Best Instrumental Guitar album ever.

What about Joe Satriani , Eddie Van Halen , Steve Vai etc ?

Vai - Alies Love Secrets. Its great, really shows what a great rythem player he is too. Inspires me to work on my rythem for sure
As for Satrani, I much prefere The Extremist to SWTA

Doesn't matter how often they are copied Wired and Blow by Blow are 2 ESSENTIAL instrumental albums.
For acoustic LAGQ (Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) an evening in Grenada or anything else by them will not disappoint you

Agreed on 'Wired' ad 'B-by-B.' But after going back to listen to each, I concluded that newbies just wouldn't get it, because funk-rock fusion isn't really that popular these days. But man-oh-man, cuts like his version of Goodbye Porkpie Hat just kill me, and are timeless. Do you think that admirers of the shred-meisters would really understand how rhythmically advanced and beautifully musical Beck's playing is -- and so much more difficult than straight-ahead shredding? Consider also, that he will also perform every wild @ss thing live, as well as in the studio -- a fact that even amazes many other guitar greats. But even when doing the near impossible, the best part is that Jeff Beck is always about the music, and not technique for technique's sake.

I've never heard anything i like better than Leo Kottke 6 and 12 String Guitar.

Yep. That's my Number 1.

A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned, but here's a couple more:

Virtuoso - Joe Pass

or for a more folk/blues/rag approach:
Some People Who Play Guitar (Like a Lot of People Don't) - Various Artists

Castles of Spain - Segovia; not the suite but the album, which looks like is not available on CD. There was one piece on there by Ponce (I think) called Romanza de los Pinos <sp?>, that I really fell in love with. If anyone knows if it was reissued on CD, please let me know. It was MCA 2534, done sometime in the 70s.

Birds of Fire - Mahavishnu Orchestra was pretty good, as was, for me at least, Close to the Edge by Yes. Close to the Edge had vocals in it, but the vocals are treated, sometimes, like alternate instruments by those guys. Lots and LOTS of guitar stuff going on for long periods of time. Not exactly what you'd call 'pop vocal tunes' at any rate.

Shakti was also quite interesting, by John McLaughlin.

Pretty much anything by Carlos Montoya

And as mentioned, the Blow by Blow album was incredible. I saw him do the whole album live, note for note.

A lot of Roy Buchanan stuff is instrumental, well some of it. Some of it sounds like they did the tracks and then never got around to hiring a singer. That stuff is scary.

Hymn of the 7th Galaxy - Return to Forever has a good bit of Bill Connors in it. I actually liked him better than Dimeola, no disrespect Al.

Red Alert by Tony Williams Lifetime has some (I think) great Holdsworth on it.

And then Leo Kottke was already mentioned.

I just got an awesome one for Valentine's Day from my wife, called "Free Bird:The Steel Guitar Tribute To Lynyrd Skynyrd." Terrific stuff, lots of Western swing style interpretations of Skynyrd songs, some positively Django-ish ones. Their version of "Curtis Lowe" is just absolutely beautiful!

It's from McMinnville Records. My wife found it for cheap at the Wal-Mart, though.

Here it is on the company website:
http://www.cmhrecords.com/web/page.asp?pgs=product&catid=7&id=313

I notice they've got a CD right above it titled "Gypsy Swing: The Nashville Tribute to Django Reinhardt," so I guess I shouldn't be surprised some of this stuff sounds like Django to me.