Innehållsförteckning för February 2026 från Guitar World

WHEN I GOT my copy of GW ’s year-end issue (also known as the January 2026 issue), I realized I had forgotten to include my own thoughts about the music that came out in 2025. So let me do that now! Besides being bowled over by the playing of Isaiah Sharkey, Pasquale Grasso, Muireann Bradley, Chris Buck and Ian Thornley, I appreciated On the Other End of the Line by Joyer, Absence of Something by the Collect Pond, Breathe Easy by Canyon Lights, Core Memory by Marble Sounds, Hot Shock by HotWax and Somos Los Straitjackets by Los Straitjackets. I also got a kick out of Robin Nolan’s For the Love of George, a collection of instrumental versions of George Harrison and Beatles tunes performed on Harrison’s own guitars. Speaking…

WHEN LENNY KRAVITZ released Circus, his fourth album, in 1995, he was coming off the back of the career-defining, global success of 1993’s Are You Gonna Go My Way. That album — and the single of the same name — saw him scoring huge success in every market around the world, maintaining his seemingly constant upward trajectory; his second album, 1991’s Mama Said, had already comfortably surpassed the impressive sales of his debut, 1989’s Let Love Rule. Kravitz and his longtime guitarist/collaborator, Craig Ross, sat down with Guitar World to revisit Circus, which has recently been rereleased as an expanded 30th-anniversary deluxe edition that sports a hefty helping of bonus tracks. Q Circus came on the back of the huge success of Are You Gonna Go My Way, which had…

AT 38, TEEMU Mäntysaari is Megadeth’s youngest — and newest — member. But don’t discount him — he was handpicked by Megadeth’s commander-in-chaos, Dave Mustaine, to carry on a lead-guitar legacy that includes Chris Poland, Marty Friedman and Kiko Loureiro. That’s not an easy task, especially given that part of said task includes helming the band’s six-string duties (besides Mustaine, of course) for their final studio album and tour. But Mäntysaari isn’t sweating it. “It was a pretty amazing process,” he says. “After I got the gig, Dave said, ‘If you have any ideas, it’s good to start saving them.’ By the end of the 2024 touring season, we started talking more and more about what we wanted to do.” Mäntysaari says that one of the first things Mustaine had…

TODAY, I’D LIKE to talk about the legacy of the legendary B.B. King, as 2025 marked what would have been his 100th birthday. I met B.B. in 1990 when I was 13 years old, and we became lifelong friends. He was the nicest and most generous person I’ve ever known. I recently recorded a tribute album in B.B.’s honor, Blues Summit 100. Sadly, he passed at the age of 89 on May 14, 2015, but he left behind a trove of the most essential and influential blues recordings of all time. Everything that I and most other blues and blues-rock influenced guitarists play, owes a tip to the hat to B.B. The title of my tribute album references the guitarist’s 1993 release Blues Summit, which features duets with Buddy Guy,…

Shining a light on The Midnight Special I CAME TO GW through my Guitar Player subscription — and I just renewed my GW subscription. I’m a 72-year-old retired Manhattan package design creative director and — since the Sixties — a guitarist and songwriter. GW content is diverse and informative. I enjoyed the recent article on 50 years of guitar-focused music on NBC’s Saturday Night Live [December 2025]. Here’s a suggestion for a similar feature: NBC’s The Midnight Special featured an eclectic range of guitar-focused bands during its 1972-to-1981 run. It’s terrific that Midnight Special broadcasts are now on YouTube, thanks to executive producer Burt Sugarman; the shows have been digitally remastered from the original 2-inch quad videotapes. So many notable bands and artists appeared on The Midnight Special, spanning numerous genres.…

Guitarist Reb Beach Guitar Ibanez WRB-3 GW Cover Date October 1990 This Interview June 2025 Photographer John Peden Q What’s the story behind this guitar, which seems to be the sequel to the Ibanez WRB-1? This is the red one, so it was the second one. This first one was called the WRB-1, and it had a really cool Winger graphic on it. This one — the second one — came out around 1990. Ibanez tried to do a lower-cost model with just a straight color. Candy Apple Red is still my favorite color, but it would’ve been so much cooler in black. I wish they did one like that. Q Was there a WRB-2? It’s a mystery. Nobody knows why the WRB-1 came out, and then the next guitar…

SEEING ICONIC GUITAR/DRUM duos like the White Stripes and the Kills left a big impression on Demi Demitro, the mastermind of the Velveteers’ off-kilter, grungy sound. Even before she picked up a guitar, she was already envisioning how her band would sound. “When I’d watch Meg and Jack White on stage, her just pounding away at the drums, and having those two pieces, it felt really inspiring,” Demitro says. The next move for the Boulder, Colorado, native was to up the stakes. “Eventually I thought, what would it be like if we added another drummer? And then it got fun. I just love the raw energy of that. It opened up more room for us to express our creativity.” Demitro’s vision for the Velveteers is split between her melodic instincts…

GUITARISTS NICK AND Shane Sullivan, who lead the East Coast-based shoegaze/bedroom pop band Joyer, credit their parents with providing them a solid musical education. “They were into so much music, starting with the Sixties and Seventies classic rock and stretching into the Nineties and alternative rock,” Shane says. “We heard all of it — everyone from the Beatles to the Feelies. I think that created a through-line for all the bands Nick and I got into on our own.” Nick points to bands like Velocity Girl, Yo La Tengo and Lillies as touchstones for tone and style. “The idea is to have more grit in the guitar solos, whenever possible” “We like how they’re able to blend a lot of different genres and sounds,” he says. “That’s important when you’re…

SINCE FOUNDING BIG Wreck in the early Nineties, Ian Thornley has filled his band’s songbook with arena-conquering melodies, Led Zeppelin-hailing heft and some of the most super-heroically knuckle-busting leads in contemporary hard rock. In other words, he’s a master auteur, and this only continues with the Toronto-based outfit’s latest album, The Rest of the Story. But behind every great writer is a great editor, which is how the new record’s subtly strummed “Laws of Man” escaped its Seagram’s Seabreeze-schmaltzy origins. Though the song is an acoustic outlier on Big Wreck’s eighth album, Thornley had initially sailed his way toward a mellow yacht-rock feel that “washed over you” with good vibes. Album producer Nick Raskulinecz (Deftones, Foo Fighters) just thought it was washed. “I came up with a really beautiful guitar…

BY THE SUMMER of 1974, King Crimson had reached critical mass. Albums like In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973) and Starless and Bible Black (early 1974) had seen the venerable British band reach the apex of proto-metal-meets-fusion-meets-prog. But tensions within Crimson’s ranks were escalating, leading to drummer Bill Bruford, vocalist and bassist John Wetton and guitarist and mastermind Robert Fripp entering the sessions for the heavier-than-heavy album, late 1974’s Red, on the precipice of spontaneous combustion. Lineup shifting, specifically the expulsion of violinist David Cross, had left Fripp feeling uneasy. This, along with the increasing sensation of needing to break away, manifested in Red’s ultra-heavy, yet still intellectually complex atmosphere. “The music is in the body,” Fripp tells Guitar World. “From there we…

KILLING IS MY BUSINESS… AND BUSINESS IS GOOD! COMBAT, 1985 Still bitter about being fired from Metallica, Dave Mustaine returned with a band fashioned from his own imagination. The songs were sharp and socially aware, while the music was surprisingly mature. Mustaine had immediately made his intentions clear — namely to take the thrash beast he’d helped create and give it a rounded metal education. It didn’t chart on the Billboard 200, but it was loved from the start. GUITARIST: CHRIS POLAND PEACE SELLS… BUT WHO’S BUYING? CAPITOL, 1986 Originally recorded for Combat Records, this was switched to the much bigger Capitol label, with the band given the budget to completely re-mix. The result is a true landmark album. Forget about thrash; here was Mustaine leading a charge through the…

DESPITE THE FALCON’S revered status, there’s been one major hurdle keeping this large hollowbody out of reach for many cash-strapped musicians: that hefty price tag. Thankfully, that’s all changed with the introduction of the newly revived, cut-price Synchromatic series. Nestled between the already-affordable Electromatic line and the premium Japanese-made Players Edition, the Synchromatic collection — featuring the Falcon and Nashville — finally brings this iconic guitar within reach for more players than ever. Built in China, this model boasts a 2.5-inch deep maple body with a Semi-Arc bracing design. And let’s not forget the must-have Bigsby, this one sports the B60 V-Cutout variation, of course. At the heart of this beauty is a set of Hi-Fidelity Filter’Tron pickups, promising to deliver that signature Gretsch chime that is synonymous with the…

A CHIEF CONSIDERATION when playing with a slide is the tuning. Many of our favorite slide players — Elmore James, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks — play slide almost exclusively in an open tuning, such as open E or G. One great benefit of using an open tuning is that you can lay the slide across the strings at a given fret and sound a pleasing major chord. But when playing slide in standard tuning, you don’t have that luxury and lose access to some of those familiar sounds. As a result, more attention and care is necessary in order to avoid unwanted sounds. You have to go “peckin’” to find the right ones! Therein lies the compromise: standard tuning limits your options for sounding groups of strings together,…

AS I STATED last month, my favorite band line-up is the guitar-bass-drums power trio. With the guitar being the primary chordal and melodic instrument in the ensemble, there are challenges inherent in the role. But with those challenges come great freedoms to direct the music however I might feel like doing at any given moment on stage. This is something I strive to take advantage of in just about every song I play with my trio. A great example of what I’m talking about here can be found in the title track to my 2022 EP Threw Me to the Wolves, which features both electric and acoustic versions of the tune. “Threw Me to the Wolves” is a song that I play at just about every live show, and in…

PAUL GILBERT “Fuzz Universe” ALTHOUGH HE’S MAINLY revered for his fiery fretwork and technical precision, Paul Gilbert puts as much dedication and thought into crafting musically appealing, memorable themes as he does being able to cleanly execute fast single-note lines. This gloriously rocking instrumental title track from the guitarist’s 2010 album showcases the long-fingered axman’s talents and brilliance as both a guitarist and composer, and serves as a fun masterclass for aspiring shredder-songwriters. When playing the song’s looping intro riff, which formally begins in bar 1 (the pickup notes during the quick fade-in are the last seven notes of bar 4), the first challenges you’ll encounter are frequent string skips and a five-fret span between the two notes played on the G string, which requires a wide reach and stretch.…

“NICE TO KNOW YOU” WORDS AND MUSIC BY BRANDON BOYD, MICHAEL EINZIGER, ALEX KATUNICH, JOSE PASILLAS II AND CHRIS KILMORE. © 2001 HV INCUBUS PUBLISHING. ALL RIGHTS CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT SECURED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC.…

READER ART OF THE MONTH If you’ve created a drawing, painting or sketch of your favorite guitarist and would like to see it in an upcoming issue of Guitar World, email GWSoundingBoard@futurenet.com with a .jpg or screenshot of the image. And (obviously...), please remember to include your name! DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH Jeff Harding HOMETOWN: Portland, OR GUITARS: 1984 MIJ Squier Strat, 2013 Gibson LPJ Les Paul goldtop, 2005 LTD M-1000, Jim Adkins JA-90 Telecaster, Squier Stratacoustic SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: AC/DC “Live Wire,” Rival Sons “Nobody Wants to Die,” Muse “Psycho” GEAR I WANT MOST: New Ultra 2 Strat HSS in Texas Tea, Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Rick Sweeney AGE: 62 HOMETOWN: Ipswich, MA GUITARS: PRS 24 SE, Mira and SE Zach Myers 594; Ibanez acoustic-electric 12 string; Fender…

IT SEEMS THAT Dave Mustaine’s wild heavy metal journey is ending via a final Megadeth album — January’s self-titled release — and a globetrotting tour. To that end, he tells Guitar World, “We have a lot of territories we need to play before we stop. We’ve got a lot of stops to get to so that we can see everybody. It’s more than just weekend-warrior stuff here in the States. We’re not just here traveling in a Winnebago.” [Laughs] It’s hard to imagine the metal landscape without Mustaine, a man whose playing is as fiery as his personality. Thankfully, those traits come across throughout Megadeth, meaning that Mustaine is going out with a massive bang — a bang that will punctuate a hell-raising career of music-making that’ll be remembered for…

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive has shown up at our door. At this point, we have to ask ourselves, “Have we hit the ceiling in the amount of Screamer-style overdrive pedals?” We could say yes, but there’s always room for improvement, right? So the question should be, “What’s different this time around?” With countless versions of the hallowed green box available, distinguishing between them while they fight for space on your pedalboard can be challenging. But since our place is already Screamer Central, let’s just unearth what’s new here. If you heed the gospel of certain YouTube content creators, you’ll find they frequently extol the virtues of the classic Japanese “Tube Screamers,” particularly the holy trinity of the TS808, TS9 and the TS10. To that end, Warm Audio is…

CRAFTING AN APPEALING guitar solo for a song is always a creative challenge. There are many different approaches one can take: Do I follow the chord changes so that the notes line up perfectly with the progression? Or should I simply strive to “be melodic,” like a singer, even if the notes are a little less “anchored” to each chord? For me, the best approach is usually to follow the “song within a song” compositional concept, while also being aware of what each chord in the progression affords me as a soloist. A good example of this can be heard in the track “Meditation,” from my 2020 album Elevated Music for an Elevated Mood. It’s a song that I play at most of my shows, and I know there are…

WHERE DEMAND FOR pedal effects grew exponentially during the early Seventies as musicians sought new sounds, many stomp box designers turned to the synthesizer for new inspiration. Mike Beigel was among the earliest engineers who realized that synth modules could easily be adapted into standalone effects. Although Guild hired Beigel to develop a synthesizer in the early Seventies, the project got canned, which inspired Beigel and former Guild chief electronics engineer Aaron Newman to form their own effects company, Musitronics, in 1972. Beigel and Newman developed the prototype for their first product, an envelope filter called the Mu-Tron III, during the summer of 1972, and it became an overnight sensation when Stevie Wonder used the effect for his supremely funky Clavinet riff on the hit “Higher Ground” released in mid-1973.…