Remember "Guitar Shop?"

Does anyone remember this periodical? It had a short life, and was only bi-monthly at that, but boy did I love it. It was a magazine dedicated solely to gear. But not gearhead-nerdy stuff. Just good high level guitar gear reviews that hit the high points and scattered in the most necessary of specs to help you along your way. A great idea for a mag (I bought it faithfully at the news stands in the mid 90's) but it just didn't seem to catch on.

There was no music lessons or tablature, which I don't care for nowadays anyway. They had the latest gear at the time, which is a fun walk down memory lane for me. As noted in my nostalgic review of GFTPM, very few ads had websites. (Phone numbers, addresses and faxes were the preferred method of contact.)

Anyhoo, the crux of the mag was what was beyond the guitar: The shop, if you will. We all knew Gilmour or Page played modified guitars, but what of the amps, effects, etc? Most of us were in the dark about those things up until the 80's, but even then we had mostly just reports of reports of rumours of what gear Knopfler, Townshend, Angus Young or Clapton used. This mag put some street-cred into their articles, as they often went straight to these guys themselves, or the next best thing (or sometimes even better!) the guitar techs.

One gem of the mag was Lisa Sharken: a regular contributor and self-professed Les Paul addict. She is/was a great writer who was very honest and talked about things a guitarist should consider when they're struggling with their tone. Anyone see or know what she's up to? She might be writing for Guitar World for all I know, as Guitar Shop was a Cherry Lane publication that was absorbed into Guitar World's domain.

So if you find some back issues somewhere of Guitar Shop, grab them. Great stuff in there, and it seems to be every bit as relevant now as it was 15 years ago.