March 2023

Guitar World

Guitar lessons, interviews, product reviews and more!

Guitar World1 min read
Woodshed
VOL. 44 | NO. 3 | MARCH 2023 YOU MIGHT BE staring at the cover, bellowing, “Jimmy Page — again?” Which is funny, because I actually think of this issue as being dedicated to “the other guys,” which is partially the result of my recent “Enough already
Guitar World1 min read
Guitar World
EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Damian Fanelli ([email protected])SENIOR MUSIC EDITOR Jimmy BrownTECH EDITOR Paul RiarioASSOCIATE EDITORS Andy Aledort, Chris GillPRODUCTION EDITOR Jem RobertsMUSIC TRANSCRIPTIONIST AND ENGRAVER Jeff PerrinCONTRI
Guitar World2 min read
Defenders/reader Art
STAY CONNECTED WITH GUITAR WORLD ON AND GET THE LATEST GUITAR NEWS, INSIDER UPDATES, STAFF REPORTS AND MORE! Got something you want to say? EMAIL US AT: [email protected] If you’ve created a drawing, painting or sketch of your favorite
Guitar World4 min read
Blake Ibanez’s New Trip
BELOVED CROSSOVER THRASHERS Power Trip were poised to return the heavy metal crown to their hometown of Dallas, where their forebears Pantera created some of the genre’s most brutal riffs and grooves in the Nineties. But then the unthinkable happene
Guitar World4 min read
Inquirer Jim Babjak
Q: What was your first guitar? I got my first guitar in 1969 when I was 12. It was a cheap Teisco that came with an amp made out of plastic. Both didn’t last very long. The strings were so far away from the neck, it was horrible. I probably would ha
Guitar World2 min read
Andrea Benz
GROWING UP IN her homeland of Switzerland, Andrea Benz was absolutely certain that she was destined to be a country music guitar player. “It all started the night I watched the CMAs [Country Music Awards] on TV with my parents,” she says. “I was alre
Guitar World2 min read
Katatonia
KATATONIA’S SKY VOID of Stars marks the second album in a row to not feature songs by founding guitarist Anders Nyström — as with 2020’s City Burials, the band’s 12th long-player was helmed completely by vocalist Jonas Renske. But when it comes to ho
Guitar World2 min read
Doll Spirit Vessel
PHILLY INDIE ROCKERS Doll Spirit Vessel pair two opposing schools of thought in guitar playing — the untrained and instinctual with the well-learned and intentional — to great effect on What Stays, the band’s debut album. “My approach to guitar has a
Guitar World2 min read
My Pedalboard Fredrik Åkesson
“HERE’S THE PEDALBOARD I’ve been using for the last few Opeth runs. I tend to change my overdrive pedal a lot; right now it’s the Seymour Duncan 805. It has a three-band EQ, which I use for slightly cutting the mids and adding bass. The DryBell Vibe
Guitar World5 min read
The Single-cut Strut
THE SEVENTIES WERE defined by the earliest wave of proverbial guitar gods — giant-slayers posturing at the stage’s edge, casting their lurid spells over unwitting audiences. The preeminent choice of magic wand? The Gibson Les Paul. But as the Eightie
Guitar World2 min read
The Boneshakers
GUITARIST RANDY JACOBS found himself at a crossroads about 25 years ago. Since the early Eighties he was a member of the band Was (Not Was), and thanks to his work on projects produced by bandmate Don Was he became an in-demand session player, record
Guitar World2 min read
Marcos Mena
EVER SINCE YNGWIE Malmsteen descended from Mount Shred and single handedly invented the instrumental guitar album, scholars have debated one question: Can anyone dance to this stuff? On Fruit Town, California-based guitar-and-drums duo Standards [sty
Guitar World6 min read
Makin' Tracks Dave Davies
FOR KINKS GUITARIST Dave Davies, revisiting the seminal British band’s 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies and 1972’s Everybody’s in Show-Biz with his brother — vocalist/guitarist Ray Davies — for a recently released pair of box sets was a tiring yet eye-
Guitar World2 min read
Quotable
Q: FROM ELVIS COSTELLO TO LARKIN POE TO YOU “When we were touring with Elvis Costello, we were eating lunch and he was expounding on the importance of not putting yourself in a box,” says Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell. “He is the perfect example of an
Guitar World2 min read
Photo Of The Month
Jimmy Page [left] and Rory Gallagher hang out backstage at the Pistoia Blues Festival in Pistoia, Italy, July 16, 1984. Page performed as part of a tribute to U.K. blues great Alexis Korner, who had died that January at age 55. Gallagher played a ful
Guitar World1 min read
From The Gw Archives
The album opens with an insane, virtuoso Eddie riff, daring you to try and play along. From there he drops us down and dirty into the ’Halen “Mean Street.” The riffs are menacing, the lyrics nihilistic and the grooves taut and funky. “Dirty Movies” f
Guitar World9 min read
Arch Enemy
WITH HIS LONG black hair covering his eyes and much of his face, Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott sports a wide grin that belies the savagery of the band’s melodic death metal as he saws into his white blood-spattered signature Dean Tyrant Bloodstorm
Guitar World8 min read
Keys To The Kingdom
THEY’VE MADE 20 ALBUMS IN 10 YEARS. and they’ve had three new albums — yes, three — released in late 2022 alone. But there is method in this madness, as King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s affable vocalist, co-guitarist and head honcho Stu Mackenzie e
Guitar World11 min read
G.a.s. Truth Or Fiction?
GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME — or G.A.S. for short — is a term that describes the seemingly uncontrollable impulse to buy — you guessed it — gear. It’s that insatiable rush that invades every cell in your being, convincing you that you need to buy that
Guitar World15 min read
That Old Black Magic
WHETHER PLAYING TO packed U.S. clubs or to tens of thousands of metalheads at Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival, there’s been nothing but love shown to Mercyful Fate since the Danish metal legends emerged from a 23-year live hiatus last summer. Back
Guitar World30 min read
Cum On Feel The Noize!
AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR is a wonderful thing. It’s expressive, it makes a beautiful noise and it’s portable. You can take it anywhere and it will work just fine, from a New York City subway station to the top of Whiskey Dick Mountain in Washington. Its on
Guitar World6 min read
Board Stiff
CHANCES ARE, UNLESS YOU’RE THE kind of player who sticks to just one overdrive or a wah between your guitar and amp, you’ve started to amass quite the collection of pedals and need something that can house them all neatly. All those power cables and
Guitar World4 min read
Expanded Perspective
A FEW MONTHS back when Strymon announced new V2 versions of six of the company’s most popular small-format pedals, the response from the guitar community was a mix of excitement and confusion (what else do you expect these days?). Many dedicated Stry
Guitar World3 min read
A Double Cut Above the Rest
CHECK OUT ANY late-night talk or weekday morning show that features musical guests, and chances are you’ll see one of the musicians playing a D’Angelico. Since the historic company roared back into the public eye more than a decade ago, D’Angelico ha
Guitar World3 min read
Encore Performance
THE VERY FIRST time I saw a Jackson Soloist in a music store in the early Eighties I experienced a similar sensation to when I first encountered a Lamborghini in real life around the same time. All of my prior notions of what a familiar object could
Guitar World2 min read
Buzz Bin Steel Panther 1987 Pedal
THE YEAR 1987 brings to mind certain memories for me: I had hair down to my waist; a Superstrat with one humbucker and a Floyd Rose; a kickin’ hair metal band; Def Leppard, Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses blaring from my speakers and well, come to think
Guitar World2 min read
Oblique Workout
GUITAR PLAYERS ARE well aware that three of the most reliable techniques for creating expressive solos are string bending, vibrato and the combination of bending with vibrato. One exceptionally cool and useful bending technique is what’s known as an
Guitar World3 min read
Wino Man
AS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY, I’m currently recording a 20th anniversary follow-up to my 2003 album, Blues Deluxe, which will be titled, appropriately, Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2. One of the songs we cut for this record is a cover of Pee Wee Crayton’s “Win-O.”
Guitar World2 min read
The Next Day
LAST MONTH, WE began our look into the song “That Day Came,” released originally on my 2016 album, Theme from a Perfect World. “That Day Came” is performed in a chord-melody style, which means that individual melody notes are supported with additiona
Guitar World2 min read
Blue And Funky
THIS MONTH, I’D like to cover my song “Pusher,” which I had originally recorded for my 2014 album, Over Your Head, but I’d really like to talk about the version I include on my new album, Live at the Spud. “Pusher” is a cool, syncopated 12-bar blues
Guitar World4 min read
Performance Notes
SLIPKNOT GUITARISTS JIM Root and Mick Thomson unleash a fierce barrage of their band’s signature pummeling metal riffs on this up-tempo juggernaut. Using drop-D tuning, transposed down one and one half steps — what many refer to as “drop-B” tuning (l
Guitar World1 min readCrime & Violence
“Spirit In The Sky”
“SPIRIT IN THE SKY” WORDS AND MUSIC BY NORMAN GREENBAUM COPYRIGHT © 1970 GREAT HONESTY MUSIC, INC. COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS ADMINISTERED BY BIKE MUSIC C/O CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
Guitar World2 min read
1984-85 Mesa/boogie Mark Iic+
THE MESA/BOOGIE MARK II model introduced in late 1978 represented a major milestone in the evolution of modern guitar amplifier design with its channel switching and cascaded high-gain preamp. However, the amp wasn’t quite perfect, and over the years
Guitar World1 min read
Woodshed
VOL. 44 | NO. 3 | MARCH 2023 YOU MIGHT BE staring at the cover, bellowing, “Jimmy Page — again?” Which is funny, because I actually think of this issue as being dedicated to “the other guys,” which is partially the result of my recent “Enough already
Guitar World4 min read
Blake Ibanez’s New Trip
BELOVED CROSSOVER THRASHERS Power Trip were poised to return the heavy metal crown to their hometown of Dallas, where their forebears Pantera created some of the genre’s most brutal riffs and grooves in the Nineties. But then the unthinkable happened
Guitar World4 min read
Inquirer Jim Babjak
Q: What was your first guitar? I got my first guitar in 1969 when I was 12. It was a cheap Teisco that came with an amp made out of plastic. Both didn’t last very long. The strings were so far away from the neck, it was horrible. I probably would hav
Guitar World2 min read
Andrea Benz
GROWING UP IN her homeland of Switzerland, Andrea Benz was absolutely certain that she was destined to be a country music guitar player. “It all started the night I watched the CMAs [Country Music Awards] on TV with my parents,” she says. “I was alre
Guitar World2 min read
Katatonia
KATATONIA’S SKY VOID of Stars marks the second album in a row to not feature songs by founding guitarist Anders Nyström — as with 2020’s City Burials, the band’s 12th long-player was helmed completely by vocalist Jonas Renske. But when it comes to ho
Guitar World2 min read
Doll Spirit Vessel
PHILLY INDIE ROCKERS Doll Spirit Vessel pair two opposing schools of thought in guitar playing — the untrained and instinctual with the well-learned and intentional — to great effect on What Stays, the band’s debut album. “My approach to guitar has a
Guitar World2 min read
My Pedalboard Fredrik Åkesson
“HERE’S THE PEDALBOARD I’ve been using for the last few Opeth runs. I tend to change my overdrive pedal a lot; right now it’s the Seymour Duncan 805. It has a three-band EQ, which I use for slightly cutting the mids and adding bass. The DryBell Vibe
Guitar World5 min read
The Single-cut Strut
THE SEVENTIES WERE defined by the earliest wave of proverbial guitar gods — giant-slayers posturing at the stage’s edge, casting their lurid spells over unwitting audiences. The preeminent choice of magic wand? The Gibson Les Paul. But as the Eightie
Guitar World2 min read
The Boneshakers
GUITARIST RANDY JACOBS found himself at a crossroads about 25 years ago. Since the early Eighties he was a member of the band Was (Not Was), and thanks to his work on projects produced by bandmate Don Was he became an in-demand session player, record
Guitar World2 min read
Marcos Mena
EVER SINCE YNGWIE Malmsteen descended from Mount Shred and single handedly invented the instrumental guitar album, scholars have debated one question: Can anyone dance to this stuff? On Fruit Town, California-based guitar-and-drums duo Standards [sty
Guitar World2 min read
Quotable
Q: FROM ELVIS COSTELLO TO LARKIN POE TO YOU “When we were touring with Elvis Costello, we were eating lunch and he was expounding on the importance of not putting yourself in a box,” says Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell. “He is the perfect example of an
Guitar World2 min read
Photo Of The Month
Jimmy Page [left] and Rory Gallagher hang out backstage at the Pistoia Blues Festival in Pistoia, Italy, July 16, 1984. Page performed as part of a tribute to U.K. blues great Alexis Korner, who had died that January at age 55. Gallagher played a ful
Guitar World6 min read
Makin' Tracks Dave Davies
FOR KINKS GUITARIST Dave Davies, revisiting the seminal British band’s 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies and 1972’s Everybody’s in Show-Biz with his brother — vocalist/guitarist Ray Davies — for a recently released pair of box sets was a tiring yet eye-
Guitar World1 min read
From The Gw Archives
The album opens with an insane, virtuoso Eddie riff, daring you to try and play along. From there he drops us down and dirty into the ’Halen “Mean Street.” The riffs are menacing, the lyrics nihilistic and the grooves taut and funky. “Dirty Movies” f
Guitar World9 min read
Arch Enemy
WITH HIS LONG black hair covering his eyes and much of his face, Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott sports a wide grin that belies the savagery of the band’s melodic death metal as he saws into his white blood-spattered signature Dean Tyrant Bloodstorm
Guitar World8 min read
Keys To The Kingdom
THEY’VE MADE 20 ALBUMS IN 10 YEARS. and they’ve had three new albums — yes, three — released in late 2022 alone. But there is method in this madness, as King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s affable vocalist, co-guitarist and head honcho Stu Mackenzie e
Guitar World15 min read
That Old Black Magic
WHETHER PLAYING TO packed U.S. clubs or to tens of thousands of metalheads at Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival, there’s been nothing but love shown to Mercyful Fate since the Danish metal legends emerged from a 23-year live hiatus last summer. Back
Guitar World11 min read
G.a.s. Truth Or Fiction?
GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME — or G.A.S. for short — is a term that describes the seemingly uncontrollable impulse to buy — you guessed it — gear. It’s that insatiable rush that invades every cell in your being, convincing you that you need to buy that
Guitar World30 min read
Cum On Feel The Noize!
AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR is a wonderful thing. It’s expressive, it makes a beautiful noise and it’s portable. You can take it anywhere and it will work just fine, from a New York City subway station to the top of Whiskey Dick Mountain in Washington. Its on
Guitar World6 min read
Board Stiff
CHANCES ARE, UNLESS YOU’RE THE kind of player who sticks to just one overdrive or a wah between your guitar and amp, you’ve started to amass quite the collection of pedals and need something that can house them all neatly. All those power cables and
Guitar World4 min read
Expanded Perspective
A FEW MONTHS back when Strymon announced new V2 versions of six of the company’s most popular small-format pedals, the response from the guitar community was a mix of excitement and confusion (what else do you expect these days?). Many dedicated Stry
Guitar World3 min read
A Double Cut Above the Rest
CHECK OUT ANY late-night talk or weekday morning show that features musical guests, and chances are you’ll see one of the musicians playing a D’Angelico. Since the historic company roared back into the public eye more than a decade ago, D’Angelico ha
Guitar World2 min read
Buzz Bin Steel Panther 1987 Pedal
THE YEAR 1987 brings to mind certain memories for me: I had hair down to my waist; a Superstrat with one humbucker and a Floyd Rose; a kickin’ hair metal band; Def Leppard, Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses blaring from my speakers and well, come to think
Guitar World3 min read
Encore Performance
THE VERY FIRST time I saw a Jackson Soloist in a music store in the early Eighties I experienced a similar sensation to when I first encountered a Lamborghini in real life around the same time. All of my prior notions of what a familiar object could
Guitar World2 min read
Oblique Workout
GUITAR PLAYERS ARE well aware that three of the most reliable techniques for creating expressive solos are string bending, vibrato and the combination of bending with vibrato. One exceptionally cool and useful bending technique is what’s known as an
Guitar World2 min read
The Next Day
LAST MONTH, WE began our look into the song “That Day Came,” released originally on my 2016 album, Theme from a Perfect World. “That Day Came” is performed in a chord-melody style, which means that individual melody notes are supported with additiona
Guitar World3 min read
Wino Man
AS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY, I’m currently recording a 20th anniversary follow-up to my 2003 album, Blues Deluxe, which will be titled, appropriately, Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2. One of the songs we cut for this record is a cover of Pee Wee Crayton’s “Win-O.”
Guitar World4 min read
Performance Notes
SLIPKNOT GUITARISTS JIM Root and Mick Thomson unleash a fierce barrage of their band’s signature pummeling metal riffs on this up-tempo juggernaut. Using drop-D tuning, transposed down one and one half steps — what many refer to as “drop-B” tuning (l
Guitar World2 min read
Blue And Funky
THIS MONTH, I’D like to cover my song “Pusher,” which I had originally recorded for my 2014 album, Over Your Head, but I’d really like to talk about the version I include on my new album, Live at the Spud. “Pusher” is a cool, syncopated 12-bar blues
Guitar World2 min read
1984-85 Mesa/boogie Mark Iic+
THE MESA/BOOGIE MARK II model introduced in late 1978 represented a major milestone in the evolution of modern guitar amplifier design with its channel switching and cascaded high-gain preamp. However, the amp wasn’t quite perfect, and over the years

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