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Slash has been honoured with the 2026 Les Paul Spirit Award for his “creative legacy, pioneering musicianship and enduring influence on generations of artists and fans”.

The legendary Guns N’ Roses guitarist received the award this October during an intimate and private event presented by the Les Paul Foundation in partnership with Gibson Gives, held at The Les Paul Recording Studio at Universal Master Recordings in Hollywood.

• READ MORE: “It’s what we’ve been looking forward to for 21 hours of the day”: Slash on why Guns N’ Roses still love touring and have no plans to stop

The Les Paul Spirit Award is presented to an individual who “exemplifies the spirit of the late Les Paul through innovation, engineering, technology and music” each year.

The award, which is always made uniquely for the recipient, was created from hand-carved acoustic boards that Les Paul built and used in his home recording studio. Previous recipients include Bob Weir, Nile Rodgers, the Edge, Peter Frampton and Steve Miller.

Slash and Les Paul shared a special friendship during Les Paul’s lifetime and often played music together. Speaking of the award, Slash says, “Les was so much more than a great guitarist and innovator. He was an actual inventor who changed the instrument itself, built groundbreaking recording equipment and completely reimagined how artists could record music.

“I feel incredibly lucky that I got to know him, hang out with him and play music with him. I cherish the relationship we had, and receiving an award that carries his name and spirit is a tremendous honour.”

Credit: Les Paul Foundation

Michael Braunstein, Executive Director of the Les Paul Foundation, adds: “We are honoured to present the Les Paul Spirit Award to Slash this year. He and Les shared a special friendship and often jammed together when they could.

“Not only does Slash exemplify the creativity and curiosity Les had during his life, but he is also an extraordinary talent and a wonderful supporter of the Les Paul Foundation. If Les were still alive today, Slash and he would be jamming onstage together somewhere regularly.”

Slash ft. Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators are due to release a new album next year. You can check out the first single, Flying Blind, below:

Find out more about Slash ft Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, or pre-order their new album, via Slash’s official website.

The post Slash receives the 2026 Les Paul Spirit Award for his “pioneering musicianship and enduring influence” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Yngwie Malmsteen was once asked to join Kiss, but the reason why he was eventually turned down had nothing to do with his skills on guitar.

A member of the band’s team was very interested in having Malmsteen on board, according to the guitarist himself, but they never called him again after learning he was above six foot in height.

• READ MORE: Brian May says that he’s planned an immersive ABBA-style Queen show, but there’s one big reason it won’t happen: “I have serious misgivings about that”

In an interview with eonmusic , Malmsteen is asked about the bands he’s been asked to join across his career, including when he was nearly recruited to join Ozzy Osbourne after the death of Randy Rhoads.

“It was right after,” he confirms. “What happened was, I sent this cassette tape to Guitar Player magazine, and it was me playing drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, obviously, and vocals, and they went fucking ape shit. And this guy, he would send my cassettes to everybody. I had people from Kiss, from Night Ranger [calling me].

“I can’t remember all the people who would call. I was still in Sweden. I was 18 years old, a kid. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was funny because I remember [with] Kiss — I don’t know if it was a manager or whoever called – but he kept [saying], ‘You’re hot, you’re hot.’ I’m like, ‘What? What the hell?’, because I was speaking the Queen’s English in those days, and I didn’t [know what] ‘hot’ meant!”

He adds, “Anyway, they wanted me to come over and join Kiss, and they asked me if I’m six foot tall, apparently they wanted me to be six foot and I’m more than that, so they didn’t call back.”

Kiss wrapped their farewell tour, End Of The Road, in 2023 with a huge show at Madison Square Garden in New York. And, of course, the band are set to continue on with a string of widely anticipated avatar shows in the style of ABBA’s Voyage in the future.

At the time, fans called on the band do a mighty show at the Las Vegas Sphere. Speaking to American Songwriter earlier this year, Kiss frontman Paul Stanley explained why they were never tempted by it.

“Towards the end of the tour, people were saying, ‘Why don’t you play the Sphere?’” Stanley recalled. “The truth of it is, the Sphere minimises a band. It makes a band miniature. You’re not going there to see a band – you’re going to see screens.”

The post “I didn’t know what the f**k was going on”: Yngwie Malmsteen reveals that he was asked to join Kiss… and the bizarre reason they pulled out appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Dunable has unveiled a signature Minotaur guitar for Castle Rat singer and guitarist Riley Pinkerton, but there’s just four of them available.

This ultra-limited guitar, called The Summoner, was designed by Pinkerton herself. Dunable says that she had “a very specific vision” for the guitar so that it would suit their music, and with it being so limited, it is priced at a high-end £2,760.99.

• READ MORE: Greg Freeman’s favourite guitar was in a house fire: “it was burned to a crisp”

Specs-wise, the guitar has a mahogany body and neck, and an ebony fingerboard with 22 jumbo stainless frets. Visually, the model is really quite striking with its gold/white colourshift lacquer finish, further complemented by a custom gold crackle/gold holoflash pickguard.

Other features include a 24.75” scale length for “very fast” playability, gold hardware in keeping with its overall aesthetic, and only “the essential specs needed for heavy riffing”: a single Direwolf pickup and kill switch. It also comes with a hard case to keep it pristine.

The guitar is currently in production, and won’t ship until mid-November. Take a closer look at it below:

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Last month, Guitar.com caught up with Pinkerton for a new episode of My Guitars & Me. She walked us through her favourite Gibson SGs, which fittingly show their fair share of battle scars, wear and tear from a suit of chainmail, and even a dash of body glitter.

A true highlight was her #17 SG, which she bought with her relief check during the COVID-19 pandemic: “I bought it used off Reverb. When the pandemic hit, we got a check, so I was like, I’m gonna buy a guitar.’ So that’s what I did,” she shared.

“It’s [got a] chainmail rash instead of buckle rash,” she added. “And everything I own is covered with sparkles, because I wear body glitter onstage, so that’s everywhere.”

Watch the full episode below:

Find out more about The Summoner guitar by heading over to Dunable.

The post “A special edition Minotaur, fit for a Rat Queen”: Dunable launches signature model for Castle Rat’s Riley Pinkerton – but there’s only four available appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Johnny Marr has a confession to make: he finds it harder to part with some of his clothes than he does with his guitars.

You might find that utterly bizarre, but Marr has only proven so with his recent guitar auction via Christie’s. Over 100 guitars went under the hammer across the five-hour event in September, fetching over £3.6 million and more than tripling the total estimate made prior to the event.

A key highlight was Marr’s 1982 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo, used across his time in The Smiths, including on their second single This Charming Man and extensively on the band’s self-titled debut album. It sold for £358,400, far exceeding its £60,000-£80,000 estimate.

• READ MORE: “I thought it went better with the guitar!”: Johnny Marr reveals he chose his famous hairstyle to compliment this specific guitar

And yet, in an interview with Mr Porter, he says, “I’d actually find it harder to get rid of some of my jackets than I would some of my guitars. Oh man, I’m getting a visceral reaction even thinking about it.”

He goes on to explain, “Growing up in the inner city in the 1970s, me and my sister were clothes freaks. It’s like the way some families like football. It’s part of the culture. Before the Smiths, the only job [I’d] ever had was working in a clothes shop.

“I was a sales assistant then. But the reason I got that job was that me and my girlfriend [now his wife, Angie] would make what bits of money we could by jibbing on the train from Manchester to London, coming down to King’s Road and buying shirts and jackets, bringing them back up to Manchester. That’s how I made enough to buy my guitar and amp.”

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Even now, Marr is particular about how he dresses on stage. In fact, there’s a fair bit of thought that goes into his style in an effort to serve the significance of his guitar: “I know what works for me and I have some strong, strong feelings about what you really can’t wear while you’re playing the guitar: anything that makes the guitar look like a fucking banjo. That’s the problem with baggy stuff. It makes your guitar look too small,” he states.

Johnny Marr’s new album, The Age Of Everything, was released this October. You can order it via his official website. 

The post Johnny Marr says he’s more sentimental about clothes than he is about guitars: “I’d actually find it harder to get rid of some of my jackets” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$3,599/£3,799, martinguitar.com

The stringed instrument that we now know as the guitar has a long and winding history that goes back almost as far as the history of the human race itself: the oldest depiction of someone playing a stringed instrument is an ancient Hittite carving that dates back over 3,500 years.

• READ MORE: Martin D-X2E Molly Tuttle review: “if I closed my eyes, I really could tell myself I was playing a 1940s guitar”

Over the next few millenia, cultures across the world would conceive of various ways to make music through a combination of vibrating strings and wood – from the oud and the lute, to the vihuela and the cittern.

Even by the 1500s, when the proto-forms of what we now understand as a guitar started to become popular across Europe, there was a great deal of variety in terms of shape, size and the number of strings as makers and players experimented to work out what worked and what didn’t.

One of the most popular and important evolutionary forks is the Terz, which was extremely popular in the 1800s, especially in central Europe – often as an accompaniment to someone playing on a regular guitar. The Terz also has a special place in the history of Martin Guitars, as these are the sorts of instruments that Christian Frederick Martin Sr was building in his native Germany, before he emigrated to the USA.

For 2027, Martin has reintroduced the Terz guitar into the company’s standard line in the shape of the 5-28 – so what’s the deal?

Image: Press

What is it?

In essence, a Terz guitar is a small-bodied (Size 5) acoustic guitar where all the strings are tuned a minor third higher than E standard – G-C-F-A♯-D-G. “Terz” is the German musical terminology for a third, hence the name – in Francophone countries the guitars are sometimes called ‘tierce’ guitars for the same reason.

The Terz’s tuning gives the same effect as placing a capo on the third fret of your regular acoustic, but combined with the tiny body it gives a sweeter tone that makes it such a great accompaniment for a regular flat-top.

Over the years Martin has periodically made Terz guitars, and they’ve earned quite a reputation among artists over that time. Dolly Parton is without doubt the most famous and visible exponent of the Terz – for many years she used a 5-18 Terz as her primary guitar, but the guitar has also been used to great effect by the likes of Marty Robbins, Sting and even Billy Corgan.

This association has made vintage Martin Terz guitars very collectable – but they rarely come cheap. They were never mass-produced, and finding a clean vintage example is very tricky because the string tension of that added third is hard going on the bridge, top and braces.

Thankfully for those of us who have always been Terz-curious, the brand new 5-28 makes the experience a great deal more affordable and accessible – it’s still not a cheap guitar by any stretch of the imagination, of course, but at least you don’t have to be friends with a vintage guitar dealer to hope to see one.

As you’d expect from a Standard series guitar, you get premium tonewoods – a solid spruce top with solid East Indian rosewood back and sides, an ebony board, and 28-style flourishes including mother-of-pearl inlays and a multi-stripe binding around the body and the soundhole. The guitar comes with a hard case and is available for lefties, too – but what you don’t get is any onboard electronics: it’s a case of mic it up or get the drill out here.

Image: Press

Build Quality and Playability

The first thing that strikes you about the 5-28 is the size of the thing – it is a very tiny guitar, even by parlor standards. In fact, the 5-28 is the smallest guitar in the Martin catalogue at this time, unless you count the D-28 Christmas tree ornament, which only really counts if you’re a mouse or other musical rodent.

Despite its diminutive size, it feels every bit a Martin built by the craftspeople in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. From the top to the bottom of this tiny Terz, I could not find a flaw in woodworking, assembly, finish, fretwork or anything else – this feels like the sort of guitar that could become a family heirloom, something you can pass down through the generations, as has often been the case with historic Terz guitars. Thanks to the ageing toner on the guitar’s top, it already looks well-travelled.

The playing experience is certainly a lot more compact than a regular Martin dread – this is a 12-fret design, but the 21.38-inch scale length here is very noticeable, though the standard 1.75-inch nut width means that it at least only feels cramped in one direction. If you’re a bigger-handed, bigger-bodied player however, you may have to shake the feeling that you’re not having a Gulliver’s Travels moment.

Image: Press

Sounds

Considering the Terz is tuned 3-steps higher the sound is still surprisingly full and articulate with clean note separation all the way up the neck. You won’t achieve the bass notes or the rounded mids of a traditional D-28 or D-18, but the note clarity and fullness of tone exceed the series 5 body shape expectations.

For comparison I went back and forth between my Martin Bigsby D-28 and the Terz and although the pitch was higher with less bottom-end, the playability was very similar. The Terz sits in its own tonal space for sure, but there is a question about how useful it is on its own – you’d have to be sure your voice provided the right range to accompany it properly, or you’d have to be sure the band around you can provide some of the bottom-end fullness.

The smooth playability up and down the neck, combined with that compact scale length, does encourage ventures up the fretboard. Thankfully, I found the 5-28 to offer a tonality that was obviously higher in register, but never piercing or shrill – it’s actually rather rounded and lovely.

Image: Press

Should I Buy One?

If you are a tone chaser looking for different sounds than your garden variety Martin acoustic guitar, the 5-28 is a lovely instrument that adds a new sonic palette that you probably didn’t even know you wanted.

Given its small stature, it has more projection and focus than you might expect, but it’s going to struggle to be heard on a big stage or in an ensemble – the decision to not include a pickup feels odd in that circumstance.

Given its place in Martin’s history and the collectability of these instruments, it does feel like something that could be a musical investment – especially if more modern artists start to discover its charms now. From a practical perspective, its small size also makes it a much more realistic prospect as an airplane carry-on – its hard case would probably fit in the overhead locker of even the stingiest airline.

There are obviously some caveats to what is a niche instrument – you will likely have to rethink the key you sing in to be accompanied by the 5-28, and you’ll probably want some friends around to fill out the sonic spectrum too. Team it up with another acoustic guitar, mandolin or 12-string and it offers a really unique tonal texture in a separate frequency path.

But ultimately, the great thing about the 5-28 is that it will likely enable more players – like me – to spend some time with a Terz guitar and discover the unique magic these instruments offer. As a different kind of acoustic guitar experience, it’s up there with the very best.

Alternatives

Terz guitars are few and far between in the catalogues of most guitar brands, so you have to get creative. Martin is feeling the small-bodied bug at the moment, and the new 00L-16E ($2,499) is a less bijou guitar, but one with bags of character and great sounds. Gibson’s L-00 Special ($1,999) is another great parlor-sized guitar, with real Robert Johnson mojo. Another incredible US-made parlor is the Breedlove Roots Parlor E ($2,899), while the Larrivee P-03 Mahogany Recording Series ($2,149) used to be made in Canada, but is now built in California – it has a 24-inch scale and 12-fret neck join. String any of these parlors up Nashville-style (or stick a capo on three) and they’ll get you a little closer to the vibe of a Terz without actually being one.

The post Martin 5-28 Terz review: great guitars come in the smallest packages appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Guitar Center are currently offering big savings across the Big F catalogue, with a wide range of electric models, amplifiers and other gear from Fender reduced throughout October.

A number of its Player II models are reduced, and many are Guitar Center exclusives boasting unique finishes. Offers end on the 28 October.

• READ MORE: The best picks for electric guitar and acoustic guitar, from Jim Dunlop, Fender, Ibanez and more

From Stratocasters and Jazzmasters, to Teles and P-Basses – which are currently celebrating their 75th birthday this year – there is a wide range of deals to choose from, so we’ve rounded up some of the best. Take a look below.

Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS Plus Top in Blue Burst

This limited-edition Player II Stratocaster HSS Plus Top model has a maple fingerboard, an alder body, and of course, a striking flame maple top that gives it its “Plus Top” status. The HSS pickup configuration consists of a Player Series humbucker and Alnico V single-coils, for a versatile range of tones. Now $799.99, you can save $130 on this guitar.

Credit: Guitar Center

Fender Player II Advanced HSS HT Stratocaster in Surf Green Pearl

Save $260 on this mean looking Strat. Fitted with upgraded Seymour Duncan electronics and featuring “fast-playing appointments and the direct feel of a hardtail bridge”, the Fender Player II Advanced HSS HT Stratocaster is a performance-oriented model. It has an alder body, matte black hardware and an exclusive Surf Pearl finish.

Credit: Guitar Center

Fender Player II Precision Maple Fingerboard Limited-Edition Bass in Ocean Turquoise

This limited-edition P-Bass is now $799.99. It offers a punchy split-coil Precision Bass pickup, an alder body and maple neck, a 4-saddle bridge, synthetic bone nut and vintage-style tuners. It also has a Modern C-shaped neck and chrome hardware to complete its contemporary look.

Credit: Guitar Center

Fender Player II Jazzmaster Electric Guitar in British Racing Green

Save $80 on this exclusive Jazzmaster. It has a classic alder body, a maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard, and a pair of Player Series Alnico 5 Jazzmaster single-coil pickups for a wide tonal palette.

Credit: Guitar Center

To view these deals and more, visit Guitar Center.

The post Get up to 20% off Fender this October at Guitar Center! appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad Feature with StewMac

Fuzz pedals! Those gloriously angry little boxes that bring the sweetest kind of tonal devastation to your rig. They’re the first effect to be condensed down into a little stompbox, and their wonderfully fuzzy sounds have inspired generations of guitarists ever since Satisfaction blew everyone’s minds.

And the best fuzz sounds out there don’t have to come from $500 boutique boxes – they can come from projects that you make yourself, either out of a kit or from the ground up. There’s an unmistakable joy that comes from playing something you’ve created yourself –are you always better off building your own fuzz?

Getting building

You might have seen a lot of buzz around DIY fuzzes, and been curious as to how to enter this world. You will need a bit of kit if you don’t have it already. First off is a good soldering iron, which is essential for all but the most basic of DIY pedal kits. You’ll also want a good set of flush cutters for trimming component legs and cutting wire to length, as well as wire strippers, wrenches to tighten things. And finally an often overlooked part of the assembly process is a PCB holder – these are absolutely worth the investment, as they make populating a PCB or veroboard a breeze! If all that kit seems a bit overwhelming, StewMac luckily offers a pedal building tool kit, as well as the individual parts if you just need to top up your workbench to be pedal-ready.

So, why build a fuzz? There are a lot of reasons – let’s dive into a few.

A teachable moment

Image: Cillian Breathnach

You can read up on electronic circuits all day – but, when it comes to musical equipment, there’s perhaps no better way to learn than getting practical and hearing the results right away. Fuzz pedals are an awesome way into the world of pedal building, mainly because they’ve generally got a low parts count, which makes them pretty approachable to actually put together. But their simpler design also means that small adjustments go a long way – there’s more immediacy between your design decisions and the resulting sound.

If you’re just starting out, I’d say that getting a simple one-knob fuzz under your belt first is a far better idea than trying to start with a multi-mode dual-PT2399 modulated delay. And, of course, the resulting sound of a fuzz is one of the most glorious aspects of playing guitar – few experiences on this instrument are quite as gratifying as a really good fuzz pedal into a loud amp.

So, where to start? Using veroboard, also known as stripboard, is a great way to get into ground-up builds, mainly because it’s a flexible base for whatever layout you want to throw at it. Buy a chunk of veroboard and the right components, and you can get a good few practice builds under your belt fairly quickly, building essential soldering skills and a good understanding of signal-path basics. There are lots of community-sourced tagboard layouts out there for different effects – if you’re building low numbers of pedals for your own enjoyment, it’s just as good as a PCB, even if it requires just a little more patience.

Kits are, of course, more one-and-done – you don’t need to worry about sourcing any part of the build, as the enclosure and all on- and off-board parts are included. To get started, check out StewMac’s selection of kits here.

Whatever substrate you’re using, basic fuzz circuits are very moddable. Fuzz Face- and Tone Bender-inspired builds will let you quickly make big adjustments with only minor tweaks, and even in more parts-heavy builds, there are often common modifications that the community on places like Reddit and freestompboxes.org will recommend and guide you through. And while you can start out by messing about and swapping out the odd part here and there, you’ll likely soon be calculating filter roll-offs and sourcing obscure germanium transistors off eBay – which brings us to customisability.

Truly your own

Image: Cristian Storto / Getty

We’re not just talking aesthetics here, although that does come into it. Off-the-shelf fuzz options will generally have a pretty broad appeal, tonally. But once you’ve got the basics down, making your own fuzzes lets you get really specific in chasing that ideal tone, in some cases much more so than modding a pre-built fuzz would. Plus, that’s less and less possible these days, with modern surface-mount builds making it far harder to perform circuit tweaks.

For example – clipping diodes. Not all fuzzes use them, but for ones that do – like the Big Muff – they can have a huge impact on the sound. You’ll likely find out your preferred combination, and it may well be that you find a sound that’s not otherwise obtainable. For example my personal favourite clipping combination is a germanium diode going one way, and a red LED going the other way – these have drastically different forward voltages, and so the resultant signal is very asymmetrically-clipped. As a sound it combines the louder, sharper edge of LED clipping with the more squishy, compressed character of germanium, and is pretty much always a cool addition to a build like a Big Muff.

Other simple tweaks are also much easier to do when you’re building the circuit from the ground up. Frequency response can often drastically adjusted with tweaks to just a few values in the tone stack if there is one, or the in-line filtering stages if there isn’t. The Big Muff is again a good example – don’t like the infamous midrange scoop? Change the values of a couple of resistors and capacitors, and you can flatten it out or give it a boost instead.

With all of these minor tweaks, it’s easy to put extra circuit controls on a switch for extra flexibility – I’ve built a couple of FZ-2 circuits, and found that I don’t always want an upper-octave sound – putting a switch that breaks the signal on one side of the rectification lets you toggle it, giving a whole new set of sounds to an already multi-mode circuit. The same goes for clipping diodes, tone stacks and extra circuits. For example, you can experiment with adding in a boost circuit before, after or even during the main effect signal path for extra punch and saturation.

And, of course, you have the all-important transistors – these are the beating heart of the fuzz sound – more often than not, all of the distortion in a fuzz comes from overloading a series of transistors far beyond their usual sonic limits. This means that finding unique, weird ones can lead to a totally unique and incredible sound. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the humble 2N5088, but the unpredictable, unstable nature of germanium is hard to replicate. And, for multi-transistor circuits, you can always take the hybrid approach to get the best of both worlds!

Should you never buy a fuzz again?

Image: Cristian Storto / Getty

Obviously, building your own fuzz pedals is great fun. But isn’t always the best option. The parts of the DIY world that are the most accessible tend to focus on what’s already been done, and at some point, it’s good to see what new ideas other builders bring to the table – maybe just to inspire your own playing, or maybe to give you a few ideas about your next fuzz pedal build.

Of course, there’s also the rabbit hole aspect of it all – like any hobby, building fuzzes can draw you in whirlpool deep alarmingly quickly – before you know it, you’ll have setup a search alert for an array of new-old-stock germanium transistors, your desk will be overwhelmed by half-populated PCBs and you’ll be dreaming about ideal bias voltages for your next build…

So, you may be just fine with accepting the sounds of an off-the-shelf pedal. But, guitarists have never really been able to be normal about effects, especially not fuzzes – why not join the ranks of many builders before you, and get tinkering?

See StewMac’s pedal-building resources here.

The post Are you better off building your own fuzz pedal? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Paul Reed Smith of PRS Guitars has responded to comments about the brand’s prices, and the ongoing joke that their models are only affordable for those in medicine or dentistry.

Reed Smith was asked directly by a viewer during a Q&A with Andertons why PRS only makes guitars for dentists, and while he laughs it off, he also provides an explanation behind some of their more high-end model price points, and brings one of their more affordable models into the conversation.

• READ MORE: PRS Silver Sky x Land Rover Defender: an unlikely collaboration that goes kinda hard

The question is asked right at the start of the Q&A, with Reed Smith responding (via Guitar World), “I didn’t know Carlos Santana and John Mayer were dentists,” pointing to two of the brand’s signature artists. “The question implies that only dentists and doctors buy the guitars. It’s just not true anymore.”

Reed Smith goes on to make reference to the SE Silver Sky to back up his point. The guitar, launched in 2022, sits around the £800 price point. It scored a 9/10 in our review at launch, and was even the best-selling guitar on Reverb from its release until 2024, when it was dethroned by the Fender Player Telecaster.

“I mean, there was a time in the late ’80s [when] maybe that was true, but Sweetwater did a thing: the most expensive guitars. We weren’t in the first 10. We’ve done everything in our power to make the SEs affordable,” he adds.

“These S2s are really affordable. Look, you can say that to some people, a Private Stock’s not affordable [priced at $8,000 – $14,000], but that’s an awful lot of time and energy and skill level for what we charge for them. So I’m okay with it.”

To watch the full Q&A, including discussions around the never-ending tonewood debate, you can check out the video below:

And speaking of tone, Reed Smith has even explored how hardware impacts a guitar’s overall sound. In a 2025 YouTube video for PRS’ Rules Of Tone series, he said: “In a lot of the past videos, I’ve stated that whatever the guitar string touches is God.

“To exaggerate that, if the bridge is made of rubber, the nut is made of rubber, and the tuning peg is made of rubber, the guitar is not going to have the kind of high-end that it would have if these things were made out of metal.”

Learn more about PRS Guitars.

The post Are PRS Guitars priced so highly that only “dentists and doctors” can afford them? Paul Reed Smith responds: “We’ve done everything in our power to make the SEs affordable” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The 1970s saw serious rock and roll excess, with many of the top bands at the time indulging heavily in alcohol and hard drugs. One of these bands was Black Sabbath…

But they weren’t the only ones. Apparently, when Sabbath and Eagles were recording their respective albums, Technical Ecstasy and Hotel California at adjacent studios at Miami’s Criteria in 1976, Sabbath entered the Eagles recording room to find the faders “so clogged with cocaine they wouldn’t move”.

And in a recent interview with Classic Rock, Tony Iommi explains how the drug habit of those around him didn’t cease even on certain special days…

• READ MORE: Guitar’s tectonic plates have shifted: self-professed tube purist Joe Bonamassa has released a Tone Master amp with Fender

Sabbath’s drug habits reportedly escalated when they headed to America in the early ‘70s. The band reportedly racked up a £55,000 cocaine bill while recording their fourth album, Vol. 4 in 1972.

But those habits came home with them, and were evident when Tony Iommi married his first wife, Susan, in November 1973.

As the story goes, his mother-in-law-to-be began to wonder why Iommi’s friends kept disappearing from the church during the wedding day.

“They were round the back sniffing and snorting!” Iommi laughs. “America changed us.”

In other news, Tony Iommi recently revealed the gruesome truth of what happens if he plays guitar without his prosthetic fingertips, which he wears after an accident decades ago which saw him lose the tops of two of his fingers.

“One time, years ago, when it did come off, I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger. There was blood all over the place!” he recalled.

Tony Iommi is set to release his first solo album in 21 years, From the Dark, later this month. Check out its lead single, World Alone, below:

The post “They were round the back sniffing and snorting”: The time Tony Iommi’s mother-in-law-to-be became suspicious after seeing his friends disappear during his wedding day appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$329/£289, boss.info

You don’t see a lot of occasional tables these days, do you? You know the type, the nest of side tables that would sit unmolested at the corner of an elderly relative’s living room until such a time as they had company over and required a wobbly edifice to place extraneous drinks and biscuits onto.

• READ MORE: Positive Grid Spark Pedal review: The Spark ecosystem welcomes another box of tricks

Correlation doesn’t mean causation, of course, but there can be no doubt that the decline in occasional tables is inversely proportional to the rise of the occasional effects pedal. Back in the dark mists of the 2010s, Line 6 came out with the M5, and it was in many ways the original occasional pedal. Inside its relatively compact package, the M9 and then smaller M5 offered a whole bunch of effects that you might only need now and then in one package designed to sit in the middle of your pedalboard ready to be anything you needed it to be at a moment’s notice.

Despite being a verifiably great idea, in the following years we saw relatively few competitors to the M9, but that has changed recently. Now the likes of TC Electronic and Zoom offer compact multi-effects units, while at the other end of the market the likes of Eventide and Hologram Electronics bring a boutique sheen to proceedings. Even Line 6 itself got back into the party with the impressive HX One a few years back.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

Now it’s Boss’s turn. Though the company already has the PX-1 Plugout FX as a compact multi-effects unit, its unique approach to being a literal stompbox library (not to mention its microtransaction-based library) means it doesn’t really fit the bill. The EX-4, on the other hand, offers a whole smorgasbord of sounds in a compact chassis, for a very reasonable price.

What is it?

In essence, the EX-4 crams 120 onboard effects, mainly from Boss’s own enviable back catalogue, crammed into the rugged and compact (but not that compact) form factor of Boss’s 200 series enclosure.

You can run up to four of these effects simultaneously, so if you’ve ever fancied running four shimmer reverbs into each other just to see what happens, you’re in luck here. You can also control the routing options of said four effects, so you can run them either in old-fashioned serial, as two separate serial chains made up of one, two or three pedals each, or using three different types of parallel routing.

The sounds here are mainly focused on guitar, but there are a handy helping of bass options too, and the effects on board run the gamut from the standard to the downright weird. So yes you’ll find the usual suspects of overdrive, distortion, reverb, et al in various common Boss and non-Boss flavours, but that’s not all. Delve into the menu and you’ll find the likes of the Slow Gear, Super Feedbacker and Slicer pedals recreated here, but also some really esoteric flavours like the Defretter (for guitar and bass), the Humaniser and the guitar synth.

As you would well expect for a pedal with this much going on, there are 128 user presets to go with the 128 factory ones. All of this is controlled by a pair of footswitches that can either be used to switch up and down through the presets or, in manual mode, the two switches can be used to turn two of the effects in the bank on and off by default. They can also be configured to control master bypass, tap tempo and even individual parameter control. Coloured lights around each switch also make it easy to see at a glance what the switch is currently up to.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

There’s plenty of onboard control for the pedal courtesy of five rotary controls, plus a 2.4-inch full-colour screen that shows you your current preset plus the four effects you have in that chain. You can turn these effects on using four FX buttons on the edges of the control panel, all of which handily light up in the colour of the effect that is currently in its bank. Editing the effect in question is a job for the rotary knobs, with the large knobs up top controlling the bank and the effect type, while the three smaller knobs tweak parameters contextually based on what’s above them. All the knobs also have a secondary click function that is represented on the second line of context-dependent info on the screen.

But that’s not all – in addition to tweaking all the effect types manually, the EX-4 also has a new feature called ‘Gear Suite’ that’s accessed by a dedicated small button on the top left. For each effect type that you select, if you hit the Gear Suite button, you’ll be presented with 10 factory and user presets for each individual effect type, meaning that you can not only streamline your auditioning process by zeroing in on some classic sounds, but it also means you can then save those presets and use them in any of your global presets. It’s presets within presets, basically – Preset-ception?

All these sounds come complete with a useful amount of IO to go with it – you get stereo ins and outs (half of which can double as effects send and return) plus a control for an external footswitch or effects pedal. There’s also a USB-C for software updates and – mercifully given the breadth and depth of tweakability at play here – full MIDI control, should that be your particular kink.

Power comes courtesy of an included Boss PSU, but should you be living in 2026 and want to power this off your own pedalboard power supply, you’ll need to make sure you have at least 300mA of juice on tap.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

Usability and build quality

When AI goes full Skynet and wipes humanity out sometime in the near future, there’s a fair bet that alongside Keith Richards and cockroaches, Boss pedals will be the effect du jour of whatever guitar-playing ghouls occupy the wasteland in our absence. Now, the 200 series might not have the same indestructible reassurance of the trusty Compact Pedal, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a serious bit of hardware – all bent powder-coated steel and sharp angles.

The footswitches are rugged, soft-click affairs – they’re nicely spaced out but rather small compared to the norm. Plenty will naturally lean towards footswitch toppers here, but be aware that this is likely to obscure the contextual LEDs around the switches themselves… that’s presumably what Boss’s own transparent toppers are meant to get around.

The rotary switches are plastic rather than metal, but they are stepped rather than smooth travelling. This feels rather satisfying, and it definitely makes it easier to be precise with your tweaking, but there is a flipside. Because each click represents a single notch on the scale, given that many of the parameter values are out of 100, making a significant adjustment to that takes many more twists of a knob than is wholly enjoyable. I can understand the rationale for why Boss did it this way, however; the alternative would be to have a knob that wasn’t sensitive enough for precise adjustment.

The colour LCD screen is bright, crisp and clear – 2.4 inches doesn’t look great on paper, but all the text is rendered clearly – it’s certainly an improvement on the HX One’s tiny little screen.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

That text is still pretty small, mind you – you’re definitely going to want to get your presets sorted before a show because you’ll need the reading glasses/a pair of binoculars to make out the text on a dark stage in the heat of battle. This is unquestionably the nature of the beast with compact multi-effects units, however, and the preset name and number itself is rendered in large, legible type, while the various contextual coloured LEDs also make things much easier to navigate on the fly.

The problem that you often encounter with compact multi-effects units is how you include as much tweakability and deep-editing as the user will want without making the top of the pedal look like the control console at Abbey Road. Too often with compact pedal makers, especially those on the boutique side of things, they try to squeeze too much into too few controls, making any kind of editing a chore, and leaving you with the suspicion that the designers assume most people will be using MIDI to control the thing anyway.

Boss has sensibly opted for a middle ground in all this – the controls are relatively spartan and clearly labelled, but the contextual nature of those three central knobs means that you can do a huge amount of tone sculpting right there on the pedal.

I am very much a Guy Who Does Not Like Menus, so it really does say a lot that within a few minutes, without even looking at the quick start guide, I worked out how to do pretty much everything I wanted to do – from preset saving to parameter tweaking to signal path adjustment. For a pedal with a whole lot going on, it really is very easy to use.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

Sounds

The reason that you’ll find a Boss pedal or two on practically every guitar player’s ’board is that for nearly 50 years now the company has been a byword for great effects sounds, and that’s very much in evidence across the broad span of tones on offer here.

It is a little frustrating that some classic Boss stompboxes are included here by name – the Metal Zone, the Turbo Overdrive, the Slow Gear, the Space Echo – while others are broken up into various generic modes that, while perhaps making sense on a bigger workstation like the GT-1000, feel a bit overly granular for a pedal of this type. Perhaps this is done to not tread too heavily on the toes of the polarising PX-1 Plugout FX pedal, which offers dedicated replications of individual Boss stompboxes, several of which have to be purchased separately.

This is a very different beast to the PX-1, and I get that, but it’s still annoying to me that I can’t simply select the DM-2 when I want a DM-2 sound, though, y’know?

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

The sounds themselves are ace, however – especially the ones that are directly derived from Boss pedals. Indeed, A/Bing them alongside their original pedal-based equivalents, it’s hard to find much difference – my Super Overdrive, DS-1 and CE-2 were pretty much indistinguishable with the EX-4 appropriately dialled in, and running the Slow Gear emulation on the PX-1 proved similarly indistinguishable.

What you are sacrificing in the quest for this cornucopia of sonic variety is the sheer sonic quality you might find in high-end separate effects or the very top end of the modelling world. You’re not going to get the same ethereal bliss you’ll find in a Strymon BigSky from the shimmer reverb mode here, nor will the glitch delay offer the sort of juddery brilliance of a Chase Bliss pedal.

But as Yngwie likes to remind anyone in earshot – less isn’t more: more is more. And in that regard, you cannot really fault the offering here – the ability to run four effects simultaneously, combined with the myriad routing and external and internal switching options, really is pretty compelling. It elevates this pedal above the utility Swiss Army Knife pedal into something that you can legitimately build your rig around.

Forget replacing one pedal on your ’board; I could easily see a world where a lot of guitar players could scale down to a mini pedalboard containing an EX-4 with maybe a tuner and a few choice dirt boxes, and still be able to cover pretty much any base in a cover band or function gig.

As with any multi-effects pedal, the question of where it goes on a larger board is a more philosophical one. The send and return sockets do increase your flexibility there for sure, but there are still likely to be signal chain compromises, especially if you’re using all for sound banks.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

Should I buy one?

There are pedals out there that offer more sounds in a similarly-sized package – the HX One, for example – and you can definitely argue that using a sound engine from an eight-year-old pedal is not exactly that exciting.

But with respect to the good folk at Boss, they haven’t sold tens of millions of pedals because they sound way better than everyone else. Some Boss pedals are unimpeachable, sure, but mainly people love Boss because they are affordable, they sound good, and they don’t let you down. In all three senses, the EX-4 ticks those boxes, and it would be a really keen ear who would notice the lack of premium sonic fidelity in a live environment.

The ability to run four sounds at once in such a small format is also a pretty compelling offering, especially if you’re a guitarist who likes to run fast and light when it comes to pedalboards – far more than just a one-shot occasional pedal, it could be the inspiration for downsizers to finally ditch their two-row ’boards.

At just over $300, the Ex-4 is also an impressive value proposition, and its straightforward and sensible control layout also means it shouldn’t scare off those of us who get queasy at the thought of menu diving. The impressive I/O (including the internal routing options) make the issue of where it sits on your board more straightforward too – and if you’re hooking it up to a MIDI switcher, those options are only further enhanced.

In many ways, this is the pedal that I think a lot of people perhaps imagined or assumed the rather polarising Boss PX-1 would be when it was launched. And I do wonder if the EX-4 had come out first, would people have been a lot less hostile to the Plugout FX’s stated goal as an expandable library of classic and rare Boss effects? We’ll never know now, but it’s very easy to see the Effects Expander reaching a much wider audience – as a multi-function utility pedal on bigger ’boards, or as a force multiplier for compact builds, this is a really compelling proposition.

Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com

Alternatives

If you want more of an all-in-one solution, the Boss GT-1000CORE ($659/£649) offers more sounds and AIRD-powered amp simulation. The obvious elephant in the room is of course Line 6’s HX One ($299/£229), which offers more effects to choose from, but with the limit of just being able to use one at a time.

The affordable and even more compact TC Electronic Plethora X1 ($155/£119) offers a choice of seven different effects, but with the ability to use two at once, and the flexibility to load TonePrint presets onto there as well as your own. The sounds might not be up to the standards of Boss or Line 6, but the Valeton GP-50 ($119/£99) offers a huge array of effects and amps in a tiny package for very little cash.

The post Boss EX-4 Effects Expander review – a force multiplier for compact pedalboards appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

You’ve heard of industry plants… but who exactly is planting these curated artists? While overnight success stories once masqueraded as calculated record label marketing, the notion of an ‘industry plant’ has recently become far more sinister. Because what if the CIA are manipulating the charts in an attempt to psychologically control audiences en masse? What if a one-hit wonder is infused with political propaganda, designed to infect our minds and dull our senses?

… is what someone crazy might believe. Unfortunately, plenty of innocent up-and-coming bands have been sucked into the whirlwind of such conspiracies – with potentially the biggest name to come under fire being Geese.

• READ MORE: These limited 10th anniversary Boss Katanas look so cool they might make me switch back from in-the-box amp sims

Back in April, the indie rock unit were labelled a ‘psyop’ (shorthand for a ‘psychological operation’ used in the military when referring to psychological warfare) in an article by Wired. The piece was inspired by an original Substack article written by singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb, entitled Fake Fans, which looked into Geese’s marketing agency, Chaotic Good. In it, McLamb critiqued how the company used manipulative marketing strategies, like posting ‘fan edits’ across TikTok to curate a ‘Fake Fandom’ before any real fandom had formed.

Now, Geese have finally addressed the entire fiasco. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, bassist Dominic Digesu has one thing to say to anyone genuinely believing they’re a ‘psyop’: “Just come to the show, and fucking tell me how many bots you see!”

If you’re wondering, Geese are regularly selling out pretty big shows. In September, they sold out two nights at Queens’ 13,000 capacity Forest Hills Stadium. So it does without saying that there are plenty of flesh-and-blood Geese fans out there.

Nonetheless, the band seem pretty worn down by the discourse. However, they’re keen to clear the air and assert their genuine appeal. Frontman Cameron Winter even chimes in, acknowledging how people might believe the band were an industry plant; when he saw all the praise rolling in, he started to doubt whether the attention was genuine or not.

For a moment, he believed that the band’s record label was paying for bots to stream their music and post about them. “I thought the same thing, I really did,” he admits. “That seemed like a reasonable explanation. We were just like, ‘Oh my god the whole fucking thing is fake’. We were having a meltdown.”

It got so bad that the band even chased down their label to find out what was the truth. “We marched up to our label over email, the relevant team members, like ‘how long have all our fuckin’ fans been fake, you sons of bitches?’” Winter says.

In the end, it turns out that no bots were being used – just a really dodgy, “shitty” marketing technique which involved Chaotic Good flooding TikTok with videos every day. “We learned that we should shot up to Zoom meetings about how our record’s going to be advertised,” the frontman admits. “It wasn’t comments or fake fans or bots or anything. It was low-effort TikTok posts that were used to boost the algorithm.”

In spite of the bad press, Geese are a very real band from Brooklyn. If you’ve got a second, you can give their last album, Getting Killed, a listen – because, if their fans are all robots, it’d be nice for them to win over a few human listeners.

The post “Come to the show and f**king tell me how many bots you see”: Geese clap back at claims their popularity is a “psyop” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

While the issue of artificially ageing a guitar is one that still bitterly divides guitar players, even the most dedicated home-relicer would probably draw the line at throwing a guitar on the fire to give it an authentically battered patina.

• READ MORE: Fake blood stains, body glitter and chainmail rash: Castle Rat’s Riley Pinkerton shows off her Gibson SGs

Thankfully for rising indie-rock guitarist Greg Freeman, that work had inadvertently been done for him by the time he came to snag his favourite Gibson SG off Craigslist for a bargain price – the guitar had been “burned to a crisp” in a house fire, and it still wears the scars today.

“My friend Garrett, who plays bass in my band, found it on Craigslist in Maine for like, $400 or something,” he told us in the latest episode of My Guitars & Me. “It was in a house fire: that’s why it looks way older than it is, I guess. It kind of immediately relic’d the whole thing. The pickguard is literally melted, and that wear looks about 70 years old.

Despite its heavy battle scars, the guitar has become Freeman’s number one as he wrote and recorded sensational new album, All Set The Bone. “It plays really great and has big thick neck and just feels like a proper SG,” he explains. “Some of them don’t really feel right to me, but this one is just great.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Freeman shares his love of an 80s Tokai Breezysound that he thinks is as good as any Fender equivalent, and also explains why he stopped buying and using vintage guitars: “I just play too hard to be able to play a vintage Mustang or something,” he explains. “Like it’s just not going to be in tune. So, I think that’s why I like guitars from the 90s and 2000s. It’s has the age, but can kind of put up with a lot.”

Get up close and personal with the guitars that have guided the musical journey of some of the guitar world’s biggest names by watching every episode of the Guitar.com Originals series, My Guitars & Me.

Greg Freeman’s new album, All Set The Bone, is out now.

The post Greg Freeman’s favourite guitar was in a house fire: “it was burned to a crisp” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Digital amp modelling has come a long way – especially for vintage gear head Joe Bonamassa to count himself a convert. Earlier this year, the bluesman made the surprise announcement that he’d been “beta testing” a Fender Tone Master in his live rig. 

He’s so convinced by the technology, in fact, that he’s just become the first person ever to attach his name to Fender’s much-loved line of digital modelling amps.

Yep, the Tone Master ’59 Twin-Amp JB Edition has officially arrived, and it faithfully – digitally – recreates the tone of Fender’s 5F8-A tweed Twin circuit, and is voiced after Bonamassa’s own prized late-’50s amps.

• READ MORE: These limited 10th anniversary Boss Katanas look so cool they might make me switch back from in-the-box amp sims

At the core of the amp are a pair of custom-designed lightweight 12” Celestion JB Neodymium speakers, which are said to “capture the warmth, punch and articulation of Joe’s touring rig while reducing overall weight”.

As any tube amp aficionado will know, the best tone often comes at ever-so-slightly antisocial volumes. Fortunately, Joe Bonamassa’s new Tone Master comes equipped with a Stage-to-Home power control, which offers players six settings: full power, plus five attenuated settings. This makes the classic tweed Twin tone accessible at any volume.

Credit: Fender

Elsewhere, the top panel features a convolution spring reverb and an effects loop for time-based effects, while the rear panel sports a “Vintage Tight” switch for “enhanced low end response”.

In terms of connectivity, the amp features a balanced XLR line output with three onboard cabinet impulse responses, as well as full customisable speaker IRs via the Tone Master IR Manager app.

The guitarist acknowledges that he’s done a U-turn over the last few years in terms of his attitude to digital gear. It’s good to be open-minded, we say!

“I wanted to hate it,” says Joe Bonamassa. “We’re all in agreement that this amp was tighter, punchier, and better. I never thought I’d see in my lifetime the fact that I’d be sitting next to a digital amp. Sound makes you play. Sound inspires you to play. You just need to know how to unlock the sound you hear in your head and get it out.”

“Joe Bonamassa is one of the world’s foremost authorities on vintage amplifiers, and he knows these original Twins as well as anyone,” adds Max Gutnik, Chief Product Officer at Fender Electronics & Digital.

Credit: Fender

“For someone with Joe’s ears, experience and deep commitment to vintage tube amps to choose a digital Fender, and say it sounds even better than the original, is a real inflection point for our industry. It demonstrates just how far this technology has come and, more importantly, the extraordinary accuracy with which Fender can now recreate the sound, feel and response of our most iconic amplifiers. That’s what Tone Master is all about: preserving everything players love about these legendary amps while making them more useful for the way musicians play today.”

The Tone Master ‘59 Twin Amp JB Edition is available now, priced at $1,999.99 / £1,789 / €2,099.

Head to Fender to learn more.

The post Guitar’s tectonic plates have shifted: self-professed tube purist Joe Bonamassa has released a Tone Master amp with Fender appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Has it been 10 years already since Boss launched the Katana series? 

First unveiled in 2016, the Katana range is equipped with Boss’s Tube Logic sound design, which recreates the sound and responsiveness of classic tube amps in a digital solid-state design. Their pro-quality sound and power combined with ultra-affordable price tags are to thank for the fact the series has sold over 1.5 million units in the past 10 years. The lineup is currently in its third generation, which arrived in 2024.

And now, a decade after the series first landed, Boss is celebrating in style with a limited-edition drop of 10th Anniversary Katanas – outfitted in stunning blue flame maple cabinetry.

• READ MORE: Why guitar frets are made of different materials – and how it has a huge impact on your playing experience

Available exclusively at Roland’s flagship stores in New York City, London and Tokyo, the lineup comprises special anniversary versions of the Katana Artist Gen 3, Katana Artist Head Gen 3, and Katana Cabinet 212 Waza, all trading their distinctive all-black colourways for a luxurious high-gloss blue.

Credit: Boss

They command slightly higher price tags than their regular-line counterparts with the Artist Gen 3 clocking in at £1,100, the Artist Head Gen 3 at £846, and the Cabinet 212 Waza also at £846.

The changes on these limited 10th Anniversary amps are purely aesthetic, and they otherwise feature the same spec sheets as the regular-line Katanas, including tube-like responsiveness, multiple onboard amp models, a suite of onboard effects, the ability to recall tone settings and loads more.

You can learn more about the 10th Anniversary Katanas at Boss.

Credit: Boss

The post These limited 10th anniversary Boss Katanas look so cool they might make me switch back from in-the-box amp sims appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Frets are the most abused metal on your guitar. Every note you play grinds a steel string into them. Every bend drags that string sideways across the crown. Eventually, the string wins, and you’re looking at divots, buzzing, and you’ll be in need of some maintenance. What that timeline looks like depends almost entirely on what your frets are made of.

• READ MORE: Does tonewood really matter? This is how the wood your guitar’s made of affects the sound

I’ve installed, leveled, and crowned a lot of frets in my time – both on my own builds and doing repair work for others. Over that time, I’ve worked with the three most common materials you’ll find used for guitar fretwire – nickel-silver, stainless steel and the lesser-seen EVO Gold. Each one has its pros and cons, but what’s the difference, and which one should you choose? Well, let’s discuss…

Image: Adam Gasson

Nickel-silver is the default for a reason

Before we start, a bit of mythbusting – nickel-silver actually contains no silver. The standard alloy is 18 per cent nickel, roughly 65 per cent copper, and the rest zinc. The nickel gives it that silvery color, which is how the name stuck. You’ll also see this alloy referred to as German silver or even maillechort – but regardless, there’s no actual precious metal here!

Nickel-silver is the wire on the overwhelming majority of guitars ever built. Most guitar builders use it, including Fender and Gibson. On the Vickers hardness scale, quality 18 percent nickel-silver wire from a maker like Jescar comes in around 200 HV. There’s also a softer 12 percent nickel version that shows up on some vintage-style wire, and it wears noticeably faster.

From a builder and tech perspective, nickel-silver is great to work with. It cuts clean with standard end nippers, fret ends dress quickly, and crowning files glide through it. A full refret in nickel-silver is a predictable job, which is part of why it’s the cheapest option at any repair shop.

The trade-off is the whole reason this article exists: it’s comparatively pretty soft and wears quickly. Play a nickel-silver fretted guitar hard for a few years and you’ll see flat spots and string divots, especially under the plain strings, which act like tiny round files. A gigging player might need a level and crown every couple of years and a full refret after two or three of those. There’s also the tone argument. Plenty of players insist nickel-silver sounds warmer and rounder than harder wire, but that really is in the ear of the beholder.

Image: Adam Gasson

Stainless steel is buy once, cry once

Stainless fret wire sits around 300 HV, roughly 50 percent harder than standard nickel-silver, with a tighter grain structure. In practical terms, your strings will die of old age long before they leave a mark on these frets. A properly installed stainless refret is close to a lifetime job for most players. Vigier has built guitars with stainless frets for decades, and companies like Music Man and Suhr now spec them across much of their lineups. Fender’s American Ultra guitars also spec stainless steel frets as standard.

Stainless is slick, so from a feel standpoint, bends glide a bit smoother, and there’s none of that faint gritty friction you feel on worn nickel-silver. Some players love it immediately. Others find it almost too slippery, like the string is skating.

Now the downside, and I say this as someone who has cursed through several stainless refrets: this material fights you. Cheap nippers will chip before the wire does. Files load up and dull fast. Crowning takes longer, polishing takes longer, and everything about the job eats consumables.

This is why shops charge a premium for stainless refrets, sometimes a substantial one. They’re not gouging you. They’re just having to replace their tools more often, and frankly, files can be expensive when you’re doing fret jobs every other day.

As far as tone goes, the theory says harder material reflects more string energy and sounds brighter. Some players swear they hear it. In my experience, the difference is smaller than the difference between two sets of strings. What you’re really buying is wear resistance and that slick bending feel.

Image: Adam Gasson

EVO Gold is the hard-to-find compromise

EVO Gold was Jescar’s answer to the middle ground. It’s a nickel-free copper alloy with titanium, originally developed for eyeglass frames for people with nickel allergies, and it lands at 250 HV, right between nickel-silver and stainless. The gold color isn’t plating. That’s the alloy itself, all the way through, so it never wears to a different color underneath.

On the bench, EVO behaves closer to stainless than its hardness number suggests, but it’s meaningfully kinder to tools. It cuts with a sharper snap than nickel-silver, seats well, and crowns without destroying files.

For a repair tech, it’s the best of the three to work with relative to the longevity it delivers. For a player, it wears far slower than nickel-silver, bends smoothly, and the hypoallergenic angle is a genuine benefit for the minority of players whose fingertips react to nickel.

The drawback here is availability. Jescar has confirmed that the supplier of the proprietary alloy stopped producing it, and that whatever wire remains in the supply chain is all there will ever be. The company still makes its nickel-silver and stainless lines, but genuine EVO Gold is done.

Other manufacturers sell gold-colored wire, including StewMac, whose version is a C425 copper alloy, but it isn’t the same material and doesn’t test as hard. If you find some real EVO in your chosen size and you want it, buy it now. I’ve already hoarded my stash!

Image: Adam Gasson

So which fretwire should I use?

If you’re keeping a vintage or collectible guitar original, matching the original spec matters for value, and a guitar that gets played a few hours a week will run for many years between fret jobs anyway.

If you play hard, bend a lot, or gig constantly, get stainless on your workhorse and stop thinking about frets forever. Pay the upcharge once. It’s cheaper than three nickel-silver refrets over the life of the instrument.

EVO Gold made the most sense as a factory spec and a middle option, and it looked fantastic against gold hardware. With the alloy gone, it’s becoming a curiosity. If your guitar already has it, enjoy it. Those frets will outlast most of the guitar they’re installed in.

One last thing: material matters less than the fretwork itself. A flawless level and crown on soft nickel-silver plays better than a sloppy stainless job every single time. Choose your material, but choose your tech more carefully!

The post Why guitar frets are made of different materials – and how it has a huge impact on your playing experience appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If there’s a story that could make any guitarist wince, it’s what happened to a priceless Martin acoustic guitar on the set of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember the scene when Kurt Russell’s character, John “the Hangman” Ruth”, becomes irked by Jennifer Jason Leigh’s “Crazy” Daisy Domergue playing the Australian folk ballad Jim Jones at Botany Bay, and proceeds to snatch the guitar from her hands and smash it.

The filmmakers arranged to borrow an authentic 1870s acoustic guitar from Martin so that Leigh could play a period-correct instrument onscreen, and the original plan was, naturally, for a little bit of screenplay sleight of hand, and for a replica to be the one that was smashed up. Only thing is, communication broke down, and the real 150-year-old Martin was obliterated instead.

• READ MORE: Is guitar dead? Zakk Wylde doesn’t think so: “What rock do you live under?!”

But was the unfortunate incident quite the accident the official story has us believe? Dick Boak, former Martin in-house historian and a veteran of the company’s A&R department, speculates that Quentin Tarantino might have hatched a plan to get the most authentic reaction possible out of Jennifer Jason Leigh.

“Tarantino filmed it at night on purpose so that the guitar tech wouldn’t be there,” he says in a new interview with Gear Gab Podcast with Eric Dahl. “He’d gone home, and they never brought the papier-mâché guitars out. They just had the regular guitar.

“And she played her little thing, and Kurt Russell grabbed it out of her hands. And Tarantino wanted to get the genuine reaction out of her. And yeah, he did, because the reaction – I mean, I’ll never forget it, you know, the reaction on her face and everything from that.”

The incident no doubt led to some serious distress at Martin HQ: “I was so upset,” Boak remembers. “I thought maybe I would even get fired over this.”

Then-Martin CEO Chris Martin saw the upside, though, Boak continues. “He was terrific. He said, ‘It’s fantastic. It’s going to be in a famous movie. The publicity value in the movie is greater than the guitar could ever be.”

The remains of the guitar were later displayed at the Martin booth at the 2024 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California.

Back in 2024, Kurt Russell recounted smashing the priceless 150-year-old Martin on the set of The Hateful Eight: “Jennifer had a number of guitars to work on this song that she was going to sing. 

“The one particular guitar that she liked, I guess, was this Martin,” he said. “Nobody ever said that it was 145 years old at the time. It was a Martin, and I remember somebody at the thing saying, ‘I think it’s worth about $15,000.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’”

“Then comes the day to shoot it,” he continued. “I knew that she’d been working on this one guitar, and because I’ve done a thousand shows, I couldn’t even imagine that they were going to be using the one guitar that she was going to be playing, not that it was a priceless Martin guitar. Because it wasn’t. Nobody said that. Nobody made that claim.

“But when we did the take, you can even see it. I kind of give it an extra beat, and nothing. I go ahead and smash the guitar. I can tell – when I grab her and sit her down, I can tell she’s not happy about this. It’s like: Something’s wrong. So as soon as it’s over, I say, ‘Tell me that’s not the guitar you’ve been practicing with,’ and she [nods].”

The post Did an Oscar-winning film director destroy a priceless 1800s Martin guitar on purpose?: “Tarantino filmed it at night on purpose so that the guitar tech wouldn’t be there” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

With ABBA Voyage contributing billions to the UK economy, it’s clear that digital concerts have plenty of appeal. Hell, even Kiss are continuing their legacy in digital form, penning in an avatar-led 2027 tour following their 2023 retirement. However, Brian May isn’t keen to digitise Queen just yet – especially if the process involved AI.

Speaking to The Times, May confirms that he never wants to tour again. He decided 18 months ago, prompted by the death of a close family friend. “I said to my tour manager, ‘I’ll just nip home for a few days and come back’, and she looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You know you can’t do that’,” he recalls. “I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom.”

• READ MORE: Tony Iommi reveals the gruesome truth of what happens if he plays guitar without his finger prosthetics: “I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger”

However, May doesn’t want his retirement from touring to mean the end of Queen. In fact, May and dummer Roger Taylor are interested in preserving the magic of Queen in some alternative live experience. Taylor notes that him and May “want to do something fairly revolutionary”, pointing to how ABBA’s ABBA Voyage experience changed the game.

“Not as Abba did, but along those lines,” May chimes in to clarify. “Last year I went to the Las Vegas Sphere. My juices started flowing and I sketched out a whole Queen show. I think an immersive experience is still on the cards and it could conquer time and space…”

Sounds marvellous, right? Unfortunately, May isn’t keen to set the ball rolling on anything too ambitious, as his current vision seems impossible without the aid of AI – something he is strongly against. “Currently you can’t make it without AI and I have serious misgivings about that,” he emphasises.

The Times article even reveals that May even pulled the plug on a music video last month after find out the directors had used AI. The track in question is My Angels Are Calling, a Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour track he and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons featured on.

As a result of the firing, the current video is pretty simple, primarily shot on green screen, but the alternative use of AI was not an option for May. “Data centres are a massive evil and have to be fought,” the guitarist says.

“My message to Andy Burnham [the UK Prime Minister] is clear: stop it now before it’s too late. It’s trashing our future. We all ‘like’ AI. It helps us write emails. It’s even saved a few lives. But the harm it is bringing to the world is immense.”

The post Brian May says that he’s planned an immersive ABBA-style Queen show, but there’s one big reason it won’t happen: “I have serious misgivings about that” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Despite chopping his fingertips off in 1965, Tony Iommi has never let his handicap get in his way of playing guitar. With a pair of prosthetic fingers, Iommi has carved out an entire legacy in Black Sabbath, and he’s even dropping his first solo record in 21 years, From the Dark, later this month. However, take away the prosthetics, and things would turn sour pretty quickly.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Iommi admits that he “couldn’t get through a gig” if he ever lost his prosthetic fingertips before going on stage. “I couldn’t touch the strings with those fingers – the bone is right under the skin,” he explains. “One time, years ago, when it did come off, I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger.”

• READ MORE: Parliament-Funkadelic legend Michael Hampton on the secrets of funk guitar, and playing a 10-string BC Rich

This slice was no normal cut, however… instead, it was like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath up on stage. “There was blood all over the place!” Iommi recalls.

Over the years, Iommi has refined his fingertip regime – explaining that he puts tape on his chopped fingers, adds glue, then pushes his prosthetic finger into place – however, accidents can happen. “They used to fall off, and it was a bloody pain,” he says.

And he doesn’t just mean the aforementioned bloodbaths; when you’re in a messy green room, looking for a pair of tiny fingertips can feel like hunting for a needle in a haystack. “Trying to find them… ‘Where is it? It’s on the floor somewhere!’” he laughingly remembers.

Of course, he has prepared himself if he ever loses his fingertips and has no spares. “I can play with the two other fingers,” he explains. “I learned to use my little finger in the early days because I had to.”

He also reveals that he has to “keep the fingertips in shape” while on the road. “I chance the leather parts every couple of weeks, and it’s a bit of a hassle, but I’ve got used to it,” he says.

Speaking to Classic Rock last month, Iommi also revealed that his fingertips are  sent to him as part of an entire rubber arm. “I’ve asked them: ‘Why not just send a hand?’ But apparently they can’t do that,” he revealed.

“They sometimes send me five arms at a time. So I chop the fingers off and throw the arms in the bin,” he admits. “The dustmen must be thinking: ‘What the bloody hell’s going on here? Has he bumped someone off?’”

From the Dark is out 23 October, and is available to pre-order.

The post Tony Iommi reveals the gruesome truth of what happens if he plays guitar without his finger prosthetics: “I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

€149/$189/£129, t-rex-effects.com

Wouldn’t it be nice if every two-for-one deal turned out to be a three-for-one? This isn’t really possible with chocolate bars, tragically, but it is with guitar pedals: two circuits in one box with separate footswitches means instant access to three sounds: left, right and both at once.

• READ MORE: T-Rex RoomMate D’Luxe review – a trusty all-round reverb pedal is reborn for the modern era

That’s the first appealing feature of the T-Rex FuzzTopia dual dirt machine. The second is that it’s a genuinely compact Danish-built unit from a company with serious pedigree in the world of overdrive and distortion.

What is it?

The FuzzTopia follows the overall design scheme of the TwinBlaze distortion and RoomMate D’Luxe reverb, but with one key difference: it isn’t valve-powered. That immediately knocks 20 per cent off its hipness quotient, but brings one significant bonus in that it can run off a standard 9v power supply.

We’re promised “a meeting point between nostalgia and new sonic ground”, courtesy of high-gain retro fuzz tones on one side and something with a lot more warmth and clarity on the other. And of course, when it comes to stacking gain, high plus low does not equal medium – it equals even higher, sometimes to the point of ear-shredding anarchy…

Image: Adam Gasson

Build quality and usability

For the most part, this is a smartly designed pedal: it’s small enough to be a real space-saver yet the soft-touch footswitches are plenty far apart, the metal enclosure feels rugged, and the knobs are recessed to protect them from your clumsy hooves. But the grey/brown finish is a bit meh, plus it really doesn’t set off the soft blue of the FuzzTopia logo… and if you like the psychedelic yellow swirls of the control panel, remind me never to take you wallpaper shopping.

The controls themselves are easy enough to navigate – each circuit has gain, tone, clean blend and volume, with backgrounds that light up when the relevant channel is engaged – but wouldn’t it have made more sense to have fuzz on the left and distortion on the right, like the footswitches, rather than lining them up in rows?

You also get a push-button on the back for ‘individual/both’ switching – this lets you turn both circuits on and off simultaneously with either footswitch.

Image: Adam Gasson

Sounds

The room is locked down in preparation for hazardous levels of feistiness, but there’s no harm in starting on the lower-gain side with the distortion and blend both set extra-low for almost no dirt at all. And it actually sounds really nice – dare I say it, almost Klon-like. What’s more, it doesn’t get drastically less nice once you start pushing things, heading fast in the direction of Marshall-style drive with the emphasis on those classic biting mids.

Jumping from that to the high-gain circuit delivers something of a shock to the system, just because it’s so much more abrasive – if this really is “retro fuzz” then it’s more gnarly Maestro FZ-1 than purring Tone Bender. The blend knob can tame things to an extent, but sadly the tone control can’t: turning it down softens the midrange but does absolutely nothing with the piercing treble.

The one thing you can do to balance that tone is hit the other footswitch. There’s a huge amount of gain available with both effects running together – and a huge amount of background noise, inevitably – but it’s surprisingly un-chaotic, and that’s because the distortion’s midrange focus does a great job of taking the sting out of the fuzz. Who’d have thought you could make something less raucous by adding more rage?

Image: Adam Gasson

Should I buy one?

The only downside to getting two for the price of one in a stompbox is that you really have to love both halves, otherwise you’re stuck with a passenger. And for me, the left side of the FuzzTopia just doesn’t sound nice enough to earn its place.

However, that is offset by the fact that the other side of the pedal sounds great – and yes, there are some worthy super-powered sounds available with both circuits on together. So while it doesn’t quite live up to that three-for-one potential, this pedal is still a solid twofer.

Alternatives

Why aren’t there more dual dirt pedals with fuzz on one side and overdrive/distortion on the other? The Frantone/Orange-inspired Crazy Tube Circuits Orama (€279/£245/$305) is one, and the rather more extreme Old Blood Noise Endeavors Pardner ($239/£249) is another. See also the Great Eastern FX Co. Focus Fuzz Deluxe (£299/$379), which does a bit of everything.

The post T-Rex FuzzTopia review – an unorthodox combo of raw fuzz and smooth distortion appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Is the guitar and rock music dead? It’s an accusation that’s been levelled quite a bit in the past decade or so. But former Ozzy Osbourne sidekick and Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde reckons there’s nothing to worry about.

In a new interview in the latest issue of Guitar World magazine, the guitarist waxes lyrical on the current generation of players, saying the instrument is very much alive and well.

• READ MORE: Parliament-Funkadelic legend Michael Hampton on the secrets of funk guitar, and playing a 10-string BC Rich

He wastes no time in firing off a list of his favourite guitarists right now. “I’m friends with Richie Faulkner, who I think is the full package,” he says. “We’ve toured with Judas Priest a bit and he’s a phenomenal player. He also has his own band, Elegant Weapons. He’s got vibrato, technique, tone everything. I feel that way about Dario from Black Label Society.”

Naming some more contemporary players, he continues: “Jared James Nichols is awesome. I love hearing younger guys like him and Tyler Bryant playing the blues. They clearly love it and have such an amazing grasp of it. Tosin Abasi has been doing it for a while now, but he’s phenomenal. I think Tim Henson is insane. My son Hendrix is a huge fan of Polyphia and Tim’s playing.”

As for those who question the vitality of guitar as an instrument in 2026, Zakk makes his opinion clear: “Whenever I hear people saying, ‘Guitar is dead,’ I think, ‘What are you talking about? What rock do you live under?’

“Guitar is doing just great. There are so many young players who love the instrument, and they’re really going for it.”

Those words are coming from one of the most accomplished and well-travelled musicians in rock music, so you have it on good authority…

In a hilarious anecdote earlier this year, Zakk Wylde recounted the time Ozzy Osbourne was mistaken for singer Meat Loaf by an air stewardess.

“He’s sitting there, bummed out, and the stewardess is like: ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it’s you!’ She’s giving him drinks, getting him food, and he’s just floored by it. He’s going: ‘Maybe things aren’t so bad.’

“As the plane lands, she says: ‘Can I get a picture?’ So she takes the photo, and then she goes: ‘Oh, wow, thank you Meat Loaf!’ Ozzy’s like: ‘I really fucking need to cut back on the calories…’”

The post Is guitar dead? Zakk Wylde doesn’t think so: “What rock do you live under?!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.