Hybrid guitars seem to be all the rage these days. The benefits are obvious – being able to obtain electric and acoustic guitar sounds at the flick of a switch without changing your guitar. Imagine going from a loud, rocking opening song to a quiet, intimate acoustic ballad without having to change guitars. The reality [...]

Apparently, if you’re an acoustic or classical guitarist and you rest your arm on top of the body of your instrument, you “lose between 15 and 20 percent of the power and projection of the top of the guitar“.  This is where guitar armrests come in, and they have the added benefit of making your [...]

Ibanez have made a flurry of announcements at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville, including limited edition guitars, new amps and a whole lot of bass products.  Thanks to Harmony Central – here are brief descriptions and links to the headlines: Ibanez Introduces Additional Xiphos Series Model - the XPT700FX metal guitar with fixed-bridge simplicity and sustain to six [...]

Just in case you haven’t been keeping track, here is a roundup of some new guitars announced recently: Gibson Custom Shop Alex Lifeson ES-355 Signature Guitar: Canadian-born guitarist’s career is being honored with Gibson Custom Shop’s recent introduction of the Alex Lifeson ES-355 Electric Guitar.  This is a semi-hollowbody electric guitar painstaking re-creation of Lifeson’s favored instrument, a 1976 Gibson ES-355. [...]

This is a seriously cool looking, compact amp for acoustic guitar players – the Fishman SoloMan Acoustic Guitar Amp is not only portable, but is designed to provide wide horizontal dispersion and deeper sound penetration than traditional acoustic combo amplifiers.  The Fishman SoloMan Acoustic Guitar Amp  features 220-watts power output, 3-band EQ, +48V phantom power, high quality preamps, [...]

Forbes has a feature story on Martin Guitars, still going strong after 175 years of guitar manufacturing.  Martin currently sells 90,000 guitars per year – the most out of all manufacturers in the United States. According to CEO Chris Martin, 52, the economic downturn of late hasn’t affected sales, but he is troubled about the not [...]

An interesting post from Jim Dalrymple of Macworld regarding his adventures in pursuit of recording the right sound for his upcoming album.  Check out the two videos too, as he goes into his method and process, and the different guitar, gear and effects combinations at his disposal. With so many options available to me to shape the [...]