Vieux Farka Touré Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to the Hendrix of the...
Vieux Farka Touré plays his father's old pedals. This is not sentiment; it is genealogy made audible. The Boss OC-2 Octave, the DD-2 Digital...
Stefan Grossman Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to the Country Blues Guitar Master’s...
In 1962, a seventeen-year-old boy from Queens was sitting in the apartment of the Reverend Gary Davis — the blind Harlem gospel and blues...
Michael Hedges Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to the Aerial Boundaries Acoustic Guitar...
One evening in Palo Alto, California, around 1980, Will Ackerman — guitarist, founder of Windham Hill Records, the label that had essentially invented the...
Lightnin’ Hopkins Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Texas Blues’ Lone Wolf
"I had the one thing you need to be a blues singer," Lightnin' Hopkins used to say. "I was born with the blues."
He wasn't...
Billy Corgan Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to the Man Who Played All...
He is left-handed. He plays right-handed. He does this because there are more right-handed guitars to choose from.
This is the essential Billy Corgan pragmatism:...
Don Ross Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to the Two-Time Fingerstyle Champion’s Rig
Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist whose own acoustic guitar work is among the finest in North American music, wrote the liner notes...
Son House Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Delta Blues’ Most Primal Force
He hated the blues. He was a preacher. He thought secular music was sinful. He had no interest in the guitar.
Then, at age 25,...
K.K. Downing Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Judas Priest’s Wild Half
There's a story about a music shop in Birmingham in the mid-1970s. Two guitarists arrived looking at the same instrument — a vintage Gibson...
Brent Mason Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Nashville’s Most Recorded Guitarist
He found it in a Nashville guitar shop in the early 1980s for a few hundred dollars.
It was a 1967 Fender Telecaster that someone...
Steve Hackett Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Genesis’ Pioneer Guitarist
Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" came out in 1978. Two-handed tapping — the technique where the picking hand taps frets on the neck while the...
