# Who is the most underrated guitarist of all time?

> Not the names on every list. The players whose work everyone has heard without knowing whose hands were on it. Two at a time, one pick each, and the order belongs to whoever votes.

*By YPB Team · Published September 17, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-most-underrated-guitarist-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Mick Ronson**
   David Bowie's guitarist on Ziggy Stardust and the arranger behind Lou Reed's Transformer. Neither record sounds the way it does without him.
2. **Steve Jones**
   The Sex Pistols' guitarist, whose layered overdubs on Never Mind the Bollocks are far more careful than punk's reputation allows.
3. **Malcolm Young**
   AC/DC's rhythm player. The riffs everyone can hum are his, and almost nobody plays them right.
4. **Mike Campbell**
   Forty years with Tom Petty, then Fleetwood Mac, playing only what the song actually needs.
5. **Billy Duffy**
   The Cult's guitarist, economical to a fault, every note placed where it counts.
6. **Link Wray**
   Recorded Rumble in 1958, an instrumental banned from radio for supposedly inciting riots, and invented the power chord doing it.
7. **Johnny Marr**
   Wrote the guitar parts that carried The Smiths, then kept reinventing the job with Modest Mouse and The The.
8. **Mick Taylor**
   The Rolling Stones between Brian Jones and Ron Wood, across Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St. and Goats Head Soup.
9. **Kevin Shields**
   My Bloody Valentine's guitarist, who turned the instrument into a texture machine and spent years perfecting Loveless.
10. **Brian Setzer**
   Brought rockabilly guitar back with the Stray Cats, then did it again fronting an eighteen-piece orchestra.
11. **Robert Quine**
   Played on Richard Hell's Blank Generation and Lou Reed's The Blue Mask, and almost nobody outside the credits knows the name.
12. **Hubert Sumlin**
   Howlin' Wolf's guitarist, whose lines on Smokestack Lightnin' got borrowed by every British band that followed.
13. **Bernard Butler**
   Suede's guitarist for two albums, and the reason those two albums still sound unlike anything else from the era.
14. **Nile Rodgers**
   Chic, Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk. The most recognisable rhythm guitar on earth, credited far less often than it is heard.
15. **Ry Cooder**
   Slide player on hundreds of records, from the Rolling Stones to Paris, Texas, and rarely under his own name.
16. **James Burton**
   Played behind Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Gram Parsons, and invented much of what country guitar became.

Tags: music, rock, guitar, musicians