covid 19

Reader Guitar of the Month: Screw You, Cancer!

Name: Jobe Jude
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio

Guitar: Julie (and many more)

Battling a scary health diagnosis during the pandemic, a guitarist set out to conquer some bucket-list items and learned how to build his own pickups. He’s built 13 guitars and counting.

I’m an avid reader of Premier Guitar and have been modding Fenders since I can remember—way before the name “partscaster” was ever used. I’ve been battling bladder cancer the past few years. Little did I know just how important my love for single-coil Strats was going to change my life. Due to the Covid-19 shutdown, I couldn’t have surgery for five months until hospitals opened surgical wards again. I was going through chemo treatments and cancer was consuming my life. I had to find a way to keep myself and my mind busy. I couldn’t be around anyone, so what was I supposed to do? It seemed like every waking moment was being consumed by thoughts of cancer, cancer, cancer.

Age of Irony: A Day/Year in the Life of PG’s Pedal Issue

Is Alanis Morissette about to collaborate with Harley Flanagan, or am I just flying high on Delta-variant wings?

Believe me, the irony of writing what I'm about to write after my previous column called out "Guitardom's Biggest Crybaby" is not lost on me. As we once again put the final touches on our annual Pedal Issue—a mammoth effort stacked with 25 reviews of killer new stomps from both biggies and underdogs—I decided to take a look at how I commemorated the big event last year. In that little ditty ("This World Sucks, So I Made My Own"), I mentioned how the process had been complicated not just by the then-new pandemic wreaking havoc on the industry, but also by both a freak storm here at PG headquarters and a Mad Max-esque wildfire situation for PG staffers based in California.

Covid Collecting and Post-Covid Shedding

Will players who spent their quarantined time experimenting with new instruments—such as this 7-string archtop—find those guitars collecting dust as they get back to their regular routines?

While plenty of people purchased guitars over the past year-and-a-half, our columnist predicts post-pandemic gear liquidations are on the horizon.

The COVID pandemic's effects on the music industry have dominated this column for over a year. Now that most of North America is essentially acting as if COVID is in our collective rearview mirror, it might seem to be time to swivel to another topic. But is there an interesting corner of the music business untouched by the events of the last 18 months? From what we buy and how we buy it, to where we can play or listen to others playing, not to mention how we learn to play, every stage in the music-making process has been affected by COVID. It's not just that something has changed. It's more like everything has changed.

Rob McNelley Rig Rundown