Awards are by their very nature subjective, however even amongst the hotly debated merchandise that Guitar.com ran its collective rule over in 2022, there are some that stood out – those that everybody was raving about no matter their preferences.

These merchandise make up the shortlist of our Product Of The 12 months 2002 award – simply being here’s a laudable achievement, however just one can take dwelling the largest prize of all. Right here’s your runners and riders.

WINNER: PRS SE Silver Sky

Paul Reed Smith and John Mayer had already rewritten the script that stated folks solely wished S-types made by Fender with the US-made Silver Sky. Regardless of the large controversy that greeted the guitar’s launch again in 2018, inside a number of brief years the guitar had not simply fully modified how guitars are launched and marketed, however had been such an outrageous success that PRS couldn’t make them quick sufficient, with the guitar hitting the quantity three spot on Reverb’s finest promoting electrical guitars in 2021.

Everybody knew what was coming subsequent – the logical step for any runaway guitar success is that you just make an reasonably priced model. What many people didn’t count on, nonetheless, was that the SE Silver Sky could be such a exceptional instrument that it will trigger many to marvel if they need to commerce of their US fashions for the Korean model, so well-received has its tweaked neck profile and fewer vintage-correct 8.5” radius been versus the extra baseball-bat charms of the USA mannequin.

It’s much more than only a neck profile, too – the pickups sound fantastic, main our reviewer to conclude that plugging in a Silver Sky SE amounted to, “an objectively lovely sound coming from a contemporary, elegant tackle a design that we’ve most likely all owned in some unspecified time in the future in a single type or one other.”

And therein lies the exceptional feat of this SE model of the Silver Sky – a mid-priced Strat is one thing that we’ve all owned at one level in our lives, however not often has the venerable S-type been so fascinating or had a basic essence of cool than Mayer and Smith’s take. Don’t consider us? The primary best-selling guitar on Reverb in 2021? Not a Strat, or a Tele, or a Les Paul – the PRS SE Silver Sky.

Learn our full assessment right here.

Nominees

B&G Helena P-90

It’s exhausting to make an authentic electrical guitar design these days. The devices that also get most individuals’s blood pumping in 2022 are the identical ones which were charming us for no less than half a century now, making it all of the harder for one thing new to make its mark.

Which makes the Helena – the primary solidbody electrical guitar design from Israeli maker B&G – all of the extra exceptional. There’s one thing about this design that simply feels prefer it’s at all times been there, pulling in varied design cues from a number of Golden Age guitars with out ever veering into pastiche – it’s a superbly elegant and understated design.

And then you definitely plug it in, and – particularly in its single-P-90 configuration – you expertise probably the most joyful and rewarding devices you’re ever more likely to play. It ain’t low cost, however guitars this good not often are.

Learn our full assessment right here.

Common Audio UAFX Amp Pedals

It’s been coming for some time now, however 2022 actually did really feel just like the yr that ditching your amp went mainstream within the guitar world. With reside music nonetheless feeling the devastation of the pandemic and with many people nonetheless doing the majority of our guitar taking part in at dwelling volumes, the pedalboard amp is right here to remain.

And once they sound pretty much as good as Common Audio’s exceptional UAFX Amp Emulators, does it actually matter? Sure, they’re costly, and sure they solely emulate one amp… however that somewhat misses the purpose of the entire endeavour. You’d by no means drag 4 amps to a gig earlier than so why do you want multiple now?

And consider the tradeoff. For lower than the value of a Blues Jr you possibly can get pleasure from a studio-quality emulation of probably the most iconic amps of all time, that sounds simply pretty much as good by way of a PA because it does your audio interface – and it’s not a lot larger than a typical pedal. There’s a purpose why each guitar participant on Instagram appears to have certainly one of these on their boards – consider the hype.

Learn our full assessment right here.