Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Guitar Player

THERE ARE MANY ways to approach the Beatles’ career: album by album, era by era, haircut by haircut. But the group’s choices of guitars and other gear is an especially enjoyable and revealing method for examining the development of their music and sounds. The period beginning in 1968 is particularly interesting, as it was then that some great new guitars and amps entered the picture during the making of the White Album. Come January 1969 and the recording of Let It Be, their gear lineup expanded with the addition of several pieces from Fender, including the company’s then-new silverface amps, which make a such a pleasing sight in the previews for director Peter Jackson’s new documentary, The Beatles: Get Back. This issue, we take a look at that gear and…

WHEN HE WAS 16, an age when most guitarists are still dreaming of playing their first high-school dances, Marcus Machado got a call to perform the National Anthem at an Orlando Magic NBA game before a sell-out crowd of 20,000. “I should have been nervous, but the truth is, I was elated,” he says with a laugh “The crowd actually helped me perform. Practicing in my bedroom, I had always imagined what it would be like playing to an arena full of people, so when I heard them cheering for me, it wasn’t scary at all. It was pretty magical.” In the years since his arena debut, Machado would be called to perform the National Anthem a few more times. One such appearance was at Madison Square Garden before a…

WHEN I OPEN a guitar magazine and see a photo of a guitarist with his shirt off, covered in Harley-esque tattoos, showing off his commitment to weightlifting with a guitar strap that places his guitar below his knees, I become uninterested. But when I see an attractive woman in an evening dress holding a jazz guitar like it’s an extension of her arms, I become very interested indeed. Mary Osborne was more than a pretty face. She was a great swinging jazz guitarist that every fan of swing guitar should hear. Born in 1921, Mary began playing guitar at age nine. At some point in her teens, she was influenced by seeing Charlie Christian perform Django’s “St. Louis Blues” note for note on electric guitar. She immediately purchased a Gibson…

One of Italy’s lesser-known ’60s offerings, the Mustang has a unique voice, thanks to its three single-coil pickups with global volume and tone knobs. The maple neck has 22 medium-jumbo frets and the feel of the larger Fender Jazzmaster, while the fully intonatable bridge has a mute that fits the palm. This was perhaps Italy’s answer to the more traditional-looking Stratocaster. The open tuners have tulip-shaped buttons, much like Hofners of the period, and the chrome whammy bar is inscribed with the guitar’s name.…

Guitarplayer Editors’ Pick IT SOMETIMES SEEMS like everybody and his cousin is making quality reproduction bolt-neck S- and T-style guitars. Yet when you get your hands on a great one, the results can be eye-opening and strangely enlivening. While I admit to feeling jaded sometimes, this K-Line Springfield arrived like a Lake Placid Blue bolt from the great beyond to remind me how inspiring the 67-year-old design remains, especially when it’s well put together and thoughtfully updated to suit the needs of contemporary players without watering down the vintage-correct tone and vibe. Chris Kroenlein began making his K-Line guitars as a sideline in 2004, buying bodies and necks from a third-party supplier. Since around 2010, however, he has put his considerable woodworking skills to good use. Today, his guitars’ bodies…

GuitarPlayer Editors’ Pick FENDER CONTINUES TO expand its line of unique ukes for the Artist Signature Series, and this time they got a little help from a fab friend. Dhani Harrison has worked with an expansive range of artists, from Wu-Tang to Jeff Lynne (who did a bit of Traveling with Harrison’s Wilbury papa, who was himself in an influential band from Liverpool). Dhani Harrison has impressive ukulele chops, and, like a lot of guitar players, he finds the uke is a handy writing tool. He enlisted Fender to develop a signature model well-suited to the stage. Harrison drew inspiration from Kamaka Ukulele of Hawaii, saying, “No two are the same, and each handmade individual is off the charts. My model is mass produced, so we asked ourselves, What is…

BY THE START of the 1990s, Matthew Sweet had released two critically acclaimed albums, 1986’s Inside and 1989’s Earth, but commercial success eluded him. That changed with the release of Girlfriend, issued in 1991, which established him as an alternative-rock star. The album cracked the upper half of Billboard’s Top 200, and its zippy title cut hit number 10 on the Mainstream Rock chart. A veritable guitar-lover’s paradise, Girlfriend features bravura six-string work courtesy of Sweet, Lloyd Cole and Ivan Julian, along with stunning solos performed by a pair of virtuoso aces: Richard Lloyd, formerly of Television, and the late Robert Quine, known for his work with Lou Reed, Brian Eno, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Among the album’s many gems is the pop-rock masterpiece “Evangeline.” Although never released…

DUANE EDDY HAS something only the greatest guitarists can claim: an instantly identifiable sound. The word twangy was coined to brand his sonic signature way back in the 1950s, and the tag has stuck ever since, thanks to its repetition in album titles like Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel and The ‘Twang’s’ the ‘Thang.’ Remarkably, a record company executive rejected his first single for “sounding like somebody trying to string telephone wire across the Grand Canyon” — which is a pretty cool description of Eddy’s magic. Awarded Guitar Player’s Legend award in 2004, Eddy was just the second recipient of the prize, beaten only by Les Paul the previous year. In the years before and since, he’s enjoyed no shortage of justly deserved accolades. With one of the longest careers…

GRETSCH HAS BEEN peppering the market with a plethora of models in the past few years. The Streamliner series offers a center-block version for players who desire some acoustic attitude but also want to crank the volume and/or distortion level without uncontrollable feedback. To that end, the G2627T (which is available only through Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend) sports a semihollow maple body with a spruce center block running the length of the body to reinforce the top while preventing nasty howling. Finished in gloss black with white binding and gold hardware, the test model presented a classy appearance. Cat’s-eye sound holes and a Bigsby tailpiece conspired to add some vintage Gretsch style to this otherwise modern update. Constructed of sustainable woods, the nato neck provides a sound similar to…

RICKENBACKER’S EXPLOSION IN popularity in the 1960s came courtesy of an unlikely and convoluted combination of circumstances: a British band selling a U.S.-made guitar back to the American audience, all thanks to an admittedly oddball model originally purchased in Germany. But while anything the Beatles laid their hands on made for an easy ride in the marketing department, the Rickenbacker 325 and its brethren proved to have a lot going for them in their own right. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Rickenbacker was born in the late ’50s or early ’60s, given the way its guitars hit the scene with John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles, the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and the Who’s Pete Townshend, among others. In fact, this manufacturer’s origins extend back to the very…

This is one of the more sought-after Japanese guitars of the ’60s. Featuring four pickups, it offers plenty of sound combinations, thanks to all those buttons and the rotary switch. Its skinny 22-fret maple neck plays fast, and it’s a good guitar for surf-style music. With distortion, it screams in a microphonic Link Wray kind of way, and it’s light and comfortable to play, thanks to the curvature of the German-style carved top and back.…

TELECASTERS WITH CUSTOMIZED hardware, electronics, finishes and so on have been a big part of Fender’s product line for years. The Jason Isbell Custom Telecaster is the latest model to be hybridized by mixing components from different eras, while also bringing all-new elements into the mix when deemed necessary by Isbell and the Fender design team. “I went with a few different Teles I really like and sort of put together my favorite features of each one for this guitar,” says the guitarist/singer/songwriter and beacon of the Americana scene. “I liked the look of the double-bound body on my Tele Custom from ’59 or ’60, and I have a Custom Shop version of it that I put a black pickguard on. We went with those things purely for the look.…

GuitarPlayerEditors’ Pick WHILE THEY’VE BE COME some of the most-respected pickups for high-end basses, Aero Instrument’s creations have remained a well-kept secret among six-stringers over their nearly three-decade run. If the likes of Darryl Jones and Juan Alderete are raving about the Aeros in their basses, you have to imagine they might do something special for guitars, and indeed they do. I first encountered Aero’s guitar pickups while reviewing a Lentz Jr. ReserveS for GP in 2016, and the single-coils on that Strat-like guitar were one of the most versatile and overtly expressive sets I’ve ever played. Founded in 1994, Aero pickups are made in Hilo, Hawaii, by proprietor Larry J. Pollack, who eschews the copyist road that so many winders take as they do their best to emulate vintage…