Criss Oliva of Savatage, Alex Skolnick of Testament and Harry Cody of Shotgun Messiah.

 

Yeah, here and there for sure. But Asia, GTR, those trys at being commercial were a bad fit for him. There were a few more decent-ish Yes albums up to Magnification but then he got old, cranky and lost the fire... still, that early stuff- daaaammmn

 

Yeah, Howe in the 70s was a whole league on his own, nobody else did anything remotely similar.
And yeah, prog rockers trying to get more pop-ish almost always sucked ass lol

I listened to his solo work only recently, and was surprised how varied it is. Tons of albums that sound nothing like what he did with Yes. Some are straight jazz or flamenco. Some are bona fide prog that could rival even Yes albums (not the good ones lol). And some still suck haha.

 

Tosin Abasi
Jeff Loomis
Mateus Asato

 

Robin Guthrie
Page Hamilton
Bruce Gilbert

 

1) Bill Nelson
2) Dave Gilmour
3) Robin Trower

 

George Lynch
Gary Moore
John Sykes

 

1. Paco de Lucia
2. Jimi Hendrix
3. Frank Zappa
----classical guitar----
Julian Bream

 

1 Carlos Santana
2 ted nuggent
3 Many others ...

 

Dave Murray, Wayne Static and Lemmy Killmister. Sadly, two of the three are not with us anymore.
I really enjoy how Dino Cazares, Marcos Curiel, Koichi Fukuda and John Frusciante play too.

 

Ok, it's just hard to resist

I try to chose some more overlooked ones ...

Charlie Christian - Gipsy Jazz Solos with not a single note too much and everything on point
Stephan Schmidt - His Rec of Bachs Lute Suites is the best classical guitar performance ever made
Angus Young - Timing, feeling and all the power that fits into a single person

 

Great to see Robin Guthrie get a mention.

 

Charlie Christian's playing and, above all, influence, goes way beyond Gypsy Jazz IMO

 

Me-And-I "My Top 3" NUFF SAID..

 

There's a guitarist who we've all been hearing for 50 years and he never gets much credit. Davey Johnstone who has played every stringed instrument with finesse along side Elton John. Listen at the 4:00 mark.

 

Davey and Dee Murray were both woefully overlooked as players.

 

Love seeing love for Andy! (I met him once, as nice a guy as you'd hope.)

 

Justin Broadrick
Greg Ginn
3rd place is a toss up between John McKay and Geordie Walker

Honorable mention, without whom NONE of this would've been possible: Dr. Tony Iommi

 

I assume you're looking for most favorite? For me, probably Dimebag, Mustaine, EVH.