It’s the one thing all guitarists and bassists use, but until relatively recently many players paid little heed to its effects on our tone. Here we detail the specs, materials, and other factors to consider when buying your next instrument or effects patch cables.
If you’re like most guitarists and bassists, you probably started hoarding guitar cables pretty early on in your playing career. For decades now—probably since the dawn of electric guitar—many a basement jam has ended in cable-spaghetti chaos. Back in the day, you’d get home from the jam and later realize that the 10-foot Switchcraft you’d bought last month had somehow shape-shifted into an old Kordex Audible Purity, or vice versa. Like guitar picks, cables tended to change hands pretty easily because none of us really gave any consideration to how they sounded—all that mattered was that they worked. And the more you had, the better.
Back in the ’80s, we carried around knapsacks full of them—thick ones, thin ones, molded ones, coiled ones, long ones, short ones, and even the cheap Radio Shack knockoffs that at times seemed like they might have been more useful as shoelaces. Every once in a while, someone would splurge for a high-end professional model and prattle on for hours about how much cooler and deeper it made everything sound. The poor sap would bring it to rehearsal, plug in his Strat, crank it up and shout, “Hear that?” We’d just look at each other and shrug, knowing that eventually, that very same cable would make the knapsack rounds, too.
Slowly but surely though, over the last couple of decades, these attitudes have changed. Some attribute it to the advent of digital recording: As software grew more adept at delivering pristine, high-resolution audio, weak links in the signal chain began to stand out, creating a demand for instrument cables that were better at suppressing triboelectric noise (aka “handling noise”—clicks and pops, mostly) but that also didn’t EQ the sound of the guitar (a phenomenon that basically comes down to a cable’s capacitance, which we’ll get into in a minute). Meanwhile, as competition among cable manufacturers picked up and new companies joined the fray, design engineers started to dig more into research and analysis, all in a concerted effort to “build a better cable.”
As Jim D’Addario recalls, after D’Addario & Co. acquired the Planet Waves line in 1998, the focus was on problem solving—specifically, signal loss and degradation, handling noise, and connection failures. “We started measuring everything, because we wanted to find out what was there,” he says. “And we really didn’t play into EQ-ing the tone of your guitar before it hits your first pedal or your amplifier. If you’ve got great-sounding strings with a good pickup and a good cable, the signal should be pure and not doctored-up by pieces of equipment in the chain. When you get to your effects and your amplifier, that’s where you tailor your sound.”
These days, it no longer makes sense to consider your guitar cables as mere accessories. Materials, manufacturing processes, and design specs have evolved to such a degree that many seasoned axe-slingers swear they can hear—or at the very least detect—noticeable differences in signal response, transient harmonics, and dynamic range. Elite players have always endorsed specific brands because they heard something that appealed to them, but now more than ever, companies rely on constant feedback from their endorsees—and of course, their regular customers—in an effort to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.
For bassists and guitarists, it’s a great time to shop and experiment. The big names like Whirlwind, Planet Waves, George L’s, Hosa Technology (and its subsidiary, Zaolla Silverline), Mogami, and more have rolled out new cable lines or introduced significant upgrades in the past year, while young companies and recent mergers like Lava Cable, RapcoHorizon, and the Austin-based upstart Asterope continue to keep the big boys on their toes. We’d need a book-length study to get into an exhaustive roundup of what’s out there, but there are some key characteristics to look and listen for when choosing a solid and dependable cable in today’s market.
1. George L’s .225 Prepackaged 10' Cables ($38 street). 2. Mogami Platinum 12' Cable ($110 street). 3. Lava Cable Ultramafi c 12' Cable ($92 street)
The Capacitance Wars and
the “Sweet Spot”
Capacitance, measured in picofarads (pF),
began emerging as a buzzword in the late
’90s, and rightly so. It’s probably the single
most influential property that affects the
sound of a cable. Bill Lawrence—who
began designing pickups and guitars
for the likes of Fender, Gibson, Peavey,
and others in the 1950s, and who pioneered
solderless cables—explains why.
“The higher the capacitance of a cable,
the less highs reach the amplifier. High-capacitance
cables shift the resonance
towards the lower frequencies, which
dramatically alters tone. For example, Jimi
Hendrix used a coiled cord with 3,000
pF [of capacitance]. This was the secret of
Jimi’s tone: Shifting the resonance frequency
below 2,000 Hz on his Strats has a similar
effect to a midrange boost. When he
recorded and needed a typical Strat sound
for some tracks, Jimi switched to a short,
low-capacitance cable.” (This also brings up
a valuable corollary: The longer the cable,
the greater the capacitance—which is why
shorter cables always sound brighter.)
Among most manufacturers today, the consensus “sweet spot” for capacitance is between 20 and 30 pF per foot—a fraction of what Hendrix and his contemporaries had to wrangle. The reasoning comes from years of measurement, customer feedback, and plain old trial-and-error. “As I’ve designed my own cables, I’ve found that it’s really a balancing act,” says Lava Cable founder and CEO Mark Stoddard. “If you think of your guitar cable as a pipe—the lower the capacitance, the bigger the pipe—two things happen if you go too low: Your highs are out there longer, so the note won’t drop off in time and the guitar will sound shrill to most people. The other risk—and I learned this the hard way—is that the cable tends to be more microphonic. That’s literally because you can hear more.”
George Lewis, who founded George L’s in the ’70s and is widely credited with bringing the first low-cap, high-end guitar cables to market, apparently favored the lower (and thus brighter-sounding) end of the sweet spot. The company’s most prominent endorsee is Eric Johnson, whose crystalline clean tone seems naturally geared for the upper-mid accent that’s a signature of, for example, the George L’s .225 line of cable—a slightly heftier cable, in terms of weight and thickness, than the .155, which is sold as part of the company’s custom effects kit. (With solderless connections growing in popularity, it’s easier than ever for players to cut and assemble their own patch cables.) George L’s also sells bulk cable by the foot—another innovation that more companies are adopting.
Hosa Technology’s Elite Series model hovers around 21 pF, which theoretically places it in the sonic ballpark of George L’s. The same holds true for Mogami’s Platinum Series, but as Mogami cable is sometimes considered the Cadillac (or perhaps more aptly, the Lexus LFA) of premium guitar cables, similarities start to diverge with the pF rating. Hosa’s Elite can claim equal reductions in handling noise and even similar connectors made by Neutrik, but Mogami’s large-diameter cable is made with Neutrik’s Silent Plug, which cuts the signal out completely when changing instruments. There’s a clear aura of luxury to any Mogami product. However, at twice the price of some of its competitors, whether the high-end engineering and add-ons translate to noticeable differences in sound (more on this below) is in the ear of the beholder.
4. Planet Waves AmericanStage
Instrument
Cable 10’ ($19 street).
5. Whirlwind Leader Standard
L18R ($28 street).
6. Hosa Elite Guitar Cable
($44–$85 list).
Further up the capacitance ladder, the affordable Planet Waves American Stage cable targets a very specific 28 pF range. As a matter of philosophy, Jim D’Addario doesn’t see the need to go overboard with vastly different sonic flavors. “If you look back at the history of some of our competitors, they might have had a ‘lead guitar’ model and a ‘jazz’ model and whatever else, and essentially all they did was doctor the EQ by building different levels of capacitance into the cable and attenuating the highs. Do you really need to buy two $60 cables with different sounds when you can just change the tone on your amp? That’s something we wanted to address right from the beginning.”
Over at Lava Cable, Stoddard agrees in principle with this approach, at least as far as capacitance is concerned. To that end, Lava Ultramafic premium cable is rated at 25 pF and made with a silver-plated copper conductor at a slightly larger-than-normal 18 gauge, which Stoddard discovered gives the cable a “punchier” sound. But he’s also keenly aware that customer tastes can be wide-ranging and eclectic, and he tries to accommodate them whenever feasible.
“One guy may not like what another guy thinks is the bomb,” he explains, “but you still can recommend things. For example, coils are great for Fender amps, because Fenders are bright, and a 20-foot coil is equivalent to about a 30-foot cable in terms of accumulated capacitance, which makes the amp sound a little darker and more musical. Greg Koch has been using our coils for quite some time, and [Nashville whiz kid] Daniel Donato loves them.”
7. RapcoHorizon G5S Professional 20' ($29 street).
8. Asterope 15' ($149 street)
Along those lines, RapcoHorizon G5S Professional cable is an affordable 18-gauge model rated at 45 pF, so it falls into the darker end of the sonic spectrum. That said, the prevailing school of thought about higher- capacitance cables, as Bill Lawrence notes in his Hendrix example, is that they’re better suited for the rigors of live performance. This is especially true when considering the usual noisy ambience of a crowded venue, where the sonic nuances of low-capacitance premium cables tends to get lost.
In fact, this is exactly what Whirlwind’s Al Keltz told PG in 2008, but not because he believed such low-cap cables necessarily merited their premium price. “I agree that cables can and do have some effect on frequency response,” he said, partly in defense of the company’s stalwart Leader series, which to this day is a staple of rugged dependability on the road, “but unless the cable capacitance is extremely high, the effect will be subtle. These differences also become much less noticeable when you fire up the whole band and all sorts of sounds start interacting with each other onstage due to room resonances and comb filtering.”
This throws open the floor to all sorts of opinions about whether incremental changes in capacitance really can be heard—a discussion that gets even more potentially delicious when a new company like Asterope steps to the fore with what it maintains is a disruptive technology. “We want to create emotional experiences for artists and listeners,” says president and CEO Dariush Rad, “and help them deliver signals that are providing obvious and clear advances in harmonics and sonic characteristics—bandwidth, transient response, spectral balance—all these things that are very real and at the critical heart of making music. We know there are skeptics, but you can hear it and literally feel it with this technology. That’s what I want to share with every player I know.”
A respected record producer and engineer himself, Rad waxes almost poetic in his commitment to Asterope’s premium Pro Artist line, for example. Thus far, the company has kept its design specs very close to the vest, but the glowing praise from guitarists who endorse the cable—including David Grissom, Lance Keltner, and Kenny Vaughan (each a musician’s musician among Austin and Nashville cognoscenti)—suggests perhaps Asterope really is on to something different.
Materially Speaking
Once you get past capacitance, opinions
begin to deviate wildly about other aspects
of a cable’s design that might affect a guitar’s
signal characteristics. Some insist the
pure conductivity of the metals used to
make the 1/4" connectors plays a role in the
sound. Others get into a soldered vs. solderless
standoff, where a cold weld or a gas-tight
crimp might be the only acceptable
alternative to a good old-fashioned solder.
And still others would rather hang from a
ledge by their fingernails than admit that a
standard cable sounds the same no matter
which end you plug into the guitar.
One thing we can be sure about: Whether a cable is made with oxygen-free copper (OFC) or electrolytic-tough-pitch (ETP) “common” copper, it won’t help you sound like Eddie Van Halen. But a case can be made for high-quality materials having some influence on the sound, however minute, especially when considering conductivity.
“Whenever you increase the conductivity of the cable and lower its resistance, it typically sounds a little bit better,” Lava’s Stoddard asserts. “It’s not a whole lot, but it’s there.” He points to his Ultramafic cable, which is made with custom-shopped plugs from G&H (one of the main suppliers of parts, along with Neutrik, to American cable manufacturers). “The plugs have a silver core,” he explains, “so we literally replace about four inches of brass with silver, which is higher in conductivity and lower in resistance.”
Hosa Technology vouches for its premium Zaolla Silverline cables with a similar assertion, albeit with more detail. “While it is true that silver is superior to copper as a pure conductor of electricity, this is not to say that silver alone is suitable for every application. If it was that easy, we could simply replace copper with silver and be done with it! Low-level analog audio signals benefit from the MF [midrange frequency] boost, or ‘warmth,’ associated with copper. Thus, all Zaolla Silverline instrument cables feature a solid-silver center conductor and an enamel-coated, stranded-copper ancillary conductor in a unique hybrid configuration for the best of both worlds.” To some players, that complex explanation might sound a bit hard to prove, but then again that’s not exactly a new situation in guitardom. As with everything else in “the relentless pursuit of tone,” the only way to know for certain whether certain bits of minutia will make a difference in your sound is to test-drive a product yourself.
Of course, let’s not forget that quality parts and craftsmanship should also extend the life of the cable—and address long-standing design flaws whenever possible. Jim D’Addario points to one small innovation with the American Stage cable that was engineered as a solution to the wide variation in instrument jacks that often results in loose connections. “The tip of the plug is called a GeoTip, because the geometry of it is completely different,” he says. Basically, thanks to a slightly flattened bulb and an elongated shield, the newly designed tip enables a more secure connection with the positive flange of just about any jack, old or new. “It’s the kind of detail that looks like nothing, but we put hundreds of hours into designing and testing that sucker so we can cover enough of all the variations, and come up with a better connection for everybody. It’s very similar to putting a seat belt on [laughs]. When you here that clunk, it just goes in and you know it’s gonna stay there.”
In the End, Trust Your Ears
With so many choices at your disposal, it’s
easy to get overwhelmed when looking for
1/4" instrument and patch cables. But the
main thing to keep in mind is that a cable is
an integral part of your signal path, and that—just with everything else in the chain from
your instrument to your amp—you should
follow what you hear. No matter what your
philosophy about cables—if you like them flat
and uncolored, or with enough accumulated
capacitance to coil a python—just keep your
ears open, and you’ll find one that fits your
sound, your playing style, and your budget.
“To strip it down to the basics, signal
matters,” Rad says. “You’re spending a
lifetime honing your craft, and you’re
spending thousands of dollars on your rig,
so don’t underestimate how critical your
signal path is. We should be cradling that
like a baby, because that’s where all the
data is, y’know?”
And once you’ve got a handle on the data, feel free to take that baby out for a stroll. “Guitar players have freaky ears,” Stoddard quips. “We’re constantly tweaking sound, whether it’s a pedal or an amp or a guitar, and I think most of us have a sound in our head that we’re after. Everyone’s got something that they like, and your cable is an integral part of that. There are tone freaks out there who will take a brand new cable, no matter what kind it is, and they’ll plug it in back and forth, in two different directions over and over again, until they find the direction they think sounds best, and then they’ll mark it!
“What I still believe to this day, though, is if you find the cable you really like and that works in your rig, it opens up more tonal range in your amp and gives you more depth to work with. That’s the key lesson I’ve learned. If you do your research and play with a few cables and find that one you like, you literally have more room. I’m not a shredder, but I’m a digger, and if I’m digging in, I want to feel that note. I want to hear it freakin’ scream! A good cable can make a difference. It can help that note sustain better, and that’s not snake oil.”
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This story’s author played this Belltone B-Classic 3 and found its neck instantly appealing, the tremolo capable of taking abuse and staying in tune, and the Filter’Tron pickups possessed of hi-fi clarity. Also, the sky burst metallic finish is pure eye candy.
Custom designing an instrument and its appointments from a menu of options makes ordering a new axe easy. Four manufacturers share their process.
It’s never been easier for any player to get a guitar made to their liking, and without being an expert, or even an educated amateur in wood, wiring, and other aspects of lutherie. Sure, you can find a builder who will spec out a guitar for you from tree to neck radius to electronics, but for most of us, we’re looking for something easier, less costly, and, often, more familiar.
That’s where guitar-by-menu comes in. Think of it as Build–A-Bear for guitar players, but louder and with cooler options, like a coral pink sparkle finish or a trapeze tailpiece. A coterie of manufacturers offers such services, some with online pull-down menus that cover everything from pickups to, well, all that goes into a guitar. And the advantage here is that no particular expertise other than knowing what you love to play and why you love to play it is required. You dig a Tele or a Jazzmaster or an SG or a Firebird from a certain era, but want a specific bridge or pickup combination, a ’50s or late-’60s neck, a finish not available in production models? No problem. Or maybe you crave something a tad more distinctive, with a non-traditional body shape, no headstock, and a finish that draws from the color palette of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. All you gotta do is ask … or, rather, pick, click, order, or email, perhaps with a phone call to confirm the details.
We spoke to a clutch of large and smaller guitar companies—Belltone, Kiesel, Fender, and Gibson—to see how they do it.
The Belltone Way
“I was always the guy who had to tweak the guitar no matter what it was,” says Belltone founder Steve Harriman. “I changed out the pickups, I changed the pickguards, tuners, whatever.”
Like former Gibson CEO James Curleigh, Belltone Guitars founder Stephen King Harriman was an apparel executive with Perry Ellis before starting the Florida-based company in 2016. But the gig he’s had since junior high school is guitarist.
“I was always the guy who had to tweak the guitar no matter what it was,” Harriman says. “I changed out the pickups, I changed the pickguards, tuners, whatever. I always had to make what I was playing, whether it was a Les Paul or a Tele, unique, so it would be personally mine.”
Initially, Belltone offered modded versions of Les Paul- and Telecaster-style guitars, but in 2019 he reframed his business, designing an ergonomically contoured pear-shaped body and distinctive 6-on-a-side headstock as a foundation, and establishing a group of craftspeople to bring his solidbody B-Classic One, B-Classic Two, and B-Classic Three variations to life.
Today, Belltone guitars are made for players looking for a similar mix of the fresh and the familiar, at $2,680 to $3,129, depending on appointments. And the range of appointments is impressive. Let’s start with the templates. The Classic One has a flat top with edge binding, an alder body, a rounded tapered neck pocket, the company’s signature Devil’s Tail bridge and angled switch-control plate, reverse-dome tall-boy knobs, and a 12" compound-radius neck (held on by four bolts), with 22 medium-jumbo frets. In contrast, the Classic Two has all of the above, except there are arm and body contours with no binding, and the Classic Three offers the same plus Belltone’s patented Back-Lip Tremolo System and top hat controls.
“I’m inspired by a lot of ’50s and ’60 car designs for the elements of my guitars.”—Belltone’s Steve Harriman
Then, there’s a rabbit hole of options. There are 36 finish choices, with 10 ’bursts—including gorgeous black cherry burst, sky burst metallic, and lemon burst shades—requiring an upcharge of $40. There are varied pickguards to choose from within Belltone’s distinctive “Deco” version, which comes in black, white, and brown tortoise. There are four neck combinations (standard C and ’59 roundback profiles, with maple or rosewood fretboards), four tuner options (locking tuners from Belltone, Sperzel, and Kluson, plus ratio tuners), and a set of any-gauge Stringjoys. And the selection of pickups is truly impressive—36 in all, from TV Jones, Benson, Rio Grande, Mojo, Lindy Fralin, Porter, McNelly, Righteous Sound, Gabojo, and the newly added Brickhouse Tone Works. And within those selections are standard and hum-cancelling P-90s, stacked humbuckers, PAF humbuckers, regular and noiseless single-coils, multiple Filter’Tron variations, and more. Further, via Belltone’s Tone-Sure program, if a customer feels they’ve made the wrong call on pickups after playing their guitar a while, Belltone will swap them out at no charge save for covering shipping and the additional cost of pricier units.
“I’m inspired by a lot of ’50s and ’60 car designs for the elements of my guitars,” Harriman attests. “If you look at my bridge, for example, it’s got kind of a tailfin look to it. For me, guitars need to not only play well and sound great, but look cool. Also, everything is designed by me and is machine-tooled. My bridge is machine-tooled aluminum with rounded contours, as your palm can get roughed up on the old-style stamped ashtray bridges. I take all the things that make players happy into consideration.” Including sturdy and handsome faux-alligator-skin cases.
A deliberative buyer could spend weeks contemplating all of Belltone’s options before pushing the “submit” button, and then, instead of being invoiced, they are contacted directly by Harriman to review it all again before his luthiers get to work.
Gibson’s Made to Measure
One of Gibson’s Made to Measure fantasies: an SG with three humbuckers in a crimson sparkle finish.
The 131-year-old Gibson company’s Made to Measure (MTM) program is a bit more conservative … but only if you’d call a hot-crimson-sparkle SG with three humbuckers, a burgundy Les Paul Standard with a full-fretboard vine inlay, a champagne-pink-sparkle Les Paul, or a 3-pickup Firebird with a P-90 in the middle conservative.
There are two ways to initiate an order for an MTM guitar. You can fill out the online questionnaire on the Gibson Custom Shop’s Made to Measure page or stop by the Nashville or London locations of the Gibson Garage in person. I visited the Nashville Garage for this story, where I spoke with Dustin Wainscott, director of the Made to Measure program, and Matt Boyer, the sales associate you’d likely encounter if you walked into the Music City shop. They brought a clutch of recent MTM examples. And a wall of the MTM room was covered in slabs of wood, available for the choosing, and various bridges, tuners, pickups, and other parts for inspection and selection. Of course, some of the on-location fun is speaking with MTM program leaders like Boyer and Wainscott, who love guitars as much as you do and are happy to swap stories.
Whether by email, which will likely be followed up by a call from Boyer, or in person, the conversation that starts a MTM order begins with questions about body style, neck preference, electronics configuration, and the finish type and treatment.
“On the cosmetic side, we can go as far as you want to, with any color or finish you want.”—Gibson’s Dustin Wainscott
At the Gibson Garage Nashville, Dustin Wainscott, director of the Made to Measure program, and Matt Boyer, the sales associate in charge of MTM at that location, brandish a pair of custom-ordered instruments.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Essentially, any Gibson body currently in production and most historic appointments from that model’s history—and some from other compatible Gibson models—can be used for an MTM order. After selecting the white wood, as slabs are called in lutherie, “figuring out the pickup layout, the neck profile, and the tailpiece you want is the next step,” says Wainscott. “Then you get into the electronics and the look of the guitar: pickup selection, coil-splitting, what color or finish hardware, a glossy or flat finish, any Murphy Lab aging.
“Non-proprietary parts can sometimes be a roadblock. Typically, we’d use our pickups, for example, so if somebody makes a request for a pickup outside of Gibson’s, I try to steer them toward something we have that’s similar. You’ve got to play in the Gibson sandbox.” Stepping outside of historic model-design parameters, which would require re-engineering, is also a no-fly. That means don’t ask for a Les Paul with a Firebird neck, or an Explorer with a 3-on-a-side headstock. That said, there is a lot of wiggle room within the company’s catalog, and “on the cosmetic side, we can go as far as you want to, with any color or finish you want,” adds Wainscott. Personalized headstocks are also a popular option.
A Made to Measure order’s price starts with a $500 charge on top of a model’s current tag, and can increase depending on the complexity of wiring, finish, inlays, etc. Wainscott notes that about 30 percent of the Custom Shop’s business is Made to Measure.
“We also do a lot of recreating of models you’ve seen in the past that aren’t available now,” adds Boyer. “So, we can’t make a Jimmy Page Les Paul with his name on it, per se, but if you want a Les Paul Custom with three pickups, a Bigsby, a 6-position switch, and all that, we can do it for you.”
Kiesel’s Family Style
Kiesel can get as rad as you wanna be, including characterful flourishes like this naturally figured wood with pools of radiant blue finish and an organically striking neck.
Kiesel Guitars has essentially always been a custom-order builder, even if its name and line of business has evolved. The L.C. Kiesel Company was founded in 1946 by Lowell Kiesel as a manufacturer of pickups he sold from the back pages of magazines. As it grew, he renamed it after two of his sons, Carson and Gavin, as the well-known brand Carvin, which became famous as a maker of quality guitars, amps, and instrument parts. In 2015, the company split, Lowell’s son Mark and his son Jeff established the guitar-building operation under the Kiesel name. Today, thanks to their high-caliber construction and endorsees like Allan Holdsworth, Devin Townsend, Craig Chaquico, Jason Becker, and Johnny Hiland, the company makes more than 4,000 custom-order guitars a year.
“We have four types of construction: bolt-on, set-neck, set-through, and neck-through,” explains VP Jeff Kiesel. The company also offers the unusual choice of nine different headstocks, which most manufacturers limit to one style as part of branding, and sans-headstock models, which Kiesel began making in 2012 with the debut of its Allan Holdsworth model. All Kiesel headstocks have an 8 1/2-degree tilt, to create a steeper string angle over the nut, which can potentially improve tone and sustain.
At work on a body in the Kiesel factory, which produces about 4,000 custom-order guitars annually.
“We’re appealing to everybody because we do so many different things.”—Jeff Kiesel
“We never build the headstock separate from the neck and then scarf joint them in—it’s all one piece,” Kiesel adds. Necks are also quarter-sawn, with a two-way truss rod, dual carbon-fiber reinforcement rods, stainless steel frets, and Luminlay side dots.
After that, ordering a Kiesel is all about options. There are 56 models, including signatures, to choose from. Once you select a model on the company’s website, you’re taken to a page that includes a builder menu. Kiesel’s lowest-priced models, including the Delos, start at $1,649, while the top-priced, flagship K-Series model starts at $4,399.
The Aries, one of Kiesel’s most popular guitars, starts at a base of $1,699 with a bolt-on neck and has a menu that includes, under general options, right- or left-hand orientation; the choice of 6, 7, 8, or 9 strings; multiscale necks; and 25 1/2", 26 1/2", or 27" scale lengths. Under body options, you can select beveled or unbeveled edges, and eight different body and 16 different top woods. There are more than 80 finishes to choose from, and 14 variations on the Kiesel logo. The neck options are equally rich, with five fretboard radius selections plus choices for neck wood, three neck profiles, inlays, truss rod covers, and more. The electronic options boast four pickup configurations, five different Kiesel neck and bridge pickup models, and additional alternatives. It’s easy to get lost in the woods, but when you emerge, an image of your guitar with all its appointments, generated as you make your choices, is waiting for you.
“Our lead time is seven to 12 weeks,” Kiesel says, “and we offer a 10-day trial period unless somebody gets too wild on their options.” Anyone ordering a guitar is welcome to phone the company to talk over their order, and Kiesel highly recommends that first-time buyers call.
While Kiesel Guitars once had a reputation as a shredder-axe factory, Jeff Kiesel explains that’s changed over the past decade. “Our demographic is not set anymore,” he shares. “We’re appealing to everybody because we do so many different things. We can build a very classy jazz-style neck pickup on a semi-hollow guitar that you can play some amazing Frank Gambale licks on. And then we can turn around and build a guitar that will do some really technical modern metal, like Marc Okubo. We can build really wild or really classy, and that’s created so much growth within our company.”
Fender’s Mod Shop
Ted created this “dream Strat” with a silverburst finish, noiseless single-coils, and a 2-Point Deluxe Synchronized Tremolo Bridge using Fender’s Mod Shop online tool.
Like Gibson, Fender’s Mod Shop is about personalizing classic templates—in this case, the Strat, Tele, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, P and J basses, and Acoustasonic Telecasters and Jazzmasters. And while the program was birthed in 2014 as the American Design Experience, it evolved into the Mod Shop and has continued to improve, most recently with an update this April that made the online menu easier to use and added more options.
“We know that 80 percent of customers will be loyal to brands where they can personalize and customize,” says Shannon Stokes, Fender’s VP of eCommerce. “So the whole online user experience has been finessed. It’s much easier to navigate on both desktop and mobile. You move through it choosing the orientation of the guitar, the finish … everything through the pickguard, the hardware.”
Justin Norvell, Fender’s VP of product, observes, “This is a playground, and you’re able to just mess around and see what appeals to you. We allow people to save their configurations to PDFs, and they can share them and send them out,” akin to trading cards. “There’s an exponential number of people that might sit on their favorite design for a year before they actually place an order.” Some hardcore fans buy multiple variations of a favorite-style guitar over time, “because you can engrave the neck plate, collect multiple finishes, and other cool stuff. This is an area where selection runs wild for lefties, too,” he adds.
Fender’s Justin Norvell with his own dream machine: an American Professional Jazzmaster in mystic seafoam.
“This is an area where selection runs wild for lefties, too.”—Fender’s Justin Norvell
“What’s amazing to me,” says Shannon Stokes, Fender’s VP of eCommerce, “is the number of people ordering black, white, and sunburst. I would think the rarer colors would be the thing.”
The cost of a Mod Shop guitar is an upcharge of several hundred dollars, with certain customizations increasing the tab. I decided to jump in and outfit a Strat, with a base price of $2,085, to my taste. After selecting the right-hand player’s orientation, I chose an alder body with a silverburst finish from a palette of nearly 50 colors and wood offerings that also included chambered ash, mahogany, and roasted pine. For the neck, I went with solid rosewood with Fender’s deep-C profile. Eight maple variations were also available. That neck option automatically led me to a rosewood fretboard, and then I hunted through 16 pickup configurations before stopping at the Generation 4 Noiseless Stratocaster set. I opted for a 4-ply black pearl pickguard, and aged white plastic controls and pickup frames. Next, from three bridge choices I tapped a 2-Point Deluxe Synchronized Tremolo Bridge. Chrome Fender strap lock buttons would do the job, since I’ve had un-strap-locked guitars fall to the stage at gigs in years past. For strings, a set for .010s, and the only case option is deluxe molded plastic with a fuzzy interior. Total cost: $2,175, which is not bad for those modest-but-swell appointments. I also downloaded a PDF, so you can see what I designed. Unhappy with the purchase? It can be returned within 30 days for a refund or exchange, plus shipping.
There’s about a half-dozen builders in the Mod Shop, but workers from the normal production line can be called in when there is an uptick in commissions, Norvell explains.
“What’s amazing to me,” says Stokes, “is the number of people ordering black, white, and sunburst. I love the satin orange because it’s vibrant, different. I would think the rarer colors would be the thing.” But players often look for instruments that are evocative of classic guitars they’ve seen. And 6-string dreams do come in all shades.
Well-designed pickups. Extremely comfortable contours. Smooth, playable neck.
Middle position could use a bit more mids. Price could scare off some.
$2,999
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II
A surprise 6-string collaboration with Cory Wong moves effortlessly between ’70s George Benson and Blink-182 tones.
Announced at the 2025 NAMM show, Cory Wong’s new collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man scratched an itch—namely, the itch for a humbucker-loaded guitar that could appease Wong’s rock-and-R&B alter ego and serve as complement to his signature Fender Strat. Inspiration came from no further than a bandmate’s namesake instrument. Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart has a line of signature model EBMM basses, one of which uses the classic StingRay bass body profile. So, when Wong went looking for something distinctive, he wondered if EBMM could create a 6-string guitar using the classic StingRay bass body and headstock profile.
Double the Fun
Wong is, by his own admission, a single-coil devotee. That’s where the core of his sound lives and it feels like home to him. However, Wong is as inspired by classic Earth, Wind & Fire tones and the pop-punk of the early ’90s as he is by Prince and the Minneapolis funk that he grew up with. The StingRay II is a guitar that can cover all those bases.
Ernie Ball has a history of designing fast-feeling, comfortable necks. And I can’t remember ever struggling to move around an EBMM fretboard. The roasted maple C-shaped neck here is slightly thicker in profile than I expected, but still very comfortable. (I must also mention that the back of the neck has a dazzling, almost holographic look to the grain that morphs in the light). By any measure, the StingRay II’s curves seemed designed for comfort and speed. Now, let’s talk about those pickups.Hot or Not?
A few years ago EBMM introduced a line of HT (heat-treated) pickups. The pickups are built with technology the company used to develop their Cobalt and M-Series strings. A fair amount of the process is shrouded in secrecy and must be taken on faith, but EBMM says treating elements of the pickup with heat increases clarity and dynamic response.
To find out for myself, I plugged the StingRay II into a Fender Vibroverb, Mesa/Boogie Mark VII, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex (Wong’s preferred live rig). Right away, it was easy to hear the tight low end and warm highs. Often, I feel like the low end from neck humbuckers can feel too loose or lack definition. Neither was the case here. The HT pickup is beautifully balanced with a bounce that’s rich with ES-335 vibes. Clean tones are punchy and bright—especially with the Vibroverb—and dirty tones have more room for air. Individual notes were clear and articulate, too.
Any guitar associated with Wong needs a strong middle-position or combined pickup tone, and the StingRay II delivers. I never felt any significant signal loss in the blended signal from the two humbuckers, even if I could use a bit more midrange presence in the voicing. The midrange gap is nothing an EQ or Tube Screamer couldn’t fix, though. And not surprisingly, very Strat-like sounds were easy to achieve for having less midrange bump.
Knowing Wong’s love for ’90s alt-rock, I expected the bridge pickup to have real bite, and it does, demonstrating exceptional dynamic range and exceptional high-end response that never approached shrill. Nearly every type of distortion and overdrive I threw at it sounded great, but especially anything with a scooped-mid flavor and plenty of low end.
The Verdict
By any measure, the StingRay II is a top-notch, professional instrument. The fit and finish are immaculate and the feel of the neck makes me wonder if EBMM stashes some kind of secret sandpaper, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt a smoother, more playable neck. Kudos are also due to EBMM and Wong for finding an instrument that can move between ’70s George Benson tones and the hammering power chords of ’90s Blink-182. Admittedly, the nearly $3K price could give some players pause, but considering the overall quality of the instrument, it’s not out of line. Wong’s involvement and search for distinct sounds makes the StingRay II more than a tired redux of a classic model—an admirable accomplishment considering EBMM’s long and storied history.
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong Signature Electric Guitar - Charcoal Blue with Rosewood Fingerboard
StingRay II Cory Wong - Charcoal BlueThe Melvins' Buzz Osborne joins the party to talk about how he helped Kurt Cobain find the right sounds.
Growing up in the small town of Montesano, Washington, Kurt Cobain turned to his older pal Buzz Osborne for musical direction. So on this episode, we’re talking with the Melvins leader about their friendship, from taking Cobain to see Black Flag in ’84 to their shared guitar journey and how they both thought about gear. And in case you’ve heard otherwise, Kurt was never a Melvins roadie!
Osborne’s latest project is Thunderball from Melvins 1983, something of a side trajectory for the band, which harkens back to this time in Osborne’s life. We dig into that and how it all relates and much more.