Features archive
June 2025
Filter
72 articles
- June 30
-
- “Aims to capture some of that posh vibe with a far more attainable price tag”: JET Guitars successfully couples high-quality specs and a premium playing experience with affordability in its Elite Series models
- “The only guitar I could ever play was the 125, but I wore them out – they were costing thousands to repair. They stopped making them around 1970; I was ready to stop playing”: George Thorogood on his “mutt” amp, and talking shop with Hound Dog Taylor
- “Robbo had grown a beard. Phil says, ‘I’m the only one with facial hair, man – you gotta shave that thing off’”: Scott Gorham on his partnership with Brian Robertson – a golden era for Thin Lizzy even if they nearly split up over facial hair
- “When you’re a kid, you go, ‘I could never be as good as a real rockstar,’ and here’s a guy that’s amazing, and he’s missing parts of his fingers”: Adam Jones on Tony Iommi’s influence and what took Tool so long to join Black Sabbath’s last hurrah
- “We did it in this old haunted house, standing in front of this open fire with a couple of Marshalls outside the fireplace... It was two in the morning”: Can't Get Enough was Bad Company's breakout smash, and its harmonized leads were perfect for the era
- June 29
- June 27
-
- “Some players will talk about wanting it to be a battle when they’re playing… I’m like, no, I want to make this fun. And I’m driving a sports car”: Winona Fighter’s Coco Kinnon and Dan Fuson on the secrets behind their riotous punk guitar sound
- “Some believe the slab ’boards have a different tone to veneer ’boards, but others think it’s more of a visual thing”: Everything you need to know about pre-CBS Stratocasters – the holy grail of vintage Fender guitars
- “I called everybody! I looked at my heavy-metal Rolodex and just called up friends who Ozzy, Sharon and I had talked about having there”: Tom Morello on honoring Black Sabbath with the biggest metal show ever, and the all-star jam he is most psyched about
- June 26
-
- “We never claimed to be virtuosos, we were virtu-no-sos! Call them overdubs or call them replacing things that weren’t up to snuff. I make no apologies”: Paul Stanley on the success (and controversies) of Kiss' Alive! and the band's upcoming unmasked gig
- “Even though Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn’t playing heavy metal, he had the elements of the style through pure skill alone”: Blues-inspired but metal-trained, he had a top 5 album at 16 – with no spiky guitars in sight. Meet Alien Weaponry’s Lewis de Jong
- “Gibson had lost the recipe, not only for guitar building but for pickup making based on their original designs. What I was after was making a rock ’n’ roll pickup”: How Larry DiMarzio changed the sound of rock guitar – and redesigned the Strat bridge
- June 25
-
- “My father was a big Pat Metheny fan – hearing him started to make me obsessed with the idea of playing music”: Berklee-educated and endorsed by Strandberg, meet Camilla Sperati – the fusion phenom hand-picked to open for Steve Vai
- “I get fingers pointed at me. I get told, ‘You’re the guy who tried to kill Randy Rhoads.’ I laugh it off. He needed to be with better people. How could our split ever be friendly?” Kelly Garni founded Quiet Riot – but it ended with shots fired
- “For the most part, new products in the pedal world are just different colored housings of the same circuits we’ve all been using for decades”: What does a Dumble-whispering tone nut keep on his pedalboard? Ask Kenny Wayne Shepherd...
- June 24
-
- “I never felt comfortable in standard. In some ways I felt more pressure because the world was so full of great players in standard – I had no interest in competing with them”: Thurston Moore on Sonic Youth’s Sister, and moving from junk guitars to Fender
- The Last Editor: The musical life of Chris Bird, the final Editor of Total Guitar
- “I could listen to Vernon’s solo on that song a million times. It’s scary and strange, but in a good way”: Frank Swart of Funkwrench Blues has recruited Vernon Reid, Oz Noy and Mike Stern to his cosmic cause – but there’s one solo that haunts him
- “Vox AC30s lasted half an hour and Fender Twins lasted an hour. 5150s sounded great for about 10 seconds, then they were fried”: Uli Jon Roth’s struggle to contain his brainchild, the Sky guitar – and why he never played Jimi Hendrix’s black Strat
- June 23
-
- “Only a guitar player would think it's OK to play bass like that!”: Joe Satriani’s best basslines (yes, he plays bass, too)
- “I played the jam with Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. I was like, ‘Uh, yeah sure. I’ll come and play G3!’”: All That Remains’ Jason Richardson on surviving the ultimate virtuoso jam, despite fearing improv – and why theory is not 'law'
- June 22
- June 21
-
- “I get infuriated by people who insist I should play a 5-string”: Alex ‘V-Man’ Venturella on tone, technique – and how he nailed his Slipknot audition
- “He could take a rock tune like Fleetwood Mac's Black Magic Woman and transform it by adding a hint of salsa clave rhythm”: Remembering Peter Green and Carlos Santana’s supernatural jam at the 1998 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Awards
- June 20
-
- “We all have easy access to the parts needed to make a pickup… You certainly don’t have to start like Seymour Duncan did with a record player’s turntable”: Why more guitar builders are making their own pickups
- “Rates are coming back up, rents very rarely go down, and suppliers are in straitened circumstances”: Is crowdfunding the answer to ensuring guitar stores’ survival? One family-run business has launched an innovative campaign to keep its stores alive
- June 19
-
- “If you stick a modern production tube in an old vintage amp, you may be a little disappointed with the tone”: Do vintage NOS tubes really sound better? Here’s what you need to know
- “I’ve seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, some people sound better than all of us playing a cheap Squier Stratocaster”: Charlie Starr on guitar collecting, his vintage Juniors theory – and the time he was gifted a ’58 Les Paul
- “Tubes are overrated. And you never know what you’re going to get overseas. I can’t play through a Marshall JCM – they sound like crap”: Sludge titans Thou have never been afraid to tear up the rulebook – but they do need a spreadsheet for their tunings
- “People tell me that I invented that rhythmic gallop – but I just brought it to the fore”: Iron Maiden remain one of most domineering forces in heavy metal – and bassist Steve Harris has led the charge
- June 18
-
- How Ibanez flipped the script for Japanese electrics with the Iceman – a flavor of original cool that Steve Miller and Paul Stanley of Kiss were waiting for
- “He needed nobody; Jerry was his only customer”: Tom Lieber apprenticed to Jerry Garcia's guitar builder Doug Irwin in the ’70s – now he’s raising the ’Dead once again
- He played a guitar held together by a belt, was admired by Keith Richards, covered by Springsteen and described by Bert Jansch as “the most underrated guitarist ever” – the life and times of a beatnik folk pioneer
- “I used to ask, ‘What was Hendrix really like?’ All Noel would say was, ‘He was a black blues player who took a lot of acid’”: Eric Bell tells the tale of how he joined forces with Noel Redding, after leaving Thin Lizzy as a self-confessed ‘basket-case’
- June 17
-
- “You’re talking about somebody who’s touched by the hand of God. You can’t even fathom it”: Paul Gilbert worshipped his playing, he tutored Luther Dickinson, and he remains, decades after his death, perhaps the greatest little-known guitarist of all time
- “Siouxsie tried out her newfound kung fu on me and barged me in the back. That was enough – I walked out and Kenny came with me”: A brawl ended John McKay’s tenure with Siouxsie and the Banshees, but not his influence on a generation of players
- “The guitar that I used on my first album cost me $20, and I got a good sound out of it. It's what you put into the guitar that counts”: He collaborated with Johnny Winter, and was covered by Phish. Son Seals is essential listening for any blues guitarist
- “Most of these dudes don’t fall quite as far as I did. They don’t develop a meth habit and end up shoveling dog s**t for $6 an hour”: Gary Holt on his thrash metal redemption story, balancing Exodus and Slayer – and why even Hetfield cheats on downpicking
- “I would listen to Eric, but my responsibility was with the rhythm section”: You know the tune, but maybe not the player – how an unassuming bassist carved out a spot in music history on Derek & the Dominos’ Layla
- June 16
-
- “The good news is it was recorded – you can go online and see it. The bad news is that’s because someone stole all the master tapes”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on his supergroup with Joe Walsh, sessions with Joni Mitchell and the voices of Albert King
- “There were all these killer players. I was shy and kind of sat there, but Etta said, ‘I like that little white kid’”: Brian Ray wowed Etta James at 18, lost-out on Shakira and landed his gig with Paul McCartney – after auditioning at the Super Bowl
- June 14
- June 13
-
- “I had three days to learn the entire set… One rehearsal. I met Pink at soundcheck right before the first show then I’m playing in front of thousands and thousands of people”: Eva Gardner on trial by fire with pop megastars and returning to the Mars Volta
- “Revelator is chock full of riffs. The chorus is just like, ‘What if a war metal band had Portishead chords?’”: Deafheaven’s Shiv Mehra and Kerry McCoy on atonality vs the ethereal, pedalboard thrill-seeking and their return to super-heavy guitars
- June 12
-
- “I have the first guitar I ever owned – my parents bought it for me in 1967 for $57. It’s a cheap Japanese guitar that I had refinished”: Alex Lifeson on Envy of None’s evolution, moving on post-Rush, and jams and coffee with Geddy Lee
- “When the Ozzy thing came around I was so excited, but also doubting myself. Duff McKagan and Chad Smith were like, ‘You can do it. It's everything you love’”: From Pearl Jam to the Stones, the stars have aligned for Andrew Watt – but he owes it to Ozzy
- June 11
-
- “The catalog proclaimed the instrument to be: ‘For the young artist with a flair for showmanship!’”: Guild Starfires appeared in the hands of The Kinks’ Dave Davies and Jerry Garcia, and shook up the electric guitar scene in the early '60s
- “Can you imagine Kramer being more successful than Fender and Gibson? It sounds crazy, but Eddie Van Halen made that happen”: H.E.A.T’s Dave Dalone on taking rock back to the future, learning from Gary Moore, and why he's a Kramer man through and through
- “I went to Chuck Schuldiner’s house and auditioned. I’m sure I played some of it wrong, but I guess it was close enough!” How Bobby Koelble brought his jazz chops to Death – and made one of the greatest metal albums of all time
- June 10
-
- “A lot of people don’t give these guitars any credit because of the short scale and narrow neck... It’s one of the nicest-sounding guitars for jazz”: Debuting in 1955, the Gibson Byrdland was the user-friendly archtop players were waiting for
- “There is a lot of jargon, much of it in Spanish, and an entire vocabulary of new techniques to learn”: Interested in nylon-string guitar but don’t know where to start? Three experts give an introductory guide for the perplexed
- “We worked at Guitar Center – There’s an air about people who tell you about their glory days. They’ll play the most expensive guitar for hours, then leave without buying anything!” The Callous Daoboys on calculated chaos, and their secret “horrid” pedal
- June 9
-
- “Rory Gallagher and many more legends have relied on this useful effect for just this reason – so don’t be put off by the name”: 20 ways to get more from your pedals
- “To my utter horror I heard myself noodling all the way through our chat. On Brian’s own guitar!”: The first time I met Brian May – and we were both wearing clogs
- “When I saw Meat Loaf, I said, ‘This is a spoof of Bruce Springsteen, and that’s why I’m doing it’”: Todd Rundgren produced The Band, Grand Funk Railroad and The New York Dolls – but his most successful collaboration was born to poke fun
- June 8
- June 7
-
- Their ranks have included blues-rock luminary Bernie Marsden, shred god Steve Vai, and journeyman virtuoso Reb Beach – here's the ultimate guide to the A-team guitarists that have shaped Whitesnake's blockbuster, stadium-conquering sound
- “With The Beatles there are two periods: the early albums, where they would recreate what they did live – and the post-’65 overdub era”: Was Paul McCartney singing while he recorded this bass track? There are audible cues in the final mix
- June 6
-
- “I believe Tommy had lots of songs which were exactly what the band needed. And his style was more akin to Ritchie’s than mine”: Clem Clempson on the return of Colosseum, jamming with Jack Bruce, and that time he auditioned for Deep Purple
- “Freddie is always with me. He was like a brother, and now I have a Mercury on my guitar, too, which makes me very happy”: Brian May on how astronomy, the Everly Brothers and Freddie Mercury influenced the design of his Gibson SJ-200 12-string
- June 5
-
- “It took me a few years to figure out that if you’re going to play Fender guitars, you play with Fender amps”: Ryan Hedgecock stuck to his own creative path, even when Lone Justice were torn apart
- “We had four guitarists, which was unheard of at that point”: Johnny Hickman on his pre-Cracker band, the Unforgiven, revisiting the Cracker catalog, and big, bone-headed riffs
- “He says, ‘Isn’t this a great guitar? I bought it off some guy on the street for 350 bucks’”: How Lita Ford reacted when she came face-to-face with her stolen B.C. Rich Mockingbird – and the only amp she ever returned
- June 4
-
- “It felt like a boot camp... It tested what we were made of”: Fresh off of Jared Dines' ‘instant band’ documentary, Musician Mansion, Chena is ready to introduce her intricate, highly melodic playing to the world
- “I love my Strat; I’m a Strat guy through and through, but I just needed a guitar with humbuckers”: Cory Wong on the making of his signature StingRay and how Vulfpeck just, y’know, made an album during a show
- “The only gear I brought was a red Hamer prototype. That guitar is magical. I used it on Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love, David Lee Roth’s California Girls and with Mick Jagger”: Eddie Martinez explains how he helped Run-D.M.C. bring rock to hip hop
- June 3
-
- “People are infatuated with heavy solidbody guitars for no real reason. It was a fad, a myth; the more mass, the less it can vibrate and the more the strings have to vibrate, which may be true”: How Rick Derringer helped create the B.C. Rich Stealth
- “Any distortion came from the amp itself. It was considered a rather clean sound compared to other punk bands”: Joe Genaro on overhead conversations, ad-libs, and making it catchy and funny on the Dead Milkmen’s classic punk debut
- June 2
-
- “With this pedal, you’re practically getting a Gilmour tone cheat-code”: From totally unique synth pedals to signature collabs and game-changing takes on the classics, here are our 30 favorite guitar pedals from the past 5 years
- “In all the years I’d played with Albert, I’d always wanted to hear him play something in a minor key – and he smoked it!”: Robert Cray tells the story behind the greatest all-star blues team-up of the ‘80s
- “I had this little house in California, back in 1984. My Marshall stacks and a reel-to-reel were set up in the living room. I remember getting my drummer to have a jam at 3am”: From his live show, to cutting classics, Yngwie Malmsteen lives off-the-cuff
- June 1
