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2025 is almost over, and so arrives year-end list season, clattering through the swing doors of journalism right after everyone gets bored of sharing their Spotify wrapped. Is there anything more festive than curling up in front of the fire with a mulled wine and several hundred year-end lists? For my sake, I hope not, because here comes another one.

• READ MORE: How Women Are Giving Metal Guitars A Mainstream Moment

Year-end lists are great opportunities to look back over emerging trends, and identify where the strongest innovations lay across the year. And this year I was pleased to see that, while the digital side of things continues to grow in power and usability, the world of analogue amps and bespoke pedals was actually a pretty damn dynamic one this year. My personal gear preferences tend towards the messy, loud and, yes, inconvenient universe of real analogue kit – so without further ado, let’s see what I was impressed by this year.

My favourite guitar of 2025: Jackson Lee Malia LM-87

Jackson Lee Malia LM-87 guitar. Image: Press

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Is it a metal guitar for offset nerds? Or an offset guitar for metal nerds? Who knows, but either way, Jackson’s new Lee Malia signature is absolutely my top pick of 2025’s new guitar releases. Firstly: it looks cool as hell, but manages to keep it relatively classy. This is not the kind of heavy guitar that screams “mettuuull”, shotguns a beer and stage-dives into the moshpit. Instead, its dark, open-pore finish, the offset shape and the weird tune-o-matic nabbed from Malia’s love of vintage Gibsons make it appealingly minimalist but nevertheless mean looking. Sonically, the combo of a subtle P90 in the neck and an absolute jackhammer of a bridge humbucker makes it great for doing textural things as well as drop-A chugs, and ergonomically, the thing is built for speed and comfort – a boon in any genre.

The LM-87 also shares what’s compelling about the Jack Antonoff and Diamond Rowe signatures: Lee Malia’s personality is here, but it’s definitely a guitar that transcends his and Bring Me’s influence. It’s a minor trend, but a trend nonetheless, for signature guitars to feel a little more like the artist is an honest part of the design process, and less like the guitars are very expensive, playable merch. The side effect is that I still feel drawn to the instrument despite the fact that, and Bring Me The Horizon’s kind of metal is very much not what I’d choose to listen to. Long may this approach continue, basically, where artists of all stripes can contribute to the wider world of cool gear, beyond appeals to their fanbase!

Read the full review.

My favourite amp of 2025: Orange Tour Baby

Image: Orange

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It’s no secret I love Orange amps, and I’ve recently been having a very good time with the brand’s solid-state offerings. Late last year I bagged myself a used Super Crush 100, which is essentially a JFET version of the Rockerverb preamp running into a Pedal Baby power amp. It’s a great amp and I love how it sounds and looks, but I was really impressed with one of Orange’s more compact solid-state offerings this year – the Tour Baby.

The Tour Baby is the same size as the Pedal Baby, but adds two preamp channels and a built-in compressor for the cleans. Given its miniscule size but beefy 100-watt power stage, it’s a really compelling option for gigs where you don’t want to load the boot of your car to bursting but still want to kick out some serious dBs on stage. Its overdrive sounds are great too, and it took dirt pedals amazingly – the mid-gain character of the dirty channel was an excellent combo with thick fuzzes. In all, it’s a very Orange take on the compact-solid-state thing, with some added versatility and portability, all for under £400. What’s not to like?

Read the full review.

My favourite pedal of 2025: Old Blood Noise Endeavours Bathing

Image: Press

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A lot of guitar gear is rooted in what was. Innovation may not quite be a dirty word, but there’s a lot of gear that arrives every year – particularly in the pedal universe – that’s retreading old ground. Maybe with pretty carbon comp resistors and unique enclosure designs, but retreading is retreading – but it’s hard to level that accusation at Old Blood Noise Endeavors’ Bathing. It’s a delay with a totally unique signal chain that shunts the feedback through a variable-stage and variable-LFO phaser – which is a whole lot of jargon to say it sounds utterly unique, totally gorgeous and, true to OBNE’s stated goal, very ‘liminal’.

While it’s by no means for everyone, it’s hard to think of a pedal release I was so intrigued by this year, and I have a lot of respect for the approach of aiming for a totally new, uncharted feeling with a pedal – the art of the thing is in the driving seat, and it’s the sort of thing I’d love to see more pedal companies do.

Read the full review.

The post A compact 100-watter, some liminal ambience and a metal offset: this is my gear of the year 2025 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Neural DSP has announced what could be the biggest plugin collaboration of all time – Archetype: John Mayer X, a digital version of the Mayer’s recognisable and sought-after tone.

• READ MORE: Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer review – is this the Mayer tone plugin we’ve been waiting for?

Archetype: John Mayer X takes a similar approach to the brand’s other Archetype plugins, in that it sonically captures Mayer’s favoured analogue bits of kit. On the amps side, you get some digital replicant of his three most beloved and commonly used tube amps – a 1964 Fender Vibroverb, John’s #002 Dumble Steel String Singer, and the prototype of his signature Two-Rock head.

On the pedal side, you get versions of the pedals that you’d expect if you’ve ever even dipped a toe into Mayer tone scholarship: a Keeley Katana, an EHX Q-tron, a Way Huge Aqua-Puss, a combined Bluesbreaker/TS-10 Tube Screamer, and, of course, a Klon Centaur. Alongside this you get a huge variety of speaker cab simulations as well as the usual boatload of microphones that come with any given piece of Archetype software. That makes for a pretty compelling collection of sought-after vintage gear, even outside of the Mayer connection!

Neural DSP head Doug Castro said about the launch in a statement: “John’s sound has inspired guitarists around the world, and it was a privilege to work with him directly to recreate the rig that anchors his tone. “There’s an intimacy to the way his rig responds – it breathes, it opens up, it carries emotion – and capturing that behavior was one of the most meaningful projects we’ve taken on.”

The collaboration is notable as it’s one of the few non-heavy plugins Neural DSP has made, although certainly not the first, as it was preceded by Archetype: Mateus Asato and Archetype: Cory Wong.

And, in case you’d wondered if I’d started putting kisses at the end of my headlines – I haven’t. The ‘X’ in this case indicates an expanded approach to the Archetype software, which is understandable given the scope of the gear captured. Perhaps relatedly this is one of the pricier Archetype offerings from Neural, coming in at €199.

Want to know more? Check out our review of the software, or indeed the 14-day free trial is available from Neural DSP.

The post Neural DSP launches Archetype: John Mayer X appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

€199, neuraldsp.com

Back in the early 2000s, I was a woefully underqualified student on a music college guitar course, powerfully unenthused by the guitar heroes I was encouraged to emulate. In truth, I was probably struggling to see myself in the Mount Rushmore shredders because well, I was and remain a witheringly average guitar player. But a few months into the first semester, one of the tutors switched us onto this new young American lad who was taking an unconventional route to guitar success.

• READ MORE: Poly Effects Trails review – probably the world’s most inspiring multi-effects pedal

This kid had landed himself a spot on the Billboard top 40 with a fairly dreadful song about someone’s body being a wonderland. But, listen to his new album, Room For Squares, we were told – there’s a serious guitar player lurking underneath the radio-friendly pop songs.

I’m telling you this not to flaunt my John Mayer credentials – as if such a thing exists – but to explain that I am something of a greybeard when it comes to Mayer tone chasing. But obviously, I’m not alone.

Mayer is probably the most influential guitar player of the last two decades, with some of the biggest artists on the planet citing him as a huge inspiration on their tone, technique and artistry. There are whole websites devoted to analysing every piece of gear in an attempt to emulate his sound. This then, is a big ol’ deal.

Because while Mayer has had signature products before – the wildly popular PRS Silver Sky being the most notable – he’s often been quite secretive about his actual signal chain. Now however, he’s pulling the curtain back and presenting any guitar player with a laptop and an audio interface the opportunity to experience a high-end emulation of his guitar amps and pedals, and presets to show you how he puts it all together.

Whisper it, but this might be the most asked-for new artist-related product the guitar world has seen in a very, very long time.

Image: Press

Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer – what is it?

Archetype: John Mayer is the latest in Neural DSP’s – maker of the Cortex pedals and a bunch of other high-end digital guitar stuff – series of wildly popular artist-focused guitar plugins.

For the most part, these Archetypes have focused heavily on the shredder, metallic end of the guitar spectrum – John Petrucci, Gojira, Tim Henson and the like – with the occasional flirtations with non-heavy guys like Mateus Asato and Cory Wong.

Landing a bluefin tuna of a fish like Mayer then, is a big deal not just for guitar fans who have been crying out for an official Mayer plugin, but also for Neural DSP. While the Quad Cortex has become hugely popular with fans and artists across the musical spectrum for its remarkably realistic amp profiles (including Mayer himself), the company has struggled to fully cater to the non-heavy audience at times – this is quite the statement of intent that they’re going to change that.

So, what actually is it? Well it’s a guitar plugin, which will work standalone or with your DAW of choice, that offers a bunch of amps and effects exhaustively modelled on Mayer’s own gear, plus a bunch of presets for that gear created not only by the man himself but by a boatload of other artists, too. Yep, if you’ve ever wondered what John Petrucci, Lee Malia or Plini would do if they were plonked down in front of John Mayer’s rig – wonder no more.

Specifically, what we get here are replications of John’s three most beloved and commonly used amps – a 1964 Fender Vibroverb, John’s #002 Dumble Steel String Singer, and the prototype of his signature Two-Rock head. All three come with corresponding cabs, and there’s an interesting fourth option, “The Three-In-One Amplifier”, which combines all three together as Mayer himself would do, under one streamlined control panel.

You can run each of the amps through any of the connected speaker options – and there are a boatload of mic options, both in terms of type and placement, as you’d expect with any high-end guitar plugin.

Image: Press

Effects-wise, the signal chain offers 11 effects in total, split up into various stages in the chain. And if you ever doubted that Mayer was both extremely online and extremely aware of the internet’s feverish obsession with his signal chain, the fact that all the pedals here are rendered as if clumsily covered in black paint – a nod to Mayer’s habit of ‘blacking out’ certain pedals on his real ‘board to throw off the tonehounds – should remove them conclusively.

In terms of actual pedals, we have five Mayer staples in the pre-effects slot – a Keeley Katana, EHX Q-tron, Way Huge Aqua-Puss, Klon Centaur and a combined Bluesbreaker/TS-10 Tube Screamer. At the other end we also have a Providence Chrono Delay and the reverb bit of a Strymon Flint, and there’s also a studio EQ and compressor after the amp stage.

The most interesting part of the rig, however, is the ‘Gravity Tank’ a Neural-designed hybrid harmonic tremolo and spring reverb tank that puts together the sound of John’s favourite units in a bespoke unit that sits between the pre-effects and the amps.

You also get a transpose function that enables you to go up or down 12 full steps, a noise gate, doubler, plus a built-in tuner, metronome and all the MIDI jiggery you’d expect.

There are 18 built-in Mayer-designed presets, plus multiple presets from over 40 different artists, and a shedload from Neural itself – you can of course, create and save your own too.

Image: Press

Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer – usability

Neural’s Archetype platform is a mature one at this point and if you’ve used any of Neural’s plugins before the basic setup is as you’d expect. Even if you’ve never used one before however, the interface is extremely straightforward and intuitive.

Across the top of the interface, no matter what you click on, you have the five editable parts of the signal chain – pre-fx, verb & trem, amp, cab, EQ and comp, and post-fx. Below that you have another permanent bar with the input and output level, noise gate, transpose, doubler and a menu to select presets. At the bottom you have an outlined depiction of the four amp and cab options so you can see at a glance what you’re playing through anywhere, while the big space in the middle is devoted to a suitably WYSIWYG depiction of whatever it is you’re currently editing.

Each effect and amp is clearly laid out in the manner you’d expect from the originals, though the blacked-out thing isn’t the most helpful at a glance. The coloured labels don’t exactly pop with their slightly washed-out colour palette, while the labels for the controls are scrawled in what you assume is Mayer’s fair hand. Again, it’s not the most legible thing I’ve ever seen, and from an accessibility standpoint it would be helpful to be able to alter the font to something more legible – but they’re hardly the first pedals, virtual or otherwise, to put form over function in that regard.

Speaking of pedals, as is the nature with all other Archetypes, the signal chain is fixed to Mayer’s preference in terms of both the overarching chain and the individual components therein. That means if you wanted to move, say, your Aqua Puss to your post fx bank, it’s a no-go – it’s sat at the end of your pre fx slot and that’s where it will stay.

Image: Press

The fixed chain has other limitations too – not least the decision to have an either/or situation with the TS-10/Bluesbreaker pedal – and then there’s the amps. Each amp has its own tone stack when selected independently, but it defaults to whatever Mayer’s preferred option for the three-in-one option. In this mode you also only get the ability to tweak the level of each amp, a master gain, plus output and room send.

What’s more, each amp only offers a single channel, and the tone stack is obviously condensed quite considerably from what’s on the front of the real thing – for example, the Vibroverb only has four controls (volume, bass, treble, output) and a bright switch.

This is less of a criticism than it is a note of caution – if you’re buying this expecting to get a fully realised replication of a Steel String Slinger or a Two-Rock, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, think of it more like what Mayer considers the most important bits of each amp – and this is an artist plugin at the end of the day. If you’re buying something for its endlessly editable and configurable sonic options, plenty of options exist.

Image: Press

Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer – usability

Booting up the plugin on my 2022 MacBook Pro, I naturally reach for the USA Strat that has been a faithful companion for over 20 years – it’s only as I go to plug it in that I recall that both the guitar and its finish choice (sunburst with a tortie pickguard) were the direct result of me spending too much time poring over Mayer’s Any Given Thursday live DVD in a grubby Coventry student house in 2004. The past is nothing if not cringe. Anyway!

The presets are obviously the right place to start for any signature product like this. While Mayer can be a cantankerous character at the best of times, it’s good to see that he hasn’t been totally obtuse here – there are no less than five presets here that have the word ‘Gravity’ in their name. Give the people what they want, John.

I start with ‘Gravity Clean’ because of course I do, with my Strat’s in-between position selected, and well… there it is. Taking into account the fact that Mayer is many dozens of forces of magnitude better at playing guitar than I am, and that my well-loved old Strat is far from a ’64, all it takes is those first five notes to raise the eyebrows at how close this sounds to the man himself.

The presets run a nice gamut of the sort of tones Mayer has become associated with, from meaty Hendrix and SRV-adjacent leads to tastefully restrained bluesy cleans, through to more raucous affairs. The ‘Just Plain Dumb’ preset is frankly, far from it – chaining all three dirty options in the pre effects into a cooking Dumble is certainly a wild ride, but one that is bags of fun.

Isolating all three amps really shows the effort and time that has clearly gone into capturing the sounds, as they really do have distinct and enjoyably authentic characteristics. The Vibroverb is like a warm hug no matter how you set it, while the Steel String Singer certainly lives up to Alexander Dumble’s reputation for creating amps that will show off exactly how good a player you are for good or for ill – forgiving this thing ain’t.

The three-in-one is obviously meant to be the headline event here though – it’s the one that most of Mayer’s presets make use of, but it’s a truly enjoyable experience regardless. The best part is the way you can use the three level controls to precisely tailor how much of each amp you want in your particular sonic gumbo – and the three are different enough that you can easily compensate for anything you don’t like about one with an extra dollop of something you do.

The effects are very impressive across the board, but the star of the show is that Gravity tremolo/reverb tank. The tremolo, in particular, throbs with a wonderfully organic and warm tonality that you rarely find in digital recreations.

And as silly as they might seem from the outset, some of the non-Mayer artist presets – looking at you John Petrucci – do a nice job of showing that there’s utility here beyond Mayer’s bluesy heartlands.

Image: Press

Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer – should I buy it?

The good thing about Neural’s Archetypes is that you don’t really need me to answer that question for you – a 14-day free trial is available for you to download and let your ears be the judge.

If you’re a seasoned user of plugins and in-the-box guitar stuff, boot it up and have a go. The sting in the tail is that it’s quite a bit more expensive than other Neural artist Archetypes – but you are getting a lot for your money.

The other thing to weigh on is the fact that, despite being a longtime user of various digital guitar solutions – including Kemper, Fractal and Neural – Mayer is often held up by the guitar community as a bit of an analogue messiah.

As a rule, he’s all about big amps, real effects pedals, and putting them together to make massive sounds – can a digital plugin really come close to that? Well… yes and no. Within the scope of some headphones and a laptop, you’re not going to capture the full majesty of playing through several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of boutique and vintage gear on a giant stage.

But you can feel the care and attention to detail that’s gone into this from a sonic point of view – it really does capture the essence of those sounds you hear on stage and on record in a way that I’ve not heard from other plugins, and presets that claim to offer you some of that Mayer magic in digital form.

I have no doubt that the man himself would never claim that this is going to replace his analogue rig – this is a guy who built mini isolation boxes for his amps so he could use them at The Sphere for Dead & Co this year, don’t forget. But what it offers him, and all of us, is the ability to capture some of that magic in a much more affordable, accessible and replicable way. Arguably, it’s what Mayer fans have been asking for for decades.

Image: Press

Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer – alternatives

Not down with the digital thing? Well Fender don’t currently make a Vibroverb but the ’68 Custom Vibro Champ Reverb ($1,049/£899) is a smaller and quieter substitute. Mayer’s Two-Rock signature has been discontinued for a while, but a Silver Sterling signature will set you back the thick end of $7,000/£6,399. Dumbles? Most clones emulate the Overdrive Special as opposed to the Steel String Singer, but the Overtone SSS 100 from Ceriatone ($2,000) is one option. Alternatively, if you just want a very high-quality suite of guitar amps and pedals in plugin form, without the Mayer endorsement, Paradise Guitar Studio from Universal Audio ($149) is well worth an audition.

The post Neural DSP Archetype: John Mayer X review – is this the Mayer tone plugin we’ve been waiting for? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Hull reveals how mandolin and guitar work together to power her songwriting and creativity.

Guitar and bass brand Höfner has filed for bankruptcy in Germany, a new filing in the Fürth District Court in Bavaria reveals.

Few details about the insolvency have been made public, however the filing does reveal that “provisional insolvency administration” has been ordered for Karl Höfner GmbH & Co as of 10 December. An insolvency administrator has been appointed, who will proceed to attempt to rectify debts over the next three months. Höfner has been contacted for comment.

The company has a long and storied history. It was founded by Karl Höfner in 1887, in what was then the Austria-Hungarian town of Schönbach, and is now Luby in the Czech Republic. Over the next few decades, the company grew to be one of the largest suppliers of stringed instruments in the area and for export. Operations were unsurprisingly scaled back during World War II, and its facilities were put to use making supplies for the German army. Germany’s postwar reconstitution meant the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, and Höfner relocated to West Germany, opening a new factory in Bubenreuth in 1950.

The company would go on to expand its facilities across the 50s, 60s and 70s. Höfner was acquired by the Boosey & Hawkes group in 1994, which led to further expansion. In 2003, Boosey & Hawkes sold its musical instrument division, including Höfner, to the Music Group as part of a rescue buyout. In December 2004, Höfner was sold to long-time general manager Klaus Schöller and his wife, finance director Ulrike Schrimpff.

The brand has made countless different instruments across its history, but one remains perhaps the most recognisable: the 500/1 bass guitar, AKA the Violin Bass, made most famous by Paul McCartney, who was seldom seen playing anything else while he was in the Beatles. The bass remains Höfner’s most recognisable instrument, and has seen many other notable users since McCartney. McCartney’s first 500/1 bass has its own unique history – it was stolen in 1972, only to be found in an attic in suffolk after nearly five decades of hunting.

Stay tuned for updates on this developing story.

The post Höfner files for bankruptcy appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

In one of the many ways that I am crushingly unoriginal as a guitar player, Back To The Future is a Very Big Deal for me. To call those three movies formative on me probably understates things somewhat.

• READ MORE: Does it matter that Marty McFly used the ‘wrong’ guitar in Back to the Future? According to Michael J. Fox, it makes “little difference”

Among the guitars and sports memorabilia that clutter up my home office, an ‘OUTATIME’ license plate sits proudly on my desk, while an Enchantment Under The Sea Dance poster sits framed over my shoulder. So unabashed is my love of BTTF in fact, that when I left Guitarist magazine a decade ago, the traditional ‘leaving cover’ given to departing staff as a farewell saw me expertly photoshopped into the red body warmer of Marty McFly, stepping out of a DeLorean.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that when, earlier this year, Gibson and Epiphone announced their partnership with the movie to release a pair of commemorative instruments modelled on the mythical ES-345 used by Michael J Fox in the movie, I was paying attention.

The cold financial realities of being a guitar journalist meant that I was never going to be in for one of the 20 grand Gibson models, but the Epiphone version? That might well be in reach… or so I thought.

Because in reality, I would have needed a time machine built out of a DeLorean to get one – by the time I’d umm’d and ahh’d about whether I really needed it (I didn’t, by the way) all 1,985 of them had sold out.

I wasn’t really surprised by that– I doubt you were either. I am far from alone in being a guitar player for whom Back To The Future was hugely important to them. I’ve interviewed a lot of musicians who were born between 1970 and 1990, and by and large it’s more notable when one of them doesn’t cite Marty McFly as a musical touchstone.

And yet in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t just that. Plenty of genuine fans were buying the guitars, sure – but as the brand new instruments started popping up on Reverb and eBay with vastly inflated price tags in the following weeks, it was clear that plenty of people had simply bought them to flip for a profit. And it was even worse with the Gibson version.

Obviously, I wasn’t surprised by this. Scalpers are a fact of life in a culture that has become more and more obsessed with limited-edition drops and artificial scarcity. Whether it’s trying to cop the latest Palace x Nike collab, a Snoopy Moonswatch or god forbid, a Labubu, there will always be people trying to profit in these situations at the expense of people who would just quite like to own the thing in question.

Image: Epiphone

The Scale Of The Problem

But how big is the problem in the guitar world? It’s always been quite hard to quantify – it certainly felt like something that was a growing issue, but how big was it exactly. Well, thanks to Reverb, we can now get a sense of the full scale of it.

As you may be aware, every year Reverb crunches the vast amount of data it holds on the buying and selling of new and used music gear across the globe to provide a list of the best selling products in various categories. 2025 was no different, but as I was perusing the lists this year I saw something that made me do a double-take.

At the top of the best-selling new electric guitars for 2025 was, you guessed it, the Epiphone Back to the Future ES-345. This guitar, which was offered for sale exclusively via Gibson’s own website and a few select dealers – and as a reminder, was limited to just 1,985 units – beat every other new guitar launched in 2025.

And let’s not forget, while Reverb may have got its start as a used gear marketplace, it’s now a place where a huge chunk of the gear sold is new – often by retailers. Don’t be under any illusions – a significant proportion of all the gear sales in the US, Europe and beyond now goes through Reverb.

For this guitar to beat out every single non-limited run new guitar made by Fender, Epiphone, Gretsch, PRS and everyone else this year… try and wrap your head around that. How many of those guitars that were bought must have been flipped for profit to have the BTTF Epiphone standing alone on the podium? It’s mind-boggling.

A glance at the other categories shows some similar red flags – if not quite as brazen. JHS’s troubled NOTADÜMBLË – a 15,000-run pedal kit that was sold exclusively via the brand’s website and discontinued after a month – is sitting pretty at number three in the overall pedal category. Elsewhere, Joe Bonamassa’s 500-run MXR Deep State sold out in a day, but still somehow made the top 10. A quick search of both sees them mainly listed for twice the amount they cost a few months back.

Image: Epiphone

Spoiling Our Fun

But does it really matter? You can argue that it’s capitalism working as it’s supposed to, I guess. But I can’t shake the sense they’re ruining the entire point of releasing products with limited production runs – the fun and excitement of trying to bag one.

Obviously, this isn’t a guitar-specific problem – practically every leisure activity you can think of has to deal with scalpers in some shape or form. StockX exists, for crying out loud. I don’t blame the brands, retailers or marketplaces for this – nobody’s managed to fix this problem for shoes, trading cards or anything else, so expecting guitar to lead the way seems a tad unreasonable.

There’s also nothing wrong with buying something, using it for a bit and then selling it on, of course. If you make a profit on it along the way, good for you. But what I hope we can push back on, collectively, is the normalisation of flipping in guitar culture.

Image: Epiphone

It’s that active desire to buy something with no intent to do anything more than stick it on Reverb for double what you paid for it – that feels quite gross to me. And looking at forums and social media, it seems like a lot of the guitar community agrees.

Perhaps the only way to fight back is to stop giving in to the price-gougers – ask yourself, do you really want that thing so much that you’re prepared to give some chancer double what it should cost to get it?

If we all decided to not play the game, the prices would start coming down because nobody wants a guitar they’re not playing kicking around the house long-term. In the end, that’s what I decided to do.

I was disappointed, sure, but in the months since I can’t honestly say I’ve missed it. Maybe in a few years the prices will come down and I’ll pick one up, maybe I won’t – but whatever happens, I won’t let the scalpers turn something that’s suppose to be fun into something so… heavy?

The post Scalpers are ruining the fun for real guitarists – and now I have the data to prove it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When billionaires throw holiday parties, expectations tend to rise well above lukewarm wine and a dutiful covers band.

That was the case last Thursday (11 December), when Eldridge Industries chairman Todd Boehly hired out New York’s Capitol Theatre and turned what was ostensibly a corporate holiday party into a full-blown all-star rock showcase.

• READ MORE: Justin Hawkins takes another brutal swing at Yungblud: “if the future of rock comes from musical theatre and Disney, if this is Ozzy’s heir, we’re in trouble”

The 1,800-capacity venue in Port Chester reportedly played host to an in-house band led by Slash and Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and producer-guitarist Andrew Watt.

Performing under the name The Dirty Bats, the group was joined throughout the night by a rotating parade of guest vocalists including Bruno Mars, Eddie Vedder, Yungblud, Brandi Carlile and Anthony Kiedis, who donned a cowboy hat for his cameo – because why not.

The setlist leaned heavily on rock canon, with covers of Motörhead’s Ace of Spades and Iggy and the Stooges’ Search and Destroy sitting alongside covers of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana. Mars, in particular, made a strong case for himself as the night’s wildcard, strapping on a Fender Stratocaster for Whole Lotta Love, Fire, and a ferocious take on Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Slash, meanwhile, stuck to familiar territory, wielding a sunburst Gibson Les Paul in front of a line of his signature Magnatone amps, while a selection of Fender combos sat ready for guest guitarists to plug into.

The night closed with everyone piling onstage for Johnny B. Goode and Rockin’ in the Free World – a fitting finale to a holiday party where money is no object and the guest list plays arenas for a living.

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Still stuck chasing the perfect rig? Kiss guitarist Tommy Thayer says he’s long since stopped worrying about “magic guitars” and his latest album is proof of that.

Speaking to MusicRadar about his newly released EP Bombshell, Thayer says some of its best sounds came from gear he barely remembers using – including a Gibson SG he never thought much of previously.

• READ MORE: “I really don’t find either of those guitars particularly comfortable”: YouTube star Bradley Hall on classic guitar designs like the Stratocaster and Les Paul

The EP reunites Thayer with longtime friend and collaborator Jaime St. James of Black ’N Blue. Describing the process as “super organic”, Thayer says of the project’s start: “Jaime and I got together simply because we’re so close and thought it would be fun to record again. We sat down intending to revisit a few old tracks we liked, but Jaime happened to show me two new ideas he had, and I loved them.”

“So, we just dove in – writing, finishing the songs, and working out arrangements right there in my living room with an acoustic guitar and recording the ideas on my phone.”

Once the material was ready, the pair headed into a Portland studio with producer Rob Daiker, who Thayer says took the reins when it came to gear and tones.

“It’s funny – people have asked me about the gear and guitars I used to record with Jaime on our new EP, and honestly, this is the truth – I’m not totally sure!” Thayer admits.
“Rob Daiker isn’t just an amazing engineer and producer. He’s also a guitar player and a fantastic musician in his own right. So he had a whole arsenal of guitars and amps ready to go, and he set me up completely.”

Still, one instrument did leave an impression. An old Gibson SG he’d brought along almost as an afterthought ended up making its way onto the record.

“I did bring along an SG I’d had hanging around for years, which I never thought was a particularly good-sounding guitar,” he says. “It was just something I happened to have with me in Oregon. But when we plugged it in at the studio, it ended up sounding great, so I used it a bit. Beyond that, Rob had everything dialled in.”

For Thayer, the experience reinforced a lesson that’s only become clearer with time – that gear matters far less than the people using it.

“Back in the old days, we all had those special guitars or amps you had to bring into the studio because they were the ‘magic’ guitars or instruments you couldn’t do without,” he says. “But over time I’ve realised it doesn’t really matter as much as I used to think.”

“What makes the difference is having someone in the room who knows what sounds good and understands the tone you’re aiming for. After that, it’s in your hands – literally in your hands. That’s what truly makes a great sound. With that, you can make almost anything work.”

The post “It doesn’t really matter as much as I used to think”: Kiss guitarist Thommy Thayer on recording his new EP without “magic guitars” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Rolling Stones have reportedly cancelled plans for a UK and European tour in 2026, after Keith Richards admitted he “didn’t think he could commit” to the demands of another full-scale stadium run.

According to The Sun, the Stones had been exploring a return to Europe following the success of their Hackney Diamonds tour in the US last year. The band – whose 2024 tour grossed an estimated $235 million – were said to be weighing up dates at major stadiums across the UK and mainland Europe, after earlier touring plans for 2025 were quietly shelved.

• READ MORE: Ronnie Wood celebrates 50 years as a Rolling Stone with new paintings of bandmates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts

Had it gone ahead, the run would have marked their first live shows since the 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour, which sold close to one million tickets across North America. But those plans now appear to be on ice, with guitarist Keith Richards reportedly reluctant to sign on for another lengthy stretch on the road.

The news was first reported by The Sun, citing an American music critic familiar with the situation: “The Rolling Stones had all the big promoters throwing loads of ideas and dates at them for next summer,” the critic said. “But when they properly sat down to discuss the tour, Keith said he didn’t think he could commit and wasn’t keen on a big stadium tour for over four months.”

A spokesperson also added: “The band were looking to tour earlier this year but couldn’t make it work either. It’s hard for their fans but The Stones will get back onstage when they’re good and ready.”

Despite the uncertainty around touring, the band’s creative engine hasn’t stalled. Speaking to The Sun in September, Ronnie Wood confirmed he was still waiting on the green light for 2026 dates, while producer Andrew Watt revealed that the Stones have been back in the studio working on new material.

“You will be getting new music from the Rolling Stones with an album next year,” Wood said at the time. “It is almost done.”

The band’s most recent release, Hackney Diamonds, arrived in 2023 and marked their first album of original material in 18 years.

The post Is Keith Richards finally slowing down? Rolling Stones cancel tour plans as guitarist “didn’t think he could commit” to the gruelling schedule appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

December 12, 2025 This week I started with a few bits of some Christmas instrumentals, talked about our special deal on the Christmas Sing-Along Bonus Pack (15 accompaniments and 6 solos), talked about reconnecting with Mike Walker and his new book of John Renbourn pieces, threw in a little theory and broke down a couple […]

The post Totally Guitars Weekly Update December 12, 2025 appeared first on On The Beat with Totally Guitars.

In this column, I’d like to focus on one of the fundamental guitar tones, the sound of a Fender Telecaster plugged into a vintage Fender amplifier. I’m most interested in the sound of a Telecaster’s bridge pickup and the bridge/middle position. For me, these are immediately recognizable. I like how the relatively hot-wound pickups and the metal bridge construction make single notes sound strong and stingy while chords and licks involving multiple strings are “creamy” and saturated.

Let’s start with a simple live stage scenario with a single guitar amp. Let’s assume the venue and stage is large enough for us to crank the amp. I’d like to nominate the Fender Vibrolux Reverb as a great Telecaster match. The strong mids from the Telecaster’s bridge pickup pair nicely with the scooped Fender black-panel tone from the two 10" speakers. At 35-watts, it’ll deliver both firm lows and enough sparkle to cut through, which is critical for the mid position to not sound muddy. It’s essential that we can set the volume high enough to achieve beautiful dynamics, compression, sag, and hairy, distorted tones when we hit the strings hard. Depending on the treble response from the speakers, guitar string gauge, pickup-style, and proximity to the strings, I carefully decide if the amp’s bright switch needs to be enabled. By disabling it, I can turn up the treble knob and get more upper mids, which is essential for clear rhythm chords. For solos and lead guitar parts, I sometimes use a delay and an OD pedal that adds a little more volume, treble, and dirt.

Let’s take it up a notch and add a second amp. A 2x12" Pro Reverb is a nice complement to a Vibrolux Reverb. I recommend warm-sounding speakers and flipping the bright switch off.

A well-known mod with the Pro Reverb is to install a 25k mid pot mod for more distortion and mids. I would dial the 25k mids high and the bass to zero, and if the volume gets too loud, I’d disengage one of the speakers. The role of this amp is to provide warm, sustaining cranked tones with burning mids and just a little reverb. The Vibrolux will be dialed into clean operation to provide clarity and attack with firm, modest bass and clearly pronounced treble. If the song requires reverb, it comes mainly from the Vibrolux.

“The strong mids from the Telecaster’s bridge pickup pair nicely with the scooped Fender black-panel tone from the two 10" speakers.”

For recording, the first problem is: What you hear in the room is not necessarily how the guitar sounds on tape. You therefore need to dial in your amp(s) based on how the guitar track will sound on tape and not in the room. Second problem: The guitar will sound different depending on your listening device. And problem number three: What sounds good on its own does not necessarily sound good in the mix. I am often surprised how narrow, trebly, and nasal a well-mixed guitar tone sounds on its own. Given all those obstacles, you need to listen to the final end result, and then go back and change what needs to be changed, pedals, amp EQ, microphone techniques, mixing, effects, compressors, EQ, and mastering. Since you can never re-create something that wasn’t there from the beginning—for example a clean tone, a particular overdriven tone, attack or nuances from finger tips—my strategy is to have amps that provide enough of these things.

My primary Telecaster amp for studio purposes is my 1966 Princeton Reverb with a bright cap mod. The added 47–100 pF bright cap brings back the top-end frequencies that I want for clean fingerstyle tone. On recordings, my Princeton Reverb’s clean tone sounds like a big 4x10" Super Reverb but with the practicality and breakup level of a small 12-watt amp.

As a second amp for cranked tones, I bring my Pro Reverb with only one speaker enabled. I spend some time EQing and mixing the guitar tracks in the entire mix. It’s important to be careful with high bass settings on the amp, because it can lead to muddiness that’s impossible to clean up afterwards. Same goes with reverb—I use only a little from the amp. It’s better to add more reverb and delay afterwards. The amps are traditionally miked up in front and further away and above for ambience. Having different amp tracks, clean and dirty, I can tweak the balance and tone afterwards. If I want more dirt I increase the level of the dirt amp track, or vice versa.

I hope this was inspiring for you to find your favorite Telecaster tones with Fender amps.

PG contributor Tom Butwin demos the new Fishman Fluence Acoustic multivoice pickups, breaking down the nondestructive design, dual-voice control, and three distinct models built for everything from solo fingerstyle to full-band stages.

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Mandolin hero John Reischman joins us this week to talk about his new album, The Salish Sea.

We chat about the influence the Pacific Northwest has had on his music-making, discuss his famed Lloyd Loar-signed Gibson F-5 mandolin, and so much more.

Check out ‘The Salish Sea’ here or on your favorite streaming platform.

Our next Fretboard Summit takes place August 20-22, 2026, at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. https://fretboardsummit.org

Our 58th issue of the Fretboard Journal will mail later this month. Subscribe here to get it.

We are brought to you by Peghead Nation: https://www.pegheadnation.com (Get your first month free or $20 off any annual subscription with the promo code FRETBOARD at checkout).

Stringjoy Strings: https://stringjoy.com

The post Podcast 529: John Reischman first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

The Aqueous Chorus is our take on the best of both worlds — vintage bucket brigade character andmodern watery tones” says Chris Van Tassel. Chris continues, “We wanted a chorus that didn’t just soundgood, but felt good to play. With added controls for EQ and gain makeup, it gives players a huge palette ofsounds from subtle vibe textures to full-on rotating speaker effects, vintage and modern chorus soundsthanks to its tilt EQ.”

Aqueous Chorus Features:

• Vintage to modern chorus tones with Tilt EQ shaping (wet signal only)
• Preamp section for gain makeup and added feel not typically found in modulation pedals
• Mix control blends chorus and vibe modes, with vibe-only in the last 1/4 rotation
• Depth and Speed controls for subtle movement to extreme modulation
• Rotary-style sounds and lush modulation effects are available with creative settings
• Built with rugged construction and vintage-inspired looks Specifications:
• 9VDC Negative Tip Power (no internal battery option)
• 28mA Current Draw

The Aqueous Chorus will be available November 6th, 2025 via select dealers for $229.99

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While the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul are, by most accounts, the two most popular guitar designs ever – and have very much shaped the world of music as we know it today – some modern players aren’t entirely convinced, and prefer builds with more modern spec sheets to suit their playing styles.

Take YouTube star Bradley Hall for example, a formidable player who has built a loyal following of nearly 600,000 subscribers for his comedic takes on guitar culture. He’s also a guitarist for Swedish power metal outfit Twilight Force.

• READ MORE: “If you come up to the factory and draw it with me, I’ll do it!”: Mark Tremonti reveals how Paul Reed Smith challenged him to design his “coolest” custom guitar

Asked in a recent Q&A for his thoughts on classic guitar designs like the Strat and Les Paul, Hall explains: “I really like the sound of classic guitars like Les Pauls and Strats. They’re amazing guitars for recording, but they’re just not very practical, in my opinion.”

He goes on: “I really don’t find either of those guitars particularly comfortable, especially traditional Strats. I love the sound of a Strat, but man, those guitars are just so uncomfortable to play…

“Les Pauls are a bit more comfortable, but they just feel horrible, especially when playing standing up. They’re just not very ergonomic at all, and I hate the pickup switch being up here. Sucks ass.”

Les Pauls have long gained a reputation for being heavy, which can make them more uncomfortable to play for long periods standing up than other, lighter guitars. And as Bradley Hall points out, a Les Paul’s pickup selector switch is located above the pickups rather than below, which can make on-the-fly pickup switching less seamless.

Bradley Hall’s comments are sure to spark a response from guitar purists who swear by either the Strat or the Les Paul, but a bit of healthy debate in the guitar world never hurt anyone, now, did it?

The post “I really don’t find either of those guitars particularly comfortable”: YouTube star Bradley Hall on classic guitar designs like the Stratocaster and Les Paul appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Of all the guitars in Mark Tremonti’s arsenal, there’s one he regards as his numero uno. And that’s Stella, a bold design the Creed and Alter Bridge man worked on personally with PRS head honcho Paul Reed Smith.

If you’ve been lucky enough to catch Creed at one of their 2025 shows, you’ll have seen Tremonti donning the Explorer-esque build throughout the set. And in a new interview with Revv Amps recorded before the band’s Edmonton, Alberta show in August, he recounts how the guitar became a reality.

• READ MORE: “I took it to my hotel room and played it all afternoon!”: How Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith got his hands on the legendary Greeny Les Paul

“I was talking to Paul about doing a new guitar design, and he was like, ‘You know what, if you come up here to the factory and draw it with me, I’ll do it,’” Tremonti says.

“So I went up there, we got on the dry erase board and started drawing shapes, and once we got kind of close I was like – when Paul started getting close – I said, ‘What about these lines here if they did this,’ and he just gave me the pen and let me draw what I envisioned. And between the two of us we came up with a design.

Next, Tremonti recalls, Paul and his team transferred the drawing to a computer programme which allowed them to visualise the guitar in three dimensions.

“It looked amazing, and they built me two of them,” he goes on. “The first was a black one, the second one was brown. The brown one was my favourite for years until they made this one… 

“This is one of the best-sounding and -playing guitars I own. I absolutely love it. I named it Stella before I had my baby girl. We always planned on naming our daughter Stella, so I was like, we haven’t had a daughter yet, so I named it Stella before my daughter was born.

“[It’s] definitely one of my most talked about guitars, one of my most played guitars. Of all the guitars I’ll play tonight I’ll probably play this the most.”

Elsewhere, Mark Tremonti showcases his #2 guitar, a Charcoal Burst single-cut PRS with a Dimebag Darrell sticker on its lower bout.

“When Dime passed, a fan was handing out stickers at a House of Blues show we were at,” he says. “So I just immediately put it on here. Vinnie [Paul] even came up to me and thanked me because he had heard I had put this on there. This is my tribute to Dime.”

Watch the full interview below:

The post “If you come up to the factory and draw it with me, I’ll do it!”: Mark Tremonti reveals how Paul Reed Smith challenged him to design his “coolest” custom guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Few guitars have quite the same legendary status as Greeny, the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard once owned by Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, and now under the custodianship of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett.

As the story goes, Peter Green played the guitar while with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers before selling it to blues ace Gary Moore in the early ‘70s for around £120 – a sum no higher than Green had originally paid for it.

• READ MORE: “It doesn’t work!”: Gojira’s Joel Duplantier explains why he doesn’t like bands playing albums in full live

Moore played the guitar for three decades – both in Thin Lizzy and throughout his solo career – before selling it in 2006 for a sum between six and seven figures. The guitar passed through the hands of several private collectors before Hammett bought it in 2014.

And a chance encounter at a hotel in Canada presented Iron Maiden legend Adrian Smith with the opportunity to get his hands on Greeny, and naturally, he jumped at the offer.

“Kirk’s a great guy,” Smith says in a new interview with eonmusic [via Ultimate Guitar]. “He’s a lovely guy, and I bumped into him in a hotel in Canada. We were just waiting for the lift. We’re just checking in, and Metallica were there, and the first thing I said to him, I said, ‘Oh, you bought Greeny.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve got it. You want to play?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’”

“So I went to his room. [Photographer] Ross Halfin was there as well, because he’s a mutual friend, although I know Kirk a little bit, and we sat, and he gave me the guitar and a little practice amp, and of course, I did [Fleetwood Mac’s] Oh Well. And then he says, ‘Look, I’ve got to go out.’”

Smith explains that Hammett and Halfin were busy taking photos, so Hammett suggested Smith take Greeny back to his hotel room and play it to his heart’s content.

“I took it to my hotel room and I had a little practice amp in there, and I just played it all afternoon,” Smith goes on. “It plays great; it’s the intonation, the feel, the sound. I mean, it’s just a wonderful, great guitar. I’m glad somebody’s using it, and it’s not on a wall in somebody’s air-controlled, climate-controlled guitar locker. It’s out there being played, as it should be.”

Kirk Hammett regularly plays Greeny onstage with Metallica, and you can watch him do so yourself at any of Metallica’s upcoming 2026 tour dates.

Check out the band’s official website for more info.

The post “I took it to my hotel room and played it all afternoon!”: How Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith got his hands on the legendary Greeny Les Paul appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

There are some rules of guitar that most of us stick to. Rock bands play Les Pauls, Jazzmasters and Telecasters are for indie kids (and country stars). Strats are for everything. And pointy guitars? Well… they’re just for metal, right?

• READ MORE: The Guitar Influences of Eddie Van Halen

Well, if you cast your eye across the biggest festival stages over the last few years, however, you’d have noticed something rather unprecedented happening. From Glastonbury to Coachella and beyond, a new generation of guitar-playing women have reclaimed the most aggressive and angry looking guitar shapes for a new generation. And for styles of music that have never seen such pointy and angular instruments before.

We can probably trace this back to Phoebe Bridgers. The Grammy-winning guitarist triggered an entire generation of angry guitarists when she smashed a BC Rich Warlock – a model more associated with Mötley Crüe, Slayer, and Guns N’ Roses than with indie’s resident sad-girl laureate – at the end of a Saturday Night Live performance in 2021, but it was clearly more than a stunt.

The guitarist began using Warlocks almost exclusively in the coming years, including as part of the cultural phenomenon that was Boygenius, but she would by no means be the last.

Phoebe Bridgers performing with Boygenius at Oyafestivalen in 2023. Image: Per Ole Hagen/Redferns via Getty Images

At Glastonbury this year, Wet Leg ditched the prairie dresses and neutral-toned Fenders for a new and more confrontational stage presence. This shift was epitomised by frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, who ditched her trusty Telecaster for an even weirder BC Rich curio – a lime green transparent acrylic-bodied Warlock.

And that wasn’t the only pointy guitar around the neck of a guitarist at Worthy Farm that weekend. Fellow Wet Leg guitarist Hester Chambers was rocking the pointy headstock of the none-more-80s Kramer Jersey Star.

Elsewhere, Turnstile’s Meg Mills was helping reinvent hardcore for a mainstream audience with her trusty pink Jackson Soloist in hand, while over on the Pyramid Stage, Olivia Rodrigo’s co-guitarist Arianna Powell was another guitarist propelling the set forward with a Soloist in hand.

By the end of the festival, it became clear that this isn’t just a gear shift, but a key change away from the age-old archetypes.

Meg Mills of Turnstile performing at Alcatraz in 2025. Image: Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images

Silver. Glittery. Crazy.

So why is it that more and more women in pop are reaching for pointy metal-adjacent guitars, and what does that say about gender, genre, and the evolution of our modern-day guitar heroes?

Originally a P-bass player, Emily Smith from rapidly rising Welsh upstarts Panic Shack never expected to pick up the Silvertone Apocalypse bass — the four-string version of KISS guitarist Paul Stanley’s early 2000s signature model — let alone be seen with it.

“I remember typing in Google, ‘Silver. Glittery. Crazy’,” she laughs from her home in Cardiff. For Smith, the shift isn’t just about aesthetics: it’s about subversion. “If you’re a woman, people assume you’ll gently play an acoustic guitar, shy away, and not take up space. I love that these artists are like, ‘No, I’m gonna get that crazy guitar. I want to stand out!’ It’s not all dainty, cutesy guitars. It’s ‘look at my minging rock guitar’. It’s disgusting and I love it.”

Young women are no longer being put into a Daisy Rock-shaped box when it comes to guitar inspiration. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that of course, but a generation of new players are having their FYPs filled up with female musicians who aren’t ashamed to break with conventions.

Emily Smith of Panic Shack. Image: Press

It’s why you’ll see Willow Smith rocking a Jackson King V at Coachella, or you’ll see Halsey’s pop pyrotechnics backed up by seven-string Warrior-toting guitarist Vixen. A Jackson artist, Vixen has definitely noticed a shift in who uses the pointy stuff.

“These instruments were traditionally designed for men’s bodies, so I’m seeing a lot of offsets and shorter-scale options,” they explain. But for the skilled session musician, this shift is something deeper than gear choice. “Why try to be a slightly worse version of someone? Just do your own thing.”

For Vixen, the use of out-there shape guitars like the Warrior and the King V is key to that “thing”. “The pop scene requires drama,” they explain. “It’s about dynamics, ups and downs – so let’s bring out the white V, you know?”

Willow Smith performing at Coachella in 2023. Image: Presley Ann/Getty Images for Coachella

Full Circle

In some ways, this return to the pointy, the dramatic, and the genre-agnostic is a full-circle moment. In the 70s and 80s when many of these weird and wonderful guitars were first designed, shred and metal had yet to claim them.

Take a few minutes and look up Latin-pop legend Jose Feliciano posing in a suit and open-collar shirt with his custom Soloist with ‘Jose’ written in the Jackson font on the headstock – it’s wonderfully incongruous, and can be filed alongside a similarly amazing shot of Wrecking Crew legend Carol Kaye playing a BC Rich Warlock in while dressed a chic 70s housewife.

But as Tim Hillier-Brook, who heads Artist Marketing manager for Fender’s Specialty brands (Jackson, Gretsch, Charvel, and EVH), puts it, today’s revival isn’t about irony; it’s about reclamation.

“Men have had thirty years of playing guitars because they could,” he insists. “The idea that you need a bullet belt to play pointy guitars doesn’t exist anymore.”

Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg performing at the Royal Albert Hall in 2025. Image: Chiaki Nozu/WireImage via Getty Images

Rejecting the pressure to perform on a “correct” instrument resonates strongly with Smith, especially when confronted with purist opinions.

“If anybody said anything to me about using an instrument that’s metal, I’d be like, ‘Oh, fuck off!’” he exclaims. “It’s just a guitar at the end of the day; it’s not that deep.”

Vixen is equally unfazed by this sort of mindset. “It no longer has to be, ‘If I’m playing this genre, I have to play this guitar.’ It’s cool to play something different and to make it work.”

And women are making it work – everywhere. Fender’s 2019 study famously found that women made up 50 per cent of new guitar players. Their 2022 follow-up revealed that many bought guitars online to avoid the intimidation of traditional stores.

As Danielle Haim puts it on the band’s Women In Music Pt. III track Man From The Magazine: “Man from the music shop / I drove too far / For you to hand me that starter guitar.” And if the chart-topping LA sisterhood is still fielding that kind of prejudice, what chance does a new, fresh-faced player have?

Arianna Powell performing with Olivia Rodrigo at BST Hyde Park in 2025. Image: Lorne Thomson/Redferns via Getty Images

Screen Idols

With physical stores still feeling fraught in some cases, thankfully, digital spaces have become a lifeline. Just as Ableton has equipped a whole new generation with access to studio gear and home recording opportunities, social media has made discovery democratic.

“Artists with huge followings like Willow Smith and Phoebe Bridgers,” continues Hillier-Brook. “People will see them and go ‘Cool, I’m going to buy that.”

Now, if someone is curious about picking up a guitar, they can simply find the model they want online, without being subjected to a character assassination.

New players without that traditional knowledge curve through dad-focused guitar mags and gatekeeping open mic nights are coming to guitar, thinking less about their forefathers and more about how the instrument fits with their identity and lifestyle.

When Vixen caught millennial musician Nai Palm of Aussie outfit Hiatus Kaiyote, they were intrigued to find her picking up a Randy Rhoads to play out the band’s sultry sounds. “Not only was it bad ass to have that guitar anyway, but to play it in a neo-soul way is like you really don’t give a fuck,” they explain.

Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote performing at Coachella in 2023. Image: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Coachella

Panic Shack’s Smith agrees about her role within her brash and bold foursome, who recently brought their high-kicks and hotpants to the BBC’s Later…with Jools Holland.

“We’re all very out there,” she agrees. “It makes sense to have a guitar that represents your style and personality.” And in pop – a genre built on the razzle dazzle – that matters more than ever.

“It is a conversation piece,” adds Hillier-Brook. “The aesthetic of a show is arguably more important than it’s ever been. You want people to leave thinking that was a complete spectacle!”

Perhaps that’s why earlier this year, after a decade-long legal battle with producer Dr Luke, Kesha returned to the stage as an independent artist, wielding a Jackson Rhoads.

It was, in many ways, the ultimate guitar power move: reimagining a guitar designed to be played with the Prince Of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, as a vehicle for a pop artist to celebrate her independence.

Emily Smith performing with Panic Shack. Image: Press

“If you’re a woman playing guitar, you’re already doing something against the grain,” Vixen agrees. “So why not lean into that?”

For Smith, the empowerment goes beyond the stage. Picking up that gleaming Silvertone every night means seeing herself – loud, unapologetic – reflected back.

“The whole industry is intimidating as a woman or someone who’s not a guy,” she admits. “I know that the other girls in the band, Romy and Meg, only now feel confident to say ‘I’m a guitarist!’”

It takes more than talent to stand out; it takes courage. Because underneath the outrageous shapes, the bold finishes, and the sneers from traditionalists, most players want the same thing: to be heard.

“Just because you’re standing there gurning doesn’t make you look like a more serious musician,” Smith says. “If you listen closely, we’re doing the same thing as you are.”

The post How Women Are Giving Metal Guitars A Mainstream Moment appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

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To celebrate the late great Space Ace, we called up PG’s favorite Kiss fan, Chris Shiflett.

On at least one of your 100 Guitarists hosts’ favorite episode of Shred with Shifty, the Foo guitarist sat down with Ace to talk about his guitar playing on “Shock Me.” It’s a fun interview with lots of great anecdotes and killer vibes. But Shiflett has a lot more perspective on Ace, going way back to meeting the members of Kiss without their makeup as a kid.

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