Guitar.com

If your kid daydreams of becoming a rockstar, Gibson’s latest collaboration with Loog might be the perfect addition to playtime. Loog’s funsized three string electric guitars have been given the Les Paul and SG treatment, allowing your child to rock out in style.

Rather than a shoddy shoe-box guitar, Loog’s mini electric models are the real deal. Loog’s take on Gibson’s iconic Les Paul and SG are fitted with real guitar strings and standard tuning, just in a half-scale, three string package.

• READ MORE: Between the Buried and Me rank their own albums from worst to best

Loog’s decision to limit the guitars to three strings serves as a way of making real guitar playing less intimidating for younger players. With chords limited to triads, it makes picking up the basics a lot easier – and it renders the transition to a full-scale six string much easier.

The mini Gibson x Loog Les Paul and SG models are also fitted with one pickup, a volume knob, and made of real wood. The Les Paul also comes in a trio of colours, with TV Yellow, Frost Blue and Shell Pink all available. The SG, on the other hand, comes in a single shade of bold Cardinal Red.

Each guitar comes with an array of learning tools to make the process fun and easy. There’s flashcards, a colourful activity book and even an app where you can learn alongside a little Loog monster. The app has video lessons to help fine-tune your guitar skills, as well as guides on how to play 200 songs, from The Beatles to Taylor Swift. There’s also interactive TV show, arcade and bedtime stories to send your kid off to guitar dreamland.

“Getting to collaborate with Gibson has been such an incredible experience and honour for us,” Rafael Atijas, Founder and CEO of Loog Guitars, reflects. “These are the guitars we all drool over – the Les Paul, the SG – and now we’ve had the chance to work with the Gibson team to bring them to life in a way that’s approachable and inspiring for kids. It’s been a pleasure, a joy, and honestly, a real privilege.”

“One of the things I’m most excited about is the Gibson x Loog Activity Book that comes with every guitar,” Atijas continues. “Thanks to it, a 6-year-old will be able to differentiate between Gibson models, learn the story behind the Les Paul, know what a ‘TV Yellow’ finish is, and even recognise a Gibson headstock from a mile away… how cool is that!?”

“We are very proud and excited about our collaboration with Loog, which lets us introduce the next generation to the world of Gibson in a fun, accessible way,” Mat Koehler, Vice President of Product at Gibson, adds. “The Gibson x Loog guitars utilise our iconic colours and shapes with Loog’s intuitive 3-string format to inspire young players to begin their musical journeys.”

All Gibson x Loog models are available now for $229 each.

The post Gibson collaborates with Loog for child-friendly range of Les Paul and SG guitars appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Fender has expanded its Vintera II range – which pairs vintage ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s specs with forward-thinking appointments for the modern player – with a limited-edition line of Road Worn models.

Fender’s Road Worn guitars, of course, come pre-aged – or “relic’d” – to give brand-new guitars the look of an instrument with years of use.

• READ MORE: Gibson partners with Marc Jacobs on super-limited Les Pauls

They have however, become rarer in the Fender catalogue in recent years, but the introduction of these new Road Worn Vintera II models signals that the Big F might have further plans to dive back into artificial aging.

Your mind when you think Road Worn might go to noticeably battered instruments which signal years of heavy ‘road’ use. But the new Vintera II Road Worn range introduces a new – and far more subtle – aging process which aims for a less in-your-face ‘closet classic’ vibe.

It’s a similar aesthetic to the Heirloom finish introduced on Bruno Mars’ 2023 signature Stratocaster, and on the American Ultra Luxe Vintage collection – which landed just last month – with minimal obvious dings and scratches and an emphasis on soft patterns of wear and semi-gloss finishes.

Naturally, the Vintera II Road Worn range is headed up by its artificial aging process, but it also features a series of specs designed for vintage guitar lovers, including ‘50s and ‘60s era-correct pickups for “vintage-accurate tone”, and authentic neck shapes for a period-correct feel.

The range comprises four models – a Stratocaster, Telecaster, Jazzmaster and Precision Bass – with colours including Sonic Blue, Black, 3-Color Sunburst, Fiesta Red, Blonde, Charcoal Frost Metallic and Burgundy Mist Metallic.

“Featuring a variety of vintage colours finished in Road Worn aged nitrocellulose lacquer, the Vintera II Road Worn ‘60s Stratocaster recreates the look and feel of a well-played classic,” says Fender.

“The limited Road Worn models are enhanced with a new subtle aging process combining light checking, gentle wear patterns and a semi-gloss finish, while maintaining the authentic broken-in feel players love about vintage Fenders.”

Price-wise, the Limited-Edition Vintera II Road Worn Stratocaster and Telecaster are priced at £1,349, the Jazzmaster and Precision Bass at £1,399. 

For more info, head to Fender.

The post Fender is making Road Worn guitars again – this time with the Vintera II line appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Collaborations between fashion brands and guitar makers aren’t a totally novel concept – Fender has partnered with such brands as streetwear label Supreme and high-end fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, for example.

But it’s slightly rarer for Gibson to partake in similar left-field collabs. That said, the guitar maker has just partnered with Marc Jacobs to create a series of Les Pauls complete with custom artwork, straps and even pick tins.

• READ MORE: Nigel Tufnel uses BIG EAR Pedals’ Slice Of Pie fuzz in Spinal Tap II – can you work out the other pedals across his three ‘boards?
  

Unveiled at Marc Jacobs’ popup store at New York Fashion Week – during which Gibson Spotlight artist Devon Thompson performed a solo set with one of the guitars – the collection comprises four new Gibson Les Pauls, three with artwork by renowned artist Hattie Stewart, and a Standard model with Marc Jacobs’ Daisy Joy design.

“Music and fashion have long been inseparable as forms of self-expression, so this collaboration in the name of joy felt incredibly fitting and necessary,” says Gibson’s Katie Knipper.

“Our Gibson team worked tirelessly with the Marc Jacobs and Nordstrom teams to make ‘Joy’ happen, and having Devon bring things to life in real time was a cherry on top.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Marc Jacobs (@marcjacobs)

Gibson hasn’t been quite as prolific as Fender in collaborating with fashion brands, but after Fender’s collabs with the likes of Supreme, Yves Saint Laurent and even Bvlgari, which resulted in an ultra-limited run of Stratocasters in 2024, perhaps Gibson has been inspired.

The four super-limited Les Paul guitars are available to buy at Nordstrom NYC and select Marc Jacobs stores.

Learn more at Gibson.

The post Gibson partners with Marc Jacobs on super-limited Les Pauls appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

“Everything started with singing,” begins Canadian musician Billianne. From the age of four, she would go around her family home singing random songs that she had heard on TV shows or when listening to the car radio with her mum. “Everything was my stage,” she says. Her parents even turned their front porch into one. “I was always pretending,” she recalls, having joined school funk bands, played trombone and regularly performed recitals during her childhood. “I can’t remember not singing.”

• READ MORE: Between the Buried and Me rank their own albums from worst to best

A family trip to Nova Scotia during which her brother put on Mumford & Sons’ first album is another fond music memory. “I liked the way that it brought us all together, memorising the words on a 19-hour drive and head-banging in the van,” she recalls of listening to 2009’s Sigh No More in full. Beyond the family bonding, a young Billianne was enamoured by Marcus and co’s lyrics: “I love their storytelling, they are such great songwriters and it’s really great folk music”.

While the foundations were set, it wasn’t until her late teens that she first picked up a guitar. “My dad always had a Norman in the house,” she reflects of the “Canadian staple”. He also had a Simon and Patrick, which Billianne used for most of her learning. Around the age of 17, she started trying to learn the instrument properly by covering songs. “I was always on Guitar Tabs and trying to figure out the songs,” she remembers, specifically citing doing a lot of two chord movements.

Best Is Yet To Come

Taking guitar as a subject during her last year of high school enabled her to “learn a little bit more”. She found it easy to pick up – at least at first. “With a lot of instruments, I always find it really exciting and fun at the beginning,” she says, having learned the G chord, D chord, A minor and F. “But getting past that point… I still feel that every time I try to learn something new on the guitar, it does feel hard to me.”

She persevered and, in 2021, began uploading cover videos to social media. “A lot of times I was singing to karaoke tracks from YouTube,” she recalls. But it was her rendition of Noah Reid’s 2018 song Simply the Best that proved the turning point. “That video was my first time finger picking,” Billianne recalls. “Half of the things with the guitar and me, I’m just like ‘well, I’ll give it a shot’.”

It worked: the cover caught the attention of Taylor Swift, Joe Jonas, P!nk, Oprah and Michael Bublé. “It’s wild,” she recalls. “I can’t believe those people may have found my name and looked me up and listened to my music.” The most surreal moment was the Joe co-sign: “he posted an Instagram story at a campfire with the track paired, which must mean he was listening to it, so that feels intimate to me”. Equally thrilling was the comment from Taylor – especially as she and her brother were Swifties and bonded over her albums Fearless and Red.

Aside from impressing big names, TikTok proved educational for Billianne. “I always look out for what guitars people are playing,” she says. Watching friends online also helped her discover alternate tunings. “I didn’t realise it was a thing. Obviously, there’s these three pegs that do something, but I didn’t realise people lowered the tune of their guitar and had these open tunings that create such inspiration. I felt like ‘wait, your guitar sounds so different from mine, what is going on?’”

As Billianne’s popularity on social media grew, she began playing shows. “There’s nothing like it, but when I first started performing with guitar, I was very nervous on stage,” she says. “It’s not my main thing, but I love how it pairs with my voice,” she adds. “And, once I do get it, it feels really special to be able to accompany myself in that way.”

While her nerves have decreased, she thinks those initial feelings came from still being in the process of learning the instrument. “I think it was a bit of imposter syndrome,” she considers. “I was thinking ‘I’m not a guitar player and there are probably guitar players in the crowd’.” Another worry was whether or not she was “playing the part well – the guitar part and the guitar player part”.

Remembering what she had learned in high school – about the importance of practicing – helped to gradually minimise these concerns. “That is what will make you feel more comfortable on stage,” she says. “I had to tell myself that, and I still believe that about guitar, especially with how much I know about it now. I think so many of my mistakes come from a lack of confidence rather than knowledge about what I’m doing. I need to be confident about where my fingers are going and what’s happening, but that comes with practice.”

Show And Tell

Billianne’s biggest test came with her TV debut – on NBC’s Today, in April 2024. “That was really fun, and I was playing guitar live, which I was so nervous about.” With her band’s encouragement, her performance of folk-pop song Daydream went off without a hitch. “It was really cool to be live on TV while my parents are back in Canada; I think they must have thought ‘she’s the same little girl but she’s on TV’.”

In February this year, she made her second screen appearance, this time singing her song Enough on the TV show of a music “idol” she once messaged: Kelly Clarkson. “I don’t DM celebrities a lot, but I DM’d her way back in the day,” Billianne laughs, adding that she was a big fan of American Idol when she was a mentor on the talent show. “I said ‘I want to sing with you one day’, so hopefully that comes true,” she says. “It was great to have her hold the cover art of my song and introduce me.”

As well as building a name for herself across the US, Billianne scored a hometown hit with her song Crush, which made the Top 10 at Canadian Top 40 Radio. “These things are crazy to think about, like that was a real thing that happened,” she laughs of the success last summer. “It was being played everywhere. We would be in the car and hear it. My friends would send videos while they were in the dollar store.”

Billianne has since toured with Julia Jacklin, KT Tunstall and “Canadian legend” Serena Ryder – during a double-bill, the latter two met her on the night. “It’s so kind when big names care like that.” Serena has been keeping tabs on her growth since: “she DM’d me and said ‘you’re doing amazing, I’m just checking up on your page and everything looks so great’.”

Transportation Station

Now, Billianne is gearing up to release her debut album, Modes of Transportation, which has been in the works for three years.

“To have this big project that had so much thought and care and people working on it, that makes me feel more like an artist,” she says. As she rode her bike, took the train and learned to drive on the highway during that time, its layered title has multiple meanings. “It’s a metaphor of being in your twenties and figuring out how you get from who you are to who you want to be in the next 10 years.”

This journeying sense of discovery is channeled through the tracklist and pacing of the record, which was recorded across Ontario – from a downtown Toronto house to a quiet cabin in Huntsville and a family basement studio in Etobicoke. “We wanted to try out different sounds,” she says, adding that there are “there are so many guitars on this record”.

Having used them throughout the writing process and to channel different emotions, she doesn’t remember exactly how many, but says her collaborators Duncan [Hood] and Nick [Ferraro] are “a little bit geeky with this stuff”. They would choose a Nylon instead of a steel string “to suit the vibe of the song,” she says, adding that the lyrics usually come first. “I tend to have song starts and ideas. Sometimes it’s a full verse, or the chorus melody, or a line and then I take it to Nick and Duncan and we work it out.”

For the song Future Emma, she remembers them discussing the tone of the electric guitar because it starts the track and “needed to be exactly what I wanted”. Meanwhile, the track ‘Let Me Run’ sees the three of them each play a different guitar: “I start that track and then they come in on guitar, so that was special”. It’s also the only one where she plays guitar on track, which is something Billianne is keen to do more of. “Recording a guitar is a totally different thing,” she says; “it’s so humbling”.

As an artist who is always working on the next thing – “there’s lots more to come,” she teases – her message to aspiring guitar players is simple. “You’ve just got to pick it up and try something,” she encourages. “Sometimes it looks so scary sitting in your room. It’s like ‘Oh my God, there’s this thing with six strings and you can do so many things on it… but the options are endless’.”

Modes of Transportation out August 15. Billianne tours the UK in November.

The post Billianne on viral success, battling imposter syndrome and her years-in-the-making debut album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Of course Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel has a massive pedal set up – what else would you expect from a rockstar whose amp can be cranked all the way to infinity?

Nestled in one of his three pedalboards spotted in the sequel to the legendary mockumentary, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Tufnel is found to be using the Slice Of Pie pedal from boutique brand BIG EAR – one of just two pedals that were specifically written into the script, according to BIG EAR itself.

• READ MORE: The Tone Mob Podcast’s Blake Wyland on the Slice Of Pie pedal and the guitar he’d save in a fire

Shaped like a slice of pizza and made in collaboration with The Tone Mob Podcast, this fuzz pedal’s quirky design is very apt for the over-the-top – and sadly fictional – band. It’s a good job it’s not shaped like tiny bread, however, or there would be a problem.

Writing on Instagram, BIG EAR shares its joy at having its pedal featured within the film, and also handily identifies a vast number of other pedals across the boards. Some do remain a mystery though, with film only just having landed in cinemas and imagery of still scarce.

“Got the first visuals from the new Spinal Tap movie.. They’re not the best quality, but that’s a Slice Of Pie right up front! I haven’t seen the film yet myself, but apparently our pedal was one of two pedals that were specifically written into the script!” says BIG EAR.

“The second slide here shows Nigel’s full rig, which is MASSIVE and has many unidentified pedals! Can you help me identify any of these?! The third slide has a list of the pedals we’ve been able to identify so far.. but there are still 13 pedals to figure out! Heelllpppp!!”

With a little help from Eric Merrow and 1981inventions, BIG EAR has spotted the following on Tufnel’s main board, working from left to right:

Bottom row

• RJM – Mastermind PBC/10
• Danelectro – Back Talk (Reissue)
• BIG EAR pedals x The Tone Mob – Slice Of Pie (Cheese version)
• Littletone – CLYDE Wah

Middle row

• Strymon – Cloudburst
• TC Electronic – CHOKA
• Strymon – Timeline
• T-Rex – Replica

Top row

• Strymon – Zuma (Power Supply)
• Strymon – Ojai (Power Supply, on top of Zuma)
• TC Electronic – Polytune Mini
• Vahlbruch Effects – Kaluna II HV Tube Drive
• BOSS – BD2 Blues Driver
• BOSS – CS-3
• KORG – Miku Stomp (On what appears to be a Junction Box)

And there are many more, especially across his other two boards… Check out the full list in the Instagram post below, and see if you can fill in the blanks:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BIG EAR pedals (@bigearpedals)

Spinal Tap II is in cinemas now. You can also check out more from BIG EAR Pedals. 

The post Nigel Tufnel uses BIG EAR Pedals’ Slice Of Pie fuzz in Spinal Tap II – can you work out the other pedals across his three ‘boards? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

David Gilmour is hoping to watch a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere one day, and apparently, it’s something he’s always wanted to do.

With the Sphere already having hosted acts such as Dead & Company, the Eagles, and U2, Floyd could make for a great band to take to the stage next, allowing for its core lineup to reunite for the first time since 2005 in digital form.

• READ MORE: “My father always thought you were a c**t”: Jack Osbourne slams Roger Waters for saying he “couldn’t give a f**k” about Ozzy Osbourne’s music

During a Q&A at the UK premiere of his Live At The Circus Maximus concert film at London’s BFI IMAX, Gilmour was asked about the Sphere: “I’m hoping one of these days to go there and sit and watch myself doing it, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. My avatar, you know? So I don’t actually have to get up and do it,” he replies (via MusicRadar).

Gilmour also shared interest in the Sphere in an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this September, in which he said, “In the future, who knows. I haven’t got that far. It will be in there amongst the plans that we are to think about.”

The Las Vegas sphere cost over $2 billion to construct, and hosts the world’s largest LED screen. Take a look at one of U2’s performances from inside the venue below:

If Pink Floyd were to be immortalised as avatars, they’d be joining the likes of Kiss – who announced a virtual, eternal era for the band following their final ever show at Madison Square Garden – and ABBA, whose Voyage concerts popularised the format.

Earlier this year, Paul Stanley spoke of the band’s retirement and their next, virtual steps: “Do I miss being on stage in front of 50,000 people, 100,000 people? Hell, yeah… Everybody who’s attained that kind of success, sure, you miss it, but there’s a difference between missing and yearning,” he told S.E Cupp on her podcast.

“We sold Kiss, which is something that’s unheard of, that doesn’t even exist in the lexicon of music. We sold Kiss [several] months ago – I mean, everything: the logo, the makeup, the music. And there’ll be an incredible, immersive musical experience that’ll debut in ‘27 that George Lucas [filmmaker] is involved in… That lives forever, but I can’t.”

Find out more about the Las Vegas Sphere, or view the full list of cinema screenings for the Live At The Circus Maximus concert film via David Gilmour’s official website. 

The post David Gilmour is open to a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere: “I’m hoping to go there and watch myself… So I don’t actually have to get up and do it” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Carrying Eddie Van Halen’s last name comes with a weight few could imagine. For Wolfgang Van Halen, that pressure is magnified every time he’s asked to perform one of his father’s songs – a request he almost always declines.

Since Eddie’s death in 2020, Wolfgang has only broken that rule twice. The first was in 2022 at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, where he ripped through On Fire and Hot For Teacher alongside Dave Grohl, Justin Hawkins and Josh Freese. The second one came at the 2024 Welcome to Rockville festival, where he stunned the crowd with a searing rendition of Eruption.

• READ MORE: “I know we’d be screaming together in the stands watching him on stage”: Eddie Van Halen’s ex-wife says he’d be “so proud” of his son Wolfgang in touching tribute

But behind the bravado was a very real fear. Speaking to Metal Hammer, Wolfgang recalls how he wrestled with Grohl’s invitation to perform at the Hawkins tribute: “I was like, ‘This is either going to be a nice coda to Van Halen or it’s going to ruin my life.’”

He explains, “I don’t think I would have ever been able to live it down – with how many people who hate me and say, ‘You’ll never be good enough and you have to play Van Halen to be relevant’ – if the one time I played Van Halen on my own, I ruined it and messed up. In my mind, it would have ruined my life had I messed up. I took it very seriously.”

That anxiety helps explain why Wolfgang now keeps his distance from his father’s legacy. In a June interview with Drumeo, the Mammoth frontman revealed that he and his uncle, drummer Alex Van Halen, have a similarly cautious relationship with the band’s catalogue.

“I’m really just not interested in playing it anymore without dad,” he said. “And I know [Alex] feels the exact same way.”

“I’ll play it for fun every now and then. If Dave Grohl comes to me and goes like, ‘Hey, you wanna do this?’ Like, ‘Yes, Dave Grohl, I would like to do that with you.’ But, overall, it’s really a tough thing for me.”

The post “I don’t think I would have ever been able to live it down”: Wolfgang Van Halen on why he was worried playing his father’s songs could have “ruined my life” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty is no stranger to legal battles.

From fighting record label boss Saul Zaentz to courtroom clashes with his own bandmates, Fogerty’s career has been as defined by legal strife as it has by the songs that made CCR legendary. In 2023, after more than half a century of wrangling, he finally secured the US and worldwide rights to the band’s catalogue.

Now, at 80, Fogerty says he’s grown more at ease with his past. Asked what he sees when he looks at photos of his younger self, the guitarist tells CBS Sunday Morning: “Well, I’ve gotten more comfortable with that person in those pictures from long ago, and so I think that allows me to feel better about it, I suppose.”

• READ MORE: John Fogerty says this thing is more important to musical success than being a good guitar player: “Even if your playing is kind of average, you can go far”

“How can I say it? I was confused about the tension and the grumbling that was going on within the band, and certainly, we ended up having a really troubled relationship with Saul, who was the owner of the label. And because it was not a big label, it became personal, because we knew that individual person and he was screwing us.”

Fogerty adds that his later victories in the music business have allowed him to look back with some relief: “The reason I’m more comfortable is because it has turned out okay now, right? But for many years, I would look at those pictures and be sad, because it was sort of a tragic thing. I think the kid doing it at the time just thought, ‘Oh, whoa. I tried really hard, and I was hoping to grow up and be [American sports icon] Babe Ruth.’”

“I mean, who knew that it would actually come true, in a sense,” he says. “But man, it was working. I thought everybody around me could see that and understood that it was working and that this was great. And I have a feeling that they didn’t see it that way.”

Asked if he’s now “at peace with Creedence”, Fogerty admits: “Yeah, I think so. It depends on what you may mean by that. The way I accept it as inevitable – I’m laughing at myself now – I have been sued innumerable times by my former bandmates, let me put it that way. Sometimes it was actually my brother Tom, but after he passed, even his widow joined with Doug [Clifford] and Stu [Cook] and sued me.”

“It’s ironic that 80-year-old people are still suing each other,” Fogerty continues. “So if you mean at peace that way, I just accept all those things as kind of inevitable. That’s all. It’s not surprising anymore.”

On a more positive note, Fogerty recently released a new album featuring re-recorded versions of Creedence classics titled Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years.

The post “It’s ironic that 80-year-old people are still suing each other”: John Fogerty reflects on decades of lawsuits with Creedence Clearwater Revival appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Nikki Sixx has once again hit back at former Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars’ claim that the band doesn’t actually play live.

Mars, who retired from touring in 2022 due to his battle with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), sued the band the following year, accusing them of cutting him off from profits and kicking him out against his will. In his lawsuit, he went so far as to allege that he was the only member performing 100 percent live during the band’s Stadium Tour and that Sixx “did not play a single note on bass”.

• READ MORE: “We had to make a choice. And we made the right choice”: Nikki Sixx defends Mötley Crüe replacing Mick Mars with John 5

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Sixx dismisses the claims and explains that Mars’s departure was simply down to health issues.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” the bassist recalls. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

On the subject of backing tracks, Sixx insists the band has never faked a performance: “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mötley Crüe’s attorney, Sasha Frid, also writes in a statement to the LA Times: “The fact of the matter is that Mötley always plays live. Even Mars’ expert witness in the litigation, who Mars hired and who reviewed hours of footage, agreed and said that the band played live while performing. He disputed Mars’ own claims.”

Meanwhile, Sixx didn’t hide his frustration at Mars’s accusations, calling them a “crazy betrayal”.

“Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” he says. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

For now, the Crüe continue with guitarist John 5, who has handled live duties since late 2022. Their Las Vegas residency runs through October, and their latest release – a reimagined version of Home Sweet Home with Dolly Parton – recently topped the charts.

The post “It’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life”: Nikki Sixx responds to Mick Mars’ claim that Mötley Crüe doesn’t play live appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$899/£899, martinguitar.com

Billy Strings is one of the most electrifying guitar talents on the scene right now, and so it should come as no surprise that Martin has honoured the 32-year-old bluegrass phenomenon with not one but two new signature models based on the dreadnought guitars that he loves so much.

• READ MORE: Martin D-X2E review – is this the new must-have budget dreadnought acoustic?

Now the first of these guitars, launched back at NAMM in January 2025, is a near as dammit $4,000 D-28 Billy Strings is a love letter to Billy’s beloved 1940 D-28, and features such interesting appointments as a unique 25-inch scale length to give a little less tension and make bends easier, while a unique 1 23/32-inch nut width allows him to blaze up and down the fretboard – it’s a little narrower than standard.

Most of us don’t have $4,000 burning a hole in our pockets to spend on a new guitar however, and so it was a relief to see that revealed alongside the D-28 at the NAMM Show back in January was a much more affordable guitar from Martin’s Mexico-made X series.

Martin D-X2E Billy Strings – what is it?

The X series version of Strings’ signature model is based on the D-X2E from Martin’s recently overhauled Remastered X-series. As I discovered in my review last year, that was a pretty impressive guitar in its own right, and the Strings version carries over much of the fundamentals from that.

That means you get a spruce top with Martin’s laminate HPL material on the back and sides – including the same Brazilian rosewood pattern printed on it in handsome fashion. You also don’t get any binding on this one, with a bevelled edge adding a smoother transition between the two.

It’s not just a name on the label that differentiates this from a standard D-X2E however – as some of the most important bits of the US-made version are carried over in the shape of that unique 25-inch scale length and custom nut width.

You also get a custom hemp (very apt for the ‘California sober’ Strings) embroidered gigbag with the artist’s name on it as opposed to the regular X series gigbag, and the usual Martin E1 electronics with a built-in tuner and volume, tone, and phase controls.

Martin D-X2E Billy Strings – playability and sound

Having played the vanilla D-X2E a fair bit, the change in scale length and string spacing is instantly apparent – and it’s a very good change in my opinion. Strings is well known for his ability to blaze up and down the fretboard with otherworldly grace, and while I’m nowhere near that sort of level, I instantly find that I’m more easily able to solo and chord up and down the neck with that slightly more compact string spacing and looser string tension.

Sonically, the scale length hasn’t had too much of an impact on the overall tonality of the guitar, and it’s pretty similar to the vanilla X-series guitar in that regard. That’s no bad thing of course, as the original sounded very good, with a clear and ringing tonality. The HPL back and sides deliver more mid to high end frequencies than traditional Martin guitars, but the Spruce top helped level it out.

Compared with the Nazareth-made Strings model, you can definitely notice the bass frequencies aren’t as forward, but that’s probably to be expected when we’re comparing two guitars of such wildly different price tags.

Plugging in, and the E1 electronics are easy to use and sound good – they’re unlikely to change anyone’s life in terms of the way they reproduce your acoustic tone, but for a sub-$1,000 guitar, it’s certainly nothing worth complaining about.

Martin D-X2E Billy Strings – should I buy one?

Sticking an artist’s name on a signature model is always going to correlate with an upcharge on the ticket, and the $200 increase on this guitar over the base model shouldn’t be discounted.

But there’s an argument that what you’re getting here is a different enough ride from the vanilla D-X2E that it more than justifies that pricetag and its status as an instrument in its own right. The neck, with its unique scale length, string spacing and slimmer profile, make this feel like such a distinct instrument from any other Martin in the X series. It feels like someone has done the work and broken this thing in for you, with an easy and addictive playability that keeps you coming back for more – you certainly don’t need to be a bluegrass phenom to appreciate its charms.

Martin D-X2E Billy Strings – alternatives

I’d play them both before you pull the trigger, but if you’re not bothered by the scale length and string spacing differences on the Strings model, the vanilla D-X2E ($699) is a fine guitar for a considerable wedge less. Another fine mid-priced dreadnought made in Mexico is Taylor’s 110ce ($799) and offers the benefits of the brand’s electric-like playability and a cutaway. If you want an alternative big-bodied acoustic with more old-school charm then Epiphone’s J-45 ($799) is a very fine instrument.

The post Martin D-X2E Billy Strings review – “you certainly don’t need to be a bluegrass phenom to appreciate its charms” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Nuno Bettencourt may have been the only guitarist to turn down an offer of playing for Ozzy Osbourne, but the Extreme guitar icon remembers their final conversation together fondly.

Bettencourt was offered a job with the Prince Of Darkness in the 1990s, but turned it down as he was busy with his own band. He’d also previously auditioned to play for Osbourne as a teenager, but didn’t get selected.

• READ MORE: “I was very bummed”: Wolfgang Van Halen explains the real reason he had to drop out of Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s farewell concert

In an interview with Page Six on the red carpet at the VMAs, Bettencourt says (via Guitarist), “When I was 15 and his guitar player [Randy Rhoads] passed in a bad plane accident, I believed that I was gonna replace him, and there was an ad to send a cassette in.

“So I did. I put a cassette together at 15, sent it in, [I thought], ‘This is my gig. I’m going to get it.’ Of course, I didn’t,” he continues. “Nobody ever called. Cut to 12 years later, I’m opening for Aerosmith with Extreme in London and my booker comes in and says, ‘Sharon [Osbourne] just called. Ozzy wants you and wants you to be in the band.’ This is like 1995, ’96. I said no.”

Though he admits it’s a regret, Bettencourt caught up with Osbourne at the Back To The Beginning final Black Sabbath gig: “The last words we said to each other when we took the big group photo, I grabbed his hand, saying, ‘Thank you for everything, and thank you, Ozzy, for what you mean to me.’

He goes on to add, “He pulls me in by the hand. He goes, ‘You were the only guitar player who said no to me.’ But he laughed! He goes, ‘I love you and thank you for being here.’”

Bettencourt also joined a supergroup consisting of Yungblud and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the VMAs to perform a tribute medley in honour of Osbourne. You can watch the performance below:

The post Nuno Bettencourt recalls his final conversation with Ozzy Osbourne – as “the only guitar player who said no” to playing for him appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Justin Hawkins of The Darkness has spoken out on his brother’s negative comments regarding the Ozzy Osbourne tribute performance at the MTV VMAs.

A band consisting of Yungblud, Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt, and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry performed a medley of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne hits at the awards ceremony, including Crazy Train, Mama, I’m Coming Home, and Changes – the latter of which was performed by Yungblud at the final Sabbath gig, Back To The Beginning, and received praise online.

• READ MORE: “I was very bummed”: Wolfgang Van Halen explains the real reason he had to drop out of Ozzy and Black Sabbath’s farewell concert

Though many loved the tribute, including a very animated Ariana Grande who was in attendance at the event, others were not so keen. Hawkins’ brother, Dan Hawkins, took to Instagram to refer to the supergroup as a “bunch of bellends”, and criticised the performance as “nauseating”.

In a new video posted to the Justin Hawkins Rides Again YouTube channel, The Darkness vocalist has reflected on the comments made by his brother, and has tried to explain why he thinks the set didn’t go down so well with him.

“I feel like what irks musicians of a certain age is the fact that Yungblud seems to have positioned himself as a natural heir to the Ozzy legacy, having nothing to do with the really important stuff,” he says (via Classic Rock). “All of this posturing is Jim Morrison meets the bloke from Stone Temple Pilots meets everybody else who’s ever owned a pair of leather trousers. It’s 101 School of Rock stuff, you know?”

Though praising Nuno Bettencourt, he goes on to add: “It’s actually like watching David Hasselhoff, who I think is one of the greats… So when I say that, it’s not actually an insult. I just mean that it’s like rock ‘n’ roll done by somebody who, perhaps, was famous for driving a talking car and felt reassured by wearing little red shorts and looking after you at the beach. It’s like a television personality doing rock ‘n’ roll.”

Though the Hawkins brothers don’t see the appeal, other artists have formerly praised Yungblud including Matt Sorum and Geezer Butler. There’s also no denying that the young rock artist did in fact have a close bond with Osbourne before he passed.

Back in 2022, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne featured in the video for Yungblud track The Funeral. Last year, Yungblud also featured on The Osbourne’s YouTube channel for an interview with Sharon and daughter Kelly Osbourne. Throughout, the pair continually shared their surprise at the similarities between him and Ozzy.

You can watch Justin Hawkins’ video below:

The Darkness are currently on tour in Canada, while Yungblud is touring in the US in support of his recent album, Idols.

The post “Was it really necessary to refer to anyone as a bell**d? Let me try to explain”: Justin Hawkins jumps to his brother’s defence after criticism of Yungblud’s VMAs Ozzy Osbourne tribute appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

We can all fall prey to impulse from time to time, especially when under the influence. But for American blues songwriter and guitar legend Marcus King, a drunk spending spree happened to land him a Fender 1966 Esquire.

As the story goes, King picks up the phone to guitar shop Carter Vintage on the other end of the line. “Are you going to come and get this guitar?” He recalls them asking, in a new interview with Guitar World. 

• READ MORE: “Exploring the guitar more fully than ever before”: Jacob Collier’s forthcoming album is all about the acoustic guitar
  

King – who has worked with the likes of Rick Rubin and has played Rory Gallagher’s very own white Fender Tele – says he was completely drunk when he placed the order. And because of that, he had no recollection of buying it at the time. He confesses, though, that “It’s probably the only good thing that came of my drinking.”

Despite his purchase, King’s drunkenly purchases guitar probably doesn’t get much play time considering his sizeable instrument collection, which also includes piano, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, ukulele. “When I’m at home, I don’t like to touch the guitar,” he says.

As for why he often chooses to play other instruments instead of the guitar, he says his skills with the six-string aren’t likely to diminish if he plays less.

“The guitar is something that I’m so familiar with,” he says. “It’s like riding a bike or speaking the English language. If I moved abroad and only spoke Spanish for six months, it’s not like I will forget how to speak English.

“Guitar is so deeply rooted in me. I like to play different instruments, and it helps my playing when I go back to the guitar. I read Victor Wooten’s book [The Music Lesson], and he harped on the importance of being a musician, not a bass player, and I have always been influenced by that idea. It’s a holy experience to be able to sit at a guitar and say exactly what I have on my mind.”

The post “Are you going to come and get this guitar?”: Blues legend Marcus King drunkenly purchased a rare guitar (and forgot he had done so) appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Last year, seven-time Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier wrapped up his sprawling Djesse album series, which spanned four records across seven years and saw collaborations with hundreds of artists.

The English music whizz would be forgiven for having a lengthy break from songwriting, but creativity seems to be the very lifeblood that courses through his veins, so we’re not all that surprised he’s already announced another record.

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

Things will be a little different this time around though, in that the album – The Light For Days – will centre around just one instrument: the acoustic guitar.

Arriving 10 October, the LP is composed of six new original songs, as well as five handpicked covers of his longtime idols, including James Taylor, John Martyn, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

While his Djesse series exerted a pressure for him to “outdo himself” every time and “continue exceeding the infinite possibilities, limitless capabilities and boundless expectations”, The Light For Days sees Collier “freeing himself to be himself in his rawest, purest form”.

The inspiration to begin writing the album came during a brief visit to his home city of London. While there, he explored his 5- and 10-string Taylor guitars “more fully than he ever had before”, including through alternate tunings like DAEAD.

But when it came time to record the album, the entire process was completed in just four days. Again, not that surprising for a musician of Collier’s calibre.

“Since completing the Djesse album series, my imagination has been brimming with all sorts of ideas of things I’d like to do and create,” Colliers says. 

“One of the things I’ve wanted to really focus on, and zone into, is the limitation of a single instrument. The acoustic-guitar sound world has been a foundational aspect of my music universe for as long as I can remember, and so I set myself the challenge of making a full-length album, using almost entirely the five-stringed guitar, in just four days. 

“As a result I had to work so fast that I couldn’t second-guess anything – I just had to roll with and trust the process. The results are warm, scrappy, imperfect, but very close to my heart.”

Jacob Collier is about to release the latest preview from the album, an original track named I know (A Little). You can watch that below when it drops at 5PM BST.

Check out the full tracklist for The Light For Days below:

1. You Can Close Your Eyes
2. Heaven (Butterflies)
3. Thom Thumb
4. Fairytale Lullaby
5. Norwegian Wood
6. Keep An Eye On Summer
7. I Know (A Little)
8. Where Did My Apple Fall?
9. Sweet Melody
10. Icarus
11. Something Heavy 

Jacob Collier is set to play a series of shows this autumn across South America, India, China, Australia and the US. Head to his website for a full list of dates, and to preorder The Light For Days.

The post “Exploring the guitar more fully than ever before”: Jacob Collier’s forthcoming album is all about the acoustic guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

PRS Guitars has revived its Mira model, which has returned to its Maryland factory line with new appointments, as a regular offering in its S2 Series.

This new S2 Mira 594 offers a 24.594” scale length and comes in both gloss and satin finishes. The model has evolved through many different variations across the years since its 2007 launch, but PRS now says it’s finally found its “true voice”.

• READ MORE: PRS SE NF 53 review: “it might look like PRS’s Telecaster, but this is its own guitar”

The original 2007 model was an all-mahogany pickguard guitar with moon inlays, 24 frets, a 25” scale length, a stoptail bridge, and a single mini-toggle. It has appeared across all of the Series from PRS and in various configurations, including the popular Mira X.

In 2013, the Mira was moved from its Core line and was one of three models to launch the S2 Series, which stands for “Stevensville 2” – a nod to the second manufacturing line it started up at its Stevensville, Maryland factory. It was last offered as an S2 in 2018, becoming part of the SE Series from 2020-2023.

Digging into its history, PRS explains: “The flat-top, all-mahogany Mira was designed for the player looking for a simple rock ‘n’ roll guitar with all the quality and intonation PRS is known for.

“The model went from design to production in a record six weeks, with a body shape adapted from the Santana [signature model], though with some notable changes to the horns and roundness of the lower bout. Overall, the Mira aimed to appeal to the modern guitarist while still honouring a retro vibe.”

The 22-fret S2 Mira 594 pairs all-mahogany construction with PRS 58/15 LT vintage-voiced pickups for a warm and focused midrange. The humbuckers are paired with two mini-toggle switches so you can individually tap the pickups for both authentic humbucking and “chimey” single-coil sounds.

The S2 Mira 594 is available in Antique White, Black, Dark Cherry Sunburst, Platinum Metallic, Vintage Cherry, and debut colour Black Rainbow Holoflake. The Satin version (offering the PRS “sinky” satin nitro finish), is available in Matcha Green, Mavis Mint Metallic, Metallic Midnight, Dark Cherry Sunburst, Red Apple Metallic, and debut colour Cloud Burst.

“The Mira has had an interesting history over the course of the last 17 years, but I don’t think it found its true voice until now,” comments PRS Guitars Director of Sales, Jim Cullen. “The S2 Mira 594 combines our 24.594” scale length with a Pattern Thin neck shape and a very simple and straight forward feature set that provides an incredibly lively, simple-to-use tool to create music. I hope you are as inspired as we are with the newest evolution of this classic model.”

The PRS S2 Mira 594 is available now for £1,699. Find out more via PRS Guitars.

The post PRS Guitars says the Mira has finally found its “true voice” as it’s relaunched as an S2 model appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Les Claypool has looked back on his high school years with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, and how he even joined his band as a singer.

As a teen, Claypool used to jam with Hammett, but chickened out of his band when he felt his vocals were a little croaky. He then was coaxed by another student who needed a bass player, which was a role he fell into somewhat easily, partly in thanks to the lack of bassists around due to the mass obsession with Eddie Van Halen’s guitar wizardry at the time.

• READ MORE: Les Claypool says Kirk Hammett was like “Tommy Chong” in high school: “He’s like, ‘Man, I know the three key elements to success: sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll’”

In an interview with YouTube’s music mastermind, Rick Beato, the Primus frontman recalls: “[Hammett] actually tried to get me to sing for his band. We had algebra together, and he sat behind me in algebra, and he would always go, ‘Hey, Claypool. Hey, Claypool, check it out, man.’

“I still, to this day, remember this ad. It was the ad for a Stratocaster where the guy’s holding it, and he’s going, ‘It’s a rock machine,’ and the guy behind him is going, ‘No, it’s a country machine…’ [Hammett’s] like, ‘Here’s my guitar, Claypool, man. It’s the one I’m getting.’”

As Claypool would always be sitting around and singing along to bands like Led Zeppelin, Hammett decided he’d make a great singer for his band and gave him some cassettes so he could learn a few tracks for an audition, including Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love.

“But also on there was Hendrix. I’d never heard Hendrix before. I was 14 or whatever so he turned me on to Hendrix and all these different things. But I chickened out. Back then I was total Bobby Brady, you know, croaking and cracking. But I met this other guy that needed a bass player,” he says.

Claypool’s dad helped him pick out his first ever bass: “We got a brand new P Bass copy Memphis. I got this thing, and I had to pull weeds all summer to pay for it, but then I was instantly in a band because nobody wanted to play bass back then. Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, so bass players were a very rare commodity.”

Of his bond with Hammett, he later adds, “I didn’t find out till years later that he was kind of pissed at me for bailing on his thing to go play bass in this other band.”

You can watch the full interview below:

The post “Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, so bass players were a rare commodity”: Why Les Claypool chickened out of Kirk Hammett’s high school band – and found bass along the way appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

£199/$249, boss.info

Everyone loves Boss pedals, don’t they? But over the last 50 years, the Japanese pedal giant has produced an almost countless number of funny little boxes, and many of them are now discontinued, and either hard to find, prohibitively expensive, or both.

• READ MORE: Crazy Tube Circuits Venus review – ”Crazy Tube Circuits may well have created a masterpiece”

Enter then, the Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – a brand new and very Boss-y take on the concept of a multi-effects unit that promises to act as an archive of some of the most iconic, missed and hard to find compact pedals the brand has ever made.

It’s also a pedal that has provoked more online opprobrium than any other Boss product in the company’s long history… so what gives? Well…

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – what is it?

Well, the clue is very much in the name. For the last year or so, through its Roland Cloud service, Boss has been making plugin versions of its most iconic effects for use in the box with your preferred DAW or software guitar amp and effects platform. The Plugout takes a bunch of these plugins and quite literally lets them out of the box, and enables their use as part of any normal effects chain. Plugin > Plugout… geddit?

The plugins offered at launch run the gamut of the stone cold classics – such as the DS-1, SD-1 and CS-1 – and out-of-production gems like the CE-2, OD-1, OC-2, VB-2 and DD-2. Then there’s the ‘weird shit’ – hard to find curios from the Boss annals like the SG-1 Slow Gear and DF-2 Super Feedbacker & Distortion and the SP-1 Spectrum Equalizer.

You get 16 plugins included at launch, but that won’t be the case for long. Boss is planning to add many more plugins to the selection, starting with the OD-2, DM-2 and DC-2 in January 2026. There is a catch, however – only those first 16 are ‘free’. While you can audition any of the new effects gratis (every 30 seconds the audio will drop briefly in this demo mode), they’ll cost $9.99 each to download and keep forever.

Now, this facet is by SOME DISTANCE the main thing that people – particularly the sort of guitar YouTubers who seem to be permanently outraged – have really zeroed in on. I think there’s some valid discussion to be had about all this, but I think it’s best covered at the end of this review.

One thing that should be made clear however is that you do NOT need to have a subscription to run this pedal – as some have erroneously suggested. After you’ve created the free Roland account, those 16 models are yours to load onto the pedal forever, and once they’re on there, they’re on there. Creating the account gives you a lifetime license to use the plugins on your PX-1, even if you don’t ‘own’ it in the most traditional sense – given that we all merrily click ‘accept’ on much more restrictive software licenses every day, I don’t know if it’s really worth getting that worked up about.

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – build quality and usability

If the two things most likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse are Keith Richards and cockroaches, then you can probably slot the venerable Boss Compact Pedal in as a respectable third. There’s a reason the design has barely changed in nearly 50 years – it’s simple, functional and absolutely bomb-proof. And the best compliment I can give the PX-1 is that despite its clearly very high-tech innards, in hand this feels just as reliable and reassuring and familiar as any other Boss pedal I’ve picked up in the last few decades.

There are differences of course – lord knows my DS-1 never had a USB-C port or a MIDI clock input – but they’re all discrete and don’t detract from the inherent functionality of the thing. Even the new screen above the footswitch feels suitably rugged – I reckon you could drop a fair few heavy things on this screen and it wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Pretty sure the good folks at Boss wouldn’t appreciate me testing this out with my review loaner, and I’d avoid trying it at home, too. Still, it feels reassuring!

If you’re anything like me, the words ‘companion app’ in relation to any guitar product is enough to send a chill down your spine. When they work, they can create a truly enhanced and seamless experience. When they don’t, it can ruin the whole damn thing – especially if some boffin has decided that huge amounts of functionality is hidden inside.

You can load 16 effects onto the PX-1 – eight permanently installed “1” models that come pre-loaded, but if you want to add the further eight effects that are available for free at launch, you’ll have to download the app and sign up for a Roland account. This is how they get you, friends.

Begrudgingly, then, I download Boss’s Effect Loader app onto my iPhone and begin the process of pairing it with the PX-1. My hackles were at half mast at this point, because the process is not exactly intuitive out the gate – reaching for the manual before you’ve even plugged in is often not a good sign. But there’s actually a quite sensible reason for this.

Unlike most modern Bluetooth products, the PX-1 doesn’t have it on all the time, you have to navigate through the menu using the three clickable knobs on the pedal to turn it on, and then connect via the app.

Once you’ve done this, it takes a few seconds to connect and then you’re presented with a screen of your available pedals – tap on said pedal, and you get the option to send it to the PX-1. A progress bar appears on both the pedal and the app, and about 90 seconds later you’re good to go. You’ll stay connected to the app until you start fiddling with the pedal itself, at which point you’ll be prompted to disconnect.

This ‘not always on’ approach is a little unusual for sure, but it kinda makes sense – why would you want something emitting a wireless signal on your perfectly crafted and isolated pedalboard unless you needed it? And the good news is that after you’ve loaded on your effects of choice, you don’t. Unless you wish to upload a different pedal to one of the user slots, you need never think about the Effect Loader app again if you so wish – and that’s the sort of companion app I can get behind.

You can also use the app to download the latest firmware for the pedal, though you can’t do that via Bluetooth. Again, the process is a little unwieldy – but effective! First you have to connect your phone to the pedal via a suitable cable, and then you have to restart the pedal while holding down the footswitch to enter update mode. If this all is starting to sound a bit too much like the sort of thing that made me stop using PCs, I’m right there with you – but don’t fret. Yes, the update process is a bit fiddly and weird – but it works. Quickly, efficiently, and consistently – I will take that all day long over less Heath Robinson methods that don’t.

With the pedal set up and updated, we wave goodbye to the app and hook it up – you have stereo in and outs here, but handily it’s all powered by a standard 9V DC barrel jack. Boss forever insists that you should only use its PSU (which is included) but realistically, nobody’s paid any attention to that since about 2001.

That expression pedal control widens the usability too – either you can set it up with a footswitch and use it to swap between two effects on the fly, or you can hook it up to an expression pedal and use that to control the sweep of any of the controls on your selected effect. You couldn’t do that with my DS-1 either.

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – sounds

I shan’t waste your time talking too much about the DS-1 and SD-1 – anyone who has ever been in a guitar shop knows exactly what these two most ubiquitous Boss dirt pedals sound like, and the PX-1 does an exceptionally faithful job of recreating them. My question is why do they even need to be part of the preinstalled launch lineup in the first place? Nobody is spending $250 to get the authentic sound of a $70 pedal are they?

At the other end of the rareness scale, Boss pedal tragics will have noticed that among the stompboxes included in the PX-1 are the first three Boss compacts ever made 48-ish years ago – the OD-1, SP-1 and PH-1. That seems like as sensible a place as any to really kick things off, and what a lovely place to begin the OD-1 is. It’s thick, meaty and ragged in the best kind of way, and has real punch and bite when you add some swarthy humbuckers to the mix.

The SP-1 is er… well it’s a single-band parametric EQ, and while it does a nice job of cleaning up muddier sounds, I wouldn’t call its inclusion here a deal-maker despite it being one of the rarest early Boss pedals out there. The PH-1 is a much more enjoyable affair, offering a quite polite and classic phaser sound with plenty of low-end depth without ever getting too wiggy.

The CS-1 compressor really is a reminder of how punchy those early pedal compressors were – this isn’t a modern transparent effect but a powerful vice-like clamp on your signal that adds punch and panache but only in the right environment. It’s a sound that, ironically, would pair sublimely with the majesty of the CE-2 – it’s lush and deep and sumptuous in the way that classic 80s Boss chorus pedals always have been.

The Slow Gear is one of those pedals that has become part of guitar folklore, because it’s both extremely rare and pretty unique. Unlike, say, the SP-1, having the chance to spend some time with it here makes you realise why it’s so sought after. The volume swell effect sounds great and is very unique – exactly the sort of thing the PX-1 should have more of.

The OC-2 remains a marvel of accurate octave tracking given its age, while the warm wobble of the VB-2 is as compelling now as it ever was.

The surprise favourite for me was the PS-2 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay – with eight-bit processing and a truly mad blend of delay and pitch shifting, it’s a very quick route to surprising Jack White wig-outs.

The DF-2 is another pedal that really rams home the fun part of the PX-1 – the tactile sense of actually experiencing these pedals in their original compact pedal form. Holding down on the footswitch to force your notes to bloom into wonderfully controlled feedback would be much less interesting in a pedal that wasn’t shaped exactly like a Boss compact.

Time and again, the prevailing sense is not just that these pedals sound really good – as good as the originals to my ears – but that the experience of using them is authentic, too, and that might be the true killer app of the PX-1.

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – should I buy one?

Okay, let’s get into it. If we’re comparing compact multi-effects units, the PX-1 is under-gunned compared to some of its competition. For $50 more, the Line 6 HX One unquestionably does a much more comprehensive job, with hundreds of onboard effects straight out of the box. And look, if that’s what you want, I cannot stress enough that you should buy the HX One.

The existence of the Plugout FX doesn’t stop anyone from doing that, and I would imagine the folks at Boss would similarly suggest that they already make plenty of multi-effects units – the purpose of the PX-1 is very different.

Because if all any of us wanted was the maximum amount of sounds in the smallest possible footprint, individual stompboxes would have gone the way of the buffalo about 30 years ago, and multi-effects would be the only flavour of floor-based soundscaping we could buy.

But guitarists are weird. Many of us don’t want all that – for some, option paralysis is the very enemy of creativity. For them, the stripped back simplicity and WYSIWYG usability of the PX-1 is the closest they’ll ever come to wanting a multi-effects on their board.

The thornier issue is one of the extra costs. Some will say that when you’ve spent $250 on a pedal, you shouldn’t then be asked to fork out all over again for added extras. I don’t think people are wrong for feeling that way, especially because of the precedent that it potentially sets – do we really want to live in a world where the microtransactional hellscape of modern gaming is transported over to our pedalboards?

But Boss is at pains to point out that these extra effects aren’t sitting on the PX-1 waiting to be unlocked – you’ll have to physically download the algorithm from the cloud to use it. In that regard it’s probably sensible to think of it less like a microtransaction and more like DLC – you’re paying to get something substantial, not the guitar equivalent of horse armour.

For some, this is still a step too far, and I get it – I do. But I would also remind people that Boss hasn’t pulled this idea out of nowhere. Who remembers the DigiTech iStomp? You probably don’t, because for all the ‘potential game-changer’ chat when it launched in 2012, it never really caught on, in no small part because guitarists did not want to pay for virtual pedals that they could load onto a stompbox one at a time.

There’s also more modern takes on the ‘plugins but in a pedal’ concept like the Chaos Audio Stratus or the MOD Dwarf – they’ve found their own dedicated communities without the guitar world slipping off its axis, and I imagine it’ll be a similar situation for the PX-1.

Because ultimately, without wishing to sound like a turbo-capitalist, the market will decide if this is a good idea or not. If people buy the pedal and keep buying plugins for it, Boss will likely keep adding new pedals, and expanding the PX family to support that. If they don’t, well at least you’ll always have those 16 launch pedals.

For those complaining that there are only 16 pedals included in this thing, however, I would point you to Reverb to have a look at how much say, an original Slow Gear or SP-1 will set you back. The PX-1 is a way to experience these pedals, even the weirdos, in a way that is much more accessible and affordable.

But this isn’t to say that the launch Plugout FX is without its shortcomings. I understand why Boss wanted to make the launch proposition of the initial 16 effects cover a broad gamut of classics, rarities and staples… but the lack of any reverb is very frustrating – my kingdom for an RV-3! There’s also the question of where it goes in your rig. This is the issue with a lot of these jack-of-all-trades stompboxes, but it feels even more so with the PX-1. Without hooking it up to an effects switcher, you’re forced into compromises in terms of signal chain. After all, you’re unlikely to want your OD-1 in the same place in the chain as your DD-2, are you?

That for me would be a bigger deal-breaker than any of the angry shouting online – and one that is ultimately exacerbated by the small selection of effects on offer at launch. But if you can accept that there will be compromises in that regard, the Plugout FX really does seem like a pedal that could find a home in a lot of rigs. Putting aside the online noise and taking it on its own merits, the PX-1 is a fun pedal with bags of potential to be a living repository of the rarest, weirdest and most interesting Boss pedals of the last five decades. Everyone should have at least one Boss pedal on their pedalboard, and this might be it.

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX – alternatives

The biggest direct competitor for the PX-1 probably comes in the shape of TC Electronic’s Plethora X1 ($151/£129). It offers 14 different effects types in one compact box, but unlike the PX-1 you can use two at the same time. The elephant in the room here is, of course, Line 6’s HX One ($299/£219) – which offers 250 Helix-level high-end sounds in one box. If you want lots of sounds in one pedal, that is very much the option du jour. The king of the high-end mini-multis is probably Eventide’s H9 Max ($599/£529) – it’s not cheap, but with over 50 of Eventide’s best and brightest on board, it’s hard to beat in terms of pure sound quality.

The post Boss PX-1 Plugout FX review – “This is a pedal that could find a home in a lot of rigs” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ever fancied getting a Gretsch White Falcon or Nashville G6120 for a fraction of the price? Well, you’re in luck. Gretsch has just unveiled a revival of its Synchromatic range, with two new hollowbody models – the Synchromatic Falcon and the Synchromatic Nashville.

While there are slight variations – namely the scale, with the Nashville being 24.6” as opposed to the Falcon’s 25.5”, and the headstocks – the pair of Synchromatic models are relatively similar. Both boast 2.5” deep laminated maple bodies, with a semi-arc bracing design. The pair also have a C-shaped maple neck, with a 12” radius ebony fingerboard with pearloid Neo-Classic thumbnail inlays.

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)

Both guitars are kitted out with versatile volume and tone controls to tweak your treble bleed and master tone. There’s also individual pickup volume knobs for the bridge and neck, as well as a three-position toggle switch. There’s also a Bigsby B60V Vibrato tailpiece, Hi-Fidelity Filter’Tron pickups and a bone nut.

Each model is also very easy on the eye – the Synchromatic Falcon comes in Snowcrest White and Black, while the Synchromatic Nashville is available in 50’s Orange Stain and Cadillac Green. All the hardware is gold, too, which looks pretty classy.

The Synchromatic range hasn’t seen any updates in quite a while, with models like the Gretsch G100CE Synchromatic serving as a great example of how strong these affordable electro-acoustic models can be. It’s great to see Gretsch yet again shooting for that premium feel at a fraction of the price.

Of course, the Synchromatic range certainly looks up to scratch – but it also sounds pretty strong. A video showing the hollow bodies in action could be the final nudge you need to cop yourself a Synchromatic.

In terms of pricing, the Synchromatic Falcon is £1299, while the Nashville model is a slightly cheaper £1149. All models come with a hardshell case, too.

For more information, head to Gretsch.

The post Gretsch’s Synchromatic reimagines the White Falcon and Nashville G6120 at an affordable price appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

No matter how big they get, every rockstar has their own guitar heroes. Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell has recently shared his own selection legendary guitarists that continue to fill him with awe.

In a new interview on KLOS radio show Whiplash with Full Metal Jackie, the frontman was asked to list his greatest guitar influences – a question that instantly overwhelms him. “Oh, God – there’s just too many to to single out…” he says.

He goes on to namedrop a slew of guitarists he “grew up listening to”, including Davey Johnstone (known for his work with Elton John), Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, AC/DC’s Malcolm and Angus Young, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons… the list goes on.

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)

“I can go down the list!” he insists. “Even Ted Nugent… or Boston’s Tom Scholz, for that matter! I’ve taken a little piece from anything that inspires me or makes me feel good. Any song that I keep coming back to, or album that I still love listening to.”

In Cantrell’s opinion, every guitarist has something unique to offer. Tonally, everyone will have their own inimitable flavour. “Tone’s a really unusual thing, because you can line up 50 guys with the same guitar on the same amp, plug them in, and they’re all gonna sound a little bit different,” he explains.

“It’s the relationship between the flesh, the wood and the metal, with the electricity running through it. It’s the soul of the individual flowing through it. So it’s unique, and it’s like a fingerprint. It’s unique to them.”

“So… it’s hard to really boil it down to who maybe influenced me the most,” he continues. “There’s standouts that are just like aliens to me. [Jimi] Hendrix was one. Eddie Van Halen is another. I think Randy Rhoads might qualify as an otherworldly being!”

Rather than trying to capture the exact sound of another artist, Cantrell hopes his own sonic “fingerprint” can inspire others. “I wanna make something that makes somebody else feel,” he says. “[I want] somebody to hear my music and feel how I felt when I was a kid. [Make them] want to become a musician and make music.”

The post “They’re just like aliens to me”: Jerry Cantrell on the legendary guitarists who have influenced him most appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The only band you can wholly compare Between the Buried and Me to is Between the Buried and Me. The Raleigh explorers may have formed with a profound penchant for Converge, the Dillinger Escape Plan and technical metalcore, but they quickly broadened their horizons to unparalleled degrees, consolidating country hoedowns, lounge and myriad other genres into what they do. The quartet have a new album, The Blue Nowhere, coming out in September, so now seemed like an ideal time to take stock and sit down with founding guitarist Paul Waggoner to get a sense of their journey so far.

• READ MORE: Five times the Hives were the best band in the world (according to the Hives)

This is every record the band have ever put out, ranked from worst to best by the man who shredded on each one:

10. Between the Buried and Me (2002)

How old were you on the first album?

“It was written when I was 19 years old or something. That was when I had just gotten to a point where I could play the guitar somewhat reasonably well and was able to take what was in my mind and put it on the guitar. Tommy [Giles Rogers, vocals/keyboards] was my musical spirit animal and we vibed out and had a cool chemistry together pretty instantly. The self-titled album is a reflection of that: it’s just us sitting in our apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina and riffing together. We built those songs with Will Goodyear, our original drummer.”

Will didn’t stick around for long after the album came out. What was he like to be in a band with?

“Oh, he’s great! I’m still great friends with him. He’s in a really cool metal band called Valletta, where he plays guitar. He’s incredibly creative, very multi-talented, great drummer, great guitarist, great singer, and a lot of fun to work with.”

How do you weather such a key member leaving the band at such an early age?

“Pure stubbornness, man! ‘I don’t want to do anything else, so I’m gonna keep doing this.’”

9. The Silent Circus (2003)

Possibly the most erratic album of the bunch.

“Yeah, it’s a weird record: very grindy and raw. We had Mark Castillo playing drums on that, and he was a fast, fast drummer. We fleshed the record out in a practice space in Raleigh and we were young. We didn’t really know what we were doing. We just wanted to be a – I don’t know what we wanted! There are some really cool riffs. It was an early step in our self-discovery.”

What was it like transitioning from Lifeforce Records to Victory?

“Victory probably became interested because they just saw us gaining a bit of headway in the American market. We signed with Lifeforce because no American label was even remotely interested in what we were doing! All of a sudden, the record did pretty good and we were touring. American labels, particularly Victory, showed some interest. We’re certainly very thankful for that.”

8. Alaska (2005)

This is when you guys started to come into your own musically.

“It’s really the first album where we were getting sort of experimental, starting to incorporate some keyboards. Selkies has a real stretchy guitar solo in it. Autodidact, the whole middle section of that is when Dan’s [Briggs, bass] influence really started coming to the table. You don’t really hear that in your typical metalcore scales or patterns. We started to do some weird shit musically on Alaska but still retained that core metalcore sound. It’s a crowd favourite, our fans love Alaska and would probably like us to play more songs from Alaska. It means a lot to me, but I don’t write music like that anymore.”

What do you mean?

“I just don’t play guitar like that. That was when I was just a metal guy for the most part. As I’ve become older, I’ve found myself influenced and inspired by different types of guitar playing. When I was relearning songs [for a 2025 tour where Alaska was played in full], I was like, ‘Shit, man, I don’t play this fast anymore!’”

7. Colors (2007)

A lot of people would put this one higher…

“It’s objectively the most important album in our career, and I think if we hadn’t written that record, we probably wouldn’t be a band anymore. It is the absolute turning point for us, when we establish ourselves as a progressive metal band. The only reason I have it a little lower is that it’s just old. We did it in 2007, we’ve played it a bazillion times live – which I still enjoy, because the fans love it – and the songs are great, but because it’s so old, it doesn’t have the same resonance in my mind.”

Is there an element of fatigue as well? I imagine a lot of fans come up to you and go, ‘Hey, Colors, right?’

“I would maybe call it a subconscious fatigue. It seems to always be the album that people talk about or people want to hear, even now. I love playing Colors but when I really think about, I’m like, ‘Shit, man, that’s almost 20 years ago we wrote that record! Does anybody care about the new stuff?’ I guess that’s a good problem to have.”

6. Automata I & II (2018)

How do you feel about Automata today?

“I think, in hindsight, we would have preferred to release it all as one album, rather than split it up into two. It was written as one long album. It was sort of a decision with the label to release it as two shorter records, but I love the songs. Obviously, Condemned to the Gallows was nominated for a Grammy, so it did well for us. It’s got some great moments, it’s very diverse. It showcases our heavier, more aggro side, as well as some really cool melodic moments. I love the chorus section in Blot.”

You don’t sound thrilled with it being a two-parter.

“I think it would have had more impact if it were released as one whole piece, because that’s how it was written and how it was meant to be listened to. This was an era, and I guess we’re still in that era, where it seemed like the perceived attention span of the average music fan was pretty short. We thought, ‘Maybe we’ll just release two short albums and it’ll resonate more,’ but that was probably a mistake.”

What’s it like being nominated for a Grammy?

“It’s a bit surreal. But, not to be flippant about it, it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We don’t take a lot of validation from things like that. We’re a metal band: we just like to play shows and put out records that we’re happy with.”

5. Colors II (2021)

Describe to me the difference between making a sequel to a record versus when you have a blank slate.

“I think people think that we were very mindful about creating a sequel to Colors, when in actuality, we were just hearkening back to the creative headspace we were in during Colors. It was very much a time where we were trying to establish ourselves as being the band who were willing to try new stuff, and we didn’t really care about what genre we fit in. For Colors II, we wanted to relive that mindset.”

But there are lots of moments that reference Colors.

“Yeah, there are a couple little ear-candy moments where we try to recall certain themes. Human Is Hell is an homage to White Walls, a little bit. In general, we approached it as, we were just writing a new BTBAM album, but we wanted to take ourselves back to 2007. I really do like that record, and it’s got some of my favourite BTBAM songs on it.”

4. Coma Ecliptic (2015)

A bit of an underdog in your discography, in my opinion.

“It’s kind of a different record for us: it’s probably our proggiest and easier to digest, a lot of clean vocals. That guitar is almost a supporting instrument. A lot of the songs were written with keyboard or bass as the backbone. It was a roll of the dice for us, but we try to do something different for every record.

“We just did a tour in the States where we played the entire album for its 10-year anniversary and it was a lot of fun. It made me dig back into those songs and realise, the way the instrumentation was orchestrated, it was pretty clever. I’m proud of that record.”

3. The Great Misdirect (2009)

This is a spicy one.

“It’s a spicy take [putting this album this high], but I like the moodiness of it. It’s a darker record, it’s got some wildcard BTBAM moments that we hadn’t done prior, and I just like the vibe of it. It’s got some of my favourite songs, like Disease, Injury, Madness and Fossil Genera.”

What was the mood making it? Was there any pressure making the follow-up to Colors?

“A little bit. After Colors, we established ourselves as a progressive band, whereas before we were a technical metalcore band or whatever. But, the first thing we wrote for The Great Misdirect was that intro, Mirrors, and it’s a haunting, dissonant, diminished-sounding intro. We knew immediately that it was going to have a spin on it than Colors. We just reacted to that and that’s how we ended up writing the rest of the record.”

2. The Parallax II: Future Sequence (2012)

Very much a fan-favourite.

“I can see why. It was a very focussed time in the band’s career: we were coming off the EP [2011’s The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues], and it felt like an opportunity to really flesh out those ideas in a full album context. It was, again, a turning point record, I think, where we really honed in on the things that make us who we are.”

How did it end up working that way, with an EP and then a full-length sequel the year after?

“We had just signed to Metal Blade Records and we wanted to put out something relatively quickly. That was the impetus for doing the EP. Once we did that, we were really ready to write a full-length record. The EP served as the beginning phase of writing The Parallax.”

It feels like your boldest undertaking, at least at that point.

“For sure! We embraced the grandiosity of what we were doing. Colors was our first foray into that, but I think Parallax II ramped it up a bit.”

1. The Blue Nowhere (2025)

Every artist says the new one is the best…

“And I’m no different! Obviously, it’s the newest, so it feels the most reflective of where we are in our journey as musicians and as people, but also, I think it’s a very good amalgamation of all our influences. It feels the most evolved and diverse, but it’s still very intentional. It’s a very cool encapsulation of everything that Between the Buried and Me is all about.”

Making something that’s more reflective as a whole, was that a response to Colors II, which zeroed in on one period of time?

“I think when we write a new album, especially this one, it really is just a blank canvas. All bets were off and wherever ideas we had to bring to the table, we brought them. It was all about a fresh start.”

Was that fresh start because of the lineup change? [Rhythm guitarist Dustie Waring parted ways with the band in July, two years after being accused of rape. He denies any wrongdoing.]

“That didn’t really have anything to do with it. I think it was just the four guys that wrote and recorded the new record – that was the core nucleus of the writing and so we worked from there. I don’t think, necessarily, the lineup change influenced the writing at all.”

The Blue Nowhere is out on 12th September via Inside Out Music.

The post Between the Buried and Me rank their own albums from worst to best appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.