The Who’s Roger Daltrey says his band invented heavy metal — and he believes the evidence is already on the record.

Most fans credit Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath with creating heavy metal in the late 1960s, forging a darker and heavier sound in industrial Birmingham after Iommi abandoned the Stratocaster-style guitar he nearly launched the band with.

But others have long argued they helped lay the groundwork. Paul McCartney famously tried to “dirty up” rock music with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” while Blue Cheer turned Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” into one of proto-metal’s defining early statements.

Daltrey’s argument, however, has less to do with specific songs than with the Who’s sheer volume, aggression, and use of feedback at a time when few bands were operating at that intensity.

“We were just different than everybody else,” Daltrey tells Rolling Stone. “Americans don’t really know the Who from the early ’60s, but as the drummer of Deep Purple [Ian Paice] said recently in a magazine, ‘The Who started it all.’ We were the first heavy metal band.”

For proof, Daltrey points to Pete Townshend’s pioneering use of Marshall amplification and the destructive stage theatrics that later became synonymous with hard rock.

“Jim Marshall invented the 4×12, 100-watt stack for Pete Townshend,” Daltrey said. “All the guitar smashing that Jimi Hendrix became famous for, in his style, was basically copied from Pete Townshend.”

In truth, Ronnie Wood laid the groundwork for the 4x12 stack, but there’s some truth to Daltrey’s claim. Townshend’s quest for ever-louder stage volume helped push amplifier design into new territory, laying groundwork for the massive guitar tones that would later define hard rock and metal. The Who’s confrontational performances and instrument destruction also established a blueprint for the genre’s rebellious spirit.

Daltrey even argues that albums like The Who Sell Out and Tommy helped elevate rock into something more ambitious and theatrical.

“We elevated rock to be maybe up its own ass in a way, you could say it,” he said.

Whether that makes the Who the inventors of heavy metal is another question entirely.

While the band undeniably influenced rock’s volume, attitude, and presentation, many fans still view Sabbath as the group that fully established metal as a distinct musical language. Iommi’s downtuned riffs, ominous songwriting, and industrial heaviness created a sound that countless bands would follow.

Other musicians have also staked their own claims. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page both argued that the guitar riff in “Beck's Bolero” was among heavy metal’s earliest defining moments — although they never agreed on who actually wrote it.

Ultimately, the strongest argument for Sabbath may be the reaction the band provoked.

“When Sabbath first played in the USA, people were frightened of us,” Iommi once told Classic Rock. “They thought we’d turn them into a frog! It was very peculiar. They were frightened to death!”

That sense of menace and shock became central to heavy metal’s identity — and it’s a large part of why many fans still place Sabbath on the throne, even if the Who helped build the stage beneath it.

As Fender’s campaign against Stratocaster-style copyists gathers momentum, PRS Guitars has confirmed it received a cease-and-desist letter from the iconic guitar maker.

Last March, a default copyright ruling in Germany established the Stratocaster as a piece of “original creative expression.” While the ruling allowed Fender to pursue infringement claims against Stratocaster-style guitars manufactured, sold or distributed within Germany and the wider European Union, it also appeared to embolden the company to pursue claims against other makers.

LsL Instruments was the first company targeted when the Santa Clarita, California guitar maker received a cease-and-desist letter in May over its Saticoy electric guitar.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, Fender has taken similar action against PRS over the Silver Sky, the hugely successful signature model it developed with serial Grammy-winner John Mayer.

“PRS Guitars, a company endorsed by the likes of John Mayer and Carlos Santana, confirmed that it is among the companies that received a letter,” the Journal writes. “The company said it disagrees with Fender’s assessment and declined to comment further.”

Introduced in 2018, the Silver Sky has become one of PRS’s biggest commercial hits. It topped Reverb’s best-selling guitar lists in 2022 and 2023, dropped to third in 2024, and climbed back to second in 2025.

Like many modern electric guitars, the Silver Sky draws inspiration from the Stratocaster — unsurprising given Mayer’s long history playing (and reportedly freezing) Strats. But whether the PRS design crosses Fender’s legal threshold for imitation remains a gray area.

In a statement obtained by Guitar World, Fender clarified that it is not targeting all “two-horned” or “double-cutaway” guitars, but rather what it considers “close copies” of the Stratocaster design.

“Fender’s goal,” the company said, “is simply to protect one of the company’s most iconic and recognizable designs while continuing to support a vibrant and innovative guitar industry.”

With its triple single-coil configuration, white pickguard, alder body, and maple neck — plus the option of rosewood or maple fingerboards — the Silver Sky undeniably shares familiar Strat-like characteristics. PRS, however, told The Wall Street Journal it “disagrees with Fender’s assessment.”

It’s not alone. Speaking recently to British retailer Gear4music, longtime Strat devotee Philip Sayce — owner of the heavily modified 1963 “Mother” Stratocaster — argued that the Silver Sky occupies its own space despite becoming a key part of his touring rig.

“With the vintage guitars that I’m grateful to own, they’re like a ’60s muscle car. You feel that rumble. They’ve got a thing that can’t necessarily be recreated,” he said. “Whereas this [the Silver Sky] is like a modern-day electric vehicle with power windows and Wi-Fi.”

“For me, they each have their own lane,” he added. “I’m not having this replace a guitar that’s one of a kind. This has things that are reminiscent of vintage guitars I love, but it also has its own voice.”

Mayer himself has made a similar argument. Speaking to MusicRadar, he insisted the Silver Sky was never intended to replace the Stratocaster.

“This guitar is made to coexist with Fender amplifiers, with Fender guitars, with Gibson guitars, with any other guitar out there in the world,” he said. “It’s not trying to revise history; it’s just a new way forward.”

Ironically, the Silver Sky’s popularity has helped position it as one of the Stratocaster’s biggest modern rivals. The only guitar to outsell it on Reverb’s 2025 list was Fender’s own American Professional II Stratocaster.

That rivalry may say more about PRS’s breakout success than outright imitation. But with Fender escalating its legal campaign beyond smaller boutique builders, the dispute has now become a much bigger industry story.

How the situation develops remains unclear. PRS continues to maintain its innocence, while Fender has shown it’s prepared to defend the Stratocaster shape against companies of any size.

Legendary recording engineer Glyn Johns earned a place in Beatles history when he became the first producer after George Martin to work on a project with the group. He was hired in late 1968 to oversee the sessions for the project that resulted in the group's final album, Let It Be, and which were documented in the 2021 series The Beatles: Get Back.

But as he explains in a new interview with Rick Beato, he was surprised to get the call in the first place. Johns initially crossed paths with the Fab Four when he was still a fresh face on the scene and working as engineer on the Rolling Stones' 1967 album, Their Satanic Majesties Request. The project saw him, coincidentally, manning the console alongside Jimi Hendrix's producer of choice, Eddie Kramer

“John and Paul came and sang backup on a Stones session, so I met them then,” he explains. “I was just the engineer. They barely acknowledged my existence.”

So Johns was shocked when, roughly a year later, McCartney hunted him down for an ambitious project to record the Beatles as they rehearsed for what would be their first public concert since the summer of 1966. What's more, the rehearsals themselves were to be filmed for a TV special that would include the live performance.

“The call from Paul to proceed with the idea he'd had was a complete shock. I thought it was Mick Jagger taking the piss,” Johns says with a laughs. “I was obviously, like the rest of the world, a fan of the Beatles.

“It was a very unusual project,” he continues. “Paul's idea was to do a live concert and perform new music. And so the film that became [the] Let It Be [album] was just a documentary of how we were going to prepare for that show. And then the live show was to be filmed, and that would be released as the piece.

“That didn't come about, as we all know. The rest of the band didn't really get the idea. It was a bit far-fetched, but it would have been really interesting.”

Although Johns was hired to engineer those sessions, which took place in London's Twickenham Studios, he found himself serving as producer in the absence of George Martin. He continued in that role after the sessions moved to the Beatles' studio at their Apple Corps headquarters in London's Savile Row.

“George Martin attended on the odd day for a little while and facilitated the equipment when we moved to the Beatles' office studio in Savile Row, " John says. "It became apparent as the sessions went on that I was required to play a little bit more of a role than just the engineer.”

Johns continued to work on the tapes from those sessions in the months that followed. He was even on hand to produce the late–February 1969 sessions at Trident Studios for the Abbey Road track "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." But by the time the group settled down to work on that album in earnest that summer, Johns was long gone.

“I started the Abbey Road sessions, and then I went off to America to do something,” he recalls. “They very sensibly decided to go back to George and Geoff Emerick, who finished [the album]. And thank God they did, because it ended up much better than when I left it. I can tell you.”

In related news, a brand-new Beatles Anthology box set has been announced, with McCartney suggesting that John Lennon’s spirit haunted the making of the first Anthology release in 1995.

The sound of the rubber guitar bridge has become a mainstay in the modern indie-rock scene, courtesy of guitarists like Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. It turns out the guitar mod has its origins in two unlikely places: the homely banjo and the toilet section of Home Depot.

And it's all thanks to Reuben Cox, who runs Old Style Guitar Shop out of a cabin in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The independent luthier inadvertently changed the face of indie rock in the early 2000s.

"I was taking photographs of Andrew Bird and Blake Mills at a recording session," he told Acoustic Guitar in 2023. "Blake had this ’50s Harmony banjo that had a kind of muting system... It had this wood and rubber kind of thing. I listened to playback, and it was one of the most exciting things I’d heard in a long time."

Using photos and video of the instrument he received from Mills, Cox began devising a bridge that could get a similar sound from a guitar. Soon he was trawling the shelves of his local Home Depot with a view to replicating the modification on an acoustic guitar.

He eventually found what he was looking for in the toilet aisle. Although what that is, he won't say.

“[It was] very Duchampian,” he tells the LA Times with a smile, referencing French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp, who was a significant player in the development of the plastic arts and made his art constructions from common everyday objects that had been discarded.

Rather than add the bridge separately, he built it into the body of a guitar.

“I was like, ‘Oh, well, let’s try this and see what happens,’” he reflects. “It ended up being a bull’s-eye.”

Rubber bridges deaden a guitar's strings without completely obliterating its resonance, giving the instrument a folky banjo-style sound. Although Cox's rubber-bridged guitar creations have been in use for years, his design didn't reach its commercial zenith until Taylor Swift used one her 2020 double-Platinum record, Folklore.

Since then, demand for rubber-bridge guitars has exploded. L.A.'s Orangewood Guitars was one of the first manufacturers to bring them to the masses with its purpose-built Juniper acoustic. This came after Cox launched his own conversion kits when demand vastly outgrew his building capacity.

The phenomenon has continued to grow, with Olivia Rodrigo's "Hope Ur Ok," Ariel Posen's "Tumble Away" and Perfume Genius' "Slip Away," three other high-profile employments of Cox's idea.

Cox has a theory about why his creations have become so sought-after.

“If you’ve been playing guitar for a really long time, your hands go to the same places, and you repeat yourself,” he says. “It’s this different sound, and it jumbles your mind in a way, and everything feels new. For a lot of people, songs would just pop out of it.”

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy told Guitar Player in 2019 how rubber guitar bridges transformed the sound of his inexpensive acoustic guitars on the album Ode to Joy, making them sound “sort of like a ukulele and classical guitar.”

“They’re terrible old ’40s stencil cowboy guitars or cheapo beginner guitars, but you put a rubberized bridge on them and they have this crazy quality that just leaves so much more room for my voice. I don’t have a real sustaining voice so I tend to like guitars that aren’t showing me up.”

Tweedy — who says he’s bought “at least” a dozen of Cox’s guitars over the years — isn’t alone in his love for the sound. The muted quality has become a huge inspiration point for singer-songwriter types, as it lends itself to intimate, storytelling songs.

Now, of course, Cox's invention is earning a payday for other makers. The 53-year-old luthier tells the LA Times that he considered filing a lawsuit against Orangewood. But as a small business owner, he says it would strain his time and finances.

He's also aware the originality of his design could be questioned. Muting devices on guitars go back decades. Even George Harrison's Gretsch Country Gentleman, which he played on the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan appearance in 1964, featured a muting device.

Instead, Cox has comforted himself with the knowledge that he will go down in history as the man behind one of the 21st century’s biggest guitar trends., even if others have found a way to profit from his experiments.

In the meantime, he hopes to “stumble across a new trick,” to build on his legacy. He has an uphill battle — the rubber bridge phenomenon is akin to catching lightning in a bottle. But who says lightning can't strike the same place twice?

Esteemed recording engineer Glyn Johns, who has worked with some of the world's biggest bands, has reflected on how modern recording methods differ from the 1960s, arguing that many today stray from what makes an album truly special.

Johns, whose resume includes working on classic records with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and many others , is the latest guest to feature on Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. During their sprawling, hour-long chat, Johns, who got his first production credit working with skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan in the late '50s, has rallied against a part of the recording process rarely overlooked by contemporary producers.

During the 1960s and '70s, Johns worked extensively with the Rolling Stones, engineering and mixing records such as Their Satanic Majesties Request, Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed. He also worked on early tracks recorded for the Beatles' Abbey Road and all of Let It Be, as well as Led Zeppelin I. Johns had further credits with Eric Clapton, Humble Pie, and the Who, including their 1971 album, Who's Next. Through it all, he never used click tracks and recorded the band with as few overdubs as possible.

When asked by Rick Beato the inevitable question of whether he used click tracks, the engineer utters the word “no” five times in quick succession.

“Against my religion,” he states. “This is entirely different from nowadays, [where] everything has to be controlled. My job was about capturing a performance of a group of people and their subliminal interactions with each other.

“I completely disagree with clicks, particularly for rock and roll,” he adds. “It has to breathe.”

That said, there was at least one exception. When Pete Townshend brought in his song "Baba O'Riley" for Who's Next, the group was forced to play along to the pre-recorded organ track — performed on Townshend's Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ using the "Marimba Repeat" setting — which is heard at the start and throughout the track. (Johns incorrectly recalls the song as the Who's 1965 hit "My Generation.") To his surprise, the usually erratic Moon was able to play along perfectly.

“It was the first time I'd ever played in something for a band to play to, which would be the equivalent of a click,” he explains. “Pete Townshend had already done the synthesizer track, which had a rhythm to it. So they had to play to that, and the one person I thought would never be able to play along was Keith Moon, because he was a loony. But he was perfect. Every single take.”

Johns feels just as strongly about the need for musicians to play together, rather to work piecemeal through overdubbing. In the 1960s and early '70s, overdubs were typically added to an initial group performance, such as when Eric Clapton’s performed his lead and solo guitar work on the Beatles' “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It would be used as well to improve live recordings, such as when Kiss overdubbed much of the instruments and vocals on Alive! (for which Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley used some of Peter Frampton’s gear).

But with the the arrival of 16- and 24-track recording in the 1970s, many acts began laying down entire songs one instrument at a time. Johns says this was never his style.

“My principle has always been that everybody should play at once,” he insists. “That way, you'll get a performance of a piece of music rather than some sterile, perfect nonsense. Music is about emotion, for God's sake. And emotion is expressed by a group of people playing together.

“You could do six takes and they'd all be different,” he says. “Eventually, you get to the take where it all literally comes together and it's like a bloody firework going off. The difference is extraordinary. And that came about through people subliminally interacting.

“They're not even aware of it. They're probably concentrating. However, they're being tremendously influenced by what everyone else is doing,” Johns continues. “Equally, everyone else is being influenced by what they're doing. And if you overdub something, you're influenced by what precedes you; what you're being played, but you're clearly not influencing what happened before.”

“Welcome to the camp, I guess you all know why we’re here.”

In the Who’s Tommy, camp ends in revolution. At Tommy Emmanuel’s Guitar Camp U.S.A., the goal is revelation.

Happening October 9 through 12 in downtown Nashville at the Embassy Suites, it features Emmanuel in the role of head professor along with a stellar faculty including fellow Certified Guitar Player John Knowles, Little Feat’s slide ace Scott Sharrard, jazz master John Pizzarelli, fingerstyle virtuoso Richard Smith, troubadour Anthony Snape and young fingerstyle whiz Parker Hastings. Jazz great Julian Lage and southern rock sister duo Larkin Poe will also be appearing as special guests.

“I love doing these camps, and I choose experienced teachers that will bring their best,” says Emmanuel, who recently released his latest album, Live at the Sydney Opera House. “That said, I want the lion's share of time with all the students myself.”

Founded by Danny Heaps in 2014, Dreamcatcher Events specializes in immersive camp experiences. Jason Shadrick — a 15-year editor at Premier Guitar who now works full time with Dreamcatcher — explains the approach.

“It gives people a chance to have close encounters with some of the greatest artists in their field,” says Shadrick, who has served on the faculty at three camps for Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Cory Wong.

“For example, Chris Thile is a lot of mandolin players’ favorite, and at his acoustic camp he went person to person, putting his hand on their picking hand, and offering advice on exact pick angles.

“And at Petrucci’s camp, players got a chance to play Dream Theater songs in front of him and [drummer] Mike Portnoy.

“And it goes beyond playing. On one of the nights at the Petrucci’s camp there was a barbecue, and John manned the grill!”

Shadrick says students will have ample access to Emmanuel to learn about everything from technique to the art of solo guitar performance. “If you’ve ever wanted to spend a few minutes asking him a question or having him show you something up close, he’s there for you.”

Registration includes evening performances by Emmanuel and the faculty — including tickets to see Emmanuel perform at the fabled Ryman Auditorium — plus opportunities to perform with Emmanuel and the faculty and be selected for a personal mentor session with Tommy or a faculty member.

Visitors will also enjoy intimate breakout groups for all skill levels, special appearances and workshops led by Larkin Poe and Julian Lage, open mics for campers every night, and four-night accommodations at the Embassy Suites, plus all meals for the entire event.

We caught up with Emmanuel for his personal perspective.

What’s your approach as an educator?

Each day starts with having breakfast together, and then I take the entire group for two hours. It’s not scripted. I usually start by playing some tunes to get everybody motivated. Then someone will ask a question, and away we go.

Sometimes I want to talk about songwriting and arrangement. I pick a familiar song and do an arrangement right in front of them, explaining all the reasons why I’ve chosen to do it in a particular key. As I’m playing through, I might decide it needs a key change and explain how to do that. I get a chance to hand on to them a lot of the skills that I've learned from listening to accomplished arrangers and keep it interesting.

What’s a common question on day one?

People want to know about what I do on a normal day on the road. [To find out, visit our feature on Tommy’s gig-day routine.] The question asked most is, “What do you do on a day off?” I tell them, “I usually play the guitar.” [laughs]

Is there a particular element you always cover?

One thing I make sure to cover is being an accompanist. I try to get it across to the all the students that your priority is to be a good listener. You’ve got to learn the arrangement and play your part in a supportive way that makes the person playing the melody feel like they can trust you with the time and how the song goes.

How do you quickly assess and accommodate for the broad variety of skill sets?

Dreamcatcher gives people a questionnaire about skill level and encourages campers to provide a very honest assessment. Sometimes people send us a video of their playing, and then we put them into an appropriate category. The thing about the camp is it doesn't matter if you're a beginner, you’re still going to learn a lot. You’re going to get valuable information from people with a lot of experience. And this is so important. The people I hire to come and teach all feel the way I do. It’s like, “Are you willing to put in the work?”

We live in the real world. We set the example of people making a living playing the guitar. And that’s a good point of view to come from rather than, “I want to be a star. I want to be rich.” We make our mortgage payment and our car payment and put our kids through school playing the guitar, so we better have it together, you know?

On the other hand, I don’t discourage people who only play for their own pleasure at home. I mean, some of the best advice I’ve given people are married men whose wives say to me, “Oh my God, he plays the same thing over and over again, and blah, blah.” I always say, “Listen, don’t practice in front of your wife. Don't practice in front of anybody, because only we need repetition. Everyone else hates it.”

Can you cite an example of another teacher’s style?

When Frank Vignola was one of the teachers, he would show people songs by teaching the class the chords, and then they’d all strum together as he would switch to the melody while they accompanied him.

How about mentoring sessions?

Some of the other teachers do mentor sessions as well, and I do as many as I can every day. Sometimes people just want to sit and tell you something. Or they might want to ask you something personal, and that’s okay. On the first day, I always tell people that I’m ready and willing and able to talk about anything you want. It doesn’t have to be about music. Sometimes people talk about what they're struggling with, and it might even be a family issue. No matter what the conversation is about, I try to get right to the point because there is such demand with between 150 and 180 campers.

How much focus is on acoustic compared to electric guitar topics?

My part of the program is mostly acoustic, but one of the things I demonstrate is how to get a sound when you plug into an amp. Ninety-nine out of 100 people don't really know how to use a pickup or an amp properly. Most people make the same mistake. They take the amp off the floor, stick it up on a chair, point it at themselves, and it's like, “Hello!” That’s exactly what you don’t do. Instead, put the amp on the floor and face it away from yourself, so you get it in the P.A. Then turn it up until it sounds right.

But of course, sometimes I feature electric guitar players at my camp, and they talk about what’s important to them as far as how they get their sound, getting a good tone, and things like that.

How about genre focus?

Well, I like so many styles. Someone’s always going to ask for “Blue Moon” or something like that where they want me to demonstrate how to play with a swing feel. I’ll also demonstrate a kind of piano style as well as straight ahead bluegrass and stuff like that. I tend to focus on playing songs and songwriting.

How about the breakdown of main components: technique, composition, performance, gear, business, etc.?

You hit the nail right on the head. I try to cover everything, and I always tell the audience that I’m speaking from my own experience. I’m not saying that everything I know is right. I’m just telling you what works for me.

Do a lot of players come in with no experience reading music whatsoever?

That’s absolutely correct. I come from no experience, really. [laughs]

You don’t read music at all?

No, I don’t read a note. I’m a total ear player.

What’s the most difficult thing to teach?

Playing with feeling. I do a whole thing on how to get the guitar to sound like a voice when you’re playing melody. And I demonstrate harmonies, vibrato, chord substitution around melody and little surprises in songs that are typically vocal ideas.

But teaching how to play with feeling is like trying to explain how Eric Clapton’s guitar voice sounds so beautiful. That’s just how it is. One of the hardest things to get across to anybody is the fact that it's going to take time and a lot of experience before your voice, your own guitar style, shows up. You must play and live a lot before it appears.

What’s the most rewarding part of the experience from your perspective?

The fact that people get so happy. They arrive all full of fear, tension, worries and self-consciousness. It all starts to fade away on the first night because we let the fun begin. I let them know there’s no judge and jury here. We’re only here because we love to play, which is the same reason you’re here. I don’t care if you suck, and I don’t care if you are frigging brilliant. If I see you love it, I'll do anything to help you.

Visit Dreamcatcher for information on Tommy Emmanuel’s Guitar Camp U.S.A. or to learn more about upcoming events.

Larry DiMarzo was a humble guitar repairman in 1960s New York City. There was little to suggest he would lead a revolution that would change the sound of rock guitar.

The weapon behind that sonic transformation was DiMarzio’s iconic Super Distortion pickup, a device that became known as his response to the limitations of Gibson’s humbucking pickups.

DiMarzio’s quest for a better pickup was in part personal. A guitar nerd and lover of six-stringed tech, DiMarzio was a player himself. He had a vision of what he wanted, but he couldn’t find it, particularly near the end of the 1960s, when American guitar quality was beginning to slip.

“I started working at the Guitar Lab around ’71 or ’72. I was going to work at a professional guitar shop around the corner of 48th Street, and I suddenly had access to tons of guitars that were coming through the shop for repair. Or I’d go down to Manny’s, pick up a Stratocaster and say, ‘This is like a dead tuna,’ you know?”

His efforts soon paid off, and by 1971, DiMarzio had dialed in his Super Distortion. Not only was it the first mass-market replacement pickup, and it also ushered in a new age of guitarists who adhered to the “tinkering lifestyle” — messing with your guitars while embarking on a never-ending tone quest.

The Super Distortion, as its name suggests, was extremely powerful for its time, much more so than the stock Gibson humbuckers of the time.

“In essence,” DiMarzio says. “It was almost three times the output that you got from a normal Gibson humbucker.”

But why was this the case? Why had Gibson, the company that made the humbucker famous in the ‘50s through its iconic ‘Burst Les Pauls, guitars brandished by Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and others, fallen so far behind when it came to their pickups?

“Gibson had lost the recipe,” DiMarzio says. “Not only for guitar building but for pickup-making based on their original design.

“What I was after was really making a rock and roll pickup. And Les Paul didn’t want distortion.”

DiMarzio’s point is critical. When Gibson debuted its iconic single-cut, which initially featured P90s and later humbuckers, high-drive rock and roll wasn’t a thing. The LP was initially thought of as a jazz guitar and only later became synonymous with rock.

It didn’t help Gibson that, by the ’70s, its infamous Norlin era was underway, and the quality of its guitars and components were suffering.

But DiMarzio saw yet another opportunity for himself: a new era of players like Joe Perry, Earl Slick and Ace Frehley, all of whom were seeking big-time overdrive and high-powered gain. Still, he didn’t necessarily want to fuss with primitive pedals at their feet—especially Frehley, who often jokes that if he had pedals, he’d “trip over them.” DiMarzio wanted to start at the source of the electronic signal: the pickup.

As for his Super Distortion pickup, it was never meant to be a reproduction of anything Gibson had done in the 1950s or 1960s but a standalone, utilitarian piece geared toward innovation. DiMarzio agrees, saying: “Very much so.”

“Don’t get me wrong—we’ve had requests over the years to produce clones. We finally did that within the last 10 years, when people have wanted a clone, like Gibson’s, with lower output.”

But are they actual clones? The answer is… kinda.

“We’re getting a lot of demand, he says. “Everyone and their mother are going, ‘I build the original Patent Applied For, and we use panther piss and beeswax in our potting compound.’ But pickups were never potted that way. They’ll say, ‘The enamel is rolled on the thighs of Cuban virgins!’ It’s just more fucking bullshit. It’s a sales pitch.”

What DiMarzio is seeing today with its pickups isn’t all that different from 1971, when the Super Distortion was spawned.

“Gibson pickups are inconsistent,” DiMarzio says. “Especially during that period [the ‘50s] of time because they had multiple spindle winding machines [four coils being wound at the same time].”

As for how DiMarzio figured that out, he says, “I wind a lot of coils.” If you have four coils winding at the same time, and you have four tensioning devices, and those four devices are not identical, you’ll have four different coils. That’s just one factor, you know, a variation on what’s going on. Gibson was never critical.”

In the years since its release, the Super Distortion has found its way into guitars played by everyone from Paul Stanley to Kurt Cobain to John Petrucci. DiMarzio’s mad scientist pickups have defined generations of rockers, helping hone the sounds of hard rock, heavy metal, grunge, indie, and beyond.

It’s no small feat, and it’s an ongoing process. In short, the Super Distortion didn’t just change the sound of rock; it changed, if not forced, the way pickup makers and big-name companies did things. Say what you will, without Larry DiMarzio and the Super Distortion, the modern rock guitar landscape would look and sound different.

DiMarzio smiles at this, saying: “Remember, we supplied all the pickups from probably 1976 to probably 1980-ish to Jackson Charvel, right? All the pickups that were going into those Jackson Charvel guitars, including the basses, we supplied — and everything to B.C. Rich.”

“We supplied everything to Hamer and Dean,” he adds. “So the whole transition into alternate guitars that were more rock and roll… I mean, Gibson didn't leap out there and make a locking Floyd Rose guitar that Eddie Van Halen was going to play; you know, they missed the boat on all of that.”

Fender could see operational costs rise by up to $25 million due to new tariffs placed on goods produced overseas.

So says a new report by credit rating analyst Moody’s, which highlights an increased risk of default for the historic gear firm’s operations.

According to the report, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation’s (FMIC) has been hit by three downgrades. The musical instrument maker has had its credit rating downgraded from B2 to B3, indicating a higher risk of default. Moody’s has also downgraded the Probability of Default Rating from B2-PD to B3-PD, and its senior secured term loan rating from B3 to Caa1, indicating significant deterioration in creditworthiness.

Taken together, the three downgrades reflect a negative outlook for a financial forecast that previously looked stable. The changes are a direct result of the rising costs brought on by the Trump administration's newly imposed tariffs, which Moody's predicts could result in operational costs rising by “approximately $20 to $25 million.”

Boutique amp firm Morgan has previously spoken of the financial impact these tariffs could have on its operations.

The tariffs have come into play because of Fender’s overseas production sites, specifically its guitar production site in Ensenada, Mexico, and its China factory, where electronic products, including amplifiers and pedals, are made. Both countries fall under the crosshairs of President Trump’s new tariffs.

Moody's report notes that "a 25% tariff on products from [Fender's] Ensenada, Mexico manufacturing facility and an additional 10% tariff on products manufactured in China and imported into the U.S. would increase operating costs by approximately $20 to $25 million.”

Fender has moved to mitigate these financial pressures by increasing production in Indonesia. While Moody's has recognized that effort, the analyst believes short-term reactions, such as price increases and vendor concessions, may not be enough if the new tariffs remain.

“Prolonged imposition of tariffs,” Moody’s reports, “will likely be highly disruptive and costly for ... Fender.”

Fender's Chinese operations represent their own set of challenges.

Says Moody’s, “China remains the largest global manufacturer of guitars by unit volume, and the musical instruments industry is already facing challenges such as weakening consumer confidence in the US and an economic slowdown in China.”

Operating in a market where “competition is intense” is also challenging because “the ability to pass on costs to consumers is constrained in an already high-priced market.”

The report also notes that Fender possesses “strong brand recognition and market position in the acoustic and electric guitar categories” and “benefits from good geographic diversity and a long-standing reputation for high-quality products, supported by a well-diversified retail distribution network.

“However, these strengths are offset by the company's narrow product focus and earnings volatility, which stem from the discretionary nature of demand for musical instruments,” it continues. “This volatility is further exacerbated by the current challenging economic environment and exposure to new US tariffs.”

A reversal of fortunes, though, can be achieved. Fender would see its credit rating restored if it is able to mitigate the impact of the new tariffs to generate organic growth. Conversely, it could face further downgrades if earnings decline beyond the expected margins.

Those fearing the worst need to only look to its biggest rival, Gibson, to see that it may not necessarily mean the death knell will chime.

Gibson faced similar downgrades in 2018, which led to it filing for bankruptcy, but has since improved its economic outlook under new ownership.

Visit Moody’s to read the full rating report.

“I invented it because I wanted it,” says Jonathan Spangler, founder and CEO of Ciari Guitars, talking about the creation of his Ascender line of folding-neck electrics. As a musician and an attorney whose job mandated extensive travel, Spangler needed a full-sized guitar that could fit into the space afforded most airline passengers — under the seat.

His solution was a stealthy, collapsible guitar worthy of MI5 technology, featuring a patented mid-neck hinge and a concealed actuator lever on the back that unlocks the hinge, loosens the strings to three pounds of tension and allows the guitar to fold in half. When ready for action, the neck is unfolded and the actuator lever solidly locks everything in place, with the strings fully tensioned and needing only some tuning tweaks to be readied for play.

Spangler’s journey into guitar making was unorthodox, to say the least, and began while he was working as a patent attorney for a Southern California medical-device firm that focused on spine surgery. “We unleashed a technology and an approach to the spine that had been deemed impossible before,” Spangler says. “That was immensely rewarding, and in about 15 years we went from two million in sales to almost a billion.

"As we’re talking, I’m looking at a jersey that [NBA Hall of Fame player] Bill Walton signed for me. He was one of our patient-ambassadors who said in no uncertain terms ‘I was figuring out when and how to commit suicide because I was in so much back pain.’ So to change people’s lives and give them their life back, how do you put a price tag on that?”

Going from medical technology to guitar making is quite a leap. How did it come about?

We designed backward from my idea for a guitar that I didn’t have to check at the airport. I wanted to have just two things I’m traveling with: my clothes and one personal item — meaning my guitar, my computer and headphones — and I didn’t want to check anything else. So we started with that requirement and engineered our way to make it so.

You were obviously aware of other folding-neck guitars. Tell us about the approach you took with the Ascender.

I did survey the other options and certainly the Voyage Air [folding-neck acoustic] was one, but it didn’t solve what I wanted because it can’t fit under the seat. Then there was the way it folds into the playing position, toward the front of the guitar, so the strings go everywhere. So string management was also something we sought to solve with the Ascender. I’ve always said that sometimes it’s better not to be first. It’s better to come into an area and improve upon the baseline offerings.

How does your folding system differ from other designs?

Our folding system is really two things in combination. You have the mid-neck hinge and the actuator, which is what locks and unlocks the hinge and releases and tightens the strings. Between those two, by far and away, the most critical is the mid-neck hinge. If we want this full-size guitar to fit under a seat, it has to fold in the neck. That’s what drives the sizing in the folded state to be a personal item. It’s been said that we over-engineered our system, but thank god we did, because it has to come back to baseline each and every time. It needed to be extremely robust, so it’s made of 7075 aircraft-grade aluminum that is hard anodized, and then we added two carbon-steel strike plates that form the abutment joints, so when the 12th fret and the 14th fret come back together it always comes back to the exact same point each and every time.

Was real-world testing involved to see how it would stand up?

Well, there’s a guy on YouTube named Justin Johnson who, for effect, would throw open the Ascender’s neck like it was a shotgun, and it actually deformed the aluminum. He was like, “Watch this”—whack! So we had to fortify the design to ensure that even rough treatment would not impact the ability for this thing to be long-term robust. We’ve evolved in concert with [Nashville luthier] Joe Glaser, who has been a vital friend and ally through this whole process, so now we have these two hardened-steel strike plates that are adjustable in a center link of the three-part hinge. Our system rises and falls on that hinge, so that’s why we over-engineered it. Now that the pandemic is over and music is back in venues, we have the right product when it’s most needed because the Ascender is being played on stages worldwide.

The actuator that locks and unlocks the neck is another key element of the system. How does it operate?

There’s probably 50 different ways you can release a tailpiece and have it float on springs longitudinally, so to have it lock and unlock you have to move it about two inches. We evolved from a side lever to the new one that is more like an airplane throttle.

The look of the guitar has also evolved right along with the mechanism.

If you look at the Ascender Custom, which was our original body style, the upper bout was a tip of a hat to the Tele and the lower bout a tip to the Les Paul, but we were very careful not to run afoul of the trademark rights of Gibson and Fender. We wanted to be non-controversial on the body style because we were being so controversial with the back. People would say the mechanism was intimidating. So for that reason we wanted to be middle-of-the-road on the body style. But the look was too blasé. No one ever said “Damn that’s a good-looking guitar.” It was always, “Holy crap, that thing folds!”

How did you go about updating the Ascender’s appearance?

Joe Glaser brought Grover Jackson into the mix and I asked them what would change if this was your guitar? The list was, like, 40 different things they would tweak and modify, and thank god they did because that’s why we’re north of 300 percent in Q1 of ’24 over ’23. So it was a focused and intentional exercise in making this thing as good as it can be. Grover said “Your guitar has to be sexy.” So that’s how we got to what is now the Ascender Standard body style that’s used in the Standard, Standard Plus, P90 and Duo. For the foreseeable future that will be our main body style, and I think it’s a good-looking axe.

The new headstock looks more traditional.

Yes, it’s an asymmetrical left-to-right moving wave. It’s so hard to fashion something new in a headstock so I was happy when Bob Taylor congratulated me for our unique presentation.

So as it stands, you have six models including a three-pickup model on the horizon. What else do you have planned?

The yet-unnamed Ascender three-pickup model will address the needs of Fender players and keep furthering the brand, because it’s not just a great travel guitar; it’s a great guitar that travels. We’re also working with Joe Glaser on a tremolo system. It’s easier said than done given all the other moving parts, and we’ll go wider and deeper on electrics before we shift into acoustic and bass.

Where are the guitars made?

The fingerboards and necks come from our shop in Nashville, and we’re starting to get some second sourcing from other places — Mexico in particular because I’m in San Diego. Our hinges and actuators are international, so we say Nashville-crafted, because we use components sourced from here and abroad.

What’s the origin of the name Ciari?

The radio-friendly version is it’s a combination of cirrus — the high, wispy clouds — and aria, for melody. The real story is that when we first launched, we got blowback from the name, which was an acronym for “Cock It And Rock It.” I found out at the NAMM show early on that some people found it very polarizing. I had an artist who tried the guitar and loved it, but when he heard “cock it and rock it”, he goes “I’m so disappointed,” and he turned and walked away. I thought, Are you kidding me? Of all the challenges I have, you’re offended by my playful way of explaining the mechanism!

Guitarists love their vintage guitars, ascribing mystical and even magical powers to their aged tonewoods, hardware and finish.

Paul Reed Smith says it's all rubbish.

Speaking to American Musical Supply, the celebrated luthier distances himself from the "old is always better" adage. "Nobody thinks that a new vet can get outmaneuvered by an old vet," he said. "But everybody thinks an old guitar can outmaneuver a new guitar. I just don't buy it.”

Smith says he's not alone in his thinking. He points to numerous guitarists, like Widespread Panic's Jimmy Herring, who have espoused the merits of new guitars.

“Jimmy Herring was the first person to say to me ‘My PRS's will do things my vintage guitars won't do,'" Smith says. "I thought that was a beautiful comment.”

The allure of vintage guitars has only grown over the past 40 years, as the market for them has imbued even modest models from the 1960s with an aura of mystique.

No less a player than David Gilmour has weighed in the subject. Speaking about the guitars featured on his latest solo album, Luck and Strange — a record he calls his best LP since Dark Side of the Moon — the former Pink Floyd guitarist said vintage guitars always sound better than modern builds, noting, “All these pieces of wood gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”

Smith isn't buying it. For that matter, he's not particular about tonewood, noting “the species is less relevant than the qualities of the wood," and has ridiculed snobbery of where certain woods are sourced from. He's said Guatemalan fence posts can make for quality guitars just as much as Honduran mahogany

To that end, PRS has been happy to experiment with left-field wood choices like Urban Ironbark, and wood alternatives for fretboards, like Richlite and Ebonol.

Expanding on those beliefs, Smith now says that where a guitar is made shouldn’t be a primary concern for guitar and bass players.

“I’ve always believed that it’s not about the country that an instrument is made in. It’s always been about the skill level of the guitar makers,” he says in a new Premier Guitar column.

“When we first started traveling to overseas guitar manufacturing facilities, we found that almost all their training over the decades had been to go fast, while our teaching about how to make instruments was about how to go well.

“Once they knew how to go well, the guitars they produce are of the same caliber as what we make here. So, as a definitive statement, the country a guitar is made in does not matter much. The skill and care of the instrument makers does matter.”

Outlining an example to back up his argument, he says that when Carlos Santana had asked for a more affordable version of his signature guitar, his solution was to manufacture it abroad.

“When we brought him the prototype, he was impressed, and his comment was, ‘This was made in America, right?’ And I said, ‘No. This was made overseas.’ The contract for his approval was on the table, and he leaned over and signed it as fast as he could.”

Instead of fixating on what wood and an electric guitar's place of origin, Smith underscores the importance of getting instruments in player's hands above all else.

“You should evaluate it the same way, regardless of country of manufacture,” he concludes. “How does it look, how does it feel in your hands, how does it sound acoustically, how does it sound electrically, and most importantly, will it do the job you want it to do?

Gibson has produced a dizzying amount of Les Pauls since its introduction in 1952, but the company believes its new updated Les Paul Studio will be “the one” guitar that players reach out for time and time again.

Studios have typically been meat and potatoes guitars to stand as the most affordable Gibson Les Pauls on the market. While its revised model comes with a fairly modest price tag of $1,599, it’s been bestowed with features usually reserved for higher-end LPs, as well as receiving some choice upgrades, too.

Designed to be “the guitar you won’t be able to put down,” it's been created with an ultra-modern weight-relieved mahogany body for increased comfort, and topped with a carved plain maple cap. That tonewood combination promises “brightness, definition, warmth, and midrange punch” in equal measure.

Its SlimTaper profile mahogany neck, which plays host to a 22-fret medium jumbo fingerboard, has been glued in for “increased resonance and sustain.” Sculpted with a 12” radius and given binding – a first for LP Studios – Gibson assures players that they will “love how this instrument feels in your hands.”

Its hardware specs bring together Vintage Deluxe tuners, a Graph Tech nut, a fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, and a lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece that no Les Paul would be complete without.

But it’s with the electronics that some of the key changes have been made. A pair of Gibson Burstbucker Pro pickups have dedicated volume and tone controls, and a push/pull for coil tapping. Rounded out with a standard three-way switch, those appointments bring it closer in line with a Les Paul Standard, as such trimmings are usually reserved for higher-end Les Pauls.

Studios, as their name implies, were built to perform in the studio, so aesthetic appointments were typically omitted to keep the price down. Here, though, Gibson has made sure it looks the part via a choice of Ebony, Blueberry Burst, Wine Red, and Cherry Sunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes.

Unfortunately, Gibson is not rolling out its luxurious Dark Purple Burst again, after unveiling it earlier this year.

The guitar has been tried and tested by gigging musicians, with Beauty School Dropout guitarist Bardo calling it “an all-around workhorse, without sacrificing the classic styling and quality I expect from Gibson.”

Country player Kenzi Lewis has praised its smoothness, light weight, and “amazing tone,” while Argentina's Ivan Singh said it “feels like home.”

The new build augments a score of new Gibson releases, including the return of its Victory electric guitar, an Epiphone Jimi Hendrix 'Love Drops' Flying V, and signature acoustic guitars for Johhny and Roseanne Cash.

“The Les Paul Studio is the essential Les Paul, reimagined and updated for today’s players who want more than just another guitar – they want their guitar,” says Gibson.

The all-new Les Paul Studio is available now for $1,599, and each model comes with a soft-shell guitar case.

Head to Gibson to learn more.

Fender has launched an official Fender Certified Pre-Owned Reverb Shop, allowing players to buy heavily discounted, pre-loved guitars directly from the company.

The first-ever Fender Certified Pre-Owned shop means that pre-owned guitars, professionally inspected before making their way onto the digital marketplace, will be available to players worldwide.

Each instrument comes with a one-year warranty at prices significantly cheaper than their first-hand alternatives, with an average of 25 percent shaved off their price tags.

Fender’s decision to team up with Reverb comes amid a growing second-hand market. Although the company isn’t alone with its offering of affordable instrument ranges, like its recently revamped Player II Series, an increasing number of musicians are looking at pre-owned instruments to add quality products to their collections without breaking the bank.

Reverb says its sales of used guitars grew by more than 50 percent between 2019 and 2023, with Certified Pre-owned models offering the security of warranties and easy returns. Fender is the first gear brand to launch a Certified Pre-Owned Reverb store, which could pave the way for others to follow suit.

If needed, electric guitars and basses are refurbished by Fender’s sustainability partner, MIRC, before they’re put up for re-sale. MIRC has kept thousands of once-loved instruments from landfill sites since its launch in 1993.

“Pre-owned guitars have long been popular among players, particularly new players and collectors. Fender Certified Pre-Owned gives players of all levels the opportunity to own a quality instrument at an affordable price,” says Fender CEO Andy Mooney.

He adds that the program extends the double-sided opportunity of “purchasing instruments that are professionally inspected and sold at a discount,” and “supporting a more sustainable gear industry. It gives the instruments a second, third, or fourth life and participating in the circular economy.”

Reverb CEO David Mandelbrot also weighed in on the new partnership: “It’s more important than ever that the music-making community has access to affordable musical instruments and Fender Certified Pre-Owned on Reverb will help many players get their hands on great-sounding guitars that fit within their budget,” he says.

Speaking of the value that second-hand gear has had on his glittering playing career, Nile Rodgers adds: “Many of my very best creative tools were bought from other musicians and the secondary market. In fact, The Hitmaker [Rodgers' most legendary Strat] was [bought] from a pawn shop in 1973.

“These guitars come with stories and history that just make them special. The fact that you can now buy pre-owned guitars from Fender means that you get the character and the affordability of pre-owned gear, plus Fender’s seal of approval.”

Interestingly, there is no mention of pre-owned Fender amplifiers in the press release, but it would be fairly safe to assume that they will make their way onto the store sooner or later.

The Official Fender Certified Pre-Owned Reverb Shop is now open.

In 2010, Kieth Urban was preparing to enter the studio to record his sixth album, Get Closer. Then came the devastating Tennessee floods, which hit Nashville particularly hard. Urban's guitar collection was left trapped underwater in his storage complex, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The Aussie-American songsmith relived the nightmare during a recent chat with YouTube favorite Rick Beato, saying that a last-gasp online guitar purchase made him feel like he was “cheating” on his go-to guitars.

The floods affected several areas in Tennessee and Kentucky in May 2010, causing $2.3 billion in damages, with Urban's instruments among the collateral.

“So we know that our stuff is floating in the water in this warehouse every day, and we can't get in there to get it and get started drying it out,” he reflects. “[It’s] days and days of that going on. I've got to start my record, and I have no guitar.”

His begrudged solution was to “buy a Clapton Strat off eBay”, but that left him feeling dirty.

“It shows up. I start the record with this Clapton Strat, and then I'm looking on eBay and I find some nice guitars,” he continues. “I felt like I was cheating on my guitars that were on life support in the hospital, and I'm looking at dating sites.

“That's what it felt like. I'm, like, ‘You never know. I might have to start a new relationship.’ It felt so awful getting anything new while all my babies were floating around in a river. So I got one or two guitars, and that was it. I couldn't get a bunch of new stuff. I just couldn't do it.”

Blitzen Trapper's Eric Earley will no doubt sympathize with Urban's woes. His beloved Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar was “warped and screwed up” in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.

Luckily for the guitarist, the vintage Gibson proved it was made of stern stuff as his luthier successfully brought it back from the dead. Today, it still plays a role in all of his live shows.

Likewise, Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson lost “scores of vintage guitars” after Hurricane Sandy hit. Yet his 1968 Goldtop Les Paul came out of its resulting surgery better for the experience.

Goldtops featured in Urban’s wider chat with Beato. Ten years the senior of Robinson’s axe, his ‘58 Goldtop proved equally as hardened after it was resurrected following the flood.

“A lot of this stuff started chipping away post-flood,” he details. “But [the Goldtop] came out of that thing sounding exactly the same as it was.

“[It was] crazy the work that [Nashville-based luthier] Joe Glaser and those guys did, and my guitar tech, Chris Miller, did so much restoration work to drive everything out and put it all back together. It's remarkable how everything survived the way it did. The old guitars fared better than the new ones.”

All the evidence points to vintage guitars being incredibly resilient to the elements. But, according to David Gilmour, guitars sound better with age and time, too.

A Guitar Center store in Gwinnett County, Georgia has helped local police seize thousands of dollars of illegal drugs after discovering a sizable stash hidden inside an amplifier.

The combo amp looks to have been gutted to house the drugs, and act as cover for the shipment.

Brazenly, the dealers, who police are trying to track down, were shipping the illegal substance through the mail, only for the amp to end up at the musical equipment store, where it was thoroughly checked over.

When staff inspected the amp, they discovered cocaine and methamphetamine amounting to thousands of dollars stuffed inside.

It is believed the shipment was sent to Gwinnett County Guitar Center by mistake, with the dealers using the firm's boxes and listing the store as the shipment’s return address, to eliminate any suspicions.

Police say that the send address was “out of state,” and are thankful for the Guitar Center employees' intervention.

“In this case, we have employees who did exactly the right thing,” Sgt. Collin Flynn with the Gwinnett County Police told WSB reporters. He adds that “it's extremely rare that this happens at any business.”

It's believed the dealers have used the method before, only this time the shipment was sent to the return, rather than the send address, in a surprise to staff.

Police have reiterated it can typically intercept these packages and stop them from reaching their intended destinations.

In 2023, the Parcel Interdiction Team, which includes the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation among its ranks, recovered 4,500 lbs of drugs.

As Sgt. Flynn explains, that amounts to $70 million which had been sent through FedEx, or UPS, that officers were able to seize with the help of a canine.

A Guitar Center spokesperson says the company is cooperating with law enforcement, and there is not believed to be a connection between the store, its employees, and the drugs.

The B.B. King Blues Experience, a ten-piece band fronted by Claudette King, the daughter of the blues great, is set to tour North America and Europe in 2025 in honor of the late guitarist's 100th birthday.

Entitled The Thrill Lives On tour, the band also features Grammy-winning vocalist and harmonica player Grady Champion, and Tony “T.C.” Coleman, King’s drummer for over three decades.

Chicago guitarist Wilbert Crosby, who has toured and recorded with Pops Staples, Mavis Staples, and Aretha Franklin, has the honor of handling King's parts. He has played the Grammy awards twice, including alongside Bonnie Raitt, Phil Upchurch, WahWah Watson, Isaac Hayes, and Maria Muldaur in 1995.

Their show promises to celebrate the legacy of B.B. King and Mississippi Delta blues “with a flavor of funk” added to the mix.

“To have the opportunity to continue sharing my father's music with audiences around the world is a blessing and a privilege,” says Claudette King. “I'm thrilled to be bringing the B.B. King Blues Experience to the world and allowing new audiences to experience the thrill of this music live.

“I dare the audience to stay seated during our songs as they will make you want to get up and dance,” she adds.

No dates have yet been announced, with Pyramid Entertainment Group “open to offers” as it looks to spread King’s music far and wide. There’s also a hope that, by fusing these classic songs with a little funk, the band can win over a new generation of fans.

“We wanted to take King’s timeless classics and add some funk to it in order to reach a younger and different audience,” Champion expands. “The show is fun, entertaining, and suitable for all ages.”

Talking to Guitar World late last year, another blues legend, Buddy Guy, waxed lyrical about King's unrivaled talents when it came to playing the blues.

“I had to find my own unique voice on the electric guitar,“ he says. “Because I had heard guys like B.B. King and T-Bone Walker. I said, ‘I’ll never be that good. I’ve got to do something different from them or I’m done for.’

“B.B. King had a left hand that could do things that were not of this Earth. I knew I could never do any of that.”

But, in the wise words of B.B. King himself, he didn’t want players to stick too closely to his sonic template. He wanted to hear the individuality of every blues player.

“I believe your sound comes from within you,” he once said. “You can manufacture a sound by having a wah-wah pedal or something, but the actual sound comes from you. It’s your touch and your soul that makes it sound the way it does.

“You don’t want to play like B.B. King or somebody else. You want to be you. Try to borrow a little bit from each guy. And, like that, you become you.”

King passed away aged 89 in 2015, and is still hailed as one of the greatest blues players in the world.

Japanese luthier Fernandes Guitars, whose instruments have been played by Kirk Hammet, The Edge, and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, has filed for bankruptcy, Guitar World reports. 

A statement posted to its website on July 13 [translated from Japanese], reads: 

“Fernandes Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ‘Fernandes’) is currently owed a considerable amount of debt to multiple creditors, and unfortunately, it has become impossible to continue business.

“We apologize for the inconvenience caused to creditors and related parties, but in light of the total amount of debt, Fernandes plans to file for bankruptcy proceedings as soon as possible.

“Creditors and business partners who have claims or debts against Fernandes will be contacted in writing by the attorney representing them in the bankruptcy proceedings… We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patronage over the years.”

The website Tokyo Shoko Research states that, as of January 2024, the company’s debts amounted to 433.89 million yen, which is approximately $2.75m. 

The firm, which was founded in 1969, and operated as Saito Musical Instruments before its name change three years later, blamed its worsening performance on the second-hand market and intensifying competition.

Its early success came from producing copies of popular US-made guitars, with two main lines produced. Its Fernandes lines specialized in Fender-style instruments, and Burny in Gibson replicas. 

The guitars were originally produced in Japan, with some models transported to the US, where they were sold as budget alternatives to known American brands. 

Fernandes slowly built a reputation for producing quality beginner guitars that players would continue to grow with as their skills developed. 

Pressure from Fender and Gibson in the '80s, however, forced the company to change up its logos to better differentiate from the luthiers it was copying. 

Metallica’s Kirk Hammet, who acquired ‘Edna,’ a Fernandes FST-13, in the early ‘80s, was one of the biggest name players to represent the firm. The guitar featured on the cover of The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited.  

As revealed during an interview with Music Radar, The Edge's guitar tech confirmed that two Fernandes guitars, a 2009 Retro Rocket Sustain and a 2003 Native Sustain, featured as part of his touring rig at the time.  

Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong was Fernandes’ most vocal advocate. He’s owned his ‘Blue’ Fernandes Revival RST-50 Strat copy since he was 10 years old. It’s been used during almost every Green Day show. 

Fernandes has also produced signature guitars for some big names, including Brad Gillis, Dave Kushner, and another Metallic alumnus, Robert Trujillo. 

Over the last decade, Fernandes has ceased building guitars for the USA market, perhaps reacting to the aforementioned increase in competition. But despite that, its Sustainer pickup has remained a popular product outside of Japan. 

Operating similarly to an eBow by using electromagnetism to vibrate strings for increased sustain, it has the extra benefit of letting players use a pick with the system. 

That's a quirk that won over key players in the prog rock elite. King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and Steve Hackett have both played Les Paul-style Fernandes copies fitted with Sustainer pickups. 

Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien also fitted his signature Fender EOB Sustainer Strat with the pickup system.   

With the news so fresh, the future of the firm is currently unclear. For a business with a history as rich as the Japanese company's, there is always the possibility of a bailout from another, similarly-minded brand. 

The owner of Dean Guitars has won the right to a retrial in its ongoing dispute with Gibson Brands.

Armadillo Enterprises is looking to overturn a 2022 ruling that went in Gibson’s favor, with the dispute centered around the usage of V and Z shape guitars.

Gibson believes Dean's manufacturing infringes on its trademark rights, while Dean believes that the shapes are perceived as generic, rather than Gibson-specific shapes.

Armadillo lodged an appeal earlier this year, saying that the Texas District Court’s decision to exclude certain evidence pre-dating 1992 was an abuse of the court’s discretion.

Dean’s owners were trying to establish an argument that the much-copied Flying V and Explorer-style designs have become generic silhouettes in the eyes of the consumer since their introduction in the 1950s.

On July 8, the Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Armadillo’s favor, believing that decades of worth of evidence was wrongfully not permitted during the 2022 case. That decision permits Armadillo to a retrial.

The firm’s CEO, Pam Rubinson, said Dean Guitars was “incredibly pleased with the court’s decision.”

She adds that the ruling “affirms our commitment to Dean's legacy V and Z models that have been in continuous production since 1977 and reinforces our belief in fair competition within the guitar industry.

“We have always strived to respect the history of guitar craftsmanship while bringing our own unique flair to the market.

“This is a complete vindication, we have fought this battle and won on behalf of Dean Guitars and every other guitar manufacturer in the industry.”

Armadillo’s attorney, Ron Bienstock, of Scarinci Hollenbeck LLC, also provided comment, saying: “Amongst other issues, the court recognized the history of the Dean brand in their longstanding use of these guitar models, as well as countless other guitar companies that have produced and marketed these same guitars.”

Bienstock is well-versed in guitar industry disputes. A gigging guitarist in his own right, he previously won a case against Fender and its attempt to trademark Stratocaster, Telecaster, and P-Bass body shapes. During the case, which lasted six years and concluded in 2009, he represented 17 manufacturers that rallied against Fender’s trademarking, with the courts ruling that the shapes were generic, and therefore open to use by all manufacturers.

However, as that case proved, this dispute, which began in 2019 when Gibson sued Dean and Luna Guitars for trademark infringements, is far from over.

The ruling comes as welcome news to Armadillo Enterprises and Dean Guitars, but it does not overturn a 2022 injunction preventing Dean from using the disputed shapes in due course.

Armadillo’s legal team, spearheaded by Bienstock, can now make what it feels is a far stronger case, with more evidence to present.

Following the ruling, Gibson provided Guitar Player with the following statement:

“Yesterday, a 3-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the Gibson v Armadillo case for retrial. The Court of Appeals found that the District court allegedly abused its discretion in excluding certain evidence. Gibson will be requesting all the appellate judges reconsider the panel decision. Gibson is confident that the Texas Judge and jury got it right the first time.

“Gibson’s guitar body shapes are iconic, and it will continue to protect them to preserve its legacy which is critical to protect partners, dealers, artists, and fans around the world.

“Gibson, like other iconic American brands, has invested in meaningful research, development, and innovation over 130 years, and is confident that in a retrial the jury will again find in favor of affirming Gibson’s well recognized intellectual property rights, rights that have been Gibson’s for decades.”

The documents relating to the appeal can be found using the Court of Appeals docket number 22-40587.

Luther Dickinson is a royal blues rocker who has led the North Mississippi Allstars for over a quarter century and is a touring member of the Allman Family Revival. Dickinson is a familiar face in the pages of GP and graced the cover in 2008 when he was a member of the Black Crowes, alongside Rich Robinson. The latest Allstars album, Set Sail, features some of Dickinson’s most soulful tunes and slinky slide playing. He shared deep insights in a 2022 feature interview.

“Thinking about the guitar fretboard horizontally can be hipper than vertically because the melody is there. It gives the phrasing a vocal quality. If you can connect your ear and your mind with your heart and your hand playing intervals on one or two strings, then the whole guitar just kind of unlocks itself.”

He adds, “I’m addicted to playing behind the slide, letting fretted notes pop out to provide something solid you can hang your hat on amidst all the squirrelly slide microtones.”

In the same interview, he also reported that Set Sail is a “transitional record” in terms of tone. Dickinson has always been closely associated with the throaty tone of a Gibson hollowbody with either a humbucker or P-90s in the neck position, but he has recently fallen in love with the sound of Lollar’s Regal pickups coming through his signature Category 5 amps.

Dickinson told GP in 2022, “Those wide-range style pickups are so clean, chimey, and bell-like that you can hear each note in every chord. That’s my new sound.”

Come hear it in the North Bay on July 18. The Allstars lineup features Luther’s co-pilot brother, drummer, and electric washboard extraordinaire, Cody Dickinson, plus Jesse Williams on bass.

Guitar Player Presents is thrilled to partner with KC Turner Presents to welcome the North Mississippi Allstars back to the West Coast. Come share the warm outdoor summer vibes at this Cookout Concert Series event starting early in the evening, plus pick up a free GP magazine and a set of Martin strings while you’re there. Secure your spot.

Win Tickets

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to GP Presents the North Mississippi Allstars in Novato, California, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Luther” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact is greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato, California, on Thursday, July 18, and have their own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Best of luck!

Event Details

GP Presents North Mississippi Allstars plus Sam Chase – Thursday, July 18
The Hopmonk Tavern– 224 Vintage Way, Novato, California
4pm doors: 6pm show

Free GP magazines, Martin strings
Get Tickets

The carbon-fiber revolution may not be televised, but it’s all over the internet and here in the pages of GP.

The young Klosowiak brothers bring a unique perspective, focused on intelligent builds using modern materials in traditional forms. They make sonorous and highly playable carbon instruments at lower prices than other custom manufacturers, and market them to adventure lifestylists, who benefit most from the resulting durability. Their ads feature Klos guitars on the backs of hikers and sailors, and hilarious online videos show players using their wares as golf clubs and baseball bats.

A successful Kickstarter campaign for the Travel Guitar put Klos (pronounced like the opposite of “far”) on the map in 2015. The 33-inch miniature dreadnought remains the company’s flagship, but Klos has expanded the line significantly and now offers a fleet of acoustic and electric instruments in an array of sizes up to the full-scale Grand Cutaway. Last month, their three-quarter-sized Grand Cutaway Mini acoustic-electric earned an Editors’ Pick review for being travel-friendly and gig-worthy.

Klos is currently introducing an A-style mandolin, a nylon-string, and a 12-string with a particularly cool tuning-peg design on its headstock to go along with a full line of basses and ukuleles. The company offers lots of custom options for each. The Hybrid Series combines wood and carbon and is more affordable, while Carbon Timber is an intriguing newfangled material that doesn’t contain any wood but has a straight grain appearance rather than the traditional carbon-fiber weave.

I caught up with Klos at the NAMM show and was impressed with the consistency in craftsmanship across its expanding range of instruments. With so much goodness coming down the mountain from Provo, Utah, it’s high time we met the brothers behind the brand.

What was the big bang that brought Klos Guitars into the universe?

Ian Klosowiak: “I was studying mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University and built a carbon-fiber guitar for a class. It was a lifelong goal to build a guitar of my own. During the process I did a ton of research and recognized that there was no company making carbon-fiber guitars at a reasonable price in a high-end, yet practical way.”

Adam Klosowiak: “Soon after, I was visiting Ian when he asked if I knew anything about business competitions. I had won a hackathon at Princeton the year before, where I studied electrical engineering.”

Ian: “Adam was involved with entrepreneurship, so we decided to put our heads together and start a company making a new category of guitars that you can depend on.”

Were you inspired by any brands or models?

Ian: “I was inspired by a bunch of guitars, but being an avid mountain biker, the main inspiration came from the mountain bike industry. I credit my knack for working with tools and being detail oriented, as well as my experience as a bike mechanic. Over the past two decades, carbon fiber has become increasingly popular for making mountain bikes. I believe the same thing will happen with guitars, because there are so many advantages over wood.”

What got you hooked on carbon fiber in the first place?

Ian: “My first exposure to making carbon-fiber parts was during an internship in a carbon-fiber lab at Northwestern University. After learning the basics, I successfully fixed a couple of carbon-fiber bike frames, and I made a bunch of random things for fun. I got familiar with Rainsong’s highly coveted carbon guitars, but they’re expensive and out of range for a college student.

“Living in Utah and Colorado, naturally I did a lot of camping, rock climbing, skiing, and mountain biking, and I brought my guitar everywhere. Seeing my wood guitar get beat up from all the travel, I started obsessing about owning a carbon-fiber guitar one day. At the same time, while Adam was a student at Princeton, his guitar developed a crack in the soundboard simply from sitting next to an open window. Since both of us were experiencing the same pain points, we knew there was an opportunity with carbon-fiber guitars.”

Durability is a primary advantage, but are there sonic advantages as well?

Adam: “People have created stereotypes about carbon fiber and make a lot of assumptions about its sound. Like wood, carbon fiber can be designed and modified to have a wide range of sonic properties. We can make guitars that sound bright, and some have very deep bass, but in general we always aim to have a balanced tone.

“Aside from good sound, our instruments have excellent playability, which is something we pride ourselves on. We spend hours and hours on each instrument, making sure it does not leave our shop until we’re confident the customer will find the playability to be the best they’ve ever experienced.”

Most carbon-fiber makers go with an offset soundhole, yet yours is traditional, and you offer a side sound port as a custom option.

Adam: “Nice observation. We try to innovate on top of tradition, and because our material is already very innovative, we try to keep other elements of the instruments traditional whenever possible. We therefore have traditional soundholes, but we do offer side sound ports for players who want it. A side sound port on an acoustic instrument works like a monitor for the player and makes an instrument sound much louder for the person playing.”

Ian: “Our most popular customization is the choice of pickup. You can achieve a specific sound by choosing the pickup you know and love, such as the Baggs and Fishman pickups we offer for acoustics. Or we can do a custom install of whatever you send us. We also offer the HyVibe smart guitar preamp. For electric and bass guitar, we have a unique pickguard that can pretty much handle any pickups, with any type of knob configuration. Our pickguards are fully loaded, so if you ever want a new pickup or layout, it’s not a problem.”

What’s the deal with Carbon Timber?

Adam: “Carbon Timber is incredible. The material is nickel-coated carbon fiber, so the carbon strands have nickel atoms coated on top of them. The result is a material that is as incredibly durable as black carbon fiber but has a brown, metallic wood-like appearance. The Carbon Timber strands are laid in one direction, and the resulting grain makes each instrument unique. We’re very excited about it and have seen a huge positive response from customers thus far.”

What makes the Travel Guitar the most popular and lauded of your instruments?

Adam: “Carbon fiber’s durability makes it a perfect fit because travel guitars undergo the most stress. We made only Travel Guitars for the first three years, so that product line had a head start. It has substantially more reviews, and although it is our best seller, I wouldn’t say it’s our best guitar. The Grand Cutaway is our biggest guitar, so it has the best sound while having the same benefits as our other instruments.”

What fuels your ambition to create an expansive line?

Adam: “We always had a vision of becoming the carbon-fiber instrument company. After making our first few instruments, we learned that we had developed the capability to make practically anything out of carbon, and that capability was our most valuable asset.

“So in 2023 we decided that we would launch eight more instruments based on the top requests from prospective customers. We did that and have plans for seven more in 2024. We’re releasing an A-style mandolin, a 12-string guitar, a classical guitar with or without a cutaway, as well as neck replacements for Fender basses in three sizes – four-, five-, and six-string – plus a baritone electric guitar. After that we’ll slow down a bit on new instrument launches and focus on growing the existing product lines.”

What are you most excited about?

Adam: “We’re extremely excited for the mandolin. The response from the mandolin community has been incredible. Everyone has been so positive, and honestly, nobody questions the logic of using carbon fiber. Everyone just gets it. A mandolin has eight steel strings, so it has a huge amount of tension on the soundboard, making it hard to make a good-sounding wooden one that won’t break simply from passive string tension.”

What are some company goals and individual thoughts you both have as Klos moves forward with these new instruments?

Adam: “More than anything, we want to keep spreading the word. We know that we’re still a tiny brand compared to the big guys, but we also know that many players want a unique instrument from a smaller company that pays close attention to each customer. We’re continuing to reach out to good retail stores and to keep finding good partners who are interested in selling innovative gear that their customers want sold locally.”

Ian: “Passionate guitarists always wish they had more time to play and practice. The worst thing is when you go on a trip and don’t have a guitar on hand to fill in your spare time. I always had the mentality that my guitar is made to be used, and not babied. I was the guy who would put my guitar in a couple layers of garbage bags and shove it in the front of my kayak.

“That attitude is at the core of our vision, to make guitars that are treated more like a piece of gear than a piece of fine art, or delicate furniture at grandma’s house. Once a guitarist gets a Klos guitar and embraces this same vision, it changes your relationship with your guitar. It will never sit in its case. It will always be leaning against your couch, ready to be played.”

• For more on Klos Guitars, visit the company's website.

Leo Kottke set the standard for the modern acoustic icon, and he continues to blaze a singular trail. 

While popular culture was focused on Woodstock and the flower power revolution happening largely on the electric side in 1969, Kottke was about to drop equivalent of an acoustic A-bomb with 6- and 12-String Guitar on mentor John Fahey’s Takoma label. 

It landed with authority in December of that year, setting a standard that ushered in the golden ’70s and that resonates to the present day. Masterpieces such as Vaseline Machine Gun and Crow River Waltz take prominent places in playlists on streaming platforms and remain setlist staples.

It’s not hyperbole to compare Kottke’s influence on acoustic players to Hendrix’s influence on electric. Kottke is routinely name checked by acoustic aficionados working in myriad styles from blues to jazz, including in recent Frets features with Catfish Keith and Julian Lage, the latter of whom toured with Kottke and recounted some of the insights he picked up to GP.

“Leo’s the greatest, and a completely unique archetype of player,” Lage says. “He’s a storyteller; he’s a communicator. 

“He happens to play the guitar like no one else, with one of the greatest grooves of all time, one of the most fascinating techniques, and one of the most soulful melodic and harmonic senses of anybody ever. But one of the beautiful things about Leo is one of the hardest things to do, which is to forget that you’re playing a guitar and just feel like you’re playing music. He embodies that transcendence.” 

Kottke’s profile in this millennium has gotten a boost through his duo work with bassist Mike Gordon of Phish fame, but Kottke mostly still performs as a solo act, as he’ll be doing on Thursday, June 20, and Friday, June 21, at the historic Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, California. The Freight has been the Bay Area’s folk music home since 1968. A true community meeting place, it has the best acoustics for Americana music anywhere in the region. 

Kottke’s off-the-cuff storytelling and bone-dry wit make each gig uniquely memorable. GP Presents will be on site Thursday with free magazines and Martin strings. Secure your seats now.

Win Tickets

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to GP Presents Leo Kottke in Berkeley, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Leo” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. 

Phone contact is greatly appreciated for confirmation. 

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, California, on Thursday, June 20, and have their own accommodations in the Bay Area. 

Best of luck! 

Event Details

Guitar Player Presents Leo Kottke – Thursday, June 20
Freight & Salvage – 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, California 94704
7pm doors, 8pm show; All Ages

Free GP magazines, Martin strings
Buy Tickets

Fender has launched a brand-new Nashville HQ with a star-studded ribbon-cutting event featuring some of Fender and Music City's biggest names. 

It comes just a few short months after Gibson hosted a similarly glitzy opening event for its Gibson Garage in London earlier this year, with Jimmy Page, Brian May, and Tony Iommi all in attendance. 

Although full details are scarce at the time of writing, key names confirmed as attending include Fender and Nashville icons such as Billy Gibbons, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, Cory Wong, Brent Mason, and Jack White. 

Chris Stapleton, Jon Randall, Rob McNelley, Steve Mackey and Patrick Clifford were also invited, with a social media post from another attendee, Guthrie Trapp, offering a peak into the event. There are also mentions of Chris Shiflett, Joe Glaser, Brett Papa, and Raul Malo at the event, alongside brand CEO Andy Mooney, making for an exhaustive guest list.  

With so many iconic guitar players under one roof, it’s no surprise to hear that a number of the guests joined together for a jam; a moment which Trapp’s post sadly only captures in pictorial form.  

“It was yet another epic evening in Music City, Guitar Town aka Nashville, Tennessee,” Trapp's post reads. “Our good friends at Fender invited us all to attend the grand event for the opening of their new headquarters in East Nashville. 

“This town always has a way of reminding us often why we all still live here. There’s nowhere on the planet that these cats would be in the same room together for such a cool low-key hang. It was great to catch up with so many old friends. The adventure continues!”

The newly built HQ stands as a multi-purpose facility for the gear brand, with office, guitar-building, and artist relations spaces all on hand. 

While Guitar Player awaits more details from Fender about its new premises – especially footage of the jam session – Powell, the firm behind its design and construction, has plenty to say about it. 

“The first floor comes alive as a lively nerve center for artist relations,” Powell details. “This vibrant area offers artists a space to immerse themselves in Fender's extensive collection, engage in discussions about custom projects, and experiment with a diverse range of instruments.

“Designed to meld with the city's pulsating artistic energy, this new space becomes an active participant in the city's music culture, sparking inspiration in the upcoming generations of musicians.” 

For a more detailed look at Fender’s new Nashville HQ, head to Powell. 

Electric guitar maestro Steve Vai is well-known not only for his virtuosity, but for his incredibly intense compositional approach, especially when it comes to his climactic guitar solos. 

Famously, he laid down perhaps his most famous composition, For the Love of God, while on the fourth day of a 10-day fast. 

In a 2016 GP interview, though, Vai emphasized a different solo – which he approached with a similar intensity (without the starvation, mind you) – as his “ultimate achievement of phrasing on the [guitar].”

Playing And We Are One – from his then-new album, Modern Primitive – for GP editor Jude Gold, Vai suddenly stopped the track, telling Gold, “For this note coming up, I’m operating my Morley Little Alligator volume pedal with one foot and a wah pedal with the other, while using the whammy bar. This is how forensic I get. It’s just one note, but it took my entire life to get to the point to where I could do that one note.

“I’ve never gotten as deep with my phrasing as I did on this solo,” Vai continued. “It may go right over the head of most people, and others might just hear it as Vai meandering, but, for me, this solo is my ultimate achievement of phrasing on the instrument.”

Fast forwarding to the present, Vai has already had an incredibly busy 2024 – reuniting with the original G3 lineup (himself, Joe Satriani, and Eric Johnson) for a tour, and teaming up with Satriani again for the first double-bill Satriani/Vai tour.

On top of that, it was recently announced that Vai would be joining forces with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Tool's Danny Carey for Beat – a forthcoming tour that will see the four musicians play the music of three early '80s-era King Crimson albums.

Robert Fripp himself gave the group a hearty endorsement, saying on social media that “Steve Vai is the only guitarist who could play my parts.”

• For tickets and more info on the Beat tour, visit the band's website.

Late last year, Jeff Schroeder – who spent more than 15 years in the Smashing Pumpkins as an electric guitar player – announced that he was amicably leaving the group. 

Schroeder first joined the band in 2007, shortly after their mid-aughts reunion, and remained with the Pumpkins even after original guitarist James Iha re-joined the group in 2018. After Iha's return, he, Schroeder, and frontman Billy Corgan ushered in a new, three-guitar era of the band.

To replace Schroeder, the Smashing Pumpkins are casting a wide net – a very, very wide net.

On their social media channels last week (January 5), the alt-rock legends announced that they were opening up their search to “anyone who might be interested.”

“The Smashing Pumpkins are in search of an additional guitarist,” the post reads. “The application process is open to anyone who might be interested. Applicants may submit a resume and related materials to SPGuitar@redlightmanagement.com.”

Throughout their career, the Smashing Pumpkins have been well-known for what Corgan has referred to as their “big wall” guitar sound, with a discography featuring songs rumored to have as many as 100 guitar tracks.

The band's permanent move to a three-guitar lineup, however, is more about texture than brute force, Corgan says. 

“James has a way of taking the blunt-force trauma of how Jimmy [Chamberlin, the band's drummer] and I approach rock music and creating a softer, more psychedelic kind of layering thing that somehow makes it feel cooler or sexier,” Corgan explained to Guitar Player in 2018. “And when you see it happen and you notice it, especially because it hasn’t been around for a while, you’re like, 'Oh, that’s that thing that people like!'”

Speaking in reference to the band's 2018 comeback album, Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun, in the same interview, Iha added, “This time there were definitely a couple of heavy songs where I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make the tracks any heavier. So I just looked for little melodic details or hooks that I could put in to bring out a different kind of sound here and there. 

“My feeling is, if you try to make the guitars even heavier, it just winds up sounding one-dimensional. So I would look for something else to do.”

At Future Publishing we rely on advertising to keep bringing you the content you love to read. The majority of the content on GuitarPlayer.com is created solely by our editorial team, but on occasion, we also work with external partners to create content we hope our readers will find interesting and useful.

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Over the last five years, we’ve all seen Gibson transform into the forward-thinking, history-conscious brand it is today. Central to that change has been fellow music lover and “guitar nerd” Cesar Gueikian who joined the firm in 2018.

An accomplished guitarist, Cesar has performed and recorded with a host of notables including Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo, Dave Mustaine, Richie Faulkner, Jared James Nichols, Mana and more. All in all, he is a passionate musician with a love of songwriting who really understands and appreciates the artists working in today’s guitar world.

Along with his world-class business acumen, Cesar’s passion for music has helped shape the successful Gibson we see today. In addition to playing a key role in revamping the company’s strategy, just some of his achievements include creating Gibson Media, launching Gibson TV, and securing partnerships with an impressive list of Gibson artists.

“I have had the opportunity to work closely with Cesar as we have rebuilt Gibson over the past five years,” said Chairman of Gibson Brands, Nat Zilkha. “He has established a remarkable track record at Gibson, shaping our product, our marketing, our artist relationships, and many of our important growth initiatives.

But the praise doesn’t end there; a plethora of Gibson artists has stepped forward to weigh in on the man Slash described as “one of, if not the smartest, most passionate Gibson guitar enthusiasts I've ever met.”

Tony Iommi commented on how Cesar helped reverse Gibson’s ailing status. “I can’t believe how Cesar has transformed Gibson from a brand on its way down and out to the success it is today,” said the Black Sabbath guitarist. “He went out of his way to meet with musicians and take note of what we were saying, gathering a great team around him. It’s now a company I’m proud to be associated with.”

Kirk Hammett kept it short and sweet: “I’m going to quote what a wise man once said to me: do epic shit, bro!”

Meanwhile, Cesar himself had this to say: “I am honored and humbled to take on the permanent CEO role! Gibson is a passion project for me. Our board of directors, chaired by Nat Zilkha, has been incredibly supportive over the last five years, giving me an opportunity to merge my biggest passion, which is not just music and guitars, but Gibson guitars with my business background, and I don’t take this for granted.”

Further support came from Lzzy Hale (“Cesar operates on a level of passion that is otherworldly”); Dave Mustaine (“I can’t think of a better, more passionate, intelligent person, to be at the helm of [the] Gibson empire”); Emily Wolfe (“Cesar has a knack for innovation in the gear world”); and many more artists besides.

Cesar’s colleague Mark Agnesi also sang his praises, adding, “I can’t think of a better leader to take Gibson forward into the next chapter,” as did Mat Koehler who said, "Cesar becoming Gibson's CEO means everything to my team and I, and we couldn't be more excited about the future with him at the helm.”

With more back-slapping than a warehouse full of Maestro Echoplexes, it’s fair to say the general feeling is that Gibson has been, and will continue to be, in good hands for the foreseeable future.

Congratulations, Cesar! Here’s to another five years.

On the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s breakthrough magnum opus, The Dark Side of the Moon, we go behind the music with Gilmour, Roger Waters and engineer Alan Parsons, all of whom deliver insights into the album’s history, from its inception as a stage presentation to its creation in the studio. We dig deep into Gilmour’s rig to reveal all the gear he used on the album, as well as tell the story behind every song.

Plus, Guitar Player gets up close with Gilmour’s iconic Black Strat as we detail every modification he’s known to have made to the guitar featured on albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. 

And we take a deep exploration into the guitarist’s Dark Side-era tone and technique by exploring passages from key songs, complete with examples featuring transcripts and audio.

This issue also includes a brand-new career retrospective interview with Harvey Mandel. The Sustain King discusses everything from his first solo album, Cristo Redentor, to his latest, Who’s Calling.

Then, we catch up Neil Giraldo, who talks about his career – from Derringer to Pat Benatar and beyond – and his recent Rock Hall induction. 

We also have an in-depth conversation with Jonny Polonsky, who tells how a few homemade cassettes – and a penchant for chasing his dream – led him to record on albums by Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and Donovan. Polonsky is back in action with his latest solo effort, Rise of the Rebel Angels.

You’ll also find Steve Morse sharing his five weirdest guitar tips in our monthly Tip Sheet, plus interviews with Angela Petrilli and Dawes guitarist Taylor Goldsmith. 

And in our ever-popular How I Wrote feature, we tell the story behind the 1970s MOR pop tune that was an unlikely favorite of former Beatle John Lennon as Little River Band guitarist Graeham Goble talks about the group’s hit "Reminiscing.”

All this, plus reviews of the Reverend Pete Anderson Eastsider Custom and Rick Vito Soul Agent, Erica Synths Zen Delay Virtual, the Boss Katana-50 MkII EX, Vertex Effects Boost MK II + Volume/Expression pedal, and Kiss My Strings JAM Offset and Telecaster Bridges.

Click here to order.

Veteran music journalist Steve Rosen has released his long-awaited book Tonechaser – Understanding Edward: My 26-Year Journey with Edward Van Halen.

Chronicling the close friendship Rosen shared with the late, great guitarist from 1977 to 2003, Tonechaser appears as a 580-page hardcover book and features a collection of images by Van Halen photographer Neil Zlozower.

While Rosen has written several other books – including biographies on Jeff Beck, Free/Bad Company, Black Sabbath and Randy Rhoads – a press release says his most recent was “not an easy task to undertake.”

Some fans may recall talk of Rosen’s authorized biography as far back as the mid-‘80s. Now, having pored over many hours’ worth of interview recordings, this highly anticipated tome is finally available to order (see info below.)

Whether on the ground in Van Halen’s 5150 studio or thousands of feet up in an airplane, these conversations between two close friends tell an accurate story that “captures the heart and creativity” of a true rock and roll pioneer.

“I chose that title, Tonechaser, because Edward once described himself in that way,” says Rosen. “I thought it was such a beautiful, fragile, and poignant word for him to use in his pursuit of the ever-elusive Brown Sound.

“I also thought it worked on another level in terms of the ‘tone’ of his life and being a guitar player, bandmember, husband, father, and icon.

“I had never heard Edward ever use that phrase anywhere else and in fact after interviewing hundreds and hundreds of guitar players, I've never heard one of them ever use that word to describe what they do.”

To purchase Tonechaser, send $47.00 to the link: paypal.me/Tonechaser. Send payment as FAMILY & FRIENDS and remember to include your address.

International buyers can contact the author for details about shipping here: scrosen@sbcglobal.net

Alternatively, you can order Tonechaser via Amazon here.

When the Beatles made their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, it inspired a generation of Boomers to pick up the guitar. But it was a much earlier TV broadcast that helped turn Bill Frisell on to the instrument, when he was a boy growing up in Denver.

Credit Jimmie Dodd, host of The Mickey Mouse Club, with planting the six-string seed in Frisell’s young brain. Dodd was Head Mousketeer during the televised show’s initial 1955 to 1959 run, when it was shown five days a week on ABC stations across the country. He wasn’t just an actor; Dodd also wrote the program’s theme song and premiered his Mousegetar on the November 11, 1955 show, which aired just a few months before Frisell’s fifth birthday.

Dodds’ adeptness on the instrument was immediately evident in the crisp, Django-esque filigrees he played between strummed chords on the tune “I’m a Guitar.”

It may have been that very song that first captured the imagination of young Billy Frisell. “Right there is what got me wanting to play the guitar,” Frisell tells Guitar Player. “I think I was about four. Wow!” 

Frisell’s guitar journey followed a path that began in earnest at age 13, when he took lessons with Bob Marcus at the Denver Folklore Center. In high school, he got hooked on Wes Montgomery and as a senior began studying guitar with Dale Bruning, who recorded a series of jazz standards with Frisell decades later on their 2000 duo album, Reunion.

At Colorado State, now the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, Frisell studied for one semester with jazz guitar great Johnny Smith, whose clean articulation and impeccable picking technique on 1956’s Moonlight in Vermont, with sax great Stan Getz, had also influenced young Pat Martino.

Smith’s 1962 solo guitar album, The Man with the Blue Guitar, recorded at his Johnny Smith Guitar Center in Colorado Springs, may have served as a template for Frisell’s own 2018 solo guitar debut, Music IS.

To date, Frisell has made more than 40 albums as a leader, starting with 1982’s In Line for Manfred Eicher’s ECM label. Prior to that, he had served as a kind of house guitarist for the imprint, appearing on albums by German bassist Eberhard Weber (1979’s Fluid Rustle), American drummer Paul Motian (1981’s Psalm), Norwegian bassist Arild Anderson (1982’s A Molde Concert) and Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek (1982’s Paths, Prints).

He has since racked up appearances as a sideman on more than 300 recordings that cover a remarkable range of artists and styles. He’s cut pop and rock sessions for the likes of Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Marianne Faithfull, Rickie Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Jackson, Loudon Wainwright III, and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

He’s accompanied jazz legends like pianists McCoy Tyner and Paul Bley; bass players Ron Carter and Gary Peacock; trumpeter Chet Baker; drummers Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Andrew Cyrille; and saxophonists Charles Lloyd and Lee Konitz.

Some of Frisell’s most potent and revered recordings came as a member of the bass-less trio featuring saxophonist Joe Lovano and led by the late jazz drummer-composer Paul Motian, with whom he made 20 albums during their more than 30 years performing together.

Frisell was also a pioneer of the current craze for looping. He pioneered looping-delay-backward effects in the ’80s, then in the ’90s had some edgy encounters with distortion pedals during his time in the services of John Zorn’s cacophonous avant-noisecore improv band, Naked City.

He’s famously known for using the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay early in his career before switching in 1999 to the Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, the looping pedal that has remained in his arsenal ever since.

Frisell has cut back on effects considerably in recent years, allowing his innate musicianship and melodic gifts to shine through with stunning clarity and intention. As ever, what he plays is surprising, rendered with a tasteful, painterly approach.

GP talked to Frisell about his latest Blue Note release, 2022’s Four, with pianist Gerald Clayton, saxophonist-clarinetist Greg Tardy and drummer Johnathan Blake. He also shed light on his philosophy of the instrument, his approach in a band setting and his current arsenal of guitars, which includes a blue Telecaster that belonged to his late friend and colleague Robert Quine, who made his mark with proto-punkers Richard Hell & the Voidoids (their 1977 album, Blank Generation, is a definitive anthem for that era) and during the early ’80s with Lou Reed (circa Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts and Live in Italy).

In Philip Watson’s recent biography on you, Beautiful Dreamer, he brings up your meeting with Robert Quine in the early ’80s at music journalist Chip Stern’s apartment on the Upper West Side. So essentially, we have Chip to thank for bringing you and Quine together, which led to your early experiments with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay pedal. And the rest is history.

Yeah, Chip was right there when Quine brought it to a jam we had. And as soon as I saw it working, it was sort of this instantaneous thing. I just knew what to do with it. It was like it was made for me or something. And Quine was sort of amazed when I started playing it. His mouth was hanging open just watching me play. I swear, it was like... Somehow it was just all laid out. It just fit with the way my brain was working.

You’ve done so much over time with looping and backward guitar. But on the new album, Four, you only dial up looping on one tune, “Dog on a Roof.”

Well, I thought I was going to make it through the whole record without using that thing. I’ve been using it less and less lately.

Your 2019 album Valentine had some backward effects on it.

Yeah, a little bit. But the last few months of being out there playing, I haven’t used any effects at all. Reverb is about the only effect that I’m using these days.

What pedal do you currently use for looping?

It’s a Line 6 DL4 pedal. I had the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay for quite a while before that bit the dust. Then I had a DigiTech 8 Second Delay, which was also another thing that Quine introduced me to. He always was the first guy to get that new stuff. Then I got the Line 6, and that’s pretty much been it for me for 20 or more years.

But really, I’m sort of getting pretty burned out on effects. The last few months I haven’t been using anything at all. I did a solo gig a couple of months ago, and that’s the kind of situation where I always would rely on it so much. But I was proud of myself: I did the whole gig without using any pedals or anything, just playing by myself. That was sort of the true test, I guess.

It affected the way I hear structures in the music, so you carry that over into how you play without them. So if you take the box away, the effect is still in your imagination. Now it’s almost like I’m trying to get at some of that stuff that I would have done with the delay, but I’m just doing it with my hands.

You’re emulating the effect to the point where it becomes part of your vocabulary.

Yeah, which is kind of great. It’s like you learn something from the machine. It will teach you something that you figure out how to do yourself.

I went back and listened to your first album from 1982, In Line, and that is a startlingly singular statement at that moment. On the title track, for instance, there’s layers of guitars, lots of loops, no discernible time. It’s like a different language for the instrument back then, and it sounds as amazing and refreshing today as it did 40 years ago.

Wow. I haven’t listened to that in so long.

And that debut album introduced a tune that you would continue to play over your career, “Throughout.”

Oh, yeah. I feel like that was sort of the first song that I ever wrote that was like an actual bit of inspiration. It just came out in a couple seconds. I don’t know how that happened and I keep trying to get back to that. Something like that happens and you think, Man, it’s so easy to write a song. But then it’s like, Okay, try to write another one.

On the new album, you reprise your compositions “Good Dog, Happy Man,” “Monroe” and “Lookout for Hope.” What is your attitude about approaching your own tunes that you had previously recorded before?

As I get older, I notice that happening more. For example, I first tried to play “The Days of Wine and Roses” maybe 50 years ago, and as the years go by you keep discovering more and more about the tune. It keeps revealing more and more stuff. So I was aware of that happening with standard tunes.

But what’s weird about getting older, it starts happening with my own tunes. So if I come back to one of my own tunes that I haven’t played in a while, I’ll see it in a completely different way or I’ll notice things that are in it that I didn’t even know were there before. In this case of playing some of my old tunes on Four, it’s really thrilling for me to hear someone else interpret them.

I don’t know if these guys ever even heard those tunes before. I know Greg Tardy played “Monroe” before, but to hear what the other guys’ take on it would be hearing it for the first time, it just brings a whole new life to the song.

With anything I write, I don’t have any hard and fast idea of what it’s supposed to be. I just want it to be a way to get us into playing some music together, and I want to be surprised, and even startled sometimes. So it’s just nice to see what these guys have to say about it.

I’ve noticed that whether it’s you playing a standard or reinterpreting a tune of your own, you do this thing where you’ll leave out fragments of the melody or parts of a chord. Rather than a Joe Pass approach, where you’re putting all of the information in the tune – the basslines, the full chords, the melody – you’re picking and choosing a triad to suggest a chord or part of a line to imply a harmonic shape. It’s kind of a Monkian approach. Jim Hall did that too. Where does that come from for you?

Probably in everything I do there’s going to be some sort of Jim Hall influence in there. But also Monk. I think about Monk every day. He’s like the master of how you can stick with a melody and find infinite variety in that without leaving it, really. And that idea of leaving space: You don’t have to say everything. If the melody is really internalized in you, you begin to hear it the way Monk plays it, where you might just play a piece of the melody and internalize the rest. And it never goes away, but it becomes this springboard for all this other stuff to happen.

The other thing about leaving space in a song is that you want to hear what someone else has to say about it. You know, you can’t just keep pumping it out yourself. You have to leave room for other people to get a word in too. Like with this new album, it’s really more about four people just having a conversation. It’s not like there’s a real soloist anywhere. It’s more about just four people talking.

Four may be one of your least guitaristic albums, in a sense. You don’t even play on “Always,” which is a solo piano piece. And the tune “Claude Utley” is almost a drum showcase for Johnathan Blake. So the album is very conversational, and in some cases you leave the conversation entirely.

Yeah, and that’s the way it would be if you’re sitting around with some people and having a conversation. You know, you’re not talking all the time. You sit there and you check out what somebody else has to say. And then maybe you get your own thing in there at some point.

The dialoguing that you do with Greg Tardy on the Americana piece, “The Pioneers,” reminds me of the intimate duo album you did with him, More Than Enough. Maybe that one got overlooked when it came out in 2019 on the vinyl-only label, Newvelle Records, but it was a fantastic album.

Yeah, that was so great. And it is a little hard to find. Actually, the deal with Newvelle is, the masters revert back to the artist after a few years, so Greg was talking about putting it out as a CD in the near future. So probably more people might get to hear it, eventually.

It has some beautiful examples of you two playing on jazz standards, like Duke Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose,” Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count” and Thelonious Monk’s “Ask Me Now,” as well as two of your own tunes, “Monica Jane” and “Worried Woman,” the latter which you also recorded on Four.

Yeah, Greg’s been such a great musical partner. I love playing with him. He played on that History, Mystery album that I made a while back [2008]. And we’ve done a lot of gigging together over the years. He’s amazing.

Your very tender “Waltz for Hal Willner” on Four is for the late producer, who you first worked with in 1981 on his Nino Rota tribute record, Amarcord Nino Rota. He subsequently produced several albums that you played on, including Marianne Faithfull’s Strange Weather, the Disney tribute album Stay Awake, Allen Ginsberg’s The Lion for Real, David Sanborn’s Another Hand, the Charles Mingus tribute album Weird Nightmare, Laurie Anderson’s Life on a String and Lucinda Williams’ West, not to mention your own albums that he produced, Unspeakable and The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.

Yeah, Hal passed so quickly from COVID during the pandemic, within the first month or so. Such a shock there. This piece “Waltz for Hal Willner” is actually an older thing that was part of this Allen Ginsberg tribute project that I did with Hal called Kaddish [which had its world premiere in 2012 at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory and was later performed at UCLA in 2013]. It was an almost nursery rhyme kind of song that appeared in this piece we had done for Ginsberg, and somehow that melody kept coming back to me. And I kept thinking about Hal with that one.

Kaddish was the first time where he specifically said, “I don’t want you to play guitar on it, I just want you to just write the music.” And that was Hal’s way of acknowledging that I could write music. It seemed like everything I did with him would present me with some opportunity, and it was like something that I didn’t even realize that I could do myself.

But Hal would just push me through the door, and I’d have to deal with it. It was always like that with Hal. He knew more of what I was capable of than I did. You know, he trusted me like crazy, from the very first meeting with him in 1980, when no one knew who I was and he asked me to play on that Nino Rota record he produced. He didn’t know me; he just had a feeling about me.

Another song on your new album, “Lookout for Hope,” was the title of your 1987 album. You also recorded it with bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron on 1991’s LIVE. Then you did it again with Victor Krauss and Jim Keltner on 1998’s Gone, Just Like a Train. It seems like a work in progress.

Yeah, originally the actual form of it was kind of complex. There was something in the form that was kind of odd and sort of awkward, so we didn’t really play it live very much back then. When I did that album with Victor Krauss and Jim Keltner, I completely dispensed with the whole counter line that was going underneath it. So I super simplified it and just opened it wide open, and that just made it easier to just play.

But then later on, I felt like I missed some of what I had originally written. So finally now, 35 years since I wrote that tune, I feel like I finally got it straight the way I wanted. It sort of solidified into this form that we’re playing on this new record. So “Lookout for Hope” was more of this struggle over all this time before I finally felt like I got it right.

It’s like “The Days of Wine and Roses.” You’ve probably played that a hundred different ways on gigs over time.

I hope so. That’s what I’ve tried to do.

You said in an interview with John Schaefer from the 2022 New York Guitar Festival, “Every note I play is like a question.” That’s a really interesting way to think about it. So in essence, you’re doing call-and-response with yourself.

Yeah, I really believe that: Every note is a question. It’s like on a micro scale and on a macro scale. If you take your instrument and just hit one note on one string, it’s like, “Okay, what are you going to do next?” But it will lead you to something else somehow.

And it’s the same thing even with a song: You learn one song and it’ll lead to something else. Like when we were just talking about “The Days of Wine and Roses,” I immediately started thinking about Henry Mancini’s other great tune, “Moon River.” It’s like they keep talking to each other somehow.

You play a phrase or play a little bit of a melody, and it’s like a conversation. Even with yourself, it’s a conversation. You play those first couple of notes on “The Days of Wine and Roses”… that’s a question. And then you answer that question, and it starts snowballing from there.

So the question could be, “The days?” And the answer could either be, “Of wine and roses,” or just, “roses.”

Yeah! Or just a blank response, like, “I don’t know.” Or think of some other completely unrelated response.

That’s what Monk did. He left out a lot of notes playing “Sweet Lorraine” or “Sweet and Lovely” or “Dinah.” When he was playing any standard, especially solo, he really was having a call-and-response with himself.

Definitely. With him, I started noticing how leaving out notes of a chord also is like a huge thing. That happened with Monk. I’m always learning from him. It’s like he’s constantly giving you a lesson or something.

A few years ago, I was playing his tune “Well You Needn’t” and I kept finding all these little details in it that I hadn’t noticed before. I’d find new things. Like I discovered that I was messing up one chord on the bridge. I was playing a Db7th chord, because that’s what everybody plays and all my schooling tells me that. And I thought, Okay, I think I’m finished now; I got everything totally together.

I finally learned this song. But then I found this Blindfold Test with Monk from Downbeat where they played him other people playing his songs. And so that chord in question – I think it was Phineas Newborn playing the song, and Monk goes, “No, no, you can’t play it that way. That chord shouldn’t have a seventh in it.”

So I was thinking it’s C, E, G, Bb, D, but he says it’s gotta be C, E, G, D. And when you leave out that one note, it sounds totally different. And that’s the opposite of what they teach you in Berklee, where it’s this thing about stacking everything up from the bottom to the top, like a pile of books or something. You just keep stacking the notes on top of each other. But if you start taking away some of the notes in the middle, all these other amazing things start happening.

Is it possible to teach a Bill Frisell methodology? Maybe the first lesson is: Leave out notes in the middle of a chord.

Yeah, with a lot of guitar books, it’s about, “How can you make this G major chord something or other sharp this, flat that, and make it into this gigantic six-note chord?” I mean, there’s so much information there. Again, I go back to Jim Hall. He played that way, where you try to pick out a couple notes within that whole rainbow of possibilities, and then it starts to set up a whole other rainbow, just with one or two notes.

Or take Monk: He’s just a master of the idea of you play the root of the chord and one or two other notes that can say so much. And that’s what makes Monk sort of almost possible on the guitar. It’s not like he’s playing all 10-fingered chords on the piano all the time, which kind of wipes out what you can do on the guitar. Instead, he makes it more accessible to where you can actually play what he played.

He played a low A, then he played a C# and a D#, and I can actually do that on the guitar. Part of that comes from just my limitations technically. If I could, maybe I would stick all the Joe Pass stuff in there too. But I can’t really do that, so I just try to make little stabs at it.

We all have to deal with our limitations. For me, I can’t actually physically play everything that I wish I could, so I’m going to just imply it or try to take a stab at something that hits close to home.

I guess the comparison would be Oscar Peterson, where he’s just blazing on the piano on every tune, filling in so much information, and Monk, where he’s leaving so much out that it’s hip. Two entirely different aesthetics on the same instrument, like you and Joe Pass.

I mean, I wish I could do that Joe Pass stuff. I remember one time I heard John McLaughlin in the mid ’70s. Now, I love John McLaughlin. He’s just a huge hero for me, right? But I went and heard him with Shakti, and I almost quit playing. I was like, I give up. It’s too much. I can’t. There’s no way I could ever do this. It was a terrible moment for me.

Then after a while, I was like, Well, fuck it! Whatever it is that I can do, I’ll just try to do it anyway. So I sort of gave up trying to play like John McLaughlin in that moment and I said, Okay, I’m going to just try to do the best I can do with whatever little bit I’ve got. And it sort of got me back playing again.

There’s quite a bit of room there between Jimmie Dodd and John McLaughlin.

[laughs] Yeah! And there are so many ways to express yourself. I mean, Robert Johnson couldn’t play like Segovia. And they’re both about as heavy music as you could possibly imagine.

That’s what’s so incredible about the guitar. When you think about it, Segovia, Robert Johnson, John McLaughlin, Jim Hall, Sonny Sharrock, Johnny Smith, Johnny Winter, Derek Bailey, Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix are all playing the same instrument, tuned the same way. And it’s like, “What?!”

That Quine guitar that you recently played on tour, the blue Telecaster: Did you ever record with it?

The only time I recorded with it was on that McCoy Tyner record [2008’s Guitars]. On that record it was just a straight, normal Telecaster. But since then, I put a humbucking pickup in it. I don’t know if that’s sacrilegious, but I think Quine would be okay with it.

How many different instruments did you play on the new album?

Just two. Mainly, I played my Jay Black Telecaster. I also played a 1966 Telecaster on “Monroe,” but all the other stuff is done with that Jay Black Tele. I got it at the beginning of the pandemic, and it has these Jeff Callahan humbucker pickups in it, so it’s quiet. But they sound more like P-90s. It’s really a good guitar.

You saw Jimi Hendrix in concert, didn’t you?

Yeah! I saw him twice. The first time was in a gymnasium kind of room at a college near where I grew up. The audio of that gig [on February 14, 1968 at Regis College Fieldhouse in Denver] is actually available on YouTube.

It wasn’t the tour he did with the Monkees; it must’ve been his second tour in the States. Soft Machine was opening for him. Are You Experienced had just come out, and I didn’t know what was going on at this concert. It was just so shocking. I don’t even know if they had much of a PA; you’re just hearing the amps coming off the stage, basically. And the whole combination of the way he sang with the guitar and the massiveness of the sound... It was just too much to comprehend, for sure.

Then I saw him again the following year at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver [on September 1, 1968]. I think it might have been the last gig that he did with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, and I remember there was something going on, like he was upset about something during the concert.

By that time, my parents had moved to New Jersey and I was going to school in Greeley. I came to visit them during the Christmas break and ended up going to the Fillmore East to see Blood, Sweat & Tears [on December 28, 1969]. And the amazing thing was, some unknown band from Georgia was opening that night for Blood, Sweat & Tears called the Allman Brothers Band.

This was before they had recorded anything. They came out and were like, “Oh, hi, we’re kind of nervous being in New York for the first time.” It was their Fillmore East debut and they just fuckin’ kicked ass!

This was just a few days before Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys played the New Year’s Eve concert, which became the famous live album from the Fillmore East. I remember noticing on the Fillmore marquee, it said: “Jimi Hendrix, Dec. 31,” and I’m thinking, Oh, I already saw Jimi Hendrix. I don’t need this. Man, I wish I had gone to that!

You once told me of another eye-opening guitar encounter: seeing Larry Coryell for the first time at Red Rocks.

Yeah, that was another amazing experience. He was playing a Super 400 with a DeArmond pickup, and he was getting it to feedback and everything. At one point during his solo, he walked back to his amp and just sort of rolled the volume knob on the amp with his forearm. It was so loud and wild!

Hearing Coryell and having heard Jimi Hendrix just a few months before that too… Talk about having your brain explode!

Order Four by Bill Frisell here.

An ultra-rare 1986 Kramer Triax electric guitar has gone up for sale on Reverb.com.

Said to be inspired by Star Trek, the Triax was designed by none other than Floyd Rose, and exhibited at the 1986 NAMM show, when Kramer was at the absolute peak of its popularity. It made its debut alongside a similarly striking, and rare, sister model, the Enterprize.

According to the guitar's seller, Nashville's Abalone Vintage, the Triax is one of only about 10 of its kind, and is in "excellent" condition, with some wear.

There's little information in the listing about its specs, though we know it has a pair of humbuckers, an ultraviolet finish, a three-way blade pickup switch, and, unsurprisingly, a Floyd Rose bridge. The Triax also comes with its original case.

According to Abalone Vintage, this particular Triax came from the collection of music journalist Michael Wright, and was displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as part of the museum's Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar exhibition in the early 2000s. The Triax also appears in a book of the same name, based on that exhibition.

The museum-displayed 1986 Kramer Triax is currently valued at $9,995.

For more info on the guitar, visit reverb.com.

EVH Wolfgang guitars appear in four distinct series: USA, Special, Standard and Standard Exotic.

At the top of the pricelist is the USA Edward Van Halen Signature ($4,599.99 in Ivory finish) followed by the USA model.

The Special series sits in the $1,099.99 to $1,299.99 price range while the Standard series offers the same style at a more affordable $699.99 to $749.99 (depending on finish.)

Featuring fancy tops, guitars in the Standard Exotic line are similarly priced $749.99 to $799.99 and include several options “for players with distinguished taste.”

Choices currently comprise Ziricote (natural); Midnight Sunset (shaded poplar burl); Spalted Maple (natural); Koa (natural); and Bocote (natural.)

Now, EVH have added two more options to the Standard Exotic range in natural: Poplar Burl and Laurel Burl.

Sophisticated looks aside, EVH Wolfgang Standard Exotic guitars take their cues from Eddie Van Halen's famously souped-up axes.

Featuring a Floyd Rose Special bridge, an R2 locking nut, and high output direct mount humbuckers these modern electric guitars are designed with dexterous technique in mind.

Priced $699.99, the new Poplar Burl and Laurel Burl EVH Wolfgang Standard Exotics ae constructed using a figured top and lightweight contoured basswood body.

A graphite-reinforcement bolt-on baked maple neck with an oil finish offers superior comfort and stability, while a 22-fret, 12”-16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard provides outstanding playability.

A hot pair of Alnico 2 EVH Wolfgang humbuckers have been directly mounted onto the body in order to increase vibration transfer and thus improve sustain.

Keeping these Wolfgang Standard Exotics firmly in tune throughout the most extreme dive bombs and pulls up are the EVH-branded Floyd Rose Special bridge and R2 locking nut.

Key Specs:

• Basswood body with “comfort cut” forearm contour
• Poplar/laurel burl top and natural body binding
• 12”-16” radius baked maple fingerboard with 22 jumbo frets
• Heel-mount truss rod with adjustment spoke wheel
• Direct mount EVH Wolfgang humbuckers
• Three-way toggle pickup selector; single volume and tone controls; and treble bleed circuit
• EVH-branded Floyd Rose Special bridge and R2 locking nut
• Black chrome hardware

Visit EVH for more information.

Here at Guitar Player, a lot of guitar auction stories cross our desks. Few soon-to-be-auctioned guitars we've seen though, possess a backstory quite as colorful as this one.

This 1958 Gibson Les Paul – currently up for sale via Heritage Auctions – was purchased by none other than George Harrison as a ransom payment of sorts, for the safe return of "Lucy," his beloved 1957 Les Paul.

After featuring prominently on the Beatles' White Album, Let It Be, and Abbey Road, Lucy – which had previously been owned by the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, Rick Derringer, and Eric Clapton – was stolen from his Beverly Hills home during a 1973 burglary and sold. 

The 1958 Les Paul on offer by Heritage – which you can see and hear in action below – was the key in getting Lucy back into Harrison's hands.

After it was taken from Harrison's home, Lucy was sold to Whalin's Sound City music store on Sunset Blvd., where it was then – according to Heritage – sold to a Mexican guitarist named Miguel Ochoa.

Via the guitar's sales receipt, Harrison quickly tracked down the friend whom Ochoa was staying with, and offered to reimburse Ochoa for Lucy's full sale price. Realizing how valuable the guitar was though, Ochoa absconded back to his native Mexico, with Lucy in hand.

Harrison then upped his offer, saying he'd trade a guitar of Ochoa's choosing for Lucy. Ochoa demanded a 1958 Les Paul Standard – which the Beatle then purchased from Norman Harris (of Norman's Rare Guitars) – and a Fender Precision bass. After receiving the two instruments, Ochoa returned Lucy, which remains in the Harrison family's possession to this day.

Ochoa subsequently kept the "ransom" Les Paul until 1983, when he sold it to Nadine's Music owner Robert Truman.

According to Heritage, the guitar's electronics are original, however, the pickup covers were removed and subsequently re-installed, with non-stock Kluson tuners also installed on the guitar at some point. 

The Les Paul's frets, likewise, are original and have "moderate" wear, and the guitar comes with its original hard case.

Overall, the Les Paul – serial #8 5424 – is said to be in "very good" condition.

Bidding for this 1958 Gibson Les Paul – which currently has an opening bid of $250,000 – closes on September 24.

For more info on the guitar, visit entertainment.ha.com.

After a two-year postponement due to Covid concerns, guitarists Steve Miller, Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers and Dave Stewart (with Annie Lennox of Eurythmics) were among the artists inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame last week at New York’s Marriott Marquis.

The in-person event officially honored the class of 2020, which also includes Mariah Carey, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (the Neptunes), songwriters Paul Williams, Rick Nowels and William "Mickey" Stevenson and music executive Jody Gerson. 

Performers and presenters included St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson, Jon Batiste, actor Bryan Cranston and more.

Miller performed his 1976 smash “Fly Like An Eagle,” using a Stratocaster-style guitar. Prior to the ceremony, he reflected on the significance of the occasion and its elite membership. 

“It’s so hard to put into words. I was looking at the list and thinking ‘what am I doing here?’ I love Willie Dixon. He wrote so many great blues tunes. 

"Paul McCartney is one of the greatest writers of all-time. I’ve worked with him, and I love how he writes. So those two are at the top of the list. And Joni Mitchell is special. There are so many great songwriters.”

Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston inducted Miller, noting the two hit it off immediately years ago, a relationship he characterized as “music without the music.”

“His music has been a huge part of my life growing up. Whatever I happened to be going through at the time as a boy on the cusp of manhood and trying to wonder what the hell is going on, his music inserted different thoughts and ideas along the way that gave me answers or made me think about things and fantasize.

“When he starts playing you get up on your feet. Cause that’s what Steve Miller does. You just get going.”

The actor also humorously riffed on how his humming and whistling as the character Hal on the critically acclaimed ‘00s hit Malcolm in the Middle led to him joining music publisher ASCAP as a member. 

When small royalty checks started flowing in, Cranston would treat his crew to food and drinks. 

“It got to the point where they would come up to me and say, ‘your character is fixing the dishwasher," he recalled. "It might be a good opportunity to hum!’”

The Isley Brothers performed a medley of their classics at the event. 

Wielding an ornately designed Fender Custom Shop ‘Zeal’ Stratocaster run through a Kemper Profiler and Mesa Boogie cabinet, Ernie Isley laid down the rhythmic pulse that drives the classic “Shout.” 

During the song’s half-time breakdown section, Isley injected fiery call and response blues guitar bends with brother lead vocalist Ron Isley.

The 70-year-old guitarist’s first recorded performance with the band was as a teenager playing the funky bass line on the 1969 hit “It’s Your Thing.” 

He cited “Summer Breeze,” “That Lady,” “Fight the Power” and “Voice of Atlantis” as personal highlights of his distinctive guitar style.

When asked, prior to the event, if he ever imagined his guitar playing would land him in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Isley answered emphatically: “Absolutely yes!”

St. Vincent (Annie Clark) recalled watching MTV as a child when a “beautiful, orange-haired androgynous creature appeared wearing a suit and tie,” referring to Annie Lennox’s iconic visual imagery in the Eurythmics’ pioneering video “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” 

The guitarist put her own spin on the ‘80s classic, coolly performing the song’s signature riffs on her Ernie Ball signature model guitar.

“They were scary, they were sexy, they were smart, and they were impossibly cool. And dominate the world they did.”

Stewart gave credit to his longtime partner. 

“It’s been a crazy, incredible journey," commented the guitarist. "But I must say, there was nobody in the world I could have done it with apart from Annie.”

Lennox focused on how new musical technological advancements contributed to the pair’s success. Those early songs, she said, were ‘abstract’ but enabled the pair to form the vision for the band’s signature sound.

“We were just really excited about all the possibilities of the sounds and rhythms we could make on this new thing called a synthesizer," she highlighted. 

"Dave, being a guitar player, and me being a keyboard player…  we would have fun with it. He would put the guitar down and play things on the keyboard. We would be experimental.

“Every songwriter in this room understands this process. It’s really hard to convey to those that don’t live it, but it’s a life lived. It is the artist’s life. It’s the road less travelled but it’s the one we chose.”

The duo performed an acoustic guitar-driven version of their 1985 hit “Here Comes the Rain Again,” anchored by Stewart’s pensive strumming on a Takamine.

Prior to the ceremony, several of the presenters and performers discussed the art of songwriting, guitar-centric songs they’ve created, and how musicians working together as a team produces timeless music.

Recalling one of his favorite guitar-centric sessions, Jimmy Jam said, “The guitar song that comes to my mind is “Black Cat” by Janet [Jackson]. 

"It was three or four different guitar parts played by three or four different guitar players. And then it was remixed by Nuno [Bettencourt]. 

"It was recorded directly into the board, and it was also recorded with Marshall amps. It was one of the songs where everybody jumped on board and made it happen.”

“I worked with wonderful guitar players," said Motown songwriter William “Mickey” Stevenson. "Finding the Funk Brothers, the riffs came with them. 

"They joined me because they believed in me. And because they believed in me, the riffs came. They were so unique. 

"They got so tight as a unit that when the producers came in and gave them an idea of what the song needed, it would all fall into place. They could read each other. It was a gift. 

"They were a machine!”

Back in 2019, Gibson sued Armadillo Enterprises, the manufacturer of Dean and Luna Guitars, for trademark infringement, counterfeiting, and engaging in unfair competition.

The following month, Armadillo, in turn, countersued Gibson, seeking to dismiss the case and alleging “tortious interference with Armadillo’s business relationships and/or contracts” on part of Gibson.

Now, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas' Sherman Division has finally returned with its verdict on both cases. The jury concluded that Dean had indeed infringed on Gibson's trademarks for the Flying V, Explorer, ES, and SG body shapes, the Hummingbird, and the Dove Wing headstock design.

Furthermore, the jury found that Dean had willfully sold what legally constituted counterfeits of the Hummingbird, and of the Flying V, Explorer, and SG body shapes, and that – in regards to the countersuit – Gibson had not interfered with Armadillo’s own business, and owes no money to the company. 

In what might be the most notable part of the verdict, the court also ruled that none of the Gibson trademark registrations in question are "generic," nor should they be cancelled, as Armadillo called for in its countersuit.

In one small victory for Armadillo though, the court ruled that Gibson had not suffered any financial damage as a result of the infringements, and that Armadillo owed only $4,000 in restitution to Gibson, rather than the $7 million the latter company called for in its original suit.

Following the ruling, both sides essentially claimed victory.

"The court’s decision by jury today, to uphold Gibson’s long-established and well-recognized trademarks for Gibson’s innovative and iconic guitar shapes is a win for Gibson and the music community at large," read a statement issued by Gibson following the verdict. 

"The court found that the Gibson trademarks are valid, the Gibson shapes are not generic, and the defendants were guilty of both infringement and counterfeiting. Gibson is very pleased with the outcome after years of simply trying to protect its brand and business through well recognized intellectual property rights, rights that have been Gibson’s for decades. 

"Gibson’s guitar shapes are iconic and now are firmly protected for the past, present, and future," it continued. "From a broader perspective, this court decision is also a win for Gibson fans, artists, dealers, and related partners who expect and deserve authenticity. Not to mention for all of the iconic American brands that have invested in meaningful innovation and continued protection, only to see it diluted with unauthorized and often illegitimate knock-offs. 

"Gibson can now focus attention on continuing to leverage its iconic past, and invest in future innovation, with confidence."  

In its own statement, Armadillo cited the small mandated payout as evidence of its own triumph. 

"We are thrilled that a Texas jury has vindicated Armadillo in ruling for Armadillo on its defense to Gibson’s trademark claims on our Dean V guitar, Dean Z guitar, and Evo headstock," a statement from the company's CEO, Evan Rubinson, said. 

"The jury found that Armadillo is not liable to Gibson for our long use of those guitars and headstock. The jury issued a judgment in the amount of $4,000, a mere fraction of the $7 million plus originally sought by Gibson.”

Beyond the mandated $4,000 payment to Gibson, it's unclear what the verdict will mean for Dean, and the future of its V, Z, and Colt lines. 

The implications of the court's verdict that Gibson's trademarked designs are not "generic," and belong solely to Gibson, are significant though, and could also potentially affect the company's similar ongoing legal battles with Heritage Guitars and Kiesel.

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.

A new graphic novel centered on the life of electric guitar icon Jimi Hendrix is set for release this summer.

The 144-page comic – titled Hendrix: Electric Requiem – was written by Mattia Colombara and features illustrations from Gianluca Maconi. Originally released in Italy, it follows the entirety of Hendrix's tragically short life – from his difficult and unstable childhood to his conquering performances at the Woodstock and Monterey Pop festivals.

As one can see from the available preview of the comic, Electric Requiem even goes beyond the end of Hendrix's life, opening with a scene of Hendrix arriving in the afterlife.

The comic also examines the racism Hendrix experienced throughout his life – from his early years through even the height of his fame.

In Ablaze's words, the comic is "An exhilarating ride, from Jimi's difficult beginnings in the South, plagued by racism, through his global stardom and triumph at Woodstock, and the excessive lifestyle of a rockstar. A rockstar who, even with all his experiences, never forgot where he came from. 

"Skillfully illustrated by artist Gianluca Maconi, this gripping tale of music, personal demons and thirst for glory is a must-have for any Jimi Hendrix fan." 

Hendrix: Electric Requiem is set for an August 9 release via Ablaze, and can be pre-ordered, for $24.99, now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

For more info on the comic, visit ablaze.net.

Cor-Tek Corporation – the maker of Cort electric and acoustic guitars – has acquired the DigiTech/DOD brand, the company announced today. 

According to a statement from Cor-Tek President Jun Park, the deal includes "all DigiTech/DOD intellectual property and assets." 

"Since 1973, DigiTech/DOD guitar effect pedals have been iconic in the guitar industry, and we have a deep admiration for the heritage and legacy of the DigiTech/DOD products," Park said. "We look forward to continuing the manufacturing and selling of the iconic products as well as investing in new features and products." 

Prior to their sale to Cor-Tek, DigiTech and DOD were owned by Harman International, which was in turn owned by Samsung. Shortly after the completion of its purchase of Harman in 2017, Samsung laid off DigiTech and DOD's entire design teams, leaving the brands and their in-the-pipeline products in limbo. 

Since the layoffs, neither brand has released any new pedals, and their recent removal from the Harman website provoked high-profile speculation that they had been discontinued entirely.

Prior to Harman's acquisition by Samsung, DigiTech and DOD's Marketing Manager, Tom Cram, indicated that he had a "roadmap" for future products from the companies.

Obviously, it's difficult to ascertain at this early stage whether or not that plan will be followed, or whether Cram – widely credited with rejuvenating the DigiTech brand in the 2010s – and other former employees of the firms will be involved in the companies' new products. 

The acquisition marks Cor-Tek's first expansion into the pedal market. Aside from the Cort brand, the company also makes electric guitars for the likes of PRS, Ibanez, and Squier.

On this day, in 1969, the original Jimi Hendrix Experience line-up featuring bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell performed for the final time on British soil at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

This historic concert was captured on film and a screening of the enhanced footage was exhibited at the Royal Albert Hall itself in October 2019, some 50 years after the show took place.

Titled The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Royal Albert Hall this infamous concert recording has “long been considered the holy grail of ‘lost’ films,” according to the official Jimi Hendrix website.

“It has never before been released on any format nor commercially screened anywhere in the world,” reads the event’s promotional literature. “It has remained unseen and been the subject of death, litigation and intrigue since its creation fifty years ago.”

Featuring a remastered soundtrack mixed by Hendrix’s recording engineer Eddie Kramer, the color-corrected film captures this historic performance by the Jimi Hendrix Experience as well as backstage footage and scenes shot in the aftermath of the riotous London show.

Later in ‘69, Redding parted ways with the band amid personal tensions, while Mitchell continued performing with Hendrix, including the guitarist’s unforgettable Woodstock appearance. He was replaced the following year by drummer Buddy Miles who featured alongside bassist Billy Cox on Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys 1970 live album.

Bootlegs and unofficial low-quality YouTube snippets aside, there is little to see of this revamped Hendrix flick aside from a frustratingly enticing one-minute-fourteen-seconds-long trailer.

Meanwhile, fans are screaming out for an official release (read the YouTube comments section for a measure of their current level of frustration!) 

For now, we can only hope a digital release is in the pipeline…

The estates of all three original members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience have – in recent weeks – become embroiled in a complex legal battle that's taking place on multiple continents.

Essentially, the fight revolves around copyright, and the distribution of royalties from streaming and digital media. We'll unpack the multiple lawsuits in play, and the reasoning behind them, below.

The battle was first set in motion in December, when Sony Music received a letter from British attorney Lawrence Abramson, claiming that Sony owed the estates of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell (who died in 2003 and 2008, respectively) performance royalties for around 3 billion streams of the Experience’s songs.

Ignoring the claim, Abramson wrote in the letter, "may lead our clients to commence proceedings against you and may increase your liability for costs.”

The letter prompted Hendrix's estate to file a preemptive lawsuit against the estates of Redding and Mitchell in January in Manhattan federal court. The lawsuit stated that Redding and Mitchell had no grounds on which to claim royalties, citing documents the bassist and drummer had signed in the '70s, in which they reportedly waived their right to sue the Hendrix estate, and released it from future legal claims.

The Hendrix estate's lawsuit – which was also filed on behalf of Sony Music – is a declaratory judgment action, meaning that at this time the Hendrix family and Sony aren't seeking damages.

In response, Redding and Mitchell's estates made good on their threats, filing a lawsuit of their own in London’s High Court last week. 

Among other points of contention, Redding and Mitchell's estates make the case that the contracts they signed decades ago do not extend to streaming rights or digital media revenue, which – they say – “none of the parties would have been able to foresee or contemplate” at the time they were signed.

The filing against Hendrix and Sony in the London court seeks a ruling on three counts – whether or not Redding and Mitchell have a copyright stake in the Jimi Hendrix Experience's music; whether those rights have been infringed; and an assessment of monetary damages, if the judge rules in their favor on the first two counts.

It's unclear at the moment where and how the dispute will eventually be litigated, given that the dueling claims and suits were filed in two different countries. According to Billboard, Hendrix's original estate proceedings – including the signing of the release documents by Redding and Mitchell at the center of the battle – took place in New York courts.

Legal messes like this tend to take quite awhile to sort themselves out, but we'll update you with new information on the proceedings as soon as we get ahold of it. 

The Who are set to hit the road in 2022, announcing an extensive North American tour.

Dubbed The Who Hits Back!, the trek follows the band's 2019 Moving On! tour, and will criss-cross North America over the course of two separate legs – one in the spring and one in the fall.

“Pete [Townshend, the Who's electric guitar player] and I said we’d be back, but we didn't think we'd have to wait for two years for the privilege," said frontman Roger Daltrey in a statement. "This is making the chance to perform feel even more special this time around. 

"So many livelihoods have been impacted due to Covid, so we are thrilled to get everyone back together – the band, the crew, and the fans. We’re gearing up for a great show that hits back in the only way The Who know how – by giving it everything we got.”

Though kept off the road by COVID-19, The Who were still fairly active in 2021, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their landmark album, Who's Next, and revisiting their 1967 pop-art masterpiece, The Who Sell Out, with a massive deluxe reissue.

Townshend told Guitar Player in an interview last year that assembling the Who Sell Out deluxe box set was a far more interesting experience for him than his typical dealings with reissues.

"I probably don’t have as much to do with any of these box sets as you would imagine, but with this one I very much enjoyed digging back into the demos that I did and making sure that they held up," he said.

"And I also made a few discoveries, particularly with some of the information in the included essays. For example, the story from Chris Huston [recording engineer at Trackmasters Studio in New York City, where some sessions for The Who Sell Out took place]: I didn’t know that he’d managed to reconstruct parts of the 'Rael' track he lost from a mono cassette that he’d made. So there’s been a few surprises like that."

You can check out the Who's full forthcoming itinerary below. For tickets and more info, stop by thewho.com.

The Who Hits Back! 2022 American Tour – Spring Leg:

April 22: Hard Rock Live – Hollywood, FL
April 24: VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena – Jacksonville, FL
April 27: Amalie Arena – Tampa, FL
April 30: New Orleans Jazz Festival
May 3: Moody Center – Austin, TX
May 5: American Airlines Center – Dallas, TX
May 8: Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion – The Woodlands, TX
May 10: Paycom Center – Oklahoma City, OK
May 13: FedExForum – Memphis, TN
May 15: TQL Stadium – Cincinnati, OH
May 18: TD Garden – Boston, MA
May 20: Wells Fargo Center – Philadelphia, PA
May 23: Capital One Arena – Washington, D.C.
May 26: Madison Square Garden – New York City, NY
May 28: Bethel Woods Center of the Arts – Bethel, NY

The Who Hits Back! 2022 American Tour – Fall Leg:

October 2: Scotiabank Arena – Toronto, ON
October 4: Little Caesars Arena – Detroit, MI
October 7: UBS Arena – Belmont Park, NY
October 9: Schottenstein Center – Columbus, OH
October 12: United Center – Chicago, IL
October 14: Enterprise Center – St. Louis, MO
October 17: Ball Arena – Denver, CO
October 20: Moda Center – Portland, OR
October 22: Climate Pledge Arena – Seattle, WA
October 26: Golden 1 Center – Sacramento, CA
October 28: Honda Center – Anaheim, CA
November 1: Hollywood Bowl – Los Angeles, CA
November 4 + 5: Dolby Live at Park MGM – Las Vegas, NV

Gretsch will honor its 135-year history by opening its very own museum in Savannah, Georgia next month.

Located at the District Live Building in Downtown Savannah, The Great Gretsch Sound! museum will open its doors on November 18, and feature a collection of instruments and memorabilia, including over 100 Gretsch guitars.

Guitars on display will include the White Falcon, Chet Atkins Country Gentleman, Brian Setzer Signature G6120, and the vintage 1963 Jet Firebird, the latter of which was popularized by AC/DC’s Malcolm Young.

Visitors will also get to see a visual timeline of the evolution of Gretsch, beginning in the 1920s.

There will also be three sound dome displays featuring original videos that highlight Gretsch's history and instrument production, as well as the “worldwide community of past and present Gretsch artists from Chet Atkins and George Harrison to Phil Collins”.

The Great Gretsch Sound! museum furthers the relationship between Gretsch and Georgia Southern University, following the establishment of the Fred and Dinah Gretsch School of Music earlier this year.

Says Dinah Gretsch, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Gretsch Company: “We hope this new museum will preserve the long history and legacy of the Gretsch Family and the Gretsch Brand. It is wonderful to share our history with the city of Savannah, the loyal Gretsch fans and all the tourists that will visit the museum.”

For more information on The Great Gretsch Sound! museum, head to the Georgia Southern University website.

Gibson has created a unique new limited-edition Les Paul Special electric guitar for School of Rock students.

Available exclusively to students of the popular music education program, this Les Paul Special happens to be the first ever made with a glossy black nitrocellulose finish and gold hardware. Elsewhere, it boasts a solid mahogany body and neck with a cream-bound rosewood fingerboard.

Powered by a pair of P-90 pickups with hand-wired orange drop capacitors, two volume and two tone knobs, the Les Paul Special also boasts a uniquely numbered backplate.

There are plenty of other tasty appointments, too: vintage '50s-style “button” tuning machines, a four-ply black pickguard, and a wraparound stoptail bridge among them.

“It's exciting to evolve our collaboration with School of Rock with the introduction of the School of Rock Limited Edition Les Paul Special guitar,” Cesar Gueikian, Gibson's Brand President, said in a statement.

“We have been working on this project for over a year, during which our Gibson Lab team led by Matt Koehler, with Elliot Baldini, [School of Rock CEO] Rob Price and the group from School of Rock designed a versatile Les Paul Special that combines vintage features with modern concepts and looks badass!”

“At School of Rock we aim to instill in our students a musical passion that will last a lifetime,” added Baldini, School of Rock's Chief Marketing Officer. “We designed this guitar to be part of that journey – something they will cherish the rest of their lives.

“This vintage-inspired guitar pays homage to the history of rock and other music styles such as blues, reggae, and pop. These timeless genres are the foundation of School of Rock's patented curriculum.”

“We want this guitar to not only inspire our students, but to also help make gear and music education more accessible to new musicians.” Baldini concluded.

All proceeds from the sale of the guitar – which comes with a hardshell case – will go towards Save the Music, a music education nonprofit that partners with local school districts and communities to build sustainable music programs. 

Sadly, but somewhat unsurprisingly, all 100 of the Les Paul Specials were snapped up extremely quickly, but here's hoping its popularity inspires Gibson to do a wider release of this beauty of a guitar.

For more info on the model, stop by schoolofrock.com.

Don Everly – one half of trailblazing rock 'n' roll duo The Everly Brothers – has died at the age of 84.

No cause of death has been revealed yet, but his family have led a wave of tributes. “Don lived by what he felt in his heart,” their statement reads. 

“Don expressed his appreciation for the ability to live his dreams... living in love with his soul mate and wife Adela, and sharing the music that made him an Everly Brother. Don always expressed how grateful he was for his fans.”

Among other high-profile names to pay homage to Everly are Peter Frampton, The Kinks lead guitarist Dave Davies, Nancy Sinatra and The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson.

“I am so sad to hear about the loss of Don Everly,” Frampton writes on Twitter. “Both Phil and Don created songs and harmonies that changed music forever.”

“Very sad day,” adds Davies. “Both of the Everlys were part of my musical life growing up. We were inspired by their wonderful records and their singing and their voices. Wake Up Little Susie was my favorite as a kid.”

Nancy Sinatra talks of the “privilege of singing” with the pair's “iconic voices”, while Brian Wilson remembers learning “a lot from their beautiful harmonies”.

Born in Brownie, Kentucky in 1937, Don Everly founded The Everly Brothers with his now-late-sibling Phil in 1956. Their innovative pop compositions later inspired a wave of artists, including The Beatles and The Beach Boys. They broke up in 1973, before reuniting a decade later in 1983. 

Shortly after, they became one of the first cohort of artists to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.

The duo released a total of 21 studio albums throughout their decades-spanning career, achieving success with singles such as Wake Up Little Susie, Bye Bye Love, Cathy's Clown, and a cover of Boudleaux Bryant's All I Have to Do Is Dream.

Don Everly was the last surviving member of The Everly Brothers, following the death of Phil Everly in 2014 at the age of 74.

Following last year's launch of the Gibson Slash Collection signature guitars, sibling brand Epiphone has recently unveiled their own equivalent models as part of their Inspired by Gibson line-up. Sporting the same finish and model names as the Gibsons these new Epiphone Les Pauls are are effectively clones. But how do they measure up? According to Gibson Brands’ Senior Product Development Engineer, Richard Akers, and Product Manager, Aljon Go, they are virtually identical.

How have the Epiphone Slash models been able to achieve such a close likeness to the Gibson equivalents?

Aljon Go: Product Development now services every brand together. So, we have people from the Gibson side and the Custom Shop side and the acoustic side, and the Epiphone side (myself and Richard Akers). We’re a big think tank. Richard is like the Swiss Army knife of the team. He’s a rare breed because he’s got so much knowledge of how things have been done over time. He’s worked at Gibson for many years.

Richard Akers: I’m trying to bring the technical side to the table, but with the love and passion of being a player. Marrying those two together is what’s been very helpful for me over the years. My background is electrical engineering, so I’ve got that piece. But it all started from a love of playing guitar as a kid. That’s what drove me to it. I’ve been with Gibson now for 28 years.

Aljon and I focus on Epiphone, but at this point in the game it’s a team effort. In the past, things have been siloed, where each division – each business unit – was sort of held in isolation. But now it’s a complete team effort between all of the business units within the Gibson brands. So, we work very closely together with Gibson USA and Gibson Custom Shop

How did you manage to get the Gibson and Epiphone Slash finishes to look so similar?

Go: We worked really hard with Gibson and Slash to make sure that those finishes were replicated as authentically as possible. We just wanted to clone them. So, you’ll notice they have a very similar look. The looks are the same and our factory has done an amazing job of our Inspired by Gibson range thus far. The fans have been very happy about that. We just want to continue to grow that level of authenticity.

Akers: We’re in much closer alignment than we’ve ever been companywide. Particularly the models based on Gibsons that are made by Epiphone. We’re the closest we’ve been in my history with the company.

Why do you think that is exactly?

Akers: I think it’s been a combination of a couple of things. Our factory in China has really come of age and is hitting on all cylinders. We’ve got people over there that I’ve worked with for decades now. The people on the ground really know what they’re doing. We have our American management team there on the ground. So, we can really elevate what we’re doing from a production standpoint. That’s one aspect of it. But that’s been in process for many years. 

The other thing is our new leadership team that took over Gibson has been very, very supportive of letting Epiphone become what we’re capable of becoming. We’re working very closely with the other divisions to really fine tune details. We’re in this very close alignment, and that’s been the biggest part of the equation of the last two or three years.

Go: Even though Epiphone is older than Gibson, we’ve always been treated like a little brother. And now, because our factory has been executing so well, we’ve proven we make amazing guitars. We listen to our fans because we’re all players. I’ve been playing Epiphone guitars all my life just like Richard. And we’re bringing Epiphone back – the way it was meant to be. Our founders at the ‘house of Stathopoulo’ would have had it no different. They wanted quality in their little shop in New York, and we’re delivering it now. It feels great to be able to do that.

The Slash Collection are guitars we would be proud to play on any stage. That’s the whole game. That’s why we say, “Epiphone: for every stage.” You can pick it up and play it in an arena, and you can pick it up and play it in your garage. It doesn’t matter. These are quality instruments, so we’re very proud of that.

How similar are the Slash Gibson and Epiphone pickups?

Akers: These Alnico II ProBucker pickups being used in the Epiphone Slash guitars are identical in construction to the Alnico II BurstBuckers being used in the Gibson Slash models. The neck and bridge pickups are different as the bridge pickup is slightly hotter – like an overwound BurstBucker 3 in the bridge and an overwound BurstBucker 2 in the neck.

Go: We wanted to be authentic to the Gibson version, and that also included using orange drop caps and CTS pots in the circuit… People need to know: if you’re a fan of the Gibson Slash Les Pauls you can get that experience with a very accessible Epiphone which uses the same type of pickups. We were able to make a clone of that very same guitar in our overseas crafteries. And it’s very, very close. It is the Boba Fett of Jango Fetts!

How do you think the Epiphone and Gibson Slash guitars compare overall?

Akers: Gibson is still the aspirational brand. If you can afford it, go for it. They’re great guitars. With the highest quality materials. There are slight differences, and someone with a very refined ear can perhaps tell them apart. But for the majority of players, an Epiphone will serve their needs very well. You could buy an Epiphone and take it to the biggest stages in the world and feel comfortable that you’re going to have a professional quality instrument that will perform and be able to get your musical inspiration across. As Aljon said: these Epiphones are “for every stage”.

What was the process like in terms of working with Slash on the custom pickups?

Akers: Gibson worked directly with Slash on developing these pickups to his exact specifications and needs. They worked very closely and got the frequency response to where Slash needed it. There was a lot of back and forth and discussions on what he needed tonally. [Gibson Master Luthier] Jim DeCola sent out sample sets until they found the golden version. And we followed suit by cloning them. Epiphone makes exactly what was developed with Gibson and Slash. It’s just a different point of manufacture.

Are these Epiphone Les Pauls reminiscent of Slash’s tone?

Go: Slash seems to think so. Ultimately, he’s the guy that says, ‘Does this work for me? Thumbs up, or thumbs down?’ And he gave it a resounding thumbs up for Gibson and for Epiphone. He was very pleased. The moment he received the prototypes he posted about it on Instagram, which we were very excited about. It was just one of those resounding ‘you’ve nailed it’ situations. Richard has worked with Slash for many years. The relationship between Gibson and Epiphone and Slash goes back a long way. We’re very excited to just keep it rolling. I love the guitars we make, but regardless of what we think, the ultimate test is for the artist. And we can’t ask for much more than their stamp of approval.

To what extent has Epiphone also been listening to customers?

Go: That’s the great thing about Epiphone’s Inspired by Gibson line – we had an opportunity to really give players what they wanted. In other words, a guitar they didn’t have to mod. And we had that same approach with the Slash guitars: you’ve got great pickups, great hardware, a Graph Tech nut, and CTS pots. Also, Slash requested the binding look like his Gibson USA guitars.

Akers: We increased the binding width slightly. This is another one of these nuances when you get to Asian manufacturing versus US manufacturing; there’s sometimes a difference between [metric] and imperial units with respect to the standard off-the-shelf part. It’s ever so slightly different, but Slash noticed it straight away. This is why working with artists who are really in tune with their instruments is so great. He brought it up and said, “Man, why is that binding narrower?” I mean it was a miniscule amount smaller. But we said, “Yeah, you’re right! Let’s improve that.” So, we made that change. It’s a cosmetic thing, but it’s important to the overall appearance of an instrument. The way someone feels about the instrument influences the way they feel about it when they’re playing it.

It’s like the color of food…

Akers: It matters. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Les Paul before he passed. When he was developing the log, he said, “People hear with their eyes.” That’s why he put the two wings on the ‘log’. He said he went out with the log and played it and people were like, “What the hell are you doing? That thing sounds terrible!” But after he went to the Epiphone factory and stuck the archtop wings on it, people heard it differently. And it’s the same with all of these finely nuanced details. The binding was a small feature that has nothing to do with tone. But Slash noticed it. And now when you see it, and you hold the guitar, you just feel like you have something of quality. It makes a difference.           

One thing that always rang true with me and has always been my driving principle to some degree is that that good design doesn’t necessarily cost more. You can do things to improve an instrument that doesn’t cost more. So, with that in mind, we’ve got free reign to go in and make the changes. I mean, it didn’t cost us any more to change that binding, but the overall impression of the guitar is better. 

The Les Paul Standard seems to be a timeless design…

Akers: When its right, it’s right. It’s the essential tool for the style of music that evolved around the tool. It’s a chicken and egg thing. The guitars themselves influenced the direction of where music went. I mean, if you look at a Stradivarius violin: hundreds of years after its creation, it’s still unmatched. When you get it right – when you get all those elements working together – it’s timeless.

Slash really helped bring the Les Paul Standard back in the late '80s…

Akers: He put them back on the map in a big way. Around the time, there was a reversion back to more of a blues-based rock – straight forward rock ‘n’ roll – and the Les Paul was right there at the heart of it. If you listen to Appetite for Destruction, it still sounds great today. It doesn’t sound dated. It just sounds like great rock ‘n’ roll.

Go: I think a hundred years from now, people will look back on the Les Paul and the humbucking pickup and go, “Damn! That’s some good shit!” It’s the heart of rock and roll.

Check out more from Epiphone's Inspired by Gibson range, including the November Burst and Vermillion Burst Slash J-45 flat-top acoustics, here.

It’s getting on for 100 years since Gibson released their first signature guitar, the Nick Lucas “Gibson Special” flat-top. Since then, the brand has released countless more, albeit comparatively few female artist models. There was of course the Emmylou Harris L-200; Sheryl Crow Country Western; Grace Potter Flying V; and Joan Jett ES-339. However, this handful pales in comparison to the vast number of male artist models Gibson have introduced over the decades.

Since Fender revealed their male/female market demographic was split down the middle, they have increasingly sought to reflect this reality in their product line. So, it’s very welcome news that Gibson have announced Lzzy Hale as their first female Brand Ambassador following the sold-out success of her Gibson Lzzy Hale Explorer and the Epiphone Lzzy Hale Explorer.

According to a recent press release, the Grammy Award-winning vocalist and guitarist for hard rockers Halestorm is due to collaborate on a collection of both electric and acoustic guitars, not just across Gibson, but also Epiphone, and Kramer.

“I am beyond honored to be named a Gibson ambassador,” said Hale. “Ever since I was 16 years old, it was my dream to someday be a part of the Gibson circle. It’s an incredible feeling to know that this dream has become a reality. Something magical ignites within me when I hold a Gibson guitar in my hands, the same guitars that my forefathers and foremothers of rock slung over their shoulders. With Gibson, I am the Rockstar I’m meant to be. It is a privilege to represent my genre, my gender, and the incredible power of music that unites us all, with my beautiful Gibson Family.”

Thankfully, under its new management regime the historic brand appears to be moving forward in line with the industry as a whole. “It’s an honor to welcome Lzzy Hale as our newest Gibson Ambassador,” adds Gibson Brand President Cesar Gueikian. “Lzzy is an ambassador of music, not just Gibson. A powerhouse singer, badass guitarist, and an influential force in music, Lzzy is a trailblazer in every sense of the word… She has and continues to pave the way for other artists leading by example, [and] breaking down barriers.”

Keep up to date with Lzzy Hale and Halestorm here.

Jimmy Page's earth-shaking opening riff to Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" has been voted the greatest guitar riff of all time by readers of Total Guitar and Guitar World magazines.

The riff edged out Randy Rhoads' opening salvo to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" and the solid-as-concrete, instantly recognizable riff that opens AC/DC's "Back in Black."

“In 1969, the year Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, Jimmy Page launched his own giant leap for mankind,” Total Guitar wrote in its July 2021 issue, which is out today (June 4).

“Whole Lotta Love's guitar figure took just 2.7 seconds to play, but it immediately projected music into another decade. While everyone else was still playing the '60s, Zeppelin were now playing the '70s.”

“It wasn't the first great riff, but it is the defining one," the magazine's piece continues. "It's why riffs became central to guitar music, the reason bands search for the guitar hook that can propel a whole song – or even a whole career.”

"Whole Lotta Love," it bears mentioning, was adapted partially from a Willie Dixon tune called "You Need Love," and the Small Faces' "You Need Loving," which itself was an adaptation of Muddy Waters' recording of the Dixon song.

Total Guitar's top 10 riffs list was rounded out by Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" in fourth, Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" in fifth, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" in sixth, Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" in seventh, Pantera's "Walk" in eighth, ZZ Top's "La Grange" in ninth, and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" in 10th.

To see the remainder of the list, pick up the new issue of Total Guitar from Magazines Direct.

Over the past year – in large part due to folks being stuck at home much more than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic – just about every major guitar manufacturer reported massive increases in sales.

Gibson's acoustic division was no exception to this boom, and as a result, the company has announced a massive expansion of its Bozeman, Montana factory to help meet the increased demand.

First reported by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the expansion will more than double the size of the factory – from 23,000 square feet to 48,000 square feet. A 10,000 square foot combination office space, showroom, day care, and reception area will also be added to the facility.

At a groundbreaking ceremony at the factory last Wednesday, March 3, Gibson CEO James "JC" Curleigh said that in six months Gibson's Bozeman factory will be “the most amazing guitar facility in the world.

“When you get pride and you get expansion and you get growth, good things tend to happen.”

Gibson's Bozeman team has created some truly fantastic instruments in recent times – both traditional and ornate – so we're excited to see what the expanded facility (and, we assume, expanded team) will produce in the coming months.

From even their earliest days in Pasadena and the Sunset Strip, Van Halen were a cracking, immaculately well-rehearsed live band. Perfectly blending showmanship and instrumental fireworks, their unforgettable live show was what first brought them to the music industry's attention, allowing them to record the 1978 self-titled debut album that would change rock music, and the guitar, forever. 

This well-known reputation for onstage perfectionism was part of why it was so jarring to hear Eddie Van Halen – who just about never put a foot wrong on the guitar – dramatically out-of-tune with the keyboard track during Van Halen's show-closing, September 29, 2007 performance of "Jump" in Greensboro, North Carolina.

In the intervening years, a video of the out-of-tune performance has become somewhat infamous, racking up over half a million views. Most fans placed blame at the foot of the synthesizer track being played back at the wrong sample rate. However, Eddie's guitar tech at the time, Tom Weber, says it had nothing to do with the synth.

During a recent appearance on Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon and The Jeremy White Podcast, Weber was asked about that fateful "Jump" performance. White asked, “Were you there when that whole screwup with the keyboard happened? With the sample rate?”

“It’s not the keyboard sample rate. It had nothing to do with the keyboards," Weber said. "I haven’t been able to address this because it’s a sore spot for Ed. 

"During the guitar solo, which was a couple of songs before the infamous incident, Ed loves to make noises with the guitar, we all know that. Anybody that’s been to a Van Halen show and been there for the guitar solo knows that you’re liable to hear any unearthly sound that Ed can make with a guitar.

“So at one point he took the guitar and literally jammed the headstock of the neck into the stage several times. Normally if there was a situation where the guitar was out of tune, obviously my job is to be ready for him with another guitar, which I was. Ed’s right-hand guy, Matt Bruck, and I were in ‘guitar world’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, crap – he’s knocked the guitar out of tune.’

“Well, he fine-tunes it some and gets back into playing and I’m holding another guitar over my head so that he can see it and he’s waving it off," Weber continued. "He’s still playing the solo, he’s fine-tuned, it’s passable. 

"Well, they go right from that into 'Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love,' that’s the next song on the set list. Wolfgang starts playing and realizes that he’s not in tune with the guitar so he retunes a little bit so they’re in tune.

"So they’re in tune – you have guitar and bass in tune. So they play 'Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love' and 'Panama' and then typically the band, at the end of the show, they come offstage for a minute, I switch guitars with Ed, and they go back on for the encore, which is 'Jump.'"

On this night though, "they didn’t come offstage," Weber said. "They went around the corner… we had what we call the ‘phone booth’ on stage left, the big ego ramp that went up around to this big cabinet that nobody ever used for anything. But they went around the side of that and Ed didn’t come off the stage to get another guitar.

“So now you have Wolfgang on his bass and Ed with his out-of-tune guitar on a keyboard song that is in tune. Ed didn’t have keyboards in his monitor mix so he didn’t hear that he was out of tune. So that’s where all that went."

Interestingly, Eddie was blissfully unaware of the entire incident until someone who had been at the venue that night showed the guitarist a video of the out-of-tune performance.

"So I got called to the dressing room full of people and he said, ‘You handed me an out-of-tune guitar,’" Weber said. "I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘If you’ll recall, you banged the headstock of the guitar into the stage that night several times and then you didn’t come off the stage to get the guitar at the end of the show for the encore. He said, ‘Ah, that wouldn’t make any difference.’"

According to Weber, Eddie, who had a guitar around his neck at the time, "proceeded to jam it into the dressing room floor, and in front of a room full of people it comes back up and it’s way out of tune. And I said, ‘Just sayin’…’ And that’s the last I ever heard about it.”

Dust-up about the out-of-tune guitar aside, Weber maintained a close relationship with Eddie until his death last October, telling Cincinnati.com, “The last conversation I had with him, we were discussing when we would potentially go out again, and he said, 'Whatever happens, you’ll be my first phone call because I’m not leaving the house without you.’ "

Weber – who, as a touring guitar tech, lost a year's worth of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic – is currently struggling to keep his home, and has set up a GoFundMe page for financial assistance.

You can donate right here. 

Gibson's former factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan is set to be transformed into a Hard Rock Hotel. 

The 103-year-old structure, located at 225 Parsons Street, will be fully redeveloped by the Reverb by Hard Rock company, PlazaCorp Realty Advisors, and the Dora Hotel Company. The hotel has a projected completion date of fall 2023. 

The complex at 225 Parsons Street also happens to be the center of operations for Heritage Guitars. However, Guitar.com – which is owned by BandLab, the company that also owns Heritage – confirmed that Heritage's factory will not be disrupted by the new development.

From 1917 through 1984, the 225 Parsons Street complex was Gibson's center of operations, after which the company moved to its current home of Nashville, Tennessee. After Gibson's departure, a number of former Gibson employees rented out part of the former facility and established Heritage Guitars, where to this day they make instruments based on classic Gibson designs.

Hard Rock says that the hotel will feature a gym, bar, brewery and restaurant, banquet facility, an auditorium, and a museum.

For its part, Hard Rock also says it will keep “a keen eye on maintaining the historic parts of the property,” adding that it plans to preserve the facility's “signing room," where scores of legendary guitarists once signed contracts with Gibson.  

“We are incredibly excited about our partnership with PlazaCorp Realty Advisors and Dora Hotel Co., allowing Reverb to expand to a prime city in Michigan,” said Todd Hricko, senior vice president of hotel development at Hard Rock International.

“Reverb Kalamazoo is the perfect new location for the Reverb by Hard Rock brand, with several announcements in other major U.S. cities set to be made within the year.”

Dweezil Zappa has partnered with Reverb.com to sell a number of custom guitars and other gear.

The collection is highlighted by one-of-a-kind custom guitars like a Neil Moser-built instrument graced with an illustration from Frank Zappa's 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album, and a green Charvel that can be seen on the cover of Dweezil Zappa's 1986 Havin' a Bad Day album.

The collection also features a number of pedals – a Fractal Axe-FX Ultra, Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone, and Vox wah among them.

"I have some really great things that haven't been out of the case in about 10 or 12 years," Zappa said. "So, I figured why not let somebody else enjoy those things. Let them be free in the wild!"

Zappa's green Charvel is particularly notable, as the six-string maestro wielded it in the music video for Don Johnson's 1986 pop hit, "Heartbeat." If you also dig the extremely of-its-time fashion in that video, the suit Zappa wore for it actually comes with the Charvel.

Other guitars in the collection include a Eric Johnson Fender Stratocaster fitted with a piezo bridge, and a custom PRS signature guitar with treble/bass clef inlays.

Dweezil Zappa's Official Reverb shop will go live on January 27, with some of the proceeds from the sale of the gear going to Feeding America.

For more info on the collection, stop by reverb.com.

NAMM’s Believe in Music Week, a global gathering designed to unify and support the people who bring music to the world, begins January 18. And registration for the first-of-its-kind online experience, which creates its own social network uniting a worldwide audience of buyers, influencers, media and more, is open now. 

Believe in Music attendees will have the opportunity to explore the latest product demos, take advantage of free cutting-edge training, view exciting performances from major musical artists and much more. To register for free, head here. 

What can you expect to find during your time at Believe in Music? For starters, a marketplace that matches buyers and sellers around the globe with access to the latest gear from hundreds of top major and boutique brands, as well as opportunities to win prizes and giveaways.

And that’s not all – there’s also Believe in Music TV, featuring 80-plus hours of programming across three channels: Believe TV, which will showcase the power of music education, exciting performances, and live from NAMM studio updates with opening sessions and events broadcasted to a global audience; Gear TV, which provides an experience akin to walking the NAMM show floor, with product demos and other content highlighting the latest brand innovations and stories; and Artist TV, bringing celebrity power and insights to the event with live music, artist appearances and interviews.

Additionally, Believe in Music offers an online training experience with over 150 professional development and training sessions. These sessions are open to registrants from all corners of the music industry, from music products, pro audio and entertainment technology professionals to music educators and administrators, nonprofit professionals and college-aged students and faculty, among others.

Particular highlights of Believe in Music Week include a day-long video stream on January 20 spotlighting the rich diversity of musical performances from around the world, with more than 40 emerging and established artists from 23 countries and six continents joining together for 12 hours (6am – 6pm PST) of livestream concert performances.

Additionally, that same day will see a Product Preview featuring a compilation of videos from companies including C.F. Martin & Co., Roland, Yamaha, Avid, Gibson, Shure and more, presenting their new products through demos, spec videos, and interviews. The Believe In Music Product Preview will take place at 4:00pm PST.

No matter what part of the MI world you hail from – whether that be communities that make, distribute and sell music, sound and live event products and services, to those that use music, sound and live event products in their venue or professional field, or from trade, print and online media to the artists, musicians and enthusiasts themselves – Believe in Music has everything you need to help you “navigate the now and prepare for the next.”

Register today at attend.believeinmusic.tv.