“I’ve had years of listening to that Goldtop and now, I own it”: Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley and Dave Baksh talk perfect guitars, going from amp stacks to profilers – and the difficult decision to say goodbye

Since the late ’90s and early ’00s, Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley and Dave Baksh have shown a blatant disregard for the supposedly established confines of the bouncy, made-for-MTV genre of pop-punk. Records like All Killer No Filler (2001) and Does This Look Infected? (2002) were edgy when compared to records by their contemporaries. 

But if Whibley, a songsmith who can rattle off catchy tunes with the best of ’em, and Baksh, a raging metalhead at heart, cared about such a lack of integration with the masses, they never showed it. 

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Andrew Daly is an iced-coffee-addicted, oddball Telecaster-playing, alfredo pasta-loving journalist from Long Island, NY, who, in addition to being a contributing writer for Guitar World, scribes for Rock Candy, Bass Player, Total Guitar, and Classic Rock History. Andrew has interviewed favorites like Ace Frehley, Johnny Marr, Vito Bratta, Bruce Kulick, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Rich Robinson, and Paul Stanley, while his all-time favorite (rhythm player), Keith Richards, continues to elude him.