General Interest

There’s clearly no love lost between ex-Van Halen bandmates Sammy Hagar and Alex Van Halen. With a new record reportedly in the works – and Toto’s Steve Lukather rumoured to be involved – Hagar’s absence seems all but guaranteed.

The former Van Halen singer has long criticised Alex for sidelining his era of the band in his book and for “not doing his brother’s musical legacy justice”.

Speaking with Rolling Stone last year, Hagar laid out the source of their acrimony: “I think Al’s angry because I’m out doing it, and Mike and I are out doing it, and he can’t. He’s not a singer. He’s not a guitar player. He is not really a band leader. And he seems like he doesn’t want to play drums or can’t play drums anymore, and he can’t go write a new record.”

• READ MORE: Michael Anthony thinks Alex Van Halen’s archival Van Halen album should be purely instrumental, “if they wanted to do it justice”

Now, in a new interview with Classic Rock, the 78-year-old Red Rocker likens his feud with Alex to the legendary rift within the Pink Floyd camp.

“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan. I see David Gilmour say: ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again’, and I know what he means,” says Hagar. “I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”

The singer also shares that he now feels “more comfortable” performing material from his own Van Halen era, particularly after Eddie Van Halen’s passing and Alex selling his drum kit.

“Because frickin’ Mike Anthony’s in the band I feel good about playing a lot of Van Halen stuff, cos no one will ever hear it again,” says Hagar. “And that was the biggest part of my career, and everybody’s career, for god’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”

Looking ahead, Hagar also remains candid about when he might finally retire from the microphone: “When I can’t sing any more. When I walk up to that microphone and I sound like some of those other guys out there touring, that will be it,” he says. “I can’t see that happening yet. I can hit a falsetto, I can sing low, I can do my screams, I can sing any song I’ve ever written. I’m still great at what I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this. And when I’m not, I won’t. But I still don’t have a plan.”

The post Sammy Hagar compares Alex Van Halen to Roger Waters, says he’ll never play with him again: “I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Lap steel guitars aren’t exactly known for radical reinvention. But every so often, something comes along that nudges the instrument in a new direction.

Enter the Verso Log, a quirky-looking slide guitar that turns one of the instrument’s most fixed components into something you can physically move around while you play.

• READ MORE: Laney’s new Prism-Mini is a pocket-sized smart amp ready to take on Positive Grid’s Spark GO

Described by its maker as a “universal playground for modern sound creation”, the Log’s defining feature is its freely movable magnetic pickup. Mounted magnetically to the body, it can be slid up and down the instrument to explore different tonal sweet spots along the scale.

“The pickup is no longer just a passive microphone but a creative part of your playing – all accessible through physical motion,” explains the brand. “Explore the entire scale with it and find an unheard spectrum of timbres and new playing techniques.”

Visually, the Log leans into its stripped-back aesthetic. The body is constructed from sheet metal – steel on top and stainless steel underneath – giving the instrument a distinctly industrial vibe while also making it extremely rigid. The steel top arrives in a striking Pop Lilac powder coat finish, contrasted with a raw stainless steel back.

Despite its unconventional looks, the Log sticks to a fairly traditional lap steel spec sheet. It features a 570mm (22.5″) scale length, six strings (.058–.013), and weighs around 2.3kg. The instrument works well with E or D tunings, as well as the classic A6 lap steel tuning.

The included pickup – dubbed the Magnet Mount LOG CUSTOM – is a specially designed single-coil with a slightly hotter wind than Verso’s standard models, clocking in at 7k. The pickup also features a thick steel baseplate designed to minimise magnetic interference with the fret markings and reduce body resonance and magnetic friction. Players can also opt to add a second pickup, which will then be wound as a humbucking pair.

Electronics are handled via two SMB pickup inputs and a switchable mono/stereo output, with a three-way switch allowing A, AB, or B configurations.

Up top, the headstock is made from high-density beech plywood, finished with linseed oil paint and fitted with six nickel-plated GEWA harp tuners. A tuning key is even clip-mounted inside the instrument for quick adjustments.

The Verso Log is priced at €699 and ships with an art print featuring a curated tuning chart on the back, and a foam-padded cardboard box.

Tempted? You might need to be patient. As the Log is a limited-run design by Kassel-based builder Robin Stummvoll, and due to high demand, current orders are closed – though prospective buyers can sign up to be notified when pre-orders reopen.

Learn more at Verso Instruments.

The post Verso Log: This funky-looking lap steel lets you slide the pickup around while you play appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival set is still the stuff of legend. The folk world collectively gasped when Dylan plugged in with a backing band, and the modified Telecaster played by guitarist Michael Bloomfield that day earned its infamous nickname: “the guitar that killed folk.”

Eastwood Guitars has now resurrected that iconic instrument for modern players in the form of the Mad Cat MB63.

• READ MORE: Myles Kennedy was worried about “tainting the history” of Jeff Buckley’s famous Telecaster when he used it onstage in 2019: “I truly didn’t feel worthy of it”

“The Eastwood Mad Cat MB63 tips its hat to one of the great troublemakers in guitar history”, says Eastwood. “The original wasn’t precious. It had that famously rough upper horn cutaway and a straight-to-the-point, workmanlike feel. It looked like someone simply decided it needed to be different, and made it so. That’s the spirit we wanted to keep.”

At its heart, the MB63 remains a no-nonsense single-cut Telecaster. It delivers the snap, bite, and clarity you’d expect, perfect for players who like their guitars a little rough around the edges and big on personality.

The Mad Cat MB63 sports a swamp ash body with a maple neck and a 12” rosewood fretboard, and comes loaded with Eastwood-branded single-coil pickups, a T-style chrome bridge, and vintage-style tuners. With a 25.5” scale, 20 jumbo frets, aged white dot inlays, and that famously gnarly upper cutaway, it’s built to look and feel pre-loved.

“With the MB63, we’ve recreated that unmistakable silhouette and given it a relic finish that feels honest rather than flashy. Taking inspiration from the vintage car world, we decided to add a clear coat over the distressed body finish to seamlessly blend the old with the new,” says Eastwood.

Priced at $1,399, the Mad Cat MB63 brings a piece of guitar history to your studio or stage.

Learn more at Eastwood Guitars.

The post “The guitar that killed folk”: Eastwood recreates the hacked-up Telecaster Michael Bloomfield played at Bob Dylan’s infamous Newport Folk Festival set appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s not every day a guitar company’s signature artist asks for cheap versions of his own model… just to tinker with them. Between launching his record label and releasing a new album, 71-year-old jazz icon Pat Metheny has found a decidedly unusual way to spend his downtime: transforming inexpensive versions of his signature guitar into private works of art.

• READ MORE: Myles Kennedy was worried about “tainting the history” of Jeff Buckley’s famous Telecaster when he used it onstage in 2019: “I truly didn’t feel worthy of it”

Speaking in the latest issue of Prog magazine, Metheny – who recently launched Uniquity Music and released his new studio album, Side-Eye III+ – gives a rare peek into his quirky hobby, explaining how these modest instruments become one-of-a-kind creations.

“I get Ibanez to send me these cheap, $400 PM358, the budget version of my signature model, and tell them not to put any finish on them,” the guitarist explains. “Then I set about them with a wood burner in various ways.”

As Metheny notes, the results are never meant for a stage or store display – they exist purely for his amusement. Asked if Ibanez knows what he’s getting up to with their guitars behind the scenes, he laughs: “They know how weird I actually am, so it probably wouldn’t surprise them.”

“I paint too; I do a lot of odd stuff. But I have no interest in sharing my artistic output with anyone.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Metheny turns his attention to the hot button topic of AI in music, describing the technology as “part of this wonderful array of tools we musicians have available in the 21st century” despite the anxieties surrounding it at large.

When asked if he worries about AI mimicking his music, Metheny shrugs.

“They’ve already done it. But if I type my name in then what I hear back is… well, they can’t really cop a lot of that stuff yet. OK, there’s a threat to the paying-the-rent part of music for sure. The guys who write muzak – man, they’re done. But I got into music so that I can understand it more, and there’s no shortcut to understanding harmony and counterpoint and improvisation.”

He sums it up philosophically: “The key thing about AI is that it’s still searching and there’s something missing. It’s like if you ask a musician to define ‘soul’, or you ask a neuroscientist to define ‘consciousness’. They can’t do it.”

Listen to Metheny’s latest album Side-Eye III+ below.

The post “They know how weird I am – so it wouldn’t surprise them!”: Pat Metheny gets Ibanez to send him “cheap” guitars for DIY projects – but keeps them on the down-low appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It used to be that the quickest thing about the Black Crowes was their tempers. Well, perhaps not anymore. Everything about A Pound of Feathers suggests a sense of speed and urgency – it’s the second record from the reunited brothers Robinson in under two years, and it was recorded in fewer than 10 days.

• READ MORE: Keo are proving that Gen Z still love guitar music: “We do feel like we’re on the tail of those bigger bands”
  

Its first song, the rollicking Profane Prophecy, slams out of the gate with spitting riffs and swagger to spare – it’s loose and freewheeling in a manner that felt beyond them as their initial run collapsed into acrimony and extended genre exercises. “We were winging it,” guitarist Rich Robinson says over Zoom. “That is what makes rock ’n’ roll rock ‘n’ roll, because it could go off the rails at any time.”

If 2024’s Happiness Bastards had enough about it to suggest that the Crowes had kicked free of the nostalgia circuit they briefly joined with reunion tours celebrating the 30th birthday of their 1990 star-making debut Shake Your Money Maker, then its successor punches everything up a few notches.

Returning to the studio with producer Jay Joyce in Nashville, A Pound of Feathers pointedly rejects the hermetically-sealed sound of many late-career rock records, which are seemingly intent on papering over any cracks left by the passage of time.

Instead, it is a gritty, grimy thing driven by a desire to capture the sound of people interacting with one another in real time, the mess and mayhem driving things on. “There’s a human element to writing and recording in that way,” Rich elaborates. “Humans are imperfect, humans speed up going into the chorus, because the chorus is exciting. It’s like, you breathe in, you breathe out, you know? Sometimes you walk, sometimes you run.”

Running Lean

After Happiness Bastards was captured alongside an all-new band comprising guitarist Nico Bereciartúa, keyboard player Erik Deutsch, drummer Brian Griffin and long-time bassist Sven Pipien, A Pound of Feathers underlines its zero-fat genesis by being the product of a bare-bones, three-piece version of the band, with Cully Symington on drums and Rich handling guitar and bass. Rich sees it as there being more than one way to skin a cat. “Chris and I move quickly,” he says. “We’ve been doing this for so long, the two of us, that we can read each other’s minds.”

“Jay was like, ‘I want you guys to come down for a week to 10 days, and let’s suss everything out.’ The idea was to bring the band in after that,” he adds. “But we were finishing songs. At the end of five days, we had nine that we were really happy with. Changing the dynamic, by bringing the band in, is going to alter the flow. You’re going to have to stop, reset and then try to recapture what everyone loves about these songs. So we just said, ‘Fuck it. Let’s keep going.’”

In the past, this decision-making process might not have worked out. Or, at least, it would have unearthed some of the interpersonal strife and insecurity that ran in parallel to the band’s imperial phase, when the Black Crowes were as well known for infighting as they were for the undeniable chemistry between the Robinsons – who were warring brothers before people knew who the Gallaghers were – drummer Steve Gorman, guitarist Marc Ford et al.

“I was 19 when I made Shake Your Money Maker,” Rich says. “We sold over seven million albums. One of the first shows we played was to 12 people in Atlanta. A year later, we’re playing in Moscow in front of a million people with AC/DC and Metallica. No one can really sit you down and explain how to deal with that.”

Throw a hellish touring schedule – 20 months or so on Shake Your Money Maker, straight into something in the same ballpark for its double platinum 1992 follow up The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion – plus drugs and ego collapse fuelled by exhaustion and you’ve got a potent mix that Rich describes as “dumping tons of gasoline on a fire”. In this environment, would anyone have been able to duck into a studio and make an album like A Pound of Feathers? “It would have been impossible,” Rich says. “Just to have the space to flush out our songs. Now, it’s different.”

“When we split up, it was years and years of toxicity: toxic family dynamic, toxic bullshit, backstabbing,” he continues. “People would go in the back lounge – Chris would be there and they’d say, ‘Your brother said you’re a dick.’ And then they’d come up to me and say, ‘Chris said you suck,’ or whatever bullshit that was. After we split up, we got offered tours every year for those six or seven years. We never took them. And when we decided maybe it’s time to get back, we randomly ran into each other and we talked about it. We decided this was a good idea, but we had to start from scratch. We decided to put our relationship first.”

Sibling Harmony

That relationship is front and centre on the record itself, which is musically pugilistic instead of literally pugilistic. Chris sounds great, all louche drawl and rat-a-tat phrasing, and Rich matches his energy with lean, mean garage-rock riffs on songs such as Do The Parasite! and It’s Like That. The first of his firecracker leads arrives only six seconds into the opening track.

“It’s youthful,” he says. “Some sessions that I’ve done with people producing, when you deal with older bands, their first thing is, ‘don’t overplay.’ Let’s leave space for the vocalist, and if you’re the bass player, just play the root note on the kick, you know? I’m like, ‘Bullshit!’ Our favourite records were made by 20-year-olds showing the fuck off. Listen to John Paul Jones on Ramble On. Listen to Jimmy Page. Listen to the Rolling Stones – no one is conserving energy on those records. They’re psyched to be there and they’re going to show you what they can do.”

Leaning further into the fast and furious nature of things, Rich cycled through guitars at a clip in order to create variety as a single player laying down two or three tracks per song. “I brought, like, 40 guitars into the studio, and about 30 amps,” he says. In heavy rotation were his trio of 335s – a ‘61, a ‘62 and a ‘68 – plus roughly 10 Telecasters and a ‘64 Rose Morris Rickenbacker. For solos, he often turned to his ‘68 Les Paul Goldtop, while his signature Gretsch G6136T-RR Magpie underpins the rumbling, sinister blues of the closer Doomsday Doggerel.

For Rich, tone-chasing begins and (almost) ends with an amp, to the extent that a couple of years ago he started Muswell Amplification with his guitar tech Roland McKay, building on the sound of his 1968 Marshall Bluesbreaker. “I believe that an amp sound is paramount,” he says. “Some people like to get their tones out of pedals, which is really weird to me. If you get a great amp sound, then any pedal is going to sound markedly better. I did use pedals, some fuzz on stuff, but the amp is king.”

“I had my ‘68 Bluesbreaker, a ‘66 Bluesreaker, my Vox AC30, Twins, tweed Princetons, my Vibrolux, and my Muswell amps – we like to explore,” he adds. “I think the difference in the tones this time around is that a lot of the amps I have are combos, and they’re open-backed. Jay had bought this old greenback Marshall 4×12 and this thing sounds fucking amazing. It was literally one of the best cabinets I’ve ever heard. He has it dialled in. I wound up plugging all my different amps through that, and it is a nastier tone.”

Unplugged Gems

But, while A Pound of Feathers is in its element as a flat-out rock record, its acoustic songs are equally important in driving home the philosophy behind its construction. On Pharmacy Chronicles, for example, you can get a sense of the space and atmosphere in the room itself, and almost feel the percussive nature of the guitar. To return to a phrase Rich uses multiple times during the course of our chat, the way the situation is mic’d makes it sound human. “That was a J-200, which I’ve never recorded with before,” Rich says. “I bought one, and I got two more because they’re so cool.”

“They’re two 1964 J-200s – one had a nickel bridge, and then one had, I guess it was a vinyl bridge or something like that, a plasticky kind of thing,” he continues. “Jimmy Page told me that Donovan had one like that. Everyone loved it because it was darker, and it resonated, so everyone would borrow Donovan’s guitar. The nickel projects a little better, it’s a lot brighter. I’ve always loved Martins. I have a signature Martin and I’ve always loved dreadnought guitars – I’ve stayed away from jumbos because it’s been hard to find some that I really gel with. But, man, these three are really amazing.”

More than four decades on from the Crowes’ formation as a high school band, Chris and Rich Robinson are still finding out new things about themselves, still figuring stuff out on the fly. For now, too, it’s all in service of having fun. “I think that is missing when people record 20 verses, take the best one, and then they grid it out,” Rich observes. “It’s called playing music. It’s not called working music.”

The Black Crowes’ A Pound of Feathers is out March 13 via Silver Arrow Records.

The post Rich Robinson on why the Black Crowes channeled the spirit of “20-year-olds showing the f**k off” on their new album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Virtuoso and former Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse has opened up about his struggles with arthritis in recent years, and how he remains determined to continue playing despite the pain.

In 2024, Morse explained how “10,000 notes a day” of practice for “decades” – combined with a genetic history of arthritis – means his fingers “don’t have the cartilage anymore”, leading to pain while playing guitar.

• READ MORE: Myles Kennedy was worried about “tainting the history” of Jeff Buckley’s famous Telecaster when he used it onstage in 2019: “I truly didn’t feel worthy of it”

Now, in a new interview with American Musical Supply, the 71-year-old guitarist tells the story of how he once watched a bassist with one arm perform live, and how the memory keeps him inspired despite his own health issues.

“I thought at one point, ‘Dude, you’re done,’” Morse says [via Blabbermouth]. “And I thought, when I was a kid going to see bands in Atlanta, it was a three-hour drive, a band called Hydra came out. The bass player, his arm was cut off here. And he was playing the gig and he was getting into it, and it was great… 

“Every time I’m feeling bad about, ‘This hurts…’ he played a gig with a nub. And you think about [jazz guitarist] Jeff Healey [being] blind and making his own technique.”

Morse continues: “Humans adapt. And I’ve learned a lot from watching things on the farm, watching the ants, for instance… I’m like Bill Murray with the groundhogs. The persistence of the animals counts. They keep on and on and they find a way. But they never stop. I guess that’s one of my big lessons, is don’t give up while you’ve still got a breath.”

Steve Morse adds that he’s tried “every treatment” he can find in a bid to help his arthritis condition.

“The reason why I wanna keep playing is because it really is a part of me – I mean, it’s a big part of me…” he explains.

“I’ve tried every treatment I can find. In fact, I’ve got another trip a thousand miles away to try something else. So, yeah, I changed my technique, changed my picking pattern, changed everything that I can to make it through whatever the challenge is.”

The post “He played a gig with a nub”: Steve Morse remembers watching a one-armed bassist perform – and how it inspires him to keep playing despite arthritis struggles appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Andy Hicks’ path to becoming a guitar craftsman—from overachieving student to Fender Custom Shop Master Builder—can be traced back to age 11 or 12, when a friend introduced him to Nirvana’s In Utero. Hicks had grown up savoring his dad’s eclectic record collection—everything from the Beatles to jazz standards to Black Sabbath. But as he soaked in the noisy strains of songs like “Serve the Servants” and “Scentless Apprentice,” it felt like “something was unlocking” in his brain.

“It was a band my parents didn’t know about,” Hicks recalls. “It was this secret. It’s kind of edgy, so do I tell them about this?’ I remember being nervous: ‘The band is Nirvana, and here’s the album cover [which shows a transparent anatomical mannequin].’ My dad was like, ‘Let’s go buy every record of theirs.’ A couple weeks later, I’ve got the entire discography and t-shirts and everything. I was just so fascinated by Kurt Cobain as an artist, and I was the perfect age for that music to resonate with me.”

But this resonance went even deeper than most kids bewitched by the brooding “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. In that clip, Hicks happened to notice Cobain was playing a Fender Mustang—not that he knew anything about his future employer as a pre-teen. “That video made me want to play guitar,” he says. “I was like, ‘That looks so cool.’ I knew he played a Fender, but I didn’t know any Fender models or anything. For my birthday, my parents took me to Guitar Center and I got my first: a made-in-Mexico three-tone sunburst Strat. I just fell in love with the guitar.”

In the decades since, Hicks—a former member of the doom-metal band Stygian Crown—has forgotten more about the instrument than most people ever learn. But in a way, his wealth of knowledge hasn’t really altered his perspective all that much, either as a builder or a musician: Instead of chasing trendy guitar gimmicks or seeking out some unattainably perfect tone, he’s just aiming for empowerment.

“My formative years were spent learning how to use my hands to make the sounds I wanted to make,” he says. “Years later, I look back at that as being such a blessing. As a builder, I’m not sucked into the misinformation pool about tone wood and all of these little minute changes to something that people think is gonna make this huge change in the instrument. It’s more, ‘Let me make the best-feeling instrument for you,’ because the tone is ultimately going to come from you. I can’t make you have the tone that you want. That’s freeing as a builder, and I think it’s freeing for the player, too.”

After getting his hands on that first Strat, he was obsessed. But not necessarily with gear. Back at home with his little 25-watt amp, he realized too late that he needed effects pedals to emulate his heroes: “I have this vision of going home and playing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’” he says. “‘Why doesn’t my guitar sound like that guitar?’” But even after experimenting with “a million” options, he learned a crucial lesson: “After having a distortion pedal, it was like, ‘I still don’t sound like Black Sabbath.’” He eventually found his own path, falling in love with heavy metal and taking any chance he could to practice.

“I wanted the guitar to be as involved in my life as it could possibly be forever,” he says. “In high school, the only guitar class they taught was Introduction to Guitar. I was beyond ‘introduction,’ but I explained to the teacher: ‘I’m just looking for a place where I can come play. If I don’t learn anything new, I’m gonna teach myself stuff. Can I take this class?’ I took it for a semester. When it was over, I said, ‘Can I sign up again?’ He was like, ‘Uh, I guess.’ I took it for two straight years, for four semesters.” That same devotion followed him into college, where he played in bands but also envisioned a life as a teacher and water polo coach. The itch, it turns out, was too strong to not eventually scratch.

“The tone is ultimately going to come from you. I can’t make you have the tone that you want.”

“My roommates would always say, ‘Why aren’t you a music major?’” he recalls. “I knew some music majors, and it sometimes seemed too clinical, the way they would talk about music. I didn’t know if that part of the guitar would give me joy. For a long time, it was, ‘I’ll have some other career, and the guitar will always be there for me to come home and decompress with.’”

He got the push he needed from his future wife. “I came home from work,” he says, “and she told me, ‘I don’t think you love what you’re doing. I think you love guitar. There’s a school in Hollywood [called the Musicians Institute].’ At this point, I was tinkering with guitars all the time. I wanted to make my guitars feel better, and I didn’t have the money to have somebody constantly adjust these things for me, swapping out pickups or whatever. When we came home [from touring the school], I was like, ‘I have to do this.’ I signed up and started there the next semester [in 2009].”

He learned a lot in the Guitar Craft Academy program, focusing six months on the electric guitar and impressing one of the instructors, longtime Fender employee Dave Maddux. “He was the first person to say to me, ‘Judging by the builds you’ve done in school, I think you could make a good go at this,’” Hicks says. “He put me in contact with some people, and when I graduated, I had a job lined up at Jackson Custom Shop, where I shaped necks and did fretwork. That’s been a main focus my whole career: making the neck feel as good as possible.”

He bounced around a bit at Jackson, including a stint on the Fender production line. But these early days were anything but boring: He was only on the job for a few weeks, working on necks for the EVH Wolfgang, when he first met Eddie Van Halen, who was on site with master builders Chip Ellis (Fender) and Mike Shannon (Jackson).

“I wanted the guitar to be as involved in my life as it could possibly be forever.”

“It’s Fender—we have tours all the time,” Hicks says. “This guy comes over, leaning on me, and he looks like some dad wearing a baseball hat. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, Eddie Van Halen is just standing here watching us work.’ The guy I was working with was in the middle of complaining: ‘Man, these stainless steel frets. With just these Wolfgangs, we’ve gotta do 12 stainless steel necks today.’ Eddie [playfully] said something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry my guitar is such a pain in the butt.’ It was incredible.” (The story has a full-circle coda: Toward the end of Hicks’ run at Jackson, Van Halen held a friends-and-family show at the Forum, and the virtuoso gave +1s to everyone who worked on his guitars. “My dad was sitting next to Tom Morello, telling him that his son made Eddie Van Halen’s guitar,” he says with a laugh. “I had to say, ‘Dad, please stop talking to Tom Morello. And also, I didn’t make his guitar. Chip made his guitar. I make Wolfgang guitars.’ He was so excited to talk to somebody, and he just happened to be talking to Tom Morello.”)

After a couple years at Jackson, Hicks “got noticed a little bit” and made the jump over to the Gretsch Custom Shop, where he earned his stripes as a “guitar detective,” helping with a meticulous recreation of Malcolm Young’s “Salute” Jet. Gretsch initially thought they’d have access to the AC/DC icon’s original axe—but after both Young and his tech suffered health issues, they were left only with photos, dimensional specs, and a lot of question marks.

“There were a lot of things that had been done to it over the years,” Hicks recalls. “It had one pickup in it and three knobs. What do those do? No one could really tell us. During some of my digging, I contacted a guitar shop in Melbourne, Australia, that had it in there before a tour. They took photos of it just for fun, so they sent me a bunch of them. That’s how I learned about the weird tone caps that they had in it—they were like wah-pedal tone caps instead of normal tone caps. It was essentially two master volumes and a tone. That’s the fun stuff of doing an instrument like that.”

“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know if I’m growing anymore.’ I didn’t like that feeling.”

Hicks grew super comfortable at Gretsch—almost too comfortable. “I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know if I’m growing anymore,’” he says. “I didn’t like that feeling. I didn’t want to wait around anymore to see if it’s going to be my turn.” When he got an offer to run production at the high-end manufacturer James Tyler Guitars, he leapt at the opportunity—finding a mentor in the titular builder, who “ran his shop like a pirate” and followed his gut above all else. “When everyone was doing the roasted necks, he was like, ‘I don’t really like how it sounds, so we’re not doing it,’” he says. “I remember some of his finance guys saying, ‘We can charge more.’ But he didn’t care.” After Tyler’s health took a turn, Hicks wound up running production and building simultaneously, often working two shifts a day to help steer the ship opposite general manager Rich Renken. This was another valuable learning moment, but he felt like there was unfinished business back at his old stomping grounds.

After a serendipitous phone call with Fender’s Ron Thorn, who told him a spot was opening up at the Custom Shop, that feeling only solidified. “As soon as Ron said this, it was like, ‘That’s the thing. I have to know if I can do it,’” Hicks recalls. “I think I left Tyler in good hands, so there were no bad feelings. It was an emotional day, coming in here, being welcomed back. It was an interesting first day, too, because you know everyone’s name. [laughs] It just felt right. It felt like coming home.”

He returned with a wealth of knowledge, but none of it prepared him for one particular build: making a new model for his favorite guitarist of all time, Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray. “It was completely insane,” he says. “They were about to start this multi-year tour and wanted another guitar. I was working really closely with his tech, fine-tuning his model a little bit.” He decked the bridge, adjusted the neck angle, oil-finished the neck—tailoring it as best he could to Murray’s preferences. Despite all that hard work, it was still tense waiting for feedback. “I shipped it off and got an email a couple days later from Dave,” he recalls. “It just said ‘Regarding the guitar’ [in the subject line], and it’s a Schrödinger’s cat situation: ‘I’m gonna open this email, and one of two things happens: He either likes the guitar, and that’s good, or he doesn’t like it, and now what do I do?’ He said how much he loved it. His guitar tech reached out and said it was going to be his number-one for the tour. And now we’ve announced that we’re launching the master-built version of that.”

Hicks once envisioned the guitar dominating his life—and between his day job and his own creative pursuits, that’s pretty much come true. “The bigger balancing act,” he says, “is learning how to turn the guitar off for a little bit when I’m at home with my kids,” he says. Those worlds are colliding even more than usual now, though, as his nine-year-old son is taking guitar lessons. (The kid has access to a pretty sweet setup, too, including Hicks’ Fender Tone Master Pro workstation and Tone Master FR-12 amp. Plus, he’s playing what Hicks calls “the nicest 3/4-scale Squier in the entire world,” after his hours of re-fretting and tweaking.)

Back home at Fender, Hicks is master-building the life he always wanted: “Man,” he says, “it’s been a dream come true.”

Right now at Sweetwater you can save over $1,000 on a range of PRS 40th anniversary Custom 24 models until the end of March.

These 40th Anniversary Custom 24 guitars are reduced to $5,822.50 and are available in four different finishes: Sub Zero (blue) and Tiger Eye (brown), plus a Micro Wraparound Burst version of each. Granted, these guitars aren’t cheap, but they’re top-of-the-line instruments, and $1,000s in savings is nothing to be sniffed at…

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The PRS 40th Anniversary Custom 24 offers a mahogany body and an Artist Grade figured maple top. It has a mahogany neck and a compact Pattern Thin profile, a 10-inch-radius ziricote fingerboard, and Old School Birds inlays.

• READ MORE: “It just seemed Looney Tunes to me”: Paul Reed Smith dismisses the notion that you “can’t play solos” on a 7.25”-radius fretboard

Each is also fitted with two of PRS’s DMO humbuckers and has a five-way blade pickup switch. Topped off with PRS Phase III locking tuners, a Gen III tremolo bridge, and a pre-factory headstock eagle inlay, only 400 of these guitars were made available worldwide, and Sweetwater says it only received 26.

PRS celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. In honour of its special birthday celebrations, PRS held a get together with 1,400 artists and music industry personnel at California’s House of Blues, where they were treated to an evening of performances by PRS’s extensive roster of talent. Hosted in conjunction with NAMM 2025, the exclusive event saw the likes of John Mayer, Mark Lettieri, Orianthi and others performing.

Later, when speaking to Andertons, founder Paul Reed Smith spoke of the brand’s signature tone: “We’re starting up the beginning of PRS having its own sound,” he said. “So, there’s sounds of Les Pauls, there’s sounds of Strats and Sounds of Teles, and maybe there’s a side table of SGs and Gretches and this and the other, Danelectros… But we’re starting to get our own tone and it’s starting to be acknowledged.

“The party last night was about that. There weren’t Tele tones or…Well, there might have been some Strat tones, maybe. Really beautiful ones. John’s solo in Gravity last night was spectacular.”

Shop this deal and more at Sweetwater.

The post Save $1,000s on these stunning PRS 40th anniversary Custom 24 guitars at Sweetwater! appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Fender has expanded its lineup of utility pedals with the Strobo-Sonic – a new “ultra-precise” tuner pedal with ±0.01 cent accuracy.

Built for performing musicians and professionals, the Strobo-Sonic also features a large, high-visibility 2.3″ x 2.1″ LED display with auto brightness dimming for low-light environments, and operates in two modes, Strobe and Needle.

• READ MORE: Laney’s new Prism-Mini is a pocket-sized smart amp ready to take on Positive Grid’s Spark GO

Strobe tuning is a tuning method by which a strobe light illuminates a pattern – often on a rotating disk, or a digital equivalent, as is the case with the Fender Strobo-Sonic Pro Tuner – which spins or moves at a rate corresponding to a specific pitch. The pattern appears to freeze when the string is perfectly in tune. It’s regarded as the most accurate way to tune a guitar.

The Strobo-Sonic also features a Needle mode, offering a more familiar tuning experience for many players.

It also sports convenient side switches offering deep control over reference pitch – this is adjustable between A = 430Hz and 450Hz – plus three bypass modes: true bypass, buffered bypass and buffered always-on.

The Strobo-Sonic also occupies a pedalboard-friendly form factor, measuring 115mm x 66mm x 44mm and weighing just half a pound.

“Made for the stage, the pedalboard-friendly tuner offers a high-visibility display, two easily trackable tuning display modes, and accessible side switches for deeper control – perfect for players of all skill levels,” says Fender.

The Strobo-Sonic Pro Tuner is available now, priced at $129.99 / £95. For more info, head to Fender.

The post Fender’s new Strobo-Sonic Pro Tuner pedal uses strobe tuning for “ultra-precise” ±0.01 cent accuracy appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Being a hugely successful guitarist – in Alter Bridge and alongside Slash, plus as an accomplished solo and session musician – Myles Kennedy has had access to some truly special instruments over the course of his career.

Kennedy recently explained how he got “emotional” when he had the chance to hold Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar while tracking the latest Alter Bridge album at 5150 Studios. And now, he’s remembered a Paris performance back in 2019 in which he covered Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, while holding the late guitarist’s 1983 Telecaster.

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

The performance came during an Alter Bridge set at L’Olympia in Paris, France on 9 December 2019, and as Kennedy explains, his veneration of Jeff Buckley had him questioning whether he was even “worthy” to hold his guitar.

“Grace [Jeff Buckley’s only album, which came out in 1994] is an album that gave me the same feeling as hearing [Van Halen’s] Eruption, with my brain wondering, ‘Whoa, what’s happening here?!’” Kennedy explains. 

“I also felt that way when I heard Julian Lage. Playing Jeff’s guitar was amazing, though I truly didn’t feel worthy of it. I was a little uncomfortable, to be honest.

“I gradually convinced myself that it was okay. It’s just a guitar that’s part of this incredible history. All I had to do was not taint that history!”

You can check out a pro-shot video of that now-famous performance below:

As for what technically makes Buckley’s ‘83 Telecaster so special, Kennedy goes on: “It’s just an early-to-mid ‘80s Tele, but there’s something weird about how the pickup was wired. 

“Apparently, there’s something technically wrong with it, at least from what [Matt’s Guitar Shop owner] Matt Lucas explained to me. That’s what gives it that beautiful shimmery sound. It’s all down to this imperfection, which makes it even cooler. When you plug it in, you think, ‘Oh yeah, there’s that sound!’”

Despite Alter Bridge’s enduring success, Myles Kennedy and his bandmates remain astutely aware of the rich rock history of some of the studios they record in and instruments they get to play.

The band recorded their self-titled new album at LA’s 5150 – the studio once owned by Eddie Van Halen and now operated by his son Wolfgang.

“Wolf was incredibly kind enough to bring that offer up with our manager,” Kennedy recently explained. 

“We were like, ‘Really?’ We knew the history of all the incredible music that had been made there. Just the fact that he trusted us enough to come in and not totally ruin the legacy really meant a lot. When we all showed up, we were very cognisant of that, and we wanted to honour the situation.

View a list of Alter Bridge’s upcoming tour dates at their official website. Listen to the new Alter Bridge album below:

The post Myles Kennedy was worried about “tainting the history” of Jeff Buckley’s famous Telecaster when he used it onstage in 2019: “I truly didn’t feel worthy of it” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Portable all-in-one digital practice amps are all the rage right now, and a new contender to Positive Grid’s Spark GO has arrived in the form of Laney’s Prism-Mini – a compact desktop smart amp packed with presets, onboard effects and Bluetooth connectivity.

At its core, the Prism-Mini aims to be a self-contained tone playground for guitarists who want big sounds without the bulk. Despite its small size, the amp comes loaded with 100 presets, split between 50 factory patches and 50 user slots, giving players plenty of room to explore and store their own signature tones.

• READ MORE: It’s time you ditched your tube amp for a modeller: this is why you should do it

Laney says its factory presets are far from generic placeholders. Instead, they’re carefully crafted tones inspired by the sounds of notable Laney players including Tony Iommi, Billy Corgan, Devin Townsend, Lari Basilio, Tom Quayle and Jack Gardiner – offering quick starting points for everything from doom-laden Sabbath grind to modern prog and fusion tones.

Players can choose from 17 amp models, covering everything from crystal-clean tones to full high-gain firepower, alongside 32 studio-style effects spanning drive, EQ, modulation, delay and reverb.

The unit allows up to six DSP effects to run simultaneously alongside the amp and cabinet models. Those effects can be freely arranged using Laney’s Tone Wizard companion app, which lets players drag and drop blocks anywhere in the signal chain. From the app, users can edit patches, manage presets and control the amp remotely, as well as import and export tones for easy storage and sharing.

Notably, those sounds are delivered through a surprisingly serious speaker setup for a practice 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. In other words, it’s built for more than just quiet bedroom noodling.

A 1.77” full-colour LCD screen on the amp itself provides quick access to presets and parameters, while Bluetooth 5.3 allows players to stream backing tracks directly from a phone or tablet. The app also includes a built-in drum machine, while the amp itself packs a tuner and Bluetooth audio streaming, making it easy to jam along with backing tracks or your favourite records.

If it isn’t already obvious, portability is a key part of the design. A rechargeable battery provides up to 14 hours of playtime, so the amp can travel easily from desk practice to dressing-room warmups without needing a wall socket. USB-C charging keeps things simple, and despite the compact build, Laney says the amp still delivers “rich stereo depth” and a tone that feels “unmistakably Laney”.

Priced at $149, the Laney Prism-Mini is available now in Blue or Black colourway.

Learn more at Laney.

The post Laney’s new Prism-Mini is a pocket-sized smart amp ready to take on Positive Grid’s Spark GO appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Buyer’s remorse is a familiar tale for many guitarists, but Jake E Lee knows the opposite: the regret of passing on a guitar that just felt right. The former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist recently shared the story of a Telecaster he once let slip – and how he still thinks about it decades on.

In a new interview with Guitarist, Lee recounts his strongest case of buyer’s remorse: “About 20 years ago, I was in a local guitar shop, looking to see what they had, and there was nothing new but this ‘67 Telecaster. And I don’t like Telecasters. I don’t like the way they sound. I don’t like the way they look. I have no fondness for Telecasters at all. But I picked this one up anyway and it felt really good, so I plugged it in. It sounded really good and I had a connection with it.”

• READ MORE: “It’s noisy, it’s crap, and we f**king love it”: Max Cavalera was so bad at guitar for Sepultura’s first gig, the guitarist from another band offered to tune his guitar for him

Despite the instant spark, Lee hesitated.

“But I put it back down and said, ‘I don’t really like Teles… I don’t even know why I picked it up,’” he says. “Two days later, I went back in there because I couldn’t quit thinking about it and it just felt right, but they’d sold it already. So that’s a different kind of buyer’s remorse, right? Maybe we’d call that no-buyer’s remorse [laughs]. I still think about that Tele every once in a while… there was just a connection there. I really wish I’d bought it.”

Lee’s regrets aren’t limited to Telecasters. Over the years, there’s been a long list of guitars he wishes he’d held on to.

“How long have you got?! I had a ’56 Les Paul Junior and a ’67 ES-335 that I wish I’d held on to. I wish I still had my original SG that I sold in the 90s, too. The list is too long and too sad,” he says.
Elsewhere, Lee also shares some sage advice for guitarists searching for that elusive “ultimate” instrument. His tip is simple, but it comes from decades of trial, error, and hard-earned lessons.

“Play it, don’t just hope for the best,” Lee says. “With older guitars, there are some that are really special and some that are just okay – you have to play those first. But I’ve bought new guitars online, like an Eastwood Messenger like [the Musicraft model] Mark Farner used to play with Grand Funk Railroad. If it’s a new guitar, the quality is gonna be pretty standard.”

Returning to the Telecaster story, the guitarist sums up why hands-on experience matters: “Going back to that Tele I mentioned before, I never would have thought about buying that guitar – and I should have bought that guitar – if I hadn’t tried it. That’s why you need to try a guitar. Sometimes you get a connection where you just feel it, like it’s the right one. And sometimes you’ll pick up a guitar that you’re sure will be the right one and it’s not there.”

The post “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 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After a short break in our series taking a look at some of the choice offerings from NotPedals.com, we’re returning to the shelves of that ever-so-cool small builder marketplace to take a look at the Galahcore FX Ploverdrive – an interesting overdrive pedal with some uniquely Australian aviary inspiration.

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

The Ploverdrive is inspired by the masked lapwing, AKA the spur-winged plover. It’s an Aussie bird that’s known for defensively swooping at anything or anyone that threatens its nest – even, in some cases, airplanes. This aggressive territorial control is aided by its spurs – sharp outcrops of bone on its wings’ carpal joints that can make a curious cat’s day a lot worse.

In all it’s a good basis for thematically mapping onto an overdrive pedal, as the heart of the unit is the Spur control – a highly interactive tone control that gives the Ploverdrive a lot of its character. I’ll get onto the specifics of its functioning in a moment. The Spur control is joined by the more standard and self-explanatory gain and volume controls, with no other switches, leading to a pretty straightforward three-knob drive format housed in a 1590bb-sized enclosure adorned with some gorgeous art by Conrad Keely of the band …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

Build quality, along with the quality of the art’s printing, is top-notch – component selection tends towards the sturdy and the high-end. Jacks connect with a satisfying and firm clunk, and the potentiometers offer the kind of resistance that indicates a quality part. Everything else is all pretty within the remit of a ‘standard’ pedal – mono, 9V pedal power, so it’s time to plug in and get going.

In use

When I first fire up the Ploverdrive, I happen to have the Spur control all the way ‘down’ and the gain all the way up. There are few better ways to wake up in the morning – the Spur control, a little like a RAT’s filter, is wired ‘backwards’, in that anticlockwise means a brighter, more focused and more resonant sound. Combined with the higher gain setting its a very punchy sound indeed, and per the manual is voiced more for brightening up a neck pickup.

On the bridge pickup that brightening effect is a little too effective, but on the neck humbucker of a Telecaster Deluxe the Ploverdrive does indeed add a lot of clarity – impressive given that this is a pickup that can quickly overwhelm a gainy amp.

Rolling the Spur all the way to the soft, fluffy, not-yet-flying-baby-bird side of the dial, and things get more interesting still. Here you’ll find the basis of a great sound for warm, wooly leads – the sound is very rounded, no matter the pickup, and does invite some more singing, Claptony style playing – here, higher gain settings accentuate its smooth, sustaining character, rather than the sonic stabs of the less friendly side of the Spur control.

And speaking of gain – there’s a lot of it! We’re still firmly in overdrive territory here, it’s no HM-2, but atop a relatively clean sound from a Marshall-style amplifier, the Ploverdrive can add a decent amount of thick saturation by itself. However, in backing off the gain control and setting the Spur to something less extreme, the sound remains very characterful and perhaps shines a more flattering spotlight on the operation of the Spur control. The amount of volume on tap can absolutely invite the front end of your amp to the party too – which is always a good combo with a mid-gain overdrive that manages to keep things dynamic. Set right the Ploverdrive will be extremely honest as to how hard you’ve hit your strings.

But enough restraint – doesn’t this bird attack airplanes? Setting the Ploverdrive back to its aggressive stance and feeding it into a more gainy amp, even more avenues for Ploverdriven goodness open up. The slightly resonant ring to the brighter side of the Spur control means that for “chugging” it may not be the most ideal pedal – through faster playing your ear does tend to latch onto the more static factor of that resonant beak. Er, peak.

However, if you put a more generic metal sound out of your head for a moment you get an excellent tone for clanking noise rock in the vein of The Jesus Lizard and Shellac. The sharpness of the more extreme settings becomes a feature not a bug if you play it right – and the fact that the pedal remains dynamic the whole way up the gain lets you still express yourself through it, but the fact that its EQ curve is very much not flat and transparent remains a boon for this kind of music.

Should I buy a Ploverdrive?

Overall the Ploverdrive is an affordable but creatively-designed pedal that is easy to learn, and hard to master, in a very good way. The spur and gain controls are quite interactive with each other, and so I was still finding new sounds within the thing days into my testing. And that’s not to mention that it very much won me over by coming with a nanoblocks model of a bird, which, you know, more pedals could stand to do. If you like an overdrive that’s ready to make its presence known with an aggressive caw and an ambitious swoop at a Cessna, you won’t be disappointed in the Ploverdrive.

Check the pedal out at notpedals.com.

The post Galahcore FX Ploverdrive review: focused boutique overdrive can help a board take flight appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Most exciting new innovations in acoustic guitar have to do with the top, like new bracing systems, double tops, etc. This makes sense, because this is the main sound-producing component of the instrument. But a guitar is a whole system of parts that work together to produce sound, and the sides of the guitar play a significant role in this.

From an engineering perspective, there are two functions of guitar sides: first, to hold the structure of the guitar together and bear some of the tension of the strings; second, to transfer vibrations from the top to the back.

Traditional guitar sides are composed of a single layer of wood, which is bent into shape using heat. Then, kerfed liners are used to glue the sides to the top and back. This is the simplest way to construct sides, and it’s also the lightest method, since it involves the least wood. However, a single thin layer of wood is prone to cracking.

That’s not the only downside of traditional acoustic sides. They also absorb some of the energy of the vibrating top and back, which has a damping effect on the guitar, analogous to brake dampers in a car. Damping decreases the loudness and sustain of the guitar. To reduce the amount of damping, guitar sides should be as stiff as possible (without being too heavy) so that they transmit vibrations, rather than absorb them. This is the goal of structured sides.

A logical way to increase the rigidity of the sides is to extend the top and bottom liners, making one big liner that spans the whole depth of the sides. This means the whole area of the side is reinforced, which in effect makes structured sides a type of laminated construct, with two plies. One ply is the outer “show” wood, and the other is the kerf bent piece that lines the inside. In general, lamination increases the rigidity of wood and helps counteract any internal stresses that may be present in one of the plies.

Several builders have contributed to the development of structured sides. Based on my research, the two-ply version was invented by Sheldon Schwartz. Another luthier, Allan Beardsell, then brought the idea to the workshop of Sergei de Jonge. While working at de Jonge’s shop, two founders of the Mile End Guitar Coop (Michael Kennedy and Jeremy Clark) learned about the technique. When they went on to found the coop, they took this technique with them and continued to experiment.

The next evolution was to add a third layer to the sides, thus making them even more stiff. This method was developed by Kennedy and Clark at the coop, and it’s currently the method that most of us in the coop use—the name “structured sides” comes from someone here. There are three plies: the outer show wood, the inner kerf bent layer, and a final thin layer on the inside of the guitar. The outermost and innermost layers are thin, solid pieces of hardwood. The inner kerf component is made of a lighter softwood, like cedar.

The physics of our three-ply sides are comparable to an I-beam. The stiffness of an I-beam comes from the two outer flanges. The middle section doesn’t add much rigidity; it simply holds the two flanges at a distance apart. The greater this distance, the more rigid your sides. Similarly, the inner kerf layer functions as a spacer for the outermost and innermost layers. This makes the sides much stiffer than if the two solid layers were glued directly together, meaning that structured sides have a higher stiffness-to-weight ratio than simply laminated sides. This also means that structured sides make the guitar more efficient by reducing the damping effect of the sides!

As a bonus, structured sides increase durability, doing a better job of supporting the body against the forces of string tension, so the back of the guitar can bear less of this stress. They also protect against side cracks and other damage; it takes a pretty big bump to the side of the guitar to get through all three plies.

Although structured sides were intended for acoustic guitars, I’ve been using the technique to build laminated banjo rims. This makes the banjo significantly lighter than a traditional solid rim. Recently, I built a tackhead banjo that weighed just 3.2 pounds when fully strung up!

All this said, I think there’s still plenty more room to experiment with sides. Maybe another filler material like Nomex could be used instead of the kerf layer. Maybe other instruments, like mandolins or upright basses, could benefit from structured sides? I look forward to seeing what the future holds for this technique!

Q: How do you know when the record is finished?

A: When the budget runs out.

It’s an old studio joke, but it sticks around because it points at something deeper than money. Budgets don’t just limit time—they force commitment. And nowhere is that more obvious than during the recording process, when the record still feels malleable enough to become anything.

That sense of possibility is intoxicating. It’s also dangerous.

I’ve lived this from both sides of the glass—first as a signed artist, aware of how the clock quietly ate into my recording money, and later as a producer watching artists wrestle with the same invisible tension. At some point, the record has to stop being an idea and start being a document.

Early in a tracking session, performances tend to arrive with a kind of clarity that’s hard to manufacture later. Musicians are alert. Intentions are strong. The red light still carries weight. You hear phrasing that commits, dynamics that breathe, and little mistakes that feel wonderfully human. The song is being captured, not negotiated.

Then something subtle shifts. Takes get more refined—and usually safer. Players start listening backward instead of playing forward. Energy gives way to self-correction. Suddenly the band is performing for the playback instead of for the moment. Technically, things may improve, but past a certain point the music begins to suffer. This is the point where the studio can easily stop being a temple of documentation and become a laboratory of doubt.

Unlimited recording time accelerates this process exponentially—especially in home studios. Without constraints, every decision becomes provisional. Mic choices stay “temporary.” Arrangements remain “open.” Performances are endlessly replaced and playlisted rather than committed to. The record never quite becomes real because nothing is allowed to harden into fact.

Some of my favorite records came together quickly and felt almost divinely inevitable. Parts were chosen. Tones and effects were printed. Performances were treated as events, not auditions. Not because they were flawless, but because they told the truth of that moment. And that truth is fragile. Chase it too long and it disappears.

“Records are never finished. They’re just released. The art is knowing when to let them go.”

One of the most useful questions you can pivot to during recording isn’t, “Can we do better?” but rather, “Are we improving the song—or just exhausting it?” Knowing when to ask that question isn’t about a fixed number of takes. It’s a feel. And if the answer isn’t immediately obvious, you’re probably already past the peak.

This is where experience earns its keep—not in knowing how to fix things later, but in knowing when not to defer decisions. Every time you avoid committing during tracking, you push weight downstream. You don’t eliminate risk; you relocate it. And by the time you reach mixing, the cost of that indecision gets paid with interest.

This is why mixing so often becomes the next battlefield. When performances, arrangements, and tones remain unresolved, the mix is forced to carry emotional weight it was never meant to bear. Engineers start chasing balance problems that are really performance problems, and tonal issues that should have been settled at the microphone. Endless tweaks follow—not because the mix is unfinished, but because the record never fully decided what it wanted to be.

Budgets—financial, temporal, or self-imposed—are what can help prevent that drift. They create gravity. They force choices out of the abstract and into the real world. They turn possibility into artifact.

Records aren’t finished when every option has been explored. They’re finished when enough of the right decisions have been made that they far outweigh the remaining ones.

.

Hi, Everyone!

Check out my latest Substack post!

Stay tuned to this blog! I plan on updating the layout a bit and talk about some new woodworking ideas!

Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage. Last month, we started to talk about the new bridge and saddles for our guitar, so let’s continue where we left off. In general, the two contact points where the strings meet the guitar are crucial and very important regarding playability, comfort, and tone. It’s always worth taking special care of the bridge and the nut on any electric guitar, and this month, we’re focusing on the bridge. Let’s break down the details of our replacement bridge and what we can expect from it.

The new bridge is much lighter than the stock model, which is great for getting a lighter-weight guitar. The overall weight of a guitar is a major factor for comfortability—a heavy guitar will add nothing to your life besides shoulder and back pain. Contrary to what you might read on the internet, science tells us it won’t increase sustain, nor add any “heavy” tone attributes to the amplified signal.

The thinner metal walls of the new bridge aren’t closed—a great attribute for reducing weight—and the double-cut “tapered walls” are a practical update, though some will disagree and prefer a bridge with vintage-style closed walls. There are countless bridge options for Telecasters, so find the best fit for your playing style. The edges of the short walls on my new bridge felt a little sharp, so I used some fine metal files and sanding paper to smooth them out. Your hand is resting on this surface, so you don’t want any jagged edges.

In addition to the classic string-through-body method, the new bridge also offers the late-’50s top-loading option, which means the strings are not running through the body but rather directly through the back of the bridge plate, giving you a gentler break angle. I recommend a bridge that provides you with both options. Top-loading your strings can give a feeling that some describe as “loose” and “rubbery,” but this route has its devotees, like the great Jim Campilongo, and it can make string bends a bit easier. Experiment to see if you like it or not. On my new bridge, all the holes for guiding the strings felt a bit gritty, so I spent some time taking care of any burrs.

The new bridge has two additional screw holes at the front, which is a very clever upgrade—two extra screws there will help join the front part of the bridge to the wood of the body. Speaking of screws, the stock bridge was attached with tiny, soft screws, which I replaced with standard-sized stainless-steel ones.

So why are these two additional screws a boon for our guitar? One of the most common culprits behind unwanted Telecaster feedback is the typical bridge plate itself. The Telecaster bridge system was designed in the 1940s by Leo Fender, and it was a crude design at best. Its function was to position the strings and offer a rough and easy adjustment of intonation and string height. Today, they don’t make them like they used to—the current-production Fender vintage bridge plates, as well as most budget aftermarket versions, are made from thin, hot-rolled steel in a deep-drawn process. This process produces parts very quickly and cheaply, but at a severe cost in quality. The steel used must be soft and thin to allow it to fold and bend in the corners, but sadly, this process creates internal stress in the material, which can bow the plate so that it can’t sit flat on the body. This often creates unwanted feedback on Telecasters.

The early bridge plates Fender made used a cold-rolled steel procedure to avoid this problem. Using two additional screws at the front of the bridge plate to firmly attach it to the body can minimize this issue. Our new bridge is straight as an arrow anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to secure it extra tight. To test your own bridge plate for any bowing, simply place it on a flat surface and check for wobbles. To level things out even more, I sanded the backside of the bridge, starting with 150-grit sandpaper and working my way up to 1,000.

Now, let’s have a look at the saddles. The classic T-style bridge sports three barrel saddles for intonation and height adjustment. As I said before: Crude at its best! Since this vintage bridge has two strings on each saddle, you’ll always be compromising on intonation. If you’re looking for perfect intonation, you should go with a new bridge with six individual saddles, like on a Stratocaster.

My new bridge came with three compensated saddles made from brass, which is the material used in the very early Fender days. These saddles are available in a large selection of materials, including steel, stainless steel, aluminium, diecast, and titanium, and also in compensated, uncompensated, smooth, threaded, and other configurations. (Differences between saddle materials are often audible when playing the guitar unamplified, but nearly none of these subtleties will present in the amplified tone.) For example, if you’re looking to shave off even more weight, I’d go with aluminum, but the brass saddles with my bridge are great quality, so I decided to keep them.

Our brass saddles are compensated for intonation in the most pragmatic way possible: slanted drill holes for the intonation screws. This not only looks quite vintage—it’s effective, too. The stock bridge uses a different compensation technique, which I described in my previous column. It works, too, but the look irritates me, and usually comes with some sharp edges. No matter what system you choose, take care to put the saddles in the right spot on the bridge plate. Typically, you can find an imprint on the underside of the saddles to indicate their position.

Our barrel saddles have a flat underside rather than being completely round, which makes it easier to do a low setup and—you guessed it— saves some precious weight! To make the surface of the saddles as glossy as possible, I polished them in several steps: first with a Dremel tool, before breaking the shine again with some super-fine Micro-Mesh to get to a used look without losing our smooth surface.

Finally, let’s talk about the height adjustment set screws, which are key for comfortability and tone. Depending on your preferred string action and the length of the set screws, chances are good that they’ll stick out a little bit from the top of the saddles. I find this super uncomfortable; bloody palms are not unusual with this quirk! Luckily, this problem is easy to solve.

These set screws are available in different lengths, and since they can make life so much easier for just a few cents, I recommend that you start building a solid collection of short and long versions. Rather than trying to level off the top of the set screws sticking out of the saddles, simply swap in a shorter screw and you’re done.

Take special care of the underside of the set screws, where they make contact with the bridge plate. It’s important to have the flattest, smoothest possible surface here—this is a spot where you can absolutely influence the amplified tone of your guitar. To hold these tiny set screws in place while filing and polishing their ends, I screw them into an old Telecaster saddle so they stick out, and lock the saddle in a vice afterwards. This way, you can work on the underside of the screws with files, sandpaper, or a Dremel. This takes some time, but is very important: I spent roughly 30 minutes with my six set screws, but I’m very happy with the result!

Next month, we’ll continue with our guitar’s pickup, electronics, and wiring. Our $259 budget for future investments remains untouched this month, but not for long! Stay tuned.

Until then ... keep on modding!

Who’s got the most ferocious picking hand in metal? 99 times out of 100, that award would surely go to James Hetfield. The Metallica frontman is known for his relentless downpicking capabilities, which are still sharp as a tack in his 60s.

The stamina required to downpick eighth notes at 215bpm for extended stretches and across two-hour setlists is simply out of reach for many players. Your forearm also needs to be kept tremendously physically fit in order for the muscles to cope with the continuous strain.

In a new interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, music YouTuber Rick Beato explains his theory as to why his own downpicking isn’t what it used to be, and it has to do with his smartphone use, apparently…

• READ MORE: “Honestly, I wanted to grab my guitar and smash it through the wall!”: Zacky Vengeance on being put through his paces by Synyster Gates on Avenged Sevenfold’s latest album

“James and Kirk [Hammett, Metallica lead guitarist] – the downpicking… I used to be able to do that!” Beato says. “I just can’t do that anymore. It hurts my thumb.

“I think, honestly – I thought a lot about it – it’s like, ‘Why is it so painful, why is it so hard?’ It’s from swiping with your thumb on phones. And I think it affects that basal joint there.”

“I’m serious,” Beato confirms, adding: “I think that that’s actually right. Because I’m thinking, ‘Why does it hurt so much to do that, all the downstrokes and stuff? It’s gotta be something.’ It’s like, yeah, it’s from swiping with a phone.”

So what do you reckon? Do you also suffer thumb joint pain when trying to downpick thrash metal riffs, which may have been made worse by excessive TikTok doomscrolling? It’s an interesting theory, to say the least…

It’s worth noting, though, that even James Hetfield admits he finds Metallica’s relentless downpicking sections tricky at times.

“We all have our own certain songs that are a little difficult,” he said in January on Metallica’s own podcast, The Metallica Report. “Moth Into Flame, Master of Puppets, those are two that are, ‘Wow, those are a little difficult.’ I’m sure Lars [Ulrich, drummer] has his list; we all have our list. But we push through, and we help each other with it.”

The post Rick Beato says excessive phone scrolling is the reason he can’t downpick like James Hetfield appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates has solidified himself as one of the most technically proficient and wildly creative guitarists in rock and metal music in the last 25 years. Known for his devilishly accurate sweep picking and fretboard-spanning rapid-fire solos, his face-melting guitar work is present across the Huntington Beach metallers’ discography.

And in a new podcast episode with YouTuber Nik Nocturnal, rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance reflects on trying to keep up with his co-guitarist while recording the band’s sprawling prog-influenced latest album, Life Is But A Dream…

• READ MORE: Mesa/Boogie has relaunched the Triple Rectifier – the amp that helped define metal music

“Dude, I’ve got to be in a band with fucking Synyster Gates!” he jokes. “That dude, he comes up with the craziest jazz chords – and he’s got long-ass fucking fingers… He can span seven, eight frets. And he can play faster than almost anyone. He just can.

“I always say there’s certain shit I cannot do. The same as you can’t run faster than [Jamaican sprinter] Usain Bolt at the Olympics. I can’t play shit as fast as he can play it, no matter how hard I try. I can set the metronome, I can try and try and try.

Zacky continues: “Even with Life Is But A Dream, I had to learn stuff that I’ve never even fathomed and chords I can’t even – but it’s fun! But at first, I mean, honestly, I wanted to grab my guitar and smash it through the wall. But once you’ve got it, you’re happy you did it.”

A highlight of Synyster Gates playing on Life Is But A Dream… comes with a ludicrous solo at the end of third track Nobody. Check it out below:

Elsewhere in the interview, Zacky Vengeance reflects on writing the riff for Waking the Fallen track Unholy Confessions, which remains one of the band’s biggest songs, and is often argued to be one of the quintessential metalcore riffs.

“It kind of blows my mind because having written that riff, I was a kid, you know? I was, like, 20 years old,” he says. “And you have no idea that it’s gonna have an impact when you’re writing it. It was a riff I was playing when I lived in my parents house, when we were touring in a van – running through it at soundcheck.

He explains that he wrote the riff as a byproduct of learning to play guitar. “I was a punk rock guitarist in high school – I grew up learning punk songs, like Bad Religion songs, Pennywise songs, and stuff like that.

“And then when me and Matt started Avenged, he started showing me stuff like At The Gates, Children of Bodom, In Flames, Pantera – shit that I wasn’t fully used to. And I was like this shit’s fucking awesome. I don’t know how to play it though. I can’t play this shit.

“So I was practicing and practicing. I’ve never taken any lessons but I was just trying to play what I heard and come up with riffs, and it was still a full learning phase. And honestly, with guitar, I don’t think there’s ever not a learning phase. I’m still learning.”

Zacky Vengeance is set to release his debut solo record, Dark Horse, on 3 April, 2026. Artistically, the project sees him use his real name, Zachary Baker.

The post “Honestly, I wanted to grab my guitar and smash it through the wall!”: Zacky Vengeance on being put through his paces by Synyster Gates on Avenged Sevenfold’s latest album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.