If you’ve already read my guide to the best acoustic guitars for picking under £300, you’ll know there’s plenty of good wood at that price. But somewhere around the £500 mark, something shifts for fingerpicking guitarists. Cedar tops start appearing. Body shapes get more interesting. Nut widths creep wider, which matters more than most people…
If you think buying the guitar your favourite artist plays will mean you can play like them, you’re sorely mistaken. I’ve been at this long enough to know that the magic is in the fingers, not the wood. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get a little closer to greatness. Knowing what your heroes played,…
I have a guitar on my wall that cost me £5 from a charity shop in 2005. I still play it. Guitars are for playing, not posing, and you don’t need to spend a fortune to get started with fingerpicking. This list is for two kinds of player: beginners who’ve caught the picking bug and…
There are a lot of guitar websites. Most of them are American. Most of them price everything in dollars, recommend things you can’t easily buy in the UK, and are written by people who seem to have never played a pub in their lives. This is not one of those websites. The Picker’s Guide exists…
I don’t know who invented jeans, but they must have been a guitar player. What else could that tiny pocket be for other than a guitar pick? My jeans all have a plectrum in that little pocket. Always. It goes through the wash, survives, comes back. Hibernating. Waiting for the three or four times a…
Before we go anywhere near gear guides and buying advice, you should probably know what’s actually on my wall as a fingerstyle picker. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got some immaculate setup, carefully curated over decades with an eye for tone and resale value. What I’ve got is what I’ve accumulated as a fingerpicking…