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“I was amazed it even worked… the scratchplate looked like somebody had used a hacksaw”: Unorthodox, powered by EMGs, Gary Moore's 1982 Charvel San Dimas was the battle-ready hot-rod he needed in the ’80s

Hasty mods made to this Charvel made it a choice workhorse for Gary in the early ’80s – and it fetched over $40,000 when auctioned at Bonham's

Guitar World · Jan 3

“Who knows? It was worth pursuing. They did okay without me”: Adrian Smith on the time he auditioned for Def Leppard

He lost out to former Dio man Vivian Campbell, as well as another classic rock star...

Guitar World · Jan 2

“I showed up on the first day of shooting, saying, ‘This is a guitar I bought at Guitar Center. I want to use my guitar in the movie’”: Jack Black reveals he still owns the Gibson SG that characterized School of Rock

The off-the-shelf guitar became a piece of cinematic history in 2003 when it was featured in the once-in-a-generation movie

Guitar World · Jan 2

“I sold my first guitar to my drummer. He paid me $50, put SpongeBob stickers on it, then lit it on fire”: Kiki Wong reveals her Smashing Pumpkins live rig, gear regrets and how a Line 6 amp made her the player she is today

Kiki Wong might be the only guitar player alive today who can recall from memory Ibanez S series model numbers. Here's what the S40DXQM means to her...

Guitar World · Jan 2

“All I remember is thinking that the bass turned into a snake. I broke all the strings, threw it down and left the stage”: Bootsy Collins was tripping on LSD when he took the James Brown bass chair to its most in-your-face level

Unable to deal with Brown’s disciplinary code, Bootsy was gone within a year

Guitar World · Jan 1

“I was broke. I only had $200 and we booked a gig. There was this guitar at a pawn shop that had been there for years...” How George Thorogood stumbled across the Gibson that became his go-to guitar – a week before his first gig with the Destroyers

Thorogood recounts how he originally opted for a now-discontinued hollowbody – with a little inspiration from the Beatles and Keith Richards

Guitar World · Jan 1

“I didn’t know him or trust him. But I gave him all of that money in the hope he would bring me a Strat. I had no idea if I’d see him again”: Rammstein’s Richard ZK on the coffee shop rendezvous in East Germany that got him his first Fender

The Rammstein riffer wanted a Strat to imitate his hero, Jimi Hendrix – but getting hold of one took some serious work

Guitar World · Jan 1

“I knew relic’ing was coming. I did it myself, to my own guitar, very crude and primitive. I put it on a stand at a guitar show, with no strategy. And it changed everything”: How relic’ing conquered the guitar world

The not-so-gentle art of relic’ing has enjoyed arenaissance since its maligned roots in the mid-’90s. We asked scene godfather and Gibson Custom Shop guru Tom Murphy how the tide turned

Guitar World · Jan 1

“He asked to hear it, so I played it, and he said, ‘I have to play on this. Give me a track’”: How a 20-year-old Steve Lukather beat three seasoned session pros to feature on this ’70s soft rock classic

England Dan & John Ford Coley bookended their decade-long career with the album Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive, which features a fast-rising Lukather on a couple of tracks

Guitar World · Dec 31, 2025

“I learned to play everything on it. We wrote our first song as Jonas Brother on that guitar”: In the mid-2000s, the Jonas Brothers exploded onto the scene as a guitar-slinging band for teens – Kevin Jonas looks back on the guitar that started it all

Nowadays, Jonas has a penchant for Gibsons, but he hasn't forgotten the humble Japanese build that kickstarted his career

Guitar World · Dec 31, 2025