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XLR is a magazine, a radar and a diary about music gear and the making of music — for the people who make records and put on shows, wherever they do it.

The name is the three-pin connector that every signal in the business passes through: the microphone on stage and in the booth, the line to the desk, the DMX cable that runs the lights. Studio, stage and lighting rig share it, and so does this magazine. Every few hours XLR collects what the makers shipped, what the reviewers heard, what the studios and the touring crews are doing, which producers and collectives are surfacing and what they are saying — synths and modular, plugins and DAWs, guitars and drums, microphones, monitors, PA and lights, the rooms and the people — from a few hundred sources in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and more, then plots what is moving. The editor writes a letter every few days. Nothing is sold here; when a link leads to a shop, that is the maker's shop, not ours.

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Guitar.comGuitars

Pink Floyd are releasing 18-carat gold picks worth nearly £6,000

September 14

Back in 2023, a Dunlop Tortex pick once owned by Kurt Cobain became the most expensive plectrum ever sold . While the worn, scribbled-on orange pick looks like something you’d find at the bottom of your gig bag, its hist

Read at Guitar.com ↗

“It’s great… but it’s too much. I gotta get this on R&B radio”: What Quincy Jones told Steve Lukather when he first played on Michael Jackson’s Beat It

Guitars“It’s great… but it’s too much. I gotta get this on R&B radio”: What Quincy Jones told Steve Lukather when he first played on Michael Jackson’s Beat It Guitar.com

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Pink Floyd are releasing 18-carat gold picks worth nearly £6,000

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Guitars“It’s great… but it’s too much. I gotta get this on R&B radio”: What Quincy Jones told Steve Lukather when he first played on Michael Jackson’s Beat It Guitar.com

Guitars“I’ve got CDs and cassettes full of them – I just can’t get away from it”: Tony Iommi has a massive stockpile of unheard riffs Guitar.com