Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Guitarist

Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk It’s always interesting to hear what someone who can have any gear they want has to say about sounding good, as with this month’s cover feature interview with Joe Bonamassa (see page 60), who has one of the most coveted vintage gear collections in the world. Given that he’s devoted so much time to finding and buying ‘unobtainium’ guitars, it’s surprising to hear him voice the opinion, with apparent sincerity, that “it’s a mistake to try to keep up with the Joneses… because sooner or later, you wake up and you realise that you hate the Joneses.” In other words, play whatever gear you get off on – and don’t worry too much…

If you think you’ve seen this guitar before, you’re almost right! The style goes back to 2020 and was called the Carey Standard – a more utilitarian take on PJD’s then top-line Carey Elite and the 10th Anniversary Carey Custom. As we’ve documented in previous reviews, it’s been a rocky ride since then for the now 15-year-old brand, not least battling through the pandemic and a failed guitar-making hub, UKGB. But since 2023’s reboot, a more stable course has emerged with a new factory and the very production-aimed Standard Series (which includes the Carey, St John offset, original T-style York, classic S-style Woodford and original offset Valhalla models), as well as the newly formed Custom Shop, which produces the higher-end Elite models, customer one-offs and our Carey Classic. This new…

Besides the big-hitters such as the Fuzz Face and Tone Bender, there were also a host of lesser-known fuzz pedals that had their genesis in the 1960s. One such was the 1968 Shaftesbury Duo Fuzz, which was available from Rose-Morris who had a showroom in Shaftesbury Avenue (the store is now around the corner in Denmark Street). The Duo Fuzz design was developed by the Shin-Ei corporation in Japan who knew it as the FY-6 and made it in several guises for a large number of different companies – it may, in fact, be better known as the Univox Super-Fuzz. Notable users back in the day were Pete Townshend (it’s all over The Who’s Live At Leeds album) and Steve Hackett of Genesis. Various clones and evolved versions have been…

Artist: Morganway Album: Kill The Silence (Earache Records) Blending vintage Americana with elements of British folk and alternative rock, Morganway are a British six-piece who borrow from an impressively wide net of influences. On their third full-length album, Kill The Silence, they’re sounding bigger and better than ever, thanks to more six-string input from singer SJ Mortimer, whose rhythmic strums provide the perfect bedrock to her husband Kieran Morgan’s inspired fretwork. This new dynamic between the pair is most evident on new tracks such as Feels Like Letting Go and I Feel The Rain, which could very well be anthems in the making. Get Back To Where You Once Belonged Inspired by the spontaneous creativity of The Beatles, a lot of the new tracks were only half complete when the…

James Taylor was the reason I got into playing fingerstyle acoustic, and why I purchased my first half-decent one, a Japanese Epiphone Texan, in 1970. I heard Fire And Rain and instantly switched from loving electric blues and rock to this, with its major and minor 7th chords, delicate trills and introspective lyrics that no lovelorn 20-year-old could resist. I learned Sunny Skies, the B-side to the single Country Road, then spent literally months trying to master the intricate You Can Close Your Eyes, which remains one of my few party tricks. “I heard Fire And Rain and instantly switched from loving electric blues and rock to this, with its delicate trills and introspective lyrics” The first time I met James was in a posh London hotel where I was…

Gibson Murphy Lab 1960 Hummingbird Heavy Aged £6,699 A short-scale, square-shoulder mahogany dread is a joyful thing for fingerstylist and flatpicker alike. They can be hard to come by, though. Here, Gibson’s Murphy Lab adds torrified woods, a fixed saddle and subtle finish checking to the classic Hummingbird design making for a superbly woody all-rounder if you can get onboard with the extroverted visuals. www.gibson.com Turnstone Guitars African Queen – TG Model £17,880 Yes, African Blackwood is a member of the rosewood family and, while it originally came to prominence as a substitute for Brazilian rosewood, it has its own sonorous personality. In the hands of UK luthier Rosie Heydenrych of Turnstone Guitars it is coupled with a soundboard of moon-harvested Alpine spruce in a powerful mid-size instrument. It comes…

Mike Peters was a man of passion: for music, for his beloved home country of Wales – and especially for his family. Influenced by the Sex Pistols and the punk movement of the 1970s, he formed The Toilets, a short-lived band that later changed line-up to become ‘17’, before morphing into The Alarm with pals Eddie Macdonald on bass, Dave Sharp on guitar and Nigel ‘Twist’ Buckle on drums. From early days playing the pub and club circuit, the band from North Wales would go on to achieve hit records and success, sharing stages worldwide with the likes of U2, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Queen. The band’s first major hit, Sixty Eight Guns, released in 1983, gave The Alarm extensive exposure, and after catching the attention of radio presenter…

There has been many a great player emerging out of the blues scene over the past decade or so, though young Welshman Chris Buck could very well be the cream of the crop. His phrasing is exceptional, he never overplays but still knows when to utilise technique, and every note is struck with the utmost control and no shortage of charisma. His tones are equally as jaw-dropping, and while he’s been spotted with all kinds of Fenders and Gibsons over the years, it’s his custom Yahama Revstar goldtop that is more often than not seen in his hands, going through an elaborate pedalboard he jokingly refers to as “50 shades of gain” and into a Victory V140 or MK Clean. A full package in every conceivable way, it’s no wonder…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “The first serious guitar I bought with my own money was a Favilla acoustic. There was a music store in Freeport, Long Island, called Gracin’s Music. At the time, I had a cheap Japanese electric that I got for my bar mitzvah, and it was a really crummy guitar. I got a job working at a bakery making bagels, and I saved up my money for my first real guitar. It was all-mahogany, left-handed and one of their less expensive concert-style guitars. I still have it! “My first good electric was a Telecaster. It seemed like most of my heroes were playing them, like Robbie Robertson, James Burton and Roy Buchanan. I just love Telecasters; there was something…

A friend of mine already owns a fine selection of classic models, so he decided to put some of the parts he has collected back into use and create something entirely different. An ash Guitarbuild body finished in metallic copper caught his eye because it reminded him of the bronze-dipped Strat Robbie Robertson used for The Last Waltz. A roasted maple Musikraft S-type neck was also acquired, complete with an aged finish and a set of vintage style Kluson tuners. For the electronics, a 1950s P-90, Seymour Duncan Lipstick and a vintage Japanese Tiesco Gold Foil pickup were earmarked for the bridge, middle and neck positions respectively, while a pre-CBS vibrato block was matched with a modern plate and set of steel saddles, and a three-ply white pickguard was sourced…

Nowhere is the elusive magic of the past evoked so powerfully as in vintage acoustic guitars. And that magic is a thing not easily captured in a bottle. But, over the years, Gibson’s Murphy Lab – the department responsible for producing the company’s most lifelike recreations of golden era Gibsons – has been in operation, its team has learned an awful lot about the arcane art of making new guitars look and sound old. This issue’s cover story offered us a fascinating window on that work, as Robi Johns of the company’s acoustic-making division in Bozeman, Montana, described some of the techniques and finesse work behind the newest Heavy Aged acoustics to emerge from the Murphy Lab – which undeniably look as if they’ve seen a lifetime of music-making already.…

Perhaps the greatest compliment we can pay Gibson’s Murphy Lab Heavy Aged Acoustic Collection is that we are terrified to play them. Faced with the neckwear, soundhole scuffs and belt-buckle scratches of this five-strong historic line-up, the abiding impression is of inspecting the personal effects of some bygone billionaire collector in the moments before they are swaddled in bubblewrap and shipped to the auction house or family vault. To lift such an instrument from its stand, to run your fingers over its blemished fretboard, to hear its ancient voice sing of centuries past is a heart-in-mouth moment, loaded with both joy and a faint dread that a curator is about to burst in and admonish you for handling it without white cotton gloves. The twist, of course, is that these…

D’Angelico guitars have always been rare beasts and are even rarer in the UK than America. John D’Angelico and his various apprentices completed approximately 30 guitars per year between 1932 and his death in 1964. From company ledgers, it’s estimated that around 1,164 guitars were built, with approximately 300 of those being D’Angelico’s New Yorker model. D’Angelico mostly built guitars to order, and this example from auctioneer Gardiner Houlgate is no exception. Originally commissioned by a jazz guitarist called Connie Wainwright, the New Yorker was collected from D’Angelico’s workshop on 26 December 1942. Wainwright was a professional player who was described by his bandmate Cliff Smalls as “a little, short fellow”. Consequently, Wainwright must have found the New Yorker’s 18-inch-wide body a bit of an armful when he was playing…

EPIPHONE 1942 BANNER J-45 £1,199 The ever-increasing ‘Inspired By Gibson Custom’ range has given us some corkers for not too much cash. This all-solid-wood J-45 is a favourite and it’s stage-ready with onboard LR Baggs VTC. You can’t expect the same quality level you’d get from a Gibson version at four times the price, and the fingerboard here is laurel, not rosewood, but the VOS poly finish looks a little old and the soft V neck profile adds to smart playability. “It’s full and earthy with that characteristic grunty bass end,” we said. www.epiphone.com YAMAHA FG5/FGX5 RED LABEL FROM £1,408 The ‘Red Label’ FGs date back to the 60s and were not only Yamaha’s first steel-strings, they helped put high-quality Japanese manufacturing on the map, too; Bert Jansch was an…

Ship To Shawn Shawn Lee is reviving Yacht Rock but in sincere, beautifully crafted style. We find out more about Young Gun Silver Fox on p54 Here Be Dragons The meticulous recreations of Jimmy Page’s Zep-era amps made by Sundragon may be the nearest mere mortals may get on p80 Gentle Giant Still much-loved, decades on from their split: guitarist Gary Green looks back on the challenge of playing intricate music live in the 70s p40…

Any guitarist that doesn’t know the Gibson ES-335 story must have been living on planet Zog for the past 67 years. Therefore we won’t insult you with a full-on history and description. Let’s simply remind ourselves of how this legendary model’s semi-hollow – laminated thinline construction with solid centre section, two deep cutaways and a set of powerful humbucking pickups – made it one of the best-sounding, most versatile and nicest playing guitars of all time. It’s up there as one of the coolest lookers, too. As we’ve seen for some time now, Epiphone loves to get in on the act. And some of the instruments we’ve plugged in and played in recent years, especially the Joe Bonamassa models and these ‘Inspired By Gibson Custom’ offerings, have been mightily impressive.…

More than once in the past month I have had customers bring me guitars for relatively small repair work, only to discover there was a more pressing issue with their beloved instrument. It’s left me feeling like a doctor who has to deliver bad news to a patient after discovering they have months left to live when they only came in for a routine check-up. The lutherie equivalent to this morbid scene can be found when ill-fitting acoustic guitar bridges subtly begin to peel away from their mooring on the soundboard. Most commonly the ends of the bridge show light between the top, but also the area around the bridge pins can show a gap, as the front of the bridge dips into the body and the back lifts up,…

AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra In the second part of this series discussing the creation and resolution of tension in harmony, we’re getting more into altered chords. An altered chord is one that contains notes from outside its scale of origin – chords such as b9 or #5 are frequently seen examples of this. What the example chords are designed to demonstrate is how we might set up a dissonance or ‘tension’, which can then resolve to a more harmonious conclusion. As an interesting side note, film and TV music will often leave a dissonant chord hanging unresolved to underline the tension of what’s happening on screen. Whichever way you choose to approach this, a deep knowledge of chord construction and harmony will aid your creativity in composition, melodic invention and arranging other…

Tucked away in a studio complex in London, you’ll find an enchanted grotto of weird and wonderful guitars, musical curios and vintage synths. Duck under Brazilian percussion chimes, oddball guitars and tiger masks and you’ll find the genial owner of this cave of tone – Shawn Lee, the guitarist and co-songwriter behind Young Gun Silver Fox. The band, who recently had a breakthrough performance at the Royal Albert Hall, have revived the yacht-rock genre that Steely Dan and Michael McDonald polished to such a high art in the 70s, bringing their own fresh, contemporary energy to it and attracting a rapidly growing international fanbase to their beautifully crafted grooves and harmony-rich songs of heartbreak and hedonism. Intrigued, we journeyed down to catch up with Shawn, who also collaborated with Little…

STRYMON EC-1 SINGLE HEAD DTAPE ECHO £279 CONTACT Strymon Europe WEB www.strymon.net The Echoplex single-head tape echo is right up there in the pantheon of iconic guitar effects, not just for its obvious echo functionality but also the sound of its preamp, used by players like Jimmy Page and EVH, to enhance guitar tone with or without the echo. Strymon has previously released pedals offering the tape echo sound – in particular the twinfootswitch El Capistan that features three different tape echo types, including single-head – but the company has now released a smaller pedal, the EC-1, which puts the focus solely on that single-head sound, building on the algorithm and the ‘dTape’ technology used in El Capistan. Where other popular tape echoes worked by having a fixed-position recording head…

Q I’ve struggled with certain guitars over the years because the necks feel too small and I’ve got big fingers. I play electric exclusively and wondered if The Mod Squad could give me any tips. Are there certain guitars with wider necks? Chris Morrison, via email A Hi Chris, I’m sure you’re not the only player, young or old, who’s struggled with a neck that feels too thin, small or wide, too big or fat. But using the broad range of electric instruments we get in for review, there’s perhaps not as much difference as you might imagine. The thing I find interesting is that very few people talk about string spacing because, fairly obviously, irrespective of the width of the neck of two different guitars, if the string spacing…

“As one of the very first Les Pauls ever made, this one has the unbound neck with a slight V profile towards the nut end that feels really nice. It’s like a 1956 wide-neck Strat V that begins to round off by the 5th fret. A lot of these early Les Pauls sound particularly good, and I wish Gibson had continued with the unbound fretboards. There’s something about the feel of shoulders that are uninterrupted by binding that I really like because it is actually very Fender-like. “It does have some playwear, but this is a completely original guitar with the long barrel ‘tall boy’ knobs and nothing has ever been altered or manipulated. The ‘Patent Pending’ stamp is on the tailpiece hinge, and the original bar bridge is still…

Dating back to his years with Fairport Convention and continuing through his solo career – which has included dozens of albums, memorable songs and notable collaborations – Richard Thompson has made a habit of upending the norms when it comes to folk music. His use of altered tunings and a myriad of interesting arrangements has made him stand out as both a songwriter and a guitarist, since breaking onto the scene with his brooding, brilliant guitar playing with Fairport Convention in the 60s. To most, his prolific body of work in the decades that followed has been pretty damn innovative, but to Richard Thompson, not so much. “I suppose all these ideas are ideas that classical players have been using for hundreds of years,” he tells Guitarist. When prodded that…

LAVA ME AIR £499 This other-worldly-looking electro breaks all the rules, as Lava has been doing since 2013. It’s made of a carbon fibre composite for one, with a High-Pressure Laminate ’board. Using a magnetic pickup (plus ‘acoustic simulation’), it offers digital effects – including chorus, delay, reverb, auto-wah and pitch-shift – that can be heard unplugged, too, similar to Yamaha’s TransAcoustic. There’s also Bluetooth for connecting to the Lava+ app, and an internal battery, rechargeable via a USB-C connection. A glimpse into the ‘smart’ revolution. www.lavamusic.com FENDER ACOUSTASONIC STANDARD JAZZMASTER £549 The latest wave of Acoustasonics landed earlier this year, comprising this Standard Jazzmaster and an equally priced Tele version, which utilise a solid Sitka spruce top on a chambered nyatoh body with bolt-on Fender-scale neck and rosewood ’board.…

Under normal circumstances, a Beatles covers album might not be headline news. But For The Love Of George – the latest release fom Robin Nolan, a player ranked among Britain’s greatest exponents of Gypsy jazz for three decades – is the final link in a chain of events so fantastical, improbable and downright surreal that, even now, there’s a hint of disbelief in his voice. The seed of this project was planted in the mid-90s, when George Harrison personally invited the then-busker to perform at his Oxfordshire estate, Friar Park. Nolan’s friendship with the family continued beyond Harrison’s death in 2001. And after plucking up courage during one particularly convivial soirée, the guitarist shared his vision: a new studio album that reinterpreted the quiet Beatle’s best moments in Gypsy jazz…

If you know your Martin guitar models, you might initially say, “Oh, it’s a D-18 but with an unusually grained fingerboard and bridge.” Well, no, it’s not a D-18, but it’s certainly a dreadnought and follows that legendary model’s features pretty closely. As for the fingerboard and bridge, like the D-18 they’re ebony, although here it’s ‘striped’. Striped ebony is just as hard and just as toneful as the pitch-black variety, and those markings are merely due to the fact that Martin is happy to use different cuts of timber from the same Gabon ebony tree. Company chairman, Chris Martin, elaborates: “Striped ebony is a sustainable option because harvesting it involves the utilisation of all parts of the tree. The streaks appear due to the species’ light-coloured heartwood; by using…

There’s no doubting that spring reverb and electric guitar go together exceedingly well, and those players who have it built into their amps can take full advantage. If you don’t have this setup, however, but still want the real electro-mechanical thang, rather than a digital emulation, there’s always the option of an amp top-box or a pedal – usually one with a large footprint due to the space needed to accommodate the springs. Now, for anyone who has passed on having real spring reverb on their ’board because of size restrictions, Danelectro has come up with a solution in the Spring King Junior, which is housed in a chassis that’s slightly narrower than a Boss Compact pedal and about an inch longer. The Junior is based on the original Spring…

New Releases From £Free CONTACT Various WEB See below Somehow, we’re already at the mid-point of the year, and with the NAMM Show firmly in our rearview mirror, it seems the industry isn’t resting when it comes to new ideas. The autumn/winter previews are beginning to appear and, in some cases, they’re already being announced as you can see from this new selection we’ve rounded up here. From revamped digital modelling to mobile recording, vintage-inspired electrics to do-it-all workhorses, here’s the proof that our gear-buying habits continue to be well catered for. LANEY LIONHEART FOUNDRY SUPERTOP £329 Laney’s Lionheart Foundry Supertop sees the brand’s beloved Lionheart valve amp tone transposed into a lightweight, all-analogue 120-watt head. On top of the dual-channel, four-voice design, it’s equipped with plenty of extra features…

Artist: Gentle Giant Album: Playing The Fool: The Complete Live Experience (Chrysalis/Alucard) To say that Gentle Giant are a cult phenomenon would be an understatement. Despite the band splitting in 1980, the fanbase is still active and ever hungry for recent studio album remixes, courtesy of Steven Wilson. Playing The Fool, the band’s 1977 live album, has now received similar treatment in the hands of Dan Bournemark and, for an album that is 48 years old, the result is nothing less than remarkable, with modern technology offering the listener the virtual experience of being present in the audience. Recorded during the band’s 1976 European tour, the full setlist has been restored for the first time, too. Guitarist Gary Green joins us for a trip down Giant’s memory lane. What was…

The flat-top acoustic guitar is a finely balanced system of parts and forces, each of which has a profound knock-on effect on the others. From scale length to bracing, neck carve to bridge weight, the instrument we love can be remarkably sensitive to the choices and intent that goes into its creation. As such, there is a temptation – wherever acoustic guitarists gather – to philosophise passionately about every part of the instrument. This is useful. As something of a pontificator myself, it is comforting to know that there are places we can go. This column being one of them. That said, before addressing one of the most hotly debated and subjective topics in the acoustic guitar world, let’s start with three objective truths. These will give us something to…

STAR LETTER YOU GOT THE POWER? I read with interest last month’s feature on the 30 best new pedals [issue 524]. I would like to add my own experiences, in the hope of saving other readers some heartache. I have played in cover bands for over 20 years, initially as a rhythm guitarist, but for the last three years as a lead guitarist. As I made the step up to lead guitarist I was forced to confront the murky waters of effects pedals. As I proceeded I noticed my tone had become muddy and bassy, whether pedals were engaged or not. It was not so apparent at practice, probably due to a concrete floor and reduced volume. At gigs it got so bad, in the end I was just using…

Let’s face it, this year didn’t exactly get off to a good start for Joe Bonamassa. For the first time, his renowned collection of guitars and amps at his LA home, known as Nerdville West, was under threat via circumstances that were raging completely out of his control. January’s wildfires in California came way too close for comfort, and suddenly the whimsical question that we’ve asked many players in these pages regarding which instrument they’d save from a burning building became not only personal but horrifically real. “I mean, I got evacuated and a lot of stuff had to be moved around,” he tells us. “It’s something I’d care not to go through again, but a lot of people lost everything, so I consider I’m one of the lucky ones.”…

When you think of AnalogMan and Chase Bliss, two of the finest independent pedal makers in the game today, the first thing that springs to mind probably isn’t journeys to Asia to source New Old Stock. But that’s just what happened when AnalogMan’s Mike Piera and Chase Bliss’s Joel Korte got together to build their ultimate gain-inducing stompbox, the delightfully amp-soaking Brothers AM, which launched this year and, thus far, seems to be one of the most sought-after overdrive pedalboard solutions this side of the iconic Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer. The Brothers AM pedal takes elements of the classic AnalogMan King Of Tone overdrive and blends its circuitry with the best bits of Chase Bliss’s Brothers analogue gain stage pedal. With a heritage like that, the Brothers AM was born…

Carlos Santana Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Les Paul Custom, Keeley Boss SD-1, Vox V845 Wah & Marshall JTM45 MkII reissue | Difficulty | 15 mins per example BORN IN MEXICO, CARLOS SANTANA moved to the US with his family as a teenager and was in a unique position to combine his own musical heritage (partly gained from his father, who was also a musician) with the stylistic melting pot that was taking place in San Francisco during the 60s. Initially, his strongest influence was the blues; BB King, Mike Bloomfield and Peter Green, among others, inspired him to form the Santana Blues Band in 1966. Within a couple of years, his Mexican heritage began to surface and combined with the influences of Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Tito Puente…

GIBSON J-45 SPECIAL £1,699 A trio of Specials launched earlier this year – comprising a J-45, Hummingbird and L-00 – and they’re more than just a price-point exercise in bringing a Gibson electro under £2k. ‘Good guitar on a budget’ sums up this Sitka spruce/mahogany J-45 with utile neck wood, which includes the LR Baggs Element Bronze system and its soundhole volume control. Our review sample came very well set up. It’s a good player and exactly the sort of guitar to take on a gig: a versatile all-rounder with strong tonal projection. www.gibson.com LR BAGGS AEG-1 £2,015 A brand that has powered many of the guitars we play surprised us earlier this year by not just creating a top-notch pickup and preamp system – but the whole guitar! The…