Guitarist

If you were paying attention to the news in the past few weeks, you might have come across a rather startling headline. This year, a Grammy – the music world’s equivalent of an Oscar – for Song Of The Year was awarded to celebrated guitarist and sing

We have a rich industry of guitar makers here in the UK, but not all of their fabulous instruments can be classed as affordable. Well, affordability is the premise behind C9 Custom Guitars: a partnership between experienced production guitar speciali

CONTACT: Taylor Guitars PHONE: 00800 23750011 WEB: www.taylorguitars.com C-Class Bracing Taylor’s V-Class bracing set a new standard for acoustic internals upon its launch. However, the C-Class bracing pattern (pictured above right) is designed speci

CONTACT Gibson WEB www.gibson.com BB King’s 1965 album Live At The Regal is a landmark in so many respects. Even though by this time blues artists such as Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and others had released live albums, BB’s masterpiece

Some years ago Mick Taylor (of That Pedal Show fame) and I did a few gigs as an acoustic duo, and sometimes as a trio with our late lamented bassist friend Roger Newell. The three of us also had a decent pub rock band with another mate on drums. On o

It’s one thing knowing a chord – but quite another knowing that chord so well that you can visualise a version of it wherever you are on the fretboard, whether for the purpose of accompaniment or to draw ideas from for melodic soloing or chord overdu

STAY OR GO? Halfway through a 40-year career with a well-known aircraft manufacturer, the company gifted me my choice of an Epiphone 335-alike. I’d been wrangling a dreadnought since childhood and fancied some electric blues. With a familiar fretboar

Based in the West Midlands and run by Rod and Lou Boyles, Pinegrove produces straps handmade from the finest leather, tanned using traditional methods with natural vegetable extracts. Each strap is unique and comfort is key – the wide designs ease th

Matt Gleeson, founder of Monty’s Guitars, is a professional tone-tweaker to the bone. From his hand-wound pickups, to the upgraded wiring looms and specialist capacitors Monty’s sells, his daily round is devoted almost exclusively to making guitars s

Being asked to write a piece on Tom Verlaine just after his passing at the relatively young age of 73 is very daunting. It feels hard to write about a hero and I want to do him justice. Recently, we’ve also sadly lost Jeff Beck, Keith Levene and Wilk

Do you have a particular way of dialling in amps to sound good? “There are loads of different ways to do this, depending on what you want to achieve. A lot of people get things like Super Overdrives, Tube Screamers and Klons and use them into a clean

While the Rapier 22’s minihumbuckers are a pretty standard humbucking design, designer Alan Entwistle shares some additional info with us: “Each coil uses a steel blade polepiece and a ceramic bar magnet, and they’re wound with 44 AWG wire.” Meanwhil

All microphones are transducers and their sole purpose is to turn acoustic energy into electrical energy in the form of an alternating current. As guitarists, we use microphones to capture the sounds of our acoustic and electric instruments for recor

At first glance, the 1959 debut Melody Maker closely resembles the original single-cut, sunburst-finish Les Paul Junior introduced earlier in 1954. Similarly constructed using a mahogany slab-body and neck with an unbound 22-fret Brazilian rosewood ’

“I have all the history on this guitar. It’s an interesting story. Back in 1998, the original owner – a guy by the name of Verlin Whitford – sent me photos of it. On the back of a photo, he’d written ‘1951 Tele and original case’ along with his name