An essential part of my approach to guitar playing is the incorporation of chordal sounds, melody and harmony that I’ve picked up from listening to jazz and classical music, as well as gospel.

Utilizing elements of these rich musical traditions offers one such a wide range of sounds and emotions that you don’t usually find in blues and provides access to some of the most beautiful sounds and harmonies that can be discovered.

I learned a lot about creating new and unique chordal sounds on the guitar from listening to keyboard players. As is always the case, I let the muse guide me and try to maintain an open mind as to what I can discover harmonically while in the midst of improvisation.

In Figure 1, I begin by sounding my open A string as a pedal tone and then play sliding 3rd intervals, first on the G and B strings then on the D and G strings. I then shift to the bVI (flat six major) chord, F(6/9), followed by a low C/F, making use of my open D and G strings.

The line in bar 3 is based on the A natural minor scale, also known as the A Aeolian mode (A, B, C, D, E, F, G), followed in bar 4 with a shift to the more classical-sounding A harmonic minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G#). Some of the notes of A harmonic minor can be played as a diminished 7 arpeggio superimposed over E7b9 (E, G#, B, D, F), with the notes G#, B, D and F. The figure ends with the chordal resolution of E7b9 to Am7add4.

I should remind you that I play the guitar “upside down”; in other words, I take a guitar strung for a right-handed player and play it left-handed, so the order of the strings is reversed, with the high E string closest to the ceiling, and the low E string closest to the floor). Additionally, I tune down a half step (low to high: Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Bb, Eb).

Playing with the strings ‘flipped over” like this allows for some chord voicings that may feel a little awkward and unnatural with the guitar strung and played in a conventional manner. The Am7add4 that ends Figure 1 is a prime example, because, for me, I can fret my high E and B strings with my thumb, as others sometimes do with their low strings.

Figure 2 offers another example of different ways to move between the tonalities of Am and F. Notice the use of ringing open strings in bars 1-3.

At the end of bar 3, I use natural harmonics (N.H.) on the A, D and G strings as a transition point between Am and Fmaj7. In bar 5, I bring in E7b9 once again as a transition chord to resolve back to Am7sus4.

You can also melodically describe the wider harmony of these chords using only single notes.

In Figure 3, the lines in bars 1 and 2 are based on A natural minor. In bars 3 and 4, I shift to a bluesier sound with fast descending phrases based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G), phrased in groups of five and six, wrapping up with a return to Fmaj7sus2.

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

John 5 was the ideal candidate to assume Mick Mars’ role in Mötley Crüe. He is one of the few rock guitar players whom you can hand an electric guitar and all bets are off – he can play anything.

By the time he joined Mötley Crüe, John 5 had plenty of experience, playing with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and more. He was no novice. But in a recent video interview with Guitar World, he admits that his first how with the LA rock legends caught him off-guard.

It was an East Coast date, Crüe were playing Atlantic City – Hard Rock Live at the Etess Arena. February 10, 2023. He’ll never forget it. He had some special guests in the audience.

“The first show, this is kind of weird,” he says. “I never talked about this. It was in Atlantic City. My first and favorite band is Kiss, and I’ve, you know, been very close with those guys for probably 30-something years. And Ace [Frehley] and Peter [Criss] came to the first Mötley show.”

Frehley and Criss were both New Jersey residents, but nonetheless, they had to travel considerable distances to get there.

“I invited them, and they drove – they drove, you know, two hours each!” says John 5. “And I remember they were right over there watching the first show, and I was playing the show, and it’s exciting, ‘cos everybody was watching.”

Maybe he was so concentrated on playing everything to a Tee that he hadn’t given a thought to what all this meant to him, but when the house lights went up and he got backstage the emotion of it all overwhelmed him.

“I got off the stage and everyone was like, ‘That was awesome,’ and I burst out into tears for some reason,” he says. “Like, uncontrollably. I was like, ‘What’s going on!?’ It was just so much emotion. It was so weird. I had my heroes there, and I’m playing with Mötley Crüe, and all my friends there. It was very odd. It was so… weird.”

But that hasn’t been the highlight of his Mötley Crüe career so far. There have been enormodome shows, hard rock bacchanals in the wide-open spaces of the world’s biggest sports stadiums, all of which was pretty exciting stuff. For a die-hard Crüe fan who was now in the band, going back to where the band cut their teeth in West Hollywood clubs has been John 5’s pinch-me highlight so far.

“The club shows,” he says. “We did the Whiskey [a Go Go], the Roxy, and the Troubadour. Playing the Whisky, ‘cos that’s where they started. We pulled up in the Dr. Feelgood ambulance, like they do in the video. I think that was probably one of the highlights.”

You can check out our interview with John 5 above – and don’t forget to subscribe to the Guitar World YouTube channel.

When the Mount Rushmore of the 20th century’s most innovative guitarists comes to be carved, John Martyn will not feature. The musician born Iain David McGeachy is often overlooked in discussions about players who changed the way the instrument is played. But why?

Firstly, Martyn rarely sold many records. While innovative works like Solid Air and Inside Out were critics’ darlings and attracted cult followings, they never really bothered the charts. How many players can an artist inspire when they sell fewer records than the guitar heroes of the day? Some of whom were, ironically, huge Martyn fans.

Secondly, he was too creatively slippery to become a legitimate guitar hero. He was a mercurial musician who loved to experiment with radical sounds and approaches – however successful they turned out to be. The musical identity of a Page or a Hendrix was fixed during their imperial phase; Martyn was more mutable.

At the start of his career he was inspired by both Scottish folk and saucer-eyed hippie music; his work at the time was all twinkly guitars and songs about – as he memorably put it – “the dingly-dangly-dell of life.” Then, on albums such as Bless the Weather and Solid Air, his playing became more influenced by jazz, folk rock and prog, with stranger tunings and those iconic, frayed-sounding chords.

More experiments followed in the form of the transcendent One World, made in Jamaica with Lee Scratch Perry. In the 1980s (partly due, in this writer’s opinion, to the malign influence of Phil Collins) he ventured into something like easy-listening territory, before experiencing more diminishing returns in the 1990s – not that there weren’t highlights – until his death in 2009.

Outside of music, his conduct was considerably less inspirational. He perpetuated years of abuse against his ex-wife, for example. So while we won’t take any lessons from his personal life, there’s still merit in exploring his complex legacy, particularly how he changed the game for guitarists – many of whom don’t even realize it.

The visual guitar solo

Martyn was a notorious showoff. Those who witnessed his first gigs at the famous London folk club Les Cousins remember that he took great delight in being the fastest, the most technically proficient, the most incendiary player.

Ralph McTell, in the excellent Johnny Too Bad documentary, recalls how Martyn “came in like the new kid, full of vim and vigor and life.” The best example is Seven Black Roses, or what Martyn eventually dubbed “the visual guitar solo.”

The song starts off incongruously enough, with quicksilver fingerpicking in an open tuning. Then he starts moving the capo up the neck while still fingerpicking. The effect is like a record is being played at increasing speed. Then he starts detuning the strings with the machineheads, still fingerpicking all the while. Sure, it’s showing off, but who cares?

Seven Black Roses is wild and utterly brilliant, as demonstrated by the many live versions floating around YouTube. While it might seem like a sonic curio or a joke, the piece demonstrates that Martyn was always looking to squeeze new sounds out of the guitar, even so early into his playing career.

Echoplex 16th notes

A number of innovative players did fall under Martyn’s spell – Paul Weller, Ryley Walker, Beth Orton and Morcheeba have all named him as a guiding light. Perhaps the most famous example, though, is U2’s The Edge.

Part of his signature sound is the chiming, delay-drenched quarter notes that stack and stack, creating a pulsing undercurrent of rhythm. Listen to Martyn’s playing from the early to mid-1970s, though, and it’s easy to see who The Edge got it from. Martyn used the Echoplex on songs such as Rather Be the Devil and Outside In to create something almost frighteningly modern-sounding.

Marking one of Martyn’s true creative peaks, Outside In fuses jazz, folk, rock, and prog into something heady and propulsive. Front and center is the kind of delay-soaked playing that’s all over Where the Streets Have No Name or I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.

Look out of his Old Grey Whistle Test version, where he and Danny Thompson strip the maximalist studio arrangement down to just guitar, Echoplex, voice and bass, creating something a little less messy; a little more focused and muscular. Of all Martyn’s innovations, his popularization of the Echoplex is perhaps the one for which he’ll be remembered.

Pedalboard wrangling

Although large and unwieldy pedalboards are de rigeur for guitarists these days, it was more unusual in the 1970s, and even rarer for an acoustic player. As well as the Echoplex, Martyn experimented with the EHX Big Muff (which he named a song after), choruses, and phasers; he described using different pedals as his “hobby.”

It was his use of a volume pedal, though, that characterizes one of his most interesting sonic explorations, and one of his most beautiful songs. Small Hours is the phosphorescent final track from 1977’s One World, recorded after a period of particularly high turmoil (even for Martyn) leading him to move to a farm belonging to Island label boss Chris Blackwell.

The foundation of Small Hours, along with the low-voltage drum machine and distant sounds of geese, is Martyn’s gradual volume swells. It’s incredible how something so intimate can sound so eternal. Of course, he wasn’t the first to use volume swells, but he was certainly one of the first to combine them with meditative music and a delay unit.

Listen to One World or Live At Leeds and it’s easy to see how his ability to stack effects places his music upstream of more modern genres like dream pop, shoegaze and post-rock.

Esoteric tunings

Martyn was also not the first to experiment with esoteric tunings, but his combination of a style typically associated with folk and blues with jazz, and beyond, was one of the ways his music and playing was so distinctive.

The philosophy behind his tuning style is interesting: In 1990 he told Guitarist magazine that “the reason I use open tunings comes primarily from those years of playing solo. It made it much easier to get a big, warm sound.” Indeed, tracks where he plays solo are remarkable in how full they sound; he pays attention to the full harmonic range.

For many people, the definitive Martyn tuning is CFCCGD. The key factor is the third and fourth strings tuned to the same note, which achieves all sorts of resonances that are usually unavailable in standard tuning.

When you hear chords played with CFCCGD or DADDAD – another of his favorites – it’s immediately clear who they sound like. How many other guitarists have claimed a tuning as their own?

Slap-and-pop style

Much like his approach to tuning, his pop-and-slap playing technique was not revolutionary; but when combined with quirky and unique songs, it became another of his calling cards. That style, which introduced a backbeat on the 2nd and 4th beats of each bar, was taken from Davy Graham, a huge influence on Martyn’s playing.

Much in the same way that his tunings were selected for fullness and warmth, to make up for the lack of other instrumentation, Martyn’s slap-and-pop technique adds rhythm and bite. In a sense, his right thumb was his drummer.

It sounds a little ludicrous – but listen to May You Never, One Day Without You, or pretty much anything from Bless the Weather until his Phil Collins era, then imagine them without that metronomic pulse. Better still, try to play them without the thumb slap and see how they sound.

The technique sums up why Martyn is such a brilliant player. Although he took relatively humble playing elements – acoustic guitars, folk guitar style, jazz chords – he was able to alchemize them into something radically new.

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.

Friedman VX-30

Boutique amp maker Friedman is known for its Marshall-inspired builds, but now it’s putting its own spin on another behemoth of the amp world with the VX-30 Series (no prizes for guessing which British amp giant inspired this one – spoiler alert: Brian May loves ‘em).

In true Friedman fashion, the VX-30 series looks to capture the EL84 goodness of the originals with a few choice refinements thrown in for good measure. The series comprises a head and a combo, as well as a matching cab.

The range is inspired by a rare 1963 copper-panel amp with a Top Boost circuit, meaning it hopes to offer premium harmonic complexity and touch sensitivity. In Friedman’s own words: “It’s not a departure. It’s the same pursuit of tone, aimed at a different kind of magic.”

All in all, it looks like a genuinely amazing take on a Vox. Everything has been thought through, from the blendable two channels all the way to the Celestion Alnico Blue speakers.

Fender Brent Mason Telecaster

Okay, okay, it’s only a colorway update, but I’m going to seize any opportunity that comes my way to sing the praises of Brent Mason’s signature Fender Telecaster. I’m not usually a fan of those Nashville Telecasters – middle single-coils on a Tele give me the ick – but I love Mason’s setup, and the mini-humbucker in the neck is a stroke of genius.

To celebrate both the Nashville session heavyweight and 75 years of the Telecaster, Fender has dropped a limited-edition Black model for Mason, which joins his current Primer Gray model. Both, it should be noted, are inspired by the heavily modified 1967 Tele that Mason found in a Nashville guitar shop in the early 1980s.

Black certainly looks more slick, but it still comes with all the bells and whistles of the source material, including that Seymour Duncan mini-hum, a Glaser Bender system and both Hot Stack and Vintage Stack single-coils to complete the configuration.

Positive Grid BIAS X x NAM

Another week, another story of Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) taking over the digital amp space with yet another big-name collaboration. Having already partnered with the likes of Blackstar, Zoom, Fractal and (soon to be) Fender, NAM is continuing its relentless sweep across the modeler market by teaming up with Positive Grid.

For now, NAM is available through BIAS X – which means all the free, open-source amp, cab and effect captures can be ported directly into the plugin. A pretty cool first step, but one we imagine merely paves the way for full NAM compatibility in the Spark practice amp.

NAM support in the Beam Mini was a huge USP for Blackstar. If its biggest rival in the Spark was to also get the ability to drag and drop NAM captures, the competition will be blown wide open once again. The golden era of practice amps is upon us.

ALSO LAUNCHED THIS WEEK

Fender x Loog Precision Bass

A new three-string, er, four-string from Fender and Loog that looks to inspire the next generation of bass players right from the off.

For more: Fender

Peterson EVH StroboStomp

A signature Eddie Van Halen tuner pedal from the guitar great’s go-to tuner maker, with baked in ‘sweetened’ tunings to capture the feel of the first Van Halen record.

For more: Peterson

Behringer mystery pedal line

No actual pedals have been released, but I’d be remiss not to mention that Behringer has teased a 300-strong line of all-metal pedals that start from just $10. Insane levels of cheap.

Fender Japan F-hole Telecaster

What’s better than a regular F-hole? An actual F-hole in the shape of the Fender F, of course. Not the first time we’ve seen this done, but always nice to see it in the Fender Japan lineup.

Martin Guitars Gram Parsons 00-21

Martin has honored Gram Parsons with a limited-edition signature guitar inspired by his original 1963 Martin 00-21. Only 80 guitars have been made to mark Parsons’ 80th birthday.

For more: Martin

James Hetfield EMG 50th anniversary Het Set

James Hetfield is helping EMG celebrate its 50th anniversary by launching a signature ‘Het Set’ that features a custom Metallica-style engraving, designed by the man himself.

For more: EMG

Yamaha Acompass60 acoustic amp

Yamaha has been busy in the acoustic guitar department for the past few months, and now it has a new acoustic amp to go with all those TransAcoustics. The Acompass 60 is designed for solo singer-songwriters and promises to reproduce “the performer’s True Acoustic Voice”.

For more: Yamaha

Gibson 1957-1960 PAF Reissue Sets

A new release from the Gibson Pickup Shop, which is now offering year-specific Patent Applied For-inspired humbuckers, from 1957 through to 1960.

For more: Gibson

Music Man Session StingRay Bass

Music Man is looking to bridge the gap between Ernie Ball and Sterling Ball with a new Session series that has debuted with a StingRay Bass. The potential this has for guitar fans is intriguing…

For more: Music Man

Ovation Gus G signature acoustic-electric

Ovation’s newest signature acoustic-electric guitar, which has been designed in collaboration with ex-Ozzy axeman Gus G.

For more: Ovation

Pink Dunlop Tortex picks

A lovely release from Dunlop, which has given its Tortex picks a pink finish in support of the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

For more: Dunlop

The world has waited a long time to hear Joe Satriani and Steve Vai collaborate on an all-original studio album together. We have seen them on tour, individually as part of the G3, together as Satch/Vai.

But on record, making music together? The pair just couldn’t get around to it.

Until now. The Sea of Emotion is released today (November 6) and finds the two virtuosos driving each other forward, pushing each other’s playing to the limit. There is a catch, though. They had to make the album remotely, recording song ideas then sending them to each other email.

There were a couple of notable exceptions. In a recent interview with Guitarist, Satriani and Vai explained why the two moments they did record together were pretty special.

Firstly, this is an album that references their times growing up in Long Island, looking out to the fields across from Carle Place school that inspired the title of the album. They called it the Sea of Emotion. It was real Dazed and Confused stuff, formative years, learning guitar, Satriani teaching Vai, listening to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Jimmy Hendrix and Kiss, long summers and goofing around. So it was a pretty big deal to get Deep Purple’s frontman to guest on the record.

“The only time we were together was when we recorded Glenn Hughes singing I Wanna Play My Guitar at Steve’s house,” says Satriani. “The rest of the time we were engineering on our own in our separate pods, separated by 400 miles.”

For the remainder of the time, Satriani was in San Francisco, Vai in LA. Their schedules were brutal. Satriani had to prepare for the ultimate guitar test, playing Eddie Van Halen songs with Sammy Hagar on the Best of All Worlds Tour. Vai had his own Herculean endeavors – he was playing Robert Fripp’s King Crimson guitar parts alongside Adrian Belew in Beat.

The time flew by, as did the deadlines. The label kept asking when the record was coming.

But they had already got together in a room to record for the record. They just didn’t know it at the time. When they were teenagers, fooling around with the guitar during a lesson, they made a recording, and that found its way onto the album.

“There is actually one little snippet we did play together because the technology to record remotely didn’t exist. That’s the intro to The Sea of Emotion Part 3: Reflections on a Year and a Half,” says Vai.

“That was recorded during one of my guitar lessons with Joe when I was, like, 13. We still don’t even know who played what, but it’s eight minutes of these teenage kids having total freedom. So I took a little snippet of that. That’s the only time on the record we’re sitting in the same room playing together. And it was over 50 years ago.”

The Sea of Emotion might be a celebration of an analog era but it was a 21st-century production, put together via email, and the pair left their tube amps on standby, relying instead on guitar plugins. Vai admits that this was a crossing the Rubicon moment for him.

“I had a very snobbish attitude,” says Vai. “‘Oh, you have to have microphones.’ So I started fooling around with SansAmp and realized how easy it is.”

You can read this Satch/Vai interview in full in the latest issue of Guitarist – better still, save and subscribe.

The Sea of Emotion is out now via earMUSIC.

What is it?

When it comes to electric guitars with vintage aesthetics, nothing beats a real nitrocellulose finish. It is what was predominantly used on those coveted Fenders and Gibsons from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and its soft nature means it will happily wear as you clock up the miles. Indeed, Gibson guitars still come with nitrocellulose finishes as standard.

For those who like a bit of modern relicing, it’s just more convincing on a nitro finish compared to the now much more prevalent polyurethane. The thing is, it nearly always comes with a higher price tag. Patina is looking to change that.

Brought to us from the same folks behind the bang-for-buck success story that is Jet, the concept behind Patina is that of affordable guitars with real nitrocellulose finishes. This sets the company apart from other budget brands that usually utilize the cheaper and more durable polyurethane.

To be clear, plenty of higher-end guitars use a poly finish too (for example, Fender’s American Professional range), as there are advantages to this finish - mostly that aforementioned durability - so we are in the land of preference here. The main point is that for those who like a classic look and a guitar that will wear, the softer nitro is the better choice.

So, with this in mind, Patina’s catalogue currently consists of four lines - the 3 Series, 4 Series, 6 Series, and 7 Series - with the differences between each being predominantly in finish and pickup configuration. As I frequently use a Fender Telecaster as my main gigging instrument, I am pleased to have one of Patina’s Telecaster-inspired guitars for review - the PT-3.

The point behind the 3 Series is that they are not relic’d, allowing us to give the guitar its own battle scars over time (for the relic’d equivalent, you’ll want to look at the PT-6).

Specs

• Launch price: £519 | €599
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Paulownia
• Neck: Roasted maple
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 25.5"/647mm
• Nut/width: Bone, 42mm
• Frets: 22, jumbo, stainless steel
• Hardware: Chrome, locking tuners, included strap locks
• String spacing at bridge: 10mm
• Electrics: 2 custom hand-wound single coils
• Weight: 6.1lbs/2.8kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Black (as reviewed), Sunburst, Sea Foam Green
• Case: No
• Contact: Patina

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

On this review model, the finish is a plain Black, which I suspect some may find a little boring, but personally I appreciate the understated aesthetic matched with the red tortoise shell scratch plate. It's a classic combo and this reminds me why.

The body is paulownia, which is known to be a softer wood that will pick up knocks fairly easily. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you have bought a Patina in order to have a guitar that will wear as you play.

It’s also a wood known to be lightweight - and that's very much the case here where the PT-3 is coming in at a comfortable 6.1lbs. Well under the usual solid T-style territory of 7lbs+.

I would prefer a little more weight in this case, however, as the guitar suffers from a touch of neck-dive, I suspect due to the hefty nature of the locking tuners paired with that lightweight body.

The upside is that the tuners feel robust and do their job well, aiding in what is a stoic tuning stability despite my best efforts to catch the guitar out with some wild bending.

A quartersawn roasted maple neck is also likely to be contributing here, as well as appointments like a bone nut and decent chrome hardware. In short, it's a pretty high spec for a budget-friendly guitar.

Well, I say budget-friendly; we are definitely on the higher end of that definition at £519, but I’d argue that this still represents good value when we consider that nitro finish. Other appreciated appointments include nicely finished stainless steel frets, strap locks, and a compensated three-saddle bridge.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

A fretboard radius of 13.75” is an interesting choice for a lower-priced T-style. It makes legato runs feel fluid, but is slightly less comfortable than the more ubiquitous 9.5” radius (for a guitar of this ilk) would be for the cowboy chords that are arguably more typical of the type of thing played by folks in the market for an instrument like the PT-3 at this price point.

I should stress that by ‘less comfortable’ I don’t mean uncomfortable. Those chords still feel easy enough to play thanks to a decent setup with a buzz-free, medium-low action of 1.25mm on the high E and 1.5mm on the low E.

So, digging into open chords does not feel quite as effortless as it does on other guitars of this type, but shredding up and down some legato lines is a little easier than you might expect, and the satin finish allows execution of that speed without getting stuck to the neck.

The result is an instrument that feels a little quicker than your average T-style-inspired guitar, and this is something you could accentuate by lowering the action a little more too.

Bends and vibrato also come off with ease, thanks to the nicely finished stainless steel jumbo frets, and access to the higher frets is made a little easier by the lightly sculpted heel. All in all, a rewarding guitar to play.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★☆☆

Plugging in, I am testing the guitar via my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe with a Browne Amplification Ethane covering overdrive pedal duties.

Starting with some clean sounds on the neck pickup, I am detecting a little less low end than I am used to in this position on a T-type guitar. There is a good helping of high-mid presence that results in those fancy chord extensions cutting nicely - something I am enjoying taking advantage of. The flip side is that it can sound a little harsh when digging in on a clean sound.

The middle position increases the mids whilst retaining the low end that is there - great for funky clean stuff.

When I activate the bridge pickup, it is immediately clear where those extra mids are coming from. It is very honky in its response, and feels quite narrow, which makes it less effective for cleans, but stick some gain on it, and lead lines poke through in a way that will stand out in a mix. But again, I find myself wanting some more low end.

With that in mind, I am spending most of my time on the neck pickup. Although the lows aren't as present as I would like them to be, it stays articulate on gains, suiting both rhythm and lead work.

Verdict

The main headline here is a nitro-finished electric guitar at a budget-friendly price, but obviously, this doesn’t mean much if the guitar itself isn’t up to scratch. Thankfully, it is well put together and plays nicely.

The weak point for me is in those sounds. Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent tones to be had here, but things are a little thin across the board, and the bridge pickup lacks the bite I am used to on this type of guitar. That latter point, however, may be a good thing for some.

Guitar World verdict: The Patina PT-3 falls a little short on tone, but there are still some good sounds here. And as a nitro-finished guitar with a high-quality build that plays well, it is a good deal nonetheless. You can always upgrade the pickups, and if you do, you will have a solid foundation to install whatever it is you decide to put in.

Also try

Martin Guitars is honoring the legacy of a late music legend with the 00-21 Gram Parsons, producing just 80 guitars to coincide with the country-rock great’s 80th birthday.

The new acoustic guitar is inspired by Parsons’ beloved 1963 00-21, which he played throughout his career. It pairs a 00 12-fret body with East Indian rosewood back and sides, and a VTS old-growth Sitka spruce top. Aging toner has also been applied to give this a pre-worn look, in keeping with Parson’s six-string.

Built to a slightly stunted 24.9” scale, it features a V-shaped neck profile crafted from mahogany and a slotted headstock for a true vintage look. The guitar has also been assembled with X-Bracing and given a period-correct standard belly bridge, faux tortoise binding, and a bone saddle.

Following his death, Parsons’ trusty guitar ended up with folk singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris. She subsequently loaned it to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and later the Rock Hall. Martin was granted an audience with the guitar in order to study its every detail.

This celebratory model is the end result of years of negotiation and work. It’s “a guitar connected directly to both his musical legacy and the Martin he made his own,” says Martin.

Notably, the guitar is releasing just nine days shy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for 2026, which will honor Parsons.

This being a limited edition Martin, of course, means the $5,499.99 price of the 00-21 Gram Parsons shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. It’s not an instrument many can buy on a whim, but it is a touching tribute to a man whose flame still burns brightly decades after his passing.

See Martin for more.

In related news, an ex-Martin employee has turned heads by suggesting that the historic guitar destroyed in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight was no accident. He’s put a fresh perspective on the famous guitar-smashing scene.

The Rolling Stones have a new album out. It’s titled Foreign Tongues. It is another late-career doozy shepherded onto tape by über-producer Andrew Watt. And it begs the question: when will we see the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll institution hit the road and perform it?

Every day, the emails come pouring in from Ticketmaster, Live Nation, See Tickets et al, and, all of a sudden, summer 2027 looks pretty busy. And yet there is still no sign of any Stones dates.

Appearing on Argentinian talk show, Otro Día Perdido (Another Day Wasted), on Thursday, November 4, guitarist Ronnie Wood explained all, and said he’s champing at the bit. But they’ll have to wait for Keith Richards to give them the shout. And we might be some time.

“Mick and I have already been promoting a little bit, but we are waiting for Keith to set down what he wants to do for his future,” said Wood (via Guitar Player). “Because he’s a bit road weary at the moment. He said, ‘I don’t want to do any more touring – for a bit, you know?’”

Wood is not road weary. He’s the opposite. He’s got ants in his pants, which is why he is in Argentina, playing the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires tonight (November 6).

“I’m not going to sit back and wait,” said Wood. “So I’m going to get out there and play!’”

Wood also has a solo compilation to promote. His Fearless: Anthology 1965–2025, was released on September 26 and collects tracks from all eras of Wood’s epic discography, including four brand-new tracks, early teenage recordings, tracks from the Faces, and a previously unreleased songs such as his cover of Ernie K-Doe’s A Certain Girl, featuring the Pretenders’ frontwoman Chrissie Hynde.

We wouldn’t give up hope on the Stones announcing dates just yet. Wood did place a lot of emphasis on “for a bit”. This is a break from the road not retirement.

Speaking to Guitar World in April, Keith Richards explained how arthritis had affected his playing.

“Well, I do have arthritis and very large knuckles,” said Richards. “They don’t hurt, but it does get in the way sometimes. I’m going for a wider fingerboard for that reason.”

Richards says he has to talk them into action: “I sit on ’em,” he said. “No, I do have one of those hand pumps, you know. I’m really lax, quite honestly. I just look at my hands and my hands look at me, and we say, ‘Well, let’s see what we can do today.’ And that’s the way I play guitar. I look at it and I say, ‘We’ve got nothing else to do. Come here. I love you!’ [Laughs]”

If you’ve been holding off on buying a new electric guitar, upgrading your pedalboard, or stocking up on studio plugins until the official Black Friday guitar deals land, I’ve got some pretty good news: you can stop waiting.

Major music retailers aren't hanging around until the end of November anymore. Almost all our favorite dealers have already kicked off their main holiday events early, dropping prices weeks ahead of schedule.

In my experience tracking gear sales year after year, these early bird discounts are genuinely on par with what we usually see on Black Friday itself.

Now, obviously, shopping early isn't just about impatience, although there’s a bit of that for sure; it's a genuinely smart play. Going early means you secure your first pick of gear before stock levels dry up, completely avoid peak holiday shipping delays, and get extra time to actually play with your new gear before the holidays. Win, win, right?

Below, I’ve rounded up the 7 best early Black Friday guitar and gear sales that are officially live right now.

In the UK?

“When Steven first mixed the record, I thought the bass was too quiet,” said Nick Beggs in the August 2016 issue of Bass Player, recalling the final stages of his work on Steven Wilson’s 2013 prog rock opus, The Raven That Refused to Sing.

“I didn't want to say anything, because I didn't want to be that guy – y’know, the bass player who says the bass guitar isn’t loud enough.”

Almost a month later, Wilson shot Beggs an email explaining that, after repeated listening, he had come to the conclusion that the bass was, well, too quiet, and he asked Beggs for his opinion on the matter.

“You’re probably asking the wrong person,” said Beggs, “but, in my opinion, every record ever made has mixed the bass too quiet!”

The upshot? On the final mixes, “Steven bumped up the bass 2dB.”

Whether by direct or indirect means, Nick Beggs has made a career of bumping up the bass, from the Larry Graham-approved slap bass fixtures on his band Kajagoogoo’s classic ‘80s single Too Shy to the pummeling Chris Squire like 16th-note power riff that fires up intro to The Raven’s leadoff track, Luminol.

In between, Beggs has plucked, slapped, and picked bass with an impressive array of artists, including Alphaville, John Paul Jones, Kim Wilde, and ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, as well as charting hits with his own projects Ellis, Beggs & Howard and Industrial Salt, and quietly releasing noteworthy solo albums featuring his other favorite instrument, the Chapman Stick.

Do you enjoy being referred to as ‘an 80s guy?’

I can go and do all this other stuff, but for some people, that’s all I’ll ever be.

Is that the downside of achieving success at the start of your career?

That was the plan, though. We did think in Kajagoogoo about how to be instantly successful, from the songwriting upwards. Everything we did was based around what was happening on the radio and what people were listening to, and how we could achieve that. And it worked!

But it’s taken me years in the industry as a professional bass player for the heavy metal magazines to want to talk to me.

You’re sounding rather like a closet metalhead.

I love that music. People might find that hard to believe, but I know my stuff. All those seminal bass players from the ’60s and ’70s were what I was listening to.

That music has come around again: heavy metal is cool again, and bands like Meshuggah are making music in subdivisions of the genre. They take what Frank Zappa did and reinvent it, because they love that stuff and they’re fans of it.

Essentially what you try to do as a musician is find a new take on what's been said already, while earning a living from it, in an industry that you love, in a genre that you’re interested in.

Well, Robert Trujillo of Metallica always references you as one of his inspirations.

He’s a very sweet guy. I did a couple of interviews for his Jaco movie. I’m really glad he made that film. I met John Pastorius, who was also a lovely fellow. He said to me, ‘Man, you ’80s guys, you all really understood my dad.’ And of course we did: he was a huge influence.

You’re known for technical playing. Are there any songs that you find difficult to play?

There are pieces which are challenging, definitely. I would find it tricky to play a gig that was too far into the jazz idiom, but I would take it as a challenge and take the time to master it. I’d say to myself, ‘You have a fixed time to get this music under your fingers. Get some tuition, and get it done.’

Talking of jazz, do you play double bass?

I’ve always wanted one, but never got around to it. But to have the jazz chops, and the ability to improvise, is more important than the execution. Steven Wilson told me that you get the most interesting improvisation when you get jazz players to play rock.

Metallica guitarist and owner of the meanest right-hand in the business, James Hetfield, is celebrating 50 years of EMG Pickups with a special anniversary “Het Set” of humbuckers.

These come with one key celebratory twist: they are emblazoned with a 50th anniversary logo created with the Metallica font, in a design of Hetfield’s own making. The limited edition JH signature set comes in brushed black chrome and is limited to just 200 sets.

It's the latest extension of the Het Set range, which has been the Metallica man's go-to pickup set for the past few decades. The Het Set – which was the most difficult set the firm has ever had to make – began life by being patterned on the humbuckers that powered Hetfield’s riffs. But the end result, EMG says, was “a completely different animal.”

JH-N neck ‘bucker has individual ceramic poles and bobbins that feature a larger core for more attack, higher output, and fuller low end in the neck position. Its counterpart, the JH-B, uses the same core, but uses steel pole pieces, a key difference from the classic EMG 81 pickup, which instead uses bar magnets. The switch up means the attack is tighter, and with less inductance to clean up the low end.

Included in the box are two 25k Volume and Tone pots, a stereo output jack, mounting screws and connector cables, and everything else needed to supercharge whatever electric guitar they’re plonked into.

The special set is priced at $299, and will be available from Friday, November 13. It follows the rest of the band getting new pickups – Hetfield included – and the launch of a Tom Morello signature set, inspired by his Arm the Homeless guitar.

Check out EMG for more.

Hetfield, meanwhile, has credited his competitiveness with Dave Mustaine for helping him master down picking in the most extreme way, and revealed that Turnstile rejected the chance to tour with them.

The guitarist has divided opinion with his anti-political statements during a recent Metallica show at the Sphere, leading to Roger Waters making a powerful retort.

Sound the Eric Clapton holy grail klaxon: Slowhand’s 1989 to ’93 guitar rig is being auctioned off, and this is a big one.

ANALOGr is hosting the auction and has placed estimates between $2,500,000 and $3,000,000. One lucky collector will be able to set this up in their backyard and play the same 1988 Custom Shop signature Fender Stratocaster and the same Soldano amp that Clapton played at Cream’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in January 1993.

Heck, the neighbors won’t mind, not once they see what you’re playing through (though if you can afford to drop $3m a guitar rig then perhaps the neighbors will be far enough away not to matter).

This is is Journeyman-era treasure, and so it’s hard to know which item to get more excited about first. The Soldano SLO-100 was hand-built by Mike Soldano himself, and comes with a COA signed by the tube amp guru.

It’s paired with a full-stack – one slanted Soldano 4x12, one straight 4x12 – and they all come in that silver snakeskin vinyl covering that was the fashion of the time.

The Strat, however, has a sort of "Blackie" MkII mojo to it. This was built by the Fender Custom Shop’s founder and Master Builder Mike Stevens, and was the very first Clapton signature Strat. It’s finished in black with a white pickguard. It has trio of Lace Sensor single-coil pickups, and the onboard boost.

It looks like Stevens used a particularly nice piece of maple for the neck and fingerboard. This was for Mr Clapton, after all. But Clapton did enjoy a cigarette while he performed, and this guitar bears the scars from where he would place it between his strings.

This guitar was sold before in 2004 as part of Christie’s epic Crossroads Guitar Auction. Back then, Clapton’s tech, Lee Dickson, explained why this made this particular Strat special. Clapton was about to go on the patches.

“I think this is the last smoking guitar,” said Dickson “This to me is one of the killer guitars. It was played an awful lot through the early '90s. It has no serial number on it because it’s the first [black] one, almost like a prototype. It was Eric’s suggestion at the time. He said we should really have a black one in the range. So this is the first officially sanctioned black [Clapton] Strat.”

The Clapton Strat was released in Torino Red, 7-Up Green and Pewter. In 2004, Stevens revealed that this guitar was originally finished in Pewter. And it most definitely was a prototype

“I remember this guitar well. It started life in Pewter as the Royal Albert Hall pics show,” said Stevens. “When it finally became black and beautiful I do not know, but I applaud it.”

Like Stevens says, this guitar was at the Royal Albert Hall, played with Cream – it was his main stage guitar from the summer of 1990 to March 1993.

Stevens left no stone unturned when designing Clapton’s signature Strat, and he was given access to the holiest of holies to get the neck profile just right, Blackie. Stevens had Blackie for two weeks, and not that he was paranoid, but he says it “never left my sight unless locked in my office in Corona or stashed under my bed with a pistol under my pillow while I slept.”

“When I finally copied Blackie, to finalize the Clapton series for Fender, I made two necks for Eric that were approved,” he said. “John Page, George Blanda, the electronic R&D guys and I all worked on this project. I built the necks and the carving templates and later helped get it into regular production. But then my job was to assemble my necks on these two bodies and make them play great!”

According to Where’s Eric?, this 1988 Custom Shop prototype Strat sold in 2004 for $231,500. It might be worth considerably more now. Might Joe Bonamassa be tempted to add Clapton's SLO-100 to Gary Moore's?

Head over to ANALOGr for more.

Stanley Jordan was never one to flood the market with new music (throughout his career, he seemed to average a new album every three or four years), but even he didn’t plan on the 11-year gap between his last album, 2015’s Duets with Kevin Eubanks, and his latest, Feather in the Wind.

“The album was originally made for Mack Avenue Records as part of my deal with them,” Jordan says, “but it didn’t really fit their stylistic A&R policy or whatever, so it kind of sat in limbo for a while. The way we resolved it is I now own the rights to the album, and I’m putting it out through my own channels.”

Ahead of the album’s release, Jordan issued two brilliant – and brilliantly distinctive – singles. On the sumptuous ballad Meditation, he trades his signature two-handed touch technique for a flatpick.

Playing a Vigier electric guitar that beautifully mimics an acoustic, he weaves a joyous dialogue with legendary Brazilian vocalist Milton Nascimento. By contrast, the high-energy Flight of the Eagle is a spectacular, one-take slice of classic jazz-rock fusion that features Jordan masterfully blending pick and touch techniques.

Beyond the stellar musicianship, however, the album carries a profound, bittersweet weight, as several of Jordan’s collaborators on the project have since passed away. He points to Flight of the Eagle, where he is backed by a “dream team” of drummer Kenwood Denard, keyboardist Delmar Brown and bassist T.M. Stevens – the latter two of whom are no longer with us.

But the album’s most poignant tribute is a planned duet that never was. For years, Jordan had discussed collaborating with his first guitar hero, B.B. King. They finally settled on an unexpected song choice: a cover of the Doors’ eerie classic, Riders on the Storm.

Tragically, before they could record together, King fell ill and passed away. Rather than scrap the track or hire another guitarist, Jordan completed the recording alone as a tribute, playing King’s parts himself.

“It’s my imaginary version of my dialogue with B.B.,” he says. “Of course, it would’ve been better to have him do it himself, but this is what I did, and I think people can feel the heart in it.”

For Jordan, that emotional resonance is the thread that binds Feather in the Wind together. “A lot of what the album is about is the things we do to find constancy in the face of loss and change and death and all the stuff that the world throws at us,” he says.

We tend to associate you with your touch technique, yet you also play with a pick. How do you make the distinction?

It has to fit the song. My two-handed touch technique is perfect for solo pianistic counterpoint, but on Meditation I had a keyboardist covering those textures. Playing with a pick lets me focus purely on a single line to create a vocal-like dialogue with Milton Nascimento.

Did the touch technique conceptually change how you play with a pick?

Definitely. I actually mastered the pick before developing the touch technique. Now, I find myself trying to recreate touch-style ideas using a pick. For example, I’ve been practicing sweep picking to capture some of that same fluidity.

In the ’80s, you began a long, professional relationship with record exec Bruce Lundvall. Before you signed to Blue Note, you actually turned him down when he was running Elektra Musician. What was going through your mind?

It wasn’t that I turned him down per se – I just wasn’t ready. I had a baby on the way and was living in Wisconsin, not New York. Bruce would call me every month and say, “I just want you to know you’ve got a record deal waiting for you here.” People told me I was crazy to wait, but I wanted to make sure the timing was right.

I was also paying close attention to how record labels operated. I had already released my independent record, Touch Sensitive [1982], so I was tuned into the manufacturing side. I noticed Elektra Musician was using a two-color print on their otherwise gorgeous album covers. Even though it was elegantly done, it made me question how much the parent label was truly invested in the imprint. I wondered, “What happens if I sign and then Bruce leaves?”

I’ve never heard of an artist raising the issue of printing techniques when deciding whether to sign a contract.

Exactly! So anyway, eventually, the time came. I walked into Bruce’s office with my attorney and said, “Okay, I’m ready.” Bruce looked at me and said, “Before we talk, I’ve got to tell you something. I don’t work here anymore. I got a call last night – Capitol-EMI wants to revive Blue Note, and they want me to run the whole thing. I want you to be the first artist I sign.” That’s how it happened.

Did Bruce give you total autonomy to record whatever you wanted?

He did. Bruce was incredibly artist-friendly. This was the same guy Bobby McFerrin approached about doing a solo, unaccompanied vocal album. Bruce told him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea for your first record.” Bobby replied, “But Bruce, I have to do the album that way. That’s what God wants.” Bruce just shrugged and said, “Who am I to argue with God? I guess you’d better do the album your way.” The rest is history.

Your first album for Blue Note, 1985’s Magic Touch, spent 51 weeks at Number 1 on the jazz charts. You were only about 25 at the time. How did that kind of success not completely mess with your ego?

I had a plan. I had been a street musician in New York, and I’d developed a strategy to succeed in the music industry. It worked – even better than I expected – and there was certainly some luck involved, like choosing the exact right day to sign with Bruce. But ever since I was a teenager, I’d viewed myself as an underground musician.

I thought of myself as the kind of artist where, if I was lucky, “people in the know” would appreciate me, but not necessarily the masses. When the mass success hit, I enjoyed it, but I never counted on it.

My instinct has always been to focus on the art and let the chips fall where they may. To appreciate what I do, it helps to know something about it. It’s not just listening. On Magic Touch, we had a disclaimer from the critic Bill Milkowski on the jacket: “Don’t be deceived. This is just one artist playing.”

When we think of guitarists who totally expanded the instrument’s vocabulary, we think of Eddie Van Halen and you. Did you and Eddie ever trade notes?

We did. We participated in a documentary concert honoring Les Paul, where a huge group of us played with him. There was Brian Setzer, B.B. King, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Miller, David Gilmour and me. We jammed together at the end. A while later, Eddie and I ran into each other at a NAMM Show, and he said, “Let’s go jam!” But in the chaos of the convention, someone spun him around, he got pulled away and it didn’t happen.

During that Les Paul tribute, I played a solo piece of my song Flying Home. To me, it was one of my best performances ever, though they didn’t end up putting it in the final film. Right after I played it, Eddie came up to me and said, “I’m speechless. I had no idea you were that good.” Hearing that from him was incredibly special.

How did it come about that you played on a Kenny Rogers record?

I love playing with other people. I treat it like a research project to figure out how to make my style complementary to theirs. Playing with Kenny Rogers is a great example.

I worked with him on a track called Morning Desire, which ended up being the Number 1 country track of the year. George Martin was producing it. Kenny had seen me on The Johnny Carson Show and was looking for something to make his track stand out so it wouldn’t be compared to Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire.

Being in the studio with George Martin was incredible. I remember him practically pulling at me going, “I want that Stanley stuff. Give me more of that Stanley stuff!”

He was very energetic. He told me, “Pretend this is your album. What would you play?” The song is about a man who doesn’t want to go to work. He just wants to stay home with his lover and listen to the rain. So, with my guitar, I became the rain.

Are Vigier guitars still your go-tos?

Oh, yeah. Vigier is still my overall favorite. However, I’ve recently gone back to my “tandem guitars” setup where I play two guitars simultaneously. For the right-hand guitar, I’m using a PRS Santana. I love its short-scale length.

The strings feel loose, which makes the touch technique much easier. I also have an ESP James Hetfield Iron Cross guitar that I’m getting adjusted. It’s a great heavy metal guitar with a great feel for the right hand.

Are we gonna see a metal album?

Yes, it’s coming! With my tandem guitars, I can run different distortion pedals and wah-wahs on both guitars at the exact same time. It’s insane what you can do. I’ve also wanted to do a flame technique.

I once visited a science museum where they hooked me up to a Rubens tube, meaning my guitar was literally controlling and shaping physical fire. You can find the video of it on YouTube.

That we’ve got to see. So you’re going to make a metal record with you operating two distorted guitars, flames and fire and all that. What else are you working on?

I’ve been developing a concept called Stanley Jordan’s Live Tronica. Essentially, I’ll act as a DJ and a live guitarist simultaneously. I have a rig with two computers running Ableton Live, which allows for intense, real-time looping.

I use a massive array of foot pedals to DJ with while I’m playing guitar with my hands. The secret sauce is that I’m bringing complex, harmonically interesting jazz theory to the electronic music space. I want to bring a totally new, age-diverse audience into the clubs and festivals. It’s on the way.

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

After much speculation, the return of Ozzfest has been confirmed, with three one-day shows planned in the UK, US and Mexico in 2027.

The heavy music event, which has a history of pitting the biggest rock and metal acts with up-and-coming artists on one lineup, was founded by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne in 1996.

Now, one year on from Ozzy’s passing – and 30 years since the inaugural gathering – Sharon and Jack Osbourne are honoring Ozzy’s legacy by bringing it back.

The US edition will take Ozzfest back to its original home at the Glen Helen Amphitheater, California, on September 11, 2027. There will also be shows at The National Bowl in Milton Keynes, England, on July 10, and the Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City on September 18

No bands have been announced for the trio of festivals, but its tradition of playing host to household names and fast-rising acts is expected to continue.

Over the years, alongside the obvious headliners of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica and Maiden have been notable headliners in previous editions. Slipknot, System of a Down, Lamb of God, and Killswitch Engage were all relatively unknown bands when they first graced its stages, with both Slipknot and System of a Down going on to headline the festival years later.

In previous years, the US editions have been touring festivals. In 2005, it took over Download Festival for a day, which say Ozzy, Velvet Revolver, HIM, and Anthrax top the bill.

Could we see some previous Ozzfest heavy-hitters return for the 2027 shows? It remains to be seen, but we imagine it highly likely. It’s time to get guessing who’s going to be on the bill.

“Ozzy was the first to launch his own traveling metal festival,” says Sharon Osbourne. “Ozzfest will always remain an important part of Ozzy’s legacy.”

Early Bat tickets – we see what you did there – will go on sale on Friday, November 6 at 10am local time.

Check out Ozzfest for more.

In related news, Sharon recently revealed that Ozzy defied doctor’s orders in order to play Back to the Beginning.

Born out of a chance meeting between songwriter/producer Aryan King and P.A.F. pickup specialist Alexey Dovnar, Octaking Labs has announced its first pedal, the Burstphonic PAF.

This debut release sees the company teaming up with guitarist Jack Moore – son of Northern Irish legend Gary Moore – to create a pedal that aims to “authentically capture the Greeny Moore legacy” via its “massive headroom, rich, clean harmonics, and that unmistakable, soaring out-of-phase sound.”

The 100 percent analog pedal features controls for level, bass, sparkle and P.A.F., with two mini switches to select between ’59/Greeny and LP/Strat modes.

Octaking is calling it “the world’s first ever guitar pedal” because it was designed to reproduce the tonal identity of the storied 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that was owned by Peter Green and Moore before it made its way into the hands of Kirk Hammett.

Instead of emulating amplifier saturation, the pedal reshapes the input signal to reflect vintage P.A.F. response curves, midrange complexity and bloom, as well as the natural compression and harmonic richness of aged tonewoods.

“Dad’s sound was never just distorted guitar,” Jack Moore tells GW. “It was a living thing – mid-forward and singing, with this bloom after the note that made even a simple bend feel like it had air around it.

“There was grit, but it was musical grit. The amp and the guitar talked back to him. You could hear the pick attack, then the note would open up and hang there just long enough that he didn’t have to rush.”

This particular relationship with tone was undeniably symbiotic – the sound of the guitar and the amp together inspired the much-missed blues giant to find the right lines and phrases to play.

“When the sound has that kind of sustain and harmonic richness, you start writing phrases around it,” Moore adds. “You hold a note because it wants to be held. You leave space because the decay is doing half the work. You bend slower because the overtones are already doing the drama.

“A drier, tighter tone would have pushed him toward shorter, more percussive ideas. His sound invited melody, vibrato, and those little vocal-style inflections. The gear didn’t replace his hands – it gave his hands a voice that matched how he heard music.”

As for sonically replicating one of the most recognizable guitars in rock and roll history, Octaking deliberately chose not to pursue the instrument itself and instead opted for a more empirical and forensic approach to the project.

“We gathered primary source data, including measurements from Gary’s late-’90s signature model,” Aryan King explains.

“We also had access to Stripe – Gary’s iconic 1959 Les Paul heard on Still Got The Blues. Alongside these, we analyzed isolated DI tracks from benchmark songs like Parisienne Walkways and Need Your Love So Bad, and selections from the Blues For Greeny album.”

The company’s engineering team mapped the electrical profile of the original pickups using a spectrum analyzer – precisely tracking inductance, impedance, and the resonant peak response.

“A massive part of the pedal’s architecture accounts for the famous accidental Greeny mod,” explains Director and co-founder Alexey Dovnar. “The flipped neck-pickup magnet polarity that created Gary’s piercing, nasal, out-of-phase middle position.

“We modeled that exact phase cancellation and frequency curve inside the circuit to ensure that when the Greeny mode is engaged, the pedal delivers that unmistakable hollow, vocal bite. And then the ’59 mode captures the broader dynamic envelope of an authentic late-’50s P.A.F. ’Burst, with the woody lower-mid bloom, transparent top-end clarity, pick attack sensitivity, and smooth sustain.”

The final thumbs up came from Jack Moore, who had been working with Aryan King on the pedal prior to the company being launched, offering his personal insight, feedback, and – ultimately – approval.

“For the family, this release is very personal,” Moore says. “My dad’s voice is still in the room. For fans, it’s respectful and useful. They’re not being sold a costume. The best tribute isn’t imitation for its own sake – it’s when a kid in a bedroom hears that midrange bloom, writes a line they wouldn’t have written on a sterile clean amp, and the music keeps moving forward.

“That’s the point: preserve the character of the tone so people can use it, not just admire it.”

• Head to Octaking for more information.

Power chords are one of the first things we learn as beginner guitarists as these easy-to-fret two note chords are the building blocks of countless classic riffs across rock, punk, pop, and funk.

But don’t let their simplicity fool you, they are more than just a shortcut to learning songs quickly or sounding heavy. They’re a versatile, genre-spanning tool that every guitarist can harness in new and creative ways.

In this lesson, you're not just learning power chords. You're unlocking their full creative potential across five distinct genres, each defined by its string set, pitch range and stylistic context.

From the thunder of doom metal on the lowest string to the clean, rhythmic shimmer of soul and yacht rock on higher strings, you'll learn how power chords change character and function based on where and how you play them.

You'll learn four key fretboard zones (ie string groupings), in open and closed positions, each anchored by a different string (from the low sixth up to the higher third) supplying the root. Plus you'll appreciate the most effective shapes for each zone and how they’re used across genres.

For example, doom and metal genres (think Metallica and Slayer) lean on low-pitched, sixth string rooted power chords to create massive weight and tight, muted aggression. Rock (think Aerosmith and Extreme) typically favors fifth string rooted shapes for driving riffs and rhythmic punch with a characteristic bright tonal snap.

Then over to 80s yacht rock/AOR (eg Richard Marx, Kenny Loggins, Glenn Frey, Huey Lewis and The News) which often utilizes fourth string rooted chords at mid-pitch ranges to create punchy, studio-friendly rhythms with extensions and color tones for rich harmony.

And finally, you'll see how soul and funk stretches the limits, using third string rooted power chords as double-stops or three-note variants for rhythmic hits or melodic punctuation. Think George Benson’s pop interpretation of Wes Montgomery’s octave ideas into more fluid, harmonic comping, or Nile Rodgers’ trademark rhythm style.

You’ll also dive into creative variations, like inverted voicings, sliding 4ths, sus2 extensions, and even the occasional flat 5. These give your power chords more life, color and musicality, even when you’re still only using two or three notes.

Whether you’re tracking heavy riffs, writing pop hooks, or clean soul comping, this is your guide to unlocking the full expressive potential of the humble power chord.

So, what exactly is a power chord?

At its core, a power chord contains just two notes: the root and the fifth. This makes them technically dyads (two notes) rather than full chords (which would require three notes such as a triad).

They are written as “5” after the note name (eg A5, D5) because they only contain the root and fifth.

Since they lack the third, the note that determines whether a chord is major or minor, power chords are harmonically neutral. This means they’re perfect for navigating the fretboard quickly as a beginner, without worrying about playing the correct major and minor chords in each key. But this is just the beginning.

Because they’re tonally simple, they hold up incredibly well under distortion, overdrive, or fuzz, which is why they’re a mainstay in punk, metal, and hard rock. This is because the distance between the root and the fifth is a perfect 5th. After the octave, the perfect 5th is the most harmonically stable interval in western music.

ESSENTIAL POWER CHORD SHAPES

Open position power chords (1:26 in video)

Let’s start with the open power chord positions down at the low frets. Beginning on the sixth string, you have the E5 power chord shape across the sixth, fifth and fourth strings. This shape is common in rock and metal, and offers a dense, bass heavy timbre.

If you mirror the same exact shape across the fifth, fourth and third strings, you get the A5 power chord. This grouping sounds a bit snappier and brighter, making it a mainstay in roots and riff-rock.

Moving on to the fourth, third and second strings, you need to adjust the fingering to compensate for the major 3rd interval found between the third and second strings in standard tuning. The guitar is mainly tuned in 4ths, with this exception. To maintain the root-fifth-octave distance across these three strings, you’ll need to shift your fourth finger up by one semitone/one fret. You should recognize this shape as a fragment of the D major open chord shape from the CAGED system.

Finally, there's the open G power chord across the higher third, second and first strings. Again, you’ll need to adjust the fingering to compensate for the tuning difference across the higher strings.

Moveable power chords (3:38 in video)

Just like full open chords, power chords can be moved around the neck using a barre. For these positions, the first finger takes the place of the “zero” fret (ie behind the nut), to adapt open power chord voicings to closed positions, allowing us to move them around the neck.

The E5 shape can be moved up the fingerboard to give you a new power chord with the root note on each fret: eg A5 at the 5th fret (see the first diagram below). For this shape, use your first finger to fret the root note, and your third and fourth fingers to play the fifth and octave.

For the A5 shape, you can mirror the same position across the fifth, fourth and third string set. On the 5th fret for instance, you’d get a D5 power chord (see the second diagram below).

The D5 shape (using the fourth, third and second strings) has lots of potential for harmonic embellishments. The G5 diagram below is a good one to try out. You may be familiar with this shape if you’re into playing '80s metal, as it appears heavily in songs like Bark At the Moon and Hot For Teacher.

Finally, you have the G5 shape (third, second and first) strings in the closed position. Check out the C5 diagram below. For this position, barre the fourth finger to hit the 5th and octave. This shape is rarely used in its entirety with many guitarists opting to leave out the low root note and play just the top two notes, creating an inversion. We’ll discuss this more in the examples.

MUSIC EXAMPLES

Example 1. Doom Metal Zone - power chords on the lowest strings (4:42 in video)

This is where heavy lives. Power chords rooted on the low sixth and fifth strings are your go-to for metal and hard rock. The tone is thick and punchy, and this position is ideal for palm muting and alternate picking. This example includes sixth/fifth/fourth strings power chords, chromatic movement, a flat 5 (dim5) chord for added tension, and some arpeggiated voicings to break up the wall of sound.

If you lower the fifth in a power chord by one fret, you get the flat 5 (tritone or diminished 5th interval), often used in heavy music. This is still technically a power chord, as it contains two notes (root and diminished fifth). You can use this voicing occasionally for some added tension in your riffing - see bar 3, beat 3&.

This example perfectly illustrates why power chords work so well with high-gain and distorted tones. Overdrive and distortion pedals introduce 'intermodulation distortion' to your guitar sound. It generates and emphasizes harmonic frequencies above the fundamental pitches you are playing.

The more notes you squeeze into the chord, the more unpleasant intermodulation distortion occurs, which is why six-string open chord shapes sound really wonky with a ton of grit. The frequencies emphasized when using power chords agree with each other and eliminate any clashing, making them perfect for high-gain riffs.

Example 2. The Rock Zone – power chords on the fifth, fourth and third strings (6:51 in video)

This zone is the engine room of classic rock, alt rock, and pop-punk. It’s brighter and punchier, with more snap and honk than the doom zone.

This example includes inverted power chords using two strings (fifth below the root) and introduces a sus2/add9 voicing (last two arpeggios at the end of bar 8). These add harmonic color to your sound: think Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Police, Extreme or The Foo Fighters: rhythmic, riff-driven, and dynamic.

Speaking of inverted power chords, you may already be familiar with this fourth and third string double-stop fingering if you’ve learned songs like Smoke On the Water or Layla. This dyad flips the root and fifth low to high voicing to instead sound a perfect fourth.

Many guitarists choose to use this inversion instead of the full root-fifth-octave voicing, especially on these strings, as it shifts your finger position and gives more room to riff through the pentatonic scale.

Example 3. The Yacht Rock Zone - power chords on the fourth, third and second strings (11:04 in video)

Don’t overlook the middle of the neck! Power chords with the root on the fourth string have a very punchy tone, be it using a rock tone (eg Steve Lukather) or edge of breakup tone (eg Bryan Adams). This zone is also perfect for chorus-soaked arpeggios, pop arrangements, and '80s radio rock, but it's equally at home in glam and classic rock.

What makes this example interesting is you will be playing add9 and major 7 chords based off the moveable power chord shapes shown earlier. When you play these clock how rich and sophisticated they sound.

The hard rock application in this zone is covered in songs like Bark At the Moon and Hot For Teacher, while you’ll see the soft-rock application in the music of Bryan Adams, The Eagles and Toto.

The wider stretch opens up your first finger to barre and add the 9th scale degree on the first string, while the fourth is now free to shift down one fret to the major 7th. You can also start grabbing more complex triad inversions from this base position like F minor/A♭(see bar 7 into 8).

All of this makes the fourth/third/second string zone arguably the most adaptable. It sounds great live, in the studio, across many genres and styles, and with different guitar tones from DI'd chiming cleans to 5150 amp fuelled metal.

Example 4. The Funk & Soul Zone - power chords on the third, second and first strings (14:25 in video)

Your final zone is all about feel and groove. This position is the gold standard for funk, R&B, and neo-soul. Inspired by players like Nile Rodgers and George Benson, this example shows how to slide shapes through the pentatonic scale, use chromatic approaches, and comp with syncopation.

Many guitarists favor this position when comping because it sits above a band's lower register instruments such as bass and keys. The overall blend then allows for a wider spread of frequencies in a song's arrangement.

Guitarists in this zone often drop the low root note on the third string and play just an inverted double-stop dyad on the top two strings. This provides a perfect fourth double-stop, used by players from Steve Cropper to Curtis Mayfield and Nile Rodgers to SRV. Certainly, this slinky and easily moveable shape can brighten up any rhythm part or add bombastic bounce to your solo.

Wata is a name that inspires awe and respect among the most grizzled tone nerds. From monolithic metal riffers to shoegazing pedal geeks, the diminutive guitarist of Japanese noise rock icons Boris is regarded by those in the know as a tonal wizard.

She is a player who conjures an elemental sound from surprisingly humble ingredients: a Les Paul, Orange and Matamp tube amps, and a few cornerstone pedals – most notably, a wah pedal, Boss DS-1, her EarthQuaker Devices Hizumitas signature, and (the pedal that inspired the latter build) the ELK Gakki Big Muff.

In the latest addition to our In Their Own Words series, Wata explains how she thinks about fuzz and distortion, her dedication to the Space Echo, and her personal history with dirt.

Sound is an experience

Connecting a guitar amp and playing at high volume, feeling the air and your own body vibrate, and experiencing a sense of oneness with the world, is crucial, with a variety of songs. It is the sensation of becoming the very “piece of music” you are playing, performing in unison with the world itself. I believe that “sound” is, in essence, an experience.

All three members of Boris are deeply particular about guitar tone; we would collect various fuzz pedals and rigorously test them during rehearsals to find the ones that best enhanced our high-volume sound.

The ELK Big Muff I acquired was rich in low-end frequencies; it possessed a unique blend of delicacy and raw power, allowing the tone to constantly shift in character as a note sustained after the initial pick attack. Boris’ music often features slow tempos, long sustains, and feedback-heavy passages, and this fuzz pedal added a wonderful richness and color to those moments.

Bring the thunder

[On tracks like Blackout] I hope to create a sense of majesty, like thunder rumbling in the darkness of night. A single pluck yields long sustain, while the distinct, gritty texture of the fuzz pedal’s distortion allows the tone to constantly shift and evolve. I aim for a sound that melds seamlessly with Takeshi’s bass, allowing the listener to fully immerse themselves in the long, sustained notes.

The Boss DS-1 actually belonged to Atsuo; I kept it on my pedalboard for moments when I needed a touch of light distortion. I decided to keep using it after trying it out in front of the ELK pedal, when I engaged both at once, I got this amazing, long sustain. So I decided to keep using it. It was purely by chance. It was a total coincidence.

Since the [EarthQuaker Devices] Hizumitas is also modeled after the ELK Big Muff, you can achieve a similar effect using the same settings. I never imagined that something I tried out on a whim would become such a crucial part of my sound.

Raise a Blue Cheer

When choosing pedals, I always test them using my own amp and guitar at high volumes, just as I would in a live setting. My approach to signal chains and settings is intuitive; I rarely read the manuals. During band rehearsals, I’ll have the other members listen as we decide on the direction of our arrangements, saying things like, “This pedal sounds great” or “Let's use it for that song” and sometimes a song is born directly from the unique sound of a specific pedal. Often, my bandmates or the music itself reveal new possibilities to me.

[When I think about the first distortion or fuzz sounds that resonated] Blue Cheer’s Summertime Blues left a particularly strong impression on me. When I first heard it, I was amazed by the sheer mass of sound, the commanding presence, and the boomy tone, things I had never experienced before.

While it seems fewer guitarists are using amplifiers these days, I consider the Orange and Matamp amps I always use to be instruments just as important as the guitar itself. Resonating sound together with my bandmates in the same space is crucial. For me, it is vital to move the air and experience the sound with my whole body, not just hear it with my ears, when making decisions about the tone.

Play to the environment

As I mentioned earlier, the Hizumitas is based on a specific ELK Fuzz unit that I own. It possesses a heavy character that constantly generates tonal shifts, yet it has earned a reputation for being easy to control despite that versatility.

I perform in various locations, and the audience and the atmosphere of the venue at any given moment influence the high-volume amp sound and my use of feedback techniques. Rather than me controlling the guitar sound, it feels more like the environment guides the sound, leading me in my performance.

Just like my amps, fuzz pedals, and wah pedals, the Space Echo RE-150 is a crucial part of my guitar sound [you hear it on tracks like Farewell]. Its wet signal constantly shifts, adding nuance and character to the tone, it feels almost like the unit is playing right along with me. I really love that sense of unpredictability. Although maintaining it is a huge hassle, I make sure to bring it on tour, because I want to share this sound with everyone.

I frequently use a wah pedal for the lead parts in Boris’ songs [for example, PINK]. Much like the fuzz sound, it enriches the guitar tone; it adds a variety of tonal nuances and allows the emotions I feel while playing to come through directly. It produces a pleasant sound that resonates through your entire body.

Even when played at high volume, it doesn’t feel noisy; instead, it’s the kind of sound you could listen to endlessly. It’s similar to the sound of a massive waterfall. The kind of thing you encounter in the great outdoors. That organic feel is important, too.

• Boris is currently on tour in Europe celebrating 20 years of PINK. For more information and tickets, head to Boris Heavy Rocks.

Following their successful Fifty Something reunion tour, Rush have just announced a five-day residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson – alongside drummer Anika Nilles and keyboardist Loren Gold – are set to perform on May 21, 23, 26, 28 and 30 2027, with “a set of fan favorites and greatest hits from across their catalogue” that celebrates their immense legacy.

“When I first heard of Sphere, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, what a shame that Rush is no longer touring, because this venue sounds tailor-made for the kind of visual attitude with which we have always designed our shows,’” says Geddy Lee.

“Normally we spend months designing the visual effects for our shows, and this scenario seemed like the cherry on top of the ice cream for our design team. But life is nothing if not surprising, and now, here we are, living and touring in the present tense, and we are able to make that particular dream come true.”

Lee also mentioned that the band is working hard to expand their touring concepts, and, in his own words, “concoct some new madness to suit this incredible venue.” He revealed they’ll be playing all of 2112, Moving Pictures, as well as “an array of other songs.”

“We are so effin’ excited to make use of this incredible opportunity to please our fans both visually and viscerally – from wherever they might fly in from. Gonna be so much fun!”

Rush Backstage and Rush Newsletter subscribers will receive an exclusive two-hour window to purchase VIP and Travel packages, beginning November 6 at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET, with artist pre-sale kicking off on November 11.

Residency aside, Rush’s reunion tour is expected to end in April 2027, with the tour covering North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and the UK.

For more information, head to Rush’s official website.

If you’ve ever longed for a guitar so much that you’d do anything – absolutely anything – to get hold of it, well, you’re not alone, as a recent court case has highlighted.

Ex-High Museum of Art executive Brady Lum just pleaded guilty to embezzling $600,000 from the arts institution in Atlanta, Georgia – a sum he reportedly then spent acquiring valuable guitars, among other items.

“Lum brazenly pilfered hundreds of thousands of dollars from a beloved civic institution to pay for his high-end guitars and other personal items,” stated U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “His appalling breach of trust damaged not only the High Museum but also the larger art community.”

Sadly, the list of “high-end” guitars he bought using the embezzled funds has not been made public, but with that kind of cash, you could afford pretty much anything. Could they have been a couple of ’Bursts, à la Joe Bonamassa? Or did he perhaps manage to nab a few of the artist guitars that were recently up for auction? Alas, we can only speculate.

The Judge did indicate that he didn’t believe Lum was likely to commit another crime, but stated that the sentence must deter other individuals (presumably, guitarists) from committing similar offences.

Lum was subsequently handed a 12 month sentence, having addressed the court in an apology. “I acknowledge I violated the law. I am guilty. I took money that wasn’t mine,” he said, while expressing regret for how this impacted his family and community.

As part of the plea agreement, Lum paid full restitution of over $607,688 to the High Museum and another $500,000 to cover investigative and legal costs. This past July, he resigned from his position as COO and pleaded guilty to a federal charge of theft in relation to programs that receive federal funds.

Speaking of true crime and guitars, multiple suspects are currently wanted after a failed attempt to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stolen guitars to a store in Nashville.

Fender has expanded its child-friendly guitar range with a fresh collaboration with Loog that introduces Loog’s first-ever bass, and a Butterscotch Blonde Tele.

Loog instruments are short-scale, and serve up just three strings by way of soft-launching the instrument to kids as young as six. The idea is to scale down the intimidation factor, and have youngsters fall in love with the fun and creative aspects of the electric guitar, before eventually leveling up to a six-string.

A Strat and a Tele made up the firm’s first Fender collab in 2024, with a Gibson tie-in following in 2025. Here, a compact Precision Bass and vintage-inspired Tele add to the lot, which also includes a Hello Kitty Strat.

The Precision Bass represents the first time that Loog has made a bass. Specifically, it celebrates the original 1951 model with a single pickup design and a “surprisingly big sound.”

A much shorter scale than the original, it was designed to be comfortable in the hands of tiny tots, while still feeling and sounding like an authentic low-end bringer. The bass is available in Candy Apple Red, Sea Foam Green and a limited edition Hello Kitty Black edition.

The Tele comes equipped with a black pickguard and is again inspired by the 1951 Tele. Both models feature official Fender headstocks and standard 1/4” jack inputs so they can plug into regular amplifiers, combos, and amp modelers.

“For 75 years, the Telecaster and Precision Bass have helped shape the sound of music,” says James Chippendale, Fender Senior Director, Lifestyle & Licensing. “Our partnership with Loog brings these iconic instruments to a new generation of players.

“Together with Loog, we're inspiring young musicians to discover the joy of playing, express themselves and begin a lifelong connection with music.”

The Fender x Loog Precision Bass and Butterscotch Blonde Tele are both priced at $229/£199 and available now.

See Fender for more info.

A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel is selling off a swathe of pre-loved gear via Analogr, including the guitar that’s all over one of the band’s biggest albums.

The pick of the bunch is his semi-hollow Yamaha AES 1500, which was a key player in shaping A Perfect Circle’s distinct alt-rock sound on 2003 album, Thirteenth Step.

“I’m not happy about letting this one go,” he sighs. “Don’t sleep on the made in Japan stuff; it’s amazing and this is no exception.

“It’s got PAF-style pickups and it splits to single coil,” he adds. “This was my only single coil-option guitar,” and it can be heard on tracks like The Noose and Vanishing.

“Any things that had a pretty sparkle to them,” he adds, “would be this guitar. It was my forever guitar. Now it’s not.”

The other guitar of note is a one-of-one S-type gifted to the band by the CFE Arena in Orlando, Florida ahead of their show on October 30, 2018. APC frontman Maynard James Keenan famously dressed as Beetlejuice that night.

A Gibson Goldtone GA-15RV combo amp, said to be heard on around 40 percent of A Perfect Circles material, also features, with Howerdel believing it would be a pirate’s amp of choice. Swashbuckling.

See too a “punchy and clean” Fender Tone Master amp head and cab, which has been a valued studio workhorse over the years, a cluster of Ernie Ball volume pedals that got heavy use on the road, and Axe-Fx amp modelers.

Howerdel is also selling off several Voodoo Lab Ground Control switchers, flight cases, and APC backdrops from tours gone by.

The seven-day auction launches Sunday November 8, with the AES 1500 expected to be the top seller with an estimated price of $5,000 - $7,500. Sounds like a bargain.

See Analogr for more.

Howerdel, meanwhile, has told Guitar World he’s embracing Jack White’s “dangerous” guitar playing style as he works on A Perfect Circle’s next record. It’s set to be their first album since 2018’s Eat the Elephant.

Millennials will know Rivkah Reyes as bassist Katie from generation-defining Jack Black classic School of Rock. Fast-forward two decades, and Reyes is now looking back on those heady days, from landing the audition to being thrust into the limelight.

“Bass didn't even happen until School of Rock,” Reyes tells Guitar World. “I had never picked up a bass in my life until I was cast. They auditioned me originally for the guitarist role, but they kind of fell in love with Joey [Gaydos Jr.], who ended up playing Zack Mooneyham.

“They wanted to find something for me to do. So they asked if I would be comfortable playing bass. I was super-precocious when I was 10 – I was just like, ‘Well, yeah, it's only four strings. I'm sure I'll nail it.’”

It was also Reyes’ first time playing in a band. “I was just like, ‘My heart's on fire. I want to do this for the rest of my life,’” she says.

Reyes got plenty of practice – the cast filmed the movie's climactic battle of the bands performance many times over. She describes the experience as nothing short of “insane.”

“We were playing in front of a huge audience in a huge theater. We were just ready to put on a good show for these background actors that were in the audience,” she says.

“With every take, I was finding new things, finding people in the audience to connect to, and, you know, flipping my hair around. It really was such a formative life experience for me.”

School of Rock became a worldwide hit, grossing $131.3 million. However, the pressure to live up to the cultural phenomenon and the movie's success soon led to resentment.

“There was a lot of time between School of Rock and me starting to gain traction again as an actor and as a musician,” she admits.

“I'm still kind of in this place where I'll look at the numbers on my streaming or on TikTok or whatever, and be like, ‘Is School of Rock gonna always be just the thing that I'm known for?’

“But even if it is, like, who cares? School of Rock inspired millions of people to stick it to the man, to pick up an instrument. Every time I see a girl playing bass, I'm like, ‘Did I have a little something to do with that?’”

You can watch Guitar World's full interview with Reyes on YouTube.

Positive Grid’s BIAS X is the latest amp modeling tech to support NAM A2, the next generation of modeling software, leading to speculation that its Spark line will be next.

The open-source software was unveiled in June, with the people behind it believing it will be “a turning point for the industry,” giving players access to highly accurate amp modeling tools, as well as a vast array of pro-level tones via the TONE 3000 platform.

Its launch has kickstarted an amp modeler arms race, with Blackstar the first firm to integrate it into a product via the Beam MINI. Zoom’s $300 Neurig modeler, which dropped last month, looks set to be a market disruptor, with Fender announcing it is working to embed it into the Tone Master Pro. Fractal is also bringing it to Axe-Fx, while HeadRush modelers already feature the tech.

BIAS X, which already packs an impressive AI tone generation tool, is the latest to join the NAM A2 ranks via a free update.

This means that users can load NAM captures directly into the plugin. They load into the amp slot, and can therefore be combined with the BIAS X’s effects and tone controls for further personalization and tone-fiddling.

Positive Grid hopping onto the hype train, then, feels like a precursor to its celebrated Spark modelers doing likewise. The growing family of products, which takes in everything from AI-powered combos and headphone amps to an all-powerful pedal, has been winning fans over in double quick time in recent years. It will be a huge move if Spark products can natively support NAM A2 in the near future.

Expect to hear more companies following suit in the coming months as those not moving with the times may fear being left behind.

See Positive Grid for more.

Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss is making a bid to be the unofficial Queen of the NFL this season, shredding through her second halftime show in a number of weeks as the two Los Angeles sides faced off at the SoFi Stadium.

Strauss has spent much of 2026 on maternity leave after giving birth to her first child with her husband and solo band drummer, Josh Villalta. She handpicked her Cooper stand-in, the supremely talented Anna Cara, before taking a seven-month break. After playing at a couple of LA Rams games, she marked her return to the Cooper band by playing the halftime show at a Las Vegas Raiders game just under a month ago.

This time, the husband and wife duo took on a slew of rock classics, including Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Iron Maiden’s The Trooper – a nod to her former gig in the Iron Maidens – and Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone.

Foo Fighters anthem My Hero and Godsmack’s Awake gave ’90s and ’00s rock a look-in, with Steve Stevens’ iconic Top Gun licks also added to the occasion. The Ibanez-endorsed shredder wrapped up proceedings with a mashup of Queen’s perennial crowd-pleaser, We Will Rock You, and Metallica’s drop-tuned rager, Sad But True.

The pair’s young son, Max, was there to watch the whole thing, marking the first time he’s seen his parents strut their stuff on stage – he was napping during the Cooper show.

Strauss will be 40 next month, and speaking to Guitar World in a soon-to-be-published interview, the guitarist admitted motherhood was fast becoming a now-or-never situation. She wants to use her story to inspire other women into pursuing motherhood and their careers simultaneously; it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

“I feared being replaced and losing opportunities, but a career that’s built over decades doesn’t disappear because you take a step away; it just comes back in a different form,” she says. “Why can’t it be better?

“There’s something that fundamentally changes in a woman when you become a mother, and it’s a huge identity shift. So the challenge, and the exciting part, is bringing that new energy forward rather than trying to go back to the way that things were. I can be grateful for what I have, and still have ambition.”

Strauss is set to hit the road with Alice Cooper starting tomorrow (November 6), with a score of summer festival dates over in Europe also in the book. Her solo band will support Paul Gilbert and John 5 in January, and they have been confirmed for Sonic Temple 2027.

Max and Josh will be with her every step of the way as she juggles being a guitar hero and a mother like a boss.

Between arranging the Back to the Beginning show in 2025, touring with his solo band and voicing his opinion on various socio-political issues, it’s hard to believe Morello has had time to make a new record.

Yet Everyone Gets Everything They Want, which features five tracks co-written by his guitar-wielding teenage son, Roman, delivers what the ’90s hero is known for. With big riffs, off-kilter solos and fury to spare, the record, as Morello puts it, is his “heaviest since Rage’s debut.”

“I’ve been playing solo shows since 2001,” Morello says. “I’m very comfortable. But many of those shows were acoustic folk shows, and it’s only recently that I’ve fully embraced an electric band.”

This led Morello to make what he deems his “first solo rock record,” and he couldn’t be more excited.

“The dissolution of Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave opened a path for me to embrace the totality of what I can do,” Morello says. “I love playing huge monster riffs, I love playing solos that sound like R2D2 or barnyard animals, and I love jamming with my shredding son, Roman. All roads have led to a record that I’m super-proud of and that’s super-heavy.”

They have also led him to Guitar World’s Goes to 11 format, where we ask heroes our most probing questions. Starting with…

1. What are the quirks or habits of your playing – like them or not – that have become a part of your style?

One thing that’s constant in my playing history is embracing mistakes. When it’s time to do a solo, there’s zero preparation. I’ll just step on a random pedal, hit go and see what happens. In songwriting, there’s inspiration and there’s craft.

You write a riff, and you say, “Okay, I can see a field bouncing up and down in Germany.” And then there’s craft, which is, “Let’s make sure we get a good take.”

But I remember doing records with [producer] Brendan O’Brien, with Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine, where it would be time to do the solo, and he’d be laughing his ass off at whatever came out of my guitar. He’d be like, “That’s the solo?” And I’d be like, “Yes, bro, that’s the solo.” [Laughs]

2. Which guitar do you have the closest relationship to?

For the longest time, I tried to deny any personal relationships with my instruments. I used to just say, “They’re tools or colleagues that you see at work.” But through the years, the Arm the Homeless guitar is the one I’ve been on a journey with. It’s a deep love affair.

I have to admit that after all these decades. I’ve had hedge-fund guys offer me insane amounts of money for it, and I’m like, “This thing ain’t going nowhere, buddy.” I stopped modifying it in 1988, but from late ’86 to ’88, a tremendous amount of modifications happened. After that, I literally gave up. [Laughs]

3. What’s been the hardest/toughest time you’ve had as a musician, and how’d you get through it?

There have been four pillars of my career, which are four great failures. The first was when I was 13 and wanted to learn Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog and Kiss’s Detroit Rock City. I failed, and I quit guitar. I told my mom, “Music is not for me,” and the guitar sat in my closet for four years before I touched it again.

After getting a Sex Pistols cassette, which is when I picked up the guitar again, there was a determination to forge my own path without lessons and to find my voice without someone telling me what to do.

Failure number two was when I had this overpriced guitar that I got at a custom shop in L.A., and it was the worst guitar I ever played. It felt and looked the worst, and I’d blown a bunch of money. I spent the next year changing the neck, pickups, electronics and whammy bar, and I also had an amp I thought sucked.

Then one day, I spent a couple of hours in rehearsal and realized there was a sound in my head that I failed to get. I gave up. I was spending too much time worrying about tone and not creating. So, I marked the setting on my amp and said, “This is the guitar I’ve got, and this is the gear I’ve got.” That was the Arm the Homeless guitar, my 50-watt Marshall half-stack and the Peavey cabinet I’ve used on 22 records.

The third failure was when my band Lock Up got dropped. I moved to Hollywood to be a rock star and make records. I got a record deal, and it was spectacular. Our record came out, and 15 minutes later, we got dropped. I failed my quest.

The producer for that record had me tone it down and be smoother. After that, I vowed to never play another note of music that I didn’t believe in, and that’s when I started writing riffs for Rage Against the Machine.

That leads to the fourth failure, and the last pillar of my career: not being able to keep Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave together. I had these two massive bands with billions of streams, and they dissipated.

But that opened a door to some of the greatest musical experiences of my life. A million windows opened for me because those two doors closed, leading to what I'm doing to this day. So, those four massive failures led to a career I’ve absolutely loved and am proud of.

4. What was your first guitar, and how did you get it?

It was the guitar that sat in my closet for four years, the Kay “SG” I got when I was 13 and took lessons on. My mom would say, “Whatever happened to that guitar that we blew 50 bucks on?” And then, when I started playing with my punk band in high school, I got another guitar, and that Kay sat in my closet in Libertyville, Illinois, for decades.

Then, one day, I thought to myself, “I wonder if that Kay SG is still there.” So, the next time I was in Chicago, I went to the house, and sure enough, it was there. I brought it to L.A. and put new frets on it, and I’ve used it on a bunch of records. It couldn’t – and still doesn’t – stay in tune to save its life, but I’ve used it a bunch anyway.

5. How many guitars do you own, and what gear do you own that might surprise people?

I was looking at my guitars yesterday, and there are a lot more than I thought. [Laughs] I’m not a collector, and I’m not buying vintage guitars. My guitars are either for a specific purpose or ones that I’ve been gifted.

But including the ones in storage, there are probably 50. But none of them are fancy! I do have a couple of [Gibson] Les Pauls in a special place, but the rest are all from the Island of Misfit Toys.

As for surprising – and I don’t know if it’s all that surprising – I’ve leaned heavily on two pedals: the small [EHX Nano] POG [octave pedal] and the DigiTech Space Station [XP300] that they made in, I think, 1994. It’s got some freaky sounds that lead to solos where we’re on an unknown journey together. [Laughs]

6. Tell us about a moment of genuine inspiration.

For my new album, I was determined to make my first rock solo album. I’ve made plenty of band rock albums and some collaborative rock albums, but over the last five years, in live settings, I’ve played some of the best shows of my life. I’m having more fun than ever fronting the Freedom Fighter Orchestra.

I’ve been playing heavy music and loving it. I wanted to make a record that reflected that. I’d say that this record, Everyone Gets Everything They Want, is probably the heaviest record I’ve made since Rage Against the Machine’s [self-titled] debut. I wanted to meld and bring the Morellian riffs from Rage Against the Machine, Audiosalve and Prophets of Rage, but also bring them into the present and future.

7. What was it like being in the room with Chris Cornell, Zack de la Rocha and Bruce Springsteen?

What a great blessing to have been in bands with Zack de la Rocha and Chris Cornell, and to have worked with Bruce Springsteen. They’re some of the greatest to ever do it. To be able to witness the way they rock a crowd, their mannerisms and preparation has been hugely influential.

With Bruce, there’s that commitment each night that every time you go on stage, there’s determination that this is going to be the best show you’ve ever played. You’re going to give these people something that’s better than what they’ve seen before.

It’s like, “Just wait until they fucking see me tonight.” That’s something I very much ingrained in myself. The intensity of Rage Against the Machine, the melodic ability of Chris Cornell, along with their kindness, and the way they treat people… all of that has been inspirational as well.

8. Who is the most exciting up-and-coming guitarist?

Here’s the thing: it’s not nepotism when your kid’s that fucking good. [Laughs] There’s a lot of great players out there, but I’ll put my kid up against anybody.

He has something that I didn’t have, which is an ear. I had to fight forever because I had zero natural ability, so it took me maybe 10 years to find my voice. But Roman Morello has got an ear and has a natural [internal] jukebox.

9. Which of your songs do you find most challenging to play, and why?

Well, from my new record, that’s easy. My son Roman was a co-writer of five songs from this record. I always have an ear to his door and poach his best riffs, so there’s a kinship there.

He has the Morello DNA and writes riffs that are familiar to me. But his fingers move in ways I’d never think of. So, the riff from Everyone Gets Everything They Want is really counterintuitive to me.

And then there’s another from Soldier in the Army of Love, where there are these big pentatonic riffs. You might go, “That’s a Tom Morello riff,” but it’s not. That’s a Roman riff that Tom had some difficulty learning. [Laughs]

10. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received as a guitarist?

That’s easy! I was a beginner guitarist, and there was a high schooler who was more advanced than I was. He’d come to my house to jam, and he said in an offhand way – though I took it as gospel – that if I wanted to get better on guitar, I needed to practice one hour a day without fail.

I said to myself, “I’m going to try that.” I practiced one hour a day, every day, without fail. I immediately noticed – because I started late at 17 – that I was getting better. Then I thought, “What if it’s two hours? What if it’s four? Shit! What if it’s eight?” That’s when I hit this crazy, euphoric stride where I felt the tide rising almost daily.

I locked into it, and there were times when I was pursuing honors at an Ivy League university, and I was practicing until four in the morning obsessively for 365 days a year. I don’t necessarily recommend it, and it hurts your social life, but that bit of advice is what allowed me to unlock the guitar and my creativity.

11. What’s the biggest misconception about you?

People are often surprised that I have a folk music career. People are surprised by Saturday-night disco nights at my house. [Laughs] But one time, I went to see my friend Warren DeMartini, and he said, “A friend of mine is in a metal band, and he’s a big fan. He wants to meet you.” I was like, “Totally cool.” So, I was hanging out, just sitting there, and there’s metal dudes all over.

I saw Warren standing with the dude, and he was pointing over at me. The guy came over and was very excited, and he walked right past me to a dude that looked exactly like Zakk Wylde. [Laughs] He assumed that must have been the guy Warren was pointing to! It couldn’t have been the half-Black dude in a Cubs cap wearing a Charlie Brown shirt! [Laughs] Then that guy behind me that looked like Zakk Wylde goes, “No, no, no, that’s Tom!”

The other guy had this look of utter bewilderment. [Laughs] I mean, this other guy was like a cross between Zakk Wylde and Rob Zombie, so he must have thought, “That’s gotta be the guy.” I guess the greatest misconception about me leads to: don’t judge a book by its cover.

• Everyone Gets Everything They Want is out now via Mom & Pop Music.

As the lone studio guitarist on Protest the Hero’s new Within album – the Canadian progressive-metal veterans’ first in six years – Luke Hoskin multi-tracked wizardly scale runs and dizzyingly arpeggiated harmonies by the boatful.

Hoskin admits he loves guitar heroics, and it’s been a major part of the act’s sound over the past couple of decades. Despite this, the writing phase of Within found the shredder scaling back his most masochistic whims – not for his own sake, but rather for fellow co-founder Tim MacMillar and touring member Ben Davis, the two guitarists tasked with actually recreating Hoskin’s fretboard bedlam on stage. After he sent out the first few demos, his bandmates politely asked him to chill.

“It was definitely a check. Like, ‘That is too fast… the bpm needs to come back on that,’” he says, explaining that he also excised a few ripping but ultimately unnecessary sections that would’ve got buried beneath the roaring vibrato of vocalist Rody Walker. “I got a lot of feedback from Tim and Rody, and it was a reminder to think about Ben, who has to carry the torch live. You have to exercise some restraint; you can’t go nuts and be like, ‘I never have to be in front of an audience doing this.’”

Within remains a knuckle-busting endeavor. Mouthpiece, Fishhook and Grandfather’s Axe offer an ambitious and often blistering splatter of progressive heaviness, pure-speed pop-punk-isms and power-metal bombast. Up until formally retiring from the road in 2021, Hoskin would have been hitting those licks on stage with MacMillar.

But a few years back – despite his show experience with Protest the Hero – a towering sense of anxiety began to grip the guitarist whenever he thought about performing live. Hoskin hasn’t toured with the band since before they put out 2020’s Palimpsest. He’s totally fine with that – thriving, even.

“Part of the reason for me leaving is that I stopped loving performing,” he says, reiterating that his passion lies with writing and recording. “I did the live side for a long time, because I thought it was a necessary part to facilitate me being able to write music.”

Hoskin, MacMillar and Walker have been together since they were teenagers, initially forming in Whitby, Ontario, under the name Happy Go Lucky in 1999 before rebranding as Protest the Hero in 2001. They wanted to keep up the creative connection, which is how Hoskin arrived at the idea of continuing with two distinct versions of the Protest the Hero.

For Within, the studio band included chief songwriter and guitarist Hoskin, bassist Cameron McLelland and drummer Nathan Bulla. MacMillar and Davis are the guitar tandem on the road, and they’re supported by the rhythm section of bassist Henry Selva and drummer Matt Kidby. Walker handles vocals for both entities.

“The band was so receptive about having a two-pronged approach,” Hoskin says with relief, “I felt like, Oh, cool, I don’t have to completely exit altogether.”

Still, there’s a natural downside to having Hoskin off the road; MacMillar is bummed to no longer be traveling the world with one of his best buds, who just so happens to kill on guitar. Davis, of fellow Canadian progressive unit the Kindred, stepped into the fold as their live lead guitarist in 2022. “Those were big shoes to fill,” MacMillar says. “We got really lucky that we found someone who could knock it out of the park live.”

Davis has been devoted to locking into the lines as laid out by Hoskin’s dexterous studio performances. Hoskin tried to keep track of his playing throughout the sessions while mapping things out through Guitar Pro software; he also runs sheet music publishing company Sheet Happens, and a member of his team went through the recording stems to double check the accuracy of the tabs.

While Hoskin and Davis share a fretboard aesthetic, MacMillar jokes that the guitarists’ similarities extend beyond their playing. “Ben kind of looks like a smaller version of Luke, so on his first tour people thought it was Luke. And we gave him Luke’s signature [Ibanez LHM1] guitar to play as well, so people would come up and be like, ‘Hey Luke, good job!’”

The Within sessions found the studio band tracking their parts at various home-recording spaces around Canada and the U.S. Armed with a grip of Evertune-loaded Ibanez guitars, Hoskin recorded his parts in Boulder, Colorado, under the supervision of Good Tiger member Derya Nagle. Through his hands, the album flows from shred-locked complexity (Mouthpiece) toward orchestral passages peppered with polyrhythmic natural harmonics (i. above).

Punk is also a huge part of Protest the Hero’s latest LP. The lyrics to Liberty Spike recall the days when they would head to their local mall to buy NOFX and Pennywise T-shirts. The chord-forward, speed-barrier-pushing melodicism of Fishhook is indebted to their love of Canadian punk progressives Propagandhi.

“That’s one of the pillars of what we do – fast, fun and melodic,” Hoskin says of the influence, MacMillar confirming of the track’s hectic pace, “Fishhook is at 190bpm, that fast spot where there’s a lot of 16th-note palm-muting.”

Hoskin continues: “We idolized those bands and learned everything we could about what they were doing and how they were approaching songwriting. I grew out of that at some point and got more into metal. I came back to punk in my late twenties realizing the songcraft is unbelievable.”

A more self-referential moment on the album arrives with Grandfather’s Axe, an “all fucking throttle” bang-out that finds vocalist Walker challenging his bandmates to step up their game, in-song (“Play that fuckin’ riff, you dickhead/I wanna hear it sing”). Its title alludes to the Theseus paradox, an ages-old philosophical question around whether or not a boat that’s been stripped and rebuilt one piece at a time remains the same ship over time. “It’s an analogy for the band,” Hoskin theologizes.

In obvious ways, Protest the Hero are not the same band they used to be. It’s been more than a quarter century since they formed, and members have come and gone since the early Noughties. The current two-lineup approach means both iterations experience their time in Protest the Hero in vastly different ways. It’s perhaps the spirit of friendship that ties things together and keeps the progsters afloat.

“The term ‘It takes a village’ keeps coming up… I think the future of the band is a village,” Hoskin says while not only contemplating the path forward with Protest the Hero’s two lineups, but the friends and collaborators that are helping the band plug along behind the scenes. In other words, there’s a lot of people helping right the ship.

Hoskin concludes with gratitude, “The only way it can exist is to embrace the help and talents of all the brilliant people that we know.”

• Within is out now.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Robin Finck, best known as Nine Inch Nails’ longest-serving guitarist, is selling a horde of guitars that have been played on some of the biggest stages in the world.

Finck’s new Reverb Shop plays host to over 200 pieces of gear that have been used throughout his time alongside Trent Reznor and during his stint with Guns N’ Roses.

Arguably the biggest draw of the collection is “Old Gold”, a Gibson Les Paul ’60 Reissue Goldtop guitar that was Finck’s main squeeze during Nine Inch Nails’ Downward Spiral era.

He played it for their iconic Woodstock ’94 performance and Self Destruct tour, and the guitar featured on every NIN tour until 2014. Its first ever appearance was in the March of the Pigs music video.

“This is the only guitar that made it out of 1994 intact,” Finck says. “I don’t know why or how because it’s also the guitar I played more than any other.”

Another Gibson also takes top billing: a 1990 Les Paul Custom in limited-edition Translucent White, which was the first Les Paul Finck ever bought.

“It’s the only guitar I had when I landed in Nine Inch Nails,” Finck says. “I’ve played it for over 35 years. It has always been favored.”

The guitarist also highlights a Gibson Les Paul Custom nicknamed “Nothingface”, which featured on five NIN tours, from Lights in the Sky in 2008 to Cold and Black and Infinite in 2018. It’s the guitar he gets asked about more than any other, owing to its bare-wood finish.

Other models include a Gibson ES-335 that featured on both GNR and NIN tours, a Gibson ’57 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue that was used to record the nine-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy with Axl Rose, and a one-of-one Manson MA-RF-01.

“There is a deep history for me with, well, all of these guitars. But if you ask me which is the best guitar? It might be this one,” Finck says of the UK company’s custom build.

“I have been so fortunate to have played these on stages all over the world,” Finck says of the collection. “Now they’re poised to play with someone new.”

The Official Robin Finck Reverb Shop launches on November 11. Head to Reverb for more info.

The members of Mastodon filed paperwork on Monday (November 2) to dismiss the lawsuit filed against the band by Billy Hinds, Brent Hinds’ father, on behalf of the Brent Hinds estate.

They reject claims that they owe the Hinds estate any money for using the late guitarist’s likeness on the cover art of Marrow Deep, the band’s latest album, arguing that the lawsuit relies on a technically flawed legal claim.

“These distinctions matter,” write the band’s lawyers. “Defendants therefore seek dismissal only of those claims, or portions of claims, that lack a legal basis on the face of the complaint. The parties’ remaining factual and contractual disputes – and the truth – will be addressed in due course.”

They also oppose the “buyout process” through which Hinds would be divested of his business interests in Mastodon, arguing that individual members should not be held liable because Mastodon is a limited liability company.

Mastodon’s lawyers go on to state that a buyout offer to Hinds before his death from one of the band’s subsidiary companies is not a binding obligation.

According to the court’s filing, obtained by Billboard and Rolling Stone, “His contributions to the band’s legacy are undeniable, and his death was a profound loss. None of that is in dispute.

“But honoring Hinds’s legacy does not require rewriting the agreements governing his business interests or imposing obligations on his former bandmates that Georgia law does not recognize.”

In another section, the lawyers dispute allegations that the rest of the members stole Hinds’ 25 percent ownership interest in the band.

“While the Estate alleges that [Mastodon] purported to redeem those interests and refused to recognize its rights, there is no allegation that [Mastodon] seized, transferred, or withheld any stock certificates or other documents embodying Hinds’s interests.”

The Hinds estate had previously filed a complaint in September, alleging that Hinds had not legally formalized his dismissal from Mastodon before his death in a tragic accident in August 2025.

The filing claims the band gave the estate an $80,000 check – representing Hinds’ share of the band’s operations – which the estate considers far too low, prompting it to refuse to cash the check.

“Sadly, a private business dispute with the estate of our dear departed friend Brent Hinds was made public,” Mastodon said at the time.

“We strongly deny allegations of ill intent on our part and intend to vigorously defend what we believe is a meritless lawsuit.”

Back in 2007, as part of its regular Dear Guitar Hero column, Guitar World asked readers to submit any burning questions they had for ageless blues guitar legend Buddy Guy. Guy, of course, had stories and wisdom aplenty...

What was the hardest part for you on the road to becoming such an accomplished guitar player? – Stephen Lang

The rhythm. When I first came to Chicago in 1957, they was making fun of me! The late Junior Wells used to say, “You can play, but you ain’t got no time.” And I was like, “What the hell is that?” So, [drummer] Fred Below and me would go play, just drums and guitar, and he told me, “Every time you hear me make this turnaround, that’s the end of a chorus.” And that's when I started learning rhythm.

What was it about those old blues players that gave their records such a warm, honest sound? – Todd Walker

I think it has to do with technology. What you hear on those old recordings is exactly what the artists were doing in the studio. Nothing was added to make my sound perfect; it was just a guitar, an amplifier, and a microphone.

Nowadays, you’ve got so many buttons to push in a recording studio, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

When I play the blues, I find myself repeating too much. How did you learn to keep your licks and phrases different and interesting? – Tommy Lee Atkins

I think you just need to let someone listen to you. Something new is coming out each and every time you play, but you can’t hear it. I know that I couldn’t hear it in my own playing.

I used to throw my guitar in a corner and attempt to walk away from it. I’d be thinking, ‘You’ll never get it!’ I felt like I was at a stand still, that I wasn’t learning anymore. But every time someone else heard me, they could hear things in my playing that I couldn’t. Man, all you’ve gotta do is keep playing that guitar.

Of all the musicians you’ve heard over the years, who stands out in your mind as being underrated and under-appreciated? – Patrick Fischer

Earl Hooker. I tried to figure out slide guitar after I’d heard Elmore James play slide, but people kept tellin’ me to go hear Earl Hooker play. I said, “Who is that?” ’cause he didn’t have no records out. But one night I walked into a club and I heard this melody, like someone was singing. I said, “Who is that singing?” and someone said, “No-one. That's Hooker playing the slide.”

I had a slide in my pocket, and even before I got introduced to him, I just walked up and gave it to him.

Buddy, some of my favorite albums of yours are the ones you made for Vanguard Records, like A Man and the Blues. How do you feel about that period in your career? – Rick Longley

My feeling was that Muddy Waters had made Chess Records a success, so where could I fit in? When I went to Vanguard, I was able to have some impact finally, because I had a little more freedom there. When the British guys started hearing my Vanguard recordings, they started cranking up, too.

Even so, I still had one hand tied behind me. Vanguard wanted that Muddy Waters kind of “real” blues, and they wouldn’t let me turn it up like I was doing when I played live.

What was the Chicago club scene like in the late Fifties and early Sixties? And what did audiences expect from their entertainers? – Janie Reagan

The audiences in the clubs were 99.9 percent black, and when you played for black audiences, you had to put on a show, just like Little Richard or James Brown did. It was a show when guys like that played, and that’s what people went to see.

The performers danced, and they wanted you to be into it. It wasn’t a Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra type thing where you could stand there and stop people in their tracks and make ’em just listen to your voice. We had to make ’em look and say, ‘What is he doing?’

What is it?

It’s not often that we dive this deep into the budget end of the acoustic guitar market, but when we heard that Indonesian mega-manufacturer Cort had produced a parlour guitar that has a lot to say for itself at a staggeringly low price, we had to take a look.

And if your eyes just drifted up the retail price, then yes, that’s not a typo or a misprint: the retail price of this guitar really is $209/£139.

What’s more, the AP550M’s spec looks amazingly reasonable for this end of the market, and when you factor in Cort’s reputation for producing quality instruments bearing surprisingly low price tags, let’s say breath is somewhat bated around these parts.

Cor-Tek, Cort’s parent company, reportedly turns out around 25,000 acoustic guitars per month across its massive 10-building manufacturing facility in Ngoro, Indonesia, and makes guitars for numerous big-name brands, too, including PRS’s very highly regarded SE range.

But even this mind-boggling statistic and the supposition that mass production at this kind of epic scale could keep prices low doesn’t seem to justify the somewhat meagre ticket price for this little parlour guitar. But enough of the theorising, it’s time to open the box and examine the goods.

For starters, it has to be said that the AP550M is very handsome, from its slotted headstock to its open-pore matt black finish. In fact, the slotted headstock raises another point: if cost-cutting is at a premium here, then surely a solid headstock would be cheaper to manufacture? We’re still full of questions.

Spec-wise, the parlour’s top, back and sides are mahogany, and it’s just possible to see a little of the distinctive grain pattern through the finish. It would seem that the back is made up from four pieces of timber, and the seams inside the guitar – viewed through the soundhole – confirm this.

Of course, this also bears out the fact that it’s solid woods we’re dealing with here. It’s also worth mentioning that multi-piece backs are not necessarily a cost-cutting manoeuvre on Cort’s part as many manufacturers have produced acoustics this way, including Martin’s celebrated D-35. The top, however, is the standard bookmatched two-piece.

The neck is once again mahogany with a separate heel, and it doesn’t look like there’s a scarf joint for the headstock, but the density of the finish hereabouts defeats our investigative eye.

Fingerboard duties are given over to a new timber for us – merbau – and the Wood Database tells us that this particular wood has many aliases including kwila, ipil and sometimes Borneo teak or Johnstone River teak. Here, it’s practically a dead ringer for the more accustomed rosewood and is reputedly extremely durable. It certainly has the sheen of a fine rosewood, too.

Along its course the 19 frets are not only neatly seated, they have been polished and had the ends finished so that there are no sharp edges as you move your hand over the playing area. We noticed that there were a couple of rough edges above the 12th fret, but nothing that would make us deduct any points.

We’d swear that the fretboard edges have been lightly rolled, too, which came as a very pleasant surprise. We can’t stop thinking about the retail price; there’s evidence of a lot of finesse in the guitar’s fit and finish, and Cort’s quality control is, as ever, at optimum levels even on its budget instruments.

It’s merbau once again for the Cort’s bridge, the ‘pyramid’ ornamentation at either side being a very nice touch. If we were to aim just one slight criticism at the fittings on the AP550M it would be that the nut and saddle are both made from Polyphenylene Sulfide, or PPS for short.

This is a material that echoes the Corian nuts and saddles used on some Martin acoustics in both feel and appearance. We can’t help thinking that bone would have been a better option and wouldn’t have added too much to the price. There would be a tonal upgrade to be had which might add to this little parlour’s allure somewhat, too.

Specs

• Price: $209 | £139 | €179
• Origin: Indonesia 
• Type: Parlour
• Top: Mahogany
• Back/Sides: Mahogany
• Max Rim Depth: 116mm
• Max Body Width: 358mm
• Neck: Mahogany
• Scale Length: 648mm (25.5”)
• Tuners: Vintage classic
• Nut/Width: PPS (Polyphenylene Sulfide)/45mm
• Fingerboard: Merbau
• Frets: 19
• Bridge/Spacing: Merbau with PPS compensated saddle/55mm
• Weight (kg/lb): 1.6/3.6
• Options: Available in plain mahogany finish
• Left-Handers: No
• Finish: Open pore black
• Contact: Cort Guitars

Build quality, usability and sounds

It would be difficult to sum up exactly what our expectations were when we began exploring the AP550’s sound potential. If so much care has been taken on the aesthetics, then surely an equal amount of time would have been spent on ensuring a good sound.

Examining the guitar in the playing position, the neck is a very welcoming C profile and so players more used to electric guitar necks shouldn’t have too much trouble acclimatising. It’s also a very light instrument, just 1.6kg (3.5lb), and so it’s easy to manoeuvre while sitting. There is no second strap button on the heel, but these are dirt cheap and easy to fit if desired.

The action is spot on – a lowish medium – and so our first chords were a breeze. And then there’s the sound. Whereas this might have been the Cort’s downfall, it turned out that the AP550 sounds as good as it looks. Campfire chords ring out with a surprising amount of bass register supporting some very sweet trebles.

A few parlour models we’ve played in the past have been boxy and lacking in bass and lower mids, but that isn’t the case here. In order to make sure our ears weren’t deceiving us we grabbed a nearby small-bodied acoustic we had to hand – which, incidentally, cost 20 times this price – and although it definitely sounded smoother and more rounded than the Cort, there certainly wasn’t the kind of difference we would have expected.

It has its rough edges, for sure: its voice seemed to demand anything with a country blues lilt to it. But when we say ‘rough’ we’re really talking characterful. And after playing it for way longer than is necessary for this review, we also realised that we were having a great deal of fun with this little parlour guitar. It proved very difficult to put down.

If it scores in the chord department, how about when we travel up the neck into the single-note soloing zone?

Even here, the low action, nicely polished frets and good-feeling neck profile all provided a great playing experience with notes that sang out with tonal polish and a very good amount of sustain.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

As we said, we’d heard good things about the AP550 and our curiosity was well rewarded.

We can remember a time when buying a cheap acoustic meant a tortuously high action, a bad setup and an indifferent, shallow tone. But that’s not the case here. It's easy on the eye and the pocket, and an instrument that doesn’t want to fight back with an agenda of unplayability.

Guitar World verdict: For a youngster who is just setting out on their guitar journey, this guitar would be an absolute gem. But seasoned players who want a sofa buddy or even just a bluesy knockabout would be well advised to seek one out. At a price point that’s cheaper than the average drive pedal, it isn’t a difficult decision to make, after all!

Hands-on videos

Artyom Acoustic Guitars

The Guitar Store Malaysia

• Best cheap acoustic guitars 2026: budget acoustics with genuine pedigree
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Countless prominent guitarists – of all musical persuasions – have likened their instrument of choice to a weapon. It can be argued, though, that no guitarist ever had a playing style as intentionally weapon-like as the late Johnny Ramone.

His disdain for fretboard frills, flourishes, and flash was legion. His modus operandi was leading the Ramones, his band of outcast weirdo (pretend) brothers, with naught but relentless, pulverizing, downstroked power chords. On the occasions that one of the band’s songs called for a guitar lead – or at least something more textural – Johnny often outsourced the part.

The Ramones’ catalog is driven by guitar at its most instinctive and primal. “Right when I started with the Ramones is when I bought a guitar and learned how to play, so I didn’t have any influences insofar as learning how to play,” Johnny told Guitar World with a shrug in a 1995 interview. “The first song I learned to play was a Ramones song.”

These are far from your usual “guitar hero” ingredients, but Johnny Ramone’s influence as a player can’t really be overstated. Punk guitar – and metal guitar, really – as we know it simply wouldn’t exist without his library of buzzsaw riffs and no-bullshit approach.

In an interview featured in the new issue of Guitar World, Linda Ramone, Johnny’s widow, pointed to that army of players who he inspired, and whose style he impacted, as evidence of his guitar heroism.

“[Metallica’s] Kirk Hammett and Johnny would sit on the floor together and talk about horror movie posters and everything, and then Kirk would say, ‘You know, Johnny, you really influenced me.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s great!’” Linda told Guitar World with a laugh.

“The Ramones didn’t know who they influenced, but I don’t know who else really influenced as many people to pick up a guitar and form bands.

“You know, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, they’re great guitar players, but Johnny influenced a whole generation of people who realized you don’t have to play that great to be great.”

• To read our full feature on the Ramones’ groundbreaking, self-titled debut album, featuring interviews with Linda Ramone, C.J. Ramone, Ale Campos, and the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, pick up a copy of the new issue of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that playing through, say, Eddie Van Halen’s rig doesn’t magically turn your playing style into Van Halen’s, as Billy Corgan once learned.

Now, as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai prepare to cement their half-century bond with a collaborative album, The Sea of Emotion, they look back on their years touring together with the G3 project – including the time Billy Gibbons and Brian May plugged into Satch’s amp.

“Do you remember when Billy Gibbons came up and played with us on G3?” Vai says in conversation with Satriani for Guitar World.

“We’re doing a jam lineup. It comes to Joe, and he does his beautiful melodic stuff. It comes to me, and I do my crazy thing. And then Billy, he just hits a few notes…”

“And suddenly we’re in Billy Gibbons World,” Satch continues. “He’d plugged into one of my amps, and you, me, and John Petrucci were just stunned. Like, how is it even possible that he could sound so much like himself?”

The same thing happened when Brian May ran his guitar through their rig. “We’re just looking at each other, going, ‘There it is!’” adds Vai.

As for the differences between the Satch and Vai schools of virtuosity and how these manifest on the record, the two note that, despite using plugins for their new collaborative record, they didn’t compromise their individual playing styles or obscure the nuances of their performances.

“Even with plugins, it’s so obvious to hear the difference in the tones in our fingers,” Vai says.

“Yeah, you can’t help that,” asserts Satch. “That’s always going to happen. We just did a gig in Colorado Springs [on Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour]. Vic Johnson just walked out and plugged into Sam’s amp, and it was remarkable how different he sounded. Same stage, nothing changed, y’know?”

SatchVai’s official debut lands on November 6, via earMUSIC.

For more from the dynamic duo, plus an in-depth analysis of the making of Crossroads and an exclusive interview with Alabama Shakes, pick up issue 611 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

We’re into November now, and it’s that time of the year when the Black Friday guitar deals start landing. Thus far, the sales have been nothing particularly special, but that’s all changed with the launch of the Sweetwater early Black Friday sale, where discounts have hit a massive up to 60% off.

There’s a huge number of guitars and pedals, and I was really pleased to see a surprising number of guitar amps and FRFR cabs in the sale, too. With all the big brands like Fender, Boss, Line 6, Marshall, Digitech, Vox, TC Electronic, and plenty more represented, it’s an easy recommendation from me as the best sale of Black Friday season so far.

I’ve had a look through the sale en masse to see what’s available, and it really is one of the best opportunities of Black Friday so far to save on gear. There are some ginormous discounts available on great gear, including many products we’ve personally tested. There are so many, in fact, that I struggled to pick out my usual handful, so here are 7 of the best to sink your teeth into.

Explore more Black Friday guitar sales

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When many of us conjure a mental image of Zakk Wylde, there’s probably an electric guitar somewhere on his person – whether it’s the Gibson Les Paul Customs he swore by for the majority of his career or the Wylde Audio instruments he launched through Schecter a decade ago.

You might envisage a line of amps stacked up behind him, running hot to fully convey the sheer sonic weight of his riffs, as well as overdrives and modulations to add extra muscle and color in the right places. He might be holding his guitar over his head, drenched in sweat and grinning like a Viking at the first sighting of green shores after endless months at sea. This, in many ways, feels like the man’s default setting.

That’s not to say he’s been an exclusively electric player over the years, however. Wylde’s 1994 Pride & Glory album had moments of reprieve from the electrified Southern rock at its core, and Black Label Society cuts like Spoke in the Wheel, The Blessed Hellride and T.A.Z. allowed the guitarist to showcase his talents in more of an unplugged setting with a great degree of success.

Then there are entire albums tailored toward his more acoustic-based writing, from his Book of Shadows solo debut, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, to its 2016 follow-up, as well as Black Label Society’s aptly titled Hangover Music Vol. VI.

On balance, here’s a metal god who has committed himself to the acoustic world more than most of his peers – someone who understands the importance of fragility and vulnerability amid the maelstrom of screaming distortion and hellfire. As he’s said himself time and time again over the years, the loud wouldn’t feel quite so loud without the quiet.

Until now, however, we’ve only seen guitars, pickups, pedals, amps and strings with the official Zakk Wylde seal of approval, so the launch of his very first signature acoustic guitar through Wylde Audio feels like a long time coming. And, as he explains to Guitar World, in the short gap between playing stadiums with Pantera as main support to Metallica and dates with Black Label Society, it’s something he’s been wanting to do for quite some time.

“I’ve been thinking we should start doing acoustics for a while now,” says Zakk, as the steam rises from the fresh cup of coffee in his hands. “For the [July 5, 2025] Back to the Beginning show, I was playing my old Alvarez acoustics. I still have all my Epiphone Masterbilts, which are great guitars, just like the Alvarez ones. They’re all ‘lights out’ guitars as far as I’m concerned.

“We’ve been making all these electrics since 2016, and I thought we should do acoustics as well, using them on the records just like I do with the electrics. We actually used some prototypes on the new BLS record [2026's Engines of Demolition]. This is the sound of Wylde Audio evolving into its next step, and it’s a natural progression.”

You’ve dipped your feet into acoustic tones more than a lot of other metal players. What is it about the unplugged sound that speaks to the human soul?

Acoustics are like this whole other world of guitar, and I absolutely love it. I like to listen to things like Heart of Gold by Neil Young or Angie and Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones, plus loads of Allman Brothers and Eagles. It’s interesting when electric players introduce more of that stuff into the mix.

Look at Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin’s Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, Gallows Pole or Going to California. The acoustics add this whole other element to those albums. Look at what we did on [Ozzy Osbourne’s] Mama, I’m Coming Home and how it affects what came next on No More Tears.

What made you choose mahogany back and sides with a flame maple top for the Wylde Audio Grand Auditorium?

There are tried-and-true woods for guitars, even more so with acoustics than electrics. When I was younger, I remember reading a thing with Yngwie Malmsteen where he was talking about the different tones that come out of Strats made out of different woods.

He also spoke about how he’d change from a maple neck to a rosewood neck and notice how the sound changed. On electrics, your pickups work as a microphone. I saw this one guy who did a test where he took the pickups out of his guitar, put them on a cinder block attached to a neck – and it sounded identical.

It was just to test the theory of how important a pickup is for an electric guitar. That’s where a lot of the tone is coming from – just to disprove all the people who spend their lives arguing about which sounds better out of ash, maple, alder, mahogany or rosewood.

One guy even recorded a microwave with some pickups on it and a guitar neck. And when he A/B’d that against his actual electric, it sounded the same. Like you said, it is pretty hilarious.

The Norse Dragon soundhole rosette is a nice addition to the aesthetics.

If you listen real hard, you’ll be able to hear the difference in tone. My friends come round and say they can’t tell the difference. But they’re not listening hard enough. [Laughs] It just might depend on how many adult beverages you’d had that evening – because I heard that can affect how you hear things!

Which acoustics have you relied on most over the years?

I still have my old Gibsons. There’s a J-200 with the bullseye on it; I’ve always loved that one. I also have some Chet Atkins models, like the nylon-string one I’ve used on a bunch of Black Label things over the years. Then there’s the Chet Atkins steel-string I used on Mama, I’m Coming Home, and there’s the 12-string version that’s also on there.

I’ve had those Alvarez guitars since forever and chose them for the Back to the Beginning show. It’s been mainly about the Gibson and Alvarez acoustics with me. My Epiphone Masterbilts have an EMG pickup. Basically it’s a single-coil, like a Strat. Sometimes people try it and say, “My electric doesn’t even sound this heavy.”

What’s the oldest one in the collection?

I don’t really have an old Martin or anything like that. I don’t have vintage classics or ancient Gibsons from 1927. A lot of my acoustics came from when I was doing Book of Shadows. A Gibson Dove got used on the album. That guitar still sounds great. Finding a good acoustic is like finding a good electric. You don’t plug it in; you just hit a G chord and if it sounds nice, you’re good to go.

Do you think a good electric player makes for a good acoustic player?

It’s a different approach. Some acoustics can be hard to play because of the high action. You might have a rough time shredding because acoustics can be a different sort of beast. If you’re just playing cowboy chords, anything around the bottom of the neck, it’s usually fine. A lot of acoustic rhythm doesn’t go into the higher frets.

I keep the action on my acoustics like my electrics – nice and playable. If it’s five feet off, it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been practicing with your metronome. I don’t care if you’re John McLaughlin, you’re going to have a rough time with that. You’ll be sitting there wondering, “Why don’t I like myself?” It’ll be torture!

It’s the 30th anniversary of your Book of Shadows solo debut. What made you want to start writing folk-rock songs?

When I was writing that record, we were working on Ozzmosis [1995] with Ozzy in New York City. Right next to where we were staying was this old pub called Brew’s. Every day after tracking I’d head there and hang out until closing.

The jukebox was amazing; it had Neil Young, Bad Company, the Band, the Eagles, the Stones – everything classic rock. I’d drink until 6 a.m., walk back to my room, pick up my guitar and start writing. By the time Ozzmosis was finished, I had Book of Shadows written.

That album has a song you wrote about Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon, who died in 1995. You’ve also written tributes to the late Layne Staley, Dimebag Darrell and, much more recently, Ozzy Osbourne.

I only met Shannon Hoon a few times, but he was the inspiration for Throwin’ It All Away. Sometimes I wake up and think, “I’ve got to stop writing these songs for my friends.” We need everybody to stick around longer. In This River [a tribute to Dimebag Darrell] and Ozzy’s Song are odes to my buddies. They’re both on the setlist every night when we’re out doing headline shows with BLS.

Your solo in Ozzy’s Song begins with this descending theme. The notes feel as emotionally heavy as the words you’re singing.

I’d be interested to see how Randy Rhoads would sit back and write back in the day. Would he have a cassette and work it all out? I tend to sit down with everything. The only thing that was more spontaneous was No More Tears. That was a one-off built out of an improv, apart from the ascending lick at the end.

The majority of that song was just one take, and I think it came out pretty okay. But on Miracle Man and other songs, I would try to work out a beginning, middle and end, as opposed to just blazing through everything.

You want your solo to have parts people will remember. I think that descending line from Ozzy’s Song is one of those. I might just have a practice amp at low volume and keep thinking up ideas until I find something I’m happy with. I’ll crank the reverb to sound like I’m headlining Madison Square Garden. It has to sound great at low volume.

It’s a bit of a cliché, but guitar players can sometimes say more with fewer notes. B.B. King was – and is – the often-cited master of that.

Exactly, and then you have what David Gilmour played on Comfortably Numb. That solo is just tremendous. You could say the same about Stairway to Heaven or Hotel California. Obviously there are still songs that call for more blazing runs, like what Randy played on Mr. Crowley. Dimebag was like that, too.

If you listen to parts of Walk, I’m Broken, This Love or anything like that, Dime worked out melodic lines that would end up becoming a big part of the song.

Sometimes your pentatonic runs sound close to what Eric Johnson, Eric Gales and Joe Bonamassa are known for – rhythmically breaking up the scale into groups of four, five or six.

Totally. For me, it extends all the way back to John McLaughlin and his work in Mahavishnu Orchestra. You had Jerry Goodman and Jan Hammer playing all these fast ideas with McLaughlin [starts humming riffs high in tempo]. That’s where it all came from.

I had a guitar teacher called Leroy [Wright], and he was hugely into Mahavishnu, Frank Marino and Dixie Dregs. There’s something about those super-fast pentatonic ideas that are, to my ears, complete McLaughlin.

Later in life I heard Eric Johnson and was like, “Wow!” When the pentatonic scale is played like that, it has a different sound to three notes per-string, which is the Al Di Meola and Yngwie style. That’s also awesome but more diatonic. If you break up the pentatonic scale into these short phrases at fast speeds, it completely has its own thing.

You played an acoustic gig at Amoeba Records in Hollywood in February. What kind of gear do you rely on for those kinds of performances? Is there a certain amp or pedal you need?

For that thing, I had my ToneWoodAmp. It fits on the back of your acoustic and it’s a great little device. It has different reverbs, delays, chorus and everything. You attach it to the back of your guitar and it amplifies your acoustic. Whenever I have to do a promotional tour for the album, which might involve stuff like radio and small shows, I will take one of my Epiphones with the ToneWoodAmp. It sounds great.

Sometimes me and Dario [Lorina, Black Label Society co-guitarist] will jam, so we might use a couple of Roland Jazz Chorus amps. As far as clean tones go, those amps sound like magic, just absolutely beautiful. I don’t really change my pedalboard. It’s the same for acoustic shows, Pantera, Ozzy, BLS, Experience Hendrix or Generation Axe. Just a wooden ’board with my Dunlop pedals.

Who are the true masters of acoustic guitar, in your opinion?

I think between the legendary trio Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco De Lucia, it’s ‘lights out’ right there. You can play Friday Night in San Francisco to anybody, and it will blow their mind. It’s an unbelievably amazing record. That one will stand the test of time for sure.

Then there’s Tony Iommi doing stuff like Laguna Sunrise, Fluff and all that stuff. Those tracks are the perfect setups for the next songs. Randy had Dee, which worked like that, too. Acoustic tracks can act like a prelude into the next heavy song. My favorite acoustic tones on record would be Angie and Heart of Gold.

There’s a lot of crossover between you and Alice in Chains, both musically and personally. Like you, they are masters of combining electrics and acoustics to create music that is that much more detailed, universal and compelling.

You could put Jerry Cantrell up there, too. He’s got a whole batch of amazing songs. Writing stuff like Heaven Beside You is phenomenal. They always had that acoustic element in with the electrics.

Jerry knows how to crush it. He’s all about layering things, and it’s something he does very well. You record the acoustics first and then add all the heavy bits on top of it. If the acoustic wasn’t in those layers, you’d really miss it.

Even if you don’t use acoustics live, they can be really valuable in the studio. I played with [Alice in Chains bassist] Mike Inez in the Ozzy band, including the final gig. When Alice took a break, we asked Mike if he wanted to come out with BLS, so he did, and the comedy continued.

You performed Would? with them in 2023.

I remember hearing Would? for the first time. Back in the day, we would just sit around in a hotel room drinking. Jerry had his guitar and Layne Staley started singing along. It was just one unplugged electric, and somehow it sounded pretty much just like the record. I’d watch their band every night when they played with us, loving all the harmonies. But the amazing thing is those guys could duplicate all of that powerful music just sitting around in a hotel room drinking.

As far as I’m concerned, Jerry is the complete package. He’s great at everything to do with songwriting – he’s an incredible lyricist and singer, then there’s all the melodies and harmonies. He does it all. He’ll probably do your laundry and taxes while cooking up a mean chicken piccata. He’s an all-round great musician, not just a guitar player.

What do you think about the next generation of players? Is there anyone who feels like a cut above the rest?

I’m friends with Richie Faulkner, who I think is the full package. We’ve toured with Judas Priest a bit and he’s a phenomenal player. He also has his own band, Elegant Weapons. He’s got vibrato, technique, tone, everything. I feel that way about Dario from BLS. He’s also in Dark Chapel, where he sings his ass off and plays piano.

Jared James Nichols is awesome. I love hearing younger guys like him and Tyler Bryant playing the blues. They clearly love it and have such an amazing grasp of it.

Tosin Abasi has been doing it for a while now, but he’s phenomenal. I think Tim Henson is insane. My son Hendrix is a huge fan of Polyphia and Tim’s playing. Whenever I hear people saying, “Guitar is dead,” I think, “What are you talking about? What rock do you live under?” Guitar is doing just great. There are so many young players who love the instrument, and they’re really going for it.

Matteo Mancuso definitely feels like a guitar star in the making.

Matteo is awesome, too. I just saw a video of him playing with Eric Johnson doing some crazy stuff. And yes, he’s got great technique, but he also keeps it so musical. Seeing someone like him play like that is so inspiring. All you need to do is play what you love and what moves you. At the end of the day, that’s what it all comes down to.

Circling back to Pantera, you’ve clearly proven yourselves by this point. Maybe there were a few raised eyebrows to begin with, but that’s certainly not the case anymore.

It’s an honor getting up there every night. I look at the fellas and know I’m among lions. It’s a powerful feeling. All we’re doing is honoring Dime and Vinnie. Everybody sings the songs and takes a trip down memory lane. Some of them will have seen Pantera playing at a bar in front of five people back in the day.

Younger kids might have only heard of Pantera’s legend through their parents. We’re playing Dime and Vinnie’s music to this awesome community. We make people happy by playing these songs; it’s a beautiful thing. Recently we’ve been doing stuff like 10s and Floods with the mellow sections. The solos in those are always fun to play.

There’s been talk of bringing some of Dime’s demos and ideas to life. Has there been any progress with that?

It all comes down to Phil [Anselmo] and Rex [Brown]. It’s for them to say what’s next. Me and Charlie Benante are there to lend a helping hand. Allied forces over here. I know originally there were talks of unfinished things that Dime had written, maybe just a riff or a full song or something on acoustic.

He had a lot of riffs just laying around, single riffs like the one to I’m Broken as well as some that were finished and structured but never properly recorded. Phil could obviously come up with a melody and write some lyrics around it. We could finish a song that was already written – that kind of thing. But not new stuff.

That was the germ of an idea, looking at it as an unfinished thing. As if Jimi Hendrix recorded Purple Haze but just on acoustic and then gave it to Eric Clapton, who teamed up with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding to finish as it had never been recorded properly. It was that kind of idea. Would I like to record something like that? Of course I would.

• Engines of Demolition is out now via MNRK Heavy.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In the 1980s, the shred guitar arms race was reaching fever pitch. Fretboard theatrics and unprecedented displays of virtuosic ability were very much in vogue. And fast-rising ambidextrous guitar star Michael Angelo Batio was very much a leading force on the scene.

Two things made Batio stand out in the crowd of shredders: his command of the fretboard, and the bonkers arsenal of double and quad guitars.

The concept itself was insane: a right-handed and a left-handed guitar, Frankenstein’d together, allowing the wielder to tap both fretboards, with each hand, simultaneously.

It’s impressive being able to wrangle such a beastly guitar. What’s even more impressive is playing it in front of more than 20,000 people. And that’s exactly what Batio did the first time he took it to the stage

In the August 1993 issue of Guitarist, Batio looked back on the making of his first double-guitar, and the first time he ever took it on stage.

“I actually had the idea for years before I had the first one built,” he remembered. “But I didn’t have a record deal, so no-one was going to take me seriously if I told them I wanted a left-hand and right-hand guitar stuck together.”

“For the first six months I didn’t even play the guitar!” Batio continued. “I just looked at it for days on end! It was like this thing that was glowing at you, goading you; it was pretty rotten. So my father goes, ‘What are you going to do – look at it, or are you going to play that thing? So I played it on-stage one time.”

And Batio picked one hell of a stage to take it on.

“The first time I played the guitar, it was in front of 23,000 people!” he revealed.

“I was using a Marshall head – my ‘Death Head’ – which was rewired by José [Arredondo]. He’s done some great work for guys like Van Halen and Randy Rhoads.

“Anyway, I walked out and everybody went crazy. I was playing criss-cross, but I was so nervous that I grabbed both guitars and all you heard was this really bad sound. And I’m going, ‘Oh shit.’

“My hands are so nervous they’re shaking; and I see these guys in front going, ‘Yeah...’ as though they think I’m giving up on it. So I said, ‘Fuck it!’ and I started playing and acting like I knew what I was doing.”

Batio didn’t need to act. He certainly did know what he was doing, and the double-guitar has been a key part of his skillset ever since.

The double guitar was only ever out-done by Batio’s even-more-insane quad-guitar, which (yep, you guessed it) had four guitar necks strapped together. And, as Batio told Guitar World earlier this year, that four-neck was actually inspired by Steve Vai’s three-neck…

What is it?

The Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble arrived in the 1970s and helped put that lush, swirling analog chorus sound on the map. It also featured a separate vibrato mode and an analogue preamp that became part of its unmistakable character.

Original units are big, bulky and command collector prices, but their influence lives on in countless chorus pedals.

Warm Audio's original WA-C1 recreates much of that vintage magic, right down to its oversized enclosure and distinctive appearance. The new WA-C1 Mod takes the same basic approach but puts it into a smaller, more pedalboard-friendly package. It's an all-analogue chorus and vibrato pedal that aims to capture the character of the legendary CE-1 while introducing a few modern conveniences, including greater flexibility over the preamp.

With so many chorus pedals available today, the WA-C1 Mod is aimed at guitarists who appreciate the warmth and character of vintage analog modulation but need something that fits more comfortably into a modern pedalboard setup.

Specs

• Launch price: $199 | £199 | €229
• Type: All-analog chorus and vibrato
• Controls: Preamp Level; Chorus Depth and Rate; Vibrato Depth and Rate; High/Low sensitivity; single footswitch with press-and-hold Chorus/Vibrato switching; rear Hi-Z and Vintage/Modern switches
• Features: Analog preamp with optional bypass; LED modulation-rate indication; selectable 50k-ohm / 1.1M-ohm input impedance
• Connectivity: One 1/4-inch input; two 1/4-inch outputs (mono and stereo)
• Bypass: Vintage mode retains preamp when effect is off; Modern mode bypasses preamp
• Power: 9V DC pedal adapter; 200mA current requirement
• Dimensions: 71 × 61 × 114 mm (W × H × D)
• Weight: 16 oz / 0.45 kg
• Contact: Warm Audio

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

The original WA-C1 was a pretty big pedal, so the smaller Mod enclosure is a welcome change. It retains the distinctive wedge-shaped design and textured finish of the original, giving it that unmistakable vintage look. The metal enclosure feels solid and substantial, with a reassuring heft that makes it feel like a serious piece of gear rather than just another stomp box.

The vintage-style knobs are a nice touch, adding plenty of character that complements the pedal’s retro appearance. They're easy to grip and turn smoothly, with just the right amount of resistance for making precise adjustments. The heavy-duty toggle switch is another nice touch, with a firm, distinctive click that adds to the pedal's substantial feel.

The footswitch feels equally solid with a smooth, positive click of its own and the top-mounted connections help keep everything neat and tidy.

Despite having quite a few controls packed into a smaller space, nothing feels cramped or awkwardly placed. Overall, it's a handsome, well built pedal that looks and feels ready to gig.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

The controls are pretty straightforward once you get familiar with them. Chorus and Vibrato each have their own Depth and Rate knobs, so there's no need to readjust everything when switching between effects.

A quick tap of the footswitch turns the modulation on or off, while pressing and holding it switches between chorus and vibrato. It's a clever design that lets one footswitch do the work of two, rather than the separate footswitches found on the original WA-C1. It takes a little getting used to but becomes second nature with a little practice.

Then there's the preamp, and that's where things get interesting. The Level knob adjusts its output, while the High/Low sensitivity toggle on the front determines how hard your guitar's signal drives it. Low provides more headroom, while High pushes the preamp harder.

Around back, the Vintage/Modern switch gives you another option. Vintage keeps the preamp in the signal path even when the modulation is switched off, while Modern bypasses it when the effect is disengaged. It's a handy feature, especially if you want to use the preamp independently of the chorus or vibrato.

The rear Hi-Z switch is also worth checking out, particularly if you're using passive pickups like those in my Les Paul and Strat. It lets you choose between the original CE-1-style input impedance and a higher-impedance setting better suited to modern guitar setups.

There's a single input on one side of the pedal and two outputs on the other, allowing you to run it in mono or connect two amps for stereo operation. There's plenty to explore here, but none of it feels complicated once you spend a little time with the controls.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

With a Supro Blues King 12 dialed in for a clean to edge-of-breakup tone, I’m running both my Les Paul and Strat through the WA-C1 Mod to get a feel for its character. The first thing I want from a chorus is a little movement without losing the sound of the guitar underneath.

That's where the WA-C1 Mod makes a strong first impression. Setting the Chorus Rate and Depth fairly low produces a warm shimmer that gives open chords and picked passages a little extra width and color. It's great for when a song needs some atmosphere, but the guitar still has to sound like a guitar.

The Strat is a natural fit for the brighter, more chimey side of this effect. With clean arpeggios or lightly picked chords, a low chorus setting adds a lovely sense of movement without blurring every note. Bring the Depth up and the swirl becomes much more obvious, with that thick, liquid character people associate with the old CE-1.

The Les Paul, with the pickup selector in the middle position, brings a different flavor that's warm and round, with a little more body behind sustained chords. I like keeping the Rate slow but making the sweep deeper, so the effect breathes rather than speeds up.

Switch over to vibrato and the mood changes. Instead of making the guitar sound wider, the pitch starts to move. At lower settings, it gives held notes a slightly dreamy, almost tape-like warble.

Turn up the Rate and Depth and things get a little weird with a pulsing, rotary-style feel that's great for bluesy single note lines or funky rhythm parts. There's a lot more fun to be had here than using vibrato as an occasional special effect.

Then there's the preamp and that's where things get interesting. Switching to Vintage mode lets me hear what the preamp brings to the table, even with the modulation turned off. It adds a little extra warmth, punch and compression, giving the guitar a fuller, slightly more driven character. The High/Low sensitivity toggle on the front offers another way to shape the response.

With my Les Paul, switching to High gives the humbuckers a little more muscle, adding bite, grit and a thicker, more aggressive character. The Strat responds nicely too, with a little extra snap and spank that makes clean rhythm playing livelier. Switching back to the Low setting smooths things out, giving both guitars a cleaner, more open response.

I like the extra character Vintage mode brings to the sound, but I also appreciate having Modern mode available, which lets me bypass the preamp when the effect is off and hear more of my guitar and amp's natural tone.

The Hi-Z switch adds another dimension, particularly when using passive pickups. Engaging it helps preserve the Strat's sparkle and the Les Paul's attack, while switching it off brings a softer, slightly darker character that's closer to the original CE-1's response.

It's another useful option for fine tuning how the pedal interacts with different guitars. And while all these extra features are nice, it really comes down to the ultra-rich, warm analog chorus and vibrato that make this pedal so addictive.

Verdict

The WA-C1 Mod brings those rich, old-school chorus and vibrato sounds into a smaller, more practical pedal with the utmost swagger. I love the depth and movement it adds whether using humbuckers or single coil pickups.

Having the option to keep the preamp's vintage character or bypass it when the effect is off is another nice touch and switching between chorus and vibrato with a single footswitch is pretty clever.

There are a few things worth pointing out though. The rear switches aren't the easiest to reach once everything is plugged in and the press-and-hold footswitch takes a little getting used to. You'll also need a 9V power supply capable of delivering 200mA.

But those are small complaints for a pedal that's so much fun to play. At $199, the WA-C1 Mod delivers the kind of lush, musical chorus and vibrato sounds that make you forget about tweaking knobs and just keep playing.

Guitar World verdict: There's a lot to love about the WA-C1 Mod, from its lush, swirling chorus to its rich, expressive vibrato. Add in the smaller enclosure and the ability to bypass the vintage preamp and you've got a terrific pedal that's loaded with character and a whole lot of fun to play.

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• "This is a truly touch-responsive, dynamic pedal that reacts like a good amplifier": Warm Audio Dirty Boy Jr. Overdrive review

What is it?

Clearly not content with simply commanding the digital effects pedal space, Strymon is evidently on a mission to flex its engineering expertise in the analog world, too. In case you missed it, the mastermind behind some of the guitar world’s most celebrated digital delays, reverb pedals and more, recently embarked on its analog stompbox journey with the Fairfax Class A Output Stage Drive.

Now, it’s got another pedal to add to its burgeoning new Series A lineup, the La Brea. For me, this one was even more exciting on paper than the Fairfax. Why? Well, because it effectively takes one half of Strymon’s cult classic Deco Tape Saturation/Doubletracker pedal, gives it an all-analog makeover, and crams it into the company’s new – and super sleek – form factor.

Full disclosure: I love the Deco. It’s a bucket-list pedal for me. But I love it mostly for the tape saturation side; that thick, chewy, vintage cassette-style tone is there in abundance. It can be snipped for an always-on thickener with amazing compression, or cranked for a unique-sounding overdrive / distortion / fuzz.

As such, $400 for a Deco is off the cards for me – and, I imagine, a lot of other folk out there. But the La Brea? Now, that’s a different story. It’s the pedal all Deco fans have been asking for. Home-in on that one circuit, give me an analog take on all that harmonic richness, and I could be a very happy guitar player indeed.

So, safe to say I had a lot of hype going into this one. I was excited to see if it could deliver…

Specs

• Launch price: £199 | $199 | €229
• Type: Analog tape drive
• Controls: Tape Saturation, Level, Dry, Shift (High, Flat, Mid), Gain (High, Norm)
• Connectivity: Mono in/out
• Bypass: True-Bypass
• Power: 9 volts DC center-negative, with a minimum of 500mA
• Dimensions: 4.53″ x 2.83″ x 2.33″ (11.51 cm x 7.19 cm x 5.92 cm)
• Weight: 0.29kg
• Options: N/A
• Contact: Strymon

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

I gave the Fairfax top marks for its build quality, so it will come as no surprise I’m giving the La Brea an identical score. But it wasn’t by default; the La Brea is incredibly well put together.

On the hood, there’s not too many moving parts. So there’s not too much that can go wrong, but Strymon has done its work diligently. The three control knobs have a firm but responsive twist, the two toggles - a nice satisfying snap. Like the Fairfax, the controls are sitting on a slightly raised metal plate, which is probably purely for aesthetics, but it’s a nice touch. I like the soft-touch footswitch, too.

Those controls have been set into a robust metal chassis that feels surprisingly light, yet fills me with confidence that it’d have no problem sitting on my pedalboard. There’s just something about this style of pedal build that I really like. I wish all my pedals were built and styled like this; almost military-like in its precision, utilitarian in its overall vibe, and lets the tones do the talking.

I said it before, but the box-like efficiency of the build gives the La Brea a nice visual distinction from the rest of my drive pedals, and the no-nonsense contours make it a breeze to fit into a busy pedalboard. Top marks for the top-mounted input and output jacks, too.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Although the control plate can feel at first a bit cosy, what with its three control knobs and two toggle switches, it becomes apparent that operating the La Brea is every bit as easy as the Fairfax. Strymon could have over complicated things here, but in keeping with its new analog ethos – and the military precision of its new chassis – it serves up everything you need to get dialed-in smoothly.

Level and Tape Saturation are self-explanatory: the former dictates overall output of the effect, the latter adds the soft-clipping, tape-style drive into the mix. Dry, meanwhile, is a lovely addition that serves as the MVP of the pedal: it lets you blend in your dry signal with the tape saturation for the desired mix, and it’s ultra responsive to tweaking your tone. More on that later…

Plus, with the addition of those toggles, the La Brea suddenly becomes even more expansive. With Gain, High and Norm offering two different levels of gain staging. As you probably guessed, those are high gain, and low-to-medium. Shift, meanwhile, adapts the frequency response.

And this goes through the whole spectrum, from added high-end chime to more dense mid-range heft. All in all, it’s a very comprehensive control set that, while not completely recreating the Deco workflow, expands and improves upon its potential with some choice refinements.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

It’s a small control set, but all three work well together and respond nicely to what’s going on in the circuit – and the result is a broad array of amazingly usable tones that include (and go beyond) the Deco remit.

As mentioned, Dry is a standout feature of the pedal. On the Deco, you only got Saturation, Tone and Volume controls and the Tape Saturation side. Here, you can really decide how much of your signal gets saturated, as it were, meaning the La Brea can be applied in a number of ways.

For me and my Quad Cortex mini, I usually have a JHS Morning Glory as my ‘always on’ pedal, but the La Brea is arguably better at thickening the juice of my harmonic character. It’s not amp-like, per se, but it gives a really noticeable, almost transparent warmth to your tone.

But I also feel the potential of the La Brea is underserved as a ‘set and forget’ pedal to sit at the start of a signal chain. I ended up using my QC mini to capture a host of different settings for the La Brea, because I kept finding new ways to use it.

As per Strymon’s recommendations, you can crank the Level and dip the Dry, while diming the Tape Saturation, for some genuinely gnarly tape drive that smashes into spitty fuzz territory. Vice versa, you can knock back Level, bump the Dry, and balance Tape Saturation for a more sensible lead cut that gives you some color and oomph without getting too dirty.

Verdict

I was expecting half a Deco, but I got so much more. I am struggling to think of a pedal maker out there right now who can match Strymon’s recent run. The company may have made its name in the digital space, but its analog future could be equally impactful. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the La Brea is held up alongside the Flint and BigSky as Strymon’s gold standard pedals.

In hindsight, half a Deco would have been a missed opportunity. The La Brea has gone beyond the design brief to deliver one of the most unique yet usable pedals I’ve come across in some time. Now it’s got the Fairfax and La Brea on its books, I can’t wait to see what Strymon does next.

Guitar World verdict: A worthy addition to Strymon’s burgeoning Series A line, don’t go into the La Brea expecting half a Deco – because this is so much more. An expanded palette with some clever control appointments mean this all-analog tape drive is one of the best of its kind currently on the market. This is up there with the BigSky and the Flint as one of Strymon’s most accomplished pedals

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Mike Hermans

Multiple suspects are wanted after a failed attempt to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stolen guitars to a store in Nashville.

Metro Police has announced at least two people went to Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday October 17 to try and sell a “handful” of stolen vintage instruments.

As reported by WKRN News, Carter Vintage Guitars staff became suspicious after the two suspects brought in a handful of vintage guitars to be appraised ahead of a potential sale. They called police after the suspects left, and were informed the guitars had indeed been stolen in Chattanooga.

An estimated cost of those instruments places the total value of the stolen haul at upwards of $500,000. A 1950s Gibson Les Paul and a vintage Fender were included in the stolen collection. The investigation is still ongoing and some suspects have yet to be found.

One suspect has been detained, after returning to the store to retrieve the stolen guitars upon learning Carter Vintage Guitars would not purchase them. He was arrested and charged with accessory after the fact.

“As Nashville’s local steward of vintage instruments, we take pride in the care and safekeeping of all instruments that come through our doors,” Carter Vintage Guitars said in a statement.

WKRN News spoke to staff members at Carter Vintage Guitars, and was told “it was clear from the start something was off”.

Staff members were suspicious in part because the suspects were unaware of how much the guitars were actually worth. They allegedly asked for $8,000 total in return – miles off the actual value of the six-strings.

Chattanooga police have yet to respond to WKRN regarding information over where the vintage guitars were stolen from.

It isn't the first stolen guitar story to have emerged this year. In June, a California music store appealed for aid following the theft of four Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters.

Last year’s release of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues satiated the appetite of Gen Xers and Late Baby Boomers who grew up with the original. Now, another ’80s guitar classic, Crossroads, may be receiving the same Hollywood treatment in the form of a potential sequel, at least according to screenwriter John Fusco.

Fusco and Ralph Macchio – who starred as the skinny, stoic Eugene “Lightning Boy” Martone, complete with iconic blonde Fender Tele – have stayed in touch. And, over the years, the topic of a potential Crossroads II has cropped up multiple times.

“Ralph and I, we call… and he’s like, ‘Man, you know we should do some kind of anniversary thing,’” Fusco tells Guitar World’s Adam Kovac in an in-depth feature on the making of the original.

“And I said, ‘We should do the freaking sequel.’ He’s like, ‘No shit, really? Do you have an idea?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I have an idea for it.’ So Ralph and I have talked about it. We’ve got a plan.”

Exactly what the sequel will look like, or when it’s expected to go into production, remains, well, top secret. But Fusco teases that it will be “exciting to music fans, to blues purists.”

“It would be years and years later, less about Eugene Martone and more about someone relevant today,” Macchio says. “I can’t go into a deep dive on that stuff, but I haven’t given up on it.”

Best of all, Steve Vai is game to reprise his role as metal-blues guitar master Jack Butler. “I know Ralph wants to kick my ass,” the virtuoso chuckles. “Jack Butler needs his revenge!”

Vai may need to dig out his iconic red Jackson for the performance, which intrepid GW writer Eric Kirkland tracked down after a 20-year quest.

For more about how Crossroads was made, plus new interviews with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, pick up issue 611 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Tony Iommi, 78, has been a bona fide celebrity for more than half a century and should, in theory, be enjoying a well-earned retirement.

In reality, it’s hard to think of a comparable musician of his demographic who is anywhere near as busy as Iommi, who has spent the past few years working on boxset reissues from his old band, Black Sabbath, playing with and promoting a Sabbath-themed ballet, recording songs to accompany an Iommi-branded line of perfumes by Xerjoff (yep, you read that right), guesting with the pop singer Robbie Williams – and, of course, playing at the Back to the Beginning concert in Sabbath’s hometown of Birmingham, England, in July 2025.

That landmark event, held just 17 days before Sabbath’s singer, Ozzy Osbourne, died on July 22 at age 76, marks a dividing line between one era of heavy metal and another, specifically because it was the last performance by the group’s classic lineup of Ozzy, Iommi, bassist Terence “Geezer” Butler and drummer Bill Ward.

A year after Ozzy’s death, many of his fans are still struggling to comprehend a future without him or Sabbath in it; fortunately, the creative heart of the band, if not its most visible face and voice, is still present and productive in the form of Iommi, whose new solo album, From the Dark – his first in 21 years – is out in October.

It’s a highly accomplished set of songs, with the music written by Iommi, lyrics and vocals by Norwegian singer Jorn Lande, bass by Mercyful Fate’s Becky Baldwin and drums by Karl Brazil of Robbie Williams’ band. Iommi’s long-time collaborator, Mike Exeter, co-produced the record and mixed it alongside Judas Priest’s Andy Sneap, and none other than Sir Brian May of Queen delivered a guest solo on Death Wakes.

This is an elite team, and it shows, with ambitious, multi-layered arrangements underpinning the songs as well as plenty of dynamic range, from atmospheric moments to full-on metal storms.

As for guitar? Iommi is on fire, supplying riffs that range from the expected Sabbath-like doom (Black Times) to mid-tempo chug (Over the Violent Sun) and soloing throughout like a man possessed. Whatever is in the water supply at his home studio near the Cotswolds in southern England, we want some.

When Iommi calls us from his home to discuss From the Dark, England is in the middle of the hottest summer on record, a situation for which most Brits are completely unprepared.

“There’s wildfires not far from here,” he says with concern, but as anyone knows who has read any of his interviews, Iommi tends to be pretty relaxed about most things. It’s no different today, presumably because he spent 50 years in one of the most eccentric bands of all time, and it takes a lot to shock him these days.

This is helpful, because we have all the big questions to ask, including whether he invented the two-octave fretboard, what Ozzy was really like – and if he’s really responsible for heavy metal.

We’re really enjoying the new album.

Thank you! This one’s not been like the other albums I’ve done, where I’ve generally had a month to write the stuff and then record it for six weeks. Normally we work five days a week, but for this album I’d get my engineer over, we’d put something down, work a couple of days and then have a week off and come back again. There was no pressure because there was no release date or anything.

That sounds ideal.

Well, it works because you can just take your time with it and do it when you really feel like it, you know. I’ve got a normal life like everybody else, and I’ve got loads of other things happening.

How close was From the Dark to completion by the time of Back to the Beginning last July? I imagine preparation for that event took up a lot of time.

A lot of things have taken a lot of time. The Back to the Beginning rehearsals took quite a while, because we had Bill Ward come over, and we hadn’t played live with him for 20 years. And also, of course, I had the Robbie Williams thing and the ballet [Ed. note: Black Sabbath – The Ballet was created by the Birmingham Royal Ballet under the direction of Carlos Acosta; it premiered in 2023].

What were the original goals for the new music?

With this record, to be honest, I was thinking, “This is an instrumental album,” like I did with the two tracks for the perfume [Scent of Dark and Deified, both 2021]. But then I thought, “Maybe I should think about writing stuff for a vocalist” and changed my mind and started again. I’ve always liked Jorn Lande’s voice, and it’s been great working with him.

How did you recruit Becky Baldwin and Karl Brazil on bass and drums, respectively?

Karl came through Mike Exeter, who’s been my engineer and producer for many years. I was down at my other house on the south coast, and I was walking along the seafront, and this guy came up to me and went, “Hello, I’m Karl.” I thought he was a fan, but he said, “We’ve got mutual friends.” I went, “Oh, who?” and he went, “Mike Exeter – and I’m the drummer with Robbie Williams.”

There was a point when Mike and I said, “We need a drummer” and I wanted somebody local, somebody who was good and somebody who could get over and start work straight away, so I said, “Let’s try Karl.” We used him on one of the perfume tracks, and he was great, and he’s really good to work with – a lovely guy. The same thing happened with Becky.

Mike told me about her, so I looked her up and watched some of her videos, and we said, “Let’s see if she’s interested.” She was, so she came over to my house, and that was it. She worked out really well. The great thing is that she’s a big fan of Geezer, so she’s playing in Geezer’s style, which I wanted.

What was your songwriting process?

We put general ideas for the song structures down, and then we got Jorn over from Norway and showed him what we’d got. He took the songs away and came back and recorded them. He’ll go on all night, Jorn.

He’ll do a take and we’ll say “That’s good,” and he’ll say, “I could just do a better one,” and we’ll say, “No, that one was fine!” And, of course, Mike played his keyboard on the album. There’s endless amounts of bloody bells on it.

I noticed a doomy bell in Legacy. Was that a nod toward the song Black Sabbath?

Yeah, absolutely! And also we brought in Andy Sneap, just to help, because it’s always nice to have another opinion from somebody who is good at engineering.

How do you write riffs? Do they just come out of thin air?

You know, it’s always a strange thing. It’s just one of the things I can do – probably one of the only things I can do. [Laughs] Generally, we’ll go in the studio and start playing and something comes up. I’d better not go on about it too much, because the next time I do it, I won’t be able to do anything… But that’s generally how it is.

I go into a particular studio and start playing, and the sound sets me up for what sort of riff I’m going to play, or what mood I’m in. I generally start off with doomy stuff and then go into something else. I’ll think, “That’s a good riff,” so I’ll leave that one and then play something else and go, “Oh, that’s good too.” And then I’ll listen back to them an hour or so later and work on a few of them.

After writing hundreds of riffs by this point, how do you avoid repeating yourself?

I don’t know. I might have repeated myself; there are so many riffs on different albums. I tend not to listen to other people because you never know, subconsciously you might come up with a riff that’s somebody else’s.

What guitars did you use this time?

I used different ones. I used my Gibson SGs, the copies of the Monkey that Gibson made [Gibson Custom Tony Iommi “Monkey” 1964 SG Special Replica]. I used that for a bit, and then I went back to my JayDee [Custom] Old Boy and used that, because I’m so used to that guitar, so I shuffled from one to the other. Also, Brian May had one of his Red Special guitars made for me, and I used that on a couple of bits.

There are so many different combinations on that guitar – I haven’t played it enough yet to find out what they are. There’s a few little bits of acoustic guitar in the background here and there, too; I played a Taylor, and I might have used a Gibson.

What happened to the original Monkey SG? We heard there was some sort of chat with the Hard Rock Cafe…

Years ago, the guy who buys all the memorabilia for the Hard Rock Cafe arranged to come over to England and visit me. He said, “Look, if you’ve got anything, I can give you up to a million for it.” At first I said, “I don’t really have anything I want to sell,” but then I thought, “Hang on, I have got my original Monkey guitar, which I don’t use now. It’s in a box and I don’t use it, because I don’t want it to get nicked if I take it on the road, which has happened a couple of times with things.”

And the man said, “If you ever want it back, let me know, give me the money back and you can have the guitar back.” I said, “Fine, that’s a great deal.”

Anyway, that’s what happened, but later the guy passed away and nobody had any idea of what arrangement we’d made! The Hard Rock Cafe apparently didn’t know that was the deal. They contacted me and said, “We don’t know anything about that.” So that was it – but I’d rather it be on show than stuck in a box.

You told Guitar World in 2024 that you were experimenting with a Kemper Profiler. Did you use it on this record?

I started off with the Kemper, which is great for what I need to get. I’ve never used anything like that before. I’ve always used amplifiers, but when we were first putting ideas down, I hadn’t got my studio built yet.

We were working on the top floor of my house, and that’s when Mike suggested this Kemper and we started using it. I liked it, I thought it was really good, but when we had the studio built in the winter, I used my Laney valve amp, the Iommi TI100. But the Kemper has been really, really useful.

What were the tunings on the record?

Out! [Laughs] I played a couple in drop D and the rest a semitone down, which I’ve done for many, many years.

Do you find that you can still solo as quickly and fluently as ever?

I’ve had problems. I broke a tendon in my arm, and I’ve never been able to repair it, but I get by and I do what I can. I’m not one for playing technically, like the other guitar players of today, who are really technical and very, very good. I still play in the old style, and I don’t even realize what I’m playing. It’s weird. I generally put a solo down, and if they say, “Can you repeat that?” I go, “No, I don’t know what I did!”

So if you then have to play the song live, you have to relearn the solo as it was recorded?

Well, yeah, to a point, I have to do it, and it’s difficult. When I did the video for World Alone, I thought, “God, what did I play in that?” I had to listen to it again and try to get it in my head. You get other guitarists who can play a solo the same way all the time, but I just can’t do that. I play exactly how I feel at that time, so it’s never really the same.

Are you planning any live dates to promote the album?

We haven’t planned anything yet, but I wouldn’t mind doing a couple of them again. I’m not going to be doing world tours or anything like that. That finished with Sabbath, but it’d be interesting to do some on-and-off stuff.

I would think that any of the big festivals next summer would happily put you on as headliner.

Yeah, but nobody would come. [Laughs] I enjoy playing live. But who knows?

Brian May plays guest guitar on Death Wake. Did you just call him and say, “Want to play on my album, Brian?”

[Laughs] I landed it on him. I said, “Bring a couple of guitars over.” “Why?” “Just bring them…” We’ve always had that relationship of just playing together. It’s been a great friendship, over the last 60-odd years.

We’d love to see a May & Iommi album come out sometime.

Yeah, I would as well, and we keep talking about it. That’s as far as we’ve gotten.

You’ve been an innovator in guitar design over the years. Is it true that you were the one who came up with two-octave fretboards before anybody else?

I came up with a lot of ideas like that. I went to various companies – big companies, you know – but they weren’t interested. They said, “What’s the point of that? Nobody’s going to use [the extra frets]. It’s always 21 or 22 frets,” so I invested in a guy in Birmingham, John Birch, who made guitars.

I said, “Can you make me a 24-fret guitar?” He said yes and made me one. After I used it, of course, companies caught on. I did it with a locking nut as well, which used an Allen wrench.

My other idea was an interchangeable pickup. The idea was that you had half a dozen pickups, and you could pull them out from the back of the guitar and then snap a different one in – if you were in the studio and you wanted a different sound. I suppose nowadays you’ve only got to press a button and you get the sound you want.

You famously lost two fingertips in an industrial accident in 1965, obliging you to fret the strings with prosthetic fingertips. How are the injured fingers holding up?

They’re all right. I have to keep the fingertips in shape when I’m on tour. I change the leather parts every couple of weeks, and it’s a bit of a hassle, but I’ve got used to it.

Do you feel any pain when you fret the strings with those fingers?

No, because I put tape on those fingers, and then I put a bit of glue on the tape and push the thimble [i.e. the prosthesis] until it holds on. They used to fall off, and it was a bloody pain, trying to find them. “Where is it? It’s on the floor somewhere!” [Laughs] But, yeah, the same thing has worked for me since day one.

If, for whatever reason, you lost the prostheses right before stage time, could you get through the gig just using your actual fingers?

No, I couldn’t get through the gig, because I couldn’t touch the strings with those fingers. The bone is right under the skin. One time, years ago, when it did come off, I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger. There was blood all over the place. But I can play with the two other fingers – I learned to use my little finger [pinky] in the early days because I had to.

It's constantly written, including by Guitar World, that you invented heavy metal by tuning down. Do you agree with that?

That’s what they say. I mean, I did it for me. I wasn’t thinking, “I’m going to invent heavy metal today.” I actually liked the sound of it when it was tuned down. It gave it a lot more guts.

I remember Rick Rubin, when he produced Black Sabbath’s 13 in 2013, telling you guys, “You’re not a metal band, you’re a blues band.”

Yeah, well, Rick Rubin said quite a lot of things. [Laughs] I don’t know. Many years ago, I thought we were a hard rock band. And then, when I did an interview for Melody Maker or something, the guy said, “So, of course, you play heavy metal.” “Heavy metal? What’s that?” I suppose it was, really, because we come from a city where people work in factories with machinery and stuff like that, so I suppose you can relate it to that sort of thing.

Ozzy Osbourne was your friend for 50 years. What kind of person was he, from your perspective?

We got on really well. He’d always look up to me and ask me if this was all right or that was all right. He was a bit insecure at certain times, but at other times when he’d go on stage, he’d be more confident. He loved what he did. He loved getting on stage. We had a laugh – a great laugh. He’d always come up to me and Geezer on stage and pull a funny face, to make us laugh. We had some good fun over the years.

How was the Back to the Beginning show for you?

Difficult. Initially, when it was mentioned to me, I said no, because we’d done The End Tour [2016 to 2017] and I didn’t want to be like, “Here we are again, another tour.” But when it was mentioned about it being for charity, then yes, I was into it.

Still, I thought, “What’s it going to be like? We haven’t played with Bill for years,” and when we got into rehearsal, I hadn’t seen Ozzy since we’d done the Commonwealth Games in 2022. That was the last time I’d seen him, because he was in the States and he couldn’t get over because of his health situation; they wouldn’t let him fly. Eventually, when he came over, and we met for rehearsals, we were floored, because he was carried in, basically. I couldn't believe how he’d deteriorated. We were all in shock, really.

He sat there, and I said to him, “You know, you don’t have to sing, we’ll just run through it instrumentally,” but he said “No, I’ll have a go” and he’d sing for a bit. And then we’d finish for the day and I said, “Don’t bother to come in tomorrow, we’ll just run over the songs instrumentally with Bill.” He said, “All right,” and then he might turn up the next day – or not.

And how was the actual gig?

The hard thing for me was when we got on stage. I couldn’t see Ozzy, because he was in his chair and I was at the back, because Bill wanted me to stand back by him to give him any clues if something went wrong. So I couldn’t see Ozzy at all, apart from when I did go to the very front and I could see him for a second.

It was very difficult, because I was so used to Ozzy jumping around and running up to me and grabbing me. It was just a terribly different thing altogether, and it was very hard to do it. But, you know, I’m glad we did it, because it was the original band and we won’t be doing it again. I’m really glad we did it for Ozzy and for the fans.

The final song on your new album is called Legacy, about a musical artist and his legacy. Does it refer to you?

I don’t know. That’s a question you’d have to ask Jorn.

So what is your legacy?

I think we started something that wasn’t around at the time. I think that’s mainly what we get credited for, because nobody was doing this sort of music, so when we did it, we had a hell of a job getting accepted in the early days.

You had to prove yourself. There was no MTV, so it was all word of mouth, and we were limited to where we could play because there were only a couple of blues clubs in Birmingham. That’s why we used to go abroad – to Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, all over.

What are your goals at this point?

I’ll just take things as they come. I’m open to a lot of different things and I enjoy it all. I enjoyed doing the Robbie Williams thing because it was something different. I enjoyed doing the perfume tracks because that was something very different. I really enjoyed doing this new album, too, and I’m very excited to see what happens when it comes out. Hopefully people will like it.

We mentioned Sir Brian May earlier, who is, of course, a knight of the realm. When are you going to be “Sir Tony Iommi”?

[Laughs] I don’t know, that’s up to the King. I did get an MBE [Member of the Order of the British Empire, a prestigious British honor] a couple of months ago.

Did that mean a lot to you?

Yeah, absolutely. All the awards I’ve had, I really do take them seriously. They show that people like what you’ve done, and they think you deserve it. To get an MBE is just fantastic.

Especially when you think about where Black Sabbath came from.

Exactly, yeah. Funnily enough, Geezer emailed me when they announced it, and he said exactly that – about looking back where we came from. It’s unbelievable, really.

• From the Dark is out now via BMG.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Steve Lukather’s 2003 Christmas record Santamental doesn’t crop up as often as, say, Toto’s Hold the Line or Africa, but it does have a cult following.

“It made a little bit of noise for five minutes,” he says now. That noise was amplified by the presence of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Slash, Michael Landau, and even his son Trev, who was 14 at the time.

“It was so much fun, man," he says of the recording in July 2002. "We brought down Christmas decorations. We just had a blast. All we did was laugh and play music – and we got paid for it!”

Santamental is being reissued now, 23 years later, after Lukather won the rights back. “They said, ‘Wanna put it out?’ And I thought, ‘Why not?’ It’s a Christmas thing and we’re doing it for charity.”

But he has no plans to record a sequel. “I got lucky,” he laughs. “It’s one and done. But I do definitely have the fucking Santa hair now!”

How did Santamental come to be?

It was done as a lark. Elliot Scheiner had put together Bop City Records and they wanted me to be their first artist – and they specifically wanted me to do a Christmas record. I was like, “What the fuck makes you think I’m Santa Claus, man? You gotta be kidding me!” But he goes, “No, man, we think you’re gonna do a weird one!”

Is that how you approached it?

Of course – there’d have been no point in me doing it straight ahead! So I enlisted the help of my dear friend Jeff Babko, who does anything from Dr Dre to sight-reading John Williams’ piano parts. I came up with the overall concept and the grooves and said, “I need some hip changes, man,” and Jeff helped me re-voice all of it. He’s a genius.

You’ve written plenty of songs and solos, but you’re not known for Christmas music. Was that challenging?

The challenge was: “Can you write two Christmas songs?” That’s got to be one of the hardest things, because how do you write a Christmas song? I just called up all of my friends, saying, “Hey, man, can you come down and do this for me?”

Eddie Van Halen plays on Joy to the World, the opening track.

You’ve got to understand this was 25 years ago. Please underline that so people understand I’m not trying to take advantage of my relationship with Ed. I talked to Alex Van Halen about the re-release, but people have a tendency to think weird shit, you know?

But anyway, with Ed I just thought he’d be the right guy for that kind of groove. I thought it would be fun to get a bunch of my guitar player buddies in. We cut the tracks in a week and it was all cut live. There were no demos, no rehearsals – nothing. It’s all analog to tape, and no click tracks. We’d run the tune and after the first take, it was done.

Eddie was more or less inactive at the time.

Ed hadn’t played in a year. This was at a time when he was going through some shit, but he said, “Yeah, I’ll come down. I’ll do it for you – but just me and you.” So, Elliot got sound on him, we kicked everybody out of the room, and it was just me and Ed.

I worked the machine and he played. It was done in like 10 minutes. He said he hadn’t played in a year, but he played great. I didn’t keep him there for very long because he did it for me as a solid, you know, as a bro. I love him for that – but I’m not using it as a calling card, saying, “Come dig this record.” I’d never take advantage of my friends that way.

What was it like working with Steve Vai on Carol of the Bells?

Steve is on another level. I don’t know anybody more dedicated, constantly reaching for the next thing, stretching their abilities and making it better and better, than him. He’s been so good to me as a friend. I owe him about a million favors. I gotta go over and mow the lawn at his new house, you know?

Steve, like every single one of these guys, came in, and did everything in one take, and said, “See you later.” These guys like having me hanging around for some reason, probably because they think I’m funny. I’m just there for the humor, man.

Slash played on Broken Heart for Christmas, and at the time, you called him “the Keith Richards of our generation.”

I think he is – and I meant it as a compliment! We’ve been friends since the late ’80s. We were friends before any musicality was involved, but I just love what he does. He’s a legend. I love Guns N’ Roses, and when you think of a rock star, you see a picture of Slash. I thought he’d be perfect for that track. I think he gave it some credibility because he’s the real thing.

One of your oldest guitar pals, Michael Landau, appears on Look Out for Angels.

Mike and I go back to when we were 12. We’ve always been best friends. I had to have him on the record because we were two punk-ass guitar players at 12 years old who thought we were badass guys in Hollywood! We were these cocky little kids who fed off each other.

The funny thing is that when he did that take for the album, his amp wasn’t even completely turned on! He just blew in there and blew out so fast… it was hysterical. I was just like, “Well, thanks, Mike. I appreciate that. It’s brilliant!”

What role did Larry Carlton play?

Larry is very, very special. We did that live record that we won a Grammy for [No Substitutions: Live in Osaka], which was great, because when I was a kid everyone wanted to be Larry Carlton. When me and Larry went on that tour, I got an hour every day before the show where we’d sit in a room and warm up. I’d get a little fucking guitar lesson from Carlton every night.

Most of what I wanted to learn was chord melody stuff. He was very kind, and spent time with me – and sometimes rolled his eyes – and showed me some things. And I’d go, “It’s Christmas time, so give me a Christmas song.” I’ve gotta give him some credit for a lot of the cool shit, and I gave him an arranging credit.

Last but not least, your son Trev Lukather also appears on Carol of the Bells.

He was still wearing his school uniform and had a buzz cut from being on the football team, man. He’s a far cry from that now! This was his first record. He and his band have got an album and a tour coming now. He’s blossomed into an amazing, tasty player, and a great writer, engineer and mixer. He’s got a lot of gifts. I’m proud of him.

It might have been a lark 25 years ago, but SantaMental is well-regarded now.

I was surprised when I found out I owned it. I didn’t for a long time because these things have to run through their contractual process. Aside from Christmas time, I hadn’t thought about it much – but it’s gotten a bit of love, and now it’s gonna be out again.

I really wanna raise money for the Ed Asner Family Center. I have a vested interest in that, as my youngest boy is autistic. That’s a journey – no two are the same. But it’s a great cause. So this is all about peace, love, and having a Merry Christmas.

• Santamental is reissued on November 7 in CD and digital formats, with vinyl to follow. 100% of proceeds go towards the Ed Asner Family Center. For more info, head to SteveLukather.com.

We live in an age of online convenience, where big-box music retailers bust out doorcrasher sales so you don’t have to brave Black Friday crowds, and folks flip their own vintage finds on Reverb and Facebook. So what’s the key to survival for a brick-and-mortar guitar store in 2026? Guitar World spoke to three very different stores to ask just that question and to understand what we can do as players to support these vital businesses.

For Seattle, Washington’s Emerald City Guitars, it’s simple reasoning: you come for the hangs, the culture, and the chance to get hands-on with some cool-as-hell guitars. Since its founding in 1996, the family business has developed a reputation for stocking lust-worthy vintage pieces – vintage Gibsons sold to Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, ‘60s-era Fenders in rare finishes, and other jaw-droppers that routinely cross the six-figure mark.

Co-owner Trevor Boone notes there are also new items in the store, including combos from Oregon amp-makers Benson and Roadhouse; but vintage is Emerald City’s specialty. Not everyone can come in and bag a $200,000 Strat, of course, but Boone welcomes anyone who wants to give the guitars a look and talk shop.

“We almost use it like a clubhouse – people buzz in to our living room,” he says. “What keeps us alive is these big vintage pieces, whether they’re sold in public or through our back channel – sourcing guitars for other guys. That’s what keeps the doors open. We also have a lot of the cool, second-tier funky stuff, like Harmonys.”

Founded in the mid-’50s, Long and McQuade is Canada’s largest musical instrument chain, and while it’s a different proposition to Emerald City, guitars are a major part of the company’s business model. The Vancouver store’s guitar boss, Stephen Fischer, says customers come in for starter Strat and Tele builds, but also for its connections to custom shops.

This summer, the store hosted a roadshow with the Fender team that brought fervent fans through its doors. Online retail is a big part of Long and McQuade’s larger business model – but Fischer talks up the social aspect of such events.

“It’s an advantage for people who are new to guitars,” he says. “If you know what you’re looking for – ‘I want a Les Paul with this spec and under this weight’ – you can go online and buy that.

“But if you have no idea what you’re looking for, it’s great to come in and try things, and to hear different perspectives from people who have been doing it for a long time.”

Events also provide an opportunity to educate customers and get them invested in guitar craft and culture. Once people are in the store, even if they don’t go home with a new instrument, they might stock up on accessories, which puts cash in the till.

Bassist Pamela Cole co-founded Fanny’s House of Music in Nashville in 2008. The full-service store sells vintage archtops, new Danelectros, and boutique accessories, and handles repairs and music lessons. There are also plans to build a separate school of music.

The emphasis is on making the act of making music comfortable for all – with a special focus on women, children, and beginners. Its large social media presence has directed countless musical tourists to the store, while its location in the busy Five Points area of East Nashville brings in plenty of curious customers.

Cole says the flipside of online promotion is that people who come through the doors often visit someone else’s site as a bargaining chip.

“They’re looking on their phone, checking to see what it is online,” she explains. “I do have to compete with Facebook Marketplace, Reverb and all those things. We do sell a little bit on Reverb, but mostly that’s for advertising and promotion for our store.”

Some nearby places sell rarer, high-price items; but Cole’s stock of used instruments – including ‘60s catalog items and vintage acoustics from local makers like Grammer Guitars – are intentionally sourced as more accessible pieces for fledgling and veteran players.

As a primarily used enterprise it can be hard to replenish stock, but Cole notes that guitarists looking to support businesses can help by selling their gear through consignment.

All three stores have an online retail component, and their connections with players through social media are priceless, but if you like brick-and-mortar locations, the best way to keep them going is to buy your guitars from a physical store.

“To not buy online, unless you absolutely have to, helps all of us independents,” Cole explains.

One thing all shopkeepers have in common is the aim that customers have memorable experiences in their stores, ones that keep them coming back, even if it’s picking up smaller items. Strings, tuners, picks, power supplies, capos all help keep the lights on: “We sell so many of those things every day,” comments Fischer.

It’s not just about string sales, either. Emerald City fans may have seen Boone’s treasure hunting travel posts with the GuitaRV series on Instagram and YouTube. However, it’s not just about white whale vintage builds and self promotion. He’s also keeping an eye out for other used goods, each one a potential memento for someone walking through the doors of his store.

“I have a big rack of old single-stitched rock t-shirts. There’s old posters and free vintage records – there’s shit everywhere here!” he laughs. “A lot of people watch our videos and come in here. If you can’t afford a $20,000 guitar, that’s cool. But I want you to leave with a piece of this shop.”

• For more information, visit Emerald City Guitars, Long & McQuade and Fanny's House of Music – or better yet, go in-person...

Peterson has released a signature Eddie Van Halen guitar tuner, and it’s decked out in the virtuoso’s unmistakable red, white, and black colorway.

But what's more, it hopes to help players get closer to his much sought after sound in a whole new way.

Built to have a “±0.1 cent accuracy”, the latest offering from the tapping wizard’s preferred tuner brand has gone through a few major changes. The old mechanical disc that was central to the 1970s-era design Van Halen favored has been replaced by a high-definition LCD strobe.

The StroboStomp EVH also notably comes loaded with 13 exclusive EVH 'Sweetener' tuning presets. These have been calibrated to the tunings used across Van Halen’s game-changing 1978 debut album, and there are 11 accompanying bass presets, too.

Each preset corresponds to a different track on the album, as Eddie’s tunings usually and very subtly tweaked the odd string, with the idea that they would help certain chords and riffs sound sweeter.

As Peterson says, the entire album was tracked in Eb Standard, with the guitars sitting just above it almost throughout. There is one exception, which is slightly flat. This tuner packs all that nuance into one convenient package.

Beyond Eddie’s personal preferences, there are over 158 Sweetened and Guided Tunings on board, with USB connectivity for players wanting to dial in their own custom tuning.

The resulting pedal, Peterson says, has the “same red glow and same rock-solid precision,” of the original, “now in a pedal tuner inspired by one of rock's most iconic guitarists.”

The Peterson StroboStomp EVH is available now for $179.

See Peterson for more.

Josh Smith’s Two Rock amp has been found days after it was declared missing – and he’ll be kicking himself over where it was discovered.

The blues guitarist, who also stars as Joe Bonamassa’s right-hand man in his live band, feared his amp missing last week. Bonamassa alerted his social media followers of its disappearance, promising a “generous reward” for its safe return.

Smith, though, will be rewarding himself. It seems to be similar to the case of Jerry Cantrell's missing G&L Rampage, which was innocently misplaced last year: it turns out the Two Rock was right where it had been left at a previous gig.

“Hey Josh,” Bonamassa mockingly says in a new Instagram post, filmed in Dortmund, Germany. The camera is pointed right at Smith. “What will you be using on stage as your amplification device?” he asks.

“I got my Two Rock back, it was right where we left it in Leverkusen, Germany,” Smith replies. “It was right underneath the stage.”

Despite the mix-up, the sentiment shared by Bonamassa and Smith here is that the post calling for people to be on the lookout did contribute to its safe return.

For Cantrell, he perhaps had fair reason to panic. A separate guitar that Eddie Van Halen had once gifted to him went missing for nearly 20 years. For Smith, he perhaps just needs to get better at sweeping venues during load out. It’s a valuable lesson learned.

Stolen gear, though, is a serious matter. Eddie Vedder recently came to the aid of an Irish band after their entire backline was stolen from the road, and Paul Gilbert had a cherished guitar stolen in a $12,000 theft. So no one can blame Smith for sending out the search party. At least it’s back where it belongs.

What is it?

The Boss RC-600 Loop Station is the company’s most advanced floor-based looper pedal. It’s a product I have plenty of experience with, as well as its predecessor, the RC-300. Working in a guitar store, the RC-300 was probably the most requested demo product, as artists like Ed Sheeran and KT Tunstall dominated the airwaves with catchy loop-based tracks that made the technique look easy.

Looping has had a long journey from the avant-garde experimentation of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s analog tape reels, otherwise known as “Frippertronics”. DigiTech brought looping to the floor in the 1980s with its PDS series, while brands like Line 6 incorporated looping functionality into products like the DL4 in 2000. A year later, Boss released a product that would launch a range that eventually became the gold (or red) standard of looping pedals: the Boss Loop Station RC-20.

The RC-20 helped establish Boss as a dominant force in looping, and there have been many iterations since. Today, the Loop Station series offers everything from simple loop sketch pads like the RC-1 to the beatboxing-friendly RC-505MKII, right up to the flagship model that is the subject of my review today: the RC-600.

Launched in 2021, the RC-600 built on over two decades of looping innovation since the RC-20, becoming a go-to choice for guitarists seeking the most feature-packed floor unit available. There have been a few changes since the RC-600's predecessor, including the removal of the built-in expression pedal, an increase from three tracks to six, and a jump to around 13 hours of total recording time across all memories, to name but a few.

The flagship Loop Station now faces competition from an increasing number of pedal brands, including Sheeran’s Looper X, the Singular Sound Aeros Loop Studio and Headrush’s Flex Prime. Does the RC-600 remain the cream of the crop? That’s what we're going to find out.

Specs

• Price: $659 | £499 | €496
• Made: Malaysia
• Type: Floor-Based Looping Station
• Controls: 3x Record/Pay footswitch, 3x Stop footswitch, Track Select footswitch, Undo/Redo footswitch, All Start/Stop footswitch, Output Level knob, 4 LCD screen control knobs, 7x buttons (Menu, Loop, Rhythm, Tap Tempo, Enter, Exit, Page)
• Features: 6 stereo tracks, 200 rhythm types, 16 rhythm kits, 49 input effects, 53 track effects, 2 master effects, 99 memory channels, Graphic LCD display, 32-bit AD/DA conversion, 44.1 kHz sampling frequency
• Connectivity: 2x XLR inputs w/ DC 48V phantom power (10 mA max), 4x ¼” TS instrument inputs (2x stereo pairs), 2x ¼” TS main outputs (1x stereo pair), 4x ¼” TS sub outputs (2x stereo pairs), 1x ¼” TRS headphones output, 2x ¼” TRS expression/control inputs, MIDI in + out, DC power jack in, USB-B port
• Power: 9V DC center-negative, 1.2 A (with phantom power), 1.1 A (without phantom power), AC adapter included
• Dimensions: 435 mm x 163 mm x 66 mm
• Weight: 2.5kg/5lbs 8oz
• Contact: Boss

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

The change in size from the RC-300 to the RC-600 is quite astonishing; it’s around 4 inches narrower and 3 lbs lighter. The RC-600 has three rec/play switches and three stop switches, with a track select switch allowing you to switch between tracks 1 to 3 and 4 to 6. Gone are the trigger latches, replaced by smaller metallic footswitches. The switches, whether rec/play, stop, or track select, all press reassuringly on my demo model and have a soft click.

However, in an attempt to save space, the switch surfaces are small, and I find them a little fiddly to hit accurately. On a looper where timing is imperative, this could prove frustrating during a live performance. If I were to keep this in the long run, I’d invest in some footswitch toppers to expand the surface area and make accurate tapping easier.

The metal chassis of the RC-600 feels incredibly durable. It feels premium straight out of the box, and if you’re planning on using this for gigging, I wouldn’t worry about its ability to survive the rigors of the road. Gone, too, is the expression pedal of its predecessor. Now, if you want to use an expression or control pedal, you’ll need to connect an external one to the appropriate input.

On the left side of the RC-600, you’ll find a backlit graphic LCD screen. It’s easy to read on a dark stage, straightforward to use, and isn’t cluttered with unnecessary options. Underneath, there are four continuous rotary knobs that let you select different settings when pressed, change effect parameters, and toggle between options.

Each knob is pleasingly weighted and allows for controlled menu diving without getting frustrated. The device itself is naturally angled, with a raised section for the top controls.

Around the back, you’ll find the impressive connectivity options. The chassis-mounted 1/4-inch jacks are all incredibly sturdy. This feels like a small feature, but when you’re running multiple cables between expression pedals, instruments, and other devices, a secure connection is paramount.

The only downside to the connection options, for me, is the power. In terms of build, the RC-600 is certainly gig-worthy, but the AC adapter cable lets it down. I’d prefer a more robust IEC connection, which is much more widely available at venues.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Switching the RC-600 on for the first time, I’m greeted by dazzling lights of many different colors. Didn’t Dolly Parton sing about that? Anyway, you’ll quickly realise that the light show is more than a pretty feature. In fact, as the user, you depend heavily on the colors, which indicate many different things.

For example, the track select button starts with a solid white light, indicating that tracks 1, 2 and 3 are selected. When track select is red, you’ve got access to tracks 4, 5 and 6. Holding the track select button switches the controls over to the effects, turning the indicator blue.

The effects are split between input effects, where you get 49 different types, from flangers and phasers to pitch bends and robot voices. Input FX affects your incoming signal, and when you record with an effect applied, that effect becomes part of the audio playback.

This is a minor gripe of mine, as I can’t simply remove the effect from the audio once it’s been recorded. Although the input effects are split into A, B and C for footswitch control, I can actually have four different effects available at once, with effect D requiring access through the screen or an external footswitch.

On the right-hand side are the track effect controls, also split into A, B and C, with option D selectable through the menu. These effects color the playback of your recorded tracks and include things like slicers, beat scatter, and vinyl flicks. If I’m honest, I don’t really get much use out of these. I struggle to find much use for them as a guitarist or singer-songwriter, but they’re there to experiment with if you’re feeling funky.

Although you’d imagine the LCD screen being the main visual cue, it’s actually the cycloptic, circular indicator to the right of it that I find most helpful. This can be found, albeit in a simpler form, on more affordable models like the RC-1. The circle moves to show the loop’s position, helping you keep track of where you are without constantly looking at the screen. When recording, a rotating red border makes it clear what’s happening. When the track is playing, this border turns green and moves around until the loop reaches its end.

There’s no denying that Boss has created a device that could easily be complicated, but it’s laid out intuitively with clever color coding. However, nailing the timing when stopping a loop so it flows perfectly can be tricky. Diving into the menu and activating quantization is a real eureka moment. This is a fantastic feature that helps snap your loop to the correct measure, and it’s something I recommend using.

Every time I use a Loop Station, I keep things fairly simple. After getting to grips with everything, I start layering a track with A, B, and C sections in the style of Prince’s “When You Were Mine.” I use the octave effect on the Boss RC-600 to create a bass part with my Gibson SG Standard, monitoring through Logic Pro with a Neural DSP plugin. On top of that, I play the song’s chord progression.

On track 2, I record the lead line, bringing it in and taking it out when needed. The B section, which I recorded on track 3, was the chorus, while part C, or the bridge, used tracks 4 and 5, applying similar techniques. Of course, this is just scratching the surface of what the RC-600 can do.

Building the arrangement this way also highlights the benefit of having six tracks available. I can dedicate separate tracks to the bass, lead, and additional parts without having to constantly reuse or overwrite existing loops. For a singer-songwriter building a fuller arrangement from scratch, that extra flexibility is a real advantage over a more basic looper.

While I keep things fairly simple here, you can delve much deeper into its effects and control options to build more elaborate arrangements. This is where the RC-600 can become as complicated as you want it to be, but it also means there’s plenty of room to grow as your looping skills develop.

Spending around an hour layering tracks, getting the timing right and making everything sound great, I got sidetracked peeling the potatoes for tea. I came back to my horror to find the RC-600 had powered down and my work was gone. Nightmare.

I have a look online and find that the RC-600's auto-off function is designed to shut the unit down after a period of inactivity. However, my review model seems to be powering down much sooner than I expect. I recommend checking the auto-off settings on your own unit and saving your work regularly, so you don't end up losing an hour's worth of looping to a potato-related distraction.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Being the flagship model, I expect top-notch audio quality, and that’s exactly what I get. Boss has upped the AD/DA conversion to 32-bit, alongside 32-bit floating-point processing, and the playback is crystal clear.

I am impressed by how clearly the RC-600 reproduces my layered parts, even as the arrangement becomes busier. I tested playback through my audio interface and Logic Pro, using a Neural DSP plugin, before switching over to my Peavey Classic 30 amplifier. This gave me a chance to hear the loops outside of my computer-monitoring setup and get a better feel for how the layered arrangement translated through a guitar amp.

The octave effect is useful for creating a bass part from my guitar, while the modulation options offer further ways to shape the sound before recording. I’m less drawn to some of the more experimental track effects, which feel better suited to more adventurous loop-based performances than the guitar arrangements I put together.

While these give you plenty to experiment with, I would have liked to see more recognizable recreations of Boss's standalone stompboxes. Given the brand's extensive pedal lineup, this feels like an opportunity missed, and something that could have taken the RC-600 to the next level.

I also barely notice any lag. My setup involved monitoring through Logic Pro via an audio interface, and I was skeptical about how well it would function as even the smallest amount of latency can throw things off musically. However, it performed admirably and was pleasingly responsive. I experience the same immediate response when switching over to my Peavey Classic 30, and have no complaints about the playback feel when interacting with the loops.

Verdict

The Boss RC-600 is a seriously capable piece of kit, and it's easy to see why it sits at the top of the Loop Station range. The audio quality is excellent, playback remains clear as you layer tracks, and the six-track setup gives you plenty of room to build arrangements. I also found the interface more intuitive than its cockpit-like appearance suggests, with the color-coded controls and visual loop indicators helping you stay on top of what's happening.

However, it's not without its frustrations. The footswitches are small and can be fiddly to hit accurately, which isn't ideal when timing is everything. The onboard effects are useful, but I would have liked to see more recognizable recreations of Boss's standalone pedals. The Auto Off experience on my review unit was another unwelcome surprise, so I'd recommend checking the settings and saving your work regularly.

For guitarists and singer-songwriters who want to build elaborate live arrangements, the RC-600 offers a huge amount of creative potential. Beginners may find its deeper features take time to master, and those who mainly want to sketch out simple ideas could be better served by a more straightforward looper. But if you're willing to explore what it can do, there's a lot to get excited about.

Guitar World verdict: The Boss RC-600 is a powerful looping station for guitarists who want to build elaborate arrangements, with six tracks, extensive connectivity, and a flexible recording workflow. The small footswitches take some getting used to, and not every effect inspired me, but its creative potential makes it a compelling choice for players who have outgrown simpler loopers.

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