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The Latest Breaking News from Guitarist

“Freddie is always with me. He was like a brother, and now I have a Mercury on my guitar, too, which makes me very happy”: Brian May on how astronomy, the Everly Brothers and Freddie Mercury influenced the design of his Gibson SJ-200 12-string

The Queen guitarist's signature model is a super-rare example of a 12-string Gibson jumbo, replete with May's own aesthetic flourishes. But why is it strung like a Ricky? Here, May explains all

Guitar World

“I’d met Leslie West, and like a lot of guitar players, you couldn’t meet Leslie West and come out unscathed”: Martin Barre explains how the Mountain man influenced his most iconic solo on Jethro Tull’s Aqualung

The Jethro Tull legend says his meeting with the Mountain man left an indelible mark on him as a player

Guitar World

“I literally made the change that Eddie Van Halen was known for and was thinking about”: Larry DiMarzio says his revolutionary bridge tweak pre-empted Van Halen’s own mods

The guitar hero’s mods showed an intimate understanding of what makes a guitar sing, and they echoed thoughts DiMarzio was also having

Guitar World

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“I’m waiting for the right calibre of player. I can’t just pick somebody off the line”: Scott Gorham doesn’t rule out a future for Thin Lizzy – but he’s biding his time to find the perfect guitar foil

Lizzy’s most faithful guitarist, Scott Gorham, has left the door open for a potential return of the iconic band – but only under the right circumstances

Guitar World

“You don't have to spend a lot of money to get a great sound”: Joe Bonamassa reveals his go-to rig for guest-spots – and the amp he uses when he doesn’t want to cart out his Dumbles

The blues rock gear guru explains his bare bones gear choices for run ’n’ gun live sit-ins - and which amps complement different venues.

Guitar World

“I had 30 days left on my visa or they’re gonna throw me out of the country. I didn’t know they’d already auditioned 24 guitarists”: Scott Gorham recalls his nerve-racking Thin Lizzy audition – and his first impressions of Brian Robertson

Back in 1974, Thin Lizzy were auditioning a second guitarist to accompany their newest recruit: the 18-year-old Les Paul-wielding Brian Robertson

Guitar World

“Sonically, it’s astonishing. You plug in, turn it on and there it is – there’s the Andy Timmons sound”: That Pedal Show’s Daniel Steinhardt reveals his top 5 pedals (from the past 5 years)

Looking for some 'board inspiration? Here, the man behind GigRig and one half of YouTube's favorite pedal show gives us his shortlist

Guitar World

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“We haven’t broken a string on a Les Paul for more than three years”: Joe Bonamassa swears by this easy string-saving hack – which was inspired by Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons

Bonamassa’s go-to stringing method for his Les Pauls improves durability – and helps achieve a slinkier feel

Guitar World

“I subsequently became the world’s most famous guitarist with The Police. I wanted to play with somebody else to see how I’d do, like an experiment on myself”: At the height of his ’80s success, Andy Summers needed a challenge – he found Robert Fripp

As Summers’ and Fripp’s avant-garde albums of the 80s are reissued, we hear all about how the side-project came to be – and whether it could happen again

Guitar World

“He mostly played bass. I had a ’64 Strat that I got for $200. Tom didn’t really have a good electric, so I let him use that one”: How Mike Campbell and Tom Petty developed their Heartbreakers sound – with the help of some choice early gear picks

Though Petty was in need of a decent electric, the two Heartbreakers quickly landed on a sound that would define their guitar partnership

Guitar World

“The rest of the world didn't know that the world's greatest guitarist was playing a weekend gig at this place in Chelmsford”: The Aristocrats' Bryan Beller recalls the moment he met Guthrie Govan and formed a new kind of supergroup

As per Aristocrats lore, the power trio formed right after an impromptu jam at NAMM 2011

Guitar World

“I had never done that before. I thought Jimmy was going to go, ‘Nice one’ – he looks at me and goes, ‘Don’t you ever do that again’”: That time Chrissie Hynde enraged one of her Pretenders bandmates because she stopped playing mid-gig

The guitar icon once decided to spontaneously shake things up on stage, and ended up feeling the wrath of Jimmy Scott

Guitar World

“I wasn’t into King Crimson at all. Definitely not my kind of music”: How Andy Summers formed one of the 1980s’ most unlikely guitar partnerships with Robert Fripp – despite not being especially keen on some of his work

The worlds of stadium rock and prog came together for a time in the early 1980s, when The Police and King Crimson guitarists teamed up for a handful of avant-garde records

Guitar World

“My mate found the guitar in a skip down the bay in the early '70s. It had been in a fire”: Andy Fairweather Low’s favorite guitar was a dumpster find

The Eric Clapton and Roger Waters collaborator paid just £47 to buy the discarded Gibson from Tom Jones’ guitarist

Guitar World

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“He flips a bass upside down, and we do Otis Redding. Then I got a phone call, ‘Jimi’s in the studio. Would you come down?’” How a 3am jam with Hendrix led Andy Fairweather Low to guest on a Jimi classic

Low says he played poorly during the impromptu jam, but he evidently impressed Hendrix enough to get a studio invite

Guitar World

“George gets up and says, ‘Andy was not the first choice. There were seven guitarists and he was the seventh choice’”: Before Andy Fairweather Low joined George Harrison’s band, the Beatle was eyeing up Gary Moore and Alvin Lee

The prolific session player joined Harrison for his 1991 tour of Japan, but it turns out he was rather low on the pecking order when the Beatles legend came to assembling his band

Guitar World

“It took me a long time to feel confident about being the only guitar on stage. I always felt like I needed a rhythm guitar”: Brian May fought to add a rhythm guitarist to Queen in their early years – and several players would eventually grant his wish

While May got into the habit of playing lead and rhythm at the same time, he did sometimes get the extra helping hand he had envisioned – including from Freddie Mercury himself

Guitar World

“I managed to stay behind at The Marquee when everyone had gone home. I asked him, ‘How do you get that sound?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s easy...’” In 1969, a young Brian May hid in a venue to speak to Rory Gallagher –and it led to his tonal breakthrough

The Irish blues rock legend gave May a tonal template that he says he’s never bettered

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Guitar World

“I didn’t do a ton of exploration on the f-hole idea. If I had to do it again, I might do it completely differently”: Eric Johnson broke new ground with his first semi-hollow Fender Strat – but he’d take inspiration from Gibson if he ever made another

Johnson’s 2018 signature model was the first to combine a semi-hollow design with a contoured Strat body, but it didn’t take long for him to settle on a concept

Guitar World

“There’s a tradition in country music where an older musician – in order to give respect to a younger musician – would give them his guitar. Dad gave Bob Dylan one of his guitars”: Rosanne Cash on her father’s six-string salute to Dylan

The country legend says her father was not precious with instruments – instead, he respected the players

Guitar World

“I suddenly couldn’t control this left arm, it was quite scary. I had no idea what was going on”: Brian May issues update after suffering ‘minor stroke’

The Queen guitar hero suffered a health scare late last year, which left him briefly fearing he might not be able to pick up the guitar again

Guitar World

“There was never any danger of going ‘full Kurt Russell’ with it, but accidents happen… especially around me!” When Chris Buck played a museum-grade Martin from 1928, a high-profile Hollywood guitar scandal played heavy on his mind

The blues rock ace demoed a five-figure Martin 0-42 in the new issue of Guitarist, and couldn't help but think of that infamous Hateful Eight guitar smash

MusicRadar

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp”: Brian May recalls the time he played live through Jimi Hendrix’s Marshall – and it didn’t go well

Hendrix might have had the Marshall stack under his spell but the Queen says he struggled to play a chord

Guitar World

“I plugged into a Marshall stack – and it sounded awful. I could hardly play... Jimi Hendrix came onstage, plugged into the same amp – and it sounded like a cataclysm”: Brian May on the one time he experimented with a Marshall stack

The Vox AC30 amp/Red Special guitar combo is one of the most iconic in rock, but the Queen guitar hero didn't solidify that setup straight away

MusicRadar

“One night after the Albert Hall he said, ‘Put it away and get a proper guitar!’”: Andy Fairweather Low on playing with Eric Clapton and how Slowhand was unimpressed by his oddball Teisco

Low got the Teisco Spectrum V bug after seeing Ry Cooder with one. Eddie Van Halen loved them too. Clapton? Not so much...

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