Norse Guitar Feeds

Imagine if you told teenage Heidi Curtis, as she learnt Florence & The Machine’s Dog Days Are Over on guitar, that she’d be announcing tour dates with Florence a few hours before having coffee with Guitar.com.

Having already played with Ben Howard and Paolo Nutini, Curtis’ list of co-signs is already undeniably stacked – despite having just three released songs to her name. Across the hour we spend with her in Newcastle city centre, we learn how her story is six years in the making.

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“I was doing mic nights at Lola Jeans for £40 a week, I was buzzing!” she recalls, running us through jobs at Newcastle United and a Mexican restaurant. “I stayed at home, I honed my craft… my mam and dad are really supportive. It’s good to see artists put out music [quickly], but I also think it can be dangerous, the change of pace in how music’s released. It takes so long to actually perfect your live performance. It’s a craft that has to be chipped away at.”

After multiple iterations, Curtis’ live band has been solidified for three years, a constant while her songwriting took many shapes and sizes in her background life in North Shields. Raised on piano, which she learnt mostly by ear, she was soon ‘borrowing’ her older brother’s Telecaster and amassing guitars of her own, notably a 1978 Gibson Dove acoustic, which reminded her of the “white-winged dove” from Stevie Nicks’ Edge Of Seventeen.

Disengaged with the Ableton-heavy music production course at Newcastle College, Curtis was instead drawn to the “privacy” of playing guitar in her room, the playing style of Johnny Marr, and the purity of live production with her bandmates. “It’s a puzzle – and I love puzzles,” she smiles. “I never have that tyrannical leadership… I want my band to have the same status as session musicians in the 70s: very revered and honoured. I want to preserve that, because their musicianship is incredible.”

Bide Your Time

In November, the mystical, heart-throbbing riff of her debut single Undone revealed what she’d been building. Next came the magical duality of Siren – a modern-day successor to Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain – before the raw downstrums of What Am I Missing? announced her debut EP, Hollow Heart (due 29 May). She has two albums’ worth of music ready to go. While Curtis tugs at folk-rock, indie and grittier rock threads, it’s evident that the guitar is at the centre of her identity.

“I can’t believe how much love that Undone riff got!” she beams. “Originally, it had this massive Tube Screamer on it, and it was a bit ridiculous. It’s the rumble and hit of the strings, everything about the guitar gives so much life to a track. I’ve been able to manipulate guitars to work with me, via going down an alternate tuning route. When I came back to standard, I knew what my style was. Trying to find your own style in standard is tricky.”

That case study, surrounding DADF#BE and DADDAD tunings, exemplifies the crux of Heidi’s songwriting journey. Before she could share her music with the world, she had reach a level of self-assurance in her artistry, taking no shortcuts. While many artists wrestle with that in the public eye to feed the music and content machine, Heidi was determined to do it her way.

She was afforded that space after her talent was spotted by Owain Davies, who, in tandem with her older brother Tom, co-manages Heidi alongside Ben Howard and Sam Fender. Hailing from the same town, Curtis has watched on in real time as Fender shot to fame, now arguably the biggest British guitar act of the decade.

“Being around him, and that level of quality, made me dedicated to stick with this process,” she says, pointing out how he also started releasing at 24, having written since the age of 16. “I’m in a really privileged position in that regard.”

Trusting the journey, Curtis learned how to channel her gut instinct and write with a degree of self-assurance. “You’ve got to meditate on the practice of not allowing others’ opinions to get involved,” she says. “Have you ever played Zelda? You’ve got to tame these horses. I see songs as these spirit-like pieces. You’ve got to really tame [them], ‘No, this is going this way.’”

Particularly after an active year of gigging in 2022, the self-inflicted pressure to ready her music did weigh on Curtis, “but it made me dig so much deeper,” she continues. “When my nana passed away. I would have never reached that point of emotional depth if I hadn’t [felt that] genuine heartbreak. You’ve got to dig for those [moments], to be honest with your emotions. It’s definitely made me understand and honour the time and the effort.”

One Step Back And Three Steps Forward

In 2023, What Am I Missing? catalysed the wave of songs we hear on Hollow Heart – and beyond. Frustrated by writer’s block, she turned to her guitar, on holiday in Cyprus, and allowed the truth of feelings to come to the surface, instead of aimlessly seeking out answers. You can feel the urgency of her predicament in the track, a headspace she had to re-enter when it came to recording.

“It’s exactly the same as acting,” she suggests. “Every song is a lesson. If you don’t confront those issues, it blocks the other ideas from being able to migrate. As an artist, you’ve got to be on the move… mentally. Writer’s block is a sign that you’ve stood here for too long. The patch of sun has moved, and you’re still standing there. I now know whenever I get writer’s block, I’m not confronting something properly.”

Although Curtis is finally emerging into the public spotlight, behind the scenes, she’s always been on the move. Her taste has changed – from Bob Dylan to Girls Aloud to Metallica and Hendrix – and so has her live show, a muscle she’s kept strengthening, “like going to the gym”. Now, there is room for ambition to enter the fray, as the fruits of her labour finally come to life, proving that the long, old-fashioned march was the right course of action. While she’s watched from the sidelines, the success of guitar acts like Fender, Fontaines D.C. and Wolf Alice “gives [her] so much faith” in her methods.

“Now, people will sniff around and I’ll think, ‘You were at my gig four years ago and had no interest,’” she laughs. “It takes a bit longer to get people knowing you, but when the moment happens – and I believe it will – a really solid fanbase that are buying tickets and invest in your art [is important]. I see artists with thousands of followers that are struggling to sell out an academy show. If the music is good enough, and your artistry’s good, it’s gonna be fine.”

Hollow Heart is out 29 May via AWAL

The post Heidi Curtis’ destiny is intertwined with guitar music: “It’s a craft that has to be chipped away at” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Don’t be fooled. Yes, José González’s mellifluous folk-pop, powered almost exclusively by Spanish acoustic guitars, sounds like it must have been a breeze to make. But if it were, a lot more of it would exist. As things stand, the acclaimed Swedish singer, songwriter, and guitarist (a child of Argentinian parents who emigrated to Scandinavia in the 1970s) has managed to put out just five solo albums in the past 23 years. Because his work is truly a solo production—González plays, sings, and records all the parts either at his home in Gothenburg or in a private studio space nearby—he has nobody to blame for this but himself. And as he explains during a recent Zoom interview with Premier Guitar, a key issue is that he starts the creative process for each of his albums intending to attain a noble ideal, of which he inevitably and invariably falls short.

“The first ambition always is to do everything, the whole album, with one guitar and one voice,” González says. “But then I’ll have a song that I feel will still be good enough for the album [that way] but I’ll just try adding one more guitar, or some vocals, or some clapping, or some looping. It’s cheating,” he acknowledges, “but you know, I’m old enough to not care that much about it. So that becomes part of the new ambition, which is to make it all sound like it was done with just one guitar and one vocal.”

A bemused grin flashes from behind the 47-year-old González’s dark, scraggly beard. “But then I run into another problem,” he continues, “which is that if the album sounds like it was done with just one guitar and one vocal, it’s a bit too homogeneous and boring for many people. So that’s when I start pushing each song in different directions, adding echoes and reverbs, changing the style of guitar playing. When I put my producer’s hat on, then it’s a different ambition: to make the album more interesting.”

​José González’s Gear

Guitars

• Estevé Adalid 11 classical acoustic
• Estevé 9CB classical acoustic (one with spruce top and one with cedar top)
• Loriente Clarita classical acoustic
• Córdoba Rodriguez classical acoustic
• Alhambra classical acoustic

Effects

• Boss OC-3 Super Octave
• Boss GE-7 Equalizer
• Roland RE-201 Space Echo
• Ableton Live software (for live looping)

Strings & Capo

• D’Addario Pro Arté EJ46 Silverplated Wound/Nylon Core
• Shubb C2 capo

Pickups, Mics, & DI

• Fishman Prefix Pro Blend pickups
• Neumann U 67 and SM 69 microphones
• Radial Engineering Firefly tube preamp/DI

Recording Software

• Logic Pro
• Universal Audio plugins, including A-Type Multiband Dynamic Enhancer, EP-34 Tape Echo and Precision De-Esser

Does González foresee a time when he might actually achieve his first ambition of making a literal solo album? “That could happen,” he says. “I don’t know, there’s many things I want to do with life. If I look into my future, when the kids [an eight-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son] are older and they move from home, I might play every day and all of a sudden have 10 songs that are amazing and just put them out on an album like that. But then again, I might just be happy on my porch by the water. And I might not have an audience that wants to see this old dude.”

One has a hard time imagining the latter situation ever coming to pass if González keeps making music that matches the consistent quality of his latest release, Against the Dying of the Light. Like its four predecessors, the new album sounds simple at first, quiet alt-folk spotlighting González’s gentle, reedy voice and mellow nylon-string plucking. But it reveals greater complexity the more closely you listen: in the tricky rhythms that course through each song, derived from West African, Caribbean, and Brazilian sources; in the harmonic richness of the chord progressions; and in the advanced philosophical concepts referenced in the lyrics.

“The first ambition always is to do everything, the whole album, with one guitar and one voice.”

Indeed, Against the Dying… could legitimately be called a concept album—not in the rock-opera sense, but in the more basic definition of a linked group of songs that explore kindred ideas. The album opens with “A Perfect Storm,” which presents a problem: Human consciousness and well-being are threatened by artificial intelligence, algorithms, memes, and other human creations. The implications of that problem are examined more deeply as the album progresses, until 13 songs later, we arrive not at a solution but at an awareness with which a solution might be found—an awareness of our own humanity. The closing song, “Joy,” concludes with these words: “As we cognify everything/We’re still conscious souls/Who can’t help but sing.”

Each song on Against the Dying… flows into the next one naturally, like the evolution of an argument or the telling of a tale. Some of this is the product of post-facto track sequencing, but sometimes González wrote the songs with their order in mind from the start. For example, the lightly skipping “For Every Dusk” is followed by the more introspective “Sheet” because the songs were originally written as two sections of the same composition. The former track, with three subtly interlocking guitar parts, is also the one that strays farthest from its author’s opening play-it-all-on-a-single-instrument mission.

According to González, “For Every Dusk” was composed in a manner similar to the way he writes most of his songs, but ended up sounding different due to certain performance realities. “I always start with guitar,” he says, “and then I start humming. And then I start writing, and when I start writing I do the words and the melodies, partly on their own and partly by sitting with the guitar. That’s the part where I give up sometimes, because I raise the bar a bit too high for myself. With some songs, I’m not able to play that well and sing at the same time. I could sort of lower the bar for the guitar part, but usually I record the guitar separate. ‘For Every Dusk’ was one of those songs. I basically did full takes and felt like they had some highlights, but none of them were good enough, even if I tried to edit them. It sounded way better if I just put two of the takes together [running simultaneously]. Then it sounds like two guitarists hanging out. The guitars are almost playing the same thing, but you get these variations that are nice, and they also sound similar to the music from Mali, where usually a couple of people with guitars are playing.”

“It became obvious that people were liking my acoustic guitar and vocals. That was what I was doing best.”

González has been a fan of Malian music for the past two decades; guitarist Ali Farka Touré and kora player Ballaké Sissoko were his gateway drugs. “Later, I got to hang out with [fellow guitarist] Sidi Touré and Bombino [Omara Moctar] from Niger. It was a pleasure to see how they play, and it’s just fun to jam with that sort of music. And I recently sang on a track for [Saharan “desert blues” band] Tinariwen’s new album—I’m really happy with how that turned out.”

Another highlight of Against the Dying…, “Ay Querida,” features an ear-grabbing alternate tuning. With a nod to legends Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake, the guitarist cranks the low E string of his Estevé Adalid 11 down, way down, to B. That, however, is the song’s only deviation from standard. González employs several similar tunings, all of which share a minimum of retuned strings. “I never retune the A, D, B or high E,” he points out. “It’s only the low E and the G that go down, or up—there are many songs that are E-A-D-A, for example. But it’s fun to have those downtuned songs. The first one that became popular was ‘Far Away,’ that was used in a video game [Red Dead Redemption]. And since then, I have a couple of songs that are in that tuning. They’re really fun to play live, because you have a P.A. with subwoofers, and when you tune down, all of a sudden you’re not playing guitar, you’re playing bass.”

Besides the transglobal rhythms and the altered tunings, the most distinctive elements of González’s guitar style are what he plays (nylon-string acoustics) and how (always with a combination of the flesh and nails on his right-hand fingers, never a pick). That’s the way he played when he first took up the instrument at age 13; he even studied classical guitar for a while in his youth. “I went to a private teacher here in Gothenburg,” he remembers, “and I asked him, ‘Could you teach me jazz guitar?’ He told me, ‘No, I can’t, but I can teach you classical guitar.’ So I started learning all these Spanish classical tunes, like [Francisco Tárrega’s] ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra,’ [Isaac Albéniz’s] ‘Asturias,’ some Bach even. I went to see my teacher once a month for a couple of years, but it took too much time to learn. So I let that go, but I learned a lot during those years.”

It wasn’t long before González had made a significant stylistic break from his early classical studies. By age 15, he was playing bass in the first of three hardcore punk bands that occupied his spare time for most of the ’90s, eventually switching over to electric guitar. “The hardcore songs weren’t bad,” he says now, “but they weren’t that good, either. And we didn’t have much success with them.” His next band, formed in 1998, was Junip, a trio that reunited him with the classical acoustic in a new indie-rock context: “It became obvious during those years that people were liking my acoustic guitar and vocals. That was what I was doing best.”

“I always start with guitar, and then I start humming. And then I start writing.”

Five years into Junip’s career, González released a solo seven-inch single, which unexpectedly hit No. 4 on the Swedish pop chart. The band proceeded to go on the backburner (though it reconvened for albums in 2010 and 2013), and González dropped his university studies—he’d been working toward a PhD in biochemistry—to focus on music full-time. “All of a sudden, I was famous in Sweden,” he recalls.

And the nylon-string guitar had played a major role in making this happen. “At that point it became a thing for me to not switch to steel-string, even though that would have meant louder sound when we were playing live,” González says. “My sound engineers were trying to get me to play steel-string, but to me that sounded like what everyone else was doing. I wanted to do what I liked, and in a way that wasn’t new either, because in the ’60s and ’70s there were Spanish guitars everywhere, in the folk traditions and the protest singers and the music that I listened to when I was young.”

That vintage sound has informed not only González’s writing and playing but also his approach to recording. Although he works strictly in the digital domain with Logic Pro, he’ll add analog-style ambience to his tracks whenever he deems it necessary—which is most of the time. “I’ll record through a tube amplifier, so I get that distortion that you can’t really take away later,” he says. “After that, I’ll add some saturation in different steps, depending on the type of song, and some tape emulator. And then, one of my favorite things to do is to add noise. The Universal Audio A-Type plugin has a noise generator that’s pretty round in its sound. I’ve got some nice mics—on the new album, I used Neumann’s SM 69 stereo mic a lot—but I don’t want things to be too bright or hi-fi, so I try to make it sound more old-school.”

Add every hour spent looking for just the right kind and amount of tape-style distortion to every hour spent struggling with the relative complexity of guitar arrangements, and you begin to understand why it generally takes five-plus years for a José González album to be completed. And of course, those aren’t the only things that can eat up a lot of time. “I’ll tell my label, ‘The album’s almost done, I have all the demos so I’m gonna start recording soon,’” González says. “So they start booking tours and setting up interviews. But then, you know, life catches on. Someone in the family gets sick, and I’m not rehearsing guitar as much, and then I need another month, or two more months. But eventually,” he concludes with a shrug, “I get to a point where I feel like this is good enough.”

He’s being humble here. For most listeners, José González’s “good enough” is way more than that.

They may be one of the biggest rock bands in the worlds, but Foo Fighters still operate and make music “like a band that plays in a fucking garage”, according to Dave Grohl.

Speaking to Radio X’s John Kennedy about the band’s latest album Your Favorite Toy, the frontman explains that despite decades of success, the group’s creative process hasn’t strayed far from their roots.

• READ MORE: Dave Grohl says playing Nirvana songs felt “forbidden” after Kurt Cobain’s death: “For a long time I was afraid to play the opening riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit”

“The way we function as a band… I know that all of this is much different than it was when we were young and playing in bands in a garage, but we still function like a band that plays in a fucking garage,” he says. “It’s the same thing! It’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a riff,’ and we show it to everybody.”

“Maybe people would imagine that we’re a lot more professional than we actually are,” Grohl adds, “but really the way that we function… it’s really similar to [Dave’s previous punk band] Scream.”

Describing Your Favorite Toy as a good example of how this works, Grohl says he typically brings in rough guitar parts and lets the track evolve organically with the rest of the band.

“Usually I’ll put down a rhythm guitar and then maybe a sort of melodic bit above that, almost for reference,” he explains. “Like, I’ll double the rhythm guitar, and then I’ll have some sort of melodic line that goes above it. But the funny thing is that nobody knows what I’m going to sing until I sing it.”

“So, I don’t go to the band and say, ‘Hey guys, listen to this song idea.’ I don’t do that. We record the instrumental and nobody’s really sure what the vocal melody is going to be. And there have been times where everyone lays down their tracks, and then I’ll be inspired by what they do, and change the vocal melody from things that they’ve done. So it’s always kind of a bit of a mystery.”

Asked how the band manages to balance its three-guitarist lineup, Grohl says, “As far as guitarists in the band… I’m sort of like a rhythm guitar player. Chris [Shiflett] is very much a lead guitar player and Pat [Smear]… Most bands, like the guitar players have a pedal that they step on for distortion. We just have Pat.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Grohl also shared a behind-the-scenes detail about the band’s latest album title. He originally wanted to call it For Good, inspired by a lyric in Your Favorite Toy – until another release threw a wrench in his plans.

“I wanted to call the record For Good, because that song, Your Favorite Toy, at first I called it For Good. In that song, Your Favorite Toy, it says, ‘Get back, hear that boy, someone threw away your favorite toy for good.’”

“And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a good not only title for the song, but also for the album.’ They could have more than a few meanings, but I’m like, ‘That’s kind of nice – For Good.’ And then that Wicked movie came out, and it’s called Wicked: For Good. And I was so pissed! So, then I changed the title of the song, and then it just became the title of the album.”

The post Dave Grohl says Foo Fighters still make music “like a band that plays in a f**king garage” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Randy Bachman has praised the genius of Paul Reed Smith, hailing the PRS founder as a “legend” of modern guitar making and placing him alongside the likes of Leo Fender, Les Paul and Orville Gibson.

Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Bachman recalls meeting Smith at a Christmas party hosted by producer Kevin Shirley last year, where the conversation quickly turned from mutual admiration to Smith’s impact on the guitar industry.

• READ MORE: “It just seemed Looney Tunes to me”: Paul Reed Smith dismisses the notion that you “can’t play solos” on a 7.25”-radius fretboard

“I was in Nashville at a Christmas party for Kevin Shirley, the producer,” says the Bachman–Turner Overdrive guitarist. “He’s a really good friend of mine, and he produced my Heavy Blues album [2015]. At his party, I got to meet Paul Reed Smith, who says to me, ‘You’re a legend.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? You’re a legend. You’re the new Leo Fender. You’re the new Les Paul. You’re the new Orville Gibson.’”

“Two legends get together, what are you going to do?” Bachman quips.

While the exchange reflected the kind of mutual respect you’d expect between two guitar heavyweights, Bachman says that the meeting also led into something more practical.

With ongoing health issues making heavier instruments increasingly difficult to manage, he has been actively searching for a lighter guitar setup.

“I said to Paul, ‘I’m looking for a lighter guitar, even lighter than my ’57, because I’ve got a back issue,’” says Bachman. “I had my left knee replaced. I’m a cancer survivor. I had four cancers, and I can hardly stand up. I’m learning to walk and balance again.

“Standing on one foot and operating your pedals is like tap-dancing, and I can’t do that yet. I’m still building up. I work out every day in a pool with weights. And he said, ‘I’ve got a new guitar. It’ll be under 4 lbs.’ So I got his number. I’m typing him a letter right now.”

The post Randy Bachman calls Paul Reed Smith a “legend” of modern guitar making: “I said, ‘You’re the new Leo Fender. You’re the new Les Paul. You’re the new Orville Gibson’” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Finneas has argued that singing live is “infinitely harder” than playing the guitar on stage.

Speaking on a recent episode of On Film…With Kevin McCarthy, the producer, musician, and singer-songwriter breaks down how he views live performance dynamics when he’s on stage with his sister and longtime collaborator Billie Eilish.

• READ MORE: “The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp

“I always think of my role as the guy holding the trampoline while the acrobat is flipping,” says Finneas. “So it’s like they’re doing the hard thing, but I could kill them.”

Expanding on that comparison, particularly in contexts like Saturday Night Live, where the pair often perform together, he adds, “If Billie and I are playing SNL or something, I’m like ‘Billie’s doing the hard part’. Billie is singing, which is just infinitely harder than strumming a guitar.”

“If I fuck up my guitar part, she’s in the open ocean,” he explains. “And that to me is like, I am locked in. I’m right there.”

“The other part is like if Billie wants to take an extra beat because she’s feeling the significance of a line… that would be such a failure if I’m like [hits imaginary keyboard] and I step on the beat.”

Finneas traces this sensitivity back to his early musical training, noting that he “grew up singing in choirs” where “watching the conductor” was essential.

“You better be watching the conductor,” he says. “Even if you are learning the song as you’re singing it, you better be looking up and back ‘cause they’re going to cut you off and bring you in.”

“And also that is the fun of it,” the producer continues. “but that would be so embarrassing to be like, ‘Oh my god, she was taking a pregnant pause and I blew through it ‘cause I was too relaxed or whatever.’”

Watch the full interview below.

The post Finneas on why he thinks singing live “is just infinitely harder than strumming a guitar” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$199/£199, strymon.net

Strymon, renowned purveyor of hi-tech reverb and delay pedals using advanced digital signal processing, apparently has a team known as “our analog guys”. Presumably they spend most of their time making coffee for everyone else, but every now and then they are allowed to design something. That’s the origin of the Fairfax overdrive… and on this evidence, it’s time for the digital nerds to start making their own coffee.

• READ MORE: Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante review – a dual dirt pedal that’s faster than the speed of light

In fact, the best way to appreciate this fully analog dirt machine might be to cover up the name at the bottom and pretend it’s made by some ultra-hip indie brand. Because the sounds it makes are about as far from Strymon’s usual fare as you can get.

Strymon Fairfax – what is it?

There’s a sort of reverse arms race going on in the stompbox world, with makers rifling through the archives in search of ever more old and obscure kit to recreate. In this case, the inspiration comes from the Canadian-made Garnet Amplifiers Herzog – a tube-driven preamp built in the 60s for Randy Bachman of the Guess Who. He used it on the band’s biggest hit, American Woman, and throughout his subsequent career with Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

The Herzog is, in a word, large – it’s designed to be stacked on top of an amp, not stomped on. The challenge for Strymon, then, was to capture all of its rich valve tones – without using DSP, remember – in a compact pedal. So the Fairfax has a preamp, a power amp and “an ingenious custom circuit that emulates the saturation characteristics of the output transformer”.

There’s also a real transformer – in the power supply, converting your standard adapter’s 9v into 40v – and you get controls for drive, output level and ‘sag’. This dials in extra compression and spluttery gating as the biasing of the JFETs is pushed out of whack. There’s no tone control, just a toggle switch for bright mode.

Strymon Fairfax – sounds

The sound of the Fairfax is sweet and chunky, with a gently crumbly texture. Basically it’s vanilla fudge in stompbox form. And while it’s not the first overdrive pedal to produce that kind of tone, it’s among the best of its type.

With drive at halfway and sag at minimum, you get a medium-gain crunch tone that’s pretty much uncoloured in pure EQ terms but with a ‘sticky’ feel that sets it well apart from the average transparent overdrive. There’s an element of gurgly scuzz involved, but it’s addictively pretty and responds nicely to variations in pick attack.

As you crank the drive, all the good stuff just gets bigger. It doesn’t go quite as fuzzy as, say, a Land Devices HP-2 or Hudson Broadcast (two pedals with which it has some tonal similarities), but it will do a fine impression of a small tweed combo at full volume – and adding some sag just makes it feel even more amp-like. There’s some wonderfully squishy compression available before things turn properly splatty, and it’s only towards the top of the dial that the gating effect starts to properly pinch.

The bright switch has been well judged, letting you decide whether or not to let all the high frequencies through unchecked, and I never found myself wishing for more control over the voicing of the Fairfax. You might feel differently if you’re using extra-sizzly single-coils, though.

Strymon Fairfax – should I buy it?

For me, there are two reasons to buy this pedal. The first, and most obvious, is that it’s awesome – smartly designed, unexpectedly versatile and bubbling over with musical character.

The second is that, the better the Fairfax sells, the more likely it is that Strymon’s bigwigs will let those analog specialists loose on a load of other Series A projects. The second entry, the recently announced Canoga, looks like a fairly unremarkable vintage-style fuzz; but after a debut like this, who knows what else they’re capable of?

Strymon Fairfax – alternatives

Other compact overdrive pedals with the emphasis on chunky warmth include the Supro Drive ($219/£189) and Beetronics Fatbee ($189/£199). But then again, why mess about with silly little stompboxes when Garnet Amplifiers is still going and you can order a reissue Herzog for CA$695?

The post Strymon Fairfax review – an old-school drive pedal with plenty of rough edges appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Universal Audio has unveiled the UAD Enigmatic ‘82 Overdrive Special Amp, a new native plugin designed to emulate some of the most coveted D‑style amplifiers in guitar history.

Available now for Mac and PC, the Enigmatic ‘82 Overdrive Special Amp captures the authentic D-style amp sounds favoured by legendary players like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and more.

• READ MORE: “The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp

“These are tones you associate with uniquely great players,” says UA Senior Product Manager James Santiago. “We modelled more than four different era D‑style amps, from early Santa Cruz builds to later LA studio favourites… because no two were exactly alike.”

The plugin delivers three distinct amp voicings – Rock, Jazz, and Custom – covering essential eras of the fabled Overdrive Special sound in a single package. Built on Universal Audio’s amp modeling and component-level circuit analysis, Enigmatic ‘82 aims to bring those tones into a versatile, in-the-box format for modern players and producers.

Users can mix and match power sections and tone stacks, as well as add the legendary Hot Rubber Monkey (HRM) mod, creating a D‑style amp circuit that’s uniquely theirs. The plugin also includes nine curated cab and mic setups designed for mix-ready tones, along with more than 40 presets from artists including Joey Landreth, Megan Lovell and Daniel Donato.

“Whether you favour intricate chord work or expressive lead playing, you’ll instantly find that classic ODS sound that responds to every nuance of your playing and cuts right through the mix,” says Universal Audio.

The UAD Enigmatic ‘82 is available as a native plugin, either as a standalone purchase or as part of Universal Audio’s UAD Spark subscription. The plugin is priced at $99, with a launch discount of $49 available through 25 May.

Learn more at the Universal Audio website.

The post D-style Overdrive Special tones go digital in Universal Audio’s new UAD Enigmatic ‘82 plugin appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Check out my latest Substack post!

New steel string acoustic guitars in progress, will be available for sale by the beginning of summer!

Stayed tuned for updates!

If you phone FU-Tone on a Sunday, there’s a decent chance company president Adam Reiver will be the one who picks up. Even after decades in the industry and building a global customer base, he hasn’t distanced himself from his clients—something that, in the age of AI chatbots, can still catch customers off guard.

“People will call, and they go, ‘Oh my god, is this the guy in the video? Is this Adam? I can’t believe I’m talking to you,’” he tells Premier Guitar. “And I go, ‘I can’t believe I’m talking to you!’”

That interaction captures something elemental about FU-Tone and Reiver: He’s one of us. “I'm just a guitar player like you, or some kid in Kansas, or the guy on the cover of Rolling Stone,” he says.

This connection isn’t just a customer service quirk. It reveals a philosophy at the heart of his brand. From the early days of designing the EVH D-Tuna to the present, this approach has shaped FU-Tone into a tight-knit community of dedicated musicians from all walks of life.

It also explains why so much of what Reiver builds and talks about centers on helping players take full control of their tone—not just upgrading their instruments, but understanding them.

To fully grasp how deeply this mindset is embedded, it helps to look at Reiver’s own journey as a player. His story began at a moment when guitar culture ruled the world, during a shift from traditional sounds into more experimental territory.

“It was around ’81 when I first really found the guitar,” he says. “And if you roll the clock back two or three years from there, it was basically, ‘Do you want a Strat, a Tele, or a Les Paul?’ And then off you go. I didn’t think modding and hot-rodding guitars were a thing.”

Reiver was there at ground zero to witness the shift toward customized superstrats, the rise of early custom-shop brands like Jackson and Charvel, and brand-new horizons in playing technique. Not wasting any time, he jumped in headfirst, becoming fascinated with how he could change, improve, and completely reimagine his favorite instruments.

“My first guitar was like a cheap, $200 Hondo Flying V,” he says with a touch of pride. “But by the time I was done with it, it had a Kahler in there. It had an Invader pickup in the bridge. It had a Mighty Mite triple-coil pickup in the neck. It was like, do anything you could do to just tinker and play with the guitar.”

Just about everyone who’s played electric guitar for any amount of time is familiar with that unexplainable pull to hot-rod their favorite instrument. In Reiver’s case, however, it was more than curiosity. It was a new paradigm. The guitar was not a finished product. It was a platform.

“The advent of FU-Tone was, ‘How do you make this guitar sound better?’”

While other tinkerers of his era pursued those same goals by winding pickups, building guitars, and adding wild finishes, Reiver’s curiosity found its outlet in fabrication. Thanks to his high school’s metal shop, he wasn’t modifying existing parts—he was making new ones.

“I was not a good student, except for that class,” he recalls with a laugh. “I got straight As in metal shop. I liked how you could fabricate parts from an idea in your head. Like, ‘How do we do this? How do we get this idea from here to there?’”

That experience translated directly into how he would later develop products. Even before founding Floyd Upgrades—FU-Tone’s original name—his process was simple and immediate. Draw something, build it, test it, refine it. Still, Reiver admits he’s no machinist.

“I know enough just to be dangerous, just to get myself in trouble. So I contracted with this guy who was a professional machinist. I would literally sketch something on the side of a box and say, ‘Can you make this?’ He would whip it up old-school and bring it back to my office.”

This spirit of experimentation wasn’t just limited to those early years. That same trial-and-error approach still defines FU-Tone products today. Instead of designing in isolation, Reiver works through ideas with the instrument in hand, adjusting based on feel and response. And as with his in-house machinist, he doesn’t work alone.

One of Reiver’s most celebrated “assistants” was Eddie Van Halen himself. Working in a small team alongside Eddie, he helped develop the EVH D-Tuna through a similar cycle of experimentation, providing locking-trem players access to instant drop-D riffage.

“[That process] became a melting pot,” Reiver says. “It would be one of those side-of-the-box conversations. I would say, ‘Well, maybe we should angle it a little, make this longer, make that shorter, make this, do that.’ I would put it on a guitar, and [Ed] would monkey with it, and say, ‘No, no, no. Do this. Do that.’”

Like Reiver, Van Halen used the guitar as a testing ground, emphasizing constant refinement in pursuit of maximizing tone. And their early success only signaled the start for Reiver.

“You know, the advent of FU-Tone was, ‘How do you make this guitar sound better? How can you make this sustain more? How can you make it clearer? How can you make it louder?’ That’s where it came from.”

With tone chasing now an obsession, Reiver turned his attention to a specific piece of hardware, one most players assumed Floyd Rose had already perfected: the tremolo. The way Reiver saw it, the point where the guitar strings terminate in the body was the most important piece of the tonal equation.

“I don’t care if you play rock, metal, death metal, country, or pop—you want to have a good guitar tone.”

“In the beginning, that was the biggest thing, and I started making one product, a 37 millimeter Big Block,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow! It sustains way more, it sounds better, and it’s more articulate. Okay, I’ll do this.’ I invested $880 to make a run of the blocks, and said, ‘Well, worst-case scenario is I could just give them to my friends, or, you know, sell them online.’”

In theory, the Big Block was exceedingly simple: a larger, heavier brass tremolo block designed to replace the smaller stock versions that came with most locking systems. With its increased mass, it maintained more string vibration, which translated into more sustain and articulation.

The Big Block was a hit, and soon enough, some of the world’s most notorious tone-hound guitarists were spreading the Floyd Upgrades gospel. Reiver realized that if one overlooked component could make that much of an impact, there were probably others.

Soon, he was manufacturing highly regarded double-locking tremolo replacement parts for the most popular trem models available. From titanium fine tuners to the little metal inserts found in each saddle, his theory about the effect of mass on tone proved correct, time and time again.

But while he was gaining users, not everyone was a fan of the moniker: Floyd Upgrades.

“A certain company didn’t like me using part of their name in my little company, and that’s fair enough,” Reiver acknowledges. “But the real blessing in disguise was that I became FU-Tone. And thank god I did, because I ended up going on to do so many other guitar parts and projects that have nothing to do with someone else’s brand.”

With a new name over the office door, FU-Tone was free to innovate and expand much further into the electric guitar market.

“FU-Tone encompasses a lot now,” Reiver says. “I make stop tail bridges. We make Tele parts. I make my own locking tremolos. We make guitars. We even make pickups.”

This relentless expansion is about more than just product lines. From tiny titanium (or brass or copper) saddle inserts to full guitar builds, every FU-Tone offering still reflects Reiver’s original conviction: tone isn't tied to any single component, but to how everything works together. It’s what Reiver has characterized as the “FU-Tone vein of tone.”

“I still pinch myself every day that I get to work with people I looked up to and tried to play like, and now I’m sitting in their living rooms.”

But what is that tone? Reiver explains: “FU-Tone vein of tone means lots of sustain, clarity, and articulation. It’s considering the wood and essence of your guitar, your hands and your playing, and then moving far beyond that.”

That idea shifts the conversation away from chasing specific gear and toward understanding how your instrument actually responds—where every material choice becomes another variable in the final sound. So what can you expect when you swap out your Ibanez Edge tremolo block for a brass or titanium one? What’s the tonal difference in the metals used in their Nancy Wilson-approved acoustic guitar bridge pins? Forever a gear nerd, Reiver’s always happy to explain.

“Brass is big and warm and round. When you think of brass, think of Eddie Van Halen, Warren DeMartini, or a George Lynch-type of sound. Titanium has a lot of sustain, but with a certain level of clarity to it, almost like a layer of glass, with really nice note separation. And copper I find to be very similar to brass, with more of a scooped-out midsection.”

From icons like Nuno Bettencourt and Slash to modern players like Lzzy Hale and Nita Strauss, countless A-listers have credited FU-Tone upgrades with having a meaningful impact on their signature sounds.

But FU-Tone products aren’t just for stars. They’re for all guitar players, and they’re also very DIY-friendly. Reiver swears that if you give him a few minutes and watch one of the company’s detailed how-to YouTube videos, you’ll be customizing your favorite instrument in no time. “If you’ve never done any of this, it can seem very intimidating,” he says. “But if you have the ability to change your own strings, you can do this.”

As a guitarist himself, Reiver knows firsthand how badly a trip to the local “expert” can go—which is exactly why he’s worked to democratize the process.

“I’ll get a guy who will buy some parts and take them to his local guy,” Reiver explains, “and he’ll say the same thing [I always hear]: ‘My guy said…’ And I’m thinking, ‘Here it comes!’ I’ve even gotten on a Zoom with guys and walked them through it. And by the end, they’re better than ‘their guy.’ I tell them, ‘You’ll never pay someone else to do it again [laughs].’”

Personal Zoom calls from a company president aren’t exactly standard practice in this industry. For Reiver, though, that’s the point—growth through relationships, not traditional marketing. “I have a handful of core guys that are all still dear friends to this day,” Reiver says. “But one of the guys who was there in the very beginning was Phil Collen from Def Leppard. After that, my phone would ring, and it would be some big artist, and they would say, ‘Phil has this on his guitar, and said to call you.’”

That kind of connection establishes a level of trust that can’t be manufactured. And for Reiver and the FU-Tone team, it also shapes how those relationships develop.

“These are not clients—they’re friends,” he says. “We’re at each other’s houses. We’re at each other’s events. It’s organic, and it’s real. I still pinch myself every day that I get to work with people I looked up to and tried to play like, and now I’m sitting in their living rooms.” He laughs. “But I play it totally cool.”

With an artist roster that includes Gary Holt (Exodus, Slayer) and Michael Wilton (Queensrÿche), it might be easy to assume FU-Tone is strictly for shredders. But Reiver’s products have found traction with players across genres and styles, and though he’s a rocker himself, he’s consistently surprised by the range of sounds and approaches the broader FU-Tone community brings.

“I’m not a big country fan, but I can tell you, those guys are the most badass musicians,” he says. “We’ll get the guys in Rascal Flatts, Jim Kimball from Reba [McEntire]’s band, Paul Sidoti from Taylor Swift’s band. I don’t care if you play rock, metal, death metal, country, or pop—you want to have a good guitar tone. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and that never gets old.”

FU-Tone may operate on a global scale, but it’s still rooted in the same instinct that led a high school kid to start modifying a budget guitar—and the same belief that the best conversations about tone happen one player at a time. Which is why, if you happen to call on a Sunday, you just might end up talking tone with Adam Reiver.

Press Release

Source: Think Press

Judy Collins – Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Legendary singer-songwriter, Judy Collins – who celebrates her 87th birthday today – will embark on her highly anticipated “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” farewell tour beginning July 4, 2026. Spanning iconic venues and cities across North America and beyond through winter 2027, this milestone tour has added dates and special guests.

Additionally, The Americana Music Association announced a special “Judy Collins and Friends” celebration at the 2026 AmericanaFest in Nashville in September. This final farewell tour will be captured on film for a forthcoming documentary on Judy’s life, music and legacy.

The tour kicks-off on July 4, 2026 with Judy headlining the live, star-studded PBS nationally televised Independence Day event “America Made In Virginia: 250 Years Together” celebration hosted by Virginia’s American Revolution 250 Commission (VA250)  in Colonial Williamsburg, the capital city of revolutionary Virginia.

Throughout the tour, select dates will feature special guests including the newly confirmed August 30th performance at Tanglewood, featuring Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, and Amanda Shires. Other guests confirmed along the tour are Richard Thompson, The High Kings, Bruce Cockburn, Elles Bailey, Livingston Taylor and Norwegian duo Oakland Rain, who are also filming the tour for a forthcoming Judy Collins documentary. Visit https://www.judycollins.com/ for specific guest appearance

Judy Collins – Photo credit: Patrick Donovan

Following the main tour, Judy will present the “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes – Celebration Encore,” a special series of encore performances for devoted fans and new audiences alike – an opportunity to celebrate six decades of musical brilliance with one of folk’s most treasured artists.

A 7-time Grammy nominee, Collins is an award-winning folk singer-songwriter who has released 55 recordings during her prolific career.  She has released six albums since 2015 alone, and her Grammy nominated 2023 album Spellbound is her first of all original, self-penned songs.   Collins is also a published author, filmmaker, keynote speaker for mental health and podcast host. In 2025, Judy Collins released Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss and Redemption – personal poems about love, loss and redemption.

2026-27 “SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES” TOUR DATES

JUNE 11 / CONCORD, NH @ Capitol Center for the Arts

JUNE 13 / NEWPORT, RI @ Jane Pickens

JUNE 14 / NEWPORT, RI @ Jane Pickens

JUNE 19 / SIDNEY, BC @ Seaside Music Festival

JUNE 20 / PORT ALBERNI, BC @ Char’s Landing

JUNE 25 / BUFFALO, NY @ Asbury Hall

JULY 4 / WILLIAMSBURG, VA @ U.S. 250th Anniversary Celebration

JULY 5 / WILLIAMSBURG, VA @ Music Arts Center

JULY 12 / CAMPBELLFORD, ON @ Westben Arts Festival Theater

JULY 15 / HYANNIS, MA @ Cape Cod Melody Tent*

JULY 16 / COHASSET, MA @ South Shore Music Circus*

JULY 18 / LANSDOWNE, PA @ Lansdowne Theater*

JULY 20 / OCEAN CITY, NJ @ Ocean City Music Pier^

JULY 22 / DENVER, CO @ Denver Botanical Garden# (SOLD OUT!)

JULY 24 / BAYFIELD, WI @ Big Top Chautauqua%

AUG 6 / SAN DIEGO, CA @ Humphreys Concerts by the Bay

AUG 15 / BROWNFIELD, ME @ Stone Mountain

AUG 16 / BAR HARBOR, ME @ Criterion Theater

AUG 26 / IOWA CITY, IA @ Englert Theater#

AUG 27 / DES MOINES, IA @ Hoyt Sherman Place#

AUG 30 / LENOX, MA @ Tanglewood$

SEPT 8 / OMAHA, NE @ Astro Theater#

SEPT 9 / LAWRENCE, KS @ Liberty Hall#

SEPT 15 / NASHVILLE, TN @ Americana Fest

SEPT 19 / HONOLULU, HI @ Blue Note

SEPT 20 / HONOLULU, HI @ Blue Note

SEPT 24 / TUCSON, AZ @ Fox Theater

SEPT 27 / SANTA BARBARA, CA @ Lobero Theatre

SEPT 29 / PORT ANGELES, WA @ Field Arts & Events Hall

SEPT 30 / KIRKLAND, WA @ Kirkland PAC

OCT 2 / GRANTS PASS, OR @ The Rouge Theatre

OCT 9 / ITHACA, NY @ State Theater

OCT 16 / FALLON, NV @ Barkley Theater

OCT 18 / BERKELEY, CA @ Cal Performance Arts

OCT 21 / CLEVELAND, OH @ Music Box

OCT 23 / CHICAGO, IL @ Old Town School of Folk

OCT 24 / CHICAGO, IL @ Old Town School of Folk

OCT 27 / MINNEAPOLIS, MN @ Dakota

OCT 28 / MINNEAPOLIS, MN @ Dakota

OCT 30 / MINNEAPOLIS, MN @ Dakota

NOV 1 / LAFAYETTE, IN @ Long Center for the Performing Arts

NOV 4 / MUNHALL, PA @ Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall

NOV 17 / ALEXANDRIA, VA @ The Birchmere

NOV 18 / ALEXANDRIA, VA @ The Birchmere

NOV 22 / MORRISTOWN, NJ @ MAYO Center

NOV 29 / RIDGEFIELD, CT @ Ridgefield Playhouse

DEC 12 / RIVERHEAD, NY @ Suffolk Theater

DEC 18 / OGUNQUIT, ME @ Jonathan’s

DEC 19 / OGUNQUIT, ME @ Jonathan’s

JAN 9 / FORT LAUDERDALE, FL @ Amaturo Theater

JAN 13 / PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL @ Ponte Vedra Beach Concert Hall!

JAN 14 / ORLANDO, FL @ Plaza Theater!

JAN 16 / CLEARWATER, FL @ Capitol Theater!

MAR 4 / LEXINGTON, KY @ Troubadour Concert Series

MAR 6 / PELHAM, TN @ The Caverns!

APR 10 / PORTLAND, OR @ Aladdin Theater

More dates TBA

*w/ Richard Thompson and Elles Bailey

^w/ Richard Thompson

#w/ Bruce Cockburn

%w/ The High Kings

$ w/ Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanna Cash, Amanda Shires

! w/ Livingston Taylor

OFFICIAL SITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM 

SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE 

Ahhhh, the great guitar vs amp debate. Unless you’re totally new to the guitar gear community, you’ll be aware of the perennial debate over what’s better: a great guitar with a sub-par amp or a great amp with a cheap guitar.

Both sides have strong voices. Math rock legend and Covet guitarist Yvette Young went on record a year ago to extol the virtues of an expensive amp, saying going for a bad amp is like “ruining a really nice audio file with something that’s going to degrade it a lot”.

• READ MORE: Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer

Meanwhile, the opposing camp has adherents in Lita Ford and Whitesnake’s Doug Aldrich, who said last year: “You can get a great sound out of any amp that works.”

And it’s the second camp that former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford finds himself in, as he explains in the new issue of Guitarist.

“I’d buy the guitar. Shit, these days, half the time I’m playing through a rented amp,” he laughs. “But the guitar is so much more personal. You’re physically touching the thing and, in a perfect world, it becomes a part of you to where you don’t even think about it any more.

“It becomes just a way to get your insides out, since your fingerprints are literally on it. There’s direct contact and that’s gonna exchange your subtleties way more than an amplifier will, I think.”

So there you have it, if you’ve got some budget and you’re deciding whether to spend more of it on your amp or guitar, you know which direction Marc Ford would steer you in…

And if you do opt to zero in on the ideal guitar, Ford has a few buying tips to orient you in the right direction.

“The ultimate guitar tip for guitars – and really, any guitar, though it’s more obvious on acoustic and maybe less so with electric – is that it’s got to sound good when it’s not plugged in,” he says. “There has to be a tone that catches your ear. And it probably needs to be unique compared with other guitars.

“Obviously, feel is important. It’s gotta feel good to you. But if it doesn’t sound good when it’s not plugged in, there’s no way that you’re ever gonna get it to sound good through the electronics.”

The post “The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Though some musicians are able to make a living from their playing for the duration of their careers, others, by various circumstances, often find themselves working back working ‘normal’ jobs once their time in the spotlight is over.

Take Rob Dukes, for example. Exodus singer between 2005 and 2014, the Florida native ended up spending his time fixing up old cars, as he explains in the latest issue of Metal Hammer. And he wouldn’t have taken that path were it not for his firing from the Bay Area thrash outfit.

• READ MORE: Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer

As he recalls, his dismissal from Exodus came as a surprise: “When I got fired from Exodus in 2014, I didn’t see it coming. I felt betrayed, angry and resentful. I was fucking scared – my livelihood was gone. Fear caused me to lash out. I hadn’t done anything in 10 years other than sing, so what the fuck was I gonna do? I was in no man’s land.”

But after the sting had worn off and he’d picked himself up and dusted himself off, Dukes started looking for his next calling, which came in the form of fixing vintage cars.

“I sucked it up and said, ‘I’m gonna get a job.’ The only thing I knew I could make a living from was working on cars. I found a place in Arizona through Roger [Miret] from Agnostic Front. I got hired and the next you know I’m a full-time mechanic restoring old ‘50s and ‘60s Volkswagens – I became the restoration guy.

“I gained a whole new life. I learned things by reading books and watching YouTube. I’m a fucking master welder now! I love fabricating stuff, I just love making stuff out of metal.”

In the end, though, the world couldn’t take the music out of Rob Dukes, and as of last year, he’s now back in the Exodus lineup. “We are beyond stoked to have Rob back ripping up the stage with us and he’s looking forward to crushing everything like only he can,” the band wrote in January 2025, following the departure of vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza.

Exodus guitarist Gary Holt has been praising the band as the frontrunners of modern day thrash metal lately. “Metallica were the best of all of us,” he said in March. “I mean, I don’t think so anymore – I think Exodus crushes them, but that’s my own humble opinion.”

He also said last month that he and his bandmates “carry the world’s biggest chip on our shoulders” that Exodus don’t get the same recognition as their thrash metal counterparts like Metallica and Megadeth.

Check out a full list of upcoming Exodus dates via the band’s official website.

The post “The next thing you know I’m a full-time mechanic”: Rob Dukes reflects on his 2014 Exodus firing appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Guitar thievery is sadly all too common. In the last few months alone, session guitarist Mason Stoops had a Fender Jazzmaster and Gretsch Corvette stolen from his van, and Chris Buck was the victim of thieves who smashed the back window of his car to make off with some of his music gear.

Most aren’t so lucky to be reunited with their equipment, but every now and again, the story has a happy ending.

In one such heartwarming tale, former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora became whole again in March following the return of his long-lost 1976 Gibson Explorer, which had been missing for 40 years.

• READ MORE: Stella – the legendary guitar brand championed by BB King, Elvis and Kurt Cobain – has been revived by Harmony with a new line of parlor acoustics

And in a new interview with People [via Guitar World], Sambora reveals the lengths he went to to recover his beloved instrument. Apparently, the guitarist even ended up hiring a private detective to help track it down.

As the story goes, Sambora went into debt as a teenager to front the $250 it cost to buy the Explorer.

“The record company had to lend us money to buy new equipment and we just went and did it,” he says. But the guitar was stolen from a warehouse in 1985 while Bon Jovi were touring overseas, and the case was shrouded in mystery for decades.

“About 10 years ago, I get a call from Guitar Center in New Jersey,” he continues. “I’m staying at my mom’s, and they go, ‘Your Explorer was in here. We just sold it to some guy.’”

Sambora then phoned the buyer to offer him double what he paid for the guitar, but never got a response, so ended up hiring a private investigator to get to the bottom of it.

But it was Matthieu Lucas of Matt’s Guitar Shop who ultimately tracked the Explorer down. He bought the guitar there and then, and sent Sambora a photo to verify the guitar was legit.

“He sent me a picture and I go, ‘Get the fuck out of here. You got it.’ He goes, ‘I knew it was yours. I bought it immediately for you.’ So that was really, really cool of him.”

“I said to myself, ‘This is the guitar that I can make talk.’ When I wanted to be a badass, that’s what I took out. It easily was the best guitar I owned, and the specs were mine. So basically it was the first Richie Sambora custom model.”

On the moment he was reunited with the guitar, he explains: “It was fucking trippy as shit. I put it on, I started to play it. It seemed like it was untouched. It’s almost in perfect shape.”

The post Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

£1,045, klangguitars.com

The niche of aluminium-necked electric guitars has long since diverged from the handful of classic rock players who picked up a Kramer or Travis Bean at some point. Now it has its own mythology, a discrete pantheon of players ruling over a much heavier tonal landscape. In 2026 the aluminium universe most often sounds like noise rock and doom metal, plus all of the weird, heavy, downtuned shit that exists in the space between those two pillars: the sparking electrical cable of Sunn O))) strung between Shellac and the Melvins. Klang, a new arrival on the aluminium-necked scene, is acutely aware of this fact, and today I’m taking a look at one of its first guitars.

• READ MORE: Fender Made In Japan Traditional 60s Jazzmaster review: “this visually polarising guitar is anything but traditional”

As I write this review, it feels appropriate that Neurosis have just announced their surprise return, fronted by new member Aaron Turner of ISIS, Sumac and Old Man Gloom. Combined, Turner and Neurosis’ heady, post-everything sludge metal is a pretty good indicator of where a lot of modern aluminium fans’ heads are at: there are exceptions, but guitars and necks from modern aluminium brands such as Robot Graves, TTTides, Obstructures, DNG and, of course, Electrical Guitar Company (also the modern inheritor of Travis Bean’s designs) are much more commonly found in the hands of musicians drawing on some strain of weird, noisy, heavy stuff.

So this is the world that Klang is launching into, and it’s absolutely not shying away from this influence. Its website mentions both Shellac and The Jesus Lizard as inspirations for starting the project, not that you need it to, given the brand name – Klang is pretty good onomatopoeia for the signature sounds of Steve Albini and Duane Denison, both players who leaned into aluminium’s angular, clanking character and crafted tones resembling plastic bags of broken toasters being thrown down concrete staircases. So Klang is very much a brand rooted in the “culture” of aluminium, as much as you can define such a thing.

Who are Klang Guitars anyway?

Klang announced its launch last summer, with a fairly unique business model. It’s a UK-based company, with manufacturing outsourced to China – necks are machined and anodised at a third-party facility, before being assembled into full guitars in Klang’s own luthier’s workshop, then imported. Production runs are small – you sign up for a slot ahead of time, and join a run with the guitar of your choice. The streamlined model means, all going well, a wait time of two to three months for your instrument.

That’s lightning-fast for the world of niche custom stuff like this. The other result of the approach is the price, which starts at a rather affordable £990 for a full guitar. To put things in perspective, before aluminium-neck specialist Baguley Guitars shut down, its bolt-on necks alone were in the €650-750 range, with the full guitars running into in the multiple thousands – and even with those prices the operation shuttered in 2024 due to financial insolvency.

US luthier Electrical Guitar Company is perhaps the biggest boutique name in modern aluminium guitars. Their full instruments also cost around three grand, while bolt-on necks from EGC and other USA aluminium makers tend to stay in that $750 range. And so Klang’s prices are affordable for semi-custom full guitars in general, let alone aluminium ones.

The price of the guitars and the bespoke import model Klang is offering has led to a mix of excitement and trepidation from aluminium guitar communities. On paper, this sort of hybrid model can be extremely effective – import guitars have only gotten better and better over the last decade or so, and Klang’s founder, Will, seems to know both his audience and the business. However, the guitar is a fraction of the price you might expect to pay – so can it be too good to be true?

Klang Guitars DC – what is it?

If my review guitar is anything to go by, Klang’s model works. It’s not a totally perfect thing, but it’s a damn good instrument for the money, aluminium or not, and it’s got a load of really interesting things going on that I’ll get into now.

Klang’s guitars are semi-through-necks, taking a similar approach to some of the vintage Travis Bean instruments. The aluminium continues from the neck into a block that the pickups get mounted to. It then returns to the surface of the body to become the bridge, so it’s all one piece along the string length. The wooden portion of the body then sits around this assembly, sandwiched in place with an aluminium plate. This means that the available body shapes (the DC and JM) are the same guitar from string to nut – it’s just the wooden portion that’s changed out.

This is very cool to see for around a grand – the fact that the entire string length is supported by the same solid block of metal is for some, kind of the point of using aluminium in the first place – rather than bolting an aluminium neck to a bunch of soft wood.

Another unexpected thing about the Klang is the presence of a truss rod. For some, this was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser when Klang arrived on the scene – a lot of other aluminium necks don’t have truss rods because, well, they essentially are truss rods – relief is just set by ensuring you’re using the right string gauge to provide enough tension when you inevitably tune down to drop A.

My Klang arrives with a set of 12s on it, wound G included (another indication the brand knows its target audience – I was keen to tune it down to C standard anyway), and so as I get it tuned up, I do find that it could do with a little more relief in the neck. I give the heel-access rod a tentative quarter-turn, which does the job just fine.

This flexibility is not a luxury I have with my other aluminium necks, with which I just use thick enough strings to keep the neck in relief with my chosen tuning. If you happen to like a particularly stiff or loose playing feel, a truss-rodless neck’s preferred tension might not accommodate that – but with the Klang, you’ve got more flexibility in that regard.

The look of the Klang DC has a no-nonsense, minimal character to it – the aluminium is anodised satin black by default, and the body is stained mahogany. Since the first run, Klang has moved to a model that offers a ‘pro’ spec, with a polished chrome finish for the aluminium and a nitro finish on the body, while the ‘standard’ keeps the combo of dark wood and anodised black.

The headstock design is modern and angular as opposed to rounded and vintage – I want to call particular attention to its use of its negative space to draw an exclamation mark, a very neat piece of branding that distinguishes it from the otherwise similarly quadrilateral Electrical Guitar Company headstock.

The body design is a little more of an explicit nod to that of the Travis Bean 1000/1000A’s, although a deep German carve does reintroduce some pointiness to the cutaway horns.

Klang Guitars DC – build quality

While its overall look is perhaps a result of the more affordable price-point – compared to something with a by-default mirror-polish and curly koa top – I think that it’s a really effective presentation, one very much suited for the modern aluminium world. It’s by no means an aggressive thing, it’s hardly a Jackson Warrior, but for me it’s at home within the styles of noise-rock and metal mentioned in this review’s introduction: raw, dark, industrial and heavy.

One thing I do want to note that might be divisive – the body’s stained-wood finish was starting to show pick wear after just a couple of weeks of me playing the guitar for review purposes. If you gigged this thing hard, it’d likely show pretty noticeable pick wear, buckle rash and other aesthetic dings fairly easily – this may be a positive, as, hey, easy relicing that’s authentically done by you – or you might prefer a guitar that shows a bit more aesthetic resilience.

Klang Guitars DC – playability

Aluminium guitars have a reputation for shoulder-pulverising weight – and the Klang DC is no exception. Despite not being the largest instrument in the world, the DC still tips the scales at a whopping 9.8lbs – or ‘right at the heavier end of a Les Paul’s territory if you’re looking for a comparison.

This means you’ll certainly feel it in your back and shoulders after long playing sessions – but if you’re looking for a featherweight instrument, I probably don’t need to tell you that a guitar mostly made out of metal might be one to swerve.

Given the mass of the neck, aluminium guitars also have a rep for neck dive, but despite its considerable weight, the DC is an impressively well-balanced instrument. The heft of the body keeps things firmly in a good playing position when stood up, and the relatively small headstock and the amount of metal south of the heel seem to help in this regard.

Beyond the balance, the guitar is a generally enjoyable thing to hold and use – the deep German carve is also remarkably comfortable on the forearm, and the integrated bridge design features a smooth ramp to the walls either side of the saddles for a pretty nice experience on the side of your palm.

But put the Klang on, and the first thing you’re likely to notice isn’t anything to do with the weight or the forearm comfort – it’s the totally unique neck profile. The neck is incredibly thin, basically the same slim C-profile all the way from the first to the 22nd fret, with an unbelievable amount of access to the higher frets thanks to the deep cutaways and the lack of a neck joint.

It will likely not be a neck for everyone – if you like a baseball-bat-thick profile to reassuringly fill your palm, you’ll probably find it distractingly thin. As it stands, I really enjoy it, and the satin feel of the anodisation also makes moving about it comfortable.

You could, if you wanted to, set it up to be a shreddy thing for big silly bends and 200bpm sweep picking. For my low-and-slow purposes, however, I still find it a comfy and inviting experience. The stainless steel frets are also well-dressed and very smooth – and, in my view, essential for an aluminium guitar – this will not really be a standard refret job if it ever comes to that, so it’s best give the guitar as long a life as possible before you need to cross that particular bridge.

Klang Guitars DC – playability

Klang’s instruments are by default loaded with P-90 pickups – or, P-90-sized humbuckers if you opt for them. This presumably keeps all of the body machining and mounting hardware interchangeable, and if down the line you want to swap out pickups, the standard soapbar P-90 format offers you a lot of choice for single-coils, noiseless pickups and humbuckers alike.

The inclusion of P-90s, in my view, does gel well with the overall vibe of the thing – it perhaps pushes it a little more towards noise rock than doom metal (to return to that arbitrary spectrum), but it’s still more than capable of both. In fact, the P-90’s incredibly bright character plus the inherent clang (there it is!) of the guitar leads to an articulate and responsive playing experience – even through a woolly Big Muff and a doomed-out Orange. Their hefty upper-mids do a great job of ensuring the sound remains cutting and present even with more extreme gain settings, like an always-on Rangemaster.

And, yes, I do my due diligence and play this thing through a Harmonic Percolator-style fuzz – and it’s a fantastic time, as you’d expect. With a vintage and weird fuzz like this, and other more sensitive fuzzes, the P-90s really make them come alive.

With that said, I would have perhaps liked to have seen at least the option for traditional wide-range-style humbuckers from the off – for me, wide-range humbuckers are the pairing with the bright sound of an aluminium neck, but I can see why the choice was made.

One quick sidebar on the wiring – this is some of the coolest and neatest wiring I’ve seen in a guitar of this budget. There’s a transparent window to view it through, and I can see why – the harness is all 90-degree angles, cloth-covered wire, full-sized pots and Mojo caps.

Not perfect

There are some inevitable compromises dotted throughout my otherwise pretty faultless experience with the Klang DC. There are a couple slight fit-and-finish issues – one of the 12th-fret side dots, for instance, is drilled to a different depth to the rest of the dots. This is fixable, however, as the side-dots are in fact hex-head grub screws, so all I need to do is back it out a little with a very small allen key. Less fixable are the few spots where the anodisation hasn’t quite caught, leading to some marks that kind of look like fingerprints, but are in fact just there.

More notably there’s also a bit of a wobble in the transition from the fretboard to neck in the first position. Klang tells me this was actually a problem with the CAD files for the first five guitars made, mine included – everyone who got one of these first instruments was offered a replacement neck without the wobble, and the issue has now been fixed for future necks. Given the machining accuracy of the rest of the guitar, it makes sense for it to be a CAD problem rather than some failure in the actual process of milling the aluminium – it’s a little less than ideal, but after a while my thumb gets used to it – and I’m glad to see that the affected customers had the chance to make it right.

One more teething problem – my review guitar exhibited a strange issue where something within the assembly was grounding the hot lead of the neck pickup. After I took the pickup in and out of its cover a couple of times this issue went away. This was apparently unique to our unit, and given Klang’s response to the neck issue I’d presume a customer who had this happen would get a similar recourse – but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

Should I buy a Klang?

Realistically, if you’ve been aluminium-curious for a while but put off by the high cost of entry, I’d say that a Klang is absolutely a great starting point. My sticking points with the guitar are some teething problems with the process that seem to have already been worked out. And even taking them on board, the guitar you get for around £1,000 is pretty damn remarkable. I also want to mention the fact that it comes with a near-bulletproof ABS hardcase with a custom foam route for another £60 – again, that’d be remarkable for an all-wood guitar!

My colleague Sam took a look at Rabea Massaad’s new affordable signature guitar recently – the £1,000 Sterling By Music Man Artist Series Sabre. I was reminded of what he had to say when I was reviewing the Klang. The Sabre, he said, was by no means bad – it just had nothing to really set it apart from anything of a similar price or vibe.

Point being – £1,000 is very easy to spend on a fairly pedestrian guitar these days, but the Klang DC is as far from pedestrian as you can get – it’s perhaps not to everyone’s tastes, sure, but it’s a well-executed guitar that really understands the needs of its target audience. And you can’t really ask for much more than that.

Klang Guitars DC – alternatives

The Klang concept pretty much stands alone in terms of affordability and accessibility when it comes to aluminium-necked instruments. The aforementioned Electrical Guitar Company made good enough Travis Bean-alikes that the late great Steve Albini was happy to use them, and their similarly vibed EGC100A will set you back $3,250. If you just want the look of a Bean guitar without any of the aluminium stuff for some reason, then Eastwood’s ETB500 ($1,499) has the cut-out headstock thing, but on a conventional all-wood electric – albeit with a silver-sprayed peghead!

The post Klang Guitars DC review: an aluminium neck guitar for the masses? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Two-Rock Studio Overdrive Review

It may have "overdrive" in the name, but this luxuriously crafted twist on Dumble themes is super-dynamic, sensitive, and capable of sweetly clean tones.

FU-Tone’s Mass Appeal

How Adam Reiver turned an obsession with hardware into one of the guitar industry’s most trusted upgrade brands.

Córdoba Abasi Stage 7 Review

Tosin Abasi gives electric 7-string players a fanned-fret path to classical connections.

Recording Dojo: RT60, Density, and Diffusion

Three parameters, infinite possibilities. Here’s how to make reverb work harder for you.

Reader Guitar of the Month: Beware Headless Kats!

Rig Rundown: Lamb of God’s Mark Morton [2026]

Hot on the heels of their 12th studio record, Into Oblivion, American metal giants Lamb of God tore off across the continent on a tour that took them to Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium. That’s where PG’s Chris Kies reunited with Mark Morton, the band’s lead guitarist and one of the genre’s most influential riffers. In this new Rig Rundown, Morton walked us through the trusty tools he’s taken out on the road this spring.

Warm Audio Introduces the Reamper

Warm Audio, the leading manufacturer of faithful recreations of legendary recording gear and guitar pedals, today announces the release of the Reamper (WA-RA), a creative routing hub built to connect guitar rigs, studio processors, pedals, and DAW workflows in ways previously reserved for complex setups.

Hi, Everyone!

I just added two new shorts to my YouTube Channel, that feature the wonderful guitarist, Juri Yun. 

I attended the 2025 Denver Guitar Festival as a vendor and Mr. Yun stopped by my table to try out the guitars I brought to the festival and he was very impressed with my work!

Go to my YouTube Channel page on this blog to see videos of other great guitarists playing my guitars!

Guitar multi-hyphenate Robben Ford has been looking back on what it was like to jam with George Harrison in the 1970s, and by his account, things were very rock ‘n’ roll.

Ford has worked with a wide span of huge artists, including Joni Mitchell, KISS, Bob Dylan, and Harrison, who Ford would later tour with in 1974 for Harrison’s Dark Horse tour. Their first encounter occurred earlier in that very same year though, when Ford was touring with Mitchell.

• READ MORE: “There are just so many problems with the electric guitar”: Robben Ford explains why the guitar is the “most difficult instrument to play”

In the new print issue of Classic Rock, Ford recounts, “I was touring with Joni Mitchell, and we did two shows in London in 1974. I’m hanging out backstage, and I turn around and standing before me is the album cover to All Things Must Pass [Harrison’s first post-Beatles solo album and third studio release overall] – you know, he had the hair, hat, gardening boots, big plaid coat.

“Next day, the whole band, including Joni, went out to his place in Henley-on-Thames. We got there about one in the afternoon. George was still asleep. At about four, he came into the kitchen, smoking a Gauloises, making tea – he only drank Typhoo.

He continues, “Joni finally split, and at one in the morning the band all went up to the studio. Everyone had been drinking, smoking something, snorting something. So we’re all set up in the studio, and there’s a shelf running along all four walls of the control room, with a box of cocaine on every shelf. So if you felt like it, you just popped over, had a little toot and continued. And we did that until the sun came up.”

After releasing a number of solo albums, Harrison joined band again in 1988, when he co-founded supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. The group consisted of Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and came together as a result of Harrison and Lynne dreaming up a new band during the sessions for Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine.

In a 2007 Uncut interview, Lynne said: “We were three-quarters of the way through Cloud Nine, and every night, as we were relaxing with a few drinks after mixing a big epic or whatever, George and I had the same conversation: ‘We could have a group, you know?’ ‘Yeah, we could.’ He didn’t like the idea of being a solo guy – that’s what he told me. He was never comfortable with it. He wanted a group, and, of course, George could do anything he wanted.”

The post “You just popped over, had a little toot and continued”: Robben Ford recalls “a box of cocaine on every shelf” while jamming with George Harrison in the ’70s appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

[Editor’s note: Harmony is part of Vista Musical Instruments, which like Guitar.com, is part of the Caldecott Music Group.]

Boasting a storied list of players – including BB King, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain – Stella was a guitar brand which remains instrumental in the pages of guitar history.

First founded all the way back in 1899 – 127 years ago – by Oscar Schmidt, and later acquired by Harmony in 1939, it’s a brand which has helped shape the landscape of rock music and beyond.

Now, Harmony has announced it is bringing back Stella, with a new range of parlor-sized acoustic guitars at very-much affordable price points, starting at just $349.

• READ MORE: “This was a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for”: Jake Kiszka on finding his “Beloved” Gibson SG

Reinterpreting the compact, travel-friendly format for the next generation of songwriters and creators, the new Stella Parlor acoustics boast mahogany backs and sides paired with a solid spruce top, along with a modern X-bracing for durability without sacrificing tone.

There’s a raft of vintage-inspired details, too, like a slotted headstock, off-white binding and a beautifully delicate soundhole rosette. They also feature bone nuts and saddles for “enhanced resonance and sustain”, and come fitted with D’Addario coated strings.

In terms of colourways, the new Harmony Stella acoustics come in Sunburst, Moonstone Blue, Backwoods Green and Ivory.

“B.B. King’s first guitar was a red Stella acoustic,” says Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of Vista Musical Instruments. “That’s the kind of impact we want this brand to continue to have, being the guitar that starts someone’s story.”

Harmony Stella Parlor acoustics start at $349, and are available in limited quantities, exclusively via harmony.co.

The post Stella – the legendary guitar brand championed by BB King, Elvis and Kurt Cobain – has been revived by Harmony with a new line of parlor acoustics appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.