February 2023

Guitarist

The Guitar Player's Bible

Guitarist2 min read
First & Foremost
The Telecaster numbers among the innovations that poured from the Fender factory during the 1950s and many would argue that Leo’s first solidbody guitar design was his best. Players from many different music genres sing its praises as it seems perfec
Guitarist1 min read
Editor’s Highlights
The Canadian stringmeister pays us a visit for a quick catch up and a special video tour through his current pedalboard and guitars p78 Laney’s Supergroup LA-Studio head is a low-output amp aimed at the recording studio and home practice p14 As we we
Guitarist1 min read
Guitarist
Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk ART EDITOR Darren Phillips darren.phillips@futurenet.com MANAGING EDITOR Lucy Rice lucy.rice@futurene
Guitarist5 min read
Master Of Reality
History tends to focus on London and Liverpool as the two main epicentres of British popular music in the late 1960s, but there were others, of course, and one of the most notable was the West Midlands. From this area came Black Sabbath, The Move (wh
Guitarist6 min read
Look Sharp
If you were playing guitar back in the late 80s and liked your gear, you would have undoubtedly come across Gary Levinson, the creator of Blade Guitars. To some, they were just another Strat-alike in some pretty contemporary colours, but virtually ev
Guitarist3 min read
Fly Drive
There is a type of pedal that delivers variations on its overdrive voice via a switchable selection of clipping options – and this certainly offers versatility. But the Kernom Ridge goes further by delivering its clipping options via a rotary Mood kn
Guitarist3 min read
Eccentric Echo
The Cosmic Wave retains the sound quality of Free The Tone’s Flight Time and Future Factory delays but is a much more compact pedal. Despite its small footprint, though, it still manages to fit in a pair of footswitches plus mono and stereo operation
Guitarist2 min read
The Wishlist
CONTACT Barnes & Mullins WEB www.paolettiguitars.com Fans of boutique guitars – and indeed Richard Fortus – will no doubt have come across Tuscany‑made Paoletti Guitars, founded by Fabrizio Paoletti in 2005. This new signature, launched in 2021, is R
Guitarist5 min read
Tones Behind The Tracks
Album: Along For The Ride (Straight Talkin’ Records) Like any hardened blues musician, it’s been a case of relentlessly touring over the years for UK’s Aynsley Lister. Along For The Ride is his eighth studio album on the Straight Talkin’ label that h
Guitarist3 min read
Gas Supply
CONTACT PRS Guitars Europe PHONE 01223 874301 WEB www.prsguitars.com DGT ‘S’ humbuckers Central to the DGT’s design is the PRS Patented Trem, but as well as that, the pickup controls add individual volume blending to the McCarty-bodied family. What
Guitarist4 min read
Albums
BMG (available now) 9/10 First ever solo live album from songwriting legend Back in 2016 David Crosby released his album entitled Lighthouse and has continued to work with the band he assembled to accompany him on that release ever since. The Light
Guitarist3 min read
Fretbuzz
Album: Life’s Machine (Self-released) Lead guitarist Ed ‘The Shred’ Clarke is one fifth of Portsmouth blues-rock outfit Brave Rival, who formed in 2019. Underpinned by some particularly silky guitar licks, the band deliver big when it comes to power
Guitarist4 min read
Nowt So Strange As Folk
As the years go by one inevitably starts thinking back to halcyon days. My memory of the specifics is often dreadful, so I link memories to where I lived, what job I had, or what band I was in at the time. Some of my happiest days were working as a g
Guitarist3 min read
In Good Company
Perhaps it’s not entirely unfair to imagine your stereotypical guitar maker as a hermit-like creature, crouched over a gloomily lit workbench among dozens of half-built instruments and forgotten projects: a grumpy rejection of the outside world, word
Guitarist2 min read
The Lydian Tonality
AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra The novel-esque title above may be appropriate in that the Lydian tonality is like a mood or atmosphere you can dive into as and when you please. You may even notice that the opening scenes of many movies feature L
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Sweat The Small Stuff
Not so many years ago, the tone secrets of vintage guitars and amplifiers were closely guarded by a select few. It was an era of mystery, superstition and wonder. Little did we know the internet was coming… It all began with newsgroups and rudimentar
Guitarist3 min read
Wilko Johnson 1947-2022
WILKO JOHNSON July 1947 – November 2022 Jaw clenched and eyes bulging. Skittering across the stage, bolt-upright and belligerent. Shouldering his black and red ’62 Tele in the style of a machine gun to mock-strafe the crowd. The sight of Wilko Joh
Guitarist7 min read
Feedback
Times are hard, everything costs a packet and we may not be rushing out to buy new gear quite as quickly as we were. Well, how about digging out your old stuff? I just read about Bill Nelson in the best pedals feature [issue 490] still using a Pod 2.
Guitarist7 min read
Andy Fairweather Low
Andy Fairweather Low first stepped into the spotlight and released a solo album 17 years ago. More accustomed to being a sideman to the likes of Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and George Harrison, he’s gone on record in the past declaring t
Guitarist1 min read
Television
Seven decades on from its launch, and counting, the Tele is still the guitar for all seasons. When it was conceived it was a design of startling modernity. Today, it’s as familiar as our own hands, as much a part of the landscape of guitar as weather
Guitarist15 min read
Telecaster Tales
Ask a guitarist what electric they’d choose if they could only have one guitar to cover all gigs and there’s a fair chance that they’ll say ‘Telecaster’. It’s ironic that the simplest of Leo Fender’s solidbody electrics has also proven to be the most
Guitarist3 min read
Simple Pleasures
What does the Telecaster mean to you? “As simple of a design as the Telecaster is, it’s the most versatile guitar out there. It just works with any style, any amp, any pedal you put in front of it. The Telecaster works so well because it’s just a gui
Guitarist8 min read
T-time
Fender’s original design for the Tele’s output jack socket would have been sheer genius had it worked. Instead, you need a specialist tool or a lot of ingenuity to fit one and, in most cases, they’ll eventually work loose or fall out once again. The
Guitarist7 min read
Country King
It’s not easy to upstage Marty Stuart. Since 1989, when the Mississippi bandleader signed his star-making deal with MCA and set out to “put the image back into country”, he’s walked the boards in scarves, rhinestones and hand-stitched bolero jackets,
Guitarist3 min read
Green Fingers
We’re talking to a series of great guitarists about the Telecaster… “Well, I’ll find you someone who can play one! You really need to be a shit-hot player to make a Telecaster sound good. Particularly when playing lead. I never thought I did. I still
Guitarist10 min read
The Jet Stream
CONTACT Fender Musical Instruments EMEA WEB www.gretschguitars.com 1 These are the Gretsches that AC/DC’s Malcom Young made famous, aren’t they? Yes! The single-cut Jet was Gretsch’s answer to the Gibson Les Paul; the Duo Jet first appeared in 1953
Guitarist8 min read
Ariel Posen
The first (and most obvious) question we ask Ariel as we settle down for our chat is if his current tour is going well. “I’m definitely feeling the love,” he says. “We tend to try to come here annually and I guess because it’s been over two years of
Guitarist8 min read
Planets Suite
CONTACT Barnes & Mullins PHONE 01691 652449 WEB www.faithguitars.com 1 Hasn’t Faith been around for more than 20 years? No, Faith is the brand name of UK distributor Barnes & Mullins, whose neighbour in Oswestry, Shropshire, is Patrick James Eggle.
Guitarist6 min read
The Name Game
CONTACT PRS Europe PHONE 01223 874301 WEB www.prsguitars.com 1 As in the PRS? I thought they only made guitars… And amps, of course. But no pedals until now. These three are the Maryland brand’s first foray into a rather different world. 2 Why st
Guitarist6 min read
Rout One
Readers of this column will recall the ‘Quick-ish Connect’ system that I recently installed in that big ‘swimming pool’ rout, providing a versatile pickup-testing platform. And so the world is now my oyster – we do like a bit of choice in The Mod Squ
Guitarist5 min read
Mick Box
What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “My first guitar was a Telston semi-acoustic that my mother bought me when I was 14, and which I’ve still got hanging on my office wall. It was from a pawnbroker and it cost £12 and 1
Guitarist2 min read
Live Wire
While the current Professional series G6131T-62 Vintage Select ’62 Jet with Bigsby is the closest that modern Gretsch gets to the 1961 to ’69 double Jet, Malcom Young’s 1963 guitar – nicknamed ‘The Beast’ – differed with its Burns vibrato, which was
Guitarist3 min read
Measure Up
We’re all used to seeing and hearing 12-inch speakers (drivers) in guitar combos and cabinets, but these days 15s are quite rare to find and 10s can often wrongly be considered as cheap alternatives to their big brother the 12. In this article we’re
Guitarist6 min read
Impedance
The word ‘impedance’ is commonly used in the context of guitars, but how many of us understand what it actually means? In this issue’s column, we’ll steer clear of complicated equations and heavy electronics, and instead explore real-life scenarios.
Guitarist3 min read
’57 Gibson EDS-1275 Double 12 Prototype
“This is a pretty neat guitar. I stumbled across it almost by accident, but it has an amazing story. This is a prototype from ’57, with no serial number. It’s an EDS-1275 hollowbody with a spruce top. It has a Polaris White finish and features a six-
Guitarist3 min read
Gibson SJ-200
Gibson’s SJ-200 acoustic guitar first appeared in the 1930s. Around this time, Gibson and Epiphone were going head to head in a size war – each trying to outdo the other under the premise ‘bigger is better’ while equating instrument dimensions with p
Guitarist4 min read
Blues Headlines
Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs SSC, Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe, Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 10 mins per example IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE what it must have been like hearing Leslie West tear into his set with Mountain at Woodstock in 1969. The most en

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