SHIETING GEAR
DURING MOST PREVIOUS decades, significant shifts took place in the guitar manufacturing industry that both defined an era and established new directions for the future. For example, the Thirties are remembered as a “Golden Era” for acoustic guitars (particularly Martins and Gibsons) as well as for the introduction of the first electric guitars. The Fifties are known for the commercial birth of the solid-body electric, and the Seventies are known for the decline of major players like Fender and Gibson and the rise of Japanese imports like Ibanez and Takamine. The Eighties are remembered for the dominance of Super Strats and hot-rodded high-gain amps, while the Nineties saw a retro-inspired resurgence of quirky Sixties designs like Jazzmasters and imported “pawn shop prizes” along with the rise of boutique guitars, amps and pedals.
However, the last decade’s biggest gear trend may be that there were no dominant overall trends, but rather numerous smaller ones. This is most likely a reflection of the popular music industry’s movement away from guitar-based music. Although the guitar may not play as prominent of a role in pop music as it did in the past, any dedicated music fan or reader of this magazine can attest that there’s a hell of a lot of great guitar music out there. It’s just splintered into numerous different factions — metal, blues, indie, progressive, classic rock and so on — that all have large and robust followings. This, in turn, has inspired companies to concentrate more on what they do best and find their own individual niche, instead of trying to chase the next big thing in an effort to keep up.
The end result of this is that guitarists now probably have more variety to choose from than ever. Traditional guitar designs are still plentiful for players who prefer those, but if you’re more adventurous you can easily find guitars, amps and pedals from numerous innovative companies that are thriving instead of just surviving on the outskirts of larger movements. Perhaps the biggest surprise to us was the increased popularity of electric instruments with features like headless necks, fanned frets and extended tuning ranges that previously were considered too unorthodox and unusual by the masses. Even acoustic guitarists seemed to be more accepting of change, as acoustics with smaller body sizes and rounder shapes challenged the dreadnought’s dominance for possibly the first time since the Fifties.
The absence of overriding trends has caused a few casual observers to claim that the guitar is dead, or at least not. Up until their launch in 2013, the most popular online platform for buying and selling musical instruments had been eBay. has since eclipsed the e-commerce behemoth here and parlayed their success from not only being an online music gear marketplace, but also as an authoritative voice for guitarists with informative content, videos and how-to articles.
