Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
  • Guitars
  • Amps
  • Pedals
  • Drums
  • Synths
  • Software
  • Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Recording
  • Buyer’s guides
  • Live
  • DJ
  • Advice
  • Acoustic
  • Bass
  • About Us
  • More
    • Reviews
Magazines
  • Computer Music
  • Electronic Musician
  • Future Music
  • Keyboard Magazine
  • Guitarist
  • Guitar Techniques
  • Total Guitar
  • Bass Player
More
  • How to make an AI cover song
  • 30 beautiful acoustic guitar chords
  • 86000+ free music samples

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

  1. News

In pictures: the best guitar gear of 2009

By The MusicRadar team
published 17 December 2009

Electric guitar of the year
Fender Classic Player Telecaster Thinline Deluxe £789

Electric guitar of the year

Guitarists may be tightening their belts in this challenging financial climate, but they’ll sure as hell still find a way to keep acquiring new gear. And 2009 has been a vintage year for drool-worthy new guitars, amplifiers and effects.

Our awards are a celebration of the very best of the products that have graced the pages of our sister magazines Guitarist and Total Guitar, in combination with our own experiences at MusicRadar. Kicking things off, here’s the big one: 2009’s best electric guitar.

As ever, manufacturers continue to innovate – witness Taylor’s stunning T-3 and the thoroughly space-age Manson MB-1 – but there’s just something spellbinding about those enduring design classics from the golden age of electric guitar that makes us want to auction elderly relatives to pay for stunning pieces like Gibson Custom’s Joe Bonamassa Les Paul Goldtop.

It’s ironic then that our winner should draw inspiration from an era considered to be the most forgettable in Fender’s history, the 1970s. However, there wasn’t a guitarist in the office whose head didn’t turn in the direction of the Classic Player Telecaster Thinline Deluxe.

No mere vintage reissue, Fender blended features from its early 1970s Deluxe and Type II Thinline Telecasters, beefed up the pickups and the frets and the result was a guitar that looks coolly retro but has all the attributes required for myriad modern playing styles.

Read the Fender Classic Player Thinline Deluxe Telecaster review

Page 1 of 8
Page 1 of 8
Acoustic guitar of the year
Martin 1 Series D-1 £999

Acoustic guitar of the year

Acoustic guitars don’t come much better than the Collings OM1AV, but they do come a lot cheaper. It’s as near to perfect as a musical instrument can be, but for most of us, £5364 is so far out of reach that it might as well have moondust inlays and frets made from hen’s teeth.

Back in the real world, £999 is still a serious investment, but Martin’s 1 Series D-1 is a guitar for life, and the ultimate workhorse dreadnought. The Stratabond neck is a glimpse of the future, too.

Read the Martin 1 Series D-1 review

Page 2 of 8
Page 2 of 8
Bass of the year
Fender Road Worn '60s Jazz Bass £1119

Bass of the year

For all the innovation at the lower end of the sonic spectrum, our award for bass of the year ended up being a straight shoot-out between Fender's fantastic Road Worn '50s Precision and '60s Jazz basses.

It really could have been either, but we had to choose one, so the '60s Jazz Bass scoops the prize. With prices for an original model now stratospheric, the Road Worn delivers a hell of a lot of the vintage vibe for a lot less cash. And by god does it look sexy.

Read the Fender Road Worn '60s Jazz Bass review

Page 3 of 8
Page 3 of 8
Amplifier of the year
Orange Dual Terror £493

Amplifier of the year

2009 has been a great year for amps, and as a result, this category was probably the most difficult to call. Marshall's pint-sized Class 5 combo, Mesa/Boogie's incredible Mark Five and Electra Dyne and Blackstar's extremely popular Series 1 amps were just a few highlights that prove that when it comes to great guitar tones, tubes still rule.

First over the line though is the Orange Dual Terror. When their Tiny Terror head arrived on the scene a couple of years ago, it was a sensation and it continues to shift serious units. The Dual Terror's launch this year gave gigging guitarists what they needed - more power and two footswitchable channels - without compromising portability or value. We've gigged and recorded with one, and it's simply ferocious.

Read the Orange Dual Terror review

Page 4 of 8
Page 4 of 8
Multi-FX pedal of the year
Line 6 M9 £329

Multi-FX pedal of the year

2008's M13 was one of the best products of last year, but still a little too Cape Canaveral for some. With just seven footswitches but a remarkable 109 effects, there's no excuse not to give its smaller sibling - the M9 - the chance to consign your single-function stompboxes to the great pedalboard in the sky.

It sounds brilliant, it's built to take a kicking and it has the flexibility to create 'scenes' for use in more than one band. If you play lots of gigs and rely on effects, this unit will make your life so much easier.

Read the Line 6 M9 review

Page 5 of 8
Page 5 of 8
Stompbox of the year
Electro-Harmonix Cathedral Stereo Reverb £149

Stompbox of the year

As good as Line 6's M9 is, there's still a place in our hearts, and gigbags, for a pedal that drops jaws. It seems like Electro-Harmonix are releasing a genuinely great new product every couple of months - let's not forget the POG2 that we got our hands on back in June - but the Cathedral Stereo Reverb is the pick of the bunch.

Taking an effect that's often neglected by stompbox-builders, despite its place at the very heart of the rock 'n' roll sound, Electro-Harmonix have packed the Cathedral to the rafters with a wonderful range of 'verbs from the claustrophobic to the psychedelic. It even has a great delay mode too. What the hell did we do before it existed?

See the Electro-Harmonix Cathedral Stereo Reverb video

Page 6 of 8
Page 6 of 8
Guitar accessory of the year
Line 6 Relay G30 £285

Guitar accessory of the year

This is a broad category but the stand-out winner is a product that took our preconceptions about guitar wireless systems and tore them to bits.

It's digital, so the audio frequency range is bigger than most of its counterparts, and the Cable Tone settings allow you to attenuate some of the extra crispness that comes from being cable-free. The most important thing though, is that it just works, without any of the associated horror stories about picking up taxi cab radios or leaving your tone horribly squashed. It's time to be brave and cut that cord.

Read the Line 6 Relay G30 review

Page 7 of 8
Page 7 of 8
Guitar hero of the year
Joe Bonamassa

Guitar hero of the year

2009 was the year that Joe Bonamassa was joined onstage by Eric Clapton for a rendition of Further On Up The Road - the first song that he learnt to play as a child - at his sold out Royal Albert Hall show, released a killer DVD filmed at that show, put out a scorching seventh studio album The Ballad Of John Henry, graced the cover of Guitarist magazine for the second time, was honoured with a Gibson Custom Inspired By Les Paul Goldtop, and showed balls of steel to get up and play brilliantly at the Classic Rock Awards in front of such six-string icons as Brian May, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Slash, Tony Iommi, Joe Perry and Ronnie Wood. He even found the time to speak to MusicRadar.

Joe Bonamassa, you are MusicRadar's guitar hero of 2009.

Page 8 of 8
Page 8 of 8
The MusicRadar team
The MusicRadar team
Social Links Navigation

MusicRadar is the number 1 website for music makers of all kinds, be they guitarists, drummers, keyboard players, djs or producers...

GEAR: We help musicians find the best gear with top-ranking gear round-ups and high- quality, authoritative reviews by a wide team of highly experienced experts. TIPS: We also provide tuition, from bite-sized tips to advanced work-outs and guidance from recognised musicians and stars. STARS: We talk to musicians and stars about their creative processes, and the nuts and bolts of their gear and technique. We give fans an insight into the actual craft of music making that no other music website can.
More about guitars
Fender Play deal

Learn guitar for the price of a coffee - Fender Play is only $3.13 per month with this colossal 75% discount

Damon Albarn

Damon Albarn slams The Rolling Stones and their new album Hackney Diamonds: “Making exactly the same music but not that good. There must be no joy in doing something like this"

Latest
Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande is rumoured to be joining Slipknot

Sepultura announce split, so does this mean Eloy Casagrande is going to be the new drummer in Slipknot?

See more latest ►
Most Popular
It's game on for Roland and its all new Ice White Edition Bridge Cast

By Andy Jones8 December 2023

The story of Fairytale Of New York: “I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas…"

By Neil Crossley8 December 2023

Jackson expands its Japanese made MJ Series with a pair of high-end shred-ready RR24MGs in two classic pinstripe finishes

By Jonathan Horsley7 December 2023

Ableton’s Push 3 Upgrade Kit is here, and It looks like it’s incredibly easy to turn your MIDI controller version into a standalone instrument

By Ben Rogerson7 December 2023

Nevermind the other festive guitar deals, the iconic Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang has 20% off at Fender

By Daryl Robertson7 December 2023

How Meduza almost abandoned billion-streaming global hit Piece of Your Heart: “We couldn’t figure out what to do with it - we were actually close to junking it”

By Andy Price7 December 2023

Lzzy Hale and Kramer team up for one of the loudest looking electric guitars you’ll see – a Voyager finished in high-voltage Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle

By Jonathan Horsley7 December 2023

Nail David Gilmour’s Wish You Were Here tones with Crazy Tube Circuits’ Hi Power, an amp-in-a-box drive pedal based on a Hiwatt amp and Coloursound Power Boost

By Jonathan Horsley7 December 2023

"It was the machine that made electronic music accessible": The 5 vintage synths that gave us synth-pop

By Andy Jones7 December 2023

Wampler has made a new version of its wonderful Tumnus overdrive pedal – so is this Germanium version better or just different?

By Rob Laing7 December 2023

Bitwig Studio 5.1 is now available and adds "10 new characters": is this the most creative DAW ever?

By Andy Jones7 December 2023

  1. Michiru Aoyama
    1
    Japanese ambient musician Michiru Aoyama has woken at 5am to record a new album every day since 2021 – he's now earning $3,000 a month from his music on Spotify and Bandcamp
  2. 2
    “The union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices”: the day the 'Loony' Musician's Union tried to kill the synthesizer (which also happened to be Bob Moog’s birthday)
  3. 3
    Has guitarist Andy Wood just made the ultimate Eddie Van Halen pedalboard?
  4. 4
    Ableton’s Push 3 Upgrade Kit is here, and It looks like it’s incredibly easy to turn your MIDI controller version into a standalone instrument
  5. 5
    The story of Fairytale Of New York: “I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas…"
  1. udo
    1
    7 of the best new hardware synths in 2023
  2. 2
    “I don’t want to generalise and say that he made everything sound good, but he did”: Joe Satriani reveals his strategy for replicating Eddie Van Halen’s tone on upcoming Sammy Hagar tour
  3. 3
    Japanese ambient musician Michiru Aoyama has woken at 5am to record a new album every day since 2021 – he's now earning $3,000 a month from his music on Spotify and Bandcamp
  4. 4
    Has guitarist Andy Wood just made the ultimate Eddie Van Halen pedalboard?
  5. 5
    The story of Fairytale Of New York: “I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas…"

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.