Watch this before buying your next fuzz

Plus, 19 tips on buying your next guitar

Here we are on Easter Sunday! I’m enjoying a few days off here, and trying to get in as much guitar playing as possible. I recently had two interesting experiences in the guitar world.

The first one, was trying to reach out to both editor-in-chiefs from Guitar World and Guitar Player. I never heard back from GW, but luckily Christopher Scapelliti (who’s the EIC over at GP) got back to me and fixed the issue. If you subscribe to Guitar World or Guitar Player in Apple News, neither one was updating as regularly as they used to - months of magazines were missing. After hearing back from Chris, both magazines fixed the problem, and now all the new issues are back in Apple News!

The other thing that I got into this week, was that I was frustrated with the intonation on my Fender original 50’s Tele, so I ended up swapping out the saddles with Gotoh In Tune compensated ones. Much thanks to my friend Simon Allaway for the moral support. Check out Simon’s blog here. I want to link to it so he writes more posts! I always love checking out his experiments.  Moral of the story here is, don’t be afraid to work on your guitars!

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This week’s guitar links!

- How To Build A Fender Guitar - Earlier this year, Mary Spender took a visit to the Fender Factory to get a pretty sweet behind the scenes tour. She checks out everything from the wood mill and metal shops, to the area for painting, and even takes a trip to the custom shop. This is a very well put together video. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to get a tour of this factory as well, where I was able to check out all the different and great guitar brands they have under the same roof. If you get a chance to do the tour in California, I highly suggest it! It was a bucket list item for me.

- 19 Guitar-Buying Tips You MUST Know - Have about 7 mins and want to know what you're doing when you're buying a guitar? Well, Tyler from Music Is Win has you covered. Tyler talks about 19 guitar-buying tips that are super helpful to know before you purchase your next instrument. The first tip might be the most valuable...but how many of us have that willpower? Tips 3, 9, 12, 17, and 19 really hit home for me. What was your favorite tip from this video?

- Watch This Before You Buy a Fuzz Pedal (The Fuzz Compendium) - Want more advice, but this time for buying fuzz pedals? Well, Rhett Shull has just the video for you. Rhett tried over 30 fuzz pedals for your listening pleasure. Plus, there's a pretty sweet advertisement for TWANG towards the beginning of the video. 🙂

- Reharmonisation: A Complete Overview (Foundations, Intermediate, Advanced) - Jack Gardiner has been one of my favorite guitarists over the past few years. Plus, I always love the courses he puts out. I ended up picking up his newest which focuses on reharmonizing songs. If you don't know what reharmonization is, you should check out his intro example, where he turns four, less than exciting chords into something awesome, in the style of Beyonce's "Say My Name".

- Wolf Van Halen’s Tornado of Tapping on “Take a Bow” - Chris Shiflett's podcast has been one of my favorite guitar shows since it launched. Chris' latest guest is Wolfgang Van Halen. They go over the solo to “Take a Bow”, check out his latest signature guitar, and even break out Eddie's Frankenstein strat.

- Intro to Fusion Masterclass with Juan Antonio - Luke Lewis at GuitarVivo is always getting great guests to join him for masterclasses. This week, he had Juan Antonio on to talk about fusion, including an announcement of his brand new book, which covers 100 fusion licks. If you ever wanted to learn to play in this style, especially if you're looking to have that ear turning “out" sort of sound, you should check this masterclass out.

- Satch/Vai Tour 2024 Night 1 Recap in Orlando, FL  & New Satch/Vai Music! - Satriani put up a short recap of night 1 of the Satch/Vai tour, which includes their rendition of “Enter Sandman”. It looks like they're having a ton of fun playing together, and the house was packed - which makes me happy that instrumental guitar music is still alive. Speaking of which, Satriani and Vai just released their first single together, which you can check out here.

- “I’m at a loss for words”: It’s one of the defining cartoon theme tunes of the ’90s – now Nili Brosh has reimagined the classic X-Men lick fest for X-Men ’97 - I loved watching the old X-Men show when I was growing up. Marvel recently released the first few episodes of their reboot of the show, called X-Men '97. And with the reboot, they also have a new rendition of the iconic theme song, which Nili Brosh recorded guitars for! How cool is that?

- “Just as I was setting up the mic, Jimi started playing, and man, my brain froze. In that second, my life changed”: Eddie Kramer on working with Hendrix, Kiss, Jimmy Page and why guitar players should think more analog - Eddie Kramer is one of the most legendary engineers of all time. While he's worked with giants like Led Zeppelin, Santana, the Beatles and more, he's most known for his work with Jimi Hendrix. In this interview with Guitar World, he talks about how incredible it was working with Jimi, his love for analog recording, and still being excited by music, all these years later.

- A master of pickslanting, economy picking and pentatonic flurries, Eric Johnson is one of the smoothest soloists on the planet – and his techniques will make really make your solos pop - I'm a sucker for a good Eric Johnson lesson, and this one from Guitar Techniques was a lot of fun to work on. GT briefly talks about pickslanting, CAGED shapes, and economy picking, and then move on to some great pentatonic/minor licks. These are all super accessible, and are great jumping off points to create your own EJ inspired licks.

- "Buried in Gear" A Day at Nerdville with Joe Bonamassa - If you want to revisit Joe Bonamassa's Nerdville collection of gear, check out this video from Chicago Music Exchange. Fenders, Gibsons, all sorts of amps, and other collectible trinkets show up in this video.