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It’s been four long years since the Red Hot Chili Peppers released 2022’s Unlimited Love – but there might be something new on the horizon. In a new interview with MOJO, bassist Flea hints that the band have been cooking up some new tunes.

While this March will see Flea releasing his solo jazz solo debut, Honora, fans have been wondering what that means for the bassist’s main gig with the Chili Peppers. MOJO addresses the elephant in the room, asking whether there’s any plans for a 13th album. “We’ve been writing music together, recording at [guitarist] John Frusciante’s house, and the music feels great,” Flea reveals.

• READ MORE: How to get better recorded guitar sounds at home with mobile absorbers

As Flea puts it, the process has been a bit longer due to the hunt for “magic” in the studio. “Ultimately, once we start playing, it’s about… just catching a magic groove and doing it good,” he adds.

It’s the same approach he has adopted while recording his upcoming jazz record, and one he feels about music on the whole. While it’s an intuitive process working on his solo project, it can be more difficult in a band, due to there being multiple moving cogs in the machine. “It’s like being in a marriage with four people that’s always moving and changing, all these challenges and all the things that you have to deal with,” he explains.

“Egos are inescapable and my ego is as big and as fragile as anybody’s. But it’s always, no matter what, this intrinsic part of who I am and it’s alive and it’s beautiful and you never know what shape it’s going to take next. I really feel like that right now.”

In the past, Flea has made it clear that he never wants to produce rock for rock’s sake. In fact, in 2016 he told SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio that he considered “rock music [to be] a dead form in a lot of ways”, far from its ‘90s heyday of “exciting” releases.

With that in mind, it makes sense that Flea is exploring other avenues of sound – and why the Red Hot Chili Peppers are determined to take their time making their next record, just to ensure their signature blend of funk, rap and rock feel utterly fresh.

Flea’s Honora solo debut will drop on  27 March, and will feature a slew of exciting artists including Thom Yorke and Nick Cave.

The post “We’ve been writing music together, recording at John’s house – it feels great”: Flea hints at new Red Hot Chili Peppers music on the horizon appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

As the legend goes, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen were like two ships passing in the night. Despite both earning their stripes on the 1970’s Sunset Strip, the pair of iconic guitarists rarely crossed paths. But that didn’t mean they didn’t know about each other.

With Quiet Riot and Van Halen both on the rise, Randy and Eddie became some of the hottest guitarists on the strip. It was impossible not to compare the two – especially when both bands would often play just doors down from each other. “We became well aware of Van Halen,” Quiet Riot’s original bassist Kelly Garni tells the Booked On Rock Podcast [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar]. “Especially when we’d [perform] at the Starwood… we knew they were playing down the street at Gazzarri’s.”

• READ MORE: How to get better recorded guitar sounds at home with mobile absorbers

Garni notes that Van Halen existed in very different circles, frequenting venues that weren’t exactly Quiet Riot’s “type of a club”. However, their differences didn’t mean there was a rivalry between the pair. “There was no competition,” Garni explains. “Most certainly, there was no competition in Randy’s world. Because Randy didn’t compete.”

“It just wasn’t in Randy to try to compete,” he continues. “He couldn’t! The way his brain was wired… he could not form a thought like ‘Oh, I’m gonna be better than that guy!’”

In fact, rather than a rivalry, there was a fascination; Rhoads was curious to see just what Eddie Van Halen had to offer. “He went down to Gazzarri’s because people were talking about this guy,” Garni recalls. “Randy said, ‘I’ll go see what the deal is’… So he went there, he saw him play, and he went, ‘Yeah, OK, the guy’s good.’”

Apparently Rhoads even got himself backstage to meet his supposed ‘rival’. “Randy was trying to get backstage to meet him, and he did get back there…” the bassist says. “But Eddie was acting kind of crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. And Randy was like, ‘Oh okay… not the best time to meet this guy.’”

So, rather than leaving with a burning sense of rivalry, Rhoads only thought: “‘He was really good, but he looked kind of nutty.’”

The pair went on to perform on just one bill together on 23 April 1977 at California’s Glendale Community College. It’s unknown just how many times the pair crossed paths beyond that… but many musicians have claimed that Rhoads and EVH developed more of a ‘rivalry’ in their later years.

Ozzy Osbourne in particular sensed some competition between the pair. The Black Sabbath legend referenced an archival 1982 Guitar Player clip to prove his point, noting how Eddie claimed “everything [Rhoads] did he learned from me”, and later adding “he was good, but I don’t really think he did anything that I haven’t done”.

“I heard recently that Eddie said he taught Randy all his licks … he never,” Osbourne told Rolling Stone in 2022.

Alongside the strange claim, he also claimed that Rhoads “didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie”, either. “Maybe they had a falling out or whatever, but they were rivals,” he said.

The archival Eddie clip was also briefly mentioned in a 2022 documentary, Randy Rhoads: Reflection of a Guitar Icon. One of Rhoads’ friends, Kim McNair, explained: “This was the years of guitar heroes. To a large degree, bands were judged on their guitar player. I think all the guitar players in town kept up on each other.”

The post “Eddie was acting crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. Randy was like, ‘Oh okay… not the best time to meet this guy’”: Quiet Riot’s Kelly Garni says Randy Rhoads didn’t have a rivalry with Eddie Van Halen, rather a “fascination” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Unapologetically brash and loaded with attitude, it’s hard to imagine punk’s standard-bearers could suffer pre-performance nerves. But for all their cocksure anti-establishmentism, The Sex Pistols were prone to pre-gig anxiety like anyone else.

As journalist and photographer John Ingham recalls in a new feature in MOJO magazine, there was one gig in particular that struck fear into the hearts of Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock.

• READ MORE: “Mick and Keith operate in a different financial stratosphere”: The stark financial disparity of the Rolling Stones revealed by Ronnie Wood son’s court case

Cast your imagination back to 9 July, 1976; the Pistols are gearing up for a gig at London’s 2,100-capacity Lyceum Theatre, supporting Supercharge and The Pretty Things. As Ingham recalls, this was the first time they’d played in a “big space”, and nerves were high.

“What was really strange was that it seemed such an amazingly unimportant gig,” Ingham says. “And they were so absolutely petrified before, backstage. Steve couldn’t talk, he couldn’t utter a word, he had the look of death on his face. To them, it was extremely important. It was the first time they’d played in a big space.

“John was really nervous. I found that strange. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wanted to win people over. That was the night that John stubbed out cigarettes on the back of his hand while he was singing. It frightened me.”

But the four-piece ultimately rose to the occasion: “Up until this point, they were getting better at it, but it was still the same kind of noise…” Ingham continues. “Suddenly there was this major step up in musical ability. Glen was phenomenal, the bass playing was tremendous. Paul was right on the beat. In one night, suddenly they were all just there.”

The Sex Pistols are still active, with a number of shows planned for 2026. However, John Lydon is no longer in the fold (Frank Carter now holds frontman duties), and has documented his somewhat fractured relations with his former bandmates in recent years.

“Come on Mr. Carter, you’re not Johnny Rotten, I am,” he told Frank as the band approached their reunion tour last year, previously saying in reference to his former bandmates: “I am the Pistols, and they’re not.”

More recently, guitarist Steve Jones said he has “nothing but love” for Lydon, saying he’ll “never shut the door” on a reunion, but asserting that he didn’t think “John would have the energy like Frank does”.

The post “Steve couldn’t utter a word. John stubbed out cigarettes on the back of his hand”: The 1976 gig that “petrified” the Sex Pistols appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

In Converge’s world, things don’t happen by accident – if they say something, they mean it. So, when vocalist Jacob Bannon ushered in the metalcore pioneers’ new record Love is Not Enough by observing that “realism is missing from a lot of modern music”, you knew they planned on doing something about it. “People, especially young people, crave authenticity,” guitarist Kurt Ballou expounds. “The process of recording metal music has been more akin to data entry than playing instruments for quite a long time now – there’s a whole generation who have been raised with this sort of ‘perfect’ music.”

• READ MORE: How Angel Du$t became the most unconventional band in hardcore

Love is Not Enough is not that. It’s a hulking, febrile thing, alive in all its grit and human imperfections. It is Converge at their most Converge – a band reflecting upon the artistic choices and creative bonds that have underpinned a genre-shaping 35 year run. There are solos on the title track with the head-spinning ferocity of Axe to Fall’s all-timer of an opener Dark Horse, for example, while To Feel Something finds Ballou reinterpreting stabbing, lurching Jane Doe-era carnage from the perspective of someone who’s learned to control the violence at their fingertips. Following on from 2021’s Bloodmoon: I, a collaboration with modern goth icon Chelsea Wolfe, Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky, it is about uncovering fresh ore in old hills.

“There are songs on Bloodmoon that I barely played guitar on,” Ballou says. “Making Love is Not Enough, that goes back to regular Converge, where we are much more comfortable in our roles. The division of labour is well established in the band and it’s back to being focused on our own stuff. But, also, there’s less space to hide. The guitar ideas are mine, and I’m playing them all. There’s a deliberate lack of collaboration on it. Guitar solos are not my thing, but we’re not having guest musicians here. No one’s playing this solo for me, so I gotta fucking do it. So, you know, I did it.”

Image: Press

Caving In

Recorded at Ballou’s God City facility in Salem, Massachusetts, the album is chiefly a document of a band capable of caving your head in from 10 paces. Bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller are a rhythm section with an unparalleled track record of unleashing sense-rearranging barrages, while Ballou and Bannon remain a pugilistic pairing pushing each other to scabrous new heights.

If you A-B the studio version of Love is Not Enough’s closer We Were Never The Same against its staging in Converge’s recent Audiotree session, you get a visceral idea of how close they have come to capturing the real thing. “When it comes to recording hardcore and metal my approach is always, ‘What does it feel like to watch this band live?’” Ballou says. “What does that excitement feel like, and can I try to capture that excitement? That’s my goal.”

Ballou is an interesting case study for this stuff, though, because he’s a working producer as well as a gnarly guitar player in a hardcore band. When he’s collaborating on Nails’ latest voyage into the death metal morass or helping Fleshwater assemble molasses-thick shoegaze-pop, his word isn’t law.

In fact, his views on recording music are malleable and driven by the desire to get at what people really want. “In my job, I interact with younger people who are fascinated with analog equipment – they’re taking pictures of their session with point and shoot film cameras,” he continues. “But I don’t want to be a luddite. I don’t want to be too cool for modern techniques.”

“All that technology exists for a reason,” he continues. “Incredible engineering has been done to create amp sims, drum replacements, audio file warping and tuning, and I do use that stuff sometimes when it’s helpful to present the music in the most flattering way. I’m not opposed to it. But I think that one of the things about technology that is important to keep in mind is exercising some restraint.

One of the things about an older style of recording is not so much that tape sounds better than digital, or tube amps sound better than modellers, it’s more that the process of using analog equipment necessitated a certain type of workflow. It didn’t require restraint when you were limited to 24 tracks. That was just what there was, and you had to make it work. Now, you would have to make a choice to limit yourself.”

Tools Of The Trade

That studio-rooted discipline also has interesting parallels with Ballou’s attitude towards his other-other career with God City Instruments (GCI), a boutique outfit producing guitars, basses, pedals and DIY pedal kits – something that grew out of Ballou’s legendary GCI business card, which took the form of an actual PCB (sans components) for his Brutalist Jr circuit.

“My wife does a lot of the order-fulfillment side of that and I QC guitars,” he says. “We’ll get a shipment every three or four months and I’ll spend a few days with them. The company is still pretty small, but it’s manageable. I’m not really trying to grow it – I don’t really want to lose control of it.”

“To double my sales would require more than double of my effort, you know? I think a lot of bands end up in a similar situation,” he adds. “Converge, for example, we have great people that we work with, our fans are awesome, and we can go and play shows just about anywhere in the world. But to play a venue twice the size is more than twice as expensive. We’d be required to have guitar techs and drum techs and lighting techs. The ticket price gets a lot higher and now we’re not doing things on our own terms.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, GCI gear forms the backbone of Ballou’s work on Love is Not Enough. Fitted with their overwound Slug Jammer humbuckers, there are multiple Craftsman models in play, along with a 27.5” scale Deconstructivist baritone that was used to bring the muscle on Distract and Divide, To Feel Something and Amon Amok, a trio of Drop A monsters.

“I’ve also got a really good short-scale Tele with Lindy Fralin pickups,” he notes. “I used that for a bunch of the clean, atmospheric background sounds on Amon Amok. On Force Meets Presence I might have used my First Act Sheena. I can’t remember if I actually did this, or if I just was thinking about doing it, but a lot of that song is rooted on the A string, so to make that clean I might have taken the low E off of the guitar for that whole section.”

Image: Press

Spreading The Load

While working on Bloodmoon: I, Ballou had to find his place within a guitar sound that he viewed as vibe-based more than “dense or athletic”. Here, the opposite is largely true. But his amp selection process remained the same, with five or six rigs primed for work as he chased a tone. “I used to have a whole bunch of amps running at the same time, hoping to capture the best of all worlds,” he says. “But I’ve come to realise over time that it just flattens whatever cool character each one has.”

With the rhythm sounds oscillating between an early Sparrows Sons model, employed with a Boss OS-2 to accent its articulate, wide-ranging gain, and a GCI Onslaught-assisted Dean Costello HMW, most of the leads were tracked with a first generation Bad Cat Black Cat, paired again with an OS-2 or a GCI Crimson Cock.

“That’s like an NPN Rangemaster,” Ballou says. “It’s really the best for matching a guitar to an amp. If your guitar feels too bright or too dark, or not loud enough, or too loud, by turning a few knobs on that thing, you can make it work.”

What pass for cleans in Converge’s world, meanwhile, were captured on a Traynor YRM-1 that Ballou picked up for $99 in the mid-1990s. “I can, honestly, probably record anything with that amp,” he observes. “I also have a few JMP 2204s, but one of them is from a transitional year when it started getting a little more JCM900-ish. I want to say I have a ‘76 and a ‘79. They’ve obviously been maintained differently over the years, but the newer one is tighter and the older one is creamier. I like them both a lot – that was set up as a pedal platform as I needed different sounds. If a song needs a fuzz part or an HM-2 part, that amp can do it all.”

Image: Press

Bright Spark

Zooming out, though, something remarkable about the way Love is Not Enough sounds is the warmth and clarity behind its guitars. As a riffer, Ballou is naturally a grimy, aggressive player, meaning that keeping a sense of nuance alive requires deliberate thought. “I’m always pushing the brightness to try to get more clarity,” he says. “But then sometimes you end up with a very chirpy sound, which is not very metal. The OS-2 quells the chirpiness and also starves the bottom end.”

From both a philosophical and practical perspective, Ballou sees his yard as the mid-range. Returning again to the idea of a division of labour, he is happy to leave the sludge to Newton and the splashy stuff to Koller’s cymbals. He’s not trying to grind you to a pulp, he’s trying to punch you in the solar-plexus. “Listen to the classic Slayer records – they don’t have crushing low end or sizzly high end,” he says. “There are great guitar sounds that have that, but we’ve always thought of Converge more as a hard band than a heavy band.”

Converge’s Love Is Not Enough is out February 13 through Deathwish/Epitaph.

The post Why metalcore pioneers Converge have returned to bring an end to “data entry” modern metal and show a new generation the power of authenticity appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you’re hoping to streamline your rig this year then look no further than the Line 6 Helix floorboard processor, now on sale at Guitar Center just in time for Presidents’ Day – saving you $200.

This popular rig command centre launched back in 2015, and went on to compete with the likes of Neural DSP, Kemper, and Fractal. Across the years, the Helix has undergone several updates that have expanded its offerings of amps, cabs, mics, and effects.

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The Helix utilises Line 6’s HX modelling engine, and captures the sonic nuance and dynamic response of vintage and modern gear. Its dual DSP architecture enables vast processing capabilities, while its large colour screen and touch-sensitive switches help to simplify deep editing.

• READ MORE: This guitarist is using a Steam Deck as his entire live rig – and it’s genuinely impressive

The screen gives users a clear view of their signal chain, while the footswitches let you edit blocks on the fly by simply tapping and turning the nearby knob. It also offers four stereo signal paths, four effects loops and a comprehensive I/O layout. Learn more in the video below:

And speaking of amp modellers, Fractal Audio has made the leap to native software with ICONS – a new line of amp-modelling plugins and standalone applications that brings its acclaimed modelling and effects tones directly to DAWs and desktop setups.

Powering ICONS is Fractal Audio’s advanced amp modelling, which recreates analogue circuits at the component level so that “each model sounds, feels, and responds just like the real thing at any setting.”

The Line 6 Helix multi-effects unit is reduced to $1,099.99. Learn more and shop more deals at Guitar Center.

The post Get a Line 6 Helix at $200 off this Presidents’ Day at Guitar Center appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

You might assume the members of the Rolling Stones and their families are all financially set for life given the enduring success of the band’s music. But as revealed in a recent court case concerning Ronnie Wood’s son Jesse, not everyone in the Stones’ world is rolling in it.

As reported by the Daily Mail, Jesse Wood stood before magistrates in West London last month after pleading guilty to an unspecified minor driving offence, revealing he was living on around £1,000 per month with an annual income of £14,000, and was surviving on savings. The 49-year-old guitarist and model asked for leniency, it’s said, after being handed a £957 court bill.

• READ MORE: Yungblud says “it’s only the people who didn’t reach the mountaintop” who are “gatekeeping” rock music

As one of rock music’s all-time commercially successful bands, it’s easy to assume the money would be of no concern to any member of the Rolling Stones and their families.

Ronnie Wood’s net worth is reported to be substantial – somewhere in the region of £150 million as quoted by numerous sources – but it’s important to note that the point at which he joined the Stones was instrumental in shaping his financial position later down the line.

Wood joined the band in 1975, after many of their most royalty-generating hits had already been written. For example, the royalties generated by hits like Satisfaction (1965) flow to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

An anonymous industry source quoted by the Daily Mail explains: “People see stadiums and assume it’s one big pot of money for everyone. It never has been.

“Mick and Keith operate in a different financial stratosphere. Ronnie’s world has always been more complicated, and that has trickled down.”

While Ronnie Wood no doubt earns a considerable wedge for being a Rolling Stone – from touring revenue and songs written since he joined, for example – the source notes that there’s a reason for the disparity in what each Stones member takes home.

“He gets paid handsomely to be a Rolling Stone, but he doesn’t own the jukebox,” they go on.

People often incorrectly assume that a person’s quoted net worth is a liquid pot of cash they have in the bank ready to distribute as needed. But the picture is always more complicated than that. The Daily Mail notes that much of Ronnie Wood’s fortune is tied up in illiquid assets, including a multi-million-pound art collection, as well as property and investments.

“His wealth is structural,” a financial advisor tells the Daily Mail. “It’s in paintings and properties and future tour revenues. That’s not the same as having millions in a bank account to distribute.”

The post “Mick and Keith operate in a different financial stratosphere”: The stark financial disparity of the Rolling Stones revealed by Ronnie Wood’s son’s court case appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you’re looking to grab a bargain before Presidents’ Day comes to an end, then head over to Sweetwater where you can grab the popular Sabre model from Sterling by Music Man for less than $1,000.

The Sabre model has a long history – it was first launched in 1978 by Music Man, with production ceasing in 1980. It was then revived in 2020, and rated 9/10 by Guitar.com no less. The Sterling version then landed in 2022, offering a slightly more affordable take on the premium Music Man model.

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Saving you $500 and now priced at $999.99, this dent and scratch model from Sweetwater may only have minor cosmetic flaws but all of its key features work just perfectly. It offers a super lightweight nyatoh body topped with a piece of highly figured flame maple veneer, and comes in a Deep Blue Burst finish.

It also offers a roasted maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard with a 12-inch radius, modern “C” shape, and stainless-steel frets. Completing this rock-ready model is a Modern Tremolo and Sterling locking tuners, while tone is driven by a pair of Fishman Fluence Modern pickups that deliver two distinctive humbucker voices courtesy of a push-pull knob.

• READ MORE: Sterling By Music Man Rabea Artist Series Sabre – a solid rock and metal workhorse

Check out the video below to hear the Sabre in-play:

If you’re looking for more Presidents’ Day deals, then check out our guide to all the best finds, as we trawled through the internet to find the best savings so you don’t have to. We found a bunch of huge deals on products from Fender, Gibson, Taylor, Positive Grid and many more treasured brands.

You can shop this deal and more over at Sweetwater.

The post Presidents’ Day bargain: Save a MASSIVE $500 on this Sterling by Music Man Sabre at Sweetwater appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s been a big year for Yungblud. Though a hugely successful artist in his own right for years, July saw him perform Changes at Black Sabbath’s massive final show at Villa Park, attracting tens of thousands of new eyes and even earning him his first Grammy for Best Rock Performance.

He’s since cemented himself as a prominent figure in the modern-day rock scene, performing with the likes of Nuno Bettencourt and Aerosmith (in a VMAs performance which attracted considerable criticism, including from The Darkness brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins). 

But Yungblud’s sudden boost in exposure has also led some to accuse him of being an “industry plant”, a claim he vehemently denies. “If I’m an industry plant, I’ve planted the f**king plant myself,” he recently said.

• READ MORE: He brought the house down at Black Sabbath’s farewell gig, and once hilariously defied a no-moshing order at a Japan show. Like it or not, Yungblud is the star rock music needs

 Yungblud – real name Dominic Richard Harrison – says the backlash he’s faced as an artist diving deeper into the rock world is partly a result of “gatekeeping”, and has an opinion on who’s mostly to blame for the elitism.

“When people say to fit in rock, that is the most un-rock ‘n’ roll thing ever,” he told Rolling Stone Australia & New Zealand in a recent interview [via Ultimate Guitar].

“Rock music isn’t supposed to be a gatekept boys club, and it became that. That’s why it’s been suffocated, and boring, and so adherent to the past. We have to allow young people to pioneer something, or at least try and give this thing a heartbeat.”

The artist says many who might be inspired to try and start a band or make a career in rock music are dissuaded from doing so because of the alleged gatekeeping that goes on.

“It just sucks, because you just know that a 17-year-old in a room who was loving sounding like Queen, my biggest fear is that they get deterred from pursuing a career in it by some old bit of cunt on the internet,” he continues. “And I’m here to go, if you’re young, play rock, fuck it. Don’t listen to them. There’s a new generation of ideas.”

Yungblud says it’s not rock music’s most venerated names putting walls up around the genre, though.

“When you actually meet the legends like Steven [Tyler], Ozzy [Osbourne], Billy Corgan, they fucking want it. It’s only the people who didn’t necessarily reach the mountaintop [who are] gatekeeping the genre,” he goes on. “So, if you’re young, and if you want to start a band, do it with everything you’ve got.”

Despite his critics, Yungblud has many famous voices from the legacy rock world on his side, including Ted Nugent, who recently branded him the “real McCoy”.

In other news, it was recently revealed that Yungblud only got the gig to play Changes at Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning show 48 hours before the event.

“48 hours before, he wasn’t gonna be the singer of that song,” said event director and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. 

“Things were changing… I landed at Heathrow Airport and I got a call, like, ‘That’s not happening.’ So I’m, like, ‘Okay, let’s figure it out.’ And it turned out to be one of the highlights.”

The post Yungblud says “it’s only the people who didn’t reach the mountaintop” who are “gatekeeping” rock music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The PRS Silver Sky – and the more affordable SE Silver Sky, in particular – are two of the most commercially successful electric guitar launches in recent memory, with the SE version topping Reverb’s best-selling electric guitars list two years in a row in 2022 and 2023.

But naturally, when a guitar becomes so ubiquitous, critics become louder. And much of that criticism has been levelled by those not a fan of the most expensive core Silver Sky’s smaller 7.25” fretboard radius.

• READ MORE: I spent my afternoon sifting through Presidents’ Day guitar deals so you don’t have to

It’s very much a debate on the minutiae of guitar building, but the argument basically goes that a larger fretboard radius and flatter fingerboard makes it easier to play solos as a less curved surface allows for a more consistent and low action across all six strings. It’s also argued that a smaller radius and more curved fretboard can sometimes lead to bent notes choking out while going over the hump of the ‘board.

But PRS main man Paul Reed Smith thinks these concerns are unfounded, as he explains in a recent interview on the Zak Kuhn Show.

“When I was a kid, nobody said you can’t play solos on a Tele or Strat. That’s new internet lore,” he says [via Ultimate Guitar].

“And so when we made the prototypes for John Mayer, we tried every single radius, every scale length, every position, every body shape. We tried everything. And he goes, ‘I want it to be the same as the guitars I’m used to. I don’t want to look down when I play.’ So we made it 7.25” and everybody, everybody pushed back. ‘Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea, you can’t play solos on a 7.25” radius.

Smith says despite the noisy opposition to the Silver Sky’s smaller fretboard radius, he thought it was “a bunch of hooey”.

While acknowledging that notes can sometimes choke out on bends on a fretboard with a smaller radius, Smith continues: “That I understood, but the idea that you couldn’t play solos on something that people have been playing solos on forever, just seemed Looney Tunes to me.

“What hurts me when people attack, it’s they’re so adamant that they know what they’re talking about. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t…

“I’m sorry. One of the solos in [ZZ Top’s] La Grange is on a Strat, from what I can hear – sounded good to me. [Dire Straits’] Sultans of Swing, don’t even get me started. Machine Gun [Jimi Hendrix] is ridiculous.”

Last year, John Mayer himself downplayed the importance of fretboard radius on a guitar’s playability, even saying the height one sets their strap is more important.

“I just looked at the guitars I loved the most, and they were 7.25 inches” he said, speaking about the Silver Sky’s 7.25”-radius fingerboard. “That was my measuring stick. Now that I know the math behind it, I still don’t think about it. The difference between 7.25” and 9.5” is less significant than your strap being an inch higher or lower. I’ll fight anybody on that.”

The post “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 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When you ask a guitarist to think about Taylor, the brand that’s been at the vanguard of acoustic guitars for the last 50 years, chances are they’re imagining the Grand Auditorium. Created by iconoclastic co-founder Bob Taylor in 1994 to be the ultimate all-purpose acoustic guitar, the Grand Auditorium sits between the big-bodied dreadnought and the more compact concert-sized instruments. Its versatility, a shining example of the brand’s determination to do acoustic guitars differently, has made it the most popular and beloved of Taylor’s many innovations since the brand’s humble beginnings in a hippy co-op in San Diego.

That’s probably why Andy Powers, Taylor’s CEO, President and Master Guitar Designer, chose the Grand Auditorium to put his most definitive and impactful stamp on the brand since his promotion to CEO in 2022. Enter the Taylor Next Generation Grand Auditorium – Powers’ reimagination of the brand’s most iconic instrument for its post-founder era.

The Taylor Next Generation Grand Auditorium on the Guitar.com Cover. Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

When you look at the instrument, though, you’d be forgiven for wondering what exactly is new about it.

“Well yeah, exactly!” Powers exclaims, sat cradling a new 814ce in his lap within the airy surrounds of a Californian hotel suite. “This is a guitar that we’ve built for a long time. It’s an iconic model for us. And we deliberately wanted to keep it appointed in the form that we know and love. But what’s so interesting about this instrument is that it represents our best and brightest guitar-making. A lot of very materially significant parts of the guitar design have been upgraded.”

Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

Stick Your Neck Out

Perhaps the most important and impactful change is one that you might never even need – but you’ll be thankful for if you do. The Action Control Neck is a Powers innovation that has been the best part of a decade of trial, error and experimentation, and after a limited debut on Taylor’s Gold Label collection last year, it’s now ready for the limelight.

Traditionally, acoustic guitar necks are glued into the bodies – a perfectly fine way to do it, but one that comes with its own issues. If you don’t like the height of the strings and general playability, your only real option is to take it to a luthier who will have to carefully remove the neck, add some shims to alter the neck’s angle so it’s more to your preference, and then reglue it back. What’s more, as a guitar gets older, the force of years of string tension often gradually pulls the neck forward, raising the action and making the guitar uncomfortable to play. The only solution? A neck reset.

“This instrument represents our best and brightest guitar-making”

“[With] a conventional neck reset, your guitar might be in a luthier shop for a month,” Powers explains. “That’s going to cost some money. It’s like open heart surgery for a guitar.”

Back in 1999 Taylor took its first steps to change this. The NT Neck, as it was known then, utilised cutting edge computer-controlled milling to create a bolt-on neck that had the same tonal transfer as glue, but also gave any tech or luthier the ability to easily remove the neck and reset it.

“We’ve been known for building great playing guitars that are easy to service, easy to adjust,” Powers explains. “But I wanted the adjustability to go even further. The way that we’ve built guitars with our Taylor neck system, that’s a huge improvement. But the Action Control Neck takes that level of adjustability farther than anything.

“You can do an action adjustment literally within seconds and not even have to re-tune the guitar. You simply adjust it to where you want to play, and you’re ready to go.”

Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

As he talks, Powers pulls out a flexible shaft screwdriver – the sort you can buy on Amazon for the price of a good cup of coffee – to demonstrate. He pops the screwdriver into the soundhole, gives a quick turn, and before our eyes, the action has been visibly lowered, but the guitar is still in perfect tune and intonation all the way up the neck. A job that would take a trained professional hours or even days to complete has been done in less time than it took to write this sentence. It feels a bit like a magic trick.

But why invest so much time in something that isn’t really a problem for Taylor once the guitar is out of the doors of their factory in El Cajon, California? Sustainability is one thing – which Taylor has taken seriously in its guitar-making for decades. If you’ve got a guitar that can be tweaked to a player’s individual taste – or their evolving playing style – in a heartbeat, you’re likely to hold onto that guitar for much longer.

“And you may never need to make those adjustments!” Powers adds. “You might pick the guitar up, it feels great, sounds great, and you’re happy forever. But I know for myself, over time my playing approach changes, or I start wanting to play in a different style. That means I want the guitar set up differently – fine. Just adjust it.”

Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

Grand Gestures

Wanting to meet real musicians where they are is also key to the other significant innovation at the heart of the Next Generation Grand Auditorium. The Taylor Expression system has been ever present in the brand’s guitars for the best part of two decades – the three rounded control knobs on the guitar’s top are about as distinctive a part of Taylor’s visual design language as the pickup itself was in shaping its live sound.

Now all of that is changing: the new Claria system offers not only a more subtle visual proposition, but a different approach to amplifying the sound, too.

“The development started by creating a pickup for big artists on big stages,” Powers explains. “It was the kind of situation where you don’t get to tune the environment to suit the pickup, so we needed to tune the pickup to suit the environment. And so we wanted to create something that was very player-centric, real intuitive and very easy to use.”

“I want the guitar to serve the player well in every way that we can”

While the Claria started with the needs of artists playing stadiums and other big rooms, Powers soon realised that the problems he was trying to solve could present themselves in any setting.

“If you’re playing a club date, when you walk on stage, you may not even get a soundcheck. Sometimes you barely get a line check and you’re off and running! And so you need something that you can dial in quickly that offers a greater selection of useful sounds.”

That user-friendly simplicity is at the heart of the new Claria system – if the Expression system was a scalpel made for carefully crafting perfect studio-quality tones, this is a lot more forgiving. “You’re not doing surgery on your amplified sound,” Powers reflects. “You’re just going, ‘That sounds good. Let’s play!’”

Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

Player Power

There was a time when Taylor guitars were designed for a certain type of player, and had a certain type of sound. Bob Taylor himself enjoys remarking that people often speak both positively and negatively about the sonic qualities of his guitars, using much the same language. It doesn’t bother him, so long as both sides agree that the instruments are well-made.

Powers is cut from a different cloth. His background as a boutique luthier who made guitars to suit each customer’s needs has helped make the ‘Taylor sound’ a much broader church than it was before he joined the company over a decade ago.

“I want the guitar to serve the player well in every way that we can,” he affirms. “The whole idea behind this was that we want to build a great, professional-quality guitar. If you were to pick a guitar because you like the sound of it, I want to make sure that all the other aspects of that instrument support you in your play. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Image: Rachel Billings for Guitar.com

The proof of his success has been placing prototypes of these Next Generation guitars in the hands of artists – the grin on Powers’ face tells its own story. “You see players respond to these, and you can actually watch fresh inspiration happening,” he enthuses. “It does really feel like it’s a breath of fresh air. I can see the future. I can see where we’re going. I know that players love playing music. That’s what interests us in the first place. So let’s build the guitars to suit them and serve their needs.”

The Taylor Next Generation Grand Auditorium is available now

Words: Josh Gardner
Photography: Rachel Billings

The post How Taylor quietly revolutionised its most iconic design with the Next Generation Grand Auditorium appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Sure, Presidents’ Day is no Black Friday – but it’s still a great opportunity to take advantage of some great deals on guitar gear. I understand, however, that it’s not exactly the most thrilling endeavour to have multiple tabs open sifting through the deals pages of all the big music retailers, which is why I’ve done exactly that so you don’t have to.

Presidents’ Day itself lands officially on the third Monday of February every year, which in 2026 is Monday the 16th. But some of the top music retailers are already offering pre-Presidents’ day discounts, and here are the best deals I’ve found…

 Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS – save over $200

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When we got our hands on the Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS after its launch in 2024, we scored it a strong 9/10, even suggesting it could be the last guitar you’d ever need. Boasting a humbucker and two single coils for a wide palette of tones, this guitar takes the time-honoured Stratocaster blueprint and adds a number of appointments for the modern player, including rolled fingerboard edges, a rosewood fingerboard and an alluring Blue Burst finish. Get it now at Guitar Center with over $200 off until 18 February.

Fender FA-135CE All-Mahogany Concert Acoustic-Electric – save $100

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In the market for your first acoustic guitar? Hell, the all-mahogany Fender FA-135CE would make a solid addition to any existing guitar collection, too. It boasts a mahogany build for a warm, resonant tone, Fishman electronics for amplification, a slim neck profile for supreme playability, plus a single cutaway for good upper fret access. Right now at Guitar Center, get it with $100 off, and pay just $219.99.

Gibson Les Paul Standard ’60s – save nearly $1,000!

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If you’ve got a little extra cash to spend and fancy getting yourself an authentic Gibson ‘60s Les Paul Standard, this awesome deal at Guitar Center means you could save a whopping $900 – and pay just $2,099. With an AAA figured maple top, pickups recreated from PAF-era examples, plus a gorgeous Honey Lemon Burst finish, what’s not to love…

Positive Grid Spark MINI – save $50

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One of the most kitted out practice amps on the market, the Positive Grid Spark MINI doubles as a Bluetooth speaker – so you can play along to your favourite tracks – and also comes with a smart app packed with a host of forward-thinking features. Did we mention it’s tiny, so totally portable? But don’t worry, it still boasts a sound which belies its form factor. We gave it a 9/10 in our review and called it a “game-changer”, so trust us, we know what we’re talking about. Get it now direct from Positive Grid with $50 off.

Taylor Builder’s Edition 514ce – save $400

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Go on, you only live once, so push the boat out; treat yourself to your last-ever acoustic guitar with this insane deal on the Taylor Builder’s Edition 514ce at Sweetwater. This Presidents’ Day, you can save a massive $400, taking the normal price of $3,399 down to just $2,999. We get it: that’s not exactly an impulse purchase, but there’s a reason why Taylor acoustics have been widely regarded as some of the best money can buy for decades. This one won’t let you down…

Fender Custom Shop Madison ’54 Telecaster NOS Masterbuilt by Greg Fessler – save almost $3,000

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Okay, this one’s a little gratuitous, but hey, maybe there’s a hardcore guitar collector out there who fancies saving nearly $3,000 on a Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilt Telecaster… You’ll still have to part with $8,745, but that’s a price slashed from $11,660 – so if you’re a serious collector with a bit of cash to spend, why not add this eye-catching Tele to the collection…

Of course, you might still want to browse the Presidents’ Day sales yourself…

• Guitar Center Presidents’ Day sale
• Positive Grid – 20% off select Spark gear
• Sweetwater Deal Zone
• Reverb Deals & Steals
• zZounds Big Deals
• Up to 84% off amp sims at Plugin Boutique

The post I spent my afternoon sifting through Presidents’ Day guitar deals so you don’t have to appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Josh Freese has reflected on his dismissal from the Foo Fighters last year, which came two years after he was announced as the band’s touring drummer in 2023 following the death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022.

In May last year, the 53-year-old drummer – who over the course of his illustrious career has performed with the likes of Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails and The Vandals – shared his “shock and disappointment” at receiving the news that he had been let go from the Foo Fighters after two years.

• READ MORE: David Ellefson thinks Megadeth should “give fans what they want” and include him in farewell tour: “Any reason that I’m not there now is unfounded, untruthful and unfair”

“In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I’ve never been let go from a band, so while I’m not angry – just a bit shocked and disappointed,” Freese said in an Instagram post at the time.

Now, in a new interview with Modern Drummer, Freese reveals he has a “couple of small theories” as to why he was let go from the band, but adds he “can’t really go into them right now”.

“The Foo Fighters are such a big, mainstream band that everything I say gets taken out of context, reposted and blown out of proportion,” he reasons [via Louder]. “People created headlines from one quick, simple comment I made on a podcast not long ago, it’s crazy.

“I’ve got to be careful about what I say about it. But I’ve got a lot to say about it and I’ve been just trying to figure out how and when to go about really articulating it.”

Freese adds that despite his shock at his dismissal from the band, he “did really enjoy the last two years [he] spent with those guys”, adding however: “They were good to me… until they weren’t.”

Much of Freese’s disappointment at being let go from the Foo Fighters appears to stem from his admiration for frontman Dave Grohl.

“I loved having Dave as a bandleader,” he continues. “I enjoyed being around those guys. They were generous and good to me… and that’s what makes the whole thing even more of a mystery. I think I’m a pretty good read on people, and I did not see that coming. One day it was nothing but laughs, we’re on stage and Dave’s looking at me every night like, ‘You’re killing it, dude!’ And then it was just – over.”

Foo Fighters have a string of tour dates planned for 2026 in North America. For tickets and dates, head to the band’s official website.

The post “One day it was nothing but laughs, then it was just over”: Josh Freese is still confused about his Foo Fighters dismissal – and says he needs to be “careful” what he says about it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If this is truly the end of the road for Megadeth, David Ellefson believes he should be a part of it. Last August, the thrash metal titans announced plans to release one final studio album followed by a farewell tour, bringing more than four decades of metal history to a close.

But while leader Dave Mustaine has publicly stated that he doesn’t intend to invite former members back for the band’s final run, Ellefson clearly sees things differently. The ex-Megadeth bassist also describes his continued absence as “unfounded”, “untruthful” and “unfair”.

Speaking on Argentinian rock radio station UnDinamo, the musician reiterates that he remains “available” for Megadeth’s final tour – potentially alongside other past members such as guitarist Marty Friedman.

• READ MORE: David Ellefson shares his thoughts on the final Megadeth album: “I hear it and go, ‘This is a Dave solo record…’ It doesn’t sound like Megadeth”

“I have always said that I am available for that. And I would do it because I think any reason that I’m not there now is unfounded,” says Ellefson [via Blabbermouth]. “It’s untruthful and it’s unfair because clearly there’s nothing wrong. So, I would hope and even pray to [God] that any misunderstanding, any bitterness would be removed, that that would somehow be dissipated.”

Reflecting on his career and the role of fans, Ellefson adds: “It’s funny – you make your first record, you have no fans. You just make your first album. Then you start to get fans who [say], ‘Hey, give us more.’ So you make album two, like we do. And then at that point, you – I feel – have an obligation to listen to your fans. You don’t have to do everything they say, like, ‘Make Rust In Peace Part II,’ ‘cause creatively the spirit leads you where it’s supposed to go. But I think, especially when you’re playing concerts – making albums is music business; playing concerts is show business. They’re two separate things that kind of come together.”

Without fans, he adds, there is no second album – and no farewell tour. “So, to me, you give them what they want.”

He also points to Friedman’s 2023 appearances with Megadeth as a sign that reunions are possible.

“So for me, yes. Marty – I can’t speak for anyone else, but Marty coming back to play a couple of shows showed his willingness, which I think was great,” says Ellefson. “I would wish that Dave [Mustaine]… Look, if it were just me and Dave sitting here, I’m sure everything would be fine, but there’s a lot of people with influences, and that can be sticky. So my hope is that the voice of the fans gets louder than any other voice that would tear it apart.”

The post David Ellefson thinks Megadeth should “give fans what they want” and include him in farewell tour: “Any reason that I’m not there now is unfounded, untruthful and unfair” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

As a fan, nothing screams ‘once in a lifetime’ quite like getting pulled onstage to jam with your favourite band.

That’s exactly what went down at Deftones’ 5 February show at the Atlas Arena in Łódź, Poland, when one lucky fan got the ultimate VIP moment: joining the band for a set-closing performance of 7 Words from their 1995 debut album, Adrenaline.

• READ MORE: Ichika Nito claps back at “fake” playing accusations with a killer one-take performance

According to The PRP, the guitarist, named Kacper, had been holding up a sign all night asking to play with the metal band. He eventually caught the attention of frontman Chino Moreno, who couldn’t resist having a little fun.

“The kid did the gesture for guitar solos, to which Chino joked, ‘saxophone?’,” a fan reports. “And then Chino said, ‘Guitar?’ He looked over at his bandmates and smiled and said ‘We’ll see.’”

As the band reached the end of their 20-song set, they made good on that tease. Kacper was brought up from the crowd, embraced Moreno, and was handed the singer’s Gibson SG by a guitar tech.
“Okay, so it starts in F sharp major,” Moreno joked, winding up the audience before launching into the pummelling opener from Adrenaline.

Judging by the footage, Kacper more than held his own, and the crowd absolutely loved it.

Check out the wholesome (and frankly, impressive) moment below.

Meanwhile, guitarist Stephen Carpenter – who in 2022 announced he would no longer tour outside North America with the band – remains absent from these overseas dates. As Moreno previously admitted, he’s still not sure why.

“If he does have an answer, I think it’d be great if one day he would share it,” said the singer.

The post Watch the awesome moment Chino Moreno pulled a fan onstage to play guitar with Deftones at a recent Poland show appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Love it or hate it, social media algorithms now play a bigger role in music discovery than radio ever did. A single 30-second clip can launch a career, revive a forgotten track, or send a boutique guitar pedal into backorder chaos overnight. And according to Marty Friedman, that same machine is doing something else: keeping guitar culture alive and kicking.

Speaking in a recent interview with musician Tobias Le Compte, the former Megadeth shredder argues that guitar’s popularity has always been cyclical – but today’s platforms are amplifying it in ways that simply weren’t possible before.

• READ MORE: Marty Friedman explains why practicing guitar at home won’t help you find your own sound

“It goes up and down in popularity as an instrument,” Friedman explains. “But the great thing about now is social media is just such a big support of guitar.”

“Just right now, I did two things that are, without social media – no one would know what they are. But I did a great collaboration with Ichika Nito, and it’s all over social media now.”
That reach, he argues, has real-world consequences for the instrument’s future.

“And that gets people who sit around watching the internet all day to play guitar, you know what I mean. And if there wasn’t interest in guitar from those people, they’d be playing games or other things,” says Friedman.

“But it’s wonderful to see those people feel the fun of playing guitar and get the satisfaction. I’m sure it’s fun playing video games too, but it’s wonderful to play an instrument with your hands and not just a computer. And so thanks to social media, there’s a lot of excitement in the guitar.”

That optimism isn’t universally shared, though. Joe Bonamassa has previously cautioned that the pressure to constantly post on social media can shift the focus away from creativity and music-making itself.

“How long you can stay inspired doing one-minute videos is up to the individual,” Bonamassa said. “And I find that if I feel the need to stay relevant because I haven’t posted something in a minute and I just go, ‘I haven’t played guitar today but let me tune this Les Paul up and do a one-minute video.’”

“I’ve been guilty of this in the past where that one minute where it took me to film something in one take and just throw on Instagram was the only minute of music I had made that entire day. And that’s not for me,” said the guitarist. “That’s crossing a line where your inspiration is the dopamine you’re going to get from the comment sections of your social media. So for me personally, that’s not the lifestyle I want to live.”

The post Marty Friedman credits social media for keeping “excitement in the guitar” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

£259, mansonguitarworks.com

Matt Bellamy is a fuzz guy. You kind of have to be, to not only play guitars with in-built fuzzes, but for that in-built fuzz to be the Z.vex Fuzz Factory, a fuzz that’s as fantastic as it is finicky. There are few more prominent modern champions of weird, spitty, chaotic fuzz guitar tones than Muse, and for many Bellamy’s guitar sound is the touchstone for Fuzz Factory tones and fuzz as a whole.

• READ MORE: The best fuzz pedals for all styles and budgets

And so we, finally, have a signature Matt Bellamy fuzz pedal. Which is, perhaps surprisingly, not a signature Fuzz Factory. It is instead made by Manson, a company that Bellamy is the majority shareholder of. It’s a collaboration with UK-based builder ThorpyFX, which has allowed Manson to both tap his wealth of experience in circuit design and keep things all UK-made.

Image: Adam Gasson

Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz – what is it?

The Supermassive Black Fuzz (which I will now just call the SMBF so that the internet doesn’t run out of ink) is, tonally, inspired by the fuzz sounds heard specifically on the song Supermassive Black Hole. Brits will remember this track as being Muse’s highest-charting UK hit, and Americans will remember it from the baseball scene in the first Twilight film. It’s obviously a killer song – it remains their most enduring hit from that era when Muse were kicking out insane, fuzzy and theatrical hard rock that didn’t really sound like anything else on the radio. The pedal uses the thick, saturated guitar lines as a jumping off point to shape a fuzz with a lot of tricks up its sleeve for something ostensibly based off a single track.

Manson Guitar Works doesn’t lay out the exact structure of the fuzz circuit, but suffice it to say that it’s very much its own thing. Notably it’s not really a Fuzz Factory-inspired thing, at least not from a controls perspective, and its tone stack sets it very far apart from any specific vintage lineage. The core fuzz sound runs into an aggressive filter with variable Q, with the Peak footswitch engaging a boosted allpass/static phase filter.

The controls here are named in the grand tradition of ‘theme over function’ – you’ve got Magnitude, Warp, Dimension and Gravity, which are respectively volume, tone, filter Q and gain. It was pretty easy to remember Magnitude as volume, but I’ll be honest, I did have to frequently refer to the manual for the others. At least the EQ on/off switch is fairly unambiguously named, which is both good from a UX standpoint and a slight missed opportunity from a theming standpoint. Presumably “Hawking radiation on/off” didn’t quite fit on the toggle washer…

Strangely, the gain/volume and filter/Q controls are diagonally opposite from each other. This hardly makes the pedal unusable, obviously, but it’s perhaps not the most intuitive way of laying the knobs out, especially when they’ve already got non-standard names. It means that in your head you can’t easily divide the control surface into two vertical or horizontal halves, one for the core fuzz controls and one for the filter controls – it’s all just a soup of ‘controls.’

The engraved metal knobs also don’t really help on the UX front. They may be fairly indestructible, but they only have a tiny grey-on-silver line to tell you where they’re pointing. At a glance across a dark stage it’s basically impossible to see your settings. Again, not really a dealbreaker, but it’s another tick in the ‘form over function’ checklist. Cool is cool until it’s so cool it’s hard to use. But never mind that – how are the sounds?

Image: Adam Gasson

Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz – build quality and usability

Perhaps fittingly for a pedal named after a black hole, the Supermassive Black Fuzz is dense. Drop this thing on the floor, it’s more likely to tunnel through to the centre of the Earth than break. The knobs are milled from aluminium, and engraved with custom designs, and are clearly extremely sturdy.

The double-sloped enclosure is also engraved aluminium, with a spacey black hole design that extends over the back edge. Aesthetically it’s undeniably striking, although I do wish that there was a little less logo on the thing – the design is sleek, dark and intriguing, but the massive typography tips the balance into perhaps overwhelming visual maximalism. Oh well – that’s probably on me for expecting any kind of restraint from a Muse-related product.

Image: Adam Gasson

Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz – sounds

First things first – the SMBF can indeed make you sound like the hit 2006 song and 2008 vampire baseball jam Supermassive Black Hole. How close you can get relies on a few more aspects of the rest of your setup – you’ll definitely want to make sure your amp is relatively clean so that you’re focusing more on the crunch and splat, but that sound is absolutely in here. But here’s the interesting thing – the tone that apes that song absolutely one of the more restrained ones on offer. This thing can get bonkers.

First off let’s remove the filter and the “Peak” boost from the equation to get a taste for the raw fuzz. It ranges from spluttery and bright on the lower settings to full-on tonal destruction in the higher gain-ranges. I recently modified a Boss FZ-2 PCB to remove the octave aspect from the fuzz – the SMBF reminds me a little of that sound. It has the massive full-range approach of a more modern EQ and circuit design, combined with the chaotic, aggressive saturation of a more vintage unit. “Best of both worlds” is trite, but…

On its own this would be a mightily impressive two-knob fuzz. For such a wild sound it has a strangely high-fidelity quality to it – it’s like a fully-produced fuzz tone, complete with studio compression and mastering. However this is not the full story, obviously – it is time to reintroduce that filter, which we can do with a quick flick of the EQ on/off switch.

This is not just a RAT-style high-end roll off or even a scooped Big Muff tilt control. It’s far more resonant a filter, and its operation is highly dependent on how you have that Q control set. Set wide, the filter is good for pretty broad tonal adjustments, but set it narrow and the fun truly begins. It’s great for honking, screaming leads, as well as for thick sludge metal tones – and, for a more subtle textural layer, it can also turn your guitar totally anaemic for some spikey, clanging riffs that will work fantastically in a fuller mix.

The Peak footswitch isn’t a straight ahead boost mode, but instead a boosted static filter – it’s pretty subtle without the EQ engaged, but with it on, it becomes even more nasal and aggressive. It’s a great addition, really, as it gives you a pretty viable way of going from a rhythm to a lead tone – or just making the overall thing just that much more aggressive.

But for all of the talk of aggression, it is a fantastically versatile fuzz – I just kept on finding tones in it, even when I took off my reviewer hat and went full self-indulgent drone metal with the thing. Relatedly it’s also a fantastic fuzz for stacking – a RAT afterwards was incredibly gratifying in how it smoothed off some of the sharper edges for an even thicker block of fuzz.

Sonically, it’s pretty hard to fault the SMBF, however there is one particular area where the pedal’s monolithic approach to UX has led to a tonal limitation – namely, the lack of an expression input. In my playing I was messing around with the filter control, and the sharp Q and exaggerated response lent the actual sweeping motion a dynamic and ear-catching character, one of an extreme and modern fuzz wah. But unlike, say, the Death By Audio Evil Filter, you’ve got no way to manipulate the filter as you play, unless you count kneeling down and messing with the knob. That’s doable in some situations, but a more repeatable and hands-off solution would have really elevated the chaos-summoning possibilities of the unit.

Image: Adam Gasson

Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz – should I buy one?

The SMBF is by no means a perfect pedal. Its bespoke-engraved knobs would be a shame to replace, but if I was to add this to any kind of live board I would tearfully replace them with ones I could actually see. Relatedly its slightly confounding control scheme is something that can be overcome with use, however for quick adjustments on the fly it is still a little annoying to have to rolodex four abstract black hole-related concepts and quickly match them to volume, gain, filter and Q.

Another elephant in the room: this is an expensive fuzz. Knowing the price and listening to the ultra-clean, ultra in-depth sounds, it is possible to square how much it costs with what it can do. But it’s still over £250 for a four-knob fuzz. The cash is undeniably felt in the build and sonic quality, and thanks to the EQ and Peak switches it’s not like it’s a single-mode effect – but it’ll be pricey enough to give a lot of players understandable pause.

With that said, the sonics are pretty much faultless. If there is ever a V2 of this pedal, and I hope there is because I want to see this circuit continue to exist and develop, I’d put expression control and a more sensible layout at the top of my wishlist. But until then this is still an extremely cool fuzz, one that will have you fast approach Supermassive Black Hole’s tones and shoot well past the event horizon, all the way into that little room with Matthew McConaughey in it shouting at bookcases.

Image: Adam Gasson

Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz – alternatives

As mentioned it’s not like this is a clone of any one other fuzz circuit, but if you’re both a Muse fan and a fuzz fan I’d be remiss not to mention the ZVEX Fuzz Factory, of course, which is the actual fuzz you hear on that track, and the one Bellamy has used for years.

Another boutique option would be the Death By Audio Evil Filter, a chaotic fuzz driven through a very, well, evil filter. If you aren’t as bothered about the fuzz-wah nature of it or are put off by the DBA option’s price, then you could also take a look at the DOD Carcosa, a very chaotic-sounding box that straddles the line between a spluttery vintage voice and a modern level of amp-shattering output.

Finally, to go for something a literal 10th of the budget of the SMBF, you could gravitate towards something like the Behringer SF300, a clone of the long discontinued (change this please Boss) FZ-2 Hyperfuzz, which is a vintage fuzz combined with a more modern active EQ.

[Editor’s Note: Meng Ru Kuok, Founder & CEO of Caldecott Music Group is a part owner of Manson Guitar Works. Guitar.com is part of Caldecott Music Group]

The post Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz review: heavy, heady filter fuzz that’s not just for Muse worship appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Nowadays, it can be hard to trust what you see online. In fact, people are quick to assume the worst, with viral shredder Ichika Nito recently facing accusations of miming in online videos. However, the Japanese guitarist has released a single-shot performance video to set the record straight.

Nito appeared on The First Take to show that he’s the real deal. The Japanese YouTube channel is known for placing a singers and bands in a studio and allowing them a single take to prove their worth – however, Nito’s episode comes as part of the new Highlight series.

The Highlight series in particular puts on a spotlight on individual talent. And the guitarist does just that, performing i miss you in one sitting with no edits – that means every second is there to scrutinise, from the tense walk to his seat right down to his closing strum.

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“The concept is simple,” Nito writes in an Instagram post. “Step into the studio and capture a performance in a single take. No vocals, no backing track, just guitar, all in one shot.”

Nito’s single-take performance comes as a huge clap back at those doubting the authenticity of his skills. Back in January, YouTuber Jacobra Records released a video dubbing Nito the “ultimate FAKE guitarist”. The video fully dissects some of Nito’s online content, and ultimately accuses Nito of miming.

However, Nito’s First Take performance seems to prove he’s pretty capable. It even has a few imperfections, which to adds to the video’s authenticity.

It’s a sentiment Rabea Massaad shared in his own video critiquing guitar culture’s “endless pursuit for perfection”. In light of all the recent accusations of miming, he explains how we should shift focus from “unobtainable perfection” and remember that authentic players fumble sometimes too.

Pointing to Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt as an example, Massaad explains that imperfections just show that a guitarist is human. “There are plenty of live videos out there of him making mistakes and playing bad notes and being a bit sloppy… but it’s cool because he’s performing and he’s loving it. Just embrace the imperfections. Some of the best solos and best performances out there have imperfections. It’s part of being human!”

Regardless of whether an online guitarist is faking or not, the truth always comes out in the end. Take Giacomo Turra, for example: when he was accused of plagiarism, even Rick Beato came forward saying that the guitar fraud “couldn’t play well enough to put the video out” when he was set to feature on his channel.

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Would you have the guts to jam with the one and only BB King? If you find the concept intimidating, you’re not alone; despite being an accomplished guitarist, Warren Haynes once “froze” when the blues legend invited him up on stage.

While Haynes has since worked up the nerves to perform alongside BB King, he was first presented with an opportunity to join King on stage back in the early ‘90s. After joining The Allman Brothers Band in 1989 for their reunion, the band would support King on tour in 1993. “We played with him in Texas,” Haynes tells Guitarist. “During the show, BB invited Gregg [Allman] to sit in [on organ].”

That’s when King shared an open invite to the rest of his musical peers backstage. “He asked, ‘Anyone else want to join me?’” Haynes recalls.

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Considering Haynes hadn’t been properly introduced to the headline star, he felt like it wasn’t his place to waltz out on stage. “More than anything, I wanted to go… but I’d never met BB,” he continues. “I thought he’d look at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ So I just froze.”

Since he’d not been able to officially break the ice and chat to BB casually, Haynes still felt like a bit of a fanboy. The idea of going up on stage and performing with his icon was overwhelming. “I saw BB for the first time aged 19,” Haynes explains. “He gave me a guitar pick that I carried in my pants pocket for years until it eventually got lost.”

It’s not the first time Haynes has recounted the tale of his fanboy fears. In a 2012 interview with Classic Rock, the guitarist explained how the experience taught him a valuable lesson. “It taught to not be so shy and take advantage of opportunities when they come,” he said. “I had the opportunity several times to meet Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I didn’t want to bother him. I always thought I would meet him the next time. And, of course, there was no next time.”

That’s why, years later, Haynes took full advantage of the opportunity to perform with King. “It was years later that I finally got another opportunity to play with BB,” he tells Guitarist. “And I have to say that was an extremely proud moment.”

Haynes has recently worked alongside Joe Bonamassa on his BB King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album, featuring on the track How Blue Can You Get. The record was released to mark what would have been King’s 100th year of life, as well as celebrating his musical legacy.

The post “I thought he’d look at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?’”: Why Warren Haynes “froze” and missed out on performing with BB King appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Behringer has unveiled the Ring Stinger – a clone of the classic ‘90s fuzz/ring mod guitar pedal of the same name from boutique analogue pedal maker Lovetone.

Designed to offer a “world of sound sculpting carnage”, Behringer’s new Ring Stinger serves up guitarists – as well as synth players, bassists and other instrumentalists – classic ring modulation for metallic experimental sounds alongside a built-in fuzz circuit.

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Alongside those core elements, the Ring Stinger also features a built-in pitch shifter, expression pedal compatibility for additional foot control, a low-frequency oscillator, for adding extra life to your tone via rhythmic pulses, a filter section for shaping your tone as you see fit, a range of waveforms, and a mix control for blending your wet and dry signal.

There’s also a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), plus true bypass for the total preservation of your signal when the unit is switched off. Multiple parameters are assignable to an expression pedal too, so you choose what an external pedal controls.

In terms of connectivity, the Behringer Ring Stinger has a DC power input plus a main mono output, expression pedal inputs for LFO depth and VCO, carrier in, VCO out and a main input jack.

“Guitarists, synth players, bassists, harpists, electric violinists and everything in between. You’re all welcome here!” says Behringer. “No matter what you’re looking to sonically tear apart and reinvent, Ring Stinger will welcome you with open arms. 

“In fact the more creative the input source the better! Explore an entirely new soundscape for your instrument with a pedal previously reserved for boutique collectors.”

Credit: Behringer

No pricing info is available on the Behringer website, but we’re seeing the Ring Stinger on numerous retailer sites, like at Thomann, priced between £80 and £99.

This isn’t the first time Behringer has produced a Lovetone clone; in December, the company unveiled its take on Lovetone’s Meatball analogue envelope filter pedal.

Learn more about the Ring Stinger at Behringer.

The post Behringer launches the Ring Stinger, a recreation of Lovetone’s classic boutique ring mod/fuzz pedal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

[Editor’s Note: Meng Ru Kuok, Founder & CEO of Caldecott Music Group is a part owner of Manson Guitar Works. Guitar.com is part of Caldecott Music Group]

To perform intergalactic riffs, you’ll need an out-of-this-world guitar. And Matt Bellamy has you covered. The Muse frontman’s new Manson Signature Black Edition is his magnum opus, packed with every gadget you’d ever need for the perfect sci-fi axe.

Eagle-eyed fans might find the Manson Black Edition series familiar. And that’s because it’s a faithful recreation of one of Bellamy’s most eccentric guitars; back in 2003, the guitar made its debut in Muse’s Time Is Running Out video, boasting a body rammed with unique effects knobs and switches. Now, fans can get the guitar for themselves.

• READ MORE: Manson Meta Series MBM-2H Sustainiac review: “a superbly set-up and put together instrument that’s ready for anything thrown at it”
  

First up, the Black Edition OR (Origin Reissue) Relic comes as a totally accurate replication of Bellamy’s original matt black mahogany axe. Brainstormed over three years, the guitar has the same ‘worn-in’ look, complete with glued joint ‘repairs’, scrapes and scratches. It even has all the same components of the original guitar, which Manson says proved quite a challenge considering it’s been 23 years since the birth of Bellamy’s original creation.

As a result, the Black Edition series offers the same MIDI-controlled killswitch effects and slew of futuristic sounds in the form of the Z-Vex Fuzz Factory and theramin-style Wah Probe. There’s also Sustainer Intensity controls as well as a Sustainer three-way Mode Toggle, a pickup selector, and Comp and Stab controls.

On the back, there’s more – you can flick your LEDs on or off, as well as trim pots RF and LED Wah Probe trim pots, Ron Joyce Sub Board trim pot system, and volume controls for your Wah Probe and Fuzz Factory drive.

As a result, the OR Relic is the most exclusive release of the series. It’s limited to just nine guitars, and it’s set to cost £29,999. To make sure it gets to you with no extra dings, it also comes in a specially designed Protechnic flightcase.

Every OR guitar has also been personally road-tested and approved by Bellamy, with the Muse frontman having a go on each unique guitar before signing the back of its headstock. The strings Bellamy used will also come in a sealed bag with your guitar, together with a copper laser-etched certificate and some limited edition picks.

For those who can’t nab one of the ultra-scarce OR Relic models, there are also two New Era Black Edition models. The axes come as more modern interpretations of the original guitar, utilising newer, less rare components, as well as coming in both marked and squeaky-clean versions.

In terms of the components, the guitars still offer a slew of unique features. In terms of its integrated systems, there’s a Sustainiac Sustainer, Z-Vex Fuzz Factory, Manson/Ron Joyce FL Wah, and a MIDI Strip controller. Alongside volume and tonal controls, there’s a MIDI Rotary Program Potentiometer, Sustainiac Drive and a three-way Sustainic Mode Toggle, as well as a pickup selector. There’s also Fuzz Factory controls, as well as Comp and Stab controls.

However, the New Era editions are still pretty limited – after all, this is an all-in-one performance multi-tool, offering the “ultimate self-contained” instrument for the stage. For that reason, the New Era guitars are limited to just 25 pieces between them, costing £11,999 for an unmarked edition and £12,999 for a relic edition.

The New Era guitars ship in a Manson/Hiscox II case, as well as coming with a limited-edition strap and a hand-signed certificate by Bellamy and Manson’s Head of Production Tim Stark.

Whether you’re carving out rich art-rock words or fine-tuning your proggy licks, the Black Edition series is up to the task. Nicknamed the “Gadget Guitar”, Bellamy has explained that the Black Edition series is his definitive creation with Manson.

“If I could only have one guitar in the world, the Black Edition would be it,” he explains.

To date, Bellamy’s live rig and personal axe collection is rammed with Manson guitars. His first signature collaboration came back in 2001, where he conjured up his signature Mattocaster/MB shape to capture the feel of a Fender Telecaster with the sound of a Gibson Les Paul.

“Fundamentally, the way a guitar feels is so important,” he told us back in 2020. “When I was younger and I picked up a Strat or a Gibson or something like that, it would always send me down a certain way of playing, which I felt was less original than when playing my own design.”

“[When designing a guitar], I want to come up with a guitar that leads me down a path of 21st-century music rather than going backwards with a retro feel,” he added. “That’s always been the challenge with the guitar in the modern era of music.”

Learn more at Manson Guitar Works.

The post Manson and Matt Bellamy have faithfully recreated the crazy guitar from Muse’s Time Is Running Out video appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.