Table of contents for April 2024 in Total Guitar

EDITOR’S LETTER We can always rely on the readers of guitarworld.com to collectively voice their opinions when we post a poll online. We’ve done this several times before in our greatest solos, riffs, albums and guitarists polls, to name but a few. Recently, a chance conversation here at TG Towers on the subject of early blues recordings led us to wonder who can truly be considered the greatest blues guitarist of all time. So, you guessed it, we just had to create a poll. Of course, what actually constitutes ‘great’ will surely be what drives bar room conversations on the subject. After all, let’s face it, we can’t really compare Robert Johnson’s Delta style blues with, say, Buddy Guy’s Chicago style, the Texan fire of Stevie Ray Vaughan, or the…

THE GREATEST BLUES GUITARISTS It’s easy as pie making a huge, long list of great guitarists. It’s difficult as all hell to pare them back to just 100 players, even when you’ve narrowed your choices down to one genre – which is exactly what we did back in February. We chose 100 of our favourite blues guitarists and created a poll for the fine readers of guitarworld.com to vote for their favourites. And vote they did – in their masses. With over 25,000 responses logged, this was a biggie! Now, the results are in. Every vote has been counted and here you’ll find a countdown of the final positions from 100 to 11. The top 10? Just turn the page… 100 Anthony Gomes99 Nat Myers98 King Solomon Hicks97 Erja Lyytinen96…

FIND YOUR AUDIO TRACKS AT bit.ly/tg382audio Hopefully the previous five pages have given you plenty of insight into JPEG RAW. And, if you hadn’t gathered, we think it’s a damn fine record – highly eclectic and doing a mighty good job of defying musical categorisation. Sure, there’s some meat and potatoes blues and rock phrasing for us guitarists to learn from, too, but it’s all set against a truly diverse backing. Here, in our lesson, we look at some of the musical approaches Gary uses. In the context of our bite-sized tab/notation examples, it’s hard to convey the scale of Gary’s creative vision, but we do have a suggestion on that score – pun not intended! Each of our riffs could work in soul, funk, blues or jazz, and,…

Today in 2024 we can listen to over one hundred years of blues. Sylvester Weaver’s unaccompanied instrumental Guitar Blues (1923) may be the earliest example of recorded blues guitar, with Son House, Charlie Patton, Memphis Minnie, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson and many more cutting records in the late 1920s and ’30s. These greats inspired the post-war Chicago blues explosion, which was subsequently seized upon by “British Blues Invasion” bands, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and more in the mid-’60s. From there, blues-rock was born, and the style has branched out ever since, taking on wider musical influences with every passing year. Here in our lesson, we’re covering a little bit of everything from early Delta blues, slide guitar, Chicago blues, through to the styles of modern day shred-blues…

HOW WE TEST CURATION Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust. FACE-VALUE REVIEWS We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock. NO SNAKE OIL You won’t find us getting hung up on hokey mythology or nonsense marketing speak: we aim to bring you bullsh*t-free opinions on the gear you’re interested in. WE CAN’T BE BOUGHT TG review scores are a true reflection of our experts’ opinion on the product they’ve been testing. You’ll never find a rating in our mag that has been bought and paid for. REAL…

Though better known for their glued-in neck models, a PRS bolt-on has actually been around since 1988 when the company introduced their Classic Electric – originally a Fender-inspired, alder body/maple neck version of the pricier Custom and Standard. Despite its lower cost, the market didn’t really get the Classic Electric, and, renamed ‘CE’, it slowly became more like the Custom, including a change to a mahogany body around 1995. After dropping in and out of production it returned to the USA line in 2016. “CAPTURES A HOT-ROD VIBE LIKE A MODDED STRAT” In 1996, PRS introduced the Swamp Ash Special, named after its lightweight ash body. It lasted, in various formats, until 2011-12. This year it’s back in the Indonesian-made SE line – and is joined, for the first time,…

Jaguar Throne might be one of the newer names on the UK metal circuit but its members come with decades of experience, with some familiar faces from well-established bands Bossk, The Hell, Krokodil and Cognizance. Given the mix of influences at play here, from post-metal and prog rock to hardcore and tech-metal, there’s no shortage of avenues for sonic exploration available to them… “I met the guys by producing their records or playing shows together,” says guitarist Steve Sears. “We all bring our own thing to the table. Although I write almost everything, our other guitarist Chris Binns plays a lot of the technical parts that are completely beyond my abilities!” So far the band have released one EP and are currently penning material for their debut full-length. Early songs…

“I DON’T JUST PLAY THE BLUES - I’VE LIVED IT” Cedric Burnside’s musical DNA is defined by tradition and authenticity. Born in Memphis, Tennessee into a heritage of hill country blues musicians, the 45-year-old’s career – which saw him transition from drummer to bandleader – has been all about “keeping the music alive”, but doing it in his own way. “My big daddy, R. L. Burnside, opened the door for the Burnside family and I’m grateful for that,” he says. “But I also think that, in the midst of keeping the hill country blues alive, he would want me to make my own way. This music has been embedded in my heart since I was a kid watching R. L. play, but you have to change with the times.” Cedric…

CLASSIC TRACK Roger Waters has long regarded Pink Floyd’s 1979 epic two-disc concept album The Wall as his crowning musical achievement – and we’d say he’s probably right thanks to the sheer scale of the project. Music notwithstanding, the theatrical production in the 1980 tour required a 40-foot high cardboard wall to be erected... and then torn down as part of the show. However, here in the Waterspenned Hey You, guitarist David Gilmour steals the limelight, laying down most of the lead vocals, plus six- and 12-string acoustics, pedal steel and all the electric guitars, too. The acoustic part that leads the majority of the track is in Nashville tuning (more on that below), and this is the secret sauce to the song – those high-tuned strings giving real sweetness…

The RV-200 has been a long time coming. When Boss’s pedalboard-friendly twin-footswitch designs made their debut in summer 2019, the 200 Series featured four pedals. Two of them – the DD-200 Delay and MD-200 Modulation – were downsized from Boss’s flagship 500 Series units. But one escaped Boss’s shrink ray: the RV-500 Reverb. It would have been the no-brainer of all no-brainers – the ideal counter to the Strymon BlueSky or Source Audio Ventris. Yet as the 200 Series expanded with Synthesizer and Impulse Response offerings, an RV-200 never emerged. Mock-ups were made by Boss fans, but we had all but given up hope… until now. Thankfully, the RV-200 is spec’d pretty much as we’d expected it. It features 12 reverb types, 10 of which are lifted from the RV-500.…

ALBUM “I’M ALL ABOUT WORKING THE VOLUME KNOB!” GREEK SHREDDER GUS G’S TIPS FOR KILLER SOUNDS AND SOLOS From becoming one of Greece’s biggest musical exports to joining Ozzy Osbourne’s band and releasing signature gear through Jackson, Blackstar and his own company Blackfire Pickups, Gus G is a man of many talents. Returning this year with his band Firewind’s tenth album Stand United, he’s still firing on all cylinders. What tones are you dialling in these days? I’ve been really getting into Klon-type pedals! I love how they tighten and compress your tone but also sound super clean. As well as custom shop versions of my pickups, I’m actually looking at doing pedals through Blackfire, starting with a Klon. My main sound right now is a Blackstar St James 6L6…

INTERVIEWGUITAR HEROES When Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes was hailed as “a landmark in rock music history”, it was no exaggeration. The former Dire Straits leader has pulled together an astonishing line-up of famous players to appear on a charity single in aid of noble causes including Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America. Going Home (Theme From Local Hero), a song written by Knopfler and originally released back in 1983, has been reworked as an extended showcase in which he is joined by legendary guitarists including David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Brian May, Slash, Steve Vai, Ronnie Wood and Joe Walsh. Poignantly, it also features the last ever recorded work of guitar icon and innovator Jeff Beck. And elsewhere, layered within Knopfler’s six-string tapestry, is longtime Toto man and…

“I’LL ALWAYS FALL BACK ON A GOOD LES PAUL”DERYCK WHIBLEY Since the late ’90s and early noughties, Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley and Dave Baksh have shown a blatant disregard for the supposedly established confines of the bouncy, made-for-MTV genre of pop-punk. Records like All Killer No Filler (2001) and Does This Look Infected? (2002) were edgy when compared to records by their contemporaries. But if Whibley, a songsmith who can rattle off catchy tunes with the best of ’em, and Baksh, a raging metalhead at heart, cared about such a lack of integration with the masses, they never showed it. Sum 41’s shred-head meets pop-laden sound has produced a hell of a lot of hits over the years, combining the hell-on-Earth antics of the Sex Pistols with the sweet melodies…

Kiss Like The Sun was originally released as a download single in 2019 and also features on Jake Bugg’s fifth album Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. The track doffs an appreciative cap to his early influences; it’s a foot tapping tour de force of country, blues, and even a bit of the mighty Led Zeppelin (think Bron-Y-Aur Stomp) thrown in for good measure! And though the original release was recorded on an acoustic, Bugg usually performs this live on electric – so feel free to experiment yourself. This song was recorded in open G tuning (low to high: DGDGBD), also famously used on just about every Rolling Stones hit from the late ’60s onwards. The only minor drawback is that you really need to keep that low sixth string muted, because…

When we heard about Sterling’s new chambered models we had to get our mitts on the white ash-bodied Bigsby model. Although a non-Bigsby version is available, this is surely the cooler option. The design traits it shares with other Music Man family guitars include four-over-two locking tuners, a five-bolt neck plate with dressed-back heel, body-end truss rod adjustment, and matt-finished neck. A quick-release battery compartment is tidily located on the guitar’s rear. With knurled chrome master volume and tone knobs, a three-way lever switch, black pickguard, and an f-hole tidily cut from the ash front it’s a functional but funky looking guitar, and we can’t fault the Indonesian factory’s attention to detail. While the guitar’s slender nut may not appeal to all players, Van Halen was a fan so you…