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About

XLR is a magazine, a radar and a diary about music gear and the making of music — for the people who make records and put on shows, wherever they do it.

The name is the three-pin connector that every signal in the business passes through: the microphone on stage and in the booth, the line to the desk, the DMX cable that runs the lights. Studio, stage and lighting rig share it, and so does this magazine. Every few hours XLR collects what the makers shipped, what the reviewers heard, what the studios and the touring crews are doing, which producers and collectives are surfacing and what they are saying — synths and modular, plugins and DAWs, guitars and drums, microphones, monitors, PA and lights, the rooms and the people — from a few hundred sources in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and more, then plots what is moving. The editor writes a letter every few days. Nothing is sold here; when a link leads to a shop, that is the maker's shop, not ours.

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Guitar PlayerGuitars

Billy Gibbons and Dion had made music together but never met — until a remarkable backstage encounter this Saturday: “We instantly bonded”

September 14

ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons finally met one of his greatest musical inspirations in person Saturday, September 12, when he and Dion DiMucci found themselves performing at the same resort. Gibbons and the Bronx-born rock and r

Read at Guitar Player ↗

GuitarsWarren Haynes on the Allman Brothers vs. the Grateful Dead: “The Dead wait for the magic to occur. The Allmans force it to happen” Guitar Player

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Billy Gibbons and Dion had made music together but never met — until a remarkable backstage encounter this Saturday: “We instantly bonded”

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