The corporate buyouts of Fender and Gibson in the mid to late 1960s have long been perceived as a trigger for a significant dip in the quality of musical instrument manufacturing. But a session guitarist wants to dispel that belief. In fact, he points to the Beatles’ breakout success as the cause for the era’s production chaos.

The claim comes from Brad Allen Williams, who has worked with Alabama Shakes guitarist Brittany Howard, jazz drummer Nate Smith, and soul singer Bilal, amongst others. Of course, he acknowledges that the two biggest guitar firms of the period underwent tough changes at this time, which today are blemishes on their histories. Yet he feels the root of the problems can be traced back to February 9, 1964, when the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.

It was the dawning of a turbulent time for instrument makers, with corporate buyouts, an overwhelming surge in demand, and experiments with production techniques creating a perfect storm that flooded the market with subpar instruments.

Two electric guitar giants, Fender and Gibson, were both on the end of buyouts that dramatically changed their operations. CBS acquired Fender for $13 million in 1965, with Leo Fender facing a staggering production backlog and health issues. He was happy to sell up. Gibson, meanwhile, was acquired by Norlin in 1969, while Baldwin assumed control of Gretsch upon the founders’ retirement.

For years, many guitarists have pointed to CBS’s cost-cutting measures as the reason its reputation started to slide, as it bid to churn out the instruments the market was ravenous for by any means necessary. Some view its moves as quantity over quality, and similar stories have been spun about the Norlin and Baldwin-era operations, too.

Williams, though, wants musicians to take a step back and assess the bigger picture.

“I don’t want to rage bait, but I am about to argue against probably one of the most widely held and uncontroversial beliefs about vintage guitars,” he says in an Instagram post. “That’s this idea that the big corporate acquisitions and mergers of the 1960s were what caused the decline in quality of the major American guitar brands. I don’t think it was.

“I do think quality was declining around the time,” he notes, “I just think that in most cases that was already well underway by the time the actual mergers happened, and if I had to affix a turning point, it would be the same date for every American guitar and drum company: February 9, 1964. That’s when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.”

Culturally, the Beatles’ five-song performance was a landmark moment. It was, for the likes of Tom Petty, Gene Simmons, Joe Perry, and Nancy Wilson, among so many others, the singular moment that made them want to pick up an instrument and play. That, from a supply-and-demand perspective, was troublesome.

“This was such a seismic pop culture moment that it caused this massive overnight sudden spike in demand,” Williams says. “And all these companies were blindsided. When Ted McCarty started at Gibson in 1948, total production was around 2,000–3,000 guitars a year [other sources claim the figures are around 1,100 and 3,700].

“By the time he was burnt out and leaving in 1966, that was over 100,000 guitars a year,” he expands. “When Leopeningnder sold to CBS in January 1965, Fender was something like $9 million in inventory backordered. In a later interview, he said that with the Fender Mustang alone, they were 150,000 units backordered.

“I don’t care who owns the company; if you’re trying to ramp up your production rate that fast, something’s got to give,” he adds. “You’re going to have a lot of people making guitars, amps, and drums who have never made them before.” One of the first things CBS did once it assumed control of the Big F was to expand its production operations, with new facilities opened in hopes of chipping away at those daunting backorder numbers. But he believes by the time their new corporate owners tweaked production and processes, these companies were already on the slide.

“Vintage Gibson collectors know that, 1969 with the Norlin era is not a hard cut off of the quality,” Williams continues. “You start to notice things changing as early as 1965 or 1966.”

He uses Ludwig “flinging” drums out of its factory before their finishes had even dried as evidence of “the environment these guitars were made in.”

“So, I don’t really think that the corporate buyouts were the cause,” he concludes. “I think they were more the effect.”

It’s a fascinating perspective. Music lovers are quick to point to the incredible impact the Beatles’ success had on Western musicians, and the list of future stars seduced by rock’ n’ roll after watching the Beatles on that February evening in 1964 underscores the romanticism swirling around that night. But there was a darker side to the story that is spoken about far less.

Still, CBS produced some iconic guitars despite its mounting challenges, and Stratocaster enthusiast Walter Trout believes CBS-era builds don’t deserve the bad rep they get. The Beatles helped reshape the music industry in a myriad of ways, but did their success also come at a price?

When J.J. Cale died in July, 2013, he left behind not only a stunning body of work filled with gorgeous songs and tasteful guitar playing, but a whole load of guitar players who discovered him via YouTube and were left wondering: "What kinda crazy guitar is THAT?"

Believe it or not, this electric guitar – that was Cale's number one guitar for many years – started life as a Harmony H162 acoustic guitar (pictured below).

When it was severely damaged during a flight, military-trained electronics expert Cale, who had also worked as a sound engineer, set about transforming it.

Marc O'Hara of The Unique Guitar Blog says: "He took the back off of the guitar, and put a cutaway on it. He used a series of metal rods and anchors to hold the body together.

"He also installed five pickups on the guitars top plus. Four of the pickups are Gibson, two of which are low impedance for recording direct. The other bar type pickup came from a Sears Silvertone guitar, it was manufactured by Dan Electro. It also had a Fishman piezo pickups in the saddle. The guitar has three high impedance outs and one low. These pickups would occasionally be swapped out. The low impedance pickups were the ones that allowed him to plug directly into a recording console, much like Les Paul's personal guitar.

"This guitar had seven control knobs, countless wires, buttons and switches, four outputs, and a big red light. He never bothered to put the back of the guitar on again. That way so he would have easy access for repairs and adjusting the action by means of a couple coins he had wedged into the thing."

Watch J.J. talk through the guitar in this clip (including describing how he punched a hole in it with a hammer so that he can fit a microphone!):

It shouldn't work, but it did. The guitar was used on many of his early, classic records.

It deteriorated over the years and became unsalvageable, even for Cale.

"I played a Stratocaster for some time after that," said Cale, "and also messed around with Les Pauls and 335s. The Harmony was good because it was an acoustic guitar and that got me into songwriting.”

See him in action with it, playing his classic song After Midnight, at Paradise Studios in LA, 1979, with Leon Russell. J.J.'s wife Christine Lakeland and session ace Bill Boatman are also on guitar.

If there’s one thing you can always count on, it’s that July 4th means big guitar deals, and this year, it’s the Les Paul that steals the show. Whether you’re a longtime fan or just curious to see what all the fuss is about with this famous singlecut, now is the time to grab one and add it to your collection.

This stunning guitar shaped the sound of rock ‘n’ roll and has been the axe of choice for some of music’s biggest icons, but unfortunately, they’re usually not cheap!

The good news is I’ve tracked down some sweet Les Paul deals at shops like Guitar Center, Sweetwater and Musician’s Friend, with savings up to $899 off. That’s not just for the fancy Gibsons, either. Yes, I’m a huge Gibson fan (13 out of my 25+ guitars are from them!), but I’ve got a soft spot for Epiphone, too. They’re making some seriously awesome guitars these days that combine classic looks and modern appointments, and they are way more wallet-friendly.

So, whether you’re looking to score your first Les Paul or add another beauty to your collection, check out my favorite Epiphone and Gibson deals from the July 4th sales below.

Joe Satriani has built his reputation on dazzling technique. But ask him what Sammy Hagar does better than he ever could, and his answer isn’t singing — it’s knowing when not to play.

The pair have spent years playing together, first in Chickenfoot and now in Hagar’s Best of All Worlds Band, celebrating the music of Eddie Van Halen. That close collaboration has given Satriani an appreciation for a side of Hagar’s musicianship that often gets overlooked.

“I’ll play too many notes, but he won’t,” Satriani tells Thinking About Guitar. “I always ask him, ‘Well, what is that?’ And of course, he doesn’t think about it. It’s totally natural to him.

“But he somehow plays the right notes with the right kind of vibrato. And that still fascinates me, as it did when I was a young kid growing up.”

Satriani says Hagar approaches the guitar like a great lead singer rather than a typical lead guitarist.

“I always thought that one of the coolest things about his guitar playing was that he somehow took the knowledge of being a really good lead vocalist and applied it to the way he played guitar,” he says. “He’s kind of a crazy shred guitar player on the one hand. But on the other hand, he’s got this editorial process that I personally recognize as being a lead singer.”

That ability to edit himself, Satriani believes, separates Hagar from many American rock guitarists.

“There aren’t many American guitar players who are well known for restraint,” he says. “I always saw that as something that would come from the U.K. or Ireland. You have these players like Eric Clapton or Brian May who just play the perfect notes. They don’t turn the amp up to eleven.

“I think [Hagar] would take that one step back from the edge of the cliff and make sure that he could pull it off. I hear it over and over again as a thing that really good lead vocalists have. And they apply it to their guitar playing.”

Hagar’s reputation has always been built first on his voice, but he arrived at guitar with a deep appreciation for melody and a $39.95 Silvertone electric guitar, which came with an amp. As per a 2024 Classic Rock interview, he got his education trying to learn every solo Eric Clapton had ever done, because.

Speaking to Classic Rock in 2024, he recalled learning every Eric Clapton guitar solo he could find because “I was more into Clapton and Peter Green than, say, someone like Hendrix” — an influence that helps explain the economy and phrasing Satriani so admires today.

The Best of Both Worlds tour has just wrapped its June U.S. dates and heads to Europe for July before returning stateside in August.

Joe Bonamassa owns a collection of electric guitars with long, unusual histories. Among them is Terry Reid’s heavily modified 1952 Fender Telecaster, an instrument whose discovery he called “one of the greatest guitar safaris of my life.”

Reid was a British singer, guitarist and songwriter who emerged in the 1960s U.K. rock scene. Widely respected by his peers, he was Jimmy Page’s first choice to sing in Led Zeppelin before he declined and recommended Robert Plant for the job.

He went on to build a solo career that included acclaimed albums such as Seed of Memory and River, the latter of which featured guitarist David Lindley. Reid remained a cult figure in British rock up to his death on August 4, 2025, at the age of 75, from complications related to cancer.

As Bonamassa explains, Reid purchased the Telecaster in Chicago, circa 1968, while he was the support act for Cream’s final U.S. tour. When the neck pickup died during that tour, he had it replaced with a humbucker at Manny’s on New York City’s 48th Street Music Row.

The opportunity to buy his hero’s guitar arose in the summer of 2014 when Bonamassa received a call from a guitar dealer he knows, who asked if he had any interest in buying Reid’s guitar.

“I told him that of course I would love to own it,” Bonamassa said, “but even more so, if nothing else, just to meet the guy who gave a young David Lindley one of his first professional gigs.”

They agreed on a price, but when calls to Reid went unanswered for several days, Bonamassa figured the opportunity had passed.

Coincidentally, that same evening he received a message from a friend on Facebook asking if he was interested in Reid’s guitar.

“I replied, ‘Yes, but he can’t be reached so I guess it’s not available,’” Bonamassa recalled. “Long story short, my friend responded with Terry’s cell phone number and, lo and behold, I was speaking to him within minutes. We set a time the next day for me to drive way out into the desert to meet him and check out the guitar.”

“The following day I set out in my car from Los Angeles to Palm Desert. When I left my house the temperature was 82 degrees — mind you, it is August. As I approached the freeway exit in Palm Desert, it was a balmy 112!”

“I find Terry’s house, knock on the door, and there he is — one of my musical heroes and a super nice guy. I say, ‘Is it always this hot?’ He replies, ‘Nah... it’s kind of cool today.’”

Over the next two hours, Reid shared stories of the road and photos of Jimi Hendrix. Bonamassa described it as “a glimpse into a time that I wish I had lived in: London in the late ’60s.”

Bonamassa noted that Reid was invited not only to join Led Zeppelin but also Deep Purple, “but he chose to follow his own musical path, something I respect a great deal.”

As the visit came to an end, Bonamassa said he began to question whether he should proceed with the purchase.

“As it came time to leave I realized just how attached he was to the guitar,” he explained. “So I told him that it will forever be at his disposal and it will always be his — I will just look after it for a while. I gave him a big hug and said goodbye. I’m honored to have it and even more honored to call him my friend.”

Bonamassa has since taken the guitar out on the road and often uses it to play the song “Slow Train,” as seen in this clip from his 2017 show at Red Rocks.

Thomann, the world’s largest music retailer, is suing Fender in an effort to halt the company’s cease-and-desist campaign against guitar makers that use Stratocaster-style body designs.

In doing so, Thomann says it is standing up not only for its own Harley Benton brand, but also for other manufacturers affected by Fender’s legal action.

For weeks, Fender has been sending cease-and-desist letters to U.S. guitar makers such as PRS Guitars, as well as retailers of S-style electric guitars across Europe and the U.S.

The campaign stems from a December 2025 ruling by the Düsseldorf Regional Court, which determined that the Stratocaster’s body shape qualifies as a copyrighted work.

Since May, Fender has cited that decision in demanding that manufacturers and retailers cease production and sales of Stratocaster-style guitars. In addition, the company has called on them to recall instruments already sold and provide customer and sales data.

Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole said in June that Fender is not suing anyone, but simply enforcing its intellectual property rights. The company’s position directly affects Thomann, particularly its Harley Benton line of guitars.

However, Thomann says its lawsuit is about more than protecting its own interests.

“We used to be a small music store ourselves and know exactly where we have come from,” Thomann CEO Hans Thomann says. “Many of those affected do not have the financial and legal means to conduct such a legal dispute. We therefore see it as our responsibility to have this matter clarified in court not only for our own company, but for all parties involved.”

Thomann also notes that the Düsseldorf ruling was a default judgment issued after the defendant — a Chinese seller of Stratocaster-style guitars — failed to appear in court. By pursuing its case, Thomann hopes to have the copyright claim tested in a fully contested trial.

There is a personal side to the dispute as well. Thomann debuted in 1954, the same year Fender introduced the Stratocaster. Since then, the retailer has carried Fender products alongside S-style guitars made by numerous other manufacturers.

At the heart of Thomann’s case is the claim that form follows function — that the Stratocaster shape is not merely artistic but functional as well. The guitar’s double cutaways provide upper-fret access and help balance the body, making them practical design elements. Thomann also argues that Fender has benefited from the shape’s ubiquity, which can be seen in everything from Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein to the rise of the Superstrat.

Thomann is not seeking financial damages, but rather a determination that the use of an S-style body shape does not constitute copyright infringement.

While Norman’s Rare Guitars has built its reputation as one of the world’s premier vintage guitar shops, Norman Harris’ influence extends far beyond buying and selling old instruments. For decades, he’s also used the store’s considerable reach to help young musicians find an audience.

That side of Harris’ legacy is highlighted in the recent documentary Norman’s Rare Guitars, which explores not only the store’s celebrity clientele and vintage electric and acoustic guitar treasures but also the musicians who’ve found exposure through its popular “Guitar of the Day” videos.

“The way he helps struggling artists that come through the store, like, ‘Hey, come play a song, we’ll put it on our YouTube channel,’” Joe Bonamassa says in the film.

“And you can sit on that sofa, and you can play, and they’ll put it out,” adds Malcolm McDowell. “It’s such an important place for a young musician to go and get a little exposure. He nurtures.”

A quick scroll through the store’s YouTube channel reveals countless young players showcasing everything from blues and country to rock and fingerstyle guitar. For many, the videos provided exposure they might not have found elsewhere.

“He’s finding musicians and bands that he thinks are worth breaking, sets them up in here, and makes them play,” actor Kiefer Sutherland says. “He’s actually making a difference.”

One musician who benefited directly from that exposure is slide guitarist ace Sarah Rogo, who later became a regular presenter on the channel.

“Norm’s platform definitely helped elevate my platform a lot,” she says. “With the YouTube algorithm, someone will punch in the name of a unique guitar, and Norman’s Rare Guitars is the first place that pops up, and they’ll see me playing the guitar. Billy Gibbons called the store one day and said, ‘Who’s that girl playing the resonator guitars?’”

But perhaps the most notable success story to emerge from the channel is Marcus King.

Mark Agnesi, who managed the store before joining Gibson, remembers filming a young King during a visit to the shop.

“I remember when he came into the store,” Agnesi recalls. “We start rolling the video, he starts playing, and then he opens his mouth and starts singing. It stopped you dead in your tracks; it was like, ‘Oh my god, I am watching the real deal right now, this kid is gonna have a serious career.’”

Agnesi’s prediction proved accurate. Since then, King has released seven albums, earned a Grammy nomination, and landed signature gear deals with Gibson and Orange.

“That video launched a career,” King says.

The clip eventually surpassed two million views, and Bonamassa was among those who took notice. According to Agnesi, Bonamassa’s reaction was simple: it wasn’t a question of whether King would make it, but when — and that time was already arriving.

As Harris puts it in the film, “giving back is very important.” Through Norman’s Rare Guitars, he’s done far more than connect players with vintage instruments; he’s helped connect promising musicians with the audiences they needed to reach.

Lenny Kravitz learned plenty about vintage electric guitars from Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. But one of the best lessons came later, when a man facing jail time pulled into a parking lot with a car full of vintage instruments — including the Les Paul that would become Kravitz’s number-one studio guitar.

Kravitz says his education in vintage gear began when he opened for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers following the release of his album Let Love Rule. Campbell, in particular, owns a number of classics, including the Fender Broadcaster he calls “the guitar I can’t live without.”

“When Let Love Rule came out, I opened for Tom Petty, and he and Mike Campbell taught me so much about vintage guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “I’m talking about ’89, when you could still find good things at really great prices. I’d go with Tom and Mike to stores in each city, and at that stage I couldn’t afford the things that they could, but I felt that they were educating me.”

Once albums like Mama Said and Are You Gonna Go My Way turned him into a major star, Kravitz was finally able to put those lessons to use.

“I really started to pick up a lot of great guitars,” he said. “People used to show up in the parking lot, find somebody from the crew and ask them to tell me that they had guitars to sell.”

One encounter proved particularly memorable.

“I got word that this guy was in the parking lot selling guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “And he, unfortunately, was facing jail time and needed to get a lawyer. I went out to his car, and I probably bought five guitars that day.”

The haul included a ’57 Telecaster, an early-’50s Stratocaster and a ’53 Les Paul Goldtop conversion that quickly became one of the most important guitars in his collection.

“It became my number one studio Les Paul from that time to now. It’s got a great Les Paul bite, and the distortion is really smooth and even, from the high end to the mids to the low. It’s on the slightly cleaner side — the pickups are not hot, but they’re just perfect. This has been on every album since I got it, starting with Are You Gonna Go My Way.”

Flatpicking queen Molly Tuttle epitomizes classic Americana artistry, so it’s a natural for her to put her fingerprint on a signature Martin — well actually, two Martins. The D-18 Molly Tuttle is her take on the all-American Dreadnought, while the D-X2E Molly Tuttle is made south of the border to deliver similar playability with far greater affordability. The raw ingredients are notably different, but both Martin Dreadnoughts share the same essential recipe and key specifications.

Tuttle is known to play a few guitar brands, but she’s been a true-blue Martin lover since she was a girl. She’s well aware of its history and what works for her approach. Molly went with mostly traditional specifications, and one that’s a bit of an outlier.

Her choice of a D-18 echoes the preference of a long line of acoustic icons from Hank Williams to Norman Blake, who praised the mahogany model on his iconic 1990 duet with Tony Rice, the “D-18 Song, (Thank You Mr. Martin).” Lots of bluegrassers favor mahogany back and sides for its articulate tonal nature. Tuttle’s D-18 features a throwback nut width measurement and an authentic 1941 neck profile with a Standard Taper. What’s particularly interesting about Tuttle’s D-18 is the rear-shifted scalloped bracing under its solid spruce top.

Rearward- Versus Forward-Shifted X-Bracing

Rearward-shifted X-bracing is designed to make the guitar sound even more articulate, and it goes against the grain to a degree. Forward-shifted X-bracing is designed to increase bass and resonance by moving the X closer to the sound hole, leaving more of the top to resonate more freely between it and the bridge. That’s the preference of players including Billy Strings who employed it on his signature D-28 that came out last year, and it has literally become standard at Martin as nearly all Standard Dreadnoughts since 2025 feature forward-shifted, GE-scalloped bracing. “GE” stands for Golden Era and refers to the period of approximately 1920 to 1942 when Martin meticulously shaved bracings down by hand to facilitate greater top flexibility. The D-18 Molly Tuttle features that GE-style scallop as well.

Molly and Billy’s Martins, Tonal Comparisons

So while the D-18 Molly Tuttle draws its inspiration from her own favorite 1943 D-18, its rear-shifted X brace is designed to tame bass boom while adding clarity and punch. That’s exactly the tonal hallmark of this guitar: it’s ultra-articulate and punchy. Note separation is exquisite, which makes sense for a guitar designed around her fabulous flatpicking skills.

Take a close look at her right-hand technique and notice how she alternates between plucking closer to and then further away from the neck at breakneck speed. Or check out her clawhammer approach, adapted from the banjo. You can see and hear why she’d appreciate that X brace being a bit further back towards the bridge and want a guitar with pinpoint tonal accuracy from note to note to match her own precision on the instrument.

And this is a Custom/Special Edition instrument with the kind of craftsmanship you’d expect from a guitar that costs significantly more than a Standard. It stands to reason that attention to detail, perhaps with a degree of hand-tuning factors into how Martin is able to make this D-18 sound so springy, airy and articulate while still having a nice low-end response.

It’s nowhere near as robust as, say, the D-28 Billy Strings with its forward shifted X-brace and hearty rosewood back and sides, but that’s clearly by design. Molly is going for a more refined tone compared to Billy’s burly tone. It’s kind of funny to make such a comparison, but they are essentially the current prince and princess of the bluegrass scene, and I suppose it’s rather natural for the boy to be a bit more rambunctious while the lady is graceful.

American Molly vs. Mexican Molly

It’s always a bit of a challenge to consider a guitar that costs 75 percent less in the same breath, and the greatest challenge for the manufacturer is clearly tone. The D-X2E Molly Tuttle has a standard X-brace, which makes sense for a guitar made of laminate, which is inherently brighter than solid wood.

Taken on its own, the D-X2E Molly Tuttle sounds pretty darn good. It delivers nice clarity and punch and decent low end that one can accentuate by plucking closer to the sound hole than the bridge. Side by side, the Mexican model is not in the same league as it’s American cousin, nor would I expect it to be.

That said, the D-X2E comes with a pickup while the D-18 version does not, and the D-X2E sounds big and bold when plugged into a nice acoustic amplifier, such as the Circa 74 used for these tests. The E1 pickup and preamp system with its onboard tuner tucked perfectly in the lip of the sound hole is super handy.

Playability

The D-18 Molly Tuttle and D-X2E Molly Tuttle are very playable guitars right out of the box with factory action, with the latter having lighter strings. You notice something as soon as you lay a hand in open position. Modern standard nut width is 1.75 inches, but many vintage Dreadnoughts measured 1.69 (1 11/16) inches. That’s the spec on both of Tuttle’s Martins, and I appreciate it. Being narrow at the nut helps a player get fingers on frets in ready fashion down in the longer fretted regions of the first few positions.

These necks are both built to 1941 profile specs with a Standard Taper, so the overall feel is quite similar. Both feel nice and chunky in hand, especially in lower positions. I seemed to feel more of a V shape, particularly on the D-18, further up the neck in higher positions.

No one in their right mind would ever hire me to play lead guitar in their bluegrass band, but I can muster up a few good licks with the right guitar in hand. The D-18 Molly Tuttle has such a bona fide classic Martin feel under the fingers that it’s easy to find yourself ripping off more than a few and taking them a bit further than you might otherwise do. I found that to be the case with the D-X2E too.

I’m mostly a fingerpicker that uses fake nails, but I was drawn to using a plectrum more often on these signature Molly Tuttle Martins. There’s something about having a high degree of tonal articulation that in turn makes you want to play more articulately. Both guitars pack plenty of projective power, and you truly get the most of that when you dig in with a serious pick.

Hey Good Lookin’

Let’s face it, lots of Martins look alike, but the D-18 Molly Tuttle is as unique as the player who picked it. I dig the vintage sunburst top with glossy finish, and her choice of Moon Phase inlays that practically appear to pop out from the fingerboard.

And in the aesthetics department, the D-X2E is in the same arena. From a distance, they appear quite similar. A closer look reveals subtle differences including a satin finish, and inlays made of faux mother of pearl and abalone instead of real seashells. Bottom line: both of Molly’s Martins look fabulous!

Major Tuttle fans and anyone after a super-sonic flatpicking D-18 tone shouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on the Molly Tuttle Signature. For those on a budget and/or want to plug in right out of the box, then the D-X2E serves those purposes and delivers a fine acoustic sound as well.

Either guitar is a strong value. Looking at the wider Martin Dreadnought range, the D-18 Custom shares the exact same price point of $4,199. From what I can tell, the D-18 Molly Tuttle is much more aesthetically interesting. I’ll be it plays a little easier as well, especially in the lower positions near that narrower nut. And the D-X2E Molly Tuttle delivers a lot of the same features and tone for about a quarter of the cash. Martin and Molly Tuttle have got a great thing going. Fans of both should be very happy with her new signature models.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT martinguitar.com

D-18 Molly Tuttle

PRICE $4,199 with molded hardshell case

NUT WIDTH 1 11/16", bone

NECK Mahogany, 1941 profile with Standard Taper, dovetail joint

FRETBOARD Ebony with Moon Phase mother-of-pearl inlays, 25.4" scale

FRETS 20

TUNERS Nickel open gear with oval knobs

BODY Solid mahogany back & sides, solid spruce top

BRIDGE Ebony with compensated bone saddle

ELECTRONICS None

FACTORY STRINGS Martin Authentic Acoustic Lifespan 2.0 Phosphor Bronze Medium gauges .013—.056

WEIGHT 3.8 lbs (as tested)

BUILT USA

KUDOS Gorgeous aesthetics, ultra-articulate tone without being too top heavy, fine playability

CONCERNS Articulate tone is very revealing and therefore not for the faint of heart

D-X2E Molly Tuttle

PRICE $999 street with softshell case

NUT WIDTH 1 11/16", white Corian

NECK Select hardwood, 1941 profile with Standard Taper, mortise & tenon joint

FRETBOARD Ebony, 25.4" scale

FRETS 20

TUNERS Nickel open gear with oval knobs

BODY Figured mahogany high-pressure laminate back & sides, spruce top

BRIDGE Ebony with compensated white Tusq saddle

ELECTRONICS Martin E1 with volume and tone flywheel controls plus tuner on/off and phase buttons in upper lip of sound hole; tuner in lower lip

FACTORY STRINGS Martin Authentic Acoustic Lifespan 2.0 Light gauges .012—.054

WEIGHT 4.5 lbs (as tested)

BUILT Mexico

KUDOS Great playability, strong amplified tone, affordable

CONCERNS Acoustic tone is quite bright

When Brad Paisley partnered with Fender last year to resurrect one of the company’s most notorious Telecaster finishes, the project was about more than a clever play on his surname. It represented the culmination of a decades-long fascination with one of Fender’s strangest and most short-lived creations.

The Paisley Red Telecaster debuted in 1968, when Fender — then under CBS ownership — attempted to capitalize on the psychedelic spirit of the era. Alongside the equally flamboyant Blue Flower finish, the guitar featured colorful Cling-Foil wallpaper applied directly to the body and covered with a translucent burst finish. It was Fender’s attempt to pay tribute to the Summer of Love.

The look was unforgettable. The execution was not.

The thick decorative paper, inexpensive adhesives and heavy polyester clear coats proved to be a disastrous combination. The finishes cracked, chipped and peeled prematurely, becoming victims of the same cost-cutting measures that defined much of Fender’s CBS era. By 1969, the experiment was over. Production ceased, and many owners stripped or refinished their electric guitars altogether.

That should have been the end of the story.

Instead, decades later, the forgotten finish found an unlikely champion in Paisley.

“It’s unreal that my own name is one of the coolest finishes I think Fender has ever done,” he said when Fender unveiled his signature Limited Edition Brad Paisley 1967 “Lost Paisley” Telecaster in 2024. “This is an attempt to show what this lost color could have been. It’s the best guitar I’ve ever had.”

Long before Fender enlisted him to help revive the design, Paisley had been on a mission to track down surviving examples of original Paisley Telecasters and restore them whenever possible. That was easier said than done. With relatively few produced — estimates generally place the number between 300 and 400 — most had long since been refinished, their psychedelic origins buried beneath later paint jobs.

Still, the hunt fascinated him.

“There’s nothing more beautiful to me than a ’50s Blackguard Tele, a ’54 Strat, or an original Paisley Tele — any of those things that frequently got stripped and mutilated,” he told Rick Beato. “Some of those refins are the best guitars I’ve ever had. It’s therapy to be able to take something and restore it.”

The obsession eventually led him to master builder Bill Crook. Together, they began trying to reverse-engineer the original Paisley finish, assuming that uncovering an authentic example hidden beneath a refinish would be nearly impossible.

Then fate intervened.

“Let me find the right guitar first,” Paisley told Crook.

That search led him to Chicago Music Exchange, where he asked if they had a refinished 1968 Telecaster for sale.

“They said, ‘Yeah, we have a black one, but it’s not a good paint job,’” Paisley recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’

“I pick it up, it’s a good guitar, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna turn this into a Paisley.’”

Crook agreed to take on the project. But once the guitar arrived, something caught his eye.

“He gets it, throws the thing on a guitar stand, and is looking at it hanging on the wall,” Paisley explained. “He looks at the way that the black finish is cracking, and he goes, ‘No.’”

Crook removed the neck and neck plate for a closer inspection. Beneath the black paint was exactly what Paisley had spent years searching for.

“There’s a paisley staring at him,” Paisley said. “He took the finish off with thinner, and that’s 100 percent original paper.

“I had accidentally bought a Paisley Tele, thinking I would turn it into a Paisley Tele!”

The story became even more remarkable when Paisley tracked down the guitar’s original owner. According to Paisley, the owner had purchased the instrument at a discount because the Paisley models weren't selling and later sprayed it black in his backyard.

What had spent decades disguised beneath an amateur refin was suddenly revealed as one of Fender’s rarest late-'60s guitars.

Paisley named the instrument La Brea, comparing it to a fossil preserved in the famous Los Angeles tar pits.

“I called it La Brea because it’s like a fossil in a tar pit,” he said.

Today, the guitar could command tens of thousands of dollars on the vintage market. But for Paisley, its value has little to do with money. After years spent chasing lost Paisley Telecasters, he had finally stumbled across the real thing by complete accident.

Phoebe Bridgers has just played her first shows since 2023, with a short run of dates concluding at Madison Square Garden. She will see out the rest of the year with performances in the U.S., U.K., and Europe.

But for a time, the indie folk singer-songwriter feared a freak accident at home could significantly alter the way she played guitar—or even halt her performing career altogether.

“I fucked up my finger like a year and a half ago,” she told Guitar World in 2020. “It stopped me from playing E and F, which were in so many of my songs.”

“I was cutting stems on flowers, and the knife flipped and just hacked right on my knuckle,” she said. “Since then, it’s been really stiff, and it hurts like shit. I hope that one day it heals, but that’s been making me more experimental with chords [and tunings].”

Across guitar history, similar physical setbacks have often led to new approaches on the instrument rather than ending playing careers. Tony Iommi reworked his fretting technique after losing the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident, Django Reinhardt developed an influential vocabulary despite severe fretting-hand limitations, and Jerry Garcia adapted his picking approach after losing the middle finger on his right hand in childhood. In each case, physical constraint reshaped technique rather than shutting it down.

For Bridgers, the injury pushed her toward a more exploratory approach to harmony and tuning. “I play guitar in a weird way,” she said. “When I met Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska, who produced both my records [2017’s Stranger in the Alps and 2020’s Punisher], I was basically a folk artist. It was sounding a little basic.”

Now, she says, she tends to “fuck up the thing that I just wrote,” adding, “I try to trick myself into writing a song in an open tuning and not even worry about what the chords look like and focus on the melody instead.”

For Joni Mitchell, open tunings became a long-term solution to hand issues stemming from childhood polio, forming the foundation of a highly individualized harmonic system built across dozens of tunings. Bridgers, who encountered Mitchell’s music early on, leaned further into alternate tunings after her own injury.

She often uses open Db, achieved by tuning her Danelectro ’56 baritone guitar to open A and placing a capo on the fourth fret.

The injury ultimately accelerated her use of alternate tunings and nonstandard chord shapes, reshaping aspects of her guitar approach. For many players, hand injuries remain among the most feared outcomes, but in Bridgers’ case it became a constraint that redirected her harmonic language.

Still, everyday accidents remain a risk for any player working with tools at home. Jeff Beck famously injured the tip of his index finger while chopping carrots in 2010, an incident that required surgery and renewed attention to hand protection among professional guitarists.

Bridgers is also an advocate for rubber bridges on her acoustic guitars, which produce a more muted, percussive response suited to her playing style. The concept originated in early DIY modifications before becoming a more widely adopted tonal option among indie and experimental players.

Peter Buck wasn’t looking to become a defining guitar voice of the 1980s. In fact, when R.E.M. were just getting started in Athens, Georgia, he was barely a guitarist at all.

“I was really struggling to get, like, the F chord down,” Buck told Guitar Player. “I knew my five chords, and I just kind of stuck with them.”

His guitar at the time was a Fender Telecaster, “because I liked the way they look — and I still do.”

“Then I got my Telecaster stolen,” he says. “I needed to replace it real fast.”

Buck paid a quick visit to Chick Piano, a small local shop, where he found a blond Rickenbacker 360 with flat-wound strings.

“There was this piano shop in Athens… I went in there to get a used guitar real cheap, and I found a Rickenbacker that was, like, $175. I played it and it felt too good to believe, so I bought it.”

Buck used that impulse buy to help define one of the most recognizable guitar sounds in alternative rock: bright, chiming, percussive — and deliberately anti–guitar hero.

When, like its predecessor, that guitar was stolen in 1981, Buck had become so enamored of its sound that he replaced it with another Rickenbacker: a black 360.

“That's the one that's been on every R.E.M. record except the first single, and I bring it to pretty much every session I do,” he told Reverb. “It's still the guitar I go to every day. It has real clarity of tone."

Even so, he’s never been intent on mythologizing it.

“I can basically get the sound I want with any guitar,” he told Guitar Player. “It’s just a matter of getting the feeling and the comfort.”

Buck admits he had no shred chops or formal training, nor any roadmap for success — just instinct and a band willing to build around it.

Still, anyone who’s heard early R.E.M. albums like Murmur or Reckoning knows he turned that feel into something very specific and ear-catching: rhythmic, interlocking electric guitar work that dodged traditional lead playing entirely.

And he did it at a time when shredding was all the rage. But Buck never saw himself as a shredder and didn’t want to be one.

“I think I’m a good rhythm guitar player in that I’ve got a good sense of where the beat is and how to play against it,” he says. “And I can play kind of pithy lines that are both melodic and rhythmic.”

That philosophy put him on a completely different wavelength from the guitar heroes dominating the era. No endless solos. No technical showboating. Just tight, strange, hypnotic rhythm parts that locked into Mike Mills’ bass lines and Bill Berry’s drums.

Buck’s influences weren’t exactly shred school either. His favorite guitarists include Chuck Berry, Steve Cropper and the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Zal Yanovsky, served up with a heavy dose of Velvet Underground attitude.

“I really like Steve Cropper a bunch,” he says. “He’s kind of playing these rhythmic lines. That’s something I tried to adopt.”

And it shows. R.E.M.’s early records — from their earliest releases to 1980s hits like “The One I Love” — don’t sound like traditional rock guitar albums; they sound like a cohesive system in which every part leaves space for the others. But it’s Buck’s guitar that pulls it all together.

Even the recording approach reinforced that philosophy. The band often cut tracks fast — sometimes before they’d fully figured them out.

“We just went in and played,” Buck says. “Songs we’ve never played, we’ve recorded them on the first takes a lot of times.

“When we did “Talk About the Passion” [from Murmur], we’d never played it all the way through before. It was like a rehearsal take, and [producer] Mitch Easter said, “That’s fine.”

In that context, the $175 Rickenbacker was the right weapon at exactly the right time. Cheap, unexpected, and completely unglamorous, it ended up helping shape one of the most influential guitar sounds of the decade.

Buck, however, still rejects the idea that gear or genius is the story.

“I think any person who had my history of listening to music — if they picked up an instrument and got into this band — would probably be playing similarly to what I’m doing,” he says.

Perhaps. But not many of them bought a $175 guitar and unintentionally helped define a genre.

When Tom Bedell sold Breedlove and Bedell last year, it marked the end of an era that began in 2010, when his Two Old Hippies company purchased Breedlove as a sister brand to his namesake acoustic guitars. The brands’ new owners are Nashville-based Pete Mroz and Shannon Pollard, and their first mission is to re-establish Breedlove’s perception as a premier brand, rather than secondary to the Bedell line.

To kick things off, they’ve recast and retooled Breedlove’s entire production line, which is now divided into three series: Roots, Artisan and Collector. They’ve also nixed overseas production — every guitar is now designed and built in the U.S. in Bend, Oregon.

The Roots Series is the core line and features basic appointments. Artisan is the next tier up, while the Collector Series sits on the top shelf. Roots Series pricing is on par with core series from other premier American brands, and it goes up from there for the fancier series. I chose to review the RTC-SRe acoustic-electric because the Roots Series is what most players will be exploring. The Concert is a mid-sized acoustic, and it’s always been Breedlove’s bread-and-butter body style.

“Our Concert body has become iconic because it simply works for everyone,” Pollard says. “It’s comfortable, incredibly versatile, and delivers a balanced voice players love across genres. From fingerstyle to full-band strumming, it’s consistently one of our most popular shapes — and for good reason.”

The Roots Concert SRe on review represents the centerpiece of the Roots Series. It sports the tried-and-true combination of solid East Indian rosewood back and sides with a solid Sitka spruce top. The Honduran mahogany neck features a redesigned soft-C profile. An L.R. Baggs HiFi pickup and preamp system makes it ready to plug in and play onstage or in the studio. I played one at the NAMM Show launch and was intrigued by the new guitar, ownership and business strategy.

I had access to an Oregon Concert made entirely of myrtlewood circa 2018 for comparison, and the differences were plain to see, feel and hear. The most obvious update is the new Wave headstock shape. It’s less idiosyncratic and more balanced than the previous angular asymmetrical shape. In addition, the logo inlay features a script capital B, as on early Breedloves, rather than the full name.

The next thing I noticed was the feel, which is lighter, with apparently less binding and perhaps lighter bracing. The Oregon Concert seems more built like a tank, while the Roots Concert feels more boutique.

The new modern C neck profile feels very comfortable in hand, and is flush from the bottom to the top. I didn’t catch any sharp fret edges or any other distractions, and every note on each string rings true. Fingerpicking is a joy, as is playing with a plectrum, and the factory action is spot on. You can do whatever you want to do, and the notes and chords are right there for you.

In terms of its tone, the Roots RTC-SRe is rich and resonant. Although it’s not nearly as loud as the Oregon, it’s far more refined. There’s a fabulous sense of balance from low to high, with a welcome articulation amid the warmth. The sound is less fundamental and more complex. You hear the basic note, and then it blooms with overtones and nice sustain.

Each Breedlove is voiced by hand and comes with a certificate of authenticity that explains and expounds on the nomenclature: RTC means Roots Concert, SR stands for Sitka spruce top with East Indian rosewood back and sides, and the e indicates it has onboard electronics.

The interesting part is that the top has a frequency 174 Hz, the back is 218 Hz, and the fundamental frequency is 101 Hz. That means the resonant frequency of the top is in the neighborhood of an open G string. The resonant frequency of the back is slightly higher, which is normal since the back reflects the top sound, adding a bit of articulation.

The fundamental frequency — sometimes referred to as “main air” or “main Helmholtz resonance” — is the frequency at which the body of air inside the guitar resonates, primarily produced by the sound hole. 101 Hz is in the neighborhood between the low G and A on the sixth string, indicating a healthy low end, especially for a guitar with a mid-sized body.

Interestingly, the electronics system is an L.R. Baggs HiFi, which uses a pair of transducers that affix under the bridge plate rather than the more typical piezo under-saddle pickup. While the output isn’t as loud or punchy as an undersaddle, there’s no piezo quack and the sound is more akin to what you’d get from a microphone.

I’ve had a lot of experience with the HiFi, and I’d say it’s not ideal for a rock band situation but quite lovely playing solo in a coffee shop. I found the best tone by rolling off a bit of treble. Percussive players will love the HiFi’s responsiveness to slapping the strings and tapping on the guitar top.

The bottom line is that Breedlove is in good hands. This guitar’s appearance isn’t fancy, although the wood is gorgeous, and I appreciate how the pin-less African ebony bridge complements its classic aesthetic. Most importantly, this Roots Concert is the best-playing and -sounding guitar Breedlove has sent my way in more than a decade of acoustic reviews. I look forward to hearing other opinions and seeing what else is in store as all the new goodness rolls out “from seed to song” at Breedlove.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT breedloveguitars.com

PRICE $2,999 with deluxe hardshell case

NUT WIDTH 1.75", bone

NECK Honduran mahogany, bolt-on, soft C profile

FRETBOARD Ebony, small center dot inlays, 25.5" scale

FRETS 20

TUNERS Nickel

BODY Solid Indian rosewood back & sides, solid Sitka spruce top, natural finish with vintage toner gloss, black binding

BRIDGE Ebony, pinless

ELECTRONICS L.R. Baggs HiFi with volume and tone controls

FACTORY STRINGS Elixir PB Nanoweb Light

WEIGHT 4.6 lbs

BUILT USA

PRO Comfortable neck profile, warm yet articulate tone, fine craftsmanship, gorgeous wood

CON Pickup volume is quiet and perhaps a polarizing choice. Would be awesome to offer options

The Memorial Day sales have only just died down, but Guitar Center has already seen fit to tempt us further with some sweet discounts on acoustic guitars hitting up to 30% off. With big money off acoustic guitars, acoustic electric guitars, classical guitars, as well as some folk favorites like ukuleles and resonators, it’s the ideal place to pick up an acoustic instrument for less.

The sale runs until June 24th, so you’ve got a whole month to cash in on the deals. With pretty much every major acoustic guitar manufacturer represented in the sale, savings on Taylor, Martin, Gibson, Fender, Epiphone, and many more make this one of the best opportunities to save of the year so far.

I’ve had a look through the full sale, and the first thing to catch my eye was $100 off this Recording King RPH-R2-E Dirty 30s Minnie Bucker Resonator. Perfect for slide and delta blues, it features a hand-spun aluminium resonator and a mini humbucker, which makes it ideal for players who want to plug in and play live.

I covered this deal in the Memorial Day sales, and while there’s a little less off it now, I still reckon this Gibson J-45 Studio with $200 off is an excellent deal. If you’re a regularly gigging player, this is a quality acoustic that delivers superb tone with its Sitka spruce top and mahogany back and side tonewood construction, and an LR Baggs electronics system that means it delivers when you plug it in.

Finally, I had to point out this limited edition Taylor 414ce, which is one of our favorite acousti-electric guitars here at Guitar Player. This version is only available at Guitar Center and features a unique sunburst top, Italian acrylic diamonds inlays, and gold Taylor tuning machines for a premium look. With $200 off, it’s superb value for money in my book.

The 1969 Woodstock festival produced some of rock’s most iconic guitar moments: Richie Havens strumming his beat-up open-tuned Guild D-40 acoustic as he improvised “Freedom.” Pete Townshend taking his Gibson SG to Abbie Hoffman’s head after the political activist interrupted the Who’s set. And Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star Spangled Banner” on a white Fender Stratocaster.

Among those standouts performances is Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee leading the group through “I’m Going Home” while playing the heavily stickered and modified Gibson ES-335 he called Big Red. The instrument would go on to become one of the most recognizable and prized electric guitars in rock history, and is currently under lock and key in the possession of his daughter Jasmin.

The guitar’s legend began in 1963 when Lee purchased it for £45 with a fitted case from Jack Brentnall’s, a musical instrument store in his hometown of Nottingham, England. By the time Big Red made its live debut a few years later, Lee had already begun modifying the instrument. The first distinctive change was the addition of a Fender single-coil pickup in the middle position, between the guitar’s two PAF humbuckers, giving it a brighter, sharper tone when needed.

“I now have a Gibson which sounds like a Tele just when I want it to,” Lee explained in an August 1975 interview with International Musician & Recording World.

At the same time, he began covering the instrument with stickers: peace signs, psychedelic decals, astrological imagery and the logo of the Ten Years After Music Lovers Society. By the time Lee walked onstage at Woodstock, Big Red already looked unlike any other Gibson in rock.

“Dad was always tinkering with the guitar doing stuff with it,” Jasmin tells Guitar Player. “In early 1970, he took the Bigsby off and replaced it with a TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. And because of that, he put more stickers on it.”

Ironically, the guitar’s appearance was permanently frozen in time by accident. During a 1972 show at London’s Marquee Club, Lee threw the guitar in the air and smashed the neck against the venue’s low ceiling.

“He used to throw it around quite a lot onstage,” Jasmin says. “Unfortunately on this particular night he threw it up and broke the dot-inlaid neck right off the guitar.”

Lee sent Big Red to Gibson for repairs. When it returned, the original neck had been replaced with a block-inlay version, and all the stickers had been lacquered over.

“The stickers became part of the guitar,” Jasmin says. “He couldn't take any off or change them.”

Gibson’s unsolicited preservation act ultimately helped turn Big Red into an artifact of classic rock history. It also obscured the guitar’s date of manufacture. Lee referred to it as a 1958 model, but without the original neck, it’s impossible to know.

Lee continued using the guitar throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s, but as its value climbed he gradually retired it from the stage. By 1992, insurance costs forced him to place it in storage altogether.

Years later, Gibson attempted to produce a signature replica, resulting in a painstaking Woodstock 50th-anniversary re-creation in 2019.

“Gibson actually worked quite closely with Dad on this guitar,” Jasmin says. “They sent him quite a few prototypes, but he was like, ‘Nope, nope, that’s not right.’”

Today, the original Big Red remains secured in storage while its replicas hang at Dean St. Studios in London. The Lee family hopes the original instrument will eventually find a new owner who understands both its musical significance and the decades of history embedded in every scratch, modification and sticker sealed beneath its lacquer finish.

Over the course of his long career, Vince Gill has been a session artist, a member of Pure Prairie League, a solo giant and, today, a member of the Eagles.

And he’s done it largely with a range of Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster electric guitars, as well as a nice selection of Gibson and Martin acoustics.

Given his somewhat infrequent use of a Les Paul, Gill never felt a need to add a vintage ‘Burst to his collection. But a sad and deeply personal twist of events brought one into his life.

“I bought a ’59 Les Paul from my brother-in-law from my first marriage [to country singer Janis Oliver],” Gill told Guitar Aficionado in 2017. “We were great friends, and he owned this great ’59 sunburst since 1959.

“He’d played it his whole life but got sick a couple of years ago. He called me and said, ‘There’s not much they can do for me. I’m probably not gonna make it. You’ve always been my favorite guitar player. Will you buy my Les Paul?’

“I didn’t have a sunburst Les Paul in my collection, and I previously couldn’t justify the expense because I don’t play a Les Paul that much, But this one came along and I said, ‘There you go,’” Gill continued. “I got the one I was supposed to have. My friend played it for 40 years, and now it gets to live on and still make music.”

The 'Burst occupies pride of place in Gill's collection, which is largely housed in his home studio. Of his collecting habit, Gill, with a chuckle, told Guitar Player in 2022, “I’m sure I’ve got a couple of hundred guitars, but I don’t have a boat or multiple houses or cars. I wouldn’t say it’s out of control, but it’s borderline.”

Gill — who has earned more CMA Awards than any other artist — will take home a once-in-a-lifetime honor on November 19 when the CMA presents him with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. The country legend will join past recipients like Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, in recognition of having “attained the highest degree of recognition in Country Music,” as well as for his humanitarian efforts and philanthropy.

"Vince embodies the very best of what country music stands for," Sarah Trahern, CMA's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "He’s a true trailblazer, one who gives back to the community, honors the roots of our genre, and even now, continues to share his talent with fans across the globe."

Gill is currently casting a long glance over his 50-year music career by curating a series of EPS, titled 50 Years From Home. The first disc, I Gave You Everything I Had, was issued October 17, with others scheduled for release over the coming year.

The fun part about writing this column is learning a guitar’s back story — where and when it was made, who played it — and assessing its playability and sound.

But sometimes you get a surprise, as I did with this 1961 Watkins Rapier 3 electric. Its creator was Sid Watkins, whose company — Watkins Electric Music, or WEM — played a fascinating role in British musical-instrument engineering. Sid was not just a luthier and woodworker but something of an electronics genius as well. He designed the electronics for the Vox Phantom Synth guitar as well as the echo units used by Hank Marvin and the Shadows.

As the company grew and its product lines expanded, WEM became nearly ubiquitous in the U.K. In addition to guitars, WEM made amps and PAs used by groups like the Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. The company even made Vox guitars to help the brand keep up with manufacturing demand during the guitar boom of the ’60s.

Watkins launched the Rapier line in 1959, and it continued until 1970. As for the surprise I mentioned earlier: There are photos of George Harrison playing a highly modified Rapier 33 that belonged to his friend Del Mandel at the Beatles’ Apple Studios in 1971, while he was producing the Radha Krishna Temple album. That’s right — a Beatle touched it!

WEM also became known beyond the U.K. through exports. At one point the company was shipping 500 guitars a month overseas, most of them to the United States.

At the risk of sounding snarky, the Rapier 3’s weirdo factor is that it’s an early British guitar that actually sounds and plays great. If you’ve ever played any of Vox’s clunky guitars, you’ll know what I mean.

The Rapier 3 originally sold at the bargain price of 29 guineas, or $85, about a third of what a Fender Stratocaster cost at the time. But don’t let that fool you. These are well-made instruments.

At first look, this is an inviting glossy fiesta-red guitar not unlike a Strat, with three pickups, a vibrato bar, offset cutaways, a toggle switch and three knobs. As it turns out, there actually is something weird here, and it’s hiding in those knobs. Their functions aren’t as straight ahead as you might think.

The first knob is a rotary pickup selector with four detented stops. The next two are global volume and tone controls. As for the toggle, used in conjunction with the rotary knob it allows you to employ only the middle pickup. But depending on what setting you’re using, it also can act as a tone bypass and/or a kill switch. It only took me about an hour to figure that out.

But my patience was rewarded when I discovered a bunch of cool sounds and switch combinations along the way. This guitar is deep! It goes from rich-sounding jazz tones to really cool phasey rhythm guitar sounds and the thinnest banjo-like setting I’ve ever heard on a guitar without active EQ or processing. I’m not sure what you’d use that for, but I couldn’t stop playing the Status Quo song “Pictures of Matchstick Men” with it. The middle two pickup settings are where this guitar really comes to life, with usable clean tones that sound great with overdrive or distortion.

The maple neck is skinny and fast, and has a rosewood fingerboard with 22 frets, plus a zero fret. The neck is relatively straight, but the truss rod seems to have plenty play left on it. In addition, there’s a Hi/Lo vibrato that works cleanly and offers little resistance. But while it’s great for playing surf rock, there will be no dive-bombing on this guitar.

Note that the sticker on the pickguard is right in the strum path. The original one disappeared years ago, but I replaced it with an aftermarket sticker that I’ve already managed to scratch up.

In sum, this guitar is light, easy to play and sounds great.

Despite its features and history, the Watkins Rapier 3 never really achieved cult status. They can still be found online for well under a thousand bucks.

I bought the guitar shown here from its original owner, Francisco, whom I met on Facebook Marketplace. He and his brothers played in bands all through the ’60s and ’70s and this was the guitar he used.

When I showed up at his house to pick up the guitar, he and his brothers were in their garage amid drums, keyboards, guitars, amps, mixers, exercise equipment and a man-fridge. Classic. The guys were so friendly, and Francisco gave me a great deal on the guitar. My thanks to Paul Connet for getting the stickers off (sorry Francisco) without harming the finish.

Contact me with questions or pics of your whack jobs. I may even write about them.

Based on high-dollar Gretsch models in the Falcon, Nashville and Synchromatic lines, the new Streamliner Hollow Body electric is designed to capture “that great Gretsch sound” at an eminently affordable price. It features a fully hollow arched body constructed of laminated maple with a width of 16 inches and a depth of 2 3/4 inches.

My review guitar arrived in a glossy Fairlane Blue sparkle finish that looks fantastic with the aged white binding, thick single-ply pickguard, matching cream pickup surrounds and quartet of cream “radio” knobs with inset gold tops.

True to form, the f-holes are smaller than the ones on many other Gretsch archtops, and the hardware consists of a Bigsby B60 vibrato tailpiece and a nickel-plated Adjusto-Matic bridge that sits atop a pinned laurel-wood base. Pickups are Gretsch’s own BT3S humbuckers with Alnico 2 magnets in the neck position and Alnico 5 magnets in the bridge position, both featuring 12 adjustable pole screws.

Carved to a Soft C shape that feels great in the hand, the Streamliner’s nato neck attaches at the 14th fret via a glued-in joint and sports white binding and a matching heel cap. The laurel fingerboard has a scale length of 24 3/4 inches and a radius of 12 inches and carries 22 lightly polished medium-jumbo frets and a set of pearloid “thumbprint” position markers.

Strings ride over a bone nut to a set of nickel-plated die-cast tuners on a bound headstock with a gloss black facing and gold Gretsch logo. This well-made guitar exudes classy coolness that immediately attracts attention and proved a lot of fun to play.

The Streamliner has a robust acoustic sound and good natural sustain, and it’s great that someone at the factory took the time to get the intonation right and the strings comfortably low with no fret buzz. The guitar tuned up easily and stayed in tune quite well once the strings and the Bigsby settled in enough to allow spirited whammy workouts.

Played through a selection of amps that included a PRS DGT 15, ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue (hand-wired by Alessandro) and a reissue Vox AC10, the Streamliner delivered cool tones across the board. The use of Alnico 2 and 5 in these pickups optimizes them for their respective positions, overall providing great string-to-string clarity and plenty of bottom-end to facilitate everything from burnished jazz textures to rockabilly snarl to crushing rock grind.

The lower output neck unit sounded great for blues and roots rock, delivering warm, clear tones that didn’t become murky when the volume and/or tone controls were rolled down. Switching to the middle position which combines the brighter, louder bridge pickup, elicited more twang and bite—nice for country and rockabilly — and the bridge pickup by itself when pumped though a pedal or high-gain amp was perfect for bluesy metal in the Billy Duffy camp, delivering ripping archtop-electric muscle that can make a solidbody guitar sound thin by comparison.

That said, if you want skinnier, funkier tones for channeling Nile Rogers or Leo Nocentelli, just pull the master-volume knob and the guitar delivers single-coil sounds that sit beautifully in a track or with a band that has horns, keys, singers, percussion and other instrumentation.

The Streamliner Hollow Body is an inspiring guitar that plays well, is lightweight for its size and has the sonic flexibility to handle just about any style. It’s an impressive performer for the money and well worth a test drive if you’re looking to bring some Gretsch love into your life.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT gretschguitars.com

PRICE $649

NUT Bone, 1.6875" wide

NECK Nato, glued-in, Soft C profile, gloss finish

FINGERBOARD Laurel with aged white binding and black side dots, 24.75" scale, 12" radius, pearloid “thumbnail” inlays and bound headstock with gold Gretsch logo

FRETS 22 medium jumbo

TUNERS Nickel-plated die-cast

BODY Fully hollow arched maple construction with aged white binding, three-ply purfling and gloss finish

BRIDGE Nickel-plated Adjusto-Matic with pinned laurel wood base

TAILPIECE Bigsby B60

PICKUPS Broad’Tron BT3S humbuckers with Alnico 2 magnets (neck position) and Alnico 5 magnets (bridge position)

CONTROLS Master volume (with push-pull coil split), master tone and individually adjustable pickup volume controls. Vintage radio-style knobs and 3-way toggle switch

EXTRAS Single-ply cream pickguard (as tested) or three-ply tortoise color with gold “Gretsch” logo. Available in Fairlane Blue, Brandywine, Robusto Burst, Midnight Sapphire and Havana Burst

FACTORY STRINGS Nickel Plated Steel, .010-.046

WEIGHT 7.2 lbs (tested)

BUILT Indonesia

PRO Cool retro-style look. Classic big-body resonance and tone.

CON Gig bag not included. Corners on the nut are sharp.

Back in 2006, Phil Manzanera was three years removed from Roxy Music’s latest reunion and back in the mix as a hired gun, working for the likes of Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox and Chrissie Hynde, among others, as well as recording his own albums. But a stint as David Gilmour’s right-hand man was a welcome addition to the regimen.

“I met David when I was 15, the week he joined Pink Floyd,” Manzanera tells us via phone from his home in Sussex in the English countryside — next door to Gilmour’s, in fact. “Pink Floyd was the coolest band in the world back then, them and the Soft Machine.”

The two guitarists maintained their friendship, and Manzanera co-wrote the single “One Slip” with Gilmour for Pink Floyd’s 1987 comeback album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Fast forward 19 years and Gilmour was preparing for his own comeback with On an Island, his first solo outing in 22 years and his first album since Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell in 1994. He recruited Manzanera to co-produce with himself and Chris Thomas, as well as play guitar on three of the album’s 10 tracks — joining a corps that included Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright and latter-day bassist Guy Pratt, along with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Robert Wyatt, Jools Holland, Georgie Fame and others.

“David doesn’t need a producer,” Manzanera says, “but he likes to have company to bounce his ideas off of, or to say, ‘I’ve got 10 ideas — any of these any good?’”

Manzanera created a chart on which he noted which pieces of music might work well together.

“There were 153 little bits, so I would take it to my studio and go back the following week and say, ‘Bit number 78 with bit number 13, and then a bit of number 121.’ And David would say, ‘What’s that?’ and I’d say, ‘That’s you. You did that!’” He laughs. “He’d either go with it or wouldn’t, but he did go with a lot of the stuff.

“He just had too much stuff accumulated and wanted a bit of help to sort it out. I’m used to doing albums and things.”

Working alongside Gilmour at his houseboat studio Astoria and his studio in Sussex, Manzanera helped him complete the album. Nearby sat Gilmour’s circa-1954 Stratocaster with the serial number 0001, which he purchased in 1978 and reportedly used on “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.”

“I’d just sit there and have his number 0001 Strat next to me, looking at it,” Manzanera says. “It was just a lot of fun.”

Manzanera adds that all concerned were well aware that Gilmour “hadn’t done anything in a while… so I was just trying to be supportive of him, as a friend, and wanting him to succeed.”

He’s also an unabashed Gilmour fan.

“I love his voice,” Manzanera notes. “Obviously everyone goes on about the guitar, which is fantastic, but I just love that voice. It’s so unique. He does a lot of stuff so well — still does it so well. It’s amazing.”

After On an Island’s release in March 2006, Gilmour recruited Manzanera to be part of the band for a spring and summer tour supporting the album, along with Wright and Pratt.

“When we did ‘Wish You Were Here,’ I got to play it on the actual acoustic 12-string he played on the original, so that was a lot of fun, too.”

Manzanera also co-produced Gilmour’s next album, 2015’s Rattle That Lock, playing both acoustic guitar and keyboards on the album and again joining Gilmour on tour during 2015 and 2016.

In between, he was part of the production team for 2014’s The Endless River — to date the final Pink Floyd album. Intended as a tribute to Wright, who passed away in 2008, the 18 instrumental tracks were built from recordings made during sessions for Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell, with additional material added nearly two decades later.

“We were in David’s kitchen one day — this is after Rick died — and there were all these tapes,” Manzanera recalls. “David asked, ‘Do you fancy having a listen and see if you can make anything out of it?’

“So I went away for six weeks and listened to every scrap. I loved Rick’s Farfisa organ from the early Pink Floyd albums, so I particularly chose bits that had it. That was such a unique aspect of Floyd that hadn’t been spotlighted enough.”

After cutting and pasting clips together, Manzanera felt he could create something cohesive from the recordings. Gilmour liked what he heard, but Manzanera was concerned about playing it for Nick Mason.

“I thought, How am I gonna play this to Nick? I’ve taken a few liberties with his drums — one bit from here, one bit from there. Finally I thought, Right, I’m gonna turn the lights off, put the screen saver on and put the music on and just not look at him.

“He listened to it and said at the end, ‘Yeah, there might be something there.’ Phew!”

After a break of a few months, Gilmour pushed everyone into the studio to finish the recording.

“David said, ‘Look, why don’t we all go into the studio at the same time and try and finish this off together?’”

Gilmour recruited his wife, the English novelist and writer Polly Samson, to compose lyrics for the album’s only non-instrumental track, “Louder Than Words.” With assistance from producer Youth, “we all worked together and got it done,” Manzanera says.

The Endless River hit number one in quite a few countries around the world, including the U.K., and number three on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.

Manzanera — who received an Order of the British Empire honor in 2024 — tells many of his other stories in his 2024 memoir Revolución to Roxy, and has brought his An Evening of Words and Music show to the U.S. Current dates include Space in Chicago on May 18, the Shank in Milwaukee on May 19 and the Quinlan Room in Minneapolis on May 20 (tickets and other details via manzanera.com).

In the studio, the guitarist is also prepping a 51st-anniversary reissue (scheduled for September 11) of Mainstream by his pre-Roxy band Quiet Sun, as well as a brand-new album by the band. There will also be a boxed-set edition of Roxy Music’s second album, For Your Pleasure, remastered by Steven Wilson and due out this fall.

“It’s a really great package, with lots of extra stuff on it,” Manzanera says. “I’ve been waiting for this for years, ’cause it’s one of my favorite albums. I heard the Dolby Atmos mix that Steven did; there’s lots of great things Eno had done that I never heard before… ’cause back then you were constrained by the length of sides on vinyl. If you had extra stuff you couldn’t use it, but now it will have a chance to be heard, which is exciting.”

How many pickups should a guitar have? One? Two? Three?

How about 64?

That’s the total number of active pickups in the PolyMap system, a new experimental electric guitar developed by audio engineer David Wieland of Dark Art Guitars.

“Traditional electric guitars have two or three pickups and you have to decide while playing which ones are active,” Wieland explains in a video demonstration of the system. “This can limit what is possible with the playing, which is why I developed PolyMap.”

Traditional electric guitars rely on just two or three pickups to capture the vibration of the strings. Those pickups shape everything from a Stratocaster’s glassy bite to a Les Paul’s thick growl. PolyMap blows up that model entirely. Instead of a handful of magnets, the experimental instrument uses 64 individual pickups arranged in a grid, allowing software to combine them into virtual pickups placed anywhere along the string.

The project is Wieland’s entry in the AES Student Design Competition 2026, where it also serves as his master’s thesis.

“It’s a polyphonic guitar pickup system that detects each string individually at eight different locations,” he says. “Then in software, you can decide which pickups are active, how they are blended, and apply various effects.”

At the heart of PolyMap is an 8×8 pickup grid that samples each of the guitar’s six strings at eight positions along its length. In total, the instrument houses 64 active pickups, each feeding a carefully designed signal path.

Those digital signals pass through buffered, bandwidth-controlled analog stages before entering eight multichannel analog-to-digital converters. From there, the data is aggregated into a Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (MADI) stream and transmitted over a single coaxial cable, which also delivers 12 volts of DC power to the pickups. The system outputs its stereo signal at 24-bit/48 kHz resolution.

Once recorded into a DAW, a specially designed plugin lets users shape their performance via two modes. Manual mode gives players direct control over each pickup’s level, phase, pan and micro-delay. Virtual mode allows users to position a simulated pickup beneath each string while the software blends signals from the sensor grid in real time.

Because the system captures the strings at multiple points simultaneously, players can also reshape the tone of the “virtual pickup” itself — dialing in sounds that mimic everything from vintage passive pickups to ultra-clean modern designs.

The multi-pickup architecture also opens the door to unusual effects. By introducing timing offsets between sensors, the system can create delay and diffusion effects. Players can even route signals independently — sending the lower strings to a bass guitar rig, for example, while the higher strings feed a traditional guitar amp.

PolyMap isn’t commercially available yet, but Wieland has published the project’s hardware designs, software and documentation on GitHub for anyone interested in exploring the system.

If it eventually reaches the market, he estimates the guitar would cost around $2,000.

“I would say at the very least six months until we can even talk about how the final system looks,” Wieland says. “Realistically, it’s probably going to be next year before it’s possibly available.”

Known for its high-quality Japanese production for more than three decades, Gretsch has also diversified into several other quality-related pricing tiers in the 21st century, and the new Electromatic Premier Jet presents a striking new addition to the sub-$1,000 lineup. Part homage to the classics, part stripped-down redrawing of the blueprint, it’s a guitar likely to appeal to the Gretsch-ogling rockers out there while offering something for a broad range of budget-conscious players.

If the original Duo Jet on which the new model is roughly based was always regarded by some as “Gretsch’s Les Paul,” the Electromatic Premier Jet is arguably even more so. Although it passes for a solidbody visually, it uses a chambered mahogany body much like the company’s ’50s single-cut, albeit with a somewhat heavier, denser construction.

Tap the carved solid-maple top, for example, and there’s less of a clue to the open airspace within — and there’s a little more weight here than you’ll find with most older Duo-Jets, to further amplify the impression of solidity. Other minor changes — such as comfort-enhancing ribcage and thigh contours at the back of the body’s waist — also help to bring it into the modern age.

The glued-in neck is carved from solid mahogany with a bound ebony fingerboard, all laid out to a slight variation of the traditional Gretsch scale that comes in at 24.88 inches, with a width of 1.6875 inches (a.k.a. 1-11/16 inches) across the GraphTech NuBone nut. The 22 medium-jumbo frets are neatly crowned and well polished, and they partner with the medium-C neck profile to yield an easy playability.

Looks-wise, the neoclassical thumbnail fingerboard inlays, Falcon-like split-V headstock and three-ply body binding lend the whole affair an air of class, while the glow-in-the-dark Luminlay side-dot inlays aid visibility on a dark stage. The Onyx Storm finish on my review sample (a gloss black that reveals a fine-grained metalflake on closer inspection) is probably my favorite of the four options for the model and looks archetypally Gretsch, but with a modern twist.

The triangular control layout reflects one of Gretsch’s long-standing design points. Along with the single upper-bout selector switch, it nods to the earlier rendition of the Duo Jet. But the knobs here also conceal the versatile new wiring setup Gretsch has loaded into the Electromatic Premier Jet. They include a single master volume and two individual tone controls, with a push-pull switch on the former potentiometer to tap Gretsch’s Lumen Filter, and no-load pots on the latter.

The Lumen Filter achieves a brighter, spankier, more single-coil–like tone by running both pickups through a small capacitor — not entirely unlike the “strangle switch” on a Fender Jaguar, for example (and in no way related to the creepy mind-altering corporation in the TV series Severance) — rather than actually splitting the humbuckers’ coils. The no-load pots take the tone control and tone cap completely out of the circuit when rolled fully clockwise, where they click into a firm detent that lets you know you’ve hit home.

This setup governs a pair of Gretsch’s new Sphera Twin Six humbuckers, a standard-sized design that presents more chrome than the smaller Filter’Tron humbucker of old. Made with 12 individually adjustable pole pieces (six per coil) and Alnico VI magnets, they employ polysol-coated wire in the neck position and plain-enamel wire in the bridge to best tailor their performance to each.

Whether in the lap or on the strap, the Electromatic Premier Jet reveals ergonomics that are different from those of more traditional Gretsch guitars. I would dare say they’re more Gibson-like, with the adjustable wrap-tail bridge pitching the strings closer to the top of the body than the old-school floating-bridge options. The result is a guitar that you feel you are hugging closer than the Duo Jets of old, and which you perhaps feel confident hitting harder.

Tested through a 1964 Fender Bassman head with a 2x12 cabinet and a Matchless Spitfire 1x12 combo, the Electromatic Premier Jet proved itself a solid and versatile performer that punches well above its class. It delivers more power than the typical Filter’Tron-equipped guitar, certainly, but also a metallic bite and silvery clarity that still screams “Gretsch!” through both clean and overdriven amp settings.

Those who find modern Gibson-style humbuckers dark or muddy are likely to love these Sphera Twin Six units, which definitely push the amp when needed but present an appealing blend of girth and articulation overall, with a signature brightness that rarely sounds too harsh.

All of this enables the new model to excel in the country, Americana, roots-rock and rockabilly arenas, in which the seminal Duo Jet has traditionally performed well. But it also brings a stinging, searing tone to heavier rock genres. This is further enhanced by the added sustain of the solidly anchored wraparound bridge, which induces more ring and resonance than the more lightly strung trapeze-and-floating-bridge arrangements of yore.

Pop the Lumen Filter, though, and there’s even more snap and jangle via faux-single-coil tones that arguably sound more authentic than the usual coil-splitting. The detents for the tone controls’ no-load settings are a little stiff and might feel kind of “locked in” for those who reach for quick and subtle control changes, but the feature does what it should, letting the pickups’ full clarity shine through.

All in all, then, the new Electromatic Premier Jet is very impressive, and even more so when you factor in the price point. At first glance, I was planning to say something like, “…but you can’t expect ‘that great Gretsch sound’ with full-size humbuckers like these,” and yet it’s somehow there, to a degree at least.

From the choice of paint to the inlays to the binding, the guitar is well constructed and beautifully finished. Playability and functionality are great, and the Electromatic Premier Jet is likely to find its way into the hands of guitarists who could otherwise afford to spend significantly more.

Many players who gasped at the thought of picking a Chinese guitar two decades ago have long overcome their reservations, but this one is yet another testament to how far the country’s instrument manufacturers have come, and to Gretsch’s thoughtful design and guidance as well.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT Gretsch.com

PRICE $799 street

NUT GraphTech NuBone, 1 11/16" wide

NECK Mahogany, 24.88" scale length

FRETBOARD Ebony, 10"–14" compound radius

FRETS 22 medium-jumbo

TUNERS Gotoh locking

BODY Chambered mahogany with solid maple top

BRIDGE Locking adjustable wraparound

PICKUPS Two Sphera Twin Six Alnico VI humbuckers

CONTROLS Master volume with push-pull Lumen filter, two no-load Tone controls, three-way switch

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario .010-.046

WEIGHT 8.4 lbs

BUILT (country of origin) China

PRO Well-built and cleverly designed, offering impressive sonic versatility and playability for the money.

CON The detents in the no-load tone pots take some getting used to for those making frequent control changes.

Revered jazz guitarist Larry Carlton made his name as a hardworking studio musician across the 1970s and ‘80s, through sessions with Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt and Quincy Jones, among many others. Throughout his career, his sunburst 1969 Gibson ES-335 has been his choice of electric guitar, for most of those sessions.

He says finding the semi-hollow model was a stroke of luck that allowed feel and play “more like me” on the countless hits he made it.

“I was starting to get busy in the studio scene in 1970, and so back then the guys would carry a Tele, a jazz box, or a Strat if they had one,” he tells Vertex Effects. “So I had a Tele, and I had a Les Paul, but coming from more of a jazz influence, I wanted something that felt more like a jazz box.”

In his teens, ES-335s were common sights in the hands of the jazz maestros he grew up admiring, so the guitar's natural appeal was evident. Little did he know how perfect a match he and the guitar would be. He picked the guitar from a trio of ES-335s hanging on the wall of Southern California music store.

“They had three 335s hanging on the wall, so I tried each one of them,” he recalls. “I didn't plug them in, I tried them acoustically, and this is the one that caught me.”

The 1969 model was brand new when he bought it for $850. Signs of the original Bigsby bridge it came with are evident on the top. The guitar underwent other modifications as Carlton finessed the instrument to his desires.

A graphite nut and Schaller tuners have been installed. But vitally, the original twin humbuckers, now looking glamorously aged from countless hours spent working away in the studio, remain in place.

As Carlton explains, getting the right instrument in his hands for those sessions was crucial in his role as a gun for hire.

“It’s the crown jewel,” he once told GP of the guitar. “I bought it out of the blue, and it’s been real good to me.”

It was paired with a Fender Princeton combo amp for Joni Mitchell's 1974 hit “Help Me”, and it can also be heard on Steely Dan's “Kid Charlemagne” after it beat a Strat in a shootout.

However, though his reputation grew to warrant a Gibson signature guitar, his relationship with the brand soured over time.

“I liked being with Gibson,” Carlton admits, “but as they started doing their production for retail, the quality wasn't like my 335, which was the whole idea. They got the color right – that's the easy part – but the guitar wasn't like mine.

“But we did it,” he adds. “And they didn’t promote it very well. Guys, especially in Europe, would bring their guitars to my concerts and ask me to sign them. I'd say, ‘Sure,’ and I'd take them out of the case, and the neck was not anything like mine.”

Sire Guitars convinced Carlton to jump ship and make its own attempt at reproducing his majestic 335. His signature model, he says, “sings beautifully.”

Even with this guitar in his hands, not all of Carlton's sessions were a dream. The guitarist famously quit working with John Lennon after one day. Steve Lukather, meanwhile, has recalled the lesson he learned from a Larry Carlton string break.

Steve Lukather had been playing guitar for six or seven years before his parents relented to his begging for a top-quality instrument, and his retelling of the story has brought him to tears.

Like countless other young players who grew up in the 1960s, the Toto and session-playing hitmaker says George Harrison, whom he first saw perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, was “the reason why I play.”

Lukather received his first guitar at age seven, but as he told the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in 2020, it was a “broken thrift-store guitar, which ironically, people now covet.”

“It was a crappy guitar,” Lukather says with a laugh. “One of my idiot friends knocked it over and broke the neck — not off, but it screwed up the headstock to the point where it wouldn't tune up very well.”

Despite the damage, he was stuck with the instrument.

“I had to play it because my dad would say, ‘You broke it, you're not getting a new one.’”

Lukather devised a way to get his hands on nice guitars.

“Instead of going to the toy store, I'd go down to Guitar Center in Hollywood every couple of weeks,” he says.

Unfortunately, those electrics were beyond his means.

One day, however, things played out a little differently when his dad agreed to drive him down to the store and added, “Maybe we'll buy an amp.”

“I didn't wanna push it, man,” he says, “my dad worked hard. He knew how much I loved it. When I'd get into trouble, they didn't punish me, they'd take music stuff away. A stereo or whatever.

“Anyway, I wanted to try out an Ampeg VT22, the one Keith [Richards] used on Exile on Main St. So they put me in a practice room, and I grabbed a Les Paul Deluxe. I crank the amp, and I'm ripping on it. People are looking, going, ‘Who's that playing?’ and it's just a little kid. I guess I was quite good for my age.”

His dad had left him to his own devices until eventually he came back to collect his son and take him home.

“He goes, ‘All right, let's get out of here. Let's get this stuff in the car.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean?’”

His father’s words stunned him.

“‘The amp and the guitar. It's yours.’”

It's at this point he starts tearing up, calling it a “huge moment” in his life, while revealing that the outlay saw his dad give up on getting the new car he wanted.

“I love my parents so much,” Lukather continues. “My dad sacrificed that for me. I got this great guitar, I man. I woke up in the middle of the night to polish it. And the smell of the case. It changed my life.”

His dad's caveat was that, now that he had pro gear, he needed to take lessons and honor his craft with the weight it deserves. As the five-time Grammy winner continues to work on a new Van Halen album with Alex Van Halen – they're currently searching for a singer after a big-name turned them down – suffice to say the investment paid off.

He’s since clarified his role in the record after the story of their collaboration blew up. Jimmy Page, meanwhile, has explained what sets Lukather apart from his peers, and the Toto man has named his best guitar in a chat with GP.

A luthier has showcased what is set to be 2026’s most heartwarming and simultaneously heartbreaking guitar of 2026, with the Matriach – a one-of-a-kind electric guitar that pays tribute to his late wife in the most beautiful way.

Micah Teruya, who runs Teruya Guitars out of Syracuse, IN, typically documents his guitar-making process every step of the way for his 9,500+ Instagram followers. This time, he kept the build secret until he posted a video of himself playing it. And with good reason.

“I lost my beautiful wife to leukemia in August 2025,” he writes. “To honor her legacy, I built this guitar.”

The centerpiece of the pink offset is its sole fretboard inlay, which forgoes traditional mother-of-pearl in favor of a far more personal touch.

“I embedded her wedding band into the fretboard,” he explains. “Traditionally, it would be placed on the 12th fret to mark the octave. However, we were married for 10 years, 11 months, and 14 days [when she died]. Therefore, I decided to place the ring between the 10th and 11th fret to symbolize how long we had been married.

“If you look closely, you can see almost all of it sits in the 11th fret, since we were so close to our anniversary.”

One key part of the build, however, was documented, as he took her ashes and inlaid them into the signature on the gutiar’s headstock.

“This was the most painful experience I have ever had building an instrument,” he confesses. “But now, she is in every note I play. Having to deal with the technical aspects of building a guitar, while colliding with the emotional weight of who I lost was unbearable.

“Often, I could only work for 10-30 minutes on this before being physically and emotionally drained,” he continues. “This guitar needed to be finished before I could continue on any other projects. It took me over six months to finish.”

Karrah had survived ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) and a bone marrow transplant for seven years before her passing, which naturally left Micah and his family devastated. But what a legacy he has created for her with his own two hands.

“Karrah was the Matriarch of our family and friends,” he writes in another post. “Nobody tells you that you can continue to love someone more even after they leave this life. I built this guitar to honor her life and her legacy in a way that is personal and sacred to me.”

At the time of writing, the main post has just shy of 35,000 likes, and the comments section is a reminder that not all hope for humanity – despite the problems in the world – is lost. The Teruya Matriarch is a thing of beauty.

And as Ukrainian luthier Tanya Shpachuk showed earlier this year, when she painstakingly restored a Gibson Les Paul left for ruin by a Russian drone strike, guitar building can send a powerful, positive message beaming into a world that can often be excruciatingly dark.

For other unique builds, check out Jack White's Ugly Stick, a garish guitar/half-bass hybrid made by Eddie Van Halen's go-to luthier, and the twin-necked microtonal monster powering the viral sensation Angine de Poitrine.

Venus Guitars arrives with a bold mission statement: electrics made "purpose-built from the ground up" for female players. That kind of pitch tends to trigger skepticism. Too many "designed for women" guitars have leaned on glitter and heart-shaped bodies while cutting corners on hardware, build and tone.

What Venus gets right is that the concept isn't cosmetic — it's physical.

The lighter-weight, 24-inch scale and comfort-carved body translate into something you notice immediately in your hands and on a strap, regardless of your gender. The shorter scale and reduced string tension are a genuine advantage for smaller hands and a real gift for players dealing with physical issues like arthritis who still want to bend freely and express vibrato with authority.

Most importantly, these guitars convert comfort into confidence and control — the kind of command that matters as much to a weekend warrior as it does to a touring pro.

Venus Revolution

The Revolution pairs a White Jabon body with a roasted maple bolt-on neck and Indian rosewood fingerboard. At five and a half pounds, my test guitar was a legitimately featherweight instrument, the kind that makes long rehearsals noticeably easier on the shoulder. It comes in Metallic White, Midnight Black (which is what I received) and Aura Pink Pearl, and ships with a deluxe padded gig bag.

The neck is a slim C with a painted finish that stays fast under the hand, and the compound 12–16-inch radius fingerboard feels natural for open-position work while it supports cleaner bends up the neck. The stainless-steel medium-jumbo frets were neatly executed — no sharp ends, no distracting high spots — and the model’s hardware is gig-friendly throughout. It consists of a fixed bridge, chrome locking tuners, dual humbuckers with coil-splitting, a three-way switch, and a one-volume/one-tone (push/pull) layout.

One genuinely clever feature is Venus’s quick-swap pickguard system. It includes four distinctly shaped pickguards in 18 color options, swappable in under 10 seconds. It's far more useful than the cute gimmick it might seem. The ability to change a guitar's visual identity without buying another instrument is a tangible advantage for 21st-century working players who are building a content library across shoots and live clips. The caveat is that replacement pickguards run $49.99, which feels steep for something designed to encourage frequent swapping.

Venus’s distinctive diagonal position marker layout is also worth noting. It’s easy to read at a glance onstage, and Elite models add Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side dots for impressive low-light visibility.

If you're arriving from full-scale Fenders or a hefty single-cut, the 24-inch scale and slimmer profile may take a few minutes to recalibrate. After about 20 minutes, it stopped feeling different and started feeling right. Position shifts got quicker, wide bends took less effort, and the whole guitar felt easier to command up and down the neck. The lower tension pays immediate dividends for expressive playing — one-and-a-half-step bends that require real effort on a standard-scale guitar feel almost effortless here.

Tonally, the Revolution punches well above its price point. Its core voice is everything you'd want from a dual-humbucker electric: focused, punchy and eager for gain, with coil-split options that add a leaner, more percussive snap for funk rhythms, indie-rock chime, and pop parts. Through a Marshall DSL100HR into a 4x12, the bridge pickup on the Classic Gain channel delivered immediate hot-rodded British drive with unmistakable '80s attitude.

I couldn't resist diving straight into Van Halen's version of "You Really Got Me." Flip to Ultra Gain and it'll move into modern metal territory. On a Fender Super-Sonic combo, the cleans were a genuine standout: full, rich and harmonically pleasing, with the bridge pickup staying clear rather than thinning out. For an $899 instrument, that range is impressive.

The Revolution is a legitimately strong all-around instrument, and an especially compelling one for players with smaller hands or a slighter build, or anyone managing hand fatigue. Its stable hardware, simple controls and wide tonal range cover rock, pop, metal and funk without breaking a sweat. Venus set out to build a guitar that fits more players more naturally, and the Revolution delivers on that promise.

Venus Revolution Elite "Dark Roast"

The Dark Roast takes the same ergonomic silhouette and pushes it upmarket: a USA-made roasted basswood body with a 5A figured maple cap, a figured roasted maple neck and a "Royal Black" torrefied purpleheart fingerboard. At six and a quarter pounds, it's still impressively light for a premium build. The slim, asymmetric C neck — slightly thicker on the bass side — wears a hand-rubbed oil finish that feels broken-in immediately. The compound 10–14-inch radius fingerboard is PLEK'd.

Hardware is appropriately premium: Hipshot locking tuners, a Hipshot U.S. Contour trem, a Switchcraft side jack and CTS pots. Pickups are a DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary set paired with a five-way Lead Mode switching arrangement. It’s a vintage-voiced foundation with expanded access to brighter, more focused tones when needed.

The DiMarzio PAF 36ths deliver exactly what you'd hope they would: vintage-inspired warmth and articulation that stays musical under gain, with enough clarity for layered chord work and enough push for lead lines that need to sing. Through the Marshall DSL100HR, clean bridge tones carried a glossy top end — plenty of sparkle — although the low end felt a touch looser and rounder than the Revolution's. That's not inherently a flaw: players who prefer a thicker foundation for big chords may actually gravitate toward it.

On Ultra Gain, the Elite clicked best at a classic hot-rod gain setting — the bridge pickup delivered high-octane sustain that made lead parts feel energized without getting harsh. The Fender Super-Sonic was an especially flattering partner. In the second pickup position via Lead Mode, the Elite produced a crisp, snappy clean that landed far closer to classic Fender-style spank than you'd expect from a dual-humbucker setup.

The Bottom Line

The Elite Dark Roast is the more premium and nuanced instrument, with a great trem, name-brand pickups, expanded switching, and boutique fit and finish, all in a featherweight package. But the real headline here is the Revolution. It's the guitar that kept surprising me. Through both the Marshall and the Fender, it consistently sounded bigger, more inspiring and more complete than anything in its price range has a right to. From convincing '80s rock snarl on Classic Gain to gorgeously usable cleans on the Super-Sonic, the Revolution delivers the goods at every turn. If Venus’s goal is to build guitars that invite you to play more — and play bolder — mission accomplished.

SPECIFICATIONS

Revolution

CONTACT venus-guitars.com

PRICE $899

NUT WIDTH 1.650", bone

NECK Roasted maple, slim C shape

FRETBOARD Indian rosewood, 24" scale, compound 12"–16" radius

FRETS 22 medium jumbo

TUNERS Chrome locking

BODY White Jabon

BRIDGE Fixed

PICKUPS Dual humbuckers with coil split

CONTROLS Volume, tone (push/pull), 3-way switch

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario EXL 110 .010 - .046

WEIGHT 5.5 lb

BUILT Indonesia

EXTRAS Quick-swap pickguard, padded gig bag

Revolution Elite - Dark Roast

CONTACT venus-guitars.com

PRICE $2,749+

NUT WIDTH 1.650", synthetic bone (Nubone)

NECK Figured roasted maple, slim asymmetric C shape (thicker bass side)

FRETBOARD Royal Black (torrefied purpleheart), 24" scale, compound 10"–14" radius

FRETS 22 medium jumbo

TUNERS Hipshot locking

BODY Roasted basswood with figured maple cap

BRIDGE Hipshot US Contour Trem

PICKUPS DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary set

CONTROLS Volume, tone, 5-way Super Switch w/ "Lead Mode"

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario NYXL .010 - .046

WEIGHT 6.25 lb

BUILT USA

EXTRAS Extra quick-swap pickguard included, Luminlay side dots, deluxe padded gig bag

One of the best guitar sales of the year is about to come to a close, with Guitar Center's Guitar-A-Thon due to end on April 29th. So, if you want to take advantage of massive discounts of up to 30% off guitar gear, now's the time to pull the trigger.

Plenty of the biggest guitar brands have still got massive discounts in the sale, with heavy reductions on Fender, Gibson, Martin, Taylor, and loads more. You can also save big on guitar pedals, guitar amps, and a nice selection of bass guitars as well.

There’s a lot to look at in the sale, so to make your life easier, I’ve looked through the whole sale for you to see what's still available and discounted, picking out 11 of my favorite last-minute deals to get you started.

Ian Horne can vividly recall the moment he realized he had lost Paul McCartney’s Höfner 500/1 violin bass.

“It felt like the worst moment of my life,” Horne tells RadioTimes of the morning in October 1972 when he discovered the instrument missing. “I walked up to the truck, saw the padlock on the ground, and my heart sank.”

This was no ordinary bass. It was the instrument with which the Beatles became famous in 1962 and ’63, heard on early hits like “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You.” McCartney was just 18 when he purchased it for £30 in Hamburg in April 1961 during the band’s residency on the Reeperbahn.

Within two years, the bass had been worn down from constant use, prompting McCartney to purchase a second Höfner as a replacement. The original instrument was largely retired, surfacing only occasionally, most notably during the filming of Let It Be.

By 1972, the Beatles had been broken up for two years, and McCartney and his wife, Linda, were recording and performing with their new band, Wings. Horne had joined them the previous year as their sound engineer. At the time, Wings were bouncing between London studios while recording tracks for their second album, Red Rose Speedway.

At the end of one long studio session, Horne loaded the band’s equipment into their truck.

“It was a three-ton truck with a roller shutter at the back,” he recalls.

Afterward, he drove Wings crew member Trevor Jones to his flat in Notting Hill, in West London. It was late, and Jones suggested Horne stay the night. In what would turn out to be the worst decision of his career, Horne agreed. He parked the truck nearby on Cambridge Gardens, in what he describes as a rough neighborhood of drug dealers and artists.

“There were lots of nice people in the hippie culture,” he says. “But there were some dodgy people about as well.”

The next morning, Horne returned to the truck and immediately saw something was wrong. The padlock that secured the roller shutter was lying on the ground.

“When I pushed the shutter up, I saw straight away that it was gone,” he says. “The bass wasn’t there.”

Jones led Horne to several nearby houses where he suspected the instrument might have ended up. Armed with tools from the truck, the two men knocked on doors and confronted a few residents.

“We went to two or three places in a sort of threatening manner,” Horne recalls. “But we didn’t find it.”

There was nothing left to do but report the theft to the police — and then deliver the news to McCartney himself.

“I realized I had to go and tell Paul in person.”

At the time, McCartney was living near Abbey Road Studios. Horne, clearly shaken, went to see him and broke the news directly.

“I just came out with it: ‘I’ve got some bad news, Paul. Our truck was broken into and the bass was stolen.’”

Horne braced for the worst.

“I expected him to go ballistic,” he says. “But Paul was lovely about it. He said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got another one.’”

In fact, McCartney was so concerned about Horne’s reputation that he chose not to publicize the loss, fearing it might damage the engineer’s career. The decision had an unintended consequence: with little attention drawn to the theft, the bass quietly disappeared into obscurity.

Which helps explain why it took decades for the search to begin in earnest. In 2023, the Lost Bass Project launched a global search to find the Höfner. Within weeks, a woman discovered the instrument was among the guitars her husband left behind when he died during the COVID outbreak. That search is the subject of the new documentary Paul McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass.

So why did McCartney finally decide to look for it in 2023?

“I think anything that’s nicked, you want back — especially if it has sentimental value,” he said. “It just went off into the universe, and it left us thinking, ‘Where did it go?’ There must be an answer.”

Some guitarists are quick to dismiss their instruments as mere tools of the trade. For others, however, a guitar can carry deep sentimental value. For Zakk Wylde, his famed “Grail” Les Paul represents exactly that: the instrument tied to the most pivotal turning point of his life. When he believed he had lost it forever, a small identifying detail on the guitar ultimately helped bring it back to him.

Wylde’s life changed dramatically in the late 1980s when he went from being a Randy Rhoads–obsessed guitar teacher to becoming his successor. At just 20 years old, Wylde landed the role of lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, becoming the singer’s third full-time guitarist after Jake E. Lee concluded his two-album run with the band.

Wylde reportedly beat out several high-profile contenders for the job, including Dutch virtuoso Adrian Vandenberg—who would later join David Coverdale’s Whitesnake—as well as shred guitarist Chris Impellitteri. Wylde himself has suggested there may have been a reason the unknown newcomer ultimately got the nod.

Shortly after he joined Osbourne’s band, Gibson quickly offered him an endorsement deal. Around the same time, Wylde struck a deal with a friend, Scott Quinn, to acquire his dream instrument: a cream-colored 1981 Les Paul Custom.

Wylde used the guitar to write his first song with Osbourne, “Miracle Man,” paying homage to both Hendrix and Rhoads in the process. Soon afterward, however, he decided to move away from the direct visual association with Rhoads, who frequently played a cream Les Paul Custom during his time with Osbourne.

That decision led to the electric guitar’s now-famous bullseye paint scheme. Ironically, the finished result was not exactly what Wylde had originally envisioned. Yet years later, when the guitar was lost under dramatic circumstances, that imperfect paint job helped identify it and ultimately led to its return.

“Don’t ever sell your first guitar,” Wylde said in a recent interview with Thomann. “You’ve got too many memories attached to it. Never get rid of them, because it’s got the mojo.”

The story of how he lost the Grail is almost as remarkable as how he got it back.

Wylde and his band were traveling overnight from Dallas to Oklahoma after stopping to watch Dimebag Darrell perform with Pantera. While the band slept, a critical oversight occurred.

“I remember when we woke up in the morning,” Wylde recalled. “The guys didn’t lock the back of the U-Haul trailer on the back of the bus, so the door went up and gear was falling out onto the highway. The Grail fell out of the back of the trailer onto the side of the road.”

Fortunately, the guitar was protected inside a durable Gibson “Chainsaw” hard case, which allowed it to survive the fall. It was later recovered by an unknown passerby.

“I just figured it was gone forever,” Wylde said. “But somebody saw the thing on the side of the road, picked it up and brought it to a pawn shop.”

The person who found it quickly sold the instrument and moved on. But the pawn shop owner happened to notice something distinctive.

“The guy who had it in the pawn shop took off the pickup ring, and it had ‘Z.W.’ on the back of it underneath the pickup,” Wylde explained. “And he said, ‘This is Zakk’s guitar.’”

By that point—around the year 2000—Wylde and his signature bullseye design were widely recognized. That small identifying mark, combined with the guitar’s unmistakable look, allowed the shop owner to track down its rightful owner.

Wylde ultimately traded one of his signature Gibson models in exchange for the instrument.

“I swapped him one of my signature Zakk Wylde Gibsons—the Bullseye—for it,” he said. “Not a bad deal.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wylde also reflected on some of his favorite memories with Osbourne — though he admitted at least one of those moments was far less enjoyable for the Prince of Darkness. He has also suggested that Osbourne had been considering a return to the sound of No More Tears for a future album before his passing.

When the Lost Bass Project launched a search for Paul McCartney’s missing Höfner bass in September 2023, it quickly became a global event.

What no one realized was that, around the same time, a woman entirely unaware of the search had already found the instrument. It was upstairs in the attic of her home — roughly 12 miles from where McCartney lives.

The story was revealed in The Times on March 28, just ahead of a new BBC documentary about the instrument — McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass — that debuts in England this week.

McCartney’s 1961 Höfner 500/1 violin bass is the stuff of legend. The instrument, which he purchased at age 18 during the Beatles’ second trip to Hamburg, was played at the band’s early shows and on their early recordings, including their debut album.

By October 1963 the Höfner needed repair, prompting McCartney to purchase an almost identical 500/1 while the original was serviced. He rarely played the 1961 bass afterward, although it did make a brief appearance during the band’s sessions for Let It Be.

In 1972, while McCartney and his band Wings were recording Red Rose Speedway at studios around London, the 1961 Höfner was among several instruments stolen from an equipment van parked in the city’s Notting Hill neighborhood.

According to the story that later emerged, George Glenister stole the bass in an act of petty thievery, believing he could sell it “for a few quid.” Once he realized what he had, Glenister knew the instrument was far too recognizable to sell. Instead, he gave it to Ron Guest, proprietor of the Admiral Blake pub in Ladbroke Grove, in exchange for a few pints of beer.

When Guest died in 1992, the bass passed to his son, Haydn Guest. Haydn married Cathy, and they moved to Hastings in East Sussex. When Haydn died during the COVID-19 pandemic, his guitars — including the Höfner — went to her.

“I inherited about 15 guitars,” she told David Collins. “I knew there were a few in the attic but hadn’t been up there for years as it was inaccessible.”

She discovered the bass in September 2023, around the time the Lost Bass Project announced its search. Cathy said she was unaware of the effort and only realized what she had after uploading a photo of the instrument to Google Images.

“The results immediately came up with Paul McCartney,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it, but I knew he only lived about 12 miles away, so I thought I would just drive there.”

“There” was McCartney’s farm in East Sussex. He was in Los Angeles at the time, so Cathy instead spoke with his security team and sent photos of the bass for verification.

“I slept with it that night because I was worried,” she said.

After McCartney confirmed it was his Höfner, the bass was returned to him on September 21, 2023, and was later restored.

McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass captures the moment he was reunited with the instrument. Holding it for the first time in more than 50 years, he murmurs: “Welcome home, honey.”

To see Keith Urban live is to see an icon wholly unafraid of brandishing any guitar he wishes to play. Lately, he’s been bonding with a well-worn ’64 Strat, and he’s also had ongoing discussions with PRS about creating a versatile signature model that can do it all.

But the guitar at the heart of Urban’s career is — and has been — Clarence, a beloved 1989 Fender 40th Anniversary Telecaster. Urban will be the first to tell you that the guitar is far from perfect. Years of road wear have done it no favors.

But he loves it so much that the neck profile is the inspiration for his yet-to-be-finished PRS.

“It’s a whole conversation about where physics clash with correctness,” Urban says. “We all know for a fact that there’s no soul in perfection.”

Which is why Urban continues to lean on Clarence, despite its inherent dysfunction. But he admits that, due to mileage, its future is as a wall-hanger, which is why his collaboration with PRS will be something to watch.

“It’s just like when they come out with new guitar processing gear. You still find yourself going back, and people ask, ‘Why are you playing that? They improved it.’ And you go, ‘Yeah. That’s where they fucked up,’” he says with a laugh.

“Sometimes, the shittier elements are what give things their mojo.”

Where and when did you find Clarence?

I was on my first trip to America. I went to Nashville, but I really wanted to go to New York and have a look around at Manny’s Music because it was world-famous, and I had my eye on getting a really great Telecaster.

The very first guitar I ever owned was an Ibanez Telecaster copy. I got it when I was nine, so the Telecaster shape was something really familiar to me. When I was about 15, I bought a Strat because I was obsessed with Mark Knopfler. But as I got into my late teens and early 20s, I got really big into chicken-pickin’, and I really wanted a Telecaster.

Is Manny’s where you found Clarence?

Yes. So, we got to New York. I went to Manny’s, walked in, saw this guitar, and asked the guy if I could play it. He pulled it out of this glass case, like it was the Mona Lisa. I played it and just immediately loved the feel, the tone, the speed, and the fluidity.

I mean, compared to guitars I’ve played previously, it was just amazing. But I didn’t have anywhere near enough money to buy it, so I borrowed some money, bought it, and took it back to Australia. And because it was gorgeous-looking, with the gold hardware, tobacco sunburst finish, and the bird’s-eye maple neck that was just exquisite, I didn’t want to take it on the road.

I made my very first solo album, Keith Urban, in Australia, and if anybody can find a copy of that, you’ll see the guitar is on the cover. I had only just gotten that guitar, so I was very excited to be featured with it on the cover of the album. I played it on every single song of that album.

Since Clarence was your only guitar, and you didn’t want to tour with it, what did you use on the road?

I bought a really shitty black Squier Strat, and that was my road guitar. I kept the Telecaster in its beautiful, immaculate tweed case under my bed, and when I’d come home off the road, I would pull it out from under the bed, sit on the floor, and play it.

I’d go, “Oh man, this guitar is so much easier to play than my piece of shit Squier. I wish I could take this on the road. Oh, well.” Then I’d put it back in the case and under the bed. [laughs]

And then, one day, I was like, “What a dickhead I am! Like, just play the damn thing, man!”

So I took it to a gig that night, and somewhere in the next couple of days it fell off the stand and it got a chip somewhere on the body. That’s when I said, “Okay, the gloves are off. It’s a road guitar.”

And that was it. [laughs] It became my number-one guitar for decades to come. Since then, Clarence has been on various album covers and certainly countless videos, things like “Somebody Like You” and “Who Wouldn’t Want to Be Me” — you know, pretty much all of those hits of mine through the 2000s and 2010s.

For somebody wanting to hear the sound of Clarence, what are a few notable studio moments that you’d call out?

Well, obviously, I’ve played a lot of Telecasters since then and have realized it’s an okay guitar. [laughs] I mean, I’ve definitely got Teles that are way better sounding than sweet little Clarence is, but on that first solo album, there’s an instrumental, “Clutterbilly,” which we recorded for my first album and then rerecorded for The Ranch in ’97. That’s Clarence through and through on both of those.

And if you can actually find the video for “Clutterbilly” on YouTube, you’ll see Clarence in full bloom. And that’s a good example of why I love that guitar; it’s just the speed, articulation, and consistency across all the strings.

There’s something to be said about a guitar you know very well, too.

It doesn’t really die anywhere along the neck, up and down. And you know, a couple of years ago, I was talking with John Mayer about guitar tone and guitars and various things. He said to me — and I love John’s mind because he has a really unique view of things — but he said to me, “When we talk about gear, no one ever talks enough about how well the player knows the guitar”

He said, “I think more than anything, when you hear a solo that you love, in a lot of cases what you’re hearing is how well that player knows the guitar. That’s really what you’re hearing and feeling.”

And I thought, “Man, you’re so right, John.” And in some ways, I feel like I played better when I had one guitar versus six or more.

And so, I’ve sort of made it my mission to try and get back to playing one a bit more dominantly throughout the night. But you know, Clarence is just a guitar that I’ve bonded with because I didn’t have any other guitars, and he covered so much of what I needed at that time.

With that being said, when you strap on Clarence and close your eyes, what do you feel that’s singular to that guitar?

Maybe it’s familiarity, even with its slightly dysfunctional way of being. [laughs] Because when I’d pick it up, it was like butter. It was just effortless. I know every single inch and millimeter of that guitar and how to make it do pretty much anything I’m trying to express.

But when I started playing other guitars — like a Nocaster that I love, and obviously a lot of other guitars, like the ’64 Strat that I started to bond with — they’re all very different in their neck shape, radius, and all that sort of stuff.

When I hadn’t played Clarence for a long time, I went back to him, and there was a part of me that kind of went, “Oh, this is a different guy. This isn’t as easy as this other guitar I just played.” But then that familiarity with the dysfunctionality came back so quickly, and it was just an old friend again.

What sort of modifications have you made to Clarence over the years?

One of the questions I’ve been asked is more about the hole in the pickguard, since there’s a hole in the middle position. And that happened because I was taking Clarence everywhere, and so many times I wished I had a Strat, too. I did have my Squier Strat, but in some situations, I could only take one guitar, and I just wanted to take Clarence.

I saw a video online with Brent Mason, where he’d pop the middle pickup in there, and I went, “Oh, fantastic. That’s what I’ll do.” And because I don’t know shit about electronics and how to put pickups in, I said to the guitar tech, “I wanna put this middle pickup in and a five-way position switch, blah blah blah…”

But I said, “I don’t wanna mess with this original pickguard. Can I just find another pickguard?” And he goes, “Oh, you can just cut into that one. You can find those pickguards all day long.” I went, “Are you sure?” And he went, “Oh yeah, they’re everywhere.” I said, “Okay,” and we hacked into the middle position.

So the guitar tech came back with the guitar, and I messed with various combinations for a while, but it just always sounded like a Tele trying to be a Strat. I just couldn’t get it to ever sound like what I wanted.

Eventually, I took the pickup out and told the tech, “Let’s get a replacement pickguard now to put back in ’cause I’m not gonna go with the middle pickup anymore.” But we couldn’t find one! [laughs] Turns out, when you look really closely at that 40th Anniversary Tele pickguard, it’s got a very fine tiger stripe pattern through it to give it that sort of cigarette-stained ivory color. It’s actually achieved through this very fine striping.

I couldn’t find another one. I was so pissed off, and it seemed like every pickguard I put in just looked awful. And so, I went, “I’ll just go with this one with the hole in the middle because the hole in the middle looks better than the wrong pickguard with no hole in the middle.”

In 2010, all your guitars ended up in a devastating flood in Nashville. Was Clarence in that flood?

It’s a great question. I gotta imagine he was, but I can’t recall now. But I mean, every guitar I had went into the Cumberland storage at Soundstage, which was right next to the river. Genius, right? [laughs]

It was a Friday when the rains came, and I was gonna start an album called Get Closer. I was in Hawaii at the time. We called Soundstage and asked if they could take all of my guitars off the high shelves they usually sat on and put them on the floor, ready to be loaded into the truck on Saturday morning. So everything had been put on the floor: my amps, guitars… You can’t make this up. [laughs]

Pretty much everything floated around in that river for, like, five days or something, because all the power lines were down, they weren’t letting people in. They said, “We just gotta wait until all the water subsides before we can get into Soundstage.” [Due to the flood, Urban bought guitars on eBay to continue recording his 2010 album, Get Closer, an act he compared to cheating]

Everyone who had a guitar in Soundstage knew our guitars were floating in water for days, but we couldn’t get in and do anything about it. But you know, most of the guitars I had survived. They all got dried out, disassembled, meticulously cleaned, and put back together. Most of the acoustics were destroyed, but most of my electrics came back to life, and I kept them all.

It must have been agonizing to wait those five days to see the damage.

It was a lot of frustration. Obviously, we all knew the faster we got them out of the water, the better. It was really frustrating having to just wait for the water level to subside and for the authorities, or whoever, to say, “Okay, the coast is clear, you can come on in. Get your babies out of here.”

But it’s kind of remarkable, and I’m sure that a lot of luthiers learned a lot from it. And I noticed just how many guitars came back to life, especially the old ones. For me, the guitars that just collapsed and never recovered were mostly the newer ones. I found that the older ones, even the electronics in them, fared better across the board. It was really extraordinary. So they definitely don’t make ’em like they used to.

You mentioned John Mayer earlier, who also helped hook you up with PRS. How is that going?

In that same conversation that we were talking about before, he was talking about how Paul [Reed Smith] had made him his primary guitar that he was using in Dead & Co. He had said that he’d just like to play one guitar all night, much like Jerry [Garcia] did. I thought, “Man, I used to play one guitar all night.”

I said, “I’d love to get back to something that has the versatility that I need, because my music covers so many different styles, and it’s really hard to just have one guitar. But still, one guitar that’s got versatility would be good.” So that was the conversation that I started with Paul and Bev at PRS, and that’s still ongoing.

What exactly are you looking for beyond just one guitar to rule them all, so to speak, and how does Clarence factor into that, if at all?

It’s just a sort of discovery mission for every little detail of body style, scale length, woods, weights, pickups, yada yada yada. But interestingly, with what I mentioned earlier about how well someone knows a guitar, I sent Clarence to Paul, and said, “Well, let’s start by meticulously getting all the measurements, details, and data from Clarence so we can replicate at least his neck down to the nth degree.”

And so Paul did that and sent me the guitar. He came to Nashville to my studio, and I was playing a couple of the prototypes, and this particular one, where he’d mapped out Clarence, I was playing it, and I got up really high on the highest string, up past the 12th fret, and I was like, “Something feels weird up here, Paul. I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

Paul said, “Oh well, you had so much wear on Clarence that you can’t even press the E against the fretboard without it sliding off.” So, he fixed that.

I went, “What?” I picked up Clarence, and when I got to that fret, the E string never fell off once. I said, “What are you talking about?”

He looked at me and goes, “How are you doing that?” I said, “Because I know the guitar, Paul.”

I said, “This isn’t about physics; this is about familiarity.” And my familiarity was that I could make this work, even when another guitar player couldn’t. So, I said, “I need you to clone this verbatim — but don’t get all physical on me.” [laughs]

It was a really great little kind of moment of two ways of approaching things crashing into each other. And so the prototype is ongoing right now.

There’s something to be said about those late ’80s Fenders, where they sort of fight you, but in a good way.

That’s another conversation that’s been… interesting. [laughs] PRS guitars are historically revered for their fine craftsmanship, playability, and refinement, but I’m constantly asking Paul if he can put more fight in the guitar. [laughs]

What does he say to that?

Of course, Paul looks at me, and he goes, “Why? Why do you want to fight?” [laughs] I say to him, “I don’t want to fight, it’s just what I know. And when I get onstage, my adrenaline kicks in. This guitar doesn’t handle my adrenaline.” And then, Paul looks at me, and he goes, “Well, rein in your adrenaline.” And I go, “That’s a fair point.” [laughs]

And it is a fair point. I tell my guitar tech, Chris Miller, “When I hit it like this, it just sort of implodes.” And he goes, “Well, don’t hit it like that.”

I get it. I would like to have more of that refined approach, but it’s just not how I play.

Something about Fenders that I’ve always loved is that they’ve got an agricultural, working-class spirit in them that feels very familiar to me. I mean, I literally came from a working-class family, and there’s just a little bit of attitude in the guitar, where it almost says, “You’re gonna have to work to get me to do something.”

I respond well to that. It’s where the passion and the fire come from. It’s from that friction, you know? Friction is where the spark and heat come from. I’m just not one of those players that has that fluid dexterity and refinement.

It’ll be interesting to see if we can get to the place where I get what I need out of the guitar, and where Paul can maintain the qualities that PRS is so renowned for, you know? It’s almost like I feel like I’m trying to put some stick-ass rims on a Rolls-Royce, and Rolls-Royce is looking at me going, “Why, what are you doing?” [laughs]

When your PRS is finally done, what does that mean for Clarence’s place in your world?

Look, in a lot of ways, Clarence — and this is with all due respect to the Fender Custom Shop at the time — you know, the wood hasn’t fared as great through its lifetime as, say, some guitars from the ’50s and ’60s. So, he’s gotten beaten up, maybe past the great tonal quality that he used to have… he’s kind of lost a lot of that.

So I think what’ll happen with Clarence is I’ll probably have him hanging in my studio, and he’ll be just a great little studio guitar to grab for various things. But I don’t know if I’ll use him live very much, though I do love the 40th Anniversary Teles.

That’s why I’ve acquired a couple more over the years in that exact same spec. They made 300 of each of those, and I’ve got two others. So Clarence is number one, and then I have a 40th Anniversary which we just call Number Two. I take it out on the road occasionally, and that one sort of feels and sounds more like Clarence used to in his former glory.

In my neck of the woods, Presidents’ Day means one thing – great guitar deals. Pretty much every major retailer is having a sale today, and while you might not think the Amazon Presidents’ Day sale has much to offer us guitar players, I’ve looked through the whole sale, and there are some awesome deals on guitar gear to take advantage of.

With 474 deals in total at the time of writing, admittedly, there’s a lot of cheap, tacky stuff here. If you look hard enough, though, you’ll see some big names popping up like Fender, Boss, D’Addario, and more. Whether you want to save big on essentials like guitar strings, or get your hands on a brand new electric guitar, here are 6 of the best deals you can pick up right now.

• Shop the full Amazon Presidents’ Day sale

• Fender - save $600 on Vintera II
• Guitar Center - up to 30% off guitars
• Sweetwater - great guitar sale
• Musician’s Friend - up to 60% off gear
• Reverb - new and used up to 67% off

Shop more Presidents' Day sales

Presidents' Day is here, and you know what that means: music retailers across the country are dropping prices left, right, and center. Whether you’re eyeing a new axe, need to upgrade your pedalboard, or just want to stock up on strings and accessories, there are deals everywhere you look.

Whether you’re a weekend warrior, bedroom producer, or gigging veteran, there’s something for everyone in this year’s Presidents’ Day sales. Everyone from Guitar Center to Musician’s Friend, Sweetwater, and Fender is getting in on the action, so it’s a great time to cross off those wishlist items or finally take the plunge on that piece of dream gear.

Expect to see savings on everything from beginner packs and practice amps to boutique pedals and pro-level audio interfaces. Many retailers are also sweetening deals with free shipping, bonus accessories, and even extended financing options to help make upgrading your rig a little easier on the wallet.

Below you’ll find our top 5 sales worth shopping this Presidents’ Day.

It’s Presidents’ Day today, and that means it’s a great opportunity to save big on some fresh guitar gear. One of the best sales I’ve seen so far is over at the official Fender store, where you can bag yourself up to $600 off Vintera II guitars. It includes Strats, Teles, Mustangs, Jaguars, and more, so it’s well worth a browse if you’re a Fender fan.

It’s not just Vintera II guitars in the sale either, you can also save on some select Fender Player Plus instruments, plus a nice selection of Squier guitars. The Paranormal, Sonic, and Affinity lines all have reductions if you want to pick up a great playing guitar for relatively little cash.

I’ve had a look through the full sale, and the first deal to catch my eye was a hefty $510 off this Fender Vintera II 50s Nocaster. Based on one of the most famous Fender guitars ever made, it’s got a surprisingly thick-sounding pair of single coils in it, and the ‘U’ neck profile is really comfortable considering it’s not a shape you usually find on guitars these days.

There’s also a chance to save big on an anniversary guitar, with the Fender 70th Anniversary Vintera II Antigua Strat getting a gigantic $600 reduction. Unusually, it’s a hardtail Strat, so expect rock-solid tuning stability, and the trio of vintage-style 70s single coils will give you all those classic Strat tones.

Finally, another Strat grabbed my attention thanks to a generous $410 off this Fender Vintera II 70s Strat. It’s another guitar that attempts to recreate an iconic version of probably the world’s most famous guitar, with a 7.25” radius fingerboard and narrow tall frets. Add in the synchronized tremolo with bent steel saddles plus a set of ‘F’ stamped tuning machines, and you’ve got the perfect vintage Strat for way less than a grand at just $799.99.

• Amazon: - save big on accessories
• Guitar Center - up to 30% off guitars
• Sweetwater - great guitar sale
• Musician’s Friend - up to 60% off gear
• Reverb - new and used up to 67% off

Guitarists are always on the lookout for a bargain, and Presidents' Day is quickly becoming a great time for guitar players to shop. It seems every music retailer gets involved in the Presidents’ Day celebrations, but for us, one of the most impressive sales comes courtesy of Guitar Center. For the next few days, you can bag up to 30% off a wide range of big-name guitar gear.

This exceptional sale offers generous discounts on some of the most popular electric and acoustic guitars, along with a range of pedalboard essentials.

The headline offer is a whopping $900 off a stunning Gibson Les Paul. As you’d expect, this gorgeous LP features a mahogany body, topped with a stunning AAA figured maple top, and is available in either sweet Honey Lemon Burst or Triburst.

If you're looking to pair your new guitar with a suitably discounted amplifier, you might want to take advantage of $50 off the rather cool blacked-out Marshall DSL40CR. Nothing pairs as well with a Gibson Les Paul as a Marshall, and this is one of the coolest around.

Elsewhere in the sale, you'll find $100 off the Line 6 HX Stomp. Thanks to its ingenious blend of amp and effects modeling alongside its incredibly flexible connectivity options, this is one of our favorite multi-effects pedals on the market right now.

Obviously, there's a lot more on offer, so it's worth browsing through the sale to see if anything takes your fancy. You have until 18 February to grab a bargain, so if you see something you like, don't hang about, as you don't have long.

Shop the full Guitar Center Presidents' Day sale below 

• View the full electric guitar sale
• View the full bass guitar sale
• View the full amps and effects sale
• View the full accessories sale

Guitar makers have long recognized the benefit of having an artist’s name attached to their wares. Les Paul, Chet Atkins and Nick Lucas — likely the first guitarist to have a signature model — all had their names emblazoned on guitars.

As the electric guitar boom got underway in the 1960s, a few gear makers continued to release artist models. Gibson had the Trini Lopez semi-hollow, while Mosrite teamed up with the Ventures to create the Ventures model line.

Over in Japan, a surf band called the Sharp Five received a signature model from Guyatone, the LG 350-T Sharp 5 (the company chose the numeral over the word). The band featured star guitarist Nobuhiro Mine, who helped design the Sharp 5 at age 20. He’s since been involved in creating many iconic guitar models and remains an active performer.

With the Sharp 5, Mine became a trailblazer in the world of Japanese surf rock. Unfortunately, neither his band nor the guitar that bears their name made a splash in the U.S., which is a shame. Both were quite good and novel in their own ways.

Made in Guyatone’s Kawai plant, the 1968 LG 350-T shown here is a fine example. The exaggerated offset cutaways and whack-as-hell headstock are the most noticeable weirdo features, but they are balanced by the beautiful blue pickguard atop a deep-blue sparkle body with a sculpted, almost German-style carve top. A carve top was an unusual feature not found on other guitars of the day aside from some Rickenbacker models and a few Mosrites.

Looks aside, this is an excellent and well-made guitar that could have been a contender in the late-’60s and remains a clear winner on today’s vintage market. It sports a super skinny neck, similar to what you’d find on a Mosrite, with 22 low-profile frets set into a rosewood fingerboard with cream binding. Like a Mosrite, it has a metal nut and a zero-fret, but no pesky volute. It adds up to a guitar that’s easy to play, and fast as well.

The two single-coil pickups have a decidedly Fender Jaguar look and sound, although they’re a bit louder and bassier. Electronics include global tone and volume controls with a three-way pickup selector. This guitar is super cutting for funk strumming and/or surf lead lines. The middle setting is out-of-phase, and sounds excellent.

This guitar also slams with distortion added. It has a lot of harmonic “chick” sounds but doesn’t get too microphonic — although I understand that some later model years had noisier pickups than others. Early examples, like this one, are quiet. The tremolo works beautifully as well, along the lines of a Bigsby, so no dive bombing.

At 24 inches from nut to saddle, the Sharp 5 is on the long end for a three-quarter-scale guitar. The frets are slightly closer to each other, but not all that noticeably. My only complaint about the guitar is the neck angle. The headstock travels straight off the neck, with no downward pull. Three dual string trees compensate for the lack of string tension, but it’s still a bit banjo-like to play. That complaint aside, it’s a killer guitar.

In 1968, the LG 350-T sold for roughly $95. Today, a Sharp 5 in good condition could fetch between $1,000 and $2,000. I paid $1,300 for mine in 2025, which was a great deal considering its age and overall condition, and especially since it has the Sharp 5 decal that the later models didn’t have. If you’re looking for a unique vintage electric that looks and sounds great, is light and easy to play, and is comparably affordable, I can recommend it.

A Ukrainian guitarist has completed the exhaustive process of restoring a Gibson Les Paul that was badly burned after a Russian drone strike hit the nation’s capital city last year. She calls it “the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on — both technically and emotionally.”

Luthier Tanya Shpachuk documented her efforts to return the blackened guitar — named Vlad after its owner — to a playable state. As a professional guitar tech working out of a Kyiv-based shop, Shpachuk was well-equipped to take on the challenge, but was also struck by the emotional weight that her restoration mission held.

“Being able to take part in this restoration feels like more than just fixing a guitar,” she writes in the description from her video series that documents the restoration. “It’s about bringing back a piece of our history, a piece of beauty and a piece of hope.

”I’ll do everything I can to make this guitar sing again, to honor its story, and to remind everyone that even after destruction, creativity and resilience will always find a way.”

Shpachuk calls the damage “heartbreaking.” The guitar’s body was charred and distorted, parts of its headstock were cracked, and several inlays had fallen out. Three of its four control knobs were destroyed, and the pickup mounting rings were warped by the heat of flames. It looked largely irreparable.

Shpachuk thought otherwise. She scraped away the fire-damaged finish, replaced a damaged pearl inlay on the fretboard and spent hours tirelessly working on the guitar, giving it a complete refinish and new hardware.

The newly restored guitar now sports a gorgeous Silver Burst finish and features a new mother-of-pearl inlay for its headstock. The original pickups still bear the scars of the drone strike, however, a reminder of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

That invasion, launched in 2022, saw the music community rally to the country's aid. Gibson recruited Slash, Paul McCartney and other artists for a fundraiser, while Pink Floyd released a song inspired by a historic Ukrainian anthem.

Shpachuk says Les Paul she restored stands as a testament to the Ukrainian spirit in what has been an extremely challenging time for the nation. She explains, however, that her decision to refinish the guitar went agains the wishes of some followers on YouTube and her Patreon page.

“I saw many comments suggesting leaving the damage visible as a reminder, because it looks 'badass,’” she says in the video description in part eight, the final video of the series. “But my focus from the very beginning was restoration.

“The message here is simple: we all want rebuilding — and we are capable of doing it.”

The video series ends, quite fittingly, with its owner playing the freshly revitalized guitar, via some lovely finger-picking. Parts one and eight are embedded here, but watch the entire series to get a true scale of the project and its poignancy.

Described as a “retro-refined take on a classic Gretsch design,” the Electromatic CVT is a hip-looking solidbody electric guitar that melds throwback styling with powerful tones tailored to suit modern players. With its double-cut mahogany body — which is comfortably rounded on the edges — solid wraparound bridge and pair of Twin Six humbuckers, this guitar is a rock machine par excellence.

It plays well thanks to a combination of a bolt-on C-shape mahogany neck that’s capped with a 24.6-inch-scale laurel-wood fingerboard sporting 22 lightly polished medium-jumbo frets, which are beveled on the tips and don’t feel prickly when you’re sliding along the neck.

My review sample was finished in Vintage White, which was nicely set off by a swooping tortoise-color pickguard that surrounds the neck pickup and the nickel-plated, flat-top control knobs, which are knurled on the sides to make them easy to grip.

The Electromatic CVT is a well-made guitar with no finish or binding flaws. It has a solid feel throughout and seems like it should cost more than it does. I initially brought it along on gigs as a spare in case a string broke on my PRS Dustie Waring signature model, but the Gretsch proved always perfect to strap on and rock out with, notwithstanding that it’s a budget axe compared to the U.S.-made PRS.

In terms of playability, the comfortable C-shape neck and 24.6-inch-scale fingerboard offer a great playing feel. The rounded neck joint makes it easy to rip to the high frets and the body’s sculpted cutaways provide plenty of access, while the contours on the front and back of the body allow the guitar to sling naturally against your body.

The factory setup on this test guitar was good, providing comfortably low action as well as tuneful intonation when chording in the higher and lower positions. The wraparound tailpiece is solidly anchored, and I think it contributes to the guitar’s sustaining sound.

The Twin Six pickups deliver tones that have a good balance of clarity and output. Perhaps a little stronger than a typical PAF pickup, they had plenty of push to drive my ’72 Marshall 50-watt into distortion, and they also sounded great with a PRS DGT 15 and a reissue Vox AC10.

I used the neck pickup a lot for rhythm and lead, switching to the middle position to broaden the sound and get a crisper tone, and the bridge setting for anything from country twang to hard rock. I found it easy to switch between the PRS and the Gretsch without feeling the guitars were too dissimilar. If anything, the CVT’s slightly shorter “G” scale made bending strings a bit easier too, which is something many players will appreciate.

The Electromatic CVT is a bang-for-buck champ that’s worth considering if you’re looking for an affordable Gretsch that performs above its price class. It’s a hip grab-and-go guitar that would be a great backup for your regular humbucker axe.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT gretschguitars.com

PRICE $419

NUT Graph Tech NuBone, 1.68" wide

NECK Bolt-on mahogany with Performance C shape and gloss finish

FINGERBOARD Laurel with aged while binding and black side dots, 24.6" scale, pearloid Neo-Classic “thumbnail” inlays and bound headstock with abalone Gretsch inlay

FRETS 22 medium jumbo

TUNERS Nickel-plated die-cast

BODY Mahogany with beveled contours and gloss finish

FINISH Available in Vintage White, Wychwood and Havana Burst

BRIDGE Wraparound with adjustable saddles, nickel plated

PICKUPS Twin Six humbuckers with Alnico 5 magnets

CONTROLS Volume, tone, 3-way toggle switch with nickel tip

FACTORY STRINGS Nickel Plated Steel, .010-.046

WEIGHT 7.6 lbs (tested)

BUILT China

PRO Cool retro-style look. Plays and sounds more upscale than its price implies.

CON Gig bag is not included

The worlds of country rock and glam metal may seem far removed, but a rare vintage Fender has bridged two stars of the genres.

In the hands of Cindarella’s Tom Keifer, this 1950 Fender “Nocaster” was used and abused. But when a major country player got the chance to buy it, it got a less bruising new life.

“I used to throw it across the stage during the show,” Keifer told Vintage Guitar about his example of Fender's early, transitional solidbody electric guitar.

A Nocaster is one of a small number of '51 Fender Broadcasters that were produced without a name on the headstock. Fender was forced to eliminate the model name when it came into trademark conflict with a Gretsch drumkit known as the Broadkaster. Fender continued to produce the Broadcaster without a name decal until some point in 1951 when the guitar was rebadged the Telecaster. To own one of these rare nameless guitars is to own a rare piece of Fender history.

Not that Keifer handed such a relic with care. Inexplicably, he traded it in to Nashville vintage guitar store, Gruhn's, where serial Grammy winner and Tele-obsessive Keith Urban came across it.

“I don't know why Tom sold it; maybe it served its purpose in his life, as they do, and it was time for someone else to own it,” Urban says in the new print issue of Guitar World. “I was at Gruhn's many, many years ago. I played it, fell in love with it, and bought it.”

Urban professes not to remember the price but says “it wasn’t cheap.” Still, for a man whose favorite guitar is his 1989 Fender 40th Anniversary Telecaster, dubbed Clarence, it was a purchase that made complete sense.

“It's just an unusually great guitar with, hands down, the most ferocious, dynamic pickups I've ever heard in a Telecaster,” he says. “The whole thing is original — well, maybe not the frets — but the electronics, hardware, and everything else. It's amazing.”

It isn’t clear when exactly Kiefer sold the Nocaster, but it's known that he later regretted his decision. He tells Vintage Guitar that he later shelled out on a 1950 Nocaster and paired with a 1972 Marshall Super Lead tube amp for his 2013 solo single, "Solid Ground."

However, he told Guitar World that same year that the Nocaster was his favorite guitar, suggesting it was likely his second model — a fondness perhaps strengthened by the regret of letting go of a guitar that Keith Urban’s paws are now all over.

Elsewhere, former GP cover star Urban has made a suggestive lyric change to one of his hits after announcing his divorce from Nicole Kidman, and it lands his co-guitarist, Maggie Baugh, at the center of the story.

Off stage, he's hard at work with Paul Reed Smith on a signature Tele that can help him “get a bit of a fight out of a guitar designed to give you no fight.” He wants it to be the most versatile T-type guitar in the world, and early signs are promising.

Queen guitarist Brian May has gifted Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi a left-handed model of his Red Special replica that merges elements of the two guitarist's custom guitars.

Built by master builder Andrew Guyton, the electric guitar was placed in Iommi’s hands last week, which led to his celebratory Instagram post over the weekend.

“Huge thanks to my best friend @brianmayforreal and master builder Andrew Guyton @guyton_guitars for this incredible left-handed Red Special replica,” Iommi wrote on Instagram. “Andrew personally delivered it last week — a true gift from Brian, two years in the making. Christmas came early! 🎸🎄 - Tony

“Andrew said ‘It’s built with the exact vintage construction of Brian May’s original Red Special, but shaped to match Tony’s iconic Jaydee Old Boy neck. Features a built-in treble booster and authentic vintage-style pots and pickups to replicate the classic tone.’”

The original Red Special was built by May and his father in the early 1960s and became a key part of Queen’s sound and identity.

In creating Iommi’s guitar, Guyton carefully matched the neck profile of Iommi’s Jaydee Old Boy electric, the custom guitar built between 1975 and 1978 by John Diggins, the founder of JayDee Custom Guitars as a successor to Iommi’s original Gibson “Monkey” and black John Birch SG. The Monkey was itself a heavily modified Gibson SG Special that defined the sound of the early Black Sabbath albums, which in turn became a hallmark of the heavy metal genre.

Iommi and May’s friendship goes back decades and began out of mutual respect — Iommi has been a fan of May’s guitar sound, and May has rightfully recognized Iommi as the father of heavy metal. May has called Iommi his "dearest friend in the business,” while Iommi has dubbed May a "rock god.”

Although the duo have never released an album together, Iommi appeared at the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert to perform on "I Want It All" and "Stone Cold Crazy,” while May has played on Iommi’s self-titled 2000 solo album.

Depending on what era of Jeff Beck’s unique guitar playing one prefers, he’s typically imagined with either a Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster in his talented hands. Or perhaps his love-it-or-hate-it Les Tele-Gib hybrid springs to mind?

Certainly not a PRS.

However, Paul Reed Smith has now claimed that, in his final years, Beck was glued to one of his electric guitars. And he's desperate to get it back.

In the Yardbirds, Beck played a sunburst Les Paul that, since his passing, has been loaned out to Lenny Kravitz’s foil, Craig Ross, and Marcus King. Later, his Blow by Blow era — which saw him butting heads with Beatles producer George Martin — was underpinned by his Oxblood Les Paul.

But, after once claiming that the Gibson axe “means business,” he pivoted to the “endless color” of the Fender Stratocaster, an instrument he was deeply associated with until his death.

Smith’s claim, then, that PRS had pulled him over to the dark side comes as quite the surprise.

So what’s going on?

“People don’t know this, but Jeff Beck had a PRS at home, and he loved it,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “He told me I’d never see him with it, but he used it to record.”

Unfortunately, Smith remains tight-lipped about what model of PRS it was. Educated guesses include an early prototype of John McLaughlin's signature, a Private Stock McCarty, or even a semi-hollow model, but those could all be way off the mark.

The important thing for Smith is tracking the guitar down.

“We’ve been trying to get it back,” the luthier and businessman explains. “It wasn’t part of the auction this year, but I know he loved that guitar.”

That auction saw big hitters like the Yardburst Les Paul that went for $496,484, and the OxBlood model became the world’s most expensive LP and smashed a series of auction records. But the PRS never made it so far.

So did it leave his possession before his death, or is it somewhere in the Beck family vault still?

In March, Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers claimed he owns Beck's last-ever recording, but added that it is unlikely to ever be released. Going off Smith's words, Beck may have tracked the song with his PRS. But, of course, this is pure speculation.

It’s a fascinating mystery either way. Let’s hope the truth soon reveals itself.

In related news, Buddy Guy has been reflecting on how Jeff Beck and the British blues guitarists of the 1960s gave his career a shot in the arm, and Ronnie Wood has revealed why he switched from rhythm guitar to bass in the Jeff Beck Group.

When you think of effects pedals, acoustic guitars aren’t often the first thing that comes to mind. The natural organic sound of an acoustic instinctively doesn’t feel like it mixes with pedals, but the reality is that smartly applying one of the best acoustic guitar pedals can offer a new dimension to your sound, especially when playing live.

I’ve tried out some, frankly, silly combinations of acoustic guitars and pedals over the years, getting dynamite results with the likes of overdrives and modulation. I’ve also explored the acoustic guitar preamp pedals, which perform a different task, but can be equally impactful on your acoustic tone. In this list, I’ve combined a mixture of different styles of pedal, so whatever you’re looking to achieve with your acoustic, there will be a pedal to help you get there.

If you just want to improve your tone with an acoustic guitar preamp pedal, then you should check out the Fishman Aura Spectrum, which is in my opinion the best preamp pedal for acoustic players. If you want to add some delay to your sound, the Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run is my top pick. If you need a looper that inspires creativity, check out the Pigtronix Infinity II.

If you’re brand new to pedals I’ve curated a handy how to choose section for you, which guides you through the important decisions you’ll need to make. I’ve also put together a list of FAQs that guitar players often ask, and a glossary of key terms to help you deal with the technical lingo in this guide.

My top picks

Best acoustic preamp

Overview: Fishman is among the most revered brand names when it comes to electronics for acoustic guitars, be that integrated preamps, pickups, or, in this instance, pedals. The Aura Spectrum DI Preamp is a surefire way to get consistent live (and recorded) sounds out of your acoustic guitar at every single gig.

Build quality: The Aura Spectrum is definitely designed to be taken on the road, with a durable all-metal construction that is made to last. While you can easily adjust on the fly, I see the Aura as a perfect set-and-forget pedal, with the ability to access an unlimited number of acoustic sounds via the Aura gallery and apply them to 16 user preset slots, build your presets, and guarantee great tones.

Usability: Despite its powerful tone shaping, the Aura Spectrum is extremely easy to use, with every knob and control simply labelled, so you’ll struggle to go wrong. The addition of EQ, compressor, feedback suppressor, and even a tuner makes this an all-in-one dynamic and tonal-shaping solution, particularly for live performance.

Sounds: But it isn’t just good for live; the fact of the matter is that an acoustic guitar plugged in anywhere rarely sounds like it does unplugged, but the Aura makes sure this isn’t the case. Utilizing the sound of your acoustic’s pickup and transforming it into a far more organic, mic’d up sound. That doesn’t mean you can’t have plenty of your original tone in though, with a blend control to balance the two. It pretty much guarantees perfect acoustic tones wherever you are, so it could also be ideal for the recording studio.

Best reverb

Overview: Your one-stop shop for ambience and described by Earthquaker Devices as a “dreamy stereosonic exploratory multi-tool” – I usually take manufacturers’ descriptions with a pinch of salt, but in this instance, I’d say they’re spot on. The Avalanche Run has delay and reverb integrated, plus it’s stereo, so if you want to transform your acoustic’s tone into something truly enormous, this is the pedal for you.

Build quality: Built with a dual footswitch design, with each engaging the effect and the tap tempo functions respectively, the Avalanche Run isn’t a small pedal, but considering it has two effects in one, it takes up significantly less real estate than standalone delay and reverb pedals. It also features unique Flexi-Switch® Technology which allows you to simultaneously use momentary and latching style switching, which is a cool addition.

Usability: At first glance, the Avalanche Run might seem a little bit intimidating, but in practice it’s very quick to achieve great results. The expression control is a nice option, giving you the ability to grow your ambience from distant to engulfing with the rock of your foot on an (external) expression pedal. Another thing I’d recommend exploring is the pedal’s ins and outs, which have some secret tricks to provide some quirky stereo output options, including all-wet left and standard mixed right-hand channels.

Sound: The specific types of ambience that the Avalanche Run produces are virtually limitless, with options that include reverse delay, sound-on-sound lo-fi looping, swells, and so much more. The drawback being that there is so much to choose from, it may be more than many need; however, if sending your sound to space is what you’re looking for, this is the pedal for you.

Best looper

Overview: Loopers and acoustic guitars go better than cereal and milk. You’ve got players like Ed Sheeran who have massively commercialized the world of loopers, bringing about the arrival of some seriously powerful and complex loopers, which, frankly, totally terrify me and take a lot of the fun out of looping. The Pigtronix Infinity II Hi-Fi Double Looper is the perfect combination of (relative) simplicity and professional-standard. Just as good when used at home or for live performance.

Build quality: I love the feel of the large ‘Decay’ and ‘Volume’ knobs, made from solid metal with round engraving on the top – little details, but it makes it feel special. The rest of the build is equally solid, with a metal chassis and classic, rugged switches.

Usability: Operation isn’t quite as simple as on some single looper pedals, so if you want extreme ease, then perhaps look elsewhere, but after a brief play, I found the Infinity II to be pretty straightforward, with a combination of six controls/functions that were easy to navigate.

Sound: Pigtronix have made it clear that the Infinity II has hi-fi audio quality, meaning your audio doesn’t degrade when looped. The standout, fun audio effect is the ‘Octave’ mode, which switches the sample rate from 48kHz down to 24kHz, dropping the sound by an octave in the process.

Best compressor

Overview: There are a huge number of brilliant compressor pedals that work superbly with acoustic guitars, but my choice would always be to go with a pedal that is optimized for your instrument, which is why the AFX AcoustiComp Mini Compressor from acoustic experts, Fishman, is my go-to choice for acoustic compressor pedal.

Build quality: Built into a compact factor at just 1.9” wide and 3.8” tall, this would easily fit on most pedalboards, and if it’s the only pedal you use, it will fit in most guitar cases. The tough aluminium enclosure will also mean it travels well.

Usability: I think what I like about it most is its simplicity in operation, with just two knobs controlling the effect. Fishman have made some decisions internally to make sure that wherever you set your controls, you can pretty much guarantee that the compressor will sound great, so it’s ideal for those new to effects, and particularly compressors, which can take some getting used to.

Sound: Tuned specifically to add a more subtle compression to your acoustic, the ‘Comp’ knob can be turned up to provide a fatter sound, or backed off for a lighter compression that is ideal for sitting in the mix. The level control can help you balance with your dry sound, making it seamless when you engage the compressor, rather than there being large volume jumps.

Best delat

Overview: Unconventional at first glance but absolutely perfect in application for acoustic guitars, the Ernie Ball Ambient Delay is an expression-pedal-based delay that allows you to gradually engage the effect, creating big swells of delay.

Build quality: The Ambient Delay is extremely solid, being made from aircraft aluminum, and the hinge feels particularly smooth, while the top of the pedal has a non-slip surface, so it can be used with confidence. The only downside is that it takes up a lot of room on a pedalboard – though less than a delay with an additional expression pedal, so it may work out as a more efficient use of space. If you do want to introduce a secondary pedal, it does have a tap-tempo input.

Usability: The biggest selling point of the ambient delay is its versatility, with delay time, delay feedback, and reverb level controls giving you a broad ambient palette, but when combined with the foot-sweepable effect level control, things go to another level. The ability to adjust the level of your sound in real time is above anything traditional on/off pedals can create. Using the foot-sweep takes a little bit of getting used to for those who aren’t used to expression pedals, but you’ll pick it up quickly.

Sound: The sound from this thing is big and can only be described as “lush”. The plate reverb is particularly special and pairs really well with the delay, which can be anything from a short slapback to a big 1-second echo.

Best chorus

Overview: When it comes to effects pedals, there’s nobody more legendary than Boss, and of all their pedals, there’s an argument that the CE-2 chorus sits at the top of the pile. The CE-2W is the modern reissue of the pedal coming out of Boss’s Waza division – their “premium” department – featuring the same classic sounds as the original, but topped with additional features.

Build quality: The first thing you’ll notice about this pedal is that it is, of course, constructed with Boss’s legendary build quality. There’s absolutely no reason that the CE-2W won’t last for the next 40 years, even if you’re taking it out on the road with you, so in terms of a long-term investment, it’s about as smart as you can make in the world of pedals.

Usability: If you are new to the world of acoustic pedals, as a “starter-effect”, it may be a little on the expensive side, but it is extremely simple, with just two knobs – rate and depth – making it very easy to get your head around. There are three, switchable sound options, with two variations of chorus, plus a vibrato.

Sound: While all of the modes sound brilliant, the standout for me is the vibrato setting, particularly when paired with acoustic guitar. This adds a beautiful wobble to your sound when dialled in gently, which can be really impactful, despite it being subtle. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that reserved, and there is an option to go pretty outlandish with either the chorus or vibrato effects, which makes for a lot of fun.

Also consider

If you didn't find what you were looking for above, here are some more great acoustic guitar pedals for you to have a look at.

How to choose

Choosing pedals for acoustic guitars isn’t unlike choosing pedals for electric guitars – if there’s a sound you’re aiming to achieve, there’s almost certainly a pedal out there that can help you get close to that goal. However, there are always a few things I like to consider when buying an acoustic pedal, which I’ve shared below to help you choose.

1. Starting out

This might seem obvious, but, if you’re anything like me, I’ll buy a pedal on impulse without really thinking about what I’m trying to achieve, which can be fun if you’ve already got a plethora of other pedals to choose from, but if you’re delving into acoustic effects for the first time, there are a few really good places to start depending on your goal.

In the world of acoustic pedals, you might be looking for a consistent live sound, without having to rely on the sound engineer, or you could add a different feeling to your existing sound – to put it in simpler terms, you are likely buying a preamp/tone-shaping pedal, or buying an effects pedal. While both sit at your feet and can be stomped on, they achieve different things, and both can work excellently together too.

If you’re new to acoustic guitar pedals, consider what your priority is and choose that. And don’t forget to make sure to put a tuner pedal somewhere towards the top of your list too.

2. Signal chain

Whether I’m buying a pedal for electric or acoustic, I try to consider where exactly this pedal is going to sit in my signal chain. There’s no harm in moving things around, but it’s nice to try and work out exactly where a pedal is going to fit in your chain before you buy.

For example, if you play with an acoustic amp and are buying a delay pedal, does your amp have an effects loop? Or perhaps you are happy with it going into the front end of your amp? You should also consider any other pedals you may have and how these could work together. There’s nothing worse than buying a new pedal and finding out it doesn’t play nice with one of your old favorites.

3. Feedback issues

Acoustic guitars when plugged in are generally prone to feedback even before you add any pedals to the signal chain, and those issues are only exacerbated when pedals come into the mix – particularly pedals with any kind of gain. If you want to add some dirt to your acoustic, I’d definitely consider pairing that with an EQ or notch filter, both of which can be used to mitigate feedback.

FAQs

Key terms

• Buffer: A device that can be found in some pedals or available standalone that converts a guitar's weak signal into a strong signal (by altering the impedance from high to low), helping to ensure it keeps its original tone and tone suck (the loss of high end).
• Chorus: An effect that produces a copy of the guitar signal but slightly adjusts the pitch and timing and then blends it back in with the original signal. This creates a dreamy sound that loosely replicates the sound of multiple instruments playing at once (ensemble).
• Compressor: A dynamic processing effect that brings up the low dynamics and brings down the high peaks, producing a slightly squashed, more consistent sound with more sustain to your sound.
• DI (Direct Input): Plugging your guitar straight into a DI is taking the raw, unprocessed signal and converting it into a balanced signal, preventing noise and preparing it to be sent to a mixing desk/PA system.
• EQ (Equalizer): A system to alter specific frequency bands of a sound to either boost or reduce those frequencies.
• Feedback: The phenomenon of a sound source being picked up by a pickup or microphone, being amplified, and then being picked up again in a loop, creating a screeching noise.
• Looper: A pedal that engages a record function on the first stomp and a playback function on the second stomp, creating a loop for the player to playback to.
• Modulation: An effects pedal that alters the guitar's signal over time, changing its pitch or amplitude. Chorus, phasers, and flangers are modulation effects.
• Notch filter: A filter used to remove unwanted, resonant/feedback frequencies from your playing. It is named ‘notch filter’ as on an EQ, it would look like a small notch downwards to remove only the specific unwanted frequency, and not impact the rest of the tone.
• Overdrive: A pedal that adds gain to your acoustic signal, introducing dirt and grit. This is more commonly used with electric guitars, but can have a great impact with acoustics, though can cause problematic feedback.
• Phaser/flanger: Phasers and flangers are modulation effects pedals that use a low-frequency oscillator (LFO) to create a swirling, sweeping, or "jet plane" sound by altering phase shifts or delay times.
• Piezo: A type of pickup technology that converts the acoustic guitar's string vibrations into an electrical signal, allowing the instrument to be plugged into an amplifier.
• Preamp: A device that boosts the weak signal from a guitar's pickup or internal microphone to a level that allows it to be amplified by a PA system or amplifier without being noisy or distorted. Many preamps also provide features like EQ controls for shaping your tone. Preamp pedals will also generally have a built-in DI.
• Reverb: An ambient effect that replicates the feeling of space. There are different types of reverb, including hall, plate, and spring (among others).
• Signal chain: The order in which your guitar signal flows from source – playing your guitar – to its end destination – generally, an amp or PA – between this there may be pedals, which are often placed in a specific order to have an optimized signal chain e.g., distortion/gain before time-based effects.
• Stereo: A sound that is across two channels - Left and Right. Some effects will convert your sound to stereo.
• Tremolo: An amplitude modulation effect, which quickly shifts your volume between loud and quiet, creating a fluttering effect.

How we test

When testing the best acoustic guitar pedals, we'll take the same process that we would take with any guitar pedal. We'll always try and spend at least a couple of weeks with any pedal to ensure that we get over the honeymoon period.

First, we'll look at the build quality of the unit in question. Guitar pedals need to be able to put up with plenty of abuse, espeically if you're playing them live, so we'll be sure to closely inspect every aspect of its build and all the components. We'll test footswitches, knobs, and regular switches for sturdiness, and of course we'll be sure to stomp the pedal repeatedly to test its durability.

Next we'll actually use the pedal in a variety of scenarios to see how easy or difficult it is to get the sounds out of it. From playing in the rehearsal room to taking pedals on stage, these tests are all about how it is to live with the pedal. We'll tweak every knob, press every button, and even open the pedal up to access the internal dip switches if necessary.

Finally, depending on what kind of pedal it is, we'll look at the overall sound. This is a very subjective thing, so each pedal is a different case. However, our review team has a lot of experience using different guitar pedals, so that helps us make a judgement on where a particular pedal might sit versus others in the same genre, or when comparing pedals of different types.

Read more on how we test gear and service at Guitar Player

“The first time I heard Wes Montgomery play, it was like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Once he hit the guitar strings with his thumb, you could feel it in your gut anywhere within the reach of sound.”

So recalled Ralph Gleason in a 1973 piece about the jazz guitarist for Guitar Player. Gleason had interviewed Montgomery many years earlier, but the interview went unpublished until it appeared in GP’s pages for a cover feature in the July/August issue.

By then Gleason was known as a co-founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and Montgomery, a giant of jazz guitar, was five years in the grave. As a longtime music critic and columnist based in San Francisco, Gleason knew Montgomery in his early years, when Wes and his brothers, Buddy and Monk, had a group in town called the Mastersounds. Wes released his first album as a leader, The Wes Montgomery Trio (a.k.a. A Dynamic New Sound), in 1959, which is around the time Gleason spoke with him.

Gleason’s interview is a candid portrait of Wes that reveals the doubts he harbored about his talent and the struggles he faced with his playing. He took up guitar relatively late, at age 19. Untrained on the instrument, he taught himself by listening to Charlie Christian records, all while raising seven kids and working as a welder. Even by the early 1960s, when his star was ascendant in the jazz world, he felt he lacked the talent of more experienced jazz guitarists who had years of playing behind them.

“Wes was actually very insecure about his own playing and very worried that when it came his tum to solo night after night, he wouldn’t be able to consistently maintain the standard he wanted,” Gleason wrote.

Invitations to perform with jazz giants did nothing to ease his mind. Montgomery once turned down an offer from John Coltrane. “It wasn’t just the money,” Gleason wrote, “it was the fact that he couldn’t think of himself as the leader in his field. He was always saying that he had played much better 15 years before.”

Montgomery was also troubled by his electric guitar sound. He favored the tone of Gibson jazz archtops, including the L-7, L-5 CES and ES-175, but had little success finding a combo that suited him. Part of the problem was his string gauges. He played a heavy, .014–.058 set, and was constantly looking for ways to brighten the sound. He tried Fender Super Reverbs and Twins before switching to a Standel Custom XV, according to Jazzguitar.be.

“He never got the sound he wanted out of any amplifier,” Gleason wrote, “and spent thousands of dollars hassling with electronics. I don’t believe that in his whole professional life he ever really got the kind of sound onstage that would have made him happy. The Fender people and everybody else must have been driven crazy.”

Montgomery gave few interviews in his life. In one quote that is frequently attributed to him, he stated, “I never practice guitar. From time to time, I just open my guitar case and throw in a piece of raw meat.”

It may be apocryphal, but it gets to the heart of his feeling about guitar: It was a beast that demanded blood. Montgomery seemed to live in constant fear of it.

“It’s a very hard instrument to accept, because it takes years to start working with it, that’s first,” he told Gleason, “and it looks like everybody else is moving on the instrument but you. Then, when you find a cat that’s really playing, you always find that he’s been playing a long time. You can’t get around it.”

If Montgomery had a signature, it was his talent for playing octaves. Starting out a solo with single notes, he’d build to octaves before moving on to block chords to create a dynamic structure that kept listeners’ ears pinned to his deft finger work.

His octave improvisations were sophisticated and lyrical. Players marveled at his mastery of such a difficult technique. But Wes, true to form, was modest about it to the point of being dismissive.

“I’m so limited. Like, playing octaves was just a coincidence,” he told Gleason. “And it’s still such a challenge, like chord inversions — block chords like cats play on piano. There are a lot of things that can be done with it, but each is a field of its own, and like I said, it takes so much time to develop all your technique.

“I used to have headaches every time I played octaves, because it was extra strain, but the minute I’d quit I’d be all right. I don’t know why, but it was my way, and my way just backfired on me.

“But now I don’t have headaches when I play octaves. I’m just showing you how a strain can capture a cat and almost choke him, but after a while it starts to ease up, because you get used to it.”

Montgomery’s decision to sound the strings with his thumb, rather than a pick, came about from his after-hours practice. Afraid to wake or disturb anyone, he brushed the side of his thumb down the strings to create a softer sound. Like his use of octaves, it would prove to be part of his distinctive style, but he saw it largely as a deficit.

“That’s one of my downfalls, too,” he said. “In order to get a certain amount of speed you should use a pick, I think. A lot of cats say you don’t have to play fast, but being able to play fast can cause you to phrase better.

“But I just didn’t like the sound. I tried it for about two months. Didn’t use the thumb at all. But after two months I still couldn’t use the pick, so I said I’d go ahead and use the thumb.

“But then I couldn’t use the thumb either, so I asked myself which are you going to use? I liked the tone better with the thumb, but the technique better with the pick, but I couldn’t have them both.”

Seemingly every direction he turned brought new threats. Classical guitarists, with their virtuosity and gravitas, were phantoms in the shadows of his thoughts. Asked if he’d ever run into any, Wes declared, “No, and I don’t want to, because these cats will scare you. It doesn’t make any difference that they’re playing classic, but there’s so much guitar.

“Like, if you hear a classical guitar player, he’ll make you feel like, ‘What’re you playing the thing you’re playing for? This is what you should be playing.’”

But it was soloing that he feared most. Gleason wondered if Montgomery would be happier playing rhythm like Freddie Green did for Count Basie.

“It would be all right,” the guitarist replied, “but

“But that’s not my aim,” he continued. “My aim is to move from one vein to the other without any trouble.

“Like, if you’re going to take a melody line or a counterpoint or unison line with another instrument, do that, then maybe drop out at a certain point, then maybe next time you’ll play phrases and chords, or maybe you’ll take an octave or something. That way you’ll have a lot of variations there.”

Perhaps it was his insecurity among jazzers that made Montgomery reach for a new market. In the years after his interview with Gleason, he scored success after success with instrumental records that crossed over to the pop format. “California Dreamin’,” “Windy” and “A Day in the Life” brought him new listeners and fame, even as purists decried his musical direction. It was short-lived, though. Montgomery died of a heart attack on June 15, 1968, at his home in Indianapolis. He was 45 years old.

On Black Friday I was raving about Fender.com's Player II Series Tele deal – and unsurprisingly, it has now sold out completely. But there is a great Cyber Monday guitar deal option elsewhere, it's not much more money and I think this darker Racing Green Player II Tele at Guitar Center for just $649.99 is actually a better finish than the Fender.com deal's Forest Green.

I reckon this one will sell out too. You get all the great Player II features here that make the series the best buy in Fender's catalogue: rosewood fingerboard with rolled edges on a C-shape neck that's a benchmark for comfort, ClassicGear tuners like the US models and Alnico 5 pickups that blend traditional Tele twang with some low-end versatility. I'm a Fender modder and even I'd think twice about ever swapping them out.

I've been focusing on what I consider to be truly great guitar deals for Cyber Monday, and this is the one I think is the best right now. It's surely going to sell out like the Fender.com has. It's only $50 than what Guitar Center is charging for the Indonesia-made Fender Standard Telecaster!

• Amazon: Huge holiday savings
• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

Working as a guitar reviews editor, this year has been filled with some very, very good gear to test. But my personal favourite of 2025 isn't a guitar, pedal or an amp – well, it's kind of all those things, actually. After I saw it reduced by $50 here at Sweetwater in the Cyber Monday sales, I honestly want to spread the word to more people about just how good the ToneWoodAmp 2 is for acoustic guitar players. This is a 5/5 piece of kit and it's inspired me to play my acoustic much more this year.

European and UK players can benefit too, because the ToneWoodAmp2 is reduced over at Thomann too.

If you own an acoustic guitar, I think this thing is the most inspiring thing you can ever put on it. I am confident you'll spend more time playing because of how good it sounds – as well as great usability.

The ToneWoodAmp magnetically fixes to the back of your acoustic via bracing fixed inside (it's easy to fit – I did it in minutes) and plugs into your guitar's preamp input. Then the magic starts; it gives you reverb, delay. tremolo and modulation (chorus, flanger, phaser) effects through your guitar's soundhole, with a pedal or amp needed.

The first ToneWoodAmp was good, but the sequel has improved upon it in every conceivable way for me; it's smaller, with a rechargeable internal battery (10 hours life) and now has its own app. But the highlight is still those glorious effects – of which you can run four simultaneously.

I'll be honest, I can be cynical about guitar gear that relies on apps but ToneWoodAmp's proves just how good the combo can be because it unlocks the device's other capabilities as a powerful preamp for live gigs – they've really designed this side of things to give you a great live sound. It's really an incredible piece of kit, and proves its worth at home or the stage. Check out acoustic maestro Mike Dawes above showing what the TonewoodAmp2 can be.

But the best thing is when using the effects you don't need to touch the app if you don't want to – the unit itself offers plenty of controls to shape your sounds. And I would absolutely concur with Mike Dawe's admission that he can't play his acoustic guitar without it now. No wonder he wrote his last album with it!

• Amazon: Huge holiday savings
• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

Update: This deal has now sold out. But the good news is the Player II Tele deal below is currently available and is currently the cheapest I've found.

I'm not sure how controversial it is to say this, but I think Fender might have created a problem with its Player II Series Telecaster – especially in the Black Friday guitar deals. I've found them to be so good for the money, I wonder if many players will think it's worth paying more for the company's more expensive models. Now I've seen one with $252 off at Fender.com and I honestly can't believe it.

A $50 discount I could understand, but $190 is huge for a Player II Fender – and in an exclusive, classy Forest Green finish, third-party guitar retailers can't stock? Even more incredible.

The rosewood fingerboard with rolled edges is a huge upgrade from the Player line, giving the Player II Tele neck an incredibly smooth and tactile feel. The ClassicGear tuners are the other big upgrade for me – as found on much more expensive US models.

The pair of Alnico 5 pickups surprised me as someone who is big on upgrading their Ensenada Fender models – I'm not sure I'd bother paying extra to swap them out as Fender's stock models are so usable, especially with my own rig where stacked overdrive pedals are a central part.

• Amazon: Huge holiday savings
• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

Part of my job as a Reviews Editor is I see and play a lot of guitars, more specifically, I test them. And when it comes to acoustic guitars the Taylor name always stands out for me for its quality and consistency right out of the box. I know I'm not alone in thinking this, but the problem is that quality often comes at a higher price. However, this Black Friday, Sweetwater has this Taylor 114ce Grand Auditorium acoustic-electric with $100 off that is helping to address the issue.

You don't have to buy Builder's Editions to get Taylor quality – I used to gig with my little Taylor GS Mini mahogany with a soundhole pickup fitted in, and I still play it every day at home. But it's Taylor's Grand Auditorium that is its classic shape for me, and the perfect Goldilocks design. Smaller than a dreadnought, so friendlier to more players and a great all-rounder for chords or finger picking. So when I was scouting for a personal recommendation to share with readers in the Black Friday guitar deals, I was very pleased to find the Taylor 114ce Grand Auditorium with $100 off at Sweetwater.

I know this guitar will deliver for players at home or the stage. Taylor ensures playability and a hi-fi clarity across its ranges – I've seen and heard it for years as a reviewer. If you're investing in your first acoustic, or first electro-acoustic for the stage, this is a really safe bet, with Sweetwater's renowned customer service allowing you to pick the exact guitar you want to buy from its stock over on its website.

How many online retailers offer that? In return you'll get a torrefied (aged) Sitka spruce top that gives you a shortcut to a added resonance, a lighter weight and a lovely vintage look. The included Expression System 2 is a quality pickup and preamp package to see at $699 too. It'll stand you in good stead if you want to venture out with your Taylor for live sessions.

Taylor also offers the best-quality gig bags I've encountered in the acoustic market, so getting one included here is another bonus. Plus, with a cutaway design you don't have to compromise on upper frets access.

I'm jealous of any player who might get to be gifted this for Christmas!

• Amazon: Huge holiday savings
• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

You'll often see older electric guitar stock in the Black Friday deals as retailers make way for new models – great deals but not the latest specs. So imagine my surprise to see this year's PRS SE NF53 not just get a decent reduction over at Sweetwater, but a whole $200.

All four finishes are included with Pearl White and three distinctive Doghair options; Black, White and Purple. The swamp ash PRS SE NF53 is a highly-rated guitar for good reasons, and another testament to the high quality of the company's more affordable models.

PRS SEs are consistently some of the very best set up guitar I encounter as a reviews editor, but the pair of Narrow Field DD 'S' humbuckers here are what makes this sounds unlike any other T-style guitar out there. They are a best of both world's blend of single-coil focus and humbucker muscle and breadth. It makes for a guitar that has wide potential appeal.

Check out more Sweetwater Black Friday deals.

• Amazon: Black Friday instrument deals
• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Gear4Music: Early Black Friday deals are live
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Thomann: Up to 70% off Cyber Week sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

For the guitarist who isn’t interested in traditional instruments, I’ve got a super Black Friday guitar deal for you. In the Sweetwater Black Friday sale you can get your hands on a Strandberg Boden Essential with a gigantic $300 reduction. It’s a mega discount on a guitar that’s all about comfort and playability, eschewing traditional design in the pursuit of technological advancement.

I’ll admit I was skeptical before I first got my hands on one, so when it came into the office for review I wasn’t really expecting much. Flash forward five minutes and I found I couldn’t put it down. I’ve honestly never played anything like it, and while I get that headless guitars aren’t for everyone, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice not trying one.

• Grab the Strandberg Boden Essential with $300 off at Sweetwater

I’ve been playing guitar for over twenty years now, so it’s pretty rare that a piece of gear completely takes me by surprise. That was exactly the case with the Boden Essential though. At first I found the EndurNeck profile quite alien in my hands, thanks to the wide flat strip that runs down the centre of the roasted maple neck.

It’s like playing a really extreme ‘V’ profile, but cleverly, it gives your thumb a platform to always be placed flat, which encourages better playing technique. This design reduces strain on your wrist by forcing you to keep your thumb as the anchor for your fretting hand. Once I got over the initially strange feel, I was soon flying across the fretboard with three-note-per-string legato licks aplenty.

The body is different from anything else I’ve tried too. Again, the shape looks very strange, but it's actually cleverly designed so you can place the guitar on either leg, or in the classical position for proper shredability. It’s lightweight too, so you can easily chuck it in a gig bag and take it to shows with you, or bring on a train or plane.

When wearing it on a guitar strap you can hardly feel it’s there, and the lack of a headstock means there’s far less chance of stabbing your singer or bassist, even when playing on a tiny stage. For me the size and weight add to the overall performance of the guitar, tying in beautifully with the playability to make one of the most all-round ergonomic experiences I’ve ever had playing an electric guitar.

Shop more Black Friday deals

• B&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday deals
• Fender store: Player II Strat lowest price ever
• Gear4Music: Early Black Friday deals are live
• Guitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday sale
• Guitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual sub
• IK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardware
• Musician's Friend: Early Black Friday 50% sale
• Native Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundle
• Plugin Boutique: 100s of software savings
• Positive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savings
• Reverb: Black Friday early access
• Sweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday sale
• Thomann: Up to 70% off Cyber Week sale
• Universal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software sale
• Waves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% off

You know what? I genuinely get excited when Black Friday rolls around, especially when there's a slew of Gibson and Epiphone deals to sink my teeth into. This year, I was honestly blown away by the number of fantastic bargains out there. Stores like Guitar Center and Sweetwater have some amazing discounts on everything from Gibson classics to Epiphone signature models and so much more.

As someone who's a huge fan of Gibson, I have to say that my love for their instruments runs pretty deep. Sure, my collection isn’t all about Gibsons, but they definitely make up a huge chunk of it. Out of my 25+ guitars, 13 of them are Gibsons, so you can imagine my excitement when I see a bunch of them on sale.

And just to be clear, I’m not one of those guitar purists who turn their nose up at Epiphone. I genuinely think they offer incredible bang for your buck. The current line from Epiphone is fantastic, blending timeless designs with modern features. Whether you’re looking for spot-on replicas of classic Gibson models or some cool new designs, there’s a lot to appreciate. Below, I've highlighted a few of my personal favorites that I've come across while browsing online.

What happens when you cross a Martin dreadnought with a 000 and infuse some historic Hawaiian guitar spirit? That’s essentially what Martin has on its hands in the form of the Martin O’ahu HG-28. Its novel HG (Hawaiian Guitar) body style is a trimmed-down, sloped-shouldered dreadnough made from solid flamed Hawaiian koa back and sides, capped off with a solid spruce top at 000 depth.

Is it a simply a novel crossover concept, or does it truly deliver a beautiful blend of Martin’s bread-and-butter body styles?

I was curious to find out. After all, the prospect of a more manageable dreadnought is appealing to a diminutive dude, and, while Martin offers short-scale LX models, a shallow full-scale model is intriguing.

I’ve never come across one before, but Chairman of the Board Chris Martin IV discovered a Gibson HG-20 from the late ’20s or early ’30s that helped inspire this new creation. He’s been on something of a vision quest to understand and celebrate the crucial role that the Hawaiian music craze from that era played in the development of the steel-string. We continue to cover it with great appreciation, and the HG-28 marks another significant step along that path.

The HG-28 now lies at the heart of Martin O’ahu family of instruments, along with the Custom K-1 Major Kealakai that was created in conjunction with Hawaiian master luthier and historian Kilin Reece. That large guitar pays tribute to legendary Hawaiian musician Major Kealakai and his groundbreaking custom Martin, made way back in 1916! The Kealakai paved the way for the venerable Martin dreadnought and practically all larger bodied steel-strings.

The pendulum swings the other way with the HG-28 toward the smaller designs of the original Hawaiian guitar era combined with the shape of the famous Martin dreadnought, which might never have come about without its Hawaiian influence.

Chris Martin IV says, “The HG-28 is something that should have been made back then and never was until now.”

The Martin O’ahu has a depth of four inches compared to four and 3/4 inches for a Standard Series dreadnought, and a scale length of 24.9 inches compared to 25.4 inches. The HG-28’s max width of 14 1/2 inches is a full inch less than a Standard dread and half an inch narrower than a 000 body. So, whereas the K-1 is essentially a deep-dish quad 0 or Martin M body style, you can think of the HG-28 as shallow-dish Martin dreadnought at 000 scale length with a bit of a trim around the hips, which ultimately makes it quite unique.

Martin signature artist Craig Thatcher says, “It’s not just a miniature edition of a dreadnought. It’s something completely different.”

I saw the first HG-28 prototype at the 2024 NAMM Show and asked for a review unit after one strum. I was immediately struck by how nimble it felt in hand, how cozy its body felt sitting on my lap, and its incredibly resonant tone. Production was slow to follow and the first one only became available very recently, so the HG-28 is still very fresh and packs way too much promise to let it slip between the cracks.

The HG-28 sounds vivacious. The warm, yet clear-and-present tone matches its aloha intention and snazzy aesthetic, a true beauty in classic Martin Style 28, framed with snappy herringbone trim. Notes seem to spring forth and bloom, and chords project with an open, airy quality. This instrument seems to welcome your playing and it practically rewards you for doing so. It takes precious little effort to generate ample string energy and activate its solid spruce top. Koa back and sides contribute heavily to its featherlight feel and nuanced sound.

The signature Martin sound is certainly represented, but this guitar has its own shade that’s more focused in the middle and upper range. A Standard D-28, for example, sounds like a cannon by comparison. I can totally appreciate that for certain circumstances, but there were plenty of times around the house and in the recording studio when this more dynamically sensitive instrument better served the situation. And then there’s the playability.

The HG-28 has a relaxed feel with über playability thanks to its smaller body and slightly short scale length. While it looks like a dreadnought because of the body shape, it probably has more in common with the triple-0 from a playability standpoint, and perhaps overall.

It’s hard to bend strings on a traditional Martin dreadnought, but it’s easy to bend them on the HG-28. It can do the classic bluegrass flatpicking thing and is actually much easier to play than even the signature Billy Strings, which is particularly fleet under the fingers for a D-28. The most surprising element of the HG-28’s playability is how fabulous it feels as a fingerpicker. That fingerpicking goodness is due in part to its full one and 3/4–inch width at the nut, so even though I would have guessed a narrower spec there’s plenty of finger space, but there’s more to that story.

To me, the hidden key is its accessibility. Since the whole body is scaled back a bit to be slightly smaller than a 000 — which is slightly smaller than the dreadnought from which the HG takes its shape — the angle of the dangle as you play is slightly different in every way. Your strum hand naturally ends up further over the sound hole toward the neck — kind of like on a 12-fret guitar, even though this one has 14 frets to the body.

Ultimately, you pluck and fingerpick from an extremely advantageous position. You naturally draw your whole upper body closer over the fretboard, making it feel easier to access the upper frets than on most noncutaway acoustics. Factor in a low-profile neck with a high-performance taper and the playability is off the charts. I can play passages with finesse on the HG-28 that are a struggle to execute at all on most other guitars.

And then there’s the toughest test — under a red-hot studio light. Options abound where I track at Lucky Recording Company, including many Martins. I didn’t believe that we truly needed another one when I took the HG-28 along for a session of Yosemite songs, but when I brought it to compare, there was no comparison, at least not for these particular songs. We put the other guitars right back on the rack as the Martin O’ahu delivered such a pristine, positively perfect tone on the mic and facilitated such ease of performance that it made two tunes in one night.

One was the most difficult fingerpicking track I’ve ever attempted, and the other the most delicate. That’s the highest honor I can mention. My heart was full of mahalo for having the HG-28 on hand that night, and now it’s difficult to imagine the recording arsenal without it. One might go for a larger guitar to fill the sonic spectrum playing solo acoustic guitar or a heartier sound in a band situation, but when there’s drum and bass, the engineer usually rolls off the low end of the acoustic anyway, so you might and well go for the best mid and top range possible.

I’d recommend this instrument to a wide variety of different players. If you dig the Martin dreadnought but feel it’s a bit big for your body or boomy in the bottom end, the HG-28 could be your best friend. If you love the playability of a triple-0 but want something with a bit more open presence and resonance, this koa creation could be just the ticket. And its relaxed feel is perfect for playing in Hawaiian “slack key” tunings such as “taro patch,” which mainlanders know as open G major or Keith Richards tuning.

If you want a campfire guitar that can do all of that in a travel-friendly package, the HG-28 fits the bill. That is if you’ve got the bucks for such a buy. It’s not cheap, but the Martin O’ahu HG-28 offers the holistic quality of a custom build made from exotic wood at a production guitar price point. So there’s great value as well in this heirloom-worthy instrument that will only sound much more profound and increase in value over the years. Hawaiian guitar enthusiasts will dig how this guitar connects the rich musical history of the islands with an eye toward the future. I can hardly wait to hear this baby in 2045!

If you’re a Martin aficionado who has already got all the staples, here’s something different that’s not too different when you think about it. This hybrid from a parallel universe makes a ton of sense. I’m shocked that such a peanut butter–and-jelly combination of dreadnought and triple-0 flavors hasn’t happened until now. Oh well — there’s no better time than the present to appreciate this modern Martin marvel.

SPECIFICATIONS

CONTACT martinguitar.com

PRICE $3,599 with softshell case

NUT WIDTH 1.75", bone

NECK Select hardwood, GE modified low oval profile with high performance taper, dovetail joint

FRETBOARD Ebony with abalone inlays in Old Style 18, 24.9" scale

FRETS 20, 14 to body

TUNERS Nickel open gear with butterbean knobs

BODY Solid koa back & sides, solid spruce top

BRIDGE Ebony with compensated bone saddle

ELECTRONICS None

FACTORY STRINGS Martin Authentic Acoustic Lifespan 2.0 Phosphor Bronze Light gauges .012—.054

WEIGHT 3.8 lbs (as tested)

BUILT USA

PRO Vivacious tone, fabulous playability, extremely comfortable, quite unique

CON Only that this Martin dreadnought/000 crossover falls into a crack instead of being recognized as a killer hybrid