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What does it feel like to get your hands on one of the most famous guitars in rock history? For Myles Kennedy, it’s something he still struggles to put into words.

Reflecting on the time he was able to hold Eddie Van Halen’s iconic Frankenstein axe, the Alter Bridge frontman admits the moment caught him off guard.

“We weren’t tracking with Frankenstein. Have I held Frankenstein? Yes,” Kennedy tells Guitar World. “Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don’t even know how to articulate that, but I got emotional – that was a pretty special moment.”

• READ MORE: Channel your inner Eddie Van Halen with this new reverb plugin inspired by the sound of the Sunset Strip

Even though Frankenstein didn’t feature on Alter Bridge’s latest record, Van Halen’s legacy was still close at hand when the band tracked the album at the legendary 5150 Studios in Los Angeles.

“As far as amps and whatnot, there was a 50-watt 5150 III that we used when we were doing pre-production, so I plugged into that,” Kennedy explains. “I had it set up because I couldn’t fly out my Diezels. I fell in love with that amp, and it became a big part of the sound. I ended up marrying it with the [Diezel] VH4 when I was actually tracking.”

That EVH head didn’t just win over Kennedy. Fellow Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti was equally impressed when he paired it with his own signature PRS amp.

“I thought [the 5150 III] sounded so good, especially mixed with what I was using, which was my signature PRS head,” says Tremonti. “I loved it so much that I got one; they were nice enough to give me one, and I took it on the last tour we did. So now it’s a part of my sound.”

“It’s given me a new appreciation for 50-watt heads. As long as I’ve been playing guitar, and as long as I’ve collected amplifiers, I don’t think I’ve ever owned a 50-watt head – maybe a single 1×12 combo that was 50 watts. I never appreciated how aggressive a 50-watt head is. When you pair it with 100-watt heads, it’s got a certain character – a bite that cuts through the mix. But it’s not harsh.”

Elsewhere, Kennedy also opens up about what it meant to be invited into 5150 by Wolfgang Van Halen himself – and the responsibility that came with it.

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

Alter Bridge’s new album is now out. Listen below:

The post “Was it a total, Excalibur-level experience? I don’t even know how to articulate that”: Myles Kennedy on holding Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$149.99, digitech.com

It has now been a few years since JHS’ Josh Scott gave the invisible hand of the free pedal market a little push, and accidentally kickstarted a craze for the original DigiTech Bad Monkey. Reverb listings for the pedal soared to stratospherically silly prices, and the presence of true magic within it was hotly debated. There were those who claimed that the Bad Monkey was a better Klon than some Klons. There were also those who claimed that all of these comparisons were proof that most overdrive pedals can be set to sound pretty similar.

• READ MORE: Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini review: “this is the most universal Quad Cortex yet”

Regardless, talk of a reissue was inevitable, one that might fit into the lineup of a newly-reinvigorated DOD/DigiTech – and here we are. First things first, this is a DOD reissue of a DigiTech pedal, presumably because it’s an analogue stompbox, and Cor-Tek (parent company of both) now wants to keep things consistently and sensibly divided – DOD dedicated to the analogue, DigiTech the digital. It’s also, as we’ll explore, more than a straight ‘reissue’ – we could have gotten a simple four-control remake of the original circuit, updated to modern spec with a better buffer and a less dated enclosure. That’s all here, but there’s a lot more to unpeel, including a totally unique barrel control that can blend together three discrete variants of the circuit.

Build and layout

The Badder Monkey is packed into the standard DOD single-stompbox format, used for everything from the Overdrive 250 to the Carcosa. It’s a really sturdy platform, with a solid build and a cool little reversible backplate if you want pre-attached velcro. The only real negative for some might be the side-mounted jacks, but overall it’s still a well-executed version of the standard single-stomp.

The Badder Monkey does look uniquely great. The barrel draws the eye, of course, but the UV print on the enclosure is also brilliantly glossy and very three-dimensional – I have to give a nod to the design execution on the titular Monkey bending the bars of an otherwise abstract control outline, labels included.

Even discounting the barrel, the full control scheme is pretty whacky – for good or for ill. If you thought the Supermassive Black Fuzz’s control scheme was ‘theme over function’, it shows Boss-like restraint compared to the Badder Monkey. Here Bananas and Curiosity are gain and volume, while Mood is a concentric EQ control – Screech and Grunt for treble and bass, respectively.

I can see the logic on the EQ side, but Bananas and Curiosity do seem totally arbitrary – you’ve just got to remember that gain’s on the left and volume’s on the right. These knob names are unusually whimsical for DOD – even its other strongly-themed pedals such as the Carcosa or Chthonic still have knobs called things like “output” and “high cut” rather than “Eldritchness” or “Cyclopeanity”. But it’s only a slight knock against the pedal, really – it’s clearly having a lot of fun with the whole vibe, and so themed control names were perhaps inevitable.

In Use

I first stay a little more conventional, and begin my testing with only the original Bad Monkey in the mix. This circuit is, as you may or may not already be aware, essentially a Tube Screamer-derived thing with the addition of a two-band active EQ. By itself, it is very easy to see why this gained status as a hidden gem from the early 2000s – that original slightly clunky enclosure was indeed hiding a fantastic overdrive sound.

Thanks to the two-band EQ it is as full or as sharp as you need it to be, and still allows the core sound to provide the all-important midrange presence. Like any good TS-inspired thing it can bring a clean amp to life as well as it can clear up gainy chugs. More extreme EQ settings behave as you’d expect – feel free to remove all the bass and pretend your guitar’s coming through an Amazon Basics walkie-talkie, or remove all of the treble and pretend you’re playing it underwater.

The real beauty, though, lies in the pedal’s versatility within the context of a full sound. You can target problem areas of both fizz and mud far more effectively than you could with a single tone control. These are all of the things that made the original so ripe for a modern revival, and so in terms of a straight-ahead reissue, DOD has absolutely done the job. But of course, like those well-meaning activists at the beginning of 28 Days Later, it is now time we open the cage and let the Badder Monkey run truly rampant.

Barrel of fun

Did you know that the phrase “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” dates all the way back to the 1800s? The phrase, along with a few other interesting things, has led to a sort of vague general association between monkeys and barrels within the collective unconscious. Imagine, if you will, a whimsical pirate ship. There’s obviously a monkey there, who has likely poked his head out of a barrel, one full of either gunpowder, gold doubloons or bananas. And before you write in, Donkey Kong’s love of throwing barrels at plumbers doesn’t count as part of this association, as he’s an ape, not a monkey, and as such will not be mentioned again in this review.

The Barrel/Monkey continuum also brought us that children’s toy with loads of plastic monkeys in it, a copy of which is actually included as case candy with the Badder Monkey. It has also spawned the new 360-degree barrel control, a patent-pending continuously-rotational potentiometer that is employed to blend between three variants of the circuit: Behaved, Bad and Badder. Behaved is a smoother, more tonally subdued variant of the pedal, while Badder is a more chaotic and aggressive version – Bad is simply the original circuit.

With all the talk about how a lot of overdrive circuits can sound nearly identical, here the trio of circuits do all have a very distinct flavour. Behaved is indeed very subdued – there’s a noticeable roll-off to any barking high-end, and there’s a fair bit less gain. Badder, however, lives up to its name with a far more aggressive approach to both the distortion and the midrange hump.

The fact that the barrel is a three-way continuous blend control means you can choose your preferred blend of any two of the three circuits on offer – which is, for an analogue pedal, a completely wild thing to be able to do, and has to be commended from a pure engineering standpoint. But it does also offer real tonal flexibility: the three voices, while all ultimately being variants of a very green-flavoured overdrive, are all disparate enough to make the in-between positions worthwhile – for instance, blending both Behaved and Badder gives you a very smooth overdrive sound with a subtle undertow of snarl somewhere beneath the surface – it’s a very effective thing.

If you want to throw all subtle blending to the wind, however, just use the middle toggle switch to select ‘troop’ mode, which engages all three circuits in parallel – the resulting sound is extremely full-fat – it may not perform quite the same with the exacting tone-shaping precision as a single or a blended sound, but it is a hell of a lot of fun.

This switch can also set the blend to be out of phase, which leads to a rather weird but nonetheless engaging sound – it makes the effect far more of a character overdrive for adding an ear-catching texture to solos, more so than pure utility. It’s a strange experience, sweeping through the middle positions in the inverted mode, leading to a sort of infinitely variable clash of the different characteristics of the circuits.

Should I buy the Badder Monkey?

It’s hard to overstate just how much joy the Badder Monkey brings me – DOD didn’t have to do any of this. It didn’t need to be a whacky, three-mode reissue with a totally unique blend control and the option for nasal out-of-phase sounds and an included copy of Monkeys In A Barrel. This could have been an easy win – but DOD took the stranger, far more creative path. The initial furor around the DigiTech pedal strayed a little close to the sun of discourse, and risked just being frustrating and draining as people bemoaned the hype and the hipsterishness of it all – this is the perfect inversion of any of the phenomenon’s negativity into something far more joyful.

All that has been discussed above is interesting enough, tonally and experientially, that you might assume it’s relegated to some exclusive boutique overdrive that’ll require a remortgage or two. And given the price silliness from the first spike in demand plus the barrel, DOD could have also probably gotten away with charging something like £200 for this thing. But the Badder Monkey is instead pretty damn reasonably priced at £129 – that’s not much over the going rate for a new official TS9, and about £100 less than the JHS Bonsai, another multi-circuit Tube Screamer-inspired pedal, albeit with a very different approach.

The Badder Monkey is also one of the few fun Tube Screamer-derived things out there – the circuit has such a reputation as a utilitarian tone-scalpel that it tends to evaporate any whimsy in its vicinity. The Badder Monkey, on the other hand, is more fun than a… well, you know the phrase.

Badder Monkey alternatives

The world of Tube Screamer-derived things is fairly massive, with everything from ultra-affordable clones to more in-depth boutique variants out there. Listing them all here would balloon the wordcount of this review to that of the Silmarillion, and so I shall mention but two. If you fancy something a little more budget and prosaic, there is always the Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini ($79.99 / £49.99), a far cheaper single-mode version of the green overdrive sound. For another well-regarded refined boutique take on the thing that won’t break the bank, consider the EarthQuaker Devices Plumes ($119 / £124.99) – a straightforward take on the pedal with three clipping modes.

The post DOD Badder Monkey review: much-memed pedal gets a bananas reissue appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Cory Wong has given an insight into his perfectionism when creating his signature Archetype plugin with Neural DSP.

Archetype: Cory Wong X packs the jazz-funk virtuoso and Vulfpeck guitarist’s gear into a plugin, and remains a highlight of Neural’s ever-expanding Archetype lineup.

And as Wong tells MusicTech in a new exclusive interview, he insisted the plugin was perfect – good enough for him to use himself regularly – before being released into the market.

• READ MORE: Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini review: “This is the most universal Quad Cortex yet”

“I was like, ‘The only way this thing goes out is if I am 100% satisfied, and if you are 100% satisfied,” Wong remembers telling Neural DSP. 

“They sent me version one, and it was pretty good. And we made revisions. By version five, I was still like, not yet. It is great, but I don’t plug into it right now and think, ‘I have to use this for everything’. So we got to, like, version nine!”

Wong also tells MusicTech how his signature Archetype plugin forms an integral part of his signal chain when it comes to recording.

“Most of the time, I use the Archetype: Cory Wong X plugin that I helped create with Neural DSP,” he says. “There’s basically an emulation of an SSL console and a Neve console; there are characteristics of both hidden in there. But then there are also very clean amps in there.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the guitarist – though known for his formidable playing chops – explains how he prefers to focus on the arrangement of a song rather than fretboard fireworks when composing and recording.

“There’s a long history of the guitar being this thing where we’re showboating our technical facility,” Wong says. “Or just constantly shredding guitar. And there’s a time and place for that – I like a lot of that music. But that’s not really what I want to do, and that’s not really what I feel is the most compelling part of my artistry.

“Sure, there are times where it’s like, ‘Let’s give them the fireworks! I’m going to get out there and shred.’ But I like the sound of other instruments. I like the arrangement,” he says.

Check out Archetype: Cory Wong X at Neural DSP. Read the full interview at MusicTech.

The post “The only way this thing goes out is if I’m 100% satisfied”: What Cory Wong told Neural DSP when offered his own signature Archetype plugin appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Bandmates and close musical collaborators for decades, Rush’s Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have come to know each other like brothers – and understand what helps when tensions rise.

Rush made headlines towards the end of last year when they announced plans to head out on tour again after years of speculation as to whether they ever would. As expected, the demand for tickets after the initial announcement was so high that Lifeson and Lee – with touring drummer Anika Nilles – added 17 more dates to the trek.

And in a new interview with The Guardian, bassist Lee and guitarist Lifeson reflect on their enduring friendship, and the extent to which they know each other so well.

• READ MORE: Dave Mustaine claims Megadeth would have been less successful if not for the motivating factor of Metallica “trying to hold me back”

They note the difference in how they both handle feelings: “He’s really emotional,” Lee says of Lifeson, to which Lifeson readily agrees: “I am… too emotional.”

Lee continues: “He can go from zero to 100 at a seemingly innocent remark. ‘Al, calm down. That’s not what we’re talking about.’

“He can really explode. A real Serbian. The only thing that calms him down is to go eat a pig somewhere. And I’m probably too controlling for him… and too rational.”

But despite their somewhat opposing approaches to handling emotions, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have been metaphorically attached at the hip for decades. They note how it often happens that they are only interested in each other at larger gatherings, remembering one time in particular: “They had planned this wonderful dinner party, and we just alienated them,” Lee says. “That happens a lot!” replies Lifeson.

Elsewhere in the interview, Geddy Lee remembers late Rush drummer Neil Peart, who died in 2020.

“He was a mentor to me in many ways,” he says. “He was a very stimulating person to be around.”

Tickets for Rush’s Fifty Something reunion tour are available now via the band’s official website.

The post “The only thing that calms him down is to go eat a pig somewhere”: Rush’s Geddy Lee explains the secret of his enduring relationship with “emotional” Alex Lifeson appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

While peacefully coexisting in 2026, the relationship between Metallica and Dave Mustaine’s Megadeth has been rocky over the years, to say the least.

Dave Mustaine was Metallica’s lead guitarist from 1982 to 1983, writing riffs that would later appear on debut album Kill ‘Em All – and even followup Ride the Lightning – before being ousted from the band for alcoholism, drug misuse and aggressive behaviour towards his band members.

And as he’s asserted over the years, it was the fallout with Metallica which heavily influenced his drive to succeed with Megadeth.

• READ MORE: Is 2026 finally Iron Maiden’s year to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Mustaine has reflected on his relationship with Metallica a lot in the past few months, after it emerged that a cover of Ride the Lightning – the title track from Metallica’s sophomore album – was set to appear on Megadeth’s self-titled final album.

And now, in a new interview with the LA Times, the guitarist and frontman reflects again on the motivating effect of the fallout and subsequent hostility.

“Think of it,” he says. “Where would I be right now if I didn’t have one of the biggest bands in the world spending their time trying to hold me back? They don’t do it anymore, but most of the time when they did, it just made me shake my head.

“And it wasn’t just Metallica, it was everybody. For a long time, it very much was me against the world. It was like, okay, if you’re not with me, you’re against me.”

On Megadeth’s Ride the Lightning cover, Mustaine continues: “There may not be a chance to ever say hello to James [Hetfield, Metallica guitarist] or Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] again. I knew some people would have a hard time with me doing the song, but that’s okay because I wanted to pay tribute and show my respect.

“If they like it, fine. If they don’t like it, fine. If they listen to it, fine. If they don’t, fine.”

Megadeth are currently on tour in support of their landmark swansong record, Megadeth. See the band’s official website for dates and tickets.

The post Dave Mustaine claims Megadeth would have been less successful if not for the motivating factor of Metallica “trying to hold me back” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you ever memorised every riff on Guitar Hero, air-guitared in your bedroom like a rock god, or desperately tried to hit that perfect streak on your plastic axe, Stage Tour is about to teleport you straight back to your glory days.

RedOctane – the studio behind the first Guitar Hero – has returned with a brand-new “rhythm-action” game designed to capture all the chaos, joy, and pure fun of the plastic-instrument era.

• READ MORE: “It had to be shiny and sparkling”: Inside Björn Ulvaeus’s wacky Eurovision 1974 star guitar

Built by the original devs who brought five-fret note highways to life, Stage Tour promises a mix of nostalgia and modern gaming flair: full-band setups, flexible inputs, and live-service features that keep the game evolving.

“Stage Tour is our love letter to rhythm gaming,” says RedOctane boss Simon Ebejer. “We want Stage Tour to feel familiar and authentic, but also fresh… With new instruments and deep charting systems, we’re raising the bar on what we believe a rhythm game can be, while also catering to those wishing to simply enjoy a casual experience and have a good time.”

Stage Tour supports guitar, bass, drums, vocals – as well as keyboard, mouse, and standard controllers. And yes, there’s a brand-new Kramer-inspired guitar controller, alongside a drum kit and wired or wireless mics, for the full plastic-instrument rhythm gaming experience. There will also be Gibson-branded in-game guitars, a nod to the original Guitar Hero series.

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Unlike the old rhythm games that relied on fixed tracklists and DLC, Stage Tour is being designed as a live, evolving platform. The studio plans regular in-game events, seasonal content drops, and track charts that adapt not just to difficulty you pick but to the controller you’re using.

“Real moments. Real themes. Real updates,” says RedOctane. “We want to evolve the game alongside the fans who support it. Improve it. Expand it. Keep it alive.”

The studio also teases that players can “expect some absolute banging tunes” – because let’s be honest, what’s a rhythm game without killer tracks and riffs to shred along to?

Closed alpha testing is scheduled for late spring or early summer 2026, ahead of the planned fall release on PC and consoles.

More information is available at Stagetour.

The post Guitar Hero creators return with Stage Tour, a new rhythm game built for your inner ’90s rock god appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Having spent over five decades on stage, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has seen just about everything a rock ‘n’ roll career can throw at him. But few moments have been as simultaneously horrifying and hilarious as the time one of his favourite guitars went airborne… and came down in pieces.

Speaking to Guitar World, Perry looks back on that chaotic night and the instrument at the centre of it: his black 1956 Gibson Junior double-cutaway with pearl inlays.

• READ MORE: Why Reverb’s big data can help tell interesting stories about the guitar market

“I’m pretty sure it’s a ‘56,” says the guitarist. “It’s one of those Juniors that started off with cherry stain, but it wasn’t a burst – it was just a cherry stain. It’s got one P90. I actually had two of them in the mid-Seventies, like the ones Johnny Thunders and Leslie West played. They’re killer guitars. It’s just volume, tone and a P90, and it screams. I was lucky enough to get two of them.”

That luck would soon be tested.

“We were doing a show at a festival and I threw this thing up in the air at the end of a song,” Perry recalls. “This was before wireless, so it went to the end of the patch cord and came down on the neck – and the headstock snapped off. I remember thinking as it was going up in the air, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it. That looks so cool.’ And then, on the way down, I was thinking, ‘Holy shit, what did I do?’ [Laughs]”

Things got even more chaotic when frontman Steven Tyler tried to toss the broken instrument into the audience.

“After it came down and was broken, Steven grabbed it and wanted to throw it out into the audience, so I had to wrestle him for it,” Perry laughs. “I knew we could fix it, you know? I got it back and gave the pieces to my guy, and the show went on.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Perry highlights some of his other favourites from his legendary collection of over 600 guitars. One standout is a custom Gibson BB King Lucille, designed in honour of his wife, Billie Paulette Montgomery.

“I got that in the ‘90s,” Perry explains. “The main reason for that guitar is that I love history, and I was looking back and fascinated by what they call ‘nose art’. Pilots would have artwork on the nose of their planes in World Wars I and II, and it would be pictures of their favourite movie starlet or their wife, and they’d name the plane after them. I thought, ‘Why not do that with my guitar?’”

The artwork, which features Billie’s face on the lower bout, was painted by Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer’s drum tech John Douglas. Perry remembers her reaction: “She had no idea this was going on! Billie just stood there for a second, and they came out with this guitar case and said, ‘Close your eyes.’ We opened it up, and she turned beet red.”

“Long story short, she wouldn’t come out when I’d put the guitar on; she’d kind of leave the side of the stage because she was so embarrassed about it. She’s not somebody who looks for the spotlight, but she got used to it,” says Perry.

The post The time Joe Perry snapped the headstock of one of his favourite guitars: “Steven wanted to throw it into the audience – I had to wrestle him for it!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Haim made history in 2021 when they became the first all-female rock band to earn a Grammy nod for Album of the Year. Now, with a nomination in the Best Rock Album category, the trio once again find themselves representing women in a space that hasn’t always made room for them.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Danielle Haim of Haim reflects on what this recognition means for the band – and for women in guitar music altogether.

“We’re so honoured to be nominated in the rock category,” says the guitarist. “Growing up, my favourite artists were women. When I think about Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders, Heart, the Go-Go’s, the Bangles – all these incredible women who were in rock bands – those are the artists I looked up to. All we want is to inspire women to pick up guitars and drums.”

• READ MORE: Is 2026 finally Iron Maiden’s year to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

For Danielle, the nomination is proof that sticking to their instincts has paid off.

“As far as being recognised, we were so honoured to be nominated for Best Rock Album,” she continues. “Part of the reason I love what we do is that people have had a hard time putting us in a box; maybe there was confusion about what box we fit into. But what’s amazing is, over the last few years, we’ve just kind of kept doing what we’ve always done – and to be recognised in this way is really, really special.”

That refusal to be boxed-in has been central to Haim’s appeal – a band equally at home with sun-soaked pop hooks and classic rock crunch. As lead guitarist, Danielle has been a key driver of that sound.

Asked about her “go-to” instrument, she says: “I started on a Gibson Melody Maker that my dad bought me, and when it came time to graduate to my next guitar, I picked the SG because it was so light. It turned into my favorite guitar, so I continued with it for a long time.”

More recently, though, her sound has been shaped by a different six-string.

“And then Rostam [Batmanglij, ex-Vampire Weekend and one of Haim’s collaborators] bought a really nice Strat from the Fifties, and it’s the most fun guitar to play. So we used that a lot on the last two albums [Women in Music Pt. III and I Quit], and I melded into more of a Strat player.”

The post “All we want is to inspire women to pick up guitars”: Haim on their recent Grammys nomination appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

ABBA delivered a performance for the ages when they took the stage at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 with Waterloo. The band’s glam styling became instant pop iconography, and central to that image was the outrageous-looking 13-pointed, silver star guitar slung over the shoulder of lead guitarist Björn Ulvaeus.

The instrument quickly became part of ABBA’s visual identity, but its origins have long been misunderstood. For years, many assumed it was a custom build from Hagström, the Swedish brand Ulvaeus frequently played. In reality, the flamboyant guitar was crafted by Stockholm luthier Göran Malmberg.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Malmberg details how the now-legendary guitar was conceived and completed under intense time pressure ahead of the Brighton contest – and why it had to be, in his words, “shiny and sparkling”.

• READ MORE: Gibson Custom Shop recreates Mick Ronson’s David Bowie-era Les Paul with super limited run

According to Malmberg, Ulvaeus approached him with just six weeks to go before Eurovision. The brief was simple: create something visually arresting enough to match ABBA’s glam aesthetic.

“Björn and I met and discussed what it could look like,” Malmberg recalls. “It had to be shiny and sparkling, so a star shape was suggested. We decided I would draw some drafts of the guitar and then show them to him. Björn approved one of them, but there was only six weeks left until Eurovision!”

With the design agreed, construction began immediately. A Stratocaster-style neck was selected, but the radical 13-point body required careful engineering to avoid the pitfalls that often plague extreme shapes.

“The body had to have the correct weight balance so that the guitar would remain in position, even if Björn released his grip on the neck,” Malmberg explains. “Furthermore, the tips of the star shape could not be in the way when he was using it.”

To prevent the sharp points from breaking, the body was built from several layers of plywood glued together. The outermost layers were 1mm birch plywood aka “airplane plywood”, chosen to minimise surface cracking in the finish. Particular care was also taken to ensure the guitar would remain balanced on a strap, even if Ulvaeus released the neck mid-performance.

“The extra-long horn provided the balance for the attachment of the shoulder strap, and there were two horns on each side of the guitar’s body,” says Malmberg. “The placement of the control knobs and the cutaway horns helped to counter the weight, too.”

As for electronics, Malmberg says he “mounted the humbuckers, especially the treble pickup, further from the bridge to get a slightly darker sound, suitable for rhythm guitar playing.”

Finally, the finishing touches delivered the show-stopping effect Ulvaeus had requested. “The guitar was lacquered with metal stain on a silver base, and 20 layers of clear lacquer were used,” Malmberg says – ensuring it would gleam under the Eurovision stage lights.

While the exact inspiration behind the star design remains unclear, some have pointed to the influence of British glam-rockers The Glitter Band, who toured Sweden shortly before Eurovision and were known for their own star-shaped instruments.

“The Glitter Band did a tour of Sweden, and this band came to see us play; they told us they really liked our music and that it was really good,” bassist John Springate previously revealed. “Then, three weeks later, we saw them on Eurovision, dressed like us, with a star guitar, and that was ABBA!”

The post “It had to be shiny and sparkling”: Inside Björn Ulvaeus’s wacky Eurovision 1974 star guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$2,199.99/£2,150, yamaha.com

As a rule, people buy a Yamaha Pacifica because they’re feeling sensible. But there have been a couple of dangerously desirable options on the table since 2024: the Standard Plus and Professional. And now, just to get us in even more of a fluster, that table has been stacked a little higher with the return of Yamaha’s single-cutaway design.

• READ MORE: Sterling By Music Man Rabea Artist Series Sabre – a solid rock and metal workhorse

There were a bunch of single-cut Pacificas floating around in the late 90s, but since then – Mike Stern signature model aside – it’s been Strat-influenced double-cuts all the way. The Pacifica SC Professional marks a revival of the more Tele-like body style, with a fixed bridge and two pickups… but this Japanese-made instrument is far from being just another Fender-alike.

Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – what is it?

Yamaha is, of course, a Japanese company – so when it decides to build a guitar at home, rather than outsourcing to somewhere with lower production costs, you know you’re dealing with the top of the line. Mind you, that much is obvious from the SC Professional itself: it’s as beautifully crafted in the hands as it is well appointed on the spec sheet.

The starting point is indeed a T-type design, with a very familiar-looking pickup mounted to the bridge plate next to a trio of compensated brass barrel saddles. But then things go wandering off from the template – starting with the neck pickup, which is a humbucker. Both pups are Yamaha’s Reflectone types, co-developed with Rupert Neve Designs.

As well as the standard three-way pickup selector, you get another distinctly non-standard feature borrowed from some of the Revstar models: a focus switch. This is a pull-out tone knob that engages a passive filter on the single-coil, opening up more tonal options.

There are no surprises in the other core specs – poly-finished alder body, bolt-on maple neck with maple or rosewood board, TUSQ nut, Gotoh locking tuners, 25.5-inch scale length, medium jumbo frets – but there are a few more notable features to mention before the artless thrashing begins.

The fretboard has a compound radius, going from 9.5 inches at the strummy end to a flatter 12 inches for easier string bends up top; the body has some chambering inside the lower horn for acoustic reasons; and, as you might expect at this price, it comes in a fancy hard case.

Oh, and one more thing: every guitar is subjected to Yamaha’s proprietary Initial Response Acceleration (IRA) treatment, which involves applying vibrations to simulate the tone-enhancing effect of years of ‘playing in’. In other words, it’s been sonically relic’d.

Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – playability and build quality

This thing couldn’t be easier to play if it came with built-in hands that did it all for you and then gave you a back massage afterwards. There’s something supernaturally smooth about the frets, and the neck itself – on the rounded side but nothing too scary – is eminently huggable. The balance is good, while the contoured neck heel and upper-body chamfer make it an ergonomic dream.

Even the half-knurled volume and tone knobs feel nice, with a slick but sturdy ‘thunk’ when you pull up the latter for the focus switch. And the factory setup on my review instrument was close to perfect, though the shared saddles mean you might have to compromise a little on intonation.

Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – sounds

It’s impossible to pick up a guitar that looks like this and not expect it to sound like a Telecaster – and the Yamaha website isn’t exactly helping with its promise of “vintage twang” – but that really is not the deal at all. There’s twanginess on offer for sure, but as with the newer double-cut Pacificas, the Reflectone pickups go big on hi-fi clarity… in this case, bigly big.

What you do get from that three-way switch and pull-out knob is an array of five very distinct sounds covering a broad tonal spectrum. The humbucker on its own is full, smooth and breezy; the middle position brings plenty of sugary twinkle; and the bridge pickup has so much shimmering top end I found myself looking down to check it hadn’t secretly turned into a 12-string. Pulling up the focus switch has a mild softening effect on that middle setting, but it completely transforms the single-coil on its own, shaving off a lot of that over-eager treble and replacing it with a bucketful of midrange spank.

Even so, in all positions, this is that rare phenomenon: a guitar with a tone knob that you’ll actually want to use. And luckily it works well, taming the zing without turning everything muddy even when it’s down to halfway. All of that makes the Pacifica SC Professional a versatile electric guitar… but through a clean amp at least, it’s not especially likeable or characterful.

On goes the overdrive, then – and now those pickups find their natural home. The sustain is piano-like, the smoothness is never compromised, and if you’re a technically tidy player you’ll find the guitar’s solidity and snappiness make it a supremely capable partner for your fiddliest lead runs. Palm-muted chords are not so strong – with high gain all that bright resonance translates to a ringiness that can spill over into the gaps – but you’ve probably worked out by now that this is not a guitar for sweaty punk chuggers.

With distortion in the picture the tonal differences between the pickup settings are reined in to a more sensible range, but all five are balanced and articulate. Couple that with the effortless playability I was raving about earlier, and you have a Professional that absolutely lives up to its name.

Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – should I buy one?

It isn’t going to destroy any stereotypes about Yamahas not being very rock’n’roll, but there’s no denying this is a monumentally classy piece of work. And while the voicing of those pickups is hardly a recipe for instant mojo, they’ve clearly been designed to do a particular job – one that’s likely to involve an overdrive pedal or two – and they carry it off impeccably.

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Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional – alternatives

The obvious alternative for anyone who can’t stretch to this kind of money is the Yamaha Pacifica SC Standard Plus ($999/£992), which is made in Indonesia and has only minor spec differences. See also the Eastman FullerTone SC’52 ($899/£799) – or, for a more traditional T-type instrument with a neck humbucker, you might prefer the Fender American Vintage II 1977 Telecaster Custom ($2,599/£2,299).

The post Yamaha Pacifica SC Professional review – the ultimate in solidbody sophistication? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Despite being a staple of British rock and metal, Iron Maiden aren’t in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame – in fact, they’ve been rejected twice already. However, they’ve been put forward to join the Hall yet again, sitting amongst the nominees for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026. Well, third time lucky…

As it stands, Iron Maiden have made it through to the final round of nominations. They sit alongside some fierce competition, with the likes of Jeff Buckley, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, and even Oasis also hoping to snag a spot in the Hall Of Fame.

• READ MORE: Paul McCartney reveals he nearly played on a Bob Weir record before his death: “Unfortunately it never came to pass”

To be eligible for nomination, a minimum of 25 years must have passed since an artist’s first commercial release. With Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut dropping in 1980, that means the band have been eligible for over 20 years – it’s fair to say their induction to the Hall has been a long time coming.

1,200 artists, historians, and members of the music industry will decide who makes the cut. There is also a fan vote currently running on the Hall’s website. Once a decision has been reached, the Class of 2026 will be announced in late April.

In the past, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson hasn’t been very fussed about the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. On his spoken word world tour in 2018, he criticised the institution: “I actually think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an utter and complete load of bollocks, to be honest with you,” he said [via Consequence of Sound].

“It’s run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know rock ‘n’ roll if it hit them in the face,” he continued. “They need to stop taking Prozac and start drinking fucking beer.”

He’s also gone on record saying he’d “refuse” to be inducted. “I’m really happy we’re not [in the Rock Hall] and I would never want to be there,” he told The Jerusalem Post in 2018. “If we’re ever inducted, I will refuse – they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there.”

“Rock & roll music does not belong in a mausoleum in Cleveland. It’s a living, breathing thing, and if you put it in a museum, then it’s dead. It’s worse than horrible, it’s vulgar.”

Regardless, Tom Morello has been working hard to get Iron Maiden in the hallowed Hall. Morello has been a member of the since 2014, making it his mission to get more metal acts into the Hall Of Fame.

“A lot of great bands have gotten into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more recently, in part because they’ve had stronger advocates in the room,” the guitarist told Guitar World in 2024. “I’m one of those advocates… This year I’m all in on Maiden.”

“I know they don’t care,” he added. “[But] I don’t care that they don’t care, because I think it’s the place where they belong.”

So far, he’s helped get Randy Rhoads posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2021. He also pushed for the committee to induct Ozzy Osbourne for his solo work in October 2024, alongside his pre-existing nod of respect when Black Sabbath were inducted in 2026. “I have to give credit to the Hall of Fame – they put me in the room because I complained so damn much!” he said.

Surprisingly, nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 also include the likes of Mariah Carey and Lauryn Hill. While the pair are magnificent artists, with Carey’s pop and R&B topping charts and Hill’s 1998 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill transformative effect on hip-hop, they’re not often associated with ‘Rock and Roll’.

Kiss legend Gene Simmons recently went on record saying that the Rock Hall should be reserved for rock acts. “Hip-hop does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame – nor does opera or symphony orchestras,” he told the Legends N Leaders podcast.

However, the critique lead to Public Enemy’s Chuck D telling TMZ that Simmons was ignoring the “roll” half the Hall’s name.  “Everything else other than rock, when rock ‘n’ roll splintered in the ’60s, is the roll… Kiss are rock gods, but they don’t have a lot of roll to them.”

Regardless, Iron Maiden have an exciting year ahead of them. Their 50th anniversary is being properly marked this year with May documentary, Burning Ambition. The same month, they’re embarking on the second European leg of their Run For Your Lives World Tour.

You can cast your vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 now.

The post Is 2026 finally Iron Maiden’s year to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Metallica. Megadeth. Slayer. Anthrax. These are the four thrash metal bands forever immortalised as the “Big Four”. But debate has raged for years as to whether certain other bands should be part of that cohort.

Such names include Bay Area greats and Kirk Hammett’s former band Exodus, East Coast thrashers Overkill, and, arguably the band most commonly argued as the group’s fifth member, Testament.

• READ MORE: Channel your inner Eddie Van Halen with this new reverb plugin inspired by the sound of the Sunset Strip

Across their vast discography – comprising 14 studio albums released over the course of four decades – Testament have made a strong case for their title as the Big Four’s fifth member.

But in a new interview with The Classic Metal Show [via Blabbermouth], guitarist Alex Skolnick explains why he believes the Big Four has always remained those four bands only. And the reason, he says, comes mostly down to timelines.

“I never give it much thought, because, to me, it’s not just the ‘Big Four’ – it’s the first four,” he says.

“Those bands had albums out when Testament was still called Legacy and was still a local band that I used to hear about when I was in high school. And they supported some of those bands, but all of the ‘Big Four’ bands had records out at the time that Legacy was still getting started. And by the time Legacy became Testament and released its first album, those bands all had several albums out. So you can’t really make the comparison.”

“They were there. They were so much further along by the time we even got started. So I think it makes more sense to look at, okay, the next wave after the so-called ‘Big Four’ bands. And it’s an honour that people think – most of the time we’re one of those names. That’s great. I’ll take it.”

Skolnick makes clear that he and his bandmates don’t mind at all that they aren’t cited as a member of the Big Four.

“I don’t know of anybody that has any issue with that,” he says. “[Nobody] says, ‘No, we should be in the Big Four.’ No, they’re the Big Four. All good. But we’ll proudly take our place in the next wave.”

Testament have a North America tour planned across March and April 2026. Aptly titled Thrash of the Titans, the trek will see the metallers take out support acts Overkill and German thrash metal outfit Destruction.

See Testament’s official website for tickets and a full list of dates.

The post “It’s not the Big Four – it’s the first four”: Alex Skolnick on why Testament aren’t included in the “Big Four” of thrash metal appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The hallowed Sunset Strip in West Hollywood was instrumental in shaping the sound of the ‘70s/’80s hard rock and hair metal, with the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and Slash all cutting their teeth in its now-legendary nightclubs and venues.

Just a few miles away at 6650 Sunset Boulevard lies Sunset Sound, the iconic recording studio that has churned out classic albums like Van Halen’s landmark debut, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. and Led Zeppelin’s second album. Now, you can harness the sound of the celebrated studio with a new standalone reverb plugin from IK Multimedia.

• READ MORE: “Girls in the crowd would want to know who it was. I’d point to my wedding ring and they’d melt!”: Joe Perry on his custom Gibson BB King “Billie” Lucille

Arriving as an expanded and standalone version of IK’s popular T-RackS plugin, Sunset Sound Studio Reverb II utilises IK Multimedia’s Volumetric Response Modelling (VRM) technology to accurately capture the acoustic detail of Sunset Sound’s Studios 1, 2 and 3.

The plugin features up to 27 distinct live room source positions per studio, with each position captured as a unique acoustic event (not mathematically interpolated, as IK explains), preserving the authenticity of the impulse response including its early reflections and spatial perspective.

There’s also directional and omnidirectional source modes, with dual-engine architecture for the combination of Live Rooms, Chambers, Iso Booths, EMT plates and AKG spring reverbs,  each with their own EQ, stereo control and routing.

The plugin also comes with advanced size control, with the ability to dynamically scale the impulse response from 0% to 200% while “preserving the original capture’s tonal fingerprint and spatial behaviour”.

An expanded capture library features 336 live room stereo impulse responses, each capturing the classic sound heard on albums recorded at Sunset Sound. There’s also variable acoustic damping modelling in Studios 1 and 3, mimicking the real Sunset Sound’s adjustable absorption panels.

Sunset Sound Studio Reverb II also comes with two selectable preamp and signal path emulations modelled on Sunset Sound’s gear: the API/DeMedio Sunset Sound Custom and Class-A Discrete NEVE 8880.

Finally, the plugin sports a redesigned 3D interface which offers “immediate feedback while maintaining precise control”.

Sunset Sound Studio Reverb II is available now for $/€149.99. For more info, head to IK Multimedia.

The post Channel your inner Eddie Van Halen with this new reverb plugin inspired by the sound of the Sunset Strip appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Heather Farr Edwards always knew she wanted to be in the “music-adjacent” industry. Her foot in the door came from pestering the editor of Relix, a live music review magazine that started as a Grateful Dead newsletter. She got an internship reviewing live shows in New York in her early 20s, moved to the world of corporate agency PR for a while, before some LinkedIn serendipity led her to a role as head of PR for the global musical instrument marketplace, Reverb.

• READ MORE: Meet NotPedals.com, a marketplace that’s making boutique handmade pedals more accessible than ever

Over her decade at the company, Edwards has seen Reverb grow dramatically to become the world’s premier gear-focused marketplace. Behind the scenes, the company has seen its fair share of changes – most notably being bought by Etsy in 2019, and becoming independent again in April 2025.

It’s more than just press releases

“I always say I’ve had a full career’s worth of experience at Reverb. The company has evolved so much in 10 years, and so has my role. At first my job was getting the word out about Reverb by all means necessary – its story was intertwined with that of our founder David [Kalt], how he was a guitar store owner [Kalt owns Chicago Music Exchange] who was having trouble selling and finding gear online, and launched the solution to his own problem.

“After we were acquired [by Etsy] I really saw my role evolve from telling Reverb’s story to telling the story of our community. That can range from studying up on new tax regulations to help sellers make sense of them, to naming the conference rooms in our offices. Last year I wrote an entire parody of Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty based on what the CEO wanted to say to the team in his end of year message. So it runs the gamut!”

Inspiring confidence is everything

“At the end of the day, we’re an e-commerce platform, but most people aren’t buying a guitar every day. So we get to think about how to inspire people who aren’t in the market at the moment – and we’re lucky, as that’s a really fun thing!

“The goal of our content is helping musicians feel more confident in the purchase that they’re making, whether that’s through a demo video or other content. We take that responsibility really seriously. Reverb didn’t invent buying music gear online, but I think it’s safe to say that people are more comfortable doing so now – and Reverb has likely had a hand in that.”

Love of gear can bring artists and fans together

“The artist shops on Reverb aren’t money grabs. 99 per cent of the time the artists look in their garage and go, ‘Shit, I’ve got too much stuff,’ or ‘I’ve used this 20 years ago and not touched it since’ – and if you care about gear, all this beautiful stuff with a thick layer of dust over the top of it is really upsetting!

“Artists choose Reverb because, while we can’t guarantee this stuff doesn’t end up in some display case, we offer them the best chance of their gear going to someone who’ll use it on tour or in the studio, or will at least noodle with it on their couch.”

Data can tell some great stories

“As a newly independent company, I do think we’re getting back to our roots – being a music gear company that’s really good at tech, not a tech company that can do music. Sometimes data tells boring stories – but ours doesn’t.

“It goes back to that responsibility with our content – the data is really useful if you’re a buyer or a seller and trying to understand the value of what you have. Early on we made an effort to make sense out of the complex data we had. So now we have these really rich insights, which we don’t want to just sit on and use for our own good.”

When it comes to the big changes, show don’t tell

“The hardest thing about going through a big change like being sold is probably the personal side of it. We’re humans, we’re in the forums, we’re reading things that people think about a change. From our side, it’s still a lot of the same people – not much has changed in terms of what we’re trying to do, which is create the best place online to buy and sell gear. But I’ve learned through this whole process that acquisitions and sales just carry a negative weight to them – even if the reality isn’t like that.

“And so my approach as a communications person is always to be honest – my approach has never been to ‘spin’ things. It can be easy for somebody to say, ‘Oh, this company got purchased by a bigger company, everything is going to go downhill!’ I can’t tell somebody that’s not going to be the case, we just have to show people that!”

The post Why Reverb’s big data can help tell interesting stories about the guitar market appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Gibson Custom Shop has honoured late guitarist Mick Ronson with a faithful recreation of the Les Paul he played while part of David Bowie’s band.

Described as an “extraordinary, ultra-limited recreation of the legendary guitarist’s most iconic instrument”, the Mick Ronson 1968 Les Paul Custom Collector’s Edition celebrates Ronson’s “indelible mark on modern music”, with only 100 available worldwide from authorised dealers, physical Gibson Garage locations and via Gibson’s website.

• READ MORE: Metallica Sphere residency CONFIRMED

In terms of specs, the Mick Ronson 1968 Les Paul Custom Collector’s Edition features a mahogany body with a plain maple cap – with an Ebony finish and Gibson’s Murphy Lab aging for an authentic-looking worn-in feel – as well as a mahogany neck with an authentic ‘68 Medium C profile.

Elsewhere, the guitar features an ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl block inlays, an ABR-1 bridge, Grover tuners and a worn Stop Bar tailpiece. Electronics come by way of a pair of aged ‘68 Custom humbuckers with Alnico 2 magnets, with era-specific CTS 500k potentiometers and Black Beauty capacitors.

The guitar also comes in a Gibson Custom case with a recreation of Mick Ronson’s signature, as well as a replica strap and certificate of authenticity booklet.

“I think Mick would be totally astonished that he’s still being talked about in such a positive way,” says Ronson’s widow, Suzi. “I think this guitar just adds sparkle to an already legendary life.”

“Mick Ronson is a true musical legend, and his impact – delivered in far too short a time – cannot be overstated,” says Lee Bartram, Head of Commercial and Marketing EMEA at Gibson. 

“The world misses Mick Ronson more than it likely knows. We hope that this project advances the broader recognition he so richly deserves.”

As well as playing alongside David Bowie, Mick Ronson also played with Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Roger Daltrey and more.

The Mick Ronson 1968 Les Paul Custom Collector’s Edition is priced at $9,999. For more information, head to Gibson.

The post Gibson Custom Shop recreates Mick Ronson’s David Bowie-era Les Paul with super limited run appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

George Harrison may have been known as ‘the quiet Beatle’, but he much preferred making music with others rather than as a solo performer.

Harrison released several albums as a solo artist, including Wonderwall Music for the accompanying 1968 film, which marked the first solo release from a member of The Beatles. But in 1988, Harrison longed to be part of a band again, and he co-founded the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

• READ MORE: Paul McCartney reveals he nearly played on a Bob Weir record before his death: “Unfortunately it never came to pass”

The group consisted of Harrison alongside Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and came together as a result of Harrison and Lynne dreaming up a new band during the sessions for Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine. In a 2007 Uncut interview, which has recently been republished online, Petty, Lynne, and more looked back on the magic of the supergroup.

“George had those intense moments in his career when it was absolute bedlam, so there were times when he craved solitude, but he also loved being with friends,” said his widow, Olivia Harrison.

Lynne added: “We were three-quarters of the way through Cloud Nine, and every night, as we were relaxing with a few drinks after mixing a big epic or whatever, George and I had the same conversation: ‘We could have a group, you know?’ ‘Yeah, we could.’ He didn’t like the idea of being a solo guy – that’s what he told me. He was never comfortable with it. He wanted a group, and, of course, George could do anything he wanted.”

The group became dormant in the early ’90s. They released their final album – named the Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3, despite it being their second record – in 1990, which they completed after the death of Orbison in 1988.

Looking back on the whole experience in the 2007 Uncut interview, the late Tom Petty added: “It was great having George Harrison as our lead guitarist – very convenient. Thank you, God. He was just the best fellow we ever met. We got into an incredible run of music there, and we were havin’ a blast doin’ it. Not one day was like work. It was all just very natural.”

The post “He was never comfortable with it. He wanted a group”: Why George Harrison wasn’t keen on being a solo artist appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

After considerable speculation, Metallica have confirmed their residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, which will comprise eight shows across October 2026.

Continuing the band’s ‘no-repeat’ weekend tradition – which sees them perform two shows in each city with entirely unique setlists on each night – the residency will take place October 1 and 3, 15 and 17, 22 and 24, and 29 and 31.

• READ MORE: “Is this yours?”: Watch the wholesome moment James Hetfield meets a 10-year-old fan – and signs his ESP LTD Iron Cross guitar

Brought to the Sphere in partnership with Live Nation and inKind, Metallica’s Life Burns Faster – taken from the lyrics to Master of Puppets, of course – will see the metal titans harness the venue’s high-resolution LED light display for the first time, which spans the entire spherical roof and consists of over 1.2 million LED pucks. 

A band already known for their elaborate and immersive stage setups, one can only imagine what they have in store for their Sphere residency…

Metallica co-founder/drummer Lars Ulrich commented, “About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ‘23, I thought ‘We have to do this, it’s completely uncharted territory!’ This residency gives us another chance to reinvent how we interact with our fans in a live setting. We are beyond excited to share this with the world in six months time, and way fuckin’ psyched to go next level!”

Both full no-repeat weekend tickets and single-night tickets will go on sale 6 March and 10am PT.

To register for tickets, or get further information on pre-sales, enhanced experiences, travel packages and more, you can head to Metallica.com.

The post Metallica Sphere residency CONFIRMED appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Whether it’s voice memo recordings, videos on your phone, hastily scrawled tabs or a combination of the three, guitarists each have their own ways of documenting riffs and song ideas. As a solo musician, I found Guitar Pro to be the best tool to turn those ideas into songs. Having discovered it just a couple of years into playing guitar, it was also a crucial tool that helped build my music theory understanding.

In this series of guides, I hope to share what I’ve learned in the 15+ years I’ve been using Guitar Pro. Today, I’ll be introducing you to the basics of tabbing out a riff in Guitar Pro as well as giving an overview into the theoretical side of your compositions and how you correctly tab those out.

If you don’t own Guitar Pro, you can download a free 7 day trial for Guitar Pro 8 (the latest iteration at the time of writing) for Windows or macOS and follow along. I’ll be using v7.6 for this guide, but all the features I’ll be talking about will apply to the latest version.

You can apply this guide to an original composition, but you can also use a riff you’ve learned from another artist. It’s how I learned a lot of Guitar Pro’s features in those early days when my own riff ideas were limited (i.e. rubbish).

1. Creating a new file in Guitar Pro

Opening Guitar Pro will bring up the projects screen. As you save more projects, add tabs of your favourite artists, etc. your recent files will begin to populate and allow you to jump right back in where you left off.

For now, we’re just going to click ‘new file’.

2. Choosing your guitar type

It’s now time to choose your starting instrument. You can see there are four tabs: Stringed, Orchestra, Drums and MIDI. We’ll be looking solely at ‘Stringed’ for this guide and will explore the other instrumentation options in future guides.

When ‘Stringed’ is selected, you’ll see two columns with your ‘master’ instrument on the left and the different permutations of that instrument on the right:

• Acoustic – Nylon, 12-string, Steel, Resonator
• Electric Guitar – Overdrive, Distortion, Sitar, Clean, Jazz, 12-String
• Bass Guitar – Acoustic, Fretless, Electric, Synth, Upright
• Other – Banjo, Ukulele, Mandolin

Once you’ve settled on your guitar, you’ll have four further settings to tweak:

• Instrument track name
• Notation type, e.g. tablature, standard and slash notation
• The number of strings and tuning
• The sound of your guitar that you’ll hear during tabbing and playback

All of these settings can be changed after this point, so don’t feel like you need to agonise over them. I’ll show you how to do this in the next step.

For this guide, I’m going to use the following settings:

• Information: Jazz Guitar, jz.guit.
• Notation: Tablature and Standard Notation
• Upper Staff: 6 strings, standard tuning
• Sound: Jazz ES

3. How to tab out a riff in Guitar Pro

Before starting, familiarise yourself with the layout of Guitar Pro. Below is an example of a ‘full screen’ view where you’ll find ‘Edition Palette’ which includes a lot of your note and effect tools; the ‘Global View’ where you’ll find all your instrument tracks and each bar of your song; and the ‘Inspector’ view where you can change the song information and edit your instrument type, amp, effects and playing style.

To begin tabbing out your idea, you need to input the corresponding fret number(s) on the string(s) being used in your riff.

Bar one will show our two staffs; the upper for standard notation and the bottom for our tablature, which represents the 6 strings of our guitar, with the highest line being the high ‘E’ and the bottom being the low ‘E’.

A new project will default to highlighting the lowest string, signified by the yellow square. You can use your mouse or directional keys to change the string you’re on or move to the next beat in the bar.

Below are two tabbed examples, an E Minor chord arpeggio and an eight-note riff across the low E and A strings.

Guitar Pro will default to a quarter note duration on a new file. Use the (+/-) keys to increase and decrease the note duration while highlighting the chord/note based on how it’s played. Use the space bar to begin playback and hear what you’ve tabbed out and refine the note durations where needed. If it’s still sounding a little too fast or slow, double click the tempo at the top of the page and adjust until it feels right.

If your bar is highlighted in red when moving to a new bar, this means there are too few or too many to fill the bar. 4/4 is the default for all new projects in Guitar Pro and means that a single measure/bar is made up of four quarter notes worth of music.

When tabbing out your idea, it’s important to make sure that your note durations add up before moving to the next bar. It’s easy to get the hang of when you’re writing in 4/4, but becomes trickier when writing in odd time signatures.

Here’s an easy way to visualise how different notes fill a bar of 4/4:

If your riff is an odd time signature, fear not! I’ll be talking a little more about that in the next section of this guide.

4. Understanding the notation behind your riff and how to tab it out

Your riff should now be sounding familiar to you, but it might still be missing something. Here are some techniques to get your riff sounding as accurate as possible.

Time signature

When I first started tabbing out ideas in Guitar Pro, I wasn’t all that knowledgeable about time signatures, so much so that I beat my head against the wall trying to understand why my arpeggio crossed a bar and a half of 4/4 long before realising what 6/4 was.

If you think that’s the case with your riff, record a voice memo of you playing your riff and then tap along and count out the time.

The top number in a time signature relates to the number of times a note is played, the bottom the speed of those notes. For example, 6/4 is a measure made up of six quarter notes.

If your riff starts in an odd time signature, you can double-click the symbol in the first bar and change it. If your riff has multiple time signature changes, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD+T (Windows/macOS, respectively) in the respective bar to change it.

Rests, ties and dotted notes

Along with ensuring each note of your riff is the right length, there are some things that can’t be done with just the (+/-) keys.

There may be a gap in your riff where no notes are being played. In notation, this would be marked as a rest, which can be inserted into Guitar Pro using the (R) key on your keyboard. Use the (+/-) keys to set how long your rest lasts for and make sure it sounds right when you playback.

Similarly, your riff may hold a note across two bars, e.g. played on the final beat in bar one and held on the first beat of bar two. For example, it may be that the note needs to last for two quarter notes, but your bar of 4/4 on has one quarter note remaining. You can’t notate it as a half note, because that adds up to five quarter notes or 5/4. To notate this, tab out the first note and then move to the next beat in the bar/next bar and press the (L) key. If you’re using a tie on a chord, press (L) on each string that the chord is fretted.

When a half note is too long, but a quarter note too short, you need a dotted note. A dotted note is when you add half the value of your chosen note duration, e.g. a dotted quarter note is a quarter note plus an eighth note. To notate a dotted note, use the ‘period/full stop’ key on your keyboard on the note you wish to change. The next note you tab will also be dotted, so be sure to remove this if not needed.

Note articulation

The final thing to discuss is how you articulate the notes in your riff. I’m just going to highlight the most common articulations for now, but we will look at more intermediate ones in the next guide.

Press (S) on the first note and then tab out the following note. The two (or more) notes will be linked and play as a legato slide transition during playback. This applies to slides up and down the neck.

Press (H) to link multiple notes where you’re performing hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Highlight the note(s) that you want to be played with a palm mute a press (P).

If you want the notes in your riff to ring out together rather than ending once the next note plays, use (i) on your keyboard to enable the ‘let ring’ function. You’ll be surprised how effective this is at taking your riff from sounding robotic to natural.

If you use dead notes as part of your riff, you can press (X) on any given string and set the note duration. Different strings with a dead note will produce different sounds so try out a combination that works for you.

Press (B) on the note you want to bend and then tweak the force and duration of the bend to your desired effect.

Next time, we’ll build on what we’ve learned here and start to build a complete song in Guitar Pro as we explore customising your guitar tone, adding additional instruments and utilising repeating sections and automation.

The post How to tab a basic riff in Guitar Pro – the essential guide appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Alex Van Halen has confirmed that he’s working on a project involving archival Van Halen material, and the band’s former bassist believes it should remain purely instrumental.

The forthcoming project will feature a bunch of Van Halen demos, but it’s not yet clear if it will go out under the Van Halen name. With Eddie Van Halen having passed away in 2020, the idea of a new album being released today is a sore subject for both fans and artists linked to the band.

Alex has already suggested that he originally wanted Free’s Paul Rodgers to take on vocal duties, who was eventually unable to take on the job, but he’s now “looking for somebody else”. Michael Anthony, who played bass for the band between 1974 and 2006, thinks they should go forwards without one.

• READ MORE: Wolfgang Van Halen thinks rock music is “perfectly great where it is”: “There’s room for everything”

In an interview with Matt Spatz of WNCX, he says [via Ultimate Classic Rock]: “The way I personally feel about it is, if they wanted to do it justice, [the best idea would be] to just finish it up as a great instrumental nod to Eddie.

“You know, because getting a new singer in there, we’re not forming a new band, and then you’ve got to work on lyrics and all that stuff. And who knows when anything would be put out at that point,” he explains.

Speaking on the project, Alex recently told Brazilian journalist Gastão Moreira for KazaGastão that the record’s tracks will feature reworked versions of songs that he and his brother never finished.

“Many people have asked, ‘What about releasing unreleased stuff?’ Well, we’re not gonna release it in its embryonic form because it wouldn’t make any sense. But I’ve been fortunate enough to have Steve Lukather [involved], who was a good friend of Ed’s, and we’re working on putting a record together.”

Steve Lukather has so far been rather elusive about his role within the project. He has already denied doing any guitar work on the record. In a comment under one of his Instagram posts about Eddie, he said: “For the record: Ever since Alex Van Halen dropped some [hints] we were gonna work together I think there is a huge misunderstanding. I will NOT EVER play a guitar note on a VH song ever!

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“Al asked me to help him go [through] a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now that’s all I got. The fact that ANYONE would think for even a second that I would play anything on this is ridiculous. I have too much love and respect and … I play nothing like Ed… More as a co-producer or something. I am honoured Al would ask me though. Let’s see…”

The post Michael Anthony thinks Alex Van Halen’s archival Van Halen album should be purely instrumental, “if they wanted to do it justice” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When you think of the most quintessential electric guitars, the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul invariably come to mind. But as Jack White explains in a new interview with Reverb, their ubiquity turned him off the idea as a young guitarist.

Instead, the White Stripes man was attracted to less conventional guitars at the time, like Silvertones and Airlines.

• READ MORE: “The guitar that started it all”: T-Bone Walker’s 1949 Gibson ES-5N is up for sale on Reverb for over $2M

“[In my late teens], I decidedly hated anything to do with Stratocasters, Les Pauls – any of the common instruments that you see everybody use,” White says. 

“I just thought it’s so overused, and so indicative of ‘white boy blues’ if you had a Stratocaster, or you’re heavy metal if you use this kind of guitar. 

“It just seemed like, I would rather try to find something that didn’t have any connotations already thrown on it. So I was attracted to Silvertones and Airlines and things that you just didn’t see on TV or on videos.”

The guitarist does admit, however, that the popularity of a particular guitar model depends heavily on the time period.

“In the ‘90s in general – if I had a Silvertone guitar, to me, in Detroit, I never saw anybody use that guitar,” he continues. “I never saw anybody on TV, definitely nobody playing shows or anybody I knew that owned one. So when I was using it, it felt very unique. 

“But then you start talking to older people, and it’s like, ‘When I was a kid, that’s all anybody had, was Silvertones. Nobody had enough money to pay for a real guitar.

“[It’s] different time periods, you know – now you can obviously see everything, but in your own zone, it’s just [about] trying to find a uniqueness; a new voice for yourself. I didn’t wanna use the same tool that everyone else was using. 

“I’m glad I did that. I’m glad I had that desire to carve something out. Because once you do that, then you can rewind, and put on one of those more common guitars and get something out of it.

Watch the full Reverb interview below:

The post Jack White never wanted to use a Stratocaster because they were “overused” and “indicative of white boy blues” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.