Rusty Cooley (born April 27, 1970) is an American guitarist and guitar teacher, known for his highly refined guitar technique.^[1] He is regarded as one of the fastest guitarists in the United States^{[by whom?][2]} and a master of shredding, an advanced guitar technique.^[3] Guitar Player magazine called him "the leading light of the post-Malmsteen shred-volution."^[4]

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Cooley received his first guitar (Peavey T27) and amp (Peavey Decade) for his fifteenth birthday. He immersed himself in music, practicing upwards of four hours a day. He took guitar lessons for a while but became dissatisfied with local guitar instructors and decided to start teaching himself. He relied on instructional books and videos like Doug Marks's Metal Method, Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry and Modern Chord Progressions books, REH instructional videos, and Robben Ford's instructional DVDs.^[5]

His early musical influences were guitarists Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Vinnie Moore and Tony MacAlpine.^[5] After only three years of playing, he became a guitar teacher at the music store where he had purchased his first guitar. Having finished high school Cooley went to the local college and studied music theory.

Cooley became unsatisfied with working with local musicians and began to create solo music in early 1996 and around this time he switched to using only seven-string guitars.

His debut solo album was the self-titled Rusty Cooley, released in 2003 by Lion Music. It consists of 12 tracks, one of which, "Under the Influence", was released alongside a music video. The album featured Cooley on guitar, Brent Marches on bass, Eric Sands on fretless bass, and Bobby Williamson on keyboard. Music was by Cooley, Marches, and Kelly Carpenter; Carpenter also wrote the lyrics for, and handled the vocals on, the vocal versions of "Dominion" and "The Machine". Programming was done by Cooley and Williamson, while guitar engineering was done by Sands. Cooley also was in charge of the production.^[6][7]

Cooley is currently in collaboration with ProTone Pedals, testing their new Jason Becker Perpetual Burn signature distortion pedals, which Becker himself could not do as he has been suffering from ALS since 1990, and as such, is no longer able to play guitar. ProTone has more recently been working on a Rusty Cooley signature pedal. Cooley has collaborated with Dean Guitars to produce a signature seven-string model, of which several versions exist.

Cooley is currently working with a new band, Day of Reckoning.^[8]

Cooley has been a guitar instructor since his third year of playing. He has released five instructional products, done lessons for magazines (such as his "Metal Guru" column) and posted many lessons on sites such as Shredaholic. He has taught for the National Guitar Workshop three times (1996, 1997, 1998) and given many clinics. Cooley has many successful students, such as Chris Storey/Cris Osuna (ex-All Shall Perish) and Mica Roth, a former member of Hybreed.

Cooley currently endorses Ormsby Guitars, EMG Pickups, Morley Pedals, GHS strings, VHT, Rocktron, Eventide, Maxon and more recently Randall Amplification.^[9][10][11]

He previously endorsed Jackson Guitars, Ibanez Guitars and Dean Guitars.

His signature Dean model was released at NAMM in early 2007. It features a super-strat style body with a deeply sculpted lower horn (in order to perform the widest stretches when playing in high positions), EMG 707 pickups, volume control and a three-way switch.

In 2011, Dean Guitars released an eight-string version as well. Nicknamed "Dean RC-8", it has the same features as the seven-string version but with the implementation of a fanned fretting system and EMG 808 pickups.

Cooley appeared on the podcast, Cyber Timebite, in April 2019.