Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly gear round-up, your one-stop-shop for keeping up to date with what’s been happening in the big wide world of guitar gear over the past seven days.
From new electric guitars to amp modeler updates, the guitar industry is never short of fresh releases, and it can sometimes be hard to stay in the loop with every new launch.
To make things a little easier, we’ve put together an essential must-read guide that will cover the major releases, the boutique drops, and everything in between.
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Below you’ll find my personal highlights from the week, along with plenty of honorable mentions for the new gear you might have missed. Agree with my picks? Have a highlight of your own? Let us know in the comments.
Death By Audio x Rainger FX Amp Crash
When Oliver Ackermann and David Rainger gather around the breadboard to work on a pedal collab, expect the unexpected – and the Death By Audio x Rainger FX Amp Crash does not disappoint.
It’s a pedal, yes, gathering reverb, echo and chorus in one unit. But it’s also a guitar amp and a microphone, complete with a 2” internal speaker and an eight-ohms speaker output for hooking it up to a speaker cabinet. What’s the purpose of having an onboard mic and speaker?
Well, it allows you to blend the direct signal from the amplifier with the mic signal to create an all-new species of fuzz-drive, harmonically volatile with all kinds of strange overtones and, yes, feedback. It’s an all-new species of pedal. C’mon, we’re happy with an internal trim pot and a dual-mode footswitch and just consider what’s going on here.
“Unlike traditional distortion or amp simulation pedals, Amp Crash creates sound physically, not just electronically,” reads the blurb. “As the amplifier, speaker, and microphone interact, they generate harmonics, feedback, compression, and textures that only exist because air is physically moving inside the pedal.”
How you choose to use this is up to you. You could use it as a practice amp, an unorthodox recording device, or just something scare your bandmates.
It was Rainger’s idea to put a microphone inside the pedal. But trust DBA’s Ackermann to take things one step further.
“David from Rainger is who I always gravitate to at any event. His effects are bonkers in the best way possible,” says Ackermann.
“When he told me he was coming to NY to work on a collaboration, it was a dream come true. Like cities in the world, Rainger FX is Death By Audio’s sister company: weird, wild, and totally extreme. Working on this project with Rainger pushed us to create something so extreme, and then we took it further.”
This wild puppy is priced $395 and is available now. See Death By Audio for more.
Epiphone Lzzy Hale
Say what you like about Lzzy Hale but you can’t ever question her commitment to Sparkle Motion – that is, like, the whole thing about this new Explorer Custom she has cooked up with Epiphone.
It arrives resplendent in the Black Diamond Holographic finish we saw on her signature Kramer Voyager, a look that is beyond KISS, beyond disco, and yet with the Explorer’s bold angles – Ted McCarty’s silhouette still radical after all these years – it’s even got a mirror pickguard which can come in handy if you’ve had spinach at lunch.
Fundamentally, it’s a slab of mahogany, with a mahogany SlimTaper neck, topped with a 12” radius ebony fingerboard with block inlays.
There are a pair of Epiphone ProBucker Ignite humbuckers at the neck and bridge, each served by its own volume control and a master tone (Speed Knobs, as per the fashion). You know the drill.
But it’s the little details that get us, and once your eyes have adjusted to this retina-burning finish you’ll notice that the Epi logo on that six-in-line headstock is 3D and holographic, too. And the finish is reprised on the neck, which is cool. One to play loud.
Find out more at Epiphone.
Jam Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer
Jam Pedals has always got something interesting bubbling in the pot but the Tiny Amp Destroyer, a signature pedal for Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is really something different, and something quite special.
Those steeped in the lore of the Gizzverse will know just what it’s about. The secret weapon to Mackenzie’s electric guitar tone on record is a bunch of beat-up cheapo solid-state practice amps he bought down at Cash Convertors. That’s what you are hearing when you hear that warm, scratchy drive on albums such as Flight b741.
“Some of the tones are pretty crispy, and pretty hot, pretty spicy, but in my mind it was like the-first-couple-of-Black-Sabbath-records distortion,” Mackenzie told Total Guitar in 2024. “They weren’t using tiny amps but that was the sound. It’s different from stepping on a fuzz pedal. When you roll back the volume on your guitar you can really, really clean up in a way you can’t do with pedals.”
The Tiny Amp Destroyer will get you those kinds of sounds, and then some. There are two footswitchable gain stages, plus a boost section modeled after the Jam Rooster (a Rangemaster-style treble booster), and we want to get one of these on the pedalboard ASAP.
Okay, an outlay of $399 to make your amp sound like a $30 amp sounds a bit silly on the face of it but there’s much more to this ingenious drive/distortion/preamp/miracle box.
Find out more at Jam Pedals.
ALSO LAUNCHED THIS WEEK
Walrus Audio Canvas Expression
Walrus Audio expands its Canvas range of utility pedal with an expression pedal that reimagines the concept with dual expression outputs that are configurable, plus MIDI support.
For more: Walrus Audio
Cort Guitars Exotic Series
Cort acoustics always present a lot of spec for the money, and you can be pretty sure of a pristine build. It’s latest augments its SFX and Grand Auditorium cutaway models by pairing solid spruce tops with ash burl, myrtlewood and walnut, and they look pretty sweet.
For more: Cort Guitars
Fender 75th Anniversary additions:
Fender is keeping the 75th Anniversary Telecaster releases coming and this drop caused some excitement in the GW office. We’ve seen these at first hand. They are all, y’know, nice.
But that 1951 Nocaster is pretty much what the American Vintage II was made for – and has real vintage mojo – and the return of the baritone Telecaster is a real cause for celebration.
For more: Fender
Gretsch Limited Edition Professional Collection G6134T-58 Penguin
Made in Japan, refreshed in a Light Blue Pearl finish, with a string-through Bigsby B3CP tailpiece and a pair of TV Jones Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity Filter’Tron pickups, this is a Gretsch guitar to throw fiscal responsibility out of the window for.
It ain’t cheap but has the arched-top singlecut ever looked better? Well, we say that every year when Gretsch releases one into the wild like this, and yet, still. Look at it!
For more: Gretsch
Charvel Pro Mod DK 24
The headline specs on these new DK24 models might include the Seymour Duncan Nazgul and Sentient humbucker pairings on the HH models, the Seymour Duncan Full Shred ‘bucker and Flat Strat single-coil pairing on the HSS – the latter with a quilt-maple top in lurid/gnarly Zombie Fade finish.
But what we love about the DK24 is the Jackson Dinky body shape – compact, ergonomic, and a reminder of the close history between the Charvel and Jackson brands.
For more: Charvel
Ibanez Wes Hauch
Wes Hauch’s new signature Iceman is a super-metal, super-cool and super-upscale take on the classic Paul Stanley and Tom G. Warrior-approved shape and it is 100 per cent a home run – except that $9,999 price tag somewhat cools our ardor.
For more: Ibanez
D’Addario XPND Voltage Booster
Reasons we love D’Addario No. 1,427,812: It makes stuff like this power booster that can turn your 9V output into a 12V, 18V or 24V output. Yup, accessories we can actually use, accessories that can be a total pedalboard life-safer.
For more: D’Addario
Godin Limited Edition 25th Anniversary Steve Stevens ACS Nylon
If you’ve been tempted to dive into the nylon-string acoustic electric hybrid revolution but were just waiting for that one instrument then this signature model for Billy Idol’s six-string lieutenant could be the one. It’s typically Steve Stevens, designed with a bit of flair, with its silver leaf maple top painted a deep high-gloss purple. Lovely stuff.
For more: Godin
Washburn Sonamaster Elite
Let’s round out the week with some S-style guitars from Washburn that offers us HSS and HH pickup configurations and figured maple veneers on mahogany bodies for what, $399? Oh and they’ve got roasted maple necks too, coil-splits, and 18:1 Grover tuners, too.
For more: Washburn
