I figured this would be a nice topic to help get this forum started up again. I actually don't know if I have one favorite guitarist as I enjoy a lot of different types of music. Currently i'm listening to Layla by Eric Clapton, so I guess i'll say right now my favorite guitar player is Eric Clapton, but as I said I don't have just one. Any comments that have something to do with the topic are welcome as long as they're not negative. (Criticism is ok as long as it's intelligent and not just, "I hate that guitarist.")

Slash is my favorite, followed closely by Joe Perry. I probably wouldn't have started playing if it wasn't for Joe Perry.

Right now, my current favourite guitar work is in Reverend Horton Heat. I love rockablily instrumentals, they have so much life to them.

I would have to say my favorite guitarist ( along with many others I'm sure) is Jimmy Page,  he is an icon of guitar artistry.  I really like his style of alternate tunings like Bron Yr Aur Stomp that is a great song, The Rain Song is amazing, it has inspired me to write songs of my own in the tuning of DGCGCD. Slash and Perry are really good too.

Yeah, those guys are great, try listening to Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Tony Macalpine and Jason Becker, they RRRiiippp!

What about Angus Young

Shred doesn't do it for me.
I guess I just like me 12 bar stuff.

Play this 12 bar riff: Am,(12 beats) A7, Dm, G7, Cmaj7, Fmaj7, F6/B, E7#9, Am, E7#9.
I jam out on this with some friends and some awsome solos pop out. (I do the rthym part lol).

4 best guitarist r Angus YOung of AC/DC Jimi Hendrix ( even though he played it back wards) Jimmy Page of led zepplen and Eddie Vanhjalen of wan halen

Good Lord, where to start? There are SOOOOOO many great guitar players out there playing so many different styles of music; you have probably never heard most of them.
   I guess I'd need to describe chronologically who I've listened to(or heard, period.) I don't quite remember when guitar became "cool" to me but it may have been the movie "Crossroads" with Ralph Macchio, the esteemed Steve Vai pantomime. I would have been 10 years old and playing violin for 5. The "Eugene's Trick Bag" nightmare showed  me Classical music was possible on the thing. My next epiphany came in 8th grade in discovering old Metallica(it should be known the late Cliff Burton was the guiding musical voice in said group and they died with him in my humble opinion...)and finding aggression. High school, then, became the height of my guitar player obsession. Instead of going after pure shredders I looked for composition that recalled the harmonic freedom given us by the Great Composers(Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Ravel, et al...)and found it in Satriani, Vai, certain bridges of songs by Nuno Bettencourt and a slathering of kind-of-white Big Band Jazz like Maynard Ferguson, Benny Goodman, etc. College and hallucinogenics(it was Berklee...)pushed me through Phish(Trey gets great tone, lots of chops but post Rift makes me want to puke)into real Jazz(LOTS of guys who don't play guitar). It was a while before I really discovered jazz guitar I could wrap myself around. Guys like Joe Pass, Tuck Andress, Django, Pat Metheny, Pat Martino, Tal Farlow, Stanley Jordan, Jim Hall, and on and on....
   Don't get me wrong; I dig Classic Rock. I tend towards middle Zep, 70's Jeff Beck, Steely Dan, Sly and the Family Stone, King Crimson, Yes, Stevie Wonder(dig the track "Contusion" on the first album of "Songs in the Key of Life" played by Michael Sembello of "Maniac" fame(the song from Flashdance)- there's soooooo much good stuff out there to find!), Hendrix, old Santana, and on and on.
   Oh, sorry...is it time for my pill?

I have a lot of favorites but lately I like Herman Li and Sam Totman from Dragonforce

I tink it was time for your pil a wjile ago!

Should I take the blue one or the red one? There's a small white one here that has a nike swoosh on one side and a smiley face on th'other...

The Best Guitarist that ever walked the face of earth is who other than JIMI HENRIX !!!!!!!!!
And he is followed by CLAPTON,BLACKMORE,PAGE,MORSE,SATCH,VAI,JOHNSON,VLATKO STEFANOVSKI and RADOMIR MIHAJLOVIC TOCHAK !!!!!!!!!
You may wonder who are those last two. They are the best guitarists from my country(SERBIA). And I tell you that they ROCK !!!!
They are really great and they are too be found on the list of the best guitarists , just not a lott of people know about them.
I bet that Tochak(Wheel) can kick Eddie Van Halens ASS !!!Eddie is nothing compared to Tochak(Wheel).Maybe you have heard of them , maybe you didn't but i tell you they are one of the greatest!!!!And Once, when a journalist asked SATCH who is th best guitarist on the world, he answerd :"Me, and the second to me is some guy named TOCHAK(Wheel) !!!!Long Live Rock and Roll !!!!

PS:   Malmsteen and Becker are really good but i see no music in HvyMetal or in those things they are doing !!!!

ROCK ON BROTHERS IN AXE'S !!!!

John Mayer.
Or SRV.

Al Di Meola, Jesse Cook.

I got into guitar in the early 1980s and loved Mathias Jabs of the Scorpions.  That soon changed to James Hetfield and Kirk Hammit of Metallica.  Also, an early Scorpions guitarist, Uli Jon Roth, can really play.  Uli Roth is more into the classical styles now but he also loves and plays Hendrix.

Rory Gallagher has to be the man

I have to add my hero`s.
Jimmy Page is a studio GOD!
Warren Haynes/Duane Allman/Dicky Betts For there Jammin songs live!
Carlos Santana  For his Jammin songs (not the radio stuff).
David Gilmour For his teastfull  playing on anything.
Joe Satriani Can make a guitar sing.
Brian May !
Al Di Meola!!!!
AND BOB SAGET!!!!!! Full house ? come on do I need to say anymore!

scottyb

This is all juvenile homo-erotic nonsense. It is only men who talk such rubbish;  women might find a singing guitar player atrractive but they won't go into paroxysms of hyperbole over his playing, it's just all you messed-up headbangers who worship at the cheesy feet of,  God help us, Jimmy Page.  How old do you have to get before you realise that rock and roll is just a marketing opportunity, aural coca cola.  Nobody would dispute that JamesMarshall Hendrix was touched, like Mozart, by something else, some otherness, but then, so, too, was Buddy Holly, his cardboard drums and string bass and his jangling Strat.  The walking mausoleum that was Pink Floyd had moments of chilly splendour but it was all just showbiz for an audience which thought it was different.  I know.  I was there.  Iwas there too at all those hysterical and historical Bob Dylan Uk concerts in the sixties and although methedrine fuelled Robbie Robertson to scorching and dazzling guitar figures it was all just show business,  flashy and exessive for the feeble-minded.  Let me entertain you.  Try the sweet complexity of  modest Mississippi John Hurt, or Reverend Gary Davis, try the multi layered virtuosity of Ravi Shankar, or any classical Indian musician, try the riffs, reels and ragas of the Incredible String band and if y'all want man's stuff try the bare-ass naked honesty and the breathtaking playing of maestro Richard Thompson. Ry Cooder invented the Rolling Stones;  Appalachian and Texan community musicians invented The Byrds and the Eagles and God, as we know, invented consumer America.  Look to your heritage. look to the European heritage mentioned elsewhere, look to the voodoo-mojo of tribal Africa and to the shimmering sophistication of Asia. There is a whole world of string music. Strutting, posturing cock-fixated guitar players, that stuff is just for teenagers.

Tasty MacFadden

Kirk Hammet, Hendrix, Graham Powell, Steve Vai, Brian May, Jimmy Page, John Williams, Steve howe, David Gilmore, Slash, Billy Corgan, Peter Green, to name but a few and in no particular order. Oh, and Ritchie Blackmore, of course. And maybe less flashy but just as talented as a music maker and musical / lyrical inspiration, Bob Marley.

Editing my post after just re-reading the previous one..... I'd like to congratulate you, Tasty, on your varied taste in music. However, there's no just cause to highlight the fact that some people's tastes may be less varied than your own. Everyone is at their own stage on their own journey of musical discovery and posts like yours are, quite frankly, bad karma injected into our world-wide community of fellow music lovers.

I'm sure that almost all musicians, whether thay are blessed with a gift from God, if that is your religion, or have achieved personal or recognised success would frown upon your post. And those that have departed this life would be turning in their graves.

I don't know what you are so angry about, but it's probably best that you keep it to yourself.