All posts in Featured

Zach Wish puts the L.R. Baggs Align Series pedals through their paces on his personal AEG-1 acoustic, demonstrating how each pedal brings studio‑quality effects to your DI signal. Hear the Session, Chorus, Delay, and Reverb in action and watch Zach dial in a pro-level tones from a compact package. Whether you want a simple, all‑in‑one acoustic board or individual pedals to suit your rig, the Align Series is ready to strum.LR Baggs Align Session Acoustic Saturation/Compressor/EQ Pedal

Align Session PedalLR Baggs Align Chorus Acoustic Chorus Pedal

Align Chorus PedalLR Baggs Align Delay Acoustic Delay Pedal

Align Delay PedalLR Baggs Align Reverb Acoustic Reverb Pedal

Align Reverb Pedal

Progressive doom outfit MOTHS explore the seven deadly sins on their new album, Septem.
The post Full Album Stream: MOTHS – “Septem” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

RhPf Electronics has unveiled the Mosferatwo, a handcrafted MOSFET overdrive pedal designed for players who want to sculpt saturated tones with clarity, nuance, and punch.Built around a 100% original circuit, it delivers everything from clean boost to greasy fuzz through a stack of carefully voiced gain stages and precision EQ shaping — all with the touch sensitivity and harmonic richness of a cranked tube amp.Dual-stage Drive control: One knob, two gain stages — for smooth transitions from subtle grit to snarling overdrive.Interactive Focus control: Shapes both dynamic feel and frequency response — bold and bloomy to tight and articulate.Heart and Bite EQ: Two tuned boost controls with toggleable center frequencies, for sculpting warmth and cut through the mix with precision.Initially designed with gritty garage-blues duos in mind — where a single guitar needs to fill the entire sonic spectrum — Mosferatwo has since earned praise from a wide range of players for its amp-like response and bold, characterful voice. It’s already landed on boards across styles, from raw vintage blues to modern fuzzed-out riffing.Like all RhPf Electronics creations, Mosferatwo is not a clone, mod, or tweak — it’s a fresh, fully original circuit built from the ground up.Street price is $179. They’re available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the RhPf Electronics online store at rhpfelectronics.com.

The Xvive H3 Transmitter Holder is specially designed for the Xvive A58 andP58 Guitar Wireless Systems.It allows you to securely fasten the A58T Transmitter to your guitar strap, keeping it away from the instrument’s output jack to avoid interference from active electronics. This setup helps reduce high-frequency noise that can be caused by active circuits in electric guitars or basses. For acoustic guitars with integrated microphone pickup systems, the H3 also helps to eliminate wireless signal interference issues.Constructed from durable leather and equipped with a secure hook-and-loop strap, the H3 ensures that your transmitter stays firmly in place during performances. It includes a ¼” TS male to ¼” TS female adapter cable to easily connect the transmitter to your instrument’s output jack. If your guitar or bass has a recessed or unusually placed output jack, the H3 adapts with ease. Its compact, lightweight design makes it ideal for stage, studio and home use.H3 is available from Xvive dealers and online stores worldwide for $28.99 (USD MAP).H3 product page: www.xvive.com/audio/product/h3-transmitter-holderA58 product page: www.xvive.com/audio/product/a58-guitar-wireless-system/ P58 product page: www.xvive.com/audio/product/p58-guitar-wireless-system-with-tuner-pedal/

For those of you in the beginning of your Fender amp journey, there are myriad options and you might be uncertain where to start. I’ll introduce two of the most famous guitar amps on the planet: the Deluxe Reverb and the Princeton Reverb. (If you’re more experienced with Fender amps, see if you agree with my analysis of their qualities and differences.)The Deluxe Reverb and Princeton Reverb amps were first introduced in Fender’s black-panel era (1964–1968). These amps are still made somewhat close to the originals; modern reissue models are available with either printed circuitboards or more exclusive point-to-point wiring, like their predecessors.The strengths of both models lie in their simplicity, portability, and the much sought-after ability to break up at moderate volumes. Up to a certain point, they’ll deliver similar clean tones, characterized as the scooped Fender black-panel tone, intended to amplify the guitar as transparently as possible. Both are perfect amps for professionals and hobby players who want a stripped-down, reliable tube amp with only reverb and tremolo. Both amps have dual 6V6 tubes in a push/pull class AB configuration, but their power amp sections are quite different. The Deluxe Reverb has a larger output transformer, a larger power transformer, higher 6V6 plate voltages, and the more efficient long-tail PI (phase inverter) circuit, versus the Princeton Reverb’s flabby-sounding cathodyne PI. The long-tail PI is widely used across 2-channel 6L6 Fender amps like the Vibrolux, Super, Twin, and Pro—the AB763 circuit amps.The Deluxe produces 22 watts, and the Princeton a modest 12 to15 watts. Additionally, the Deluxe has a bigger speaker and a larger cabinet. The 1×10″ Princeton Reverb is 16″ tall, just under 20″ wide, and 9 1/2″ deep, weighing approximately 34 pounds. The 1×12″ Deluxe Reverb is approximately 17 1/2″ tall, 24 1/2″ wide, and 9 1/2″ deep, weighing approximately 42 pounds, and all this contributes to a louder and cleaner tone with more ambience and a bigger low end.What does this mean? If you are looking for maximum portability and the earliest breakup, opt for the Princeton. In a recording or miked context, you won’t be bothered by its smaller, boxy tone. Plug in your Telecaster and you will be transported directly to Nashville. The Princeton Reverb can even be used with a single 6L6 tube in class A operation for ultra-low power (5 to 7 watts).On the other hand, the Deluxe sounds slightly bigger on its own at home, in the practice room, and on stages where you need to cut through. It can even take 6L6 tubes for more power and clean headroom (about 30 watts). This 6L6 trick is not possible with the Princeton Reverb. However, the smaller Princeton is still quite capable if we do something with the speaker. It can be much louder if you swap a vintage speaker to a highly efficient modern speaker or, even better, disengage the built-in speaker and use a 1×15″ extension cabinet. I love the combination of the Princeton’s early breakup through a big and full speaker cabinet loaded with a 15″ Eminence Legend 1518. It’s huge and punchy, but not ear-breaking. Both amps require an 8-ohm speaker impedance, allowing a wide set of extension speakers in the range of 4 to 16 ohms.The preamp sections of these amps are more similar, but with a few differences. The controls are the same: volume, treble, bass, reverb, tremolo intensity, and tremolo speed. Obviously, the Deluxe Reverb also has a second normal channel without reverb and tremolo. It also lacks the 47 pF bright cap, making it smoother and warmer than the vibrato channel, just like the single-channel Princeton Reverb, which also comes without this bright cap. This explains why many players think the Princeton handles pedals and bright guitars better than the Deluxe. Personally, I never use the normal channel of classic Fender amps other than sometimes routing my reverb return signal into it. That way, I can control the reverb with the normal channel’s volume and EQ knobs for more tonal options, like a dark and long reverb tone. I use a phono/jack adapter plug for this trick. Other than the bright cap, the tone stack is similar in these amps.While the tremolo controls are the same on these amps, the tremolo circuits are built differently. The Princeton Reverb’s bias tremolo can get really deep, but only if you set the bias correctly, which can be a bit of a hurdle since it lacks an adjustable bias screw. If you struggle with weak tremolo, you can experiment with different 6V6 power tubes, rectifier tubes (either 5U4GB or GZ34, depending on the model), and 12AX7 tremolo/PI tubes (the one closest to the 6V6s). If that doesn’t help, the caps and resistors in the tremolo circuitry must be inspected. With the Deluxe Reverb’s AB763 optoisolator tremolo design, the sound is easier and more consistent.I hope you are inspired to try out at least one of these legendary amps. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Is our favorite instrument set to go the way of the once ubiquitous accordion?Since last month’s installment of Esoterica Electrica, I’ve been thinking about another instrument that rose and fell in the public consciousness. There was a time when the accordion was king. Not cool, maybe, but unavoidable—wheezing its way through dance halls, weddings, and smoky cafés. On TV, accordionist Lawrence Welk squeezed out over 1,000 episodes of his immensely popular show in one of the longest running serials of all time. Then, the electric guitar as we know it showed up, with its raw edges, bad attitude, and built-in middle finger, and the accordion got shoved in the closet next to grandma’s fondue set. But over the last few decades the accordion has been creeping back from the shadows, and that tells us something strange—maybe even prophetic—about where guitar culture might be headed.
The guitar has always been more than a musical instrument. It was rebellion you could strap on and crank up. It said, “I don’t care about your rules, and I’m not going to college.” Eventually, rebellion got turned into a brand. It became a logo on a shirt and a preset in a digital amp. The raw energy of rock, blues, and even jazz got scrubbed up and packaged for mass consumption. And that’s where things started to get boring. Even saturated, detuned 7-string metal got—yawn.
Guitarists might wonder if this is the decline of civilization. Probably not, but it might be the decline of a scene—the kind of place where you could write poetry about your friends, your lovers, or your city’s crumbling infrastructure. The clubs in Paris before the revolution, the jazz dives in Harlem, the punk storefronts in the Midwest—their influence was all replaced by sports bars, chain restaurants, and multi-use “event spaces.” There’s nowhere left to be inspired by place, because everywhere is the same. Meanwhile, popular music culture is drowning in junk. But that’s not new—it’s always been full of crap.
Every era had its disposable acts, cheesy hits, and manufactured stars. But now we’ve added infinite shelf space and instant access to the mix, and it’s overwhelming. Bad music isn’t the problem. It’s the sheer volume of it. Anyone with a phone can make a song, a video, and a fake album cover in 15 minutes, and then post it. And then maybe go viral. Or not. No one really knows. Algorithms don’t help, they are the sycophant friend that won’t tell you that you suck. They track clicks, not quality. In the analog days nobody knew if an album got played 50 times in someone’s bedroom—but those plays meant something. Now, we’ve turned music into data points. If it gets enough hits, it must be good, right? But we know that’s not true.“Algorithms don’t help, they are the sycophant friend that won’t tell you that you suck.”Now social media stumbles under its own weight. Platforms are changing their algorithms weekly, creators almost outnumber their audiences. Trends change faster than guitar strings at a sweaty club gig, and to me, the whole thing feels a bit stale. Yes, it’s easier than ever to record music, and technically that’s a good thing. But most of it isn’t great. That’s fine—most of anything isn’t great. But it’s harder than ever to find something sublime because everything’s buried in the feed. So as the accordion started to pop back up, it wasn’t just nostalgia—it was a sign that we were looking for something different. Something that didn’t feel polished to death. My observation is that music always steals from the past with a new twist. In a world that’s been flattened by sameness, an unfashionable instrument starts to seem kind of interesting again.Which brings us back to the guitar. It still works. It still says something. But maybe now it has to fight harder to be heard. Rebellion isn’t gone—it’s just out of frame, figuring out its next move. The scene might be harder to find, but it’ll come back. It always does. Talent tends to survive, even if it doesn’t trend. The guitar is a chameleon in a way that a synthesizer or computer can never be. In our hands, and strapped close to our sweaty bodies, it’s a living, breathing, organic extension of our humanity that we can twist, bend, and strangle into an emotional connection with anyone within earshot. Rock guitar was never built to last—it was meant to blow the doors off and then disappear. But that’s its super power. The guitar is like a coiled spring wound tight with the potential energy to leap back into the fray. Maybe the world is just waiting for the next weird, noisy, honest thing to kick down the door, and hopefully it has six strings and a little dirt on it.

“Analog voicing” in digital delays typically refers to approximations of the foggy, frayed echoes created by a chain of analog bucket brigade devices. Digital devices aspiring to analog-ness usually accomplish this with little EQ tweaks elsewhere in the chain. And it sounds cool when done right.Austin, Texas’ Berserker Electronics employs a multi-pronged approach to generating analog warmth from their very inexpensive, well-made, USA-built Aquanaut. To start, designer James Millican uses analog filtering at the input and output—inspired in part by the analog Way Huge Aqua-Puss and Boss DM-2. And for generating the repeats, he employs the PT2399 chip, an inexpensive and abundant digital unit originally conceived for karaoke machines that also drives delay devices like the EarthQuaker Space Spiral, Death By Audio Echo Dream 2, Caroline Kilobyte, and others categorized and marketed under the “vintage” and “lo-fi” umbrellas. This formula really works in the Aquanaut, adding an appealing analog-like toastiness that, apart from the absence of clock noise, could fool experienced analog delay users.Deftly Walking the Digital DivideThe few limitations in the Aquanaut design have little bearing in basic delay applications. If you use oscillation effects at high mix and repeat levels, however, you might find the Aquanaut’s controls feel a little uptight compared to true BBD effects. Some users might like this less twitchy and temperamental feel. But it’s likely everyone can appreciate the generously proportioned and easy-to-manipulate blend and delay knobs, which facilitate hands-on Nigel Godrich flying-saucer-liftoff effects, Jimmy Page Echoplex manglings, and other outer-limits oscillation-based sounds.“The Aquanaut responds to dirty, distorted tones in the same visceral, haunted way a BBD device does.”As for the repeats, they’re warm and contoured at the edges, with a little more capacity for midrange detail than the Supa-Puss and Carbon Copy I used for comparison. That said, there is haze aplenty. By pushing the PT2399 beyond its usual 300ms maximum repeat time spec, Millican introduced some distortion to the repeats. The analog input stage filtering, meanwhile, removes some of the high frequencies in that distortion. There’s also a diode limiter before the delay chip. This recipe adds a lot of the ambience—some might call it signal pollution—that makes real bucket brigade echoes sound so hazily mysterious and immersive. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hear slightly more of this ambience in the repeats of a Supa-Puss and Carbon Copy. But the Aquanaut’s version is pleasing and practical in other ways. And like my real BBD echoes, the Aquanaut responds to dirty, distorted tones in the same visceral, haunted way a BBD device does—rounding off edgy harmonic peaks and adding a very open compression that allows plenty of room for aggressive picking dynamics.The VerdictAt $129, the Aquanaut is just $20 less than the genuine bucket brigade MXR Carbon Copy and the same price as digital delays like the TC Flashback, which features a less dimensional “analog” simulation. Yet it’s a high-quality pedal, and the compromises inherent to this kind of design are executed in a way that doesn’t require many sacrifices in sound, quality, or value. James Millican and Berserker pulled off a nice balancing act here—assimilating virtues from great, straight-ahead BBDs without the clock noise, and with a little extra headroom and midrange fidelity that dovetails beautifully with drive, distortion, and fuzz.

Mysterious modulations and Leslie sounds abound in a compact, straightforward, and streamlined rotary simulator complete with variable drive settings.BOSS announces the RT-2 Rotary Ensemble, the latest member of the company’s famous compact pedal lineup. Rotary speaker cabinets are a vital part of the classic combo organ voice, and guitarists and other musicians have also used them to infuse iconic tracks with their distinctive depth and rich modulation. Powered by the latest BOSS advancements, the RT-2 distills this expressive spatial effect into a pedalboard-friendly footprint with three sound modes, deep tonal shaping, multiple audio output configurations, and advanced real-time sound control.The most revered rotary speaker designs feature a spinning high-frequency horn (treble rotor) and a woofer that feeds into a rotating drum (bass rotor). Changing rotor speeds between fast and slow creates a steady stream of tonal shifts that players have long used for interesting sonic movement. The RT-2 authentically replicates these complex audio behaviors, coupled with two-way speed control, a Rise/Fall Time switch for adjusting the transition time between speeds, and a colorful indicator that shows the current rotation of the virtual rotors.The versatile RT-2 has a three-position Mode switch for selecting a classic rotary speaker sound or two modern variations developed with custom BOSS tuning. There’s also a Drive knob to add pleasing distortion inspired by the tube amplification circuits in vintage rotary speaker cabinets. Via a rear-panel switch, this dual-function control can be assigned to adjust the volume balance between the treble and bass rotors for different tonal characteristics.Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble Pedal

RT-2 Rotary Ensemble Pedal

PRS Guitars today announced that their renowned 58/15 LT and 85/15 pickups are now available aftermarket from authorized PRS dealers and directly through the PRS West Street East online store.PRS 58/15 LT (“low turn”) pickups are vintage-inspired pickups with exceptional clarity. Designed to capture the sweetness of vintage single coils and the warmth of late 1950’s humbuckers, these pickups are lively and open with focused midrange and balanced treble and bass.PRS 85/15 pickups bring modern and vintage pickup design together to deliver exceptional clarity and extended high and low end. With balanced full-spectrum clarity, PRS 85/15’s are perfect for modern players driving a pedalboard and have enough character to deliver when plugging straight into an amp.The music industry continues to take notice of PRS pickup designs. When describing the 58/15 LT pickups, guitar content creator Sean Daniel recently said, “The balance of PRS pickups is probably my favorite part. They’re warm and bright at the same time … there’s a distinction between the frequency bands that you get with the PRS stuff that is awesome.” Earlier this summer, PRS also introduced new apparel, hats and lifestyle offerings, along with a range of parts now available for individual purchase. The popular PRS Rechargeable Clip-On Headstock Tuner has also been updated to charge via USB-c for more convenience. As always, you can find genuine PRS accessories at any Authorized PRS Dealer and, in the USA, online in the PRS West Street East accessories store.“This summer’s accessory releases include options for everyone from the casual player to pro musicians who use our gear on stages worldwide. We are especially excited to offer our 85/15 and 58/15 LT humbucking pickups for sale as a pair or as individual options,” said PRS Guitars Director of Marketing, Judy Schaefer. PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.