Honest Reviews & Expert Advice for UK Musicians
A dreadnought acoustic guitar is the big, square-shouldered acoustic body shape that C. F. Martin developed in the early twentieth century to produce more volume and bass than the parlour guitars that came before it — it’s the shape most people picture when they hear the word “guitar” at all, and it remains the default … Read more
Somewhere between “I fancy trying an 8 string guitar” and actually owning one sits a swamp of marketing fluff, contradictory forum threads, and spec sheets that read like they were translated twice. An 8 string guitar is a solid-body electric with two extra bass strings below standard low E, typically tuned down to F# and … Read more
A 7 string guitar for metal isn’t a gimmick bolted onto a normal six-string — it’s a different relationship with the low end entirely. Add one extra string, tuned to a low B (or lower), and suddenly your rhythm playing has a foundation that a standard guitar physically cannot reach. That’s the whole point. Bands … Read more
A 7 string guitar is a solid-body or hollow-body electric guitar with an additional low string — usually tuned to B — bolted onto the standard six-string layout, giving guitarists an extra octave and a half of low-end range for heavier riffs, fuller chords, and more harmonic freedom. If that sounds like exactly the itch … Read more
Somewhere between a Telecaster’s snap and an archtop’s woolly warmth sits the sound most blues players are actually chasing — and it lives inside a semi-hollow. Pick up almost any classic blues record from the mid-1960s onward and there’s a decent chance a semi-hollow guitar is doing the talking, because the design solves a problem … Read more
Somewhere between the boomy, feedback-prone archtop and the clinical snap of a solid body sits the semi-hollow — jazz’s great compromise, and honestly, its best-kept secret. A semi-hollow electric guitar is a hollow-bodied instrument with a solid centre block running through the middle, and that block is doing more work than most players ever give … Read more
Somewhere between the twangy honesty of a fully hollow archtop and the blunt-force reliability of a solid body sits the best semi-hollow guitar for your particular ears — and working out which one that is can feel like being asked to pick a favourite child. What is a semi-hollow guitar? In short: an electric guitar … Read more
Somewhere in every guitarist’s life, there’s a moment standing in a shop, staring at two single-cutaway shapes that look almost identical, wondering why one costs the same as a second-hand car and the other costs about the same as a second-hand bicycle. That’s the Epiphone vs Gibson Les Paul dilemma in a nutshell, and it … Read more
Here’s the thing about walking into a guitar shop looking for the best Epiphone Les Paul: every single one on the wall looks like it wants to be picked up. Same silhouette, same single-cutaway swagger, same promise of Slash-in-your-bedroom tone. But underneath that familiar shape sits a genuinely wide spread of build quality, hardware and … Read more
There’s a reason nearly every blues guitarist worth their salt has owned a Stratocaster at some point in their playing life. That in-between quack, the way a single coil breaks up just so when you dig in, the way the whole guitar seems built for bending strings and telling stories — it’s no accident. A … Read more