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Dave Mustaine says he wants to move into acting after Megadeth’s retirement – and would even cut his hair to do it, but only for a “big part”
After over 40 years, the end of Megadeth is in sight. And while frontman Dave Mustaine wouldn’t be surprised of their farewell tour lasts “three to five years” – via an interview with Kerrang! – he’s already making plans for life post Megadeth – and he’s got his sights set on Hollywood.
As he tells Classic Rock in a new interview, he plans to use his retirement to pursue new avenues of interest, like expanding his acting portfolio. “I wouldn’t mind studying acting,” he says.
While he’s not a very seasoned thespian, Mustaine has had a handful of small acting gigs in the past. Perhaps his most serious role was a one-off appearance in the TV series Black Scorpion. The 2001 show followed the titular superhero fighting crime, and Mustaine played villain Torchy Thompson. More recently, he did some voice acting in the 2017 horror/musical Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill.
That being said, Mustaine is adamant he wants to fine-tune his skills. “I’ve already done a ton of stuff on TV – hosting game shows, appearances in small sitcoms and movies – so I’m very accustomed to being in front of the camera,” Mustaine explains. “I think that might be fun to do.”
And he’s serious about it; he’s even willing to chop of his iconic ginger mane to land the right gig. “If they asked me to cut my hair, I’d be willing to do it!” he adds. “But it would have to be for a guaranteed part – and a big part, to make that kind of a commitment!”
As well as his acting dreams, Mustaine also notes that he’d be interested in helping other artists. If anyone is keen to learn some guitar from one of the best, he’s more than willing to pass down some advice. “I really want to share my gift with younger musicians,” he says. “Actually, it doesn’t even have to be a younger musician. It it’s somebody that’s a little bit older and they want to learn what it is that makes Dave tick, I don’t care about their date of birth, I just want to be able to share.”
He goes on to note that sharing his gift is only fair – considering it was a generous “gift from God”, in his words. “I’ve been gifted,” he emphasises. “I wouldn’t be this good on my own.”
Recently, Mustaine revealed that ex-Megadeth members wont be involved in the band’s grand farewell tour. It’s a decision that ex-bassist David Ellefson has criticised. Speaking on Argentinian rock radio station UnDinamo, he said: “I have always said that I am available for that. And I would do it because I think any reason that I’m not there now is unfounded… I would hope and even pray that any misunderstanding or any bitterness would be removed, that that would somehow be dissipated.”
Megadeth are currently on tour in support of their self-titled final record. See the band’s official website for dates and tickets.
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“Our emotional vocabularies were not vast”: Black Crowes brothers Chris and Rich Robinson on how they put their legendary feuding behind them and reinvent the band
![[L-R] Chris and Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Chris-Rich-Robinson-new-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and that was certainly the case for Chris and Rich Robinson. Famous for being “at each other’s throats”, The Black Crowes brothers claim that their 2015 split was crucial to heal their relationship. Of course, a few rounds of therapy also helped.
In a new interview with Classic Rock, Rich claims that his relationship with Chris is “night-and-day better” than it once ways. “It’s so much healthier,” he insists. “Making records is so much cooler. Touring is so much better. We call and talk about the day-to-day shit… just stuff like brothers do, you know?”
It’s a healthy, brotherly bond that wouldn’t have been possible without their six year split between 2015 and 2021. “When we got back together, we had grown a lot,” Rich explains. “We’re both in our fifties now! So we said: ‘Look, we don’t want to do some bullshit money grab, going on tour and fighting and have it be shitty.’”
As well as generally maturing, Chris notes that therapy was also played a massive part in healing old wounds. “Rich and I are mid-century products of the Deep South; our emotional vocabulary was not vast,” the brother notes. “To be where we are today, we had to mature, and that meant going through what we went through.”
Speaking to Howard Stern in 2019, Chris expressed his remorse over how he’d ended things with his brother. “I said some horrible things. I was in a negative place, but you know what, I’ve apologised to Rich about that,” he said. “A lot of things have changed for me in the last two years. I was in a relationship that was failing, I was in a negative place, I was dealing with depression. And I’m sitting over here, like, ‘Why am I saying bad things about my brother?’”
It would be two more years until the pair finally made amends in 2021 – and they’re glad they waited. Despite plenty of enticing offers to tour across that period, the brothers knew they had to patch up their relationship before working together again. By 2021, the pair were ready – and it was just in time for the 30 year anniversary of their debut, Shake Your Money Maker.
“We needed to strip everything back, and put our relationship first,” Rich tells Classic Rock. “We needed to listen to each other… and so Chris and I have been really adamant about that, and it’s helped our relationship tremendously.”
Nowadays, the pair are thick as thieves. In the interview, the brothers even recall an interaction with the late Todd Snider; when the guitarist visited the Robinsons, he marvelled at how in-sync they were. “What’s going on with you two?” he apparently exclaimed. “Are you wizards? You don’t even say anything to each other!?”
Since their reunion, the brothers have been churning out some great work together, from 2024’s Happiness Bastard, and their latest record, A Pound Of Feathers, is set to drop 13 March. It’s an impressive feat for a pair who, at one point, couldn’t stand being in the same room as one another.
The post “Our emotional vocabularies were not vast”: Black Crowes brothers Chris and Rich Robinson on how they put their legendary feuding behind them and reinvent the band appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Get a Fender American Professional II Telecaster for $200 less right now in this tasty deal at Sweetwater
Looking to add a Tele to your collection? Sweetwater is currently offering a $200 price drop on Fender’s American Professional II Telecaster.
The Professional II line was unveiled in 2020, offering a line-wide revamp of the brand’s flagship American Professional series of electric guitars and basses. The launch followed rumours that the series was due its first revamp since it was originally launched back in 2016.
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This Butterscotch Blonde model features several improvements and upgrades that enhance the classic Tele design. Namely, this model is fitted with V-Mod II Telecaster single coil pickups designed by Fender’s pickup guru, Tim Shaw. They’re described as offering a vintage voice with modern clarity.
The model also has a roasted pine body, a choice steeped in Fender history, as pine was one of the woods Leo Fender experimented with when he was first developing the Telecaster. Other key specifications include a maple neck with a satin finish, a Deep C neck profile, and a contoured heel joint. The model also has a maple fretboard with 22 narrow tall frets, plus an upgraded cut three-saddle top-load/string-through bridge for enhanced flexibility for setting individual string tension.
Find out more below:
At the time of its launch, Fender’s Justin Norvell said of the series: “Over the past few years we have refined and elevated the American Professional series as a result of ongoing conversations with our artist partners.
“With their feedback and innovation a priority, we reviewed every element across the series, incorporating specs like a new sculpted neck heel, new pickups, supernatural neck finish, and various aesthetic refinements including bold colourways, tonewoods like roasted pine and tortoiseshell guards on select models.”
Shop this deal and more over at Sweetwater.
The post Get a Fender American Professional II Telecaster for $200 less right now in this tasty deal at Sweetwater appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Keo are proving that Gen Z still love guitar music: “We do feel like we’re on the tail of those bigger bands”
“I’m more obsessed with guitar now than I’ve ever been in my life,” professes Finn Keogh. Although Keo’s frontman and rhythm guitarist has been toying around with his dad’s Yamaha acoustics, banjos and mandolins since primary school, his first true love was songwriting, not his six-string. “I know it sounds mad, but I’m going through a Hendrix phase right now. It took me all this time…”
The ying to Keogh’s yang is lead guitarist Jimmy Lanwern, dubbed the “final fit” for the London alt-rock quartet after many had attempted the role. Gripped by Hendrix, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and all sorts of 90s alt-rock, Lanwern’s “conventional guitar heroes” route explains why you’ll generally catch him with a Jazzmaster or Jaguar. “I don’t know if it’s quite obvious,” he jokes through his dark mop of hair, “but Jonny Greenwood was a huge influence on me.”
Although Keo had been slaving away on the London gig circuit for a couple of years, Lanwern’s introduction sparked a significant shift in their fortunes. By his third gig, they’d secured an agent, manager and played at Scala, as mutterings of the capital’s next great guitar act intensified while they consciously held back music. Closer in age than their bandmates, Keogh and Lanwern’s friendship is key to their synchronicity with the guitar.
“I actually saw his pedalboard before anything, because I was fed up with playing with guitarists [who] would turn up without a pedalboard,” Keogh explains. “If you invite someone to rehearsal and they plug their Les Paul into the fucking black Boss Katana, they might be able to shred….” He politely declines to finish that sentence, but in Lanwern, he found a player who had substance to his style. “I was more serious about tones than I was about my playing, and I think that’s the reason it works,” Lanwern tells Guitar.com.
Image: Hermione Sylvester
The Sound Of Sirens
After breaking the deadlock last March with debut single I Lied, Amber, Keo’s debut EP Siren followed in June. Every strum of the guitar feels intentional and raw, finding a moody middle ground on songs like Hands and Thorn. Rarely driven by catchy riffs and hooks, there is a sense that Keo are steadily curating their own wall of sound, albeit with much more of an indie twang than the haze of The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine.
“We definitely think more about soundscaping,” explains Keogh. “Not just throwing on an overdrive and going, ‘This is the scale and this is a lick.’ [Creating] an atmosphere more than anything, that’s what I love about Jimmy’s playing.” In conversation with Keogh today, his charismatic but pensive nature resembles a bandleader who cares deeply about each moving part within that atmosphere.
Perhaps destined to become a frontman, Keogh admittedly resonates with lead singers more than guitarists, picking up playing habits from friends and peers. “My old friend used to really aggressively swing his neck after every chord, and it’d have this nice vibrato,” he explains – a trait that he’s transferred onto Lanwern. “Not only did it look cool, but you’re changing the pitch – ever so slightly – of that chord. It’s almost like shaking the slide on a fret.”
Admitting he fell in love with Ben Howard’s “percussive” pick-and-go technique and early Keo songs attempted to recreate Pearl Jam’s Daughter, the framework for Keo clicked into place when he stopped looking to other artists for inspiration. While he also writes solo material – and has recently penned a global publishing deal with Universal – he’s realised any rules for what defines a Keo song are made-up.
“Every band starts by looking for [their sound], and it takes them a long time to not,” he elaborates. “You’ll get two years down the line and always drop those songs. The best songs, for me, you’ve got everyone in the room after going, ‘Where does that come from?’ Almost like trying to figure out your ancestors or giving it a DNA test. ‘Why did that sound like that?’ The best influence naturally comes out, rather than thinking about it.”
The Kids Are Alright
TikTok has aided Keo’s early buzz, despite their alt-rock serving as the antithesis to the commercial sounds you’d expect to go viral. At their shows, you’ll find rooms dominated by teenagers, a characteristic shared by bands like Fontaines D.C. and Wunderhorse in recent years. Keo’s sound has drawn unavoidable comparisons to the latter, and there’s a sense they are next in line to follow them through to academies and arenas. On this month’s upcoming UK tour, they’ve shifted 3,000 tickets in London alone.
“I think we get an unfair amount of criticism for jumping on some bandwagon with Wunderhorse and Fontaines,” muses Keogh. “But I can wholeheartedly say that since the dawn of time, I wanted to make a band that was Pearl Jam-esque, Nirvana-esque, Radiohead-esque. I will give kudos to Wunderhorse and Fontaines, because when I saw them very early on, it was quite reassuring to see how people were doing guitar music in a new fashion. We definitely took a lot of influence from those bands, but we were already on our way to figuring out how to make something new.”
“I remember a period of time where I was really frustrated, that I was into all this old music, and no one else I was mates with seemed to really be into it,” recalls Lanwern. “Meeting Finn and the boys and seeing bands like Wunderhorse and Fontaines, it does reassure you.” At their gigs, both Keogh and Lanwern see snippets of their younger selves in the audience: the fan undergoing that eureka moment, finding others who love good old-fashioned rock music.
“You can see them coming to your shows, it’s like they’ve had this secret on their chest for their whole lives,” says Keogh. “They discover our band, and they’re like, ‘Fuck, I get this, and maybe only I get this,’ and I think that makes it more valuable to them. Everyone else that comes to the shows feels the same, and then suddenly you’ve got all of those people in a room, a bit of a scene going, and a community.”
Image: Hermione Sylvester
At the time of writing, just four guitar bands are on the Reading & Leeds 2026 line-up, a festival that has always existed as a pillar of youth. They are Fontaines D.C., Florence and the Machine, Geese and Keo. Having already performed on its BBC Introducing Stage, do Keo feel the pressure of the festival’s guitar-rich heritage, as if they’re flying the flag for the next generation of guitar bands?
“To say we’re carrying the torch is quite a big thing to claim, but it is quite a surreal thing for it to be growing so quickly, and I feel like we’re almost trying to catch up with it,” responds Lanwern. “It’s hard to accept, mentally, where we are,” adds Keogh. “When you’re coming up, there’s this imposter syndrome here and there, but within Keo now, we’ve honed our craft so much and truly put in the hours. There is also now this confidence of, ‘We are the real deal,’ because we’ve fucking gone through everything we needed to go through.
“When we go to Reading, the mindset is that we are competing for that ‘spearheading band.’ We do feel like we’re on the tail of those bigger bands, and we’re putting everything we fucking have into this band. If you put enough effort into something, you feel like you’ve gained enough knowledge and earned your stripes, essentially. The shows give you adrenaline. You want those shows where all eyes are on you – where it freaks you out.”
With just one EP to their name, everything about Keo’s attitude, sound and decision-making points towards a band destined for greatness. Such is the confidence in their live show that only last month, they released their Live At Village Underground film in independent cinemas around the UK. Now, speaking to Guitar.com in between studio sessions, they are readying their next move.
“A band gets to a certain point where you almost start referencing yourself, and you’re not thinking about other bands,” concludes Keogh. “It takes years to get to, but in the last six months, there’s no need for [explanation]. Keo has got its own blueprint now, it’s going down its own lane, and that really fucking excites me.”
Keo will tour the UK from 5-15 March 2026.
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Save big on Positive Grid’s AI-powered BIAS X and Spark NEO Core smart guitar headphones
There’s nothing like a great deal on guitar gear to cure the early-week blues, and this time Positive Grid is delivering the goods.
For a limited time, guitarists in the US and Canada can take advantage of this sweet deal on the brand’s Spark NEO Core modelling amp headphones, and get them for just $135, down from $159. Meanwhile, players all over the world can get Positive Grid’s AI-powered BIAS X amp and effects suite at a massive 25% discount.
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Arriving in September last year, BIAS X is the next iteration of Positive Grid’s industry-leading amp modelling and effects software, BIAS FX. While it came with plenty of new amp and effects models, the biggest talking point was the addition of an AI assistant right within the software, which can turn ideas in the form of simple text prompts into fully working signal chains. While some guitarists love tinkering with the settings of their chain on a granular level, some of us just want a solid tone so we can start playing. BIAS X takes a lot of the guesswork – not to mention the time it takes – out of the tone-shaping process.
The team here at Guitar.com all had a go, and were thoroughly impressed by the range of awesome sounding virtual gear available, plus the reliability of its AI-powered features. And for a piece of software that’s so useful – and may very well change the way you craft guitar tones – you can get it right now at 25% off, for just $111. Alternatively, there’s a number of upgrade options available for existing Positive Grid customers too, in which you can also save 25%. So don’t wait to have a go at AI-powered tone creation yourself.
Positive Grid’s Spark NEO Core headphones, meanwhile, offer a formidable headphone amp solution for guitarists, pairing a suite of powerful amps and effects with AI-powered tone generation, plus high-quality 40mm drivers tuned for guitar and bass. Simply download the Spark app and plug the cans straight into your guitar, and you can enjoy high-energy practice sessions without the fear of disturbing your neighbours, family members, or anyone else who might put a premature stop to your best riffs ever.
Shop Positive Grid’s full product range now.
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“You don’t want to have no recollection of when, where or how you acquired it”: Why Joe Bonamassa is hitting the brakes on his vintage gear collection
If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a guitarist goes all-in on vintage gear, just look at Joe Bonamassa. The blues legend and self-professed vintage connoisseur’s home gear museum, Nerdville West, reportedly holds over 1,000 items – including no less than 600 guitars.
However, even a collector of Bonamassa’s caliber admits there’s a limit. During a recent chat on the No Cover Charge podcast, the musician reveals he’s finally hitting the brakes on new acquisitions, as there’s only so much gear a person can meaningfully explore.
“As far as acquiring stuff, I’ve really slowed down, because there’s a saturation point,” he explains. “I’d like to get to the stuff that I own, and discover the sounds that I can get out of those pieces, before it just starts piling up and piling up and piling up.”
The guitarist says last year’s Los Angeles wildfires helped put his obsession into perspective. Clearing out his collection in the wake of the fires reminded him just how overwhelming hundreds of instruments can be.
“You never want to go into a situation, I’ve done this when I cleared out this place after the fires, where you’re pulling out cases and have no recollection of when, where, or how you acquired it. And it’s probably starting to get to that point,” says Bonamassa.
“Obviously, you can’t evacuate everything. So, you have to prioritise. And I thought about it for years. I said, ‘Well, if we gotta go, here’s what’s going.’ This being one of them, you know – Mr Skinner [Bonamassa’s ‘Skinnerburst’ Les Paul] has to come along.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Bonamassa also reveals his tactical approach to collecting rare gear.
“What I do is, I never telegraph anything. You won’t know I’m interested until I’d be like, ‘I’ll take it,’ or, ‘I’ll cut you a check.’”
The guitarist says he tends to acquire gear in batches, securing spares and matching pairs of key amps and instruments: “Like, you notice there’s two [Marshall] JTM45s. There’s three in here, and one in Nashville. So, I’m usually ‘a pair and a spare,’ And you look at the back wall, there’s a bunch of Blackface Fender amps, and Selmers behind you, and [Fender] Tweeds and everything.”
The post “You don’t want to have no recollection of when, where or how you acquired it”: Why Joe Bonamassa is hitting the brakes on his vintage gear collection appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Jason Richardson on leaving All That Remains: “There’s just a lot of things on the business side that I was not happy with at all”
Walking away from a band you’ve called home for years is never easy, as former All That Remains guitarist Jason Richardson knows well.
In a recent chat with Guitar World, Richardson – who joined the metal band in 2018 after the tragic passing of founding guitarist Oli Herbert – says his departure last July was driven not by personal conflicts but rather, frustrations over management and the handling of the band’s 2025 album, Antifragile.
When asked whether leaving was a “difficult” decision, he admits [via Blabbermouth], “Kind of, but not, simultaneously. I don’t wanna get into the weeds of it publicly, but I’m still cool with all of the guys in the band. It was mostly just a business thing. And things just were not executed like they were promised to be, from management and the people tasked with putting the record out.”
“I’m glad the record exists, but the fact that it’s already been out almost a year and there hasn’t been one show. So it’s, like, there’s just a lot of things on the business side in the back end that I was not happy with at all.”
The guitarist is quick to stress that it wasn’t about personal relationships.
“It has nothing to do with anyone’s personality or anyone in the band at all,” he says. “It just wasn’t, in my opinion – like, I could be doing other things than trying to make that work when it so clearly was not going to – from my perspective, at least.”
Despite the frustrations, Richardson looks back on the album fondly: “I still love the guys. I love the record. I loved working with [producer] Josh Wilbur, the guy who did the album. He’s phenomenal. And that’s probably one of the best things about that record, for me at least, is now I have a great relationship with him, and we’re gonna keep working together. But I am happy all those songs are real, so there’s that at least.”
Following Richardson’s exit, former Unearth and As I Lay Dying guitarist Ken Susi has officially stepped in as his replacement, opening a new chapter in the band’s story.
The post Jason Richardson on leaving All That Remains: “There’s just a lot of things on the business side that I was not happy with at all” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Inside the heavily modded – and blowtorched – Fender/Warmoth hybrid Joe Perry calls his “desert island guitar”
Every guitarist has that one guitar they can’t live without, and for Joe Perry, it’s the “Burned Strat”. From small club gigs to MTV stages, the Fender/Warmoth hybrid has been a constant in Perry’s musical journey – an instrument so personal he calls it his “desert island guitar,” and one he can “pretty much do anything” on.
Speaking to Guitar World, Perry reflects on the axe’s origins, describing it as a “work in progress” even after decades of tweaks and shows.
“The inspiration for putting it together was when I left the band, I put most of my Aerosmith guitars aside and basically put this guitar together out of Warmoth parts,” Perry explains. “I was going back to playing clubs and theaters, just cruising the country in a van with a band and playing. In a way, that guitar fit in with my philosophy of leaving the Aerosmith thing to the side and playing this one guitar that I’d put together.”
“You can tell it was played a lot because I did a lot of shows back then, and there’s just a sound and a feel to it,” he adds. “It had a left-handed neck and body, and it was my go-to guitar for those three years. When it was time to start going back on the road with Aerosmith, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll pull that one out’ because it symbolised so much of me; it had a sound and felt really comfortable.”
By the early 2000s, Perry and his tech built the current Burned Strat to preserve the original.
“I didn’t want to take a chance on the original guitar being lost, so somewhere around 2001, me and my tech put another one together with the same philosophy – just bits and pieces, you know?”
As for what makes the Burned Strat so unique, Perry explains, “It’s the same guitar as far as the Fender body and Warmoth neck. It’s kind of a relic; I’ve changed the pickups, the vibrato bar and the bridge. I carved off more of the body to make it comfortable, and I even put it in the freezer overnight and then took a blowtorch to it so the finish would crackle, which gave it a jump-start to the way it would look over the years.”
He’s also upgraded the tremolo with a Vega-Trem bridge and even used a Dremel on it – “just to make it a little more of this or that,” says the guitarist. “So I can divebomb on it and use it as another musical tool – but I also can get the classic vibrato sound.”
Recent pickup swaps to a pair of Seymour Duncan P-Rails have expanded the guitar’s tonal palette as well.
“Each one has a P90 and a Strat-style pickup in it; those two sit in a humbucker slot. We went from three pickups to two, but with those pickups, there are really four positions, and you can switch them with the microswitches we added. I can have the pickups separate or together, and the toggle lets me pick which one I want and when. I can pretty much do anything on that guitar.”
Perry recently put the Burned Strat through its paces at the MTV Video Music Awards with Steven Tyler and Yungblud, as well as on Aerosmith’s latest collab EP, One More Time.
“Everything you hear I did with that guitar and just a few foot pedals,” he says, noting that its hybrid string setup and fat frets let him bend notes comfortably – even with arthritis starting to kick in.
“At this point, it is and will continue to be my ‘desert island guitar,’ but you never know,” Perry laughs.
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“Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don’t even know how to articulate that”: Myles Kennedy on holding Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar
What does it feel like to get your hands on one of the most famous guitars in rock history? For Myles Kennedy, it’s something he still struggles to put into words.
Reflecting on the time he was able to hold Eddie Van Halen’s iconic Frankenstein axe, the Alter Bridge frontman admits the moment caught him off guard.
“We weren’t tracking with Frankenstein. Have I held Frankenstein? Yes,” Kennedy tells Guitar World. “Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don’t even know how to articulate that, but I got emotional – that was a pretty special moment.”
Even though Frankenstein didn’t feature on Alter Bridge’s latest record, Van Halen’s legacy was still close at hand when the band tracked the album at the legendary 5150 Studios in Los Angeles.
“As far as amps and whatnot, there was a 50-watt 5150 III that we used when we were doing pre-production, so I plugged into that,” Kennedy explains. “I had it set up because I couldn’t fly out my Diezels. I fell in love with that amp, and it became a big part of the sound. I ended up marrying it with the [Diezel] VH4 when I was actually tracking.”
That EVH head didn’t just win over Kennedy. Fellow Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti was equally impressed when he paired it with his own signature PRS amp.
“I thought [the 5150 III] sounded so good, especially mixed with what I was using, which was my signature PRS head,” says Tremonti. “I loved it so much that I got one; they were nice enough to give me one, and I took it on the last tour we did. So now it’s a part of my sound.”
“It’s given me a new appreciation for 50-watt heads. As long as I’ve been playing guitar, and as long as I’ve collected amplifiers, I don’t think I’ve ever owned a 50-watt head – maybe a single 1×12 combo that was 50 watts. I never appreciated how aggressive a 50-watt head is. When you pair it with 100-watt heads, it’s got a certain character – a bite that cuts through the mix. But it’s not harsh.”
Elsewhere, Kennedy also opens up about what it meant to be invited into 5150 by Wolfgang Van Halen himself – and the responsibility that came with it.
“Wolf was incredibly kind enough to bring that offer up with our manager,” says the musician. “We were like, ‘Really?’ We knew the history of all the incredible music that had been made there. Just the fact that he trusted us enough to come in and not totally ruin the legacy really meant a lot. When we all showed up, we were very cognisant of that, and we wanted to honour the situation.”
Alter Bridge’s new album is now out. Listen below:
The post “Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don’t even know how to articulate that”: Myles Kennedy on holding Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
DOD Badder Monkey review: much-memed pedal gets a bananas reissue
$149.99, digitech.com
It has now been a few years since JHS’ Josh Scott gave the invisible hand of the free pedal market a little push, and accidentally kickstarted a craze for the original DigiTech Bad Monkey. Reverb listings for the pedal soared to stratospherically silly prices, and the presence of true magic within it was hotly debated. There were those who claimed that the Bad Monkey was a better Klon than some Klons. There were also those who claimed that all of these comparisons were proof that most overdrive pedals can be set to sound pretty similar.
Regardless, talk of a reissue was inevitable, one that might fit into the lineup of a newly-reinvigorated DOD/DigiTech – and here we are. First things first, this is a DOD reissue of a DigiTech pedal, presumably because it’s an analogue stompbox, and Cor-Tek (parent company of both) now wants to keep things consistently and sensibly divided – DOD dedicated to the analogue, DigiTech the digital. It’s also, as we’ll explore, more than a straight ‘reissue’ – we could have gotten a simple four-control remake of the original circuit, updated to modern spec with a better buffer and a less dated enclosure. That’s all here, but there’s a lot more to unpeel, including a totally unique barrel control that can blend together three discrete variants of the circuit.
Image: Adam Gasson
Build and layout
The Badder Monkey is packed into the standard DOD single-stompbox format, used for everything from the Overdrive 250 to the Carcosa. It’s a really sturdy platform, with a solid build and a cool little reversible backplate if you want pre-attached velcro. The only real negative for some might be the side-mounted jacks, but overall it’s still a well-executed version of the standard single-stomp.
The Badder Monkey does look uniquely great. The barrel draws the eye, of course, but the UV print on the enclosure is also brilliantly glossy and very three-dimensional – I have to give a nod to the design execution on the titular Monkey bending the bars of an otherwise abstract control outline, labels included.
Even discounting the barrel, the full control scheme is pretty whacky – for good or for ill. If you thought the Supermassive Black Fuzz’s control scheme was ‘theme over function’, it shows Boss-like restraint compared to the Badder Monkey. Here Bananas and Curiosity are gain and volume, while Mood is a concentric EQ control – Screech and Grunt for treble and bass, respectively.
I can see the logic on the EQ side, but Bananas and Curiosity do seem totally arbitrary – you’ve just got to remember that gain’s on the left and volume’s on the right. These knob names are unusually whimsical for DOD – even its other strongly-themed pedals such as the Carcosa or Chthonic still have knobs called things like “output” and “high cut” rather than “Eldritchness” or “Cyclopeanity”. But it’s only a slight knock against the pedal, really – it’s clearly having a lot of fun with the whole vibe, and so themed control names were perhaps inevitable.
Image: Adam Gasson
In Use
I first stay a little more conventional, and begin my testing with only the original Bad Monkey in the mix. This circuit is, as you may or may not already be aware, essentially a Tube Screamer-derived thing with the addition of a two-band active EQ. By itself, it is very easy to see why this gained status as a hidden gem from the early 2000s – that original slightly clunky enclosure was indeed hiding a fantastic overdrive sound.
Thanks to the two-band EQ it is as full or as sharp as you need it to be, and still allows the core sound to provide the all-important midrange presence. Like any good TS-inspired thing it can bring a clean amp to life as well as it can clear up gainy chugs. More extreme EQ settings behave as you’d expect – feel free to remove all the bass and pretend your guitar’s coming through an Amazon Basics walkie-talkie, or remove all of the treble and pretend you’re playing it underwater.
The real beauty, though, lies in the pedal’s versatility within the context of a full sound. You can target problem areas of both fizz and mud far more effectively than you could with a single tone control. These are all of the things that made the original so ripe for a modern revival, and so in terms of a straight-ahead reissue, DOD has absolutely done the job. But of course, like those well-meaning activists at the beginning of 28 Days Later, it is now time we open the cage and let the Badder Monkey run truly rampant.
Image: Adam Gasson
Barrel of fun
Did you know that the phrase “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” dates all the way back to the 1800s? The phrase, along with a few other interesting things, has led to a sort of vague general association between monkeys and barrels within the collective unconscious. Imagine, if you will, a whimsical pirate ship. There’s obviously a monkey there, who has likely poked his head out of a barrel, one full of either gunpowder, gold doubloons or bananas. And before you write in, Donkey Kong’s love of throwing barrels at plumbers doesn’t count as part of this association, as he’s an ape, not a monkey, and as such will not be mentioned again in this review.
The Barrel/Monkey continuum also brought us that children’s toy with loads of plastic monkeys in it, a copy of which is actually included as case candy with the Badder Monkey. It has also spawned the new 360-degree barrel control, a patent-pending continuously-rotational potentiometer that is employed to blend between three variants of the circuit: Behaved, Bad and Badder. Behaved is a smoother, more tonally subdued variant of the pedal, while Badder is a more chaotic and aggressive version – Bad is simply the original circuit.
With all the talk about how a lot of overdrive circuits can sound nearly identical, here the trio of circuits do all have a very distinct flavour. Behaved is indeed very subdued – there’s a noticeable roll-off to any barking high-end, and there’s a fair bit less gain. Badder, however, lives up to its name with a far more aggressive approach to both the distortion and the midrange hump.
The fact that the barrel is a three-way continuous blend control means you can choose your preferred blend of any two of the three circuits on offer – which is, for an analogue pedal, a completely wild thing to be able to do, and has to be commended from a pure engineering standpoint. But it does also offer real tonal flexibility: the three voices, while all ultimately being variants of a very green-flavoured overdrive, are all disparate enough to make the in-between positions worthwhile – for instance, blending both Behaved and Badder gives you a very smooth overdrive sound with a subtle undertow of snarl somewhere beneath the surface – it’s a very effective thing.
If you want to throw all subtle blending to the wind, however, just use the middle toggle switch to select ‘troop’ mode, which engages all three circuits in parallel – the resulting sound is extremely full-fat – it may not perform quite the same with the exacting tone-shaping precision as a single or a blended sound, but it is a hell of a lot of fun.
This switch can also set the blend to be out of phase, which leads to a rather weird but nonetheless engaging sound – it makes the effect far more of a character overdrive for adding an ear-catching texture to solos, more so than pure utility. It’s a strange experience, sweeping through the middle positions in the inverted mode, leading to a sort of infinitely variable clash of the different characteristics of the circuits.
Image: Adam Gasson
Should I buy the Badder Monkey?
It’s hard to overstate just how much joy the Badder Monkey brings me – DOD didn’t have to do any of this. It didn’t need to be a whacky, three-mode reissue with a totally unique blend control and the option for nasal out-of-phase sounds and an included copy of Monkeys In A Barrel. This could have been an easy win – but DOD took the stranger, far more creative path. The initial furor around the DigiTech pedal strayed a little close to the sun of discourse, and risked just being frustrating and draining as people bemoaned the hype and the hipsterishness of it all – this is the perfect inversion of any of the phenomenon’s negativity into something far more joyful.
All that has been discussed above is interesting enough, tonally and experientially, that you might assume it’s relegated to some exclusive boutique overdrive that’ll require a remortgage or two. And given the price silliness from the first spike in demand plus the barrel, DOD could have also probably gotten away with charging something like £200 for this thing. But the Badder Monkey is instead pretty damn reasonably priced at £129 – that’s not much over the going rate for a new official TS9, and about £100 less than the JHS Bonsai, another multi-circuit Tube Screamer-inspired pedal, albeit with a very different approach.
The Badder Monkey is also one of the few fun Tube Screamer-derived things out there – the circuit has such a reputation as a utilitarian tone-scalpel that it tends to evaporate any whimsy in its vicinity. The Badder Monkey, on the other hand, is more fun than a… well, you know the phrase.
Image: Adam Gasson
Badder Monkey alternatives
The world of Tube Screamer-derived things is fairly massive, with everything from ultra-affordable clones to more in-depth boutique variants out there. Listing them all here would balloon the wordcount of this review to that of the Silmarillion, and so I shall mention but two. If you fancy something a little more budget and prosaic, there is always the Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini ($79.99 / £49.99), a far cheaper single-mode version of the green overdrive sound. For another well-regarded refined boutique take on the thing that won’t break the bank, consider the EarthQuaker Devices Plumes ($119 / £124.99) – a straightforward take on the pedal with three clipping modes.
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“The only way this thing goes out is if I’m 100% satisfied”: What Cory Wong told Neural DSP when offered his own signature Archetype plugin
Cory Wong has given an insight into his perfectionism when creating his signature Archetype plugin with Neural DSP.
Archetype: Cory Wong X packs the jazz-funk virtuoso and Vulfpeck guitarist’s gear into a plugin, and remains a highlight of Neural’s ever-expanding Archetype lineup.
And as Wong tells MusicTech in a new exclusive interview, he insisted the plugin was perfect – good enough for him to use himself regularly – before being released into the market.
“I was like, ‘The only way this thing goes out is if I am 100% satisfied, and if you are 100% satisfied,” Wong remembers telling Neural DSP.
“They sent me version one, and it was pretty good. And we made revisions. By version five, I was still like, not yet. It is great, but I don’t plug into it right now and think, ‘I have to use this for everything’. So we got to, like, version nine!”
Wong also tells MusicTech how his signature Archetype plugin forms an integral part of his signal chain when it comes to recording.
“Most of the time, I use the Archetype: Cory Wong X plugin that I helped create with Neural DSP,” he says. “There’s basically an emulation of an SSL console and a Neve console; there are characteristics of both hidden in there. But then there are also very clean amps in there.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the guitarist – though known for his formidable playing chops – explains how he prefers to focus on the arrangement of a song rather than fretboard fireworks when composing and recording.
“There’s a long history of the guitar being this thing where we’re showboating our technical facility,” Wong says. “Or just constantly shredding guitar. And there’s a time and place for that – I like a lot of that music. But that’s not really what I want to do, and that’s not really what I feel is the most compelling part of my artistry.
“Sure, there are times where it’s like, ‘Let’s give them the fireworks! I’m going to get out there and shred.’ But I like the sound of other instruments. I like the arrangement,” he says.
Check out Archetype: Cory Wong X at Neural DSP. Read the full interview at MusicTech.
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“The only thing that calms him down is to go eat a pig somewhere”: Rush’s Geddy Lee explains the secret of his enduring relationship with “emotional” Alex Lifeson
![[L-R] Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Alex-Lifeson-Geddy-Lee-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
Bandmates and close musical collaborators for decades, Rush’s Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have come to know each other like brothers – and understand what helps when tensions rise.
Rush made headlines towards the end of last year when they announced plans to head out on tour again after years of speculation as to whether they ever would. As expected, the demand for tickets after the initial announcement was so high that Lifeson and Lee – with touring drummer Anika Nilles – added 17 more dates to the trek.
And in a new interview with The Guardian, bassist Lee and guitarist Lifeson reflect on their enduring friendship, and the extent to which they know each other so well.
They note the difference in how they both handle feelings: “He’s really emotional,” Lee says of Lifeson, to which Lifeson readily agrees: “I am… too emotional.”
Lee continues: “He can go from zero to 100 at a seemingly innocent remark. ‘Al, calm down. That’s not what we’re talking about.’
“He can really explode. A real Serbian. The only thing that calms him down is to go eat a pig somewhere. And I’m probably too controlling for him… and too rational.”
But despite their somewhat opposing approaches to handling emotions, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have been metaphorically attached at the hip for decades. They note how it often happens that they are only interested in each other at larger gatherings, remembering one time in particular: “They had planned this wonderful dinner party, and we just alienated them,” Lee says. “That happens a lot!” replies Lifeson.
Elsewhere in the interview, Geddy Lee remembers late Rush drummer Neil Peart, who died in 2020.
“He was a mentor to me in many ways,” he says. “He was a very stimulating person to be around.”
Tickets for Rush’s Fifty Something reunion tour are available now via the band’s official website.
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Dave Mustaine claims Megadeth would have been less successful if not for the motivating factor of Metallica “trying to hold me back”
![[L-R] James Hetfield of Metallica and Dave Mustaine of Megadeth](https://guitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/James-Hetfield-Dave-Mustaine-new-hero@2000x1500.jpg)
While peacefully coexisting in 2026, the relationship between Metallica and Dave Mustaine’s Megadeth has been rocky over the years, to say the least.
Dave Mustaine was Metallica’s lead guitarist from 1982 to 1983, writing riffs that would later appear on debut album Kill ‘Em All – and even followup Ride the Lightning – before being ousted from the band for alcoholism, drug misuse and aggressive behaviour towards his band members.
And as he’s asserted over the years, it was the fallout with Metallica which heavily influenced his drive to succeed with Megadeth.
Mustaine has reflected on his relationship with Metallica a lot in the past few months, after it emerged that a cover of Ride the Lightning – the title track from Metallica’s sophomore album – was set to appear on Megadeth’s self-titled final album.
And now, in a new interview with the LA Times, the guitarist and frontman reflects again on the motivating effect of the fallout and subsequent hostility.
“Think of it,” he says. “Where would I be right now if I didn’t have one of the biggest bands in the world spending their time trying to hold me back? They don’t do it anymore, but most of the time when they did, it just made me shake my head.
“And it wasn’t just Metallica, it was everybody. For a long time, it very much was me against the world. It was like, okay, if you’re not with me, you’re against me.”
On Megadeth’s Ride the Lightning cover, Mustaine continues: “There may not be a chance to ever say hello to James [Hetfield, Metallica guitarist] or Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] again. I knew some people would have a hard time with me doing the song, but that’s okay because I wanted to pay tribute and show my respect.
“If they like it, fine. If they don’t like it, fine. If they listen to it, fine. If they don’t, fine.”
Megadeth are currently on tour in support of their landmark swansong record, Megadeth. See the band’s official website for dates and tickets.
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Guitar Hero creators return with Stage Tour, a new rhythm game built for your inner ’90s rock god
If you ever memorised every riff on Guitar Hero, air-guitared in your bedroom like a rock god, or desperately tried to hit that perfect streak on your plastic axe, Stage Tour is about to teleport you straight back to your glory days.
RedOctane – the studio behind the first Guitar Hero – has returned with a brand-new “rhythm-action” game designed to capture all the chaos, joy, and pure fun of the plastic-instrument era.
- READ MORE: “It had to be shiny and sparkling”: Inside Björn Ulvaeus’s wacky Eurovision 1974 star guitar
Built by the original devs who brought five-fret note highways to life, Stage Tour promises a mix of nostalgia and modern gaming flair: full-band setups, flexible inputs, and live-service features that keep the game evolving.
“Stage Tour is our love letter to rhythm gaming,” says RedOctane boss Simon Ebejer. “We want Stage Tour to feel familiar and authentic, but also fresh… With new instruments and deep charting systems, we’re raising the bar on what we believe a rhythm game can be, while also catering to those wishing to simply enjoy a casual experience and have a good time.”
Stage Tour supports guitar, bass, drums, vocals – as well as keyboard, mouse, and standard controllers. And yes, there’s a brand-new Kramer-inspired guitar controller, alongside a drum kit and wired or wireless mics, for the full plastic-instrument rhythm gaming experience. There will also be Gibson-branded in-game guitars, a nod to the original Guitar Hero series.
Unlike the old rhythm games that relied on fixed tracklists and DLC, Stage Tour is being designed as a live, evolving platform. The studio plans regular in-game events, seasonal content drops, and track charts that adapt not just to difficulty you pick but to the controller you’re using.
“Real moments. Real themes. Real updates,” says RedOctane. “We want to evolve the game alongside the fans who support it. Improve it. Expand it. Keep it alive.”
The studio also teases that players can “expect some absolute banging tunes” – because let’s be honest, what’s a rhythm game without killer tracks and riffs to shred along to?
Closed alpha testing is scheduled for late spring or early summer 2026, ahead of the planned fall release on PC and consoles.
More information is available at Stagetour.
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The time Joe Perry snapped the headstock of one of his favourite guitars: “Steven wanted to throw it into the audience – I had to wrestle him for it!”
Having spent over five decades on stage, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has seen just about everything a rock ‘n’ roll career can throw at him. But few moments have been as simultaneously horrifying and hilarious as the time one of his favourite guitars went airborne… and came down in pieces.
Speaking to Guitar World, Perry looks back on that chaotic night and the instrument at the centre of it: his black 1956 Gibson Junior double-cutaway with pearl inlays.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a ‘56,” says the guitarist. “It’s one of those Juniors that started off with cherry stain, but it wasn’t a burst – it was just a cherry stain. It’s got one P90. I actually had two of them in the mid-Seventies, like the ones Johnny Thunders and Leslie West played. They’re killer guitars. It’s just volume, tone and a P90, and it screams. I was lucky enough to get two of them.”
That luck would soon be tested.
“We were doing a show at a festival and I threw this thing up in the air at the end of a song,” Perry recalls. “This was before wireless, so it went to the end of the patch cord and came down on the neck – and the headstock snapped off. I remember thinking as it was going up in the air, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it. That looks so cool.’ And then, on the way down, I was thinking, ‘Holy shit, what did I do?’ [Laughs]”
Things got even more chaotic when frontman Steven Tyler tried to toss the broken instrument into the audience.
“After it came down and was broken, Steven grabbed it and wanted to throw it out into the audience, so I had to wrestle him for it,” Perry laughs. “I knew we could fix it, you know? I got it back and gave the pieces to my guy, and the show went on.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Perry highlights some of his other favourites from his legendary collection of over 600 guitars. One standout is a custom Gibson BB King Lucille, designed in honour of his wife, Billie Paulette Montgomery.
“I got that in the ‘90s,” Perry explains. “The main reason for that guitar is that I love history, and I was looking back and fascinated by what they call ‘nose art’. Pilots would have artwork on the nose of their planes in World Wars I and II, and it would be pictures of their favourite movie starlet or their wife, and they’d name the plane after them. I thought, ‘Why not do that with my guitar?’”
The artwork, which features Billie’s face on the lower bout, was painted by Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer’s drum tech John Douglas. Perry remembers her reaction: “She had no idea this was going on! Billie just stood there for a second, and they came out with this guitar case and said, ‘Close your eyes.’ We opened it up, and she turned beet red.”
“Long story short, she wouldn’t come out when I’d put the guitar on; she’d kind of leave the side of the stage because she was so embarrassed about it. She’s not somebody who looks for the spotlight, but she got used to it,” says Perry.
The post The time Joe Perry snapped the headstock of one of his favourite guitars: “Steven wanted to throw it into the audience – I had to wrestle him for it!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“All we want is to inspire women to pick up guitars”: Haim on their recent Grammys nomination
Haim made history in 2021 when they became the first all-female rock band to earn a Grammy nod for Album of the Year. Now, with a nomination in the Best Rock Album category, the trio once again find themselves representing women in a space that hasn’t always made room for them.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Danielle Haim of Haim reflects on what this recognition means for the band – and for women in guitar music altogether.
“We’re so honoured to be nominated in the rock category,” says the guitarist. “Growing up, my favourite artists were women. When I think about Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders, Heart, the Go-Go’s, the Bangles – all these incredible women who were in rock bands – those are the artists I looked up to. All we want is to inspire women to pick up guitars and drums.”
For Danielle, the nomination is proof that sticking to their instincts has paid off.
“As far as being recognised, we were so honoured to be nominated for Best Rock Album,” she continues. “Part of the reason I love what we do is that people have had a hard time putting us in a box; maybe there was confusion about what box we fit into. But what’s amazing is, over the last few years, we’ve just kind of kept doing what we’ve always done – and to be recognised in this way is really, really special.”
That refusal to be boxed-in has been central to Haim’s appeal – a band equally at home with sun-soaked pop hooks and classic rock crunch. As lead guitarist, Danielle has been a key driver of that sound.
Asked about her “go-to” instrument, she says: “I started on a Gibson Melody Maker that my dad bought me, and when it came time to graduate to my next guitar, I picked the SG because it was so light. It turned into my favorite guitar, so I continued with it for a long time.”
More recently, though, her sound has been shaped by a different six-string.
“And then Rostam [Batmanglij, ex-Vampire Weekend and one of Haim’s collaborators] bought a really nice Strat from the Fifties, and it’s the most fun guitar to play. So we used that a lot on the last two albums [Women in Music Pt. III and I Quit], and I melded into more of a Strat player.”
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“It had to be shiny and sparkling”: Inside Björn Ulvaeus’s wacky Eurovision 1974 star guitar
ABBA delivered a performance for the ages when they took the stage at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 with Waterloo. The band’s glam styling became instant pop iconography, and central to that image was the outrageous-looking 13-pointed, silver star guitar slung over the shoulder of lead guitarist Björn Ulvaeus.
The instrument quickly became part of ABBA’s visual identity, but its origins have long been misunderstood. For years, many assumed it was a custom build from Hagström, the Swedish brand Ulvaeus frequently played. In reality, the flamboyant guitar was crafted by Stockholm luthier Göran Malmberg.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Malmberg details how the now-legendary guitar was conceived and completed under intense time pressure ahead of the Brighton contest – and why it had to be, in his words, “shiny and sparkling”.
- READ MORE: Gibson Custom Shop recreates Mick Ronson’s David Bowie-era Les Paul with super limited run
According to Malmberg, Ulvaeus approached him with just six weeks to go before Eurovision. The brief was simple: create something visually arresting enough to match ABBA’s glam aesthetic.
“Björn and I met and discussed what it could look like,” Malmberg recalls. “It had to be shiny and sparkling, so a star shape was suggested. We decided I would draw some drafts of the guitar and then show them to him. Björn approved one of them, but there was only six weeks left until Eurovision!”
With the design agreed, construction began immediately. A Stratocaster-style neck was selected, but the radical 13-point body required careful engineering to avoid the pitfalls that often plague extreme shapes.
“The body had to have the correct weight balance so that the guitar would remain in position, even if Björn released his grip on the neck,” Malmberg explains. “Furthermore, the tips of the star shape could not be in the way when he was using it.”
To prevent the sharp points from breaking, the body was built from several layers of plywood glued together. The outermost layers were 1mm birch plywood aka “airplane plywood”, chosen to minimise surface cracking in the finish. Particular care was also taken to ensure the guitar would remain balanced on a strap, even if Ulvaeus released the neck mid-performance.
“The extra-long horn provided the balance for the attachment of the shoulder strap, and there were two horns on each side of the guitar’s body,” says Malmberg. “The placement of the control knobs and the cutaway horns helped to counter the weight, too.”
As for electronics, Malmberg says he “mounted the humbuckers, especially the treble pickup, further from the bridge to get a slightly darker sound, suitable for rhythm guitar playing.”
Finally, the finishing touches delivered the show-stopping effect Ulvaeus had requested. “The guitar was lacquered with metal stain on a silver base, and 20 layers of clear lacquer were used,” Malmberg says – ensuring it would gleam under the Eurovision stage lights.
While the exact inspiration behind the star design remains unclear, some have pointed to the influence of British glam-rockers The Glitter Band, who toured Sweden shortly before Eurovision and were known for their own star-shaped instruments.
“The Glitter Band did a tour of Sweden, and this band came to see us play; they told us they really liked our music and that it was really good,” bassist John Springate previously revealed. “Then, three weeks later, we saw them on Eurovision, dressed like us, with a star guitar, and that was ABBA!”
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Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional review – the ultimate in solidbody sophistication?
$2,199.99/£2,150, yamaha.com
As a rule, people buy a Yamaha Pacifica because they’re feeling sensible. But there have been a couple of dangerously desirable options on the table since 2024: the Standard Plus and Professional. And now, just to get us in even more of a fluster, that table has been stacked a little higher with the return of Yamaha’s single-cutaway design.
There were a bunch of single-cut Pacificas floating around in the late 90s, but since then – Mike Stern signature model aside – it’s been Strat-influenced double-cuts all the way. The Pacifica SC Professional marks a revival of the more Tele-like body style, with a fixed bridge and two pickups… but this Japanese-made instrument is far from being just another Fender-alike.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – what is it?
Yamaha is, of course, a Japanese company – so when it decides to build a guitar at home, rather than outsourcing to somewhere with lower production costs, you know you’re dealing with the top of the line. Mind you, that much is obvious from the SC Professional itself: it’s as beautifully crafted in the hands as it is well appointed on the spec sheet.
The starting point is indeed a T-type design, with a very familiar-looking pickup mounted to the bridge plate next to a trio of compensated brass barrel saddles. But then things go wandering off from the template – starting with the neck pickup, which is a humbucker. Both pups are Yamaha’s Reflectone types, co-developed with Rupert Neve Designs.
As well as the standard three-way pickup selector, you get another distinctly non-standard feature borrowed from some of the Revstar models: a focus switch. This is a pull-out tone knob that engages a passive filter on the single-coil, opening up more tonal options.
There are no surprises in the other core specs – poly-finished alder body, bolt-on maple neck with maple or rosewood board, TUSQ nut, Gotoh locking tuners, 25.5-inch scale length, medium jumbo frets – but there are a few more notable features to mention before the artless thrashing begins.
The fretboard has a compound radius, going from 9.5 inches at the strummy end to a flatter 12 inches for easier string bends up top; the body has some chambering inside the lower horn for acoustic reasons; and, as you might expect at this price, it comes in a fancy hard case.
Oh, and one more thing: every guitar is subjected to Yamaha’s proprietary Initial Response Acceleration (IRA) treatment, which involves applying vibrations to simulate the tone-enhancing effect of years of ‘playing in’. In other words, it’s been sonically relic’d.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – playability and build quality
This thing couldn’t be easier to play if it came with built-in hands that did it all for you and then gave you a back massage afterwards. There’s something supernaturally smooth about the frets, and the neck itself – on the rounded side but nothing too scary – is eminently huggable. The balance is good, while the contoured neck heel and upper-body chamfer make it an ergonomic dream.
Even the half-knurled volume and tone knobs feel nice, with a slick but sturdy ‘thunk’ when you pull up the latter for the focus switch. And the factory setup on my review instrument was close to perfect, though the shared saddles mean you might have to compromise a little on intonation.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – sounds
It’s impossible to pick up a guitar that looks like this and not expect it to sound like a Telecaster – and the Yamaha website isn’t exactly helping with its promise of “vintage twang” – but that really is not the deal at all. There’s twanginess on offer for sure, but as with the newer double-cut Pacificas, the Reflectone pickups go big on hi-fi clarity… in this case, bigly big.
What you do get from that three-way switch and pull-out knob is an array of five very distinct sounds covering a broad tonal spectrum. The humbucker on its own is full, smooth and breezy; the middle position brings plenty of sugary twinkle; and the bridge pickup has so much shimmering top end I found myself looking down to check it hadn’t secretly turned into a 12-string. Pulling up the focus switch has a mild softening effect on that middle setting, but it completely transforms the single-coil on its own, shaving off a lot of that over-eager treble and replacing it with a bucketful of midrange spank.
Even so, in all positions, this is that rare phenomenon: a guitar with a tone knob that you’ll actually want to use. And luckily it works well, taming the zing without turning everything muddy even when it’s down to halfway. All of that makes the Pacifica SC Professional a versatile electric guitar… but through a clean amp at least, it’s not especially likeable or characterful.
On goes the overdrive, then – and now those pickups find their natural home. The sustain is piano-like, the smoothness is never compromised, and if you’re a technically tidy player you’ll find the guitar’s solidity and snappiness make it a supremely capable partner for your fiddliest lead runs. Palm-muted chords are not so strong – with high gain all that bright resonance translates to a ringiness that can spill over into the gaps – but you’ve probably worked out by now that this is not a guitar for sweaty punk chuggers.
With distortion in the picture the tonal differences between the pickup settings are reined in to a more sensible range, but all five are balanced and articulate. Couple that with the effortless playability I was raving about earlier, and you have a Professional that absolutely lives up to its name.
Image: Adam Gasson
Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – should I buy one?
It isn’t going to destroy any stereotypes about Yamahas not being very rock’n’roll, but there’s no denying this is a monumentally classy piece of work. And while the voicing of those pickups is hardly a recipe for instant mojo, they’ve clearly been designed to do a particular job – one that’s likely to involve an overdrive pedal or two – and they carry it off impeccably.
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Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – alternatives
The obvious alternative for anyone who can’t stretch to this kind of money is the Yamaha Pacifica SC Standard Plus ($999/£992), which is made in Indonesia and has only minor spec differences. See also the Eastman FullerTone SC’52 ($899/£799) – or, for a more traditional T-type instrument with a neck humbucker, you might prefer the Fender American Vintage II 1977 Telecaster Custom ($2,599/£2,299).
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Is 2026 finally Iron Maiden’s year to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Despite being a staple of British rock and metal, Iron Maiden aren’t in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame – in fact, they’ve been rejected twice already. However, they’ve been put forward to join the Hall yet again, sitting amongst the nominees for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026. Well, third time lucky…
As it stands, Iron Maiden have made it through to the final round of nominations. They sit alongside some fierce competition, with the likes of Jeff Buckley, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, and even Oasis also hoping to snag a spot in the Hall Of Fame.
To be eligible for nomination, a minimum of 25 years must have passed since an artist’s first commercial release. With Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut dropping in 1980, that means the band have been eligible for over 20 years – it’s fair to say their induction to the Hall has been a long time coming.
1,200 artists, historians, and members of the music industry will decide who makes the cut. There is also a fan vote currently running on the Hall’s website. Once a decision has been reached, the Class of 2026 will be announced in late April.
In the past, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson hasn’t been very fussed about the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. On his spoken word world tour in 2018, he criticised the institution: “I actually think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an utter and complete load of bollocks, to be honest with you,” he said [via Consequence of Sound].
“It’s run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know rock ‘n’ roll if it hit them in the face,” he continued. “They need to stop taking Prozac and start drinking fucking beer.”
He’s also gone on record saying he’d “refuse” to be inducted. “I’m really happy we’re not [in the Rock Hall] and I would never want to be there,” he told The Jerusalem Post in 2018. “If we’re ever inducted, I will refuse – they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there.”
“Rock & roll music does not belong in a mausoleum in Cleveland. It’s a living, breathing thing, and if you put it in a museum, then it’s dead. It’s worse than horrible, it’s vulgar.”
Regardless, Tom Morello has been working hard to get Iron Maiden in the hallowed Hall. Morello has been a member of the since 2014, making it his mission to get more metal acts into the Hall Of Fame.
“A lot of great bands have gotten into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more recently, in part because they’ve had stronger advocates in the room,” the guitarist told Guitar World in 2024. “I’m one of those advocates… This year I’m all in on Maiden.”
“I know they don’t care,” he added. “[But] I don’t care that they don’t care, because I think it’s the place where they belong.”
So far, he’s helped get Randy Rhoads posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2021. He also pushed for the committee to induct Ozzy Osbourne for his solo work in October 2024, alongside his pre-existing nod of respect when Black Sabbath were inducted in 2026. “I have to give credit to the Hall of Fame – they put me in the room because I complained so damn much!” he said.
Surprisingly, nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 also include the likes of Mariah Carey and Lauryn Hill. While the pair are magnificent artists, with Carey’s pop and R&B topping charts and Hill’s 1998 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill transformative effect on hip-hop, they’re not often associated with ‘Rock and Roll’.
Kiss legend Gene Simmons recently went on record saying that the Rock Hall should be reserved for rock acts. “Hip-hop does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame – nor does opera or symphony orchestras,” he told the Legends N Leaders podcast.
However, the critique lead to Public Enemy’s Chuck D telling TMZ that Simmons was ignoring the “roll” half the Hall’s name. “Everything else other than rock, when rock ‘n’ roll splintered in the ’60s, is the roll… Kiss are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them.”
Regardless, Iron Maiden have an exciting year ahead of them. Their 50th anniversary is being properly marked this year with May documentary, Burning Ambition. The same month, they’re embarking on the second European leg of their Run For Your Lives World Tour.
You can cast your vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 now.
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“It’s not the Big Four – it’s the first four”: Alex Skolnick on why Testament aren’t included in the “Big Four” of thrash metal
Metallica. Megadeth. Slayer. Anthrax. These are the four thrash metal bands forever immortalised as the “Big Four”. But debate has raged for years as to whether certain other bands should be part of that cohort.
Such names include Bay Area greats and Kirk Hammett’s former band Exodus, East Coast thrashers Overkill, and, arguably the band most commonly argued as the group’s fifth member, Testament.
Across their vast discography – comprising 14 studio albums released over the course of four decades – Testament have made a strong case for their title as the Big Four’s fifth member.
But in a new interview with The Classic Metal Show [via Blabbermouth], guitarist Alex Skolnick explains why he believes the Big Four has always remained those four bands only. And the reason, he says, comes mostly down to timelines.
“I never give it much thought, because, to me, it’s not just the ‘Big Four’ – it’s the first four,” he says.
“Those bands had albums out when Testament was still called Legacy and was still a local band that I used to hear about when I was in high school. And they supported some of those bands, but all of the ‘Big Four’ bands had records out at the time that Legacy was still getting started. And by the time Legacy became Testament and released its first album, those bands all had several albums out. So you can’t really make the comparison.”
“They were there. They were so much further along by the time we even got started. So I think it makes more sense to look at, okay, the next wave after the so-called ‘Big Four’ bands. And it’s an honour that people think – most of the time we’re one of those names. That’s great. I’ll take it.”
Skolnick makes clear that he and his bandmates don’t mind at all that they aren’t cited as a member of the Big Four.
“I don’t know of anybody that has any issue with that,” he says. “[Nobody] says, ‘No, we should be in the Big Four.’ No, they’re the Big Four. All good. But we’ll proudly take our place in the next wave.”
Testament have a North America tour planned across March and April 2026. Aptly titled Thrash of the Titans, the trek will see the metallers take out support acts Overkill and German thrash metal outfit Destruction.
See Testament’s official website for tickets and a full list of dates.
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