Features

How to find new sounds and rekindle your love affair with your amp

Eight years since the release of his last album, Martin Andres reveals what he learned from playing with Oni, Mark Morton and Gojira, how he discovered selective picking before it went mainstream, and why he’s creating an AI version of his musical self

Fuzz this, intonation that – life can be confusing for the beginner player. This handy glossary explains what some of the most commonly heard terms mean

Whether you're writing songs or woodshedding solos, using a loop pedal will make you a better guitarist – these are the best looper pedals from Boss, TC Electronic, Line 6 and more

Treat them right with our pick of the 46 must-have guitar items, essential accessories, clever gadgets and instruments for every budget

The defender of the blues faith names the players bucking the clichés and preventing the genre going stale, and explains why anyone who says Joe Bonamassa can't play the blues is “full of s**t”

How to set your intonation and pickup height, keep your guitar in tune and get it playing better than ever

The session ace-turned-solo artist recalls his earliest bass hero, and the swung-funk bassline on Don Blackman’s Heart’s Desire

The technical guitar impresario reveals his thoughts on the now-dirty word status of 'shred', what he's always looked for in guitar players, and his favorite guitar brand (hint: it's probably not one you'd expect)

The Extreme guitarist drops some tone wisdom and explains why you should be looking for a rig that gets out of your way and lets you be you

Because great tone begins with getting the fundamentals right, from picks and strings through to pedals

One of the bass guitar’s all-time greats on how Béla Fleck got him into Paul McCartney, the time Stanley Clarke sent him a broken bass string, and why Marcus Miller is “so good, he can play on something and you won’t know it’s him”

Before the long beards, sold-out arenas, spinning fur guitars and MTV stardom, Billy Gibbons cut his teeth in a psychedelic group called the Moving Sidewalks, who opened for – among other A-tier rock acts – one James Marshall Hendrix...

On concept album Dead Club City, Nothing But Thieves not only ditched the amps, but the speaker sims as well. Dominic Craik and Joe Langridge-Brown share their love of “honky” tones, stacking Queen-esque harmony guitars and how Dave Grohl shaped the sound of the record

Influential UK seven-stringers Acle Kahney and James Monteith on the secret to mastering their shape-shifting time signatures, recording their most challenging riffs and why the Quad Cortex is their new amp modeler of choice

A graduate of “Motown Funk University,” Babbitt said that he took from James Jamerson, but rightly so: “he was the original”

Fame, flame and punchy tone – meet the ’Burst that has it all. And it’s yours for $500,000...

Nick Cogan of Drug Church and Militarie Gun joins Malachi Greene of Scowl to share the state of play in U.S. hardcore, a formerly rules-based art form that is now a free for all creatively

Leilani Kilgore's dream was to ring out power chords on the Warped Tour. Then she studied the blues greats and started to “take the guitar seriously… as a means of conversation rather than just shouting”

As hair-metal met its end and the alt-rock explosion reinvented guitar anew, a fresh breed of electric guitars were getting plastered on bedroom walls