Today in guitar: Rodrigo y Gabriela come home on nylon strings, Gibson's changing of the guard, and a $399 hybrid joins the wave

The day's biggest string story is an acoustic one, again. Rodrigo y Gabriela, the Grammy-winning Mexico City duo who have spent two decades folding thrash metal and flamenco into two nylon-string guitars, announced their new album, OurHome, due September 18 on ATO Records (Premier Guitar). Recorded in Tokyo and self-produced by Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero, the record returns to the acoustic instrumentation that defined the duo's sound before 2023's electric-heavy In Between Thoughts...A New World. The first single, "Monster," arrives with a music video from manga legend Naoki Urasawa, a collaboration born after Urasawa discovered the duo were fans of his work.

For a strings desk, the interesting part is what has not changed. Sanchez and Quintero have toured for years on custom Yamaha nylon-string guitars strung with D'Addario EJ45 Pro-Arte, Normal Tension, a set built from silver-plated copper basses over clear nylon trebles. It is D'Addario's best-selling classical tension for a reason: enough projection for a percussive, two-handed attack without punishing the fingers the way a hard tension set can. We go deep on the full rig, from the LR Baggs pickup system to why normal tension fits their style, in today's breakout on what Rodrigo y Gabriela actually play.

The honest part: a nylon set will not teach you two-handed tapping or a flamenco rasgueado. It gets you the tone that technique lives inside of, which is exactly the starting line a beginner curious about nylon needs. If you are still deciding between nylon and steel in the first place, our guide to nylon and classical guitar strings lays out the real trade.

Gibson announced a leadership transition this week: President and CEO Cesar Gueikian is stepping back from the role to become a strategic advisor to the company's board, effective July 31, 2026, while remaining Gibson's global artist ambassador (Premier Guitar). Chief Commercial Officer Anne Rohosy steps in as interim President and CEO while the board runs a search for a permanent successor.

There is no string angle to force here, and we will not invent one. What matters to a player is that Gibson has signaled no change to its guitar, amp, or Custom Shop lineup, including the newly relaunched ES-330 hollowbody reissues we covered earlier this week. Leadership changes at a guitar brand this size are still worth a beginner's attention, if only because who runs a 130-year-old instrument maker shapes what gets built next.

Guitar World's weekly gear roundup, published this weekend, rounds up the smaller drops that do not always make their own headline (Guitar World). The one worth a strings desk's attention is the Winzz WCG370, a $399 hybrid nylon-electric with a thinline African mahogany body, a spruce top with a flame maple veneer, and an undersaddle piezo pickup with onboard volume, bass, and treble controls. It is the budget end of the same nylon-electric wave that Tim Henson's Ibanez signature and Tosin Abasi's Cordoba collaboration have been riding, proof the idea has legs beyond boutique price tags.

The same roundup flags Kramer's 50th Anniversary Collection, a gold-metallic respray of the brand's core shred lineup (Baretta, SM-1, the 84, Volante, NightSwan, Pacer Carrera) starting at $999, and the Gibson Custom Historic Reissue 1959 and 1962 ES-330s we already covered in depth earlier this week. Neither changes the string conversation much, but a $399 entry point into nylon tone is worth flagging for anyone who read the Rodrigo y Gabriela story above and wants to try the sound before committing to a full classical guitar.

Manowar has been confirming cities for its next arena run, the 2027-dated Kings of Metal Fighting the World Tour, with a confirmed stop at Istanbul's Kucukciftlik Park on July 31, 2027 and tickets for more cities still rolling out. The guitarist behind that run is Michael Angelo Batio, the instrumental shred pioneer who invented the twin-neck Double Guitar and four-neck Quad Guitar in the 1980s. He joined Manowar in September 2022 after three decades fronting his own solo career and, before that, the glam-metal band Nitro, and by his own account is now playing arenas that average around 15,000 people, a scale nothing in his solo catalog approached.

There is a gear story behind the tour news, too, though the details are murkier than they first look. Batio built a long signature relationship with Dean Guitars, and separately picked up a Sawtooth signature partnership that surfaced publicly around 2020. Public sourcing on exactly when, or whether, one deal fully replaced the other is thin and inconsistent, so we are not going to pin an exact switch year on it. What is solid is his own invention, the MAB String Dampener, which is genuinely strings-adjacent: a spring-loaded mute built to kill the feedback his twin-neck playing produces live. We go deep on the tour and the Dampener in today's breakout on Michael Angelo Batio's Manowar comeback, and the full career arc, from Holland to Nitro to his signature-guitar deals, in our sourced profile.

Guitar collectors have a new obsession this week, and it is not the guitar you would expect. Paris dealer Matthieu Lucas has brought a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard that Eric Clapton played on Cream's debut album into public view for the first time in nearly 60 years (Guitar World). It is not Clapton's famous stolen 'Beano' Burst, that guitar has never resurfaced, but the replacement he bought from a young Andy Summers right after the theft: a Les Paul nicknamed the Summersburst, a play on Summers' name and the guitar's sunburst finish, that later needed a headstock repair of its own after a pair of neck breaks.

We go deep on the guitar's story, the repair, and what Clapton actually has strung on his guitars today, in today's breakout on the Summersburst Les Paul.

Bob Dylan does not explain his lineup changes, and this one is no exception. Jazz guitarist Julian Lage, a Blue Note recording artist better known for playing alongside Bill Frisell and Nels Cline than for backing a Nobel laureate, has quietly replaced longtime guitarist Doug Lancio in Dylan's touring band, with no press release from either camp (Guitar World). A Dylan spokesperson could not even confirm to the Los Angeles Times, which reviewed the band's Santa Barbara Bowl show, whether the pairing is temporary or ongoing.

For a strings desk, Lage's own rig is the real story: a famously stripped-down setup built around a custom Nachoguitars Telecaster and a Collings signature model, both strung with D'Addario XL Chromes flatwounds rather than the roundwound sets most electric players default to. We go deep on the gear, the strings, and what a flatwound set actually changes about your tone in today's breakout on Julian Lage joining Bob Dylan's band.

Dylan's lineup kept moving today, and it is not about Lage. Two weeks after Lage quietly replaced Doug Lancio, second guitarist Bob Britt announced his own exit from the band, posting "Sayonara Bobby" on Facebook over the weekend and later clarifying he was not fired but chose to leave for personal reasons (Guitar World). Britt's wife, Etta Britt, told fans on Facebook the departure had nothing to do with Lage: "Julian has gone back to his tour. He enjoyed playing with him and said he's a great guy."

Dylan filled the seat fast. Chicago-based blues and jazz guitarist Joel Paterson made his debut with the band June 29 at Austin's Moody Amphitheater, less than a week after Britt's post. Two days earlier he had been playing his weekly residency to crowds of about 150 at Chicago's Green Mill Cocktail Lounge; with Dylan he played to roughly 5,000 (Guitar World). Paterson has spent two decades in Chicago's roots scene, playing with JD McPherson, Kelly Hogan, Pokey LaFarge, and Deke Dickerson, plus pedal steel on The Cactus Blossoms' Dylan-covers EP.

We are not going to guess Paterson's rig. Nothing about his specific guitar or string choice on the Dylan stage is confirmed yet, and we have not found a sourced breakdown of his usual setup either. If that changes, we will update this desk with a sourced breakout the way we did for Lage's D'Addario flatwounds.

The Rolling Stones inch closer to Foreign Tongues, their new album due July 10 on Capitol Records, with the release this week of an official companion podcast, Speaking In Tongues, featuring new interviews with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, narrated by Norah Jones (Premier Guitar). Every Stones record is also a Keith Richards string story: his five-string open G setup, low sixth string removed entirely, has defined the band's rhythm sound since the early 1970s. Our Keith Richards open G breakdown is the place to start before July 10.

That closes out today's news. Yesterday's stories, including Rodrigo y Gabriela's "Monster" single and the Fender James Jamerson reissue, are still live in the June 30 briefing. And July 1 has more than today's news behind it: see what happened on this day in guitar history, from Willie Dixon's birth in 1915 to The Band's Music from Big Pink in 1968.