Gear Gods

Here’s Everything You Need From Musician’s Friend 4th of July Sale

Greg Kennelty — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:32:40 +0000

We already talked about the ongoing Sweetwater sale, and now we’re moving on to the Musician’s Friend 4th of July sale! There’s a lotta really solid gear on sale over at Musician’s Friend, all of which I sorted through and came up with a fairly short list of the best stuff.

Though you can also shop whole sale here – there’s a hell of a lot more than just this stuff!

Guitars on Sale

Basses on Sale

Amplifiers on Sale

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The Ibanez ALPHA 7-String Slings Riffs in New Demo

Greg Kennelty — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:32:38 +0000

Ibanez has teamed up with guitarist Andrea Cappellari (Nekomata, Violet Eternal) for a new demo of the space-age-looking Ibanez ALPHA 7-String. This one’s the Nebula Shift finish, but Ibanez also has a Iron Pewter finish available as well.

Get the Ibanez ALPHA 7-string for $1,899 at one of the links below:

Leading the spec sheet is Ibanez’s newly developed Parallel Wizard AS neck. Constructed from five pieces of Maple and Walnut, the neck maintains a consistent 21mm thickness from the first fret all the way to the 12th, while introducing an asymmetrical profile that’s slightly rounder on the bass side. Ibanez says the design promotes a more natural grip for techniques such as sweeping, string skipping and other technically demanding styles.

The neck is paired with a multiscale construction that stretches from 27.2″ on the bass side to 25.5″ on the treble strings. An Ebony fingerboard fitted with 24 Jumbo Stainless Steel frets completes the package.

An American Basswood body features a deeply contoured elbow cut designed to naturally position the picking arm, while a sweeping rear contour angles the guitar upward against the player’s body to improve fretboard visibility and reduce playing fatigue.

Ibanez has also flattened the lower body edge to create a larger contact area when seated, helping stabilize the instrument during extended practice or recording sessions. Completing the package is an innovative three-bolt neck joint.

Electronics come courtesy of a set of Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers, with an Alnico-equipped neck pickup joined by a Ceramic bridge unit.

The active pickup pairing is designed to provide the tight attack and high-output performance modern metal players demand, while an onboard Fishman Voicing switch unlocks a second personality. With the flick of a switch, players can move from Fluence’s signature high-gain active voice to a cleaner, more open sound for expanded tonal versatility.

Then there’s all the hardware. A Mono-Rail G2 bridge provides individual saddles for each string to improve note separation and minimize sympathetic vibration between strings. The bridge also supports both string-through-body and top-loading configurations.

Gotoh MG-T locking tuners ensure fast string changes and reliable tuning stability, while Luminescent side-dot markers improve visibility on dark stages. The instrument ships fitted with D’Addario EXL120 strings, including a .059 low string, and includes a gig bag.

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WTF: Morley and Digitech Stream New Demo of the Wah-ocTo-Fuzz Pedal

Greg Kennelty — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:04:01 +0000

The Wah-ocTo-Fuzz (or WTF) is really good at three things: wah sweeps, big octave sounds, and crunchy fuzz. All at the same time! Unless you’re not into that. Then you can dial it back, as you’ll see in the demo.

Get the Morley and DOD Wah-ocTo-Fuzz at the links below for $259:

The WTF combines Morley’s optical wah technology with a vintage-inspired fuzz circuit and an octave effect based on the classic DOD Octoplus. Each section can be used independently or combined, making the pedal equally suited for subtle tonal tweaks and over-the-top sonic experiments.

The wah section features Morley’s switchless design, meaning there’s no toe switch to engage before using it. Step on the treadle and the effect activates automatically; step off and it bypasses.

For dirt duties, Morley turned to one of its original fuzz circuits from the 1970s. The fuzz section offers a thick, saturated voice with plenty of sustain and midrange presence, while dedicated Level and Intensity controls allow players to dial in everything from a light layer of grit to full-blown fuzz.

The octave circuit draws inspiration from DOD’s long-running Octoplus pedal and includes dedicated controls for octave level, tone, and dry signal blend.

Despite packing three effects into a single enclosure, the WTF maintains a relatively compact footprint. Other features include a built-in buffer for preserving signal integrity across larger pedalboards, a rugged steel chassis, and Morley’s signature glow-in-the-dark treadle.

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First Look: Stephen Carpenter Unveils His New LTD SC-607 Baritone

Greg Kennelty — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:03:41 +0000

ESP has refreshed one of its longest-running signature models for 2026, introducing the LTD SC-607 Baritone in an eye-catching new Magenta finish. Designed in collaboration with Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter, the latest version retains the proven formula that has made the SC-607 a staple.

Get the LTD SC-607 Baritone at one of the links below for $1,899:

Built for the lowest tunings

The SC-607 Baritone is purpose-built for heavy music. Its 27″ baritone scale length provides the increased string tension needed to handle aggressive downtuning while maintaining note definition and tight low-end response.

The LTD SC-607 Baritone further features a three-piece Thin U-style Maple neck, a Macassar Ebony fingerboard with a 400mm radius and 24 extra-jumbo frets, and a Neck-Thru construction that runs through the Mahogany body wings.

The reverse headstock isn’t simply a visual flourish either, either. By increasing string length behind the nut on the lower strings, it also contributes additional tension where extended-range players need it most.

Stephen Carpenter’s Fishman Fluence pickups return

Electronics once again come courtesy of Carpenter’s signature Fishman Fluence SRC 3-Voice humbuckers. The active pickup set offers three distinct voicings, with push-pull controls providing access to alternate sounds without cluttering the control layout.

A master Volume control with push-pull functionality, Tone control and five-way selector switch combine to offer a surprisingly broad tonal range, allowing the guitar to move from articulate cleans to the crushing high-gain tones that have become a hallmark of Carpenter’s playing.

Premium hardware completes the package

The rest of the specification reflects the SC-607’s premium ambitions. A TonePros locking TOM bridge with string-through-body construction enhances sustain and tuning stability, while LTD locking tuners further reinforce reliability for players who spend their time in lower tunings.

Gold hardware provides a striking contrast against the new Magenta finish, giving the guitar a fresh visual identity while maintaining the upscale aesthetic expected from ESP’s Signature Series. The instrument also ships with a deluxe ESP hardshell case.

Get the

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Ernie Ball Music Man, Kramer, Eventide and More: Gear You Gotta Know About This Week 6/26

Greg Kennelty — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:30:38 +0000

Keeping up with new gear is hard, but we got you with our Weekly Gear Roundup! Check out all the new gear we covered this week below and have a great weekend! Also, here are some sales you might wanna check out:

Sweetwater just rolled out their Fourth of July sale and it’s got a lot going on! Check out that whole sale right here, and try not to destroy your bank account.
Guitar Center is also running a Fourth Of July sale, and guess what? It’s also got some pretty sweet stuff in there. Shop that sale right here.
You’re never going to guess what holiday Musician’s Friend is celebrating with their new sale. That’s right – Easter! Alright for real, it’s another Fourth Of July sale. Shop that here.

John Myung Bongo 4

Here’s a twist for you – Dream Theater bassist John Myung just unveiled a new Ernie Ball Music Man signature model, and it’s got four strings. Four! Not six, four. It’s a pretty wild choice given Myung’s history, but it’s also a nice bass. Learn more about that not-six-string-bass right here.

Solar Guitars T1.61FR Assassin

Solar Guitars expanded its Type T lineup with the Solar Guitars T1.61FR Assassin. It’s finished in Carbon Black Matte, has some Red accents throughout, and I want one. Check out the full story on this beast right here!

Kramer 50th Anniversary Models

The new Kramer 50th Anniversary collection brings together six of the brand’s most recognizable models, each finished in a glossy Anniversary Gold colorway and loaded with the shred-friendly appointments. They’re really, really Gold. I love it. Get your Gold on here.

Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2

The new Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 quietly appeared as a pre-order a few weeks back, and now we’ve got a full announcement plus some demo and overview videos! Check all that out right here.

Fender Player Fusion Series

Fender – they’re not just good for lawsuit headlines! They also dropped a new limited-edition Fender Player Fusion Series featuring hot-rodded electronics, streamlined controls, and premium appointments. The range includes a Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision Bass and perhaps most intriguingly, a Jaguar Baritone. Check all that out right here.

IK Multimedia ReSing Doubling

IK Multimedia doubled down with their new ReSing Doubling, a new add-on for its AI-powered ReSing vocal production platform that promises to help create convincing double-tracked and layered vocal performances. See double about that right here.

Solar Guitars Chug Capo

Solar Guitars has expanded their line of Chug pedals with the Chug Capo, a compact digital pitch-shifting pedal designed to do one thing exceptionally well: change your guitar’s tuning very accurately with dramatically reduced latency. Check it out here.

The post Ernie Ball Music Man, Kramer, Eventide and More: Gear You Gotta Know About This Week 6/26 appeared first on Gear Gods.

The Best Deals to Shop Right Now During Sweetwater’s July 4th Sale

Greg Kennelty — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:14:29 +0000

Someone might tell you that the Fourth Of July has something to do with America, but they’re lying. It’s all about those sweet sales, baby! Which is why I’ve combed through the current Sweetwater July 4th Sale to highlight some excellent options.

You can also shop the whole deal here and not trust all my picks below. It’s fine.

Guitar Deals

Bass Deals

Pedal Deals

Plug-In and Software Deals

Studio Gear Deals

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Low Latency Pitch Shifting: Solar Guitars Just Dropped The Chug Capo

Greg Kennelty — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:43:17 +0000

A digital capo with 24 semitone positions

Operation couldn’t be much simpler. Two arrow buttons raise or lower the signal in single-semitone steps, with the onboard display indicating pitches from -12 to +12 semitones. The concept is intentionally linear, mirroring the layout of a guitar fretboard rather than requiring users to navigate multiple modes or hidden functions.

While digital pitch shifting has become increasingly common, Solar Guitars mastermind Ola Englund says the Chug Capo’s biggest advantage lies in its responsiveness. The pedal is set to offer roughly half the latency of many comparable single-function pitch-shifting pedals, helping preserve the natural connection between the player’s picking hand and the resulting sound.

That makes it particularly well suited to modern metal techniques such as fast alternate picking, palm-muted rhythms and tight down-picked riffs, where excessive latency can quickly become distracting. The internal processing has also been optimized to retain the natural voicing of full chords after transposition, minimizing the tonal compromises often associated with digital pitch shifting.

Blend control and favorite presets expand the feature set

Beyond basic transposition, the Chug Capo includes several additional performance features. A Mix control allows players to blend the shifted signal with the original dry tone, opening the door to layered octave textures and creative harmony effects. The pedal also stores a single Favorite preset, which can be recalled directly from the onboard controls or via an optional external non-latching footswitch connected through the dedicated FAV input.

While the external switch isn’t included, the pedal ships with a 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch TS adapter cable, and common options such as the Boss FS-5U and Harley Benton Tap Tempo Switch have already been confirmed as compatible.

And yeah – the Chug Capo has been optimized to preserve chord integrity and minimize latency during rhythm playing. But the company acknowledges that some digital artifacts remain unavoidable when playing lead lines.

The emphasis instead is on delivering the most natural-feeling experience possible for rhythm guitarists, particularly those working in modern metal, where changing tunings between songs has become an everyday necessity.

Get the Chug Capo here from Solar Guitars for $279.

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CASIO’s DIMENSION SHIFTER isn’t just a toy – but it IS the most fun I’ve had playing guitar in years

Trey Xavier — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 22:04:33 +0000

Original ideas in the world of guitar are pretty hard to come by these days. Guitarists are a conservative bunch – innovations tend to go unnoticed, and new ideas get panned as fads.

It makes a certain amount of sense – the guitar is a wonderful instrument even without much between it and your ears. Plugging straight into a good amp is enough of an experience to make most people wanna give up their day jobs. But while that’s where most of us start, anyone who’s played a long time knows that half the fun is finding all the OTHER stuff you can do with it.

Enter the Casio Dimension Shifter ($299.99 street).

I’ve played the guitar for 30 years as of 2026, and as the Gear God, 12 of those years have been trying every piece of guitar-related gear that manufacturers can throw at me. And there’s been plenty of good stuff – but until now, none that made me laugh out loud with glee the first time I tried it.

So what is it? It’s literally nothing more than an expression controller that operates like a B-bender. Just like the expression pedal on your board you might use to control some parameters in your modeler, all it does is send expression information. The difference is that it attaches to your strap, and rather that operating it with your foot, you pull down on the guitar.

When I saw it at NAMM this year, I was stunned. It’s such a simple idea that I can’t believe no one thought of it before. The guitar is one of the most expressive instruments that exists – and that’s even without whammy bars and slides, volume pedals and knobs, B- and G-benders, Sustainiac pickups or Ebows. But even all of that can be a bit limited – what if you wanted to have realtime control over the expression of effects, without being at your pedalboard?

The real name of the game here is fun – sure, you can use an expression pedal to do pretty much the same thing, but it just isn’t as much fun. The ability to control an effect right on the guitar itself without it interrupting your playing makes for a way more seamless and enjoyable experience.

When testing the device, I used it for a few different basic effects – pitch/whammy, reverb, and delay. I mostly used it with modeler plugins in my computer, but because of how it’s designed, it’s actually easier to use it with analog effects. Setting it to a +1 or +2 octave shift gives instant Tom Morello vibes, and combining that with the mix control on a shimmer reverb sent me blasting into space.

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The setup is pretty simple – there’s a battery-powered wireless transmitter that goes between your strap and your guitar, which sends signal to the receiver via Bluetooth, and then a TRS cable goes from the receiver to the expression input of the device you want to control. In order to control effects in the computer, I also needed a USB MIDI device (in my case a Nektar Pacer) to convert it to a digital signal that the modeler can use. I happened to already have this, but if you’re intending to use the Dimension Shifter to control effects in your computer you’ll need something with this function.

I was a little skeptical of the Bluetooth connection, but it connected immediately and worked with no noticeable latency (the specs list it at 20ms, which is negligible at worst, and I didn’t feel any).

There are several ways to adjust how the Dimension Shifter feels and operates. There’s a tension adjustment that changes how tight the spring mechanism feels (which makes it easier or harder to pull down on), a Minimum Value knob on the receiver so you can customize what values get sent, an Invert button on the transmitter that allows you to invert the value of the expression information being sent (for example, if you’re using it to pitch your signal up an octave, it would go down instead), and a Hold control (that’s what the footswitch does AND there’s a button on the strap unit, in case you’re not at your board) to freeze the effect at any level. There’s also a Switch mode that allows you to turn an effect on and off rather than sending continuous expression control.

All of this adds massive functionality (emphasis on the fun) to the device, and it really takes no time to figure out what settings are gonna work best for you.

I found myself excited to try it on different effects because it opened doors I never considered exploring before. The ability to have that expression without being locked down to my pedalboard to use it has me thinking of a hundred different ways I can use it to play with controls in real time, and for the first time in a long time, I’m having fun like a kid while playing guitar.

You can get your own Dimension Shifter and shift yourself to a dimension of pure joy for $299.99 right here.

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Demo Time: Rodney Dudum Goes Prog on the LTD TH-400

Greg Kennelty — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:25:53 +0000

Rodney Dudum of Sea In The Sky is here to show you the heaviness capabilities of the LTD TH-400. Not that you needed to be convinced given everything ESP and LTD has ever done, but hey – it’s a good excuse to watch a great player rip some sweet riffs.

Get the LTD TH-400 here: Sweetwater | Guitar Center | Musician’s Friend

Designed with metal and hard rock players firmly in mind, the LTD TH-400 combines aggressive styling, active electronics and a player-focused specification sheet that prioritizes speed, comfort and reliability. While its silhouette may trace its roots back to one of the most iconic electric guitar designs ever created, nearly every aspect of the instrument has been optimized for contemporary high-gain playing.

One of the TH-400’s standout appointments is its three-piece Roasted Maple neck, which has been treated for enhanced stability and durability. ESP pairs the neck with its popular Thin U profile for some swift movements, while a slim carve is designed to be comfortable for extended sessions on stage or in the studio. The neck is topped with a Rosewood fingerboard featuring a flat 13.77″ radius and 24 extra-jumbo frets.

For pickups, ESP has turned to one of the most battle-tested pickup combinations in heavy music to power the TH-400 – an EMG 81 in the bridge position and an EMG 85 in the neck. The ceramic-loaded EMG 81 delivers the tight low end, aggressive attack and cutting articulation, while the Alnico V-equipped EMG 85 offers a warmer and fuller response.

The TH-400’s hardware package is equally focused on performance. A string-through-body LTD fixed bridge is employed to maximize sustain and resonance while providing a stable platform for aggressive picking and alternate tunings.

LTD locking tuners further reinforce that reliability, helping the guitar maintain pitch consistency throughout demanding performances and lengthy recording sessions.

Get the LTD TH-400 for $899 at one of the links below:

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Eventide Officially Unveils the H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 With 74+ Algorithms and 1,000 Presets

Greg Kennelty — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:36:30 +0000

The new Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 quietly appeared as a pre-order a few weeks back, and now we’ve got a full announcement plus some demo and overview videos! Spoiler – it’s exactly as cool as I thought it was going to be.

Get the Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2: Sweetwater | Guitar Center | Musician’s Friend | American Musical Supply

The biggest selling point of the Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 is its massive effects library. The pedal ships with more than 74 algorithms drawn from the complete H90 and H9 Max collections, alongside over 1,000 factory presets – delays, reverbs, and modulation effects to pitch shifting, granular processing, synth sounds, vocal effects, looping, and multi-FX combinations.

Pitch processing remains at the core of the H9 Harmonizer Gen 2, and Eventide has upgraded the platform with its SIFT polyphonic pitch-shifting technology. Unlike traditional pitch shifters that can struggle with complex chords, SIFT is designed to track multiple notes simultaneously.

Eventide has also overhauled the pedal’s workflow and user interface. A larger 2.5″ display is paired with three dedicated Quick Knobs and button-pad controls, while the operating system is organized around four core modes: Select, Perform, Presets, and Parameters.

For live performers, the new Perform mode introduces customizable footswitch behavior, while HotSwitch and HotKnob macro controls allow multiple parameters to be assigned for real-time manipulation. Combined with dedicated Bank navigation and playlist management tools, the H9 Gen 2 is designed to allow fairly easy navigation.

Players who prefer editing on a larger screen can connect the pedal to Eventide Control via USB-C. The companion software allows users to manage presets, configure MIDI mappings, update firmware, import and export user lists, and adjust routing settings. Eventide also plans to add Bluetooth support for wireless connectivity with Mac and iPad devices in a future update.

Live players will also benefit from seamless effects spillover between presets, allowing delay repeats and reverb tails to continue naturally during patch changes. Flexible routing options, including Wet/Dry and Pre/Post configurations, further expand the pedal’s usefulness in both live and studio applications. Eventide has also included a built-in tuner, reducing the need for additional pedalboard real estate.

Beyond guitar and instrument processing, Eventide has expanded the platform’s vocal capabilities through its optional Harmonizer+ Vocal Suite. When paired with the company’s MixingLink preamp (sold separately), users gain access to dedicated vocal harmonies, pitch processing, and additional vocal-focused effects.

Get the Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 for $599 at the links below:

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