These are sad times, friends. A legendary Ovation guitar factory in Connecticut has been forced to shut its doors after 47 years in the business. During that time, the company produced for the likes of Mick Jagger, Eddie Van Halen, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon. Additionally, the company managed to get itself acquired by Fender. In an interesting twist, Fender will actually continue to manufacture Ovation guitars, however they will be doing so through an offshore…

Hey Guitar News Daily readers, we’ve got something really special for you today. Our friends over at guitartricks.com hooked us up with an exclusive look at some of their guitar lessons. If you haven’t heard of them yet, Guitar Tricks is a revolutionary online guitar learning system that teaches players to sound like their favorite guitar heroes. Anyways, they gave us a sneak peak of one of their stellar lessons, “Getting Started: The Four-Step Pattern”. You’ll notice the video is…

If you couldn’t make it to Nashville this past weekend for Summer NAMM 2013 (National Association of Music Merchants), you definitely missed out. As one of the music industries largest trade shows, Summer NAMM is the best way to find out about upcoming products, as well as to catch some celebrity appearances and great performances.

Here are two great mobile applications you should give a try if you like guitar. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced guitarist, these apps will be not only fun but also essential tools to keep in your pocket. Jimi Guitar is already one of the most acclaimed guitar apps on Android market. It has a variety of play modes and a smart user interface that make it enjoyable even for non-musicians. The free play mode changes your phone into a…

Hybrid guitars seem to be all the rage these days. The benefits are obvious – being able to obtain electric and acoustic guitar sounds at the flick of a switch without changing your guitar. Imagine going from a loud, rocking opening song to a quiet, intimate acoustic ballad without having to change guitars. The reality however, is that these guitars tend to favour one sound over the other, and the final product is really a compromise of sorts between an…

Apparently, if you’re an acoustic or classical guitarist and you rest your arm on top of the body of your instrument, you “lose between 15 and 20 percent of the power and projection of the top of the guitar“.  This is where guitar armrests come in, and they have the added benefit of making your playing more comfortable.  I must admit that through my years of classical guitar playing, I’ve never seen the need the need for one of these,…

Ibanez have made a flurry of announcements at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville, including limited edition guitars, new amps and a whole lot of bass products.  Thanks to Harmony Central – here are brief descriptions and links to the headlines: Ibanez Introduces Additional Xiphos Series Model – the XPT700FX metal guitar with fixed-bridge simplicity and sustain to six string shredders Ibanez Announces Alternate Finish for Ultimate S Guitars – now come in fiery Viking Red! Ibanez Releases Limited Production RG770DX – the 2008 RG770DX has all…

Just in case you haven’t been keeping track, here is a roundup of some new guitars announced recently: Gibson Custom Shop Alex Lifeson ES-355 Signature Guitar: Canadian-born guitarist’s career is being honored with Gibson Custom Shop’s recent introduction of the Alex Lifeson ES-355 Electric Guitar.  This is a semi-hollowbody electric guitar painstaking re-creation of Lifeson’s favored instrument, a 1976 Gibson ES-355.  The Alex Lifeson ES-355 guitar has a maple body and three-piece maple neck. It features a special Maestro Long Vibrola tremolo tailpiece and individual volume…

This is a seriously cool looking, compact amp for acoustic guitar players – the Fishman SoloMan Acoustic Guitar Amp is not only portable, but is designed to provide wide horizontal dispersion and deeper sound penetration than traditional acoustic combo amplifiers.  The Fishman SoloMan Acoustic Guitar Amp  features 220-watts power output, 3-band EQ, +48V phantom power, high quality preamps, reverb, effect loop, phase and notch filters, 2 mic/instrument and aux stereo (with level control) inputs, balanced XLR D.I. output per channel and main mix…

Forbes has a feature story on Martin Guitars, still going strong after 175 years of guitar manufacturing.  Martin currently sells 90,000 guitars per year – the most out of all manufacturers in the United States. According to CEO Chris Martin, 52, the economic downturn of late hasn’t affected sales, but he is troubled about the not too distant future. Amazingly, they were almost bankrupt in 1982, but managed to turn the company around.  Martin has grown explosively since then – while…