Total Guitar

4 days ago | guitarworld.com | Amit Sharma

You could probably say Dumble Amplifiers are about as mythical as music gear can possibly get. Named after founder and owner Alexander Dumble – who sadly passed away on January 16, 2022 – the business was very much a one-man operation, with only a handful of meticulously crafted amplifiers built every year. The custom heads and combos famously ended up in the hands of players like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Robben Ford, whose tones made history almost as much as the music they wrote.

6 days ago | guitarworld.com | Phil Weller

Filling Richie Sambora’s shoes in Bon Jovi was always going to be a big task for Phil X, and though he accepts certain portions of the fanbase will always pledge allegiance to his predecessor, he says the band’s recent documentary has helped win some fans over. Sambora left the band in 2013, leaving a 30-year legacy behind him, with Phil X getting the gig off the back of a three album stint with LA pop rock outfit Powder, and his work with vintage guitar store Fretted Americana.

6 days ago | guitarworld.com | Phil Weller |Andrew Daly

Swedish arpeggio obsessive Yngwie Malmsteen is rarely spotted without a Fender Stratocaster by his side – and he has a vast collection of them – but he says the guitars were not in vogue when he first started earning his stripes. His rise, though, helped give the guitar a second life. With the one-two of 1984’s Rising Force, which introduced the world to his high octane neoclassical shredding, and Marching Out one year later, Malmsteen proved a force to be reckoned with.

6 days ago | guitarworld.com | Jackson Maxwell |Chris Gill

For an incredible 50+ years, Elton John's live band – truly one of the most underrated in rock – has been anchored by guitarist Davey Johnstone, who first teamed up with the pop superstar at the tender age of 19. It shouldn't come as a big surprise, then, that Johnstone has stories aplenty from all those years of touring madness – but a particularly great one is how he came into possession of one of his most prized guitars, a three-pickup, gold hardware-adorned Gibson Les Paul Custom.

6 days ago | guitarworld.com | Janelle Borg

In Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII – the newly restored version of the 1972 film directed by Adrian Maben – a clip of the band recording what would become The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios has been unearthed from the depths of the Floyd archives. Perhaps most interesting are the band's thoughts on the criticisms they were receiving at the time – that they depended too much on their gear and new technologies.