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Blackstar’s Beam Mini is available now – and it packs a mighty punch despite its portable size
After making its grand debut at January’s NAMM show, Blackstar’s Beam Mini desktop amp is finally available to the public. The tiny DSP-powered amplifier boasts massive tone, as well as cramming a whole host of digital amp models, ISF control and TONE3000 NAM compatibility into its portable size.
Regardless of whether you’re performing with an acoustic, bass or electric guitar, the Beam Mini offers 12 different amp models to experiment with. The selection varies from six Blackstar amps, to six recreations of classic amps crafted by Ampton. There are also three specialised bass amps, as well as a pair of acoustic voices and an acoustic simulator thrown in for good measure.
Despite its smaller scale, Blackstar has assured that the Beam Mini doesn’t sacrifice on tone. That means that you can take that diverse selection of amps anywhere and know it’ll still sound cracking. That’s also aided by the amp’s two 60mm full-range drivers, its pair of passive bass radiators and Blackstar’s Super Wide Stereo technology, all designed to offer an “expansive, room-filling sound”.
Users can also fine-tune their sound thanks to Blackstar’s ISF controls, as well as morphing their tone with any of the 35+ effects in the amp’s library. Users can navigate their way through any personalisation on the amp’s SpeedDial and Light Beam Display, removing any need to navigate through long, bloated menus.
However, if there is any interest in delving a bit deeper, the amp can be controlled via the Beam app. The app allows for further editing of tones, as well as allowing access to an online library of amps, cabs, mics and pedal models – as well as any artist-uploaded patches and tone settings, which can be uploaded and shared amongst the app’s community.
Alongside the tone editing and modelling abilities, the amp also boasts Blackstar’s IR-driven speaker and mic simulation, CabRig. The addition allows the amp to extend beyond a mere tool for performing and instead allows for recording – be that guitar parts or vocals, thanks to its studio-quality microphone input.
The amp is even planning to introduce Moises AI down the line in August, which should allow users to separate stems from your recordings. Blackstar plan to add the additional AI tool in a software update.
If that already sounds up your street, there’s also the guarantee of it being weatherproof, dust-tight and rechargeable. With 18 hours of potential playtime, it’s a strong option for musicians wanting to practice or record on the go, keeping things light but still offering a nice selection of tone to play with.
For more info, head to Blackstar.
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Fender Godzilla Distortion: imbue your pedalboard with the “sonic might of the King of Monsters”
Following the roaring success of Fender Japan’s Godzilla-themed Stratocasters last year – which we labelled, and still believe to be, some of the coolest guitars we’ve ever seen – the guitar titan has now unleashed its Godzilla Distortion pedal upon the world.
The distortion pedal was first unveiled along with the Godzilla-themed Strats in October 2025, but like those, was exclusively available in Japan. Now, those who sit in the intersection of the guitar player/Monsterverse fan Venn diagram all over the world can get their hands on one.
They’re subject to “limited stock”, though, so you’ll have to be quick…
Described as a “powerhouse pedal” capable of transforming your rig into a “heat-ray-breating beast”, the Godzilla Distortion is designed for the range of distortion use cases, from “thick rhythmic chugging” to “soaring lead tones that cut through any mix”.
Credit: Fender
The unit itself is powered by an op amp-based distortion circuit, with active Treble and Bass controls for crafting the perfect EQ curve for your tone.
Visually is where the pedal really shines, though; there’s a striking Godzilla-themed wraparound artwork, with “Godzilla” emblazoned on the bottom of the unit.
Credit: Fender
It’s pedalboard-friendly, too, of course, with top-mounted jacks plus a road-ready aluminium enclosure. There’s also true-bypass switching, so when the pedal is switched off, you know your signal is clean and unaltered.
Credit: Fender
So if you want to “unleash sonic might as legendary as the King of Monsters himself”, you’d better get on the Godzilla Distortion quick, as we imagine these will sell out fast.
Price-wise, the Godzilla Distortion clocks in at a totally reasonable £145. Get yours at Fender.
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“Those touring years are dog years”: Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted believes the “accelerated lifestyle” of touring contributed to his throat cancer diagnosis
Last year, bassist Jason Newsted was diagnosed with throat cancer, and kept it a secret from fans. Though he has already had treatment to fully cure it, he chalks the cancer up to the “accelerated lifestyle” of his time touring with Metallica.
In a new interview with the Let There Be Talk podcast, Newsted explains that he received a cancer diagnosis last February. While he’d been suffering with earaches and a sore jaw, he had simply written it off as minor ailments that were only slightly impacting his ability to sing. When he finally noticed a lump on his neck, he decided it was time to get checked up. “The doctor calls [back] and he says, ‘You need to come in’,” the bassist recalls [via Blabbermouth].
The 63-year-old initially thought “there’s no way…”, before remembering how chaotic his years in Metallica had been. “I expected [a diagnosis like that] maybe 20 years from now… but then I started thinking about it,” he says. “Our accelerated lifestyle [in Metallica]… with the big tours, you’re doing a couple of hundred shows a year… Those touring years are dog years.”
He goes on to explain how, due to the intense touring schedule, one Metallica year is the equivalent of “four or five” normal years. In his opinion, its a lifestyle that has taken its toll. “If you put the math down, that’s taxing on your cells, three flights a day… that kind of shit, it’ll get you,” he says.
Newsted underwent surgery for this cancer last May, a procedure he describes as the doctor taking “a bunch of shit outta [his throat]” with lasers. “The cavern inside my head is different than it was, but we got it early,” he explains. “And I got my ‘free and clear’ about three weeks ago! So I beat it.”
While Newsted is happily celebrating his cancer-free future, he advises his rock and roll peers to seriously be cautious and conscious of their own health moving forward. “There’s 550 cancers that we deal with… and there’s no telling when it’s going to come,” he reflects. “I wanna be an advocate, of course, for everyone to be aware of things like that. It can happen to anybody.”
To further prove his point, he name-drops peers that have also suffered from mouth, tongue and throat related cancers, pointing to Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine and Social Distortion’s Mike Ness. “It’s the most prevalent cancer now for males over 40,” Newsted explains.
Despite the lifestyle taking its toll on his body, Newsted doesn’t regret his time in Metallica. The bassist parted ways with Metallica back in 2001 after 15 years, and continues to be a massive supporter of the thrashers.
Regardless of his diagnosis, the bassist hopes to carry out his North American headline tour with his Chophouse Band project this summer. The tour comes a full year after his cancer surgery, so Newsted is ripe and ready to roll. “I promised myself I was going to rest [after my surgery], and that was the first time I’ve done that in my life,” he says.
Jason Newsted and the Chophouse Band will be playing an eight-date headline tour this July, before supporting country rockers Blackberry Smoke for a further 10 dates.
For tickets and more information on Jason Newsted and the Chophouse Band’s summer tour, head to the band’s website.
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Have Greta Van Fleet broken up? Fans speculate over meaning of “thanks for the wild ride” social media post
Greta Van Fleet have sparked rumours of a breakup following a cryptic social media video “thanking” their fans.
The video in question was shared yesterday (4 May), and shows clips of the band throughout their 14-year-tenure. After flickering through multiple videos from across their career, the video closes out on a message reading: “Thanks for the wild ride, love, Josh, Jake, Sam [the Kiszka brothers] & Daniel [Wagner].”
Prior to sharing the video across their social media channels, the group had been keeping a low profile. On their Instagram, the band hadn’t shared anything since July 2025. Even then, the post was simply an anniversary post to mark two years of their last record, 2023’s Starcatcher. Before that, they’d not posted since March 2025.
While the reflective video seems like a farewell, some fans aren’t entirely convinced. Some have noted that the music in the clip is unfamiliar, hinting that there is new Greta Van Fleet music on the way. If that is the case, the message could simply be thanking fans for the “wild ride” touring their last album, waving off the era to welcome in the next one.
As well as that, the new video has been edited in a way that is reminiscent of other clips throughout the Starcatcher album cycle, particularly the fuzzy, film-strip-like overlays.
Over the years, Greta Van Fleet have had a tough time earning their place in the rock world. At first, many wrote the band off by labelling them as “derivative”, due to their similarities to Led Zeppelin. However, the band went on to gain a huge fanbase and even earn the Grammy for Best Rock Album for their 2017 EP, From The Fires.
Currently, the band has neither confirmed nor denied whether they will be breaking up. However, if the outcome does see the end of Greta Van Fleet, the members aren’t entirely abandoning music; brother Jake Kiszka has been working with Ida Mae’s Chris Turpin on new Mirador music, with the duo set to release their The Gathering EP in June.
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Former Turnstile guitarist Brady Ebert could face life in prison following alleged hit-and-run
Former Turnstile guitarist Brady Ebert is facing life in prison after striking his ex bandmate Brandan Yates’ father William with his car.
Upon arriving to William Yates’ home on 29 March, Ebert is alleged to have struck down the 79-year-old with his vehicle, leaving him severely injured with a broken leg.
News of Ebert’s alleged hit-and-run first hit the press back in April, with the Baltimore Banner reporting that the guitarist considered his actions to be of “pure self-defence”, claiming that “they’re the attackers”. Despite pleading his innocence, a Montgomery County grand jury has now formally indicted a charge of attempted first-degree murder – a significant upgrade from the Montgomery County police’s original charge of attempted second-degree murder.
The more serious charge comes with potentially more severe repercussions for Ebert; now, if the guitarist is convicted, he could be handed a life sentence.
According to the Baltimore Banner, Ebert’s alleged hit-and-run was preceded by the guitarist driving by William Yates’ home, honking his horn and yelling “obscenities” at William Yates, his daughter and his son-in-law. However, Ebert allegedly then escalated the situation and drove back around to the house.
Surveillance footage provided by the Montgomery County police allegedly shows William “warning” his daughter and her partner to get away. However, the 79-year-old wasn’t so lucky; according to the police, Ebert struck Yates while he was trying to run away, yelling that he “deserved it”.
Back in August 2022, Turnstile parted ways with Ebert. While the guitarist had been a founding member, the group explained in an Instagram Story: “We are deeply grateful for our time together. Our love for him continues and we wish him nothing but the best moving forward.”
Turnstile confirms guitarist Brady Ebert has left the band
byu/papo96 inindieheads
However, in a statement shared with Rolling Stone last month, the band clarified that Ebert’s removal from the project had been triggered by his self-destructive behaviour and increasingly “violent” nature. “Turnstile cut ties with Brady Ebert in 2022 in response to a consistent pattern of harmful behaviour affecting himself, the band, and the community,” the band explained.
“After exhausting every available resource to support his access to help and recovery, a boundary ultimately had to be set when healthy communication was no longer possible and he began threatening violence.”
“In the years since, his baseless tirades have continued in public. We never addressed it. We chose to protect his privacy and the circumstances around his departure, even when he did nothing to be deserving of that protection. Over the past few months, his threats only escalated further… We have no language left for Brady.”
In recent years, the ex-Turnstile riffer joined a new band, The S.E.T. (Self Evident Truth). However, his new bandmates also ended up kicking him out back in February, following some erratic social media posts criticising Turnstile.
According to NME, Ebert publicly accused his former bandmates of “misusing funds from a benefit gig”, forcing his new band to cut ties with him. “Brady is no longer a member of The S.E.T.,” the band wrote on Instagram. “We will not stand by his ridiculous comments and behaviour toward the members of our band and our community.”
The criticism of his old band came shortly after Ebert had criticised them in January. According to Vice, the guitarist had slammed Turnstile for posting an “abolish ICE” post, labelling it a performative move: “Lmao, no one in Turnstile cares at all about ethics or social issues in general, they’re just pandering to their audience.”
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“We figured we needed to do it as good or better than the original”: Dave Mustaine on Megadeth’s Ride the Lightning cover
One of the biggest headlines in the leadup to the release of Megadeth’s final album was the announcement that a cover of Metallica’s Ride the Lightning was set to appear.
As the story goes, Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine co-wrote the track when he was still a member of Metallica in the early ‘80s, alongside James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Cliff Burton. Mustaine ended up being fired in 1983 before the release of the band’s debut album, Kill ‘Em All, and Ride the Lightning first appeared as the title track of Metallica’s second album the following year.
- READ MORE: Dave Grohl says Foo Fighters still make music “like a band that plays in a f**king garage”
When Megadeth’s cover of Ride the Lightning was confirmed, Dave Mustaine described his intention to make it a full-circle moment, saying: “I wanted to pay my respects to where my career first started.”
And while Mustaine says he “put [his feud with Metallica] to sleep many years ago” in a new interview with Brazil’s Ibagenscast [via Blabbermouth], it seems there was at least a small competitive streak to Ride the Lightning cover.
“I’ve always thought that James was an excellent guitar player, so when we set out to do the song, we figured we needed to do it as good or better than the original,” he says. “And we figured, how are we gonna do that? Metallica’s an amazing group.
“So we sped it up just a little bit, made it a little bit more frantic, and then we kind of spiced up the solo a little bit. And then, at the end, there’s some drum fills that the Metallica guys had played, and I told Dirk [Verbeuren, Megadeth drummer], I said, ‘Have fun there. Just have fun.’
“So he did a drum fill at the end in the four spots that there’s drum fills. And I think that they’re really stunning drum fills. They may be similar to the original stuff, but I’m not sure how similar. And he recorded his parts, and I love it.”
Also in the interview, Mustaine touches again on his desire to complete the circle of his career, so to speak.
“Going back to why we did that song,” he explains, “it’s kind of closing the circle, paying my respects to the band that I was a founding member in. And love me or hate me, they’ll never be able to erase me.
“And I think that when people can look with acceptance and fondness of the two bands and not try and keep something that I don’t wanna keep going. I don’t wanna have a feud. I’ve put that to sleep so many years ago.
“So, yeah, I wanted to do something that was — just show some respect, ’cause it doesn’t matter to me if he cares, if he likes it; it matters what I do and that I show respect and close the circle.”
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Heidi Curtis’ destiny is intertwined with guitar music: “It’s a craft that has to be chipped away at”
Imagine if you told teenage Heidi Curtis, as she learnt Florence & The Machine’s Dog Days Are Over on guitar, that she’d be announcing tour dates with Florence a few hours before having coffee with Guitar.com.
Having already played with Ben Howard and Paolo Nutini, Curtis’ list of co-signs is already undeniably stacked – despite having just three released songs to her name. Across the hour we spend with her in Newcastle city centre, we learn how her story is six years in the making.
“I was doing mic nights at Lola Jeans for £40 a week, I was buzzing!” she recalls, running us through jobs at Newcastle United and a Mexican restaurant. “I stayed at home, I honed my craft… my mam and dad are really supportive. It’s good to see artists put out music [quickly], but I also think it can be dangerous, the change of pace in how music’s released. It takes so long to actually perfect your live performance. It’s a craft that has to be chipped away at.”
After multiple iterations, Curtis’ live band has been solidified for three years, a constant while her songwriting took many shapes and sizes in her background life in North Shields. Raised on piano, which she learnt mostly by ear, she was soon ‘borrowing’ her older brother’s Telecaster and amassing guitars of her own, notably a 1978 Gibson Dove acoustic, which reminded her of the “white-winged dove” from Stevie Nicks’ Edge Of Seventeen.
Disengaged with the Ableton-heavy music production course at Newcastle College, Curtis was instead drawn to the “privacy” of playing guitar in her room, the playing style of Johnny Marr, and the purity of live production with her bandmates. “It’s a puzzle – and I love puzzles,” she smiles. “I never have that tyrannical leadership… I want my band to have the same status as session musicians in the 70s: very revered and honoured. I want to preserve that, because their musicianship is incredible.”
Image: Jay Davison
Bide Your Time
In November, the mystical, heart-throbbing riff of her debut single Undone revealed what she’d been building. Next came the magical duality of Siren – a modern-day successor to Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain – before the raw downstrums of What Am I Missing? announced her debut EP, Hollow Heart (due 29 May). She has two albums’ worth of music ready to go. While Curtis tugs at folk-rock, indie and grittier rock threads, it’s evident that the guitar is at the centre of her identity.
“I can’t believe how much love that Undone riff got!” she beams. “Originally, it had this massive Tube Screamer on it, and it was a bit ridiculous. It’s the rumble and hit of the strings, everything about the guitar gives so much life to a track. I’ve been able to manipulate guitars to work with me, via going down an alternate tuning route. When I came back to standard, I knew what my style was. Trying to find your own style in standard is tricky.”
That case study, surrounding DADF#BE and DADDAD tunings, exemplifies the crux of Heidi’s songwriting journey. Before she could share her music with the world, she had reach a level of self-assurance in her artistry, taking no shortcuts. While many artists wrestle with that in the public eye to feed the music and content machine, Heidi was determined to do it her way.
She was afforded that space after her talent was spotted by Owain Davies, who, in tandem with her older brother Tom, co-manages Heidi alongside Ben Howard and Sam Fender. Hailing from the same town, Curtis has watched on in real time as Fender shot to fame, now arguably the biggest British guitar act of the decade.
“Being around him, and that level of quality, made me dedicated to stick with this process,” she says, pointing out how he also started releasing at 24, having written since the age of 16. “I’m in a really privileged position in that regard.”
Trusting the journey, Curtis learned how to channel her gut instinct and write with a degree of self-assurance. “You’ve got to meditate on the practice of not allowing others’ opinions to get involved,” she says. “Have you ever played Zelda? You’ve got to tame these horses. I see songs as these spirit-like pieces. You’ve got to really tame [them], ‘No, this is going this way.’”
Particularly after an active year of gigging in 2022, the self-inflicted pressure to ready her music did weigh on Curtis, “but it made me dig so much deeper,” she continues. “When my nana passed away. I would have never reached that point of emotional depth if I hadn’t [felt that] genuine heartbreak. You’ve got to dig for those [moments], to be honest with your emotions. It’s definitely made me understand and honour the time and the effort.”
Image: Jay Davison
One Step Back And Three Steps Forward
In 2023, What Am I Missing? catalysed the wave of songs we hear on Hollow Heart – and beyond. Frustrated by writer’s block, she turned to her guitar, on holiday in Cyprus, and allowed the truth of feelings to come to the surface, instead of aimlessly seeking out answers. You can feel the urgency of her predicament in the track, a headspace she had to re-enter when it came to recording.
“It’s exactly the same as acting,” she suggests. “Every song is a lesson. If you don’t confront those issues, it blocks the other ideas from being able to migrate. As an artist, you’ve got to be on the move… mentally. Writer’s block is a sign that you’ve stood here for too long. The patch of sun has moved, and you’re still standing there. I now know whenever I get writer’s block, I’m not confronting something properly.”
Although Curtis is finally emerging into the public spotlight, behind the scenes, she’s always been on the move. Her taste has changed – from Bob Dylan to Girls Aloud to Metallica and Hendrix – and so has her live show, a muscle she’s kept strengthening, “like going to the gym”. Now, there is room for ambition to enter the fray, as the fruits of her labour finally come to life, proving that the long, old-fashioned march was the right course of action. While she’s watched from the sidelines, the success of guitar acts like Fender, Fontaines D.C. and Wolf Alice “gives [her] so much faith” in her methods.
“Now, people will sniff around and I’ll think, ‘You were at my gig four years ago and had no interest,’” she laughs. “It takes a bit longer to get people knowing you, but when the moment happens – and I believe it will – a really solid fanbase that are buying tickets and invest in your art [is important]. I see artists with thousands of followers that are struggling to sell out an academy show. If the music is good enough, and your artistry’s good, it’s gonna be fine.”
Hollow Heart is out 29 May via AWAL
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Dave Grohl says Foo Fighters still make music “like a band that plays in a f**king garage”
They may be one of the biggest rock bands in the worlds, but Foo Fighters still operate and make music “like a band that plays in a fucking garage”, according to Dave Grohl.
Speaking to Radio X’s John Kennedy about the band’s latest album Your Favorite Toy, the frontman explains that despite decades of success, the group’s creative process hasn’t strayed far from their roots.
“The way we function as a band… I know that all of this is much different than it was when we were young and playing in bands in a garage, but we still function like a band that plays in a fucking garage,” he says. “It’s the same thing! It’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a riff,’ and we show it to everybody.”
“Maybe people would imagine that we’re a lot more professional than we actually are,” Grohl adds, “but really the way that we function… it’s really similar to [Dave’s previous punk band] Scream.”
Describing Your Favorite Toy as a good example of how this works, Grohl says he typically brings in rough guitar parts and lets the track evolve organically with the rest of the band.
“Usually I’ll put down a rhythm guitar and then maybe a sort of melodic bit above that, almost for reference,” he explains. “Like, I’ll double the rhythm guitar, and then I’ll have some sort of melodic line that goes above it. But the funny thing is that nobody knows what I’m going to sing until I sing it.”
“So, I don’t go to the band and say, ‘Hey guys, listen to this song idea.’ I don’t do that. We record the instrumental and nobody’s really sure what the vocal melody is going to be. And there have been times where everyone lays down their tracks, and then I’ll be inspired by what they do, and change the vocal melody from things that they’ve done. So it’s always kind of a bit of a mystery.”
Asked how the band manages to balance its three-guitarist lineup, Grohl says, “As far as guitarists in the band… I’m sort of like a rhythm guitar player. Chris [Shiflett] is very much a lead guitar player and Pat [Smear]… Most bands, like the guitar players have a pedal that they step on for distortion. We just have Pat.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Grohl also shared a behind-the-scenes detail about the band’s latest album title. He originally wanted to call it For Good, inspired by a lyric in Your Favorite Toy – until another release threw a wrench in his plans.
“I wanted to call the record For Good, because that song, Your Favorite Toy, at first I called it For Good. In that song, Your Favorite Toy, it says, ‘Get back, hear that boy, someone threw away your favorite toy for good.’”
“And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a good not only title for the song, but also for the album.’ They could have more than a few meanings, but I’m like, ‘That’s kind of nice – For Good.’ And then that Wicked movie came out, and it’s called Wicked: For Good. And I was so pissed! So, then I changed the title of the song, and then it just became the title of the album.”
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Randy Bachman calls Paul Reed Smith a “legend” of modern guitar making: “I said, ‘You’re the new Leo Fender. You’re the new Les Paul. You’re the new Orville Gibson’”
Randy Bachman has praised the genius of Paul Reed Smith, hailing the PRS founder as a “legend” of modern guitar making and placing him alongside the likes of Leo Fender, Les Paul and Orville Gibson.
Speaking in a new interview with Guitar World, Bachman recalls meeting Smith at a Christmas party hosted by producer Kevin Shirley last year, where the conversation quickly turned from mutual admiration to Smith’s impact on the guitar industry.
“I was in Nashville at a Christmas party for Kevin Shirley, the producer,” says the Bachman–Turner Overdrive guitarist. “He’s a really good friend of mine, and he produced my Heavy Blues album [2015]. At his party, I got to meet Paul Reed Smith, who says to me, ‘You’re a legend.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding? You’re a legend. You’re the new Leo Fender. You’re the new Les Paul. You’re the new Orville Gibson.’”
“Two legends get together, what are you going to do?” Bachman quips.
While the exchange reflected the kind of mutual respect you’d expect between two guitar heavyweights, Bachman says that the meeting also led into something more practical.
With ongoing health issues making heavier instruments increasingly difficult to manage, he has been actively searching for a lighter guitar setup.
“I said to Paul, ‘I’m looking for a lighter guitar, even lighter than my ’57, because I’ve got a back issue,’” says Bachman. “I had my left knee replaced. I’m a cancer survivor. I had four cancers, and I can hardly stand up. I’m learning to walk and balance again.
“Standing on one foot and operating your pedals is like tap-dancing, and I can’t do that yet. I’m still building up. I work out every day in a pool with weights. And he said, ‘I’ve got a new guitar. It’ll be under 4 lbs.’ So I got his number. I’m typing him a letter right now.”
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Finneas on why he thinks singing live “is just infinitely harder than strumming a guitar”
Finneas has argued that singing live is “infinitely harder” than playing the guitar on stage.
Speaking on a recent episode of On Film…With Kevin McCarthy, the producer, musician, and singer-songwriter breaks down how he views live performance dynamics when he’s on stage with his sister and longtime collaborator Billie Eilish.
“I always think of my role as the guy holding the trampoline while the acrobat is flipping,” says Finneas. “So it’s like they’re doing the hard thing, but I could kill them.”
Expanding on that comparison, particularly in contexts like Saturday Night Live, where the pair often perform together, he adds, “If Billie and I are playing SNL or something, I’m like ‘Billie’s doing the hard part’. Billie is singing, which is just infinitely harder than strumming a guitar.”
“If I fuck up my guitar part, she’s in the open ocean,” he explains. “And that to me is like, I am locked in. I’m right there.”
“The other part is like if Billie wants to take an extra beat because she’s feeling the significance of a line… that would be such a failure if I’m like [hits imaginary keyboard] and I step on the beat.”
Finneas traces this sensitivity back to his early musical training, noting that he “grew up singing in choirs” where “watching the conductor” was essential.
“You better be watching the conductor,” he says. “Even if you are learning the song as you’re singing it, you better be looking up and back ‘cause they’re going to cut you off and bring you in.”
“And also that is the fun of it,” the producer continues. “but that would be so embarrassing to be like, ‘Oh my god, she was taking a pregnant pause and I blew through it ‘cause I was too relaxed or whatever.’”
Watch the full interview below.
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Strymon Fairfax review – an old-school drive pedal with plenty of rough edges
$199/£199, strymon.net
Strymon, renowned purveyor of hi-tech reverb and delay pedals using advanced digital signal processing, apparently has a team known as “our analog guys”. Presumably they spend most of their time making coffee for everyone else, but every now and then they are allowed to design something. That’s the origin of the Fairfax overdrive… and on this evidence, it’s time for the digital nerds to start making their own coffee.
- READ MORE: Twilight Pulse Audioworks Konstante review – a dual dirt pedal that’s faster than the speed of light
In fact, the best way to appreciate this fully analog dirt machine might be to cover up the name at the bottom and pretend it’s made by some ultra-hip indie brand. Because the sounds it makes are about as far from Strymon’s usual fare as you can get.
Image: Press
Strymon Fairfax – what is it?
There’s a sort of reverse arms race going on in the stompbox world, with makers rifling through the archives in search of ever more old and obscure kit to recreate. In this case, the inspiration comes from the Canadian-made Garnet Amplifiers Herzog – a tube-driven preamp built in the 60s for Randy Bachman of the Guess Who. He used it on the band’s biggest hit, American Woman, and throughout his subsequent career with Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
The Herzog is, in a word, large – it’s designed to be stacked on top of an amp, not stomped on. The challenge for Strymon, then, was to capture all of its rich valve tones – without using DSP, remember – in a compact pedal. So the Fairfax has a preamp, a power amp and “an ingenious custom circuit that emulates the saturation characteristics of the output transformer”.
There’s also a real transformer – in the power supply, converting your standard adapter’s 9v into 40v – and you get controls for drive, output level and ‘sag’. This dials in extra compression and spluttery gating as the biasing of the JFETs is pushed out of whack. There’s no tone control, just a toggle switch for bright mode.
Image: Press
Strymon Fairfax – sounds
The sound of the Fairfax is sweet and chunky, with a gently crumbly texture. Basically it’s vanilla fudge in stompbox form. And while it’s not the first overdrive pedal to produce that kind of tone, it’s among the best of its type.
With drive at halfway and sag at minimum, you get a medium-gain crunch tone that’s pretty much uncoloured in pure EQ terms but with a ‘sticky’ feel that sets it well apart from the average transparent overdrive. There’s an element of gurgly scuzz involved, but it’s addictively pretty and responds nicely to variations in pick attack.
As you crank the drive, all the good stuff just gets bigger. It doesn’t go quite as fuzzy as, say, a Land Devices HP-2 or Hudson Broadcast (two pedals with which it has some tonal similarities), but it will do a fine impression of a small tweed combo at full volume – and adding some sag just makes it feel even more amp-like. There’s some wonderfully squishy compression available before things turn properly splatty, and it’s only towards the top of the dial that the gating effect starts to properly pinch.
The bright switch has been well judged, letting you decide whether or not to let all the high frequencies through unchecked, and I never found myself wishing for more control over the voicing of the Fairfax. You might feel differently if you’re using extra-sizzly single-coils, though.
Strymon Fairfax – should I buy it?
For me, there are two reasons to buy this pedal. The first, and most obvious, is that it’s awesome – smartly designed, unexpectedly versatile and bubbling over with musical character.
The second is that, the better the Fairfax sells, the more likely it is that Strymon’s bigwigs will let those analog specialists loose on a load of other Series A projects. The second entry, the recently announced Canoga, looks like a fairly unremarkable vintage-style fuzz; but after a debut like this, who knows what else they’re capable of?
Strymon Fairfax – alternatives
Other compact overdrive pedals with the emphasis on chunky warmth include the Supro Drive ($219/£189) and Beetronics Fatbee ($189/£199). But then again, why mess about with silly little stompboxes when Garnet Amplifiers is still going and you can order a reissue Herzog for CA$695?
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D-style Overdrive Special tones go digital in Universal Audio’s new UAD Enigmatic ‘82 plugin
Universal Audio has unveiled the UAD Enigmatic ‘82 Overdrive Special Amp, a new native plugin designed to emulate some of the most coveted D‑style amplifiers in guitar history.
Available now for Mac and PC, the Enigmatic ‘82 Overdrive Special Amp captures the authentic D-style amp sounds favoured by legendary players like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and more.
“These are tones you associate with uniquely great players,” says UA Senior Product Manager James Santiago. “We modelled more than four different era D‑style amps, from early Santa Cruz builds to later LA studio favourites… because no two were exactly alike.”
The plugin delivers three distinct amp voicings – Rock, Jazz, and Custom – covering essential eras of the fabled Overdrive Special sound in a single package. Built on Universal Audio’s amp modeling and component-level circuit analysis, Enigmatic ‘82 aims to bring those tones into a versatile, in-the-box format for modern players and producers.
Credit: Universal Audio
Users can mix and match power sections and tone stacks, as well as add the legendary Hot Rubber Monkey (HRM) mod, creating a D‑style amp circuit that’s uniquely theirs. The plugin also includes nine curated cab and mic setups designed for mix-ready tones, along with more than 40 presets from artists including Joey Landreth, Megan Lovell and Daniel Donato.
“Whether you favour intricate chord work or expressive lead playing, you’ll instantly find that classic ODS sound that responds to every nuance of your playing and cuts right through the mix,” says Universal Audio.
The UAD Enigmatic ‘82 is available as a native plugin, either as a standalone purchase or as part of Universal Audio’s UAD Spark subscription. The plugin is priced at $99, with a launch discount of $49 available through 25 May.
Learn more at the Universal Audio website.
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“The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp
Ahhhh, the great guitar vs amp debate. Unless you’re totally new to the guitar gear community, you’ll be aware of the perennial debate over what’s better: a great guitar with a sub-par amp or a great amp with a cheap guitar.
Both sides have strong voices. Math rock legend and Covet guitarist Yvette Young went on record a year ago to extol the virtues of an expensive amp, saying going for a bad amp is like “ruining a really nice audio file with something that’s going to degrade it a lot”.
- READ MORE: Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer
Meanwhile, the opposing camp has adherents in Lita Ford and Whitesnake’s Doug Aldrich, who said last year: “You can get a great sound out of any amp that works.”
And it’s the second camp that former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford finds himself in, as he explains in the new issue of Guitarist.
“I’d buy the guitar. Shit, these days, half the time I’m playing through a rented amp,” he laughs. “But the guitar is so much more personal. You’re physically touching the thing and, in a perfect world, it becomes a part of you to where you don’t even think about it any more.
“It becomes just a way to get your insides out, since your fingerprints are literally on it. There’s direct contact and that’s gonna exchange your subtleties way more than an amplifier will, I think.”
So there you have it, if you’ve got some budget and you’re deciding whether to spend more of it on your amp or guitar, you know which direction Marc Ford would steer you in…
And if you do opt to zero in on the ideal guitar, Ford has a few buying tips to orient you in the right direction.
“The ultimate guitar tip for guitars – and really, any guitar, though it’s more obvious on acoustic and maybe less so with electric – is that it’s got to sound good when it’s not plugged in,” he says. “There has to be a tone that catches your ear. And it probably needs to be unique compared with other guitars.
“Obviously, feel is important. It’s gotta feel good to you. But if it doesn’t sound good when it’s not plugged in, there’s no way that you’re ever gonna get it to sound good through the electronics.”
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“The next thing you know I’m a full-time mechanic”: Rob Dukes reflects on his 2014 Exodus firing
Though some musicians are able to make a living from their playing for the duration of their careers, others, by various circumstances, often find themselves working back working ‘normal’ jobs once their time in the spotlight is over.
Take Rob Dukes, for example. Exodus singer between 2005 and 2014, the Florida native ended up spending his time fixing up old cars, as he explains in the latest issue of Metal Hammer. And he wouldn’t have taken that path were it not for his firing from the Bay Area thrash outfit.
- READ MORE: Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer
As he recalls, his dismissal from Exodus came as a surprise: “When I got fired from Exodus in 2014, I didn’t see it coming. I felt betrayed, angry and resentful. I was fucking scared – my livelihood was gone. Fear caused me to lash out. I hadn’t done anything in 10 years other than sing, so what the fuck was I gonna do? I was in no man’s land.”
But after the sting had worn off and he’d picked himself up and dusted himself off, Dukes started looking for his next calling, which came in the form of fixing vintage cars.
“I sucked it up and said, ‘I’m gonna get a job.’ The only thing I knew I could make a living from was working on cars. I found a place in Arizona through Roger [Miret] from Agnostic Front. I got hired and the next you know I’m a full-time mechanic restoring old ‘50s and ‘60s Volkswagens – I became the restoration guy.
“I gained a whole new life. I learned things by reading books and watching YouTube. I’m a fucking master welder now! I love fabricating stuff, I just love making stuff out of metal.”
In the end, though, the world couldn’t take the music out of Rob Dukes, and as of last year, he’s now back in the Exodus lineup. “We are beyond stoked to have Rob back ripping up the stage with us and he’s looking forward to crushing everything like only he can,” the band wrote in January 2025, following the departure of vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza.
Exodus guitarist Gary Holt has been praising the band as the frontrunners of modern day thrash metal lately. “Metallica were the best of all of us,” he said in March. “I mean, I don’t think so anymore – I think Exodus crushes them, but that’s my own humble opinion.”
He also said last month that he and his bandmates “carry the world’s biggest chip on our shoulders” that Exodus don’t get the same recognition as their thrash metal counterparts like Metallica and Megadeth.
Check out a full list of upcoming Exodus dates via the band’s official website.
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Richie Sambora reveals he hired a private detective to track down his stolen Gibson Explorer
Guitar thievery is sadly all too common. In the last few months alone, session guitarist Mason Stoops had a Fender Jazzmaster and Gretsch Corvette stolen from his van, and Chris Buck was the victim of thieves who smashed the back window of his car to make off with some of his music gear.
Most aren’t so lucky to be reunited with their equipment, but every now and again, the story has a happy ending.
In one such heartwarming tale, former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora became whole again in March following the return of his long-lost 1976 Gibson Explorer, which had been missing for 40 years.
And in a new interview with People [via Guitar World], Sambora reveals the lengths he went to to recover his beloved instrument. Apparently, the guitarist even ended up hiring a private detective to help track it down.
As the story goes, Sambora went into debt as a teenager to front the $250 it cost to buy the Explorer.
“The record company had to lend us money to buy new equipment and we just went and did it,” he says. But the guitar was stolen from a warehouse in 1985 while Bon Jovi were touring overseas, and the case was shrouded in mystery for decades.
“About 10 years ago, I get a call from Guitar Center in New Jersey,” he continues. “I’m staying at my mom’s, and they go, ‘Your Explorer was in here. We just sold it to some guy.’”
Sambora then phoned the buyer to offer him double what he paid for the guitar, but never got a response, so ended up hiring a private investigator to get to the bottom of it.
But it was Matthieu Lucas of Matt’s Guitar Shop who ultimately tracked the Explorer down. He bought the guitar there and then, and sent Sambora a photo to verify the guitar was legit.
“He sent me a picture and I go, ‘Get the fuck out of here. You got it.’ He goes, ‘I knew it was yours. I bought it immediately for you.’ So that was really, really cool of him.”
“I said to myself, ‘This is the guitar that I can make talk.’ When I wanted to be a badass, that’s what I took out. It easily was the best guitar I owned, and the specs were mine. So basically it was the first Richie Sambora custom model.”
On the moment he was reunited with the guitar, he explains: “It was fucking trippy as shit. I put it on, I started to play it. It seemed like it was untouched. It’s almost in perfect shape.”
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Klang Guitars DC review: an aluminium neck guitar for the masses?
£1,045, klangguitars.com
The niche of aluminium-necked electric guitars has long since diverged from the handful of classic rock players who picked up a Kramer or Travis Bean at some point. Now it has its own mythology, a discrete pantheon of players ruling over a much heavier tonal landscape. In 2026 the aluminium universe most often sounds like noise rock and doom metal, plus all of the weird, heavy, downtuned shit that exists in the space between those two pillars: the sparking electrical cable of Sunn O))) strung between Shellac and the Melvins. Klang, a new arrival on the aluminium-necked scene, is acutely aware of this fact, and today I’m taking a look at one of its first guitars.
As I write this review, it feels appropriate that Neurosis have just announced their surprise return, fronted by new member Aaron Turner of ISIS, Sumac and Old Man Gloom. Combined, Turner and Neurosis’ heady, post-everything sludge metal is a pretty good indicator of where a lot of modern aluminium fans’ heads are at: there are exceptions, but guitars and necks from modern aluminium brands such as Robot Graves, TTTides, Obstructures, DNG and, of course, Electrical Guitar Company (also the modern inheritor of Travis Bean’s designs) are much more commonly found in the hands of musicians drawing on some strain of weird, noisy, heavy stuff.
So this is the world that Klang is launching into, and it’s absolutely not shying away from this influence. Its website mentions both Shellac and The Jesus Lizard as inspirations for starting the project, not that you need it to, given the brand name – Klang is pretty good onomatopoeia for the signature sounds of Steve Albini and Duane Denison, both players who leaned into aluminium’s angular, clanking character and crafted tones resembling plastic bags of broken toasters being thrown down concrete staircases. So Klang is very much a brand rooted in the “culture” of aluminium, as much as you can define such a thing.
Image: Adam Gasson
Who are Klang Guitars anyway?
Klang announced its launch last summer, with a fairly unique business model. It’s a UK-based company, with manufacturing outsourced to China – necks are machined and anodised at a third-party facility, before being assembled into full guitars in Klang’s own luthier’s workshop, then imported. Production runs are small – you sign up for a slot ahead of time, and join a run with the guitar of your choice. The streamlined model means, all going well, a wait time of two to three months for your instrument.
That’s lightning-fast for the world of niche custom stuff like this. The other result of the approach is the price, which starts at a rather affordable £990 for a full guitar. To put things in perspective, before aluminium-neck specialist Baguley Guitars shut down, its bolt-on necks alone were in the €650-750 range, with the full guitars running into in the multiple thousands – and even with those prices the operation shuttered in 2024 due to financial insolvency.
US luthier Electrical Guitar Company is perhaps the biggest boutique name in modern aluminium guitars. Their full instruments also cost around three grand, while bolt-on necks from EGC and other USA aluminium makers tend to stay in that $750 range. And so Klang’s prices are affordable for semi-custom full guitars in general, let alone aluminium ones.
The price of the guitars and the bespoke import model Klang is offering has led to a mix of excitement and trepidation from aluminium guitar communities. On paper, this sort of hybrid model can be extremely effective – import guitars have only gotten better and better over the last decade or so, and Klang’s founder, Will, seems to know both his audience and the business. However, the guitar is a fraction of the price you might expect to pay – so can it be too good to be true?
Image: Adam Gasson
Klang Guitars DC – what is it?
If my review guitar is anything to go by, Klang’s model works. It’s not a totally perfect thing, but it’s a damn good instrument for the money, aluminium or not, and it’s got a load of really interesting things going on that I’ll get into now.
Klang’s guitars are semi-through-necks, taking a similar approach to some of the vintage Travis Bean instruments. The aluminium continues from the neck into a block that the pickups get mounted to. It then returns to the surface of the body to become the bridge, so it’s all one piece along the string length. The wooden portion of the body then sits around this assembly, sandwiched in place with an aluminium plate. This means that the available body shapes (the DC and JM) are the same guitar from string to nut – it’s just the wooden portion that’s changed out.
This is very cool to see for around a grand – the fact that the entire string length is supported by the same solid block of metal is for some, kind of the point of using aluminium in the first place – rather than bolting an aluminium neck to a bunch of soft wood.
Another unexpected thing about the Klang is the presence of a truss rod. For some, this was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser when Klang arrived on the scene – a lot of other aluminium necks don’t have truss rods because, well, they essentially are truss rods – relief is just set by ensuring you’re using the right string gauge to provide enough tension when you inevitably tune down to drop A.
My Klang arrives with a set of 12s on it, wound G included (another indication the brand knows its target audience – I was keen to tune it down to C standard anyway), and so as I get it tuned up, I do find that it could do with a little more relief in the neck. I give the heel-access rod a tentative quarter-turn, which does the job just fine.
This flexibility is not a luxury I have with my other aluminium necks, with which I just use thick enough strings to keep the neck in relief with my chosen tuning. If you happen to like a particularly stiff or loose playing feel, a truss-rodless neck’s preferred tension might not accommodate that – but with the Klang, you’ve got more flexibility in that regard.
The look of the Klang DC has a no-nonsense, minimal character to it – the aluminium is anodised satin black by default, and the body is stained mahogany. Since the first run, Klang has moved to a model that offers a ‘pro’ spec, with a polished chrome finish for the aluminium and a nitro finish on the body, while the ‘standard’ keeps the combo of dark wood and anodised black.
The headstock design is modern and angular as opposed to rounded and vintage – I want to call particular attention to its use of its negative space to draw an exclamation mark, a very neat piece of branding that distinguishes it from the otherwise similarly quadrilateral Electrical Guitar Company headstock.
The body design is a little more of an explicit nod to that of the Travis Bean 1000/1000A’s, although a deep German carve does reintroduce some pointiness to the cutaway horns.
Image: Adam Gasson
Klang Guitars DC – build quality
While its overall look is perhaps a result of the more affordable price-point – compared to something with a by-default mirror-polish and curly koa top – I think that it’s a really effective presentation, one very much suited for the modern aluminium world. It’s by no means an aggressive thing, it’s hardly a Jackson Warrior, but for me it’s at home within the styles of noise-rock and metal mentioned in this review’s introduction: raw, dark, industrial and heavy.
One thing I do want to note that might be divisive – the body’s stained-wood finish was starting to show pick wear after just a couple of weeks of me playing the guitar for review purposes. If you gigged this thing hard, it’d likely show pretty noticeable pick wear, buckle rash and other aesthetic dings fairly easily – this may be a positive, as, hey, easy relicing that’s authentically done by you – or you might prefer a guitar that shows a bit more aesthetic resilience.
Image: Adam Gasson
Klang Guitars DC – playability
Aluminium guitars have a reputation for shoulder-pulverising weight – and the Klang DC is no exception. Despite not being the largest instrument in the world, the DC still tips the scales at a whopping 9.8lbs – or ‘right at the heavier end of a Les Paul’s territory if you’re looking for a comparison.
This means you’ll certainly feel it in your back and shoulders after long playing sessions – but if you’re looking for a featherweight instrument, I probably don’t need to tell you that a guitar mostly made out of metal might be one to swerve.
Given the mass of the neck, aluminium guitars also have a rep for neck dive, but despite its considerable weight, the DC is an impressively well-balanced instrument. The heft of the body keeps things firmly in a good playing position when stood up, and the relatively small headstock and the amount of metal south of the heel seem to help in this regard.
Beyond the balance, the guitar is a generally enjoyable thing to hold and use – the deep German carve is also remarkably comfortable on the forearm, and the integrated bridge design features a smooth ramp to the walls either side of the saddles for a pretty nice experience on the side of your palm.
But put the Klang on, and the first thing you’re likely to notice isn’t anything to do with the weight or the forearm comfort – it’s the totally unique neck profile. The neck is incredibly thin, basically the same slim C-profile all the way from the first to the 22nd fret, with an unbelievable amount of access to the higher frets thanks to the deep cutaways and the lack of a neck joint.
It will likely not be a neck for everyone – if you like a baseball-bat-thick profile to reassuringly fill your palm, you’ll probably find it distractingly thin. As it stands, I really enjoy it, and the satin feel of the anodisation also makes moving about it comfortable.
You could, if you wanted to, set it up to be a shreddy thing for big silly bends and 200bpm sweep picking. For my low-and-slow purposes, however, I still find it a comfy and inviting experience. The stainless steel frets are also well-dressed and very smooth – and, in my view, essential for an aluminium guitar – this will not really be a standard refret job if it ever comes to that, so it’s best give the guitar as long a life as possible before you need to cross that particular bridge.
Image: Adam Gasson
Klang Guitars DC – playability
Klang’s instruments are by default loaded with P-90 pickups – or, P-90-sized humbuckers if you opt for them. This presumably keeps all of the body machining and mounting hardware interchangeable, and if down the line you want to swap out pickups, the standard soapbar P-90 format offers you a lot of choice for single-coils, noiseless pickups and humbuckers alike.
The inclusion of P-90s, in my view, does gel well with the overall vibe of the thing – it perhaps pushes it a little more towards noise rock than doom metal (to return to that arbitrary spectrum), but it’s still more than capable of both. In fact, the P-90’s incredibly bright character plus the inherent clang (there it is!) of the guitar leads to an articulate and responsive playing experience – even through a woolly Big Muff and a doomed-out Orange. Their hefty upper-mids do a great job of ensuring the sound remains cutting and present even with more extreme gain settings, like an always-on Rangemaster.
And, yes, I do my due diligence and play this thing through a Harmonic Percolator-style fuzz – and it’s a fantastic time, as you’d expect. With a vintage and weird fuzz like this, and other more sensitive fuzzes, the P-90s really make them come alive.
With that said, I would have perhaps liked to have seen at least the option for traditional wide-range-style humbuckers from the off – for me, wide-range humbuckers are the pairing with the bright sound of an aluminium neck, but I can see why the choice was made.
One quick sidebar on the wiring – this is some of the coolest and neatest wiring I’ve seen in a guitar of this budget. There’s a transparent window to view it through, and I can see why – the harness is all 90-degree angles, cloth-covered wire, full-sized pots and Mojo caps.
Image: Adam Gasson
Not perfect
There are some inevitable compromises dotted throughout my otherwise pretty faultless experience with the Klang DC. There are a couple slight fit-and-finish issues – one of the 12th-fret side dots, for instance, is drilled to a different depth to the rest of the dots. This is fixable, however, as the side-dots are in fact hex-head grub screws, so all I need to do is back it out a little with a very small allen key. Less fixable are the few spots where the anodisation hasn’t quite caught, leading to some marks that kind of look like fingerprints, but are in fact just there.
More notably there’s also a bit of a wobble in the transition from the fretboard to neck in the first position. Klang tells me this was actually a problem with the CAD files for the first five guitars made, mine included – everyone who got one of these first instruments was offered a replacement neck without the wobble, and the issue has now been fixed for future necks. Given the machining accuracy of the rest of the guitar, it makes sense for it to be a CAD problem rather than some failure in the actual process of milling the aluminium – it’s a little less than ideal, but after a while my thumb gets used to it – and I’m glad to see that the affected customers had the chance to make it right.
One more teething problem – my review guitar exhibited a strange issue where something within the assembly was grounding the hot lead of the neck pickup. After I took the pickup in and out of its cover a couple of times this issue went away. This was apparently unique to our unit, and given Klang’s response to the neck issue I’d presume a customer who had this happen would get a similar recourse – but it’s worth noting nonetheless.
Image: Adam Gasson
Should I buy a Klang?
Realistically, if you’ve been aluminium-curious for a while but put off by the high cost of entry, I’d say that a Klang is absolutely a great starting point. My sticking points with the guitar are some teething problems with the process that seem to have already been worked out. And even taking them on board, the guitar you get for around £1,000 is pretty damn remarkable. I also want to mention the fact that it comes with a near-bulletproof ABS hardcase with a custom foam route for another £60 – again, that’d be remarkable for an all-wood guitar!
My colleague Sam took a look at Rabea Massaad’s new affordable signature guitar recently – the £1,000 Sterling By Music Man Artist Series Sabre. I was reminded of what he had to say when I was reviewing the Klang. The Sabre, he said, was by no means bad – it just had nothing to really set it apart from anything of a similar price or vibe.
Point being – £1,000 is very easy to spend on a fairly pedestrian guitar these days, but the Klang DC is as far from pedestrian as you can get – it’s perhaps not to everyone’s tastes, sure, but it’s a well-executed guitar that really understands the needs of its target audience. And you can’t really ask for much more than that.
Image: Adam Gasson
Klang Guitars DC – alternatives
The Klang concept pretty much stands alone in terms of affordability and accessibility when it comes to aluminium-necked instruments. The aforementioned Electrical Guitar Company made good enough Travis Bean-alikes that the late great Steve Albini was happy to use them, and their similarly vibed EGC100A will set you back $3,250. If you just want the look of a Bean guitar without any of the aluminium stuff for some reason, then Eastwood’s ETB500 ($1,499) has the cut-out headstock thing, but on a conventional all-wood electric – albeit with a silver-sprayed peghead!
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“You just popped over, had a little toot and continued”: Robben Ford recalls “a box of cocaine on every shelf” while jamming with George Harrison in the ’70s
Guitar multi-hyphenate Robben Ford has been looking back on what it was like to jam with George Harrison in the 1970s, and by his account, things were very rock ‘n’ roll.
Ford has worked with a wide span of huge artists, including Joni Mitchell, KISS, Bob Dylan, and Harrison, who Ford would later tour with in 1974 for Harrison’s Dark Horse tour. Their first encounter occurred earlier in that very same year though, when Ford was touring with Mitchell.
In the new print issue of Classic Rock, Ford recounts, “I was touring with Joni Mitchell, and we did two shows in London in 1974. I’m hanging out backstage, and I turn around and standing before me is the album cover to All Things Must Pass [Harrison’s first post-Beatles solo album and third studio release overall] – you know, he had the hair, hat, gardening boots, big plaid coat.
“Next day, the whole band, including Joni, went out to his place in Henley-on-Thames. We got there about one in the afternoon. George was still asleep. At about four, he came into the kitchen, smoking a Gauloises, making tea – he only drank Typhoo.
He continues, “Joni finally split, and at one in the morning the band all went up to the studio. Everyone had been drinking, smoking something, snorting something. So we’re all set up in the studio, and there’s a shelf running along all four walls of the control room, with a box of cocaine on every shelf. So if you felt like it, you just popped over, had a little toot and continued. And we did that until the sun came up.”
After releasing a number of solo albums, Harrison joined band again in 1988, when he co-founded supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. The group consisted of Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and came together as a result of Harrison and Lynne dreaming up a new band during the sessions for Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine.
In a 2007 Uncut interview, Lynne said: “We were three-quarters of the way through Cloud Nine, and every night, as we were relaxing with a few drinks after mixing a big epic or whatever, George and I had the same conversation: ‘We could have a group, you know?’ ‘Yeah, we could.’ He didn’t like the idea of being a solo guy – that’s what he told me. He was never comfortable with it. He wanted a group, and, of course, George could do anything he wanted.”
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Stella – the legendary guitar brand championed by BB King, Elvis and Kurt Cobain – has been revived by Harmony with a new line of parlor acoustics
[Editor’s note: Harmony is part of Vista Musical Instruments, which like Guitar.com, is part of the Caldecott Music Group.]
Boasting a storied list of players – including BB King, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain – Stella was a guitar brand which remains instrumental in the pages of guitar history.
First founded all the way back in 1899 – 127 years ago – by Oscar Schmidt, and later acquired by Harmony in 1939, it’s a brand which has helped shape the landscape of rock music and beyond.
Credit: Harmony
Now, Harmony has announced it is bringing back Stella, with a new range of parlor-sized acoustic guitars at very-much affordable price points, starting at just $349.
Reinterpreting the compact, travel-friendly format for the next generation of songwriters and creators, the new Stella Parlor acoustics boast mahogany backs and sides paired with a solid spruce top, along with a modern X-bracing for durability without sacrificing tone.
Credit: Harmony
There’s a raft of vintage-inspired details, too, like a slotted headstock, off-white binding and a beautifully delicate soundhole rosette. They also feature bone nuts and saddles for “enhanced resonance and sustain”, and come fitted with D’Addario coated strings.
In terms of colourways, the new Harmony Stella acoustics come in Sunburst, Moonstone Blue, Backwoods Green and Ivory.
Credit: Harmony
“B.B. King’s first guitar was a red Stella acoustic,” says Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of Vista Musical Instruments. “That’s the kind of impact we want this brand to continue to have, being the guitar that starts someone’s story.”
Harmony Stella Parlor acoustics start at $349, and are available in limited quantities, exclusively via harmony.co.
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Fender teams up with fashion brand Kith on a super stylish Stratocaster
Fender has partnered with fashion and lifestyle brand Kith on a Kith Records Limited Player Stratocaster, with a stylish green checkerboard design.
This isn’t the first time Fender has teamed up with a fashion brand for an instrument collaboration, in fact a number of other brands have also launched collaborations with fashion companies over the years. This particular model has been designed to commemorate Kith’s 15th anniversary and Fender’s 80th.
The Kith Records Limited Player Stratocaster reimagines Fender’s Limited Player Stratocaster and is finished in custom Stadium green with a checkerboard pattern and gloss finish. It has an alder body along with a rosewood fretboard with rolled edges and 22 medium jumbo frets.
It’s fitted with Player Series Alnico V Single-Coil Strat pickups, and its five-way blade switch “covers the full tonal spectrum”. A two-point tremolo and ClassicGear tuners complete the model. As an extra fashionable touch, the guitar’s pick guard also features a Kith logo redesigned in Fender’s famous typography.
The model will be available to pre-order this Friday 1 May, exclusively for US customers on the Kith website and the Kith App. There is currently no information available on price. Check out the guitar below:
Fender’s other fashion ventures include a 2023 collaboration with Wrangler, for which the Big F released a range of denim guitar cases and straps. Prior to this, the two brands also teamed up in spring of 2022, introducing a range of Fender-inspired clothing which aimed to bridge the gap between music and fashion.
Fender has also partnered with high-end fashion label Yves Saint Laurent and even streetwear brand Supreme in the past. Just last year, Gibson partnered with Marc Jacobs on a series of Les Pauls complete with custom artwork, straps and even pick tins.
The Kith Records Limited Player Stratocaster will launch on 1 May at 11am EST. To find out more, head over to Kith.com.
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“This was a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for”: Jake Kiszka on finding his “Beloved” Gibson SG
Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka has been reflecting on the first time he got his hands on his 1961 Gibson Les Paul SG Standard, which he affectionately nicknamed “Beloved”.
The guitar is the inspiration behind his new signature SG Standard with Gibson, which launched just last week. Crafted in Nashville and available only in limited numbers, the model retains the essence of his ’61 Les Paul SG through its contours, deep-edge bevelling, and double‐cutaway design.
Speaking to MusicRadar, Kiszka recalls how the band visited the Chicago Music Exchange while on tour, back when they were just getting started. Greta Van Fleet’s manager was friends with the company’s CEO, Andrew Yonke, and arranged for Kiszka to visit what CME calls ‘The Vault’, where it keeps treasures of interesting and vintage gear.
Kiszka recalls, “It was maybe a decade ago now, about 10 years ago, Greta Van Fleet was leaving Michigan for the first time, where we’d really played shows and gigged and done all sorts of work there. It was really the first time out in North America, nationally… Setting out into the infinite horizon, trying to find manifest destiny or something.”
On his visit to The Vault, he remembers, “I was looking through all these guitars, and we were trying to pick up some gear if we could, some serious, good gear. I wasn’t really that familiar with the early ‘60s SGs. I didn’t know much about them. I stumbled upon this one,” he shares of his Beloved.
“I was just immediately mesmerised. Immediately, from the first strum, it was like a lightning bolt just hit me from above,” he continues. “I really did feel like this was sort of a divine intervention for me. It was everything that I was looking for in terms of the sound of something. I’d been searching for that my whole life up to this point.”
However, back then Kiszka didn’t have the money to afford this stunning vintage model that he’d fallen head over heels for: “There was no question I yearned to take it on the road with me. The caveat was it was a $25,000 guitar. So of course I wasn’t gonna be able to afford that being a poor kid coming out of Michigan.
“Thankfully and gratefully I’m humbled that the owner perhaps saw something in me, and us as a band, and allowed me to take it on the road. He said, ‘Do you know what? Just pay me back for it later, when you can afford it.’ And I did,” he states.
Kiszka spoke of this very story back in his episode of My Guitars & Me with Guitar.com. Speaking of the wear and tear the guitar has earned since being in his ownership, he told us: “This is what happens when you start wearing rhinestones on suits with no jacket over them. And this is what my nipples have done,” he joked. “It looks like a cutting board, doesn’t it? It’s a lot lighter than when I got it – I’ve sanded it away!”
“I’ll probably be buried with it!” he added. “There’s a piece of me in this guitar, but there’s also a piece of this guitar in me. In reality, a lot of my playing, and the way that I’ve developed playing have actually come from this very specific instrument.”
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