As this is principally a Guitar Pedal blog, I only feature Guitar articles fairly rarely here - and when they feature something particularly special. And in recent weeks I’ve been really vowed by the Emerald Guitars Virtuo Hybrid Model.

This not only combines Acoustic, Piezo and Electric playback in a single guitar, but also gives you a 13-pin MIDI output - which allows you to control Roland and Boss guitar synthesizer pedals - which combination has to be the most potent of any guitars made...

For me, this turned out to be the best The Guitar Show yet - where I pretty much managed to round off all my pre-show goals - in terms of seeing what and whom I wanted to / needed - as per the following highlights. I caught 2 great lunchtime showcases - first by Mikey Demus of Skindred / Redbeard Effects fame and then Rabea Massaad of Andertons, Chapman, Dorje, Toska, etc. fame - and D’Addario as it turned out - albeit people were really just there to see Bea play.

I must have circled the ...

This is undoubtedly likely to be one of the standout innovations introduced at this Summer NAMM show. It is evident that Wild Customs Guitars has been working on this project for a while. They have come up with a modular rotating drum system of pickups - where Seymour Duncan single size pickups - any variety - regular, rails, mini-humbucker etc can be attached to a capsule and snapped in as one of 3 pickup options per modular ’barrel’ / cartridge.

In effect you have 3 ...

As posted on this site - I spent yesterday/Saturday at ’The Guitar Show’(poor SEO) which is actually the UK’s most significant guitar show - but still relatively compact and bijoux and with lots to notable absentees. No Fender or Gibson, and strangely no Chapman Guitars either - they seem to have an odd approach to their own domestic market!

In any case there was plenty to see at the show - still nothing really compared to what takes place in Germany or the USA, but enough for a day out. I ...

So I discovered these two instruments somewhat by chance - the Les Paul style one fairly recently, while the SG I’ve now come across a few times. The Daniels LP style guitar is actually a couple of years old while the Gibson is the ridiculously limited Billy Gibbons Ultimate SG from the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalogue back in 2015 - and which retailed for a hefty $30,000 back then. The LP-style is a one-off custom build by UK luthier Darren Daniels whose prices are supposedly relatively...

2018 has been a pretty decent year for new guitar releases - with genuinely something exceptional for near enough every variety. Fender released the really cool alternative range of Parallel Universe guitars - including the above Troublemaker Telecaster. And Gibson released the perfectly packaged Les Paul Junior Tribute.

We also saw Ibanez, Music Man and PRS further build on their quality reputations - while Music Man concentrated more on its Sterling diffusion range as it was so busy ...

So I attended the inaugural Future Publishing UK Guitar Show this past Saturday at the Olympia Exhibition Centre London - Levels 2 & 3. It was not the most auspicious day for an event in London, considering there was a strike on the Piccadilly line, and the important chunks of the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines were down for maintenance. I therefore ’tubed’ it to Shepherd’s Bush or Westfield essentially, and walked down from there - a ...

There were two big stories that dominated the guitar booths at NAMM 2018 - namely Ibanez’s new millennial Suhr-alike range and Fender’s smart Parallel Universe range. My very first guitar was that original Super-Strat the Ibanez Roadstar RG 440 (1986) in black - with the slightly odd older rounded headstock shape. The new headstock is much nicer, and there are some genuine innovations at this price point - with dedicated and exclusive Seymour Duncan Hyperion pickups across the range...

It should be evident by now that my preferred style of guitar is the doublecut S-type, with relatively few exceptions. My preferred pickups are humbuckers - ideally with some well-defined grunt, and I am very fussy about fretboards (Rosewood / Ebony) and headstock shape. As any guitar aficionado does, I have a rolling wishlist of guitars I desire to acquire - I’m not setting up shop, so the chance of me getting all, or even a significant number of these are slim to none. This is more of a...