h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The guitar is sublime.

This is where we talk axe. Favorite guitars, good tab. sources, the most horrendous price paid for a Les Paul once played by Jimmy Page and Slash, that kind of thing. We can even have a pointless "best guitarist (not band) in the world" flame, if you like.

Okay, I'm game.
Favourite guitar: Gibson SG ('cause I've got one. Well, alright, a copy)
Good Tab Source: OLGA - The OnLine Guitar Archive ( http://www.olga.net ) It's been closed down due to legal action but you can still search it. That and Total Guitar magazine.
Best guitarist: Kirk Hammett gets my vote (but only 'cause I can't say Metallica ).

Hammett? Though an excellent chopmeister I worry about his soloing. Have you seen the video "A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica: Part 1"? Hammett comes over as the stereotypical rock primadonna. The finished Unforgiven solo is a masterpiece, but the chop-run-chop-run bollocks that led to it were dire. James Hetfield is the one with the guitar part writing talent, I reckon, as the same video shows in the recording of the Nothing Else.. solo. Bet you that's where most of the cooler sounding bits come from - Sanitarium, One.

Anyhow, the best guitarist in the world today is Jerry Cantrell.

Okay, maybe Hammett wasn't such a good choice. Wholeheatedly agree about Hetfield - I think his riff writing talent is unquestionable. I have seen that video and, yes the Nothing Else Matters solo is sublime. Any more laid back and he'd be horizontal. Haven't really listened to Alice in Chains much so I'll have to take your word about Jerry Cantrell. What about old favourites like Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani...?

...oh and you wouldn't fancy having a look at my entry on the guitar would you? http://www.h2g2.com/P117253

Steve Vai had his arse thrashed by Frank Zappa and rightfully so. Are we talking good in terms of ability to create tunes, ability to whizz up and occasionally down the fretboard or good in terms of hair, trousers, posturing and realism of pick action?
John Sykes needed a better singer, drummer, keyboard player and bassist; as it was he was stuck in a crap band that wouldn't let a good tune get in the way of good old-fashioned metal wankery.
Ian Ball and Ben Ottewell need a mention here. Simplicity is best.
Years ago I saw something on which John Lee Hooker was playing with various bods including Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder. AT the end, some little bloke in a funny hat called Richard Ryder got up and played some nice bouncy stuff on an acoustic, realising (unlike Mike McReady) that they sound best when playing more than one note at a time. Stone Gossard deserves credit, if only for the Alive riff. Mark Yates used to carry the rest of the band until they decided to start having remixes done. The little widdly bit from Oblivion was very nice. Steve Rothery was overfond of the chorus pedal but could do nice things. Martin Barre could play well but his solo album showed a lack of ideas. Ian Anderson isn't primarily a guitarist but did create some nice tunes, particularly Up To Me and the first bit of Thick as a Brick. G-Love is both good at playing and good at writing.

Stone Gossard! Yes!

The best thing Mike McCready ever did was Yellow Leadbetter on the B side of Jeremy. Chilling. Superb.

Did you see him on BoBfest '92 playing masters of war with Eddie and some bloke playing the mandolin? Swinging his hair to and fro as if the crowd and viewers were looking anywhere else but at Eddie's eyesockets to see where his irises and pupils had gone. That might be his worst moment, though the trying-to-play-the-Alive-solo-on-an-acoustic on the Unplugged sesh comes a close second. What other bits did Stone not only play but write? Half of Vitalogy and No Code was shit but the riff throughout a song whose title escapes me but to which the lyrics are "I just want someone to be there for" is nice. Difference? That might be it. J. Mascis could do better but has done quite well, especially with Start Choppin' and Get Me. I love it when the guitar carries the entire melody, rhythm and feel by itself. Billy Corgan has his many shite moments but did well on the first and second volume-surprise moments on Rhinoceros. Chunky. Mmmmm. Iha should avoid trying to play single notes and stick to doing stuff like Plume from Pisces Iscariot. Kossof had an ear for a good riff. Sometimes. Polly Harvey has done some excellent bits, especially the refrain/intro to Missed. Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil added some tunes to their usual thrashy stuff on Superunknown, especially for the Day I Tried to Live and the nice wide-sounding intro to Limo Wreck. Time to mention Ben Ottewell and Ian Ball again in case people have forgotten about them.

I love most of the stuff on Dinosaur Jr's "Out There", my PC at home starts Windows to the opening barres of Start Choppin', but I borrowed the follow up album off a mate and it didn't have the same effect.

You haven't mentioned Cantrell yet. The solo from Nutshell (Jar of Flies) is a minimalist work of art and the riff from Dirt's opening track, Them Bones, is pure evil.

AAARHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

", ability to
whizz up and occasionally down the fretboard "

There are two decent tracks on Vai's Passion and Warfare - one that starts with a funky thing and one with a nice melodic solo. The rest of it is scale practice and a demo of some expensive effects and MIDI stuff.

I bought Yngwie Malmsteen's "Magnum Opus" (pretentious git) a couple of years back and I still don't think I've listened to the whole album. 60 minutes of tapping practice does not an album make.

There used to be a busker in Leeds, Jools Hodgson, who was as good, if not better than Vai. He'd sit there in the middle of a pedestrian precinct with his drum machine, his effects pedals and a black Ibanez RG570 and work magic. I bought a tape of his called Ration and Welfare

Whale and wasp? Slightly more minimalists than Nutshell, though the acoustic bit on the same is excellent. COuld have done with being played on a straight acoustic rather than an electro-acoustic. Same for the bass. What was Cantrell's solo album like?

A bloke I worked with a few years ago was mad on Mr. Big, Malmstein, Bettencourt (wankerwankerwanker), Whitesnake and so forth. He'd been taught by Sean Colvin and thus thought tapping was the only way to use a guitar. A transcript of one of Colvin's tracks off the Jazz Metal album said something like "240 crotchets per minute. Swing feel". If you've got time to add a swing feel at that speed you've got too much time on your hands. Needless to say it was lacking in a tune, a feel and any soul. Anyway, this bloke has an extremely daft-looking bright pink tapping-device (forget the make but it was something equivalent to a Jackson) and a Gordon Smith Les Paul, which I was only permitted to touch once. The pink thing was stupid - you couldn't feel the strings under your fingers and only had to breathe on the trem bar to make it wobble. The other was better but was still designed for fretwankery rather than riffing. This bloke had fun pointing out that he could hardly play the rhythm part to Boom Diddy Bop or whatever it's called and that the lead part was twice as fast. Satriani's Moonlight is an exception to the rule that tapped stuff lacks tune. What it comes down to is that they're playing an arpeggiated chord in a slightly different sequence than would be available to someone picking the notes individually. I can't tap on my cheapy Epiphone LP standard copy and am glad. If people want to produce a rapid flurry of high-frequency sine wave shaped noises there are better things to do it on than a guitar.
What irks me most about all swift-fretting people is the fact that they all favour the high-treble, high-bass and no-middle sound. Guitars sound best with masses of middle, the very top cut off and about half as much bass as is possible. That's why Houses of the Holy wasn't as good as the rest of Zep stuff.

Very good. Two or three stonking tracks, one or two turkeys and the rest pretty good. Not enough widdly-widdly or the Hendrixy-hammer-onanoffachord-howdedodat stuff that he can do so well for me.

http://www.sonymusic.com/artists/JerryCantrell/?frameset=1

Sorry to butt in here like an unexpected guff, but was the pink tapping thing an Ibanez Gem 777 with 'scalloped' frets above the 14th fret? A kid I knew got bought anything he wanted by his rich dad and he wanted to learn guitar so his dad paid a grand for this guitar because Steve Vai used one, and a Steve Vai songbook. It was an absolute dog to play, so this kid made a few clung-krang noises on it for a couple of weeks and then went on to his next waste of time and money.
It's the most difficult guitar I've tried to play apart from a Byrds-style 12-string Rickenbacker which was impossible (all strings, no frets).
I started with a sub-hundred-quid Vox White Shadow (strat-neck with 2 humbuckers). I had it for 5 years and it was the nicest guitar to play I've ever had. It didn't sound amazing, just had such a nice feel. Now I've got a Tokai strat copy and it's just fine.
I agree wholeheartedly about frettapperywankery. I think a good solo's like a great journey, happy to slow down to take in the sights and then running off somewhere unexpected (e.g. Floyd "Comfortably Numb", Led Zep. "Since I've Been Loving You", Zappa "Watermelon in Easter Hay", Cardiacs "Is This The Life", Television "Marquee Moon" etc. etc.).
Soloists like Malmstein make solos which sound like your Gran knitting a jumper that you have to wear all Christmas.

Don't think it was an ibanez. Locking trem in the Floyd Rose stylee, through-neck, pointy headstock, equal-length bridge-end projections. Can't think of the make - suggest some and I'll remember. I think the fretboard was ash rather than rosewood. My first guiitar was a £70 secondhand Columbus 350 copy with a badly-fixed bolt-on neck that wobbled if you pulled it hard enough - very nice feel, adequate intonation, decent pickups and good tension. My second and current is the Epiphone LP standard, which looks a little better, plays a little better and sounds a little better. There's a shit recording of it if you go to my homepage - it might be a little loud so be careful. One of my mates at school had a USA strat in yellow/white which cost £600 but played like a piece of damp spaghetti. He traded it in for a Washburn that was a little tighter but which had shite pickups, especially noticeable when played through either a Marshall MOSFET 100 or a Peavey. Why do people buy Peavey amps? Their PAs are allright but their Supersat™ distortion is the biggest pile of arse I've ever heard. I've got a Laney which suffices but once played through a Park practice amp which had the best sound in the world. It assured me that I didn't need to somehow find the extra £700 to get a genuine Les Paul.

Nicest Gibson I ever played was a 'BB King signature edition' semi-acoustic with the most outrageously fat body in the world. It was impossible to play sitting down, but had a wonderful sustain and when played through an Alesis reverb and a Marshall stack could make the most naff blues scale sound like something from Twin Peaks. At a cool grand it's in the 'errrm maybe next year' class of guitars. I must admit I prefer a thinnish Strat neck as I find Gibson necks a bit too thick to barre comfortably for a while. Having said that, the frets are easier to hit as they stand a bit prouder than weedy Strat frets.

My ultimate dream guitar is an original '52 blond Telecaster, and I've bought my Lottery ticket just in case

So, as this is an axe forum, let's talk strings. As I mainly play rhythm (with the odd riff) I use Ernie Ball hybrids. What about you?

Daddario XLs in 10s. I think the bottom E is about .046". Does everyone else notice that the Rotosounds that come with the extra top E are provided with such a thing merely because the first will break whilst you're stretching it? I used to be quite keen on Ernie Balls in .008"s but packed them in when I got sick of the weedy sound and buzz that low-tension strings provide. I've got a fairly short scale and no headstock tensioning thing and therefore have to stick to non-wobbly thick strings if I want any kind of meatiness and sustain. Daddarios are nice in this way but also require less cleaning than other strings. I'll be back to this tomorrow but am, in the meantime, missing The Simpsons. Cheerybye.

I use Maxima Gold 9-42's myself. I don't break strings often but I have horribly acidic sweaty hands. If I use normal strings and don't clean them properly I can make them go black very fast.
I think we're all in agreement that the number of notes per second does not make a good guitarist.On the other hand of course, playing fast does not necessarily make you crap either.
"Always with me, always with you" by Joe Satriani is a brilliant tune that has fast bits in but not un-necessary ones.I alwys like guitarists who have a good attitude and aren't too big headed.
look at Angus Young. He might be a total nutter and he's not the best guitarist ever, but the amount of energy he puts into a performance is anmazing and he also freely admits that his band puts out the same album every year with a different cover.Joe Satriani is always very modest about his ability but he writes good tunes. It's always annoying though when you try and learn one and there is just that bit you'll never learn.Jeff beck is good as well. His new album "Who else?"is very interesting and follows on from "Guitar Shop".
For Guitar instrumentals, Jan Cyrka is very good.He's sort of somewhere between Satch and Vai but he is very fond of Floyd Rose Warbling.
As far as guitars go, I always find it best to ignore the hype and test a guitar on its own merits.
Most USA strats I've played recently are well put together but don't sound great and have no character. They are just a lump of wood. The same goes for a lot of USA guitars. B.C. Riches, Jacksons, Even Paul Reed Smiths I've played are good, but not great and very bad value for money.They just don't make you want to play them. The only USA guitar I'd REALLY recommend is a TOM ANDERSON. They are very expensive but absolutely lovely guitars.Similar to these but cheaper are the French VIGIER guitars.I'm seriously considering selling my furniture guitar Patrick Eggle Berlin for one of these.
Gordon Smiths are probably the best value for money guitars you can buy and are certainly better built than Gibsons. I actually sold my 1989 Gibson USA SG STD to buy a Gordon Smith because it was nicer.I did have to raise the action a bit though. I think the boys in the factory show off too much about how low they can get the action without buzzing. They are piss easy to play but can be improved in sound by raising the action just a tad. When i got mine, the action was the same height at the 12th fret as it was at the nut.