General Interest

AC/DC are due to kick off their highly anticipated Power Up Europe tour later this week, and have shared a snap on social media of themselves rehearsing for trek to pump up the excitement.

The photo shows the new lineup – core members Brian Johnson, Angus Young and Stevie Young – alongside bassist Christ Chaney and drummer Matt Laug, who replace Cliff Williams and Phil Rudd, respectively.

• READ MORE: “Angus put me through my paces. Everything was a test to see how I’d handle it”: Jet singer recalls “intense” AC/DC audition

“In the studio, gearing up for the Power Up tour, kicking off in Gelsenkirchen, Germany in just one week!” the post’s accompanying captions reads.

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Stevie Young – nephew of both Angus and Malcolm – began filling in for rhythm guitarist Malcolm when he was diagnosed with dementia in 2014. Upon Malcolm Young’s death in 2017, Stevie became a permanent member of the Aussie rock titans.

Meanwhile, Chris Chaney – former bassist of Jane’s Addiction – fills in for Cliff Williams, who played with the band during their Power Trip festival performance last year, but opted not to join the full Power Up tour. Matt Laug made his debut with the band at Power Trip, which took place in October last year.

Power Trip was also the first time singer Brian Johnson performed with the band since 2016 after taking a hiatus due to hearing issues. Johnson is now fully back, though, and will perform throughout the Power Up tour.

The Power Up tour will see the five-piece play 21 dates from 17 May to 17 August, in Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Slovakia, Belgium, France and Ireland. It follows AC/DC’s 17th studio album of the same name, which arrived in 2020.

For tickets, head to AC/DC’s official website.

The post See AC/DC’s new lineup in action in pre-Power Up tour rehearsal photo appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Dave Grohl pranked fans watching Foo Fighters headline at Welcome To Rockville festival last weekend by tearing through Van Halen’s Eruption guitar solo, for cameras to reveal the playing was actually coming from Wolfgang Van Halen hidden away behind the stage.

Wolf had previously said he doesn’t plan on playing songs from his father’s catalogue anymore, having played them at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts back in 2022 as a way of saying goodbye, but those who know Wolfie will know he has a soft spot for Grohl, and seemingly made an exception for the fun prank.

• READ MORE: What guitars does Dave Grohl use? These are the instruments that power the Foo Fighters

At the festival last Saturday, the Foos covered some short bursts of tracks from the Beastie Boys, Ramones, and Nine Inch Nails midway through their set, before Grohl joked, “You know who never gets a fuckin’ solo? Me, god damn it, I never get a fucking solo!”

He added, “So, since this is the last night of the trip, I’m gonna do a fucking solo. How about that? You may think, ‘That guy can’t play a fucking solo.’ You wanna see me do a guitar solo right now?” He asked the crowd.

Grohl then turned his back slightly to the crowd to begin tapping away at Eruption, before eventually lifting both his hands in the air to show he wasn’t really playing. Cameras displayed on big screens then flipped to Wolfgang, who jokingly tries to play it cool.

Wolfie also plays a short snippet of another Van Halen classic, Hot For Teacher, before the Foos eventually go on to play My Hero and dedicate the song to both Wolf and his father Eddie.

Watch below:

Wolfgang’s band Mammoth WVH will be joining the Foo Fighters on tour this summer across a few dates throughout the US. The tour will also see support from The Hives, Pretenders and more along the way.

View all upcoming tour dates for the Foo Fighters.

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While Jason Momoa is mostly known for his hugely successful acting career – which has seen him play the likes of Aquaman and Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones – he’s also heavily entrenched in the music world.

When he’s not spotted moshing in the pit during Metallica and Pantera shows, Momoa finds himself quite the instrument collector; last year, he purchased the first Martin D-28 ever made, and in 2022 he bought the last available Gibson “Greeny” Les Paul replica.

• READ MORE: Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready falls off stage mid-solo – and keeps playing anyway

And his instrument collection has expanded a little more while making his show On The Roam, which sees him travel across the US to meet “extraordinary individuals blazing their own path”, including craftsmen, motorcycle enthusiasts, musicians and athletes.

Now, a selection of instruments collected on his travels are going up for auction at Julien’s Auctions in its upcoming Music Icons sale.

There are nine instruments up for grabs: three Gibson Custom Les Pauls, including Slash’s Jessica and Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates signature models that are hand-signed by each guitarist, respectively; three Fender Custom Shop models, a ‘51 Esquire, ‘54 Strat Relic and Nocaster Relic; and then two bass guitars and a ukulele.

The basses include a Les Claypool-stage-played Pachyderm model – which has an estimated sell price of $20,000-$40,000 – and a Carl Thompson bass which is expected to sell for between $4,000 and $6,000.

As for the Pachyderm model, it’s been given the nickname “Momoa’s Koa” by luthiers for its “exceptionally figured top made of wood found only in Hawaii”.

The Music Icons sale is due to take place 29-30 May, with proceeds going to charities including MusiCares, the Fender Play Foundation, Make A Wish and St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital.

For more information, head to Julien’s Auctions.

The post Jason Momoa is selling a trove of Fender and Gibson Custom Shop guitars via Julien’s appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Kerry King’s solo album From Hell I Rise lands this week, and he nearly asked fellow Slayer guitarist Gary Holt to join his band to record it.

Things became a little confusing at the Slayer camp earlier this year after the thrash metal outfit, who had formerly said they were calling it quits in 2019, announced their return at three US festivals later this year – Louder Than Life, Riot Fest and Aftershock.

• READ MORE: Kerry King on putting aside his differences with Tom Araya for Slayer reunion, “We’re professionals”

It’s still unclear whether these will be the only reunion dates or if the band will be making a full comeback later down the line, but King made it clear at the time of their split that he wasn’t ready to retire yet, and took to making an album of his own.

Eventually, King recruited Death Angel vocalist Mark Osegueda, former Slayer drummer Paul Bostaph, former Vio-Lence and Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel, and former Hellyeah bassist Kyle Sanders for the album. So, why did Holt not make the line up?

In an interview for the Spring 2024 print edition of Revolver, King explains, “I started to realise that the more pieces I take from Slayer, the more it’s gonna be called ‘Slayer Lite.’ I mean, of course it’s gonna sound like Slayer; I wrote 90 percent of the last record. But if I take less with me from Slayer, there’ll be less for people to stand on, as far as making lazy comparisons.

“If I had to do Slayer over again after [Jeff] Hanneman [who died in 2013], 110 times out of a 100, I would pick Gary Holt. He was the right guy. But the perception of people, it weighs on me, and I don’t want to deal with that,” he says.

“I love Gary. He’s a great player. But I already had my one dude from Slayer I was definitely keeping. And Phil had only played four gigs with Slayer, so that comparison wasn’t going to be there; also, he impressed the fuck out of me when he came out to do those Europe gigs. It was just a couple of days after his Machine Head tour had ended, and he learned 18 or 20 of our songs on short notice.

He goes on to add, “He also had to learn our stage tempos, and where the pyro was. If Judas Priest had asked me to come out in four days and figure all that out, I couldn’t have done it. But Phil did it for us.”

Find out more about King’s solo project and view his upcoming live dates.

The post Kerry King didn’t ask Gary Holt to play on his solo record because he was worried it would be regarded as “Slayer Lite” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$119/£119, boss.info

Arriving shortly before the pandemic meant that everyone spent a lot more time playing at home than they’d like to, the Boss Waza-Air headphones offered a pricey but compelling view of home practice – with wireless connectivity and spatially aware audio that meant you felt less like you were playing through cans and more like you were actually in a room with a real amp.

• READ MORE: Blackstar HT-20RH MK III review: the gigging amp staple becomes a versatile recording tool

They were the best part of $400, though and in the real world that is a LOT of money to drop on a practice aid – even one that will also do double-duty as Bluetooth headphones (and style-wise AirPods Pro Max they were not). Nevertheless, I was always impressed with the fundamental tech behind the Waza-Air, and so my interest was certainly piqued when Boss announced what effectively appeared to be something of a halfway house between the expensive Airs and the current king of the affordable headphone amp game – Fender’s Mustang Micro – in the shape of the Katana GO.

What does the Boss Katana GO do?

Put side by side and you’d be forgiven for assuming that the Katana GO is basically the same as the Mustang Micro, given that they’re aesthetically very similar – right down to the adjustable rotating jack plug that enables it to slot into pretty much any guitar seamlessly, and the big ol’ volume knob on the top.

In terms of functionality, there are also a lot of similarities – they both have a 3.5mm headphone jack for plugging your favourite wired headphones into, and they both have a USB-C socket that acts as both the charging point as well as allowing the unit to act as a direct recording interface to capture your songs. But after this things diverge.

Unlike the Mustang, which gives you a well-chosen but static selection of 12 predetermined amp and effects combinations, Boss offers 10 amps and 30 effects that can be put together and saved to one of the Katana GO’s 30 user preset slots. Intriguingly for Waza-Air fans, the Katana Go also features a ‘Stage Feel’ control, which promises to use “advanced Boss spatial technology” to make you feel like you’re playing in a room instead of headphones, and there’s even a built-in tuner.

All this is tweaked and edited using a GO-specific version of Boss’s well-trodden Tone Studio app – which connects to your iOS or Android device using Bluetooth, and you can also save and store your favourite presets here too.

Is the Boss Katana GO easy to use?

As you would expect from a headphone amp, getting things set up here is a doddle – simply charge it up, press the power button, plug in some ‘phones and plug it into your guitar, and you’re off.

Everything is laid out intuitively, with the tuner being activated by pressing the up/down rocker, which in normal operation enables you to scroll through the 10 presets in each of the three banks (which have their own buttons on the side). In truth, the buttons are a little fiddly until you get used to them, and it’s frustrating that swapping between banks takes you to the equivalent preset, rather than the last one you used (i.e. if you’re on preset four of bank A, swapping to bank B will automatically move you to preset four of bank B). The tiny OLED screen helps here of course, and once you get used to them, it’s quite straightforward.

Pairing the audio and MIDI aspects requires two different Bluetooth connections, but they’re easy enough to set up and it’ll remember them next time. The Tone Studio app is as solid and powerful as usual, with the ability to tweak sounds, EQ and ‘Stage Feel’, download new sounds from the Tone Exchange library, and pair peripherals like Boss’ new wireless expression and foot controllers to really open up the sonic potential.

How does the Boss Katana GO sound?

Another thing that you might well need to do via the Tone Studio app before you really try to get anywhere is tweak the global EQ settings to suit the headphones you’re using – as this can make a significant difference to your enjoyment of the whole experience. My Sony noiseless over-ears sounded fine, but plugging in a set of old Apple EarPods required some easing off on the high-end to make things sound full and authentic.

The sounds themselves are so bountiful that you could easily lose an afternoon just scrolling through the almost overwhelming number of options – with dozens of quality recreations of choruses, phasers, flangers, reverbs, delays and dirt on tap.

There are 12 effects slots in all, but two are saved for EQ, one for a noise suppressor, one for pedal-controlled effects like wah, and another for a dedicated solo boost. It’s nice that there’s the option to run two delays simultaneously, but frustrating that there’s only one dirt option to cover boost, drive, fuzz and everything in between. In a world where everyone is gain-stacking, it would probably have been more useful to be able to run a Klon into a TS than it would to double-dip your SDE-3000 delay models (though that is fun, don’t get me wrong).

The ‘Stage Feel’ control appears to be a fancied-up room reverb (similar to the ‘room’ controls on pedal amps such as the Strymon Iridium and Walrus ACS1. Unsurprisingly, it’s not as convincing as the technology in the Waza-Air cans, but it does a nice job of making the sounds feel more room-y than you would expect, though it can feel a bit too much at higher settings.

Is the Boss Katana GO worth it?

The elephant in the room with this product isn’t necessarily the one that it’s presumably been created to take on; the Mustang Micro. If it was, I’d have no problem telling you that for an extra £20 the Katana GO offers so much more for your money that it’s a no-brainer. But there is a different elephant here, and its name is the Positive Grid Spark GO.

The smallest of all the Sparks doesn’t sound quite as good through headphones as the Katana GO, but it has a speaker that actually sounds good, meaning that should you wish you can unplug and enjoy the sound of your guitar in the actual room, not a pretend one. It seems churlish to damn a headphone amp for just being a headphone amp, but the reality is that the current entry-level amp market offers solutions that don’t tie you so slavishly to a pair of cans. Is this the best headphone amp on the market? Undoubtedly, but the question you have to ask yourself is – is that what I really need?

Boss Katana GO alternatives

If you only really vibe with Fender-style amps, the Mustang Micro ($99.99/£105) probably does a better job of emulating those sounds than the Katana, but with less versatility overall. If you want something that’s cheaper but still does the job, Vox’s AmPlug 3 ($49.99/£49) range offers single-amp sounds that do a fair job of the company’s iconic tones. The aforementioned stalking horse here is the hugely impressive Positive Grid Spark GO ($129/£129), which comes with a real speaker and a jamming app to boot.

If you’re looking for something more high-end, the Boss Waza-Air ($399/£369) is a pricey but impressive upgrade, while Yamaha’s new YH-WL500 wireless headphones ($349/£348) are designed for musical instruments, and promise to turn any amp with a headphone jack into a wireless practice dream.

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