East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys.
 
 
(Oh, and Alex Lifeson's decent, too.)

East Bay Ray's Awesome! nice to see a plug...Alex Lifeson's super cool too and been listening to him since 1976? so many good players for all your moods...Kurt Kirkwood(Meat Puppets), them Sonic Youth guys, Matt Pike(High on Fire), Buzz Osbourne(Melvins), and many more...one guy I wanted to point out(mind you, I've only heard this one track) is a guy called Glenn Phillips, and the song is Vista Cruiser on a SST records compilation (if I could find the cd in my massive bins of cd's I'd post the name of it...) anyway, one of the most evocative solos I've ever heard; so perfectly captures one of those moments when you're so happy all you can do is scream and channels it through a guitar...I wanna scream for joy at the sun every time I hear it...
 
Oh yeah, Pete Townshend is huge...really too many...
Remember I was a guitar player for years before I saw the light and switched to bass....Tony.

when it comes to punk rock, D Boon. period.

D Boon, YEAH!!! agreed...so many greats; I mean, Steve Jones on 'never mind the Bullocks'; great tone!
With so many great guitar players, maybe we need a thread to find guitarists we can agree to dislike...but let's see who we uneath here for awhile....Tony

My current favorite is Steve Kimock (reportedly one of Garcia's favorites).
 
Must add David Lindley to this splendid list, and Rory Gallagher too.
 
Peace
 
(Message edited by tom_z on August 25, 2009)

I find Terry Kath being brought up very interesting. I've heard it said that Jimmy Hendrix thought Terry was the best guitarist he had heard and that Terry was better than he was.
 
Keith

Terry Kath was fabulous.  I've heard similar praise from Hendrix though I've never seen an official source to verify it is true or not.

Tony; you may find this of interest; Glenn Phillips playing live.

Terry Kath is one of my all-time faves.  
 
Also, I always thought that Peter Cetera was under-appreciated as a bass player. He did some pretty nice things on bass while singing quite dificult lines!

Thanks Dave, that was cool!
 
Another cool guitarist is Mike Sullivan with Russian Circles; using a looping pedal he creates these beautiful, intricate melodies that can turn ferocious on a dime and do it all live...he even does tapping and it doesn't sound like a gimmick...Tony

Here's something to check out. I just found this this morning. I've never been big into Buckethead simply because I'm not a guitar player, but this song is something to hear.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adV8-_hgL4g&feature=related

My favourite anything changes from day to day but I never tire of listening to John Petrucci of Dream Theater. I think he has a pretty talented bass player and drummer too doesn't he?  ;-)
 
Graeme

Graeme; and keyboard player!

Ok, some of my favorites... in no particular order.
 
Eric Clapton, Les Dudek, Duane Allman, Jason Becker, Robbie Dunbar, George Harrison, Paul Simon, Don Felder, Gary Moore, Peter Frampton...
 
just a few, I am sure I have a couple of more favorites, I just can't think of.

Frank Marino!