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April 2025

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99 articles

April 24
- “The best guitar player I ever heard”: Nashville guitar extraordinaire Mac Gayden – who worked with Bob Dylan, Elvis, Linda Ronstadt and Simon & Garfunkel – dies at 83
April 23
- “Even standing with the guitars is tricky”: Ritchie Blackmore's health sparks concern after update from wife and musical partner Candice Night
- “The rest of the world didn't know that the world's greatest guitarist was playing a weekend gig at this place in Chelmsford”: The Aristocrats' Bryan Beller recalls the moment he met Guthrie Govan and formed a new kind of supergroup
- “Our answer to everything players have asked for and more”: Neural DSP’s Nano Cortex had one major drawback – but now it’s been addressed with a huge free firmware update that takes on Kemper and TONEX
- Carlos Santana hospitalized following pre-show medical emergency
April 22
- “The musicians, shops, and brands who use Reverb have always been at the center of all that we do”: Reverb has been acquired by two new investors – and will once again become an independently operated company
- Weezer’s first show was opening for Keanu Reeves’ band Dogstar. Now the John Wick star is set to play a villain in the Buddy Holly hitmakers’ forthcoming mockumentary
- “Even the thought that Clapton might have seen a few seconds of my video feels surreal. But I’m truly honored”: Eric Clapton names Japanese neo-soul guitarist as one to watch
- One of the UK's biggest guitar stores has sold its stock and website to online retailer Gear4music for $3.2 million – after weeks of speculation over its future
- “Imagine the roaring intensity of Meshuggah’s live performances echoing through your rig”: Meshuggah’s world-ending guitar tones are now available in a signature pedal
- Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong tackles one of Randy Rhoads’ most iconic solos – tapping and all – in live cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train
- “It’s not meant to be anything more than a thank-you – with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo”: Sammy Hagar set to release track inspired by a dream he had about Eddie Van Halen, co-written with Joe Satriani
April 21
- “I was playing in the living room, he walked past and shot me this look of ‘Do that again.’ So I bent the string up and he gave me this nod of approval”: Jack Moore on lessons learned from his father, Gary
- “I heard the Money solo and thought, ‘This is amazing!’ So I sent David a telegram saying, ‘Remember me? I'm in a band now called Roxy Music’”: Phil Manzanera on his friendship with David Gilmour, and the key to the Pink Floyd man's unmistakable tone
- “It’s really quite genius, but also hard to learn – it sounds insane, but sometimes the easiest songs still get me nervous”: Kiki Wong reveals the Smashing Pumpkins song she had the most trouble with
April 20
- “I always felt like that record could have been better if we had worked on it some more”: Looking for a blockbuster comeback album, Aerosmith turned to Van Halen producer Ted Templeman. For Joe Perry, it served as a learning experience
April 19
- Guitar World Discussion: Who is the most underrated guitar player of all time?
April 18
- “I could be blazing on Instagram, and there'll still be comments like, ‘You'll never be Richie’”: The recent Bon Jovi documentary helped guitarist Phil X win over even more of the band's fans – but he still deals with some naysayers
- “The Strat was about as ‘out’ as you could get. If you didn’t have a Floyd Rose, it was like, ‘what are you doing?’”: In the eye of the Superstrat hurricane, Yngwie Malmsteen stayed true to the original
- Guitar World deals of the week: save $250 on a Gretsch semi-hollow guitar, bag a budget busting EQD delay pedal, plus all the best deals on guitar gear over the Easter weekend
- “It's like saying, ‘Give a man a Les Paul, and he becomes Eric Clapton. It's not true’”: David Gilmour and Roger Waters hit back at criticism of the band's over-reliance on gear and synths when crafting The Dark Side of The Moon in newly unearthed clip
- “A new signature for Misha Mansoor, but not the one we’ve been waiting for”: The essential guitar gear releases you might have missed this week, from Chase Bliss and PRS to Jackson and Fender
April 17
- “I said, ‘Let’s get Hendrix to play on it.’ His manager said, ‘Jimi’s playing shows back-to-back.’ So we got Jimmy Page”: The hit ’60s single that was supposed to feature Jimi Hendrix… but ended up with Jimmy Page
- “There are people who think it makes a big difference to the sound. Stevie always sounded the same whether it was rosewood or maple”: Jimmie Vaughan says your fretboard choice doesn’t matter – and SRV is his proof
- “Jeff Beck used to love seeing him and Lenny play live – it feels full circle”: Lenny Kravitz guitarist Craig Ross has been playing Jeff Beck’s $490,000 Yardburst Les Paul onstage for an entire tour
- “You got it!” Rare footage of Andy Summers teaching John Mayer how to play Message in a Bottle emerges
- “My hand hit the glass and it broke. It got totally trashed. I can’t feel my pinky from nerve damage”: The freak injury that changed the way Chris Poland played guitar – and ended up informing the sound of Megadeth’s Rattlehead
April 16
- Mark Tremonti’s PRS signature amp is one of the best affordable high-gain heads on the market – and it just got one major upgrade
- “These measures threaten the economic and cultural impact of U.S.-made musical instruments”: NAMM president responds to Trump's tariffs – urgently urging the administration to exempt the musical instrument market
- “You might laugh a little. The post office shipped your guitar to Jim Root”: This metal fan ordered a new guitar from Sweetwater – but it ended up with the Slipknot guitarist
- “I hope they never do one of Van Halen. I told Wolfie, ‘Make sure I’m dead’”: Eddie Van Halen's former wife, Valerie Bertinelli, rules out Van Halen biopic
- “The hotshot guitar player at our gig said, ‘Your guitar sounds terrible. You should leave that thing on.’ So I turned on the Big Muff…” How a heckler helped J Mascis unlock his Dinosaur Jr. guitar tone
April 15
- Stevie Ray Vaughan, Simple Minds, Megadeth, the Cult and the class of 1985 – only in the new Guitar World
- “My guitar tech ran in and said, ‘Hey, you want to meet Pete?’ I was too scared”: The Smithereens’ love affair with The Who goes way back – yet when guitarist Jim Babjak got the chance to meet Pete Townshend, he turned it down
- “The most in-demand mods straight from the factory”: Fender’s elevated Player II Modified line brings the firm’s most sought-after guitar upgrades to the masses
- “Last time we were here, in ’89, we played with Slash on this stage. I don't remember what we did...” Slash makes surprise appearance at former Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe's show at the Whisky a Go Go
- “I’m inspired”: John Mayer has been spotted playing a Neural DSP Quad Cortex live for the first time – could this be his new amp modeler of choice?
April 14
- The heaviest acoustic guitar ever made? Two budding builders craft an acoustic entirely from concrete because they “thought the idea was really funny”
- “There’s a slight latency in there. You can’t be super-accurate”: Yngwie Malmsteen names the guitar picks that don’t work for shred
- “David Crosby said, ‘I don't like it, man. That folky 2/4 time never gonna play on the radio’”: The Byrds needed a hit or they’d be dropped. Releasing a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man as their first single was a gamble that paid off
- “The nuisance is exacerbated by the repetition and poor quality of some of the performances”: Buskers banned from London’s Leicester Square as performances likened to “psychological torture”
- “This particular way of concluding Bohemian Rhapsody will be hard to beat!” Brian May with Benson Boone, Green Day with the Go-Gos, and Lady Gaga rocking a Suhr – Coachella’s first weekend delivered the guitar goods
April 11
- “A virtuoso beyond virtuosos”: Matteo Mancuso has become one of the hottest guitar talents on the planet – now he’s finally announced his first headline US tour
- “His songs are timeless – you can’t tell if they were written in the 1400s or now”: Michael Hurley, guitarist and singer/songwriter known as the ‘Godfather of freak folk,’ dies at 83
- “The future is pretty bright”: Norman's Rare Guitars has unearthed another future blues great – and the 15-year-old guitar star has already jammed with Michael Lemmo
- “I said, ‘Mike, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s a note-for-note guitar solo from...” Mike McCready stole his Alive solo from Kiss – but Ace Frehley had already stolen it from another legendary classic rock band
- The guitar gear releases you might have missed this week, from Martin and Fender to Tone King and D'Angelico
- “You run scales so when inspiration and instinct kicks in you're able to keep up with it”: Larkin Poe's Rebecca Lovell explains her “hunt and peck” approach to guitar solos – and how scales can make all the difference
- Epiphone brings one of Gibson’s most desirable one-off finishes to the masses with Guitar Center-exclusive Widow Les Paul – but it’s been given a twist
- Celebrated jazz guitarist George Freeman, best known for his work with Charlie Parker and Gene Ammons, has died aged 97
April 10
- “After I made the RD with Epiphone I found it wasn't actually that comfortable to play live”: Bring Me the Horizon’s Lee Malia is no stranger to signature offsets – but he wasn’t too fond of his first
- “Tom would say, ‘Play your guitar with a car key.’ It was very experimental”: Little Feat's Fred Tackett recalls Tom Waits' left-field approach to guitar playing – and his one-of-a-kind studio sessions
- I spent way too long looking through all 372 deals in the Thomann Easter sale – here are the 5 I’d buy
- “Seeing friends and heroes of mine having their solos plagiarized broke my heart”: Giacomo Turra used their solos note-for-note for his own viral content. Now the guitarists who had their playing “stolen” are speaking out
- Guitar Center’s massive Guitar-A-Thon sale has landed, and there's $600 off one of my favorite Gibson Les Paul finishes and a host of exclusive models from Epiphone, Taylor, and more
- “Something’s stirring behind closed doors…” Joe Satriani plays For the Love of God? Steve Vai and Satch tackle each other’s most iconic leads in first SatchVai Band rehearsal footage
- “Eric’s standing there drinking an orange juice. He looks at me and says, ‘Been doing this a while, have you?’” When Eric Clapton saw an up-and-coming Tommy Emmanuel play for the first time
April 9
- “You're getting the most precisely built, easily adjustable guitar we've ever made”: Taylor Guitars just announced a guitar neck innovation that allows players to micro-adjust string height “in seconds” – without removing the neck or strings
- “I was like, 'I'm a kid. I should apply. He's gonna say no, right?' But he said yes”: This 12-year-old heavy metal prodigy never expected to be mentored by a former Megadeth guitar player – but that’s exactly what happened
- “I asked him to get me four bass strings because I only had a $29 guitar from Sears”: Bootsy Collins is one of the all-time bass greats, but he started out on guitar. Here’s the sole reason why he switched
- “This isn’t just a makeover. It’s a full-on glow-up”: Martin’s Junior Series Dreadnought is the best all-round acoustic electric guitar on the market – now the entire range has been given its most significant upgrade yet
- “I was reluctant, even in Rush, towards the end – I was not playing nearly as many solos. I just wanted to get away from that”: Alex Lifeson on his complicated relationship with guitar solos – and why he cut down on leads in Rush's later years
- “I don’t only think in barre chords – that’s a slightly arrogant statement to make”: Brian May and Roger Taylor disagree about their guitar contributions to Taylor’s Queen tracks
- “It’s the guitar I’ve dreamed of making for years”: Jackson and Bring Me the Horizon’s Lee Malia champion the rise of the metal offset with new signature Surfcaster
April 8
- "I never use my tube amp at home now, because I have a Spark Live": 5 reasons you should be picking up the Positive Grid Spark Live in the massive Guitar Month sale
- “The ‘Destruct’ button really sets it apart from just about any other Tele”: Fender and Mike Campbell recreate the Red Dog – the Heartbreaker’s heavily modded 1972 Telecaster, which he played with Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac
- “Trent Reznor told me, ‘You’re by far the best guy that we’ve tried. I would love to have you in the band’”: Richie Kotzen came close to joining Nine Inch Nails – but one detail stopped him getting the gig
- “In the beginning, I was a terrible rhythm player. I avoided it like the plague”: Martin Barre once distanced himself from rhythm playing – but some Steve Lukather wisdom changed his mind
- “One of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen in music”: Popular social media guitarist Giacomo Turra accused of stealing other musicians’ songs for content
- “That is how you make an entrance!” Jack Black mimes on a Minecraft’d Flying V as Kirk Douglas nails the Sweet Child O’ Mine solo on Jimmy Fallon
April 7
- “What they do harkens back to classic rock and real musicianship”: Amadou Bagayoko, singer and Malian guitar great, dies at 70
- “They said, ‘The Ace Hotel have you on camera leaving with the guitar.’ I was like, ‘I thought it was a gift!’” Machine Gun Kelly on the time he stole a cheap Martin from a hotel – and was billed $5,000
- “I had never done that before. I thought Jimmy was going to go, ‘Nice one’ – he looks at me and goes, ‘Don’t you ever do that again’”: That time Chrissie Hynde enraged one of her Pretenders bandmates because she stopped playing mid-gig
- “Dave was the master of some of the most iconic basslines in music history”: Dave Allen, former Gang of Four bassist and post-punk heavyweight, dies aged 69
- “I never met anyone who was his own person as much as Al was”: SSD guitarist and hardcore pioneer Al Barile dies aged 63
- “I think Pantera might’ve talked about this in Hot and Heavy”: Kayla Kent nails Eddie Van Halen’s Ice Cream Man solo in the style of Dimebag Darrell
April 5
- “Not everybody has a high standard. A lot of indie people think playing too good is a bad thing”: Billy Corgan on the difference between rock and “indie” guitar players
April 4
- “I'd sit there with my guitar and that was my education. This show gave me purpose, it gave me hope”: Gary Clark Jr. dons a Strat to cover Stevie Ray Vaughan classics at Austin City Limits' 50th Anniversary televised special
- “There was never any half-measures with Gary. If he didn’t like something he’d soon tell you to f**k off”: In July 1979, Gary Moore stormed off stage and officially left Thin Lizzy – now, guitarist Eric Bell reveals the real reason why
- “One of the coolest guitars I own”: Dweezil Zappa has some absolutely wild guitars in his vault – but his insane one-of-one fretless Gibson SG is one of his favorites
- “Delivers the same tones that made the original popular with legends”: Rotosound’s ultra-rare fuzz pedal has been reissued – bringing Jimmy Page-approved fuzz magic to the masses
- “Maybe we could buy a 12-string and have it sawed in two”: Kevin Bacon and Jimmy Fallon rewrite Bryan Adams’ Summer of ’69 – and make it all about six-strings
- “It's getting harder for him. But I've seen people younger than him in wheelchairs on stage doing what they do”: Ritchie Blackmore suffered a heart attack last year – and a return to Europe has been ruled out for the time being
- “A classical guitar for the modern era, with all the specifications expected by the seasoned player”: Harley Benton seizes on the Polyphia-led nylon-string revival with a versatile acoustic-electric for under $300
- “That’s the same guitar I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people”: Billy Corgan on why he plays off-the-shelf Reverends – and isn’t fussed about playing expensive guitars
- “The guitar work on her tracks is perfectly wonderful without me, so I decided to throw some mud at the wall”: Pete Townshend passes the torch to the next generation as he lends his guitar chops to emerging Dutch guitarist's latest record
April 3
- “I was working with David Gilmour and I said, ‘I can't work out how to play this.’ He couldn't either’”: Phil Manzanera tried to relearn one of his classic riffs after it was sampled by Kanye West and Jay-Z – and even the Pink Floyd hero couldn’t help him
- “I could barely play his guitar. He had 12s on the top. It was like a G string. I was like, ‘How do you do that?’”: Huey Lewis and the News' Chris Hayes looks back on his friendship with Stevie Ray Vaughan – and the blues great's notorious guitar setup
- “That was the first time I’d ever listened to one and gone, ‘What is that? I want to learn how to do that’”: Justin Hawkins is known for his rock chops – but a soul and reggae legend inspired him to break the rules
April 2
- “Who doesn't want to hear the recording of Ted Nugent and Eddie Van Halen jamming?” Ted Nugent's colossal archive includes sessions with EVH, Billy Gibbons and the Mothers of Invention
- “It went wrong since Corona”: Bax Music, one of Europe’s largest musical instrument retailers, files for bankruptcy and ceases operations
- “If you’re youngish, cute-ish and can play that axe, you’re for me”: Chaka Khan is holding open auditions to find a new guitar player – but she’s got some very specific requirements
- “I walked in and said, ‘Can I get that guitar, the one at the end there?’ He looked at the name on the credit card and then looked up at me”: Chrissie Hynde on that one time she bought her own signature guitar off the shelf
- “I wasn’t into King Crimson at all. Definitely not my kind of music”: How Andy Summers formed one of the 1980s’ most unlikely guitar partnerships with Robert Fripp – despite not being especially keen on some of his work
April 1
- “Affordable versions of the three best basses I've ever held in my hands”: Sterling by Music Man completes its trilogy of Joe Dart signature models with a trio of made-to-order basses that cost less than $500
- “Blurs your bassist so the mix stays focused on where it really matters”: From feline fuzz pedals to Bootsy Jooce, the April Fools Day guitar gags are out in full force this year – and we've rounded up the best
- “After his successful election, we sell this kind of guitar in the U.S. We once got an order with 12,000 guitars”: New documentary appears to confirm that Trump Guitars are being manufactured in China
- “The all-in-one music creation companion”: Donner’s HUSH-I PRO offers built-in FX and onboard IRs – and it could be the ultimate travel guitar
- “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe how cool it was”: Joe Satriani is selling one of his rarest guitars – an ultra-ambitious Ibanez Y2K Crystal Planet prototype