Wired.com has an interesting post on the patents behind the modern electric guitar pickup: 1937: Guy Hart, general manager of the Gibson guitar company, is awarded the first patent for an electric guitar pickup. The instrument that defines popular music in the second half of the 20th century is born. Gibson’s electric guitar wasn’t not [...]

Did you know that the first Sony Walkman debuted in Japan on July 1, 1979? The Sony Walkman is one of the few inventions that truly changed the way we listen to our music and deserves a place alongside radio, the phonograph (record player), CD, and MP3 compression. According to Wikipedia, the device was designed [...]

On May 23, 1969, The Who released their ground-breaking double album, Tommy, and introduced the world to the concept of the “rock opera” (and also gave guitarists that damn cool Pinball Wizard lick). The genius of Tommy is, in part, due to it’s simplicity. Most of the double-album centers around Pete Townhsend’s incredible acoustic guitar [...]

Plek technology is a combination of software, mathematics, and robotics used to automatically dress a guitar fretboard (including truss-rod adjustment) with an accuracy not achievable by a human. I’ve seen one at work at the Martin Guitar factory, and there are a few shops around in the US who use the machine. Here’s a video about the [...]

Here’s a bit of hopefully interesting trivia for you guitar players. Last night, I watched the wonderful and underrated movie Fandango, starring Kevin Costner and Judd Nelson. I was pleasantly reminded that Fandango was how I was introduced to Pat Metheny as a young man. Two of his amazing tunes, September 15 and Farmer’s Trust [...]

This article caught my eye on RollingStone.com today: Fans who’d eagerly bought Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music when it came out in 1975 soon returned to their music stores in droves, demanding refunds and complaining that the record was broken. MMM is Reed’s most controversial record, the black sheep in his catalog: a 64-minute double album that consists almost [...]

Did you know that you can buy some seriously cool guitar memorabilia at the New York Times online store? I didn’t either. My favorite is Jaco Pastorius Fingers on Bass Guitar: In this rare color photo from December 1975, an outtake from the 1976 “Jaco Pastorius” album cover photo sessions, Don Hunstein focuses on the [...]

A couple of months ago, I posted about the most wanted and unwanted song, created based on online polls. Did you know that there actually is a worst song of all time? It’s called “Agadoo.” Written by band Black Lace in 1984 and pronounced worst of all time by a panel of music journalists, Agadoo [...]

Did you know that every year B. B. King does a Mississippi tour to honor slain civil rights leader, Medgar Evers? Or that he and his band once played 342 one-night stands in one year? Or that B. B. toured with the Stones in 1969? Me either. Check out Dave Howell’s Fun Facts About B. [...]

In the spring of 2008, thrash-metal band Testament released The Formation of Damnation and will be headlining a tour this May and June (click here for tour dates and ticket information) with their original lineup, which includes interesting guitarist Alex Skolnick. Here’s the kind of music Testament plays: Cool stuff. Alex can really shred. But, [...]

When you think of guitar woods, what comes to mind? Rosewood, mahogany, ash, ebony, koa, spruce… The list is long. What you normally don’t think of is pine. But it can be done. Here’s what master guitar builder Bob Benedetto did with  a couple of pieces of knotty pine: Knotty Pine Guitar 01-01-1993 Guitar serial [...]

According to a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Salzburg, jazz guitarists’ brain waves synchronize while playing together. Just like, um, a Star Trek Vulcan Mind Meld. Of course, the researchers wouldn’t give props to Star Trek, so they decided to call it “Cortical Phase Synchronization.” Lame. [...]

Did you know that Ada Vidovic is one of the youngest virtuoso guitarists in the world? She picked up the guitar at just 5 years old and by eleven was good enough to play all over the world. At 13, she became the youngest music student at the National Music Academy near her hometown of [...]

The guitar you see to the left at first looks like what might happen if I tried my hand at fretting a neck, but it’s actually a picture of a guitar fitted with a True Temperament Fretting System. Most guitarists are aware (at least on some level) that you can’t ever really acheive a perfectly [...]