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Anthrax and Helmet guitarist Frank Bello launches a signature bass with Charvel featuring a poplar body paired to a bolt-on maple neck. The Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV features a poplar body paired to a bolt-on maple neck with rock-solid graphite-reinforcement rods to withstand extreme climate changes, a heel-mount truss rod adjustment wheel for pain-free neck relief tweaks. Engineered to deliver unrivaled playability, the 12”-16” compound radius maple fingerboard with rolled edges and 20 jumbo frets allows for effortlessly fast playing and comfortable chording and bending.New York alternative favorites Helmet, is known for his dynamic, energetic stage presence and inventive bass style. Primed to thrash, the Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV features a poplar body paired to a bolt-on maple neck with rock-solid graphite-reinforcement rods to withstand extreme climate changes and a heel-mount truss rod adjustment wheel for pain-free neck relief tweaks. Engineered to deliver unrivaled playability, the 12”-16” compound radius maple fingerboard with rolled edges, 20 jumbo frets and black block inlays allows for effortlessly fast playing and comfortable chording and bending. A set of EMG Frank Bello Signature P/J pickups serves up warmth and low-end punch, along with tight mids and dynamic high-end. The no-nonsense control layout consists of individual volume knobs for the bridge and middle pickups. A Charvel HiMass bridge, Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut and open-gear tuners combine for stellar tuning stability with improved note punch and sustain. Available in Gloss Black with mirror pickguard and chrome hardware.Features Poplar Body Bolt-on Maple Neck with Graphite Reinforcement 12″-16″ Compound Radius Maple Fingerboard with Rolled Edges and 22 Jumbo Frets Black Block Inlays Graph Tech TUSQ XL NutEMG Frank Bello Signature P/J Pickup Set Dual Volume KnobsCharvel HiMass Bridge Open Gear Tuners Mirror Pickguard Heel-Mount Truss Rod Adjustment Wheel Introducing the Frank Bello Signature Charvel Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IVCharvel Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV – Black

WINGER’s seventh studio album is currently being mixed for a 2023 release.
Earlier today, WINGER frontman Kip Winger shared a photo of him and a mixing engineer in the studio, and he included the following message: “Mixing #WingerVII!”
WINGER’s next LP will be the follow-up to 2014’s “Better Days Co…

Former ROB ZOMBIE and MARILYN MANSON guitarist John 5 has uploaded a video of him playing along to “Primal Scream”, a song from MÖTLEY CRÜE’s 1991 greatest-hits compilation “Decade Of Decadence 81-91”. The 52-year-old rocker captioned the clip: “OK Kids it’s another episode of Motley Mondays. Here’s…

In a new interview with Australia’s Heavy, guitarist/vocalist Joseph Duplantier of French metallers GOJIRA was asked if there are plans for him and his bandmates to begin work on the follow-up to last year’s “Fortitude” album. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Yeah, that would be a…

NIGHTWISH has once again postponed its previously announced Asian tour. The trek was called off less than a month after NIGHTWISH singer Floor Jansen revealed that she was “cancer free” after recently undergoing surgery to have a tumor removed following a breast cancer diagnosis.
Earlier today, the…

On November 30, EVANESCENCE’s “Fallen” album was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) for sales and streams of ten million units in the United States.
Led by the smash single “Bring Me To Life”, which also appeared on the soundtrack to the movie “Daredevil”, “Fal…

On November 30, GHOST’s “Mary On A Cross” single was certified gold by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) for accumulating 500,000 certified units.
According to the RIAA, one equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams.
“…

Fan-filmed video footage of Geoff Tate’s December 4 performance at Arcada Theatre in Saint Charles, Illinois can be seen below (courtesy of YouTube channel MusicJunkie422). The show saw Tate playing many of QUEENSRŸCHE’s biggest songs, including early classic “Queen Of The Reich”, which originally a…

By most accounts, the digital effects revolution began almost 50 years ago, when Eventide created the H910 Harmonizer. Early digital denizens included guitar players Eddie Van Halen and Frank Zappa, who used the harmonizer’s continuously variable pitch shifting to great effect in their recorded and live work. While extraordinarily clever, the earliest digital effects were absolutely primitive compared to the types of digital signal processors on the market today. That H910 harmonizer cost the equivalent of $7,500 when released, and equally capable effects can currently be had at about a twentieth of the cost, bringing digital effects to the feet of the masses, and their processing superpowers to our pedalboards.At this point, the amount of words written in the analog versus digital debate likely rivals the number of celestial bodies in our galactic neighborhood. Discussing the chewiness of analog mids relative to the number of Big Muff variants your modeler offers is a surprisingly well-trod path, but how did we get from the revolution of the ’70s to the current digital regime?The first digital effects were not like the highly integrated DSP (digital signal processing) pedals of today. Those pioneering engineers did not have the benefit of many of the building-block integrated circuits that have since proliferated the electronic component marketplace. A quick search for high-fidelity analog-to-digital converters yielded well over one thousand results. Back in the digital age’s infancy, none of these monolithic options existed. Designers had to roll their own ADCs using discrete components. What can be currently done with one chip would have taken upwards of 100 times more components to accomplish. This DIY ethos actually created some interesting artifacts that now make vintage digital effects coveted. For instance, the preamp of Lexicon’s classic PCM 42 digital delay had a compression and limiting circuit so that your signal would not overrun its primordial discrete ADC. That preamp became part of the “thing” that made people love the unit.At this point, the amount of words written in the analog versus digital debate likely rivals the number of celestial bodies in our galactic neighborhood.It wasn’t until the Boss DD-3 that engineers were able to produce a commercial digital signal processor in a compact pedal. The DD-3 benefitted from the fact that Roland/Boss had created an application-specific integrated circuit for use in their SDE-3000 rack mount delay and other products. Making a custom integrated circuit was (and still is) extraordinarily expensive, but Roland used its considerable buying power to condense many of the required digital delay functions onto a single piece of silicon. Boss designers shoehorned the chip into one of their compact pedal enclosures, added some analog signal conditioning, sprinkled in some RAM, and the DD-3 was born. Even the DD-3’s level of integration was bound to be bested, though. By 2006, a company called Spin Semiconductor developed an affordable DSP chip that contained practically everything required for effects processing, resulting in a small, easy-to-use platform that has facilitated a boutique DSP effects explosion.Many of these effects are still a relatively black-box affair. Whatever the manufacturer programmed the effect to do is all that it will ever do. The first digital effects were immutable, but decades ago, the industry started using MIDI as a means of off-loading and on-loading sounds and programs in effects processors and synth modules. These days, with the ubiquity of the personal computer and USB, everyone has a device and a means to upload new features to their suitably equipped gear. The number of guitar players that know how to update firmware is approaching the number that can actually read music. Firmware makes up the programs that govern how your device behaves, and, like software, it can come with bugs. New pedal releases sometimes have broken features due to latent firmware bugs. Analog designs can suffer from design shortcomings, too, but their digital brethren can at least be updated. Moreover, designers like those from Line 6 and Fractal not only use the flexibility of firmware to fix broken things but to add features that did not exist before, adding value to a product you already own.Digital effects still feel very new to the scene, but in reality, they are only about a decade younger than the first analog guitar effect ever made. While the amount of development they’ve had for over half a century is incredible, it is still possible to see the thread that connects the late, great effects of the 20th century to the latest and greatest of the 21st.