The Guitar.com staff picks: this is the best new gear of 2025
2025 is nearly over – across the last 12 months we’ve seen some seriously impressive guitar products arrive, ranging from overarching software suites to gorgeous metal guitars, from innovative utility pedals to gorgeous ambient delays. Over the last few days myself and the rest of the Guitar.com team have been collating our favourites from the whole year – let’s dive into our picks!
Best premium acoustic: Taylor 314ce
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News Editor Sam: “Forget the scene when Jack lets go of the door and Rose watches him fade into the icy abyss of the Atlantic Ocean. A real tragic end to a beautiful love story came earlier this year when the UPS courier came to collect the Taylor 314ce Studio I had spent months developing an intimate bond with. I’ve never quite felt heartbreak like seeing that van – carrying what I can only describe as the love of my life – fade into the distance. I won’t be judged for being dramatic.
“The Taylor 314ce is among a small crop of the finest instruments I’ve ever played. Everything, to me, is exactly how I want it to be. The action is set up pristinely, which, paired with Taylor’s “easy-playing” neck profile – and satin-finished neo-tropical mahogany neck and West African Crelicam Ebony fingerboard – makes for one of the most luxurious acoustic guitar playing experiences imaginable. The guitar also delivers a stunningly balanced and earthy tone, with satisfying low end projection plus gorgeous sparkly highs, making everything from simple chord strumming to intricate fingerstyle playing an utter delight. I must also note that I had this guitar for months and played it regularly, and somehow the strings still sounded brand-new.”
Best affordable acoustic: Martin 000 Jr Sapele
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Commissioning editor Josh: “I am not a small person. I am big and broad enough that I will begrudgingly accept that I do look rather silly playing any kind of student or parlor guitar. And yet… I bloody love a small-bodied acoustic. Especially as the entirety of my acoustic playing life is now at home, I don’t really care about the power and projection of a big-bodied guitar at this point. I just want something that’s comfortable, plays well and sounds good.
That said, I was not expecting to get on with the Martin 000 Jr quite as much as I did – but something about the whole recipe really did just click with me in a way that made it a very, very hard guitar to say goodbye too.
“That scaled-down 000 body shape doesn’t feel as dainty as a parlor-sized instrument, and the full-size scale length certainly combines with that to make it feel every inch a ‘proper’ guitar, but just a big more ergonomic and compact. It also sounds and looks great too, and with its stained sapele finish, it just looks at home in any space you put it in – a killer instrument and a killer price too.”
Best gigging amplifier: Orange Tour Baby 100
Image: Orange
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Senior Staff Writer Cillian: “It’s no secret I love Orange amps, and I’ve recently been having a very good time with the brand’s solid-state offerings. Late last year I bagged myself a used Super Crush 100, which is essentially a JFET version of the Rockerverb preamp running into a Pedal Baby power amp. It’s a great amp and I love how it sounds and looks, but I was really impressed with one of Orange’s more compact solid-state offerings this year – the Tour Baby.
“The Tour Baby is the same size as the Pedal Baby, but adds two preamp channels and a built-in compressor for the cleans. Given its miniscule size but beefy 100-watt power stage, it’s a really compelling option for small gigs where you don’t want to load the boot of your car to bursting but still want to kick out some serious dBs on stage. Its overdrive sounds were great too, and it took dirt pedals amazingly – in all, a very Orange take on the solid-state thing, with some added versatility and portability, all for under £400. What’s not to like?”
Best practice amplifier: Orange O Tone
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Commissioning editor Josh: “I didn’t actually review this one in the end, Richard did, but the O Tone 40 spent a few weeks in my house while it was waiting to be photographed and man, did I have a good – and extremely loud – time with it sitting in for my trusty Princeton over that time. Because, as the O Tone 40 proves, nobody really designs amps like Orange’s design guru Ade Emsley. Here’s a solid-state, non-modelling amp that sounds absolutely fantastic, responds like a tube amp in all the best ways and is unapologetically and unreasonable loud with it.
“I am a paid up member of the ‘most people play at home we need amps that sound great at bedroom levels’ club, but I love that there are people out there like Orange building these uncompromising machines in 2025 – it’s a dying art and we should appreciate it.”
Best utility pedal of 2025: Boss PX-1
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Commissioning editor Josh: “A confession, before we start: I think we might have reached something of a saturation point in terms of pedal innovation in 2025. That’s not a particularly original thought I know – my esteemed colleague Cillian said much the same last year – but it’s something I’ve been coming back to a lot this year. It’s not that there aren’t still good and interesting pedals being made all the time of course. But I think we’ve reached the point in the curve where the ‘surprise and delight’ aspect has started to wear off. Pedals are a bit like iPhones now – what would have blown your mind a decade ago is kinda normal now, and it takes a lot to really inspire much strong emotion.
“Which is why I found the reaction – and dare I say the backlash – to the Boss PX-1 so interesting. There’s no doubt that what Boss is trying here is quite different – creating a pay-as-you-go archive of classic and rare stompboxes from the brand’s illustrious past is not what anyone had on their bingo cards I don’t think. And while I think that the discussion and debate it provoked was actually quite useful and important – I’ll be very surprised if anyone tries a subscription-based pedal thing any time soon on the back of it, for example – it did rather obscure what the pedal itself was about.
“And taken on its own merits, the PX-1 is a very fun thing to have around – a living library of Boss rarities to pull out as and when the mood strikes. And judging by how quickly they flew off the shelves, a lot of you agreed with that sentiment.”
Best guitar software of 2025: Positive Grid Bias X
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News editor Sam Roche: “My colleagues Cillian and Josh started their year-end gear picks lists with their favourite guitars, and I’ll get to mine, but first I have to highlight BIAS X, the groundbreaking new AI-powered amp and effects suite from Positive Grid. Essentially an evolution of the brand’s long-adored BIAS FX 2, BIAS X blew the in-the-box tone market wide open when it landed in September, bringing with it an AI assistant, on hand to turn the tone in your head into a reality, in some cases in seconds.
Creativity should be the ultimate goal, and the tone-making process taking too long can be a hindrance to that end. With BIAS X, you can enter any prompt (“give me a high-gain tone for modern metal”), and the AI assistant conjures a signal chain from the platform’s vast amp and effects library to best match the vibe you’re going for. Like any AI, it’s not always perfect, but almost always offers a solid starting point which you can then tweak to your heart’s content. For the record I’m not a fan of any AI which takes creativity out of the hands of humans. But this is an application which expedites the tone-chasing process, and ultimately keeps you in your creative flow, so it’s a big A+ in my book.”
Best vintage-style electric of 2025: Fender Road Worn 50’s Jazzmaster
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Commissioning editor Josh: “Okay, I’m going to cheat slightly here because, frankly, this is my article and you can’t tell me what to do. Yes, you will probably have noticed that Guitar.com hasn’t quite got round to publishing our review of Fender’s latest Road Worn return… but I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve had one in my house for the last month and it is K-I-L-L-E-R killer.
“That might be somewhat spoiling the review when it comes out early next year, but time is a construct and I will not be constrained by such trivialities. I love a Jazzmaster at the best of times, but the Road Worn Vintera II is such a wonderfully bang on version for the money.
“I remember the first RW Jazzmaster Fender made over a decade ago, and while it was cool, it did very much look like a factory-aged guitar. The subtle ageing and lacquer checking on the 2025 variant is so much more believable. The only thing that’s lacking is the colour options – Fiesta Red and Sunburst? Come on guys, give us some custom colour options – Sonic Blue, Seafoam Green, Shoreline Gold… who cares if it’s vintage-correct, live a little!”
The best rock/metal electric of 2025: Jackson Lee Malia LM-87
Jackson Lee Malia LM-87 guitar. Image: Press
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Senior Staff Writer Cillian: “Is it a metal guitar for offset nerds? Or an offset guitar for metal nerds? Who knows, but either way, Jackson’s new Lee Malia signature is absolutely my top pick of 2025’s new guitar releases. Firstly: it looks cool as hell, and in a super classy way. This is not the kind of heavy guitar that, aesthetically, screams “mettuuull”, shotguns a beer and stage-dives into the moshpit – instead the dark, open-pore finish, the offset shape and the weird tune-o-matic nabbed from Malia’s love of weird vintage Gibsons make it appealingly minimalist but still mean looking. Sonically, the combo of a subtle P90 in the neck and an absolute jackhammer of a bridge humbucker makes it great for doing things that aren’t just drop-A chugs – but it does still excel at those.”
Best modern electric of 2025: Sterling By Music Man Kaizen
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News editor Sam: “I’m fortunate enough with this job to have many guitars across my desk, and every now and then there’s one which has me tempted to get my wallet out to persuade the powers that be to let me keep it. When I was delivered the Sterling by Music Man Kaizen 6 last month, it was one of those moments.
“I love to experiment with jazz, blues and all manner of other genres, but really I’m a metal player through and through. And the SBMM Kaizen – an affordable take on its Ernie Ball Music Man counterpart, developed in partnership with Animals As Leaders visionary Tosin Abasi – is genuinely up there as one of the best guitars I’ve ever played. Much is often made of a guitar’s ergonomics, and for good reason. The way it sits in your lap and contours against your body will often be the defining factor in whether you play it casually for 10 minutes or get lost in it for two hours. And when I say I couldn’t put the Kaizen down, I mean I actually couldn’t put it down. I had plans on the evening of the day I received it which I was late for because I was so consumed.
“It’s so lightweight and thin that it quickly starts to feel like an extension of yourself – which in my mind is the perfect recipe for creativity. Oh, and I’m not even mentioning the high-gain and clean tones offered up by its duo of ceramic humbuckers. And add to that a floating trem? Take my money.”
The best ambient pedal of 2025: Old Blood Noise Endeavours Bathing
Image: Press
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Senior Staff Writer Cillian: “A lot of guitar gear is rooted in what was – but it’s hard to level that accusation at Old Blood Noise Endeavour’s Bathing. It’s a delay with a totally unique signal chain that shunts the feedback through a variable-stage and variable-LFO phaser – which is a whole lot of jargon to say it sounds utterly unique, totally gorgeous and, true to OBNE’s stated goal, very ‘liminal’. While it’s by no means for everyone, it’s hard to think of a pedal release I was so intrigued by this year, and I have a lot of respect for the approach of aiming for a totally new, uncharted feeling with a pedal – the art of the thing is in the driving seat, and it’s the sort of thing I’d love to see more pedal companies do.”
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