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The Year in Gear 2018

Step inside Premier Guitar’s magical, miraculous time machine and revisit the gear that stood head and shoulders above the rest as Premier Gear Award winners in 2018.

Land Devices HP-2

The HP-2, like it’s inspiration, the Interfax Harmonic Percolator, can seem like an exercise in contradictions. At many settings it’s brash and delivers a sonic slap in the face. But at the root of all these opposites is an audible complexity and sensitivity that’s a magnificent and inspirational antidote to the same-old-distortion blues.

$185 street
landdevices.bigcartel.com

Click here to read the full review

Less-corpulent, Big Muff-style tones that cut in many colors.

Unique, less-bossy take on the Big Muff sound that trades excess fat for articulation. Nice build at a nice price.

Some Big Muff heads may miss the bass and silky smooth edges.

$149

Evil Eye FX Warg
evileyefx.com

4.5
4.5
4
4.5

Membership in the Cult of Big Muff is an endless source of good times. Archaeologically minded circuit-tracers can explore many versions and mutations. Tone obsessives can argue the merits of fizzier or fatter tone signatures. The Ace Tone FM-3 is one of the less famous branches on the Big Muff evolutionary tree, but one that every true Big Muff devotee should know. It came out around 1971 and it was among the first in a line of often-imaginative Japanese takes on the circuit.

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Paul Reed Smith shaping a guitar neck in his original Annapolis, Maryland garret shop.

Photo courtesy of PRS Guitars

You might not be aware of all the precision that goes into building a fine 6-string’s neck, but you can certainly feel it.

I do not consider my first “real” guitar the one where I only made the body. In my mind, an electric guitar maker makes necks with a body attached—not the other way around. (In the acoustic world, the body is a physics converter from hand motion to sound, but that’s a different article for a different month.) To me, the neck is deeply important because it’s the first thing you feel on a guitar to know if you even want to plug it in. As we say at PRS, the neck should feel like “home,” or like an old shirt that’s broken in and is so comfortable you can barely tell it’s on.

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Billy Strings has become one of the biggest drawing guitar players out on the road these days. His music brings bluegrass fans and jam band scenes together, landing him on some of the biggest stages around. Your 100 Guitarists hosts have brought in guitarist Jon Stickley to help them work out their differences—one of us is a jammer and the other … is not.

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Shervin Lainez

Warren Haynes has unveiled the Million Voices Whisper 2025 Tour in support of his new solo album.

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