When was the last time you purchased a guitar magazine?

guitars4you

I get Guitarist as part of a work subscription - Do I take it all in and study it ? - No

I use to like/prefer Guitar Magazine but can't really be bothered with it now it is on-line - I get update/messages for it and kind of 'flick' thru' it - But preferred it on the lounge table as read thru' it bit by bit over the month 

I still have many many copies of Guitarist, Guitar Magazine and International Musician from the 70's 80's and 90's - But stopped collecting as to many copies and getting out of hand - Maybe in truth or should try and move them on to some one who would appreciate such a collection - Part of me say's do this as I don't really look at them now - But part of me say's keep them as they reflect part of me - Good job I don't need the space

stonevibe

guitars4you said:

I get Guitarist as part of a work subscription - Do I take it all in and study it ? - No

I use to like/prefer Guitar Magazine but can't really be bothered with it now it is on-line - I get update/messages for it and kind of 'flick' thru' it - But preferred it on the lounge table as read thru' it bit by bit over the month 

I still have many many copies of Guitarist, Guitar Magazine and International Musician from the 70's 80's and 90's - But stopped collecting as to many copies and getting out of hand - Maybe in truth or should try and move them on to some one who would appreciate such a collection - Part of me say's do this as I don't really look at them now - But part of me say's keep them as they reflect part of me - Good job I don't need the space

Yeah, I have an attic with boxes full of old Guitarist magazines 

fretmeister

Before lockdown I reckon. Bass Guitar Magazine.

HAL9000

Last month for something to read on a long flight. Apart from that I’ve only read digital magazines for four or five years now.

crunchman

EricTheWeary said:

I think the last edition of The Guitar Magazine which was November 2021. 

Same for me.

Tannin

Probably Guitar Player. I used to read it all the time in the 1970s, probably picked up my last one sometime in the early 1980s.

At around the same time, in addition to the usual Australian rags, I used to read the New Musical Express. For the first year or so of reading it I assumed that I simply wasn't understanding it properly 'coz a lot of it seemed to be complete shit. After a while I slowly started to understand that NME was, in fact, simply full of shit. 

tone1

stonevibe said:

I just found the last one I purchased, as recently moved house and was going through boxes yesterday.

The Guitar Magazine, dated February 2019, means I haven't bought one for 5 years. I still haven't read it.

I used to buy a magazine every month; as a kid, I easily bought two or three a month.

Doubt I will ever buy another one now. Print is kind of dead for me these days, but maybe I'm the exception, as I know some people must still read them.

@stonevibe Don't forget I dropped over about 100 magazines to yours a few years back….(guitar magazines)…..so it might be longer ago when you last bought one 

stickyfiddle

I was a Guitarist subscriber for a good few years from probably 2006-2010 but I don't think I've bought a copy of anything since about 2012. 

stonevibe

tone1 said:

stonevibe said:

I just found the last one I purchased, as recently moved house and was going through boxes yesterday.

The Guitar Magazine, dated February 2019, means I haven't bought one for 5 years. I still haven't read it.

I used to buy a magazine every month; as a kid, I easily bought two or three a month.

Doubt I will ever buy another one now. Print is kind of dead for me these days, but maybe I'm the exception, as I know some people must still read them.

@stonevibe Don't forget I dropped over about 100 magazines to yours a few years back….(guitar magazines)…..so it might be longer ago when you last bought one 

Yeah, they are somewhere in my pile of old magazines

BillDL

I bought a Guitar Player magazine about a year ago when something on the cover attracted my attention as it sat on the rack in Asda as I walked past to buy the TV Times for my old Mum.  I can't even recall now what caught my attention, because I quickly discovered why I stopped buying them about 20 years ago and threw it in the recycling bin after skimming it.  It's the same old format.  I think the writers must go to a school to learn all the clichées and writing formats in the same way that boxing or football commentators feel the need to conform into a mould.  How many ways can you describe how pickups sound before it becomes very boring while still leaving you in the dark as to what makes them different or special?  They still feature guitars I could never afford and, because of the delay in publishing, all the "new" stuff is already out there being talked about by the YouTube guitar celebrities.  I have rarely read bad reviews of gear, but I suppose that's no different from the YouTube faces that receive free gear to review.  There are only so many mods that can be done with wiring electric guitars before the articles begin to repeat themselves over the years, and unless a guitar that's being reviewed is quite radically different from others a review has to be padded out with frippity nonsense to fill the page.  It's very much regurgitation of the same theme, just with new products.

I used to have a newsagent order me in Guitar Player, Guitarist, and I think International Musician and Recording World every month without fail.  I drooled over the glossy photos of some of the guitars that I felt I may eventually aspire to owning, but never did mainly because something else came along in subsequent years that was more droolworthy.  I used to read Dan Elrewine's guitar repair articles and other ones with electronic wiring schemes.  I actually had a long list of title, year, publication month, page numbers, and brief descriptions of the articles that interested me.  Before I eventually took about 18 or 20 years worth of accumulated guitar magazines to the recycling plant (nearly collapsed my suspension) I used that list to locate the respective magazines and tore out the pages that might be useful for the future.  I still have them in clear polypockets in a ring binder in the loft somewhere, so clearly I never had the need to consult them again.  Magazines are a pain in the arse when they spill over articles onto other pages much further on.  It's hard to present them in a folder in a logical way.

TheBigDipper

I bought a copy of Guitarist last month. I haven't bought anything like that for several years. I had an hour in the car to kill waiting for herself to return. 

 I won't be buying it again in a hurry. It hasn't changed, and they're still recycling the same topics and interviews that I've seen recycled several times already over the years. The names aren't the same, but the aspirational GAS-feeding and inane interview questions and answers are. 

 And we don't all play blues. Just sayin'... 

 

stonevibe

I agree that the news is outdated, and the reviews are pointless.

Tannin

TheBigDipper said:

 I won't be buying it again in a hurry. It hasn't changed, and they're still recycling the same topics and interviews that I've seen recycled several times already over the years. The names aren't the same, but the aspirational GAS-feeding and inane interview questions and answers are. 


 

This would be as opposed to the fresh, vital, and thought-provoking topics we here on The Fretboard are thrilled by every day in every way.

Chimpankie

stonevibe said:

I agree that the news is outdated, and the reviews are pointless.

The scores for reviews in Guitarist tend to be:

1-6: doesn’t exist

7: avoid at all costs

8: people who are really into this thing might like it 

9: good

10: great 

I think some of it is that obviously manufacturers will provide the best setup and most perfect examples of guitars which flattens the curve somewhat (which means whenever a review mentions any kind of setup issue alarm bells ring) but also I imagine there’s a choice to just not review the bad stuff. 

stonevibe

Chimpankie said:

stonevibe said:

I agree that the news is outdated, and the reviews are pointless.

The scores for reviews in Guitarist tend to be:

1-6: doesn’t exist

7: avoid at all costs

8: people who are really into this thing might like it 

9: good

10: great 

I think some of it is that obviously manufacturers will provide the best setup and most perfect examples of guitars which flattens the curve somewhat (which means whenever a review mentions any kind of setup issue alarm bells ring) but also I imagine there’s a choice to just not review the bad stuff. 

Having reviewed many guitars for a living, I will say that manufacturers do not send you the best ones.  I've had some right dogs sent to me to review (I just send them back)

CoffeeAndTV

Guitar Player for me in the 80s up to the mid nineties.  Although not a guitar magazine but downbeat too.  

monquixote

I think I may have bought a copy of Guitarist in about 2014 when I missed a train connection and was stuck at a station for 90 minutes and my phone was low on battery. 

Even then I remember thinking it had been years since I'd bought a physical magazine and the format was looking very tired.

rlw

Every month via my subscription to Guitarist

EricTheWeary

Chimpankie said:

stonevibe said:

I agree that the news is outdated, and the reviews are pointless.

The scores for reviews in Guitarist tend to be:

1-6: doesn’t exist

7: avoid at all costs

8: people who are really into this thing might like it 

9: good

10: great 

I think some of it is that obviously manufacturers will provide the best setup and most perfect examples of guitars which flattens the curve somewhat (which means whenever a review mentions any kind of setup issue alarm bells ring) but also I imagine there’s a choice to just not review the bad stuff. 

They’ve always said if something is simply bad they won’t review it but that it’s relatively rare to get something that’s truly bad anyway. 

[ by They I mean Chris from The Guitar Magazine, Mick Taylor and Neville from Guitarist, etc, who are quite clear on all this] 
On the other hand they don’t do sponsored reviews as they are often accused of. I remember Nev saying someone had accused him of giving a Gibson top marks to please advertisers then pointed out that Gibson hadn’t advertised with them for ten years. 

I guess it was a big deal and important publicity for a guitarist to be interviewed by any of these mags. So they would give time to it, discuss things in detail. Some of those old Guitar Player interviews were weighty, even some of the U.K. mags had good quality interviews. But the artists became less interested as they found other outlets and the magazines shifted more towards gear (invariably it’s a picture of a guitar on the cover now, you don’t see artist photo shoots anymore). I guess if you are, let’s say, Joey Landreth then there is still a cross over between your audience for tasteful blues based choons and the magazine audience so you take that call but if you are the guitarist in Wet Leg there isn't so you don't. 

Nitefly

I recently bought a copy of Guitarist for the first time in 5 or 6 years - it was the Gretsch Guitars special edition, with a black Gretsch on the cover. 

As someone mentioned above, it was just there on the rack at Tesco, so I chucked it in with the shopping.

It will likely be another 5 or 6 years before I do it again, barring being stuck in an airport...