trio, augmented by the great Jason Isbell.

Anyway, I wouldn't call them the best guitar duo of all time, that's not for me to say, but they're my personal favorite.

You, however, can say what the best guitar duo of all time is. In fact, we'd like you to tell us who you feel should wear that crown. And yes, you can name a trio if you're partial to, say, Skynyrd.

Who had the greatest chemistry? Who pushed each other to the greatest heights? Who best knew how to serve the song together? Let us know in the comments below.

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Samantha Fish has played with a who's who of the blues world, but one especially memorable mentor has been bona fide blues legend, Buddy Guy.

Back in 2013, after a whole night driving across Canada to make it to Guy’s show on time, Fish was coaxed to the stage to jam with the guitar ace himself.

“I see this look on Buddy Guy’s face that’s like, ‘What’s this girl's name? I’ll put her on!’” she recalled in a 2019 interview with Blues Blast Magazine.

“That’s when Buddy called me up. I was so nervous. My recollection of it is terrible, ’cause I was so damn nervous. I do remember him saying, ‘When shit like that happens, I can play all night.’”

Since then, Fish has carried on Guy's mission of “keeping the blues alive,” even trading licks with him on stage as a special guest on multiple occasions.

Those experiences have presented plenty of valuable lessons for Fish, who revealed the most important ones she learned from Guy in a recent Guitar World interview.

“​​Well, Buddy Guy is, as far as guitar players go, one of the best conversationalists on the planet,” she says.

“What he does with his guitar, and when you're doing a back and forth with him, trading licks, he's fully immersed. For me, the best thing you can do for a guitar, as a guitarist, is try to make it sound like a human voice. Emote a voice out of it... and he just does that perfectly too.”

Fish notes that Guy “takes a lot of pauses,” and when he stops playing, the audience “just goes nuts”. It's all about finding the space, playing with emotion, and trying to squeeze every ounce of emotion out of each note.

“It’s amazing,” she raves. “People really do respond to it. He's just one of the best emoters there is.”

Fish will be taking part in Buddy Guy’s 90th birthday concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on May 1st. As part of a stellar lineup, she’ll be honoring his legacy and celebrating all things blues alongside Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks, Joe Bonamassa, and, of course, Guy himself.

There are a myriad of well-known licks in guitar playing, but the Gaslight Anthem’s Tele-wielding band leader says there’s one that all players need to learn above the rest.

In recent years, Fallon has become a prolific solo artist and is set to release his latest solo LP, Not Bad for New Jersey, in September. That’s led him to tell Guitar World what he thinks should be a fundamental piece of knowledge for every guitar player. Regardless of genre.

“Some people underestimate what a great guitar player is; there’s multiple facets to it,” he says, building up to his point.

“There’s the traditional shredder, but then there’s Julian Lage or John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Take Snow (Hey Oh), for example; that lick isn’t hard to play, but it’s super hard to get up to speed for five minutes. I don’t think a lot of people could do it cleanly.”

Fallon is keen to point out that the upper echelons of playing are not reserved for superstar shredders alone. He puts himself firmly in the Frusciante camp here, and puts a clear divide between guitar solos and lone-standing licks.

“Instead of solos, I want to learn licks,” he quips. “It’s about the relationship between the two. That kind of playing is overlooked. We have a lot of Ron Woods and Mick Taylor’s [of the Rolling Stones], but we need more Keith Richards’s and [Bob] Marley’s.”

That leads him, at last, to the lick in question: Your Favorite Mistake by Sheryl Crow.

“It’s crazy. It’s slamming,” he purrs. “That opening lick is so dope. It’s Wendy Melvoin, and it’s perfectly played.

“If you’re a guitar player out there, go listen to her – that is the way you should play guitar. But only half of you. The other half needs to be shredders, because every Izzy needs a Slash.”

Indeed, for every Yngwie Malmsteen-inspired shredder who can dance through arpeggios like it’s a task as easy as putting socks on, there needs to be understated players who keep things simple and grounded. They complement one another.

Fallon isn’t speaking out against shredders; he is simply proving that there are other ways to be great. And he’s certainly doing it in a more understated way than Keith Richards, who said he laughed his ass off when the ‘80s shred scene built up speed, or modern prog hero Steve Wilson, who said shredding wasn’t music but sport.

Guitar World’s full interview with Fallon will be published online in due course.

Bassist Tim Bogert first came to prominence via Vanilla Fudge’s eponymous debut in 1967. His virtuosic style helped define that band’s sound during a prolific five-album stint that lasted up until 1969.

“Vanilla Fudge were an amazing band,” said Billy Sheehan. “Tim was all over the place on bass – but everything he did worked. He was a huge influence on me.”

Bogert and Fudge drummer Carmine Appice went on to create Cactus, which churned out four studio albums before dissolving in 1972, when the duo teamed up with guitarist Jeff Beck to form the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice.

But despite boasting the kind of explosive musicianship not heard since Cream, the trio never found the chemistry to match its collective talent.

“The nights that BBA were on, we were frightening,” said Bogert in the March 2011 issue of Bass Player. “But we were only on maybe one of three nights.

“That group was like a dragster when it does a burnout: you get a lot of smoke and a lot of noise, but it doesn't go anywhere. But when it hooks up, my God, it's amazing. That's what that band was like. I lived for those moments when it all hooked up; they're some of the best musical memories I have.”

Lady, the second song on the group’s only studio album, exemplified Bogert’s freewheeling inventiveness on the bass guitar.

“For Lady, I played whatever flopped out of my head at the time, trying to be appropriate, flashy, or both. We did the basics in one take, and then everything else was over-dubbed.

“No-one taught me to play the bass; I just picked it up and did my thing. So it was out of ignorance of the rules that my style developed.”

To record the track, Bogert played a Fender Precision Bass with a Telecaster neck and La Bella flatwound strings through a Sunn Coliseum head and custom cabinet made by Tony Frank of Univox.

“I'd mic the cabinet, which had two 15-inch speakers, and play the bass hard – you had to with the flatwound strings, so it would distort and break up.”

The guitar and drums set the mood in the first three bars with a gritty stop-start riff, joined by the bass in the second half of bar 4, as Bogert enters with an echo of the track’s defining E minor pentatonic figure.

At 00:07, Bogert – who employs a two-finger plucking technique and occasional rakes – settles into a simmering groove that makes full use of the open E string.

Note how he matches the rising intensity of the drums with a high staccato root-note figure at 00:22, which he contrasts with flowing, chromatic 16ths through beats three and four.

Bogert opts for a simpler riff under the first 12 bars of the 16-bar verse, sticking to root notes while the vocals sketch out harmonies atop his basic foundation. Appice and Bogert both sing on the track: Bogert is the higher of the two voices.

As the promise of a guitar solo unfolds at 02:05, Bogert navigates Beck's dense, multi-layered guitar work with fearless creativity, injecting the music with fluid chromatic runs and rich, Jamerson-influenced syncopation.

The low-end excitement continues as Bogert soars up to a high B on the G string under the B major chord at 02:47 before working his way down to the open E, leading to a period of quiet E7-based reflection.

This is followed by two more verses, during which Bogert’s on-the-fly development continues: Highlights include a cool descending D Mixolydian run at 04:08, and some wide-ranging skips at 04:14.

After a semi-false ending, followed by a drum solo, the final section pivots around bass-heavy reiterations of the track's E-minor pentatonic theme.

This is a custom-made Super 400 that Gibson built for Merle Travis. I bought it at Christie’s in New York when his stuff went up for sale, along with several other guitars that belonged to him. It intrigued me because it has some features that were rarely seen in 1968.

By the late 1960s humbuckers were standard pickups for the Super 400 and this body has humbucker cut-outs. But Merle must have specified P-90s, and Gibson placed a very thin plastic cheat ring under the neck P-90 cover to hide the humbucker rout. The bridge pickup has a standard spacer that also conceals the hole.

The really cool pickguard is obviously custom-made, and the Bigsby has the burnished brown colour that you sometimes see on archtops. It’s actually an enamel finish that has chipped off in certain places. It has a palm bar, which is more like a long wire with a hook on the end.

When he played, Merle would operate the Bigsby with his pinky finger as he picked with his thumb and index finger. The bar is fixed so it doesn’t swing out of the way; he had about a hundred guitars with this setup. That was Merle’s thing and I’ve bought several instruments that belonged to him, including a 1952 Fender Esquire. He mounted a big old Bigsby right on the end of that with the same long bar.

The pickup selector is a standard three-way switch, but it’s in a completely different position from a standard Super 400 switch. It’s maybe an inch lower and almost directly in line with the pickup. A second switch, next to the pickguard, was used to put the guitar in standby.

The witch-hat knobs are pretty standard for late-1960s Gibsons, and there’s a big plastic plate where the jack socket is mounted. I’m sure somebody broke the jack at one point and just stuck that sucker on to cover it.

There’s also a homemade wire hook for his strap that is screwed into the tail block. It’s not the first time I’ve seen one and it’s the kind of thing techs did back in those days. I don’t really care because, to me, this is an artist guitar.

The guitar has such a thin neck, I’m sure it was carved that way especially for Merle. It’s a very comfortable instrument to play and it’s made from three pieces of maple with a fair bit of flame.

In contrast, the back of the body, which appears to be carved from a single piece of maple, has no figuring at all. The sides are maple, too, but the really interesting thing about the body is that it has less depth than a regular Super 400.

The scary part is that this represented Gibson’s best in 1968 and, to be honest, the materials are just not that great.

I sometimes look at guitars from this era and wonder where they found such unremarkable wood. I can’t believe they used maple like this for their flagship model guitar, particularly one made for an artist like Merle. But I guess they didn’t really care that much.

The truss rod cover says ‘custom’ and the front of the headstock has a Les Paul Custom-style split diamond inlay that is echoed on the back of the headstock, in regular Super 400 style. The fingerboard is ebony, with typical Super 400 inlays, and it has been refretted with wire that’s a little flatter and wider. The Kluson Sealfast tuners are also original and have never been replaced.

The biggest differences between this custom-made guitar and a regular Super 400 that you could buy off the shelf are the thinner body, the pickups, the pickguard and the switching arrangement. It’s wonderful to be able to feature it here because most people don’t get to see guitars like these and it isn’t one that we have publicised.

There is a little wear and tear because this guitar has been played and loved on, and Merle did keep it to the end of his life. I have a cute little thank you note from Christie’s and the original poster board that they made to display the guitar.

There is also a CD that was in the case when I bought it with session outtakes and noodling on this actual instrument. On it, you can really hear how Merle used the vibrato and he was an absolute master of it.

I had a conversation about this with Brian Setzer a couple of weeks ago and he was commenting on Merle’s command over the instrument. He was such an exceptional guitarist.

• Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York / 001 (516) 221-0563
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

What happens to iconic guitars after a famous (or cult hero) guitarist dies? These days it’s common to see instruments sold at high-profile auctions and vanish into the clutches of anonymous collectors with deep pockets.

However, some guitars live on in museum collections, remain under close guard as family heirlooms, or pass along to famous player friends, where they continue to make history.

We decided to take a closer look at five of the most celebrated Telecasters, (actually, one is an Esquire) played by guitarists we’ve loved and lost, and figure out where those instruments are now. We start with George Harrison’s legendary 1968 Fender Rosewood Telecaster Prototype...

Sales of electric guitars skyrocketed in the mid-’60s, shortly after Beatlemania reached the U.S. However, American guitar companies were initially hesitant to capitalize on the phenomenon by striking deals with the Beatles, even though the Gibson, Gretsch, and Rickenbacker (and later Epiphone and Fender) guitars they played instantly became desirable icons.

Rickenbacker did make an early effort by giving George Harrison a prototype of its 360/12 electric 12-string, which made that model an instant success, but the relationship didn’t go much further than that.

The generation gap between the marketing/artist relations departments of American guitar companies and young rock ’n’ rollers was apparently still too wide, as manufacturers preferred to align with more “respectable” jazz, country, and pop performers at the time.

However, that attitude started to change during the late ’60s. In July 1968, Fender’s director of sales, Don Randall, met with Paul McCartney and John Lennon at Apple Corps, hoping to convince the Beatles to sign an endorsement deal with Fender.

As a symbolic gesture of trust, Randall gave the band Bassman and Twin Reverb amps, a Jazz Bass and Bass VI, a Rhodes electric piano, and a Fender PA system.

Lennon and McCartney greatly appreciated the gesture but remained reluctant, so Randall decided to sweeten the deal by giving lead guitarist George Harrison a very special instrument that was already in the works: a prototype of the Rosewood Telecaster model that Fender was planning to introduce.

Fender designers Philip Kubicki and Roger Rossmeisl built two prototypes each of the planned Rosewood Tele and Strat models, choosing the best example of each for Harrison and Jimi Hendrix, respectively (Hendrix died before Fender could give him the Rosewood Strat).

Coincidentally, Rossmeisl already had an indirect relationship with the Beatles as the designer of the body shapes for the Rickenbacker 325 and 360/12 guitars and 4001 bass played by Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney.

The Fender Rosewood Telecaster did not depart too radically from the standard Telecaster’s design other than its two-piece rosewood neck and body construction, which consisted of two slabs (top and back) of Indian rosewood with carved chambers and a very thin layer of maple in the center.

Beyond that, it retained the two single-coil pickups, a three-way blade selector switch, master volume and tone knobs, and other standard Tele features.

A clear satin finish preserved the rosewood’s natural root beer brown color and grain figuring, and a black pickguard was chosen over the usual white version because it complemented the rosewood’s deep, rich hues better.

Rossmeisl had already developed both the short-lived “smuggler’s” variant of the Telecaster body, where a huge hollow cavity was hidden underneath the pickguard to relieve excess weight, and the Telecaster Thinline model that made its debut in 1968.

Rosewood was even heavier than the dense variety of alder supplied to Fender during this time period, so the chambered designs that Rossmeisl devised became a necessity to produce a guitar that was even remotely comfortable. Regardless, Harrison’s Rosewood Telecaster still tipped the scales at more than 10 lbs.

The Rosewood Telecaster occupied a seat next to Randall when he flew to England in December 1968 to personally deliver the prototype to Harrison. Although he never felt fully comfortable with the guitar’s excess weight, Harrison loved the Tele’s looks and tone, and he immediately put it to use for the Get Back sessions in January 1969.

It remained his studio companion from February through August 1969 as the Beatles worked on Abbey Road. The Rosewood Tele can be heard on several classic Beatles songs, including Don’t Let Me Down, Get Back, I’ve Got a Feeling, the single version of Let It Be, and the solo-tradeoff section of The End.

Most importantly, it is the guitar that Harrison played during the Beatles’ final live performance on January 30, 1969, on the rooftop of the Apple Corps headquarters at 3 Savile Row in London, captured for the feature film Let It Be.

Fender probably hoped to capitalize on the film to promote the Rosewood Telecaster, but they released the model prematurely in 1969, well before the film was released in May 1970. Public response to the model was passive, mainly due to its then-expensive $375 price tag.

By the time Let It Be reached theaters, dealers lost interest in stocking the model, even though a few eagle-eyed Beatles fans sought the distinctive Tele they saw Harrison playing. The Rosewood Telecaster appeared on and off in Fender catalog and dealer price lists until 1972, when they finally shipped all of the remaining stock.

Harrison also lost interest in the Rosewood Telecaster well before the film came out. In December 1969, he gave the Tele to Delaney Bramlett while he briefly toured as a member of Delaney & Bonnie. Bramlett played the guitar often on stage during the ’70s and beyond.

He even famously loaned it to Jerry Garcia in 1970 when the Grateful Dead guitarist joined Delaney & Bonnie on stage for a jam when their bands were on tour together. Bramlett made a few modifications to the guitar over time, including routing the body for a humbucking pickup in the neck position and sanding the finish off the back of the neck.

In 2003, Bramlett sold the Rosewood Telecaster through Odyssey Auctions in Hollywood on September 13. The winning bidder was actor Ed Begley Jr., who snagged the instrument for $434,750. Apparently, Begley was meant to act as a distraction from the real buyer, which was Harrison’s widow, Olivia.

The news of the guitar’s return to the Harrison family became public knowledge anyway, and it still remains in their possession, often seen in the hands of George and Olivia’s son Dhani.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In this column, I’d like to talk about guitar playing as it relates to songwriting. And as every guitarist knows, it’s all about the riff!

All great riffs have that instant allure that immediately captures the listener’s ear and attention. This is true in every style of guitar-based music. Songs like (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Purple Haze and Walk This Way are all great examples of the power of the almighty riff.

I wrote a song called Let It Burn for our 2017 album, Like an Arrow, that is built from a simple, catchy riff based on an open G chord. It all started, as is often the case, during a soundcheck. I was playing a Fender Telecaster or Esquire, and I said to our late drummer, Brit Turner, “Hey man, play the ‘train’ beat!”

I began playing Figure 1, which became the main riff in Let It Burn. With my fret-hand in a 3rd-position G chord shape, I begin by repeating the low G root note in a syncopated, punctuated rhythm, followed by oblique bends and releases on the G and B strings.

In these bends, the note on the G string is bent while the note on the B string remains stationary. These bends are followed by single-note riffs based on the G major pentatonic scale (G, A, B, D, E).

We jammed on that for about five minutes, setting up the “runka-runka” feel of typical Chuck Berry-style rock and roll. I then went home and put the verse section together by singing over the G5 - G6 rhythm part. As shown in Figure 2, I moved from the rock and roll figure to a ringing C/G chord, and then back to the runka-runka part.

This is how I began to put the lyrics and melody together, and a song evolved from the initial riff idea. This prompted me to map out the first half of the verse section, shown in Figure 3.

The alternating G and C/G chords in bars 1-5 led me to the D5 - C5 - D5 in bars 6-9. At that point, I felt that it’d be great to bring in some kind of harmonic twist. When it comes to mixing rock and roll with the unexpected, in my opinion, the three of the greatest bands are Rockpile, NRBQ and, of course, the Beatles.

I thought, “What would they do?,” and came up with the musical curve ball shown in Figure 4. Starting on the relative minor chord, Em, I arpeggiate the chord and then chromatically drop (descend) from the E root note to D#, D and C#, resulting in the progression Em - D#aug - G/D - A9/C#.

The verse section then wraps up with a return to rock and roll in Figure 5.

All of this set up the chorus, and I now had my story; the protagonist in the song’s lyrics had had enough of this town and wanted to see it in his rearview mirror, and, preferably, on fire, so the vocal line is, “Let it burn!”

Figure 6 illustrates the end of the chorus section, which balances the rock and roll approach of the D5 - D6 chord movement with a heavier Bb - F figure in bar 2, which then brings us back to the intro.

Now that all the elements were there, I had to put on my arranger/producer hat and give the song some order and structure and sharpen the picture so that it would work as effectively as possible. And herein lies the balance between initial inspiration and a completed, fully realized song.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Besides great guitar playing, two things come to mind when Angus Young is mentioned: Gibson SGs and his iconic school uniform.

The Australian riff machine has stayed loyal to the Gibson double-cut across his career. He’s bought many, and played them all across his prolific career. But one holds dominion over all the rest.

“I’ve lost count of how many SGs I have,” Angus Young admitted to Guitar World in 2009. “But none of them match up to that one guitar.”

His late brother and rhythm master, Malcolm, favored a heavily modded 1963 Gretsch Firebird. Angus, by comparison, has never been able to look past his red 1968 SG. And it’s not for a lack of trying.

“I’ve tried getting copies of it, but no, they’re not even close,” he said. “You might get the feel, but you don’t get that same kind of sound out of it. I don’t know why. I wish I did.”

The '68 SG in question is one of Young's most iconic instruments. It was used for most major AC/DC recordings and taken across the globe on numerous world tours. It was also the source material for an Angus Young signature SG in 2009. Noted for its unusually slim neck, it became the bedrock of the AC/DC lead sound.

Young's 2009 GW interview charted the creation of their 15th studio album, Black Ice. Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden) was tasked with producing the 15-track barnstormer, and he wanted to change things up a little by prizing Young away from his tried-and-trusted workhorse.

“I’ve got a couple of other guitars that I use onstage and as spares,” Angus relayed at the time. “I’ve got an early Sixties black SG, and we’d try that one. I’ll try anything and, if it works, use it.”

So, what fans are hearing on Black Ice isn’t always that guitar – Young is happy to experiment.

“Another guitar that I’ve got, a ’68 SG, dates from the Highway to Hell days, and I’ve used it for backing tracks and stuff,” he continued. “It’s a factory reject, I think – it has the number ‘2’ on it. I got it for 70 or 75 bucks when I first came to America. It was quite beat up.”

The Aussies played their first US shows in July 1977, meaning the $75 price tag is roughly $650 in today’s money. That alone makes it sound like a steal, but given its provenance, it's probably added a couple of zeros by now.

Today, the SG is finding plenty of love in the hands of Derek Trucks, Samantha Fish, Grace Bowers, and Yungblud as new generations take to the iconic axe. That said, a new signature Angus Young SG from Gibson wouldn't go amiss...

In a 2020 interview with Bass Player, AC/DC low-end legend Cliff Williams explained how he got the AC/DC gig in 1977, and charted the gear that defined his sound.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly gear round-up, your one-stop-shop for keeping up to date with what’s been happening in the big wide world of guitar gear over the past seven days.

From new electric guitars to amp modeler updates, the guitar industry is never short of fresh releases, and it can sometimes be hard to stay in the loop with every new launch.

To make things a little easier, we’ve put together an essential must-read guide that will cover the major releases, the boutique drops, and everything in between.

Below you'll find my personal highlights from the week, along with plenty of honorable mentions for the new gear you might have missed. Agree with my picks? Have a highlight of your own? Let us know in the comments.

Harley Benton Aged Series

Way back when I first started playing guitar, the first ‘proper’ six-string I was eyeing up was a Fender Road Worn ‘60s Stratocaster. The sunburst finish. The relic’d paintjob. The aged hardware. It was, in my eyes, the quintessential Strat.

Well, that ship sailed, I got a Les Paul Studio instead, and life went on. But I’ve always been pining for that road worn-style Strat. However, with a perfectly fine S-type already to my name, it always felt a bit frivolous to fork out on one.

Thanks to Harley Benton’s new Aged Series, I can finely get my hands on one for as little as $238. Seriously – these guitars look uber-cool. Hand-relic’d guitars with aged hardware, available in a bunch of colors and silhouettes, for under $250? What’s not to like about this? We always say it with Harley Benton, but this really is a home run.

John Page Noah Levine Signature DL Baritone

To be honest, I’ve never been too fussed about baritone guitars. Sure, they sound cool, look great, and do things a bit differently, but I’ve never felt an overwhelming urge to buy one. Well, I think I might be getting the urge, thanks to John Page’s new Noah Levine Signature DL Baritone.

Built for Noah Kahan’s lead guitarist, Levine’s new baritone is a beautifully styled, relic’d long-scale with a choice of Fishman Fluence or Lollar P-90 pickups, four gorgeous colorways, and a Bigsby tailpiece. That Olive Drab version is particularly easy on the eye.

The guitar doesn’t land until the 27th, but pre-orders are open now. It continues John Page’s recent hot form, and cements the brand’s position as one of the most adventurous and exciting modern electric guitar designers currently out there.

Kramer Malina Moye Pacer Deluxe

It’s about time Malina Moye got a signature guitar. Across four genre-blurring albums that draw influences from Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Elizabeth Cotton, Eric Gales and plenty more blues greats, Moye has established herself as a sorely underrated modern day guitar hero.

A former Fender artist known for her flipped-southpaw style, Moye has now defected to the ranks of Gibson-owned Kramer, which has made her its first woman of color signature artist.

Her first signature guitar is a doozy. Available in right and left-handed configurations, it builds on the S-style Pacer Deluxe platform, decking it out with DiMarzio pickups, gold hardware and a very tasty Splash Blue finish. Extra points for the color-matched headstock.

ALSO RELEASED THIS WEEK

Orange Baby Terror

The latest entry to Orange’s popular Baby series, with 20W of power and some unique features to boot. Petition to get a ‘Tubby switch’ fitted to every amp…

MXR Textures Granular Synth Engine

Yet another innovation from MXR that crams expansive granular synth guitar tones into a tiny form factor, Textures continues the ambient stompbox trend that’s been gaining momentum over the past few months in tremendous fashion.

Origin Effects EQDeluxe

A tribute to the Pultec EQP-1a, which, for the unacquainted, was a passive EQ famed for its low-end weight and clarity. The EQDeluxe promises studio-grade EQ and drive effects aplenty.

Third Man Hardware x Beetronics Old Zoo Lion Meat

The latest cross-company collaboration from Jack White’s Third Man gear company, the Old Zoo Lion Meat is an old school-style fuzz pedal that looks like a tin of tuna. No real lion meat included.

Shergold Telstar 12-star

A 12-string version of Shergold’s flagship Telstar single-cut, which not only promises to provide a platform for classic Roger McGuinn-style tones but a foundation for further experimentation.

Bad Cat Mod Shop Cub 15

Bad Cat has revisited and revived its definitive Club amp for a Mod Shop version, which pays homage to the original 1999 Mark Sampson Cub.

Steve Hackett has opened the door to the possibility of a Genesis reunion – or at least it is one to file under “never say never.”

Speaking to the Word in Your Ear podcast and YouTube show, Hackett was an open book, discussing his early days with the trailblazing British prog institution, living off 15 bucks a week, and the formative influences that shaped his style and musical education.

He talked intensively about his almost seven-year-long stint in Genesis, during which time he recorded some of their definitive albums – Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound et cetera – and made himself a poster boy for prog guitar.

And so the conversation just gravitated towards one obvious question: with all of the original members still alive, might Genesis reform one day?

“Well, I’ve always said that if they wanted me to reform, I would do it,” says Hackett. “I would even play harmonica, or do a walk on, but what is a reformation?”

Presumably, that would be all of the circa ’70 to ’75 lineup, together onstage, playing a show. But there are considerable barriers to this. Peter Gabriel has shown little interest in previous reunion tours. Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford might already consider the project done after The Last Domino? tour in 2021. When that tour was put together, Phil Collins was quoted as saying it was the “easy option” to just go out with Banks and Rutherford.

The are more serious reasons why the classic era lineup might not play together. Phil Collins has had long-standing health problems. When he, Rutherford, and Banks took to the stage for The Last Domino? shows, his son, Nicholas, was sitting in for him on drums. Collins senior performed seated, and told the BBC that he struggled to even hold a drumstick. He first encountered these issues during the band’s 40th Anniversary reunion Tour.

“Something happened on the Genesis reunion tour. At the end of each show I had a drumming duel with Chester Thompson, and one night something happened. It just went,” he said, speaking at a press conference in 2016. “I tried everything – bigger drumsticks and so on, but it just never came back. It’s a mystery what happened, I just couldn’t get it back. But I’m 65 and have played drums since I was five. I’d like to have the choice about being able to play, but I’m not going to cry myself to sleep about it.”

On March 26, 2022, during the final night of the The Last Domino? Tour, at London’s O2 Arena, Collins told the audience that that was it.

Hackett tells the Word in Your Ear host that musicians all have a different perspective of the past, and even when they do revisit old material there is an instinct to move it forward and develop the songs.

“I’ve rerecorded some of this stuff, and I’ve sometimes dealt with orchestras, so there’s some sort of sense of development there,” he says. “I’m gonna be doing that in Quebec, but it means that I get a chance to choose what I think is the best of it, and I like to think that it’s agenda free. Of course, there will be a few guitar parts that get heard that maybe were a little submerged back in the day, but that’s my prerogative.”

Not all bands can agree on what the so-called classic period is. Hackett alludes to the ‘70s being a more artistically satisfying period for musicians like them. Gabriel left in ’75. Hackett followed him in ’77. The hits that came for Genesis in the ‘80s might change what the band would consider to be the classic period.

“It wasn’t carte blanche to go out and do what you liked. I think the tail was wagging the dog rather more, and I suspect for today – for anyone who is signed to a major record company – it is the same. The Americans will be saying, ‘I don’t hear a single.’”

Hello there, and welcome to Guitar World Editors’ Picks – our monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.

With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of July, and noted our personal highlights – the playing, tones, and songwriting that most set our six-string senses a-tingling.

Highlights this month include a ferociously technical new single from the future of shred, a piece of defiantly optimistic post-punk, a slice of “ecstasy for the ears” indie, and some irresistible jazz fusion (and not the ’70s kind).

All that and much more in our playlist below.

Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief

Track of the month: Baxty – Threshold (ft. Pierre Danel)

The future of shred is a 26-year-old Chilean by the name of Bastian Martinez – you might know him as Baxty. His latest missive, Threshold, proves that, yes, virtuosos can thrive outside the social media battlefield – of course, it helps if you’re able to fuse the celestial prog of Dream Theater with the djent-adjacent rhythmic trickery of Animals as Leaders, as he does here.

Baxty’s devastating alternate-picking is the song’s dramatic centerpiece, but his yearning bends have all the feel of golden-era Satriani. Then, as if the track needed yet more firepower, Novelists’ Pierre Danel solobombs in to drop some terrifyingly clean sweep passages. Modern technical guitar playing doesn’t get better than this.

Also playing:

• Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery – The Black Sea
• Queens of the Stone Age – Easy Street (ft. Nikki Lane)
• Emma Ruth Rundle – Enough

Matt Parker – Deputy Editor

Track of the month: Protomartyr – Sounds We Cannot Hear

There has been an awful lot of bleak, shouty post-punk made in the last decade, which does seem like a reasonable response to all the shouty bleakness. However, the first taster of Protomartyr’s new album, Hotel Usona, hints at a defiant optimism.

It certainly ain’t all sunshine and roses lyrically (opening line, “Another 81 dead since dawn”), but as Greg Ahee’s cacophonic guitar tone is periodically let off the leash, there’s a melody fighting its way through the mire. Interwoven with the brass and keys, it’s like a cavalry call. I don’t know if you’d call it hope, but it feels like something fresh… a new way to use noise.

Also playing:

• Devil Master – You Worms' Vain Delusions
• Steve Lacy – Doom
• Grandmas House – Blue Oblivion

Jackson Maxwell – Operations Editor

Track of the month: The Strokes – Going to Babble On

I'm not opposed to my beloved Strokes changing things up, I admire them for it, really. That said, I do feel like they're often meandering aimlessly in AutoTune-colored waters on Reality Awaits, their first new album in six years. But that said, the album does feature a gem in Going to Babble On, one of the rare moments on the album where the always underrated twin guitar attack of Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi gets to shine.

Saying “One of us is riffing and the other adds color!” in a two-guitar lineup is like saying “I need to breathe oxygen!”, but fuck if those two aren't so good at it – their riffs are always killer, and there are warbly leads, pretty arpeggios – and listen to that Thin Lizzy-like flourish at the end! Thin Lizzy always were punk at the end of the day...

Also playing:

• Billboard Style – Billboard Style
• The Linda Lindas – Closer (ft. Hayley Williams)
• Hermanos Gutiérrez – Los Ojos Del Cóndor

Matt Owen – News Editor

Track of the month: Hovvdy – You Will Go Far

As this month's playlist will attest, there's a lot of angsty, technical, heavy, and darn right loud music coming out at the moment. And that's great. Heck, I had Polyphia as my highlight last month. I ain't complaining.

But this month my repeat-listen has been something a bit... softer. You Will Go Far, the latest single from Hovvdy's fortcoming record, is ecstasy for the ears. Those melancholic acoustics are so smooth they'll have you feeling like you can float. An excellent progression to noodle and improvise over, I might add.

Also playing:

• beabadoobee – Switchblade
• Nothing But Thieves – Stray Dogs
• PRESIDENT – dark heaven

Janelle Borg – Staff Writer

Track of the month: Marla Kether – Reverse

You may have spotted Marla Kether being the queen of cool on stage, holding down the low end with acclaimed British rapper Little Simz. However, what you may not know is that Kether is a fully fledged artist in her own right.

Her new track, Reverse, is an oh-so-funky number that offers a glimpse of what to expect from her upcoming record, Luso.

Fusing Latin jazz and broken beat, the track is built around Kether's addictive bassline – brought to life via her Squier Jazz Bass, “Scout” – and establishes her as one of the most exciting voices in bass, not only in the UK but, dare I say, on the global jazz scene.

Also playing:

• Charli XCX – Camera
• Los Bitchos – Hang Up (Pt 2) ft. Sinkane & Adrian Quesada
• Toast – Two Hearts

What is it?

The term Stratocaster-style guitar is a bit of a loaded one at the moment, but that’s what we’re dealing with today in the Sire Larry Carlton S7 Ash Top. It’s a double-cutaway instrument with the ever-versatile HSS pickup configuration, a vibrato bridge, and a 25.5-inch scale length. S-type? ST-type? Double-cut? I’m not sure anymore.

But I digress; Sire is a South Korean company that first found fame through its partnership with jazz legend Marcus Miller. In a rather shrewd move, instead of releasing a pricey signature model, Sire bucked the trend by releasing cut-price instruments with the sort of features you’d expect from pro-level instruments.

In 2020 Sire partnered with Larry Carlton, legendary session guitarist, to recreate that same magic. Carlton, whose credits include Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Dolly Parton, and plenty more, has his name put on S-styles, T-styles, 335-style semis, and LP-type guitars. The ethos is the same: good value instruments that deliver pro features at a price most musicians can afford.

Looking at the spec sheet of the S7 Ash Top, it’s hard to believe that it sits so far below the $1k mark. The alder body is paired with a solid Swamp Ash top; it’s got a roasted maple neck and fretboard combo with a 9.5-14-inch compound radius, and 22 stainless steel, medium jumbo frets.

A Graph Tech TUSQ nut is positioned below a set of staggered locking tuners, negating the need for a string tree, while Sire’s own 2-point tremolo bridge anchors the guitar at the opposite end. The Sire LC Super HSS super pickup set is augmented by a push-push knob that splits the humbucker, with a single volume and tone knob and a 5-way position switch.

Specs

• Launch price: $869 | £739 | €749
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Alder body with solid Swamp Ash top
• Neck: Roasted maple / C shape
• Fingerboard: Roasted maple with rolled edges
• Scale length: 25.5 inches, 647.7mm
• Nut/width: Graphtech Tusq XL / 42mm
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo, stainless steel
• Hardware: Sire premium locking tuners, Sire modern 2-post tremolo bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 54.3mm
• Electrics: Sire LC Super HSS pickup set, volume, tone, 5-way lever switch
• Weight: 8.15 lbs, 3.7 kg
• Options: Non-ash top available for $769
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Natural (as reviewed), Amber Burst
• Cases: No
• Contact: Sire

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Taking the Sire S7 Ash Top out of the box, I’m once again reminded why I don’t really like natural finishes on electric guitars. They just look like your grandmother's kitchen table. That said, pictures of the swamp ash top on the Sire site don’t quite do this guitar justice. It’s got a bit more depth to the color and grain of the wood under natural light, versus the rather surgical shine of the product photography lighting, and it grew on me in my time testing it.

The back of the body has a cherry-red stain, and the alder grain is visible underneath, revealing a three-piece body construction. The difference in colors creates a rather dramatic contrast between the dark back and the lighter wood of the Swamp Ash top, which is immaculately bound together.

The body has a forearm carve, as well as a belly cut to make it more comfortable to play. There’s no sculpted neck heel, but the lower horn is slightly carved on the back side, though, to be honest, I never feel like this really aids playability, as my hand tends to go over the front of the guitar when reaching for the upper frets.

The fretwork is exceptionally well done, much better than I’ve seen on a lot of Indonesian-made guitars of late, and better even than some of the Mexican-made instruments I’ve had pass through my hands.

The ‘Edgeless’ fingerboard ends are nicely rounded off, with nary a sharp edge to be seen or felt. The tangs of the fret ends are neatly finished, so there are no visible gaps or bumps on either side of the fretboard edge.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

Sitting down to play the Sire S7 sans amplifier, I’m immediately impressed with the playability. It’s listed as a ‘C’ neck profile but feels decidedly modern and fast-playing as I tear through some of my favorite licks and riffs. It’s a nice all-rounder neck that, combined with the compound radius, feels effortlessly playable no matter where I am on the fretboard.

It feels satisfying bending and playing against the medium jumbo frets, although a full jumbo-sized fret would likely take it into proper shred guitar territory. As it is, it feels more suited to more classic rock styles rather than all-out guitar acrobatics, which I don’t mind one bit. It’s still comfortable enough to pull off frenziedly fast legato, and I can’t find any dead spots or scratchiness across the length of the neck.

Trying some power chords with alternating strikes of the two high strings open, the high E pops out of the nut slot when I really lay into it. This only seems to happen on the upstroke, occurring a couple of times when I was striking the strings very hard. It points to a nut that's likely been cut too shallow, but could also be compounded by the lack of string trees.

The tremolo comes ‘decked’, with the bridge sat against the body so you can’t pitch up, only down. This means it’s a lot more stable, preventing any forward lean when bending the strings and making the tuning more sturdy. You can set it up to float if you want as it’s a two-point design.

In the decked configuration, it works really well, maintaining stability even under heavy load. I can pitch it down two-to-two-and-a-half tones, and it puts up with the abuse, pretty much perfectly maintaining its tuning alongside the locking tuners.

One thing I do notice when playing is that the position of the push-push tone knob is a little further away from my picking hand than I’d like. While a push-push knob is much more ergonomic for live players, its position –– spaced apart from the volume knob ––means you have to reach over the tremolo arm to get it, which can sometimes get in the way when you need to make a quick change.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Plugging the Sire S7 into my pedalboard and feeding it into the clean channel of my Orange Rocker 32 tube amp, the first thing I notice is that the humbucker feels quite a bit louder than the other positions. Going from soft-picked arpeggios and laying into some power chords results in quite a jump due to that midrange bump, so some players may need to slightly adjust their playing style (or the pickup height) to account for this.

Flicking through the positions with the clean channel engaged, as well as a nice helping of spring reverb with a sprinkle of tape delay, it's got all those typical S-type honk and spank tones you’d expect. It sounds great with some of my favorite Spaghetti western-inspired licks, and adding in some tremolo is the cherry on top.

The neck single coil is particularly great. It’s warm and round but never feels dull, and I found myself noodling here for a good twenty minutes during my testing. With some generous reverb and delay, it’s great for those Explosions in the Sky-inspired spacious licks, and chords sound full and articulate.

The split humbucker sound was my least favorite of the bunch. There’s a little harshness in the top end here, although I was able to tame this with a little roll back of the treble knob. If you have a particularly bright amp, you might find that this is a little much in this position, but you can help cure it by rolling back the tone knob a touch. In combination with the five regular pickup selector positions (where position two gives a mix of the split humbucker and middle pickup regardless of the push-push switch setting), that gives a total of six pickup selections in total for a lot of versatility.

It’s not just good at the clean stuff, either. Adding in my Joyo Tauren Klon clone into a Victory Amps V1 Sheriff overdrive pedal, I get some properly good, raunchy rock, PAF-tones from the humbucker. It can chug, too. It’s not quite djent territory, but cranking up the gain I can get some nice modern hardcore tones with chugging power chord licks, and it lends itself well to some prog metal fretboard expeditions.

Verdict

Much in the way AI is disrupting the world, I think we’re getting to a point where players are recognizing you don’t have to pay premium prices when looking for a new guitar.

Of course, there will always be those loyal to the old guard, but this Sire is living proof that if you’re not fussed about brand loyalty or particular headstock shapes, you can get a lot more bang for those hard-earned smackeroonies.

The most striking thing about the Larry Carlton S7 for me was that I couldn’t help myself from picking it up. I’m always testing gear, and I often have a round-robin of guitars on my $7 D’Addario guitar neck rest. The Sire has been solidly in position for the past week, and I’ve picked it up to play countless times, whether testing pedals, an audio interface, recording demos for an upcoming project, or taking it to rehearsal with my band.

The fretwork is particularly good, miles better than guitars I’ve tested costing closer to the $1k mark, and apart from the issue with the high-E nut slot, I can find little to fault here with it. The fact that the non-solid wood top is available for well below $800 makes the S7 a real dark horse, and for those working players who need playability and tone without spending loads, I can’t think of many guitars that deliver better than this.

Guitar World verdict: I’ve tested too many guitars to remember over the past few years, from budget-friendly to those costing in the thousands. Honestly, I think the Sire Larry Carlton S7 Ash Top is one of the best value-for-money instruments out there right now. The build quality is superb, it plays like a dream, and unlike other guitars in this price range, the electronics don’t let it down. It had a couple of tiny niggles, but overall it plays and sounds like an instrument that costs two times as much.

Also try

John Squire’s departure was a huge loss for the Stone Roses. The Mancunian indie band had released two monumental albums before he stepped aside in 1996, and Simply Red’s touring guitarist, Aziz Ibrahim, was subsequently sworn in.

Ibrahim delighted in the opportunity. But it also presented a huge learning curve.

“It was a dream come true. They didn’t tell me how to be; they just wanted me to be an entity, a unique individual, and to let my personality shine,” he says in the new issue of Guitarist. “They wanted that to come out in the music, so it was about identity.

“I started to understand what being in a band was about, which is about what you have to say, not what you’re told to do.”

It was a stark contrast to serving as Mick Hucknall’s foil. But there was an ugly side to the job, too.

“That was bittersweet,” he says of replacing Squire. “The downside was that I knew you couldn’t replace somebody as loved as John. It was difficult in terms of being accepted, but also with the racism I faced during that period. In those days, people could get your phone number easily, and I used to get death threats and all manner of calls.

“For that to be related to music was mind-blowing. It was difficult psychologically, but, musically, it didn’t take me long to learn.”

He was given freedom to be himself, but that didn’t stop Ibrahim recognizing the need for a change of style all the same.

“The hardest thing was that John is such a unique individual, so that was an education,” he observes. “That was the beginning of my reverse-engineering the damage in my playing. And when I say ‘damage’, what I’m referring to is the technical playing.

“I was geared up to play Steve Vai solos, which needed dexterity, and I was [particular] about pickups, fretboards and fret height. But being in The Stone Roses sent me in a completely different direction. It was now about individuality, tonality and the sense of the song.”

There’s nothing quite like being yanked out of your comfort zone to test your mettle, and Ibrahim was thoroughly tested during his time in the band. Sadly, the Stone Roses would go on hiatus by October 1996, with Ibrahim going on to work on vocalist Ian Brown’s solo albums. There, his Asian heritage could shine more brightly, with faux sitar licks aplenty.

Ibrahim’s full interview can be found in the new issue of Guitarist, an issue that puts the world’s greatest signature guitars under the microscope.

Digital and print copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

With their red-hot blend of influences including AC/DC, Rory Gallagher, and Gary Moore, The Zac Schulze Gang are fast becoming one of the UK’s hottest new blues acts.

Their debut album, Straight To It, certainly lives up to its name, with the hunger and urgency of a young band cranking things up and trying to leave their mark on the world.

And though he’s only 26 years old, frontman Zac Schulze is the kind of player who is on a mission to bring vintage sounds kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Big Guns

As with a lot of younger players, it was Joe Bonamassa who exposed Schulze to the musicians who ruled the world in the ’70s and ’80s.

“I’d been playing for a year when my dad bought me the DVD of Joe playing the Royal Albert Hall in 2009,” says Schulze. “That’s what turned me onto the blues; for people my age it was easy to relate to. That made me want to find out more about who inspired him as a player.

“Gary and Rory were the two I found with so much energy in their playing, as well as feel. With so many people out there doing the Stevie Ray thing, the Gary and Rory style felt a bit more unique.”

In The Flesh

Aside from the vocals, the debut album was recorded live to capture the trio’s natural energy. For Zac and band, it was a case of staying true to themselves and recording something they could actually deliver on stage.

“We wanted to keep it upbeat,” says Schulze. “There might be one or two tracks that are a bit lower in energy, but we did it all live apart from the vocals and wanted to keep that sound. In the past, I’ve gone into the studio and ended up recording 170 parts in one song. But what’s the point in doing that if you can’t pull it off live?”

Straight & Narrow

It was a simple tonal recipe for the recordings: one main guitar and one amp, with just a simple overdrive in front.

“The main guitar was my Strat, which has a 1978 Fender neck with a Japanese Squier Silver Series body,” Schulze says. “I ended up getting the guitar on eBay for £120. Me and my dad went to pick it up from a woman’s house and it turns out it was her ex-husband’s. Somewhere out there is a guy wondering where his Strat went [laughs]!

“Lee from Green Pickups in Manchester then made me some custom pickups. We plugged it into an Orange Rockerverb with an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer for more gain.”

Take Control

With such a simple rig, Schulze uses the controls on the guitar itself to dial in the tones.

“A lot of magic happens through working the volume,” he says. “I use the drive channel but clean it up through my guitar. That’s how Clapton and Page used to do it back in the day. I use a fair amount of gain, so I have to control my signal. John Mayer once said something along the lines of, ‘You end up sounding like yourself when you fail to sound like the people you’re trying to sound like.’ That quote really resonated with me.”

Fire & Water

From the new songs, Betterland is the one that Schulze chooses as his proudest achievement.

“I wanted to base that solo on All Right Now by Free, where it goes from a bass break into something melodic,” he says. “I started with something Clapton-esque in B minor and then went for a major/minor mix, almost like how Chris Buck plays. It’s a solo that builds, it goes somewhere. The same goes for Angeline; those two songs are more pop-rock than blues. Sometimes it’s nice to play over music with more chordal elements to it.”

Zac on the greatest guitar tone ever caught on tape

“I think Bad Penny by Rory Gallagher would have to be up there because it sounds exactly like how it should sound – a battered old Strat going through a Vox AC30. I had the pleasure of playing through that amp before it got auctioned off.

“If you have a great song with a great tune, you’ve basically won. It’s such a powerful tone – kind of woody but also very in your face. Similar things could be said of [Gary Moore’s] Still Got The Blues, it was just perfect. It wouldn’t have sounded the same on a Telecaster through a Twin.”

• Straight To It is out now via Ruf.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Dominic Davis has known Jack White since they were kids growing up in Detroit. The two jammed together for years and caught a vibe – but Davis didn’t realize how strong their chemistry was until later. “After a couple of years of not finding anybody to play with in college, I was like, ‘Wow… the guy was special,’” he tells Bass Player.

Eventually he did find others to play with. He formed Steppin’ In It before moving into a session career, working with everyone from Pharrell Williams to Adele to Beyoncé. “It’s always interesting,” he says. “Everybody does something different.

“Pharrell sent me a finished album and wanted me to do exactly what he’d done. But with pop songs there’s a lot of ear candy. You hear about trying to ‘have a moment,’ – maybe there can be a bass moment there. If I’m forced to do that, I will, but I don’t usually think like that.”

His understated yet virtuosic approach works so well that it led to old pal White inviting him to join his band over a decade ago. Since then Davis has appeared on five of White’s solo records, the latest of which is 2026’s Frozen Charlotte, and he’s about to tour the globe with White again.

Davis has other projects too. “I’ve been doing a bunch of soundtrack work,” he says. “I moved to Nashville 14 years ago, and there’s lots of sessions, lots of producing records, and lots of hanging with friends in the studio. In Nashville you never know who’s gonna call or where you’re gonna wind up.”

What inspired you to take up the bass?

I was always interested in music. Growing up, there was a cardboard Kay guitar in the house. I grew up in Detroit with a single mom, and we were pretty poor, but she always encouraged me. She bought me a crappy pointed headstock guitar with a fake Floyd Rose – it just would not stay in tune!

I’d go to Jack’s house when we were 9 or 10 and we’d play in his attic with his brother Eddie. One day, since my guitar wouldn’t stay in tune, Jack’s brother Eddie said, “You know what? I bet you’re a bass player.” He put a bass in my hands, and that was the beginning of it all. I still play guitar, but I’ve always felt like a bass player.

What was it like growing up with Jack in Detroit?

I don’t know that I was terribly receptive. He was into some things that kids our age weren’t. He was always making things, like cutting up Dr. Pepper cans and making trains, planes or whatever.

One time he was listening to one of those big Lifetime classical music box sets. No one else was really listening to that. But when I moved to college, it took me forever to find people to play with, and that’s when it dawned on me that Jack had something special; he was motivated in a way that other people weren’t.

Eventually you transitioned into a healthy session career.

Yeah, I got pretty lucky. The band I started in college, Steepin’ In It, was kind of like Americana before Americana had a term. We got a reputation for backing folks up around Michigan.

We ended up playing with the actor Jeff Daniels a bunch, and with Greg Brown. That was a natural step into session work – we were already backing half of the singer-songwriters in Michigan.

What’s been your typical bass rig during sessions?

I’m a Jazz Bass guy, so I usually bring a J and a P-Bass. And I usually bring something short and weird, like a Kay or a [Teisco]. And whether they want it or not, I always bring the upright, because it seems like it’ll get used if I bring it!

I have a pretty giant session pedalboard. It’s everything you could want – a bunch of octaves, synthy things, and a couple of compressors. Not everybody wants to use amps, especially in Nashville, so I rarely use an amp on a session, unless it’s a rock session like with Jack.

What led you to become a mainstay in his solo band?

For years he dealt with his bands The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and all that. He was only doing that, aside from the Loretta Lynn album [Van Lear Rose], but when he moved to Nashville he started producing more.

I started coming down and playing on tons of stuff, like for Wanda Jackson and Tom Jones. It was a natural progression. I think for Jack, assembling bands was about him calling all his old pals.

What’s it generally like recording with Jack?

In high school he’d call and say, “Hey, come over – I wanna record!” and that’s how it still goes now. He’s pretty fearless in the studio. He doesn’t necessarily need a plan; he kind of chases it a lot. You just gotta trust him and know it’s gonna work, ‘cause there’s a lot of experimentation.

There’s a lot of pulling things from thin air, more so than a typical Nashville session where you get demos ahead of time, and you have a session leader who sends you all the charts.

Put us in the room with the band and Jack during a typical session for his latest, Frozen Charlotte.

It used to be half and half where there were finished songs, and he’d sit down and play you the whole thing, then the other half were experiments. But with the last couple of records, it’s more him just playing you riffs, and we connect parts.

We’ll say, “Maybe this should be longer,” or, “This should be shorter,” when there’s not a lot of lyrics yet. He’s an old-school guy but he’s also futuristic; he kind of walks between those worlds. He’ll be very specific about what he wants you to do, but he’ll let you be yourself somehow.

He’ll be like, “Big picture – octaves,” then he’ll say, “How about a higher octave or a lower octave?” instead of telling you exactly what to play. For this record I was trying not to do exactly what he did. You can hear the riffs aren’t exactly the same.

Like with Derecho Demonico, I’m keeping it all in one octave so it sounds a little tougher. I was sort of dissecting trios and hearing that a lot. In Led Zeppelin tunes, John Paul Jones is often playing a harmony, or not playing exactly the same riff. That was sort of theme for me. It doesn’t always sound right for me to do exactly what he’s doing.

I’ve learned from arranging White Stripes songs that you don’t have to play all the time. When we do Ball and Biscuit I play like 50 notes the whole song! It’s just roots on the one. On the album there’s a rhythm guitar that’s barely there. So, it’s like, “Okay, I’ll do that.” If we start playing it like a regular 12-bar blues song, it would go into a territory The White Stripes never would have gone to.

When we did My Doorbell a couple of tours ago, I just played tambourine! Sometimes a tambourine or a shaker will be more impactful than playing bass. But then there are some where you can really play the riff with Jack and be like his thumb.

What do you need as a part of your bass rig, no matter what?

I don’t need a whole lot, really – maybe a pick and my palm mute would be what I need most. But I use octaves pretty often, so that’s always part of my rig.

For my whole career it’s basically been octaves, fuzz and some sort of saturation distortion. I’ve also got an EHX POG, a MXR Poly Octave, and an MXR Bass Synth. I like octaves with presets; on mine I have four different octave settings.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from Jack?

I used to be a “bass on 10 and everything else on 0” guy, but Jack’s changed that. It’s so drastically different than the way I used to do it. Maybe it’s the bigger rooms, but now I’m bass on 2 and mid on 10. Jack’s really hammered home that the mid is kind of deeper than bass, or that you’ll hear it more.

And I play too hard! I can’t help it when I’m up there, but I wish I could have a lighter touch, especially with the pick. I’m really trying to play behind the beat, but it’s hard with him because he gets so excited, and it’s so energetic tempo-wise. But I’m trying to learn how to keep things back a bit.

• Frozen Charlotte is out now on Third Man Records.

Tony Iommi’s first solo album in over two decades is a cause for celebration. Even more so because it's set to feature his close friend, Queen guitarist Brian May.

The Black Sabbath legend announced From the Dark earlier this week with the lead single, World Alone. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Iommi revealed May recorded the solo on another track, Death Wake.

“In the very early Seventies, he was in one studio, and I was in another. We just hit it off,” Iommi recalls of his first meeting and friendship with May. “We’ve been friends for, God, nearly 60 years.”

May played the solo on When Death Calls, from Sabbath’s Headless Cross album in 1988. He then lined up alongside Dave Grohl on Iommi’s 2000 solo track, Goodbye Lament, as part of his eponymous, guest-filled LP.

More recently, May gifted Iommi a left-handed version of the Red Special for Christmas. Their friendship is enduring and it will continue on From the Dark.

“We stay in touch all the time,” Iommi says of his friendship with May. “He’s played onstage a couple of times with me, and then we’ve done a couple of album tracks we played on together. He’s a very, very close friend.”

They could have doubled their money on From the Dark. Iommi offered the chance for May to play more. But the Queen legend didn’t want to overstay his welcome.

“I did say to him, ‘Do you want to play on something else?’” Iommi remembers. “He said, ‘No, no. Your solos are good. I don’t need to play.’

“It was great that he did. I just played him a couple of things, and he’d done it here at the studio in my house. Then of course he’d play something and go, ‘Oh, I don’t know about it.’ I go, ‘I like it.’”

From the Dark is due for release on October 23. It comes after the guitarist had teased flirtations with orchestras and, more surprisingly, that he’d been experimenting with a Kemper for its recording.

In related Iommi news, the Black Sabbath legend also recently reflected on Ozzy’s passing, one year on.

Legendary Australian composer Mick Gordon is to perform his seminal Doom video game soundtrack live for the very first time when he headlines the UK’s RADAR Festival in 2027.

For a generation of metal guitar nerds weaned on the claustrophobic brutality of the first-person shooter, this is like not only finding the Ark of the Covenant but breaking its seal, opening it and finding all of the secrets to his Meshuggah-through-the-event-horizon sound.

Gordon will be joined by a full band – and an orchestra – and of course he will be bringing his Doom Machine along for the performance.

“This isn’t a DJ set, and it isn’t a tribute act,” says RADAR Festival. “It’s the actual composer, the actual score – the riffs played properly loud in a room that can withstand all the ripping and tearing.”

We predict that sales of Schecter Damien 9-string guitars will rocket in the Greater Manchester area in the weeks following Gordon’s performance (though an Ernie Ball Music Man John Petrucci JP7 and a Mayones 8-string guitar were just as important to the Doom sessions).

Gordon’s Doom soundtrack is one of the foundational texts of progressive modern metal. It’s ugly, brutal, rhythmically audacious, super aggressive and yet still manages to send a chill down the spine with its post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

It’s the kind of headphones record that has you checking the corners upon entering a room. Heck, it’d make a municipal parking lot complex feel like hell itself.

Gordon probably won’t take to the stage in a powdered wig, red velvet jacket and gold brocade but he nonetheless has a Mozart-esque command over his sound, and an electric guitar tone that is far beyond electric, squished through layers of compression (the Origin Effects Cali76-TX was used extensively when making Doom).

He told Origin Effects that he saw “guitars as a flavour rather than a genre”. In his pursuit of modernism he had to almost destroy tone to reconstruct it for the Doom world.

“Well, you take angry 7, 8 and 9-string guitars, vintage Soviet synthesizers and punch-knuckle-smacked drums,” he told Bethseda. “Then, you spice it up with burning valve distortion, electrically starved transistors, dusty ancient reel-to-reel tape machines, bleeding feedback arrays and gut-grinding sub-woofers. Finally, you smash all these elements together, give the player a shotgun and let the hunt begin!”

Earlier this year, Gordon famously did give away all of his secrets, or at least those he saved down onto his Fractal, when he sold the Axe-Fx unit he used on the Doom soundtrack. The amp modeler also had his presets from Wolfenstein, Prey, and LawBreakers soundtracks.

So, gamers, djent-heads and fiends for quasi-mechanised chug, the time is almost nigh when you can hear this all live and in concert. Let’s just hope it isn’t a harbinger of things to come on this Toilet Earth of ours. We’ll keep the chain gun locked up in its gig bag for now.

RADAR Festival 2027 is hosted over the weekend of July 30 to August 1st, and Super Early Bird tickets are on sale from August 7. Sign up at RADAR Festival.

There’s no official lower limit to how far a bass player can tune, but if you’ve reached drop F, you’ve probably gone far enough. This month, however, manufacturers have been doing their best to encourage us to venture further into the sonic abyss.

Highlights include Dingwall’s Amos Williams Signature Combustion, a BEAD-tuned four-string built for subterranean lows, and the Ron Petzke Cyclops Bass from Dunable Guitars. If you’ve ever thought your bass simply wasn’t capable of moving enough air, Dunable and Petzke would like a word.

Other artist-driven releases include Ashdown’s Combo of Doom, created with Black Sabbath legend Geezer Butler, La Bella’s Aston “Family Man” Barrett Signature strings, and JCA Audio’s Endless Bass plugin, which packs multiple amp tones, DI and sub channels and a parallel mixer into a single plugin.

With a host of new basses, strings, pedals and plugins designed to make your low-end even louder, here’s our pick of the biggest bass gear releases in July.

Dingwall Guitars Amos Williams Signature

Although most of us would sooner drop an SVT on our foot than venture into tunings as low as progressive metal band TesseracT, there can’t be many bass players who haven’t at least considered going lower.

TesseracT remain one of prog metal’s heaviest hitters, and anyone drawn to the low-end manoeuvres of bassist Amos Williams should take a serious look at his Signature Combustion from Dingwall Guitars.

The four-string version features Dingwall’s renowned 34.75–37-inch multi-scale design and comes factory-tuned to BEAD, offering plenty of extended low-end range straight out of the box.

There’s an environmental angle, too. In keeping with Williams’ commitment to reducing waste, each bass is constructed from carefully selected body offcuts that would otherwise be too small to build a complete instrument. The result is a sustainable approach that also means every bass is genuinely one of a kind.

Joe Calderone Audio & Toby Peterson-Stewart Endless Bass

Lauded as one of the modern-day heroes of the electric bass, Toby Peterson-Stewart has teamed up with Joe Calderone Audio to create Endless Bass, a custom plugin that’s designed to give you control over multiple amp tones, with a dedicated DI and sub channel, plus a full parallel mixer – all in one plugin.

“We made Endless Bass to provide the most complex bass tone, with the simplest workflow,” says Peterson-Stewart. “All modern bass tones are an amalgamation of different parallel channels that are combined together to make one big tone. So we decided to put it all into one plugin.”

The parallel mixer can be accessed from the plug-in’s Mix Page, with each channel featuring its own full parametric EQ. There’s also a Pre-FX page with fuzz and chorus, although crucially, these effects don’t affect the Sub channel.

The result is a streamlined multi-layered bass signal that would otherwise require several amp, effects and mixing chains, all from a single plugin.

Ashdown Geezer Butler Combo of Doom

Here’s one for the Sabbath fans – following Geezer Butler’s monstrous bass rig for Black Sabbath’s 2025 “Back to the Beginning” concert, Ashdown has unveiled the Combo of Doom – a UK-built 200-watt bass combo created in collaboration with the legendary bassist and limited to just 70 units worldwide.

The control panel features a five-band EQ, tube-emulated drive, Shape and Active/Passive switches, while an effects loop, Line In, balanced XLR DI, headphone output and optional footswitch provide plenty of flexibility for both stage and studio use.

Visually, it shares the same purple Tolex as Butler’s colossal Ashdown rig, but at just 10.5kg, and with a single 1x12-inch speaker, it’s a far more portable alternative – and a tempting proposition for Sabbath devotees and bassists alike.

Dunable Guitars Ron Petzke Cyclops Bass

If your idea of a sensible bass tuning ends somewhere around standard, look away now. Dunable Guitars has teamed up with Bongripper bassist Ron Petzke for a limited-edition USA Cyclops Bass built specifically for players who like their low-end to venture into truly ridiculous territory.

Designed with drop F in mind, the recipe is suitably stripped-back: a single D-Bird pickup, a charcoal finish and a hefty slab of swamp ash.

With its USA-built construction and limited-edition status, this latest model from Dunable looks less like a conventional bass and more like a dedicated piece of heavy-duty artillery for anyone who thinks drop G simply isn’t low enough.

La Bella Aston “Family Man” Barrett Signature Flatwound Bass Strings

La Bella reckons its 760FS Deep Talkin’ Bass flatwound strings played such an important role in Aston “Family Man” Barrett’s legendary tone that the company has developed a signature set in tribute to the late bassist.

"For decades, ‘Family Man’ relied on La Bella flatwound strings to deliver the deep and powerful tone that became the heartbeat of countless classic recordings,” say La Bella. “His basslines provided the foundation for some of the most influential music ever created, making La Bella strings an integral part of his unmistakable sound.”

The set uses .045, .065, .085 and .105 gauges, finished with distinctive red, gold and green silk ends – a nod to Barrett’s Jamaican roots and musical legacy.

Serek The Grand Batch #12

If you like your basses with a little more attitude than your average slab of mahogany, Serek’s latest limited-edition Grand should be firmly on your radar.

Batch #12 is the latest instalment in Serek’s semiannual series, and it arrives with a mahogany body finished in Wild Mountain Berry, accented with Cream stripes and topped with a custom-engraved “Four Thousand Holes” pickguard from Decoboom.

As with previous Grand models, Batch #12 features a TV Jones Thunder’Blade pickup and Serek’s “Skuzz Serkit” passive fuzz circuit. A roasted maple neck, Indian rosewood fingerboard and Hipshot hardware round out the spec.

Jad Freer Audio SARTO

We’re already partial to the Jad Freer Audio CAPO, and always pleased to see the Italian-based company release another of it’s studio-style preamp pedals. The SARTO is billed as a “channel strip in a small box” – a compact preamp/EQ pedal designed to bring clean-tone shaping to just about any instrument.

It’s based on the clean preamp circuit from the CAPO and is built around an ultra-high input impedance, making it particularly well suited to piezo-equipped instruments such as upright basses.

An extended EQ section and resonant high-pass filter give players plenty of control over the frequencies that can make or break a live or studio sound.

There’s also a balanced XLR output, making the SARTO a practical option for bass players who want to go straight to a desk or recording interface.

Winzz Guitars EBS714 & EBS715

Winzz Guitars is looking to bring neck-through construction and modern active electronics to a wider audience with its new EBS714 and EBS715 electric basses. Both combine an okoume body with a walnut top and sleek matte finish.

Winzz has fitted the pair with active dual-humbuckers and a three-band active EQ, giving players boost-and-cut control over the bass, middle and treble frequencies alongside a master volume.

Chrome hardware completes the package, but the real attraction is the combination of a 35-inch scale, neck-through construction and active dual-humbuckers.

Swiff Audio Maestro Series WT09B 5.8GHz Wireless System

If you’re tired of cables getting under your feet, Swiff Audio has another wireless option for your bass rig – and this one promises to keep things seriously stable.

The Maestro Series WT09B 5.8GHz Wireless Transceiver System arrives just two months after the 2.4GHz WT09A, upgrading to the less congested 5.8GHz frequency band for what Swiff describes as studio-grade tone and rock-solid wireless performance.

The launch also comes with some serious player endorsements. Guitar virtuoso Bernth Brodträger and slap bass extraordinaire Charles Berthoud have both officially joined Swiff Audio as global brand ambassadors for the Maestro Series – suggesting the company is keen to position its latest wireless system as a serious tool for serious players.

BOSS CB-EB15 Bass Guitar Gig Bag

It may be BOSS’s first bass guitar gig bag, but the CB-EB15 looks like the company has done its homework – offering plenty of protection and practical touches for bassists who need to get their instrument from A to B in one piece.

The exterior is made from durable 600D polyester, with thick padding throughout and extra reinforcement to protect the strap button on the lower bout. A cushioned end guard features an adjustable fit, allowing the bag to accommodate basses of different shapes and sizes.

Inside, your bass gets a velvet-lined interior and two detachable neck supports with adjustable straps, while heavy-duty zippers add another layer of protection. There’s also a sizeable external front pocket for accessories, along with a padded carry handle and two padded backpack straps for even easier transport.

Kramer has partnered with genre-blurring blues guitar hero Malina Moye for a historic signature guitar.

The arrival of Moye’s first signature electric guitar has been a long time coming. The underrated artist has melded blues, hip-hop, R&B, funk and soul across her four studio albums. Her 2023 record, Dirty, was voted one of the best guitar records of the year by GW readers.

With her flipped-southpaw style, Molina has channeled Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Elizabeth Cotten, Eric Gales, and many other greats of the instrument.

Now, having played everything from Flying Vs to Stratocasters, Moye has turned to the Kramer ranks for a milestone model that cements her place in the history book as the brand’s first woman of color signature artist.

Moye’s signature builds off Kramer’s S-type Pacer Deluxe platform and is available in left and right-hand configurations. At its core, there’s an alder body and maple neck with 10” radius fingerboard, as well as a TUSQ nut, 2-point tremolo and gold hardware.

Since it’s been designed to cover all bases from sultry soul to rootsy rock, it features Moye’s preferred DiMarzio pickups – specifically, Virtual Vintage Blues, Area 7 and Super Distortion.

Finishing touches include a Splash Blue finish – with color-matched headstock – a tortoiseshell pickguard, locking tuners and Moye’s signature on the rear of the headstock. Oh, and the Moye inlay at the 12th fret is a very nice touch indeed.

“I really wanted to make sure it was perfect – a completely different type of Kramer,” Moye says of her new signature. “And you know what? I think we nailed something really hot.”

The Malina Moye Pacer Deluxe is available now for $1,299.

Visit Kramer for more.

D’Addario has set the record straight after it found itself embroiled in an online AI controversy.

The string maker was recently accused of using AI-generated music in the demo for its new NYXL HD strings. It then came under fire for its response video, which showed the recording’s workflow in an attempt to confirm that AI had not been used in its creation.

The video was scrutinized by the online guitar community. Some believed the pitch and tempo discrepancies between the original demo and the response proved AI had in fact been used.

But now D’Addario has published a lengthy statement explaining the making of the demo track, asserting that generative AI was not used, but AI-assisted production tools were.

“We share the growing alarm that generative AI can remove the musician from the creative process,” the statement begins. “In a recent post featuring one of our products, many people questioned whether we employed generative AI in our demo track.

“The track was written and performed by one of our employees who was proud to create an original piece to show off a new string he helped to develop.”

D’Addario charts the “complex” way the track was created. It notes an excess of plugins to “compress, auto-tune, EQ and distort” the DI guitar that was used, alongside 12 programmed synthesizers and a drum track with four compressors.

“The result is a track that exhibits the hallmarks commonly found in generative AI music, and it is understandable that this sound would elicit such a response from the community,” D’Addario observes.

“There were excessive non-AI tools used to make the original composition sound ‘more produced’. This added a lot of extra noise and inorganic details to the mix which people misunderstood as signs of AI-generation.”

As for the discrepancies present in the session video, D’Addario explains the response clip showed a pre-mix and pre-master demo. The original, meanwhile, used two AI mastering tools that further muddied the water.

“This is where the confusion lies,” it says. “While Generative AI was not used in the creation of this music, by virtue of using Logic’s ‘Mastering Assistant’ feature and LANDR’s Assister Mastering, AI did assist with the mixing and mastering process post DAW export which caused noise and drift.

“Most of the digital artifacts that people online have taken issue with come from an unusual take on modern production techniques.”

D’Addario ends its statement by apologizing for the confusion caused, stressing it is, above all else, experts in music accessories – not audio production.

“We knew we had nothing to hide; we just needed the time to understand why our take on the situation was so different than others in the community before we responded,” it says. “We’re genuinely sorry for the delay in response and confusion it caused.”

D’Addario’s statement has gone a long way to de-escalate the situation, though opinion is still divided. Several D’Addario artists including Yvette Young, Plini and Mike Dawes have voiced their support, but some commentators are yet to be fully convinced by the company’s explanation.

Visit D’Addario’s Instagram page to read the full statement.

Philip Sayce has earned a reputation that puts him at the top of the list of modern high-energy blues-rock guitarists. Operating entirely outside the major label machine, he’s built a loyal following through relentless touring and word of mouth.

The independent artist cut his teeth handling guitar duties on tour with artists like Jeff Healey and Melissa Etheridge – that’s where he mastered the art of live performance.

You can hear exactly where that journey has led on his recent live album, Scorched Earth: Volume 2 Live in LA / London. Recorded at London’s Garage and LA’s Baked Potato, it captures his power trio completely raw.

What made you want to pick up the guitar?

Growing up, my parents played The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks and a lot of ’60s music. British music, world music and blues were always around; my dad loved blues.

I started guitar late because my brother and I were taking piano lessons and my parents had saved for a piano, so I felt guilty asking for a guitar. I was around 15 when I finally asked. I always wanted to play because that’s what was listening to in the house – huge Clapton solos and things like that.

Once I got a guitar, I went deep into learning how to play. I played constantly on a cheap Sears acoustic with brutally high action. This was around the time Stevie Ray Vaughan passed away, and his music hit me spiritually.

I felt that same pull from Albert Collins, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Healey, Clapton, George Harrison and Jeff Beck. I remember my dad telling me how Stevie Ray was “true example of greatness.” He thought Stevie was the only guy that was as good as Clapton.

Did you have any formal training?

I’m mostly self-taught. I would sneak into clubs when I was underage and stand close to the stage, trying to understand how people were getting their sound and phrasing. I watched anyone who could play, tried to absorb something and then went home and figured it out.

Even if I only picked up on one little thing, I’d go home and work on it for hours. I also learned from tablature and books.

How did you first connect with Jeff Healey?

We met through the Toronto scene at a downtown club when I was around 18. An associate introduced us and Jeff asked me to jam. He played bass, I played guitar, and we did Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon material – the Cream versions. Afterwards he asked if I wanted to join his band. He was a hero to me, so I said yes immediately. I was so grateful for that opportunity.

So after high school, my friends went to college and I went on tour with Jeff. I call it the University of Jeff Healey – I watched, listened and absorbed everything. He gave me space to sing and solo, building my confidence. I also learned professionalism and how to deliver every night.

When did that chapter end?

After about four years, Jeff told me it was time to do my own thing. Around that time, producer Marti Frederiksen was working on a Jeff record in Toronto. He came to see me play and suggested I come to Los Angeles with him and write songs. My wife and I eventually moved there. It was scary, but I got some session work and later toured with Uncle Kracker when his song Drift Away was huge.

How did Melissa Etheridge come into the picture?

I met producer John Shanks at a guitar store while trying amps and we hit it off. Later he said Melissa needed a guitarist who could play and sing. I met her for lunch, then auditioned with Kenny Aronoff and Mark Browne. They reported back to Melissa and I got the gig. I was already a fan; I had played her songs in high school.

Did you have to adapt your style?

Not really – Melissa is roots-based, with strong rhythm and emotional delivery, so it came from the same place as blues. She was generous and let me be myself. Sometimes she’d say, “Play and stretch out!” which gives you confidence. Watching her connect with audiences was a lesson in communication.

What was that transition from clubs to arenas like?

There were things to learn. An arena doesn’t mean you get to play ten times louder. You really have to focus on monitors because you can be far from everyone on stage and feel some lag. You watch the band leader, learn stage presence and command the room. As a sideman you know it’s not your stage – your job is to support the artist.

Did you always know what direction you were headed in, or did you try different styles?

For the most part, it’s always been the blues-based rock I play now, although I sometimes move towards funk, rock or soul. I started singing out of necessity when my high school band lost its singer before a battle of the bands competition. But my favorite guitarists were also great singers, so that’s what I wanted to do.

How did you first get turned on to vintage Strats?

It was always a dream to own one because my heroes – Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Knopfler and Buddy Guy – played them. I kept hearing that ’62 and ’63 were the sweet spots. Big Daddy was a guitar I missed out on years ago, then a buddy saw it 10 or 15 years later and sent a picture. It was the same guitar, so I sold some gear and bought it.

What is it about your ’63 Stratocasters that makes them so special?

Fender hit a sweet spot with the neck shape, feel and response. Mine are from August and September ’63 and both feel right. The pickups are outstanding.

Big Daddy is the biggest, meanest Strat I’ve heard. Mother has ’58 pickups now, so it’s more airy and sparkly, but has that ’63 chunk. I’ve had them re-fretted several times with the tallest, widest wire I could find because so much of my playing is bending.

Why do you think modern guitars don’t have the tone and feel of vintage guitars?

I don’t think modern builders are getting it wrong or missing anything. The wood on a vintage guitar that’s 60-plus years old is dry and settled. When those guitars were made, that wood might have already been 100 years old. You can get really close now but there’s maybe that last five or 10 per cent where it comes down to the resonance and the age of the wood.

The pickups make a huge difference, too. The pickups in Mother are from ’58 so slightly underwound, and they sound great. We did a project with Seymour Duncan, recreating the Mother pickups – it was fascinating getting into the details of what made them sound that way. The team did a fabulous job and the Duncan Mother pickups sound fantastic.

How does your PRS Silver Sky fit in with your vintage Strats?

It has its own lane so it’s not competing with the ’63s. It’s comfortable, stays in tune and goes where you want it to go. Vintage guitars are like muscle cars. The Silver Sky is like a modern performance car. It handles beautifully and doesn’t fight you.

Do you play differently depending on the guitar?

Not in a big way. It’s about what the guitar gives back. Once the old guitars are dialed in by a good luthier, they feel like old jeans or an old baseball glove. The Silver Sky is comfortable too; I like warming up with it.

When did you start seriously exploring tone beyond just guitars?

Playing beside Jeff forced it because his Marshalls sounded huge and I needed something that could keep up. I contacted Cesar Diaz, who worked on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s amps, and sent him a late ’60s Fender Dual Showman. It came back with unbelievable punch, sustain and clarity.

Later I brought him a Super Reverb and Bassman. I got to spend time in his shop while he built some pedals for me. It was very hands-on – I would play, give him feedback and he’d mess with the amp. He dialed in my Super Reverb in about 20 minutes!

He was amazing. We worked on getting my guitars and Fuzz Face to interact with the amp the right way. Cesar approached amps the way a tailor fits a suit. Watching him work was like seeing magic happen.

Did that experience also influence your choice of speakers?

Absolutely. Cesar turned me on to Electro Voice speakers, and I used EVM 12Ls in touring cabinets with Jeff, and later Melissa, because they were strong and reliable. Once you feel a 4x12 with EVs it’s hard to go back.

For the past 15 years I’ve worked with Tommy Cougar in Sweden, who studied Cesar and Dumble. He’s incredible – in my opinion, the best living amp guy in the world right now. He also turned me on to JBLs for my Super Reverb.

Did that experience shift how you think about tone?

Yeah, it taught me that tone is really about response. The amp has to react to your hands. If you play softly it opens up, and when you dig in it pushes back. When that relationship works, you stop fighting the instrument and start communicating through it.

How did you start working with Alexander Dumble?

Producers Dave Cobb and John Shanks introduced us. I had already used some Dumble amps on sessions, so I knew his work. When I went for a visit, he was warm, generous and not as mysterious as people imagine.

We played through several amps at his house, including an early Steel String Singer. I also left him a Fuzz Face to work on. It took months to get it back, but he didn’t charge me and it sounded fantastic.

Was there something about the Dumble amps that really stood out to you?

Each amp was built for a specific player; they weren’t interchangeable. The feeling was like putting on glasses and suddenly seeing clearly. Notes jumped out in three dimensions, with a stickiness that gave back what your fingers put in. It inspired you to play differently because the detail and connection were right there.

Out of all your records, is there one that you feel was a turning point for you?

Each record is a snapshot of where I was personally, so it’s hard to choose. But Peace Machine from 2005 was a turning point – it was raw, unfiltered and high energy. I called up some musicians that I loved working and recorded it mostly live in just a few days.

What’s most important to you in your music today?

Connection – like when you meet someone and feel like you know them right away. I feel most connected to the kind of music that inspired me when I first started out; music that’s honest, truthful and brings people together. It’s really about being authentic and sharing what’s in your heart.

• Scorched Earth: Volume 2 is out now.

A great way to devise a creative and unusual rhythm part is to superimpose a variety of triads over a static one-chord vamp. As you may know, a triad is a three-note entity that, in its most universal function, represents a specific type of chord.

The most common types of triads are major – built from a root, major 3rd and 5th – and minor – built from a root, minor 3rd and 5th.

When playing over a one-chord vamp, that chord represents a key center from which many different triads can be built.

Let’s begin with a simple, funky rhythmic vamp built on an A7 chord, as shown in Figure 1. This is a repeating one-bar pattern that starts with hammer-ons on the A and G strings, followed by syncopated accents on the top four strings.

You could just play different voicings and inversions of A7 over this groove all day long and it’ll sound great.

But the way to get the most out of this approach is to recognize A7 as a chord derived from the A Mixolydian mode (A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G), which is the fifth mode of the D major scale (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#).

This means you can use all of the scale’s triads – D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm and C#dim – to discover new rhythm patterns to play over A7 that are even more colorful and interesting.

Figure 2 illustrates the triads Em (E, G, B) and F#m (F#, A, C#) played on the top three strings alongside the A7 chord voicing. If you know your triads on the neck, you can devise some really cool rhythmic ideas.

For example, Figure 3 demonstrates Em and F#m triads played on the D, G and B strings before moving over to the top three strings.

Figure 4 offers an example of utilizing the F#m and Em triads over the funky A7 rhythm part.

Notice that the triads are strummed in syncopated 16th-note rhythms and shift smoothly from one to another via finger slides. Figure 5 switches things up by ending with a dyad/single-note type of riff.

In Figure 6, I branch out from minor triads by including some triadic inversions: on beat 2 of bar 1, I bring in a 1st-inversion G triad (G, B, D), sounded with B, the 3rd, as the lowest note. On beat 3, I include a 2nd-inversion D major triad (D, F#, A), with A, the 5th, on the bottom.

​As you can see, these options provide more sounds than does simply riding on voicings of A7. There are Em and F#m triad shapes to be found all over the fretboard and on different string groups, so be sure to explore every area of the neck to discover where these triad shapes reside.

As long as we return to our key center of A7, we have some cool options to explore. In Figure 7, I incorporate some chromatic movement between G and A triads to bring in another variation.

Look to map out all of the voicings of the aforementioned triads that live within the D major scale and try to find inventive ways to move between them when playing over a static A7 vamp.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Aside from his longtime slot as Billy Idol’s rhythm guitarist, Billy Morrison has collaborated with a veritable list of big names throughout his career, including Ozzy Osbourne – whom he calls his “best friend” in an upcoming Guitar World interview.

“Everyone with a heart was crying the day of that show,” he recalls of the July 2025 Back to the Beginning mega concert.

“Obviously, his health had been declining, and I had been witness to that. I had seen him in more than one hospital with tubes attached. I visited him coming out of surgeries.

“But you know you don’t go there in your head. Ozzy was so strong and overcame so much. He would text me: ‘I'm in pain. This thing, it's getting me down.’ I would just say: ‘You're the strongest man I know.’”

Morrison admits that he expected him to “overcome everything like he’s Superman,” since Osbourne famously bounced back, “time after time after time.” Therefore, he was far from ready when the Prince of Darkness passed away.

“The hardest day I've ever been through was his funeral. I flew to his funeral in England, and I delivered a eulogy. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.”

After knowing each other for three or so decades, Morrison reveals that “humor was what bonded us.”

“Sharon would tell you that we were like two 11-year-olds when we got together,” he chuckles. “That's what made the friendship special. We understood each other in situations where, perhaps, other people didn't understand us.

“And as friends, there were huge life events for both of us where one of us helped get the other one through... We had a connection.

“I miss him.”

Guitar World's full interview with Billy Morrison will be published in the coming weeks.

There is a distinct difference between watching a band work through a setlist and that rare experience of witnessing virtuosos caught up in pure, unadulterated joy.

On night one (7.28.26) of their four-night stand at Madison Square Garden, Rush delivered two-and-a-half hours of the latter – a rapturous jubilee that felt less like a choreographed arena rock show and more like master musicians kicking back and letting it rip – simply because they can.

From the opening swells of Xanadu, the energy inside the arena was beyond juiced – and it never let up. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson spent the evening trading “holy shit” grins and laughing out loud, visibly drinking in the deafening waves of adoration from the tri-state crowd, making decades of formidable prog-rock mastery feel like second nature.

Lifeson was sparkier and more unruly than ever. He knows the holy texts, of course, and he gave fans the brilliant, note-for-note solos on Tom Sawyer and Limelight they knew by heart. But for much of the night, he went off on his own loose-limbed benders, taking madcap detours and stretching out phrases just to see where they’d land. It was fretboard swagger at its most generous.

And Lee! After all the hand-wringing over his June bronchitis scare down in Texas, he came to rumble. There was no tentative easing-in, no cautious vocal pacing. He hit the microphone full-throated, leaning into his bass with a physical, nimble crunch. Whatever resting period that forced hiatus gave him, it worked – his voice had a bright, soaring punch that reached for the high rafters without a flicker of strain.

Then, of course, there's Anika Nilles. Stepping into the drum throne of the beloved Neil Peart (who passed away in 2020) is a monumental – and some would say, unenviable – task, but the German-born drummer proved to be a dream behind the kit: fast and fluid, swinging with a luscious, elastic groove that gives even the oddest of odd-time signatures a supple, human heartbeat.

In the time since the Fifty Something tour debuted at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA, in early June, cellphone videos of Nilles acing the around-the-kit tom fills to Tom Sawyer have been shared millions of times, but those viral clips don't prepare you for the physical impact of seeing her do it live – it’s the intoxicating spectacle of a genius executing genius things, and with a high-beam smile, no less.

Overhead, poignant video tributes to Neil Peart wove throughout the show, grounding the night’s jubilation in tender, warm remembrance. Rather than heavy eulogizing, the visuals captured Peart's humor, artistry and legacy, elevating the performance into a true-life celebration.

Setlist

Set One

• Xanadu
• Limelight
• Far Cry
• Subdivisions
• Freewill
• Bravado
• Headlong Flight
• La Villa Strangiato
• Vital Signs
• The Spirit of Radio

Set Two

• 2112 (Overture, the Temples of Syrinx, Grand Finale)
• Distant Early Warning
• Red Barchetta
• Dreamline
• Natural Science
• Time Stand Still
• Red Sector A
• YYZ
• The Garden
• Tom Sawyer

Encore

• By-Tor and the Snow Dog
• Working Man

What is it?

It seems EarthQuaker Devices is in a constant flux between light and dark duality — call it Yin and Yang, if you will — across most of its recognized pedals. On one side, it's known for beautifully ambient pedals that create luminous soundscapes, while the other side unleashes bellowing, sonic mayhem. Its latest stompbox, the Sunn O))) HalfLife Octave Distortion & Booster, firmly falls under the latter description. The HalfLife stompbox (as you probably guessed with its play on words) is a more compact, condensed and pedalboard-friendly version of the Sunn O))) Life pedal, and lives on as a successful ongoing collaboration between Sunn O))) — the loudest of drone metal doomsayer bands — and EQD.

HalfLife is also the standard-issue successor to the extremely limited-edition Sunn O))) HalfLife Fer MMXXV, which featured a striking, cast-iron enclosure made using a centuries-old Nanbu-tekki casting technique. Like the Life Pedal before it, HalfLife is designed to capture Sunn O)))'s core front-end signal chain driving multiple vintage Sunn Model T 100-watt tube stacks into glorious saturation. As an aside, and as someone who owns the V3 version of the Life pedal, I can declare the current HalfLife stompbox doesn’t half-ass any of the chaos-inducing tones of its predecessor.

Specs

• Price: $259
• Type: Analog Octave, Distortion and Boost
• Made: USA
• Controls: Octave, Filter, Distortion, Magnitude, Amplitude
• Features: Three-mode clipping, octave-up, expression pedal control
• Connectivity: 2 x 1/4" instrument and 1 x 1/4" Octave Expression input
• Bypass: True bypass with Flexi-Switch technology
• Power: 9V DC center-negative; 15 mA current draw
• Dimensions: 127 × 70 x 57 mm
• Weight: 0.74 lb
• Contact: EarthQuaker Devices

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Do I even need to talk about build quality? Like all the other stompboxes in its stable, this EQD is about as solidly built as they come and employs premium components. Housed in a rugged, textured enclosure with contrasting red and black spirals, the pedal pairs distortion with a blend-able octave up at the first stage with the Amplitude footswitch, while the Magnitude footswitch activates the second stage — an all-discrete MOSFET clean booster.

Controls for Octave, Filter, and Distortion occupy the top portion of the pedal, and just below that are Mag (output volume for Boost), Clip (Clipping switch for OpAmp, Asymm or Symm modes), and Amp (output volume for Octave/Distortion). I would also urge anyone to become very familiar with where each specific control is because the tiny UV screen-printed characters are nearly impossible to read from above — just in case you need to make any heat-of-battle adjustments on a dark stage.

Rounding out its features are standard 9VDC power, an expression jack for Octave blending, and EQD's proprietary Flexi-Switch technology for seamless momentary or latching true bypass operation.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Inspired by the vintage Shin-Ei FY2 Companion and FY6 Super Fuzz boxes and a vintage white-logo RAT distortion-style circuit, with a low-pass filter control, there isn’t much to deal with in this triple-threat of a stompbox arriving in a more pedalboard-friendly size. Most of your guesswork will be made by using your ears and selecting which of the three clipping modes will provide the utmost in aural black magic.

The first OpAmp removes the clipping diodes entirely, unleashing its full output for an aggressively brighter, high-volume attack. Assym employs an asymmetrical clipping configuration using two silicon diodes and one LED, producing a slightly compressed, smoother amp-like crunch. Finally, Symm recreates the original double silicon diode configuration, delivering the classic, familiar rodent-like saturation that made the white-logo circuit a favorite.

Unlike the original Life Pedal, which features a dedicated Octave footswitch, HalfLife's upper octave is only controlled by dialing it in using the O knob or controlled dynamically with an expression pedal connected to the Octave EXP jack, allowing the octave to be blended in as needed.

The final Magnitude stage is designed to overload your preamp tubes with a clean, high-impedance boost while preserving your amp’s natural character, driving it harder without adding coloration or introducing distortion of its own.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Whether paired with single coils or humbuckers, HalfLife delivers a thundering octave/distortion experience tailor-made for doom architects and those who poke around in subterranean noise.

While it nods heavily to the classic ProCo Rat design, it departs from its saturation in a more symphonic fuzz-stortion that’s tightly layered and articulate. What’s interesting is you can hear the fuzzy textures become progressively darker in its clipping modes as you sweep from the brighter and grittier frequencies found on OpAmp, to the warmly compressed Big Muff-style saturation in Asymm, and finally plummeting down to the deep hirsute fuzziness in Symm mode.

I can only imagine that if I brooded in bands like Boris and Burning Witch, I would dwell within the sludgy depths of Symm mode.

The highly responsive Filter knob sweeps from dense darkness to the cutting slice reminiscent of a cranked Sunn Model T's Brite channel. The upper octave tracks clearly on single notes above the ninth fret, provided you are flying high with your neck pickup.

Here, the spiked upper octave tones add a clanging, metallic ring to the signal. It’s an intensely fun pedal that can easily coax the bottom-heavy fuzz found on Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins as well as the shimmering, furry pulse of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless album (Yes, I’m dating myself).

Finally, the highly transparent Magnitude clean boost is loud with a capital “L.” Be mindful of your level setting, as its massive output — combined with the Amplitude stage — can quickly push an amplifier into explosive meltdown and endless sustain. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Verdict

Whether it admits it or not, EarthQuaker Devices knows exactly how to weaponize distortion — and it's quite good at it. Any aspiring dirt purveyor worth their salt will naturally gravitate toward the HalfLife’s crushing wall of sound. For players seeking targeted drone strikes of blend-able upper-octave fuzz, aggressive distortion, and a powerful clean boost designed to push an amplifier into massive, amp-melting territory, the HalfLife delivers the droned, bottom-heavy fury inspired by Sunn O))) with uncompromising force.

Guitar World verdict: With its combination of brutality and flexibility, the Sunn O))) HalfLife Octave Distortion & Booster is a true “FAFO” pedal for sonic mayhem. It unleashes a full-scale assault of saturated ecstasy, proving once again that this Machiavellian alliance with those shadowy Sunn O))) guitarists is a notorious victory for EQD.

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