Amazon’s Spring Deal Days event has taken a pleasant turn for guitarists, especially those on the lookout for Ibanez instruments and accessories. Traditionally, these sales haven’t offered much for musicians beyond the basics, think cables, strings, and entry-level bundles. This time, however, Amazon UK has raised the bar, offering a variety of Ibanez guitars, pedals, and other gear at impressive discounts.

The Spring Deals Day sale runs from Tuesday, March 10, through Monday, March 16. With prices like these, it’s an excellent time for guitarists to refresh their setup or finally pick up that piece of gear they’ve been eyeing.

Notably, a range of Ibanez electric and acoustic guitars is now available for less, making it an opportune moment for players to upgrade or expand their collection. Among the standout deals is the Ibanez GRGR221PA-AQB GIO in Aqua Burst, an RG-inspired electric guitar now more than 20% off. At just over £200, it’s an ideal choice for new players looking for a metal-ready instrument without breaking the bank.

Acoustic players aren’t left out, either. The Ibanez AEG7MH OPN, featuring a spruce top, sapele back and sides, and a comfortable satin neck, comes complete with onboard electronics and a digital tuner, all for just £204.25. This model is perfect for those seeking a reliable, stage-ready acoustic at a wallet-friendly price.

We've also found a decent discount on the compact Ibanez Mini Chorus, which is included in the sale at only £67.15. Despite its small footprint, it offers a broad palette of chorus tones, from subtle shimmer to jet-like swirls, making it a versatile addition to any pedalboard.

Of course, the deals don’t stop at guitars and effects. Amazon’s sale includes savings on basses, straps, cases, and even ukuleles, ensuring there’s something for every kind of player.

While the current offerings are exclusive to the UK, Amazon has hinted that similar promotions may soon reach the US market, so American guitarists should keep an eye out in the coming days.

Unlike many of his peers, Joe Satriani isn’t a vintage gear obsessive. That's not to say he doesn't own a few classic axes. In fact, he shared a few gems from his collection with us back in 2020.

But even then, he was culling the herd. For that matter, he never understood the hype about vintage guitars — or the prices they command.

Long before his name was up in lights as a shred supremo, Satriani spent a decade teaching guitar out of Second Hand Guitars in Berkeley, California. The likes of Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick and super-collector Kirk Hammett all drank from his fountain of knowledge. The gig also afforded him the chance to wrap his hands around gear that would make Joe Bonamassa drool.

Satriani, though, didn’t gel with this slew of vintage picks.

“Working in a vintage guitar shop, you kind of get disillusioned about the price of these things and what they actually sound like,” he says in a new video with D’Addario.

“After hours, we would sit there, my friends and I, and we would play all these guitars that were supposedly the most expensive, the most valuable, rare guitars. And they'd be like, ‘There's nothing special about it.’

It's easy for players to be seduced by the magic of vintage guitars. They come from a time when the craftsmanship was meant to be on another scale, and players can source guitars with beautiful backstories, like Joe Bonamassa's "Royal Albert" Les Paul, that set him back a tidy $190,000.

And, of course, there’s the thrill of the chase — finding an ultra-rare Gibson Les Paul in a second-hand store is far more exciting than ordering a brand-new build direct from Gibson.

But when it came to an instrument’s performance, Satriani felt unmoved by the guitars he tried. That, he says, is the most important qualifier of a good guitar.

“The musician has to connect with the guitar for it to become special,” he ascertains.

His answer, several years down the line, was to make the most of his blossoming relationship with Ibanez. He wanted to look forward, not back.

“I thought, We can start building our own guitars,” he says. That led to the creation of his first signature guitar, the JS1, which arrived in 1990 and has since been followed by the JS2 (dubbed "Chromeboy"), the JS3 and an ever-growing line of JS guitars.

Since then, there's been an ambitious Crystal Planet JS prototype, which is completely see-through and even features glass bobbins, plus countless other models that have pushed Ibanez's luthiers to their limits.

And when it came to replicating Eddie Van Halen's tone on the Best of All Worlds tour, Satriani modded off-the-shelf axes instead of trawling vintage guitar stores for period-correct models.

The other vintage guitar sticking point, in Satriani’s eyes, is the inflated prices. And it’s easy to see where his grievances lie there. The original “Royal Albert” owner had spent £50 on the electric guitar in the late ‘60s, which is a drop in the ocean compared to JoBo’s outlay.

Then there’s the Kapa Minstrel, the once budget-priced $135 guitar that’s garnered a sizable reputation in the intervening years, and a price tag to match at around six times the original price.

David Gilmour might be inclined to agree with him. The former Pink Floyd guitarist said he couldn't pick out his famous Black Strat in a blindfold test against Fender's reissue models. That admission holds a lot of weight considering the original Black Strat, which featured on The Dark Side of the Moon and Pink Floyd's legendary Live at Pompeii performance, became the most expensive guitar sold at auction when it went for just shy of $4 million in 2019.

Elsewhere, Satriani has said he's happy that a whole generation of guitarists is out-shredding him, has come to the defense of Kurt Cobain's guitar chops, and revealed that he convinced Jeff Beck to sign up for a G3 tour, only for the maverick guitarist to pull out last minute.

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith's Ibanez Destroyer has survived breakages and acts of god but, over 40 years after he got it, is still going strong.

The Jackson signature artist is usually seen shredding his Floyd Rose-equipped, Strat-gone-metal axe on stages with the British metal heavyweights, with his bandmates sticking with Fender’s recipe instead. But he does deviate for certain songs.

Before the American luthier caught his attention, he was playing another American-built electric guitar, the Gibson Les Paul. He was, in fact, headhunted by the firm’s founder, Grover Jackson, and he made the switch because he felt his guitars were better suited to the rigors of the road.

His first signature model arrived in 2007, but decades before that, Ibanez had been sniffing around and got a Destroyer, its take on the Explorer, into his hands.

“I got this the first time we went to Japan,” he tells Ola Englund during a new rig rundown video. “It would have been ‘80 or ‘81, and the good people of Ibanez came down to see us, and they gave me this guitar. I couldn't believe it. Someone actually gave me a guitar!

“I don't know what this wood is,” he says with a shrug. “I mean, it's not like a high-quality wood. I thought it was a cool shape, and it played alright. It plays pretty well still for 40 years old.

“I actually dropped it at a gig in America in the '80s and broke [the bottom horn on the treble side] off,” he reveals. “So we glued it back on.” Its stripe was added during the operation to hide its scars.

Though he liked it initially “for the nostalgia,” the guitar, which features a pair of DiMarzio Super Distortion humbuckers installed at a later date, became his main guitar alongside his trusted Les Paul Goldtop throughout the '80s.

“I probably recorded 'Number of the Beast' on this; the song, the solo, and everything,” he goes on. “I definitely use it in the video.”

Today, the guitar is still wheeled out to play the track from their 1982 breakthrough album of the same name. And it’s been through the wars over the years.

“It was in a flood,” he says. “It was all green,” and a chunk of paint on its backside has chipped away. “It shows you how much I’ve used it,” Smith laughs.

It shows that price doesn’t always equate to quality, a sentiment that Jack White can attest to, having shot to fame while playing a cheap giber glass guitar.

Equally, Alex Lifeson says his first guitar, bought by his parents for just $57, still plays a role in the studio. He says he wants to be surprised by guitars, which is why his budget builds remain by his side.

Smith has also revealed that two strokes of luck, one at the behest of a Roland guitar synth, led to him writing two of Maiden's biggest hits.

Bon Iver chief songwriter Justin Vernon may be the only guitarist to ever turn down a vintage Martin guitar for a $199 “god ugly” beater.

While making Sable, Fable, the two-time Grammy winner’s first album since 2019’s I,I. Vernon was after an elusive guitar sound for the track "Speyside," which saw him make a choice that would shock most guitarists. Vernon shared the story while speaking with co-producer/co-writer Jim-E Stack in a video for BBC Radio 6 Music.

"Speyside" finds Vernon in a typically vulnerable light. The sparse recording features little more than his voice and some delicate acoustic guitar playing.

As he explains, his original demo for the song was recorded with an iPhone. Its intimate sound made him want to have fans experience the song as if they were “inside the guitar.”

“There was something about the iPhone demo,” he says. “The iPhone just has that great compression on it. I wanted the left part of the guitar [the bass] to be in the left ear when you put the headphones on, and the right ear has the upper [treble] part of the guitar.”

Early into the recording sessions, Vernon took a trip to the Minnesota store Willy’s Guitars to find the perfect acoustic guitar for the occasion. “I got a very nice '60s Martin because I was like, ‘This song's important. We've gotta get the guitar for it.’"

Vernon and his guitar tech, Wyatt Overman, decided to wire up the Martin with two pickups — one for the treble side and another for the bass.

They decided to test their idea on a lesser instrument in Overman's workshop: a “hideous” Ibanez V70CE that had been rejected by a Minneapolis rehab center because of its poor condition.

“I was like, ‘What's the story with this guitar, because it is god ugly,’” Vernon recalls.

“Wyatt does this work where he sets up guitars for folks at this recovery center in Minneapolis called Hazelton’s,” he explains. “And this was such a crappy guitar that they wouldn't take it. They wouldn't even take it for inpatient recovery.

"So we got it.

Part of the Japanese firm's V series, the V70CE was first released in 2014 and featured a select spruce top, mahogany back, sides, and neck. It was a simple instrument with a humble price tag.

After Overman’s split pickup concept worked on the Ibanez, he turned his attention to the Martin.

“He takes this rather expensive Martin from the ’60s, drilling holes in it and putting all this hardware in it to do the pickups,” Vernon says.

But upon testing their results, Vernon and Overman were surprised.

“We're playing it, but it's just not quite making me excited," the guitarist says. "It's not doing 'the thing.'”

The Martin's exact year of production isn't stated, but the 1960s is considered an excellent year for the company's craftsmanship. Despite that, and against all odds, the Ibanez delivered the sound Vernon was chasing.

“So I'm like, ‘Wyatt, did you bring the beater guitar?’" Vernon recalls of the recording session. "We plug it in, and it's very quiet and kind of noisy, but it just has ‘the sound.’

“We had to bring it with us because it's the only guitar that sounded like this, for some reason,” he adds.

Stack believes “this guitar really is the song. I can't ever imagine [Vernon] playing this song without it.”

No doubt Vernon and Stack are among the few to have ever turned down a Martin in favor of a lesser, modern acoustic. Martin fans are widespread, and include Joe Bonamassa, who called reissuing his prized “museum-grade” 1941 Martin “the honor of a lifetime”.

More recent releases have seen the firm pay tribute to its Hawaiian roots and promote optimism through music with a special-edition 23-inch scale LX1. It has also reissued Eric Clapton's iconic MUTV Unplugged acoustic, celebrating a guitar that helped win over a whole new generation of players.

Your tone starts with your fingers and your guitar. Think about all differences that tonewood choices and pickups make to how a guitar sounds.

Now ask yourself: If you had to make a choice, would you choose a cheap guitar with an expensive amp, or an expensive guitar with a cheap amp?

For Yvette Young, the math-rock guitarist for Covet, the answer is clear. As she tells Guitarist, she sees “no point” playing a high-end instrument if the amp it goes through isn’t cut out for the job.

“It’s like ruining a really nice audio file with… I don’t know… something that’s going to degrade it a lot,” she says. “There’s no point, right? I’d rather go for the expensive amp.

Besides, she adds, "‘Cheap guitar’ doesn’t mean bad guitar. I have plenty of guitars that are cheap, but I feel like they still sound really impressive for the price point.”

Young's own setup includes a boutique Silktone amp and her P90-loaded Ibanez Talman. The electric guitar is set to get a new Ibanez signature release, which will mark her third guitar with the Japanese luthier.

“I usually play [Vox] AC30s, but I kind of love how I can get something out of the Silktone without losing definition and clarity,” she says.

“It’s so balanced. [Silktone owner] Charles Henry is the best — I’ll hype him forever; he’s an outstanding person. Those amps really sound so smooth, and I feel like they make me play better.”

As for how she recommends players choose a guitar, Young has a few tips.

“You need to make sure you try the guitar in your own rig,” she says. “Sometimes, if you’re playing out of another amp, it might be brighter than you’re used to. Try to simulate the environment that you’re going to be using the guitar in as accurately as you can.”

Young recently celebrated the release of her first soundscape-conjuring signature stompbox, the Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer, a feature-packed modulation pedal. The guitarist, who helped design the effect over an exhaustive two-year period, tells Guitar World that she wants it to be a stompbox that sparks new ideas.

“I used to be an art teacher, so the way I talk about music is very visual,” Young explains. “The hardest part in creating, I think, is starting. We have a lot of anxiety; we put a lot of emphasis on how that first mark has to be perfect, but I know with painting that, once I have a big wash of color, that anxiety disappears because I took away that sterile white canvas.

“So for the Qi Ethereal, I wanted it to be an ambient machine and an idea generator, and I wanted you to be able to play guitar with yourself and sound really full. And hopefully make your guitar not sound very much like a guitar!”

The pedal represents the latest addition to the peculiar tone-shaping tools on Young's pedalboard. They include a DigitTech Whammy Ricochet and a Hologram Electronics Microcosm, which is a looper, granular sampler, delay, reverb, pitch modulator, and filter all in one. She says that the Swiss Army pedal is “absolutely essential for me”.

Beyond that, her setup includes two EarthQuaker Devices pedals — the Warden optical compressor and the Avalanche Run delay — which sit alongside a Meris MercuryX for chorus, vibrato and reverb, and an Electronic Audio Experiments Longsword overdrive.

Young is among the cast of next-generation talents with whom Steve Vai is “fascinated" and has featured in several editions of his yearly tuition camp, Vai Academy. She and the shredder locked horns in 2022 with a colorful 80s-inspired jam. It was a moment she described as “a gift."

Vai was clearly impressed as well.

“Yvette is just a wildly artistic person from head to toe,” he had said of her. “Her guitar playing and the things she comes up with is one aspect. It’s a particular color in her palette. She has this creative perspective that I just find so refreshing. She’s an artist, she paints, and I just really love the energy and the atmosphere that she manifests.”

After months of excitement and gear speculation, Sammy Hagar is set to take his Best of All Worlds tour out on the road this weekend. 

The 31-date run will see the vocalist performing Hagar and Roth-era Van Halen songs, backed by an all-star band featuring Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham. 

The guitar world has been patiently drip-fed information about the gear that Satch will be using for the shows, with many a keen eye paying close attention to a man who doesn’t do things by halves. 

We already know he’s worked with 3rd Power amps for a tube amp that nails Eddie Van Halen’s transitional 1986 guitar tone, and that his signature Ibanez models will feature. Now he’s given fans the most comprehensive rundown of his Van Halen-worthy axes yet in a new video.

Amongst the guitars packed for tour is a 1995 Music Man Wolfgang, which he bought on Reverb. It has since been re-fretted and had Satriani’s signature DiMarzio Satur8 humbucker installed in the bridge. The pickups it came with “didn’t work,” in a surprise twist.  

The pickup's chrome finish, he says, “was not the color we were looking for but it was the only one they had.” 

There’s also a modded EVH Frankenstien, which has been fitted with a Sustainiac pickup, kill switch, and a clear pickguard for “my unusual picking technique.”  

Of his Frankensteined Frankenstien, he adds “I straightened out the pickup and put a Satur8 in there. It sounds really good.” 

Satriani has previously joked that he fears the ghost of Eddie will haunt him for the mods he’s made to the guitar. But, forever a tinkerer and innovator, we imagine that Eddie would have loved to see these choice tweaks being made here.

The Satriani signature guitars that have gotten the nod are his Elephants of Mars model, his standout Chrome signature, and Red, White, and Black variants. 

Of those, he says “my main guitar is gonna be the chrome guitar, which I have really beat up on tour all year. It sounds great for all the stuff.” 

The Red model, meanwhile “is a bit sweeter” for having a basswood, rather than an alder body. The Black model will stand as his 5150 guitar.  

Indeed, the fact that an Ibanez – and not an EVH or the Music Man – will play the leading role is an interesting development, with the guitarist perhaps leaning a little further into his style of playing than some expected. 

There is one feature, though, that is prevalent across virtually all the touring guitars, regardless of who made them. 

“I’m sure people will say, ‘What’s this speed knob doing here?’” says Satch with his Elephants guitar in hand. 

“Well, it’s because I need the numbers. I just need to look down really quick and find out where ‘four’ is on the volume knob, and get that perfect volume setting for whatever song we're doing.”

Satriani admits that he’s “not quite sure which ones are going to be the ones I’ll use on every song,” but insists he’ll “have fun” and “mix it up,” throughout the tour. 

Visit Sammy Hagar's website for a full list of upcoming Best of All Worlds tour dates.

Among the many guitars that took their design cues from a handful of seminal designs, the Ibanez Artist Model 2617 stood out as distinctly different, even enticingly exotic. And yet it looked undeniably classic.

The golden age of American electric guitar design and manufacture stretched from the early 1950s to the mid ’60s. For Japanese guitars, however, the renaissance didn’t occur until a decade later. Today, nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, players are again appreciating the quality and originality that made these late-’70s and early ’80s creations so desirable and successful in the first place.

Many fans of Japanese electric guitars refer to the mid to late ’70s as the “lawsuit era,” a term that references the direct copies of American guitars that arrived from that country just before its guitar makers began creating models based on original designs. 

In truth, Gibson rarely ever filed lawsuits against Japanese manufacturers, as they would have been difficult to pursue and enforce from such a distance. However, the company did sue Elger, Ibanez’s U.S. importer, in 1978, putting the squeeze on any direct copies brought into the American market. 

Predictably, Ibanez responded by producing original designs for export to America. In fact, the brand had been designing and building some unequivocally original models before the lawsuit, many of them under the Artist banner, which it had also applied to several guitars that closely aped Gibson’s Les Paul and SG. Copies continued to emerge after 1978 but weren’t shipped to the American market, making it more difficult for Gibson to enforce restrictions imposed by the U.S. courts.

The origin of the Ibanez brand dates to a time shortly after the founding of its parent company, Hoshino Gakki, in Nagoya, Japan, in 1908. Similar to many sellers of affordable guitars in America in the early 20th century, Hoshino Gakki began primarily as a sheet-music distributor and soon after branched into musical instruments by importing reputable classical guitars from Spanish maker Salvador Ibáñez. 

By the late ’30s, Hoshino Gakki was making its own guitars, but the company retained the Ibanez brand name on many of them. From there, it largely followed the general trends in guitar design, going big into electrics following the guitar boom of the 1960s. 

Early Ibanez electrics looked much like what we expect to see from Japanese guitars of the ’60s, echoing features familiar in guitars from Teisco, Kawai, Fujigen, and others. 

By the ’70s, however, the brand’s offerings often reflected accurate takes on the designs of many American makers, perhaps Gibson most prominently. But alongside their cloned looks, these guitars displayed impressive advances in quality that caught the attention of American buyers at a time when the caliber of American-made guitars was in decline. 

These overseas makers saw that a share of the market was ripe for the taking, and they grabbed it. Once they proved they could sell successfully in the U.S. market, they demonstrated that they could rival American makers with appealingly original designs.

The distinctive double-cutaway Ibanez Artist guitars were introduced in 1976, and by 1978 the range boasted its own catalog with Steve Miller on the cover and an extensive collection of solidbody, semi-acoustic, and double-neck guitars inside. 

The solidbodies may have been tangentially influenced by a marriage of Gibson’s SG and Les Paul, though perhaps not as overtly as the semi-acoustic Artist Model 2629 and 2630 were influenced by the ES-335. Still, they gave the overall impression of originality in everything from body to headstock to hardware (including the easy-load Gibraltar tailpiece and extended-intonation Gibraltar bridge mounted into a brass sustain block). Some even featured unique, elaborate adornments.

The Model 2617 featured here is a case in point. In addition to being made from solid ash (a distinctly non-Gibson wood) with a recessed “German carve” at its body’s edges and a contoured back, it had abalone purfling around the edges of the top, abalone block inlays in the rosewood fretboard, and gold hardware. 

The glued-in neck was made from rock maple, and the headstock’s profile was topped with an inset “wing” of sorts, taking it well away from the “open-book” Gibson headstock that got earlier copies into trouble. 

Equipped with Ibanez Super 80 pickups when it was made in 1978, this example now features more contemporary PAF-style replacements with gold covers. And while the two mini-toggle switches might look at home on an Artist of the era, they are modifications made by a previous owner to upgrade this Model 2617’s specs to those of the Model 2619. 

Built with a more Gibson-esque solid-mahogany body and carved maple top, the 2619 had two three-way mini-toggles to offer full-humbucking, split-coil, and reverse-phase-humbucking sounds from each pickup. 

Topping the 2619 in bonus electronics, the Model 2622 was the ultimate “standard” Artist design, and was often referred to as “the Steve Miller model” thanks to his endorsement. The 2622 also had a solid-mahogany body, carved maple top, and abalone and mother-of-pearl block inlays, along with active preamp and EQ stages.

The latter included knobs for bass, midrange, and treble, which could be bypassed if desired, and delivered several decibels of gain from a nine-volt-powered circuit in the preamp. 

Lesser seen, and even more elaborate, the Artist Custom Model 2700 was clearly inspired by Alembic guitars, with a laminated maple-and-walnut through-neck, a body made from a sandwich of zebrawood and ash, the active preamp and EQ stages of the Steve Miller model, and the coil switching of the 2619.

Ibanez had even greater success in later years when it began making Superstrat shred machines with pointy headstocks, but the Artist models and their late-’70s siblings established the brand as a professional-quality maker. 

In addition to Miller’s endorsement, Artist-derived signature models hit the stage with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, the Doobie Brothers’ Pat Simmons, session guitarist Marlo Henderson, country picker Randy Scruggs, Sly & the Family Stone guitarist Freddie Stone, and others, while John Scofield adopted the 335-like semi-acoustic Artist, which was eventually configured for him as a Signature model. 

Essential ingredients

• Double-cutaway body made from solid ash 

• German-carved top, contoured back

• Glued-in maple neck with 24.75” scale length

• Abalone top purfling and block fingerboard inlays

• Dual Super 80 humbucking pickups

• Gibraltar bridge and tailpiece

• Gold-plated hardware

With the Best of All Worlds tour fast approaching, fans have been given the biggest insight yet into Joe Satriani’s Van Halen-honoring live rig, and it appears he may be leaving his Ibanez signature guitar behind for the shows.  

The tour sees Satriani and Jason Bonham uniting with Van Halen alumni Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony for shows celebrating the band’s David Lee Roth- and Hagar-fronted eras. Satriani has been taking his role extremely seriously, as he tries to craft the most authentic Eddie Van Halen guitar tone possible. 

The guitarist has previously spoken about chasing the “mythical Van Halen sound,” and it seems his relentless tone-chasing mission involved a drastic overhaul of his gear. 

Hagar posted a clip of their recent rehearsal on his Instagram account, with Satriani donning what looks to be an EVH Striped Series ‘78 Eruption guitar, while a host of EVH pedals were spotted on his pedalboard. 

Satriani is rarely spotted without his signature Ibanez, which makes the sight of him shredding on a white and black striped EVH super Strat even more surreal, but the tones he ushers out of it show that his meticulous tone-chasing is paying off. 

Two EVH-branded MXR pedals, a Phase 90 and a Flanger, can be seen in his effects chain, alongside a Boss CE-2w chorus pedal and a Boss DM-2w delay pedal. 

The Hagar-filmed clip doesn’t hang on the guitarist for long, leading to speculative guesses as to what else completes his pedalboard, with Guitar Player's best guesses being a TC Electronic Sub 'N' Up Octaver and a Vox wah.

The latter is particularly interesting. While Satriani has a signature Vox wah, Van Halen has long been synonymous with the Jum Dunlop Crybaby Wah.   

Satriani is working with 3rd Power Amps ahead of the tour to create a custom amp designed to nail the sound of Van Halen’s 1986 live album, Live Without A Net. It was a transitional period for the band, getting used to life without the enigmatic David Lee Roth, while Eddie began to move away from Marshall amps. More importantly, it’s a tone that both Satriani and Hagar adore. 

Satriani’s gear overhaul may be pretty extensive, but as per a recent Guitar World interview, it was always necessary. 

“My live rig is designed so that I can play above the 12th fret on the first strings and still have everything sound fat,” he said. “I realized there's no way to play the Van Halen stuff on my rig; it's a different animal. It doesn’t work.” 

The 28-date Best of All Worlds tour begins in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 13, and runs through to August 31, with the final show happening in St. Louis, Missouri. A full list of dates can be found on Sammy Hagar's website.

In this digital age, where an endless stream of equipment information seems to come from all directions at any moment, now seems like a good time to take a 360-degree scan of the current landscape, filter though the spew, and focus on a few.

What you’ll find below is some inspiring gear that connects acoustic players to primary developments that have appeared scattered throughout the foggy ether of the pandemic era, as well as a few novel innovations and commemorative celebrations. 

This is by no means comprehensive coverage of the entire acoustic universe, but rather a selected swath of shining stars on the gear horizon, with a primary lens concentrated on guitars.

Breedlove TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina 

The Breedlove TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina is from Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, which both fly under the banner of Two Old Hippies. 

As owner Tom Bedell explains, “The Breedloves have bolt-on necks and are essentially Taylor killers, while Bedells are basically Martin killers.” Bedell himself is usually entrenched with the line that bears his name, but for the first time ever, he’s put his initials on a gorgeous orange Breedlove made of solid myrtlewood with a Baggs M1 magnetic pickup in the soundhole. “I wanted a guitar that sounded great playing the blues,” he reports. 

I had a chance to play a few Delta licks on the unplugged guitars in their booth at the NAMM show, and the instrument had an authentic appeal. The Breedlove TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina is priced more like a Bedell than a Breedlove, which may put it out of range for some few blues enthusiasts, but those with the greenbacks and an orange appreciation will dig it. 

TB Vintage Edition Blues Orange Concertina – $4,999, from Breedlove.

Cole Clark True Hybrid TL3 

Cole Clark made hybrid history by straddling the acoustic/electric boundary with the True Hybrid TL2. The new TL3 ups the ante with improved magnetic pickups and dazzling aesthetics. The body remains a thinline Grand Auditorium loaded with Cole Clark’s PG3 acoustic pickup system, plus a magnetic system with dual outputs designed to feed an electric amp and an acoustic amp or P.A. 

The magnetic pickups (which now come on all new TL2s and TL3s) are hotter, with less noise, and are balanced for optimal performance with phosphor-bronze acoustic strings. 

The True Hybrid TL3EC-EMEM-HSS has a humbucker/single/single configuration, like the TL2 we reviewed, and is also available with a pair of humbuckers or three single-coils. 

The TL3’s cosmetics include imperial-style tuners and large abalone inlays on its ebony fretboard as well as on both sides of the waist on its carved top. The whole guitar is solid European maple (grown in Australia). 

Another TL3 designated BLBL-HUM is all Australian blackwood with a single humbucker between the bridge and soundhole, located in the standard spot rather than an offset teardrop like the other models. Its aesthetic is more traditional. 

True Hybrid TL3EC-EMEM-HSS – $3,999, from Cole Clark. 

Ibanez AE390TA and AE340FMH 

Ibanez’s AE Performer concept is all about high-end aesthetics and features at player-friendly budgets. 

The AE390TA offers a distinctive tonewood combination with a German spruce top and gorgeous flamed maple back and sides finished in a brilliant Aqua Blue hue. The AE340FMH features a stunning solid flamed okume top as well as flamed okume back and sides. Both sport Ibanez’s secondary soundhole, the A.I.R. Port, on the top side, for additional personal monitoring from the player’s perspective. 

AE390TA – $829. AE340FMH – $799, from Ibanez.

Gibson Custom Ebony Series 

Gibson’s Custom Ebony series comprises a quartet of its most popular acoustics. Each handcrafted guitar retains its classic features and sound, and features a solid Sitka spruce top and onboard L.R. Baggs Session VTC electronics, along with appointments inspired by the Les Paul Custom, such as an ebony finish, multi-ply binding, mother-of-pearl block fretboard inlays, and a split-diamond headstock inlay.

The series includes the J-45 Custom, Hummingbird Custom, SJ-200 Custom and Songwriter EC Custom. J-45 Custom – $4,999. Hummingbird Custom – $5,999. SJ-200 Custom – $7,499. Songwriter EC Custom – $4,999, from Gibson. 

Takamine GD37CE PW & GD37CE-12 PW

Takamine’s GD37CE PW and its sibling GD37CE-12 PW 12-string represent striking new additions to the company’s affordable G Series. Their dreadnought bodies sport solid-spruce tops and maple back and sides, and are decked out in glossy pearl white, with a beautiful abalone rosette. 

A split-saddle bridge is designed to offer superior intonation, and the guitars come stage-ready with proprietary TP-3G electronics that include a three-band EQ, gain, and an onboard tuner. 

Takamine’s Director of Product Development, Tom Watters, says, “We created the two new GD37CE models to cover a wide range of musical styles,” and indeed, a guitarist could feel pretty heavenly rocking anything from folk to gospel on them. 

GD37CE PW – $849. GD37CE-12 PW – $949, from ESP Takamine. 

Martin SC-28E & SC-18E 

These American-made SC models represent the culmination of innovation Martin unleashed about five years ago with a secret R&D project spearheaded by VP Fred Greene and lead designer Tim Teal. 

When GP was invited to take a sneak peek at the original SC-13 SC in 2020, it was immediately apparent that this oddly S-shaped instrument was coming from an entirely different galaxy, with its crazy cutaway and Sure Align neck system, which together delivered easy access to the fretboard’s upper reaches. 

That model was manufactured in Mexico, as were all four subsequent SCs until a small batch of U.S.-made Custom Shop models arrived in 2022. An enthusiastic response from collectors encouraged Martin to begin building these two Standard Series models stateside, with solid woods and significantly upgraded electronics. 

The SC-28E pairs East Indian rosewood back and sides with a spruce top, while the SC-18E is mahogany and spruce. Both come equipped with Fishman Aura VT Blend or L.R. Baggs Anthem electronics. Pros will appreciate. 

SC-28E – $3,999 with hardshell case. SC-18E – $3,599, from Martin. 

Taylor 50th Anniversary Limited-Edition Collection

Taylor is commemorating its golden anniversary with the Circa 74 AV150-10 boutique amp as well as a series of limited-edition guitars that it will roll out over the course of the year. 

Ranging from fancy and expensive to practical and affordable, the group includes the Builder’s Edition 814ce LTD, featuring a sinker redwood top with Indian rosewood back and sides; the 314ce LTD, with sapele back and sides and a torrefied Sitka spruce top; the American Dream AD14ce-SB LTD, offered with walnut back and sides and a Sitka spruce top; the Presentation Series PS14ce LTD, which comes in a choice of urban ironbark with a striped sinker redwood top or figured claro walnut with a western red cedar top; and the PS24ce-LTD in figured, master-grade Hawaiian koa. 

Builder’s Edition 814ce LTD – $4,999. 314ce LTD – $2,799. American Dream AD14ce-SB LTD – $1,999. Presentation Series PS14ce LTD – $9,999. PS14ce LTD – $14,999. PS24ce-LTD – $19,999, from Taylor Guitars. 

Fishman AFX Mini Series pedals 

Fishman has made three new additions to its AFX Mini Series, whose pedals are voiced to handle the wide sonic range of acoustic instruments. The EchoBack delay, BlueChorus multi-chorus, and AcoustiComp compressor follow the blueprint laid down with last year’s batch of four AFX Minis that earned an Editors’ Pick Award in 2023 and ranked among the Top Gear of the Year. 

The EchoBack offers analog, digital, and tape delay, and its lone foot switch can be set to use for tap tempo. The BlueChorus offers analog, vintage, and classic varieties of chorus, and the AcoustiComp is a super-simple compressor based on Fishman’s popular Aura Spectrum. All AFX Minis are voiced and processed in parallel to preserve your acoustic tone. 

$119.95 each, from Fishman.

L.R. Baggs HiFi Duet pickup system

L.R. Baggs's HiFi Duet pickup and mic mixing system (available this summer) is essentially the same HiFi that earned an Editors’ Pick Award last year as well as a spot in Gear of the Year, but with the addition of a second element, the Silo Microphone. Built on the broad shoulders of Baggs’ Tru Mic technology, Silo features a new mic capsule and tuned suspension. 

A discrete preamp with a multipole crossover system seamlessly blends the HiFi Pickups and Silo Mic, so you can dial in anything from punchy and direct to open and airy, all with enhanced ambience and dimension. The quick demo I heard was very promising. 

$449, from L.R. Baggs.

Nakupenda Guitar Master Stool 

The Guitar Master Stool by Nakupenda was a favorite surprise find at the 2024 NAMM show. Nakupenda has put a ton of research into making what it calls “the world’s first ergonomic guitar performance stool,” which is designed to hug hips and align the spine and pelvis to improve posture, thereby relieving back and neck pain by evenly distributing the player’s weight. 

The chair is handcrafted from FSC-certified sustainable North American walnut and is available in two heights. Once while attempting to get comfortable on a bar stool at soundcheck, Leo Kottke remarked, “I always feel like a marionette sitting on one of these things.” Not so with the ergonomic Guitar Master Stool. Better still, it has a handy built-in guitar stand on the back. 

$459 direct with free shipping, from Nakupenda.

Snark ST-8 Ti 

The Snark ST-8 Titanium brings a couple of ingenious new features to the clip-on tuner format that the brand played a huge role in establishing. A vulcanized rubber collar cushions the back of its interface and acts like a sound shield to cut out external frequencies and vibrations, thereby providing reliable tuning accuracy in noisy conditions. 

Players will also appreciate the ST-8 Titanium’s rechargeable lithium battery, which Snark claims can deliver “weeks to months of continuous use” from one charge via USB, PC, or power bank. The high-resolution LCD screen has 360 degrees of rotation and is designed to be visible from all sorts of angles on stage, whether conditions are dark or sunny. 

$26.99, from Snark Titanium.

Mackie ShowBox 

Mackie’s new Swiss Army knife comes armed with pretty much everything a busker needs to rock a gig, anywhere at any time, alone or with a few buddies. The ShowBox is a battery-powered all-in-one performance rig comprising a portable P.A., acoustic guitar amp, six-channel mixer, and effects rack. 

Particularly innovative is a breakaway mix controller that mounts directly to a mic stand and connects to the ShowBox through the included Ethernet cable, allowing the performer to manage all channel levels, effects and EQ settings, user snapshots, and the built-in looper and tuner, all without having to leave their stage position. 

A USB-C audio interface facilitates streaming or recording the gig, and ShowBox can also record straight to an SD card. Custom backpack sold separately. Stay tuned for a detailed review soon. 

$799, from Mackie.

In 1979, Japanese engineer Susumu Tamura created the game-changing Maxon OD808. Subsequently rebranded for Ibanez as the TS808 Tube Screamer, this tube-sounding distortion/boost pedal with midrange-enhanced sound quickly became a must-have for legions of guitarists following its use by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson. It’s gone on to inspire countless imitations by scores of pedal makers ever since.

Guitar Player spoke with Tamura-san, who resides in Matsumoto, Japan, about this legendary stompbox...

What was the first pedal you designed when you started working for Maxon?

It was a phaser, the PT999. I really liked the sound of its spatial spread, which was not present in pedals like fuzz, distortion, booster and wah.

Did you design any distortion pedals before the OD808?

The OD880 was my first overdrive design, and it was popular and used by the very famous Japanese guitar player Char. With the OD808, the design goal was not to obtain the overdrive effect alone but to create the sound of the guitar amplifier and overdrive pedal combined.

Did you play guitar yourself?

I could not play the guitar – same as Leo Fender – but I could tune one. However, during the development of the 19-inch rack Harmonizer, called the Harmonics Delay HD 1000, I was forced to learn music theory.

I understand that the OD808 was designed to compete with the Boss OD-1, but that you wanted it to have a more tube-like sound. Were there any particular tube amps that you used as references?

At that time, I mainly used Fender tube amplifiers for development and audio tests of the pedal, specifically a 1968 Fender Twin Reverb and a Vibrolux Reverb. Occasionally, I used a Marshall 1959 Super Lead.

Did you use any guitar players to help voice the OD808?

The final determination of almost all of Maxon’s pedals was done by [guitar instructor] Shiro Tanigawa. [Tanigawa also created the sample settings that appeared in Maxon manuals].

What were some of the challenges to creating a solid-state circuit that would sound and feel like a tube circuit?

The main challenge was to avoid a dramatically changed effect that didn’t leave any of the guitar’s original sound, like fuzz and distortion pedals of the time. I wanted to create an effect with the original sound of the guitar remaining, and with a softer distortion.

Also, the nuances of the player’s picking needed to come out, and it was challenging to implement that as a component of the total system of guitar, pedal and amplifier while also creating a synergy with the amplifier.

Can you tell us about the different op amps used for the OD808 and TS808?

At the time, the first operational amplifiers that I evaluated for trial manufacture were the Fairchild UA741 and Motorola MC174. All were imported goods, and the price was more than 20 times the current price. They were so expensive that I hesitated to use them for Maxon products. The Fairchild UA1458 and Motorola MC1458 were also offered. However, the price was almost the same as the UA741.

The UA1458 was eventually adopted for the earliest OD808/TS808 narrow-case pedals. The OD808/TS808 were both remodeled several years later to use the Raytheon RC4558, which had improved audio characteristics to the UA1458. After that, the RC4558, JRC NJM4558 and [Texas Instruments] TI RC4558 were installed, depending on the production lot.

How did Maxon start making effects for Ibanez, and did you make any changes to the OD808 circuit when it became the TS808?

At that time, Maxon did not have the ability to export products abroad on its own. Therefore, Maxon concentrated on domestic sales only, and overseas export was supplied under the export company Hoshino Gakki’s Ibanez brand or the U.S. Buyers brand. Back then, almost all products, in addition to the TS808 and OD808, were supplied with the same circuit and the same specifications but under different brands. 

Until we shut off the product supply from Maxon to Ibanez in 2003, there were some models with different names and designs, but the contents were basically the same. I think you can easily find Maxon’s printing and engraving on the printed circuit board or battery lid of vintage Ibanez pedals. These are proof that the pedals are the same as the Maxon versions.

Who came up with the name Tube Screamer?

The name was suggested by the Sam Ash Music family, by Jerry’s son Sammy Ash [Jerry is the son of founder Sam Ash]. We first visited Sam Ash Music at West 48th Street, Manhattan, and talked to [Jerry’s son] Richard Ash. Since Sammy was familiar with the sound of pedals, Richard told me to speak with him.

At this time, we brought a prototype of the Micro Teacher Mini Amp GA-10 [a 1970s-era pedal-size amp] and asked Sammy to evaluate it. When I connected the external speaker terminal of GA-10 to the input of the guitar amplifier, it suddenly made a screaming sound.

Sammy asked, “Do you know how the Cry Baby pedal got its name?” “Yes,” I said, “it sounds like a baby crying.” And he said, “This sounds like a screaming tube amp.” So when the Maxon OD808 Overdrive Pro was born, Ibanez’s overdrive was named the TS808 Tube Screamer Overdrive Pro.

Can you talk about the pedals you designed after the OD808?

The OD9/TS9 and other models that are successors to the OD808 are also overdrives that I designed. I worked on most of the pedals Maxon released from 1974 to around 1985. and these include distortion, auto wah, compressor, analog delay, digital delay, multi-effector and the Digitally Controlled Processor [DCP] series. The development of wireless microphones became my main job from around 1986 to 2000.

You must be very proud of the revolution in guitar distortion effects that you started by creating the OD808.

Thank you. I am very honored. When designing it, I did not dream that the 808 would become so famous. At the time, if a guitar was considered vintage, it received high evaluation, so I was jealous of the guitar. I never thought that a pedal would ever be considered vintage. I also think that it is wonderful that the same 808 has continued to be loved.

Do you have a favorite story about the 808?

At the time that I designed the 808, we exhibited several pedals of the prototype TS808 that we completed after working all night at Musikmesse in Frankfurt. Then, a sad incident happened to me.

On the evening of the first day of the show, a TS808 prototype was missing. On the second day, another one was missing. A trading company person who was there comforted me by saying, “That pedal is surely wonderful. The unpopular pedals are not stolen.”

Once again, the NAMM show took place at a strange time – in mid April as a sort of winter/summer combo – and the buzz in the lead-up was (also once again) about the major players that weren’t coming, including Fender, Gibson and PRS.

But once we were on the Anaheim Convention Center floor, the story turned from who wasn’t there to who was. And, as it happened, the gear surfing was actually quite awesome. Acoustic currents came from many directions, including the east (via Martin, Fishman and Ovation), the west (Taylor, L.R. Baggs, Universal Audio, Bedell, Breedlove and Santa Cruz), the north (Godin and Seagull), from across the Pacific (Lava Music, Donner, Ibanez, Takamine, Yamaha and Australia’s Cole Clark) and the Atlantic (Lâg, Lowden).

All in all, it sure felt like the acoustic world was well represented. There were a few obvious undercurrents. Hybrid designs and acoustic electronics continue to be the most exciting developments in the entire guitar sphere.

Environmental awareness is growing. As wood supplies dwindle, manufacturers are doing everything they can, from spearheading sustainability initiatives to becoming ever more creative with what’s available.

The third theme is money, or the lack thereof in the wake of the pandemic. Every effort is being made to bring affordability along with innovation. For many brands, that sensibility co-existed with a “go big or go home” attitude, as lots of luxury was on offer as well. No complaints here.

It’s always enticing to browse the dream machines on display in Disneyland.

Acoustic Guitars

Martin

Martin’s press event was the first happening at Wednesday’s media preview, and the historic manufacturer covered all the aforementioned bases, including actual basses. Second-year CEO Thomas Ripsam introduced the show-stopping CEO-10 ($8,999 street), an extravagant limited edition OM made with exquisite Guatemalan rosewood back and sides.

On the flip side, the StreetLegend D-18 and D-28 ($2,399 and $2,799 street) were attainable acoustics inspired by the prized, timeworn instruments in Martin’s fabled museum.

Sophisticated re-creations are also now available in the form of the D-18 and D-28 Authentic 1937 Aged ($7,999 and $8,999).

Three small-bodied basses added to the Martin Junior Series made a big impression. My favorite was the DJR-10E Bass Burst ($749 street), because it sounded so full for such a little fella.

On the environmental tip, Martin unveiled the vibrant OM Biosphere ($2,299 street). It’s a totally non-plastic, fully FSC-certified instrument with a gorgeous aquatic-themed top print featuring very lifelike oceanic images courtesy of Robert Goetzl.

The affable artist painted the master for last year’s 00L Earth Guitar as well, and the OM Biosphere is essentially a version-two of that admirable concept.

While it’s not exactly a hybrid, the ever-expanding and reasonably priced SC line offers the playability of an electric way up the neck, and the fancy Custom Shop Limited Edition CS SC-2022 introduced at last year’s show drew tons of attention.

There were no new Modern Deluxe models, but the vibe at the Martin booth was more contemporary, artistic and lifestyle driven, as exemplified by the colorful, optimistic OXK Uke Life is Good ($349 street).

Says Ripsam, “We’re refreshing our brand, targeting a broader spectrum of more diverse players and encouraging every guitarist to unleash the artist within.” Ripsam isn’t just talking – he’s working on the CEO-10 personally and releasing the album Lichtenstein under the moniker Seeds of Imagination, for which he painted the impressive cover art depicting Castle Lichtenstein, from his family’s home region in Germany.

Taylor

Taylor didn’t have a gear booth to browse, but they did host a dealer dinner and a cocktail party at a nearby hotel restaurant. President, CEO and chief guitar designer Andy Powers introduced the three latest creations.

The AD11e-SB offers the popular small-bodied Grand Theater at an American Dream price point of $1,799.

The first Grand Pacific in the rosewood 400 Series, the 417e ($2,999 street), is one of the most cannon-like Taylors I’ve ever heard – full-bodied and boisterous.

On the other end of the spectrum is the smooth and sophisticated Builder’s Edition 814ce ($4,499 street). Explains Powers, “It’s our new flagship, which represents a high-water mark in high-fidelity acoustic guitar craft.”

The environmental element of the 814ce is subtle, yet significant. The top is made of Adirondack spruce, which has long been pricey due to scarcity. Powers is now creating four-piece tops using smaller pieces of the prized tonewood. He explains that it’s possible to make a perfect-sounding top out of them, and cited a correlation to piano tops being made out of many more pieces.

The trick is in the build, and if the builder knows what he’s doing and is willing to put the time in, a top made of multiple smaller pieces can actually sound better than a traditional two-piece top.

Breedlove

Breedlove is constantly on the sustainability trail. In honor of Earth Day, the company produced the Oregon Concert Earthsong LTD and Pursuit Exotic S Concert Earthsong LTD.

They’re crafted from 100-percent clear-cut-free Oregon Myrtlewood, and every sale goes directly to the planting of new trees.

Breedlove’s main thrust at the show was the Organic Pro Series, a new line assembled overseas that’s designed to deliver most of what the American-made Oregon Series does, at price points for working pros.

Yamaha

Yamaha has a history of delivering quality production instruments at attainable prices, and the company returned to NAMM with a huge showroom full of every instrument imaginable, including its budget stalwart FG800.

But the new angle was all about the handcrafted FG9s ($4,099 street for the FG9 R, with rosewood back and sides, and $3,999 street for the FG9 M, with mahogany back and sides).

I played them both back in the quiet room, and they were easily the nicest Yamahas I’ve ever put my hands on. Craftsmanship, playability, tone and feel were exquisite.

Takamine

The highlight at the Takamine booth was surely the striking LTD2023 Santa Fe 30th Anniversary ($3,199 street), with its NEX cutaway body – made of Silky Oak back and sides, and a solid cedar top – and Native American– themed appointments, including plenty of turquoise.

The original Santa Fe featured Takamine’s infamous Brownie preamp, so called for its warm sound, produced by the unique saturation effect of the FET amplification element.

The LTD2023 features the CTF-2N preamp, which is based on the original Brownie, plus modern functions such as detailed EQ adjustment, notch filter and a tuner.

Godin

Godin had a rather large presence, and its hot acoustic item was the Seagull S6 Collection 1982 ($599 street), which follows the design of the S6 Original, with a shorter scale length and retro features from the ’80s, including the headstock and logo.

Like all Seagulls, it’s made in Canada from sustainably sourced woods, in this case a cedar top with wild cherry back and sides.

One of Seagull’s primary ambassadors, Italian-American maestro Peppino D’Agostino, was on site performing with his trusty signature dreadnought cutaway. He offered me the opportunity to play it, and it’s a wild crossover of a booming steel-string with an extra-wide nylon-style neck that facilitates ample space for his classically inspired fingerpicking.

D’Agostino has been with Seagull almost 30 years, and he said there may be an anniversary update to his signature model by the next NAMM Show, in January 2024.

Hybrid Hot Rods

Godin

Godin has long been hot on the hunt for the ultimate hybrid, evidenced by its entire Multiac line and several electrics with dual outputs for magnetic-plus-piezo pickups.

The latest is the solidbody Radium-X ($2,250 street) launched last fall. Feeding dual amps, it delivered a killer Tele-meets-acoustic tonal blend, which brings us to another undeniably accelerating trend.

Ibanez

So much innovation is happening on the hybrid front, including an increasing number of instruments with dual outputs.

Ibanez includes them on several acoustics, and the new Advanced Acoustic AAD440CE ($2,299 street) is particularly interesting. It’s a dark and handsome Grand Dreadnought (five percent larger than a standard dreadnought) made of all solid African mahogany, with a deep Advanced Access cutaway, and a dual pickup system consisting of an AP-11 magnetic pickup and a contact pickup that feed into the two separate outputs.

The Platinum Collection AE410 ($1,999 street) features a similar setup, plus a T-Bar undersaddle piezo on its AE body, which is essentially a grand auditorium style with a cutaway. Three controls on the upper bout let you blend their levels to your heart’s desire.

Cole Clark

Cole Clark’s True Hybrid ($3,399 street) takes the concept to another level that truly straddles the acoustic/electric boundary.

The body is a thinline Grand Auditorium made of solid Australian Blackwood and loaded with their proprietary PG3 acoustic pickup, as well as a full-on three-way magnetic pickup system available in various configurations: two humbuckers, three single-coils or a humbucker with two singles.

The magnetics are specifically balanced for optimal performance with a typical set of phosphor-bronze acoustic strings.

I got off on the über-flexible HSS setup of the TL2EC-BLBL-HSS at the booth, where they were running the magnetics through a Blackstar 1x12 combo while the acoustic pickup was fed into a QSC P.A. Look for a full review soon.

Lava

On the cusp of the hybrid wave are smart guitars that feature all sorts of onboard effects and other gadgets, housed in an acoustic body that becomes its own amp.

Lava had a case stocked with its top-tier ME 3 carbon-fiber instruments as well as its most recent model, the more affordable Lava Blue Touch, made of high-pressure laminate.

Donner

Meanwhile, Donner showcased a new prototype smart guitar called the REVO (price TBD) with dual pickups (magnetic and piezo) and a lighted fretboard that can be used to illuminate, for example, a particular scale.

Two guitars can be linked, opening up endless educational possibilities. Rather than taking a more high-tech route, Lâg aimed at the masses with two of their more affordable BlueWave guitars featuring the simple BlueWave smart system with dual controls for room and hall reverbs, plus delay.

Unique & Boutique

The Boutique Guitar Showcase was back, and once again one of the coolest of these instruments came from Robert Robinson Guitars out of Chicago.

The 10-C ($8,600 direct) is a 12-frets-to-the-body model with a deep cutaway, thereby combining the awesome punch of a 12-fret with access to the higher register.

One of the most unique items at the show was Timberline’s new Jamie Dupuis signature model ($3,299 direct), a combination 12-string and harp guitar.

Acoustic Electronics

L.R. Baggs

L.R. Baggs introduced what could be a game changer in the form of the HiFi ($199) high-fidelity acoustic bridge-plate pickup system.

At its heart are dual transducers that affix under the bridge plate with a non-invasive peel-and-stick installation. An exceptional preamp is in the endpin, and tone and volume controls mount in the sound hole.

HiFi essentially splits the difference between a traditional piezo undersaddle, such as the Baggs Element, and a body sensor-style pickup. It sounds more realistic and balanced than any undersaddle I’ve heard, including the Element.

I tried out the HiFi rather extensively, and didn’t experience the kind of feedback issues one might expect. I can’t wait to check it out in a gig environment.

Fishman

Fishman introduced the AFX Series, featuring four miniature pedals tailored to the acoustic guitarists.

The AFX Pocket Blender ($89.95 street) is an A/B/Y + D.I. with a two-channel mixer that lets users of dual-element pickup systems, such as Fishman’s PowerTap, to adjust the balance of the signals individually and send them to separate amps.

The AFX Broken Record ($119.95 street) is a simple one-button looper/sampler that can hold up to six minutes of 24-bit audio, which can be transferred to a computer.

The AFX Pro EQ ($119.95) is a miniature acoustic preamp and equalizer, while the AFX AcoustiVerb ($119.95) offers spring, hall and plate reverbs, all voiced and processed in parallel to preserve your acoustic’s tone.

Peterson

Peterson brought a Mini Mouse-approved pedal, the Strobo Stomp Mini ($119 street). It’s a real strobe tuner with true-bypass and pure-buffer mode.

Top-mounted jacks make its tiny footprint even smaller. Its ultra-accurate display appears huge and can be seen in sunlight or stage light. It runs on nine-volt AC or USB-C power. Acoustic players will appreciate its more than 80 sweetened and guided tunings.

Universal Audio

Universal Audio introduced three mind-altering pedals: Max Preamp & Dual Compressor, Del-Verb Ambience Companion and Galaxy ’74 Tape Echo & Reverb ($349 street each).

There wasn’t an acoustic on hand at their event, but James Santiago handed me an electric while he played around with various pedal settings and, Holy Toledo! The sound was studio quality and the effects were otherworldly.

Max offers classic Teletronix LA2A optical limiting, punchy 1176 studio compression and a hearty vintage preamp tone. Del-Verb delivers three vintage delays and three lush reverbs, while Galaxy simulates the iconic mid-’70s Roland Space Echo.

Awesome compression and ambience are at the top of the effects list for an acoustic player, and these are top shelf.

Future Focus

Even without some of the big names present at NAMM, so much was happening on the show floor that it’s impossible to cover everything here. And once folks started getting into cocktail hour mode in the hotel lobbies, talk of secret projects not quite ready for this show started to spread.

Godin whispered about collaboration with a classic rock superstar, so we’ll be eager to find out what that’s all about.

Baggs has some Area 52 stuff happening that I saw for myself at their headquarters in Central California, and I can safely say acoustic-electric enthusiasts will be pleasantly shocked.

The future of acoustic-electric guitar appears brilliant. And while the future of tonewoods seems less so, there are areas for optimism through alternative tonewoods, sustainability initiatives and making better use of the woods that are available now.

As for the NAMM show, it appears to be on far more stable footing than last year. Here’s looking forward to the next one!

“Whenever you’re dealing with the idea of matching a guitar sound to a song, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, ‘What do I want to say with my instrument?’ Joe Satriani told Guitar Player. “You have to consider your intentions, and that becomes context.

“Context will ultimately define if your tone is good and proper for what you’re trying to put across.”

Synonymous with Ibanez, Satriani has maintained his loyalty to the Japanese firm for decades and his signature guitars remain the engines of his creative work. So how did it all begin? “What I noticed when I was growing up and developing my style, was that Les Pauls, Teles, and Strats restricted me,” he reveals.

“I wanted to play a certain way. But my knuckles would hit the horn on ES-335s, Telecasters and Les Pauls would dig into the underside of my forearm, and things like that.”

While the Strat proved more lenient, the vibrato system still wasn’t working out for Satch. Ultimately, he needed something more stable.

“All of a sudden, the Floyd Rose comes into being,” he recalls. “It had to be invented, because somebody had to solve the tuning issue and make a better vibrato bar.

“Also, I had been putting guitars together myself with Boogie Bodies and ESP necks, and all this stuff, but it wasn’t until Ibanez sent me a 540R that I realized, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like a ’50s guitar, and it produces a whole other sound.’”

While physical comfort was a crucial factor in realizing the ultimate JS guitar, so too was sound.

“I had to start working on the sound, because the guitar has to be elegant in how it makes its transitions,” explains Satriani. “I start a song, I play a riff, I immediately go into a melody, there are little solo flourishes around the melody, there’s an intense melody that may involve totally destroying the guitar with the whammy bar and other techniques, and then go back to the melody to finish the song. I do that for two and a half hours onstage, and instruments of that ’50s design just don’t work.

“Steve Blucher at DiMarzio has been working with me for years to figure out pickups that would allow me to have a specific voice when I play melody, but also have a big, broad sound when I play chords. It’s easier said than done. There’s real subtlety in those shadings.

“In addition, Gary Brawer and Ibanez’s Los Angeles Custom Shop spent many years on getting the mass out of the tremolo bar so that it didn’t make the guitar sound boingy. It’s constant refinement, because when I play a song like “Headrush” or “Energy,” I don’t want the guitar to stop me at all.

“I need it to be open to interpretation.”

Order Joe Satriani's latest album, The Elephants of Mars, here.

German guitarist Manuel Gardner Fernandes’ playing is in a league of its own.

His insane, vertigo-inducing compositions, loaded with bell-like tapped harmonics and eye-wateringly quick finger work, are so impressive, in fact, that he was accused of faking his electric guitar playing in 2019.

The accusations came after a selection of content creators attempted to shine a light on alleged six-string trickery occurring in online guitar videos. Unfortunately for Fernandes, he was placed right in the firing line.

Setting the record straight, the guitarist confirmed that he does occasionally edit and pre-record his videos – as is the entitlement of any online content creator in 2022 – to ensure the music is the “best quality and to add an extra two percent of perfection to it.”

But he asserted that not a single one of his videos had ever been sped up.

And on a positive note, the controversy helped get Fernandes in front of a wave of new viewers, many of whom ultimately became fans.

Like his contemporaries, Fernandes selects poppier, more electronic backdrops upon which to lay his out-of-this-world lines.

He also fronts progressive-metal band, Unprocessed, blending genres with the likes of the pop-djent single “Candyland,” and the pop-inspired cut “Portrait.”

Fernandes makes light work of rapid muted strums for percussive flair and octave-hopping harmonic chimes.

“I started playing metal when I was a kid and started playing downstrokes back then,” he said of his signature style in 2020. “After that, I started combining Latin styles, and at some point I wanted to integrate dead sounds and notes.

“I found a way to play it the fastest and tightest way possible.”

This 2020 rendition of the instrumental “Right Hand King” is case in point. In this mind-blowing performance, Fernandes throws down his trademark percussive muting and lightning-quick tapped slides over a hip-hop beat.

Browse the Manuel Gardner Fernandes catalog here.

As any longtime Guitar Player reader knows, Steve Vai and this magazine go way back. His introduction to the wider guitar community came via an appearance in the magazine in October 1984.

The unveiling of “The Attitude Song” on the Eva-Tone Soundsheet flexi-disc provided in that issue brought Vai’s insane chops and melodic sensibilities directly to the people who would appreciate them the most, the Guitar Player readers, something Vai acknowledges in the following list of career highlights.

He is currently celebrating the success of Inviolate, his 10th studio album, which was released earlier this year to universally strong reviews and debuted at the top of the Billboard Hard Rock album chart.

“I’m humbled by the response that Inviolate has received,” he says. “None of my solo work has ever debuted at number one on any chart, anywhere. I can’t believe it.

“It’s been a while since I did a purely instrumental record. When I was making it, I was in that frame of mind where I thought, I don’t know how people are going to take it, but I’m not going to worry about that.

“What I do know is that the people who follow what I do and like what I do want me to make the music that’s most important to me. Because then it has in it the thing that they like, and it’s a great formula: I’m satisfied, and they’re satisfied. The right people are attracted. It is so nice to feel that your contribution is appreciated.”

Shortly after the album’s release, Vai underwent shoulder surgery and recorded a YouTube video which showed him shredding one-handed through a piece called “Knappsack,” while his right arm was suspended in a sling.

Vai re-injured the joint but fortunately the damage wasn’t too severe.

“They thought that I had re-torn the shoulder, which would have entailed a 16-month healing time, but fortunately that wasn’t the case,” he explains. “It was a different tear, and I was already able to pick a little with my right hand a week later.”

Always one of the most cerebral and spiritually minded artists, Vai has an interesting philosophy on what it takes to maintain a mind-and-body approach to well-being.

“I’m a vegetarian,” he says. “I like to eat foods that are close to nature, I don’t take any drugs and I’m not on any drugs.

I don’t really drink or anything like that, but that just feels natural to me. It’s not like I’m doing that to be healthy. I don’t think that health comes from things like that but from the health of your mind. That requires a whole different focus.

“If you’re open enough, you know what things work for you, whether it be food or exercise or whatever. But if you’re in some kind of funky mindset, you won’t know what your best choices are. That’s how I view things.”

Having spent so long in lockdown, and several more months recuperating from surgery, Vai is currently on a mammoth global tour.

“What I do is psyche myself up for whatever lies ahead of me,” he explains. “That means that if I’m at home, I’m psyched to be at home, and I’m psyched to be in the studio, recording.

“When the record is done, I start to psychologically align myself with going on tour, and that’s when the feeling changes to ‘I’ve got to get out of Dodge and I’ve got to get on that iron horse! [laughs] I’ve got to play my guitar to people now!’

“I cultivate the impulse and then I’m ready to go. When the tour starts to wind down, I then psychologically align myself with being at home, and then I don’t want to be on tour. It’s all mental gymnastics to keep my sanity.”

Vai picked through his extensive catalog to select these five tracks that he considers among the most important to his career…

1. “The Attitude Song” from ‘Flex-Able’ (1984)

“This was a very important song for me. When I recorded it, I had no expectations with regard to what would happen with it, or even whether anybody would hear it. It was just like joy when I made it. I had so much fun, and I had so many ideas.

“‘The Attitude Song’ checked off a box for me, with regard to the wild kinds of things that I was working on at that time on the guitar.

“Some of the things I was doing seemed unique: pulling up on the bar and playing the melody, the weird harmonies, and the way that things were structured. It didn’t dawn on me until decades later that those things were quite unique.

“It had innovation, but I didn’t realize that so much at the time. It was quite a tricky song to play, with the polymeter: 7/8 over a 4/4.

“When it appeared in Guitar Player on a Soundsheet, I can honestly say that that was the first major exposure for me as a guitarist to the guitar community, and it went over very well.”

2. “For the Love of God” from ‘Passion and Warfare’ 1990

“I think this is undoubtedly my best-known piece of music. I’d probably get beat up after the concert if I didn’t play this live. I never get bored playing it, though; I can lose myself for an eternity in just one note in that song.

“This was another track that came from a very innocent kind of approach. At the time that I made Passion and Warfare, I knew that I was deliberately turning my back on ‘rock stardom.’

I had toured the world multiple times with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake, and it was really big, and it was lucrative. You get to play the part of a rock star, which was fantastic, but it wasn’t entirely what I was looking for.

I knew all along that there was this music in me that had to come out, and in my mind, I thought that it would just be the end of my career. It was a nice run being a big rock star, but I have to do this music.

“When I recorded ‘For the Love of God,’ it was under the auspice that this record that I was making really didn’t have an audience or a place, because there was nothing like it at the time. I knew it was something that was in me that had to come out, regardless of how the guitar community was going to receive it.

“I remember someone hearing it and saying, ‘It’s nice, but it’s kinda long and wanky.’ [laughs] I remember thinking those sentiments may be true, but fuck that; this is a beautiful piece of music. I really had an intimate relationship with that song when I recorded it, and I think that’s what people feel.

“When I handed this album to Capitol Records, who had previously released Eric Johnson’s Ah Via Musicom, they actually said to me, ‘We have no idea what this is. We are not going to promote it, and the advance that we told you we were going to give you, we’re cutting that in half.’

“I just said, ‘Fine, I’m taking it away from you. You broke the deal, so I don’t have to release it on Capitol.’ Relativity picked it up after that.”

3. “Tender Surrender” from ‘Alien Love Secrets’ (1995)

“For me, this is the perfect amalgamation of my intense side and my tender side. I love the way that it starts out with those octaves. It’s very sweet, and there are so many dynamics and such articulation. Those things really make melodies speak.

“I knew that I wanted it to build and build organically; every note is part of the melody in that piece. It’s another song that was very well received by the guitar community. It was planted at exactly the right time for me, whereas my previous album, Sex and Religion, seemed to have come out at exactly the wrong time.

“I think the guitar community had a big question about that album: ‘What’s he doing? Why vocals? This isn’t an instrumental album!’

“When Alien Love Secrets came out, it was friendly for the guitar community, with tracks like this, ‘Kill the Guy With the Ball’ and ‘Bad Horsie.’ ‘Tender Surrender’ has such a nice melody and builds so well to a climax that it was almost a perfect formula for those people that really love instrumental guitar music.

“It really struck a nerve. It’s another song that I play in concerts all the time, because if I didn’t, I think people would be very disappointed.”

4. “Bad Horsie” from ‘Alien Love Secrets’ (1995)

“This is a very different track from ‘Tender Surrender.’ It had the bones to exist in the metal community. It’s a side of me that I really enjoy. It’s sort of like Jack Butler [the character Vai plays] in the movie Crossroads.

“It’s connected to that song that I played in that film; that movie had a significant impact on my career. When I was doing Crossroads and reading the script, it said, ‘Jack Butler kicks into a guitar riff that sounds like a freight train.’ I wondered what a freight train would sound like if it were mimicked with a guitar.

“The first thing I did was tune down, then grind out that rhythm on the bass notes. Soon after that, I had a dream where I was on a wild stallion, and I was riding through a field of high grass, being chased by a train.

“Suddenly the horse stopped, turned around and charged at the train, at which point I woke up. [laughs] That was when I thought I’d write a song with the train concept from Crossroads and mix it with a horse.

“It’s a song that I really love playing. It’s malleable – we can constantly change it up. It’s heavy and it’s satisfying when you feel that heaviness. It’s another song that has gravitated toward becoming a favorite of my fans. It’s definitely one of my most metal tracks.”

5. “And We Are One” from ‘Modern Primitive’ (2016)

“I would go on record to say that I think the solo on this is perhaps my greatest accomplishment on the guitar. That would be because of its phrasing, its neatness and its beauty. I don’t feel pretentious saying that, because I’m speaking within my capacities.

“So if I say something is profoundly, deeply moving and beautiful to me, that’s to me, you know? There may be others that feel that way, but it’s important that an artist invests their intimacy into their music, because it carries their DNA in it.

“This is what people want: They want you, your unique creativity. They don’t want you to sound like somebody else. They can smell fake a mile away.

“With this song, I told myself, ‘You’re going to record a solo here, where every riff is going to be unique for you. It can’t be anything you’ve done before, and it has to be innovative.’ In that one song, there is more phrasing and melodic intimacy than anything I’ve ever recorded. That’s why this song is so important to me.

“There is really a lot going on in my playing that might not be apparent to someone who isn’t watching me play this. Not that that is important in itself, of course. What is important is that when the listener hears it, they feel something.”

Visit the Steve Vai website for tour dates and ticket info.

Browse the Steve Vai catalog here.

For the first time since 2020, the music industry descended upon Mickey Mouse Land to get its NAMM dance on, and from jump street it was – well...weird.

We may have been in the right place – the Anaheim Convention Center – but it was the “wrong” time.

NAMM took place on the first weekend in June, whereas Anaheim traditionally hosts the huge Winter NAMM Show in January, and Nashville presents a smaller Summer NAMM Show in July.

While a scaled-back event was held in Nashville in 2021, this year’s bash was intended to be the extra-large experience the Anaheim show usually is.

The turnout, however, was extra small.

If the Anaheim show is a primary litmus test for the state of the musical instrument biz, what does it say about the industry’s health?

In short, it’s complicated.

Some manufacturers – the majors, mostly – are thriving, while the majority are struggling. The sheer number of empty aisles at the show indicated that many not only didn’t make it to the show – they didn’t make it, period.

Everyone has had to adapt, and the situation remains fluid as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on supply chains and personnel.

With the show taking place amid Orange County’s COVID surge, the story this year was less about new gear drops and celebrity performances, and more about human beings.

There was an overwhelming sentiment of, “Damn, it’s good to see you again!” The first exchange was always some version of “How’ve you been?” followed up with anecdotes about life under COVID.

The survival stories were compelling, and some were epic – like listening to a family history of how their folks made it to the New World.

New-gear talk seemed like an afterthought.

But talk new gear we did. In the absence of Gibson, Fender and PRS, Martin and Taylor had an outsized presence, and their booths drew hordes.

“We were pleasantly surprised,” remarked Fred Greene, Martin’s VP of product management.

The lack of many big, loud booths also allowed smaller exhibitors to shine, with many of them pushing products developed a year or three ago.

Some chose not to bring any goods at all and simply held meetings inside cubicles that turned parts of the show floor into office space.

And yet somehow there was still enough cool new stuff that it was hard to walk more than 50 feet without running into something that you wanted to try out or someone you wanted to talk to.

The NAMM Show was shorter by a full day, with the media preview on Thursday and the show floor open Friday through Sunday.

Martin’s press preview kicked off the affair in a rather surreal setting. The star of the show was Rich Robinson, who was on hand to introduce his Custom Signature Edition D-28 ($6,999 street), which he calls the Appalachian.

“My dad had a folk duo in the ’50s called the Appalachians, so I called it that in tribute to him,” he explains.

The guitar is modeled and relic-ed precisely after his father’s 1954 D-28.

“It was always there around the house when I was growing up,” Robinson says, “and my dad gave it to me just as our band was blowing up.”

Robinson used that ’54 to write tons of Black Crowes tunes, including his signature acoustic guitar number, “She Talks to Angels.”

I gave the intro a go on the Appalachian, and it sounded right on the moneymaker.

The Custom Shop SC-2022 ($7,999 street) is the first Nazareth-made instrument with the SC style introduced at the January 2020 NAMM convention.

It combines the revolutionary SC body and Sure Align neck with features from Martin’s other contemporary groundbreaker, the Modern Deluxe, such as solid tonewoods, Liquidmetal bridge pins and Fishman Aura VT Blend electronics.

The Custom Shop SC-2022 ups the ante with a dazzling fretboard inlay. Limited to just 300 instruments, it’s bound to be a collector’s item and quite possibly a harbinger of more American-made SCs to come.

Stay tuned for a deeper story on this development in our upfront New & Cool department.

The Custom Major Kealakai ($7,999 street) is a re-creation of a guitar Martin made for the Hawaiian maestro back in 1916.

Essentially an oversized 12-fret triple 0, it was Martin’s first big guitar by modern standards and the precursor to the game-changing Dreadnought.

I relayed the basic story in the Frets Learn column in the Holiday 2019 issue because of a chance encounter on Oahu with esteemed luthier, player and Hawaiian musical historian Kilin Reece of KR Strings, Honolulu, who had just received the prototype.

He was also at this show, and has much more to add to this truly historic story, including a documentary film and a partnership with Martin and others to launch the Pacific String Museum in November.

We’ll catch up with Reese closer to then.

Finally, the 2.5 millionth Martin was unveiled, showing off a starry top that replicates the night sky as it would have appeared over Manhattan when C.F. Martin and his family arrived in America in 1833.

Fast-forward to last year, and the big news was that Chris Martin IV was handing the reigns over to Thomas Ripsam.

The avid Martin fan and player is now celebrating his first anniversary as the company’s president and CEO.

“It’s been like a whirlwind,” he told me when we caught up, “stepping into such historic shoes.

“We’ve had a great year, and we’re still dealing with the boom. There’s been a lot of demand for our guitars, which is wonderful, but there have also been many challenges, from supply chain issues to all kinds of other stuff in this weird time.

“The key is to make sure that each and every Martin guitar is special, with the kind of top quality that leads to an emotional connection with the player.”

Martin wasn’t the only company with a new head honcho.

Taylor Guitars dropped a press release on the eve of the show declaring Andy Powers the company’s president and CEO, as well as chief guitar designer.

Former president Bob Taylor and CEO Kurt Listug (both Taylor cofounders) will become senior advisors and co-chairs on the board of directors.

The move puts Powers, who is just 41 years old, on the same playing field as Fender’s Andy Mooney and Gibson’s J.C. Curleigh.

Last year, Taylor announced transfer of ownership to its employees, so the company enjoys a new leader at the helm of a ship owned by its employees and under the direction of two sustainably minded co-founders who are intent on ensuring a strong legacy – not to mention, plenty of quality tonewood for the future.

Taylor has a Hawaiian partnership to sustainably supply and grow koa, and Powers is obsessed with it.

He summed up the Taylor ethos in a phrase that should one day be the title of his memoir: “From soil to song.”

Powers thrives at NAMM, where he gives interviews with guitar in hand, playing original compositions to illustrate why a given guitar was created and how he uses that particular tool for specific playing styles.

As an example, he noted how the established Koa Series has a sophisticated look and sound, and how he’s taking an entirely different approach with the new all-solid-koa 700 series, consisting of the Grand Auditorium 724ce and the Grand Concert 722ce (both $3,499 street).

Powers says the 700 series is designed for a more workman-like look and feel, and a sweeter mid-focused tone, with oodles of dynamic nuance.

He let me do some comparisons, and the new series does sound less booming and more nuanced.

Ibanez had a big booth showcasing its wares with lots of instruments that blur the line between electric guitar and acoustic guitar.

A notably cool addition is the AEG550 ($399 street) with its sleek, high-gloss black finish and a vine inlay that runs all the way up an ebony fretboard and onto the headstock.

The Talman TCM50 ($299 street) is an eye-catcher, featuring a figured ash top with vintage brown sunburst and a unique orange pickguard that makes it stand out.

It’s a wildly shaped thinline acoustic-electric hybrid design that incorporates a magnetic pickup near the neck, just beyond an offset oval soundhole.

One of the great things about talking to acoustic artists each month is that they hip you to manufacturers you might not know about or find in your local store.

Yasmin Williams, who was featured in the January 2022 Frets, plays a Timberline harp guitar, and the company’s booth featured several capably showcased by Andrew Kasab.

My favorite guitar at the Timberline booth was the T90Cc Solid Silkwood OM Cutaway. It’s snazzy looking, with an arm bevel and a Venetian cutaway. It plays well and is a strong value at $2,249.

One of the most fun instruments to be found at NAMM this year is made by pickup manufacturer Lace Music Products.

The Electric Cigar Box Guitar (three- or four-string, $349 street) isn’t made from an actual cigar box, but it’s built to look like one and comes in an array of different designs. It has a Lace Matchbook pickup with a push/pull coil tap to select between humbucking and single-coil.

I’d never played one before, but it was in an open tuning, so that was easy enough to figure out and get a song going.

My bandmate Jules Leyhe grabbed a slide, and it sounded great on the box as well. You can see the duo jam on GP’s Instagram.

Even in such a significantly scaled-back setting, NAMM was global. 

Lowden, an Irish manufacturer of high-end acoustics, displayed the new Equals Edition signature model ($1,330 street) in its Sheeran by Lowden line, an affordable range created with Ed Sheeran, who as a former busker wanted his signature instruments to be attainable by everyday musicians.

The company also introduced three fantastic new nylon-string Lowdens: the S-23J made of walnut with a red cedar top ($6,850 street), the S-34J made of koa with alpine spruce ($7,645 street) and the exceptional S-35J made of Guatemalan rosewood and alpine spruce ($18,020 street).

The Boutique Guitar Showcase was back this year, and in an area that was full of unique items, one of the coolest had to be the Domino Resonator by Chicago’s Robert Robinson Guitars ($12,000 street).

It’s essentially a metal resonator housed in a wooden body with a removable face that has six circular sound ports that make it look like a domino.

It sounded very much like Duane Allman’s tone on “Little Martha,” so we tuned it to open E and gave it a go.

You can watch video of Jules Leyhe playing it, also on our Instagram.

And because this NAMM show was all about human connections, we had a memorable moment when we ran into Australian teen sensation Taj Farrant outside.

When Taj told us he was considering approaching Taylor for an endorsement deal, we marched him upstairs and made an introduction to Taylor A&R man Tim Godwin.

Taj’s team made the case for his rising star, noting that he’s played with Santana and has huge social numbers.

After playing a little to demonstrate his prodigious chops, Taj was made a Taylor artist and left with a new GS Mini.

It was inspiring to watch a young musician’s dreams be realized – a magical moment happening in the shadow of Disneyland.

So how will the NAMM Show look next year? That’s the million-dollar question.

It’s clearly dependent on many factors, such as new COVID variants and how manufacturers feel about this year’s show. But one has to imagine the show will bounce back to some degree, if not immediately all the way.

And while some may be quick to make too much of NAMM’s declining attendance, this year’s show was a reminder that it remains an important juncture between musicians and gear makers – or, to use another word, people.

The NAMM Show was a step forward toward resuming some semblance of normalcy, and a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with old friends as well as make new ones.

“I only play one guitar.” That's what Nile Rodgers told Guitar Player in a recent interview regarding the Chic/funk legend's axe of choice, the "Hitmaker" Stratocaster.

Now, that statement is mostly true, as the Hitmaker has lived up to its name over the decades by finding its way onto dozens of smashes not only by Chic, but also by Daft Punk, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Madonna, and countless others.

Despite that steadfast loyalty to his number one electric guitar though, Rodgers sounds right at home on other six-strings as well, as evidenced by the video above.

Shot during the recording sessions for the Halo 2 soundtrack, the video shows Rodgers working with Steve Vai to record a decidedly more shreddy version of the video game series' iconic theme.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, the Hitmaker – unmistakable, with that mirror pickguard – does make an appearance early on in the 27-minute video, with Rodgers improvising a funky chord progression to accompany the theme's propulsive strings.

A minute or so later in the video, though, Vai turns up, after which Rodgers explains – and even sings – to the maestro what he's looking for. Vai subsequently picks up one of his signature Ibanez JEMs and begins to dial in his tone and warm up, before asking Rodgers to babysit the JEM while he does more tonal detective work.

Starting at 6:09, Rodgers proceeds to have a field day with Vai's guitar, unleashing a series of rapid-fire licks, populated with huge bends and red-hot alternate picking. "This [the Ibanez] feels great!" Rodgers exclaims to Vai before handing back his prized axe.

Elsewhere, the video shows Vai essentially getting what became the eventual lead guitar track dead-on on the first take. We just wish there'd been a jam with him taking up the Hitmaker and Rodgers picking up the JEM once again...

Back in December 2020, Paul Gilbert sold his one-of-a-kind, custom-built 1987 Ibanez “Ice-Stroyer” on Reverb.com for $16,000.

Gilbert parted ways with the electric guitar to assist his former bandmate, Racer X bassist Juan Alderete, and his family with the significant medical expenses they incurred after Alderete was involved in a serious bicycle accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury, a fractured clavicle, and a spinal fracture. 

Commissioned by Gilbert in 1987, the guitar was reportedly supposed to be merely a pink Destroyer. However, Ibanez – feeling that Gilbert would want unrestricted access to the upper reaches of the fretboard – built Gilbert the top half of a Destroyer, but cut the bottom half of the body like one of the company's Iceman guitars. 

“This Ibanez Ice-Stroyer was built by the Ibanez Custom Shop in Bensalem, PA in 1987,” Gilbert explained in 2020. “Only two were made. This pink one, for me. And an orange one for Bruce Bouillet. I used this guitar for live Racer X shows, for Mr. Big recordings, and on Mr. Big tours.

“Over the years, I changed the bridge to a fixed bridge, moved the location of the toggle switch, and had a DiMarzio Tone Zone and a DiMarzio single coil pickup installed," he continued. 

"The back of the guitar has sushi stickers that I got on my first tour of Japan with Mr. Big back in 1989. And my signature on the headstock is back when I was still signing in script. The tall frets are in excellent condition, and the guitar plays and sounds great!”

Listed by Nashville's Rumble Seat Music, the guitar – which can be seen on the cover of Racer X's 1988 live album, Extreme Volume Live – is said to be in "excellent" condition. It can be purchased now for $18,500.

To view the full listing, point your browser over to reverb.com.

Inviolate, Steve Vai’s new album, delivers everything fans have come to expect from the guitar wizard in terms of sonic innovation and ever-expanding creative horizons. But it also throws in a few curve balls with the use of clean Gretsch and Strat tones, and the introduction of the Hydra, a beast of a guitar with three necks and enough onboard gizmos to land it on the moon.

Vai’s philosophy about making music is simple in theory but considerably more difficult in practice.

“I always say to myself that, for at least one point in every track, I have to do something that I haven’t done before,” he reveals. “And it has to sound like music.”

The guitarist underwent shoulder surgery to repair an injury around early 2021, which allowed him to record the new album. Subsequent to his tour, at the time of our talk, he discovered that a second surgery was necessary, which will delay his worldwide Inviolate to until September.

Always positive in his outlook, the Vai was unfazed by the temporary setback and looking forward to the eventual road trip.

We see you resisted the temptation to go for the pun on your name with the album title.

I thought about it. [laughs] I wrote that word down so many ways, thinking, How do I want to spell it? I just thought that it would be bastardizing it, and it wouldn’t mean anything anymore, so I avoided the temptation.

“Teeth of the Hydra,” the opening track, was cut with your new three-necked Hydra. Was it all played in real time?

Yeah, the idea was to create an instrument that could cut the piece all in one shot. The only other instruments on there are some keyboard parts and some drums.

The title came first, when I saw the finished guitar. I just looked at it and knew it had to be called the Hydra. I got that name from my love of old stop-motion animation movies, like Jason and the Argonauts.

I then thought, What does the piece of music need to say with that title? How do I make the title audible? That’s basically how I approached writing the song. I wanted to capture the essence of the guitar – its image and its abilities – and translate that into music.

All the bass, seven-string and harp strings are performed on the Hydra at the same time. The challenge was the linearness of it. I knew that, ultimately, I had to create something that was enjoyable as a standalone piece of music, with a nice melody.

I didn’t want it to be a gimmick for the guitar. People may not realize what is going on when I perform that piece until they see me do it.

It’s a little like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.

Exactly, that’s a good way of putting it. Either that or juggling chainsaws. [laughs]

Having seen photos of the guitar, we're wondering what the case for it looks like. It must be huge.

It’s so funny that you mention that. I had a meeting about it with my tech this morning, because the case that we have is large. To take it on tour is a whole other story. We have to have an Anvil case built around the existing case. It’s going to be the size of a Volkswagen when we’re done.

Is there any prospect of Ibanez producing it for sale if there is a demand?

[laughs] I can assure you that the Hydra is not a production-model instrument. It took four years to build. It’s highly technical, with built-in synthesizers, a Sustainer pickup… So many things. The cost to build it would not be within anybody’s budget.

Having said that, I guess I’ve seen odder things happen. Hopefully, it will spark the imagination in some new young luthiers to do outrageous things.

The thing about multinecked guitars is that their functionality is usually fairly limited, but if you can embrace the potential of the Hydra, you’re in a whole other neighborhood.

So you won’t be throwing the Hydra around your neck in the tradition of all the hair-metal era videos?

[laughs] I tried. No, you can’t because we have a strap that goes around my waist to take the weight of the guitar. I should look into getting something to make it spin around like ZZ Top did in that old video clip [for “Legs”] with the furry guitars.

“Zeus in Chains” has a very commercial stop-start feel in the main part of the song.

This started out as a simple riff that I had recorded into my iPhone before I went to sleep, on a guitar that I keep by my bed. I usually sit there and plunk about before bed and document any riffs that I feel have some energy.

I had the first 16 bars, and then it sat there, beckoning me. Occasionally, I’d give in and pull the track to have a think about it. The basic demo idea had all of the energy, so I knew what the finished piece was going to be like.

The title didn’t come until after I recorded the piece. I knew that I wanted to enhance the tonality of it by using a seven-string, for those big, fat clustery chords. The idea was to let the chords ring out lushly, then create a soaring melody that arose out of the chords.

Very ugly can be beautiful too, so I had some very ugly chords spitting out beautifully macabre melodies.

When I was listening back and trying to come up with a title, I was trying to let the track tell me what the title should be: What imagery was coming at me? When it got to the heavy middle section, it just said the title to me.

“Little Pretty” was recorded on a Gretsch, which most fans wouldn’t expect to see on one of your records.

Yeah, it took me by surprise too. [laughs] This was, again, a bedside riff that I had. I had the chords for the first eight bars, and there was something very intriguing about it. It had a darkness, but there was some kind of light, and there was a menacing nature to it.

All I had was those few chords, and it lived on the shelf for about five years. When I started to unpack it, I was listening to the riff, which was recorded on an unplugged electric guitar going straight into my iPhone. I just followed the chords, and the melody unfolded.

I originally had another title for it, “The Red Flower,” but the melody kept saying “Little Pretty” to me. The menacing nature of the harmonic structure created this image for me of something reflective of Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, or Little Red Riding Hood. The whole melody suggested the wolf to me.

The riff usually tells me what guitar to use, which will usually be a [Vai’s signature Ibanez] JEM or a PIA. I’m really not comfortable on any other guitar or able to play to my full potential. I really love archtops though, and I have a wonderful collection of them.

I love the tonality of a Gretsch. I guess most of us know that tonality because of Brian Setzer. The riff just didn’t work on a solid-bodied guitar, but the Gretsch had the dimension that I was looking for.

At times it suggests hints of a spy movie soundtrack.

Yeah, it’s kind of nefarious. [laughs]

There’s another major sonic departure for you on “Candlepower.” The guitar on that cut sounds like a clean Strat, although it is still unmistakably you playing.

Yeah, I can’t help that. [laughs] No artist can. This was another bedside riff [plays four bars on an unplugged guitar], then a couple of chords that went with it to create some energy.

One of the things that I like to do for myself is create a challenge by setting up certain parameters. It’s not uncommon for me to consider doing a guitar solo all on one string with one finger, because, although you’re applying limitations, there are infinite possibilities within those limitations. I’ll end up doing things that I wouldn’t normally do, so then I’ll have a new vocabulary.

When I listened back to my “Candlepower” riff, I decided to flesh it out, use a clean Strat-style guitar, use my right-hand fingers – I’ve spent precious little time honing my finger-picking technique – and no whammy bar, which is like removing an arm for me. [laughs]

As I said before, I like to infuse each song with something that is unique for me. I came up with the concept in my head for bending and releasing multiple strings in different directions at the same time, while crawling up the neck using open strings to increase the flow of the music.

I knew what it would sound like before I did it, but it was unbelievably difficult for me to execute the technique at first.

This is another one of those “patting your head and rubbing your stomach” moments, isn’t it?

Exactly, plus rubbing the bottom of my feet with my pinkie and rubbing my toe while my head is spinning. [laughs]

What I have noticed, though, is that anything that might seem impossible doesn’t seem so impossible once you start doing it.

The last track that we wanted to discuss is “Knappsack,” which demonstrates the way that a limitation can create opportunity and inspiration. You were unable to use your right hand at all, because you were recovering from shoulder surgery.

Yeah. What I try to do is first accept what is, and from there ask myself, What can the situation do to serve me? That’s a very important question to ask. Most people don’t ask questions when they see obstacles; they only see negativity and their creativity becomes derailed.

I had a long-standing shoulder issue which needed to be fixed, and it was an easy, simple surgery. Because I’m doing so much press, it seems like maybe I’m this guy who’s accident prone, but I’m very healthy and I’m doing very well.

When I got back from the surgery, I had this sling on my shoulder, and the name of the sling was the Knappsack, which was designed by the doctor that did my surgery, Dr. Knapp. A new Onyx Black PIA had just arrived at the house when I got back. I sat in my studio, put the guitar on my lap – I couldn’t use my right hand at all, as it was in the sling – so I started playing with my left hand, and it all just came to me.

I wanted to create an enjoyable piece of music, with a nice melody and some crazy soloing, which is almost the story of my life. [laughs] When it was done, I asked myself whether it sounded like a piece of music or a novelty, and it sounded like a piece of music.

You’ve mentioned a solo acoustic/vocal album that you’ve been working on sporadically. Is that likely to be completed and released in the foreseeable future?

I uploaded a version of me singing and playing acoustic guitar on a song called “The Moon and I” during lockdown, which is something I never normally do. Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of little snippets of songs that have a harmonic feeling to them, that don’t sound like anything from my catalog.

When I uploaded that song, the response was surprising to me. There were so many favorable comments. That made me think that I should get on with doing the acoustic album, as I had 15 songs.

I recorded the guitar parts for 13 of them and got about halfway through the vocals when my shoulder went out.

When I got back from the surgery and recorded “Knappsack,” I knew I wanted to tour, so I finished Inviolate, because I’m not going to tour on a solo acoustic album. I will finish the vocals and get the record out at some point, but I have a lot of product planned.

And now you’re about to have another shoulder surgery.

Yes, which means that by the time I’ve recovered from it, I’ll be preparing for the tour, so there isn’t any opportunity to do any recording unless I can get the vocals done while I’m on tour.

I had the original surgery over a year ago, but over the summer I did something stupid and I re-tore one of the tendons. I could probably get away with completing the tour, but to play the Hydra is quite a challenge and it exaggerated the tear.

It became very obvious that it wouldn’t be wise to go on a 250-show tour until I get this thing fixed. It’s a relatively simple fix and my arm will be out of use for about three weeks. But it might be a while before I can play the Hydra again. [laughs]

Order a copy of Inviolate here.

The quest for violin-like attack and endless sustain seems to have found its apotheosis in the Fernandes Sustainer. Generating a magnetic field, this clever pickup device causes a guitar’s strings to vibrate, resulting in infinite, controllable sustain.

But while predecessors like the Gizmotron and EBow were devised as a means to mimic orchestral strings, the Sustainer’s powerful tone has helped it find an audience with shredders, like Steve Vai, who described the pickup’s effect on his playing as giving it “a whole new dimension. As a matter of fact, it’s sort of a dimension of slow motion. I actually can play long slow notes now.”

Vai equipped several of his signature guitars with Sustainers, including FLO (a 77FP JEM transformed to 7VWH spec), FLO III (a basswood Ibanez Los Angeles Custom Shop JEM 7VWH), and BO (a JEM77BRMR prototype), but he has since moved on to the Sustainiac brand, with whom he’s developing a new sustainer pickup.

“I’ve used Fernandes Sustainers, but I can’t put them on my signature guitars because I can’t get enough of them and they’re not consistent,” he told Guitar Player in late 2020.

“And there was always something about the Sustainiac that I like. It was a different feel and a different voice. So I decided to work with them to create something that really suits my needs in a sustainer.”

Vai continues to push the envelope of electric guitar design, as demonstrated by his infamous Hydra instrument. This triple-necked beast comprises seven- and 12-string guitars, a four-string, 3/4 scale length bass guitar and 13 harp strings. Not to mention single-coil, humbucking, piezo, MIDI and sustainer pickups.

Speaking of the innovative instrument, Vai recently told Guitarist magazine, “The [vision] was a guitar with seven strings, a bass neck and these harp strings, and also that I was going to create a piece of music on this instrument that was a much evolved version of things that I’ve done with other triple-neck guitars.

“I was really going to integrate into the piece of music all the necks, and I haven’t done that. I also knew that this piece of music had to stand alone as a piece of music and it can’t sound gimmicky, and I knew that the melody had to be uninterrupted, it had to sound like a melody while I was juggling all these other things.”

Today, Vai revealed an utterly astounding performance video accompanying the piece “Teeth of the Hydra.”

Buy Inviolate here.

While the Ibanez guitar brand dates back to late 19th Century Spain with luthier Salvador Ibáñez (1854–1920) it was the Japanese Hoshino company that brought the name to the fore of the modern guitar world.  

Having imported Ibáñez acoustic guitars from Spain since the late 1920s, Hoshino started making Ibanez-labelled guitars themselves following the demise of the Valencian workshop in the late ‘30s.

Things really progressed after the rock ‘n’ roll years of the late ‘50s when Hoshino began exporting Ibanez electric guitars. Eventually, in 1972, the Ibanez brand was trademarked in the U.S. along with the formation of Hoshino U.S.A.

From this point onwards, Ibanez guitars began to develop an identity all their own.

In celebration of this year’s 50th anniversary, Hoshino U.S.A. is releasing a collection comprising instruments crafted in the Los Angeles- and Aichi Prefecture-based Custom Shops.

Featuring guitars and basses – each with a unique design – the collection represents the most ambitious run of Ibanez Custom Shop guitars to date.

Celebrating half a century of success, these rare and collectible guitars are mere days away from seeing the light of day.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak at just a few of the enticing axes that will be on offer via dealers.

LACS5 “Root Beer Float”

• Neck: 3pc Maple / Korina
• Neck Width: 43mm @ Nut, 57mm @ 22nd Fret
• Neck Thickness: 20mm @ 1st Fret, 22mm @12th Fret
• Grip Shape: Round 
• Fretboard: Maple
• Fretboard Radius: 12”
• Inlays: Block Pearloid / Abalone
• Side Dots: Luminlay
• Scale Length: 24.7”
• Neck Joint: Set Neck
• Body: Mahogany
• Top: Flamed Maple
• Pickups: DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary
• Controls: 2 Vol, 2 Tone, 3 Way Pickup Selector
• Tuners: Gotoh Magnum Locking
• Bridge: Gibraltar 1
• Finish: Light Root Beer Burst

LACS18 “Hang 10”

The Talman is Ibanez’s answer to those classic offset electric solidbodies that hail from California. Similarly, this Los Angeles-built neck-thru rarity is constructed using alder, maple and rosewood.

Its quilted maple top and Turquoise Blue Stain finish are redolent of ocean waves while its Seymour Duncan Strat Lipstick pickups deliver that quintessential surf rock tone.

Specifications:

• Neck: 3pc Maple/Purpleheart
• Neck Width: 42mm @ Nut, 57mm @ 22nd Fret
• Neck Thickness: 20mm @ 1st Fret, 22mm @ 12th Fret
• Grip Shape: Half Round 
• Fretboard: Rosewood 
• Fretboard Radius: 16”
• Inlays: Mother of Pearl Dots
• Side Dots: Luminlay
• Scale Length: 25.5”
• Neck Joint: Neck-Thru 
• Body: Alder
• Top: Quilted Maple
• Pickups: Seymour Duncan Strat Lipstick
• Controls: Vol, Tone, 5-Way Pickup Selector Switch
• Tuners:  Gotoh Magnum Locking
• Bridge:  Gibraltar Std. II
• Finish:  Turquoise Blue Stain Gloss

JPCS32 “Sakura”

Made in Japan, the JPCS32 is a remarkable work of art in itself. This electric bass is nicknamed Sakura (meaning ‘cherry blossom’ in Japanese) in reference to its intricate inlays of shell and wood.

Its 5-piece maple/Purpleheart neck features a Timeless Timber Maple center – a highly-coveted, centuries-old tonewood found preserved in lakes and rivers.

Specifications:

• Neck: 5pc Maple/Purpleheart (Timeless Timber Maple core)
• Neck Width: 38.0mm @ Nut, 60.0mm @ 24th Fret
• Neck Thickness: 19.5mm @ 1st Fret, 22.5mm @ 12th Fret
• Grip Shape: Atlas-4 HP
• Fingerboard: Ebony 
• Fingerboard Radius: 12”
• String Spacing: 19mm  
• Inlays: MOP & Abalone  
• Side Dots: White
• Scale Length: 34” 
• Neck Joint: Bolt-On
• Body: Alder
• Top: Maple Burl
• Pickups: Nordstrand Big Singles
• Tuners: Gotoh RES-O-LITE
• Bridge: MR5S
• EQ: Ibanez Custom Electronics 3-Band EQ
• Controls: Vol/Blend/Treble/Mid/Bass/EQ Bypass/Mid Selector 
• Finish: Yozakura Blue

Visit the Ibanez website for more news.

Though it has been said 'tone is in the fingers' some might argue that using a Fender Jaguar to play jazz with is pushing things a little too far. Nevertheless, as this incredible video of Joe Pass (1929-1994) clearly shows, the offset that once sat proudly at the top of Fender’s pricelist is capable of doing far more than just surf-rock in the right hands.

Joe Pass probably isn’t the first name that springs to mind when it comes to the Fender Jaguar, however. After all, the great American jazz guitarist was one of the most famous endorsers of the Gibson ES-175, having played a 1962 ES-175D model for the best part of two decades almost exclusively prior to the launch of his Ibanez JP20 signature guitar in 1981.

A professional performer since childhood Pass was a jazz guitar prodigy. Unfortunately, the young musician developed a raging opiate addiction in his early 20s for which he eventually sought help via the Synanon treatment program. Down on his luck and without an electric guitar to his name, Pass borrowed a Fender Jaguar before acquiring the Gibson jazzbox he later became synonymous with.

“I’ve stuck with the same basic kind of Gibson, like the model I play now, an ES-175,” Pass told Guitar Player in 1976. “It’s the only kind of electric I’ve ever played when I had the chance. I’ve had this one since my Synanon days. I didn’t have a guitar of my own; all I had was a solid rock ‘n’ roll guitar that belonged to Synanon.

“I was playing a gig at a local club when this guy named Mike Peak came in and saw me playing jazz with a rock guitar. A few months later, on my birthday, I came home and there was this brand-new ES-175D that he had bought for me.”

Browse the Joe Pass catalog here.

Ibanez has unveiled its new AMH90 guitar.

Part of the company's Artcore Expressionist series, this hollow-body features a Linden top, back, and sides, and a 3-piece Nyatoh/Maple neck with a bound Macassar ebony fretboard that sports 22 medium frets and abalone dot inlays.

The guitar's sound comes by way of two Ibanez Super 58 humbucking pickups, controlled by two volume knobs, two tone knobs, and a three-way selector switch. Also onboard is Ibanez's Tri-sound switch, which gives each pickup three individual voices.

Elsewhere, the guitar features gold hardware, a plastic nut, and a Gibraltar Performer bridge with a VT06 tailpiece.

The Ibanez AMH90 guitar is available now – in Black and Cherry Red Flat finishes – for $699.

For more info on the guitar, stop by ibanez.com.

If you're a pedal geek, there are few better channels on YouTube than that of JHS Pedals' Josh Scott.

The man knows his stuff, and his videos are a blast to boot, his latest one especially.

In it, Scott documents his arduous, but eventually successful, quest to acquire what he believes is the rarest guitar pedal on the face of the earth, the Ibanez SK-10 Visual Super Product.

You can check out the video above.

The SK-10 Visual Super Product was part of Ibanez's 10 Series of pedals, first introduced in 1986. Including the OT10 Octave, Modulation Delay, and the beloved TS10 Tube Screamer, the line was a smashing success, and a worthy follow-up to the company's similarly successful 9 Series pedals.

The SK-10 Visual Super Product, however, was part of an ultra-limited run made exclusively for a single store in Japan. It's unknown how many examples of the pedal still survive, though the number is thought to be extremely small.

Which is why Scott – who had traveled across the world desperately hoping to locate the elusive stompbox – was so over the moon to receive an example from Colorado-based pedal company Snouse. 

“It does a really good grunge-y, rock distortion that's right up my alley,” Scott said of the SK-10 after giving it an initial run-through.

The pedal features a control layout of power, EQ, and tube knobs, of which Scott says: “Tube feels like a drive control. Whatever the circuit is, the tube control is cranking the tubes of an amp – that’s my first guess. EQ is a hi-pass. I’m pretty sure it’s just allowing you to have all the possible high end, and then roll it back to get rid of it. Power is volume, without a doubt.”

Scott subsequently breaks down some of the pedal's components – which include a diode arrangement similar to that found on a '70s-style hard-clipping circuit and a dual op-amp – though he declined to share the circuit itself.

Though, just as Scott expounds on why he won't share the exact circuit, and why a bit of mystery is important in life, the camera not so subtly pans to a ProCo Rat and Ibanez FC-10 Fat Cat, respectively, giving us a decent idea of what the SK-10 is made of...

For more of Scott's videos, be sure to check out his YouTube channel.

This is an excerpt from the January/February 2014 issue of Guitar Aficionado magazine.

Most guitarists and fans who have paid close attention to Eddie Van Halen’s career likely think of him as a “serial monogamist” when it comes to the guitars he plays. During the early days of Van Halen, he was known for playing his Frankenstein guitar that he assembled from various parts, and during the Eighties he was usually spotted onstage with his trademark Kramer 5150 guitar. 

After that, Ed went through a succession of signature-model guitars that he designed that were built by Music Man and Peavey. Those guitars led to the ultimate solution – establishing his own EVH brand, which produces various guitars, 5150 amplifiers, cables, accessories and other products entirely to Ed’s own specifications, including the Wolfgang model guitars that are his main workhorse instruments today.

However, over the years Ed has amassed quite an impressive and deep collection of many other guitars that have played important, behind-the-scenes roles in Van Halen’s music. Some of these guitars inspired new songs, while others made cameo appearances during solos or overdubs recorded in the studio. 

Then there are several gifts given to Ed, particularly the various guitars that his mentor Les Paul gave to him over the years. And like anyone who has played guitar for a while, Ed has made a handful of impulse purchases, picking up instruments that catch his eye if only for their aesthetic appeal.

The storage space at 5150 studios, where Van Halen keeps his gear, makes Guitar Center’s Hollywood flagship location look like a humble mom and pop store. Boxes marked with the EVH brand logo are stacked neatly near the entrance, and row upon row of old, battered guitar cases line the walls, concealing their mysterious and alluring contents. 

As Matt Bruck, Van Halen’s business partner and our tour guide for the day, asks if there are any guitars we’d like to see, our minds are immediately flooded with recollections of rare or obscure guitars that Van Halen has mentioned in past interviews or that we caught fleeting glimpses of in old concert photos. Most of those instruments are still around, but even more fascinating are the guitars that we never knew Van Halen had.

“I’m not the typical guitar collector in the least,” Van Halen says as he goes through the stacks and pulls out a few of his personal favorites. “I’ve bought a lot of vintage pieces over the years, but I’ve destroyed quite a few of them. People might think, How could you desecrate the Mona Lisa? But I really don’t care what something looks like. 

"I’m more concerned with a guitar’s functionality, sound and playability. That’s why I started building my own guitars. Other guitars wouldn’t do what I needed them to do, so I made my own.”

Van Halen is not exaggerating. As the photos on the following pages show, he has no qualms about performing rather drastic surgery on instruments to achieve the sound or performance he desires. 

Vintage purists may want to look away, but the various scars, marks, and modifications that he’s made even on valuable vintage instruments tell the tale of a man who is constantly looking for ways to improve the tools of his trade and who refuses to accept the commonly held belief that all progress in electric guitar design stopped in 1959. 

That attitude resulted in a treasure trove of innovations that Van Halen either invented or inspired, including the hybrid Super Strat design (with PAF humbuckers instead of single-coil pickups), customized high-gain amps, bold graphic finishes and other developments that most of today’s guitarists take for granted.

“There is always something new for me around the corner,” Van Halen says. “My tastes are always changing. I used a Wolfgang Stealth with an ebony fingerboard on our entire 2012 tour. Before that, my main guitars all had maple fingerboards, but one day I tried a guitar with an ebony board and thought that it felt pretty good. 

"For the 2012–13 tour, I modified my 5150 III amp heads because my taste had changed again a little and I wanted to continue the evolution of the amp. We’re putting out the limited-edition 5150 III S with that mod, for anyone who wants what I am currently using. I just keep pushing to see what I can get out of something. Spinal Tap made a joke about things going to 11, but I’ve spent my whole life pushing things to 11.”

Even though Van Halen is constantly tinkering with his guitars, his love affair with the instrument is undeniable. During the interview, he pulls out a Sixties Teisco Del Rey with four pickups and wistfully explains how it is exactly the same as his very first guitar. 

(“It’s ironic,” he says, “because my first guitar had four pickups and all these switches, but I’m known for having guitars with just one pickup and one volume knob.”) As he describes his first pro-quality guitar – a 1968 Gibson Les Paul Standard goldtop – the nostalgia and regret in his voice for a guitar that long got away from him is unmistakable.

“That was the first guitar I experimented with,” he says. “It originally had P-90 soapbar pickups, but I put a humbucker in the bridge. When we used to play at the Starwood and Whisky, people tripped at the sound I was getting from that guitar. They couldn’t see the humbucker in the bridge because my hand was covering it.

"That was just the first of many guitars that I fucked with. I took a PAF out of an ES-335 and the vibrato out of a Fifties Strat when I made my Frankenstein guitar, but it was worth it because it got me closer to the sound I was looking for. Out of all the experiments I’ve done, 87 percent of the time I was successful and 13 percent of the time I ruined it. But even after I ruined a guitar, I learned something.”

On the following pages, Ed explains the roles that various guitars in his collection have played in his quest to find the ultimate tone. Of course, he also discusses a few of his side excursions, but those examples have made his journey even more fascinating.

Frankenstein

“What trips me out about this guitar is that when I painted it red, that made it more famous. A lot of people still don’t know that it’s the same guitar as the black-and-white guitar on the cover of the first Van Halen album. 

"That guitar went through a lot of different phases and changes. On the first record, it had a stock vintage Fender Strat vibrato, then the Floyd came around, and then I added the dummy pickup at the neck. I kept changing it because I was tired of people copying my guitar.”

Kramer 5150

“It’s a workhorse. It served me for a very long time. When I retired my Frankenstein, that became my main guitar. I played it in a lot of videos – ‘Panama’ and ‘When It’s Love’ – and in the studio. I used that guitar up until I started using my Music Man EVH guitar. It still sounds great.”

1976 Ibanez Destroyer

“I used that a lot on the first album. I played it on every song that doesn’t have any vibrato-bar parts on it, like ‘You Really Got Me.’ I can’t remember what pickups were in it when I recorded the album – I was always changing them – but that was before I cut that big chunk out of it. 

"When I first got the Destroyer, I painted it white. It was the same time that I painted my black-and-white guitar. After I finished painting that guitar, I figured that I might as well paint the Destroyer too.”

1963 Fender Bandmaster

“I used that amp for years in two ways. I already had the Marshall, but I had not stumbled onto the Variac thing yet, so I would use the Bandmaster through the Marshall cabinet when we gigged at smaller clubs like Gazzarri’s. 

"In the little house in Pasadena that I grew up in, my mom always hated what she called ‘that high crying noise’ – in other words, soloing. She’d always go, ‘Why do you have to make that high crying noise?’

“If you plug the cabinet into the external speaker output instead of the regular output, it’s really quiet. I could turn everything all the way up, which is what I always did anyway, and there was this small amount of bleed that sounded exactly like when the regular output is turned all the way up, but it’s really quiet. Everyone says that you can’t do that because the transformer will blow, but the amp never blew up.

“The real beauty of that amp is how many songs I wrote with it. I wrote all of the early Van Halen songs for the first three albums with that amp, playing quietly in my room. It was really quiet, so my mom couldn’t hear me, but it sounded amazing. 

"My dog Monty would sit down next to me, and he dug it. When I wrote the intro to ‘Women in Love,’ he was sitting there with his ears perked up, like the RCA Victor dog. That Bandmaster was more important than my Marshall head, because I wrote everything with it.”

1968 Marshall Super Lead 100 Model 1959

“When I was working for a music store called Berry and Grassmuck in Pasadena, moving pianos and organs, a Marshall head came in one day that had belonged to the Rose Palace. The Rose Palace is a concrete building where they build Rose Parade floats. They used to have concerts there with bands like Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix. 

"When they stopped having concerts there, that Marshall ended up in the store. I had never seen a Marshall before, except in pictures. I told them that I didn’t care how long I had to work there, but I wanted that amp head."

“When I first plugged it in, I blew it up. When you’d plug it straight into the wall, it would go poof! When I got it fixed, it was too loud. I used to sit in my room and stare at it. I remember playing a gig with it once, and as I looked behind it I could see the glass bottles of the tubes melting! It was too hot. 

"The Variac was the key to making that amp work. I always wondered, What will happen if I do this? That’s how I stumbled onto the Variac. I wondered if the amp would still work if I lowered the voltage. It worked for years. Sylvania 6CA7 tubes sound great in it, but the best set of tubes that I ever had in that amp was a matched set of Telefunkens.

“I eventually met someone who worked at the Rose Palace who told me it was the house amp. Probably everyone and their brother played through it. It remained stock throughout its life.”

Kramer Custom Double-Neck

“I used that live to play ‘Secrets’ off of Diver Down. On the record, I used a Gibson double-neck. I had that before the ‘Panama’ 5150 guitar, so it’s probably the first guitar I ever got from Kramer. Other than this guitar, no one at Kramer built any of my Kramer guitars. I built two of them myself. Every other Kramer that’s out there that's supposedly one of my guitars is a fake.

“The Baretta model that Kramer sold had nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know they were selling those things. In the early Eighties, everyone was copying me. I’d walk around the NAMM show and see all of these guitars with one pickup and one knob. The people at Schecter even called them Van Halen models. Every company on the planet was making one.”

Custom Steinberger/Gibson Les Paul

“I used that to record ‘Me Wise Magic.’ Ned Steinberger put the TransTrem on it. We were working together on the TransTrem design and he asked my opinion. I was trying to get him to make things simpler. He was such an engineer that he would over-engineer things. 

"It was very kind of him to make a special guitar just for me. I used a regular Steinberger guitar on ‘Summer Nights,’ but it was hard to play. I ragged and moaned so much about it that he made me that guitar. It’s very fat sounding. Everything on that guitar is unique. The tuners are really different.”

1958 Gibson ES-335

“I used that to record the ‘Big Fat Money’ guitar solo. [Producer] Bruce Fairbairn asked if I had any hollowbody guitars, so I asked Matt to grab me a 335. Bruce asked me to play something jazzy, so I did. When I was done, I asked him, ‘Something like that?’ He said, ‘That’s perfect. We’re done.’ 

"He had recorded it without telling me. That’s what you hear on the record. The guitar went back in the case, and I don’t think I’ve touched it since then.

“Sometimes I’ll ask Matt to go out to find and purchase a certain guitar, and he’ll tell me that I already have one. Once I told him that I needed a Rickenbacker 12-string for a part I wanted to try, and I told him to call around to see if anyone had one. He told me that I had one in storage, and then he went down there and brought back three of them. Matt is my database.”

Ibanez has unveiled updates to Joe Satriani and Steve Vai's respective signature guitars for 2021.

Vai's PIA3761 is a new version of his PIA signature model (first launched at Winter NAMM 2020) with a Black Flat finish, contrasting gold and black hardware, and a floral pattern on the guitar's DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups.

Otherwise, the guitar's signature features – including the unique Petal Grip and Edge tremolo with a Lion’s Claw tremolo cavity and magnetic tremolo cavity plate – remain. 

Elsewhere, the PIA3761 is built with an alder body, a five-piece maple and walnut neck, and a rosewood fretboard with a blossom inlay and 24 stainless steel frets. 

Satriani's signature JS2410, meanwhile, comes in a Sky Blue finish with contrasting red DiMarzio Satch Track and Mo’ Joe pickups. 

Elsewhere, the alder body, three-piece maple/bubinga neck, and rosewood fingerboard of Satriani's Muscle Car Purple JS2450 remain, as does its Edge tremolo – with an Ultralite tremolo arm – and the hi-pass filter on its volume control.

For more info on these guitars, stop by ibanez.com.

Ibanez has launched its new AZS series of guitars.

Headlined by the Josh Smith Signature FLATV1, the AZS guitars offer a Tele-style twist on Ibanez's ever-popular AZ series. Blending traditional and 21st century appointments, the AZS guitars boast unique finishes and – in the case of the AZS2209H – a distinctive curved control panel.

The most traditionally-minded of the bunch, the AZS2209H features an ash body, and an oval C S-TECH WOOD roasted maple neck and fretboard, in addition to the curved control panel (which can also be seen on the Josh Smith FLATV1.)

The guitar boasts Seymour Duncan Magic Touch-mini and Alnico Pro custom pickups, supported by volume and tone controls, a three-way pickup selector, and a dyna-MIX5 switching system with an Alter Switch.

Available in Prussian Blue Metallic or Tri Fade Burst finishes, the AZS2209H also features Ibanez/Gotoh "In-Tune" string saddles, a Gotoh F1803 hardtail bridge, and a stainless steel bridge plate.

The AZS2200, AZS2200F, and AZS2200Q models, meanwhile, feature alder bodies, and S-TECH WOOD roasted maple necks and fretboards. The models also each boast a Gotoh T1802 tremolo bridge, in lieu of the hardtail bridge on the other AZS guitars.

Though these AZS series models feature the same pickup layout as the AZS2209H, they feature a more standard control layout, in lieu of the curved control panel.

The guitars come in either a quilted maple top in a Royal Blue Sapphire finish, or a flamed maple top in Sunset Burst or Black finishes.

Prices and a release date for the Ibanez AZS series guitars have yet to be announced as of press time.

For more info on the guitars, stop by ibanez.com.

Ibanez has unveiled its new Josh Smith Signature model, the FLATV1.

A Tele-style model that sports a bold Black finish, the FLATV1 features a non-contoured ash body and an S-TECH WOOD roasted maple neck and fretboard. The 25” scale-length guitar also carries a Gotoh F1803 bridge and Ibanez/Gotoh “In-Tune” saddles, which work together to reduce string slips and maintain accurate intonation.

Sounds for the signature Ibanez come by way of custom Seymour Duncan FLATV1 pickups, which aim to capture the big blues tones that Smith is known for. A vintage-style neck pickup with increased output partners a bridge pickup constructed using a combination of different Alnico magnets, resulting in bright and fat sounds.

Assigned to the pickups are 3D-printed master volume and tone control knobs, as well as a three-way pickup selector switch. These are situated on a curved control panel which promote greater ease of use.

Luminlay side dot inlays, Gotoh machine heads and a four-bolt joint heel reminiscent of the golden era of guitar design also make up Josh Smith’s new signature Ibanez.

For more info on the guitar, stop by Ibanez.com.

Ibanez has expanded its mini pedal collection with the announcement of its new Booster Mini and Phaser Mini pedals.

Built in Japan, and outfitted with your usual Bass, Treble, and Level controls, the Booster Mini features up to 24dB of boost. The pedal also contains a JRC MUSES 8820 op amp, which Ibanez says will help users retain clarity in their tone, even when they're pushing amps way into overdrive.

The pedal's range spans from solid mid boosts to a wide range boost – which Ibanez says will "broaden" your tone, with more volume and presence – that can be dialed in with Bass and Treble turned all the way up. 

The Japanese-built Phaser Mini, meanwhile, sports Depth, Feedback, and Speed knobs, while its switchable stages – accessible by a small side-mounted button – offer four-stage and more intense six-stage sounds.  

The Ibanez Booster Mini and Phaser Mini pedals will be available later this year for $99 and $119, respectively. Each pedal runs on 9V power supplies, and features true bypass switching.

For more info on the pedals, stop by ibanez.com.

As part of its 2021 lineup rollout, Ibanez has unveiled its new AZ2204N electric guitar.

The first AZ series model with a rosewood fingerboard and tortoiseshell scratchplate, the AZ2204N also sports an alder body, an AZ Oval C S-Tech Wood roasted maple neck, and chrome hardware.

Also new for the AZ series are the AZ2204N's newly-designed Seymour Duncan Fortuna pickups, which Ibanez says are underwound relative to the original Hyperion pickups, and feature a more scooped mid-range. 

New to the AZ series as well is a Gotoh T1702 tremolo bridge, a non-recessed bridge cavity, and a 228mm to 305mm compound radius.

Though no release date for the guitar has been announced yet, it will be sold – in Prussian Blue, Antique White, and Black finishes, and with a hardshell case included – for $1,999.

For more info on the guitar, stop by ibanez.com.

Ibanez has unveiled its latest Paul Gilbert signature model, the FRM300.

Built with a three-piece okoume/maple set-in neck and solid okoume body, the guitar sports a bound ebony fretboard with a 24.75" scale length. Also aboard are a Gibraltar Performer bridge and Quik Change III tailpiece, for quicker string changes.

Sounds come by way of the guitar's DiMarzio PG-13 mini-humbuckers, which Ibanez says were specifically wound for Gilbert. These are controlled by a five-way pickup selector switch, plus volume and tone knobs.

The Ibanez Paul Gilbert signature FRM300 is available now – in a Purple finish – for $1,099.99.

For more info on the guitar, stop by ibanez.com.

In January of this year, Juan Alderete – a veteran bassist who's played with The Mars Volta and Marilyn Manson, and co-founded Racer X – was involved in a serious bicycle accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury, a fractured clavicle, and a spinal fracture. 

A GoFundMe page – set up in the wake of the accident to help Alderete and his family with their significant medical expenses – has since raised over $200,000. 

Now, Alderete's former Racer X bandmate, Paul Gilbert, has chipped in, selling an ultra-rare pink 1987 Ibanez "Ice-Stroyer" (an Iceman/Destroyer hybrid) on Reverb.com for $16,000.

All proceeds from the guitar will go toward Alderete's expenses.

“This Ibanez 'Ice-Stroyer’ was built by the Ibanez Custom Shop in Bensalem, PA in 1987,” Gilbert said. “Only two were made. This pink one, for me. And an orange one for Bruce Bouillet. I used this guitar for live Racer X shows, for Mr. Big recordings, and on Mr. Big tours.

“Over the years, I changed the bridge to a fixed bridge, moved the location of the toggle switch, and had a DiMarzio Tone Zone and a DiMarzio single coil pickup installed. The back of the guitar has sushi stickers that I got on my first tour of Japan with Mr. Big back in 1989. And my signature on the headstock is back when I was still signing in script. The tall frets are in excellent condition, and the guitar plays and sounds great!

“I will be donating the proceeds from this guitar to Juan Alderete to support his recovery from his injuries from his bicycle accident earlier this year," Gilbert continued. 

"I co-founded Racer X with Juan. He is a great friend, a great musician, and was instrumental to my career both musically and in the business. He got me out of practicing in my bedroom, and onto the stage! Thank you for your support, and enjoy this amazing guitar from a great era!”

You can visit Alderete's GoFundMe page here.

Ibanez has unveiled its new ACFS380BT baritone acoustic guitar.

The latest addition to the company's Artwood series of acoustics, the ACFS380BT features a deep Grand Concert style body with a solid Engelmann spruce top and pau ferro back and sides, in addition to a C-shape African mahogany/pau ferro five-piece neck with a Macassar ebony fingerboard and 27-inch scale.

The guitar's electronics include an Ibanez T-bar under-saddle and block contact pickup with an Ibanez DP1 preamp. The guitar's dual outputs allow users to run the pickups independently or mixed.

Other features on the guitar include chrome die-cast tuners, ebony bridge pins and an unbleached, oiled nut and saddle.

The Ibanez ACFS380BT baritone acoustic guitar will be available soon - with an open-pore semi-gloss finish - for $799.

For more info on the guitar, head on over to ibanez.com.

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Danelectro has unveiled its new Roebuck overdrive pedal.

The Roebuck, based on the ultra-rare and highly-sought after '90s-era Ibanez Mostortion pedal, features a metal chassis and a relic'd finish of sorts, complete with dings on the case and scuffed paint.

Controls include a touch-sensitive three-band (Bass, Mid and Treble) EQ, a three-way clipping mode switch and a soft-action footswitch.

All this results in a pedal that Danelectro says is perfect for everything from classic, drive-heavy blues to sweet British lead tones to scooped metal.

The Danelectro Roebuck overdrive pedal is available now for $199.

For more info on the Roebuck pedal, head on over to danelectro.com.