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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…

Fretprints: Stevie Ray Vaughan
Texas Flood
Stevie Ray Vaughan was unknown when he premiered at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Born and bred in Dallas, he’d…

Gallagher Bluegrass Bell
Ready, Set, Ring
Pickers sure love to talk about their guitars, and more than a few will enthusiastically tell you about their favorite…

Walrus Audio Eras Five-State Distortion
Serious Saturation
After its Ages Five-State Overdrive proved popular, Walrus Audio dipped back into the concept with a box offering five distortion…

Thinkin’ Thin
Heroes of the Semi-Hollow
The semi-hollowbody electric guitar is one of the most revered axes in the plugged-in universe, offering the playability of a…

“Buy That Guitar” podcast with special guest Redd Volkaert
Season 03 Episode 03 In Episode 3.3 of “Buy That Guitar,” host Ram Tuli is joined by Redd Volkaert, one of…

Budda Verbmaster 112
Versatile 18-Watter
Budda Verbmaster 112 Price: $1,800 (street) Contact: budda.com As part of its Hand-Wired series, Budda has reissued the tube-rectified Verbmaster…
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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,…
ARTISTS

Eric Johnson
Rescued Relics
For nearly 50 years, Eric Johnson has been a revered guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist whose music expands far beyond the…

Bob Cowsill Plays a Topical Tune
New Cowsills album is an impressive self-contained work Before the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds, The Cowsills scored four Top…

Don Felder
Six-Stringed Summer Stock
Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder is spending the summer with a few friends. On an extended tour with Styx and…

Ana Patan’s funky “General Conspiracy”
“Live” from a Swedish forest From her home deep in a forest in Sweden, Ana Patan and her Framus Renegade…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS

JMI Vox AC15 “Two-Tone” 1×12″
TV Star
The permutations of early Vox models remain endlessly fascinating to vintage-amp enthusiasts, and few get us as worked up as…

Classics: September 2021
Fenton Robinson’s Gibson ES-225
Kevin Ludwig first became aware of Fenton Robinson in 1975, when he heard Boz Scaggs’ version of “Somebody Loan Me…

Kevin Keaton’s 1958 Esquire
Swamp Thing
June 10, 2020, was a summer night like most in the life of Kevin Keaton, a postal mail carrier and…

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell
Guitars at Heart for 30 Years
Remember the first time you strummed a D chord or fumbled your way oh-so-slowly through “Walk Don’t Run”? Chances are…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight

Relic the Hague’s Scumbag
Rock-and-Roll Animal
On the surface, the Scumbag is a simple rock beast. With a 25.5″-scale neck, maple fingerboard, and bolt-neck construction, it…
Gibson’s 1941 SJ-100
Second Coming
Gibson 1941 SJ-100 Price: $3,868 (list)/$2,999 (street) Info: www.gibson.com Sporting a unique “stair step” headstock, the first Gibson SJ-100s began…

Knaggs Chena Old Violin
Righteous Axe
With notable string-bending monsters like Larry Mitchell, Eric Steckel, and Steve Stevens singing the praises of Knaggs Guitars, Peter Wolf…

Allen Amplification Hot Blond 1×15 Combo
Some Like It Hot
In the story of the Fender amp – after the tweedy pre-Army Elvis and before the black-face Deluxe British blues…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer

Andrews Spectraverb 16
No Limits
Taking inspiration from Fender’s classic AB763 Deluxe Reverb, the hand-wired Andrews Spectraverb 16 uses a pair of JJ 6V6 power…

Jay Jay French
Twisted Tales
There are music-business survivors, and then there’s Jay Jay French. Twisted Sister’s founder/co-lead guitarist/manager has led a life of wild…

Rob Wrobel Le Voyage Lace III
Boxed Up
Cigar-box guitars are a 19th-century creation that today are enjoying a trendy surge in popularity, and attracting the design expertise…

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…










































