Gear Tour: Steve Vai

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Guitar World Staff
Guitar World Staff

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English rock group The Kinks, from left, Ray Davies, Pete Quaife, Mick Avory and Dave Davies (playing a Vox Phantom XII 12 string guitar) perform on the pop music television show Thank Your Lucky Stars for ABC Television at Alpha Television Studios in Birmingham, England in 1965. The band members are all wearing matching red jackets and pink shirts.
“I left without a penny to my name. I was bitter for a while, but I’ve got a great legacy”: Though Pete Quaife gets credit for jumpstarting the Kinks bass chair, John Dalton and Jim Rodford pushed the band forward on many of their classic albums
Clarence Gatemouth Brown performs at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival at Aptos Village Park in Aptos, California on May 27, 2000
“Chuck Berry's not a very good guitar player. He's a clown. He runs all over the guitar, just like any one of these old rock players would do, and makes no sense”: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown pulled no punches when speaking about his fellow guitar heroes
Roy Clark (left) and Merle Travis
“I said, ‘Merle, do you remember this?’ and I played him his song Sweet Bunch of Daisies. He said, ‘I remember it. I've never heard it played that good’”: When Roy Clark met his guitar hero
Bassist Hadrien Feraud
“I asked Marcus to sing on it. As amazing as he is on bass, I think he’s underrated as a vocalist”: Having earned lofty status in bass-hero circles, Marcus Miller lent his vocal chops to Hadrien Feraud’s solo album
Bootsy Collins
“I was playing stuff I don’t think James Brown understood. He told me, ‘You have to play the one – you’re playing too much’”: Six years after he quit touring, Bootsy Collins reflects on James Brown and George Clinton, and what he gets out of playing today
Geordie Walker of Killing Joke performs with his Gibson gold-top Gibson ES-295 with the Mary Kaye pickguard.
“This guy kept calling saying, ‘I’ve never been in a band before, but I’m the best guitarist ever.’ When I heard him play it was like a fire from heaven”: The life and times of Killing Joke visionary Geordie Walker – the guitar hero’s guitar hero
Bad Cat's late amp designer Mark Sampson on the shop floor: Sampson is widely credited as being one of the godfather's of the boutique amp movement.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Mark Sampson was the father of the boutique amp revolution”: An interview with the late, great Mark Sampson, the trailblazing amp designer behind Bad Cat and Matchless
Ray Aggs
“I’ve never bought a guitar and I’m quite proud of that! I always tell people when they’re learning: there’s a guitar not being played”: Meet Sacred Paws’ Ray Aggs, the dextrous Tele-wrangler inventing new chords and capturing Thurston Moore’s imagination
EHX founder Mike Matthews stands in a warehouse with his fists in the air. He wears a tan jacket and has a trademark cigar in his mouth.
“Jimi was staying at a hotel in Times Square. He had his hair set in pink curlers and we would just talk band drama”: Electro-Harmonix founder Mike Matthews on befriending Hendrix, booking Chuck Berry and the birth of pedal culture
Yves Jarvis
“I didn’t use any amps. The pedal that saved me was the Boss Super Overdrive”: How Yves Jarvis made 2025’s most exciting experimental record so far with a $50 Explorer knockoff and an unbelievably weird tuning