By Matt McCracken
Contributions from Chris Barnes, Daryl Robertson
Feast your eyes on the best Memorial Day sales for guitarists with savings on Gibson, Fender, Martin, Line 6, and loads more
Jump To:
- Editor's picks
- Guitar sales to shop
- How we choose deals
- Why you can trust us
- Where to shop
- Deals to look for
Welcome deal hunters! This week, we've got a double XL-sized spread of deals for you to savor. With Memorial Day coming up on May 27th pretty much every major music retailer has gone live with discounts in some form or another and to make things easy for you, we've put the very best of the bunch right here in one place. Let's get started...
Kicking off the weekend in style, Sweetwater has just dropped some huge savings of up to 40% off pedals, including deals on Catalinbread, Walrus Audio, JHS, Line 6, and plenty more. It's an awesome way to power up your pedalboard and there are some select accessories in the sale as well including strings and straps.
You may have caught it earlier in the week, but Musician's Friend has similarly significant savings of up to 40% off a range of gear from Schecter, Electro-Harmonix, Fender, and loads more. Over at Guitar Center, you can grab up to 35% off guitar gear with Gibson, Epiphone, Fender, Martin, and plenty of other big savings on great gear.
At the Fender official shop, there's a massive sale with up to 60% off parts and accessories like cases, straps, guitar necks, and lifestyle bits like t-shirts and stools. There are also some select savings on electric guitars, with discounts on the Steve Lacy Strat and Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang and 25% off a Limited Edition Player Strat.
Take a breath, there's more. Reverb is doing a huge sale with up to 61% off gear, including some great deals on new, mint, and b-stock guitars and pedals. Over at the Positive Grid site, there are select savings on amps, interfaces, and software including money off Spark 40, Riff audio interface, and BIAS FX 2.
Finally, if you're into your home recording then you'll want to check out what's going on at Plugin Boutique. With an emphasis on mastering plugins, there are massive savings on Softube, Mastering the Mix, SSL, and Eventide to help you get your home recordings to compete in the loudness wars.
Of course, we've looked through every single sale and picked out some of our favorite deals for you below. It's well worth checking out the sales in full though, as there's a huge amount on offer throughout Memorial Day. Have an awesome weekend and we'll catch you next week for more super savings from the team here at Guitar World.
Editor's picks
Catalinbread Belle Epoch: $359.99, now $287.99
Famously used by Eric Johnson, the Catalinbread Belle Epoch delivers Echoplex-inspired delay sounds for rich and powerful guitar tones. It's got a $72 discount in the Sweetwater pedal sale, bringing the price well below the $300 mark. If you're after analog delay tones it doesn't come much better than this, and we love the modulation and filter options.
Squier CV 60s Jazzmaster: $429.99, now $349.99
One of our favorite budget offsets just got even better value thanks to a $80 discount in the Musician's Friend Memorial Day sale. The Squier Classic Vibe 60s Jazzmaster packs all that classic offset vibe into a guitar that doesn't cost the earth. Great for players who love indie or shoegaze style playing.
Fender x Wrangler Hard Case: $249.99, now $99.99
The looks may prove divisive, but a Fender hard case at this price is an absolute steal. Discounted by a ginormous $150, a 60% reduction is a fantastic deal if you need a fresh hard case for your Stratocaster or Telecaster.
Martin SC-10E: Was $1,299, now $1,099
If you like your acoustic guitars traditional, look away now. The Martin SC-10E is a futuristic take on the acoustic platform, with its offset body shape, nearly invisible neck heel, and super deep cutaway. Reduced by a hefty $200 in the Guitar Center Memorial Day sale, it's a great chance to own an incredible playing acoustic guitar for just above the $1,000 mark.
EQD Astral Destiny: Was $199, now $169.15
If you like your reverbs out of this world, the EarthQuaker Devices Astral Destiny is an excellent choice. Packing 8 different reverbs that cover everything from low octave shimmer to pitch bending and harmonies, it's a totally unique pedal that sonic explorers will love. A $29.85 discount over at Reverb isn't huge, but might just tip those still deciding over the edge. There are also plenty of other EQD pedals available in the sale too if this doesn't take your fancy.
Sonnox Oxford Limiter: Was $264, now $59
If you've ever compared your own recordings to those of professional guitar players, you may have found they're lacking in the volume department. This could be for several reasons, but a great limiter will help your mix compete in the loudness wars of modern-day streaming. Over at Plugin Boutique, the Sonnox Oxford Limiter has got a gigantic $205 discount, a must-have for recording guitarists who want their creations to sound loud.
Guitar sales to shop
- Amazon: Today's top guitar deals
- Andertons: Save on gear
- Fender Shop: Up to 60% off parts
- Gear 4 Music: Huge clearance deals
- Guitar Center: Up to 35% off guitars
- IK Multimedia: Save on software
- Musician's Friend: Up to 40% off gear
- Plugin Boutique: Save big on plugins
- Positive Grid: Smart amp sale
- Reverb: Up to 61% off top brands
- Sweetwater: Up to 40% off pedals
- Thomann: Hot deals on guitar gear
- Yamaha: Save big on acoustics
How we choose our deals of the week
Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products we recommend.
First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want to match other players with the right products for them, at the best prices.
For us to recommend a deal it has to be a product we rate that’s a genuinely great price or part of a truly fantastic bundle. It’s also important that we only recommend retailers where you will have a positive shopping experience.
Why you can trust our choices
We spend a lot of our time scouring guitar retailers for fantastic deals on our favorite gear. Not only is it our job to research and recommend the best gear in our buyer’s guides, but we’re also dedicated to helping players get the best deals for the gear they need, too. After all, the only thing better than new gear day is a hearty discount.
We cover a lot of the big sales events throughout the year, including Memorial Day, Black Friday, 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day, and we have a good view on which products are likely to receive the biggest discounts and when, the prices they’ve been in the past and which deals are genuinely worth a look.
Where are the best places to shop?
Online shopping is definitely a lot easier and more secure than it used to be, and we like to recommend a small handful of online retailers who have a sterling reputation and offer fantastic benefits like fuss-free returns, great customer service and, in some cases, full checks and setup of guitars before they are dispatched. So, all the deals we’ll recommend on this page are from retailers that tick these boxes.
What sort of deals should I look for?
Great deals come in all shapes and sizes. There are a few key types to look out for:
- Single item - A single product with a great discount
- Site-wide discounts - A single discount percentage on a large range of products across a site
- Discount codes - Load your basket to a certain value and redeem a discount code for money off your basket contents
- Added value deals - These include multi-buy discounts, or additional products or software for free when you buy certain items
November has arrived and with it a flurry of early Black Friday deals have landed in our inboxes. We were expecting an influx but this year has already surpassed the expectations of the writing team here at Guitar World, with pretty much every retailer and many manufacturers either going all-in on their Black Friday sale or tempting us with some sweet early savings.
First up, Sweetwater's early Black Friday sale has landed offering massive savings of up to 70% off gear. Big hitters like Mesa/Boogie, Taylor Guitars, and Universal Audio all feature
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Matt McCracken
Junior Deals Writer
Matt is a Junior Deals Writer here at Guitar World. He regularly tests and reviews music gear with a focus on guitars, amps, pedals, modelers, and pretty much anything else guitar-related. Responsible for over 60 buying guides, a large part of his role is helping guitarists find the best deals on gear. Matt worked in music retail for 5 years at Dawsons Music and Northwest Guitars and has written for various music sites including MusicRadar, Guitar Player, Guitar.com, Ultimate Guitar, and Thomann’s t.blog.A regularly gigging guitarist with over 20 years of experience playing live and producing bands, he's performed everything from jazz to djent, gigging all over the country in more dingy venues than you can shake a drop-tuned guitar at. When he's not holed up in his home studio recording new songs or tweaking with pedal settings, you’ll find him making a racket with Northern noise hounds JACKALS.
With contributions from
- Chris Barnes
- Daryl RobertsonSenior Deals Writer
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