Tag: features

Now more than 90 years old, the lap steel was the earliest example of an electric guitar and remains a stringed instrument every guitarist should try, largely because it’s so accessible. In fact, a lap steel is about as straightforward as you can get – it’s a plank that sits on your lap and is fitted with a bridge, nut, tuners, and pickup. All you need is your slide of choice.

Eastwood’s MRG has a solid mahogany body/neck slab, rosewood fretboard with block markers, and a scale length of 22.5″. The bridge is an adjustable hardtail, while the tuners are chrome and side-mounted. It’s finished with a black-to-amber sunburst and a translucent-gold pickguard. The sole pickup is a Höfner-style staple humbucker, accompanied by Volume and T knobs. Like most laps, it’s the quintessence of simplicity.

Out of the gig bag, the MRG is ready to play, though oddly set up with light-gauge strings; most sliders will put a medium or heavy set on there ASAP, as preferred for most bottleneck playing.

Next, twist those machine heads to your tuning of choice; Eastwood recommends C6 (such as C-E-G-A-C-E), but also dig into open E, D, or G, standard, or your favorite chord combination.

Going into a solidstate practice amp, the MRG sang like a bird. Lap-steelers already know to palm-mute strings, but if you’re new to the game, hold the slide under your thumb, index, and middle fingers and mute with your ring finger and pinky. The humbucker keeps things nicely quiet, and rolling back the Tone knob a hair lets the Eastwood’s natural tone shine forth. The MRG effortlessly delivers sonic textures from David Lindley to David Gilmour, ready to complement a vocalist with fills or add a searing solo.

With a solid build, mandolin-influenced looks, and killer tone, the MRG Lap Steel is also easy on the wallet. Definitely worth a run. – Pete Prown

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

If the iconic Soldano SLO-100 is perpetually on your wish list but its price tag keeps you from pulling the trigger, its creator now has a realistic alternative.

Expanding on the original single-channel SLO Overdrive pedal, the SLO Plus introduces a Normal channel alongside Overdrive, each with dedicated controls that allow for detailed tweaking of Preamp gain and Master output. Tone-shaping is courtesy of shared three-band EQ, Presence, and a side-mounted Deep switch for shaping low-end.

The pedal has a durable metal housing, tactile control knobs, heavy-duty foot switches, LED indicators, and a 9-volt jack. It’s dressed with clean graphics and labeling, neatly organized internal components, and professional build quality.

Running a Les Paul through a boutique amp with 6V6s and the Plus set to edge-of-breakup tone produced the thick, sustaining overdrive for which the SLO-100 is known. With the Overdrive channel’s Preamp (gain) cranked, you’re rewarded with creamy, saturated overdrive that oozes sustain and harmonics; the Normal channel provides a rich, aggressive crunch perfect for rhythm tones or bluesy leads when its Preamp knob is backed down a touch. Switching to a Telecaster yielded sharp, cutting distortion on the Normal channel and a saturated-but-articulate distortion through Overdrive. Adjusting the EQ and Deep switch tailored the pedal’s tone for the Telecaster’s brightness or the Les Paul’s darker sounds.

The Plus responds well to picking dynamics and cleaned up nicely when rolling off the guitar’s Volume knob. Channel and bypass switching make it ideal for live gigs and the studio.

Powerful and compact, the SLO Plus delivers usable, smooth, classic crunch or high-gain monster tone, bringing some of the experience of a legendary amp right to your pedalboard. – Charlie Wilkins

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

For 2025, Orange has expanded on its compact Pedal Baby introduced a few years back with a new trio – the Dual Baby, Gain Baby, and Tour Baby. All 100-watt amps with solid-state Class A/B output stages, Jfet preamp stages (another form of solid-state), and two footswitchable channels, they’re housed in 12″ x 3.25″ x 7.5″ metal boxes and weigh a little under eight pounds. While offering individual modus operandi, they share several features – buffered effects loop, dual speaker outs, and XLR DI out.

The Dual Baby 100’s two channels each carry controls for Gain, Volume, Presence, Bass, Middle, and Treble. Channel A – voiced to emulate the Orange Rockerverb – adds a Tubby switch to boost lows, while Channel B – voiced for gritty clean-to-crunch tones – has a Tight switch to liven its sound at lower gain levels. Split into a more classic rhythm/lead dichotomy, the Gain Baby 100 has a simpler Clean channel with just Volume, Bass, and Treble, and Comp, tapping a built-in VCA compressor. Its Dirty channel piles on Gain, Volume, Presence, Bass, Middle, and Treble, plus FS Volume (footswitchable for a second output level/solo), and Tight switch. The Tour Baby 100 carries the exact same controls in its Clean and Dirty channels, minus the Tight switch, though it’s voiced to more-classic overdrive tones versus the contemporary high-gain of the Gain Baby.

Tested with an ES-355 and Telecaster into 1×12″ and 2×12″ cabs, each revealed some overlap in sonics, but with several distinct personality traits. We ultimately preferred the Gain Baby overall, with the Tour Baby a close second. The pair’s similar Clean channels benefit immensely from the built-in Comp, which adds swell, depth, and dynamics to the Dual’s otherwise rather linear and solid-state-sounding Channel A. And while the Gain’s Dirty Channel dishes out sizzle and saturation aplenty with Tight engaged, its up position delivered an expressive, full-bodied overdrive with typically mid-rich Orange leanings that yielded our favorite playing tones of the entire trio, with Tour Baby’s Dirty (Tight up) a close second.

Ultimately, there’s a lot to like in each. And while they might not knock more-exalted all-tube models off their perch, the Baby range represents a big bundle of power and tone at a reasonable price. – Dave Hunter

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Based on the famed Roland SDE-3000 rack unit, Boss’ SDE-3 combines some classic delay sounds of the 1980s, updated with a bevy of modern tricks and features. Like a lot of delays, it can be run in mono, but you’ll get the biggest bang going in stereo to different amps or outputs.

The core of the unit is the Offset knob, which sends separate echo times and layers them into a sonic sandwich for supremely lush effects. If you’ve always wondered about the secret of The Edge’s massive chords and arpeggios, the SDE-3’s Offset can give you those sounds in a blink. Another bonus is a chorus/modulation circuit that gives Depth, Rate, and Hi Cut controls via the unit’s concentric outer knobs. Naturally, there’s tap tempo (controllable by foot, an external expression pedal, or MIDI), as well as eighth and dotted-eighth settings for that David Gilmour vibe. On the back of the unit, look for a Carryover On/Off switch, which can yield a natural tail decay when you turn the SDE-3 off, or more of a sudden chop.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, but the SDE-3 is a vast, powerful delay in that familiar Boss format, weaving in ’80s sounds, two simultaneous delays (the offset), chorus, tremolo, dual-amp panning and far more. – Pete Prown

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The evolution of Randall Smith’s legendary high-gain Mesa/Boogie design into the revered Mark IIC+ of the mid ’80s established a rock amp that many guitarists still consider the epitome of the form. Building on what was already a high-gain amp by the standards of the day, the M/B team piled on even more gain, more high-end sizzle, and a tighter low end, and lit a fire under the tone-obsessed backsides of many heavy rockers in the process. Well-known from the playing of John Petrucci, Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, both Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield from Metallica (who had theirs further modified to “C++” status) and others, original examples have become the priciest and most-collectible of vintage Boogies – setting the stage for a much-welcomed reissue like this.

Billed as an authentic re-creation, the hand-wired Mark IIC+ is a compact head that puts out 75 watts in Simul-Class or 25 watts in Class-A mode from its four 6L6GC output tubes, with five 12AX7s in the front end. Controls including Volume 1, Treble, Bass, Middle, Master 1, Lead Drive, and Lead Master – with bonus push/pull functions tied to many of them. Also familiar to any fan of the earlier Mark models are features like footswitchable five-band graphic EQ, rear-panel Reverb and Presence controls, and Slave Out with level knob.

Tested with an ES-355 and Telecaster into 1×12″ and 2×12″ cabs, the Mark IIC+ proved a fast track to the hallowed Cali high-gain tones of the ’80s and ’90s, and a lot of fun no matter how it was dialed in. There will be naysayers, and of course many of the components used to build the originals 40 years ago are no longer available, but this reissue offers an impressively authentic dose of the IIC+ magic, delivering everything you could hope for in juicy, saturated, singing, and endlessly sustaining lead tones.

No matter the builder or model, the latest version of 40-year-old amp design will sound a little different, but ultimately the new Mark IIC+ is a fitting tribute to the classic. And, lest we forget, its rich, clean rhythm tones are extremely good, as well – largely in the “big Fender” camp – and round out a package that offers most anything a rock-leaning player could need from a dual-mode amp. – Dave Hunter

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.