[Drew]

"Do you want to improve your tone? Do you want to learn about hot new acts on the national and the club scene? Do you want to stay on top of the newest techniques? If so Guitar Player is for you."

Now, I used to be a GP subscriber back in the day, and I still consider them probably the best guitar mag out there. However, reading that, I could honestly say "No" to every question they asked.

I love my tone - I just added a Line6 delay to the Nomad, and I'm DAMNED close to the tone in my head these days, between that and my UV. If I ever feel something's missing, I've got you guys to fall back on for advice - we all know the difficulties involved in amplifying a seven, and between us there's not much we haven't owned or played extensively over the years. National and club acts? We're all either in them or know someone in them or are intimately familiar with their music, or have a finger on the pulse of the local scene and know who's worth checking out that's coming up. And I guarantee you GP won't cover half the bands that get mentioned around here. "The latest techniques?" We've run interviews with Rusty Cooley and Francesco Ferarri, we've got some blistering members of our own, and a number of us have VERY solid groundings in music theory, too.

Really, it's a great mag, but they don't have a thing on us. I was surprised how little I was interested, considering that's a magazine in the past I used to learn a lot from. So, let's raise a collective beer to this community, in honor of just how strong we've grown. Cheers, fuckers!

[kovachian]

I'll <<hiccup> drink to that *~burrrrrrrrrrrp~*

[darren]

With the speed (and occasionally the quality) of information on the Internet, i've found that my consumption of magazines has dropped to almost nothing. There are still a couple that i buy (Fine Woodworking being one of them) because they're great to have around, and they have an abundance of information worth having in hard copy. (Besides, i don't want to have a computer in the workshop.)

[Leon]

amen!

hell, we could probably do our OWN magazine.

[Shannon]

I get a lot of great info from this place, but yes, I'm still a magazine buying whore.
If anything, I'm interested in the lessons and the gear reviews.

[Shawn]

I buy Guitar Player just about every issue so I've been thinking of subscribing too.

[noodles]

I pretty much gave up on most of the guitar mags at some point in the 90s. Following the trends in the 80s was no big deal, because all the guys were monster players. The minute they started putting guys like Cobain on the cover is when I lost interest. I read the magazines for gear reviews and interviews/lessons with guitarists that would help me further my development on the instrument, not to read about some whiney middle class kid's problems.

All these magazines now look more like TV in print form than a useful resource. Honestly, if you call your publication Guitar {World, Player, School}, then why are you gonna put Jack White on the cover? He has contributed absolutely nothing to guitar. I'm not trying to get my opinion involved in this, which is why I'm not talking about his music, but he will be the first to tell you that he isn't very accomplished. Why do I care what he has to say about guitar?

[Shannon]

^ I agree with all of that. I even gave up on them for a while too. But now with some great players given cool lessons & gear reviews via CD-Roms, it's renewed my interest a bit.

[Mastodon]

It's probably worded like that because the target audience is teenagers just learning their stuff.

[distressed_romeo]

It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but they do have to sell magazines, and more guitarists are (sadly) inspired by Jack White than Rusty Cooley. One of the advantages of the rise of the internet is that it's made it a lot easier for people who share 'specialist' interests to exchange information; a website dedicated to seven string guitar can flourish, but there wouldn't ever be sufficient buyers to make producing a decent quality magazine viable.
Recommend a UK magazine called 'Guitar Techniques'...there aren't any gear reviews, but they have a much better quality to crap ratio than many similar magazines, and they have the single best transcribing team on the planet, period. They've had really good video lessons with Yngwie, Pablo, Jennifer Batten, Steve Lukather, Steve Stevens and Mike Stern, and apparently there's a Frank Gambale one coming.
I really wish I could get Young Guitar sent over here...watching there videos on Youtube makes me drool...