Tabla de contenidos para August 2024 en Guitar Player

ROCK AND ROLL DOESN’T have too many breakthrough moments, those instances where an underground movement roars to life and becomes a cultural phenomenon. Elvis, the Beatles, the Sex Pistols — all came out of nowhere and profoundly reshaped the musical landscape for years to come. You should add Bon Jovi to that list. Slippery When Wet, the New Jersey hair-metal group’s 1986 breakout hit, marks the moment when metal became a pop-culture force, and on a global scale at that. And for guitarists of that era, the player who led that revolutionary charge was Richie Sambora, the co-writer and riffmaker behind monster hits like “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.” So it’s more than a little odd that Richie was never on…

YEARS BEFORE PETER Stroud set his sights on playing the guitar for a living, his father gave him a few non-musical pointers that would prove invaluable. “He told me, no matter what you do in life, be a good listener,” Stroud says. “That always stayed with me, the idea that you don’t always have to say something just because you can, and you don’t always have to be the first person to talk. Learn to read the room. Try to understand the people you’re dealing with.” For Stroud, communication skills are as important as musical chops, especially when it comes to his long-running role in Sheryl Crow’s touring band as both guitarist and musical director. “Sheryl is a dear friend, so we have that kind of relationship,” he explains. “On…

JUDY HENSKE HAD a diverse recording career, and the folk-blues High Flying Bird appears to be something of an anomaly within her catalog. I have two other records of hers that are nothing like it: A Little Bit of Sunshine is a big-band vocal record, while Farewell Aldebaran is a psychedelic record that enjoys a cult following. Me? I didn’t get it. That said, High Flying Bird is an outstanding album I’ve enjoyed for 30 years. Released on Elektra in 1963, High Flying Bird overflows with great performances by Judy and her group, which includes guitarist Jack Marshall, the man who wrote The Munsters theme song. This being a folk record, Marshall plays acoustic throughout, and while he won’t make you throw away your Eddie Van Halen records, to my…

IN THE 11 YEARS since he left Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora hasn’t exactly flooded the market with new music. In 2017 and ’18, he teamed with his then girlfriend, Australian guitarist Orianthi, and released a pair of EPs and an album, but in the ensuing six years he’s been relatively quiet. Or has he? “I write every day,” he says. “People think I stopped working since I left Bon Jovi, but I went right back to work on solo records and the music I did with Ori. I look at myself as a new artist. Now, other people might not — they relate to me for what I’ve done, and I love what I did with Bon Jovi. I’m not ever saying anything bad about that because we did a…

THE NEW YEAR is just a few weeks old and John Fogerty is driving with his wife and manager, Julie, along a stretch of California highway. But as the road unwinds ahead of him, his thoughts are drifting back several decades, to 1969, as he recalls in vivid detail the albums and events that made it a banner year for his band Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Well, first of all,” Fogerty says, “I don’t think at the beginning of 1969 I had a business plan outlined that said, ‘Okay, we’ll release an album in January, we’ll release one in August, we’ll release another in October…’ I don’t think I had any plan like that. When you’re 22 years old, you can’t see that far ahead.” In hindsight, however, CCR’s 1969 was…

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GUITAR PLAYERS ARE notorious for futzing with their guitars. Hendrix modded his Strat’s pickup selector for in-between settings, Yngwie scalloped the frets on his, and Jaco tore the frets off his Fender Jazz. And as everyone knows, EVH performed some radical surgery on his axes. It’s in that spirit that multi-instrumentalist/composer Gabriel Horn built this 11-string fretless baritone after being inspired by his fellow songwriter and fretless player Fletcher J. Dowell. As Gabriel explains, “The sounds one can make with fretless instruments are extremely expressive.” While we’re all familiar with the singing attributes of the violin and slide guitar, the fretless electric guitar remains an oddity, which is why I had to check it out. WEIRDO FACTOR If all you see is a Flying V — in this case, the…

“MY HOUSE, MAN, it’s a music church,” Richie Sambora exclaims over Facetime from his Los Angeles home. “I’m used to paying two thousand dollars a day to go to the studio, but welcome to Kitchen Studios! It’s just off the kitchen here — where I keep my guys fed, because I work them hard!” Sambora chuckles, but the reality is that all four of his new songs were cut in the comfort of his home, and why not? After all, he had its architecture tweaked for maximum sonic value. “I recessed every ceiling, all at different levels,” he notes, explaining the effort made to reduce reflections that can ruin a recording. “And every room sounds great.” Here, Sambora walks us through his writing and recording comeback effort, song by song.…

GUITAR MAY HAVE historically been dominated by male players, but as Sue Foley exemplifies on her fabulous new album, One Guitar Woman (Stony Plain), some super women boldly went where no one had gone before, paving the way for the far more inclusive guitar world we live in today. In fact, many of the earliest six-string heroes were ladies who wielded parlor guitars, entertaining families and handing down techniques through generations. Martin documents its first X-braced acoustic was a size 1 made in 1843 for Madame De Goni, who was the Eddie Van Halen of her time. We simply don’t know much about players from that era because information is scarce. We have a pretty good record since the advent of studio technology, and Foley has done a ton of…

FAME IS CELEBRATING 20 years in the instrument game with a commemorative limited-edition series that includes this Forum IV Modern 20th Anniversary model with a striking Burl Stonewashed Blue top and high-gloss finish. What started in Gdansk, Poland, with a small custom shop called Mayones has grown into an internationally known brand in cooperation with the German retailer Music Store Professional. With Fame, Music Store aims to produce a luxurious guitar with an economy price tag, and the Forum IV Modern seems designed to fit the bill. The guitar is loaded with premium features that include a GraphTech Resomax Tune-o-matic bridge with a Ghost piezo pickup system that augments a pair of coil-splitting Seymour Duncan humbuckers. Gotoh locking tuners adorn the shapely headstock, capping off an ebony fingerboard that features…

MOTHER MOTHER HAVE been hard at it since 2005, when Ryan Guldemond formed the band in Quadra Island, British Columbia. Along the way, the alternative-pop rockers dropped eight records heading into the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they never managed to resonate on a larger scale. All that changed after “Hayloft,” a cut from 2008’s O My Heart, exploded with the help of TikTok, catapulting Mother Mother to millions-of-streams-per-week success. Since then, the upward trend has continued, with the group’s latest record, 2024’s Grief Chapter (Warner), looking to be their biggest yet. Reflecting on Mother Mother’s journey, Ryan Guldemond tells Guitar Player, “If you want to marry your art with commerce and success, you probably should just get on social media and do whatever it takes to be noticed, just…

YEARS AGO, HARMONY and Silvertone guitars were mostly seen as low-level pawnshop prizes, funky junk or, at best, short-money noisemakers that might cut a dashing figure in garage bands or punk-blues outfits. But the people who designed and manufactured those guitars took pride in creating the more elevated models that ended up in the hands of stars like Roy Smeck, Buck Owens, Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James and Keith Richards. Today, many guitarists now value those upmarket models as viable instruments that have a sound, vibe and look all their own. Moreover, they can help the player say something original onstage or in the studio, and do so with a sly sense of cool. BUDGET JAZZ BOX The Silvertone Model H63 Espanada featured here is just such a guitar. Design-wise,…

CROWDED HOUSE’S RETURN five years ago was certainly a welcome one. The Australian-formed group had been dormant since 2016, when it played four shows at the Sydney Opera House and was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association’s (ARIA) Hall of Fame. So frontman and co-founder Neil Finn’s announcement of resumption and a new lineup — with original bassist Nick Seymour, original producer Mitchell Froom on keyboards, and Finn’s sons Liam and Elroy on guitar and drums, respectively — was greeted with great anticipation, even if the pandemic delayed the group’s return to the stage. “It does feel like it’s got a really good future, because everyone is super excited,” Finn enthused during the spring of 2021, when the new Crowded House released Dreamers Are Waiting, the band’s first new…

A HIGHLY EVOLVED spin-off of Dean’s V model from the late ’70s, the Vengeance is a stylish metal machine that’s available in both the USA Custom Shop and offshore-produced Select line, with options in pickups and hardware (including the Evertune bridge) to suit different needs. The version on review here is the Select Floyd Fluence which, as the name suggests, carries a Floyd Rose 1000 bridge and locking R3 nut and a pair of Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers: an AB1 (alnico) at the neck and a CB1 (ceramic) at the bridge. Powered by a nine-volt battery housed in a flip-open compartment on the back, these pickups offer Voice 1 (modern, high output) and Voice 2 (crisp, clean) modes that are activated by a push-pull function on the tone control. The…

ALMOST ALL GUITARISTS associate germanium with fuzz boxes. But in fact, this chemical element was used to make transistors and diodes for myriad applications before silicon components became more widely available. Amp maker David Kowalski has something of an obsession with germanium. Based in McAllen, Texas, Kowalski — whose Dark Gene micro amp was reviewed in our November 2021 issue — has created the Rare Earth Germanium Device to bridge the gap between overdrive and fuzz. QUIRKY CIRCUITS Inspired by the iconic two-transistor Tone Bender Mk 1.5 and Fuzz Face circuits of the ’60s, Kowalski spent years testing and selecting appropriate germanium components for his Germanium Device. He ultimately decided to work with suitable transistors from a range of makers, including Telefunken, Mullard, RCA, Brimar, NKT and — as found…