All content archive

January 2024

Filter

Year
Month

45 articles

January 28
- "I’ve taught Travis picking at least 500 times but whenever I’ve asked a student, 'Do you know who Merle Travis is?' I’ve never heard, 'Yes!'" A deep dive into Walkin’ the Strings, an album whose influence is everywhere in our guitar lives
January 27
- “I thought whatever made me happy’s gonna make everybody happy. I didn’t think it out”: How legendary guitar designer Les Paul bet on the “Black Beauty” in 1954 and lost…
- “Lush, evocative and a ton of fun to play with”: Gibson’s new retro-leaning Falcon 5 and Falcon 20 amps pay homage to the rare tweed-era 1961 GA-19RVT and “set a new bar for low-power tone”…
January 26
- NAMM flashback: Watch Eddie Van Halen shred classic Van Halen riffs as he unveils and demos his Peavey EVH Wolfgang signature guitar in 1996
- "It’s not what you play, it’s what you don’t." Paul Rodgers – the singer's singer who played with the guitar player's guitar players – on what he learned from the likes of Paul Kossoff, Mick Ralphs and Jimmy Page
- Line 6 is rolling back the clock, discounting the Helix Floor and LT to its original launch price - save a mega $200!
- “More than enough firepower to keep up with a heavy-fisted drummer…” The high-tech, hard-rocking Soldano Astro-20 amp reviewed
January 25
- “A little badass: ideal for a bit of bottom-end grooving without the weight of a full-scale bass or amp”: The junior-sized Martin DJR-10E acoustic bass reviewed
- “I don’t see myself as having a particular sound. I’m more of a music creator, and guitars are my tools. I just try to be prepared for any job”: The career of Lyle Workman, sideman, session guy and soundtrack composer in five songs
January 24
- “It’s tempting to look for more overdrive, distortion or feedback, but the volume control is what it’s all about. Just listen to Jeff Beck!”: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Zal Cleminson on tone, Marshalls, and what he learned from his late bandleader
January 23
- “I had a huge pedalboard at one point. You have 15 pedals, and your tone sucks... Joe Walsh and Hendrix, they didn’t use a bunch of pedals”: Schooled in jazz and classical guitar, with a punk spirit, Mary Timony's skilled fretwork is as unique as ever
January 22
- “When you show up to a set thinking you’re gonna hear acoustic blues and you hear tapping on an overdriven resonator, it might make you stop and listen”: Buffalo Nichols on breaking with blues tradition, and charting his own resonator-led path
January 21
- “Make the worst-sounding chord you can imagine…” Alter Bridge supremo Mark Tremonti’s top five tips for guitarists
January 20
- “An analogue powerhouse with surprising versatility…” The Benson Delay pedal reviewed
- “I was on the toilet with my acoustic guitar and I just started playing the riff. I thought, 'Wow, that’s either something or it’s just a bunch of irrelevant notes'. The next day, the riff came back…" How Trevor Rabin wrote Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart
January 19
- Excellent playability, affordability and “fabulous amplified acoustic tone”: Fender’s latest Highway Series’ Parlor and Dreadnought guitars reviewed
- Based on a prized guitar from Bonamassa’s vintage collection, The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom is an obvious choice for anyone who’s been priced out of the market for a vintage Gibson
January 18
- ”What I’m playing is like a string quartet, meaning that a mandolin corresponds to a violin”: Dave Grisman on his Acoustic America album and stunning exhibition of 90 iconic folk instruments at Arizona's Musical Instrument Museum
- The Martin GPCE Inception Maple is state of the art in a market where a cutaway used to be considered outrageous – but is it any good? Oh yes…
January 17
- "Sometimes, when I play through a huge stack, I’m like, ‘Holy sh*t – the power!’ That's all great, but it tempts me into taking the easy way out instead of trying to find the perfect part”: Marnie Stern on tapping, modding, and finding your own voice
January 16
- "I was criticized for sounding too much like Creedence... Every time I’d get into a groove, a little gremlin would pop up and say, 'You can’t sound like that or I’m going to sue you'": John Fogerty on double-stop solos, and bizarre legal battles
- "I showed Eddie Van Halen some of what I had to learn in order to pull off Frank’s music... Eddie said, 'Who would've thought that you'd be giving me a guitar lesson!': How Dweezil Zappa took EVH inside his father's playing, and left him in awe
January 14
- “It's about the band. There’s a kind of confession in it…” How the fear, hope and sadness of a love affair mixed with secret band tensions helped Justin Hayward write the Moody Blues’ The Story in Your Eyes
January 13
- “The weakness that guitar players often have is they’re good at noodling but not necessarily at making a hook that sticks to your ribs”: How heartland rocker Dave Hause made his new album Drive It Like It’s Stolen
January 12
- GP Presents Julian Lage, January 18 - January 21 in San Francisco – win tickets
- "Bird just grinned. He’d never heard a guitar played like that!" He saw T-Bone Walker, worked with Charlie Parker and uses a drawer-knob instead of a pick: Chicago jazz supremo George Freeman, 96, looks back over an epic career
- “When you’re young and struggling, you overplay to get noticed. I’ve shredded my way to success. Maybe now is a good time to just go, 'Is this serving the song?'” Joe Bonamassa has reached the next level
- Caught by the fuzz: The story of Electro-Harmonix’s tooth-rattling Big Muff, the stompbox guitarists have been falling in love with since the 1960s
January 11
- “It was waiting patiently for decades, kind of like lost tapes from an artist”: The Espada HH and Espada HH Active are G&L’s latest “dual-humbucker” takes on Leo Fender’s gorgeous long lost late-1960’s blueprints
January 10
- "I was playing an ES-335 before we got signed, but the guys said, 'Come on, you look like Roy Orbison' – this little punk kid playing a Ted Nugent axe": Why Eddie Van Halen left Gibson's famed semi-hollow behind, and how he would've built his ideal ES-335
January 9
- Ever wanted to play guitar in the Smashing Pumpkins? The alt-rock legends are taking applications, and anyone can throw their hat into the ring
- "When you leave a 12-string neck open and play on the 6-string neck, you get the 12 strings vibrating in sympathy, like an Indian sitar. I use it on Stairway to Heaven like that": How Jimmy Page brought the studio magic of Stairway to the stage
January 8
- "It will be worth the wait": The design of MXR's still-in-development Randy Rhoads Distortion+ pedal has been revealed
- “I never practice, so my technique is not great, but I also don’t go down a lot of ultra-rehearsed alleyways. I can still find things that are surprising to me. That may not happen if I practiced every day”: An archive interview with Andy Partridge of XTC
- Shelved for 15 years of tinkering, Totally Wycked Audio's homage to the early ’70s Maestro Bass Brassmaster, the Krytical Mass KM-01 Reactive Octave Fuzz, is finally here. And it's totally Wycked…
- Pushing Telecaster playing to innovative new heights, Roy Buchanan’s Second Album is a guitar masterclass as groundbreaking and timeless as its predecessor
January 6
- ”There’s 12 notes on a guitar and Steve Vai and Zakk Wylde sound like they have more. How do you do that?” Blues prodigy Kenny Wayne Shepherd on his new solo album Dirt on My Diamonds, Vol. 1, and why unpredictability is so important
- The quest for amps and speakers that can reproduce all that DSP-generated guitar tone as sound waves has yet to produce a clear winner: Could Fender's new Tone Master Pro FR-10 cab be the one?
January 5
- February 2024 Guitar Player Lesson Audio
- “The thick, punchy stereo sound from this rig simply rocks”: the Two Notes Torpedo Captor X SE is a cleverly designed unit that offers an incredible range of sound from a brick-sized box. And there are only 450 of them…
- “I want my solos to be melodic — but not a ‘pretty’ melodic, an aggressive one…’‘ Grammy award nominee Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s top five tips for guitarists
January 4
- Believe the hype: The long-awaited Fender Tone Master Pro is one of the best-sounding, most powerful and easiest to use guitar processors ever and a worthy Editors’ Pick Award winner
- "Waiting for the Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago? In essence, it’s a blues suite in 4/4 and 6/8 time..." The career of Billy Gibbons, blues guitar supremo, in five songs
January 3
- U2 in a box? MXR goes for "atmospheric perfection" with new Joshua Ambient Echo delay pedal
- "A sports doctor looked at it and he was laughing at me": Steve Morse reveals how his struggle with arthritis has transformed his technique – and the nifty mod he made to limit the damage to his picking hand