New models honor pop-rock star Avril Lavigne, metal stalwart Jim Root, alt-rock bassist Mikey Way

Squier has added three new artist signature models, the Avril Lavigne Telecaster®, the Jim Root Telecaster®, and the Mikey Way Mustang® Bass, promising star-like vibe and tone at incredible Squier value.

The new lavish, black-on-black Avril Lavigne Telecaster joins Lavigne’s chart-topping signature Tele, and features several striking touches, including a three-ply pickguard, knurled black flat-top volume control knob, a black headstock with die-cast turners, and a distinctive 12th-fret skull and crossbones logo.

Designed in cooperation with Slipknot/Stone Sour guitar speed demon Jim Root, the Jim Root Telecaster boasts several foreboding features, most notably an elegant satin-matte finish in black or white, starkly simple single-knob/single switch control layout, black die-cast tuners and other black hardware, and two pulverizing passive humbucking pickups with black covers.

The Mikey Way Mustang Bass, designed with the input of My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, takes the classic Mustang Bass and amps it through the roof with a dazzling large-flake Silver Sparkle finish with black racing stripes, a single seismic humbucking pickup with a black cover, and a black headstock with Way’s signature on the back.

Also in the signature series are the Simon Neil Signature Stratocaster and the James Johnston Jazz Bass guitars. Released in Europe in 2009, these popular signature models designed in collaboration with the Scottish rockers are now available worldwide.

Two years ago, TC introduced polyphonic tuning to the world and since then guitarists everywhere have welcomed this next-generation way of tuning with open arms. Now TC reveals the world's smallest polyphonic tuner: PolyTune Mini that will fit on any pedal board.

Sometimes size actually does matter and in such cases, PolyTune Mini is the perfect solution as no other pedal tuner in the world will take up so little space - which means more room for other pedals.

"When designing PolyTune Mini we set a goal right from the start: we didn't want to compromise on features in any way," says TC's guitar product manager Tore Lynggaard Mogensen. "Despite shrinking it down to a third of the size of the original PolyTune, our engineers did an absolutely incredible job taking all the cool stuff from PolyTune and shrinking it down to a tiny package. It really is the kind of product you have to hold in your hand to truly appreciate the size, build quality and attention to detail."

PolyTune Mini is based on the exact same technology as the original PolyTune, so like its bigger brother it shows the tuning state of all strings simultaneously by simply strumming the guitar, enabling guitarists to get back to playing in a matter of seconds.

Just like the original PolyTune, PolyTune Mini is among the most precise tuners in the world, tuning with +/- 0.5 per cent precision in chromatic mode and +/- 1 per cent accuracy in polyphonic mode. Also, it automatically switches between chromatic and polyphonic modes depending on whether all strings are strummed at once or each string is picked individually.

Finally, PolyTune Mini features Drop-D and Capo modes as well as True Bypass for zero tone coloration and a super-bright LED display with the same amount of LEDs as the original PolyTune.

PolyTune Mini Main Features

• Ultra-small Footprint – Will Fit on Any Pedal Board
• PolyTune – Tune All Strings Simultaneously
• +/- 0.5 Cent Tuning Accuracy
• True Bypass w/ Silent Tuning
• Super-bright LED Display
• Up to 5 Semitones Flat Tunings
• Drop-D and Capo Tuning

Apollo is the first professional, high-resolution computer audio interface that delivers the sound, feel, and flow of analog recording. This 18 x 24 FireWire/Thunderbolt - ready interface combines genuine UA analog design with class-leading 24-bit/192 kHz sound quality and onboard Realtime UAD Processing. Using Apollo, music producers and performers can finally track audio through a range of classic UAD analog emulation plug-ins — from Neve, Studer, Manley, Lexicon and more — in real time, and with a sleek, elegant workflow on both Mac and PC.

StageScape™ M20 is the world’s first smart mixing system — an integrated live sound solution that uses touchscreen-based visual mixing to explode the traditional mixer/outboard gear paradigm. StageScape M20d uses a combination of input jack sensing, a visual mixing environment and professionally crafted sound tools to prepare, process and route signals automatically. The StageScape M20d can guide you through optimally setting signal levels, EQ, dynamics, effects, monitor routing and more, to get your mix quickly sounding great. Instead of a complex surface of knobs and faders, StageScape M20d uses a touchscreen with a graphic representation of your stage — just touch an image to access total control of the channel. Dialing in a sound is as simple as moving your finger around the touch screen. If you’re a professional or A/V installer, the advanced tweak mode allows you to go right in and add 5kHz or change compression ratios. With premium mic pres, world-class DSP and premium sound quality, StageScape M20d will satisfy even the most experienced ears. It’s the only smart mixing system designed to keep you in the creative zone.

Mixing Sound and the Left-Brain/Right-Brain Conundrum

As musicians, when we mix live sound, we generally do the minimum — meaning we just bring up a level and maybe add some EQ. Some players study engineering, learn the “lingo” and become experts in that skill. For the rest of us, there’s a lot of unknown territory involved in getting a good sound live.

We musicians spend so much time writing and recording, yet sadly leave much to chance during performance. The truth is that it's critical to sound great live if you want to be taken seriously. It's a challenge just to get things to work, not to mention dealing with all of the complexities in getting a good sound. Making music is a right-brain activity, yet we are constantly getting pulled into left-brain tasks like problem solving, analyzing and decoding:

What’s wrong with that sound? Do I boost a frequency to make it right, or cut one? Which frequency? I wish I could get my acoustic guitar to sound better in this room… I wish I could get the vocal to sound more like the recording…

The StageScape M20d mixer and StageSource loudspeakers offer a different approach.

StageScape M20d was designed to bypass the complication of getting good live sound. Instead of keeping track of channel strips, StageScape puts the landscape of the stage in front of you using a graphical representation of, that’s right… a stage. The M20d lets you think in musical terms like “light” and “dark” to dial in sounds. And instead of bringing along racks of outboard gear and making it all work together, everything is integrated within StageScape — even recording to a USB drive or a computer.

The clash between right-brain artistry and left-brain analytics often derails the creative flow. StageScape was designed to avoid the left-brain/right-brain duality by removing layers of non-creative tasks between you and your live mix.

Instead of facing the complexity of multiple knobs and faders, StageScape M20d provides you with a graphic of your stage, complete with all the instruments, monitors and mics for your performance. Connect a mic, and a mic stand appears on the stage. Just touch that image to access channel parameters. Move your finger around the touchscreen to change multiple parameters at the same time — what used to be a dozen individual parameter adjustments using multiple knobs now becomes one finger. Instead of getting caught up decoding settings, StageScape frees you to do what’s most important: perform.

Musicians often buy a PA speaker only to find out that it can only do one thing well: amplify the output of a mixer. But as you start adding other musicians to the band or you move from electric to acoustic sets, you find out you need more gear, or you end up compromising your sound. Line 6 StageSource™ L3t is designed to be a lifesaver for the performing musician by providing an integrated professional live sound solution for a variety of common scenarios.

And if you use the StageScape mixer with StageSource loudspeakers, it gets even better.

Using proprietary digital networking called L6 LINK™, the mixer and loudspeakers integrate into a smart system. The M20d will recognize which loudspeakers are being used as monitors and send them monitor feeds. Loudspeakers will automatically self-configure, pan stereo signals, adjust Smart Speaker modes and perform system-wide optimization.

Both StageScape and StageSource products were designed to be a smarter, faster way for musicians to get great live sound and help them stay in the creative zone focused on the music. Whether you play small acoustic shows or have a full band, playing live will never be the same.

Fender introduced its new Pawn Shop Special amplifiers at this years NAMM show, which present a coolly unconventional take on amp design by evoking the enjoyably esoteric finds you might find in a pawnshop or second-hand store. They have the air of the early days of electrified sound, when musicians grabbed whatever amp they could get—be it for guitar, harmonica, lap steel, accordion, vocal mic, etc. Those amps produced sounds that were wonderfully distinctive precisely because they were so primitive, and it was exactly their oddball nature that made them so much fun.

The two new Pawn Shop Special models—the diminutive Greta™ and the elegant Excelsior™—deliver that offbeat no-school-like-old-school spirit in spades. Neither is intended as your everyday main amp (in fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the name “Fender” anywhere on them), but you’re nonetheless in for a delightful sonic experience that just might spark some magic creative impulse, spur a great idea or lend a certain never-heard-that-before sound to your recording. Plug in, and you’ll find new voices, new sounds and new songs hiding in these unruly little boxes—all just waiting for you to let them out.

In the playful form of a vintage tabletop radio, the Pawn Shop Special Greta model is quite possibly the most unusual Fender tube amp ever. In fact, nobody would blame you if you saw a Greta and, not yet realizing its true identity, tried to tune in the local weather on it.

But an amp is exactly what it is—a two-watt tabletop beauty with a 4” Special Design speaker, old-school VU meter with “clean to overload” indicator display and simple volume and tone controls. Its charmingly vintage-style enclosure has front and rear wood panels finished in bright red, gold-finished metal top and sides for increased shielding, “Greta” script badge on the front panel and tabletop feet. Under the hood and on the back panel, the Greta features a single 12AT7 output tube and 12AX7 preamp tube, with a ¼” instrument jack and ¼” line out jack (for preamp use with another amplifier). Greta produces a variety of low-volume clean and overdriven guitar tones, but even if you never plug a guitar into it, the 1/8” back-panel auxiliary input is perfect for iPod or other media player use, with great mono tube playback sound that’ll have you rocking right there at your desk.

Alluringly refined yet harboring tones from polite to raw to raucous, the Pawn Shop Special Excelsior model is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive tube combo amps in Fender history. Its brown textured vinyl covering, smartly stylish “E” grille design and bold crossed-swords front-panel badge convey a decidedly stately vibe with a marked air of cold-war cool.

To say nothing of its admirable tone and power. The 13-watt Excelsior elegantly encloses a single 15” Special Design speaker, with a bottom-loaded primary chassis and top-loaded control chassis for operating convenience and low noise (powered by two 6V6 output tubes and two 12AX7 preamp tubes). Distinctive features include “instrument,” “microphone” and “accordion” inputs that each have individually optimized circuitry; tremolo circuit with speed control, bright/dark tone switch (for treble or bass emphasis), volume control and ¼” internal speaker disconnect that lets the amp drive an external speaker enclosure. For playing at home, smaller gigs and studio sessions, the Excelsior is a class act that brings a fresh and unconventional new vibe to your playing.

Giraffe Tongue Orchestra — the new supergroup featuring members of Mastodon, Jane’s Addiction, and Dillenger Escape Plan — just announced the addition of ex-Mars Volta and current One Day As a Lion drummer Jon Theodore to the roster.

The group of talented, yet stylistically different musicians boasts Dillenger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman, guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds of Mastodon, bassist Eric Avery formerly of Jane’s Addiction, and now One Day As a Lion stickman Jon Theodore. The announcement contrasts previous reports that Thomas Pridgen — also a former Mars Volta drummer — was on board to man the kit for the group. Theodore explained that his interest in the project was sparked by it’s unusual direction:

“When I first heard some of the ideas these guys were working on I immediately knew this project was right up my alley. Both beautiful and technical but not spastic, thematic but not cheesy, hard but delicate.”

It may be a minute before we hear any ideas the guys are working on, as both Mastodon and Dillenger Escape Plan still have overseas dates on their shared tour through March and according to Weinman they have yet to settle on a vocalist, or vocalists as it were:

“This band [Giraffe Tongue Orchestra] has been a long time coming. Now that we have actually started creating together, it’s great to see it all materialize into what I feel is some really interesting material. G.T.O. is a true collaborative effort, which in my experience rarely works, so I think we have something pretty special here. It just so happens to be with some of my favorite people and musicians. Almost every day this experiment seems to take on some new characteristic, and I think some of the people we’ve been talking to about contributing vocals would be a big surprise to many. It’s even surprised me!”

If your looking for a fun guitar app that actually teaches you to play shredder songs then look no further. Megadeth have released the "Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy," an iPad application where Mustaine teaches fans to play hits like Tornado of Souls or Public Enemy No. 1 from the band's new album, TH1RT3EN.

Guitar Prodigy shows you how to play a real guitar just like Mustaine. The app uses his master tracks and listens to the notes you play, giving you instant feedback on your performance. Mustaine digs into rhythm, technique and theory. It's the next best thing to taking private lessons with Dave.

Guitar Prodigy includes several Megadeth mega-shredding hits like "Tornado of Souls," "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due," and "Public Enemy No. 1" from Megadeth's new album TH1RT3EN. Also included are a number of progressive bite-sized "Micro Lessons" created by Mustaine himself covering areas like rhythm, technique and theory revealing the true genius behind his music.

The app comes with multiple skill levels from beginner to advanced, and even features a leader board to show off top scores. Never before has there been an affordable way for a fan to get a one-on-one connection with the artist, to experience the music – by playing the music.

Download your copy of Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy HERE

Most bass guitars are long-scale instruments. Students and other younger players, however, may prefer to start with a short-scale bass guitar and then “graduate” up to a long-scale bass.

Fender itself defined the long-scale bass guitar when it introduced the profoundly influential Precision Bass® in 1951; joined later by the Jazz Bass® (1960) and other long-scale models, such as the Telecaster Bass® (1968) and the Jaguar Bass® (2006). All have a 34” scale that, while universally accepted as a standard length, can be a bit of a stretch for younger players.

Realizing this, Fender introduced its first short-scale bass guitar, the Mustang® Bass, in summer 1966. The last Fender bass guitar designed by Leo Fender himself, the Mustang Bass had a student-friendly 30” scale with an accordingly shorter distance between frets and a generally more compact physical size that made it easier to play for kids and players with smaller hands and shorter reach (Fender had been offering smaller student-model electric guitars since 1955). Another short-scale model, the Musicmaster Bass, debuted in 1971 and remained in the Fender line until 1981.

Between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, several other makers introduced their own short- and medium-scale basses. Standards basically settled into the dominant long scale established by Fender (34”; rarely, other makers have offered longer scales) the less prevalent but nonetheless commonplace short scale (30” and slightly longer) and the much less often-encountered medium scale (around 32”). It bears remembering here that the term “scale length” refers to the distance between the bridge and the nut—the entire vibrating length of the strings—rather than the length of the neck or fingerboard.

Today, Fender’s widely varied bass guitar selection continues to encompass several quality short-scale models. These include the modern version of the Fender Mustang Bass, the Squier Vintage Modified Mustang Bass, Squier Vintage Modified Jaguar Bass Special SS and Squier Bronco™ Bass. All have a 30” scale.

In addition to the obvious size difference between long- and short-scale basses, is there a tonal difference?

Yes, definitely. For one thing, short-scale bass guitars sometimes use a slightly heavier string gauge than their long-scale brothers, which imparts a thicker and more bass-heavy tone than lighter-gauge strings with more brightness and snap. Further, shorter strings require lower string tension for proper intonation, which imparts not only a looser, more “floppy” feel to the strings, but also results in fatter-sounding low notes.

Further, short-scale bass playing has not been the exclusive province of kids and beginners. Plenty of bass greats have used short-scale basses, including Paul McCartney, Jack Bruce (Cream), Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones), Andy Fraser (Free), Glenn Cornick (Jethro Tull), Trevor Bolder (Spiders From Mars, Uriah Heep), Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads), Garry Tallent (E Street Band), Bruce Thomas (the Attractions), Gary Mounfield (Stone Roses, Primal Scream), Mike Watt (Minuteman, Firehose, Stooges) and many others.

Original article can be viewed at Fender.com

The closing of this acquisition marks Gibson’s further expansion into the pro audio market with loudspeaker, monitor and electronics technology. In addition, Stanton Group gives Gibson the ability to leverage its existing research and development base.

“Right now we have an extremely powerful brand that people recognize and value, but the musical instrument category is inherently limited because people who purchase instruments also need to know how to play them,” says Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar. “This new division is perfectly aligned with our core. It expands our reach to fellow music lovers and allows us access to 20 in 20 consumers instead of the one in 20 we currently hit.”

Juszkiewicz adds, “Stanton produces some of the best pro audio equipment in the world and we’re incredibly excited to be working with the very talented team at Stanton as we take Gibson into the future.”

“We are very excited to be joining the Gibson family,” says Timothy Dorwart, CEO of the Stanton Group. “This partnership will allow our brands and core management team to continue our growth and momentum in the marketplace within our shared channel while the association with the iconic Gibson brand gives us the opportunity to quickly expand our customer base. Moreover, we bring technical resources that will enhance the R&D capabilities of both companies.”

The first video. Short of calling it a single, "The View" has been the band's focus track since the album launched, having performed the track live on various European tv and radio programs.

The black and white clip was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and shot at the Metallica HQ in the San Francisco Bay area.

"The first time I heard 'The View' I was stunned," Aronofsky said. "I had never heard anything like it. Half was all Lou. The other half all Metallica. It was a marriage that on the surface made no sense, but the fusion changed the way I thought about both artists and morphed into something completely fresh and new. I couldn't stop listening to it. Lou's crushing lyrics, and the band's incredible licks."