The partnership between Jackson and Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen has been running for almost 40 years, and their latest collaboration is the release of the pre-relic’d Pro Series PC1-E signature guitar.

Collen’s first signature model arrived in 1989, in the wake of breakout success with their albums Pyromania (1983) and Hysteria (1987). Here, his namesake electric is welcomed into Jackson’s Pro Series range for the first time and comes in cheaper than previous iterations, thanks to Mexican origin.

With a Strat body and reverse headstock, it stays aesthetically true to the guitars Collen has been whipping into shape these past four decades, albeit with the addition of the heavy relic finish. This places it in-line with Mexican models from elsewhere in the Fender family, like the Fender Mike McCready Stratocaster.

However, while it might look like a Super Strat, the PC1’s recipe is a little left field in that regard. As such, the Pro Series PC1-E pairs a mahogany body with a caramelized maple neck and 24-fret, 12-16 ebony fretboard. It also features a dual-action truss rod adjustment wheel at the heel, which is gladly becoming the new industry standard, and Luminlay side dots.

A golden Floyd Rose 1000 sits at the heart of the guitar, given Collen’s penchant for a dive bomb or 6,000. It’s aided by Jackson-branded die-cast tuners and a locking nut.

Electronics see Collen doubling down on his DiMarzio loyalty. There’s a high-powered X2N DP102 humbucker in the bridge, with Sugar Chakra DP427BK and PC1 Sustainer Driver single coils in the middle and neck positions.

As such, a five-way pickup blade is in place to get the very most out of the trio of pups, alongside some other gizmos. Its Volume control features a push-pull coil split, there’s an Intensity control, an Active Sustainer – “it’s like an E-bow,” Collen enthuses – on/off switch and a Fundamental/Harmonic/Blend switch.

“It’s got all the bells and whistles,” Collen says. “You can rule the universe with one of these.”

There are nods to his biggest heroes across the guitar, from Jimi Hendrix via the reverse headstock, to Eddie Van Halen via its tonewoods, tonal goodies, and the abuse he puts it through.

“Honestly, if you've got a PC1, you don’t need anything else at all,” Collen believes. “I’ve done recordings and you go ‘That's a Strat’ or, ‘That’s a Les Paul,’ and no, it’s all here. I’ve had people pick it up and never want to put it down. That’s what you want in a guitar.”

For those curious, the ‘E’ in the guitar’s name nods to the Ensenada, Mexico factory from which it was forged. It’ll set players back $2,199.99 apiece.

See Jackson for more.

What is it?

In the age of S-types and T-types, it’s not all that often you come across a guitar that feels totally different from anything else. Yet that’s exactly what we’ve got on our hands today with the Steelyjam Delta Junior. With a hollow body carved not from an exotic tonewood, but laser-cut and CNC-machined from everyday aluminum.

Steelyjam is a two-person Belgian operation, helmed by Arthur Devreux and Jean-Baptiste Demarcin. The initial concept of the steel body guitar was first conceived in 2005, but it wasn’t until 2022 that aluminum replaced the steel construction. Now, there’s a selection of shapes and series, all combining aluminum bodies with wooden necks. The Delta is part of the company's raw hand-brushed Junior range, alongside the Alpha and Junior.

The body itself is hollow aluminum, made via CNC machining and laser cutting into a welded structure. This gives the guitar an extremely stable construction, resistant to humidity and temperature changes. It also creates a Faraday cage, which shields the interior from electronic interference. In theory, that means no 60-cycle hum from the single P-90 pickup.

The neck is African mahogany with a modern ‘C’ profile, while on the front face there’s a rosewood fretboard with a 12-inch radius. Acrylic trapezoid inlays complete a much more traditional neck setup. It’s a 24.75-inch scale with a bone nut, and atop the headstock are Steelyjam’s standard tuning machines.

At the opposite end, we have a Steelyjam standard hardtail bridge with six saddles and a pair of chrome knobs for controlling volume and tone. A single Steelyjam P-90 pickup completes the electronics lineup. Everything is wired to a Steelyjam universal wiring board that takes plug-in components, meaning no soldering is required if you need to swap parts.

Specs

• Price: $1,060 | £850 | €985
• Made: Belgium
• Type: Six-string electric guitar, hollow aluminum body
• Body: Aluminum, hollow body construction, CNC-machined and laser-cut, raw hand-brushed finish
• Neck: African mahogany, Steelyjam Modern "C" carve, high-gloss varnish, bolt-on, dual-action truss rod
• Fingerboard material/radius: Rosewood, 12" (305mm) radius, acrylic trapezoid inlays, black side dots
• Scale length: 24.75" (629mm)
• Nut/width: Bone, 1.65" (42mm)
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo
• Hardware: Standard hardtail bridge, standard 16:1 ratio tuning machines, nickel/chrome finish, chrome control knobs, and 4-bolt neck plate with "Y" logo, white 2-ply pickguard
• String spacing at bridge: 54mm
• Electrics: Single Steelyjam P-90, master volume, master tone, Steelyjam Universal Wiring Board V.01 (solderless PCB)
• Weight: 7.1lb / 3.2kg
• Left-handed options: Yes, in the same raw hand-brushed finish
• Finishes: Raw hand-brushed (only finish available in the Junior series)
• Case: Steelyjam deluxe gig bag included, plus a certificate of authenticity, three Steelyjam picks, a 3m angled instrument cable, and Elixir Optiweb .010-.046 strings fitted
• Contact: Steelyjam

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

With the Steelyjam Delta Junior out of its plush gig bag, I’m really taken aback by the design of the body. The raw, scratched aluminum looks like the surface of some far-away planet, unable to protect itself without an atmosphere. It certainly got a lot of appreciative comments at band practice and when I shared it on my Instagram.

It’s surprisingly lightweight considering a large portion of it is made from metal. Comparatively, for a single-pickup guitar it’s similar to the average. The body itself appears to be completely hollow, which I ascertain by knocking on the surface of it. It’s got quite a thin response when I tap, giving the impression that the metal is machined very thin.

The edges are smooth all over, and nowhere do I find even a hint of sharp metal. Unsurprisingly, it’s very cool to the touch, so be wary pressing it against you when going shirtless like John Frusciante or wearing a crop top à la Kiki Wong.

One thing that stood out to me during the visual inspection is how large the neck joint is. It’s a thick bit of wood attached to a thick bit of metal with no comfort carves, plus a strap button and neck plate, making it look very blocky indeed - more on which in the playability section. If I’m being picky, the edges of the fretboard could be given a light sanding, but it doesn’t hinder the playability.

Overall, it’s a very well put together instrument. The knobs offer a very firm travel, which I’m a big fan of, and the hardware is neatly applied with the exception of the tone knob that’s ever so slightly askew on my review model. With the raw aluminum body, there’s no need to hide any finish blemishes, because it’s all part of this instrument’s vibe.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

My first opportunity to properly play the Delta Junior is at band practice, so I hook a spare guitar strap on and play through our usual set. Despite my qualms about the neck joint, there’s absolutely no hindrance to the playability of the guitar. It’s got that SG-style upper fret access, delivering unfettered access to all 22 frets.

It comes fitted with 10-46 electric guitar strings on, but the Gibson-style scale makes it feel very slinky when played. It doesn’t take long for me to start flying around the fretboard, and it’s really easy to bend full tones and more. The medium jumbo frets offer that nice middle ground of giving me something to push against when bending up, while still letting me feel the wood.

The saddles of the bridge have a lot of exposed screw sticking out the top, which can feel slightly uncomfortable depending on where I place my hand when palm muting. I stop noticing it after a while, though. The placement of the P-90 does also mean I have to adjust where I pick slightly, as it’s quite close to the strings and I end up accidentally whacking it during more frenzied strumming moments.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

At band practice, with the Steelyjam going through my pedalboard and into my Orange Rocker 32 tube amp, I’m very enamoured with the sound of the guitar. The P-90 feels very high output, and manages to cut nicely through my typically effects-laden sound. I do notice when I strike the low string there’s a little bit of buzzy, farting-out type noise, which I suspect is due to how close the pickup is to the string. I only notice it on the clean stuff, but store it for later on.

The clarity is fantastic from the pickup overall, and although the strings are a little too anaemic for my taste, I have great fun ladling it with fuzzed-out synth pedals, sweep echo, and my typically heavy right hand. It cuts through the full mix nicely without me having to adjust my existing setup, which is geared for a Telecaster.

With the Steelyjam in my home studio, I’m able to put it under the microscope and learn more. I start by playing it unplugged. It’s got an almost semi-hollow type sound played this way. It resonates really nicely acoustically, although it’s not as loud as my Gretsch. You won’t be playing it around the campfire, but it’s got enough for noodling sans-amp on the sofa to not sound totally dead like a typical solid body.

Plugging into my audio interface alongside Line 6’s Helix Stadium Native, I set about examining the sound of this pickup. That farting-out sound rears its head again, and with more time on my hands I determine it is due to the P-90 being too close to the strings.

Annoyingly, I can lower the treble side of the pickup significantly more than the offending bass side (I am unable to turn the screws any more), so although I mostly fix the problem, it still appears when I strike the strings really hard on a clean amp model.

Curious as to what might be causing the problem on a deeper level, I slacken the strings, take off the pickguard, and examine further. Inside the cavity, full of fluffy white acoustic wool, I find the pickup is sitting on some height adjustment foam, and beneath that, the pickup screws go into a block of wood.

Presumably it's the wood preventing the bass side from going down any further, as both screws are the same length. Unfortunately, I get close to stripping the screw trying to get it to sit at an equal level with the treble side. I manage to eradicate the issue by raising the string height at the saddle, which gives it enough clearance to resonate freely when I attack with my pick.

Continuing with my clean tone test, the single pickup delivers a lovely mid-range tone with a little hint of that natural acoustic resonance running underneath. It’s not as pronounced as you’d find with a classic semi-hollow guitar, but it adds a little extra something to the tone of the Delta Junior.

Is it noiseless? Well, not entirely. It’s certainly less noisy than my single-coil-equipped Strat, but I can hear some noise when I get the P-90 really close to the screen of my laptop. On a clean amp, it’s hard to hear, but there’s noticeable noise when I switch to an Orange emulation and stick a fuzz pedal in front of it.

With a heavy amp engaged, I run into the limitations of the single pickup. For palm muting and single-note licks, there’s a nice clarity when I ladle on the gain. For those slower, doomy power chords, however, it’s lacking in low end, which is where a neck pickup would come in handy. You can pay more (from £1,830) for the Delta Standard, which has a neck pickup.

There's also not much give in the volume knob, which doesn't clean up all that well, and gets duller as I turn it down. The placement of the P-90 slightly away from the bridge gives it a bit more roundness, which means it can cover punk, rock, blues, and anything shy of the really heavy stuff. It sounds really great for a stock pickup, but more dynamics from the volume knob would make it much more versatile.

Verdict

The Steelyjam Delta Junior instantly took me in with its unique look, but it was the sound and playability that sold it for me. It’s exciting coming across something genuinely original in a world of copies, and it’s executed really well here. The tones from the stock P-90 are fantastic, and paired with the resonant body, offer some good versatility despite just having a single pickup.

The issues with the low E that needed resolving could just be bad luck, but it was disappointing that I couldn’t just remedy it by lowering the pickup height via the screws. I can also see that the single pickup configuration will naturally be limiting for some, particularly if you like a more bass-heavy guitar tone.

Guitar World verdict: It’s not perfect, but the Steelyjam Delta Junior offers something truly unique, which is hard to come across these days. The resonant aluminum body really adds something to the sound, and it looks amazing as well. Overall, the guitar is well put together with a little bit of work needed to get it playing perfectly, and despite the initially scary-looking neck joint, upper fret access is superb. The P-90 delivers a range of versatile tones that can cover most bases, although some players may find it limiting.

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Steelyjam Guitars

Some players have a seemingly endless supply of electric guitars. Others, like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar hero, Lonnie Mack, had a one and only. Now, his noble steed is heading to auction.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s adoration for Jimi Hendrix and Albert King is well documented, but his ties to Mack, who was a formative figure in blues rock, often slip under the radar. But he was no less impressionable on the virtuoso.

Mack’s trusted six-string companion was certainly unique. The 1958 Gibson Flying V is saddled with a Bigsby vibrato, which, given the guitar's shape, isn't a pairing we see all too often. To make it possible, the tailpiece of the tremolo sits on a metal bar that connects to the inside legs of the V-shaped body. It’s a little crude, sure, but it’s effective, and a big part of the guitar’s uncanny charm.

Dubbed “Number 7”, indicating how soon this model came off Gibson’s inaugural production line, it stayed by his side throughout his pioneering blues-, country-, and soul-blending career.

Here, Heritage Auctions is offering it alongside his 1962 Magnatone Custom 440 combo amplifier and stage-used strap.

“This is far more than an exceptionally rare 1958 Gibson,” says Heritage Auctions. “It is a cornerstone of American popular music history. The recovery and first public offering of this remarkable instrument represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to acquire one of the most important and iconic artist-owned electric guitars ever to become available.”

The auction is launching with a starting bid of $300,000, and there are a few historical caveats to note.

"Number 7" Was refinished in its red visage by Gibson around 1963, and its neck has had a major repair. Scars of that, two korina wood dowels, can be found at its heel. Given its Bigsby, the original string-through-body holes have long since been filled in, and its tuners have been replaced with period-correct reproductions. The original Kluson tuners are part of the package deal.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Mack would go on to collaborate numerous times, with SRV producing his 1985 comeback album, Strike Like Lightning.

Naturally, “Number 7” was there for the whole thing and has featured during their on-stage linkups, meaning the guitar has a deep connection to both blues guitar greats. Indeed, the instrument was so significant that Gibson re-produced it as a signature model in the ’90s, complete with bar bracket and Bigsby.

It's not the only totem instrument Heritage Auctions is offering right now. The prototype of Eric Clapton's Crossroads ES-335, modeled on his faithful 1963 guitar; Ace Frehley's 1972 Gibson Les Paul, used on stage with Kiss throughout the '70s; and a skull-laden Telecaster formerly owned by Keith Richards are also heading to the auction block.

See Heritage Auctions for more.

Every edition of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival brings with it not only a jaw-loosening lineup of artists, but the debut of some killer six-strings as well.

Last month, Guitar Center unveiled its Crossroads 2026 guitar collection, featuring splashy limited-edition Eric Clapton and John Mayer models from Fender, Martin, and PRS, respectively. Not to be outdone, though, Epiphone is also getting in on the Crossroads fun.

Those attending the festival – which will take place on September 26-27 at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas – will be able to stop by something called the Gibson Booth, where, according to Epiphone, “Over 30 Gibson and Epiphone instruments will be on display and available to plug in and play.”

Most tantalizingly, one of these is an Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom Eric Clapton 1964 ES-335TDC Reissue model, which Epiphone says will be released in summer 2027. It will be the first public appearance of the model, which is based on the somewhat mysterious ’335 that Clapton famously wielded at Cream’s farewell performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London in November 1968.

Certainly less famous and iconic than other Cream-era Clapton guitars – The Fool SG and his 1964 Gibson Firebird I come to mind – the ’64 ES-335 is of somewhat murky provenance. Guitar World contributor Tony Bacon wrote that it was most likely acquired by Clapton in late 1968, from guitarist Jerry Donahue.

“He really liked it,” Donahue recalled to Guitar World. “The feel, the sound – it was perfect. Certainly, it took no time at all for him to get his wallet out.”

Regardless of how and when he bought it, the guitar was in Slowhand’s possession for over 35 years, until he sold it at auction to Guitar Center, to benefit the Crossroads Center.

In a full circle moment, the original guitar will also be displayed at the festival as part of its Guitar Center Experience. We can double-check for those curious, but we’re gonna go out on a limb and assume that if you tried to demo that one, you might run afoul of festival security.

We’ve no further details on the ins and outs of the replica, but it’s definitely one we can’t wait to get our hands on, given how much we’ve been impressed by other Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom creations.

For tickets and more info about the Crossroads Guitar Festival, visit its website.

John Mayer isn’t just a guitar player. Nor is he just a singer, or a songwriter. As he explains in an exclusive new interview with Guitar World, he’s also crazy about product design. The time he’s spent building and refining his signature guitar, the PRS Silver Sky, is testament to that fact.

“It’s probably my favorite thing next to making music,” Mayer tells us. “And when I say next to, I don’t mean below it. I mean parallel with it.”

That’s why the subject we’re sitting down with Mayer to talk about is particularly significant. Today, PRS and John Mayer have announced a milestone collaboration with Land Rover, resulting in a run of US and SE Silver Sky models with Defender finishes never before seen on guitars.

It’s a big deal for Mayer, who's an avid collector of Defenders. But for those who don’t have a garage filled with luxury 4x4s, or any interest in Land Rover at all, there’s a more universal talking point that will make you sit up and pay attention.

Besides those fresh new colorways, the collection introduces the first Silver Sky to come factory-fitted with a black pickguard. It might not be the place fans were expecting it to pop up, but it finally brings one of the most requested Silver Sky features to the masses.

Mayer has long spoken about his desire to elevate electric guitar design. He’s been influenced by movements outside of the music world, looking to lifestyle brands such as Tesla, Apple and Leica as inspiration for the Silver Sky.

It’s unconventional thinking for a guitar, resulting in a signature platform that has led by example when it comes to keeping modern guitar aesthetics fresh. That’s always been the goal.

“I knew from the very beginning of the Silver Sky launch that I wanted to have a new relationship with colors when it came to the guitar,” Mayer dissects. “I wanted to elevate the sense of what colors are on the guitars.

“Color communicates so much. It’s the same way, if you're at a restaurant, fonts on a menu can communicate things. When you see that Rolex Green, it's a hex code.”

This Land Rover link-up feels like a full circle moment, then. It has allowed Mayer to geek out about a brand he loves, while flexing his passion for product design and trying to keep the guitar landscape fresh.

“I thought, ‘This is the perfect opportunity to legitimize this concept that I’ve had for so long,’” Mayer explains of the collab. “Instead of pantone-matching someone else’s colors, we got to go to the brand and get involved in the heritage of these colors and tell a deeper story.

“We were given the actual paint samples from Defender, and the paint codes. Most people don’t have those paint codes. We were entrusted with them.”

Trust is at the heart of this partnership, and that’s not lost on Mayer.

“We’re using Land Rover paint. That’s the legitimacy that I feel like is a dream come true. It’s just trust. Trust that, when I create the Silver Sky in these colors, I’m going to be an extension of the Defender story.

“It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to align with a brand that’s known so well for its colors and adapt those colors so that they live on the Silver Sky,” Mayer says. “I’m a huge fan of Defenders and a collector of Defenders. This is marrying two things I love.”

Of course, car colors and guitars have always been intertwined. In the ’50s and ’60s, Gibson and Fender used custom car colors for their builds. Dakota Red. Lake Placid Blue. Candy Apple Red. The list goes on.

But this puts a different spin on the car color theme. For a start, no-one’s used actual Defender paint before. Plus, Defenders of this style were made no earlier than the 1980s. It’s a more contemporary – and, yes, more exclusive – approach that’s in keeping with the Silver Sky’s ethos on color.

And this new collection is all about color. Keeping the same specs as regular Silver Skys, the US model gets heritage colors no longer offered on the 4x4: Arles Blue, Willow Green, Portofino Red and Sandglow Yellow, with color-matched headstocks to boot.

Meanwhile, the SE gets contemporary finishes Petra Copper, Sedona Red, Carpathian Grey, and Woolstone Green. The SE models also get the honor of bringing that black pickguard to the lineup.

It’s one of the most anticipated new features for the Silver Sky. Many fans have taken it upon themselves to make similar mods with off-label parts in the past. Now PRS is leaning into it. And Mayer is giving back to the SE in the process.

“It’s almost like the first appearance of Wolverine. Everyone’s waiting for it,” Mayer acknowledges. “I think it’s interesting that it makes its appearance on the SE line as opposed to just having it trickle down from the Core line.

“I thought it was nice to give something to the SE. When I was growing up, the more accessible guitar got punished for being more accessible. I learned a lot from the SE.

“I originally had the idea like, ‘Oh, you tier it.’ Then guitar lovers of the world spoke to me. I learned that some people are going to have an SE forever. It doesn’t have to be a consolation and someday you’ll work your way up. That’s when I thought, ‘There should be a little bit to separate the lines.’”

Players have been waiting for this one since the Silver Sky first landed. To have it appear in a Land Rover collaboration might seem odd, but it all fits Mayer’s vision for his signature guitar. This is no ‘black pickguard Silver Sky’ for the sake of it. The Defender drop felt natural.

Mayer explains, “The US core model has a white pickguard, because the wagon version of the Defenders from the 1990s had a white top. The colorway on the modern edition of the Defender has a lot of black accents, which is how we arrived at a black pickguard on the SE.

“If the SE was grabbing from modern colors, then black is the roof and hood color of a new Defender.”

Granted, a formal collaboration with an actual car brand might seem indulgent. Mayer is certainly no stranger to luxury link-ups, having worked in the past with premium Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet.

But Mayer maintains that, despite the fact this limited-edition drop has one eye on attracting collectors as well as players, it never loses sight of what’s at the center of the partnership: his signature guitar.

“The greatest compliment on the instrument side of my life is when somebody says, ‘If he put his name on it, you know it’s right,’” Mayer stresses. “That means everything to me. I don’t want to break that chain. But in the meantime, you can play with the colors and play with the story it can tell.”

This whole venture goes back to Mayer’s obsession with design and color. This is a man who has looked to fashion and cosmetics as inspiration for his guitars. The Faded Black Tee Silver Sky was color-matched to a T-shirt he likes. Moc Sand came from a pair of shoes.

“If you like one of the colors, you’re not going to get weighed down by branding,” Mayer says of this new drop. “I made sure the whole time, and so did Land Rover, that this is not a guitar feeling like it has four wheels.

“It’s not meant to combine the design DNA of a Defender and a Silver Sky. It’s telling a color story, and that’s what I really love. That’s why I think it should be known as the Defender Color Collection.”

Only 500 of each of the US Silver Sky models will be made. The SE variants won't be limited editions, per se, but will only be available until mid-year 2027.

For more information, head over to PRS Guitars.

More from John Mayer’s interview with Guitar World will be published in the coming weeks.

What is it?

Modern appointments on guitars with a storied history can often elicit some pretty strong responses. Some applaud the innovation, while others would rather classic formulas remain un-messed with. Thankfully, we are spoiled for choice, with a lot of options on both sides of that fence, one of which is the new line of Epiphone Futura guitars.

As the name suggests, these lean into a more evolved, modern side of things, not only with their specs, but also with the striking finish that changes depending on the angle you are viewing the guitar from.

The line gives the Futura treatment to six revered Gibson guitars - the Les Paul Custom, SG, ES-355, Firebird, Flying V, and, interestingly, the RD Custom.

In my hands for review is the Epiphone Futura ES-355. A classic semi-hollow shape, but with a 10-14” compound radius, a modern C-shape neck profile, Epiphone’s ProBucker Ignite pickups, push/pull coil-splitting and phase-switching options, stainless steel frets, locking Grover Rotomatic tuners, and a Chromashift high-gloss finish- in this case, the Dragonfly Shift flavor.

Things get a little more familiar with the maple/poplar five-ply body (the Gibson ES-355 is usually a trio of maple/poplar/maple), a solid maple center block, mahogany neck, and an ebony fretboard. In short, it's still an Epiphone ES-355, but with quite a few high-performance tweaks to the traditional formula to get stuck into.

Specs

• Launch price: $899 | £849 | €999
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: 5 ply maple/poplar
• Neck: Mahogany
• Fingerboard: Ebony
• Scale length: 24.75"/628.6mm
• Nut/width: Graph Tech, 42mm
• Frets: 22, stainless steel, medium jumbo
• Hardware: Grover locking Rotomatic tuners, LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge and stop bar
• String spacing at bridge: 11mm
• Electrics: 2 Epiphone ProBucker Ignite pickups, 3-way pickup selector, 2 volume, 2 tone, 2 push/pull coil split, 1 push/pull phase change
• Weight: 8.8lb/4kg
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Dragonfly Shift (as reviewed), Firestorm Shift
• Cases: Epiphone soft case
• Contact: Epiphone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Let’s get straight to the point. That Dragonfly Shift finish is show-stopping. Shifting from green to blue-ish as you view it from different angles, I can’t help but spend a chunk of time admiring the guitar every time I pick it up.

It’s not perfect, though, as the finish on the inside of the F-holes is a bit scrappy and slightly sticky, so there is a little room for improvement.

Despite this, the guitar's Gibson Custom-inspired split-diamond inlays plus the bound fretboard and body lend it a premium look beyond the price tag.

Furthering this aesthetic and adding some much-needed grip is the knurled finish on each of the controls (two volume, two tone). Additionally, the three controls that sport push/pull functionality execute this with a satisfying and reassuring clunk.

The stainless steel frets are finished nicely, and the guitar arrived well set up with a buzz-free, low action (1.25mm low E, 1mm high E). If I'm being picky, the nut is a little sharp, but it's far from a deal-breaker.

There is also some scope to be picky about those Posi-Lok strap buttons, as Epiphone states that they “keep your strap securely attached without any extra hardware”. To me, this implies that they can be used in place of strap locks.

So it’s worth pointing out that, despite the pointed sides, the strap can still detach in the same way as it would on normal strap buttons if pulled at the right angle. Having said that, they still add an appreciated level of extra security, just not quite enough if you're planning to be spinning your guitar around your back.

The rest of the hardware, which includes the Graph Tech nut, locking Grover Rotomatic tuners, LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge, and LockTone stop bar, all perform admirably, with the guitar's stoic tuning stability a testament to the quality here.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

Traditionally, an ES-355 would come equipped with a 12” fretboard radius, but this Epiphone Futura version boasts a 10-14” compound radius. We are in the realm of preference here, but the convention is that the rounder feel of the lower frets makes those cowboy chords a little more comfortable, and the flatter curve as you move up the fretboard helps facilitate those flashy runs.

Personally, I love the feel of this. Open chords and country picking are a breeze at the bottom, and legato acrobatics are coming off nice and easy at the top. The usual 24.75” scale length makes bending and vibrato flow off the fingers too, in a guitar that is a joy to play.

This is aided by that aforementioned low action, which results in lead licks feeling buttery-smooth, and stretchy chord shapes popping out with minimal finger strength required.

The only point of complaint is that, as with all ES-355s I’ve played, the shallow cut of the lower horn makes reaching those top two frets a little awkward. And if you have bigger hands, the 20th fret may be slightly uncomfortable too.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

The ES-355 has always offered a relatively rounded sound, with plenty of low end, a smooth high end, and a midrange that is not as forward as something like a Les Paul. This Futura iteration is similar, but thanks to the Epiphone ProBucker Ignite pickups, it has a slightly tighter low end than a traditional 355, and considerably more output.

These changes make for a guitar that offers sparkling cleans, if not quite as full as other ES-355s, but excels at overdriven sounds, with an interesting, fuller-range flavor than its solid-body counterparts.

With the guitar's semi-hollow propensity to vibrate in sympathy with an amp, the Futura not only offers buckets of sustain, but readily breaks into musical feedback at even minimal levels of overdrive when combined with a dollop of volume. A ton of fun.

There is a limit on how much gain can be applied without getting into uncontrollable feedback territory, which is as expected with this type of guitar. Here, I am getting right up to the heavier side of classic rock before this occurs.

Something to consider, however, is that the increased output of the Futura ES-355 is driving my setup harder than my Les Paul and '61 SG Standard. I am running into a Hot Rod Deluxe with a Browne Amplification Ethane handling drive duties, and I find I am having to significantly adjust my level of gain when switching between the Les Paul and Futura ES-335.

Mid-level gain on the Burstbucker-equipped Les Paul is a heavy drive on the Futura - enough to get into the aforementioned uncontrollable feedback.

This feels the wrong way round, and makes switching guitars kind of a pain. But, obviously, not a problem if you are just running one guitar during a gig, and you can always roll the volume back on the Futura ES-355. Either way, I would prefer a lower output on this type of guitar.

Another modern tweak is the push/pull pots, of which we have three. One for each pickup in order to split the coils, and a third that changes the phase of the neck pickup, resulting in that distinctive, quacky midrange when both pickups are active.

Like most coil-splits, these are a little thin-sounding, but not so much as to make them inviable for some single-coil spank. For snappy, funky playing, the split neck pickup is a good option.

And then that out-of-phase sound is slightly reminiscent of a cocked wah, great for that Peter Green thing. It’s a distinctive tone, and one that most will be using sparingly, but pleasing all the same.

Verdict

Although some may argue that little has changed in the world of electric guitars since the ‘50s, I’d suggest that there have, in fact, been more tweaks than the industry usually gets credit for. The compound radius, high-output pickups, coil split, and phase options that this Futura boasts are good examples.

What these features create is a guitar that respects the ES-355 heritage, whilst lending it some modern accouterments that bring it up to the present day, and all in that stunning finish.

Obviously, if your preference is for a traditional spec (personally, I think there is a place for both), this is not for you, and I would rather have the pickups tweaked to a lower output in order to reflect the semi-hollow nature of the guitar.

The upside, though, is a superbly playable instrument with a sound that offers something a little different to the traditional ES-355.

Guitar World verdict: The Epiphone Futura ES-355 takes the famed guitar and gives it a bit of a glow-up with a collection of modern features and a stunning finish. It’s the semi-hollow tone with the same sustain, a tighter low end, and a ton of output. That high output is a strange choice given the tendency for semi-hollows to feedback, but the result is a 355 capable of a little more growl than you might expect, and a worthwhile iteration of a time-honored guitar.

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Hands-on videos

Philip McKnight

Epiphone

The Neurotic Guitarist

When Gibson announced the launch of its third Gibson Garage location in Miami over the summer, the firm said it would also be tapping into the city’s rich culture. Now it’s putting its money where its mouth is by collaborating with the estate of Gustavo Cerati for what it’s calling “one of the most significant collector instruments in Gibson history.”

The resulting Gibson Custom Gustavo Cerati ES-335 electric guitar is limited to just 60 pieces and is available exclusively at the Miami store, which opened its doors last week. A 1965 reissue, it's a tribute to the late Soda Stereo frontman’s prized workhorse and honors “one of the most influential artists in Latin American music.”

Built by Gibson Custom and aged by the Murphy Lab, the ES-335, of course, has a Cherry finish and is loaded with a B7 Bigsby trem, factory double pickguards, and Grover tuners to mirror the guitar that starred in Soda Stereo’s 1996 MTV Unplugged performance. It also appeared on some of the band’s biggest tours and at Cerati’s 2007 Live Earth performance with Shakira.

Cerati, who released seven albums with the legendary Argentine rock band outfit and a series of solo albums before his passing in 2014, bought the original guitar in New York in the mid ’90s. It had already been modded with a second pickguard, leather back pad, and Bigsby, which the Murphy Lab has naturally replicated here.

Couple those details with Murphy Lab aging processes that have already given reissues for Jeff Beck’s Yardburst Les Paul, Mick Ronson’s David Bowie-era LP, and fooled Peter Frampton – and there’s an artifact-like attention to detail here.

Born in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires in 1959, Cerati fused a love of the Beatles and the Police with his roots to make Soda Stereo a global success story. He sold over 10 million solo albums and won six Latin Grammy Awards.

The result of Gibson’s collaboration with the Cerati estate, the firm believes, has produced “a museum-quality, yet fully playable collectible designed to endure both musically and historically.”

The Gibson Custom Gustavo Cerati 1965 ES-335 is available only at the new Gibson Garage in Miami and comes with a custom hardshell case.

One of a kind would be overstating it because I actually have two of these 1950s Telecasters with this custom walnut finish, but I’ve never seen any others.

These guitars were purchased brand-new as a set in 1956 and, besides the condition, they are like clones. The one with all the wear and tear has lettering spelling the name ‘Gillie’ on the pickguard. The obvious question is, who the heck was Gillie?

Unfortunately, we don’t know, but the photographs that came with these guitars show us he was a singing cowboy who played in a band with other singing cowboys.

Having bought these guitars, he must have decided which was the one for him and he never used the other one and it remains in new old stock condition. It’s wrapped in the tissue paper it was shipped in and it still has the factory strings on it.

Although we haven’t been able to identify Gillie, it’s likely that Fender did know who he was because they agreed to build him a matching pair of guitars with a unique finish and custom-feeling necks.

I think that Gillie may have been someone locally famous in the Southern California area judging by the look of his band photos and the way they were dressed. Or perhaps he knew somebody who worked at the factory. Either way, he must have had an in somewhere with Fender for them to make him two special guitars.

The necks are basically identical and they feel fabulous with a really thick V profile. Although the neck and nut widths are standard, they are quite bulky – almost like Fender turned U-shaped ’52 Tele necks into soft Vs. Gillie must have had giant mitts on him, but they do feel comfortable.

The one he played weighs around 7lb 4oz and, besides the pickguard lettering, it has never been altered and it still has its battered original case. The really clean guitar’s case is in mint condition and still contains all the paperwork from Fender.

I must say that for my taste, this is not the prettiest colour and it’s the kind of brown that’s reminiscent of something else. You’d be the only kid on your block to have one if you owned these guitars because I’ve never seen this finish on any other 1950s Fender guitar and that means it was specially ordered.

I have no idea why Gillie wanted his guitars to look like 1950s kitchen cabinets. Maybe it matched his personality or the band’s stage outfits, but for whatever strange reason, he thought this was cool. It is somewhat translucent so you can see grain through it. The lacquer is just opaque enough that it’s almost a transparent walnut colour.

If it was just the one guitar, I might be less certain that it’s a factory finish. But because the clean one is in mint and completely unmolested condition, it confirms that it is original. Neither guitar has been altered in any way and even the solder joints are pristine so this is Fender paint.

The one Gillie played has got checking and a few dings and dents. The edges are bumped and bruised and there’s a big wear spot from a giant buckle. You can tell from the buckle rash that he played the guitar high up, which means he was playing it early on. It’s been loved on and Gillie had a career with it.

As you’d expect for ’56 Telecasters, they have smooth steel saddles and bridge pickups with staggered slugs. On Gillie’s playing guitar the pickups read 7.5k and 6.6k at the neck and bridge respectively. The played one sounds particularly good, but since the other one has original strings, we can’t really compare them at this point.

The bodies aren’t dated, but the neck dates are September 1956 and the pots are from the 20th week of 1956. The wiring is unchanged, so the guitars still have their ‘mud’ settings, and although the played one doesn’t have a bridge cover, the mint one does.

The guitars come with two really cool old photos. In one picture you can see a Fender double-neck pedal steel and the other guitarist in the band looks a bit horrified. Maybe he’s kicking himself because he could have had a Fender, but he ended up buying a Gretsch. We would love to hear from Gillie or maybe his kids or grandkids. If you know who he is, please step forward.

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

For more than 10 years, master luthier Roger Giffin and vintage gear rental specialist Brett Allen have been sitting on a secret that could have landed both of them serious jail time.

The story goes back to Giffin’s time as head of the Gibson Custom Shop operations in Los Angeles. The renowned British guitar maker, who famously built Johnny Marr’s Telecaster knock-off, arrived in LA in 1988 with the task of building a Custom Shop facility. He was left largely to his own devices, working on repairs and warranty issues. In walked Allen.

They immediately hit it off. Giffin played the role of teacher, talking Allen through the builds he had hanging on the wall. Allen fired question after question at him and Giffin answered. They were similarly curious about guitar design, about what could be done – if not what should be done.

“Literally the moment him and I started talking, we got on like a house on fire,” Allen tells Guitar World. “He would show me bits and pieces of what he wanted to put together as a guitar, like he’d take a Gibson neck that shouldn’t be on this body and put it on that body, and try and find out what it’s going to sound like, right? That really intrigued me.”

It got Allen thinking: if there was one Gibson guitar that Giffin would love to design but the company would never make it, what would that be?

“Without hesitation, within a second, he said, ‘Yeah, a hollowbody Les Paul,’” says Allen.

They kept talking. Giffin had all this worked out, how to construct a Les Paul as you would do a hollowbody Gretsch guitar. Allen asked if he would build him one, and there it began, an illicit collaboration that all started with a hollowbodied Les Paul, complete with f-holes, and once it was finished they were sitting on a consignment of 16 wholly unauthorized acoustic, bass and electric guitars, all bearing the Gibson name on the headstock, all made from parts purloined from company stock.

“If they found out, we’d be in jail. Or I would be. I was the instigator. I was the one that came up with it,” says Allen.

“I would go back to Nashville every few months,” says Giffin. “I’d spend a few days there. I’d wander around in the wood mill, and take a trolley thing on wheels, and just say, ‘Can I have that and that and that?’ And they’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, just take it.’ I would take all this stuff on the trolley and wheel it back to the other end of the shop there, and they would just crate it up and ship it to me in LA.”

Giffin amassed a stockpile of premium tonewoods and spent his nights and weekends working on designs that he knew deep down would not ever go into production at Gibson. And, he says, the company saw some of these. He would send some of the builds back to Nashville for finishing. Giffin describes them as “kind of official Gibsons” but prototypes.

“Whatever they saw, they obviously didn’t disapprove of it, so it just kind of spiraled,” he says.

Allen had more suggestions, and this clandestine project continued, off-the-books, on the hush-hush. Some of the designs were Giffin’s from the ground up, such as the hollowbody design and his baritone Les Paul.

“The hollowbodies didn’t exist,” says Giffin. “Those were built from scratch. I probably used Gibson necks on some of them, but not all of them, especially not the baritones, because there were no baritone necks.”

Allen says these guitars have been sitting under his bed all this time but some of them had been rented out to artists to use in the studio. Allen wanted to build his rental business – he also wanted to know what these guitars would sound like in a pro’s hands. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains made a beeline for that baritone Les Paul.

“Jerry Cantrell was the very first person to ever play either one of the baritones,” says Allen. “He played the one with P-90s in it – it’s got ’54 cream top P-90s. They sound amazing. Jerry played it for about a minute and a half. He looked at me and he said, ‘Brett, this is the most evil-sounding guitar I’ve ever played in my life. This is pure fucking evil, and I want it.’”

Allen told him it wasn’t for sale. But Cantrell was determined, and was willing to put down some serious money for it. He went as far as thirty grand. Allen said no. None of these instruments were for sale.

Until now. And this is why Allen and Giffin have broken cover. They waited 10 years until the statute of limitations had passed, and now these guitars are going up for auction at ANALOGr as ‘The Giffin Outlaw Guitar Collection.’

All of them were made using Gibson woods. That hollowbody Les Paul really started something; they made a 12-string variant, equipped with cream-covered P-90 pickups, and a 12-string Gold Top Les Paul. And what about a truly ostentatious (and Gretsch-inspired) gold sparkle Les Paul with a trio of P-90s?

Allen says all of these are one-offs, all built on this hypothetical premise of what a Gibson guitar could be – or mostly. Some were made to upset then Gibson-CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, such as a fully hollow Les Paul with a cats-eye soundhole just like a Gretsch. That one was all Giffin’s idea.

“What he wanted to do at the time was piss Henry off. Henry Juszkiewicz,” says Allen. “We used to call him ‘Henry just a twit’. Henry was getting on his case all the fucking time, from the time he started with with Gibson. So he built that for me.”

These guitars go under the hammer on October 20 via ANALOGr. Allen has waited a long time for this day. They had been close to being caught on a couple of occasions. Now he says it’s over.

“All of those guitars, literally, were underneath my bed in Hollywood for over 30 years,” he says. “The statute of limitations is seven years. I wanted to wait 10 years to make sure that, absolutely, that’s it, you can’t touch me. You can’t do anything.”

Giffin left Gibson in 1992. It got “nasty” towards the end. Gibson sent in “the hatchet squad”. He said he would never work for an American corporation again and formed Giffin Guitars.

You can find out more about the auction and these one-of-one guitars at ANALOGr.

Reverend has expanded its Billy Corgan signature guitar lineup with a limited edition release commemorating 30 years of the Smashing Pumpkins’ bravura double album Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Unveiled in time for the Chicago alt-rock institutions’ Rat in a Cage Tour, the Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available as a standard six-string electric guitar, and as a baritone guitar – and if it looks familiar then maybe that’s because you caught the Pumpkins’ set at Lollapalooza. Corgan was debuting them onstage, just to test them out.

He’s one of the lucky ones. Reverend are not making many of these. There are 60 in total, 24 of which will be the Drop Zero baritones.

Both versions share the Black Sparkle finish, the solid alder construction, and ebony fingerboard – and the Melon Collie graphic that sits just south of that six-saddle hard-tail bridge. Indeed, they share a lot of features.

Both have Railhammer humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions, a pairing that’s served by the volume, tone, and bass contour knobs (bass contour! I know, right?), with a three-way blade switch to select them. Note the signature etching on the covers. That’s pretty neat.

In the hand, that bolt-on maple neck should feel familiar; Corgan’s preferred ‘medium oval’ profile is a crowd-pleasing shape – not too fat, not too thin – but you get a bit more neck on the baritone. With a 26.25” scale, it’s not quite a Sleep Token IV-style octave-down monster, but it will eat up drop tunings, and you’ve got 24 frets as opposed to the 22 on the regular Z-One.

Reverend hasn’t actually specified this yet, but those dot inlays look glow-in-the-dark to us. That’s another plus point if true. Each guitar in this series comes with a certificate of authenticity, a two-tone soft guitar case, plus a poster of Billy Corgan’s Mellon Collie Moon artwork.

The standard model will set you back $1,899, while the baritone rings up at $1,999.

And, if you buy one, you’ll be buying the same guitars that Corgan plays onstage. In April last year, Corgan explained to Guitar World why he played off-the-shelf Reverends onstage and in the studio.

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give,” he said. “I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever. That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument.”

The Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available now. Head over to Reverend for more details.

Okay, so NAMM 2026 happened, and by now it seems like a lifetime ago, so long ago in fact that you would be forgiven for forgetting some of the most-exciting electric guitars that debuted on the show floor at Anaheim.

But surely the following rings a bell: a $749 guitar from Cory Wong anf Sterling By Music Man with a double-cut profile inspired by one of the greatest bass guitar designs of all time, dual humbuckers, Pearl Blue or Silver with white egg-shaped pickguard, built to spec for a man whose right hand is one part quartz crystal, two parts rubber…

That’s right, it’s Mr Cory Wong of Vulpeck's StingRay II, the first-ever SBMM version of that model, and it looks every bit as fresh in September as it did in January.

If it is something completely new for SBMM, the affordable wing of the Ernie Ball Music Man family of brands, then it is also something new for Wong. This is the player who made his name on the lithe, elastic snap of Stratocaster single-coil pickups – and here he is rolling with humbuckers. What gives? Well, he wanted something with more girth.

“I am known by a lot of people as somebody who plays a single-coil guitar. That’s a big part of my sound,” he admits. “But there was a lack of just a fatness in some of the things I wanted to play.”

Wong was in luck. He started exploring the idea of humbuckers when the Ernie Ball Music Man R&D team were looking to rework one of their classic designs, and if Wong was in the market for a new signature guitar – complete with the fatness of ‘bucker – then he would be pushing at an open door.

“They’re like, ‘Well, we’re talking about maybe doing the StingRay thing, so why don’t you just help us with the design process?’ I was telling them the things I was looking for sonically and visually, and the collaboration was born,” says Wong.

For $749, the StingRay II is, as they say, a lot of guitar. It has a caramelized maple neck, bolted to a “double-contoured” alder body. There are two of the aforementioned humbuckers, and a three-way switch to select them. Volume and tone knobs serve both pickups.

Wong’s SBMM StingRay II has a vintage-style tremolo, locking tuners, and a rosewood fingerboard, which is always appreciated on the more affordable instruments (no shade to Indian laurel, etc, but rosewood is where it’s at).

Other points to note: these have a Fender-esque 25.5” scale but a Gibson-esque 12” fingerboard radius, and the price is very nice but it does not include a gig bag.

For more details, head over to Sterling By Music Man.

Gibson has launched a limited-edition collection of electric guitars inspired by the one-of-a-kind six-strings that were built by former CEO, Cesar Gueikian.

The now-board member of Gibson spent much of his tenure learning the art of crafting guitars. One of his last builds was played by Kirk Hammett with Metallica at Back to the Beginning, before it was auctioned off.

Inspired by his journey, Gibson has celebrated its former leader with the Do Epic Shit series (inspired by Guekiain's catchphrase). It comprises a Les Paul, SG, ES, Explorer, Flying V, and Victory.

The guitars all share the same Ghost Burst finish, Super Split Block inlays, the same compound-radius ebony fretboards, and Gibson’s all-new, future-minded ELEV8 humbuckers.

Gibson Master Luthier Jim DeCola has also had a hand in the builds, with each model also boasting AAA figured maple tops, black nickel hardware, and uncovered zebra-coil pickups. Hardware specs include Grove locking tuners, a Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, and a push/pull coil tap to get the most out of its Alnico 8 pickups.

The recipe is largely the same across the board, with the collection contributing to the firm’s in-house charity, Gibson Gives. They’re pretty sharp-looking instruments., and will be sold exclusively on the Gibson website and at Gibson Garage locations.

Gibson is celebrating the series’ launch by dropping a charity single in tandem.

Featuring Mateus Asato, Dream Theater keyboardist Joran Rudess, and Gueikian himself – who is no slack on the guitar, either – Sanctuary is a piano-driven song iced with brooding Asato leads.

That, in turn, has inspired the creation of another one-of-a-kind Gibson Sanctuary Soundwaves guitar. Its intriguing finish has actually been informed by the soundwaves of the song itself, and is being auctioned off via RallyUp to add even more cash to the Gibson Gives kitty.

The fact that Asato has not long joined the Fender family makes him an interesting choice for the track, but he nails it all the same.

Speaking to Guitar World last year, Gueikian said that when he finished his first build, the building bug bit him hard. It’s become a career highlight.

“At the beginning, I thought, ‘I want to build a guitar.’ And I realized it was no longer about the guitars, but it was about the moment,” he said.

The Gibson DES Series is available now exclusively via Gibson.com and Gibson Garage locations.

See Gibson for more on the DES Series, and RallyUp for the auction details.

Joan Jett’s signature Olympic Special has returned to Epiphone in commemoration of the 45th anniversaries of her iconic albums, 1980’s Bad Reputation and 1981’s I Love Rock ’N Roll.

Back for the first time since 2022, this 2026 edition takes inspiration from the specs of Jett’s workhorse Melody Maker, delivering a “rock-ready model without distractions.”

It features a lightweight, asymmetrical double cutaway mahogany body, a glued-in mahogany body shaped to the guitar’s unique profile, and a rosewood fretboard with a 22-inch radius, 22 medium-jumbo frets, and pearloid dot inlays.

Aside from carrying the classic Olympic Special silhouette, the headstock is fitted with die-cast tuners, a Graph Tech nut for tuning stability, and a gold reproduction of Jett’s signature.

The controls channel her no-frills, punk sensibility, with a single PowerHammer ProBucker pickup, a CTS volume potentiometer, a black Speed knob with a rubber grip, and an on/off toggle switch for added kill-switch capability. To top it off, it’s now available in Vintage Sunburst finish.

“What attracted me to guitar was just being able to make that kind of noise and have control over it,” Jett said upon the signature’s release in 2022. “The point is to make it your vision and voice. Being true to your music is really about owning who you are. My guitars have become an extension of who I am.

“I want girls and guys everywhere to be fearless about picking up a guitar. Anyone can play rock ‘n’ roll and make it authentic.”

Priced at $599, Jett’s signature is available now.

For more information, visit Epiphone.

Fender CEO Bud Cole has revealed the company is pivoting its ongoing cease-and-desist campaign, as it continues its attempts to enforce legal protection for the Stratocaster.

In May, Fender issued a wave of cease-and-desist letters to a number of guitar builders that Fender claimed were making Strat copies. The copyright dispute has been widely criticized by players, Guitar World readers and brands alike.

Cole recently gave Bloomberg his first public interview since the start of Fender’s legal strategy. In it, he concedes mistakes were made in how the company approached the dispute, and that its main target has now changed from small builders to big players.

"It’s clear to me that this got ahead of us – the legal process got ahead of us – and that we could have done this better,” says Cole.

“We are very, very focused solely on large manufacturers now,” he adds. “We are not focused at all now on boutique builders… We are not focused on small builders.”

Bloomberg has confirmed that 60 firms in total were sent cease and desists, with the first official confirmation that Schecter and Ernie Ball Music Man are involved. PRS, Yamaha and Harley Benton are the three biggest guitar companies that were already known to have been served a letter.

It doesn’t specify which models, but Schecter’s Nick Johnston signature model and Ernie Ball Music Man’s Cutlass are likely candidates.

Meanwhile, Thomann, Harley Benton’s owner, is currently locked in a high-stakes suit with Fender. PRS has repeatedly declined to comment on the matter, but has said it disagrees with Fender’s position.

LsL Instruments, a family-owned boutique firm, is also defending its right to make its Saticoy S-type. It’s one of a number of firms being represented by Ron Bienstock, the attorney who defeated Fender’s previous trademark dispute back in 2009.

Fender claims to be seeing some success in its campaign, however. Bloomberg notes it is currently working with 32 builders, 18 of which have signed agreements. Those onboard are yet to be identified, but have agreed “to stop making the Stratocaster and take it in a different direction and redo the design,” Cole says.

As for why a boutique firm such as LsL received a cease-and-desist letter in the first place, despite Fender’s new focus on larger manufacturers, Cole states: “The idea was to begin conversations with people. That has always been our objective.”

Cole made similar comments in a leaked dealer event in June. “What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and respectfully to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design,” he said at the time.

However, Bloomberg notes neither LsL nor any of Bienstock’s other clients have heard from Fender. LsL did explore a redesign of its own accord, but that was a pre-emptive move rather than a collaboration with Fender. LsL has been approached for comment.

Throughout the interview, Cole avoids defining what a Stratocaster actually is, a distinctive point of identification that lies at the heart of this dispute. According to Bloomberg, “He describes it as most others do: recognizable, unique… Defining it turns out to be slippery.”

Elsewhere, the interview confirms Fender’s legal campaign predates Cole’s tenure, and that his appointment as CEO came after the wheels were already in motion.

Cole says he knew about the original judgement that had formed the basis of Fender’s entire campaign in December 2025, two months before he got the job. He doesn’t confirm who instigated the dispute, but when pressed, offers: “We led that. That was Fender, the company.”

The dispute, then, continues. All eyes will be on the outcome of the Thomann v Fender case, and what those 18 firms’ redesigned guitars will eventually look like – and how distinct from the Stratocaster they will need to be.

Mention the words ‘signature guitar’ and you will usually provoke one of two distinct reactions.

Some see the ultimate expression of an artist’s vision, an instrument shaped by years of touring and real-world experience. Others see little more than a standard production guitar with an inflated price tag and a famous name slapped on the headstock.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, split between two design philosophies: instruments built as faithful replicas, and instruments engineered to refine and innovate.

The first approach treats the guitar as a historical artefact. Faithfully replicated models such as Gibson’s recent ‘Greeny’ Les Paul, cloned from the iconic 1959 ’Burst shared by Peter Green, Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett, aren’t trying to improve the original template.

Their purpose is to preserve a frozen moment of rock history for a new generation. Conversely, the second philosophy looks forward, asking a practical engineering question: how can we make this guitar better?

These instruments use an artist’s experience to refine ergonomics, hardware and electronics. Steve Vai’s groundbreaking Ibanez JEM is the ultimate example. Its structural innovations solved real performance roadblocks, eventually trickling down into the mass-market RG series and permanently changing how modern guitars are built.

Problem Solvers

The best signature guitars rarely begin as marketing ideas; they start with a player trying to solve a persistent problem. Fender chief product officer, Justin Norvell, explains that this collaborative spirit is part of the company’s original DNA.

“It’s an ongoing conversation we have with everybody,” Norvell notes. “Leo wasn’t a guitar player. It was Bill Carson, Freddie Tavares… all of these players that would just say, ‘I like this. I don’t like this. Can you put an extra pickup on there? Can you do this?’”

Artist-driven R&D existed long before formalised signature models did. Michael Schulz, Fender’s head of Signature Artists, says that same spirit drives modern projects, though artists now arrive with highly specific insights from heavy touring and recording.

“We’re getting more information from artists saying, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing this thing. I’ve been hearing this thing… let’s R&D it.’ So then, we’ll try to figure out how to make it work.”

In much the same way, the PRS DGT grew organically from a friendship starting in the mid-1980s between David Grissom and Paul Reed Smith. As they exchanged ideas, Grissom’s road and studio experiences led to requests for a thicker mahogany body, revised pickups and player-focused changes.

Those ideas first evolved into the PRS McCarty model, which Grissom initially declined to put his name on out of respect for Ted McCarty’s legacy.

Grissom explains: “I was really at the point where… nobody knows who I am and I don’t want my name on the guitar. A lot of the ideas that I was trying to translate into the PRS were really ideas that Ted McCarty had pioneered at Gibson, and I thought it was extremely fitting and appropriate to recognise Ted for all his contributions.”

Only after years of continued refinement did that platform become the DGT. As Grissom recalled: “We bounced ideas off each other for years and we would always come up with different stuff.”

As Grissom’s session work increased, the guitar had to cover more ground. “We changed the control layout so the bridge pickup volume knob was closer to my little finger because I worked that constantly,” he explains. “We worked on the neck profile quite a bit over several years with quite a few prototypes.”

Norvell witnessed a similar level of microscopic detail when collaborating with Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, where tiny shifts in wood dimensions mattered.

“I remember we were messing with different necks,” Norvell recalled, “and Ed was feeling 10 thousandths of an inch on the back shape of neck. ‘Well, this one’s a little bigger.’ We’d get out the digital calipers and, sure enough, the neck was bigger.”

The Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster illustrated how demanding an artist can be when every detail affects performance. Norvell recalls that “Eric wasn’t interested in changing a guitar simply for the sake of change; he was searching for a very specific feel and response. The project ultimately involved testing more than 60 pickup sets and developing Fender’s first compound back-shape neck.”

But the real takeaway was much bigger than any single component. It was about getting every element to vibe together perfectly. “We always reduce it to the components,” Norvell says. “But, really, it was about designing a guitar that’s optimised to be the best version of itself where all the components work together in harmony.”

This same holistic approach defined the development of the PRS DGT, where Grissom focused heavily on achieving a seamless dynamic response across the entire fretboard.

The pickups became a major focal point of the R&D process. Instead of settling for high-gain performance or sterile vintage replication, he pushed for a balanced pickup voiced to deliver rich output and musical warmth without losing an ounce of single-coil-like openness and clarity.

“I still felt like there was too much midrange, too much gain,” he says, “but I didn’t want it to be sterile. I’m trying to get that sweet spot, where you do have mids, but you don’t sacrifice the sweet top-end and the harmonic complexity.”

Factory manufacturing methods, like pickup potting, became part of the discussion. Grissom questioned whether soaking them too long in wax killed the sound.

“If you’re letting them soak in a tub of wax for 10 minutes,” he says, “you’re killing all that air around them.” The solution was subtle: “To this day, they just go in for a little bit, and we don’t do the vacuum where it pulls the wax through.”

That level of detail carried through the entire instrument, down to the fret bevels, spec’d for “maximum real estate, but with no sharp edges”. He sums up the philosophy simply: “Everything about that guitar is spec’d out. It’s not an accident. It’s not left to chance.”

Tried & Tested

Real-world testing is equally vital. Fender’s Michael Schulz recalls sending Mike McCready an early Road Worn Strat prototype to play on stage with Pearl Jam. McCready came back with direct operational notes: “Hey, this sounds great, but I need this changed a little bit – I need this neck thing fixed right here a little bit.”

For Schulz, that was definitive proofing: “How much more R&D truth can you get than having this be played during Yellow Ledbetter and Alive and Even Flow live with Pearl Jam?”

Grissom describes the exact same idea from the player’s side. His suggestions were “born out of thousands of gigs and hundreds of sessions”, but success required “the ability to take those suggestions, put them into a guitar, and then hit the road, or go make a couple of records to see if they worked”.

Jared James Nichols’ signature model evolved even more organically. Nichols took his own Les Paul, removed the neck pickup, stripped the controls and rewired it with a single bridge P-90 and one volume knob. The guitar became his main instrument long before a brand got involved. When Gibson approached him, Nichols says the development was remarkably collaborative.

“They let me pick whatever components I wanted,” he recalls. Crucially, Nichols chose to build the guitar as an Epiphone, rather than a Gibson Custom Shop model, wanting something working musicians could realistically afford.

Perhaps no model better illustrates the power of artist-driven R&D than Steve Vai’s collaboration with Ibanez. Rather than modifying an existing production model, Vai worked with engineers to build a guitar from scratch.

The resulting JEM introduced innovations such as the Monkey Grip, enhanced upper-fret access, advanced switching and the ‘Bear Claw’ tremolo rout – all practical solutions to Vai’s real playing challenges.

Meanwhile, Paul Reed Smith rejects the idea of a standard blueprint for signature guitars, noting every collaboration follows its own path.

“It’s all different,” Smith explains. “What I did with Herman Li, what I did with David Grissom, what I did with Carlos Santana – all completely different stories.” In fact, Herman Li’s model took nearly a decade because “he didn’t just want a guitar. He initially wanted a synthesizer controller that would do things that most guitars won’t do.”

By contrast, “David wanted a McCarty guitar with a tremolo, he wanted everything right”. Ultimately, Smith says, “it’s not a label-slapping moment where you just throw an artist’s name on the back of a headstock. It’s getting these people what they want and having their legacy and their pride involved.”

Together, these stories show that signature guitar R&D is multifaceted. Whether it is a long factory development cycle, a prototype tested on stage, or a guitarist stripping a Les Paul down to the essentials, the best examples all share one core idea: the artist brings the problem, the builder helps find the solution, and the guitar becomes stronger because both sides listen.

Back To Business

Behind every successful signature guitar is a massive investment of time, money and trust. Long before reaching a dealer’s wall, manufacturers spend years refining prototypes alongside an artist. It is a major risk, with no upfront guarantee that the instrument will appeal beyond a core fanbase.

For some players, royalties from a successful signature guitar can provide long-term financial stability while cementing an artist’s legacy. While David Grissom and Steve Vai both acknowledge the economic benefits, they insist that a guitar must ultimately stand on its own merits. Players buy an instrument because it performs, regardless of whose signature is on the headstock.

To make it all work, the guitar market has split into very distinct price points and tiers. At the ultra-premium end, limited Custom Shop micro-runs function less like tools and more like fine art or financial assets. The benchmark remains Gibson’s 2004 Jimmy Page Les Paul.

The 25 ‘Played and Signed’ models originally retailed for $25,000 and now routinely command over $80,000 at auctions. Fender’s 2006 clone of Eric Clapton’s ‘Blackie’ retailed for $24,000 and sold out in hours. These instruments generate immediate, high-margin cash flow and can elevate a brand’s entire catalogue.

This split highlights a brand-new approach to signature collaborations. As Fender’s Justin Norvell and Michael Schulz reveal, modern collaborations look far beyond traditional rock heroes.

High-profile releases like the Bruno Mars and H.E.R. Stratocasters are explicitly engineered to introduce the guitar to younger, more diverse demographics. When a partnership really clicks, it doesn’t just sell gear; it builds a lasting legacy for the company and creates a classic instrument that keeps inspiring players long after the artist is gone.

More Than A Name

The ultimate compliment a signature guitar can receive is when players forget it’s a signature model at all. The Gibson Les Paul is the absolute benchmark. While it carries the name of a true pioneer, most guitarists don’t buy a Les Paul to sound like Les Paul; they buy it because it is one of the greatest electric instruments ever built. Somewhere along the way, the design simply became bigger than the signature.

The same has happened with many of today’s most successful artist models. The PRS DGT has earned a loyal following among players who appreciate its feel and versatility, regardless of whether they’re familiar with David Grissom’s music. Martin’s 000-28EC followed a remarkably similar path.

The guitar’s initial spark came during Eric Clapton’s legendary 1992 MTV Unplugged performance, where his stripped-down acoustic set gripped a global audience and put the short-scale Martin 000 back on the modern map.

But while that landmark broadcast served as the ultimate launchpad for his 1996 signature model, 30 years later, it remains a cornerstone of Martin’s line-up because players discovered it is simply an outstanding, highly responsive acoustic instrument in its own right.

Even the Ibanez JEM tells a similar story. Steve Vai’s ideas helped reshape the instrument, but many of the innovations developed during the project eventually found their way into Ibanez’s hugely successful RG series, extending far beyond the people who originally set out to buy a Steve Vai model.

A signature opens the door in a showroom, but the guitar has to do the rest. That’s what separates the truly great signature models from the forgettable ones. The best ones endure because they became exceptional instruments in their own right.

The Game-Changers

Most signature guitars are designed to solve problems, introduce new ideas or celebrate an artist’s contribution. Every once in a while, a guitar does something much bigger. It changes the entire direction of the company.

Gretsch is one of the best examples. By the early 1980s, the company had all but disappeared from the conversation. Production had stopped, quality had suffered, and the brand had lost relevance.

Then Brian Setzer stepped into the spotlight with the Stray Cats, proudly playing his well-worn Gretsch 6120. Suddenly, a new generation of players rediscovered the brand, sparking renewed interest that eventually led to a successful line of signature models and playing a significant role in the company’s resurgence.

Gibson experienced a similar revival in the late 1980s. At a time when pointy ‘SuperStrats’ dominated the hard-rock market, Slash walked on stage with a late-’50s-style Les Paul and reminded an entire generation why the design had become a classic. Demand for Les Pauls surged, helping re-establish the model as Gibson’s flagship guitar and laying the foundation for one of the company’s most successful signature relationships.

Stories like these are rare, but they illustrate the extraordinary influence the right artist and the right guitar can have. The best signature models don’t just sell well; occasionally, they revive forgotten designs, reshape public perception and help rewrite a company’s future.

• With thanks to ATB Guitars in Melksham (www.atbguitars.com) and Gas Station Guitars in Taunton for providing the stunning vintage guitars photographed for this issue’s cover feature
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Jack Higginbotham’s life changed the night he met Paul Reed Smith eating a slice of pizza down on Main Street in 1983. He went home and told his girlfriend – now his wife – that the guy was going places.

When Smith set up PRS Guitars in 1985, Higginbotham got in at the ground floor, working minimum wage as an entry-level guitar builder.

“There was something driving that guy that I was fascinated by,” says Higginbotham from PRS’s HQ on Kent Island, Maryland. “I was going to go back to get my mechanical engineering degree, but I found myself absolutely falling in love with the art and the science of guitar building.”

41 years later, Higginbotham is now PRS’s first-ever CEO. He explains why the time is right for that position, and how the company’s guiding principles on quality are driving it forward – albeit at the expense of his playing.

“Oh, it’s made me a worse guitar player!” he laughs. “Hopefully I’ll get my chops back, but I’m an infinitely better guitar builder than I ever thought I would be, and that’s more important.”

Why has PRS Guitars appointed its first CEO?

It’s actually about where our company is headed right now. We have been doing business internationally since the year we opened. But I believe this is our time to become a global business, and I think [it’s important] having one consistent leadership point, one consistent path to follow, drawing all of our company objectives into one spot…

The last year and a half, I would say maybe 50 per cent of my time has been outside of the United States, traveling and understanding these markets a little bit better.

The birds inlay and the quilted maple catches the eye, but arguably the defining detail of PRS is the guitar’s critical infrastructure – nuts, tremolo units, tuners...

I do a series of trainings, and it’s dealer training for the most part. One chapter is called “The Devil in the Details”, and it’s exactly what you’re talking about. The bridge, the pickups, the nut, the tuners, drying wood, our thoughts on resonance and sustain as it applies to moisture content inside of wood, proper ways of drying wood so that you bring out the most in a guitar... The devil is in the details. It’s what we’re interested in.

A lot of this comes from Paul.

He’s a very singular human who can listen to a guitar and tell you what’s emanating from it – whether it’s the pickup, the soldering, if it’s the amount of potting in the pickup, or if it’s a truss rod that’s too tight or the action is too high. He’ll just listen and go, “Do this, this and this,” and then you do it and that guitar is better. He’s amazing in that regard.

Players can go into a store with $1,149 and take home an SE Special Semi-hollow. Is that what you mean by quality and value?

Whether it’s Private Stock and it’s $20,000, or it’s $649 for a CE Standard, it’s about value. We want the person to get twice their money’s worth, and we feel really good about the job we’ve done. If we’ve made a $600 guitar and you’re like, ‘Man, I would have paid $1,200 for this guitar,’ that’s a home run in my book.

In 2022 you talked about a five-year plan to turn the SE line into a $75 million business. How close are you?

We’re not too far. I don’t remember saying that, actually, so good on you! That portion of our business is about three times what it was then, which I would say is a great success – because the quality of the instruments has risen, not just stayed flat.

Do you have ambitions of seeing PRS guitars on the vintage market?

I guess it doesn’t really matter to me so much, not in the traditional sense of it as an investment. That doesn’t really interest me. What I do love is the fact that people care enough about us to care enough about our roots, that they value those things.

I saw a 1986 Custom Custom 24 on Reverb going for $23,000. That is technically a vintage guitar.

My 1986 Custom 24 has an interesting story. Two years ago, I’m writing a will. I’ve got a lot of musical instruments, and so my kids are like, “What do I get?” So we had a death party. My lawyer was like, “This is a very bad idea.” [Laughs]

So everybody came over, and I had everything around the house and different colour sticky pads. I was like, “I’m gonna count to 10, and everybody go claim your stuff!” My daughter put her sticky on my ’86 Custom.

I realised I hadn’t opened that case in a while, and it bummed me out, because it was the first guitar that I can say I completely built by myself. I didn’t use it anymore. As time went on and we learned more, the guitars just got better.

Then last year I said, “I am never gonna sell this guitar, so why don’t I just go back, rip it apart, and turn it into a guitar that I would love today?”

I put new pickups in it. I put new electronics on it; new tuning pegs, new bridge, new everything. I even went back and redid the fingerboard… The guitar is absolutely unbelievable.

My point being, people look back at guitars – vintage guitars, or early PRS guitars – and it’s like, “Oh, the magic of this.” And there’s magic because it’s history. But the real magic is in the performance, and what I loved was, I was able to take a guitar that I probably never would plug in and use, and I turned it into my other favorite guitar – along with my Silver Sky.”

Silly question to finish – but if you could put a PRS into the hands of any player, living or dead…

A Silver Sky in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s hands would be quite interesting. That would be nice.

The sale of a great player’s guitar collection is sometimes lamented by fans, however, it’s something we are seeing more often as celebrated musicians reflect on the road travelled and the road yet to come.

As a player always ready to embrace the future, Marr is clearly no servant to his own backstory. But why is he choosing to sell some of the most important guitars, amps and even the gold and platinum discs that he’s picked up over the years?

“He found the process of writing and publishing the book Marr’s Guitars in 2023 quite a cathartic experience,” says Amelia Walker, Christie’s Head of Private and Iconic Collections, who is overseeing the sale.

“In the process of writing the book about the guitars, he was getting them all out, holding them… finding the muscle memory of all these amazing songs that he’d written on them – particularly some of the earliest guitars – and then going out after the book was published and speaking about them…

“And then when that whole tour wrapped up, and it was time to put them away, the impression I got was that he didn’t want them just to get put away in cases again.

“With his [signature] Jag, he’s basically created an instrument that does everything he needs – so he doesn’t see as many opportunities to use a lot of these instruments in the future.

“And yet he wants them to be played, he wants them to find new owners and I think he really loves the idea of people coming up to him in years to come and saying, ‘I’ve just written a song on your D-28’, or ‘I’ve just played your Rickenbacker on stage,’ or whatever it might be. Or even if it’s not someone who performs, just ‘I love your guitar,’” Amelia says.

“The final lot count is 111,” she continues. “There are about 90 guitars and we’ve got about 10 gold records… actually gold, silver and platinum. Mainly Smiths, but also one for Electronic’s [eponymous debut] 1991 album and a recording he made with Bryan Ferry, which are all being sold for charity.

“And then there’s a collection of concert posters and promo posters, which again are all being sold for charity. There are about 10 amps as well – no pedals – and I think most of them are amps that he’s had for his whole career.”

It’s an impressive collection even when viewed simply as vintage instruments – but when you consider the music made with them, it adds real depth to Marr’s decision to let them go, and pass the proceeds of around 20 lots on to his chosen charities (The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the National Autistic Society).

Before they go under the hammer, we took the opportunity to take a close look at the most important (and distinctive) of his guitars, with Amelia as our guide.

1963 Epiphone Casino

“Compositionally, a lot of his songs start on acoustics, but How Soon Is Now was written on the Casino, over what sounds like the most prolific songwriting weekend of all time, when he wrote William, It Was Really Nothing and Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want and then How Soon Is Now as the third, just to top it off [laughs]. The fact he wrote the song on the Casino and then also used it to record that riff makes it very, very special.

“He used the Casino at Glastonbury in 1984 which, by all accounts, was the moment that the festival kind of shed its hippie roots and went into pop because [The Smiths] were in the pop sphere by that year.

“Then everyone rushed the stage and there were these guys trying to climb up the sheet metal in front of the stage, while he’s playing that guitar. Casinos have such a strong association with the music that he loved from the ’60s that he was listening to. So yeah, it’s a really cool thing, and everyone loves that song.”

1959 Gibson ES-355

“So this guitar is probably the one guitar – other than the Rickenbacker – that is most associated with the Smiths. I think it was probably the third guitar he owned in that band: he had a Gretsch [Atkins Super Axe], the Rickenbacker and then this.

“He got it because the Smiths went to New York between Christmas and New Year in 1983, and they were due to play their first show and to sign to Sire Records with Seymour Stein – they were already signed to Rough Trade in the UK but they were going to do their US deal [with Sire]. Johnny had heard about Sire doing a similar deal with Brian Jones, so he cheekily said, ‘We’ll sign to Sire if you buy me a guitar.’

“So they played their show on New Year’s Eve at Danceteria, and then on 2 January, Johnny marched Seymour to 48th Street and bought this guitar, which is a thing of beauty. He got back to the hotel and I think before even sitting down he wrote Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.

“Johnny talks about songs ‘falling out of him’ and sort of just coming to him, as well as guitars giving him songs – and it seems that this guitar inspired him to do that. He then used it to record a lot of the Smiths’ second album [Meat Is Murder] and it’s seen on stage throughout 1984 and 1985.”

“He made a few modifications to it. It was, obviously, originally a stereo [output] guitar but he didn’t want it to be stereo so he switched it to mono. And then I think at some point in the late ’80s, Bill Puplett replaced the wiring harness but unfortunately we can’t date that because everything’s shielded and it’s really hard to see.

“But we still have the original [wiring harness] that he took out and from that we can tell the original pots must have been taken out before he bought the guitar as the harness that was in there dates to ’83 – all the pots are ’83. But it’s still got these lovely [original] Patent Applied For pickups.

“The Varitone must have been switched out as well because that dates from a bit later than 1959. The guitar’s factory order number dates it to late ’59, but then it was shipped on 2 February 1960. So it’s a bit of a hybrid, crossing over ’59 and ’60.”

1992/93 Rickenbacker 330

“When you think Johnny Marr, really you think Rickenbacker. This particular guitar also appears on the front cover of Supersonic by Oasis – just lying on the floor. That says a lot about Johnny’s generosity in lending instruments to other musicians and further underlines that he wants his guitars to be played. He wants them to give songs to other people.

“The Rickenbacker is [the sound of] This Charming Man and so many other songs. It’s his jangly sound and I think it was a deliberate choice at the time – he wanted his playing to go in a certain direction and that’s what the Rickenbacker did for him. His melodic arpeggio playing and picking out the individual strings of the chord, rather than just strumming, is so intertwined with the Rickenbacker.

“He got it in ‘83 and he used it to record the single This Charming Man, which was tracked along with a Telecaster that belonged to producer John Porter. I think Johnny only had two guitars at the time [this and the Gretsch Super Axe], and John thought he needed another one on that track.

“He then used it on most of the Smiths’ first record as well. I think a lot of that record was written on the Gretsch because he didn’t have the Rickenbacker at the time, but the recording itself is a lot of Rickenbacker with the Tele added in. It’s really so connected with the Smiths emerging and their whole story.”

Custom Roger Giffin T-Style 

“That guitar was custom-made by Roger Giffin. I think having played John Porter’s Tele, Johnny really wanted one. So Alan Rogan, who worked with The Who, Keith Richards and George Harrison, put [Marr’s then girlfriend, now wife] Angie in touch with Roger Giffin and she bought the guitar for him.

“It’s heavy – it weighs around the same as Tiger [Jerry Garcia’s custom electric built with exotic woods by Doug Irwin], around 10lbs. But the Roger Giffin guitar is iconic because of its unique look, and so many fans will remember it as the guitar he played on Top Of The Pops with the Smiths.

“Johnny switched out the neck humbucker after a while because originally it had a Mighty Mite zebra-coil pickup fitted. But now it’s got a different humbucker with these very distinctive hexagonal pole pieces – a Bare Knuckle ‘Juggernaut’. We don’t know when that mod was done but again the work was completed by Bill Puplett.

1963 Lake Placid Blue Fender Stratocaster

“That was a John Entwistle guitar, so that came from him, via Alan Rogan. There were about seven or eight guitars that came from John, who seemed to have the most amazing, huge collection of guitars… there’s a fantastic photograph taken around 1977 of him in his living room, literally surrounded by guitars – and we managed to spot one of Johnny’s in the photo, which is pretty cool [a Gretsch 6120].

“It’s actually composite – it’s got a ’65 neck, and the body is ’63, which is why he would have wanted it. He used it on Strangeways Here We Come, for the solo in Paint a Vulgar Picture – which is notable because it’s his first proper solo on a Smiths record.

“We don’t know what neck it had on it originally, but at some point in the late 1980s he took the neck off his sunburst Strat – which had this really beautiful bird’s-eye maple neck, and is really distinct because it has particular wear on the first and third fret, and switched it onto this Lake Placid Blue guitar.

“In late 1989 he was photographed with it for the cover of the January 1990 issue of Guitar Player magazine, with the maple neck. I don’t know when he put this [current] 1965 rosewood neck on it – we’re still verifying that.”

1977 Gretsch Atkins Super Axe

“This was Johnny’s only guitar for I don’t know exactly how long. It’s pre-Morrissey, pre-Smiths and I think – until he got the Rickenbacker– it was the only guitar he had. I think it was some sort of part-exchange when he sold his [prior] Les Paul. And it’s interesting that he chose this model.

“I don’t know if it was literally what was available in the shop, or if he was on the lookout for a Gretsch... but he was clearly looking to move away from the Les Paul when he swapped it for this. He wrote the whole of the first album on this, and recorded Hand In Glove on it.”

1984 Gibson Les Paul Standard

“He got this new in 1984. Again, I’m not sure of the exact date, but it was probably around September. When he bought it, it didn’t have a Bigsby – he put that on himself in about the summer of ’85, because we have photos of him with the Les Paul without a Bigsby on in December ’84 and March ’85. But then by the time the Smiths were on Top Of The Pops in October ’85, it had the Bigsby on. He’s said that if the building was on fire, this would be the guitar he’d grab.

“Because I think he’s done more on that guitar than any other in terms of consistent use throughout his career, even up until his current record that’s about to come out [The Age Of Everything], there are parts on that record that have been played with this particular Les Paul.”

“It’s got Seymour Duncans in now and I think they were double blacks originally, but they always had covers on them during his time in The Smiths, and then at some point they got swapped out again by Bill Puplett.

“We’re still investigating when the Seymour Duncans were fitted but, again, I think it would have been late ’80s, because he used the Les Paul in the music video for The The’s track Dogs Of Lust and you can very clearly see there’s a zebra in both positions – and that was in 1993.”

1978 9-Pickup Modified Fender Stratocaster

“We initially had no idea who created this, but we had another look at the instrument when we took some of the guitars to New York for an exhibition in late June. And we found a label indicating who [had carried out the major modifications]. It seems as though the idea was the concept of one brother, Stephen Liddard, with the work itself done by a Richard Liddard in 1991.

“So that would have been just before Johnny bought it from Music Ground in Doncaster. He bought it on a trip there with Noel Gallagher, just a day or two after they first met… Noel remembers Johnny saying, ‘Let’s go for a sandwich. Never buy guitars on an empty stomach.’

“But anyway he bought the 9-pickup Strat and, much later on, it was used in the video for his solo record Spirit Power And Soul. It’s amazing, just about the maddest thing you’ll ever see, and it was the concept of the Liddard brothers in, I presume, somewhere near Doncaster.”

1963 Gibson J-160E

“I think [he acquired this guitar] at the same time he bought the Casino when he was very Beatles-focused, and wanted that Beatles sensibility in his playing. This was around the time The Smiths moved to London just after they released their first record, and that was when he met Alan Rogan. This was when he started to have a bit of money to buy guitars and when his guitar-purchasing really sort of started taking off.

“He went from only having two to suddenly having three… five… seven guitars, and wanted them so he could do different things for specific reasons and sounds. He used it, as I mentioned before, when he wrote three of the most epic Smiths songs on a quiet weekend when the band had nothing on – William, It Was Really Nothing and Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want were both written on that guitar.”

• Marr’s Guitars: The Johnny Marr Collection will go under the hammer on September 17. See Christies for more details.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

An ex head of the Fender Custom Shop has seemingly issued a message to his former employer with a new S-style build.

After a court ruling gave Fender legal protection over its Stratocaster body design, Thomann, PRS, Yamaha and more have since received cease-and-desist letters, leaving the body shape’s place in the market uncertain.

Mike Eldred, who ran the Fender Custom Shop in the 1990s, has apparently reacted to the unpopular legal strategy. He’s unveiled his first S-Style guitar under his new firm, El Cabron.

Not only does its familiar S-shape fly in the face of Fender’s legal wrangles, but it also features an important message.

“Never let a corporation tell you what the rules are,” it says in all capitals. It’s serving Tom Morello’s Arm the Homeless guitar. Ironically, that’s an S-type too.

El Cabron’s Black Corp electric guitar features a Gotoh 510 tremolo, a single humbucker bridge pickup, and a single volume control. If anything, it’s a little more G&L Rampage than vintage Stratocaster. The message comes through all the same.

To top it off, the guitar also features Banksy artwork beneath the trem. It depicts a masked protester throwing a bouquet of flowers and is intended to symbolize prioritizing peace and love over anger and violence.

During his time in Fender’s ranks, Eldred built guitars for a feast of celebrated players, including Eric Clapton, Brad Paisley, John Mayer and Keith Urban.

Eldred isn't the only former Fender employee to take aim at the firm. Ex-Masterbuilder John Cruz also recently teamed up with Chinese guitar maker Farida for another S-style.

One of the smaller firms targeted by Fender’s campaign was LsL Instruments. It has since unveiled an all-new design, which it hopes will offset the lawsuit’s impact. In an age of small brands pushing the needle on new, original body shapes, it could signal the start of a wider industry trend.

Few guitars command the attention quite like the Gibson Flying V. As a young, aspiring guitarist, I remember that I was totally mesmerized by how aggressive it looked, only to realize that playing one sitting down was a total mess; it kept sliding right off my lap.

It’s a weird design that you have to adjust to, but that fine line between a trainwreck and a stroke of genius is exactly what Ted McCarty tapped into during Gibson’s ‘modernist’ push in 1957.

Crafted from African korina wood, featuring a split headstock and a body that cut away into a dramatic, sweeping arrowhead, the original Flying V was unlike anything else on the market. Released in 1958, the futuristic design was way too radical for the conservative jazz and country players of the era.

Gibson had quietly pulled it by 1960 after only shipping about 100 units. It reemerged in 1967, when Gibson brought it back with some crucial changes, trading the original korina wood for a mahogany body, adding a larger pickguard, and updating it with a stopbar or Vibrola tailpiece. This forgotten failure somehow clawed its way back to define everything from raw Delta blues to thrash metal.

Blues guitarists played a significant role in popularizing the Flying V. Lonnie Mack favored a ’58 model throughout his career. Albert King was famously a lefty who flipped a right-handed ’58 korina V upside down: the way he grabbed those massive, string bends out of his V proved the design had plenty of tone to back up its wild looks.

In the late ’60s, Jimi Hendrix dragged the V straight into the psychedelic stratosphere, hand-painting his ’67 Flying V and completely blurring the lines of what a rock guitar was supposed to look like.

By the time the ’70s rolled around, Rudolf Schenker had turned the V into a visual trademark for the Scorpions, while his brother Michael took it into absolute guitar shred territory.

Michael’s legendary half-black/half-white Gibson Vs became the ultimate symbol for blistering, lightning-fast solos, proving that this crazy V shape was more than worthy. By the late ’70s, Dean Guitars put its own stamp on the iconic shape with the Dean V. Boasting an oversized wing-shaped headstock and a massive string-through V-plate tailpiece, it was quickly adopted by heavyweight players such as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons.

By the 1980s, music got harder and faster, and the V shape evolved and underwent its wildest mutation yet. Virtuoso Randy Rhoads teamed with Grover Jackson to develop an offset V-shaped guitar named ‘The Concorde’.

The look was so radical that Grover Jackson slapped his own last name on the headstock instead of his established Charvel logo. He did it purely to protect the Charvel name and avoid alienating his traditional customers if the guitar flopped, accidentally launching one of the most renowned guitar brands on Earth in the process: Jackson Guitars.

The sharp evolution of the Jackson models weaponized the V for the metal era, and the Concorde evolved into the iconic Randy Rhoads model that the metal community has fully embraced for the past four decades. Dave Mustaine of Megadeth made the Jackson King V his signature guitar for much of his career.

Even boutique brands are putting their own spin on the V, like the radical, custom-built Dirty Boy ‘Dirty V’ that completely twists the traditional shape. And, today, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram is carrying the torch for modern Delta blues, tearing up stages with a killer, custom-built V-shape from Banker Guitars.

C’est La V

To fully grasp why the Flying V remains an iconic tone monster, you have to look closely at how they’re constructed. Luthier Matt Hughes of Banker Guitars highlights the tonality and build variations separating generations of the V.

“The 1958 original Flying Vs were carved from a beefier 1 1/2-inch slab of korina, whereas the 1967 mahogany reissues were cut thinner at 1 3/8 inches,” he says. “The construction approach shifted completely. On the ’67 models, Gibson routed a massive electronics cavity right through the center to mount a giant pickguard, fundamentally hollowing out the footprint compared with a solid string-through ’58 korina body.

“Recreating those original specs requires rare, thick slabs of korina wood, but when it’s done right, that solid construction generates a distinctly snappier midrange and a unique resonance that you simply cannot achieve with thin mahogany.”

What fascinates me most as a player is how the V’s shape changes the physics of how you play, requiring you to wear it differently. Blues-rock powerhouse Jared James Nichols describes how plugging into a Flying V shatters conventional playing habits.

“When you first strap on a V, you realize it’s completely unlike any traditional guitar shape,” he tells us. “It feels less like a guitar and more like a sword. Standard instruments just rest on your leg or hug your hip, but a Flying V demands a different kind of choreography. If you try to position it traditionally, it simply doesn’t feel right.

“You have to pull the body directly into your frame, almost like you’re giving the instrument a physical hug. It forces you into a more personal, aggressive stance where you’re actively shaping the guitar to the contours of your own body. It’s deeply expressive, and commands you to play it with authority.”

The Gibson Flying V was never a failure; it was just waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Today, the value of those rare, pristine, 1958 original korina wood Flying Vs has skyrocketed.

They aren’t just vintage guitars any more, they’re pieces of six-string fine art that easily command jaw-dropping price tags into the hundreds of thousands.

Take Joe Bonamassa’s 1958 korina Flying V, affectionately known as ‘Donny J’, which he bought for over $400,000 – going down in JoBo history as the most he’d ever paid for a guitar when he bought it in 2019. Decades after it originally crashed and burned, the Flying V stands as a masterclass in why we shouldn’t judge a design by its first act.

Three to get ready: Descendants of the V

Epiphone Futura Flying V Custom – $899/£849

If you’re ready to steal the spotlight, the Epiphone Futura Flying V Custom is begging to cause a scene. This modern machine pays homage to the classic Flying V soul with a solid mahogany body, compound-radius ebony fretboard, string-through-body bridge, and stainless-steel frets. At a price that feels almost suspiciously good, it delivers boutique-grade performance without the boutique sticker shock.

Dirty Boy ‘Dirty V’ – $3,500

If you think traditional Vs are too polite, the custom Dirty Boy ‘Dirty V’ is here to pick a fight. This boutique monster gives the classic design a radical offset twist, matching its dangerous attitude with a mahogany body, heavily checked road-worn finish, and premium gold hardware.

Outfitted with dual humbuckers for maximum muscle, it’s a high-end, modern-day evolution of the V shape with built-in attitude.

Jackson RRT-5 Pro Series Rhoads – $1,099/£849

Pushing the boundaries of the original Flying V design, Grover Jackson and Randy Rhoads somehow made one of rock’s craziest shapes even more outrageous.

The Jackson Pro Series RRT-5 Rhoads sharpens the V’s silhouette with offset wings, a flat neck, high-output pickups, and 24 jumbo frets. This iconic heavy metal shred machine remains one of the most extreme and instantly recognizable V variants ever created.

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

This has been the year when we have pondered the future for S-style guitars – but what if that future has been out in China working at Farida Guitars on a limited run high-end model?

John Cruz, former Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop, has unveiled his first design with the Chinese guitar brand, the JC-1, and it is a relic’d vintage-inspired electric with some choice modern appointments.

This is a historic moment for the Chinese guitar brand. Hiring Cruz is something of a coup. And after 273 days of development, it has a borne fruit.

“It’s the first time a Chinese guitar brand has brought a world-class master guitar builder onboard,” says Farida. “And we believe it’s the start of something even better.”

Farida has put considerable resources behind this move. In the JC-1’s introductory video, Farida says it build Cruz a Custom Shop, and gave him time to get to work. Cruise himself walks through his process.

“To build a great guitar you have to start with great wood,” says Cruz. “I weigh every body blank to find the exact weight I’m looking for. Then I like to tap on them and listen to the voice that tells me which one will be used.”

The JC-1 has a two-piece alder body, a bolt-on Canadian maple neck fashioned into a “JC Comfy C” profile (“sized between a Regular C and a Larger C for an exceptionally comfortable grip”), and the Olympic White finish and tortoiseshell pickguard all speak to the design inspirations.

The fingerboard is rosewood. The finish, which will be a big selling point, is described as a light relic, “with every detail drawn from John Cruz’s own observations of how guitars wear through everyday use – as both a player and a luthier.”

The three single-coil pickups are a custom wind co-developed by Cruz and his team at Farida, and they promise a ‘60s-style sound. But the most interesting thing here is the control setup.

They are hooked up to a 5-way selector switch, master volume and tone knobs, with the second tone control operating as a blend knob, so that in positions 1 and 5 you can mix the neck pickup with the bridge and vice versa.

“I am a guitar builder but I am also a guitar player,” says Cruz. “I know the guitar is a working instrument, something you pick up day after day, that’s why playability is everything to me.”

Farida Guitars does not have a huge presence in the US or UK markets. And they are only making 60 of these.

But Farida’s Instagram suggests these will be priced $1,989, which for a relic’d electric guitar built by a former Master Builder, is a competitive price. You can see more of this guitar at Farida Guitars Instagram.

Innovation Week: In a recent interview with Guitar World, Ernie Ball’s Director of Engineering and Product Development, Drew Montell, said with a laugh, “Most people hate our best-selling guitars right out of the gate.”

The two defining electric guitars were both designed in the early 1950s. We pore over minute variations on the templates, but their inner workings have – to be honest – not changed all that much.

Full disclaimer, if I’m coming across as a bit high and mighty, the designs of the two guitars that sit behind me as I write this are both old enough to collect Social Security payments. I’ve not, say, installed fuzz circuits in either of them – they’d be fully recognizable to anyone who bought them the year they first hit shelves.

Now, if you move away from the instruments themselves, you’ll find that our little universe has been quite amenable to leaps and bounds in technology. Marty McFly yourself into 1954 or 1961, and show the people buying a brand-new Stratocaster or Epiphone Casino a Neural DSP Quad Cortex mini – “yeah – you just use this touchscreen and there are almost a hundred amps, over a hundred effects, and... oh, right, so, a touchscreen is something where you...”

Elsewhere, one of the main reasons the Beatles quit touring 60 years ago was the inability of their amps to compete with the howls of tens of thousands of screaming fans – now, there are amps fitted with tone-shaping AI tech.

So, what would you like to see from the future of guitars? Do you want to see the instruments themselves leap forward technologically like the devices you plug them into? Should the Strat and Les Paul be joined on Mount Rushmore by new, more futuristic designs? Would you like to see the old giants knocked off their pedestal entirely? None of the above?

Let us know in the comments below.

• On Apple News? Head here to join the discussion.

Innovation Week: For most of the electric guitar’s history, frets were something players simply accepted would wear out. Bend enough strings, play enough gigs and sooner or later those shiny crowns develop flat spots and divots. Then came stainless steel: harder, smoother and so durable that, for many players, they’ll never have to worry about another fret job.

Traditional fretwire is generally a copper/nickel alloy. It’s easy for a repair tech to cut, seat, level and crown but it eventually wears down. Stainless steel is considerably harder, which is great once it’s on the guitar but much tougher for a tech to work with.

This is not a new invention. The Parker Fly helped put stainless frets on the radar in the early ’90s, and boutique builders have offered them for years. What has changed is availability. The feature has steadily migrated from custom order spec sheets to regular production guitars, including Fender’s American Ultra Luxe models, ESP’s LTD Deluxe 1000 Series and, more recently, Epiphone’s $899 Futura range.

So what do they actually feel like? When stainless frets are properly installed and polished, bends can feel exceptionally smooth, with less of the gritty drag that develops on softer, worn wire. Philip Sayce summed it up perfectly when I spoke with him: “It’s like putting on your skates and going out on a fresh sheet of ice. You can take these big, long strides.”

For a player whose vocabulary is built around huge bends and wide vibrato, that slippery feel is not a minor detail. Sayce said one of his older Strats once needed fretwork roughly every 18 months but with stainless steel frets, that interval stretched closer to five years. “Less wear and tear,” he said, “and I think they feel great.”

The shred crowd has reached a similar conclusion. Periphery’s Misha Mansoor highlighted the jumbo stainless steel frets on his signature Jackson So-Cal, describing its neck as “very easy to shred on.” The general consensus among many players is that bends feel “super-slippery” compared to the sometimes gritty feel of standard nickel frets.

There is, however, an important qualifier: material alone cannot rescue bad fretwork. Height, width, crown shape, fretboard radius and the quality of the level and polish all have a major effect on feel. A beautifully dressed set of nickel frets can play better than a mediocre stainless steel job. Stainless steel simply holds that polished surface much longer.

Then there’s the tone debate. Some players hear a slightly brighter, harder or more immediate attack while others hear no meaningful difference at all. Most players feel that the difference is subtle compared with swapping pickups, strings, picks or speakers. If you like the sound of your guitar now, stainless steel frets aren’t going to turn it into a different instrument.

The real drawback is the work involved. Stainless steel fret wire is tougher on cutters and files, takes longer to dress and can make a refret more expensive. It also demands an experienced hand, particularly on a bound fingerboard. But manufacturers know players are willing to pay for the result.

When ESP adopted stainless steel on their LTD Deluxe 1000 Series guitars, president and CEO Matt Masciandaro explained that it had become their customers’ number one request for a design update. Even budget brands like EART now come standard with stainless steel frets on all their guitars.

I can vouch for the appeal firsthand. A few years ago, I had my Les Paul refretted with jumbo stainless steel fret wire. The bends became noticeably smoother, almost effortless and the wear since then has been virtually nonexistent.

It didn’t change the guitar’s voice; it simply made it feel freshly dressed every time I picked it up. Theres little doubt that this guitar will need another fret job…at least in my lifetime.

That may be the real selling point here. Guitars are built to be played hard and for most of the guitar’s history it meant accepting that frets would eventually wear and need replacing every few years. Stainless steel doesn’t much change how a guitar sounds as it changes how long a guitar keeps feeling new. Smooth bends with nothing getting in the way between your hands and the note.

Guitar Center has issued an open call for guitar players to test its new in-house electric guitar, but it comes with a few conditions.

The retail giant has been busy working on its own guitar brand for almost a year now, long before the project was publicly announced back in April.

For the as-yet-unnamed venture, Guitar Center asked players for their help, inviting ideas and feedback on social media platforms in an ambitious attempt to bring something new to the market. Now they’ve entered the next stage of development.

“We’ve been building and creating a new guitar line from scratch, and that new guitar line has been based on interactions with you and your feedback,” Dalporto says on Instagram. “You guys have been giving us tons of feedback on your aspirations and dreams and hopes of what you would like to see in a new guitar.

“We are now at the point where we’re getting prototypes into our office and we want real-world feedback – feedback from you.”

The call has been issued to those in the LA area. Testing will take place at Guitar Center’s office in Westlake Village, CA, in late September and early October. Those wanting to get involved can email info@GCPLB.com with some background information on you and your playing style.

However, there are a few things to note. Rich Thrush, lead on the Guitar Labs project, laid out the terms for getting hands-on with the prototype in a Reddit post.

“You'll need to visit our Westlake Village, CA office in early October, leave your phone outside the testing area, and sign a Non Disclosure Agreement before participating,” the post reads. “We're looking for genuine players who are willing to share honest opinions.

“If you're primarily an influencer or represent a brand, please let us know when you reach out. We'd still love to connect, but we'll likely involve you at a later stage of the project.”

Some guitarists were skeptical when the Guitar Labs project was announced, which CEO Gabe Dalporto directly addressed in an interview with Guitar World.

“Most retailers simply make copycat products and charge a little less,” he said earlier this summer. That’s completely uninteresting to me.”

The Guitar Labs project comes amid a years-long overhaul of Guitar Center’s business model. Guitar World sat down with Dalporto to discuss his plans for the retailer last year, discussing fan concerns in the process.

Recently, we asked you whether you thought Guitar Center had shown any signs of improvement following the chain’s restructure.

Head over to Guitar Center’s Guitar Labs Sub-Reddit for more information.

Gretsch has launched black limba versions its affordable and uber-desirable Electromatic CVT and Jet models.

The revamp not only introduces a new tonewood to the range, but gives both guitars a fetching appearance, with the West African hardwood’s famous, striking dark brown and black streaks shining beneath clear gloss finishes.

The CVT has become a major player in the affordable guitar market, and its new baritone model has received widespread praise. Here, the makeover is more than just aesthetic.

Lightweight and resonant, black limba has been used for both body and neck. The latter is sculpted to Gretsch’s Performance C-profile and capped with a 22-fret, bound rosewood fingerboard. Pearloid Neo-Classic thumbnail inlays keep things minimal and classy.

It also features a Wraparound bridge with adjustable saddles, die-cast sealed tuners, and a Graph Tech NuBone nut. The electronics center on golden Twin Six humbuckers, flanked by a Master Volume control with treble bleed, a Tone knob, and a three-way switch. Priced at $599.99 / £549 / €649, it keeps the competitive edge with a striking new look.

The Jet, meanwhile, dials things up a few notches. It again features a black limba body paired with a black limba Performance C-shaped neck.

Its 12”-Radius Bound Ebony Fingerboard gets the same inlays and 22 Medium Jumbo Frets, but elsewhere has slightly more premium specs. Here, the bridge is a LockDown locking version of the same wraparound design, with another NuBone nut and more die-cast-sealed tuners to keep tuning tight.

The electronics then go a step further with PureVolt Twin Six humbuckers, billed as “beautifully dynamic, exceptionally expressive, and addictively powerful.” The neck uses an Alnico IV magnet, and the bridge uses an Alnico V. Again, the treble bleed feature is wired into the Master Volume.

Beyond that, it has individual pickup controls and a push-pull for single-coil snap on each pickup. With the split coil activated and the three-way switch in the middle position, it makes for one hum-canceling ‘bucker. That’s all reflected in its $749 / £629 / €739 price tag.

See Gretsch for more.

Innovation Week: Strandberg opened the floodgates to a whole new era for the electric guitar. Headless, ergonomic designs are threatening to become the new normal. But New Zealander Dom Pearson, the brains behind Pearson guitars, believes the company has “shot itself in the foot” with its business model. And he has eyes on its throne.

By 2031 he intends to outsell the Swedes and perpetuate his belief that headless guitars are the future. The days of headstocks and industry giants, he thinks, are numbered, and the Pearson Omega – a bizarre-looking metal build with insane upper fret access – is him putting his money where his mouth is.

“From a playability standpoint, headless guitars are objectively superior,” he says. “The only reason headstocks are still popular is because of the culture. The next generation are watching TikTok, and they’re seeing all these crazy headless guitars. When they’re 60-year-old dentists with money for a vintage guitar, they’re going to want a Strandberg, not a Fender. Les Pauls will be collectible art pieces.

“Maybe I’m just young and delusional, but I would bet on headless guitars, and that’s what I’m doing with business.”

In his early teens he bought knock-off guitar bodies, borrowed his dad’s woodworking tools, sand them down and spec them with Chinese parts. His first fully original build was carbon fiber, drawing on his uncle’s experience of making bike frames from the same material. Raw aluminum has since proven more affordable, and just as malleable.

“You can’t do anything interesting with wood anymore,” he states. “It’s all been done. And I don’t believe in the tonewood debate.”

Pearson assembles the guitars himself. Their powder-coated bodies are machined locally in New Zealand. Modern C- and Strat-style necks are custom-made in China, with standard and multi-scale options available.

The modified Hipshot bridge design is bolstered by a Gotoh/Floyd Rose locking nut. It’s wired in with easily-replaceable OEM Alnico 2 humbuckers with dedicated coil-split switches, a three-way selector, plus A500K pots sourced for Korea. He makes around 80 instruments a month.

There’s a wicked attention to detail, too. The Pearson headstock is compatible with wall-mounted stands and there’s a subtle body cut for traditional stands, countering a Strandberg setback. The strap weaves through the guitar’s open-plan body, which means strap locks aren’t needed, and it hugs the player’s form better.

The Omega dials back some of the absurdities of his earlier builds, like the purposefully alien Hyper B. It’s a guitar built for the future, without severing all ties with the past.

“I wanted a Stratocaster neck with Les Paul pickups and a Strandberg body,” Pearson says. “I know there’s a market for a Strandberg Boden, but I know there’s also a massive market for a Boden that has more traditional attributes.”

Ibanez has recognized that, hence its Quest series of guitars, replacing Strandberg’s trapezoidal EndurNeck with its Wizard profiles. The Omega aims to be even more accessible. “The Hyper B was about how weird and wacky I could get,“ Pearson says.

“It got a lot of hate – that was half the plan. The Omega is me asking, ‘How can I build 1,000 guitars a week?’ I’m thinking about mass scalability, because I want people from all over the world playing them.”

He also feels the Omega’s price gives it the advantage. At $1,075, it’s slightly cheaper than Ibanez’s Q Series, and nearly $100 less than the Strandberg Essential. Moreover, he doesn’t want to fall into similar preconceptions of who his builds are for.

“Strandberg really pigeonholed themselves with prog metal,” he says. “I want to be broader – I want jazz and blues players to play the Omega. I want to see it in Taylor Swift’s hands. I need that for the brand.”

Crucially, he’s backing the industry to shift in his favor. “Ibanez saw it was losing out on a market because of Strandberg,” he says of the firm’s pivot into headless builds. “Fender and Gibson are going to start dying out; they’re so driven by shareholders they’re not going to take any risks. Smaller companies are moving the needle.

“But Strandberg is owned by private equity now, so I don’t think they’re interested in selling 100,000 guitars a year; they want to stay niche. That’s how I’m gonna overtake them. I’m thinking massive scale, affordable workhorse guitars.”

His ambitions are lofty, but with Paul Masvidal already showing an interest in the firm, and Plini’s interest piqued, Pearson might not be building these guitars on his own for much longer.

• Find out more at Pearson Instruments.

Squier has unveiled its first Paranormal Series signature guitar – a 12-string Telecaster built for Queens of the Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen.

The Paranormal Series has been Squier’s most reliable range for bizarre and bonkers builds since its inception back in 2020. It has produced everything from the Jazzmaster XII to the Super-Sonic.

It made perfect sense, then, as the home for Van Leeuwen’s new signature: a recreation of his Masterbuilt Custom Shop 12-string Telecaster that he’s played with QOTSA and Iggy Pop.

Perhaps too niche for a Masterbuilt reissue, maybe a bit too daring for a standard Fender run, the Squier Paranormal Series is the perfect place for this oddball. And since Van Leeuwen wanted to keep it as accessible as possible, it made sense for all involved.

“When creating my second signature with Fender, I wanted an instrument at an affordable price point that could inspire anyone who’s ever been curious about playing a 12-string,” he says.

“Having worked with the team for over a decade, they easily connected with my vision for a guitar that’s designed for functionality, aesthetically striking, and would sound great right out of the box.”

The result is a 12-string like no other, inspired by one of Van Leeuwen’s main workhorse guitars. It features a nyatoh body and maple neck, as well as a pair of Fender Designed Alnico single-coils.

The Custom Telecaster XII headstock is drafted to help with those six extra strings, while a 12-string top-load/string-through bridge shoots for maximum functionality. Again, that was important to Van Leeuwen.

“The Custom Shop has a more vintage-style bridge. I didn’t want that for this – I wanted something that was user-friendly right out of the box,” he tells Guitar World.

“Functionality is so important because it’s hard to get a 12-string bridge to work right. It had to be usable because when you’ve got 12-strings, you really need them to stay in tune.”

Other appointments include an Indian laurel fingerboard, 1.6875” wide nut, and gorgeous Copper colorway.

At $599, it’s a very tempting price point for an electric 12-string. And it’s no show piece, either. Van Leeuwen himself used the then-unannounced Squier version when he played with Michael Stipe on Jimmy Kimmel.

The Paranormal Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII is available now for $599.

Visit Fender.com for more.

Innovation Week: The guitar industry is famously slow-moving. Heck, we’re still obsessing over designs pioneered in the ’50s. But every now and then, there will be a genuine game-changer – something that roots itself in the wider guitar consciousness and becomes part of the lexicon of the instrument.

But for every Line 6 Pod or EverTune, there’s an innovation that didn’t quite pan out – and as digital became the go-to buzz word for experimentation, the 21st century was full of ’em.

Below, we chart some of the designs that didn’t stand the test of time – or even make it through the next year…

Gibson Firebird X

You won’t always know when your new future-forward electric guitar design has failed – but there will be signs, like when hundreds of them are lying side by side in a parking lot, awaiting execution, as heavy machinery revs up in preparation to run over them and pound them into a mess of kindling and wire.

That is our abiding memory of the Gibson Firebird X, the guitar that was predicted to change guitar forever – but which ended up in a 2019 YouTube snuff movie.

“Don’t be so proud of this technological terror you have created,” warned intergalactic bad guy Darth Vader. He was speaking in 1975, but it could have been 2011 in response to then-Gibson chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz’s bullish pronouncement that we had just witnessed the future of guitar.

Complete with Robot tuners – more on them shortly – the Firebird X was as far from three pickups and the truth as you could get. A fugly offset with a complicated array of switches, sliders and dials for its onboard effects, 55 presets, piezo mode, tuning mode…

There was no manual. Not even Gibson knew what to do with this thing. Crazy, especially when Gibson had actually released an arguably more radical reimagining of the electric guitar three years prior, when the HD.6X-Pro Digital Guitar augmented the classy Les Paul platform with the capability to route the signal from each string individually via a hexaphonic pickup.

Okay, this didn’t catch on either – all those cables! – but for those of us who have forever been excited by Eddie Van Halen’s Ripley Guitar, the HD.6X-Pro was kind of cool. And it didn’t have Robot tuners.

Gibson Robot Guitar

If anything was emblematic of Gibson’s slide under the previous administration, it was the Gibson Robot Guitar, which featured a self-tuning system from Tronical that turned the tuners for you. It was like playing a guitar with an SUV parked on the headstock.

But Gibson wasn’t the only company to lose its mind in thrall to technology. The biggest guitar failures of the 21st century were really no different from the age-old missteps in guitar design when the likes of Vox, Kay, Guyatone, etc., were packing guitars with onboard effects in the ’70s.

Ibanez RGKP6

Exhibit A: the Ibanez RGKP6, which was presented as an entry-level RG-style shredder but had a Mini Kaoss Pad S2 on the front. It had what every $500 electric guitar didn’t need; namely its own touchpad-operated effects processor, sample recorder and audio player. Matt Bellamy, you have a lot to answer for.

Peavey AT-200

So, too, has Antares. Its Auto-Tune technology destroyed pop, and in 2012 it provided Peavey with the brains behind its Auto-Tune Guitar.

The AT-200 was a relatively stock S-style with onboard tech that digitally altered its tuning, providing you with virtual capo features – not to mention “perfect” intonation up and down the neck, much to the envy of three-saddle Telecaster players worldwide. Where is it now?

Moog E1

The Moog E1 was another that came and went. Endless sustain, Moog synth sounds, but again, kind of ugly, super-expensive, and these sounds would arrive in amp modelers and plugins.

Line 6 Variax

We should also mention the Line 6 Variax in dispatches. This was Line 6’s industry standard modeling tech in a guitar. Again, it never quite took off, but Steve Howe of Yes is a huge fan, most recently using its virtual sitar setting on his 2024 solo album, Guitarscape.

DigiTech iPB-10 Programmable Pedal Board 

You might be forgiven for thinking that, for a short while in the 2010s, guitar players were hellbent on destroying their iPads.

How else could you account for new all-in-one integrated pedalboard systems from DigiTech and IK Multimedia that required your iPad to be mounted to them, on the floor, providing the digital brain of your rig?

Okay, technically, you didn’t need to have your iPad actually in the unit at all times. When using DigiTech’s iPB-10 Programmable Pedal Board, launched in 2011, you could do the programming, remember your presets, and detach the tablet. But who has the memory for that? Not many of us.

IK Multimedia iRig Stomp I/O

The iPB-10 itself might not have lasted long, but its discontinuation didn’t stop IK Multimedia from revisiting the concept in 2018 with the iRig Stomp I/O.

You could load AmpliTube on your iPhone, iPad, or Microsoft Surface and use the device as a MIDI controller/audio interface. An iPad on the floor seemed foolhardy, but what did for these products was the march of progress.

Orange OPC

Guitar’s digital transformation got particularly weird in 2011 when Orange released an amp and personal computer combo, the OPC – spreadsheets up front, overdrive at the back.

Source Audio Hot Hand Ring

Source Audio invited us to look unhinged with the Hot Hand MIDI controller. You wore the device as a ring and you could control your pedals with a hand gesture. No-one got the memo that, even in the 21st century, playing guitar is largely a two-handed activity.

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

What is it?

There is only one show in town if you want a hot-rodded T-style guitar with active EMGs, a satin-smooth neck carved from caramelized flame maple, 24 stainless steel frets and contemporary ergonomics visited upon body and fingerboard alike – and you want all of this and some change from 500 bucks.

You know it. We know it. Harley Benton knows it. This is the German budget gear brand’s USP, doing more, charging less, and that is great. But can its guitars excite us in the same way as, say, a Charvel?

Charvel’s Standard Series San Dimas Style 2 postmodern Supertele is both a clear rival to the Fusion T-II, and it has mojo behind its build – the pop-cultural cachet that comes with being at the epicenter of the high-performance electric guitar revolution in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s.

Harley Benton does not have that but what its newly refreshed Fusion-T II series does have is options and plenty of them. It overwhelms us with numbers, with 18 new models released this year alone in a cornucopia of solid-color, metallic and translucent finishes.

Have yours with the choice of a six-saddle Babicz Z Series hardtail bridge or a Babicz 2-point tremolo. Locking tuners come as standard.

We think of the T-style as a blue-collar tool, the quintessential workhorse, and yet some of these Fusion-T II models present themselves as bona fide peacocks, such as the Quilt Raspberry Burst model with its bougie maple veneer giving it the rarified airs of a boutique build.

It looks just as ostentatious in Quilt Dusk Glow, a model that really speaks to the LA hotrod inspiration at play with a mismatched pair of Tesla Opus humbuckers, one covered, one uncovered with zebra bobbins. It’s as though you put it in the shop and asked them to swap the bridge humbucker out. Oh, and while you were there you got some coil-taps too.

We don’t have any of this fancy pants stuff here. The Fusion-T II EMG MN HT SBK is the made-for-metal option – and was evidently named by a cat walking across the Harley Benton keyboard.

Resplendent in Satin Black with black hardware and loaded with a pair of EMG Custom Retroactive Hot 70 humbuckers at the neck and bridge, and a Babicz hardtail, plus it comes with a reverse headstock that is kinda metal but really makes us think of something Joe Perry would play.

Specs

• Launch price: $479 | £429 | €499
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Nyatoh
• Neck: Roasted Canadian flamed maple / Modern C profile (21mm thickness at 12th fret: 23mm at 12th
• Fingerboard: Roasted Canadian flamed maple, 12" to 16" compound radius
• Scale length: 25.5”/648mm
• Nut/width: Graphtech TUSQ XL / 42mm
• Frets: 24, Blacksmith stainless steel medium jumbo frets
• Hardware: Harley Benton-branded Jinho JN-07 locking tuners, Babicz Z-Series FCH-Fixed 6 hardtail bridge
• String spacing at bridge: 52.5mm
• Electrics: 2x EMG Custom Retroactive Hot 70 humbuckers (neck and bridge), 3-way pickup selector, volume, tone
• Weight: 7.15lb/3.25kg
• Options: The Fusion T-II series includes 18 models, with other options fitted with Tesla Opus-1 humbuckers at the neck and bridge and the choice of the Babicz Z-Series FCH-Fixed 6 hardtail or Babicz FCH 2-Point Special Z-Series C Full Contact Tremolo
• Left-handed options: Yes, Satin Black
• Finishes: Satin Black
• Cases: No
• Contact: Harley Benton / Thomann

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

It’s funny when we talk about T-styles and S-styles and all that jazz (topical, too, but let’s not go there). But no, it’s funny/weird because the shape tells us very little about the guitar itself.

I have this Harley Benton sitting alongside my Fender Classic Player Baja Telecaster, which is very much in the style of the original Butterscotch blackguard… It’s just a big ol' slab o’ ash. The Harley Benton looks like it has more in common with a B-2 stealth bomber. They feel completely different. They sit differently in your lap.

Like the rest of the Fusion-T II series, this has a solid nyatoh body with heavy contouring in the cutaway and a generous amount of sculpting on the heel. All of which is not only a concession to player comfort but helps keep the weight down. This is a lightweight instrument at just over 7lbs.

The caramelized maple is nicely figured and well-fired to a deep reddish walnut. The neck joins the body with a four-bolt joint and a separate piece of roasted figured maple forms the fingerboard. It looks like a veneer on the headstock just to finish it off nicely.

Everything on this guitar is tidy, the fingerboard with its circle dot inlays on a figured piece of maple makes us think of high-end Ernie Ball Music Man designs such as the Sabre. The glow-in-the-dark fretmarkers along the side of the fingerboard is a welcome sight too.

The frets are smooth, their tangs disappearing into the fingerboard edges which has been left unbound. As per the fashion of high-performance electrics, the truss rod adjustment wheel is found at the top of the fingerboard.

The volume and tone controls are knurled metal and sit in recesses on the body’s top. The absence of a pickguard just adds to the minimalism. The Babicz bridge is a really tidy piece of kit. This and the quality tuners keeps things nice and steady. Tuning this up took no time at all – and it held its tune. What did take forever was trying to open the battery compartment on the back of the instrument. It’s either a footery contraption or I'm getting old. Both are probably true.

The only thing, however, to catch the eye is the misalignment of the pickup pole pieces and strings. They align on the neck pickup, but it is especially noticeable that the low E, A and D strings do not at the bridge. Would Harley Benton have been better to go for the Hot 70 with the wider Floyd/Fender spacing of 52mm?

Maybe. But the plot thickens. These are Custom Hot 70s, where all the pole-pieces are black and fixed (a regular Hot 70 humbucker has one slug with plain pole pieces, one with adjustable screw pole pieces). Sonically, they are the same pickup but are evidently made to Harley Benton specs, perhaps to support mass production.

The body is routed for a regular-sized humbucker – it’s doubtful whether a Trembucker sizing would fit better. Now, this does not make any appreciable difference to the tone in this instance, but it does look strange.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

I’m no stickler for a guitar’s weight but at the same time you will get no complaints from me at a 7lb guitar, especially one that's built for zippy playing styles.

Upper fret access is superlative on this instrument. It’s strange how this sits on the lap. The Fusion-T II feels as though the 12th fret within easier reach than my Tele. This could be an illusion, or it could be subliminal design cues to encourage players to tear up the fingerboard.

With all of the Fender-owned shred, rock and metal brands (EVH Gear, Charvel and Jackson) all widely using the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard, we can probably call this the industry standard, and it’s hard not to like as the fingerboard flattens towards the summit of the neck. Many a player will find these fingerboard dimensions the Platonic ideal.

The best compliment I can pay this neck – heck, this guitar – is that it at times it reminded me a little of the Fender American Ultra II Tele, although that has a D profile neck with a bit more wood on the shoulders.

Maybe a buttery smooth satin finished neck with a crowd-pleasing shape and stainless steel frets is all your need for that hyper-luxurious sports guitar vibe.

Also, don't worry about this neck being one of those obscenely thin profiles where it's a bit like running in carbon-plated shoes and you start cramping up after three songs. There's comfort baked into the menu.

Finally, kudos to Babicz for designing a bridge with no scratchy grub screws to catch your hand when palm muting. Epicurus was right all along; it's the little things...

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

The thing with Harley Benton is that it sometimes all feels like it is all too good to be true. The prices, the specs, all that.

And so, as a skeptic, it is almost disappointing to test out the controls and find that they do their job, that the tone knob does indeed roll back some of that bridge pickup top-end, making those clean tones more palatable when playing solo – more Les Paul-esque than anything else. What were we saying about the shape of the guitar telling us very little? Yeah, that x100.

The middle position, both humbuckers in play, is a superb voicing for hot and crunchy, kinda woolly ‘70s rock sounds, with the active EMG pairing invoking the decade that gave them their name.

And here’s the thing. I must make a confession. The Fusion-T II’s 21st-century design, the matte black finish and athletic ergonomics, the prospect of being sonically steamrollered by the merciless power of active EMGs, was not overwhelmingly enticing – it's like you’d need to be guitar's very own Chuck Yaeger to fully test this instrument's capabilities. But five minutes was all it took to change my mind.

There’s something pre-mastered about the Hot 70 humbucker tone, that gives you that trademark EMG bloom and clarity when played clean. Those of us introduced to EMG by Metallica et al will be relieved to know that the neck humbucker with a Boss Waza Craft CE-2W Chorus and a short delay gives you those Hetfield-esque clean tones – thick, splashy, box-office stuff.

Those a little bored of that sound might then be genuinely excited that this guitar is way more than that. Okay, they’re too beefy to be properly skronky but there’s a nice trebly scratch to that bridge humbucker that’s fit for CCR chord work.

You can access much of the Dazed & Confused tone universe, the talky throatiness of Aerosmith and Foghat, by pumping up the gain and rolling back on the volume. Playing around with the tone pot will even unearth some pseudo-cocked wah sounds.

And then, say, when Friday night arrives, you can look forward to playing on 10 and working with all the harmonic volatility that a great high-output pickup gives you.

Personally, I can take or leave active pickups. A passionate yearning for them as a teenager has given way to this feeling that I'd rather someone put a battery in me, not my guitar. But the low-noise, high-output performance makes me happy to have them here.

You can be extreme on this. You can be a little more tucked in. You can absolutely nail that early ‘80s metal tone without too much effort. Even on this old Blackstar tube amp combo with a little chorus and Catalinbread tape echo emulation, it’s all there. Vivian Campbell, Eddie Van Halen, George Lynch eat yer heart out.

Verdict

That misalignment of polepieces and strings caused a minor existentialist panic that there was something fundamentally wrong with this picture. But there wasn’t. And there was, in truth, nothing really wrong with this picture at all; that an electric guitar under $500 can play and sound as this does – it’s remarkable.

We musicians can be a snobbish about brand recognition. We want to play what our heroes play. But a little time spent with a guitar like this changes the calculus, especially in an inflationary economic environment.

No matter how competitive the market for guitar gear has become, it is not exactly saturated with T-styles at this price point with top-tier pickups from a market-leading brand, with guitars that combine an ambitious spec with an effective execution. There’s no question that the closure of the Harley Benton Reverb store is a kick in the backside for players in the US but, even so, this EMG-equipped Fusion-T II could still present great value.

It’s not without drawbacks. There is only one finish option. You have to stick a battery in it. You’ll have to buy a gig bag or a case separately and the visual of that pickup alignment is hard to get by. But that’s like going on holiday for two weeks and complaining about a day of rain. Did you have fun? Yes. Would you go back? Also yes.

Guitar World verdict: Harley Benton beefs up the T-style but avoids the pitfall of muscle above all else, with an active pickup that balances power with dynamics. And it puts the ball in the court of more established brands, challenging them to follow suit and officially make roasted figured maple, stainless steel frets and EMGs, y’know, a thing on guitars at this price.

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Hands-on videos

Harley Benton

• "This could well be Harley Benton's most impressive electric guitar platform yet when it comes to value": Harley Benton ST-Modern HSS review

Today is the big one; Labor Day 2026 is delivering the goods left, right and center with all manner of guitar deals popping up to help you satiate your GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). Some of the discounts I've spotted so far today are right up there with what I'd expect to see at the end of November when the Black Friday guitar deals roll around, so if you can't hold out until then, you're in luck as now is a great time to shop.

With hearty discounts up to 50% on a huge range of gear from Fender to Gibson, Jackson, Martin and Blackstar at Sweetwater, through to potential 60% savings, plus discount coupons, at Musician's Friend, now is the best opportunity of the year so far to save money on some new guitar goodies; whether that's a shred-worthy electric guitar, an angelic acoustic guitar, or a thunderous new bass.

More of the biggest names in music retail have gone all in on the Labor Day sales this year too, with big hitters like Guitar Center, Positive Grid and Guitar Tricks all slashing prices on some of their most popular products and services.

In my experience, most sales should hang about for at least a couple of days after Labor Day, but if you see something you like, I'd recommend picking it up as soon as possible before the sale ends or potentially limited stock runs out.

Below, I've highlighted what I think are the best Labor Day guitar sales in town right now.

When the DragonForce shredder launched his first-ever signature guitar collaboration with PRS in the summer of 2025, it caused quite the stir online. Its bold style was completely different from anything Paul Reed Smith had put out before, with an all-new body design, Fishman Fluence Signature pickups, and even ditched the birds-in-flight inlays for a brood of dragons. It doesn’t get more DragonForce than that!

Speaking of his new model, Herman Li said, “With the PRS SE Chleo, we set out to create the best affordable professional-quality guitar unlike anything out there. It delivers a unique combination of effortless playability, outstanding craftsmanship, and versatile tonal range.

“It combines modern innovations with classic style, giving players the tools they need to create everything from classic tones to cutting-edge, new sounds,” he continues. “The SE Chleo was tour-tested to withstand night after night of intense live shows, in any touring conditions.”

The model is currently available in a trio of eye-catching finish options, from the striking green and yellow Mantis Burst to the pink Orchid Dusk and the gothic Charcoal Purple Burst, all of which show off a fierce flame maple top – but today there’s a new finish option being added to the list.

Sweetwater has just announced an exclusive Black Satin colorway of the SE Chleo. As expected, all other specs remain the same, with only the color difference being the distinguishing factor. So you can expect figured maple-topped mahogany beneath that jet-black paint job, a bolt-on maple neck reinforced with carbon-fiber rods, and a 20-inch-radiused ebony fingerboard.

The pickups are also the same, with a duo of Fishman Fluence Omniforce humbuckers onboard. These unique active, multi-voice pickups feature a copper-free, layered PCB design and, along with a 5-way pickup selector with push-pull functionality, generate a wealth of tonal options. The guitar is available now at Sweetwater for $1,949, that’s $50 cheaper than the originals.

In other Sweetwater news, the company has just kicked off its Guitar Month sale, where customers can access limited-time discounts, special financing options, and some tasty six-string bargains. In case that wasn’t enough, there’s also a Labor Day sale running now, with up to 50% off selected items. So we highly recommend heading to the site to see what goodies you can grab while the offers last.

Innovation Week: Every guitarist with a Tune-O-Matic and stopbar tailpiece setup knows the ritual. Feed the string through the bar, over the bridge, up the neck, then wind three full wraps around the tuning post and wait for the thing to settle down over the next few hours of playing.

Steadfast Designs looked at that ritual and decided to run it in reverse. Its debut product, the Steadfast Stopbar, is a patented aluminum tailpiece that locks the ball end of the string at the tuning post and clamps the other end at the tailpiece with a small set screw.

Pull each string tight, then secure it with the supplied hex driver. It’s a mechanical flip, but one aimed squarely at anyone who has ever dreaded restringing the day before a gig.

By anchoring both ends of the string instead of relying on friction and wraps around a post, the company claims you get tuning stability quickly after restringing, along with a restring that takes a fraction of the usual time.

Stability is improved by eliminating the wraps of string that can settle around the posts. You still need to stretch the strings and retune, as the company’s own instructions point out, but you arrive at stable tuning much faster. For touring players and guitar techs, that difference alone could be worth the upgrade.

The stopbar is CNC-machined in the USA from solid billet aircraft grade aluminum rather than the die cast zinc most factory stopbars are made from, and it shows on the scale. The Steadfast bar weighs in at 37 grams against roughly 88 grams for a typical Gibson zinc unit.

Less mass moving around under string tension means that more vibration reaches the guitar body rather than getting soaked up by the hardware, according to Steadfast. This contributes to better sustain and a clearer top-end.

Steadfast has also hinted at future titanium and stainless steel versions for players chasing even more sustain. Tone arguments involving guitar hardware are almost always subjective, so you’ll have to hear this with your own ears.

Installation is easy – it’s a drop-in replacement with no drilling required. Steadfast says it fits the vast majority of Tune-O Matic guitars from Gibson, Epiphone, Gretsch, ESP, Ibanez, Schecter and plenty of others, in both US and metric post spacing.

Prices run from $99 for a faded finish model up to $169 for a 24k gold plated Custom model. The company backs it with a limited lifetime guarantee.

Steadfast joins a crowded field of stopbar variations – the top-wrap-friendly Lightning Bar, for one – with an idea that’s worth trying for yourself. The question now is whether guitarists will warm to its backwards approach enough to make it a keeper.

• For more info, head to Steadfast Stopbar.

The life and times of Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett is filled with much mystery and weirdness, so it’s fitting the guitar most closely associated with him also has a similar reputation.

This guitar was a ’60s Fender Esquire often called the “Mirror Disc Telecaster” that Barrett modified by covering the body with silver-colored mylar foil wrap and polished circular metal discs that reflected light (but weren’t actually mirrors).

Pink Floyd guitar enthusiasts often describe this guitar as a 1962 model due to its laminated rosewood fretboard (identifiable by the straight angle of the edge of rosewood protruding past the nut).

However, highly detailed photos and video that have emerged recently clearly show that the headstock decal has three patent numbers below the “Esquire” (damaged to read “Esquipe”) name, which didn’t appear on the Esquire until 1963.

Allegedly Barrett bought this guitar brand new in either 1964 or ’65, so it’s most likely a 1964 model. The Esquire originally had a stock light blonde (almost white) finish before Barrett covered the body.

Barrett used this Esquire almost exclusively on Pink Floyd’s first singles and debut album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

It became famous in its own right during Pink Floyd’s early concerts, where the metal discs reflected lights and colors from the psychedelic light show. Barrett played it on A Saucerful of Secrets as well, but shortly after the album’s release he stopped using it for shows, preferring a white Tele he recently purchased.

In late 1968, after the release of A Saucerful of Secrets, Barrett traded his “Mirror Disc” Esquire for a black Telecaster Custom. From that point onwards, the guitar’s whereabouts have remained unknown.

It’s possible that Barrett or the person he sold it to removed all of the distinctive modifications, so even if the guitar were discovered today it would be very difficult to verify as actually being the Pink Floyd founder’s guitar.

Syd’s Esquire might be gone forever, but, as he once sang, “Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood?”

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

If you mention the words Fender and Esquire, most guitarists these days will picture a Telecaster-style guitar with no neck pickup. Fender’s Esquire model actually predated the Telecaster, and indeed the Broadcaster, having first been produced in the spring of 1950.

Although a single bridge pickup was standard, Fender soon began offering a two-pickup ‘double Esquire’ version for a modest upcharge.

Some Esquires were also returned to the factory to have neck pickups installed, and others were converted by owners themselves – often years later. Fender paused Esquire production between late summer 1950 and January 1951, offering only a two-pickup model newly dubbed the Broadcaster. When Esquire production eventually resumed, it became Fender’s official single-pickup single-cutaway option – and things have remained that way ever since.

Single-pickup guitars were nothing new when the Esquire was released, but most were lap steel or jazzbox-style instruments with the pickup in the neck position. Paul Bigsby was clearly an influence on Leo Fender and during the 1940s he made a single-bridge-pickup guitar for Merle Travis.

Merle’s guitar had what appears to be a three-way selector switch that operated in line with the strings and three control knobs. Leo Fender’s approach was similar and was a laudable attempt to provide Esquire players with instant access to three distinctive preset tones. We’ll discuss those settings later on.

It’s hard to identify any big-name players who have used a single-pickup Esquire throughout their careers. The likes of Steve Cropper, Jeff Beck and Billy Gibbons have all played them at some point, but they graduated to Telecasters and other models. Bruce Springsteen’s Esquire already had a neck pickup fitted when he bought it, and there’s no evidence to suggest he ever changed it back.

Toto Gesture

Although better known for playing his Rosanna ’Burst and his more recent affiliation with Music Man, session ace and Toto founding member Steve Lukather also owned and played a 1951 Esquire for decades.

In an interview with Vintage Guitar magazine, Steve revealed how he acquired the guitar in the late 70s: “I already had the Goldtop and ’Burst, and I began to look into other vintage guitars. The Esquire just fell into my lap; I paid 600 bucks for it.”

Steve was acting on the advice of his friend Paul ‘Jamo’ Jameson who persuaded him that collecting vintage guitars would be a sound long-term investment. “He actually hipped me to a lot of stuff,” he said. “Had I listened more than I did – because I thought paying a couple of grand for a guitar was insane back then – I would’ve bought everything.”

The Esquire became a studio staple for Steve and he recalled using it extensively on Toto IV. “Anything that sounds remotely like a Tele is that Esquire. It’s me doing my impression of Keith Richards.” He also used the Esquire on sessions with Joni Mitchell and Dolly Parton, and played it on Ringo Starr’s single Let’s Change The World.

When we contacted Steve, he seemed to have few regrets about selling it. “It was clean and sounded and played great,” he says, “but I was cleaning house and some guy offered me a shit ton of dollars for it and I said yes. Vintage gear is getting to the point where it’s so expensive, the crash will occur and values will drop so…”

French Connection

The Esquire now resides in Paris and is owned by Matthieu Lucas of Matt’s Guitar Shop. It’s in fairly remarkable condition for its age with the dirty yellow butterscotch lacquer that is so typical of Blackguards from this timeframe. The finish itself is semi-opaque and the ash body’s grain pattern is clear to see.

There are a few scratches and nicks on the surface, along with a small patch of buckle rash adjacent to the string ferrules, but the guitar certainly hasn’t endured decades of hard gigging in the honkytonks. While there is some finger wear on the fretboard, the lacquer on the back of the neck remains largely intact.

Fender began transitioning from flat-head to cross-head screws in 1951, and this Esquire has a mixture of both. The neck, bridge and control screws are all cross-heads, but the pickup, pickguard and switch screws are flat-heads.

David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars in New York had the opportunity to examine the guitar and told us that there was a 1mega-ohm potentiometer in the volume position and he believed the 7.24k pickup had been rewound.

The neck was initialled ‘TG’ with December ’51 pencil dates on the neck and body. Dowel plugs in the neck pickup cavity indicated that a second pickup was installed at some point and, in addition to a refret, a set of Schaller tuners has been fitted.

The Esquire is housed in a 1970s Fender case with a ‘Steve Lukather’ stencil and case candy that includes a note from Steve along with a photo of him playing the guitar and other documentation.

Is Less More?

Some guitarists hold the view that single-pickup electric guitars are tonally superior, and the most commonly cited examples are Les Paul Juniors versus Les Paul Specials, and Fender Esquires versus Telecasters.

In short, it’s the ‘all I need is one pickup and a cranked up valve amp and I can get every tone I need’ school of thought – and if that works for a player, it’s hard to dispute.

Regarding Juniors, there’s also the simplified controls argument, but if the complexities of a three-way pickup selector flummox you, there could be other issues at play. The touted sonic benefits include greater brightness and clarity, enhanced resonance and improved sustain. Focusing solely on Fenders, it might be interesting to analyse why that may be the case.

The fundamental differences between an Esquire and a Telecaster are one pickup, rather than two (obviously), and different control wiring. Addressing the pickup disparity first, the two factors to consider are lower weight and less magnetic pull on the strings to inhibit vibration. Popping a Telecaster neck pickup on some digital scales we get a reading of 62.4g (2.2oz).

Telecaster guitars vary considerably in weight, but let’s assume they range from 2.7kg to 4.5kg (roughly 6lb to 10lb). Running the numbers, the weight of a neck pickup equates to between ¹/43 and ¹/72 of the overall weight of the guitar. To put that in context, a set of vintage-style Kluson tuners weighs 135g and a set of die-cast tuners is around 175g, which makes the weight argument seem a bit moot.

The decreased magnetic pull factor may have more to it. As someone who has spent more time than is healthy swapping magnets in humbuckers and P-90s, this writer can report there are audible differences in sustain characteristics.

In short, the same pickups hang onto notes noticeably longer with weaker Alnico III than strong Alnico V magnets. This is only discernible, however, with clean or mildly overdriven tones. If you crank up the gain or use a compressor or overdrive pedal, everything evens out.

What’s more, a lack of sustain in Les Pauls with Alnico V-powered Patent Applied For pickups is not a noted characteristic. It’s also worth remembering that Telecaster neck pickups have traditionally been made with relatively weak Alnico III slugs. On balance, the improved sustain argument does seem to have merit, but it’s fairly marginal.

Switching Stuff

Turning to the electronics, Esquires and pre-1968 Teles both had one setting with a preset treble roll-off. Whether it’s applied to a neck or bridge pickup doesn’t make much difference because they’re both dull to the point of impracticality. So let’s keep things simple and assume we’re comparing Esquires with Telecasters with neck/both/bridge switching options.

In this instance, the Esquire’s middle setting corresponds to the Telecaster’s bridge setting because the tone control is out of circuit on the Esquire’s back setting. Whenever a tone control is connected to a pickup there’s some degree of treble roll-off – even when the control itself is turned fully up – and this may be why the Esquire is noted for having a brighter and more cutting tone.

The trade-off is that, for obvious reasons, an Esquire can’t give you neck pickup or neck and bridge in combination tones. A Telecaster can, however, do the wide open Esquire thing if you disconnect the bridge pickup from the tone control or fit a no-load tone potentiometer.

In recent years, the ‘Eldred’ mod has become popular among Esquire players. The ‘neck’ setting is slightly revoiced to produce a mid-heavy cocked-wah tone with ample clarity and more than a hint of P-90 heft.

The question ultimately boils down to whether Esquires justify their ‘too cool for school’ reputation or if they’re guitars that are precisely one third as good as they could be. Esquires have a unique vibe that some players genuinely prefer, but when this writer performs Esquire conversions for clients he invariably finds himself converting them back to Tele specs within weeks.

If you’re a T-type enthusiast, you’ll probably want to own an Esquire as well as a Telecaster, but if it has to be one or the other, then a Telecaster may be the better option.

• With thanks to Matt’s Guitar Shop in Paris for allowing us to photograph this guitar.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Ola Strandberg has spent most of his career pioneering the modern headless guitar space. Now, he’s announced bold plans to create an electric guitar with a headstock.

Strandberg making guitars with headstocks is an unexpected move. After all, the company single-handledly revived the headless electric guitar space with models such as the Boden and Salen.

Some hugely influential progressive guitarists all play Strandbergs. Plini, Jacob Collier, Jordan Rudess, Jake Bowen, Liso Lee… the list goes on.

That’s why Ola Strandberg’s latest blog post came as such a surprise. In it, he teases he’s now working with another big-name player to bring his latest creation – affectionately named UME – to life.

The UME concept can be traced back to over a decade ago, when Ola experimented with a radically modular guitar that had interchangeable layers and adjustable components. The initial plan was scrapped, though.

“I could not bring myself to complete the design,” Ola says. “My ideas were solutions looking for problems to solve, instead of the opposite.”

That changed when Ola met a player who set him down a path that would lead to the revival of the UME experiment.

“At the 2026 NAMM Show, I met someone with needs that are beyond what any current guitar on the planet can meet,” he continues. “Just like when I met Tosin Abasi when I was just starting out, and the extended range Boden design was born.

“Talking to them more and more and understanding the limitations of current instruments, and the problems to be solved, I realized that I was answering the open design questions for the UME design.”

The new UME is set to be a completely modular design, with body modules, neck modules and adjustable components that will allow for complete player-based configuration. Another key design element will be that headstock.

“A headstock!?" you say? Well, current Strandberg guitars are headless for a reason… but there are also reasons and design justifications for a headstock,” Ola explains.

These include how it impacts the feel of the instrument – “bending strings, for example” – as well as how a headstock contributes to a guitar’s tone. There’s also the question of personal taste.

“The lack of mass at the headstock can [make] some players feel unfamiliar to the point that it is not enjoyable,” says Ola.

“To this player, all of these things were real issues that need to be resolved,” he says. “So the pieces fell into place, and the UME design now has a modular headstock that will address all these issues.”

The blog post has shared a heavily blurred render of what the UME could look like. Safe to say it might take us a while to get used to a Strandberg with a headstock.

Ola has promised to keep readers up to date with his design in future blog posts, which will also eventually reveal the identity of the mystery player.

Visit the Strandberg Lab to find out more.

When it comes to guitars, I’d say I’m a traditionalist. Hand me a vintage reissue Gibson, a classic Fender, or a retro Gretsch, and I’m pretty happy. Sure, I’ll dabble in the occasional modern build, but it’s most definitely not my wheelhouse. Now, that said, there’s always been one instrument that’s looked tempting from afar, but I’ve never had the courage to try it, the baritone guitar.

For years, I sort of dismissed it. I was convinced it was a guitar I’d never really use. I'm a blues rock player at heart, who also loves punk. I like things simple and always thought the baritone was only for beefy metal riffs. While I love listening to chuggy metal, it's not something I play all that often. Looking back, maybe I was just being naive.

My colleague, Matt McCracken, on the other hand, is a bona fide baritone lover. He’s spent months trying to lure me over to the long-scale dark side, daring me to break out of my comfort zone and add one to my arsenal. Well, consider the challenge accepted. I’m officially in the baritone ring.

Speaking of the benefits of the baritone, Matt says, "I bought my first baritone guitar as a replacement for my 7-string, and not having to deal with an additional string is an absolute godsend for me. The extended scale length keeps the low strings tight, even when I drop tune them to the subterranean depths of E1.

"All the chords, scales, riffs, and licks stay the same, but they're now all in a much lower and heavier-sounding tuning. They're surprisingly versatile too, and I've used them for layers on lots of different productions alongside regular scale guitars."

So, with those words ringing in my ears, I’ve been handed the rather beautiful Sterling by Music Man StingRay Baritone for a month-long test drive. Will this low-tuned beast change my mind about the baritone’s place in my guitar universe? Let’s find out.

What is a baritone?

Okay, so before I dive into my findings with the baritone guitar, it’s probably a good idea to define exactly what this instrument is.

Basically, a baritone guitar is an extended-scale instrument designed to handle lower tunings better than a standard electric guitar. In the case of the guitar I’m testing, the scale is 27.5”. It's not quite as long as a bass, but it's certainly getting close.

For the tuning, they're typically tuned a perfect fourth lower than a regular guitar, so B E A D F# B. However, there’s nothing to stop you from tuning lower to A, or even slightly higher to C, if you’re a big fan of Queens of the Stone Age.

In terms of the guitar I’m using, it’s the Sterling by Music Man StingRay Baritone, and it’s actually the company’s first-ever long-scale instrument. As for specs, we have a roasted maple neck and a rosewood fretboard, locking tuners and a vintage-style tremolo bridge.

The body here is poplar, and finished in the gorgeous Taluca Lake Blue. Tonally, the model is served by a pair of Sterling’s own ceramic humbuckers.

As for my first foray into the wonderful world of baritones, I feel like I’m easing myself in with a vintage-esque instrument. This isn’t an ultra-modern metal monster, unlike the new Jackson Pro Plus Series Signature Sleep Token IV Monarkh SC, so at least I’m not completely out of my comfort zone straight out of the gate.

What I learned

1. It’s actually not that much of an adjustment

If you’re a six-stringer who’s never touched a baritone, you might picture the transition as being a serious adjustment, but honestly, it’s nowhere near as daunting as it sounds. The extra length of the neck is noticeable, sure, but thankfully it doesn’t feel like shifting from a Gibson Les Paul to a double bass.

Okay, so the fret spacing is a hair wider, and that low B string has a fair bit more tension, but if you’ve ever played a seven-string, I’m sure you’ll click with it easily enough.

Genuinely, what surprised me is how quickly the baritone became familiar territory. My muscle memory was there from the start, and honestly, it was actually fun to explore the deeper registers.

I know it’s hardly a revelation that if you can play guitar, you can play baritone, but I did think there would be some adjustment time with it to feel comfortable, and luckily there wasn’t.

2. There are more tunings than B

Yes, B standard is the most common tuning for a baritone, but it isn’t the be-all, end-all. The baritone is actually an incredibly flexible instrument.

I spent a lot of time messing around with different tunings and was honestly floored by how much the character of the guitar changed. With B standard, you get tight, punchy chugs, but go lower and it’s perfect for modern metal riffage.

That said, you don't need to always tune lower. Tune up, and things start to feel snappier, but equally as aggressive.

What’s even more fun is the way alternate tunings open up the fretboard. It makes it easier to find new chord voicings or unexpected harmonics, and that’ll undoubtedly lead you to writing something you never would on a normal guitar. Speaking of which…

3. It’s a songwriting riff machine

For me, I love writing songs. In fact, it’s pretty much the reason I play the guitar. Having the baritone around made me write a completely different way than I normally would, with low-tuned riffs coming out of nowhere.

If you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut, the baritone could be a way to unlock brand new ideas, it certainly helped me. I’d sit down to noodle for five minutes and end up with three potential song intros or chorus hooks, all because the instrument pulled me in a fresh direction.

It’s worth noting that it’s not just about writing heavier music, either. Throwing on a bit of delay and massive reverb, I found myself gravitating toward atmospheric, almost cinematic progressions that had me jamming for hours.

4. It’s a valuable studio tool

If you do any recording, from bedroom demos to full-blown studio sessions, the baritone is a great tool to have on hand.

Layer it under your standard guitar tracks, and suddenly everything sounds bigger. The low end fills out the arrangement, and octave-doubled riffs can make parts punchier, too.

I tried tracking a couple of old songs with the baritone alongside my regular guitars, and I must say, I loved the results. Even simple power chords took on a new depth, and the songs just sounded more polished.

I can now see why producers love to have a couple of baritones floating around in the studio.

5. It’s not just built for metal

I think, more recently, the baritone has gotten a bit of a metal reputation, with many thinking it’s just for metalheads looking to tune lower. Sure, it’s a staple in doom, sludge, and contemporary metal, but plenty of players outside the heavy scene have embraced the baritone for its unique voice, from surf rock to spaghetti western soundtracks, or even ambient indie.

During my month with the Sterling, I found myself channelling everything from Dick Dale to Brian Eno, all on the same instrument. Clean tones sound almost piano-like with loads of sustain. Throw on some chorus or tremolo, and you can create massive-sounding atmospheric soundscapes. It’s a lot of fun.

Honestly, if you thought baritones were a one-trick pony, think again. It can do a whole lot more than monstrous distortion-soaked riffage.

Final thoughts

After a month with the Sterling by Music Man StingRay Baritone, I can confidently say my perspective on baritone guitars has shifted dramatically. What once seemed like an intimidating oddity has become a guitar that I’m genuinely looking to add to my arsenal.

For me, the baritone’s flexibility opened creative doors I hadn’t anticipated, and better yet, I discovered how seamlessly it could slot into my songwriting and recording.

I was guilty of thinking a baritone was only a metal guitar, but I’m happy to be proved wrong. The baritone proved itself to be far more than a niche instrument for doom jams, but rather a seriously versatile studio companion that works to fill out just about any arrangement.

If you’ve ever been curious, I’d encourage you to take the plunge. You might just find, as I did, that it becomes an indispensable part of your guitar collection. Find out what we believe to be the best baritone guitars available right now with our dedicated buyer’s guide.

Find your tone

Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates is one of the most iconic Les Pauls of all time. Now it’s receiving a Collector’s Edition run from the Gibson Custom Shop – but getting one won’t be straightforward.

The Gibson Custom Billy Gibbons “Pearly Gates” 1959 Les Paul Standard Collector’s Edition is a faithful recreation of the ZZ Top legend’s 1959 LP.

Gibson leaned into “in-depth examination, cutting-edge 3D scans, and precise measurements” to reproduce a guitar that Gibbons hasn’t found a rival to, despite decades of searching.

That also means its body has been aged and relic’d by the Murphy Lab, and it features painstaking replicas of its original P.A.F.-style humbuckers.

Recalling in an interview how he got his hands on the original, Gibbons remembers, “[A friend] said, 'I know you were looking for another one of those Gibson guitars.

“'There’s a cowboy who’s got a ranch outside of town. He may have what you were looking for.'

“We had a girlfriend named Renee Thomas,” he continues. “She said, ‘I’ve got an invitation to go audition for a part in a movie, but I have to get back to California.’ We decided that she should have this 1936 Packard automobile.

“Next thing you know, the phone rang, and she said, ‘I got the part. I blame it on Pearly Gates,’” he continues. He asked the inevitable question: What’s Pearly Gates?

“She goes, ‘Oh, that’s the name I gave the car. That do you want me to do with the car?’”

On Gibbons’ advice, they sold the car for $250. The money, he says, landed in his pocket the very day he was heading off to the ranch to check out the Gibson.

Gibbons says, “He opened the case and said, ‘Can you give me $250?’ I whipped out the check then and there. The word got back to Renee, and she goes, ‘It’s going to make divine music.’”

The name transferred from car to guitar, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As for this Collector's Edition reissue, there is a slight catch for those who want to get their mitts on the guitar.

It’s available exclusively as part of an event package, which includes an invitation to attend an exclusive evening with Billy Gibbons at the Gibson Garage Nashville.

The evening is being described as “the ultimate fan experience” and includes a private Q&A with Gibbons, an intimate live performance, a personal meet-and-greet, and a photo opportunity.

There are only 30 spots available, and interested readers are encouraged to call the Gibson Garage Nashville at (615) 933-6000 to reserve a place. A price hasn't been listed.

Visit Gibson to see the guitar in more detail.

Ibanez has unveiled a host of surprise electrics guitars, including new star signatures and a firm-first Iceman.

There’s a lot for players to get their teeth into here, so we’ve trawled through the listings to pull out the highlights.

Leading the signatures, Steve Vai’s visually updated PIA77BON2 features an intricately detailed design, including a hand-painted gold leaf body finish and an expansive PIA Blossom fretboard inlay.

Its DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups continue the aesthetic, and it otherwise conforms to the usual PIA spec sheet.

Joe Satriani, meanwhile, has the new JS2470 to his name. It follows a similar tonewood recipe with an alder body and three-piece maple/bubinga neck sculpted to his namesake profile.

At its heart, there’s a DiMarzio Satchur8 humbucker in the bridge and a Sustainiac in the neck, and it’s complete with a dedicated three-way switch, taking in Harmonic/Mix/Normal modes.

Nita Strauss’ latest signature is a Torch Red-colored shredder. The JIVA10R pairs an African mahogany body with a quilted maple top, a three-piece JIVA maple/purpleheart neck, and an ebony fretboard featuring a Beaten Path inlay design.

Aside from the signatures, the pick of the bunch is the newly modernized and weaponized Iceman.

It's a body shape favored by System of Down’s Daron Malakian, inverted by Paul Gilbert (to make the Fireman) and more recently adopted by Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale.

Here, it gets a seven-string, multi-scale makeover. It’s armed with Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers and has a five-piece Wizard II-7 maple-and-walnut neck, an Okoume body. It looks like it could do damage.

There are plenty of highlights elsewhere. Last year, Ibanez revived the forgotten (and pretty mad-looking) P Series guitar. Now it’s back in a more metal-minded fashion.

Available in White or Black, each model features what appears to be an aluminum pickguard for its exaggerated treble-side horn.

Building on a basswood body, five-piece maple/walnut Super Wizard neck, and 24-fret bound rosewood 'board with Sharktooth inlays, it is one of the most radical-looking Ibanez guitars currently around.

As we said, there’s a lot to absorb, but with the Iceman getting something of the Alpha treatment, three stellar shredders getting new squeezes, and the P Series continuing to reintegrate itself into the modern scene, it’s good news for Ibanez loyalists.

See Ibanez for more.

What is it?

For a long time, Gretsch meant rock ’n’ roll in its ’50s leathers – twang on steroids. But lately the company has broadened its offer, and one of the main tools used to do that is its Electromatic range.

The name ‘Electromatic’ derives from the first electric guitars and amps the company ever sold, back in 1939. But the name was resurrected in 1998 for a range of affordable instruments that offered an easier entry point to the brand than its premium Japanese-built models.

Another useful thing about the Electromatic range, from Gretsch’s perspective, is its malleability. Gretsch offers Electromatics with P-90s and a variety of pickups that offer a more contemporary drive than the traditional Filter’Trons.

All this helps them get the attention of guitarists who wouldn’t normally reach for a Gretsch guitar, including the increasing number of players who use baritone electrics for girthy high-gain riffs and evocative, brooding cleans.

Indeed, Gretsch now offers two baritones in the Electromatic range – an Electromatic Jet Baritone with a 755.65mm (29.75”) scale length and this double-cut CVT Baritone with its more hand-friendly 685.8mm (27”) scale.

The engine room of this CVT Baritone is a pair of Sphera Twin Six humbuckers with 12 adjustable poles, evoking Gretsch’s famous Filter’Tron humbuckers. Built around a pair of Alnico 6 magnets, the idea behind the Twin Six is to ‘bridge the tonal gap between modern Alnico 5 clarity and vintage Alnico 2 warmth’.

Featuring a solid mahogany body with bevelled edges, our review guitar is finished in a smoky Bristol Fog sunburst – the only finish option available for this model.

The body appears to be three-piece, although the dark sunburst obscures some of the top, making it hard to confirm. The 22-fret neck is made of maple, though it’s covered by black gloss paint so we’ll have to take Gretsch’s word on that. The fretboard is bound rosewood.

The CVT Baritone also sports a pair of Twin Six humbuckers – except these have Alnico 5 magnets and not Alnico 6, as found in the Premier Jet, so we might expect a more conventionally brightish, mid-forward sound here. It has a trick or two up its sleeve in terms of electronics, too.

There’s a treble bleed on the master volume so the sound doesn’t get muddy when you turn it down, plus it features a pull-push pot that engages a coil-split on the neck pickup. Meanwhile, the single tone control has a pull-push pot that operates a coil split for the bridge pickup.

Specs

• PRICE: $599 | £599 | €589
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Double cutaway solidbody baritone electric
• BODY: Solid mahogany
• NECK: Maple with painted headstock, with Performance ‘C’ profile
• SCALE LENGTH: 685.8mm (27”)
• NUT/WIDTH: GraphTech NuBone/ 40mm
• FINGERBOARD: Bound rosewood. 241.3mm (12”) radius.
• FRETS: 22 nickel silver, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Nickel-finish Adjusto-Matic bridge, three-ply black/white/black acrylic pickguard, knurled plain top metal knobs
• TUNERS: Die-cast sealed
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 55mm
• ELECTRICS: Two Twin Six humbuckers. Master volume with treble-bleed, push/pull for coil splitting neck pickup, master tone with push/pull for coil splitting bridge pickup. Treble bleed circuit.
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.8/8.4
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Bristol Fog (as reviewed)
• CONTACT: Gretsch

Build quality, usability and sounds

The CVT Baritone’s world is brooding, low chords, and melodies with drama and grandeur.

You can’t play all your old, familiar clichés – there are no bluesy bends on the stiff strings of a baritone – so you have to ‘say something’ and take the melody somewhere. It feels like a guitar for writers, rather than noodlers, and it’s all the more satisfying for it.

Reverb, delay and drive all pair powerfully with the CVT – though we found ourselves using the coil-splits more often than the full humbucker sounds for added clarity.

The action is comfortable and that shorter scale means it’s not a struggle to reach or fret notes. It’s a really intriguing and rather addictive experience, bridging the gap between bass and guitar.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

Guitar World verdict: The Baritone is a truly intriguing proposition – for under $600 it does something quite special: it opens up a new sound-world, new paths of expression for the uninitiated. And it does so comfortably, effectively and affordably.

Hands-on videos

Guitarist

Gretsch

• Best baritone guitars 2025: pick up the slack with these long scale guitars
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

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

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

We decided to take a closer look at five of the most celebrated Telecasters (actually, one is an Esquire) played by guitarists we’ve loved and lost, and figure out where those instruments are now. Today, we look at Roy Buchanan’s 1953 Fender Telecaster, nicknamed “Nancy”.

The enigmatic and highly influential blues-rock guitarist Roy Buchanan inspired hundreds of players to pick up Telecasters during the ’70s, including Danny Gatton and even Jeff Beck, who returned to the Tele in 1974, after favoring Les Pauls and Strats for nearly eight years, to record his tribute to Buchanan, Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers.

Buchanan owned a variety of early ’50s black-guard Telecasters during this period, but he was best known for a 1953 model nicknamed “Nancy” (serial number 2324) that appeared on most of his Polydor and Atlantic album covers.

Guitarists who managed to track down an early ’50s Tele often wondered why their instruments never matched the sharp, biting treble, voice-like, crying midrange, and subdued bass, of Buchanan’s signature tone.

The secret wasn’t any special effects, a particular amp, or studio trickery, but rather a very simple quirk or flaw. At some point, perhaps even before Buchanan acquired the Tele in the late ’60s while attending barber school, a winding in the bridge pickup became broken.

Although the pickup’s resistance didn’t register on an ohm meter, it still operated normally, albeit with a distinctive tonal character that mystified pickup designers for years (not unlike the humbuckers in Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein and 5150 guitars).

Buchanan had a few other tricks up his sleeve that guitarists quickly caught on to. The guitarist often placed a penny underneath the center saddle of the Tele’s three-saddle bridge, which raised its height without extending the screws excessively.

Many players feel that extending the saddle screws too far can make the tone thinner and affect sustain, as the string vibrations don’t transfer as well when the screws aren’t embedded fully in the saddle.

At some point, Buchanan drilled a hole through the headstock, but this was done only so he could hang it from a protruding nail on the wall (similar to the practice of many Spanish flamenco guitar luthiers) and not for any tone or performance reasons.

According to Seymour Duncan, the wiring in the “Nancy” Tele was 100 percent stock, providing the era-correct bridge, neck, and neck dark/bass settings. A .1µF capacitor in series with the output performs like a high-pass filter to roll off some of the bass frequencies.

Although the volume and tone pots were allegedly stock, they had the short on/off throw of linear taper pots, which made it easier for Buchanan to perform his signature volume and tone control swells.

Buchanan toured and gigged with “Nancy” up until the early Eighties, when the value of vintage Teles soared. Worried that someone would steal his increasingly valuable ax and needing a sizable influx of cash to support himself, Buchanan sold it.

His ’53 Tele circulated among a few vintage-guitar shops and buyers over the years until collector Mac Yasuda purchased it in the ’90s. Since then, Yasuda has loaned it to occasional exhibits at the Fullerton Museum Center’s Leo Fender Gallery in Southern California.

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

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

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

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

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

PRS Dany Villareal Astryx Limited Edition

Dany Villareal of The Warning’s first-ever signature guitar is something a little special – and one for the PRS collectors out there, with the Maryland high-end electric guitar brand only making 200 of them.

Still, you will have little trouble picking out the the Astryx on the wall of your local guitar store. Its Ocaso (Sunset) finish is a purple-red-orange-amber burst of color, like a toucan’s beak digging into a packet of Takis Fuego.

Fundamentally, it’s a Custom 24, so you have the DMO (“Dynamic Musical Open”) humbuckers, the Gen III tremolo unit, the mahogany and figured maple build, Pattern Thin mahogany neck and 25” scale – and the PRS Phase III tuners.

But the Astryx’s 24-fret fingerboard is ebony, not rosewood, and those don’t look like bird inlays to us.

Villareal says it feels like an extension of her body.

“Ever since I tried my first PRS guitar, it’s been an inseparable relationship. With PRS, I feel powerful and confident – and that’s a feeling that once you find, you don’t want to let go of,” she says. “It has such a beautiful sustain, which I really like.

“The neck also feels so comfortable, and it’s not that heavy. As the only guitar player in the band, I love how my PRS takes up a lot of space sonically. It did wonders for our three-piece band.”

Each instrument comes with a signed backplate and a thought in the back of our minds that the higher-uppers at PRS Guitars should send an email to their colleagues at Cor-Tek, in Indonesia, to float the idea of an SE version sometime in the near future. That finish – bright, yes – is a keeper.

Friedman Jose 20 head and combo

If you consider that a Marshall amp modded by the late great amp guru Jose Arredondo is what most tonehounds would consider a holy grail proposition – and good luck finding one on the used market – then what can we say about the Jose 20 Series from Friedman Amplification?

Dave Friedman, in collaboration with Marisol Arredondo, Jose’s daughter, has just put that tone inside a 20-watt all-tube head and a combo amp, too. Now, some might hold out for his 100-watt Arredondo tribute amp. But these are more compact, much more affordable, and for most players, more amp than you could ever need.

Hot-rodded Marshall-style sounds are its stock in trade, and there are all kinds of little features to get that sound.

Arredondo helped start the arms race for more gain, and these Jose 20 amps offer a 3-way gain styling switch, a Plexi/Drive switch for a “true additional gain stage,” a Fat switch for adding low-end oomph, and the channels are internally bridged with dual volume controls for each to mix and match those Bright and Normal channel voicings.

There’s a master volume, series effects loop, and, it promises the same dynamics and super-juicy harmonic overdrive sound as the original amps that had the likes of George Lynch, Mick Mars, James Hetfield, Steve Vai and more seeking out this maverick guru’s services.

Sleep Token's blockbuster signature collab with Jackson and Charvel

Sleep Token’s first-ever signature collaboration did not disappoint, and certainly not if you were looking for something completely different from a metal guitar – or your taste in five-string bass guitars has grown, shall we say, exotic.

Jackson and guitarist IV dreamt up a novel take on the baritone guitar, an octave-down 30” scale behemoth single cut. Guitar World’s review of the Pro Plus Series Signature Sleep Token IV Monarkh SC is overwhelmingly positive.

There are aspects of this design that are quite stunning, and daring, too. It’s very much 21st-century metal guitar – EverTune bridge, multi-voiced Fishman pickups, and a pale moon ebony fingerboard that looks like it was carved from some ancient tree from the prelapsarian era. It might put your bass player out of a job, too.

But not if your bassist’s name is III. Maybe this is why the the Charvel Sleep Token III Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Bass V is such a gnarly affair – with the multi-voiced Fishmans, powerful active EQ, a 34.4” to 35” multi-scale design and so on. It’s a whole lotta modern bass.

The aesthetics might be a bit much for some players, but for Sleep Token fans, for players seeking out a state-of-the-art high-performance platform for low-end audio adventurism, this is where it's at.

ALSO LAUNCHED THIS WEEK

Neural DSP CorOS 4.1.0 update for Quad Cortex and Quad Cortex Mini

This is the way of it now. Some of our biggest gear releases come via update, downloadable over wi-fi, and this week Neural DSP delivered big-style for its Quad Cortex and Quad Cortex Mini users, bringing more Virtual Devices to the party, expanding plugin compatibility and transforming workflow.

The new Device Presets feature could be a game-changer for QC players putting together tones. And it's a free update.

For more: Neural DSP

Harley Benton SC-Special Hybrid

These $195 single-cuts are quite possibly the coolest beginner electric guitars on the market. Plain-color tops, glued-in necks, the P-90/humbucker pickup configuration and rosewood fingerboards. Super-budget rock 'n' roll machines.

For more: Harley Benton

Hotone Pulze Jr.

Is it possible to get more amp for $300 than with the Hotone Pulze Jr.? That's what we've been asking ourselves ever since they dropped. You'll find all mod cons here – amp models, effects, Bluetooth and of course AI.

What Hotone has done is just gone full AI, offering AI-powered tone creation and track separation. Could be a great practice option.

For more: Hotone

EMG Tom Morello

Tom Morello and the active pickup specialist EMG have teamed up for a signature pickup set plucked straight from his "Arm the Homeless" guitar, which means an 85 humbucker at the bridge, and the EMG H single-coil pickup at the neck. And for all you long-time EMG fans, note that these have the old-school logo.

For more: EMG Pickups

Gibson Victory Baritone

Gibson’s first baritone guitar in over a decade comes strapped with an all-new pickup, the ELEV8 humbucker. These are an Alnico VIII design. Can you believe that? (Alnico has had more instalments than the Friday the 13th franchise).

These are a fascinating proposition – proof positive that the Victory has finally arrived as a mainstay of the lineup?

For more: Gibson

Fender George Harrison Bass VI

The Electric VI has always been an enigma. Setting aside the taxonomical quandary of whether to call it a guitar or a bass, the spec itself, and where this offset design sits in Fender history makes it a fascinating instrument, so difficult to pigeonhole.

This meticulous Custom Shop replica of George Harrison’s 1967 model adds layers to that story. It’s a stunning instrument, and, wowzers! It is expensive, too. But watch the demo video above for some great Fender trivia, and one great-sounding guitar – sorry, bass… Bass guitar. Whatever.

For more: Fender

Marshall 60th Anniversary Hendrix Collection

Marshall continues its 60th Anniversary Hendrix celebrations by adding a special edition Studio Vintage JMH half-stack to the collection, refreshing it in cosmic purple-and-black swirl, with a purple LED power lamp FTW, and that "third eye" badge is pretty cool too. If the hand-wired anniversary Hendrix Plexi was Too Much Amp, this 20-watter, switchable to five, might just be the ticket.

For more: Marshall

JHS Pedals Andy Timmons

JHS Pedals shrinks down the Andy Timmons signature amp-in-a-box drive pedal into a smaller housing but still keeps the same tones you know and love. Our heaving pedalboards thank you, Josh Scott. Keep up the good work, sir!

For more: JHS Pedal

Ernie Ball introduces three new string gauges – meet Silky Slinky, Nova Slinky and Titan Slinky

Sometimes options can be a pain in the backside. Restaurant menus need not be so long that you could read Ulysses in the time it takes to get to the sides. Movies, music, TV... streaming is a hellscape.

But with electric guitar strings it’s different. Even in our age of abundance we still find ourselves mixing and matching sets, which is why the good folks at Ernie Ball keep on expanding the Slinky series with more gauge combinations, launching the new Silky Slinky (9.5-48), Nova Slinky (11-54) and Titan Slinky (11-56).

For more: Ernie Ball

Gibson has continued to make moves in the extended range market by releasing its first baritone guitar in a decade.

Back at NAMM, the company teased it would be exploring heavier territory when it confirmed seven-strings and baritones were on the cards. More recently, it surprise-launched the Gibson Les Paul Long Scale. Now, it’s continued that momentum with the Victory Baritone.

It becomes Gibson’s first production-run baritone since the early 2010s, when it had the SG Baritone, Explorer Baritone and Les Paul Studio Baritone on its books. There was also Buckethead’s cult classic signature model, which was available around 2011.

Since then, it’s been all quiet on the extended range front. But with the rising popularity of these models, Gibson is clearly keen to get in on the action.

Tuned B to B, this new model has a 28” scale length and offers a mahogany body with updated Victory contours. There’s also a mahogany neck with a rounded profile, a compound-radius ebony fingerboard, and 24 medium jumbo frets.

The Explorer-style headstock is fitted with a Graph Tech nut and Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners, while the body is equipped with the classic Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece.

Sharing the spotlight with the extended scale length are Gibson’s new ELEV8 humbuckers. Newly developed for the Victory Baritone, they are said to be tailored for down-tuned riffing to retain a tight low-end and impressive note separation.

They have alnico 8 magnets and custom-gauge wiring, and are Gibson’s take on the modern heavy pickup. Both have push-pull controls for coil-splitting and inner/outer coil selection.

This becomes the latest addition to the Victory line since Gibson revived the oft-forgotten cult 1980s model in 2024. The range also includes a Floyd Rose version.

The Victory Baritone is available now in British Racing Green and Graphite Metallic for $2,499.

Visit Gibson for more.

What is it?

Despite never showing his face or speaking publicly, Sleep Token’s IV is amongst the most searched metal guitarists of the past few years. The Roman numeral-ordered quartet is arguably the biggest band in metal right now, so it was only a matter of time before IV got a signature guitar. The Jackson Pro Plus Series Signature Sleep Token IV Monarkh SC is the resultant offering, and if the popularity of the band is anything to go by, it could end up being one of the most popular metal guitars ever made.

With the band hell-bent on maintaining anonymity, details of his sound were scarce until a few years ago, when Sleep Token’s guitar tech revealed all the gory details. IV’s signature model comes from the lineage of that Jackson guitars Custom Shop Monarkh, which certainly turned my head when it was announced back in late 2023. That was an 8-string guitar, though, whereas this is a Bass IV.

There are likely some players who will be disappointed this isn’t the same 8-string IV has been wielding on tour for the past few years, but this guitar isn’t as far away from that as it looks at first glance. Both carry a 30-inch scale length, featuring a girthy .084 low E. The Monarkh archtop single-cut body is the same, along with that distinctive ‘Pale Moon’ ebony fretboard. Both models also feature luminlay side dots and an EverTune bridge for stability on the low strings.

Dual Fishman Fluence Open Core Classic humbuckers are a less modern choice than you might expect, being Fishman’s more affordable Fluence with a more vintage-voiced tone. It’s got a single push-pull volume knob which accesses the additional voices on the Fishman, and a classic 3-way toggle selector.

The fretboard has a compound radius, moving from 12 to 16 inches as you get nearer the body. It features 22 jumbo, stainless steel frets with pearloid teardrop inlays, topped by a composite phenolic nut with a 42.86mm nut width. Atop the neck is the 3x3 headstock with a set of Jackson locking tuners.

Specs

• Launch price: $2,299 | £1,949 | €2,299
• Made: Korea
• Type: Bass VI
• Body: Mahogany with maple cap and quilt maple veneer
• Neck: 3-piece caramelized maple, set-neck
• Fingerboard: Pale moon ebony, dot inlays, 12" to 16" compound radius (304.8mm to 406.4mm)
• Scale length: 30" (762mm)
• Nut/width: Phenolic, 42.86mm (1.6875")
• Frets: 22, jumbo, stainless steel
• Hardware: Jackson sealed die-cast locking tuners, EverTune F6 model with custom saddles
• String spacing at bridge: 50.5mm
• Electrics: Fishman Fluence Open Core COC-BB1 (bridge), Fishman Fluence Open Core COC-NB1 (neck), 3-position toggle switch, volume (push/pull)
• Weight: 7.9lbs/3.6kg
• Left-handed options: N/A
• Finishes: Transparent Black Burst only
• Cases: Jackson gig bag included
• Contact: Jackson

Guitar World video demo

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

I'm disappointed with the guitar case the IV Monarkh comes in. Eagerly opening the box, I'm expecting a signature model of such an image-focused band might contain some unique easter eggs or details on its case, but alas, it’s just a standard Jackson gig bag. It doesn’t fit the guitar very well, and considering the cost, I’d have expected at least one of those semi-hard foam cases like the Christian Andreu Rhoads came in.

The guitar itself looks phenomenal. It’s a real stunner with the dark, quilted maple top, but that Pale Moon ebony fretboard is the star of the show. It’s a unique color combination, looking like an almost white maple with near-black ebony streaks across it. The look is natural, from the Diospyros malabarica species often called black and white ebony, and its use means no two fretboards of this model will be the same.

The sharp-eyed will note there’s no Sleep Token logo at the 12th fret, as we see on IV’s Custom Shop 8-string, which again is a little disappointing. Perhaps the cost of the fretboard outweighed that of adding in the additional work to spec a custom inlay of such complexity. For super fans this might be a loss, but for those who just want a drop-tuned metal guitar, it could absolutely be a plus that there’s no obvious ST branding on it, apart from the ‘IV’ on the headstock.

Inspecting the guitar closely, I can find no obvious issues with the build, nor the aesthetic. Everything feels robustly applied, and it's an exquisitely finished instrument. There's a belly cut on the back of the body, as well as a slight carve on the cutaway to aid upper fret access.

One odd choice is that there’s an unsightly block of black gloss that partially covers the neck from the heel. Perhaps done to cover up the neck joint, it’s not on the Custom Shop model and feels a little odd terminating diagonally across the maple neck just shy of the 15th fret.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Sitting down to play, my first impression is that it’s impressively playable considering the huge scale and behemoth string gauge (D’Addario® EXL156 Bass VI Nickel Plated Steel .024-.084). All the strings are wound for this monstrous set, yet I find the string tension to be relatively low. I can fret barre chords on it, and bending the strings is absolutely achievable once you set the EverTune to the correct mode.

It’s not super shreddable, purely because of the thickness of the strings. With a bit of practice, I can let rip on it a bit, and adapting my right-hand technique for things like sweeps is possible, but it feels weird initially. This is where those prog metal players might have preferred an 8-string versus the Bass VI we have here.

The body is quite small, and with the huge scale, I find it a little awkward to play sitting down at my desk. The upper frets feel quite far away, and I find myself stretching to reach them while balancing the guitar on my right leg. I’m 5’ 9”, distinctly average height, so if you’re smaller than me, you’ll definitely want to get this on a guitar strap for more comfortable playing.

I find my hands getting tired at the end of a few playing sessions due to the monster size, especially when trying to play more technical metal. It’s absolutely gigantic in feel, and it’s been a while since I last used an extended-range guitar. There’s a definitive adoption phase needed when switching from a normal-scale guitar to this instrument, so be prepared for some warming up before your hands and arms adjust.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

As IV is a Quad Cortex user, it makes sense to test it with some of the Neural DSP plugin suites. While there’s not much info on exactly what amp models IV is using, I opt to use Gojira X and Nolly X, both of which are designed for modern metal tones. But from my initial playing using one of my own presets, I find there’s a lot of work needed to tame that low E string.

It’s very unruly out of the box, so I start with a high-pass filter on the way in to help tame the low end. Next I need to mess with the amp controls, particularly the resonance control on the 5150-inspired amp sim. It’s still a bit much, though, so my last adjustment is to lower the bass side of the humbucker a touch. It helps a lot, and I’m able to get a much tighter, modern metal tone out of it.

If you like heavy music, then this guitar can do it all with the right adjustments. Switching to the neck position is perfect for sludgy doom power chords, whereas the bridge position is ideal if you want to play djent-style tones or more prog metal-inspired stuff. My final fix is to pinch a Gruv Gear fret wrap from my own baritone and place it behind the nut to tame some of the extraneous noise.

It’s still not quite as precise for heavy tones as some players might want, and that’s because the pickups themselves are more vintage-voiced. Jackson has opted to fit the Fishman Fluence Open Core Classic pickups rather than the Modern ones, which makes it more versatile overall, but may not satisfy those looking for that super compressed, modern djent tone.

Due to this, it sounds surprisingly good played clean. I'm really impressed at how well-behaved it is through lower-gain presets and totally clean ones. It turns standard chord progressions into really ominous-sounding passages, and I wonder if part of the thinking here with the Classic Fluence was to prioritize flexibility over the often more sterile-sounding modern-voiced Fishmans. It can certainly handle those softer, cleaner Sleep Token moments.

Each pickup has two voices: a modern active and modern passive. Pulling the volume knob up activates the passive mode, which sounds a bit more open and has a more treble response versus the very midrangey active mode. It's not a huge difference between the two, and the single-coil voice isn't wired in on this guitar, which would've given it a more definitive secondary voice.

Verdict

Despite being the signature guitar for Sleep Token, I think the Jackson IV Monarkh can handle pretty much any modern metal duty. Whether you want Periphery-style djent tones or Loathe-type super-drop tuning, it’s a stable platform for chugging once you make a few adjustments to your signal chain and the guitar itself.

It's surprised me with its versatility, too. It’s not quite as good for low-tuned clean stuff as a baritone, but it’s playable enough to do open and barre chords, and you can get some lovely sounds out of it with the clean channel of your amp alongside some reverb and delay.

For a certain portion of the metal community, however, the gauge of the strings will make it too tough for some playing styles. If you're looking for a shred guitar that's tuned super low, this doesn't provide the slinky playability of an 8- or 7-string guitar, so prog metal aficionados may want to look elsewhere.

Guitar World verdict: If you love drop-tuned metal and want to focus on riffs rather than shredding, the Jackson Signature Sleep Token IV Monarkh is a great alternative to a 7- or 8-string guitar. The pickup choice is flexible enough for djent riffs as it is cowboy chords, and the looks are distinctive enough to make it appealing to ST fans without putting off the wider metal community, who perhaps aren’t so obsessive about the band.

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Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Jackson and Charvel

Jackson and Charvel have unveiled a historic Sleep Token launch, honoring one of the biggest progressive metal bands of the modern era with two signature guitars.

Few bands have experienced the meteoric rise that Sleep Token has over the past few years. Their arena-filling, melting-pot sound – along with their mysterious anonymity – has given them legend status in as little as three albums.

They are one of the most talked about bands of our generation, widely credited for redefining contemporary heavy music with a sound that traverses cinematic pop, sultry hip-hop, crushing djent, smooth R&B, and everything in between.

Such success has also given rise to theories over everything from their obscured identities to the guitar gear they use.

For guitarist IV and bassist III, Jackson and Charvel guitars have been the beating heart of their arsenal. Now, the brands have taken that partnership to the next level, unveiling signature models for both.

IV has been partial to Jackson baritones – namely, a custom shop, EverTune-equipped 30” single-cut that has been used on stage and in studio.

That has been the source material for IV’s first-ever Jackson signature guitar, the Pro Plus Series Monarkh SC. Built for the guitarist’s whole-octave-down tuning, it’s one of the most mesmerizing extended range instruments you will come across.

The bound mahogany body has a quilt maple veneer, with a matching three-a-side headstock. The three-piece caramelized maple set neck flashes a compound radius pale moon ebony fingerboard, with 22 stainless steel frets, Luminlay side dots and pearloid teardrop inlays to boot.

And then there’s the monstrous 30” scale length and six-string setup, which puts the Monarkh on the upper end of the baritone spectrum and sits it alongside the Fender Bass VI guitar/bass hybrid.

Tone-wise, there’s a pair of direct-mount Fishman Fluence Open Core Classic humbuckers, designed to deliver every nuance of IV’s Sleep Token tone. The EverTune 6 bridge has custom saddles, and promises “unprecedented clarity and tuning stability in the lower registers”.

In other words, it’s everything you could hope for from a Sleep Token signature, and rather unlike anything Jackson has on its books.

III, meanwhile, has a new Charvel Pro-Mod San Dimas Bass V, inspired by his go-to Charvel. It features a poplar body, caramelized maple neck and fingerboard, and a 12”-16” compound radius fingerboard. There’s also a 34.4” to 35.5” multi-scale design, and custom red Fishman Fluence soap bar pickups.

Those pickups have three voices accessible via a toggle switch, and can be fine-tuned through the two-band EQ.

“Sleep Token’s sonic and visual identity is so distinctive, and the Jackson and Charvel signature models are a huge part of shaping that sound,” said Justin Norvell, Chief Product Officer, Fender Guitars.

“We’re always looking for artists who redefine what a signature instrument can be, and Sleep Token does exactly that.”

The Monarkh is available for $2,199, while the Bass V is up for $1,599.

Head over to Jackson and Charvel to find out more.

PRS has partnered with The Warning’s Dany Villarreal to release the riff rock guitar hero’s first signature guitar.

The Astryx is a stunning limited-edition take on the Custom 24 model, with a firm-first finish and custom inlays that replace the firm’s usual Bird fretboard markers.

The Warning, a power trio comprising three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, have become one of the hottest new rock bands in recent years, with quirky alternate tunings a key ingredient in their success.

With their fifth album, Everything’s Falling, releasing this Friday (August 28), the Astryx’s arrival couldn’t be more timely.

PRS guitars, including an SE Mark Holcomb SVN, have been a valuable part of Villarreal’s arsenal, but this guitar has taken things down a more personal road.

First, there is that unique color fade finish, which is stunning. Then, there are Solecito (little sun) dot inlays across the fretboard, and a standout sun logo on the 12th fret that nods to her Mexican heritage.

Villarreal’s signature also appears on the truss rod wheel, and each of the 200 guitars that will be made will feature an autographed backplate.

Beneath the glitz, though, the Custom 24 formula remains unchanged. The mahogany body has a maple top, with a 25” scale length and Pattern Thin neck.

Hardware includes a no-nonsense PRS Patented Gen III Tremolo, while a pair of PRS’s DMO (Dynamic, Music, Open) humbuckers also feature. The Alnico 2 pickups debuted at NAMM 2025 and have since appeared across the PRS Core range.

Spec’d by Paul Reed Smith and the PRS New Products Engineering team, they arrived after extensive research into “coveted vintage pickup models and advancements in signal analysis”. Tonally, they’re voiced to sound wide open, with note definition and a vocal-like character.

“One of the most important things for me in a guitar is that it feels like an extension of my body and that I can trust it and just do my thing,” says Villareal. “Ever since I tried my first PRS guitar, it’s been an inseparable relationship. With PRS, I feel powerful and confident – and that’s a feeling that once you find, you don’t want to let go of.

“As the only guitar player in the band,” she adds, “I love how my PRS takes up a lot of space sonically. It does wonders for our three-piece band.”

Only 200 units will be available, so fans wanting a slice of the action better act fast.

See PRS for more.

In an interview with Guitar World last year, Villarreal broke down her unique alternate tuning approach.

Epiphone and Halestorm leader Lzzy Hale have joined forces yet again, unveiling Hale’s seventh signature model (between Epiphone and its parent/sibling companies, Gibson and Kramer).

It’s an Explorer, adorned with an unmissable Black Diamond Holographic finish of the variety that first appeared on the rocker’s signature Kramer Voyager.

This is beefier than that guitar, however, and has more to chew on than just its loud finish. It’s got a few vintage touches, and strands of Les Paul DNA, perhaps inspired by Hale’s Les Paul-slinging past.

Let’s start with the obvious, though. Not only is the Explorer adorned with that Black Diamond Holographic look, there’s a mirror pickguard. Hale jokes in a new interview that she uses it as a “weapon to blind not only my sound guy, but anybody that isn’t paying attention in the show.”

There’s some Les Paul Custom influence here and there – a SlimTaper ’60s C profile neck and an ebony fretboard with pearloid block inlays. There’s more old-school cool, as well – your standard hockey stick headstock, with a raised Epiphone nickel logo a la early Flying Vs.

More modern are the guitar’s pair of Epiphone Probucker Ignite pickups, controllable via a slim setup of a volume for each pickup, a master tone, and a 3-way toggle switch.

Thankfully, we don’t need to speculate idly on what sounds they produce – Guitar World Senior Deals Writer and resident Gibson/Epiphone expert Daryl Robertson has already taken the guitar for a spin, and had this to say: “They’re a key part of what gives this Explorer its modern edge, and they sound pretty great.

“​For me, I’d say these pickups are definitely voiced with modern players in mind. They have a bit more output than your average PAF, but they aren’t so loud that they lose all definition.”

Thanks, Daryl! Overall, he gave the guitar a rare five-out-of-five stars – not too shabby! You can read his full review of the Epiphone Lzzy Hale Explorer Custom – which is available now for $999 – here.

For more info on the guitar, visit Epiphone.

What is it?

As the frontwoman, guitar slinger, and songwriting powerhouse behind Halestorm, Lzzy Hale has already been honored with six signature models to date, ranging from Gibson, Epiphone, and even Kramer, and now with the new Explorer Custom, that makes seven models to bear her name.

Lzzy is a long-time fan of this angular Gibson, so it’s no surprise this new model is an Explorer, but what makes this one different is the appointments. Built around the attributes of a Les Paul Custom, the mahogany Explorer body features elegant 7-ply binding, the mahogany neck is the standard SlimTaper 60s C profile and is equipped with an ebony fretboard that sports those classic pearloid block inlays.

Of course, the neck is crowned with the iconic hockey stick headstock, but this one showcases a raised Epiphone nickel logo, not unlike what you’d find on a vintage ‘58 Flying V. Rounding out the peghead is a Graph Tech nut and Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners.

The model is dressed in a striking gloss Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle finish, just like Lzzy’s Kramer Voyager, and is paired with a single-ply mirror pickguard.

Tonally, we have a pair of Epiphone Probucker Ignite pickups, with no fancy electronics here, just a volume for each pickup, a master tone, and, of course, a 3-way toggle switch. The model comes bundled with an Epiphone hardshell case that bears Hale’s signature.

Specs

• Launch price: $999 | £859 | €999
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Mahogany
• Neck: SlimTaper 60s C
• Fingerboard: Ebony
• Scale length: 24.75"/628.65 mm
• Frets: 22, Medium jumbo
• Hardware: LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge, LockTone Stop Bar tailpiece, Grover Rotomatic tuners, Silver Speed knobs
• Electrics: Pickups, controls, switching
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle
• Cases: Epiphone Lzzy Hale hardcase
• Contact: Epiphone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

I’ve never had an electric guitar arrive for review that’s had such a big reaction from others in the house. My wife kept coming into my office just to look at it. Simply put, this guitar looks stunning. Yes, it looks good in photos, but in person you can really see how all of those little flecks of glitter catch the light and morph through greens, silvers, and purples – and that black stinger on the rear of the headstock is the icing on the cake.

Thankfully, the finish has been very well applied, with nothing to spoil its striking appearance. I like the black edge to the binding too. It’s the perfect understated frame for that pretty wild finish.

While we’re on the aesthetics, the raised Epiphone logo is a bold choice, and I think this guitar pulls it off. It reminds me of the models produced by Gibson Custom and master artisan Leo Scala, and the very limited '58 Addiction Explorers. It’s a cool look, and I’d love to see this appear on more instruments going forward.

Moving on to the fretwork, I’m happy to see a clutch of well-polished and very well-installed medium jumbo frets. They are well cut and trimmed, with no sharp ends or high spots. They also look good against a jet-black ebony board that is perfectly dark and without streaks or marks.

The only issue I could find from a build point of view was with the control knobs. The silver speed knobs look great, but have been poorly installed from the factory. Not only were they a little crooked on the pots, but they also pop straight off with very little force.

It’s an easy enough fix if you have two minutes spare and a small screwdriver to open up the post of the pot, but at this price point, it’s the sort of thing you’d hope wouldn’t make it through quality control. I’ll chalk this one up to bad luck, though, and I hope the rest are all fine, as otherwise it’s a neat and tidy build overall.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

Explorers can feel a little unwieldy and just straight up awkward if you’re not used to them. I happen to be a die-hard fan of Explorers, so I’m more than familiar with their quirks.

It’s fair to say weight distribution can be an issue with this style of guitar, but this one’s 8lbs are surprisingly balanced, whether I’m playing seated or standing with a strap. It stays put and sits rock-solid. The cutaway and deep lower bout give easy access to the upper frets, so stretching for those high notes is no problem at all.

Billed as a SlimTaper ‘60s neck profile, this guitar actually feels pretty substantial, and a little thicker than I was expecting – but in a good way. Once I pick it up, the neck fills my hand just right, striking a nice balance between not too thin and not too thick. More rounded than my own Gibson Explorer, especially in the open position, but it’s very comfortable indeed.

What surprised me most, though, is how effortless it is to move up and down the fretboard. The setup from the factory was spot-on, with a low action that measured just about 1.5mm at the 12th fret on the low E. There’s no fighting the strings here. ​

I guess it’s to be expected with whose name is on the headstock, but it feels great for riffing – and that’s thanks to the nicely rounded neck. Chording is comfortable, and the slightly chunkier neck profile gives you something to really hold onto, especially when you’re laying into heavy power chords.

But that’s not to say it’s not capable of some speed too. Thanks to the low action, you get a slinky feel that makes fast runs and bends easy, but without any annoying fret buzz. All in, I think this is a fabulous feeling instrument.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

Epiphone’s new ProBucker Ignite humbuckers are at the heart of this guitar’s sound. I recently reviewed the excellent Epiphone RD Futura Custom, which featured these pickups, and I’m glad to see them used here as well. They’re a key part of what gives this Explorer its modern edge, and they sound pretty great.

​For me, I’d say these pickups are definitely voiced with modern players in mind. They have a bit more output than your average PAF, but they aren’t so loud that they lose all definition.

For testing, I opted for a Positive Grid Spark Live modeling amp and matching cab. Now, from what I believe, Lzzy is a fan of a dimed Marshall JCM800 – aren’t we all? – so that’s exactly what I dial in with a touch of verb for some space.

As expected, the tone here is tight and focused, with a slightly hollowed-out mid-range that pairs really well with a healthy dose of distortion. As I noted the last time I used these pickups, the bottom end has been excellently shaped. There’s no flabby low-end with these pups, meaning I can de-tune without worry that things will get too muddy.

Unlike the Futura series, there is no extra switching with the Custom Explorer. No coil-splits or out-of-phase switch, which feels like a shame. I understand that Hale may not use anything like that herself, preferring to keep this simple, but this switching worked well on the Futura, and I think it would work equally as well here – it would certainly make the model more versatile.

That said, this is a fantastic-sounding guitar, and one that perfectly nails those Halestorm high-gain tones and a whole lot more.

Verdict

There’s no denying this is a bold guitar, and that’s definitely in keeping with Hales's other signature guitars. From her Falcon-esque white and gold Explorer, her Firebird-headed Explorerbird, and her Kramer Voyager, she just doesn’t do subtlety, and I, for one, am here for it. In fact, this may be my favorite of her signature models so far.

It isn’t all about looks either; this guitar more than delivers on playability and sound, too. My review model arrived perfectly playable straight out of the box, and as I’ve noted before, the Ignite pickups from Epiphone may be up there with the best the company has produced.