Tabla de contenidos para December 2023 en Guitar Player

THERE HAS BEEN little reason to expect a new Rolling Stones album in recent years. The group hasn’t produced any new music since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, and the death of the group’s founding drummer, Charlie Watts, on August 24, 2021, only seemed to underline the obvious — that the long-running rock and rollers were reaching the end of their road. While we might be able to expect more adventures in their seemingly endless string of live performances, another studio album of new Mick Jagger–Keith Richards–penned tunes seemed unlikely. Yet, history has shown time and time again that it’s a fool who underestimates the Rolling Stones. The English rockers have been declared past their expiration date many times, only to rear their heads and unleash another slab of vinyl filled…

IN ADDITION TO his solo career, Gary Hoey has recorded and/or toured with some of the biggest guitarists around — players like Brian May, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Peter Frampton, Rick Derringer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, among others. He explains that with each pairing, he keeps his eyes and ears open for any playing tips he might pick up, and he’ll seek advice whenever possible. “I’m a fan of these players, just like anybody else,” Hoey says. “I’m always trying to incorporate the things they can do into my style. I did a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp with Steve Morse, and I picked up some cool pointers from him.” One such technique involved fingerstyle playing with your picking hand. “Steve talked about how a lot of players don’t use…

AMID ALL THE exotic, vintage bucket-brigade delays and germanium-transistor fuzzes that qualify as classic pedals, one humble three-knob overdrive has been doing the job for 42 years with little romance or acclaim, and probably juicing the tones of more rigs and recordings than any other single pedal on the planet. Introduced in 1981, the Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive represented the OD pedal come of age — a just-right circuit for guitarists requiring pushed-amp tone in situations where an amp can’t easily be pushed, or providing just a little poke to take a lead from satisfactory to luscious. Worth exploring in and of itself, the SD-1 is also worth considering in light of the many boutique and vintage reissue overdrives that cost two, three or even four times the price. For…

KEITH RICHARDS ONCE humorously quipped, “Guitar is easy — all it takes is five fingers, six strings and one asshole.” Yes, easy perhaps, but few have wielded the instrument with as much imagination, grit and panache as the legendary Rolling Stone himself. Over the past six decades, the guitarist has unleashed a torrent of timeless riffs, gracing hits like “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Satisfaction,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Start Me Up,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’” and “Happy.” And now, brace yourselves for a dozen more hot rocks. At the venerable age of 79, Richards, accompanied by his eternally youthful crew, the Rolling Stones, has put the final touches on their 26th U.S. studio album. Lord knows, it’s been a long time comin’. Nearly eight years have passed since the release of…

SOMETIMES A GUITAR is more than an instrument. It makes a statement about who you are, and indicates your values and what you appreciate as an artist. The Martin OM Biosphere is such an instrument. It’s totally free of plastic and fully FSC-certified. Even its groovy gig bag is made of hemp. Forestry Stewardship Council certification means a product is made from responsibly sourced woods and ensures benefits of an environmental, social and economic nature for the forest and its local people. Showing support for the conservation of precious and increasingly endangered coral reefs, the OM Biosphere features an aquatic-themed top with an oceanic image by Robert Goetzl. The affable artist painted the cosmic scene for 2021’s 00L Earth Guitar as well, and the OM Biosphere is essentially a version-two…

JOE KNAGGS AND his team have been building exquisitely crafted solid and semi-hollow custom and signature guitars for more than 20 years, so it’s always a treat when one shows up here for a test drive, as this Severn Trem SSS did. Named for a river in Maryland, the Severn harks back to Knaggs’ days working at PRS before he launched his own guitar company. “The inspiration behind the Severn was to create a guitar that I wanted to play,” he explains. “I had a ’61 Stratocaster at the time and wanted a Strat-style guitar with a fretboard radius of eight and a half inches, so it wouldn’t be as curved as the Fender and fret out when I’d bend strings. There’s a lot of other factors that led to…

INNOVATOR, GUITARIST, INVENTOR and photographer are some of the words that define Larry DiMarzio, whose early interest in making guitars sound and play better led him to start a company that offered players better tone in the form of replacement pickups. The concept was unheard of in the early 1970s, but DiMarzio revolutionized the music industry by doing what guitar companies couldn’t do — build drop-in pickups that replaced the stock units without modification to the instrument. It was something he was adamant about because of his love for vintage guitars and his belief that owners should always be able to return them to stock if they desired. As he has said, “The Super Distortion humbucking pickup came about because I wanted to improve my guitar’s sound and output without…

JIMMY BRYANT WAS notoriously difficult to work with. Which might explain why it’s not Jimmy but his rhythm guitarist, Billy Strange, pictured with his face turned away from the camera on the cover of Country Cabin Jazz, Bryant’s 1960 Capitol Records release. Born Ivy John Bryant Jr. in 1925, Jimmy started as a fiddle player and moved on to guitar. Although he was influenced by Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins and Les Paul, his style was so unique as to be beyond the definitions of any genre, something Country Cabin Jazz makes perfectly clear. The album is packed with great performances, unique and concise songs, and the phenomenal chemistry of Jimmy Bryant and pedal-steel virtuoso Speedy West. They’re given exhilirating support here by Strange, bassist Cliff Stone, drummer Roy Harte and…

“SO, WHO DOES every kid that picks up a guitar want to be?” producer Andrew Watt asks. “You want to be Keith Richards, right? That’s the whole fucking thing! So making this record and working with the Rolling Stones, earning their trust, was the honor of my lifetime.” Watt, at 32, is still a little giddy from working with the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band on their new album, Hackney Diamonds, and who can blame him? Even though he’s arguably the music industry’s hottest producer, having collaborated with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Eddie Vedder to Miley Cyrus, the native New Yorker is still buzzing from his time producing the Stones and their legendary guitar duo of Richards and Ronnie Wood. “I’ve seen the Rolling Stones play countless times,”…

THERE WAS NO denying Dan Wilson’s talents, nor the diversity of his repertoire, when he released Vessel of Wood and Earth in 2021. They shone through on every track. The sheer speed, incendiary single-note flights and swing factor that the Akron, Ohio–based guitarist demonstrated on tunes like “The Rhythm Section” and “The Reconstruction Beat” marked him as a new talent to watch, as did the impeccable, Pat Martino–esque picking technique he flashed on “Who Shot John.” Elsewhere on that outing, his third as a leader, Wilson balanced those fleet-fingered numbers with two timely message songs in Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” and “Save the Children,” the latter grafted onto the stirring intro of John Coltrane’s “After the Rain.” He lent a subtle touch of reharmonization to Stevie Wonder’s “Bird of…

IN ITS FIRST significant assault on the North American electric guitar market in the mid to late ’70s, Yamaha showed more-established brands how to do it right with its so-called Les Paul killer, the SG2000. In the decades since, the brand has continued to produce high-end guitars for the Japanese market, but here in the United States Yamaha has more often been known for making lower-priced models that nevertheless offer good value. Now comes the Revstar Professional RSP02T, a guitar that shows the company returning to unbounded standards for quality and design in the U.S. market. Built at the company’s headquarters in Japan, and primed with top-notch construction and components, its a guitar whose achievements are well matched to its namesake aspirations. Yamaha’s first Revstar hit the streets in 2015…

YOU CAN SAY this: Relentless (Parlophone), the 12th and latest studio album from the Pretenders, is aptly named. Since forming 45 years ago, in 1978, the group has endured deaths — the melodically gifted lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, in 1982, and bassist Pete Farndon, in 1983 — as well as lineup changes and the vicissitudes of popular culture. Through it all, frontwoman and guitarist Chrissie Hynde has remained the sole constant force behind the group. But since 2008, she’s had an equally persistent partner in guitarist James Walbourne, who has served as Hynde’s musical foil. Walbourne is not only an astounding guitarist but also Hynde’s writing partner, co-penning the band’s last two albums with her. On Relentless, Hynde and Walbourne combine familiar elements of the band’s past work with some…

ONE GLANCE AT Peavey’s new HP 2 Poplar Burl RM tells you it’s primed to rock, with its double-locking vibrato, dual humbuckers and no-nonsense control layout. Likely the same glance also tells you it’s a direct descendant of Peavey’s best-known and most historic rock axe of all time, the Wolfgang. The company, based in Meridian, Mississippi, manufactured that Edward Van Halen signature model between 1996 and 2004, prior to the virtuoso shredder’s split from the deal to make guitars and amplifiers under his own EVH brand, beginning in 2007. Few guitarists missed the similarity between the designs when Peavey introduced its first HP 2 in 2017. Now the HP 2 Poplar Burl RM adds to the formula with an exotic top carved from solid burled poplar, in your top-finish choice…