Music
guitar player
jackie venson-on emotive tones
jackie venson may be tagged as a “blues artist,” but the austin-born guitarist/composer doesn’t allow media labels to fence in her stylistic diversity.
3 min |
february 2017
guitar player
last man shredding
the ferocious legend that is buddy guy may be the final link to early chicago blues guitarists, but he’s not going quietly into that good night.
10 min |
february 2017
guitar player
big sky, cowboy chords, and telling stories
bob weir draws on his teenaged campfire performances for blue mountain.
7 min |
february 2017
Guitar Player
Pete Thorn's Session Essentials
IF YOU’VE PATROLLED YOUTUBE FOR cool gear demos, you’ve likely come across Pete Thorn, who is one of the video-sharing website’s most prolific product reviewers. But the tone-obsessed guitarist has also done studio sessions and/or worked stages with Chris Cornell, Courtney Love, Pink, Alicia Keys, Melissa Etheridge, and others. If anyone knows how to “give good tone” it’s Thorn, and here he reveals his must-have session gear.
3 min |
February 2018
Guitar Player
Mike Matthews On Celebrating 50 Years Of Electro-Harmonix
AS FOUNDER OF ELECTRO- Harmonix, Mike Matthews certainly deserves his 2012 Guitar Player Hall of Fame Award for Manufacturing Legend. But the man is also a force of nature. He’s someone I’d bet would laugh during a zombie apocalypse with unlit cigar in hand and a master plan for continued existence in tow—well, as long as the fish were still biting. His company has survived union thugs, bankruptcy, strong-arm tactics in its Russian tube factory, and five decades of competing in the roller-coaster-in-flames wild ride of the guitar industry.
3 min |
February 2018
Guitar Player
Three Ways To Get Terrific Speaker-Cab Tones At Home
TONS OF HOME RECORDISTS UTILIZE DIGITAL-AMP MODELS for their guitar tones, and they are simple and great-sounding solutions. However, at times, you might get a bug to explore some other tonal options that also work in personal-studio situations. Here are three relatively new tools I’ve tried recently, and I really dug the results.
2 min |
February 2018
Guitar Player
Corrado Rustici
Pushing the Boundaries of Sonic Invention.
7 min |
March 2017
Guitar Player
Machine Head
Powered by Classic Gear, Rick Nielsen Revs Up Cheap Trick’s Latest Release, We’re All Alright
8 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
A Season In Hell
Gretchen Menn Reinterprets Dante’s Inferno & Rethinks the Concept of an Instrumental Guitar Album
8 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
A Little Help From His Friends
Ricky Phillips, Eric Singer, and a Bevy of Guest Stars Help Finish Ronnie Montrose’s Last Album
6 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
Let It Flow!
Two Seemingly Disparate Guitar Geniuses Converge to Hail the Glories of Improvisation
10+ min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
Electro-Harmonix
Operation Overlord And Tone Corset.
2 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
BOSS BOX-40 40th Anniversary Box Set
IN 2014, WE PARTNERED WITH BOSS to produce a comprehensive digital resource entitled Guitar Player Celebrates 100 BOSS Compact Pedals. The staff was buried in specs, tones, and artist interviews for months, and we had a marvelous time getting first-hand access to the company’s Compact Pedal archives.
3 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
Celestion G12H-150 Redback And Limited Edition G12-35XC
CELESTION CONTINUES TO PUSH AN “it’s back” theme as a distinguisher of variations on classic guitar speakers, this time with the über-powerful 150-watt G12H-150 Redback ($169 street) topping out well above the Greenbacks and Creambacks of this world. Alongside it, the G12-35XC ($169 street) is a Limited Edition that applies the company’s cumulative knowledge to a new vintage-meets-modern take on the legendary Pulsonic cone. I tested each speaker in a 1x12 StoneAge cabinet with a Les Paul and a Stratocaster into JTM45-style and AC15-style amps.
3 min |
November 2017
Guitar Player
No Borders
Classical Guitarist Xuefei Yang Channels Bream, Bach, and Her Ancestors
4 min |