Happy Friday, people, it’s time for your Guitar World round-up of all the fresh gear that has dropped this week, and it has been quite the week – NAMM without the breakfasts.
Of course, there are new electric guitars to gawk at, some all traditional and straight out of Kalamazoo with a Golden Era vibe, some coming off the shop floor already missing a headstock and presenting us with a six-string that challenges our preconceived notions of what a high-performance instrument should look like – should feel like too.
Vintage/modern is a theme of this week, like the Marshall preamp module that sits inside the Synergy modular guitar amp eco-system. We’ve got a trio of fuzz boxes that put a modern spin on age-old designs, and we would be lying if we said we wouldn’t draft all three onto the ‘board without a second thought.
And then we have Positive Grid ushering in a new era for amp modeling software, enlisting GenAI as your guitar tech or engineer. Radical.
There are radical signature models from Ibanez and Manson Guitar Works. But then another signature acoustic guitar from Martin that was made for one of today’s most adventurous players, and yet has all the appointments you might find from a lost classic from the archives.
There is a lot more besides, with groundbreaking pitch-shifting tech from Boss, Harley Benton doing Harley Benton things again, plus ENGL, PRS, EarthQuaker Devices, Heritage, Way Huge, and Electro-Harmonix... Let's do this...
Boss XS-100 and XS-1 Poly Shifter
Boss has been working on its next-gen series of pitch shifter pedals for some time now. Rumor has it the XS-100, with its integrated expression pedal, its awesome range – four octaves in either direction – has been in development for at least two years.
But these algorithms don’t write themselves – at least not yet they don’t.
Boss wanted to get them just right. And with the XS-100 Poly Shifter, and its little Compact Series sibling, which is similarly powered but assumes the size of your regular Boss pedal, it might just have anted up and delivered – finally – a pitch shifting pedal to rival the DigiTech Whammy.
This XS-100 Poly Shifter has a lot of tricks. You can adjust the speed of each direction of the treadle’s travel, hook up another expression pedal, hook it up to external switches, MIDI, make your electric guitar sound like one of the bikes in Tron – and maybe in doing so, as you put your foot down, and go inside the game, inside the pedal, you might see a Whammy in the rear-view mirror. Time will tell but these look awesome.
And don’t discount the XS-1. Add an expression pedal, it has a three-octave range in either direction, and can retune your guitar in seconds via the rotary dial. Where did you put that capo? Oh, no worries, it’s right there at your feet. And your capo can’t make your guitar sound so low that only whales and dolphins can hear it.
For more: Boss
PRS S2 Reclaimed
PRS Guitars was never just going to do a couple of special editions, maybe launch something new, and then that’d be that for its 40th trip around the sun. No, way. Instead it’s gone big: monthly launches, limited edition models coming left, right, and center.
None, however, quite have the same sort of back story and speak of the brand’s relationship with tone wood than the PRS S2 Special Semi-Hollow Reclaimed.
This run is limited to just 700 instruments worldwide, and each one is unique, featuring tops made from peroba rosa that were recovered from abandoned houses in Brazil, guaribu preto from derelict farmhouses in Brazil, where its tensile strength for support beam structures alerted PRS wood-buyer, Michael Reid, to its potential for a fingerboard, and, most dramatically of all, a body made from Cuban mahogany felled when Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico in 2017.
Reid recalls a PRS fan telling him about all these trees being turned into mulch. Couldn’t they be put to better use?
“After initial pleasantries and introductions, I asked Carlos about the hurricane recovery efforts on the island and at some point during our conversation, Carlos made a comment about the enormous quantities of mahogany trees that had blown down during the hurricane that were now being turned into mulch at FEMA sites around the island,” says Reid, speaking to the PRS Guitars blog.
“Shortly thereafter we planned a visit to Puerto Rico and made a connection with a local saw mill that had been salvaging ‘Maria wood.’ The mill has been cutting high quality Cuban mahogany neck blanks for us ever since.”
These are stunning. You have the super-versatile humbucker/Narrowfield/humbucker pickup configuration, mini-toggles, a dozen sounds, a top-tier build, and a guitar made from wood that has lived.
For more: PRS Guitars
Ibanez BER10 Bernth
You can read our full story on Bernth's state-of-the-art Ibanez here but the TL:DR skinny on this upscale S-style is that it has, like, signature multi-voiced Fishman humbuckers offering nine core sounds. There's top-tier hardware with Gotoh locking tuners and a tremolo system with plenty of play in it.
The return of the reverse sharkfin inlays is, well, too cool. And the whole ethos behind it is that the BER10 is a guitar that makes you play better. And unless you are an electric guitar string, who doesn't enjoy the sensation of jumbo stainless steel frets, right?
For more: Ibanez
EHX Bender Royale
Who hear can read the words Bender Royale and not think of Sam Jackson as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction rattling on about the “Royale with cheese”?
But, to paraphrase the sharp-dressed gangster, this is one tasty fuzz, a Tone Bender with all kinds of modern refinements, such as the Blend control to preserve not articulation from your guitar’s signal, Bass, and Treble controls, plus a Fat switch, and a Bias dial for making it all sputtery and weird sounding.
All this for $149. No one does it better.
For more: Electro-Harmonix
Strandberg N2
“The Boden N2 Original is quite unlike anything I've ever played, and I’d encourage every guitarist, at some point in their playing life, to give this a go. I’d wager some of even the most ardent traditionalists will be won over.”
Not my words, Carol, the words of Guitar World magazine, whose own Matt Owen (who ordinarily handles this column but is away), was pressed to write after being bowled over, mind blown, by the latest update to Strandberg’s future-forward headless guitar.
Just read his review. It says it all. We don’t give up those Platinum Awards easily.
For more: Strandberg
Synergy Marshall JMP Preamp Module
It feels like people have been trying to get the modular guitar amp to take off for some time but finally Synergy seems to have cracked the code, and is expanding its lineup with some choice additions – not least today’s announcement, that it is selling PLEXI tones by the pound.
Well, we’re not sure how much Synergy’s JMP preamp weighs but it is basically a $399 dual-channel, tube-driven Marshall amp you can stick into your SYN series head (or table or rack-mounted module dock, we won’t judge) and live the dream.
Given how some retailers bundle these preamps with a Synergy amp platform, they begin to look like the modular amp a financially canny proposition for those who crave tones from a quote/unquote real amp.
For more: Marshall Amps
ENGL Ravager
Once upon a time I would lie back and think of ENGL and memories of the Ritchie Blackmore E650 would come into view, flashbacks to shaking the windows and flooring in a friend’s tiny apartment block as we blasted ham-fisted Mastodon riffs through it, quaking at its power.
But these days it is the ENGL lunchbox amp that first springs to mind, and how the tube amp specialist has managed to translate the high-decibel, high-wattage performance to compact 20-watters without losing its sense of its self. And, it has to be said, embracing digital in the process, equipping amps such as this new Ravager with onboard IR support, and a headphones output should you need it.
This makes it a superb recording amp, and an altogether more friendly proposition for anyone living in a small apartment who wants to spend the wee small hours drinking whiskey, eating oatcakes, and playing heavy metal and still be able to look their neighbor in the eye the following morning.
It’s compact. Just a hair over 6kg. There are a pair of EL84s under the hood, two ECC83/12AX7s in the preamp, and at $879, this could be money well-spent for small gigs, recording, and ENGL promises glassy cleans and abundant filth from its dual-channel setup.
For more: ENGL
Harley Benton CLD-65 and CLO-65 Series
The CLO-65 and CLG-65, orchestra and dreadnought-sized cutaway acoustic electric guitars respectively, expand Harley Benton’s range for the aspiring singer-songwriter. Like, everything on these guitars is designed for the performing musician.
The HB-03 acoustic guitar pickup and preamp system will have you ready for open-mic night. The armrest will give you a bit of bougie comfort that you wouldn’t expect for circa 350 bucks.
The builds themselves seem fairly authoritative for the price point. You have a choice of solid sapele or solid spruce tops, solid sapele on the back and sides as standard. There’s a splurge of abalone in the rosette. High-ratio 18:1 open gear tuners, again, are not what you should expect at this price but we get ‘em.
For more: Harley Benton
Harley Benton ST-80FR MN and ST-80FR MN HH
As per all Harley Benton guitars, the price will give you pause, a double-take, especially when you look at the figured pattern in that maple neck, and when you consider the build.
The ST-80FR MN and ST-80FR MN HH, single and dual-humbucker versions of the same S-style, are ‘80s-inspired shred machines with budget-friendly ticket prices that have a certain air of the Charvel or prototypical Suhr about them.
In other words, this high-performance electric might be cheap but it has got class, and if it were your dining partner, say, it wouldn’t horrify you by eating peas off its knife, and probably has interesting opinions on 18th-century Spanish literature, the reformist zeal of Leandro Fernández de Moratín, and so forth, but also about how to nail the Brown Sound for 500 bucks or less.
For more: Harley Benton
Positive Grid BIAS X
Seeing as these enormo-brains are no closer to solving the alignment problem of generative AI, we are all going to have to make hay before the technology overwhelms us and sends us to our doom.
What better way to to make hay and enjoy our last days than to spend them asking ChatGPT for competition-grade recipes for Texas chili, or to beseech Positive Grid’s new guitar plugin suite, BIAS X, to engineer us electric guitar tones just by a prompt.
Yup, text-to-tone, mofos. Or, you can even play BIAS X a song, or even isolated guitar, and ask it to design a tone from that. Further refinements can me made – more bass, less compression, more cowbell et cetera – or you can sift things around manually.
There is so much to get into here. Too much to go into here. But we particularly like the fact you can run two signal chains in parallel, and all the things we liked – and didn’t like – can be found in Guitar World’s review of the Positive Grid BIAS X.
For more: Positive Grid
Way Huge Smalls Doom Hammer
A shut-up-and-take-my-money fuzz pedal if ever there was one, the Way Huge Doom Hammer Fuzz is another peach from the workbench of Jeorge Tripps, and a pedal that once started out as a modded 1978 op-amp Big Muff that he had been working on for a band called Oranger.
Tighter bottom end, refined performance, tweaks to make it sit better live was the brief Tripps was given, and lo, it sounded pretty good.
He kept the schematic, returning to it some years later to prototype what we now have here, a three-knob fuzz that can be rolled back to give you that gnarly crunch of an overdrive pedal, but has this super-saturated fuzz to it that might give you some Siamese Dreams when consumed close to bedtime.
For more: Jim Dunlop
Manson Guitar Works OYRIX Rhythm Machine and ORYX GT Edition
Created in collaboration with Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood, and designed and made in the UK – looking like the sort of 21st-century S-style that would look at home onboard the USCSS Nostromo – these next-gen versions of the ORYX are loaded with Bare Knuckle Pickups, come with the Schaller or TonePros bridges, and ask the prospective player a question: what do you want to do with them?
After all, what you do with an instrument is the most important thing. Fundamentally, the question here is whether you want to occupy yourself with the designed-for-chug powerchord powerhouse that is the ORYX Rhythm Machine, or assume the full real estate of the spotlight for the GT – which Manson describes as a “boutique-style solo special”. Can we take both, please?
For more: Manson Guitar Works
Martin OM Mikael Åkerfeldt
Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt has had the good fortune to play a number of Martin guitars in his life, visiting the “Holy Land” of the Pennsylvanian high-end acoustic guitar brand’s museum, where he availed himself of the charms of Kurt Cobain’s 1953 D-18, aka ‘Grandpa’ and a 19th century acoustic he was almost too awed to play.
But today, he and Martin have unveiled a new signature OM acoustic, and Åkerfeldt is so taken by it he says it blows everything else out of the water.
It looks the bee’s knees. It’s exquisite, with a VTS-aged solid spruce top complemented by Guatemalan rosewood sides and a three-piece back with an East Indian rosewood wedge. The bracing is “Golden Era” scalloped Adirondack spruce, again given the Vintage Tone System treatment and arranged in the traditional X-pattern.
The ebony fingerboard is inlaid with black mother-of-pearl Roman numerals. The price is a cool $6,999 but this, limited to 74 units worldwide, looks worth every cent.
For more: Martin Guitar
Heritage Standard II H-150
Seeing these Standard II H-150 single-cuts all sitting there in formation does something to a player, especially one with a weakness for thick mahogany bodies and maple caps, fat cigars and the creak of a leather sofa, the numbing warmness of a large tumbler full of artisanal bourbon, the finer things in life, and that “something” is the loosening of the wallet and the hardening of the suspicion that some of the finest single-cuts are still being made in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
These are weight-relieved and house two newly developed Heritage Custom Shop 225 Standard humbuckers.
“Built with 42 AWG plain enamel wire for the neck position and 43 AWG poly wire for the bridge on Butyrate bobbins, paired with 2.5-inch roughcast Alnico 5 magnets, these pickups deliver a wide and expressive tonal range,” says Heritage. And if you’re thinking that these are simply a well-made pastiche from a renowned zip code, bear in mind we have modern series/parallel switching from a push/pull function on the tone pots.
For more: Heritage Guitars
EarthQuaker Devices Barrows Fuzz Attacker
The Barrows Fuzz Attacker is a small but mighty take on the über-classic Tone Bender MKII, with – PR marketing shizzle incoming… – “modern refinements that would make even the most discerning vintage purist weep tears of harmonic joy”.
I don’t know what Jamie Stillman has ‘em smoking up in the EQD workshop but the last time I recall weeping tears of harmonic joy, it did not come from my pedalboard. Anyhoo…
Listening to the demo video of this, well, well, well, there is something magic about the number three. De La Soul knew it. Stillman knows it. And this circuit has a trio of matched germanium transistors working together like Porthos, Athos and Aramis – or Crosby, Stills and Nash when the going was good.
Just two knobs, no messing. The phase-corrected and buffered output will help you find a home for it in your signal chain. The boosted output will give your amp something to cry about. Yeah, that’s where the big, wet “tears of harmonic joy” will be flowing from. Wear rubber-soled shoes. Stand well back. Crank it.
For more: EarthQuaker Devices
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