Guitar

France's Wild Customs has created a $10k special-edition guitar based on a 1934 Ford Coupe hot rod owned by legendary ZZ Top frontman Billy F Gibbons, and featuring the company's carousel pickup system rocking the bearded one's signature pickup set.

Best known for its boxy effects pedals for guitar and bass, Boss also makes amplifiers, wireless systems, rhythm machines, and a bunch of accessories. And now the company has made its own guitar, which comes with a built-in synth and Bluetooth.

A new version of Roland's hugely popular portable combo amp first introduced in 2007 has been announced. The Cube Street II now wears a Boss logo on the grille, comes with twice the output oomph and has had a few pounds shaved off its weight.

Paul Reed Smith Guitars has tapped into the Woodstock spirit for two new rig additions to its HXDA family, the PRS HX100 and HX50 amplifiers, which are inspired by a newly documented Jimi Hendrix touring amp circuit.

Lava Music's Me 2 pushes the acoustic guitar into uncharted waters, with a strong, lightweight carbon fiber body, and a built-in body-shaking speaker with reverb, chorus and delay effects. It's an ultra-portable travel axe with tricks up its sleeve.

Last year, we featured an interesting prototype electric six string from Fern Guitars that allowed players to install pickup modules in a host body, without having to break out the soldering iron. Now the Phoenix guitar has launched on Kickstarter.

There have been a number of attempts to add digital sound processing tech to analog guitars, including the Fusion and Acoustasonic Jazzmaster. The latest hybrid shredder comes from Shenzhen's Mooer Audio in the shape of the GTRS 800 Series.

Late last year, we caught up with accomplished Italian guitar player Luca Stricagnoli to take a closer look at his novel slide guitar attachment prototype. Now the Reversed Slide Neck has undergone some modification ahead of upcoming production.

Learning to play the guitar is hard, and we've seen a number of solutions leveraging digital smarts to help kickstart the process. The latest is a funky X-wing smart guitar that was designed to open up playing to the disability community too.

Last month, Fender launched its third Acoustasonic hybrid acoustic, and we got to play with the Jazzmaster and interview the company's R&D chief. Now Master Builder Ron Thorn has given the Custom Shop treatment to the guitar, and it's a beaut.

Pearl Jam's Mike McCready is perhaps most associated with a Fender Stratocaster, and his vintage '59 model is his most prized. So it was this instrument that was chosen for a very limited Custom Shop replica run. But not all was as it seemed.

Fender conceived the Acoustasonic as the "modern acoustic" guitar. Slim, lightweight and super easy to play, it's a digital twist on a familiar organic form. We spoke to Fender's VP of R&D about how this "transitional" guitar works and what it means.