For me, Cantrell is Elton John of guitar - a master of songwriting and blending his influences, not one note is out of place in his songs. I’m sure he could be/could have been your regular blues/pentatonic minor scale shredder of 80s or 90s like Slash or Zakk Wylde, for example, but it was never his style and I admire him even more because he focused on how to make his songs and his albums better. I’m in the minority, I suppose, but I consider the AIC albums he created after Layne’s death to be the peak of his powers.
not my top 10 but all great players.
my 10 would be the ones that i want to sound like - Sambora, Slash, Nuno Bettencourt etc but also Noel Gallagher is a big infulence.
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Needs the caveat of ‘electric rock/blues’. I don’t think many of these could dream of being able to play like Tony Rice for instance, and I’m sure there are plenty examples from other genres, Django Reinhardt would be another one. Still I’d have Hendrix at or near the top for sure. Keith Richard’s? Do me a favour.
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Greatest is always subjective and Rolling Stones magazine always fucks these up.
Some of my favourites:
Guthrie Govan
John Petrucci
Paul Gilbert
Marty Friedman
Jeff Loomis
Tosin Abasi
Eddie Van Halen
Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal
Terry Syrek
Steven Taranto
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I think that he’s probably the greatest guitar player of all time in terms of combining technical ability, invention, multiple genres and understanding of the instrument. He’d probably laugh it off and say that it’s Shawn Lane (and I wouldn’t contest that because both are otherworldly). Genuinely, whenever I see him play, I wonder if this is how people viewed Mozart or Paganini in their time. The only downside to him is that people like him put me off playing, not because I know that I’ll never reach their ability but because I know I’ll never grasp the very basics of guitar like they do.
I’m kicking myself for not including him in my list. I don’t think I’ve seen a guitarist in the world who loves playing more than he does. Just look at how his eyes sparkle when he’s playing or talking about playing! And I think he’s a really good guy, too.
I used to love him a lot but his evolution into an relentless technical monster put me off his music… I wish Kevin Moore never left Dream Theater - for me, he was the anchor of the band and it seemed as though he kept the band rooted to the artistic, progressive aspect of music, not the technical one. When Rudess joined, a lot of their songs started sounding like an instrumental race between Petrucci and Rudess. I stopped listening to their new material after Train of Thought.
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Absolutely it is, but I think there’s a bit of mystique to Hendrix that made all his peers take notice. He is regularly quoted as the best so there must be something in it. Van Halen also did that and would feature but I am not a huge fan of a lot of his work.
Zappa, to his credit was clearly a force to be reckoned with, musically for sure. Without him, I’m not sure we get Vai and Satriani for example. First to use distortion? I doubt that.
Oh my god a 100% YESS!! I loved Kevin Moore and what he brought to the band. Him, Portnoy, and Petrucci together were the perfect combo.
I like Mangini but he doesn’t have the musicality of Portnoy even if he is a slightly superior drummer.
I like Jordan but he’s just like another virtuoso guitar player, just on keyboards. That’s not what Dream Theater needed.
But JP’s solo stuff (argh they’re only touring in the US) and Liquid Tension Experiment still puts him near the top!
@Nikola mate check out Steven Taranto. Mindblowing guitarist/instrumentalist from Sydney
I’m learning one of his songs right now (Throne of the Anxious) and my guitar teacher and I just laugh at how fast and proficient he is. It’s a joke!
Im not a fan of Steve Vai, Satriani, Petrucci or Evh - not that I dont appreciate they will play better than I could even if I lived until i was a million but what they produce bores me. I dont want minutes of widdles and tapping on every song. Sometimes less is more.
Sure, JH was the entire package, he even had a cape! I cant listen to anything heavier than Zep, maybe some 90s alternative rock, but I find Metal and its derivatives, to be too much. They’re using suh high amounts of gain with delay, and active pick ups, that beyond speed and scale, is lost to my ear. I appreciate EVH started this, but even by today’s standards, his work seems accessible. Even punk does not generally use a lot of gain, its all about the phrasing and timing of the guitar in the wider song. Not a high gain fan at all, but each to their own. Of the modern high gain aficionados Guthrie is probably the best. But its all effects really, and the core craft seems to be lost within this genre. It would be the end of the world for me to have active PUPs.
I think Vai’s first job was with Zappa?! Yes I dont know where I got that from its credited to either the Kinks (slashing speaker cones) or the Stones (tonebender pedal), in Satisfaction, but those were fuzz tones.
Similar to myself, I’m not a huge fan of high gain stuff. I’d draw the line at some Metallica stuff.
it alway astounds me how clean the likes of Page were. I can’t get that at home without sounding really weak.
Gary Moore, a favourite of mine makes me wince listening to some of his later live stuff. Simply far too much gain.
Yep Vai played with Zappa after some time under the tutelage of Satriani I think and gives a lot of credit to him for being a bastard and pushing his boundaries.
I think there’s some earlier examples than the Kinks related to overdriving the amp rather than having a pedal to simulate that.
Yep same here, (Page was relatively clean and on most albums used a Tele and not a LP) its because its volume which seems to be the neglected variable. They dial only a little gain but push the volume; a lesson on Youtube about the relationship between vol-Eq-gain did more for my understaind than anything - its from That Pedal Show, I think I linked it for you before? Its entitled balancing dynamics. So what we mistake for gain is was actually volume. Another cardinal rule if you adjust one knob on your rig, you have to balance with adjusting another. As the increase is logarithmic, not linear, like a growing triangle rather than the column we were misled with on the rising led on 80s hi-fi units 
Yes you’re right, Ive just listened to that earliest claimed used of distortion, its 1948, Johnny Burnette’s Rock n Roll trio, but its not distortion as we understand it, its just cranked amp with a subtle break up.
Oh, there’s absolutely no question that Petrucci is one of the best guitars players of all time - I just wish he stuck to what he used to do on early DT albums. Under a Glass Moon, Voices, Scarred - how cool are those solos and harmonies… He was creating something unique and untouchable back then. I sometimes run into YouTube clips or ads that feature his old Ibanez signature model, the one that looks like a Picasso painting, and it instantly warms my heart.
Oh, do one, all you people who can actually play! 
It takes me a lifetime to learn some Judas Priest solo, it would take me an eternity to learn this.
There can never be too much gain! 
What’s cooler than Gary Moore?! An Explorer-wielding Gary Moore!
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There’s a clip in one of his very last performances where he’s playing Parisian Walkways or Still got the Blues and his Les Paul is feeding back like crazy. I suspect he really struggled to find that magic sustain spot that day and had to really wind things up to compensate. But it sounds really harsh and to me loses the tone of the song.
speed is fun to listen to for a few mins, then it just sounds like showing off. Guitar Hero stuff.
I’ll take guys like
SRV (the god of the guitar)
Clapton
David Gilmour
Prince Rogers Nelson
Tom Morello
Joe Walsh
BB King
Jon Mayer
Jimmy Page
Pete Townsend
Tim Reynolds
Alpha Yaya Diallo (this guy is unreal, saw him live)
Ottmar Leibert
Thats a decent list!
Its when you get into folk fingerstyle I think the men from the boys are defined.
People like Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, Roy Harper (maybe) and others are the real masters of the instrument.
It’s a bit dismissive to say that top technically gifted virtuoso guitarists are all about speed. Every player that i mentioned in my list is a master of their guitar and play a myriad of songs, riffs, and solos. And yes they can all play blazingly fast, but what makes them great is they choose when to play fast and when to slow it judiciously.
Without the slow parts to juxtapose the fast parts, it won’t sound good. And these guys know that. It shows in their playing.
true this
Is where I think talents like Alpha YaYa Diallo, Ottmar Leibert, Jesse Cook all bring something different to the table. a different interpretation of the instrument than what would be considered traditional by the NA listener, but in actuality we’re a little slow on the uptake at times 
edit
I was actually at this show… Food and music festival.
Na, you want some of this!! Song starts at about 40 seconds. I have never seen a guy hammer a guitar like this. He’s quite tame in this video. I saw him live at Glastonbury many many moons ago. Nuts!!