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All Reviews

This $500 solidbody may look like a no-frills machine, but it’s a rock-solid player with features that elevate it above most guitars in its price category.

A flat-out bargain. Great vibrato system. Excellent fretwork. Fast playability.

Some midrange clutter in the output at wide-open volumes.

$499

PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin
prsguitars.com

4.5
4.5
5
5

PRS makes some of the best affordable electric guitars in the world. They also have a talent for making those instruments look expensive. They achieve this trick thanks to quality control standards and practices that better most companies at the accessible end of the price spectrum. But PRS also built their reputation on immaculately crafted and very exclusive guitars. And once that association is burned into the collective consciousness of the guitar playing public—and you figure out a way to cop high-end design cues in down-market versions—well, you can make an inexpensive guitar seem very expensive, indeed.

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Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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A top-shelf dread’ built for dueling with a D-28 offers appealing tone alternatives.

Balanced voice. Cool interplay between low and low-mid registers. Nice attention to detail.

Loud but lacks a little push in bass frequencies. “Vintage gloss” finish looks more satin than gloss.

$2,799.

Guild D-50 Standard
guildguitars.com

4.5
4.5
4.5
4

Selling a USA-built rosewood-and-spruce in the vicinity of $3K is cruel, nasty business. Gibson and Taylor both make enticing, attractive options in the form of the Hummingbird Studio Rosewood, Songwriter Standard, and Grand Pacific models. And anyone who dares get tangled in this cage match must face off with the most legendary rosewood-and-spruce dreadnought of all, the Martin D-28. Guild has always had a seat at this table thanks to the D-50 and D-55. Both models moved in and out of the lineup as Guild changed hands over the last few decades. Now, with Cordoba at the controls, the D-50 Standard is back in the fold.

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Flexible and rich with liquid-to-choppy textures, this analog tremolo is addictive fun and a potent tone-shaper.

Abundant textures of analog trem’ you can really get lost in. Intuitive. Rich modulations.

Costs just enough to sting.

$279

JAM Pedals Harmonious Monk mk.2
jampedals.com

4.5
4.5
4
4

The second iteration of JAM’s Harmonious Monk, a tremolo pedal designed with Dan and Mick from That Pedal Show, has a way of making hours disappear. It’s super fun, full of sounds you can swim or drown in, and, after a short time, quite intuitive to use. I’d be surprised to encounter a gigging musician that couldn’t cover 90 percent of their tremolo needs with the mk.2. For most, I suspect, the mk.2 will cover every need and then some.

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Gibson’s Falcon 20

Mesa/Boogie-built updates of two classic combos add boutique amp control and character to stellar vintage sounds.

Reimagines a classic small combo while adding modern clarity and punch to vintage tones. Power scaling is a plus for at-home and small-venue players.

Might not appeal to guitarists seeking a wider variety of sounds. Tremolo could use more range and is noisy at highest depth settings.

$1,799

Gibson Falcon 20
gibson.com

4
4
5
4

I love old science fiction and horror movies, and one of my favorites is The Fly, both the Vincent Price and Jeff Goldblum versions. The premise: A scientist developing a teleportation machine accidentally steps into its chamber with a fly inside, and their genetic material gets blended. Mayhem ensues.

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