Innehållsförteckning för March 2025 från Guitarist

Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk The revered American choreographer and dancer Martha Graham once said, “No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.” I was reminded of the quote reading this month’s cover story with Brian May – the polymath guitarist who built his own instrument and then persevered, along with the rest of Queen, as early sceptics dismissed the band’s chances of breaking through to mainstream success with their unique, flamboyant and brilliant sound. Unlike most other guitar bands of the era, there was very little blues in Queen’s brand of rock, outside of May’s repertoire of expressive bends. Instead, there was an operatic grandeur…

After dialling into George’s workshop, a quick ‘How are you?’ evokes: “I’m extremely busy! We’ve got about seven different projects going on at the minute. That’s kind of okay, but I’m 73 now,” he says with a laugh. Once again, we’re thinking, ‘Where have those years gone?’, but it’s that distant past that informs the design of this latest Lowden electric, the GL-J. “In terms of playing, both the original GL-10 and this new GL-J are just as accessible up in the higher positions, so it wasn’t to do with the accessibility,” George explains. “It was really the fact that when I was a teenager I was very much a fan of Cream and Peter Green and plenty of other players, but my dream guitar, which I couldn’t afford, was…

Artist: Mary Spender Album: Super.Sexy.Heartbreak (Self-Released) You wouldn’t wish the inspiration behind Mary Spender’s Super.Sexy.Heartbreak. on anyone. The acclaimed British singer-songwriter and content creator has undoubtedly suffered for her art (these 11 tracks chronicle the status of her smashed heart across a lifetime of failed relationships). But having caught the spark at producer Pau Romero’s BeatGarden studio in Barcelona, the result is one of the great modern break-up albums: a minutely observed journey of hurt and healing, with faint shades of Joni Mitchell, Mark Knopfler and Fleetwood Mac in its shimmering sounds and twisty fingerstyle. Tell us a little more about the concept behind Super.Sexy.Heartbreak. “I guess the title makes it clear that I’ve experienced some heartache in my time. Some of these songs I wrote when I was, like,…

As regular readers of this column will know, sometimes we focus on very specific topics and sometimes we meander a bit more freely across the topic of guitar tone. Recently, I picked up the phone to one of the most knowledgeable tone-smiths on the British scene, Dan Coggins. Dan was the designer behind the highly influential Lovetone effects pedals from the 1990s, and today he’s a frequent collaborator with ThorpyFX and designer of the Gear Of The Year-winning Dinosaural Cogmeister overdrive. What fewer people may know, however, is that he’s also a valve-amp maven with years of meticulous repair and restoration experience under his belt. So while we were chatting, I took the opportunity to draw on his know-how regarding the myths and realities of how to get the most…

At the turn of the millennium – and not for the first time in rock history – there was nowhere cooler than New York City. For the hipsters rifling vinyl crates in the East Village thrift stores, the essential soundtrack was Is This It by The Strokes, all trash-can guitars and curled-lip anthems howled through a glitchy microphone. But in the wee small hours, when the city fell to ink and neon, Interpol came out to play. Debuting in 2002 with Turn On The Bright Lights, these four sharp-suited shadowmen made music that sounded like rain on a coffin lid, with frontman Paul Banks’ sombre proclamations met by the desolate, delay-clad riffing of Daniel Kessler. But it was 2004’s follow-up, Antics, that stands as arguably Interpol’s greatest work to date,…

In the past, G3 tours have found many esteemed masters of shred take to the stage to thrill audiences worldwide. Players such as Steve Morse, Paul Gilbert, Yngwie Malmsteen, Uli Jon Roth and many more have sent flurries of 32nd notes out into the ether in the name of fretboard finesse. But way back in the mid-90s it was Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson who started the G3 ball rolling. Last year, the three reassembled for a sell-out tour that has resulted in the album G3 Reunion Live, restating their preeminent position in guitar’s hall of fame. You could say that if members of this particular G3 incarnation were The Beatles, then Eric Johnson would almost certainly go down in history as being The Quiet One. Never one…

West Valley Guitars Custom £2,450 (inc case) EMAIL info@westvalleyguitars.co.uk WEB www.westvalleyguitars.co.uk If there were a perfect path for the modern guitar-maker, it might well include touring Europe and the UK with a band, learning to become a furniture maker, then realising making guitars sort of combines both worlds! Such was the journey of West Valley Guitars’ Josh Stopford. Along with running a busy repair shop and guitar setup courses, he’s evolved the design we see here through several prototype models to form the basis of his stock and to-order builds. “I wanted the design to feel familiar, especially to Fender players,” Josh tells us, “so there are definite references: for example, the position of the leg cutaway to the nut. But I always loved offset guitars, too, so I wanted…

In the wide world of modding, there are plenty of topics and techniques to cover – yet once again I find myself discussing setups. It seems this most basic of DIY skills is uppermost in plenty of players’ minds. Nick Gassman dropped The Mod Squad an email illustrating some very valid concerns. “I thought the points in Dave’s article were well made. I recently bought a PRS SE partly because they have a reputation for being consistent and playable out of the box. I’m not an expert on guitar setup and so I rely on magazines like yours and the guys in my local shop to help me with such things. “While I can understand you have a relationship to maintain with the guitar companies, I would really like to…

Rosanne Cash Songcraft, new Gibson signature acoustics, and the personal and musical legacy of her father, The Man In Black. We meet her on p62 Eric Johnson Talks about of playing in a super-trio with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai – perhaps the most capable, influential guitarists of their era p68 D’Addario Turns 50 Not just a string maker but sonic engineers without equal, D’Addario celebrates five decades (and actually more) of tone on p106…

The Fender Bassman is one of only a handful of historic amplifiers that have shaped the sound of the electric guitar as we know and love it. Since its release in 1952, the unmistakable throaty authority of the tweed 4x10 combo has had top players including such luminaries as Michael Bloomfield, Buddy Guy, Paul McCartney, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton enthralled. The amp was so ubiquitous that Marshall used its two-channel, four-input design as a jumping off point for other classic amps in our hypothetical historic handful, starting with the JTM45. Ken Bran leaned heavily into the Bassman’s circuit, albeit with UK valves and a UK-voiced tone stack, achieving a more aggressive midrange than Leo Fender would have ever allowed to leave the Fullerton factory. However, there are other…

When it comes to choosing a drive pedal, there are many, many choices available out there and it’s often a case of trial and error with a bunch of stompboxes until you settle on the one (or several) that will really work for you and become a long-term fixture in your rig. Some high-profile professional players who know exactly what they want, however, are lucky enough to get to work with a pedal manufacturer and get their ideal pedal made for them. And that’s the case with Phil X, the Canadian guitarist who officially replaced Richie Sambora in Bon Jovi back in 2016, and who has worked with J Rockett to arrive at the PXO. The idea here was to create something that would be of use in the studio…

Artist: The Damn Truth Album: The Damn Truth (Spectra Musique) The Damn Truth bring a ton of fun to rock. Rising from the lively music scene in Montreal, their songs are full of hooky riffs courtesy of lead guitarist Tom Shemer and impassioned vocals delivered by singer and rhythm guitarist Lee-la Baum. But beyond the rock lurks a wealth of other genres too, most noticeably the blues, which uplifts the melodies to create the blend of the band’s sound. “I think the blues is the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll,” Tom says. “I’m a big blues fan and Lee-la is, too, in her vocal style. We definitely come from a blues-rock place; that’s the starting point.” Melting Pot Blues-rock might be at the centre of it all, but the band’s…

I recently got together with an old workmate from Gibson/Norlin in Rotterdam. Dick Noordijk joined us when he was not yet 20 but already a fine guitarist, and keen to learn he fitted in immediately. He spoke superb English and his sense of humour was identical to ours. Dick is still a successful luthier in the Netherlands, building and repairing guitars for top players including Focus’s excellent Menno Gootjes (he’s fixed the headstock of Menno’s black LP Custom three times now, it having snapped in three different places!). “We might check 100 Gibsons a day, and while most would be good, a few needed work, and a couple or three were totally outstanding” During our reminiscences Dick recalled how we might check 100 Gibsons in a day, sometimes all the…

AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra The term ‘embellished’ isn’t really a theoretical one, but it seems an appropriate way to describe these examples. Sometimes an idea for a chord progression can come to us virtually complete; at other times, we have to work a bit harder to refine an idea. In a recording session, it’s not unusual to be asked if you can add something to a ‘standard’ set of chords and bring something else to the harmony – all within reason, of course. The theme linking these examples is that (with experimentation) they could all make nice alternative voicings or ‘overlays’ to more conventional chords. Some of them have a complexity you can normally only achieve in alternative tunings, which is also a wonderful world to explore, but it makes sense to…

Half a century later, when discussing the road to Queen’s self-titled 1973 debut album with Brian May, it’s necessary to suspend your disbelief. Imagine, if you can, a time when the classic line-up of May, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon and Roger Taylor were not multi-platinum national treasures. A time, in fact, when they were penniless nobodies, typically found bottom of the bill at a sweatbox club, being ushered from record label offices or facing tough questions from parents convinced these four bright boys were burning their futures for an impossible dream. Appearing on our Zoom call in a halo of grey curls, May can smile about it now, knowing what lay ahead. In spring ’72, the band cut their first chink in the industry’s formerly impenetrable armour as they were…

With Martin model designations, the digit before the hyphen corresponds to body size and the bigger the number the smaller the body. So, when the 0 (usually pronounced ‘oh’ despite it being an ‘aught’) was first introduced in 1898, it would have been considered a sizeable guitar. It was second only to Martin’s 00 model, which was introduced the same year and remained Martin’s biggest model until the arrival of the 000 in 1902. Officially, the 0 models measure 13 ½ inches across the lower bout, but they sometimes came out a tad wider. The tail depth is 4 ¼ inches and the scale length is 24 ¾ inches. As is typical with Martin’s V-profile necks of the pre-war era, the fretboard is fairly wide and measures 1 7/8 inches…

After just five years as a lone builder, chef-turned-luthier Rich Jones has been making instruments that have created quite a buzz among the customarily reserved acoustic guitar fraternity. Certainly, the few we have had pass through our hands have been full of surprises with top-class workmanship and amazing, musical tone very much to the fore. And when you consider that those instruments were built in a premises little bigger than the average garden shed, eyebrows are raised and the plot thickens even more. When we encountered the Select Series reviewed in this issue, we took the opportunity to talk to Rich about his transition from one profession to the other. “The best chefs aren’t necessarily the most creative,” he tells us. “They’re the ones who are organised and can manage…

The D’Addario story begins in the Abruzzo mountains of Southern Italy, crosses the ocean to America at the dawn of the 20th century, and writes a new chapter with every pack pulled from the peg of a neighbourhood guitar store. But alongside the geographical mileage, what resonates with this family firm’s current custodians – chairman of the board and chief innovation officer Jim D’Addario and CEO John D’Addario III – is the relentless march of its product. From the hard-won intuition of its first string-makers to the forensic accuracy of its cutting-edge wire mill in Farmingdale, New York, D’Addario has remained the market leader since ’74 through its credo that even the most advanced guitar string is a work in progress. Better materials, tighter tolerances, greater uniformity: all are moving…

“Introduced in 1961, the Fender VI is often referred to as the Bass VI. When I was growing up I wasn’t a catalogue geek and I was unaware that this model even existed when I saw a listing in the classifieds of a local newspaper for a Fender VI. I just assumed it was a six-string guitar. It was a sunburst and the guy wanted $200 so I bought it anyway. “My friend recognised what it was and I soon discovered that the VI was used by Glen Campbell, The Hollies, Aerosmith, Jack Bruce, The Beatles and Brian Wilson. The VI also became a studio staple in Nashville. Although I wasn’t even old enough to drive, I had discovered that you could open up Fender guitars and find dates on…

Under the considerable shadow of the finely crafted acoustics that have been Lowden’s calling card for the past 50 years, a lone electric model – the single-cutaway GL-10, which launched some six years ago – could well have been a minor footnote. Instead, there was a variant, the GL-10c, which added chambering and, with it, weight reduction. And here we have the third Lowden electric, the double-cut GL-J. Lifting the GL-J from its classy GWW case, we can’t help but smile. The new design adheres to the timeless, individual craft style that we’re more than familiar with from Lowden, the natural colours and textures of the woods given centre stage; there’s no glitzy, gaudy colour stains or opulent inlays here. But this is far from rustic craft. Fine detailing abounds,…

Shergold’s history is complex and chequered, but knowing the gist of it will help contextualise the brand. Ex-Burns employees Jack Golder and Norman Holder started out building necks and bodies for the likes of Hayman, Burns London, Ned Callan and Rosetti before striking out with their own range. Initially, they used up leftover Hayman parts; if you remember Hayman, you’ll recognise the similarities. The company’s fortunes waxed and waned with the prevailing music trends, leading to closure in 1992 after Golder died. Keen to revive this interesting British marque, UK distributor Barnes & Mullins bought the name in 2015 and conscripted Patrick James Eggle to breathe new life into the brand, which was relaunched in 2017 with the new-design, Indonesianmade and now-called Classic models, the Masquerader and Provocateur. For 2024,…

Long before the current plethora of ‘rig-in-a-box’ pedals there was the Rockman. Anyone who played guitar in the 1980s will be aware of it, and anyone who’s listened to Def Leppard’s Hysteria album will have heard it in action. In 1982, Tom Scholz of US rock band Boston designed and released the Rockman X100 headphone amp via his electronics company Scholz Research & Development, putting amp sound and effects for silent guitar practice into a portable unit that could also be connected to a recording console. The distinctive compressed sound, with its integral analogue chorus, soon found its way onto various recordings in the 1980s. Now, over 40 years on, the range of Rockman units is apparently in demand, so MXR is catering to that with a new addition designed…

As guitarists, nothing can be better for our musical development than being forced to play in a way that takes us outside of our comfort zone. It’s so easy as we get older to strum along with the same old tunes and find ourselves stuck in a rut. When I was younger I remember trying to learn a Wes Montgomery solo after years of hacking away at Jonny Greenwood-style riffs on my Telecaster, and later bringing home a cheap five-string banjo upon which to learn bluegrass. I recall my dad muttering, “Jack of all trades, master of none…” as he passed my bedroom. But I’m pretty sure he just didn’t like the banjo very much. “Blending the main portion of the neck into the heel and headstock is woodwork in its…

STAR LETTER TILL DEATH DO US PART As I read through the guitar reviews in Guitarist this month, I, as usual, bemoaned the fact that virtually none are available left-handed. But it did set me thinking about my 50-year-plus guitar journey and the fact that I have kept many of the purchase receipts. August 1971: less than a month after starting my first job I purchased my first quality guitar, a right-handed sunburst 1964 Gibson ES330 that I restrung left-handed. The salesman was Ian Bishop (author of many guitar books), and the shop, I think, was Guitar Village in Shaftesbury Avenue. The price? £125. Fast forward one year and the 330 was replaced by a new SG Special (right-handed). This time it was definitely Guitar Village, and the salesman was…

Glance at them under the lights and there’s no mistaking the rock ’n’ roll dynasty behind Gibson’s latest signature models. Even if you never saw Johnny Cash driving his beloved brimstone SJ-200 back in the 1950s, it’s hard to miss the Man In Black’s moniker snaking up the neck of this recreation in inch-high mother-of-pearl letters. Meanwhile, for the avoidance of doubt, the J-185 released in tandem also salutes country’s first family with a stern upper-case ‘CASH’ punched into the pickguard. Decades back, when she was starting out as a young songwriter, and ambivalent about her father’s long shadow, you sense Rosanne Cash might not have signed off on such a family affair. Now, as a formidable artist in her own right, and with four Grammy awards and a fistful…

BOSS GX-10 £349 CONTACT Roland UK WEB www.boss.info What You Need To Know 1 This looks smaller than Boss’s usual multi-effects offerings. We haven’t seen a compact format such as this since the GT-1000Core arrived in 2020. This time around it’s a more affordable cut-down version of the GX-100. 2 Does it have the GX-100 sounds? Its more compact format means it has a smaller number of footswitches and loses some of the socketry, but it has the same sound engine and touchscreen as the bigger unit. 3 Does having the touchscreen make much of a difference? Yes, it’s a worthwhile asset that streamlines the editing process and also features a bunch of easily recalled display screens for different functions. Following a long line of GT processors, Boss moved to…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “God, it was a long chain of guitars. I had my first job when I was 13, and every couple of weeks or months my pay would be used to try to trade up to the next level. The first guitar I had that was really good was an Elektra Les Paul copy. It would have been about 1976, and I bought it from ABC Music on Main Street in Evansville, Indiana, where I grew up. It was a bolt-on maple neck, cream-coloured Les Paul – unusual but really cool-looking. It was my main guitar until 1981 when it got stolen from my car. Can you imagine the heartbreak of that? I loved it so much. I left…

You may remember that in an earlier instalment I mentioned that the neck depth felt somewhat different from Andrew Raymond’s late-1956 Stratocaster that I’ve been using as a reference for this restoration. The soft V profiles are remarkably similar, but my neck has less heft. I actually prefer the neck on Andrew’s guitar, but I like mine, too, and it has always been my assumption that the difference in depth can be attributed to overzealous sanding when the neck had previously been refretted and the fretboard was refinished. The guitar has clearly been played a lot and it’s likely that an earlier owner wanted all the finger marks eliminated. Given the choice of fretwire and the way the body was refinished, I think it was most likely done during the…

VIDEO & AUDIO ► http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Modern Blues Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Les Paul Custom, Keeley Boss SD-1 & Marshall JTM45 MkII Reissue Difficulty | 20 mins per example THE TERM ‘MODERN BLUES’ may seem a little ambiguous at first glance, so to be more specific, I’m referring to the inclusion of unusual and non-pentatonic phrases alongside more traditional ideas. But that wouldn’t have made for a very good title! The example solo was played as a continuous live take, but we’ve broken it up into four sections to make it easier to digest. The more modern lines either take the shape of arpeggios (and fragments of these) or pentatonic ideas that are more influenced by players such as Joe Bonamassa and Eric Johnson, rather than the more ‘classic’…