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Top 10 First Looks of 2022

Sure, perennial big hitters like Gibson, Fender, PRS, and MXR dazzled with fresh offerings, but one surprising stunner earned the most clicks.


10. Warm Audio Centavo & Warmdrive

John Bohlinger

The vintage-style gear specialists dive into the legacy of two classic drive pedals.

9. Supro Amulet

John Bohlinger

Power attenuation plus all-tube tremolo and reverb make this a killer club amp at a nice price.

8. MXR Poly Blue Octave

John Bohlinger

Pitch shifting, deep modulation, and monster fuzz make this single box a multi-headed tone mutator.

7. Gretsch G5420T Electromatic Hollowbody

John Bohlinger

Trestle-block bracing and new, refined FT-5E Filter'Tron pickups make a classic shape punchy, powerful, and more feedback resistant.

6. Magnatone Starlite

John Bohlinger

Maggie’s 5-watt mighty mite bursts with black-panel and tweed-Champ style sounds.

5. MXR Duke of Tone

John Bohlinger

An impressive taste of what lurks in the King’s chambers for players on a budget.

4. Fender Kingfish Telecaster Deluxe

Premier Guitar

The Mississippi blues maestro’s signature instrument is a potent and dazzling evolution of an underrated Tele’.

3. Gibson Theodore

John Bohlinger

Ted McCarty's archives reveal a long-lost treasure.

2. PRS SE Silver Sky John Mayer

John Bohlinger

An affordable version of John Mayer’s signature solidbody sacrifices little in the way of tone and quality, and sells for well under a grand.

1. Yamaha Revstar Standard RSS02T

John Bohlinger

A chambered body makes Yamaha's latest cafƩ racer-inspired electric a truly lightweight machine.

Versatile guitarist Nathaniel Murphy can be seen and heard on YouTube and Instagram, where he has over 450,000 followers, and demos for Chicago Music Exchange.

Nathaniel Murphy and Steve Eisenberg join the PG staff to wax poetically on what their signature pedal might sound like.

Question: What would your signature pedal sound like?

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Small spring, big splash—a pedal reverb that oozes surfy ambience and authenticity.

A vintage-cool sonic alternative to bigger tube-driven tanks and digital springs that emulate them.

Susceptible to vibration.

$199

Danelectro Spring King Junior
danelectro.com

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Few pedal effects were transformed, enhanced, and reimagined by fast digital processors quite like reverb. This humble effect—readily available in your local parking garage or empty basketball gymnasium for free—evolved from organic sound phenomena to a very unnatural one. But while digital processing yields excellent reverb sounds of every type and style, I’d argue that the humble spring reverb still rules in its mechanical form.

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Featuring studio-grade Class A circuit and versatile resonance switch, this pedal is designed to deliver the perfect boost and multiple tonal options.

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After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.

Photo by Trenity Thomas

It’s been eight years since the New Orleans-based artist released his last album. He’s back with a record that redefines his relationship to the guitar.

It is January 24, and Benjamin Booker’s third full-length album, LOWER, has just been released to the world. It’s been nearly eight years since his last record, 2017’s Witness, but Booker is unmoved by the new milestone. ā€œI don’t really feel anything, I guess,ā€ he says. ā€œMaybe I’m in shock.ā€

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