Innholdsfortegnelse for October 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 This month’s cover feature on the first five years of Fender’s CBS era reminds us that, over time, all historical stories get reduced to simplistic clichés that help us sum up a period of complex activity in a single phrase. The trouble is that these distillations of history into easily digestible bites mislead as often as they illuminate. For many years now, it’s been pretty common to hear people say post-CBS Fenders aren’t as good as pre-1965 Strats, Teles and so on. Now, if we were talking about post-CBS Fenders from the late 70s, that statement might hold largely true. How about guitars from 1966, though? Or 1969, the year Hendrix made some…

British amp company Blackstar was founded in 2007 by ex-Marshall engineers with the aim of updating traditional circuits with fresh, innovative technologies. Designed in the UK and manufactured in China, Blackstar’s amps come to market at surprisingly low price points, and the brand has been warmly embraced by bedroom players, rehearsal rooms and touring professionals alike. Indeed, gathering a roster of varied luminaries – spanning Phil Collen to Gaz Coombes, Neil Schon to Bob Mould – requires wide-ranging, first-class tones alongside ruggedly reliable construction. Former Whitesnake gunslinger Doug Aldrich began using Blackstar’s HT Stage 100 head with his band The Dead Daisies in 2023 and as the relationship between player and brand grew, conversations regarding a signature model culminated in what we have here: the Ruby. Based around his HT…

Based in Canada, the original Diamond Pedals company launched in 2004 and is probably best known for its Memory Lane delay pedal. It closed down during the pandemic but is now back, having been revived by Greg Djerrahian of SolidGoldFX in 2023, and initially relaunching with five new pedals that built on the brand’s original designs. The latest edition to the roster is the Boost/EQ, which revamps an older version of the pedal from circa 2007. Two toggle-switched modes of operation are on offer here. You can use the pedal as a straight boost or you can flip the switch down to bring some soft clipping diodes into the equation for more driven tones. Two knobs adjust the EQ, both with neutral central notched detent positions. One knob is a…

Artist: Nicolas Meier Album: Last Sunset (MGP Records) Not many guitar players can say they were personally recruited by Jeff Beck to join his band for a world tour. But, in the case of Nicolas Meier, the invitation is hardly surprising as this Swiss-born, UK-based musician has such a unique talent and sound. This year Nicolas is releasing Last Sunset, a collection of songs inspired by his experiences and memories working alongside the much-missed guitar hero. On tracks such as Plan 9, Strange Sensations and Bosphorus, it’s easy to gauge what a profound effect Beck had on him, with the tracks also mixing together elements of instrumental rock, jazz and world music into one breathtaking package. Freeway Jam It was by pure chance that Nicolas joined Beck’s band. Nicolas was…

“We marvelled at how this 55-year-old guy exuded so much power and confidence. We had witnessed a magical experience” I may have mentioned this before, but recently I was recalling a moment that, had I not worked for Guitarist, could never have happened. In 1999, when Eric Clapton sold 100 guitars to raise money for his Crossroads charity, David Mead and I were entrusted by Christie’s auction house in London to verify the instruments for the sale catalogue. To undertake this we would fly to New York to see our late friend Virginia Lohle at her Star File photo agency. We were also invited to the auction house in London to peruse some of the sale guitars. As two EC acolytes, this was a massive privilege. However, to our equal…

AUDIO ▶ http://bit.ly/guitaristextra When we learn about creating a chord from a scale, we list the notes in order of appearance: Root, 3rd, 5th. However, swapping this order around can sometimes be really effective. Shifting the 3rd (or b 3) to the bottom gives what classical composers call a ‘first inversion’, which is what we looked at last time in issue 528. This time around we’re going to move the 5th to the bottom, making a ‘second inversion’. It’s still the same chord, but the emphasis shifts from the Root and gives the chord a slightly different feel. For example, play a regular C major chord and follow up with a G major. This is all fine, of course, but maybe there’s more we can do with it… How about…

By 1964, Fender was a few years away from its 20th anniversary, business was strong and fine guitars and amps continued to pour from the company’s Fullerton factories in California. Around 600 people worked there – the majority in manufacturing, spread across the 29 buildings that had appeared as demand grew through the years. Forrest White, in charge of production, recalled that by the end of ’64 his workers were making 1,500 guitars a week, compared with just 40 a week when he’d joined Leo’s small setup 10 years earlier. As well as the electrics and amps, Fender’s catalogues and price lists from the mid-60s also featured acoustics, effects, accessories and Fender-Rhodes electric pianos. “There’s always this suspicion when a big company takes over that they’re going to make a…

DIRE STRAITS BROTHERS IN ARMS 4OTH ANNIVERSARY These days, Mark Knopfler tends to keep his distance from Brothers In Arms. Dire Straits’ all-conquering fifth album belongs to another time now, its songs to a 30-something gunslinger in a red headband whom the 76-year-old only half-recognises. Before he quit the road, six years ago, he’d pull out the occasional track at solo shows, treating Madison Square Garden to a valedictory blast through Money For Nothing in 2019. But Knopfler – press-shy at the best of times – has never gone deep on the ’85 album that brief ly made him the world’s biggest rock star, whether he liked it or not (hint: he didn’t). “Brothers In Arms just happened to coincide with compact discs, and it was a sheer fluke,” he…

The release of the Beatles’ album Help! in August 1965 marked a significant shift in the group’s sound. Their fifth LP release, it would also be their second film soundtrack, following A Hard Day’s Night from July 1964. The band had met folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan while in America that same year, and been bowled over by the compositions on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. In conversation (and after Dylan had introduced them to marijuana), the singer advised John and Paul to “stop writing for the meat market” and come up with more thought-provoking lyrics. This would contribute to making Help! a more acoustic-led affair, with songs that shifted away from the ‘boy and girl, you and me’ hit-making formula of She Loves You, From Me To You…

BOSS RT-2 ROTARY ENSEMBLE £229 CONTACT Roland UK WEB www.boss.info What You Need To Know 1 Doesn’t Boss already have a rotary pedal? Well, it used to have the RT-20, a larger dual-footswitch pedal, but that was discontinued. This new addition gives you a rotary pedal in the standard Boss Compact pedal format for the first time. 2 Does it have the same sound as the RT-20? Boss says the two have totally different algorithms; it’s revamped the DSP engine and can now better reproduce detailed behaviours. 3 Can you change between fast and slow speeds with one footswitch? Yes, a long press does it, or you can do it with an external footswitch if you prefer. The complex mix of spatially shifting audio effects in a rotary speaker is created by the…

“I’ve heard people call this a variation on Gibson’s Crest model because of the rosewood body, but it’s very much its own thing. The Crest was built more like an ES-330 with Johnny Smith pickups, but this one-off guitar that was made for Tony Mottola is basically a heavily customised ES-355. “Tony was a very successful professional guitarist who played for Frank Sinatra among others, and he designed this guitar with Les Paul. His fingerprints are all over it, starting with the pickups, which appear to be the ones used for the Les Paul Personal, Professional and Recording models, as well as the early L-5S and Les Paul bass. “These are known as ‘low impedance’ pickups designed for plugging straight into mixing desks, rather than amplifiers, so they aren’t very…

Page’s Gretsch Jimmy Page’s playing drew heavily on rock ’n’ roll, so it’s almost a surprise he didn’t play more Gretsches like this 6120. Learn more on p78 Don Felder The former Eagles guitarist talks about improvisation, his rich and varied solo career, and recovering from an onstage collapse p50 Brand-New Vintage Fender’s new American Ultra Luxe Vintage range marries vintage tones and looks with very modern comforts and functionality on p94…

It’s no secret that a lot of us guitarists tend to have a bit of a penchant for instruments with a few years on them. Perhaps it’s because of the tonal effect age has on wood, or maybe it’s the specifics behind older construction methods, or the direct connection to the innovators of our instrument. But sometimes, it’s just because they look cool. Whatever your reason, there is something fulfilling about owning a guitar with real heritage. Equally, builders with that heritage can hold the same appeal, and Stromberg, with its USA origins dating back to the 1920s, certainly ticks that box. Starting out as a builder of banjos, the company soon pivoted to guitars as music and tastes began to change. Firmly aiming at the jazz market, this proved…

Giordano Tributo 58 €5,600 Giordano Guitars EMAIL giordanonicholas35@gmail.com WEB instagram.com/_giordanoguitars_ Based in the Motor Valley region of Northern Italy, 29-year-old Nicolas Giordano has been building guitars professionally for five years, although he made his first instrument when he was 15. “I’m surrounded by car manufacturers – Ferrari, Lamborghini and so on. It’s been like that since the 30s, so there’s a big history of manufacturing here. It’s where I’m from as well. “I’ve always been passionate and at times obsessed by vintage guitars,” he continues. “I wanted to be able to replicate all the details and the feel of vintage guitars. I did start by building replicas. I think that’s quite common for people building vintage-inspired guitars because, at first; you really have to understand the history behind you. There…

In lutherie, finishing a project is always a big moment. In my case I’m normally building guitars for other people, and it’s not so much about satisfying myself as it is about making sure the client is happy. I’ve always found that moment of unveiling a customer’s guitar for the first time quite excruciating, and the big sigh of relief only happens once they have left the workshop with their treasured new axe and a big grin on their face. By the time the sawdust has settled, though, I’m always grateful to greet the exciting new projects coming over the horizon. And, in this case, there are not one but three instruments to start planning. But where to begin? Think Ahead I always start with a good plan. An easy…

STAR LETTER TROUBLE IN STORE I was particularly interested to read Neville Marten’s ‘Neville’s Advocate’ column in the Summer edition [issue 527] about regretting letting guitars go and the demise of guitar stores. The closure of the PMT chain and GAK was mentioned in Neville’s piece. Your Star Letter from Nigel Greensitt in the same edition also bemoaned the closure of guitar shops. I have a particular reason to connect with all of this. Back in 2008 I purchased a wonderful new Gibson sunburst J-185 with a Madagascan rosewood fingerboard and bridge from GAK in Brighton. Later, in 2010, I was visiting the PMT store in Birmingham where I spotted a new Martin HD-28V hanging on display. After playing it, I had to have it. This unfortunately meant I had…

All the major electric guitar models evolved throughout the 50s and 60s, but Gretsch’s changes tended to be more seismic than incremental. The single-cutaway 6120 era lasted from late 1954, when the first ones were made, through to 1961. In the intervening years, Gretsch gradually reduced the body depth, introduced two distinct variations of ‘trestle bracing’, transitioned from a dovetail to a mortice-and-tenon neck joint, adopted entirely new pickups and completely redesigned the wiring harness. There were cosmetic changes, too, with cowboy kitsch fretboard inlays giving way to humpback and ultimately neo-classical thumbnail markers. Early 6120s had ‘G’-branded tops, and there were variations in pickguard shapes and placement. Batch Maker Gretsch historian Edward Ball’s scholarly reference book Gretsch 6120: The History Of A Legendary Guitar includes an exhaustively compiled analysis…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “I was 11 and I was washing dishes at my dad’s restaurant, saving my money. My dad was like, ‘Hey, you find a guitar and we’ll split it. Whatever you have, I’ll match.’ So I took my 175 bucks, he matched that and we went to this weird guy’s apartment and bought a secondhand Strat. Right now, that Strat is hanging up in my friend’s bar in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. One thing that Edward Van Halen instilled in me was that you can enjoy and ruin. So that guitar went through four or five different necks, three or four different Floyd Roses, and like 75 pickups [laughs]. “As I honed my craft as a player, I also honed…

Such is the modern world, we were scrolling through Instagram and stumbled across a delicious-looking Patrick James Eggle Oz-t. A quick “can we get one?” request and a little while later, once Patrick and his team had made another, here it is. There’s no launch embargo date to follow. No PR to wade through. Just another jaw-dropping example of home-grown craft. Increasingly, those of us who enjoy über-quality are looking beyond the big guns’ Custom Shops and Private Stock programmes. Nobody is saying £3k is cheap, but it’s considerably less than those obvious Custom Shop models, not least if you want some bespoke features that suit you. Like many, many makers worldwide, Patrick’s range centres on guitars inspired by Fender favourites: the Tele-style Oz (named after the location of Eggle…

Once a particular drive pedal has been established as an icon of guitar tone, it’s inevitable that other manufacturers will spawn copies and evolved versions. While we’re still witnessing new variations on the Tube Screamer and Bluesbreaker, it seems like the Klon Centaur has been in the ascendant these last few years, spawning the alliterative ‘Klon Klone’ as a whole new genre. Of course, an exact clone isn’t necessarily what’s on offer, bearing in mind the difficulty in matching precisely the so-called ‘magic’ diodes of an original. So what we have instead are variations on the theme, and the most interesting of those are the ones that can match the original sound but increase the versatility by adding new features. The Keeley Manis falls firmly into that latter camp with…

PRS S2 Mira 594 From £1,699 CONTACT PRS Guitars Europe PHONE 01223 874301 WEB www.prsguitars.com Mira, Mira, on the wall… “What is the most affordable US-made guitar to come from Paul?” Funny you should ask, actually. Because it’s this one. PRS has been on a relentless quest to ply us with new releases every month in its 40th anniversary year, and the start of autumn sees it reflecting (we’ll stop now) on a model that has been absent for some years. Yeah, I remember this – and it’s affordable, you say? Well, that’s all relative, but we’ll get to that in a mo. The Mira is back as the S2 Mira 594, which, as we all know, is PRS-speak for its 24.594-inch (625mm) scale length. It’s pushing this as a…

Artist: Robert Jon & The Wreck Album: Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes (Journeyman Records) If you’ve never heard Robert Jon & The Wreck in action, then imagining the boogie of ZZ Top combined with the Southern twang of Lynyrd Skynyrd would be a good place to start. Renowned for impactful live performances, the band have gone from strength to strength in recent years – and being signed to Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman record label has guaranteed them their rightful share of the limelight. For the new album, they booked themselves into producer Dave Cobb’s residential studio in Savannah, Georgia, in order to live and breathe the music they were creating. We rounded up the band’s guitarists – rhythm ace and vocalist Robert Jon Burrison and Epiphone Firebird and Gibson SG Special-toting lead…

Most of us have modded guitars at some point, but only a select few have had their own signature model factory-built for them with mods included from the word go. Canadian guitarist Ariel Posen, who has garnered a worldwide following for his lyrical, expressive playing style, has now joined that exclusive club. Recently honoured with his own Fender Custom Shop signature model – the Limited Edition Ariel Posen Stratocaster – the story of its creation is a model of how, when offered the chance to have anything you want, understanding what you need and keeping things simple can yield the best results. Tell us about your new signature model – it’s a blend of quite a few things. “Well, it’s a Stratocaster, but it’s based off of two Fenders of…

Don Felder is 77 and in February of 2025 he had a health scare, collapsing on stage due to dehydration. You’d think he’d be mulling the idea of slowing down, but when Felder talks about his career, there’s an urgency to his voice. “I’ve got to work and produce as much as I possibly can while I’m still in good health, and still happy and inspired by it.” To that end, Felder is holding up his end of the bargain, releasing The Vault – Fifty Years Of Music earlier this year. The album is a collection of old, new and reworked material. “I walk into my studio with it being totally dark, [thinking], ‘I have no idea in the world what I’m going to do,’” Felder tells Guitarist. His approach…

SQUIER CLASSIC VIBE ’60S MUSTANG £385 Introduced in ’64, the Mustang lasted throughout the 70s and here’s an affordable flavour of that style. Like the Jaguar, the scale length is 610mm (24 inches) and the body is poplar with a single gloss polyurethane colour, Sonic Blue. The Indian laurel ’board is flatter than vintage at 241mm (9.5 inches) with Narrow Tall frets, hardware includes the original-style floating bridge with ‘Dynamic Vibrato Tailpiece’, and the three-way slide switches allow on/off for each pickup and out-of-phase when combined. Check out more options in the American Performer, Vintera II and Made in Japan ranges. FENDER VINTERA II ’60S TELECASTER THINLINE £1,059 After experimenting with lighter-weight Teles, notably the ‘smuggler’s Teles’, the Telecaster Thinline was launched in 1968. Aside from its semi-hollow construction and…

FENDER AMERICAN PROFESSIONAL II TELECASTER FROM £1,859 NECK PROFILE: Deep ‘C’ shaped FINGERBOARD RADIUS: 241mm (9.5”) FRETS: 22, narrow tall PICKUPS: V-Mod II single coils HARDWARE: Top-load/string-through bridge with compensated saddles, die-cast tuners FINISH: 10 colours; gloss urethane body, satin to neck back A slightly updated Tele with a neat bridge and three brass ‘bullet’ saddles, extra fret and headstock truss rod adjustment. It uses Fender’s ‘modern’ radius fingerboard with ‘Narrow Tall’ frets. Hard to argue with. FENDER AMERICAN VINTAGE II 1951 TELECASTER £2,069 NECK PROFILE: ‘U’ shaped FINGERBOARD RADIUS: 184mm (7.25”) FRETS: 21, vintage tall PICKUPS: Pure Vintage ’51 Telecaster HARDWARE: Brass saddle bridge, vintage-style tuners FINISH: Butterscotch Blonde only; gloss nitro If you want to experience some original Telecaster style, then this is the one for you. There’s…

Ididn’t encounter this guitar until the early 80s. Owned by a friend of a friend who’d purchased it in South London around a decade before, it had already seen service during the punk years and was settling into life in the more musical post-punk period. Establishing its date was an early job I was tasked with, followed by inevitable maintenance to a guitar that had been worked hard: from basic clean-up and setup, a fret level (eventually a refret), to servicing malfunctioning pickups and scratchy pots. The ‘vintage’ guitar was a relatively new thing, of course, but even back then no-one considered the Tele as valuable. It was simply a working guitar, and a heavy one at that. At 4.19kg (9.22lb), the ash body certainly wasn’t of the lightweight ‘swamp’…

I’ll admit that I wasn’t looking forward to extracting the Southern Jumbo’s broken bridge plate, and most luthiers would view this task with trepidation. But equipped with a StewMac bridge-removal chisel, a palette knife and a bridge-plate heating iron, I was out of excuses. There was, however, a complicating factor that is peculiar to vintage Gibsons. In addition to glueing on bridges, Gibson bolted them down. If you refer to the photo of the bridge plate in the previous instalment of this Southern Jumbo restoration (see issue 527), you can see the nuts and washers inside the body and two machine screws that Gibson concealed under pearl dots. Removing the bridge plate involves heating it up to soften the glue and then separating it from the body using the aforementioned…

Melodic Blues Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Fender Stratocaster & Vox AC15 Difficulty | 10 mins per example LEARNING SCALES AND patterns is perhaps one of the less exciting aspects of guitar playing – and, arguably, many of our heroes didn’t approach their playing in this way, either. However, consider the process of writing and recording material, and rehearsing then touring, which obviously involves playing those same tunes night after night. This in itself can teach us so much about what works and what doesn’t, simply through an intense process of trial and error. If the old adage about one gig being worth a dozen rehearsals holds true, what are the benefits of a long tour? It’s true to say that many professional musicians (myself included) come off tour…