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April 2026
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43 articles
- April 6
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- “Is it worth the higher price tag? For some, it won’t matter, but for others, it is something to weigh on heavily”: Act Entertainment Sterling Vermin RAT Distortion pedal review
- “Automatically you go into blues when you do that”: Big Country's golden guitar rule that steered them clear of the blues
- “I’d buy a ‘54 Strat, and then I’d sell it, buy one, sell it… I just kept trading them off. I’ve been disappointed in some of those”: Eric Johnson on why a guitar's age, value, and cool factor don't necessarily make it a better instrument
- “The company that handles all our equipment has completely boned us. We have literally nothing to play”: The All-American Rejects cancel show after gear is “mistakenly shipped across the country”
- “I certainly didn’t know how to build a studio. It was all Donn’s magic”: Donn Landee, the engineer who masterminded 5150 Studios, and helped shape Van Halen’s sound, dies at 79
- “I was 8 and Andy was my first guitar teacher – to me he was Mr. Summers with a funny accent!” Doug Pettibone on taking lessons from Andy Summers, touring with Jewel, and not getting fired by John Mayer
- “I put it in the freezer overnight and took a blowtorch to it”: Joe Perry put his “desert island guitar” through hell but it’s still his number one
- “That changed everything for me. ‘It doesn’t hurt. I could play like this all day long. And it sounds great!’’ How a Hendrix hack helped The Collect Pond’s Danny Moffat play through his health issues
- “There are really good ’Bursts, average ’Bursts and some that are not that good at all”: What this pristine 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard tells us about the myth of the ’Bursts
- April 5
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- “I wasn't trying to make a retro album. I went through a Fractal”: Avenged Sevenfold’s Zachary Baker rides alone on Dark Horse – cooking up a country album with little more than a modeler and an Epiphone acoustic
- “I told myself I’d stop buying JHS Pedals gear. At this rate, my pedalboard is going to look like a shrine to the company”: All the guitar gear that caught my eye this week – including the most outrageous Ibanez I think I’ve ever seen
- “I am 10 times the player when I hold a guitar pick the ‘wrong’ way”: A blues guitar hero showed me how he held his pick – and it changed the way I played guitar
- “I’ve never met Noel Gallagher, but I’ve heard he liked Strange Times”: The unsung 1986 album that inspired the ’90s Britpop boom
- April 4
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- “It was a lot of trial and error with Dave – a lot of just trying to find out what worked, fine-tune it and then do it again”: Jimmie Vaughan on the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Top 40 hit that got Al Bundy – and Hollywood’s – seal of approval
- “We continued being friends for 69 years. I don’t think there’s nobody living today that knew him as long as I did”: Bobby Rush salutes his old friend B.B. King
- April 3
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- “Something you’ll hear a lot of is, ‘Oh, you didn’t earn that relicing.’ But people who like it aren't thinking of it like that”: The real reason why relicing is so popular, according to a Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilder
- “He rolled up with his guitar on his back and his Fender Deluxe in his right hand”: Mark Lettieri on his jams with John Mayer, and how they ended up working together on one of the biggest PRS shows in history
- “They’re 16 bars, and that’s it. There’s no extended solos”: Adrian Smith on why making music outside of Iron Maiden lets him stretch his soloing wings
- Philip Sayce: The 5 techniques that define my sound
- “He will be remembered for his unwavering empathy and compassion, and his magnetic, inimitable presence on and off the stage”: Harm’s Way guitarist Bo Lueders dies at 38
- Who is the most iconic Fender Telecaster player?
- “The first time Sonic Youth went to England, people hated us: ‘Oh, you’re playing guitar? That’s so old-fashioned’”: Alt-rock icon Kim Gordon on the secret to making great music on bad guitars and why she never saw herself as a bassist
- “Other groups tell everyone they’re the ‘proper’ metal band on the bill, but they’re all using 8-string guitars”: Tailgunner are flying the flag for old-school metal (with a little help from K.K. Downing)
- April 2
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- “We would roll into, say, Portland, and go to the pawn shops. You could find a ’57 Les Paul for $200!” Melissa Etheridge learned more from a grouchy old man who’d lost his fingers than she did at Berklee
- “When I was asked who was the best up-and-coming guitarist, I had no hesitation”: Alice Cooper announces new 22-year-old guitarist, handpicked by Nita Strauss to be her replacement
- “It can get loud enough to annoy my partner, which is good enough for home use”: Laney Prism-Mini review
- Yes postpone upcoming tour dates due to guitarist Steve Howe requiring “essential surgery”
- Turnstile co-founder and former guitarist Brady Ebert arrested for attempted murder after allegedly hitting former bandmate's father with his car
- “That way, I can bend notes the way I want, and it also saves my hands”: How Joe Perry is changing his guitar setup to battle the early signs of arthritis
- “The two things I remember are the cool guitar stuff… and this never-ending scream”: Billy Corgan on the first time he met Courtney Love and witnessed Hole live
- “The whole rig went completely silent – 10,000 people started booing me”: The 17-year-old guitar prodigy who flourished with Dio, but got off to a nightmare start
- “Peter had such a glorious touch thanks to his wonderful simplicity. But then he went off the rails and became a gravedigger”: How 10cc’s Rick Fenn ended up working with David Gilmour, Peter Green, Mike Oldfield, and almost all of his other heroes
- “It will take time to build up the accuracy that the riff demands”: Welcome to Mike Stringer’s downpicking bootcamp
- April 1
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- One of Slash's Guns N' Roses reunion tour Les Pauls expected to fetch up to $400k at auction
- “What happens when you do more with dramatically more?” Quilter Labs unveils The Vamp, a four-wheeled, 200,000-watt guitar amp
- Paul Gilbert: What I learned and taught at GIT
- “Get the data-driven results musicians dream of”: Chibson and Acorn Amps team up for the definitely-not-Google Drive pedal
- “If you talked to me when I was 25 years old, I would have been frightened to take a solo after Joe Satriani…” Why Cory Wong is no longer afraid to trade leads with his heroes
- “Way more rare than a Klon”: JHS Pedals pays tribute to mysterious pedal builder with the Coyote – a new fuzz based on one of the rarest pedals of all time
- “I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t play this thing’”: Why Steve Vai struggled to play Brian May’s iconic Red Special
- “I got to play with Layne and Chris and Lanegan. Now they’re gone. What would they be doing now? That haunts me to this day”: Mike McCready opens up on his new rock opera, the Seattle jams that changed him, and the future of Pearl Jam
- “The phone rang. It was Paul McCartney. That’s when I knew we’d found it”: We meet the man who reunited Paul McCartney with his long-lost Beatles bass
- “Björn and I met and discussed what it could look like. It had to be shiny and sparkling”: How a Swedish luthier used by Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton created the iconic ABBA star guitar
