What Sells Now — the piece to read first
The Modeller Replaced the Stack — Here Is When
Amp modellers didn't win a debate. They won the tour bus.
- Kemper Profiler
- 2012
- Line 6 Helix
- 2015
- Quad Cortex
- 2021
- IK Tonex
- 2022
The Long Objects
The TR-808 Failed Commercially. Then It Became the Most Sampled Instrument Ever Made.
Roland pulled the TR-808 from production in 1983 after roughly 12,000 units. The machine that replaced it is forgotten. The one they discontinued runs the world.
- Introduced
- 1980
- Discontinued
- 1983
- Units built
- 12,000
The TradeAll eight pieces
Guitar Center's Chapter 11 and What Came Out the Other Side
The filing made headlines as a retail death notice. The balance sheet told a different story.
Read the piece →
The End of the Juszkiewicz Era
90%
of first-time players quit inside a year, by Fender’s own retention research — measured in the two years it sold more instruments than ever before.
Fender’s best two years →
Materials and RulesAll six pieces
Since 2017 the question of what a guitar may legally be made of has been answered by a permit, a mill and a kiln.
CITES Appendix II, 2017: The Year Every Rosewood Guitar Needed a Certificate
A single CoP17 vote brought every Dalbergia species under international permit rules — and the instrument trade had about three months to adapt.
Taylor's Crelicam Mill and the Ebony Question
When a guitar maker bought into the source, it found that the ideal it was chasing exists in only eight percent of the harvest.
The Long ObjectsAll six pieces
The Hammond B-3 and the Cabinet That Completed It
The organ Hammond built to sell churches ended up defining soul, gospel, and rock — and it needed a speaker its maker spent years trying to block.
The SM57 and SM58: One Capsule, Two Jobs, Sixty Years
Two microphones, one transducer, and no fundamental revision since the Johnson administration.
