Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 från Guitar Player

YOU HAVE WITNESSED a revolution. When Guitar Player made its debut 58 years ago in 1967, it marked a new era for guitar. For the first time, the instrument was celebrated in a regularly published magazine devoted to furthering guitarists, guitar gear and its makers, and guitar virtuosity. What founder Bud Eastman began laid the first stone of an empire that would go on to launch many other magazines — including Bass Player, Frets and Keyboard — publish books, release records and videos, and much more. Guitar Player’s success also opened the door for numerous other titles, including our sister magazine Guitar World, further enriching the lives of guitarists everywhere. And now our print run has come to an end. With this issue, Guitar Player will move fully online to GuitarPlayer.com, where…

MR. BIG HAS always blended dysfunction with virtuosity. That probably wasn’t the intent when bassist Billy Sheehan, vocalist Eric Martin, drummer Pat Torpey and guitarist Paul Gilbert got together in Los Angeles in 1988. In the years since, the hard-rock group has navigated music’s changing styles, from the shred badassery of their 1989 self-titled debut and 1993’s Bump Ahead to their hit power ballads “To Be With You” and “Just Take My Heart.” At the same time, they’ve endured more than their fair share of inner turmoil. Gilbert left in 1999 and was replaced by Richie Kotzen before Mr. Big called it quits for the first time, in 2002. But there’s something about the original quartet’s “occasional dysfunction” (as Gilbert calls it) that has kept them coming back for more.…

IN THE LATE 1950s, Gibson was in the last throes of trying to make its flagship Les Paul solidbody fly in a skeptical market. Adding a luscious sunburst finish in 1958 to the humbucking pickups that arrived in ’57 hadn’t quite done it, even if those same ingredients would in future decades make it one of the most desirable vintage guitars of all time. But the company must have felt confident about the semihollow archtop it introduced in ’58. The ES-335 wasn’t allowed to linger on its own for long before it was joined by not one but two more-deluxe variations on the theme: the top-of-the-line ES-355, introduced later in 1958, and the ES-345, introduced in 1959, which sat right between the “3” and the “5” in features and adornments.…

IF YOU WANT to find Diego Garcia these days, head to Marina Del Rey in California and look for the boat studio where he makes his home — and whose name, Panamerica, is also the title of the award-winning Spanish-born guitarist’s latest album under his performing moniker, Twanguero. “It’s like a small apartment for me,” Garcia, 48, explains. “I purchased it because rehearsal rooms are so expensive here in Los Angeles; it’s almost like renting an apartment on top of whatever you’re renting to live in. So I decided to buy a boat. It’s way cheaper. “I know Bob Dylan used to have a boat here, like two slips away. So if it was good enough for him…” Although it’s no competition for the larger yachts that populate the marina,…

“‘STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN’ … THAT’S WHERE THE DOUBLE-NECK CAME IN” IT WAS FALL 1970, and having finished much of the work on Led Zeppelin’s now-iconic Led Zeppelin IV, Jimmy Page turned his attention to a slew of upcoming tour dates beginning March 5, 1971. Though the album would not be released until November ’71, the band planned to debut future classics like “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “Going to California,” and the evocative piece that was to become their signature song: “Stairway to Heaven.” There was just one catch. “I was so involved in creating the guitar parts for ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ on the acoustic guitar and two [tracks of] electric 12-string” Page recalls in Jimmy Page: The Anthology, “that I hadn’t been thinking about how I was going to…

ON STAGE AT El Club, a respectably divey club in his hometown of Detroit, for a Cinco de Mayo show in 2022, Wayne Kramer was preparing to play something more than 50 years in the making — a new MC5 song. “Some bands take two years between albums,” Kramer told a packed house at what was, in fact, the first show by a new MC5 lineup. “Some bands take five years between albums. We take 50.” He then cranked up his famed American flag–painted Stratocaster to play the metallic riff that introduces “Heavy Lifting,” the title track from what is the first MC5 album since 1971’s High Time. It’s a 13-track set that fits the band’s legacy well. From its boldly topical lyricism to a guitar assault led by Kramer…

AS THE MODERN-DAY 2020s roll on, so do the inevitable semi-centennial anniversaries. By my math, that means it’s time to celebrate some now classic electric guitar moments from 1974. Speaking to the electric guitar itself, it was 70 years ago that the iconic Stratocaster was introduced by the Fender Electric Instrument Company. Just two years earlier, the Gibson Guitar Corporation gave the world the Les Paul. Fast-forward 20 years to 1974, when these now iconic instruments, along with others, were plugged into an assortment of tube-driven amplifiers to create musical moments that would be more than worthy of remembering today. Both the American and British guitar worlds were in full force, while the Canadian scene was finally beginning to boom. All three nations contributed albums that featured tunes with unforgettable…

ONE MIC TO rule them all? That’s the dream, and Universal Audio aims to achieve it with the SC-1, a condenser mic with Hemisphere software that models eight iconic microphones. The promise of such flexibility is appealing, not only for those on budgets but for anyone working in the field or far-flung places where you might be less inclined to use a pricey mic. That was my situation when I took the SC-1 along to a cabin in Yosemite National Park for some remote song-tracking sessions, running it through an Apollo Twin X Duo Thunderbolt interface. UA’s mic-modeling endeavors began in 2022 with its Sphere modeling software and a pair of microphones: the Sphere DLX, UA’s flagship dual-capsule modeling mic, and the smaller and more affordable Sphere LX. The technology…

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DISSECTING guitars as a teen and opening his own shop half a dozen years ago, Justin Abernethy has worked with several of the finest guitar makers in business today. All of that has inspired the Abernethy Sonic Empress THC, a guitar that reflects some of the most appealing trends of these offset-inspired times. The guitar shown here is not just any example of Abernethy’s cornerstone model but one built specifically for that icon of offset-leaning indie/alt/Americana, Jeff Tweedy, who kindly let GP divert it on the journey from its birthplace in Guadalupe, California, to the Wilco loft in Chicago, for a quick run through its paces. Although the rather Mustang-like upper bout and more bulbous lower bout may suggest otherwise, the Sonic Empress THC is made to a full…

I DON’T KNOW why, but for the past couple of years I didn’t listen to Prince. Then one day The Black Album found its way onto my turntable and it was like hearing an old friend, or maybe a great new undiscovered artist. I had forgotten how cutting edge, dangerous and deep his music was. It’s all there on The Black Album. I was once a Prince superfan, but my obsessiveness began to wane around the release of 1984’s Purple Rain. I preferred the underground funkiness of his early works, although the vibe of 1982’s 1999 and, my personal favorite, 1986’s Parade kept him as one of my inspirations. And yet, oddly, it’s The Black Album that has won out. It’s the Prince album I’ve listened to most, even if…

“FROM THE MOMENT I PLUGGED THE DOUBLE-NECK INTO THE SUPER DRAGON, IT WAS LIKE, ‘HALLELUJAH. WE FOUND IT. WE GOT IT” “We’re well charged-up!” Jimmy Page reports over the phone from New York City. Page has been in New York the previous few days meeting minds and making plans with his two chief collaborators in Sundragon, the boutique amp company he founded in 2017 with former Marshall/Vox executive VP and Park Amps chief Mitch Colby, and noted producer and vintage gear collector/curator Perry Margouleff. It was Margouleff who, among other things, famously rescued Page’s long-missing 1960 Gibson Les Paul “Black Beauty” from obscurity back in 2014. MARGOULEFF IS, PERHAPS above all things, a dedicated believer in the idea that music and audio history must be preserved. Sundragon’s mandate since its inception,…

IN LATE SPRING 1970, Jimmy Page did a rare thing: He performed on solo acoustic, without the other members of Led Zeppelin, on the BBC’s Julie Felix Show. Felix, an American folk singer from California, was nevertheless so popular in Britain at the time that she was dubbed “Britain’s First Lady of Folk.” Page, whose affection for folk music ran deep — in particular for fingerstyle guitar greats like Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and Doc Watson — performed a semi-improvisational medley combining his “White Summer” and “Black Mountain Side.” Both tunes, like the later Zeppelin epic “Kashmir,” are played in the evocative DADGAD modal tuning, popularized by Graham. Page’s guitar of choice for the Felix performance was a 1964 Gibson J-200, with the classic “Flowers & Vines” splayed pickguard, a…

THE NEW MC5 album is called Heavy Lifting, but that would have been an equally fine name for the just-released tome MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band. The book was painstakingly compiled by writers Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki using the late rock scribe Ben Edmonds’ recorded interviews with the proto-punk Detroit rockers. Tolinski and Uhelszki are no strangers to this territory. Both are Detroit natives who made their mark in rock journalism: Uhelszki as a co-founding editor of Detroit’s legendary Creem magazine, and Tolinski as the longtime editor of Guitar World magazine and the author of the celebrated rock tomes Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen, Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page, and Play It Loud. The duo inherited the project from Edmonds — a one-time…

SADLER VADEN’S NEW album, Dad Rock, is bursting with hooky, well-crafted tunes that recall the glory days of ’70s classic rock and power pop, but it still sounds fresh and vital. Every song is loaded with big guitar sounds — some bright and sparkly, others snaggle-toothed and gnarly — but they’re not buried in distortion. It’s one of those rare records that’s impossible not to like. And it doesn’t wear out its welcome: Its eight songs zip by in something like 40 minutes. All steak and no fat. “I’m not a fan of super-long records that just don’t know when to stop,” Vaden says. “I grew up on my dad’s record collection. He had all the great stuff from back in the day. Sure, there were some double albums that…

YOU CAN’T OWN so much as a smartphone today and not know about Russia’s relentless, unprovoked war against Ukraine. But back in the early 1970s, the U.S.S.R. was intact and relatively peaceful, and the Soviets had begun to produce fairly decent guitars. Made in Ukraine’s Odessa Factory of Musical Instruments, this Rhythm Solo is one of the standout guitars from that period — which is simply to say it’s one of the better-playing models from that corner of the guitar world, with a thinner-than-usual neck, three pickups and a Fender-esque shape… although that’s as far as the similarities go. WEIRDO FACTOR Compared to the bulbous and ornately decorated Russian guitars from this era, this guitar is rather sleek, with a thin, angular body and an art deco–inspired pickguard. There’s not…

ONCE IN A blue moon a player’s name becomes synonymous with an instrument for an era, and Jerry Douglas is on that extremely short list. He is to Dobro what Béla Fleck is to banjo, David Grisman is to mandolin, Ron Carter is to upright bass and Leo Kottke is to steel-string acoustic. Douglas is the modern standard, and he suddenly made history this summer when he was enshrined in the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Douglas has the requisite technical expertise in spades, but he didn’t earn his status simply by shredding. Douglas made his bones by being everyone’s first call and answering it with impeccable accompaniment instincts developed via a wealth of experience. His ability to play virtually anything earned him the nickname Flux, as reflected in the titles of…

FOR THE PAST few decades, Epiphone guitars have largely offered more affordable offshore-built alternatives to Gibson models, while generally being made with nearidentical shapes and specs, in the broad sense at least. The new USA Collection Coronet, however, takes us back to the original premise of the late ’50s and ’60s, when Epiphones were manufactured right alongside Gibson guitars in Kalamazoo but were often given their own brand-specific model designs. Shift the production site to Nashville and dial your way-back machine to 1959, and that’s largely what we’re looking at this month: a USA-made Epiphone Coronet that captures serious vintage vibe in a stripped-down yet unexpectedly versatile guitar. While the Epiphone USA Collection Coronet appears to be authentic, it isn’t a strict reissue, nor is it intended to be, although…