Music is the universal language
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:14
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“It’s happened before, people thought it was a patriotic ditty to wave the flag”: John Fogerty explains why Trump has misunderstood Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son
US president Donald Trump has ruffled the feathers of a growing list of artists for using their music at his political rallies and within campaign videos, with many taking legal action – John Fogerty is one of them.
Trump has previously used Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son to soundtrack his rallies, causing the band’s guitarist and prime songwriter to issue a cease and desist order to put a stop to its use. Fogerty has no idea why anyone would want to use the track at a political rally, but especially Mr. Trump.
Back when Fogerty issued the cease and desist, he wrote a statement and explained that the song exists because “as a veteran, I was disgusted that some people were allowed to be excluded from serving our country because they had access to political and financial privilege”. You can read his original post below:
— John Fogerty (@John_Fogerty) October 16, 2020
Now, in an interview with Vulture, Fogerty selects the track as the most misunderstood song from his catalogue. He explains, “That’s misunderstood by a small percentage of people – people who seem to be conservative, right-wing, and probably Republican or some other ‘ism’ in that category, and most notably by Mr Trump.
“It’s happened before where people thought it was a patriotic ditty to wave the flag and all that, not really understanding the cynicism and absolute defiance I had in the song. I mean, even if you don’t hear the rest of it, you should at least hear, ‘It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son’. But if you don’t, then I guess you’re able to see the song in a different way.”
He adds, “How can I say this? I can’t imagine using that song as a political rallying theme, particularly when you seem to be the person who I’m screaming about in the song on all three counts. It’s hilarious to me. Maybe I’m the one that misunderstands it, who knows?”
John Fogerty released Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years on 22 August, featuring re-recorded versions of the band’s classics. You can find out more via his website.
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Legendary guitar dealer reveals his “biggest mistake” – turning down George Harrison’s offer to trade in his Beatles Gretsch Country Gentleman
Norman Harris of Norman’s Rare Guitars has shared the “biggest mistake” he’s made during his career – turning down an offer to buy George Harrison’s Gretsch Country Gentleman.
Harris’ legendary vintage guitar business has become the subject of a documentary, which is streaming on Netflix in the US. The documentary dives into the world famous reputation of the business, and features interviews with artists who treasure the shop including avid collector Joe Bonamassa, and even the late Taylor Hawkins.
In a new interview with The Guardian, in which Harris himself reflects on the shop’s humble beginnings and its legacy, he explains how the surprising visit from The Beatles guitarist sent his career “stratospheric”.
Back in 1973, he received a phone call from a friend. “He said he was with someone who needed a Les Paul,” he says. “But he wouldn’t tell me who it was. I went over to meet them and it was just my friend there. I said: ‘You made me ride all the way down here? You made it sound so important.’ And then in walked George Harrison with Mal Evans [The Beatles’ former road manager].”
At the time, Harrison was looking for a replacement for Lucy, a one-of-a-kind 1957 Goldtop Les Paul, refinished in red, that had been stolen earlier in the year. The guitar was given to Harrison by Eric Clapton, and had been used on The Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
After it was stolen, it was sold to a musician in LA. Harrison managed to track it down, but the new owner argued that he had “purchased Lucy in good faith”. He gave Harrison an offer: he would hand over Lucy if Harrison could get him another 1950s Les Paul and a Fender Precision bass in exchange.
As The Guardian reports, a mutual friend became involved who knew that Harris had three 1950s Les Pauls. When Harrison visited, he purchased two 1958 Les Paul Standards – one for the trade, one for himself.
“We actually spent the day together. I then went to this place he was renting in the Hollywood Hills. Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitarist, was there. To me, The Beatles were bigger than the pope or the president or whoever. I just kept looking at him – I couldn’t believe it was happening,” recalls Harris.
Also during his visit, Harrison offered Harris his Gretsch Country Gentleman, used in his Beatles days. Harrison owned two Gents, and one of them was reportedly smashed to bits in 1965 after it fell out the back of a car (though this has been disputed).
Harris regretfully passed on the offer, which he says is “the biggest mistake he ever made”: “I’m not a huge Gretsch fan, and more importantly, I didn’t think anybody would ever believe that I’d spent the day with George and bought his Beatles guitar,” he explains.
Find out more about the Norman’s Rare Guitars documentary, or head over to the shop’s website to dig into its history or view its current product lineup.
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Marshall launches the Bromley 750 – its first-ever “party speaker” complete with integrated stage lights
Though for decades one of the world’s top guitar amp brands – it still is, of course – recent years have seen Marshall foray further into the world of consumer audio, with products like headphones and bluetooth speakers becoming a staple of its product lineup.
Now, the company is once again pushing into new territory, as it unveils its first-ever “party speaker”, the Bromley 750.
Perhaps the unit’s most intriguing feature isn’t its sound at all, but rather the integration of “stage lighting” on its front panel, which is sure to set the Bromley 750 apart from other similar standalone or party speakers.
These lights have three presets: the first creates an ambient feel in the room, while the second and third “gradually up the energy” by syncing with the music being played through the speaker.
“Inspired by stage lighting, we’ve incorporated lights in a new way, enhancing the atmosphere and elevating the entire experience” says Ella Renneus, Senior Manager Design at Marshall Group.
But how do the Bromley 750’s other specs measure up? The unit is housed in a tactile, premium enclosure, with a brushed metal control panel, water-based PU leather wrap and stamped metal grill. Oh, and it also has an IP54 rating, meaning it’s safe from dirt and rain, if your party is subjected to such elements.
Elsewhere, the Bromley 750 features 360° True Stereophonic sound, with an integrated Sound Character control which can be adjusted to fit the mood or setting.
It also sports 40+ hours of unplugged play time courtesy of its onboard battery – which gets charged when plugged in using an AC cable. There’s also a backup battery, meaning you can vastly extend your unplugged play time.
The Bromley 750 also features a host of inputs so you can connect mics, instruments, and even turntables – everything you need for a good party.
The Bromley 750 weighs 23.9kg and measures 652 x 413 x 355 mm, so you’ll also be pleased to know its fitted with a set of wheels for lugging it around an airport, the sidewalk, or, well, anywhere.
Credit: Marshall
“When we first considered entering the party speaker category, we saw an opportunity to bring something different to a uniform market. By staying true to our identity and what we are great at – prioritising iconic design and superior acoustics – we’ve created a standout product that brings something fresh to an otherwise homogenous category,” says Hanna Wallner, Product Manager at Marshall Group.
“We designed Bromley 750 to be something you want to keep out and show off – a speaker that becomes part of your home and interior. The design is rooted in our heritage, with ‘party’ at its core. It’s bold and straightforward, with every material chosen for a reason – to both look good and withstand countless parties to come,” adds Ella Renneus.
The Bromley 750 will be available from 23 September for £899.99. For more info, head to Marshall.
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Fender Studio review: a barebones DAW with promise – and teething problems
Fender’s approach to being a guitar company includes having a Fender-branded thing in nearly every stage of the musical creation process. You know, patch cables, pedal power supplies, wireless systems, clocks that look like amplifiers – the essentials. In support of this goal, and following on from the 2021 acquisition of PreSonus, Fender now offers its own DAW – Fender Studio. It’s a barebones, beginner-friendly program that’s available on any platform you like, all for the low, low price of zero dollars. But is it any good?
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What is Fender Studio?
The fact that it’s a free app that supports mobile platforms ties into Fender Studio’s generally beginner-friendly approach. On top of this, the central selling points are a range of Fender-designed guitar amp sims and effects, and a library of pre-mixed jam tracks you’re free to use in your social media content, or play around with to learn the basics of a DAW.
Being made by many of the same team, there’s a lot of crossover with PreSonus’ Studio One’s UI and feel. There is also a native way to export full projects straight from Fender Studio into .DAWproject files, a relatively new open-source format that’s currently supported by a handful of paid DAWs, including Studio One.
Fender Studio workspace. Image: Cillian Breathnach
What can’t Fender Studio do?
On the surface, Fender Studio seems like an answer to an entry-level (but relatively fully-featured) DAW like GarageBand. In reality, it is even more stripped-back as a proposition – the term DAW suggests MIDI, software instruments and support for third-party plugins, but as of June 2025, Fender Studio doesn’t have any of those. It also only supports a total of 16 audio tracks, which won’t be enough for complex ‘full song’ mixes. It is perhaps more useful to think of it as an elevated voice notes app, and indeed that’s how Fender pitches it – there’s a reason that one of the four options presented upon launch is a big red button that instantly starts recording.
It’s a reasonable approach in theory as, realistically, most beginner guitarists don’t need to get their head around four different Hammond organ VSTs before they start sharing their riffs on Instagram. The pitch is that there’s less of that extraneous stuff but more guitar-friendly features built right in, namely that aforementioned library of amps and effects.
A track in Fender Studio. Image: Cillian Breathnach
In use
But before I get to the guitar sounds on offer, I have to contend with Fender Studio’s UI design. The good news is that there are a lot of elements that are pretty self-explanatory. While I obviously can’t completely Eternal Sunshine my general DAW experience to gauge just how intuitive things really are for beginners, many other visual elements of the program are minimalistic enough to be easy to figure out with a quick bit of experimentation.
With that said, there are a few things I want to call attention to as more than a little obtuse. One thing I have trouble with when I dive in is working out how to pan a track left or right – having not used Studio One before, I’m unaware that the little blue handle below the mute and solo buttons is called the “panner” – so I lose a quarter of an hour fruitlessly searching for a knob somewhere, anywhere, that matches the style of the delay and reverb controls.
Track panner detail. Image: Cillian Breathnach
Having failed to find any way to pan, I search the manual. Searching for “pan” and “panning” doesn’t return any results, and for a moment I ponder if panning has been excluded on purpose. However to find info on the “panner” within the manual you need to type in “panner” explicitly, introducing the fun extra challenge of convincing your autocorrect that you’re not looking through the Fender Studio manual for a hard cheese common in South Asian cooking.
In some ways this shared design language is understandable. But regardless of whether I’m familiar with Studio One, I’d wager that Fender Studio’s target audience of DAW-inexperienced recording beginners aren’t going to intuit things like this. I cannot for the life of me think why this isn’t a big, obvious knob labelled “L/R” or “pan”. It’s also a pretty fiddly control on both desktop and mobile, and has no way to double-click or tap to type in a specific value.
A shortcut to nowhere
Given that the express goal of the software is to get you recording as quickly as possible, it’s not ideal that my next issue crops up as I go to start actually recording. Hitting the ‘R’ key doesn’t, as I am used to from some other DAWs, start rolling. Instead it just toggles whether the selected track is armed to record. That’s fine, but I’m used to ‘R’ as the record key, so I head into the settings menu to change the shortcut…
…and am surprised to find that the settings menu doesn’t really exist, beyond some basic layout tweaks and the audio setup. There’s no way to remap the keyboard shortcuts. This is less than ideal, as the default key to start recording is ‘*’ on the numpad, a key that does not exist on my laptop. So I’m stuck clicking on the record button with my mouse.
This may not sound like a big deal, but dexterity is at a premium in the case of a DAW that’s meant to be used while also holding a guitar. Maybe this is the result of the platform-agnostic, beginner-friendly approach, but changing keyboard shortcuts is hardly power-user hacking. There are a couple of other incompatibilities with the default layout, too – the backspace key does nothing on Mac, for instance. You need to press fn+backspace to delete a region, which turns it into a two-handed operation – again, not ideal when you’re also trying to keep a guitar neck from knocking your coffee over.
Editing in Fender Studio. Image: Cillian Breathnach
Exporting woes
I have one more gripe on the design side of things. Having recorded some stuff I press cmd+S to save my project, and nothing happens. I go to the top window to see where the ‘file>save’ menu is, but it isn’t anywhere, because it doesn’t exist. So where’s my project file being saved? It turns out Fender Studio is autosaving all the time (fine) to a deep system folder (less fine). There is no native way to save full projects to a location of your choosing.
The on-board export function either bounces out audio, or bundles the whole project into a .DAWproject file – but there’s no import function for .DAWproject files. Exporting is a one-way street to the DAWs that currently support the format. As of 2025, that’s Bitwig, Cubase and (all together now) Studio One. To move your project between devices but keep it in Fender Studio, you have to root into Fender Studio’s app folder and bundle up the full project yourself. Not exactly intuitive, and obviously a bit trickier on mobile.
I can only speak to the Android experience; however Apple isn’t particularly forthcoming with users’ deeper app folders, so best of luck to the iPhone users. It takes me some time to find where Fender Studio is saving its projects on my phone’s disk, and once I do, I have to use my phone’s file system UI to zip it and send it to my desktop.
Fender Studio has been explicitly designed for desktop and mobile. Surely the process of moving projects between platforms – and not just exporting out to a ‘full’ DAW – should be built right into it? The mobile app uses the OS share functionality for seamless exporting to a cloud service, or anything that can be shared to – DMs and socials included. So it’s a shame that it’s such a complex operation to move the actual Fender Studio project about.
The sounds
Yes, the UI and UX whinges are finally over. It’s time to talk sounds. Fender Studio’s cabinet of virtual guitar gear includes an overdrive, a fuzz, a chorus, a tremolo, a mono delay, a stereo delay, a hall reverb and a room reverb. The four amps are a ‘59 Bassman, a ‘65 Twin Reverb, a Bassbreaker combo and a Super Sonic. That’s it for the guitar effects block – but you can also load up a separate set of effects for bass and vocals. The bass module keeps the ‘59 Bassman and the majority of the effects, but also adds a bass-specific overdrive, a compressor and a flanger, plus three more bass amp models. There’s a set of vocal effects too, including a de-tuner, a ‘transformer’, a ring mod and a vocoder.
The tonal fidelity on display here is pretty damn good. The effects and amps have been ported over from the GTX series, so despite the superficial resemblance to the Tone Master Pro’s UI, these models aren’t quite as powerful. However, they still do offer some more in-depth controls for further sonic tweaking, such as tube bias and sag.
There’s a lack of touch-responsiveness that means they’re not going to ever make you question owning a real tube amp – but the tones are absolutely release-worthy for the kinds of things you’re going to use a free DAW for. The preset library is pretty broad, too, and demonstrates some creative combinations of effects to hopefully spark some inspiration.
In a very Fender way, the focus remains on the clean and mid-gain sounds, with the occasional preset for blown-out vintage fuzz or indie wobble. I do want to note the rather odd omission of anything geared towards modern metal – the gainiest amp is the Bassbreaker, which has quite a loose, old-school-Marshall voice. Getting a tight, chuggy modern metal sound is all but impossible with the virtual gear here. Given Fender Studio’s self-proclaimed beginner focus, and the current glut of modern heavy bands with huge, young fanbases, this is a bit of a headscratcher. Maybe in a future update…
In a jam
To give the guitar sounds a test within a context, I open one of the jam tracks – these are multi-track recordings that, as well as providing a bed for some noodling, let you experiment with muting/unmuting elements, adding effects to different tracks and doing some rudimentary mixing. Most of them have bass and drums, and then a few rhythm guitar tracks or synth parts depending on the genre of choice.
The quality of the tracks themselves is fine – they’re generic by design, providing a bland musical slate on top of which you can add your own playing. The EULA for these tracks stipulates not to actually release them as full tracks onto, say, Spotify – but you can still jam over them on social media. Fender Studio can also natively time and pitch-stretch the tracks to bring them to your key and tempo of choice, which is a very neat feature. However, since the tracks aren’t software instruments, things can sound a little artefacted the further you stray from the original key/tempo.
Running into limitations
The main issue with having no software instruments, however, is that it’s actually pretty hard to write using Fender Studio. You’re stuck with the deliberately generic parts in the jam tracks – unlike a DAW with even a rudimentary drum sampler, it’s not really capable of letting you actually create a ‘full song’ in the box.
If you’re a bedroom guitarist and you want to write a full song with an original drum pattern, you’re going to need a way to make your own beats in an audio format and then import them in – a hardware drum machine, access to a drummer who can record their own parts, extremely convincing beatboxing skills, that sort of thing. This is a far cry from GarageBand’s auto-drummer, which can instantly provide fairly alright drum parts in-the-box that will at least get you started, and can be edited.
This is a good time to remind ourselves of what Fender Studio ultimately is. When considering it as an elevated voice-memo app, the ‘full DAW’ editing features that like panning, mixing, compression, EQ, reverb and so on do seem a little overwrought – what’s the point of EQing a guitar to sit in a full mix if the software doesn’t have an easy way to create a full mix?
The answer to that is to practice using a ‘full’ DAW without the time and financial investment. Which is ultimately a pretty good thing to exist – a good baseline understanding of DAWs is a pretty good skill for a guitarist, given the prevalence of self-recording in 2025. Fender Studio lets you frog-in-the-water your DAW experience from the very beginning of your playing journey, a good alternative to having to learn a more in-depth program after years of just using a voice notes app.
Final thoughts
So overall, I do really respect the goals of Fender Studio, and I can only knock a free piece of software so much. However, my time with the version of the app as of June 2025 was still a bit of a mixed bag. It really feels like a baseline version of the software at the moment, with things like a more diverse amp lineup and some rudimentary software instruments being potential inclusions in future updates.
Right now, there’s a good bit of fun to be had with the jam tracks and the creative tones – and given that it’s free, I do encourage you to check it out, especially if you’ve not had to get your head around a ‘real’ DAW before. And if Fender Studio doesn’t seem up your street at the moment, as well as noting the obvious alternatives here of BandLab and GarageBand, I’d also like to say that it may well look very different in a year – maybe come back and check out what’s been added in a spell.
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“You can feel every nuance of the guitar”: Jake Kiszka on what sets SGs apart from other Gibson guitars
First introduced in 1961 – initially as the Les Paul SG – the Gibson SG has since been adopted by guitarists across a wide range of rock subgenres, notably including AC/DC’s Angus Young, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and more recently, Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet and Mirador.
So besides its rockier looks courtesy of its double-horn body design, what exactly sets the SG apart from other classic Gibson models like the Les Paul, Explorer or Firebird?
According to Jake Kiszka, it’s that its design allows the player to feel “every nuance” of the notes they play.
Asked what a good SG should be in the latest issue of Guitarist magazine, Kiszka explains: “The early ‘60s ones – which were [branded] Les Pauls at first – with the thinner neck are highly microphonic.
“If you tap anywhere on the body and it’s making that sound, it’s just very thin lacquer. Mine’s basically been sanded off [by playwear] entirely.
“So the thing about an SG that differentiates it from other Gibson guitars is that it’s really microphonic, and you can feel every nuance of the guitar.”
Kiszka explains that this nuance is “highly important” to him as he likes to play guitar as if it’s a “full-body thing”.
“I really like to play with my body,” he continues, “and even pulling the neck slightly back and moving things and tapping on it. It’s responding in more than just one way. It’s not just the strings and the connection between that and the pickup.”
While Greta Van Fleet’s sound has been compared extensively to that of Led Zeppelin, Ghost frontman Tobias Forge recently leapt to their defence, urging fans to embrace GVF as the modern-day flag-bearers of rock music.
“I don’t wanna hear anything about Greta Van Fleet now, because I think that their intentions are true,” he insisted. “They just happened to sound like someone else, but that’s not their fault! So, stop it.”
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The guitar legend that Frank Zappa claimed was “a genius in ways that have yet to be discovered”
Frank Zappa once gave a rather huge compliment to a young and budding guitarist, who went on to become a guitar legend in his own right – Steve Vai.
According to Vai, who played in Zappa’s band for a brutal stint during the 1980s, the late musician usually refrained from commenting on other artists and their skills, so his one-off compliment took him by surprise.
Speaking to the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan on his Magnificent Others podcast (via Ultimate Guitar), Vai says, “There was only one time he ever commented on my future, and I’m reluctant to mention it… We were in the studio, just him and me. We’re playing Sleep Dirt. It’s just two guitars, it’s an arpeggio, and I was brand new.
“Frank would look for special things in a musician; something that they could do that’s kind of quirky, interesting. He would find something. The great thing about Frank was, he had this intuitive ability to recognise your potential even better than you did. And then, he would pull it out of you, and use it as a colour in his palette. That’s why all of his records sound so different. And for me, I was into the weird abilities [needed] to play these hard melodies.”
He goes on to recall that very jam session with Zappa, sharing, “I remember just stopping, because I was stunned. He started playing rhythm, and I was starting to solo. And just some months before that, I was in my bedroom in Long Island, listening to his records. I had a moment of, ‘What’s going on?’ It was almost like an existential crisis or something…
“He goes, ‘You okay?’ I said, ‘Frank, I don’t know what I’m doing here. How did I get here?’ And he said, ‘Well, how many Tommy Marses [Zappa’s keyboard player], are there?’” Zappa went on to list further examples, including his drummer Vinny Colaiutas, before asking, “‘Well, how many Steve Vais do you think there are?’
“I didn’t understand that, because I didn’t see myself as anything special whatsoever. I thought about it, and then he said, ‘I think you’re a genius in ways that have yet to be discovered.’ And I just thought he was being nice,” says Vai. “I think he saw my potential to do something obscure. But everybody is a genius when they find what they love and they throw themselves into it without any excuses.”
You can check out the full podcast below:
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Veteran Nashville session guitarist on the “two things” that are most important in the studio – and neither are the melody or notes
Session guitarist Brent Mason believes there are two core things that players should master in order to make it as a successful session player.
Mason is one of the most recorded guitarists in history, and has played guitar on over 1000 records. Having been discovered by Chet Atkins, who invited him to play on his Stay Tuned album, Mason is certainly the kind of guitarist worth taking advice from.
Though not the most exciting or glamorous elements of playing guitar, Mason believes that timing and dynamics matter most if you want to become an esteemed session player. He tells Guitarist, “When I first started doing sessions in Nashville, you needed to have a great sense of timing.
“I remember a lot of times, I was working up things and didn’t have a metronome – and we all hate metronomes [laughs]. It’s just clicks that are uninspiring. But now, you can set up in your hotel room and practise, so it’s about timing.”
He adds, “When I first started doing sessions, I found out that I was speeding up a little bit, and guys would go, ‘Hey, you’re on top of the beat, man.’ I always heard that and now I know that it’s about timing and dynamics. Those two things, timing and dynamics, without even bringing up melody or notes, it’s about those things.”
Asked about common pitfalls that session players usually come up against, he replies, “You gotta watch out when you go in there. Studio musicians like to play a song, jam and get loosened up to check and see if everything is clicking. But sometimes you can play too much.
“You’ve really gotta listen to the vocalist and mark down on your chart where the fields go, make sure you’re off the vocal point and make sure you understand what the artist wants.”
To find out more about Mason – including his gear, virtual lessons, and his history as a player – head over to the Brent Mason website.
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“He got to just be the bass player in the band, and he f**king loved it”: Why Paul McCartney loved playing bass on The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds album
![Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones [main], Beatles legend Paul McCartney [inset]](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Rolling-Stones-Paul-McCartney@2000x1500.jpg)
Producer Andrew Watt has worked with a growing list of legends, and even managed to get Paul McCartney to play on The Rolling Stones’ latest record.
Watt – who has also worked with Elton John, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, and more – landed his production gig on the Stones’ 2023 album Hackney Diamonds thanks to McCartney, who recommended him to Ronnie Wood.
Watt and McCartney had bonded over tea following his Producer Of The Year Grammy Win in 2021. The pair also jammed together, and Watt picked his brains over his favourite Beatles song, Blackbird. Speaking to Mojo for its latest print issue, Watt says of their bond, “Paul McCartney got me the gig for The Rolling Stones! I mean, that sounds like a fake-ass dream.”
As sessions began for the record, Watt ended up playing bass on a number of tracks as well as co-writing three: Angry, Get Close, and Depending On You. Of his bass contributions, he explains, “It’s not me pushing in and just inserting myself. Sometimes there wasn’t a bass player present.”
Though former Stones bassist Bill Wyman famously made a return to contribute to the record, Watt also enlisted some external contributors, including Gaga and his good friend Macca, who played bass on the track Bite My Head Off.
“He got to just be the bass player in the band, and he fucking loved it,” shares Watt. “As I was walking Paul out of the studio, he said, ‘I just fucking played bass in The Rolling Stones, and I’m a fucking Beatle!’”
Listen to the track below:
Last year, Watt explained how he manages to work with so many of his heroes: “Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Elton John, Eddie Vedder – they’re fully capable of producing an album by themselves,” he told Variety. “They understand song structure, mix, a good snare drum sound, they’ve done this forever. So none of them need a producer – but they are choosing to hire a producer.”
On how he’s managed to attain such an impressive list of collaborators, he added: “Just ask. When I asked Paul McCartney to play bass on a Rolling Stones song: silence for 10 seconds, then ‘Yeah, I’d love to.’ Just ask the question! The worst that can happen is no.”
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“I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on the time he chose a budget Squier over its ’58 vintage counterpart – which cost “about a bazillion dollars”
Do vintage guitars always sound and feel objectively better than their affordable counterparts? Not necessarily, as many high-profile guitarists have discovered.
Back in 2021, Mike Rutherford revealed he was using a $200 Squier Bullet Tele while playing live with Genesis, saying: “I just love it. It’s got a life to it.” Naturally, a band of Genesis’s calibre would have been able to get their hands on pretty much any instrument they desired, so Rutherford’s evangelism of his affordable Squier was even more potent.
Now, former Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has voiced his love of cheap guitars, reflecting on the time he spent $140 on a Squier Telecaster which he thought sounded better than its ‘58 vintage counterpart.
In a new interview with Guitar World, he recalls the Squier Tele being the most recent guitar he bought for himself.
“I buy a lot of guitars for veterans’ charities and stuff like that,” he explains. “But let’s see… the last guitar I bought for myself, I think, was a Squier Telecaster that has a Jazzmaster pickup installed for rhythm. It’s a great guitar. I bought it just for the hell of it.”
He continues: “I saw it and thought, ‘Wow, a Jazzmaster pickup,’ and it was put in at the factory. I played it and really loved it, so I told the guy at Guitar Center, ‘Pull down that ‘58 Telecaster you have up there,’ which cost about a bazillion dollars, and I spent about an hour setting up the [Squier] guitar.
“They had a guitar repair guy there, and I asked if I could use his tools and set up the guitar myself. And very quickly, I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better, so I bought it. I said, ‘Yep, gonna have one of these,’ so I think that’s the last guitar I bought.”
You might think $140 is a solid deal on a guitar in any case, but Baxter also notes how he recorded his parts for Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff on a $35 six-string.
“In terms of value for money, that would be a Burns Baby Bison guitar that I bought for 35 bucks. I ended up using it on the Donna Summer album and also started playing it in the studio as well as playing it live. It was a hell of a deal.”
Vintage guitar collecting tends to be a rich person’s game, with many instruments commanding thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands. So the availability of far cheaper budget versions of these guitars – which sound and feel high-quality for their price point – means more guitarists are discovering they don’t need to spend loads to get a solid instrument.
And even vintage guitar enthusiasts often emphasise that there’s no need to shell out more money than you can afford to get a great guitar setup.
Recently, blues maestro Joe Bonamassa – a big-time vintage gear collector – said guitarists don’t need to spend loads on an amp to get a great sound.
“You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a great sound, and it doesn’t have to be overly complex,” he said.
The post “I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on the time he chose a budget Squier over its ’58 vintage counterpart – which cost “about a bazillion dollars” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“We’ve just written this one but we’re not sure about it…” How The Beatles turned to the Shadows legend Hank Marvin for advice about an iconic song
Before the Beatles came along and forever shifted the cultural landscape later in the decade, The Shadows were one of the most influential and important British bands of the 60s – certainly the most important instrumental group.
Hank Marvin’s guitar playing was hugely impactful on a whole generation of guitarists that came after him. Everyone from Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to Brian May and Tony Iommi has heralded the influence of Britain’s original Strat-slinger.
Another band that felt Hank’s influence and acknowledged his impact were The Beatles themselves, and in particular guitarist George Harrison. The band celebrated the Shads in all manner of overt musical ways.
Cry for a Shadow which was recorded in June 1961 by a pre-fame Beatles, was the fab four’s tribute to the British instrumental masters, though the track didn’t see the light of day until it was released as a single in 1964.
The Beatles’ early live performances during their stints in Hamburg included a cover of The Shadows most iconic track, Apache in their setlist. Even The Beatles’ own Here, There and Everywhere was initially offered to The Shadows by Paul McCartney before the band decided to keep it for themselves. Marvin would later record an instrumental version of the song for 2007 album, Guitar Man.
Stand Up Advice
But The Beatles also sought help from the Shadows on occasion. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were known to have turned to Marvin and Shadows rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch for guidance. One particular piece of advice that the fab four took onboard was in regards to The Beatles live concert gear set-up.
“In 1962, Brian Epstein [Beatles manager] had brought Paul and John to our show at the Liverpool Empire,” explains Hank Marvin today. “They’d just come from playing in the Star Club in Hamburg which was a very pub, sort of rough atmosphere. And Brian told them, ‘I want you to see how a real professional band looks on stage and how they present themselves to an audience’.
“We had our Vox guitar amplifiers on stands, and the reason was that having the amplifiers off the floor, we could hear them a bit better. Because when you had them on the floor, a lot of those theatres, because they had a wooden stage with a cellar underneath, it would emphasize the bottom end of the amp. So, by lifting it up, it made the amp sound much clearer. And also, obviously we could hear it better as it’s pointing more up towards our hearing. And they saw that and they too went out and got the same things from Vox, from Jennings Musical Instruments who were the Vox makers at the time, and also placed them on stands.”
From Me To You
A year later after having returned from a Shadows tour abroad, both Marvin and Welch went to see The Beatles perform a concert in London. After the show, the pair paid McCartney and Lennon a visit backstage before all headed out to a party together.
“We’d just come back from a tour in South Africa and saw that their second single release, Please Please Me (1963) was number two in the charts,” recalls Marvin. “We thought it was a brilliant record. And we saw that they were on tour with a guy called Chris Montez, who at that point had the current number one single in the UK. Tommy Roe was second on the bill and The Beatles were third. So, we thought, ‘let’s go and see these guys.’ We went along and the place was half empty, and at that point, no one was screaming.
“The Beatles were very raw, but there was a lot of energy in the way they played and the way they sang. And they were also fooling around a bit on stage. So, we went backstage to see them, and went up the stairs and John [Lennon] was standing and leaning against the drawer of the dressing room, wearing his black glasses because he was shortsighted like me. As soon as he saw me, he whipped them off and put them in his pocket.
“After that, all of us went back to Bruce’s [Welch] house that same night, and we got the guitars out, and we’re all playing rock and roll songs and everything. I have to say, the songs that they played were a few of their own songs; one they’d written for Billy J. Kramer, Do You Want to Know a Secret and From Me to You, which was the follow up single to Please Please Me. Then they turned to us and said, ‘Oh we’ve just written this one but we’re not sure about it. Do you think it’s too long? We think verse is too long’. And that song was, She Loves You! And we listened to it and said, ‘Nah, it sounds great and the chorus is brilliant’.
Fast forward a couple years to 1965 and Marvin and George Harrison end up crossing paths again, but this time it was the Beatle himself offering up some friendly advice to The Shadows, after the group had recently released a single that featured a lead vocal by Marvin. “We had just released Don’t Make My Baby Blue which had vocals and I bumped into George at Abbey Road Studios,” he says. “George said, ‘oh, I love your new record, it’s great. Stop doing the instrumentals, and do more vocals! You, and Bruce can sing so do some more vocals’ And, unfortunately, we didn’t take his advice and we went straight back to instrumentals. And honestly, at that point, realistically, instrumental popularity was waning. Unless you came up with something I like a big film theme or something. And so, his advice was good, but unfortunately, we didn’t follow it.”
In 1978, McCartney would again seek out Marvin, this time inviting him to be part of the guitar ensemble on the recording of Rockestra Theme, a track that appeared on the final Paul McCartney and Wings studio album, Back To The Egg.
The post “We’ve just written this one but we’re not sure about it…” How The Beatles turned to the Shadows legend Hank Marvin for advice about an iconic song appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Why Harley Benton’s new DNAFX AmP20 is the “perfect practice amp”
Why buy multiple pedals and amps when one small combo can cover it all? Harley Benton’s new DNAFX AmP20 brings eight amp models, a host of effects, and preset storage into a tidy, 20-Watt practice amp that won’t break the bank.
Priced at just $116/£103, the DNAFX AmP20 is a 20-watt Class D combo designed to give guitarists a versatile setup in a single, compact unit. Built around an 8” full-range custom speaker, the AmP20 delivers eight amp tones spanning Clean, Country, Blues, Rock, Lead, Brown, Ultra, and Metal. Whatever your style, this little amp has you covered.
Adding to the flexibility are six programmable user presets, a 3-band EQ, as well as Drive and Master Volume controls. LED indicators make dialing in settings a breeze, even at a glance.
Onboard DSP effects include modulation options – Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo, and Chorus – as well as time-based effects like Spring, Delay, Delay+Reverb, and Hall. There’s even a tap tempo for delay, letting you sync effects perfectly to your playing.
Credit: Harley Benton
Despite its friendly price tag, the AmP20 doesn’t skimp on practicality: you get a built-in digital chromatic guitar tuner with multicolored LED display, Bluetooth for playing along with backing tracks, a line-in for external sources, and a headphone out for those late night practice sessions. An optional footswitch (sold separately) lets you toggle between your six stored presets without missing a beat.
Measuring 33 x 346 x 202 mm and weighing just 6 kg, the DNAFX AmP20 is compact enough to move around easily but packed with enough features to feel like a full rig.
The Harley Benton DNAFX AmP20 is available now at Thomann. Check out the amp in action below.
Learn more at Harley Benton.
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“It’s not always perfect, but we were brothers till the end”: Mastodon pay tribute to Brent Hinds at first concert since guitarist’s death
Mastodon honoured Brent Hinds during their first show since his death, describing the guitarist as “one of the most creative, beautiful people that we’ve ever come across in this world.”
Hinds was killed in a motorcycle crash in Atlanta last Wednesday, 20 August, at the age of 51. His death was confirmed to Atlanta News First by the Fulton County medical examiner’s office, after police reported that a man riding a Harley Davidson was killed in a collision with a BMW SUV.
On Friday (22 August), the band took stage at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, Alaska, marking their first performance since Hinds’ passing.
Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor delivered a moving tribute at the end of their set, reflecting on Hinds’ impact both on the band and their fans: “We lost somebody very special to us yesterday,” he said. “Brent Hinds, 25 years with us as our guitar player, one of the most creative, beautiful people that we’ve ever come across in this world, tragically left us. Very, very unfortunate.”
“We loved him so, so, so very much. And we had the ups and downs of a 25-year relationship, you know what I mean? It’s not always perfect, it’s not always amazing, but we were brothers to the end,” he continued.
“And we really loved each other and we made a lot, a lot of very beautiful music together. And I think that that’s gonna stand the test of time, evidenced by you people here tonight.”
“So we will continue to play Brent’s beautiful, beautiful music that he helped us make, that we formed this band together and traveled the world together, slept in a van together, laid our heads down on beds of fucking kitty litter, got way too drunk to remember anything the next day about a thousand, million times over and over again with the love that we shared and the beauty, all the audiences that we played for, all the stages we stepped on.”
“I don’t know. We’re just at a loss for words. We’re absolutely devastated and crushed to lose him and to be able to never have him back again,” Dailor said. “But you guys made it OK for us to come on stage and do this tonight. So that was for fucking Brent, OK? Thank you guys so much.”
He concluded, “Thank you for helping us get through that one, it was fucking tough for us. But you guys are fucking amazing, so thank you.”
Brent Hinds co-founded Mastodon in 2000 with Bill Kelliher, Troy Sanders, and Brann Dailor, a lineup that stayed intact until his departure earlier this year. While the band initially described the split as amicable, Hinds later claimed he had been forced out for “embarrassing” the group.
On Thursday, Mastodon shared a statement on social media expressing their “unfathomable sadness and grief” over Hinds’ passing: “We are heartbroken, shocked, and still trying to process the loss of this creative force with whom we’ve shared so many triumphs, milestones, and the creation of music that has touched the hearts of so many,” said the band.
The post “It’s not always perfect, but we were brothers till the end”: Mastodon pay tribute to Brent Hinds at first concert since guitarist’s death appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Walter Trout: “I’m like a cat. I’m on my 4th or 5th chance here”
Walter Trout has lived through enough close calls to fill a biography: drug addiction in his twenties, liver failure in his sixties, and now the daily grind of making music at 74. Somehow, like the nine lives he jokes about, he keeps landing on his feet.
As the blues legend tells Classic Rock magazine, “I never expected to make it this far. I’m like a cat. I’m on my 4th or 5th chance here. And with each one I get more involved in wanting to be an artist, wanting to say something that means something to somebody.”
For Trout, that drive is rooted in the stage. Touring remains his lifeblood, though it comes with discipline: “It’s incredibly important to rest, to eat well, to pace yourself,” he says.
“I drink a lot of water and do vocal exercises to warm up my voice. The weird thing is that I’m finding the older I get, the more power I have in my voice. I even have more of a range. I don’t understand it.”
That vitality carries straight into his performances: “I want people to come and see us and feel the energy. I want to give them everything I have, and at the end of that two hours be completely drained. I’ve had many people come and see my band and they go: ‘you guys play like you’re twenty.’ I don’t want them to say it’s a bunch of old men up there doddering around.”
When it comes to his guitar playing, Trout has little interest in mindless flashiness. “Great guitar players now, they’re dime a dozen,” he says. “I want to play less but have it mean more. Melody, feeling, expression – that’s what I’m going for.” It’s a philosophy that carries into his upcoming record, Sign Of The Times, which arrives on 5 September.
And in a world where technology is creeping further into music, Trout makes it clear he’s not about to hand any part of his craft over to a machine.
“It used to be if they had a video of somebody murdering somebody, they showed that in the courtroom and the guy was obviously guilty as hell. None of that works [any more] because of these deep fakes,” says the musician.
“I’m not gonna ask a computer to help me do what I do. If it’s not coming from me, I’m not putting it out there.”
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With the FullerTone, Eastman Guitars stands at the new frontier of quality affordable electrics
Eastman Guitars is one of the true upstart success stories of the last decade: its high-quality instruments have challenged outdated preconceptions about Chinese guitar-making, and earned fans among musicians big and small across the globe.
Now, the brand is disrupting the entry-level end of the market with the FullerTone – an instrument that takes everything the brand has learned over the last decade and applies it to its most affordable guitars yet. The results are spectacular.
The Eastman Guitars FullerTone on the Guitar.com Cover. Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
But Eastman’s CEO & founder Qian Ni never planned to be a guitar maker. A classically trained flautist, Qian started Eastman Strings in 1992, thinking he’d make quality violins, cellos and strings more affordably in China.
“I had no goals,” Qian admits. “I just wanted to see where it would go. I loved music and felt lucky to be able to potentially build something within an area that I enjoyed.”
“Eastman started the way all the old guitar companies did: the hard way, not the easy way” – Pepijn ‘t Hart
In the ensuing years, Eastman would expand rapidly, moving into making mandolins and archtop guitars before its first decade was up. Quite by accident, the company was charting a path that many iconic American electric guitar brands did almost a hundred years previously.
“Eastman really started the way all the old guitar companies started,” notes Eastman’s director of fretted instruments and product development, Pepijn ‘t Hart. “The hard way, not the easy way – with carved tops and dovetail neck joints.”
Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
The Hard Way
Doing it the hard way involved challenging the status quo. Traditionally, Chinese guitars were a means for US brands to produce their designs more affordably.
“Most people use China as cheap manufacturing, but China has a really high level of skill and craftsmanship,” asserts Qian. “A lot of people see China’s cheap labour, but cheap doesn’t mean low quality.”
When Eastman started out building violins, the aim wasn’t to reinvent how they were made – it was to do it using time-honoured methods in a place where training such skilled artisans was much lower. Given the similarities in their construction, it wasn’t long before Eastman started making archtop guitars, and it was through these early efforts that Qian crossed paths with American luthier Otto D’Ambrosio. Shortly after, Qian rang him “out of the blue”, D’Ambrosio remembers with a smile, and peppered him with an “overwhelming” number of questions about guitar building.
“We have to do some things differently and take the risks associated with that” – Qian Ni
It didn’t take long for D’Ambrosio to realise that the brand’s focus on doing things the hard way would reap benefits for guitar-making. As evidenced by seeing the brand’s Beijing workshop – which now produces all of Eastman’s electrics and archtops.
“The shop already had this knowledge base of working with their hands,” D’Ambrosio remembers. “That was always the part that fascinated me: seeing that level of skill there at that time when nobody else was doing it.”
Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
All In Our Hands
That grounding enabled Eastman to move into the big leagues of solidbody electric guitars in 2016. Their instruments clearly took inspiration from the classic designs, but with a level of craftsmanship, finesse and consistency that led this very publication to describe them as “giant killers”. But it wasn’t the overnight success it seemed to many.
“I’ve heard it many times over the years, ‘Oh, there’s a new workshop, and they’re going to be a real competitor for you’,” ‘t Hart explains. “Not to be cocky, but we know that’s not possible. Because we started in 1992 building violins, cellos and double basses by hand. You can’t just get 200 people and get them hand-building instruments to that level of expertise overnight – it’s impossible!”
“That’s what we do best: the hardworking culture of our craftspeople,” Qian agrees. “It’s about consistent craftsmanship. Our instruments are made by a team of specialists, all masters in their specific field of expertise. In a way it’s like what Stradivari did in Cremona – learning from the best.”
Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
The Shape Of Things To Come
The success of the first wave of Eastman solidbodies shook up the electric guitar world, but their next step – unique original designs – is one that has confounded many brands. But D’Ambrosio, now Eastman’s chief designer of fretted instruments, had something special cooking.
In 2019 Eastman launched the Romeo, a thinline semi-hollow that would be its first truly unique design. Fittingly, it was a guitar that was percolating in the background as an archtop project for D’Ambrosio before Qian intervened.
“I had not given Romeo the attention it deserved,” ‘t Hart explains. “[Qian] saw the prototype in the workshop and said, ‘Oh, this is the future of our electric guitars. This is the thinline that we should start building.’ And it shifted my view on Otto’s design, because suddenly I didn’t see it as an archtop. Now, it’s my most used Eastman guitar.”
Romeo got the ball rolling for a bold new phase of the Eastman electric guitars project: establishing a distinct visual style. Next came the Juliet, the brand’s first original solidbody, which won Eastman fans in a variety of artists, most notably James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, who fittingly described it as “a design for life”. But these milestones were setting the stage for something even more significant.
Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
Bolt From The Blue
By the start of the 2020s, Eastman was an established electric guitar brand with a growing presence thanks to its original designs. But it still wasn’t doing everything its founder wanted it to do.
“Qian is a no nonsense guy,” ‘t Hart explains. “He said to me, ‘We’re still an acoustic company at heart’ – kind of disappointed! Because do you know how hard it is to break into the electric market?! We were so proud of our accomplishments. But then, I realised what he meant: you can only be an electric company if you can supply all guitar players, with the FullerTone series, we have accomplished that.”
The challenges of making a great entry-level guitar were, for Eastman, worth facing. “We want to invest in making better instruments,” Qian explains. “In order to do so, we have to do some things differently and take the risks associated with that.”
“We have a blank slate to do whatever we feel is the right thing to do” – Pepijn ‘t Hart
So Eastman did the entirely unexpected: they started making guitars in the USA under D’Ambrosio’s supervision, and for the first time ever, they made a bolt-on – as opposed to the set-neck instruments the brand had been known for.
“We always said we could never do a bolt-on neck!” ‘t Hart laughs. “But Qian gives us so much trust and freedom… so I said to Otto, ‘Hey, what about a bolt-on? Is there anything we can do to improve Mr Fender’s brilliant design from the 50s? And Otto started doing what he does best.”
A bolt-on neck is a much simpler and thus more affordable instrument to produce than a set-neck, but one with its own eccentricities. “The Fender neck design, it’s been around for 70 years,” D’Ambrosio explains. “And while there are workarounds, the inherent flaws in terms of the screws loosening and the neck shifting are still there. So we just looked at it with a different kind of lens to figure out how we could really lock in the neck and body.”
The result was the FullerTone neck: a revolutionary new way of bonding guitar and neck together in a way that only requires a single bolt, but has the fit and stability of a set neck instrument. The resulting guitar, christened D’Ambrosio in honour of its designer, turned heads upon its launch in 2024. But it was just the start.
Image: Joseph Bishop for Guitar.com
The Fuller Picture
In 2025 Eastman launched a new range of guitars, named FullerTone after the neck that makes them possible, which at under £800 are also the most affordable electric guitars the brand has ever produced.
To get there, Eastman leaned on modern CNC production techniques, armed with the lessons learned in the US. “I don’t think the FullerTones would be as good as they are without the D’Ambrosio series,” ‘t Hart insists. “Otto made these guitars in his workshop to enable our shop to catch up. That’s the thing that Leo Fender did so brilliantly: he created this guitar that could be built in large quantities, without the quality ever dipping. That’s what we also needed to do with FullerTone.”
Not only do the FullerTone guitars feel like a culmination of 30 years of learning, creativity and expression for Eastman, they’re also a fitting tribute to the passion of the people who have collaborated to create it.
“We always said we could never do a bolt-on neck! But Qian gives us so much trust and freedom” – Pepijn ‘t Hart
“Otto and I, it’s like we both have Eastman tattooed across our hearts,” ‘t Hart says. “I could not imagine myself working for any other company, because we have a blank slate to do whatever we feel is the right thing to do.”
Qian Ni, whose colleagues credit with the trust necessary to experiment and innovate, remains self-deprecating. “We believe that we are building instruments that will help musicians to perform at a higher level, all the way down to the student,” he says, mission-based as ever. “You have to learn from the best. I won’t take any credit. We have been inspired by so many great companies, and if our work has done the same for others, we feel honoured to be a part of that history.”
For Pepijn ’t Hart, the only way for Eastman is up – but he’s still relishing being the upstart challenging the status quo while he can.
“I really try to cherish the place where we’re at now. Because there’s going to be a time when we are on top – then you have to stay there. This is the best part!”
Words: Josh Gardner
Photography: Joseph Bishop
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“Getting it back feels like being reunited with a piece of myself I thought was gone forever”: Deryck Whibley has been reunited with his Fender Telecaster that spent 20 years on display
Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley has been reunited with his beloved Fender Telecaster, which had spent 20 years on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in Florida.
Back in February, Whibley wrote a post on Instagram about his love for the guitar, in which he asked if he could “work something out” with the cafe in order to have it back. He owned the guitar for a few short years during the band’s Does This Look Infected? era before he gave it away.
In his original post shared earlier this year, Whibley spoke of the guitar’s origin story and how it accompanied him for most performances the band did alongside Iggy Pop, including an MTV Awards performance of their collaborative track, Little Know It All, which features on Pop’s 2003 album, Skull Ring.
“Back in 2003, I had just started playing Fender and only had one black Telecaster, but needed a backup. We were on the road in the US when I asked them if they could send me out something quick,” Whibley wrote. “I never specified any particular colour or style, I just said I needed something fast.
“A few weeks later, this pewter grey Telecaster showed up. I fell in love with it immediately. I went to town decorating it in my own style. I tried lighting it on fire the same way I did with my Les Pauls, but the finish just didn’t burn up the same way so I just threw some stickers on it instead,” he said.
Having missed the guitar so much, the cafe has happily to return the guitar to his ownership once again. In a new Instagram post featuring the Tele, Whibley writes, “After 20 years on display at the Hard Rock Cafe, this guitar is finally back in my hands — and it feels amazing to plug it in again.”
He continues, “I was happy to have it on display at the Hard Rock for so long – it felt like part of my history belonged in their collection. But getting it back now, after all these years, feels like being reunited with a piece of myself I thought was gone forever. Thank you Hard Rock Cafe.”
Whibley also notes that the guitar is now fitted with a Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB humbucker, and in his new Instagram video, he’s running it through a Wizard MC II 50-watt. Take a look below:
The post “Getting it back feels like being reunited with a piece of myself I thought was gone forever”: Deryck Whibley has been reunited with his Fender Telecaster that spent 20 years on display appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Is Master of Puppets about to have ANOTHER ‘resurgence’? Metal fans rejoice: Metallica’s 1986 mega-hit features in new Call of Duty trailer
When Master of Puppets featured in Stranger Things back in 2022, it brought Metallica and metal music back into the eye of the mainstream once again.
Yep, when the band’s 1986 thrash metal mega-hit featured in the hit Netflix show’s Season 4 finale, people went wild, with many guitarists clamouring to test their downpicking mettle and learn its now-legendary riffs.
And now that Master of Puppets – or an industrial-flavoured remix of it, at least – has featured in the latest trailer for Black Ops 7, the upcoming installment of Call of Duty, are we about to see a similar revival?
The Call of Duty franchise reportedly has over 100 million active monthly players across all its titles – with many regularly tuning into Warzone, the battle royale behemoth whose popularity was massively propelled during Covid.
So it stands to reason that a large subsection of this enormous player base will have checked out the trailer for the upcoming Black Ops 7, and not all of those will be familiar with Metallica and the thrash classic that is Master of Puppets.
In my mind, two things stand in the way of the track having a revival similar to that ignited by Stranger Things, though.
One: the track is quite significantly chopped up, edited and remixed, with a futuristic industrial sound which more closely aligns with Black Ops 7’s future-tinged aesthetic and gameplay. Thus, the frantic 200bpm-plus downpicked riffs are slightly harder to make out, and will likely cause fewer ears to perk up as a result.
And two: the track’s inclusion in Stranger Things saw protagonist Eddie Munson literally playing the song mid-episode on his electric guitar in order to scare away a flock of demonic bats. Yep, MoP will tend to do that.
The fact that this scene appeared during the season finale, when the audience had built up a strong affinity for one of the main characters who played the riffs, would have no doubt contributed to many picking up a guitar and giving it a go themselves.
Therefore, it’s unlikely Master of Puppets will have quite the same resurgence – pardon the pun, for the very select few of you that will understand that reference – as it did in 2022. But ultimately, we’re always happy to see metal represented in the mainstream. So props, Call of Duty.
At the time of writing, the new trailer has received nearly 35 million views on YouTube in just two days. Check it out below:
That said, the Call of Duty franchise is no stranger to collaborating with metal artists on its titles. Huntington Beach metal juggernaut Avenged Sevenfold – who have supported Metallica on numerous occasions – have worked with CoD developers many times, contributing tracks including Not Ready to Die and Carry On to the series’ soundtracks.
Watch the video for Carry On below, in which members M. Shadows, Synyster Gates, Zacky Vengeance and Johnny Christ are transformed into in-game characters.
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“Men love to come along to our shows and say, ‘They’re miming!”: Nova Twins on why they get a buzz from proving sexist people wrong
Rock duo Nova Twins, known for their secretive pedalboard wizardry, say they sometimes get accused of miming and not playing their instruments live by sexist audience members at their shows.
Anyone familiar with Amy Love and Georgia South’s guitar chops and passion for gear know that miming along to a backing track is certainly not their bag – back in their first interview with Guitar.com in 2020 they revealed they have two massive pedalboards, and are still yet to disclose how they get their signature crunchy and fuzzy tone.
- READ MORE: The best electric guitars for metal – our top-rated Jacksons, Gibsons, Strandbergs & more
Ahead of their new album, Parasites & Butterflies, which arrives on 29 August, the duo have spoken to Metal Hammer for its latest print edition about their guitar and bass tone, and how they love to prove the naysayers wrong.
“We love the challenge of playing everything live off pedals,” Love says. “There’s no synths on track or guitars on track. Men love to come along to our shows and say, ‘They’re miming! They’re not playing live!’, but the sounds we make are all live.”
South adds, “We were setting up our gear, and someone asked our guitar tech, ‘What guitars do you have?’ Our tech said, ‘Oh, no, those are the girls’ guitars…’ And the guy just ignored it. It was like he thought our tech was joking – the idea that the guitars genuinely belonged to us completely went over his head.”
Not only that, but they also faced wolf-whistling and other misogynistic behaviour from the crowd at that same show, which took place in Vienna a few years ago. And yet, they of course played a great set that had won over the whole room by the end of the show.
“The guy who had asked about our guitars was so embarrassed,” Love adds. “The rest of his band were telling us how much they loved the set, but he stood quietly in the corner.”
For a taste of Nova Twins’ live show, check out the video below:
Parasites & Butterflies is available to pre-order now. They kick off a record store tour on 23 August, before beginning their headline shows on 17 September – find out more via their official website.
The post “Men love to come along to our shows and say, ‘They’re miming!”: Nova Twins on why they get a buzz from proving sexist people wrong appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Blackstar ID:X 50 review: “stands out by knowing exactly what it is, and who it’s for”
£289, blackstaramps.com
Blackstar has been on an impressive hot streak over the last few years. From the impressive St James valve combos to the entry-level Debut amps, through to the content creator playground that is the ID:Core series, the brand has really hit the sweet spot between affordability, features and sound.
Now however, the brand is setting its sights firmly on the fertile ground occupied by the likes of Boss’s Katana range and Fender’s Mustangs – the no-nonsense gig-ready modelling combo. Watch out, the ID:X is coming for you…
Image: Adam Gasson
Blackstar ID:X 50 – what is it?
There are two flavours of the new ID:X combo arriving out of the gate – a 100-watt beast and this more bedroom-friendly 50-watter. The “ID” bit of the name does suggest some shared DNA with the hugely popular ID:Core series of course, and you can perhaps see this as the logical stepping stone for someone who bought one of those as their first amp.
So visually and in terms of the control panel things are pretty familiar on that front. For example, you have the same six onboard amp voicings as the ID:Core V3 – ranging from chiming cleans through to searing high gain. You also get a full three-band tone-stack here, in addition to Blackstar’s almost ubiquitous mid-mithering ISF control – a notable tone-shaping enhancement over its little brother.
You can’t very well take on the Katana without a bevvy of onboard effects, and you get plenty to get to grips with here. There are 34 distinct pre- and post-effects listed in the manual – everything from flavours of dirt to tremolo, phasers and even a shimmer delay – and Blackstar stresses this is a moveable feast, with more effects coming in the future.
Navigating all this comes courtesy of an onboard OLED screen – top marks for Blackstar not burying all this in a companion app as many would do in this era of smart amps. What you see is very much what you get.
In addition to the amps and effects you can also tweak the valve response options of each amp sound (between EL34, EL84 and 6L6 recreations), and this thing comes primed to gig with the ability to store up to 12 presets on board to ensure you don’t have to fiddle with that screen mid-song.
The player convenience features don’t end there either. You can drop the power down to 10 or even 1 watt for pure bedroom playing, while if you need to record things direct you have the convenience of Blackstar’s impressive CabRig technology, as well as a USB-C port for going digital direct.
There’s also a headphone output up top, and a line-in for putting your own songs or backing tracks through it, a built-in tuner and an effects loop. One thing that you won’t find however, is bluetooth audio – it’s strictly analogue here unfortunately.
Another slightly mystifying omission in the case of the 50 is a lack of a balanced XLR out – the 100-watt version has one, but if anything the 50 is more likely to need it in a gigging situation. It’s a little bit like forgetting to put wheels on a suitcase – you can live without it, sure, but it’s a hell of a lot easier if you have them.
Image: Adam Gasson
Blackstar ID:X 50 – usability and sounds
The reason that the Katanas of this world are so popular with ordinary guitarists is that they do a great job of getting out of the way. Blackstar has clearly been paying attention in that regard because getting to grips with the ID:X is as intuitive and simple as you could ever want it to be – with barely a glance at the manual I’m off to the races navigating the various sounds and effects, with the onboard controls being super easy to use and understand.
Plugging in and it’s immediately apparent that this is not the place to come if your stock in trade is whisper-thin jangly. The ID:X is a chin out, Saturday night rock machine. Regardless of what guitar I put it through, everything sounds thick, chewy, meaty… it’s an amp that begs to be played loudly and proudly.
That’s not to say it’s untamed or unruly however – the valve-like nature of these sounds had me feeling fully in control of how gnarly I wanted to get, breaking up naturally when I wanted it to, or providing a nice clean pedal platform if I needed it.
You can get a lot out of this amp without ever plugging it into a laptop, but it’s also worth noting that the real deep editing stuff is done via Blackstar’s excellent Architect software – and what an enjoyable experience that is. Despite the abundant options to tweak and refine here, you never feel like you need a PhD in music production to dial things in – it’s sleek, user-friendly and gets out of the way.
As I said, most of the parameters you’ll be tweaking day to day can be done easily on the amp itself, so the Architect is more of an occasional trip than a daily driver. That said, it would be nice to not have to plug into a laptop to do it. The lack of Bluetooth rears its ugly head again here I feel, but an iOS/Android app option would encourage you to get deep into the weeds more often.
That said, if I had to choose between one or the other, I’m glad they’ve gone down the wired connection route – the guitar world is littered with ill-conceived companion apps that barely work outside of laboratory conditions, and there’s something reassuring about just plugging a thing into another thing.
Image: Adam Gasson
Blackstar ID:X 50 – should I buy one?
There’s no shortage of impressive budget modelling amps out there, but too often these amps can end up falling down by trying too hard to be everything to everyone. The ID:X stands out by knowing exactly what it is, and who it’s for.
This is an excellent all-round rock machine that offers everything you’ll need to craft a wide variety of quality tones – but with the fundamental punch and girth of Blackstar at the forefront.
It’s not perfect, and if your stock in trade is exclusively jangly clean tones there are probably better options for you sonically. But for those chasing punchy high-gain tones with studio-ready flexibility and an interface that simply gets out of the way, this is a serious contender.
Image: Adam Gasson
Blackstar ID:X 50 – alternatives
If simplicity and sheer volume are your goals for a solid-state amp, then the no-messing and comically loud Orange O-Tone 40 ($399) is pretty hard to beat – it’s not versatile, but it’s as close to a ‘real’ amp as digital gets. The Fender Mustang LTX50 ($349) is another modelling amp that’s trying to keep the menu-diving to a minimum – and it does a nice job of it too. The king at this price point is of course the Boss Katana-50 Gen 3 ($349) – it also has the option of adding Bluetooth via an option dongle.
The post Blackstar ID:X 50 review: “stands out by knowing exactly what it is, and who it’s for” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Former Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds dies in Atlanta motorcycle crash
Brent Hinds, the former guitarist of Atlanta metal band Mastodon, has died aged 51 in a motorcycle crash.
A police report details how the driver of an SUV failed to yield while making a turn at an Atlanta intersection. Hinds’ death was confirmed to Atlanta News First by the Fulton County medical examiner’s office.
Brent Hinds founded Mastodon alongside Bill Kelliher, Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor in 2000, and this lineup remained unchanged until his exit this year.
With Hinds, Mastodon have released eight studio albums, and been nominated for several Grammy awards, winning one for Best Metal Performance in 2018 for Sultan’s Curse.
Hinds was also a member of several other bands, including the surfabilly band Fiend Without A Face and the supergroup Giraffe Tongue Orchestra.
Hinds’ relationship with Mastodon has been heavily strained in the past year, following his exit from the band in March.
While the split initially looked amicable – with his former bandmates wishing him “nothing but the best” – Hinds would later make disparaging comments about the other members of the band three months after his departure, and claim that he had been kicked out rather than the split
More recently, this month, Hinds claimed he was “kicked out” for “embarrassing the band”, accusing its members of being “incapable of singing in key”, and adding: “I’ve never met three people that were so full of themselves.”
This is a developing story.
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How Martin’s Oʻahu HG-28 sheds light on the hidden history of the Dreadnought
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The dreadnought acoustic guitar has long been associated with country and folk music. But did you know that the first dreadnoughts made by Martin under the Ditson brand name were originally intended for music from Hawaii?
In fact, there is a strong argument that modern society owes a significant cultural debt to this tiny group of islands, and should be celebrated. This is certainly a position held by C.F. Martin IV – former Martin guitar CEO, current Executive Chairman of the iconic guitar brand, and the man with a name that should indicate that he very much knows what he’s talking about.
Chris Martin has been heavily involved in the new Martin Oʻahu sub-brand – and its debut instrument, the HG-28. The HG-28 is the sort of guitar to make dreadnought fans sit up and take notice – a 14-fret instrument with a shorter 24.9-inch scale length, a Sitka spruce top, and Hawaiian koa on the back and sides.
You can see a fair bit of of Dread DNA in here, and that’s by design – as Chris himself explained in the latest Martin Journal, that is by design. Modern guitar in general would be a very different place without the impact of Hawaiian music.
After all, how many times have we read that resonators, lap steels, and electric guitars were originally invented for Hawaiian music? It’s a fact that many players tend to gloss over, but it remains a fact.
Unconventional Origins
The specs listed above are rather unusual for a Martin guitar, but that’s because the whole concept for this instrument actually came from a vintage Gibson – and one that you’ve almost certainly never heard of.
The HG-20 is a superbly improbable guitar – it sports both an internal resonating chamber and no less than two sets of f-holes in its top. The guitar was, like the original Ditson Dreadnought, designed for Hawaiian music.
When browsing an auction one day, Chris Martin IV spotted the guitar and instantly recognised that this bizarre guitar’s outline was remarkably similar to a slope-shouldered dreadnought.
This revelation led to an intense period of research in the company’s archives and ultimately led to the creation of the HG-28 – a guitar that imagines itself as the Hawaiian ‘missing link’ in the evolution of the Dreadnought between the commercial failure of the Ditson Dread to the all-conquering 14-fret Martin-branded beast that would come along 17 years later.
Uke Can Do It
Another instrument that had a massive influence on the Martin Company is the ukulele. In fact, during the dark financial times of the 1920s, the Martin Company survived thanks to the thousands of ukuleles they were able to make and sell.
Koa was a common wood choice for the ukulele – an instrument which saw a huge spike in popularity following the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915. This was arguably the point at which the world fell in love with Hawaiian culture and it would not be the last time that the tiny ukulele would have a significant effect on popular music around the world.
Martin pioneered the use of koa for steel string guitars in the 1920s and the wood, which only grows on the Hawaiian islands. In recent years, koa has again become very popular with players looking for something different to mahogany or rosewood – but the HG-28 is another way to demonstrate the brand’s early engagement with what feels like a very modern concept.
The gently slope-shouldered body of the Oʻahu HG-28 is slightly slimmer than a regulation dreadnought. In fact, it’s the same depth as a Martin 000, making it very comfortable indeed for the seated player. The neck features Martin’s low oval High Performance taper with 14 frets to the body, while the 13/4-inch nut width means there’s plenty of space for the fingerstyle player, too
There are plenty of other nice little touches on the HG-28 that make it feel a little different to the regular line Martin – the herringbone purfling, the colourful palm-adorned internal label, and of course the word ʻOʻahu’ – note the correctly oriented apostrophe! – sitting proudly on the headstock beneath the iconic Martin logo.
Because the HG-28 is not just one guitar – it’s the start of a range. Already, the Oʻahu sub-brand has absorbed an existing Martin tribute to the huge impact of Hawaiian guitar culture – the Custom K-1 Major Kealakai
Kealakai was a giant of Hawaiian music, who was the conductor for the Royal Hawaiian Band. The custom guitar made for him by Martin in 1916 – recreated in the K-1 – was itself a direct forebear of what became the dreadnought we now know and love.
The Oʻahu HG-28 is a fitting tribute to the influence of Hawaiian culture on modern music, and a great and interesting addition to the Martin line. If you’ve ever been tempted by the sound of a classic dread but have been put off by the size, this could very well be the perfect guitar for you.
Find out more about the Oʻahu range at martinguitar.com.
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