Why I am left cold by the thought of this?
It looks like it would have information in it I would find interesting – but all wrapped up in a yuppie-lifestyle package…has anyone perused one? Is the information in it worth looking past the hipper-than-thou packaging?
There is another mag that I heard about from **Crotalus **called **Fretboard Journal **that looks better – a bit artsy-craftsy but more invested in guitars as tools vs. a lifestyle…
It seems a lot like Cigar Aficionado, which is more about the lifestyle of cigar smokers than it is about the cigars themselves. Note that the tag line of GA is "Guitars, Cars, Watches, Wine, & The Deluxe Life. (Bolding theirs). You can view their premiere edition on the site, and there’s very little about guitars except “The Most Expensive Guitar EVAH!” type stuff.
So, sure, if you want to pose, buy this magazine. 
Ugh, that looks unbearable.
Yeah, I’d want to thumb through an issue or two before I say yes or no on it, but it strikes me as something that’s there to enable rich people to buy up guitars that they’re never going to use. I’m aware of how hypocritical that makes me sound in light of the number of posts where I’ve said ‘get the best guitar you can afford, even if you don’t feel like you play well enough to deserve it’, but I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘get a boomer of a guitar and keep the bugger locked up somewhere’.
It’s like those magazine shots of somebody’s deluxe kitchen where they’ve got this stunning kit, but the person who owns it couldn’t tell tarragon from thyme.
It just makes me think of those places in Africa or South America where there’s only one electric guitar in town, and it’s the house guitar at the local bar and it has strings on it from three years ago…
There is a very blurry line between getting the best tool and getting a trophy prize. I fall into the demographic that this magazine is trying to target - as do you and other Dopers - and I am very sensitive to that blurry place.
I went to a friend’s gig the other night - he had been asked to sub for someone, so I didn’t know the other guys. But my friend and these guys are all blue-collar, working musicians who network with each other, pretty much take every gig that pays, and understand the need to keep the customers satisfied when the wedding party wants to hear Hava Nagila. 
Anyway, my buddy saw me, and a song or two, just took off his electric guitar and held it out to me while he grabbed his electric-acoustic. I took and, asked what song we were playing (some 80’s chestnut) and we took off. I did my thing, the song rocked, all good.
I’m telling this story because there is a difference between the POV of a gigging musician and a person who equates guitars with cigars and cars (rhyming notwithstanding). I put being considered a peer by low-paid giggers doing their job much higher than how my “furniture guitar” photographs to show the play of the grain (don’t get me wrong, I like nice wood grain, but you get the idea…)
Sometimes a guitar is just a guitar.
‘sall I’m sayin’ - stuff that works.
One headline caught my eye: “Billy Gibbons new Fender Custom Shop Esquire”. That’s just odd; I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gibbons play a Fender guitar.
If you subscribe to and read a “lifestyle magazine,” well…I don’t think I want to share this planet with you anymore.
He has an amazing collection, which includes many Fenders. There is a clip arount youtube of him playing an Esquire, I think at a NAMM show. Sounds like himself.
Well son of a gun, Billy on a Tele. Sounds nice. The range of tones on that band was a bit much for one song; blond guy should lay off the reverb a bit. There’s a part2 where some woman plays some absolutely blazing lap steel; sadly you can’t see her playing well, she’s hidden by a pedal steel rig. [/hijack]
Fretboard Journal is great - plenty of emphasis on the players and the music to go along with the “guitar porn” - and certainly no cheesy “lifestyle” content about expensive cars or whisky or whatever. It’s somewhat expensive but the issues are fat, print quality is very high and they don’t have NEARLY as many ads as your typical Guitar Player, Acoustic Guitar etc. sort of magazine.