After Tom Petty unexpectedly died in 2017, his longtime partner in guitar and songwriting crime, Mike Campbell, found himself at a loss. But since then, he’s picked up the pieces and leaned heavily into his own band, the Dirty Knobs.

“Of course, I miss the Heartbreakers, and I miss my brother… that was very sad when that happened,” Campbell tells Guitar World. “But I’d always had it in the back of my mind that if the Heartbreakers ever retired, I would focus on the Dirty Knobs and make that my purpose.”

Campbell continues to expand on that purpose with The Dirty Knobs' fourth record, Mission of Mercy. “I named the record that because I kind of feel like The Dirty Knobs are on a mission of mercy,” he says. “We’re trying to bring a little relief from the wicked world we all live in.”

Songs like I Remember, Mission of Mercy, and Vicious Hangover do just that. But Campbell isn’t reinventing the wheel. “I stick with what I’m comfortable with,” he says. “I’ll try a new guitar or amp, but if I’m recording and working on a record, I don’t want to be bothered with too many choices. I want to focus on the song and the performance.”

For the most part, as he did with the Heartbreakers, Campbell leans on his beloved Fender Broadcaster and his gold top Gibson Les Paul, with a hint of Rickenbacker 12-string mixed in. “It’s whatever inspires you,” he says. “I’ll look at a guitar, and I’ll think, ‘I wonder what this chord would sound like on that guitar…”

Gear aside, when it comes down to it, Campbell is grateful to still be out there doing what he loves. “We, The Dirty Knobs, play these theaters; we have some rock ‘n’ roll soul healing together,” Campbell says.

He continues, “That’s the only way to get that in your life, you know? It has to be through that. So, that’s what I live for, and that’s what makes me happy. I’m very grateful to be where I am. I survived the [Tom Petty’s] death, moved on, and I keep making music.”

Do you still always write on guitar?

It used to always start on guitar, but lately, since I’ve been writing on my own, sometimes it’ll start with piano, or no instrument, and just in my head with some lyrics. I’ll hear something, and it’ll trigger something I heard in the Sixties, or whatever. Next thing you know, I’m writing a song.

The first single, I Remember, was written on piano, right?

Yeah, that’s an example of not writing on guitar. I’m not good on piano, but I can find chords. That song was just chords… on piano, you can have a bassline, and then the melodies on top, so it’s a little fuller than just a guitar chord. And then, I wrote the rest of the song over that.

I really like Let Me Back in My Dream. How did that come together?

I like that song a lot, too. I kind of dreamed that song up… no pun intended. [laughs] A lot of times, you can have a dream, and it might be a really good dream, and then you wake up, and you want to remember the dream and go back into it because you were enjoying it!

But it just vaporizes, and it’s gone if you don’t grab the idea right away. So, that’s what inspired that. And then, the music was just quickly written, probably, within five minutes. It’s just some loud chords and some unique chord changes in the verse. It’s mysterious.

How about the title track, Mission of Mercy?

I had that song in my head for a while in my tape library. I’d forgotten about it and never pursued it because I thought it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll enough. It’s a real homage to Brian Wilson, who is a big hero of mine. And so, when I was writing that song, it was with him in mind with those chord changes and the background vocals.

Is that style of music more ingrained in your songwriting than people realize?

I don’t know what people realize, but it’s certainly buried in my history of listening to music. I grew up on that stuff, but I like new music, too. I'm occasionally inspired by new music, but mostly, I get frustrated with it because it all sounds computerized, and there’s no magic in the songs like there was in the Sixties.

Is that to say that when it comes to your music, you’re all analog?

No, I’m not all analog. I use Pro Tools, which I’ve used for a long time, or at least since they got the sounds together. Now, with that, it’s hard to tell if you’re on tape or digital if you record it properly. But I don’t do a lot of technical stuff with Pro Tools; I just use it to record, rewind, and play, like a tape recorder.

One of the more fun songs on the record is Vicious Hangover. How did that one come together?

That’s a perfect example of spontaneity. The band was coming over that day, and right before they got into the studio, I thought of this idea, which was just real simple, and I threw the chords together with rock ‘n’ roll energy. But I didn’t have it sussed out, so they came in, we changed the chords around, and we were able to capture it in one take.

[Guitarist] Chris Holt plays the song on that song, right?

Yeah, he did. It was all live, and the first time we played it through, I said, “Just go for it.” And he’s that good and has just been a breath of fresh air for the band. He’s so talented on so many levels, and brings amazing harmonies, doubles my voice, and can play strings and keyboards, too. He’s also really easy to get along with.

What’s your tried-and-true key to finding guitar tones these days?

Good question! I don’t spend a lot of time looking for tones. I get an amp setup that I like, starting off with the gain that’s right for the song, and then I try a couple of guitars. So, whichever guitar seems to fit, I start with that, and then if I get to a point where it needs to be beefed up, I might try a boost pedal or a wah. But I don’t do a lot of pedals. I like to get the tone from the guitar and amp if I can.

What was your main rig for this record?

For this record – and the last couple of records – I’ve reconnected with an old amp that I used early in the Heartbreakers, an Ampeg Rocket. I used that for the whole album, and Chris used a Fender Princeton. And for guitars, I gravitate toward my Broadcaster, my Les Paul, and occasionally, a Rickenbacker twelve-string.

What led you to reconnect with the Ampeg now?

It was just in my closet, and one day I pulled it out, turned it on, and thought, “Wow… this is a sound that I’ve been missing.” It sounded really good, and I sort of stumbled back into the room, and there it was. [laughs]

Do you put much stock into the so-called “connection” with a particular guitar, or amp, or can you write on any guitar, at any time?

That’s a deep question. If you get in touch with your instrument, and it speaks to you, it'll tell you what it wants to play a lot of times. If you’re doodling around, there will just be certain things that sound good on this guitar, and you’ll go back to it, and it'll become a direction for a song. So, a lot of times, the instrument, if you really get in tune with it, it'll speak to you.

Considering the years you spent with the Heartbreakers and the void you found yourself in after Tom’s death, what does the positive reception toward The Dirty Knobs mean to you?

Well, it’s my life. It means a lot. The good thing about The Dirty Knobs is that we started out playing in little bars, and now that we’ve done relatively well, we can play theaters, which I love. My goal was to get out of the bars and play theaters, and we’ve gotten there now.

I mean… it’s not a money-making thing, like the Heartbreakers, which was a big financial success. With this, I’m doing okay, but I’m doing what I love to do. Nothing makes me happier than taking this band into a theater with a group of people and having a moment.

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

The Jam bassist, Bruce Foxton, has revealed he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, following show cancellations and recent speculation about his health.

“It’s no secret that I’ve undergone treatment for cancer and am still having scans on a regular basis to keep an eye on that,” Foxton wrote on social media.

“However, what you don’t know is that the cancer treatment in itself caused some significant issues for me and investigations into all of that uncovered the fact that I’m now facing a future living with Parkinson’s Disease… and I’m determined to do that as well as I possibly can.”

Parkinson's Disease is a disorder of the nervous system that impacts movement and gets worse over time. Symptoms include problems with balance, uncontrollable shaking of the hands and fingers, and stiffness.

Foxton describes the diagnosis as “a huge shock” and it's “taking a long time to let that sink in and for me to accept that my body and mind are dealing with something completely out of my control.”

He says that he now has to face the mental and physical repercussions of the diagnosis daily and is taking the right medication in order to “carry on doing what I love and what I live for in a relaxed and supportive environment.”

While he’s been active for over 40 years, Foxton had to call off touring with From The Jam in May 2025 due to health issues, but is still touring under his own name, where the conditions are more under his control.

“With your help, I’m going to keep going and playing live for as long as I’m able to do it,” he concludes. “It’s good for me, my future health, and hopefully good for all of you.”

Back in 2023, Foxton spoke to Bass Player about writing with Paul Weller (and why the Beatles can't sue him for the Start! bassline).

A genuinely unique character, whose taste for Jack Daniel’s is only equalled by his love for classic rock ’n’ roll, Michael Anthony has earned a reputation as one of the most hard-rocking bassists of his generation.

He’s played in several now-legendary bands, with Van Halen alone selling upwards of 80 million albums worldwide, snagging a Grammy and entering the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

But long before the arena tours and platinum-selling albums, Anthony was just another Southern California kid hauling gear into backyards, playing fraternity parties and dreaming of making a living through music.

“Snake was the first power trio I ever played in,” said Anthony in the November ’95 issue of Bass Player. “I played bass guitar and sang lead; we did a lot of ZZ Top, Cream, Allman Brothers, and Doobie Brothers covers. We were playing backyard parties when I first became aware of the Van Halen brothers.

“I was going to Arcadia High Schooling California, and we had a carnival on our field, and they played. Back then they were called Mammoth – it was Ed on guitar, Al on drums, and some bass player. Ed was singing lead.”

Anthony later attended Pasadena City College, where the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth were also enrolled.

“My father wouldn't let me major in music, so I was majoring in psychology – but I took a couple of music classes, like jazz improvisation, theory, and piano to learn how to read bass clef. After about a year, my father finally let me major in music, so I switched all my classes.

“Around that time, Snake opened up for Van Halen – Roth had just joined the band, and they asked me if they could borrow our PA. Theirs had blown up.

“I'd see Alex coming from his Jazz Improv class, and I remember Roth coming over to me; he was wearing this little vest, had a cane, and his hair was dyed like a skunk. He said, ‘How do you like my boys?’ I stepped back and thought, ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ Little did I know what it would lead up to!

"A while later, Ed told a friend of mine that the band was going to be getting rid of their bass player. My friend told Ed, ‘Hey, Mike might be interested in joining.’

“I had never played with musicians like Eddie and Al before, because Snake was straightforward 4/4 rock. I mean, these guys had played Gazzarri's in Hollywood, and the biggest thing I had done was a backyard party. They ran me through beat changes and different time signatures, and we just jammed.

“Afterwards, Ed and Al asked me if I wanted to join. I thought about it for half a second and said, ‘I'm in!’ I learned five cover tunes a day so we could play parties. We eventually started playing clubs, and we also did weddings.

“We played everything from the Ohio Players to K.C. & the Sunshine Band. You would love the sight of Van Halen doing Get Down Tonight! But by the third set, when everybody was good and tanked up – boy, we'd be blazin’!

“I soon realized that my two Acoustic 150 amps weren't cutting it, because by this time, Ed had found his 100-watt Marshall. So I bought my first SVT stack and retaliated. I remember thinking, ‘I'm in the big leagues now!’”

Anthony and the boys weren't in the big leagues yet, but they were close. In 1976, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons took the foursome under his wing and produced a five-song demo, but all it yielded, said Anthony, was “a good tape.”

One year later, at a Monday-night gig at Hollywood's Starwood Club, Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin and producer Ted Templeman saw the band and offered them a deal. In February 1978, Van Halen hit the stores; globe-circling tours, platinum records, and the usual rock ’n’ roll excesses followed, until the negative effects of stardom started taking their toll in 1984.

“During our '84 tour, there was a lot of tension – Ed had written Jump, and it turned out to be the biggest single Van Halen ever did. Dave never liked Ed playing keyboards, but Ed finally said, ‘Fuck you!’ Then he met Valerie Bertinelli, and I think that pissed Dave off more.

“At the end of that tour, we fired our tour manager because of some skeletons we found in his closet. So Ed, Al, and I were in the studio starting to work up some music, and Dave decided he wanted to record a solo EP with California Girls. We knew he was testing the water to see how he'd do on his own. All of a sudden, the dream was over and Dave had left.

“At that point, we didn't know if the band would continue, but we eventually realized that the music was coming from us, not Dave. A lot of people thought he was Van Halen – even our record company wanted us to change our name. When Dave left the rest of us hanging, we thought, ‘What do we do now?’”

What they did was hook up with ex-Montrose singer Sammy Hagar via a recommendation from Eddie Van Halen's car mechanic (as fate would have it, he was Hager’s mechanic, too).

Their first collaboration, 5150, became Van Halen's first #1 album, and it has since sold over six million copies.

Gibson has put a long-scale spin on the Les Paul Custom by matching Fender’s favorite scale length – meet the 25.5" Long Scale Custom.

Whereas Fender’s Stratocaster, Telecaster and Jazzmaster models favor 25.5” scale lengths, Gibson typically opts for a more stunted 24.75” setup for its catalog. The Les Paul, SG, ES-335… you name it, it will have a 24.75” scale length.

Along with body shapes, wood choices and tonal setups, the contrasting scale lengths is a key differential between the two brands, and usually a contributing factor for many players when determining whether they are a Gibson or Fender player.

There are distinct playing differences between 24.75” and 25.5” scale length. The former often translates to a looser, slinkier feel, owing to the shortened distance between the bridge and nut. The latter, meanwhile, has increased tension and as such a snappier, tighter feel.

Under the fingers, they feel different, and they sound different, too. Now, Gibson has catered to those players who prefer a longer scale length by introducing the Les Paul Custom Long Scale.

Everything is as you’d expect from a Les Paul Custom. There’s a mahogany build, ebony fingerboard with block inlays, gold hardware. Yes, there’s the body, neck and headstock binding. Tones come by way of 490R and 498T humbuckers.

But while that all sounds familiar, the scale length doesn’t. A Les Paul that matches the setup of a Stratocaster or Telecaster? Now, that’s a very intriguing proposition indeed.

Gibson has said it’s tailored the Les Paul Custom Long Scale for heavier genres and drop-tuning, and while that will certainly appeal to a wide pool of players, I’m more interesting in just how different this will feel from a conventional LP.

It’s also interesting that Gibson is starting to experiment with scale lengths. The Victory, for example, embraces the 25.5” setup. At NAMM, Gibson also teased that some baritone models could be on the cards.

The Les Paul Custom Long Scale is available now for $5,999.

Visit Gibson for more.

In related news, earlier this year Gibson revived the Les Paul Custom '70s and made it available as a USA Standard model for the first time in 20 years.

Whether they’re being praised as torch-carrying titans or derided as classic-rock cosplayers, Canadian duo Crown Lands are often cited as the modern-day Rush.

But Kevin Comeau – their guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and now primary producer-engineer – isn’t concerned about the endless comparisons, which continue with the release of their third LP, the conceptual sci-fi epic Apocalypse.

But they’re expecting that chatter; after all, the reference point was consciously baked into the band’s DNA back in 2015, when he met his long-lost brother in prog, drummer-singer Cody Bowles.

“When we started the band, we joked to ourselves, ‘What if the White Stripes covered Rush?’” Comeau tells Guitar World. “We just kept leaning more into the Rush than the White Stripes as time went on. I still think, sonically, Rush’s Moving Pictures is as perfect a record as you can get. As a producer, I’m always chasing the clarity of something like Power Windows.”

In fact, connecting these virtuosic Canadian bands feels like the ultimate accolade. “We’re not worried about people comparing us to Rush,” he says. “I don’t think you can get more complimentary than a comparison to Rush. I love seeing the discourse online – ‘I don’t like them. They sound too much like Rush.’ Or ‘I don’t like them. They don’t sound enough like them.’

“I’ve always loved Rush’s [philosophy of thinking] – ‘We want to be the world’s smallest symphony orchestra.’ Trying to do that with two people is like trying to one-up our heroes – or one-down our heroes.”

Apocalypse is their most grandiose adventure into this symphonic realm, building on the proggy template – and interstellar good-and-evil storyline – they established with 2023’s Fearless.

The album balances spacey balladry (Through the Looking Glass) with heavy, punchy rockers (Blackstar), all building to the 19-minute climax of the title track, which also pulls inspiration from the Allman Brothers Band and the bonkers 1974 Yes piece The Gates of Delirium.

Their long-form centerpiece, with its textural shifts and cinematic key/tempo changes, offers plenty of space for Comeau on guitar – from crunching power chords to jittery arpeggios to bluesy leads that sound beamed in from The Wall.

That fluidity and constant surprise keeps the piece engaging, much like Echoes or Supper’s Ready. “When you have a record about going through a black hole and fighting your arch villain through time and space,” he says, “the music ends up writing itself. You end up pushing all the crazy polyrhythms even further.”

But the monster runtime wasn’t the ultimate goal, even if Comeau gets a nerdy thrill out of seeing the track tick past the 19-minute mark.

“You’re chasing length a lot of the time in prog,” Comeau says. “I’m always chasing the 20-minute opus. When we sent the final mix to Ted Jensen, it was 19 minutes and 1 second. Mastering engineers will often lop off any dead space, and the master came back at 18:58.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever had to send a revision – ‘It sounds great, but can you restore the four seconds of silence at the very end so that it stays past 19 minutes?’ It’s so stupid, but that’s progressive rock, baby!”

Even if all of these tunes had been short, Comeau would’ve had his hands full on Apocalypse; along with playing guitar and producing the bulk of the material, he also continued to handle all of the bass, synths and bass pedals. To put it in Rush terms: part Alex Lifeson, part Geddy Lee.

To pull off that crazy feat on stage as a two-piece, especially with their songs growing more complex, Crown Lands would either need to scale back dramatically or get super creative.

They’ve chosen the latter route, with Comeau often playing a double-neck guitar/bass custom-built by luthier Brock Stoyko. (There was also a major assist from Lee’s bass tech, John “Skully” McIntosh, who helped him wire it. And to land on a suitably “ergonomic” design, Comeau went to Lee’s home and took measurements of the Rush legend’s own double-necks.)

Comeau’s admiration clearly extends well beyond “casual fan.” In 2021, Crown Lands joined Lifeson on stage during the annual Andy Kim Christmas Show in Toronto, joining for an all-star Led Zeppelin medley.

“In rehearsals, I’m playing every Rush riff I know, like The Necromancer, and Alex is just laughing,” Comeau says.

“He was so cool. He said, ‘I don’t want to play my double-neck for this song – it’s too long and heavy.’ I said, ‘I’ll do it!’ He lent me his white Gibson EDS-1275 for Stairway, so I’m doing the 12-string part while he’s doing the solo. I’m like, ‘Holy shit, this is life-affirming.’”

Later, Comeau helped Lifeson catalog and tune his guitars for a charity auction, and he wound up being Lee’s keyboard tech ahead of 2022 Taylor Hawkins tribute show.

Prog is in Crown Lands’ blood, and their Rush worship is pure. “When I found Cody, it was like, ‘It’s perfect!’ We’re so deep into this niche; I don’t know where we’d be if we didn’t have each other to fill in [our] musical holes. I see that in Rush.

“They’re such singular musicians that, if they were in any other context, it wouldn’t work. The way they were able to last for 40 years, how they’ve stayed friends when the meat grinder of the industry destroys friendships, is so special.”

• Apocalypse is out now via Inside Out.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Jackson has unveiled its latest signature guitar for Brandon Ellis: a 27-fret shred machine that brings some serious upgrades to the Kelly design.

The former Black Dahlia Murder member is no stranger to Jackson Kelly guitars. He already has one signature under his belt. But this new version, the KE27, is a different beast altogether.

The highlight is that epic fretboard, which bumps the fret count from 24 to a whopping 27. Twenty-seven frets?! That is insane. Not only that, they’re jumbo stainless steel. Pair that with the 12”-16” compound radius fretboard and you have a guitar primed for fretboard pyrotechnics.

The maple neck and fretboard, which has black sharkfin inlays, is fixed to a nyatoh body. Enter the next standout feature: the Gold Crackle finish. Is it an upgrade on the Green Crackle found on its predecessor? Yes, yes it is. Especially when paired with the gold hardware.

Tone-wise, there’s a Seymour Duncan signature Dyad Parallel Axis and PA-STK pickup combo. The former has a hybrid coil design for a wide-open dynamic sound, and is wired to a push/pull series/parallel volume pot. The latter is for “hum-free clarity with smooth sustain”.

Finishing touches include a top-mount Gotoh GE1996T double-locking tremolo, a reverse Jackson headstock, Dunlop strap locks, Luminlay side dots, and ivory binding on the neck and headstock.

“The KE27 has really evolved into a completely different guitar in its own right,” Ellis says of his new signature. “While the first iteration was built on the standard Jackson Kelly spec, this one features meaningful customizations to virtually every aspect.

“When I pick this guitar up, I'm just in awe. It plays like a custom shop guitar and has a unique feel and sound all its own.”

The Pro Plus Series Signature Brandon Ellis Kelly KE27 is available now for $2,199.

Head over to Jackson to find out more.

If there's one thing you can always count on, it’s that the 4th of July sales bring an array of deals on guitars – and this year it’s particularly good if you’re a fan of the Les Paul, like me. The Gibson Les Paul is the dream instrument for so many guitar players, and it’s easy to see why. This rock ‘n’ roll icon has produced some of the best electric guitar tones of all time and has been the go-to guitar for some of the biggest names in music. There is only one catch… they’re expensive. Well, you needn’t worry, as today, I’ve found a bunch of Les Pauls on sale across Guitar Center, Sweetwater and Musician’s Friend, and in some cases there’s up to $899 off!

Now, if you’ve followed Guitar World’s deal coverage for a while, you may know that I’m a devoted Gibson guitar fanatic. While my collection isn't limited to models from the Nashville guitar giant, they make up a significant portion of it. Out of the 25+ guitars I own, 13 are Gibson. Of course, I'm not a purist who sneers at Epiphone. In fact, I believe they offer some of the best value in the guitar market today.

In my view, Epiphone’s current lineup strikes a compelling balance of timeless designs and modern features. From expertly crafted replicas of iconic Gibson models to innovative new creations, there’s plenty to love.

Below, I’ve picked out a few of my favorite Epiphone and Gibson models from across the internet that are heavily discounted in the July 4th sales.

You won’t hear Bill Frisell say a bad word about a well-made archtop. The archetypical jazz guitar has a special place in his heart. But there is a practicality about the Fender Telecaster that makes it his number one.

He tells Guitarist that it’s not only that it’s durable, it can be customised, with his number one electric guitar on new album, In My Dreams, unlike any Tele you’ll find in today’s Fender catalogue…

“My first guitar I ever got was in the summer of ’65 – a Fender Mustang – but soon after that I went into the pawn shop and saw a late-’50s Esquire that was $75. I thought, ‘Oh, that looks cool, I’ll get that.’ With the Telecaster, it’s like, they got it just right at the beginning, y’know?

“Everything about it is so simple. Everything you need is right there. I have a number of Teles now, and some of them have different pickups or whatever. But I just have an instinct for all of them. I know where the volume knob is, where the pickup switch is – I don’t have to reprogram my brain if I switch between them.

“Some of my guitars are just straight Telecasters, but the design is so easy to mess with. With my main instrument, it’s basically a Telecaster, but it comes from a bunch of different models, all put together by JW Black, who was one of the first guys that worked at the Fender Custom Shop. So he’s serious about Telecasters, knows them inside out and restores old ones.

“We have a sort of a dangerous relationship because he’ll always get some idea, like, ‘Oh my God, what if we put this pickup in this guitar…?’ So my main Telecaster is a shorter Gibson scale and the neck pickup is made by TK Smith – I guess he was inspired by those old Bigsby pickups.

“It’s painted by my friend Terry Turrell, and the bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan, a Little ’59 or something. That Telecaster was the only guitar I used on my new album, In My Dreams.

“I have to say, I love playing archtops. Like, I have a Collings I-30 that I love. But it’s harder to travel with those. I don’t have a crew and roadies, or a truck with 50 guitars. When I travel, I carry one guitar and I end up checking it in under the plane.

“With a Telecaster, you can pretty much just throw it down there in the hold and it’ll survive somehow. And even if it doesn’t survive, you can just get a screwdriver and screw it back together.

“So there’s this practical thing about the Telecaster for travelling. I’d love to go out with a Gibson L-5 or something, but you just know it would be destroyed in a matter of minutes by the airlines!”

• In My Dreams is out now via Blue Note.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Over the years, Joe Perry has put together a seriously impressive guitar collection that, at one point, was recorded as 600 electric guitars and acoustic guitars. However, there is one particular guitar that he let go many years ago that he still wishes was in his possession.

In an interview with Guitarist, the Aerosmith guitarist was quizzed over whether he’d ever sold a guitar that he now particularly regrets parting ways with.

The story involves an unassuming red Hofner Stratocaster clone that was purchased on the road, which Perry used back in the 1990s to serenade the Lake Sunapee locals on 4th of July each year with a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

“I did that for a couple of years with that particular guitar, and as the years went on the guitar ended up getting back with my main collection,” Perry reflects. “I was kinda in one of those moods at the end of the tour, and I had like 400 of these guitars that I never played.

“I said, ‘I gotta get rid of some of these things. It’s time to clean house a little bit.’ I earmarked a few guitars to go and somehow that guitar got on the list.

“And like three or four months later, I found out that it was gone and was like, ‘Next time, I gotta pay more attention to this. I’m not getting rid of anything else for a while.’

However, Perry would cross paths with the Hofner S-type again a few years later – when it was presented to him at a train station by the fan who got their hands on the six-string.

“A couple of years later, we’re on the bullet train in Japan, and as the bullet train is pulling out 30 or 40 people follow us up there. As the train was moving along, I saw a kid holding that guitar out for me to sign it.

“But the train was already moving, slowly pulling out, and the kid was holding it out with a Magic Marker. I’m thinking, ‘Man, I gotta get the kid’s number to see if I could buy it back or trade it for something else,’ because it did have some sentimental value, you know?

“But we were off to the next city, and at that point I didn’t have any ideas about how to get in touch with the guy. I suppose I could have tracked him down through the fan club and tried to figure out who it was, but it was lost.”

Perry hopes the story will have a happy ending, though, and is holding out hope that he may be reunited with the Hofner at some point in the future.

“I’ll buy it back. I’ll trade it for something else, you know? It would be fun to get that back. And again, that was one of those off-the-wall, not exactly the hippest guitar of the month.

“But it sounded pretty cool and it had a really good neck. It was more about the sentimental things. I regret having lost that.”

This is just one example of Perry letting go of a guitar he later wished he kept hold of. Speaking to Total Guitar, he revealed the golden-era Aerosmith guitar he misses the most.

Tobias Osland is the wildly inspiring guitarist and songwriter behind one of the most essential bands in hardcore right now, the Norwegian trio Hammok. He started in a place familiar to most players: banging out single-string renditions of Smoke On The Water and Seven Nation Army. The crucial difference is that he didn’t stay there.

His playing on the band’s latest effort, When Does This Place Become Our Scene, is an enthralling, kaleidoscopic blend of everything from the deeply industrial to colossal bending of metal’s finest dark-arts noise-smiths like Chelsea Wolfe, right through to math-rock rhythms and the manic melodicism of Refused. He knows both how to let it breathe and to leave you breathless.

Having harbored early and ultimately unfulfilled ambitions to be a drummer, Osland is a rhythm-first player – but don’t mistake that for being basic. Those instincts inform much of his playing, whether it’s his millipede fingering on Blast Off or the thundering arrangement of BANG.

“I do this picking thing a lot,” he says, “which is kind of a galloping rhythm and is very, very present in Blast Off. It’s very natural to me, but it’s not very natural to a lot of other guitarists. It’s like it’s in my hand. We have a guitar player with us now; he’s been struggling for ages getting it up to speed, and I was like, ‘Why is this so confusing?’”

He puts it down to his rhythmic obsession, along with hours spent drilling speed to Slipknot and the patterns of Dillinger Escape Plan and At The Drive-In; but it never feels dull.

“Everything is rhythm first; I feel like a lot of times it’s a drum beat and then I’m supplying the guitar on top,” he says. He’ll often flip the script by using the guitar as a percussive instrument – repeating a pattern, and then shifting the bass beneath it – for melodic interest.

“I fell in love with that on this album. Just not doing so many of the usual big chords and keeping the guitar to these small rhythmic patterns, like the song CND – that’s a kick pattern common in club music. I found it on TikTok. I was like, ‘Maybe that can be the guitar and you just make everything move around that.’”

Warped through a Whammy pedal and punctuated by wailing ghost-train leads and goliath bass drops, it’s hugely effective. It’s also one of those stupidly simple, massively inspiring ideas that works across just about any genre. I mention it feels like the rhythmic equivalent of lead guitarists channeling the phrasing of horn players.

“I’ve seen a lot of people talk about having rap flows in your head while you’re improvising guitar solos,” Osland responds. “Like following a Tupac or a Jay-Z flow in your head and playing to that. It’s fascinating.”

He’s equally varied and instinctive in his approach to tones. Most players can relate to the sinking feeling of having a great part lose its luster as they cycle presets in search of the ideal texture. The Hammok guitarist, again, does things differently.

“I think a sound can come first – you’re just playing to that sound or playing to whatever instrument you’re using. Like, is your guitar super-poorly intonated? What does that do to your playing? The guitar I played for seven years was impossible to intonate, so I couldn’t play open chords. That shaped how I play.

“Doing this album, I stumbled across so many sounds. Gooning for Free was just an accident of having my distortion pedals on and pitching the entire guitar an octave down with a Whammy pedal and reacting to that sound. I played one chord and it was like, ‘Whoa, that moves the entire room!’”

You can change your playing faster and more instinctively than you can switch a tone, meaning it’s a much more immediate way to write. “It’s all about responding,” Osland agrees. “There’s a lot of guitar moments on the album that I recorded with my phone in my bedroom, like the intro for CND and Confidence Of A Beaten Horse.

“Then I just popped it into the session and it sounded cool. I’m very happy with that. It feels like you’re collecting the memories along the way of creating the song – and it’s all there in the final product.”

It may not shock you to learn that the maverick guitarist-songwriter-producer behind one of the year’s most exciting and sonically unhinged punk releases is not super-fussy about his gear. His main guitar is an utterly trashed, but characterful 2009 Gibson Melody Maker.

He reports he’s broken the headstock twice: once on tour in the UK as guitarist with Sløtface; and once in a performance for a group of elementary school kids that I truly wish I’d seen. “It was this school program thing; we played two or three shows every day for from Monday to Friday.

“The last second of the last show of the week, I was out in the crowd and banging on the neck, and the headstock just popped off. It brought back all the trauma of the UK tour. I was like, ‘I’m standing in the middle of these young school children destroying my guitar – for this?!’”

His other option is a Frankenstein-ed Strat that kind of did come back from the dead: “The one that I use, my dad found on the street. I put a new neck on, and somehow it works. The pickups are super-high output because they’re super-cheap, so it’s super-aggressive.”

A new, considerably lower-performance spin on the Superstrat, then. On the amp front it’s a Laney V100R and a Vox V30 for most of the album (Quad Cortex live), though he admits to having a secret weapon in the box.

“I use lots of plugins – a lot of the stuff is meant for dubstep and those distortions are just insane. They’re not vintage, they’re not trying to be some cool outboard gear; they’re just kind of fucked. Whatever Skrillex is using is probably going to make your guitar explode, which is fun!”

• When Does This Place Become Our Scene is out now via Sargent House.

Call it luck or serendipity, but growing up in Southwest Detroit alongside Jack White led Dominic Davis to an illustrious career playing bass on records by the crème de la crème of the pop world, including Pharrell Williams, Adele, and Beyoncé.

And, in what can only be described as a full-circle moment, over a decade ago, White invited his long-time friend to be the bassist for his solo band.

“I’d go to Jack’s house when we were 9 or 10, and we’d play in his attic with his brother Eddie,” Davis tells Bass Player.

“One day, since my guitar wouldn’t stay in tune, Jack said, ‘You know what? I bet you’re a bass player.’ He put a bass in my hands, and that was the beginning of it all. I still play guitar, but I’ve always felt like a bass player.”

Growing up with White also came with a couple of, well, quirks. “He was into some things that kids our age weren’t. He was always making things, like cutting up Dr. Pepper cans and making trains, planes, or whatever.

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

All these decades later, White and Davis have a mutual understanding of how the other works and fits into the puzzle.

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

Bass Player’s full interview with Dominic Davis will be published in the coming weeks.

In more recent news, White spoke about why he always shied away from your typical Les Pauls and Strats – and how he found his own voice by seeking out a different kind of guitar.

Bob Dylan has had some serious lineup changes over the past few weeks.

After Julian Lage sneakily replaced Doug Lancio at Dylan’s Santa Barbara show on June 17, and second guitarist Bob Britt quit with a “Sayonara Bobby” post on social media, Dylan fans were left wondering who would join his rotating roster of guitarists.

Turns out, it wasn’t too long before we got the answer, as Chicago-based blues guitarist Joel Paterson made his debut with Dylan’s band on June 29 at the Moody Amphitheater in Austin.

Up until last week, Paterson held a weekly residency at Chicago’s historic Green Mill Cocktail Lounge with his jazz quartet. Just two days ago, he went from playing to a crowd of 150 to performing for 5,000 alongside the Bard.

While it’s unclear how acquainted Paterson was with Dylan’s complete repertoire before he landed the gig, he did have a previous relationship with at least some of his songs, having played pedal steel on If Not for You, To Ramona, When to See the Gypsy, and Tell Me That It Isn’t True on alt-country and indie folk band The Cactus Blossoms’ Bob Dylan Songs Vol. 1 EP.

Paterson has been a mainstay of the Chicago roots music scene for over two decades.

Aside from his new gig with Dylan, his current projects include The Joel Paterson Quartet and The Western Elstons. He’s also an accomplished studio musician, having played with the likes of JD McPherson, Kelly Hogan, Pokey LaFarge, and Deke Dickerson.

As for Britt, following his public post announcing his departure, his wife, Etta Britt, took to Facebook to clear the air that he didn’t leave because of Julian Lage.

“Julian has gone back to his tour. He enjoyed playing with him and said he’s a great guy.”

Lage’s representatives confirmed with Rolling Stone that the jazz virtuoso will continue playing with Dylan this year – at least when his schedule permits. Comparing the pair's gig calendars for the coming weeks, it looks like Lage may make every show except the July 4 date.

Guitar World reached out to Joel Paterson with a request for comment about his new gig.

British MP Andy Burnham might be on the cusp of becoming the next Prime Minister of the UK, but he’s still had time to show off his surprising guitar chops.

The former Mayor of Manchester is set to take office from outgoing Labour Party leader Keir Starmer after a fairly turbulent few weeks for British politics. Nevertheless, he’s found the time to sit down with Manchester guitar legend Aziz Ibrahim of the Stone Roses for a candid chat about all things guitar.

The pair sit down for a chat for the Manchester Museum, where Burnham showed he can throw a few chords together.

Armed with a Gretsch Electromatic Jet, he showcased his talents by strumming an A minor-shaped barre chord, with a look of slightly pleasant surprise etched across his face.

“So you know your power chords,” Ibrahim responds, with Burnham quipping back a satisfied, “there you go.”

Burnham’s love for music has been evident throughout his career, as he has been a vocal figure in addressing the UK’s grassroots venue crisis. In 2024, he said that “the industry needs to support its own grassroots venues, rehearsal spaces and talent development systems” (via NME).

Sure, Burnham is unlikely to be joining a Van Halen covers band any time soon, but he’s certainly fared better on the instrument than former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who once went viral for playing an acoustic guitar, because he bizarrely fretted the strings behind the capo.

Still, the most impressive playing we’ve seen from a politician in recent years goes to former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who played a Neil Young classic with a Ukrainian covers band in 2024 as he pledged his support to the nation’s war efforts.

When Eric Bell left Thin Lizzy, the group overhauled their guitar department, bringing in both Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham for a soon-to-be-legendary guitar tandem. But Robertson admits that he wasn’t all the convinced by Gorham at the start.

Gary Moore had stepped into the picture after Bell’s departure, with vocalist Phil Lynott later dramatically bolstering the band line-up with twice as much electric guitar firepower.

Robertson was first through the door, then he watched Gorham’s entrance into the band in real time.

“It was Phil’s decision because he liked his look, and he was American,” Robertson says in the new issue of Guitarist. “Brian [Downey, drums] and I didn’t think he was up to it, to be honest. He was perfectly capable of playing the major and minor chords in the right place, but not the lead.

“You’re playing a minor blues, and you’d say, ‘Take a solo,’ but he played it [in] major. That’s what jarred with Brian and I.”

There was also the small matter of Gorham’s Japanese Les Paul copy falling to pieces during his audition. Speaking previously to Guitar World about his audition, Gorham admitted it was a “chaotic” trial by fire. But he did enough to get the gig – something 25 players before him couldn’t manage.

Regardless, Robertson had his reservations.

“He was more of a rhythm player in the beginning,” he says of Gorham. “The solos he did take were meticulously worked out. They weren’t solos, as I understand solos. Even from the early days, I would just say, ‘Run the track, and I’ll just jam.’ We’d do it three or four times, and then edit them, so there’s some spontaneity.”

Gorham preferred the more exacting approach, a contrast to Robertson’s casual flair. Still, their guitar harmonies – which Robertson said he led on – became their trademark, with The Boys are Back in Town quickly becoming a staple hit when it was released in 1976.

In related news, Robertson also detailed how a guitar swap with Jeff Beck led him to bring a new instrument into the band.

He would eventually leave Lizzy behind, with Gorham partnering with Gary Moore on the 1979 LP, Black Rose: A Rock Legend. He says he knows what the band lost when he stepped down.

Robertson’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitarist. Print and digital copies can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

As a prolific songwriter, Stephen Bishop has penned songs for the likes of Art Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, and Phil Collins.

However, Bishop is also the artist behind the 1977 soft rock hit On and On, as well as Save It for a Rainy Day, from his breakthrough album, Careless, which featured a veritable list of collaborators, including Eric Clapton.

“When my manager at the time, Bob Ellis, was at Shangri-La Studios visiting Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, another of his artists, Eric happened to be there,” Bishops recalls of the collaboration in a new Guitar World.

“Bob told him, ‘You should meet this young artist I'm working with named Stephen Bishop. He's a funny guy – I think you’d like him.’”

Clapton dropped by the studio with his guitar, and, as Ellis predicted, the two hit it off immediately.

Bishop continues, “I played Eric some of the songs I was working on, and to my relief, he really liked them.”

Clapton performed the guitar solo on the single Save It for a Rainy Day, which ended up peaking at number 22 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 when it was released in December 1976.

He also provided what Bishop describes as “beautiful slide guitar work” on the fourth track on the album, Sinking in an Ocean of Tears.

“As a 16-year-old kid, I’d seen Cream perform, so having Eric playing on my debut album was pretty surreal,” he says. “He was exactly like what you’d imagine a rock star should look like; he had this effortless charisma about him.

“What means the most to me, though, is that all these years later we're still friends and still keep in touch.”

However, as important as Clapton was to Bishop’s breakthrough, no one was as critical to his success as his “lifelong friend” Art Garfunkel.

“Art’s support helped open doors that ultimately led to my record deal,” Bishop reveals. “He also sang background vocals on several songs on Careless, and I returned the favor by singing background vocals on Breakaway. That's how our friendship began, and it's lasted for more than 50 years.”

Guitar World’s interview with Stephen Bishop will be published in the coming week.

And, speaking of Clapton, his ‘Summersburst’ – used on Cream's debut album – has finally been unearthed after 60 years.

STL Tones has expanded its artist royalty ecosystem, allowing players to earn money from the tones they create.

Tone chasing can feel like a thankless task at the best of times, so the prospect of earning recurring royalties from the end result is certainly an extra incentive. Better yet, STL says over $2.5m of artist royalties has been generated on the platform so far.

Until now, its signature tone packs, sold through ToneHub and ControlHub, have been created by select guitarists and producers, including those behind Bring Me The Horizon and Converge. Spiritbox producer, Daniel Braunstein, is also on the platform.

Now, the scheme is now being rolled out to the public.

Players can upload their tone packs to ToneHub, or their mixing and mastering chains to ControlHub, and earn royalties when they used by others in STL’s growing community. Your tones will need to cut through the mix of options on the site, but STL feels it’s an important moment in the industry.

“The launch represents a shift toward sharing platform revenue directly with the users contributing to the ecosystem,” it says. “The launch also reflects a broader evolution happening across the music industry, where artists increasingly rely on multiple revenue streams to build sustainable careers.”

Indeed, extra revenue streams have become a necessity for the modern working musician, so the STL scheme seems like a worthwhile feather to add to your bow.

ToneHub subscriptions cost $14.99 a month. It give access to over 7,000 pro-captured tones, and allows users to capture and publish their tones for others to enjoy.

See STL Tones for more.

Johnny Marr’s cleaning out his closet and the world’s wealthiest music fans are warming up their credit cards for yet another hot-ticket celebrity guitar auction. Why does this keep happening? Answering that very question through the medium of – as one fan describes it – “a snarky faux interview”… it’s Fret Buzz!

Lend us a dollar – Johnny Marr is auctioning his guitar collection in September.

My pleasure. So you’re good for the other $199,000?

Excuse me?

As befits an indie-guitar god, Johnny’s instruments are quite expensive. For instance, there’s a $200,000 estimate for his fabled 1960 ES-355.

Hmmm. Anything in my budget?

How about $106,000 for the ’82 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo played on This Charming Man?

Heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Well, we told you they’re expensive. Basically, if you put your hand in the air anywhere near Christie’s auction house in London, you’ll accidentally default on your mortgage for a road-soiled wah pedal.

Has Johnny fallen on hard times?

Don’t worry about Johnny. He’s doing very nicely. He’s just offloading a few dozen guitars because he “didn’t like the idea of my studio space becoming a museum”.

First-world problems…

Anyway, Johnny is famously a charming man, and the proceeds will go to various charities, including the Guide Dogs For The Blind Association.

Wow. Those guide dogs are going to be loaded. Will they all get gold collars?

That’s not how animal charities work.

How did this auction craze start, anyway?

Back in 1999, Eric Clapton sold his first batch, including the ’57 Brownie Strat. Since then, it’s gone gangbusters. In March, David Gilmour’s Black Strat regained the title of World’s Most Expensive Guitar, fetching $14.6m.

But aren’t these just ordinary production guitars that happened to be played by talented people?

Johnny reckons there’s more to it: “I once asked this acupuncturist if guitars had chi – a life force. He said, ‘Yeah, your guitars have got chi in.’ I was like, ‘I knew it!’”

Why don’t manufacturers just put in the chi at the factory?

Chi doesn’t work like that. It’s more of a spiritual thing. It’s under your fingernails.

Who has $14.6m, anyway?

Oh, all sorts of people. Tech bros. Russian princes. Centuries-old dynasties of European vampires. Regular folks, y’know?

Are you being sarcastic?

Yeah. People get annoyed by celebrity guitar auctions. But also excited. And jealous too. It’s hard to read the room sometimes.

Why the resentment?

It’s the notion of rock’s most cherished guitars being held captive in the iceberg basements of Silicon Valley, their voices forever silenced – except that one time Jeff Bezos took out Kurt’s Jag-Stang for a halting attempt at Come As You Are.

Isn’t that a simplistic view of auction buyers?

Yeah, maybe. Last year, Christie’s specialist Amelia Walker told GW that “at the Mark Knopfler sale, I remember seeing people in tears. It’s absolutely driven by the emotional connection.” She also points out that many guitars head to public museums – while the benefits for charity are undeniable.

Anyway, isn’t the guitar press partially responsible for stoking up this circus with its feverish coverage of celebrity guitar auctions?

Hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Back to Johnny’s auction. Please, please, please, let me get what I want?

The best we can do is a ‘Comet Sparkle’ edition of Johnny’s signature Jaguar for $11,000. And that’s assuming you don’t get into a bidding war with a Big Oil CEO who was very sensitive at school.

Guild has revived its S-300 electric guitar, 50 years after the unsung offset was deemed too radical for its time.

First introduced in 1977 and – by today’s standards, looking like a cross between a Gretsch Electromatic CVT and a Surfcaster – it had a short production run, as what Guild now accepts was a “radical” design failed to land.

Just shy of half a decade later, the guitar landscape has changed. Offsets in all walks of music have never been more popular. As such, the S-300 – which will no doubt win over more fans this time around – returns at the perfect time.

It’s sure to please contemporary audiences, pairing newly contoured mahogany bodies and Soft U-shaped mahogany set necks with ivory-bound rosewood fingerboards for a unique silhouette.

It sports matching Alnico V HB-2+ humbuckers with dual-rail covers, each with a pair of Volume and Tone controls, and a three-way switch. The tones, as per Guild, range from “old-school warmth and punch to cutting-edge crunch and clarity”. A phase switch is a tidy addition, too.

Other appointments include Ultimate Angle Tune-O-Matic-style bridges, vintage-style Guild Compensated tailpieces, and Grover G2 open-gear tuners. Aesthetic touches come in the form of large vintage-style headstocks, Chesterfield inlays, and five-ply black pickguards.

In an age where funky body shapes are now commonplace – see Abasi Concepts, Strandberg, and the Dali-esque Ibanez Alpha for evidence – it’s high time for this unusual offset to rear its headstock again.

Granted, its futuristic vibe is likely to divide opinion still, but those twin cutaways offer plenty of access to its 24 narrow jumbo frets, and you can’t argue with that. And no matter your predilection, it’s always a joy to see new shapes hit the market.

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

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

Indeed, its Neptune Blue Metallic and Vintage Sterling Metallic finishes are absolutely gorgeous, and their $799.99 price tags aren't too shabby, either.

Check out Guild for more.

Fender is shining the spotlight on its oft-forgotten era of ‘brown-panel’ guitar amps with a new ’62 Deluxe reissue.

The Big F’s black-panel and tweed amps are household names for guitarists, and their history and lineage is widely revered. There was, however, a niche subsection of Fender amps from the early 1960s that bridged the gap between the two.

As such, the short-lived brown-panel amps have often been overlooked in favor of their more popular siblings. Fender has recently been giving brown-panels their flowers, and last summer revived the “hidden treasure” American Vintage ’62 Super Amp.

Now, it’s joined by the more affordable ‘62 Deluxe Amp. Like its predecessor, the ’62 Deluxe looks to bring the unique brown-panel amp sound – defined by its distinct woodiness, warm pokiness, and gritty overdrive when cranked – to the masses.

In other words, Fender says we should expect something that sits between the “raw sound of its ’50s-era tweed” amps and “sparkling clean tones” of mid-’60s black-panel amps.

This one has two 6V6 output tubes, offers 20 watts of power, and comes packing with a custom-designed Celestion 12” speaker. It’s a slightly more streamlined Brown Panel, with Normal and Bright channels (Volume and Tone controls for each), as well as Speed and Intensity controls for the tube-bias tremolo.

“The brown-panel amps are one of those eras not many players have experienced,” Fender Senior Product Manager, Rick Heins, told Guitarist last year of Fender’s mission to bring the amps back.

“They’re rare, expensive, getting harder to find and almost unobtainable at this point.”

“Browns have a punchiness, a sort of immediate feel,” he adds of their tone. “They don’t sag like tweeds. The power section feels more robust. Crank one and it’s a warm, fat overdrive. Not thin, not ‘paper tear’ distortion, but a fuller, fatter sound. That midrange and warmth sits perfectly in a mix, whether live or recording.”

The '62 Deluxe Amp is available now for $1,699.

Head over to Fender for more.

Fender has had a busy few weeks. Alongside the '62 Deluxe, it also recently dropped its annual mid-year gear lineup, which included the return of the Squier Paranormal series, the limited-edition Player Fusion range, and a boatload of pedals, amps, acoustics and more.

It was backstage in Australia, of all places, that D12 got serious. “We was on Snoop Dogg’s I Wanna Thank Me tour in 2023,” remembers the Michigan hip-hop collective’s co-founder Kuniva.

“We was kicking it in his dressing room and he said, ‘Yo, did y’all hear that crowd out there when y’all came out? Man, y’all need to keep this going. The world needs D12. If they askin’ for it, you gotta give it to them. And they're screamin’ for it. Don’t stop now!’”

From the fateful day in 1996 when late Detroit rapper Proof assembled Motor City’s greatest street-poets under the banner of D12 – followed by their explosion on 2001’s Devil’s Night, with a peak-fame Eminem at the helm – the band’s legend was cast in stone.

But they only released one more full album – 2004’s D12 World – before Proof’s fatal shooting in 2006 and Eminem’s hiatus slowed their studio activity to a trickle. On 2018’s Stepping Stone, the ice-blond rapper went so far as to declare: “The moment that Proof died, so did the group. D12 is over.”

You could have fooled us. With Kuniva first to join today’s Zoom call, the faces start popping up like mushrooms. Here’s Swifty McVay: the friendly, thoughtful OG who’s mostly happy just to sit in. There’s Jeff and Jake Bass: the father-and-son studio team who produced and played guitar and bass on long-awaited third album D12 Forever.

The banter begins. “You're looking like Hugh Hefner over there, Jeff, with the robe and little fucking pipe and shit!” Kuniva tells his freshly showered collaborator as he exhales a flume of smoke.

“Minus the women,” drawls Jeff in response.

That industrial-strength chemistry shouldn’t surprise. Long-standing D12 fans know that Bass Snr’s association goes right back to the mid ’90s. One fateful morning at 3am, the story goes, Eminem and the D12 crew turned up to his studio on 8 Mile Road (the address should sound familiar) and put their sound in the hands of Jeff and his brother Mark, collectively billed as the Bass Brothers.

From that moment, right up until Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery, Jeff was a studio fixture (and fixer), sporadically producing and co-writing, while playing guitar, bass and keys for both groups.

“I remember when I first met them,” he reflects. “They were young and nobody knew anything about anything. But after Em blew up, he brought his boys in, and we continued working with them. It’s been a lot of years.”

The pick of the back catalog is probably Jeff’s brittle, pulsing, angry-hornet guitar intro to Eminem’s inescapable 2002 8 Mile soundtrack hit, Lose Yourself. “I never talked about that song with any of the guitar magazines,” he says, “because everybody thought it was just a sample.

“Y’know, Tone Lōc, back in the day, had used Eddie Van Halen’s Jamie’s Cryin’ on Wild Thing – but that was a sample. When I began to play the guitar parts live on these records, it gave hip-hop a different sound. D12 came along right after that, and they were using guitars in their work, too. And that’s the Detroit sound. You mix a little bit of everything together.”

Jake Bass was not yet a teenager when those classic albums went down –but already the kid had his antennae up. “I was 11 when they did Devil’s Night, and I was nerding out, studying what my dad did on that first record in real time,” he reflects. “I watched which guitars he chose, which Line 6 POD settings he used on the session for These Drugs. That kidney bean was the best!”

“You never know what your child's watching you do,” chuckles his old man. “Thank God that Jake picked up on all that kind of shit, as opposed to the drugs and the alcohol that I used to be fucking around with. He chose the right substance!”

For D12 Forever, Bass Jr took charge not just of production at Michigan’s FBT Studios, but the bulk of the album’s guitar and bass parts. “I went with that old-school Run-DMC/Beastie Boys vibe, but I did it all real and original and live on my PRS 40th anniversary McCarty SC56,” he tells us of the fiery rhythm work on recent single Tear It Down.

“I just wanted something with constant motion, because it was so high-energy. Something they could just go crazy on as far as rapping. If you break that guitar part down, you’ll see there’s seven or eight harmonies going on to give it that fullness.”

Another guitar standout is Tenderism, Jake’s snakecharmer lick coiling around a guesting Method Man’s bullet-belt vocals. “I wanted a hybrid of what would happen if D12 was mixed with Van Halen, mixed with the Ohio Players. And for the bass parts I used the exact same P-Bass my dad used on Devil's Night.”

“I bother Jake at all times of the day and night!” laughs Kuniva. “I call him up with ideas and he’s like, ‘Okay, I'll do it soon as I put the kids to bed!’ He’s always on deck for whatever you need. That's just a dope thing when you have someone who’s that in tune with your sound.

“Shit that I can't explain with words, Jake knows what I mean. He can play damn-near anything. Y’know, he comes in with a flute sometimes, or a mandolin.”

Those jawbreaker tracks couldn’t be further from the vibe of What If?, where Jeff steps up with a sunbeam outro solo beneath Melanie Rutherford’s vocal. “This album is Jake's baby,” nods the veteran.

“But I was honored they asked me to play the guitar on that track. I used a 335. I was always a Strat guy back in the ’90s, on Eminem and D12’s early stuff. Now I tend to gravitate more towards a fuller-bodied guitar.”

“What Jeff played on What If? just pulls at my soul,” reflects Kuniva. “I get choked up when I hear it.”

But the most poignant cut of all is saved for last – with Forever airing unheard posthumous vocals from the band’s fallen leader. “All the things that Proof happened to say on that recording were just so appropriate in such a beautiful, eerie way,” says Jake.

“It’s like, ‘It’s not over; it's not the end – it’s not gonna stop.’ I wanted the guitar to reflect that. There’s no chorus in that song; it’s just a constant motion.”

Along with Snoop’s pep talk, remembers Kuniva, Forever threw down the gauntlet, convincing D12 to raise their game, push this third studio album over the line and commit to their future.

“That song is so powerful, y’know? And I speak for all of us – when we heard the Proof verse, it was like, ‘Man, there’s something crazy in the air here that we have to match.’ It just means a lot to still connect with someone who was such a force in in your life.

“We came into this game not caring what other people thought about us. We’ve defied so many odds, survived so much, endured so much. So we’re really making a statement on that song – ‘Yo, no matter what happens, D12 is always gonna be here. We’re never going away. We’re gonna live forever!’”

• D12 Forever is out now.

Growing up with a Broadway-singer father, whose musician friends were frequent visitors to the family home, meant a strong foundation for Eric Bibb’s eventual musical path.

The road ahead was a done deal when a school friend introduced him to influential artists such as Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Leadbelly, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, and soon Eric was on course to become one of the most celebrated country blues artists around today.

Three times Grammy-nominated, Eric’s albums are a masterclass in how the country blues genre can glide smoothly over to a modern audience. With velvet vocals and enviable fingerstyle, his music has become celebrated worldwide.

Recently, his enthusiasm for seeking out new instruments to play on stage has led Eric to discover the rebirth of an old acoustic guitar brand, and an instrument he’s keen to share with us.

Tell us about your new acoustic guitar.

This is a fairly new friend that’s come into the family. It’s a Larson Brothers OM model. The Larson brothers were two Swedish brothers [Carl and August] who immigrated to the States in the late 1800s. They made great guitars – I think Stefan Grossman might have one or two of theirs, they’re hard to find these days.

But not so long ago, I think a company based in Germany acquired the rights to use the Larson Brothers logo and they [iMusicnetwork, founded by Toni Götz, together with Nikolaus ‘Klaus’ Eilken, founder of Thomas Guitars] are making really high-end guitars, and this is one of my favourite guitars to tour with. I have another model that’s all mahogany, but this is a spruce top. Just a lovely, lovely instrument.

How did you discover the Larson Brothers’ guitars?

Well, I was in Paris looking around for guitars and I spotted a Larson Brothers – the old mahogany one that I mentioned – in a shop window and the look of it just drew me in. I went in, I played it and I bought it. Then they got in contact and said, ‘Wow, we’re really pleased that you’re enchanted with our instruments.’

That first one was made by a known luthier, his name is Maurice Dupont. He makes mostly Maccaferri-type guitars, but he made that flat-top guitar and I loved it. The Larson Brothers company knows what I like. They sent me this guitar and I didn’t send it back.

Is the OM a good body size for you?

Yes, I’m not really a dreadnought type of guy; I like smaller body guitars. OM is a good size for me, or parlour guitars, you know? But this is about perfect for me.

What other instruments do you have on tour?

It’s always a challenge deciding what to bring. I have a lot of guitars. I have guitars I’ve toured with, guitars that are really precious, and I’m a little reticent about taking on the road because they go through a lot. I have the other Larson Brothers guitar, the all-mahogany one, which is tuned down a half step, so E is Eb.

I also have a thin hollowbody Takamine, another interesting guitar, which is tuned down a whole tone – this is just to accommodate my changing vocals. So, you know, songs I play in the 1st position, if I find my voice has dropped, then I need a guitar that’s a whole tone lower.

So I have one guitar in standard or drop D, I have another one half a tone down, and I have another one a whole tone down. Those three guitars more or less take care of what I need.

Do you have an amp on stage or do you go direct into the PA?

I go through a DI. In the past I’ve used – as my own kind of side monitor – a Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier. My sound guy prefers the direct signal because then he can do what he wants with it out front. It was a bit of a crutch leaning on that amplifier by my side, but I just discovered that, actually, if the monitors are proper, then I don’t really need it. It’s enough to have just two wedges in front of me and a direct DI.

What pickup do you have in the Larson Brothers OM?

I’m using the Blackstack by Fishman. I’ve had all kinds of soundhole pickups through the years, the Sunrise kind of started out as being the de rigueur option. It’s a heavy pickup and I found that even though the sound quality was great, the independent standalone power box was difficult for changing batteries.

I prefer a pickup where I don’t have to think about battery changes; you don’t want to be in the middle of a tune and it dies on you. So this is passive and it works.

I’m not really after a pure acoustic sound. Everybody’s wanting to find the pickup, either bridge pickup or soundhole pickup, that really gives you the true sound of an acoustic guitar.

I find, if I want that, I’ll just stick a great microphone in front of the guitar, you know? But in a situation where I’m with a band on stage with a drummer, that is challenging, so you want a pickup that’s going to break through all of that.

This is the best solution I have. And with a magnetic pickup there’s a kind of liquid sound that you get when it’s through the DI; it’s a little bit more fluid than just the sound you would get from a microphone, and that seems to suit my own stage sound. But in the studio I’ll often just have great microphones in front of the guitar.

Do you use any outboard effects on stage?

I used to. I used to use some chorus stuff and tremolo. But I’m really not a gear-oriented guitar player, so I had the most simple pedalboard with my Boss tuner. Maybe I’ll have an A/B switcher if I feel like I need to do something like that. But, lately, I like a really stripped-down situation where I don’t have to think about it.

And I have a great sound guy out front, so I trust him. I usually have another guitarist with me in the band and they have pedalboards to die for. I don’t know how they keep up with all this stuff, but I guess if that’s your thing, you figure out a way. But they’re like a ballet dancer, you know?

You had classical guitar lessons when you were young. How do you think that might have influenced your acoustic guitar technique?

What it told me right from the start was that the guitar really can be an orchestra, and if you use your thumb and three fingers on your right hand, you can arpeggiate and you can create all kinds of different sounds and textures.

It really helped me when I started discovering fingerpicking – you know, [Mississippi] John Hurt kind of stuff. I started out with Carcassi [Matteo Carcassi, 1792 to 1853, author of arpeggio studies still in use today], so all of that stuff sort of came together at a certain point.

When I really focused on my own style of playing, I knew I wanted to fingerpick, I knew I wanted to arpeggiate. So all of that has come into my technique. I tried fingerpicks at one point, and thumbpicks, but they’d fly off. I’d get excited and sweaty, and they’d just fly off.

But Ry Cooder once said there is really no better tool for the guitar than your right hand. There are so many ways you can approach the guitar with just your bare hands. I do have acrylic nail enhancement on three nails of my right hand because I found that, without it, I’m risking breaking a nail and then things get kind of complicated.

I discovered the hard way that if I chipped a nail in the middle of a show, it was really going to affect my playing in a negative way. And you can cover your nails with hard polish, but I find that the best thing for me is the acrylic. I’m not sure it’s really great for your health, but you sacrifice all for art.

Have you ever experimented with slide?

I love the textures that you can get and the sound, especially if you’re into country blues like I am. The slide sound is a part of the vocabulary, but I’ve never been one to dive deep into that. It’s almost like a separate universe. But I’ve always had guitarists close to me from very early days who were proficient at slide and bottleneck playing.

I’m on tour at the moment with Robbie McIntosh, who’s a master. He not only has the whole country blues vocabulary of bottleneck guitar and slide, he’s just so lyrical, he’s so fluid and melodic. There are a few players who have mastered it to that level. He’s one of them, but there are not that many.

He’s exceptional as a slide player and a player in general. I tend to be happiest when I have a really fine second guitarist in the band who has a huge understanding of blues first of all, but who is also familiar with other harmonies, jazz harmonies and that kind of thing.

Do you ever play electric guitars or hollowbody jazz instruments?

Well, I’m really not an electric guitar player. I find that the electric guitar is almost a separate species, you know? I have an old Danelectro solidbody that Hubert Sumlin signed the back of, so I love that guitar. I did a video of a song called This One Don’t and you can see that guitar. It was given to me by a wonderful bass player, Dave Bronze, as a birthday gift long ago.

But I play electric guitars like I play my acoustic guitars, I fingerpick them. I’ve never played with a plectrum, you know? I’ve never really mastered or even really been attracted to that style of playing, although I have band members who are wonderful players on electric guitar and who play with their fingers but also are masters of the pick.

I do love older jazz big-body guitars. If I had an Epiphone Emperor, that big, beautiful blonde guitar that they made in the ’30s, I’d hold on to that. But, yeah, a great acoustic guitar is the way to go for me.

• One Mississippi is out now via Repute Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

She may have worked with Courtney Love playing keys in Hole, or alongside bands such as Radiohead and Depeche Mode while stationed in the studio with legendary producer Nigel Godrich, but it’s Bethia Beadman’s output as a solo artist that truly astonishes the senses.

The 11 tracks that make up new album, Kitten Feel, have a hypnotising effect. Think swampy primal energy and artful enigma, beaming into the soul like an abstract blues from a long-distant planet where the language is familiar but the message is curiously esoteric…

In other words, it’s the perfect marriage of hippie soul and spine-tingling atmospherics, and it looks set to be one of the alternative rock highlights of the year.

Sanskrit Roots

Bethia would be the first to admit her journey into guitar was more leftfield than most players.

“I got into guitar-playing through Sanskrit and mantra,” she says. “You have to go deep to find your voice without much thought. It’s like finding this place that’s so deeply buried, there’s no music.

“I don’t want to sound like a wanker, but I’m more of a mystic than a musician. I move in energy fields. When I saw Roy Harper at Glastonbury, I cried because his music is non-performative. It’s real and in the room, while also being healing.”

No Bounds

As a result of this creative background, Bethia’s approach is more natural and impulsive than a lot of her contemporaries, though artists such as Marianne Faithfull and Scott Walker helped show her the way.

“It’s like I have a sack of songs that just goes on,” she says. “I can’t necessarily control what they are. It’s like a cat bringing in a dead bird and leaving it on the mat. I try to live inside my music, it’s almost the greater reality, and getting to work with Tchad Blake [The Black Keys, Fiona Apple, Tom Waits] on the mix gave it all ultra-vision.”

Come Together

The initial sessions took place in Detroit before Bethia came back and finished recording at the Lightship 95 vessel studio moored in East London.

“The Detroit sessions were done spontaneously in five days,” she says. “We, producer Paul Simm and I, found this drummer called Adam Bradley Schreiber on Instagram. We didn’t know him, but he was a perfect fit.

“I play baritones and Adam tunes his drums down a 4th, like baritone drums. We were all about limitations and simplicity. Bass wasn’t needed because we had swampy guitars and deep drums covered in shammies.”

Baritone Bliss

One of the main guitars heard on the album is a Reverend electric baritone guitar kindly lent by Detroit thereminist/composer Via Mardot.

“It’s the perfect electric baritone,” says Bethia. “It’s so easy to play and sweet sounding. You can really hear it on the song Balcony.

“For the sessions in London, I used my Brook Tavy baritone acoustic, which was handmade in Exeter, and a Japanese Jazzmaster that I customised into a baritone. The electrics were plugged into my 1965 Gibson Explorer combo, which I love for its simplicity and tremolo circuit.”

A Simple Reason

Bethia has many reasons to be proud of this latest body of work, though it’s Balcony that tops the list in terms of personal achievements.

“That one has so many chords,” she says with a laugh. “I’m usually suspicious of songs like that. It was my least favourite initially. Generally, I prefer fewer chords, like Wicked Game by Chris Isaak.

“With fewer chords, the melody gets starved of its senses like a nursery rhyme. I like simplicity. That’s why nursery rhymes and mantras have survived so many years. They touch this collective place we all have inside of us.”

Bethia on using less gear over the years

Although she’s built up quite a sizable collection of stompboxes over the years, Bethia doesn’t feel the need to use them as much these days.

“I still have all the Boss ones I bought during my teens,” she says. “These days, I’m more about finding a good amp sound and keeping things simple. It’s mainly my Boss distortion and compression. We used a real Space Echo on this album.

“It sounds awesome and I ended up buying my own back in London, but maybe I should’ve just bought the new RE-2 pedal version because it’s supposed to be amazing and is bound to be more roadworthy!”

• Kitten Feel is out now via 5dB.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

Gretsch’s hollowbody behemoths cast a significantly long shadow, one that often eclipses its smaller, overlooked Jet models. Sure, the big-box Gretsches have their fair share of famous fans, but the Jet has built a cult following of its own. Legends like George Harrison and Pete Townshend have slung a Jet over their shoulder, but for me, it’s Chris Cornell, Seattle’s flannel-clad, grunge icon, whose late-'80s sparkling Duo Jet made me want one of my own.

Now, Cornell’s model wasn’t exactly set up for hard-hitting riffs. With its Filter’Tron pickups and Bigsby, it leaned more toward jangle than face-melting. Still, Cornell made it growl in ways the designers probably never imagined. I can’t help but wonder what he’d have done with the new Gretsch Premier Jet in his arsenal. With its modern upgrades, it might have been even better suited for his detuned, heavy riffage and stage-stomping antics.

The Electromatic Premier Jet is Gretsch’s answer to the prayers of players who want classic vibes with some 21st-century muscle. It’s fair to say this isn’t your grandaddy’s Gretsch; the Premier Jet has been dragged, willingly or not, into the modern era, complete with a spec sheet that reads like a wish list for tone chasers and gigging guitarists alike.

As you’d expect, the body of this electric guitar is chambered mahogany, but the top is carved maple, not unlike a certain Gibson single-cut. The neck is also mahogany with a bound ebony fingerboard and a complement of 22 medium jumbo frets. We also have a 10"-14” compound-radius fingerboard and Luminlay side-dot markers.

In terms of electronics, it has a pair of Sphera Twin Six humbuckers. Visually, these are considerably larger than a set of filtertrons, being full-sized buckers in construction. Each pickup features twelve adjustable pole pieces and Alnico VI magnets. The neck pickup uses a clear poly-sol-coated wire, said to lean towards clearer high end, while the bridge uses a plain enamel-coated wire to aid warmer tones. Of course, there are other variables involved too…

Gretsch promises more output, more punch, and a little extra snarl from these pickups in general, perfect for everything from jangly cleans to fuzzed-out grunge, and this versatility continues on to the control layout.

The master volume features a handy treble bleed circuit that helps you maintain clarity at any volume. Individual no-load tone controls for each pickup keep things sounding lively, and a push/pull function on the master volume control engages the custom Lumen Filter for what Gretsch says is a “tighter, snappier response that excels at both percussive hi-gain tones and crystalline clean tones.”

Hardware-wise, the Premier Jet keeps things rock solid with the Lockdown adjustable wraparound tailpiece, locking machine heads, and locking strap buttons. This model is available in a variety of colorways, from the shimmering sheen of the Vintage Pearl to the vintage charm of Robusto Burst, the deep blue Clairvoyant, and the jet-black Onyx Storm I’m reviewing today.

Specs

• Launch price: $799 | £649 | €699
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: Mahogany, Performance 'C'
• Fingerboard: Bound Ebony
• Scale length: 24.88" (632 mm)
• Nut/width: Graph Tech NuBone, 1.6875" (42.86 mm)
• Frets: 22 Medium Jumbo
• Hardware: LockDown locking bridge, die-cast sealed locking tuners, knurled plain top metal knobs, and strap locks
• Electrics: 2 X Sphera Twin Six Humbuckers, Master Volume with Treble-Bleed, Tone 1. No-Load Tone Control (Neck Pickup), Tone 2. No-Load Tone Control (Bridge Pickup)
• Weight: 7.9Ibs/ 3.6 kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Vintage Pearl, Clairvoyant, Onyx Storm (as reviewed), Robusto Burst
• Cases: No
• Contact: Gretsch Guitars

Guitar World video demo

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Lifting this single-cut out of the box, I’m met with what is, by all accounts, a very handsome guitar. That subtle Onyx Storm finish is stunning, indeed. The light flecks of glitter against the black are seriously classy and a finish I like a lot, which is a good thing as it wraps every inch of the guitar.

It has also been applied very neatly throughout, and this carries over to the entire guitar. I genuinely can’t find a single thing out of place on this model. There are no finish blemishes, no marks, and the ebony used on the fingerboard is as dark as it gets, pretty impressive stuff, considering the price point.

Moving on, the pearloid Neo-Classic Thumbnail inlays have been perfectly installed, as are the medium jumbo frets. You’ll not find any rogue frets here; everything has been installed flush and has been well polished too, meaning you don’t get any of that “straight-out-the-box scratchiness." Lastly, the Graph Tech NuBone nut has been expertly cut and filed, rounding out what is a superbly made and well-put-together guitar.

​Straight off the bat, it’s obvious that this is a model made for performers, as it comes loaded with gig-ready features you typically find on much more expensive instruments. The inclusion of Luminlay side markers is another thoughtful touch, making it easy to see your way around on dark stages, and the addition of pre-installed straplocks and locking tuners is the icing on the cake for me.

It’s these little upgrades that make the Premier Jet feel every bit as roadworthy as guitars costing twice as much, and show that this model is built for live players, not just collectors or home players.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Okay, so now on to playability, because a guitar can look as good as it wants, but if it doesn’t feel great in hand, none of that matters.

​The best way I can describe the Premier Jet is with one word: modern. This isn’t a model for vintage Gretsch lovers; it’s a contemporary take on the Jet that feels fresh and sleek. The “performance-C” style neck, with its rounded profile and tapered shoulders, fits my hand well. Compared to my own Players Edition Falcon, it feels slimmer overall, but shares the exact same string spacing and a nut width of 42.86 mm, so it still feels familiar. There’s even a whiff of Gibson’s SlimTaper profile in this Gretsch, so fans of the Nashville guitar giant will feel right at home.

​The action measures a very playable height, at 1.35 mm clearance from the low E. It’s low enough to feel slinky, but not so low that it chokes out when I go for full-tone bends high up the fingerboard.

Speaking of the fingerboard, the Premier Jet features a compound radius that morphs from 10" to 14". It’s a subtle change, but it’s definitely noticeable as you play. Starting a run on the 3rd fret E-string and aiming for the 15th, I can feel my hand naturally shifting into more comfortable positions as I move up the neck. That flatter radius higher up is ideal for big bends, fast runs, and complex chord voicings, giving you room to stretch out without fighting the instrument.

All these small design choices add up to an instrument that feels thoughtfully engineered for today’s players.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Next up is sound, and the tonal center of this Jet is a pair of Sphera Twin Six humbuckers. Sonically, this model feels more at home in the Les Paul camp than the classic Jet camp, and that’s thanks to these full-sized humbuckers.

There’s some real power in these pickups. Plugging into a Fender Blues Jr, it doesn’t take much to drive the amp into a nice breakup. The tone is rich, warm, and full of character, but it lacks the sharp brightness of a Filter’Tron. That’s not to say the tone isn’t great, it’s just different from what some players might expect from a brand like Gretsch.

Kick on a Tube Screamer, and the Jet really shows off its hard rock capabilities. That lack of top-end sparkle actually works in its favor here, creating a tight, focused, and well-balanced sound that cuts through a band mix without sounding harsh.

Remove the drive and leave the Gretsch naked, with just a touch of reverb, and the higher-output pickups reveal their drawback. The guitar loses some of the classic Gretsch chime when played clean. I find myself wishing for a little more sizzle and a touch less midrange from the Sphera Twin Six pickups. Still, the treble bleed circuit is a thoughtful inclusion that does help preserve what top-end there is when rolling down the volume.

There’s also a push/pull function on the master volume control. It’s not a coil-split, as you might expect, but instead engages a Lumen Filter. To my ears, this produces a honky, more nasal tone, with the low end shelved off. Does it sound like a single-coil? Not exactly, but it’s a very usable tone that will certainly get you in the right ballpark for playing live.

Overall, the Premier Jet’s sound is unique, balancing power and warmth with just enough versatility to cover a lot of ground. While it may not deliver the vintage Gretsch sparkle some purists crave, it more than makes up for it with its punchy, modern voice. It proves again that Gretsch can surprise us as it continues to evolve and expand.

Verdict

If you’re searching for a guitar that effortlessly bridges the gap between vintage soul and modern muscle, the Gretsch Premier Jet might just be your perfect match. Gretsch has taken the Jet and given it a contemporary overhaul, crafting an instrument that wears its "premier" name well.

I think that a big part of the appeal here is the build quality, which truly stands out at this price point. Every detail, from the flawless finish to the expertly dressed frets, speaks to an attention to detail that Gretsch has brought to a model well under the $1,000 mark.

The Premier Jet’s compound-radius neck and dark ebony fingerboard make for a playing experience that feels fast, smooth, and inviting. Add to that the gig-ready features like locking tuners, the Lockdown wraparound tailpiece, Luminlay side markers, and secure strap buttons, and you’re looking at a package that’s ready for the stage.

Sonically, the Sphera Twin Six humbuckers bring a new flavor to the Jet formula. There’s plenty of punch and warmth for rock and blues. It’s a voice that feels fresh and perfectly at home in modern music, even if it doesn’t chase the classic Gretsch chime.

For me, the Premier Jet is a really smart buy. Whether you’re gigging every weekend or just want a reliable, stylish workhorse for your collection, the Premier Jet proves that you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a professional instrument.

Guitar World verdict: If you’re going to put “premier” in the title of a guitar, then you’d better deliver. Thankfully, Gretsch does, with a guitar that’s chock-full of premium appointments. From the ​Luminlay side dot markers to the adjustable wraparound tailpiece, locking machine heads, and pre-installed strap locks, this guitar is designed to stand up to the harsh realities of playing live and at a very affordable price.

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Gretsch Guitars

Leon Todd

• Best Gretsch guitars: Explore those iconic Gretsch tones with our top picks

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

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

Said highlights include a slice of Sexy Djent from UK metallers Loathe, Dance Djent from Polyphia, a gorgeous display of musical companionship from Hermanos Gutiérrez, a thrilling new collaborative rocker from Weezer, and a cinematic guitar landscape from Rodrigo y Gabriela.

All of that and much more can be heard in our playlist below.

Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief

Track of the month: Loathe – Fangs

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the era of Sexy Djent, and UK metallers Loathe just oiled up and laid down one of the slinkiest, nastiest riffs of the Sleep Token-led movement. Every time that gut-busting hook rears its head, it has a gnarlier fuzz tone, which is exactly the kind of attention to detail that makes me want to buy more pedals. Fangs a lot, gents.

Also playing:

• Mastodon – Your Ghost Again
• Jack White – Dollar Bill
• Every Hell – Bane of The Bear

Matt Parker – Deputy Editor

Track of the month: Hermanos Gutiérrez – Canto Andino

Not to make this a guitarist's lonely hearts ad, but in 25 years of playing, I’ve never experienced a playing relationship anywhere near the instinctive harmony and musical companionship of Ecuadorian-Swiss siblings Hermanos Gutiérrez.

Canto Andino (literally: ‘Andes song’) is strung throughout with nylon acoustics, subtle wah lines, and the dynamic rise and fall of the landscape that inspired it. We have to wait until September for the full album, but in the meantime… if you’re a guitarist who enjoys looking melancholy against a mountainous backdrop, gurning at tape recordings, and long walks in the Andes, call me.

Also playing:

• Paerish – Wait For Dark
• Emma Ruth Rundle – Powerless
• Chelsea Wolfe – Death Is Not The End

Jackson Maxwell – Operations Editor

This might be a hot take, but I've been quite frustrated with Weezer for a number of years. I've felt that over and over again they've gone for shtick and irony in lieu of making something more focused; something great. Not that shtick and irony haven't always been a huge part of their whole thing, but their recent material has gone a bit too far in that direction for my taste.

Perhaps the presence of Karly Hartzman, the singer, songwriter, and leader of Wednesday, one of the most vital alt-rock bands around, is what gave them the kick to produce something as ripping as We Might As Well Be Strangers. The lead single of the band's latest self-titled ‘color’ album (it's gold, fittingly), it finds Rivers Cuomo in brilliant form. His riff is mega, his little solo is crooked-letter-font perfection, and god, that chorus – a master at work.

Also playing:

• Blondshell – Violins
• Ibibio Sound Machine – Concept of Love
• Radiator Hospital – Wall Between Us

Matt Owen – News Editor

Track of the month: Polyphia – Can You Feel It

I’ve been impatiently waiting for Polyphia 5 for quite some time now, and though I don’t play any sort of progressive metal personally, I am incredibly fond of Tim Henson, Scott LePage, and how they keep finding new ways to elevate guitar playing.

And, with all the talk of ultra-heavy riffs and eight-string prototypes, there was reason to be extra excited about Polyphia’s next album. And if CAN YOU FEEL IT is anything to go by, Henson and co are about to make good on all their promises of it being perhaps their heaviest record to date. Dance djent is now a thing. I am obsessed with rave riffs. Bring on Polyphia 5.

Also playing:

• Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Boys
• Keith Urban – Guitar Man (ft. John Mayer)
• Slow Pulp – Better Man

Janelle Borg – Staff Writer

Track of the month: Rodrigo y Gabriela – Monster

Rodrigo y Gabriela’s flowers are long overdue. With their upcoming album, OurHome, the virtuosic duo continues to expand their palette, this time incorporating subtle (and not-so-subtle) Japanese influences both musically and visually – as evidenced by their latest single, Monster, and its accompanying animated music video, crafted by legendary manga artist Naoki Urasawa. Oh, and the duo even recorded (and self-produced) the album in Tokyo.

Monster takes listeners on a veritable journey, with contrasting guitar parts conjuring a narrative-driven tension that feels cinematic in scope. Across its 6-minute, 2-second runtime, melancholy and, dare I say, apprehension – driven by the interplay of two acoustic guitars – gradually give way to an overdriven, rock-infused climax, where Sánchez’s Rolodex of Strats battles it out with Quintero’s custom Yamaha nylon-string acoustic (based on the brand’s NTX series), leaving you breathless in the best possible way.

BRB, adding it to my running playlist.

Also playing:

• Arab Strap – Fighting for You
• Rossann – Isa Binti
• Boards of Canada – Prophecy at 1420 MHz

This month, while we were were sipping balloon glasses of brandy in celebration of Fender’s James Jamerson P-Bass, Dream Theater’s John Myung casually returned to 4-strings after decades of defining prog metal on a 6-string bass.

“While the 6-string is my comfort zone, I missed the physical freedom and generous string spacing of the 4-string bass,” said Myung of his latest signature collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man, and who are we to judge?

For this month’s roundup we also heard from Rickenbacker’s Brendan Duff on the release of the company’s 3030 semi-acoustic bass, which combines the body of the iconic Rickenbacker 330 guitar and a bass guitar neck. Yes, it looks nuts – so what? We like crazy-looking gear.

According to Duff, “The control layout is the same as the 330/360 Rickenbacker models, with a single mono output, three way selector switch, two tone, two volume and a blend knob that acts as a secondary volume for the neck pickup.”

Now available in limited supplies on the company’s Boutique site, so order three today, plus one to keep in a lead-lined vault.

From vintage-inspired signature basses and artist-approved short-scale strings to cutting-edge firmware, here's our pick of the best bass gear from June 2026.

Fender James Jamerson 1962 Precision Bass

What can we say about James Jamerson that you don’t know already? As part of Motown’s house band, Jamerson played bass on more number-one pop hits than Elvis Presley and The Beatles combined.

Arguably the most accomplished bass player ever to stalk the earth, Jamerson made his bones with a ’62 P-Bass dubbed “The Funk Machine,” which has now been faithfully reproduced by Fender, complete with a nitrocellulose lacquer sunburst finish, and that all-important single-pickup.

Other appointments include a chrome Pure Vintage four-saddle bridge with threaded steel saddles and a chrome cover, knurled flat-top controls, and reverse open-gear tuners.

In keeping with Jamerson’s preferences, each bass comes with La Bella Flatwound strings. Quite right too.

Squier Paranormal Precision Bass Thinline SJ

Reliable, versatile and great-looking. But that’s enough about our editor-in-chief… Squier’s bass guitar range fills a gap in the market in which a reasonable amount of money meets a respectable amount of quality, and they fill it well.

The Squier Paranormal Precision Bass Thinline SJ is the latest bass addition to Fender’s 75th Anniversary collection. As you might expect, this new model reimagines the iconic Precision Bass outline through a semi-hollow “Thinline” construction and a distinctive SJ-style body design.

It’s equipped with a carefully voiced pickup configuration that comprises an alnico single-coil '51 P-Bass pickup in the neck position and an alnico single-coil Jazz Bass pickup at the bridge.

Other player-friendly features include a 4-saddle vintage-style bridge with slotted barrel saddles, a satin urethane neck finish, and vintage-style open-gear tuners. It's available in Olive, Vintage White and 3-Color Sunburst.

Darkglass Anagram KosmOS 1.16

The latest firmware update for the Darkglass Anagram is one of the platform's biggest updates to date. The standout addition is a completely overhauled Scene Manager. While previous firmware limited users to three scenes per preset, KosmOS 1.16 increases that figure to an impressive 126 scenes.

Darkglass also added two new amplifier models. Peggy Classic delivers the warm, rounded response associated with one of the most revered bass amp designs ever produced, while Peggy Fliptop captures the unmistakable character of a vintage flip-top combo.

For users embracing Neural Amp Modeler technology, KosmOS 1.16 introduces full support for NAM Architecture 2 (A2).

Another welcome addition is a combined HPF/LPF block, merging high-pass and low-pass filtering into a single processor and freeing up additional space within the signal chain for effects or routing options.

Ernie Ball Music Man John Myung Bongo 4

While John Myung has been quietly pushing the barriers of 6-string bass playing for decades with his band Dream Theater, his latest signature model stems from a renewed appreciation for the traditional 4-string.

Available in JM Purple or JM Green, with Stealth pickup covers, the John Myung 4 sees a return to the normal string spacing of the original Bongo design.

“While the 6-string is my comfort zone, I missed the physical freedom and generous string spacing of the 4-string bass,” said Myung. “Each song needs to be played on what it was written for to capture its original soul. Returning to a 4-string during our 40th Anniversary Tour for the Images & Words tracks completely restored the musical conviction of those songs live.”

A notable change from the traditional Bongo is the streamlined control layout. Myung instead opted for a simplified setup featuring a volume control that doubles as an on/off kill switch alongside a five-way rotary pickup blend selector.

If that's not enough to grab your attention, the roasted maple neck has been paired with a hybrid rosewood and roasted maple fingerboard that Music Man refers to as a “Golden Ratio” design.

EMG NS-Wav Retro Fit

If Han Solo played bass in Star Wars, the NS Design Wav4 upright bass would be the one he’d choose. It's the bass you want stored in the Millennium Falcon in case of ‘imperial entanglements’.

The good news is that EMG has introduced a new drop-in system specifically for the Wav bass that’s designed to give you more control beyond the standard volume, tone, and arco/pizzicato controls.

It features a 20megOhm input impedance for each Piezo pickup for more low-end, and changes the Arco/Pizz switch to a blend control.

Along with master volume, there's also a variable low pass filter that maintains low frequency gain while cutting the high frequency response at 12dB per octave. The system runs on 18 Volts, so there’s plenty of headroom. It comes complete with a new backplate, battery holders, and takes minutes to install.

Rickenbacker 3030

If you’ve got a couple of grand to spare, you could do worse than investing in one of these splendid Rickenbacker basses. Combining the body of a 330 guitar and a bass guitar neck, the 3030 has a scale length that’s 9 1/4 inches shorter than a standard long-scale and 5 1/4 inches shorter than a typical short-scale.

It’s built with a maple body, a maple/walnut neck, and rosewood fingerboard in Jetglo, Mapleglo, and Fireglo finishes. A Walnut version features a walnut body and maple fingerboard. Both are fitted with a pair of Hot Toaster pickups.

“The control layout is the same as the 330/360 models,” said Rickenbacker’s Brendan Duff. “A single mono output, three way selector switch, two tone, two volume and a blend knob that acts as a secondary volume for the neck pickup.”

Other features include the “R” tailpiece, a four-saddle bridge, mono output, and Schaller M4 tuners.

Available in limited supplies on the company’s Boutique site, and expected to be offered in small batches from time to time. Most of the rest of us will never get to own one, but hey, a bassist can dream, right?

Trickfish Amplification L212

Trickfish Amplification has expanded its acclaimed L Series lineup with the introduction of the L212, a lightweight bass cabinet designed for players seeking the punch and warmth of dual 12-inch speakers in a compact enclosure.

Rated at 800 watts AES and weighing just 45 pounds (20.4 kg), the L212 features two Lavoce neodymium 12-inch drivers in a unique diagonal configuration, with the same compact footprint as the company’s L410.

“Players who want the warmth of 12-inch drivers at full gigging volume now have a single cabinet that gets them there,” said Trickfish president Ryan Owens. “The diagonal driver placement supports better stage coverage without changing the cabinet's footprint, so you get more coverage without giving anything up.”

D'Addario Backline Bass Case

Ever since there have been expensive bass guitars to love, cherish and obey, a range of protective bags and cases has grown up around them. This new gig bag from D’Addario’s Backline series has a water-resistant exterior, reinforced zippers, and an assortment of straps, handles and pockets.

There’s plenty of “shock-absorbing” padding too, and room to carry all of your gig essentials thanks to a detachable Breakaway Bag with Auto Lock mechanisms for storing your accessories.

La Bella Ian Martin Allison Signature Short-Scale Bass Strings

La Bella has been a big player in the bass strings game for quite some time – the original Deep Talkin’ range took the bass world by storm back in the late ‘50s. More recently, the company has widened its focus to include a signature set for bassist Ian Martin Allison, which is now available as a short-scale set.

Made with a hex core and polished stainless steel roundwound wrap, the new scale option has the same feel and custom gauges as the original set (.045, .063, .083, and .103) with the five-string adding a .125 B-string.

Z.Vex DB-1

If you like your pedals to be hand-built by people who love their work, it's worth taking a look at the wacky world of Z.Vex Effects, which now plays host to the DB-1. The DB-1 continues the company’s tradition of mutating classic designs into modern versions with a twist.

It functions as an ultra-high impedance analog signal meter that monitors signal activity on your pedalboard. It can be used anywhere in your signal chain without fear of affecting your tone. It also works in both directions.

We love the retro VU meter, which scales up to a maximum level of eleven in homage to the great Nigel Tufnel.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly making its way into every corner of the guitar world. Bad actors are replicating guitarists’ playing videos and replacing them with AI-generated models, and now another new phenomenon is emerging: AI guitar YouTubers.

Guitarist, gear reviewer, and popular YouTube personality Rhett Shull recently discovered that his videos are being used as training fodder for AI YouTube influencers.

“I was on Instagram, and I got tagged in a story by The Bad Guitarist Podcast. [It says,] ‘This week, we take a look at an AI guitar YouTube channel that popped up in the last month and has over 5000 subs, 600,000 views, and a ton of comments from unsuspecting viewers.’”

Out of curiosity, Shull clicked on it, only to discover that this specific AI YouTube channel, the so-called Guitar Gems with Chase, “is directly ripping me off in several different ways. I clicked on this [channel] last night and honestly was kind of freaked out.”

“If you've been watching my channel since before 2021, you should recognize this background,” Shull points out. “This is the old set – the old background that I used to film in from about late 2018 until we bought this house in 2021.

“This [AI-generated] creator, Chase, is wearing [a jacket that] is pretty clearly modeled after this jacket, which I used to wear in my videos all the time, so this is one of my older videos.”

Background and jacket aside, the bad actors behind the videos are going as far as to replicate the very gear Shull had in his previous clips.

“There's no question that this is someone, some content farm, or some person somewhere, who's feeding my videos to some sort of AI and having it spit out this content. I wish I was as handsome, though, as this guy is!” he quips.

The AI-generated creator’s videos took an even darker turn. Turns out, it’s being used to slander guitar products and reputable brands without being held accountable.

“What this video is claiming is that a company like Gibson or, later, Fender and PRS, and these other companies are ripping you off because they're using the same machines and building the same guitars, but in China,” Shull says. “It's completely wrong information; it's false.

“If I said that stuff in a video, if I came out and made these claims that are just like objectively false, I could be held liable for slander or defamation because I'm lying about a company. But so far as I understand it, because this is an AI creator, and AI is completely unregulated here in the United States, there are no rules around this stuff, at least as far as I can tell.”

Shull goes on to say that “YouTube obviously doesn't seem to have a problem with it,” as the AI-generated channel is “most likely monetized” and not held to the same standards as a human creator.

What’s more, the channel is also being leveraged to sell guitar courses, or, as advertised, “The complete, no-BS manual that takes you from ‘I don’t know what to buy’ to ‘I own the right gear, it plays perfectly, and I got it at a fair price.’”

The so-called “4-in-1” guide currently costs $27 (for a limited time only, of course), with topics including “The Honest Guitar Buyer’s Guide 2026” and “The Ultimate Beginner Gear Setup,” which we can assume are also generated by AI.

While concrete laws regarding AI are few and far between and are different across territories and jurisdictions, in March 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Copyright Act “requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being,” according to a paper published by Christopher T. Zirpoli.

Elsewhere, Executive Order 14365 pushes for a “single national framework” for AI but doesn’t clearly address copyright and privacy concerns. Ultimately, as per Legal Clarity, “No single federal law governs artificial intelligence in the United States. Instead, AI regulation is spread across executive orders, agency guidance, existing civil rights and consumer protection statutes, and a growing number of state laws.”

This naturally leads to a patchwork system that does little to address the concerns of creators like Shull.

As for YouTube, the platform requires creators to label AI-generated content. There were also recent updates to YouTube’s privacy standards that make it possible for individuals to request the removal of “AI-generated or other synthetic or altered content that simulates an identifiable individual, including their face or voice.” Crucially, however, videos are not automatically demonetized simply because they are AI-generated.

“It really sucks, man,” says Shull. “The fact that this is allowed to happen on YouTube, the fact that the platform doesn't immediately crack down on this AI-generated slop, really sucks. And as a creator, and as someone that does this for a living now here on YouTube, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me about the future of this platform.”

Bob Dylan is potentially on the hunt for yet another new guitarist after Bob Britt abruptly quit his band over the weekend.

Britt, who joined Dylan’s band back in 2019, apparently announced his surprise departure from the group in a Facebook post (as per Rolling Stone), which included an image of a plane flight and the caption, ‘Sayanora Bobby.’ And, in response to a commenter on the post asking for context, Britt replied, “I quit.”

In a later statement, Britt shed a bit more light on his sudden exit, stressing he was not fired but had decided to leave of his own accord.

“Apparently there are quite a few threads out there with people speculating about my departure from the Bob tour. I’d like to clear it up,” he writes. “I was not fired but left of my own accord for reasons I would prefer to keep private. I will miss my band mates and crew.

“I am looking forward to getting back to doing sessions (give me a call) and also finishing up Etta’s gospel record. As far as any touring goes, we will see what the future holds. Meanwhile, I have some flower beds to weed.”

Britt is the latest Bob Dylan guitarist to cut the band. His departure comes two weeks after the folk legend’s other longtime guitarist, Doug Lancio, was suddenly replaced by jazz virtuoso Julian Lage in one of the most unexpected and surprising lineup changes in quite some time.

Having already had the task of replacing Lancio, Dylan now seems to be in need of another new guitarist.

It remains to be seen what Dylan has planned going forward. It’s unclear just how permanent Lage’s appointment will be, given the solo commitments he has of his own.

According to Cult Following, session guitarist Joel Patterson was drafted for Dylan's show last night (June 29) to fill in for Britt, but, like the situation with Lage, it remains to be seen whether his appointment will be permanent.

Julian Lage declined to comment to Guitar World on his position in the band.

After years away from the stage, Frank Marino is making his grand return to the stage on August 7 for a rare appearance in Montreal’s Little Italy.

The performance marks Marino’s first live performance in years, after he announced his retirement from touring in 2021 and, subsequently, injured his hand while building pedals in 2024.

After Marino made the jump from player to pedal maker in an attempt to continue his career in music after health issues prevented him from touring, he suffered a hand injury that left him unable to play as he once had.

“I'm making all these pedals by hand, and basically, by doing the grinding, pressing, and everything that I was doing by holding stuff in my left hand, I damaged a nerve in the index finger of my left hand,” Marino said in an interview with Guitar World.

“I've been playing nonstop for 55 years,” he continued, “so suddenly, when I play my guitar, I've got to be careful about how I do it because it hurts.”

“That was on top of all the other things that were happening to me, not being able to use my left hand or my index finger on my left hand... it made it a lot harder,” he told CTV News Canada last year.

“So basically, I went to all the different doctors and hand specialists and all of that stuff, and nothing worked. They tried all these magnets, and it cost me a lot of money, and it was all really for nothing. And so, I just decided to wait and tried playing slowly and gradually. It’s all over time. My finger came back.”

A dose of patience, as well as therapy and cortisone, has enabled him to play again, starting with a private jam in Montreal with local musicians back in October.

“I’d say it’s about 80 to 90 percent back. But, you know, I can play anything that I could play before, but it hurts. So I have to play through the pain just like a hockey player,” he said.

Now, Marino is taking things a step further while paying homage to his city and mesmerizing audiences with a free 90-minute concert as part of ItalfestMTL 2026 – Montreal’s Italian-flavored festival, presented by the Caisse Populaire Desjardins Canadienne Italienne.

For more information about Marino’s concert, visit the official ItalfestMTL 2026 website.

In an exclusive Guitar World interview in 2015, Marino spoke about comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, Mahogany Rush's heyday, and his penchant for pedals – including carrying around a six-foot-by-three-foot, two-tier pedalboard with 22 stompboxes on it in the late '70s.

Darkglass has branched into the world of electric guitar multi-effects pedals for the very first time with a limited-edition modeler designed in collaboration with two behemoth retailers.

Co-founded by Douglas Castro – who’d later go on to conquer the modeler market with his next venture, Neural DSP – Darkglass is the undisputed leader in the world of digital bass guitar modelers and multi-effects pedals.

Indeed, Darkglass has cemented its position with a run of acclaimed amps, pedals and plugins, and the near-perfect, bass-specific Anagram multi-effects unit.

Now, though, Darkglass has waded into electric guitar waters for the first time, partnering with Andertons and Sweetwater for the Anagram Guitar Essentials pedal.

It’s a big development from Darkglass and an interesting side-step into the world of conventional guitars. Competition in this area is already at an all-time high, thanks to the likes of Line 6, Fender, Boss, Kemper, Neural DSP and more.

But with its background in bass guitar and digital tone expertise, Darkglass could make some serious waves in the industry.

The Anagram Guitar Essentials takes on the same compact form factor as the regular Anagram, with a seven-inch central display screen offering 3D-rendered interfaces, flanked by three footswitches and six control knobs.

The pedal comes preloaded with a bunch of preamp models and effects as part of the Guitar Essentials plugin curated by Andertons and Sweetwater. Some heavy hitters are included in that list, such as Fender-style Deluxe and Twin amps, some Marshall-y models, and others inspired by Hiwatt, Matchless and Magnatone offerings.

As for effects, three pedals are part of the drop, inspired by the Klon Centaur, Marshall Blues Breaker and Ibanez Tube Screamer. In total there are 12 amps and a trio of effects to play with.

What’s even more tempting, though, is the fact the Anagram can host compatible third-party NAM profiles, should you wish.

For the uninitiated, NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) is an open-source, free-to-use modeling tech offering amp profiles that is poised to revolutionize the industry. The recently released A2 architecture, for instance, beat out Neural DSP, Line 6 and IK Multimedia in a comprehensive blind listening test.

The NAM compatibility here is a huge benefit. None of its direct competitors currently offer that function, and only a handful of mainstream practice amps and headphone amps – most notably from Blackstar – accomodate this function.

That already gives it a leg up over the likes of the Quad Cortex, Helix Stadium and TONEX.

And, like the OG Anagram, there’s some expansive routing and connectivity options, including MIDI, USB and Bluetooth.

“There was no one better than Sweetwater and Andertons to identify the pieces of gear that helped define the sound of the electric guitar,” says Managing Director of Darkglass, Marcos Barilatti.

“These are the amplifiers and pedals that generations of players built their tone around, and that continue to set the standard today.”

To put a downer on the whole thing, Darkglass is stressing its guitar-based Anagram is a one-time-only, limited-edition launch. A genuine shame, because this could take the fight to some key players in the compact modeler game. Here’s hoping for a more regular run at some point in the future.

The Guitar Essentials Anagram will be available exclusively from Sweetwater in the US ($1,299), and Andertons in the UK (£999).

Visit Darkglass for more.

In the late 1980s, bass guitar player Martyn LeNoble moved from the Netherlands to Los Angeles, where he spent time cutting his teeth playing for the likes of Thelonius Monster before eventually co-founding Porno for Pyros.

The move presented some insurmountable logistical problems concerning his bass gear, and when he arrived in the US he found himself without a bass amp. That proved to be a problem, since the gigs were coming thick and fast – and the bass shop LeNoble sought out couldn't supply him one in time.

Fortunately, as the bassist recalled in an interview with Guitar World, he was once rescued by an unexpected savior: John Entwistle of The Who.

Regarding his relocation and the problems it posed to his rig, LeNoble explains, “I ended up switching to Trace Elliott amps in the '80s. That's what I played when I first moved to the United States.

“The one I had in the Netherlands was too much to ship here, so I went to buy another at a place called The Bass Center in Los Angeles. I don't think it exists anymore. I walked in and had a gig that weekend, but they didn't have an amp in stock. They said, 'We can't get one before your gig.'

“Then, this gentleman walked up behind me and said, 'You can use mine for the gig if you want.' It was John Entwistle from The Who.”

True to his word, Entwistle had one of his techs deliver his personal Trace Elliott amp to LeNoble’s place, so the new-in-town bassist could continue with his gig.

“He asked me for my address, and he had one of his techs come and bring it to my place,” LeNoble goes on. “So, the first two gigs I played here were with John Entwistle's Trace Elliott amp. He was a complete stranger to me; I was a stranger to him.

“But he did say, 'If you blow it up, I'm going to take the one that's yours that's coming next week.' So, there was really no risk for him.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, LeNoble discussed his ill-fated stint in Jane’s Addiction, which he said came to an end after a clash with Perry Farrell.

The critics were brutal, none more so than Guitar World’s editors, who branded Nitro’s 1989 debut, O.F.R., “dickhead music.” Michael Angelo Batio says the smackdowns stung, but he also reveals that what pissed him off the most was that he found himself agreeing with much of the criticism. “The band knew going into it that we were going to be very extreme, but we wound up going way beyond that,” he says.

Everything about Nitro was pushed beyond the max. The Los Angeles-based glam metal quartet, which also included singer Jim Gillette, drummer Bobby Rock and bassist T.J. Racer, was billed as having “the fastest, loudest, highest sound around.” And boy, did they ever. Gillette, whose ballsack-grabbing soprano seemed to extend to a range heard only by canines, reportedly shattered not one, not two, but three wine glasses at live shows.

Batio, brandishing a custom “Quad guitar” with four necks pointing outward, blitzed through songs with neutrino-like speed. (His solos were so blindingly fast, in fact, that many listeners assumed they were the result of computer manipulation.) With Nitro’s songs whooshing by at a head-spinning 200 beats per minute (perfect for cardio workouts), all the rhythm section of Rock and Racer could do was hang on for dear life.

The group’s image was as outlandish as their sound – circulation-constricting leather and Spandex, and bigger-than-big hairdos that surely boosted Aqua Net’s stock. Gillette took things to the point of parody, with a gravity-defying hairstyle that made him look like Tina Turner’s stunt double from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

“It was all very calculated,” Batio says. “I was surprised at how divisive the record was. You loved it or you hated it with a passion. It was an odd thing, because I don’t consider it representative of who I am, or who I was at the time.”

Previously, Batio had high hopes for Holland, a Chicago-based metal band he joined in 1984. Fronted by singer Tom Holland, the group signed with Atlantic Records and recorded an album titled Little Monsters with hard rock production specialist Tom Werman.

“If you listen to that record, that’s the real me on guitar,” Batio says. “The playing is tasteful, kind of like Cheap Trick meets L.A. heavy metal. It’s got really ripping guitar sounds.”

When Little Monsters failed to chart, Holland broke up and Batio moved to Los Angeles. “Suddenly, I thought, ‘Is black really white? Is up really down?’” he says. “Fast didn’t sound fast to me anymore. High didn’t sound high. I hung out on the Strip, and I morphed into this hair metal guy. Nitro became an extreme version of it.”

According to Batio, the group’s demo – “all fast playing and high singing” – wasn’t quite extreme enough for Rhino Records President Bob Cahill. “He said, Angelo, I thought you were fast,” the guitarist says. “I was a little taken aback, and then he said, ‘I want you to overplay all the time.’ He wanted the record to be sonically abrasive.” Which it was, once the label mastered the album.

The finished product accentuated treble frequencies, rendering Batio’s fulsome sound thin and tinny. Worse yet, Racer and Rock’s bass and drum performances all but disappeared under Gillette’s shrill, multi-tracked gang vocals. “The label wanted the PMRC [Parents Music Resource Center] to ban the record, so everything was way over the top,” Batio says.

O.F.R., which stands for “Out-Fucking-Rageous,” appeared to go unnoticed by the nation’s self-appointed censors, but it reached an audience comprised of hardcore metalheads, shred-guitar enthusiasts and curiosity seekers. Boosted by the singles Freight Train and Long Way from Home, which received weekly plays on MTV’s Headbangers Ball and regional metal video shows, the album performed respectably, reaching Number 140 on the Billboard 200.

Even so, Batio and Gillette wanted more. “We just weren’t happy with the mastering of the record,” Batio says. “Jim and I even went to Bob Cahill’s house and said, ‘Look, we hate how the record sounds. We’ll take our own money to remix and master it.’ Bob looked at us and said, “Why? It’s on the charts. It’s selling!”

You wanted to be “the fastest, the loudest and the highest.” When you met Jim, did you think, “He’s the guy”?

Oh yeah. Jim’s outfit had so many metallic studs on it – the jacket weighed almost 80 pounds. It was very heavy metal. We didn’t have big hair – we had the biggest hair. We didn’t have any money, but that didn’t stop us from looking like rock stars.

Jim’s hair was the biggest of all. I remember when we drove to the photo studio to do pictures for our album, I had a hatchback car, and Jim had to sit in the front seat and push it all the way back to accommodate his hair. Even then, his hair was sticking out the car door.

How did you find Jim?

I met him at a party in Venice Beach. We had a mutual friend, a hair stylist who did people like Farrah Fawcett and all the stars. All the rockers used to hang out at her place and go to her parties. I thought Jim could fit in perfectly. He’s an interesting guy. He’s got a black belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. He’s super-smart, super-street. He’s just an extreme guy. You don’t bet against Jim. And he had this voice.

Bobby Rock had already been in the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, so he had that extreme thing down already.

Oh yeah. We targeted Bobby. I don’t mean that in a stalking sense, but we used to see him on the Strip. Jim would be like, “Bobby Rock… We need Bobby Rock!” So I ended up talking to him, and he joined up.

Is it really true that Jim could shatter wine glasses with his voice?

He could. We advertised “double axes and shattered glasses” at Nitro’s debut show at Gazzarri’s. At first, we had no clue how to shatter glass. All we knew was that Ella Fitzgerald did it in a Memorex commercial, but we thought, “There must be a way.” Jim and I were on a quest.

We actually went to [California-based loudspeaker manufacturer] Renkus-Heinz, and we pumped 125 dB against a wine glass – and it still wouldn’t break! We tried everything. We got hold of the guy who did the Memorex commercial. He was like, “Who are these crazy rockers?”

But he liked us and he kept giving us clues. For example, it had to be a fluted goblet made by a German company called Schott Zwiesel, and it had to have a two percent lead content. If you had one of those goblets, it was easy.

Did have all the music written for O.F.R. before you found Jim?

The two songs that became singles, Freight Train and Long Way from Home, I had written before I met Jim. I didn’t have any words, though. I patterned Freight Train after Deep Purple’s Burn.

That’s how I came up with the riff. I had these words, “Believe in yourself, believe in yourself,” and Jim went, “Dude, that’s stupid.” In two minutes, he came up with lyrics to Freight Train. Sonically, what I did on the demo was killer. It was thick and heavy, but that wasn’t what the label wanted.

Were you already playing the four-neck guitar at this point?

No. What happened was, I had a two-neck guitar, and then Steve Vai came out with his three-neck heart guitar. My label wanted me to challenge Steve to a duel. I didn’t see the point in competitions like that.

You’d be doing the Crossroads thing in real life.

Yeah. I didn’t want to do that, but the label went, “Michael… Steve’s got three necks and you have two. You know what you need?” And I went, “Four.” They loved it. As it happened, Wayne Charvel was building all my guitars. I said to him, “Can you do this?” He said, “Sure.”

I have a good engineering mind for guitar design, so I designed the Quad. I told him how I thought it should be four separate guitars, and that was that. It was the wildest thing. There was no limit to what we were trying to do.

When the record came out, a fair amount of people thought you had sped up your guitar playing with computers.

No, no. Those songs were clocking at 200 bpm, which was nothing for me – that’s all 16th notes. There are a lot of guitarists who can play like that now. No, that was all analog tape. There were no punches.

What about Jim’s vocals?

With Nitro, we wanted the biggest background vocals since Queen. Jim could sing like that – five octaves. He was massive, and we didn’t even put reverb on him. There’s no reverb on my guitar either, except for one part of Machine Gunn Eddie. Live, we used the background vocals from our records, and we played everything to the clicks of the record.

How much touring did Nitro do for the album?

We did two- and three-month runs, but we couldn’t get on a big tour. The label gave us tour support for six months. Everybody else got paid, but Jim and I were broke. A lot of people liked us; others didn’t. There were no gray areas with Nitro. After a while, Bobby Rock got offered to play with Nelson. We couldn’t match the number they gave him. I understood. I’m still friends with him.

You guys made another album before breaking up. But you reformed for a time in 2016 with Victor Wooten on bass. How on earth did that happen?

We got Chris Adler from Lamb of God on drums. He was a fan of my solo albums. Victor, too. He’d heard songs from my solo albums, and he said, “I’m looking to get into something heavy.” We were like, “Yeah! We’ve got a supergroup.” Unfortunately, life got in the way. My mom got sick and I had to go take care of her. She ended up passing. I had already told Jim that I couldn’t focus on the band at that time.

Think you guys might ever try again?

No, no. I play in Manowar now, and I’m happy. We headline arenas – our average crowd is, like, 15,000 people. I love what I do now.

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

As a guitarist that plays a lot of blues, I find myself performing many different kinds of shuffles, from slow to medium to fast. One of my all-time favorite blues recordings is Steppin’ Out, as covered by John Mayall on Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. (The original version is by Memphis Slim and features Matt “Guitar” Murphy, of The Blues Brothers fame, on guitar.)

Steppin’ Out is a hard-driving medium-up shuffle in the key of G, and Clapton’s guitar playing on that track is just incredible. He plays with so much fire and creativity, as well as this distinctly youthful British exuberance.

Figure 1 is a two-bar phrase along the lines of the signature lick in Steppin’ Out. It’s played in the key of G and is based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F), with an abundance of quarter- , half- and whole-step bends on the G string.

I love the way Eric draws from his Freddie King influence, in terms of his melodic phrasing and articulation, as demonstrated in the pickup bar and bar 1 of Figure 2, into the Freddie-style reverse-rake “slurs” at the end of bar 2 into bar 3. Throughout the example, notice all of the subtle, expressive bends on the top three strings.

In bars 8-12, the melody and phrasing is so simple – just swinging eighth notes – but the lines are delivered in a way that is also a nod to the great T-Bone Walker, in the use of hammer-ons from the minor 3rd, Bb, to the major 3rd, B, as well as the inclusion of the 2nd, or 9th, A.

In bar 12 into bar 13, I switch to G major pentatonic (G, A, B, D, E), moving back into G minor pentatonic in bar 16. In bar 17, I play a series of D notes on the B string, all on the eighth-note upbeats, that are bent in increasing increments, ending with a one‑and-a-half-step bend that is shaken. In bars 19 through the end of the example, I move freely between G minor and major pentatonic ideas.

Clapton also loves to go up high on the neck and hit you with aggressive unison bends on the top two strings, a la the phrases that kick off Figure 3. This lick begins with F, at the 18th fret on the B string, bent up a whole step to G while a G note at the 15th fret on high E string is strummed together with the B string, ultimately adding aggressive vibrato to the unison bend.

The remainder of the example is played in the 15th-position G minor pentatonic box and features fast hammer-ons and pull-offs as well as vocal-like, wide and fast vibratos.

When soloing over a shuffle like this, it’s wise to hold back some ideas at first, so that you don’t play everything you know in the first chorus! Take your time, hold and shake some notes and let the solo build in a musically natural way. Follow your stream of consciousness and use dynamics to tell a musical story.

Just about every blues show I attended in the ’80s and ’90s started with an uptempo shuffle like Steppin’ Out, and the Mayall-Clapton version is a great vehicle for learning what blues soloing is all about.

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

When Slipknot released their self-titled debut on Roadrunner Records, precisely on June 29, 1999, singer Corey Taylor, percussionists Shawn “Clown” Crahan and Chris Fehn, drummer Joey Jordison, bassist Paul Gray, turntablist Sid Wilson, sampler/keyboardist Craig Jones, guitarist Mick Thomson, and original guitarist Josh Brainard altered not only the sound but also the very image of heavy metal as it entered the new millennium.

And while breakthrough single Wait and Bleed was pivotal in introducing Slipknot to the masses and opening the floodgates to nu metal, as Thomson said in a 2014 Guitar World interview, it wasn’t quite the musical trajectory the band wanted to follow for the rest of their career.

“For a long time, I resisted anything that had melodic choruses. I was very anti anything like that,” he said.

“I mean, I thought it was great how Wait and Bleed ended up on the radio. It’s a great song. But when we were having success with that on our first record and the label says, ‘Yeah, we need five more Wait and Bleeds, I was like, ‘Go fuck yourself!’”

Thomson went on to clarify why he had that immediate reaction – despite the single’s international success. “‘You want five songs that can be radio singles? Well, we’re really not that band. You sell our records, and we’ll make them, okay?’”

The guitarist even pointed out that the radio edit was significantly different than the album version – the label’s attempt at making Wait and Bleed more “commercial” and palatable for the mainstream.

“The more melodic sing-songy part of the chorus, which is on the radio edit, was different on the album,” he asserted.

“It was a background vocal, made lower, that Corey barked over. But then the fuckin’ label gets a hold of it, and they want a radio single, so they ended up having it remixed so the brutal vocal drops and the melodic vocal is now on top. But that’s not what you get when you see us live.”

As Thomson very aptly described the band’s core ethos – especially at the time – in a 2024 interview, “People didn’t fucking know what to think or do with us early on. But our thing always was, ‘Fuck your labels – just listen to the shit. Do you like it?’ You don’t have to categorize it and this and that. Just ask yourself, ‘Is it cool?’”

Elsewhere in the 25th anniversary retrospective, Thomson revealed why all of his solos were cut from the final record, and gave Guitar World a peek into the chaotic and intense recording sessions that made Slipknot such an iconic album.

What is it?

The Baum Guitars Carve comes from a company that is relatively new on the scene, and seemingly appeared out of nowhere for me. Like most of the modern age’s discoveries, I came across the company via sponsored posts scrolling on Instagram. The sharp design and strangely familiar outlines grabbed my attention, and an encounter with Baum at the UK Guitar Show sealed the deal.

Baum actually goes back to 2015, established by Morten Bau, focusing on custom builds and Danish-made, high-end instruments. Quickly realising it had a winning formula on its hands, Baum switched to replicating these same designs with far-eastern-made guitars, reducing the costs and improving the accessibility to a wider audience. The Carve is made in Indonesia, using proprietary parts and pickups, before being shipped back to Denmark for a proper setup from a professional luthier. It's this new Vega Series that The Carve I have here is taken from.

The Baum Carve features a slim, 36mm mahogany body with a metallic ‘Stone Blue’ finish. The sharp double cutaways are not unlike an SG guitar, but still distinctive enough to look like its own thing. The roasted maple neck is shaped to a ‘C profile, and features a rosewood fretboard with a 12-inch radius. ‘Crown’ inlays decorate the 22 medium jumbo frets, which are constructed from nickel.

The hardware is all Baum’s own, with a Baum Performer tune-o-matic bridge with a stop tail, and a set of Baum Performer tuners with an 18:1 ratio. The dual single-coil pickups are also Baum’s own Goldsound Ember P-90, which feature Alnico V magnets. A 3-way toggle switch gives you traditional switching options, with a master volume and tone controls and 500K potentiometers. It also comes with a very nice Baum Original Deluxe Gig Bag.

Specs

• Launch price: $999 | £669 | €699
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: Roasted maple / Baum modern ‘C’
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Scale length: 25.5” / 647.7 mm
• Nut/width: High-density composite / 42.9 mm
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo, nickel
• Hardware: Baum Performer tuners, Baum Performer bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 51.5mm
• Electrics: 2x Goldsound Ember P-90, master volume & master tone, 3-way toggle switch
• Weight: 3.2 kg / 7.05 lbs
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Stone Blue (as reviewed), Vintage White
• Cases: Baum Deluxe Gig Bag
• Contact: Baum

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Taking the Baum Carve out of its rather nice gig bag, the shape of the body is immediately distinctive in its metallic blue finish. It’s like a less aggressive SG shape, with the double cutaways more rounded off. At the tail end of the body, there’s an asymmetric cut that starts as an arm bevel but terminates much lower down than usual at the strap pin.

This carve continues up to the top horn, and flipping the guitar around, there’s another bevel that goes all the way around the body edge and into the cutaways, alongside a curved neck heel on the treble side for additional comfort. As I’ve seen with a couple of guitars I’ve more recently reviewed, there’s no panel on the back for accessing the electronics, so if you ever do need to change anything, the entire pickguard will have to come off.

The metallic blue finish is very well applied, and upon close inspection of all the knobs, screws, and body fitments, everything feels very well-made and sturdy. The neck joint is neat, and examining up and down the fretboard, I see nothing out of place apart from a tiny bit of extra glue sticking out from the 17th fret.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Unlike the SG which it shares so much of a likeness with, the Baum Carve features a 25.5” scale length. Sitting down to play, the Modern ‘C’ neck profile feels very familiar coming from my Telecaster, and there’s no real adjustment period for being able to play my favorite licks. The medium jumbo frets feel nice to bend against, and there isn’t too much resistance from the .10 gauge D’Addario electric guitar strings fitted to it.

I do notice some buzzing at the 1st fret, so I have to remove the truss rod cover and make a small adjustment to get it really singing. Baum did warn me that this particular guitar has been to several shows before reaching me, and that its new guitars always have these adjustments done before reaching customers. With my finger on the 1st fret, the action measures at 2mm on the 12th fret, which, on the face of it, is high. It doesn’t affect the playability all that much, though, whether I’m chugging drop-D riffs or letting fly with some rapid-fire lead licks.

The neck profile is a nice all-rounder. Slim and modern feeling, but not quite in shred guitar territory. It handles everything I throw at it, and I never feel like any particular style or technique is beyond reach. The upper fret access is excellent, as you might expect with a design similar to an SG, but it’s not quite as good as Gibson's design. I have to angle my hand ever so slightly to land those 22nd fret bends.

Using it on a strap in rehearsal, there’s no neck dive either, thanks to the strap pin being positioned on the upper horn rather than at the back of the guitar. I do find that the toggle selector is a bit too close to the neck pickup, so when I got into playing some aggressive barre chords, I whacked it a couple of times onto the neck setting.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

I took the Baum Carve to rehearsal to put it through its paces with my gigging rig of an excessive pedalboard and Orange Rocker 32 tube amp. Starting off with a clean tone, I’m immediately surprised at how hot the bridge pickup is. It doesn’t take much to start pushing my amp into overdrive, and I have to recalibrate some of my pedal settings to get it back to where it usually is with my Telecaster.

It’s got the typical P-90 midrange articulation. It’s cutting, but smoother than a more traditional single-coil sound. Played softly, there’s loads of clean clarity, but as soon as I dig in with the pick, it’s easy to eke out some tube breakup. It’s a lovely sound, without a hint of the ice-pick you sometimes get from single coils, and adding some subtle delay and reverb keeps me playing for a long time.

The neck pickup is a little lower in the output stakes, so it stays cleaner with more forceful picking. Again, there’s that midrange clarity, but the sound is lovely and warm, and noodling single-note motifs sound incredible here. The note sag is really obvious when I attack the string, and it gives a lovely, soft feel that works really well with some busy post-rock arpeggios. With both pickups engaged, there’s a discernible jump in volume, and here the bridge does a lot of heavy lifting with a very bright attack.

Switching in a couple of overdrive pedals and moving to some higher gain stuff, again, the bridge pickup absolutely rips. For punky power chords, it really sings when I leather the strings, but there’s still an excellent clarity when striking full barre chords, even with a Blues Breaker-style overdrive in front of the already driven tube amp. Lead work sings out nicely, and I’m again impressed with the punchiness of the sound.

Switching to the neck pickup, it again retains excellent articulation under higher gain settings, sounding really warm but still with plenty of bite. There’s not quite as much clarity here when I play full chords, but it still sounds inspiring, and there’s a fuzziness to it that sounds great when I attack some single-note riffs on the low E.

Obviously, they won't do metal tones, but I found that pretty much every other style was achievable one way or another. Whether I was playing punky power chords, doomy riffs, or space rock guitar freakouts, the pickups delivered. That said, I think they will likely be too hot for vintage tone hunters.

Verdict

I was admittedly surprised when I saw the price point for the Baum Guitars Carve. It’s more expensive in the US, granted, but you still get a lot for below a grand. The EU and UK should especially sit up and take note, because it’s fantastic value there. It’s a guitar that really nicely balances the retro looks with modern playability and pickups, managing to impressively juxtapose originality and traditionalism that I reckon will appeal to all sorts of guitar players.

My model was very well put together, but it did need a couple of setup tweaks to get it playing perfectly, though Baum did say this was due to this particular test model going to a few expos before it came to me. I’m not sure how I feel about the lack of a panel to access the pots at the back of the guitar, but maybe that’s me being pedantic. After all, how often do we actually check that unless there’s a serious problem or modding to be done? My only other issue is the placement of the toggle switch, which can be easily knocked when getting into a live performance.

Baum’s own Goldsound pickups do a phenomenal job here, especially if you like a hotter, more modern P-90 voice. They’re really adaptable to a wide variety of styles and took to all kinds of effects experimentation with aplomb. It might be a little too much for those who specifically want lower output tones. Overall, I think it’s well voiced for the modern player, and I certainly enjoyed the way they drove my guitar amp hard whilst still retaining plenty of articulation.

Guitar World verdict: Overall, I’m very impressed with the Baum Guitars Carve. It looks distinctive enough to be different in a way that isn’t likely to put off traditionalists, is very well put together, and is fantastic value for money - especially considering you get a high-quality gig bag with it. The pickups deliver that typical P-90 experience, aggressive under gain, lovely when gently picked clean, but always delivering plenty of clarity. It’s easy to see why Baum has seemingly emerged from nowhere when delivering guitars that are this good.

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Solar Guitars is the latest firm to enter the hotly contested pitch-shifting market with the Chug Capo, a no-nonsense stompbox being billed as “a digital bi-directional capo” that is set to go toe to toe with the likes of Boss and DigiTech.

The chrome pedal shifts up and down by one octave in semitone increments, has a bright display, and two key selling points.

The first is the promise of low latency performance – weighing in roughly half its rival's – so that “fast tempo right-hand picking and chugging won’t give the feel of your playing dragging.”

Beyond that, Solar says the “sonic integrity” of a player’s tone will not be harmed when shifting the signal. Its voicing has been “meticulously programmed” so that the affected sound the same as an unaltered chord sound.

That’s important for those considering a pitch-shifting pedal as a primarily practical piece of gear. Dropping by, say a whole tone, can help eradicate the need for taking multiple guitars on the road, thus slimming down live rigs.

Elsewhere, the pedal has two modes. Mix offers a “very powerful fast-tracking octave divider,” while a saved preset can be recalled via Fav mode. There’s also the option of plugging in a non-latching switch, which is not included.

Finally, there’s a Mix dial for blending the pitched signal, meaning it can double up as an octave, and a USB-C port on the back for connecting to a computer.

For a good while, the DigiTech Whammy and Drop pedals, alongside Electro Harmonix’s Pitch Fork, were the go-to for on-the-fly transposing. But in recent years, Neural DSP has impressed with the Transpose feature built into its plugins, and Boss did some serious work with its artifact-free XS-1 Poly-Shifter last year. The market has woken up to the need for high-end pitch shifters for bedroom musicians and working guitarists alike.

In certain cases, artifacts have proven a key characteristic of pitch-shifting – it’s why the DigiTech Whammy DT edges out the Boss XS-100 in my opinion – but for pitch-shifting in its purest form, Boss has proven a force to be reckoned with. That means that Solar has to meet a high bar if it is going to stage a successful content.

“This is the fastest and most transparent-sounding pitch shifter to date, especially when it comes to tight rhythm playing, chords, and pinch harmonics,” says firm founder, Ola Englund. These, he adds, “are usually the first things to expose weaknesses in pitch shifters.”

The Chug Capo is priced at $249, which makes it a chunk pricier than the $199 Boss XS-1, which has slightly more features and a wider octave range. The acid test comes down to audio quality alone.

See Solar for more.

Simon McBride might have just sparked another footnote in the never-ending tone debate by sharing a rather novel hot take that you might not have heard before.

As Deep Purple prepares to release their second studio album with McBride, the guitarist has been fielding gear questions and has issued a red-hot take on the downside of truss rods.

McBride is the successor to Steve Morse’s decades-long tenure in the band and has brought a traditional blues approach back to their core, akin to Ritchie Blackmore’s legacy. As ever, everything goes through his trusted PRS 408 electric guitar.

“I played everything on this record with a prototype from PRS,” McBride tells Guitar World ahead of SPLAT!’s release on July 3.

“The idea is that there’s no truss rod,” he continues. “It goes back to the early days when guitars had no truss rods because I’m a firm believer that if you put a truss rod in a guitar, it sucks the tone and sustain out of it.”

Truss rods, typically made of metal or carbon fiber, run down the length of the neck of a guitar beneath the fretboard and work to reinforce the neck and counter the tension generated by the strings.

They are a necessary feature to prevent and remedy any nasty neck warps. For most, they’re a vital ingredient in guitar building. McBride disagrees.

“This guitar is like an animal,” McBride says of his PRS. “It’s hard to control because there’s so much natural sustain, and I don’t do high-output pickups.

“Acoustically, there’s such a difference without the truss rod,” he adds, alluding to the apparent increased sustain and resonance that comes with removing a chunk of metal from the guitar. “[The neck] must be the strongest piece of wood they could find because it doesn’t bend at all.”

Now, we aren’t expecting McBride to kickstart a trend of players yanking their truss rods out of their guitars – that really wouldn’t be advisable – but the thought that the truss rod actually harms a guitar’s sustain is certainly an interesting take.

Read McBride's full interview in the new issue of Guitarist, which includes a feature on the recent discovery of Eric Clapton's long-lost Summerburst. Pick up a copy over at Magazines Direct.

Laura Cox accidentally embarked on a fully fledged career after she started posting classic rock guitar covers on YouTube 18 years ago and went viral.

She’s now a bona fide touring and recording artist, with three albums under her belt. But as she herself admits, the transition from YouTube to recording her own material in a professional studio was trickier than she expected, or, in her own words, “a nightmare”.

“I was around 15 when I started playing the guitar. Then, two or three years afterwards, I was really into watching YouTubers playing covers of classic rock solos, and it was really motivating for me,” she tells Guitarist. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do the same. I’m gonna post and maybe get some feedback.’

“A lot of the comments were really positive, really encouraging and motivating. But there was also a few criticising my looks, or almost sexual harassment. But, honestly, for me, it was the internet, it was not real life.”

Around 2014, Cox put a band together, and, thanks to her notoriety on YouTube, she managed to find a label and a booker – a move that led her to release her first studio album, Hard Blues Shot, in 2017.

“It was a nightmare,” she replies when asked about dipping her toes into the recording arena. “Because my only experience of music was playing guitar in my room in front of a webcam where I was alone, so I could re-record and re-record.

“But playing in the studio, recording an album with a band and engineers, and every second is costing me money, I was really stressed,” Cox continues. “We had a lot of technical difficulties; the gear was falling apart, and nothing was working.

“I was kind of going into depression after the first studio recording because we couldn’t see the end. Every day we were thinking, ‘Okay, we’re late on the schedule; we still have to record this and this,’ and it was never-ending.”

Thankfully, things got better over the years, and as she – and the rest of the band – gained more studio experience, she even discovered the joy of self-producing on her latest album, Trouble Coming.

“I didn’t record it this way in the studio. I recorded a lot at home, and it felt way more comfortable.”

For more from Laura Cox, plus new interviews with Jeff Tweedy and Brian Robertson, pick up the new issue of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

JHS Pedals is poised to correct its biggest error after announcing the long-awaited second edition of its DIY Notadümblë pedal will be released tomorrow, Tuesday 30 June.

The second stompbox in the firm’s build-it-yourself category, the Notadümblë V1 made the headlines after JHS Pedals founder Josh Scott realized he’d dropped the ball pretty dramatically.

In short, a schematic mix-up meant the clean boost circuit inserted into the Dumble clone was actually modeled on an even rarer Dumble pedal than advertised. As such, it was discontinued after just two weeks.

With V2, JHS Pedals is not only releasing the pedal as it always meant to, but it’s also introducing some pleasing quality-of-life improvements.

It is now a true two-in-one pedal, with independent footswitches for both the Dumble-style overdrive and boost side. The Presence control has also been promoted to the top control panel.

But most importantly, the boost side now correctly draws from John Mayer’s one-of-one A Box Later pedal.

Other quirks that weren’t in the earlier version include a slider toggle to choose which side of the pedal comes first in the signal path, and an effects loop for its preamp boost circuit.

Controls on the pedal’s face include Volume, Drive, EQ, and Presence for the overdrive, and Input and Outputs for the clean boost, staying true to the streamlined controls on the A Box Later.

The first batch is limited to 6,000 units, but fear not, because this is not a limited edition release. The Notadümblë V2 will be available indefinitely; there might just be a small wait for those not quick enough to snag one from the first drop.

The first batch launched on Tuesday, June 30th at 10 am CST.

See JHS Pedals for more.

JHS Pedals has been busy of late, having dropped the ultimate pedal demo guitar in collaboration with Bilt; a curious, against-the-grain octaver; and the Fumble, which separates the wrongly copied Dumble from V1 into its own unit.

Modern punks The Bobby Lees had just completed a sold-out European tour when they realized something was wrong. Crowds flocked, merchandise shifted – but when the band got home to the States and tallied the numbers, the reality was stark. “Everyone made almost no money,” says guitarist and vocalist Sam Quartin.

The Woodstock-founded foursome had self-funded their last three album releases after struggling to secure major-label support. But even for a band accustomed to doing it themselves, the situation no longer worked.

The perpetrator was clear – in an Instagram post later that year, Quartin and bandmates Kendall Wind (bass) and Macky Bowman (drums) announced an indefinite hiatus, citing streaming services' payouts as one of the biggest reasons mid-sized bands can’t sustain themselves.

“People don't want to say something because they're scared they won't get put on the playlist,” reasons Quartin. “We were like, 'Fuck it. Someone's gotta be honest!’" After the announcement she took a moment to disconnect, heading for a swim at her local river – oblivious to what was playing out online.

“I don’t have a personal Instagram account,” she says. “But my friend does. She said, ‘You should check the post, there’s a really positive response!’”

Expecting a message from a label or manager, Quartin instead found something far stranger. “There was a message from Jason Momoa, a video of him in his car saying, ‘Hey, you gotta call me. I want to help. I’m hosting SNL next week – I’ll be in New York. Maybe we can find a solution.’”

Quartin called him immediately. “He said, ‘We’ll get the record funded. How does that sound?’ He didn’t ask for anything in return. If only everyone who has the same position could just do one act of kindness for one of their favorite artists.”

The experience was surreal – while Momoa was busy promoting Aquaman, he was equally happy talking gear. “Kendall ended up giving him Zoom bass lessons when he was on set!” Quartin recounts.

If Momoa’s involvement felt like the beginning of a Hollywood ending, reality quickly intervened. The Bobby Lees found themselves confronting the same barriers they'd been railing against in the first place. Only this time, the challenges were being chronicled on Momoa’s HBO docuseries, On The Roam.

“Jason took us to Atlantic, Turnstile’s label, and they passed,” Quartin says with a droll laugh. “I wish that hadn't been filmed!”

The rejection was especially stark given the flawed discovery model of one the industry’s biggest streaming platforms and the ramifications for its algorithm towards new artists. As Momoa joked to the band, “‘If a new Nirvana or Bob Dylan emerged today, would the industry even recognize it?’” For a moment, it seemed the answer might be no.

Enter Epitaph – founded by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, the legendary punk imprint connected with The Bobby Lees’ first new music in years in a way others hadn’t. For Quartin, the relief was overwhelming.

“They filmed us going into Epitaph on the show, but they weren't with me after,” she recalls. When I got in the car to go back to the hotel,I just started crying.”

After years of self-funding records, scraping together tour budgets and publicly questioning whether they could continue, The Bobby Lees had finally found a home.

Momoa wasn’t the only famous supporter to emerge from the hiatus. “When we were in San Diego, Keanu Reeves came to a show,” says Quartin. “He said, ‘I'm a fan.’ I said, ‘Me too!’ It's cool when people whose work you admire appreciate what you do.”

Another unexpected ally was Flea, who Bowman knew thanks to his mom’s stint as a backing vocalist for Red Hot Chilli Peppers. “When we posted about the hiatus, Flea helped save money for our West Coast tour by putting the band up at his house – but I still haven’t met him!”

The emotional rollercoaster has inevitably bled into their latest record, New Self, specifically in the rap-rock leanings and snare snaps of the title track. Quartin admits to seeking something heavier while songwriting. “I was listening to the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine. The goal was an empowering ‘don't fuck with me’ undeniable head nod.”

While longstanding guitarist Nick Casa has since amicably parted ways (“Every reason he had for leaving, I agree”), the pair’s dual-Telecaster command was still at play for the album. But Quartin was ready to push past some long-held studio habits.

“Dave Sardy [producer] brought over a few guitars. I used to be so superstitious about using mine. I bought it at the Chelsea Hotel, in Dan's Guitar Shop.” It’s a landmark of Manhattan that was once home to Patti Smith and Jimi Hendrix. “I was like, ‘Maybe it has some of their juice!’”

Wind and Bowman also picked up some fresh tricks in the interim, playing as part of Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion. “Kendall and Macky are telepathic now,” she boasts. “A conjoined force!”

Ahead of hitting the road again this autumn, Quartin can see that while the economics that pushed The Bobby Lees to the brink haven’t changed, her perspective has. For the first time, they’re are no longer starting from underwater.

“This whole process turned the volume down on all the crap. I used to be like, ‘Why is that happening?’ But now, it's like, ‘Okay, we've said something. We've done our part. Let's use this opportunity to make the best work we can.’ We’re no longer paying attention to the bullshit.”

• New Self is out now via Epitaph Records.

The six-decade career of Dave Mason – who died on 19 April, just a few weeks off his 80th birthday – was equal parts fantastical and frustrating, but never dull.

For many, his defining work came in the late-’60s progressive-rock group Traffic, though you could also point to his serendipitous thumbprints on the albums of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac.

Others, however, felt Mason might have achieved rather more were it not for the acrimony between band members – and particularly with Steve Winwood – which slowed Traffic down and arguably denied them the immortality enjoyed by their peers. “On one level,” Mason told The Guardian in 2024, “I could hate every one of them.”

David Thomas Mason was born on 10 May 1946, in Worcestershire, and seemed a perfect foil to Winwood when the prodigious frontman quit the Spencer Davis Group in 1967.

At first glance, it worked beautifully: the Mason-penned/sung early single, Hole In My Shoe hit UK No 2. But the rest of the line-up disliked its psych-pop leanings, and Mason was restless, too. “I realised I needed more life experiences in order to write stuff that would become timeless,” he shrugged, quitting shortly after the release of debut album Mr Fantasy (1967).

Having produced Family’s debut album, however, Mason was back for Traffic’s self-titled 1968 follow-up, on which the prolific guitarist once again threatened to steal the show with another enduring hit, Feelin’ Alright? (later covered by everyone from Joe Cocker to Paul Weller). But Mason would claim that Winwood “felt threatened”, and painted a cold picture of his sacking just months later.

“I don’t like the way you write,” he was supposedly told by his frontman. “I don’t like the way you sing. I don’t like the way you play. And we don’t want you in the band any more.”

For a time, it seemed Mason would do just fine without them. Having played the shehnai on the Stones’ classic 1968 single Street Fighting Man, he had the distinction of being one of the few guest guitarists to appear on a Hendrix track, strumming the deceptively tricky 12-string acoustic for All Along The Watchtower.

“It took me 10 or 11 takes to get the timing on the intro right,” reflected Mason, “and Jimi easily could have just done it.”

After touring with Clapton associates Delaney & Bonnie, and blowing through the line-up of Derek And The Dominos, there he was again in the studio with the scattered Beatles, contributing guest guitar to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album (1970) and Wings’ 1975 hit, Listen To What The Man Said.

That same decade, Mason enjoyed US platinum sales for 1977’s solo album Let It Flow. But his hit-rate settled down in the ’80s, while the star hook-ups became fewer and less fruitful (a mid-’90s tenure with Fleetwood Mac – including the Time album – was remembered by Christine McVie as “very acrimonious”).

Mason kept busy in the post-millennium, even finding time to launch his own sustainable guitar brand, RKS, alongside designer Ravi Sawhney (deemed a “fucking impressive device” by Keith Richards).

“When Dave joined me to create RKS Guitars,” Ravi said in tribute following Dave’s death, “he didn’t show up as a rock legend looking to put his name on a product. He showed up as a builder… Dave was deeply involved in every part of that process. Not as a celebrity, as a creator. That’s what made him rare. [He was] a creative force who never stopped asking what could come next.”

But in September 2024, the guitarist revealed he was undergoing treatment for a serious heart condition, while citing “ongoing health issues” for the cancellation of last year’s tour dates. Hearteningly, it was Winwood who led the tributes when news broke of his passing.

“Dave was part of Traffic during its earliest chapter, and played an important role in shaping the band’s sound and identity during that time. His songwriting, musicianship and distinctive spirit helped create music that has lasted far beyond its era, and continues to mean so much to listeners around the world. His place in that history will always be remembered, and through the music, his presence endures.”

Meanwhile, the valedictory post by Mason’s family suggested he had found fulfilment at the end.

“After cooking an amazing dinner with his wife, Winifred, he sat down to take a nap with his [pet dog] at his feet. He passed away peacefully, in his favourite chair, surrounded by the beautiful Carson Valley that he loved so much. A storybook ending. On his own terms. Which is how he lived his life right up to the end.”

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

“Joe Walsh and Don Felder would show up for a session and unpack a minimum of 30 guitars and five or six amps apiece,” Hotel California producer Bill Szymczyk says. “It was, ‘Let’s try this with that.’ What I remember most, though, throughout Hotel California, was a whole lot of Gibson Les Paul with a lot of Fender Telecaster.”

No one can be sure exactly how many – or which – Les Pauls make appearances on Hotel California, but we do know about one of them: Felder’s famous 1959 Burst, which was painstakingly reproduced by Gibson in 2011.

As he told Guitarist around that time, Felder bought the original guitar from a traveling dealer who was famous for his superb stable of vintage axes.

“His name was Tony Dukes,” he said, “and every time we’d go through Texas, Tony would show up. He was a horse trader, and he always had something in his truck you wanted. He would show up in a station wagon or a truck that was full of Les Pauls, Teles and Strats, and I bought probably 20 pieces from him over the years.

“It must have been about 1974 or something, right after our first big hit, One of These Nights, when I started making money. He came round, and I think I bought three or four pieces from him – the Les Paul, a Tele, a Strat and some other stuff.” And, as he told Guitar World in 2013, he plugged his LP into a Fender Tweed Deluxe – “just kind of cranked up, with just the guitar into the amp.”

“The acoustic guitar in the intro to Hotel California is a Takamine 12-string with a DeArmond pickup,” Felder added. “We mic’d the acoustic and put that in the center of the mix. Then we took the pickup’s output and ran it through a [Maestro] Echoplex and a Leslie. We mic’d that in stereo so it has this left-to-right kind of swirling, ethereal characteristic.”

“For recording acoustic guitars, I usually used a Neumann KM84,” Szymczyk says. “Don had a pickup on his guitar running to a pair of little Orange amps, and we mic’d them in stereo. The initial opening-guitar intro is an acoustic guitar in the middle and an amp on both sides, with a chorus that is flowing back and forth between the two amps.”

“Felder and I always found that if we both used single-coil or double-coil [guitars], there wasn’t enough contrast to give the songs any personality,” Walsh told Total Guitar in 2012. “It just turned into a guitar wall.” That’s why he famously played a Telecaster on Hotel California, which was perfectly paired with Felder’s Les Paul.

“I played a Tele, through – I think – the Roland Cube, which I used a lot back then,” Walsh added. It was most likely the same Roland Cube he and his Strat used on Life in the Fast Lane.”

On the Hotel California tour, Walsh also used a Fender Black Panel Deluxe Reverb, a Fender Tweed Deluxe and a Mesa/Boogie Mark I.

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

It's been four days of full-on guitar-based bargains, but that's the Prime Day guitar deals now over - Jeff Bezos has packed up his sleigh and won't be back until next year. This year's Prime Day event saw some truly epic savings on a multitude of musical equipment, so whether you were seeking out a brand new acoustic guitar, electric guitar, or guitar amp, you were sure to find a deal tailor-made for you. 

Don't worry if there's an extra space on your multi-guitar stand, an empty case that needs filling, or just enough room to squeeze another pedal onto your pedalboard, as there are plenty of deals still to be had. Luckily for you, we've rounded up 16 of our favorites that are still up for grabs. 

And don't forget that currently Sweetwater, Guitar Center, and Musician’s Friend all have 4th July guitar sales up and running, with Musician’s Friend and Sweetwater offering up to 60% discounts apiece, while Guitar Center has a more conservative 30% maximum saving – that said, their sale features almost 12,000 items, so for variety they're a real winner.

Jeff Tweedy has named his Epiphone Casino as his greatest guitar bargain, but reveals that things once got heated with its former owner.

The Wilco man has a fairly extensive collection of electric and acoustic guitars, so he was hard-pressed when recently asked by Guitarist to name his most cost-worthy purchase. So, he picked out a small cluster, with family ties and trash-bound gems both included.

“I have to credit my mom with this one,” he says of the first two guitars. “When she got it in her head that I was really serious about playing guitar, she’d look for them at auctions and garage sales. She went to a farmer’s auction, and she got a ’56 Gretsch Duo Jet for 70 bucks.”

That alone is quite a steal, but Tweedy’s mom wasn’t done there. She had an eye for a bargain.

“Then she got a ’50s prototype ES-350 with three pickups, which was probably one of the first guitars with three P-90s,” he notes. “She got that for 120 bucks.”

Both sales represent a lot of value and playability for a combined $190, and echo the support his mother had for his burgeoning passion for guitar. Yet, his greatest find was all his own work, even if the guitar’s new life left its former owner rather peeved.

“I mean, a lot of the guitars I own would sound like fantastic stories now, but they didn’t feel cheap at the time,” Tweedy laughs. “I bought the Epiphone Casino for 100 bucks, and I use it all the time.

“The neck had snapped off, and the guy didn’t think it was going to be fixable,” he develops. Tweedy clearly had a different outlook on the situation. So he struck up a deal.

“I told him I’d buy it and I did,” he notes. “And then, when we came back years later to St Louis, and he came to our show, he saw me playing it, and he was mad at me. He said I took advantage of him. I was like, ‘You were gonna throw it away…’” It goes to show that even the most devastated-looking guitars aren’t unsalvageable.

Elsewhere, Tweedy’s bandmate, Nels Cline, has reflected on a life-changing conversation he once had with Tweedy, as Wilco continues to trek across the US.

Tweedy’s full interview can be found in the new issue of Guitarist. Issue 539 is available to order from Magazines Direct.

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.

Kramer 50th Anniversary Collection

There is a certain demographic who will be looking at this new 50th Anniversary Collection from Kramer, seeing the Gibson-owned high-performance electric guitar brand respraying all the hits of its current lineup in a really sweet Gold Metallic finish to mark its jubilee year, and they will acutely feel the passing of time.

Some might wince, suddenly feeling the urge to pick up a more age-appropriate instrument. But what even is that? Embrace the dying of the light. Take that Frying Pan out of your Reverb cart. So what if the premier shred brand of the ‘80s used to watch movies on Betamax – it’s still young at heart. And so are we.

Besides, the Baretta, SM-1, the 84, the Volante, NightSwan, and the Pacer Carrera have never looked better.

These all come with a gig bag and everything you need to split the atom, i.e. super-quick necks, jumbo frets, compound radius fingerboards, plus Kramer Eruption PRO humbuckers and Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibratos. And the price on these is not that bad either, with the range starting from $999.

PRS Jon Jourdan Limited Edition

Jon Jourdan’s new signature guitar is something different from PRS. We're used to seeing a more maximalist approach when it comes to its designs, electrics with an array of switching options to rinse everything out of their pickup configuration. But Jourdan’s day job requires something different.

His signature model is all business; a single-cut with a single pickup, one volume knob, and a wraparound bridge. And that’s it. As six-string lieutenant to Wolfgang Van Halen, touring the world’s enormodomes with Mammoth – not to mention his roles in To Whom it May and Clint Lowery’s solo band – he clearly needs something that you can tune down, crank up, and hit hard. This is the electric guitar as a hammer, albeit, a very expensive hammer.

“At the end of the day, my guitar is a tool. I want it to do exactly what I need it to, so we took out all the ‘extra’ stuff I don’t need,” says Jourdan. “This guitar sounds huge and is incredibly fun to play. There’s something about taking out any unnecessary wiring and removing the neck pickup so its magnets aren’t pulling on the strings that makes it feel alive. I can’t imagine anyone playing this guitar having a bad time.”

Its sole pickup is interesting, a PRS Metal humbucker. That’ll slug the front end of your guitar amp nicely. PRS is releasing these in Platinum and Gunmetal metallic finishes. Each instrument comes with signed backplate. The bad news is that they’re only making 200 of them.

Eventide H9 Gen 2

No one has ever accused the H9 Harmonizer of lacking features or sounds, but Eventide has just made it better anyway, and has done so without increasing the size of the enclosure.

The next-gen H9 is still respectful of your pedalboard real estate, but this time it comes with full ARM processing to make it faster and better, and SIFT processing; and with all of the algorithms from the H9 Max and H90, you now have some 74 sounds to play with.

Some of these are the kinds of sounds you can only really get from Eventide, such as its sui generis PitchFuzz algorithm, which comprises a trio of pitch shifters, delay, and a fuzz-cum-distortion, and there are some on-trend sounds that we’d forecast will play well for the avant-indie and shoegaze soundscaper, with Cosmic Web, Glitch, GrainMod, and Stutter showing us what happens when Eventide embraces the “granular” revolution.

The aforementioned SIFT technology now allows the H9 to run the polyphonic algorithms just as its flagship units do. All of these sounds can be bamboozling, but you’ve got more than a thousand presets to organize them.

As before, you can only run one preset/algorithm at any one time, but these effects contain multitudes. The H9 Gen 2 could be a powerful chameleon to have on your ‘board for wildcard sounds and studio-quality delay and reverb essentials.

Also launched this week…

Knaggs 250th Anniversary Limited run

While most people will resort to a box of fireworks and grill some dogs to celebrate the USA turning the big two-fifty, Joe Knaggs had different ideas, and instead turned his peerless luthierie skills towards a super limited run of Kenai and Severn models that have F-18s and F-16s performing a fly-by on an ebony fingerboard. Spectacular. They're only making 25 of them. Order by the end of July.

For more: Knaggs Guitars

Two Notes Genome 2

This is a good week for updating your digital guitar eco-system, because Two Notes Engineering has just launched Genome 2.0, upgrading its fully integrated amp modeler, effects, and virtual cab engine with some serious new features. Its multi-parametric AmpNet capture tech could be a game-changer.

For more: Two Notes

Gibson Custom Historic Reissue 1959 ES-330 and 1962 ES-330

Playing a nice ES-330 is one of the greatest experiences you can have as a guitar player, and while that hollowbody gives some the fear – what about the feedback? – the P-90 mojo, the resonance, the musicality of the instrument... it's really something. And these two period-correct 1959 and 1962 Historic Reissues look truly exceptional.

For more: Gibson

Winzz WCG370 nylon-string

For $399, this new hybrid nylon-string guitar is a sweet deal. It has a thinline African mahogany body topped with spruce and a flame maple veneer. There's an undersaddle piezo with volume, bass, and treble, and some nice finish options, too.

For more: Winzz Guitars

Harley Benton BLOCK Series bass amps

Portable and configurable, Harley Benton's new BLOCK Series includes 200, 300, 600, and 800-watt Class D bass amp heads, plus a variety of matching cabinets. You don't need us to tell you these are affordable.

For more: Harley Benton

• What's your favorite new gear release of the week? Let us know in the comments below.

50 years into their career, it can be argued that the Cure have never been a hotter commodity.

Pop giga-star of the moment Olivia Rodrigo has gone far beyond merely citing the goth-rock pioneers as a major influence – she brought Cure frontman Robert Smith out onstage for a pair of duets at her triumphant Glastonbury headlining set last year, and recruited Smith for a guest appearance on What's Wrong with Me, a banner track from her chart-topping new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.

One of the tunes Rodrigo and Smith sang together onstage at Glastonbury was Friday I'm in Love, the swooning charmer of a love song that became the band's biggest hit upon its release in 1992.

Proving beyond doubt that the band's range extended far beyond dense, brooding epics, it remains the Cure song to reference for those who know of only the band's name and maybe their frontman's inimitable hairdo – as Smith told Mojo in 2004, “To taxi drivers, I'm the bloke that sings Friday I'm in Love.”

Sometimes, it seems like the music-biopic-friendly, it-came-out-of-the-sky stories behind classic songs seem improbable, but Friday I'm in Love indeed sprang from one of those sudden flashes of inspiration.

Asked about the genesis of the song in a 2004 interview with Guitar World, Smith recalled, “We were recording the [1992] Wish album in the Manor studio, which is about an hour west of London. I remember driving home one Friday afternoon to have the weekend off. And I started to think of this really great chord sequence.

“I was about 20 minutes away from the studio. So I turned around, went back to the studio and everyone was still there. We actually recorded it that Friday night.”

When the band first laid the song down, Smith felt the guitar tracks needed a bit more jangle to fit how upbeat it was (“It's about that Friday afternoon feeling,” he told GW at the time).

Some studio trickery was just the fix.

“It was recorded in D, and then the tape was sped up slightly using the Varispeed control, so it's kind of between D and D sharp,” Smith told GW.

“It didn't seem to sparkle enough the way we recorded it, so [producer] Dave Allen and I thought, ‘What if we just ramp the tape up a little with the Varispeed?’ Suddenly, everything got brighter and sounded a little more sparkly and poppy.”

Smith confirmed that – though he primarily played a Gibson Chet Atkins model on the Wish album – the hit single's solos were played on an ES-335.

Asked by Guitar World who was playing on each of the song's guitar tracks, Smith explained, “One of them is Pearl [Thompson, the Cure's then-second guitarist], and the rest are me.

“I know I played the acoustic, the solos, and the guitar that plays that signature riff. There's a lot more of me on Cure albums than people probably expect.”

Marla Kether's Congolese heritage and a musical upbringing in the University of Bristol's Jazz, Funk and Soul Society has given her a unique feel for blending Afro-Brazilian rhythms with dancefloor-inspired grooves.

“My approach is instinct-driven,” says Kether. “I play whatever feels right in the moment. Most of the time, consciously or not, my goal is to emulate James Jamerson. I truly prioritise feel and placement over all else.”

Kether found the outlet she was looking for when she was invited to play with rapper Little Simz, beginning an ongoing collaboration that has taken her on a world tour and to a standout performance at the 2024 Glastonbury Festival.

Asked how she got the gig with Little Simz, Kether tells us: “I used to play bass for a singer called Obongjayar, and there were a few London shows where Simz would come onstage. I think that's how she became aware of me.

“She asked if I could play some shows with her, but the dates clashed with a family holiday. Luckily, she asked again a few months later, and I ended up playing the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival.

“Of the hour-plus set, the live band featured on five songs. So it was a combination of playing to the biggest crowd I'd ever performed for, only appearing on five songs, and feeling incredibly exposed – there's not much to hide behind on at Glastonbury!”

Do you enjoy that level of crowd interaction?

I actually feel there’s a weird phenomenon where the more people there are, the fewer interactions you end up having. With bigger crowds, it just looks like a sea of indistinguishable figures, so it’s sometimes easier to play to.

I prefer playing to smaller rooms where you can really interact with people – although seeing the audience that close can also be more nerve-wracking. If you’re playing your heart out to a 100 capacity room and you see someone yawn, you just take it to heart, even though it’s really not that deep.

What’s been the period of greatest growth for you as a bass player?

I’d say there’s been a noticeable development since I started playing for Little Simz in 2024. Something shifted for me in the run-up to that first show, and since then I’ve been pushing myself more than ever.

I also use a wireless setup onstage, so my performance has had to evolve. That includes my stage presence during solos, deciding which songs to roam on or stay put for, and what energy to bring to each moment.

These are all things I’ve carried through into my solo project. My confidence as a band leader and bass player is continuing to grow, and I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my live shows.

What drove you to start writing your own music?

It was a natural progression from being a session musician to wanting to establish my own musical identity and explore my own ideas. I’d been playing for other artists for just under two years when lockdown started.

I had developed my craft and suddenly had enough time to start experimenting with Logic, and to revisit a growing collection of voice note ideas, turning them into properly recorded tracks.

Has your career as a bass player influenced your DJ Set?

Absolutely. I’m drawn to bass-driven and percussion-led genres like batida, gqom, bubbling and UK funky. I’ve even developed a DJ/bass hybrid setup, which is what I used when supporting W.I.T.C.H around the UK, so my bass playing directly informs my sets in that sense too.

What was your biggest takeaway once you entered the gigging scene?

Be personable. There’s no point grinding to reach a standard you consider acceptable if you’re not pleasant to be around. When you’re on the road for weeks at a time, it’s important to be in the company of great people.

How have different cultures influenced your music?

My music is primarily influenced by Brazilian and West African music. A track like In My Corner ft. K.O.G has elements of soukous, a genre I grew up listening to through my Congolese parents. I also make Afro house tracks.

The African continent is so rich in music that it’s hard not to draw inspiration from it, and I’ve not encountered a Brazilian genre I dislike: baile funk, brega, baião, MPB, forró, samba, maracatu – I love them all. That love naturally feeds into my music.

Who were your early musical influences?

I was learning basslines from Nikolai Fraiture of The Strokes, Chris Baio of Vampire Weekend and Esperanza Spalding. I started uploading bass covers to YouTube about a year after I began, and they’re still up.

When I first started making my own music, I was heavily influenced by Deborah Scroggins of ESG. I’ve always been taken by how her basslines can say so little while saying so much.

Tracks like Step Off and Dance are prime examples of the power of a great riff: it doesn’t need to be overly complex. It’s an ethos I still carry into my production now, including on tracks like BTR2, which layers three different bass riffs.

What was the first bassline you ever learned?

I’m not sure if this was truly the first, but once I started bass lessons I remember being taught Money by Pink Floyd. It’s quite a bold choice for a beginner, giving them a tune in 7/4, but it definitely expanded my musical horizons.

Do you have a go-to bass or do you like to experiment?

My go-to is my Fender Squier 5-string Jazz Bass that I bought in 2017. The strings haven’t been changed since 2019!

What is your ideal bass tone?

I love the rich tone provided by flatwound strings; I use D’Addario XL Chromes.

Do you have any advice for aspiring bass players?

Be kind, be punctual, don’t get bogged down in comparing yourself to others and believe in the ubiquitous qualities that you bring!

• Blessing is out now.

From 1965 to 1972, Jack Casady stretched the art and technology of the electric bass faster and farther than anyone ever had before. Casady revolutionized the instrument and helped to create the ‘San Francisco sound’ with Jefferson Airplane, before forming Hot Tuna with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen.

“Jack had this roaring, growling thing that would start at the bottom and twine all the way up,” said singer Grace Slick, answering a question about why she joined Jefferson Airplane in 1966. (The quotation appears in the booklet for Jefferson Airplane Loves You). “I’d never heard bass like it.”

Casady began his career with an early-‘60s Fender Jazz Bass, which was soon stolen. By the time of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, he was using another Jazz Bass, generally through a Fender Bassman amp.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2022, Casady explained: “I played the first three albums with that Jazz Bass with a P-pickup in it, so it was really a three-pickup instrument.”

Casady’s first bass amp was a 50-watt Fender Bassman. His dad built a 4x10 extension cabinet that was “loud as hell and looked like a coffin!” According to Casady, it was designed to fit precisely into the back seat of his 1950 Pontiac.

In 1967, during the sessions for After Bathing at Baxter's, amp designer Bob Hall came down to the RCA Studios with an amplifier he'd designed for acoustic bassists: a 40-watts-per-channel stereo tube amp called the Versatone. The outputs from the two channels were combined into one custom-made 12-inch Utah speaker.

Casady was quickly impressed by the Versatone's potential. “Jack turned the thing all the way up!” Hall told Bass Player in 1993. “I didn't know why you'd want to do that – but as long as he bought the amp, it was his business.”

Casady’s high-flying tone was complete with the addition of the Versatone. He soon discovered a more subtle approach to the volume control, and the Versatone turned up halfway – so it distorted only when he played harder – became a crucial part of his sound.

The Jazz Bass was still Casady’s main instrument on After Bathing at Baxter's, though towards the end of the sessions he tried his first Guild Starfire Bass.

This instrument began to evolve when Augustus Stanley Owsley and Ron Wickersham made some modifications to the electronics. Their circuit was a variable-Q resonance filter, with Darlington emitter-followers at the pickup to lower output impedance before the filter.

The modified Starfire – dubbed ‘Mission Control’ (not to be confused with Phil Lesh's Alembic) – was refinished by luthier Roy Noble and received an ornate headstock inlay, designed by Jorma Kaukonen’s wife and executed by luthier and inlay artist Chuck Erikson.

Casady used this bass for the next three Airplane albums. It was stolen shortly after Woodstock, leading to the purchase of another Guild, a sunburst 1968 or 1969. Casady shipped it back to Wickersham immediately.

There was no time for woodworking, so Wickersham sawed out the top around the lower f-hole and installed three magnesium channels for the controls.

“Back in those days we were chasing a hi-fi sound – we were trying to get better fidelity all the time. I learned all that from my father, who was a dentist, but as a hobby he was an audiophile. He loved to make amplifiers and put sound systems together to listen to records and get better fidelity. So, I was kind of trained in that – to always get something that sounded a little better.”

Casady used this bass until early 1972, when he got his first Alembic.

Casady's new bass was the first all-Alembic instrument. Built by Rick Turner, with pickups of his design, it had elaborate electronics by Wickersham. It featured different sets of pickups on sliding rails and interchangeable bridge saddles of different materials.

At some point during the next three years, the bass was dropped onto a concrete floor and returned to Alembic for repair of body cracks. According to Casady, “It never sounded the same after that.”

Casady replaced the Alembic with a Flying-V bass made from a mahogany body by luthier Glenn Quan, a short-scale Guild neck, and ’60s Guild pickups. He used this instrument during Hot Tuna's hard-rocking period.

During his tenure with SVT, Casady moved to a couple of Modulus Graphite P-style instruments, as well as a Stars Guitars P that was stolen after a show in West Hollywood.

With the downsizing of the reformed Hot Tuna in 1985, Casady opted for a Guild B-30 acoustic bass guitar with piezo pickups in the bridge. Then, while living in New York City in 1986, he found a 1971 Gibson Les Paul Signature bass at Chelsea Music. This long scale, semi-hollow instrument with a single low impedance pickup quickly became his main bass.

Casady’s admiration for semi-hollow basses culminated in the launch of an Epiphone signature model in 1997, which resembles his Gibson Les Paul from the ‘70s and has enjoyed consistent acclaim since.

“I love electric instruments with acoustic properties. And with the Les Paul, I finally found a bass that's responsive enough to capture all the subtleties of my sound and style, from the high-end to the low-end.

“I approached Gibson about reissuing that bass, and they turned me over to Jim Rosenberg at Epiphone. We duplicated the pickups as they were on the old Gibson model, but then I took the pickup and added more Alnico power to it – another three-quarters of an Alnico magnet on the other side.

“I also wanted a long-scale f-hole bass out there. The Guild f-hole guitar wasn't a true hollow body; it had a block down the centre. But this instrument still has an acoustic quality, and that's why I think it sounds so good along with the pickup.”

When we visited Furch’s guitar-making facility near Brno in the Czech Republic a couple of years ago, we were struck by how unapologetically progressive the brand’s approach was.

When we asked if its guitars were all about handmade tradition, the company’s CEO Petr Furch smiled and cheerfully shook his head. Plenty of artisan-quality handwork goes into every Furch guitar, but Petr prefers robots to do the lutherie processes that require total precision and consistency – such as making the company’s innovative neck joints.

Therefore, he dismisses the idea that acoustic lutherie is a technological cul-de-sac fenced in by immovable tradition, and instead views it as an open road towards ever-improving playability and tone.

This spirit finds its highest expression in the Red Series guitars. Furch’s ranges are categorised by colour, with Red being the highest-quality guitars made by Furch outside of the company’s custom-order department.

The Deluxe tier within this series is, therefore, intended to be a bit special – and this guitar doesn’t disappoint.

Among many features unique to Furch, the most recent innovation that appears on this model is the Booster Soundport on the shoulder of the upper bout. Soundports are nothing new, of course, but Furch has designed its own to be an attractively understated array of slots, rather than a yawning hole in the side of the guitar.

Turning to fundamentals, the guitar’s body is made of Malaysian blackwood, which somewhat resembles a rich rosewood, while the soundboard is made of Alpine spruce.

Furch analyses and individually voices each of its soundboards for optimum resonance – a high-end process it performs even on its cheaper lines. But on this Red Series guitar the back is tuned, too, a further mark of its top-tier grade.

Furch is a very detail- and engineering-oriented maker, so even the Full-Pore High-Gloss Finish lacquer that clads this guitar was developed in-house to optimise volume and resonance.

The finely sculpted armrest on the top edge of the guitar’s body is complemented, unusually, by a belly cut on the rear – a doubly ergonomic feature that Furch has dubbed the Bevel Duo.

Ornamentation is also top-notch here, with koa binding and soundhole rosette, the latter with abalone inlay, plus a decorative koa wedge at the tail of the guitar.

Figured ziricote is used, meanwhile, for the bridge, fingerboard and headstock face. It adds up to a seriously elegant, feature-rich and capable instrument.

• The Red Deluxe GC-LI a 2026 is priced €6,265 ($7,169) approx. See Furch Guitars for more details.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

The Gretsch Electromatic Jet Baritone (not to be confused with the G5260 Electromatic Jet Baritone) is an ultra-long scale baritone guitar, coming in at a positively humongous 29.75-inch scale length. Despite being designed for surf and rockabilly, the Gretsch baritone has been effectively hijacked by heavy guitar players, largely thanks to Eric Bickerstaffe of shoegaze-metal chameleons Loathe.

Today’s review model differs in quite a few ways from the guitar that Bickerstaffe tunes an octave down to E with a .105 gauge guitar string, though. The solid mahogany of the G5260 body has been replaced with a chambered mahogany and a carved maple top. It’s more sculpted for comfort and has a rounded neck heel on the treble end for more comfort in the upper fret registers.

The mini humbuckers of the G5260 are also gone, replaced with dual PureVolt Twin 6 humbuckers, which both feature 12 individual adjustable pole pieces. The electronics have also been upgraded, with the addition of a treble bleed circuit on the volume knob and a push-pull control for coil splitting.

The neck profile has changed as well, with the G5260s' thin ‘U’ profile making way for a performance ‘C’ shape. The fretboard wood is bound rosewood, with 22 medium jumbo frets and pearloid classic neo-thumbnail inlays. Both feature adjusto-matic bridges, but the V-stoptail is now a more usual, straight stop tail. Both have die-cast tuners in a 3x3 lineup on the headstock.

Specs

• Launch price: $699.99 | £549 | €599
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string baritone electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany with carved solid maple top
• Neck: Maple/performance ‘C’
• Fingerboard: Bound rosewood
• Scale length: 29.75”/ 756 mm
• Nut/width: Graph Tech NuBone / 42.86 mm
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo
• Hardware: Die-cast sealed, adjusto-matic with stop tail
• String spacing at bridge: 51.7 mm
• Electrics: 2x PureVolt Twin Six humbuckers, master volume with treble-bleed, tone 1 (neck pickup), tone 2 (bridge pickup), push-pull on each tone control splits bridge and neck pickups respectively, 3-position toggle switch
• Weight: 9lb/4.1 kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Imperial Stain
• Case: No
• Contact: Gretsch

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

The Electromatic Jet Baritone is ridiculously long for a guitar. Even the box it comes in is supersized to account for the additional scale length, and out of curiosity, I place it next to my Jaguar short-scale bass guitar, which ends up being not that much longer than the Gretsch. I have to take great care moving it around my home studio, not to clang the headstock, and even then, I still managed to knock it off a few things.

Thankfully, there was no damage done, and the overall build quality is very good. A close inspection reveals barely a hair out of place, with the only thing I could spot being some light marks on the fretboard where it terminates by the neck pickup. Other than that, it’s an exquisitely put-together instrument.

It’s really good looking too, in my opinion. The carve of the solid maple top is gorgeous, and the aged white binding is really nicely applied. The body features some very slight comfort contours on the back of the body, with a very shallow belly cut and even a small carve where the guitar sits on my knee.

The Imperial Stain finish on my test model is very dark, looking more like a gloss black in certain lights. That also means that it picks up dirt and dust very easily, and after one playing session in the current UK heatwave, there was a very obvious sweat mark where my picking arm draped over the body.

Placing it on my scales, it comes in at 4.1kg (9lbs), which, while brawny, isn’t quite as heavy as the Sterling by Music Man StingRay Baritone I tested a few months back. Still, when sitting down at my home studio desk and moving it in and out of my D’Addario desk neck cradle, I definitely feel that extra weight.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Sitting down to play, that scale length makes its presence immediately felt. I regularly play a baritone in a metal band, but this feels absolutely massive in my hands. Out of curiosity, I Google the average hand size for men in the UK, which comes out at 7.6 inches. Mine measures at 7.5, so it’s fair to say that if you have a below-average hand size, you could well struggle with the size of this instrument.

It means that some chord stretches are difficult. Fretting a Loathe-inspired Bmaj7/G# chord is pretty much impossible for me, even after a few days of adjusting to the size of the instrument. It’s fine for your more bread-and-butter open chords, though, and riffing feels really nice on it out of the box.

The stock strings are 13-65, which is a little lighter on the bass end than what I’m used to. It means I can’t hit any Loathe-style downtuning, but I can take it down to drop G. It makes bending at the opposite end relatively easy, too, and I can get a full tone bend without too much difficulty, despite the huge scale length and increased gauge size versus a standard electric guitar. Beyond that, it does get considerably harder, however, so be prepared to practice if you want to nail those Gilmour-inspired two-tone bends on this.

The neck profile is pretty slim for a baritone. It feels more like a ‘D’ than a ‘C’ to my hand, and makes fast riffing and lead legatos really slick feeling. The gloss finish isn’t sticky, and with a nut width of 42.86mm, it doesn’t feel gargantuan when playing open or barre chords, no matter where I am on the neck.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Plugging it into my audio interface and loading up the Neural DSP Nolly guitar plugin, my first port of call is to see how it djents. I drop tune the low string all the way down to E, and attempt to play some of my favorite Sikth riffs on it. It holds its tuning surprisingly well here, despite the string flapping around all over the place, but despite my best efforts, it’s way too inconsistent, so, ambitions curtailed, I go back to drop A for some high-gain riffing.

It’s chug city with a modeled 5150 and a Tube Screamer-style overdrive pedal pushing the front end. The humbuckers are in that medium output level, which means they stay really clear and articulate despite the low tuning. Playing open chords even on the heavily saturated preset, it’s remarkable how clear everything stays. Moving to some octaves with a drone string throughout, I can hear every string, no matter where I’m playing on the neck.

It won’t be for everyone. If you like that ultra-compressed, effortless active pickup feel of a more usual metal guitar, this might be a little too organic for you. On settings that are usually quite saturated on my other humbucker-equipped baritones, here it sounds more like a hot, vintage-style humbucker rather than something you’d typically hear in modern metal. I don’t mind that at all, but it’s worth noting for those who prefer that type of sound. The low end is also very well behaved, so there isn’t an overload of it even when I crank the bass knob on the amp.

Switching to the neck humbucker, it’s a little less articulate when I play open chords, and lower output than the bridge sound. Cranking up the gain and the bass, I’m straight into lumbering doom power chords territory. It sounds fantastic with single note riffs on the low A, and moving into some lead work and adding a little reverb delivers a fantastic lead guitar sound, with plenty of thick warmth that still manages to sound very clear and defined.

This guitar can be set to coil split individually on each humbucker, so my first instinct is to split the bridge humbucker, leave the neck as is, and move to the middle position of the toggle switch. I switch to the Neural DSP Tone King plugin on my tried and trusted clean setting with a touch of spring reverb and tremolo, and the resulting tone adds a little of that Strat out-of-phase sound, with a bit of honkiness to it. It’s less noticeable with open chords, but as I move higher up the neck, there’s a plinkiness that creeps in.

It’s a cool feature, and adds a lot of different tonal options as you can combine single coil with humbucker sounds, just use the split coils on their own, and have both humbuckers in split coil mode. The sounds are less useful when playing high gain, but for those clean sections or recording, there are a lot of options here.

Moving into some more measured playing, the pickups feel a lot darker with a mid-scooped amp tone and no mid boost pushing the front of the amp. I feel the need to turn up the treble a bit to get them to cut better, and it’s even worse on the neck pickup. They end up coming across so dark that I switch to another plugin, Archetype Cory Wong X, to see if I can eke a brighter sound out of them. Using the baritone guitar specific preset, I have to crank the mids, treble, and presence knobs to get a really bright sound. It sounds great once I get there, but it takes some work.

Verdict

It’s interesting then, because it seems this guitar has been aimed more at the metal crowd than traditional baritone sounds. Under high gain, I found the tones to be incredibly inspiring, articulate, and powerful. It behaves brilliantly with drop tuning, and it’s got plenty of gutsy midrange to power through a full band setup. It can absolutely djent and chug with the best of them. It’s also incredibly versatile thanks to the clever switching of the individual split coil mode on each humbucker.

If you’re after that Spaghetti Western baritone sound, though, I don’t think this is the guitar for you. With clean tones, the pickups end up sounding really dark due to a combination of scale length and the vintage-leaning voicing of the pickups. It means it’s not a clean machine unless you start cranking the treble and presence knobs, which comes with additional side effects.

It will be a very difficult guitar to handle for smaller players or those with smaller hands. The scale length is massive, and even for an experienced baritone player, I found more complex chords hard going on its behemoth span. Despite this, it’s super fun to play for open and barre chords, lead work, and single note riffing, thanks to the slim neck profile and reasonable nut width.

Guitar World verdict: For high gain and metal players who want to downtune, this is a great option if you don’t fancy a 7 or 8-string guitar. The articulate pickups mean it delivers incredibly well when it comes to anything heavy. It’s a tale of two halves, though, because I found the clean tones to be quite lackluster. It means that for players who want the classic baritone experience, I recommend looking elsewhere.

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Straddling the boundaries of virtuosity and eclecticism, Italian-born American acoustic guitarist Peppino D’Agostino’s innovative fretwork saw him named by Guitar Player in 2017 as one of the 50 Transcendent Acoustic Guitarists on the scene.

His cross-cultural collaborations have also seen him work with longtime Joe Satriani drummer Jeff Campitelli and classical guitarist David Tanenbaum.

For his latest collaboration, D’Agostino teamed up with Dr. Barbara A. Minton, an internationally recognized psychologist, neuroscientist and musician, for Calm the Storm, an album blending cutting-edge neurobiology with the transcendent power of music to foster restoration, emotional healing and inner-connection.

“When I was asked by Dr. Minton [who accompanies D’Agostino on pipe organ] to work on this project, she set up certain parameters,” D’Agostino says. “I needed to stay within two octaves because the idea is to engage the brain with melodies so that the brain is focusing, and at the same time, give the brain this kind of a slow tempo. Also, the pitch was important because if it’s too high frequency, the brain gets disturbed.”

While the fingerpicking guitarist is normally at home playing a Robert Godin designed signature model Seagull steel-string guitar, he switched to a nylon-string for the new album.

“Due to the brightness of the steel string guitar, Dr. Minton determined that it was not what we wanted,” he says. “So, we decided to use a Godin nylon-string guitar. I had to be careful about touching the strings a certain way because we needed to avoid parasite noises when you slide your fingers along the strings.

“I also had to consciously think about the amount of pressure that I was putting on each string, especially on the bass strings. If you press too hard, the string goes out of tune.”

D’Agostino hopes Calm the Storm inspires people to reflect on the unique combination of classical guitar and pipe organ.

“This music is not about acrobatics or showmanship: it’s about touching people with beautiful melodies and rich harmonies,” he says, “so that it brings them into a positive state of mind and reminds us that music can be a source of healing and a refuge of happiness.”

• Calm the Storm is available now via musicandhealing.net
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.