An evolutionary guitar, built in cooperation with a revolutionary player.
An almost perfectly executed modern instrument. Super smooth playability. Versatile pickups.
Very expensive.
$3,999
Ernie Ball Music Man Kaizen
www.music-man.com
Ernie Ball Music Man’s instruments have a way of attracting virtuosos. Annie Clark, John Petrucci, Steve Morse, and even Eddie Van Halen lent their names to models that became instrumental in their creative process, and big parts of their musical and visual identity, too. Over the course of the pandemic, fellow virtuoso Tosin Abasi had time to try a few EBMM guitars, including a Goldie (St. Vincent signature model) and Valentine (James Valentine signature model). He came away impressed.
While Abasi has his own line of boutique guitars called Abasi Concepts, he knows resources from a big, established company can bring a lot of cool ideas to life. Abasi also likes the company’s bold embrace of unusual body shapes. Abasi and EBMM started talking, and, by NAMM 2022, Abasi and EBMM’s collaboration, the Kaizen, was real. The Kaizen is a unique 7-string with a load of evolutionary player-oriented features and a high but justifiable price tag. A 6-string version is in the works for those that prefer a more traditional instrument. But little about the Kaizen, in any form, feels traditional.
Forward-Thinking Features
The Kaizen’s very 21st century profile is a progressive move in design terms. This ain’t your uncle’s Tele. Our test model is finished in Apollo black, decked out in all black hardware, and looks quite like something out of The Matrix. As wild as it looks, the guitar’s body shape is just the first in a long list of modern elements.
The Kaizen’s roasted flame maple neck is a marvel. It has a multi-scale setup—25.65" on the high E string to 25.5" on the low B string. On the bottom side, the longer scale length gives you a tighter feel and better tuning stability (even if you drop the low B further in pitch), and on the top end, the shorter scale length gives you a slinky feel for shredding and bending. The Kaizen’s ebony fretboard is fitted with 24 medium-jumbo stainless-steel frets in a fanned configuration.
Eschewing conventional tuners, the Kaizen features Steinberger gearless locking tuners (similar to those on the discontinued Steinberger GS) with a 40:1 ratio that facilitate smooth, super-accurate tuning. Aesthetically, it’s very hip and the low profile of the tuners add to the guitar’s almost aerodynamic appearance.
Optimized for Speed
Ernie Ball Music Man makes some of the best production guitars around. And I’ve seen quality in EBMM instruments that rivals many custom builds. The Kaizen is no exception, and it arrived perfectly set up in its fitted G&G hardshell case.
“Contours are everywhere (even the back plate is shaped), and the guitar is almost entirely without flat surfaces.”
Tosin Abasi’s virtuosic style of music will challenge any guitarist, no matter how technically adept. Executing almost any of Abasi’s ideas puts playability at a premium, and the Kaizen is really built to feel like a natural, seamless extension of the player. The body is ultra-ergonomic. Contours are everywhere (even the back plate is shaped), and the guitar is almost entirely without flat surfaces. The neck’s thin profile and satin finish makes it feel extra fast, and the sculpted heel makes for unobstructed access all the way up to the 24th fret. The fretboard is slightly thicker on the treble side than the bass side, and its “infinity” radius enables you to see the entire fretboard with ease.
Kaizen’s vibrato system is excellent, too. The whammy bar is set from the factory to only go down in pitch. Using it vigorously, I was impressed that the guitar stayed perfectly in tune, even without a double-locking nut system. The guitar has a compensated nut, and the strings go straight through the tuners without a break angle, which improves tuning stability.
Modern Meaty Sounds
The Kaizen’s pickup configuration consists of a heat-treated Ernie Ball Music Man bridge pickup and a mini humbucker in the neck. While high gain is part of the mission, the pickups are also clear and present. And though they are passive, they sound awake and powerful, like active pickups do. The 3-way pickup selector switch offers bridge humbucker, bridge and the neck’s outer coil combined, and both coils from the mini humbucker in the neck.
In high-gain situations (I used a Mesa/Boogie Tremoverb combo, Mark IV head, Bogner Ecstasy Mini Red, and Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler as amp and pedal pairings), the bridge pickup offers abundant sustain. Notes blossom into feedback beautifully and djent-style rhythmic figures cut through with razor-sharp accuracy.
“This ain’t your uncle’s Tele.”
The combined pickup setting is excellent for clean, percussive, slap-and-pop figures, like those that R&B bass players use, as well as the thumping moves you hear from Abasi. In this setting, pick attack feels immediate, and the guitar really cuts, even at lower volumes. It’s also an ideal setup for funk-type rhythm figures. The middle pickup setting is articulate in dirty settings, too, and fast, alternate-picking licks pop like a machine gun.
The neck mini humbucker, meanwhile, is versatile and responsive. It delivers creamy classic blues sounds in dirty amp and pedal settings, especially when you roll guitar tone and volume back a touch. Open up the guitar’s tone and volume and the Kaizen is a heavy rock monster. As big and explosive and Kaizen can sound, in cleaner settings it’s very rich. The guitar’s pots also give you room to shape a great range of cleaner tones. With the tone knob almost all the way off, it still sounded clear through the mellowness, and there was almost none of the blanket-over-speaker, mushy tonality you hear from most guitars when the tone control is down. Pretty impressive.
The Verdict
The Kaizen is an exquisite instrument. There is little question about the music the guitar is intended for. It’s a shred machine, first and foremost, made for modern, heavy styles. But it’s easy to imagine how it would excel in other contexts because of the wide variety of sounds available. It would make a very interesting progressive jazz instrument for sure.
While the roughly $4k price tag will be a barrier for many, it’s not obscene for what you get. If you’re a forward-thinking guitarist, particularly one that feels like you’ve squeezed all the tricks you can from your old instrument, the Kaizen has the potential to unlock a lot of new ones.
Ernie Ball Music Man Kaizen Demo | First Look
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Analog modulation guided by a digital brain willing to get weird.
Fun, fluid operation. Capable of vintage-thick textures at heavier gain settings. High headroom for accommodating other effects.
MIDI required to access more than one preset—which you’ll probably long for, given the breadth of voices.
$369
Kernom Elipse
If you love modulation—and lots of it—you can eat up a lot of pedalboard space fast. Modulation effects can be super-idiosyncratic and specialized, which leads to keeping many around, particularly if you favor the analog domain. TheKernom Elipse multi-modulator is pretty big and, at a glance, might not seem the best solution for real estate scarcity. Yet the Elipse is only about 1 1/4" wider than two standard-sized Boss pedals side by side. And by combining an analog signal path with digital control, it makes impressive, efficient use of its size—stuffing fine-sounding harmonic tremolo, phaser, rotary-style, chorus, vibrato, flanger, and Uni-Vibe-style effects into a single hefty enclosure. Many of the effects can also be blended and morphed into one another using a rotary control aptly called “mood.” The Elipse, most certainly, has many of those.
Modulator With Many Masks
Anywhere pedal hounds meet and chat you’ll encounter spirited talk about the way pedals sound relative to a certain gold standard. It makes sense. Benchmarks are useful for understanding anything. But one of the things I like best about the Kernom Elipse is how it eludes easy comparison to such standards, and how the fluidity of its controls make it sound unique. As with any review, I compared the Elipse to as many pedals as I have that are relevant. Here, that included an Ibanez analog chorus, Phase 90 and Small Stone phasers, an optical Uni-Vibe-style pedal, a Boss BF-2,Mu-Tron Phasor II clone, and more. But what made the Elipse stand out in this company was function as much as sound. Operating the Elipse with an open mind, rather than a quest to replicate another pedal’s sound, leads to intriguing, unique, and unusual tones more specialized modulators don’t always offer.
“The Elipse is pretty ambitious for an analog modulator, but doesn’t spread itself too thin.”
Three of the Elipse’s controls—speed, mix, and depth—function predictably. The latter two controls, however, change function depending on the pedal’s mood (or mode). In tremolo mode, setting the mix at noon generates complex, warbly, and elastic harmonic tremolo-like textures. At maximum, it shifts to a more binary, on/off sound akin to optical or bias tremolo. In chorus/vibrato mode, the noon position marks a 50/50 wet/dry mix of pitch shift and dry signal—the ingredients for any chorus. At maximum, the signal is 100 percent wet, yielding pure pitch-shift vibrato. The shape control, meanwhile, adjusts the LFO waveform. In tremolo mode that means moving between triangle- and sine-wave pulses. The swirl control is the wild card of the bunch. It adds big-time dimension to the Elipse in all modes. Through most of its range, it slathers slow phase on whatever modulation is already bubbling and burbling. In the latter third of its range, though, it also adds gain, and by the time you reach maximum, the output is discernibly thickened in the low-midrange zone. The gain and low-mid bump helps compensate for the perceived volume loss intrinsic to modulation. But they also excite different segments of the harmonic spectrum as you manipulate other modulation-shaping parameters—adding expansiveness as well as the thickness you might miss from vintage modulators.
Enunciation Modulation
Compared to many of the modulation pedals I used for contrast, the Elipse has a high-mid-forward voice. This frequency bias has advantages. It lends most of the Elipse’s modulation textures a clear, airy essence that keeps their character present when adding fuzz or big delay and reverb effects. It makes some modulations less chewy, but it’s also easy to imagine such textures slotting easily into a mix where some thicker analog modulators would gobble up harmonic space.
The basic EQ profile also makes it easier to probe the nuances in the “in-between” voices, living in the liminal spaces between pedal moods. When you start to play with these blended textures and various blends of drive, shape, mix, and depth, you encounter many sounds that veer from vintage templates in cool ways. Lathering on gain from the swirl control and lazy depth rates made the hybrid chorus/flange intense, dreamy, and enveloping. Similar blends of slow, heavy harmonic tremolo and rotary speaker sounded massive too.
The Verdict
The Elipse is pretty ambitious for an analog modulator, but doesn’t spread itself too thin. Players looking for one or two very specific modulation sounds might find the interrelationships between the Elipse’s controls too complex. The inability to save more than a single onboard preset without a MIDI switcher might frustrate guitarists used to all-digital pedals’ preset capabilities. Players that already have MIDI switchers in their rigs, however, could fall hard for the ability to switch between Elipse’s myriad, complex, analog-colored textures. With or without MIDI, it is an excellent analog modulator that offers colors galore.
Unleash your inner metal icon with the Jackson Lee Malia LM-87, a high-performance shred-ready axe designed in collaboration with Bring Me The Horizon guitarist Lee Malia. Featuring custom Jackson signature pickups, a fast D-profile neck, and a TOM-style bridge for rock-solid stability, this signature model is a must-have for commanding metal tone and smooth playability.
British metal icon and Bring Me The Horizon guitarist Lee Malia has partnered with Jackson to create his signature LM-87, a shred-ready axe built for heavy riffing and alternative modern metal. As a founding member and lead guitarist of the Grammy-nominated band, Malia is renowned for his aggressive playing style and intricate solos. This high-performance guitar matches his demanding musicality.
With its offset Surfcaster™ body shape and vintage appeal, the LM-87 melds classic design with modern appointments. The thin open pore finish on the bound Okoume body and neck exudes organic style, while the unique 3-ply pickguard and chrome hardware add striking accents. The fast D-profile 3- piece okoume neck allows smooth riffing across the bound amaranth fingerboard.
Custom Jackson signature pickups, including a bridge humbucker with push-pull coil-split, equip the LM-87 with versatile tone-shaping options to fulfill Malia's sonic vision. The TOM-style bridge with anchored tailpiece and fine tuners provides rock-solid stability for low tunings and heavy picking.
Designed in close collaboration with the legendary guitarist, the Jackson Lee Malia LM-87 is built for shredding. Its blend of vintage vibe and high-performance features make this signature model a must-have for players who value commanding metal tone and smooth playability.
The Tune-o-matic bridge with an anchored tailpiece and fine tuners offers enhanced tuning stability and precise, incremental adjustments. This setup ensures consistent pitch control, improved sustain, and easier fine-tuning without affecting overall string tension.
The guitar’s three-piece set-neck guitar with graphite reinforcement offers exceptional strength, stability, and resistance to warping. The multi-piece construction enhances sustain and tonal clarity, while the graphite reinforcement adds extra durability and prevents neck shifting due to humidity or temperature changes. This design ensures a solid, reliable performance with improved resonance and longevity.
Features Include:
- Okoume body
- Three-piece okoume set neck construction with graphite reinforcement
- 12"-16" compound radius amaranth fingerboard
- 3-ply pickguard
- Chrome hardware
- Custom wound Jackson LM-87 pickups
- Volume with push-pull coil-split and tone control
- TOM-style bridge with anchored tailpiece and fine tuners
- Gig bag included
The Jackson LM-87 carries a street price of $899.99.
For more information, please visit jacksonguitars.com.
Unleashing the Pro Series Signature Lee Malia LM-87 | Jackson Guitars - YouTube
Jackson Pro Series Signature Lee Malia LM-87 Electric Guitar - Open Pore Black
Pro Series Lee Malia Signature LM-87 Open Pore BlackThe Tone King Imperial Preamp Pedal delivers legendary vintage American tube tone with modern control. Featuring two channels mirroring '50s tweed and '60s blackface tones, built-in zero watt poweramp, stereo convolution spring reverb and tremolo, and low-latency impulse response technology. MIDI programmable with up to 128 presets for instant recall.
The Imperial All-Tube Preamp pedal delivers Tone King’s legendary MKII amplifier's '50s tweed, '60s blackface, and vintage British rock tones in a compact, pedalboard-friendly format. It features the exact preamp section and phase inverter circuitry of the Imperial MKII amp, as well as Reverb, Tremolo and Attenuation, resulting in a pedal that sings with harmonic richness and blooming touch response. Powered by three 12AX7 preamp tubes running at high voltage, this preamp delivers the amp's sound, responsiveness, and exquisite interaction with your pickups and effects. The onboard, low-latency impulse response (IR) loader (per channel), Headphones, easy integration and expansion with your existing gear, and MIDI capabilities, takes these iconic tones into the new era of guitar playing.
Legendary Vintage Tube Amp Tones
The Imperial Preamp Pedal features two distinct channels, each mirroring the '50s and '60s flavors of the Imperial MKII.
- The Rhythm Channel evokes the essence of a classic '60s blackface combo's pristine cleans with a touch-sensitive response that transitions smoothly into overdrive.
- The Lead Channel is inspired by the iconic tweed amps of the '50s’ with the ability to glide between warm articulate cleans and aggressive midrange bark. This channel's Mid-Bite control adds a further layer of tone shaping, focusing the low-end, while adding high-end presence and gain for a British-flavored rock crunch.
Built-In Zero Watt Poweramp - Phase Inverter
The Imperial Pre-Amp Pedal includes the exact phase inverter circuitry of the actual Imperial MKII amp, utilizing one of its three 12AX7 tubes. This built-in “0 watt poweramp” authentically provides the harmonic and dynamic content of the Tone King poweramp section. This revolutionary design is the cornerstone that delivers the ENTIRE Imperial MKII experience right on your pedal board.
Stereo Convolution Spring Reverb & Stereo Tremolo
Like its namesake amp, the Imperial Preamp boasts foot-switchable spring reverb and tremolo (digital on the preamp pedal) which are assignable to each channel. A signature of the Tone King Imperial MKII tube amplifier, these era-correct effects add dimension and movement while transporting you to a golden age of electric guitar tone.
Impulse Response (IR) Cabinet & Power Amp Sim
The Imperial Preamp pedal's low latency IR and power amp simulation technology delivers its tube tones directly to the front of house or your interface. That’s especially evident in the 15 included OwnHammer-made IRs. Each channel has three of our favorites, preloaded, and selectable via dual 3-way toggle switches.
OH 112 Imperial TK1660: Tone King 1660 speaker in a Tone King Imperial 1x12 combo. Captured using a Shure SM57, a Neumann U87, and a Royer 121 through '70s API 312 preamps.
OH 212 Class A Blue: Celestion Blues from 1963 in a Vox AC30 2x12 combo. Captured using a Shure SM57, a Neumann U87, and a Royer 121 through '70s API 312 preamps.
OH 412 Basketweave M25: Celestion G12M-25 speakers from 1971 in a basket-weave 1960B 4x12 cabinet. Captured using a Shure SM57, Telefunken MD421, and Royer 121.
There are 12 additional IRs to choose from in the included Tone King Editor software (powered by Synergy) which are easy to swap in and out of the pedal's six available slots. You can also disengage the onboard IR loader entirely to use the preamp with an external IR loader or powered cabinet.
Tone King Editor Software
You can assign the Reverb, Tremolo and IR to each of the channels right on the pedal itself, making it a powerful and easy-to-use sonic tool. Tone King offers an Editor software, powered by Synergy, which takes the Pre-Amp's capabilities to another level, allowing you to fine-tune all of the preamp's digitally controlled parameters and save them in up to 128 MIDI presets
- Control the independent power amp simulation HF Comp and Low-Pass filters
- Access all 15 included OwnHammer IRs• Easily load your own IRs and manage your IR library
- Assign any of your IRs to the pedal's six available slots (three per channel)• Control your reverb, reverb tails, tremolo and effects loop bypass settings• Save these settings to up to 128 presets for instant recall via MIDI
The Tone King Editor software also unlocks all of the Imperial Preamp's modern control. Fully MIDI-capable, you can save your presets and access them instantly with a MIDI pedalboard controller or the laptop running your entire show. It is the perfect marriage of modern control and classic tube tone.
Expanding Your Rig's Capabilities
The Imperial Preamp Pedal is the perfect DI recording and performing solution. But that's just scratching the surface.
Add Channels to Your Current Guitar Amplifier
A standout feature of the Imperial preamp pedal is its ability to easily integrate with your existing amplifiers (must have a series effects loop). A straightforward 3-cable connection is all it takes, and you can instantly alternate between the Imperial Preamp as your amp's front end or your amp's preamp channels.
Networking with Other Effects-Loop-Equipped Preamp Pedals
Create the ultimate pedalboard-based rig with other preamp pedals (with effects loops). Using the same 3-cable method, you get both Imperial channels, your other preamp’s tones, the Imperial's stereo effects loop, and its onboard IRs. Additionally, you can assign the Imperial's spring reverb and tremolo effects to your other preamp channels.
Classic American Tube Tone for Every Stage & Studio
Whether you're a gigging musician, a recording artist, or simply a tone enthusiast, the Tone King Imperial Preamp pedal offers endless possibilities. Use it as a standalone preamp for recording or for silent stages and practice, add its two channels to your existing amplifier, pair it with a power amp and cabinet to move some air, or combine it with other preamp pedals for an even wider range of pedalboard-based tones.
Tone King Imperial Preamp Pedal is the ultimate marriage of legendary, vintage American tube tone and modern control.
For more information, please visit toneking.com
Features
- Two Channel High-Voltage preamp – DI
- 3 x 12AX7 preamp tubes running at proper high voltages
- Built-In zero watt poweramp - phase inverter circuit
- Two channels with independent Volume and Attenuation controls
- Rhythm Channel (top)
- '60s-era American blackface combo tone
- Bass and Treble controls
- Lead Channel (Bottom)
- '50s-era American tweed combo and British rock tones
- Tone and Mid-Bite controls
- Spring Reverb (convolution)
- Reverb and Dwell controls
- Independently assignable to each channel
- Tremolo (digital)
- Depth and Speed controls
- Independently assignable to each channel
- Stereo, Series FX loop (bypassable)
- MIDI programmable
- Save up to 128 presets for instant recall via an external MIDI switcher
- Presets save:
- Channel selection
- Master bypass settingo IR selection
- IR bypass setting
- Effects loop bypass setting
- Reverb bypass and tails settings
- Tremolo bypass settings
- Onboard Impulse Response (IR) Technology
- Low-latency Impulse Response cabinet simulation (bypassable)
- 3-position CAB/IR select switch per channel (programmable via software)
- Included OwnHammer IRs
- Poweramp simulation with software editable HF Comp and Low-Pass filters (per channel)
- Connections:
- Dual stereo balanced XLR outputs with Ground Lift Switch
- ¼" Headphone output
- Effects Send and Stereo Return Jacks
- MIDI 5-pin standard connector
- USB-C connector for use with the included Tone King Editor software editor
- To Amp In, From Amp Send and From Amp Return Jacks – for adding Imperial channels to your amp or preamp
- Included
- 6’ USB Cable
- Universal 12V Power Supply
- Dimensions: 7.2” (W) x 5.7” (D) x 2.75” (H)
- Weight: 1.9 lbs.
With a bit of downtime back in Nashville, co-shredders-in-chief Megan and Rebecca Lovell joined Shred With Shifty to deconstruct their face-melting leads on “Summertime Sunset,” off of their 2022 record Blood Harmony.
The Georgia-born, Nashville-based roots-rock outfit Larkin Poe have had a busy year. Last summer, they toured across the U.S. supporting Slash, and released their seventh studio album, Bloom, on January 22. With a bit of downtime back in Nashville, co-shredders-in-chief Megan and Rebecca Lovell joined Shred With Shifty to deconstruct their face-melting leads on “Summertime Sunset,” off of their 2022 record Blood Harmony.
The Lovells grew up reading sheet music and learning violin via the Suzuki method—there was little room for going off the beaten path until they fell in love with Jerry Douglas’ dobro playing on Alison Krauss records. Rebecca took up the mandolin, while Megan went for the dobro and the slide side of things. It took a while for them to get comfortable turning up from their bluegrass roots, but eventually they built Larkin Poe’s amplified, blues-rock sound.
First up, Rebecca, playing a pristine ’60s SG, shows how she put together her stinging, fuzzy solo by “hunting and pecking out” melodies in her mind, building up the chops to follow her intuition. Then Megan, playing a Rickenbacker-inspired lap steel of her own design through a Rodenberg TB Drive, details her dizzyingly fast slide acrobatics, and her particular “rake” technique that she copped from Jerry Douglas and Derek Trucks.
Tune in to hear them talk about how to sustain family relationships while going professional, keeping music community-minded, and whether or not they’ll go back to bluegrass.
If you’re able to help, here are some charities aimed at assisting musicians affected by the fires in L.A:
https://guitarcenterfoundation.org
https://www.cciarts.org/relief.html
https://www.musiciansfoundation.org
https://fireaidla.org
https://www.musicares.org
https://www.sweetrelief.org
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editor: Addison Sauvan
Graphic Design: Megan Pralle
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.