Imposter syndrome is an ailment that impacts the large majority of artists – including what we all consider the cream of the crop.

Carl Carlton – real name, Karl Buskohl – is renowned as one of Europe’s great slide guitarists, and a first-call sideman who helped drive the careers of Robert Palmer and Eric Burdon to dizzying heights.

“I always had imposter syndrome. When I played with Manfred Mann or something, I always thought, ‘Any minute, they’re going to find out I’m no good,’” Carlton says in the latest issue of Guitarist.

Coming from a “little farm in the middle of nowhere” in Northern Germany, Carlton always felt like he wasn’t set up for success.

“I’m not from London or some hip city. I’m nothing. And they will find out.’ But during the recording of Drive [his fourteenth and final solo album], Robert really helped me out without realizing.”

Palmer and his team went to Metropolis Studios in London to finish a song called Stella, “which was like a calypso groove by [Grenadian-born, Trinidadian calypso vocalist and songwriter] Mighty Sparrow,” and the guitarist simply “couldn’t get it together.

“And I was so nervous because my friend [session guitarist and member of the Pretenders] Robbie McIntosh – who played with us live – was in the control room.”

To make matters worse, the record company had also suggested Eric Clapton as a guest, and the prospect of playing alongside him sent Carlton into a spiral of self-doubt.

“I got really nervous. I just couldn’t get this song together, and I got really angry,” he admits. “So Robert came in, with his martini and his cigarette, and he said, ‘Carl, what’s the matter? Can I make you a drink? A Bloody Mary? A glass of champagne?’”

He continues, “And I’m like, ‘No! I can’t get this shit to work, and Robbie’s sat there and Clapton’s coming any minute!’ And he’d never seen me like that. He said, ‘Please, Carl, take all the time you want. I don’t want Robbie. I don’t want Clapton. I want you.’ And that triggered off the imposter syndrome big-time. I was like: ‘That’s a fucking lie!’”

Thankfully, in the midst of his breakdown, someone’s girlfriend stepped in. “She said, ‘Carl, what’s the matter?’ And I told her. And she said, ‘No, Robert is always talking to everyone about your playing and your feel.

“And he wants you – nobody else.’ So I found out that it was true: Robert meant it when he said he liked my playing, and he was confident that I would make the song work. So that helped me out a lot. That was a big step for me.”

For more from Carlton, plus new features about Dolly Parton and Rory Gallagher, pick up issue 542 of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

In 1970, Mick Ronson changed the musical fortunes of David Bowie, a struggling singer-songwriter with two novelty hits behind him.

Together, and with their band the Spiders from Mars, they reinvented Bowie musically, and created some of glam-rock’s best-loved albums: Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, and Pin Ups.

Afterward, Ronson struggled to match that initial success, despite a catalog of collaborations that included some of rock’s biggest names: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, Roger McGuinn, Morrissey, John Mellencamp, and many others.

Although Ronson’s career was defined by his time with Bowie, there was a significant before and after.

In the 1960s, he played in various groups from his hometown of Hull, England, including the Mariners, who were advised by the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman to change their name to the King Bees around the time Bowie was fronting a group called Davie Jones and the King Bees. He was also a member of the Rats, whose main claim to fame was the 1967 single The Rise and Fall of Bernie Gripplestone.

“Mick was the best guitarist in Hull, so when he left to head down south and join Bowie, I was pretty upset,” recalled Benny Marshall, the Rats’ lead singer and a close friend of Ronson’s.

“John Cambridge, our drummer, had played with Bowie on Space Oddity [his second album, a.k.a. David Bowie]. He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London. He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”

Cambridge did as instructed, and Bowie and Ronson were introduced at the Marquee club, where Bowie was playing on February 3, 1970. Two days later, Ronson had learned the riffs and song arrangements well enough to back Bowie, Cambridge, and bassist/producer Tony Visconti for a John Peel Radio 1 show live in concert at the Paris Theatre in London’s Lower Regent Street.

They played 15 songs, including a new number, The Width of a Circle, and plenty of material from Bowie’s recently released self-titled second album. Reaction was positive, and Ronson moved into Bowie’s Haddon Hall apartment on Southend Road in Beckenham in South East London, becoming part of the family.

The timing of his arrival was perfect; Bowie wanted to make a hard-rock album. As Visconti said later, “We respected groups like Cream, but we didn’t have that in us. We needed someone to be [that] important element, and that somebody was Mick Ronson.”

In terms of his personality, Ronson was a good fit. Everyone loved Ronson’s laconic Northern humor too, especially Bowie, whose father and mother came from Yorkshire and Lancashire, respectively. He’d tease Ronson and get just as good back. But it was, of course, his guitar playing that stunned them.

“He floored us,” Visconti said. “When David and I met him, we knew he’d fit in looks-wise, but we had no idea what was coming until he picked up his Les Paul and played for us.

“He really didn’t have to be taught the few songs we’d already worked up with John Cambridge. Mick watched our hands on the guitar and bass necks, and he just knew what to play, but he didn’t say much. We thought he was just a cool, silent type. Later we found out that our apartment in Beckenham was very ‘big time’ for him, and he was simply overwhelmed.”

Visconti insists Ronson came to Trident Studio in September 1969, when the David Bowie/Space Oddity album was being finalized.

“Mick came to the mix of Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud and was persuaded to play a little guitar line in the middle part and joined in the handclaps on the same section,” he said.

But if he did, he isn’t credited. Ronson’s first recorded work with Bowie was on the remade and rocked-out single Memory of a Free Festival Part 1/Part 2, recorded in September 1969 and released to zero chart success in June 1970.

In April, sessions began for The Man Who Sold the World, featuring the core band of Bowie, Ronson, Visconti, and former Rats drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey.

It was a brilliant album, full of Ronson’s crunching heavy-metal attack allied to arcane, Wagnerian, dystopian lyrics. His contributions to Bowie tracks such as She Shook Me Cold, Running Gun Blues, and the epic The Width of a Circle cemented his place in Bowie’s orbit, leading the singer to call him, with a smug smile, “my Jeff Beck.”

As it happened, both Bowie and Ronson were huge fans of Beck’s Truth album. Marshall said, “[Mick] knew all the licks, except Beck’s Boogie, which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him. In 1968, the Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterward Ronson asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said, ‘If I play it any slower, I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learned that riff.”

The Man Who Sold the World had not been a commercial breakthrough, but it added to Ronson’s confidence. Visconti and Ronson had masterminded the sound and dashed off the arrangements, while Bowie canoodled with his new bride, Angie.

She Shook Me Cold, the dirtiest song he ever wrote, was directly about Mrs. Bowie, but it was Ronson who provided the Jimi Hendrix-style intro and the power-trio setting à la Cream. Later, Angie lamented the fact that Ronson didn’t receive the publishing he deserved. “In terms of kudos and feeling that one is valued, it would have been nice for Mick Ronson to have had publishing credits,” she said.

Visconti’s departure from the group saw the arrival of bassist Trevor Bolder. It also gave Ronson his in.

“[Visconti had] done all the string and piano arrangements, so it was my chance to fill the gap,” Ronson said. “I’d never done it before, but I could read and write music, and I’d watched Tony at Haddon Hall, writing in the basement, saw how he did the charts, and I’d help out.”

Ronson had already written a mini-score for four recorders, used in the break of All the Madmen. It was a start. “I thought, ‘Well, if you can do that then so can I,’” he said.

“I went out for dinner with [singer] Dana Gillespie, who had tracks that needed strings, and David said, ‘Oh, Mick’ll do that!’ [Like Bowie and Ronson, Gillespie was managed by Tony Defries’ MainMan company]. I never had, but it was great. David pushed me forward. That was his thing. He made stuff happen.”

With Visconti gone, Bowie was now reliant on Ronson. His next album, 1971’s Hunky Dory, saw the emergence of his new quartet, featuring Ronson, Bolder, and Woodmansey, a taut group that gave his folkie tunes their strong rock underpinnings.

Ronson finally got his credit as the arranger of its songs, Changes, Life on Mars?, Kooks, Quicksand, and the Biff Rose cover Fill Your Heart, which was copied virtually note for note from the original. In retrospect, many have noticed how similar the sound of Hunky Dory is to Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor, the 1970 album on which Ronson had made his debut.

Ronson’s burgeoning role extended to instructing hired gun Rick Wakeman for his now iconic piano parts on Life on Mars? The Royal College of Music–trained keyboardist (and future Yes member) didn’t mind the input. “He was a tremendous human being, with oodles of talent,” Wakeman said.

Bowie producer/engineer Ken Scott pointed to “the great orchestral versions that Ronno put together. [They’re] even more brilliant when you consider he had this habit of running out of time. I remember him rushing in 10 minutes before the session, running up to the bathroom, and locking himself in so he could find the privacy to finish writing. He’d come out with a huge grin and a stack of charts.”

By the time the band assembled for the follow-up, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Ronson’s talents were in full bloom. On the epic Five Years, his string section whipped up the hysteria, while on Suffragette City, it was Ronson who came up with the funky, lurching ARP synthesizer sound that many mistake for saxophones.

But working with Bowie had its challenges for Ronson, a now-25-year-old who, until recently, had been a practicing Mormon. In January 1972, shortly before the Ziggy Stardust sessions were complete, Bowie told Melody Maker he was gay, or, more accurately, bisexual. Ronson admitted he found it hard to deal with at first.

“It embarrassed me,” he said. “I wondered what people would say about me. I knew my family in Hull would get flak. I gave dad a car when I left for London, and people threw red paint over it.”

Aside from his own feelings about it, Ronson understood Bowie was playing with his image as a way to keep the media engaged. “Personally, it was a bit of a shock,” he admitted, “but Bowie manipulated the media again and again.”

Overall, Ronson approached the Ziggy Stardust project with slight suspicion. The explicitness of Suffragette City and the discarded track Sweet Head concerned him. “He worried about the lyrics,” Angie said. “I told him. ‘Look, all these people are waving their arms in freedom thanks to you. It may not be what you’re used to in Hull, but accept it.’ Then he’d simmer down and be happy.”

If Ziggy Stardust was a Ronson tour de force, the follow-up, Aladdin Sane, was a mixed blessing for him. His contributions were immense, but so were those of recently arrived pianist Mike Garson, whom Ronson had auditioned and later advised to “make yourself indispensable. That’s what David likes. Don’t just be a session man.”

Ronson lived up that credo. His work on Lou Reed’s Transformer, produced with Bowie the August after Ziggy Stardust, effectively rescued Reed’s career after his debut solo album had bombed.

“It was a good experience for me,” Ronson said. “Lou’s guitar was always out of tune, so I’d kneel in front of him and tune it properly. He didn’t care, ’cause he was so laid-back.”

Without his contribution, Transformer might never have gotten off the ground. “It came out pretty well,” Ronson said. “Though I didn’t know what the hell Lou was talking about half the time. He’d say stuff like, ‘Can you make it sound a bit more gray?’”

Fortunately the album was a success. “Transformer is easily my best-produced album,” Reed said. “That has a lot to do with Mick Ronson. His influence was stronger than David’s, but together, as a team, they’re terrific.”

By 1973, though, it seemed that Ronson had become dispensable, along with Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder, both of whom had been dropped for having the gall to protest when they discovered that new arrival Garson was making 10 times their salary.

The guitarist’s relations with Bowie were frosty when, on October 20, 1973, Ronson played with Bowie onstage for the last time in that decade. Only 200 people saw the appearance in the flesh, shot for NBC’s The Midnight Special.

Dubbed “The 1980 Floor Show,” the concert featured Bowie serenading French singer/actress/model Amanda Lear with Sorrow, a 1966 hit for the Merseys that Bowie would record for 1973’s Pin Ups. He and singer Marianne Faithfull also duetted on Sonny & Cher’s I Got You Babe.

But Bowie hated the end result, which he derided as “shot abysmally.” This was the night Ziggy Stardust truly left the building, which might explain why a smiling Bowie ended each song with an affectionate pat on Ronson’s white satin-clad back.

As the wingman was increasingly sidelined, MainMan, his and Bowie’s mutual management company, promised him the earth. He was to be the next superstar off the production line, said manager Tony Defries. In the summer of ’73, having finished his sessions for Pin Ups, most of which he’d arranged, as usual, Ronson returned to the Château d’Hérouville studios outside Paris and made his solo debut album, Slaughter on 10th Avenue.

Bowie chipped in from a distance, gifting the songs Growing Up and I’m Fine, Pleasure Man/Hey Ma, Get Papa, and Music Is Lethal. RCA wasn’t overjoyed with what it heard, and the album’s release date was put back more than six months, to 1974.

Within months, Ronson was in another band, joining Mott the Hoople for what would be their final single, Saturday Gigs.

Ronson and frontman Ian Hunter had bonded back when Mick had knocked out a string arrangement for Mott’s Sea Diver, but the other band members resented the arrival of this “rock star” in their midst, with MainMan and RCA sending limos for their boy while Mott traveled together in a bus. Tired of the conflict, Hunter split the band.

Ronson went back to his solo career. Bowie didn’t take part in the follow-up album, Play Don’t Worry, but he allowed Ronson to use the backing track from their cover of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat, which had been recorded for an American attempt at a Pin Ups album that was discarded soon after.

Play Don’t Worry was excellent in parts. Although he wasn’t a natural songwriter, Ronson did himself proud on Billy Porter, Empty Bed, and versions of two songs by Pure Prairie League, whose 1972 album Bustin’ Out featured his guitar and string arrangements.

While Slaughter on 10th Avenue was being mixed, Ronson returned to the studio with Bowie to create demos for the future Diamond Dogs tracks 1984 and Dodo. His work wouldn’t appear on the finished album, a creepy, avant-garde affair, but his trademark guitar style did in the shape of Rebel Rebel, almost a Spiders from Mars pastiche riff, played now by Bowie.

According to Ronson’s wife, Suzi, “When Mick heard Diamond Dogs, he wasn’t exactly depressed. He just thought, ‘Oh, that’s Dave going out on a limb.’ But he would have done that record like a shot.”

Instead Ronson embarked on a brief solo tour, including a show at London’s Rainbow Theatre in February 1974, where he had strings and woodwind sections and, on backing vocals, the Thunderthighs – Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou, and Casey Synge – who appeared on Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side and Mott the Hoople’s Roll Away the Stone.

Cast into the spotlight, Ronson didn’t appear confident. The ultimate sideman was too modest to carry this off. Bowie watched on from the wings and offered words of encouragement during the intermission, but he decided against making a guest appearance.

After Bowie, where does one go? Ronson produced and played on Ian Hunter’s self-titled 1975 debut solo album. That same year, he moved to New York City, rented a place on Hudson Street near the Meatpacking District and enjoyed NYC with his best friend, Hunter, who had provided safe haven via Mott the Hoople, Mott, and the Hunter Ronson Band.

This is where they met Bob Dylan, who invited Ronson to join his band of gypsies, the Rolling Thunder Revue, after a meet engineered by Dylan’s main fixer, Bob Neuwirth. That evening began at the Bitter End on Bleecker Street.

“We weren’t Dylan fans at all,” Suzi Ronson said. “Mick thought he sounded like Yogi Bear. But Ian took us anyway, and Dylan played [his 1976] Desire album, and he was mesmerizing, better than David. Then we went to the Bottom Line, where Mick got thrown out three times for being drunk and disorderly.”

Back at the Bitter End, Hunter recalled “the whole place going insane ’cause Dylan was singing with Neuwirth and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. And Neuwirth [sees] Mick and says to Dylan, ‘Go and ask him!’” In Ronson’s version, “[Neuwirth] was with this guy,” he recalled. “And I looked at this bloke he was with and thought, ‘Wait a minute, I know you!’

“Of course, it was Dylan. We talked, and he said, ‘We’re going on the road. Why don’t you come with us?’ I honestly thought it was a hoax. Then Dylan phoned me, said the tour was going to happen and would I be there? Like a shot!”

“That tour rescued Mick’s professional life,” Suzi said.

Ronson was soon back with Hunter, appearing on You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic and Welcome to the Club. With his solo career on hold, he became a full-time producer. He worked with Van Morrison, John Mellencamp, Roger McGuinn, and Meat Loaf backup singer Ellen Foley. He even contributed guitar to the title track from David Cassidy’s 1976 album, Getting It in the Street.

Despite his signature guitar style and tone, Ronson became engrossed in writing string arrangements.

“He lapsed into the language of strings,” Hunter says, “but he was a bit lazy, ’cause if it was interesting he’d do it using 15 tracks and one guitar track. He wrote arrangements on Marlboro Light [cigarette] packets. But he could be persnickety and picky if he was involved. He could have matured into a world-famous musician again, but he’d meet people on the street and, next thing, he’s doing a Mexican punk band.

“But he was great with fans. He’d invite them back for tea, he’d return their phone calls. Sometimes he could be the big guy and show off, so he wasn’t perfect, gorgeous as he was. I considered him like family, so there were arguments.

“One time he disappeared to Sweden for a project when we were in the middle of something, so I had a go. And he just said, ‘Look, I’ve done Bowie and I’ve done you, so I’m allowed to fuck up,’ and we just collapsed into laughter.”

In the late Eighties, Ronson’s health began to cause concern. He was diagnosed with liver cancer, something he neither made a secret of nor chose to acknowledge as a serious threat. Instead, he threw himself into engaging projects such as Morrissey’s heralded 1992 album, Your Arsenal.

Speaking with Classic Rock, Morrissey said, “Mick told me that he alone wrote the main guitar hooks for Starman, The Man Who Sold the World, and others – not just hooks, really, but grand choruses in themselves – but a share of publishing wasn’t ever on offer for him. When you consider his guitar solos in Time and Moonage Daydream, then you can guess they were his own creations.”

A fan of Ronson and Bowie, Morrissey was intrigued by letters Bowie sent to his old guitarist chum during the making of Your Arsenal. “One day at breakfast, I asked Mick why Bowie wrote so often,” Morrissey recalled, “and he said, ‘He keeps asking me what you’re like in the studio,’ and then he exploded with laughter. I have no idea why this was so hilarious. I think Bowie had interest in Mick only as much as it was in his nature to like anyone.”

Certainly, Bowie was impressed enough by Your Arsenal that he invited Ronson to work with him on his 1993 studio album, Black Tie White Noise. He also kicked off a fine version of All the Young Dudes with Bowie and Hunter at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, 1992, which was the last time his fans saw him onstage.

One year later, on April 29, 1993, Ronson died of liver cancer at age 46. He spent his last hours in the company of Hunter, Suzi, and sister Maggi at Tony Defries’ house on Hasker Street in West London.

Ronson didn’t die penniless, but he wasn’t wealthy by rock-star standards. “He bought the house in Woodstock on Glasco Turnpike [Ulster County, New York] because he made money out of my records and Ellen Foley’s Night Out,” Hunter said. “His car was an old Toyota Corolla that sounded like a hair dryer.”

Hunter summed up the gloomy finale in his Ronson elegy Michael Picasso, from 1997’s The Artful Dodger: “You turned into a ghost surrounded by your pain/And the thing that I liked the least was sitting round Hasker Street, lying about the future.”

“What is remarkable is that he was so overlooked, and he still is,” Morrissey said of Ronson. “Has Mick ever been on the cover of a major British music magazine? Even when he died? He was by nature extremely humble. He was just happy to be there.”

Though he was the first of many great guitarists Bowie would adopt, champion, and cast aside, Ronson continued to hold a place in his heart after their split, perhaps more than any other who followed him.

“Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character,” Bowie admitted years afterward. “He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so what you got was the old-fashioned yin-and-yang thing. As a rock duo, I thought we were as good as Mick and Keith.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Everything about the Animeros seems to come straight from the movies. Take the Austin trio’s cinematic debut album, ¡Qué Bárbaro!, whose splice of Latin rhythms with soul, funk, psychedelia – and beyond – just needs a Tarantino movie to soundtrack. “We’re here, Quentin,” guitarist Mauro Lopez says. “Hit us up!”

Then there’s the Hollywood-worthy story of how they came to record it for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label.

“We got together for the second time as the Animeros to play South by Southwest,” Lopez says. “It was, like, a 30-minute unofficial showcase on a hotel roof patio. Like the Beatles playing on the Apple rooftop, I guess. [Laughs] A week later, our bassist gets an email; Dan saw us play. He came into town and we had breakfast. What shocked us all was his knowledge about Latin music. It comes from him being a vinyl DJ. He's like, ‘Hey, do you want to come to Nashville and record?’”

Just as fantastical, Lopez was invited to bolster his workhorse Telecaster Vintera ’60s and Cry Baby with the Black Keys man’s trove of rare guitars, amps and pedals. “I can’t remember the models, but he’d be like, ‘Hold on, let me grab this one’ and put, like, a vintage Danelectro in my hands. ‘What do you think?’ He just had an ear for it.”

If their rise sounds almost annoyingly easy, be assured that Lopez, Nicolas Sánchez (bass) and Nick Tozzo (drums/percussion) have individually paid their dues, grinding out a decade-plus on the Austin circuit. But it’s as the Animeros that something has clicked, with the trio’s melting-pot style meeting their gift for painting vivid pictures.

“With instrumental music, it’s like, ‘How do you tell a story without words?’” Lopez says. “We might be writing a song and realize it feels like driving through the West Texas desert at night looking for UFOs. Or, ‘Man, this riff sounds like a Tarantino fight scene.’ Our favorite one is from Kill Bill, with Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in the snow. It starts off with these claps and you just know something’s going down.”

But as the affable guitarist reminds us, the Animeros are here to make us dance, not fight. “There’s enough bad things going on in the world, man. When people hear this music, you forget all that. Something about the rhythm is contagious. You just can't help but move.”

• ¡Qué Bárbaro! is out now via Easy Eye Sound.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Duane Betts’ new album, Isle of Hope, is his most intimate, personal work to date. After almost a decade as an established solo artist, Betts leans into Americana songwriting on the recording, which is produced by Dave Cobb, known for his work with Sturgill Simpson, John Prine, Marcus King, and many others.

“I wanted to show my life’s experiences,” says Betts, who co-wrote most of the songs. “All that I’ve been through, and that I aspire to be. I want to create music that is a sanctuary for people during anxious times.”

Betts recorded the album shortly after the 2024 death of his father and mentor, Dickey Betts, the melodic genius behind so much of the Allman Brothers Band’s sound. Duane is a terrific lead guitarist, as he has shown throughout his career – touring with his father’s band, Great Southern; performing with Dawes; on his debut solo album, 2023’s Wild & Precious Life; and on multiple albums with the Allman Betts Band, alongside Devon Allman.

On Isle of Hope, however, Betts leans more into the songs, while also sharing the guitar spotlight with Johnny Stachela and J.D. Simo.

“I certainly wanted a few guitar spotlights, but the album isn’t about my playing,” Betts says. “I like the fact there are solos I could have done that could have gone on forever, but don’t. There’s plenty of room to jam live.”

You’ve come a long way in the last decade since you started stepping out as a solo artist, but one constant has been working with Johnny Stachela. What do you value so much about your partnership?

I just really enjoy playing with him. We have been playing together regularly for almost 15 years, and I just think we complement each other very well.

Johnny has good taste, and we share a lot of the same musical and aesthetic interests, we’re good friends, and he’s just a fantastic player. I also like having a right-hand man and somebody that can play slide. I’m not really a slide player and now have no push to work on it because he’s so good.

Last year, you put together a tribute to your father in Macon, Georgia, that included Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Chuck Leavell, Charlie Starr, and others. How do you remember that night?

That event was quite the undertaking. The playing part was stressful, but it was so rewarding. It was deeply personal and it was something that had to be done, and it had to be done by me.

I look back with a lot of pride on what we were able to do that night, and the love showed for my dad and his music both on the stage and in the audience was great. I’m just grateful it went off without a hitch.

Isle of Hope has a different sound than your previous work. How did working with Dave Cobb at his studio in Savannah affect the recording?

Dave had a huge impact. He elevates the material and brings everything to its maximum potential. He makes calls that pushed me to go against some of my ingrained instincts.

Some of it was as simple as adding a descending line or having more movement in the chord structure, and some was subtraction to make something hit harder by making it simpler. These are things that producers are supposed to do, but he’s so good at it, and has such impeccable taste and great instincts that it’s easy to have faith.

I learned a lot about song structure from him, and some of it went against my instinct to jam. Reckless was the perfect example. I wanted to put the solo in the middle over the chorus structure, then have it go into the chorus.

Dave didn’t want it to go back to those chords until the chorus, which would make it hit harder, then [he wanted to] put the solo at the end with a whole new section. It worked out really well, and I had Johnny play the solo because it just sounded right when he did. Dave’s records have such a style and character, and you can definitely hear that.

Was it hard to relinquish control of the songs like that, especially since a lot of them seem so personal, starting with Heartache?

No, because what he was doing was making the songs better and helping me deliver them to people. Heartache is my favorite song that I’ve ever been a part of writing. It means so much to me, and I am so excited for other people to hear it.

Losing somebody you love is a universal feeling we can all relate to. It was written shortly after dad passed, but I realized it’s not just about him. It’s about some of my friends I’ve lost. It’s about everything.

In terms of it being the first track, we wanted to commit to that. Before I had even finished the song I had the idea that I wanted to start the record out with a quieter song, not a barn burner. I was thinking about how much I liked how Beck started the Sea Change album with the beautiful, quiet The Golden Age.

Then, once we brought the songs in and started thinking about the track order, Dave was adamant that he wanted Heartache to be the first song, so we were in line, and I am very proud to come out of the gate with something so emotional. It’s hard being that vulnerable, but I’m really proud of the song.

It reminds me of how the Allman Brothers Band started Eat a Peach with Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More, which Gregg wrote after Duane passed away, and it’s Dickey’s first recorded slide part. It’s answering the question, “How are we going to survive without Duane?” on the very first track.

Wow, yeah. That’s such a powerful, soulful song, but you just turned on a light bulb in my head by putting it in that perspective. That was so gutsy. That’s a strong statement and, yes, there’s a common thread between those two conceptually, but it wasn’t conscious and it only occurred to me when you mentioned it!

Has your famous name ever been a challenge to your career as a musician? Your first and last names are so evocative.

I’m so fortunate to be able to play music, do what I love and be part of a beloved, highly respected musical legacy. It’s an honor that my dad named me after Duane. I realize people will always associate me with that lineage – because that is my lineage. It’s who I am. But I just want people to listen to my songs, check what I’m doing now, and consider that maybe there’s more to it.

And most folks do. I just try to create my own art, and if I feel that I’m doing really good work and I’m proud of something, then that usually supersedes any negative feelings that I possibly could have.

The whole point of what we do is to share the art with people and hopefully put a little joy in their lives and give them a reprieve from their daily stresses. My dad used to say that the three hours people come to the show is the little sanctuary we create for them to forget about their daily troubles.

They get to escape with us, and we want to give them a little peace of mind. And that’s what the concept of the record basically is – an isle of hope.

A great metaphor.

The crazy thing is the title is both a metaphor, and a real place. Going to the studio every day I would pass over a little bridge with this sign that said something like “Now entering Isle of Hope.” A couple more turns, and there was the studio.

I mentioned this to my wife Lisa, then to Dave, and everyone agreed it was a great title. I thought it was also appropriate for these times when there’s a lot of anxiety. This is your little place to stand on safe ground. This is your isle of hope.

• Isle of Hope is out now via Sun Records
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

One of a kind would be overstating it because I actually have two of these 1950s Telecasters with this custom walnut finish, but I’ve never seen any others.

These guitars were purchased brand-new as a set in 1956 and, besides the condition, they are like clones. The one with all the wear and tear has lettering spelling the name ‘Gillie’ on the pickguard. The obvious question is, who the heck was Gillie?

Unfortunately, we don’t know, but the photographs that came with these guitars show us he was a singing cowboy who played in a band with other singing cowboys.

Having bought these guitars, he must have decided which was the one for him and he never used the other one and it remains in new old stock condition. It’s wrapped in the tissue paper it was shipped in and it still has the factory strings on it.

Although we haven’t been able to identify Gillie, it’s likely that Fender did know who he was because they agreed to build him a matching pair of guitars with a unique finish and custom-feeling necks.

I think that Gillie may have been someone locally famous in the Southern California area judging by the look of his band photos and the way they were dressed. Or perhaps he knew somebody who worked at the factory. Either way, he must have had an in somewhere with Fender for them to make him two special guitars.

The necks are basically identical and they feel fabulous with a really thick V profile. Although the neck and nut widths are standard, they are quite bulky – almost like Fender turned U-shaped ’52 Tele necks into soft Vs. Gillie must have had giant mitts on him, but they do feel comfortable.

The one he played weighs around 7lb 4oz and, besides the pickguard lettering, it has never been altered and it still has its battered original case. The really clean guitar’s case is in mint condition and still contains all the paperwork from Fender.

I must say that for my taste, this is not the prettiest colour and it’s the kind of brown that’s reminiscent of something else. You’d be the only kid on your block to have one if you owned these guitars because I’ve never seen this finish on any other 1950s Fender guitar and that means it was specially ordered.

I have no idea why Gillie wanted his guitars to look like 1950s kitchen cabinets. Maybe it matched his personality or the band’s stage outfits, but for whatever strange reason, he thought this was cool. It is somewhat translucent so you can see grain through it. The lacquer is just opaque enough that it’s almost a transparent walnut colour.

If it was just the one guitar, I might be less certain that it’s a factory finish. But because the clean one is in mint and completely unmolested condition, it confirms that it is original. Neither guitar has been altered in any way and even the solder joints are pristine so this is Fender paint.

The one Gillie played has got checking and a few dings and dents. The edges are bumped and bruised and there’s a big wear spot from a giant buckle. You can tell from the buckle rash that he played the guitar high up, which means he was playing it early on. It’s been loved on and Gillie had a career with it.

As you’d expect for ’56 Telecasters, they have smooth steel saddles and bridge pickups with staggered slugs. On Gillie’s playing guitar the pickups read 7.5k and 6.6k at the neck and bridge respectively. The played one sounds particularly good, but since the other one has original strings, we can’t really compare them at this point.

The bodies aren’t dated, but the neck dates are September 1956 and the pots are from the 20th week of 1956. The wiring is unchanged, so the guitars still have their ‘mud’ settings, and although the played one doesn’t have a bridge cover, the mint one does.

The guitars come with two really cool old photos. In one picture you can see a Fender double-neck pedal steel and the other guitarist in the band looks a bit horrified. Maybe he’s kicking himself because he could have had a Fender, but he ended up buying a Gretsch. We would love to hear from Gillie or maybe his kids or grandkids. If you know who he is, please step forward.

• Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York / 001 (516) 221-0563
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Revisit the opening bars of U2’s 1987 Billboard-topping ballad With Or Without You. There’s a music-box chime. A heartbeat bassline. A soft but purposeful beat. But what really turns the head are those long, lost, lonely whistles, each one hanging for an eternity, aching with Celtic melancholy.

Four decades later on a call from his LA studio, Michael Brook is conjuring that exact same sound for GW. The 74-year-old didn’t perform the guitar part on the Irish band’s classic fifth album, The Joshua Tree – that was The Edge.

But he did invent the near-mythical sustain device behind it, which has been retrofitted into a grand total of three so-called Infinite Guitars. Brook owns one, Edge another, and Joshua Tree co-producer Daniel Lanois the third.

“Here it is,” he smiles, holding up the Tokai Strat copy that hosted his original circuit, then letting fly with a cascade of deathless notes. “It’s still my favorite guitar.”

Of course, to suggest the Infinite Guitar is all the Canadian has achieved is outrageously reductive. According to his PR team, Brook is here to talk about the reissue of his 1992 solo albums, Cobalt Blue and Live At The Aquarium, each a hit of pure ambience.

“The zeitgeist just wasn’t right,” he recalls of their cool commercial reception first time around. “It’s so much better now.”

But even those are just a conversational jump-off for a musician whose sprawling résumé takes in A-list collabs with Robert Fripp, Brian Eno and Youssou N'Dour; movie soundtracks Heat, Mission: Impossible; and album productions from The Pogues to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)

“To tell you the truth,” says Brook, gesturing at the treasure trove of gear behind him, “I’ve been in this cave for about the last 25 years.”

It all began when Brook picked up the guitar as a compromise in the early ‘60s. “My parents wouldn’t buy me drums – in self-defense, I’m sure! And once you get over a not-very-high hump, there’s an innate pleasure in playing guitar.”

He cites The Beatles, Hendrix and Jeff Beck as his formative influences. How about Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, whose ghostly style seems to loom over Cobalt Blue? Brook shakes his head: “I have huge respect for him, but it just never rang my bell. My friends and I, our party game was, ‘What incredibly popular album have you never heard?’ And for me it was The Dark Side Of The Moon.”

In any case, Brook was soon moving in more sophisticated musical circles. He remembers that as a music/electronics student at Toronto’s York University, he was ashamed to play guitar.

“If something sounded like rock music, they looked down on it as dumb. People were into music that was unpredictable, atonal, slightly random – and very critical of anything melodic. That first year, I didn’t tell anybody I played guitar.”

Out in the real world, he began work on 1985 solo debut Hybrid and found he didn’t have the tools for his vision. “I’d been exposed to ornamentation and melody in Indian music and I was playing around with that. But to a degree, a guitar is a percussive instrument.

“Then in 1983, I saw Bill Nelson play in Toronto, and he started the set with an EBow, which I’d never heard of or seen before. And I thought: ‘I’m fucked! He’s doing exactly what I’ve been trying to do and everyone’s going to think I’m copying him!’ Fortunately, it was just a 60-second intro, so it was fine.”

Brook ordered his own EBow but it never showed up (“I mailed this guy a check, never heard back”). In desperation he tapped his own electronics background, developing a circuit that fed a signal between pickups, creating an endless loop. “I didn’t have much money and I didn’t know if it was going to work,” he says.

“So I thought, ‘I’ll just get a cheap guitar for the prototype, then it’s no big deal.’ So I got this Tokai Strat. It was pretty rickety, but it worked. And when I sent in another order for a EBow, it turned out the Infinite Guitar was much better for what I wanted to do.”

In his post-college years, Brook met Lanois and fellow U2 producer Brian Eno while working as an engineer at Ontario’s Grant Avenue Studios. In the mid ’80s, the story goes, U2 were ready to can With Or Without You until Edge knocked on Brook’s door.

“Brian thought he might be interested in the Infinite Guitar. So Edge came to my little bedsit and said, ‘Can you make me one?’ I modified his ’75 Strat, and he got this magic piece of music out of it. That song gave me chills. Nobody had ever heard something like that before. Even I had never thought of using it that way.”

U2 went on to become the world’s biggest band, while Brook rolled into a thrilling portfolio career. “Robert Fripp is a very particular person,” he reflects of his work with the King Crimson man. “There was one song we did in 35/8, and I just never got it. I screwed it up seven times out of 10!

“As for producing The Pogues’ Waiting For Herb [1993], that was very challenging because Shane MacGowan had been kicked out of the band. There was a lot of emotional baggage.”

Fast-forward to 2026, and Brook is clearly successful, sought-after, and financially solvent. But a question hangs in the air: where might he be now if he’d patented the Infinite Guitar and rolled out production?

“Around the time of The Joshua Tree, I did speak to some manufacturers,” he reflects. “Fender was one, and a company called IVL. We had meetings and they were all pretty interested.

“I think Edge’s guitar tech showed it to Fernandes, but I don’t know the whole history there. I think their Sustainer is pretty good. It may be slightly influenced by the Infinite.”

But doesn’t he mind the millions that got away? He gives a good-natured shrug: “I realized I just didn’t want to be in the instrument-making business. I’d rather just use it as a tool for my own music.

“It’s turned out that the Infinite has its little niche. It’s not the best at lots of things, but it’s turned out to be very good for me.”

• Cobalt Blue and Live At The Aquarium are out now.

Barrie Cadogan has spent more than 20 years playing sideman to Eighties and Nineties Brit-pop legends like Morrissey, Primal Scream, John Squire, and Liam Gallagher. It takes a special player to cover that ground. Luckily, Cadogan was dyed in the wool.

“John Squire made me want to pick up guitar,” he tells Guitar World. “After hearing the first Stone Roses record,” Cadogan says, “I fell in love. I was fascinated. I loved the way the band looked as much as they sounded.”

Then Cadogan dug deeper. “I was a very big fan of Johnny Marr,” he says. “And J Mascis, and Jimi Hendrix. All of my initial influences begin with a J! [laughs]”

When he’s not working with Little Barrie, Cadogan rubs elbows with musicians he once idolized. To that end, Cadogan dialed in with GW to look back on carrying the torch for some of Britain’s favorite rock music.

How did you score a tour with Morrissey in 2004?

That was the first high-profile thing I did. I got that gig because of Andy Hackett, who had the guitar shop Angel Music. He introduced me to Morrissey’s guitarist, Boz Bora. I really liked Boz and got away with him. I got a call from Boz out of the blue, saying they were looking for a guitar player to stand in for ten shows before an American tour.

Was that challenging?

I did three rehearsals. It was a baptism of fire. Boz said, “Just do what you can. We’ll see you tomorrow.” I had a music stand on stage at the time, with a few notes on it because it was a lot to get into my head, but Morrissey seemed pleased.

What gear did you use with Morrissey?

I took a 1964 sunburst Gibson ES-345. And I used to have a beaten-up old blue ’63 Stratocaster, so I took those two out on the road. I traveled light.

What was the trick to handling parts laid down by Johnny Marr?

I tried to stay as close as I could to Johnny’s original guitar parts. I had no idea how Johnny did it; I just tried to work it out as best I could. Johnny Marr, for me… no one else can play like him. It’s kind of impossible to replicate. He has a very unique style and touch.

In 2006 you joined Primal Scream.

When I was working at a vintage guitar store in the early 2000s, I met many musicians, including Andrew Innis and Bob Gillespie. I was living near Bobby, and I used to bump into him quite a bit. Sometimes we would chat, drink tea, and play songs on acoustic guitars.

Not long after that, he called me and said they were looking for a guitarist. It was a stripped-down version of the band. We did a couple of days of rehearsal; they seemed really happy. I ended up playing with them for eight years!

Later on, you joined Liam Gallagher’s band.

Liam texted me one night out of the blue saying, “Hi Barry. It’s Liam. I’m looking for a guitarist for some shows. I don’t know if you’re interested…” It was hard to believe it was actually a real message. [laughs] I wasn’t sure what to do. I texted him back, and we spoke on the phone. I did a couple of years standing in for Bonehead. It was a great experience. I was really well looked after.

Liam seems like one of the last remaining true rock stars.

When you stand on stage with Liam, and he’s singing those songs, it’s incredible seeing the reaction from the audience. Sometimes, the audience was singing so loud it was drowning us out on stage!

No one could sing those songs like Liam. He brought the vibe in bucketloads. It was really powerful stuff.

What’s the key to nailing Oasis’s songs?

To be honest, I wasn’t using exactly the same setup as Bonehead. I brought in my old 1964 Fender Bassman, and I used my own guitars. Liam made a comment that I kind of had more of a Rolling Stones kind of guitar sound.

But there were three guitar players, and those others were more faithfully focusing on recreating the Oasis guitar sound. They had more intricate setups than me. I had a very simple setup and laid the foundation.

You did play some lead though.

I ended up playing some of the lead guitar stuff in Champagne Supernova, but not the solo. I also liked playing Roll It Over, and Cigarettes and Alcohol is always good. With Liam’s voice, it was just a vibe. He brought everything to life straight away.

You also played with John Squire while he toured with Liam.

That’s something I could have only dreamed about. I’d really enjoyed working with Liam before, but with John there, I was playing bass. It was a cool band with a different swagger. It had a heavy swing. I’d love to do that again if the opportunity arose. John is incredible. He was and still is my hero.

What keeps you in demand with the Britpop greats?

I think it’s because I try and keep it pretty simple. I keep things very old-fashioned and simple. My setup and gear are simple, and I just go straight into the amp. If you get the right amp, and turn it up just right, you can get a lot out of that.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Warren Haynes is always on the move. He’s on tour now and is promoting Dreams & Songs: A Symphonic Journey.

Beyond that, he’s got “vault recordings” by Gov’t Mule to sift through dating back to before bassist Allen Woody died. After that, he’ll pivot to solo work – but not his usual fare.

“My next adventure will probably be an instrumental, jazz-influenced record,” Haynes tells Guitar World. “I’m not sure if there will be a Mule recording or just a solo recording. We’ll see!”

1. What was your first guitar, and how did you get it?

It was a Norma, and I had a Norma amp. My dad bought them for me at a local hardware store. He didn’t know anything about them, just that I wanted a guitar. I think I was 12, but I didn’t have it that long. I eventually traded it for a Lyle copy of an SG.

2. What was your teenage guitar rig like?

My second amp, which was my first decent amp, was a Silvertone that you’d get out of a Sears catalog. It was actually a bass amp with no reverb because they had a small guitar amp and a bass amp that was bigger, and I told my dad I wanted the bass amp. I made up a story that B.B. King played through a bass amp, and that’s why I wanted it. [Laughs] It wasn’t true!

3. Which of your current guitars do you have the closest relationship with?

My ’59 Les Paul would be the one I love the most. I got that through a friend who always said he wanted me to wind up with it. We eventually were able to make that happen, and I’m forever grateful because it’s a wonderful instrument.

It’s original, and those guitars have their own unique sound. That one is no exception. It’s beautiful.

4. What’s your Number 1 tone tip?

Always be searching. Even if you love your tone today, you might not tomorrow. Recently, people have asked me a lot about my sound, and why I opted specifically for Les Pauls. It finally dawned on me that I always wanted my tone to be similar to my voice, and that guitar is similar to that for me. They come from the same place.

5. What’s a quirk or habit within your playing that – like it or not – has become integral to your style? 

Playing slide in standard tuning. Sometimes, combining regular guitar and slide playing together… people did it before me, but it’s something I’ve gravitated toward naturally without thinking about it. I can pick up a slide at any moment and switch without feeling it.

6. Music history is filled with sliding-door moments. Was there ever a time in your career where you faced a decision that had real implications on your life as a musician?

When I was living in Nashville at 23 and thinking of pursuing a session career, the more progress I made, the more I realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

When I was 26, I knew I wanted to be a solo artist or be in a band, and then I got an offer from Dickey Betts to join his band. And when I was 28, they reformed the Allman Brothers Band and asked me to join. That changed everything.

7. What was it like being in a room with Dickey Betts?

Dickey was one of those rare players that always sounded like himself. No matter what guitar he was playing or amp he was playing through – or if he was playing an acoustic – he was instantly recognizable.

When I started playing next to him on stage, it occurred to me that I needed to go to school to figure out how to make every note sound like myself, especially if I was gonna be next to someone like him! That was a big wakeup call to me to get rid of the superfluous stuff in my arsenal and concentrate on what represented me as a player.

8. What’s been your most memorable encounter with a guitarist or guitar hero over the years?

The two nights we played with Eric Clapton at the Beacon [Theatre, New York City], where we did six or seven songs one night and seven or eight the other night.

Not just for me – and it was huge for me – but for everyone involved. The Allman Brothers Band and Eric Clapton had never performed together, even though there was history with Eric and Duane [Allman], so it was historic.

9. What’s been the toughest time you’ve ever had as a musician, and how did you get through it?

Losing Allen Woody. When he died in 2000, it didn’t make me wanna stop being a musician, but it did make me wanna stop doing Gov’t Mule. We started that band together, and most people know that with an improvisational trio, it depends on chemistry. Woody had a lot to do with that.

My natural instinct was to dissolve Gov’t Mule and move on, but friends and associates that I loved and respected encouraged me to keep it together. I’m really glad we did, but it was a tough time. The two records after he died were cathartic and bittersweet, but it challenged us, and we rose to the occasion.

10. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a guitarist, and who gave it to you?

My friend Andy Hunter, who was my first and only guitar teacher in Asheville, where I grew up, told me when I was really young: “If you only listen to the Three Kings – Freddie, B.B., and Albert – you’ll still have a lifetime of work ahead of you.” He wasn’t saying to only listen to them, but that if you do listen to them forever, you could never learn it all.

11. What’s the biggest misconception about you as a player?

Because of my association with the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule, people automatically assume I’m 100 percent coming from a blues and rock background. That is definitely a big part of my influence, but I’ve listened to so much more, and I incorporate that whenever I can.

I’m extremely proud of what I did with both bands, but nobody likes to be pigeonholed or have people assume that’s all there is to you. I was a huge Allman Brothers fan growing up, and that’s one of the main reasons I was the right person for the job.

But at the same time, if I hadn't joined the Allman Brothers, my career trajectory would have been completely different. It would have been a different turn or direction. There’s no way of imagining what that direction would have been, but I was given this opportunity. I was thrust into this amazing environment and a challenge that changed my life. And what an amazing journey it’s been.

• Dreams & Songs is out September 18.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In the summer of 1983, 18-year-old David Ellefson had moved from Jackson, Minnesota to Los Angeles, where he met guitarist Dave Mustaine, who had recently been fired from a new band named Metallica.

Equipped with only a bag of clothes, a B.C. Rich Mockingbird bass guitar, and a small Roland Cube amp, Ellefson squatted around L.A. while writing what would become Megadeth’s first two albums. Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! and Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?

This classic slice of ’80s thrash metal owes much of its success to Ellefson’s growling pick-driven bass tone. By locking tightly into the drums and guitar, Ellefson cemented his reputation as one of the genre’s greatest players.

“Growing up, I could never afford a big amp,” said Ellefson in the March 2016 issue of Bass Player. “I found that playing with a pick gave me a tone that would cut through, even when playing with my buddies who were using half-stacks.

“Fast forward to moving to L.A. and meeting Dave in 1988. When we first started writing music for Megadeth, I used my fingers because the music was much slower – it was almost Black Sabbath-type tempos.”

Megadeth’s transformation into one of thrash metal’s defining bands wasn’t entirely preordained. For Ellefson, the shift happened almost overnight, sparked by an unlikely source.

“One day, a fan wrote a letter to Dave that said, ‘Dude, I hope your new shit is faster than Metallica.’ Right then, we went to rehearsal, all of the tempos sped up by 50 to 60 BPM, and we became a thrash band that night.

“Because of that, I needed to use a pick to keep up, and it was already natural to me. The pick is just an all-purpose device that allows me to do everything.”

Another key element of Ellefson’s tone has been his long-standing relationship with Jackson, a partnership that began in the late ’80s and would eventually lead to a series of signature models.

“I went to see Judas Priest on their Turbo tour, and the opening act was Dokken. Jeff Pilson was playing a Charvel bass, and his tone was phenomenal.

“The next day I went to the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard, and I saw a Jackson bass on the wall. I plugged it through a GK 800RB head into a Hartke 4x10 and a single 1x15 cabinet. My tone was born right then and there.”

It was in 2016 that Ellefson reportedly achieved his favourite bass tone to date. During the recording of Megadeth’s Dystopia album, he decided to track with no drums, no guitars, and no vocals – just his bass and a metronome.

“Dave and I sat there together, and we went through everything part-by-part and song-by-song; by having the bass guitar as the first brick of the building being laid down, the rest of the structure was built on the back of the bass tracks.

“As bass players reading this will understand, you can sit by yourself at a computer and dial in a great bass tone, and then once the band comes in and everyone tracks together, your tone disappears in the mix.

“By doing it this way, we were able to build a tone that would stand up to the drums and the heavy rhythm guitar on top of it. We got such a crystal-clear, ripping bass sound. The bass became the benchmark for the rest of the album.”

The bold manoeuvre paid off, with Ellefson setting the bar for the rest of the band – nowhere more so than in the bass-heavy Fatal Illusion.

“That bass riff actually started off as a guitar part. That would happen a lot of times, where we’d write something difficult with a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs, which can be tricky to nail on a five-string bass with a wide neck.

“But sometimes, instead of keeping them on guitar or doubling them up, we’d delegate them to bass. That part is on the lower register, down near the nut where the strings feel super-tight.

“Playing it is almost like a seesaw, where once you’re locked into it, it takes you into the riff. So the trick for me is to lock in right away, because as long as I get my up- and downstrokes going it’s like clockwork. But I tell you what, if you land on one of those notes wrong, you'll never get back into it.”

Bill Kelliher has looked back on his songwriting partnership with the late Brent Hinds, which he says felt like a “competition”.

Hinds’ exit from Mastodon in March last year sent shockwaves through the fanbase. His tragic death several months did the same. The band has since released their first record following his death, Marrow Deep.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, guitarist and key songwriter Kelliher admits writing with Hinds was a rocky experience.

“I’m constantly writing. With Brent, it was always a competition, which I didn’t understand. It was one-sided with him,” he says. “He was interesting – a great fucking guitar player and songwriter – but it was difficult to write with him. With this new stuff, I’m writing all the time and putting riffs into my phone.

“But with Brent, after a while, he was just on his own wave… He just wasn’t into it any more. I was like, ‘Dude, how great is it that we get to go up on stage, have people buy our albums and worship you?’ But he just had this self-destructive streak.”

The band said they were unsure about speaking out about Hinds’ troubles, and the manner in which they reluctantly parted ways, given that he wasn’t around to contribute to the conversation. Still, Hinds’ legacy lacquers Marrow Deep – a record they see as a tribute as well as a fresh start. Sadly, something had to change.

“We were on totally different ends of the spectrum as far as guitar and personality,” Kelliher continues. “We did have a lot of things in common, but he was dangerous. I think that’s what made the Mastodon we were in the early days. He would just do whatever the fuck he wanted to do, but that got old after a while.”

After a relentless career that’s produced nine albums and six Grammy nominations, the band is an established institution. At 55, Kelliher is the oldest of the core group, and everything the guitarist says points towards them growing up, while Hinds was stuck in a destructive place. It’s hard to hear, but he says life in the band improved when he left.

“Honestly, it was like a big weight had been lifted,” Kelliher confesses of Hinds' departure from the band. “I was doing the lion’s share of the writing, but I always had to think, ‘Is Brent gonna like this?’ And pretty soon, he didn’t like anything that we would come up with.”

Hinds once said he hated heavy metal – a soundbite that went on to make many headlines. But that only scratched the surface of the effervescent and complex personality he was.

Now the band is facing a lawsuit from the late guitarist’s estate, claiming they financially benefited from his image following his death. The band has strongly refuted the claims.

They’ve also added another member to their live lineup, Baroness’ John Baizely. He’ll join them on their US tour with Deafheaven and Alcest.

Kelliher’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitarist. You can pick up print and digital copies from Magazines Direct.

This month in Guitar World's cover stars we journey back to March 1993, when Page Hamilton of Helmet graced the cover of the magazine, holding the ESP Horizon that would be his calling card.

Coming out of the NYC punk and alternative scene with a pink/magenta Superstrat was a real power move. Here we get the story behind the guitar.

Where and when did you get this cover image guitar?

I got it at ESP when the company was four guys upstairs above 48th Street Custom Guitars in New York City. Baker Rorick was the sales guy back then and was acquainted with then-Helmet bassist Henry Bogdan.

He said he worked for this pretty new-to-the-U.S. guitar company and asked, “Would Page be interested in talking to them?” I went by, and they had maybe 50 to 75 guitars on wooden shelves.

I started pulling guitars down with the ESP guitar tech, the late, great Paul Skelton, and found my Horizon Custom with a Floyd Rose bridge and reverse headstock. It was super-cool looking and very uncool in an indie rock world – the Lower East Side, New York City scene.

Why was it applicable to your music and style of playing?

This guitar was meant to be with me. It felt right. I don’t remember if it was the first, second, or third guitar I played. ESP is so damn consistent, they build really great guitars and basses, but every piece of wood is different. I could feel the connection immediately.

It reacts great with my Fryette amps and any number of the hundreds of pedals I’ve used, but it did not factor into why I chose it. I knew it would sound great when played acoustically. It’s a very light alder body with a maple neck-through and ebony fretboard; it resonates beautifully and has amazing sustain.

What notable recordings is it used on?

It’s on every Helmet album from Meantime.

Have you made any modifications to it? If so, why?

I had the neck pickup, toggle and tone knob removed. ESP put wood plugs in the holes, and a tech put a photo of the fat guy in one of the windows from the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti on top of one plug. The building on the album cover is on St. Marks Place between 1st Avenue and Avenue A in Manhattan.

I used to eat at Mogador across the street a couple of times a week after tours. I love seeing that building and obviously love that album. Kashmir might have burned the polyrhythm stuff into my brain. Drums in 4, guitar groove in 3 or 6, etc. As a 15-, 16- or 17-year-old, I listened to two entire Zep albums almost every day.

Why did you choose this guitar for your GW cover shoot way back in late 1992?

I honestly don’t remember the shoot!

Obviously, you still have your ESP. What about it makes it so special?

With that guitar, it’s hard to say… I’ve always trusted my ears. If something sounds great, I’ll feel inspired. If it sounds like crap, I’ll move on.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

For more than 10 years, master luthier Roger Giffin and vintage gear rental specialist Brett Allen have been sitting on a secret that could have landed both of them serious jail time.

The story goes back to Giffin’s time as head of the Gibson Custom Shop operations in Los Angeles. The renowned British guitar maker, who famously built Johnny Marr’s Telecaster knock-off, arrived in LA in 1988 with the task of building a Custom Shop facility. He was left largely to his own devices, working on repairs and warranty issues. In walked Allen.

They immediately hit it off. Giffin played the role of teacher, talking Allen through the builds he had hanging on the wall. Allen fired question after question at him and Giffin answered. They were similarly curious about guitar design, about what could be done – if not what should be done.

“Literally the moment him and I started talking, we got on like a house on fire,” Allen tells Guitar World. “He would show me bits and pieces of what he wanted to put together as a guitar, like he’d take a Gibson neck that shouldn’t be on this body and put it on that body, and try and find out what it’s going to sound like, right? That really intrigued me.”

It got Allen thinking: if there was one Gibson guitar that Giffin would love to design but the company would never make it, what would that be?

“Without hesitation, within a second, he said, ‘Yeah, a hollowbody Les Paul,’” says Allen.

They kept talking. Giffin had all this worked out, how to construct a Les Paul as you would do a hollowbody Gretsch guitar. Allen asked if he would build him one, and there it began, an illicit collaboration that all started with a hollowbodied Les Paul, complete with f-holes, and once it was finished they were sitting on a consignment of 16 wholly unauthorized acoustic, bass and electric guitars, all bearing the Gibson name on the headstock, all made from parts purloined from company stock.

“If they found out, we’d be in jail. Or I would be. I was the instigator. I was the one that came up with it,” says Allen.

“I would go back to Nashville every few months,” says Giffin. “I’d spend a few days there. I’d wander around in the wood mill, and take a trolley thing on wheels, and just say, ‘Can I have that and that and that?’ And they’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, just take it.’ I would take all this stuff on the trolley and wheel it back to the other end of the shop there, and they would just crate it up and ship it to me in LA.”

Giffin amassed a stockpile of premium tonewoods and spent his nights and weekends working on designs that he knew deep down would not ever go into production at Gibson. And, he says, the company saw some of these. He would send some of the builds back to Nashville for finishing. Giffin describes them as “kind of official Gibsons” but prototypes.

“Whatever they saw, they obviously didn’t disapprove of it, so it just kind of spiraled,” he says.

Allen had more suggestions, and this clandestine project continued, off-the-books, on the hush-hush. Some of the designs were Giffin’s from the ground up, such as the hollowbody design and his baritone Les Paul.

“The hollowbodies didn’t exist,” says Giffin. “Those were built from scratch. I probably used Gibson necks on some of them, but not all of them, especially not the baritones, because there were no baritone necks.”

Allen says these guitars have been sitting under his bed all this time but some of them had been rented out to artists to use in the studio. Allen wanted to build his rental business – he also wanted to know what these guitars would sound like in a pro’s hands. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains made a beeline for that baritone Les Paul.

“Jerry Cantrell was the very first person to ever play either one of the baritones,” says Allen. “He played the one with P-90s in it – it’s got ’54 cream top P-90s. They sound amazing. Jerry played it for about a minute and a half. He looked at me and he said, ‘Brett, this is the most evil-sounding guitar I’ve ever played in my life. This is pure fucking evil, and I want it.’”

Allen told him it wasn’t for sale. But Cantrell was determined, and was willing to put down some serious money for it. He went as far as thirty grand. Allen said no. None of these instruments were for sale.

Until now. And this is why Allen and Giffin have broken cover. They waited 10 years until the statute of limitations had passed, and now these guitars are going up for auction at ANALOGr as ‘The Giffin Gibson Outlaw Guitar Collection.’

All of them were made using Gibson woods. That hollowbody Les Paul really started something; they made a 12-string variant, equipped with cream-covered P-90 pickups, and a 12-string Gold Top Les Paul. And what about a truly ostentatious (and Gretsch-inspired) gold sparkle Les Paul with a trio of P-90s?

Allen says all of these are one-offs, all built on this hypothetical premise of what a Gibson guitar could be – or mostly. Some were made to upset then Gibson-CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, such as a fully hollow Les Paul with a cats-eye soundhole just like a Gretsch. That one was all Giffin’s idea.

“What he wanted to do at the time was piss Henry off. Henry Juszkiewicz,” says Allen. “We used to call him ‘Henry just a twit’. Henry was getting on his case all the fucking time, from the time he started with with Gibson. So he built that for me.”

These guitars go under the hammer on October 24 via ANALOGr. Allen has waited a long time for this day. They had been close to being caught on a couple of occasions. Now he says it’s over.

“All of those guitars, literally, were underneath my bed in Hollywood for over 10 years,” he says. “The statute of limitations is seven years. I wanted to wait 10 years to make sure that, absolutely, that’s it, you can’t touch me. You can’t do anything.”

Giffin left Gibson in 1992. It got “nasty” towards the end. Gibson sent in “the hatchet squad”. He said he would never work for an American corporation again and formed Giffin Guitars.

You can find out more about the auction and these one-of-one guitars at ANALOGr.

A simple, effective way to discover new sounds on the guitar is to use a capo along with 1st-position open chords, commonly referred to as “cowboy” chords.

A great example of this approach can be heard in the title track to my 2012 album, Driving Towards the Daylight, which I co-wrote with the great Danny Kortchmar. Danny is renowned for his work with James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Ringo Starr and many others.

In truth, this was a song that I had forgotten all about. Around 15 years ago, I had a Korg multitrack machine that I was going to get rid of, but before I did, I decided to go through it to hear what had been recorded on it. I saw the title and thought, “What is that?” and when I heard it I remembered it was a song Danny and I started but never finished. I decided to finish it, and it became the title track of my next record.

The song is played in the key of F minor, because that is the best key for my voice. But I opted to use a capo at the 1st fret and play the song as if it were in E minor. The capo allows me to play 1st-position “cowboy” chords throughout the song, along with many open-string embellishments that 1st-position chord shapes facilitate.

Stylistically, the song has a country/Americana feel. Personally, I like all kinds of music, and this song affords me the opportunity to visit that musical terrain.

Figure 1 illustrates the first four bars of the intro/verse section of the tune, wherein I play a single-note melody that connects the chord progression of Em-G-D-C. For each chord, I allow all the strings to ring together.

When it comes to soloing, there’s an old adage that you can’t do a lot of string-bending if you’re using a capo. The truth is that you can, as long as you have a good capo.

It needs to be affixed to the guitar tightly, so that when you bend and release a string, it will go back to the proper unbent position.

Figure 2 presents a nine-bar solo that moves loosely between Em and C; you can imagine a G and D chord played in bars 2 and 3, as well. This improvised solo is based primarily on the E hexatonic minor scale (E, F#, G, A, B, D) with brief use of C, C# and D#.

When using a capo, it can get a little disorienting when playing more than five frets away from it because all the fret numbers are relative to the capo. In this case, a note tabbed or visualized to be at the 9th fret is actually at the 10th.

Because we’re thinking in E minor here, I wouldn’t play country-type licks such as that shown in Figure 3, because these phrases are more suited to the key of E major.

Figure 4 is a better example of sitting firmly within the key of Em by sticking with E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) or hexatonic.

Driving Towards the Daylight is inherently a rock song with country elements, akin to the music of the Eagles, Jackson Browne and the music that came out of Laurel Canyon in the late ’60s.

And in this application, the capo helps to achieve some chordal sounds that would otherwise be unavailable.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Just recently, we sat down for a chat with Anna Cara, the 22-year-old Newcastle native who rose from obscurity to land one of the more vaunted guitar gigs in rock – backing the King of Shock himself, Alice Cooper.

How’d that happen, exactly? Well, her bandmate, Tommy Henriksen, found Cara via social media, and was blown away by what he heard.

This is far from an isolated case, too. The bass prowess rising star Becky Baldwin showcased on Instagram landed her a gig with Mercyful Fate in 2022 (she just played bass on Tony Iommi’s new solo album, too, btw). No less than the Beach Boys found their latest member on Instagram. Gone are the days when you needed to mail a cassette tape to the fan club of a big artist in order to get their attention.

Social media’s supposed to be the great equalizer, in a way. Anyone and everyone, theoretically, can get their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Isn’t it a blessing that some of the traditional guardrails – connections, record labels, cigar-chomping managers – have been lowered?

Then again, social media’s dark side has also left its mark on the guitar corner of the world.

There’s the comparison thing. You know what I mean – feeling bad and envious because that one snooty person from school is at a palatial villa in Greece for the summer, and somehow they’re also impossibly jacked, now? It extends to guitar, too.

Last year, Sophie Lloyd – herself a huge presence on guitar social media – said that that very fixation on everyone else’s playing sapped all the joy out of her own. “I kept comparing myself to others and it just stopped being fun,” she said.

Instagram algorithms are designed to reward our ever-shorter attention spans. Too many guitarists have told us that when they scroll, they see players who are capable of tasteful, melodic, and slow-building playing focusing instead on moving across the fretboard like Lewis Hamilton. With so little time to grab someone’s eyes and so many others to compete with, who can blame them?

Then there’s the darker side of things – Instagram guitar giants using their platform to pass off the compositions of other players with fewer followers as their own, and hucksters using AI to steal the compositions and identities of other guitarists to gain followers and even scam people, to name just two recent examples.

So, in totality, do you think social media has been a positive or negative force for the guitar and its players? Has its playing field equalization outweighed the darker psychological effects and thievery?

Let us know in the comments below.

• On Apple News? Head here to join the discussion.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly gear round-up, your one-stop-shop for keeping up to date with what’s been happening in the big wide world of guitar gear over the past seven days.

From new electric guitars to amp modeler updates, the guitar industry is never short of fresh releases, and it can sometimes be hard to stay in the loop with every new launch.

To make things a little easier, we’ve put together an essential must-read guide that will cover the major releases, the boutique drops, and everything in between.

Below you'll find my personal highlights from the week, along with plenty of honorable mentions for the new gear you might have missed. Agree with my picks? Have a highlight of your own? Let us know in the comments.

Gibson DES Series

During his tenure as Gibson CEO, Cesar Gueikian learned the art of guitar building. He made a bunch of limited models, played by a bunch of different artists, some of which were auctioned off for charity. One even made it onto the stage for Back to the Beginning.

They were all made under the DES umbrella, an acronym for Gueikian’s catchphrase: “Do Epic Shit”. Now, a formal DES line has been unveiled by the Gibson Custom Shop.

There is one of each model: a Les Paul, SG, ES, Explorer, Flying V and Victory, all with Ghost Burst colorways and new ELEV8 humbuckers. They look pretty darn cool. Oh, and to mark the release, Gueikian has released a new single that features Mateus Asato.

They will be available exclusively through the Gibson website and at select Gibson Garage locations worldwide.

Schecter Nick Johnston V

Are you really a Mastodon guitarist if you don’t have multiple Silverburst signature guitars? Bill Kelliher has one. Troy Sanders has a bass of the same finish. Nick Johnston got his first in February this year. Now, he’s got another – and it’s even more Mastodon than the last.

Johnston, the virtuoso who became Brent Hinds’ permanent replacement in the band last year, was given an Atomic Mercury (read: Silverburst) HH S-style earlier this year. This time, he’s opted for a more metal shape. And you’ll forgive us for saying it heavily reminds us of Brent Hinds’ Epiphone V from a while back.

It’s kitted out to the hilt, with a nine-piece wenge/purpleheart/maple neck, as well as a 14” radius ebony fingerboard and NJ Signature Atom-Bucker pickups. It looks the part. Definitely sounds the part. It will look right at home on stage with Mastodon.

ALSO LAUNCHED THIS WEEK...

Martin 16 Series

Martin has refreshed and rebooted the 16 series, unveiling fresh body shapes (including a slope-shouldered dreadnought), all-solid-wood constructions, new colorways and updated electronics.

For more: Martin

Sterling by Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong

Funk king Cory Wong has brought the StingRay bass body shape to Sterling by Music Man’s guitar lineup. It’s an affordable version of the Ernie Ball Music Man variant that made headlines back in 2025.

For more: Sterling by Music Man

Joan Jett Epiphone Olympic Special

Joan Jett’s iconic Olympic Special has been brought back to celebrate the 45th anniversaries of the rock legend’s two most iconic albums. What a way to mark the occasion.

For more: Epiphone

Mono x Tim Henson M80 Classic Dual Electric Guitar Case

Mono’s first artist-developed gigbag, this has been designed in collaboration with Polyphia’s Tim Henson. It flaunts a square-patterned front panel, off-white plush interior and a Polyphia metal badge.

For more: Mono

MXR Slash Talk Box

He might be best known for his love of wah, but Slash is also partial to a bit of talk box action. So much so, in fact, that MXR has made him a signature version.

For more: Reverb

Gibson x Baggs HiFi DNA Pickup system

Gibson and Baggs (not L.R. Baggs anymore) have partnered for the HiFi DNA pickup system, which might just revolutionize acoustic amplification.

For more: Gibson

EHX Adrian Belew Echoflanger

EHX has partnered with prog legend Adrian Belew for his signature Echoflanger, which puts his most famous sounds into a limited-edition stompbox.

For more: EHX

Fender Lee Sklar Precision Bass

Lee Sklar is one of the most iconic session bassists of all time. Now, Fender has honored him with a recreation of the P-Bass he played on some of his most notable contributions.

For more: Fender

Gibson Custom SJ-200 and Hummingbird Elegant Koa

These aren’t just your regular SJ-200 and Hummingbird acoustics. These are Elegant Koa SJ-200 and Hummingbird acoustics. They’re made from koa, and they sure are elegant.

For more: Gibson

El Cabron Custom Black Corp

A pointed message from Mike Eldred to his former employer Fender? Potentially. Fender’s ex-Custom Shop head has unveiled the El Carbon Black Corp. Make of that body slogan what you will.

For more: El Cabron

Fractal x NAM

This is a big deal. Fractal has become the first of the modeler world’s Big 3 to partner with TONE3000 for NAM compatibility. The tide is certainly shifting in the digital amp and effects world.

Yamaha F7 Series

Yamaha expands its acoustic lineup with the F7 series. It comprises the concert-style FS7 and dreadnought-inspired FG7, with each offering solid Sitka spruce tops, rosewood or mahogany back and sides, and Atmosfeel pickup systems.

For more: Yamaha

Mesa/Boogie 90s Triple Rectifier Standard

Mesa/Boogie has brought back the '90s Triple Rectifier Standard, which means you can get the famed heavy rock amp in a more affordable standard black dress configuration with an aluminum-look Diamond Plate face.

For more: Mesa/Boogie

Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness

A milestone model for the Smashing Pumpkins frontman, built to celebrate 30 years of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Nice pickup covers, gorgeous finish, lovely SP artwork. 10/10.

For more: Reverend

Reverend Standard series

Two drops from Reverend this week, the other is the new Standard Series. Think frills-free, no-nonsense, high-performance. There’s a few different body shapes and finishes on tap. A great addition to the Reverend stable.

For more: Reverend

• What's your favorite new gear release of the week? Let us know in the comments below.

Reverend has expanded its Billy Corgan signature guitar lineup with a limited edition release commemorating 30 years of the Smashing Pumpkins’ bravura double album Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Unveiled in time for the Chicago alt-rock institutions’ Rat in a Cage Tour, the Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available as a standard six-string electric guitar, and as a baritone guitar – and if it looks familiar then maybe that’s because you caught the Pumpkins’ set at Lollapalooza. Corgan was debuting them onstage, just to test them out.

He’s one of the lucky ones. Reverend are not making many of these. There are 60 in total, 24 of which will be the Drop Zero baritones.

Both versions share the Black Sparkle finish, the solid alder construction, and ebony fingerboard – and the Melon Collie graphic that sits just south of that six-saddle hard-tail bridge. Indeed, they share a lot of features.

Both have Railhammer humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions, a pairing that’s served by the volume, tone, and bass contour knobs (bass contour! I know, right?), with a three-way blade switch to select them. Note the signature etching on the covers. That’s pretty neat.

In the hand, that bolt-on maple neck should feel familiar; Corgan’s preferred ‘medium oval’ profile is a crowd-pleasing shape – not too fat, not too thin – but you get a bit more neck on the baritone. With a 26.25” scale, it’s not quite a Sleep Token IV-style octave-down monster, but it will eat up drop tunings, and you’ve got 24 frets as opposed to the 22 on the regular Z-One.

Reverend hasn’t actually specified this yet, but those dot inlays look glow-in-the-dark to us. That’s another plus point if true. Each guitar in this series comes with a certificate of authenticity, a two-tone soft guitar case, plus a poster of Billy Corgan’s Mellon Collie Moon artwork.

The standard model will set you back $1,899, while the baritone rings up at $1,999.

And, if you buy one, you’ll be buying the same guitars that Corgan plays onstage. In April last year, Corgan explained to Guitar World why he played off-the-shelf Reverends onstage and in the studio.

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give,” he said. “I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever. That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument.”

The Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available now. Head over to Reverend for more details.

Okay, so NAMM 2026 happened, and by now it seems like a lifetime ago, so long ago in fact that you would be forgiven for forgetting some of the most-exciting electric guitars that debuted on the show floor at Anaheim.

But surely the following rings a bell: a $749 guitar from Cory Wong anf Sterling By Music Man with a double-cut profile inspired by one of the greatest bass guitar designs of all time, dual humbuckers, Pearl Blue or Silver with white egg-shaped pickguard, built to spec for a man whose right hand is one part quartz crystal, two parts rubber…

That’s right, it’s Mr Cory Wong of Vulpeck's StingRay II, the first-ever SBMM version of that model, and it looks every bit as fresh in September as it did in January.

If it is something completely new for SBMM, the affordable wing of the Ernie Ball Music Man family of brands, then it is also something new for Wong. This is the player who made his name on the lithe, elastic snap of Stratocaster single-coil pickups – and here he is rolling with humbuckers. What gives? Well, he wanted something with more girth.

“I am known by a lot of people as somebody who plays a single-coil guitar. That’s a big part of my sound,” he admits. “But there was a lack of just a fatness in some of the things I wanted to play.”

Wong was in luck. He started exploring the idea of humbuckers when the Ernie Ball Music Man R&D team were looking to rework one of their classic designs, and if Wong was in the market for a new signature guitar – complete with the fatness of ‘bucker – then he would be pushing at an open door.

“They’re like, ‘Well, we’re talking about maybe doing the StingRay thing, so why don’t you just help us with the design process?’ I was telling them the things I was looking for sonically and visually, and the collaboration was born,” says Wong.

For $749, the StingRay II is, as they say, a lot of guitar. It has a caramelized maple neck, bolted to a “double-contoured” alder body. There are two of the aforementioned humbuckers, and a three-way switch to select them. Volume and tone knobs serve both pickups.

Wong’s SBMM StingRay II has a vintage-style tremolo, locking tuners, and a rosewood fingerboard, which is always appreciated on the more affordable instruments (no shade to Indian laurel, etc, but rosewood is where it’s at).

Other points to note: these have a Fender-esque 25.5” scale but a Gibson-esque 12” fingerboard radius, and the price is very nice but it does not include a gig bag.

For more details, head over to Sterling By Music Man.

Sammy Hagar admits that he has no idea why former bandmate Alex Van Halen has a long-standing beef with him, as he addressed the recent comments from AVH that described him as a “complete idiot”.

Speaking to Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, Hagar said he had no desire to get into a “tug-of-war” in the press, but argued that, if Alex Van Halen had problems with anything he wrote in his warts ’n’ all autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, then that was on him, insisting everything he wrote was true.

“I don’t know what Alex’s problem is,” said Hagar. “I’m always honest. I tell the truth. And I have never lied in my book.”

But is the book the source of the beef? Hagar has been quoted as saying they haven’t spoken in 21 years. The book came out in 2011. Alex Van Halen had been speaking with Brazilian music journalist Marcelo Vieira, when he took aim at the Red Rocker. He also said that he hadn’t read Hagar’s book, and didn’t want to know what was in the book. The plot thickens.

Hagar sure sounds none the wiser. But he says whatever Alex Van Halen is doing, it is tarnishing the legacy of Van Halen.

“I want to call Alex out and say, ‘Dude, we all know. You act like there was never a Sammy Hagar. You act like there was never a Van Halen,’” said Hagar. “We sold 40-some million records, four number-one albums, and you just scratched that off of your brother’s legacy… You don’t even want to acknowledge it… That’s weird. That’s not right for Eddie, for me, for Mike [Anthony], for anybody.”

Needless to say, all this to and fro goes some way to deepening our understanding on why a proper Eddie Van Halen tribute concert did not happen, that there was no Kumbaya moment where all VH alumni rallied to the flag and put on a show for old time’s sake – for Edward Van Halen’s sake.

Hagar said Alex Van Halen’s recent behavior called to mind his treatment of Anthony, when he began airbrushing him out of the band’s history when his nephew Wolfgang Van Halen replaced him on bass guitar.

But hope is at hand. Hagar says he’s willing to talk. Maybe Eddie Trunk could mediate? Or maybe this calls for Dr Phil. It’s a lot of drama. Who knows if there is a book in it (we’ve had enough trouble with books) but it could make great TV.

“To me, he's doing a lot of stuff wrong for the legacy of Van Halen,” said Hagar. “And the one that is my business is I just want to know why. Just come clean. Tell the people, tell me, make a public statement… If we can’t fix it, then just go about my business.

“It’s all good. It's not changing my life. And it doesn't really even bother me anymore because I think the fans really know it’s wrong.”

Over to you, Alex.

Gibson has launched a limited-edition collection of electric guitars inspired by the one-of-a-kind six-strings that were built by former CEO, Cesar Gueikian.

The now-board member of Gibson spent much of his tenure learning the art of crafting guitars. One of his last builds was played by Kirk Hammett with Metallica at Back to the Beginning, before it was auctioned off.

Inspired by his journey, Gibson has celebrated its former leader with the Do Epic Shit series (inspired by Guekiain's catchphrase). It comprises a Les Paul, SG, ES, Explorer, Flying V, and Victory.

The guitars all share the same Ghost Burst finish, Super Split Block inlays, the same compound-radius ebony fretboards, and Gibson’s all-new, future-minded ELEV8 humbuckers.

Gibson Master Luthier Jim DeCola has also had a hand in the builds, with each model also boasting AAA figured maple tops, black nickel hardware, and uncovered zebra-coil pickups. Hardware specs include Grove locking tuners, a Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, and a push/pull coil tap to get the most out of its Alnico 8 pickups.

The recipe is largely the same across the board, with the collection contributing to the firm’s in-house charity, Gibson Gives. They’re pretty sharp-looking instruments., and will be sold exclusively on the Gibson website and at Gibson Garage locations.

Gibson is celebrating the series’ launch by dropping a charity single in tandem.

Featuring Mateus Asato, Dream Theater keyboardist Joran Rudess, and Gueikian himself – who is no slack on the guitar, either – Sanctuary is a piano-driven song iced with brooding Asato leads.

That, in turn, has inspired the creation of another one-of-a-kind Gibson Sanctuary Soundwaves guitar. Its intriguing finish has actually been informed by the soundwaves of the song itself, and is being auctioned off via RallyUp to add even more cash to the Gibson Gives kitty.

The fact that Asato has not long joined the Fender family makes him an interesting choice for the track, but he nails it all the same.

Speaking to Guitar World last year, Gueikian said that when he finished his first build, the building bug bit him hard. It’s become a career highlight.

“At the beginning, I thought, ‘I want to build a guitar.’ And I realized it was no longer about the guitars, but it was about the moment,” he said.

The Gibson DES Series is available now exclusively via Gibson.com and Gibson Garage locations.

See Gibson for more on the DES Series, and RallyUp for the auction details.

Joan Jett’s signature Olympic Special has returned to Epiphone in commemoration of the 45th anniversaries of her iconic albums, 1980’s Bad Reputation and 1981’s I Love Rock ’N Roll.

Back for the first time since 2022, this 2026 edition takes inspiration from the specs of Jett’s workhorse Melody Maker, delivering a “rock-ready model without distractions.”

It features a lightweight, asymmetrical double cutaway mahogany body, a glued-in mahogany body shaped to the guitar’s unique profile, and a rosewood fretboard with a 22-inch radius, 22 medium-jumbo frets, and pearloid dot inlays.

Aside from carrying the classic Olympic Special silhouette, the headstock is fitted with die-cast tuners, a Graph Tech nut for tuning stability, and a gold reproduction of Jett’s signature.

The controls channel her no-frills, punk sensibility, with a single PowerHammer ProBucker pickup, a CTS volume potentiometer, a black Speed knob with a rubber grip, and an on/off toggle switch for added kill-switch capability. To top it off, it’s now available in Vintage Sunburst finish.

“What attracted me to guitar was just being able to make that kind of noise and have control over it,” Jett said upon the signature’s release in 2022. “The point is to make it your vision and voice. Being true to your music is really about owning who you are. My guitars have become an extension of who I am.

“I want girls and guys everywhere to be fearless about picking up a guitar. Anyone can play rock ‘n’ roll and make it authentic.”

Priced at $599, Jett’s signature is available now.

For more information, visit Epiphone.

When I was a kid, my dad played acoustic guitar and sang around the house, and he played everything from bluegrass to old folk and gospel songs. I was fascinated watching one man do that. It was just a guy and his guitar doing a troubadour kind of thing.

This really informed my initial understanding that music could be just a person and a guitar. He could hold my attention for as long as he wanted to! He could do it with just the combination of rhythm, musicality, melody and lyrics. He liked to sing a song to me called The Wreck of the Old 97, which was about a train crash. It had adventure, speed, death, and there’s a woman involved too. Everything that you need in one song!

As I got older, I realized that what I really wanted to do, other than to play the guitar, was to create songs: to get an acoustic guitar and do exactly what my dad did. I ended up falling in love with the music of Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle – so many masters of this craft. These are all guys that could put a guitar on their back, drive from town to town and stand on the sidewalk and entertain you.

This can be said for Barbeque Bob – Robert Hicks – Curly Weaver, Buddy Moss and Blind Willie McTell, who played in front of a barbeque place in Atlanta called Pig n’ Chick. The list goes on and on.

Fast-forward to me writing my own songs and having writing sessions with others. It was awkward at first, but one day I met Travis Meadows, and within two days we wrote two songs, Pretty Little Lie and One Horse Town, which has gone on to be a big song for my band, Blackberry Smoke.

Figure 1 illustrates the verse section of Pretty Little Lie. While strumming in a steady eighth-note rhythm, the progression is a stream of nice minor-to-major chordal resolutions, one that I was able to weave a story around with some very direct lyrics.

I realized I could take that kind of feeling, with just an acoustic guitar and my voice, and play and sing that to anybody for the rest of my life. And then you have the enjoyable option to take it to four other musicians, turn it up to 10, hit the drums really hard and put background and harmony vocals on it, to make it a big production. But when you boil it all down, it goes back to one guitar and one voice.

Figure 2 shows the chorus section, which combines different minor-to-major resolutions with lyrics that move the story forward.

The very next day, we were back in a minor mood, and, as shown in Figure 3, the intro features a single-note line and then moves from Am to C. Travis and I are both from very small southeastern towns, and this is how One Horse Town was born.

For the verse, what better place to go than another minor chord! So, as illustrated in Figure 4, the verse starts on Dm and then weaves its way through to F/C, C then G. This is a perfect example of a lyrical idea carrying and inspiring the day.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to strumming chords and singing a melody. It’s a beautiful thing to create songs and make other people happy, just like my dad did.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Last month, we asked Guitar World readers to name the best guitar duo of all time.

It didn’t come as a massive surprise to see the Allman Brothers Band’s original six-string tandem of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts come up over and over again.

In the all-too-short time between the band’s formation in 1969 and 1971, when the Allman’s life was cut tragically short in a motorcycle accident, the pair left an indelible mark on rock guitar. The two both had an incredibly melodic touch – with Allman always having an answer to Betts’ sweet statements on slide.

According to Betts, Allman wasn’t a fiery character, per sé, but he had an incredible drive, a firm belief in himself and his vision. Betts was no shrinking violet himself, though.

Once the Allman Brothers kicked into gear, the two clicked – musically and personally. But, as Betts told it, their first couple of interactions didn’t exactly foretell a history-making partnership...

Recounting his relationship with Allman in a 2007 interview with Guitar World, Betts vividly remembered the first time he saw the slide great play.

“It was around ‘65, ‘66. I kept hearing from different people about this hot guitar player named Duane Allman over in Daytona [Florida],” Betts told GW.

“I started going out with a girl that had dated Gregg [Allman], and she told me about the brothers. I had a pretty good band at the time [the Jokers]. We had the biggest crowds in Sarasota. So my girlfriend took me over to Daytona to see Duane and Gregg’s band, the Allman Joys, and introduced me to them.”

“I thought they were real good, but to tell you the truth, we didn’t get along right away,” Betts explained, adding, with a laugh, “I thought they were stuck-up, and they thought I was some hillbilly hayseed.”

A couple years later, the brothers rocked up to a Florida club where Betts was playing, and jammed with him for the first time. Unfortunately, that didn’t go particularly well, either – though this was due more to a misunderstanding than anything.

“Duane came up onstage to play and I showed him the amp to plug into, which was on the dark corner of the stage,” Betts recalled to Guitar World. “It was hard to see, so as he was plugging in, I tried to help him, saying, ‘This here is the bass and treble, and here’s the volume,’ and he looked at me and said, ‘Man, I know how to run an amp by now, I think!’

“I was just trying to be nice! So I said, ‘Okay, well, fucking have at it then.’ So we didn't get along that time either.”

Ironically, once Betts and Allman began to play together more over the coming couple of years – overcoming their earlier bad impressions of one another – and the nucleus of the band that would make them famous began to form, the Allman brothers themselves had to get over some bad blood before all could finally come together.

Encouraged to contact his brother to round out what would become a six-piece band, Duane was hesitant.

“At that point, Gregg was out in LA and [he and Duane] were mad at each other,” Betts told GW in 2007. “It was just a brotherly thing; they fought all of the time. Duane said, ‘Oh, he ain’t coming,’ but we knew Gregg was going to have to come.”

Early tension and brotherly spats aside, once the Allman Brothers Band hit their stride, Duane – aside from laying down the mind-boggling slide work that helped establish the band as one of the most groundbreaking in rock – did much to help keep the band’s eye on the ball in their early days.

“Duane was such a great guy for keeping things positive,” Betts explained. “He would talk about all of the things that we all had been thinking about and gave us what were, essentially, pep talks.

“He’d often say, ‘I’m not the leader of this band, but if and when we need one, I’m a damn good one!’ And he was.”

Fender CEO Bud Cole has revealed the company is pivoting its ongoing cease-and-desist campaign, as it continues its attempts to enforce legal protection for the Stratocaster.

In May, Fender issued a wave of cease-and-desist letters to a number of guitar builders that Fender claimed were making Strat copies. The copyright dispute has been widely criticized by players, Guitar World readers and brands alike.

Cole recently gave Bloomberg his first public interview since the start of Fender’s legal strategy. In it, he concedes mistakes were made in how the company approached the dispute, and that its main target has now changed from small builders to big players.

"It’s clear to me that this got ahead of us – the legal process got ahead of us – and that we could have done this better,” says Cole.

“We are very, very focused solely on large manufacturers now,” he adds. “We are not focused at all now on boutique builders… We are not focused on small builders.”

Bloomberg has confirmed that 60 firms in total were sent cease and desists, with the first official confirmation that Schecter and Ernie Ball Music Man are involved. PRS, Yamaha and Harley Benton are the three biggest guitar companies that were already known to have been served a letter.

It doesn’t specify which models, but Schecter’s Nick Johnston signature model and Ernie Ball Music Man’s Cutlass are likely candidates.

Meanwhile, Thomann, Harley Benton’s owner, is currently locked in a high-stakes suit with Fender. PRS has repeatedly declined to comment on the matter, but has said it disagrees with Fender’s position.

LsL Instruments, a family-owned boutique firm, is also defending its right to make its Saticoy S-type. It’s one of a number of firms being represented by Ron Bienstock, the attorney who defeated Fender’s previous trademark dispute back in 2009.

Fender claims to be seeing some success in its campaign, however. Bloomberg notes it is currently working with 32 builders, 18 of which have signed agreements. Those onboard are yet to be identified, but have agreed “to stop making the Stratocaster and take it in a different direction and redo the design,” Cole says.

As for why a boutique firm such as LsL received a cease-and-desist letter in the first place, despite Fender’s new focus on larger manufacturers, Cole states: “The idea was to begin conversations with people. That has always been our objective.”

Cole made similar comments in a leaked dealer event in June. “What we’ve done is reach out thoughtfully and respectfully to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replicating the iconic Fender Stratocaster design,” he said at the time.

However, Bloomberg notes neither LsL nor any of Bienstock’s other clients have heard from Fender. LsL did explore a redesign of its own accord, but that was a pre-emptive move rather than a collaboration with Fender. LsL has been approached for comment.

Throughout the interview, Cole avoids defining what a Stratocaster actually is, a distinctive point of identification that lies at the heart of this dispute. According to Bloomberg, “He describes it as most others do: recognizable, unique… Defining it turns out to be slippery.”

Elsewhere, the interview confirms Fender’s legal campaign predates Cole’s tenure, and that his appointment as CEO came after the wheels were already in motion.

Cole says he knew about the original judgement that had formed the basis of Fender’s entire campaign in December 2025, two months before he got the job. He doesn’t confirm who instigated the dispute, but when pressed, offers: “We led that. That was Fender, the company.”

The dispute, then, continues. All eyes will be on the outcome of the Thomann v Fender case, and what those 18 firms’ redesigned guitars will eventually look like – and how distinct from the Stratocaster they will need to be.

You’d be more likely to see a mosh pit at a Dave Matthews concert than a list of all-time greatest bassists that didn’t include Paul McCartney. With all the recognition McCartney gets for his bass chops – not to mention his songwriting genius – it’s easy to forget that he started his journey with the Beatles as a guitarist.

Only when Stu Sutcliffe stepped down as the band’s bassist in 1961 did the 19-year-old, baby-faced Paul reluctantly trade six strings for four.

Even after switching to bass, McCartney couldn’t keep his hands off the guitar. Try to imagine Beatles tunes like Yesterday, Blackbird or Michelle without his gentle acoustic artistry.

For that matter, try to picture Paperback Writer without his fuzzed-out electric guitar riff, or Ticket to Ride without the melodies he wrenched from his Epiphone Casino, or The End without his sharp, expressive leads, or the intro to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band without the proud six-string proclamations he launched through a Vox Conqueror from his Fender Esquire, or Taxman without his solo’s blotter-art swirl of blues-rock and Indian influences… Shall we go on?

After the Beatles disbanded, the Former Fab leaned in harder, plastering albums like McCartney and McCartney II and Wings’ Band on the Run with his distinctive guitar work. His array of equipment broadened over time, but his Epiphone Casino, Vox amps and go-to acoustics – a Martin D-28 and an Epiphone Texan FT-79 – stayed close to both his heart and his hands.

Realizing that even he can’t play bass and guitar at the same time, McCartney has taken legions of gifted guitarists under his wings (yeah, we said it) throughout his career.

From Wings alumni like Denny Laine, Henry McCullough and Jimmy McCulloch to more recent collaborators such as Robbie McIntosh (no, you don’t have to have a last name starting with “Mc” to play guitar with the Big Mac, but it helps) and current band members Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, these players have all enriched McCartney’s music with their skill and creativity.

In turn, they’ve learned crucial lessons in musicianship, stage presence, band dynamics and music-biz politics while enrolled at “McCartney University,” as guitarist Laurence Juber calls it.

Juber, who stepped away from a successful career as a studio musician to join Wings in 1978, says he and his bandmates had an abundance of artistic freedom under Paul’s leadership.

“We were encouraged to really think of it as a band,” he says. “There were very few occasions when he gave me something specific to play. That would be when something was written into his concept of a song, whether it was a riff on the live Coming Up single or those figures in [Wings B-side] Daytime Nighttime Suffering.”

Trying to spotlight every standout guitar performance in a body of work this vast – especially one so rich in contributions from world-class musicians – is like trying to cram every item in a restaurant into a to-go box.

We’d love to list every deserving candidate, such as Pete Townshend’s feisty leads on Angry from 1986’s Press to Play… or the harmonized solo that closes out Alligator from New (2013), or Jimmy McCulloch’s leads on The Note You Never Wrote (Wings at the Speed of Sound, 1976), or Lloyd Green’s adroit pedal steel quips on the 1974 Junior’s Farm B-side Sally G… Well, hell, if we don’t stop there, the list of honorable mentions is going to be longer than the round-up itself.

With that caveat out of the way, let the rock show begin. Here, in chronological order, are our picks for the guitar highlights from the great Sir Paul’s post-Beatles studio catalog. May they provide newcomers with a six-string-centric entry point to the hallowed halls of Maccademia, and may they inspire longtime fans to go back and listen to what the man played.

Maybe I’m Amazed – McCartney (1970)

With a little help from Linda on backing vocals, the ever-industrious Mr. McCartney recorded every track of this soaring proto-power ballad in a single day. His rhythm guitar playing is sparse and unobtrusive, accentuating the song’s emotional peaks without crowding his vocal.

Still, there’s a quiet ingenuity at work here; in the latter half of the song, McCartney builds intensity by fretting chords without fully depressing the strings. Combined with palm-muting, this creates a percussive sound with just a whisper of harmony. Paul uses this technique to craft a rhythm not dissimilar to the one his ultimate guitar hero, Jimi Hendrix, played in the intro to Are You Experienced?

Within the context of the song, it sounds like he’s sending a love note to his new bride in Morse code. Also noteworthy are the song’s twin guitar solos – loose variations on the vocal melody that he decorates with slides, hammer-ons and swiftly released ghost bends. While largely alike, the two solos diverge at the last instant.

In the first, McCartney colors outside diatonic lines with childlike glee, but in the second, he stays loyal to conventional tonality. Midway through each solo, he adds an arpeggiated rhythm track much like a passage from the Beatles’ You Never Give Me Your Money, which still bore the scent of fresh paint when Maybe I’m Amazed was released.

Too Many People – Ram (1971)

One of McCartney’s finest post-Beatles works, Too Many People cloaks unusually bitter sentiments in a melody sweeter than buttercream. Paul wastes no time setting the hook, driving the intro with insistent downstrokes on an acoustic guitar tuned a whole step south of standard. This detuning allows a droning A string (sounding as G) to underpin a shifting series of dyads on the D and G strings.

After the vocals take hold, the guitar temporarily recedes into the background. Then the guitarist plants a bomb in the bridge: a simple, catchy melody that fills the space between the sung lines.

Mid-song, cowbell and shakers help propel a momentum-building electric solo. In the verse that follows, the cowbell pairs with animalistic guitar wails to foster the pastoral atmosphere suggested by the album’s cover. A second solo bites harder than the first, as if echoing the little jabs at John and Yoko in the song’s lyrics.

Debate persists over whether McCartney or the late session player Hugh McCracken handled at least one of the leads in this song. However, beatlesbible.com credits McCartney with overdubbing both solos in a single take. Either way, the sharp-edged lead guitar at the song’s end hints that a formidable set of fangs lurks beneath this sheep’s clothing.

My Love – Red Rose Speedway (1973)

In a statement on former Wings guitarist Henry McCullough’s death in 2016, Paul McCartney described the solo on this recording as “a classic that [McCullough] made up on the spot in front of a live orchestra.”

McCartney, who had initially composed a different solo for the song, tells the origin story of McCullough’s lead in the book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run: “Just before the session, Henry came over to me, leaned down and whispered in my ear. He said, ‘Do you mind if I try something else on the solo?’... I had to have faith, and boy, was it rewarded.”

In Band on the Run: A History of Paul McCartney and Wings, McCullough claimed this was the first time a member of Wings had challenged the former Beatle. Granted, his nightly improvisations of the My Love solo throughout Wings’ 1972 tour probably gave him the head start he needed to nail his single-take performance at Abbey Road Studios.

Still, this lead, likely played on a goldtop Les Paul with P90s, is sensitive and unforced, briefly echoing George Harrison’s most tender musical moments without lapsing into imitation. McCartney has named it as McCullough’s finest moment with Wings, and McCullough called it a “one-take wonder” and a “gift from God.”

Junior’s Farm – Non-album single (1974)

With 1966’s And Your Bird Can Sing, Paul McCartney and George Harrison slipped harmonized lead guitar into the rock lexicon through the f-holes of their Epiphone Casinos. By 1974, acts like UFO, the Allman Brothers Band and Queen had embraced this device, bejeweling their songs with gleaming dual-guitar leads.

Toward the end of that year, Paul McCartney & Wings released Junior’s Farm, the band’s final output on Apple Records. The song barrels in with an anthemic guitar line harmonized mostly in thirds, similar in spirit to the triumphant major-key fanfare that would later parade through Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town.

Junior’s Farm also serves as a coming-out party for Scottish guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, the former child prodigy who played on Thunderclap Newman’s U.K. Number 1 hit Something in the Air at age 15. McCartney’s shout of Take me down, Jimmy! is unmistakably reminiscent of Get Back (“Get back, Loretta!”), as is the instrumental break that follows.

However, in contrast to John Lennon’s straightforward lead (yes, Get Back is a rare example of Lennon playing lead guitar on a Beatles tune), McCulloch studs his solo with flashy ostinato runs and a double-stop that he gooses into a screaming dissonance.

He burns through the song with confidence and finesse, then embeds some deceptively simple-sounding arpeggios in the coda, his deft picking camouflaged by the band’s harmonized vocals.

Spin It On / To You – Back to the Egg (1979)

The title of Wings’ final record, Back to the Egg, reflects the back-to-basics ethos that permeated that album’s creation. “We were basically recording in a barn in Scotland, so we didn’t have any of the sophistication of being at Abbey Road or one of the other London studios,” Laurence Juber says.

One of the guitarist’s most prominent memories from those sessions is of working out the leads for the punk/rockabilly-influenced Spin It On, one of the first songs recorded for the album. McCartney sat with him in the control room, encouraging him to come up with licks “that fit the title in terms of the ‘spin’ aspect of things. Paul brought stuff out of me that I didn’t necessarily know that I could do.

When you’re sitting eye-to-eye with a Beatle, one tries to rise to the occasion.” And that Juber did, spinning speedy legato runs and screeching bends that beg for swear words of appreciation. His tone came from a 1963 Stratocaster plugged into a Mesa Boogie Mark II – the same rig he used to far different effect on To You, which finds him plowing straight through the roadblock of the song’s key signature.

“Paul was in the control room manipulating an Eventide Harmonizer while I was improvising, so I was hearing notes in the headphones that were transposed from what I was actually playing,” he says.

“That led me to play outside of the changes.” The result was a harmonized (and disharmonized) solo that stands triumphantly at the junction of consonance and dissonance. Juber calls the effect “weirdly satisfying”; we call it glorious.

In a 2012 interview for the webzine Something Else!, the guitarist described his solo on To You as “a precursor to what Trevor Rabin did on [Yes’] Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Elsewhere on Back to the Egg, Juber used an ARP Avatar guitar synthesizer and, on occasion, an EBow.

More recently, he recorded One Wing, an album consisting of selections from McCartney’s post-Beatles work. This year saw the release of I’ve Got a Feeling… LJ is Still Playing the Beatles!, Juber’s fifth collection of Fab Four tunes adapted for solo guitar.

No More Lonely Nights – Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)

Before lighting up No More Lonely Nights with a pair of inspired solos, Pink Floyd’s prodigious axeman, David Gilmour, played on a couple of tunes from Back to the Egg (Rockestra Theme and So Glad to See You Here) as part of a “rockestra” that also included GOATs like Pete Townshend, John Bonham and John Paul Jones.

However, whereas Gilmour blended stealthily with the ensemble on those tracks, he is recognizable from note one of his first solo on Lonely Nights.

Gilmour plays a melody as hummable and lyrical as the song itself. His sustained ending note morphs into a pinch harmonic that stings like a bite of live hornet pizza. At the song’s end, his second solo starts as a reiteration of the first, but an upward modulation seems to bring out the snarl in him. He spray-paints the song’s outro with screaming bent notes, surly double-stops and sneering whammy bar flourishes.

The-paulmccartney-project.com quotes Gilmour as saying, “In one three-hour session with a band, we learnt [No More Lonely Nights] and put it down, and Paul played piano and sang the lead vocal live, and I put the guitar solo down, bang.”

In a 1984 interview for Guitar Player, he said the gear he used for this session was a stripped-down version of his live rig. According to gilmourish.com, that full rig comprised – among other things – an array of Stratocasters, a Mesa Boogie Mark 1 60w head, four MXR Digital Delay effects racks, an assembly of Fender Concert combo amps and a slew of Boss pedals.

Gilmour would go on to contribute characteristically outstanding performances to Paul’s Flowers in the Dirt and Run Devil Run (from 1989 and 1999, respectively) and the song I Love This House, which first appeared on McCartney’s radio show Oobu Joobu in 1995. That said, his work on No More Lonely Nights gets our vote for Best in Show.

Good Times Coming / Feel the Sun – Press to Play (1986)

How is it possible for a guitar solo to be simultaneously pleasant and abrasive, stiff and flowing, jagged and smooth, jarring and melodic, mechanical and friendly, angular and sinuous? Somehow Carlos Alomar reconciles these seeming opposites in Good Times Coming.

With its thick, heavily processed tone, abrupt stops and aggressive whammy bar dives, his lead on this song sounds like a PG-13 reboot of Robert Fripp’s R-rated playing on Fashion by David Bowie. While we’re on that subject, Alomar also appeared on Fashion, but he played the clean, funky rhythm part on that track, while former 10cc multi-instrumentalist Eric Stewart fulfilled that role on Good Times Coming.

Stewart’s syncopated chord stabs, nimble fills and muted 32nd-note flurries are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Stick around for the transition to Feel the Sun, which illuminates McCartney’s knack for stitching song scraps together seamlessly. Culminating with a bright guitar melody, this bouncy little piece wouldn’t need its cheerful lyrics to impart the feeling that the sun has just broken through, and the good times have arrived.

Peace in the Neighbourhood – Off the Ground (1993)

The recording of Peace in the Neighbourhood (yes, that’s the British spelling) that made it to the Off the Ground album was originally intended as a rehearsal take, but the band couldn’t recapture its loose feel on subsequent passes.

“That was a good one for me, that guitar outro,” guitarist Robbie McIntosh commented in the tour book for McCartney’s New World Tour. “We were rehearsing, arsing about, really, so I wasn’t thinking, ‘Woo! I’ve got the chance to show off now!’ It was aimless in a way, and yet it ended up sounding quite nice.”

While not lacking in technique, his solo glides with a relaxed smoothness that only a seasoned player can conjure when he’s not trying overly hard.

McIntosh brings the same verve and professionalism to Off the Ground that he has displayed in his work with artists like the Pretenders, John Mayer, Joe Cocker and Roger Daltrey. Other morsels of guitar goodness on the album: the slide work on Biker Like an Icon and the title track, the solo on Looking for Changes and the honky-tonk blues leads on Get Out of My Way.

House of Wax – Memory Almost Full (2007)

Paul’s dreamlike lyrics on this tune border on the Dylanesque, depicting lightning striking a house of wax, poets spilling out to the street and thunder drowning a trumpet’s blast.

The song reaches its emotional apex during a second solo filled with quick alternate picking, wailing bends and flashy legato licks. In the final moments of House of Wax, the lead guitar seems to portray the lightning in the song’s lyrics as drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. brings the thunder.

Some online sources claim that longtime McCartney guitarist Rusty Anderson is the player who bottled this lightning, but Memory Almost Full’s producer, David Kahne, recalls being in the control room when McCartney improvised the lead: “I had this weird moment, because it reminded me of the solo in ‘Taxman.’ It has that same chaotic, loose, all-over-the-place [feel], almost like the tape wasn’t on, but it works so well and sits in the track perfectly.”

Apparently, these kinds of lightning-bolt moments aren’t uncommon when you’re working with McCartney. “He does something that makes you think, ‘How did he do that? Where did that come from?” Kahne says. To borrow from this song’s lyrics, the answer to that question is “buried deep below a thousand layers.” Whatever its origin, this spontaneous blast of electricity could melt steel, let alone wax.

Long Tailed Winter Bird – McCartney III (2020)

Bluebirds, blackbirds, skylarks and wrens have all winged their way through McCartney’s music over the years. In 2020, he continued that tradition by composing an acoustic guitar-based piece called Winter Bird for an animated short film.

“I liked what I did so much that once I’d finished the film bit, which was less than a minute in length, I then thought, ‘OK, let’s keep going,’” he told NME. McCartney created an elongated version of Winter Bird, adding drums, Höfner bass, vocals, recorder, harmonium and extra layers of guitar.

Winter Bird and its long-tailed counterpart eventually bookended McCartney III, which was recorded during the Covid lockdown. In both tunes, McCartney zigzags between fretted notes and the open E string. At times, the second and seventh notes of the E harmonic minor scale momentarily clash with the root note, creating exotic dissonances.

Is it one of the best guitar licks of 2020? The jury is story out on that one, but it’s a certainly compelling listen, bearing an air of mystery and a badass groove that continues to hum in the listener’s bones after this winter bird has flown.

As You Lie There – The Boys of Dungeon Lane (2026)

62 years after the Beatles struck the famous “May we have your attention, please?” chord that kicked off their A Hard Day’s Night album, Sir Paul used an equally unusual guitar voicing to draw listeners into the first track from this year's The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

The quirky, harmonically jarring arpeggio at the beginning of As You Lie There – either a D13b9 (no 3rd) or a Cm(maj7)/D (no 5th), depending on who you ask – makes a disconcerting first impression. While using his acoustic guitar’s open D string as a recurring pedal tone, McCartney then moves the top note of the arpeggiated chord down a whole step, bringing a shaky sense of relief, as the chord changes to a slightly less dissonant but still restless D7b9.

A shift to a relatively stable-sounding second-inversion G chord, G/D, provides grounding and familiarity, and a revelation that we’re in the key of G, but its open D bass note warns us not to get too cozy.

Capping off the four-bar phrase, a melodic staccato hop down G major pentatonic scale, doubled two octaves lower on bass, outlines the home chord and takes us back to the start of the progression.

For those whose eyes glaze over at the sight of flat symbols and Roman numerals, suffice to say that it’s a cool, offbeat mix of sweet and unsettling sounds, setting the perfect tone for a song that’s equal parts light and shade.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Nearly 100 of Johnny Marr’s history-lavished guitars have sold for £4 million at auction.

The official sum of £3,649,280, or about $4.87m, was achieved after a five-hour Christie’s auction and included buyers from 34 countries – showing how far the Smiths guitarist’s reach spans.

The lot included a bizarre nine-pickup Stratocaster, his 1982 Rickenbacker 330 Jetglo (which also moonlighted in Oasis), and the 1960 Cherry Red ES-355, used as a bargaining chip to get the indie band to sign to US label Sire Records.

The history and prestige of those instruments were reflected in their respective sale prices, totalling over £500,000 (approx. $669,000). The Rickenbacker fetched £358,400, the ES-335 went for £204,800, and the bonkers Strat smashed its £10k estimate by going for £38,400.

Three other guitars reached triple-figure sums. The 1984 Gibson Les Paul that starred in the music video for the Smiths’ 1985 track The Boy With The Thorn In His Side sold for £204,800 (approx. $274,000). His custom Roger Giffin T-Style, in its standout green finish, went for £121,600 (approx. $163,000). It is also tied to the Smiths’ music video history via Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now and the Meat is Murder album more broadly.

Rounding out the trio is a 1963 Epiphone Casino, which was tuned up to F# and paired with a Fender Twin Reverb for the iconic main guitar track of How Soon Is Now. Estimated to sell for just £30,000, the hammer eventually went down at £102,400 (approx. $137,000).

On the acoustic front, the big winner was Marr's 1971 Martin D-28 – his main writing and recording acoustic guitar in the Smiths. That went for £128,000, smashing its £35-50k estimate.

Most of the amps up for grabs sold for just over the £10K ($13,300) threshold. They included a 1967 Fender Dual Showman head and matching 2x15” cabinet, a 1998 Matchless DC-30 combo, and a Fender Pro amp from 1960.

“The auction has been a great experience and has exceeded all my expectations,” Marr says (via the BBC). “I’d like to thank everyone who made bids and special thanks to Christie’s for making it so memorable.”

The money raised is going to Marr’s chosen charities, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the Autistic Society.

It marked a prestigious guitar journey that started, he says, with a moment that felt like it came straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Speaking to Guitarist ahead of the auction, Marr said he was happy for his beloved instruments to sell for more modest figures than sums generated by Mark Knopfler and David Gilmour – whose Black Start is the most expensive guitar in the world.

“My hope is that someone who’s got a regular job in Glasgow, who fancies a good guitar but wants one of mine, will be able to afford it,” he said.

Head to Christie’s for the full auction results, and for the stories behind the guitars, check out our in-depth feature and exclusive photography.

Los Angeles in the early ’70s was to singer-songwriters what Detroit and Memphis were to soul music just a few years prior. And as the rhythm-section backbone for artists like Jackson Browne and James Taylor, Leland Sklar was the James Jamerson and Duck Dunn of the singer-songwriter set.

“I was in a band called Wolfgang at the end of the ’60s,” Sklar told Bass Player back in 2014. “John Fischbach – who owned Crystal Recording Studio and engineered a lot of early Stevie Wonder records – was a really close friend of our drummer, Warren “Bugs” Pemberton.

“One of John’s friends was James Taylor, who he’d bring to our rehearsals to hang out. When James got his first offer to play at the Troubadour, they asked if I’d play bass with him. I thought it’d be one gig; it turned into 20 years!”

Sklar’s breakthrough came at a pivotal moment in the early ’70s, when his work with James Taylor began putting his name firmly on the radar of the Los Angeles studio community.

“As soon as James hit, drummer Russ Kunkel and I started getting a ton of work. One of the calls I got was for this guy named Jackson Browne.”

What do you remember about that first session with Jackson Browne?

It was a Crystal Recording Studio, and Richard Orshoff was the engineer. The studio had probably one of the biggest control rooms ever, and you’d listen to playbacks in there and just scream – it sounded so great.

Jesse Ed Davis came in and played the guitar solo on Doctor, My Eyes. He basically pulled his guitar out of the case, said, ‘Let me hear the song’, played that solo, and that was it.

How would you prepare for a typical session?

There were no rehearsals for anything. Jackson would sit down at the piano or with his guitar and play it, and we would craft parts. There were no charts or anything, and there was no pressure. We were in for long hours.

We’d cut something, and sometimes we’d come back a few days later and go, ‘Let’s try that one again, now that we’re in the right groove.’ It was a rich period in the studio. People weren’t clock-watching, and we had a lot of leeway.

That album probably stretched out six months or so. Jackson would come in and do some vocals, then decide to change a line. It didn’t take long to cut the tracks, but the entire process took a while.

We’d all go off and do other things, and Jackson would do some gigs to make some money. It was a very fluid, organic project, which most of the projects in that time were. But you’d find yourself in a dream state when you hear songs like Jamaica Say You Will.

Jamaica Say You Will is just one of countless tracks where your consistency, and especially your attention to note duration, is brilliant.

I know a lot of bass players who are very methodical and intellectual in their playing, I’m not. When a song starts, I go into another space and just start playing. I go with my gut: if it feels like the note wants to come out, that’s what comes out, if it wants to ring through the whole thing, I do it.

I don’t have rules, and I don’t give it any kind of conscious method. I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants player, and I think that stylistically, that’s to my benefit.

What bass did you record with?

I’m sure l used a ’62 Fender Jazz Bass. The main bass I use right now in the studio we built in around ’74. Up until that point I was using this ’62 Jazz Bass that I completely carved up with peace symbols. It was totally reflective of the times – I had a picture of Frank Zappa decoupaged on the back. I used that on James’ early stuff, Jackson’s, and Spectrum with Bill Cobham. I still have it, and I love it.

Did you record with a click track?

When you’re working with Russ Kunkel on drums, time is not an issue. If you turn on a click at the beginning of the song, and if you turn it on in the last eight bars, it’s probably damn near exact, but the song has taken a ride during its course; it's far more expressive than it would be if we had cut with a click.

I’m not a fan of the click, but I’m a realist, too, so I’ve worked with it for years. But given my druthers, I’d really rather have things feel more human.

What other details from that session do you remember?

It’s hard to remember exactly what went on. My reflection is really the entire experience of making that record with Jackson, and sitting there song after song and marvelling at this guy’s gifts as a lyricist, as a musician, and as a singer.

Jackson sang everything live with us. Whether or not that ended up being the final vocal track, I don't know because I wouldn’t have been there. But he’s one of those guys who will sing it live, and unless there’s an issue with mic leakage, every live vocal take was as good as you’re going to get.

He’s so consistent, every time he’d walk up to the mic, just the way James was. Everything was a performance – there wasn’t a throwaway.

When you're working with a singer-songwriter, how do you approach finding the right bass part for the song?

I’ve worked so much with singer-songwriters, where you really need to respond to the vocal. A lot of times, I’m listening to them breathe, and I’m moving with them in this little dance. If they lift their breath, I lift off, too, so there’s this beautiful little space in between. But it's not a conscious effort.

With guys like Jackson Browne and James Taylor I try to figure out what I can do to justify my playing: their songs are complete with just them playing. So I have to find a way to fit into it by responding to their performance to enhance it and to lift it to another level.

If it required me to play little staccato notes, I’d do that, and if it required me to do long notes, I’d do that. Jackson’s first album had it all. He’s one of those truly rare gifted artists who I feel blessed to have been able to work with.

UPDATE (09.18): Guitar Center has commented on the illegitimate entries it has removed from the competition.

“Guitar Center has long been committed to supporting musicians at every stage of their journey and creating opportunities for artists to share their talent with the world. The ‘Open for Legends’ competition series was developed months ago as part of that broader commitment and is designed to create opportunities for musicians to perform on major stages alongside a range of artists.

“As with any open submission process, we received entries that were not legitimate applications to participate in the program. Those submissions will not be considered so that the opportunity can remain focused on musicians who are seeking to showcase their talent.

“We’re continuing to review and manage the program in accordance with its intended purpose and look forward to recognizing and supporting talented musicians through the initiative.”

On the same day (September 14) that Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s now-embattled Loop Tour, a contest launched in August inviting hopefuls to open for the British superstar received renewed attention.

Guitar Center organized the competition as part of its new “Open for Legends” initiative, and the winner will get to support Sheeran in Mexico City on December 11.

According to submission guidelines, competitors must be at least 18 years old, hold a valid U.S. passport, have experience performing live, and submit original music. Bands hoping to submit are limited to a maximum of five members, and auditions must not exceed five minutes. The submission deadline is October 7.

However, according to Entertainment Weekly, up till yesterday (September 16), the website has been flooded with memes and non-musical content in support of Palestine, with just a handful of genuine videos. At the time of writing, Guitar Center appears to have removed these videos from its site.

Macklemore was forcibly removed from Sheeran’s tour after voicing support for Palestine at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4 and 5. According to Sheeran, the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium owner, billionaire Robert Kraft, pushed the other stadium owners to advocate for his removal.

Messina Touring Group, the promoter responsible for Sheeran’s US dates, confirmed his removal in a statement to Rolling Stone.

“As the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s US Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming US tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans. After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”

Shortly afterwards Sheeran’s own backing band, Beoga, as well as his other support acts, including FINNEAS, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe, announced they had withdrawn from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore.

Kraft is now claiming Sheeran asked him to match a $2 million donation for “aid in the region.” His statement came after Macklemore publicly stated that he will be donating the entire $1 million of his net earnings from the Sheeran tour to organizations “working directly to support Palestinian people,” and urged Kraft to match him.

Kraft hasn’t publicly confirmed whether he has agreed to the donation. Artists including Roger Waters and Billy Bragg have since called for Sheeran to scrap the tour.

Guitar World has reached out to Guitar Center for comment.

See Open for Legends for more info on the competition.

Guitar Center just kicked off its huge Guitar-A-Thon sale today and, having covered these events for years now, I can confidently say this one is worth a serious look. We aren't just talking a handful of clearance items here, there's major brands and major discounts in play - some as high as 30% - and there should be something for every type of player and budget.

Running from today through October 7, GC is slashing prices by up to 30% across the board on some incredibly desirable gear. Whether you're hunting for a fresh electric guitar, a reliable beginner acoustic, or a bucket-list bass guitar, this sale has something to upgrade every rig.

Guitar-A-Thon typically signals the start of the biggest sales of the year with the Black Friday guitar deals just around the corner, so I highly recommend you check out the full sale and see what early deals you can bag before we move into sales season properly.

When I dig into these huge sales, I always look for meaningful discounts on reliable, gig-ready instruments rather than just cheap filler. It's incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by pages of discounted accessories, so I’ve pulled out some heavy hitters for you to focus on.

First up, the Fender Player II Advanced Stratocaster HSS HT immediately caught my eye as a standout deal, thanks to a chunky 20% discount. The Player II series is a huge upgrade over its predecessor, and this model features premium Seymour Duncan pickups in the ever-versatile HSS configuration.

Seeing this limited-edition model in Daphne Blue discounted by 20% to $1,007.99 is a bold move from Guitar Center. You're getting a road-ready Fender guitar with rolled fretboard edges and upgraded hardware at a very accessible price.

If you lean slightly more towards the heavier side of the tonal spectrum, you need to check out the Epiphone Les Paul Modern Pro. At $499, they've knocked a clean $100 off the usual asking price. That makes it an absolute steal for anyone seeking classic LP sustain but with modern weight relief and versatile coil-splitting.

Finally, one for lovers of the low end. The Sterling by Music Man DarkRay in a gorgeous Galaxy Shimmer finish is currently sitting with a staggering $336 discount, bringing it down to a much more manageable $1,263.99.

Featuring that iconic, punchy Music Man humbucker paired with custom onboard Darkglass electronics, it’s a monster of a bass guitar. It's incredibly rare to see a premium workhorse like this get a 21% price drop, so I wouldn't wait around if it's on your wishlist.

In this month's column, I’d like to demonstrate a really cool technique that I learned from the great Larry Carlton that’s commonly referred to as the “super arpeggio.” It’s based on stacking major and minor triads on top of a chord, yielding much longer arpeggios that move through different triadic forms and sounds.

Let’s start with a Cmaj7 chord, as shown in Figure 1. The most natural triad to play over this chord is C major, which consists of the notes C, E and G.

The “super arpeggio” concept is based on forming successive triads off the second note of each triad. As shown in Figure 2, we start with a C triad and then play a triad based on the second note, E; this yields an E minor triad formed by the notes E, G and B. We then form a triad from G, the second note of Em, which yields a G major triad with the notes G, B and D.

In Figure 3, I play over a static vamp on a Cmaj7 chord by outlining the C major, E minor and G major triads.

In Figure 4, I use this approach to play a solo-type line, moving from C major to E minor to G major in steady 16th notes before resolving the line with a lick based on the C major pentatonic scale (C, D, E, G, A).

Figure 5 offers an example of “bookending” the three triadic shapes with lines based on C major pentatonic at the beginning and end of the improvised melody.

It’s useful to be aware of what intervals each triad includes: a C major triad consists of the C root note, the major 3rd, E and the 5th, G. Relative to C, the E minor triad gives us the major 3rd, E, the 5th, G, and the major 7th, B. Superimposing a G major triad over a C root gives us the 5th, G, major 7th, B, and the 9th, D. All together that gives us a Cmaj9 arpeggio (C, E, G, B, D).

These triads can and should be played everywhere on the fretboard. In Figure 6, the three triadic forms are moved down to 2nd/3rd position.

A great place to go from here is to apply this concept to a minor chord. The relative minor of C major is A minor, so many of the same notes will appear but within the triadic forms built from A minor.

If I were to play a static Am vamp, I can play lines based on the triadic forms of Am (A, C, E), C (C, E, G), and Em (E, G, B).

In Figure 7, I move through all three of these triadic forms with an improvised line played in a rhythm of 16th notes and 16th-note triplets. Notice that I end the phrase with a lick based on A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G). You’ll find that combining the progression of triads with minor pentatonic lines will sound very musical and also offer many different options for improvisation.

This will be the last installment of Blues Expansions for now, so I hope you have enjoyed these columns and that the concepts presented have been useful to you in your soloing endeavors. Thanks for reading, and please check out more of my lessons at Corey Congilio.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Billie Joe Armstrong’s heavily modified Fernandes S-style, “Blue,” is as synonymous with Green Day as timeless hits like Basket Case, American Idiot, or Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

“Blue” goes way back to pre-fame Armstrong. Specifically, it was his gateway into the world of guitars… and all that it’s brought with it.

“When we're playing some of the older songs, as soon as I bring it out, people identify immediately what's about to come,” Armstrong reminisces in an interview with Sweetwater.

“I've had this guitar [since] I was about 12 years old. My mom bought it for me and bought it off my guitar teacher, George Cole, back in 1985 or something like that.”

Armstrong explains that he initially wanted a Stratocaster but ended up with a cheap, light blue Fernandes copy that would become the stuff of legend.

“It was a sound that I always needed to hold on to,” he says matter-of-factly. The guitar is personalized to a tee. It even has a photo of a 13-year-old Armstrong attached to the back of the body, doing his “best Mick Mars impression.”

More customization comes by way of an assortment of stickers… and photos. “I think there's a couple of ex-girlfriends' pictures inside of here and stuff like that. So [it’s] the ultimate punk rock guitar.”

“Blue” was also a core part of Green Day’s 1994 major label debut, Dookie. “I was really adamant about playing Blue because I just felt like it was such a part of my sound for my whole life,” he says, an ethos he stuck to for the first “four-and-a-half” albums.

“I think I could have played a different guitar, but there was something about this that just had, at that time, that deep distortion that sort of created something that's unique. Because I think a lot of people have a distortion sound, but nothing that kind of comes across as like something instantly identifiable.

“And I think that that's what my ‘Blue’ guitar and the [modified Marshall 100w] Plexis really come across.”

And while Armstrong eventually moved on to more expensive weapons – namely, Gibson Les Pauls and Les Paul Juniors – by the time the band recorded 1997’s Nimrod, “Blue” is still close to Armstrong's heart, even to this day.

“It's weird to have a bond with a wooden instrument. It reminds me of my past, and it's something that I look at, and I can remember where I was the first Green Day gig that we had ever played, and I was playing ‘Blue’ until the last stadium show.”

The Green Day frontman even goes so far as to refer to “Blue” as “like a ghost that never leaves.”

“I'm a big guitar collector nerd. I have a lot of guitars. Maybe subconsciously, like I try to run away from ‘Blue’, but ‘Blue’ just happens to show up everywhere I go.”

The only thing more embarrassing than playing a ropey rendition of Free Bird at a party is stopping halfway through because your fingers are on fire. Look, every seasoned guitarist knows the pain of those early years, and the pain is enough to make the vast majority of new recruits give up, but if you push through, your fingertips will harden, and you’ll be rewarded with smooth, pain-free playing.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but even the greats started with sore fingers. From Jimi to Angus, Slash and Vai, they too suffered with delicate digits that hurt after every lick. If you play a stringed instrument, you need calluses. They allow you to crank out barre chords, execute searing bends, and hammer-ons without wincing. Calluses are the secret ingredient to those marathon jam sessions, and the reason your guitar hero can blaze through a three-hour set without looking like they’re being tortured onstage.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how to transform those soft, baby-like digits into hardened fretboard warriors, you’re in the right place. Today I’m going to break down how to develop your fingertips and debunk some common myths, all with some help from a few famous faces.

How to really build calluses

The secret to building calluses isn’t really a secret at all – you need to play. Like, every day. Seriously. Even if it’s just 10 minutes of Smoke on the Water or a questionable attempt at Enter Sandman, just play your guitar.

Consistency is key here. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix. Yes, your fingers will hate you at first, but they’ll thank you in the long run. With calluses, it’s use them or lose them. So you need to be constantly building them up. I know if I don’t play for a while, my calluses soften and even peel off – a sentiment that guitar legend Steve Cropper echoed when he spoke to our sister publication, Guitar Player, a few years ago.

“After all these years of playing guitar, you could probably shove an ice pick in mine, and I wouldn't even feel it. When I come off the road, though, and it's too long between shows, my calluses will just peel off until I start playing again,” says Cropper.

So with that in mind, set a daily routine. Start with 10-15 minutes, focusing on chord changes, scales, and a riff or two. Gradually increase your practice time as your fingers toughen up.

To make this easier, I suggest keeping a guitar handy and easily accessible. You’re more likely to pick it up if it’s within reach. Of course, don’t just stick to the easy stuff, either. Challenge yourself when you can. Try those tricky barre chords, string bends, and wide vibrato, they'll toughen your tips faster than endless strums of the same three open chords.

Now, It’s also a great exercise to rotate between electric guitar and acoustic guitar if you can. Acoustic strings are tougher, but your calluses will thank you for the extra work – and it’s a bonus when you switch back to electric and feel like a superhero.

In this case, practice makes permanent. So if you want gig-ready fingers, you’ll need to play as much as possible. Sorry, I know you wanted a quick fix, but unfortunately that’s not how it works.

If it’s any consolation, even touring greats like Steve Morse need to keep their calluses in check, as he told Guitar World back in 2021, “Left-hand strength is something I concentrate more on before a tour. The vibrato, bending, and building up calluses is very important. Most players find that their fretting fingers are sore after the first or second gig.”

Forget the myths you hear online

Trust me, I’ve heard them all by now, and frankly, some of the advice I see on the internet is just plain bizarre. Some folks say you should dip your fingers in pickle juice, some advise the gross act of urinating on them, and some say you should rub them with sandpaper. Please don’t. The only thing you’ll earn is a trip to the ER, and other musicians avoiding the new player who smells of pee and pickles. Stick to playing. Your body knows what it’s doing.

As virtual guitar sensation and member of MGK’s touring lineup, Sophie Lloyd tells us you can forget the gadgets too. "I bought one of those Gripmaster hand exercisers when I was a kid... I don't think it made any difference to my playing! There's no replacement for picking up a guitar, feeling those strings under your fingers and building your calluses."

So with that in mind, let’s debunk some other urban guitar legends while we’re at it. Super glue is the most common solution I hear, and it doesn’t help that iconic players like Buddy Guy are out there keeping the myth alive.

Speaking to Guitar World about BB King back in the day, he said, “Later on, guys like Hendrix and Stevie Ray were using the really thick heavy-wire strings, which would cut the tip of your finger if you bent them in the BB King style. BB King used to put glue on the tips of his fingers to protect the skin and keep them from bleeding."

It very well may be true, but in the modern age, with advancements in string technology and a better understanding of health in general, it really isn’t necessary and, more importantly, gluing your digits won’t make you play or sound like BB King or Stevie Ray Vaughan, so what’s the point?

And the same goes for burning your fingertips with a lighter. Yes, seriously, some players issue this bonkers piece of advice. Unless you’re auditioning to replace Knoxville in a Jackass reboot, please resist the urge to set yourself alight. Third-degree burns won’t make you develop calluses any quicker, you’ll just hurt yourself and potentially ruin your guitar career before it’s even started.

As you can see, even the best players have tried, and ultimately regretted, at least one of these myths. If you want real results, there’s only one answer – keep playing!

Things that can really help

Okay, I’ve discussed what not to do, but there are some small gear changes that can really make a difference, starting with string gauge...

Lighter strings are easier on new fingers. You don’t need to be a hero. Save the 13-gauge electric guitar strings for your SRV blues phase. If you’re starting out, .09s or .010s are more than heavy enough on your beginner electric guitar.

Similarly, if you have a beginner acoustic guitar, dropping down to .11s could make pressing the strings down a little easier. Even shred master Paul Gilbert switches out his strings depending on how his fingers are feeling. "My gauges are changing all the time, because it really depends on the state of my calluses,” he told Guitar World back in 2019.

And even Stevie Ray Vaughan dropped from his heavy .13s to something more manageable, as he discussed with Guitar Player in February of 1990, "At the points where I play a lot, my calluses were getting ripped off to where it stuck a hole in the finger. Right now, I'm using a little bit lighter strings, just until I get my calluses back."

Next is the action. Higher action means you need more pressure to press the strings down. If your strings are half an inch from the fretboard, it's time to get your guitar set up and that action lowered. A good setup is worth its weight in gold, and please don’t be afraid to ask your local guitar tech for help.

Genesis axeman Steve Hackett started on his father's old guitar, and he still has nightmares about how heavy the action was. Speaking to Guitarist magazine, he said, "Nylon guitar was something I was introduced to by a friend. 'Wow, this is too easy,' I thought, compared with the brutal action on [my dad’s guitar]. The wounds never healed from my dad's guitar. He said, 'You'll get calluses…' but it never happened, I just had fingers that were bleeding."

So in a nutshell, get your guitar set up well by a professional, and experiment with lighter strings if you need to. It won’t give you rock-hard fingers overnight, but a well-set-up guitar with nice-feeling strings can make callus-building less miserable.

Final thoughts

In the end, building guitar calluses is a rite of passage every guitarist must endure. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no shortcut, no secret formula, and certainly no substitute for time spent with your instrument. Trust me, the pain and frustration of those early days are temporary, but the rewards are long-lasting.

Remember, even famous guitar heroes once struggled with sore fingers. Embrace the process for what it is. Keep your guitar within arm’s reach, commit to regular practice, and be patient with yourself as your fingertips gradually become more resilient.

Sure, make small adjustments to your gear if necessary, but keep your focus on enjoying playing and celebrate the incremental improvements. Stick with it, and soon you’ll look back on these early struggles with pride, knowing you built those calluses one note at a time, just how it’s supposed to be done.

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Brian May will forever be associated with the Red Special that he built with his dad in the early 1960s. But, in some alternate timeline where his legendary electric guitar was never assembled, what would May have played?

It’s a head-scratcher, but Planet Rock put the question to him – and May remained on the fence.

“Nothing really worked for me apart from my own one,” he caveats. “It’s odd. I always found the Fenders too thin and scratchy for the sound that I was trying to get.

“And I found the Gibsons a little bit too much in the other direction: a bit too dark. They didn’t have the crispness and the top-end that I wanted.

“My guitar, partly by design and partly by good luck, sits somewhere in the middle, and it also has a very wide range of tones because of the way I hooked it up and wired up the pickups in series, but in phase and out of phase.

“So it has a very wide range of bright to dark. I only really can get my sound with the guitar that I created with my dad.”

It’s a very diplomatic non-answer, but his early indifference to both Fenders and Gibsons could lead to speculation that he’d look elsewhere for his main six-string squeeze. That said, May has had a healthy share of guitars from both brands over the years.

His 1978 Crazy Little Thing Called Love Telecaster is probably the most notable. He also has a ‘67 Esquire, and occasionally turned to a Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul as a Red Special back-up in Queen’s early days.

Still, they didn’t quite stick. “I only used [the Strat and Les Paul] as spares because I didn’t have a decent copy of my guitar at that time,” May told Guitar Player in 2012. “Neither of them really worked for me, though they work just fine for other people.”

May has an appreciation for both, though, especially Gibson. A few years ago, May signed a surprise partnership with the company, which is said to be working on Murphy Lab recreations of his Red Special. He also recently got a signature 12-string acoustic.

The Red Special, then, has come a long way since its humble origins as a DIY project made from leftover wood hoarded by May’s father.

“It was a piece of somebody’s fireplace that my dad had saved,” May explains of the build to Planet Rock. “We had a spare bedroom and that was his workshop.

“He had lots of bits and pieces from all over – things that might come in handy one day. I still have the rest of the fireplace, so I could actually make another neck from it.” Maybe Gibson can use it for one special Murphy Lab replica?

In related May news, it was recently confirmed the Queen guitarist will feature on William Shatner’s unexpected metal album.

Singer-guitarists Carson Groves and Hyrum Russon were just 11 when they formed Riff Wood with drummer Asher “Shredder” Winegar. Five years on the Utah-born trio have toured North America and the UK, and eagerly await the release of their contagious, riff-soaked second album Butterfly in Black and White.

Their debut, Tough Luck, featured the catchy anthem Blur that’s been streamed almost four million times to date. It grabbed the attention of three-time Grammy winner Rob Cavallo – producer behind blockbuster records by Green Day, Linkin Park and many more.

Fascinated by Riff Wood’s youth and depth of talent, Cavallo reached out through a DM, which understandably left the band completely “starstruck.” In summer 2025 he produced Butterfly in Black and White.

“His son Joey found us on TikTok, and sent one of our videos to Rob’s wife, Kim,” Groves says. “She showed it to Rob, but at first he was like, ‘I don’t know.’ Then he started listening to a little more and he was like, ‘Oh wow!’”

“[For our part] we were already massive fans of Rob because we grew up massive fans of Green Day. We knew all the Green Day lore and how Rob was working with Green Day – we were just starstruck. It felt like such a great fit.”

As a result, the recording process was fast and effective. “All the songs were already written when we went to Rob’s studio in LA,” Russon recalls. “We’d sent demos to him, with no click track, nothing. When we got there he was like, ‘Alright, this will be the tempo of the song.’ We thought, ‘That was one take! Shouldn’t we figure this out a little more?’”

Cavallo argued that the best sound is achieved through how you feel in the moment of writing. Groves notes: “He’s a big believer in raw sound – if you nitpick a track too much, it’s not genuine.”

You might assume Riff Wood had been playing for some years before they formed. But Groves says they discovered the ins and outs of their instruments alongside one another. “I think it’s one of the important things about our band.”

Russon adds: “I didn’t grow up listening to rock. I didn’t listen to any music as a kid. After we met and started the band, I found those first influences. We kept listening to new bands, which made us want to try new things. I was fed so much that I hadn’t known before, so all this stuff was flowing out of me.”

Groves and Russon both play through a Blackstar HT Stage 60 MK III. Armed with his Yamaha Revstar, the majority of Groves’ distortion comes directly from his Blackstar. For a bigger sound he uses an Ibanez Tube Screamer and a Big Muff. He switches to a Yamaha TransAcoustic for mellower tracks.

Russon’s go-to guitar is a Reverend Bob Balch signature with a Floyd Rose, whereas his distortion is all pedals – a Boss Blues Driver and an EHX Big Muff for fuzz. “The other electric guitar I use is a Custom Strat,” he says. “I went to a local guitar shop and saw it on the wall. It was beautiful.

“One of the workers there builds custom guitars. It’s a green Fender Stratocaster with a mirror pickguard and Seymour Duncan pickups. I also use a TransAcoustic, but it’s a different color.”

Butterfly in Black and White is packed with punches of punk and stomping licks across its 12 tracks, as heard in Run It, which experiments with clever time signatures and a monstrous tone. Just don’t ask them to name the source of that tone.

“Rob’s the master of that,” Russon says. “There’s this pedal… we thought Rob called it Nuclear Destruction – it’s crazy distortion. It’s not actually called that, but it’s something similar.”

Safe to say, there’s no slowing down for Riff Wood as they ascend the stratosphere. Next stop? “Stadiums would be nice,” Russon says. “We’ve seen how our music has connected with people so far, and we want to see that with more people.”

“One of the greatest feelings of all time is being on stage and hearing the crowd sing back a song that was once personal to you,” Groves says. “It’s such a beautiful thing. I can’t even imagine how that would feel with 60,000 people.”

• Butterfly in Black and White is released on September 18, and available for preorder now.

What is it?

Strymon is to the reverb pedal world what Gibson and Fender are to electric guitar. There is no brand out there that commands such a stake in this space; there is no equal to its influence. And for good reason. I can’t even begin to imagine the number of pedalboards the boutique effects pedal specialist has found itself on across the globe.

It isn’t just reverb, of course. The US pedal maker also specializes in delay, modulation, drives and more. But its 'verb pedals almost sit in a category of their own. The BigSky MX is the premium reverb workstation to beat. The smaller BlueSky tops best reverb pedal lists across the internet.

And then there’s the Flint. Strymon's twofer ambient pedal that has become the first-choice reverb-tremolo solution for players across the globe. It's almost laughable how many big-name players have – or have had – it on their pedalboards over the years.

John Mayer, Noel Gallagher, Billy Corgan, Gary Clark Jr., Graham Coxon, Chris Shiflett… the list goes on. For Mayer fans in particular, it is one of the most crucial components of his rig.

All of that is to say, the Flint is a very popular pedal, one that has stood the test of time thanks to its tonal superiority and foolproof functionality. But it’s got its fair share of competition. After all this time, does its latest iteration still hold up to scrutiny?

Specs

• Launch price: $349 | £315 | €369
• Type: Reverb and tremolo pedal
• Origin: USA
• Controls: Tremolo on/off footswitch, Intensity, Speed, three-way toggle switch | Reverb on/off switch, Mix, Decay, Color, three-way toggle switch
• Features: MIDI, Stereo/Mono Input, USB-C, Stereo Out, Class A JFET TRS stereo input
• Connectivity: 1/4" Stereo/Mono Input, L and R Stereo Output
• Bypass: True
• Power: 9V DC center-negative, 300mA
• Dimensions: 101.6mm (W) x 114.3 mm (D) x 44.5 mm (H)
• Weight: 1.1lbs (0.5kg)
• Contact: Strymon

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

The phrase ‘it’s built like a tank’ gets bandied about far too easily these days, but we should make an exception for the Flint. I wouldn’t recommend testing this theory, though.

Now, this is a review of the V2 – which I have spent plenty of time with – but before that I’ve had the V1 on every permutation of my pedalboard over the past two years. Therefore, I can say with some confidence that I’ve found it to be one of the most hard-wearing workhorse pedals money can buy.

I’ve had it on pedalboards big and small, and dragged it to venues of all shapes and sizes. Granted, it’s not the stompbox in my rig that has the highest stomps-per-night ratio, but it’s never shown any signs of weakness or any chinks in the armour.

What’s more, the robust box-like chassis has a nice brushed-aluminum finish that feels well equipped to protect the circuits inside. The toggle switches are firm with an authoritative ‘snap’ between modes – safe from any accidental switches when tweaking the innermost knobs – and the parameters all have a healthy sweep with a nice amount of resistance.

Between the V1 and the V2, the build quality and overall components are the same: top-notch. The looks is clean and classic – a Strymon calling card – and it all comes in a tidy package that, while not exactly on the small side, doesn’t take up too much pedalboard real estate considering the two effects it hosts. And any space you might sacrifice will be worth it.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Another reason why the Flint has stood the test of time is because of how intuitive it is. If, like me, the sight of a BigSky MX gives you cold sweats, the Flint is an excellent entry point into top quality Strymon effects.

The reverb and tremolo effects get their own sides. On the left, you get a bypass footswitch for the tremolo, along with a three-way voice toggle and controls for Intensity and Speed. On the right, reverb has its own bypass switch, another three-way toggle, and Mix, Decay and Color parameters.

On the face of it, that’s all you need. For some, that might be limiting. But the V2 added MIDI connectivity, meaning you can save and store up to 300 presets that can be recalled using an external MIDI controller.

It can be a faff to set up, and for players (like myself) who try to avoid MIDI at all costs, the lack of any onboard preset slots is a bit of a shame. Regardless, normal operation is so easy you could practically do it in your sleep, so as long as your changes aren’t too drastic, you could probably get away with doing it on the fly.

There are also some secondary controls worth noting hidden away, including Pre-Delay, Tap Division, and Boost/Cut. To access these, you need to either press and hold both footswitches, or engage Live Edit mode by holding a single switch.

It can be a pain if these secondary functions are key to your tone, and it's not the most intuitive layout for them. Some additional tagging on which knob does what would be helpful here.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

Naturally, Strymon pedals excel when it comes to sound. And there are plenty of excellent reverb and tremolo tones to unpack here. For my money, you won’t find a twofer reverb/tremolo pedal that sounds better.

The V1 and V2 share the same core effects algorithms, but with hardware differences around them that I will get to. On the right side, you get ‘60s Spring Tank Reverb, ‘70s Electronic Plate Reverb and ‘80s Hall Rack Reverb, while the tremolo gives you ‘61 Harmonic Tremolo, ‘63 Power Tube Tremolo and ‘65 Photocell Tremolo. The nice thing about the Flint is that, thanks to the independent toggles, you can mix-and-match any reverb and tremolo combo you like. The V2 also lets you determine the order of effects.

On the reverb side of things, the Flint can be used as a ‘set it and forget it’ end-of-chain or effects loop ’verb, or you can have fun with it and move between modes depending on what you need.

I’ve done both, and the Flint can do them easily. At first, I used it similar to how Mayer did: locked on the ‘60s reverb mode, with Decay and Color around noon and Mix just below. With that, you get a no-nonsense, solid spring-style reverb reminiscent of vintage tube amps. It’s digital, but it could fool anyone, with a lovely three-dimensional dynamic feel that escapes some lesser reverb pedals.

The tremolo I initially used for subtle lead lines, again similar to how Mayer deploys it. Intensity around noon, speed around nine o’ clock, just for a tone tonic that can thicken and add a bit of character and personality when you need something to stick out in the mix. Lead lines, for example, or jangly melodies that would otherwise fall flat.

When I went ampless and started using the reverb in my Nano Cortex, I then deployed the Flint in a more ambient role, leveraging the experimental tones you can get from the reverb and tremolo effects.

Namely, I moved to the ‘80s Hall setting, cranked the Mix and Color, and used it for soundscaping: textural parts and atmospheric pads that sounded absolutely incredible in the mix. This is how I used the Flint when I played at Portman Road Stadium in the UK with a band, and the thought of those reverbs still gives me goosebumps. It filled the 30,000 cap venue absolutely magnificently.

The Color control really comes into its own when you give it freedom, too. When it’s bumped, you get a darker vibe that almost gives your chain a bit of grit. It affects the decays, so when your reverb time is bumped, you get this irresistible break-up that filters out in an incredible musical way.

The tremolo can get more involved, too. As well as those aforementioned subtle warbles, you can really crank the controls to get into gnarly, choppy territory. Dime the Intensity and it will make you feel seasick, such is the responsiveness of the control. Up the Speed and it could give you whiplash.

Again, I’ve followed the Mayer school of thought, but I’ve also paired it with fuzz pedals and overdrives for more bit-crush-y, shoegaze-y tones. Granted, it’s not easy switching between all those different effects without a MIDI controller, but it’s nice to have those options. There's also the option of using the Strymon MiniSwitch ($49, sold separately) to recall a favourite setting and switch between that what's dialed into the Flint at the time. You can also tap in tremolo speeds with it too. If that appeals, you'll just have to make extra space on your pedalboard as well as your wallet.

For this V2 version, Strymon also adds a Mono/Stereo input signal switch. A bit of a gamechanger, especially for players like myself, who somewhat struggled with the V1’s placement, given the fact it had a sum-to-mono input. Not ideal, especially when you’re running it alongside stereo effects beforehand – like I would with choruses and ping-pong delays.

I should also mention the premium analog JFET input circuit of the V2, which is said to offer improved responsiveness to your playing. An A/B test with both shows there’s certainly a distinction there, with a great receptiveness to dynamic playing – particularly when rolling back the volume on your guitar.

Verdict

It’s easy to see why the humble Strymon Flint has played a starring role in John Mayer’s rig for such a long time, and become the go-to reverb/tremolo pedal for players across the world. As a standalone reverb pedal, you’d be hard pressed to find three better algorithms in one unit. Pair that with three wholly distinct tremolos, and the ability to match them as you see fit, and it really is a winning formula.

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are often the best, and while the Flint V2 did introduce some very handy features – MIDI compatibility, USB-C connectivity, and a stereo input switch – it would probably have retained its title without them. That said, as an avid fan of the V1, I’d definitely be looking to make a permanent switch to the V2.

It’s one pedal that has never left Mayer’s pedalboard and except for some very minor cases, I doubt it will ever leave mine.

Guitar World verdict: And still the reverb/tremolo pedal to beat, the Flint V2 updates an already world-beating two-in-one that has little to prove in this day and age. It's good enough for some of the most particular toneheads on the planet, it's good enough for me.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Strymon

Mike Hermans

Andertons

Power to the People, the festival curated by Tom Morello, has added Nathaniel Rateliff, Stephen Stills, Mike McCready, Geezer Butler, State Radio, Scott Ian, and The Last Internationale to the lineup.

The self-described “once-in-a-lifetime day of peace, love, justice, music and community” is taking place on October 3, 2026, at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

Aside from these names, the festival features a noteworthy lineup of artists and activists. This includes Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black (featuring Roman Morello, Revel Ian, Yoyoka Soma and Hugo Weiss), Serj Tankian, Cypress Hill, Killer Mike, grandson, The Neighborhood Kids, Taylor Momsen, Matt Cameron, The Linda Lindas, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Tom Morello, and a DJ set by legendary artist Shepard Fairey.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to engage with non-profit organizations and community groups in the festival’s Freedom Village, encouraging “civic engagement, grassroots organizing, education, mutual aid, and social impact initiatives.”

Morello wears his activism on his sleeve, having championed numerous causes throughout his career – from protesting the parental advisory sticker, through to supporting workers’ rights and the Occupy movement.

Perhaps the most obvious statement, though, is his ‘Arm the Homeless’ guitar, which has become synonymous with the Rage Against the Machine firebrand.

“I scrawled the words on it at a Rage show,” he told Guitar World last year. “It was the afternoon. We were playing at the Whisky [a Go Go] that night. We were opening for two other bands at the Whisky that night, and that would have been in probably early ’92.

“I was sitting on the dirty carpet in my little apartment in West Hollywood, and there were a couple of markers around. They happened to be black and red, or it would have been something else at the time. I like slogans that are provocative.”

Tickets for Power to the People have sold out, but the festival has announced a Face Value Ticket Exchange program in partnership with CashorTrade.

For more information, visit the festival’s official website.

For the casual observers, it’s Angus Young who gets all the plaudits in AC/DC. Guitarists, however, understand that the band’s rhythm guitarist, Malcolm Young, was the glue that held the band together.

So much so, in fact, that Angus believes his brother was a better player than Eddie Van Halen.

In 1986, AC/DC had already established themselves as industry veterans and were on the promo trail for their 10th studio album, Fly on the Wall. Van Halen, meanwhile – another band to feature two brother musicians – were kickstarting their Sammy Hagar era with the ultra-successful 5150.

Even without David Lee Roth, who was busy recruiting Steve Vai for his solo band, Van Halen were one of the biggest bands on the planet, and it was Eddie Van Halen’s shredding that put them center stage.

But their Australian counterparts operated in different circles. Sure, they had guitar solos galore, and more riffs than you could shake a stick at. But speaking to Guitar World in March 1986, Angus insinuated that Eddie’s shredding was often a little superfluous.

“Malcolm makes [AC/DC] sound so full,” Angus said. “It’s hard to get a big ego if you play in a band with your brother – it keeps your head on the earth.

“Malcolm is like me. He just wants the two of us to connect. Although he lets me take all the lead breaks, Malcolm’s still a better guitarist than Eddie Van Halen.”

The word “better,” of course, brings the element of taste into the equation. Look at Guitar World’s list of the world’s greatest guitarists, and you’ll see that the top rankings are taken up by virtually incomparable players. So it’s hard to say what makes David Gilmour better or worse than Yngwie Malmsteen – they’re very different creeds.

In fighting his brother’s corner, Malcolm Young also took a swipe at his world-conquering counterpart.

“Van Halen certainly knows his scales, but I don’t enjoy listening to very technical guitarists who cram all the notes they know into one song,” Angus bemoans.

“I mean, Van Halen can do what he does very well, but he’s really just doing finger exercises. If a guitarist wants to practice all the notes he can play, he should do it at home. There’s definitely a place for that type of playing, but it’s not in front of me.”

Strong words indeed. And in a bid to better underscore his point, he turned to two blues icons – Chuck Berry and B.B. King – to explain why technicality doesn’t resonate with him. He’s looking for someone else.

“Those guys have great feel,” he noted. "They hit the notes in the right spot, and they know when not to play.

“Chuck Berry didn’t care whether he was playing his tune, out of tune, or someone else’s tune. Whenever he plays guitar, he has a big grin from ear to ear.”

But perhaps, by this point in time, Angus Young had grown cynical about his contemporaries. In the same interview, he fired shots at Eric Clapton, saying he wasn’t sure what the hype was about. No name was too big for the SG loyalist not to try and scythe down.

In his eyes, no-one comes close to Malcolm Young, and many will agree with him. The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins believes him to be rock’s most underrated player. Steel Panther’s Satchel also reckons he influenced more guitarists than either of the two players Angus has snapped back at.

Ed Sheeran has been at the center of controversy after opening act Macklemore alleged that he was removed from Sheeran’s US Loop Tour over onstage comments about Palestine. Now, Sheeran’s own backing band, Beoga, has dropped out of the tour.

Beoga, an Irish folk group that previously collaborated with Sheeran on his 2017 album ÷ (Divide) and the hit Galway Girl, was the superstar’s backing band on these tour dates, which include performances at multiple stadiums across the United States.

They announced their withdrawal from the tour, alongside a statement on social media that reads, “We are a traditional Irish band who never saw ourselves playing in stadiums of that size and that opportunity is not lost on us. We have been friends with Ed for over 10 years now and will continue to be. We believe in dialogue as a means of progressing the plight of the Palestinian people.

“As musicians, playing to those crowds every night is the stuff of dreams but to play in venues that silence anyone advocating for a Free Palestine is simply not an option for us.”

Macklemore was booted off the tour after his two-minute speech on September 4 and 5 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which advocated for a “free Palestine,” “the occupied West Bank,” and criticism of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This led to a petition organized by the Israeli American Council and billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. Their actions subsequently led other venue owners to push for Macklemore’s removal.

“Based on Macklemore's recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th shows would not be permitted,” Kraft shared in a statement made to ESPN.

Tour promoter Messina Touring Group confirmed Macklemore’s removal from all remaining U.S. dates. Following this development, the rapper posted that he is not the victim in this situation. “We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world,” he wrote.

“Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families. The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence.”

Yesterday (September 15), Ed Sheeran posted his own statement, saying that while he is “appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine,” and that he respects Macklemore “as an artist” and doesn’t interfere in support acts’ setlists, “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision” and not his own.

“I would never let down the fans who had made plans, nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.

“I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so. I know who I am, both as a person and as an artist, and those who know my heart know my values too.”

The rest of the tour's support acts, including FINNEAS, Lukas Graham, and Aaron Rowe, have all withdrawn from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore.

At the time of writing, Sheeran's US tour is due to resume on September 19 in Philadelphia.

Like countless guitarists, Peter Frampton sent Slash scurrying to his local guitar store to get a talk box of his own. Now he has a signature MXR version.

With timeless cuts like Baby, I Love Your Way and Do You Feel Like We Do, Frampton made the strange little effect a household name. The unit, which features a plastic tube that players quite literally sing into, rose to prominence in the 1970s, and Jeff Beck and Aerosmith were big fans, too.

Slash’s model is based on the classic Heil circuit, the same one that Frampton preferred for its higher output. Using that as a platform, it’s been duly hot-rodded for even more firepower and offers an upgraded loudspeaker.

The firm also believes it has better articulation than other models, plus a thicker low-end. It’s finished in the Candy Apple Red finish that Slash has stayed loyal to down to the ears, resulting in a pedal that MXR stresses was “built to say something.”

“I’ve had a talk box since I was 16,” Slash says of his new collab. “The first time I heard it was Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do, then Jeff Beck’s She’s a Woman, and Aerosmith’s live Walk This Way.

“To me,” he adds, “it’s right up there with the Cry Baby Wah: a classic effect that transforms your guitar into an extension of your own voice.”

That’s quite the claim from someone who has made the wah pedal such a key part of his arsenal since the Appetite for Destruction days. Maybe we’ll hear it in action on the new Guns N’ Roses album, although don’t expect that to arrive anytime soon.

The MXR Slash Signature Talk Box is available exclusively on Reverb for $499.99.

In other recent Slash news, the top-hatted one has opened up about his surprise Marshall exit.

What is it?

It’s been a few years since the Strymon BigSky MX was released, so it’s about time we got around to reviewing it. Successor to arguably the most popular reverb pedal of all time, the MX looks to build on the success of the original, adding more sounds, more processing power, better connectivity, plus loads more.

The headline here is that you can now run two reverb engines simultaneously, whether that’s in series, parallel, or with each engine panned separately. The MX also significantly increases the power to do this, replacing the 366 MHz SHARC DSP chip with an 800 MHz tri-core ARM processor.

The impulse and chamber engines are fresh additions to the lineup, but it's not just new stuff that's been added. The spring, plate, hall, room, and shimmer engines have been rewritten from the ground up, with many of the other returning sounds getting additional functions and enhancements. The ability to load custom impulse responses up to 10 seconds long adds a lot of potential flexibility, and it ships with 22 stereo IRs as stock.

The footswitches have had some slight changes, with a dedicated infinite footswitch, while the A and B footswitches can now be set to toggle each reverb engine independently. It has USB-C, bringing it firmly into the future versus the original, which required a MIDI-to-USB adapter to use the Nixie companion app. It can also do MIDI over USB-C, TRS, or the traditional 5-pin DIN connection.

Specs

• Launch price: $749 | £699 | €699
• Type: Dual-engine reverb workstation
• Controls: Type, Value, Decay, Pre-Delay, Tone, Mod, Param 1/2, Mix; 3 footswitches (A, B, Infinite)
• Features: 12 reverb algorithms, dual reverb engines (Series/Parallel/Split routing), 10-second stereo impulse response loading and editing, Nixie 2 editor software
• Connectivity: Stereo in/out, MIDI in/out (5-pin DIN), USB-C (MIDI, editor, firmware updates), EXP jack (expression pedal / MultiSwitch / TRS MIDI)
• Bypass: True bypass (electromechanical relay) or buffered bypass, selectable
• Power: 9VDC, center-negative, 2.1mm, 500mA minimum
• Dimensions: 172mm x 127mm x 48mm (7" x 5" x 1.87")
• Weight: 800g
• Options: N/A
• Contact: Strymon

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Despite the workstation moniker, it’s not actually as big as you think it might be. The MX is slightly wider than the original BigSky but only just, and it weighs well below a kilo. It’ll take up the same amount of space as two and a bit Boss stompboxes by my reckoning. It’s not tall either, offering a relatively low-profile platform that won’t stick out too much alongside other pedals.

All of the parameter control knobs offer a nice, firm travel and feel robustly applied to the chassis. The endless encoders for selecting reverb engines and adjusting certain values, on the other hand, are a lot softer in their response.

There’s no ratcheting to the engines, which are instead dictated by an LED light, and when I turn slowly, it takes a second or two to move to the next option. The push-in function of each encoder is nice and tactile, but personally I’d like a little more resistance when turning them.

One thing I didn’t enjoy was the white text on the blue background. Great when playing on a dark stage, but at some angles could be difficult to read with the overhead lighting in my home studio. No such issues with the screen, which works brilliantly in any light thanks to the contrast of green on black.

The footswitches feel very robust, and they click quietly when I press them in. There’s no reason to suspect it’s any less durable than the original BigSky, which has graced players’ pedalboards for a good thirteen years and counting.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

To test its stereo capabilities, I plug the BigSky MX into my Universal Audio audio interface and started by seeing how easy it is to navigate the pedal without resorting to the manual. At the other end of my guitar cable is the Sire S7 HSS S-type.

Moving banks is handled by the ‘value’ encoder or by pressing the A and B footswitches to bank down, or the B and Infinite footswitches to bank up. The presets stay disengaged until you click one of the A or B footswitches, which could be quite handy for live players who want to tee a fresh sound up without necessarily engaging it. If you leave the pedal for too long, it engages a screensaver function that scrolls the preset across to prevent burn-in.

Due to the seven parameter-specific knobs on the chassis, hands-on control is an absolute breeze. Any time I want to change something about the preset, I’m easily able to dial in those most important controls with a quick turn of a knob. A handy up arrow marks where the knob was originally set to, should you want to go back to the original sound.

Pressing the value encoder opens up further settings, allowing me to change the low end, size, diffusion, output level, pan, and loads more options. It’s all quick and easy to change, and it's nice that Strymon has kept the way you interact with the pedal the same as the original.

Holding the ‘Value’ encoder down unlocks the global settings for the pedal, where I can get even more granular. Things like the display mode for the screen, screen brightness, MIDI settings, expression settings, spillover, and even the footswitch LED brightness are accessible here.

Downloading the Nixie 2 companion app, I’m surprised to find there is still no preset editability, despite the pedal having launched several years ago. The only real use for the software is for loading third-party impulse responses or adding new presets, so if you prefer doing your editing on a computer, there’s currently no option for it. Strymon hasn’t said when this is coming, but they have promised it will be part of a future software update.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

In order to test the stereo capabilities, I route the outputs to inputs 1 and 2 of my interface, then load a couple of clean amp simulations in Pro Tools and pan them hard left and right. Scrolling through the presets, I come across the ‘Drippy Spring’ setting. It’s a delightful tone, perfect for surf rock noodling and tremolo picking on the middle position of my Strat-style guitar.

It’s easy to see why the cloud engine got its own pedal when I switch to the ‘Silverscreen’ preset. It manages to be washy and atmospheric without drowning out your core playing, ideal for ambient players who want that huge reverb sound but still need to keep their original guitar tone clear in the mix.

The shimmer engine tracks brilliantly and allows me to select basically any harmony I can think of, including tritones. It stays on point even with complex chords and non-linear harmonies, and I can add two different harmonies at once when running dual engines, making it a very flexible tool for some soaring tones that coalesce beneath whichever note I’m playing.

The chorale engine is similarly superb, providing a lush undertone for pretty much any kind of sound. Riffs with prominent drone strings ring out with clarity, all underpinned by the soaring or impending (depending on what I'm playing) synth pad-like sounds.

The magneto engine is an interesting one. On the face of it, it's actually tape echo emulation, but at higher diffusion settings it blurs the line between echo and reverb. It’s cool but feels slightly out of place initially. It really comes into its own when I pair it with another reverb in dual mode, which results in some incredible sounds as I feed the delay tails into the reverb algorithms.

There are so many sounds here that it’s not possible for me to list them all within the constraints of this review. But the main takeaway I got is how good they are at not completely overpowering your playing. The engines can all do this with the right mix setting, of course, but the presets are remarkably good at balancing the wash of reverb whilst still keeping the attack when I strike the strings.

Verdict

The Strymon BigSky MX succeeds in delivering some spectacular reverb tones that will cover all bases, whether it’s a classic room tone or you want huge waves of ambient wash that drown your guitar completely. The sheer quality of the sounds is unbelievably good, up there with anything Line 6, Neural, Eventide, Boss, or any other manufacturer is putting out there, and it's easy to see why the BigSky has been such a popular pedal for such a long time.

Its real strength, though, is in how refreshingly easy it is to dial in the sounds. There is no companion app with preset editing for the BigSky MX at the time of writing this review, but I didn’t miss it at all. A lot of pedals like to hide functionality behind an app these days, so having all the controls on the front of the unit is a breath of fresh air. For those who do prefer doing their tweaking on the computer, the immediate lack of app editing could be a deal breaker.

Is it overkill for a lot of players? Absolutely, and especially when you consider the price point is well north of $600. If you just want one or two reverb sounds, then this pedal would likely be wasted on you, and some players could easily get lost in option paralysis instead of just concentrating on their playing.

Guitar World verdict: The Strymon BigSky MX is a worthy successor to arguably the most popular reverb pedal ever made. It’s not just a quick rehash either, with entire engines being rebuilt to improve the quality, and the addition of running dual algorithms seriously expanding the sound-sculpting possibilities. Despite the huge depth, it’s incredibly easy to edit and adjust sounds, which is the real strength of this pedal. It’s a worthwhile upgrade for anyone who already owns a BigSky, as well as a potentially huge boon for players who want a wealth of top-quality reverb tones at their fingertips.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Secret Weapons

Andertons

Chords of Orion

Mention the words ‘signature guitar’ and you will usually provoke one of two distinct reactions.

Some see the ultimate expression of an artist’s vision, an instrument shaped by years of touring and real-world experience. Others see little more than a standard production guitar with an inflated price tag and a famous name slapped on the headstock.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, split between two design philosophies: instruments built as faithful replicas, and instruments engineered to refine and innovate.

The first approach treats the guitar as a historical artefact. Faithfully replicated models such as Gibson’s recent ‘Greeny’ Les Paul, cloned from the iconic 1959 ’Burst shared by Peter Green, Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett, aren’t trying to improve the original template.

Their purpose is to preserve a frozen moment of rock history for a new generation. Conversely, the second philosophy looks forward, asking a practical engineering question: how can we make this guitar better?

These instruments use an artist’s experience to refine ergonomics, hardware and electronics. Steve Vai’s groundbreaking Ibanez JEM is the ultimate example. Its structural innovations solved real performance roadblocks, eventually trickling down into the mass-market RG series and permanently changing how modern guitars are built.

Problem Solvers

The best signature guitars rarely begin as marketing ideas; they start with a player trying to solve a persistent problem. Fender chief product officer, Justin Norvell, explains that this collaborative spirit is part of the company’s original DNA.

“It’s an ongoing conversation we have with everybody,” Norvell notes. “Leo wasn’t a guitar player. It was Bill Carson, Freddie Tavares… all of these players that would just say, ‘I like this. I don’t like this. Can you put an extra pickup on there? Can you do this?’”

Artist-driven R&D existed long before formalised signature models did. Michael Schulz, Fender’s head of Signature Artists, says that same spirit drives modern projects, though artists now arrive with highly specific insights from heavy touring and recording.

“We’re getting more information from artists saying, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing this thing. I’ve been hearing this thing… let’s R&D it.’ So then, we’ll try to figure out how to make it work.”

In much the same way, the PRS DGT grew organically from a friendship starting in the mid-1980s between David Grissom and Paul Reed Smith. As they exchanged ideas, Grissom’s road and studio experiences led to requests for a thicker mahogany body, revised pickups and player-focused changes.

Those ideas first evolved into the PRS McCarty model, which Grissom initially declined to put his name on out of respect for Ted McCarty’s legacy.

Grissom explains: “I was really at the point where… nobody knows who I am and I don’t want my name on the guitar. A lot of the ideas that I was trying to translate into the PRS were really ideas that Ted McCarty had pioneered at Gibson, and I thought it was extremely fitting and appropriate to recognise Ted for all his contributions.”

Only after years of continued refinement did that platform become the DGT. As Grissom recalled: “We bounced ideas off each other for years and we would always come up with different stuff.”

As Grissom’s session work increased, the guitar had to cover more ground. “We changed the control layout so the bridge pickup volume knob was closer to my little finger because I worked that constantly,” he explains. “We worked on the neck profile quite a bit over several years with quite a few prototypes.”

Norvell witnessed a similar level of microscopic detail when collaborating with Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, where tiny shifts in wood dimensions mattered.

“I remember we were messing with different necks,” Norvell recalled, “and Ed was feeling 10 thousandths of an inch on the back shape of neck. ‘Well, this one’s a little bigger.’ We’d get out the digital calipers and, sure enough, the neck was bigger.”

The Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster illustrated how demanding an artist can be when every detail affects performance. Norvell recalls that “Eric wasn’t interested in changing a guitar simply for the sake of change; he was searching for a very specific feel and response. The project ultimately involved testing more than 60 pickup sets and developing Fender’s first compound back-shape neck.”

But the real takeaway was much bigger than any single component. It was about getting every element to vibe together perfectly. “We always reduce it to the components,” Norvell says. “But, really, it was about designing a guitar that’s optimised to be the best version of itself where all the components work together in harmony.”

This same holistic approach defined the development of the PRS DGT, where Grissom focused heavily on achieving a seamless dynamic response across the entire fretboard.

The pickups became a major focal point of the R&D process. Instead of settling for high-gain performance or sterile vintage replication, he pushed for a balanced pickup voiced to deliver rich output and musical warmth without losing an ounce of single-coil-like openness and clarity.

“I still felt like there was too much midrange, too much gain,” he says, “but I didn’t want it to be sterile. I’m trying to get that sweet spot, where you do have mids, but you don’t sacrifice the sweet top-end and the harmonic complexity.”

Factory manufacturing methods, like pickup potting, became part of the discussion. Grissom questioned whether soaking them too long in wax killed the sound.

“If you’re letting them soak in a tub of wax for 10 minutes,” he says, “you’re killing all that air around them.” The solution was subtle: “To this day, they just go in for a little bit, and we don’t do the vacuum where it pulls the wax through.”

That level of detail carried through the entire instrument, down to the fret bevels, spec’d for “maximum real estate, but with no sharp edges”. He sums up the philosophy simply: “Everything about that guitar is spec’d out. It’s not an accident. It’s not left to chance.”

Tried & Tested

Real-world testing is equally vital. Fender’s Michael Schulz recalls sending Mike McCready an early Road Worn Strat prototype to play on stage with Pearl Jam. McCready came back with direct operational notes: “Hey, this sounds great, but I need this changed a little bit – I need this neck thing fixed right here a little bit.”

For Schulz, that was definitive proofing: “How much more R&D truth can you get than having this be played during Yellow Ledbetter and Alive and Even Flow live with Pearl Jam?”

Grissom describes the exact same idea from the player’s side. His suggestions were “born out of thousands of gigs and hundreds of sessions”, but success required “the ability to take those suggestions, put them into a guitar, and then hit the road, or go make a couple of records to see if they worked”.

Jared James Nichols’ signature model evolved even more organically. Nichols took his own Les Paul, removed the neck pickup, stripped the controls and rewired it with a single bridge P-90 and one volume knob. The guitar became his main instrument long before a brand got involved. When Gibson approached him, Nichols says the development was remarkably collaborative.

“They let me pick whatever components I wanted,” he recalls. Crucially, Nichols chose to build the guitar as an Epiphone, rather than a Gibson Custom Shop model, wanting something working musicians could realistically afford.

Perhaps no model better illustrates the power of artist-driven R&D than Steve Vai’s collaboration with Ibanez. Rather than modifying an existing production model, Vai worked with engineers to build a guitar from scratch.

The resulting JEM introduced innovations such as the Monkey Grip, enhanced upper-fret access, advanced switching and the ‘Bear Claw’ tremolo rout – all practical solutions to Vai’s real playing challenges.

Meanwhile, Paul Reed Smith rejects the idea of a standard blueprint for signature guitars, noting every collaboration follows its own path.

“It’s all different,” Smith explains. “What I did with Herman Li, what I did with David Grissom, what I did with Carlos Santana – all completely different stories.” In fact, Herman Li’s model took nearly a decade because “he didn’t just want a guitar. He initially wanted a synthesizer controller that would do things that most guitars won’t do.”

By contrast, “David wanted a McCarty guitar with a tremolo, he wanted everything right”. Ultimately, Smith says, “it’s not a label-slapping moment where you just throw an artist’s name on the back of a headstock. It’s getting these people what they want and having their legacy and their pride involved.”

Together, these stories show that signature guitar R&D is multifaceted. Whether it is a long factory development cycle, a prototype tested on stage, or a guitarist stripping a Les Paul down to the essentials, the best examples all share one core idea: the artist brings the problem, the builder helps find the solution, and the guitar becomes stronger because both sides listen.

Back To Business

Behind every successful signature guitar is a massive investment of time, money and trust. Long before reaching a dealer’s wall, manufacturers spend years refining prototypes alongside an artist. It is a major risk, with no upfront guarantee that the instrument will appeal beyond a core fanbase.

For some players, royalties from a successful signature guitar can provide long-term financial stability while cementing an artist’s legacy. While David Grissom and Steve Vai both acknowledge the economic benefits, they insist that a guitar must ultimately stand on its own merits. Players buy an instrument because it performs, regardless of whose signature is on the headstock.

To make it all work, the guitar market has split into very distinct price points and tiers. At the ultra-premium end, limited Custom Shop micro-runs function less like tools and more like fine art or financial assets. The benchmark remains Gibson’s 2004 Jimmy Page Les Paul.

The 25 ‘Played and Signed’ models originally retailed for $25,000 and now routinely command over $80,000 at auctions. Fender’s 2006 clone of Eric Clapton’s ‘Blackie’ retailed for $24,000 and sold out in hours. These instruments generate immediate, high-margin cash flow and can elevate a brand’s entire catalogue.

This split highlights a brand-new approach to signature collaborations. As Fender’s Justin Norvell and Michael Schulz reveal, modern collaborations look far beyond traditional rock heroes.

High-profile releases like the Bruno Mars and H.E.R. Stratocasters are explicitly engineered to introduce the guitar to younger, more diverse demographics. When a partnership really clicks, it doesn’t just sell gear; it builds a lasting legacy for the company and creates a classic instrument that keeps inspiring players long after the artist is gone.

More Than A Name

The ultimate compliment a signature guitar can receive is when players forget it’s a signature model at all. The Gibson Les Paul is the absolute benchmark. While it carries the name of a true pioneer, most guitarists don’t buy a Les Paul to sound like Les Paul; they buy it because it is one of the greatest electric instruments ever built. Somewhere along the way, the design simply became bigger than the signature.

The same has happened with many of today’s most successful artist models. The PRS DGT has earned a loyal following among players who appreciate its feel and versatility, regardless of whether they’re familiar with David Grissom’s music. Martin’s 000-28EC followed a remarkably similar path.

The guitar’s initial spark came during Eric Clapton’s legendary 1992 MTV Unplugged performance, where his stripped-down acoustic set gripped a global audience and put the short-scale Martin 000 back on the modern map.

But while that landmark broadcast served as the ultimate launchpad for his 1996 signature model, 30 years later, it remains a cornerstone of Martin’s line-up because players discovered it is simply an outstanding, highly responsive acoustic instrument in its own right.

Even the Ibanez JEM tells a similar story. Steve Vai’s ideas helped reshape the instrument, but many of the innovations developed during the project eventually found their way into Ibanez’s hugely successful RG series, extending far beyond the people who originally set out to buy a Steve Vai model.

A signature opens the door in a showroom, but the guitar has to do the rest. That’s what separates the truly great signature models from the forgettable ones. The best ones endure because they became exceptional instruments in their own right.

The Game-Changers

Most signature guitars are designed to solve problems, introduce new ideas or celebrate an artist’s contribution. Every once in a while, a guitar does something much bigger. It changes the entire direction of the company.

Gretsch is one of the best examples. By the early 1980s, the company had all but disappeared from the conversation. Production had stopped, quality had suffered, and the brand had lost relevance.

Then Brian Setzer stepped into the spotlight with the Stray Cats, proudly playing his well-worn Gretsch 6120. Suddenly, a new generation of players rediscovered the brand, sparking renewed interest that eventually led to a successful line of signature models and playing a significant role in the company’s resurgence.

Gibson experienced a similar revival in the late 1980s. At a time when pointy ‘SuperStrats’ dominated the hard-rock market, Slash walked on stage with a late-’50s-style Les Paul and reminded an entire generation why the design had become a classic. Demand for Les Pauls surged, helping re-establish the model as Gibson’s flagship guitar and laying the foundation for one of the company’s most successful signature relationships.

Stories like these are rare, but they illustrate the extraordinary influence the right artist and the right guitar can have. The best signature models don’t just sell well; occasionally, they revive forgotten designs, reshape public perception and help rewrite a company’s future.

• With thanks to ATB Guitars in Melksham (www.atbguitars.com) and Gas Station Guitars in Taunton for providing the stunning vintage guitars photographed for this issue’s cover feature
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Gibson is continuing to invest in the future of pickup technology. This time, it’s collaborating with Baggs to take acoustic guitar amplification to the next level with the all-new HiFi DNA pickup system.

After unveiling its new Alnico 8 magnet-powered ELEV8 humbuckers last week, it’s now bringing that same love to its electro-acoustic instruments. Excitingly, Gibson and Baggs – recently rebranded from LR Baggs – believe their new system is “the most natural, studio‑grade live tone ever achieved from an acoustic guitar.”

It’s bold talk, of course, but the collab reckons it has the evidence to back up its claim. Promising “high-fidelity, unprecedented realism, dynamic nuance,” it hinges on a dual Class A preamp architecture, which treats each sensor as its own studio channel.

That means each sensor runs through its own custom-voiced preamp before the signals are blended. The priority is keeping articulation pure and avoiding unintended interactions between the pickups.

A new sensor platform has also been designed and is said to be lighter, larger, and more responsive than previous formats. It’s crafted to react to the guitar as a whole, so it feels like you’re stepping inside the guitar itself, rather than hearing it amplified through a pickup.

Lloyd R. Baggs, Founder of Baggs, calls the system a “a big leap forward”.

“One of the discoveries that excited me most was bringing dual preamps to market,” he says. “We’ve known for years how powerful that architecture is, but it was never before feasible at scale.

“Now, each sensor has its own preamp stage before they’re blended, which keeps both signals pristine. If you combine two mic diaphragms – or two piezos – before amplification, they tug on each other, and the sound can get muddy. Separating them preserves every detail.”

“The two sensors work almost like a pair of choir mics: each hears a different part of the instrument, with enough overlap to feel natural and enough focus to stay immediate,” he adds.

“You get ambiance without losing attack, space without losing touch. It’s a new way of hearing and capturing the acoustic guitar – clear, alive, and deeply connected to the player.”

“What we’re able to do now is capture the true timbre and full dynamic range of a real acoustic guitar – so the player’s touch, nuance, and personality finally come through on stage the way they do in the room,” adds Robi Johns, Sr. Product Development Manager at Gibson Acoustic.

For now, the system is available exclusively in a range of Gibson acoustics, but aftermarket systems will be available later. The range includes classics like an SJ-200, J-45, and a host of Hummingbird variants.

See Gibson for more.

Anyone who has followed Adrian Belew’s eclectic career will know that the guitarist has an ear for unusual sounds. Throughout his time in some of rock’s biggest bands, he’s always had an Electro-Harmonix flanger pedal by his side, and now the firm is dropping a limited-edition signature model.

The eponymous EHX Adrian Belew Echoflanger does what it promises, and so much more. It’s an all-analog, multi-mode modulator voiced for versatility. So expect a subtle, smooth signal waver, through to calculated carnage.

A host of classic modes from the original pedal have been copied over. That includes Filter Matrix, Flange, Chorus, and Slap Back. It's bolstered by new combination modes.

So, you can double your money by blending Slap Back and Filter Matrix, or Adrian’s go-to blend of Chorus and Flange, which is all over his King Crimson records.

Its controls have also been expanded at Belew’s request. Volume is a new addition, sitting alongside Rate and Width dials, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Speed, Range, Tune – for dialing in the centerpoint of the modulation waveform – and Feedback combine to present new ways to get weird.

Further, the Blend switch either adds or removes the dry signal from the effect, serving up more traditional modulation sounds and intensifying the vibrato sounds on offer.

Belew has worked with Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, King Crimson, and David Bowie, and also collaborated with the late Ken Parker on a bonkers MIDI-powered Parker Fly signature. This is his next madcap invention.

“I got my first Echo Flanger in 1980, and I had it for the [Talking Heads offshoot band] Tom Tom Club,” Belew remembers. With the pedal at his feet, the guitarist was able to achieve a “steel drum” sound with his guitar, and it went on to make the single Genius of Love. According to Belew, it helped it become “the most sampled song of all time.”

“Electro-Harmonix is the one company you could make do things they’re not supposed to do,” he continues. “You could make it do really weird sounds that I started doing off the bat with King Crimson. As someone who loves sonic design, you’re going to love it. I’m so happy this pedal exists.”

Priced at $239, the Echoflanger features stereo outputs and true bypass with mechanical relays. It also ships with a 9V power supply.

See Electro-Harmonix for more info.

Jack Higginbotham’s life changed the night he met Paul Reed Smith eating a slice of pizza down on Main Street in 1983. He went home and told his girlfriend – now his wife – that the guy was going places.

When Smith set up PRS Guitars in 1985, Higginbotham got in at the ground floor, working minimum wage as an entry-level guitar builder.

“There was something driving that guy that I was fascinated by,” says Higginbotham from PRS’s HQ on Kent Island, Maryland. “I was going to go back to get my mechanical engineering degree, but I found myself absolutely falling in love with the art and the science of guitar building.”

41 years later, Higginbotham is now PRS’s first-ever CEO. He explains why the time is right for that position, and how the company’s guiding principles on quality are driving it forward – albeit at the expense of his playing.

“Oh, it’s made me a worse guitar player!” he laughs. “Hopefully I’ll get my chops back, but I’m an infinitely better guitar builder than I ever thought I would be, and that’s more important.”

Why has PRS Guitars appointed its first CEO?

It’s actually about where our company is headed right now. We have been doing business internationally since the year we opened. But I believe this is our time to become a global business, and I think [it’s important] having one consistent leadership point, one consistent path to follow, drawing all of our company objectives into one spot…

The last year and a half, I would say maybe 50 per cent of my time has been outside of the United States, traveling and understanding these markets a little bit better.

The birds inlay and the quilted maple catches the eye, but arguably the defining detail of PRS is the guitar’s critical infrastructure – nuts, tremolo units, tuners...

I do a series of trainings, and it’s dealer training for the most part. One chapter is called “The Devil in the Details”, and it’s exactly what you’re talking about. The bridge, the pickups, the nut, the tuners, drying wood, our thoughts on resonance and sustain as it applies to moisture content inside of wood, proper ways of drying wood so that you bring out the most in a guitar... The devil is in the details. It’s what we’re interested in.

A lot of this comes from Paul.

He’s a very singular human who can listen to a guitar and tell you what’s emanating from it – whether it’s the pickup, the soldering, if it’s the amount of potting in the pickup, or if it’s a truss rod that’s too tight or the action is too high. He’ll just listen and go, “Do this, this and this,” and then you do it and that guitar is better. He’s amazing in that regard.

Players can go into a store with $1,149 and take home an SE Special Semi-hollow. Is that what you mean by quality and value?

Whether it’s Private Stock and it’s $20,000, or it’s $649 for a CE Standard, it’s about value. We want the person to get twice their money’s worth, and we feel really good about the job we’ve done. If we’ve made a $600 guitar and you’re like, ‘Man, I would have paid $1,200 for this guitar,’ that’s a home run in my book.

In 2022 you talked about a five-year plan to turn the SE line into a $75 million business. How close are you?

We’re not too far. I don’t remember saying that, actually, so good on you! That portion of our business is about three times what it was then, which I would say is a great success – because the quality of the instruments has risen, not just stayed flat.

Do you have ambitions of seeing PRS guitars on the vintage market?

I guess it doesn’t really matter to me so much, not in the traditional sense of it as an investment. That doesn’t really interest me. What I do love is the fact that people care enough about us to care enough about our roots, that they value those things.

I saw a 1986 Custom Custom 24 on Reverb going for $23,000. That is technically a vintage guitar.

My 1986 Custom 24 has an interesting story. Two years ago, I’m writing a will. I’ve got a lot of musical instruments, and so my kids are like, “What do I get?” So we had a death party. My lawyer was like, “This is a very bad idea.” [Laughs]

So everybody came over, and I had everything around the house and different colour sticky pads. I was like, “I’m gonna count to 10, and everybody go claim your stuff!” My daughter put her sticky on my ’86 Custom.

I realised I hadn’t opened that case in a while, and it bummed me out, because it was the first guitar that I can say I completely built by myself. I didn’t use it anymore. As time went on and we learned more, the guitars just got better.

Then last year I said, “I am never gonna sell this guitar, so why don’t I just go back, rip it apart, and turn it into a guitar that I would love today?”

I put new pickups in it. I put new electronics on it; new tuning pegs, new bridge, new everything. I even went back and redid the fingerboard… The guitar is absolutely unbelievable.

My point being, people look back at guitars – vintage guitars, or early PRS guitars – and it’s like, “Oh, the magic of this.” And there’s magic because it’s history. But the real magic is in the performance, and what I loved was, I was able to take a guitar that I probably never would plug in and use, and I turned it into my other favorite guitar – along with my Silver Sky.”

Silly question to finish – but if you could put a PRS into the hands of any player, living or dead…

A Silver Sky in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s hands would be quite interesting. That would be nice.

Fender has just announced the Lee Sklar Precision bass – a faithful recreation of the highly customized P-Bass that has accompanied him throughout his decades-long career.

His one-of-a-kind bass has featured on records by James Taylor, Phil Collins, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, and Rod Stewart, among many others. Now, Fender has captured the distinctive modifications that Sklar made to make his bass work for him – and a staggering number of records.

“I’ve used this guitar on about 2,000 albums. It is my go-to instrument when I go in the studio. It’s the first thing I think about when I hear a song,” Sklar says.

“That’s what made this project with Fender and EMG so meaningful to me. We put a lot of time, detail, and care into every part of this bass, from the pickups and electronics to the feel and response of the instrument, to make sure it captured what I love about this guitar.”

The signature bass includes some tasty, Sklar-approved specs like his signature Dual EMG active pickups, a slim 1962 Jazz Bass “C”-shaped neck paired with mandolin frets, a Hipshot BT-3 Bass Xtender, and a Badass II bridge – high-end hardware that provides an “instant” low-end tuning change.

To top it off, the alder body is finished in satin Heirloom nitro lacquer, which recreates the naturally worn aesthetic of Sklar’s original.

Priced at $3,499, the Lee Sklar Precision is available now. For more information, head to Fender.

Since its launch back in 2020, Fender have described the Squier Paranormal series as a line of “unconventional and unique” instruments that “combine classic features with unexpected twists.”

Similar terminology could be used to describe the work of Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, the musician who’s often regarded as Josh Homme’s right-hand man and hailed as the band’s secret weapon.

Alongside Dean Fertita, who switches between keys and guitar, they form the core of QOTSA’s midrange assault – a kaleidoscopic jigsaw of textures that echo and reverberate into infinity above Homme’s signature furnace of smoldering fuzz.

This year, Van Leeuwen is teaming up with Fender for his third signature offering, following on from his Jazzmasters released in 2014 and 2020. Except this time, it’s a completely different style of guitar being released through Squier.

The new electric XII is a Telecaster with double the strings, to create what the company describe as “rich harmonic depth and shimmering complexity,” while also staying true to “the mystique and bite that made the Tele famous.”

Like the 2020 Jazzmaster, the new model comes in a fetching Copper Age finish. You could say a player like Van Leeuwen was practically born for the Paranormal series, given his highly individualistic and experimental approach to layering and dialing in otherworldly sounds.

“This guitar is probably the most stripped-down out of the ones with my name attached,” he says, a few weeks after the release of Easy Street, the lead single from upcoming ninth full-length Perfecth. “For me, there’s nothing more straightforward and simple than a Telecaster.

“You know what you’re going to get. It does the twang sound I’ve always loved. But adding 12 strings creates this extra lushness within that direct Tele-ness. It’s a cool but simple idea.”

This Paranormal took inspiration from your Paul Waller Masterbuilt Fender Custom Shop guitar. What’s different aside from the price tag?

The Custom Shop has a more vintage-style bridge. I didn’t want that – I wanted something that was user-friendly right out of the box. Functionality is so important because it’s hard to get a 12-string bridge to work right. When you’ve got 12-strings, you really need them to stay in tune.

It’s been in your hands for quite a while now.

Yeah, it started showing up more over the last four records. I’ve used it quite a bit, especially on stage. It’s a guitar that Dean and I shared for a while, because he occasionally plays 12-string. I’ve also played it live with Iggy Pop.

It’s just a good, solid no-frills guitar. You know what you’re going to get. I used it on the new album for this cover we did of Iggy Pop’s Sunday. I’ll break the 12-string out whenever I can because when you have three guitarists in one band, you have to find your spot. That guitar has a point that can always be heard in the mix.

Easy Street is way more laid back than what you’d normally choose for a lead single.

That’s what a lot of this record is about – going back to basics, letting the songs do what they’re supposed to do and staying out of the way. Creating space and letting go a little bit. There’s no bass on Easy Street, or drums, but there are claps and acoustics.

It could be the simplest QOTSA song ever written, mainly based around classic C and F shapes.

Yeah! It’s the most “church chords” song we’ve done. We recorded the music quite a while back and let it marinate over time. When we were sifting through songs for this new record, Easy Street popped up and we wondered, “Wow, what if we did this?”

It came together within an hour or two – mixed and done. There’s a sense of liberty when you let things be and try not to get too clever. We complicate things quite naturally; this kind of expression is the opposite.

Is that a harmonized EBow we’re hearing towards the end?

I definitely picked one up. You can hear my Robert Fripp-ness in there. It’s two double tracked EBows that are harmonizing, like a tip of the hat to Heroes or Teenage Wildlife from Bowie. It’s where my inspiration came from. I love that era of Fripp playing with Bowie.

We can imagine there must be seriously irregular finds in your collection. Which would you say are the coolest?

I have this Teisco DelRay ET400, which was like their version of a Jazzmaster/Jaguar offset made around the late ’60s. It has three pickups, as well as this weird handle in the body, plus a giant baseball bat neck. It’s quirky and interesting.

I have an early ’60s Hofner Verythin hollowbody with three pickups. I’ve got a 1963 Jaguar. I like new guitars, too, especially signature models – I have an Epiphone Noel Gallagher Supernova in blue with the pickup selector on top. I like the Billy Duffy Gretsch White Falcon. I like checking out other artist signatures.

On the last tour you mainly relied on your GMI amps, the Eventide H9 you never go anywhere without, your Electro-Harmonix Superego and some Way Huge and EarthQuaker pedals. Is anything changing for the next album cycle?

I’m going to reimagine and simplify things a bit. But those are my go-tos. The H9 does so many great things. Basically, whenever it says Eventide on it, you know it’ll be good. I like to build different gain stages, so my tone shifts in different ways. There’s always a boost pedal, some kind of filtering option and then a couple of fuzzes.

When I talk about filtering, I usually mean my signature Dr No Raven pedal. It has three notches, so you dial in the frequency, hit the boost and it’s like instant Brian May. Or even harsher, like Michael Schenker’s half-cocked wah.

With three guitarists, we try to spread ourselves frequency-wise. Josh has the main classic QOTSA sound, very low-mid driven. Dean and myself play around that. That’s why I use a lot of single-coil guitars to poke through the mix, plus reverbs and space for background ambience.

A lot of the QOTSA guitar tone has been attributed to the Peavey Decade amp. Recently you’ve been using a 10 Years pedal to recreate that sound.

Honestly, a lot of it comes down to that amp. Josh even put his own version out a while back. We use a little jam room to warm up and there’ll be four Decade amps in there. You can plug bass, guitar, synth or whatever into those things.

Before the 10 Years pedal existed, I would take the amp on the road and connect the direct out to the front. That was my Decade pedal... an actual Decade! This is much smaller. There’s something about the circuit that cuts through in a certain way.

Interestingly, QOTSA has never been a Strat band.

I don’t know why! It doesn’t seem to fit right. For that matter, we’ve never been a Marshall band either. It’s one of those things I guess we’ve avoided. As classic as they are, for us it feels a little too on-the-nose for what a rock sound should be.

I mean, you’ve got Jimi Hendrix, that was his rig. You can’t really outdo that. He did it so well, I don’t see us ever trying to chase that sound.

• For more info on the Paranormal Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII, head to Fender.com.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the Beatles’ most enduring classics, but it had a rocky start. Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr weren’t all that keen on George Harrison’s opus. It took a special guest to help get things off the ground.

Not only was it one of the best songs Harrison ever wrote, it was one of the greatest Beatles songs full stop, and a standout inclusion on the White Album.

During the record’s studio sessions, though, Harrison’s bandmates didn’t care too much for the tune. It made tracking the song difficult. At one point, they abandoned the song altogether, only to later start over again.

In the February 2001 issue of Total Guitar, which featured a long-lost interview with Harrison conducted in the 1990s, the Beatle looked back on the frustrating experience.

“We’d be in a recording situation, churning through all this Lennon/McCartney, Lennon McCartney, Lennon/McCartney! Then I’d say, ‘Can we do one of these?’” he said.

“When we actually started recording While My Guitar Gently Weeps it was just me playing the acoustic guitar and singing it and nobody was interested. Well, Ringo probably was, but John and Paul weren't.

“When I went home that night I was really disappointed, because I thought, ‘Well, this is really quite a good song, it's not as if it's shitty!’”

The song’s fortunes turned when Harrison lift-shared with an old friend. Eric Clapton was in town. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, he invited him to the studio.

“The next day I happened to drive back into London with Eric Clapton, and while we were in the car I suddenly said, ‘Why don't you come and play on this track?’” Harrison continued. “And he said, ‘Oh, I couldn't do that, the others wouldn't like it.’”

“Eric was reluctant, and I finally said, ‘Well, sod them! It's my song and I'd like you to come down to the studio.’”

Clapton’s presence had a transformative effect in the studio. Harrison had seen it happen before. The band picked up the song and made history.

“The same thing occurred that happened during Get Back, while we were filming the movie,” Harrison observed.

“Billy Preston came into our office and I pulled him into the studio and got him on electric piano. And suddenly everybody started behaving and not fooling around so much. Same thing happened with Eric, and the song came together nicely.”

Slowhand entered the studio on September 6, 1968, to record his overdubs. Clapton played Harrison’s red 1957 Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe. His isolated guitar parts were shared years later.

Last night (September 14), the polka-dotted duo Angine de Poitrine made their US TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – and used the occasion to debut a new song, Zugzegk.

Brandishing their new Godin double-neck guitar/bass, Khn started the song with a robotic voice that has since become synonymous with the Dada-ist band, before launching into the microtonal, looped frenzy we’ve come to expect from them. It’s noodly, it’s upbeat, but somehow, still catchy – and just over four minutes long.

The Québécois duo – guitarist/bassist Khn and drummer Klek – are undoubtedly one of this year’s breakout acts. After their session on Seattle radio station KEXP went viral, the band – complete with oversized papier-mâché masks, oversized noses, and polka dot costumes – racked up millions of streams and graced the lineup of a multitude of major festivals.

Speaking about their sudden rise to the top, guitarist Khn recently told Guitar World, “It would be presumptuous to think that it’s only about the music. Because while we make an honest effort to create fun and original tunes, there’s also an endless flow of amazing music being put out every day by people whose virtuosity knocks me out of my chair.

“Has the success of any rock band ever been only about the music? The music needs to be catchy, but it’s also about how people relate to it. Angine confusingly celebrating while also satirizing some of rock ’n’ roll’s clichés – all in good fun – might be what a lot of people needed.”

The microtonal mavericks are currently on a sold-out North American tour, which kicked off on September 9 at Le Poisson Rouge in New York.

Marty Friedman has spent much of his career celebrating Japanese culture. He kicked that pursuit into overdrive after leaving Megadeth, making a home there and becoming something of a national celebrity beyond the confines of his six-string exploits.

Lately he’s become associated with Rock Fujiyama, which originated as a variety show in the 2000s and found a new online home during the pandemic. “It’s a humble little Japanese YouTube channel,” he says.

“It features hundreds of rare performances with guests that music fans, Japan culture fans, and most especially musicians, will enjoy.

“It’s definitely worth wading through the unfamiliar language to get to the unusually juicy guitar sessions. Many of the videos have me doing impromptu sessions with Japanese players of all genres, and some from other parts of the world. It’s a blast playing with all these super players.”

Friedman dialed in with Guitar World to share 12 unique Rock Fujiyama guests he’s had the pleasure of hosting.

Matteo Mancuso

People are doing themselves a disservice by seeing Matteo just as “the guy with the great fingerpicking.” His graceful fingerpicking is just a tool – a great tool – but his real talent lies in his note choices and his unusually deep grasp of traditional jazz/fusion theory.

I grilled him on his thought processes, which are greatly different from mine. He inquired about how I “tell a story” with a guitar solo. Both of us gained things that day, and it’s great to share that back-and-forth with viewers. I played his song Solar Wind with him; we had a tangible chemistry right out of the box.

Ikkyuu Nakajima

Ikkyuu is in the progressive J-pop band Tricot. Many of the top J-pop artists have a surprising amount of prog elements to their music, although not in the Rush/Dream Theater image of prog that many Western listeners might imagine. Ikkyuu’s use of odd time signatures, unique chords and weirdly enjoyable melody and harmony choices are absolutely addicting.

I’ve been a Tricot fan for years. Recently we started appearing at some of the same shows and events, so I made sure she came on the show. We played the Tricot song Ochansensusu, which has a lot of twists and turns that were super-fun. Lots of “counting while you play” going on!

Mateus Asato

Mateus was a joy to work with. You immediately get a genuine “playing from the heart” feeling with him. He has great control of the sensitivity and touch of what he plays and uses that so effectively. Even though he’s got next-level technique at his command, his playing prioritizes musicality at every turn.

We played his song Cryin’ which, like Matteo’s song Solar Wind, was more fusion-flavored than you’d find on any of my albums. This type of jamming is incredibly liberating – it’s like I’m on someone else’s turf, which allows me come up with lines and melodies that I normally wouldn’t.

Lisa-X

Lisa-X turned a lot of heads at a very young age, doing note-for-note covers of flashy songs by players like Guthrie Govan and that exclusive ilk. Of course, at 13 or so, she wouldn’t have the finesse of the original players she mimicked.

But to the mainstream person, seeing her play all the notes correctly and in time, was impressive, far outshining any lack of nuances that only professional players would notice. She was featured on TV a lot to oohs and aahs and continued to grow upward into a genuinely special player.

Now she’s with her own band, Koiai, which focuses more on their songs rather than her freakish ability to copy challenging works of other players. On Rock Fujiyama, it was her idea to step up to the challenge of playing my song, Inferno, right in front of me – she made light work of it, despite it being quite a finger-twister.

Bradley Hall

I’m a huge supporter of YouTube guitar content creators. It is so much more involved than just being an impressive guitarist. Constantly coming up with fun content and self-producing it is a ton of work that most guitarists would shudder at.

They’re highly responsible for inspiring so many people to experience the unique joys of playing guitar. Despite a non-guitar-friendly Billboard chart, Bradley is super-talented not only on the instrument, but in discovering ways to make otherwise boring content fun, educational and entertaining.

I don’t remember much of what we talked about but I remember it being super-nerdy, with lots of funny and worthwhile guitar talk. If I’m honest, I think we could have done better if we weren’t confined to the Fujiyama format, which is pretty much live, with way less editing than Bradley is used to. But it was still packed with gems.

Kotaro Oshio

Kotaro Oshio is a famous, much admired acoustic guitarist in Japan who’s known for his mellow sounds and sensitive touch. I’ve always loved his glassy tone, which the YouTube recording doesn’t do justice to. We did a Japanese ballad, I Love You, arranged for electric and acoustic guitar.

Playing over his smooth backing is a treat. At the end of the song, I just sustain a seemingly endless long tone while I sit back and listen to his sweet chord work.

Naoki Morioka

Naoki Morioka is in my band, so it was a no-brainer to get him on Fujiyama. He’s the ultimate band member – he knows my entire catalog, backing and solos – and he’s always prepared to play parts that would require me to go back and relearn.

When you have a guy like that in your band it’s liberating, because you know you can do anything live with no limitations. Naoki loves the guitar as an instrument in general, way more than I do. He’s constantly scouring the internet to find new and challenging techniques to add to his already deep arsenal.

He has his own band and releases his own solo music, which is very progressive – so hard to play, in fact, that I had him go on the show by himself because it would have taken forever for me to learn all of the tricky parts and do them justice. Fans of my band love him!

Shinji Wajima

Ningen Isu are a very heavy Japanese band, like a modern and doomy Black Sabbath with very dark Japanese motifs. The guitarist, Shinji Wajima, is extremely knowledgeable about the Japanese instruments he was influenced by, and showed us some cool shamisen-inspired guitar work.

I wish this episode was in English, because the content would be very fresh to guitarists around the world. I also think fans of heavy music would soon get addicted to Ningen Isu. The common ground he finds between traditional shamisen phrases and typical blues-rock solo phrases is a perfect example of East meets West.

Ichika Nito

Ichika has a big worldwide following, and his style squeezes elements of modern progressive guitar through his uniquely Japanese filter. The techniques sometimes resemble Tim Henson on steroids, but the fancy fingerwork exists to support his wistful melodies in a vastly different way.

We played some of his songs together on Fujiyama, which were good fun, but the music video of the song we wrote together for Neural DSP is a much better representation of what happens when two completely different artists collide and bring hidden things out of each other.

We’ve done many shows and projects in Japan and China, and it’s just as much of a joy to watch him play as it is to jam together. He’s a consummate musician and a true artist.

Takayoshi Ohmura

Takayoshi Ohmura is one of the flashiest and most skillful guitar players in Japan. He was in my band for seven years, and like Naoki Morioka, he makes light work of my complex arrangements, backing parts and harmonies.

I met him when he was a teenager and I was giving a clinic at MI Osaka, where he was a student. I knew he had something special even then. He has his own band, and he played in BabyMetal’s Kami Band for many world tours.

He does seminars around the world and people are stunned at his abilities. His stage presence and ease of playing guitar are rare, especially in Japan, where many players who do difficult things are more reserved and studious-looking. On Fujiyama, we play one of my songs that we used to do together on tour, and you can easily see the fun chemistry.

Hal-Ca

There are a lot of super female rock guitarists in Japan, but if I was forced to choose a favorite it would be Hal-Ca. Her band is called Asterism, and we’ve done a lot of cool things together, notably performing the song Gyutto, which we wrote together on Sony’s The First Take video series.

Hal-Ca is an extremely aggressive heavy metal player, with a precise machine-gun right hand for rhythm that I wish I had. Her soloing is wild, well thought out, and performed with ease and abandon. Hal-Ca will be doing some shows with me as my second guitarist on tour, and that requires some pretty high-level abilities.

On Fujiyama, we played one of her Asterism songs, Stars, and it reminded me of playing with Jason Becker. She does all the guitar things I don’t do – like tapping and whammy bar stuff – but does them in a way that I like, which is saying a lot. Asterism are a power trio unlike any heavy metal three-piece you ever heard.

Ami Inoi

Ami Inoi is a world-class classical guitarist who slummed it with us on Fujiyama for some interesting performances. I’ve done several events with her, and when she plays the sonata by Leo Brouwer it’s hard to keep your jaw off the floor. We played Cafe 1930 by Astor Piazzolla and Bistro Fada by Stephen Wrembel on Fujiyama, and it was a joy to play these beautiful songs with such an accomplished gut string player.

Bistro Fada was particularly strange because neither of us is what you would call a “gypsy jazz” guitarist. You might listen to it and say it sounds fine, but if you compared it to players who live and breathe gypsy jazz guitar, you can easily hear a universe of difference.

But that’s one of the fun things about Rock Fujiyama – it’s a rare chance to step way out of your comfort zone and take a few risks in front of people. Sometimes happy accidents happen, sometimes not. But it’s just jumping in and just doing it that helps you grow, at whatever musical level you might be at. And occasionally, when magic moments happen, it’s the best.

The sale of a great player’s guitar collection is sometimes lamented by fans, however, it’s something we are seeing more often as celebrated musicians reflect on the road travelled and the road yet to come.

As a player always ready to embrace the future, Marr is clearly no servant to his own backstory. But why is he choosing to sell some of the most important guitars, amps and even the gold and platinum discs that he’s picked up over the years?

“He found the process of writing and publishing the book Marr’s Guitars in 2023 quite a cathartic experience,” says Amelia Walker, Christie’s Head of Private and Iconic Collections, who is overseeing the sale.

“In the process of writing the book about the guitars, he was getting them all out, holding them… finding the muscle memory of all these amazing songs that he’d written on them – particularly some of the earliest guitars – and then going out after the book was published and speaking about them…

“And then when that whole tour wrapped up, and it was time to put them away, the impression I got was that he didn’t want them just to get put away in cases again.

“With his [signature] Jag, he’s basically created an instrument that does everything he needs – so he doesn’t see as many opportunities to use a lot of these instruments in the future.

“And yet he wants them to be played, he wants them to find new owners and I think he really loves the idea of people coming up to him in years to come and saying, ‘I’ve just written a song on your D-28’, or ‘I’ve just played your Rickenbacker on stage,’ or whatever it might be. Or even if it’s not someone who performs, just ‘I love your guitar,’” Amelia says.

“The final lot count is 111,” she continues. “There are about 90 guitars and we’ve got about 10 gold records… actually gold, silver and platinum. Mainly Smiths, but also one for Electronic’s [eponymous debut] 1991 album and a recording he made with Bryan Ferry, which are all being sold for charity.

“And then there’s a collection of concert posters and promo posters, which again are all being sold for charity. There are about 10 amps as well – no pedals – and I think most of them are amps that he’s had for his whole career.”

It’s an impressive collection even when viewed simply as vintage instruments – but when you consider the music made with them, it adds real depth to Marr’s decision to let them go, and pass the proceeds of around 20 lots on to his chosen charities (The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the National Autistic Society).

Before they go under the hammer, we took the opportunity to take a close look at the most important (and distinctive) of his guitars, with Amelia as our guide.

1963 Epiphone Casino

“Compositionally, a lot of his songs start on acoustics, but How Soon Is Now was written on the Casino, over what sounds like the most prolific songwriting weekend of all time, when he wrote William, It Was Really Nothing and Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want and then How Soon Is Now as the third, just to top it off [laughs]. The fact he wrote the song on the Casino and then also used it to record that riff makes it very, very special.

“He used the Casino at Glastonbury in 1984 which, by all accounts, was the moment that the festival kind of shed its hippie roots and went into pop because [The Smiths] were in the pop sphere by that year.

“Then everyone rushed the stage and there were these guys trying to climb up the sheet metal in front of the stage, while he’s playing that guitar. Casinos have such a strong association with the music that he loved from the ’60s that he was listening to. So yeah, it’s a really cool thing, and everyone loves that song.”

1959 Gibson ES-355

“So this guitar is probably the one guitar – other than the Rickenbacker – that is most associated with the Smiths. I think it was probably the third guitar he owned in that band: he had a Gretsch [Atkins Super Axe], the Rickenbacker and then this.

“He got it because the Smiths went to New York between Christmas and New Year in 1983, and they were due to play their first show and to sign to Sire Records with Seymour Stein – they were already signed to Rough Trade in the UK but they were going to do their US deal [with Sire]. Johnny had heard about Sire doing a similar deal with Brian Jones, so he cheekily said, ‘We’ll sign to Sire if you buy me a guitar.’

“So they played their show on New Year’s Eve at Danceteria, and then on 2 January, Johnny marched Seymour to 48th Street and bought this guitar, which is a thing of beauty. He got back to the hotel and I think before even sitting down he wrote Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.

“Johnny talks about songs ‘falling out of him’ and sort of just coming to him, as well as guitars giving him songs – and it seems that this guitar inspired him to do that. He then used it to record a lot of the Smiths’ second album [Meat Is Murder] and it’s seen on stage throughout 1984 and 1985.”

“He made a few modifications to it. It was, obviously, originally a stereo [output] guitar but he didn’t want it to be stereo so he switched it to mono. And then I think at some point in the late ’80s, Bill Puplett replaced the wiring harness but unfortunately we can’t date that because everything’s shielded and it’s really hard to see.

“But we still have the original [wiring harness] that he took out and from that we can tell the original pots must have been taken out before he bought the guitar as the harness that was in there dates to ’83 – all the pots are ’83. But it’s still got these lovely [original] Patent Applied For pickups.

“The Varitone must have been switched out as well because that dates from a bit later than 1959. The guitar’s factory order number dates it to late ’59, but then it was shipped on 2 February 1960. So it’s a bit of a hybrid, crossing over ’59 and ’60.”

1992/93 Rickenbacker 330

“When you think Johnny Marr, really you think Rickenbacker. This particular guitar also appears on the front cover of Supersonic by Oasis – just lying on the floor. That says a lot about Johnny’s generosity in lending instruments to other musicians and further underlines that he wants his guitars to be played. He wants them to give songs to other people.

“The Rickenbacker is [the sound of] This Charming Man and so many other songs. It’s his jangly sound and I think it was a deliberate choice at the time – he wanted his playing to go in a certain direction and that’s what the Rickenbacker did for him. His melodic arpeggio playing and picking out the individual strings of the chord, rather than just strumming, is so intertwined with the Rickenbacker.

“He got it in ‘83 and he used it to record the single This Charming Man, which was tracked along with a Telecaster that belonged to producer John Porter. I think Johnny only had two guitars at the time [this and the Gretsch Super Axe], and John thought he needed another one on that track.

“He then used it on most of the Smiths’ first record as well. I think a lot of that record was written on the Gretsch because he didn’t have the Rickenbacker at the time, but the recording itself is a lot of Rickenbacker with the Tele added in. It’s really so connected with the Smiths emerging and their whole story.”

Custom Roger Giffin T-Style 

“That guitar was custom-made by Roger Giffin. I think having played John Porter’s Tele, Johnny really wanted one. So Alan Rogan, who worked with The Who, Keith Richards and George Harrison, put [Marr’s then girlfriend, now wife] Angie in touch with Roger Giffin and she bought the guitar for him.

“It’s heavy – it weighs around the same as Tiger [Jerry Garcia’s custom electric built with exotic woods by Doug Irwin], around 10lbs. But the Roger Giffin guitar is iconic because of its unique look, and so many fans will remember it as the guitar he played on Top Of The Pops with the Smiths.

“Johnny switched out the neck humbucker after a while because originally it had a Mighty Mite zebra-coil pickup fitted. But now it’s got a different humbucker with these very distinctive hexagonal pole pieces – a Bare Knuckle ‘Juggernaut’. We don’t know when that mod was done but again the work was completed by Bill Puplett.

1963 Lake Placid Blue Fender Stratocaster

“That was a John Entwistle guitar, so that came from him, via Alan Rogan. There were about seven or eight guitars that came from John, who seemed to have the most amazing, huge collection of guitars… there’s a fantastic photograph taken around 1977 of him in his living room, literally surrounded by guitars – and we managed to spot one of Johnny’s in the photo, which is pretty cool [a Gretsch 6120].

“It’s actually composite – it’s got a ’65 neck, and the body is ’63, which is why he would have wanted it. He used it on Strangeways Here We Come, for the solo in Paint a Vulgar Picture – which is notable because it’s his first proper solo on a Smiths record.

“We don’t know what neck it had on it originally, but at some point in the late 1980s he took the neck off his sunburst Strat – which had this really beautiful bird’s-eye maple neck, and is really distinct because it has particular wear on the first and third fret, and switched it onto this Lake Placid Blue guitar.

“In late 1989 he was photographed with it for the cover of the January 1990 issue of Guitar Player magazine, with the maple neck. I don’t know when he put this [current] 1965 rosewood neck on it – we’re still verifying that.”

1977 Gretsch Atkins Super Axe

“This was Johnny’s only guitar for I don’t know exactly how long. It’s pre-Morrissey, pre-Smiths and I think – until he got the Rickenbacker– it was the only guitar he had. I think it was some sort of part-exchange when he sold his [prior] Les Paul. And it’s interesting that he chose this model.

“I don’t know if it was literally what was available in the shop, or if he was on the lookout for a Gretsch... but he was clearly looking to move away from the Les Paul when he swapped it for this. He wrote the whole of the first album on this, and recorded Hand In Glove on it.”

1984 Gibson Les Paul Standard

“He got this new in 1984. Again, I’m not sure of the exact date, but it was probably around September. When he bought it, it didn’t have a Bigsby – he put that on himself in about the summer of ’85, because we have photos of him with the Les Paul without a Bigsby on in December ’84 and March ’85. But then by the time the Smiths were on Top Of The Pops in October ’85, it had the Bigsby on. He’s said that if the building was on fire, this would be the guitar he’d grab.

“Because I think he’s done more on that guitar than any other in terms of consistent use throughout his career, even up until his current record that’s about to come out [The Age Of Everything], there are parts on that record that have been played with this particular Les Paul.”

“It’s got Seymour Duncans in now and I think they were double blacks originally, but they always had covers on them during his time in The Smiths, and then at some point they got swapped out again by Bill Puplett.

“We’re still investigating when the Seymour Duncans were fitted but, again, I think it would have been late ’80s, because he used the Les Paul in the music video for The The’s track Dogs Of Lust and you can very clearly see there’s a zebra in both positions – and that was in 1993.”

1978 9-Pickup Modified Fender Stratocaster

“We initially had no idea who created this, but we had another look at the instrument when we took some of the guitars to New York for an exhibition in late June. And we found a label indicating who [had carried out the major modifications]. It seems as though the idea was the concept of one brother, Stephen Liddard, with the work itself done by a Richard Liddard in 1991.

“So that would have been just before Johnny bought it from Music Ground in Doncaster. He bought it on a trip there with Noel Gallagher, just a day or two after they first met… Noel remembers Johnny saying, ‘Let’s go for a sandwich. Never buy guitars on an empty stomach.’

“But anyway he bought the 9-pickup Strat and, much later on, it was used in the video for his solo record Spirit Power And Soul. It’s amazing, just about the maddest thing you’ll ever see, and it was the concept of the Liddard brothers in, I presume, somewhere near Doncaster.”

1963 Gibson J-160E

“I think [he acquired this guitar] at the same time he bought the Casino when he was very Beatles-focused, and wanted that Beatles sensibility in his playing. This was around the time The Smiths moved to London just after they released their first record, and that was when he met Alan Rogan. This was when he started to have a bit of money to buy guitars and when his guitar-purchasing really sort of started taking off.

“He went from only having two to suddenly having three… five… seven guitars, and wanted them so he could do different things for specific reasons and sounds. He used it, as I mentioned before, when he wrote three of the most epic Smiths songs on a quiet weekend when the band had nothing on – William, It Was Really Nothing and Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want were both written on that guitar.”

• Marr’s Guitars: The Johnny Marr Collection will go under the hammer on September 17. See Christies for more details.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

An ex head of the Fender Custom Shop has seemingly issued a message to his former employer with a new S-style build.

After a court ruling gave Fender legal protection over its Stratocaster body design, Thomann, PRS, Yamaha and more have since received cease-and-desist letters, leaving the body shape’s place in the market uncertain.

Mike Eldred, who ran the Fender Custom Shop in the 1990s, has apparently reacted to the unpopular legal strategy. He’s unveiled his first S-Style guitar under his new firm, El Cabron.

Not only does its familiar S-shape fly in the face of Fender’s legal wrangles, but it also features an important message.

“Never let a corporation tell you what the rules are,” it says in all capitals. It’s serving Tom Morello’s Arm the Homeless guitar. Ironically, that’s an S-type too.

El Cabron’s Black Corp electric guitar features a Gotoh 510 tremolo, a single humbucker bridge pickup, and a single volume control. If anything, it’s a little more G&L Rampage than vintage Stratocaster. The message comes through all the same.

To top it off, the guitar also features Banksy artwork beneath the trem. It depicts a masked protester throwing a bouquet of flowers and is intended to symbolize prioritizing peace and love over anger and violence.

During his time in Fender’s ranks, Eldred built guitars for a feast of celebrated players, including Eric Clapton, Brad Paisley, John Mayer and Keith Urban.

Eldred isn't the only former Fender employee to take aim at the firm. Ex-Masterbuilder John Cruz also recently teamed up with Chinese guitar maker Farida for another S-style.

One of the smaller firms targeted by Fender’s campaign was LsL Instruments. It has since unveiled an all-new design, which it hopes will offset the lawsuit’s impact. In an age of small brands pushing the needle on new, original body shapes, it could signal the start of a wider industry trend.