I say the Rabea Sabre is fully available - while noting that the Limited 30 Run Frenzied Flame Burst Edition sold out in just a couple of days or so. The Standard Vileblood Burst will be available at all Music Man Dealers, including at Andertons - where it’s priced @ £4,299 (Music Man = $3999).

My upper ceiling for guitar acquisitions is usually at £3.5K, but I would most definitely make an exception for this fantastic guitar. It’s designated as a Sabre Model - but there are so many cool ...

These are simply the most attractive and appealing 16 Guitars that I came across through the NAMM guitar coverage.

I alas seem to mostly have expensive taste - as some of these models cost as much as $22,000, with the PRS SE Swamp Ash Special a somewhat lonely outlier @ $849. The majority here seem to be between $3,000 and $5,000.

I’m not sure I will even acquire any of these - while it’s of course nice to dream what you would do if / when your lottery numbers come through!

The ...

Do please note that this is the 3rd roundup in the series - for those looking for more classic / vintage guitar designs - then the first part is the more pertinent for your preferences. Part 2 became a little more eclectic and avant-garde, while this Part 3 is an even mix of more classic / traditional designs and more modern and futuristic.

This part plays some fan service in covering some of the more popular omissions from the previous posts - while I don’t subscribe to the same view for ...

Much like my recent ’Ergonomic’ Headstock feature - this was another labour of love really - and essentially the second half to that exercise.

The remit is slightly different here - where this curated selection is a mix of universally held iconic classic guitar body shapes, sprinkled with a few of my own idiosyncratic favourites. I don’t expect your own selection to be entirely the same - while surely there should be a 80-90% overlap or thereabouts.

This exercise has been done by many ...

This is my third feature on headstock ergonomics - following on from my 2016 original, and 2018 follow-up. On this occasion the catalyst for this article was the recent Birmingham Guitar Show - where I liked a lot of the body shapes I saw on display, but was put off by their unergonomic or in fact actually rather ugly headstocks.

Creating an aesthetically beautiful but distinct headstock shape is an incredible difficult task these days - and lots of brands essentially ’fail’ in that area - ...

I’ve watched a few demos of the Keyztone EXchanger pedal recently, and it brought to mind a number of different technologies all trying to do the same thing really, and none more similar than the slightly older Sim 1 XT-1. I like the neatness of the Keyztone offering - 8 classic pickup sounds in one rather compact and streamlined pedal. I wonder if 8 is the right number of options as compared to Sim 1 XT-1’s 12 presets, and the 22 different variations available on Line 6 Variax Guitars.

...

The last time I covered this subject - ’The Shape of a Guitar’s Headstock has a significant impact on Tuning Stability’ I focused more on what the issues were rather than the solutions. Here I will go into slightly more detail about the science of guitar tuning fidelity and all the little gains that can be made by doing things properly! This article was sparked in part by my recent article on 9 ’SG’-style guitars, where I really decided for once and for all that I would never buy a guitar with ...

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...