The 60+ guitars, amps, pedals, basses, and accessories that stood out from the crowd and earned our coveted Premier Gear Award this year.

Carvin

Carvin X1 Tube Preamp


Featuring clean and dirty channels driven by two 12AX7s, Carvin’s X1 Tube Preamp has a full EQ (bass, mid, treble, and presence) and the ability to use footswitches to switch channels, engage a lead-channel boost, or activate a 5-band graphic EQ. The X1 offers a truly impressive array of tones ranging from spongy, beautifully compressed cleans to crunchy grit or high-gain sounds perfect for singing leads or evil metal.

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$449 street, carvinaudio.com

Plus! December Premier Gear Award Winners!
Read the full reviews on the pages indicated below!

1. Peavey Invective.MH$699 street, peavey.com
2. Chase Bliss Dark World$349 street, chaseblissaudio.com
3. Comins CGS-16 $2,399 street, cominsguitars.com
4. Ernie Ball Music Man Short-Scale StingRay$1,999 street, music-man.com
5. EBS MicroBass 3$349 street, ebssweden.com


CuNiFe-driven Wide Range pickups and a 7.25" fretboard radius make this the most period-correct Thinline since the original.

Awesome, alive, and individual Wide Range pickup sounds. Great neck. A 7.25" fretboard radius. Light weight. Period-authentic 1 meg pots.

Taper on 1 meg pots not very nuanced. Less-than-plentiful ash supplies could mean odd grain matches on natural-finish guitars.

$2,399

Fender American Vintage II '72 Thinline Telecaster
fender.com

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In the 50 years since their big, chrome covers first reflected a hot stage light, Fender’s Seth Lover-designed Wide Range humbuckers have gone from maligned to revered. The guitars built around Wide Range pickups are legends in their own right, too. Keith Richards’ Telecaster Custom is synonymous with the Stones dynamic and adventurous late-70s-to-early-80s period. Scores of punk and indie guitarists made the Telecaster Deluxe a fixture of those scenes. And Jonny Greenwood almost singlehandedly elevated the Starcaster from a curiosity to an object of collector lust. The fourth member of the Wide Range-based guitar family, the ’72 Telecaster Thinline, lived a comparatively low-profile life. Yet it is a practical, streamlined, uniquely stylish, and multifaceted instrument with a truly original voice—qualities that are plain to see, feel, and hear in this new American Vintage II incarnation.

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This advanced control application extends Precision's unmatched ARC acoustic calibration, response customization and speaker emulation capabilities.

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The ADHD, or Adaptive Droning Hyperfuzz Device, is a glitch, filter, bit crushing, octave, square wave guitar synth oscillator disguised as a fuzz pedal.

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Made in Germany to the highest standards of craftsmanship, this great little instrument offers you the opportunity to join the party and play along!

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