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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…
Chris Duarte
Ain’t Giving Up
After Stevie Ray Vaughan’s death in 1990, an army of Strat cats rushed into the breach, vying to be the…
Chris Jack
The Routes: Psychedelic Faithful
The Routes embody all the best elements of the ’60s psychedelic-rock scene. Based in Japan and fronted by British-born guitarist…
The Manakooras
Tiki Twang
Call it exotica or tiki twang, but the Manakooras play tropical instro that evokes visions of dreamy Pacific islands. Led…
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…
Billy F Gibbons
Hardware
The ZZ Top guitarist once again stretches his Texas legs on this, his third solo LP. While most of Hardware’s…
Have Guitar Will Travel 063 – Brendan Byrnes
Host James Patrick Regan welcomes guitarist/composer Brendan Byrnes to the latest episode of “Have Guitar Will Travel.” Brendan is a…
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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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ARTISTS
Webb Wilder’s take on “Beautiful Delilah”
“Hillbilly Speedball” sample Since the mid ’80s, Webb Wilder has cranked out consistently fine roots-rock. His latest is “Hillbilly Speedball,”…
Snarky Puppy’s Mark Lettieri
Empire Central: Funky homage to Dallas Snarky Puppy guitarist Mark Lettieri took a minute at soundcheck to use his PRS…
Jesse Johnson
Quad City Funk
In the early 1980s, Jesse Johnson traveled from Rock Island, Illinois, to Minneapolis and found fame with The Time and…
Revealing Jesse Ed Davis
Douglas K. Miller
Jesse Ed Davis was an unsung guitar hero – unless you were a legend like Eric Clapton, John Lennon, George…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS
The Slingerland May Bell
It’s hard to imagine a more poorly “documented” guitar brand than Slinglerland. The company has been around since before World…
VG Q&A: Odd Dots
Import fretboard markers, and Kay’s Model 1961
In the mid ’60s, why did some Japanese electric-guitar manufacturers put the marker on the 10th fret rather than the…
Ro-Pat-In’s First Electric Spanish
Granddaddy to the Stars!
The story of George Beauchamp’s invention of what would become the first commercially successful electric guitar is shrouded in the…
Steve Evans’ Guitars & Cars Passion Project
Pretty Pairs
Steve Evans was just 12 years old in 1968, when he began to appreciate the sleek bodies of electric guitars…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight
EHX’s Bad Stone Phase Shifter, C9 Organ Machine, and Pitch Fork Polyphonic Pitch Shifter
Pedal Heaven
When it comes to stompboxes, there are the standard go-to effects that every guitarist, whether a gigging musician or a…
Looks Aren’t Everything
Ugly Amps Big Ugly 50 and 100
Steve O’Boyle got his start converting old tube PA heads into guitar amps. Flash forward nearly 17 years and O’Boyle…
Epiphone Tony Iommi SG Special
Monkey Time
Digging into the primordial ooze of heavy metal, players often start with Black Sabbath and their resident guitar necromancer, Tony…
Weller El Dorrado
Rock-and-Roll Screamer
Tucked away in southwest Illinois near St. Louis, luthier Steve Weller is making interesting instruments. His El Dorrado model is…
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer
Guild Surfliner
Hang Ten
The Surfliner is Guild’s first new solidbody to come along in decades. A thoroughly modern design with classic features, there’s…
Flying High Again
The Eastwood Airline ’59 3P
Long before the brazen, pointy electrics of the 1980s, Airline created a model with all kinds of modern angles and…
Gibson’s Crest Models
Gibson has produced two guitars bearing the “Crest” name. While both designs date to the 1960s, they’re very different instruments.…
Nick Moss
Backbone Shiver
On Get Your Back Into It!, guitarist Nick Moss and harmonica savant Dennis Gruenling combine blues, swing, and rock and…
