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Step aside 4 July – Reverb’s “Independents” Day sale is here, and some of the savings are huge
As the US gears up for the 4 July, Reverb is kicking off its own celebration of independence. Back in April, the online marketplace was sold by Etsy, marking a transition to being an independent, privately owned company – and it’s marking the occasion with an “Independents” Day sale.
Running right up until 7 July, the ‘Independents’ Day sale will spotlight its vast community of independent shops and sellers across the online store. We’re talking thousands of discounts on new, used, and B-stock gear.
[deals ids=”cNuZ7viC562Bl3AIHVert”]
The sale offerings vary from top brands like Fender and Gibson, to more obscure vintage offerings. And the savings can be huge – smaller shop Tone Wolf is offering 20% discounts on Korina Explorers, while KORG is slicing £1,145 off its usual Vox Bobcat S66 pricetag, meaning you could get one for just £381.
There’s also plenty of pedal deals, whether you’re hunting for a simple tuning pedal or a more boutique effects stompbox. City Music Annex is offering a 60% discount on the Electro-harmonix and JHS Pedals collaborative Lizard Queen Octave Fuzz, a pedal we gave an 8/10 back in 2023. Elsewhere, a TC Electronic Polytune 3 Mini polyphonic tuning pedal has had a 41% price drop, now available for just under £50.
Warm Audio is also selling B-Stock at a fraction of the original price. The WA-DI-P Passive Direct Box in particular is available for 10% off, dropping from £82.46 to £74.21. You could also get your hands on a Two Notes Torpedo C.A.B. M+ Speaker Simulator for 15% off, now just £123.25.
As Reverb champions its independent sellers, the company will continue on its own path of independence moving forward. “There’s a lot for our community to look forward to and I’m very excited about what’s coming as we move forward as an independent company again,” Reverb CEO David Mandelbrot teased back in April.
To check out more ‘Independents’ Day sales, head to Reverb.
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Meet your heroes and try out the latest gear at Sweetwater’s GuitarFest 2025
Last August, Sweetwater hosted its very first GuitarFest, allowing the public to get hands-on with new products from top guitar brands, engage with brand representatives and meet their favourite musicians – and its happening again this year.
The second annual GuitarFest will take place on 27 September at Sweetwater’s Fort Wayne, Indiana campus.
Manufacturers such as Gibson, Fender, Marshall, and more will be in attendance, allowing the public to test out new guitars and quiz brand reps. It’s also just a great opportunity to mingle with fellow guitar lovers.
While nobody has been announced just yet, Sweetwater has teased that multiple “major artists” will be making appearances throughout the day, including meet-and-greets and signings.
The festivities will serve as the grand finale of Sweetwater’s Guitar Month sale. The sale will see a slew of exclusive in-store deals popping up over an 8-day period, kicking off on 20 September.
GuitarFest is completely free, but you do need to register for entry. Early registration is already available via Sweetwater’s website, where the company will continue to post updates on artist meet-and-greets, planned activities, and more.
“We’re thrilled to bring GuitarFest back for its second year,” says Samantha Hunter, director of artist relations and campus events at Sweetwater.
“We’ve taken everything we learned from last year’s event – along with the valuable feedback from attendees – and used it to make the experience this year even better.”
“We truly believe 2025’s GuitarFest will be an unforgettable celebration for music lovers of all kinds,” she concludes.
The free festival is just one of many ways Sweetwater gives back to the community. The company’s 2024 Impact Report shared that the company’s Guitar Workshop recycled over a quarter of a million guitar strings last year, as well as generating 1.4 million kilowatt hours of electricity across its Fort Wayne campus’ 93,000 feet of solar roof panels.
If you’d like to get a sense of what GuitarFest has to offer, YouTuber Masters of Shred posted a thorough vlog of the 2024 experience, showcasing the wide variety of guitars, pedals, amps and artist signings on offer.
Registration to attend GuitarFest is open now. Browse all your favourite products over at Sweetwater.
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Why Jake E. Lee agreed to perform at Black Sabbath’s final show even though he “hasn’t spoken with Ozzy Osbourne or seen him in decades”
With Black Sabbath’s long-awaited farewell show just around the corner, former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee has opened up about why he agreed to take part despite not having spoken to the Prince of Darkness in decades.
Speaking in the latest issue of Guitar World, Lee reveals that it wasn’t Ozzy who reached out directly, but Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who’s serving as musical director for the all-star Back To The Beginning event.
“Tom Morello called me. He said, ‘There’s going to be a thing, an original Sabbath performance and Ozzy Osbourne’s final performance. I can’t see this going on without Jake E. Lee in there somewhere,’” he recalls.
Lee, who played on hits like Bark at the Moon and Killer of Giants during his stint with Osbourne in the ‘80s, says he’s excited about the upcoming show both as a participant and as an audience member even if he hasn’t been in contact with Ozzy for years.
“It’s a thrill to be a part of it,” he says. “And even more so for me to watch it. I hope Ozzy can get through it. I haven’t spoken with him or seen him in decades.
“I really don’t know what condition he’s in, but he deserves a final farewell performance.”
“No matter how he is, or how well his singing is, he deserves to have that final farewell. I’m happy to be a part of it.”
Taking place on 5 July in Birmingham’s Villa Park, the one-day Sabbath-headlined show will be preceded by Osbourne’s own mini set and supported by metal heavyweights like Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Gojira, and Anthrax. The concert will also be available as a pay-per-view livestream for £24.99 for fans around the world.
Meanwhile, Wolfgang Van Halen earlier this week revealed that he’s no longer appearing at Black Sabbath’s farewell gig due to prior touring commitments with Creed.
“I wouldn’t be able to pull it off – unfortunately. I’m very excited to watch it, but I unfortunately had to back out,” the guitarist told WRIF Detroit.
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“His future is as bright as his talent is undeniable”: Jason Becker applauds Matteo Mancuso after meet-up that “bridged generations of guitar greatness”
Guitar history has its icons and its rising stars, and every so often, those worlds collide – such as they did when 28-year-old Italian virtuoso Matteo Mancuso visited the legendary Jason Becker.
One one of the most celebrated guitarists of the late ‘80s, Becker made his mark alongside Marty Friedman in the neoclassical shred duo Cacophony before joining David Lee Roth’s band for 1991’s A Little Ain’t Enough. His meteoric rise was tragically cut short after being diagnosed with ALS (a motor neuron disease) in 1989. Though he eventually lost the ability to speak and now communicates via computer, his mind remains sharp and he continues to compose music using only his eyes.
Despite these challenges, Becker has remained a beacon of inspiration for guitarists around the world. Over the years, countless players – from Eddie Van Halen to 11-year-old prodigy Maya Neelakantan – have paid him visits. Most recently, that list grew to include Mancuso, whose jaw-dropping technique and expressive touch have drawn praise from icons like Steve Vai, Al Di Meola, and Joe Bonamassa.
The meeting, shared via Becker’s official Instagram account, was described as “a moment that beautifully bridged generations of guitar greatness.”
“Each of [the above guitarists who praised Mancuso’s skills] has echoed a powerful sentiment: if the future of guitar lies in Matteo’s hands, then the instrument’s legacy is in very good hands indeed.”
“But what struck us most during his visit wasn’t just his technical brilliance – it was his heart,” the post states. “Matteo arrived with sincere humility, kindness, and a deep respect for Jason and his story. Watching the two connect – one a rising star, the other an enduring symbol of courage and creative brilliance – was moving and unforgettable.”
“It was a meeting of minds, a celebration of music, and a reminder that true greatness lies not only in talent, but in the soul behind the strings.”
The post continues: “Jason and all of Team Becker want to express their heartfelt thanks to Matteo and his manager, Michele Mozzicato, for making this visit possible – and for being so generous with their time, energy, and spirit.”
“It meant the world to us. We’ll be cheering Matteo on every step of the way and can’t wait to watch his incredible journey continue to unfold. His future is as bright as his talent is undeniable.”
Check out the full post below.
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“I buy them from Sweetwater”: Vintage obsessive Joe Bonamassa’s pedalboard consists entirely of “standard-issue” modern effects
He’s got one of the biggest vintage guitar collections in the world. A reputation for being a certified gearhead and tone obsessive. He also purchases standard-issue pedals straight from Sweetwater.
Yes, we’re talking about Joe Bonamassa, whose pedalboard is surprisingly no-frills for someone with access to nearly any piece of gear imaginable.
Speaking on the new issue of Guitarist, Bonamassa reveals just how low-maintenance his effects setup actually is when asked if any of his pedals – like the MXR Micro Flanger, for instance – had been modded.
“Nope, standard issue – I buy them out of Sweetwater,” says the blues legend.
“There’s a Tube Screamer that is either an ‘80 or an ‘81. A Micro Pog and a Fuzz Face that goes through the Twins. Then the switcher and the wah and the Fulltone [Supa-] Trem and a Way Huge Conspiracy Theory.”
“The rest of it’s just junction boxes, you know: inputs for the amps, and a junction box, basically, to get to the switcher and out, and then there’s the two boxes that power everything.”
As with his pedalboard, Bonamassa prefers to keep his amplifiers simple as well.
Whether he’s sitting in for a night or flying in for a special appearance, the musician previously revealed that his priority is just to “bring something that’s appropriate” for the gig at hand.
“The older I get, the more I prioritise my general condition and the condition of my back,” he said. “If I’m in L.A., I have a lot of stairs. What goes down must come up.”
So when he’s just dropping in for a guest spot, Bonamassa keeps things light: “I just scale accordingly. It’s only one guitar, a gig bag, a protector case, and a cable.”
“If I’m just sitting in, I just prefer to play through whatever’s there,” he added.
“The only thing that will make me bring my own amp is if they go, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a Princeton Reverb’ and it’s a live band. Well, you can’t really move the needle there; it’s not loud enough. You’re just peaked.”
Meanwhile, Bonamassa is set to play a trio of Rory Gallagher tribute concerts in Cork next week – and in a move that perfectly sums up his guitar-obsessive spirit, he recently purchased a Fender Stratocaster from none other than Crowley’s Music Centre, the very shop that sold Gallagher his iconic 1963 Strat, in preparation.
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“I like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works”: Why Alex Lifeson still reaches for the $57 Japanese guitar his parents got him
When you’ve spent decades playing in front of stadiums with one of prog rock’s most sonically ambitious bands, you earn the right to reach for whatever gear you damn well please.
And for Alex Lifeson, that sometimes means bypassing his custom rigs in favour of a cheap, beat-up Japanese guitar he’s had since 1967.
Asked if he tends to stick with familiar tools or reach for new ones when recording, Lifeson tells Guitar World,
“There are definitely go-to’s that I prioritise, but I also just like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works.”
“Like, I have the first guitar I ever owned, which my parents bought for me in 1967 for $57. It’s just a cheap Japanese guitar that I had refinished. I pull it up for some things.
“It’s kind of like a Jack White sensibility, like, ‘I’ll take this crappy guitar and see what happens.’”
“So far, I haven’t had much success, to be honest,” he adds with a laugh. “But you get what I’m saying. Sometimes, I’ll go for a P90; I’m not normally inclined in that way with guitars, but now I realise that tonality is what it’s all about. I create different tones.”
As for his most-used gear today? “I’d probably say my ES-335, the Lerxst guitars, and a couple of my Teles,” says Lifeson.
“And then, on the amp front, I’ve got a bunch of them. I’ve got a Marshall, my Lerxst amps, Bogner, a Mesa Boogie Mark V and – like I said – I have an enclosure built with a single Celestion 12.”
“Then I’ve got my Universal Audio compressors and about a dozen good acoustics. I’ve been collecting gear for 50 years, so I’ve got a good arsenal of gear here in my apartment. I’m covered.”
Still, for all the gear and decades of experience, the Rush guitarist admits confidence hasn’t always come easily.
“I’ve never been very confident, to be honest with you, as a player,” he says.
“I’ve always felt like I had to work hard, and maybe I didn’t appreciate that I have a natural talent for playing guitar.”
The post “I like grabbing something that I don’t think is the ‘right’ thing and seeing how that works”: Why Alex Lifeson still reaches for the $57 Japanese guitar his parents got him appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
“You don’t have to worry about the good retailers” Lee Anderton on why the recent spate of high-profile closures doesn’t mean that guitar shops are doomed
The last few years have been a brutal time for musical instrument retail across the globe. The enforced closures of the pandemic period might have been offset somewhat by a temporary boom in online musical instrument sales, but in many ways that shift just accelerated a trend away from brick and mortar stores that many retailers are still struggling to recover from.
In the last five years we’ve seen Guitar Center enter and exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and scores of smaller retailers go to the wall across the globe, but things seem to have accelerated in recent months. Last year the legendary US music chain Sam Ash filed for bankruptcy and closed all its stores, and earlier this year Dutch retailer Bax Music filed for bankruptcy only to be saved by a buyout led by founder, Jochanan Bax. The UK has been hit particularly hard, with the loss of GAK earlier this year followed up by the shocking collapse of PMT earlier this month.
Lee Anderton is probably the world’s most well-known guitar shop owner. But the Andertons main man has been moved to speak out by the crisis of confidence that seems to have gripped customers in the wake of all this, and wants to reassure the world that guitar retail isn’t going anywhere.
“We’ve been getting all sorts of comments coming through with orders saying, ‘Please confirm that you’ve definitely sent this today, because I’m a bit nervous that you’re gonna go bust tomorrow as well’,” Anderton reveals. “So it’s really important, I think, that we put some balance back into the debate.”
The death of PMT – one of the UK’s most recognisable and largest brick and mortar music retail chains – has sent shockwaves through the UK music scene, and it was a loss felt by their peers as well.
“Every single day the team at Andertons comes to work – and it’s the same at GuitarGuitar or PMT or anyone – and their job is to convince customers to buy something from them, as opposed to one of their competitors. That is the job. And yet, when you realise that something has happened and one of those competitors can’t continue anymore… ultimately you have to take some responsibility for their downfall, and it’s a validation that we must be doing something right. But then also it’s a moment of genuine sadness and sympathy for the people who now have to find other ways to pay the mortgage.
“It is a weird one, especially in the music industry, because above everything else, everybody in it just loves guitars and music, and it’s an industry where there’s quite a lot of camaraderie.”
Image: Press
Shop Talk
Anderton is at pains to explain that he has no special insight into what went wrong at PMT, GAK or any of the other retailers that have passed into memory over the last few years. But as someone intimately familiar with MI retail, and someone who has overseen a business that has, by his estimation, bounced back from the recent industry-wide downturn to almost the same level they saw during the Covid boom, he does have some feelings on where retailers that focused on brick and mortar might have struggled.
The enforced closures due to the pandemic are unsurprisingly one of the top culprits in this sad tale. “You just couldn’t have thrown a worse curveball, to a business with a large number of retail stores,” Anderton explains. “And then I think, honestly, it’s never recovered. I think Covid accelerated customers’ propensity to shop online, and probably accelerated what was going to happen anyway over a 10- or 15-year period, into a two-year period.”
Anderton’s point that it was always likely to happen eventually probably chimes with a deeper truth – and one that you probably relate with reading this. That the way people shop for things has changed dramatically, and it’s making it increasingly difficult for physical shops to compete.
“People like the selection and the freedom to shop online that bricks and mortar retailers just can’t compete with,” he admits. “I shocked myself with this stat, right? But if I add up the number of guitar amp and pedal products that you could order today on the Andertons website – I’m not even counting strings and cables, just guitars, amps and pedals – there are 14,000 different products. And 10,000 of them are in stock! How on earth is your average bricks and mortar store gonna get close to that? It’s financially not possible to have that kind of operation in every major city.”
Image: Press
The Power Of Passion
And yet, Lee Anderton still owns a brick and mortar store. The Andertons shop in Guildford, UK continues to offer an in-person retail experience that, while being as well-stocked as any shop of its size could be, still has to work with the same limitations and drawbacks compared to online – so why does he persist?
“Anybody who’s in the music business, we’re fundamentally trying to enable people to make music somehow,” Anderton explains. “And that’s quite an inspiring thing to do. I’m still a complete sucker for getting a lump in my throat every time I see parents with their 10-year-old kid coming in and buying a starter guitar pack. We mustn’t take for granted what a profound moment that could be for that kid’s life, you know? And if they go on to be a superstar, what a profound moment that could be for millions of people!
“So I never want to lose that. And I suppose to a certain extent, I do think it’s slightly sad when you periodically see [UK supermarket giant] Tescos selling guitar packs at Christmas. I do accept that if it reaches a wider audience and gets more people playing, it’s a good thing. But do I really think that the best way for you to start your guitar playing life is chucking it in with a half a chicken and a pound of potatoes in your shopping basket? No, I’m not about that.”
As an online retailer first and foremost, however, the challenge is to bring as much of the good stuff from shopping in person onto a digital platform.
“A big part of the e-commerce offering at Andertons was to try to replicate the store experience,” Anderton reveals. “Because I do still think that the greatest experience that you can have in retail is in an amazing bricks and mortar store. Doesn’t matter what you want to buy, a really amazing store with amazing demonstration facilities, and a vibe, and a great sales person and great after-sales service… if that can happen, it’s amazing.
“But when in reality did you last experience that? It’s so hard to consistently achieve that experience. I certainly think that part of the reason Andertons has never opened a second store is that it’s hard enough trying to do it most of the time in one store, yeah, trying to do it most of the time let you know, let alone all the time in 15 stores.”
The way that you can bring some of that magic to the fore however, is by reflecting the passion, knowledge and engagement of the store staff in a digital sphere – for Andertons, the most visible way this is done is through the brand’s hugely popular YouTube channel.
“I always describe our social media stuff as our foot in the door,” he explains. “And also, if you come and talk to the guys at Andertons, whether it’s someone who’s just joined yesterday, up to me and some of the team who’ve been here for 25-plus years, you’ll see that the YouTube stuff is quite genuine. That is what we’re all really like. And I kind of feel it’s still nice to know that you are shopping with people who really care, you know? And I buy lots from Amazon, and I don’t necessarily have a bad word to say about Amazon, but I don’t suppose Amazon is as passionate about music and instruments as we are.”
Image: Press
The Problem Of Choice
When talking about retail, it’s easy to forget that the people making the products have a part to play in all this. People assume that stores must be making huge margins, but in guitars especially this is not always the case. Anderton cites the example of a typical big-selling budget guitar, a Squier Classic Vibe Strat. With a retail price of about £379, Andertons’ margin on that guitar is around £50 – a hair over 15 per cent.
This might work if you’re selling these guitars by the hundreds, as big retailers like Thomann and Andertons surely do, but how does that work for a small local guitar store? If that guitar sits on the wall for a month or two, how much of that £50 profit is a shop going to actually make when you factor in the rent and other expenses accrued in the time it’s taken you to sell that instrument?
Another issue facing guitar stores is one of scale. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there have never been more products hitting the market in the history of guitar than there are right now. Anderton’s figure of 10,000 products is wild enough, but that scales up even further when you consider a mega-retailer like Sweetwater or Thomann. Thomann, for example, claims to have over 100,000 different products in stock and available for shipping from its cavernous warehouse in Germany at any time.
All this leads to a huge problem for brick and mortar stores, and even large chains. How can they possibly compete with the demand for choice that the industry has foisted upon them? Especially you have a thriving online guitar community that does a fantastic job of hyping and publicising these constant launches (and Guitar.com is absolutely part of that ecosystem, by the way), and driving a constant demand for the new hotness.
“Nowadays, you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of products in every manufacturer’s catalogue,” Anderton agrees. “You’ve got brands who are famous for making one style of guitar in search of more and more growth every year, going, ‘Let’s make other styles of guitar, or amps, or pedals, accessories.’”
It puts retail stores, especially smaller local ones, in an impossible position – because they just can’t offer the breadth of choice that the industry has created. “Any music store with less than 10 million quid to invest in inventory, you’ve got absolutely zero chance of being able to say to most customers, ‘Yes, I’ve got what you want today,’” he ruefully observes.
Image: Press
Forward To The Future
Anderton acknowledges that there are huge challenges facing the retail sector in general, and music instrument sellers are certainly not immune to this. Brands are bypassing retailers and selling direct more and more, consumers are finding themselves with less disposable income, and the basic costs of running a business are increasing exponentially. But despite all this, Anderton is optimistic about the future of your local small guitar store – provided that lessons are learned.
“It’s a fruitless task for that music shop to think they’re going to be able to service the same kind of customer that one of the big guys will be able to service,” he insists. “If I was starting again today, I’d be diversifying, I’d be shying away from anything mainstream – I wouldn’t be stocking any new Fender, Gibson, PRS or Ibanez.
“I still think that a small guitar shop that really, really specialises in what it does can work. There’s bucket loads of used gear around now, so just get into that – buy used gear, give it a really good overhaul, sell it for more than you paid for it. There’s a business there. And find all the weird and wonderful brands that are making really cool stuff, but just can’t get their voice heard because the big brands make so much noise.”
And while there are still people who pick up an instrument, music retail will continue to exist in some form or another.
“Fundamentally, we have to hope that human beings continue to want to make music and enjoy listening to music,” he reflects. “There are all sorts of retail challenges, but fundamentally, young bands are picking up guitars again. Schools have consistently carried on offering music tuition. And you’re still the coolest kid in school if you’re the guitar player in the band.”
The post “You don’t have to worry about the good retailers” Lee Anderton on why the recent spate of high-profile closures doesn’t mean that guitar shops are doomed appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 review: “if you’re looking for your first serious Les Paul-style guitar, you need to try this”
Editor’s note: Heritage Guitars and Guitar.com are both part of the Caldecott Music Group.
$699/£549, heritageguitars.com
Heritage has long been a cult favourite of the Gibson-inclined guitar connoisseur – after all the guitars have been made in the former 225 Parsons Street Gibson factory in Kalamazoo since the 1980s, using many of the staff who opted to stay in Michigan when the company relocated to Nashville. The problem with being a small, boutique, USA-made guitar company, however, is that there are limits to how many guitars you can make, and how affordable they can be.
A year or so back, however, Heritage decided to change that. The original Ascent collection was designed to create “modern, accessible guitars crafted with Heritage DNA”. In plain terms, that means making Gibson-inflected budget guitars in China, priced in similar territory as the very bottom of Epiphone’s range, or Harley Benton – but with some genuine US boutique bona fides to back it up.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – what is it?
The aforementioned original Ascent collection was aimed squarely at the entry level of the market and priced/spec’d to match. The new Ascent+ range however, is pitching itself more at the ‘first serious electric guitar’ market currently dominated by Epiphone and PRS’s SE in the non-Fender end of town.
In the case of this Les Paul-inspired H-150, what that means is you get a proper mahogany body and neck, which have been contoured at belly and heel for comfort. You get a maple top – which depending on the finish is either flamed – and a proper nicely dark rosewood fretboard. You also get a 12-15” compound radius neck, bound body, a tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece, a pair of Heritage’s own humbuckers and a classic four-control wiring setup – but one that’s actually hiding a push-pull pot for coil-splitting those pickups. And you get all that for under $700.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – build quality
Unboxing the H150 I was immediately impressed by what a good-looking instrument it is. The ‘Dipped in glass’ high gloss finish gleams over the dark blue to turquoise burst quilted maple top, bringing to mind wistful days by the summer pool perhaps.
While the finish and quilt level may be an acquired taste – it’s a bit more PRS than Gibson – there’s no denying the quality of the workmanship and classic timber selection. For those of more traditional tastes, traditional cherry and lemon bursts with flamed maple tops are available.
One of the most common issues with more affordable guitars is the weight of them. Corners cut either in wood selection or drying time mean that, especially when melded with a thick poly finish, you’re stuck with a boat anchor for life – it was one of the issues raised with Fender’s Asian-made Standard range, for example.
A good way to get around this with Les Paul-style guitars is to add some subtle weight relief underneath that maple cap, and that’s what Heritage has done here. It makes the Ascent+ H-150 an impressively lightweight and resonant instrument in the hands – tipping the scales at just under 8lbs, it won’t leave you sore after a long set.
Image: Adam Gasson
The significantly contoured heel may be visually off-putting to vintage purists, but it undeniably aids slick ergonomic playability and ease of access to upper frets that has my regular single-cut feeling a bit clunky in comparison.
The nicely bound genuine rosewood fingerboard could do with a touch of oil, but it’s well done and adorned with classic crown inlays – a treat to see, especially at this price point.
The gloss-finished classic C profile neck with 24.75″ (628mm) scale length neck feels great in the hand, nicely polished jumbo frets atop the 12” -16” compound radius board and genuine Graph Tech TUSQ XL all lend a professional and fast playing feel to the Ascent+ H-150’s impressive feature set.
Popping off the rear shielded control cavity, we find tidy wiring of the two 500K alpha potentiometers for volumes and the two 500K split-shaft push/pull potentiometers for coil splitting the humbuckers – each one controls its respective pickup.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – sounds
Giving the H-150 a strum straight out of the box I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent resonance of the guitar – it yields an airy unplugged tone with plenty of sustain, and bloom to single notes.
Plugged into my tweed combo, the pickups are nicely voiced with both reading around 8K in a traditional lower output PAF tonality. Okay, they may not quite have the articulation of a classic PAF from the 1950s – this is a $600 guitar, people! – but they are nicely musical. There’s plenty of snarl and honk at the bridge, smoother and darker at the neck and the classic middle position is always my underrated favourite on this type of guitar, offering perfect balance between the two.
Classic open chords and low-down riffs feel right at home, and as your solos take you further up the neck it’s easy to forget you’re playing a classic single-cut. That contoured neck joint really does disappear under your palm, facilitating speedy runs to the highest echelons of the fretboard, if only my playing could keep up!
The humbuckers offer a great range of classic rock tones, and while the coil split won’t turn your H-150 into a Strat, they are effective at adding a range of sparkly thinner tones to the available palette. I particularly enjoyed the middle position with both neck and bridge pickups split for funky rhythms and cutting country chicken pickin’.
And don’t overlook mixing a blend of one pickup in single coil split mode with one full fat humbucker, either. I think my favourite tone on the whole guitar was the combo of bridge humbucker with neck pickup coil split, producing a slightly hollowed out yet full bodied beautifully jangly rhythm tone and an articulate lead tone that slices through a mix brilliantly with a little fuzz. The opposite setting of a full neck humbucker and coil split bridge ups the midrange snarly and definition, perfect for those Andy Summers-esqe suspended chords and tight riffs.
The only gripe with the coil splits, is how tricky it is to actually access them. The gold bonnet knobs might look the part on a classic single-cut, but they’re very tricky to quickly pull up in the heat of battle – especially if you have large hands and fingers. If Heritage is determined to stick with these knobs, perhaps swapping the push-pull to push-push pots would make this less frustrating?
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – should I buy one?
This is a professional looking and sounding instrument – one that’s relatively lightweight and resonant with slinky playability that you could happily gig with tomorrow. Traditionalists may baulk at those quite extreme body and neck contours, but Heritage should be applauded for thinking outside the box a little – this is a great looking, superb playing and versatile single-cut for the more modern player.
The Ascent+ H150 develops the genre’s classic single cut DNA with some modern twists for increased comfort, easy playability and expanded tonal options all in a range of eye-catching finishes.
The one incongruity is perhaps the contrast here. Much of this guitar’s look and feel seems best suited to more technically-inclined, high-gain players – but the sounds on tap are much more traditional. Perhaps the next step for the Ascent+ is to add some options with higher output pickups to make a play for the heavy market? Regardless, this really is a lot of guitar for the money – if you’re looking for your first serious Les Paul-style guitar, you need to try this.
Image: Adam Gasson
Heritage Ascent+ H-150 – alternatives
The sub-$1,000 set-neck single-cut category is a hugely competitive one, and the biggest beast in this weight class is undoubtedly Epiphone. The brand’s Les Paul Modern ($699/£749) is clearly the target for Ascent+, sporting as it does a sculpted heel, compound radius and coil-split pickups. If you want to keep the single-cut vibes but lean into the rock mentality, ESP’s LTD Eclipse EC-256 ($599/£599) is a good option. And you can’t really talk about quality guitars in this price point without mentioning PRS – the SE Singlecut McCarty 594 ($899/£829) is an absolutely monster guitar for the money.
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“Who the hell gives anyone the right to tell these living legends to retire”: Fans jump to AC/DC’s defence after concert footage goes viral
AC/DC are the latest victims of TikTok virality. While the iconic rockers have been churning their way through their Power Up World Tour, a clip from a show back in April has recently resurfaced – and people aren’t impressed.
The TikTok in question captures 70-year-old guitarist Angus Young rousing up California’s Rose Bowl stadium during T.N.T. The guitarist knocks out a few calls of “OI! OI” OI!”, before we see frontman Brian Johnson singing the track. While it’s a calmer display than one might have seen in the ‘70s, some users have been quick to criticise; “It’s time to retire,” one user writes.
Others share similar sentiments, with one user commenting: “I really wanted to see them this year… now I don’t, thank you for this”.
Despite the backlash, plenty of fans are stepping in to defend the rockers. “People are confusing bad sound engineering and mixing with a bad performance,” one user notes. “I saw them last month and they rocked the house. They might retire soon, but not because they’re unable to deliver.”
“They’re selling out stadiums, I don’t think they are embarrassing themselves,” another TikToker notes. “They crowd’s having a great time, and the band aren’t stopping [any time soon].”
@acdc_usaAC/DC – T.N.T. (2025 Pasadena) @AC/DC #acdc #acdcforever #acdcrocks #acdcfan #acdcfans #acdclovers #angusyoung #brianjohnson #rocknroll #music #guitar #classicrock #backinblack #highwaytohell #thunderstruck #rocklegends #musiclovers #hardrock #rock #rockmusic #tour #worldtour #pwrup #powerup #poweruptour #poweruptour2024 #bonscott
News outlet Australian Daily has also shared the clip, urging more fans to rush to the Australian band’s defence. “Who the hell gives anyone the right to tell these living legends to retire,” one user says.
When faced with a hater, the user doubles down: “Don’t go [and see AC/DC] then, it’s that simple. They are 70-year-old men than have rocked the world for over 50 years, and they still get up there and fill stadiums.”
“What do they expect honestly? To see a band in their prime? Not a chance, they are old men. But it’s rock n roll, and rock n roll will never die. And if you think they care what people say then you are poorly mistaken.”
“Angus is 69 years old, Brian is 76, compared to someone like Axl Rose, they’re looking and sounding pretty damn good – and they’re older by him by a decent margin,” another notes.
Despite the divisive TikTok clip, AC/DC are still in the thick of their world tour. Celebrating the release of 2020’s Power Up record, the tour kicked off last May and has drawn in over half a million punters thus far.
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“Outdoor events are going to come to an end. It’s too hot”: Chrissie Hynde says that increasing global heat will lead to the demise of outdoor festivals like Glastonbury
While thousands of tents already pitched across the Glastonbury fields, the festival’s annual weekend of music is set to kick off tomorrow. However, The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde is warning people that global warming could put an end to the beloved summer festival season.
In a new Instagram post, Hynde reflects on how British summers are getting hotter every year. “I trust you’re all surviving the heat waves,” she writes. “I’m remembering the last couple years when we supported Guns N’ Roses, and then the Foo Fighters… It was so hot I had to strap ice packs around my waist. And I realised then that outdoor events are going to come to an end. It’s too hot.”
According to weather predictions, this year’s festival could be the hottest ever. “There is a slim chance that temperatures [on Sunday] could get close to the Glastonbury record of 31.2°C,” the BBC reports.
The Glastonbury Town Council has also voiced its concern surrounding changing climates. In 2019, the council “declared a climate emergency, and pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030”.
Hynde isn’t the only musicians fearful of rising climates. St. Albans rockers Enter Shikari have even attended the UN’s world climate change conference, COP26, back in 2021. “We’re going to make as much noise as we can!” he told Kerrang! at the time.
The gang have been contributing to the climate crisis discussion since 2012, when they released Arguing With Thermometers, a thumping wallop of dubstep-meets-industrial-post-hardcore fury.
In 2019, they even performed on the Reading & Leeds Festival main stage with a backdrop of ‘Warming Stripes’. Designed by Reading University Professor Ed Hawkins, the Warming Stripes depict how average global temperatures have risen since 1850. The blue stripes represent cooler years, while the red stripes show hotter years.
Regardless, Glastonbury wont be deterred by the hot weather this year. This weekend is set to boast headline sets from Olivia Rodrigo, Neil Young and The 1975. The 1975 have also made every effort to impress, with the Telegraph reporting that the band spent “four times their actual fee” for their stage production.
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Taylor’s top-tier Gold Label Collection now features Grand Pacific models – here’s everything you need to know
After first being introduced at this year’s NAMM Show, Taylor‘s Gold Label Collection is expanding with new Grand Pacific models.
The Grand Pacific models expand on the Gold Label Collection’s “warm, heritage-inspired acoustic flavour”. Rather than the classic Grand Specific design, the Gold Label upgrade boasts a reimagined body shape, 3/8 inch deeper body and a round-shoulder dreadnought to capture a fuller sound and even more low-end power.
While the deeper body allows for more “lung capacity”, it also has the Gold Label’s signature Fanned V-Class bracing architecture. The combination allows for rich tonal and musical clarity; as the company notes, even the treble notes feel warmer and deeper than the Grand Pacific’s standard model.
“Compared to the Super Auditorium body, the curves and depth of the Grand Pacific produce even more volume and tonal dimension,” Andy Powers, Taylor’s Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO, explains. “Its voice is earthy, honest and uncomplicated. It’s a reliable acoustic workhorse – both seasoned and soulful.”
Credit: Taylor Guitars
The Gold Label Collection Grand Specific also has Taylor’s Action Control Neck. The neck is featured on all Gold Label guitars, and allowing the tonal benefits of a long-tenon neck joint combined with the ease of instantly being able to tweak string height.
This is possible by using a quarter-inch nut driver on a bolt in the neck block, which can be accessed via the soundhole. It means that no fiddly neck or string removal needs to happen in order to make your adjustments.
“The design serves players by allowing them to adjust their string height for different playing styles, applications or climate conditions as often as they like,” Powers notes.
The new Grand Pacific models come in either mahogany or rosewood, both with torrefied Sitka spruce tops. Grand Pacific Mahogany 500 Series models include the natural Gold Label 517e, Gold Label 517e SB Cream, Gold Label 517e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 517e Blacktop.
Rosewood 700 Series models come in the same colour options, with the all-natural Gold Label 717e, Gold Label 717e SB Cream, Gold Label 717e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 717e Blacktop. As well as this, both the Mahogany and Rosewood Firestripe models can come with firestripe or cream pickguards, depending on your preference.
All models also come with a ‘Crest’ inlay motif in cream on the fretboard, as well as a new headstock inlay. All models boast a West African ebony fretboard and Taylor Nickel tuning machines and come with D’Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light strings.
The Gold Label Grand Pacific range is available now, with prices ranging from $2,599 to $2,999.
For more information, head to Taylor Guitars.
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Adrian Smith recalls pushback he received when making Iron Maiden bandmates use drop D tuning: “I’m the only one in the band who would do it”
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has spoken about being the sole member of the band to make use of Drop D tuning – a move he claims was met with some resistance from his bandmates.
In a recent conversation with Ola Englund, Smith shares how he began experimenting with his playing after rejoining Maiden in 1999. The guitarist credits producer and Bruce Dickinson collaborator Roy Z, whom he worked with for “a couple of years”, with introducing him to Drop D tuning, something Smith says helped push his playing into new territory.
“Roy showed me all this business,” Smith recalls [via Ultimate Guitar]. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what is that?’ Now everyone’s doing it. So, I brought a little bit of that into Maiden.”
He continues: “When I rejoined the band, I thought I’d try something a little bit different, because Jan [Janick Gers] was just playing the same as I used to play. So, I’m playing a lot of stuff differently than I used to.”
Drop D stuck – but not for everyone in the band: “We do songs like Run to the Hills, The Clairvoyant, it’s Drop D. I’m the only one in the band who would do it. ‘Come on! Let’s drop the D, move with the times!’ They’re like, ‘Nah.’”
Even so, Smith concedes that the effect is subtle unless the bass joins in: “I think unless the bass does it, it doesn’t really get the full effect. But it’s a little bit of a different texture,” he says.
The Maiden guitarist also previously credited Roy Z with shifting his approach to practice altogether.
“I never knew you had to practice… I just used to write songs, play them, sing, and do gigs,” Smith admitted on the Scars and Guitar podcast.
“I never used to sit down for hours and practice, but Roy showed me stuff, and I thought, ‘Hey, he’s technically miles better than I am, and I’m playing in a band with him, and I’ve got to go on stage with him. I better get my shit together.’”
Elsewhere in Maiden lore, longtime manager Rod Smallwood recently reflected on the band’s early shows in Japan and a particularly odd audience experience.
“One of the weirdest things for us was how the audiences were all seated. If a fan got too excited and stood up, a security guy would bang them on the head with rolled up newspapers,” he said. “So the fan would sit down, but then another would stand up somewhere else, and then – bang! – they’d sit down. It was like Whac-A-Mole. Quite extraordinary.”
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PRS breaks new ground with radical new signature model for DragonForce’s Herman Li – and it’s been four years in the making
PRS Guitars has launched its first signature guitar with virtuoso Herman Li, best known as one-half of the high-speed guitar duo in power metal outfit DragonForce.
Named Chleo, after a combination of his children’s names, the limited-edition axe is as bold as it is technical, packing four years of R&D into just 200 units for 2025.
At first glance, the Chleo is a seemingly dramatic departure from classic PRS design. But under the hood, the build quality and craftsmanship are pure PRS.
The guitar features a figured maple top on a solid mahogany body with a one-piece maple neck.
Its body has been slimmed down dramatically, making it light enough for high-energy stage performances and comfortable for longer gigs, while a custom neck joint adds structural integrity and enhances tonal transfer.
Built for speed, the neck is “very thin front-to-back” with a slightly taller playing surface and a wide 20” fretboard radius. The upper frets are fully accessible thanks to a revised scoop and scalloping at the last four frets.
Glow-in-the-dark side dots round out the build, alongside a striking custom “Eclipse Dragon” inlay pattern across the ebony fretboard.
Credit: PRS
At the heart of the Chleo is a custom HSH pickup configuration powered by the Li’s signature Fishman Fluence Signature Series Omniforce set.
These copper-free pickups use layered PCBs to deliver a consistent, noise-free performance. With three distinct voices and a versatile switching system, players can access up to 13 unique tone combinations.
Whether you’re after fat, aggressive rhythm tones, crisp single-coil sparkle, or searing high-gain leads, Chleo adapts with ease.
The guitar’s performance-friendly control layout – featuring a single push/pull volume, a push/pull tone, and a 5-way blade switch – also makes it easy to switch between tones on the fly.
Even the bridge has been rethought. The Chleo features a Gotoh locking tremolo, upgraded with a custom stabiliser developed by PRS.
This clever design gives you the freedom and feel of a floating tremolo while maintaining the tuning stability you’d expect from a hardtail bridge.
Credit: PRS
“With the PRS Chleo, I wanted to create a guitar that combined effortless playability, precision craftsmanship, and a versatile tonal range,” says Li.
“It brings together modern innovation with timeless style, giving players the freedom to explore both classic sounds and new creative possibilities. The Chleo isn’t just a signature model – it’s a guitar built to inspire.”
Rob Carhart, PRS’s Director of New Products Engineering, adds, “This guitar represents a new evolution for PRS. We spent more than four years in research and development, working closely with Herman to get everything exactly right.”
At $6,850, the Chleo doesn’t come cheap, though it clearly isn’t meant to. Available in Orchid Dusk and Charcoal Purple Burst finishes, with just 200 units (100 each) planned for global release, this is a high-performance, limited-edition instrument for players who demand precision, playability, and standout style in equal measure.
Learn more at PRS.
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“I wouldn’t be able to pull it off”: Wolfgang Van Halen backs out of Black Sabbath farewell concert
Wolfgang Van Halen has confirmed he will no longer be taking part in Black Sabbath’s upcoming farewell show in Birmingham due to scheduling conflicts with his own touring commitments.
Set for 5 July at Villa Park, Back to the Beginning marks a monumental – and supposedly final – reunion for Black Sabbath’s original lineup: Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward.
Billed as their definitive send-off, the event will also feature performances by metal heavyweights like Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, and Gojira.
Wolfgang Van Halen was among the first names attached to the show earlier this year, leading fans to speculate about a possible guest appearance or collaborative set.
But in a new interview with WRIF Detroit, the Mammoth frontman reveals he’s had to step away from the gig entirely.
“I, unfortunately, had to back out because the Creed tour starts the day after, and I wouldn’t be able to pull it off – unfortunately,” he says. “I’m very excited to watch it, but I unfortunately had to back out.”
Van Halen and his band Mammoth are set to hit the road this summer as part of Creed’s massive Summer of ’99 reunion tour. The North American run also includes stops alongside 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, and Big Wreck.
Despite Van Halen’s absence, the Villa Park show still promises to be a major event for fans – not least because of Ozzy’s return to the stage after a long break due to health issues.
While he won’t be performing a full set, the Prince of Darkness has reportedly been undergoing endurance and weight training (producer Andrew Watt previously described him as “real-life Iron Man”) in preparation for his appearance.
Still, the 76-year-old frontman isn’t sugarcoating the realities of performing at this stage in life.
“I had an appointment in the hospital yesterday,” he recently told MOJO.
“I’ve also got a problem with a trapped nerve in my neck – nine months and it won’t shift. When you get to our age, things just go wrong. We’ll probably keel over after two songs!”
For fans who can’t make it to Villa Park in person, the concert will be available as a pay-per-view livestream for £24.99.
Learn more at backtothebeginning.com.
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Brent Hinds calls Mastodon a “s**t band with horrible humans” three months after his departure
There appears to be no lost love between Mastodon and their ex-guitarist Brent Hinds, who took to social media this week to describe his former group as a “shit band with horrible humans”.
The blunt remark arrived after Mastodon posted the cover of their 2014 album Once More ‘Round the Sun on Instagram, commemorating the record’s 11th anniversary.
A fan replied in the comments section, praising the song Halloween and adding that they would “definitely gonna miss B. Hinds.”
Hinds then responded: “I [won’t] miss being in a shit band with horrible humans.”
Credit: Mastodon/Instagram
The guitarist co-founded Mastodon in 2000 and spent 25 years with the band, sharing vocal duties with bassist Troy Sanders and contributing to all eight of their studio albums.
His departure was announced in March, just days before the band was due to perform at Tool’s Tool in the Sand festival in the Dominican Republic.
At the time, Mastodon described the exit as a mutual decision, writing: “We’re deeply proud of and beyond grateful for the music and history we’ve shared and we wish him nothing but success and happiness in his future endeavours.”
To honour their upcoming commitments, Mastodon initially brought in YouTuber and guitarist Ben Eller to fill Hinds’ spot.
More recently though, they’ve announced Canadian guitarist Nick Johnston as their new touring member for upcoming shows.
The band also assured fans then that all 2025 tour plans would continue as scheduled, and said they were “very inspired and excited to show up for fans in this next chapter.”
As of now, neither the band nor its members have publicly responded to Hinds’ remark. But if his Instagram comment is any indication, the split may have been far less cordial than the official statements let on.
View all of Mastodon’s upcoming live dates via their official website.
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Taj Farrant explains how he got so good at guitar at 15 that Nuno Bettencourt called him “SRV and EVH reincarnated into one body”
The guitar world loves itself a prodigy. And in the social media age, it seems barely a month passes without some precociously talented young shredder setting the feed ablaze with their skills… but some are a little bit different.
In the last few years, there’s been one young guitarist whose skills have been blowing minds around the rock and blues community, and earning some serious fans along the way. No less than Nuno Bettencourt himself was so astounded: “It’s as if God was doing his weekly reincarnations, but on this day enjoying a bit of a drink [and] just to fuck with us convinced SRV and EVH to be reincarnated into one body. And just for fun he threw in Michael Jordan’s fingers.” The person he was talking about is a 15-year-old guitar phenom named Taj Farrant.
Farrant was born in Australia and made his first waves as a guitar player via an appearance on Australia’s Got Talent. From there his YouTube channel blew up and he has since moved to the United States, becoming the youngest person to ever be endorsed by Gibson, and sharing the stage with Carlos Santana and another guitarist who first gained attention as a very young man, Joe Bonamassa. His playing has been described as a tasteful mixture of shred and emotion in the vein of one of his idols, Gary Moore.
But how did this kid get to be so good at such a young age? Well, the answer is simple enough.
“I practised probably eight to nine hours a day from when I was like seven to when I was probably 13, 14,” Farrant explains. “I’ve cut back on practicing now because I am doing a lot more touring. But really, it was just a lot of practice with dad in my bedroom all those years.”
Image: Press
Putting In the Hours
Woodshedding guitar seemed to come quite naturally to young Taj from the moment he saw Angus Young take the stage at an AC/DC show that his father brought him to – that planted the desire to learn to play guitar, and he pursued it with all the fervor and ambition that kids normally display for certain sports of their liking. But while other kids were working on their footy skills, Farrant was in his room diligently getting better and better at the guitar.
It’s often been said that practice makes perfect, which often entails running scales until your fingers bleed. This is where, for many of us, those big dreams of becoming a great guitarist crash headfirst into a wall of reality. Let’s face it, running scales is boring. So how did Farrant overcome this common hurdle early on in his sonic journey?
To answer that, you have to get to know Taj Farrant. From the moment you start talking about guitar, either technique or nerdy gear-related stuff, Farrant’s face lights up – for him, playing the guitar was seldom a chore; it was a labor of love that he naturally threw himself into from a very young age.
Regarding playing those boring scales, Farrant explains that he would simply play them while watching television. This helped commit the scales to muscle memory and learn where each note lands on the fretboard, greatly aiding in sculpting a skill that many have lauded Farrant for – his ability to improvise when playing live.
Next Chapter
When he is not on tour, he has been busy recording a follow-up album to his blues chart-topping debut album, Chapter One. While we don’t know many details about the upcoming album, it promises to pick up where the debut left off, as the constant touring has only helped to sharpen his skills. Farrant did reveal that it would have several guest appearances from some pretty big names
“This next album is full of guests on pretty much every song,” he enthuses. “We’ve got Kingfish [Christone Ingram] for one, maybe Andy Timmons for another, Eric Steckel…” Based on those names it would seem that the album will be a powerful statement for the blues community, combining established blues artists as well as the exciting crop of young guitarists lending their talents to the storied genre.
Given his remarkable technical ability, it’s easy to assume that he ascribes to the “more is more” school of musicianship, but even at this young age, he’s worked out that more notes doesn’t always translate to more feeling.
“It’s cool when you can play a thousand notes,” he says. “But it’s way cooler when you can hold one note and it can captivate what all of those thousand notes could have done.”
Image: Press
One good exercise for those looking to hone their melodic skills would be to explore ways of interpreting the vocal melodies of a song on the guitar. This is something that Paul Gilbert has been doing for a while now and Taj Farrant has also been doing a lot when covering legends in his live shows.
“Sometimes with some of the Prince songs like Purple Rain or even some Gary Moore songs like Parisian Walkways I won’t sing them just out of respect because obviously it’s their song,” he affirms. “But I will still do what I love to do, which is the guitar part. I keep their iconic parts, but I still make it my own by interpreting the vocal parts.”
There is no question that Taj Farrant is one of the guitar talents in the blues-rock world, but it’s also clear that he has something beyond shredding – he can connect with people on an emotional level through his music. So if you’re really looking for the secret to his young success, it’s probably the best advice he can offer – find your feeling and let it flow through your fingers.
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“Got lucky with an exceptional hospital”: Bruce Springsteen guitarist undergoes emergency surgery on tour
With just three dates left of Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams tour, guitarist Steven Van Zandt has announced that he will be temporarily out of action in the wake of emergency appendix surgery.
The 74 year old E Street Band member underwent the emergency surgery in the Spanish city of San Sebastian, where Springsteen performed last night. Zandt, understandably, did not perform. “Got a sharp pain in my stomach, thought it was food poisoning, turned out to be appendicitis,” Zandt explains on Instagram.
- READ MORE: Learn how Martin guitars are shaped by the iconic musicians who play them in the 2025 Martin Journal
While the guitarist is resting up, he hopes to be back on stage soon. “Got lucky with an exceptional hospital in San Sebastian,” he continues. “Operation was a complete success and I’m hoping to get back on stage for at least one of the shows in Milan. Thank you all for all the good vibes. See you soon.”
The show in question would be the tour’s grand finale at the San Siro Stadium on 3 July. Alongside marking the end of the Land of Hope and Dreams tour, Zandt’s return to the stage will surely be another cause for celebration.
Springsteen’s tour has certainly been one for the history books. The singer sparked outrage in the White House due to a speech at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena on 14 May, leading him to release the cutting speech on an impromptu EP, Land of Hope and Dreams. He then changed the name of the entire tour too, just to cement his defiance.
“My home – the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years – is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” he explained at the Manchester show.
“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us,” he urged. “Raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.” He then kicked into a triumphant performance of Land of Hope and Dreams.
Alongside the tour, Springsteen has also just released a mammoth, career-spanning boxset of seven previously unreleased records. Tracks II: The Lost Albums is rammed with Springsteen cuts recorded between 1983 and 2018, showing his full breadth as an artist across a span of 35 years.
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Simply Guitar review: simple isn’t always better
Note – there are two learning platforms called SimplyGuitar/Simply Guitar – this is a review of the smartphone app Simply Guitar made by Simply (formerly JoyTunes), not the web-based platform hosted at simplyguitar.com.
Given you’re here, you may have seen your fair share of adverts for ‘smart’ learning solutions across the various corners of the guitar internet. In particular, a few years ago, Simply Guitar and Yousician seemed locked in a battle to have the most ubiquitous and energetic video adverts – they’re less pervasive now, but for a while it was a running joke just how many you’d run into.
The, er, comedic tone of Simply Guitar’s ads no doubt helped cement them as memes, but beyond the yelling there are some serious promises being made in all of Simply Guitar’s marketing material about the platform’s teaching ability. So, let’s dive in and see if they’re kept.
Who is Simply Guitar for?
Simply Guitar is a smartphone-based learning app aimed at anyone who’s totally new to guitar and who might feel intimidated by more traditional learning paths. Like Yousician, a lot of Simply Guitar’s marketing lampoons YouTube video lessons as obnoxious and unfriendly to beginners. Regardless of the truth of that, it presents itself as an alternative, promising to make the guitar far more friendly and accessible with a mix of smart features and professionally-made video lessons.
Its beginner focus means there’s very little theory explored in the app, and it sticks to very simple tabs and chords, with almost no rhythm notation. Hence, If you have some basic theory knowledge from another instrument, or more than a year or so’s experience on the guitar, Simply Guitar’s approach may be too simplistic for you. It is also probably not for you for other reasons, no matter your skill level, but we’ll get on to that.
All Ages
As well as being a general “beginners” app, Simply Guitar is also vaguely pitched as “all ages”. There are a good amount of kid-friendly songs to play, including a few Disney tunes alongside a wide range of modern pop. While some learning platforms seem to forget the existence of music released after 1986, it’s refreshing to see artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, Post Malone and Sia make a showing here… sort of. More on that later.
Some effort has been made to keep the tracks family-friendly, too. I don’t hear a single swear word across my time with the app (not counting the ones I say). Songs are sometimes tweaked to minimise adult themes – for instance Why Do You Only Call Me When You’re High has been bowdlerised to simply Why Do You Only Call Me, and the version of ooh la la by Run The Jewels ends before you’re told the four-letter verb you should do to the law. It is not, however, a completely sanitised experience: the full lyrics of Hurt are included, and a lot of racy classic rock tunes are left untouched in the lyrics department.
So, yes, a broad age pitch does mean inevitable compromise. For very young learners it’s definitely not the most engaging platform out there – I mean, just look at the Loog app’s colourful cast of characters and contrast them to Simply Guitar’s fairly bland tablature. Conversely if you’re above the age of 13 you’ll likely find the skits and bits within the video lessons – replete with comedy explosions and shouting – irritating rather than funny.
The Simply Guitar experience
The main loop of Simply Guitar is this: you select a course, and then go through a series of short training exercises, leading up to performing “full songs” (those quotes are foreshadowing) to cement each course’s ideas. Video lessons are interspersed throughout the courses, with a presenter popping up to explain and re-state different techniques, chords and strumming patterns as and when they’re needed.
The courses themselves are split into two paths – chords and lead. The chords path focuses on the skills needed for campfire strumming, while the lead course drills down on riffs and melodies. They occasionally convene for courses that cover both. Notably the whole app is pretty electric/acoustic agnostic – when I sign up, it asks me what kind of guitar I have, but this appears to impact nothing.
A given lesson goes over the finger positions of any relevant chords, and then gives you a chance to practice the upcoming chord changes, riffs and melodies. Here you’re actually playing the notes, with the app listening to check you’ve done so correctly. You can work through the initial chord changes and melodies at your own pace, before playing some of the parts in time to a generic drum track. You’ll then put it all together to play along to a song from the library.
For the sections where you’re playing along to music, the tabs/chords scroll across the screen and work on Guitar Hero rules – hit the right note or chord at roughly the right time, and you’ll get to keep going. If you completely mess up too many times in a row, the track rewinds a bit and makes you try again. You can’t proceed to the next lesson within the course until you get through each part without triggering this rewind. Things broadly stick to this formula across all of the app’s lessons.
I will start with a positive: the videos that are dotted throughout the lessons, despite an occasional reliance on cringey humour, are well-presented and clear. It’s always helpful to see a human demonstrate how to fret a chord rather than just look at a chart, and here there are some good visual enhancements used to make things obvious. The main video presenter is particularly good at slowly and patiently explaining the basic elements of guitar.
However, there will be long stretches where it’s just you and the open road of tablature – the stop-offs for the human-presented lessons are far less common in some courses. For these stretches, you’re left with the smart “instant feedback” system – the thing that listens to your playing and tells you how well you’re doing – as the main voice of authority. How well does that work?
Detection issues
From a purely technological standpoint, the detection is reasonably functional for single note lines. And boy, that’s a sentence with a lot of caveats. The app occasionally hears itself and registers a false positive – you can mitigate this with headphones, but this does mean you’re going to have a harder time hearing your own playing – and given there’s no desktop app, there’s not really an easy way to mix guitar and app audio through your headphones. Plus if you’re using one of those new-fangled phones that doesn’t have a headphone jack (IE, most of them), this might introduce a little bit of bluetooth latency without a dongle. And latency is the last thing Simply Guitar needs, for reasons we’ll explore in a moment.
None of that is ideal, but it’s the chord detection where the cracks really start to show. During a lesson, I lean away from my phone to cough. There’s a swoosh, a boop and a big animated tick. I’d apparently just coughed a perfect Fmaj7. I try whacking my (muted) strings. A perfect D major. A tuneless pickscrape? To Simply Guitar, an E minor.
In short – its chord detection is simply not really functional. You can play the wrong chord, drop your guitar, have a bin lorry go past the window – Simply Guitar often just can’t tell the difference. Rhythmically, it’s much more of an issue – when I sustain the same chord, Simply Guitar registers it as multiple strums. This means that there’s no real way for it to tell me whether I’m playing a strumming pattern correctly, as it registers my first strum as half of the entire pattern.
I ask Simply Guitar’s team about ways to mitigate this, and I am told to use a cleaner tone and a lower volume, with the phone not too close to my amp. But, this had all already been with a clean tone at standard home practice volume. It obviously gives me extreme pause as to the reliability of the whole system if it can’t tell the difference between a guitar and a coffee grinder.
Before these detection issues, Simply Guitar was coming across as a pretty basic but fairly harmless tool for beginners. But we now reach the point where the review score realises, Wile E Coyote-style, that it’s run off the cliff, and plummets. It will not be getting better from here.
Feedback on the feedback system
So, even in a world where Simply Guitar gets its detection working, the actual feedback system also needs a major overhaul to be an effective teaching tool. “Strum along to the songs you know and love, and receive real-time feedback to keep you on track,” Simply Guitar’s website says – but here’s the main drawback: the feedback is almost totally binary. You either hit the right note at sort of the right time, or you don’t. That’s as nuanced as it gets in the heat of the moment, and after the song ends, you’re just told how many notes/chords you missed.
Playing perfectly in time is, to Simply Guitar, just as good as playing an eighth-note behind the beat. There’s no “ok, good, great, perfect” scale for your timing as there is in Yousician. You’re given far too much leeway as to what counts as in time, and the app has absolutely no way to tell you to improve on this, or indeed on any particular aspect of your playing beyond just ‘general accuracy’. And it is measuring accuracy with a system that, at least in my experience, only sometimes works. You could progress through every lesson in Simply Guitar’s catalogue while developing absolutely no internal clock, playing everything wildly out of time – you’d still come out with a perfect score.
This is made worse by the fact there’s no actual rhythm notation, formal or informal, and the tabs are occasionally extremely simplified versions of a vocal performance. There’s no grid beyond bar lines, no time signature indicated, and how long a note is meant to be sustained for isn’t shown. When you’re playing a three-note version of a complex vocal melody, and a pair of eighth notes looks basically the same as a dotted eighth note next to a 16th note, the timing of what the app actually wants you to play is totally inscrutable.
Similarly, there’s no tempo control of the songs or lessons – at least, not on the version of the app I’m reviewing. When I ask Simply Guitar’s team about tempo adjustment, they send a screenshot that depicts a set of buttons that I do not have. It turns out that tempo control – as well as the ability to move around within a song – is iOS-exclusive.
Having such an essential feature locked to your operating system isn’t great. The team assures me that it’s being worked on, but at the moment one of the most vital aspects of learning music – playing something slowly and accurately before speeding it up to a more sensible tempo – is exclusive to those within the Apple ecosystem.
But hey, do you know what’s not iOS-exclusive? The metronome. Because there isn’t one. This exacerbates my concerns about the app’s loose approach to timing – if I could do one thing for my younger self guitar-wise, I would sling a metronome through that time portal, ideally at my own head, attached to a note that said “bloody well use this, you idiot.” 16 years after I started, I am still paying for the fact that I learnt to play via untimed guitar tabs without really ever bothering to keep an internal clock.
My point is, being early on in your playing journey does not mean you should ignore this stuff. Simplifying music to make it more accessible is a commendable goal – but not if it comes at the expense of the cornerstones of musical language. Not including a metronome in your learning app is like not teaching a new driver what a red light means, in case they get demotivated from learning how powerslide. You may be skipping straight to the exciting stuff, but it’ll likely introduce some problems down the line.
The song library
Now, maybe you don’t sign up for Simply Guitar for its technique-developing courses and video lessons. Maybe you’re drawn in by the oft-repeated promises of being able to learn your favourite songs quickly – to a degree where you’ll greatly impress your friends, if you believe the ads. The song list is great – it strikes a balance between guitar-driven classics, well-known contemporary pop and Disney earworms. But sadly, there are some pretty big barriers to Simply Guitar’s performance as an engaging and effective song-teaching tool.
Firstly, the library is effectively all cover versions, and a lot of them are slowed down quite noticeably – irreversibly so for Android users. The fact they’re covers isn’t in itself awful, but it’s not something Simply Guitar makes obvious in any of its marketing – the whole app is peppered with photos of the original artists, after all. The pitch is that you’ll enjoy learning guitar so much more when you can “strum along to the songs you know and love,” not strum along to a slowed-down, mildly unsettling Björk impression.
(Side note: the Björk song included is her cover of It’s Oh So Quiet, originally by Betty Hutton – but it isn’t the Björk original. So you’re listening to a cover of another cover, and seemingly reason that the song is listed as a Björk track not a Betty Hutton track is that the vocalist is doing their own version of Björk’s unique delivery and Icelandic accent. I cannot imagine any reason for this to have happened, but here we are.)
The inability to slow or speed the songs up on Android obviously throws a bit of a spanner in the works from a pure “learn a whole song” angle, and I do think it’s pretty unfair to have an Android user pay the same as an iOS user for a tool that’s less capable. But this isn’t the only barrier to learning songs using Simply Guitar – there’s also the awkward fact that Simply Guitar’s transcriptions often aren’t anything close to the actual guitar parts.
This manifests in a few ways. Firstly, all of the songs in the library are taken straight from the lessons they appear in, with no variable complexity to choose from. Unlike Yousician’s system where the same song is presented as multiple versions depending on your chosen level of difficulty, songs here are the level that they are – with only a few appearing multiple times across the courses.
Take Creep as an example. Its chord progression is evocative and easily recognisable – you, as a beginner, might want to use the guitar tuition tool you’ve just paid for to learn it. But because Simply Guitar uses Creep to demonstrate changing from E major to E minor in a very early lesson, you get a transposed version of the song that doesn’t indicate the strumming pattern, or include two of the four chords. Creep doesn’t come up again, so the app is incapable of teaching the rest of the song. “What the hell am I even doing here”, indeed.
Further down the chords path, strumming patterns are introduced. Despite using covers, Simply Guitar doesn’t modify the arrangements to reflect the guitar parts it wants you to play. While learning to play a Rihanna song with just open chords, you’re not hearing an acoustic version of the track. You’re instead playing along to a full pop arrangement, amongst which your strumming pattern gets more than a little lost. Combine this with Simply Guitar’s inability to accurately recognise the rhythm of a strumming pattern, it really starts to feel like it’d be better in basically every way to open up a free YouTube lesson for a campfire acoustic version of the song.
For the lead path, the melody transcriptions are often just barebones interpretations of the vocal line, even when the guitar part is likely what you came for. It is extremely strange to open up a lesson on The Thrill Is Gone, as part of “Lead Foundations III” only to not be taught that iconic opening lick. Instead you’re given a four-note version of the vocal melody. This may well be more instantly accessible to a complete beginner’s skill level, but is it really a sensible compromise when you have ostensibly signed up to learn the guitar?
When the transcription does cover guitar parts, they’re often simplified beyond recognition. Whole Lotta Love is a simple and iconic guitar riff, and a reasonably slowed-down version of it is definitely within the grasp of a beginner guitarist. But Simply Guitar transcribes it as follows:
It’s fair to say that if you play this as written in isolation, no one is going to recognise it as Whole Lotta Love. This simplification is ostensibly in service of the app’s beginner focus – but again, you’re still hearing the “real” riff as you try to sightread a different rhythm. I’d argue it would be simpler – and more rewarding – to teach the riff as played, even if it means using a slower version of it without the bends at first.
No shortcuts
I am trying to keep in mind that beginner-focus, of course, because it is obviously not a good idea to try and teach someone who’s just learned their very first chord a perfectly accurate version of the main riff to Sweet Home Alabama. However the complete disconnect between what you’re being asked to play and what you’re hearing is troubling, and made worse by some other major limitations with the platform. Namely: the complete lack of any mention of slides, bending, hammer-ons or pull-offs.
Simply Guitar’s team tells me the app is made for “novice players that are looking to master open chords, tab reading, strumming patterns, finger-picking and riffs,” hence these techniques are absent. But this seems like throwing an entire orphanage out with the bathwater – how are you going to “master” most of these categories without an understanding of basic guitar techniques, and how they’re commonly transcribed? Mastering riffs surely includes at least acknowledging the existence of the techniques used to play them.
There are courses here called things like “Fretboard Master”, promising to let you “take command of advanced guitar solos.” Let’s look at one of the lessons in that course – blues licks. Yes, there is a lesson on blues licks that makes no mention of bending, which is just such a bizarre thing to attempt. It uses Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning as its end point. You can hear the main riff being played, slides, bends, pull-offs and all – but the platform doesn’t support these, and so the riff is not transcribed accurately. You’re just left wondering why either a) why the lesson is ignoring half of the riff, or b) why what you’re playing just sounds wrong compared to the track.
You might hear the song and think, “oh, that sounds cool – I want to play like that” – and you can. Slides, pull-offs and bends are totally within a beginner’s grasp, especially someone who has proved they’re willing to invest time and money in learning to play. But in focusing entirely on being fun and accessible, Simply Guitar has perhaps sacrificed too many vital aspects of the instrument.
Further Accuracy issues
Sometimes, the transcription is as complex as the “real” song but still inaccurate. For instance – Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt. An acoustic guitar classic, which starts with the root and the fifth… or, according to Simply Guitar’s tab, an octave jump. But not according to the guitar you hear on the track, which plays the correct fifth interval. This is one of the most advanced tracks in the app, and is basically as complex as the “real” tab, so why the incorrect transcription, if it’s not to make it easier?
I asked Simply Guitar’s team why this change had been made, and they told me that sometimes the tabs will be different to the song you’re hearing on purpose – to avoid the app hearing itself and registering a false positive. From a technological standpoint, it’s a solution, I guess. From an educational standpoint, I don’t think it’s an acceptable one. I’d be more than a little concerned about the impact of this discrepancy on a player who’s developing that all-important feedback loop between their ear and their playing.
Pricing
A blog post by a Simply Guitar developer can perhaps shed some light on why these drastic limitations exist. The post describes how, in developing the first version of Simply Guitar, the team were struggling to surmount the technological challenges presented by strumming patterns. The solution chosen was this: ship the app without actually including them.
The blog post admits that strumming patterns are vital to actually learning the guitar, but the goal was to move fast, to get the app out there and generating revenue as quickly as possible. This isn’t a leak of some internal memo – this is freely shared as part of the development journey, despite the fact it indicates a little disregard for the quality of the teaching being provided. Strumming patterns have since been added to the app, but the approach arguably persists, given that, lest we forget, the app tries to teach you how to play blues licks without mentioning bending, a task akin to teaching you how to bake without ever explaining what dough is.
But by the time a beginner can figure out what’s missing from Simply Guitar, it’s too late. The lack of any real progression beyond the total basics might be reasonable if Simply Guitar was a one-off, affordable purchase that aimed to kickstart your playing. However, the app bills you annually by default, and in the US, it’s a total of $120 a year.
I think if there’s even the option to charge by the year, then we do have to consider at the very least a player who’s about to have their yearly subscription auto-renew. At that point, they’re about to be paying $240 for two years of guitar learning with a tool that doesn’t have a metronome, a fully functional detection system, tempo control if you’re using Android, accurate transcriptions, songs by the original artists pictured in the app or support for cornerstone guitar techniques. It is, simply put, a bad deal.
Simply Guitar Alternatives
There are plenty of alternatives to Simply Guitar out there, the main one being Yousician, which operates on very similar principles. While its subscription is a little more pricey, it at least has more nuanced timing feedback, a library of the original songs rather than covers, support for techniques beyond the very basics and a way to progress through various levels of difficulty as your playing improves. With that said, it still does rely on a rather informal approach to timing, but its ‘bouncing ball’ take on the Guitar Hero format is better than the spartan approach to rhythm Simply Guitar employs.
If reading this has understandably soured your thoughts on “smart” apps, you may of course want to look into something a little more analogue and straightforward. Guitar Tricks has some beginner courses while also allowing you to actually progress beyond the walled garden of techniques Simply Guitar places you in. Alternatively, there is an absolutely huge collection of beginner content out there on YouTube for free, most of which is far more comprehensive. Even if it’s not as clearly structured, it’s a much better way to learn the campfire acoustic versions of tracks that Simply Guitar has to offer.
Even Songsterr is a viable alternative to Simply Guitar – its free version has fairly accurate tabs for most of the popular guitar songs out there (although take none as gospel), and will teach you at least formal rhythm notation at the same time. Are community-sourced or AI-generated tabs always 100% dead on? Of course not, but Simply Guitar is also not a source of truth in this regard.
If you want to have real feedback on your playing, rather than just going through passive video lessons and/or a load of tabs, your best bet is realistically to get a teacher. I recently looked at Til, a great platform that lets you connect with real human teachers in one centralised place. While it is a good deal pricier than any of the above, the depth of feedback you will get is a universe beyond anything an app can provide by listening to your playing.
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“There was this Star Wars one going around a week or two ago…”: Metallica has a band member-only group chat for sending memes
It’s official: when Metallica aren’t knocking out hair-raising riffs, they’re sat watching funny cat videos. Well, not quite, but drummer Lars Ulrich has revealed that the legendary metal outfit have a group chat for exchanging memes and funny videos.
Speaking to Variety, Ulrich explains that the elusive Metallica group chat isn’t just filled with band secrets and new song ideas. Instead, it’s filled with jokes and fan-edits. “We have a band-only text thread that’s just for the four members, and there are definitely some fun things that we see in this day and age with everybody being so creative,” he explains.
Ulrich picks out a recent favourite of his: an Anakin Skywalker TikTok set to the sound of Metallica’s 1988 track, One.
“There was this Star Wars one going around a week or two ago which was really funny,” he recalls. “There are some conversations between Darth Vader and a whole thing that builds up, and then they’re talking about the dark side. Then all of a sudden it goes into ‘Darkness imprisoning me!’, that whole thing from One.”
@brethrenedits#ANAKIN X #METALLICA – One || insp: @street #starwars #edit #darthvader #obiwan #yoda #anakinskywalkeredit #fyp #viral #starwarsday #revengeofthesith #maythe4thbewithyou
“We love people’s creativity, and to see so many fans reinterpret our songs, whether it’s on guitar or drums or singing them,” Ulrich says. “[Some are even] taking them into different genres. Sometimes you mix a little AI in there and then something fun spits out.”
Of course, it’s hard to keep track of absolutely everything fans are posting online. “It’s a lot to keep track of because this happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day,” he admits. “But there are some fun ones that get into our band-only text thread for the four of us to enjoy and appreciate.”
Metallica have previously shared proof of their online presence. When Ulrich was unable to attend Download Festival in 2024, Ulrich acknowledged memes about him avoiding the festival because of its name – a jestful nod to Metallica’s lawsuit with Napster, a site that allowed users to ‘download’ MP3 files for free.
The drummer also revealed in a 2023 interview with Metal Hammer that he reads fan feedback online. “If you decide to go down into the comment sections, at least for me, you have to prepare yourself for not taking any of it overly personally,” he said. “You have to kind of remove yourself from it. But I’d like to challenge anybody in a band to say they don’t look at comments.”
“I mean, I’m not sitting up until four o’clock in the morning scrolling through every one,” he notes. “But when you haven’t put any music out in five or six years and you dump something like Lux Æterna on an unsuspecting world, you’re going to want to see what the feedback is.”
Metallica’s third documentary, Metallica Saved My Life recently made its debut on June 11 at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was directed by Jonas Åkerlund.
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Tyler Bryant invites fan onstage – and he totally steals the show
Performing onstage with your hero is something out of teenage fantasy, but Tyler Bryant just made one fan’s dream a reality. After spotting the fan waiting in line outside, Bryant thought he’d invite him to perform with him – and the fan absolutely nailed it.
On 15 June, guitarist Matt Levulis travelled 300 miles to Albany’s Empire Live venue catch Bryant’s show with the Shakedown. Luckily, Bryant would hear about his long journey. “I was walking back from dinner and met this guy standing in line for the gig,” Bryant explains in an Instagram post. “He said he’d driven four hours from Buffalo to Albany with his homies to hear the Shakedown. [He] looked like a ripper to me.”
During the show, Bryant decided to see if Levulis truly was a “ripper”, offering him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I subtly asked him if he wanted to play during Drive Me Mad,” he writes. “He didn’t hesitate to climb over the barricade. Ripper indeed.”
Onstage, Bryant asserted the same judgement, explaining to the crowds that Levulis “looked like a badass guitar player, but I don’t know how this is gonna go”.
Despite cautioning the crowd, there was no need. Bryant was right – Levulis was a total “ripper”, knocking out slick riffs without a hitch. The performance was even kicked off with an ultra smooth guitar transfer in the midst of the track, with Bryant placing the strap over Levulis’ head before the fan instantly picked up where Bryant had left off.
Levulis’ profile asserts him as a “hat guy, Strat guy and rock’n’roller”. Though no hat was in sight at the Shakedown gig, he was trusted to wield Bryant’s shell pink ’60s-inspired Fender Strat, and embodied the essence of rock’n’roll.
Despite initially playing without a pick, Bryant soon hands him his own, essentially handing over the reigns to let Levilus take full control. With the right tool in his hand, Levilus absolutely shreds, stealing the spotlight for a glorious guitar solo.
“Thank you Tyler Bryant for the best night of my life,” Levilus reflects on his own Instagram post. “Unbelievable.”
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