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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…
Matchless JJ-30
Stage Staunch
Rare and sought-after, in part because only about 40 were built, the Matchless JJ-30 John Jorgenson is the only Signature…
Yamaha THR10
Practice Perfection?
Yamaha THR10 Price: $299 Contact: usa.yamaha.com. As a rule of thumb, practice amps are a compromise. Blissfully portable, they typically…
Roger Glover
Time Machine
Deep Purple’s 1972 album, Machine Head, is one of rock’s totemic monsters, especially its best-known track, “Smoke on the Water,”…
Music Man’s JP13
Petrucci Pick
Music Man’s JP13 Price: $3,500 Info: www.music-man.com. Music Man has a knack for building blazing artist models for the likes…
Alvin Youngblood Hart
Electric Gutbucket
Alvin Youngblood Hart surfs the musical landscape of blues-based music to make his own great art. His influences range from…
The Story of Melobar
Stand-Up Steel
Born in Northern California in 1920, Walt Smith took piano lessons and became a child prodigy on several instruments before…
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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
Andy Summers
The Next Phase
Best known for his innovative guitar playing in the Police, veteran English guitarist Andy Summers was into other genres of…
GA-20’s Matt Stubbs and Pat Faherty
FlashBack Sounds, Forward Steps
Musical gateways opened by Jimi Hendrix and the Doors led Matt Stubbs to become a disciple of Johnny “Guitar” Watson,…
Ace Frehley
The Space Man’s Cover Plan
Few guitarists in hard rock have proven as influential as Ace Frehley; just about any guitarist interviewed after the mid…
Bryan Beller: Aristocratic Riffs
Time-Signature Shifts on “Aristoclub Bryan Beller and his Lull Custom BBMF5 demonstrate what it takes to keep up with Guthrie…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS
Star Board: Carl Verheyen
In each issue of “Signal Chain,” we’ll take a guided tour of pro players’ pedalboards. We’re calling the feature “Star…
Hangin’ with Kid and Lisa “Little Baby” Andersen
Smooth, Funky Blues With Soul Kid Andersen worked with Charlie Musselwhite and Elvin Bishop before scoring his current gig with…
Tele of Two Legends
The Amazing Story of One Unique Fender
One day in the mid 1950s, up-and-coming thoroughbred jockey Bill Shoemaker was playing host to his friend, bandleader Hank Penny,…
1978 Steinberger Prototype Bass
When introduced commercially in 1979, the Steinberger bass was a truly revolutionary instrument employing graphite construction and a minimalist artistic…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight
GJM Guitars Tenoroc
Designed To Rock
Road-warrior guitarists with years of gigs under their belt who later design guitars have an advantage over builders without that…
Positive Grid Spark Go
Ready, Set…
Following the success of its highly portable Spark and Spark Mini practice amps, Positive Grid went really small with the…
DiMarzio’s Black Angel Pickup
Got a Sweet…
Back in the old days, adding a pickup to an acoustic guitar was a major operation that required a luthier’s…
Guild Polara Kim Thayil
Get Your Grunge
With Soundgarden, guitarist Kim Thayil helped define the grunge movement. His unusual weapon of choice was the Guild S-100 Polara,…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer
Ralph Towner
Fifty Years and Counting
As a young musician, Ralph Towner wrote “Icarus,” a revolutionary jazz piece that became a crossover hit for the Paul…
Coral Electric Sitar
For centuries, Indian musicians have utilized the resonant sympathetic strings of the sitar to create the unique sounds of classical Indian…
The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger’s famous 1968 statement – “What’s the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m A King Bee’ when you…
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967
Imagine a Jimi Hendrix Experience concert where the audience actually disliked the band. That’s the scenario here, a secretly recorded…
