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Gallery: Riot Fest 2015

Chicago’s other 3-day festival hosts an eclectic group of artists that span all of pop music.

Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock

The fiery frontman played a good chunk of the festival’s last set Sunday night with his Wicks Custom 6-string that has a solid mahogany body, a five-piece maple neck, a “Tree of Life” inlay on the pau ferro fretboard, a custom-made Calaham trem, and Wolftone pickups.

An ’80s legend returns in a modern stompbox that lives up to the hype.

A well-designed recreation of one of the most classic tone tools of the ’80s. Sounds exactly like the tones you know from the original. Looks very cool.

If you don’t like ’80s sounds, this isn’t for you.

$229

MXR Rockman X100

jimdunlop.com

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Was Tom Scholz’s Rockman the high-water mark of guitar-tone convenience? The very fact that this headphone amp, intended primarily as a consumer-grade practice tool, ended up on some of the biggest rock records of the ’80s definitely makes a case. And much like Sony’s Walkman revolutionized the personal listening experience, it’s easy to argue the Rockman line of headphone amps did the same for guitarists.

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Experience the pinnacle of Taylor playing comfort and tone with the Builder’s Edition 514ce, 514ce Kona Burst, and 524ce. These models feature solid Shamel ash back and sides, uniquely voiced V-Class bracing, Gotoh 510 tuners, ES2 electronics, and a Deluxe Hardshell Case.

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AI, which generated this image in seconds, can obviously do amazing things. But can it actually replace human creativity?

Technology has always disrupted the music biz, but we’ve never seen anything like this.

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Our columnist’s bass, built by Anders Mattisson.

Would your instrumental preconceptions hold up if you don a blindfold and take them for a test drive?

I used to think that stereotypes and preconceived notions about what is right and wrong when it comes to bass were things that other people dealt with—not me. I was past all that. Unfazed by opinion, immune to classification. Or so I thought, tucked away in my jazz-hermit-like existence.

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