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Still looking for last-minute Christmas gifts? You’re in luck, because Thomann is offering one of the most treasured Electro-Harmonix pedals for less than £50.

The EHX Bad Stone was originally launched in the late 1970s and was reissued by the brand in 2015. It remains faithful to the original circuit design and three-knob control layout, but features up-to-date enhancements for today’s players, and can now be yours for just £47.

• READ MORE: Guitar.com Deals Of The Week: pre-Christmas savings to stuff your stockings with

The Bad Stone delivers six stages of phase shifting, and also hosts a manual mode that lets players freeze the phase. Its Rate knob controls the phase shifting speed – which goes from very slow to a rapid, oscillating warble – while its Feedback knob determines the depth of the phase effect. A toggle switch is also onboard for selecting Auto or Manual modes.

All controls are super simple to use, and the pedal is housed in a compact, rugged die-cast package that shrinks down the original Bad Stone to a more typical modern pedal size. To hear how it sounds and find out more, you can watch the video below:

In other EHX news, the brand has teamed up with JHS Pedals to revive Bob Myer’s long-lost dual Op-Amp Big Muff design as the EHX Big Muff 2, described as “a sharper, louder, more aggressive take on the classic Big Muff voice.”

But that’s not all from the EHX camp, as it also recently informed the subscribers of its email newsletter that the company has a plan to solve an AI-induced energy crisis by harvesting a near-infinite supply of energy that’s hiding out in the planet’s magnetosphere.

To shop this deal on the EHX Bad Stone, head over to Thomann.

The post One of the most iconic pedals ever for under 50 quid? Grab this incredible Thomann deal while you can appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Guild Polara is an ultra-light, rock-ready machine with simple yet effective controls, and you can now get your hands on it for less than $500.

Launched at NAMM in 2024, this Polara range followed on from the success of Guild’s 2023 collaboration with Kim Thayil. This standard version is the most affordable of the lot – among the Deluxe, Artist Signature, and USA versions – and you can now get a further 20 percent off it via the zZounds Reverb shop, knocking it down to $439.95.

• READ MORE: The 10 best acoustic guitars for all styles and budgets

We reviewed the Polara shortly after its launch, and awarded it a glowing 8/10. While its no frills layout means it’s not the most versatile guitar, we loved its striking aesthetics and described it as a “tone-packed rock machine” that will “remind you exactly why you fell in love” with guitar in the first place.

A brilliantly accessible model, the standard Polara offers uncovered HB-2+ pickups, described as “modern extensions” of the coveted Guild HB-1 oversized humbuckers built in a traditional size with Alnico V magnets. A diagonal string layout matches Guild’s compensated stop bar design first introduced in the early 1970s, and its string-through body design delivers glorious sustain.

This double cut dream offers plenty of access to the upper frets for soloing and classic rock shredding. It has an ultra-light ergonomic Mahogany body, making it an ideal workhorse guitar, and a mahogany U-shaped neck hosting a rosewood fingerboard. Its uber sleek and simple design is completed with basic controls for master volume and tone.

Infallible for players of all abilities, this standard Polara is sold brand-new through Reverb and comes in a vibrant Voltage Yellow colour. Hear it in-play in the video below:

You can shop this deal now via Reverb.

The post We said this Guild “reminds you exactly why you fell in love” with guitar – and you can get an incredible 20% off it at Reverb appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

As much as we love it, and while guitarists themselves have continued to evolve, there’s no escaping the truth. The electric guitar is an instrument rooted in technology from the early 20th century, with a playing technique that predates the printing press.

But what if we took all the technological innovation the last seven decades have afforded us, and approached this wonderful thing of ours with fresh eyes? The Circle Guitar is one answer.

If you’ve seen it, you will no doubt have an abiding memory: the disc. The spinning wheel that gives the guitar its name, covered in tiny plectrums, strums the strings in a way that no human could – freeing both hands up to create sounds, effects and textures that even the greatest guitarist couldn’t create on their own with a conventional instrument. With the rhythm aspect controlled by the guitar (the rhythm and pattern of which is determined by MIDI), you can interact with the guitar in new ways: create impossible chord shapes, experiment with new types of string muting and string bending, work the onboard volume faders to precisely bring in each note at the right moment.

Creator Anthony Dickens describes the circle as “an electro-mechanical guitar that uses a MIDI-enabled physical sequencer to strum the strings”. Sounds straightforward, right? But to see it, to hear it, to play it is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced with six strings. It’s dizzying, confronting and exhilarating all at once.

Pushing The Envelope

The man who designed this guitar from a cyberpunk future is an unassuming, down-to-earth chap from the South West of England. Anthony Dickens’ first experience of the instrument was some rapidly aborted classical guitar lessons at school. He didn’t give the guitar much more thought until he was flicking through his dad’s record collection a few years later. The 12-year-old happened upon a cellophane-wrapped sample single given away with Smash Hits magazine, celebrating some artist he’d never heard of by the name of Jimi Hendrix.

“For two years, I listened to nothing else apart from every single thing Jimi Hendrix did,” Dickens explains today. “I was just obsessed from that moment on with music and guitars.”

“The thought was a simple one really – what if I could strum a guitar, but that strum never ends?”

Dickens’ obsession expanded: Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Rage Against The Machine. Rave music was also everywhere in the UK in that period, but Dickens struggled to really connect with it until he heard the uniquely experimental sounds of Aphex Twin – it was like a light had been turned on.

“When I discovered Aphex Twin, the first thing about it was that he was sort of an enigma,” Dickens says. He adds, tellingly: “And then I heard that he made his own instruments, and I was like, fucking hell, that is cool! That is the ultimate freedom, isn’t it?”

Dickens’ cousin taught him the basics of sampling on his Atari ST, and he was off making his own ‘esoteric’ electronic music. The logic went: “I’m not in a band, so I’m gonna try and do it myself!”

Design For Life

Dickens also had a passion for making things, and went to university to study furniture design. That said, he planned to pursue music as a career once he was done with his degree. But a final-year exhibit in London complicated matters.

“I ended up winning these awards!” Dickens explains. “Instead of going to Brighton with my three other mates, to go head first into writing music and probably set up a label, I had to ring them up and go, ‘I’ve won this design award. I’ve got to stay in London and I’m going to work.’ It’s a sliding doors moment because it started me on a design career… but the tension has always remained.”

As a designer, Dickens has since worked with everyone from Red Bull to Audi – but he never stopped thinking about ways his two passions could combine. Around 1996, he started to seriously contemplate how music could influence design and vice versa.

“For me, it’s always about: how can I find a new way of expressing myself that nobody else has done before? It’s about people exploring new ways of communicating, and progressing that historical lineage of creativity.”

“It’s almost like the guitar has been left behind. Look at the evolution of music technology – and yet the guitar is the way that it is, and that’s all it should be”

After considering and discarding various ideas over the years, true inspiration struck in 2018. “I was trying to think about how I could change the way that I interacted with a guitar,” Dickens recalls. “The thought was a simple one really: ‘What if I could strum a guitar, but that strum never ends?’ No matter how fast your hand is, there has to be a moment where your downstroke ends and you have to bring it back up for the next one. But I thought, ‘What if it never ended?’”

Dickens landed on the idea of sticking a wheel onto a guitar, putting a load of plectrums onto it, and spinning it by hand. So he made his first prototype – using a cheap acoustic guitar with a hole drilled into it, skateboard ball bearings, a laser-cut piece of plastic, the cheapest, thinnest plectrums he could find, and a doorknob off a kitchen cabinet.

“I started spinning it around, and it sounded amazing – you could make it sound like a swarm of bees, this incessant, endless thing. Immediately I thought, all right, there’s something there.”

On Your Ed

Dickens began pursuing the Circle Guitar project in earnest shortly before the pandemic. At Somerset House’s Makerversity space, he connected with people who could fill in expertise gaps, such as the coders and engineers who helped develop the motorised spinning wheel and the MIDI control that could accurately and consistently keep time. Dickens eventually also added a hex pickup to enable each string to be treated as an independent signal, with onboard volume faders for each one.

As he continued to tinker, Dickens needed some validation that he was on track. “I thought I had to put some videos on social media. Just to see: are we being absolutely mad? If I’m finally going to put my love of design and music together into something, I need to find out if it’s really worth pursuing.”

Some thought the Circle Guitar was madness, while others thought it was genius. But one particular cosign pushed the project forward.

Dickens had watched a That Pedal Show episode with Ed O’Brien, where the Radiohead guitarist insisted that searching for new sounds and textures was more important than any kind of technical virtuosity. It struck a chord, and so he dropped O’Brien an Instagram message about the Circle Guitar. “Within an hour, he got back to me going, ‘Wow, this is amazing. I’d love to come and play it,’” Dickens remembers. “And a week later he was in my house!”

“Every single guitar hero was an agitator, because they were doing something that hadn’t been done before”

O’Brien would later characterise the Circle Guitar as “extraordinary”, telling Reuters it was “almost like playing a different instrument”. “It’s like learning a new language, really. I want to spend a lot of time with it.”

Chances are your first encounter with the Circle Guitar was a direct result of that meeting in August 2020. While at Dickens’ house O’Brien recorded a short phone video of him using the Circle Guitar to create some otherworldly sonic textures, and shared it on Instagram. It quickly went viral, and before long Dickens was fielding queries from artists and producers keen to try it for themselves.

In the five years since that video, the Circle Guitar has changed dramatically both inside and out – and Dickens is ready to share his vision with the world. The first batch of production instruments have been completed, each one custom-tailored to the requirements of the artists and innovators who ordered them.

O’Brien will take delivery of one of them, Phish bassist Mike Gordon another, as will A-list producers Paul Epworth and John Congleton. True innovation doesn’t come cheap – the Circle Guitar costs £7,995 – but guitarists as diverse as Muse’s Matt Bellamy and Idles’ Lee Kiernan have been wowed by the Circle Guitar’s potential.

The faith these artists have placed in Dickens has empowered him to assemble a small team of investors and collaborators to help him achieve the Circle Guitar dream. US-based software engineer David Ashman is responsible for coding the guitar’s firmware and designing the internal electronics, while respected UK luthier Manson Guitar Works – which is owned by Bellamy – produced the necks and bodies for the first batch. [Editor’s Note: Meng Ru Kuok, Founder & CEO of Caldecott Music Group is a part owner of Manson Guitar Works. Guitar.com is part of Caldecott Music Group.]

Another key figure in helping the project move forward is Freddie Cowan, former guitarist in indie-rockers The Vaccines. When Dickens moved to the quiet Somerset village of Frome to work on Circle in earnest, he discovered that Cowan was his neighbour, and he became a hugely important voice in the development – if you’ve seen a Circle Guitar demo online in recent months, Cowan is likely the man playing it.

The Future of Guitar

Even with a formidable team behind him, Dickens still toils away in his workshop to assemble each and every Circle Guitar. There are some who see his brainchild as some sort of technological interloper, transgressing on the pure and good world of electric guitars. It’s a position he understands, even if he hasn’t got much patience for it.

“It’s almost like the guitar has been left behind,” he argues. “Look how the evolution of music technology has exploded – and yet for some reason the guitar is the way that it is, and that’s all it should be. Some people get annoyed because they see the Circle as cheating, because you don’t have to play it like a normal guitar – but you can still buy the old ones! And the intention was never to create something to shortcut learning; it was about exploring new ways to play the guitar. But,” he adds with a wry smile, “it’s also quite fun winding people up as well.”

The unique venn diagram of Dickens’ interests made him the perfect man to conceive of the Circle Guitar. But it still comes back to that maverick creativity and expression that Jimi Hendrix captivated him with all those years ago.

“The beauty of innovation is that it’s deep within us – we’re compelled to find something new”

“For the purists out there, every single one of their guitar heroes was an agitator when they first came out,” Dickens explains. “Because they were doing something that hadn’t been done before, and it probably pissed off a load of other musicians too! This is what humans do. We are always pushing things. The beauty of innovation is that it’s deep within us – we’re compelled to find something new.”

With batch one completed and deposits for the second batch now being taken, Dickens is ambitious about the future of the Circle Guitar. He has plans for new devices, and intends to use feedback from batch one’s owners to refine the concept and better cater to the needs of artists – something that remains at the heart of the Circle ethos.

“The thing that [guitarists] always tell me is that Circle forces you to think differently,” Dickens says. “And for a musician, that’s their job – they’re constantly trying to reinvent themselves. They’re trying to find different ways of responding to their instrument. So that’s what I’m hoping that Circle as a brand is going to keep doing – giving these tools that allow them to open new doors of sonic exploration.”

Words: Josh Gardner
Photography: Andy Ford
Location: Distillery II Studios, Bristol

The post The Circle Guitar is the most revolutionary new guitar in half a century – and artists are queuing up to be part of it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

What makes you want to buy a guitar? It could be a visual aspect like shape or colour, or maybe it’s the electronics or wood. For Keith Urban, it needs to pull an unusual riff out of him.

Urban, who has just launched his first ever live album, High And A(live), has been sharing his best tips for buying guitars, including what is most important to him. It doesn’t matter if a guitar is expensive or cheap, if he manages to play something entirely brand new on it, he’ll likely buy it.

• READ MORE: “She was always willing to confront her inabilities and work on them”: Keith Urban explains why he saw Taylor Swift’s huge potential when she supported him in 2009

He tells Guitarist in its new print issue, “I think maybe it’s about bonding with something. That’s all it is for me. l usually base it on if I pick it up and play it, and a riff or something comes out of the guitar that I’ve never played before, I get very excited about that particularly.

“It happens on really cheap guitars, too. I’ve walked into stores and found fairly cheap guitars, you know, for a couple hundred bucks, and kind of gone, ‘Wow, l’ve never played that riff before.’ Then maybe another riff comes out of it, and I go, ‘This guitar’s got some stuff in it.’ So l’ve bought guitars based on that,” he explains.

Asked if he’d rather buy a cheap guitar and an expensive amp, or vice versa, Urban responds, “The guitar comes first, but… Man, that’s a great question. I was going to try to give an answer, and I was like, ‘You don’t believe that, Keith’ [laughs]. Because, really, either one works.

“To me, ‘good’ is something that pulls something out of me that feels and sounds really good. Regardless of how much it is, what brand it is or anything about it, to me, that’s a good guitar. That beats tone,” he concludes. “Because the tone could be shitty and that’s actually part of the character of the guitar you just played.”

Keith Urban will go on tour in 2026. You can find out more via his official website.

The post Keith Urban says this is the best way to tell if you should buy a guitar: “I get very excited about that particularly” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Steve Stevens has recalled how Eddie Van Halen “shook up the world” when he rose to success, as shredding became an obsession – but with some unintended consequences for the rest of the guitar scene.

Stevens kicked off his own career in the 1980s, just as Van Halen were soaring, and remembers how record labels were looking to sing players who could tap and shred in the same style.

• READ MORE: The Guitar Influences of Eddie Van Halen

Stevens has worked with artists like Michael Jackson, Vince Neil, and prominently Billy Idol, as well as having worked on his own solo music. In an interview with Guitarist, he says he never gave into the pressure of shred-sanity, and still prefers “having a dialogue” with other band members on stage.

“I wasn’t from LA. I didn’t grow up watching Van Halen thinking, ‘Oh shit, what do we do now?’ A lot of guys did. Eddie shook up the world, no doubt. I became friends with him later, but I never wanted to play like him.

“Record labels were signing anyone who could tap and shred. The good ones, like Warren DeMartini and George Lynch, found their own voices, unlike guys that were just Eddie clones. But, really, my true love is collaborating on a good song.”

He continues, “I’m definitely not looking for my moment of glory three minutes into a song, waiting for the guitar solo. I enjoy being part of the band more than anything and having that dialogue with the guys on stage, playing and locking in with the drummer.”

Another guitarist who has recently reflected on the impact of Eddie Van Halen’s work is Steve Lukather, who was also a good friend of his. Speaking to Forbes, he said that Ed “changed the world”, but not everybody understood what he was about.

“People mistook him for a parlour trick because he did the tapping thing. He actually stumbled upon it by accident. It had been around for a while. He was in a trio, and filling up the sound is hard. Think Cream [with Eric Clapton],” Lukather said.

“Ed’s rhythm-playing and solos were like one fluid movement. I don’t think he ever played the same thing twice, and that used to drive the guys in the band crazy.”

You can find out more about Steve Stevens’ work via his official website.

The post Steve Stevens claims 80s guitar music suffered due to the obsession with finding “clones” of Eddie Van Halen: “Record labels were signing anyone who could tap and shred” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

We’ve entered into December proper. And, so, the herds of savings that stampeded around us across Black Friday and Cyber Week have completed their yearly migration, disappearing over the horizon as quickly as they came. But, deal hunters that we are, we move onto new pastures to find fresh savings to throw spears at and chase over cliffs. Metaphorically. And those new pastures are the pre-Christmas build-up sales, which are now in full swing at retailers like Sweetwater and zZounds. There are some awesome deals to be had on everything from stocking-stuffing pedals to dream guitars to reliable Boss classics – here are just a few.

Save $50 on the IK Multimedia ToneX One

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A pocket-sized pedal this may be, but there’s a whole universe of amplifier simulations within its miniscule enclosure. This bite-size pedal features 20 onboard Tone Model slots, allowing you to pick and choose from over 200 Premium Tone Models and more than 25,000 user-generated Tone Models via IK’s TONEX Librarian and ToneNET – that’s an unbelievable amount of flexibility, all for less ahead of the holidays.

Save $30 on the Boss RC-5

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This is my personal looper of choice – it’s a great balance between size and featureset, as it’s got an extensive set of on-board beats, storage options, and other nifty quality of life features, but it still functions just fine as a straight-ahead looper!

Save $310 on the PRS SE Hollowbody Standard Piezo Electric Guitar

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This innovative semi-hollow from PRS comes in the rather intriguing dog hair finish, which is a lot prettier to look at than you might think – with the accentuated, tight grain of the top providing an almost glittery effect. The guitar comes with all of the player-friendly ergonomics that you might expect from PRS, alongside a versatile set of sounds thanks to that unique piezo setup.

Save $30 on the Boss TU-3

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We don’t need to tell you why the TU-3 is great, and even greater at just under $80. It’s a fast, accurate, reliable tuner that’s housed in Boss’ ever-beloved compact series enclosure, and therefore will survive a direct hit from a nuclear missile, probably. No wonder it’s on so many professional and non-professional pedalboards alike!

Save $50 on the Boss Katana

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$299 for the Katana 50 Gen 3 is an extremely appealing deal. The Katana Gen 3 has excellent direct sounds, with a customisable signal path and effects chain thanks to robust software control. What’s more, it’s also more than capable of being used as a regular combo amplifier – the 50-watt version balances between power and portability, as it’s more than capable of all kinds of gigs thanks to its headroom and its direct capabilities, but it’s also a one-hand lift!

The post Guitar.com Deals Of The Week: pre-Christmas savings to stuff your stockings with appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with Lutefish

Remote jamming is a phrase that incites a certain degree of scepticism – with a lot of solutions, the latency is inevitably too high thanks to lengthy processing delays. But the Lutefish stream is a new solution that aims to get around the normal roadblocks and offer a super low-latency experience while you jam with musicians hundreds of miles away.

What is the Lutefish Stream?

The Lutefish Stream is a pretty straightforward unit. To some degree it resembles an audio interface, but it is by no means a traditional one. Each bandmate requires a Stream, and can easily connect their instrument either direct or via microphones – there are two mono combo XLR/¼” inputs with individual gain controls, two headphone outputs for your preferred connector size, an overall master volume and finally a talkback mic to communicate with your bandmates.

So, why a hardware solution as opposed to software that uses your own interface? Rather working like a traditional interface, the Lutefish Stream instead uses a direct ethernet connection, straight into your router – which is what lets it achieve such low latency. Going direct via ethernet means the minimum possible delay in sending the digitised audio stream – no lag is added by unstable WiFi connections or your computer’s audio processing path.

With a good connection, the Stream’s latency can be around 3ms. Sound travels through air at roughly one metre per millisecond – and so a 3ms delay is about what you’d get from just standing on the other side of the room to the rest of your band.

All of the audio is routed through this connection, including the talkback mic. This allows for seamless, lag-free chats alongside your practice session. The video call for a session is sent separately through your laptop or phone’s own connection, which keeps as much bandwidth as possible available for the audio stream.

To the test

I put the Lutefish Stream to the test with the help of my band Epimetheus. Gathered in different practice spaces, we connected everything up and joined the session. I was worried that remote jamming of any kind would be pretty obstructive to our music – we play downtuned shoegaze that occasionally veers totally off-piste, or at least I do, while the rhythm section keeps things grounded. We don’t play to a click or backing tracks, and we often rely on cueing each other back in for different sections – so we really need to be in sync!

However the Lutefish Stream handled it all with aplomb! Remote jamming is never going to feel exactly like you’re in the same room, mainly because you’re hearing everything through headphones – but the latency was so low it felt really great playing with my bandmates. Check out the video to see for yourself!

The benefits of a solution like this really speak for themselves – there are lots of reasons why you might not be able to all get into the same room and practice as often as you’d like. And thanks to Lutefish’s network of musicians, once you have a stream you can also start connecting with a load of other players and expand your musical horizons.

The Lutefish Stream is by no means a complete replacement for playing in a room together, however it’s a great solution for those of us who find life getting in the way of music. It lets you work to a more flexible schedule, and spend more time playing – and less time lugging gear across your city.

Find out more about Lutefish at lutefish.com.

The post The Lutefish Stream is a remote jamming solution that actually works appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Mateus Asato has been thinking about suggestions to add vocals to his instrumental pieces, and has concluded that the music alone is “enough”.

Asato rose to fame by sharing videos of himself playing online, and has toured with artists like Bruno Mars and Tori Kelly. This year, he began releasing music of his own with singles Cryin’ and The Breakup Song. Both tracks form part of his debut album, which is due for release in 2026.

• READ MORE: “Hurt yourself a bit”: Mateus Asato is one of the world’s best guitar players – and his latest practice tip is certainly unconventional

Neither song features any lyrical content, and fans of Asato have been suggesting different vocalists that should collaborate with him on his music. In a Story post on Instagram, he says he’s not offended by these suggestions, but plans to keep his music purely instrumental.

“If there’s a person who’s considered having vocals and lyrics on my songs, that person was definitely me,” he begins. “Now that I have been releasing my own music these days, it’s been a common thing to read something like, ‘I can picture [this artist] singing over this’. I don’t feel offended – actually, most of the time, I agree or even thought the same thing.

“But… let me explain this. I’m aware of how a human voice and words could be the closest bridge from a creator to the listener. The message doesn’t get any more clear than that. I am not a singer – and never wanted to be one. The only reason I make music today is because I fell in love with the sound of the electric guitar one day.”

Asato goes on to explain how for a number of years, he felt there was something missing from the music he was making, which he now puts down to external pressures from others: “That never started from myself, always from others. Former managers, family members and so on.

“After hearing their words, I’d come home and started to re-shape in my head the creation that made me proud and alive. Until the day I realised that I truly like these guitar pieces how they are. It’s meant to sound that way and it’s enough. For me, at least. And that’s what matters,” he says.

“The coolest thing of instrumentals is how SUBJECTIVE it could be. Like a painting with no description. And I’ve been enjoying the effect of it at this season of my life. It’s grown on me at a point that I finally decided to release these songs in an album that will be out soon. The time with songs with vocals and melodies might come, if my identity as a creator understands it needs some extensions. Right now there’s a lot of satisfaction where it is.”

Hear his latest single below:

You can learn more about Asato and find tabs for his new music via his official website.

The post Mateus Asato doesn’t mind you imagining vocals on his instrumental music, but this is why he’s not going to do it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

John 5 has played for some huge rock artists, and unlike some guitarists, he doesn’t believe in putting his own spin on other artists’ songs.

John joined Mötley Crüe in 2022 after Mick Mars stepped down due to health reasons. As well as his own solo career, he’s played for David Lee Roth, Rob Zombie, and more, and says he only plays for artists whose music he enjoys so that he’s a better fit for the job.

• READ MORE: “It will never stop – thank God”: John 5 names three modern guitarists who are ensuring that the guitar will “keep evolving”

There are lots of guitarists out there who are set on putting their own spin on things when filling in the shoes of another player, with some arguing they want to leave that artist’s work and legacy alone out of respect, but John feels that nailing the parts as intended is more honourable.

Speaking to Metal Hammer for its new print issue, he explains, “[For every band I’ve played with], I have such respect for the music and the artist, and the person that I’m stepping in for. Be it Eddie Van Halen [with David Lee Roth], Mick Mars [with Mötley Crüe], or anyone like that, I have such respect for them.

“I show respect by playing the songs just as they were written. I’m not trying to do my own thing. As long as you play the parts directly and do a good job at it, everything will be OK, because that’s what people want. They love these bands that they’ve seen their whole lives.”

He goes on to add, “I do only join musicians that I’ve loved most of my life as well. It makes it easier on me. It’s easier for the audience, too, because there have been a lot of people who joined certain bands, and were like, ‘Oh, I never really even listened to them before’, and that idea is just so foreign to me.”

In other John 5 news, the guitarist was honoured with a birthday cake that replicated his Boss-heavy pedalboard earlier this year. After turning 55 in July, a fan named Merredith Mooth commissioned the cake, which was made by Angie Martinez Hrndz (Cakes from the Crypt). All six of his pedals were expertly recreated, from his CE-2W Chorus to his NS-2 Noise Suppressor, to his DD-8 Digital and DM-2W Delay pedals.

Find out more about John 5, or view the full list of dates for Mötley Crüe’s 2026 Carnival Of Sins anniversary tour. 

The post John 5 explains why he doesn’t improvise when playing other people’s songs: “I show respect by playing the songs just as they were written” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

€329/£299/$399, gamechangeraudio.com

I’m going to be very careful to avoid hyperbole here. The Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal is almost certainly the wildest, hairiest, scariest stompbox I have ever used. Now imagine what that sentence would have been like with the hyperbole left in…

• READ MORE: Warm Audio WA-TS Tube Squealer review: “it offers a great deal in a small enclosure”

To be clear, while the Latvian mavericks’ latest concoction very much comes under the ‘synth’ category, we’re not dealing with boops, bleeps, moving filters or emulated organ sounds here. This is a whole different kettle of piranhas.

Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal – what is it?

Okay, here’s the easy part: it’s a monophonic synthesizer pedal for guitar. More specifically, according to the manual, this is “the world’s first electromechanical synth engine in pedal format”. It’s built around a spinning motor oscillator with three rotating coils and a fixed electromagnetic pickup, driven by a pitch-tracking engine.

For anyone thinking that might as well be written in Greek, you’re not far off – it’s written in geek. And here’s what it means in basic English: the higher the note you play, the faster the motor spins, and that’s what generates the output signal. It’s an idea taken from the desktop Motor Synth, but now offered in much-simplified (and guitarified) form.

Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal – is it easy to use?

Ten knobs looks like a lot, especially when they’re crowded around a bamboozling display of multicoloured lights, but they’re ripe for picking off one at a time.

Begin with the ones at bottom left and right, which aren’t really knobs at all but five-way rotary switches: one for selecting the synth mode, and one for assigning the function of the built-in expression pedal. Between those two you’ve got plenty of housemate-horrifying power on tap even with everything else parked at halfway.

Let’s not forget the other controls, though. There’s a seven-way switch for setting a pitch-shift interval between one octave down and one octave up, dials for dry and wet volume plus tone and drive, and three more for tweaking the synthesized signal.

And then, of course, you’ve got the expression pedal. This looks and feels like a car’s accelerator, and I don’t think that’s a decision Gamechanger has made just to fit in with the automotive theme: push it down and it will spring back up when you let go, which is useful, and you can also squeeze it down harder to push through into ‘floor-it’ mode. Intriguing, no? Better buckle up…

Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal – sounds

Sure, the vroomy-vroom concept is cute and all – it’s even got racing stripes! – but if you pop it in the first mode and note-bend your way along the low E string, the Motor Pedal can sound uncannily like an F1 car going through the gears. It’s a ‘synth’ sound, yes, but with a grindingly atonal thickness that’s distinctive and exhilarating, if not exactly musical in any familiar sense of the word.

Some of the other sounds are more traditionally synthy – throw away your keyboards now, Gary Numan fans! – but you always have the feeling that unpredictable overtones are just waiting to grab the wheel and drag you into the crash barriers. The knob marked ‘mod’ can make this even more pronounced, while you also have the option of cranking the drive for maximum furiousness.

There’s a wonderfully wobbly vibrato on board, as well as adjustable sustain for softening the in-built gating effect – which is helpful, but can’t always stop it cutting off a hanging note when you really don’t want it to. This can be absolutely maddening, and will make you envy those key-prodders with their un-decaying notes.

For the real high-octane thrills, though, you need to step on the expression pedal. It can be set to go up or down an octave, engage infinite sustain, add momentary vibrato or serve as a volume pedal. Push down extra-hard in vibrato mode and it increases the speed; in either of the octave modes it will soar beyond its range like a satanically possessed Whammy. All of this happens without any distracting latency or tracking issues, and with the entertaining visual bonus of a spinning chequered wheel to distract you from all your mistakes.

Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal – should I buy one?

The Motor Pedal pushes at the boundaries of what a guitar stompbox can do before it becomes simply a generator of unpleasant noises. Its practical uses, unless you’re in some sort of neo-industrial electro-goth dada-brutalist ensemble, are limited. It’s large, heavy and somewhat expensive. Worst of all, it sounds better with keyboards than it does with guitars. Still with me after all that? Then yes, you probably should buy it.

Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal – alternatives

Nothing else will take you anywhere quite like this, but other unapologetically rebellious stompboxes for noisemongers include the Noise Engineering Dystorpia ($299/£299), Electro-Harmonix POG3 ($645/£599) and Mantic Flex Pro ($269/£230).

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YouTuber KDH has made name for himself calling out others – be they guitarists or brands – in the guitar space. And the latest to find themselves in his crosshairs is Brandon D’Eon, a popular YouTuber with over 800,000 subscribers.

It comes after KDH – who himself boasts over 110,000 subscribers on the platform – discovered an old video posted to Brandon’s channel which saw him approaching guitar brands stationed at the 2024 NAMM Show asking for free instruments.

• READ MORE: The story of Tom Morello’s ‘Arm the Homeless’ Guitar

KDH subsequently posted a video to his channel titled ‘The WORST Guitar YouTuber I’ve ever Seen”, listing the ways he felt Brandon had been rude in his approach to said brands.

While it’s not uncommon for brands to work with influencers in the guitar space – with many such deals seeing these influencers furnished with free instruments in exchange for publicity or exposure – KDH takes an issue with how Brandon communicated with the brands he approached. “The real problem is how it was executed,” he says.

“Instead of Brandon approaching people and brands with respect… he chose the option to just walk up and demand free stuff, thinking that everybody would recognise him as the big star that he thinks he is,” he continues.

KDH’s video has since gone viral, amassing well over 300,000 views in just six days, and the pair have since had a conversation to straighten things out. And lucky for us, that conversation was recorded, and can now be viewed on KDH’s channel.

“A lot of the things that you said in that video [were] very fair…” Brandon tells KDH. “I did act in a way that was not super polite. I was a bit of an ass.”

Brandon contends, however, that his more “aggressive” and inflated “ego” was a persona, and not a true reflection of himself. “In my head, I thought that I did have to act like a bit arrogant to create engagement,” he explains. “I’m not saying I was right to do that, but I’m just trying to explain where my head was at.”

But when Brandon notes that his “yelling” at brand reps was part of this persona and performance, KDH is quick to point out the difference between yelling at a camera for engagement and yelling at real people.

“If I record a video and I’m being aggressive or rude, it’s not directed at anybody,” he explains. “When you take that [performed aggression and] speak directly to one person, then it’s directed at them.”

KDH also raises the point that those working at NAMM have to contend with less-than-ideal conditions, purely by virtue of the nature of the show. “When you’re working NAMM you’re hearing 50 guitar players play 50 different songs at 50 different tunings [all at once] and it’s just horrible,” he explains. “Then they’ve got two cameras on them, they know that it’s going to go on YouTube. They have to just accept whatever is said, because it reflects on the company.”

Again, freebies in exchange for exposure is part and parcel of the guitar space – and indeed many other markets. But the backlash recently faced by Brandon D’Eon is a reminder that how you might approach brands as an influencer is still important, and blindly pursuing engagement metrics like views – and adopting abrasive personas in the process – might be counterproductive…

The post “I was a bit of an ass”: This YouTuber asked brands for free guitars at NAMM, and a viral video called him out – now Brandon D’Eon has set the record straight appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Ad feature with the t.bone

While there are myriad effective and great sounding ways to record your guitar direct in 2025, there’s something about the classic recipe of sticking a microphone in front of your amp or instrument that can’t be beaten.

But what mic to use? For the uninitiated, the sheer variety of different types of microphones available – and the huge spread of prices they can cost – can put you off before you’ve even had the chance to experience the wonder of a properly mic’d acoustic or guitar amp.

But it doesn’t have to be this way – most mics can be grouped into three broad categories that offer utility for certain types of instruments and recording situations. In this guide, I’ll be running you through the three most common categories, and explaining how they can be used to make your at-home recording experience even better.

The other issue often putting people off is cost, but here the good folks at t.bone are here to help. The t.bone offers a wide selection of common mic types, often ones that channel the spirit of a classic mic at a fraction of the cost you might have seen elsewhere – each mic you’ll see us talk about below costs less than €200. Let’s dive in.

Dynamic Microphones

Also known as ‘moving coil’ microphones, dynamic mics are in many ways the easiest and most straightforward type of mic to understand, as they operate effectively like a loudspeaker in reverse. When sound waves hit the microphone, the membrane of the moves to the rhythm of the sound waves, and the magnetic coil on its back moves along with it, converting that movement into an electric signal.

In practice, this makes for a very simple and robust mic, which is part of their appeal – they also don’t require phantom power from your audio interface. Dynamic mics tend to have a more focused tone than other mic types, which means they’re less likely to pick up on external sound and background noise. If you’re recording at home in an environment without much acoustic treatment, having a dynamic mic might be the best option.

Two really great dynamic mic options in the t.bone range are the MB75 and MB75 Beta. The MB75 is inspired by a classic dynamic mic and offers fantastic feedback resistance and directional quality, making it perfect for mic’ing up guitar amps both live and in the studio, or for close-recording of acoustics in non-treated environments.

The Beta version keeps much of the 75’s character and usability, but offers a greater dynamic range (more high and low frequencies) while being even more directional – perfect for mic’ing up a noisy guitar amp.

Whatever dynamic mic you choose, they’re great all-rounders for whatever you want to put them in front of.

Ribbon Mics

Ribbon mics are technically a variation of the dynamic microphone, but such is their distinct sonic character, most musicians will treat them as an entirely distinct type in their own right. Like a dynamic mic, ribbon mics use electromagnetic induction to capture sound, but rather than moving a magnet, it uses a thin piece of aluminium foil that moves inside the magnetic gap.

In practice this means that ribbon mics are able to reproduce the sound more accurately and sensitively than a regular dynamic mic, though they tend to lack a bit of top end. This makes them best suited for mic’ing up guitar amps and cabs. One thing to be aware of, however, is that ribbon mics are very fragile, and have a natural ‘figure 8’ (ie they record sound both in front and behind, not the sides) recording pattern – so probably not the best option for quiet recording in untreated environments.

As you’d expect, the t.bone offers a wide selection of quality ribbon mics, but the standout is the RB 500 – a lovely microphone with a warm, natural sound that’s perfect for sticking in front of your amp and capturing its authentic tone.

Condenser Mics

The final type of microphone you might wish to consider for your home recording set up is a condenser. Condenser mics can capture a sound source in the most rich and accurate detail possible and work in a different way to dynamic mics – the mic capsule contains an extremely thin membrane (known as the diaphragm) that sits parallel to a charged metal plate. As sound hits this membrane, it vibrates and creates a current in the metal plate.

Condensers offer a detail and dynamic range not found in dynamic mics, and as such they’re perfect for capturing the nuances of acoustic guitars – though they’ll often also pick up a lot of other extraneous background noise, so might not be perfect for recording for non-treated environments.

There are two types of condenser mics – large diaphragm and small diaphragm. Large diaphragm condensers tend to generate less self-noise, and will impart their own sonic character to the recording, which is usually warm and lush. A great example of this type of mic is the t.bone SC 1100.

Small-diaphragm condensers offer a greater frequency range than their larger counterparts – meaning that you’ll have a more neutral and accurate depiction of the sound in the room. If you’re wanting to capture the full nuance of an acoustic guitar, it’s common to use a pair of small-diaphragm mics in ‘X/Y/ configuration positioned 6-12 inches from the 12th fret with the mics angled 45 degrees from the fretboard.

Thankfully, the t.bone SC 140 is an affordable small-diaphragm condenser that means it doesn’t cost much to grab yourself a pair. And don’t forget with condenser mics, you’ll need to run them into an audio interface or mixer with phantom power!

Choosing the right mic for your needs can be the difference between a good recording and a great one – thankfully, t.bone makes things so affordable that you can experiment with a minimal outlay, and find the perfect mic for you.

To find the right mic for you, shop now at tbone.audio

The post Choosing the right mic can transform your home guitar recordings – here’s how to do it on a budget appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After sitting untouched for nearly half a century, Bob Myer’s long-lost dual Op-Amp Big Muff design has finally been brought to life as the EHX Big Muff 2.

Built in partnership with JHS Pedals, the new Big Muff 2 is described as “a sharper, louder, more aggressive take on the classic Big Muff voice.”

• READ MORE: “Legends never die”: Ross revived under Bud Ross’s grandson with new Era 6 pedals after failed JHS relaunch

In 2021, while digging through Big Muff inventor Bob Myer’s archives for the forthcoming Electro-Harmonix history book, Made On Earth For Rising Stars: The Electro-Harmonix Story, JHS founder Josh Scott unearthed something unexpected: a hand-drawn schematic labeled “BIG MUFF USING (2 DUAL OP AMPS)”.

It wasn’t a variation anyone had heard of, but rather, Myer’s own attempt to reimagine his landmark fuzz using the newer Op-Amp technology that had emerged in the 1970s.

“Once discovered, [we] breadboarded the circuit exactly as Bob drew it, and immediately knew they had something worth making,” says JHS. “We found that Bob’s design is unique when compared to the now famous late ‘70s Op-Amp Big Muff designed by Michael Abrams. Different clipping arrangement, an extra gain stage and various other elements that made this lost version extremely special.”

Where the original Big Muff is known for its “sweet violin-like sustain”, the Big Muff 2 is built to hit harder. It dishes out a sharper edge, significantly more volume, and what the companies describe as the “most pronounced low-end and midrange” of any EHX Big Muff ever released.

Controls remain reassuringly familiar – with the usual Volume, Sustain, and Tone knobs – on top of a classic big-box wedge enclosure.

Production is limited to 5,700 units, with the Big Muff 2 priced at $249.

The pedal’s launch also coincides with Made On Earth for Rising Stars: The Electro-Harmonix Story — a 500-plus-page archival volume chronicling the company’s history, created with JHS Pedals, Third Man Books and archivist Daniel Danger. The book is available to pre-order now via Third Man Records.

Order the Big Muff 2 today at JHS Pedals.

The post Electro-Harmonix and JHS Pedals revive Bob Myer’s forgotten circuit with the Big Muff 2 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

He may be the son of one of rock guitar’s greatest shredders, but Wolfgang Van Halen has argued that “shredding” is rarely the point – and that fans who expect him to play like his father Eddie are missing the bigger picture.

Speaking on the Song Cake podcast, the Mammoth leader addresses the fixation certain listeners have with his technique, and shares how reducing music to shred metrics does a disservice to what makes songs matter.

When host Phil Wilding notes that rock fans and critics often zero in on the playing rather than the writing, Wolfgang didn’t hesitate to agree.

• READ MORE: “It’s not about having a guy jumping around on stage… It’s about playing the f**k out of your instruments”: Wolfgang Van Halen on what really matters onstage

“I think that’s the big thing where people tend to lose focus,” he says. “Especially when it comes to be they just sit there and go, ‘Oh, he doesn’t play as well as his dad,’ or ‘It’s not as good as this Van Halen song.’”

“It’s all focused on the fact that I might not be tapping well enough in their opinion, or not playing well enough, rather than, ‘hey, isn’t it cool that I created this whole thing by myself with all these different pieces, all these different parts?’”

The guitarist also emphasises that his priorities are the same as his father’s were – even if listeners sometimes forget.

“It’s about the song construction at the end of the day, for me, as it was for Dad, even though people seem to focus on the playing,” Wolfgang explains. “It’s about creating the song. Because if you don’t have that, you have just shredding through scales. And there’s not really much soul on that.”

To stress the point, Wolfgang draws attention to megastar Taylor Swift, who was voted eighth best guitarist of the last two decades in a 2024 poll conducted by UK guitar retailer guitarguitar.

“Do you see Taylor Swift shredding scales?” he asks. “I don’t think so. She writes a song that makes you feel stuff. At the end of the day, if you’ve got a melody and a song that makes you feel things, makes you remember somebody you lost, makes you miss something, makes you think of being back home, at the end of the day, that’s what a song is about.”

While there’s “room for shreddiness and stuff,” Wolfgang concedes, “at the end of the day, like I mentioned, that’s what it’s about for me.”

The post “Do you see Taylor Swift shredding scales? I don’t think so”: Wolfgang Van Halen explains why fans who expect him to shred like Eddie are missing the point appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Seymour Duncan has teamed up with Fear Factory riff-machine Dino Cazares on the new signature Machete humbucker.

Long known as the secret weapon inside Cazares’ signature Ormsby guitars, the Machete now makes its standalone debut for players everywhere. Engineered for guitarists who demand articulation and low-end definition without sacrificing organic feel, this active pickup in a passive mount combines high-output coils with a custom preamp circuit to deliver ferocious attack and surgical precision.

• READ MORE: Is this the first relic’d Strat? Andrian Belew and Seymour Duncan’s chaotic ‘relic-ing’ session revealed: “He laid it in the grass, doused it with lighter fluid, and poof!”

“The Machete looks like a traditional passive pickup, but it’s actually an active pickup with a preamp hidden inside the housing, right underneath the pole pieces,” Cazares explains. “That design gives this pickup extra bite, precision, and clarity – built to cut through any mix like a blade.”

Built on the foundation of Seymour’s popular Retribution model, the Machete dials in a sharper treble edge and thicker low-mids, giving it an aggressiveness that’s perfect for machine-gun picking, tight chugs, and searing leads.

“I wanted the best of both worlds. The open, less compressed feel of a passive pickup combined with an aggressive bite and articulation of an active preamp,” says Cazares. “It delivers the raw clarity, but still hits with the force of an active pickup.”

“The machete pickup is an incredibly diverse pickup,” he adds. “I designed it to sound great for any style that I play, and for any type of player. It delivers beautiful, open, clean tones without that heavy, active compression, but it also gives you the precise, aggressive staccato attack that I would need for Fear Factory or Divine heresy, and anything in between.”

Hand-built in Santa Barbara, California, the Machete is available for six-string guitars in Black, White, and Red, and for seven-strings in Black, White, and Zebra. Prices come in at $149 for the six-string model and $159 for the seven-string version.

Learn more at Seymour Duncan.

The post “Built to cut through any mix like a blade”: Seymour Duncan launches the Dino Cazares signature Machete humbucker appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Kurt Cobain’s famed Martin D-18E, the guitar he played during Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged performance and the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, has been donated to the Royal College of Music in London.

Widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant guitars in rock history, the rare electro-acoustic was modified for Cobain’s left-handed playing style. After his death, the instrument was inherited by his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, who stored it in a Seattle vault. It later became part of a divorce settlement and was ultimately sold by Isaiah Silva.

• READ MORE: The guitar influences of Kurt Cobain

In June 2020, the D-18E went under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions, fetching a staggering $6,010,000 (£4.51 million), a record-setting price that cemented its status as the world’s most expensive guitar.

The buyer, Peter Freedman AM – founder of RØDE Microphones and a founding supporter of the Royal College of Music’s Australia Commonwealth Scholarship Fund – has now donated the instrument to the conservatoire in memory of his father, Henry Freedman. The guitar will join the RCM Museum’s extraordinary collection, which includes what is believed to be the oldest surviving guitar in existence, made in 1581 in Lisbon by luthier Belchior Dias.

The Royal College of Music has also confirmed that Cobain’s D-18E will anchor a new international touring exhibition planned for 2026, following the success of Kurt Cobain: Unplugged, an in-house exhibition that drew more than 15,000 visitors.

“I am delighted to gift this iconic guitar to the Royal College of Music so that they might realise the guitar’s value and profile for the benefit of young musicians at the RCM and reach people around the world,” says Freedman. “This gift is dedicated to my father Henry who loved music and London, and it’s an honour for me to support the next generation of musicians.”

James Williams, Director of the Royal College of Music adds, “The Royal College of Music is deeply grateful to Peter Freedman for his incredible generosity in gifting the College Kurt Cobain’s Martin D-18E guitar.”
“This asset opens future opportunities to share the Kurt Cobain: Unplugged exhibition with an international audience; it is also emblematic of Peter’s unstinting support for the performing arts and his steadfast belief in the power of education to transform lives.”

The post Kurt Cobain’s $6 million MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E finds a permanent home at London’s Royal College of Music appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.