I love the look of this Telecaster built by the Fender Custom Shop’s Yuriy Shishkov for Keith Urban. Country Music Television blogger, Alison Bonaguro, managed to get a little info out of Yuriy about how he designed and built it: • Urban’s favorite Fender Telecaster guitar was flown to Shishkov so he could duplicate the [...]

Rolling Stone caught up with great Yes/Asia guitarist, Steve Howe, who is now touring with Yes and Asia: How did you decide to do this double tour? I had this summer pretty much booked up [with Asia], and Yes were disappointed about not getting a chance to play this summer, so I put my thinking [...]

When Michael Jackson died, I wondered how it would affect the musicians in his employ, such as Orianthi Panagaris, his latest guitarist (a post previously held by guitar-great Jennifer Batten). Turns out, Orianthi is as disturbed by the whole thing as the rest of us: “Seeing how happy he was, excited, singing and dancing, it’s shocking. But I’m [...]

Here’s a bit of guitar tech for you. A University of Maryland professor and a couple of students have formed a guitar company, Coil Guitars, based around their innovations in guitar switches and electronics. In a nutshell, they’ve created a way to increase the number of tones from a set of humbuckers well beyond what [...]

The Wall Street Journal has an article posted today about Martin’s honorable approach to avoiding layoffs at their factory and managing to sell some guitars in this troubled economy. Workers at C.F Martin & Co. are putting finishing touches on the solid-wood 1 Series model, so named for its simplicity. It lacks inlay, as did [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In support of his new CD, United States, Paul Gilbert sat down with Clay Howard at YesWeekly.com: Well, I had just done a couple of instrumental records. Those actually did great for me. Especially in America and Europe. When I did my first instrumental record, Get Out of My Yard, Joe Satriani took notice and [...]

Well, at least some good has come out of the whole Coldplay/Satriani plagiarism affair. Winnipeg guitar teacher, Andrew Wasson, owner of CreativeGuitar.ca, made a 9 minute video analysis of the tunes and posted it on YouTube.com. It went viral: Since then, Wasson’s video on YouTube has received more than 670,000 views and earned him a [...]

Gibson.com has posted an interview with one of rock’s guitar legends: Leslie West. One thing that always strikes me about Leslie West is the fact that he became a legend with one tune. True, it just so happens to be one of the coolest guitar tunes ever, Mississippi Queen. I can’t think of any other [...]

Matt Warnock at ModernGuitars.com has a great analysis posted of Jimmy Page’s Heartbreaker solo, one of the greatest rock guitar solos from one of the greatest rock albums, Led Zeppelin II: With the song recorded and headed for mixing, along with the rest of the bands second album, a 25-year-old Jimmy Page decided to re-listen [...]

In a new book, Rock Roadie: Backstage and Confidential with Hendrix, Elvis, the “Animals”, Tina Turner, and an All-star Cast, from one-time Hendrix roadie, James “Tappy” Wright, makes the startling claim that Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffrey. James alleges that Michael Jeffrey made a drunken confession to him about a year [...]

Great story in the LA Times today about Jimi Hendrix impersonator Anthony Aquarius, complete with a soundtracked video slideshow of him busking in Hollywood: Sometimes a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard is a step back in time. To 1969, to be exact. It’s that way when Anthony Aquarius plugs in his battery-powered amplifiers, straps his electric [...]