I never see his name mentioned in guitar threads, but to my untrained ear, Ian Bairnson (guitarist for the Alan Parsons Project) has one of the most recognizable guitar sounds I know.
My favorite “obscure” guitarist is Michael Roe (of The 77s).
You have more than one Brian Moore Custom? What models? Yowza!
I wish I had more, but my MC-1 set me back. I may never get caught up from that.
Elliot Easton of the Cars. Great chops, tasty beyond belief. Every time a Cars song comes on the radio I marvel at how perfect the guitar work is.
In fact, I was planning to start this thread just to mention him, but someone did already. 
Great, great choice. Knows his stuff, has a solid grounding in folk and rockabilly and can hold his own across a variety of styles. Hangs out on the LP Forum and is generally a very nice guy.
David Lindley, although he may be more “under-recognized” than “under-appreciated”. Of course, he’s more than just a guitarist (he’s been described as a maxi-instrumentalist). Listen to Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty for a good sampling of his prowess on varied stringed instruments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lindley_(musician)
Vernon Reid from In Living Color once said that when auditioning bassists for the band, one criteria was that they had to come in with the bass slung way down low. Otherwise - outtathere!
Too funny - 'cause Reid holds his guitar up *there *like Tom Morello. Here’s a photoI could find - not nearly as high up as in the Cult of Personality video, but you can see it’s above his belt. And yeah, the first ILC bassist, Muzz Skillings, wore his bass slung low - and was a total rock/funk/jazz monster…
Heh. Yes, Morello and Reid are armpit axemen. Skillings was a low guy, but Doug Wimbish (his replacement) doesn’t really hold his bass particularly low.
You know, by that logic, Sid Vicious would have been a great bassist for the band. Wonder how that would have worked out?
Jeff “Skunk” Baxter-one of the founders of Steely Dan.
Not a founder - heck, Chevy Chase was a drummer in the early SD back at Bard College well before Skunk got involved - he was making a living as a session player and Fagen and Becker dug his chops. Hmm - Wiki lists him as a “founding member” - see below - but I have always heard that the beginnings of The Dan was back at Bard College and Skunk was one of their go-to guys when Fagen and Becker decided to focus on the band full time… but what do I know?
Totally great player - wide variety of styles - and his knowledge of missile defensesystems (wiki link) comes in handy when he is out on the road! 
Baxter and Denny Dias trading licks on “Bodhisattva,” especially the live version, should bury any notion of Steely Dan being soul-less, non-rocking robots. True, they were a jazz group at heart, but they could rock when the time called for it. That may be the most underrated guitar rock song.
He is a better guitarist than about 99% of the people being named here. He plays mostly acoustic. Listen to his early albums. Some of the tracks are instrumentals comprising just him playing guitar. Many of them are fingerpicking with multiple lines so melodically and rhthymically complicated it does my head in just trying to figure out what’s going on. He’s up there with really good guitarists like Tommy Emmanuel and Chet Atkins, and most of people being named here wouldn’t know where to start if they were asked to play what he plays. Most people named in this thread are just averagely good guitarists in famous bands.
I’d like to add Tony Hicks from The Hollies.
& hes a better singer than ever given credit for as well.
I was listening to the strangely sad (& strangely titled!) “I was born a man” on Youtube yesterday.
I have to practice, but I can’t leave this thread alone. I’ll give it five minutes…
Bruce Cockburn does a few things that make him worth a listen. His finger-picking style is a combination of Travis picking, claw-hammer and classical-based stuff. His thumbs are amazing - he can wrap his left for the bass notes of many different chord shapes, allowing him to use a spare finger for inner voices and melodic figures. His use of hammers, pulls and glides make it sound like there’s more than one player, especially in his instrumental numbers. His right thumb keeps exquisite time, jumping two or three strings, sometimes playing more than one note at a time to give a true stride piano effect. In a tune like ‘Foxglove’, he plays phrases of three eighth notes overtop of his thumb’s quarter notes, sounding like a swing harp. He is a true master of alternate tunings, and his sense of cross-string melodies is superb. I’ve no idea what his presence in the US has been like, but his career spans 40 years, during which time his range has expanded from being just a damn fine folk guitarist to including blues, rock, reggae, country and world music influences without losing the central core of what makes his playing unique, interesting and instantly recognizable. A thumb through the two books of his transcriptions (“All the Diamonds” and “Rumours of Glory”) will quickly show that this is someone who has thoroughly explored and expanded the possibilities of the instrument.
Recommended listening includes the albums “Bruce Cockburn”, “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws”, “Humans”, “Stealing Fire”,“Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu”, but I haven’t heard an album or been to a concert of his that disappointed me.
Ten minutes later - and with that, I have to get some work done. Back later.
Pretty niche. He’s had two song that made the top 100 in the US (“Wondering Where the Lions Are”, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”), but both of those were at least 25 years ago. I know that he has his devoted fans here in the States, but he didn’t have a sustained presence as a popular artist.
When I was going to school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I recall that he came to play a concert at the Memorial Union. His tour bus was parked outside…the placard on the front of the bus (above the front window) read “NO 1 U NO”. 
How about the L.A. session musicians from the late 50s to the 70s: Tommy Tedesco, Glen Campbell, Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts, Carol Kaye (who became the first call bassist), etc. Those guys played on everything. They’re now known as the Wrecking Crew, but according to Kaye, that name was coined years later when drummer Hal Blaine wrote his book. And the Funk Brothers from Motown: Robert White, Eddie Willis, and Joe Messina. Or Steve Cropper from Stax; not just a creative/influential guitarist but also a strong songwriter. And from Muscle Shoals, Jimmy Johnson. Or James Brown’s guitarists through the years like Jimmy Nolen, Catfish Collins - very funky, syncopated stuff.
I agree with Glenn Tillbrook from Squeeze, he created some real tasty stuff. Same with Elliot Easton. I’m glad Nels Cline got a mention. In L.A., he’s at the top of the heap. I saw him with Wilco a few weeks ago…he was the one that people couldn’t take their eyes off of.
As usual, I agree with most of what WordMan wrote; I guess I have to give the Allmans a more serious listen, though I’m pretty familiar with Duane’s work on the Layla album. As far as Beck goes, musicians get it, but I think the general population just sees him as a famous British rock guitarist that’s been around for a long time. But man, that dude has always been ahead of his time. When I hear him play, the word that constantly comes to mind is “futuristic”. I need to check out his new stuff; his current bassist, Tal Wilkenfeld, has quite a buzz around her.
Another thread reminded me of one more underrated guitarist: Billy Zoom from X. He isn’t the flashiest guitarist, but he helped change the musical landscape in the early 80s by merging punk with rockabilly and roots music. His tight rhythm playing sure propelled those X tunes.
All good stuff. I hear you about the studio guys, but then what do you do about Steve Lukather? I mean, he is a monster player who played on everything in the 80’s - from the non-EVH parts in Beat It to his own hits with Toto. From a session standpoint, he is up there with Waddy Wachtel, Jay Graydon, Larry Carlton, etc. - but…he’s got that awful 80’s processed tone.
Totally true about Billy Zoom - great stuff. Same with James Calvin Wilsey, who started off in the LA punk scene and ended up being Chris Isaak’s first guitarist (Wicked Game - sublime). And yes, check out that Beck DVD - I assume you saw the review/drool thread I posted a month or two ago on it…
A couple I like a lot and didn’t get a mention on that Rolling Stone list or in this thread are Page Hamilton from Helmet and Andy Gill from Gang of Four. Andy Gill may have slipped from underrated to downright obscure – he gets maybe 100 words in Wikipedia and the fourth hit from a Google of his name was a stuntman of the same name.
It probably doesn’t help that both bands were terribly uneven.
Agreed on Andy Gill - I had a thread herewhere I praised his work while railing on his use of ice-pick feedback…