Guitar Player

Guitar Player magazine helps you play better and sound better

Guitar Player2 min read
The Last Page
YOU HAVE WITNESSED a revolution. When Guitar Player made its debut 58 years ago in 1967, it marked a new era for guitar. For the first time, the instrument was celebrated in a regularly published magazine devoted to furthering guitarists, guitar gear
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 Player6 min read
The Big Goodbye
MR. BIG HAS always blended dysfunction with virtuosity. That probably wasn’t the intent when bassist Billy Sheehan, vocalist Eric Martin, drummer Pat Torpey and guitarist Paul Gilbert got together in Los Angeles in 1988. In the years since, the hard-
Guitar Player6 min read
My Career In Five Songs
“SONGS KIND OF jump out of a guitar,” Justin Hayward notes via Zoom from his home in the south of France, where he splits time with his native England. He should know. Shortly after he discovered his beloved Gibson ES-335 — particularly the 1963 mode
Guitar Player5 min read
Tipsheet
WHEN ASKED TO describe how his guitar playing has evolved over the years, Zakk Wylde lets out a chortle. “Bro, there’s no way I can answer that,” he insists. “I’m still evolving!” Simply put, the rock legend finds joy and purpose in doing the work. W
Guitar Player5 min read
Turning Japanese
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DISSECTING guitars as a teen and opening his own shop half a dozen years ago, Justin Abernethy has worked with several of the finest guitar makers in business today. All of that has inspired the Abernethy Sonic Empress THC, a guitar
Guitar Player6 min read
Pop Art
SADLER VADEN’S NEW album, Dad Rock, is bursting with hooky, well-crafted tunes that recall the glory days of ’70s classic rock and power pop, but it still sounds fresh and vital. Every song is loaded with big guitar sounds — some bright and sparkly,
Guitar Player2 min read
Back In The U.S.S.R.
YOU CAN’T OWN so much as a smartphone today and not know about Russia’s relentless, unprovoked war against Ukraine. But back in the early 1970s, the U.S.S.R. was intact and relatively peaceful, and the Soviets had begun to produce fairly decent guita
Guitar Player3 min read
Funk Noir
I DON’T KNOW why, but for the past couple of years I didn’t listen to Prince. Then one day The Black Album found its way onto my turntable and it was like hearing an old friend, or maybe a great new undiscovered artist. I had forgotten how cutting ed
Guitar Player4 min read
Medium Cool
IN THE LATE 1950s, Gibson was in the last throes of trying to make its flagship Les Paul solidbody fly in a skeptical market. Adding a luscious sunburst finish in 1958 to the humbucking pickups that arrived in ’57 hadn’t quite done it, even if those
Guitar Player8 min read
Dragon Tales
“We’re well charged-up!” Jimmy Page reports over the phone from New York City. Page has been in New York the previous few days meeting minds and making plans with his two chief collaborators in Sundragon, the boutique amp company he founded in 2017 w
Guitar Player6 min read
Closer To Home
IF YOU WANT to find Diego Garcia these days, head to Marina Del Rey in California and look for the boat studio where he makes his home — and whose name, Panamerica, is also the title of the award-winning Spanish-born guitarist’s latest album under hi
Guitar Player3 min read
Little Dragon
“IMMEDIATELY AFTER I played ‘Rumble’ at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame show last November,” Jimmy Page recounts to Guitar Player, “I went backstage, and you’ve got to understand the headspace I was in. I had just played, and I’d also taken in all the o
Guitar Player2 min read
The Beast Is Back
IT WAS FALL 1970, and having finished much of the work on Led Zeppelin’s now-iconic Led Zeppelin IV, Jimmy Page turned his attention to a slew of upcoming tour dates beginning March 5, 1971. Though the album would not be released until November ’71,
Guitar Player32 min read
58 Years Of Guitar Player
RIGHT AROUND 700. That’s how many issues of Guitar Player reside in our archive, from our debut publication to our last. (We tried running the numbers several times, but we’d lose count after being distracted by some fascinating nugget from an earlie
Guitar Player3 min read
FLOWERS & VINES
IN LATE SPRING 1970, Jimmy Page did a rare thing: He performed on solo acoustic, without the other members of Led Zeppelin, on the BBC’s Julie Felix Show. Felix, an American folk singer from California, was nevertheless so popular in Britain at the t
Guitar Player14 min read
High Time
ON STAGE AT El Club, a respectably divey club in his hometown of Detroit, for a Cinco de Mayo show in 2022, Wayne Kramer was preparing to play something more than 50 years in the making — a new MC5 song. “Some bands take two years between albums,” Kr
Guitar Player1 min read
Book ’em, Danno
THE NEW MC5 album is called Heavy Lifting, but that would have been an equally fine name for the just-released tome MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band. The book was painstakingly compiled by writers Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelsz
Guitar Player8 min read
Man Of Steel
ONCE IN A blue moon a player’s name becomes synonymous with an instrument for an era, and Jerry Douglas is on that extremely short list. He is to Dobro what Béla Fleck is to banjo, David Grisman is to mandolin, Ron Carter is to upright bass and Leo K
Guitar Player7 min read
Unforgettable Fire
AS THE MODERN-DAY 2020s roll on, so do the inevitable semi-centennial anniversaries. By my math, that means it’s time to celebrate some now classic electric guitar moments from 1974. Speaking to the electric guitar itself, it was 70 years ago that th
Guitar Player4 min read
Universal Audio
ONE MIC TO rule them all? That’s the dream, and Universal Audio aims to achieve it with the SC-1, a condenser mic with Hemisphere software that models eight iconic microphones. The promise of such flexibility is appealing, not only for those on budge
Guitar Player3 min read
Pushing Forward
AS WE PUT Guitar Player’s print edition to rest, it’s a good time to reflect and glance forward. Writing Frets Learn for nine years (and counting) has taught me a ton about the acoustic universe, and I’d like to highlight a few major themes before we
Guitar Player4 min read
Epiphone
FOR THE PAST few decades, Epiphone guitars have largely offered more affordable offshore-built alternatives to Gibson models, while generally being made with nearidentical shapes and specs, in the broad sense at least. The new USA Collection Coronet,
Guitar Player3 min read
Line 6
IT’S BEEN MORE than a quarter of a century since Line 6’s unmistakable red, kidney bean–shaped modeler burst onto the scene and kickstarted a tonal revolution, laying the foundation for what is today a commonplace alternative to using an amp. The POD
Guitar Player1 min read
We’ve Got Pop, We’ve Got Rock, We’ve Got Blues… And Much More!
magazinesdirect.com Discover more about your favourite singers and musicians or Discover follow in more their about footsteps your by favourite learning singers to play and instrument musicians or follow in or their even footsteps how to produce by l
Guitar Player3 min read
Uafx
AS PART OF its expanding line of compact pedals, UAFX presents the Teletronix LA-2A Studio Compressor, which emulates the smooth, musical compression produced by the original unit’s unique tube-driven electro-optical system, which allowed instantaneo
Guitar Player3 min read
How I Wrote… “Year of the Cat”
BY THE TIME Al Stewart finally achieved his commercial breakthrough with 1976’s “Year of the Cat,” it was the culmination of a decade-long odyssey to bring the song to completion. Its bones date back to 1966, when Stewart penned a set of lyrics title

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