"Some time in late 1966," writes Dave Gregory of XTC, "an American gentleman known as Jimi Hendrix released his first single, 'Hey Joe'. On the B-side was a delightful refrain entitled 'Stone Free', the guitar solo and fade-out featuring the most brutal mis-use of Stratocaster hardware hitherto encountered. But at last, some 35 years after Doc Kaufman's original prototype, the tremolo unit had found its true vocation."

"Having everybody in Madison Square Gardens get up when you've played your set is a great feeling," reminisces Jeff Beck about his pre-Christmas gigs with a Mr Eric Clapton. "There's no way I'm not gonna get back into it. I've got an album in the pipeline — we'll be recording in February in New York, and I'm doing some things in LA with Rod Stewart for his new album." Beck is back, it seems.

Jon Lewin runs the video again: "while a show like The Tube is made by people who work for The Tube, Whistle Test (and others) are made by people who work for the BBC." Yes, see what you mean...

Bunged an E-Bow (new black one), Bill Nelson decided to put the guitar in An Historical Context: "Where once noise had liberated, now it chained. What had promised to be progressive and open, became narrow and fixed. The Heavy Metal Opiate had arrived: an unforgivable, grim cavalcade of mindless and hysterical riffs, perpetrated by the kind of people who saw nothing more challenging in the instrument than a socially acceptable way of pointing their willies at an audience." Yes, see what you mean...

Buying a guitar with Adrian Belew: "The pre-requisite I place on a guitar when I'm buying is how it plays, and also how well it sustains, without an amplifier. I've found that if a guitar sustains well and it's not even plugged in, that means it'll be all right when you put it through an amp."

Andy Duncan finds himself the wrong side of the sound proofing yet again. "When the engineer says 'can we have a bit of snare drum', single beats will do perfectly well. Resist the temptation to show off all the finer points of your Scottish Pipe Band drummer's technique, the advanced Ratamaque, or press roll like the beginning of Blue Peter. Likewise the toms. At this stage no-one is remotely concerned with your ability to simulate the sound of the massed drummers of Burundi all on your lonesome."