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“I was sobbing for eight minutes. After that I was like, I don't care so much about guitar solos anymore”: Why Paul Gilbert started prioritizing quality songwriting over crazy guitar solos

Gilbert may be a master shredder, but even he realizes the importance of practicing restraint

Guitar World

“If you would have told me 15 years ago that Paul Gilbert’s main amp in the future would be a solid state Fender Twin, I’d have said you were off your rocker”: Paul Gilbert is the latest big name to switch to Fender Tone Master digital amps

The shred pioneer is using one as a monitor, one to push air at the crowd, and he believes it is a top-tier pedal platform

Guitar World

“Evidently not content with redefining what was technically possible on the guitar, he also managed to rewrite pretty much the whole of music theory”: How Allan Holdsworth blew Eddie Van Halen’s mind and inspired the next generation of virtuosos

We unpack the brilliance of jazz-fusion trailblazer Allan Holdsworth, with some help from Steve Vai, Guthrie Govan, Paul Gilbert and Eddie Van Halen

MusicRadar

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“This wasn’t party rock any more. It was fusion and progressive music, and I absolutely loved it”: Paul Gilbert on the genius of Allan Holdsworth, and the one song that proves it

The former Mr Big guitarist and solo artist discovered his prog hero via Eddie Van Halen – and even tried to play like him for a while

Louder

“At home, you’re tempted to go over the top with everything. ‘Maybe if we put on another double guitar part – that’ll fix it.’ You can spend forever making a song worse”: Paul Gilbert on how the original POTUS's words opened new frontiers for his guitar

The shred titan's new LP, WROC, combines words from George Washington with incendiary rock and super-sized melodies. Oh, and he had weird AI experiences along the way. We'll let Gilbert explain all...

Guitar World

Paul Gilbert: What I learned and taught at GIT

Paul was a student and a tutor at LA's G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology). Here are the shred secrets he learned there – and taught

Guitar World

“I had a beat-up Strat and a Yamaha digital amp. Edgar was horrified. He said, ‘Doug, your tone is atrocious!’” Air-guitar playing AC/DC fan Doug Rappoport on how he fell into working with Edgar Winter and Paul Gilbert

Despite horrifying Winter at one point with his terrible tone, and only barely managing to keep up with Gilbert, the guitarist who was inspired by an Angus Young solo has kept himself incredibly busy

Guitar World

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“You start putting expectations on yourself. ‘OK, I’ve got to compete with Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and The Beatles!”: An in-depth conversation with rock guitar’s most maverick virtuoso, Paul Gilbert

Featuring: his “mouse” heartbeat, the jazz pianist so good he's “inhuman” and the most courageous thing a shredder can do

MusicRadar

“The promoter was panicking and asked me to headline. I didn't have a band with me. And I didn't have any solo material prepared”: Paul Gilbert’s completely unplanned Jimi Hendrix tribute set for first-ever digital release

After a collab with Albert Collins fell through at the last minute, Gilbert had just hours to come up with an alternative set

Guitar World

“To me, it was like being asked to tour with the Beatles”: Paul Gilbert on why he turned down the gig of a lifetime – and why not maintaining his “Whitesnake haircut” was a barrier to career progression

When Todd Rundgren called and invited Gilbert to tour with him there was only one answer, even if it pained him to say it

MusicRadar

“I would go by John’s room and he’d be working on alternate picking to a metronome. I’d never seen anyone do that before”: He arrived on the shred scene with Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker and John Petrucci… then he vanished

After starting a family and his own company, Darren Housholder's priorities changed – but he’s gradually brought music-making back into his world

Guitar World

“When I heard Train Kept a Rollin' I said, ‘Man, Joe Perry and Brad Whitford have gotten really good!’ After Steven left, Jack Douglas said, ‘Don’t say anything, but that’s not Brad and Joe’”: Angel’s Punky Meadows on why he didn’t join Kiss or Aerosmith

As the band’s final large-scale tour looms, the Superstrat pioneer looks back on how he got started, why he quit, and why he’s not planning to fall silent again

Guitar World

“I would have loved to get together with Wolfgang”: Eddie Van Halen once asked Paul Gilbert to give Wolfgang a guitar lesson – here’s why it never happened

The Mr. Big virtuoso has been reflecting on his guitar teaching methods, and why he thinks it’s time to bring back the shred

Guitar World

“A couple of the lyrics turned out to be AI-generated… I thought, ‘Okay, I like the music. The lyrics are still in the spirit of what I’m going for, and so I’ll go for it’”: How Paul Gilbert accidentally wrote a song using an AI hallucination

Gilbert's first vocal album since 2016, WROC finds him adapting George Washington's "rules for civility" into lyrics for rock songs. But what happens when AI injects itself into the process?

MusicRadar

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Guitar World

“Joe Satriani said,‘Every time I do an album, I feel like the first song I have to prove that I can play guitar’”: Why Paul Gilbert thinks it’s important to practice restraint when it comes to shredding

Every guitarist plays with a point to prove, he says, but we shouldn’t always be playing in fifth gear

MusicRadar

“Joe Satriani said, ‘Every time I do an album, I feel like the first song I have to prove that I can play guitar. I wish I could let that go.’ I thought, ‘I know exactly what you mean’”: Paul Gilbert on why it’s so hard to resist the urge to shred

Gilbert says shred can sometimes be the easy way to give his audience what they want, but their expectations only make him want to work harder on his melodies

Guitar World

“Flamenco-inspired triplets, big trap beats, and – wait – is that a wah solo?” January 2026 Guitar World Editors’ Picks

Featuring an onslaught of leviathan power chords from Sunn O))), a bruiser of a blues rock romp from Jared James Nichols, a beautiful, heartfelt piece of desert blues from Imarhan, a genre-obliterating piece of twisty guitar genius from Tim Henson, and a whole lot more

Guitar World

Speed bursts are the path to Shred Heaven: boost your rock chops with 6 jaw-dropping examples (that won't break your fingers)

Learn how short and fast sequential patterns favoured by legends such as Paul Gilbert, John Petrucci and Zakk Wylde can be connected to create blazing solos

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Guitar World

“A Tube Screamer is a Tube Screamer. It’s one of the great cons of the guitar industry. They got these dirt boxes right the first time!” Why Jared James Nichols stopped obsessing over gear – and honed in on his playing instead

Freedom, says Nichols, is the knowledge you can pick up anyone's guitar and sound like you, and now the Nashville-based Les Paul wrangler is finding that freedom in songwriting

Guitar World

“I was tired of not having a great tone. I could never figure out why I don’t sound good. So I started to experiment with how I pick”: Great tone starts with the pick – just ask Steve Vai. Here’s how honing your picking can improve your tone for free

Unlock every pick color – from warmth and brightness to the secretive clarinet tone

The Guardian - UK

‘She rang me to say there was water coming into the house’ – This is climate breakdown

His mother had lived in the same house for 83 years. When the floods came, no one was ready. This is Paul Gilbert’s story

Guitar World

“Boldly established Ibanez as a new contender in the highly competitive Superstrat market”: How Ibanez’s era-defining RG550 transformed high-performance guitar

It had the tones, it had the super-stable floating vibrato for divebombs, and it had the fastest neck around. The RG550 pushed shred guitar further and faster – just ask Paul Gilbert

Guitar World

From the shred heroics of Joe Satriani to the melodic mastery of George Benson and fascinating phrasing of Yvette Young, we chart 25 game-changing Ibanez guitarists

While it’s easy to think of Ibanez as a company that’s solely at the cutting edge of metal machines for the modern age, they’ve also innovated much further afield, producing timeless acoustics, semi-hollows, and hollowbodies

Guitar World

“My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher”: Why Eddie Van Halen had to ask Paul Gilbert to give his son a guitar lesson

He was just too virtuosic to show his son the ropes, it seems...

MusicRadar

“As soon as I've just finished a song, I'll double the lead part right away, while it's still completely fresh in my mind”: Four big-name guitarists spill their recording secrets

With insight from Paul Gilbert, John 5, Adam Dutkiewicz and Marty Friedman on their approaches to the recording process

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