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Wish you could more easily keep up with everything that’s been happening in the world of guitar? Now you can. Welcome to Guitar.com‘s weekly roundup of top guitar stories and developments you need to know about.

This week, we’ve got the results from an auction selling the personal collection of a particular Mancunian guitar legend, a new update about Fender’s ongoing Stratocaster legal campaign, the bougiest guitar picks you’ll ever see and loads more. Read below to find out more.

Johnny Marr guitar collection rakes in £3.6 million at auction

The sale of Johnny Marr’s personal guitar collection took place at London auction house Christie’s this week, and fetched the former Smiths man a pretty decent payday. All in all, the collection of over 100 lots comprising electric and acoustic guitars, amps and other memorabilia, yielded over £3.6 million in an auction lasting over five hours. A significant chunk of the proceeds are going to charity, though, split evenly between the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the National Autistic Society.

Take a look at some of the final figures from the auction.

Want to test the prototype from Guitar Center’s new in-house guitar brand? Here’s how you can

Is the guitar industry crying out for some real innovation? Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto certainly thinks so, and he’s so steadfast in this belief, in fact, that earlier this year he announced the launch of the retail giant’s new in-house guitar brand. Of course, the project caught a bit of flak for crowdsourcing design ideas without what the community believed was a robust compensation structure. But sidestepping that for a moment…

The time has come to test what Guitar Center’s been cooking, and the retailer is inviting guitarists to apply to test it themselves at its offices in Westlake Village, CA later this month. Want to be a part of guitar industry history?

Read more to find out how you can.

Fender CEO Bud Cole admits “we could have done this better” over Strat legal threats, but claims the campaign is working

Credit: Adam Gasson [main], Naoki Tsuruta [inset]Fender’s cease and desist campaign against fellow guitar builders making Strat-reminiscent designs has shaken the industry, prompting widespread backlash and in some cases legal pushback, too. In a new interview, CEO Edward “Bud” Cole reflects on the company’s legal campaign to protect the Stratocaster, admitting “we could have done this better”. He does, however, claim the campaign is working…

Read the full story now.

MONO partners with Polyphia guitarist Tim Henson on signature dual-carry guitar case

Accessory news, now… Polyphia mastermind Tim Henson has partnered with MONO to create his own signature version of the brand’s M80 Classic Dual guitar case, which is able to carry and keep safe two electric guitars at the same time. As far as guitar cases go, it’s got some real tech spec candy, with durable Sharkskin for reliable protection, MONO’s patented dual protection design and Headlock neck suspension system, and a metal Polyphia badge for the cherry on top…

Learn more about the MONO x Tim Henson M80 Classic Dual Electric Guitar Case.

You won’t believe how long it took Matt Bellamy’s guitar tech to capture all his amp sounds

Muse frontman Matt Bellamy is a true amp modeller convert, with a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III making up the heart of his live rig. His features dozens of captures of his own collection of amplifiers from Vox, Diezel, Gibson and more, and his guitar tech Chris Whitemyer has revealed just how long and meticulous the process was when capturing them.

“All of those amp sounds [in the Axe-Fx III] are his amps,” Whitemyer says. “[We modelled] everything. 63 days, eight hours a day, left before dinner every day…” he says.

Learn more about Matt Bellamy’s monstrous Muse live rig.

Gibson and Baggs tackle muddy live performance sound with the new HiFi DNA acoustic pickup system

Has Gibson just revolutionised acoustic guitar pickups? For the company’s latest project, it’s partnered with acoustic pickup specialist Baggs – formerly L.R. Baggs until a recent rebranding – to create the new HiFi DNA acoustic pickup system, designed to deliver “the most natural, studio‑grade live tone ever achieved from an acoustic guitar”.

Robi Johns, Sr. Product Development Manager at Gibson Acoustic, describes it as the solution he’s been chasing since the 1970s…

Find out more about the new Gibson x Baggs HiFi DNA acoustic pickup system.

Pink Floyd are releasing 18-carat gold picks worth nearly £6,000

And finally, Alexa, play Money…

In perhaps the most ostentatious story of the week, Pink Floyd have partnered with the Royal Mint on a super limited line of guitar picks made entirely of 18-carat gold. Each pick is etched with the artwork from the band’s landmark 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, and described as “fully functional”. You’ve gotta be rocking some serious dollar to take one of these gigging though, as just one will set you back a princely £5,750.

Want flashy but not that flashy? In addition to the 10 gold picks up for grabs are 300 silver versions priced at £129.50 a piece.

Learn more about Pink Floyd’s limited run of gold and silver guitar picks.

The post Johnny Marr’s 7-figure payday, reflection from Fender’s CEO and 18-carat-gold Pink Floyd picks: here are this week’s guitar stories you need to know about appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

A Christie’s auction listing over 100 guitars and other items from Johnny Marr’s personal collection has raked in over £3.6 million, more than tripling its total estimate made prior to the event.

The auction took place over a period of five hours yesterday (17 September), with the final figure finishing up at a respectable £3,649,280. Highlights from the sale included Marr’s 1982 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo – used across his time in the Smiths, including on their second single This Charming Man, and extensively on the band’s self-titled debut – which sold for £358,400, far exceeding its £60,000-£80,000 estimate.

• READ MORE: Noel Gallagher reveals the “best bit of advice I’ve ever been given” from Johnny Marr about buying guitars

There was also the Cherry Red 1960 Gibson ES-355, which was bought for Marr in early 1984 by Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, after Marr said jokingly that The Smiths would sign to his label if he was gifted a new guitar. With a pre-auction estimate of £100,000 – £150,000, this guitar smashed that figure, selling in the end for £204,800.

Other six-figure lots included the Cherry Gibson Les Paul Standard bought by Marr for the Smiths’ second album Meat is Murder, and which he professes to using on “more records than any other”. With a custom-installed Bigsby tremolo, this guitar also sold for £204,800.

Another highlight was the 1971 Martin D-28 acoustic used on many classic Smiths hits including Rusholme Ruffians (recently played by UK PM Andy Burnham in Ukraine, of all people) What She Said and Meat is Murder, smashed its £30,000 – £50,000 estimate, selling for £128,000.

Elsewhere, Marr’s “go-to rhythm guitar” between 1984 and ‘85 – a Roger Giffin-refurbished Fender Telecaster which sold for £121,600. Marr’s signature Comet Sparkle Fender Jaguar – which he used to record the James Bond theme for 2021’s No Time to Die – also sold for a solid £46,080.

Of the total money raised from the sale, proceeds from 31 lots spanning 10 guitars, 1980s concert posters, and sales awards, will be split equally between the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the National Autistic Society.

“The auction has been a great experience and has exceeded all my expectations,” says Johnny Marr. “I’d like to thank everyone who made bids and special thanks to Christie’s for making it so memorable.”

Amelia Walker, Christie’s Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections, London, adds: “We are thrilled to have been able to partner with Johnny Marr for this landmark auction, the results of which reflect his groundbreaking and unparalleled musical influence.”

“We’re incredibly grateful to Johnny Marr for choosing Guide Dogs as one of the charities benefitting from this auction,” says Jo Stevenson, Head of Customer Experience at Guide Dogs.

“As a charity we’re almost entirely funded by donations; this will go a long way in helping people with sight loss live the life they choose. We’d like to say a huge thank you to Johnny for his generosity and for sharing his impressive guitar collection with his fans.”

Hayley Butler, Head of Fundraising at the National Autistic Society adds: “We are delighted by the success of the auction. The amazing funds raised will support our mission to create a society that works for autistic people. We’d like to say an enormous thank you to Johnny, and to everyone who bid on these iconic guitars.”

Iconic guitars continue to regularly command sky-high prices at auction. Billionaire Jim Irsay’s collection – which featured classic instruments once owned by Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and many others – brought in a total $94.5 million following his death in 2025.

That auction holds the record for the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction: David Gilmour’s legendary Black Strat, which raked in a staggering $14,550,000 on its own, over three times the total amount generated by the entire Johnny Marr auction. That auction also saw Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar sell for over $11 million, and Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang sell for nearly $7 million.

Take a look at the final results of Marr’s Guitars: The Johnny Marr Collection over at Christie’s.

The post Johnny Marr guitar auction brings in £3.6M – with several iconic Smiths instruments selling for six-figure sums appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Positive Grid’s Spark completely redrew the guitar amp map when it burst onto the scene in 2019. Bringing studio-ready tones to the fingertips of guitarists everywhere was the mission, and what a successful ride it has been. The brand has gone from strength to strength in the years that followed, with the Spark now a family of amps that run the gamut from headphones to portable PA systems. Now, however, they’re taking a left turn into the speakerless world of pedals.

• READ MORE: Positive Grid Reactor review: does your guitar amp really need an AI chatbot?

On paper, it seems like a very sensible move – pedalboard amps are increasingly popular, both for live use and for playing at home, and so having something compact that puts all the great sounds and ease of use of the amp into a smaller form factor is surely onto a winner.

At least, that’s what we’re all hoping anyway – trying to be both a practice amp, live solution and recording option in one is a lot of hats to wear, we’ll see if any fall off along the way…

What is it?

It won’t surprise people to learn that the Spark Pedal effectively distills the important bit from its amp brethren into a 6×4” floor unit. Now, it’s worth noting that the tech in here is the latest hotness – it uses PG’s HD Tone engine, the same architecture found in the latest Spark 2 amp.

Like its sibling, it comes loaded with 33 high-quality amp models and 43 effects as standard, and crucially that also means you get access to over 100,000 community-created presets courtesy of the hugely useful ToneCloud setup. If you’re a long-time Spark-user that has spent endless hours crafting perfect tones, fear not. You can easily load your saved presets from other Spark products and take them with you on the go. As with the other Sparks, it offers a relatively compact but useful array of bass and acoustic options for extra utility here too.

Sensibly for a floor-based option aimed at live players, it has the facility to be used purely as an effects unit – if you want to bypass the onboard amps, you can – and simply use it as a compact but powerful sound box.

The concessions to streamline its live use don’t stop there either – as with most Sparks, the Pedal has a built-in rechargeable battery, meaning that you won’t have to worry about plugging it into the mains or your PSU and in fact, you can’t – but more on that later. The battery life is promised to be up to seven hours, which is pretty impressive.

On the top you’ll find five chunky rotary knobs for on-the-fly tweaking, plus a trio of multi-function footswitches, while round the back you’ll find the upgraded I/O options that really set out the stall for this being a live tool. In addition to the usual mono input jack, headphone and USB-C output for silent practice and direct recording, you’ll find stereo outputs, an expression pedal socket, and in a first for a Spark product, MIDI in and out as well. Of course, being a Spark you’ll also need to hook this thing up to bluetooth to use the companion app, which is rather essential.

Usability and Build Quality

The concern with any multi-effects that doesn’t have a a screen is that all the useful functionality is going to be hidden in the companion app, and nobody really wants to be whipping their phone out mid-gig do they?

Thankfully, while the Spark app remains a standard setter for both its ease of use and consistent and straightforward connectivity in this sector, there’s plenty you can do on the pedal itself once you spend a little time familiarising yourself with the fundamentals.

The three foot switches are home to up to six presets across two banks. Editing them and saving them using the pedal itself is satisfyingly straightforward. Select the preset you want to modify, do your thing, then press and hold the foot switch to save. No 20-page guide, secret handshake, or ritual sacrifice is needed here – it’s all rather intuitive.

The multifunctional volume knob in the center is responsible for switching between the two operating modes. In FX mode, the knobs control drive type, modulation, delay and reverb. Click that centre knob and the color coded LED light will indicate you are now in Amp mode. This is where you sculpt gain, bass, middle and treble, just like a real amp. Hold the centre knob down and you will activate the basic but welcome built-in tuner.

The built-in 60-second looper is as uncomplicated as one gets. Pressing pedals one and two together activates Looper mode. Recording/overdubbing, play/stop, and undo/redo functions are all handily activated with a footswitch each. If you can count to four, you’re golden here.

It’s an undersold part of the Positive Grid experience that they clearly put a lot of thought into the physical usability of their devices as well as the app-based stuff, and that’s true again here. It would have been very easy to make this pedal look like a Boeing cockpit, but with some simple and intuitive paring back, they’ve kept all the features you’d need mid-show accessible.

That said, the Spark app is absolutely crucial to the experience here. Constructing signal chains and exploring ToneCloud is a total blast. However, on-the-fly adjustments in a live scenario from the pedal alone proved much more difficult. For example, you stomp into your meticulously crafted solo channel but the volume isn’t quite there? Reaching down to turn the main volume knob will sort that out. However, it turns up the volume across all your other channels too, like a master volume knob would. Not ideal.

The app isn’t a bonus feature here, it’s still the star of the show, and a necessary companion when you’re sculpting your sounds. I ended up having my iPhone in a cradle attached to the mic stand during rehearsals, but that’s really not what you wanna be doing during a performance is it?

There are some other compromises here to get it out at the very impressive $199 price point. Compared to the rugged unflapability of a Boss pedal, the Spark Pedal’s aluminium chassis and one-piece silicone cover are perfectly serviceable, but I would wonder how well that cover is going to last after a few months of being knocked about on venue floors and on street corners.

And knock it about you probably will. While the fact that this weighs just 0.58kg is very impressive – that’s significantly less than a Nano Cortex for example – there is a tradeoff there. It’s so lightweight, it’s quite easy for a stray foot to knock it away from where you want it to be – while the sturdy rubber footing stops it flying out into the audience, again I wonder how robust that would be long term.

The footswitches also don’t feel as premium as you’d like – they have resistance and lack that satisfying “click” of other stomp boxes. I’d probably think twice before stamping down on them with gay abandon in a pair of Docs, put it that way.

The pedal’s built-in battery is again both a boon and a potential issue. On the one hand, if you were a busker or were using it as your entire rig, the ability to run it without plugging into anything is potentially the killer app: especially with that seven-hour battery life.

On the flipside, if you wanted to use this alongside other pedals, or as a semi-permanent part of your pedalboard, the fact that it only runs on battery power – you can’t have it plugged into a pedal power supply or any other pass-through adapter – could be a real issue. Do you really want the hassle of having to make sure that one pedal is charged up before every gig? And then there’s the potential of battery degradation in the future that we’re all more than familiar at this point – seven hours at launch is great, but how long will that be in two years of heavy use, or five? This is obviously a problem with any guitar device with a lithium-ion battery in it, but it could be extra problematic for futureproofing with a device that’s designed to be used live without a net.

Sounds

The excellent sound produced by Positive Grid products is no secret in 2026 – if you’ve enjoyed the broad array of amps and effects in any other Spark product to date, expect the same here.

The consumer-friendliness of the entire ecosystem should also be applauded, and there’s a real sense of community here among the ToneCloud regulars. The variety of tonal possibilities never seems to end, and I found myself getting lost for hours just… playing. Headphones on, Metallica backing tracks, completely butchering album upon album’s worth of Kirk Hammett solos. Heaven. It’s also a great tool if you’re in a covers band – with so many song-alike and artist-alike tones in the ToneCloud, dialling in the sound you need is an absolute doddle.

If you’re after the crystalline Vox-adjacent tones of a Matchless or the punishing brutality of a cranked Peavey 5150, the Spark’s HD models do a fine job of recreating the whole gamut of amp types with a faithfulness that belies the Spark Pedal’s humble size – whether you’re running direct into a powered cab, a PA system or just going through headphones. That’s true with drop tunings, heavy riffing, almost anything that might cause a lesser modeller to get a bit glitchy and messy. This isn’t a level of sonic fidelity that can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Neural or Kemper, but remember that this is considerably cheaper than even some of the more affordable amp and effects units out there.

The effects are equally impressive, with the drives sounding thick and chewy, the fuzzes sputtering in the appropriate way, and the reverbs and delays sounding suitably cavernous. Again, this isn’t a HX Stomp, but that’s double the price!

If you don’t fancy that hassle of building a Spark signal chain yourself, the Spark AI tone-prompting feature has been updated to version 2.0 now, and while it’s certainly not foolproof, it’s clear that PG has learned some lessons from the Reactor amp and the results you get are more or less very usable. It’s not essential, but it’s a handy one to have if you’re trying to sketch out song ideas or find inspiration in a hurry.

Should I buy one?

At $199, the Spark Pedal represents a superb amount of functionality and versatility in a small, intelligently designed package. The combination of portability, solid tones, app features and straightforward usability makes this the perfect unit for buskers, jamming musicians, and bedroom players alike.

There are definitely a few drawbacks to consider if you’re a gigging musician looking for a credible live option however. While you can get by with most everyday needs with the on-pedal controls, the thought of having a mid-gig crisis that requires whipping a phone out and trying to pair with your pedal via Bluetooth fills me with a special kind of dread. I’m not wholly convinced by the build quality and long-term battery life either.

Also, if I was to indulge myself slightly, I would love to have a powered speaker output included, allowing the Spark Pedal to power a cab directly. Blackstar’s Amped pedal range has shown just how appealing a true “all-in-one” pedal-amp format can be.

Of course, adding a power-amp stage would demand a totally different power architecture, and likely ruin the Spark’s rechargeable portability, so perhaps I’m asking a Swiss Army knife to pack a chainsaw. Still, it would be dreamy.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that a product aiming to do so much at this price point is going to have some compromises here and there, but this is still a very impressive and fun to use product that ticks a lot of boxes.

If you’re happy to tinker with tones on your phone, and want the flexibility of a unit that can be at home both in the bedroom, the practice room or the street corner, this is a very compelling option. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the Spark is mature technology at this point, instead, it’s trying to build on what it did so well half a decade ago – removing friction from the guitar playing experience.

Alternatives

This space in the market is home to some other excellent and affordable alternatives. Boss’s GX-1 ($229.99/£219) takes its tone DNA straight out of the flagship GX-100, and has a screen and a wah pedal built-in – I’m not convinced the amp models sound as good as the Spark’s though. Blackstar’s Amped 2 is a little more expensive and doesn’t have as many onboard sounds (£391), but the tones are legit and it really packs a punch, and can power a cab directly. The Line 6 POD Express ($179.99/£149) is even more compact than the Spark Pedal, and comes directly from the HX family of processors, but it’s got a limited palette of sounds comparatively.

The post Positive Grid Spark Pedal review: The Spark ecosystem welcomes another box of tricks appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Whatever side you land on, one thing’s absolutely certain: Fender’s campaign to issue cease and desist letters to guitar builders making Stratocaster-reminiscent designs has sent shockwaves through the industry.

A bit of background to catch you up: late last year, Fender won a default judgement in Dusseldorf, Germany after the defendant, Chinese instrument manufacturer Yiwu Philharmonic Musical Instruments, failed to show up to court. The ruling resulted in the Stratocaster body shape being deemed a “work of applied art”, and protectable under copyright law.

Following the ruling, Fender embarked on a campaign to issue guitar companies large and small with cease and desist letters demanding the cessation of production of guitars closely resembling the Stratocaster. Those on the receiving end included Californian boutique builder LsL Instruments, German retail giant Thomann and PRS, one of the world’s largest guitar companies.

But the move was met with widespread criticism from the guitar community, with prominent guitar creators like Rick Beato, Rhett Shull and Tim Pierce distancing themselves from Fender, not to mention legal pushback from some of the companies targeted.

Following the backlash, Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole spoke at a dealer event in an attempt to calm things down, clarifying that the brand was “not suing anybody”.

“What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and [respectfully] to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design,” he said.

Now, some time after the initial cease and desist letters were sent, but while Fender still battles to legally reclaim its Stratocaster body shape, Cole has reflected once again on a turbulent few months for the company in a new interview with Bloomberg.

“There’s been a lot of introspection about this,” he says. “It’s clear to me that this got ahead of us – the legal process got ahead of us – and that we could have done this better.” Despite his reflective comments, though, Cole believes Fender’s campaign to reclaim the Strat is working.

Cole says a large part of Fender’s legal campaign was to urge differentiation and innovation in the guitar industry. “They’re simply copying designs, and that does not help our industry,” he says of builders making S-types. “We all start out with the same piece of wood. There are unlimited ways to design a guitar with that piece of wood.”

Clarifying Fender’s position, Cole says the company is “very, very focused solely on large manufacturers now”, adding: “We are not focused at all now on boutique builders.”

Where that leaves LsL Instruments – the boutique brand that made its presence as a recipient of a Fender cease and desist most known – is unclear. LsL confirmed in June that it had hired veteran guitar industry lawyer Ron Bienstock, who famously won a 2009 trademark case against Fender on behalf of a consortium of guitar brands. It saw Fender’s request to obtain trademarks for its Stratocaster, Telecaster and Precision Bass body shapes rejected.

Whether down to its legal costs is not clear, but LsL recently announced a flash sale in order to “raise $75,000 in a very short amount of time”.

Regardless, Bud Cole continues his reflection, saying Fender’s goal was not legal aggression, but rather to “begin conversations with people” about how brands could “begin to design something that is not a direct copy”. “That has always been our objective,” he says.

You can read the full feature at Bloomberg.

The post Fender CEO Bud Cole admits “we could have done this better” over Strat legal threats, but claims the campaign is working appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

[Editor’s note: MONO is part of Vista Musical Instruments, which like Guitar.com, is part of the Caldecott Music Group.]

Polyphia guitarist Tim Henson has further expanded his growing collection of signature gear with a new take on MONO’s M80 Classic Dual guitar case, which is able to carry two guitars at once within a streamlined profile.

Henson, of course, has a number of signature guitars to his name with Ibanez, including his TOD-10 electric, which sports his signature rose-and-thorns inlay across its fretboard, and a number of nylon-strings gear towards virtuosic playing, too.

• READ MORE: Why Tosin Abasi created the wildest nylon-string guitar ever: the Stage 7

So with so many guitars in his portfolio, it makes sense that he’d have a signature carry case that can protect more than one at the same time, right?

Though it’s another entry in Henson’s catalogue of signature gear collaborations, the new Tim Henson M80 Classic Dual case marks a big moment in MONO’s history, as it’s the first time the musical accessory company has officially collaborated with an artist. Henson himself has been a user of MONO cases for some time, so the partnership is a natural fit.

You might think it’s just a guitar case, but MONO’s design-led philosophy and meticulous attention to detail is apparent all over the new Tim Henson case, which was developed over months of prototyping.

On the outside, the case sports a distinctive square-patterned front panel with durable, water-resistant Sharkskin material for reliable protection, along with a custom Polyphia metal badge, a specially incorporated front handle and reinforced steel-riveted webbing handle.

Inside, it boasts MONO’s patented dual protection design – which keeps two instruments safe at once – with the brand’s patented Headlock neck suspension system, as well as a custom off-white plush interior.

“I’ve been using MONO gear for years, so I’m very happy to have gotten the opportunity to make my own version of the M80 Classic Dual,” Henson says. “I’m constantly switching between my electric and nylon-string signature guitars, so having one case that carries both and looks exactly the way I want it to is perfect.”

The MONO x Tim Henson M80 Classic Dual Electric Guitar Case is available now for $399.99 via MONO’s website and select authorised dealers.

Learn more at MONO.

The post MONO partners with Polyphia guitarist Tim Henson on signature dual-carry guitar case appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Of the most influential guitar players of all time, heavyweights like Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix often get the first mentions. But there’s one guitarist who’s somewhat unsung by comparison, and was so influential, in fact, that folk-rock guitarist Richard Thompson calls “the original guitar hero”.

And that’s Davey Graham, the late veteran British guitarist and folk-rock revivalist, credited with popularising DADGAD tuning, among many other accolades.

• READ MORE: Does tonewood really matter? This is how the wood your guitar’s made of affects the sound

“He was a great player, and a great pioneer who took from everything,” Thompson explains in a new interview with Uncut. “He knew enough jazz, North African music, traditional music, Caribbean music, it’s all in there, and if you went to visit him he’d switch from one to the other, like, ‘Have you heard this one? But what about this?’ He was the first. After him comes Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, then John Martyn et cetera.”

Though he had a lasting impact on the guitar world, Davey Graham wasn’t without his struggles. In an interview last year, folk legend Martin Carthy spoke of Graham’s battle with heroin addiction, recalling the first time he dabbled in the hard substance and how it affected his creative ability.

“I thought I’d done a really good job, but when I put the record on, I went: ‘What the fuck is that?!’ It was absolutely terrible. I was playing this solo that was nonsense,” Carthy remembered of the pair re-recording a version of Port Mahon, originally written by Sydney Carter.

He went on: “On the way home from that session, Davey told me that he’d had his first fix the night before: ‘Oh, it was great, I’m going to do it again.’”

Continuing in the new interview with Uncut, Richard Thompson says: “One does not judge. People have to get through life, and sometimes you need a bit of fortification to do so.”

Thompson himself is a lifelong teetotaller, a decision he says he made at a “fork in the road” in the 1970s.

“If you’re in the music community you see a lot of damage, you see a lot of people die young,” he says. “In the ‘70s I saw a fork in the road, and I can go this way and I’ll be dead in, you know, seven years, and if I go this way, I might survive. It was a conscious choice.”

The post The iconic British folk guitarist that Richard Thompson claims is the “original guitar hero” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

For a spectacle that is a Muse show, frontman Matt Bellamy is pretty particular about the sounds he wants onstage. The Manson-toting guitarist is well and truly an amp modeller convert, with a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III being the heart of his live rig.

Yep, Bellamy’s arsenal of custom electric guitars might be the main attraction for regular folk attending Muse shows. His numero uno, a Floyd Rose-equipped Manson MB and the stunning mirror guitar with an MXR Phase 90 and ZVEX Fuzz Factory built right in, are some notable highlights.

But for us slightly nerdier guitar gear aficionados, what’s lurking within the walls of his rack-mount amp and effects processor is far more intriguing…

• READ MORE: Does tonewood really matter? This is how the wood your guitar’s made of affects the sound

And that’s because it’s packed with heaps of custom amp captures from Vox, Diezel, Laney, Orange, and Fender amps, and even a Gibson amp dating back to 1938. And as his guitar tech Chris Whitemyer explains in a new interview with Premier Guitar, the process of capturing them was so meticulous that it took a whopping 63 days. That’s over two months…

“That was one thing Matt insisted on, was ‘I don’t want anyone else’s amps.’ He wants his amps,” Whitemyer explains, adding that the Muse superstar is the proud owner of “about 35” amps. “There’s kind of oddball ones that are really cool, and they’re all in there [the Axe-FX III].”

The veteran guitar tech, who has also worked with Guns N’ Roses, Whitesnake and Nine Inch Nails, goes on to explain how he and Bellamy are “always” running a combination of amp sounds as opposed to any one on its own, and says he runs three Axe-Fx III units concurrently to get Bellamy’s sound.

“All of those amp sounds [in the Axe-Fx III] are his amps,” Whitemyer says. “[We modelled] everything. 63 days, eight hours a day, left before dinner every day…”

Earlier this year, Manson – which is part-owned by Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of the Caldecott Music Group, which also owns Guitar.com – announced that it had worked with Matt Bellamy to create a production-run model of his iconic Time is Running Out guitar. 

Loaded with a slew of integrated systems, including a Sustainiac Sustainer, Z-Vex Fuzz Factory, Manson/Ron Joyce FL Wah, and a MIDI Strip controller, the guitar comes at a hefty price tag, with the more decked out version sitting at £29,999, and a [slightly] more affordable model available at £11,999.

The post You won’t believe how long it took Matt Bellamy’s guitar tech to capture all his amp sounds appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The wood that your guitar or bass is made from affects your tone as much as any other gear choice you make, as much as pickups, pedals and amps. This is especially true for acoustic guitars, with or without a pickup.

Different woods like alder, ash, mahogany and more add subtle nuance to the resulting tone, in turn changing how you play, pick, dig into strings and the harmonic content bouncing around.

• READ MORE: Why your guitar’s fretboard radius matters more than you think

There’s countless arguments, discourse and opinions online about how much each component of a guitar affects the overall sound, extending to discussion around factors off the guitar, such as player’s hands, technique, feel and more. Discourse aside, what is true is that everything matters.

While different woods have different amounts of impact, each component affects sound, which in turn affects feel, affecting technique and subsequently the final signal that has passed through the guitar to an amplifier or out of a soundhole. Even the most simple guitars might have a handful of components doing 1 per cent each, but 20 of those leads to a 20 per cent variance between sonics and sound— a huge amount when you think about it!

The weight and feel of the guitar is largely at the behest of the woods it’s made from, both the body, neck and fretboard, and these also feature wildly different tonal characteristics because of structural integrity, quality and weight.

Fretboards

Fretboard wood varies a little less than body wood, so let’s start there. Many guitars feature either rosewood or maple fretboards, though ebony is another common, albeit premium, choice. Various woods like purpleheart, or amaranth, ovangkol and pau ferro are all often used in situations where rosewood is unavailable, either because of logging restrictions or cost prohibitive situations.

Rosewood is used extensively on electric guitar fretboards. Being a softer wood, it absorbs certain frequencies and accentuates others, often being known for a warmer, more midrange sound, making it a great choice for a mid range instrument like the guitar. Brightness is retained in a controlled way, while low end melts away a little bit without the resulting sound being overtly thin.

Maple is a harder wood, and while retaining the mid range character of rosewood, its bright disposition is thanks to the snap and attack of your playing bouncing off the hard surface instead of vibrating away into the wood. This is augmented by the glossy finish on many maple necks, used both for tone, as well as to protect the clean, light-coloured maple from getting grubby.

Ebony is again, even harder than maple, and is particularly bright, the grain almost invisible on premium cuts of ebony. While rosewood has visible grains and imperfections in the wood, ebony usually offers a particularly glassy finish, both aesthetically and sonically. Furthermore to your choice of wood, designs like a one-piece maple neck can prevent tone from fizzling away between components. While a rosewood fretboard is often glued to a maple neck, for example, the tiny gap between neck and board allows vibrations to escape, while a single piece of maple that serves as neck and fretboard has no gap for that sweet, sweet tone to escape to!

Perfect Pairings

Pairing your fretboard wood with body wood can help to shape and refine the sound. More common warm guitar woods like mahogany for electric guitars or rosewood for acoustic guitar can be paired with snappier fretboards for a controlled tone, while matching a warm fretboard with a warm body wood can provide a more mellow, vintage, mid-range focused sound.

Mahogany is commonly used on Gibson’s Les Pauls, paired with a rosewood fretboard, or ebony on the Custom range. Fender uses alder extensively to provide weight relief compared to the hefty mahogany Gibsons. Alder provides a nice middle ground that harnesses the punch of a rich, firm wood, while its lightness allows a little mud and low end to fizzle away. Fender also commonly uses various species of Ash, even lighter and brighter again, paired with warmer fretboards.

These subtle differences are augmented further by your choice of pickups, so be weary of those pairings! The wrong choice of pickups can either miss out on the richness of your wood, or augment to the point of harshness.

Acoustics

These choices are even more obvious on an acoustic guitar, guitar makers pairing different woods for the top, sides and back of the guitar. These choices, along with the soundhole, serve as the guitar’s amplifier and affect the sound entirely. Variations of maple are commonplace in modern tops for acoustic guitars, the bright demeanour of the wood being perfect for clarity in playing.

More vintage-style acoustics, like parlour guitars, sometimes use rosewood for the top and sides resulting in a warmer, more dimmed sound that allows the mid range to shine through. Both rosewood and ebony are common on acoustic guitars, though the brightness of maple is often overkill for the brightness of acoustics, the resulting sound being brittle and harsh.

The character and controlled acoustic qualities of a tonewood come together in semi-hollow guitars, some of which have a comb of standard electric guitar pickups and piezo systems. The timbre of the tonewoods in semi-hollow electrics harness woods like alder and ash, usually reserved for solid body electrics, tying together acoustic resonance and controlled, mid-forward chime.

While tonewood may have a small effect on its own, the way they allow or prevent vibration from escaping into the ether have a huge effect on the resulting sound. Different designs allow sound to vibrate away differently, either pushing brightness into your pickups or mellowing it out entirely. Harder and softer woods offer brighter or warmer sound respectively, and your choice of body wood yields the same results, this being exacerbated in acoustic guitars because they act as both guitar and amplifier as sound bounces out of the soundhole.

In the pursuit of your perfect sound, you’ve also got to try different tonewoods to see what matches your style, technique and feel, different woods either being great to augment your own playing, or to harness different tonal tools for different jobs. There’s no right answer for everyone, but there might be a wrong one, so try as many guitars as you can.

The post Does tonewood really matter? This is how the wood your guitar’s made of affects the sound appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Brian May is best known for playing his self-made Red Special, and there’s a reason why he very rarely uses other guitars.

May crafted the original with help from his father as a teenager, but has also been known to play other models from brands like Fender and Gibson; he can even be spotted in the music video for Crazy Little Thing Called Love with a black Telecaster in-hand. Yet, according the Queen guitarist, no other electric models besides his Red Special have ever really felt like the right fit.

• READ MORE: Tony Iommi wanted Brian May to play on more of his new solo album: “But he went, ‘Oh no, it’s your album!’”

In an interview with radio station Planet Rock, May is asked by a listener what guitar he would play as his main instrument if he didn’t have his Red Special, to which he confesses he never found one to have his desired tone.

“Nothing ever really worked for me apart from my own one, it’s odd. I always found the Fenders too thin and scratchy for the sound I was trying to get, and I found the Gibsons a little too much in the other direction, a bit too dark. They didn’t have the crispness and the top end that I wanted.

“My guitar, partly by design and partly by good luck, sits somewhere in the middle. It also has a very wide range of tones because of the way I have hooked it up and wired pickups in series, but in phase and out of phase. So it has a wide range of bright to dark.”

He concludes, “I can only really get my sound with the guitar I created with my dad, or a copy of it. Now we make them, we sell them. I take great pride in the fact that they’re well made and they’re not too expensive… It’s an extension of me and always will be.”

Watch the interview below:

The Red Special might be the perfect fit for May, but other artists who have played it have found its build to be a little peculiar. Namely, Steve Vai recalled getting his hands on the original, and struggling to play it: “The neck is like a bat, it’s got like, what, gauge .08 strings? But it was a miracle to actually have the guitar under my fingers, and he allowed that. And Joe [Satriani] and I have had a great relationship with him since,” he said.

The post Brian May was asked what guitar he’d have used if he hadn’t built the Red Special: the answer may surprise you appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Fender has made a “faithful recreation” of Lee Sklar’s highly customised Precision Bass, which has accompanied the bassist and session musician throughout his esteemed career.

The Lee Sklar Precision Bass forms part of the Fender Stories Collection and captures the distinctive modifications Sklar made to create a bass that is uniquely his own, minus the sprawling handwriting that covers the original.

The original bass has been used on an estimated 2,000 albums as his “go-to” instrument when in the studio, and is affectionately named Old Frankenstein. The handwriting on its body mostly consists of autographs from other musicians and celebrities.

• READ MORE: Win a 75th Anniversary Fender Player II Precision Bass – here’s how to enter

Sklar’s bass chops have shaped countless recordings from James Taylor and Carole King, to Phil Collins, Toto, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, and Rod Stewart. His P-Bass features on close to an impressive 85 percent of his recorded work.

Sklar transformed the instrument by stripping it down to bare wood. This signature recreation is fitted with a Hipshot BT3 Bass Xtender for “flexible” low-end range changes, dual EMG Active Lee Sklar P pickups, a Badass II Bridge, and a modified Precision Bass neck shaved down to Jazz Bass dimensions and dressed with mandolin frets.

Find out more in the video below:

“It is my go-to instrument when I go in the studio. It’s the first thing I think about when I hear a song. That’s what made this project with Fender and EMG so meaningful to me,” says Lee Sklar.

“We put a lot of time, detail and care into every part of this bass, from the pickups and electronics to the feel and response of the instrument, to make sure it captured what I love about this guitar. At the end of the day, though, the most exciting part is knowing that another player can pick up this bass, make it their own and use it to create some music of their own.”

Justin Norvell, Chief Product Officer, Guitars, adds: “Whether you know it or not, you’ve heard Sklar’s playing. His ability to weave in and out of different genres, moods and energies is unparalleled and in order to honour such fearless playing, this instrument needed to be crafted with meticulous care.

“Sklar’s P-Bass has been alongside him for an extraordinary portion of that career, so recreating it meant getting the details that make the instrument uniquely his, exactly right. It’s an incredible instrument and a fitting way for Fender to celebrate both Lee’s legacy and 75 years of the Precision Bass.”

The Lee Sklar Precision Bass is priced at $3,499.99 USD/£3,249 GBP. Find out more by visiting Fender.

The post Fender recreates Lee Sklar’s highly customised P-Bass – but you’ll need to write on it yourself appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Gibson and acoustic amplification company Baggs have partnered together on the new HiFi DNA acoustic pickup system, designed to deliver “the most natural, studio‑grade live tone ever achieved from an acoustic guitar”.

The new HiFi DNA pickup is available on a wide range of Gibson acoustic guitars across its Modern and Original Collections, with a standalone version for individual purchase coming soon that can be installed via a simple peel-and-stick application.

Baggs, formerly known as LR Baggs, changed its name earlier this September as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, to mark a new, modernised era for the company.

• READ MORE: “It’s about having a space that’s big enough to tell 132 years of stories” Gibson’s Mark Agnesi on why Miami’s new Gibson Garage is its biggest yet

Gibson says the pickup is intended to close the gap between live performance and studio-quality output, marking a “major leap forward” in acoustic amplification.

It works by utilising a dual Class A preamp architecture, which treats two individual sensors as their own independent studio channel. These lighter and larger sensors run through their own custom-voiced Class A preamp before they are blended together, preserving purity and articulation in a unified output.

Overall, the system captures both string detail and body resonance with improved accuracy, meaning it reacts to the guitar as a whole instrument to produce a tone that sounds like “stepping inside the guitar” itself.

Learn more in the videos below:

“HiFi DNA is a big leap forward – dual sensors with their own independently optimised preamps keep each signal pure and deliver unprecedented fidelity with the same gain before feedback as our acclaimed Element Under Saddle Pickup,” says Lloyd R. Baggs, Founder of Baggs.

“The name ‘DNA’ speaks to our character as relentless innovators and to what this new sensor can do. It’s lighter, more flexible, and more responsive. Less mass and stiffness means more life, more breath, more truth from the guitar.”

Baggs goes on to explain, “One of the discoveries that excited me most was bringing dual preamps to market. We’ve known for years how powerful that architecture is, but it was never before feasible at scale. Now, each sensor has its own preamp stage before they’re blended, which keeps both signals pristine. If you combine two mic diaphragms – or two piezos – before amplification, they tug on each other, and the sound can get muddy. Separating them preserves every detail.

“The two sensors work almost like a pair of choir mics: each hears a different part of the instrument, with enough overlap to feel natural and enough focus to stay immediate. You get ambience without losing attack, space without losing touch. It’s a new way of hearing and capturing the acoustic guitar – clear, alive, and deeply connected to the player.”

Robi Johns, Sr. Product Development Manager at Gibson Acoustic, further states: “What we’re able to do now is capture the true timbre and full dynamic range of a real acoustic guitar – so the player’s touch, nuance, and personality finally come through on stage the way they do in the room.

“I’ve been a student of the guitar my entire life, and for decades it’s been a struggle to make an acoustic sound right on stage. In the studio, with a great microphone, you can hear the whole voice of the instrument, but live that colour and character were always compromised. The first time I heard Lloyd’s new HiFi DNA pickup, I was stunned. It felt like I wasn’t listening from a point in space anymore – I was inside the guitar. It was the solution I’d been chasing since the 1970s. For the first time, the individual personality of each guitar comes through in amplified form. It transforms the entire playing experience.”

View the full Gibson x Baggs HiFi DNA collection, or head over to the Baggs website to learn more about the company.

The post Gibson and Baggs tackle muddy live performance sound with the new HiFi DNA acoustic pickup system appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Martin Guitar

The iconic shape and look of a natural-finished square-shouldered Martin Dreadnought is so familiar, so legendary, that it’s not just defined the last 100-plus years of Martin, it’s become the thing people who have absolutely no idea about guitars picture when someone tells them to imagine a guitar.

For generations of players, the classic Martin body shapes – be that a Dreadnought, Auditorium or Concert – have become familiar friends, trusted confidants and companions through a lifetime’s musical journey. But Martin didn’t become the most iconic American acoustic guitar brand by resting on its laurels and playing the hits for a century or more – the Pennsylvanian company has forever been pushing the boundaries and trying new things.

That spirit has continued apace over the last few years, whether that’s been through exploring new body shapes like the GPC and the SC, trialling alternative tonewoods in the Inception range, or expanding the visual palette with new finishes like Mezcal Burst, Paisley Ember Burst and Amber Fade Sunburst.

Even by this standard, however, the brand new and reimagined 16 Series is taking Martin’s already big tent, and expanding it for a lot of new guitar players with bold, and unconventional ideas about what a Martin guitar is. In fact, the new 16 Series might be the most interesting new range of guitars the brand has created in a long time – and this is why.

Any Colour You Like

There’s a fun anecdote that Martin’s Mike Dickinson told Guitar.com in our film Perfect Harmony. Back in the 1970s, Johnny Cash asked Martin to build him a guitar, and being The Man In Black, he wanted it to be… well… black. The legend goes that Martin CEO Chris Martin III really wasn’t a fan of painting over the beautiful spruce top of a Martin guitar, and so the Martin team effectively made this guitar in secret, with the company owner not realising it had ever happened until he saw Cash on TV with the guitar, and was delighted.

It’s safe to say that things have changed at Martin in the decades since then, and has expanded the visual palette of its guitars a great deal.

But while signature artists like Cash and Eric Clapton (with his limited run collabs with Hiroshi Fujiwara) have added solid colours to their guitars in the past few decades, it’s safe to say that we’ve seen nothing before like the new 16 Series.

Whether its Cherry Cola, Blue Denim, Black Smoke or Cream, the eye-popping new colours that adorn the spruce tops of the 16 Series are as striking as they are appealing – you have to admit, you might never have thought about a bright red Martin guitar before, but now you’ve seen it, it works, right?

These new finish options aren’t just marketing gimmicks either – you don’t have to spend much time looking at stages across the musical spectrum in 2026 to see that plenty of young singer-songwriters are looking to painted-top guitars as a way to stand out on stage – and these new options certainly do that.

Of course, if you’re not a primary colour kind of guitarist, the stunning 1935 Burst gives a modern twist to the shade top look, and there are some natural-finish versions in there, too. What’s more, closer inspection will reveal that while these guitars are bright and colourful, the finish is semi-transparent, allowing you to still see the grain of that beautiful spruce underneath – we’re sure Chris Martin III would appreciate that.

Shape Sorter

If the finishes were the only departure for the 16 Series, that would still be a big deal, but you’ve probably noticed that this isn’t the biggest change for 2026. While the previous 16 Series guitars were designed to straddle the worlds of traditional and modern acoustic guitars, the new ones do something much more unexpected.

Because in addition to a refreshed take on the modernist GPC platform, the range now comprises three very rarely seen body shapes in the Martin canon – a slope-shouldered Dreadnought, a slope-shouldered 00, and the Jumbo.

Quite aside from the visual point of difference these guitars offer, they also offer a different experience in terms of both playability and sound than the more conventional Martin guitars you might be familiar with.

The DSS-16E Slope-Shouldered Dreadnought offers a punchy midrange, strong treble response, and a focused low end. With a spruce top and mahogany back and sides, it offers a woody, more intimate tone that pairs perfectly with a shorter-than-normal 24.9″ scale length. This gives a more relaxed and comfortable playing feel that complements the DSS’s natural warmth, while forward-shifted scalloped X-bracing enhances both the bass response and resonance.

The Jumbo sized J-16E is another eye-catching entry – this 14-fret spruce/rosewood beast is designed to command a room with a body size that delivers thunderous volume with sparkling top-end response – it’s the perfect Martin guitar for strummers, rhythm players, and anyone who wants to command the stage.

Finally, the smallest guitar in the range, the 00L-16E brings the slope-shouldered style to the classic Martin 00 body style. Compact and intimate, the 00L still has surprising projection for a guitar of its size, with a woody and responsive tonality that’s the perfect pairing for fingerstyle, songwriting, or rhythm work.

Martin Magic

These unconventional shapes pair with the striking new finish options to produce some of the most non-traditional Martin guitars ever, while still maintaining that touchstone of heritage and familiarity that players love about the brand.

What’s more, while they may look different to the norm, they remain every bit the Martin guitars that we know and love – just with a slightly different accent.

It goes without saying that these 16 Series guitars aren’t replacing anything – you’ll still be able to buy all the D-18s and 000-28s you want, and these guitars don’t change that at all. What they do instead is create new colours in the crayon box, and new paths for more guitarists than ever to discover the magic of Martin guitars. And that’s something we can all get behind.

Find out more about the Martin 16 Series at martinguitar.com

The post Why Martin’s 16 Series is its most interesting new range in years appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Earlier this year, Fender shook the guitar industry’s foundations when it sent cease and desist letters to a plethora of small builders demanding they stop making guitars similar in body shape to its iconic Stratocaster design.

Many in the guitar community criticised the move, and significant pushback was mounted by some of the brands targeted, including German retail giant Thomann – which went on the offensive to sue Fender after it was sent a C&D letter, presumably over its S-type Harley Benton guitars – and California-based boutique builder LsL Instruments, which hired the lawyer who successfully beat Fender in a trademark dispute on behalf of a consortium of brands back in 2009.

• READ MORE: The best deals from Thomann Guitar Days – save up to 60% on guitars from Fender, Gibson, Strandberg, Solar and more

Now, former Fender Custom Shop head Mike Eldred has apparently made his thoughts about Fender’s legal action clear, with a new S-style build that appears to take aim at his former employer.

Mike Eldred was let go from the Fender Custom Shop a little over a decade ago, after serving as its head for around 17 years. During his time at Fender, he created the Filter’Tron pickup-equipped Cabronita Telecaster, and has continued a similar naming convention since his departure with his line of El Cabron guitars.

His removal made waves at Fender, and was a significant reason why John Mayer left Fender’s artist roster and later joined PRS, where he helped develop the Silver Sky, one of the biggest commercial guitar successes in recent history. Side note: PRS was another brand targeted by Fender’s cease and desist campaign.

Eldred’s new El Cabron Black Corp certainly makes a statement – one which we assume takes aim directly at Fender. Firstly, it’s a S-type guitar at a time Fender is clamping down on Strat copies, and secondly, it features a pointed message across its body: “Never let a corporation tell you what the rules are.” 

The guitar also features the classic Flower Thrower artwork by UK graffiti artist Banksy, which symbolises the power of peace and love being more powerful than violence and aggression.

View this post on Instagram

We don’t know much in the way of specs, but we do know the guitar features a Gotoh 510TS bridge, and a single humbucker hand-wound by Willy Houston at Rocket Pickups, with voicing designed by Mike Eldred and Grover Jackson.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Black Corp guitar has already sold out on Mike Eldred’s El Cabron website, despite its wallet-denting price tag of £5,275…

You can take a closer look at the official El Cabron website.

The post “Never let a corporation tell you what the rules are”: Former Fender Custom Shop head takes swipe at former employer with pointed S-style build appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Gibson has expanded its Artisan Series with two new acoustic guitars – an SJ-200 and Hummingbird, two of the brand’s most iconic acoustic designs – built using premium koa tonewoods.

Handcrafted by the team at Gibson Acoustic in Bozeman, Montana, both guitars feature a “richly figured” koa back and sides paired with a AAA Sitka spruce top, offering “sparkling high-end clarity that develops greater warmth and complexity with regular play”. A notable aesthetic touch comes by way of a three-rope marquetry strip running across the centre of the back of each guitar.

• READ MORE: “It’s about having a space that’s big enough to tell 132 years of stories” Gibson’s Mark Agnesi on why Miami’s new Gibson Garage is its biggest yet

First up, the new SJ-200 – built on a blueprint introduced in 1937 and that’s come to be widely regarded as the “King of the Flat Tops” – features, alongside its koa back and sides and Sitka spruce top, a rosewood SJ-200 two-bar moustache bridge with abalone bar inlays, a tortoiseshell pickguard with abalone dot inlays and a silver-foil stamp that creates “vivid, shifting iridescence” as the light shifts.

Elsewhere, the guitar sports a mahogany neck with a Round profile, a bound 20-fret rosewood fingerboard with abalone graduated crown inlays, and a single-ply bound headstock, TUSQ nut and gold-plated Grover Rotomatic tuners.

In terms of electronics, the SJ-200 Elegant Koa is fitted with L.R. Baggs Anthem electronics, which combine an under-saddle Element pickup with an internal mic and preamp to faithfully reproduce the guitar’s unplugged tone.

Meanwhile, the new Hummingbird Elegant Koa features a very similar spec sheet, with the same koa back and sides and Sitka spruce top, Round-profile mahogany neck, 20-fret rosewood fretboard, and TUSQ nut and saddle.

Visually, this one stays true to the design that has made the Hummingbird such a classic, with the familiar artwork on its tortoise pickguard. This art is developed, though, now with gold and silver-foil details that shift as the light changes. This one also features L.R. Baggs electronics, this time a VTC system.

Premium guitars need premium protection – so each new Elegant Koa acoustic model ships with a Gibson Custom hardshell case.

“The SJ-200 and Hummingbird represent defining chapters in Gibson acoustic history,” says Robi Johns, Gibson Acoustic Senior Product Development Manager.

“With the Elegant Koa models, Gibson Custom honors the character that made these instruments legendary while introducing the beauty, clarity, and evolving warmth of koa. These are guitars designed to form an even deeper connection with players over a lifetime of music.”

These are high-end acoustics, and their price tags reflect that, with the Hummingbird Elegant Koa coming in at $5,199, and the SJ-200 Elegant Koa priced at $6,899. If those figures feel a little outside your budget range, you can check out some of the mouth-watering high-res photos below instead…

These guitars are available now, both at Gibson.com and at the Gibson Garages in Nashville, London and Miami.

The post Gibson unveils two stunning luxury acoustics – a Hummingbird and SJ-200 built using elegant koa wood appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Of all the electric guitars in Billie Joe Armstrong‘s collection, his Fernandes S-type – affectionately named “Blue”, and which he’s owned since just 12 years old – is far and away his favourite.

The guitar has been with him for decades, accompanying him during countless live shows, and appearing on many of the band’s now-immortal studio albums, including their breakout album, Dookie (1994), and 1995’s Insomniac.

Blue remains a staple of the Green Day frontman’s live rig to this day, and can be clearly identified during shows thanks to its liberal covering of stickers and other marks of personalisation.

• READ MORE: Green Day serve up Basket Case and a few ice cream cones from the top of a Mister Freezie van
  

And now, the guitarist has spoken to US music retailer Sweetwater about his beloved Fernandes, diving into detail about some of the stickers that make it uniquely his.

“My mom bought it for me from my guitar teacher back in 1985 or something like that,” Armstrong says. “I just loved it so much. I really wanted a Stratocaster. It’s been part of my life ever since. Through the years I’ve kept it. I felt like it was a sound that I needed to hold onto.”

Explaining some of the stickers, BJA points to a photo on the back of the guitar, which shows himself in the 7th grade doing his “best Mick Mars impression”.

“I just started plastering stickers all over it, putting the “BJ” on it I think there’s a couple of ex-girlfriend’s pictures inside of here, stuff like that,” he says, pointing to the guitar’s lower bout where fresh stickers cover layers that came before.

Armstrong calls it the “ultimate punk rock guitar”…

The way the guitar looks is clearly a big talking point, but Billie Joe Armstrong regards Blue as indispensable to his sound. He goes on to explain its significant role in the recording of Dookie.

“When we went in to record Dookie, I was really adamant about playing Blue because I just felt like it was such a part of my sound for my whole life,” he says. “There was something that was really important to me. I played a lot of Insomniac [with Blue] also. It’s on the first four and a half albums.

“I could have played a different guitar, but there was something about this that just had, at that time, a deep distortion that created something unique.

“A lot of people have a distortion sound, but nothing that comes across as instantly identifiable. I think that’s what my Blue guitar and the Plexi has.”

The Green Day frontman has become somewhat synonymous with that pale shade of blue, and recently launched his signature 1959BJA Marshall stack – road tested at this year’s Super Bowl – which is wrapped in a similar colour.

You can watch the full video below:

The post “There’s a couple of ex-girlfriends’ pictures inside”: Billie Joe Armstrong reveals the secrets of his most iconic guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Angine de Poitrine suffered a string break that nearly derailed their whole show as a jam session pushed their instruments to the limit.

Guitarist Khn de Poitrine and drummer Klek de Poitrine were performing at Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) in New York on 9 September when they hit an instrumental snag…

• READ MORE: “It was the perfect choice to make fun of guitar heroes”: The story behind Angine de Poitrine’s ridiculous double-neck guitar

While the custom-built guitar and bass rig had not suffered too many major malfunctions at previous shows, the string break on the six-string half of the instrument very nearly saw the show end early.

During a performance of Ababa Hotel, Khn’s guitar needed to be restrung, a complex affair given the custom-built rig has a bass attached underneath.

Despite the near-disaster, the band managed to keep their jam going all while a guitar tech was on hand to fix the broken string. A viral video of the restringing has since been shared to YouTube, where fans of the band hailed the guitar tech for fixing the instrument mid-jam. The crowd in attendance were heard cheering once the restring had been completed.

To this day nobody knows the identity of Khn or Klek, and it’s a choice the duo have spoken about in interviews.

When explaining their decision not to reveal their identities to Cult MTL, the duo confirmed it was nice to live a life off stage without fame impacting them.

“There’s a comfort to feeling, ‘Oh, I’m this on stage,’ but after that, I’m a normal person,” they said. “We can avoid the, ‘Oh, this is the drummer’ talks, where everyone swarms you after a show when I just want to drink my water.”

Angine de Poitrine has enjoyed viral acclaim over the last year, with a performance at Montreal International Jazz Festival drawing a 70,000 strong crowd.

You can watch Angine de Poitrine jam around their instrumental restring below.

The post Watch guitar tech mastery in real time as Angine de Poitrine break a string during a live show appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

A Nazareth, Pennsylvania-made Martin is about as prestigious an acoustic guitar as one can get, which has kept players demanding the very best returning to the brand’s 16 Series time and again.

And now, Martin has announced the latest overhaul of the 16 Series, introducing a raft of exciting new specifications and finish options. Handcrafted in Nazareth, these US-made acoustic electrics boast all-solid-wood construction, along with gloss-top finishes and a range of distinctive body shapes to choose from.

• READ MORE: Martin Road Series DC-13E Modern review: a stunning cutaway Dreadnought aimed at contemporary players

These body shapes run the gamut and cater to just about every acoustic player, from “intimate, responsive” 00L models to “warm, punchy” Dreadnoughts, to larger Jumbos. There’s also a Grand Performance cutaway model, and even a “room-filling” Grand Jumbo 12-string.

Each 16 Series model comes fitted with L.R. Baggs Element electronics, with spruce tops complemented by a back and sides of either satin solid mahogany or East Indian rosewood.

A highlight of the series, Martin says, comes with the DSS-16E, which with its 24.9” scale length, marks the first time Martin has built a short-scale sloped-shoulder Dreadnought model.

“The compact 00L models bring surprising projection and a focused, intimate tone, while the Jumbo models deliver bold volume, deep bass, and commanding stage presence,” says Martin.

“The GPC offers balanced tone and comfort with a Grand Performance body and 000 depth, while the Grand J 12-string delivers lush shimmer, rich overtones, and room-filling sound to the lineup.”

Colour options in the refreshed 16 Series lineup include Blue Denim, Cherry Cola, Cream, Black Smoke and 1935 Burst, as well as more traditional natural tops, too.

Coinciding with the launch, Martin is offering a small run of accessories and lifestyle merch inspired by the series, including Blue Denim and Cherry Cola steins, a Cherry Cola ringer T-shirt, Blue Denim corduroy hat, and Blue Fade leather strap.

The refreshed 16 Series and accompanying merch are available now. Learn more at Martin.

The post Martin overhauls its Nazareth-made 16 Series – here’s what’s new appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.