Guitarist magazine celebrates its 25th Anniversary this issue with a special Collector's Edition, on sale now!

The cover feature is The 100 Greatest Guitar Things Of The Last 25 Years – a massive 18-page celebration of gear, artists, albums and more.

CD & Multimedia Editor Simon Bradley picks his Top 5 from the list

BOSS ME-5
I have fond memories of this unassuming floor-based effects processor – the first produced for the mainstream. Not only did I sell what seemed like hundreds of them during my time working at Musical Exchanges in Birmingham, but actually went on a training course at Roland UK in Swansea to be shown how to work it.

The day went like this. Meekly introduce yourself to a gaggle of similarly hairy-arsed shop workers; spend an hour setting up a patch on the ME-5 (it actually took about four minutes); demo said patch to your classmates; repeat; have a cuppa; repeat; have lunch; tutor unpacks the first GR-50, a melon-twistingly complex guitar synth that none of us could work; spend rest of time trying to get anything out of it; go home.

Amazing to think of the intricate nature of some of the gear we have to get our heads around these days as a matter of course: the ME-5 is to the BOSS GT-10 as the Sinclair C5 is to a Ferrari FXX.

Marshall 25/50
One thing all guitarists surely have in common is a piece of gear we wish we'd never sold. Some of us have more than one but trumping my original Floyd-equipped Schecter PT-1 and white 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom (sold to insure my rotting Ford Sierra...noooo!) on my personal list is my Marshall 25/50. It was my first real amp and although I didn't really know how to work it back then, I found that flicking it to half-power gave a huge, fat tone that I've yet to recreate all these years later.

True, any 25-watt all-tube head is likely to sound pretty good flat-out, but factor the 25/50's boost feature into the equation and I had the tone that Marshall are renowned for without the crushing output of an SLP...

I ultimately sold it to Phil Docker, a customer (and mate) of ours who used to come into Musical Exchanges each and every day. He's now the guitarist with DLR-tribute monsters Yankee Rose and he remembers the amp: he just laughed when I said I wished I'd never flogged it. And he'd sold it on! Git!

Phil Docker - give me my amp back! (That's not his real hair...)

Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi
Yes, yes, Bon Jovi are crap: yada, yada, yada. There, now that's out of the way, let's get to the facts. The band have sold over 120 million albums since their 1984 debut; they have been selling-out stadia across the world for over 20 years; their diminutive frontman is one of the most famous people in the world; and Bon Jovi are not crap.