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The Guitar Sounds New Again

Press/Media: Expert Comment

Description

Article in The Atlantic magazine on the guitarist Mk.gee and his popularization of the vintage 1990s guitar pedal, the Roland VG-8. 

Period14 Apr 2026

Media contributions

1

Media contributions

  • TitleThe Guitar Sounds New Again
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletThe Atlantic
    Media typeWeb
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    Date14/04/26
    DescriptionMk.gee himself plays a Fender Jaguar, which had a similar resurgence in the ’90s among players in the grunge scene, because “you could find one at a pawn shop for dirt cheap,” Cyril Nigg, the senior director of analytics at Reverb, told me. Gear revivals are part of the life cycle of music: A soon-to-be-famous player comes across forgotten equipment “and picks it up because it’s cool and inexpensive, and it ends up having a huge influence on their sound and then the culture at large,” Nigg said. In one way, though, the VG-8’s current popularity is a slightly newer phenomenon. Vintage-gear crazes are usually around analog devices, as a kind of rebellion against digitization and technology, Steve Waksman, a rock musicologist at the University of Huddersfield, told me. But the VG-8’s recent rise represents “nostalgia for a time when digital was still new.” Music sounds so digitized now that even just an earlier digital device feels like it has more character.
    Producer/AuthorNancy Walecki
    URLhttps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/04/guitar-sounds-vg8/686807/
    PersonsSteve Waksman