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There are certain instruments which hold an unassailable place in music history. And Noel Gallagher’s 1960 Cherry Red Gibson ES-355 is one of them.

While Oasis are back now stronger than ever – and in the midst of a world tour, one of the most highly anticipated in history – the Gallagher brothers have had to fight through their share of differences to get to this point.

• READ MORE: Boss brings the Whammy into the 21st century with the all-new XS-100

It was inevitable that the band’s breakup in 2009 would be climactic, and ultimately saw a fight break out between Liam and Noel backstage at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris. The bust-up was not without collateral, either, as Liam grabbed Noel’s ES-355 and swung it “like an axe”, causing the damage which can be seen on the instrument today.

This guitar played a big part in the story of Oasis’s contentious breakup, so now that it’s headed to the auction block, it’s understandable experts are predicting such a high sell price: £250,000 – £500,000, to be precise.

According to PropstoreAuction – the auction house hosting the sale – Liam chose this guitar to swing around because he knew it was one of Noel’s favourites. “So then he leaves and goes to his own dressing room and picks up a guitar,” Noel explained in 2011. “He comes back in and he starts throwing it around like an axe.”

Noel later announced he was leaving Oasis, saying he could no longer work with Liam, and the band subsequently split.

Aside from its big part in Oasis’s 2009 breakup, the ES-355 was used by Noel and Gem Archer during Oasis’s Dig Out Your Soul tour in 2008, as well as extensively in the studio. Archer also played the guitar during the band’s performance of Don’t Look Back in Anger at Wembley Arena in 2008, and Noel played it during an acoustic performance at Koko Club in Camden on 2 November, 2006.

Online bidding for the guitar is open now, with a minimum starting bid required of £125,000. The auction will end on Thursday, 23 October.

Noel Gallagher’s 1960 Cherry Red Gibson ES-355 is just one item in PropstoreAuction’s mega Music Memorabilia Live Auction. Other items headed to the auction block include: 

• Noel Gallagher’s Takamine FP460SC acoustic used to record Wonderwall (Est. £200,000 – £400,000
• Lyrics handwritten by Jimi Hendrix for Straight Ahead (Est. £40,000 – £80,000)
• Slash’s 2019 Gibson Les Paul Appetite Burst “Prototype 2 of 2” (Est. £20,000 – £40,000)
• Trevor Horn’s Sarm West Studio 2 Solid State Logic SL 4048E+G Series Mixing Desk (Est. £100,000 – £200,000)
• Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal music video white fedora (Est. £40,000 – £80,000)
• Elvis Presley’s original pair of worn Grand Prix sunglasses (Est. £8,000 – £16,000)

“Propstore’s auction is a celebration of music history, with guitars that shaped the sound of a generation, handwritten lyrics that capture the first spark of legendary songs, and personal items that offer a glimpse into the lives of the world’s greatest music artists,” says Mark Hochman, Propstore’s Music Specialist.

“From John Lennon’s unmistakable glasses to Noel Gallagher’s iconic guitars, these are not just collectables; they’re cultural touchstones that have inspired millions. The Oasis online auction is a particular highlight, perfectly timed with the band’s return to the stage, and offering fans a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own a tangible piece of their enduring story.”

Learn more at PropstoreAuction.

The post Noel Gallagher’s 1960 Gibson ES-355, which Liam Gallagher destroyed right before Oasis’s breakup, is headed to auction – and could fetch up to £500k appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram burst onto the blues scene a decade ago as a teenage electric prodigy. Now the erstwhile son of Clarksdale, Mississippi is back with Hard Road – a new album of modern blues released on his new label Red Zero Records and an upcoming world tour to support it.

• READ MORE: “I think it’s important that I don’t restrict myself”: Flawed Mangoes is defying genre expectations and moving beyond ‘hopecore’

Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing Ingram’s calling down the thunder with his soulful vocals interspersed with searing lead lines – from his signature Fender Telecaster Deluxe no less – will be expecting great things and this album does not disappoint with some stand out guitar moments. More about Hard Road later, but we really wanted to find out more about the records that have inspired Kingfish to become the 2025 blues colossus that he is. So here are his top five – well six actually – influential albums in the man’s own words.

I’ll Play The blues For You – Albert King

“The title track is the first song that I learned how to play – on bass! This album has to be first on the list. The whole record is great but my favourite song has to be Answer To The Laundromat Blues. He’s really digging in. I don’t know if this is a weird statement but I really like blues players that play with a lot of authority – not necessarily fast – they really dig in. Albert King is one of my biggest influences and he does that – especially on this record.”

Showdown – Albert Collins, Robert Cray, Johnny Copeland

“This is a classic amongst blues historians. Well, for me it’s a classic. It was a collaborative thing between Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland. The first track – T-Bone Shuffle – Johnny Copeland plays one of my favourite solos on that song. I love his opening licks on that solo. I play those licks in my solos and I got them from this record!”

Live At The Regal – BB King

“Man, you can’t mess with this. Yes sir, that’s classic blues – in fact you can’t say classic blues without Live At The Regal. What can I say about the guitar work on this album? Listen to the whole thing! That’s all I can say! I love that sound – When I first started I played a Gibson 355 – that sort of guitar has certainly been part of my journey and sound.”

Are You Experienced? – Jimi Hendrix

“Jimi Hendrix was a big influence on me. Well, look, outside of classic blues – I love a lot of music, I’m looking at my computer right now and there is so much to choose from – this ain’t easy! But this record… I love the whole thing but there is this one song in particular that is special to me – May This Be Love. This song showcases Jimi’s R&B chordal influences and that’s why I love it. It’s beautiful. He was a master of rhythm guitar.”

A Real Mother For Ya – Johnny Guitar Watson

“Yes sir, Johnny Guitar Watson is definitely an influence when it comes to my phrasing, funk playing, he was a great blues player too – just so inspiring. This is just a great record – listen to the title track. So much feel, and humour too. But I need one more, can I have one more?”

Of course!

Superfly – Curtis Mayfield

“Curtis Mayfield has to be here. Superfly is an important album. I always say that Curtis Mayfield was a prophet. History repeats itself and he really prophesied a lot of what we are seeing today for sure man. Not only that but his black piano key tuning and his whole approach opening up the guitar to his melody and rhythm work. This record belongs here for sure. The title track says it all.”

“I don’t consider myself a blues purist. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with “purists” of the genre. And that’s simply because I jump back and forth – one day I’ll play traditional blues, the next I’m all rocked up and rocking out. But here’s the thing, I will play whatever the hell I want to play, how I want to play it. And not only that, I feel that it’s cool to showcase the influence of the blues as much as the language itself.

“We all know that the blues is the roots – all these other sub-genres like soul, blues rock, rock n roll, they’re all the branches. Ain’t nothing wrong with showing what the blues has influenced. I feel like the more I go out the box musically people will always be able to hear the foundation of the blues in my music because I will always have that no matter what I do. Even if I’m doing a pop record it’s going to have some blues in there somewhere because that’s where I come from.”

You recently set up your own record label – that is an interesting step forward!

“That’s right – Red Zero Records. This was an idea that my manager and I formulated back in 2019. We wanted to create an avenue for a lot of the young blues-based musicians that we felt weren’t getting the recognition they deserved. I’m not the only one that’s out. Here doing it you know – there’s a host of young talent out here and I wanted to help. You have to give back – someone gave me an opportunity and now I’m at a point in my career where I can pass that forward.”

Did you feel a new level of creative freedom?

“Definitely! I feel like everyone knows me for the blues and blues-rock but you listen to this new record and you will hear R&B on there, you’ll hear soul, I really wanted to make a record that would showcase my voice and my vocal range too – and then all the other stuff comes in. Tom Hambridge, Patrick “Guitarboy” Hayes, and Nick Goldston did a great job with the production too – those guys know what they’re doing – I love how this record sounds.”

Hard Road is out 25 September on Red Zero Records

The post Christone “Kingfish” Ingram picks his six most influential blues guitar albums of all time appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Boss has unveiled its 21st-century answer to the Whammy pedal with the all-new XS-100, as well as a smaller unit adopting the brand’s compact pedal format, the XS-1.

Boasting a huge eight-octave range – and, of course, an onboard pedal for linear control of the four octaves above and below the centre line – Boss is confident the XS-100 is a “powerhouse expression machine that will transform how guitarists and bassists perform with pitch”.

• READ MORE: Boss PX-1 Plugout FX review – “This is a pedal that could find a home in a lot of rigs”

Meanwhile, the XS-1 takes the XS-100’s core features and distills them into the treasured Boss compact pedal format, offering instant drop tunings, capo simulations, octave effects, and even linear pitch control, if pairing with an external expression pedal.

Linear pitch shifting has long been an effect much loved by guitarists. But with the development of the XS series, Boss says it has pioneered new methods to “advance real-time pitch shifting and eliminate the tonal artefacts common in conventional designs”.

“Powered by finely tuned algorithms and a specially selected DSP platform, the XS series provides balanced polyphonic performance that feels natural and musical across all playing styles, pickup positions, and pedal setups,” Boss says. 

“The attack and tonal character are fully preserved, and even complex chords and sustained lead tones – typically a challenge for pitch shifters – are reproduced with stunning clarity.

Let’s take a closer look at what both the XS-100 and XS-1 have to offer.

XS-100 Poly Shifter

In addition to four octaves both above and below, controllable via an onboard expression pedal, the XS-100 also enables motor revving-style tones via independent pitch-change speeds for each pedal direction.

There’s also an integrated toe switch, whereby at the end of the pedal’s travel, players can experiment with momentary pitch jumps with adjustable range and rise/fall time. Additionally, there are two footswitches which can be used to bypass the pedal shift and quickly retune an instrument at fixed semitone steps across the eight octaves.

The pedal’s range is also customisable, meaning musicians can create different presets for specific songs and bank them to 30 onboard memory slots.

And if one pedal wasn’t enough, the XS-100 supports up to two external footswitches or an expression pedal, further expanding real-time control options. There’s also MIDI I/O functionality for more advanced applications, like sending MIDI commands using the pedal and footswitches.

XS-1 Poly Shifter

Meanwhile, the XS-1 doesn’t have an onboard expression pedal – though an external one can be integrated – and is thus packed into Boss’s smaller compact blueprint for a more pedalboard-friendly footprint.

Offering a range of seven semitones and three octaves up or down, the XS-1 can be used for a variety of applications, including drop tunings, key changes, or capo simulation, to name a few.

Its easy-to-grasp interface features a dedicated Balance knob for adjusting the mix between wet and dry signal, while there’s also a Detune mode for experimenting with doubling effects.

The XS-1’s pedal switch can be assigned to on/off for momentary operation, while up to two external footswitches can be connected for quick access to alternate tuning modes with your preferred Balance settings. An external expression pedal can also be used to turn the XS-1’s operation more into that of the XS-100.

Pricing and availability

Both the XS-100 and XS-1 will be available in October 2025, priced at $349.99 and $199.99, respectively.

For more information, head to Boss.

The post Boss brings the Whammy into the 21st century with the all-new XS-100 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Sick of endless knob-fiddling to get that perfect tone? Positive Grid’s latest AI-powered guitar tone platform BIAS X is here to change that. Available for Mac and PC, BIAS X combines cutting-edge AI with a next-generation tone engine, taking musicians from a spark of an idea to a mix-ready sound in just moments.

From subtle dynamics and soaring leads to punchy modern metal and dreamy ambient swells, BIAS X delivers tones with an authenticity that mirrors real tubes, speakers, and circuits. Whether used as a standalone tone lab or as a DAW plugin, BIAS X is designed to help players spend more time making music and less time fiddling with settings.

• READ MORE: “AI should be putting mufflers on cars, not doing art for us”: Wolfgang Van Halen slams AI use in music

What really sets BIAS X apart is its use of agentic AI, which is said to “understand tone like a musician”. Players can describe the sound they want – via text prompts referencing a favourite artist, song, genre, or even an abstract feeling – and the software generates a matching tone almost instantly. Musicians can also upload audio clips to recreate tones or request iterative refinements such as “more bite,” “less fuzz,” or “add crunch”. This dramatically streamlines the creative workflow, which is clearly one of BIAS X’s primary goals.

The platform itself comes equipped with 33 amps, 62 effects, and an all-new cab simulation. All of which have been crafted with an advanced tone engine that combines decades of Positive Grid’s amp and effects modelling expertise with machine learning and circuit-level simulation.

Over 200 classic amps were analysed during development to capture their tonal character, while adaptive circuit modelling and harmonic fingerprinting ensure that every note responds dynamically to a guitarist’s pick, volume, and playing style.

BIAS X also features an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface – reminiscent of Positive Grid’s popular BIAS FX 2 amp and effects suite – that encourages fast experimentation without breaking creative flow. Musicians can easily mix and match amps, cabinets, and effects to build custom rigs, while the revamped preset manager and gear browser make it simple to recall, compare, or swap gear on the fly.

As with all AI learning models, BIAS X evolves with the user, which means it will, in theory, adapt to your preferred style and preferences the more you play.

BIAS X is available for $149. Check out the software in action below.

Learn more at Positive Grid.

The post Say goodbye to hours of painful tone tweaking: Positive Grid’s new BIAS X platform uses AI to deliver the perfect guitar tone instantly appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Jake Kiszka says he was prepared to face some scrutiny when releasing music for his new project, Mirador, from the fans who came to know him in Greta Van Fleet.

Launching Mirador has allowed Kiszka to make music without his brothers and GVF bandmates – Josh and Sam Kiszka – for the first time. He’s teamed up with Ida Mae’s Chris Turpin for the project, and the pair released their self-titled debut album earlier this month.

• READ MORE: “It’s quite a nice change to occasionally not be in a band with my brothers”: Greta Van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka on why he’s embarking on side project band Mirador

Opening up on the formation of Mirador, Kiskza tells SPIN, “There was some pressure around that, especially to begin with. We knew that if this was going to be a thing, there was going to be quite a bit of scrutiny around it from Ida Mae fans and Greta Van Fleet fans and everybody.

“In one way or another, there’s a skepticism about it. We really have to show up. We really have to deliver. In one way, as a promise to ourselves. But in another way, it was trying to do our best to represent this idea. It was trying to show people not only Mirador as a band, but that it exists because of this relationship and friendship and brotherhood. That’s part of the story. The reason we did this to begin with was because the philosophy, what Mirador means, transcends the music,” he states.

Further speaking on the differences in communication between the Greta Van Fleet camp and his work with Turpin, Kiszka adds: “The creative input is coming from four different sides of the table [in GVF]. There’s a stark contrast because there’s so many ideas. You’re really chasing a moving target, and that’s exciting, and it’s exhilarating, and it holds its place within the chemistry of Greta Van Fleet. But I’d never really worked with another person outside of my brothers.”

He continues, “That creative kinship is a rare thing. I have written or worked with other people where we’re seeing eye-to-eye to a certain degree, but not completing the other one’s sentences. It really started with a guitar, the phrasing. It was evident we were coming from the same place, that we spoke the same language, that our musicality and that vernacular was going to be shared and intertwined, because it was that way with the guitars.

“There was no question that if we could play together like that, with that kind of chemistry, we were of one mind. It was two people locked into one thing. I never had that before…. An interesting contrast to what I’ve been used to.”

The debut album from Mirador is out now, and you can also catch them on tour  from September-November this year.

The post “We knew there was going to be quite a bit of scrutiny”: Jake Kiszka felt “pressure” at what Greta Van Fleet fans would think of his Mirador side project appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Producer Andrew Watt is working with the Rolling Stones again, as he confirms that they’ve been recording new music together.

Watt produced the band’s Grammy-winning 2023 album Hackney Diamonds, and has since gone on to produce for Pearl Jam, Lady Gaga, and for the collaborative album, Who Believes In Angels?, released by Elton John and Brandi Carlile earlier this year.

• READ MORE: Andrew Watt on the most important skill for studio guitarists: “It’s not about ‘your thing.’ In the studio, it’s about what’s right for the song”

Though remaining very tight-lipped on the fine details, producer Watt tells Rolling Stone, “I’ve said it before, but it’s like working for Batman. When the tongue [logo] is up in the air, you just go… I can say we did some recording together, but that’s all I can say.”

Watt’s involvement in what sure seems to be another full-length record comes after speculative reports from inside sources, which suggested the band had been spending time in the studio again, and a Record Collector interview with Keith Richards’ son, Marlon.

He told the outlet that the band were “nearly done” recording and that they had enough material left over from Hackney Diamonds to work with on a new project: “They have enough left over from the last one. [It] gave them a Grammy so now they’re all hyped up on that: ‘Oh, yeah – we can do another one like that! We’ve got more like that if you want…’. I think they’re doing the follow-up,” he said.

Watt reflected on the making of Hackney Diamonds earlier this year, sharing his pride in how Paul McCartney helped him to land the gig, and how the Beatle got involved on the record for track Bite My Head Off.

“He got to just be the bass player in the band, and he fucking loved it,” Watt told Mojo. “As I was walking Paul out of the studio, he said, ‘I just fucking played bass in The Rolling Stones, and I’m a fucking Beatle!’”

The post Andrew Watt is producing another Rolling Stones album: “It’s like working for Batman… When the tongue is up in the air, you just go” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Positive Grid

The guitar world is a place where true innovation often feels hard to come by – after all, a lot of the technology used to make guitars, amps and effects do what they do is many decades old.

Positive Grid has been trying to change that in recent years, and the brand’s revolutionary Spark smart amp has changed the game for thousands of guitar players who want to streamline and simplify their practice routine.

Now the brand is looking to make the tone-sculpting experience even more frictionless in its impressive new amp and effects software suite, Project: BIAS X – and it’s doing it with the help of 2025’s main character: AI.

One of the most common complaints about any kind of comprehensive amp and effects product is that the sheer volume of options can act as a hindrance to creativity. Option paralysis is a real thing, and how often have we got distracted auditioning different amps and effects instead of actually making music? It can be fun, but it’s not always productive.

As you’d expect, BIAS X is a hugely powerful tool for in-the-box guitarists, offering over a hundred brilliantly modelled amps, cabs and effects, and all the signal-routing options you could dream of.

You could spend many hours exploring all the different sounds that are available. But for those who want to get down to it, BIAS X adds something potentially revolutionary – a chatbot-style AI Assistant that will take your prompts and attempt to turn them into the guitar sound you’re looking for in seconds.

I don’t know about you, but even as an experienced BIAS user, I often find there’s a gap between the tone I envision in my head and the one I’m able to create – especially when I\m stepping outside of my musical comfort zone.

Could BIAS X’s AI Assistant help me dial in the sound I’m looking for more easily and accurately than I could on my own? I was keen to find out, so I took the plunge?

How do you use the AI Assistant to create tones in BIAS X?

If you’ve been on the internet at all in the last year or so, you’ll probably have had some conversations with an AI agent, and the chat window popup in BIAS X is reassuringly familiar if you have.

Rather than answering your inane questions like ChatGPT, however, BIAS X’s AI Assistant has the much more worthwhile task of taking your user prompt and using its machine learning to build a signal chain from its myriad options. Once that’s done, you can check it out and then manually tweak and refine parameters to your taste.

As Guitar.com’s resident high-gain aficionado, my first port of call is to see how the AI Assistant can handle some crushing metal tones. There are plenty of amazing classic metal amps in BIAS X, so my hopes are high.

As with any AI prompt, I find it helps to be as specific as possible to get good results – “Give me a thrash metal tone” is not likely to yield exactly what you’re after for example, given the huge scope of that particular request.

Instead, I drill down: “Give me a high-gain tone for thrash metal,” I write. “Use a gate to limit unwanted noise, and make sure it has enough clarity so I can hear many notes in quick succession.”

I wait in quiet anticipation as the Assistant tells me it is ‘dialling it in’, and barely 10 seconds later I’m presented with a shiny new preset based on my request. This is a lot quicker than building it yourself.

To my great pleasure, the tone it gives me is a gnarly, heavily driven but not muddy sound – it’s frankly, mix-ready. The only thing I really have to do is tweak BIAS X’s global gate to reduce some heavy noise, but that may be more to do with my input level than anything fundamental about the AI-generated tone itself. Did I say it did this in 10 seconds?

A big tick for metal then, but how will the AI Assistant handle something a little more nuanced – like a crunchy blues-ready lead or a delicate and immersive clean for arpeggios? And what happens if I dial back on my level of detail in the prompt?

Keeping it simple this time I simply ask, “Give me a crunchy blues lead tone” and instantly you can tell the difference. While the basic result it provides me sounds good, it definitely needs a bit of refinement to get it to where I need it to be. It’s a touch wooly for my tastes, and the mids need scooping.

Thankfully, the AI Assistant exists in a continuous chat window, so I can ask it to make whatever refinements I desire. “Keep everything the same, but apply some subtractive EQ to the 400 – 600 Hz range to reduce grating peaks,” I tell it.

And voila, not 10 more seconds later, I’m served up a refined blues tone based on more than one of my prompts that sounds so good, and has me jamming for long enough for me to forget I’m working right now on writing this article.
My only real hiccup occurs the first time I ask for a clean tone – the Assistant generating a tone that’s significantly quieter in level than the previous two generated. Again, this would be an easy enough fix, but out of interest I simply ask the same prompt again.

The power of the AI inside means that these steps are not predetermined – so there’s every chance that the Assistant will output something different each time. Second time out, I’m delivered a gorgeously ethereal and reverb-washed clean tone that’s good to go.

It’s also worth noting that in my weeks with BIAS X, the quality of response from the Assistant has improved significantly with each software update pushed out pre-release. It’s a good sign that this will get even better over time.

It’s not just about text either…

What’s more, text-to-tone is just one of two principal ways the AI Assistant can help you achieve the sound you’re after. The other, ‘music-to-tone’, is perhaps even more exciting – as it allows you to upload an audio file, which BIAS X then analyses and delivers a guitar tone based on what it hears in the track.

Giving it a go myself, I uploaded an mp3 of a royalty-free track which begins with a riff, followed by a more full instrumental. I’m asked which snippet of the song I want BIAS X to analyse – it’s generally more successful if you choose a section with less instruments surrounding the guitar.

Once again, in 10 seconds or less delivers me four presets to choose from. I did notice that these presets were often quite different, but given that the AI is trying to account for the all-important guitar-shaped variable, that’s probably for good reason. Ultimately, every time I’ve given this feature a go, at least one of the generated presets sounds scarily like the original track.

So, do I really need an AI Assistant in my guitar software?

A lot of the conversation around AI at the moment is basically ‘Does X really need AI in it?’ but with something like BIAS X I can really see the user benefit.

The AI Assistant isn’t going to replace your need to have any kind of input in your tone-shaping endeavours – you still have to think and engage with what it’s spitting out in order for you to get the exact sound you want for your gear, playing style and needs.

Sure, you could create anything that the Assistant does yourself, but there’s no doubt that it gets you there a hell of a lot faster than the old-fashioned way. For me, it massively expedited the process of turning the sound in my head into a usable, functional guitar time, and let me focus on what really matters – making music.

Find out more about BIAS X at Positive Grid. 

The post I tried using an AI-powered amp and effects suite to create my guitar sound for me – here’s what happened appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder has re-recorded his 1981 solo cut Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride) for his new album, The Vault – Fifty Years of Music. The song, he reveals, has its roots in the band’s late ’70s heyday, when he envisioned it as the ultimate guitar showdown between himself and bandmate Joe Walsh.

Felder explains that the track was written in the wake of the Eagles’ career-defining Hotel California, where his traded solos with Walsh had become the stuff of legend. With The Long Run on the horizon, Felder says he wanted to push that energy even further.

• READ MORE: “I didn’t realise what dehydration was!”: Eagles legend Don Felder reveals the truth behind his terrifying on-stage collapse

“It was going to be a follow-up on The Long Run,” he tells Guitarist. “It had a real kind of heavy hand to it and I wrote it so that Joe and I could play even harder than we did – or edgier than we did – on Hotel California, against each other. It had harmony parts, trading-off solos and a much harder rock edge.”

A basic track for the song was cut during sessions for The Long Run, but deadlines (“We were just dying to get through this record,” the musician recalls) and tour commitments meant the band never finished it.

“We had a basic track, but it just died in the Eagles’ vault,” says Felder. “We just didn’t have time to do everything we needed to do. There were a lot of dropped ideas along the way, but I took the idea and turned it into Heavy Metal.”

The unfinished idea was resurrected years later when Felder was approached to contribute to the soundtrack for the animated sci-fi film Heavy Metal. Retitled Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride), the song found new life outside the Eagles’ orbit, but Felder has never stopped imagining what it might have sounded like as a full-blown Eagles guitar epic.

Now, more than four decades later, Felder says revisiting the track for his new album gave him the chance to finally update its sonics.

“After listening to it since 1981 or ‘82, just the tonality and the quality of it sounded kind of dated, you know? I thought, ‘I really like that song. I love playing it, and I play it at almost every one of my live shows. I just want to do a fresh version of it,’” he says.

Recorded with modern tools and production values, Felder insists the 2025 version captures the power he always heard in the song: “I used 96k Pro Tools, and with the remastering that we have today you can make things sound really great. So I went back and re-recorded it. It was fun to do and it just sounds a lot better to me.”

“Without the title Heavy Metal, that song could have, and should have, in my opinion, been finished on an Eagles record with Joe and I following up on Hotel with some dazzling guitar solos and stuff,” he says.

The post “I wrote it so that Joe and I could play even harder than we did on Hotel California”: Don Felder on the guitar duel that never made Eagles’ last 70s album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

A rare piece of Nirvana history has hit the auction block. Previously unseen footage of the band’s February 1990 gig at Iguanas in Tijuana, Mexico is going under the hammer – and it’s expected to fetch up to $150,000.

• READ MORE: The Guitar Gear Used on Bleach by Nirvana

The video, which runs just over 45 minutes, captures the grunge icons in their early Bleach era. The night also saw legendary frontman Kurt Cobain smashing not one but two guitars: a DIY pink Mustang and a 1970s Gibson SG.

The footage was captured across two Sony Video 8 master cassette tapes, labelled “Original Master Camera-A” and “Camera B”, complete with scrawled tape stickers reading “Nirvana I” and “Nirvana II.” Bonhams, which is handling the sale, expects the lot to fetch between $100,000 and $150,000.

It’s not just the tapes that are included. The package also comes with digital transfers of the footage on two Sony mini DVs, a portable SSD drive loaded with the “complete, digitised raw footage from both cameras, the professionally edited version of the concert, the edited version of the concert with a security watermark, and some stills taken from the video files”, as well as a US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration for the filming and editing of the show.

Collectors will also find some choice extras, including an original Nirvana tour poster for their 15 February show at Raji’s nightclub in Los Angeles – just two nights before Tijuana – plus a Sub Pop first pressing of Bleach on white vinyl, limited to just 1,000 copies.

Thirteen songs made the setlist that night, all delivered with the feral energy that would soon make Nirvana world-famous.

The sale is part of Bonhams’ Unplugged & Unforgettable: Music Auction, which closes Thursday, 24 September, at 12pm PDT.

Learn more at Bonhams.

The post Unseen Nirvana footage from 1990 gig – where Kurt Cobain smashed two guitars – surfaces at auction appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

£136, notpedals.com

While there may be a disco-ball on the front of the GLTTR!, have it place you under no illusion. There is little understating how totally unsuitable this unit is for attempting some funky Nile Rogers-style chops. You’d sooner kickstart the next disco revolution by cutting a goose in half with a guitar string.

• READ MORE: Meet NotPedals.com, a marketplace that’s making boutique handmade pedals more accessible than ever

What is the GLTTR!?

First of all, it’s a pedal with an exclamation point in its name – so no, the question in the sub-heading above has not been delivered in a desperate shout, but it would be appropriate if it was. The GLTTR! is one of those things that get listed as “other” or “glitch/weird” – and it earns it. Engaging the pedal for the first time I am met with an overwhelming, incomprehensible wall of sound. As per the manufacturer’s copy, GLTTR! “generates cascading noise that evolves over time,” and “even reacts to your playing when it feels like it.”

Indeed, this is only sort of an effects pedal review – in reality, the GLTTR! is a synth in disguise. It will allow you to mix in your guitar sound, and it even distorts it for you as well, because why not. However, the interaction between your playing and the sounds the GLTTR! produces is arcane – it’s there, but it’s hardly a one-to-one relationship.

While a delay chip is the heart of the GLTTR!’s noise-generation, there are a scant few settings where your signal is repeated back to you in any tangible way. And, for the most part, you can use the GLTTR! totally on its lonesome, without anything plugged in, if you so desire. It’s a pedal that can do the job of a big pile of modular gear, in the specific setting of noisily feeding everything back into itself to create violent cochlea sandpaper – the job of the musician, in the case of things like GLTTR!, is less about playing the gear and more about shaping it and directing the flow of the output.

This is because regardless of what’s going on at the input stage, GLTTR!’s output resembles a Merzbow album – replete with digital, harsh pulses and totally abstract howls, as if the little delay chip in here was granted the ability to feel pain. For genres where consonance, rhythm and harmony have been abandoned, though, the GLTTR!’s controls are extremely inviting.

The texture of the noise is thick, and the various controls poke and prod the resulting oscillations in various directions– the manual describes the “!!!” control as the “most important”, however it’s how it works in tandem with the various switches – specifically the “???” switch – to give you some really varying outputs, going from low growls with occasionally digital screeches at random intervals to high, piercing screams with blasts of white noise.

The on-board LFO, when set right, will also let you dance between some varying extremes, pushing and pulling the texture of the noise in great crashing waves. At some settings it even tortures the delay chip so drastically that it simply gives up and turns off, leading to stark, sudden silences amidst the total chaos. In these moments, before the howls return, you contemplate life before the GLTTR!, life after the GLTTR!, and the gulf between these two things.

Who is the GLTTR! for?

I would heartily recommend the GLTTR! To anyone who genuinely likes a bit of noise music in their life – you could otherwise achieve a similarly three-dimensional and variable noise sound with a more in-depth modular setup, but the GLTTR! Lets you dip your toes into that world in a familiar stompbox format.

With that said, anyone who is expecting a guitar effect that’s, well, an actual guitar effect, may feel like this is unusable in most circumstances. If you turned this pedal on during a “normal” guitar set, the sound engineer will probably start trying to figure out what just exploded. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its place in a ‘band’ setting – for some alarming noises between songs, I can see the GLTTR! doing a great job too. Just keep in mind that for best results, you may need to crouch down and do some knob-twiddling on stage.

The post Emerald Ox FX GLTTR! review: “one of the most out-there ‘effects’ you’ll ever play” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Boutique guitars are a chance for highly skilled luthiers to let their creativity shine. Fender’s annual Custom Shop offerings are just one example of imagination gone wild.

But might this be the most beautiful boutique guitar ever built? It’s a tough title to steal, but we reckon Retablo has the credentials.

• READ MORE: At 80 years old, this is how much John Fogerty practices guitar a day

The work of luthiery legend John Page – formerly of the Fender Custom Shop, now heading John Page Guitars – Retablo is the result of thousands of hours of development (over 2,350, to be precise) over two years.

The guitar depicts – literally within its body – a crop of some of the most influential musicians from American roots music, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson.

Perhaps it’s only right, then, that a guitar of this calibre – designed by a luthier of such status – should have its own hour-long documentary. And John Page himself has come through to deliver on this.

A new documentary on John Page’s YouTube channel showcases the guitar’s painstaking design process, from the process of drafting countless sketch sheets to that of using religious imagery to elevate these musical heroes to sainthood status.

“I am not a religious person,” Page explains. “My father was a minister, and to say that my childhood soured me on it would be an understatement. But that being said, I love religious art.” He also reveals how his wife, Dana, collects religious art, and so he’s “constantly surrounded” and predictably inspired by it.

While initially intending to have each of the American roots heroes painted by someone else – his rolodex after an illustrious career would have suggested a contender in no time – after trying his own hand at painting his wife in a saintly pose, Page felt confident he could complete the entire project with his own two hands.

“If this piece was going to be a Retablo, then I decided that its creation must all be at my hands,” he explains.

Page says Retablo’s primary function is to be a work of art, but of course, it is also a fully functioning electric guitar. “The goal is to blur the line between fine art and functional craft,” he reasons.

And we’re not yet even getting into the intricacies of the materials used to build the guitar…

Retablo features a roasted African mahogany neck and body, with an African ebony fingerboard inlaid with mother of pearl and Honey Jasper TruStone, in an interpretive rendition of a Gothic cathedral’s steeple and spires.

Its headstock is overlaid with ebony, recess routed with Page’s signature and gilded in 24K gold. It also sports custom Gotoh M6 mini tuning machines, and 22 gold EVO frets and 24K gold plated strings. Both the body and neck are finished with multiple coats of Osmo Polyx-Oil, a satin hard wax finish made in Germany.

Protecting the sculptural assembly cavity is a .118” sheet of non-glare Acrylic, held in place via a rabbet in the side walls of the body by a custom-made solid brass, Gold plated trim ring, and 28 Gold plated #2 flat-head screws.

The guitar is also loaded with nineteen 1mm Soft White LEDs powered by a 3.7 volt LiPo battery, encased in the rear centre cap.

You can learn more about Retablo at John Page’s website, or settle in and watch the hour-long documentary about the instrument below:

The post With intricate LED-lit, hand-painted renditions of 9 American roots heroes and gold-plated strings, we’re calling it: This is the most incredible boutique guitar ever made appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Maker of the iconic Big Muff, Electro-Harmonix knows a thing or two about fuzz pedals. And the New York-based company is putting that expertise to good use again with its new stompbox, the Bender Royale.

Housed in EHX’s Nano-sized chassis, where the three-transistor Bender Royale sits on the fuzz spectrum is between the original vintage flavour of a two-transistor fuzz, and the more “over-the-top wall of sonic mayhem” that is the four-transistor Big Muff.

• READ MORE: Meet NotPedals.com, a marketplace that’s making boutique handmade pedals more accessible than ever

EHX’s fresh take on the Germanium MkIII version of the circuit, the Bender Royale builds on a standard control set of Volume, Fuzz and Bass, with the addition of a Fat switch which adds bass and low-mids for “tonal thickness”.

Guitarists can use the Bias knob to dial in the “sweet spot for the perfect amount of rip or leave the circuit starving for voltage”. There’s also a Clip switch which can be used to re-bias the final germanium transistor for a rougher fuzz tone.

And finally, the unit’s Treble control is an active treble shelving filter for harnessing high frequencies, while its Blend knob is available to mix wet and dry signals – great for zeroing in on the perfect level of clarity, especially when stacking other drive pedals.

Elsewhere, the Bender Royale features a mechanical relay true-bypass switch, with latching/momentary functionality.

The Bender Royale is available now for $149, and comes with a standard EHX nine-volt power supply.

For more information, head to Electro-Harmonix.

The post “Germanium fuzz explosion!” Meet Electro-Harmonix’s latest fuzz pedal, the Bender Royale appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

How many hours of practice per day should guitarists aspire to? Answers for this question vary greatly, with some saying serious players should be aiming to get hours in every day.

On the upper end of the spectrum, virtuoso Steve Vai recently recounted his rigorous practice regimen as a teenager, which saw him “happy if I got nine hours a day”.

• READ MORE: “AI should be putting mufflers on cars, not doing art for us”: Wolfgang Van Halen slams AI use in music

Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty doesn’t adopt quite the same level of obsession to his practice schedule, but in a new interview with CBS Sunday Morning, he details how he keeps his chops sharp.

“It just feels really good,” he says [via Guitar World]. “I like to practice, because my connection to the guitar makes me feel better. It’s a kind of therapy.

“It always takes a certain amount of time to work up to where you were yesterday. It doesn’t just start right there. You kind of sink back or something. Your muscles have to get warm again, I suppose.”

He goes on: “What’s cool about it is the next day, meaning today, you start practicing, and then you get better at something than you were yesterday. 

“That happens every single day. Sometimes, there’s a big chunk I’m trying to get better at, and sometimes it’s just some little thing. And the more you do it, the easier it gets, and the more you understand it, and you develop the actual coordination.”

But the big question: how many hours does John Fogerty actually practice per day? He answers about two or three hours.

“That’s ingrained in me, and also when I do that – that’s kind of what for other people would be their office, and their meditation space to kind of get it together to do their job.

“I’m practicing, and I do have various things I’m trying to get better at, but it also allows me to mentally and spiritually bond with the music that I love. You know, there’s always little bits of stuff that I’m not good at, and I wish I was better at some parts.”

Elsewhere, John Fogerty recently revealed the one thing that’s more important to musical success than being a good guitar player.

The post At 80 years old, this is how much John Fogerty practices guitar a day appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

With the widespread adoption of AI, artists have different levels of acceptance when it comes to its use in music. Some say it’s very much here to stay and should be embraced – like ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, who recently called the technology “unstoppable” – while others think we should pump the brakes.

Wolfgang Van Halen, for example, hasn’t pulled any punches when it comes to his thoughts on the matter, and even goes as far as to say generative AI is “dumb”.

• READ MORE: “It’s like some terrible disease”: Bruce Dickinson blasts the use of mobile phone cameras at Iron Maiden shows

In a new interview with Springfield, Missouri’s Q102 radio station, the Mammoth leader and multi-instrumentalist explains [via Blabbermouth]: “I think generative AI is really stupid. I just think it’s dumb. I think it’s a waste of time.

“I think AI should be putting mufflers on cars, not doing art for us. But other people feel differently. That’s how I feel. I think it’s dumb. I think it’s just – I don’t know – it’s not my thing.”

When pressed on the fact that some record labels are increasingly leaning on AI, WVH responds: “Yeah, it’s lame. Well, you know why? ‘Cause it allows you to pay less people. 

“All the people at the top see the line go up because they’re paying less people to do more work with less money. It’s kind of the way – every industry is, unfortunately, like [that] at the end of the day, which sucks. It’s never really about what’s being made. It’s how quickly you can make it and shovel it out to people.”

Despite Wolfgang’s stance on artificial intelligence, it hasn’t stopped the topic of AI from entering the Van Halen world.

Last year, it was revealed that drummer Alex Van Halen had reached out to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, to analyse “the patterns of how Edward would have played something” in hopes of generating new Eddie Van Halen riffs and solos.

That touches on a whole other issue entirely, mind, as Wolfgang Van Halen has repeatedly expressed his reservations – and even refusal – to posthumously release banked EVH riffs and ideas.

Elsewhere in the Van Halen world, vocalist Sammy Hagar recently called out Alex Van Halen, accusing him of “not doing his brother’s musical legacy justice” for leaving out his era of Van Halen in his book, Brothers.

Wolfgang Van Halen is set to release his new album with his band Mammoth, The End, next month. Listen to its title track below:

The post “AI should be putting mufflers on cars, not doing art for us”: Wolfgang Van Halen slams AI use in music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The first time I bought a handmade, boutique pedal was in 2015. I was 19, spurred into expanding my pedalboard by effusive comments on Reddit and a desperate need to try and sound like Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats. The pedal was a Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom. It was more money than I had ever spent on a single pedal ever in my life, and I had absolutely no idea if it would even make it across the Atlantic – I crossed my fingers and, two weeks later, a package arrived at my door.

It was everything I’d hoped it would be – fuzzy, weird and beautiful. And In the decade since, that pedal has rarely left my setup, even when I went down to a mini board in a moment of misguided madness. It remained consistent throughout an ever-changing rig of different drives, fuzzes, amps and guitars. I’ve played more music through it than basically any other piece of equipment, and I owe it all to going out on a limb and ordering something weird and handmade from overseas.

• READ MORE: Earthquaker Devices Fuzz Master General review – “the full gamut of vintage-adjacent fuzz tones”

One person who really understands the unique joy of this is Alex Bray, founder of NotPedals.com. A Melbourne-based musician and pedal fanatic, he founded the storefront to stock strange and wonderful small-batch pedals – and to combat what he describes as a “monoculture” within the pedal world.

“I wouldn’t call myself a builder,” Bray says. “A lot of people think I am – I’ve tinkered a bit, you know, I got a Big Muff when I was 16, I played with that and modded it a bit. But I’m not a builder. But my friends are – people I know from all around the world, they’d make something and send it to me, and it would end up on my board. And I always said, ‘this is fucking cool, where are you selling these? How are you getting them into the hands of musicians?’”

The answer, he laments, was always the same. “‘Oh, I built a website’, or ‘I kinda put it on Instagram’, or ‘I put it on Reverb and it got lost amongst a million second-hand Les Pauls’. So they weren’t really finding a place to cut through, there wasn’t one central place where it could just be about pedals. So I built it.”

Not… pedals??

You can easily see for yourself what Bray has built. NotPedals’ front page is full of pedal brands you almost certainly haven’t heard of, but you probably immediately want to know more about. I mean, an overdrive that has interchangeable little ‘fuses’ for different sounds? A pedal that does, er, something with a “???” switch and a “!!!” knob? A quad-BBD analogue delay with presets and tap-tempo?

It’s rare to see pedals like this all together. Of course, there are a few other places that do collect some rather out-there sounds – Break The Machine is one great example – but these don’t share NotPedal’s sole focus on the purely small-batch, handmade things.

“The really original stuff is harder for people to get into in a lot of ways,” Alex says, “unless you absolutely trawl Instagram, Reddit and Reverb all the time to find these tiny builders. And then shipping can be super expensive, too!” And so one of the things NotPedals aims to do is a good deal of that searching for you. “NotPedals is heavily vetted. I know every builder that is on there, I’ve spoken to and built a relationship with all of them. They’re all making really high-quality stuff that you can’t find anywhere else.”

Shipping and shopping

There are really strong communities surrounding these kinds of boutique pedals – but normally it’s a bit more builder-focused, with makers congregating in DIY-oriented spaces like /r/diypedals and freestompboxes.org. But as a consumer who doesn’t want to debate the virtues of leaded vs unleaded solder, your shopping experience is much more likely to be drawn in by the immense gravitational pull of the major retailers.

One of the most appealing things with the big retailers, over ordering something kitchen-table-assembled, is consistency. You know what you’re going to get in terms of shipping and tracking, and the returns process. NotPedals is aiming to bring that feeling to the small-batch boutique world, too. One of the most striking things about the platform is that shipping is free. Worldwide. For everything. When I receive my NotPedals products for review, they come with great tracking and arrive quickly.

How does it all work? Despite Alex being based in Melbourne, the warehouse where the goods are stocked is in Ohio, bang in the middle of the USA’s shipping corridor. “I didn’t really want to spend $70,000 creating a completely bespoke shipping solution. So I thought it would be better to ship it all from one central place,” Alex explains. “When I bring a new builder onto the platform, after I meet them and get to know them and everything, they’ll ship the first batch to our warehouse in Ohio – everything goes out from there.”

“I’ve had people emailing us, particularly US customers, saying things like ‘I ordered this last night, and I was having dinner tonight, and the guy rocked up with the pedal! The bigger brands have access to this really nice retail experience – smaller builders before NotPedals didn’t really have that. As a buyer and as a musician as well, I want that nice, smooth experience, just as good as buying a Boss pedal – you know that it’ll be fast and there’s going to be proper tracking. I think all the smaller builders deserve that.”

Part of this, obviously, helps the platform feel much more approachable. Regardless of the actual price of an item, no one likes to add something to their cart and then suddenly see £40 of postage slapped on top of things just to get it to you from America – this resonates with both me and Alex, given that we’re based in the UK and Australia respectively. And, in order to expand out the ease of the process to a wider range of customers and also help mitigate the impact of tariffs, there are plans to open an EU warehouse as well.

Culture Shift

Since I bought that Fuzzhugger in 2015, the pedal world has continued to grow. What’s notable is that the makers who were at one time definable as bonafide “boutique” brands – JHS, EQD, Walrus and even Chase Bliss – have become some of the biggest names in pedals, in the space, second only to brands like Boss and EHX.

“The crux of it is, there are five or six dominant brands – they make great stuff. But it’s become a monoculture,” says Alex. “The same stuff is in every post on socials, on Reddit, on anything in the guitar communities. If you go into a guitar shop, which I hate doing now, it’s the same things all over the place. There really isn’t as much originality anymore in that market, in my opinion. As an artist, I think that doesn’t really flow with the originality and creativity that’s meant to be there in music. We’re not selling fucking accounting software!”

Of course, all of these brands make awesome pedals, and it’s especially great that a lot of the more artistically-led brands, ones with cool graphics and out-there effects, have risen up to be part of the mainstream. However, as they grow they inherently change. The kinds of experiences, sonic or otherwise, that you get from a single-person operation are intrinsically different to those offered by a business operation that’s expecting to shift thousands of pedals.

An example: when I receive the Ploverdrive for review, it comes with a Nanoblocks model of a bird, a level of case-candy that’s extremely rare for anything other than limited-edition pedals from larger brands. Sonically, there’s also a lot more room for the totally out-there when you’re expecting to shift tens of units rather than thousands. Some of the pedals on NotPedals will be totally unusable for the vast majority of players – which can make them a great antidote to having to contemplate the creative possibilities of the same identical Instagram board for nth time that day.

The sound of a NotPedal

Bray’s own musical background is in punk, (as he puts it, “lots of Dead Kennedys influence, lots of really questionable band names”), but he was still keen to cater to all sonic tastes with the platform. “I didn’t want to back us into a corner where every pedal on there was wild and full-on. Overdrives and compression and so on all have their place. There are builders all over the world, who range from making subtle, tasteful germanium drives to the most fucking crazy self oscillating tremolo-Fuzz-Face-thing. I connected with a real mix of people.”

Something else Alex notes is that some advances in tech have opened some sonic foors for smaller builders. “People have really broadened out from doing modified TS9s or Blues Drivers into potentially some really high-end sonic territory. I just got a Surreal Audio Echo Sphere – the stuff this pedal does compared to what I thought was a ‘boutique pedal’ even three years ago, is right up there with, I think anything else you can get on the market – it’s an all-analogue delay with preset banks, tap tempo, subdivisions and different LFOs. It’s crazy”.

Coupled with technical advancements, Bray highlights the agility of brands like these. “They’re the jet skis vs the oil tankers. They can turn on a dime and make something fucking weird that maybe won’t sell a lot – which is great. I personally don’t want another Centaur – I want something that is going to be like the Centaur is now but in 15, 20 years.”

For Bray, this forward-looking approach is essential – as that growth continues, we need more builders who fill those niches within the boutique community – and not just the unobtanium niche. “I was speaking to JHS and they’ve been super supportive from the day I emailed them cold!” Bray says. “I just said, I’m launching this thing. You’re a pedal guy, Josh, what do you think?’ – and their point of view is that there’s probably a lot of the new guard of pedals on NotPedals right now. A lot of the brands that no one knows about yet, but in ten years, they could be another JHS.”

A deeper look

Given the variety of sounds to be had from NotPedal’s catalogue, it’s only fair that we actually get our ears around what the storefront can offer. Alex kindly agreed to ship us three NotPedals pedals to check out – the Emerald Ox GLTTR!, the Galahcore FX Ploverdrive and the Monkey Riot Pedals Rippletron. You can check out our review of the Emerald Ox GLTTR! tomorrow – and hold onto your cochleas, as it’s the wildest of the bunch.

The post Meet NotPedals.com, a marketplace that’s making boutique handmade pedals more accessible than ever appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Bruce Dickinson has made no secret of his dislike of fans using mobile phones during Iron Maiden shows; the band have even prohibited their use for select upcoming gigs, though not all.

In a new conversation with Appetite For Distortion, the 67-year-old singer goes as far as to say he wishes the “camera on those things had never been invented”, explaining how their widespread use at concerts diminishes the experience for both the artist performing and fans alike.

• READ MORE: “He can do a lot of things people didn’t expect him to be able to do”: Dweezil Zappa thinks Wolfgang Van Halen’s success has proved wrong people who gave him a “hard time for no reason”

“It’s like some terrible disease, that people feel the need to look at the world through this stupid little device. It’s like a failing of humanity,” he explains. “You’re surrendering your senses completely to this little fascist in your hand.”

He goes on: “Put it down, put it in your pocket and look around you. Look at the people, look at the joy, look at the band, feel the emotion, feel the music. What a phone does, it cuts all of that off.

“And so I feel sad. I also feel pissed off, because as a performer, I want to perform for an audience of people that have some emotional feedback – not a bunch of Android twerps.”

Phone use at live shows has been a subject of contentious debate in recent months. One of the most high-profile bands from the rock and metal world to instate phone bans at their shows was Swedish juggernauts Ghost, with frontman Tobias Forge calling gigs with widespread phone use “deeply disconnected”.

In practice, these phone bans are achieved using locking phone pouches – with Yondr being one of the biggest suppliers – to attendees before entering a venue.

While many fans have received such phone bans well, others have voiced their concerns, for example pertaining to the ability to contact people not present at the venue in an emergency, or simply the removal of people’s freedom to choose how to remember the event.

“Many people want to share their experience and why shouldn’t they?” one fan wrote in a Reddit thread discussing Ghost’s phone ban.

As the discussion picks up steam, more and more high-profile artists are considering phone-free shows, with one of the most prominent being pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter. While she hasn’t decided to ban phones at shows yet, she recently revealed she was considering it.

Iron Maiden recently announced a new series of European shows on their Run For Your Lives tour, and while most will allow phones, there will be two phone-free shows in Paris, which will be filmed for an upcoming release.

See a full list of upcoming Iron Maiden dates via the band’s official website.

The post “It’s like some terrible disease”: Bruce Dickinson blasts the use of mobile phone cameras at Iron Maiden shows appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After rumours recently began to swirl surrounding a potential Fleetwood Mac reunion for JK Rowling’s 60th birthday party, the band’s representatives have set the record straight and confirmed these rumours are untrue.

The rumours were ignited after a source hinted to the Daily Mail that was perhaps on the cards. “It is going to be no-expense-spared,” the source said. “She always finds a superstar band to perform for her New Year parties so the birthday will be no different – in fact it could be bigger better than years gone by because this time it’s for her 60th birthday.”

• READ MORE: “He can do a lot of things people didn’t expect him to be able to do”: Dweezil Zappa thinks Wolfgang Van Halen’s success has proved wrong people who gave him a “hard time for no reason”
  

But now, a rep for Fleetwood Mac has called this gossip out as being “categorically false”, adding, “It’s not in the realm of the true.”

As for why a Fleetwood Mac reunion could never be on the cards, band members agree that it’s impossible without Christine McVie, who passed away in 2022.

“When Christine died, Fleetwood Mac died… We cannot replace her,” Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone in 2024.

Drummer Mick Fleetwood made similar comments in 2023, when he told press at the 2023 Grammys [via Consequence] that a Fleetwood Mac reunion was “unthinkable” following McVie’s death.

While the band did momentarily reunite for 2019 children’s hospital benefit concert and tour in 2018-2019, Christine McVie said in 2022 that the band “had kind of broken up again”. This wasn’t due to the band’s infamous relationship dramas, instead citing health reasons, telling Rolling Stone at the time that she didn’t “physically feel up for it.”

So no, don’t get too excited – Fleetwood Mac aren’t returning any time soon.

The post “This is categorically false”: Fleetwood Mac respond to reunion rumours appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

With the spectacular success of his band Mammoth, Wolfgang Van Halen has certainly proved those who have accused him of riding on the back of his father’s success wrong.

And as a fellow child of a musical pioneer, Dweezil Zappa has his sympathies with what Wolfgang has been through.

• READ MORE: Save up to 70% on guitars, amps and effects in Thomann’s massive Guitar Days sale
  

In a new conversation on the Andertons YouTube channel, Zappa – son of legendary musician Frank Zappa – says Wolfgang has been given a “hard time for no reason”, commending him for being a “trooper” in his response to critisicm

Wolfgang has dealt with critics even since replacing Michael Anthony as Van Halen bassist in 2006. Earlier this year, he said his dad would be “disgusted” at online trolls who think they are defending Van Halen’s legacy.

It’s Wolfgang’s stoicism in the face of criticism that, among other traits, garnered Dweezil Zappa’s admiration, but also his musical skill.

“He can do a lot of things that I think people didn’t expect him to be able to do,” he says. “And I’m sure it’s not because he wanted to prove them wrong. “It’s in his blood. It’s a thing for him to just keep exploring.”

Dweezil also says the fact Wolfgang is also a musician isn’t indicative of nepotism.

“I equate it to like, let’s say my dad was a medieval shoemaker… And he was the guy that invented the pointy-toed shoe.”

“I would have to perfect the pointy-toed shoe to carry the business forward, that’s how I look at it. I’m still working on making that pointy-toed shoe be as good or better than the original.”

Dweezil also notes that it’s important to find your own voice as an artist regardless, as he found himself compelled to do in his youth. However, as he explained in an interview with Marshall in June: “I don’t think I ever really developed my own style until I went through a whole other process of learning a lot about my dad’s music.”

The post “He can do a lot of things people didn’t expect him to be able to do”: Dweezil Zappa thinks Wolfgang Van Halen’s success has proved wrong people who gave him a “hard time for no reason” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$399/£379, walrusaudio.com

In a world where every boutique pedal builder worth their salt is seemingly getting in on the high-end DSP, it’s worth remembering that when they came along five years ago, the Walrus Mako series was a very big deal.

• READ MORE: Boss PX-1 Plugout FX review – “This is a pedal that could find a home in a lot of rigs”

It was rare enough at the time for boutique builders to invest the time, resource and ingenuity required to take advantage of the sort of high-end chips we saw in big brand modellers, even less so for them to squeeze it into such a compact form factor.

Those first Makos were a hit, and so it’s no surprise that the brand has come along with a MKII version that takes what was so successful about the originals and refines them even further. These MKIIs have been around for a while now, but today we’re checking out the updated version of one of the best of the original crop – the M1 High Fidelity Modulation Machine.

Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine – what is it?

Like its predecessor, the M1 is designed to offer high-fidelity digital recreations of all your favourite modulation sounds – to the uninitiated that means chorus, phaser, tremolo, vibrato, rotary speaker, and filter sounds.

New for the M1 MKII is the addition of a flanger mode to one of the chorus settings, addressing what was a bit of an oversight on the original, but that’s not all. There are 18 algorithms in total, so three for each effect type, and there’s also been a fair bit of work done under the hood – several of the algorithms have been redesigned from the ground up to be more usable and better sounding, too.

The most striking difference between MKI and MKII is of course that two-inch OLED display that replaces the bank of fiddly mini-toggle switches. This means you can more easily access and tweak the various secondary functions as the display adjusts to reflect whatever you have to be tweaking.

Elsewhere, the layout has further been tidied up – the sides of the MKI were somewhat cluttered with stereo in and out jacks, a USB-C for software updates AND the power jack all on the sides. The sensible decision has been made here to shift the USB out the way up the top alongside the MIDI in and thru jacks.

Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine – usability

One of the truly brilliant things about the Mako range is the way Walrus distilled a lot of the sounds and functionality of a bigger modeller into a compact package that, broadly speaking, put everything you needed on the pedal where any idiot (hello!) could quickly work out what he’s doing.

The worry when adding a screen to proceedings is that you’re going to, by design really, add extra functionality that will necessitate both menu-diving and manual consultation – the true nemesis of any lazy and technology-adverse guitar player.

There’s no doubt that there is an element of that with the MKII – it’s not as WYSIWYG user-friendly as the original, and you probably will need a scan of the online user guide to make sure you know what you’re doing.

At its core things are initially pretty straightforward still – there’s the big central rotary to select which type of effect you want to use, but now you’ll need to click on that knob to cycle through the three modes rather than select it with a mini-toggle.

Above you’ll find three global controls for rate, depth and lo-fi (more on that in a minute) and then you have two further ‘encoder’ rotaries that control what’s being displayed on the screen.

The left hand rotary controls the ‘parameters’ functions – which to those of us who don’t speak Walrus means things like the modulation type, the waveform symmetry, the stereo spread of the tremolo and the attack on the filter effects. There are loads; three for each position, and each can then be cycled through using our old friend the clicky knob.

The right-hand encoder is given over to the various fun bits of the ‘lo-fi’ aspect of this pedal. You can individually set the levels of various parameters like – say, tape age, saturation or noise – and then this whole gumbo can then be added to taste using the global control above it.

If all that seems like a lot to get your head around, well that’s why there are 128 MIDI-recalable presets – or nine onboard the pedal itself. You’re going to need them, because honestly who fancies messing around with all that in the heat of a gig?

One thing that hasn’t fully been fixed since the MKI is that Walrus aren’t exactly giving you a lot of help in that regard either – while the brightness of the OLED doubtlessly makes things easier to see on the fly, actually tweaking the thing is still a fiddly and fraught affair.

Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine – sounds

One thing that absolutely set the original M1 apart from so many other compact modulation pedals was the variety and quality of the sounds, and there’s little doubt that the MKII version raises that bar again.

Do most of us really need three Leslie speaker sounds at our toe-tips? Surely not, but the subtle nuances that Walrus has managed to capture between the standard, moving horn and moving drum modes here are really wonderful to hear played out – especially when you start messing around with the mic-distance control.

And it’s the same story across the board, the chorus sounds are lush, deep and inviting – especially the gloriously 80s tri-chorus mode, which will have you sizing up an Armani suit with big shoulder pads in a matter of minutes. I certainly didn’t miss the replaced dual-chorus mode as a result, and the presence of the flanger here instead is very welcome. It’s a pleasantly wooshy thing that can get a bit out of hand if you’re not careful but sometimes that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

A good tremolo sound is one of the most sumptuous places to hang out for any guitar player, and I was particularly taken with the Pattern mode, which uses the shape and symmetry parameters to make all sorts of juddery, off-kilter throbs. Bags of fun.

As with the MKI, the secret ingredient of all this is that lo-fi mode, and the extra control and editing you can do over the various parameters now is a great way to dial in just the right amount of weird to enhance your sound without it seeming too artificial.

Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine – should I buy one?

If you’ve already got an M1 MKI, I would say there are some very limited reasons to upgrade here – the sounds are broadly very similar and there was absolutely nothing wrong with them in the first place.

If the thing you liked about the original was its ease of use and simple operation, I would stand firm where you are, but if you’ve been pining for the ability to get more control and more tweakability out of your sounds, this really is a no-brainer – it offers a huge amount of editable parameters without any tedious nested menus or what have you.

If, however, you don’t own a MKI and are just after a fantastic and comprehensive modulation pedal that takes up minimal space on your board while offering you some of the very best sounds out there? This is another home run for Walrus and its Mako platform.

Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine – alternatives

If you want a similarly compact modulation pedal that isn’t skirting PS5 price territory, the Electro-Harmonix Mod 11 ($123) sounds nowhere near as good as the Walrus but it’s still pretty good and has loads of sonic options. If peerless sound is your goal and space and precise are less of an issue, then both the Strymon Mobius ($449/£399) and the Eventide H90 Harmonizer ($899/£845) are big, brilliant and, certainly in the case of the Eventide, eye-wateringly expensive.

The post Walrus Mako M1 MKII High Fidelity Modulation Machine review – “some of the very best sounds out there” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

‘Hopecore’ was never meant to be the point. But Evan Lo, the artist known across the digital world as Flawed Mangoes, will forever be associated with that neologism. The American musician’s early releases under the moniker – short, emotive tracks that layer swelling ambience underneath delicately-tapped, looping melodies – were swept into the burgeoning online trend for positive posting in 2023, and he found his audience snowballing as his music became a pillar of the movement.

It was clearly something that happened to Lo’s releases, rather than something he set out to do with them. Lo laughs as he tells Guitar.com that he used to find it “cringe” that people were using the term hopecore to describe his music.

“Now, I don’t know if I could say I’m at peace with it,” he admits, “but, I don’t care as much these days. How people want to interpret my music is up to them. I’m grateful, at least, that it was a really positive thing that got attached to it, and that was what reached so many people”.

But the word hopecore – which GQ described as “the last gasp of a less-toxic Internet” – is more applicable to content than it is music alone. Hopecore memes and edits are steeped in sentimentality and positive affirmations, with a specific trend for mixing Lo’s music underneath motivational speeches. The combination of Dramamine and Everything Everywhere All At Once star Ke Huy Quan’s joyful Oscar acceptance speech, for instance, has been viewed millions and millions of times, and there’s a related segment on Kai Cenat’s livestream that uses Lo’s track Swimming to soundtrack guests giving their own best motivational speech. Lo even got to take part in that one himself.

As a movement rooted in the deeper recesses of TikTok, fully grasping what the #hopecore tag actually means requires being ‘terminally online’. But it’s also a pushback against the bleak, inhuman feeling that pervades our post-ironic, post-pandemic, post-AI slop internet.

Regardless, Lo’s standing in hopecore does make sense when you dive into his extensive back catalogue. His earliest ‘pre-hopecore’ viral successes showcase his ability to evoke melancholic nostalgia and peaceful reminiscence with only a few layered tracks of reverb-drenched, killswitch-fitted guitar. His musical vignettes have a warmth to them that immediately takes you out of your doomscroll into at least the memory of warm summer evenings and quiet, still mornings.

“How people want to interpret my music is up to them. I’m grateful that it was a really positive thing that got attached to it”

Out on the road

When Guitar.com speaks to Lo for his cover story, he’s just home from a refreshingly offline activity: his first ever tour as Flawed Mangoes. “The shows were awesome, so much fun,” Lo says. “It’s been so long since I was in that world of live music – it was very fulfilling to reconnect with that.” His trip across the US saw him play three shows in New York, LA and his hometown of Boston. And the translation of an audience grown through viral success into bodies in a room was clearly successful, too – he had no problem selling out all three shows.

Lo and his band spent eight months of rehearsals tightening the live sound of Flawed Mangoes, as well as translating his more atmospheric material into a punchier, full-band format. “Prior to putting the shows together, I was pretty scared about that transition. I knew it was something I wanted to do, I just needed to figure out the best way to go about it. But I committed to playing with a band – I thought that would have way better energy on stage compared to me just sitting there with a looper pedal.”

The commitment to adding energy meant expanding things beyond the ‘bedroom’ instrumentation, and recontextualising the music to sit within a setlist rather than a playlist. “The songs developed their own live arrangements,” Lo says. “We were playing with the structure a lot, changing it to make it more fun to play in a live setting, and giving it more energy, and adding drums to the ones without drums. It turned out to be a really fun experience, and I think it surprised a lot of people, too.”

The intro’s over

And speaking of surprises – recent Flawed Mangoes releases have featured one in particular, and that’s Lo’s singing. Lo explains that he’s mainly just trying to make music that’s “addictive to listen to”, whatever it sounds like. “I just listen to too much music with vocals not to be inspired by that,” he says. “It’s been a really fun journey, learning how to sing and how to write with vocals.”

But tracks like Surreal don’t just add vocals. They’ve evolved the Flawed Mangoes sound into dense, heavy shoegaze with a mathy edge – too chaotic to gently bubble away in the background of an edit. But while full band stuff may be new territory for Flawed Mangoes, it’s not so much for Lo himself. “In high school I was in a math rock band, and then a jazzy indie band. We didn’t play that many shows, but we rehearsed every week, and wrote songs, and just enjoyed doing that,” he says.

“It was math rock and post rock that were the two colliding worlds for me – bands like Battles and El Ten Eleven were hugely influential. Maybe the biggest influence at the time, though, was Tera Melos. They were doing this crazy tapping along with some really heavy stuff and frantic song structures – all the math rock shit! I really liked that. That’s where I really learned to tap, and write riffs around tapping.”

“I committed to playing with a band – I thought that would have way better energy compared to me just sitting there with a looper pedal”

Producer’s mindset

After spending his high school years playing in bands, Lo put the guitar down when he was at college, finding himself drawn into electronic, producer-focused scenes. “I was more active on SoundCloud, in all these niche internet genres – I got into vaporwave at one point, and lofi – these internet producer scenes where people could release music and find an audience through the community, which was really great.”

Online music discovery, however, has changed a lot since the mid-2010s. In the heyday of vaporwave and lofi beats, microlabels were the place to go to find either an audience or new artists. “Now, it feels like people are realising it can be easier to bypass that label platform when you’re making music – it’s this even playing field. You can build your own brand, and put your own music out there.”

Of course, it’s nice cyclical synchronicity that Lo was active in these scenes – in some ways they were the precursors to a lot of today’s internet-rooted music. “Aesthetically and musically, they still have some influence on what’s popular,” Lo says. “But everything changes very fast.”

The 80s and 90s nostalgia of vaporwave has moved on into reminisces about the jungle and breakbeat soundtracks of PS1 and PS2 video games, the electronic flipside to a revival of Deftones-esque, Y2K-inspired nu-gaze. But regardless of what specific ‘era’ Lo’s music might evoke, though, he states that a “key part” of his sound is “going for that nostalgic sort of feeling – for instance, I really like what Boards Of Canada do, they’re one of my favourite artists.”

Cycling back

After graduating Lo returned to the guitar, because, in his words, “everything’s cyclical”. “The guitar was what ended up breaking through on social media. So then I was thinking, ‘I guess I’m back all in on guitar now’ – but having the producer’s experience and skillset was vital. Being able to mix and master all of my own music then get it out as quickly as possible has been really important for my process.”

It’s also helped him develop his sonic signatures. “On the plugin side, I use a tape emulator called Sketch Cassette all the time for the lo-fi vibe. But maybe more important than that are digital artefacts. They may sound shitty to some people, but they can be tastefully dialled in. I get a lot of them by time-stretching with non-optimal algorithms, or just by using digital pitch-shifters – they really take things to a level that the analogue artefacts just can’t!”

That’s not to say Lo doesn’t appreciate real effects pedals – quite the opposite. His most valued, he tells Guitar.com, is his MXR Dyna Comp, set to give him maximum sustain. And on the guitar side, he got pretty hands-on with his own made-in-Mexico Telecaster to install that DIY killswitch. “For whatever reason a friend of mine was stripping a J Mascis Jazzmaster for parts. We ended up taking the rhythm circuit switch from it and I thought, oh, I can make a killswitch with this!”

“I had heard Jonny Greenwood, Tom Morello and Buckethead use one and thought it was cool. So we soldered it together in their basement and cut a little hole in the pickguard with an Exacto knife, which is why it’s kinda fucked-up looking. The Tele was one I got for $350 second-hand, and it was my backup. So I didn’t care about it as much – there wasn’t much thought into it, other than ‘this would be cool’.”

“People are realising it can be easier to bypass that label platform when you’re making music – it’s this even playing field”

Hopecore and beyond

Obviously the installation of that killswitch turned out to be more than just some cool addition to a backup guitar – Killswitch Lullaby now has well over 100 million Spotify streams, and its viral success was the first step in launching Flawed Mangoes’ career into what it is now.

But it’s arguable that Killswitch Lullaby and other tracks like it, with their melancholic haziness and tightly-curated palette of layered, ambient melodies, were primed to be folded into other content – especially on TikTok, a platform that makes it easy to mash one thing into another. And so came an inevitable drive to build on those shorter pieces.

“I definitely did find it a little limiting,” Lo says. “There was this expectation to create this really specific genre. I think it’s important that I don’t restrict myself, and this is something that I still feel like I have a lot of space to grow in. I was in this one lane of instrumental, drumless guitar music – so making different stuff really helps me get out of my head, and be like, ‘I can do whatever I want, and it’ll be okay’”.

Flawed Mangoes’ new single Anthem is out now.

Words: Cillian Breathnach
Photography: Sam Keeler

The post “I think it’s important that I don’t restrict myself”: Flawed Mangoes is defying genre expectations and moving beyond ‘hopecore’ appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.