“Hot-rod” is a verb as well as a noun. It describes the act of making your guitar your guitar—either by giving it a new look, a new sound or some
“Hot-rod” is a
verb as well as a
noun. It describes
the act of making
your guitar your
guitar—either by
giving it a new
look, a new sound
or some kind of
new feature that
clearly wasn’t part
of the original
design. Not to
take anything
away from the purity of a mint-condition ’63
Strat or a ’56 goldtop, but there’s just something
cool about firing up a guitar that was
tweaked for your particular style and tone.
That’s what we’re doing with Premier Guitar.
We’re redesigning the look here, adding a
new column there, and basically retooling our
approach. We’re doing it in order to make
this thing fit your interests as an experienced
player—just as comfortably as a neck shaped
to fit your own hand. We appreciate that many
players like to know what’s going on under the
hood of their gear, so allow me to take this
opportunity to fill you in on some of our latest
tweaks and the motivations behind them.
Multiple Voices
The guitar industry comprises a diverse group
of old-world luthiers, modern-day tweakers,
theoretical virtuosos, feel players, by-thebook
scientists and experimental tonehounds
hell-bent on dissecting mojo and recreating
it. We find great value in exploring what is
to be learned from each of these camps, and
we will always strive to include a diversity of
voices. In our relentless pursuit of tone we
are all ears and always will be. This is why
you’ll find industry vets like guitar makers,
amp designers, pedal gurus, artists and artist
techs writing columns and occasional articles
for us—we value what they’ve learned and
are excited to share their knowledge with
you. What they bring to the table, along
with the contributions of PG staffers and our
experienced stable of freelance guitar journalists,
rounds out what we consider to be a
potent offering of guitar-focused stuff to sink
your teeth into every month (and every day
on premierguitar.com).
The resulting in-depth discussion about tone
continues with each new issue. Like a backstage
conversation among techs at an all-star
jam, the collective dialogue is enriched by
the different experiences and viewpoints
involved. That’s why you’ll see more familiar
names penning new columns, and rotating
into existing ones, in the near future.
Full Disclosure
With this approach comes the embedded
responsibility of holding our contributors’
feet to the fire. People in the industry who
are willing to share their secrets still have a
dog in the race, so to speak. However, they
understand and respect our audience and
know that opportunities to contribute are not
fortuitous moments to pimp their products or
slag their competitors.
Along these lines, it’s important to note that
we pay industry contributors for their submissions—
just like we do with professional
writers. Whether or not they advertise with
us has no bearing. Likewise, we welcome
any and all gear gurus willing to share what
they’ve learned to write for us. There is no
cool club of industry vets who receive preferential
treatment, either—we receive many
submissions and reject a lot of them. Our
contributors also know that anything they
submit has to make it through a gauntlet of
editing and fact checking before the content
is presented to you.
Guitar Media 2.0
Remember that your voice is valued within
the Premier Guitar community. Every column,
article, interview, review, etc. in our magazine
appears online for free (as always) and
includes a comments section where players
around the world weigh in with their own
$.02. It’s not unusual to find an amp builder
or artist mentioned in an article answering
reader questions within the article’s online
comment section. Our aim is to get away
from the practice of guitar magazines being
the preachers while the readers are the humble
disciples. The way we see it, we facilitate
discussions about tone. We start them with
our articles and invite you to jump online to
join in, or hang back and take it all in.
Premierguitar.com is also where you’ll find
soundclips, videos, extended photo galleries
and podcasts that give you a chance to
hear and see the gear, people and events
that we cover in the magazine. Because
many of you are like us and simply can’t
get enough of this stuff, we offer a considerable
tally of new articles and reviews
online—that you won’t find in the magazine.
If you’re unable to cruise by our site
everyday, but would like to be alerted to it
all, be sure to sign up for Backstage Pass,
our free weekly newsletter that brings
everything to your inbox. And of course,
you can also sign up for the Online Edition
of Premier Guitar, which is a free digital
version of the magazine you’re holding in
your hands. Just as some people dig Floyds
and some don’t, we understand that some
of you like having the print edition around
and some of you do your reading online.
Like most hot rod guitars, the tweaking is
never done and we’re open to suggestions.
If you have an idea for a killer story, a new feature
or any feedback whatsoever—let us know.
Joe Coffey
Editorial Director
joe@premierguitar.com