Harmony Guitars is bringing back Stella guitars, the storied guitar brand that helped shape American folk, blues, and rock 'n' roll, with a new collection of parlor-sized acoustic guitars.
Kalamazoo, MI – May 13, 2026 – Harmony Guitars is bringing back Stella guitars, the storied guitar brand that helped shape American folk, blues, and rock 'n' roll, with a new collection of parlor-sized acoustic guitars.
Originally founded in 1899 by Oscar Schmidt and absorbed into the Harmony family in 1939, generations of musicians have played Stella — from Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie to B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, and Leon Bridges.
The new Stella parlor acoustics carry that legacy forward, reinterpreting the compact, travel-friendly format for modern players. The parlor shape is built for writing, practicing, and playing in close quarters. Its smaller body sits naturally on the couch or at the desk, with a focused midrange voice that records well and cuts through without overwhelming a room.
"B.B. King's first guitar was a red Stella acoustic. That's the kind of impact we want this brand to continue to have, being the guitar that starts someone's story," said Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of Vista Musical Instruments, the parent company of Harmony and Stella.
The new Stella parlor acoustics include these features:
Solid spruce top with mahogany back and sides for warm, clear acoustic articulation, paired with carefully tuned modern X-bracing for durability without sacrificing vintage tone
Bone nut and saddle for enhanced resonance and sustain
Vintage-inspired details, including a slotted headstock, off-white binding, and a adorned soundhole rosette
Strung with D’Addario coated strings, includes a padded gig bag
Available in Sunburst, Moonstone Blue, Backwoods Green, and Ivory finishes
The Harmony Stella parlor acoustics are available exclusively at harmony.co starting at $349.
For more than 20 years, English guitarist Barrie Cadogan (aka Little Barrie) has been one of the go-to 6-string collaborators for England’s biggest rockers, from Morrissey and Liam Gallagher to Primal Scream, Paul Weller, and more. The Better Call Saul theme song composer has also made a name for himself in the U.S., notably as a trusted creative collaborator for Dan Auerbach and his Easy Eye Sound studio. That’s where PG’s Chris Kies linked up with Cadogan for this Rig Rundown. Tune in for the full interview for all the fascinating details, and peek at a quick preview roundup below.
Cadogan acquired this P-90-loaded goldtop Murphy Labs Les Paul from the Gibson Garage in Nashville last year. It was fitted with a Bigsby later, and the neck has been slimmed down. Cadogan uses a custom set of ProSpec Pyramid flatwound strings (.011–.014–.018–.028–.038–.048).
Blue Bomber
Cadogan designed this 6-string himself, inspired by a guitar owned by John Squire of the Stone Roses. A bit of a hybrid between a Jaguar and Jazz bass body, it’s also equipped with P-90s and a Bigsby, and holds up well to touring abuse. Plus, Cadogan had a killswitch installed.
Tarulli Tones
Black Keys’ front of house engineer Jason Tarulli built these two combos. One of them is inspired by the early-’70s Fender Musicmaster Bass amp circuit, while the other takes after a tweed Deluxe. Cadogan loves the sound of them running together.
Barrie Cadogan’s Pedalboard
Cadogan’s few-frills board carries a Boss TU-3W, Sola Sound-modded Boss TB-2W, Fredric Effects Super Unpleasant Companion, Strymon Deco, Fredric Effects West Germany Vintage Tremolo, and an Echo Fix EF-P2 Spring Reverb.
Adding to the company’s lineup of boutique pedals, Buzzing Bugs Audio Devices has launched the Bolster two channel giant fuzz.
Bolster’s main channel is a silicon transistor high-gain fuzz which ranges from a classic Tone Bender-esque drive, to a synthy buzzsaw by starving or saturating the circuit with the VOLTS control. The pedal’s SHIFT control gives more control over the tone circuit, providing an incredibly flexible EQ range. The MORE channel is a speaker destroying op-amp one-knob fuzz which gives a monolithic amount of sustain.
The pedal includes the following controls and features:
VOLTS - Starve or over-supply the transistors in the circuit to sweep from classic tonebender sounds, through to synth-like gated buzzsaw
SHIFT - Modify the fullness of your signal at the input stage of the pre-amp
GAIN - Ranging from sparkling cleans to growling fuzz
TONE - A classic modified Muff-style tone stack with highly flexible EQ sweep
MASTER - Output volume control
MORE - The more switch engages the second op-amp fuzz channel
True bypass switching
Diecast, robust metal enclosure
Top-mounted jacks
9vDC standard center negative input, PSU not included
Paying homage to the myths and legends of Buzzing Bugs’ home county of Cornwall, England, Bolster is a nod to the heritage and folklore that surrounds Cornish tradition. Bolster, the Cornish Giant, lived near the cliffs of Chapel Porth and terrorized the people of the nearby village. Feasting on children and livestock, Bolster overcame anyone who dared challenge him.
Buzzing Bugs Audio Devices’ Bolster giant fuzz carries a street price of $240 USD / £179.00 and is available direct from www.buzzingbugsfx.com.
Hello, and welcome back to another month of Mod Garage! After selecting a pickup and the individual parts for the wiring last time, it’s time to put it all together and finish the body of our Esquire-style project guitar.
Let’s start with wiring up the pickup. Remember how we installed a piece of copper foil for string grounding, replacing the piece of wire that’s typically used for this? This method has more benefits besides preventing feedback gremlins on the bridge pickup, which is why I use it in every Telecaster-style guitar. You usually have three wires running from the bridge pickup into the electronic compartment: hot and ground from the pickup, plus the wire from the string grounding. If you use any kind of 4-way series switching, that becomes four wires, but with a little trick, we can reduce it to only two. Each piece of wire means a little bit more resistance and capacitance, which drains some high-end to ground. Therefore, the less wire we use, the sharper our tone will be. The rule of thumb with wiring is this: As long as necessary and as short as possible. We’ll replace some more wires when we get to the output jack, but this time, let’s focus on the pickup.
Snip the ground wire of the pickup (usually the black one) so that only a short piece remains on the pickup. Solder this short piece from the pickup to the copper foil, then solder the snipped-off segment of wire to the same spot on the foil. Now, route this wire together with the hot wire from the pickup (usually white, yellow, or red) into the electronic compartment, and voilà: only two wires instead of three! This only works when you don’t have any series connections in your wiring, which is the case here.
The string-grounding wire and the ground wire from the pickup are both connected to ground, so this little trick is easy to perform. To delete another wire from the electronics, twist the ground together with another piece of wire, and solder it to the ground lug of the output jack. The typical arrangement would be to solder all the wires to ground (usually the back of a pot), then run another ground wire from the output jack to the back of a pot. This way, you only have one wire that connects to ground, grounding the output jack, the pickup, and the strings at the same time. Besides saving some wire (and, therefore, tone), the wiring will look more tidy and less crowded. It’s a neat little trick you can use to take your wiring from standard to “custom-shop grade.”
Next, let’s talk about our three individual switching positions and what they do:
1. Pickup with volume and tone control
This is the standard position you know from Teles, and it’s the normal playing position for this wiring. The pickup is routed through the volume and tone pots (more about this shortly). I decided to place this one in the middle position of the 3-way switch, which normally is the bridge and neck (in parallel) position on a 2-pickup Telecaster.
2. Pickup connected directly to output jack; controls bypassed
This switch position completely bypasses the volume and tone pots, making it perfect for any lead or solo part because it delivers a bit more output. Because of the bypassing, you can use this setup in a kind of preset configuration—for example, you can dial in a rhythm tone with the volume and tone pots rolled back in the first position, switch to this second, bypassed position for leads, and jump back to your rhythm position when you’re ready. This preset trick has a long history at Fender; it was first imagined by Leo Fender himself. I wired this bypassed configuration in the first switching position, which on a standard Telecaster would be your bridge pickup with volume and tone.
3. Pickup with an additional capacitor and volume control; tone control bypassed
This is often called “Eldred wiring,” named after Fender Custom Shop veteran Mike Eldred. He came up with this specific wiring for his personal Esquire, and it was an instant success. (Nowadays, Eldred is building guitars with his own company, El Cabron Guitars.) By adding a small capacitor and removing the tone control, this switching position adds a kind of vowel-shaped vocal quality to the tone, with a scooped and hollow midrange that sounds nice and warm. This specific sound is sometimes described as the “cocked-wah tone.” This tone, together with some swells from the still-engaged volume pot, can completely substitute for a wah pedal if you master the playing technique—for excellent examples, see guitarists like Greg Koch and Jim Campilongo. It’s also great for mimicking a Telecaster’s neck pickup tone. I placed this setup on the third switching position, which on a standard Tele is typically the neck pickup only, with volume and tone.
Next, here’s a short rundown of the individual parts I decided to use and why:
- Two 250k mil-spec audio pots with a 60/40 taper ratio, U.S. inch, solid shaft. These are the standard for Esquire/Nocaster guitars from the ’50s, offering a perfect, even taper.
- Duesenberg 3-way switch, which is simply a pleasure to engage; you can really feel the individual switching positions.
- Custom-made, vintage-style output jack with a Pertinax disc (of course, you can use any good quality output jack of your choice).
- Silver mica treble bleed network for the volume pot. I decided to go with a 470pF, “cap-only” version here, which yields a very even high end when rolling back the volume.
- 3300pF film cap for the tone control. This transforms our standard tone control into a warmth control, making it much more useful. You can use any cap you want here; if you feel that a standard .022uF, or even a .047uF, will work for you, go for it.
- 2200pF film cap for the Eldred wiring, for a more decent cocked-wah tone. If you desire a more dramatic response, go up to 3300 or 4700pF; if you want a less severe effect, go down to 1500pF. Eldred himself preferred 4700pF, which is the standard for this mod. I decided to use 2200pF because it sounds more like a neck pickup, which makes a great addition for warm rhythm tones.
- Seven-stranded reissue vintage cloth wire. I really love to work with this wire, and it’s the same material that was used in the ’50s by Fender.
These picks reflect my preferences for this project, but you can customize any of them to your liking.
Here we go with the wiring:
As usual, I simplified all ground connections so the diagram doesn’t look like a bird’s nest. The grounding scheme was described in detail above; you don’t need any ground wires between the pots as long as you’re using a metal control plate. If you use one made of wood, plastic, etc., you’ll need to run an additional ground wire from pot to pot.
As you can see, there’s no lug connected to ground on the volume pot, which is the key element for our second position’s true bypass feature. Make sure you don’t add one out of habit.
Here’s a photo of the finished wiring on the control plate that will go into our Harley Benton guitar. As you can see, there are only three external wires connecting to the control plate: ground and hot from the output jack, plus hot from the pickup.
At this point, we’ve finished work on the body of our guitar, and I’m feeling pretty happy with how it came out. We didn’t spend any additional money this month, so our remaining $196 budget is still untouched for future investments. Next month, we’ll start to work on our guitar’s neck, so stay tuned.
Tech 21 has reissued the Double Drive guitar pedal, a sleeper classic that enjoys a cult following among in-the-know pedal connoisseurs. The new 100% analog DoubleDrive reissue captures the lush, muscular power amp distortion of both Class A and Class A/B tube amps. Instead of just blending these tones, one feeds into the other creating massive ‘cascading’ distortion and offering a broad range of tonal variation.
With the Double Drive, you can go from a clean boost to jaw-rattling fuzz. It is designed to be used with any amp – tube or solid state, vintage or modern.
The pedal was first introduced in 2002 and discontinued in 2006. Pedal guru Josh Scott of JHSPedals describes the Double Drive as a pedal "that should have been famous." His 2021 video about it was, in fact, responsible for prices skyrocketing on the used market. Josh likes it so much, he owns four of them, one in each of the colors originally offered: Black, Blue, Red andYellow.
The new Double Drive reissue is available in just one color – black – and key features include:
DRIVE A controls the amount of Class A power amp output stage distortion, rich in even harmonics. The amount of harmonics is dynamically controlled by the input level and their ratio by how hard you pick.
DRIVE A/B controls the amount of Class A/B power amp output stage distortion, rich in odd harmonics.
TONE is a very musical, specialized low pass filter that allows you to remove the high end without losing mids or getting muddy.
Available in Black finish only
Buffered bypass switching
9-volt DC operation via either battery or standard external power supply
18-volt DC operation using external power supply
Made in the USA
Tech 21’s Double Drive reissue pedal carries a street price of $225 and is available exclusively through Tech 21’s Reverb shop: https://reverb.com/shop/tech21