As a teenager who just wanted to play music, Norm Harris lived with the reality that he and his band weren’t going to be millionaires anytime soon. So he did what musicians do – side-hustled. But when most were manning the counter at a music shop or serving tables, Harris was up at the crack

Our perception of Japanese guitars has evolved slowly. At one point, they were cheap toys, at other times imperfect copies, then startling innovations. Perspective encircles the truth. So, how should we perceive the Yamaha SA-15? Japan became interested in guitars in the early 1920s, as some musicians there began to perform what we’d today call…

Greg Koch: Gristly “Blues” Greg Koch fearlessly wrings the sort of vibrato that only a Tele will tolerate from his ’53 to play this exclusive version of Freddie King’s “The Stumble” flavored with a bit of delay and running into his Tone King Royalist. Inspired by fan requests, it’s just one of the tracks culled…

Gibson is widely known for its guitars, mandolins, and banjos, but many are unaware the company built instruments for nearly…

The Black Bison Leads the Herd
In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled…
Peavey RJ-IV bass, serial number 04938996. Photo: Bill Ingalls Jr. Instrument courtesy of Naffaz Skota. Americans by the millions “know”…

Designer's Dream Come True
In 1978, Gibson craftsman Wilbur Fuller produced the company’s first hand-carved, tuned-by-ear custom guitar. The instrument, which in a blind…

Greg Koch: Gristly “Blues” Greg Koch fearlessly wrings the sort of vibrato that only a Tele will tolerate from his ’53 to play this exclusive version of Freddie King’s “The…

While the most commonly played and collected Martin guitars have a six-string neck, the company has also made a number of historically noteworthy four-strings. Beginning in the 1920s and carrying…

What good was selling a newfangled electric guitar back at the dawn of the revolution if you didn’t have an electric guitar amplifier to go along with it? Any significant…

In Detail
Body is two-piece mahogany. Pickguard mounts to body with 13 screws. Pickups are patent-number humbuckers with chrome-plated covers. Tune-O-Matic bridge with Gibson’s basic spring vibrato (a.k.a. Vibrola) tailpiece. Control pots…
The Secret's Out!
Like plants, Japanese guitars have an almost secret life of which few people outside are aware. While many Americans in the ’60s were seeing fairly low-end commodity guitars at the…

Hilary Gardner returns! Ready to set the tone for your holidays, Hilary Gardner and her band return for a fantastic take on the classic Elvis hit “Blue Christmas” (written by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson) just for VG followers! Accompanied again by Justin Poindexter and Sasha Papernik, this time they’re joined by Jen Hodge on…

Having looked at the most expensive electric guitars offered in 1960s – over 50 years ago. Traditional makers – Gibson, Guild, and Gretsch – concentrated on flashy amplified archtops that retailed up into the $700 to $800 range – beautiful instruments, but not representative of where the electric guitar was going. More forward-looking makers offered…

A Master’s Magnificent Misfire
The eternal question “Who invented the electric guitar?” has no single answer. By the late 1920s, many players, tinkerers, and…

When trying to determine originality, guitar dealers and collectors have a tendency to study instruments with the care of a…

Rarities From the Pacific Northwest
As a brand of American electric instruments, the name “Hanburt” is about the furthest thing from being a household term.…

Eddie Quinn’s Gibson L-5
Had you been a music-loving resident of Bogalusa, Louisiana, at the height of the jazz age, you would’ve caught wind…

Rudy Jaramillo is quick to mention that his effects setup is very simple. “I go into my 1) Boss tuner, then to a 2) Boss Blues Driver that has been…
At first glance, these three guitars appear to be a straightforward collection of different sizes of the same model. A comparable set of three Martins would be a 0-40, 00-40…

The Showman
In addition to several significant shifts in style and presentation, for Fender, the transition of the late 1950s into the early ’60s represented a more concerted push into big-amp territory.…

Chet Atkins was the most important endorser ever employed by the Gretsch company. When introduced in the 1950s, models bearing his name were admired and played by many artists including…

Cardinal Red Rarity
Looking to finally make a real dent in Fender’s solidbody bass market, in the mid ’60s Gibson launched a line of electric guitars and basses that emulate Fender’s latest designs.

Amid the classics in Fender’s “golden-era” amp line, some remained in production only a short time because of timing, misjudgment of the market, or both. Such is the case with…
A lifelong vintage-guitar nut who has had “a million guitars,” Jeremy Graf’s all-time favorite is this 1961 Stratocaster. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Graf was just seven when, for reasons he doesn’t remember, he asked for an Elvis Presley record. His mother obliged and brought home Elvis’ Golden Records, a compilation of ’50s hits. “That
In an era when the sub-20-watt combo is arguably the most popular guitar-amp format, it’s worth remembering that several classics of the category emanate from the ’50s. And just as interesting as the well-worn favorites, several lesser-known alternatives were also born in the decade of rock and roll. In the December ’24 issue, we examined
Marc Schoenberger was part of the early-’70s vanguard on the Southern California guitar scene – not as a gigging musician, but among the crowd that raced the 101 freeway to check out old guitars every time a new issue of the Recycler hit the streets. He’d also been repairing guitars for friends and local shops
Despite their catalog-grade status, Supro amps have been used by several noteworthy guitarists. For many, the sturdy Thunderbolt is the preferred workhorse. It’s been a long time since Supro amps were any kind of secret find or hidden gem; players have long recognized the eccentric splendors of certain mid-sized examples, with their thumping tremolo and
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, performance, and tone. On the other hand, the company’s electric bass viols and violins excited segments of the industry but never sold well. Same for
The word “underrated” is belabored in music journalism, but Joey Molland was just that. As co-guitarist in Badfinger, he was part of a quartet signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, yielding glorious AM hits like “Come and Get It,” “Day After Day,” and “No Matter What.” The foursome fell into obscurity and tragedy a few

Family Barn Jam! With his ’82 Gibson 335 running into a Headstrong Corduroy (20-watt/6V6) amp, McKinley James shares a taste of his new album, “Working Class Blues,” with this run at “Call Me Lonesome.” In the October issue, he tells us how the album was made in the family barn with the only backing…

Steve Cardenas and Jim Campilongo have been playing guitar together for a long time, though the constellations only recently aligned so they could record. Captured on three nights in September of 2022, New Year showcases harmonic personalities merging through atmosphere, reverb, and ancient acoustic guitars. It’s also a meditation on the beauty and strength of…

Famous Sounds Abound in New Book
Stompboxes inspire their own special mania. While the allure of guitars is obvious with their colorful, curvaceous looks, effects are…

The Axe that Time Forgot
For more than 60 years, aluminum has been used as a component in guitar construction. Exactly whose idea it was…

Seven Siblings
Every guitar company has had its odd ducks, its failures, its forgotten models. While some are consigned to the scrapheap…

Molten Mojo, Head-To-Head Vintage Versus Reissue
In the good ol’ days of 1952, jazzmeister Les Paul strutted to the center of the world’s stage and proudly…