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GALLERY: SXSW Gear Expo 2015

This year's festival had plenty of axes, amps, and stomps for gearheads to dig into.

Austin Hot Mods

A local crew of modders showed off their tweaking chops as they brought a board of run-of-the-mill, off-the-shelf stompboxes from familiar brands. The catch was that they were all hot-rodded and tweaked for even more power and tone-shaping abilities. They changed out key elements and warped others to give the stock pedals a new, fantastically huge sound. By taking out the cheaply produced stock parts and replacing them with better quality partsā€”and sometimes parts of differing electronic valuesā€”Austin Hot Mods provided a whole new tonal palette and functionality to old pedals.
austinhotmods.com

Austinā€™s biggest music festival has added auxiliary showcases and attractions since its inception in 1988. Starting in 1994 they included a SXSW Film and Multimedia Conferenceā€”the following year it was divided into two separate eventsā€”and since then theyā€™ve added comedy and technology components. In 2010, SXSW added a Gear Expo for gearheads to swarm the halls and try out new toys from industry stalwarts like PRS and Seymour Duncan to the local companies like Moniker Guitars and Square Amps.

Balance: producer, hip-hop artist, movie sound designer, modular synth player, and member of Jogja Hip Hop Foundation.

While the pedal builders at Sehat Effectors are in the game for their love of the 6-string, theyā€™ve since begun exploring what effects pedals mean to other kinds of instrumentalists.

This time, Iā€™d like to share my perspective as a pedal builder on how our effects pedalsā€”originally crafted with guitarists in mindā€”are experiencing an exciting evolution in use. Our customer base spans around the globe, and as it turns out, many of them arenā€™t guitarists. Instead, our pedals are finding their way into the hands of non-guitarist musicians like DJs, synth players, movie sound directors, and even drummers. Yes, a drummer once used one of my fuzz pedals in a drum miking setupā€”quite an extreme yet bold experiment! This made me wonder: How did such a phenomenon come about?

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The P-90 Sound: Vintage Meets Modern with Reverend and Rock N Roll Relics
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PG contributor Tom Butwin dives into the magic of P90 pickups with three killer guitars: the Reverend Jetstream 390, Rock & Roll Relics Starfighter, and Reverend Contender 290. From vintage vibes to modern upgrades, explore the tones that make the P90 unique!
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Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small has been a lifetime devotee and thrash-metal expert, so we invited him to help us break down what makes Slayer so great.

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Pearl Jam announces U.S. tour dates for April and May 2025 in support of their album Dark Matter.

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