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The Rolling Stones have seemingly started teasing the title of their next album, which could also be their last.

According to a recent report, the album’s title may hark back to an alias they have used in the past to announce secret shows, The Cockroaches. Posters have also been spotted featuring this moniker, and the first single, titled Mr Charm, is supposedly landing this Saturday (11 April).

• READ MORE: “Call my guitar man if you want the exact number”: Keith Richards reveals the astonishing number of guitars in his collection

According to an exclusive from The Sun, a “music insider” says, “The Rolling Stones album has been in the can for some time now. A lot of it was written and recorded a while back but there has been a lot of fine-tuning to make it perfect. They were back in Metropolis Studios in West London last year and now it’s ready to go.

“The guys are aware they aren’t getting any younger so some people are seeing this as a final album – but who knows with the Stones? They will be making some appearances together to promote it but there’s not going to be a tour yet.”

If the rumours are to be true, this new record will mark their 25th studio album and their first since 2023’s Hackney Diamonds. The Grammy-winning album was produced by Andrew Watt, and marked their first record since the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021, though he does appear on two of its songs. The Sun also suggests that this new album could include more recordings from Watts.

Both members of The Rolling Stones and those associated with them have been teasing that their work is not quite done ever since Hackney Diamonds landed. Keith Richards told Guitar Player in 2023, “I’ve never even come close to thinking of wrapping up the Rolling Stones’ story… We plan to keep on working. I know we’re going to work next year.”

Last year, Andrew Watt also hinted about working with the group again. He told Rolling Stone, “I’ve said it before, but it’s like working for Batman. When the tongue [logo] is up in the air, you just go… I can say we did some recording together, but that’s all I can say.”

Prior to this, Keith Richards’ son also gave an interview to Record Collector, in which he said that the band were “nearly done” recording and that they had enough material left over from Hackney Diamonds to work with on a new project: “They have enough left over from the last one. [It] gave them a Grammy so now they’re all hyped up on that: ‘Oh, yeah – we can do another one like that! We’ve got more like that if you want…’. I think they’re doing the follow-up.”

The post “Some people are seeing this as a final album”: Details of the Rolling Stones’ top secret new album revealed appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.



Thomm Jutz’s story is unlike any other we’ve ever shared.

Born in the Black Forest of Germany, Jutz became obsessed with American music when, at the age of 11, he saw Bobby Bare on TV. He eventually moved to Nashville, where he has worked with Nanci Griffith, Mary Gauthier, Billy Strings, and others. These days, he also teaches songwriting at Belmont University.

On this week’s podcast, we talk to the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer about his new solo album, Ring-A-Bellin’, its companion book, his secrets for success in Nashville, and so much more. It’s a great chat.

https://thommjutz.com

Order the Ring-A-Bellin’ book: https://thommjutz.com/store

Subscribe to the Fretboard Journal print magazine here.

Our next Fretboard Summit takes place August 20-22, 2026, at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Register today: https://fretboardsummit.org

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Mike & Mike’s Guitar Bar: https://mmguitarbar.com

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Above photo: Otis

The post Podcast 544: Thomm Jutz first appeared on Fretboard Journal.

Ernie Ball Music Man is celebrating 30 years of its Axis electric guitar model with a limited-edition collection honouring its legacy.

First launched in 1996, the Axis has become a staple of the EBMM lineup, and guitars in the new collection stay true to the original design with a classic asymmetrical neck carve for “comfort and playability”, 22 stainless steel frets and a figured maple neck with glow-in-the-dark side dots.

• READ MORE: Guitar Center is launching its own guitar brand and asking guitarists for help with design – but the response hasn’t been all positive

The 30th Anniversary Axis features a hand-stained quilt maple top, and comes in six different finish options: Gold, Black, Pink, Red, Blue and Purple, each with a colour-matched headstock. Each option comes with a sparkled black back for a “refined and cohesive look”.

Elsewhere, the guitar features a pair of custom-wound DiMarzio pickups, plus an Ernie Ball Music Man double locking tremolo system, and fine tuners for “exceptional tuning stability”.

A final visual touch comes by way of a commemorative 30th Anniversary logo on the back.

Additionally, each 30th Anniversary Axis guitar comes with a certificate of authenticity, and ships in a deluxe hardshell case.

Price-wise, the 30th Anniversary Axis clocks in at $3,799. It’s also limited worldwide, with 120 Gold guitars available, and 100 each of the other five colours.

Learn more at Ernie Ball Music Man.

The post “A true collector’s piece”: Ernie Ball Music Man unveils 30th Anniversary Axis appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Guitar Center has announced it is setting up its own in-house guitar brand, and is outsourcing a portion of research and development to its community of customers and players.

In a TikTok video posted on 26 March, CEO Gabe Dalporto shared the company’s plans to develop its own guitar brand, explaining his reasoning behind the move.

“We are about to do something insane,” he said. “We are going to build a revolutionary guitar and guitar brand from the ground up. Guitars haven’t changed that much in the last 50 years, and we’re about to change that.

“We have something that nobody else has: a relationship with you,” he continues. “Our customers are incredible musicians. And we’re going to work with you in public, out loud, and share our designs, take your feedback, iterate, and make the best guitar that has ever been made.”

@guitarcenter

It’s time to throw out the rule book and build a new guitar with no constraints, and you’re the designer! Follow @ gdalporto on Instagram to stay tuned in the guitar building journey, and join the subthread, r/GuitarLab, on Reddit to see the whole conversation unfold—link in bio. ——— By submitting your idea, design, suggestion or feedback (collectively, “Idea”), you affirm that your Idea is your original creation, and that any Idea submitted by you is wholly original and owned by you, and cleared for use by Guitar Center, Inc. (“Guitar Center”) without the need for additional licensing. By submitting your Idea, you assign, transfer, give and relinquish to Guitar Center all right, title and interest in and to the Idea or any material based upon or derived therefrom for no consideration. Guitar Center may use and exploit, without any payment or attribution obligation of any kind, any Idea you provide to Guitar Center. You waive any moral and similar rights you may have in such Idea. If requested by Guitar Center, you agree to execute and deliver all documents needed to confirm the assignment and transfer of your Idea to Guitar Center.

♬ original sound – Guitar Center – Guitar Center

A subreddit – r/guitarlab – has also been set up by Guitar Center to encourage its community to submit ideas for their ideal guitar, but a number of disclaimers have some guitarists sceptical about the whole idea, mostly around the concept of giving away ideas for free which will later be used for profit.

“Come build a guitar with us from the ground up,” Dalporto writes. “Your input will go directly to our builders as we iteratively create the world’s most revolutionary guitar from first principles (and your frustrations and desires). Be part of the biggest guitar innovation since Les Paul nailed a neck and pickups to a railroad tie.”

Under the r/guitarlab rules section, Guitar Center sets out three important disclaimers those submitting ideas for guitar design need to know:

“By submitting your idea, design, suggestion or feedback (collectively, “Idea”), you affirm that your Idea is your original creation, and that any Idea submitted by you is wholly original and owned by you, and cleared for use by Guitar Center, Inc. (“Guitar Center”) without the need for additional licensing,” reads the first.

But the second two stipulations are what have guitarists scratching their heads.

“By submitting your Idea, you assign, transfer, give and relinquish to Guitar Center all right, title and interest in and to the Idea or any material based upon or derived therefrom for no consideration,” reads the second rule. “Guitar Center may use and exploit, without any payment or attribution obligation of any kind, any Idea you provide to Guitar Center.”

And finally, the third rule: “You waive any moral and similar rights you may have in such Idea. If requested by Guitar Center, you agree to execute and deliver all documents needed to confirm the assignment and transfer of your Idea to Guitar Center.”

While some have enthusiastically taken to the cause, others have expressed their concern at the limited perks or remuneration community members will receive for their contributions.

In a post labelling the move “peak corporate cringe”, one user writes: “Am I the only one who finds it incredibly unnerved that a multi-billion dollar corporation, which has been struggling with its own identity and finances for years, is now asking us to do their R&D for free?”

Meanwhile, another user writes: “Seriously? you’re just going to rip ideas off your community and give them nothing but crappy trade in values?”

As it stands, Guitar Center hasn’t publicly responded to these concerns.

Keep up to date with the design via the official r/guitarlab subreddit.

The post Guitar Center is launching its own guitar brand and asking guitarists for help with design – but the response hasn’t been all positive appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

You can now get a PRS SE Silver Sky for $599 thanks to this huge deal at Sweetwater, saving you $250.

The Overland Gray version of the SE Silver Sky with a maple fretboard is available at this reduced price on the Sweetwater website only while supplies last. This model was part of the original launch of the SE Silver Sky Maple, which landed in 2023.

[deals ids=”7r6pTBFdbaWVeErzHCJAKs”]

Apart from the fretboard wood, the PRS SE Silver Sky Maple has all the same specifications as its rosewood-appointed sister. The SE version does differ from the standard Silver Sky, however, and was designed to be a more affordable alternative.

• READ MORE: PRS releases full-length documentary celebrating the life of guitar industry legend Theodore “Ted” McCarty

The SE Silver Sky’s biggest deviation from the standard model is a slightly modified 8.5-inch radius, as opposed to the original’s 7.25-inch radius. Its other key features include a poplar body, 22 frets and a 25.5” scale length, 635 JM “S” pickups, plus one volume and two tone controls, accompanied by a five-way blade pickup switch.

We rated the SE Silver Sky Maple a 9/10 in our 2023 review. We noted that while the sonic differences between the rosewood and maple fretboard might be minor, the Maple version “further pulls the S-type format into step with modern design languages”.

Last year, PRS refreshed its rosewood SE Silver Sky by introducing four new colours, created in collaboration with John Mayer. The finishes were all-new for PRS and almost crayon-like, they were: Derby Red, Trad Blue, Laurel Green, and Dandy Lion (yellow).

PRS also teamed up with Ed Sheeran on a new “Cosmic Splash” Limited Edition signature model, launched at NAMM earlier this year. The guitar features artwork made by the singer-songwriter himself, and is a limited SE Hollowbody I Piezo Baritone model. Only 1,000 of them were made available worldwide.

To shop this huge deal on the SE Silver Sky Maple, head to Sweetwater.

The post We rated the PRS SE Silver Sky Maple a near-flawless 9/10 – save $250 on it right now at Sweetwater appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

An Epiphone EJ-200 acoustic guitar owned by Noel Gallagher – and used by the Oasis legend on the band’s landmark 1995 sophomore album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – is headed to the auction block.

The auction will take place as part of Sotheby’s April rock and pop sale, and will also feature a handwritten lyric sheet for the Oasis megahit Don’t Look Back in Anger, plus a Noel Gallagher-owned Rickenbacker 12-string.

• READ MORE: Charvel recreates Jake E. Lee’s Bark at the Moon/Ultimate Sin-era Blue Burst guitar

The Epiphone EJ-200 was used by Gallagher during the 15 days Oasis spent recording (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – the best-selling British album of the ‘90s which featured tracks like Don’t Look Back in Anger, Champagne Supernova and Wonderwall.

“It was quite extraordinary how they managed to record it in such a fast period of time,” says Sotheby’s New York-based pop culture specialist Craig Inciardi [via The Guardian]. 

“He was just so prolific at the time … with the amount of songs that were coming out of him, it’s almost unprecedented. And if you look at that album and you look at the track listing, it looks like a greatest hits album.”

In terms of its provenance, the EJ-200 was given by Gallagher to a roadie, who later sold it to the person selling it now. Sotheby’s estimates the guitar will sell for between $60,000 and $80,000, though given the results of recent high-profile guitar auctions – like David Gilmour’s Black Strat and Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar, which sold for $14.5m and $11.5m at the recent Jim Irsay Collection auction, respectively – it could well exceed that estimate.

“These are functional objects that have become so sought after and the value of musical instruments that have this sort of historic provenance has significantly increased over time,” adds Inciardi.

Online bidding for the auction begins on 9 April. Learn more at Sotheby’s.

The post Noel Gallagher’s What’s The Story Epiphone acoustic headed to the auction block – could it become the latest high-profile guitar to smash its estimate?  appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Press Release

Tom Principato is set to release his first studio album in 9 years with “Twangin’!”, an all instrumental electric guitar album with an eclectic mix of styles. There are five Tom Principato originals, such as:  “Beyond The Stars,” “Smoky Blue,” “The Bone Head Shuffle,” “Head First,” and “Drop D Boogie,” as well as two covers of obscure Ventures’ songs “Night Walk,”and “Blue Star,” “Kentucky,” an old Bluegrass favorite, The Gospel classic “All Day, All Night (Angels Watching Over Me), a heartfelt rendition of Ketty Lester’s “Love Letters”, and “Champagne” an obscure shuffle from Merle Haggard’s band of the ’70s, written by Norm Hamlett and Roy Nichols, one of Tom’s Telecaster heroes.

There’s plenty of twang and blues here as well as rockin’ stuff harking back to Tom’s work, “Blazing Telecasters,” with the late Danny Gatton, and plenty of that D.C. Telecaster sound invented by Roy Buchanan.

Guests include Dave Elliott – drums (Danny Gatton), Jim Brock – drums (Kathy Mattea), Steve Wolf – bass (Danny Gatton), Big Joe Maher – drums, Jim Robeson – bass, and Tommy Lepson – organ (Danny Gatton).

Track Listings: 1. Night Walk 2. Kentucky 3. Drop D Boogie 4. Smoky Blue 5. The Bone Head Shuffle 6. All Day, All Night (Angels Watching Over Me) 7. Champagne 8. Beyond The Stars 9. Head First 10. Love letters 11. Blue Star

Source: T. Principato

Charvel has teamed up with legendary Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee to recreate the guitar he used throughout Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon and Ultimate Sin album cycles.

Delivering “the same explosive tonal versatility at an accessible price point”, the Jake E Lee Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HSS HT RW is built to pay tribute to Lee’s enduring influence on the landscape of 1980s hard rock.

• READ MORE: What’s the point of a guitar’s pickguard anyway? This is what it’s actually there for…

Specs-wise, the guitar sports the same Blue Burst finish the made the original such an iconic piece of six-string eye candy, along with an alder San Dimas body, a Charvel hardtail bridge for maximised sustain, resonance and tuning stability, and an HSS pickup configuration, with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker in the bridge position, and DiMarzio SDS-1 single coils in the middle and neck positions.

There’s also a bolt-on maple neck with a 12”-16” compound radius fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and white dot inlays, as well as a five-way blade switch and single volume knob, and locking Charvel tuning machines.

“For the signature Charvel, we wanted a more accessible version,” Lee says. “We want to put it in more hands for aspiring guitar players.”

“The Custom Shop has always set the standard for what’s possible, and now we’re bringing that same level of craft to players everywhere,” adds Peter Wichers, Product Manager at Charvel.

“The Pro-Mod Blue Burst captures the exact visual intensity that made Jake’s guitar iconic under the lights, that deep, electric blue finish, that unmistakable presence, but this is Charvel’s moment to put it in the hands of every player who’s been chasing that sound and look.”

The Jake E Lee Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HSS HT RW is available now for $1,399/£1,399.

Learn more at Charvel.

The post Charvel recreates Jake E. Lee’s Bark at the Moon/Ultimate Sin-era Blue Burst guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you’ve not heard of mixing the major and minor blues sounds, you’re in for a treat today…

Not only will we cover why and how you want to mix the major and minor blues scales, you’ll get one of the most classic blues licks on the planet that demonstrates the concept perfectly.

This concept is a large part of the last 1/3rd of Blues Guitar Unleashed because it’s a skill that can be challenging, but is such a huge part of the sound of your favorite blues guitar players.

Ad feature with Sweetwater

Chances are you remember the first time you bought a guitar. Depending on your age and where you lived, that first guitar buying experience was probably done in a brick and mortar store, where you wandered the racks and stands searching for that one guitar that spoke to you, the one that would set you off on your journey as a musician.

For most of us, the huge benefits of price, convenience and choice that online musical instrument retail offers us is worth losing some of the more romantic aspects of guitar buying. But that being said, wouldn’t it be great to inject some of that back into it somehow?

Because a guitar isn’t a TV, a refrigerator, or a games console. While the consistency and quality of guitar making has remarkably improved across the board in recent years, these are still works of art made primarily out of wood by human hands. This adds a certain amount of variance that, frankly, is part of why we love these instruments.

The issue is that when you’re buying online, most of the time you don’t have anything more to go on than a picture that might well be a manufacturer’s product shot, and some basic spec. How can you make a fully informed decision about your dream instrument with such limited information? Don’t worry, Sweetwater has you covered.

Get Close Up

If you’ve browsed Sweetwater recently – and let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you definitely have – you will probably have encountered the Sweetwater Guitar Gallery. If you haven’t, this innovative and hugely useful tool helps bring a bit of the old magic of wandering a guitar store, turbocharged by the power of America’s favourite online guitar retailer.

The Guitar Gallery is a dedicated space at Sweetwater’s Indiana HQ where guitars are inspected, photographed, weighed and fettled into perfect playing condition by a skilled and dedicated team.

For one, this means that you can see pictures of the exact guitar you’re going to buy. When you visit a guitar’s Sweetwater product page, you’ll be presented with a list of guitars matched to their respective serial number. Each of these guitars has their individual weight listed, and also photos of that exact guitar taken so you can get up close and personal, and make sure that this is the perfect guitar for you.

That means from a weight perspective, if you’re like Adam Jones from Tool and you think that the heavier a Les Paul is, the better it sounds, you can pick the chunkiest, meatiest slab of mahogany you can find. Or if you’re of the school that thinks that any Strat over 8lbs is making you work too hard? Well the Guitar Gallery can let you find the ideal candidate to get close with.

It’s not just about weight however, the fact that each guitar is individually photographed also lets you really dial in on what your dream guitar is going to be – especially when you’re talking about guitars with visible wood grain.

We all know that no piece of wood is identical, and the Guitar Gallery celebrates this – while giving you a hitherto unseen level of choice. It’s quite the thing to be scrolling through every individual guitar of a certain model and finish until you find the burst pattern that is just perfect, or the top figure that speaks to you. They certainly never offered this breadth of choice in even the biggest brick and mortar guitar store.

And that, ultimately is the magic of the Guitar Gallery – it doesn’t just let you see the guitar you’re actually buying, it lets you find your guitar soulmate in a way that you never would have been able to before.

Handled With Care

But the Guitar Gallery is about more than just pictures and weights – it also gives you the piece of mind that an instrument has been inspected and checked by a real human being, who has treated the guitar like it’s their very own.

As part of the Guitar Gallery service, every guitar featured also receives Sweetwater’s rigorous 55-point inspection checklist to ensure that your guitar arrives with you in perfect condition.

The details of the inspection process is far too detailed to go into here (though you can read about all 55 here!) but rest assured that Sweetwater’s Guitar Gallery team will go over every inch of your instrument. They’ll polish it, clean it, ensure that the frets and setup are tip top, and of course make sure that it plays, sounds and feels just like it should.

The Guitar Gallery team is made up of professional technicians, inspectors, and luthiers, who have been trained by the big brands themselves about exactly what your guitar should feel, play and sound like. They also have years of customer feedback to draw on to ensure that they know exactly what you expect.

Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about your precious new guitar having a rough time before it gets to you, as every guitar is stored in Sweetwater’s temperature and humidity-regulated facility 24/7. So you’ll know it’s going to be in tip-top shape when it heads out to you.

Buying With Confidence

The Sweetwater Guitar Gallery is a truly game-changing innovation for guitar players: offering a level of choice and personalisation that you’ve never been able to experience at even the biggest and most well-stocked brick and mortar store, all without having to leave the house.

It takes away so much of the guesswork and potential for disappointment that often plagues online shopping. And knowing that a team of dedicated professionals has got the instrument in perfect condition before it leaves the store, you’ll just need to sit back and wait for the sweet moment you can crack open the box, and strum that first chord on your new favourite guitar.

Find out more at Sweetwater.com.

The post Why Sweetwater’s Guitar Gallery gives you the reassurance of a brick and mortar guitar store with the convenience and value of shopping online appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Former Megadeth guitarist Kiko Loureiro has traded blows with Arch Enemy, accusing the Swedish death metal outfit of plagiarising his 2024 track Talking Dreams with their new song, To The Last Breath.

In a post on Instagram on 26 March, the Brazilian guitarist shared a clip of his song side by side with Arch Enemy’s new single, pointing out a similar chord progression alongside the caption: “Just helping promote Arch Enemy’s new song… you’re welcome.”

But Arch Enemy have fired back, dismissing Loureiro’s insinuation of copyright infringement. In a video of their own posted to Instagram last week, the band shared an in-the-studio snippet of a demo version of To The Last Breath from 2022, two years before Loureiro released Talking Dreams.

• READ MORE: “It doesn’t matter how fast you can speak – it matters what you’re actually saying”: Uli Jon Roth explains the problem with the pursuit of technical perfection in guitar playing

“In light of a recent copyright infringement accusation against Arch Enemy made by Brazilian YouTuber/guitarist Kiko Loureiro and his lawyer, we feel it best to present clear evidence proving this to be a false claim,” the band write in the post’s accompanying caption.

“In this video you can see and hear the early demos in 2022 which led to becoming To The Last Breath.”

“Anyone familiar with our creative process knows that we document extensively,” the statement continues. “Demos, drafts, and iterations are part of how we build our sound, and in this case, that documentation unquestionably establishes the timeline.

A statement directly from Arch Enemy guitarist Michael Amott adds: “Hey Kiko, sorry to disappoint you and your lawyer, but as you can see and hear, I had the melody back in 2022 already, two years before you released your song. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

“Enjoy the video and good luck with your music, I will continue to not listen to it!”

View this post on Instagram

At the time of writing, Kiko has not responded to Arch Enemy or Michael Amott, though former Arch Enemy vocalist Angela Gossow – and the band’s current manager has chimed in on Kiko’s post, defending her former bandmates.

“Never heard Kiko’s song before tbh,” she says. “So 3 notes are the same? Well, I guess that happens quite often in music. I have heard a lot of Arch Enemy notes in other songs but would never accuse the other band of plagiarism… More the contrary, I would probably feel honoured to inspire others.

“So sad to read a post like this from a guitar player we all respected. What is this good for? If you really feel you’ve got a case, get in touch and discuss professionally, not make such a post.”

View this post on Instagram

With millions of songs in existence and only a limited number of chord progressions and notes to choose from, it’s natural that songs often share similarities with one another. However, as is the case between Arch Enemy and Kiko Loureiro, this can lead to disputes which often wade into legal territory.

One of the most publicised such cases in recent memory concerned Ed Sheeran, who was accused of plagiarising Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On with his 2014 megahit, Thinking Out Loud.

The case was ultimately dismissed, after Sheeran used a guitar in court to prove how common the chord progression of Thinking Out Loud is across music. However before the ruling, he had threatened to quit music if found to have plagiarised Marvin Gaye’s classic.

“If that happens, I’m done, I’m stopping. I find it really insulting to devote my whole life to being a performer and a songwriter and have someone diminish it,” he said.

The post Kiko Loureiro accuses Arch Enemy of copyright infringement  – Arch Enemy fire back: “So 3 notes are the same?” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Is the pursuit of technical excellence damaging the next generation of guitarists? Former Scorpions guitarist Uli Jon Roth seems to think so, as he explains why players shouldn’t “put too much emphasis” on perfection.

In a newly uploaded interview with North Coast Music Beat, Roth discusses why the pursuit of “technical brilliance” might often be at the expense of feel and soul.

• READ MORE: ThorpyFX just made the world’s first braille pedal for blind guitarist Anthony Ferraro following his custom braille Victory amp

“Nowadays there’s a lot of talent out there,” he says [via Blabbermouth]. “However, I find the journey at the moment is maybe a little bit too much in pursuit of technical brilliance, and the personal sound and personal touch and expression is wanting.

“Too many players start sounding like typewriters, I would say. And I’m not saying that derogatorily – there are amazing people around, but I would [say], for a young player who wants to be different and stand out, do the opposite: don’t play all the fast notes. Play the notes that go straight to the heart…”

The 71-year-old guitarist says he’s taken on his own advice in his later years: “I still do [play fast] sometimes, but the older I get, the more I aim for just the most meaningful notes.”

“It doesn’t matter how fast you can hold a speech to someone; it matters what you’re actually saying… when you listen closely [to someone speaking fast] they’re not saying anything – it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just empty gobbledygook, as we’d say in England.”

Roth says young guitarists should aspire to have an understanding of theory in order to make their playing more impactful.

“You should know music, not just the scales and arpeggios. Understand the harmonies, understand the rhythms, and understand music from deep within and connect with it on the deepest level you possibly can. And then get inspired. And then the rest will come.”

And Uli Jon Roth isn’t alone in his opinion that players should focus on the meaning of their note choices as opposed to just playing fast.

Earlier this year, Carlos Santana said those who play fast are no better than gym bros who flex their muscles: “Big deal, so what?” he said.

Similarly, in 2024, Lenny Kravitz gave his take on Instagram shredders who are all about speed: “Musicians should be thinking more about feel, dynamics and emotion,” he said.

Watch North Coast Music Beat’s full interview with Uli Jon Roth – recorded in 2025 – below:

The post “It doesn’t matter how fast you can speak – it matters what you’re actually saying”: Uli Jon Roth explains the problem with the pursuit of technical perfection in guitar playing appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

In all my years of writing guitar-centric articles, I’ve covered a lot of ground, and still, sometimes there are things I realize I’ve never considered when it comes to guitar construction. For example, have you ever wondered why guitars have pickguards? Especially since a lot of players like their guitars to have that worn-in kind of look.

• READ MORE: Stop wasting your money on professionals – here’s how to install a new guitar pickup yourself

The pickguard – or scratchplate, as it’s sometimes called – seems like an obvious feature at first glance. It’s there to protect your guitar’s finish from pick scratches, right? Well, after some research, we find the answer can sometimes be a bit more complex than that, and depending on the guitar, the pickguard might be doing a lot more work than you think.

The Original Purpose: Protection

Let’s start with the basics. The pickguard was originally designed to protect a guitar’s finish from damage caused by the picking hand – specifically from fingernails, not picks. If you want a good example of that sort of wear, check out Willie Nelson’s “Trigger”, which was a Martin N-20 that didn’t have a pickguard. As a result, the wood on the guitar’s top has been completely worn through down to the bracing.

According to historical documentation, the pickguard became important on acoustic guitars where aggressive strumming or fingerpicking could easily scratch and wear down the polished wood surface near the soundhole. Gibson introduced the “floating” pickguard design in 1909 for archtop acoustic models like the Gibson L-1, where the guard was elevated on adjustable metal support brackets. This allowed players to adjust the height based on their playing position while keeping the guitar’s top protected.

On acoustic guitars, pickguards are typically thin sheets of plastic adhered below the soundhole. The material needs to be lightweight – usually around 2mm thick – because anything heavier could dampen the soundboard’s vibration and affect the instrument’s tone and volume. It’s a delicate balance between protection and performance.

The Electric Guitar Revolution: Function Meets Manufacturing

When Leo Fender designed the Telecaster and Stratocaster in the early 1950s, he transformed the pickguard into something far more clever. Leo Fender was a brilliant man, but his contributions to guitar design extend into the means of mass production – that was equally important as the design of the solidbody guitar. He didn’t just design the solidbody electric guitar as we know it, he revolutionized the industry at the manufacturing level as well.

As we know, the Stratocaster’s electronics are mounted directly to the pickguard rather than to the body. This design feature meant the entire assembly – pickups, controls, and wiring – could be dropped into place and screwed down with just eight screws, requiring only a connection to the output jack.

This was revolutionary for mass production. As noted in Fender’s historical documentation, the original Telecaster featured a simple black pickguard made from fiber or Bakelite held on with five screws. The pickguard changed from black to white in 1954, and materials evolved from brittle early plastics to more durable options by 1955. By 1959, Stratocasters received multi-ply celluloid pickguards with 11 screw holes instead of the original eight.

How The Pickguard Can Improve Tone: Shielding

Modern pickguards serve a third purpose that many players don’t realize: electromagnetic shielding. According to guitar electronics experts, guitars with single-coil pickups are particularly susceptible to electromagnetic interference from fluorescent lights, dimmer switches, and other electrical devices. This interference creates unwanted hum and buzz in your signal.

Many manufacturers now apply conductive shielding – either copper foil or conductive paint – to the underside of pickguards. When properly grounded, this creates what’s known as a Faraday cage around the guitar’s electronics. Shielding the pickguard back and connecting it to the grounded body cavities helps reduce radio frequency interference and electromagnetic interference that would otherwise be picked up by your wiring.

Some companies even manufacture metal pickguards from aluminum or copper specifically for their shielding properties, though these come with their own aesthetic considerations.

Another Hidden Purpose

Back in the late 1960s, Fender was making their guitars out of lightweight ash, but it became difficult to find, so after a shipment of heavy ash wood, they started exploring other means of weight relief in the bodies of their Telecaster guitars. One of the first attempts at this weight relief resulted in what many know as “The Smuggler’s Telecaster”. Basically, Fender routed out a large cavity in the guitar’s body just beneath the pickguard.

From the exterior, it looks like any other Telecaster at the time, but the pickguard was hiding one of the first attempts at weight relief in solid body electric guitars. The routed-out cavity seemed to be perfect for people what might want to smuggle items in their guitar undetected, hence the moniker “Smuggler’s Tele”. This was somewhat a precursor to what would become the Thinline Telecaster which would come out in 1968. Most Smuggler Telecaster examples are from 1967. About ten years or so ago, Fender did a limited run of 100 Custom Shop “Smuggler’s Telecasters” which came with two pickguards – one white and one clear, so you could see into the cavity. The Smuggler’s Tele teaches us that the pickguard was the key to a major innovation regarding weight relief in solid body guitars.

So What’s the Point?

The pickguard serves several distinct purposes depending on the guitar. On acoustics, it’s purely about protecting the finish – this is the most obvious purpose. On electric guitars, particularly Fender-style instruments, it’s a mounting platform that makes assembly and repairs significantly easier. And increasingly, it’s also part of the guitar’s noise-reduction system, helping to keep your signal clean in electrically noisy environments.

The next time someone tells you the pickguard is just there to look cool, you can let them know it’s actually one of the hardest-working components on your guitar – even if most of that work happens completely out of sight.

The post What’s the point of a guitar’s pickguard anyway? This is what it’s actually there for… appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Relicing has long been one of the most divisive topics in the guitar world. Some players adore the worn-in look and feel, while others can’t stand the idea of a brand-new instrument looking decades old, dismissing it as disingenuous.

Fender masterbuilders Andy Hicks and Austin MacNutt know just how heated this debate can get. In a recent conversation with Guitarist, the pair break down why some players are drawn to the beaten-up aesthetic, why others recoil at it – and why, at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal taste.

• READ MORE: ThorpyFX just made the world’s first braille pedal for blind guitarist Anthony Ferraro following his custom braille Victory amp

“There are people who want an instrument that looks like it’s straight out of the early ‘50s, and then there are other people who see [relicing] as another aesthetic part of the guitar,” says Hicks.

“In just the same way as people have their favorite colors, they also tend to have their favorite relicing level. And it’s not about, ‘Does it look like it actually happened to the instrument?’ Something that you’ll hear a lot of is that relicing is like ‘stolen valour’ – like, ‘Oh, you didn’t earn that relicing.’ But I think people who like it are not thinking of it like that,” he explains.

“They’re not thinking, ‘I want this instrument to look like I’ve played it for 60 years.’ They just think it’s cool.”

Hicks stresses that his role isn’t to police taste but to build the guitar the customer wants. Whether it’s a one-off for a local player or a Custom Shop model for Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray, the philosophy stays the same.

“I always tell people there’s nothing stopping you from ordering a NOS [non-relic] guitar,” MacNutt laughs. “I’m more than happy to not beat it up – so you can have both.”

Despite how they look, relic’ing doesn’t mean simply smashing guitars or beating them up indiscriminately (though Andrew Belew and Seymour Duncan might beg to differ) There’s a surprising amount of care and craftsmanship behind the process, as Fender Chief Product Officer Max Gutnik explains.

Take Fender’s Road Worn models, for instance. Built at the company’s Ensenada, Mexico factory, they’re designed to give players that ‘played-in’ feel straight out of the box, replicating the gradual wear of decades of playing.

“It’s like getting a pre-washed pair of jeans,” Gutnik says. “They’re broken in so they’re comfortable right out of the store, but they’ll continue to wear and become your own.”

“That’s what’s so great about nitrocellulose lacquer. If you have to wait 25 years to get to that place, I mean, you might not get there! So starting that process and having the guitar feel super comfortable out of the gate is what we’re aiming for.”

The post Fender masterbuilders on why relic’d guitars aren’t about “stolen valour”: “Those who like it aren’t thinking, ‘I want this instrument to look like I’ve played it for 60 years.’ They just think it’s cool” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Angine de Poitrine are quickly becoming the hottest act in guitar town. The Quebec-based instrumental duo – known as much for their polka-dotted masks as for a sound that borders on the unearthly – are turning heads across the internet.

Fresh off the release of their second album, Vol. II, ADP are riding a wave of online buzz, with their February KEXP performance already closing in on 8 million views on YouTube.

And now, even Foo Fighters guitarist Dave Grohl has hopped on the hype train.

• READ MORE: Celebrate Foo Fighters’ new album and get Dave Grohl’s Pelham Blue Epiphone DG-335 at a discount at Thomann

Grohl shared his discovery of the duo during a recent interview with Logan Kelly on Logan Sounds Off. Asked about the music he’s been listening to lately, Grohl immediately gushes, “I just have to try to say this correctly because it was sent to me yesterday by a friend, and it absolutely blew my fucking mind.”

“It’s called Angine des Poitrines… And I don’t know how to explain it other than you just have to watch these people. And it’s all instrumental.”

Attempting to put the band’s setup into words, Grohl explains, “That person has a double neck that’s a bass guitar on the bottom and a guitar on the top. And you’ll see the bank of pedals that they’re stepping on. And they’re looping every one of these riffs. It’s so completely insane.”

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For the uninitiated, that part-bass, part-guitar beast of an instrument, as drummer Klek de Poitrine revealed in a previous interview with Noize, actually began as a DIY experiment.

“I built the first microtonal guitar we used myself,” he said. “I added more frets on a guitar with a saw. The moment we started playing it, we just laughed. But since I’m not a guitarist, I wasn’t using the instrument’s full potential.”

“So I brought it to [bandmate] Khn [de Poitrine], and I told him, ‘You have to try this, it makes absolutely no sense.’ Then right away, the moment we started playing with it, we just laughed, you know, because of the friction created and the proximity of the notes.”

Listen to Angine de Poitrine’s new album, Vol. II, below.

The post “It absolutely blew my f**king mind”: Dave Grohl is getting on the Angine de Poitrine hype train appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Earlier this year, boutique amp maker Victory made headlines by building a custom braille-equipped amp for blind guitarist and skateboarder Anthony Ferraro. Now, UK pedal wizards ThorpyFX have picked up the baton with what’s believed to be the first fully braille-labelled guitar pedal.

“Braille guitar pedal? It’s the first one in the world,” Ferraro exclaims in an Instagram video documenting the reveal. “Wouldn’t be possible without this man, [Thorpy founder and pedal designer Adrian] Thorpe. I just showed up to his factory in the UK and he surprised me with this.”

• READ MORE: The best looper pedals for all needs and budgets

The pedal in question is a customised version of ThorpyFX’s The Dane MKII, a dual-stage boost/overdrive developed in collaboration with Andertons demo star and session ace Peter Honoré, aka ‘Danish Pete’. Already a favourite among tone chasers for its amp-like drive and stacked boost section, The Dane now has a new trick: it can literally be read by touch.

Getting there, however, wasn’t as simple as swapping printed Gain and Boost labels for raised dots. Thorpe’s initial attempt to integrate braille into the standard control layout quickly hit a wall.

“He started by trying to put the braille in here but unless you have super dainty fingers, which I don’t have, you can’t read it,” Ferraro explains. The solution came in the form of a custom “cover plate” – a removable top layer featuring clearly spaced braille markings that map out every knob and switch without crowding the pedal.

Running his fingers across the enclosure, Ferraro reads aloud: “Let’s see if the braille’s right. Level, boost side, clip, gain, tone, lows, the Dane. And then it even tells you on each side
which each pedal does. Like, this is the drive side and this is the boost side. Not to mention, he actually made it so I know if it goes on or off.”

“When using guitar pedals, it can get really confusing and I can forget all the controls at once,” Ferraro continues. “And this makes it so I know exactly what I’m gonna dial in and this is pure freedom at its finest. Especially in an age where all these pedals are going digital with all these touch screens. Come on!”

Plugging in his Fender Stratocaster, Ferraro runs through the tones: “Here’s our clean signal. Add some drive. Add some boost.”

And the verdict’s clear: “I think this just became my favorite drive pedal,” says the guitarist. “Thanks for being the first one to ever do this with a pedal and making huge waves in the accessibility world, brother. Thank you.”

In the video’s caption, Ferraro – a longtime advocate for accessibility in music gear – also reflects on how far the conversation has come.

“I thought asking music equipment to be made accessible was an extreme request but why not dream big. Never did I think my advocacy for braille throughout my life would lead to such monumental waves,” he writes. “If playing music is the only thing I do in my life that doesn’t make me feel blind then why not make the gear accessible so other blind kids and people can experience freedom through music like I have.”

“Thank you ThorpyFX for making the world’s first braille pedal – of course it had to be The Dane by Peter Honoré – it was incredible to visit your factory where this braille pedal came to reality and gave us a new friendship.”

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The post ThorpyFX just made the world’s first braille pedal for blind guitarist Anthony Ferraro following his custom braille Victory amp appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.