Steve Vai has picked his favorite Guitar Idol finalist–and it’s not the winner, Jack Thammarat. I actually like this one better as well. The composition is more interesting and his guitar playing is a bit quirky and angular, a quality I love. Here’s Daniele Gottardo playing Cardiology:

Sorry to hear about Michael Jackson–one of the best Eddie Van Halen best solos was on Beat It. Regardless of the controversies, you gotta give the guy his due. He was a monster musical figure. Godspeed, Michael. Here’s a link to that great tune (embedding is disabled).

Over at NPR.com, Tom Cole posted a nice tribute to Ventures guitarist Bob Bogle, complete with “Walk, Don’t Run” for streaming: The Ventures will always be remembered for Walk, Don’t Run and an early-’60s West Coast rock sound. The influence of Walk, Don’t Run is HUGE. While few guitarists could master the smooth alternate picking [...]

Here’s a little treat for you–an interview with the master, Steve Vai. Steve recently gave a master class in London and released Naked Tracks, a great gift to guitarists in my opinion.

Great long interview with Ed over at Spinner.com in which Ed talks about his sobriety and how it has affected his playing. Booze worked on him to the point where it became the necessary rocket sauce that allowed him to visit that place where he felt most comfortable playing: It takes me a good hour [...]

Slide guitar master Arlen Roth has a great standard-tuning slide-guitar lesson posted at Gibson.com: Playing slide guitar in standard tuning – as opposed to an open chord tuning – is very different, and quite difficult because you have to take extra care in damping the strings. When you play slide in an open chord tuning, you [...]

The new Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ, scheduled to open next spring, just purchased a $35,000 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, similar to the one pictured to the left. The guitar is likely one of the first 60 Les Pauls ever made. The Musical Instrument Museum bought the rare Les Paul from Lynn Wheelwright, an [...]

AcousticGuitar.com is giving away a sweet-looking Martin MC-28 Steve Howe Special Edition acoustic: This year, Howe and C.F. Martin & Co. collaborated to create a new model inspired by the early 1980s MC-28, the one Martin that’s been a mainstay in Howe’s guitar rack for decades. The MC-28 is notable for its grand auditorium cutaway [...]

Haven’t had an eye-candy post in a while. Here’s an interesting design from student Yi-Luen Tan, who created the “Reverse Guitar.” Not an entirely new concept, of course, but I sort of like the headstock. (via stylecrave.com)

Eddie Van Halen thinks Nike Dunks stole the copyrighted “Frankenstein” design he made famous, so he’s suing them. What do you think? Ed’s Nike’s (via business.transworld.net)

The Harmony Stratotone pictured to the left, once owned by Rolling Stone Brian Jones, is expected to fetch about $80,000 at auction. Brian Jones played it on stage, and it can also be heard on the Rolling Stone’s first single, Come On/I Want to Be Loved. Richard Hattrell, a close friend of Jones’, gave him [...]

Not sure I entirely agree with Steve Lucas on this one. In this day age, when you can’t even carry certain size bottles of shampoo with you on a plane, you might want to rethink a guitar strap with bullets all over it: The problem was that his Epiphone electric guitar, which is cased in [...]

According to the Daily Express, Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, has decided that he won’t sue Coldplay for possible plagiarism: “I stand by what I said. They did copy my song but I don’t think they did it on purpose. I have even copied myself without even knowing I have done it. I’ll [...]

I’m sad to report that Bob Bogle, lead guitarist for The Ventures, passed over the weekend. He was 75. Bob was a hugely influential guitarist who inspired countless guitarists, Eddie Van Halen among them. I once read that The Ventures’ Walk, Don’t Run is what got Eddie thinking about the guitar. Godspeed, Mr. Bogle. (via [...]

I love seeing stories like this, especially in Newspapers like the New York Daily News. William del Pilar has been building classical guitars in Brooklyn for 52 (!) years: A stone’s throw from the Borough Hall subway stop in Brooklyn is a nondescript storefront whose only identifying features are a patent ­application taped to the [...]