A sleek rock machine loaded with a Seymour Duncan Nazgûl and Sentient humbucker.
Cort Guitars introduces the X500 Menace, a reimagined flagship electric that's now even darker and more aggressive than its predecessor. Highly suitable for metal and extreme music with high access frets, the X500 Menace has been reborn with a modern aesthetic and feature upgrades, including new tonewood selections, a reverse headstock, compound radius fingerboard, Floyd Rose® 1000 Series tremolo, and a Seymour Duncan Nazgûl and Sentient humbucker set. The combination of these features provide for superb playability, sound quality, and a menacing presence that extreme guitarists seek.
The X500 Menace is the latest addition to Cort's X Series, which was revamped with a more modern, ergonomic design and new finishes that capture today's metal guitar trends. The X500 Menace offers timely innovation with the popular tonewood combination of a solid maple top on mahogany body. Together, these classic woods are thick and cutting, yet warm and rich. The sustain and tone transfer is limitless thanks to the X Series signature neck-thru construction, which offers focused midrange punch and cut.
The 25.5-inch-scale X500 Menace is rock-solid stable and built for speed across the entire range of its sleek ebony fingerboard. The 7-piece maple/purple heart/panga panga neck likewise provides a smooth surface that enables high-speed riffing and soloing with unfettered access to the highest frets for utmost playability. Aesthetically, the striped design of the neck provides visual intrigue against the Black Satin finish.
The compound radius fingerboard (12 to 16 inches) is a deluxe feature that facilitates easier playability when transitioning from easy chording on the low frets to high-speed soloing and string-bending on the upper register. As a finishing touch, Cort has designed an exclusive reverse headstock for the X500 Menace, presenting an unconventional and meaner look over the original design. Black hardware and die-cast tuners complete the look.
The addition of the Seymour Duncan Nazgûl & Sentient high-output passive humbucker pickup set takes the X500 Menace to the center of the earth, if not straight to the underworld. The Nazgûl combines a large ceramic magnet with custom winding specs, resulting in an ideal blend of note articulation, saturation, pick attack, and one of the most brutal "chugs" available from a humbucker. The Sentient neck delivers a balanced, versatile tone with pristine cleans and fluid leads under high gain. One volume pot and one tone pot with 3-pickup selector keeps the controls clean and simple, allowing the player to focus on making music.
The X500 Menace hardware includes a FloydRose 1000 Series tremolo system that gives players the confidence to express their musical ideas without tuning worries. With this upgrade, the X500 Menace is ready to handle anything the player throws down, from dive-bombing and extreme harmonic squeal pull-ups to subtle chord coloration.
Sleek yet robust, the X500 Menace was designed and built for metal but is versatile enough to cover a wide range of musical genres and styles such as fusion, prog, and classic rock, making this beast much more than a one-trick-pony.
Street US $849.99
Learn more and get a closer look at the X500 Menace and other designs in Cort's X Series at www.cortguitars.com.
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It’s almost over, but there’s still time to win! Enter Stompboxtober Day 30 for your shot at today’s pedal from SoloDallas!
The Schaffer Replica: Storm
The Schaffer Replica Storm is an all-analog combination of Optical Limiter+Harmonic Clipping Circuit+EQ Expansion+Boost+Line Buffer derived from a 70s wireless unit AC/DC and others used as an effect. Over 50 pros use this unique device to achieve percussive attack, copious harmonics and singing sustain.
A 1000-watt speaker cabinet crafted for musicians who demand power and precision. Sunn Amps intends to reinvent the standard 4x12 configuration with the introduction of this new cabinet.
The Sunn Amps DoomBox is built to accommodate both guitar and bass, offering an impressive 1000-watt handling capacity—making it the first commercially available 4x12 cabinet with such high power handling. With four specially designed 12” drivers rated at 250 watts each, this cabinet provides clean, unrestrained sound levels that can maintain power integrity across all frequencies, ideal for high-volume performances.
Inspired and developed using feedback from artists and bands who rely on the depth of lower tunings and high volume genres, the DoomBox was engineered to meet the unique demands of professional musicians looking for a robust, high-efficiency cab that can translate the raw power of their sound without compromise.
Premium Craftsmanship and Materials
The Doom Box cabinet is crafted from solid finger-jointed Baltic Birch plywood, ensuring both durability and tonal clarity. Each cabinet is constructed by hand in the U.S.A. using original 1930s machinery, the DoomBox reflects Sunn’s historic commitment to quality, contrasting with some of the mass-produced, MDF-based cabinets on the market today. The cabinet’s aluminum basket, ferrite magnet, and custom Sunn weave Tolex with a custom grill design complete its professional-grade build.
Technical Specifications:
• Power Handling: 1000W
• Inputs: 1 x ¼”
• Impedance: 8 Ohm
• Drivers: 4 x Sunn 12S250
• Construction: Marine Grade Baltic Birch
• Dimensions: 29.25” X 30” X 14”
• Weight: 107 lbs
• Price: $2399.00
With clear low-end punch, even sound response, and ample air movement, the Doom Box ensures that every note reaches the audience with clarity and power. This cabinet is a game-changer for musicians who need high-performance, road-ready equipment that enhances their unique sound.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.