Guitar Playerの May 2024 の目次

WHEN WE SET out to get an exclusive interview with Gary Clark Jr. for this issue, his new album wasn’t even available for preview yet. But we just knew we’d want to speak once again with the guitarist who reinvigorated the blues movement with his fusion of blues, rock and soul and has remained a player to watch, listen and learn from. So it was a delight to hear the transformation in his musical direction on JPEG RAW, his new record, which is by turns soulful, funky, psychedelic, symphonic and, yes, even at times bluesy. As Gary explains to Joe Bosso in this issue’s interview, the pandemic gave him a chance to rediscover his love of shred and grow creatively in new directions. “I was doing whatever I wanted,” he…

SARAH LONGFIELD HAS come a long way. After starting as an unintentional YouTuber in 2007 — when social media was far from being a breeding ground for young guitarists — she oscillates today between sharing stages with John 5 and Nita Strauss (in 2021 and 2023, respectively) and getting name-checked by Steve Vai after attending his Vai Academy 7.0. “I was surprised and grateful to be invited to the Vai Academy this year,” Longfield tells Guitar Player. “Steve is an incredible player who has so much wisdom to share on guitars, as well as the music industry overall. I left feeling incredibly inspired. It was so much fun to hang out with the other great guitarists and witness their unique style and approaches.” As for wisdom and style, Longfield has…

WHEN PETER FRAMPTON co-founded Humble Pie in 1969, he was already regarded as one of England’s hottest guitarists, but his songwriting skills hadn’t yet blossomed. He contributed a number of strong cuts to the four studio albums he recorded with the band during his brief, two-year tenure, but it wasn’t until he turned solo and began issuing his own albums, starting with 1972’s Winds of Change, that his compositional chops began to equal his skills as an instrumentalist. “I can’t say I always enjoy the process of writing,” he says. “I do like coming up with bits — a riff or a chord pattern. Sometimes a title comes to me that sparks something. But putting a song together and actually finishing it can be quite painful, especially when it comes…

TINSLEY ELLIS KNOWS he’s “always been a pretty high-voltage electric” guitar player, at least since he was recording with the Heartfixers back in the early ’80s, and certainly during the 36 years since he signed with Alligator Records as a solo act. But the idea of a solo acoustic album — which he released in February as Naked Truth — has been in Ellis’s head for almost all that time. “I’ve been threatening to do it for almost 30 years,” he says from his home in his native Atlanta, where Ellis recorded the 12-track collection of originals and covers using his 1969 Martin D-35 and a 1937 National O Series steel guitar, which he plays with a brass slide. “On a couple of occasions, I had asked [Alligator founder] Bruce…

FOR ALL HIS experience with complex circuits and top-notch components, British effects guru and switching systems designer Pete Cornish has long relied on a mantra that points to a much simpler, yet often-overlooked necessity: “Clean the plugs to free the tone!” And while Cornish has no connection to these clever contact-and-connector cleaning kits from stage-and-studio accessory manufacturer Stedman, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t approve of them. Offered in two sizes, the GP-2 Gig Pack and PK-3 Pro Kit provide efficient solutions to an issue that hinders pure tone: the tarnish, corrosion and grime that accumulates over time on jacks and plugs. The tools in each kit include: • ¼-inch microfelt tips (five in the GP-2, 27 in the PK-3) for cleaning ¼-inch jacks, with a hole in one end…

THE CLASSIC BRITISH sounds of the ’60s and early ’70s have never fallen out of fashion, and it’s hard to imagine they ever will. The real trick for many guitarists in the 2020s, though, is achieving the sound of a cranked and raging Marshall “Plexi,” Hiwatt stack or Vox AC30 in a format that jibes with today’s often restrictive playing situations. It all comes together beautifully in the new Bel-Ray, a three-in-one tribute to the best of British tone from Carr Amplifiers. Proprietor Steve Carr is known for his uncanny ability to compact classic sounds into extremely portable packages, and the Bel-Ray is the latest of his seemingly magic presto-changos. Onto the foundation of a 16-watt output stage driven by two EL84s with an EZ81 rectifier tube, the Bel-Ray grafts…

ANY GUITARIST WHO can combine country-style chicken pickin’ and hypersonic metal shred is no one-trick pony. Over the course of his career, John 5 has made diversity his calling card, and his six-string services have been called upon by a wide range of artists, including k.d. lang, Marilyn Manson, Wilson Phillips, Lynyrd Skynyrd, David Lee Roth, Rick Springfield and Salt-N-Pepa, among others. Until recently, he held down the spot as Rob Zombie’s ace guitar wizard (during which time he also issued a series of popular solo albums), but in late 2022 John 5 joined Mötley Crüe after founding member Mick Mars announced his decision to quit touring. “From the time I picked up the guitar, I wanted to learn as many different styles as I could,” John 5 says. “I…

WHEN AMERICAN GUITAR brands suffered a dip in quality during the 1970s and ’80s, the door was open for guitar rivals to make inroads to the U.S. market. While many of them came from Japan, at least one homegrown guitar maker saw his “in”: Paul Reed Smith. With his PRS Guitars, Smith hit the ground running in 1985, creating widely acknowledged “modern classics,” and he’s been accepted as another of the United States’ leading guitar makers ever since. The 1989 Custom 24 featured here was built just a few years after PRS established proper production but before its guitars were commonplace in dealerships across the country. Not only is it a classic from the maker’s “golden era” but it wears a rare Bonni Pink finish that comes with its own…

“OF ALL MY Warner Bros. albums, it’s the one I love the most, without a doubt. And maybe that’s because I took so much shit for it.” When Marshall Crenshaw set out to make Field Day in early 1983, he was riding high on the success of his self-titled debut. Released the previous April, and recorded with his duo — bassist Chris Donato and Crenshaw’s brother, drummer Robert — Marshall Crenshaw was a sunny, power-pop confection, full of three-minute tunes whose styles recalled the artists that populated rock and roll’s late ’50s to early ’60s heyday, including Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and the Beatles. The album showed Crenshaw to be a fine songwriter and singer, but it was his guitar skills that proved to be his unlikely strong suit for…

SOME THINGS IMPROVE with age. Guitars certainly sound better over time, particularly acoustic guitars, because it’s literally all about the wood. This is a subject Santa Cruz Guitars Company captain Richard Hoover knows all too well. When we spoke with him for our February 2024 Frets feature, Hoover was crafting the company’s stunning Vault Series from some of the most prized ancient wood on the planet for release at the NAMM show. We had a chance to catch up with him again at the event for a follow-up discussion about old-growth woods. Here’s what he had to say. Why does old wood sound better? The reason to a large degree is that the sticky resins within the wood don’t harden from the evaporation of moisture. You remove moisture when you…

MY FRIEND ANDY HESS and I were reminiscing about how amazing the Bay Area music scene was in the ’70s and early ’80s. There was Tower of Power, Malo, Santana with Neal Schon, Larry Graham, Sly Stone, Merle Saunders, the Pointer Sisters, Pete Escovedo at Cesar’s Latin Palace, Sylvester, and Journey before Steve Perry. The club Larry Blake’s had a great blues scene, as did the South Bay over at the Saddle Rack, while the Oakland music community was vibrant and diverse with artists who pushed the musical envelope while performing some of the best funk ever played by human hands. Among the many performers in that scene was Betty Davis. The second wife of Miles Davis, Betty was about two years divorced from the trumpeter when she cut this…

AT THE START of the Black Keys’ latest album, Ohio Players, singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach declares that he’s going to “spend the rest of my days in the middle of nowhere.” He’s joking, of course. It’s certainly been an eventful journey for Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney since the pair met as childhood neighbors in Akron, Ohio. Both have musical family backgrounds that stoked their own interests, and diverse ones at that. Auerbach’s cousin Robert Quine was one of New York City’s top guns, playing with Lou Reed, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Tom Waits, Matthew Sweet and many others. Carney’s uncle Ralph Carney, meanwhile, was a saxophonist who played with Waits, among others. Auerbach and Carney seemed strange bedfellows as teens — the former was a jock, the latter a…

IN THIS DIGITAL age, where an endless stream of equipment information seems to come from all directions at any moment, now seems like a good time to take a 360-degree scan of the current landscape, filter though the spew and focus on a few. What you’ll find over these pages is some inspiring gear that connects acoustic players to primary developments that have appeared scattered throughout the foggy ether of the pandemic era, as well as a few novel innovations and commemorative celebrations. This is by no means comprehensive coverage of the entire acoustic universe but rather a selected swath of shining stars on the gear horizon, with a primary lens concentrated on guitars. ACOUSTIC GUITARS BREEDLOVE TB VINTAGE EDITION BLUES ORANGE CONCERTINA BREEDLOVE AND BEDELL guitars both fly under…

THE LATEST ADDITIONS to PRS’s offshore-produced SE line include two guitars that date back to the 1980s — the Custom 24 and the CE24, introduced, respectively, in ’85 and ’88 — along with a reissue of an outlier model called the Swamp Ash Special, which was originally produced at PRS’s Stevensville, Maryland, factory between 1996 and 2002. I tested these guitars through a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a ’48 Dual Professional, along with a row of UAFX pedals that included the Lion ’68 Super Lead, 1176 Studio Compressor and Orion Tape Delay. SE CE24 Featuring a mahogany body and a maple top with a shallow violin carve, the SE CE24 is a sharp-looking guitar with its striking Blood Orange quilted maple veneer. The exposed edge shows off the thickness of…

CARBON FIBER LIFE STYLE brand Klos (pronounced like the opposite of “far”) is rolling out a gang of new gear, and the Grand Cutaway Mini is particularly compelling because of its unique size and features. Travel guitars put Klos on the map and remain its most popular size, but the company is gaining ground in the full-size market with models like the new grand auditorium Grand Cutaway. The GC Mini essentially splits the difference. The concept is a road-ready, seaworthy instrument that delivers fuller sound and better playability than a typical travel guitar, along with gig-worthy electronic options. GP was excited to try one of the first GC Minis built with an L.R. Baggs Anthem. It packs the promise of a perfect on-the-go guitar for dedicated cruiser lifestylists and working…