Norse Guitar Feeds

Sammy Hagar feels it’s important to keep playing Van Halen music live, in order for the work of Eddie Van Halen to carry on.

Hagar and his Best Of All Worlds band are currently performing shows at Dolby Live at Park MGM for a residency. The band’s lineup includes Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani, Kenny Aronoff and Greg Phillinganes (stepping in for Rai Thistlethwayte).

• READ MORE: “I’m sorry my guitar is such a pain in the butt!”: Eddie Van Halen once apologised to the Fender production line for the EVH Wolfgang’s fiddly frets

Speaking to Las Vegas Magazine, Hagar says that after Eddie’s passing in 2020, he felt it was necessary to continue performing their music for fans. Their current residency shows are billed as the “deepest dive” into the band’s catalogue yet.

“I started thinking, geez, we’re never going to play together again. Then Alex Van Halen made an announcement that he can’t play drums anymore due to his health. It’s so necessary to carry the legacy of that music on,” he says.

“The Van Hagar catalogue, I wrote every song with Eddie. Eddie wrote the music, I wrote the lyrics and the melodies. Those people who grew up with that music, they’ve got to hear it again.”

Asked if any Van Halen songs mean something different to him now, he replies, “A song like Right Now – every time I sing it, I think how it’s about right now, because something else is happening right now than what was happening in ’91 when we wrote it. And Love Walks In, I wrote about aliens and automatic writing. Now all this UFO stuff is coming out, and when I sing that song, I have a feeling it’s touching people differently.”

Soon, Eddie’s recorded work may also live on, as his brother Alex Van Halen has confirmed that he’s working on a project involving archival Van Halen material. The forthcoming project will utilise old demos, but it’s not yet clear if it will go out under the Van Halen name.

Alex has already suggested that he originally wanted Free’s Paul Rodgers to take on vocal duties, who was eventually unable to take on the job, but he’s now “looking for somebody else”. Michael Anthony, who played bass for the band between 1974 and 2006, thinks they should go forwards without one. A release date is yet to be confirmed.

The Best Of All Worlds residency ends on 21 March. The band will then continue to tour from June 2026. Find out more via the Red Rocker website. 

The post Sammy Hagar says Eddie Van Halen’s death made it “necessary” for him to carry on performing Van Halen music: “Those people who grew up with that music, they’ve got to hear it again” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s been 75 years since the Telecaster made its debut, and Fender is celebrating that three-quarters of a century in style with a brand-new range of special-edition Tele models.

Paying homage to the world’s first mass-produced, solidbody electric guitar, the 75th Anniversary Telecaster Collection comprises five instruments, spanning a range of price points across Fender’s Vintera, Player II, American Professional and American Ultra lines.

• READ MORE: Fender wins legal battle over Stratocaster shape in Germany – is it the end for S-type guitars in the EU?

The Fender Telecaster started life in late 1950 as the Fender Broadcaster, a two-pickup version of the Esquire, which hit the market months earlier in April 1950.

Due to a trademark conflict with Gretsch over its Broadkaster drum kit, the Broadcaster guitar was renamed the ‘Telecaster’ in 1951. Taking direct feedback from players, Leo Fender sought to create a guitar which unlocked a “new level of expression”. Since then, the Telecaster has become one of the most iconic and recognisable guitar designs of all time.

Let’s take a closer look at the five new 75th Anniversary Telecasters on offer:

75th Anniversary American Professional Classic Cabronita Telecaster – £1,799

Perhaps the most noteworthy of the five is a new Cabronita Tele, the first time the concept has appeared in the standard Telecaster line in the classic double Filter’Tron pickup configuration since the model’s debut for Fender’s 60th Anniversary in 2011.

Pairing “vintage charm with modern performance”, this guitar features TV Jones pickups, along with a modern “C” neck and pearloid button tuners.

75th Anniversary Vintera Road Worn 1951 Telecaster – £1,599

This one features authentic ‘50s specs with a swamp ash body, plus an early ‘50s “U” shape neck, Road Worn nitrocellulose finish and Pure Vintage 1951 pickups for “crystal-clear chime and raw, steely twang”.

75th Anniversary American Ultra II Telecaster – £2,899

Arriving as the most high-end offering of the new collection, the 75th Anniversary American Ultra II Telecaster features a Liquid Gold finish, ebony compound radius fingerboard, and advanced pickup system – with a 75th Anniversary Noiseless Single-Coil and Fastlane humbucker – with dual S-1 switches.

75th Anniversary American Professional Custom Telecaster – £2,499

The second entry to the American Professional line offers a flame maple top with a double binding and two-tone sunburst finish, plus 75th Anniversary V-Mod pickups and push/push pot for series wiring, along with gold hardware.

75th Anniversary Player II Telecaster – £949

Outfitted with a Diamond Dust Sparkle finish and a selection of contemporary visual appointments, the 75th Anniversary Player II Telecaster is loaded with Thunderbolt pickups for “rich, powerful tones with enhanced clarity and punch”.

Learn more about the 75th Anniversary Telecaster Collection at Fender.

The post “The one that started it all”: Fender celebrates 75 years of the Telecaster with new limited-edition collection – including new Cabronita model appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Les Claypool, known for his unique approach to bass, has said he chose the instrument because the guitar sounded “wimpy” to him when he was younger.

The Primus frontman’s bass style combines varying techniques such as tapping and slap bass. Regarded as one of the best bassists by music media for his authentic approach, it seems his journey with the instrument started out purely because it sounded much richer – even though he grew up in the era of Eddie Van Halen’s reign over guitar culture.

• READ MORE: Rick Beato says excessive phone scrolling is the reason he can’t downpick like James Hetfield

In an interview with The Guardian promoting his collaborative concept album on AI, made with Sean Ono Lennon, Claypool says, “To me the bass was a more sultry instrument, whereas the guitar sounded kind of wimpy.” He also explained his playing style as “holding down the root of the bass but also trying to play the rhythm guitar parts”.

Elsewhere in the interview, he also spoke of how his bass chops led him to audition for Metallica to replace Cliff Burton after his sudden passing. Kirk Hammett was a former classmate of Claypool’s, but it just wasn’t meant to be: “I didn’t know how popular they were,” he says. “We played a song or two and I said, ‘Hey, you guys want to jam on some Isley Brothers?’ Nobody laughed.”

Claypool also spoke of his early friendship with Hammett during an interview with Rick Beato last year. Hammett actually wanted Claypool to be a singer in one of his early bands when they were just teenagers, 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,” Claypool recalled.

“Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, so bass players were a very rare commodity… I didn’t find out till years later that [Hammett] was kind of pissed at me for bailing on his thing to go play bass in this other band.”

Claypool’s band with Sean Ono Lennon, The Claypool Lennon Delirium, will release their third album, The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy, on 1 May. The concept album features 14-songs reflecting on morality, mortality, and the warnings of AI. You can pre-order the album now.

The post Les Claypool says he chose to be a bassist because the guitar sounded “wimpy” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$179/£169, acornamps.com, joespedals.com

The clip is easy to find on YouTube – just search for “Josh Homme’s secret weapon”. The Queens of the Stone Age frontman goes off to find the amplifier, a crappy little 1980 Peavey Decade practice combo, then pops it up on his lap and tells the interviewer: “This thing is incredible.”

• READ MORE: DOD Badder Monkey review: much-memed pedal gets a bananas reissue

That was enough to prompt Peavey to create a signature reissue of the amp itself, as well as including a Decade model in the line of pedals it put out last year. And it also prompted Atlanta builder Acorn Amplifiers to give this 10W titan the proper boutique stompbox treatment – in the shape of the Solid State Preamplifier.

Image: Richard Purvis

Acorn Amplifiers Solid State Preamplifier – what is it?

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a Peavey in a box – it’s a Peavey in a box in a box. Because the SSP is a compact version of the Acorn Solid State, a bigger pedal that includes a recreation of the Decade’s output stage and can be plugged straight into a speaker cab. The preamp-only model might not be able to do that but it keeps all the core features – three-band EQ, footswitchable ‘normal’ and ‘saturated’ channels, pre and post gain controls – and adds a toggle switch marked ‘thick’ for a chunkier tone option.

The main drawback of the downsizing process seems to have been in reducing the gap between the two footswitches. Hitting one and not the other on an empty floor can be tricky; in the middle of a packed pedalboard, it’ll surely be like trying to perform brain surgery with barbecue tongs.

One design feature I do like is the light-up Acorn logo, which turns from cheery green to fiendish red when you engage the saturated channel (and is extra-bright when running off 18 volts). Pity there’s no way of telling which channel is selected when the pedal’s in bypass, though – you just have to remember how you left it.

Image: Richard Purvis

Acorn Amplifiers Solid State Preamplifier – what does it sound like?

Deliberate spoiler for anyone who just wants to know if it sounds like Songs For The Deaf: yes, in the right setup, it absolutely does. But between the channel footswitch and the toggle, there are four very different sound zones to explore here and that’s just one of them.

The normal channel goes from clean to medium-scuzzy, adding a crisp edge to the top end and some decidedly solid-state firmness to the bottom. This could certainly serve as an always-on tone improver for some players. The firmness doesn’t last long when you flip the switch down, however: now you get a more wiry kind of crunch that flirts with horribleness at times but mostly keeps things nicely clear and ultra-sparkly.

Switch to the saturated channel and the first thing you might notice is a fractional difference in output level – up or down, depending on where the pre gain is set and whether you’re using 9v or 18v. Sadly, there are no individual volume controls to correct that; happily, this channel is a monster. The effects of the toggle seem to be magnified here: the thin mode is beautifully abrasive, in stark contrast to the chunky richness – albeit still edgy – of the thick setting.

In both cases it really does sound just like the dirty channel of a small transistor amp from the 80s: raw and insolent in the best way imaginable. It’ll even do the old doomy scoop if you kill the thickness, set the mids to zero and max out the gain.

Image: Richard Purvis

Acorn Amplifiers Solid State Preamplifier – should I buy it?

The sound of this pedal is hard, dry, unrefined – all the things that some of us longed to escape from when a little practice amp was all we had. But that stuff has a vibe of its own, and a usefulness beyond mere nostalgia, especially when it’s presented in such a smart and multifaceted package.

Practical issues might limit its appeal for live work, but maybe it’s fitting that the SSP’s real strength should lie behind the scenes as a recording tool – just like Josh’s old Peavey.

Image: Richard Purvis

Acorn Amplifiers Solid State Preamplifier alternatives

It’s made in Taiwan, but the Peavey Decade Preamp ($199/£179) does have the right name – in the classic spiky font – on the front. More interested in the Josh Homme connection? The Stone Deaf PDF-2 (£160) is the latest version of a drive and EQ pedal he actually uses, while the Funny Little Boxes Skeleton Key (£99) is a ‘dirty boost’ inspired by the sounds of QOTSA.

PS. Thanks to Joe’s Pedals, Acorn’s UK dealer, for the loan of the SSP.

The post Acorn Amplifiers Solid State Preamplifier review – the ‘Peavey in a box’ you didn’t know you needed? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

March 13, 2026 A random improv started today’s Update, followed by some discussion on time signatures and strumming techniques. The time signature thoughts cited Nights In White Satin, Lucky Man and Stormy Monday. The technique primer was on using rest strokes to hit bass notes cleanly. The progression to Mr. Bojangles was used as an […]

The post Totally Guitars Weekly Update March 13, 2026 appeared first on On The Beat with Totally Guitars.

Back in November 1997, Pearl Jam had the opportunity to open for the Rolling Stones across four shows at California’s Oakland Stadium. And on the final gig of the run, frontman Eddie Vedder was invited to actually play with the Stones for one song only.

And in a new interview with Howard Stern, Vedder recalls choosing which song he wanted to play with the band. After initially being sceptical about performing Let’s Spend the Night Together for fear he wouldn’t be able to “keep up” with frontman Mick Jagger, he opted for the band’s 1981 ballad, Waiting on a Friend.

• READ MORE: Gibson uses 3D scanning and period correct materials to create an “exact replica” of Keith Richards’ prized 1960 ES-355

Describing the “interesting experience” of performing with the rock legends, Vedder recounts the daunting experience of playing on a stage so big, and performing the song with minimal prior rehearsal.

“There was no introduction or anything,” Vedder says [via American Songwriter] , adding that when he asked whether he should go out on stage when the band started performing the song, “everyone turned their head, like, ‘I have nothing to do with this.’”

“Mick looked like a football field away … and he’s singing it already, and I’m coming in for the second verse. So I just kind of tucked my head down… and then just walked to the middle and started singing. It was okay.”

Vedder recalls later telling guitarist Keith Richards: “Hey, sorry, man – your man [Mick] left me hanging a bit there,” to which Richards replied: “Don’t you worry about it, me boy. He’s been doing that to me for 35 years.”

Vedder also remembers being struck by the “liquidity” of Keef’s playing: “You’re standing on the side of the stage, and it’s a big stage. It’s a stadium in Oakland, and Mick’s in the middle and then Keith, and you’re standing right next to Keith’s amp, like behind it. And then you’re listening to the liquidity of what he plays. It’s like he’s never playing the same thing once.”

You can listen to audio from the performance below:

 

The post “He’s never playing the same thing once”: Eddie Vedder shares what he learned about Keith Richards “liquid” guitar playing by sharing a stage with him appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Vinnie Vincent hastens to call his new album Guitarmaggedon “one of the greatest rock albums of all time”. In fact, the former Kiss guitarist is so confident in his latest body of work that he’s placed upon it a $2 million barrier, which one wealthy rock fan must pay him in order to hear it.

It’s pretty common for a creative person to play down their talent and creative output in a bid to stay humble. It would appear Vincent suffers from no such concerns…

• READ MORE: This Line 6 Helix Floor has been used onstage with Ed Sheeran – and it’s listed on Reverb for a totally reasonable price

Bearing a $2 million price tag, Guitarmaggedon is a fully completed album comprising 10 tracks in total. That’s $200,000 per track, for the mathematically challenged…

Essentially, Vinnie Vincent’s marketing strategy for the album is as follows: one wealthy fan must pay him $2 million, after which point they are free to release it and share it with the wider world, should they choose to do so. 

The fee includes a selection of artwork accompanying the album, including per-song artwork – you know, in case you were worried you weren’t getting your money’s worth.

“I am very proud of this very special album,” Vincent explains [via Guitar World]. “The entire album will be offered in master format only for $2,000,000. This includes 10 songs mixed in master, final product format, all the master files of the artwork, related posters, and 10 separate vinyl and CD packaging art for each individual song, should the buyer choose to release the album on a per-song basis.

“The buyer can choose to release the entire album in any format they desire; vinyl, CD, or any other configuration, in whole or in part, at their discretion. All marketing plans and ideas require approval by Vinnie Vincent. The price does not include any right, title, or interest in the copyrights and/or trademarks related to Vinnie Vincent or the product itself.

He goes on: “If the buyer wishes to purchase any associated rights in the compositions, a separate agreement can be arranged and negotiated. The price will also include a perpetual license to use the brand name, ‘Vinnie Vincent Invasion’ and ‘Vinnie Vincent’ for the life of the album.”

It’s easy to brand such prices as slightly ridiculous, but there are enough wealthy music fans out there to make it worth having a shot in the eyes of the seller. Just take the recent Jim Irsay auction, for example, which saw David Gilmour’s legendary black Fender Stratocaster sell for a gargantuan $14,550,000.

The post Former Kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent has released an album – but you’ll have to pay $2 million to hear it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Guitar virtuoso/singer-songwriter Paul Gilbert’s latest release, WROC, a homophone of “rock,” is based on George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation. Yes, the George Washington you learned about in middle school—Gilbert’s one of the few people on the planet that can make a history lesson fun!

While Gilbert’s peers in his early metal days were more inclined to doodle pentagrams and flip through the Satanic Bible, Gilbert had vastly different interests. “I read a bunch of Founding Father writings decades ago,” he explains to PG. “I was curious, so I bought the full, thick compendium of everything written by Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. There are no stories there; instead it’s almost like finding somebody’s emails from hundreds of years ago. That was the first time I came across Washington’s Rules of Civility, and the idea of being more civil, of having better manners, somehow that was appealing to me.”

In February of last year, Gilbert had just wrapped up the final concert of Mr. Big’s “The Big Finale” tour at Tokyo’s storied Budokan, and on the flight home, both inspiration and Rules of Civility struck. “I was thinking, ‘Okay, it’s a new start for me,’ and I was excited about what to do next. I had an internet connection on the plane, and that excitement turned into this conversation with AI,” he recalls. “I couldn’t remember what they were called, I just sort of remembered there were these rules that Washington tried to follow when he was a kid. So I Googled around and asked AI, and refreshed my memory.”

Gilbert and his chatbot then worked in tandem to dissect lyrics out of Washington’s rules. “I said, ‘Take a random Washington rule and turn it into a blues lyric.’ And in three seconds, I got this Washington rule turned into a blues lyric,” he says. Gilbert then proceeded to ask AI to do additional things: Make the chorus repeat more. Find a different Washington rule for the bridge. “I was sort of telling AI what to do. That was my initial process,” he says. “As I went on, I realized it was better if I did it myself, because I know what I want. So then my conversation with AI changed. Instead of having AI do it, I said, ‘AI, give me the list of rules.’ There’s 110 of them, so I said, ‘Put them in order according to length—the short ones first and the longest last.’ That way, when I’m searching around, if I just need a short line, I don’t have to hunt through the whole book.”

Washington’s rules were the perfect springboard for Gilbert. “I love writing from a lyric—it’s so much easier than any other way of songwriting,” he says. “It was maybe the most fun I’ve ever had writing songs in my life. It’s almost escapism—I can get out of myself and enter some other world. I would take [Washington’s] lines and try to make it into a melody. Then once I had that, all the jobs that follow are my favorite jobs. I love finding chords for a melody, I love the balance of repetition—but not too much. You get to that point where it’s like, ‘Okay, that’s too many repeats, I’ve got to pull it back and find, like, a weird note that I haven’t used yet.’ And that will inspire a chord I didn’t think of. That whole craft is something I really have fun with.”

Paul Gilbert’s Gear

Guitars (live)

Ibanez FRM350 Paul Gilbert signature

Ibanez PGM50 Paul Gilbert Signature

1970s Ibanez IC200

Ibanez RS530

Ibanez Custom Shop PGM Paul Gilbert Signature (pink)

1970s Ibanez double neck (set neck version)

Guitars (studio)

Ibanez AS7312

1970s Ibanez 751 acoustic

Amps

1990s Fender Custom Vibrolux Reverb into a Randall isolation cabinet

1960s Fender Vibrolux Reverb as a wedge monitor

Victoria Club Deluxe (turned on for solos as a volume boost)

Effects

Distortion pedals for main amp:

Xotic AC Booster (always on)

JHS Overdrive Preamp

Mojo Hand Colossus

Distortion pedals for solo boost amp:

MXR Distortion+

Xotic AC Booster

Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus

Boss LS-2 Line Selector (Gilbert has two: one to switch between distortion and clean, the other to switch on solo boost amp)

“Clean” pedals:

Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer

Catalinbread Callisto

“Modulation” pedals:

JAM Pedals RetroVibe

MXR Stereo Chorus

Home Brew Electronics THC Three Hound Chorus

Sabbadius Tiny-Vibe

Strings, Picks, Slides & Cables

Ernie Ball Mighty Slinky (.0085–.040; Gilbert replaces the .040 with a .046)

Dunlop Tortex III .73 mm picks

Dunlop 318 Chromed Steel slide

Divine Noise coiled cable

DiMarzio straight cables, patch cables, and speaker cables

In a perfect world, Gilbert would have loved to use Washington’s rules exactly as they were written, but each song went a different way. To turn the rules into songs and make them singable, Gilbert had to resort to some basic rules of songwriting. “The first trick is just to repeat things. Or repeat an ending,” he explains. “Like, ‘If you soak bread in the sauce, let it be no more, let it be no more.’ You sing the last line twice, it becomes more like a song. So a lot of that is, you sing a line and then take the end of it and repeat it. And then once I had the verse, I might grab the book and flip through to find the bridge. Some of the songs are really simple in that I just sort of repeat the same part, but the second verse will have a harmony to it, so that’ll take it to a different direction.”

The chord progressions on some WROC songs like “Orderly and Distinctly” reveal a harmonic palette that stands out among today’s songwriters. When I covered Gilbert’s Great Guitar Escape camp in 2013, the nightly jams featured harmonically rich songs like the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love,” and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” These types of compositions inform Gilbert’s writing style, and their influences can be heard on many of the chord progressions on WROC.

“The idea of being more civil, of having better manners, somehow that was appealing to me.”

“That comes from growing up in the ’60s and ’70s and hearing a lot of piano-composed songs,” he says. “I was listening to Elton John, the Carpenters, Todd Rundgren, Queen, the Beatles, the Beach Boys. And you know, there’s some chords in there. That was the hard thing for me as a kid—and it was really helpful for me to go to school [in 1984 Gilbert enrolled at GIT, now called Musician’s Institute] to learn that stuff, because I was essentially an ear player. I’ve learned by ear mostly. I never had a deep knowledge of harmony until I went to school, and then I started filling in the missing puzzle pieces.”

Gilbert continues, “I remember learning ‘God Only Knows.’ I’m ruminating about the half-diminished chord in that song because it was so important to me. Or another one is, ‘When I Grow Up to Be a Man.’ The opening vocal harmony, I don’t even know what it’s called—I know what it looks like. It’s like a sharp 11 or something. It’s really a crazy chord and it starts the song off. And I don’t necessarily have to know what it’s called—whenever I hear one of those things I know it’s the ‘When I Grow up to Be a Man’ chord. My wife [Emi Gilbert] is amazing at jazz piano, but she began as a classical piano player. So some of the jazz chords are new to her and she’ll be like, ‘What is that?’ Well, there’s that Beach Boys chord. I can spot it. And I think the Beatles were like that. They weren’t trained in the vocabulary of the terminology. But they were really well trained with songs.”

As the songs for WROC started coming together, Gilbert made an interesting, and unfortunate, discovery about AI, his writing partner. “I learned that AI doesn’t always tell you the exact truth. It’ll make stuff up,” he says. He found this out when he did a Google search for a rule he used for a song title—and nothing came up. Gilbert recalls, “I then asked AI, ‘Which Washington rule is this?’ And AI was like, ‘That’s not any Washington rule.’ I said, ‘Well, you gave it to me. You were the one that told me.’ And the response was, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I must have hallucinated.’ So I was searching through this list, and now I know it was about 80 percent correct and 20 percent hallucinated. And that was a good learning experience.”

The lesson? “Always double check your AI, because it’ll just make stuff up,” he says. Nevertheless, one song on the album, “Conscience is the Most Certain Judge” features some of these AI hallucinations—Gilbert kept them because he felt they were still in the correct spirit. He also took poetic license and composed variations with his own words on “Show Yourself Not Glad at the Misfortune of Another.”

WROC, of course, is more than a mere (AI-assisted) history lesson. Since his Racer X days, Gilbert’s fanbase has been heavily populated by guitar geeks that salivate at every 16th-note run he unleashes. As is to be expected, WROC showcases Gilbert’s fiery six-string work. The opener, “Keep Your Feet Firm and Even,” kicks off with characteristic neoclassical licks and harmonized melodic lines. “Maintain a Sweet and Cheerful Countenance,” meanwhile, is built on an incendiary harmonized jazz/fusion and prog-influenced riff in the intro, which leads to a solo that sees Gilbert tearing it up on the slide—a texture he’s been exploring over the past decade.

“I learned that AI doesn’t always tell you the exact truth.”

Gilbert’s slightly unusual guitar setup accommodates both his newfound slide inclinations and his legacy speed-demon licks. While Gilbert’s strings are very light—he uses .0085 for his high-E string (at this year’s NAMM convention, while performing with Steve Morse at the Ernie Ball booth, he even admitted to using .007s on that day)—the guitar’s action is set fairly high. “It’s funny, I did a guitar clinic in Italy where I didn’t bring my own guitar,” he says. “All the students let me use their guitars, so there were, like, ten guitars on a stand. They said, ‘Use any guitar you want,’ and I picked this one up and I hurt myself. Everybody had .010s and low action and, man, I can’t play .010s with low action. I can’t get a grip on the string, and I bend all the time.”

Even though he’s been most often identified throughout his career as a guitar hero, Gilbert’s focus hasn’t been strictly on the guitar. Since King of Clubs, his 1997 debut solo album, his abilities as a lead vocalist have come to the forefront. Gilbert is a charismatic frontman who can belt out songs in a multitude of styles. He readily admits, however, that guitar is still more natural for him. “As a lead singer—which, really, if you want to be a pop musician, singing is very important—my voice always had limitations that my hands didn’t have,” he says. “If I sat down and practiced, you know, I could play this Van Halen thing. Whereas if I practice singing, I still couldn’t sing ‘Oh! Darling’ by the Beatles, no matter how much I practiced.”

Currently, Gilbert’s guitar practice goals are less about mechanics and more about melody. The days of endlessly repeating outside picking exercises with an ever-increasing-in-tempo metronome have taken a backseat to his new obsession with mastering the ability to instantaneously play the melodies he hears in his head on the guitar. Being able to produce a melody on the guitar with the proper inflections is an art that isn’t nearly as easy as it might sound (especially doing it on the spot in real time), even if you can shred scales and arpeggios at supersonic speeds. “It’s funny, right before this interview I was practicing improvising over Gary Moore’s ‘Still Got the Blues,’” he says. “Which has challenging changes, almost like ‘Autumn Leaves.’ To me, that’s a rough, rolling rapid of rocky river to navigate, but I’m getting better at it. Step one is I found all the shapes—the shape for the B half-diminished and for the E7. But then I’m using my eyes to navigate, like, ‘This shape goes into this shape.’ That’s useful to some extent, but it’s not coming from my singer’s voice. So now I sit down and go, ‘Don’t play it if you can’t sing it.’ And I force myself to sing and solo at the same time.

“I’m not great at it yet,” Gilbert continues, “so it’s risky to do it because it does slow everything down. But the more I do it, the better it gets, and there’s a real payoff at the end. But it feels like I’m telling the truth when I really play what was in there. Suddenly everything’s connected and it tells a story.”

Reverb is a great place to find unusual gear gems, and occasionally, you might just come across something that’s been used on stage with a huge celeb.

Right now, one seller has listed their used Line 6 Helix Floor, and says it’s been used on stage with Ed Sheeran, of all people. The seller, based in London, has owned the Helix Floor since 2019, and says it has been used on tour with not only Ed Sheeran, but also R&B singer Jorja Smith.

[deals ids=”5MgMSLFkp208pCHXxaW4By”]

They say it is in great condition minus one small screw missing from the IEC power socket, but the unit itself works perfectly fine. They’re also including an original Helix backpack case for transport. The seller doesn’t have much information on their profile, but has provided a YouTube link of them using it for a performance of Bad Habits with Sheeran in 2021 (though it is difficult to see the unit in shot).

• READ MORE: Laney just launched its pocket-sized smart amp, the Prism-Mini – and you can already save $30 at Sweetwater
  

They also say it was used for a recorded performance of Smith’s Falling or Flying on Later… With Jools Holland, and one of the provided pictures shows the unit displaying “She Feels” on its screen, the title of a Jorja Smith song. Most gear used alongside well-known artists is often sold at higher prices, but this Helix Floor is listed at £660. Most brand-new Helix Floors still sell for around £999.

The Helix Floor first launched back in 2015, and has undergone several updates over the years that have expanded its offerings of amps, cabs, mics, and effects. The Helix utilises Line 6’s HX modelling engine, and captures the sonic nuance and dynamic response of vintage and modern gear.

Line 6 has recently upped the ante for its offering of floorboard modellers with its new Helix Stadium line. At its huge announcement last year, the company teased the pair of new modellers, with the flagship Helix Stadium XL Floor earning an earlier release and shipping out at the end of 2025. Now, the standard Helix Stadium Floor has just begun shipping.

While the XL model offers the most “comprehensive and integrated guitar processor ever created by Line 6”, according to the brand, the smaller Helix Stadium Floor offers a cheaper, more streamlined alternative. It scraps the built-in expression pedal, and halves the amount of effects loops, external expression pedals, and drum trigger inputs it can support to just two each.

To check out the Line 6 Helix used on stage with Ed Sheeran and Jorja Smith, head to Reverb. 

The post This Line 6 Helix Floor has been used onstage with Ed Sheeran – and it’s listed on Reverb for a totally reasonable price appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Laney launched a brand new compact smart amp last week, and you can already save your pennies on it over at Sweetwater.

The Prism-Mini is a new rival to Positive Grid’s Spark GO, offering a whole bunch of presets, Bluetooth connectivity, a full-colour LCD screen, and an accompanying Tone Wizard app for tweaking and fine-tuning your tone. This tiny blue amp is already on sale with $30 off.

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Small but mighty for a pint-sized desktop amplifier, it has a 14-hour rechargeable battery, a built-in tuner, and features 100 presets (50 factory, 50 user). You’ve also got 17 amps and 32 effects on board, and you can even use up to six effects simultaneously in stereo.

• READ MORE: Victory Amplification’s new PowerValve 200 brings “authentic valve response and tone to modern rigs”

Its 50 factory presets are not just your run-of-the-mill tones either, as they were inspired by Laney’s endorsed artists, including Tony Iommi, Billy Corgan, Devin Townsend, Lari Basillio, Tom Quayle, and Jack Gardiner.

These sounds are all delivered through a rather serious speaker setup for an amp this size – the Prism-Mini features dual 1.5” woofers and a true stereo 3W + 3W output, promising a “wider and more detailed soundstage” than the typical single-speaker mini amp.

The back panel also hosts a headphone jack for private listening, and the free Tone Wizard app enables players to not only control their effects and amps, but also stream music from a smartphone. Additionally, it even provides you with an app-based drum machine.

In other Laney news, the brand unveiled the Supergrace Loudpedal in January, a floor-based dual-amplifier platform that puts Billy Corgan’s live rig within reach. Developed in close collaboration with the Smashing Pumpkins frontman, Supergrace captures the core of his touring sound.

At its heart are two of Corgan’s essential amplifier voices: the high-gain Carstens Grace, and the famed Laney Supergroup, distilled into a single, compact 60-Watt floor unit.

The Laney Prism-Mini is reduced to $149.99 now at Sweetwater.

The post Laney just launched its pocket-sized smart amp, the Prism-Mini – and you can already save $30 at Sweetwater appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Recording an Ozzy Osbourne album should be a dream gig for any guitarist. For Jake E. Lee, however, making 1986’s The Ultimate Sin was a “terrible” experience – largely thanks to clashes with producer Ron Nevison.

In a new interview with Guitar World, the former Ozzy guitarist looks back on the making of the record, and how tensions with Nevison escalated to the point where the producer even suggested replacing him altogether.

• READ MORE: “I don’t like the way they look or sound. I have no fondness for them at all”: Jake E. Lee hates Telecasters… but there was one which changed his mind

Asked what it was like working with Nevison, Lee doesn’t mince words: “Terrible. [Laughs] It was butting heads from the beginning,” he says. “Ozzy gave us a list of producers, and it wasn’t my choice per se, but he asked me, and I thought Nevison was a guitar producer since he’d worked with UFO and Led Zeppelin, so he had my vote.”

The problems started almost immediately – beginning with something as simple as studio hours. Lee, who had recorded Bark at the Moon during late-night sessions, insisted that rock music was a “nighttime” affair.

“I’m a nighttime guy, right? To me, rock is nighttime music you play in clubs until closing time. It didn’t feel like a daytime thing to me,” says the guitarist. “I recorded at night, and that’s how we did Bark at the Moon. Max Norman, who produced that, was cool with that. Ron Nevison wasn’t. He told Sharon [Osbourne] that he wanted to start no later than noon.”

“Sharon told me that, and I said, ‘Noon? I’m not even thinking about waking up then. I won’t start any earlier than 6 p.m.’ So right off the bat, we had problems, and Nevison told Sharon, ‘I know a lot of guitar players… we don’t have to use him. We can use other people to come in and play the parts. I have all the demos.’”

The idea was shot down by Sharon immediately. As Lee recalls, “It was ridiculous. He obviously had no idea what Ozzy was. He’s not somebody who brings in fucking guitar players. But Sharon told me that, and I said, ‘Really? And what did you say?’ Sharon said, ‘I told him he was out of his fucking mind. You’re playing the guitar. How about we start at 3?’”

“That was a good compromise, so I said I’d come in at 3, but I never did,” Lee admits. “I’d get up, look at the clock and if I saw it was 3, I’d say, ‘Oh, shit, I better get ready…’ But I never showed up earlier than maybe 4. I just hated the idea of forcing myself to wake up and play during the day. It felt wrong to me to make an album that would last forever that way. It irked me.”

The friction didn’t stop there. Lee says he prefers recording in the live room with his amp cranked “because I like getting feedback”, but his first session brought about another dispute – this time about temperature.

“I went into the room, and it was fucking freezing,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘What the hell? Can you warm up the room?’ Nevison said, ‘No. I like my musicians to be awake. The cold keeps them awake and alert.’”

“I said, ‘Fuck you. You know what it also does? It makes my fingers fucking slow because they’re frozen. I can’t play like that.’ So we argued about the temperature in the room, which I won. I said, ‘I’m just not fucking playing when my fingers are fucking cold. Fuck you.’ [Laughs] He acquiesced.”

The post “Sharon told him he was out of his f**king mind”: Jake E. Lee recalls when producer Ron Nevison tried to replace him on Ozzy Osbourne’s The Ultimate Sin appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Jerry Garcia’s legendary “Tiger” guitar barely had time to settle into its new home before it was back in action. Just one day after selling for a staggering $11,560,000 at Christie’s, Derek Trucks put the instrument through its paces onstage with the Tedeschi Trucks Band at New York’s Beacon Theatre.

• READ MORE: Dusty Hill’s sheepskin bass and an Eddie Van Halen stage-played Charvel: The guitars up for grabs in the second day of the Jim Irsay auction

Trucks’ performance came during the band’s ongoing Beacon residency, immediately following the historic auction in New York City. Tiger was purchased as part of the Jim Irsay Collection, a multi-day sale featuring hundreds of the late Indianapolis Colts owner’s prized possessions, from rare instruments to pop culture memorabilia.

The guitar was purchased by Bobby Tseitlin of Family Guitars, who makes it clear that Tiger is part of a “living, breathing collection”, meant to be played rather than “locked away in a vault or hidden behind glass”.

Tseitlin is also owner of a number of other high-profile instruments, including items once belonging to the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia, as well as a Dave Davies-owned Flying V and a Telecaster belonging to blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield.

Derek Trucks must have been visualising his performance before the historic Christie’s sale, as it’s also been revealed he was sat next to Tseitlin when he placed his winning bid. Despite the instrument’s eight-figure value, Trucks wasn’t overly careful with his performance at the Beacon Theatre, and even ended up breaking a string mid-set…

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“Every scratch, every worn fret, every vibration in the wood carries the fingerprints of the musicians who played them and the songs that defined generations,” Family Guitars notes on its website. “Our mission is simple: keep these guitars alive.”

On Friday night, Trucks put that philosophy into action, performing several songs on the instrument, including Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues, Frank Zappa’s Willie the Pimp, John Prine’s Angel From Montgomery, and Garcia’s own Sugaree.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Trucks describes the guitar’s unique feel: “It’s a really heavy guitar, but it’s really articulate when you play it. So there’s no hiding anywhere. You’re going to hear all of it, every note. It almost speaks like a piano in some ways, where everything’s clean and even. It’s not for the faint of heart. You need to know what you’re doing to play that guitar. I wasn’t worried about hurting that thing. It’s a big old heavy beast, and he can handle it.”

The Christie’s auction also made headlines beyond Tiger, with David Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster fetching $14,550,000, claiming the title of the most expensive guitar ever sold, a record previously held by Kurt Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E.

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The post Derek Trucks played Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar live just one day after it sold for $11.5 million – and broke a string appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The music industry isn’t very good at understanding artists who don’t want to sit in a box, particularly strong young women. This is the story of Grace Bowers, and even we don’t have her figured out like we thought.

Today she is happily “doing nothing”, and her uber-chilled manner is exactly the same as it is when she’s playing before thousands or walking red carpets. ‘Would you say you’re an old soul?’ Guitar.com asks, expecting a resounding yes. While in some respects she agrees, Bowers feels she’s in the right place at the right time. None of this ‘born in the wrong generation’ schtick.

Grace Bowers on the Guitar.com Cover. Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

The proof in the pudding? Her winning combination of utilising social media and playing as many live shows as possible to get where she wanted to be. Now 19 years old, she’s shared stages with artists like Slash and Dolly Parton, has played the US national anthem at an NFL game, and even performed at the 2024 Grammy awards with Coldplay’s Chris Martin.

But Bowers doesn’t want to be defined as a guitar prodigy, or as any one thing at all. We’re about to meet a completely different version of her, and in another five years we’ll likely meet another. She’s excited about this, and is working on new music that is a huge departure from her 2024 funk-laden debut, Wine On Venus.

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

“I’m leaning very heavily on rock and punk, while also combining some pop elements. It’s more me. The stuff I was doing before, I got really into funk and was in this jam band world. I realised very quickly, ‘Oh, I do not fuck with this,’” she laughs.

“I feel like there’s such a movement right now with hardcore and punk. Rock bands are coming back. You have Geese and Yungblud… it’s super inspiring to me. I’m like, ‘What can I add to this?’ What I have is not straight ahead rock, it’s very modern sounding.”

“Nothing came naturally at first. I f**king sucked when I first started. It was years and years of non-stop practice”

Diving in

This is a woman with a mission, and one that’s been in her back pocket from her early gigs in dingy dive bars. Originally from a small town in the East Bay of Northern California, Bowers and her family moved to Nashville in the middle of the pandemic, when guitar became her core focus.

Her relationship with the instrument began far before then, just not as smoothly as you may think: “Nothing came naturally at first. I fucking sucked when I first started,” she confesses. “I was trash. It was years and years of non-stop practice.”

Bowers began playing at age nine, and with no other musical members of her family, she had to figure things out on her own. She once had dreams of becoming a football player, but stumbling upon Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome To The Jungle music video made her instantly want to learn her way around a guitar.

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

“When I first started I had a teacher and he taught from a church. I would always come to him asking to play AC/DC’s Highway To Hell. He was like, ‘No, that’s not Christian. I can’t teach you that.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever,’ and I go home and learn it by ear,” she remembers.

Moving to Nashville wasn’t an intentional way for Bowers to chase music. Her family wanted a change, and it’s almost as if by destiny the sweet sounds of Music City became inescapable and influential. “I was immediately surrounded by music 24/7, I didn’t have a choice!” she says gleefully. “It definitely inspired me. Being able to go to shows and be around other musicians was something I never would have gotten where I used to live, so that honestly changed my life.”

Meanwhile, Bowers’ social media presence was burgeoning, and opportunities to play in front of real people began to land in her lap. Summarising the vibe of these early dive bar shows, Bowers treads carefully. “It’s kind of dirty, honestly. But you know what? Some of the most fun I’ve ever had has been on a cramped stage with people I just met. You have a musical freedom knowing that half these people aren’t listening. On the other side, maybe the other 50 per cent are listening, and you never know who’s in the crowd.

“I get people in my DMs all the time like, ‘How do I start doing what you did?’ Dude, go to open mics! Go see local bands, get connected. At the same time, keep posting your stuff on social media,” she urges.

“I feel like there’s such a movement right now with hardcore and punk. Rock bands are coming back”

On another planet

Bowers recorded her Wine On Venus album when she was 16. Produced by John Osborne and made with the Hodge Podge band formed off the back of various jam sessions, its sound naturally became a funkadelic melting pot of soul and blues. Now, over a year on from its release, her connection to the album has certainly changed.

“I can’t go back and listen to it,” she admits. “I had never written a song before and my agent was like, ‘I’m having trouble booking you because you don’t have music out.’ I’m super glad that I did it. It was an incredible experience, and there are songs on it that will always be near and dear to my heart because of what they were written about.” Its title track was dedicated to her grandmother, who lived to be 100 years old.

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

“At the same time, it’s not the kind of music I want to make anymore. I didn’t even know what kind of music I wanted to make when I was 16. I also don’t tour with that band anymore, so it definitely stands as a phase of my life that is documented. But I don’t really associate myself with it anymore.”

In line with the punky spirit Bowers is channeling within her new music, she’s becoming more and more in tune with what she wants, and has less time to care about what others want from her.

“Nothing pisses me off more than someone throwing a label on me,” she says ardently. “I’m 19! The music I play now versus the music I played when I was 16 or 17 is vastly different. People get upset about that. I’m like, think about when you were 16… You were probably a different person. That’s what kind of sucks about being on social media all the time; I’ve grown up in front of so many people.”

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

There is one thing that has remained consistent across her career so far that will likely never waver: Bowers’ connection to the Gibson SG. Though she may occasionally dabble with a Stratocaster when in need of a different sound, it’s the SG she is most drawn to.

“First of all, they look cool,” she states. “I feel like I can get most of the things that I need out of the SG because it has a lot of versatility that people don’t realise. They probably see an SG and associate it with Angus Young or Tony Iommi. Really, it can be used for everything.”

Bowers’ pedalboard is “pretty bare”, but she never goes without a wah pedal (typically a Vox or Dunlop Cry Baby), keeps a highly-coveted Analog Man King Of Tone on constant, and occasionally uses a chorus pedal on a low setting. She’s not opposed to the idea of embracing an amp modeller to save on space, but right now, Bowers bleeds tube amp supremacy: “Fender Deluxe Reverb all the way. It has never done me wrong.”

“Some of the most fun I’ve ever had has been on a cramped stage with people I just met”

Reaching for the stars

Before we get out of Bowers’ signature curly blonde hair, we take some time to look back on the bedlam and beauty of all she has conquered. “If you told me five years ago, ‘You’re gonna play the Grammys one day,’ I’d be like, ‘Get out!’ I never would have thought that posting videos from my bedroom could lead to something like that. It’s trippy,” she says.

The trick to performing with world-famous artists and nailing it? “Don’t overthink it,” she replies. “For me, it goes better when I just let things happen. They’re asking you to play with them because they like what you do. So you shouldn’t all of a sudden start to change or overthink. They’re asking you for you, and not to sound like someone else.”

While at the Grammys, Bowers also got to meet Taylor Swift, who reassured her she knew exactly how she felt as someone who was also once the only teenager in the room. Elsewhere on her bucket list of dream collabs is Olivia Rodrigo, and she’s a big fan of trailblazing women in modern punk.

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

“It would be a dream to open for her,” Bowers says dreamily. “There’s a lot of really awesome bands out right now. I just met The Linda Lindas – I’m a huge fan of them, and Amyl And The Sniffers, Lambrini Girls.”

With such a large and colourful career, she thankfully has outlets that allow her to switch off and stay in tune with herself outside of music. She works with a modelling agency and loves to experiment with style, “whether it’s high fashion or a really cool pair of blue jeans”. She skateboards, enjoys long drives in Tennessee, and has “an obsession” with exploring abandoned buildings – don’t say we didn’t tell you she’s full of surprises.

Bowers can put one word on her experience in music so far: “wild”.

“The hardest part about it is being away so much and missing out on normal teenager stuff. I stopped going to school midway through my sophomore year. The pros of it are that I get to travel the world and I’ve experienced so many things that I never would have experienced had I stayed in school, and I’m so glad I didn’t.”

Image: Alanna Taylor for Guitar.com

Bowers’ new goal? Blow all preconceived notions of her career out of the water. She doesn’t want to be ‘Gen-Z’s answer to’ your favourite formative blues-rocker, she doesn’t want to be ‘the next’ anyone. She’s the first Grace Bowers.

“I’ve never tried to copy anyone else. I don’t want to do something that someone’s already done before, and I feel like that sets me apart,” she declares. “People are either gonna appreciate the growth, or not be cool with that. I don’t care either way. That’s always been my thing. I’m gonna do what I want to do, and I’m not doing it to impress anyone else.”

Words: Rachel Roberts
Photography: Alanna Taylor
Photo Assistance: Mallory Lowery
Glam/Styling: Lisa Bowers

The post “Nothing pisses me off more than someone throwing a label on me: I’m 19!” Grace Bowers is determined to forge her own path appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Sometimes in a musician’s life, gear design aligns with the needs of the artist. Picture this: It’s 2014. You’re surrounded by several pieces of inadequate and unobtainium looping gear in various states of disrepair, wondering if there will ever be a time when a single device is available to help you meet your ambient, pan-rhythmic, non-band-in-a-box playalong-looping desires. Then, you read about the brand new update to the looper algorithm of the Eventide TimeFactor. Once upon a time, this happened to me.

This was back when, seemingly, the powers that be saw fit to regress looping hardware devices back to the dark ages, as if the Lexicon PCM 42 and original Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay had never existed. You’d be hard pressed to know that now, what with the plethora of forward-looking looping and sampling devices available today from the likes of Hologram Electronics, Red Panda, Chase Bliss, Expedition Electronics, Kinotone, and many, many more. But sandwiched right in the time zone between these two eras is where I found the Eventide TimeFactor’s looper algorithm.

The TimeFactor had been out for several years at this point (released, in fact, on my birthday a few years prior to this—how’s that for a sign?). It was marketed primarily as the latest super delay with a variety of dual parallel delay engines available with presets. An Eventide product, there’s no doubt about the sound and build quality of this device. But the looper seemed kind of basic and a bit of an afterthought initially, doing little more than recording and overdubbing. The major update delivered access to options like overdub order, reverse, retriggering, loop windowing, tap tempo (sort of…), and up to two octaves up or down of intervallic scanning and recording—from octaves and fifths to completely smooth linear movement, all mappable to expression pedal and AUX switches.

So, I’d like to make a case for this large-ish piece of hardware, by modern standards, with many knobs and switches, if I may. For the type of music I strive to make, swift access to parameters is essential—with little to no latency and minimal hindrance to making changes. No menu diving to reassign a knob mid-song or mid-improvisation when the fancy strikes.

It’s true that this exact same looper algorithm lives within the Eventide H9. But with only one giant knob and a couple buttons, how can I reasonably be expected to have access to the 13+ parameters available to me at the surface level of the TimeFactor hardware? It’s also true that the H9 has a digital facsimile of the TimeFactor’s hardware available in the tablet app that can control the H9 over Bluetooth, but, unfortunately, the latency introduced is still a … “factor.” (Sorry.) In fact, I think it speaks volumes that one of the best ways the Eventide engineers could come up with to control the parameters of the H9 was to simply replicate the TimeFactor control layout in the tablet app.

“For the type of music I strive to make, swift access to parameters is essential—with little to no latency and minimal hindrance to making changes.”

The TimeFactor also speaks to the priority of immediacy by allowing an expression pedal and (not or) an aux switch for further parameter control. Another great aspect of the design, and one I don’t hear much talk about, is that you can assign two instances of any knob on the unit to an auxiliary switch. If I want to jump between 0 percent and 70 percent decay in my looping overdubs at the click of a switch? No problem, we can make that happen!

Still need convincing? The pristine Eventide tone can be vintage-ified by setting a longer loop length and lowering the bit rate. The instrument/line-level switches on the back panel add further tonal shaping—some players love running that line-level boost into a guitar amp. All of this has kept me from feeling any need to "upgrade" for the past 12 years.

Please allow me to end my love letter to the TimeFactor’s looper with the following: When a legendary company known for great sound and creative devices drops a product like this—one that allows an artist to not only find a way to serve their musical ideas inspired by great guitarist looping effectors like Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, David Torn, Henry Kaiser, Bill Frisell, and Nels Cline, but also builds enough in there to allow any artist to find their own way forward in their music into the future of their own voice—I truly believe they have done an unquestionable service for the good of all creative artists everywhere. And for that, I thank them, heartily!

Press Release

Source: Mark Pucci PR

“The single most spectacular solo I’d ever heard (‘Like A Rock’)” – BOB SEGER

“A singer and guitarist of the first rank. A master of his instrument!” – JOHN MAYALL

“My favorite Blues guitarist and vocalist…the real deal.” – STEVE MILLER

“Rick Vito’s guitar playing is as cool and sharp as a Cadillac tail fin!” – BONNIE RAITT

Grammy-nominated guitarist Rick Vito announces the April 3rd release of his new all-instrumental album, Slidemaster, on MoMojo Records, with physical distribution by MVD and digital thru The Orchard. Pre-orders for Slidemaster are available now!

This unique recording is a compilation of Rick’s all-instrumental cuts played exclusively on slide guitar, in the style of which he is universally renowned. It features both new material plus some of his best former releases which were remixed and mastered specifically for the album. Rick’s takes on Peter Green’s “Albatross,” and “The Supernatural,” Sam Cooke’s, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and the originals, “Vegas Jump,” and “Soul Shadows,” are not to be missed!

“For many years now, friends have asked, ‘when will you release an instrumental album?’ Having recorded even more instrumental tracks this past year, I finally decided to do just that,” says Vito. “To my knowledge there have not been many slide guitar instrumental albums, and out of this came the idea for my new release, Slidemaster. These new works are paired with some of my very favorite cuts from previous albums resulting in a soulful collection of all-instrumental slide guitar tracks. This album comes from years of recording in a style that I hope you will love as much as I do.”

Rick’s last album, the highly acclaimed Cadillac Man in 2024, generated universal rave reviews and extensive radio airplay, reaching the number one slot on the Roots Radio Report. “Vito transports listeners with his wraithlike style. He never wastes a note in his expressive playing and always finds just the right phrase to fit the song he’s serving on his album,” said Henry Carrigan in Living Blues. In Rock and Blues Muse, Jim Hynes opined: “Vito’s playing is clean, tasty, and impactful… one of the best guitarists in the genre, and a premiere slide guitarist with few peers.” And Marco Piazzalongo, writing in Jazz N More summed up by stating: “Vito’s licks and solos go down like a tasty cocktail mixed by one of the greats in the field. They exude atmosphere, warmth, deep musicality and do not require any gimmicks. But it’s not just his amazing skills on the six strings, be it without or (especially!) with a bottleneck, that Vito brings to life with grandeur on Cadillac Man. His songwriting also has style and class throughout, is based on inspiration from across blues’n’roots history, and is cleverly composed.”

Guitarist, singer and producer Rick Vito is perhaps best known as a member of the legendary supergroup Fleetwood Mac (1987-1991). His guitar work and songs are featured on their albums, Greatest Hits, Behind The Mask, The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac, The Chain, and the live concert DVD, Tango In The Night.

He later partnered with Mick Fleetwood to form the “Mick Fleetwood Blues Band featuring Rick Vito.” Shortly after the release of their CD, Blue Again, Rick was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Blues category as both artist and producer.

Of particular note, Rick’s now iconic slide guitar solos on Bob Seger’s “Like A Rock,” have been heard and heralded by untold millions, both on Seger’s hit albums and as the guitar voice on the Chevy truck TV commercial ads which ran over ten years.

Rick’s solo albums began with Atlantic Records in 1992 with his debut album, King of Hearts, after which he began performing worldwide with his own band.  His unique guitar work has also appeared on hundreds of recordings by such legendary Rock & Roll and Blues Hall of Fame artists as Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, John Fogerty, Christine McVie, Little Richard, Leon Russell, Boz Scaggs, Maria Muldaur, John Prine, Delbert McClinton, Rita Coolidge, Roy Orbison, Jackson Browne, Roger McGuinn, Todd Rundgren, Bob Seger, and scores of others.

Rick Vito is also the recipient of the Blues Music Award for the song of the year, “It’s Two A.M.” by Shemekia Copeland, and his compositions have appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including multiple episodes of the highly acclaimed TV series, “Blue Bloods.”

A designer of Art Deco and Modernistic guitars, Rick’s stunning “Rick Vito Soul Agent” Signature model guitar is currently available from Reverend Guitars. This represents the fourth edition of Reverend Signature models bearing Rick’s name and design features.

In 2020, Rick appeared alongside Christine McVie (in her final performance), Billy Gibbons, Pete Townsend, David Gilmour, Bill Wyman, John Mayall and a host of other musical luminaries in the “Mick Fleetwood & Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green” concert filmed in London, now available on CD and DVD from BMG.

About Rick Vito

Rick Vito began his professional career in 1971 after moving to Los Angeles and joining Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, also working with Todd Rundgren and Derek & The Dominoes’ Bobby Whitlock. Vito was a featured guitarist on Bob Seger’s albums starting in 1986, including his legendary slide guitar solo on the Seger classic, (and Chevy truck TV commercial), “Like a Rock.” He was a regular member of Bonnie Raitt’s touring band in the 1980s and 1990s, also recording and/or touring with John Mayall, Jackson Browne, Little Richard, Roger McGuinn, Roy Orbison, Dobie Gray, John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks, Maria Muldaur, Albert Collins Dolly Parton and many others. Vito has had 12 solo album releases (counting his latest), having toured in Europe and the US with his own band. He also produced rockabilly singer Rosie Flores’ album, Speed of Sound, released in 2001.

SLIDEMASTER

PRODUCED BY RICK VITO (C) 2026

Catalog Number: MMJ404

1.       VEGAS JUMP

2.       STEAL AWAY

3.       THE BIG BEAT

4.       THE DANGER ZONE

5.       RED HOT BABY

6.       ALBATROSS

7.       SOUL SHADOWS

8.       SLIDE THE BLUES

9.       A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

10.   RIVER OF BLUES

11.   THE SUPERNATURAL

12.   THE LORD’S PRAYER

MUSICIANS:

Guitars, Acoustic & Electric Bass, Keys, Percussion: Rick Vito

Drums: Rick Reed (tracks 1, 5, 6, 8, 9), Lynn Williams (track 11), Charles Johnson (tracks 2, 3, 4, 7)

Electric Bass: Charlie Harrison (tracks 1, 6, 8, 9)

Organ: Mark Horwitz (track 9), Kevin McKendree (track 12)

SONGS: Rick Vito, Vitone Music, BMI, plus:

“Albatross” and “The Supernatural” by Peter Green, Primary Wave Music

“Steal Away” by Jimmy Hughes, Screen Gems-EMI Music

“The Lord’s Prayer” by Albert Hay Malotte, G. Schirmer Inc.

“A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, Abkco Music Inc.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Mark Vito

ENGINEERS: Rick Vito, Brian Harrison, OB O’Brien, Michael Lawson

MASTERING: Phil Nicolo, Studio 4 Mastering

 

 



Portland, Oregon-based musicians Eric Skye and Jonah Sissoyev join us this week to talk about Jonah’s beautiful new EP, ‘A Place Called Nowhere.’

The EP’s origin story begins with Jonah asking Eric, an acclaimed fingerstyle guitarist and Santa Cruz Guitar Co. signature model artist, for guitar lessons. Once he heard Jonah’s songs, Eric offered to produce and record this project.

During our chat, we hear all about their collaboration, Eric’s recording techniques (including some DIY home recording advice), the Stew-Mac kit guitar that Jonah built for himself, and so much more.

Listen to Jonah’s EP here:
https://jonahsissoyev.hearnow.com/a-place-called-nowhere

Follow Eric: https://www.instagram.com/eric.skye.guitar/

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

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

Mike & Mike’s Guitar Bar: https://mmguitarbar.com

Mike & Mike’s Substack: https://mmguitarbar.substack.com 

The post Podcast 540: Jonah Sissoyev & Eric Skye first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

Victory Amplification has launched a new 200-watt valve power amp, which is made to bring valve feel, response, and tone to digital rigs.

The PowerValve 200 allows players to run their modeller, preamp or pedalboard through a real guitar cabinet with the dynamic response of Victory valve technology. The company claims that while modellers have made vast progress, digital rigs “still struggle” to recreate essential elements of a traditional amp.

• READ MORE: Victory sends blind guitarist custom braille amp in the most wholesome moment of 2026 so far

The PowerValve 200 is said to bridge the gap. Users can connect their modeller via 1/4” jack to the PowerValve’s balanced input, set their levels, engage the valve stage, and drive a real speaker cabinet with “authentic amp-like response”.

At its core is Victory’s Valve React Circuit (VRC) featuring an EF91 (CV4014) valve. For players who prefer a completely transparent signal path, the valve stage can be bypassed via a front panel switch. This front panel also includes a 3-band EQ (Resonance, Body, and Presence) allowing players to fine-tune their tone, and there is also a Cab Sim on/off switch.

Ryan Morgan, Head of Global Sales at Neural DSP (home of the acclaimed Quad Cortex) comments, “The PowerValve 200 genuinely exceeded our expectations. The response, feel and tone — especially when paired with the Quad Cortex — were outstanding. With the flip of a switch, the added tube stage delivers an immediate improvement to the signal. This is a seriously impressive piece of kit.”

Martin Kidd, Chief Designer at Victory, adds: “Players told us they still wanted to feel a guitar speaker cabinet moving air on stage — something that doesn’t quite happen with FRFR cabinets. The subtle harmonic content generated by a valve stage creates slight asymmetry in the waveform — and that’s where the feel comes from.”

The PowerValve 200 is available now for £499 / $599 / €579. Find out more via Victory Amps.

The post Victory Amplification’s new PowerValve 200 brings “authentic valve response and tone to modern rigs” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The second round of the Jim Irsay Collection auction is now live, and there’s a whole bunch of incredible guitars up for sale once again.

The first round took place yesterday through Christie’s in New York, with some of the most famous guitars selling for ground-breaking amounts. In fact, the first round saw history made, as David Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster once again took the crown as the most expensive guitar ever sold, raking in an eye-watering $14,550,000. It broke the previous record held by Kurt Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E, which sold for just over $6M in 2020.

• READ MORE: “The guitar that started it all”: T-Bone Walker’s 1949 Gibson ES-5N is up for sale on Reverb for over $2M

Widely described as the greatest guitar collection on Earth, the collection was curated by billionaire and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, and following his death in May last year, his estate took the decision to sell it. The live auction will also continue tomorrow, 14 March.

In today’s round, 34 instruments are included, with some of the biggest highlights from the most influential musicians – including George Harrison, Eddie Van Halen, and many more – due to fetch in up to $300,000, though they could sell for much more.

One of the most significant items is Harrison’s Harptone 12-string acoustic, which is estimated between $200,000 – $300,000 and is accompanied by a copy of a letter from his father, Harold Harrison, on Harrisongs headed notepaper. Another standout is Dusty Hill’s incredibly kooky sheepskin-covered Dean bass guitar, which was used in the music video for ZZ Top’s Legs in 1984, and is also estimated to fetch up to $300,000.

The auction will also see an Eddie Van Halen signed and stage-played Charvel EVH Art Series model go under the hammer. It features the signature red, white and black striped pattern associated with the guitarist, and is accompanied by an EVH Art Series certificate of authenticity signed by Eddie and a colour photograph of him playing this same guitar live on stage at the Plaines d’Abraham in Quebec City, Canada, on 3 July 2008. It’s also signed on the body in silver marker pen.

Other key guitars include:

• Neal Schon’s Gibson Les Paul Pro Deluxe, used to record Journey’s 1981 hit, Don’t Stop Believin’
• Don McLean’s Martin 00-21 acoustic, used to record his 1972 hit, Vincent
• John McVie’s custom Alembic fretless bass, used to record Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain
• Bob Dylan’s Gibson Hummingbird acoustic, played at the inaugural concert for president-elect Bill Clinton in 1993

Other musicians whose guitars are featured include Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Nancy Wilson, Billie Joe Armstrong, The Who, and many more.

To view the full range of guitars going under the hammer, head over to Christie’s.

The post Dusty Hill’s sheepskin bass and an Eddie Van Halen stage-played Charvel: The guitars up for grabs in the second day of the Jim Irsay auction appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Michael Hampton’s whole career started with a single song.

As a teen growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he taught himself to play along with records on just one string. The Temptations’ “Get Ready,” Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused”—those worked. Then he expanded, adding strings and songs like Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” and Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” to his repertoire. Somewhere in there, he started jamming along with Funkadelic’s 1971 psychedelic guitar opus, “Maggot Brain.”

On the opening track to the band’s album of the same name, guitarist Eddie Hazel defined new boundaries of post-Hendrix fuzz-and-wah-soaked psychedelia. George Clinton’s Echoplex manipulations cranked the mind-melt factor further afield. It moved the young guitarist, and he kept coming back to that song.

By 1974, the band rolled through Cleveland and the 17-year-old had a chance to witness the live P-Funk extravaganza. Around that time, he had been playing music with his cousin, Lige Curry, and “a guy on the east side called Ed Sparks, he was an older guy playing bass,” according to Hampton. Together, they went to catch the show at Public Hall. Afterward, they all ended up with some of the band back at Sparks’ house.

“Ed’s like, ‘Go play “Maggot Brain,”’” Hampton recalls in his soft-spoken voice, “and I just played it til I couldn’t play it no more.”

About two weeks or so later, P-Funk drummer Tiki Fullwood called and invited the teenager to join the band. Driven to the airport by his cousin—who would also go on to join the band in 1978—he recalls, “I took my first plane ride to a sold-out show at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. I put my head down and played ‘Maggot Brain.’ Bernie [Worell, the band’s keyboardist] was accompanying me, which helped a lot. They wanted just Bernie and myself to do it. He was good at putting that backdrop behind me so I could solo freely.”

At first, Hampton’s only role in the Parliament-Funkadelic stage show was to play “Maggot Brain.” He eventually learned the whole set, somewhere along the way earning the nickname Kidd Funkadelic. (A recording of Hampton’s “Maggot Brain” from 1978 is included on the CD edition of Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, showing his soaring, liquid phrasing and searing tone.)

Ever since that first night, Hampton has been a fixture in the P-Funk universe, and the band and its music have been the centerpiece of his musical life. Though he’s done some collaborating beyond P-Funk, his own solo work has maintained an orbit, as can be heard on his 1995 release, P-Funk Guitar Riffs for DJ’s, or on the more solo-minded but still related Heavy Metal Funkason from 1998, which features Curry as co-producer and Clinton on guest vocals. More recently, with drummer Chuck Treece and guitarist PhilipTheArtist (Philip Smith), he’s released music as Punkadelic, which includes original material, but remains reverential in name.

Now, he seems ready to set himself apart. But that might not be a conscious effort. In fact, sitting and talking to Hampton on one of the couches at SoundPlex Studios in South Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, I get the distinct sense that Hampton makes his way through life by going with the proverbial flow. He takes it as it comes, and for a guy who’s been playing a lot of the same music for decades, he seems surprisingly in the moment, not lingering on the past.

“Since Parliament-Funkadelic is one of the most sampled groups of all time, it’s probably safe to say you’re among the most sampled guitarists around,” I point out. “Do you ever reflect on that?”

“Nah,” he tosses off. “I don’t reflect on it. I’m honored.” He pauses, adding, “It’d be cool if I could get some more sessions or be a fly on the wall at some of these sessions that they do.”

What does get him excited is a lifetime of listening. Hampton cites his musical inspirations off the cuff: Pink Floyd, Herbie Hancock’s solo on “Chameleon,” Kiss—he stops to show me a recent gift from guitarist PhilipTheArtist, the owner of retro-minded Goldfinch Guitars, an LP-style guitar with an Ace Frehley tribute finish. “This was a gift after Ace passed,” he explains. “That’s what’s gonna get me inspired to do more—‘I wanna do something Kiss-like with that guitar’ or whatever.”

“Everything I hear, I want to play.”

He jumps to a host of more recent references—cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, bass futurist MonoNeon, blues phenom Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and electric blues rocker Joe Bonamassa—then goes more big-picture. “The grooves to a lot of things—it could be commercials—whatever catches my ear, it could be electronica, it could be classical, everything I hear, I want to play.”

Hampton gets stoked thinking about all the music he loves. He mentions Les Paul, then catches himself—“Django … his ass! Man, come on!” It’s a wide musical world, full of inspiration.

It’s not just music itself that gets him going, it’s the instruments as well. Hampton loves to collect guitars, and figures he currently owns around 50 or so. In addition to the Ace Frehley tribute, he’s also brought another recent gift, also from PhilipTheArtist, this one an SG-style guitar with a finish in the style of The Fool—the Gibson once owned by both Eric Clapton and Todd Rundgren. On this one, the iconic angel has been replaced by the Kidd Funkadelic logo from Funkadelic’s 1976 Tales of Kidd Funkadelic.

That guitar made it out with Hampton for some solo band dates to celebrate the release of Into the Public Domain, the first of two EPs plus an LP that he’s releasing. The name is literal: He’ll also be releasing the multitrack files, which can be used royalty free.

It’s a large project with a lot of moving parts and a long cast of collaborators, but it came together at the behest of PhilipTheArtist, who co-produced the record along with Hampton, Joe “the Butcher” Nicolo, and John Schreffler. Recorded at Fort Wolf Studios in Canyon Country, California, and Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound, much of the music was initiated by PhilipTheArtist and Schreffler in order to create something, according to the former, “like if National Geographic or Nova wanted something in the background—not just rock ’n’ roll.”

A song like the off-kilter funky rocker “Steve’s Kadillac” strikes an experimental funny bone that could certainly work in that direction, with warped riffs floating in and out across the groove-centric soundscape. But there is plenty of rockin’ to be found, as on the opening “Fight or Flight” and the title track, where Hampton’s distortion-drenched leads crack the stratosphere wide open and launch into space.

PhilipTheArtist explains that “Technicolor Mobile Home” has roots that reach beyond the studio. “When me and Michael play ‘Hit It and Quit It’ [from Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain] live,” he explains, “there’s a certain way he plays the chorus that is different than the record. That way he plays it evolved into ‘Technicolor Mobile Home,’ then I recorded what I remembered he came up with.”

Hampton remembers the sessions as a laid back affair, where the vibe, from his perspective, was “just do what ya feel.” He recalls, “Phil would call me up from California and say, ‘You got time, Mike?’” If he was available, he’d fly out from his Philly area home. “If I didn’t jump on and do it then, I wasn’t gonna do it,” he says.

“Today, there are some serious issues and it’s like, what am I gonna write to that? Am I gonna write about it? Or not gonna write about it? Or just play?”

Nicolo, a nine-time Grammy winner and co-founder of legendary hip-hop label Ruffhouse Records, assembled the jammy tracks into songs. “I had so many colors of the rainbow to paint with,” he says.

Hampton will follow Into the Public Domain with King Kong, a musical telling of the classic story, and The Kidd. With a preview of rough tracks from the latter, it seems as though the trilogy will showcase just how singular and varied Hampton’s guitar playing is. The early tracks indicate a world that’s all over the sonic map, his still-distinctive guitar fitting right into ’90s ZZ Top-style heavy blues, warped disco funk, soul jazz, and beyond.

Nicolo will release the albums through his SMN Records imprint—a part of his Sound Mind Network, a nonprofit whose “mission is to change the way the world looks at trauma suicide and drug abuse with the arts.” He says the records display Hampton’s “splintered genius” and calls him a “chameleon" who is “so unlike traditional guitar players.”

Hampton is all about the vibe, and that seems to be what makes him such an adaptable player. He gets the vibe, and dives in. It’s an approach that any improvisor knows requires staying in the moment and keeping overthinking at bay, and that’s where Hampton is most natural.

“I like to remain ‘not-knowing,’” he muses. “I like to practice a lot, but at the same time, I want it to be new.” (It’s also the answer he gives when I ask if he likes messing around with pedals, which he doesn’t really get into extensively: “Every time I hook something up, I want it to be brand new.”)

“Staying inspired,” he continues, “it’s just life itself. Today, there are some serious issues and it’s like, what am I gonna write to that? Am I gonna write about it? Or not gonna write about it? Or just play?”

This recent burst of activity is intentional, though; Hampton tells me he’s trying to be more available to new musical things. In this case, it’s been working out. Jams that started some years ago in Philadelphia turned into sessions—he mentions some early jams related to the project at Bam Margera’s house—that led to more sessions and eventually to the L.A. recordings. Throughout, he’s just been trying to be open to saying yes. Where that will lead next is anybody’s guess.

“I like to remain ‘not-knowing.’ I like to practice a lot, but at the same time, I want it to be new.”

If all that sounds like he’s always on to the next thing, that’s only partially true. P-Funk continues to take it to the stage, and when we talk, Hampton is getting ready to head out for a few dates. The group’s large ever-changing lineup has sounded powerful on recent tours. And at the recent Hampton-band live shows in California, the pickup band assembled by PhilipTheArtist opted to stick to versions of P-Funk classics, namely “Butt-to-Butt Resuscitation,” “Red Hot Mama,” “Hit It and Quit it,” and, of course, “Maggot Brain.”

While the classics remain in all parts of his life, Hampton says he hopes to get a live band playing the new material. He adds that when the time comes to play those songs, “I don’t want to know them too well.”

The driving force in Hampton’s camp, it seems—the one making sure this all goes down—is PhilipTheArtist, and he’s passionate about the music. He wants people to hear the breadth of what’s possible. The world knows his work with P-Funk, but he wants Hampton to be heard as an individual. “It’s time for Michael to get out there,” he says. “Every legendary guitar player has a set of solo records and has a sound people can put their finger on. Michael was under-celebrated in that way. It was time.”

What is it about Hampton that has driven this project? “Michael has the ability to give you goosebumps with his playing,” PhilipTheArtist says. “He’s one of those guys who can make you cry or make you smile with his playing.” Or to put it simply, “He just knows how to make you feel something.”

From the Spring 2026 Issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine With this issue, Acoustic Guitar settles into its new quarterly rhythm. At a time when publishing—and so much else—feels unsettled, the change has prompted us to look closely at what belongs in each issue and how deeply we want to explore it. A quarterly pace also feels closer […]