ALSO OUT NOW...

GIBSON TONY IOMMI SG SPECIAL £2,149

Think of SG players and there’s a good chance that Tony ‘The Inventor Of Metal’ Iommi will spring to mind. We profiled Gibson’s Custom Shop recreation of Uncle Tone’s 1964 Gibson ‘Monkey’ SG last year in issue 456, but in the anniversary year of Gibson’s most unflappable mainstay comes the USA version. The Tony Iommi SG Special is based on the Monkey, coming in left- and right-handed versions. You get the classic all-mahogany body/neck and Indian rosewood fingerboard, a pair of chrome-covered P-90s, Graph Tech nut, Grover Rotomatic tuners, and of course, a replicated Monkey sticker (application optional). The whole lot comes in a custom case, and it’s available now. www.gibson.com

PROCO LIL’ RAT £89

Cast your mind back to the start of the year and you might have spotted that ProCo – purveyor of the rodent-based, Gilmour-approved drive pedal – made rumblings of a miniRat pedal. We saw a demo video, but price and availability of the new unit remained quiet. Until now: because the Lil’ Rat exists and is now shipping. Featuring the same circuit and Distortion/Filter/Volume controls as its full-sized sibling, the pedal is 100 per cent analogue and measures just 50mm (two inches) left to right. So if your ’board only has room for a mouse, there’s gnaw reason to miss out on biting distortion… www.ratdistortion.com