As mentioned before, it's hard to call any one guitarist as the best ever, but he was great for sure. I remember going to see Tommy Emmanuel play and he was so good that I couldn't pick up my guitar for 3-4 months after....I just didn't see any point to it. There was one point in the middle of his show he asked if there were any guitar players in the audience....I couldn't raise my hand because after seeing what this guy could do with a guitar I felt embarrassed to call myself a guitar player.