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Super PickupGiveaway 2025
Win Big! 11 Sets! 11 Winners! Win a set of pickups from one of these sponsors: Deadline is March 15, 2026. Complete the survey below to enter giveaway. One entry…
Lance Lopez
Hard-Time Music
Lance Lopez is back and better than ever. Trouble Is Good is wild, hellacious, and packed with three essential influences…
Dobro Model 27
Brother Oswald's Dobro – Country Music History Maker
The melodic, evocative warbling of a resonator guitar has for decades been a fixture in country music, and knowledgeable fans…
Blackbird Guitars’ Lucky 13
Nice Roll
Blackbird Guitars’ Lucky 13 Price: $1,850 (list)/$2,050 (with Fishman electronics) Info: www.blackbirdguitar.com What has a 13-fret neck, a small-but-curvaceous body…
Fender Micro Mustang
Fender’s Micro Mustang is a pocket-sized contraption offering 12 amplifier models including classic Fender, “British,” and “American,” along with 12…
The Les Paul Becomes The SG
Double Time
It may be difficult to imagine now, but Gibson’s original Les Paul was only a modest success. Introduced in 1952,…
Italian Smorgasbord
The Goya Rangemaster 116 SB
American guitars made in the 1950s and ’60s constitute an almost-holy canon, yet most players in that era took their…
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Rickenbacker’s Electric 12-Strings
Double-bound for Glory
George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacher founded Electro String in 1931 to manufacture what everyone would soon call “Rickenbacker” guitars. Success came early and their lap steels set standards of quality,…
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CURRENT ISSUE
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ARTISTS
Robin Trower
Conquering Hero
As frustrating as the Covid pandemic has been for keeping artists off the road the past two-plus years, for many,…
Warner Hodges
In And Out of Scorcherland
If your ear was at all tuned to “alt-country” (a.k.a. cowpunk) in the late ’80s or you were lucky enough…
Bryson Willoughby
Mojo Thunder’s Collective Consciousness
Kentucky’s favorite alternative Southern rockers, Mojo Thunder, extrapolate fresh ideas from disparate genres to produce an album as passionate as…
Christmas 1968
Vintage Guitar magazine Presents Greg Martin's Head Shop
This is a regular series of exclusive Vintage Guitar online articles where The Kentucky Headhunters’ Greg Martin looks back on…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS
The (Way) Back Beat: A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody
Fretted cheesecake advertising through the years, Part One
There are many ways for an advertiser to attract attention, and in the history of 19th- and 20th-century print hucksterisim…
Kalamazoo KG-1
Collectible value in guitars can be defined any number of ways, and not just by having a popular brand name…
Watkins Rapier 33
If you were an American teenager in the late 1950s or early ’60s, and you wanted to play the new…
Fender’s Tweed-to Tolex Transition
Best Face Forward
Through its 75 years, Fender has been responsible for myriad leaps forward in the history of guitar-amplifier design and manufacture.…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight
The PRS HX 50 and HX 2×12 Cabinet
Jimi Jam
Paul Reed Smith has earned a reputation building guitars of the highest quality. It wasn’t until just over a decade…
Category 5 TBR-35 2×10
Backline Star
Don Ritter started Category 5 Amplification designing amps for blues players before expanding to other genres while holding to the…
Airline ’59 Custom 1P and Epiphone ’61 Casino 50th Anniversary
Having a Rave-Up!
Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t give away some of the less-popular guitars from the ’60s, whether they were models with…
The 1912 Martin 000-28
The 1912 Martin
By 1912, players of fretted instruments were familiar with steel strings. Mandolins, which were enjoying their period…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer
Eko’s “Celluloid” ’60s Basses
Cool or Gaudy?
By the early 1960s, Europe’s industrial bases had mostly recovered from World War II. Many musical-instrument manufacturers stuck to products…
The (Way) Back Beat: Top O’ The Line, For Only $150!
The Immortal Danelectro Guitarlin
Having looked at the most expensive electric guitars offered in 1960s – over 50 years ago. Traditional makers – Gibson,…
Check This Action: Discovering Son House, Again
In 1964, blues enthusiasts Nick Perls and Phil Spiro, along with freelance photographer/writer Dick Waterman, made a pilgrimage to track…
Julian Lage
Jazz Memoir
The latest from Julian Lage contains mesmerizing originals featuring Bill Frisell’s supple artistry and Lage’s potent six-string imagery. View With…
