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Hello, and 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.
How will history look upon this week in gear? Who could possibly say. This has not been one of those off-calendar NAMM weeks in which everything from everyone drops all at once – but it might well be remembered as the week in which one of the most anticipated metal guitars in recent memory has been released.
And as ever, please remember to vote for your favorite new release in the poll below...
Jackson Pro Series Wes Borland King V
Wes Borland’s first-ever signature guitar with Jackson presents me with something of a conundrum.
Nu-metal, aesthetically, is very much a leave it or leave it proposition for me, and yet this King V, stripped down to a single-pickup platform, just one Seymour Duncan SH-8 Invader at the bridge position, finished in black with white bevels, and with its uniquely reversed and upside down headstock design, is screaming ‘buy me now”.
There is nothing overly Limp Bizkit about Borland's King V. It's just a super-cool metal guitar. It won’t leave your tap water tasting of hot dogs. It won’t make your Hershey’s bar taste of starfish. The signature details are writ large only in its design, in that Borland, an iconoclast in stagewear, tones and – clearly – electric guitars, has spec’d this up to be like a left-handed King V he grabbed from the Custom Shop and liked so much he just converted it to a right-hander.
Hence, the “upside-down” Jackson logo. Too cool. And there's more...
You also have the recessed Floyd 1500 Series vibrato, and all mod cons that come with the Indonesian-made Pro Series Jackson, i.e. the Luminlay side-dot markers, the 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard – we’ve got ebony here – and locking strap pins etc.
And the King V remains a redoubtable option for all things high-gain, death metal, black metal, thrash metal, doom, and clearly also nu-metal. That neck-through build – a speedy, graphite-reinforced maple neck sandwiched by poplar wings – is always superlative. And that Invader at the bridge is one gnarly pickup.
$1,299? Not bad, but a look at the Jackson website suggests all stock has sold out already. But you gotta have faith – more stock will be on the way.
DOD x Morley Wah-ocTo-Fuzz
Two giants of US stompbox manufacturing, one whacked-out pedal, the Wah-ocTo-Fuzz is hard to say out loud, easy to fall in love with, given that it packs fuzz, octave and wah into one housing.
The circuits under the hood, and therefore the sounds, are all classic designs, so the sounds will be familiar to us. Only DOD/Morley is allowing us to stack them, combine them, use them individually, in a pedal that does a lot of work for the real estate it will take up on your pedalboard.
The octave down effect is delivered by the DOD FX35 Octoplus circuit from the mid ‘80s, while Morley’s Power Wah and Power Fuzz circuits do the rest. At first blush, those controls look a bit cramped on there but we’ll see how that transpires when we get ahold of one.
One thing we can be sure of is that, once you dial it in, this could be a particularly useful pedal, for Jimi Hendrix-style freakouts, for any musical purpose you can think of that requires a trinity of classic effects sounds. It's the wah pedal that is also a fuzz pedal and then it's an octave pedal, too. WTF, indeed.
Korn Indigo Sludge Preamp + Fuzz
So you were one of the lucky ones who bagged yourself Wes Borland King V, why not make this week an All in the Family type deal and place an order for a Korn pedal that replicated the band’s formative guitar tones of their first two albums?
The Indigo Ranch Sludge Preamp + Fuzz combines one high-gain preamp with a fuzz section, and there’s a switchable octave pedal too. Just grab yourself an Ibanez seven-string guitar and you’re good to go. These are built to James ‘Munky’ Shaffer’s exacting specifications, and are being sold exclusively via the Korn website, priced $249. They’re only making 500 of ‘em, and they ship in November.
Harley Benton ST Modern Plus HSS and ST Modern HH
Harley Benton’s timing is immaculate. Just when everyone and their dog is talking about the fashionable S-style, the German budget gear brand has gone and expanded its ST range with some seriously hot-rodded models at typically ridiculous prices.
The return of the ST Modern HH is great news for any young player or beginner looking for a cheap, shreddable runaround. For $185, you’ll get some pure humbucker beef. There’s a no-fuss hardtail. The metallic finishes are awesome (Root Beer Metallic FTW), and they come with roasted maple necks as standard. Sculpted heels let you access the dusty end of the fingerboard, and said ‘board is very a la mode, with a 12” to 16” compound radius offering a platform for technically adroit playing.
The ST Modern Plus range sees the Dark Purple Sparkle model given a right-handed makeover. It’s a little more upscale, and yet still offers change from 500 bucks. For your dough you get one cool finish, quality hardware, a roasted flame maple neck and Harley Benton’s VR-Nitro pickups.
Futone 50 / 60 switch
This week has been a good week for the modding community with Futone Guitars debuting the 50/60 switch, which is for all intents and purposes a time machine. Well, kind of. It’s a pro-quality mod that lets you switch between vintage ‘50s style wiring and the more modern ‘60s style wiring we see today.
And finally, it gives players the chance to A/B them on the one guitar, on the fly, without reaching for a soldering iron. Both wiring systems sound the same when your volume and tone knobs are on 10. But once you roll back the volume and tone controls the differences come to light. In short, ‘50s style wiring keeps your highs even as you back off the volume, and the tone and volume are interactive.
There’s a little treble roll-off as you turn down the volume on the ‘60s wiring. That said, with latter, you can adjust your tone pot and it won’t affect your guitar’s output.
“Go from warmer interactive vintage taper to tighter modern articulation…in seconds,” says Futone. Find out more at Futone Guitars.
Seymour DuncanRyan “Fluff” Bruce FLF Model Humbucker
Ryan ‘Fluff’ Bruce’s latest signature pickup will be familiar to anyone who has taken his custom Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay, and of particular interest to anyone who likes the idea of combining a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker and a Black Winter in one insane pickup.
That is what this is. Designed around an Alnico IV bar magnet, it pairs one coil of the JB with one of the Black Winter, and gives it the blackout finish with matte black bobbins and black nickel studs/screws. Tasting notes? Oh go on. “A throaty midrange and percussive bite nail aggressive drop-tuned rhythms, while a smooth, buttery top end keeps leads expressive and musical.”
Lovely. Serve at room temperature. Pair with high-gain. Find out more at Seymour Duncan.
IK Multimedia Royal 45 Legends
Has IK Multimedia just unveiled the ultimate classic rock guitar plugin? It’s quite possible. The latest in its superlative Tonex series collects the tones from a trio of “museum-grade” ‘60s Marshall amps, two of which belong to Capitol Records, and the third from “one of Europe’s most respected vintage Marshall collections”.
So, yes, for that JTM45 vibe that you can keep safely on your computer – your own digital ace in the whole for recording – it does not get much better than this.
As ever, IK Multimedia applied its proprietary Tonex V2 AI Machine Modeling tech to the job of capturing these amps, using super high-end studio gear, and of course these are collected with a range of vintage cabinet and speaker simulations.
For all your Eric Clapton rock and blues guitar tone needs, for those “dad rock but make digital” moments, head over to IK Multimedia.
Blackstar's Tone3000 capture pack
One of the things that most excited us about the Blackstar Beam Mini was the prospect of accessing all those user-created Neural Amp Models (NAM), free from the Tone 3000 online community. Blackstar is the first amp company to partner with the platform, offering hundreds of thousands of amp captures natively on the Beam Mini, and so maybe it makes perfect sense that it has created some NAM amp captures itself and is offering the collection for free via Tone 3000.
There are 14 tones in all, including some of the backline stars from the Blackstar catalog; the St. James 100, the Series One 100 MKII, the TV-10 AH and the Artisan 100. And we are very pleased to see the HT-Dual Overdrive pedal is in the collection too.
“These aren't third-party interpretations. They're the real thing, captured by the people who designed and built the hardware. From the boutique warmth of the Artisan handwired series to the high-gain muscle of the Series One, every capture is a direct line to the sound in your head.
“These are some of the most prestigious valve amplifiers we’ve ever made and many players may never have the opportunity to plug into them,” says Alex Gee, Blackstar’s head of products. “Working with Tone 3000, we’ve captured each one faithfully and put them in the hands of anyone who wants to try them.”
And you can get these now via Tone 3000.
