A FEW OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS
PAUL REED SMITH McCARTY 594 HOLLOWBODY II REVIEW
Introduced at the 2019 Winter NAMM Show, the McCarty 594 Hollowbody II [GP 7/19] married the refinements of the McCarty 594 solidbody’s evolution with hollow construction à la PRS, rendering a new model that is simply stunning. It features mostly hollow construction, a carved and highly figured solid-maple top and back, a supremely comfortable ’50s-inspired Pattern Vintage neck profile, 58/15 humbuckers with resistor-assisted push-pull for fatter split tones, abalone bird inlays and mixed nickel-and-gold hardware. It’s both a looker and a supremely able performer — a showpiece for players fortunate enough to get one.From $4,350, prsguitars.com
— DH
GIBSON CUSTOM 1959–2016 ’60TH ANNIVERSARY LES PAUL STANDARD
This righteous vintage-spec guitar inspired me with its superb playability and killer sound [GP 8/19]. The ’59 medium C-shape neck, polished medium-jumbo frets and low-action setup make it feel so cool to play, and the unpotted Gibson CustomBucker pickups with their Alnico III magnets (along with 500k ohm volume and tone pots and old-style Bumble Bee caps) give this guitar the ability to twang like a Tele or deliver the fat, singing LP tone that has always been the forte of this model. This is probably as close to a real ’59 burst as humans can make.$6,500 street, gibson.com
— AT
LÂG TRAMONTANE THV30DCE HYVIBE
No acoustic/electric of 2019 stood out quite like the Tramontane THV30DCE HyVibe [GP ]. Talk about intelligent design! Lâg’s HyVibe electronics system combines onboard resonance-based effects with smartphone-style features that make it worthy of being called the world’s first smart guitar. In addition to eight awesome-sounding, acoustically generated digital effects that burst forth from the soundhole or transfer to an amp, HyVibe also
