March 2024

Guitarist

The Guitar Player's Bible

Guitarist2 min read
Don’t Sweat It (Too Much)
Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk Reading this month’s cover feature with John Squire, I was struck by a comment his album co-star Liam Gal
Guitarist1 min read
Editor’s Highlights
We take a look at a seminal 1960 Telecaster clad in Lake Placid Blue, whose finish predates the official debut of that colour by two years p124 Is it possible to get the custom shop vibe in a guitar under £1,500? Vintage’s ProShop makes a good case o
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 EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jamie Dickson jamie.dickson@futurenet.com ART EDITOR Darren Phillips darren.p
Guitarist5 min read
Golden Brown
We first heard about Shropshire‑based luthier Rich Jones in early 2023 when he visited our studios bearing two of his recent builds, an OM and parlour. The subsequent review was enthusiastic, to say the least, as we were extremely impressed by both t
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Power Of Three
Mark Tremonti is one of PRS’s most prolific and dedicated artists; his boundless talents are more than one or even two bands can satisfy. Having found global fame with Creed, Tremonti went on to form Alter Bridge in 2004 with Myles Kennedy, followed
Guitarist8 min read
Standard Shimmers
Production-style methodology has always been at the heart of PJD: clean craft and design, well executed and far from expensive. In fact, its new Standard range – which kicked off in 2023 and includes the single-cut Carey, the S-style Woodford, the or
Guitarist3 min read
Face Lift
The last Flattley pedal we looked at was The Ace tone booster in issue 495 but now the company has returned with a closely related release. The brand says this new version of its DG Fuzz is effectively a double pedal: a 60s-style fuzz that now incorp
Guitarist3 min read
Air Supply
Since its introduction in 2016, Boss’s Katana range has become a byword for quality, affordable guitar amplification, with products to cater for every need, from the flagship Katana-Artist to the Katana-Air desktop combo, the world’s first totally wi
Guitarist3 min read
Vibe ’n’ Drive
The sound of a Uni-Vibe combined with dirt (whether that be a driven amp, a fuzzbox or a combination of both) is one of those classic rock tones that is instantly familiar. Eventide has attempted to capture that in a single DSP-based pedal by includi
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The Wishlist
CONTACT Hammett Guitar Co WEB https://hammettguitarco.com Based in the Cotswolds, Pat Hammett draws his design inspiration from the 50s and 60s, and while that includes models such as his Razor, which is based on the perennial favourite, the Gibson L
Guitarist4 min read
Gas Supply
CONTACT Various WEB See below Welcome to 2024 where, following a few years of slight disruption to our regular influx of new year releases, we now find ourselves in something of a NAMMdemic. By the time you read this, the world will once again have c
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Albums
Provogue/Mascot Label Group (release date: 1 March) 9/10 With health problems now firmly behind him, the unbreakable blues master returns If anyone deserves the epithet ‘veteran bluesman’ here in the 21st century, it’s Walter Trout. He’s been an es
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Fretbuzz
Album: Train Track Worktapes (EP; Sony Music) Tenille Townes has been on the country music scene for many years, steadily gathering a fanbase and releasing music with her first collection, Real, dropping in 2011. 2022’s mini-album, Masquerades, saw a
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Unsung Stars Of Music
One of the interesting things about playing in the band of someone well known, as I have been fortunate enough to do for many years, is that occasionally we get to do a special gig. Take December of last year. Marty Wilde is a member of the SODS, or
Guitarist6 min read
Tones Behind The Tracks
Album: The Wolves Are Coming (Atomic Gemini/Forty Below Records) After the release of his seventh solo record, Spirit Rising, in 2020, Philip Sayce took to the internet to promote it in lieu of being able to play live during the pandemic. Incredibly,
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Knock On Wood
Let’s make this clear from the outset: I am a wood addict, a self-confessed ‘dendrophile’. 13 years of guitar making has made me this way compounded by an already unhealthy addiction to playing and collecting guitars, so maybe you’ll be able to relat
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Attachment Theory
It’s hard to pinpoint the time when the belief that glue is good and bolts are bad took hold. The cynic in me might suggest that it was instigated, or at least propagated, by some traditionally minded guitar manufacturers in response to a Californian
Guitarist2 min read
Rock ’n’ Roll Endings
When rock ’n’ roll was being invented, the guitars used were often the hollowbodies that were originally designed for jazz – just check out early photos of Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry and, of course, Eddie Cochran. In many cases, the harmonic sophistic
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Tell Me Straight
Keith Richards once humorously quipped, “Guitar is easy – all it takes is five fingers, six strings and one asshole.” Yes, easy perhaps, but few have wielded the instrument with as much imagination, grit and panache as the legendary Rolling Stone him
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Denny Laine 1944 – 2023
DENNY LAINE 29 October 1944 – 5 December 2023 Brian Frederick Hines was born in Tyseley, Birmingham, later adopting the stage name Denny Laine, the surname chosen to reflect his sister’s love of pop crooner Frankie Laine. He took up the guitar ear
Guitarist6 min read
Feedback...
VALVE PRESSURE? Interesting comment made in issue 506 in the article The Future Of Valves. The writer says: “Valves wear out, while DSPs don’t” and while that’s technically true, it’s more than a little misleading. Valves do wear out, but if looked a
Guitarist14 min read
What The World Is Waiting For
This must be the place. Deep in the sheep-sprinkled Cheshire moorlands, behind an unassuming farmhouse door, a creative whirlwind awaits us. Model aeroplanes swoop from the rafters. Craft knives, toy robots, aerosols and half-finished energy drinks j
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History Repeating
One of the most striking developments in the guitar market has been the emergence of high-end Les Pauls that command the kind of prices that, just a few years ago, original 60s or even 50s examples used to cost. Built as part of limited-run ranges su
Guitarist9 min read
Custom Dreams
CONTACT John Hornby Skewes PHONE 01132 865381 WEB www.vintageguitarsrus.com 1 What’s the deal? Simple: the UK ProShop takes a standard Vintage lookalike and upgrades it, typically with an aged-looking nitro finish and premium parts. Originally, thes
Guitarist5 min read
Call In The Pros
The Vintage brand celebrated its 25th anniversary back in 2020 and today exports its wide range of inspired-by models worldwide. As the company’s success proves, there are an awful lot of us that buy and play budget instruments. This writer’s V62 was
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Krautster Craft
The dilemma for any guitar maker – large or small, new or old – is whether they, ahem, borrow someone else’s design or plough a new furrow. Many brands do both, of course. We’re not talking about creating a counterfeit, but the classic shapes from th
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Über Huber
CONTACT Nik Huber Guitars WEB www.nikhuber-guitars.com 1 Is this actually a new guitar? Well, officially, it’s a new model. For the past 15 years the Krautster I and II have primarily used Nik Huber’s single-cut Les Paul Junior/Special-inspired Orca
Guitarist7 min read
Reet Petite
CONTACT Electro-Harmonix WEB www.ehx.com 1 Didn’t we just see these a few issues back? No, those were the Nano pedals, which are basically smaller, more pedalboard-friendly versions of larger Electro-Harmonix pedals. These Pico pedals are the same s
Guitarist8 min read
For The Roses
In recent years, we’ve seen more than a few canny luthiers – such as Dennis Fano and Patrick James Eggle – blend together elements from classic vintage guitars to create modern electrics that are built to an exacting contemporary spec yet sound and f
Guitarist5 min read
Pablo Van De Poel
What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “When I was eight years old, I started saving up for my first guitar, and then on my ninth birthday my grandma paid the extra 50 euros that I needed to buy a Squier Affinity Seri
Guitarist6 min read
Huw Price’s NittyGritty
Gibson acquired the Epiphone company in 1957, along with all the tooling, and shipped everything over to Kalamazoo when production ceased on the East Coast. At that time, the quality of Epiphone guitars was on a par with Gibsons and – according to Gi
Guitarist3 min readMathematics
Material World
There is an ever increasing narrative that the wood or materials your speaker cabinet is made of don’t make a difference. I’m not entirely sure where this started, but I have a feeling the two main culprits are YouTube and some cabinet design theory.
Guitarist3 min read
1960 Telecaster
“This guitar has a very interesting backstory because it’s a 1960 Lake Placid Blue Telecaster that was owned by Alvino Rey. He was a fantastic multi-instrumentalist and an electronics pioneer who was involved with developing pickups and effects for e
Guitarist4 min read
Blues Headlines
Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 20 mins per example LONNIE MACK is something of an unsung hero in the development of the modern guitar solo. He had a somewhat chequered career, reportedly through being dif

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