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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…
Tedeschi Trucks Band
I Am The Moon
Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have released the first of a four-album set called I Am The Moon. Comprised of…
The DryBell Vibe Machine V-2
Catch A Wave
DryBell is renowned for one of the most authentic and pedalboard-friendly Uni-Vibe recreations on the market. Five years after launching…
Warren Haynes
G-Mule Shout!
Gov’t Mule’s blues-based rock has never followed a formula, opting instead for an improvisational modus operandi that gives its music…
Randy Rhoads
Diary of an Axeman, 30 years Later
(RIGHT) Rhoads’ polka-dot guitar was built in 1979 by Karl Sandoval, with a mahogany body, modified ’60s Danelectro non-adjustable maple…
Jack Bruce 1943-2014
Jack Bruce, an icon of electric bass, died October 25 in Suffolk, England. Best known for his work with Cream…
Frank Zappa
Apostrophe (’) 50th Anniversary
Great googly-moogly! Frank Zappa’s potty-mouth masterpiece is a half-century old and now fêted with a 75-track box set. The original…
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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
GA-20 blends R&B, Blues, Hendrix, and much more
VG Exclusive “Dry Run” GA-20 blends influences from Hendrix to the guitar Kings to East Coast Family cassettes. Here, Matt…
Roman Bulakhov’s Radical Stew
Ukrainian guitarist fuses…. everything Inspired by Pat Metheny, Greg Howe, Guthrie Govan and others, guitarist Roman Bulakhov fuses rock, funk,…
Pop ’N Hiss: Bruford’s Allan Holdsworth
Landmark Fusion of One of a Kind
Jazz-rock fusion was vastly popular in the mid 1970s, but began to run out of steam as the “smooth jazz”…
Instro-Meister Eric Penna
Blues Switch-Up in Trabants Eric Penna’s main gig is playing bass for the garage/surf band Insect Surfers, but he side-hustles…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS
1965 Epiphone Emperor
The Epiphone Emperor has a long, convoluted history. It first appeared in Epiphone’s catalog in late 1935 as a response…
1949 Bigsby Tenor
By the advent of the solidbody electric guitar in the 1950s, tenor guitarists were a dying breed. Consequently, electric tenors…
The Valley Arts Custom Pro Bass
Keeping the Arts Alive
In 1969, when a North Hollywood guitar teacher named Duke Miller teamed up to start a music store with students…
Epiphone Crestwood
’60s Un-Gibson Solidbody
Gibson’s acquisition of Epiphone in 1957 presented a tremendous challenge to guitar designers and marketers at the company. One challenge…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight
Cast Engineering Texas Flood OD
Bring On The SRV
Tube Screamers, those famed overdrives from Ibanez, have been screaming off the shelves ever since guitarists first learned the little…
The ASIA Symposium
Kinship and Connections
As much a celebration of kinship as it is an educational forum, the biannual Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA)…
Andrew White Guitars’ Freja 1013W
Shape Shifter
Though electric guitars have undergone radical change since the world first laid eyes on Rickenbacker’s “frying pan,” acoustics have rarely…
BluGuitar Amp1
Tiny Tube Terror
The trend toward the miniaturization of guitar gear shows no signs of slowing. Thanks to modern technology, guitarists are fitting…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer
Oz Noy & Andrew Synowiec
Recreational Substance
Fusion guitar experts Oz Noy and Andrew Synowiec join forces for an album of shameless note density and post-bebop shred.…
The Xaviere XV-JT90 and XV-585
Planks for Pennies
Xaviere is a company that imports its guitars from China, sets them up in its Massachusetts shop, then sells direct.…
Jonathan Pearce
Kiwi Krunch
Hailing from New Zealand, the Beths play crackling power pop fronted by singer/guitarist Liz Stokes with Jonathan Pearce on lead…
Jabrille “Jimmy James” Williams
Old Soul, Fresh Sounds
Seattle’s Jabrille “Jimmy James” Williams is a rare find in the guitar universe. At a time when music influences run…
