In 1980, something terrible happened to jazz-guitar great Pat Martino. He nearly died of a brain aneurysm, and after surgery, he had no memory of how to play guitar. Martino Unstrung, A Brain Mystery is a new documentary that tells his incredible story. From audaud.com: Martino’s neuropsycologist and friends such as Joe Pesci and Red [...]

The BayNet.com posted an article today about guitarist Stephen Bennett. What makes Stephen unique is that he plays an unusual 100-year-old “harp” guitar built by his great-grandfather. He explained that the harp guitar was his great-grandfather’s and was 100 years old this year so he was playing it for performances to celebrate this milestone. Bennett [...]

On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) were killed in a plane crash on a cold winter night in Iowa. That infamous rock-and-roll event became known as “The Day the Music Died” (thanks to Don McLean). The Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock Texas honor’s Buddy’s life in [...]

Found this lengthy article on AcousticGuitar.com featuring 5 small-scale luthiers who build dreadnought acoustics. The picture to the left is a dreadnought built by Rockbridge Guitars, featured in the article. For this article, we talked to five luthiers who specialize in making traditional dreadnoughts: guitarmakers who spend most of their time refining the details of [...]

Charlie Hunter is  fingerstyle jazz guitarist who plays some damn interesting guitars. Here he is playing an 8 string solo, Just a Closer Walk with Thee: (Charlie Hunter’s Amazon.com artist page)

I’ve always been intrigued by the sound of fretless guitars, and today I ran across this article about a Turkish guitarist named Cenk Erdogan. There I had the chance to hear his two-fingerboard guitar that let him perfectly make use of both the microtonal space with the fretless neck and the usual fretted part that [...]

Brooklyn-based Kaki King is an amazing guitarist with kick-ass technique that lends itself to her music as opposed to getting in the way of it. On her MySpace page, check out the tunes 2 O’Clock, Bone Chaos in the Castle, and So Much for So Little (my favorite–just bought it). These showcase her technique pretty [...]

Guitar great Django Reinhardt would have been 99 today. Here’s a little write-up about him I stumbled across today on FindingDulcinea.com. Born into a vagabond life on the outskirts of Paris in 1910, Django Reinhardt took on the fledgling world of jazz and reimagined it through his gypsy roots, bringing the guitar to the fore [...]

I’d never heard of guitarist Mickey Gee until today, but apparently he was something special. Reported by WalesOnline.co.uk : LEGENDARY Welsh guitarist Mickey Gee has lost his battle with emphysema. Gee, who was the main man behind three of Wales’ most famous musical sons – Tom Jones, Dave Edmunds and Shakin’ Stevens, was regarded by [...]

Kansan.com has a new interview with John Scofield today: I have advice for jazz professors. This is the line that has a great shock value but I really like it: Jazz can be learned but it can’t be taught. I think we have to remember that. That [in the] arts, you teach them the techniques [...]

Remember that boat guitar from a post ages ago? Well, it’s for sale: “Seeing the guitar boat clip spread around the world has been one of the highlights of releasing this album [Chimney's Fire] so far,” Pyke told Undercover News. “I love the idea that its charm will now go towards helping something I’m passionate [...]

Holy crap. 13? I wonder if she wants to be in my band…

Here’s an interesting technical article about guitar cables and pickups over at RadioWorld.com: At the highest frequency of the guitar with the most frets (24 frets above E4) would be a frequency of only 1319 Hz. I calculate those –1 dB distances at that low frequency to be 206 feet with the 16 pF/ft flexible [...]

New from Gibson to celebrate their 50th anniversary is a ’59 Les Paul Standard Reissue: Available in either Cherry or Dark burst, the instrument is true to the original with maple top, gold top-hat control knobs with dial pointers, a one-piece mahogany body and nickel ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge. (via gearlive.com) I’ve long felt that Gibsons [...]

I admit that I abandoned my vinyl a long time ago. Hell, I abandoned my CDs a long time ago. But, there are those among us who believe that vinyl is the way to go. None more so than Angelis Labor, a company who created the $64,000 turntable: The Gabriel is made from aluminum, bronze [...]