Music is the universal language
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:14
Guitar.com
Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka says people who dismiss them as being imitators are ignoring the “far more complex and nuanced” reality of their music
Ever since their debut single topped Billboard’s Rock Chart in 2017, Greta Van Fleet have been scrutinised by the press. While Highway Tune and every subsequent release has been a hit, listeners and critics have branded them as “derivative” rock ‘n’ roll, with many citing their similarities to Led Zeppelin. However, guitarist Jake Kiszka argues that Greta Van Fleet’s sound is more “nuanced” than the press might have you believe.
In a new conversation with Guitar World, Kiszka argues that there is a “lineation between innovation and imitation”, and Greta Van Fleet fall on the side of innovation. “People perceive our sound to be one way, but, in reality, it’s far more complex and nuanced than that,” he says.
He believes that a lot of the heat Greta Van Fleet have faced was exacerbated and fuelled by online forums and trolls. “There’s a lot of negative commentary that perhaps comes from the evolution of Greta Van Fleet, and how quickly it exploded and how polarising it has become… and there’s a lot of controversy on the internet, which has expedited and proliferated it,” he explains. “It was just a fire in the corner, and now it’s a conflagration.”
Kiszka also admits that people labelling his band as “saviours of rock ‘n’ roll” certainly didn’t help. “I think that’s a misconception as well… [it’s] an inaccurate representation of us…” he says. “We’re a bunch of young guys who grew up in mid-Michigan, in a little town somewhere. And in a garage, we fell in love with American blues and music of all cultures from all places.”
And anyway – is rock ‘n’ roll dead or in need of saving? “I don’t think so,” Kiszka says. “It just lays in wait, you know? And then it’s there for the next generation to pick up.”
Back in May, Greta Van Fleet sparked breakup rumours after releasing a cryptic social media video. However, they’ve recently confirmed that they’re still together, and their fourth album, Palace For The People, is dropping on 9 October. The release will be their first record since 2023’s Starcatcher.
The group have already shared a pair of new singles: Saw You Stand and Play Your Games. They also pulled off an intimate $20 show in New York City at the end of May.
Palace For The People from Greta Van Fleet is available to pre-order now.
The post Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka says people who dismiss them as being imitators are ignoring the “far more complex and nuanced” reality of their music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Phil X explains the things that “scream fake” when he hears someone using a digital guitar amp: “Violence is hard to replicate with the modeller”
The world of digital guitar amps and effects has got dramatically better in recent years, leading even sceptics like Joe Bonamassa to come around to them but not Phil X.
In a new interview, the Bon Jovi band member stated his belief that there are still ways that you can tell the difference between a real amp and a digital one – and even listed three ways that he thinks you can tell if a guitar player is running through a tube amp or a model.
He told Guitar World: “Playing with, you know, tube amps and stuff like it really dictates how you can approach getting all those dynamics where modellers, you know, you’re kind of stuck with that sound and it’s a little more nuanced where you where you have a lot more there. There’s three characteristics that scream fake to me.
“One is the squeal. It just sounds when guys squeal, it just it sounds like the old like kidney pod or something, right? And then, the chunkiness that you get from an amp like Unchained… that violence is hard to replicate with the modeller.
“It’s not an EQ thing. It’s violence. It should be a violence knock. And then chords. Sometimes you hear a chord and it’s just mush. You don’t hear the note separation. Those are the three things for me that scream fake.”
Phil X has been a member of Bon Jovi since 2013, playing lead guitar with the Livin’ On a Prayer hitmakers for 13 years. He uses Friedman amplification and became a Gibson artist in 2019.
He’s previously been outspoken about the quality of his playing. For years the guitarist would refuse to play Gibson products, and explained why in an interview two years ago.
“I got used to playing with the hardtail piece, and then I wanted an SG, but I have a thing for quality control,” Phil X tells Guitar Summit [via Ultimate Guitar]. “So for the longest time, Gibson wasn’t so good with the quality control. And that’s a long time ago.”
The guitarist elaborates, “And it’s not me — I could walk in and I could pick up a beautiful Les Paul that looks amazing, but it doesn’t sound very good and it doesn’t feel very good because it wasn’t set up right, because of the quality control, or the lack thereof.”
“And for me, it’s like, ‘I don’t care.’ I put it back. But you got a kid who saves all their money to go buy it, and Gibson Les Paul because Jimmy Page uses it, and they get a non-good version of it for, like, $4,000 that they saved. And that kind of bugged me.”
The post Phil X explains the things that “scream fake” when he hears someone using a digital guitar amp: “Violence is hard to replicate with the modeller” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Why your guitar’s fretboard radius matters more than you think
Every guitarist, in time, will develop guitar specs that they prefer, one of those specs, regarding playability, is the fretboard radius. Radius has more to do with how a guitar feels under your fretting hand than almost any other spec on the sheet, and it decides how low your action can go before your bends start dying.
So what is fretboard radius? Well, first of all, I’ll bet that some of you reading this didn’t even realise that the wood of your guitar’s fretboard probably isn’t perfectly flat, but actually has a very subtle curve running across its width.
And that’s what fretboard radius is talking about – it’s a measurement of the way in which the wood of your fretboard is curved. Still not following me? Picture a circle, and then slice a thin strip out of its edge and lay it across the neck.
That arc is your fretboard surface, and in order to measure this surface, we use the radius of the circle that you took that thin slice out of.
The bigger the radius number – and the bigger the circle you’re pulling from – the flatter your fretboard will be. So, for example, a vintage Fender guitar would have a radius of 7.25 inches, meaning that the slice comes from a relatively small circle.
Modern Fenders run to a flatter 9.5 inches, while Gibsons are generally flatter again at 12 inches. PRS sits in the middle at 10 inches. Ibanez’s Wizard necks are very flat in the 15.75-17-inch range, while a classical guitar has no radius at all and is completely flat (sometimes called “infinite radius”).
Image: Adam Gasson
The Bending Debate
The biggest question you might be having is why are most guitar necks radiused at all? Radius was added to the guitar design long ago to adapt to the fact that your hand isn’t flat.
Wrap your fingers around a barre chord and they form a natural curve. A rounder board matches that curve, which is why cowboy chords and barre work feel so easy on old Fenders.
Flat boards make chording feel like pressing strings against a table. It’s fine for a classical player with proper left-hand position and the neck up at 45 degrees. Less fine for someone playing an open G with their thumb hooked over the top.
But there is a potential trade-off there, and that’s to do with bending strings further up the neck.
When you bend a string, you push it sideways across the board. On a curved board, sideways means uphill. Bend the high E at the 15th fret and the string travels toward the crown of the arc, where the frets sit higher relative to the string’s straight path from your fingertip to the saddle. If your action is low, the string loses clearance over the frets ahead of your finger and the note chokes out.
This is a famous issue that many players have found with Fender’s preferred vintage 7.25-inch radius. These guitars feel wonderful for chording, when you attempt a full-step bend above the 12th fret dies on the fret in front of it.
The fix is raising the action, which trades one problem for another. Flatter boards suffer less from this because the crown is lower. A 12-inch Gibson board will take noticeably lower action than a 7.25-inch Fender board before bends choke.
Now, there are plenty of eminent guitar experts who will tell you that a properly set up 7.25-inch radius guitar will take whatever you can throw at it. There are few men more obsessive about the minutiae of electric guitar design than Paul Reed Smith, and he dismissed the idea that you can’t bend on a vintage Fender as “new internet lore”.
He’s joined in his fight by John Mayer who dismissed the idea that his PRS Silver Sky was somehow problematic for having a vintage Fender radius, claiming that, “The difference between 7.25” and 9.5” is less significant than your strap being an inch higher or lower. I’ll fight anybody on that.”
As with most other things in guitar, the debate never stops!
Image: Adam Gasson
What About The Compound Radius?
In 1978, a luthier named Denny Rauen was refretting a Stratocaster for a customer who wanted his Strat set up with the same low action as his Les Paul. Rauen got the action down, tried a bend, and hit the choke problem head on. His solution was a fretboard with more than one radius – one that’s round at the nut, where you generally chord, and flat at the heel, where you’re generally adding bends to a solo.
He called it the multi-radius fingerboard and published the idea in American Lutherie and String Instrument Craftsman in the mid/late 80s rather than patenting it. Warmoth picked it up, renamed it the compound radius, and the term stuck. Today Jackson and Charvel run 12 to 16-inch compounds as standard, Fender’s American Ultra line goes 10 to 14, and Warmoth still cuts its classic 10 to 16.
Now the part that gets muddled in forum threads. A properly made compound radius board is a section of a cone. Your strings aren’t parallel. They splay outward from a narrow nut to a wider bridge, and each one needs to travel in a straight line at a consistent height over the frets. A cone is the one surface that lets every string in that fan lie flat along it. Rauen understood this from the start, which is why he also called his invention a conical fingerboard.
The distinction worth knowing is between a true conical board and a blended one. CNC-cut boards from good makers are genuine cone sections, with the radius opening up continuously from the first fret to the last. Some cheaper boards and plenty of hand-modified ones are really two or three cylindrical sections sanded together at the transitions. This requires some careful fret leveling to get right. I’ve done it myself and admittedly, I’ve screwed it up a time or two before I got proper jigs.
Image: Adam Gasson
So Which Is Best For You?
The obvious answer is that if you are playing chords, get a rounder radius, if you want to do bigger bends, get a flatter radius. For shred, flat or near-flat is what you’ll want. Wide legato stretches, tapping, and sweep picking all reward a board where every string sits at an identical, minimal height. That’s why Ibanez has kept the Wizard neck up around 17 inches for decades and why so many extended-range and metal builds push flatter still. The cost is that first-position chording feels slightly alien, which is a price most shredders happily pay – nobody pays to see Yngwie Malmsteen play cowboy chords, after all.
Two practical notes before you go shopping. First, your saddle radius should follow your board. Set a flat saddle arc over a 9.5-inch board and your middle strings sit too low. On a compound board, set the saddles slightly flatter than the last fret’s radius. Second, if you love your vintage-radius guitar but hate the choking, a good tech can level the frets with progressively more fall-away above the 12th fret, effectively cutting a compound into your existing fretwire. It’s a $100 fret dress instead of a new neck, and on a 7.25-inch board, it’s the single best playability upgrade money can buy.
Regarding radius, my advice, as always, is to play as many guitars as you can. Radius is one spec, but it is not a spec that exists in a vacuum – there’s also neck contour (the shape of the back of the neck), neck width, string spacing, etc – all of which can have a subtle effect on a guitar’s playability and feel. So play on, and when you find something you like, figure out what that is and stick with it.
The post Why your guitar’s fretboard radius matters more than you think appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Blackstar’s BEAM just became an even more useful practise tool with this major free update
Blackstar has confirmed their Beam Solo app will receive a huge, free overhaul on iOS and Android. While the update is available on iOS from August 28, Android users will need to wait until September 30 to get their hands on the new tools.
We were hugely impressed with the Beam Mini when we reviewed it earlier this year, and as part of that review we got a sneak peek at how impressive the Moises tech can be. Said tools offer stem separation technology, meaning app users can separate the guitars from the rest of the mix for almost any song streamed or played from your device in real time.
READ MORE: Blackstar Beam Mini review: “a new benchmark for practice amps”
Those using the app can now instantly mute the guitar and isolate the guitar parts for easier fret learning. You can also turn down the vocals and perform the song yourself with this new app update.
All those using the app need to do is connect to your Beam Mini or Beam Solo, start playing their music and adjust the mix with the slider options available in real time.
Several features are included as part of the Mosies Integration update. This includes premium stem separation free for all Beam users, as well as the ability to turn down other instruments and vocals by 25% in order to better hear the guitar part you’re trying to nail.
The really impressive thing is that this is compatible not just with the Beam Mini practise amp, but also with the tiny Beam Solo headphone amp, and the update has already rolled out on iOS devices, with Android following at the end of the month.
Find out more about the new update from Blackstar.
The post Blackstar’s BEAM just became an even more useful practise tool with this major free update appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Jimmy Page recalls the life-changing guitar gift Jeff Beck gave him: “This is for yours for getting me in the Yardbirds”
Long before he was in Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a young upstart session guitarist in London, mixing with an all-star cast of future guitar legends. And in a new documentary about the Fender Telecaster, Page reveals the time he received an incredible gift from Jeff Beck that would alter his entire guitar trajectory.
- READ MORE: Fender Telecaster: 75 Years Of History
In the Fender-produced documentary, The Fender Telecaster: The One That Started It All, Page reveals that as a very young man making his way in the London session scene, Eric Clapton had recommended Page his guitar replacement in The Yardbirds in 1965, when Slowhand left to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
Page, who was barely 21 at the time, decided to turn the offer down, instead suggesting his friend at the time, Beck, as an alternative. The rest as they say, is history. The Yardbirds would be transformed with Beck on guitar, pushing them into groundbreaking new musical territory, and enjoying major label success and multiple chart hits over the following year.
The Yardbirds made Beck a star, and he wouldn’t soon forget the part Page had played in his success, and on the back of The Yardbirds signing their major label record deal, he paid his friend a visit.
According to Page, the guitar legend rolled up in a newly bought 1963 Corvette Stingray with the guitar in hand. He recalled: “I was still living with my parents at the time in Epsom. And I heard this car come roaring up.
“I looked out the window and I saw this blue Stingray outside… and Jeff’s coming out and he’s holding this guitar. [I thought] ‘Oh, he’s come to have a play.’
“He knocked on the door and explained that [the Yardbirds] had just done a new deal and he bought the Stingray with it. Then he said, ‘Here, this is yours’ and gave me his 1959 Telecaster. He said, ‘This is yours for getting me in the Yardbirds.’ Well, obviously, I was really moved, you know, because there was a lot of love in that gesture of giving it to me.”
Beck had used the Telecaster in his early days as guitarist in the Deltones – he borrowed it from bandmate John Owen, who soon asked for it back, and Beck moved on to find his legendary 1954 Esquire as his number one. It’s unclear exactly how the guitar ended up back in Beck’s possession full-time, but by the time he joined The Yardbirds it would be a regular backup and alternative to the Esquire.
Before long however, Beck’s guitar preferences evolved and he moved on to his Les Paul, leaving the ’59 Tele in need of a good home, and given how hard it was to get Fender guitars in the UK in the 50s and 60s it was obviously the perfect gift for a young guitar player.
Page would use the guitar throughout his stint in The Yardbirds, before the guitar would have an even more important part to play in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. When Page formed The New Yardbirds with John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plant in the wake of the original band dissolving in 1968.
By that point, the guitar had changed dramatically from its original form, with Page stripping and painting it with an artwork all of its own. “I painted it in one go over the course of an evening, finishing it the next day,” Page later explained. “The pattern took on the imagery of a dragon. I was quite happy with the way it ended up. Now it was the ‘Dragoncaster.’
The guitar would become a staple of the early recordings of his new band, who quickly changed their name from The New Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin. “I played it on the last Yardbirds recordings at the Anderson Theater in New York and on Led Zeppelin,” Page explains. “Once it was created and painted it became like the legendary Excalibur as it traveled from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin.”
And without Beck’s bit of generosity, things could have turned out very differently.
Watch The Fender Telecaster: The One That Started It All now on Fender’s YouTube channel.
The post Jimmy Page recalls the life-changing guitar gift Jeff Beck gave him: “This is for yours for getting me in the Yardbirds” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Why Eric Clapton never wanted his Unplugged album to be released, and bet his label boss $100 it was going to be a flop
The impact of Eric Clapton‘s Unplugged is hard to overstate. The recording of Slowhand’s legendary MTV set has sold over 25 million copies, and over 30 years after its release in 1992 remains the best-selling live album of all time. Quite asides from the sheer numbers, Unplugged is credited with revitalising mainstream interest in acoustic guitar music, and no less than Chris Martin IV himself once claimed the album “saved the Martin guitar” – and revitalised interest in 000-style instruments. However, the most remarkable thing of all might be that Clapton himself never even wanted to release it.
In a new interview with Guitar Center, Clapton admits that he outright “didn’t want” Unplugged to be released. He was so certain that it would flop that he even bet on its downfall. “There’s 100-dollar bill on the wall of [ex-Warner Brothers president] Lenny Waronker’s office that he won from me, because I said ‘I bet you $100 it won’t even go into the top 50,’” he reveals.
Thankfully, Waronker put his foot down, because he believed that Unplugged had the makings of a “hit album”. Of course, he was right; the former president of Warner Brothers had an ear for a hit. But Clapton had tried his hardest to resist a formal release. “I wanted to do a deal with them… to put it out as a limited edition,” he says. “Just 500 copies or something. I just didn’t want to hear it anymore… I had a real aversion to it for a long time.”
Despite his initial “aversion”, Clapton’s Unplugged has become a key part of his history. “That’s the Clapton that people know,” he admits. “People didn’t really a lot of what I was doing before that – the music was either far too underground or too poppy. I [recently] thought, ‘Okay, I have to listen to [Unplugged] again.’”
When Chris Martin IV’s praise for Clapton’s Unplugged is revealed, Doyle explains that the CEO has crowned Clapton as a saviour of the Martin Guitar. Clapton is unwilling to accept the praise outright, instead focusing on how wild it is to go from admiring Martin guitars through shop windows to having his own signature axes with them.
“When I was a kid… I saw a Martin Dreadnought [in Kingston Market],” he remembers. “There was a crowd gathered round this guitar case, and they opened the lid, and there was a Dreadnought in there… I thought, ‘Wow! One one day, I’m going to have one of those… that’s the most beautiful shape… Picasso could have done that!’”
Now, Clapton’s latest signatures in the Crossroads 2026 Marin Collection will surely be admired by budding guitarists through shop windows. Alongside some John Mayer models, Clapton has the Martin 000-42 EC and Martin 000-13E EC, with both six-string acoustic-electrics wearing Clapton’s favoured 000 shape.
The Crossroads 2026 Collection also recreates Clapton’s Blind Faith Telecaster. With just 130 in existence, the Tele has the unique Frankensteinian mish-mash of a sunburst single-cut body and a Stratocaster neck.
For more information on the Crossroads 2026 Martin Collection, head to Guitar Center.
The post Why Eric Clapton never wanted his Unplugged album to be released, and bet his label boss $100 it was going to be a flop appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
TONE3000’s new free plugin gives you access to over 700,000 guitar tone captures
TONE3000 has spent the last few years building what it claims is the world’s largest library of guitar tones. And we’ve been hugely impressed when we’ve used it. Now, instead of making you hunt them down one by one, it’s putting the whole thing inside a plugin.
The company has launched the free, open-source TONE3000 plugin, giving guitarists and bassists direct access to more than 700,000 Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) captures and Impulse Responses (IRs) from within their DAW – or through a standalone app.
- READ MORE: New firmware update lets HeadRush users tap into a world of open-source guitar tone captures
Until now, using a tone from TONE3000 involved a little more work than you might expect: find the capture online, download it, unzip it, organise the file and load it into a separate NAM plugin. Want to try another? You’ll have to do it all again.
The new plugin cuts out that faff. Musicians can now browse TONE3000’s library from inside the plugin, with captures covering amps, pedals, speaker cabinets, full rigs, outboard gear, acoustic spaces and even some weird experimental setups.
Log into your TONE3000 account and you can also access your saved favourites, recently used tones, your own creations and private tones without leaving the plugin.
And because the library is constantly growing, you don’t have to wait for a plugin update to get your hands on new sounds. Every new tone added to TONE3000 becomes available through the plugin immediately, with no additional purchase required.
Unlike the traditional amp-sim model, where you buy a plugin and get a fixed collection of sounds, here, the TONE3000 plugin acts more like a gateway to a library that keeps expanding as the community adds to it.
Under the hood, everything is powered by NAM A2, the latest generation of Neural Amp Modeler technology developed by TONE3000 with NAM creator Steve Atkinson. For the uninitiated, NAM is free, open-source technology that uses AI to model analogue gear by learning from recordings of physical amps, pedals and other equipment.
“Because the TONE3000 Plugin is open source, right now is the worst it will ever be,” says the company’s co-founder and CEO Stanley Vergilis. “We’re excited to see what the community does with it.”
“With A2 we made captures dramatically more accurate, but accuracy doesn’t matter if loading a tone is a chore,” adds TONE3000 co-founder and CTO Woodbury Shortridge. “The plugin is where the architecture, the community library, and players finally meet in one place. Every layer is open source by design. We’re betting the future of tone belongs to the people creating it, not to whoever owns the technology.”
The plugin also goes considerably further than simply being a tone browser. You can stack unlimited NAM A2 captures and IRs to build signal chains, run dual chains with branching and panning, create stereo images and apply EQ at different points in the chain.
The TONE3000 plugin is available now for macOS, Windows and Linux, with VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP and LV2 support, as well as a standalone version. It works with major DAWs including Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, Reaper and Bitwig Studio.
And, importantly, it’s free. Of course, if you want to take these tones into the real world, there are myriad options, from Blackstar’s impressive BEAM practice amp, to the more gig-ready situation of Headrush’s full stable of amp modelling pedals – NAM is truly taking over the world of guitar modelling in 2026.
Download the plugin today at TONE3000.
The post TONE3000’s new free plugin gives you access to over 700,000 guitar tone captures appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Headrush brings real amp looks to the powered cab game with new FRFR Cab Series
If you’ve wanted to use your digital guitar unit of choice in a live context, but still want the authentic experience of moving real air, Headrush has pretty much been the standard-setter for some time now.
The company pretty much invented the market for FRFR (Full Range, Flat Response) guitar cabs that has exploded as the likes of Neural DSP, Fractal, Kemper and Helix have offered us a wealth of new ways to sound good in the digital sphere. But as the market has grown, so the competition has increased for your powered cab dollar – and it’s perhaps no surprise that the king of the sector has come back firing on all cylinders.
- READ MORE: New firmware update lets HeadRush users tap into a world of open-source guitar tone captures
The most striking thing about the new FRFR Cab series is their look and form factor. When the original FRFR-108 launched back in 2019, it made sense that the brand would envision it primarily as monitors for guitarists going direct into a PA, and as such they were shaped like classic speaker wedges.
Of course, a LOT has changed in the world of digital guitar acceptance in the seven years since, and it was notable how many guitarists had their interests piqued by Fender’s Tone Master FR-12, with its traditional amp aesthetics, when it launched alongside the Tone Master Pro back in 2023. In fact, the FR-12 has been such a hit with guitarists who want the look of a real amp while still running their Quad or their Helix, they even made a tweed one.
Image: Headrush
The new FRFR Cabs lean heavily into this, with both an 8-inch and 12-inch versions that have the classic closed-back look of a combo amp, complete with a vintage Marshall-style split grille cloth, black tolex, and a top-mounted control panel with classic gold amp knobs. The cab’s wooden now too, as opposed to the plastic of old. If you want to retain the aesthetic of a classic guitar amp on stage while still having the full-on Headrush experience, this is the cab for you. And if you do still need to tilt them back in the manner of old, each cab has a pair of tilt back legs so you can set them up at the angle of your choosing.
Of course, it’s not just about the looks here – the sound is why people love Headrush FRFR cabs, and they’re not messing around. Joining the single eight- or 12-inch speaker in your chosen cab, you’ll find a custom-designed low-frequency woofer with a 1-inch high-frequency compression driver and a wide 90° conical horn. All that means you’ll get a full, rich frequency response across the spectrum, and if you want to use your cab to run backing tracks or other non-guitar sounds, it’ll do it with aplomb.
And did we mention these suckers are loud? Headrush never spare the wattage when it comes to their FRFR cabs, and these are no exception, the FRFR-8 will deliver a monster 480W Peak/240W RMS (200W LF/40W HF) of pure power, while the FRFR-12 gets even more ridiculous with 750W Peak/325W RMS (285W LF/40W HF).
Image: Headrush
You also get the quality of life stuff like bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, a XLR/TRS combo input for easy hooking up to any modelling pedal, a 3-band Baxandall EQ with high-cut filter to adapt your sound on the fly to the room you’re in, and rugged, road ready build quality.
“Guitarists and bassists building their sound in a modeling pedal deserve a cabinet that gets out of the way and lets that tone come through, on stage, in the studio, wherever they play,” said John Boudreau, HeadRush Director of Product Development. “The FRFR CAB Series pairs that accuracy with the feel of a real amp cabinet, so the rig sounds and feels like home no matter where you’re plugging in.”
The FRFR-8 CAB is $399/£279 while the FRFR-12 CAB is $499/£359 – both are available now.
Head to headrushfx.com for more.
The post Headrush brings real amp looks to the powered cab game with new FRFR Cab Series appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Fender Telecaster: 75 Years Of History
Fender Telecaster: 75 Years Of History
[shorthand url=”https://nme-networks.shorthandstories.com/fender-telecaster-75-years-of-history/index.html”]
The post Fender Telecaster: 75 Years Of History appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Gretsch G5260 Electromatic Jet Baritone review: more long-scale chaos from Gretsch
$549/£519, gretschguitars.com
By the end of this year, I’ll most likely have reviewed more baritone guitars than regular-scale instruments. There are a bunch of reasons that guitar culture is thoroughly embracing the whole baritone thing these days, but enough wrangling on about Loathe and Sleep Token has been done in these reviews alone to fill a nine-volume encyclopaedia. So, let’s take the fervent appetite for baritones as a given, and look at another of this year’s new heavy-focused Gretsch instruments: the Jet Baritone.
Image: Adam Gasson
What is it?
The Jet Baritone is the sibling instrument to the CVT Baritone, which I reviewed a short while ago, and also absolutely bloody loved. That guitar was treading some new ground for Gretsch, in that it was utilising the niche, recently-revived Corvette body shape, and working with a 27” scale length. The Jet, on the other hand, is much more within Gretsch’s established wheelhouse of baritones – it follows the G5260 from a little while ago, the thing that arguably kicked off this whole accidental association between Gretsch and modern metal. Like that guitar, we’ve got the more vintage 29.75” scale here – just a quarter-inch short of a Bass VI.
So what’s different this time? Well, like with the CVT, Gretsch has abandoned its more vintage, restrained sonic palette – lest we forget that the Loathe-featuring demo video featured more pummelling downtuned riffs than you could shake a long-scale stick at, calling to attention a spec-sheet that’s more metal than a Slayer gig in an industrial blast furnace.
Both of the 2026 Gretsch baritones have launched with the new Twin Six humbuckers, full-bodied things that will handle heavy sounds a lot better than the vintage-output pickups more commonly found in Gretsches. There’s also a more neutral, flat stop-bar tailpiece, rather than the vintage-style V stop-bar, and we’ve got coil-splitting push-pulls controls for both pickups if that’s your thing.
The Jet shape is still quite classically Gretsch – dating back all the way to 1953 when the brand went “oh crap, everyone seems to be buying a hell of a lot of solidbody guitars these days” – but the aesthetic touches here bring it into a classy modern metal mould fairly seamlessly. It’s all nickel hardware and dark wood (I much prefer the Imperial Stain here to the Bristol Fog of the CVT) with nice cream binding that has the secondary effect of keeping the outline of the guitar present and readable when you invariably play it wearing a black t-shirt.
The only headscratcher is that the pickup rings are made of a slightly tinted clear plastic. It’s subtle and by no means ruins the look, but it smacks of “we had a few extra boxes of translucent magenta pickup rings lying about” more so than “this will be a cohesive addition to this guitar’s aesthetic”.
Image: Adam Gasson
Build quality and usability
The Jet, like its sibling guitar, is built in a way that belies its mid-level price tag – this thing feels very premium for something that costs £549. The electronics are high quality, with all-metal knobs and push-pull posts that give a reassuring clunk upon operation. The tuners are fairly prosaic sealed ones, but they’re more than functional and even with some silly tuning experiments, I never have the guitar drift out of tune.
Ergonomically, it’s an interesting thing – it takes, as you’d imagine, some getting used to, even for me, who plays a baritone basically every day. The 29.75” scale is well into Bass VI territory, which means quite a hefty span. The benefit is that a set of Bass VI strings and the right setup could absolutely see this thing stay stable down to double drop C# (IE, with the lowest string a casual 15 semitones lower than regular E standard).
As it stands, I stay between B standard and drop F, and have a perfectly pleasant time in doing so – tunings around B and A feel very taught indeed, while Drop F is obviously a bit slacker, the extra scale means the guitar handles it very well.
The body is relatively heavy, but what it loses in lightweight chuckability, it gains in feeling solid and well-balanced. The neck, which feels hilariously long (and makes standard-scale guitars feel like ukuleles after a week or so of testing) , always presents properly, and even if your arms and shoulders have to get used to a slightly wider stance. Not absurdly so, though – in converting the guitar to a baritone, the bridge has thankfully been moved quite far down the body, which means the string length isn’t totally off-centre.
The neck profile is a very middle-of-the-road thing, and while middle-of-the-road is seldom a ringing endorsement, it’s no bad thing here. Despite the metal focus, this is not a shred machine; it’s a riff machine. So there’s enough meat that it feels substantial and meaningful in your hands as you shift around power-chords, but it’s not thick enough that you’re just fighting it the whole time. It’s a little sticky and glossy, sure, but that’s really just its one concession to its price point – given that it’s in the £550 range, I’d have no bones about taking some Scotch-Brite to it too if you wanted a more satin feel.
Image: Adam Gasson
Sounds
The Twin Sixes are, in my view, pretty damn good pickups. However, while the extra scale length here brings out a bit more punch in higher tunings like B and A standard, that extra punch highlights that the pickups are a little on the sludgy side, particularly if you venture down towards the Bass VI range. This is great for playing, well, sludge metal, but their meatier output is pretty full-spectrum, and compared to their performance in the CVT they get just a touch less controlled in the low end if you want tighter chugs.
While it’s perhaps unfair to compare this guitar to something almost ten times its price, I’m reminded of the LSL Baribone I recently looked at – specifically the Bareknuckle Impulse that was chosen for its bridge position. That was a pickup voiced for heavy-focused baritones, and you could really hear it – here, the limitations of a slightly more broadly-voiced thing become a little bit more apparent.
The good news is that you can split the Twin Sixes, and while that brings some extra noise, setups that seek that chuggier, brighter sound will invariably be using a gate anyway. The split-coil sounds here through high-gain are actually really engaging, with a super twangy, djenty feel that brings back some extra articulation – although this may be a little too far the other way for some.
Of course, these split-coil sounds are well-suited to clean and ambient sounds as well. They won’t win any awards for outstanding depth and clarity, but they do the job well enough. As with the CVT, they remain pretty full-sounding and loud even in split-coil mode, so they won’t do a true impression of something like a Fender Bass VI – but that’s likely not your use-case for a guitar like this. For ambient textures and clean intros, they’ll get you there.
Image: Adam Gasson
Should I buy one?
There’s clearly an audience for this kind of guitar, and I think Gretsch has absolutely delivered for them – the longer scale means it’s flexible from tight standard-baritone things all the way down to truly extreme tunings, with electronics that are more than ready to handle heavier sounds.
The build quality and general togetherness of the instrument would make it an easy recommendation anyway, but it helps that it’s also pretty unique in its space. Realistically, if you’re enamoured with the vibe and aesthetics and are looking for an instrument of this scale length, I’d heartily recommend – the sounds are great at the moment, and as the pickups are easily-swapped humbuckers, they could get even greater down the line.
Image: Adam Gasson
Alternatives
An obvious alternative is of course the CVT equivalent ($/£599.99) with much the same specs but a shorter scale of 27” and a double-cut body. For a more offset vibe but staying in the HH mode, Squier has just released the Paranormal Jazzmaster HH baritone ($/£479.99), and the Fender Player Fusion Jaguar Baritone ($1,299.99/£1,049).
If you’d rather a more vintage set of sounds but want the same long scale, there’s both the Fender Vintera III Early ‘60s and Classic Vibe Bass VIs ($1,499/£1,229 and $569.99/£509 respectively), or the Danelectro ‘56 Baritone ($599).
If you’ve dry-heaved every time you’ve read the word ‘vintage’ in this review, and you play in the kind of band that has a separate budget for sacrificial goats, there are plenty of more explicitly metal baritone options out there with a more minimal, sharper aesthetic – such as the ESP LTD M-201HT ($599).
The post Gretsch G5260 Electromatic Jet Baritone review: more long-scale chaos from Gretsch appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
TONE3000’s new free plugin gives you access to over 700,000 guitar tone captures
TONE3000 has spent the last few years building what it claims is the world’s largest library of guitar tones. Now, instead of making you hunt them down one by one, it’s putting the whole thing inside a plugin.
The company has launched the free, open-source TONE3000 plugin, giving guitarists and bassists direct access to more than 700,000 Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) captures and Impulse Responses (IRs) from within their DAW – or through a standalone app.
- READ MORE: New firmware update lets HeadRush users tap into a world of open-source guitar tone captures
Until now, using a tone from TONE3000 involved a little more work than you might expect: find the capture online, download it, unzip it, organise the file and load it into a separate NAM plugin. Want to try another? You’ll have to do it all again.
The new plugin cuts out that faff. Musicians can now browse TONE3000’s library from inside the plugin, with captures covering amps, pedals, speaker cabinets, full rigs, outboard gear, acoustic spaces and even some weird experimental setups.
Log into your TONE3000 account and you can also access your saved favourites, recently used tones, your own creations and private tones without leaving the plugin.
And because the library is constantly growing, you don’t have to wait for a plugin update to get your hands on new sounds. Every new tone added to TONE3000 becomes available through the plugin immediately, with no additional purchase required.
Unlike the traditional amp-sim model, where you buy a plugin and get a fixed collection of sounds, here, the TONE3000 plugin acts more like a gateway to a library that keeps expanding as the community adds to it.
Under the hood, everything is powered by NAM A2, the latest generation of Neural Amp Modeler technology developed by TONE3000 with NAM creator Steve Atkinson. For the uninitiated, NAM is free, open-source technology that uses AI to model analogue gear by learning from recordings of physical amps, pedals and other equipment.
“Because the TONE3000 Plugin is open source, right now is the worst it will ever be,” says the company’s co-founder and CEO Stanley Vergilis. “We’re excited to see what the community does with it.”
“With A2 we made captures dramatically more accurate, but accuracy doesn’t matter if loading a tone is a chore,” adds TONE3000 co-founder and CTO Woodbury Shortridge. “The plugin is where the architecture, the community library, and players finally meet in one place. Every layer is open source by design. We’re betting the future of tone belongs to the people creating it, not to whoever owns the technology.”
The plugin also goes considerably further than simply being a tone browser. You can stack unlimited NAM A2 captures and IRs to build signal chains, run dual chains with branching and panning, create stereo images and apply EQ at different points in the chain.
The TONE3000 plugin is available now for macOS, Windows and Linux, with VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP and LV2 support, as well as a standalone version. It works with major DAWs including Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, Reaper and Bitwig Studio.
And, importantly, it’s free.
Download the plugin today at TONE3000.
The post TONE3000’s new free plugin gives you access to over 700,000 guitar tone captures appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“If you’re prepared to take a chance, so am I”: how working with David Bowie helped lure Robert Fripp out of an early retirement
When King Crimson first disbanded in 1974, it seemed like Robert Fripp was ready to settle down in the Sherbourne countryside and withdraw from the limelight. However, David Bowie’s request for Fripp to feature on 1977’s Heroes put a halt to his temporary retirement – because, when Ziggy Stardust comes a-knocking, you can hardly turn him down.
While Fripp’s feedback-heavy, multi-layered guitar performance on Heroes is now iconic, Fripp thought that Bowie “took a chance” when he first enlisted him to feature on the track. “I didn’t view myself as a working player at that time, having just been in retreat for 10 months with no intention of going back to anything like that,” he admits in a new interview with Guitar World.
Although the King Crimson frontman wasn’t too optimistic, Bowie was adamant that he wanted Fripp. “When David asked me to provide guitar, I just said, ‘Well, I don’t know… but if you’re prepared to take a chance, so am I,’” the guitarist recalls.
The recording session saw Fripp flying out to Berlin’s Hansa Studios with his Les Paul, no amplifier, and a small selection of pedals (a volume pedal, a wah and a fuzz box). Despite his stripped back arsenal, Fripp still impressed Bowie and his producer, Tony Visconti; in a January interview with Guitar Player, Visconti recalled Fripp’s innovative ability to utilise studio monitor feedback as an instrument in and of itself.
That’s right – the EBow-like effect on Heroes is Fripp utilising monitor feedback. “Fripp had a technique in those days where he measured the distance between the guitar and the speaker where each note would feed back,” the producer explained. “For instance, an A would feed back maybe at about four feet from the speaker… He had a strip that they would place on the floor, and when he was playing the note F sharp he would stand on the strip’s F sharp point. and F sharp would feed back…”
Needless to say, Fripp nailed the job. Bowie loved his work so much that he even tried to bag Fripp as his full-time live guitarist – but Fripp kindly turned him down. He had ran away to a country home to escape touring, and even Bowie couldn’t tempt him to return to the stage just yet: “I just said, ‘No… I’ve just come off the road after six years of touring!’”
Despite his rejection, Bowie was keen to work with him again, asking Fripp to perform lead guitar parts across his 1980 record, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). On their second collaboration, Bowie knew he could ask anything of the talented Fripp – even if that meant asking him to embody the energy of another player.
“I remember I asked David, ‘Any suggestions?’ because there’s any number of ways you can go,” Fripp recalls in conversation with Guitar World. “He said, ‘Think Ritchie Blackmore’. I didn’t expect that, but I understood what he meant.”
Rather than outright copying Blackmore’s tone, Fripp captured the same aura and swagger of the Deep Purple legend. “Did I sound like Ritchie Blackmore? No,” he admits. “But I’d seen Ritchie in the Outlaws in Poole when I was 17, and his playing was phenomenal! He had all the moves. So I’d seen Ritchie, I’d heard Ritchie, and I wasn’t going to play like Ritchie would… but I knew what David meant!”
The post “If you’re prepared to take a chance, so am I”: how working with David Bowie helped lure Robert Fripp out of an early retirement appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Alex Lifeson on the self-doubt that crept in before Rush’s reunion tour: “There were times I was sitting on the edge of my bed at two o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘Can I do this?’”
After more than a decade away from the stage, even Alex Lifeson wasn’t sure he was ready to step back into Rush. The guitarist says the pressure of preparing for the band’s Fifty Something reunion tour became so intense that, at times, he found himself questioning whether he had made the right decision.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lifeson opens up about the nerves and “self-doubt” that crept in during the final weeks of the band’s 14-month rehearsal period.
“14 months of rehearsal, it was difficult,” says Lifeson. “In the last month of rehearsals, there were times I was sitting on the edge of my bed at two o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘Did I make the right decision? Can I do this? Can I play? Am I good enough?’”
As Lifeson explains, getting back to Rush wasn’t just about relearning the songs. After so long away from the stage, there was the physical challenge of playing a full show again, along with the pressure of meeting the standard he had set throughout his career.
Geddy Lee felt much the same pressure. The singer and bassist says the band’s return demanded more preparation than anything he had done before, with the full show being rehearsed 24 times in 27 days during the final month and a half.
“In my history as a musician, I don’t think I’ve ever rehearsed quite as much as an individual, and also as a band,” Lee says. “Of course, we needed to, because it was a monumental task.”
“Coming back at this age, your fear is that you can’t do it anymore, and you’re going to be a compromised version of yourself. And I don’t want that,” Lee continues.
Thankfully for Lifeson, those nerves finally gave way once the band actually stepped onstage.
“It wasn’t really until Sunday, when we played that gig, that it all kind of came down this funnel and spilled out,” he says. “It was at that moment that I thought, ‘Yeah, this has all been worth it. This is where I really am happy to be.’ I’m tired this week. But I’m really, seriously happy.”
Watch the full interview below.
The post Alex Lifeson on the self-doubt that crept in before Rush’s reunion tour: “There were times I was sitting on the edge of my bed at two o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘Can I do this?’” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter recalls the time Dolly Parton asked for “fireworks” on a guitar solo: “She said, ‘Can you just make it, like, reds and greens and sparkles?’”
With decades of session work under his belt, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter is no stranger to unusual requests in the studio. The guitarist, best known for his work with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, recently recalled one particularly colourful brief from country legend Dolly Parton, who passed away last week at the age of 80.
Speaking to Guitar Player, Baxter looks back on the session for Parton’s 1978 song Baby, I’m Burnin’, where she asked him for “fireworks” on a guitar solo.
“Dolly Parton asked me to make fireworks one time,” he says. “I was working with my Roland guitar synthesizer, and she said, ‘Can you just make it, like, reds and greens and sparkles?’”
“So I thought about it for a second, and then with one hand I played as many notes as I could while the other hand was working the Roland’s [pitch] transposer, slapping it back up and down,” Baxter recalls. “She was going, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Whee!’”
As unusual as the request might sound, Baxter says this is simply part of being a session player. Artists don’t always explain what they want in technical terms, so it’s often up to him to work out what an abstract or non-musical description actually means in guitar terms – and turn it into something that works on the record.
“Sometimes you get requests like, ‘Can you make it more green?’ or, ‘I need it to ooomph more,’” he says. “So you say, ‘Okay,’ and think about all the times you’ve ever done sessions and people have said to you, ‘Boy, that really ooomphs,’ or ‘That sounds really green,’ and you start from there.”
“There have been a couple of dates like that. I enjoy it,” Baxter continues. “I get a lot of calls for steel guitar where they say, ‘Can you make it not sound like a steel guitar?’ That’s always a request. They want something different. They want a sound that has the fluidity of the steel guitar but doesn’t sound like Six Days on the Road.”
The post Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter recalls the time Dolly Parton asked for “fireworks” on a guitar solo: “She said, ‘Can you just make it, like, reds and greens and sparkles?’” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Mike Campbell on why the Telecaster “always works” even though he once thought it looked “thrown together with leftover parts”
Mike Campbell may not be a fan of the Telecaster’s looks, but he’s got plenty of good things to say about playing one, calling it a guitar that “always works”.
In a recent chat with Guitar World, the former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist explains why the Fender classic has become one of his go-to guitars, particularly when he’s stuck trying to find the right part in the studio.
“The Telecaster always works. It always seems to find a spot in the band that works, and it just sounds right,” says Campbell, who currently fronts his own band, The Dirty Knobs. “If I’m stuck in the studio, I can grab the Tele and I know it’s going to work – I’ll find something that’ll fit the track.”
He also likes the fact that the Tele is straightforward to play, comfortable to hold and tough enough to take a beating.
“They’re easy to play, and they’re not heavy. You pick it up, it sits on your lap and feels balanced. Then, when you stand up with it, it still feels balanced!” Campbell says.
“You can hit it hard, and it won’t go out of tune. And between the two pickups, it’s got a range of tones where you can get a really clear sound or you can get really nasty.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Campbell describes the Tele as a “workhorse”.
“It’ll do anything you want it to do,” he says.
His connection with the guitar also goes back to his earliest days as a player. Campbell’s first Telecaster was actually a Broadcaster, the name Fender used for the model before it was renamed the Telecaster.
“Actually, my first Telecaster was my Broadcaster, which is from a few years before they changed the name. That’s an irreplaceable guitar,” he says.
These days, Campbell has a couple more in his collection, including a ’59 and a ’56 fitted with a string bender. But his appreciation for the Telecaster wasn’t always quite so strong.
“Now I have a couple; I’ve got a ’59 and a ’56 that’s got a string bender on it. But to be honest, back in the day, I always thought Telecasters were kind of ugly,” he says.
“Strats had that great shape, and Les Pauls have those beautiful curves, but the Telecaster always looked like it was thrown together with leftover parts! [Laughs] Now, I think that’s kind of the beauty of it.”
The post Mike Campbell on why the Telecaster “always works” even though he once thought it looked “thrown together with leftover parts” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“I feel the most ‘me’ whenever I’m playing guitar”: Aziya on her rock journey and the beauty of being “wrong and strong”
“It’s having that confidence to be like, ‘I don’t care if this isn’t perfect’,” says Aziya with a shrug and a smile. The London-based artist and producer adjusts her large cat-eye sunglasses as she chats to Guitar.com among the buzz of cicadas in Athens, Greece. “If Gary from Surrey who’s 68 wants to say the intonation’s not right, I don’t care!”
Perfectionism doesn’t serve Aziya. Predominantly self-taught, her journey began to blossom as she shared covers and original songs from her bedroom on Instagram and TikTok across the early 2020s. She’s yet to release a debut record, but over a flurry of EPs – from 2021’s We Speak In Tides to 2023’s Lonely Castles, and a 2024 mixtape titled BAMBI – Aziya has set her stall out as a unique and interesting guitar artist borne of very contemporary circumstances.
Aziya on the Guitar.com Cover. Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
Her artistry is not going unnoticed. Aziya can count Yungblud and Olivia Rodrigo as admirers (she played both the inaugural Bludfest and shared the bill for Rodrigo’s BST gig last year), landed a spot on Fender’s Next programme – whose alumni include everyone from Phoebe Bridgers and Sam Fender to Orville Peck and Omar Apollo – and signed a major label deal with Atlantic.
Now freshly independent and embarking on a new phase driven purely by an instinctive joy for music, Aziya’s craft as a player blends perfectly with her confessional lyrics of what it means to be flawed, complex and the self-sabotaging type.
“I borrowed my first electric from school, it was a Squier. I haven’t given it back yet”
Something Borrowed
Aziya got her first nylon-string acoustic at 10 years old – and while she knew the guitar would become her extra limb, she didn’t necessarily know she was on the path to becoming an artist.
“I didn’t know that what I was trying to do was be an artist. It’s always been something that’s a passion of mine and has evolved with me. When I got to 16, I knew that I wanted to discover who I was as an artist. That’s when I finally took it seriously,” she shares.
Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
At the state school she attended in Hackney, music resources were limited and spread thinly to accommodate all children. Aziya was tasked with singing, but knew she was destined to play guitar too. Taking part in her first show at school, she got to sing Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, which changed the trajectory of her future.
“That just relit this love I had of rock music, so I was like, I can’t not play the guitar, guys! I managed to borrow one from school, my first electric, it was a Squier. I haven’t given it back yet,” she admits, “but I will when I make it big…”
“I’ve gone back to why I first started doing this, and a lot of that reason is the guitar”
Locked In
Aziya attended the BRIT School of performing arts for the last two years of her education, following in the footsteps of Adele and Amy Winehouse. The prestige of the BRIT School means that you don’t get in without passing an audition. But as Aziya recalls, that’s pretty much the easiest part. It’s no machine churning out manufactured pop-stars, she assures us.
“You have the studios, you have the guitars, you have other great musicians, but it’s up to you to go and speak to those musicians, to use the studio, to hone your craft. There’s no one there saying to you, ‘This is what Adele did, so we’re all going to do this.’”
As it happens, Aziya’s moment to cut through happened in a very early 2020s kinda way. When the COVID-19 lockdown hit, she took advantage of her home set-up to begin sharing bedroom recordings on social media – a mix of original music and guitar-driven covers. One of them, which interpreted Grimes’ Oblivion with a wailing guitar solo and a punchy harmonic-laden riff, quickly racked up thousands of views and brought her to the attention of some big names.
Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
Back in lockdown, Oscar- and Grammy-winning guitarist H.E.R. started a weekly livestream on Instagram called Girls With Guitars. The series welcomed artists as diverse as Willow, Lianne La Havas, Orianthi and Melissa Etheridge to talk about their shared love of the instrument. And one of those guests, being broadcast to the roughly 300,000 people watching, was Aziya.
“That was one of the solidifying moments for me of, ‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter that I’ve only been shredding for like a year,” she reflects. “Because people are acknowledging me and my work: great people.’”
“Every guitarist goes into it with the confidence to be like, ‘I’m going to be wrong and strong, and I don’t care’”
Strong Roots
Growing up on a wide catalogue of artists from My Chemical Romance to Patti Smith, as well as a palette of early punk, Aziya’s sound reflects all that she absorbed through osmosis in her youth; it’s a melting pot of pop, rock and romantic R&B. She also found courage in the examples set by women with guitars and founding Black female artists, including the Godmother of rock ‘n’ roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
“It’s a shame that her flowers are only coming now. She definitely set the path for me,” she declares. “All my favourite guitarists, from Jimmy Page to Jimi Hendrix – even people that look like me, like Hendrix and Prince – they’re all men! I was like, where are the women? They’re there, but they’re hidden, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to June Millington from this band called Fanny. There’s also Viv Albertine from The Slits. They are out there.”
Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
Many of these women set the template that Aziya now continues to champion in her own craft: the brilliant defiance to be “wrong and strong”, to give things a go without worrying about being good enough. Playing an electric guitar is not brain surgery after all, it’s art.
Aziya points to something Albertine said about electric guitar in her memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. “She liked how obnoxiously loud it was and the fact that she didn’t know how to properly play, but she was being amplified. I think that’s how every guitarist goes into it, you go in with the confidence to be like, ‘I’m going to be wrong and strong, and I don’t care.’”
“I can’t ever lose my creative autonomy again”
Altar-d State
The days of an artist needing the heft of a major label and the resources of a massive studio to make their mark are long over, but Aziya embraces the bedroom aesthetic more than most. Her distinctive but distinctly DIY online backdrop has become a magnetic aspect of her art. It’s a wink to other budding artists that they can do this too. You could argue that for modern musicians, the bedroom is a creative altar – a place where they can grow as artists in safety and security, while still sharing their music with the world.
“Describing it as an altar is really interesting,” Aziya replies. “Because like an altar, like going to God and wrestling with things that are going on for you, it’s the same as when you’re in your bedroom [making music].
“There is sometimes the creative identity struggle of doing it from your bedroom, especially as a female producer. Sometimes it’s like, is this official enough? Will people take it seriously? But [there’s] a peace that comes through for me, the comfort of it being my space. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think there’s more female producers because of it as well.”
Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
As for her setup, she’s “happily moved away from the Squier” these days, but still favours quality over quantity. Alongside her Novation Launchpad, you’ll mostly find her with a Fender Telecaster (affectionately named Dove by her fans), but she also uses a Mustang, a P-Bass, and one particularly special treasure she purchased on London’s iconic music retail district, Denmark Street.
“A guitar I always come back to is my 60s reissue Jag. It’s Japanese-made, and I use that a lot on quite a few of my songs. Wundagirl, that’s one where you can hear the Jag for sure,” she says. “I’ve also just got myself a [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex, it’s got every pedal you could desire and want. My usual setup with it is a lot of chorus, a lot of delay, reverb. And then occasionally my [Pro Co] RAT when I want to get a little heavier.”
“There is sometimes the creative identity struggle of doing it from your bedroom, but I wouldn’t have it any other way”
Self Sabotage
Guitar is woven through the DNA of Aziya’s songs. Even in tracks where it is less obvious, like He’s Mine, it’s there as a constant spine. Don’t expect that to change any time soon as she embarks on her new phase as an independent artist. Details are limited and her lips are sealed for now, but Aziya can confirm she is working on a new project, with the first taste being latest single Sabotage!.
“This one sets a precedent. A lot of the writing stems from reflection on being this saboteur type, but not to anyone else, just to myself. That’s what I wanted to do with this first song, lay that out and the direction of where we’re going in terms of what I’ve experienced this last year.
“This is probably the nicer, sweeter sounding of the songs. I love sitting in that world where it’s like rock meets hip-hop almost,” she reflects. “Sitting in that weird alternative space is something I love to explore. I think the deeper we will get into this project, the more stripped away things will get. There’s a lot of reference to Nirvana as well in there. There’s guitar in every song.”
Her forthcoming ‘Saboteur’ project is looking to be a significant mark in the sand for her independence. Being dropped by a major label is the sort of blow that would drive many artists to pack things in – especially so early on. But instead it lit a fire under her to create on her own terms. Whatever comes next, it will be wholly and truthfully Aziya.
Image: Danica Robinson for Guitar.com
“When I got dropped, the first thing I wrote down were the non-negotiables for me as a creative,” she explains. “The first was me saying I can’t ever lose my creative autonomy again or people-please, and I think that is sometimes an unfortunate byproduct of being an artist.”
Aziya has emerged through her early tumble through these weeds stronger and wiser. She’s got unapologetically big dreams, from scoring films to soundtracking fashion shows, not to mention a spot on Glastonbury’s famous Pyramid stage. She is wickedly smart and switched on, and there’s undeniably a quiet genius about the way she works.
Relaxing in her seat on her hotel balcony, there’s an assured energy about Aziya today. She’s certainly done her fair share of work to chase her dream, and this next era is all about attracting the success she’s duly earned.
“I feel the most ‘me’ whenever I’m playing guitar,” she smiles. “I’ve really gone back to my roots. Being independent now, the only voice that I’m listening to and that matters is my own, and the collaborators I’m in the room with. I’ve gone back to why I first started doing this, and a lot of that reason is the guitar.”
Aziya’s Sabotage! is out now
Words: Rachel Roberts
Photography: Danica Robinson
Location: The Shacklewell Arms
The post “I feel the most ‘me’ whenever I’m playing guitar”: Aziya on her rock journey and the beauty of being “wrong and strong” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
John Mayer honours Dolly Parton with instrumental I Will Always Love You cover
John Mayer has paid tribute to Dolly Parton with an emotional instrumental rendition of I Will Always Love You.
The guitarist performed the country classic during his SiriusXM concert at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, New York, on 26 August, a day after news broke of Parton’s death.
Mayer worked the song into the intro of Gravity, playing Parton’s familiar melody on his PRS Dead Spec Silver Sky and giving it a bluesy spin of his own before moving into his own song.
Before the show, Mayer also reflected on Parton’s death and the extraordinary reaction to her passing, particularly the way her music brought people together.
Credit: Rick Diamond/ Getty Images
“I think Dolly would be really happy to see that on the day of her passing, the world came together in a way that it hadn’t in a very long time to celebrate someone,” he says.
“I don’t know that there are many people in this world [that are] left that can galvanise a very fractured world to come together and share love for one person. When everyone’s loving one person at the same time, it is everybody loving at the same time, which has this sort of side effect of feeling each other’s love when that happens.”
“This is what a life well-lived looks like, feels like, and sounds like,” Mayer continues, describing her career as a “brilliant, classy, talented, full artistic rendering”.
“This is how you give your life to the thing you love.”
Parton, who died aged 80, was one of the most celebrated songwriters and performers of her generation. I Will Always Love You was written and recorded by Parton in 1973, becoming one of her signature songs before taking on an entirely new life through Whitney Houston’s hugely successful 1992 cover for The Bodyguard.
Watch Mayer’s tribute below.
The post John Mayer honours Dolly Parton with instrumental I Will Always Love You cover appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“It changed my career”: Joe Bonamassa pays tribute to Tim Curry and recalls their “perfect” connection
![[L-R] Joe Bonamassa and Tim Curry](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Joe-Bonamassa-Tim-Curry-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
Blues legend Joe Bonamassa has paid tribute to actor Tim Curry, who died earlier this week at the age of 80.
Curry is well-remembered for his roles as Pennywise the Clown in the original IT movie, as well as in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clue, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Bonamassa posted a tribute to Curry on Instagram yesterday (August 26).
He wrote: “Rest in Peace Tim Curry. Many do not know that Tim cut the original version of Sloe Gin on his debut album Read my Lips in 1978. The song was composed by Bob Ezrin and Michael Kamen.
“20 years ago Kevin Shirley rang me and said he found the perfect desperate blues song for me. He was right and our version changed my career trajectory forever. Tim’s version was bold, beautiful and featured the mastery of Dick Wagner on guitar.”
Alongside the written tribute is a video of Bonamassa performing Sloe Gin. The song remains one of Bonamassa’s biggest hits to date. He once told Total Guitar: “That song initially came to me via [producer] Kevin Shirley who was born in South Africa. It was a hit there but nowhere else.
“I have to give a special shout out to Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner who played on the original version. They were basically Bob Ezrin’s ringers… What you hear on the record and how we play it live are two different things. That song’s got a life of its own. I’m thrilled with that… sometimes we just have to play it!”
Curry’s 1978 release included not only the Ezrin and Kamen track but also featured covers of work by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Roy Wood, and Joni Mitchell.
The post “It changed my career”: Joe Bonamassa pays tribute to Tim Curry and recalls their “perfect” connection appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
The baritone hype is real – and Gibson’s getting in on the action
Baritones seems to be all the rage in 2026, with a particularly eye-catching model recently coming from Jackson in partnership with Sleep Token.
It’s been a while since Gibson dipped its toes in the baritone pool – the last time extended-scale guitars among its product catalogue being the early 2010s, with the SG Baritone, Explorer Baritone and Les Paul Studio Baritone.
And while it’s not as radical a model as the new Jackson Monarkh for Sleep Token’s guitarist IV – which ships tuned an entire octave down – Gibson has revived its baritone offering once more, with the all-new Victory Baritone.
Shipping with a B-to-B tuning, made possible and more stable by a longer 28″ scale length (typically, Gibson guitars measure up 24.75″), the Victory Baritone features a double-cutaway mahogany body with “updated Victory contours for enhanced comfort, balance, and stage-ready performance”, as well as a glued-in mahogany neck, and compound-radius ebony fingerboard with 24 medium jumbo frets and acrylic dot inlays.
Credit: Gibson
An extended-scale guitar sort of calls for high-gain, drop-tuned riffs, so the Victory Baritone is equipped with a pair of newly designed Gibson ELEV8 humbuckers, which are said to offer “powerful tone with unmistakable Gibson character”, with alnico 8 magnets and custom-gauge wiring. These electronics also include push-pull controls for coil-splitting as well as inner-outer coil selection.
Credit: Gibson
The new Victory Baritone is just the latest addition to Gibson’s cult classic Victory line, which received a significant revamp back in 2024. We recently got our hands on the line’s Floyd Rose equipped model, and gave it a near-perfect 9/10 review.
Available in British Racing Green and Graphite Metallic, the Victory Baritone is priced at $2,499/£2,149.
Learn more at Gibson.
The post The baritone hype is real – and Gibson’s getting in on the action appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Tom Morello’s “Arm the Homeless” guitar pickup combo is now available as an EMG signature set
Want to get a little closer to Tom Morello’s guitar tone without, you know, actually being Tom Morello? EMG has just made the pickup combination behind his legendary “Arm the Homeless” guitar available as a signature set.
The new Tom Morello TM Set pairs an EMG 85 in the bridge with an EMG H in the neck, recreating the exact setup that has been at the heart of Morello’s sound for decades.
And this isn’t just a pickup pairing the Rage Against the Machine guitarist happened to like. The EMG 85 and H have been the foundation of Morello’s “Arm the Homeless” guitar since the late ’80s, with the iconic axe appearing on every recording and live show he has played since then.
So, what are you actually getting? For starters, the set comes with the throwback EMG logos found on the pickups in Morello’s original guitar, along with a commemorative “ATH” Tom Morello guitar pick.
At the bridge is the EMG 85, an active humbucker designed to deliver plenty of output, punch and low-end heft while keeping its highs controlled and articulate. Morello says he chose it specifically for the “hard metal sound” he wanted from his riffs and solos.
The neck pickup is where things get a little more interesting. The EMG H is essentially an EMG S single-coil tucked into a humbucker housing. That means you can drop it into a guitar routed for humbuckers while still getting the kind of single-coil character associated with a Strat.
For Morello, that single-coil character is a big part of what makes a “heavy” guitar sound work. As he puts it: “Some of the greatest riffs of all time are done on a Telecaster with a single-coil pickup.”
“A lot of times, guitar players think they have to have the most manly, alpha, distorted sound in order to be heavy. That’s not the trick,” says Morello. “It’s the tone, and the chemistry of the people you play with. And so with this pickup, there was a springiness to the tone, a funkiness to the tone with the way that I played. It has made fields of people bounce up and down over the course of the last three decades.”
The EMG Tom Morello TM set is available now for $249. Like all EMG products, this set includes the solderless wiring system for simple installation.
Learn more at EMG.
The post Tom Morello’s “Arm the Homeless” guitar pickup combo is now available as an EMG signature set appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.