Get 2022 off to a rockin’ start with the second installment of Guitar World’s New Year New Gear guide

It might only be the middle of winter, but 2022 is already heating up with plenty of awesome guitars, amps and accessories. To see just how hot it is, we welcome you to Guitar World’s New Year New Gear guide.

In this first installment, Guitar World’s Paul Riario and Alan Chaput select metal six-string shred machines and exciting new stompboxes that are guaranteed to get 2022 off to a red-hot and rockin’ start.

First up is Dean’s latest batch of shred-erific Exile models – the Exile Select Floyd Arch Top Quilt Maple Satin Black Burst, Exile Select 7 Floyd Fluence Gloss Natural Black Burst, Exile Select Floyd Fluence Gloss Natural Black Burst and Exile X Floyd Satin White guitars.

The new axes boast a host of high-end features, with materials and appointments that include alder bodies with burled maple tops and three-piece slim “D”-shape maple necks with 16”-radius ebony fretboards.

Other features include 24 jumbo frets, abalone small offset dot inlays, Fishman Fluence Modern pickups, Floyd Rose 1000 bridges and Mini Grover 18:1 tuners, not to mention hot, hot looks to boot.

Next is something special, indeed: IK Multimedia’s new AmpliTube X-Gear pedals, the company’s first-ever range of physical guitar stompboxes.

AmpliTube has long been the first and, in many users’ eyes, unparalleled option when it comes to software effects. Now IK has put its first-class tech into physical pedals. Consisting of four designs – the X-Drive, X-Time, X-Space and X-Vibe – the stompboxes boast studio-grade effects algorithms and encompass a variety of overdrive, delay, reverb and modulation tones and effects.

Each pedal features 16 different effects drawn from the most popular AmpliTube models and tweaked via a multitude of onboard controls, and there’s also newly designed reverb and delay algorithms that offer up a range of vintage and contemporary tones.

Additionally, the X-Gear pedals all feature up to 192kHz internal processing with four times oversampling, as well as a 5Hz–24kHz frequency response to capture the full sonic spectrum of your guitar. They also work as an audio interface and come with AmpliTube 5 SE and an exclusive virtual X-Gear version of the exact same effects for use in AmpliTube 5. So you can record, tweak settings and save presets back to the hardware pedal for world-class tone anywhere.

Finally, Paul and Alan check out Godlyke’s TWA Triskelion Harmonic Energizer Mk. III effect pedal. Godlyke first introduced the Triskelion pedal – essentially, the company's recreation of the legendary '70s-era Systech Harmonic Energizer used by Frank Zappa, Joe Walsh and others – back in 2010.

A few years back the pedal, which the company characterizes as “a parametric midrange filter with adjustable peak and an obscene amount of gain,” was tweaked and trimmed down to create the Triskelion Mk. II. And now it has undergone further upgrades in the form of the new Triskelion Harmonic Energizer Mk. III.

The new model takes the best aspects of both earlier versions, including an extended high-frequency range and expression control over the filter sweep, and shrinks the whole thing down into an even smaller, even more pedalboard-friendly footprint. Which means that the original Triskelion's Variant Mass Boost switch – which adds an “ear-shattering” upper range – is back, as are the 30-odd hertz of low frequencies that had been deleted from the Mk. II.

Other features include the Mk II’s improved, pro-audio-quality noise floor and a gain level that can be switched on and off via either a top-mounted mini-switch or an external footswitch connected to the side-mounted mini-phone jack. There’s also a second mini-phone jack to connect an expression pedal or, if tap-tempo modulation is your bag, the TWA Side Step.

To find out more about Godlyke’s TWA Triskelion Harmonic Energizer Mk. III and all this amazing gear, check out the video above.