110 Fun Facts About Guitar

How many strings does a standard guitar have?

A standard guitar has six strings; classical, steel-string acoustic and most electric models all share that count, with the lowest and highest strings tuned two octaves apart.

What are the notes of standard guitar tuning, from the lowest string to the highest?

Standard tuning is E A D G B E from low to high: perfect fourths between each pair of strings except the major third from G to B, remembered as 'Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie'.

Which fret divides a guitar's scale length exactly in half, sounding an octave above the open string?

Each block of twelve frets represents one octave.

In "drop D" tuning, which string is lowered a whole step?

The sixth (lowest) string drops a whole step from E to D, so the lowest strings sound a D power chord when strummed open, a staple of metal and grunge riffs.

Keith Richards plays "Honky Tonk Women" and "Brown Sugar" in which five-string tuning?

Keith Richards' five-string open G tuning, G-D-G-B-D with the lowest string removed, powers 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Start Me Up'.

The 19th-century Spanish maker who set the size and fan-bracing of the modern classical guitar was whom?

Antonio de Torres Jurado, working in Seville from the 1850s, enlarged the body and refined the fan-braced soundboard, fixing the proportions that define the modern classical guitar.

The robust X-bracing of flat-top steel-string guitars is credited to which German-American luthier?

C.F. Martin, a Saxon immigrant to New York, developed X-bracing in the 1840s; its two crossed struts give a flat top the strength to bear steel strings.

In what year was the oldest surviving US guitar maker, known for the D-28 and D-18, founded?

The firm was founded in 1833 in New York City by a Saxon immigrant and moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in 1839; its D-28 dreadnought arrived in 1931.

The violin-like carved-top archtop guitar is usually credited to which American?

Orville Gibson, a Kalamazoo, Michigan, luthier, carved guitar and mandolin tops like a violin's from the 1890s and patented the construction in 1898; the company bearing his name formed in 1902.

Which Spanish virtuoso did the most to establish the guitar as a serious concert instrument?

Andrés Segovia, born in Linares in 1893, played the world's concert halls for seven decades, commissioned works from Ponce, Turina and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and taught generations of players.

After World War II, which material for classical guitar strings, replacing catgut, was popularised?

Nylon strings, developed by Albert Augustine with DuPont in the 1940s, held their pitch and resisted humidity far better than gut, and leading concert players adopted them within a few years.

What nickname did the first commercially successful electric guitar, a 1930s lap steel, carry?

The Frying Pan, George Beauchamp's cast-aluminium lap steel with a horseshoe-magnet pickup, took its nickname from its long neck and small round body; the first ones were sold in 1932.

Which company did Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp found in 1931 to sell electric lap steels?

The Ro-Pat-In Corporation, short for Electro-Patent-Instruments, was set up in 1931 by Beauchamp, Rickenbacker and Paul Barth; it was later renamed the Electro String Instrument Corporation and sold under the Rickenbacher, then Rickenbacker, brand.

Which Texas bluesman played a battered sunburst Stratocaster he called 'Number One'?

Stevie Ray Vaughan found Number One in an Austin music shop in the early 1970s and played it until his death in 1990; its worn sunburst body, 'SRV' stickers and left-handed tremolo made it instantly recognisable.

Besides guitars, Les Paul pioneered which studio technique?

He pioneered multitrack overdubbing, layering parts by recording sound-on-sound to disc and then tape; the 1951 hit 'How High the Moon' with Mary Ford stacked many overdubbed guitar and vocal parts.

The Telecaster and Esquire were the first commercially successful mass-produced what?

The Telecaster, with its single-pickup sibling the Esquire, was the first commercially successful mass-produced solid-body electric guitar: a bolt-on maple neck on a plank-like ash body, built from 1950.

The Fender Telecaster was first distributed in 1950 under which name?

Fender shipped the model as the Broadcaster from autumn 1950; Gretsch objected to the name, it was dropped early in 1951 and Telecaster decals appeared later that year.

Fender had to rename its new Telecaster in 1951 after a trademark clash with Gretsch over what product?

Gretsch already sold a drum kit under a near-identical name and objected; for some months in 1951 Fender clipped the model name from the headstock decal, and those guitars are nicknamed Nocasters.

In which year did Fender begin manufacturing the Stratocaster?

Fender put the Stratocaster into production in 1954, after Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares worked up its contoured double-cutaway body and synchronised tremolo bridge.

How many pickups does a standard Fender Stratocaster have?

It was the first Fender with three pickups and the first with a contoured body.

Remarkably, Fender founder Leo Fender could not do what?

Leo Fender never learned to play the guitar; trained in accounting and self-taught in electronics, he ran a radio repair shop in Fullerton, California, and relied on working musicians to test his designs.

To which company did Leo Fender sell Fender in 1965?

Leo Fender sold his companies to CBS in January 1965 for about $13 million; the CBS-era Stratocasters that followed are recognisable by their larger headstock.

After leaving Fender, Leo Fender co-founded Music Man and then which other guitar company?

G&L, named for George Fullerton and Leo Fender, started in Fullerton in 1979 after Leo's Music Man years; he kept designing there until his death from Parkinson's disease in 1991.

Fender's 1951 four-string electric, named for its fretted neck's accuracy, was called what?

The Precision Bass, launched in 1951, took its name from the fretted neck that let players hit exact pitches; it was the first widely successful electric bass, and Fender built the Bassman amplifier to go with it the following year.

The Gibson Les Paul went on sale in which year?

The model went on sale in 1952, after company president Ted McCarty signed the guitarist as endorser and consultant to answer Fender's new electrics; the first ones carried a gold-finished top.

The original gold-top Les Paul carried which type of pickups?

The first gold-tops carried P-90s, the single-coil pickups of the day; the model switched to Seth Lover's humbuckers in 1957, and the sunburst 'Burst' followed in 1958.

When the Les Paul was redesigned in 1961, it became which now-separate Gibson model?

The thin double-cutaway 1961 redesign kept the Les Paul name until 1963, when the endorsement lapsed and the company renamed it the SG, for Solid Guitar; the original carved-top shape returned in 1968.

Which radically shaped 1958 Gibson was originally built from a pale wood the company branded "korina"?

The Flying V's arrow-shaped korina body sold fewer than 100 units in 1958-59; Albert King, Dave Davies and Lonnie Mack later made the shape famous, and it was reissued in 1967.

Which angular 1958 Gibson flopped at launch, then was revived in 1976?

The Explorer, a futuristic korina design, sold only a few dozen in 1958-59; it was reissued in 1976, and players like James Hetfield and the Edge later made it famous.

What name did B.B. King give to every one of his guitars?

They were usually black Gibson ES-355-style guitars; Gibson made an official B.B. King Lucille model in 1980.

Which 1949 incident inspired the name B.B. King gave his guitars?

The name recalls a dance-hall fire sparked by a fight over a woman: in Twist, Arkansas, in 1949, two brawling men knocked over a kerosene heater, and King ran back in to rescue his guitar.

What is the name of Willie Nelson's battered nylon-string classical guitar?

Trigger, an N-20 classical bought in 1969, is named after Roy Rogers's horse; decades of pick strokes have worn a large hole through its spruce top beside the bridge.

Whose signature, scratched into Willie Nelson's guitar, began its collection of 100-plus autographs?

Leon Russell was the first: he asked Willie Nelson to sign his guitar and offered to scratch his own name into Nelson's in return, starting a collection that passed 100 signatures.

Queen's Brian May built his guitar, the Red Special, largely from what?

Brian May and his father Harold built the Red Special in 1963-64, carving its neck from an old fireplace mantel a neighbour was discarding and the body from salvaged wood, because a factory-made guitar was out of reach.

What does Brian May famously use as a guitar pick?

Brian May plays with a sixpence coin: the pre-decimal British sixpence is stiffer than a plastic pick, and its milled edge gives a scratchy attack when he angles it against the strings.

Which Fender model, introduced in 1958, became a surf-rock staple with its floating tremolo?

The Jazzmaster, launched in 1958 with an offset body and a floating tremolo, was aimed at jazz players but found its home with surf bands such as the Ventures and, decades later, Sonic Youth.

Roughly how much did Clapton's Blackie fetch at its record-setting 2004 auction?

Blackie sold for $959,500 at Christie's in New York in June 2004 to the Guitar Center chain, with the money going to Clapton's Crossroads Centre addiction-treatment clinic in Antigua.

Which Pink Floyd guitarist played the "Black Strat" on "Comfortably Numb" and "Money"?

David Gilmour bought the Black Strat, a 1969 model, at Manny's Music in New York in May 1970 and used it on most Pink Floyd records from Meddle to The Wall, including 'Money' and 'Comfortably Numb'.

Roughly how much did the Black Strat fetch at its record-setting 2019 auction?

The Black Strat sold for $3.975 million at Christie's in New York in June 2019 to Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay; the proceeds went to the environmental law charity ClientEarth.

Which guitar broke the Black Strat's auction record in 2020?

Kurt Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E, played on Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged set, sold for just over $6 million at Julien's Auctions in June 2020 to Røde Microphones founder Peter Freedman.

Which Beatle played a Rickenbacker 360/12 twelve-string that shaped the sound of A Hard Day's Night?

George Harrison received one of the first Rickenbacker 360/12s in February 1964, and its ringing tone colours the title track and 'I Should Have Known Better'; Roger McGuinn copied it for the Byrds.

Which guitarist's band scored hits with 'Black Magic Woman' in 1970 and 'Smooth' in 1999?

Carlos Santana's band Santana took 'Black Magic Woman', a Fleetwood Mac cover released in 1970, into the US top five, and topped the US chart for much of late 1999 with 'Smooth', sung by Rob Thomas.

What is the strip at the top of the fingerboard, over which strings pass to the tuners, called?

The nut, a slotted strip of bone, plastic or brass at the headstock end of the fingerboard, sets the string spacing and the string height at the open end of the scale.

Gibson's 1936 ES-150, its first electric Spanish guitar, is nicknamed after which jazz player?

Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman's guitarist, made the ES-150 and its bar pickup famous from 1939, so both carry his name; the model number came from the $150 price of guitar and amplifier together.

What device clamps across the strings to raise the pitch of all of them at once?

Its full name is the capotasto, from the Italian for "head of the fingerboard".

Which guitarist played 'Stairway to Heaven' on stage with a cherry-red double-neck?

Jimmy Page played 'Stairway to Heaven' live with a cherry-red EDS-1275 double-neck from 1971, switching necks to cover the song's fingerpicked intro and its electric finale.

On which 1968 Beatles track did Eric Clapton play the lead guitar solo?

Eric Clapton played the solo on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' at Abbey Road in September 1968 at its writer's invitation, one of very few outside musicians to play on a Beatles record.

The chiming twelve-string electric sound was the basis of which subgenre of pop?

Jangle pop grew out of the Byrds' 1965 'Mr. Tambourine Man', built on the bright arpeggios of Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker; R.E.M. and the Smiths carried the sound into the 1980s.

A lap or pedal steel is played by sliding what against the strings instead of using frets?

The bar itself is called the "steel", which gives the instrument its name.

The word "guitar" ultimately descends from which Ancient Greek instrument's name?

The chain runs kithara to Latin cithara to Arabic qitharah to Spanish guitarra.

Which 15th–16th-century Spanish instrument most influenced the baroque guitar?

The vihuela, a flat-backed, figure-eight-bodied instrument strung in courses like a lute, was the plucked instrument of the Spanish court in the 1500s; the five-course baroque guitar inherited its body shape and playing techniques.

What is the metal rod inside a guitar neck that counteracts string tension called?

The truss rod, a steel bar set in a channel under the fingerboard and usually adjustable at one end, lets a technician straighten a neck that string tension has pulled into a bow.

How does a humbucker pickup cancel electrical hum?

Its second winding is in reverse polarity: wound and wired the opposite way, so the hum each coil picks up is cancelled while the string signal, sensed through magnets of opposite polarity, adds up; Seth Lover's design dates from 1955.

Who composed and recorded the 1968 fingerstyle instrumental hit 'Classical Gas'?

Mason Williams, then a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, recorded 'Classical Gas' in 1968; it reached number two on the US singles chart and won him a Grammy for best instrumental composition.

How many strings does the traditional Portuguese guitar used in fado carry?

The Portuguese guitarra, the pear-shaped cittern descendant that accompanies fado, carries twelve steel strings in double courses; in Portugal an ordinary guitar is called a viola.

Jimi Hendrix, a lefty, famously played what kind of instrument?

Hendrix played a righty model strung in reverse: he flipped right-handed Stratocasters over and restrung them for left-handed play, which put the controls above the strings and reversed the slant of the bridge pickup.

Ned Steinberger's original headless basses and guitars had necks moulded from what material?

Ned Steinberger's 1979 L-series bass was moulded in one piece from graphite-reinforced epoxy, a carbon-fibre composite that resists warping; the headless design moved the tuners to the bridge.

Which Spanish guitarist published the 1674 guitar treatise Instrucción de Música?

Gaspar Sanz, an Aragonese priest trained in Italy, published Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española in Zaragoza in 1674; Rodrigo's Fantasía para un gentilhombre is built on its dances.

Which major acoustic guitar maker is known for bolting its necks on rather than gluing them?

Taylor's NT (New Technology) neck, introduced in 1999, bolts to the body on precisely milled shims so the angle can be reset in minutes; most other steel-string makers glue a dovetail joint.

In which year did the last surviving published music for the vihuela appear?

Esteban Daza's El Parnaso, printed in Valladolid in 1576, was the last of the seven vihuela books, a series begun by Luis de Milán's El Maestro in 1536.

Despite the name, the catgut once used for guitar strings usually came from which animal's intestines?

Sheep and goats supplied most catgut, and there is no record of cat intestines ever being used; the 'cat' may be a garbling of kit, a dialect word for a fiddle.

Which Cremona violin maker also built guitars, one of which is kept in a South Dakota museum?

Antonio Stradivari made harps and mandolins as well as violins, and the National Music Museum in Vermillion holds one of the very few guitars of his that survive.

Which Canadian astronaut filmed a David Bowie cover with the guitar kept aboard the International Space Station?

Chris Hadfield recorded 'Space Oddity' in orbit on a Larrivée Parlor guitar that was already on board, and released the video in 2013 just after handing over command.

Which restaurant chain's memorabilia collection began with a guitar hung over Eric Clapton's regular seat?

Hard Rock Cafe hung the unsigned red Fender in 1979 because Clapton, a regular at its first London restaurant, wanted to claim the spot; a rival guitarist promptly sent in one of his own.

Which Nordic country has hosted the Air Guitar World Championships in the city of Oulu since 1996?

Finland's contest began as a side event of the Oulu Music Video Festival, and its declared purpose is to promote world peace.

The bass-like riff of which White Stripes hit was really played on a guitar through an octave pedal?

Seven Nation Army has no bass on it at all: Jack White plugged a semi-acoustic guitar into a DigiTech Whammy pedal that dropped its pitch by an octave.

Paul McCartney based the guitar part of the Beatles song 'Blackbird' on a lute piece by which Baroque composer?

Johann Sebastian Bach's Bourrée in E minor was a show-off piece McCartney tried to learn as a teenager; he later reworked a segment of it as the song's opening.

Deep Purple's guitar anthem 'Smoke on the Water' recounts a casino fire in which Swiss lakeside town?

Montreux lost its casino when someone fired a flare gun into the ceiling during a Frank Zappa concert, and Deep Purple watched the smoke spread over the lake from their hotel.

Which Delta blues guitarist, legend says, sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads?

Robert Johnson left only 29 songs before dying at 27, and the crossroads detail seems to have been borrowed from the story of an earlier bluesman with the same surname.

Bob Dylan first performed with an electric guitar and band, drawing some boos, at which town's 1965 folk festival?

Newport heard only a brief amplified set that night, and the Stratocaster Dylan played there sold at Christie's in 2013 for $965,000.

Which jazz guitarist relearned his instrument with two working fretting fingers after a 1928 caravan fire?

Django Reinhardt soloed with his index and middle fingers, using the two burned ones only for chords; his example later inspired the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, who had lost a finger.

The dreadnought, the big-bodied acoustic guitar shape first sold in 1916, takes its name from which kind of vessel?

A battleship: HMS Dreadnought of 1906 lent the big guitar its name, and from the late 1930s its volume made the dreadnought the standard guitar of bluegrass.

Which rock guitarist built the striped 'Frankenstein' guitar around a factory-second body bought for $50?

Eddie Van Halen wanted a Gibson's sound with the feel and tremolo bar of a Stratocaster, so he fitted a Gibson pickup into the bargain body; a copy is held by the Smithsonian.

Slash stumbled on the guitar riff of which Guns N' Roses hit while clowning through a warm-up exercise?

Sweet Child o' Mine began as a 'circus' melody Slash played while pulling faces at the drummer, and within an hour the band had turned his exercise into a song.

In which 1984 mockumentary does guitarist Nigel Tufnel show off an amplifier whose dials go one notch past ten?

This Is Spinal Tap turned that boast into an everyday idiom, and Christopher Guest had already played guitar as 'Nigel Tufnel' on a comedy album before the film was made.

Which rock and roll guitarist's 'Johnny B. Goode' was sent into deep space on the Voyager Golden Record?

Chuck Berry's recording rides both Voyager probes; when a folklorist objected that rock was adolescent, Carl Sagan replied that the planet has plenty of adolescents.

Which heavy metal guitarist made plastic thimbles after losing two fingertips in a sheet-metal factory accident?

Tony Iommi melted a washing-up liquid bottle into fingertip caps, then tuned his guitar down to ease the pain, and that slacker, darker sound became a hallmark of Black Sabbath.

Which rock and roll pioneer played a rectangular Gretsch guitar he designed himself and called the Twang Machine?

Bo Diddley drew up the box-bodied instrument himself, and he once implied that the odd shape sprang from an embarrassing moment.

Which British rock guitarist made smashing guitars part of his act after a low pub ceiling broke one in 1964?

Pete Townshend snapped his guitar on the ceiling of the Railway Hotel in Wealdstone, and the crowd's delight persuaded him to finish instruments off on purpose, later choosing cheaper ones.

Jimi Hendrix knelt over his guitar and set it alight with lighter fluid at which 1967 festival?

Monterey Pop was his first major American appearance, and he hid the lighter fluid behind his amplifiers before the set so that a rival band on the bill could not upstage him.

Moving one fret higher on a guitar neck raises a note by which interval, the smallest in common Western use?

A semitone per fret is why the frets crowd together towards the body: each one shortens the sounding string by the same ratio rather than the same distance.

Which notation, common for lutes in the Renaissance, shows guitarists which fret to press rather than which pitch?

Tablature is a diagram of the instrument itself: each line stands for a string and each number for a fret, so a beginner can follow it before learning to read music.

Which formal name do musicians use for a guitar pick, a tool once cut from tortoiseshell?

Plectrum is the proper term; flat ones only caught on in the 1920s thanks to the player Nick Lucas, before which most guitarists borrowed banjo-style thumb and finger picks.

Which word do guitarists use for the height of the strings above the frets, lowered to make playing easier?

Action set too low makes the strings buzz against the frets, so adjusting it is a trade-off; on a steel-string acoustic it is lowered by carefully sanding down the saddle.

Which notes ring out when a guitarist lightly touches a string at certain points instead of pressing it down?

Harmonics sound because the fingertip rests on a node, a point where the string can stay still, which mutes the main note and isolates a higher overtone.

Guitar tuners are calibrated to which standard frequency for the A above middle C, set out in ISO 16?

440 Hz became the American music industry's informal standard in 1926; France had earlier fixed a slightly flatter pitch of 435 Hz, which many countries adopted.

Which guitar style, popularised by Mississippi Delta bluesmen, is named after the improvised slide worn on one finger?

Bottleneck playing took its name from the necks of bottles that players slid along the strings, and Sylvester Weaver made the first known recordings of the style in 1923.

Which howling loop arises when an electric guitar's pickups catch the sound of their own loudspeaker?

Feedback is also known as the Larsen effect after the Danish scientist who first described it, and since the 1960s rock players have provoked it on purpose for long sustained notes.

The 'tremolo arm' on an electric guitar is misnamed, since wobbling the pitch up and down is really which effect?

Vibrato is a wobble in pitch, whereas true tremolo is a wobble in volume; the swapped names are generally blamed on Leo Fender, who called his bridge a tremolo device.

Standard guitar tuning spaces most neighbouring strings by which interval, with a single major third the exception?

A perfect fourth separates every neighbouring pair but the G and B strings, and that one irregular gap forces players to memorise several shapes for each chord.

A typical electric guitar pickup turns string movement into voltage by which principle, set out in Faraday's law?

Electromagnetic induction needs a magnetic string: the pickup's magnet magnetises the string above it, and that string's moving field then drives a voltage in the coil.

The air inside an acoustic guitar's body rings at its own pitch, an effect named after which German physicist?

Hermann von Helmholtz gave his name to the effect, the same one heard when someone blows across the top of a bottle; the size and shape of a guitar's cavity set the notes it reinforces.

Which French mathematician's 1636 laws explain why a tighter or shorter guitar string sounds a higher note?

Marin Mersenne showed that a string sounds an octave higher when it is halved in length or put under four times the tension, the trade-off behind every fret and tuning peg.

Many acoustic guitar pickups use crystals that produce a voltage when squeezed, an effect known by which name?

Piezoelectricity was discovered in 1880 by the brothers Jacques and Pierre Curie, and the same effect sets off the pads of most modern electronic drums.

The wire wound around a guitar's bass strings lets them sound lower by adding which property without much thickness?

Mass is the point of the winding: a metal-wound string sounds lower than a plain one of similar thickness, which let makers fit thinner, easier-playing bass strings.

Which wood, valued for transmitting sound well, is commonly used for the soundboard of an acoustic guitar?

Spruce tops matter because a bare string hardly moves any air; the soundboard does that job, so its wood has a strong effect on how loud the guitar is.

Which kind of acoustic guitar, often called a Dobro, feeds its string vibrations into spun metal cones?

Resonator guitars were designed to be louder than ordinary acoustics, which were being drowned out by the horns and percussion of dance orchestras.

Which guitar effect pedal imitates the expressive tone that 1920s trumpeters made by moving a mute?

Wah-wah pedals came about by accident in 1966 during the redesign of a Vox amplifier, and the version sold to Americans was branded the Cry Baby.

Which guitar effect, a Peter Frampton trademark, pipes sound through a plastic tube into the player's mouth?

Talk box players shape the guitar's tone with their mouth so that a microphone picks it up almost as speech; Frampton was given his as a Christmas present in 1974.

Which nickname did Les Paul give the experimental electric guitar he built around a 4x4 timber post?

The Log was built after hours in the Epiphone factory, and for the sake of appearance Les Paul attached the sawn halves of a hollow guitar body to its sides.

Gibson built guitars in which Michigan city before closing its historic factory there and moving to Nashville?

Kalamazoo kept its guitar trade after the Parsons Street factory shut in the early 1980s: former Gibson employees founded Heritage Guitar in the city in 1985.

Which Gibson model of 1958 put a solid maple block inside a hollow guitar body to tame howling at high volume?

ES-335 guitars were a deliberate middle ground: nearly as resistant to howl as a solid instrument, yet with a warmer tone closer to that of a hollow one.

Which Spanish composer, blind since early childhood, wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez for classical guitar?

Joaquín Rodrigo was a virtuoso pianist who never mastered the guitar himself, and his wife said the slow movement was a response to the miscarriage of their first pregnancy.

The Nokia ringtone is a phrase from 'Gran Vals', a 1902 solo guitar piece by which Spanish composer?

Francisco Tárrega's waltz reached Nokia through a 1992 advert that used a Czech guitarist's recording of it, and an excerpt then became the phone maker's default ringtone.

Which Link Wray guitar instrumental of 1958 was kept off some radio stations even though it has no words?

Rumble worried broadcasters because its title was teen slang for a street brawl; Wray had also poked a pencil through his amplifier's speaker cone to roughen the sound.

Which jazz guitarist plucked his trademark octave melodies with the fleshy part of his thumb rather than a pick?

Wes Montgomery developed the thumb technique for the benefit of his neighbours and to avoid waking his children; he worked as a welder by day and played clubs until morning.

Which Spanish flamenco guitarist joined Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin on the album Friday Night in San Francisco?

Paco de Lucía recorded it live at the Warfield Theatre in December 1980, and one jazz critic has called it perhaps the most influential of all live acoustic guitar albums.

Which London music-shop owner, nicknamed the Father of Loud, began building guitar amplifiers in 1962?

Jim Marshall was a drummer who sold drums before guitars; his customers wanted something bigger than they could buy, and it took several attempts based on a Fender Bassman to satisfy him.

Which slide guitarist, killed in a 1971 motorcycle crash, played on the Derek and the Dominos album Layla?

Duane Allman only began learning slide on his birthday in 1968, yet within two years he was recording with Eric Clapton; he died aged 24.

Which Rolling Stones hit made Gibson's Maestro fuzz pedal sell out its entire stock by the end of 1965?

Satisfaction was meant to have horns: Keith Richards treated the fuzz tone as a mere sketch of what a horn section would play on a later take.