CATEGORIES

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.

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.

big sky, cowboy chords, and telling stories

bob weir draws on his teenaged campfire performances for blue mountain.

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.

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.

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.

Corrado Rustici

Pushing the Boundaries of Sonic Invention.

Machine Head

Powered by Classic Gear, Rick Nielsen Revs Up Cheap Trick’s Latest Release, We’re All Alright

A Season In Hell

Gretchen Menn Reinterprets Dante’s Inferno & Rethinks the Concept of an Instrumental Guitar Album

A Little Help From His Friends

Ricky Phillips, Eric Singer, and a Bevy of Guest Stars Help Finish Ronnie Montrose’s Last Album

Let It Flow!

Two Seemingly Disparate Guitar Geniuses Converge to Hail the Glories of Improvisation

Electro-Harmonix

Operation Overlord And Tone Corset.

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.

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.

No Borders

Classical Guitarist Xuefei Yang Channels Bream, Bach, and Her Ancestors