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Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones might be having a blast with the band’s new frontman Frank Carter, but the guitarist assures he’s got “nothing but love” for their former vocalist Johnny Rotten.

Though John Lydon has certainly dished out a fair bit of criticism regarding the band’s decision to reunite with Carter in tow, it seems Jones isn’t holding it against him. Carter, of Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, joined the reunited band in 2024, and has been performing with them ever since.

• READ MORE: “With them Marshall 800s? There honestly ain’t a lot to it”: Steve Jones reveals the secrets of his Sex Pistols guitar tone

In an interview for the print edition of Guitar World, Jones explains the differences between the vocalists, noting a difference in energy between the two: “Frank’s a lot younger, so he’s got a lot more energy. He’s literally the best; I call him the ringmaster. He loves getting the crowd going; he goes crowd surfing and just takes the heat off of me, [Paul Cook] Cookie and Glen [Matlock].

“I’m 70, so I’m definitely not jumping into the crowd. [Laughs] He’s great – and he’s definitely not trying to be Johnny Rotten. He’s really something else, and he’s made it a lot of fun,” he states.

Asked if he ever feels sad that Lydon is missing out on their fun, he replies, “I’ve got nothing but love for John. He was brilliant back in the day, and I never would take that away from him. I would never deny it; he was fantastic. But I think we’ve just grown apart.

He adds, “He’s going somewhere else, and we’re going somewhere else. It’s just the way it is. But you never know. l’ll never shut the door, but I don’t think he’d have the energy like Frank does, to be honest with you.”

Sex Pistols and Frank Carter are touring across the US and Canada in September and October – you can grab tickets to see them live now.

The post “I’ll never shut the door, but I don’t think John would have the energy like Frank does”: Steve Jones says he’s got “nothing but love” for former Sex Pistols bandmate John Lydon appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Paul Reed Smith, PRS founder and tonewood connoisseur, thinks there’s nothing more important when it comes to making guitars than the neck.

While some may argue that pickups, body shape, or weight matter more, Reed Smith thinks that how the neck feels and how its wood resonates is far more key: after all, that’s where most of the action happens in-play.

• READ MORE: PRS celebrates 40 years with the McCarty SC56 Limited Edition: “We started with our take on a classic late ‘50s singlecut body”

In a new video on the PRS Guitars YouTube channel for the brand’s Rules Of Tone series, Reed Smith explains, “Neck making in my mind is fundamental to guitar making. You’re a guitar maker, you’re a neck maker – there’s nothing more important on the guitar.

“You could argue that the pickups are the most important thing or the weight of it, but in the end, how it feels, how you change the length of the strings, how it resonates [prevails]. There’s this sound that the neck makes as a raw blank that makes a big difference,” he adds.

“You have the body of the guitar and then you have this [part] sticking out and it’s a-weighted. It has tuning pegs at one end, there’s more frets at one end than the other; it’s not evenly weighted like a tuning fork is. So, the strength of the neck has a huge impact on how it rings. One of the things that is important from the rules of tone is not putting the neck under a huge amount of tension, unless it’s from the strings.”

Reed Smith goes on to give an analogy of a bell to better explain his argument, stating that if you were to drill a hole in a bell, put a piece of thread through it and start to tighten down the nuts on each side, the sound of it would be far more flat and dull, and it would lose its crystal clear ring.

“When you have to tighten the truss rod too much, it adds that kind of lack of sustain load mid-range to the instrument. The truss rod’s there as a safety. If you’re going to put really heavy gauge strings on it and tune it up, you’re going to need a truss rod. That’s just the way it is. But the more guitars we make for artists, the more we learn that the stronger the neck is, the better the guitar sounds,” he states.

You can watch the full episode below:

PRS, famous for its bird-decorated fretboards, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Reed Smith often shares his passionate views on guitar craft, with his opinions on topics like tonewood and his unique business practices often garnering a lot of attention.

In a column shared last year, he expressed why wood is another key part to building a great-sounding axe: “A magic guitar can be made of many different types of wood, but those woods need to have certain qualities and need to be handled correctly throughout the manufacturing process. So to me, woods matter.”

He added, “To me, if wood doesn’t matter, then logically it follows that the material the bridge is made of doesn’t matter and the material the nut is made of doesn’t matter. What I believe, because of scores of experiences, is that if we make two identical guitars out of different woods, the guitars will sound different from each other.”

Find out more about the brand or shop its full product range at PRS Guitars.

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If you’ve lost track of the current status of The Who’s lineup, you’re not alone. But let us try and catch you up.

Back in April, following a choppy performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend fired Zak Starkey, who was the then-touring drummer of the band. Starkey quickly put out a statement in response, saying: “I’m surprised anyone would have an issue with my performance that night, but what can you do?”

• READ MORE: “I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band”: Ringo Starr slams Roger Daltrey for firing his son from The Who

Just days after, Townshend and Daltrey announced that Starkey was back in the band, on the condition that he would “tighten up”. However, it was not to last, as a month later, it was announced that Starkey had been fired again.

Starkey later suggested that his firing was primarily the work of Roger Daltrey, saying “Pete had to go along with it because he’s had 60 years of arguing with Roger”.

Now, in a new interview with The Times, Daltrey has had his say, going as far as to accuse Starkey of “character assassination”.

Starkey told Rolling Stone in June that he was not to blame for the Royal Albert Hall slip up, and instead accused Daltrey of “getting lost”. “He blamed it on the drums being too loud, and then it got made into this huge social media thing,” he said.

Now, Daltrey describes the whole situation and fallout with Zak Starkey as “incredibly upsetting”.

He explains of the incident at the Royal Albert Hall: “It is controlled by a guy on the side, and we had so much sub-bass on the sound of the drums that I couldn’t pitch.

“I was pointing to the bass drum and screaming at [Starkey] because it was like flying a plane without seeing the horizon. So when Zak thought I was having a go at him, I wasn’t. That’s all that happened. Pete and I retain the right to be The Who. Everyone else is a session player.”

You can see the Royal Albert Hall incident in the video below:

As it currently stands, Zak Starkey is out of The Who, and drummer Scott Devours is handling drums for the band’s upcoming farewell tour.

You can view a full list of dates via the band’s official website.

The post “Pete and I retain the right to be The Who. Everyone else is a session player”: Roger Daltrey comments on firing of drummer Zak Starkey appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that anyone who passes through King Crimson’s ranks is as technically proficient as they come.

In a new interview with Prog, bass player Peter Giles recalls his first impression of guitarist Robert Fripp, and how practicing reading music together nurtured their budding friendship in the late ‘60s.

• READ MORE: The real story of The Final Countdown: John Norum explains why Europe’s biggest hit made him quit the band in disgust

“He had a nice, droll sense of humour, and his chops were really good, his chords and stuff. He was hot,” Giles recalls when asked about his first impression of Fripp.

“He’d been playing with some older musicians at the Majestic Hotel in Bournemouth, and you learn a lot from those people. We thought London was the place to be. It’s a lot easier to do it from London than bloody Bournemouth.”

Giles goes on to recall Giles, Giles and Fripp, the short-lived rock group consisting of himself, his brother Michael on drums, and Robert Fripp on guitar between 1967 and 1968.

“My brother was working in the evenings in dinner dance stuff, covering the Top 40,” Peter remembers.

“I used to work in Frith Street in the heart of the West End in a restaurant with an Argentinian guitarist and blind organist who used to play everything in F sharp. Fripp was teaching. But Gile, Giles and Fripp never did any gigs together.”

Giles also remembers making a habit of sourcing old pieces of sheet music with Fripp, with the pair going over them together to hone their musical skills.

“We used to go to the La Gioconda Café in Denmark Street where all the music publishers were. We’d go into some of them and ask if they’d any old sheet music. We used to get handfuls of this bloody stuff and then go back home and stick it up with Fripp reading the top line and the chords, and I used to read the bass parts. We’d have a go at it.

“We used to spend hours doing this! [laughs]. That’s what we did all day apart from writing and recording. Whenever one of us had a song or an idea, the three of us would chip in. My brother is a very good ideas man, not just a drummer. I mean, he has a lot of brilliant ideas, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic.”

King Crimson fans got excited recently when guitarist Jakko Jakszyk revealed they were recording their first new album in 20 years. But Crimson manager David Singleton was quick to dispel the rumours – at least partially – when he said “getting excited is somewhat premature”.

The post “We used to spend hours doing this!” The pastime Robert Fripp and Peter Giles enjoyed pre-King Crimson appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Europe’s The Final Countdown is one of the most iconic and beloved anthems of the 1980s. Its synth- laden riff, underscored by hard driving guitars, bass and drums features a melodic guitar solo that shreds like no other courtesy of Norwegian born guitarist John Norum, who laid the solo down in 15 minutes. The song went on to become the Swedish group’s calling card, while the album of the same name, has remained the group’s most enduring and most commercially successful to date. Not bad for a song that Norum initially at first hated, but later came to embrace it.

• READ MORE: Why have we forgotten the greatest female guitar heroes? The pioneering women who shaped guitar history

Both the song and album’s birth went back a number of years prior to the group entering the studio. The group’s vocalist Joey Tempest had earlier recorded a bare bones demo of the track on a cassette tape with plans to use it as an opening piece of music to open the group’s concerts. Having filed it away in the cupboard, it was only when the group were undertaking writing sessions for the album, that Tempest revisited his old demo and brought it to the band.

The group also shared an admiration for the arena rock of Journey, which came to play a major role in the musical direction of the album. “We’d been listening to Journey a lot, and we loved the sound of their albums,” recalls John Norum today. “And Neal Schon is one of my favourite guitar players too. And because of that, we wanted to work with producer Kevin Elson who produced those Journey albums in the late Seventies and early Eighties. We thought Kevin Elson would be perfect for us because we wanted to get that kind of Journey sound.

“At the time Joey and I were doing demos of the songs at his house. We had maybe four or five songs, and I was putting down some guitar solos and stuff like that with one of those little Rockmans. After that, we got Kevin to come out to Sweden and we did pre-production for the album for about two weeks, and then we moved to Zurich, Switzerland to begin recording at Powerplay Studios.”

Swiss Precision

The Swiss picturesque environs provided the perfect setting for the group to focus on the music and for Norum, capturing his guitar sound at its best. “We were there for about five weeks, and it was great,” he says. “It was out in the countryside, and we were living there too as they had bedrooms and stuff so we were working constantly just focusing on the music with no outside distractions. I remember pretty much just playing guitar all the time and Kevin got me a great guitar sound too.

“Because I didn’t really have that much knowledge about how to dial in a good guitar sound, he kind of dialed it in for me. For the album, I used my 1965 Fender Stratocaster and plugged it into a rental amp, a Marshall JCM800, 100-watt. I used a Boss Super Overdrive and a Boss DS-1 Distortion together. Though we mixed them together, most of the gain came from the amp. And using those two Boss pedals together proved to be a good combination. We did try using each pedal separately, but it just didn’t seem to work in giving me the sound we wanted to achieve.”

Journey On

Once Norum’s guitar sound was put to tape, and recording sessions ended, the band along with producer made their way over to the west coast of America to begin mixing, which again, had ties to Journey. “We went to San Francisco and mixed it at the same place where Kevin had mixed the Journey stuff, at Fantasy Studios in San Francisco,” says Norum. “And because that was the first time we, as a band, had been in the States – it was very exciting. After the album got released, it just exploded. It became number one in 25 countries, and we quickly started touring.”

But success became a double-edged sword for Norum. While the commercial success gave the band the world at its feet, for Norum though everything had become less about the guitar, and more about fame and its excesses. Instead of solidifying its standing as a hard rock group, with the guitar as its primary driving force, Europe had now morphed into purveyors of synth-pop rock. This led to Norum facing a career crossroads.

“When you get success that quick, it goes so fast, and you don’t really know how it works, how the business works and everything,” he explains. “Suddenly it’s like you have to get up and do the interviews every day from morning till night, and TV shows and get on early flights and all that stuff. And the fact that the keyboards were taking over a lot more, we had become more like a pop band.

“I hated that whole bubblegum image with the big hair and the spandex pants and that whole eighties image. Then some guys in the band got really big headed, and just doing the sex and drugs and rock and roll thing way too much and drinking every day, all the time. I was constantly waking up with a hangover, and finally came to the realization that this life was not for me. It’s not what I wanted to do and it wasn’t me and I didn’t want any part of it. So, I quit.”

Norum went on to enjoy a prolific solo career though, while Europe would soldier on until 1992. A decade later in 2003 the band reunited with Norum back in its ranks, and far-removed from the excess of their 80s pomp, the band remains active today on the touring circuit with plans for a new album, and a reputed return to their classic sound, currently in the works for a late 2025 release.

The post The real story of The Final Countdown: John Norum explains why Europe’s biggest hit made him quit the band in disgust appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

While St. Anger often takes the crown as Metallica’s most controversial record, 1996’s Load and the following year’s Reload have certainly caused a stir over the years. Not only did both records shift away from Metallica’s signature thrash in favour of hard rock and bluesy influences, but some fans have considered them to be ‘loaded’ with filler. However, the pair of records could have been even longer.

Speaking on episode 105 of The Metallica Report, producer Bob Rock explains that Metallica were utterly inspired while writing Load and Reload, overflowing with new ideas. “I think we cut 26 tracks,” he recalls. “I think we were a year into it and James Hetfield had, like, three vocals. And I’m going, ‘This is gonna take fucking five years!’ So we made the decision to split the album.”

• READ MORE: Why have we forgotten the greatest female guitar heroes? The pioneering women who shaped guitar history

While the record marked a shift in tone, the pair of albums would also soundtracks huge change in the band’s personal lives. “We had to get out of town because they all just started having kids!” Rock adds. “They married and stuff, and nothing was getting done. So I said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here [to refocus]’.”

The environmental shift would only amp up the inspiration. “We picked New York, and, in New York, it kind of changed,” he explains. “They started experimenting, like Hetfield’s [version of] Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

Because of this shift in location, there’s also “quite a difference” between how Load and Reload were produced; the split also captures a change in production. “They didn’t have the consoles that we used before, the [Solid State Logic, SSL] 6,000,” he says. “All the studios that were available, they had an SSL 9,000… [Recording engineer] Randy Staub and I fucking hated it. It’s an acquired taste – but that’s what we had to finish it.”

“When I listen to Load and when I was asked to write about [the reissue of] both records, and I talked to Lars [Ulrich] about this, I said, ‘They’re completely sonically different,’” he continues. “Reload is aggressive. But some people love Load! They don’t know what I know.”

Despite the controversy around the records, the experimental records were Metallica’s way of reinventing and evolving with the times. According to Rock, drummer Ulrich played a big part in defining Load and Reload’s sound, eager to capture the feeling of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Particularly inspired by dual guitarist rock bands like Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and Guns N’ Roses, Metallica would see frontman Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett taking on dual rhythm roles. “Before Load, James did all the rhythms,” Rock says. “So the idea was, Kirk was gonna play rhythms along with James. That changed everything – and some people don’t like it!”

The record also saw former bassist Jason Newsted changing his approach to playing, something he had began to do during the recording of 1991’s The Black Album. “Jason wasn’t playing bass like a bass player,” Rock notes. “He was just doubling the guitar. So I taught him: ‘Dude, be a bass player!’ So there’s points where he’s not playing the guitar riff – he’s playing with the drums… So that opened the door, and it’s my fault that I opened that door to them [during The Black Album]. On Load, they embraced it.”

Despite the controversy, Rock was fully supportive of the shift in tone. “I was glad we weren’t copying The Black Album, ‘cause you can’t make The Black Album again,” he explains. “When you make albums like that, it’s everything coming together – where I was, where they were, where culture was, where music was. And so I embraced the fact that they wanted to be a little freer.”

“Load is a great record,” Rock insists. “Actually, my kids like Load better than Reload… But when you put Fuel on off of Reload, they go, ‘Oh!!’ Sonically, it’s more aggressive. It’s more like [Metallica], so to speak.”

While fans continue to debate whether Load and Reload are quality Metallica records or not, Ulrich is in the same camp as Rock. “I think Load and Reload are great records,” he told Revolver Magazine in 2013 [via Ultimate Guitar]. “They are creatively on par with every other record we’ve made.”

“Obviously, they’re bluesier records, and at that time, we were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and AC/DC, and we had a different kind of foundation than records before or after,” he continued. “I also understand that there are people who couldn’t quite figure out what was going on with the haircuts and the rest of it, and that’s fine. But, musically, if you strip all that other stuff away, if you just listen to the 27 songs, it’s a great collection. Those records are on par with everything else that we’ve done creatively… I’m very proud of those records.”

The post “They all started having kids and getting married, and nothing was getting done”: Why Metallica’s Load and Reload were split into two albums appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Last month, after it was revealed that 500 of the “finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making” had been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor claimed the collection included a 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul stolen from him in the early ‘70s.

In a well-documented story, the “Keithburst” Les Paul – which was played by Keith Richards during the band’s 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as well as by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page – was taken along with eight other guitars from Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the French Riviera where the Stones recorded their 1972 album, Exile on Main St.

• READ MORE: “I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll”: Lzzy Hale on why “humble kid” Wolfgang Van Halen is the future of guitar

A source last month said Mick Taylor was “mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection”.

Now, while it agrees Taylor played the instrument in the past, the Met now contests that he never actually owned it, along with certain elements of his version of events.

We do know some of the guitar’s history. It went up for auction via Christie’s – but failed to sell – and appeared on the cover of its catalogue in 2004, and featured in a Met exhibition in 2019. The rest, however, remains hazy. As Guitar World notes, there were no claims during either of these events from Mick Taylor or his team.

According to the Met’s version of events, the “Keithburst” Les Paul was actually the property of Keith Richards until 1971, and wasn’t one of the nine guitars stolen from Villa Nellcôte.

The Met lists Adrian Miller as the guitar’s owner in 1971, but stops short of mentioning how he acquired the guitar. Miller later sold it to Heavy Metal Kids’ Cosmo Verrico in 1971, who tells the New York Times he “can’t recall how Miller acquired the guitar”.

Also per the Met’s claim, after the Keithburst Les Paul failed to sell at the 2004 Christie’s auction, it was bought in 2006 by Peter Svensson, a music producer from Sweden. It was later bought by billionaire businessman Dirk Ziff, who lent it to the Met in 2019 for its Play it Loud exhibition.

Now, the New York Times says it has received a message from Mick Taylor’s business manager Marlies Damming, which reads: “We would like the Metropolitan Museum to make the guitar available so that we can inspect it, and confirm its provenance one way or the other.”

Guitar.com has reached out to Mick Taylor’s team and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.

The post The Met challenges Mick Taylor’s claim that he once owned the 1959 “Keithburst” Les Paul which appears in new exhibit appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Skunk Anansie didn’t wait nearly a decade between albums just to rehash the same rock clichés. On The Painful Truth – their first record in nine years – the genre-defying UK quartet returns with a renewed approach to writing and sound design, and a rethinking of what a “guitar band” can be in 2024.

Speaking in a new interview with Blabbermouth, frontwoman Skin says that while the guitar is still “really important”, these days, the band is more interested in telling stories without drowning their songs in recycled riffs.

• READ MORE: Slayer’s Gary Holt thinks that some modern guitarists don’t put enough “conviction” and “passion” into their riffs

“The way we used guitars, we started as a rock band. We’ve developed from there,” she explains. “I think electronics is the most exciting thing on the planet right now, the things that they can do. That’s really exciting.”

“That’s where the creativity is on the planet. It’s not in rock guitar. It’s about, ‘Where do you place the guitars?’ We are essentially a guitar band. It’s really important, but you don’t have to do all the big old fucking riffs.”

In fact, Skin argues that the genre’s biggest sacred cow – the riff – is creatively spent.

“They’ve been done. Really, every single riff in every connotation has already been done. It’s that people like those. It’s things that people like, so that you can offer different flavours, and people will like them. It’s that Led Zeppelin and AC/DC did them, and you can change them a bit, and people still like them because they like that sound. It’s all been fucking done.”

For now, what makes the guitar “exciting”, says Skin, “is that you can place and texture them and juxtapose them with electronic songs. That’s where the excitement lies with me: how can you do what we do, but do it in a different way?”

That said, tearing up the playbook comes with its own set of risks.

“That involves a lot of experimentation,” she admits. “To be honest, you go down a path and at the end, it can be a dead end, and you have to stop and go down a different path. There’s a lot of experimentation in that. [Laughs] It’s not like playing a kick drum to find the right sound for two days. We don’t do that because we have a drummer. It’s about finding ways to tell the story that doesn’t clog it up with riffs.”

The post “Every single riff in every connotation has already been done”: Why this “guitar band” is turning its attention to electronics appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Wolfgang Van Halen might be the son of a rock god, but Lzzy Hale believes that’s far from the only thing that makes him special. In fact, the Halestorm frontwoman says the Mammoth leader is one of the rare few carrying the future of rock on his shoulders – and doing it without ego.

Speaking in the new issue of Classic Rock Magazine, Hale reflects on an early encounter with Wolfgang, and how quickly he stood out from other second-generation rockstars.

• READ MORE: “That might be stupid coming from the son of Eddie Van Halen”: The surprising opinion Wolfgang Van Halen holds about guitar solos

“He’s a humble kid, there’s none of that ‘I’m a rock star’s kid’ stuff,” she says. “I’ve met quite a few of those guys that think that they’re better than everybody else because their dad was famous. That’s never been Wolfie.”

One moment that stuck with Hale was a visit to 5150 Studios – the legendary space built by the late Eddie Van Halen, where many of the band’s seminal albums were recorded.

“He took us to 5150 [Studios] and it still had all the tapes up there. There was Jump, the old analogue tapes, everything marked, everything organised to a T,” she recalls. “And we’re like: ‘Are we supposed to be in here?’ He’s like: ‘Oh yeah, dad won’t mind’ I’m like, this isn’t just anybody’s dad’s garage!”

“I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll,” Hale adds. “He’s a part of that small club of rock stars that are like: ‘Hey, you are more than welcome to be a part of this cool thing that we’re doing, but we don’t need you, we’re gonna do it anyway.”

Meanwhile, Wolfgang himself has opened up about the weight of carrying the Van Halen name – and the balancing act of honouring that legacy while forging his own path:

“Man, is it a fucking tight rope to walk, with the shadow I’m under and the expectations,” says the guitarist. “And it’s, like, I wanna be able to have the opportunity to reference my lineage, but not copy it and just put a flag in it and sit there and play Panama for everybody every night. I wanna be able to be my own person.”

The post “I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll”: Lzzy Hale on why “humble kid” Wolfgang Van Halen is the future of guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Black Keys have opened up about the advice that nearly derailed their career before it even took off.

More than 20 years on from their humble beginnings in Akron, Ohio, guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are reflecting on the so-called music industry wisdom they were urged to follow – and how ignoring it might’ve been the best decision they ever made as a band.

• READ MORE: “It was very simple: We had lost all of our income for the year”: The Black Keys come clean on cancelled tour and justify controversial cryptocurrency show

“There are a lot of false prophets in this business,” says Auerbach in the August issue of Classic Rock. “People who want to give you advice, and really they have no experience or any fucking idea what they’re talking about. There was this whole indie-rock credibility thing that was rampant in the music industry at the time.”

That scene came with all kinds of unwritten rules – and one in particular stuck with the duo for all the wrong reasons.

“The single worst piece of advice we ever got as a band was basically: don’t allow a song into a commercial,” says Carney.

“It put this whole thing in our heads of worrying about what other people were going to say, rather than paying attention to the fact our music isn’t on the radio, and this was a way for people to hear our shit. And we could also maybe pay some fucking bills.”

The band didn’t wait long to break that so-called rule. After initially refusing to license their music to commercials for fear of being branded ‘sell-outs’, Auerback and Carney soon relented. One of their first major breakthroughs came when their song Set You Free was licensed for a Nissan ad – a move Auerbach later admitted ‘helped immensely’ by putting the Black Keys on the radar of a wider audience.

What followed was a run of high-profile syncs, from Sony Ericsson and Victoria’s Secret to American Express and Zales, that introduced their music to millions around the world.

Looking back on their journey, Carney doesn’t mince words: “There’s a reason the music business is considered a slimy hellhole,” says the drummer, who earlier this year spoke out about the band’s ill-fated North American tour and the fallout that led them to fire their management.

“Be careful who you trust. I wish the work was just making the songs and playing the shows, but it’s also worrying about who you’re working with, and every venue you’re playing, and ticket prices…”

“It all comes down to the band,” he adds. “No one is going to be as passionate about it as the two guys in the band, but you have to maintain a level of hyper-vigilance, or else it’s gonna get fucked up.”

The post Why the Black Keys ignored “the single worst piece of advice we ever got as a band” and made their careers appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$789/£799, gretschguitars.com

The Gretsch Roots Collection has been around for several years now, offering a variety of affordable rootsy resonator guitars and ukuleles crafted in China. The latest shiny addition to the line is a small batch “Bell Brass” release of their metal body resonator – The Honey Dipper. Tasty.

• READ MORE: Heritage Ascent+ H-535 review: “this could easily become your new main guitar”

The Honey Dipper takes key design points from the legendary National Triolian design of the late 1920s – there’s a single aluminium cone, a 12 fret neck join, a pair of F-holes in the shoulders and a coverplate with cut-out ornamentation. Where the Gretsch instrument differs at first glance is in the use of Padauk for the bound fingerboard and the solid “paddle” headstock rather than the slot head that we might expect to find on a 12-fret guitar.

Frankly I’m all for this – not only does the risk of bleeding out from a viciously sharp string end lessen, but you also get a genuinely attractive (if undeniably kitsch) headstock covered in pearloid plastic with a great big vertical Gretsch logo to let everyone know that you are a free-thinking acoustic balladeer who won’t conform to labels.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – what is it?

Gretsch describes the Honey Dipper as a round-neck guitar – which is technically correct in that it is not a square-neck instrument designed for lap position playing. With me so far? What may cause some confusion, however, is the pronounced V-shape to that same neck. It’s reasonably comfortable if you’re used to a V profile, but may come as a bit of a shock if you’re not. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a rounded C or D shape.

Another thing that may surprise players new to the resonator is the relatively high default action. This is not the slinky string height of a modern acoustic guitar and there are several good reasons at play. First of all, the resonator guitar was originally designed for volume and that often means a heavy hand from the player – with or without finger picks.

There is also the fact that the biscuit bridge of a resonator guitar sits in the centre of the cone and the more downward pressure it gets, the better the guitar sounds. Finally, the joy of a resonator guitar is as a slide instrument and, as anyone who has shifted a brass bottleneck across the strings will know, a higher action will allow for a much clearer sound and help avoid rattling the slide against the frets.

Aside from these notes, the usual resonator health and safety guidelines apply. This is a metal-bodied instrument and is considerably heavier than an acoustic guitar of the same size. Also, for the love of Robert Johnson, do not play this naked on a cold day. With those caveats out of the way let’s head down to the crossroads and see if there’s a deal to be made.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – feel and sounds

Kicking off with some exploratory blues in standard tuning, I am greeted with a chunky sound and a particularly pleasing honk on the 3rd and 4th strings. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a metal-bodied guitar has to sound cold and impersonal. It’s brash but in a good way, and comes closer to the sound of a vintage original than anyone might have the right to expect at this price point.

Entry-level resonator guitars can sound a bit watery, especially in the top end, but the Honey Dipper offers a throaty bark and solid trebles. Very nice. Despite the higher action you can still execute some top string bends too if you’re feeling ambitious.

One important feature here is the 12-fret neck. This, coupled with the 25” scale length, makes for a warmer sound than usually encountered on a 14-fret instrument. It also means a more compact guitar that feels very comfortable against the body here. The real test will be dropping the beast into an open tuning – DADF#AD here we go!

A quick point but it’s one worth making: A reso guitar can expect to spend time in several different tunings over the course of its lifetime and Gretsch scores points here for the well-cut nut and smooth Grover Sta-Tite tuners.

There is a deep joy to be found in an open-tuned resonator guitar due to the, well, the resonance. In particular, the sympathetic resonance of open strings vibrating together as you play. It’s like the guitar takes off with a delicious internal reverb. And this does happen with the Honey Dipper to some degree as we dig in – it’s not the choir-like response of a Fine Resophonic guitar by Mike Lewis but it is pleasing nonetheless.

With a heavy brass slide we get a touch of the volume that defines a resonator. These instruments were created in the era before amplification and the ability to fill a room with the voice of your instrument was top of the list of requirements for a musician of the time. The guitar sounds full across the fretboard and there is a satisfyingly grunty bass response here.

The only challenge is hitting the octave notes cleanly on the 12 fret neck, especially if you wear your slide on the 3rd finger – but that’s the nature of the beast and takes only minor adjustment. The V-neck is actually a lot more comfortable with a slide and the whole instrument just works at its best in this context.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – should I buy one?

Now, there is an argument to suggest that the horrific living conditions caused by The Great Depression of the 1920s have been romanticised to the point where the pared-back aesthetic of small brown guitars, ukuleles and resonators has become a design language of its own. As such the looks of an instrument carry as much semantic weight as the sound. This certainly looks and sounds the part.

Given that at the time of writing the Gretsch Roots Collection boasts eight different resonator guitar models, there is every chance that if this guitar doesn’t do it for you then Gretsch will be able to provide you with something that will. That said, the Honey Dipper is an impressive, relatively affordable resonator guitar – if you’re new to the blues or looking for some new textures in the studio then have at it!

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – alternatives

If you really want to get authentic with your Depression-era resonators, then you can always try and pick up an original 1930s National Triolian – though you’ll be paying the thick end of five grand for the privilege. If you want an even more affordable resonator option, UK brand Gear4Music’s in-house Hartwood Electro Resonator is a snip at $570/£449.99, while a Johnson 995 Biscuit Electro Resonator ($1,223/£999) is another solid mid-priced option.

The post Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper Special Resonator review: “it comes closer to the sound of a vintage original than anyone might have the right to expect” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Who came up with the name Megadeth? There are different accounts, including from frontman Dave Mustaine, who in his 2010 book Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, claimed short-lived vocalist Lawrence “Lor” Kane coined it. “Lor knew I had already written a song entitled Megadeth [Set the World Afire] and thought it would work equally well as a band name,” he wrote.

But now, guitarist Greg Handevidt – who was in Megadeth briefly in 1983 – claims it was actually his idea. He drops the revelation in a new guest appearance on The David Ellefson Show, hosted, of course, by the band’s former bassist.

• READ MORE: “No one needs an exact copy”: Should guitar covers sound exactly like the original? Dweezil Zappa thinks so – but I’m not so sure. So I asked you what you thought
  

“We were sitting down in our little apartment, and Dave had read a pamphlet by Senator Alan Cranston talking about the ‘arsenals of megadeath’, and I think that really triggered something in him about nuclear war and just how devastating it was and everything,” Handevidt says [via Blabbermouth].

“And I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, the arsenals of megadeath.’ And he had that line in the lyrics. And it just occurred to me, ‘Megadeath.’ I’m, like, ‘That would be a cool name for a band.’”

But after some contemplation, Handevidt thought to himself: “‘Do you really want the word ‘death’ in the name of your band? Do you really want that?’ It seemed kind of negative-karma-ey to me back then; that’s what sort of was in my head.”

Rather than scrapping the idea, he says he came up with a subtle tweak: “I sat down and I just wrote it out as one word and I dropped the ‘A’ out, and I just wrote it on a piece of paper and I was, like, ‘I think this is cool. We could call the band Megadeth. One word. We take out the ‘A’. It’s unique. It doesn’t have any sort of dark connotation around it. And I think people would see it and not be put off. It wouldn’t put people off.’”

He also cites commercial reasons for dropping the ‘A’, saying that people were just not ready at the time for extreme band names:

“And I think at that point in time to break through in a commercial sense without just completely selling yourself out, I think there were barriers that would’ve… I’m not sure Capitol Records was ready to sign a band called ‘Death’ at the time. And maybe, maybe not.”

Mustaine, Handevidt goes on to say, did not agree to using the name immediately, but warmed to over a couple of days: “He came back and he was like, ‘Yeah, you know, this is growing on me.’”

The post “I sat down and wrote it out as one word – and dropped the ‘A’ out”: Early Megadeth guitarist claims he came up with band’s name – here’s his account appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

There’s never been more guitar content creators, and many of them dabble in covers to help get their chops seen by the world. But when it comes to such covers, how important is it that they remain faithful to the original songs?

It’s a debate that was kicked up earlier this week, when guitarist Dweezil Zappa – who also happens to be the son of late legend Frank Zappa – expressed his opinion that those who cut corners when covering classic songs exhibit “laziness”.

“There’s a lot of people that – and sometimes it just comes down to laziness – they’re like, ‘Well, I’ll just do my own thing.’ Because they hear enough of it, and they’re like, ‘I’m in the ballpark. I’ll just make my [own thing],’” he said.

“But to me, when I was learning songs, if it was Van Halen or if it was something that Randy Rhoads was playing, I didn’t feel like I was playing the song at all unless I played exactly what I heard them doing. And I wanted to learn the nuances. I wanted to try to get the sound. I wanted to do that. Because to me, that was the whole package of playing the song.”

Now, when I saw these comments, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Does it really matter?’ and ‘Isn’t the point of art interpretation, anyway?’ Perhaps it’s because I’ve dabbled extensively in online guitar covers myself, and that’s my bias – or even “laziness”, to indulge Zappa – talking.

But in any case, I thought I’d put the question out to you, our wonderful Guitar.com audience via social media, to see how much it really matters that guitar covers emulate the style and sound of the original tracks, or whether anyone really cares at all.

To my pleasure, the comments largely took a pretty measured approach to the whole debate.

“Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Either nail it or do your own thing, anything in-between comes across as slipshod, half-assed, and lazy…” writes one user.

I can’t help but feel that there’s no point in creating a cover that’s exactly like the original, because why would someone listen to that when they can just listen to the original? And it seems to be a view many share.

“No one needs an exact copy cover that’s just the original with different vocals,” another person writes. “Take a spin on it!”

“Technique is overrated and emulation destroys creativity,” writes another. “It has been shown that most interesting artists in the past 30 years were not the most technical but someone that actually has something to say. Music is communication.”

“I’d rather see artists make it their own,” says another. “If vocalists could emulate the voice exactly, would he want that too? what would be the point? It’s already been done that way.”

“I absolutely hate hearing a cover song done by another band that sounds like a perfect copy of the original,” says another. “It’s not a tribute, it’s just a copy. Change the tempo, sing it differently. Make it minor. Make it exciting!”

Other commenters note that the difference between a cover version and an original is similar to that between a studio recording and a live version. Is there any point in going to see a band or guitarist live if it sounds exactly like the album version?

“Many guitarists like Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page etc always improvised when playing their solos live, so why shouldn’t other people when covering famous songs?” one person astutely notices.

“I am even bored when bands reproduce their own music live note for note…” another writes.

Perhaps an important distinction needs to be made between a dedicated tribute band – who might need to more accurately recreate the music of the artist they’re emulating – and an original artist creating a cover.

“If you’re in a wedding covers band, yeah absolutely agree [with Dweezil], if you’re an original artist covering a song you should put your own spin on it, otherwise what’s the fucking point?” says another.

Ultimately, no one’s holding a gun to any of our heads – I hope. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. If you get your kicks from studying and emulating a song exactly as it was recorded, then why not. But if you’d rather let the creativity flow and make it your own, who’s gonna stop you.

No one’s going to force anyone to listen to anything either, but it’s certainly an interesting conversation, especially amid the increasingly content creator-heavy online landscape.

The take away from all of this? Play – and listen – to whatever the hell you want. Thanks for coming to my talk.

The post “No one needs an exact copy”: Should guitar covers sound exactly like the original? Dweezil Zappa thinks so – but I’m not so sure. So I asked you what you thought appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Positive Grid is hosting its 2025 Back to School sale, and there’s a number of excellent deals to be taken advantage of on a number of the brand’s Spark products. Cure the back to school blues right now by treating yourself to a new piece of guitar gear. It’s a proven antidote, trust me.

Discounted for a limited time only are the Spark 2, Spark MINI, Spark MINI VAI, Spark GO, Spark Edge and Spark LIVE.

• READ MORE: DigiTech HammerOn review – will this ‘instantaneous pitch shifter’ hit the nail on the head for enhanced creative playing?

First up, the Spark 2 – PG’s 50W Smart Practice Amp – has had $30 shaved off its price tag, meaning you can get it for just $269.99 right now. With a built-in looper, intuitive AI-powered features and an advanced speaker system, few practice amps on the market right now hit the mark quite like the Spark 2. In our review last year, we gave the Spark 2 a shining 9/10 review.

Next, the Spark MINI and Spark MINI Vai variant – designed, of course, in collaboration with legendary guitar virtuoso Steve Vai – are now priced at $205 and $225, down from $229 and $249, respectively. The Spark MINI is about as compact as practice amps come, but it’s still decked out with awesome features, including Bluetooth, smart app integration and a massive sound which belies its little form factor.

If you’re looking to barely make a dent in your budget, why not go for the Spark GO, Positive Grid’s ultra-portable – and ultra-affordable smart guitar amp and Bluetooth speaker. Boasting room-filling sound with advanced acoustics powered by computational audio, the Spark GO is now priced at just $116 down from $129. Get yours now…

After something a bit beefier? The Spark Edge – a four-channel smart amp and PA system – is now just $405 down from $449. This baby delivers 65 watts of dynamic sound in a sleek and still portable design, with dual XLR ¼” combo inputs, optional battery power and a built in looper.

We gave the Spark Edge 10/10 in our review earlier this year, so when we recommend this one, we mean it.

And finally, Positive Grid’s Spark LIVE is also discounted – at just $499 down from $549. Powered by Sonic IQ Computational Audio, the Spark LIVE is a four-channel smart amp and PA system packed with amp emulations, effects and even a mixer. Get yours for a limited time at a cool $50 off.

You can browse the full Back to School promo sale via the link below:

[deals ids=”3yplkWUIbggaEbsVhikkPL”]

And you can learn more about Positive Grid via the brand’s official website.

The post We gave the Spark 2 9/10 in our review – and it’s on sale now in Positive Grid’s Back to School promo appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Earlier this month, one of the biggest reunions in British music history took place as the Gallagher brothers returned to the stage as Oasis for the first time since 2009.

With ticket prices soaring into the thousands, you bet fans were watching everything, from the band’s setlist to Liam’s wardrobe, and of course, Noel’s gear.

Among the familiar arsenal, one black Gibson Les Paul with P-90s quickly caught the attention of eagled-eyed gearheads. Now, the story behind the mystery guitar has been revealed in a new interview with Lee Bartram, Head of Commercial, Marketing & Cultural Influence at Gibson EMEA.

• READ MORE: “Should anybody be remotely interested”: Noel Gallagher reveals his Oasis reunion tour pedalboard in classic nonchalant fashion – and yes, Noel, we are interested

Explaining how Noel’s custom new axe came, the executive says that while the Les Paul made its live debut on a massive stage, it wasn’t designed specifically for Oasis’ reunion. At least, not initially.

“We have been working on this guitar for at least 18 months,” Bartram says. “It really came from a conversation around creating a Les Paul that would accommodate P-90s (which Noel was playing a lot with NGHFB at the time, favouring Epiphone USA Casinos) at high volumes, without compromising on the sound and tone of the pickup.”

“Aesthetically, Noel had an idea of what he wanted it to look like, and we tried out a few hardware, finish, and color options before landing where we did.”

The executive also admits he had no idea what the guitar would be used for during the initial design stage. “But, as development continued, it was important to create a guitar that would give different sonic layers to a lineup of three guitarists playing to stadium-level attendances. The guitar needed to be loud and capture the vibe of those earlier shows, without compromising the output and tone of the pickups.”

The result? A hybrid based on a 1960 Les Paul Standard, loaded with Gibson Custom P-90s (instead of the original humbuckers), a SlimTaper neck, Grover tuners, and an Ebony finish – Light Aged via the Murphy Lab in Nashville to Noel’s personal specs.

“Everything we build for Noel starts out as Light Aging, and he will then decide after playing it if he wants to add more aging or keep it as it is,” Bartram explains. “In this case, he wanted more on the body, neck, and back, which looks great on stage.”

While the guitar is custom in appearance, the older Gallagher kept things classic in tone.

“The pickups are Gibson Custom P-90s as stock. Noel wanted to capture a very traditional P-90 sound with these, so there is no additional wiring.”

“Noel has a great understanding of what he wants from a pickup and gives relevant feedback,” Bartram says. “He knows that Gibson invented the P-90, and we didn’t want to mess with a winning formula. Having aged nickel covers on the pickups is relatively unique, however, and something the Gibson Custom Shop spent a lot of time getting right. The results look great and the pickups sound amazing at volume… mission accomplished!”

The post “I had no idea what the guitar was intended to be used for”: The inside story on Noel Gallagher’s Oasis reunion Les Paul appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

How prevalent are fake online guitar stores pretending to be your favourite retailers? As it turns out, prevalent enough to be costing ordinary people thousands, as guitar player Daren Maas recently found out for himself.

Maas was the target of a phishing scam, in which fraudsters created a website that looked like Guitar Center‘s online store, and lured him into buying what he thought was a cut-price Gibson Les Paul.

• READ MORE: Is rock dead? No – and Live Nation has the numbers to prove it
  

For those unaware, phishing is the fraudulent practice of deceiving people into giving away their personal details, like passwords, personal information or credit card details. And according to Better Business Bureau (BBB), this year it could be on the rise.

In the case of Daren Maas, when he saw a Facebook ad – seemingly from Guitar Center – advertising a Gibson Les Paul for just $1,231.56, he was quickly lured in. Let’s face it, at that price we’d all have a look.

As Maas explains to News 6 Orlando, he believed it was a “great price”, and didn’t think it too suspect as it was also a “sale price”. He proceeded to go “through the order process” and placed what he thought was a legitimate order.

Shortly after, though, he received an email confirming his money had gone to someone called Shane Griffin, not Guitar Center. Maas says this was the moment he realised he had been tricked.

He later examined the URL of the site he’d been taken to, which read: “guitarcenter-us.com”, not the legitimate one, which is “guitarcenter.com”.

“I’m sure I’m not the only one that they got, they scammed,” Maas says. “They’re hunting people like this and it’s sad.”

At present, Maas is disputing the charge with his credit card company. “It’s a very bad position to be in and you feel very vulnerable,” he says.

Thankfully, as phishing scams like this have been around for a long time, experts have become savvy in how to avoid them.

As Holly Salmons, CEO of the Better Business Bureau, explains, customers should avoid clicking on ads that show up on social media feeds. “Go, yourself, directly to the business and then look for the product that you’re trying to search for. Those direct links could be what get you in trouble,” she says.

It’s also worth noting that social media ads are relatively inexpensive to run, especially if targeting a small subset of the population which is more likely to fall victim to a phishing scam, like older, less tech-savvy people, for example. If a scammer spends £20 on Facebook ads targeting people over the age of 60, they could reach hundreds of potential victims, and if just one makes a purchase – like $1,231, in the case of this Guitar Center scam, that’s a very high ROI for the scammer.

Put simply, if you see what looks like a good deal in a social media advert, open another tab in your browser and search for the deal yourself. If it doesn’t show up obviously and straight away on the purported retailer’s website, don’t go any further.

Additionally, you should watch out for unusually low prices. We’re all lured in by good deals – that’s how they work – but if it’s significantly less than the same or similar products offered on other retailer websites, chances are it’s too good to be true.

And finally, be sure to look out for subtle visual hints on any webpage you visit which could suggest it’s fake, like misspellings, or strange formatting that doesn’t look familiar.

The post “I saw the price, thought it was a great deal”: Scammers are targeting Guitar Center customers – here’s how not to get caught out appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The guitar industry is in constant motion, with boutique trends, YouTube-fueled fads and viral tone-chasing shaping the market year by year. But while player tastes evolve, some instruments stay locked in time.

As Fender Senior Master Builder Paul Waller reveals, there are just certain guitars that “always get built”. Speaking in the latest issue of Guitarist, Waller lifts the curtain on what’s changed behind the scenes at Fender’s Custom Shop – and what hasn’t and probably never will.

• READ MORE: Fender Acoustasonic Standard Jazzmaster review: “this is a wonderful all-round gigging machine”

“The ones that always get built are the blonde Teles, the black Strats, sunbursts,” he says. “We make those in the same quantities no matter what is in fashion.”

Meanwhile, the ears of those who play those six-strings have been getting sharper.

“The thing that has evolved,” he adds, “is the players. They have a more discerning taste and can hear a lot more of what we’re throwing [into the design of the guitars] in terms of pickups and tonewoods, specifically [through the use of] the roasted maple and alder, and ash bodies.”

“Those that are in the know and seeking out that tone can find it through some of those avenues. It can be a trend that might fall off, or it might stay in – but we’re a made-to-order shop, so we just make what people are ordering.”

And given how quickly trend cycles change, staying ahead of the curve means listening as much as building: “The trends – and staying in front of them and making sure that we have good communication with our dealers – are a big part of what we do,” says Waller.

“I always tell people I’m kind of living two years in the past because a lot of my orders are two years old. So it’s nice to have events where I can talk to dealers and see what’s currently the hot trend.”

That said, beneath all the tweaks, requests and evolving preferences, Waller believes that the soul of a Fender electric still lives in one very specific place: the pickup.

“Pickups have always been a big thing for me because I think the heart and soul of a Fender is the pickup itself,” Waller says. “I think everyone’s aware that we’re the biggest electric guitar manufacturer on the planet. And I say, ‘Well, that also makes us the biggest pickup manufacturer on the planet, and we make a pretty good one.’”

“We’ve been doing it a long time, and there are generations of people who have been working in the factory since the ‘50s and ‘60s that are still doing it.”

“To me, that’s super important; that’s the quality ingredient that goes into it,” the builder continues. “I draw a lot of inspiration from the hot-rod world, where you want to make it look like it’s an old part, or make it look like it existed back in the day but modernise it.”

The post Players have “evolved”, but some guitars “always get built” – Fender master builder Paul Waller reveals the timeless builds that never stop rolling off the line appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors (OBNE), the makers of the cult-favourite Dweller phase repeater, have returned with Bathing, a “Liminal Delay” pedal that’s anything but ordinary.

Described as “perhaps a reverb, or a phaser, or a classic delay, but never exactly any one of these things”, Bathing brings you a style of effect unique to the Old Blood lineup.

• READ MORE: A guide to the best Big Muff-style pedals, from classic reissues to boutique oddities

The pedal draws inspiration from the “phase repetition” found in Dweller, taking this difficult-to-describe effect and highlighting all its magical features through a wide control set, low noise floor and an expansive stereo field.

You pick the overall delay time, the number of all-pass filter stages it runs through to get there (from 2 to 12), and how you want to modulate the character of those stages. Fewer stages create tight, flanged tones while longer times and more stages generate cascading repeats both before and after the central delay.

There’s also a Feedback control for you to feed the delay output back into the input (which creates longer trails and increased resonance), a Filter to darken or brighten the character of the delay, and a powerful LFO section that shifts the character of the delay repeats depending on your time setting.

When Time is very short, the LFO acts like a modulation effect (think phaser or flanger sounds). When Time is set longer, it moves anywhere from a single repeat at the central delay time out, to a scattering of many diffused repeats around that time. In Mono-in, Stereo-out or full Stereo modes, the LFO is offset across the left and right channels to create a variety of stereo effects.

Beyond all that, Bathing is also built for serious pedalboard integration. It features Stereo I/O with analogue dry-through, presets, MIDI control over everything including MIDI clock sync, and expression control over every knob.

Priced at $299, the pedal comes shipped in three dreamy colourways – Algae, Orchid, and Ink.

Dive into the Bathing and all its magic below.

Learn more at Old Blood Noise.

The post Think you don’t need another delay pedal? Old Blood Noise Endeavours’ trippy new “Liminal Delay” Bathing might change your mind appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The next time someone says “rock is dead”, ask them to explain the 14% surge in heavy rock shows this year, or why Metallica is still outselling most popstars in stadiums across the globe.

The “rock is dead” chorus is far from abating, but new stats from Live Nation suggest the reality on the ground – and in the pits – tell a very different story: Heavy rock and metal aren’t just alive, they’re thriving.

• READ MORE: Halestorm pick their five most underrated rock and metal bands

In a new Instagram post, Live Nation declared that “heavy rock and metal are bigger than ever in live music” and they’ve got the receipts to back it up.

According to the live music giant, heavy rock shows are up 14% this year, while metal now accounts for 13% of all stadium and arena shows.

Bands like Bring Me The Horizon, Bad Omens, Pierce The Veil, Sleep Token, Ghost and Turnstile are leading the charge, “blowing up in streams, tickets sales and fans snapping up arena tickets”.

Legacy acts like Korn, Deftones, Linkin Park, Evanescence and Iron Maiden continue to ‘anchor festival line ups’, while System Of a Down have added stadium dates, “after instant sellouts in New Jersey, Chicago and Toronto.” Metallica, on the other hand, continues to “dominate global stadium touring”.

Even in the festival circuit, the scene is expanding.

Live Nation notes that metal festivals such as Rockville, Aftershock and Inkarceration are “bigger every year”, “fuelled by diverse line ups catering to even more fans.”

And 5 July marked what may be the genre’s most emotional moment in recent memory – Black Sabbath legend Ozzy Osbourne’s final public farewell at Birmingham’s Villa Park.

“Ozzy Osbourne – The Prince of Darkness – didn’t just front Black Sabbath,” Live Nation writes. “He changed music forever. His legacy will live on in every riff.”

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A post shared by Live Nation Concerts (@livenation)

Earlier this year, Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French claimed that the lack of young rockstars is a clear sign that the genre has lost its grip on the mainstream.

“The body of what we constitute as the standard rock act… is by and large, over,” French said.

He explained that while rock bands still exist, their impact on mainstream culture has waned significantly: “The collective psyche that dictates current music trends and sociological impact of music, it’s not showing up in the rock world in terms of mass acceptance”.

The post Is rock dead? No – and Live Nation has the numbers to prove it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

£219/$299, digitech.com

Manuals are for losers – no offence, manual writers – but even so, it’s worth having a quick squizz at page two of the little booklet that comes with the DigiTech HammerOn. It won’t show you how to play like Eddie Van Halen, but it will give some insight into the thinking behind this multi-mode pitch-manipulating pedal – and the wider Whammy range.

• READ MORE: DigiTech MonoNeon Whammy review: “This is the most innovative Whammy since the original”

“These are guitar effects that you ‘play’, not just turn on and off,” says the blurb, and that really is the key: this device can replicate the effect of hammering on, at humanly impossible note intervals if desired, and can also work as a looping five-note sequencer as well as covering standard up and down pitch shifting… but it isn’t a question of stomping on a switch then standing back to enjoy the show: your hands and feet will have to do some of the work.

DigiTech HammerOn – what is it?

You don’t need to be a grandstanding widdle wizard to understand the concept of hammering on – it just means using your fretting fingers to add notes between picking strokes. So that’s the main selling point of this pedal: select your desired interval, anywhere on the scale from an octave down to an octave up (or indeed a wacky two-octave leap), then use the left footswitch as your hammering ‘finger’ to jump there. You can also engage the trill button to move back and forth between your two notes automatically at a set speed of your choosing.

But that’s just the start. You noticed there are two footswitches, right? Well, you can use the other one to jump to another interval, allowing for three-note masterpieces that are limited only by the rotational dexterity of your ankle. And if you like things a little more harmonious? Press the ‘dry+’ button and your original note will be blended in with the new one(s).

The promisingly named ‘impossible mode’ takes things up another notch by letting you jump to two different notes in turn using the same footswitch, which is basically like hammering on with two fingers instead of one; and that just leaves the three sequence modes. These carry that idea further into the weirdosphere by allowing you to choose two, three or even five notes to run through in sequence. With the trill function selected, this pattern will repeat at your chosen speed; otherwise you move through it one note at a time with each press of the right footswitch.

DigiTech HammerOn – usability

There’s a learning curve for sure, but it doesn’t take long to power through the head-scratching phase with this pedal. The mode button is key, as each press moves you on to the next effect – assisted by colour-coded LEDs that come in very handy.

The only other thing to get your dopey brain around is how to set intervals – this involves holding down the relevant footswitch while you turn the top-right knob. Bit of a chore if you’re in five-note sequence mode, as you have to set each one individually, but this time it’s the red LEDs at the top that are your best friends.

One thing you can’t do with the HammerOn is choose a key and ask it to track melodies accordingly, as you can with something like the Boss PS-6 Harmonist or Electro-Harmonix Intelligent Harmony Machine. Here the intervals are fixed – so bear that in mind before you launch into an elaborate melodic progression with a minor third slapped over everything, because it’ll almost certainly sound pigging awful… and nobody’s going to buy “It wasn’t me, it was the pedal” as an excuse.

DigiTech HammerOn – sounds

You’re going to want some gain. No, this isn’t all about faux-shredding, but a Marshall-esque combination of bite, thickness and sustain will help to make all of the pitch changes sound crisp, strong and natural. It just makes more sense that way.

And yes, it really can sound natural, albeit not exactly the same as what happens when you whack the fretboard with your fingertips. It’s best to start with simple one-note jumps, but you’ll soon be getting carried away with multiples, and might even find that the HammerOn helps you to come up with a new melody or two. You’re not restricted to single notes either: it works just as well with two-string riffs, and can be used (just like a standard Whammy) to drop power chords down into the doomy baritone register. It tracks tightly, with no obvious latency.

All of this is highly entertaining, but it’s very much the case that what comes out is only as good as what you put in, and it can be difficult to keep playing in time with a fast trill or sequence… which makes it all the more tempting to add some delay, embrace the chaos of multiplied sloppiness and tell everyone you’re creating a challenging soundscape. Sometimes it might even be true.

DigiTech HammerOn – should I buy one?

If you’re hoping for a cheat code – a way to sound like EVH without the need to learn any actual technique – then I’m sorry to say the HammerOn is not going to save you from your own shortcomings. In the same way that a classic Whammy does things you’d never even try to do with a physical vibrato arm, this is all about expanding your playing palette into new and perhaps unexpected areas.

In that sense, it might actually prove more useful to experimental art-rockers than it is to technical metallers. But be warned: if you’re neither of those things, you’ll probably find it more than slightly gimmicky.

DigiTech HammerOn – alternatives

The standard DigiTech Whammy (£199) remains the pitch-mangling pedal to beat, though the Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork (£169) is a pretty solid alternative for the simple stuff. For the not so simple stuff, you might be tempted by the soundscaping extremities of the Red Panda Tensor (£349) or – if you can find one second-hand – the fluttering arpeggios of the discontinued EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid (£N/A).

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