Innehållsförteckning för March 2025 från Guitar World

ANOTHER MONTH, ANOTHER major guitar auction. It seems they’re cropping up all over the place these days, doesn’t it? The David Gilmour auction is still fresh in our memories (OK, my deranged memory), and — more recently — we saw Rory Gallagher and Mark Knopfler’s collections go “the way of the hammer” (both in 2024). And let us not forget about George Harrison’s Hamburg-era Futurama, which sold for $1.27 million in November; John Lennon’s Help!-era Framus 12-string, which went for $2.8 million in May; Eddie Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” Kramer ($3.9 million in 2023); Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Fender Mustang ($4.5 million in 2022) and Eric Clapton’s “The Fool” Gibson SG ($1.2 million in 2023). Hey, I could go on; I haven’t even mentioned the Fender American…

DEEP SEA DIVER’S “Billboard Heart” music video is pure eye candy. Filmed out in the wide-open expanses of eastern Washington state, it finds guitarist-vocalist Jessica Dobson wandering deserted highways framed by cerulean skyscapes and a stunningly panoramic mountain view. Another sight to behold is the vintage Silvertone S-shape the bandleader is strumming unplugged throughout. How the thing actually sounds is anybody’s guess — Dobson’s included. “I got that the week before we made the video,” Dobson says. “Peter [Mansen, drummer] found it in the back of a very large Seattle Goodwill that’s like a warehouse. It was all beat up on the back, but everything else was intact. I actually have literally never plugged that guitar in. I probably should!” When it comes to Deep Sea Diver’s forthcoming, as-yet-untitled fourth…

DIAMOND ROWE CO-FOUNDED heavy metal band Tetrarch with high-school friend Josh Fore when they were still teenagers in Atlanta. At the time, Rowe could only imagine the type of success the band has now experienced, which includes a string of well-received albums and EPs and sharing stages with the likes of Avenged Sevenfold, Sevendust and others. “As a kid you’re like, ‘That would be so sick,’” Rowe tells Guitar World. “But it’s all just a dream.” Another thing that was just a dream? Having her own signature guitar model. But like many things in Rowe’s musical life, that dream is now reality, in the form of the Jackson Pro Series Signature Diamond Rowe DR12MG EVTN6. “I’m honored,” she says of the impressively spec’d electric. “To see it come to fruition…

IT WAS DECEMBER 2023, and backstage at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, Johnny Marr was wrestling with a dilemma. Playing the same venue the night before with a 30-piece orchestra, he’d turned to a Martin D-28, of the kind that propelled him to Eighties stardom in the Smiths, and gifted him classics like “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Now, flanked by elite classical musicians and facing an expectant hometown crowd for the second show, Marr found himself debating whether to give a trial by fire to the prototype of his new signature Martin M-7, which was delivered half an hour earlier. As the man who jumped from that most cherished of British indie-rock bands with no safety net in 1987, perhaps it’s no surprise to learn that Marr took…

WHEN GUITAR WORLD reaches the alternative metal icon — and founding guitarist of Alice in Chains — he’s been running the press gauntlet on a rare day off from his summer tour supporting U.K. rockers Bush. This is Cantrell’s fourth call in as many hours, and while he’s more than willing to dig into the meat of I Want Blood — the guitarist’s sensationally snarling new solo album — he also notes that talking about himself for so long has worked up an appetite. In an admission befitting the record’s insatiable title, he says he’s ripping into a steak the second he wraps the interview. Sure enough, there’s a ton of bite to I Want Blood, too. That much was clear once Cantrell unveiled first single “Vilified,” a brooding-but-teeth-bearing attack…

TODAY, I’D LIKE to talk about an unsung hero of rock and roll, the great Lowell George of Little Feat. This past summer, I was very lucky to have purchased his Dumble Overdrive Reverb amplifier. Its 4x12 cabinet came with Altec speakers, which I don’t normally like, but when I plugged in my Strat and played some slide through it, that sound that Little Feat fans know and love was there. Lowell had his own fantastic slide style, in the realm of my other two slide guitar favorites, Ry Cooder and David Lindley. All three guitarists have similar traits, in regard to their overall sound and mastery of a crystal clear, melodic approach. For these examples, my guitar is in open A tuning (low to high: E, A, E, A,…

“JADED” Spiritbox THE BRAINCHILD OF guitarist Mike Stringer and vocalist Courtney LaPlante, Spiritbox’s distinctive brand of modern prog-metal has garnered wide appeal among guitarists and non-guitarists alike. This dramatically powerful song features several highly syncopated and relentlessly intense riffs, all of which Stringer performs on his seven-string guitar, with its low B string tuned to “drop-A.” Additionally, he tunes all seven strings down a minor 3rd, or one and one half steps, resulting in a tuning that many refer to as “drop-F#” — low to high: F#, C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#. If you watch the highly revealing play-through video of “Jaded” that Stringer posted on YouTube, you’ll see that, amazingly, he down-picks/strums most of the song’s riffs, which demands a great deal of pick-hand agility and stamina. The…

REGARDLESS OF PERSONAL struggles, coping with the war-torn streets of Ukraine or trying to make a name for himself in Nashville, guitarist, producer and Instagram star Aryan King always had a dream: to own a real-deal Gibson — and to make it sing. “Gibson had always represented a dream from my childhood,” he says. “A Gibson is like a ’69 Dodge Charger; it’s a beautiful, high-quality classic that can handle just about anything you throw at it.” Beyond his love for Gibsons, King — who was born in Spain and spent time in Poland, loves rock and blues, and was immersed in flamenco guitar from a young age — spent his life bouncing from place to place in the name of protecting his family. Music often took a backseat, but…

IT WAS PURE chance that led to Joe Knaggs becoming a guitar builder. He started his career working at a finishing plant, overseeing the final touches for everything from cars and hospital ductwork to furniture for the White House. Then one day he got the call that changed his life — an offer from Paul Reed Smith to join the finishing team at his boutique workshop. It was an opportunity too good to refuse. Knaggs’ responsibilities exponentially grew within the company, until one day he decided to part ways and start his own brand. Since launching in 2009, Knaggs Guitars has become one of the most respected independent luthiers in America, highly lauded for their ability to create bespoke instruments that look every bit as good as they sound. Have…

THE FIRST SHOT I had at joining a big act happened while I was living in San Francisco, sometime in the late ’80s. Ozzy Osbourne was looking for a guitarist to replace Jake E. Lee, and someone recommended me to his wife and manager, Sharon. She called and offered to fly me to Los Angeles for an audition. I was thrilled that someone in Ozzy’s camp had even heard of me and was willing to pay my airfare to hear me play. As great as they are, Ozzy’s and Black Sabbath’s songs are way easier to play than anything by [my band] Cacophony. I had no problem learning them, and then I over-practiced until I was so confident I could have played the songs fluidly in the middle of an…

AS FUNNY AS this sounds, when a brand sends me a new guitar model outfitted with only one pickup, I say to myself, “That’s bold.” Releasing a spartan guitar like the Xotic XSS Super S-Style seems like such a throwback to a time when a guy with the initials EVH changed the entire guitar-world landscape by playing guitar with a solitary humbucker and making every guitarist around the globe realize that might be all we need. Be that as it may, today’s players crave switching options and multiple tonal colors achieved by having more than one pickup. That being said, I’ve spoken too soon. Even though the guitar I received is an H-model, fortunately, the Xotic XSS is also offered in two other pickup combinations (HSS and HSH) for the…

IF YOU WANT that “symphony orchestra in your hands” sensation that only a 12-string acoustic can provide, my mantra is “go big or go home.” That usually means a jumbo or dreadnought model. If dreadnought is your preference, a Martin 12-string is a wise choice as they not only invented and perfected the dreadnought acoustic but they’ve also been making 12-string acoustics longer than any other company on the market today — just over 60 years, as a matter of fact. The Martin D-X2E Brazilian is an affordably priced 12-string acoustic-electric that delivers incredible value and should induce serious consideration from guitarists looking to add some 12-string magic to their stage and studio performances. Build Quality & Playability You may have read the word “Brazilian” then looked at the price…

LAST MONTH, I presented a shuffle rhythm pattern for a standard 12-bar blues in the key of G, with some inversions of dominant 7th chords that had the 3rd, 5th or 7th in the bass instead of the root, which create a harmonically rich sound. This month, I’d like to demonstrate a soloing approach over this rhythm part, using both major and minor pentatonic scales, as well as some chromatic notes. FIGURE 1 illustrates the solo: bars 1 and 2 are based on the G minor pentatonic scale (G, Bb, C, D, F) and the G blues scale (G, Bb, C, Db, D, F) with the additional inclusion of the 6th, E and the 2nd, A. In bar 3 into bar 4, I switch to playing lines based on G…

FOURTEEN YEARS INTO their career making bluesy roots rock as Larkin Poe, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell had their biggest 12 months yet in 2024. Coming off an album cycle that saw their sixth full-length studio release, 2022’s Blood Harmony, earn their first Grammy and third Number 1 on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart, the Lovells walked away with confidence and swagger to spare. “It does give you a little bit of a confidence boost to say, ‘Okay, my opinions are valid,’ so then the next time you go in the studio, you hold that in your head a little bit,” Megan says. For Rebecca, the takeaway from those experiences — plus a world tour, a plum spot on Slash’s S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival and winning the Americana Music Award for Duo/Group of…

The following is a preview of the upcoming Jeff Beck biography Blow by Blow by Brad Tolinski & Chris Gill, scheduled for release in October by Grand Central/Hachette Books. JEFF BECK’S BLOW by Blow shouldn’t have been a success. By all accounts, it was a huge risk, even in the heady, more musically adventurous era of the mid Seventies. It was an instrumental album — an instrumental jazz album. Perhaps oddest of all, it was an instrumental jazz album by a rock guitarist, which meant that it ran a highly possible risk of alienating rock and jazz audiences alike. And even though Epic Records released separate singles of three songs from the album in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., none of the songs became hits. Yet audiences in the United…

WAY BACK IN the dark ages (a.k.a. the Eighties), there were two distinct types of guitar shredders who occupied opposite sides of the spectrum: the hard rock player whose weapon of choice was a super Strat versus the country picker who inevitably opted for a Telecaster. The lines were clearly drawn, and never the twang shall meet. Over the years we’ve seen a lot of cross-pollination as far as players and styles go, but guitars that crossed that gap were few and far between... until now. The new Caparison Dellinger-JSM V2 is a signature model designed with Killswitch Engage’s Joel Stroetzel that merges the sexy asymmetrical cutaway curves of a super Strat with Tele-style appointments like a fixed bridge, chrome control plate with three-way blade switch and master volume and…

ONE OF THE more difficult techniques to master on the guitar is performing fast arpeggios, often played as a series of single notes on adjacent, and sometimes non-adjacent, strings. The term “arpeggio” means “broken chord,” as the chord tones are played individually, in succession, as opposed to all at once. Arpeggios are found in virtually every style of music, from the classical études of JS Bach to blues, jazz, country and bluegrass. They’re especially integral to the Gypsy-jazz style, as exemplified by the music of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. My latest album, Charisma, includes a track called “Master Gracey’s Manor,” which is built from a combination of classical-style arpeggios and Gypsy-jazz-flavored minor melodies. The tune was inspired by the music of film composer Danny Elfman, known for his work…

ONE OF THE most important soloing approaches I rely on is “call and response.” The concept involves phrasing development: I’ll start with a simple melodic idea and then develop it and try to get the most musical mileage out of it. For me, it’s not enough to play an idea once and then move on to something else. I’d rather develop my initial phrase and then morph it into 10 different, thematically connected ones. Using call-and-response phrasing can help give a solo balance, direction, focus, and clarity of intent. I think of it as a way of having a musical conversation without abandoning the script. FIGURE 1 offers an example of how to start with a simple idea and then develop it via subtle variations. Using notes from the E…

IT’S PRETTY DAMN cool that the very first commercially produced solidbody electric guitar, the Fender Esquire, can still kick serious butt today; you can’t say that about too many 75-year-olds. Many guitarists often forget that the Esquire came before the Telecaster and that a two-pickup version of the Esquire, which came a few months after the single-pickup version, was essentially the first Broadcaster/Nocaster/ Telecaster. But here I’m just going to focus on the single-pickup version. Featuring just one single-coil pickup in the bridge position, a volume knob and a tone knob, the Esquire seems like a no-frills minimalist design. However, if you look closely you’ll notice it also has a three-position blade switch. Instead of the usual pickup switching function, this switch ingeniously provides access to three different wiring configurations…