Last week a mysterious envelope arrived containing this gem of guitar culture. Actually my brother was organizing his basement. Other than the cover discoloration, this mag's in pretty good shape. I'm just glad he didn't mail me any dead rodents.
Besides the Les Paul cover feature (interview available online), other articles profiled The Outlaws, Funkadelic, Women & Guitar and Session Men.
Monthly columns at that time included Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's "Eclectic Electric", Craig Anderton's "Electronic Guitarist", John Carruthers's "Guitar Workshop", Barney Kessel's "Guitar Journal" and a very prophetic installment of George Gruhn's regular American Guitar column entitled, "American Guitars in the World Market". That's right. It seems like Gruhn has always known what's going on.
Additional players clinic column offerings came from: Larry Coryell, Howard Roberts, Tommy Tedesco & a number of others. The "Questions" column featured then editor Don Menn, and included a reader question "How does a fuzztone work?", which Don handled with great care and thoroughness (now I know!!!).
One of my favorite things is the product ads. Surprisingly, several companies in this issue are still around-- more than I expected considering the high turnover in the gear industry over the last 32 years. Electro-Harmonix was enormously prominent-- and I have to laugh because the EH stuff looked the same then as it does now. EH's newest box was the Memory Man. Fender was still with CBS, and Gibson & LAB Series amps were under Norlin.
Ibanez was pimpin' their Artist Series model inside the front cover. The center spread displayed a huge full-color Mighty Mite lightening bolt thru the heart. Music Man guitars, basses & amps owned the inside rear cover (pre- Ernie Ball era). Roland was pushing Amps and their GR-500 guitar synth. Mesa Boogie was presenting their first generation small combos & heads (wish I still had mine!).
Gone by the wayside stuff includes Road Amps, Hondo, Oberheim, St. Louis Music, Stage amps & PA gear, Martin's Sigma line, Mu-Tron pedals, Travis Bean guitars, Altair attenuators,
Acoustic Amps and Ampeg Amps.
Rick Derringer was endorsing the BC Rich Mockingbird model. There were also ads for tape recording gear such as Teac's Tascam reel to reels (the 4 track cassettes, i.e. Fostex hadn't yet arrived). Ovation had a cool looking solidbody called the Viper which was much more conventional looking than the Breadwinner... better looking!
The usual String makers were there. We also saw long, straight string packaging by Alvarez & Nashville Straights who warned us about the tonal degradation of strings packaged in coiled form... I guess coiling them actually wasn't so bad after all.
In the pickup zone, DiMarzio was the king of hot-rod replacement pickups. Bill Lawrence was there too. Older outfits like Bartolini & DeArmond were chugging away but in a lower key fashion. I was surprised by Schecter Guitar Research selling loaded Strat pickguards, and even EMG was already rolling the active thing.
But wildest of all is a tiny ad in the very back for Seymour Duncan's Pickup Rewinding Service offering custom rewinding:
Besides the Les Paul cover feature (interview available online), other articles profiled The Outlaws, Funkadelic, Women & Guitar and Session Men.
Monthly columns at that time included Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's "Eclectic Electric", Craig Anderton's "Electronic Guitarist", John Carruthers's "Guitar Workshop", Barney Kessel's "Guitar Journal" and a very prophetic installment of George Gruhn's regular American Guitar column entitled, "American Guitars in the World Market". That's right. It seems like Gruhn has always known what's going on.
Additional players clinic column offerings came from: Larry Coryell, Howard Roberts, Tommy Tedesco & a number of others. The "Questions" column featured then editor Don Menn, and included a reader question "How does a fuzztone work?", which Don handled with great care and thoroughness (now I know!!!).
One of my favorite things is the product ads. Surprisingly, several companies in this issue are still around-- more than I expected considering the high turnover in the gear industry over the last 32 years. Electro-Harmonix was enormously prominent-- and I have to laugh because the EH stuff looked the same then as it does now. EH's newest box was the Memory Man. Fender was still with CBS, and Gibson & LAB Series amps were under Norlin.
Ibanez was pimpin' their Artist Series model inside the front cover. The center spread displayed a huge full-color Mighty Mite lightening bolt thru the heart. Music Man guitars, basses & amps owned the inside rear cover (pre- Ernie Ball era). Roland was pushing Amps and their GR-500 guitar synth. Mesa Boogie was presenting their first generation small combos & heads (wish I still had mine!).
Gone by the wayside stuff includes Road Amps, Hondo, Oberheim, St. Louis Music, Stage amps & PA gear, Martin's Sigma line, Mu-Tron pedals, Travis Bean guitars, Altair attenuators,
Acoustic Amps and Ampeg Amps.
Rick Derringer was endorsing the BC Rich Mockingbird model. There were also ads for tape recording gear such as Teac's Tascam reel to reels (the 4 track cassettes, i.e. Fostex hadn't yet arrived). Ovation had a cool looking solidbody called the Viper which was much more conventional looking than the Breadwinner... better looking!
The usual String makers were there. We also saw long, straight string packaging by Alvarez & Nashville Straights who warned us about the tonal degradation of strings packaged in coiled form... I guess coiling them actually wasn't so bad after all.
In the pickup zone, DiMarzio was the king of hot-rod replacement pickups. Bill Lawrence was there too. Older outfits like Bartolini & DeArmond were chugging away but in a lower key fashion. I was surprised by Schecter Guitar Research selling loaded Strat pickguards, and even EMG was already rolling the active thing.
But wildest of all is a tiny ad in the very back for Seymour Duncan's Pickup Rewinding Service offering custom rewinding:
"$17.50 Fender / $30 Gibson"
(We've since seen some progress here...)
!
(We've since seen some progress here...)
Album reviews included, Robin Trower's "In City Dreams", Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever", Lee Ritenour's "Captain Fingers", Chet Atkins' "Me and My Guitar" and Jean Luc Ponty's "Enigmatic Ocean" featuring Allan Holdsworth.
The upcoming January '78 issue promised features on Steve Miller, Domenic Troiano and a little guitar lesson outfit called Guitar Institute of Technology.
Finally, GP's Dec. '77 issue featured the Reader's Poll Results. It was their 8th poll. Check out the following selected categories for a good taste of that era's popular players (including the 4 runners up):
Overall Best Guitarist:
#1 Steve Howe
Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Roy Buchanan & Carlos Santana
Best Rock Guitarist:
#1 Jimmy Page
Steve Howe, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana & Frank Zappa
New Talent:
#1 Tom Scholz
Al DiMeola, Ted Nugent, Earl Klugh & Alex Lifeson
Best Guitar Album:
#1 Elegant Gypsy by Al DiMeola
Boston's debut, Guitar Player (?), Loading Zone by Roy Buchanan & Yes's Going for the One
Best Electric Blues:
#1 Johnny Winter
Bonnie Raitt, Albert King, Michael Bloomfield ('76 winner) and Muddy Waters
Other categories included: Best Jazz, Best Pop, Best Classical, Best Country, Best Acoustic Blues, Best Flamenco, Best Steel, Best Bass (pre-BP mag), Best Studio & Best Folk.
Feel free to comment below if you want any stats on those last categories!
I worked a little on this post folks, because GP didn't yet have an ad index;))
The upcoming January '78 issue promised features on Steve Miller, Domenic Troiano and a little guitar lesson outfit called Guitar Institute of Technology.
Finally, GP's Dec. '77 issue featured the Reader's Poll Results. It was their 8th poll. Check out the following selected categories for a good taste of that era's popular players (including the 4 runners up):
Overall Best Guitarist:
#1 Steve Howe
Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Roy Buchanan & Carlos Santana
Best Rock Guitarist:
#1 Jimmy Page
Steve Howe, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana & Frank Zappa
New Talent:
#1 Tom Scholz
Al DiMeola, Ted Nugent, Earl Klugh & Alex Lifeson
Best Guitar Album:
#1 Elegant Gypsy by Al DiMeola
Boston's debut, Guitar Player (?), Loading Zone by Roy Buchanan & Yes's Going for the One
Best Electric Blues:
#1 Johnny Winter
Bonnie Raitt, Albert King, Michael Bloomfield ('76 winner) and Muddy Waters
Other categories included: Best Jazz, Best Pop, Best Classical, Best Country, Best Acoustic Blues, Best Flamenco, Best Steel, Best Bass (pre-BP mag), Best Studio & Best Folk.
Feel free to comment below if you want any stats on those last categories!
I worked a little on this post folks, because GP didn't yet have an ad index;))
!
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