Latest articles by Jamie Dickson
Six-string psychonaut Kavus Torabi on the mythology of Gong, Hotel California moments with Steve Hillage and his epiphany with scales
Torabi plays in some of Britain’s most out-there bands, fronting Gong to playing with Steve Hillage and former snooker champion Steve Davis. We join him on the search for Utopia
Jeff Beck in his own words: “My Strat is another arm – it’s part of me. It doesn’t feel like a guitar at all… It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture”
In these classic interviews, the late Jeff Beck, a man who typically preferred to let the guitar do the talking, looks back on his career and discusses his gear discoveries and creative epiphanies
Paul Reed Smith explains exactly what makes a great electric guitar – including the exact amount of time it should sustain
Tone, the master guitar builder says, "is a complicated equation"
You’re not ready for these Teles: meet the rarest Fender Telecasters ever built
From early prototypes to crushed-glass finishes and body contour experiments, these four unicorns tell the story of the Telecaster – and the evolution of the electric guitar itself
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…
Andy Fairweather Low: “I got Fender to make me an Esquire tuned to A... a beast. I tried using that with Eric Clapton and he said, ‘Put that away! Play a proper guitar’”
Defiantly old-school in his approach to music-making, with a delightfully quirky taste in guitars to boot, everybody’s favourite sideman has a new solo album, Flang Dang
How Roland’s JC-120 became the king of solid-state guitar amps
We unpack the magic of the Jazz Chorus, which has been producing reference-quality clean tones and sublime chorusing for everyone from The Police to Metallica since its introduction in 1975
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
How Martin supersized the Dreadnought for a Custom Shop acoustic that’s louder, more dynamic and “hits you in the chest”
If you can’t make the world’s most influential acoustic better, you can always make it bigger. Scott Sasser and Tim Teel of Martin explain the design of the awesome Super Dreadnought
Tom Murphy on the magic of the Les Paul and the Gibson Custom Shop’s meticulous approach to reissues
For many players, the Murphy Lab represents the pinnacle of aged guitar finishes, and the closest a new guitar gets to its vintage forebears. Here, the man behind the process explains all
The evolution of the Les Paul: how Gibson’s single-cut design developed from 1952 to 1978
We chart the key changes the Les Paul and its variants went through in its seminal early years
Barrie Cadogan talks about his great gear hits and misses, and explains why the Squier 40th Anniversary Jazzmaster is a winner for fans of old-school offsets
The Little Barrie main man opens up about a stellar deal on a ’62 Epiphone Crestwood and his fondness for P-90 pickups
Gordon Giltrap: “All the best stuff comes when you’re not thinking about it. It just flows: you start off with a one-bar idea and then build up on that”
What is good music? What is good guitar playing? It can take a lifetime to arrive at meaningful answers, as acoustic master Gordon Giltrap reflects when we join him to discuss his powerful new album, Scattered Chapters
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram: "You always want to say something when you play the blues, you always want to feel. You can’t play the blues by the book"
The Clarksdale, Mississippi native tells GW how he and Fender blended their ideas – deviating from '70s orthodoxy at times – to create his stylish and powerful new signature model
How the Les Paul transformed from elegant jazz guitar to rock ’n’ roll's weapon of choice
Gibson’s Mat Koehler has spent countless hours tracing the history of the company’s iconic electrics. We join him to learn more about the first 10 years of the Les Paul's history
Suzanne Vega: “I love the acoustic guitar – I always have. I love the sound of it. I love playing it. I love the look of it. I love everything about it”
As Vega prepares to return to the UK with an album of songs from the Big Apple, we join the legendary New York singer-songwriter to talk guitars and songcraft
How Fender shook up the ‘new vintage’ market with the American Vintage II series
As Fender returns to year-specific reissues once again, we ask Justin Norvell what’s new when it comes to recreating the past
The Proclaimers’ Charlie Reid talks acoustic guitars, songwriting and working with James Dean Bradfield on the Scottish rock institution's life-affirming new album
The Proclaimers are back with their own signature brand of earworm choruses tempered with that familiar Scottish lilt, and it's a sound that takes many Taylor acoustics to put together
That Pedal Show rate the most legendary pedals of all time: the deserving, the overrated and the total sleepers
Do these stompboxes deserve their notoriety or did they just get lucky? And how do you get the best from them? Dan Steinhardt and Mick Taylor share their thoughts – and tell us which pedals have gone under the radar over the years
The rarest Gibson Firebird of all time might just be this 1964 Kerry Green example
David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars reveals the story behind a bona-fide unicorn for Gibson collectors
The story of the Fender Rosewood Stratocaster that never made it to Jimi Hendrix
The fabled Stratocaster was the rosewood counterpart to the Telecaster popularized by George Harrison – and only two were ever made
This unearthed 1960 prototype reveals what the Gibson SG Special nearly looked like
Meet the SG Special's rarely seen slab body forebear
The story of the ‘Ghost Finish’ Telecaster – one of the rarest Fender guitars ever made
Under normal lights, this Telecaster appears to be an unremarkable, late-’60s blonde color. But stick it under UV light and things get trippy...
John Petrucci talks buying and selling guitars: “I’m completely illiterate in the world of vintage guitars and Les Pauls and Strats and all that stuff”
Dream Theater’s magus of the fretboard on the Les Paul copy that sparked his love of humbuckers and why he might give Django a run for his money…
