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XLR MAG

Signal of the week

Electric guitars & amps · 96 stories, +39 vs last week

Electric guitars & amps: 96 stories in seven days, +39 on the week before.

GuitarsJoe Bonamassa On His New Signature Fender Modeler: 'The King Cork Sniffer's Telling You He Enjoys It More Than His Tube Ones' [News] Ultimate Guitar

GuitarsLonnie Mack’s guitar rig sells for $550,000 at auction – alongside the most expensive 1959 Les Paul ’Burst Guitar World

Latest

Ultimate GuitarGuitarsThe Guitarist Who Turned Down The Rolling Stones At 21 Vanished From The Public Eye For Three Decades [News] Trends : "I just couldn't get a record deal."

Ultimate GuitarGuitarsJoe Bonamassa On His New Signature Fender Modeler: 'The King Cork Sniffer's Telling You He Enjoys It More Than His Tube Ones' [News] Gear : "I wanted to be true north, going, 'Yeah, it's tubes all the way...' I probably would have said that in 2022 or '23, but we're in '26 and honestly, the technology is incredible."

Dorico BlogDAW & pluginsTen years of Dorico Dorico launch event at Bush Hall, Tuesday 18 October 2016 (Photo: Bea Fuhrmann) Ten years ago today, on Wednesday 19 October 2016, Dorico 1.0 was released.

DJ MagLive & DJJacques Greene shares new album 'jg' via LUCKYME®: Listen Greene's first solo full-length studio LP in seven years, following 2019's 'Dawn Chorus'

DJ MagLive & DJDaMetalMessiah announces FABRICLIVE. compilation featuring Novelist, Manga Saint Hilaire, Tailor Jae, more The LP is a portrait of grime in 2026, featuring "handpicked producers" and a spread of era-spanning MCs

DJ MagLive & DJThe Avalanches - No Bad Memories Music Reviews A L B U M S Release date: 16 October 2026 | Kristan J Caryl The Avalanches No Bad Memories Modular Recordings Corporate dream-pop

Digital Music NewsIndustryMateria Music Turns 10 as Deltarune Lands at #3 on Billboard’s Soundtracks Chart Photo Credit: Materia Music Materia Music is turning 10, and the timing is hard to beat. A decade ago, original game soundtracks rarely made it past the game itself.

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsSampleScience releases Compact Acoustic Piano, a FREE lightweight piano plugin SampleScience offers Compact Acoustic Piano, a free sample-based piano plugin for macOS and Windows. I think SampleScience always delivers nice sample-based instruments, and we’ve covered plenty of…

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsArswerk Harmonia EQ makes room in your mix without sidechain routing Arswerk has updated Harmonia EQ, a dynamic and spectral equalizer that lets tracks respond to one another without manually routing sidechains.

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsSample Roll offers SPCE adaptive sidechain plugin for FREE Sample Roll is offering SPCE, an adaptive sidechain plugin for macOS and Windows, for free for a limited time. It normally costs $39, and it’s currently available as a freebie for a limited time.

IQIndustryMetal and punk the ‘strongest in a decade’ as DWP brings in one million to 2026 festivals Danny Wimmer Presents has hailed the “tremendous” growth that has seen its festivals welcome over one million attendees across the 2026 season, with “demand for punk and metal is… stronger…

Guitar WorldGuitarsLonnie Mack’s guitar rig sells for $550,000 at auction – alongside the most expensive 1959 Les Paul ’Burst Lonnie Mack’s guitar rig sold for more than half a million dollars at a recent auction event that set a new world record for a 1959 Gibson Les Paul ’Burst.

On the calendar

· Trade shows and launch events, this week's stories from each corner of the industry, and what its press is covering.

On view

This week, from that corner the newest stories from the corner of the industry you picked

The wire their own posts, translated

How records get made in 2026 from the industry's own reports

Sources

Fetched every six hours, linked to the original

About

Three pins, and nearly every signal in this business passes through them.

The magazine is named after the cable: the microphone in the booth, the line to the desk, the DMX run that fires the lights. Studio, stage and rig share the same cable. Most magazines pick one of the three. This one covers all of it, because the people we read do too — the engineer mixing a record on Tuesday is on front of house by Saturday.

Around a hundred and sixty sources, in English, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Chinese and Italian: makers and their release notes, reviewers who put a hand on the thing, studios and touring crews, the producers and collectives surfacing this month and the scenes they came out of. Synths and modular, plugins and DAWs, guitars and drums, microphones, monitors, PA and lighting. What the trade is talking about is counted and plotted. The editor's letter has just started; it will find its rhythm.

For each story: a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link out. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the maker or the photographer. A German review appears in German and a Japanese one in Japanese, as the writer published it; the link goes to the original.

Nothing is sold on this site. When a link leads to a shop, it is the maker's shop, not ours.