Misha Mansoor has named the emerging electric guitar player who he thinks is taking the instrument to all-new heights – and it’s a player who’s already been singled out for praise from some of this generation’s biggest names.
At Guitar Summit last month, Mansoor was on hand to take Guitar World through his new stable of Jackson Juggernaut signature guitars. During the conversation, the Periphery pioneer was asked if there were any up-and-coming players who have caught his eye in recent times – and a familiar name cropped up.
“Have you heard of Spiro Dussias?” he said. “He's doing some alien stuff, man. It's very rare to see a guitarist where I'm just like, ‘How are you doing what you're doing?’
“He's definitely up there. He's doing some pretty great [stuff]. I feel like he's definitely trying to push what a guitar could be. I’m interested to see where that goes.”
Spiro is one of the fastest-rising virtuosos of recent years, revered for his mind-altering picking precision, head-bending speed, and downright absurd fretboard vocabulary. Widely regarded as “shred’s next great hope”, he’s an Abasi Concepts artist, starred in Jackson’s American Series Soloist promo campaign, and ended up giving Dream Theatre guitar lessons.
Mansoor is by no means the first player to ring the Spiro klaxon. At NAMM earlier this year, Guitar World asked both Tim Henson and Tosin Abasi the same question – and they provided the same answer.
“Dude, there’s that guy – Spiro – you know what I’m talking about,” Henson told Guitar World. “I don’t know how to say his last name. I just recognize the Instagram handle, but that guy is fucking crazy.”
“There’s this guy, Spiro,” Abasi echoed. “Alien levels of precision. It’s like, you can’t believe it until you sit in front of him and you’re like, ‘Whoa.’”
Earlier this year, Guitar World caught up with Spiro to discuss his whirlwind rise to the upper echelons of the shred guitar scene, during which he shared the secrets of his otherworldly economic picking technique.
Head over to the Guitar World YouTube channel to watch the full interview with Misha Mansoor.
