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Name your FAVORITE guitar player... It has to be your A list, number one favorite guitar player of all time.

Now, if you really really really REALLY love some other musician who plays something different, list him or her instead (and what he or she plays), but let's mostly list guitar players.

I'm goint with Brian Setzer. He was the former front man for the Stray Cats, Brian Setzer Orchestra, and also has a solo gig. If you're ever seen him play, you know that few can match his licks.

Here's a short clip of him demonstrating a small fraction of what he can do

mooo

Conan O Brien's favorite guitar player too, btw...

Jimi Hendrix; His guitar-work has never gotten old for me, and he's about as inimitable a guitarist as there can be.

My second choice would be Django Reinhardt, the greatest jazz-guitarist off all time.

Bertie Wooster wrote:Jimi Hendrix; His guitar-work has never gotten old for me, and he's about as inimitable a guitarist as there can be.

My second choice would be Django Reinhardt, the greatest jazz-guitarist off all time.

Yeah, "there's a red house over yonder..." Hendrix doing the blues was beyond awesome...

Exactly what I was thinking. The only album of his I've touched in 10 years is The Jimi Hendrix "Blues" album which came out in 1994.

Jimmy Page.

Second props to Stevie Ray Vaughn.

I am torn between Jimi and Ritchie Blackmore. Blackmore was the lead guitarist for Deep Purple for the majority of its high-profile stuff, in between which he also played in Rainbow. Now he does medieval-style work in Blackmore's Night.

I've always held a special place in my heart for Annihilator's Jeff Waters, a man who once said that he was cut out to be a pop songwriter but couldn't stomach anything less aggressive than thrash metal. The solo to the song "Stonewall" is a compelling argument that a fast solo need not be a "soulless" (whatever that old chestnut means, anyways) one.

I gotta throw bones out to Overkill's Rob Cannavino for the riff and solo to "Thanx For Nothin". This song obviously thrashes like hell, but does something I've NEVER heard before in any metal song - it SWINGS, too.

And the man who married melodic neoclassical techniques, sweep picking, and good ol' fashioned brutality, Alex Skolnick, deserves more praise than he gets. Much of what goes for the norm these days in metal had a lot to do with him and his songs like "Into The Pit".

I could go on, and maybe I will later; but that'll do for now.

Dimebag, followed by Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Dimebag, I've heard was actually banned from Texas-based guitar contests because he won all of them back when he was in his teens. He had a true mastery of the instrument, as well as how to write a good song that other virtuosoes tend to veer away from in favour of essentially wanking with their guitar. He could focus and make a simple, catchy but crushingly heavy riff that got across the attitude and aesthetic perfectly, and then he could show off with mental sweeps in a southern bluesy style that was all his own.

His sound was what a lot of people had in their minds before discovering Pantera or even the heavier side of music, what they'd wanted to listen to/make, but couldn't name. He inspired loads to pick up the guitar and gets less credit than he deserves due to people's anti-metal bias.

Stevie Ray Vaughn is awesome also, blues is one of the most soulful musics out there, full of talent and emotion, and he's a master at it. Metal is, arguably, a spinoff of blues, and that might be why it appeals to me so much, musically.

Jimi Hendrix was good too, of course, but honestly, I just think he was overrated.

I think Lindsay Buckingham's pretty damn good. Maybe not the best in the history of guitar players, but I think he's pretty great.

I'm a big fan of Josh Homme, Dimebag, Johnny Ramone & J Yuenger (at least while he was in White Zombie).

In my opinion, guitar solos, that is fast-licked solos with no effects, are extremely boring, along with those guitarists whose fans say "OMGZ! He is so fucking good! Look at how fast he can play!". A prime example of one of these guitarists is Daron Malakian from the oh-so-shitty bad System of a Down.


I choose Adam Jones from TOOL as my favorite guitarist because he is creative. He uses common household items to produce awesome sounds with his guitar. For instance, he used an epilady on the song Traid from the Lateralus album. Who would think to use that!? I am an effects kind of guy. I love flange, chorus, delay, and wah. Adam uses these effects a lot. I really love it when one can hold a single note for three minutes and raise and lower the pitch of that note.

Jimi. Stevie Ray.

And Les Paul, who started it all.

Eddie Van Halen. He got me into guitar.

David Gilmour of course.

See "Comfortably Numb," The Wall.

FSTargetDrone wrote:David Gilmour of course.

See "Comfortably Numb," The Wall.

Seconded. Most of Pink Floyd's stuff is amazing, for me. I'm not too into solos, but the one from "Time" always makes me feel... wonderful. And "Wish You Were Here" is a great acoustic song too.

Would Symphony X's guitarist (Michael Romeo) count? His work has always been good, at least to me.

Randy Rhoades for teh mother fucking win!

General Zod wrote:Randy Rhoades for teh mother fucking win!

He's on my top five list for sure... that and I've always loved Jackson guitars. He was originally trained in classical guitar, yeah?

Prince. No seriously.

Especially when he was backed by Morris Day and the motherfuckin' Time!

Word.

Check This Out

Prince, live on stage, with an accoustic guitar and an audience. I just loved how much 'Cream' has such a blues style to it on the accoustic that I didn't realise with an electric guitar. He also covers 'I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man', 'Sometimes it Snows in April', Chaka Khan's 'Sweet Thing' and Elvis' 'Proud Mary' (or Tina's if you prefer).

Syd Barrett
followed closely by Jimmy Page

At risk of committing thread hijack, I'm going to have to say that I hate Dimebag Darrell with the might of a thousand suns. His solos were thoughtless sequences of notes that were easy for his fingers to hit rather than being the result of any considered effort to string together melodies, and his guitar tone is easily one of the worst things to ever happen to metal. I'll fuck up a television and sit there watching snow if I want to hear Dimebag's guitar tone, and riffs like those to "Walk" and "5 Minutes Alone" did more for nu-metal's rise than any band until Korn came along.

TithonusSyndrome wrote:At risk of committing thread hijack, I'm going to have to say that I hate Dimebag Darrell with the might of a thousand suns. His solos were thoughtless sequences of notes that were easy for his fingers to hit rather than being the result of any considered effort to string together melodies, and his guitar tone is easily one of the worst things to ever happen to metal. I'll fuck up a television and sit there watching snow if I want to hear Dimebag's guitar tone, and riffs like those to "Walk" and "5 Minutes Alone" did more for nu-metal's rise than any band until Korn came along.

You're not alone. I can't stand that douche either... I appreciate most guitar playing, but he doesn't do anything for me.

In his defense (kinda), his style of crappy music doesn't depend on any sort of melody (or coherence for that matter). It really just requires an audience stoned out of its gourd that would think anything coming out of a guitar is cool.

I don't even give him that; I hear he was a nice guy in life, but then again the same can be said of a lot of unsavory people. When you're 15 and high school livin' limits your cultural horizons, maybe Dimebag's playing seems standout, but since then I've heard a lot better than he, including but not limited to my first post in this thread. Listening to Dimebag for any reason seems like a complete waste of time in light of that.