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Signal of the week

Electric guitars & amps · 84 stories, +46 vs last week

Electric guitars & amps: 84 stories in seven days, +46 on the week before.

EuropeTest: Harley Benton GS-Travel-E Spruce, Akustik-Reisegitarre AMAZONA.de

GuitarsStanley Jordan is writing a metal album on James Hetfield’s signature ESP Guitar World

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Ultimate GuitarGuitarsVernon Reid's Reverend Signature Draws On Jung, Joseph Campbell, And Basquiat. Its Fretboard Carries A Language That Might Be Half Folklore [News] Guitar Of The Week : Jack White ended up with a Mystery Tramp after running into Vernon Reid at the Memphis airport, and Reid walked away with a Triplecaster.

DJ MagLive & DJADAM Audio announces Sub8 PRO and Sub10 PRO subwoofers Managed by the company's new software system, ADAM Control

DJ MagLive & DJBaby Audio announces new muti-effect plug-in, HyperWarp The plug-in comes loaded with 190 presets from "top producers and sound designers"

DJ MagLive & DJA Minimoog is set to take be used in a soloist's performance with the Asheville Symphony "One of the aims of this concerto is to showcase the virtuosity of the classical tradition on a synth"

Guitar PlayerGuitarsInstagram admits a glitch keeps pushing Creed’s “Higher” on users Instagram has a strange musical obsession, and it seems to have one song on repeat. Users have noticed that the platform keeps recommending Creed’s 1999 hit “ Higher ” for their Stories, whether they…

UK Jazz NewsEuropeEntries open for Dankworth and Harvey Jazz Awards Applications for the next John Dankworth and Eddie Harvey Awards, for jazz composers and arrangers respectively, are now open.

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsPointless Audio offers PortaTwin, a FREE Tascam Porta Two-inspired cassette plugin Pointless Audio offers PortaTwin, a free cassette channel strip inspired by the 1987 Tascam Porta Two Ministudio. So, yet another tape emulation has arrived in what feels like a sea of them lately.

Guitar WorldGuitarsWhy Zakk Wylde isn’t convinced by the tonewood debate It does not take much to get guitar players arguing with each other. But there are few topics that get people going like tonewoods.

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsSQ8L returns as a FREE 64-bit Ensoniq SQ-80 synth for macOS, Windows, and Linux The free SQ8L synth is back as an unofficial 64-bit port for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Siegfried Kullmann’s original Ensoniq SQ-80 emulation was a 32-bit Windows VST, last updated in 2008.

Bedroom Producers BlogDAW & pluginsXLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color drops to $29 in a 70% off sale Plugin Boutique is offering XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color for only $29 until October 16, 2026. That’s 70% off its regular $99 price. You can get RC-20 at Plugin Boutique while the sale is running.

Guitar WorldGuitarsStanley Jordan is writing a metal album on James Hetfield’s signature ESP Guitar World famously listed Stanley Jordan as one of 40 players who changed the post-1980 modern era of guitar playing, and by the sound of it, he’s about to do that again.

Production ExpertStudios & prosOur Sound Design Skills Are Safe From AI. Our Industry May Not Be Monkeyland Audio Inc - Charles Maynes Sound designer and re-recording mixer Charles Maynes agrees that AI can't match human creative thinking, as expressed in Rene Coronado's article Why This Sound…

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 three 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.