Journey’s show at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma last night (October 8) was halted for a medical emergency when drummer Deen Castronovo took ill and had to be helped off the stage.

The band were just two songs into their set. They opened with Be Good to Yourself, following it with Stone in Love, and that was it, Castronovo’s night was over.

The group left the stage. The house lights came up, and after a pause, rhythm guitarist and lead keyboard player Jonathan Cain addressed the audience, asking them to keep Castronovo in their thoughts. Though he did not have much information to share with them, and at that point he was unsure whether the gig was going to continue.

“Our drummer is having a medical emergency, right now, at this very moment, so we’re going to see what happens as this progresses,” said Cain. “It’s an unfortunate situation. We’re really sorry. We’re hoping it’s only a delay. But please have your prayers ready for Deen Castronovo. Everybody, thank you.”

25 minutes later, the show was back on. Neal Schon introduced Castronovo’s drum tech, Steve Toomey, to the crowd, asked them to give him a round of applause before apologizing for the delay. “We love you all,” Schon said. “We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”

Toomey duly stepped behind the kit, counted them all in, and away they went into Ask the Lonely. The show must go on. There was no further update on Castronovo’s condition, but Schon suggested that it was not that serious, and dedicated their performance to him.

“This concert is for Deen,” he said. “I think he’s going to be fine.”

Journey fans will still be in the dark as to Castronovo’s health. There is no mention of the incident on the band’s social media channels. Though they did post footage of Schon’s wicked solo before Wheel in the Sky on Instagram.

Journey are on their epic Final Frontier Tour, which has been winding its way around the enormodomes of the United States since late February. Tomorrow night they play the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas. Here's hoping Castronovo makes a speedy recovery.

Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill has announced his retirement, stepping down from the British metal stalwarts after 57 years of service.

Described as “the backbone of Judas Priest” in an official statement, the 74-year-old has made the tough decision to leave the group.

Hill, the band’s third bass player after a series of early line-up changes, joined in 1970, and has played on every single one of Priest’s 19 studio albums, from 1974’s Rocka Rolla to 2024’s Invincible Shield.

“For a long time now, when asked ‘how long can you continue,’ I’ve always answered, ‘until my performances suffer,” he says in an official statement. “I hate to say it, but that time has come.

“For some years now, I’ve been struggling with the onset of the evil arthritis, which is now in an advanced state in my left shoulder and right hand, established in my right shoulder, and present in both knees. I’ve been fighting this with painkillers, gels, and recently with cortisone injections in my shoulder and hand.”

Treatments, he says, made it possible for him to lay down his punching basslines on the band’s latest album. Since then, he has doubted his ability to take the music onto the road.

“We asked our good friend Davey Rimmer from Uriah Heep and Elegant Weapons to learn the set list to stand in for me if I had to pull out, which I did for the London show,” he says of their recent European tour.

“This was due to me snapping a tendon in my left shoulder, as if I didn’t have enough problems with it, just before the encore during the Brussels show two days before [September 18, 2026].”

Reluctantly stepping aside as the band flattened the English capitol’s Eventim Apollo has been a wake-up call for Hill, who says, “I’ve neglected my family life for 57 years.”

“I’ve decided to retire and spend the remaining years making up for it,” he adds. “There’s not a day goes by where I don’t give thanks for the incredible journey I’ve lived through, and it just remains for me to say that I love you all, and thank you for the life you’ve let me live.”

With the news, Hill confirms that Rimmer will take his spot in one of Britain’s most important metal bands.

Longstanding guitarist Glenn Tipton, meanwhile, has already retired from touring as age catches up with him, but is still proving a riff machine in the studio alongside Richie Faulkner. It means that vocalist Rob Halford is the only member to have played on Rocka Rolla left touring with the group.

The destruction of a 145-year-old Martin guitar in Quentin Tarantino’s film, The Hateful Eight, is embedded into guitar folklore. But what if it was no accident?

A former Martin employee has just blown the story wide open. He doesn’t believe the narrative that has been told over the past 11 years. He says Tarantino wanted it destroyed.

Set in Wyoming Territory during the 1870s, the Academy Award-winning flick follows Kurt Russell’s bounty hunter, John “the Hangman” Ruth. He has captured Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domergue when they get caught in a blizzard and are forced to seek shelter.

Domergue is a guitarist, and so Leigh was handed a period-correct Martin, believed to be worth around $15,000 to practice on, so she could authentically strum away on set.

In the film, Ruth gets annoyed by her constant string fiddling, and at one point, takes the acoustic guitar off her and smashes it to pieces. The story goes that it was a tragic mixup that saw the ancient Martin – and not a prop guitar – destroyed during the scene. That might not be the case.

“Tarantino filmed it at night on purpose so that the guitar tech wouldn’t be there,” Dick Boak, Martin’s now retired in-house historian tells the Gear Gab Podcast with Eric Dahl podcast.

“He [the tech] had gone home, and they never brought the papier-mâché guitars out. They just had the regular guitar,” he claims. “She [Leigh] played her little thing, and Kurt Russell grabbed it out of her hands.”

The ‘mixup’ has since become stuff of legend, with what’s left of the guitar even put on display at the Martin booth at NAMM 2024. The guitar had been loaned to the filmmakers from the Martin Museum – a place where it neighbors Kurt Cobain relics and haunted guitars – and didn’t come back in one piece.

In fact, Boak says he feared the incident would get him sacked. But Tarantino is Tarantino; he only ever makes movies his way.

“Tarantino wanted to get a genuine reaction out of her,” Boak says of the scene. “And yeah, he did. I’ll never forget it, you know – the reaction on her face and everything from that.”

Martin has since, and rather understandably, changed its loan policy for museum instruments after Russell’s cowboy Pete Townshend impression. No other production company is going anywhere near its artefacts.

Apparently there were six prop models made, to spare the priceless Martin a gruesome fate. Moreover, Russell was egged on to treat the guitar like it owed him a sizeable wad of cash that fateful day on set. The actor, in turn, says he doesn’t care about the guitar’s destruction, and believes the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

Boak’s claims add a fresh twist to the tale, and, if anything, steep even more prominence onto the poor instrument.

Last month, metal guitar legend Tony Iommi said he turned down Andrew Watt’s offer to make one last Black Sabbath album with the original lineup. Watt himself, however, has just spun a very different story on the matter, and why plans for a 20th Sabbath album never got off the ground.

Watt first made his name working with pop artists before working with giants of rock and metal, from being a key player in Ozzy Osbourne’s late-career purple patch to Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones. Through his closeness with the Prince of Darkness, the idea of making one last Black Sabbath record with the original lineup – Bill Ward having been absent from 2013’s 13 – was floated.

The young producer was desperate to get the band back together. Iommi, citing Watt’s pushiness and lack of understanding of how the original lineup operates, rejected the offer.

However, in a new interview with Lipps Service/Spin, Watt blames the botched plans on other circumstances, and insinuates Iommi was onboard.

“We had made these two Ozzy albums, and Ozzy wanted to make another album,” Watt says. “He didn’t want to do exactly the same thing that we had done before, so he was into the idea of doing a Sabbath album.

“Sharon and him said I had to call and talk to each guy and see if they were into it,” he continues. “So I called Tony, talked to him, and he said he was into it as long as Bill [Ward, drums] was there. That was everyone’s thing. Ozzy was like, ‘If Bill does it, we’ll do it.’”

Bass player Geezer Butler – who has just made a guest appearance on the new Mastodon record – is said to have felt the same. So all Watt had to do, he says, was convince the drummer to pick up his sticks and play.

“I had this 40-minute call with Bill, which was one of the weirdest and funniest phone calls ever,” Watt details. “Long story short, it ended up that Bill wasn’t able to do it for a multitude of different reasons, so that’s why that didn't happen. But the other guys were all into doing it.”

It doesn’t take a detective to spot the big difference between the two stories, so it’s anyone’s guess which tale is closer to the truth.

What is apparent, however is that Iommi has a new solo album – and band – to focus on in 2026.

Michael Hampton was barely 20 when he recorded Funkadelic’s 1975 record Let’s Take It to the Stage. He was young compared with his P-Funk bandmates, earning him the nickname Kidd Funkadelic – but he quickly settled into the funk collective, and the good times soon rolled.

“Once I got in the band and out on the road, I just practiced and played,” Hampton says. “When we got into the studio, maybe I’d bump into a few beers and just kick it and have a good time.”

With this, Hampton admits he “couldn’t tell you the actual process,” mainly because Funkadelic was a collective of free-spirited, drug-using, hard-partying musicians looking for nothing more than a groove to accent their good times.

“Those guys were older than me,” Hampton says. “They were putting it together. There was probably a lot of ‘paperwork’ I missed out on. [Laughs] But, hey, I’d rather have the few brain cells that I’ve got left than worry about any of that!”

Like most of Funkadelic’s ’70s output, Let’s Take It to the Stage is a banger with lots of guitar heroics to spare.

“We saw it as like a battle of the bands, you know, that type of relationship,” Hampton says. “We always tried to do our best on tour. That’s where ‘Let’s take it to the stage!’ came from. We’d be like, ‘Let’s do this sucker!’ We were like a funk mob, just doing our best to smoke the stage and outdo whatever other band was coming.”

Now 69, Hampton isn’t a “Kidd” anymore, but he fills up with youthful energy when he looks back on Funkadelic’s halcyon era.

“It means something to me on the groove trip,” he says. “If you don’t like it, take your dead ass home, you know? [Laughs] Shit, I still love that stuff. I love playing it. When I do, I pull out the best equipment, so that whatever I use will be louder and funkier. We still say, ‘Let’s take it to the stage,’ you know? It still represents us. It’s about having fun and that competition, which is alright by me.”

How did the sessions for Stage kick off?

We went up to Michigan United Sound, which was near Wayne State University’s campus in Detroit. We stayed across the street at a little motel, and that was where we came up with a lot of stuff. I’d have to listen to the album to remember exactly what happened and where, but I do remember that.

Can you remember the first song that you recorded?

That woulda been Be My Beach. I actually did the sessions for Let’s Take It to the Stage the same day I did the first sessions for Bootsy Collins’ first album, Stretchin’ Out [1976].

Given the free-spirited nature of Funkadelic – and your playing – what was your general approach?

I had no idea where we were going. [Laughs] I don’t know what the process was because there wasn’t one! We went in there, said, “We’re gonna record this song,” and we just did it. No-one ever approached me formally and was like, “This song is gonna be on this album, and we’re gonna do it this way…” We just did a lot of sessions for both albums, and they picked out the best stuff that made sense for the albums.

So you had no idea if you were recording a track for Funkadelic or Bootsy?

It wound up as a process of elimination. Everybody was just recording all the time, 24/7. It was like one giant shift; you’d get back up, go over there, play, do it, hang out, kick it, put some parts on and then come back out. It’s hard to even know who played on what track, to be honest with you.

That checks out, as the credits on P-Funk albums are murky at best.

A lot of things went undocumented. I’d have to listen to try and figure out who played with me on this or that track. There might be a log out there somewhere that had that, but I don’t know. I’d go in there early in the morning and be on this or that song, but things changed so often, and the process was fluid.

Who plays guitar on Good to Your Earhole, which features a ton of ripping guitar?

I know that one, man. That’s Eddie Hazel! I didn’t play the foundation of that or anything. Everybody was recording, and Eddie probably went in there, did his thing and probably did some singing because he was a great singer, too. That’s the story there.

According to George Clinton, a “smack addict” wandered into the studio, laid down the solo for Get Off Your Ass and Jam and was paid $50. Is that true?

I heard a story like that, but I don’t wanna say the guy who did it was a smack addict, you know? [Laughs]

Paul Warren of Rare Earth has claimed that the solo on Get Off Your Ass and Jam was, in fact, him. Should we put the “smack addict” rumor to rest once and for all?

Yeah, I don’t know! Maybe it was a guy on smack who got paid $50. But let’s just roll with what George Clinton said. [Laughs] So, yeah, sure, the original story is probably true.

Did you play on Get Off Your Ass and Jam, too?

I did the loop when the song starts off. They looped it real fast, and then I’m in the back doing some whammy stuff later on. And it’s funny because I think Tupac Shakur sampled that in one of his tracks [1993’s Holler If Ya Hear Me]. Somebody sent it to me. They broke it down, and it’s like three notes running; he made all these beats and different time signatures. It was a cool sample.

What gear were you working with?

We had a lot of Marshall amps. And we had the old backline from Aerosmith, which were Music Man amps, and Crown power amplifiers. So, yeah, we were using Aerosmith’s old equipment.

How did Funkadelic end up with Aerosmith’s gear?

That’s a good question! [Laughs] There was a guy called “Rabbit” who we coulda asked, but I don’t know about any of that, man. I don’t wanna drop any names, but I just heard that’s where we got the Music Man and Crown stuff.

I’m not quite sure if we borrowed them, if it was an actual purchase or a trade, but there were a lot of things going on back in the day with roadies and things like that, so who knows about the actual transaction.

Is that to say maybe a side deal took place between roadies?

Well, there were some guys that worked with Aerosmith that were actually techs, and they were working with us, too. I don’t know because I didn’t see the guys, and I didn’t talk to anybody that did the deal. I just know that we wound up with it, and that’s what was used. They worked, I plugged in, and that’s how it was!

What guitars did you use on the album?

I had an old Gibson L6-S. I kept it all original, and that’s the guitar I used a lot back then. I also had a Les Paul and an old Framus that was kind of Les Paul-shaped [probably a 10600]. I had that guitar worked on; it had these weird augmented pickups where the coil and the wire wrapped around them made crazy sounds.

I ended up having DiMarzio pickups put in there instead. And then I had an Alembic guitar that I bedazzled with rhinestones, mirrors and shit. [Laughs] Oh, and I had my B.C. Rich Bich.

How do you view the album’s legacy?

Some people just have their favorites, but it doesn’t matter to me too much. It’s about how well you play. Once somebody gets into it, that’s what matters. But it’s funny because I had no idea people would like it so much. You play the songs, rehearse them and do the shows, but you don’t know it’s gonna be something that loops on forever.

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

There’s a long-running joke in the guitar industry that PRS guitars are for dentists and lawyers. The sentiment is that those who fork out $7,000+ for a PRS McCarty are rich hobbyists, rather than hard-working touring musicians.

In a recent fan-led Q&A with UK music store Andertons, firm owner Paul Reed Smith was asked about his firm’s reputation head on. “Hey Paul,” write Getthefunkout46, “why do you make guitars exclusively for dentists?”

It’s a pointed question, and one that Smith embraces with a smile. But he’s not in the mood to simply laugh it off. He wants to set the record straight, and actually insinuates that there are other firms more deserving of that affiliation.

“I didn’t know Carlos Santana and John Mayer were dentists,” he first chuckles. Then the laughter subsides.

“The question implies that only dentists and doctors buy the guitars. It's just not true anymore,” he says. “I mean, there was a time in the late ’80s [when] maybe that was true, but Sweetwater did a thing: the most expensive guitars. We weren’t in the first 10. We’ve done everything in our power to make the SEs affordable.”

He has a point. Coming from Cort's massive – and impressive – Indonesian factory, most SEs offer great value for money, such as the NF 53 SE, which was one of 2025’s best sub–$1k electric guitars. The Silver Sky SE has been selling like hot cakes, too. Herman Li’s signature SE, though, is something of an outlier at $1,999.

Still, Smith isn’t done pleading his case.

“These S2s are really affordable,” he continues. “Look, you can say that to some people, a Private Stock's not affordable [at $8,000 – $14,000], but that's an awful lot of time and energy and skill level for what we charge for them. So I'm okay with it.”

Elsewhere in the Q&A, Smith was quizzed on tonewoods, having previously offered an interesting take on the debate, and had his first Greggs sausage roll [a budget UK fast food staple]. So it was quite the day for him.

Smith has just been inducted into Guitar Center’s RockWalk of Fame, after a heartfelt speech from John Mayer.

When Alek Darson was hired to mix and master a batch of demos, it seemed like the kind of straightforward job he regularly handles in his Port Colborne, Ontario studio. Instead, the guitarist and producer found himself pulled into Inner Child, the progressive project led by guitarist Carlos Borges and anchored by Animals As Leaders drummer Matt Garstka.

By the time the self-titled debut was finished, Darson had contributed lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards and programming – while producing, engineering, mixing and mastering the album too.

Borges had initially presented himself as a client, but Darson recalls the job kept expanding: “We need bass for this part. We need guitars for this.” Soon he was adding solos, reshaping sections and suggesting arrangements. Most of the album was assembled remotely before the team spent four days tracking drums with Garstka at East Iris Studios in Nashville.

Calling Inner Child progressive metal only gets you partway there. The music moves through odd meters, jazz-fusion phrasing, heavy riffing and quieter passages, while guitars, keyboards and orchestration shift underneath. Garstka’s drumming can be explosive and hyper-detailed, while string arrangements push the music well beyond a standard trio.

There’s virtuosity everywhere – but the record unfolds in layers rather than simply overwhelming the listener. That complexity makes Darson’s guitar choices more interesting. Much of Inner Child lives in clean and edge-of-breakup territory rather than constant high gain, which pushed him outside his comfort zone.

“A 5150, chugging along: that’s my happy place,” he admits. The cleaner approach gave him room to experiment, especially with economy-picking concepts from longtime influence Frank Gambale.

For the heavier material he leaned on his WoodGuerilla Ghost of Isabel, a multiscale eight-string with a 26.5-to-27.5-inch scale and Fishman Fluence pickups. He likes the glassy top end, while the extended scale gives the lowest strings an almost piano-like fundamental.

He uses an unusual E-A-D-A-D-G-B-E tuning that opens up less predictable low-register voicings. When he wanted something warmer, he reached for Puffy, his neck-through WoodGuerilla seven-string and longtime touring workhorse.

Darson’s amp world is equally modern. He’s largely moved to Fractal’s Axe-Fx platform after years of hauling traditional rigs, but he says searching for the right tones still feels like swapping amps, cabinets and microphones in a studio. Some DI tracks were also re-amped through Cubase’s stock VST amp simulator, particularly for clean sounds. Darson may miss the physical ritual of using real amps, but as he puts it: “They've nailed it in the box.”

He says his “producer brain” is always involved when choosing instrument tones as “half of the mix is within the arrangement.” If a guitar needs drastic EQ later, his instinct is to question the part, voicing or register first. Picking a sound and arranging a part are really the same process: making sure every layer earns its space.

There were moments when the Inner Child project was quite challenging. For Solace Darson wrote a sweeping, nearly chromatic unison with the synth that became one of the hardest guitar passages he’s ever tackled.

“I don’t think I've ever practiced anything that much in my entire life!” he says. “I can barely play it at tempo.”

It’s a revealing admission from an accomplished progressive guitarist whose technical vocabulary can make difficult parts sound almost casual. His fretboard fluency was built over many years – he started aged 10 on his mother’s nylon-string in Belgrade, then heard Dream Theater's Images and Words as a teenager and was floored by the unison passage in Metropolis Pt.1.

He later studied counterpoint, harmony, figured bass and solfege while touring, as the Eastern-influenced music around him provided an almost subconscious education in odd meters. Berklee had long been the dream; once financial help made it possible, he moved to Boston. Years after Dream Theater first inspired him, he found himself playing guitar and bass on Jordan Rudess’ 2019 solo album Wired for Madness.

The title Inner Child also became unexpectedly personal – as an only child who spent much of his youth looking inward, Darson connected with the idea. “I’m still the same kid in a sense,” he says. “Still gazing at these instruments, like, ‘It would be cool if I could play that!’”

Asked which track he’d suggest to introduce Inner Child, he settles on Guided Anger, while giving Wonder an honorable mention for its guitar and drum interplay. Both reveal the balance at the heart of the record: chops are welcome, but never simply for their own sake.

Whether he’s choosing an eight-string, dialing back the gain or wrestling with a brutal unison line, Darson keeps returning to the same question: what does the song need?

• Inner Child is out now.

A violin bow may be better associated with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or Rosalía’s Lux, than rock music. However, a handful of guitar players dared to challenge the confines of guitar playing and brought the lofty violin bow into the rock circus.

Jimmy Page is undoubtedly the most famous of them all – he stunned audiences at Madison Square Garden in 1973 with his bowed-guitar shenanigans. Eddie Phillips is widely cited as the player who inspired Page plus Adrian Belew, Lee Ranaldo and Sigur Rós’ Jónsi.

The violin was my first instrument before I took “a walk on the wild side” and picked up the electric guitar. Fast-forward to when, teenage angst and all, I decided it would be a good – no, an excellent – idea to use the bow of my first-ever violin on my first-ever Strat. I didn’t even know that Page had done that decades prior on Dazed and Confused.

The shtick stuck. Over the past five years or so, I’ve been experimenting with perfecting the technique in the studio and, more importantly, live with my band ĠENN – making sure that the result is more “ethereal” than “screeching cat.”

Here are a few tips you might find helpful if you’re thinking about trying the technique, but don’t want to get tied up with a bow…

Getting started with a bow

Welcome to the world of rosin: for the uninitiated, it’s essentially a block of hardened tree sap, mixed with other ingredients, that, when applied to a bow, creates the friction needed to produce sound. Naturally, guitar strings are not made for a bow, so they need a lot more friction to respond. You need to apply more rosin to the bow than you would when playing a violin, viola or cello.

But beware! Rosin leaves a lot of dust behind that can gradually ruin your electric guitar strings. So if you want to avoid racking up hundreds of dollars in guitar-string costs, a low-dust rosin like Pickaso’s is the way to go.

Size it up

Another consideration is bow size, which range from 15 inches – known as 1/32 – to 29.5 inches – 4/4 or full size. A 4/4 bow gives you more space for sustained chords, while shorter bows are easier to start with as they give you more control over what you’re doing. I spent the first couple of years using the trusty bow 6-year-old me had used on my beginner 1/4 violin.

Violinists are very picky when it comes to bow weight – some won’t even dare try one that doesn’t weigh approximately 60 grams. Paying a visit to your local music store and try bows out in person. See which one you jive with, and swipe right when you find your perfect match.

Find your angle

Nailing the bow’s angle matters more than pressure. Guitar players tend to instinctively apply more pressure when trying out the technique, but tilting it slightly up or down – depending on the guitar’s design and pickup position – and gliding it across the strings tends to do the trick, and helps avoid the “screeching cat” effect.

Chords not strings

And speaking of screeching cats, since guitar strings and the fretboard aren’t made for bows, it’s way harder to bow individual strings. Chords tend to sound better, so don’t shy away from experimenting with capos, chord shapes, and altered and open tunings – find which ones work and, more importantly, sound best.

If I’m adding a bowed guitar layer to a track, I tend to go for open tunings that work with the song’s key or chord progression. And, for a touch of pure, chaotic noise, go for standard tuning – or your altered tuning of choice – and bow that guitar like there’s no tomorrow.

Not all guitars are equal

Different guitars respond differently to the technique. I’ve tried it on quite a few – my Pawn Shop Mustang, a couple of Les Pauls, Strats, Teles, even a Gibson Marauder.

Each guitar requires some trial and error in terms of which pickup produces the best sound. I’ve found that those equipped with humbuckers tend to produce the clearest sound. That said, with some tweaks, single coils can produce quite an airy and eerie tone, which I’m quite partial to.

Reverb is your friend

Considering its inherent airy, avant-garde quality, a bowed guitar sounds best when it’s drenched in reverb and delay. Then you can throw in a healthy dose of overdrive and distortion and a volume pedal for an added cinematic effect.

My secret (now not-so-secret) ingredient, however, is the DigiTech Whammy, or any other octaver/harmonizer pedal – it really brings out the expansive orchestral potential of the technique. Who needs a string quartet when you’ve Whammy-d up your bowed guitar?

Keep an open mind

As Page explains in the book Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page, “Whatever squeaks I made sort of intrigued me.” This is the point. Follow your ear, experiment with your gear – grab all your long-forgotten delays, reverbs, and the wackiest of pedals and try things out.

• ĠENN’s latest single, Jaguar Sun, features the bowed guitar technique and is out now.

Holding down the low-end for No Doubt, Tony Kanal helped turn the band’s punk-inflected pop into a global phenomenon.

Born in London to Indian parents, Kanal moved between the UK, Canada and the US before settling in Anaheim, California, where his musical journey began on saxophone.

But it was as a bassist that he joined No Doubt at 16, going on to co-write global hits including Just a Girl and Don’t Speak – the latter reflecting on the end of his seven-year relationship with singer Gwen Stefani.

But long before Kanal was filling arenas with No Doubt, he was simply trying to get his hands on a bass guitar he could call his own. A family connection to Yamaha gave him a way in.

“When I first started playing bass I was using the school Rickenbacker, and I would take it over the weekend to play shows,” Kanal told Bass Player in July 2017. “And as cool as my high school bass teacher was, when he found out about that, he told me I had to stop taking it or he’d get in trouble.”

“At the time I didn't have a lot of money, but Gwen’s dad worked at Yamaha in the WaveRunner division, so he got me an employee discount. I borrowed $350 from my dad and bought a BB1600.

“That was my bass from 1987 until we went to Japan in 1995, and I found a BB3000 in a store. I bought that bass and started playing it. Right about then Yamaha got in touch with me, and I've been working with them ever since.

“For years they’ve been finding vintage models from the ’80s, and they totally strip them and put in new electronics and re-paint them so I can style them how I want. I just love how the collaboration with Yamaha turned out.”

“I’ve also been using Gallien Krueger heads since the beginning. I still have the first one I bought at Guitar Center in 1988. They even rebuilt it for me a couple of times, because I blew it out over the years.”

What goes through your head when you’re onstage?

When everything is firing on all cylinders, I usually go to another place entirely. That's where the muscle memory kicks in – you just go with it.

Tom and I were writing the early No Doubt stuff when we were teens, so that's real muscle memory; when you're still forming physically and mentally, it’s part of your fiber. Whenever we play, it’s just there.

Who has been your biggest influence?

My go-to is always Prince. I listen to Prince every day, and I play his music for my daughters constantly. Talk about a monster bass player. That guy made every bass player look like a joke, and that wasn't even his main instrument.

Which other bass players influenced you?

Simon Gallup, Peter Hook, Horace Panter from the Specials, and my bass teacher from high school, Michael Stopher. I had only been playing for a year when we started No Doubt, but that guy introduced me to so much great music and so many great bass players.

What was it like going to Jamaica to work with Sly and Robbie on the Rock Steady album?

It was amazing. I learned so much from those guys, especially from Robbie on the bass side. He would tell me that I didn’t have to play as many notes to get my point across.

My early basslines with No Doubt were so busy, because as a kid you always have something to prove, so I was playing a ton, but space is so important, and that’s probably the biggest thing I learned from working with Robbie.

On our song Underneath It All, I play the low bassline and Robbie is playing a strumming bassline on top. He didn’t let me cut and paste any of my parts, so that song was all in one take. No matter if I got off or not, it was real.

You also played key bass for the first time on that album.

I had no idea what I was doing when I started playing keyboard basslines, but that was the cool thing about the way we recorded Rock Steady: We just let go of everything we had done in the past. It was just about trying something new.

In our case it worked really well, and I’m glad I didn’t get discouraged by the fact that I’m not a keyboardist. It wasn’t about skill it was all about getting something that just felt great.

I tend to overcomplicate things on bass, and this was a way to prevent that from happening. It forced me to play simply – but simple in a way that left me happy with the part. I think that changed my mindset overall, to the point where now I’m okay with playing a very simple part on the electric bass as well.

What advice would you give to an up-and-coming bass player?

You have to be hungry and work hard at what you do. We were just tenacious when we started out. People don’t realize this about us, but we didn’t get on the radio until we had been together for nine years. That’s a long time to be doing something, but we loved what we were doing.

I went to college for a little while and I was in psych classes and I was just working on the next No Doubt flyer. It was where my heart was. Love what you do, and don’t stop putting in the work.

Oasis' critically acclaimed documentary, Don't Look Back In Anger, is scheduled to hit streaming on Friday, October 9, and you can get a front-row seat to the action via a Disney+ or Hulu subscription.

Focusing on the band's return to the live stage in 2025, it includes never-before-seen footage from an interview with Liam and Noel Gallagher, as well as full performances of classic tracks like Wonderwall, Slide Away, D'You Know What I Mean?, and Half The World Away.

The film has already been a hit at the UK and Ireland box offices earlier this month. It's proven a hit with audiences and critics, earning a 97% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience rating of 98.

Read on to find out how to watch Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger for yourself, no matter where you are in the world.

How to watch Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger

To watch Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger, you'll need a Disney+ or Hulu subscription. Here's the latest US and UK prices:

• 🇺🇸 $9.99 - Disney/Hulu bundle
• 🇺🇸 $19.99 - Disney/Hulu Premium bundle
• 🇬🇧 £5.99 - Standard with ads
• 🇬🇧 £9.99 - Standard
• 🇬🇧 £14.99 - Premium

Unfortunately, there's no free trial for Disney+ or Hulu, but there are often special offers on the services throughout the year, so keep an eye out.

How to watch Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger from anywhere

If you're traveling for work or happen to be on holiday, you can still catch the action by using a VPN.

A VPN changes your IP location, allowing you to watch the film no matter where you are in the world. At Guitar World, we recommend NordVPN. It's currently reduced by 75%, so it's a great time to sign up, and you get a 30-day money-back guarantee for peace of mind.

How to use a VPN

1. Install your VPN. As we've mentioned above, Nord VPN is Guitar World's favorite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're currently outside of the country and don't want to miss out on seeing Don't Look Back In Anger as soon as it arrives, just select your country from the list, then log on to your Disney+/Hulu account as usual.

3. Kick back and relax: That's it, you're all set to watch this critically acclaimed documentary as you prepare for the Oasis 2027 tour!

Watch the trailer

Oasis '27 Tour Dates

May 21: Glasgow Celtic Park, UK
May 23: Glasgow Celtic Park, UK
May 25: Glasgow Celtic Park, UK
May 28: Glasgow Celtic Park, UK
May 29: Glasgow Celtic Park, UK
Jun 04: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 06: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 08: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 11: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 12: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 15: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 18: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 19: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 22: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 25: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jun 26: Manchester Etihad Stadium, UK
Jul 02: Munich Allianz Arena, Germany
Jul 03: Munich Allianz Arena, Germany
Jul 06: Munich Allianz Arena, Germany
Jul 10: Barcelona Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Spain
Jul 11: Barcelona Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Spain
Jul 16: Amsterdam Johan Cruijff ArenA, Netherlands
Jul 17: Amsterdam Johan Cruijff ArenA, Netherlands
Jul 20: Paris Stade de France, France
Jul 24: Paris Stade de France, France
Jul 26: Rome Stadio Olimpico, Italy
Jul 29: Rome Stadio Olimpico, Italy
Jul 30: Rome Stadio Olimpico, Italy

Aug 10: Boston Gillette Stadium, MA
Aug 13: Boston Gillette Stadium, MA
Aug 14: Boston Gillette Stadium, MA
Aug 20: Las Vega Allegiant Stadium, CA
Aug 21: Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium, US
Aug 24: Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium, CA

Sep 04: Slane Castle, Ireland
Sep 05: Slane Castle, Ireland
Sep 11: Knebworth Park, UK
Sep 12: Knebworth Park, UK
Sep 18: Knebworth Park, UK
Sep 19: Knebworth Park, UK
Sep 25: Knebworth Park, UK
Sep 26: Knebworth Park, UK

What else is on Disney+

Disney+ is one of the many streaming services available, and it has a small number of quality music documentaries to tune into once you're done watching Oasis.

The service features the likes of Peter Jackson's Beatles doc Let It Be and the three-part Beatles series Get Back. Other musical highlights include the brilliant Travis Barker documentary Louder Than Fear, Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, Summer ’82: When Zappa Came To Sicily, Abbey Road: If These Walls Could Sing, Hip-Hop And The White House, and the 2024 biopic The Beach Boys.

For a lot of people, the real draw of Disney+ and the reason many have subscriptions for years is that it's home to the entire Star Wars universe – all the classic movies are here, alongside spin-offs such as The Mandalorian, Andor, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Clone Wars animated series. There's even an option to watch everything in timeline order.

Marvel content is another draw, and like the Star Wars content, it's crammed with flicks, series, and shorts – and the ability to binge on the entire MCU complete timeline.

Joe Bonamassa has become the first artist to be honored with a signature model in Fender’s Tone Master amp series, with a reissue of his favorite combo: a 1959 Twin. And shockingly, it’s all-digital.

The Fender Tone Master ‘59 Twin Amp JB Edition sees the vintage charm of the high-powered late ‘50s tweed amplifier, emboldened by a choice modern features.

A mainstay of his touring and studio rig, Bonamassa is rarely apart from his beloved Twin. This collaboration, then, hinged on replicating the “sound and response of his vintage originals together with the versatility and functionality of Fender’s modern Tone Master platform.”

At its heart are 2x12” Celestion JB Neodymium Speakers paired with a six-way power attenuator. That means its tones are just as achievable at bedroom and neighbor-friendly volumes as they are when backed by 85-watts of power on the stage.

The original, Fender says, is “too loud for mere mortals when playing small gigs or at home,” so this power shift feature is a smart addition. As is the fact the combo has ground lift and a three-way cabinet simulator, letting players fuse the amp’s tones with their preferred impulse responses via the Tone Master IR Manager app.

The Celestion speakers have been chosen for “punch, warmth and articulation” aplenty. They have also gone through a weight reduction process to save a player’s back when lugging the combo around on tour.

Aside from a three-way EQ, onboard controls take in a built-in spring reverb, and controls for Presence Volume Bright and Volume Normal. Beyond that, there’s an effects loop for time-based effects and a Vintage/Tight switch for enhancing its bass response.

On the surface, it really feels like Bonamassa has taken everything that’s great about vintage and modern amplifiers in their own rights, and stirred them into a signature brew. According to Fender, the bluesman reckons it actually goes one better than the original.

“Joe Bonamassa is one of the world’s foremost authorities on vintage amplifiers, and he knows these original Twins as well as anyone,” says Fender’s Chief Product Officer, Max Gutnik. “For someone with Joe’s ears, experience and deep commitment to vintage tube amps to choose a digital Fender, and say it sounds even better than the original, is a real inflection point for our industry.”

The collaboration continues the Bonamassa-Fender relationship after a late ‘40s signature amp, and a reissue of his ‘61 Nocaster, dubbed The Bludgeon. It’s unlikely to be his last.

Recently, he shocked the guitar world by revealing that he’s warming to digital gear and amp modeling – it now looks like the unit he was using on tour was likely this signature build. As such, it is Bonamassa putting his money where his mouth is.

The Fender Tone Master ‘59 Twin Amp JB Edition is available now for $1,999.99/£1,789 €2,099.

See Fender for more information.

American rock heavyweights Aerosmith have officially confirmed their return to the stage, “for two nights only” at the Hollywood Bowl.

There’s not long to wait for their first shows since their 2023 farewell tour came to a premature halt in light of Steven Tyler’s vocal injuries. The band will take over the 18,000-capacity venue on October 29 and November 1.

Dubbed California Dream On: Aerosmith & Friends, the two shows will welcome a plethora of guests that pay tribute to the band’s half-century legacy, across a range of genres.

So, yes, while RUN DMC will appear, there’s a glut of rock icons set to play a role. From electric guitar legends Slash and Nuno Bettencourt to Tom Morello, and Steve Stevens, and there’ll be extra vocal flair from Sammy Hagar, Billy Idol and Godsmack’s Sully Erna.

Super producer and guitarist Andrew Watt, Heart, Alice in Chains duo Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez, Marcus King, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and sticksman to the virtuosos, Kenny Aronoff, will also feature.

The shows are being spearheaded by another big-name producer, Don Was. The man who has wrestled with the Rolling Stones, John Mayer and the Black Crowes is serving as Musical Director and also set to appear at the show.

The cast of guests will change across the two nights, with the band saying to expect “unforgettable collaborations and unexpected moments.” They’ve also teased more surprise announcements to come.

Says Aerosmith: “These highly anticipated performances will mark a return to the stage for Aerosmith, giving fans a rare opportunity to experience the band together once again and the unmistakable chemistry and stage presence that have defined their live shows for more than five decades.”

In August last year, Joe Perry refused to rule out one more Aerosmith show so the band could end on their own terms. It seems likely then, that these shows could well represent Aerosmith’s own Back to the Beginning – a chance to go out with a bang, not a whimper.

Since their last show, Perry and Tyler have linked up numerous times, including their controversial MTV VMAs performance where they paid tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne.

They’ve also released a surprise collaborative EP with Yungblud, who Perry says “really has the stuff.” The One More Time EP was their first new music since 2012’s Music From Another Dimension!.

Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets for the two shows on Thursday October 8th at 10am PDT until Friday October 9th at 10am PDT through the Citi Entertainment program.

The remaining tickets will go on sale on Saturday October 10th at 10am PDT.

See Aerosmith for more.

Getting hold of the cash for an original Klon Centaur pedal in 2026 increasingly involves the sale of vital organs, so it’s not surprising that affordable Klon clones have proliferated. Now, seemingly undeterred by a lawsuit for its on-the-nose copy, Behringer has announced for four more clone builds.

The Behringer Zentara and Zentara Mini, with both models offering gold and silver variants, albeit with the same circuitry as their predecessor. The firm says the priority here is “to make sure everyone has access to these sounds.”

As such, there are no tonal differences to note between the Zentara and Zentara Mini. It is really down to how much spare real estate you have on your pedalboard, and what kind of shiny you prefer.

The German brand’s provactive take on the original Centaur model was pulled in light of the legal action taken against it, and soon many appeared for hugely inflated prices on second-hand sites.

“So please,” Behringer’s YouTube host Adam Husk nudges, “don’t be bidding up the old version on eBay.”

Replicating the transparency of the original has been a key goal here, with the Gain offering subtle touches of grit, or full blown overdrive bite. Like the original, too, it is accompanied by Treble and controls, and they can be stacked together for even more oomph.

Bill Finnegan, who developed the cult classic pedal in the early ’90s, called Behringer’s $69 Centaur Overdrive “a blatant counterfeit” as he launched his lawsuit in May 2025.

That forced the firm to make some changes to its design, rebranding as the Centara Overdrive and updating its artwork, and the case was ultimately – and quietly – dismissed in October last year.

So, after a very public lawsuit – which Behringer pokes fun at throughout the quartet’s unveiling video – Behringer is doubling down on one of the cheapest Klon copies around.

All four pedals are available now, with most stockists selling them for $75.90 apiece.

Finnegan, though, isn’t the only one mad at Behringer for its cheap remakes of classic stompboxes. The makers of Mu-Tron III had some choice words to say about the brand after another $69 clone hit the market.

See Behringer for more on Zentara pedals.

Like most guitarists, I waste way too much of my life mindlessly staring at Instagram. When I’m not ogling vintage six-strings I’ll never afford, I’m scrolling through what seems like a relentless feed of targeted ads for online gear giveaways. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed a sharp increase in the number of these sites popping up lately.

Honestly, it’s hard to blame anyone for taking the bait. The thought of snagging your dream electric guitar for less than a set of Slinkys is pretty damn tempting, and I’m certainly not strong enough to resist it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don't need any more guitars. At my last count, I have around 26 of them, but I seem to always be looking to add just one more to the collection – and that brings me to this rather nice Ebony Flying V.

I’ve been obsessed with Metallica since I was 12, especially Kirk Hammett’s battle-scarred ’79 Gibson Flying V, you know, the one he played heavily in the band’s early days. So when an ad flashed up on my phone for a 2009 V, with more than a passing resemblance, I jumped on it. Tickets were 48p. So I thought, “Screw it. What’s 48p?”

My wife didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm. “Really? You know it’s a scam, right?” At this point I’m skeptical myself. After all, the internet is littered with suspicious-looking prize websites promising everything from luxury supercars to houses. I mean, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is, right?

Well, if it was a scam, best-case scenario I lose a couple of quid. Worst case, they steal my bank account details and go on a spending spree. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Only hours after entering, I got an email with the header “Congratulations, you’re a winner!” I had gone and won the damn thing. I still didn’t fully trust it. Of course, I was ecstatic to win such a beast of an instrument, but I wasn’t going to celebrate until the courier handed over the massive box and there was a guitar inside. Well, I can tell you, the guitar did, in fact, arrive, and no, it wasn’t a Chibson.

Turns out this is a fully functional, totally legit, and ridiculously lucrative business model, and it’s taking over the guitar world, at least in the UK. So with that in mind, I want to take a closer look at this new industry, find out how it's regulated, and also how to spot the real sites from the dodgy ones.

In the past few years, online prize competitions have exploded across the UK. Driven by aggressive social media marketing and the irresistible dream of securing a holy-grail instrument for less than the price of a coffee, the market has gone from niche internet raffles with a few hundred participants into a major operation with thousands of players entering every day.

To understand how a garage-born idea became an industry behemoth, I spoke with Sam Boxell, co-founder of Guitar Gear Giveaway and one of the pioneers behind the UK's first exclusive guitar competition site.

Launched in April 2019 and starting out with a single 1980s Japanese Fender Hendrix Strat loaned by his business partner's father, the platform now moves an impressive number of high-end instruments every month. So much so that it could comfortably compete with some of the country’s biggest retailers.

“We ship out over 125 guitars a month, and they're not Squiers,” proudly states Boxell. “They're £2,000 Les Pauls. They're five-grand Murphy Labs. These are expensive guitars.”

Rather than competing directly with traditional brick-and-mortar guitar stores, these giveaway sites have become essential customers for dealers, buying up huge quantities of vintage, preowned, and new stock.

As Boxell explains, around 90% of their instruments are sourced secondhand, and that is by design, as they buy up stock from GuitarGuitar, Andertons, Peach Guitars, and even eBay.

“I love the hunt for the incredibly cool guitars,” he says. “Rather than doing a new ’70s reissue Les Paul Custom, let's just find a real ’70s Custom. That way someone hasn't got to go and spend five grand on that guitar – they can win it for next to nothing,” he continues.

To show how unstable the industry was in its infancy, the founders hit major corporate roadblocks in the early days that nearly killed the venture before it really got started.

"We were running on Shopify and using things like Stripe and PayPal for payments, which swiftly blocked us and took all of our money and froze it for 500 days until eventually we found a merchant who understood the industry and they took us onboard," recalls Boxell.

You don't need me to tell you that when COVID-19 hit, many businesses struggled, but the sudden shutdown gave the new business an unexpected boost. People were locked down, many traditional guitar shops closed, and well, more importantly, the costs of Facebook ads plummeted.

“When everything shut down, everybody turned off their Facebook ads because all the shops were closed. Our cost per acquisition went from maybe £1.50 to get a new customer down to like 15p. We went from 5,000 to 25,000 users in two months on the site," says Boxell.

Nothing illustrates the wild shift in the company’s trading quite like going from listing a borrowed Japanese Strat as their first comp to a 1952 Les Paul Goldtop. As Boxell recalls, they originally ran the all-original holy grail about three years ago. The lucky winner was initially over the moon, but panic quickly set in at the thought of holding such a valuable piece of guitar history.

“He was having a panic attack,” Boxell tells me. “He was like, 'I don't know what I'm going to do with this; my house insurance won't cover it.'” Thankfully, the platform helped facilitate a buyout, matching a dealer's offer so the winner could walk away with a cool £20,000 in cash to buy a modern Custom Shop model and pocket the rest.

Boxell's business partner Andy Willett ended up acquiring the Goldtop, even loaning the guitar to blues-rock virtuoso Jared James Nichols to play live on stage at The Fleece in Bristol.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re curious about the guitar, Guitar Gear Giveaway is actually preparing to put the legendary instrument back into a draw in December. That’ll be one hell of a Christmas present for someone.

For years, prize competition sites operated in somewhat of a grey area. Because they include skill elements, like simple questions to answer or free postal entries, they fall just outside a lot of the traditional gambling legislation for lotteries or raffles. However, this lack of formal oversight left the sector vulnerable to bad actors and lingering consumer mistrust.

Thankfully, the government has stepped in with a voluntary code of conduct run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, as well as oversight from the Prize Competitions Council.

Before new regulations and public trust caught up, the early days involved fighting a constant PR battle in the comment sections online just to prove the whole thing wasn’t an elaborate scam to separate you from your cash.

"The killer early on was the social media comments. That was brutal,” laughs Boxell. “I realized pretty quickly that the easiest thing to do is to just respond through video. Because if you just start a typing war with someone, it obviously never ends."

Now, this new framework introduces strict operational standards across the industry. Third-party verified random number generators help keep things as fair as possible. This means basic Google RNGs are no longer sufficient. Operators must use independently audited software that date-and-time-stamps every draw with a unique public token.

The government also now has a verified, compliant list of operators listed on official government trade registers, giving players a way to instantly check a site is real.

Of course, responsible gaming controls are now in place, too. Platforms must enforce monthly spending caps, restrict credit card use, and you can even lock your account if things get out of hand.

Rather than fearing tighter government rules, established platforms see them as crucial to long-term credibility.

“You've always got this feeling of, well, anyone could come in at any point and just shut this down. Then what happens not just to us as a business, but to the guys we've employed whose livelihoods are riding on this job?

“Sure, the regulation might mean we make a little less money in the short term, but it turns this industry into something with real longevity behind it. For me as an owner, it's just a massive weight off, having some structure and some guidance,” says Boxell.

When asked about expanding internationally across the Atlantic, Sam explained why the UK model is uniquely difficult to replicate abroad.

"The rule set is so different in every single jurisdiction that you can't possibly comply with everyone. And that's the reason the US is such an issue, basically, because every state just has a completely different view on all of this stuff. I think you would never be able to run a competition in America like you can in the UK,” he continues.

While legitimate sites are safer and more transparent than ever, pop-up scams still occasionally surface, so players entering giveaways should still be as vigilant as possible.

Obviously, the first thing to do is to confirm the operator appears on the government code of conduct register. It's the quickest way to ensure a site is legit.

Above-board sites may not have their credentials yet, but it’s always best to play it safe and only use sites that you can verify.

Next, you can confirm the draw system. It’s best to make sure the website uses an independently verified, third-party random number generator with public, searchable draw logs rather than an unverified live feed. This helps ensure there’s no funny business with the draws.

You can also look at reviews and see what other players are saying online about the site. If the site is dodgy, you can guarantee someone will be sounding off about it online. So, take an extra five minutes to check independent review platforms like Trustpilot. Watch for common complaints about unfulfilled prizes, unfair draws, or anything else that seems a bit sus.

Lastly, look for total transparency. Legitimate businesses feature real winners with photos, have public company registration details, clear postal entry routes, and easy email contact.

Winning a dream instrument for such a silly price is thrilling. I genuinely thought it was a scam until a Gibson Flying V arrived at my door. For gear nuts like me, competition sites offer a legitimate shot at dream instruments that would otherwise remain financially out of reach, and that is exciting.

But it’s vital to keep your feet on the ground. At its core, entering prize draws is a form of gambling. Yes, the odds are transparent, but they are still odds. It should never replace your standard budget or be seen as a reliable investment strategy.

Honestly, I think you should treat it as a bit of fun. Never spend more than you can afford. Set hard limits, and play responsibly, because yes, you could win a guitar, but you could also lose a lot of money if you’re not careful. If you are worried about gambling and need help, be sure to check out the UK Gambling Commission for some very helpful advice.

Anyway, I’m under strict instructions not to bring any more guitars into the house, so I'd better make the most of this one. I’m off to play Seek and Destroy at an ungodly volume until my neighbors call the fuzz.

After more than a year of uncertainty, British budget gear brand Vintage Guitars has been saved from extinction and will now kickstart a new era under German ownership.

The firm, which could rightly be compared to Thomann’s Harley Benton for its affordable import versions of classic designs, was founded 30 years ago by UK distribution giants John Hornby Skewes & Co.

However, following the death of the company’s founder and namesake in 2024, the firm announced in 2025 that it was winding down its operations, despite remaining profitable.

That decision ultimately left the fate of Vintage Guitars hanging in the air. Thankfully, Musik Wein, a German-based distributor, has stepped in at the 11th hour to save the day.

Having distributed Vintage models across Germany for a decade, it knows the brand’s product line intimately and looks well placed to continue the Vintage story.

Appearing on the Rich Words Music YouTube channel, outgoing owner Dennis Drumm has celebrated the deal. He says Vintage Guitars was focused on “finding someone who got the passion [of the brand].”

“It’s guitars and it’s commerce, but it’s also about putting the right things in people’s hands, and there’s a lot of emotion invested in that,” he adds.

“We’re proud that we have the chance to continue the journey of this very traditional and established brand,” Ralf Rohrbach, the firm’s new owner, returns. “We have so many ideas, all of us [at Musik Wein] are guitar people.”

Drumm will stay on for the short term to help with the handover, admitting “there’s work to do” in the coming months.

“We’ve done what we’ve done with Vintage, from JHS,” Drumm continues. “Now it’s up to Ralph and Musik Wein to do what they want with Vintage from their perspective, with their talent and expertise. So we might see some slightly leftfield ideas come Winter NAMM 2027.”

Writing in an official statement on its website, Vintage confirms that “Musik Wein will, as the new proprietors, handle all aspects of the brand from concepts, design, development and manufacturing to worldwide distribution, and sales of both brands,” with classical guitar firm Santos Martinez included in the deal.

The brand has also played a surprising role in Joe Bonamassa’s off-stage career. During a trip to the UK many years ago, he bought a Vintage Les Paul copy for £300, and was blown away by its quirky, modded take on a classic.

That, in turn, inspired his wallet-friendly collaborations with Epiphone – leading to sales of over 20,000 guitars.

Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher spent his summer taking people to school. It’s a sweltering afternoon in Zagreb, Croatia, and Kelliher is sitting backstage before one of the final shows of a European tour.

Naturally, the master metalmaker has been crushing it on stage with the Atlanta-formed outfit, putting on a clinic while delivering an authorial blend of battering-ram rhythms, prog-spiraling licks and interstellar melodicism – hallmarks of classic albums including 2004’s Leviathan and 2009’s Crack the Skye.

Kelliher was dropping knowledge before those sets, too. All tour long he’d been knuckling into a series of one-on-one guitar lessons with fans – sometimes explaining the fundamentals, other times teaching aspiring six-stringers how to play Mastodon’s most memorable moments. Above all, he drilled in the importance of playing through your own voice, no matter whose riff it is you’re riffin’.

“The theme of the whole lesson is this: don’t be like, ‘I’m never gonna be as good as that guy,’” he says. “I learned not to think like that a long time ago – and that rhythm is everything.”

Notably, Kelliher is saying this while seated beside current co-guitarist Nick Johnston, the Canadian virtuoso who joined last year following the departure of founding guitar hero Brent Hinds.

Nicknamed “Manimal,” Hinds’ visionary fretboard dynamism led him through countless mind-bending solos with Mastodon over the years, but he’d left the group unexpectedly in March 2025.

The ensuing months found Hinds stating that his exit was not his choice – and less than amicable; Kelliher suggested more diplomatically at the time that they’d grown apart, while this year’s The Mastodon in the Room mini-documentary adds that Hinds’ substance-abuse issues played a part in the disconnect and departure from his bandmates.

But they expected he’d eventually come back. Devastatingly, they’d never get the chance to reconnect; Hinds was killed in an August 2025 traffic accident after an SUV struck his motorcycle.

Mastodon now address the profound loss of their friend and former bandmate in Your Ghost Again, the first single from the act’s ninth album, Marrow Deep. It begins with erratically stagger-stomped brutishness, then Kelliher and Johnston team up for a dizzyingly zoetropic run. As the song cosmic-portals itself toward a melancholic, prog-tinged plane, drummer Brann Dailor and bassist Troy Sanders croon of “feelings of regret” and “visions of a future non-existent.”

While the album was written and recorded in Hinds’ absence, his presence was felt deeply within the walls of Atlanta’s West End Sound studio. Kelliher often dialed monster tones out of Hinds’ old JMP head, dubbed the “Unicorn.” The lyrics to the urgent, yet grief-stricken Snakes for Dinner further reference their late friend by name-checking Hearts Alive, a Leviathan track that featured one of Hinds’ most towering performances. While gone, Hinds is anything but forgotten.

“We weren’t expecting Brent to pass away,” Kelliher says. “We parted ways, we were moving forward, and all of a sudden that happened. So, we started reflecting on it. We couldn’t just ignore it and write some happy record. It was like, ‘This is the topic – we have to remember the good times, express it and get it off our chests.”’

Though he’s guarded on certain details, Kelliher admits Mastodon were on a “rocky road” while navigating their split from Hinds. Linking up with Johnston has helped put the veteran act back on track.

The Toronto-based Johnston first met the band members nearly a decade ago, through mutual friend and Dethklok guitarist Brendon Small. Johnston and Dailor stayed in touch, as the former carved out a body of instrumental solo work and collaborated with the likes of Paul Gilbert, Guthrie Govan, Intervals’ Aaron Marshall and Polyphia’s Tim Henson.

Johnston was putting the finishing touches on an as-yet undetailed solo album when Dailor reached out to float the idea of jamming with Mastodon. While intimidated by the prospect of joining one of his favorite bands, the Canadian six-stringer learned their set while “trying to unlock all the unique ‘isms’” of Kelliher and Hinds’ playing.

“Watching Bill work on a riff is one of the most amazing things, because he’ll sit there for hours until it’s sculpted into this perfect shape,” Johnston says, now that he’s peeked behind the curtain. “I’m not able to do that. I’m stunned at that ability. You hear that all through the music, that relentlessness.”

Mastodon played one show with YouTube shredder Ben Eller before Johnston made his onstage debut in spring 2025. He’s since clocked dozens of global appearances, including a memorable mini-set at Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning farewell show in Birmingham, England. That summer 2025 concert, both guitarists say, is what sealed the deal.

“It’s like he was the long-lost cousin,” Kelliher says. “He just jumped right in. I know they’re big shoes to fill, but he’s got big feet!”

Johnston ended up co-writing a few tracks on Marrow Deep. His solos run from simply-stated, yet canyon-sized bending (Your Ghost Again) to uproariously mercurial legato (Out Like a Lamb) to lysergic improvised trade-offs with keyboardist João Nogueira. Though Kelliher offered minor notes like “let’s try it a little bit more evil,” he encouraged Johnston and Nogueira to run wild and free with their playing.

Though it may be Mastodon’s first release without Hinds, the collection also surrounds the act with several lifelong friends, tourmates and studio collaborators: Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme; Clutch vocalist Neil Fallon; Gojira’s Joe Duplantier; three members of hardcore band Converge (including album co-producer Kurt Ballou); and Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler, who gets gloriously gloomy with his bass intro on The Vanishing.

From losses, to leads, to legendary guest spots, Mastodon’s current guitar tandem discuss the gratitude they’re feeling deep in their bones these days.

What was it like processing both Brent’s departure from the band and his death throughout this record?

Bill Kelliher: That’s a fairly tough question, because I don’t know if I’ve really processed it yet, you know? It was a surprise, but it wasn’t unexpected. Maybe part of me was ready for it.

You know, Brent was a wild man – one-of-a-kind, cavalier and incredible. There’s no-one like him, one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. And like [Your Ghost Again] says, I still see him out of the corner of my eye sometimes, because he was omnipresent in the band, on the tour bus or in the practice room.

Barbarian’s Blood starts the album off with heavy patterns in 7s and 4s. How did you end up leaning into that sludgy groove?

Kelliher: Most of the songs were demoed last year, but then I heard this band called Generation of Vipers. I don’t really like anything contemporary, but I’d heard them and went, “Man, I gotta go back to the drawing board; we gotta be heavier.” They shook my foundation.

On a day off in Belgium, I sat in my room and wrote three or four almost-complete songs, and that was one of them. When I played it for the guys, everyone was like, “That’s gonna make the record, that’s sick.” It’s a perfect opener. It’s definitely Mastodon… but it’s kind of left of center within our sound. And it’s tuned to A, so it’s fucking heavy.

I write weird time signatures. I can’t explain why, it just grooves to me. It did get changed, though. We took a note away, per Brann. He was like, “What if we took one note out so it grooved like this?” And it worked!

The acoustic section in Moth and Bone is one of the gentler pieces.

Kelliher: When Brann’s mom passed away [in 2025], I was writing a lot on acoustic. I had it in this weird tuning, almost like an open G. It lends itself beautifully on acoustic – when you hit the two high strings it gives off so much emotion. There’s dissonance. It’s melancholy.

So I had his mom in mind, and I came up with that pattern, which was very odd. Everyone wanted to fix it and make it straight, but I was like, “No, this is the way it goes.”

Nick Johnston: Once you get that groove and rhythm with your hand, it’s this propulsion thing – but it’s not an obvious pattern. It’s just about how tight you can get all that stuff. I’m used to tracking a looser or improvised kind of playing, but this was awesome once it started to get locked in. I like the way that song ramps up, but tracking that whole heavy section was hard, with that sliding thing at the end.

Kelliher: With the dynamics, I keep thinking, “How are we going to do this live?” Am I going to have a stand with an acoustic and a double-neck that I’ll borrow from Geddy Lee?

Johnston: That would be sick! [Laughs]

Out Like a Lamb closes with two gigantic solos – one from Nick, then an organ solo from João.

Johnston: Brann and Bill had sent the song over and were like, “We need a solo as a placeholder, just to illustrate the arrangement.” That was the first take I sent over.

Kelliher: You wanted to redo it, and we were like, “No fuckin’ way are you gonna redo that.” [Laughs]. Oh my god, it’s incredible.

Johnston: I didn’t expect it to make the record because part of me was like, “I’m going to go over the top at the end, just for fun, and see what happens.”

Kelliher: It was my 55th birthday and I was on an hour-long drive to pick up some Brazilian wood [to build a table out of], and that’s when I put the whole record on for the first time after it was mastered.

When it got to that solo, it was just tears running down my face like someone was squeezing my eyeballs. I was about to go in and get the wood, but I was like, “I can’t go in there like this; I’m a mess!”

Nick, you adapted the set-up of your Schecter signature to play in Mastodon. What went into the build of your Silverburst Traditional?

Johnston: That was the first guitar I had done with Schecter that was just two humbuckers. I started out with all single-coils, and then I started doing HSSs and then felt this was the proper application to do two ’buckers. It’s a little hotter output.

I keep gear real simple. I usually plug right into the amp – I’m using a Bad Cat and a couple of Boss pedals to sweeten it if I need to. It’s my same guitar since the beginning; it’s just that now it’s got two humbuckers.

Do you ever drop to low A in your solo work?

Johnston: This is the first time I’ve even played in D standard.

Kelliher: You didn’t know a guitar could go that low!

Johnston: I played in E flat my whole life. Getting used to playing in these new tunings for the record – drop C and drop A – felt great.

The finish fits the aesthetic of Bill and Troy’s instruments. Is there a story behind Mastodon’s love of the Silverburst?

Kelliher: They were so rare in the wild… but I found one when I was a kid. I remember going to [Geneseo, New York’s] Big B Buzzo’s Music and putting $50 down on a Les Paul Custom Silverburst – this was 40 years ago, and it was probably $500. I never went back to get it. I always felt so shitty that I never did.

Then one time I had a guitar stolen when we were in Houston. We pulled over to a Sam Ash or a Guitar Center and there was a used Silverburst Les Paul Custom on the wall, an ’82. It’s my favorite guitar. I still have it. That one has tons of mojo. Brent also had a Flying V Silverburst, so we both loved them. They just look fucking cool as hell!

What were you playing on this record?

Kelliher: I used a baritone ESP Viper on Barbarian’s Blood. I completely redid the guitars, because Kurt wasn’t happy with [the original tracking]. He was like, “I can hear some tuning things – let’s try this.” I ended up using that on a lot of stuff. It just sounded so big-dick-swingin’. I was like, “Woo-hoo! This thing’s great!”

I played a ’77 white Les Paul Custom. I used some ESP Sparrowhawks. And I used the ESP Ron Wood; that’s the secret weapon. I really love the sound of it, to fatten stuff up in the frequencies the humbuckers don’t pick up.

What did it mean to have Geezer Butler play the intro on The Vanishing?

Kelliher: Brann orchestrated all that.

Johnston: I didn’t even know it was happening until it was basically delivered!

Kelliher: Even before Back to the Beginning, Brann got heavily back into listening to Black Sabbath. He was wearing different Sabbath T-shirts for a year straight. I was like, “Wow, he has a different Sabbath shirt on again!” [Laughs]. I think he was channeling Bill Ward.

I wrote that opening riff one day at practice, and Brann was like, “That’s fucking cool, let’s work on that!” It turned into an ode to Black Sabbath’s Planet Caravan, because we were about to do that show.

Then Brann was like, “He’s mentioned our band in his audiobook [ed. 2023’s Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath – and Beyond], we’ve toured with Black Sabbath [ed. during the 2005 Ozzfest], and we were invited to do this show… would he do this?” And then Geezer was like, “Do you want it in the style of N.I.B.?”

We were beside ourselves when we heard him doing the intro, even through the cellphone. Listening to that freakin’ tone was incredible.

Did Geezer come to Atlanta?

Kelliher: No, he did it remotely. It would have been cool if he came to our little studio, put some headphones on and did it. But that didn’t happen.

Marrow Deep reflects on the past, but likewise references a new day rising. Bill, how are you feeling about where Mastodon is positioned?

Kelliher: It’s never been better. We wouldn’t have gotten to where we are without a quarter-century of working with Brent, but I believe everything happens for a reason. Unfortunately, they’re not always the best outcomes for certain people.

• Marrow Deep is out now via Loma Vista.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

With users from MBV to The Black Keys, and Nine Inch Nails to Karnivool, Devi Ever was part of pedal royalty in the heady days of the 2010s boutique boom.

A failed Kickstarter and other issues resulted in a sale to Dwarfcraft and a hiatus. Now, however, Devi is back, producing plugins that replicate the pedals in the old Devi Ever line.

Though it sounds like physical pedals may follow at some point, for now Devi is focussed on these releases, with four plugins released to date.

Two are early-ish influential circuits, the Goddess Zero (subtle octave-fuzz) and Zero Good ("rectifying fuzz signal destroyer"), while most pedal aficionados will have heard of the Soda Meiser (a Big Muff-inspired fuzz) or Vintage Fuzz Master (a more extreme octave-fuzz).

Specs

• Price: £21 | $25 | €25
• Type: Plugins (64-bit, VST, AU, CLAP)
• Controls: Pregain, Volume, Spectrum Taper
• Features: 4 emulations of Devi Ever pedals
• Contact: Fuzz Goddess

Usability and features

All four pedals share the same control setup: Pregain and Volume. It doesn't sound like the most expressive combination, but it is, while also having the benefit of being very simple. This was true of the physical pedals, as well. When you've already got a complex signal chain, and are facing option paralysis with all the audio tracks in your project, saturation and gain-type blocks being simple to dial in is absolutely crucial.

There's another similarity with the pedals in that for some, especially, say, the Zero Good, there's not a huge amount of range, because the pedal is voiced in such an extreme way. The pregain and volume controls are highly interactive of course, but the plugins all have a distinct character that can't really be tweaked away, for better or worse.

Devi Ever pedals generally didn't have a tone control anyway, but in a plugin where you have the facility to run a pre or post EQ, it makes even less sense. Even so, the range of the unit is important, which is why in addition to the standard interface of these pedals, there's a final control, Spectrum Taper, which "spreads tone more evenly across the pregain."

Depending on your taste, this may or may not be useful, but it's almost like having a fixed two-mode tone control on the plugin. The flexibility is certainly welcome.

Sounds

Before talking about specifics, it's worth remembering what Devi Ever effects are, and what you can expect.

Just like boutique builders of a similar vintage like Death By Audio, Devi Ever was always about pushing the envelope sonically, not making controllable or easy-to-categorize pedals. This makes it difficult to describe them. However, on the plus side, it goes to show why plugins might be, if anything, as good if not better an avenue for experimentation than 'just' pedals.

In general, my take is that all of them work with most of the sources I threw at them, but which sounded best was highly contextual. I used my usual vintage-voiced Telecaster pickups, and Gibson Les Paul humbuckers into Neural DSP's Petrucci Mark II+C Suite, dialled into something of a Fender-y clean tone, with a bit of the new Tone 3000 plugin for some 5150 sounds via NAM A2 captures. On the synth side I used MIDI soft synths and pads as well as my trusty Arturia Mini Brute.

On Devi's new site, there's a video of NIN playing, using her pedals, and that kind of says it all. If you're the sort of person that heard 'Devi Ever plugin' and jumped immediately to the idea of running drums through it, then you're going to enjoy these.

Goddess Zero Core

The Goddess Zero has velcro-like tendencies, but enough oomph that except at very low pregain settings it still punches through.

Like the other patches, it's highly interactive with the volume control, but very much feels like it has two speeds: off and on. Nevertheless, its extreme saturation suits synth parts and certain guitar and bass sounds due to its slightly darker voicing.

Soda Meiser Core

Unlike many of Devi's pedals, which are biased to gate in a velcro-like way, the Soda Meiser at higher pregain levels – which is where it sounds best – starts to escape containment.

The only consistent drawback I found across the plugins was that the Spectrum Taper control didn't do much, at least to my ear. It was most noticeable when pushing drums through them, but here's where the Soda Meiser wins hands-down.

We know it's decent on guitar and bass, but it's the only plugin that really added much to drum sources. In their own way, all the others had a unique voice, but not enough flexibility for the kind of industrial drum processing that I prefer.

Vintage Fuzz Master Core

The VFM is, as described by Devi, "sort of Muff and Octavia-like".

In some ways, this is the most 'normal' of the pedals here, and that does lend it a strange utility. It's weird enough to generate ideas but not so weird that they immediately need work to contextualize them. Case in point: I threw a melodic pop sample at the VFM maxed-out and the overall effect was quite like a smashed limiter, albeit with octave artifacts.

Print that to a channel, use Ableton's 'convert to MIDI' feature to capture the weird overtones the fuzz pushed to the fore, then you have two useful channels of output already. You could sidechain the noise pad you just created to the MIDI notes, then attach a MIDI synth to that track. Instant industrial joy.

Zero Good Core

If all these pedals are on a continuity of gated and velcro-like to runaway feedback, the Zero Good is the most gated and crunchy. It works well for guitar, less well for synth, but okay for samples, and, if you really want a totally bitcrushed, blown-out sound, some drum breaks.

Verdict

In the plugin market, $25 isn't quite the steal that it would be in physical pedals. Still, if you are experimentally-minded and have a recording setup, then $100 gets you four very useful, unpredictable distortion and fuzz boxes.

Which one is for you will depend on your taste. For my money I'd start at the most extreme of the usable pedals, the Soda Meiser or the Vintage Fuzz Master, depending on how much you like velcro fuzz. After all, every DAW has some pretty serviceable stock gain and distortion blocks in it. Weird is good.

The plugins are locked into their voice and offer limited flexibility, but the studio setting means that anything about them can be edited pre-and post using additional effects and studio techniques.

Guitar World Verdict: Overall, the value you will get out of these plugins, and which will seem the most useful to you is heavily dependent on taste. Owning all of them is probably not necessary, even for noiseniks. However, at $25, having one in your back pocket to spark ideas seems like a little bit of a no-brainer.

Hands-on demos

Devi Ever FX

• Best guitar plugins 2026: my top plugins to level up your recorded guitar tones

Gibson’s latest reissue revives the 1957 L-5 CES, one of the most revered and influential archtops it has ever created.

In the firm’s own words, “few guitars carry a legacy as rich as the Gibson L-5,” and its 100-plus-year history proves that. First introduced in the early 1920s during the Lloyd Loar, it was quickly adopted by the leading country, jazz, blues, and rockabilly players of the era.

It was then electrified in 1951, and improved further still with the arrival of Patent Applied For humbuckers in 1957. Wes Montgomery, George Benson, and Pat Metheny were among those to take it under their virtuosic wings – and in the case of that trio, the very same model passed between them.

Releasing as part of Gibson’s Historic Reissue range, Senior Vice President of Product Mat Koehler says that “no corners were cut in bringing it back to life, even going as far as utilizing a dovetail neck joint for the first time at our Custom Shop.”

As ever with these no-expense-spared reissues, Gibson rolled out the red carpet. 3D scans of late 1950s models and exacting measurements were made. Here, a carved AAA spruce top is paired with a carved, bookmatched AAA curly maple back and solid AAA curly maple sides. There’s also seven-ply top binding and three-ply back binding for a “refined character” – it’s luxurious stuff.

Crafted to a 25.5” scale length, its neck is maple with a walnut center strip and has a period-correct profile. Its four-ply ebony fretboard is adorned with 20 medium jumbo frets and mother-of-pearl block inlays.

The hardware on offer is no less fancy. It has with an art deco-inspired tailpiece partnered with a Historic Reissue ABR-1 bridge, which is mounted on a rosewood base. The L-5 reissue also features a corian nut, golden Kluson Sealfast tuners, and a five-ply bound headstock that features a mother-of-pearl flowerpot inlay and Gibson logo.

Its Alnico 3 humbuckers are unpotted and promise to “capture warmth, clarity, articulation, and dynamic sensitivity,” of classic L-5s. Each pickup gets dedicated gold top hat-style Volume and Tone controls alongside a three-way toggle switch.

“With its fully carved construction, vintage-accurate specifications, responsive Custombucker pickups, and extraordinary appointments, the Gibson Custom 1957 L-5 CES Reissue is the summit of Gibson archtop design,” says Gibson.

“It is an instrument for players who demand uncompromising sound, feel, and craftsmanship, and a fitting continuation of a legacy more than a century in the making.

The Gibson Custom 1957 L-5 CES is strung with .012–.052 flatwound strings and ships with a Gibson Custom Shop hardshell case. All that amounts to a $11,999 / £9,699 price tag.

See Gibson for more.

Over at the Amazon Big Deal Days sale, you can bag some significant discounts on two of my favorite pairs of Beyerdynamic headphones. The Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro is perfect for critical listening and is down to just $149.99. Meanwhile, the closed-back Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro has had its price dropped to $159.99, ideal if you want to block out the rest of the world while you play guitar.

With more and more guitarists using multi-effects and modeling these days, it’s a good idea to have a decent pair of headphones for guitar amps around the house. Most consumer-grade headphones have what we call a ‘V’ profile, which means they cut the mids while boosting the highs and lows. This sounds great when listening to music, but it’s terrible for your guitar tone, because guitars live in the midrange.

That’s why studio headphones are a must-buy for any guitar player who wants to monitor from a modeling amp, multi-effects pedal, or audio interface. Beyerdynamic is one of the biggest names in the studio headphone game, and it’s rare to find a studio without at least one pair of them somewhere.

I’ve got a pair of DT 990 Pros, and I’ve been using them for a good six or seven years now. The velour padding is discolored a little from many a sweaty recording session, but that aside, they’re still in perfect working order.

These are open-back headphones, which means they sound a lot more open than the DT 770 Pro. This does mean that they leak sound, however, so they’re not ideal if you’re looking for a silent practice option. It does mean they offer a much more open soundstage, so you’ll find stereo effects sound incredible on them.

The DT 770 Pros are well known in the recording industry for their durability. It’s rare to find a studio without at least a couple of pairs of these, thanks to their hardy build, comfortable ear pads, and excellent sound quality.

They’re closed-back, which means they prevent sound from leaking outwards, which is great if you’re recording in the same space you mix in. They’re actually really great for mixing in noisy environments too, delivering a balanced sound with a good low-end response that isn’t overpowering.

Still unsure what to go for? Well, if you want the most natural sound and don’t have to worry about playing totally silently, go for the DT 990 Pros. If you need to have a completely quiet practice rig, the DT 770 Pros are the best choice.

If you’re confused about the ohms on the headphones, this is more commonly called impedance, and it relates to how loud a signal you need to drive the headphones. The lower the ohms, the less power needed to drive them. I’d recommend checking what the headphone output on your device outputs to be totally sure, but you’re likely to be safer going with the lower 80 ohms version of both pairs, in my opinion.

It’s been 10 years since Zakk Wylde launched his namesake gear firm, Wylde Audio. And as it marks a decade of loud, it’s celebrating quietly with its first-ever grand auditorium electro-acoustic models.

So far, we’ve seen some pretty extravagant electric guitar designs, including the Blood Skull Bezerker and the SG-meets-V Warhammer, as well as a 50 watt mini amplifier, among others. The plans for adding an acoustic to the pile, it turns out, have been on the cards for a while.

“I’ve been thinking we should start doing acoustics for a while now,” Wylde confesses in the new issue of Guitar World. “For the [July 5, 2025] Back to the Beginning show, I was playing my old Alvarez acoustics. I still have all my Epiphone Masterbilts, which are great guitars, just like the Alvarez ones.

"They’re all ‘lights out’ guitars as far as I’m concerned. We’ve been making all these electrics since 2016, and I thought we should do acoustics as well, using them on the records just like I do with the electrics.”

The drop features two grand auditorium models. The first, which bears a typically bold Ash Burst Satin finish, is available now. A pale moon ebony Norse Dragon Bullseye version will launch in Spring 2027.

The Ash Burst model pairs a flamed maple top with a mahogany body, and a mahogany neck with a thin C-profile and dovetail joint. It has a rosewood fingerboard with 20 narrow jumbo frets, battle-ready rune inlays, a bone nut, and 16” radius.

Grover tuners and a rosewood bridge with a compensated bone saddle headline its hardware specs. The guitar is saddled with an OEM preamp with an EQ system and built-in tuner, and a Piezo pickup.

The guitars are priced at $999 apiece. They too come with Wylde’s personal stamp of approval, seeing as the prototype model was put straight to work, featuring on Black Label Society’s new album, Engines of Demolition.

“This is the sound of Wylde Audio evolving into its next step,” the Viking-shaped shredder adds. “It’s a natural progression.”

See Wylde Audio for more. Just make sure to avoid the bizarre, AI-littered fake website, which is somehow still live.

Meanwhile, Guitar World’s all-new merch store is launching with a special edition of the latest magazine. Wylde and the two acoustics are on the cover of the issue, which includes a signed poster, and Engines of Demolition cassette. The bundle is priced at $19.99, but the magazine and cassette are also available separately.

Get yours at Guitar World Store.

Soon after Ultimate Music Cruises Inc. announced that thrash titans Anthrax were headlining their 2026 four-day cruise, 70,000 Tons of Metal, fans scrambled for tickets, paying thousands of dollars for cabins aboard the ship, hoping the two sets the Big Four band played would be highlights of their lives.

Maybe they were, but for Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and drummer and songwriter Charlie Benante, the cruise was one of the lowest points of the year.

“It was everything I didn’t want to do, and I got talked into doing it,” griped Benante back on February 5, a few days after returning to his home near Chicago. “I ended up getting sick and burned. I was so pissed.”

The ship set sail from PortMiami on January 29, and right before their show that night in the indoor theater, Benante was waiting backstage to go on when a smoke machine in the truss overhead malfunctioned, spilling hot oil.

“At first it was like, ‘What the hell?’ but before we could get out of the way, it spewed out more. A chunk of it hit my left arm, and I got a second-degree burn.”

“It took layers of skin off and damaged the ‘Not Man’ tattoo,” Ian says from a Zoom call at his L.A. home.

That’s when ill winds really started to blow – literally. As the ship sailed back from the Bahamas to Miami, it passed through a winter weather system and was confronted by freezing temperatures and gale-force winds. That’s when Anthrax played a full outdoor set on the pool deck while far less-established European bands, including Dark Tranquillity and Eluveitie, stayed warm in the theater.

“We had to play in below-freezing weather,” says Ian, standing and shifting from side to side to find a comfortable position. “They would not move us into the theater, and during the show I was jumping around and I threw out my back because of the cold weather. That boat and that promoter can go to hell for making us play in the cold.”

Clearly, Ian is annoyed that Anthrax were the biggest selling point of the cruise by far, yet it seems they were subjected to defective equipment and dangerous weather conditions.

He’s even more upset about his back pain. He has worked on it for the past few days to no avail and thinks he might need an MRI. He winces and explains what happened during a flight to Argentina for a show with cult experimental band Mr. Bungle right after the 70,000 Tons debacle.

“I had to fly to Buenos Aires, and I was in so much pain,” he says. “Any move I made was just lightning bolts. It took me 25 minutes to get out of my seat and go pee. And then I just stood next to my seat for two hours until I had to sit down for landing because I knew sitting down was going to destroy me again. And it did. All because of that fucking boat.”

The cruise confirmed the band’s determination to never again get stuck on a sinking ship. During their 45-year career, Anthrax have worked with labels that didn’t support them, management companies with which they weren’t in sync and booking agents that landed them on head-scratching bills. Now, as they ramp up their schedule for their first album in 10 years, the band are working with a completely new support team.

“We cleaned house, business-wise,” Ian says. “It was a long time coming, and we made the changes we needed to make going into this album cycle. It took a while to finalize everything, so we couldn’t put the album out until we knew we had the right people and the right plan because what if this is the last record we ever make? We have to give it every chance to succeed.”

In the months since the nightmare boat trip, Ian’s back has healed. The band has opened arena tours for Megadeth and Iron Maiden, headlined dates with Testament and Municipal Waste and played major slots at festivals in the U.S. and Europe.

In a metal scene that is embracing thrash at a level not seen since the late ’80s, Anthrax are in a position to retake their place near the top of the metal hierarchy. And Cursum Perficio could be the record that will take them there.

The album, their most exciting and energized release since 1987’s Among the Living, blends barreling speed, nuanced melody, angular precision and creative experimentation into 11 fierce and often furious tracks.

There are the militant chugs and skewed, precision riffs of album opener The Long Goodbye; the AC/DC-meets-Pantera groove of Infectious; the moshpit geometry and stagedive propulsion of NYC 93; and the minor-key tremolo-picking and blastbeat rhythms of Edge of Perfection.

In a strikingly candid conversation triggered as much by pain (physical and emotional) as by a desire to speak truth to power, Ian and Benante address the seemingly endless wait between 2016’s For All Kings and 2026’s Cursum Perficio, how playing with other bands helped them up their game, the band’s unconventional approach to songwriting, their rehearsal and studio gear of choice, Ian’s new signature guitar and the very real possibility that Cursum Perficio will be Anthrax’s final studio release.

The new album has been called your best release since Among the Living…

Scott Ian: Well, first of all, we weren’t out to make Among the Living II. It’s not a top-to-bottom, ripping thrash record because that’s not who we are. We’re a thrash band for sure, but it’s a different kind of album because we’ve never repeated ourselves.

I think it’s in the vein of our last couple of albums, but it’s more intense and more riff-oriented. And certainly, it’s heavier than For All Kings. There’s more intensity on this album than we’ve had in a long time. But I think it’s also the best thing we’ve done in a long time.

Charlie Benante: I wanted every song to be individual. I wanted to have different moods, different sounds, stuff we’ve never done before. I’m not saying this is going to be our last record, but for me, right now I don’t want to write another record. So, if this turns out to be our last album, I’m really happy with it.

And I’ve nitpicked the shit out of the songs so much because every time I hear a new album come out from a band, I feel like they’re phoning it in. They’re like, “That’s good enough.” I didn’t want this to be good enough. I wanted it to be as good as we could possibly make it.

Did you enjoy the creative process, or was it like having a root canal without anesthetic?

Benante: If I could do it again, maybe I’d do it differently. We did six songs first and then we took a break, worked on those songs, and then I went and recorded the next six or seven songs. But I’ve always said I’d rather be in the studio than be on tour because I love creating.

Ian: Doing this album was totally enjoyable because the material was so good. It was so exciting to work on these songs, and that’s what keeps my head in the game. Every time we would get another step further with it, I’d be so psyched. The only way it would ever be like pulling teeth with Anthrax is if I thought the songs were bad because then, what are you doing? It’s pointless.

Charlie, by now most fans realize you write almost all the songs on guitar and then record full demos before the band works on them. Was there a time when that wasn’t as well known?

Benante: There was, and it’s so weird that 40-something years later I’m starting to get recognized for it. I don’t want to say it was a dirty little secret. Insiders knew, but on the outside, I wasn’t really allowed to talk about it in the interviews.

Scott had nothing to do with that, but some of the other guys felt discredited that the drummer was writing all the songs. The problem with that is I don’t think it ever dawned on them the effect that it had on me – that I could never speak about it or talk about it.

Did that make you angry or resentful?

Benante: It was frustrating because Scott and I always did the bulk of the writing and the bulk of the work. I watch the Go-Go’s documentary [2020’s The Go-Go’s] at least once a year because I relate to it so much. At one point the band wants the two primary songwriters to give up the credit and divide it evenly within the band, and when they’re talking about it, I go, “That’s exactly how I feel.”

But at the end of the day, my attitude is still all about Anthrax. If I have to take a backseat for it, I’m doing it for the betterment of the band itself. I’m just happy that after all this time, the creativity still comes.

What was the timeline for Cursum Perficio?

Benante: For me, it’s probably been going on since about 2015. I’d make demos and send them to the guys. And then around 2018 we got together in L.A. and started to create the album. Then during Covid I kept coming up with riffs and making demos, knowing that eventually we’d make songs together again.

Ian: Honestly, this record really started being made after the pandemic. That’s when we became serious and came up with the album you hear. There are other songs that were there early on that never made it. We tracked drums for three and guitars on a song with a working title of Bond.

I thought it was a killer song, but it never went anywhere. Sometimes that happens. The thing is, people think we’ve been away for 10 years. We spent three years on a touring cycle on For All Kings, then Covid hit, so 2020 and 2021 were out. It was more like a solid three years of in-and-out writing and recording sessions to make this record.

Was there a point where everything clicked into place?

Ian: Charlie sent me a demo for Edge of Perfection, and that’s when I knew we were going to make a great album. It’s the best song we’ve ever written. Even if the rest of the record was shit – which it’s totally not! – I knew we would have had our best song on there. And from that point, everything else came into place. To me, a lot of it is very much a love letter to Anthrax fans.

Do Charlie’s demos closely resemble the final recorded tracks?

Ian: All the parts are there. I always joke around that I’m the editor because his demos will come in, and I’ll start listening to the arrangements, and I’ll go, “This verse is 30 lines long now and we need to cut it down. And we need a pre-chorus here.” But a lot of the ideas on the demos are very fully realized, so it’s just a matter of getting into the room and making everything work.

Benante: Sometimes it’s cool when Scott does a variation of the riff to modify it. I’m always open to that because these guys have to interpret it, too. In the past, I would feel like, let the song be what it wants to be. Don’t stifle it. But I think now we’re pretty much all on the same page.

Do you work on the longer, more complex songs or the shorter, simpler pieces first?

Benante: I just start writing songs without any limitations, but I’ll know where the record is going after the sixth song is written. And once I get that vibe, boom, the next five or six come out and they don’t sound anything like the first six.

Ian: After we had the first batch of five or six songs, which included Edge of Perfection, I remember saying, “We’ve got a lot of these epic six-minute songs. I would really like to write some three-and-a-half, four-minute thrash songs, too.” Because I felt like it, and so did Charlie. That’s when we did stuff like NYC 93 and It’s For the Kids.

It’s For the Kids came out of different musical ideas from me, Charlie and Frank. Then, I sat in the house, plugged in a guitar, took all of our parts and put together an arrangement, [and my son] Revel engineered it in Logic on his Mac, and it totally worked.

Like several songs, It’s For the Kids features some crazy, galactic-sounding guitar effects.

Ian: A lot of the weird stuff was me in the studio just wanting to create something nobody’s ever heard on an Anthrax record – or maybe on anyone’s record – before. I was looking for sounds that are fun and make me laugh. I wanted to make these little segues, so one song would go into the next.

I used a bunch of pedals, including the Old Blood Noise Endeavors BL-44 Reverse; Beetronics Zzombee Filtremulator; TC Electronic Chorus, Pitch Modulator & Flanger; Gamechanger Plasma distortion; some Death by Audio stuff; and the Strymon Cloudburst ambient reverb. I used the Cloudburst for the clean intro on Edge of Perfection and in the bridge section of Infectious.

You said Edge of Perfection is your best song. Which one is your favorite?

Ian: NYC 93, maybe, because it’s the most personal. It’s a snapshot of me in New York City, talking about being there at that time and my experiences, and how fun and how crazy it was. It really captured the mood I was in writing this record.

The Long Goodbye is a tribute to your father, who died after a long battle with dementia.

Ian: That was one of the last few tracks we worked on. Charlie had this demo, and something about it reminded me of Persistence of Time [Anthrax’s 1990 album]. I started calling it Persistence of Memory, literally after the Salvador Dalí painting, because your memories are what really keep things alive.

Charlie and I were talking, and he said something about where the time went, and it struck me hard. I started writing words about my dad and losing him. At the last minute, I changed the title to The Long Goodbye, because it was a key lyric in the song.

It was something that someone had said to me while my dad was in the throes of it – that it’s the worst because the person has been gone for years, they’re not even there anymore. He didn’t know who I or my brothers were for years.

That must have been awful.

Ian: It was so strange. We’d sit there and think, “Who does he think we are?” It’s just this paradox that is unfathomable. At one point, we were visiting and I was playing guitar in the house. He goes, “Oh, you play guitar. My son plays guitar. He’s in a big band. Have you ever heard of Anthrax?” They tell you not to remind or correct people when they’re like that because it confuses them, but my brother Jason couldn’t help himself.

We walked into the den and my dad was pointing at a picture of me from Sound of White Noise [1993] that was inside a gold record plaque on the wall. He goes, “That’s my son right there.” Jason points at me and says, “Dad, that’s Scott; that’s him.”

My dad turned around and looked right at me, but he just couldn’t make the connection. There was no ability for him to connect that the guy standing in his house was the son in the photo. He just turned to me and said, “If you keep practicing, maybe someday you’ll have one of these on your wall.”

I can’t even imagine. On a much less horrible note, Infectious feels like a real celebration.

Ian: It came out so great. It’s like a doomy Back in Black – a solid four-on-the-floor with this great riff. My rhythm playing usually sits on top of the beat. It’s part of the Anthrax sound. So, it was a learning process in the studio for me to get behind the beat to get the right Malcolm Young-style groove.

That took me a minute because it would always sound right to me, and then producer Jay Ruston would say, “You’re still a little bit on top of it. Pull it back.” Then, it feels like I’m lagging behind, but it didn’t take long before I got it right and then it was so great.

Benante: We love AC/DC. We don’t sound like AC/DC, but, oh my god, we want to be AC/DC.

What was the hardest song to play?

Ian: Watch It Go. That beat and groove Charlie’s playing has a weird count, and the guitar picking is relentless. We rehearsed a lot, and we did a lot of pre-production on it so we could play it as a band, but it was not easy.

The song has a guitar part reminiscent of Pantera’s Primal Concrete Sledge.

Ian: We definitely had the riff before Charlie was playing in Pantera, but we didn’t have the riff before Pantera wrote Primal Concrete Sledge. That part is definitely a nod to Dime. I have no problem paying tribute to our buddy. Obviously, Charlie’s in that band, so I think it’s okay.

Did touring with Pantera have any impact on these songs?

Benante: There’s probably a song or two that’s influenced by me being in Pantera. When Dime and Vinnie were around, we were really close.

We talked about music all the time. Me and Dime used to have these 2-in-the-morning calls about bands we loved – like King’s X. Darrell used to snap his finger and say, “watch it go,” and that always stuck with me. It was just going to be the working title of the song, but Scott liked it and it stuck.

Charlie, what did you use to record the demos?

Benante: I used to use a Vox AC30 a lot. I cherish that amp, but in the past couple of years, I’ve used the Line 6 Helix or AmpliTube. The HeadRush is another one. I can just dial in my own sounds and they’re. And I know the tone is going to be exactly what I want because I made it.

What guitars did you use?

Benante: I have two EVH Stars. One is in standard tuning, and the other is tuned down a half step because sometimes I’ll hear a riff in my head and it will sound too happy in standard tuning. I also like to sit around at home or on tour with my Taylor GS Mini and mess around.

Scott, what have you been playing?

Ian: A bunch of my Jackson X King Vs. And also my new Jackson signature. We did a limited edition of my original Not Rhoads that I got back in ’82 that I ordered through Sam Ash on West 48th Street in New York. It was custom-shop built, and there’s a picture of it on the back of Spreading the Disease.

It’s a white Randy Rhoads and it has an anarchy sign and says “not” on it. There’s just one little difference. It used to say “NYHC,” and now it says “SINY” because I don’t want to make any claim to the New York hardcore logo. This is my thing – Scott Ian New York. I played it on the video for It’s For the Kids.

What about amps?

Ian: Just my Marshall JCM800 with the TC Electronic Boost in front of it. It’s the same tone I’ve been using forever, and it’s balanced with the EVH 5150 because the EVH supply has a bottom end I can’t get out of the Marshall. You’re hearing the mids from the JCM800 on top, and it’s a really clean tone compared to just plugging into an EVH.

Cursum Perficio features guitar rhythms in various voicings besides power chords.

Ian: Being around the guys in Mr. Bungle for six years has opened my caveman world. Outside the basic realm of major and minor, I didn’t really know a lot of other stuff. Getting to play with them has definitely made me a better player. And playing a lot of crazy cover songs like Olivia Newton John’s Hopelessly Devoted, I’ve learned grown-up chords.

I still don’t know the names of most of them, but I know how to play them, and I’m moving them around the neck now. Also, I learned a lot of cowboy chords playing on and off with [my wife] Pearl [Aday] over the years. Any time you dip your toes into another genre, it’s only going to make you a better musicIan.

Cursum Perficio is Latin for “I complete my journey.” That supports speculation that the album will be your last studio release.

Benante: I felt like our journey has come to an end. As I said earlier, this may be the last record that I want to write for the band, and I just had this whole idea of the journey being over. Then there was this Marilyn Monroe documentary I was watching, and one of the tiles in her house said Cursum perficio, and it translates to “I complete my journey,” so that became the album title.

The artwork features characters from the covers of the band’s other albums, which supports the idea that this record is an amalgamation of some of your best moments.

Benante: That’s pretty much what I wanted to do, and it came together like the album title. I was looking to capture the look of those old Harry Houdini posters. Then, I’m watching a six-part documentary series on [magicIan] David Blaine, and in the first episode this piece of art comes up, and it’s exactly what I wanted. I paused the credits, found the artist’s name, and we contacted him. He ended up doing the cover.

Scott, what does the album title and artwork mean to you? Does it seem like this is the band’s final chapter?

Ian: It’s up to Charlie whether he wants to write more Anthrax songs. I could keep going. But you know what’s crazy? We’re going to tour this album for about three years, and by the time we’re done, we’ll be three years away from our 50th anniversary.

I’m not saying for sure, but that would be a cool time to say sayonara and do a big world tour. I’m very much of the mind that you always want to go out on top like George Costanza. But, you know, if Cursum Perficio turns out to be our final statement, I’m really happy with it.

• Cursum Pacifico is out now via Nuclear Blast.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Sterling Ball has resurrected his secret supergroup for a new age, recruiting Joe Bonamassa, Steve Vai, Steve Lukather and more for an upcoming covers album.

Those attuned to Ball’s musical history will know that this is essentially a continuation of the off-the-books supergroup he has been spearheading for decades.

In the past, the group has boasted everyone from Albert Lee to Eddie Van Halen on its roster. Now, it has some fresh faces set for a surprising covers record that will see each of them go out their comfort zones.

Biff Baby’s Allstars features a core lineup of Ball – who is both Ernie Ball’s son and a bass guitar legend for his work on the Bongo Bass – drummer John Ferraro and keyboardist Jim Cox.

Across their new self-titled album, expect guitar solos galore, with everyone from John Petrucci and Steve Vai, to Steve Lukather, Albert Lee, and Joe Bonamassa contributing.

Many of those players are part of the Ernie Ball clan, naturally, but it isn’t an exclusive party, as Vai and Bonamassa’s presence confirms.

Blues Saraceno, who once played in a band with Cream alumni Ginger Backer and Jack Bruce, and drummer Chad Wackerman (Frank Zappa, Allan Holdsworth) also feature.

“So thrilled to be part of another monumental collaboration forged by my dear friend, Sterling Ball,” Petrucci enthuses. “Joining my brothers in shred for this incredible Allstars lineup is an absolute honor.”

The record is made up of newly interpreted cover songs, including Golden Earring’s Radar Love – perhaps in honor of George Kooymans who passed away last summer – and a medley of two Allman Brothers Band classics: Whipping Post and One Way Out.

“It truly is pure joy to hear everyone’s unique interpretations of these classic songs and make music together with my friends,” Petrucci adds. “I can’t wait for everyone to hear this very special release!”

Biff Baby’s Allstars continues a glowing legacy for Ball’s supergroup. They once boasted Eddie Van Halen amongst their ranks, and at one notable gig, Albert Lee had the virtuoso squirming.

“On a couple of gigs, we had Eddie Van Halen playing with us. He said, ‘I can’t play on that!’ I said, ‘Yes, you can – you can do all that tapping!’ And of course he was great,” Lee told Guitar World earlier this year.

“In 1982 I started a band to play California Clubs called Biff Baby’s Allstars,” Ball explains in his own Instagram post. “The original core was me, my brother Sherwood, John Ferraro, Jim Cox and Albert Lee. On my 30th birthday Steve Morse joined the band. We played clubs all over California.

“Along the way Steve Lukather joined. It was awesome. We would call a club and tell the band to not play, they would get paid and I would buy their dinners. In the early ‘90s Eddie Van Halen played a bunch, Rodney Crowell, John Petrucci, Blues Sarasceno Steve Vai, Jay Graydon were regulars. It was ego free, with everybody bringing their best playing and even better accompaniment.”

The band stopped gigging around 15 years ago, but their friendship has gone the distance. So, it was time for a reunion, and to play some “fun old songs.”

“Most of the great guests picked songs that you would never associate with them,” Ball says, which means the 11/8 boogie of Whipping Post may not feature the algorithmic right hand of John Petrucci.

The album releases on November 27. Head to Biff Baby’s Allstars for more.

For many, the beginning of Fall conjures up thoughts of autumnal leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, and trick-or-treating. Over at Guitar World, we prefer a noisier October, full of high-octane electric guitars, ground-shaking combo amps, and beautiful acoustic guitars. Luckily, the good folks over at Musician's Friend feel exactly the same. The musical instrument retailer is currently running the aptly named Rocktober sale, offering up to 50% off a range of music gear from the likes of Fender, Epiphone, Martin, Schecter, Ernie Ball, and more.

With offers on everything from extreme metal guitars to shoegaze-appropriate offset guitars, there's something for everyone. So, no matter your playing style or guitar preferences, you're sure to find something to sink your teeth into here. That said, it's not just guitars going cheap; you'll also find tasty discounts on accessories, live sound equipment, and even drums – so your whole band can get in on the action!

With so much on offer, we thought we'd try to make your life a little easier by picking out a few of our favorite deals.

First up, we have to shout out the incredible Schecter MV-6. This model is £300 off right now. A classically styled instrument with a characteristic high-spec Schecter twist, the MV-6 is the perfect middle-ground model for those who want to pair their love of modern sounds and contemporary playability with a more orthodox, Stratocaster-inspired vibe.

Next is the gorgeous Epiphone 1963 Firebird V Maestro, which has $320 off. Honestly, there’s nothing we don’t love about this guitar. It looks fabulous, plays really nicely right out of its huge leather-look black case, and sounds phenomenal.

You can even save $130 on the fabulously retro Gretsch 5427TG, now available for only $819.99! Decked out in a stunning Midnight Sapphire finish and packing Gretsch's FT-5E Filter'Tron pickups and Bigsby vibrato, this large hollowbody is an absolute steal.

Obviously, there are many more items on offer, so we suggest taking the time to browse through the entire sale. Looking for more savings? Head over to our Prime Day guitar deals hub, where you'll find a selection of heavily discounted guitars, amps, and pedals.

If you’re looking for a budget multi-effects pedal with plenty of flexibility and features, there are two great deals available in the Prime Big Deal Days Sale at Amazon right now. The Mooer GE150 Max Li is available for just over $200, while the Mooer GE150 Pro Li is down to just $132.03.

They’re both amazing value for money even at full price, but with these additional discounts you’re getting a lot for relatively little money. Looking back at what was available when I first started playing, these units blow those out of the water.

The Mooer GE150 Max Li has a lot of features. It’s compatible with NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) captures, can be operated on a built-in battery, is rechargeable via USB-C, has a looper, and plenty of footswitches that make it usable when gigging.

It’s fairly lightweight and sized so that you can easily chuck it in a backpack. It feels very sturdily built with a chassis that’s a mixture of metal and hard plastic, and the footswitches click satisfactorily when you press them. The expression pedal is also made out of metal, giving it a very hardy feel.

In my testing, I used it for a good three hours solid, and it only lost one bar of battery, so Mooer’s claim of nine hours looks to be on point. There are plenty of cues on the front of the unit, so it can be operated without diving into the manual, and the screen is bright and clear.

One thing you will have to do with this unit is dial in the tones. It’s got great sounds in it, but the stock presets aren’t the best. This is one of the factors in buying something cheaper that I’ve noticed having tested many different multi-effects units.

The Mooer GE150 Pro Li is very compact, small enough to fit into a gig bag pocket if you need it to. The build is very plasticky, but it feels overall robust enough to take some abuse. It’s not got a huge amount of connectivity, but then this is aimed at beginner players playing in their first bands.

There’s no touch screen here, so everything has to be handled via the hardware knobs. The select and mode dials do most of the controlling here, and everything is clearly represented on the screen. Everything reacts instantly, and we found zero latency when putting signal chains together.

The amp models are solid if unspectacular. But at this price, we’re not expecting Quad Cortex quality. The clean tones are actually pretty good, but the more distorted amps can end up feeling a little generic. Obviously, beginner players won’t know the difference, and if you’re looking for a cheap modeler for practicing with, they’re more than respectable.

• Read our full Mooer GE150 Pro Li review

Alice Cooper welcomed Nita Strauss back into his band to perform in Las Vegas for an NFL halftime show.

Cooper’s and co entertained the Allegiant Stadium Raiders in Sin City as the Kansas City Chiefs faced off against the Las Vegas Raiders.

It was a quickfire set of three early 1970s hits: No More Mr. Nice Guy, I’m Eighteen, and School’s Out. It was Strauss' first show with the band since becoming a mother earlier this year.

Strauss handpicked 22-year-old Brit, Anna Cara, to take her place from April as she went on maternity leave. Cooper had Facetimed with Cara's parents ahead of her joining, and the young starlet has more than held her own, despite the overwhelming size of the gig.

Yet Strauss looked like she had never been away during the performance. Mind you, she was in familiar territory, having been in Cooper’s band since 2014. She is set to make a permanent return to the lineup in the coming weeks.

“Quick trip to Vegas for a super fun (but short) Alice Cooper set at Allegiant Stadium Raiders v Chiefs halftime today,” Strauss posted on Instagram after their set. “Heartbreaking end to the game, but we had a blast.”

Strauss will return to the fold properly for Cooper’s run of shows with Criss Angel starting in late November.

“Nita opened our 2026 touring season in Las Vegas back in March and is now returning to close out 2026 with us there,” Cooper said last month (via Louder). “We’re really looking forward to welcoming the Hurricane back onto the stage. Bringing Nita back after she took a break to start a family is the perfect way to wrap up 2026.”

While Strauss was away, Ibanez dropped another new signature for the shredder, and the rest of the band were blown away by Cara’s playing, attitude, and Gary Moore-like Vibrato.

If there's one thing you can't always count on, it’s Amazon's Prime Day sales bringing an array of guitar deals. That said, this year it’s particularly good on Amazon, but even better if you venture off-site to music retailers.

Now, 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 music's biggest names. There is only one catch… they’re expensive. But you needn’t worry: today, I’ve found a bunch of Les Pauls on sale at 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 26+ guitars I own, 14 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.

It's worth noting that this is the last day of the Amazon Big Deal Days sale and the Guitar Center Guitar-A-Thon, so be quick, as these fantastic offers won't be around for long. Be sure to head over to our Prime Day guitar deals hub to see what other discounts we've spotted.

The objective for Jake Kiszka is the same as ever – to play guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll from the heart. But after years of success with Greta Van Fleet, Kiszka stepped away, formed another mega-band in Mirador and, shall we say, expanded his portfolio. Circling back to Kiszka’s objective, with his attention back on Greta Van Fleet via a new album, 2026’s Palace for the People, yeah, it’s the same, but with a twist.

“The sonic identity for me, from a guitar perspective with Greta Van Fleet, is to do something much wider than I’d ever done before,” Kiszka tells Guitar World. That meant Kiszka needed to take inventory of what the guitar meant to him, what it could do for him and how he’d wield what he calls “Excalibur” in the studio and on stage.

“It’s a utility of projection,” he says. “It’s a vehicle that can take what’s in your heart, mind and body, and translate it in some ways.” This mindset extended to the rest of Greta Van Fleet while recording Palace for the People. Also on the band’s mind is the Internet’s habit of slogging the band at every step.

Not that this is a hindrance. “It’s never really a factor,” Kiszka says. “Experientially, we see it as if you’re an artist, if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably not making great art.”

Greta Van Fleet has certainly done plenty of that. Sure, their social media following is in the millions. The members – brothers Jake, Sam and Josh Kiszka, along with Danny Wagner – have become cultural icons on the backside of hit records, including 2018’s Anthem of the Peaceful Army, 2021’s The Battle at Garden’s Gate and 2023’s Starcatcher, but that hasn’t stopped people from labeling them as “imitators.”

Further complicating matters is the mantle of “saviors of rock ’n’ roll” that was unfairly thrust onto the band. And then they delivered the goods – but critics and certain sectors of fans still turned on them. But through it all, Kiszka remained level-headed and is more confident than ever as the band prepares for the post-Palace windfall.

“This album is an interesting intersection of our musical journey,” Kiszka says. “It just sort of came about through having more worldly influences than ever before.

“A big part of the project itself was the title. It comes from the Alexandra Palace in north London. The idea was, it’s this palace built for the people by the British monarchy, and we thought that was a beautiful concept. It became identifiable, a modus operandi and our philosophy for this record.”

Kiszka reflects on his journey like a man beyond his years. He broke in so young, and it seems like he’s been around forever, so it’s hard to believe he’s just 30. Couple that with the shots he’s taken versus the immediate and ongoing praise, and you have an artist with thicker skin than most.

“No matter what you are, you’re fighting an uphill battle,” Kiszka says. “The idea, or the objective of the spirit, of the fighter, or the reluctant one, is that in the soul of the artist, we’re not only going to climb the mountain, we’re going to the summit of the bastard!” [Laughs]

Kiszka’s laughter reminds us that there’s plenty of levity left in his spirit. Coming from the right place from the jump saw to that.

“With music, and specifically the guitar, I really feel like the boy who pulled the sword from the stone,” Kiszka says. “And that’s beautiful. I guess it’s been a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways, you know? There was hope and destiny that I’d find some sort of freedom through this thing – and that’s exactly what happened.”

Ironically, that proverbial sword has brought Kiszka everything he could have asked for, but it’s also brought the greatest challenges of his life. “I couldn’t have imagined it would have happened so young,” he says. “There was this explosion; Greta Van Fleet’s first record absolutely erupted.”

This brings us back to the never-ending cycle of pop culture-driven love and hate that Kiszka and his cohorts experience. But Kiszka is here for all of it. “That just kept going,” he says. “It was a rocket, an explosion. It’s been an enchanting, wild and frenetic adventure ever since.” For Kiszka, it’s all about perspective, which can only be gained through the give and take, the push and pull, his career has afforded him.

“To wrap up why we’re put here… yeah, there’s been a lot of achievements,” Kiszka says. “On paper, I guess you could look at it that way. But I think the greatest accomplishment for us so far is the beauty in seeing the lives we’ve touched, the love we’ve conveyed to people and the hope we’ve brought. But all of that comes with great sacrifice, and this is still just the beginning.”

That last bit ensures that the rumors that Kiszka is breaking up Greta Van Fleet in favor of Mirador or going solo can be put to rest. If anything, Greta Van Fleet are stronger and more apt to take on a cruel world than ever.

“This is who we are,” Kiszka says. “We’re just the same as everybody else. We’ve got a beautiful story to tell. All we want to do is bring that love and light to the world.”

As for Kiszka personally, who in recent years has seen his success elevate him to A-list status when it comes to six-strings, he’s aware of it, but not letting it inflate his ego.

“I’m now a piece of the lineage,” he says. “I’ve walked in the footsteps of my heroes. In so many ways, I’m just very grateful, you know? I’m just another guitar player. In some ways, I’m just another guy who fell in love with the guitar and rock ’n’ roll.”

The last few years have certainly raised the stakes for you. But you’re still so young, and it’s still early in your journey. Have you taken a step back and thought back to when you first picked up guitar, and what that young kid might have thought about all this?

That’s a profound question!

Gotta get you thinking right out of the gate!

Exactly! At this point, in achieving the things we’ve been grateful to achieve, and putting out work that I suppose the world has come to appreciate and herald… that feeling of reciprocation and reaffirmation that what we’re doing has a social or popular-culture impact… that’s the main thing. It’s surprising in so many ways.

Dig into that for me.

When I picked up a guitar when I was a kid, it was this object or artifact… a monolith of freedom and self-expression. Being raised in the place we were raised in [Frankenmuth, Michigan], I think when we’re all coming up, we’re learning who we are, what we’re meant to do and where we belong.

And the guitar helped you with that?

There’s this sense of great repression in some ways – social confines. To me, the guitar was something no one could take away. I had so much taken away at a young age, and this was sort of a defiance against structure and systems. It was an object of fighting for freedom, like Excalibur or something. I really felt that way.

With that object of freedom, you’ve made a cache of memorable records. But this is the Internet Age, where artists are peppered with criticism, especially a band like Greta Van Fleet, which has gotten so big so fast. So, while the guitar gave you freedom, it also, ironically, presented challenges for you to navigate at a young age on a big stage.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? The idea of freedom, and, I guess, creation and the idea of dreams, right? Like, everything that surrounds us, in some ways, is brought through this filter of human imagination, with guitars being one of those things.

So, that question becomes paradoxical in a sense because the sole reason why I do what I do, why I play guitar and why Greta Van Fleet does what it does is we’re trying to bring a sense of imagination, hope and love to a generation through rock ’n’ roll.

Have you always seen rock music as a vehicle for that sort of imagination, hope and love?

I guess it’s the one that chose us, you know? That’s just what we grew up with, so that’s the music we play. And in some ways, it’s ironic to see the turmoil or the sense of cultural degradation – or even devolution – in the realm of the internet.

As in keyboard warriors and the like?

It’s the lack of, I guess, consequences – or even accountability for things people say. If no one is held accountable, they don’t feel an obligation to be sensible or caring.

There’s no sense of character anymore when it comes to the internet. It’s like this Wild West and free form of shit-talking and spreading hatred… but I guess that sort of applies to everything and everyone.

In that context, your mission, if we can call it that, of spreading imagination, hope and love feels important.

That’s why the human experience is so important. That’s why music and many other forms of art hold ground so strongly against devices of evil. It’s the human experience. When we’re all at a concert, we’re sharing this emotive collective energy, this consciousness, where everybody feels each other, and there’s this emanation of spirit. That polarizes the hypocrisy of the internet and the hate.

With that comes pressure, which you’ve managed well over the long haul. But have you ever felt the need to step back and go within? And if so, how did that help you grow?

That’s the challenge. Having a sense of soul really does help. I can’t speak to those who have walked this path alone because I’ve done it with my brothers in many ways. That sense of shared experiences and brotherhood, you know, siblinghood, is a support in having a unified mission statement.

But there’s that point where we as humans – there’s this idea of stagnantness, whether it’s guitar or any art, that follows us through our journey in life. It always comes to these points where we have to surrender the pieces of us that no longer serve us to reinvent them.

It becomes that mythological story of the phoenix in some ways, like being reborn. Greta Van Fleet has been turning up the road below us for years, and all of a sudden, we had to take a step back.

We started when we were kids, so the majority of life has been in the spotlight. I think walking away and returning, so much of ourselves had changed. So much of the introspection had happened. A sort of rebirth had occurred, and I think we approached our music and returned to our instruments in a very different way.

During that time away, you had success with Mirador, which must have been gratifying. Can you track where you were as a player and songwriter when you returned to Greta Van Fleet after so much success outside it?

It spreads you out a bit further. It expands that conscious thought of approaching something musically. For me, working with other people in Mirador, those guys are all English and European, so the approach to music and their thought process was different.

I’d only ever shared that sort of kinship with my brothers, and in that sense it was a different lens. So, you’re always learning something, and that’s the object.

There’s this insatiable lust to try to find something new beyond the horizon. It feels like constantly pushing against the wind. I discovered a lot of that, and I was able to bring some of that self-discovery and new ideas to Greta.

It really felt like a new creation. I think we were surprising each other. Everyone was going, “What if we did this?” And then, it was like, “Where are you even coming from with that idea?” There was a lot of excitement in that. We were sort of trying to impress each other, like we might have when we were teenagers in our parents’ garage. [Laughs]

Diving into Palace for the People, you can hear that. The classic rock riffs are there, but there are underlying prog influences and other new sounds throughout, too.

I would say this record’s influence is far more eclectic than anything we’ve previously recorded. The problem we’ve always had – which is in opposition to most people’s problems – is we’ve had too much material. That’s a good thing in the long run, but it’s about pulling apart all these different things.

But I’ll say this: it’s when we put something through the Greta Van Fleet filter that it comes out a certain way. There’s always going to be elaborate guitar pieces, riffs, heavy, explosive drums, soaring vocals, and bass and keys that will be interesting and detailed. That’s the siphon, so it’s about filtering influences through Greta Van Fleet in a way we hadn’t done before.

Tell me about Tear It Down, which features a sort of off-the-rails guitar solo.

Yes. [Laughs] Mike Elizondo produced the record, and his studio is battle-ready. There are all these amplifiers strung up on the wall, and cabinets out in an isolated booth. You could press any button, and pretty much activate, or make combinations of amps, and throw those through any cabinet you want.

And then, there were pedals laid out, like, built into this shelf Mike put together. It almost removed the entire factor of having to find the equipment, pulling it off shelves and finding the sounds. It was really just plugging in and playing with it. It was a really quick workflow for me. It also gave me the ability to just be, you know?

I probably played more guitars through more amplifiers than any other record I’ve ever recorded. [Laughs] It was very electric, but with Tear It Down, that was my ’61 [Gibson] Les Paul SG going through a modern Fender Champ.

And there might have been a Klon [overdrive] and some stereo reverb from an EMS outboard. I think I used that on the solo as well – which I’ve never used before. But I used it a lot across the record. And specifically on the solos, I used a Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer. It’s a physical compressor box that I’d stick onto the guitar.

It’s really strange, but Mike had one, and he was like, “Do you want to try this?” I’d used a compressor pedal before, but this was on a whole other level. I think Ry Cooder used that quite a lot when he was playing with John Lee Hooker.

Another memorable track is Dreams You Told, which has an underlying, almost quasi-’80s metal-meets-prog vibe. There’s a vibe I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and that’s very different from typical Greta tracks.

Yeah, that’s a really strange one. [Laughs] That song was written, probably two or three years ago. But I think it was written in the consciousness of the rest of the record, where there were pieces and an arsenal of songs.

But yeah, that one started with the riff, as many Greta tracks do. What was interesting was the idea of taking all these alternative concepts and putting them together, and then you had Sam exploring with synthesizers, which was huge. Sam’s interpretation brought this edge of modernity to it.

The highest and most singular objective, you know, the mission statement for me as an individual, and with Greta Van Fleet, is to create things we’ve never heard before. It’s channeling different concepts to push into new territories and not stagnate. When we heard that, it was mesmerizing, like, “Boom. We hit the mark.”

It’s something we’ve never heard before. I think you’re right [about the sound of the track], but your interpretation is interesting. I hear it in a certain way, and some of the stuff you said I totally agree with, but some of it I hadn’t thought about until now. I think you’re totally on it, but it was just a product of combining different ingredients.

Toward the back end of the record, there are two really memorable solos on So You Stand and Call My Own. Both are soaring, but your work on Call My Own is atmospheric and casts you in a different light, sonically.

Call My Own was an interesting one. It was done on my Telecaster with a B-bender, which has very early T-Top humbuckers. Honestly, most of the solos on this record were done through combo amps, and Call My Own was probably an old Magneto, and there was a lot of stereo reverb.

That gives everything much more space, where you can put vocals right through the middle. So, there’s a lot of stereo slap, and stereo phasers and stereo reverb. If you listen to the record on headphones, you’ll get the full effect. [Laughs] It’s quite radical!

What gear did you use for Saw You Stand?

That was my ’61, the beloved Number 1 [Gibson Les Paul SG]. But that was another one, where, you know, I don’t like to take more than a few takes of a solo. Typically, I can somewhat get it early on, but I also sort of design it in my head.

Why is that?

Because there’s a separate, I think, for me as a guitar player. I often approach something with an idea I construct in my mind, then have a layout with a map or blueprint and parameters to work within. But then some solos are off the cuff and very much made up in the moment. I think Saw You Stand was one of those solos I had already orchestrated and wasn’t improvised. And because it’s quite a long solo, if I continued to do takes, it might have sounded too refined for me… maybe too manufactured.

It’s not about perfection – it’s about a vibe.

I don’t want to play it perfectly. I want to play it from the gut. I want to shoot from the hip. I want it to feel human. So, with Saw You Stand, I came back the next day and had it in one or two takes; on that second day, that’s how it landed.

There is also some great acoustic work on Palace for the People. You have a sort of shaggy style, which interweaves really well with your electric tone.

I like it! That’s why they call me Shaggy Jake. [Laughs] But that’s brilliant! What a great term because, yeah… it is a bit shaggy, isn’t it? My playing is a bit messy. But I like that because I try not to perfect anything. That’s a good question because on this particular record, I tried to take the acoustic element of Greta Van Fleet a little bit further.

On Boughton Bliss, for example, there’s acoustic layering with electrics throughout. But there’s moments on the record where it’s more prevalent, so I was trying to push that a bit further. And I used a lot of Nashville tuning, some Martin 12-string. And for the solo on Boughton Bliss, typically, that’s something I’d have been inclined to take up with an electric guitar. But instead, I favored a classical guitar with nylon strings, so that was another thing where I pushed into stranger territories.

Pushing boundaries, having the confidence to lay down solos in fewer takes and owning your sloppiness – in a good way – it all shows the trust you have in yourself and your growing confidence as a player. Have you had time to reflect on that?

It took a long time for me to approach my instrument that way. It took a long time to get my playing to where I’d be able to record something and just let it be what it is. That’s a byproduct – and also the essence of – feeling comfortable with your identity as a player.

And that’s what’s taken me the longest. I’ve played since I was quite young, and Greta has been going for a decade, so it’s been a really long journey from the boy who pulled the sword from the stone, you know, this manifest destiny, to being here now and coming to terms with who I am as a person.

But also, the identity as a guitar player, and how I approach the instrument itself, you know? I’ve been through some things at this point with Greta, music and life, and I’m strong in my identity. I’ve been able to just let it be recorded as imperfectly and as humanly as possible, you know, to let it bleed.

All of that has seen you elevated to an A-list player by most people’s accounts.

I don’t know… for me, it’s the highest honor that, in some ways, maybe… yes, I’m conscious of the fact that perhaps people celebrate my guitar playing. I’m really grateful for that. In some ways, my greatest achievement as a guitar player is that, as a kid, the guitar heroes I looked up to, and the dreams, influence and inspiration they imparted on me and awakened in me – perhaps I could do the same for this generation or the next.

Earlier, we talked about the almighty Internet culture swirling around us. Within that context, Greta Van Fleet – and Jake Kiszka – aren’t just musicians or a popular rock band; you’ve become cultural icons and had tracks in video games, yet people still take a lot of shots. With that, the negative perception doesn’t always align with reality. From your perspective, what do people get wrong?

I suppose in a sense… I guess there’s the social or political construct or people saying, “There’s a lineation between innovation and imitation,” right? In many ways, people perceive our sound to be one way, but in reality, it’s far more complex and nuanced than that.

Can you dig deeper into that?

I’m not necessarily saying just strictly music, but the story, and who we are as human beings. A lot of people have looked at Greta Van Fleet, and, as you said, there’s a lot of controversy on the internet, which has expedited and proliferated it, where it was a fire in the corner, and now it’s a conflagration of some sort. That being said, Greta Van Fleet has become quite a massive thing – to my surprise – in some ways.

But we’re polarizing, I think, so there’s a lot of attention on that. Some said we were the “saviors of rock ’n’ roll,” or whatever, and I think that’s a misconception as well. All of that, I think, is balled up in one, and it makes it sort of an inaccurate representation of us.

So, who are you really?

I think we’re a bunch of young guys who grew up in mid-Michigan, in a little town somewhere, and in a garage, we fell in love with American blues and music of all cultures from all places. We fell in love with the idea of manifest destiny and adventure. We became a part of that.

People can perceive this as one or another, and there’s a lot of attention. Let’s say there’s a lot of negative commentary that perhaps comes from the evolution of Greta Van Fleet, and how quickly it exploded and how polarizing it has become. I think that would be something that people misperceive or get wrong.

The “saviors of rock ’n’ roll” thing has always been sort of ridiculous to lay on anybody. It’s really a label perpetually thrust on young bands, and when they don’t deliver – because no one can – it’s used against them, just as it has been against Greta Van Fleet. And really, does rock ’n’ roll really need saving anyway?

Exactly! It’s an interesting thing, man. Because is rock ’n’ roll dead? I don’t think so. It never truly dies; it just lays in wait, you know? And then it’s there for the next generation to pick up.

To be an artist, I think, is to want to be understood. If you are understood is another matter entirely. What do you want people to understand about you?

That’s a complex question, and it’s deserving of a complex answer. Ultimately, do you mean as a human being or an artist?

Both. There’s certainly an intersection, if you’re an artist, where your humanity overlaps the artistry.

Yeah, absolutely. Perhaps in both senses, as a human being, I’m as imperfect, flawed, ridiculous and mad as anybody else. I’d certainly have to be a little insane, or a little mad, to carry the torch or climb this hill. [Laughs] In that sense, I bleed just like everybody else. But I enjoy the human experience, all the pain, all the beauty and all the things I’ve seen in this lifetime. And so far, all of that has greatly informed the music I create and the guitar I play.

All of that has become sort of a manifest. It manifests in myself, in my music and my guitar playing and as an artist overall. I think that’s the idea… with all of the good and evil in the world, it’s the artist's job, or the modus operandi, to take all those things, internalize them intrinsically and reflect them back onto society.

Sparking not just curiosity within yourself, but within others…

Yeah. In some ways, you question things. Like, how to create what the universe cannot naturally. We take the emptiness of these voids, and we inherently intersect them, sew them back together, and weave them to bring them back to the people. I think that’s what we’ve done.

Salvaging what’s there culturally, I think, is sort of what Greta Van Fleet is about. But also, as an individual, I think the conveyor of truth is there’s a lot of people – and there’s no right or wrong with this – who play an instrument, or an artist, and there’s some sort of persona in place.

And that’s brilliant in so many ways that someone can take a creation and characterize themselves with that. But I will say that, with Greta Van Fleet, and with myself as an individual, I don’t so much do that.

We truly are who we are on that stage, as much as we are off of it. I’m maybe a personification of myself on that stage – but it’s truly me. I play that way. I truly play through my experiences, through my life, my head and my heart. And so, through and through, I suppose that, in part, is who I am. So maybe I’d like to just state that what you see is just the truth.

Where does Greta Van Fleet go from here?

Only up, Andrew! Right to the top! [Laughs] I don’t know… I just think it’s marching forward boldly and gorgeously. We’ve said it in this interview, but there’s been quite a bit achieved at a young age for us. We’re young men now, but there’s a long, long way to go. And yeah, it’s exciting because there’s so much to invent, you know?

There’s so much to create and so much to bend and break. But we’ve got a lot of surprises for this year for sure – and for the coming years within the musical sphere and realm. And even outside of that as a creative entity. I suppose we’re looking forward to all of it.

• Palace for the People is out on October 9 via Lava/Republic.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

AC/DC once said it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll. Alice Cooper knows the truth in that statement. His new autobiography Devil On My Shoulder documents his journey from infamy to icon, documenting the band’s climb up the greasy pole and the truth – or at least, his truth – behind the outrageous tales that have followed in his wake for the last 50 years.

As Cooper puts it: “In the beginning Alice Cooper was the name of a rock group. Then my stage name. And then a monster. Now I’ve written a book that tracks Alice’s evolution, how he and I became almost fatally intertwined, and how I’ve tamed him at last.”

In this exclusive excerpt, Cooper recalls the band’s first grimy residency in New York, the city that never let them sleep, in 1969. They went hoping to take a bite out of the Big Apple – but ultimately it took a bite out of them.

Expect big knives, drag queens, horrible dining habits, and a gear nightmare that drove guitarist Glen Buxton to the brink. Over to Alice...

America was opening up for us, a little. Shep [Gordan] and Joey [Greenberg] worked the phones from a brownstone in Greenwich Village in New York, booking us everywhere they could – Denver, Colorado Springs, Portland, Passaic, Sacramento, Philadelphia, Toledo – mostly Midwestern venues so we could drive from town to town, but also occasionally flying places.

Shep would ostentatiously slap his Louis Vuitton executive briefcase and wallet on an airline ticket counter and write out a check that would only bounce after we’d got off at the other end. We rifled through more than a few groupies’ handbags across the country and skipped out on a lot of motels.

Band on the run! We had nothing you could call a per diem, but we made do. I remember Glen [Buxton, guitarist] complaining one morning that his breakfast doughnut was stale, then dunking it in beer, and voilà, fine dining! Sleeping sometimes in the car or six to a room, our personal hygiene must have been off the charts horrible – but it was a joy because for the first time we were almost making ends meet.

And then there was New York, which was a revelation to us Phoenix homeboys. It was a different world entirely. We knew Arizona. We knew Hollywood. We knew Detroit. But we were not prepared for New York.

We tramped the streets in the broiling heat in awe of the din, the jackhammers pounding and yellow cabs honking, the street vendors hollering, the odor of garbage piled high on the curbs, the brownstones bristling with ironwork, the neo-Gothic churches with their blackened spires and the gleaming skyscrapers curving over the horizon, the sidewalks dotted with dog poop, the peep shows and grindhouse theaters, the touts and hustlers working the corners, the games of three-card monte there one moment and gone the next, the steam hissing up from the subway grates like a whiff of Gotham City or the underworld.

We reckoned we were kindred spirits with bands like the Velvet Underground who were writing about sadomasochism, drag queens, and paranoia instead of hippie optimism and utopian slogans. But when we got there, they and their cooler-than-thou fans were not impressed.

We went onstage at Steve Paul’s The Scene, a short-lived but legendary dark, cramped kind of basement speakeasy room near Times Square for the rock elite, and beat each other up and turned on the fire extinguisher. I brandished my sword with dollar bills skewered on the blade. I stood on the tables and kicked the glasses to smithereens and all that. And they didn’t raise a single eyebrow. They were so jaded, so tragically hip, it was like, go home, little boys.

Our first night in town, Neal, Glen, and I went to check out The Scene, where I think Jimi Hendrix was sitting in, and as soon as we arrived, this drag queen pulled me into the women’s bathroom and stuck something up my nose. I go, “What was that?” And he goes, “Mexican heroin.” Welcome to New York!

Then on the way out, we hail a taxi, and a turtle- shaped cab driver snaps at us, “Get in.” Then a big Black guy comes over and says to us, “This is my cab.” The driver says, “I got somebody,” and the big guy pulls out a knife. Then the little guy pulls out a zombie knife and says to us as we cower in the back seat, “That cocksucker, I’m gonna cut him down the middle.” This is our first night. We looked at each other and went, like, Wha? We thought we were tough guys, but maybe not so much.

We checked into the Hotel Earle near Washington Square Park, where a band from Denver called Zephyr let us share rehearsal time in the cellar with them, the rats, and the roaches. The Earle had once been a natty residential hotel where luminaries like P. G. Wodehouse, Ernest Hemingway, and Bob Dylan had stayed (Joan Baez too; she refers to it in Diamonds & Rust), but by the time we got there it was seriously past its prime.

We took a room with six or seven beds and a cot, the walls wallpapered with grimy oilcloth; we got in so late that we just piled all our stuff there and crashed. The next morning when we got up, Glen started screaming, “Where’s my guitar? Where’s my fuckin’ guitar?” His beloved white semi-hollow-body Gretsch with gold pickups was missing.

Nothing else was touched. In a mad thrashing panic, we turned everything inside out and upside down. The door and windows were locked. The fire escape was pulled up. How could this have happened?

We charged down to the front desk and yelled, “We’re checking out of here, your security is beyond lax,” and then went across the street to the Howard Johnson’s to make new plans and get a bite to eat, leaving our stuff with the concierge. Or did we pace in the lobby angrily, wondering what to do? Or did we stand, fretting, on the sidewalk with our luggage, waiting for a cab? Again, memories vary.

We were tired, hungover, disoriented, and afraid. But whatever we did or didn’t do, next thing we knew, Glen’s suitcase was gone. And a week later, after we’d moved hotels, his pink Les Paul too. Welcome to New York.

Glen was devastated. We felt so bad for him, but what could we do? Shep and Joey bought him another guitar. I tried to cheer him up, saying, “Look on the bright side. Somewhere in Manhattan there’s a wino with green velvet pants and a pink Les Paul.” And if looks could kill…

Michael [Bruce, guitar] says that Glen was never quite the same afterward, that the brand-new Rickenbacker he selected never gave him the feedback or sustain he wanted. To him, his Gretsch wasn’t just a guitar; he’d modified it according to his own specifications – reengineered it with his own patented “giggy” bits – and there was no replacing it.

But worse, some kind of pilot light inside of him was snuffed out. He’d already been drinking harder than the rest of us every day – a bottle of whiskey a day, plus the weed and uppers and downers and everything – but Michael maintains it was after the theft of everything he owned – his guitars, his clothes, his identity – that he really started overindulging.

We were virtually unknown in New York, but because what we wore on the street was exactly the same as on the stage, drag queens and ladyboys flocked to us like moths to a flame, following us around like we’d walked into a scene from Last Exit to Brooklyn. I thought they had a sad edge to them, but also a defiance that you had to admire. They weren’t just dressing up, they had to dress up – to become the people they wished they were. They knew they’d always be social outcasts, they knew they’d be beaten up and spat on, but they had no choice.

Still, I never felt too comfortable with them. I get that the outrageous glamour, the too-fabulous RuPaul thing, can be an art form, yet here’s these guys that want to be not just female but an exaggerated, garish version with scarlet lipstick and huge hair. I’ve never understood why more women don’t think it’s making fun of them or insulting them at some level.

Anyway, there was this one Puerto Rican guy with curly hair who was really getting on our nerves. He knocked on the door of our hotel room with a couple of his friends, all made up and mincing about, wired on bennies, and after a couple of hours Glen gets up, says to the guy, “Here, follow me,” and goes to the bathroom. “Get in the bathtub,” he says.

So the guy does, real excited like something sexual was going to happen. Then Glen turns on the cold water from the showerhead and drenches the poor guy, and Michael says he’ll never forget him wailing, “Glen, you’re the devil!” like it was the end of the world.

Anyway, one good thing: As I recall, Glen got one of his guitars back from a pawn shop after one of those very same drag queens gave us a tipoff. But, honestly, we left the city feeling beat up, spat out by the Big Apple like a mouthful of seeds.

• Excerpted from Devil on My Shoulder: A Memoir by Alice Cooper, published on October 6, 2026.
  
  Copyright © 2026 by Nightmare, Inc. Used by arrangement with Da Capo Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.

What is it?

In a green and pleasant corner of Somerset, West Valley Guitars founder Josh Stopford realises his very tasteful visions of alternative offset-body guitars.

Of the company's existing Indiana range, there are already a variety of options available to suit different aesthetic and sonic tastes - but recently the line-up has been notably extended with the arrival of a whole new model, named the Fever.

Part of the launch line-up is today's subject, the Fever Rambler. Stopford is describing this model as feeling “roughed up, modded and almost industrial”. A major part of that vibe comes from its relic finish, which contrasts sharply to West Valley's other, glossier models.

Owing to its simpler construction, the new Fever range sits at a slightly cheaper price point than the brand's existing Indiana model. It also forms the foundation of West Valley's first bass offering, the incredibly cool-looking Fever Thunder. Now, though, it's time to see how the Firebird-style mini humbucker-powered Rambler stacks up.

Specs

• Price: From £2,595
• Made: UK
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: American lime
• Neck: Mahogany, C/D profile
• Fingerboard material/radius: Rosewood, 10-12” compound radius
• Scale length: 24.75”/628mm
• Nut/width: Bone, 42mm
• Frets: 21, narrow tall
• Hardware: Gotoh Vintage tuners, Descendant Blue Collar hardtail bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 11mm
• Electrics: Monty’s Firebird Retro Wind mini-humbuckers, CTS/Switchcraft electrics
• Weight: 6.9lb/3.1kg
• Options: Hardware, aging, neck and finish options available on request
• Left-handed options: N/A
• Finishes: ‘Refined color palette’, nitrocellulose, finish aging to customer request
• Case: Foam hard case included
• Contact: West Valley Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

The Fever shape is very similar, in silhouette, to the West Valley's Indiana - but where the Indiana has a comfort-contoured, chambered body and a posh-looking bound top, the Fever is much more straightforward. The body is a simple slab of American lime, with no contouring on the rear.

At the front, though, we find a classic German carve - an evocative design feature that marked out many a leftfield mid-century guitar shape, and really lifts the aesthetic. It really looks like a long-lost ‘60s design.

The neck on this example is a lovely, deep-brown mahogany with a rosewood fingerboard - a combination that calls to mind a traditional Gibson build, albeit with bolt-on construction. But since these guitars are very much built to order, you can steer further into the Fender-style vibe and have a maple neck if you want. Fretboard-wise, you can have maple too, or ebony.

The Rambler is to be offered in what’s termed a ‘refined color palette’ of nitrocellulose finishes. Josh tells us choices are "customisable and open to discussion," but the foundational ethos of the Rambler is a finish that's more towards an open-grain thin, while other West Valley models offer the more traditional nitro or poly finish options.

This Rambler I have here is finished in a faded, worn black; the vintage vibe is then augmented with some tasteful-looking relic work. The aging is done to the customer’s preferences, so if you think this example's relic job is too much, or too little, then West Valley can oblige as necessary.

This Fever is set off by a tortoiseshell pickguard and a pair of natty silver-and-black control knobs that look like they came straight off a 1960s transistor radio.

Anchoring the strings is a Blue Collar bridge, a cut-off Tele-style hardtail from Descendant (a brand already beloved of offset aficionados, for their modernised take on the Jazzmaster vibrato tailpiece).

This simple and purposeful, well-built bridge exudes a kind of industrial chic that suits the Fever Rambler perfectly. At the other end, we find a set of high-quality Gotoh Vintage tuners; Klusons are also available by order. As with the rest of the metal componentry, they’ve been tastefully aged.

As befits a boutique small-shop build such as this, of course, fit and finish is superb. It feels as though it’s been built to very tight tolerances; it's clear that, from the woods to the finishing and the hardware, great care has been taken to ensure everything you touch feels of extremely high quality.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

American lime, as used for the Fever's body is, in fact, one of the names for *tilia americana*, or basswood - which you may have seen on spec sheets for much cheaper instruments. Scratch any thoughts of this timber choice being a problem, though, because this is a fantastically resonant and light-weight guitar.

It's like any other species of wood – there are cheaper, lower-quality cuts, and then there's the good stuff (as notably used by Music Man, Suhr and others). And this body is very clearly a fantastic piece of wood.

The neck profile is a very likeable, rounded C/D shape with medium depth and pronounced shoulders; not too far in size and shape from what you might find in a pre-CBS Strat.

That Gibson-adjacent scale length feels accommodating, the open-pore finish is a tactile delight, and the fretwork is excellent. After a couple of small adjustments to suit my own tastes, I found the Rambler absolutely addictive to play.

With its gently offset waist and that more compact scale length, it's a wieldy, comfortable and well-balanced guitar too – Strat or Jazzmaster players might miss some contouring on the rear of the body, but if you're used to anything like an old-school slab-bodied Tele, it’ll feel familiar.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

The Rambler model is the first West Valley guitar to employ a pair of Gibson Firebird-style mini-humbuckers. On this build, they come from esteemed UK pickup purveyors Monty's Guitars; West Valley's own hand-wound items will be fitted as standard.

Either way, on a guitar with Firebird mini-hums, you're experiencing a lesser-spotted gem; clarity and bite to go up against any single-coil, and power not far off a typical full-size humbucker. It's a pickup design I know and appreciate, having now spent many happy years with a set installed in my beloved 2000s Gibson Flying V.

Plugged into my HX Stomp-based pedalboard, and a variety of Marshall, Hiwatt and Mesa emulations, the Rambler instantly delivers that punchy, ringing sound I find so very appealing. Further explorations through my Deluxe Reverb reissue, with a Tube Screamer in front, yielded similarly excellent results.

Unlike a traditional humbucker, the bridge pickup is big on glassy treble and stinging upper-midrange – but there's also a more solid low-mid foundation than your average single-coil.

In the middle and neck positions, those lower frequencies become more apparent – but there's still a healthy dose of twang and definition. It's always a beautifully clear, precise-sounding voice, whether played clean or with a generous amount of gain.

Again, Tele fans will likely find much to enjoy here – but humbucker players who want a little more brightness and bite will be very well-served too.

Verdict

Even with a significantly lower entry price than West Valley’s Indiana model, the Fever Rambler is pretty serious money for a guitar that doesn’t have the pedigree of more established brands to back it up.

But place that into perspective, if you will – its price is still nowhere near anything from the Fender or Gibson Custom Shops at the moment; and this is an instrument that, I’d argue, equals or betters them in terms of quality and componentry.

If you’re not wedded to the age-old traditional shapes from those makers, the Rambler may well be a much more appealing prospect. Being a built-to-order instrument, there’s plenty of scope for making it your own too – the woods and various components, the colour and the amount of wear, can all be up to you.

Taking this guitar solely on its own merits, then, you’re getting a beautifully crafted, boutique instrument which has the look, feel and sound of a long-lost ‘60s guitar, but without being a copy of anything – it has its own identity, and a very compelling one at that.

And, despite that potent old-world aura, it has none of the fragility or temperamentality that can put a dampener on the vintage guitar experience. With its beautifully resonant body, fabulous pickups and classic-feeling neck, it’s a tough guitar to put down.

Guitar World verdict: The Fever Rambler is an addictively playable, lightweight, lively guitar with a simple but beautifully effective range of tones, highly accomplished finishing and a wonderful neck – it’s a simple recipe, executed with real flair. West Valley has knocked it out of the park with this model.

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West Valley Guitars

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Fender has partnered with John 5 to release not one, but three new signature guitars.

An avid Tele fanatic who has played the Big F’s famed single-cut for the majority of his career, John 5 is no stranger to signature Telecasters.

He got his first, a black/chrome beauty, back in 2004. Most recently, he was honored with the Ghost in 2023 ahead of Motley Crue’s stadium tour. Between those, John 5 also released a Tele with a Bigsby, and one inspired by 1970s Tele Deluxe.

Oh, and let’s not forget all his Squier signature models. He’s had two of those – one in black/chrome, and another in Frost Gold.

You get the picture. John 5 can’t get enough of his Teles. And so, it seems appropriate that his unbridled passion for the model has continued momentum with the launch of three new additions to that lineup.

By our count, that makes him the most decorated Tele signature artist of all time. Nine Fender and Squier models in total.

Granted, none of them reinvent the wheel. They all look like John 5 Telecasters. Spec’d like them, too.

First, you have two Indonesian-made standard-run models. The Ghost is inspired by the all-white model he’s often seen playing, while the Phantom embraces a darker aesthetic with a black-on-black finish. Both make their long-awaited return to the Fender shelves.

Completing the range is a Custom Shop Phantom, which follows the same blueprint as the Indonesian model but heavily ups the ante with a US build.

Those first two models both feature nyatoh bodies and C-shape maple necks, as well as a pair of DiMarzio D Activator humbuckers and a signature neck plate.

The Ghost has an Arctic White finish accented by those red pickup bobbins, red binding, and red control tips. There’s also a 9.5” radius maple fretboard with red dot inlays, and a six-saddle hardtail bridge.

On the other hand, the Phantom has a Black finish, with a flatter 12” radius ebony board. There’s also a Floyd Rose double-locking trem, black speed knobs, and black hardware. Both models get color-matched headstocks and a three-way toggle switch.

So, yes, everything you’d expect from a John 5 Telecaster. The Custom Shop Phantom, however, has a more premium two-piece select alder body with Ultra Contours, a Modern C profile maple neck, and a 10”-14” compound radius flat-laminated ebony fingerboard.

It keeps the DiMarzio D Activators of the other models, as well as the Floyd Rose. Of course, you get the color-matched headstock and signature neck plate, too.

“I don’t know if the Telecaster picked me or I picked it. I was so drawn to that shape,” John 5 says. “Ever since I was little, Fender was always just the pinnacle, the greatest, and I just wanted nothing more to have the best guitar for me and have the people enjoy it as well.”

Speaking to Guitar World earlier this year about his love for Telecasters, John 5 revealed his first encounter with the iconic model came from an unlikely source.

The John 5 Ghost and Phantom models are available now for $1,299. The Custom Shop Phantom is priced at $6,000.

Visit Fender for more.

When Prince saw Andy McKee play his 2006 classic Rylynn, he wasted no time in recruiting the fingerstyle acoustic guitar virtuoso for his Welcome 2 Australia tour.

And, in true Purple One style, he had big plans for the show – but not all of them felt natural to McKee.

As McKee explains in a new interview with Guitar World, Prince had grand designs for his role, but his intended entrance and set-opener spectacle proved to be an uncomfortable proposition.

“We toured in Australia and did nine concerts, and that was an unbelievable experience,” McKee tells us. “Never would I have dreamed something like that would happen.

“Even if we never did any shows together, just to have him appreciate what I did was so incredible. It was very moving for me.”

“He originally wrote to me about opening the concerts, and he had had this whole plan laid out,” he remembers. “I was going to come up on an elevator and have this 50-foot cape on, and start playing something in a minor key, kind of mysterious.

“Then I was supposed to walk down the stage, which was his symbol, and my 50-foot cape was going to unfurl. They were going to have these projections on the back of it.

“Then he was like, ‘Maybe switch into something major key.’ The projection on my back was going to turn into fire and explosions and stuff. But it was a bit too much for me, man.”

It was a Very Prince Plan, but one that took McKee a bit too far out of his comfort zone. Stepping up to open Prince’s show was already spectacular enough. So McKee came up with an alternative option.

McKee continues, “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I could do that.’ So I just sent him a version of me playing Purple Rain. I was like, ‘Would this be okay?’”

Prince was clearly impressed by the arrangement, so much so that he dropped his vision for fire, explosions, and a 50 foot cape in favor of McKee’s more humble, virtuosic entrance.

“Prince was like, ‘That’s cool, man. I’ll let you do that.’ So I just came up on an elevator and played that,” McKee says. “You know, I’m a bit too shy to do something like that.’”

Head over to the Guitar World YouTube channel to watch the full interview with Andy McKee.

I’ve been covering Amazon’s Big Deal Days sale for the past few years now, and while it’s never been great for guitars, amps, and pedals, it’s always delivered when it comes to essential accessories. With the launch of the sale this morning, I made it my mission to search high and low for the best quality accessories, all at a price that’s below $20.

There are absolutely tonnes of no-name brand gear on there, which, while it might be cheap, I don’t think it’s worth taking a gamble on. You’re way better off going for a name brand if you want something that lasts, and thankfully there are loads of discounts on brands we all know and love, like Ernie Ball, Jum Dunlop, MXR, Fender, and more.

I’ve listed out the best deals I’ve found for you below; let’s get to it!

Back in June 2024, we reported that Fender quietly rolled out its own challenger to the wave of cheap Amazon import guitars: the Squier Debut Series. The talking point then was its astonishingly low price tag, but we’ve just spotted that two models have been reduced by 20% for Amazon's Big Deal Days.

Both the guitar and bass feature a poplar body, a comfortable C-shaped maple neck, ideal for burgeoning players, a laurel fretboard, and ceramic pickups.

Yes, some import brand rivals offer slightly better specs for the price, but this is a licensed Stratocaster or P-bass – not a copy – and, while it is made in China, it comes with the reassurance of Fender's backing and a two-year warranty.

What’s more, you also get the considerable benefit of a free subscription to Fender Play – the firm’s acclaimed online guitar lesson platform – bundled into the deal.

There will, of course, be some trade-offs on a budget Strat or P-bass, even when they are made under the Fender umbrella. For instance, those ceramic pickups will get you started, but they'll be worth swapping out down the line. However, this is a surprising amount of guitar for what was already a very low price, and is now even more competitive - you'll even have enough left over to bag a tuner, strings, or even an amp.

Looking for more deals? Check out our Big Deal Days guitar deals hub for the best bargains from Amazon and beyond.

This year's Prime Day guitar deals (or is it Big Deal Days? We don't know anymore) have been strong so far, but with every single Spark amp in the line-up discounted we're yet to find a better offer on a brand we rate. That means that right now you can save up to 38% off some of the greatest practice tools on the market, including our favorite practice amp overall, the Positive Grid Spark Mini.

We've made no secret of our penchant for Positive Grid over the years – their range of smart amps has consistently wowed us, and they remain go-tos for many of the Guitar World team today. Now, for this latest Prime Day event, which ends at midnight tomorrow (Wednesday), there are some sizeable discounts available on every model, including Pearl variants, and even the cool Steve Vai edition of the Spark Mini.

Check out our video demo below to hear what these mighty amps are capable of.

At the core of the Positive Grid stable is the Spark amp line-up. For us, there's not much out there to beat the trio of the Spark Go, Spark Mini, and Spark 2 in this space. They all offer similar core functionality – with the Spark app giving players access to tones, with 33 amp models and 43 effects to choose from, alongside other features like Smart Jam and Auto Chords – but in 3 different form (and power) factors, from portable to desktop.

For Prime Day, Amazon has seen fit to discount all 3 amps. If you need any further convincing, the Spark Mini is our current favorite practice amp, the Spark Go is our go-to compact mini amp, while the Spark 2 sits pretty in our guide to the best guitar amps overall.

Shop more of today's best deals

• Amazon: Big Deal Days guitar deals
• Guitars: Save on beginner guitars
• Amps & pedals: Save big on fresh tones
• Accessories: Strings, slides, straps, and more

The onslaught of activity that is Amazon’s second-biggest sale of the year is finally upon us with the start of the Big Deal Days sale today. If you’re looking for a deal on an electric guitar, I’d look elsewhere. If you want to stock up on essentials like strings, picks, and other replishables, there are some amazing deals out there for the next two days.

I’ve looked through all the musical instrument deals in the sale, and there are loads of multipacks for electric and acoustic guitar strings right now. A multipack already saves you money versus buying them individually, so with these further discounts, it’s the perfect opportunity to stock up.

With brands like Ernie Ball, D’Addario, Elixir, Martin, and more available in the sale, I’ve rounded up all the multipack deals for you below.

Shop the full Big Deal Days sale

• Amazon: Big Deals Day guitar deals
• Guitars: Money off beginner guitars
• Amps & pedals: Save big on fresh tones
• Accessories: Strings, slides, straps, and more

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