Skip to content

XLR MAG

Latest

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.

← XLR MAG Archive

MusicRadarGear

I’ve covered Guitar Center sales for years, and the freshly launched Guitar-A-Thon sale is a must-shop with reductions hitting up to 30% off

September 17

As someone who’s spent years keeping tabs on retail events, I reckon Guitar Center’s newly launched Guitar-A-Thon is genuinely worth your time.

Electric guitars & amps

Read at MusicRadar ↗

Related

GearSee iconic Jeff Beck, Mike Bloomfield and Jack White guitars up close MusicRadar

Gear“Joan Jett has always played by her own rules, and that certainly applies to her guitar of choice”: Epiphone brings back the Joan Jett Olympic Special and gives the single-pickup powerhouse an all-new look MusicRadar

Gear“I’m 42 years old; I’ve only just realised you can change the tuning to make it easier to play stuff!”: When Death Cab for Cutie shared their guitar rig with us MusicRadar

Gear“One day Mike played a riff on the guitar, with an echo, and I suddenly sang, ‘She seems to have an invisible touch – yeah!’ It came into my head fully formed”: How Genesis created their biggest hit – with a writing process “like jazz” MusicRadar

GearHow Pete Townshend, Carlos Santana and a miracle pawn shop find in the depths of winter made Joe Bonamassa fall in love with P-90s: “That’s what really got me into them, the way they clean up really well but they would roar” MusicRadar

GearHave Gibson and Baggs cracked the code for amplified acoustic guitar tone? Their new HiFi DNA pickup system promises “unprecedented realism, dynamic nuance, and clarity” MusicRadar

More from MusicRadar on XLR MAG.