Latest articles by Henry Yates
“There’s no player of my generation who doesn’t remember when they first heard that almost one-second delayed repeat. It was truly epic”: How BOSS's trailblazing delay pedals changed the world
History repeating: BOSS’s delay pedals changed everything – now the modern range salutes the Japanese firm’s storied past while forging ahead with bold new creations
“Before BOSS, there just wasn’t a wide enough selection of pedals. They kicked it into high gear, eclipsed everything else…” How BOSS changed the soundscape of modern music in five decades
The inside story of how BOSS revolutionized effects. The milestones that led the Japanese firm to the cutting edge of the modern music scene
Are BOSS's 50th Anniversary versions of the DS-1, SD-1 and BD-2 the ultimate collector’s editions?
Limited to a production run of just 7,000 units each – and featuring one-off finishes – here’s why BOSS’s 50th Anniversary DS-1, SD-1 and BD-2 are the holy trinity…
“I loved Hendrix – he was my first guitar hero... But seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan was transcendent. He made me understand Hendrix better”: Mike McCready says SRV helped him make sense of this Hendrix technique
“When he [Vaughan] did Voodoo Child, it was so bad-ass," McCready says. “He changed how I wanted to play, and if you listen to Even Flow, you can hear me trying to emulate his stuff”
“My Foo Fighters setup is the kind of beast you have when somebody carries your s**t around for you!” Chris Shiflett on his double-life as a jobbing solo artist and lead guitarist in the world’s biggest rock band
The Foo Fighters stalwart tells us about the “blasphemy” of his new backline, holding his breath when he solos and why the kind of guitar playing he loved “became pretty much illegal”
“When I played Here I Go Again to Jon Lord he had a certain look in his eye. He said, ‘You’re a clever little sod, aren’t you?’”: Remembering Bernie Marsden, 1951-2023
The Whitesnake co-founder and lifelong bluesman left us on 24 August. Guitarist remembers an all-time-great player, writer, collaborator, collector, mentor and friend
“It feels like total blasphemy!” Chris Shiflett on why he joined the modeler movement and switched from tube amps to amp sims
The amp aficionado flipped the script for his recent solo tour, which demanded an entirely new approach to guitar setups from the Foo Fighter
Steve Vai called him “the evolution of the guitar” while Al Di Meola said his playing was “light years ahead”. We meet Matteo Mancuso, the young guitarist redefining virtuosity
The Sicilian virtuoso is at the forefront of technical guitar playing, but as he explains, “I’m not a shredder and I’m not a jazz player – I listen to a lot of different stuff and I wanted it all in my music… You need to be open-minded”
“It’s really taken off – Rabea Massaad has introduced players to a new way of delivering tone from a Strat”: How Bare Knuckle redefined the sound of the Stratocaster with its radical new Triptych single coils
How the tones of Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer and Philip Sayce informed a signature set of single-coil pickups for one of guitar's most progressive players
“It needs a tune – but we’ll do that free of charge!” Meet the Gibson Firebird that Jimmy Page lost in a drinking game with John Bonham
This heavily modified Non-Reverse Gibson Firebird III is a lost Led Zeppelin guitar with a fascinating history – we get the story behind the Page-owned beauty and the buoyant market for Gibson’s under-appreciated cult hero
“Everyone else had walls of Marshalls, but Rory just turned up, put a Vox AC30 on two folded-out chairs and let rip”: Rory Gallagher – the gear behind the legend
As we rebuild the exact rigs from the late Irishman’s most famous live periods, using historic gear loaned by his estate, Daniel Gallagher looks back over his uncle’s lifetime onstage
Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday: “I don’t need to play all the notes at a very high speed. I can appreciate that in players, but I’m looking for texture and color”
As the Californian rockers return with Darkfighter, Holiday invites us into his guitar room to talk mad-scientist fuzz pedals, his adventurous new doubleneck, and why he mods no more
Marty Stuart: “It started with my Clarence White Telecaster. That old guitar is kinda like an invisible band member. It has a tone of its own”
The country legend on channeling the Byrds’ guitar tones, how YouTube helps him cope with the loss of Johnny Cash and finding the amp he’d been searching for all his life
Graham Nash: “The acoustic guitar touches the heart faster. It’s much more human and personal than electric guitar”
As the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young legend releases the “most personal record” of his half-century career, he tells us about speaking truth to power, selling his Woodstock Martin D-45, and making up with David Crosby
Run out of ideas? Try Scott Holiday's 'mind eraser' songwriting method
Sometimes it's the simplest fixes that yield the greatest results
Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday on his greatest gear hits and misses: “You can basically install a pair of EMG active pickups into a cardboard box and get the same sound”
Holiday is no fan of active pickups, and his life in gear involves a flaming Line 6 amp, a foolish trade that said goodbye to some PAFs, and the epiphany that TV Jones Filter'Trons are all you ever need
Remembering David Crosby, a giant of American songwriting who gave the ‘60s a voice
As architect of two ‘60s supergroups – and spokesman for the peace and love generation – Crosby will be remembered for his contribution to the counterculture, not the darkness in his life
The 50 greatest guitar riffs of all time
From metal to rock, punk to grunge, these are the best guitar riffs ever recorded, as voted for by you
Bruce Foxton: “We once butchered some Rickenbackers, putting in P-Bass pickups to make it sound like a Precision. But all it did was screw up a lovely guitar”
The former Jam bassist checks in to discuss his tonal experiments, writing with Paul Weller and why the Beatles can't sue him for the Start! bassline
How The Jam's Town Called Malice turned a cheeky Motown steal into a bona fide bass classic
Bruce Foxton on destroying Rickenbackers and the band's history of borrowing bass parts – plus, how to play Town Called Malice
Marty Stuart: “I appreciate the Stratocaster, but I really can’t do it justice. It’s two different planets, two different universes – and I’m a Tele guy”
Telecaster master Marty Stuart recounts a half-century love affair with the snub-nosed Fender model, from falling for the twang and surviving the honky-tonks, to the spookiest session with his iconic ‘Clarence’ Tele and snapping up Mick Ronson’s ’52 Esquire
Francis Rossi: “You really need to be a s**t-hot player to make a Telecaster sound good. Particularly when playing lead”
Status Quo’s Francis Rossi on baiting the purists, swapping guitars with Badfinger, and why he’s not an all-time-great Tele player
John Osborne: “The Telecaster is the most versatile guitar out there… Its simplicity allows you to find your voice. It’s a desert island guitar”
The Brothers Osborne guitarist on how he discovered the Tele, trading up and why bad B-Bender technique is like too much cologne…
Simple Minds’ Charlie Burchill: “Edge had his AC30, his delays and his black Strat. I picked up his Strat – and I sounded like Edge! I thought, ‘Jesus, it’s in the gear as well…’”
The Glasgow guitar legend talks vintage Gretsch, the rise of Simple Minds as a pop behemoth, eschewing powerchords, and what happens when you play through the Edge's epic rig
Lzzy Hale: “When you get your first Gibson, it feels almost like it could play itself because there’s some kind of intangible magic”
Hale talks cult guitars, her identity crisis, the darkness behind new album, Back From The Dead – and the drinking session that inspired her purist-baiting signature Gibson Explorerbird
