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Guitar Picks of the Stars

Guitar Picks of the Stars

See a sampling of picks used by famous guitarists over the years.

Allman Brothers Band - Warren Haynes & Oteil Burbridge
Yngwie J Malmsteen
Mastodon's Bill Kelliher
Deftones' Stephen Carpenter
Eric Johnson
The Who's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend
Thin Lizzy's Vivian Campbell and Ricky Warwick
Slash
Queen's Brian May
Def Leppard's Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell
Grace Potter
Maroon 5's James Valentine
Fall Out Boy's Joe Trohman
Buddy Guy
Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington
Dave Matthews
Brian Setzer
Trivium's Corey Beaulieu
Sting
Anthrax's Scott Ian
Rush's Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee
Eddie Van Halen
Aerosmith's Joe Perry
Night Ranger's  Joel Hoekstra
Slipknot's Mick Thomson
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Geezer Butler
Earl Slick (David Bowie)
Zakk Wylde
Ted Nugent
Sepultura
Greg Koch
AFI
Disturbed's Dan Donegan
Metallica's James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett
Slayer's Kerry King
John 5
Paul Gilbert
Velvet Revolver's Duff McKagan and Dave Kushner
Los Lonely Boys' Henry Garza
Megadeth's Dave Mustaine
The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach
Ritchie Blackmore (Blackmore's Night)
Megadeth's Dave Mustaine
The Cult's Billy Duffy
Kiss
Hoobastank
Exodus
ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons

Submit your own artist pick collections to rebecca@premierguitar.com for inclusion in a future gallery.

Stompboxtober is rolling on! Enter below for your chance to WIN today's featured pedal from Peterson Tuners! Come back each day during the month of October for more chances to win!

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Wonderful array of weird and thrilling sounds can be instantly conjured. All three core settings are colorful, and simply twisting the time, span, and filter dials yields pleasing, controllable chaos. Low learning curve.

Not for the faint-hearted or unimaginative. Mode II is not as characterful as DBA and EQD settings.

$199

EarthQuaker Devices/Death By Audio Time Shadows
earthquakerdevices.com

5
5
4
4

This joyful noisemaker can quickly make you the ringmaster of your own psychedelic circus, via creative delays, raucous filtering, and easy-to-use, highly responsive controls.

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This little pedal offers three voices—analog, tape, and digital—and faithfully replicates the highlights of all three, with minimal drawbacks.

Faithful replications of analog and tape delays. Straightforward design.

Digital voice can feel sterile.

$119

Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay
fishman.com

4
4
4
4.5

As someone who was primarily an acoustic guitarist for the first 16 out of 17 years that I’ve been playing, I’m relatively new to the pedal game. That’s not saying I’m new to effects—I’ve employed a squadron of them generously on acoustic tracks in post-production, but rarely in performance. But I’m discovering that a pedalboard, particularly for my acoustic, offers the amenities and comforts of the hobbit hole I dream of architecting for myself one day in the distant future.

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A silicon Fuzz Face-inspired scorcher.

Hot silicon Fuzz Face tones with dimension and character. Sturdy build. Better clean tones than many silicon Fuzz Face clones.

Like all silicon Fuzz Faces, lacks dynamic potential relative to germanium versions.

$229

JAM Fuzz Phrase Si
jampedals.com

4.5
4.5
5
4

Everyone has records and artists they indelibly associate with a specific stompbox. But if the subject is the silicon Fuzz Face, my first thought is always of David Gilmour and the Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii film. What you hear in Live at Pompeii is probably shaped by a little studio sweetening. Even still, the fuzz you hear in “Echoes” and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”—well, that is how a fuzz blaring through a wall of WEM cabinets in an ancient amphitheater should sound, like the sky shredded by the wail of banshees. I don’t go for sounds of such epic scale much lately, but the sound of Gilmour shaking those Roman columns remains my gold standard for hugeness.

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