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John Mayer’s black Stratocaster guitar has been his go-to instrument for years. He has relied on it for countless recording sessions and performances, and he affectionately calls it the “BLACK1.” In collaboration with the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and guitarist, Fender now offers a collectible, 500-piece special edition of the John Mayer Special Edition BLACK1 Stratocaster.Mayer implores everyone to “make their...

Here is a great TECH TIP from Fender explaining the workings of a Stratocaster pickup selector switch. The pickup switch is the key to the Stratocaster’s time-honored tonal versatility, because it controls which pickups or which combinations of pickups are on at any given time. Since the Stratocaster is Fender’s sole three-pickup guitar, its pickup switch has an important job...

From the Guitarchive over at Fender comes a history lesson on the Telecaster Deluxe: Fender’s third and final late-’60s/early-’70s experiment with redesigned Telecaster models was the Telecaster Deluxe, developed in 1972 and introduced in 1973. Along with its predecessors, the Telecaster Thinline (1968) and the Telecaster Custom (1972), the Deluxe represented Fender’s first forays into the world of humbucking pickups...

In 2010, for the first time ever, the four giants of metal – Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax — shared one stage for seven European shows. The final stop on June 22 at the Sonisphere Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, was beamed by satellite to more than a thousand cinemas worldwide. On Nov. 2, the historic June 22 concert will hit DVD...

Daniel Lanois, who produced Neil Young’s new album, Le Noise, discusses it track by track.