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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…
Check This Action: The Salad Days of British Blues
What springs to mind when you hear the term “British blues movement”? Is it covers of Slim Harpo, Muddy Waters,…
Strobel Rambler Travel Bass
Traveling in Style
As a rule, travel guitars and basses are intended to help one keep up their chops while on the road…
Gibson’s Memphis ES-275
History Now
Take a quick glance at the Gibson Memphis ES-275 and you might think this is a venerable Gibson from decades…
Ibanez M522S
F-Style For Less
Thanks to acts such as the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons, and the Punch Brothers, the mandolin is suddenly hip…
VG Q&A: ’71 Mahogany Precision?
Plus, a ’60s Conrad 12-String and Converting a ’65 ES-345TD-SV to Mono
I have a Fender Precision Bass with a 1971 neck date and serial number 296XXX, and I’ve always suspected the…
Status Quo’s Francis Rossi
On Guitars, Music, and Elusive Success
“I’m only as good now as I should have been when I was 25,” laughs Francis Rossi, the 64-year-old lead…
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Carr Skylark Special 1×12
Take Flight
Arriving a little more than 10 years after the original Skylark, Carr Amplifiers’ new Skylark Special adds versatility and enhanced tonal depths to squeeze a lot more into this diminutive…
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ARTISTS
Chris Dreja
Yardbird Recall
Chris Dreja had a front-row seat to rock-and-roll history, playing rhythm guitar and bass in the Yardbirds behind Eric Clapton,…
Ceil Thompson and her self-made guitar
“Dan’s Guitar Rx”: VG’s Rock-and-Roll High School(er)! In 2022, Dan Erlewine’s “Guitar Rx” column walked readers through a class-project guitar…
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…
Steve Knight
Jazz For People
Chicago resident Steve Knight’s first album, Persistence, takes listeners back to the days of warm jazz-guitar tones, popular tunes, group…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS
Beat Portraits: Burns Volume 1
Beginnings – The Early 1960s
In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled…
Gibson EB-2
Kalamazoo’s Biggest Bass Innovation?
In the mid 1950s, Gibson president Ted McCarty was paying close attention to two new instruments impacting the musical-instruments market…
1968 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
Silver Serenade
Amplifier collectors swarm to models with descriptors like “first year” and “golden age,” but other types can be far more…
The “Last” Trainwreck?
Ken Fischer’s prolonged illness and subsequent death at the age of 61 remains one of the great tragedies of the…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight
SynapticGroove Snapperhead OD/Distortion
Dirty Deeds
With their first offering, Benjamin Harrison and Chrystal Gilles of SynapticGroove set out to fill the gap between heavy effects…
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…
PRS SE NF3
Expanded Options
The latest result of PRS Guitars “reverse-engineering”/ reconsidering its own instruments, the SE NF3 is the first PRS to be…
The Chase Bliss Clean
Posh Squash
With is Clean compressor, Chase Bliss set out to create a pedal that would duplicate the vivid interactivity of a…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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And an Archtop Mystery
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Supergroup Alpha
Paul “Mayo” Mayasich
The latest from guitarist Paul Mayasich and his band of buddies is an eclectic mix of American music. You get…
DSM Humboldt ClearComp 1078 Dynamic Threshold Compressor
Smooth and Sweet
When it comes to compressor pedals, the modern standard is to pursue studio-quality results in a pedalboard-friendly box. DSM Humboldt…
Janne Haavisto
Finnish Instro Auteur
There’s a long history of instro and surf-rock from Scandinavia, perhaps none deeper than that of Janne Haavisto, formerly with…
Category 5 Samantha
Hook, Line, and Tone
Blues-rocker Samantha Fish (VG, December ’21) electrifies audiences with her high-energy shows. A decade ago, she began favoring Category 5’s…
