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Adje van den Berg

Adje (Adrian) van den Berg (Born: 31 January 1954, The Hague in the Netherlands) is a Dutch rock guitarist, best known for his tenure as one of the guitarists in Whitesnake during their successful late 1980s period.

Adrian was originally the lead guitarist for the Dutch band Teaser, a band that released a self-titled album in 1978. This band should not be confused with the American band Teaser, which featured American guitarist Jake E. Lee. He then started his own band, simply named Vandenberg, who released three albums in the 1980s, Vandenberg, Heading for a Storm and Alibi. They are arguably best known for the ballad "Burning Heart", a song that features complementing guitar layers and harmonies, and "Friday Night", from the Heading for a Storm album. They toured extensively, including a support slot to the Michael Schenker Group in the UK in late 1982. A "Best of" compilation has recently been released.

Vandenberg was originally approached to join Whitesnake in the early 1980s, having impressed David Coverdale with not only his guitar wizardry, but also with his songwriting talent and his ability as a band leader. He initially declined, due to the success of his own band Vandenberg and their Top 40 hit, Burning Heart. By 1986, however, with pressure from the record company to become more and more commercial and their success hitting a plateau, he relented and finally disbanded Vandenberg and agreed to join Coverdale in Whitesnake. Initially he was hired as a session musician, helping to complete their eponymous album Whitesnake (known as 1987 in Europe) after a mass-firing of the original band members by Coverdale. He contributed the solo to their #1 hit "Here I Go Again", but guitarist John Sykes played all of the other rhythm and lead guitar on the album.

After an extremely successful world tour and extensive airplay for their 3 videos on MTV, Vandenberg co-wrote all of the music to the follow-up album Slip of the Tongue.
However, in preparing to enter the studio for the recording sessions, he injured his wrist performing isometric piano warm up exercises and was unfortunately unable to contribute lead guitar work to the album Slip of the Tongue. Steve Vai was imported by founder David Coverdale to record both lead and rhythm guitars on the album in Vandenberg's stead.
Vandenberg healed in time to stay with the band on tour supporting the album in a now-trademark dual guitarist role with Steve Vai. After Whitesnake was disbanded in 1991, he returned as part of other Whitesnake incarnations such as the 1994 Whitesnake's Greatest Hits reunion/tour. He once again co-wrote the songs for the 1997 album Restless Heart with Coverdale. This time, he played all of the guitars on this stripped-down, bluesy album, turning away from his well-known rock/metal neo-classical chops and towards his original main influence, Jimi Hendrix. He also collaborated with Coverdale on the Whitesnake unplugged acoustic album, Starkers in Tokyo.

After Whitesnake, he played in the band Manic Eden, which also featured former Little Caesar singer Ron Young, and Adrian's former Whitesnake bandmates bassist Rudy Sarzo and drummer Tommy Aldridge. The band split up when Adrian took part in Whitesnake's 1994 Greatest Hits reunion/tour.

He has since returned to painting and is an accomplished airbrush artist, having created the cover art for both the Heading for a Storm and Alibi albums.

When Whitesnake play in Adrian's home country, the Netherlands, he makes a "surprise guest appearance"; he did so at the June 2008 Arrow Rock Festival in Nijmegen, where he joined the current line-up for a performance of "Here I Go Again".

Coverdale suggested that he and Vandenberg should probably do an acoustic Whitesnake tour in the far future.

Adrian Belew

Adrian Belew (born Robert Steven Belew, December 23, 1949, in Covington, Kentucky) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer.
He is perhaps best known for his work as a member of the progressive rock group King Crimson (which he has fronted since 1981) and for his unusual impressionistic approach to guitar playing (involving arresting yet frequently melodic sounds more akin to animals and machines than to standard instrumental tones).

Widely recognized as an "incredibly versatile player, Belew has released nearly twenty solo albums for Island Records and Atlantic Records which blend Beatles-inspired pop-rock with more experimental fare.
His 2005 single "Beat Box Guitar" was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category. In addition to being a member of King Crimson, he is also in the more straightforward pop band The Bears and fronted his own band, Gaga, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
He has worked extensively as a session and touring musician, most famously with Talking Heads, David Bowie, Caifanes, Frank Zappa, and Nine Inch Nails.

Belew has recently moved into instrument design, collaborating with Parker Guitars to help design his own Parker Fly signature guitar.
This guitar is noticebly different from the standard design, containing advanced electronics such as a sustainer pickup and a Line 6 Variax guitar modelling system. It is also MIDI capable, allowing it to be used with any synthesizer with MIDI connectivity.

Adrian Smith

Adrian Frederik Smith (born 27 February 1957) is an English guitarist and one of three guitarists/songwriters in the English band Iron Maiden. He also performs backing vocals on some songs, along with Steve Harris.

Smith currently prefers to use his Jackson signature 'San Dimas' Dinky, although he has used a variety of guitars over his career including several different Dean models, various Jackson models including the Randy Rhoads, Fender Stratocasters (including three Fender Floyd Rose Classic Stratocasters; one of these stratocasters had a roland MIDI pickup installed), Gibson Les Pauls, Gibson Explorers, Gibson SGs, an Ibanez Destroyer and Lado Guitars.
On the A Matter of Life and Death DVD, he says the first decent guitar he bought was a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop which he paid £235 for when he was 17. He's still using it and says, "it's still probably the best guitar I've got".

As of August 2007, Adrian Smith endorses Jackson Guitars, his first guitar company endorsement in over fifteen years. With Jackson he has an Adrian Smith San Dimas DK model.

Alex Lifeson

Alex Lifeson, OC (born Aleksandar Zivojinovic; August 27, 1953) is a Canadian musician, best known for his work as the guitarist of the Canadian rock band Rush. In the summer of 1968, Lifeson founded the band that would become Rush with friend and original drummer John Rutsey. He has been an integral member of the three-piece band ever since.

For Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as other stringed instruments such as mandola, mandolin, and bouzouki. He also performs backing vocals in live performances, and occasionally plays keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers. During live performances, Lifeson, like the other members of Rush, performs real-time triggering of sampled instruments, concurrently with his guitar playing.
The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, although Lifeson has contributed to a body of work outside of the band as well. Aside from music, Lifeson is part owner of the Toronto restaurant The Orbit Room, and is a licensed aircraft pilot.

Along with his bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honoured, as a group.
On May 1, 2007, Rush released Snakes & Arrows, their eighteenth full-length studio album. Lifeson and the band followed up the album with the Snakes & Arrows Tour.

Alvin Lee

Alvin Lee (born Graham Barnes, 19 December 1944, Nottingham, England) is an English rock guitarist and singer. He began playing guitar at the age of 13, and with Leo Lyons formed the core of the band Ten Years After in 1960.
Influenced by his parents' collection of jazz and blues records, it was the advent of rock and roll that truly sparked his interest and creativity, and guitarists like Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore provided his inspiration.

The Jaybirds, as Lee's early band was called from 1962, were popular locally, and had success at Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany (since that time lead guitarist Lee also took lead vocals), following The Beatles there the same year. But it was not until the band moved to London in 1966 and changed its name, first to Jaybird, dropping 'The' and 's' to make it sound more contemporary; then to Blues Yard (for one gig at the Marquee Club); and finally to Ten Years After (TYA), that international success beckoned.
The band secured a residency at the Marquee Club, and an invitation to the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival in 1967 led to their first recording contract. The self titled debut album surprisingly received play on San Francisco, California's underground radio stations and was enthusiastically embraced by listeners, including concert promoter Bill Graham, who invited the band to tour the United States for the first time in the summer of 1968.
Audiences were immediately taken by Lee's distinctive, soulful, rapid fire guitar playing and the band's innovative mix of blues, swing jazz and rock, and an American love affair began. TYA would ultimately tour the U.S. twenty-eight times in seven years, more than any other UK band.

Appearing at the Woodstock Festival, Lee's performance was captured on film in the documentary of the festival and his playing helped catapult him into stardom. Soon the band was playing arenas and stadia around the globe. Although Lee later lamented that he missed the intimacy of smaller venues, there is no denying the impact the film made in bringing his music to a worldwide audience.

TYA had success, releasing ten albums together, but by 1973, Lee was feeling limited by the band's style. With American gospel singer Mylon LeFevre and a host of rock talents like George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Mick Fleetwood, he recorded and released On the Road to Freedom, a highly acclaimed album that was at the forefront of country rock.
A year later, in response to a dare, Lee formed Alvin Lee & Company to play a show at the Rainbow in London and released it as a double live album, In Flight. An energetic mix of rhythm and blues and rock, with a tribute to Elvis Presley thrown in for good measure, Lee once, in his understated fashion, called this band "a funky little outfit".
Various members of the band continued on with Lee for his next two albums, Pump Iron and Let it Rock. In late 1975, he played guitar and acoustic guitar for a couple of tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. He finished out the 1970s with the trio Ten Years Later who also released two albums, Rocket Fuel (1978) and Ride On (1979) and toured extensively throughout Europe and the United States.

The 1980s brought another change in Lee's direction, with two albums that were strong collaborations with Rare Bird's Steve Gould and an extensive tour with the former John Mayall and Rolling Stones' guitarist Mick Taylor joining his band.

Lee's overall musical output includes more than 20 albums, including 1985's Detroit Diesel, and the back to back 1990s collections of Zoom and 1994 (U.S. title I Hear You Rockin'). Guest artists on both albums include George Harrison. Their duet on 1994's The Bluest Blues led one reviewer to call it "the most perfect blues song ever recorded."

Alvin Lee in Tennessee, recorded with rock and roll legends Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana was released in 2004 .

Lee's most recent album, Saguitar, was released in September 2007.

Andy Summers

Andy Summers (born Andrew James Somers 31 December 1942) is an English guitarist and composer best known for his work in The Police and Eric Burdon & The Animals.

Summers began his recording career in the 1960s as the guitarist for the R&B group Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, and its subsequent psychedelic-era incarnation, Dantalian's Chariot.
In 1968, Summers was a member (for a couple of months, from May to July) of the Canterbury scene jazz fusion band Soft Machine, although he did not record with the group.
He also recorded with Eric Burdon and The Animals, and spent much of the mid-seventies doing session work for Kevin Ayers, Kevin Coyne, and others. He was also a member of the band Strontium 90 along with Sting, Stewart Copeland and Mike Howlett.

Summers achieved international prominence as the guitarist for The Police (which he first had contact with in 1977, and of which he was the oldest member by almost a decade), most notably on popular hits such as "Message in a Bottle", "Don't Stand So Close to Me", and "Every Breath You Take". Summers also wrote songs for the Police, such as "Omegaman" and "Mother", and his instrumental "Behind My Camel" (on which Sting refused to play) won the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental in 1980. Although Sting was the primary lead vocalist, Summers sang lead vocals on several songs, including "Be My Girl - Sally" (which he co-wrote) and "Mother."

After the break-up of The Police in 1983, Summers continued his musical career, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians. He has also developed his career as a writer (of books and essays) and a photographer.


Angus Young

Angus McKinnon Young (born 31 March 1955) is a Scottish-born Australian musician and the lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of the rock and roll band AC/DC.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other members of AC/DC in 2003 and is known for his wild, energetic performances, schoolboy-uniform stage outfits and the duck walk.
Rolling Stone ranked him 96th on their list of 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time.

Angus Young has used Gibson SGs in various forms (his original, and the basis for his current signature model, was a 1968 SG) throughout his career. He also used a modified version of the SG called the Jaydee SG, which was made custom for Angus by Jaydee guitars.
The Jaydee SG featured signature lightning bolt inlays on the fretboard. Gibson made a custom SG for Angus with lightning bolt inlays to replace the Jaydee SG. He is rarely seen with another guitar, though he also owns Fender Telecasters, Gibson Firebirds and ES335s.
When AC/DC played a jam of "Rock me Baby" with the Rolling Stones in 2003, he played a Gibson ES-335 borrowed from Keith Richards, perhaps one of the few times he was without an SG onstage. Young's 1968 SG has T Top pickups. Another 1964 SG that he used on the recording of Ballbreaker, has patent # pickups.
All of these are vintage-output Alnico II or V pickups with matched coils typically reading 7.5k ohm. All of his pickups "...are the original ones that came on the guitar(s)."
Angus uses Ernie Ball SUPER SLINKY Nickel Wound guitar strings (RPS-9 being gauges .009-.042).

Angus Young and Gibson Guitar Corporation have collaborated to make the Angus Young Signature SG, which is special in several ways.

The model features a pickup designed by Young himself (the Angus Young Signature Humbucker) in the bridge position, and a '57 Classic Humbucker in the neck. The headstock features Young's famous "devil schoolboy" engraved picture, and the tremolo bar features Angus's name instead of the Gibson logo.
The guitar has a rosewood fretboard, trapezoid fret inlays, a signature black pickguard, 22 frets, antique cherry finish, and nickel hardware. The volume and tone knobs are of the "witch-hat" style, the SG also sports the standard 3-way pickup selector switch.
This signature model is unique in that Angus himself does not use his signature model either live or in the studio.

The second, recently released Angus Young SG, is available in two variants, both which are different from the first. The Gibson Custom Shop version is based on a 70's SG Standard, it features genuine pearl lightning bolt inlays instead of the standard plastic trapezoidal inlays.
It has no Maestro Tremolo, and Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates Humbuckers (modified in the bridge position); it has 22 frets and an Aged Cherry finish. The fretboard is made from ebony and the most unusual feature compared to other SGs is that the very thin neck is constructed from maple.
This model also for a limited time can be bought aged by Gibson USA and signed by Angus Young himself although the Gibson USA version cannot.

The lower cost Gibson USA variant is based on a 1960's SG Reissue, featuring a smaller pickguard. It too has lightning bolt inlays, though smaller and made from plastic, and '57 Classic in neck position and an Angus Young Signature Humbucker pickup in bridge position. It is available only in Ebony.

Big Jim Sullivan

Big Jim Sullivan (February 14, 1941) is an English musician, whose career started in 1959. Born as James George Thompkins in Uxbridge, Middlesex, England, Sullivan is best known as a session guitarist.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Sullivan was one of the most "in-demand" studio musicians in the UK and performed in more than one thousand charting singles over his career.

Jack Good introduced Sullivan to session work when he met him on the set of the television series Oh, Boy!

Sullivan went on to become one of the most sought after guitarists throughout the 1960s and the 1970s due to his flexibility in playing different styles of music.

This meant he averaged three recording sessions a day[citation needed] which allowed him to appear on many hit records.

He played on at least one thousand UK chart entries.

Billy Gibbons

Billy F Gibbons (born 16 December 1949) is an American musician, actor and car customizer, best known as the guitarist of blues-rock band ZZ Top. He is also the lead singer and composer for many of the band's songs. Gibbons is known for playing his Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird guitar and his 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar known as Pearly Gates.
He is noted for using a Mexican peso coin as a guitar plectrum and uses many pinch harmonics in his solos.
A cornerstone in Hollywood, Gibbons remains a familiar fixture at the Sunset Marquis Hotel, producing studio sessions with actors Billy Bob Thornton and J.P. Shellnutt, along with musicians Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jed Leiber, and Dwight Yoakam.
Gibbons is also well known for his authentic preparations of Mexican cuisine and is frequently a guest chef around Hollywood, California serving his famous "Renegade Guacamole".

Billy Gibbons is recognized for his large collection of guitars, as seen in his autobiography, "Rock + Roll Gearhead". His main guitar is known as "Pearly Gates," which is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard.
In the early years, Gibbons has been known to play various Fender guitars, including Stratocasters and Telecasters. In 1968, Jimi Hendrix gave a pink Stratocaster to Gibbons. Along with "Pearly," a 1955 hardtail Strat was used on the recording of "La Grange" from Tres Hombres.

At the 2010 Winter NAMM show, Dunlop and Gibbons unveiled a new line of guitar accessories, Rev. Willy's. These include Gibbons inspired picks, strings, and slides.

Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008) is the stage name for Ellas Otha Bates, an American rock and roll vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, and inventor. He was known as "The Originator" because of his key role in the transition from the blues to rock & roll, influencing a host of legendary acts including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton.
He introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged guitar sound on a wide-ranging catalog of songs. Accordingly, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
He was known in particular for his technical innovations, including his trademark rectangular guitar.

Brain May

Brian Harold May, CBE (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen. As a guitarist he uses his home-built guitar, "Red Special", and has composed hits such as "Now I'm Here", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "Hammer to Fall", "Save Me", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "I Want It All" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You".
May earned a PhD in astrophysics in 2007 and is currently the chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. May lives in Surrey.

He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 for "services to the music industry".

In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the 7th greatest guitarist of all time. He was ranked 39th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", reflecting the magazine's editorial opinion.

Brian May has been referred to as a virtuoso guitarist by many publications. He has used a range of guitars, most often the "Red Special", which he designed when he was only 16 years old. It was built with wood from an 18th century fireplace. His comments on this instrument, from Queen In Their Own Words (ed. Mick St. Michael, Omnibus Press, 1992, p. 62) are:

I like a big neck – thick, flat and wide. I lacquered the fingerboard with Rustin's Plastic Coating. The tremolo is interesting in that the arm's made from an old bicycle saddle bag carrier, the knob at the end's off a knitting needle and the springs are valve springs from an old motorbike.
—Brian May

In addition to using his home-made guitar he prefers to use coins (especially a sixpence from the farewell proof set of 1970), instead of a more traditional plastic plectrum, on the basis that their rigidity gives him more control in playing. He is known to carry coins in his pockets specifically for this purpose.

May's early heroes were Cliff Richard and The Shadows, who he says were "the most metallic thing out at the time." Many years later he gained his opportunity to play on separate occasions with both Cliff Richard and Shadows lead guitarist Hank Marvin. He has collaborated with Cliff Richard on a re-recording of the Cliff Richard and The Shadows (then known as The Drifters) 1958 hit "Move It" on the Cliff Richard duets album Two's Company which was released on 6 November 2006. On Queen For An Hour 1989 Interview on BBC Radio 1 May listed Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton as his guitar heroes.

May was proud upon hearing that Cliff Richard had mentioned in an interview that he would have Brian May in his personal fantasy band. As well as recording with Hank Marvin, May also contributed to the 1996 album Twang!: A Tribute to Hank Marvin & the Shadows, playing FBI. The album featured many other renowned guitarists.

During the time in which Brian May and his father were building the Red Special, May also produced plans to build a second guitar. However, so successful was the Red Special, that May simply had no need to build another guitar. These plans were eventually given to guitar luthier Andrew Guyton in around 2004/05, some slight modifications were made and the guitar was built. It was named "The Spade", as the shape of the body resembled the form shown on playing cards. However the guitar also came to be known as "The Guitar That Time Forgot". As yet, this guitar has not been used in any recordings and remains in May's possession.

Brian Robertson

Brian "Robbo" Robertson (born 12 February 1956, Clarkston, Renfrewshire) is a Scottish guitarist, best known for his work with Thin Lizzy and Motörhead.

Robertson is often associated with the Black 1973 Les Paul Custom, with white/parchment (rather than black) coloured pick guard, featured in photographs on the Live and Dangerous album and subsequent video.
However, in an interview Robertson explained that his main guitar remains his original Thin Lizzy Sunburst Les Paul Deluxe, albeit re-fretted (from wear) and with 1959 vintage Gibson Seth Lover PAF humbucker pickups fitted roughly by his guitar technician.
The pickups are sans the normal German-silver pick-up covers, a popular modification. Other guitars seen played by Robertson include a white Fender Stratocaster (Dedication video), 1970's Travis Bean aluminium neck guitar (Dedication video), red Les Paul with trapeze bridge and soap bar pick ups (cover of the "Still in Love with You" video).
At the time of Scott Gorham's Thin Lizzy audition, Robertson was playing an SG Junior.

Although strongly associated with British Marshall amplifiers (100 watt non-Master Volume Superlead heads and 25W Celestion Greenback speakers), Robertson has been known to use Mesa Boogie (100W Dual Rectifier head) and Soundman amplifiers. The Jailbreak album was recorded using Carlsbro combo. Robertson's original wah-pedal is a UK made Colorsound (rather than the CryBaby or Vox, which were more expensive at the time), although he sometimes used a Cry Baby wah wah in the 1990s and a borrowed Vox Wah in the "Still in Love with Blues" video.

Robertson's use of the WEM Copycat tape echo unit was later replaced by a modern rack mounted digital delay unit. He used a Black Les Paul custom and mentions he experimented with "Boss Analog Chorus Delay, an MXR Pitch Transposer, Yamaha analog delays, and MXR 32 band Graphic EQ" during his Motörhead days.

Record producer Tony Visconti mentioned that for "Killer Without A Cause":

... Robertson plays guitar through the strange talk box, the simple gizmo that Peter Frampton made famous on his successful live album."

Buckethead

Brian Carroll, better known as Buckethead, is an American musician, songwriter and virtuoso. He has released 29 studio albums, 4 special releases, 1 EP as of 2010, and performed on over 50 more by other artists. His music spans such diverse areas as progressive metal, thrash metal, funk, electronica, jazz, bluegrass, and avant-garde music.

When performing in his theatrical persona, Buckethead used to wear a KFC bucket on his head, emblazoned with an orange bumper sticker that read "FUNERAL" in capital black block letters, and an expressionless plain white costume mask.
More recently, he has switched to a plain white bucket no longer bearing the KFC logo. He also incorporates nunchaku, robot dancing, and toy trading into his stage performances. Buckethead's persona represents a character who was "raised by chickens" and has made it his "mission in life to alert the world to the ongoing chicken holocaust in fast-food joints around the globe."

Although a multi-instrumentalist, Buckethead is best known for his electric guitar playing. He has been voted number 8 on a list in GuitarOne magazine of the "Top 20 Greatest Guitar Shredders of All Time" as well as been included in Guitar World's lists of the "25 all-time weirdest guitarists" also known for being in the "50 fastest guitarists of all time list".

Buckethead performs primarily as a solo artist. He has collaborated extensively with a wide variety of high profile artists such as Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Iggy Pop, Les Claypool, Serj Tankian, Bill Moseley, Mike Patton, Viggo Mortensen, and was a member of Guns N' Roses from 2000 to 2004.
Buckethead has also written and performed music for major motion pictures, including: Saw II, Ghosts of Mars, Beverly Hills Ninja, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Last Action Hero, and the soundtrack of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.

Buckethead cites a wide variety of musical influences, including Michael Jackson, Paul Gilbert, Shawn Lane, Yngwie Malmsteen, Bootsy Collins, Eddie Hazel, Randy Rhoads, and Angus Young, as well as the many artists he has collaborated with over the years.
In addition to his musical influences, Buckethead cites a diverse range of non-musical influences including athletes Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and numerous science fiction and horror TV shows and movies including Giant Robot.

Carl Verheyen

Carl Verheyen is an American guitarist, publicized for his work in Supertramp. He is currently based in Los Angeles recording and touring with the Carl Verheyen Band.

Carl has used just about every guitar, pedal and amp ever built. His favourite guitar of choice is the Fender Stratocaster.

Live (taken from his forum which no longer exists)

"The guitar goes to a A / B pedal board with different distortion pedals for the clean side and the dirty side. For the clean I am using a Zendrive pedal and out to a Stamps Tremolo Reverb unit in a rack with a tc chorus pedal and a Lexicon stereo MPX 100 delay, then into a 1964 Fender Twin and a '64 Vox AC-30. The distortion side goes though a Langraff Perfect Distortion pedal, a Voodoo Labs Pro Octavia and an Italian pedal made by VDL Professional Analogics called "Il Distorsore".
From there it goes into a Dr Z SRZ-65 amp and the speaker out feeds a THD Hotplate. The speaker out of the Hotplate feeds a "dry" cabinet, either a Marshall 4X12 from the '60s or a THD 2X12 cab. The line level out on the Hotplate hits an old Lexicon PCM-41 and a little Lexicon LXP-1 reverb. This line level signal goes to the power section of a 1969 100 watt Marshall head that was modified so that the bass input is a power amp in. The speaker out feeds another Marshall 4X12 or another THD 2X12 cabinet.
In Europe I use the same pedal board but I have a Euro transformer in my Dr Z over there and I currently use 2 Fender classic Twin reissues that are also European power. My rack is slightly different but it's the same basic idea because in a trio nothing is more organic than an A / B rig. No MIDI and no channel switching going on to cut your signal off for that brief instant.
Instead all the delays and reverbs hang over as you change sounds and actually stack on top of each other making for seamless transition while radically changing the tones!" He is a good friend of the people, a man close to you, a very interesting guitarist.

Carlos Santana

Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales and congas not generally heard in rock music. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Rolling Stone named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and 3 Latin Grammy Awards.

Santana played a red Gibson SG Special with P-90 pickups at the Woodstock festival. From 1976 until 1982, his main guitar was a Yamaha SG 175B and sometimes a white Gibson SG Custom with 3 open coil pick-ups. In 1982 he started to use a custom made PRS guitar, which became his main instrument around 1988. Santana currently uses a Santana II model guitar using PRS Santana III pickups with nickel covers and a tremolo, with .009-.042 gauge D'Addario strings. Santana's guitar necks and fretboards are constructed out of a single solid piece of Brazilian Rosewood, this helps create the smooth, singing, glass-like tone that he is famous for.
Carlos Santana also uses a classical guitar, the Alvarez Yairi CY127CE with Alvarez tension nylon strings.

For the distinctive Santana electric guitar sound, Santana does not use many effects pedals. His PRS guitar is connected to a Mu-Tron wah wah pedal (or, more recently, a Dunlop 535Q wah) and a T-Rex Replica delay pedal, then through a customized Jim Dunlop amp switcher which in turn is connected to the different amps or cabinets.

Previous setups include an Ibanez Tube Screamer right after the guitar.

In the song "Stand Up" from the album Marathon, Santana uses a Heil talk box in the guitar solo.

The Santana lead guitar tone is produced by a humbucker equipped guitar (Gibson/Yamaha/PRS) into a small but effective preamp (consisting of Gain & Master Volume controls) for the Mesa Boogie [ref. as above]. He also literally put the Boogie in Mesa Boogie: 'Santana exclaimed to Smith, "Shit, man. That little thing really Boogies!" It was this statement that brought the Boogie name to fruition.'

Specifically, Santana combines a Mesa/Boogie Mark I head running through a Boogie cabinet with Altec 417-8H (or recently JBL E120s) speakers, and a Dumble Overdrive Reverb and/or a Dumble Overdrive Special running through a Brown or Marshall 4x12 cabinet with Celestion G12M "Greenback" speakers, depending on the desired sound. Shure KSM-32 microphones are used to pick up the sound, going to the PA. Additionally, a Fender Cyber-Twin Amp is mostly used at home.

Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947.
On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio.
His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand.
But in January 1962 Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963 Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place To Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine", but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid cash led to a jail sentence in 1979—four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several Rolling Stone "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Now in his eighties, Berry continues to play live.

Cliff Gallup

Clifton E. "Cliff" Gallup (June 17, 1930 - October 9, 1988) was an American electric guitarist, who played rock and roll in Gene Vincent's band The Blue Caps in the 1950s.

In February 1956, local radio DJ "Sheriff Tex Davis" (aka William Douchette, 1914-2007) heard Gene Vincent performing at a talent show in Norfolk, Virginia, became his manager, and put together a band of local musicians to back him. These included Gallup, who had previously played in a local band called The Virginians, and who was older than Vincent and the other band members.
In May 1956, the band recorded in Nashville, Tennessee. Producer Ken Nelson had session musicians standing by in case the band was not up to par, but as soon as Gallup played the solos on "Race with the Devil" they knew they would not be needed.

Gallup played on 35 tracks with Vincent, including his biggest hit "Be-Bop-A-Lula", and established a reputation as one of the most technically proficient guitarists in early rock and roll. He used a flat pick in conjunction with fingerpicks on his middle and ring fingers, using his little finger to work the vibrato bar.
According to one source, Gallup's trademark sound was produced by echo units he constructed himself from old tape recorder parts, but according to another source it was created in the studio by Nelson.

As a married man, Gallup was reluctant to tour with Vincent, and left the band in late 1956, returning only for some more studio sessions that same year for the second Gene Vincent & The Bluecaps LP. In the mid 1960s Gallup made a solo album for the local Pussy Cat record label in Norfolk, Straight Down the Middle, in a more mellow instrumental style akin to Chet Atkins and Les Paul.
He occasionally played with local bands, while working in school maintenance. He played guitar up until the day he died. He last played in Norfolk with a group called the H-Lo's 48 hours before he suffered a fatal heart attack.

At the time of his death from a heart attack in 1988, he was the Director of Maintenance and Transportation for the Chesapeake, Virginia city school system, where he worked for almost 30 years. At the request of his widow, obituaries in local newspapers made no mention of his time with The Blue Caps. He is remembered principally for his influence on such guitarists as Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. The latter recorded an album of Gene Vincent songs, Crazy Legs, in 1993 considered by music critics to be a tribute to Gallup and Vincent.

Gallup was ranked 79th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"[8]

Gallup is a Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductee.

Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Lee Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999) was an American soul, rhythm and blues, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producer best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions and composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly.
From these works and others, he is highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and of politically conscious African-American music. He was also a multi-instrumentalist who played the guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums.

Mayfield is remembered for his introduction of social consciousness into R&B and for pioneering the funk style. Many of his recordings with the Impressions became anthems of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and his most famous album, Super Fly, is regarded as an all-time great that influenced many and truly invented a new style of modern black music (#69 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums).

As a member of The Impressions, Mayfield was posthumously inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003.

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Mayfield #99 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.



Dave Davies

Dave Davies (born David Russell Gordon Davies, 3 February 1947, Fortis Green, London) is an English rock musician (singer and lead guitarist), best known for his membership with the English rock band The Kinks.

In 2003, Davies was ranked 88th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Davies has played a number of guitars over time, the most recognizable of which is his Gibson Flying V. Davies bought it in 1965, and soon began appearing live and on TV performances with it. Davies was one of the few guitarists who played Flying Vs at the time.
It was, in that period, out of issue due to lack of interest upon its 1958 test release, and models were numbered. Guitarists like Lonnie Mack, Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and Davies himself helped stir interest in the instrument, and it would eventually become one of the signature guitars of the Heavy Metal genre.

Davies would later comment on his Flying V:
"I used to play a Guild custom built guitar and the airline lost it on our first American tour in '64 or '65. In those days I used to only carry one guitar around and I had to get a replacement quick. I went into a store and they didn't have anything I liked. I saw this dusty old guitar case and I said 'What have you got in there?' he said 'Oh, that's just some silly old guitar.' He got it out and I bought it for about $60."

Davies has played many other guitars throughout his career. He has played several models of Gibson Les Pauls over time, including a 1960 Goldtop and a black '78 models

Dave Murray

David Michael "Dave" Murray (born 23 December 1958) is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as one of the original members of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. He joined the band just two months after their inception in 1975.

Throughout his career, Murray has used and endorsed Marshall amplifiers exclusively other than on the Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son albums and respective tours when he used Gallien Krueger amps and he has used Fender Stratocasters almost exclusively. His black 1957/63 (body is from a '63, neck is from a '57) Stratocaster previously owned by the late Free guitarist Paul Kossoff (used from circa 1976-1990 and made by Fender as an Artist Signature model since 2009 - now resides in a glass case at his home.
Although he has been occasionally seen with various Dean, Gibson, Ibanez, ESP and Jackson electrics as well as a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar used live for the song Journeyman, and on the Somewhere Back In Time tour for the intro to Moonchild and a Gibson Chet Atkins solid body acoustic used on the Fear of the Dark tour for Wasting Love, Murray's primary instrument has been a Stratocaster.

Dave used his 1957/63 Strat (equipped with DiMarzio Super Distortion and PAF humbucking pickups) extensively, retiring it at the end of the Seventh Son tour in 1988 when he switched to Jackson guitars having also been an endorsee of ESP since 1986, and subsequently returning to Fender in 1995.



David Gilmour

David Jon Gilmour CBE (born 6 March 1946) is an English musician, best known as the guitarist, lead singer, and one of the main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a record producer for a variety of artists, and has enjoyed a successful career as a solo artist. Gilmour has been actively involved with many charity organizations over the course of his career. In 2003, he was appointed CBE for services to music and philanthropy and was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution title at the 2008 Q Awards.

Gilmour is best known for his lead guitar work. Gilmour's solo style is often characterised by blues-influenced phrasing, expressive note bends and sustain. In 2005, Gilmour was rated the 82nd greatest guitarist by Rolling Stone. In January 2007, Guitar World readers voted Gilmour's solos, "Comfortably Numb", "Time" and "Money" into the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos ("Comfortably Numb" was voted the 4th greatest solo of all time, "Time" was voted the 21st greatest solo of all time and "Money" was voted the 62nd greatest solo of all time.

In his early career with Pink Floyd, Gilmour played a multitude of Fender Stratocasters. One of his popular guitar solos ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2") was played on a Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar equipped with Bigsby tremolo bar and P-90 pickups. In 1996, Gilmour was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pink Floyd. Gilmour's solo on "Comfortably Numb" was voted as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time in several polls by listeners and critics.

Although mainly known for his guitar work, Gilmour is also a proficient multi-instrumentalist. He also plays bass guitar (which he did on some Pink Floyd tracks), keyboards, banjo, harmonica, drums (as heard on the Syd Barrett solo track "Dominoes", and other songs where he opted to play all the instruments) and lately, the saxophone.

Derek Trucks

Derek Trucks (born June 8, 1979) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. He is a member of The Allman Brothers Band and his own band, which he founded at age 15 and bears his name.
The Wall Street Journal has described him as "the most awe-inspiring electric slide guitar player performing today".

Trucks first attracted the attention of the music industry as a nine-year old child prodigy on the guitar, and by age 12, he'd worked with some of the biggest names in the music scene. He was sitting in with Buddy Guy and an increasing list of other famous musicians, touring with The Allman Brothers Band for a decade before finally becoming an official band member in 1999.
That same year, he met blues singer Susan Tedeschi, and the two married in 2001, beginning a family. He continues to play with both The Allman Brothers Band and as bandleader of The Derek Trucks Band. In recent years, Trucks and Tedeschi have merged their respective bands when their schedules have permitted, billed as the "Soul Stew Revival", drawing accolades from fans and critics.

Trucks is known best for his specialty as a slide guitarist, his stoic focus while performing on stage, his reverence for the legacy of roots and blues musicians who influenced Trucks' music, as well as his familiarity and integration of a wide variety of musical genres in his music.

Trucks avoids processing and effects, preferring to get the purest tone possible by connecting his guitar (a modified Gibson USA SG '61 reissue with factory Vibrola, which has had the tailpiece modified and a stopbar tailpiece installed) directly to his amplifier, a 1965 Fender Super Reverb loaded with four Pyle Driver MH1020 speakers. He modifies his tone with the controls on the guitar.
In early 2006, an equipment trailer with Trucks' gear was stolen. Some of the gear was recovered from a field outside Atlanta, including the 1965 Fender Super Reverb (an amplifier he's been playing with since he was a young boy), a 1968 Super Reverb (one of the backup amps), a Hammond B-3, two Leslie rotating speaker cabinets, a Höhner E-7 Clavinet, and a few other minor items. He said, fortunately, nobody was home at the time, he "was away gigging with the Allmans", so nobody was hurt.

Trucks regularly plays without a plectrum. He generally plucks or strums (together or independently) with his thumb as well as his index, middle, and ring fingers. An article from The Washington Post describes the sound, saying Trucks "harvests notes and chords that soar, slice and glide, sounding like a cross between Duane Allman on a '61 Gibson Les Paul and John Coltrane on tenor sax".
He uses custom gauge DR nickel-wound strings on both his SG and resonator guitars: .011, .014, .017, .026, .036, and .046. Most of his guitars are tuned to open E. Although he still prefers Super Reverbs when playing with the Derek Trucks Band, currently Trucks is playing Paul Reed Smith amplifiers almost exclusively when performing with the Allman Brothers Band.

Dick Dale

Dick Dale (born Richard Anthony Monsour on May 4, 1937, in Boston, Massachusetts) is a surf-rock guitarist, known as "The King of the Surf Guitar". He experimented with reverberation and made use of custom made Fender amplifiers, including the first-ever 100-watt guitar amplifier.

As well as the Fender amplifiers mentioned, Dale is associated with the Fender Stratocaster guitar. Fender makes a signature model, the Dick Dale Custom Shop Stratocaster, fitted with "Custom Shop '54" pickups, which are supposed to recreate the sound of the first "Strats".
Dick uses a reverb unit with the signal split between two Fender Dual Showman amps. As of 2010, Dale continues to play with his original reverb unit and Showman amps from the early 1960s. Dale is notable for stringing his left-handed guitar upside down.
The unique features of this guitar include a toggle switch: bypasses 3-position blade switch to activate neck and middle pickups only.

Dickey Betts

Forrest Richard "Dickey" Betts (born December 12, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer best known as a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band.
He was inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and also won with the band a best rock performance Grammy Award for his instrumental "Jessica" in 1996. Recognized as "one of the most influential guitar players of all time", he had early on in his career one of rock’s finest guitar partnership with the late Duane Allman introducing melodic twin guitar harmony and counterpoint which "rewrote the rules for how two rock guitarists can work together, completely scrapping the traditional rhythm/lead roles to stand toe to toe".
Dickey Betts was ranked #58 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list in 2003.

In the early days of the Allman Brothers, Betts played a 1961 Gibson SG, given to Duane Allman in 1971 to use as an all-slide guitar. He then used a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, calling it "Goldie". He has recently painted it red. Early on in the Allman Brothers days he occasionally played a Fender Stratocasters, and has been an on-and-off endorser and player of PRS guitars.
As of April 2009, Betts is using a red Fender Telecaster with a pearloid pickguard.

Dimebag Darrell

Darrell Lance Abbott, also known as "Diamond Darrell", "Dimebag Darrell", "Dimebag" or simply "Dime" (August 20, 1966 – December 8, 2004) was an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan. He also performed in the southern rock band Rebel Meets Rebel.

Abbott frequently appeared in guitar magazines and in readers' polls, and wrote a long-running Guitar World magazine column, which was compiled into the book, Riffer Madness.
He was praised for his tone and was included in "The 50 Greatest Tones of All Time" by Guitar Player magazine. Remembered for his amiable nature and rapport with fans, Abbott was described by Allmusic as "one of the most influential stylists in modern metal."
On December 8, 2004, Abbott was murdered on stage during a Damageplan performance at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio.

Dimebag was a major endorser of Dean Guitars since the 1980s, and is best known for playing a Dean ML guitar with Bill Lawrence L500XL pickups, which he would install in a reversed position to have the "hot" blade facing the neck. Dimebag used Dean Guitars from the early days with Pantera

When Dean Guitars went out of business he switched to Washburn from 1995 to 2004. In late 2004 he switched back to Dean guitars who were back in business. Seymour Duncan manufactures a signature pickup co-designed by Dimebag, the SH-13 Dimebucker. He proudly endorsed the pickup manufacture, but continued to use Bill Lawrence pickups in most of his personal guitars.

Several months before his death, Darrell ended his long relationship with Washburn, cutting short the Washburn custom shop production of 100 Southern Cross guitars. He became a Dean endorser once again, coinciding with founder Dean Zelinsky's return. Dean built him a brand new signature guitar; the Dime O' Flame, which he began using live.

As a tribute to him, in 2005 Dean Guitars released the new Dime Tribute line of ML guitars. These guitars come in various models, ranging from lower price models to higher end models with SH-13 Dimebucker's, a Floyd Rose bridge, and set neck construction. In his last few weeks with Dean, Dime helped design a guitar that he called the Razorback.
After his death, Dean continued with the Razorback project and dedicated them to the memory of him. During the height of Dimebag's fame, he also worked together with MXR and Dunlop to produce the MXR Dime Distortion and the Dimebag "Crybaby from Hell" Wah respectively.

Duane Allman

Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American lead guitarist, co-founder of the southern rock group The Allman Brothers Band, and respected session musician. He is best remembered for his brief but influential tenure in that band, expressive slide guitar playing, and formidable improvisational skills.

A sought-after session musician both before and during his tenure with the band, Allman performed with such established stars as King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Herbie Mann. His contributions to the 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos went on to become a part of Rock history.
In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Allman at #2 in their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, second only to Jimi Hendrix. His tone (achieved with a Gibson Les Paul and a 50-watt Marshall amplifier) was named one of the greatest guitar tones of all time by Guitar Player.

Tragically, his life and career were cut short at the age of twenty-four by a motorcycle accident in October of 1971.

Duane Eddy

Duane Eddy (born April 26, 1938) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Duane Eddy was the first rock and roll guitarist to have a signature model guitar.

In 1960, Guild Guitars introduced the Duane Eddy Models DE-400 and the deluxe DE-500. A limited edition of the DE-500 model was reissued briefly in 1983 to mark Eddy's 25th anniversary in the recording industry.

The Gretsch "Chet Atkins 6120" model has long been associated with Eddy. In 1997, Gretsch Guitars started production of the Duane Eddy Signature Model, the Gretsch 6120-DE.

In 2004, The Gibson Custom Art and Historic Division introduced the new Duane Eddy Signature Gibson guitar.

Eddie Hazel

Edward Earl "Eddie" Hazel (April 10, 1950 – December 23, 1992) was a guitarist in early funk music in the United States who played lead guitar with Parliament-Funkadelic. Hazel is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.

Hazel has been featured on a number of lists of greatest guitarists of all time. He was 43 on the list of Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time and was ranked at 88 in a similar list by Uncut Magazine.

Eddie van Halen

Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen (born January 26, 1955) is a Dutch-American guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the heavy metal/hard rock band Van Halen, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 . Eddie Van Halen is widely known for his innovative performing and recording styles in shredding, tapping, scratching solos and high frequency feedback; he is also known for energetic and acrobatic stage performances. The All Music Guide has described him as "undoubtedly one of the most influential, original, and talented rock guitarists of the 20th century."


Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English blues-rock guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer. Clapton is the only person who has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times; as a solo performer, as well as a member of rock bands the Yardbirds and Cream. Often viewed by critics and fans alike as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time, Clapton was ranked fourth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #53 on their list of the "Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In 2010, Clapton was ranked #4 on Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

Although Clapton has varied his musical style throughout his career, it has always remained grounded in the blues; despite this focus, he is credited as an innovator in a wide variety of genres. These include blues-rock (with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and The Yardbirds) and psychedelic rock (with Cream). Clapton's chart success was not limited to the blues, with chart-toppers in Delta Blues (Me and Mr. Johnson), Adult contemporary ("Tears in Heaven") and reggae (Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff"; he is often credited for bringing reggae and Bob Marley to the mainstream). Two of his most successful recordings were the hit love song "Layla", which he played with the band Derek and the Dominos, and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", which has been his staple song since his days with Cream.


Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson (born August 17, 1954) is an American guitarist and recording artist from Austin, Texas. Best known for his success in the instrumental rock format, Johnson regularly incorporates jazz, fusion, New Age, gospel, and country and western music into his recordings.

Guitar Player magazine calls Johnson "One of the most respected guitarists on the planet." Johnson composes and plays not just instrumental songs but also vocal pieces, and plays piano as well.

Widely recognized for his guitar skills, Johnson's stylistic diversity and technical proficiency have drawn praise from Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Allan Holdsworth, Larry Carlton, Steve Morse, Billy Gibbons, Johnny Winter, Jeff Baxter, B. B. King, Joe Satriani and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
His critically-acclaimed, platinum selling 1990 recording Ah Via Musicom produced the single "Cliffs of Dover," for which Johnson won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

Eric Johnson is best known for playing stock Fender Stratocaster and Gibson ES-335 electric guitars through a triple amp setup that consists of Fender Amplifiers, Dumble Amplifiers, and Marshall amplification. The Dumble amp has not made an appearance on his live performances for some time since and including his best known live DVD at the Austin City Limits.
Eric uses effects pedals such as a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, BK Butler Tube Driver, TC Electronic Stereo Chorus, Vox Cry Baby wah-wah, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man Delay, an MXR Digital Delay, a Line 6 Echo Pro Studio Modeler, and a Maestro Echoplex tape delay of which all are connected to multiple A/B boxes to create sounds and tones that are both clean and distorted; Although the majority of Eric's setup is predominantly vintage, he has recently started using more modern effects including a stereo chorus made by AnalogMan.

Eric Johnson occasionally substitutes his pedals for others, sometimes being spotted with a TubeWorks Tube Driver rather than a Butler one. He has also been seen using the Xotic AC Booster as well as a Boss DS-1 and a Smoky Signal Tubeless Overdrive.

Eric Johnson was also responsible for putting the Tube Driver pedal created by Brent Butler on the map which is an essential part of his guitar sound.

Johnson has also played other guitar brands such as Robin, Rickenbacker, and Jackson Charvel, which appears on the cover of the Ah Via Musicom album.

He has also been known to use series wired or 'coil tapped' Dimarzio HS-2's in the neck and bridge position of his stratocasters; although this setup is not hum-cancelling, it still cancels around 70% of the AC hum.

In 2001, Eric Johnson added a Custom Shop '59 Les Paul Reissue to his guitars of choice.

C. F. Martin & Company released a limited-edition signature Eric Johnson Signature MC-40 in 2003, built to his specifications. Johnson donated five percent of the profits from his signature Martin guitar to Jefferson Medical College as a tribute to his father who attended.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation released an Eric Johnson Signature Fender Stratocaster in 2005 also built to his specifications. Johnson has also released other signature gear such as GHS Eric Johnson Nickel Rockers Electric Guitar Strings, DiMarzio DP211 Eric Johnson Signature Custom Pickups, and a Fullton-Webb amplifier. Jim Dunlop also has released an Eric Johnson signature Jazz III plectrum.

Johnson was also featured in a video for Line6 GuitarPort product.

In late 2006, Johnson switched from recording in analog format to digital format.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation in early 2009 has released the Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster Rosewood model. This signature Fender Stratocaster guitar features the same specifications as the Eric Johnson Maple Neck Strat, except for the addition of a unusual 3-ply 8-hole white pickguard, hotter treble pickup and a bound rosewood laminate fingerboard with pearloid dot position markers (available in colors such as Dakota Red and other three exclusive colors Tropical Turquoise, Medium Palomino Metallic, and Lucerne Aqua Firemist).


Frank Marino

Frank Marino (Francesco Antonio Marino), born November 20, 1954, in Montreal, is the guitarist and leader of Canadian hard rock band Mahogany Rush.
Often compared to Jimi Hendrix, he is acknowledged as one of the best and most underrated guitarists of the 1970s.

Besides Jimi Hendrix, Marino acknowledged the influence of for instance Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, and Carlos Santana. He plays blues, heavy metal, and improvisational styles; one of his notable tricks is playing (live) a lick as if it were played backwards, with the help of only a volume pedal and a delay.
His style has influenced many guitar players, including Zakk Wylde and Eric Gales.
His tone is recognized by for instance Guitar Player, which called him a "full-spectrum guitar god," alongside Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen, and The Edge.

He is noted for complicated set-ups; according to Guitar Player, he has "an entire pedalboard ... assigned to hold the expression pedals that control the parameters of the effects on another pedalboard."
In the past, he has built his own Pre-amplifiers to achieve the right sound; he also uses Fender Twins. Marino is a devoted Gibson SG player and regularly uses four of them, two with the original PAF pickups and two with DiMarzio humbuckers.


Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electric guitar.
He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages.
His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements.
He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and he gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history, and he is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time; he remains a major influence on musicians and composers.
He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2010, Zappa was ranked #39 in Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967 he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust.


Gary Moore

Gary Moore (born Robert William Gary Moore, 4 April 1952, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a Northern Irish guitarist and singer.

In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore has played with artists including Thin Lizzy, B.B. King, Colosseum II, Greg Lake and the blues-rock band Skid Row (not to be confused with the glam metal band of the same name), as well as having a successful solo career.
Among many cameo appearances over the years, he performed the lead guitar solo on "She's My Baby" from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Moore grew up on a road opposite Stormont, off the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast and started performing at a young age, having picked up a battered acoustic guitar at the age of eight.
Moore got his first quality guitar at the age of 14, learning to play the right-handed instrument in the standard way despite being left-handed. Like so many others, Moore's early musical influences were artists such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Later, having seen Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in his home town of Belfast, his own style was developing into a blues-rock sound that would come to dominate his career.

Moore's greatest influence in the early days came from guitarist Peter Green, of Fleetwood Mac fame, who was a mentor to Moore when performing in Dublin. Green's continued influence on Moore was later repaid as a tribute to Green on his 1995 album Blues for Greeny, an album consisting entirely of Green compositions.
On this tribute album Moore played Green's 1959 Les Paul standard guitar which Green had loaned to Moore after leaving Fleetwood Mac. Moore ultimately purchased the guitar, at Green's request, so that "it would have a good home".

Moore has remained relatively unknown in the US, although his work has "brought substantial acclaim and commercial success in most other parts of the world – especially in Europe".
Moore throughout his career has been recognised as an influence by many guitarists including Randy Rhoads, John Sykes and Kirk Hammett.

Moore has collaborated with a broad range of artistes including George Harrison, Trilok Gurtu, Dr. Strangely Strange, Colosseum II, Albert Collins, Jimmy Nail, Mo Foster, Ginger Baker, Jim Capaldi, Vicki Brown, Cozy Powell, the Beach Boys, Ozzy Osbourne and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
He has experimented with many musical genres, including rock, jazz, blues, country, electric blues, hard rock and heavy metal.


George Harrison

George Harrison, (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English rock guitarist, singer-songwriter and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles.
Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian mysticism, and helped broaden the horizons of the other Beatles, as well as those of their Western audience.
Following the band's breakup, he had a successful career as a solo artist and later as part of the Traveling Wilburys, and also as a film and record producer. Harrison is listed at number 21 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 100 Best Guitarists of All Time". He was voted into the list of "The Best 100 Musicians" by music fans.

Although most of The Beatles' songs were written by Lennon and McCartney, Harrison generally wrote one song per side from the Help! album onwards.
His later compositions with The Beatles include "Here Comes the Sun", "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". By the time of the band's breakup, Harrison had accumulated a backlog of material, which he then released as the acclaimed and successful triple album All Things Must Pass in 1970, from which came two singles: a double A-side single, "My Sweet Lord" backed with "Isn't It a Pity", and "What Is Life". In addition to his solo work, Harrison co-wrote two hits for Ringo Starr, another former Beatle, as well as songs for the Traveling Wilburys—the supergroup he formed in 1988 with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.

Harrison embraced Indian culture and Hinduism in the mid 1960s, and helped expand Western awareness of sitar music and of the Hare Krishna movement. With Ravi Shankar he organised a major charity concert with the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, and is the only Beatle to have published an autobiography, with I Me Mine in 1980.

Besides being a musician, he was also a record producer and co-founder of the production company HandMade Films. In his work as a film producer, he collaborated with people as diverse as the members of Monty Python and Madonna
Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001.

Harrison's guitar work with the Beatles was varied, flexible and innovative; although not fast or flashy, his guitar playing was solid and typified the more subdued lead guitar style of the early 1960s.
The influence of the plucking guitar style of Chet Atkins and Carl Perkins on Harrison gave a country music feel to the Beatles' early recordings.
Harrison explored several guitar instruments, the twelve-string, the sitar and the slide guitar, and developed his playing from tight eight- and twelve-bar solos in such songs as "A Hard Day's Night" and "Can't Buy Me Love", to lyrical slide guitar playing, first recorded during an early session of "If Not for You" for Dylan's New Morning in 1970. The earliest example of notable guitar work from Harrison was the extended acoustic guitar solo of "Till There Was You", for which Harrison purchased a José Ramírez nylon-stringed classical guitar to produce the sensitivity needed.

Harrison's first electric guitar was a Czech built Futurama/Grazioso, which was a popular guitar among British guitarists in the early 1960s. However, the guitars Harrison used on early recordings were mainly Gretsch played through a Vox amp. He used a variety of Gretsch guitars, including a Gretsch Duo Jet - his first Gretsch, which he bought in 1961 second hand off a sailor in Liverpool; a Gretsch Tennessean, and his (first out of two) Gretsch Country Gentleman, bought new for £234 in April 1963 at the Sound City store in London, which he used on "She Loves You", and on The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

During The Beatles' February 1964 trip to the US, Harrison acquired a Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar. He had tried out the 12-string electric guitar during an interview with a Minneapolis radio station, and was given the guitar either by the Rickenbacker company or the radio station.
The 360/12 was an experimental 12-string guitar with the strings reversed so that the lower pitched string was struck first, and with an unusual headstock design that made tuning easier.
Harrison used the guitar extensively during the recording of A Hard Day's Night, and the jangly sound became so popular that the Melody Maker termed it "the beat boys' secret weapon". Roger McGuinn liked the effect Harrison achieved so much that it became his signature guitar sound with the Byrds.

He obtained his first Fender Stratocaster in 1965 and used it for the recording of the Rubber Soul album, most notably on the "Nowhere Man" track, where he played in unison with Lennon who also had a Stratocaster.
Lennon and Harrison both had Sonic Blue Stratocasters, which were bought second hand by roadie Mal Evans. Harrison painted his Stratocaster in a psychedelic design that included the word "Bebopalula" painted above the pickguard and the guitar's nickname, "Rocky", painted on the headstock. He played this guitar in the Magical Mystery Tour film and throughout his solo career.

After David Crosby of the Byrds introduced him to the work of sitar master Ravi Shankar in 1965, Harrison, whose interest in Indian music was stirred during the filming of Help!, which used Indian music as part of its soundtrack, played a sitar on the Rubber Soul track "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", expanding the already nascent Western interest in Indian music.
Harrison listed his early influences as Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Everly Brothers.


Glenn Tipton

Glenn Raymond Tipton (born 25 October 1947 in Blackheath, West Midlands, UK) is one of the Grammy Award winning guitarists (and occasional keyboard player) for the British heavy metal band Judas Priest. Prior to joining Judas Priest, he was in The Flying Hat Band.

In 1997 Tipton released his first solo album Baptizm of Fire, featuring a host of well-known musicians including John Entwistle, Billy Sheehan, Cozy Powell, Robert Trujillo and Don Airey, among others.

Tipton has used numerous guitars over the years. These include a 60s Fender Stratocaster up until about '78. During '78-'79 he used a black Gibson Les Paul Custom and he started using a modified CBS-era Fender Stratocaster with Dimarzio Super-Distortion (humbucking) pickups.
For the Screaming for Vengeance tour he added a chrome pickguard. For this tour he also played a Gibson SG, which, apparently, he spray-painted black himself. The SG also had a chrome pickguard and stock PAF humbuckers. Around '84 he switched to a Hamer Phantom GT model which was fitted with one EMG humbucker, a Kahler tremolo and one volume pot. A signature model of this was developed and sold to public from '84-'86. Tipton still uses this guitar model, but now with Seymour Duncan Blackouts active pickups.


Guthrie Govan

Guthrie Govan (born 27 December 1971 in Chelmsford, Essex, England) is a guitarist known for his work with the bands Asia (2001-2006), GPS, The Young Punx and The Fellowship as well as Erotic Cakes (a vehicle for his own music). He is a noted guitar teacher through his work with the UK magazine Guitar Techniques, Guildford’s Academy of Contemporary Music and currently the Brighton Institute of Modern Music.
He is also a former winner of Guitarist magazine's "Guitarist of the Year" competition.

Govan’s earliest influences were Jimi Hendrix and Cream-era Eric Clapton; as such he describes himself as coming from a "blues rock background".
While he is "wary" of 1980s technique driven guitar music ("shred") he cites the imagination of Steve Vai (as well as Frank Zappa, with whom Vai played) and the passion of Yngwie Malmsteen as influences. Jazz and fusion elements are an important part of his style: he cites Joe Pass as a pivotal influence in this respect.

Govan is known for his virtuoso command of the electric guitar, due to both his technical ability and proficiency in various styles.
Govan’s MySpace profile lists quotes from various guitarists to this effect; elsewhere, fellow virtuosos Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert have praised Govan's playing.

Govan mainly uses various Suhr guitars: the Guthrie Govan Signature Model, three custom Standards, a Modern 24-fret model, a Classic and Classic T.
Govan also favours Cornford amps: the sleeve notes of Erotic Cakes state he has used an RK100, MK50 and Hellcat.


Hank Marvin

Hank Brian Marvin (born Brian Robson Rankin on 28 October 1941) (at 138 Stanhope Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne) is an English guitarist, best known as the lead guitarist for The Shadows. The group, which primarily performed instrumentals, was formed as a backing band for vocalist Cliff Richard.
Marvin has a distinctive guitar sound and appearance, primarily using a clean sound with very distinctive echo and vibrato giving a dreamy effect.

His name, Hank Marvin, is an amalgamation of his childhood nickname of Hank (to differentiate himself from a number of friends also named Brian) and Marvin Rainwater, a country and western singer.



James Burton

James Burton (born August 21, 1939, in Minden, Louisiana) is an American guitarist. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2001[2] (his induction speech was given by longtime fan Keith Richards), Burton has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Critic Mark Demming writes that "Burton has a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest guitar pickers in either country or rock ... he is one of the best guitar players to ever touch a fretboard."

James Burton is also known as the Master of Telecaster.

Since the 1950s, Burton has recorded and performed with an array of notable singers, including Bob Luman, Dale Hawkins, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, John Denver, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Lee Lewis, Claude King, Elvis Costello, Joe Osborn, Roy Orbison, Joni Mitchell and Allen "Puddler" Harris.

Burton works with a variety of amplifiers to provide flexibility and a wide range of sounds. He has used a Music Man 210-150, an old Fender Twin with K model Lansing speakers, and a 1964 Fender Deluxe.
His primary guitar has always been a Fender Telecaster, beginning with an early blonde model his parents bought for him around 1951 or 1952.
His 1969 Paisley Red (better known as Pink Paisley) Telecaster became the basis for a Fender Artist Signature model in 1991, with Lace Sensor pickups and a TBX tone circuit.
Five years later his 1953 Candy Apple Red Telecaster was the inspiration for a standard version Artist Signature model featuring two Fender Texas Special Tele single coil pickups and a vintage-style 6-saddle bridge.
In 2006, the Signature Paisley model was redesigned with a red paisley flame design over a black body, plus three specially designed blade pickups, a no-load tone control and S-1 switching system.


James Hetfield

James Alan Hetfield (born August 3, 1963) is the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and co-founder of the American heavy metal band Metallica.

Hetfield has been a major endorser of ESP Guitars since the 1980s, and is best known for playing custom-made Explorer-style guitars with an EMG 81/EMG 60 set for pickups. Hetfield's main guitar from the early days was a Gibson Flying V copy made in Japan, used almost exclusively until about 1984 when he switched to the Gibson Explorer model.

During the mid-1990s, ESP produced the first of his signature model guitars. To date, Hetfield has had six signature guitars with the company. However, Hetfield most often uses guitars from Gibson and other companies instead of ESP despite his endorsement.


Jan Akkerman

Jan Akkerman (born 24 December 1946, Amsterdam, Netherlands) is a Dutch guitarist. Akkerman is a distinctive guitarist, constantly experimenting with new equipment and guitars. Akkerman's distinctive guitar sound is characterised by his pioneering use of volume swells which produce a smooth, fluty, sustained note, although he is also capable of astonishing high-speed pyrotechnics.
He also pioneered the use of the lute in a rock band, reflecting his interest in medieval and Renaissance music and culture. He first reached world acclaim in the 1970s when he was seen as the core of the Dutch rock band, Focus, together with Thijs van Leer.


Jeff Beck

Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck (born 24 June 1944) is an English rock guitarist. He was one of the three noted guitarists which include Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, to have played with The Yardbirds. He was ranked 14th in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

MSNBC has called Beck a "guitarist's guitarist" and Rolling Stone magazine has described him as "one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock".

Much of Beck's recorded output has been instrumental, with a focus on innovative sound and his releases have spanned genres ranging from blues-rock, heavy metal, jazz fusion and most recently, an additional blend of guitar-rock and electronica. Beck has earned wide critical praise; furthermore, he has received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance five times. Although he has had two hit albums (in 1975 and 1976) as a solo act, Beck has not been able to establish and maintain a broad following or the sustained commercial success of many of his collaborators and bandmates.

Beck appears on albums by Roger Waters, Stevie Wonder, Les Paul, Zucchero, Cyndi Lauper, Brian May and ZZ Top. He also made a cameo appearance in the movie Twins (1988).

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 4 April 2009. The award was presented by Jimmy Page.


Jerry Garcia

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for his work with the band the Grateful Dead. Though he vehemently disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group.

One of its founders, Garcia performed with The Grateful Dead for their entire three-decade career (1965–1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders-Garcia Band with longtime friend Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, and Legion of Mary.
Garcia co-founded the New Riders of the Purple Sage with John Dawson and David Nelson. He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician.
He was well known by many for his distinctive guitar playing and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" cover story.
Later in life, Garcia was sometimes ill because of his unstable weight, and in 1986 went into a diabetic coma that nearly cost him his life. Although his overall health improved somewhat after that, he also struggled with heroin addiction, and was staying in a California drug rehabilitation facility when he died of a heart attack in August 1995.


Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.
He is often considered to be the greatest electric guitarist in the history of rock music by other musicians and commentators in the industry, and one of the most important and influential musicians of his era across a range of genres. After initial success in Europe, he achieved fame in the United States following his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Later, Hendrix headlined the iconic 1969 Woodstock Festival and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Hendrix often favored raw overdriven amplifiers with high gain and treble and helped develop the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback.
Hendrix was one of the musicians who popularized the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock which he often used to deliver an exaggerated pitch in his solos, particularly with high bends and use of legato. He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, and Elmore James, rhythm and blues and soul guitarists Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, as well as by funk and some modern jazz.
In 1966, Hendrix, who played and recorded with Little Richard's band from 1964 to 1965, said, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."

As a record producer, Hendrix also broke new ground in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. He was one of the first to experiment with stereophonic and phasing effects for rock recording.

Hendrix won many of the most prestigious rock music awards in his lifetime, and has been posthumously awarded many more, including being inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected in his name on his former residence at Brook Street, London, in September 1997. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6627 Hollywood Blvd.) was dedicated in 1994. In 2006, his debut US album, Are You Experienced, was inducted into the United States National Recording Registry, and Rolling Stone named Hendrix the top guitarist on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all-time in 2003. He was also the first person inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame.


Jimmy Nolen

Jimmy Nolen (April 3, 1934 – December 18, 1983) was an American guitarist known for his distinctive "chicken scratch" lead guitar playing in James Brown's bands.

Nolen developed a style of picking known as "chicken scratch," in which the guitar strings are pressed lightly against the fingerboard and then quickly released just enough to get a muted “scratching” sound that is produced by rapid rhythmic strumming of the opposite hand near the bridge.

This new guitar style was affected not only by Nolen’s choice of two and three note chord voicings of augmented 7th and 9th chords, but also by his strumming straight 16th note patterns, as in James Brown’s "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."
Nolen’s choices of guitars and amplifiers also affected the sound for which he would be nicknamed. In his first recordings with James Brown, Nolen used a Gibson ES-175 and an ES-5 switchmaster, both hollow body jazz guitars equipped with single coil P-90s. He also relied on a Gibson Les Paul Recording model with single coil pickups, an Acoustic Black Widow, and a Fresher Straighter, which were also single coil instruments.
The single coil pickups on these guitars produced a thin "chanky" sound; Nolen ran these guitars through a Fender Twin Reverb with the treble set at 8 out of 10. The result of these factors was a rhythm guitar sound that seemed to float somewhere between the low-end thump of the electric bass and the cutting tone of the snare and hi-hats, with a rhythmically melodic feel that fell deep in the pocket.
A good example of such tone would be in James Brown’s "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "I’ve Got The Feeling." Nolen had been experimenting with the sound prior to his joining James Brown: it can be heard on an obscure 45 RPM single called "Swinging Peter Gunn Theme (Parts 1&2), released in 1960 on the Fidelity label, a subsidiary of Art Rupe's Specialty Records.


Jimmy Page

James Patrick Page, Order of the British Empire (born 9 January 1944) is an English guitarist, songwriter, and record producer.
He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.

Page is described by Allmusic as "unquestionably one of the all-time most influential, important, and versatile guitarists and songwriters in rock history", and by Rolling Stone as "the pontiff of power riffing & probably the most digitally sampled artist in pop today after James Brown."
In 2007, Page was ranked at #4 on Classic Rock Magazine's list of the "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes", and Rolling Stone ranked him number nine in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003.
He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, once as a member of The Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995). In 2010, Page was ranked #2 on Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time".


Joe Satriani

Joseph Satriani (born July 15, 1956 in Westbury, New York) is an American multi-instrumentalist, known primarily for his work as an instrumental rock guitarist, with multiple Grammy Award nominations. His dexterity and years of dedication to his craft have earned him a reputation as a shred guitarist.
Early in his career, Satriani worked as a guitar instructor, and some of his former students have achieved fame with their guitar skills (Steve Vai, Larry LaLonde, Kirk Hammett, Charlie Hunter, Kevin Cadogan, Alex Skolnick).
Satriani has been a driving force in the music credited to other musicians throughout his career, as a founder of the ever-changing touring trio, G3, as well as performing in various positions with other musicians.

In 1988, Satriani was recruited by Mick Jagger as lead guitarist for his first solo tour. Later, in 1994, Satriani was the lead guitarist for Deep Purple. Satriani worked with a range of guitarists from several musical genres, including Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Eric Johnson, Larry LaLonde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Brian May, Patrick Rondat, Andy Timmons, Paul Gilbert, Adrian Legg, and Robert Fripp through the annual G3 Jam Concerts. He is currently the lead guitarist for the supergroup Chickenfoot.

He is heavily influenced by blues-rock guitar icons such as Leslie West, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore and Jeff Beck, possessing, however, his own easily recognizable style. Since 1988, Satriani has been using his own signature guitar, the Ibanez JS Series, which is widely sold in stores. He has a signature series amplifier, the Peavey JSX, and signature Vox pedals The "Satchurator" distortion pedal, The "Time Machine" delay pedal, The "Big Bad Wah" wah pedal and The "Ice 9" overdrive pedal to be released in June 2010.

Satriani is recognized as a technically advanced rock guitarist, and has been described as a virtuoso by some publications. He has mastered many performance techniques on the instrument, including legato, two-handed tapping and arpeggio tapping, volume swells, harmonics, and extreme whammy bar effects. One of his trademark compositional traits is the use of pitch axis theory, which he applies with a variety of modes.[citation needed] During fast passages, Joe favors a legato technique (achieved primarily through hammer-ons and pull-offs) which yields smooth and flowing runs. He is also adept at other speed-related techniques such as rapid alternate picking and sweep picking, but does not often use them.

Satriani has received 14 Grammy nominations and has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide. Many of his fans and friends call him "Satch," short for "Satriani".

An influential guitarist himself, Satriani has many influences, including jazz guitarists Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Allan Holdsworth and Charlie Christian, and rock guitarists Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Ritchie Blackmore.


John Petrucci

John Peter Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is an American guitarist and songwriter best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. Along with his bandmate Mike Portnoy, he has produced all Dream Theater albums since their 1999 release, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory.
He is also a backing vocalist for Dream Theater, along with Portnoy. Petrucci was named as the third player on the G3 tour six times, more than any other invited guitarist.
In 2009 he appeared in the No. 2 position (behind Dave Mustaine) in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.

Petrucci is respected for his variety of guitar styles and skills. One of the most notable of these is his high speed alternate picking which, as he himself claims, requires a "strong sense of synchronization between the two (playing) hands."
John is notable for frequent use of the seven-string electric guitar, which he states is used as a "writing tool", taking advantage of the extended range both for heavier riffing (The Mirror) and to play extended range runs as part of a solo (This Dying Soul). On one of his guitar lesson videos he states that James Hetfield of Metallica had a great influence on him.
He has also cited Steve Morse as a major influence. Another is Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. Petrucci adopted the technique of using fuller chords and heavy chorus/reverb effects from Lifeson. In addition to this, he is greatly influenced by the emotion-driven guitar playing of David Gilmour. Perhaps the best examples of this are his guitar solo in 'Lines in the Sand' off Dream Theater's 1997 album 'Falling into Infinity', the fast solo mixed with alternate picking and sweep picking from Stream of Consciousness from Dream Theater album 'Train of Thought', the extended solo section of 'A Change of Seasons', and the mellow, spacy segment near the end of 'The Count of Tuscany' from their latest release 'Black Clouds & Silver Linings'.
Petrucci has also been known to directly incorporate riffs and solos from other bands into live Dream Theater performances. For example, Pink Floyd's 'Have a Cigar' and Metallica's 'Enter Sandman' are referenced during the performance of 'Peruvian Skies' from the 'Once in a Livetime' live album.
Another example occurs in Dream Theater's live DVD 'Chaos in Motion', during the extended version of 'Surrounded'.
Here, Petrucci incorporates the guitar solo from 'Mother' by Pink Floyd. The varied examples of this further demonstrate Petrucci's wide range of influences.


Johnny Marr

Johnny Marr (born John Martin Maher on 31 October 1963 in Ardwick, Manchester) is an English songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, harmonica player, and singer.
Marr rose to fame in the 1980s as the guitarist in The Smiths, where he formed a prolific songwriting partnership with Morrissey. Marr has been a member of Electronic, The The, and Modest Mouse.
In 2008, he joined The Cribs after touring with them on 2008's NME Awards Tour.


Johnny Ramone

John William Cummings (October 8, 1948 – September 15, 2004), better known by the stage name Johnny Ramone, was the guitarist for the seminal punk rock group The Ramones. He was a founding member of the band, and remained a member throughout their career.
In 2003, he appeared as #16 on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and listed on Time magazine's 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players.

Cummings was known for his fast, high-energy playing style that consisted of rapid down stroked barre chords, often in a simple I-IV-V progression. Called "buzzsaw", this technique was highly influential on first- and second-wave punk.
This technique was used in New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands like Iron Maiden, and Def Leppard. It's also used in alternative rock bands, as well as thrash metal performers such as Kirk Hammett of Metallica.
Guitar Virtuoso Paul Gilbert has cited Johnny Ramone as one of his influences. Cummings was strictly a rhythm guitarist, as evidenced by live recordings.
Johnny played very few leads on the studio albums (including "Time Has Come Today", "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", and "California Sun" amongst others); guitar solos on the group's studio albums were overdubbed by Erdelyi, Ed Stasium, Daniel Rey, Walter Lure and other uncredited guests.


Jorma Kaukonen

orma Ludwik Kaukonen Jr. (born December 23, 1940, Washington, D.C.) is an American blues, folk and rock guitarist, and an inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As a member of Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen's primary guitar was a Gibson ES-335. Jorma presently endorses Martin Guitars. In 2010, Martin Guitars released the Martin M-30 Jorma Kaukonen Custom Artist Edition.
This guitar was designed by Jorma using ideas from 2 Martin guitars that he had previously been playing. A David Bromberg Custom Artist Edition and an M-5 prototype.

Jorma also uses and endorses the Fishman Loudbox amp.


Kirk Hammett

Kirk Lee Hammett (born November 18, 1962) is the lead guitarist and a songwriter in the band Metallica and has been a member of the band since 1983. Before joining Metallica he formed and named the band Exodus.
In 2003 Kirk Hammett was ranked 11th in Rolling Stone's list - The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

In 2007, ESP Guitar Company announced the release of a 20th Anniversary Limited KH-20 Guitar to celebrate 20 years of relationship with Kirk Hammett (based upon the KH-2 guitar with some modification). Only 41 guitars were in production, with the price at $9,999 USD a piece.

In January 2009, ESP also announced the rare release of Hammett's famous "ouija" guitar, which was very limited and for 2009 only.

On the 25th anniversary of Metallica's Kill 'Em All, Kirk Hammett appears on the cover of Feb. 2008's Guitar World sporting his new custom ESP. This model is the KH20, the 20th anniversary model from ESP.Guitar World - Covers Archive

In the video for "One", Kirk Hammett is seen using what is most likely an ESP Vintage Plus. It appears however to be modified; it has a Floyd Rose tremolo, which could have been Hammett's own work or a custom model.


Keith Richards

Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English guitarist, songwriter, singer, record producer and a founding member of The Rolling Stones.
As a guitarist, Richards is mostly known for his innovative rhythm playing. In 2003 he ranked 10th on Rolling Stone magazine's "Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
With songwriting partner and Rolling Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger, Richards has written and recorded hundreds of songs, fourteen of which are listed by Rolling Stone magazine among the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Richards's guitar playing shows his fascination with chords and rhythm; he conspicuously avoids flamboyant virtuosity in favour of riffs Chris Spedding described as "direct, incisive and unpretentious".
Richards prefers to play in tandem with another guitarist and has always toured with one. Chuck Berry has been a constant inspiration for Richards. Richards and Jagger played many Berry numbers with the first band they played in, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys; and it was Richards and Jagger who introduced Berry's songs to The Rolling Stones' early repertoire.
Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters records were another early source of inspiration, and the basis for the style of interwoven lead and rhythm guitar that Richards developed with Brian Jones.
In the late 1960s, Brian Jones's declining contributions led Richards to record all guitar parts on many tracks, including slide guitar, which had been Jones's specialty in the band's early years. Jones's replacement guitarist Mick Taylor worked with The Rolling Stones from 1969 to 1974, and Taylor's virtuosity at lead guitar led to a much more pronounced separation between lead and rhythm guitar roles, notably onstage. In 1975 Taylor was replaced by Ronnie Wood, marking a return to the style of guitar interplay that he and Richards call "the ancient art of weaving".

The 1967/68 break in the Rolling Stones' touring allowed Richards to focus on open tunings.
Open tunings are commonly used for slide guitar, but Richards used them for rhythm playing. In doing so, he developed an innovative and distinctive style of syncopated and ringing I-IV chording that can be heard on "Street Fighting Man" and "Start Me Up".
Richards has used various open tunings (while continuing to use standard tuning) but has often favoured a five-string variant of open G tuning using GDGBD unencumbered by a low 6th string. Several of his Telecasters are tuned this way (see the "Guitars" section below), and this tuning is prominent on Rolling Stones tracks and concert renditions including "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar" and "Start Me Up".


K. K. Downing

Kenneth "K. K." Downing, Jr. (born 27 October 1951 in Yew Tree Estate in West Bromwich, England) is a Grammy Award winning guitarist, songwriter and a founding member of the British heavy metal band Judas Priest. He received his stage name when a girl in Denmark could not pronounce his name and called him "K. K." instead.

Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Downing bought his first guitar at the age of sixteen. According to an interview by Guitar One magazine, Downing found little support from his parents for his career of choice. This did not change even after Judas Priest achieved worldwide commercial success and critical acclaim.
Together with his schoolmate and fellow band founding member Ian Hill, Downing has been solely dedicated to the band for more than 35 years.

Downing has been noted for his aggressive, bluesy solos and dual leads with fellow Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton.
His solos have remained of this style for most of his career, but he has incorporated various techniques into his playing over the years. As opposed to Tipton, his solos tend to incorporate a more raw, rough-edged sound, making use of techniques like pinch harmonics, dive bombs, and tremolo picking, and often focus on speed, technical accuracy and melody.
In 1978, Tipton began to incorporate tapping into his playing, which Downing promptly began to use as well. By 1990, both guitarists started to use the complex technique of sweep-picking, which can be notably heard on the title track of their 1990 album Painkiller.
Both have continuously used these techniques ever since. Notable guitar solos are on such tracks as "Victim of Changes", the 2nd solo in "Beyond the Realms of Death", "Before The Dawn", "Sinner", "Don't Go", the 2nd solo in "Painkiller", and the live version of "Breaking The Law". Notable guitar duels are on such tracks as "Hellrider", "The Sentinel", "Ram It Down", "Metal Meltdown" and "Screaming For Vengeance".

In Judas Priest's early years, Downing made common use of the wah-wah pedal, but began to limit his use of it in the late '70s, and had abandoned use of it by the mid-'80s, save for during live performances of the songs that originally featured it.
The only time since then that he has renewed use of it was in 1996, when vocalist Tim "Ripper" Owens joined the band, and they began to experiment with their music more than before. One of these experimentations was the renewal of wah-wah in Downing's playing, which can be heard on their 1997 album Jugulator.
This experimentation was taken further on their next album with Owens, 2001's Demolition, but was once more abandoned when the band's former vocalist, Rob Halford, returned to the band.


Lee Ranaldo

Lee M. Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the rock band Sonic Youth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, the 33rd and 34th Greatest Guitarists of All Time, respectively.

Ranaldo usually uses Fender Jazzmaster, Telecaster Deluxe electric guitars and sometimes Gibson Les Paul's, with radically alternative tunings, and modifications.
One of his Jazzmasters has a single coil pickup installed between the bridge and the tailpiece to exploit the resonating chiming sounds on that area of string at these so called tailed bridge guitars.

In 2007 Yuri Landman built for Ranaldo the Moonlander, a biheaded electric guitar with 18 strings: 6 normal strings and 12 sympathetic strings.

Since Ranaldo and Moore, together with Elvis Costello and J. Mascis, are known for being key figures in the popularisation and resurrection of the Fender Jazzmaster, Fender introduced in 2009 a special Lee Ranaldo signature edition of a transparent blue version, together with a transparent green one for Thurston.


Leslie West

Leslie West (born Leslie Weinstein on October 22, 1945) is an American rock guitarist, singer and songwriter.

West is renowned for helping popularize use of the Gibson Les Paul Jr. guitar with P90 elements, along with the use of Sunn Amplifiers, to create a tone which became his trademark sound.

West frequently used two Les Paul Juniors, one "TV Yellow" and the other a sunburst.
West also used a modified Gibson Flying V, with the neck pickup removed (he used the hole for an ashtray) and a P90 fitted at the bridge position, West also had a 2 pickup flying vee which he used after the ash tray vee broke the s/n of that flying vee is s/n 906965. West also used a plexiglass Dan Armstrong for slide guitar.

From 1977 to 1982, he used a signature on-board effects MPC model guitar, created by the Japanese company Electra.
He currently uses a signature model from Dean Guitars, the USA Soltero Leslie West Signature model, fitted with a custom-designed Dean pickup called "Mountain of Tone."


Link Wray

Frederick Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr (May 2, 1929–November 5, 2005) was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer.

Wray was noted for pioneering a new sound for electric guitars, as exemplified in his hit 1958 instrumental "Rumble", by Link Wray and his Ray Men, which pioneered an overdriven, distorted electric guitar sound, and also for having, "invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarist," "and in doing so fathering," or making possible, "punk and heavy rock".


Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack (born Lonnie McIntosh, 18 July 1941, Dearborn County, Indiana) is a rock and blues guitarist/vocalist.

In the early 1960s, he recorded several full-length electric guitar instrumentals which combined blues stylism with fast-picking techniques and a rock 'n' roll beat, the best-known of which are "Memphis", "Wham!", "Chicken Pickin'" and "Suzie-Q". Mack's fiery instrumentals from this period set a new standard of virtuosity for a generation of rock guitarists and formed the leading edge of the "blues-rock" guitar genre.

In 1979, music historian Richard T. Pinnell, Ph. D., called 1963's "Memphis" as "a milestone of early rock guitar".
In 1980, the editors of Guitar World magazine ranked "Memphis" first among the five "landmark" guitar recordings of the Rock Era.

Mack is also known for the emotional intensity of his early "blue-eyed soul" ballads. In 1992, citing both Mack's vocals and his guitar solos, music critic Jimmy Guterman ranked Mack's first album, 1963's The Wham of that Memphis Man!, No. 16 in his book The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time.

Mack released numerous singles and thirteen original albums between 1963 and 1990 and was most active as a blues-rock performer during the 1960s and the latter half of the 1980s. However, an aversion to fame and its trappings led him to switch styles and even idle his career for lengthy periods, perhaps explaining his simultaneous appearance, years later, in lists of both "100 Greatest Rock Guitarists" and "Forgotten Greats and Unsung Heroes".
Today he is widely regarded as both an influential stylistic innovator and a pivotal figure in defining the role of the lead guitar in rock.

Beyond his career as a solo artist, Mack recorded with The Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon, Ronnie Hawkins, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Dobie Gray and the sons of blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, among others.

In the early 1960s, Mack's extended guitar solos displayed exceptional levels of speed, dexterity and improvisational skill. In Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, guitarist Mike Johnstone recalled the impact of Mack's playing upon rock guitarists in 1963: "Now, at that time, there was a popular song on the radio called 'Memphis'-- an instrumental by Lonnie Mack. It was the best guitar-playing I'd ever heard. All the guitar-players were saying: How could anyone ever play that good? That's the new bar. That's how good you have to be now'."

Although from inception Mack's rock-guitar style was steeped in the blues, it is distinguished by fast-paced "fingerstyle" and "chicken picking" techniques, which are hallmarks of traditional country and bluegrass music. Noting these stylistic elements, Wayne Perkins (erstwhile guitarist for The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Leon Russell and others) observed: "Lonnie brought it down from the mountain and hooked up an amp". Mack's pioneering use of "lightning-fast runs" and machine-gunned, whammy-fired climaxes became hallmarks of virtuoso rock guitar by the end of the 1960s.

Close-up photos reveal that Mack typically manipulates the whammy bar with the little finger of his right hand, while picking at a 45-degree angle with a pick or the remaining fingers of the same hand, and bending the strings on the fret-board with his left.
Stevie Ray Vaughan: "Nobody can play with a whammy-bar like Lonnie. He holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine".


Malcolm Young

Malcolm Mitchell Young (born 6 January 1953) is a Scottish-born Australian guitarist, best known as a founding member, rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist and songwriter for the Australian hard rock band AC/DC, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003 along with the other members of AC/DC.
He has been with them since he co-founded the band in November 1973, apart from a brief absence in 1988.

Though his younger brother Angus is the more visible of the brothers, Malcolm has been described as the business and brains behind AC/DC. As the rhythm guitarist, he is responsible for the broad sweep of AC/DC's sound, developing many of the band's guitar riffs and co-writing the band's material.

Malcolm Young plays a 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird guitar handed down to him by Harry Vanda, along with elder brother George Young, of Easybeats fame. He calls this guitar "The Beast".
The guitar has the neck and middle pickups (the middle was a humbucker which had been added by Malcolm) removed and only the stock Gretsch "Filtertron" bridge pickup remains. For a short time, Young placed socks in the cavities to prevent feedback. Prior to that, he used a white piece of plastic to cover the pick-up cavities.

Part of Malcolm Young's sound is due to his use of extremely heavy gauge Gibson nickel roundwound strings. (.012-.056). The heavy strings produce a thicker sound, but don't lend themselves to intricate lead playing, as is the case with the lighter .009-.042 sets used by his brother, Angus.

During the Let There Be Rock era, he stripped off the original red laminate to the maple top. During the Powerage era, Young again removed the plastic and stuffed socks in the pick-up cavities, and also changed the tailpiece from the stock Burns vibrato to an all-in-one Badass bridge, and put a black piece of plastic over the cavity where the original tail-piece was.
During the Highway To Hell era, he removed the socks. The guitar stayed like this until 1995, when, during the Ballbreaker tour, he replaced the Badass bridge with the original tailpiece, and removed the pick-up ring that was held in the bridge pick-up. This is how the guitar has been since then.

Malcolm also owned a 1959 Gretsch White Falcon that was used during the tours that supported the albums Back in Black and For Those About to Rock We Salute You. But he said that after someone 'fixed' it, it lost its distinctive sound, and thus got rid of it. It was sold a few years ago on a rock star items website, along with one of Cliff Williams' MusicMan basses.
He has recently used another Gretsch White Falcon at shows at Hampden Park and the Hockenheimring on The Black Ice Tour.

Angus and Malcolm Young both use Marshall amplifiers. The amps stacked behind Malcolm onstage are two original Marshall 100 watt heads, one 1966 JTM45/100 and one late Superbass from the late 1960s or early 1970s. Each head powers two 4 × 12 cabinets. Malcolm also uses custom-made Wizard amps on tour.
Malcolm's main amp, since recording Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in 1976, is a slightly modified Marshall Superbass from the late 1960s or the early 1970s. On Ballbreaker, he used a Marshall JTM45/100 with KT66s and a high B+ voltage (625 volts). In a recent interview with Marshall Law, Malcolm mentions his two favourite amps: a Superbass and old Super amp (JTM45/100).

On AC/DC's latest album, Black Ice, Malcolm stated that he used AmpliTube software on the tracks "Big Jack" and "Anything Goes".

Gretsch now produces Malcolm Young signature model guitars in single and dual pickup configurations.


Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler (born 12 August 1949) is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer.

Mark Knopfler is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977 with his brother David.
After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler continued to record and produce albums as a solo artist under his own name.
Knopfler has played in other groups occasionally, such as the The Notting Hillbillies, and has guested on works by other artists, including Gerry Rafferty in his album "Another World", The Dandy Warhols, Bob Dylan, Bryan Ferry, Eric Clapton, Jeff Healey, John Fogerty, Jools Holland, Steely Dan, Emmylou Harris, Sonny Landreth, Phil Lynott, Joan Armatrading, the Chieftains, and Chet Atkins. He has produced albums for artists such as Tina Turner, Willy DeVille, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan and even "Weird Al" Yankovic.

His musical scores include Metroland, Local Hero, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Wag the Dog, and Rob Reiner's classic, The Princess Bride.

He is one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists of the modern rock era and was ranked #27 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million albums to date.

Mark Knopfler is left-handed, but plays right-handed, and fingerpicks (using a personal variant of the clawhammer style) instead of using a plectrum (i.e., "pick").
Fingerpicking is usually associated with the acoustic guitar, but Knopfler usually (though not always) plays an electric guitar. Knopfler revealed during a French interview that he uses a pick for his rhythm work during recording sessions. Knopfler surprised the interviewer by pulling a pick out of his pocket and saying that he usually carries one.
Knopfler has long favoured Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster style guitars and his Artist Series Stratocaster can be viewed on the Fender website.
During the 1980s he came to appreciate the tone of the Gibson Les Paul and his original 1958 has been used regularly in the studio and on stage.


Martin Barre

Martin Lancelot Barre (born 17 November 1946, in Kings Heath, Birmingham, West Midlands, England) is an English rock musician.

Barre has been the guitarist for rock band Jethro Tull since 1969. He has appeared on every Jethro Tull album except This Was.
His sound has been marked by a blend of Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton style blues with the baroque complexities of early 1970s progressive rock and traditional European folk music sounds. He has also acted as a flautist both on-stage for Tull, and in his solo work.

Barre's signature solo on the 1971 Jethro Tull standard "Aqualung" was voted by the readers of Guitar Player magazine as one of the top rock guitar solos of all time.
Also, in 2007, this solo was rated one of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos by Guitar World magazine. Dire Straits' leader Mark Knopfler, in a 2005 interview, called Barre's work with Ian Anderson "magical".


Marty Friedman

Marty Friedman (born Martin Adam Friedman, December 8, 1962) is an American guitarist, most widely recognized and best known for his tenure as lead/rhythm guitarist for thrash metal band Megadeth, which lasted close to ten years.
He has resided in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan since 2003, and has hosted his own television programs, Rock Fujiyama and Jukebox English on Japanese television.

Friedman has played a variety of guitars throughout his career. In his days with Cacophony, Friedman played Hurricane guitars, then Carvin guitars, primarily a V220M model. He also used Carvin on his first solo recording, Dragon's Kiss.

When Marty joined Megadeth in 1989, he switched over from Carvin to Jackson Guitars. Primarily, he was responsible for popularizing the now highly acclaimed Jackson Kelly guitar, a sleeker and faster version of the Gibson Explorer Z style shape.
The first line of KE1s, which were his signature models, had poplar bodies with maple neck through construction and a single Seymour Duncan JB pickup as well as a Kahler Fine-tuning fixed bridge.
Later versions of the KE1 would have a Floyd Rose double locking tremolo in place of the Kahler. He also used other Jackson's, such as the Rhoads and the Roswell Rhoads.

Marty used Gibson and Fender guitars on the Risk tours as well. He used Jackson guitars up until 2000, when he started endorsing Ibanez guitars. He has produced a signature model with Ibanez (based on the Ibanez SZ line of guitars), but this model is as of now only available in Japan and not in the US.
In 2009 his contract with Ibanez guitars expired and he is currently an endorser of PRS Guitars.

It is hotly contested what amplifiers Marty first used with Megadeth on their landmark album "Rust in Peace." It has been said he used a Bogner Triple Giant and a Tube Works solid-state preamp for solos, along with a VHT 2150 power amp.
Contrary to popular belief the Bogner Fish, which is often cited as the preamp for the album, was first released one year after the album debuted, therefore making it impossible to be the preamp of use on this album, unless he received a pre-production model. Supposedly on his official website he said for the rust album he plugged strait into a Marshall tube amp with his Jackson and the Seymour Duncan JB humbucker.
Marty and Dave Mustaine both used Custom Audio Electronics 3+ Preamps and VHT 2150 power amps on the commercially successful "Countdown to Extinction" and "Youthanasia" albums. When recording started on "Cryptic Writings, Marty switched to Crate Amplifiers. He used these on all of his recordings after Youthanasia, primarily using Crate's highly successful Blue Voodoo tube amplifiers.
As of 2007 however, Crate has discontinued the Blue Voodoo and Marty now uses ENGL amplifiers. He uses Special Edition heads and Vintage cabinets from ENGL.


Michael Landau

Michael Landau is a legendary session musician and guitarist who has played on thousands of albums since the early 1980s with artists as varied as Seal, James Taylor, Helen Watson, Richard Marx, and Miles Davis. Landau, along with fellow session guitarists Waddy Wachtel, Steve Lukather and Dann Huff, played on many of the major label releases recorded in LA from the 1980s-1990s.

In addition to his session work, Landau has also fronted several bands including Raging Honkies and Burning Water. In the early 1980s, he was also in the band Maxus that featured future Los Angeles session musician stalwarts Robbie Buchanan, Jay Gruska, and Doane Perry. Landau was also in competition with high school bandmate Lukather to become the guitarist for Toto in the late 1970s.


Michael Schenker

Michael Schenker (born 10 January 1955) is a German rock guitarist, best known for his tenure in UFO, in addition to his solo work. He first rose to fame as a founding member of the Scorpions, then achieved fame in the mid 1970s as the lead guitar player for UFO.
Since leaving UFO in 1978, he has been leading the Michael Schenker Group in various incarnations. He is the younger brother of Rudolf Schenker, who is still a guitarist with the Scorpions.
His career has had many ups and downs, partly due to a long history of alcoholism and personal problems; still, Schenker continues to perform and record and to maintain a following, and is called "a legendary figure in the history of metal guitar."

Schenker's main guitar for much of his career was a Gibson Flying V, which he typically played through a wah-wah pedal (used as a parametric equalizer to strengthen the "sweet spot") and Marshall amplifiers.
His "unmistakable midrange tone" emphasized by the partially engaged wah, as exemplified on the song "Rock Bottom" from the UFO album Strangers in the Night, was listed among the 50 greatest tones of all time by Guitar Player magazine. In recent years Schenker has switched to using a signature model Dean V.

In 2007 Dean Guitars, after producing a signature Schenker Dean V, also made two acoustic models with the familiar black and white "V" design.


Mick Ronson

Michael "Mick" Ronson (26 May 1946 – 29 April 1993) was an English guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer. He is best known for his work with David Bowie, as one of The Spiders from Mars.

He also recorded several solo albums, the most notable example of which was Slaughter on 10th Avenue album, which reached #9 on the UK Albums Chart.
Ronson played with various bands after his time with Bowie. He was named the 64th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone.

Throughout his career with Bowie, Ronson used a 1968 Gibson Les Paul customised "Black Beauty". In the post-Bowie era, Ronson tended towards a blue, rosewood-board Fender Telecaster.


Mick Taylor

Michael Kevin "Mick" Taylor (born 17 January 1949 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire) is an English musician best known as a former member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and The Rolling Stones.
During his tenure with those bands, Taylor gained a reputation as a reliable technical guitarist with a preference for blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll and a talent for slide guitar. Since his resignation from the Rolling Stones in December 1974, Taylor has worked with numerous other artists, as well as releasing a number of solo albums.

Throughout his career, Taylor has used various different guitars, but is mostly associated with the Gibson Les Paul. His first Les Paul was bought when he was still playing with The Gods (from Selmer's, London in '65).
He acquired his second Les Paul in 1967, not long after joining The Bluesbreakers: Taylor came to Olympic Studios to buy a Les Paul that Keith Richards wanted to sell. On the '72/'73 tours Taylor used a couple of Sunburst Les Paul guitars without a Bigsby.
Other guitars include a Gibson ES-355 for the recording of Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, a Gibson SG on the 1969, 1970 and 1971 tours, and occasionally a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Telecaster.


Mickey Baker

Mickey Baker, also known as Mickey "Guitar" Baker (born MacHouston Baker, October 15, 1925, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American guitarist. He is widely held to be a critical force in the bridging of rhythm and blues and rock and roll, along with Bo Diddley, Ike Turner, and Chuck Berry.

By 1949, Baker had his own combo, and a few paying jobs. He decided to move west, but found that audiences there were not receptive to progressive jazz music. Baker was stranded without work in California when he saw a show by blues guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. Baker said of the encounter:

"I asked Pee Wee, 'You mean you can make money playing that stuff on guitar?' Here he was driving a big white Eldorado and had a huge bus for his band. So I started bending strings. I was starving to death, and the blues was just a financial thing for me then."

He found a few jobs in Richmond, California, and made enough money to return to New York.

After returning back east, Baker began recording for Savoy, King and Atlantic Records. He did sessions with The Drifters, Ray Charles, Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Coleman Hawkins, and numerous other artists.
During this time, Baker (along with either Paramour Crampton or Connie Kay on drums, Sam "The Man" Taylor on tenor, and Lloyd Crompton on bass) played on virtually every hit record by Atlantic, Savoy, and King.

Inspired by the success of Les Paul & Mary Ford, he formed the pop duo Mickey & Sylvia (with Sylvia Robinson, one of his guitar students) in the mid 1950s.
Together, they had a hit single with "Love Is Strange" in 1957. The duo split up in the late 1950s, but continued to record off and on until the middle of the next decade. It was around this time that he moved to France, making a few solo records and working with some French pop and rock performers, including Ronnie Bird and Chantal Goya. Baker appeared at the 1975 version of the Roskilde Festival.

In 1999 Baker received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

In 2003 he was listed at #53 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".


Neal Schon

Neal Joseph Schon (born February 27, 1954, on Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) is an American guitarist best known for his work with the band Journey. He is the only member, along with bassist Ross Valory, to play on all of their albums.

Schon's first guitar was an acoustic Stella, followed two years later by a Gibson ES-335 which was subsequently stolen and replaced with a '56 Les Paul Goldtop reissue that he used for many years.
Schon currently endorses Gibson guitars, and has a limited edition signature Les Paul model entitled the "Neal Schon Signature Model Custom Les Paul", of which only 35 were made according to the Gibson Custom website.
He has previously employed Godin guitars on his 1995 solo album Beyond the Thunder, and more recently uses Paul Reed Smith guitars. In the late 1980s, Schon manufactured (through Jackson Guitars and later Larrivee) and played his own line of guitars. Simply named Schon, about 200 of the Jackson-produced models were made.
A white Schon guitar can be clearly seen in the music video for the Journey song "Girl Can't Help It", as well as a gold version in the Journey videos for "I'll Be Alright Without You" and "Be Good to Yourself". A Gibson Les Paul Super Custom can be seen in the video for the journey song "Anyway You Want It."

As of 2008, Schon currently prefers guitar pedals from Xotic, a Vox Satriani model and occasionally uses a Buddy Guy wah pedal.


Neil Young

Neil Percival Young, (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, film director and activist.
Young began performing as a solo artist in Canada in 1960, before moving to California in 1966, where he co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield along with Stephen Stills, and later joined Crosby, Stills & Nash as a fourth member in 1969.
He then forged a successful and acclaimed solo career, releasing his first album in 1968. His career has spanned 50 years and 33 studio albums, which have seen him explore a wide variety of musical styles.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website describes Young as "one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers". He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame twice: first as a solo artist in 1995, and secondly as a member of Buffalo Springfield in 1997.
Young has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards and has won once.

Young's work is characterized by his distinctive guitar work, and signature falsetto/tenor singing voice.
Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments, including piano, harpsichord and harmonica, his clawhammer acoustic guitar and often idiosyncratic electric guitar playing are the defining characteristics of a sometimes ragged, sometimes polished sound. While Young has experimented with differing music styles, including swing and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into two primary styles: either acoustic folk and country rock, or amplified hard rock in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse.
Young has also adopted elements from newer styles such as alternative rock and grunge. His influence on the latter caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".

Young has directed (or co-directed) a number of films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past (1973), Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Human Highway (1982), Greendale (2003), and CSNY/Déjà Vu (2008). He is currently working on a documentary about electric car technology, tentatively titled Linc/Volt. The project involves a 1959 Lincoln Continental converted to hybrid technology, which Young plans to drive to Washington, D.C. as an environmentalist example to lawmakers there.

Young is an outspoken advocate for environmental issues and the welfare of small farmers, having co-founded in 1985 the benefit concert Farm Aid. In 1986, Young helped found The Bridge School, an educational organization for children with severe verbal and physical disabilities, and its annual supporting Bridge School Benefit concerts, together with his wife Pegi Young (née Morton).
Young has three children: Sons Zeke (born during his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress) and Ben who were diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and daughter Amber Jean, like Young himself, with epilepsy. Young lives on his ranch in La Honda, California.
Although he has lived in northern California since the 1970s and sings as frequently about U.S. themes and subjects as he does about his native country, he retains Canadian citizenship, which he has never wanted to relinquish. On July 14, 2006, Young was awarded the Order of Manitoba. On December 30, 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In 2003, Rolling Stone listed Young at eighty-third in its ranking of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", describing him as a "restless experimenter...who transform(s) the most obvious music into something revelatory."
Young is a collector of second-hand guitars, but in recording and performing, he frequently uses just a few instruments, as is explained by his longtime guitar technician Larry Cragg in the film Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Paul Gilbert

Paul Brandon Gilbert (born November 6, 1966 in Illinois, USA) is an American musician. He is well known for his guitar work with Racer X and Mr. Big, as well as many solo albums. He also joined Joe Satriani and John Petrucci on the 2007 G3 tour.

He has been voted number 4 on a list in GuitarOne magazine of the "Top 10 Greatest Guitar Shredders of All Time", as well as a spot in Guitar World's 50 Fastest Guitarists of All Time list.

Paul Gilbert primarily uses his Ibanez PGM signature series guitars, identified by their unique painted "f-holes". Although earlier PGM models featured the Ibanez Lo-Pro/Edge double locking tremolo system, many of his guitars (such as his main PGM300) have since been modified to accommodate a fixed bridge, hence the Ibanez PGM301 series.
Along with his signature guitars, Gilbert often uses his sticker-covered "Dino" Ibanez RG750, in addition to a wide variety of Ibanez solidbody and semi-hollow electric guitars. Recently, Gilbert has been using Ibanez "Fireman" (a reversed-body Ibanez Iceman with single-coil pickups and an extra cutaway) guitars, which he designed himself.

Regarding amps, Gilbert used ADA preamps and rack effects units early in his career prior to switching to Laney amplifiers. He praised the Laney amps as having "the best natural distortion of any tube amp ever heard".
Since the G3 2007 tour however, Gilbert stated that playing with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci inspired him to take a closer look at his own guitar sound. As a result of his search he found the Marshall Vintage Modern series. He currently uses the Marshall Vintage Modern 2266c combo amps. Paul uses Jim Dunlop Tortex picks, of which he prefers the orange (.60mm) picks.

Paul also used a modified vintage ADA Flanger from the 1980s (source: Berlin VIP session interview). You can hear it on tracks like 'Bucket of Rocks', and he also uses it on the 'Snowball of Doom' DVD. Paul stated the flanger had been modified. He uses it to change the pitch from high to low to create a sound similar to a dive bomb. Unfortunately, during Paul's 2008 European tour, his trusty ADA Flanger broke.
Thankfully, before the pedal broke, he and Ibanez collaborated to make a similar pedal, with both a regular flanger mode and a mode which can be set to create a close approximation of the ADA pedal's sound, and the pedal has been released as the Ibanez Paul Gilbert AF-2 Airplane Flanger. He also uses the Psilocybe phaser and THC chorus pedals from Home Brew Electronics.

In the intro to "Get Out Of My Yard" Paul uses a Boss DD-3 Delay pedal to achieve the altered pitch looped effect at the beginning of the track. This was also demonstrated by Paul on the instructional DVD of the same name.

In 2009, Ibanez released a new PGM model, the Ibanez PGM401, which is rather different from most of Paul's previous models, with an ash body (most of his previous models were made of basswood, although his PGM800 guitar was made of lightweight ash (a similar but different wood than that used in the PGM401), Trifade Burst finish, Cosmo Black hardware and a regular headstock replacing the reversed one of the previous models.
Also, rather than the DiMarzio PAF Pro, Tone Zone and Super Distortion pickups used in his previous models, the PGM401 comes with Paul's favorite humbucker model for the past five years, the DiMarzio Air Classic, arranged in a dual humbucker arrangement.
Paul has stated that he had the bridge pickup moved 1 mm closer to the neck, which he said results in a warmer and thicker sound, particularly for the high notes he often uses in soloing. The F-holes are 3% smaller, to make the look more balanced with the pickup mounting rings.
But perhaps the biggest difference from other current Ibanez guitar models, is that the PGM401 uses the old late-1980s neckjoint, which is thicker than the current neckjoints on other Ibanez guitars.


Pete Townshend

Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend, born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than forty years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the rock era, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."

Townshend is the primary songwriter for the Who, having written well over one hundred songs for the band's eleven studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds and Sods.
He has also written over one hundred songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he is also an accomplished singer, keyboardist, and also plays other instruments, such as banjo, accordion, synthesizer, piano, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artist's recordings. Peter Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.

Townshend has also been a contributor and author of newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts, as well as collaborating as a lyricist (and composer) for many other musical acts. Townshend was ranked #3 in Dave Marsh's list of Best Guitarists in The New Book of Rock Lists, #10 in Gibson.com's list of the top fifty guitarists, and #50 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list: 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.


Phil Keaggy

Philip Tyler Keaggy (born March 23, 1951, in Youngstown, Ohio) is an American acoustic and electric guitarist and vocalist who has released more than 50 albums and contributed to many more recordings in both the contemporary Christian music and mainstream markets.
He is a seven-time recipient of the GMA Dove Award for Instrumental Album of the Year, and was twice nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album. He has frequently been listed as one of the world's top-3 "fingerstyle" as well as "fingerpicking" guitarists by Guitar Player Magazine readers' polls.


Randy Rhoads

Randall William "Randy" Rhoads (December 6, 1956 – March 19, 1982) was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot. A devoted student of classical guitar, Rhoads often combined his classical music influences with his own heavy metal style. While on tour with Ozzy Osbourne, he would seek out classical guitar tutors for lessons. Despite his relatively short career, Rhoads is a major influence on neo-classical metal players that emerged in the 1980s such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Angelo Batio, and Jason Becker. He is cited as an influence by many contemporary heavy metal guitarists, including longtime Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde.

Rhoads used a relatively small setup, with few guitars and a small set of effects and amplifiers. He preferred .010-.011 strings.


Ray Davies

Ray Davies CBE (born Raymond Douglas Davies, 21 June 1944, Fortis Green, London) is an English rock musician, best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

Since the demise of the Kinks in the mid-90s Ray Davies has embarked on a solo career as a singer-songwriter.


Ritchie Blackmore

Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore (born 14 April 1945 in Weston-super-Mare) is an English guitarist, who was a founding member of hard rock bands Deep Purple and Rainbow. Blackmore left Deep Purple first in 1975 and for a second time in 1993 due to a growing rift between Blackmore and other members in spite of renewed commercial success. His current band is the Renaissance-influenced Blackmore's Night.

With Deep Purple and Rainbow, Blackmore almost exclusively played a Fender Stratocaster. He is also one of the rock guitarists to use a "scalloped" fretboard where the wood is filed and carved out into a shallow "U" shape between the frets.

One of Blackmore's best-known guitar riffs is from the song "Smoke on the Water". He plays the riff without a pick, using two fingers to pluck the strings in fourths.

In his soloing, Blackmore combines blues scales and phrases with minor scales and ideas from European classical music. While playing he would often put the pick in his mouth to play with his fingers.

He has two guitar solos ranked on Guitar World magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos" ("Highway Star" at #19 and "Lazy" at #74, both from the album Machine Head). In 2010, Blackmore was ranked #49 on Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.


Robert Fripp

Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, composer and a record producer best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, the progressive rock band King Crimson. His work, spanning four decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles. Fripp was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (published August 2003).
In 2010, Fripp was ranked #47 on Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

Fripp began playing guitar at the age of eleven. He says he was tone deaf with no sense of rhythm when he started. His comment on dealing with the obstacle is "Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice."

While being taught guitar basics by his teacher Don Strike (who Fripp described as "a very good player in the thirties style"), he began to develop the technique of crosspicking, which would later become a significant technique taught in Guitar Craft.

In 1985, Fripp began using a tuning he called "New Standard tuning"[11], which would also become the official tuning of Guitar Craft.

Fripp's guitar technique, unlike most rock guitarists of his era, is not blues-based but rather influenced by avant-garde jazz and European classical music, combining rapid alternate picking with motifs employing whole-tone or diminished pitch structures, continuous cross-picked (and polka-influenced) sixteenth-note patterns for long stretches in a form called moto perpetuo (perpetual motion).

Fripp is left-handed, but plays guitar right-handed.


Robin Trower

Robin Leonard Trower, known as Robin Trower (born 9 March 1945, Catford, South East London, England) is an English rock guitarist who achieved success with Procol Harum during the 1960s, and then again as the bandleader of his own power trio.

Trower has been a long time proponent of the Fender Stratocaster. He currently uses his custom built Strat (made by the Fender Custom Shop) which comes in Black, Arctic White and Midnight Wine Burst. The guitar is equipped with a 1950s reissue pickup in the neck position, a 1960s reissue in the middle position, and a Texas Special at the bridge.
Other features included a custom C-shaped maple neck featuring a large headstock with a Bullet truss-rod system, locking machine heads and a maple fingerboard with narrow-spaced abalone dot position inlays and 21 frets. The Strats he plays live are an exact model of his signature guitar, which is entirely unmodified. During live performances, his guitar is tuned a full step down, to a DGCFAD tuning.

Trower uses between one and three 100-Watt Marshall heads with four to six cabinets on stage. While he usually uses two JCM 800s and a JCM 900, he also links 100-Watt Marshall Plexi heads. In studio sessions, Trower uses a mix of amplifiers, such as a Fender Blues Junior and Cornell Plexi Amplifers models to acquire different tonality. Recently, Trower has been using Marshall Vintage Modern 2466 heads live.

He has recently been using Fulltone pedals and effects. He favors the OCD, Distortion Pro, Fat Boost, CLYDE Deluxe Wah, Deja Vibe 2, Soul-Bender, and a BOSS Chromatic Tuner. He runs his Deja Vibe into his distortion pedal to get his famous tone. He was given his own signature Fulltone Robin Trower Overdrive in late 2008.

For his 2009 tour Robin was using his Fender Custom Shop Signature Stratocater into a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner, Fulltone Robin Trower Overdrive, Fulltone Full Drive, Fulltone Clyde Standard Wah, Fulltone Wahfull, and Fulltone DejaVibe 2 into two Marshall Vintage Modern 2466 heads.


Rory Gallagher

Rory Gallagher born William Rory Gallagher (2 March 1948 – 14 June 1995) was an Irish blues-rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, and raised in Cork, Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste during the late 1960s.
A talented guitarist known for his charismatic performances and dedication to his craft, Gallagher's albums have sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide.
Gallagher received a liver transplant in 1995, but died of complications in 1995 in London, England aged 47.

Gallagher was always associated with his well-worn sunburst 1961 Stratocaster (Serial Number 64351), which his brother Donal has officially retired. It was reputedly the first in Ireland, and was ordered from Fender by Jim Connolly, a showband member performing with The Irish Showband.
Connolly ordered a cherry red Stratocaster through a music shop in Cork. When Fender shipped a sunburst Stratocaster instead, it went on sale as a second-hand instrument, which Gallagher bought for just shy of £100 at Crowley's Music Store on Cork's McCurtain Street. The guitar was extensively modified by Gallagher. The tuning pegs, for a start, are odd (5 Sperzel pegs and one Gotoh), and all of these have been found to be replacements.
Secondly, it is thought that the nut has been replaced and interchanged a number of times. Thirdly, the scratchplate was changed during Gallagher's time with Taste. Another change was made regarding the pickups, of which none are original. The final modification was that of the wiring: Gallagher disconnected the bottom tone pot and rewired it so he had just a master tone control along with the master volume control.
He also installed a 5-way selector switch in place of the vintage 3-way one. The most notable effect that years of touring have had is the almost complete removal of the guitar's original sunburst finish, due to Gallagher's rare blood type, which caused his sweat to be unusually acidic.
Although the Strat was left abandoned in a ditch, in the rain, for days after being stolen, this is not believed to have caused any of the effect. All of the wear is caused by playing, not misuse. It also had a period of time of having a replacement neck, with the original bowing due to the amount of moisture it absorbed during continuous touring.
The neck was taken off the strat and left to settle, and was eventually reunited with the Strat after returning to its correct shape. Other quirks include a 'hump' in the scratch plate which moves the neck pickup closer to the neck on the bass side and a replacement of all of the pickups, though this replacement was due to damage rather than a perception of a tonal inadequacy. One final point of interest is that one of the clay double-dot inlays at the 12th fret fell out and was replaced with a plastic one, which is why it is whiter than the other clay inlays.


Roy Buchanan

Roy Buchanan (September 23, 1939 - August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan was a sideman and solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career, and two later solo albums charting on the Billboard chart. Despite never having achieved stardom, he is still considered a highly influential guitar player.
Ranked #57 on the Rolling Stone list "100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time," Guitar Player praised him as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of all Time."

Buchanan used a number of guitars throughout his career, although he was most often associated with a 1953 Fender Telecaster guitar nicknamed "Nancy", the one he used to produce his trebly signature tone. The Buchanan sound is, essentially, achieved with minimum means: the Telecaster through a Fender Vibrolux with the volume and tone "full out," with the volume and tone controls on the guitar used to control volume and sound (he achieved a wah wah effect using the tone control).
Buchanan rarely used effects pedals, though he started using an Echoplex on A Street Called Straight (1976). To achieve his desired distorted sounds Buchanan would occasionally use a razorblade to cut open the speakers or even pour water over the tubes in his amplifers.

Buchanan taught himself many guitar styles, including the "chicken pickin" style. He sometimes used his thumb nail rather than a plectrum and also employed it to augment his index finger and plectrum. Holding his thumb at a certain angle, Buchanan was able to hit the string and then partially mute it, suppressing lower overtones and exposing the harmonics, a technique now known as pinch harmonics, though Buchanan himself called it an "overtone."
Buchanan had the ability to execute pinch harmonics on command, and could mute individual strings with free right-hand fingers while picking or pinching others.

Having first trained as a lap steel guitarist, Buchanan often imitated its effect and bent strings to the required pitch, rather than starting on the desired note. This was particularly notable in his approach to using double and triple stops.


Scott Gorham

Scott Gorham (born William Scott Gorham, March 17, 1951 in Glendale, California) is an American guitarist and songwriter who rose to international recognition as one of the "twin lead guitarists" of the Irish-formed rock band, Thin Lizzy. Although not a founding member of Thin Lizzy, he is best known for his continuous membership after joining in 1974 through the band's breakup in 1983.
Gorham and guitarist Brian Robertson, both hired at the same time, marked the beginning of the band's most critically successful period, and together developed the "twin lead guitar" makeup of the band that distinguished it's sound with dual backing vocals as well.

Since 1996 onward, with a different lineup, Gorham has continued to perform on guitar and backing vocals, and, as in years past, he has contributed to the band with with songwriting material written or co-written with other band members.


Scotty Moore

Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III (born December 27, 1931 near Gadsden, Tennessee) is an American guitarist. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis' Hollywood years. He was ranked forty-fourth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Scotty Moore learned to play the guitar from family and friends at eight years of age. Although underaged when he enlisted, Moore served in the United States Navy between 1948 and 1952.

Moore's early background was in jazz and country music. A fan of guitarist Chet Atkins, Moore led a group called the "Starlite Wranglers" before Sam Phillips at Sun Records put him together with then teenage Elvis Presley. Phillips believed that Moore's lead guitar and double bassist Bill Black was all that was needed to augment Presley's rhythm guitar and lead vocals on their recordings. In 1954 Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what was going to be the first legendary Presley hit, the Sun Studios session cut of "That's All Right (Mama)", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll history. Elvis, Black and Scotty Moore then formed the "Blue Moon Boys". They were later joined by drummer D.J. Fontana. Beginning in July 1954, the "Blue Moon Boys" toured and recorded throughout the American South and as Presley's popularity rose, they toured the United States and made appearances in various Presley television shows and motion pictures.

Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings including "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Baby Let's Play House", "Heartbreak Hotel", "Mystery Train", "Hound Dog", "Too Much" and "Jailhouse Rock".

Scotty Moore is given credit as the pioneer of the rock 'n' roll lead guitarist. Most popular guitarists cite Moore as the performer that brought the lead guitarist to a dominant role in a rock 'n' roll band. Although some lead guitarists/vocalists had gained popularity such as Chuck Berry and blues legend BB King, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, usually providing rhythm and leaving the lead duties to Moore. Moore was a noticeable presence in the Presley performances, strictly as a guitarist. As a result, he became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, one of the more vocal of these being Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Moore, being quite introverted on stage, accomplished this almost exclusively through his performance and interpretation of the music.

In the 1960s, Moore released a solo album called The Guitar That Changed the World. He performed on the NBC television special known as the '68 Comeback Special.

While with Presley, Moore initially played a Gibson ES-295, before switching to a Gibson L5 and subsequently a Gibson Super 400.

For his pioneering contribution, Moore has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
In 2000, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mark Adam portrayed Moore in the 2005 CBS miniseries Elvis.


Shawn Lane

Shawn Lane (March 21, 1963 – September 26, 2003) was an American musician. Although piano is his first instrument, he quickly became a noted player in underground guitar circles and joined Black Oak Arkansas when he was just fourteen years old.

He is best known for his solo album Powers of Ten and his long stint with former John McLaughlin bassist Jonas Hellborg. Lane is also well known for his fast playing skills. Guitar World magazine writes, "Few, if any, guitarists can play faster than Lane could, and his arpeggio sweeps and precision-picked lines blasted more rapid-fire notes than the average human mind could comprehend."


Slash

Saul Hudson (born 23 July 1965), better known by his stage name Slash, is a British-American musician. Best-known as the former lead guitarist of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he performed and recorded between 1985 and 1996, he later formed the eponymous Slash's Snakepit and co-founded Velvet Revolver with his former bandmates Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum.
His debut solo album, Slash, was released in April 2010.

Slash has received critical recognition as a guitarist. In August 2009, Time Magazine ranked him #2 on its list of the "10 Best Electric Guitar Players of All-Time".
He was also ranked #21 on Gigwise's list of the "50 Greatest Guitarists Ever".

Slash owns more than 100 guitars. The guitar he recorded Appetite For Destruction with was a hand made flame-top 1959 Les Paul replica with no pick guard and two Seymour Duncan pickups. His main live guitar is a 1987 Les Paul Standard with three piece top (Factory Second). It has a cracked neck in two places, but he has had it repaired and continues to use it. Most of Slash's electric guitars have Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups which are low output pickups.

His guitars include: B.C. Rich Mockingbird, Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, B.C. Rich Double neck, Gibson EDS-1275, Gibson Flying V, Gibson Explorer, Gibson Melody Maker (used for slide during "Bad Obsession"), Slash Custom Les Paul Gold Top Guitar, Guild Crossroads acoustic/electric double neck.

One of Slash's favorite guitars is the aforementioned hand-made Gibson Les Paul Copy. He received it during the recording sessions for Guns N' Roses debut album, "Appetite for Destruction". When he couldn't get the right sound he was looking for, the band's manager found a 1959 Les Paul Standard copy. He has used that guitar on every album he has recorded with Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver. The guitar was also the basis of the instrument his doppelgänger used in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.


Steve Cropper

Steven Lee Cropper (born October 21, 1941 in Willow Springs, Missouri), also known as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper is an American guitarist, songwriter and producer. He is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band Booker T. & The MG's and backed artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla, Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, also acting as producer on many of these records.
He later gained fame as a member of The Blues Brothers band. Cropper is generally regarded as the most well known and influential soul guitarist.


Steve Hackett

Stephen Richard Hackett (born 12 February 1950) is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. He gained prominence as a member of the British progressive rock group Genesis, which he joined in 1970. Hackett remained with the band for eight albums before leaving in 1977 to pursue a solo career.

In 1986, Hackett co-founded the supergroup GTR with another progressive guitarist, Steve Howe of Yes and Asia. The group released a self-titled album that year, which peaked at #11 on the Billboard 200 in the United States and spawned the Top 20 single "When the Heart Rules the Mind". When Hackett left GTR in 1987, the group disbanded.

After leaving GTR, Hackett resumed his solo career and has released albums and toured on a regular basis since. His body of work has encompassed many styles, such as progressive rock, world music, and classical. His playing has influenced guitarists such as Alex Lifeson and Brian May. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.


Steve Howe

Stephen James "Steve" Howe (born 8 April 1947 in Holloway, North London, England) is an English guitarist best known for his work with the progressive rock group Yes after replacing Peter Banks in 1970. He has also been a member of The Syndicats, Bodast, Tomorrow, Asia and GTR, as well as having released 17 solo albums as of September 2009.

Howe was voted "Best Overall Guitarist" in Guitar Player magazine five years in a row (1977 - 1981) and was inducted into Guitar Player's "Gallery of Greats" in 1981. The only other two guitarists to win the "Best Overall Guitarist" category for the "Gallery Of Greats" are Steve Morse and Eric Johnson.

Gibson Guitar Corporation, the maker of Howe's second electric guitar (which he was still playing forty years later), said that Howe "elevated rock guitar into an art form" and "helped define a new style of music known as art rock." In a tribute to Howe and his personal favourite ES-175 guitar, Gibson produced a Steve Howe Signature ES-175 in 2002.

Rolling Stone ranked him number sixty-nine on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time in 2003.


Steve Lukather

Steve "Luke" Lukather (born October 21, 1957, San Fernando Valley, California) is an American Grammy Award-winning guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer best known for his work with the rock band Toto. Lukather has played with countless artists, released several solo albums and, as a studio session guitarist, has been involved with arranging, composing, and recording on over 1,000 albums.
He is also a member of jazz fusion bands El Grupo and Los Lobotomys, both collaborations of notable sessions musicians. While his work with Toto was predominantly based on pop rock music, Lukather's solo and side-project work spans many genres including rock, prog, jazz and funk.

Notable session keyboardist David Paich and session drummer Jeff Porcaro were high school friends with Lukather. They asked Lukather to join in forming their band, Toto, in 1976 when Lukather was nineteen years old. He was a member of Toto from that time until the band split up in 2008.
Lukather's reputation as a guitarist and his association with Paich and Porcaro, already established session musicians, allowed him to secure a great deal of session work in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a prolific songwriter, writing or co-writing many songs for Toto and other artists.
His career has encompassed hundreds of performances and album appearances with Toto and other well-known musicians. Lukather has been nominated for 12 Grammy awards, and has won five times.

Lukather is known for his acumen in the studio, often recording tracks in one take using minimal sound processing. Although known for using many guitar effects in the studio and on stage, he now frequently disparages such practice, and instead advocates clean tones and minimal studio processing.
Lukather plays primarily a signature electric guitar manufactured by Ernie Ball Music Man bearing his nickname, Luke, and equipped with a custom set of EMG pickups. He also plays Ovation Adamas acoustic-electric guitars.

Influenced by blues-rock guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, jazz guitarists such as Larry Carlton, and jazz fusion players such as Al Di Meola and Frank Gambale, Lukather is known for a "melodic and intense" playing style.
His vibrato is very pronounced and his exaggerated wide bends are instantly recognizable. Well versed in theory, Lukather can follow chord charts and changes as a jazz musician would, and this ability enhances his value as a session musician. In interviews, he has explained how he thinks of the guitar in a "chordal cluster" format, and not the typical "linear scale" format.

Lukather's approach to engineering his sound in the studio is usually simplistic. He is not known for doing a large number of takes or for incorporating much overdubbing—rather, he has a reputation for doing only single takes for many parts.
Although he enjoys the technical mastery that is possible in the studio, Lukather prefers the dynamic of performing live on stage. He has stated that dynamics are the most important element of producing a recording with good sound quality.

Despite being known in the past for having an intricate effects rack, Lukather now claims to play mostly free of effects after seeing some overdone commercial effects processors named after him. Other than some delay, he has not used many effects in recent years.
He has held a long association with Bob Bradshaw of Custom Audio Electronics, who designed and manufactured key elements of Lukather's effects rack. Lukather is one of the few official endorsers of EMG pickups, having collaborated on his own Lukather signature "SL20" pickup system.
The pickup system is a single unit incorporating two different types of pickups (including a humbucker), single volume and tone knobs, and a pickguard.

Lukather is an endorser of Music Man guitars and has a signature model named "Luke" that incorporates his signature EMG pickup system. The guitar started out with only MusicMan specifications (including a Floyd Rose locking vibrato, later replaced with a vintage-style fulcrum bridge), but in 1998 the manufacturer made several customizations to the model to better fit Lukather's playing style.
Music Man also produces a Ball Family Reserve Steve Lukather Model that features upgraded hardware and materials.
Lukather has also been known to play Ibanez, Tyler and Valley Arts guitars as well as a vintage Gibson Les Paul. His relationship with Ibanez and Valley Arts yielded an endorsement for a brief time in the 1980s with the release of the Ibanez Roadstar RS1010SL and Valley Arts Custom Pro Steve Lukather Signature guitars in 1984/85.


Steve Morse

Steven J. Morse (born July 28, 1954) is an American guitarist, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs, and the guitar player in Deep Purple since 1994.

Morse's career has encompassed rock, country, funk, jazz, classical, and fusion of these musical genres. In addition to a thriving solo career, he enjoyed a brief stint with Kansas in the mid 80s.

Morse is considered one of the hardest working guitarists in the world, playing in a wide variety of genres in only thirty years. He is known for his stylistically diverse compositional skills and virtuosic abilities, and was voted "Best Overall Guitarist" by Guitar Player magazine for five years in a row, qualifying him for their "Guitar Player Hall of Fame", the only other members being Steve Howe of Yes and Eric Johnson. He is regularly cited by John Petrucci as a major influence, and has proven himself throughout his career as capable of playing highly complex chord structures in classical sequences, as well as being able to play fast, shredded arpeggios. He is well known for using harmonics and improvising them in songs during live performances, such as in Deep Purple's "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming".

Steve Vai

Steven Siro "Steve" Vai (born June 6, 1960) is an American rock guitarist, songwriter, vocalist, producer and actor. After starting his professional career as a music transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, Vai also recorded and toured in Zappa's band, starting in 1980. The guitarist began a solo career in 1984 and has released 13 solo albums as of 2008. Apart from his work with Frank Zappa, Vai has also recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake. Vai has been a regular touring member of the G3 Concert Tour which began in 1996. In 1999 Vai started his own record label, Favored Nations, intending to showcase, as Vai describes, "...artists that have attained the highest performance level on their chosen instruments.

Vai is a virtuoso in the world of guitar music. His 1990 album Passion and Warfare and the ballad For the Love of God in particular received a significant amount of press, and are often cited by critics and fans alike as amongst his best work.

Vai's playing style has been characterized as quirky and angular, owing to his technical ability with the instrument and deep knowledge of music theory. He regularly uses odd rhythmic groupings and his melodies often employ the Lydian mode. Perhaps his most readily-identifiable stylistic feature is his creative use of the floating vibrato, using it to add melodic lines that sound odd to the ear. His playing can also be described as lyrical, as if sung by a human voice. He often uses exotic guitars: he plays both double and triple neck guitars (including a custom-made heart-shaped triple-neck model built by luthier Joe Despagni), and is regarded as the first to use the 7-string guitar in a rock context.[5] Along with Ibanez, he designed a signature 7-string guitar, the Ibanez Universe in 1989.


Terry Kath

Terry Alan Kath (January 31, 1946 – January 23, 1978) born in Chicago, Illinois, was the original guitarist and founding member of the rock band Chicago. He died in 1978 at the age of 31 from an unintentionally self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A multi-instrumentalist who played lead & rhythm guitar, banjo, accordion, bass, and drums, Kath played lead guitar in a band called "Jimmy and the Gentlemen" during the mid-1960s. He played bass in a road band called Jimmy Ford and The Executives. Kath's close friend, Walter Parazaider, played in these bands as well, and they were together in developing the band later to be called Chicago.

Kath was an important contributor to Chicago, beginning with their first album The Chicago Transit Authority released in 1969. The album includes his composition "Introduction" which was described as "Terry's masterpiece" by later Chicago guitarist Dawayne Bailey. The song displays many varied musical styles, including jazz, blues, salsa, rock and roll, acid rock, and pop.

The same debut album includes an instrumental guitar piece entitled "Free Form Guitar". The album liner notes indicate that this nearly seven minute piece was recorded 'live' in the studio in one take using an overdriven Fender Showman amplifier and a Fender Stratocaster guitar (on the album's gatefold sleeve, however, Kath is pictured playing a Gibson SG). "Free Form Guitar" is also noted as being an influence on the genre of noise music.

The hit "Questions 67 & 68" contains lead guitar techniques that became staples of the Chicago sound. The song "Beginnings" includes acoustic rhythm guitar by Kath. Another of Kath's more notable highlights as a recording guitarist is his extended guitar solo in the middle of the Chicago hit song "25 or 6 to 4".

Fascinated by gadgets, Kath once owned nearly twenty guitars, though his early staples were a Gibson SG and a Fender Stratocaster. Kath was also one of the few well-known guitarists to make regular use of the unique 1969 Les Paul "Professional" model.
He utilized no special tunings or modifications. He is most associated with a specially decorated Fender Telecaster and was connected with Pignose amplifiers. He experimented with a wide variety of amplification and distortion devices and used a wah-wah pedal frequently.

Kath's singing was also an important feature of Chicago's sound. In a group of many song composers who often let other members of the band do the lead singing on their compositions, Kath's vocal style can be heard in "Colour My World" and "Make Me Smile" , both from Chicago.
His screaming in the live version of "Free" from Chicago at Carnegie Hall, released in 1971, is another example of his singing style. Kath also played bass and sings lead vocal in the closing song "Tell Me" in the 1973 drama movie Electra Glide in Blue. "Tell Me" was also used as the last song in the final episode of Miami Vice.

Kath was also a massive influence on contemporary musicians at the time. Jimi Hendrix explicitly referred to him several times before his death, saying things such as "(Terry Kath) is better than me," and "(Terry Kath)'s the best guitar player in the universe."


The Edge

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961 in Barking, London, England), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge), is an Irish musician. He is best known as the guitarist, keyboardist, and main backing vocalist of rock band U2.
His distinctive electric guitar timbre and percussive style of playing, along with his use of digital sound processing — delay and chorus in particular — has been crucial in defining U2's sound. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named him at #24 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar.

Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert.
He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.

When he takes over for bassist Adam Clayton for the song "40", he used the Ibanez Musicia n in the 1980s and the Lakland Darryl Jones Signature for the more recent Vertigo Tour.

Thurston Moore

Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958 in Coral Gables, Florida)[1] is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label.

Moore is known for using a large selection of Fender guitars during gigs. Most of the time he plays a Jazzmaster through many different types of amps among which Vox AC30, Peaveys and Fenders are present. He also plays a Jaguar and a heavily modified Mustang with three single-coil pickups, but less often.

Since Ranaldo and Moore, together with Elvis Costello, J. Mascis and Kevin Shields are known for being key figures in the popularization and resurrection of the Fender Jazzmaster, Fender introduced in 2009 a special Lee Ranaldo signature edition of a Sapphire Blue Transparent version featuring two Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups together with a Forest Green Transparent finish for Moore (equipped with a pair of Seymour Duncan Antiquity II Jazzmaster single-coil pickups).



Tommy Bolin

Thomas Richard "Tommy" Bolin (August 1, 1951, Sioux City, Iowa - December 4, 1976) was an American-born guitarist who played with Zephyr (from 1969 to 1971), The James Gang (from 1973 through 1974), Deep Purple (from 1975 to 1976), and his solo work. He died of a drug overdose in 1976.

Tommy Bolin began playing in bands around Sioux City as a youth before moving to Boulder, Colorado, in his late teens. He had played in a band called American Standard before joining Ethereal Zephyr, a band named after a train that ran between Denver and Chicago.
When record companies became interested, the name was shortened to Zephyr. This band included Bolin on guitar, David Givens on bass, and Givens' wife Candy Givens on vocals. The band had begun to do larger venues, opening for more established acts such as Led Zeppelin. Their second album, entitled Going Back to Colorado, featured a new drummer, Bobby Berge, who would pop up from time to time in musician credits in album liner notes from Bolin's later projects.

In 1972 Bolin, at the age of 20, formed the fusion jazz-rock-blues band Energy. While the band never released an album during Bolin's lifetime, several recordings have been released posthumously.
He also played on Billy Cobham's Spectrum album, which included Bolin on guitar, Billy Cobham of Mahavishnu Orchestra on drums, Leland Sklar on bass and Jan Hammer (also of Mahavishnu Orchestra) on keyboards and synthesizers.

1973 found him as Domenic Troiano's replacement, who had replaced Joe Walsh, in the James Gang. He had two records with this band: Bang! in 1973 and Miami in 1974.

After the Miami tour, Bolin wanted out of the James Gang. He went on to do session work for numerous rock bands and also with a number of jazz artists including Mouzon's album Mind Transplant. He also toured with Carmine Appice, Moxy and The Good Rats.

Bolin signed with Nemperor records to record a solo album. Bolin decided to do his own vocals on this album as well. Session players on this record included David Foster, David Sanborn, Jan Hammer, Stanley Sheldon, Phil Collins and Glenn Hughes. During the recording of this album, he was contacted to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple.

In the start of 1975 Bolin contributed some studio guitar assistance to Canadian band Moxy during the recording of their debut album. Later in 1975 saw the release of Bolin's first solo record, Teaser, on the Nemperor label, and Deep Purple's Come Taste the Band on the Purple label. The Deep Purple world tour that followed in 1975 and 1976 allowed Bolin to showcase one song per night from Teaser.

In 2001, This Time Around: Live in Tokyo 1975 was released.

After Deep Purple disbanded in March, 1976, Bolin was back on the road with his solo band and planning a second solo record. The band had a rotating cast of players which included Norma Jean Bell on saxophone and eventually Bolin's younger brother Johnnie Bolin on drums.

CBS signed Bolin. In 1976 he began to record Private Eyes, his second solo record.


Tony Iommi

Frank Anthony "Tony" Iommi (born 19 February 1948, in Aston, Birmingham, England) is an English guitarist and songwriter best known as the founding member of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and the sole constant band member through multiple personnel changes.

Iommi is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential guitarists in rock music: according to Allmusic, "Iommi is one of only two guitarists (the other being Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page) that can take full credit for pioneering the mammoth riffs of heavy metal."
In 2003, Iommi was ranked 86th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2004, number one on Guitar World's "100 Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time".


Tony MacAlpine

Tony Jeff MacAlpine (born August 29, 1960) is an American guitarist and keyboardist.
Having released ten studio albums over a career spanning more than two decades, he is best known as an instrumental solo guitarist; although he has worked with many different bands and musicians in the form of guest appearances and collaborations.


Uli John Roth

Ulrich Roth (born 18 December 1954), more commonly known as Uli Jon Roth, is a German guitarist and one of the earliest contributors to the neo-classical metal genre. He is also the founder of Sky Academy and inventor of the Sky Guitar. He is the older brother of fellow guitarist and artist Zeno Roth.

In the 1980s, Roth commissioned construction of custom guitars with additional frets from master luthier Andreas Demetriou. Andreas developed the concept adding many unique specifications. Uli Jon Roth has (or at least has had) at least five of these "Sky" guitars.
They are beautifully crafted by hand by the British luthier, and also used by the guitarist from Fair Warning. The first three Sky guitars were as follows: One had 36 frets, another had 42 frets, and a third one is fretless which was used on the Beyond the Astral Skies album.
In an April 2001 Guitar Player Magazine interview, Roth reports that the guitars are either fretless above the 30th fret or have whole step fret spacing above the 27th fret, with 35 effective (half step) frets. All of the Sky guitars with frets have extensive fretboard scalloping as is favored by Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen (who was influenced greatly by Roth) and many neoclassical metal guitarists.
The Sky guitar's pickups are custom 4-coil humbuckers made by John Oram, with one guitar having an Oram pickup hidden under the 24th fret. The guitars named 'Mighty Wing' and 'Destiny' have 7 strings and the others have 6 strings. The 7th string is a low B.
Roth preferred amplifier is currently the Framus Dragon, and he uses a stalk mounted Vibesware guitar resonator (sustainer) to introduce infinite sustain during solos both live, and on the song "Benediction" from "Under a Dark Sky".

Vinnie Moore

Vinnie Moore (April 14, 1964, New Castle, Delaware) is a guitarist and a member of the English hard rock band UFO. Along with Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony MacAlpine, and others, Moore is known as one of the most influential guitarists to emerge out of the shredder boom in the mid 1980s.

Moore has endorsed numerous guitar companies over the years, his most well known being Music Man guitars. In 2007 Moore left Music Man and began endorsing Dean guitars.
At the winter NAMM show in January 2008, Dean Guitars unveiled a Vinnie Moore signature model. The Dean VM-2000 features a Vinnie Moore "ShredHead" Humbucker in the bridge position.
Moore also has an endorsement contract with Engl amplification.


Yngwie Malmsteen

Yngwie Johann Malmsteen (born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck on June 30, 1963) is a Swedish guitarist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. Malmsteen became notable in the mid-1980s for his technical fluency and neo-classical metal compositions, often incorporating high speed picking with harmonic minor scales, diminished scales and sweep picked arpeggios. Four of his albums, from 1984 to 1988, Rising Force, Marching Out, Trilogy, and Odyssey, ranked in the top 100 for sales.

Malmsteen is best known for his extremely fast shred guitar solos and Neo-classical style of playing. He favors the harmonic minor scale, and often uses diminished arpeggios and phrygian scales and draws an influence from Bach and Beethoven. In an interview, Malmsteen confessed that his regular use of harmonic minor was because in the 1980s he was trying to move away from the blues-based pentatonic scales that "everybody else was using".

Malmsteen has been a longtime user of Fender Stratocasters. His most famous Stratocaster is his 1971 blonde Strat, nicknamed "The Duck" because of its yellow color and the Donald Duck stickers on the body. He also has a signature Stratocaster. It comes in a Vintage White finish with a maple neck and either a maple or rosewood fretboard. Every fret is scalloped.

He is an avid fan of Marshall amplifiers. He has been in magazine ads where he has been quoted as saying "I'd rather pay for a Marshall than play anything else for free."

In the mid to late 80s Malmsteen endorsed Schecter guitars which produced multiple custom models with Strat style bodies and reversed Fender headstocks for him.