Guitar Player

Guitar Player magazine helps you play better and sound better

Guitar Player3 min read
The Power Of Change
WHEN WE SET out to get an exclusive interview with Gary Clark Jr. for this issue, his new album wasn’t even available for preview yet. But we just knew we’d want to speak once again with the guitarist who reinvigorated the blues movement with his fus
Guitar Player1 min read
Guitar Player
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Christopher Scapelliti, chris.scapelliti@futurenet.com SENIOR EDITOR Art Thompson, arthur.thompson@futurenet.com ART EDITOR Philip Cheesbrough, philip.cheesbrough@futurenet.com PRODUCTION EDITOR Jem Roberts, jem.roberts@futurenet.com
Guitar Player5 min read
English Channel
THE CLASSIC BRITISH sounds of the ’60s and early ’70s have never fallen out of fashion, and it’s hard to imagine they ever will. The real trick for many guitarists in the 2020s, though, is achieving the sound of a cranked and raging Marshall “Plexi,”
Guitar Player5 min read
Jane Getter Can Shred
IN THE WORLD OF Jane Getter — a player who can outright shred but hates the notion — “redundancy” is a dirty word. For Getter, there’s no fun in being a retread, nor does she care what’s worked for her in the past, only what works for her now. The tr
Guitar Player6 min read
‘I’ve Chilled Out’
SARAH LONGFIELD HAS come a long way. After starting as an unintentional YouTuber in 2007 — when social media was far from being a breeding ground for young guitarists — she oscillates today between sharing stages with John 5 and Nita Strauss (in 2021
Guitar Player5 min read
Tip Sheet
ANY GUITARIST WHO can combine country-style chicken pickin’ and hypersonic metal shred is no one-trick pony. Over the course of his career, John 5 has made diversity his calling card, and his six-string services have been called upon by a wide range
Guitar Player4 min read
America At The Crossroads
GUITAR PLAYERS AND enthusiasts will find a coterie of familiar faces adorning the Hall of Fame rotunda at the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (a.k.a. The MAX), an interactive museum in Meridian that honors the state’s famed writers, actor
Guitar Player7 min read
My Career In Five Songs
WHEN PETER FRAMPTON co-founded Humble Pie in 1969, he was already regarded as one of England’s hottest guitarists, but his songwriting skills hadn’t yet blossomed. He contributed a number of strong cuts to the four studio albums he recorded with the
Guitar Player4 min read
The Pink of Health
WHEN AMERICAN GUITAR brands suffered a dip in quality during the 1970s and ’80s, the door was open for guitar rivals to make inroads to the U.S. market. While many of them came from Japan, at least one homegrown guitar maker saw his “in”: Paul Reed S
Guitar Player3 min read
West Coast Funk… With Legs
MY FRIEND ANDY HESS and I were reminiscing about how amazing the Bay Area music scene was in the ’70s and early ’80s. There was Tower of Power, Malo, Santana with Neal Schon, Larry Graham, Sly Stone, Merle Saunders, the Pointer Sisters, Pete Escovedo
Guitar Player5 min read
‘I Had Two Totally Different Sounds’
TINSLEY ELLIS KNOWS he’s “always been a pretty high-voltage electric” guitar player, at least since he was recording with the Heartfixers back in the early ’80s, and certainly during the 36 years since he signed with Alligator Records as a solo act.
Guitar Player13 min read
Blues Breaker
JPEG RAWIS Gary Clark Jr.’s first post-pandemic album, but its origins date back to the 2020 lockdown, when the guitarist, like every other musician on the planet, was forced to scrap his tour plans and await a return to normal life. “It was a weird
Guitar Player12 min read
Funk Brothers
AT THE START of the Black Keys’ latest album, Ohio Players, singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach declares that he’s going to “spend the rest of my days in the middle of nowhere.” He’s joking, of course. It’s certainly been an eventful journey for Auerbach a
Guitar Player10 min read
The Inner Light
HIS NAME IS like that of a Marvel superhero or the title character in a new vigilante series airing on Netflix. But Max Light plays guitar with the gift of one who has organically incorporated the lessons of his six-string forebears Kurt Rosenwinkel,
Guitar Player15 min read
Field Goal
“OF ALL MY Warner Bros. albums, it’s the one I love the most, without a doubt. And maybe that’s because I took so much shit for it.” When Marshall Crenshaw set out to make Field Day in early 1983, he was riding high on the success of his self-titled
Guitar Player7 min read
Acoustic Intel
IN THIS DIGITAL age, where an endless stream of equipment information seems to come from all directions at any moment, now seems like a good time to take a 360-degree scan of the current landscape, filter though the spew and focus on a few. What you’
Guitar Player7 min read
Adventures In Fingerstyle Rock Guitar, Part 2
LAST MONTH, WE set our picks down to learn new fingerstyle skills we can add to our arsenal of electric guitar techniques. We covered the basics, then left off by introducing harp harmonics. This month, we’ll integrate them into our fingerstyle playi
Guitar Player3 min read
Old Glory
SOME THINGS IMPROVE with age. Guitars certainly sound better over time, particularly acoustic guitars, because it’s literally all about the wood. This is a subject Santa Cruz Guitars Company captain Richard Hoover knows all too well. When we spoke wi
Guitar Player6 min read
Prs
THE LATEST ADDITIONS to PRS’s offshore-produced SE line include two guitars that date back to the 1980s — the Custom 24 and the CE24, introduced, respectively, in ’85 and ’88 — along with a reissue of an outlier model called the Swamp Ash Special, wh
Guitar Player2 min read
Stedman
FOR ALL HIS experience with complex circuits and top-notch components, British effects guru and switching systems designer Pete Cornish has long relied on a mantra that points to a much simpler, yet often-overlooked necessity: “Clean the plugs to fre
Guitar Player5 min read
Dr. Z
WHEN DR. Z FOUNDER and chief designer Mike Zaite tells you, “I think this is the best amp I’ve ever built,” it’s worth paying attention. The maker has been a perennial name at the top of the boutique amp charts since he introduced his first Carmen Gh
Guitar Player5 min read
Klos
CARBON FIBER LIFE STYLE brand Klos (pronounced like the opposite of “far”) is rolling out a gang of new gear, and the Grand Cutaway Mini is particularly compelling because of its unique size and features. Travel guitars put Klos on the map and remain
Guitar Player3 min read
Donner/third Man Hardware
COMBINING THREE ANAL OG effects in a small package with a low price tag makes the Triple Threat an outsider among today’s boutique boxes. However, it all makes sense considering that Jack White conceived this sleek little multi-effector for his Third
Guitar Player3 min read
“Day Of The Eagle”
“IT’S PROBABLY THE best rock and roll song I’ve ever written,” Robin Trower says about “Day of the Eagle,” the frenetic, heavy blues track from his second solo album, 1974’s Bridge of Sighs. “It’s still a lot of fun to play, too. To pull it off succe

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