Dave_Mc_2

that's messed up. here in europe (far as i'm aware, could be wrong, the rules change so darn often it's hard to keep up ) if something goes wrong the retailer has to cover return postage. thomann paid for my return international shipping (bog standard special 6, not the ultra). though they changed tubes and only cleaned the pots. Which didn't fix the problem. i made them pay return shipping a second time I wasn't best pleased though, having to parcel it up etc. twice (only brought it to the post office once, i told them to collect it the second time ). Someone with as little amp knowledge as me would know that wouldn't have fixed it.

oh yeah, i mean i realise hendrix didn't have his chance, but then again i'm not sure it's fair to say that he definitely wouldn't have gone to crap the way pretty much every other player/band ever has i've always thought our charts suck

^ I like 1984 that being said, how long was hendrix's prime? any more than 3 or 4 years? yet almost everyone agrees he was the greatest rock player (fwiw i'd probably agree... or at least i wouldn't put ed ahead of him, equal at best). He had zero top 10 albums in the UK. not sure that really accounts for much when you look at the "quality" of our charts

it might have happened anyway, but ed still gets the credit, kind of thing. i mean you can (more or less) say that about any innovator (to varying degrees of accuracy). I still say coming up with a new idea for a type of guitar (granted, more like bolting existing parts from separate guitars together, but still) is worth at least as much (in terms of innovation) as just using older pawn shop type gear which most other players had ignored (possibly for good reason). I'd say the same about the style of playing, too- rehashing an older style of playing/writing and producing songs which has gone out of fashion is hardly as innovative as coming up with a new style. not saying everything eddie played was 100% original and innovative, of course, because even innovators are building on the past, but yeah.

Jack certainly has had an effect on all these people chasing vintage tone by way of boutique amps anyway. Obviously not the same thing at all, but virtuosity is also not all that big a deal in this day and age. well, sure but i mean the superstrat basically exists because of EVH, so i guess you could call that one even if you're talking about both players' influence on the gear.

^ yeah but did white or cobain have the guitar players running round trying to figure out what they were doing? not going to question about the adulation of the masses- i don't like either but i'm not going to pretend they weren't popular, because obviously they were. but eddie had both the masses and the guitarists. that's not to say plenty of guitarists didn't also love kurt or jack, of course- obviously they did. But they weren't running round saying, "how the hell does he do THAT?!?!" (were they? )

Honestly, when I read this, I picture this: hehe +1

^ +1, excellent post. Do i think EVH is the greatest player of all time? No. I do think he's a killer player, though, and he's really, really difficult to mimic (arguably more difficult that some of the "better" players, who maybe have faster or more complex technique, but who don't have as idiosyncratic a style... and fwiw, I also think "feel" is also an indicator of a good player, just as much as technical prowess). But he's certainly the one who raised the bar after hendrix in rock guitar, and most of the guys we talk about as "better" than evh (in the rock/metal world, anyway) only exist because EVH came first. Oh come on! Be honest, he's not in the top 50 rock guitarists of all time?!?! Edward Van Halen?? Seriously?? I mean really and truly his worst enemy would put him in the top 5 without hesitation. So would your mom, ask her. (I'm not saying this as a joke, I would like you to please ask your mother if Eddie Van Halen would be in her personal list of the top 50 rock guitarists of all time) +1 I mean it's the same with guys like hendrix or even page or clapton. you've gotta have a darn good reason not to put them in there. and if you do, the onus is on you to provide some proof/good reasons.

This forum really boggles my mind weekly! To answer the question is Vanhalen the greatest hard rock guitarist of all time the answer is no. I could never put a single player in that spot due to a ton of reasons. As someone who bridges the gap between Hendrix and Eddie I would say he is the second most innovative guitarist in rock history.All lead players were measured against Hendrix who everyone thought had taken the electric guitar as far as it was going to go. So I always tell it that Hendrix wrote the first Testament of hard rock. Then in 78 when VH-1 came out Eddie knocked the whole guitar community on its ass with a whole new bag of sonic bombast that sent a million guys heading for the woodshed, and Ed wrote the second Testament. I see that there are a lot of players on this board that were born after Vanhalen came out, so they will never understand the whole jaw dropping what the {censored} is he doing or what is that moment. Neither Hendrix or Eddie even were the first to do any of the techniques that they are noted for, but it was everything they put together to make there style so unique which makes them legends. I don't want to even go into the whole tapping thing, as there were players who did it before him. But none of them even came close with the speed and fluency to make it sound like nothing ever heard before-not even close. There is not a week that goes by here that some all time great player is not ripped to shreds, no matter who they are. Nice to see a lot of love for Page on this thread as it is usually how sloppy he was live lol. Well to be honest I think a lot of Pages problem with being sloppy live was because he wore his ax below his balls to the point he could not even bar an F chord and would have to use his thumb. There are just way to many great players to ever pinpoint one as the best. I doubt Danny Gatton could play like Yngwie and Yngwie like Gatton, or Eddie like Albert Lee and Lee like Eddie. So just like boxing style makes fights! The one thing that they all have in common is that they are in that 1% of un human talent. It is not so hard to copy some players styles as not every great player was amazingly fast including Hendrix. The whole thing is coming up with a style that is original and having a great sense of note selection. The one player that still blows my mind is Jeff Beck as the guy continues to grow as a player and is playing the best guitar of his life in his mid 60's. I also am not one to knock other players and it is all about the music and song. But keeping it real Jack White does not belong in the same category as the players named in this thread. There is nothing Jack White has ever played that I could not pull off when I was 14. I don't mean to disrespect the guy as an artist, but guitar playing is a whole different ball game. It was like when that {censored} rag Rolling Stone did there first list of 100 greatest Rock Guitarist and Randy Rhoades was #85 and Vanhalen #70 while Jack White was #17 and Kurt Cobain #12. Glad I read that in the bathroom as I did not need toilet paper. good post

^ yeah, pretty much why the hell would anyone want these? just means even more cost for stuff that we want to buy. good point

^ i lost that bet with myself Shame? You pose a stupid question, you get a lot of nonsense back as a result. Welcome to the internet, new guy! actually you could probably remove the word "stupid" and get more or less the same result

i just fast forward through the ads or change channel

Pretty sure that 5% is not more than 1 in 20. Not sure if the 5% is in the US or globally, but i trust my source on the 5% figure.

Two things; 1) You're ignoring the fact that Clapton started in a group called The Yardbirds, and 2) Parody doesn't mean dislike, or degrade, it just means parody.... and yes, before the band was called Steel Panther they were called Metal Skool, and before that some where in Atomic Punks. 1) touch

Irrelevant. What was going on around of them has no influence on their abilities to be interesting, or to lose focus. i agree- however it might and probably will affect how much influence they have on later bands.

Don't feed the troll. good point

Can you read? I said that price and J.F. are way past their creative prime in my post. Guitar based rock is in it's death throes and it is on its way to big band type status as a niche product for a niche audience. Van Halen Style Rock is beyond dead. Heck EVH started the self-embalming process years ago. SB yes i can read. "beyond their prime" is not the same as "being current". when they were in their prime they were no more (or little more) current than van halen was/is. So i don't see the point in bringing them up. If they're the two most recent hendrix-influenced players you can think of then hendrix has no more influence than van halen has. You said van halen didn't influence any modern players, and then proceeded to name two non-modern players to try to claim that hendrix had more of an influence. which is being intellectually dishonest, frankly. yes, ok, so the white stripes and black keys are a bit more current, but i don't hear much page in the white stripes (not familiar with the black keys, maybe they're different). Plus certainly the white stripes are no newer than either the darkness or steel panther, and they both have plenty of van halenisms going on. Ok, so maybe they're parody bands/maybe not, but they still sell records. And I'm not sure how much of a parody those types of bands can really be, when it takes a fair bit of effort to play like that. If you really disliked it you just wouldn't bother, kind of thing.

is frusciante even still in the chilis? not sure that's a fair comparison there... frusciante joined the chilis, when, 1989? I mean hair metal was still mainstream back then. prince was in teh 80s, too. Nice try. FWIW i hear plenty of lead guitar and van halenisms in a fair bit of hard rock and metal at the moment. Hardly mainstream, but it gets on kerrang and scuzz tv channels here. As you say, it's not like either hendrix- or van halen-style lead guitar really gets into the charts, i don't think you can claim either is any better in that respect.

While I agree EVH was/is influential, his influence is nowhere near as widespread as Hendrix or even Clapton or Beck. Floyd Rose and a humbucker is pretty much limited to a hard rock/metal category. So is his influence still felt there? Possibly. Is Hendrix' influence felt on just about anybody who has picked up an electric guitar since 1967? Probably. to be fair, clapton probably has influenced a lot of people. anyone who started off awesome and then went boring was probably influenced by him. kidding, i love clapton too. I guess you could level that same accusation at most people. I mean, as much as love hendrix, he didn't live long enough () to go off the boil. Maybe he was awesome enough to be awesome forever, I dunno.

i don't see how you can claim there's no emotion in eddie's solos. his solos are awesome. his vibrato is killer.

Excellent point! But surely it's more than one generation for EVH. +1. he's still influencing plenty of people. also i mean it's hardly fair to criticise him for influencing one fewer generation than hendrix when hendrix was one generation older than him. that's a bit like saying dickens has influenced more people than thomas hardy. no {censored}, he was born 30 years earlier EDIT: just to clarify, I love hendrix too. I'd certainly have hendrix in my top 5 (if not top 1 or 2).

Not that he didn't have feel but his playing influenced that genre. is it fair to blame him for that, though? I mean, I sorta used to blame grunge for killing the music I liked, but then I realised that the actual grunge era wasn't that bad, and it was more the stuff that grunge influenced that killed the music I liked.

I think it works out at around 22.4% overall, but don't quote me on it, I've never done it myself, it's just from what i read somewhere...

^yeah, maybe the fact you went in with others worked against you ( i was on my own) although some other guitar shops in and around denmark street got pissy when they thought i wasn't buying... anyway, i only buy from places that let me try stuff to my heart's content, if no, i don't buy from them, it hurts them in the end.

Originally posted by Japetus I always laugh my ass off when I see that "HC's Faceman" sig... the a-team pwns!