Table of contents for Holiday 2023 in Guitar Player

IT HAPPENED IN Detroit, 1975. After releasing three albums that had little impact on the charts, Kiss got a major foothold when their single “Rock and Roll All Nite” connected with Detroit radio listeners. Seemingly overnight, Kiss were everywhere. And if, like me, you were a local youngster, they were just about the only thing any of your peers were talking about. To be honest, I didn’t “get” Kiss until years later, once the pressure was off and I could take them on my own terms. I came to appreciate the raw power and pure fun that they brought to music, bridging the void between glammy proto punks like the Stooges and New York Dolls and the first wave of punk that delivered the Ramones and Sex Pistols. In an…

OVER THE COURSE of his nearly 40-year career, Dream Theater guitar god John Petrucci has played thousands of shows across the globe. And guess what? Not all of them have been perfect. “Oh, yes, I’m mortal,” he says with a laugh. “Even though I try to nail all of my parts night after night, I’m going to screw up occasionally. It happens.” How does Petrucci not allow onstage flubs to bother him? By simply choosing not to get rattled. “The worst thing you can do is beat yourself up when you make a mistake,” he says. “If you start to become too self-conscious, you’ll get in a downward spiral and you’ll make another mistake. Before you know it, you’ve made a string of mistakes and your whole gig will be…

ALTHOUGH IT WAS Gibson’s first major endorsement-led electric guitar, the Les Paul model failed to set the market on fire during its initial run, from 1952 to ’60. But the thinline semi-hollowbody ES-335 that joined the company’s lineup in 1958 was much closer to an overnight success. The seminal semihollow design immediately proved to be one of the world’s most versatile electric guitars, and it has retained that reputation ever since. And just as Gibson had extended the Les Paul range in 1953 with the Custom model, a.k.a. Black Beauty, the company added to the ES lineup in late 1958 with the ES-355, the top model of the range. The step up to the ES-355 brought with it changes to the guitar’s electronics — including stereo wiring and a six-position…

“I don’t think there was any kind of masterplan in the beginning, or anything close to it,” Trevor Rabin says, summarizing a music career that’s taken him from classroom music stands to Hollywood movie studios — and many points in between. “It all just kind of happened. I think everything took different avenues once it got going.” Rest assured, the South African–born guitarist, composer, bandleader and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (with Yes) has traveled a great many paths while playing music for almost all of his 69 years. His latest effort, Rio (Inside Out Music), is his first new song-oriented solo album in 34 years. The son of overachieving artistic parents — dad Godfrey was an attorney, conductor and lead violinist in the Johannesburg Philharmonic; mom Joy a…

When it comes down to it, all it takes for Paul Stanley to get his game on is a guitar plugged straight into an amp. “We have tried different things in the rig, as far as modular effects or overdrives,” explains T.J. Silljer, Stanley’s guitar tech on the End of the Road tour. “But at the end of the day, we usually just plug directly into the amp and Paul ends up saying, ‘Nothing sounds better than a great guitar plugged straight into a great amp.’ We only use one channel on the amp for the whole show. If he wants a little less gain, he uses his volume knob to clean it up a bit. That’s one of my favorite things about Paul: I love how old school he…

FROM HIS SOLO work to his stints with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and Mötley Crüe, John 5 has been hailed as a modern-day guitar hero. Through the years, he’s also had the opportunity to work with the original members of Kiss. John appears on Paul Stanley’s Live to Win album, performing on songs that include “Where Angels Dare,” which he co-wrote with Stanley and Desmond Child. He also shows up on Ace Frehley’s Origins Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 releases, and he enlisted Peter Criss to play drums on “Georgia on My Mind,” from John 5 and the Creatures’ 2021 album, Sinner. It all results from a fascination with the group that began in his youth. “It was spring of 1977 and I was walking through Sears when I saw…

BIRÉLI LAGRÈNE IS one of the most accomplished jazz guitarists of the past four decades, yet his playing still radiates a boyish wonder and curiosity. I caught his recent show at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, California, in a duo setting with fellow phenom Martin Taylor, where Lagrène displayed sheer playful virtuosity. His plucking thumb alone is a marvel and could practically do a gig by itself. When supporting Taylor, Biréli would add an octave effect and become a badass bassist with deep pockets. When at the fore, his ability to casually throw in outrageously advanced licks or crazy chords for utter amusement brought Jeff Beck and Tommy Emmanuel to mind. The audience was full of cats smiling to themselves, shaking their heads in disbelief and occasionally laughing out loud…

GUILD’S LATEST EDITION of the S-100 Polara — a model originally introduced in 1963 sporting a “kickstand” body shape and a distinctive spear point on the headstock — is the offset-batwing version that Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil has been playing since 1978. The model on review here — a production (read “offshore made”) version of the USA-built flagship model that features premium old-growth woods and Jason Lollar pickups — has a gloss-black mahogany body and a glued-in mahogany neck with a comfortable soft-U carve. Sitting atop is a 24 ¾–inch-scale rosewood fingerboard that looks suitably upscale, with pearloid blocks and ivory binding, and carries 22 polished narrow-jumbo frets. The strings travel across a chunky composite nut before fanning outward to a set of gold-plated Grover Rotomatic tuning machines on a classic…

THE 14TH PEDAL in the UAFX line, the OX Stomp is essentially a pedal-sized OX Top Box without the internal speaker load. In other words, it’s not a power attenuator and is designed for instrument and line-level signals only. But what OX Stomp does have are the cabinet, mic and room emulations that give players produced-sounding three-dimensional tones, greatly simplifying the signal chains required for recording and live performance. Housed in the same metal enclosure used by most UAFX pedals, the OX Stomp has controls for room (studio ambience and air), speaker drive (dynamic response and breakup), output, mic 1 (microphone 1 level), rig (a six-position rotary switch for selecting rig presets) and mic 2 (microphone 2 level). In the middle are two switches, mic 1 select and mic 2…

WHETHER THEY’RE MAKING pedals, pickups, amps or guitars, many small-shop builders discover that the rewards of pursuing their passion come with the headaches of running a small business. You can count pickup designer and winder Spencer Mumford among them. Shed, his one-man operation in South Wales, U.K., earned a stellar reputation for the quality of its pickups in the early-mid period of the boutique-winder boom, but shuttered in the mid 2010s after struggling with issues regarding admin, supply chain and worldwide shipping hassles. Shed re-formed in summer 2023 and now includes partners Jeff Williams and Phil Jarvis, who handle day-to-day business operations, while Mumford — known in the trade simply as “Spence” — focuses on the pickups. Shed’s wares include the set of HA-59 PAF humbuckers I’m looking at this…

JOE KNAGGS HAS carved a stellar reputation for his craftsmanship and design skills since he and his business partner, Peter Wolf, left PRS Guitars in 2009 to form Knaggs Guitars. The Maryland-based guitar maker had a goal to make high-end instruments that offer awesome playability, leading-edge quality and attention to detail, as well as jaw-dropping finishes, including the two-tone schemes that Knaggs pioneered. Those are often with inlaid purfling dividing the colors, such as we saw on the Severn Trem SSS dressed in luscious Seafoam Green and TV Yellow reviewed in our December 2023 issue. But that particular guitar represented just the tip of Knaggs’ iceberg. The company lets buyers personalize their instruments with an extensive array of options in neck and body woods, hardware, pickups and finishes that are…

ONCE UPON A time, as I watched Roy Clark performing “Malagueña” on TV, I thought to myself, Sheesh! This guy is sweating buckets. Is sweating a part of his act? Years later, I learned that “that guy from Hee Haw,” as I knew Roy, was a great multi-instrumentalist. He even made a guitar duet record with Joe Pass. So when I found Guitar Spectacular, I bought it. As it turns out, it’s a great place to start appreciating Roy Clark for the artist he could be. I’m always pleased to re-evaluate an artist who I consider “commercial.” For example, many people think of Jerry Reed as Cledus Snow in Smokey and the Bandit, but Mr. Reed was actually one of the great guitar composers of the 20th century. Similarly, Roy…

FIFTY YEARS AGO, four New York City punks set the music world on fire with their swaggering brand of rock and roll and ghoulish costumes. It was a minor victory, seeing as the greater number of music listeners were simply shaking their heads in wonder at this band of cartoonish costumed wags. It took time, but within a few years, the tide began to turn — first in cities like Detroit, where teen fans made “Rock and Roll All Nite” a party anthem, and then in towns and metropolises throughout the country and, eventually, the world. Before then, Kiss had simply been a quartet: guitarist Paul Stanley, lead guitarist Ace Frehley, bassist Gene Simmons and drummer Peter Criss. Afterward, they were an institution, cutting 20 studio albums and seven live…

WHETHER TE ARING UP the fretboard with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie or Mötley Crüe, John 5 Is recognized as one of this generation’s most groundbreaking guitar players. Given his six-string mojo and his cred as one of the most dedicated foot soldiers in the Kiss Army, we asked him to lend his expert opinion on six of his favorite Paul Stanley solos. “HOLD ME, TOUCH ME” PAUL STANLEY — PAUL STANLEY (1978) “The ‘Hold Me, Touch Me’ solo is one of my favorites because of the emotion and the slow hand vibrato, and that’s hard to do. Sometimes playing fast is easier to do than playing something with beautiful emotion and a slow hand vibrato that’ll just tear your heart out. It might be my favorite part of the song.”…

FOLK ICON BOB DYLAN went electric in 1965. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” electrified Woodstock in 1969, and Kurt Cobain’s suicide would be rock’s biggest story of 1994. While 1973 may not have a singularly defining music-related event like these, the year heralded the release of a staggering number of classic albums. It’s almost impossible to fathom, but Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, the Who’s Quadrophenia, and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions were all issued that year, not to mention debuts from now-legendary rock bands Queen, Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Over the course of 2023, we’ve dedicated entire lessons to celebrating the guitar wizardry found within Dark Side, Houses and Skynyrd’s debut, Pronounced ‘Lĕh-’nérd ‘Skin-’nérd. What better way to close out…

DURING THE COURSE of an illustrious career that has lasted more than 50 years, Steve Hackett has consistently explored a diverse musical cocktail, delving into everything from prog-rock and classical to blues and beyond. After making a name for himself as a guitarist with several English outfits in the late 1960s, including pop-rockers Quiet World, he came to worldwide acclaim with the English prog-rock group Genesis in 1971, featuring singer Peter Gabriel, drummer Phil Collins, keyboardist Tony Banks and bassist Mike Rutherford. Hackett’s highly skilled technique and stylistically mixed bag were integral contributions to the group’s ever-evolving sound on the six studio albums he contributed guitar to, but he departed Genesis in late 1977 to pursue a hugely prolific solo career that continues today. Along the way, Hackett found time…

LONG BEFORE JAPANESE and European musical instrument makers flooded the U.S. market with cheap starter guitars in the mid 1960s, we had our own budget-minded companies right here in the states. Danelectro is the guitar maker most people think of when it comes to cheap-and-cheerful axes, but there were many others, including Harmony, Supro and — the subject of this month’s column — Kay. In fact, Kay was a very well-established musical instrument manufacturer, with origins dating back to the 1930s. Despite being remembered for budget axes, Kay built some nice guitars in its early years, like the elegant and sought-after Barney Kessel model. As the rock and roll craze caught on, the company had the foresight to offer several stripped-down beginner guitars, like the bizarre 1958 Solo King model…

“WE WANTED TO be a band that had heavy guitars but also songs with strong melodies and choruses. That’s the school I grew up in,” Paul Stanley says, reflecting on the birth of Kiss, the group he co-founded some 50 years ago. “It was coming more from the Brill Building kind of writers than head-banging. The idea was to combine some of the old Tin Pan Alley sensibilities with the Beatles’ style of songwriting and make it more guitar-driven, like Led Zeppelin, or the Rolling Stones and the Who. Interestingly, most of it was about rhythm guitar, which is the foundation of everything. Without it, everything falls apart.” From humble roots in Queens, New York, through equal measures of talent, ambition, hard work and self-belief, Paul Stanley willed himself into…

“AT THE END of the day, Mother Nature and Father Time get their comeuppance,” Gene Simmons offers, philosophically. “They put their hand out and say, ‘Okay, time for you to pay us for this wonderful life you’ve led.’ You have to have the dignity, self-respect and pride to know when it’s time to get off that stage.” Making that move hasn’t been easy for Simmons. When Kiss wrap up their nearly four-year-long End of the Road tour on December 2, it will bring the group’s 50-year reign to a rousing finale. Kiss have taken their sweet time crossing the finish line, but when it’s over, the 74-year-old bassist will be able to look back at a life and career of his own choosing and making. It’s not an exaggeration to…

IF SMALL IS the new big, then Boss’s novel acoustic amp is huge news, because this little bugger is truly tiny. The AC-22LX is about the size of a double-wide lunch box and weighs under nine pounds. And if the battery-powered movement is one of the most exciting revolutions in amplification, here’s an interesting option: The AC-22LX uses old-fashioned AA batteries instead of the trendy lithium ion. It packs a ton of functionality into its compact package and comes loaded with two distinct channels, a rhythm box, a looper, and onboard effects, most notably Air Feel models designed to deliver the airy tones of a miked-up acoustic. The AC-22LX has a distinctly acoustic-looking brown-on-brown aesthetic that makes it look like a little sibling to the Boss Acoustic Singer Series. Controls…