• Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Classic Instruments

    Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Jon Butcher tales his Olympic White ’63 Strat for a rip on “Jam,” a track from his new album, “Nuthin’ but Soul.” The disc is an homage to sounds of Motown, Stax, James Brown, and Sly Stone highlighted by Butcher’s mastery of Hendrix-style psychedelia. It was recorded using a ’63 Princeton, a Vibrolux, and a…

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Kalamazoo KG-1

Collectible value in guitars can be defined any number of ways, and not just by having a popular brand name such as Fender or Gibson. That’s certainly the case with…

The Bass That Waited

Rickenbacker’s Early 4000 and 4001

In the January and February installments, we looked at Gibson’s Thunderbird, an instrument condemned by its maker to a quick demise only to be reborn due to late-blooming popularity. Another…

’66 Epiphone Casino

In the Epiphone line of the 1960s, the Casino occupied middle ground. In appearance as well as electronics it ranked well below the semi-hollow Sheraton and Riviera or the solidbody…

Ovation UKII 1291

Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars

1980 Ovation UKII 1291 If there’s a Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars, it would be named Ovation. For more than a decade, Ovation tried unsuccessfully to leverage its achievements…

Doc Buffington’s ’48 Fender Pro Amp

Gold Bond

Ever plugged into a well-played vintage combo, run your hands over its road-worn tweed covering – scuffed to a cashmere-like texture – and thought, “If only this amp could talk”?…

Popa Chubby’s Dangerous Attitude

NYC blues beast rips on “I Don’t Want Nobody A fixture in New York City blues joints and familiar face in others worldwide, Popa Chubby melds blues-rock with punk-rock immediacy.…

1904 José Ramírez I

Possibly no name is more associated with the classical guitar than that of José Ramírez (1858-1923), the founder of a long dynasty of Madrid makers dating from the late 19th…

Fender Jazzmaster

Caught in the Surf

A 1965 Fender Jazzmaster in Surf Green. Photo: VG Archive. In the midst of its scramble to compete with Fender by developing the radical Flying V and Explorer guitars, Gibson likely…

Arbiter Fuzz Face

When Jimi Hendrix released his first album, 1967’s Are You Experienced, he launched a new level of guitar heroics as well as a sartorial fad for ruffled shirts and band…

Border Crossing

C.F. Martin and the Influence of German and Spanish Guitar Designs

It has often been said that today’s Martin guitars are direct descendants of the instruments made in Vienna by Johan Georg Stauffer, whose apprentices included one C.F. Martin, Sr. It…

Star Board: Joe Moss

Star Board: Joe Moss

Joe Moss is the archetypical blues “road dog,” regularly rolling out of his home base of Chicago to wail for crowds in venues ranging from clubs to festivals around the…

Gibson Les Paul Juniors

Beauties in Black: Two Rare Gibson Les Paul Juniors

Guitar dealers tell guitar stories much like anglers tell fish stories. There are those they “got” and those that got away, and either can render reactions ranging from a sigh…

Jim Campilongo & Steve Cardenas

Mutual Musical Idiosyncrasies

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…

Fixing a faulty pickup selector lever

And a few oddball pickups from the Duncan archives

When I use the pickup  selector lever switch on my Fender Strato-caster, one of the pickups cuts out. What could be the problem? There could be a few problems with…

Ovation UKII 1291

Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars

1980 Ovation UKII 1291 If there’s a Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars, it would be named Ovation. For more than a decade, Ovation tried unsuccessfully to leverage its achievements…

The Musical Instrument Museum

Blooms in the Desert

When traveling the American desert southwest, one should expect the unexpected. Visit in the springtime and you might witness the elusive flowering of the torch cactus, which happens on just…

Rickenbacker’s Bakelite Spanish Vs. Fender’s Esquire

Fender Myth Debunked! (Part II)

Even if Rickenbacher’s 1935 Bakelite Spanish model wasn’t the first solidbody electric, it would still be important in the evolution of modern guitars as the inspiration for Fender’s 1949 entry…

Dan Armstrong Design

The Pinnacle of Modern Design

This installment will focus on the famous Dan Armstrong line of guitars and basses. These instruments were introduced to the market in 1960 as the “Dan Armstrong See Through” Guitar…

Robert Perine

How I helped Leo Fender

In all modesty, my role was small – especially in Leo’s eyes. Here was a man whose sole interest was making guitars and amps sound better, not worrying about the…

Classics – May 2021

This 1940 ES-250 with serial number 96385 left the Gibson factory bound for retailer New York Band on October 25, 1940 – the same day as the first ES-300, which…

“Buy That Guitar” podcast with special guest Larry Wexer

“Buy That Guitar” podcast with special guest Larry Wexer Season 01 Episode 07 In Episode 7 of “Buy That Guitar,” presented by Vintage Guitar mag, host Ram Tuli is joined…

Kay Violin-Style Guitar

1938 Kay Violin-Style Guitar. One prominent thread in the story of the guitar is a quest for more volume – a search that was effectively achieved with the dominance of…

Rosewood Dobro

Rosewood Dobro

In the 1930s, the original Dobro company went through a series of ownership changes and licensing agreements. It did not regularly publish catalogs, and its model numbers were typically also…

J.D. Simo

Playing for Elvis

Psych-blues guitar maestro J.D. Simo was the wizard behind the guitar work heard on Elvis, the new Baz Luhrmann film starring Tom Hanks and Austin Butler. Unlike the actors who…

Guitar Picks

What's So Special About Guitar Picks

You may have one in your pocket. They only cost about 25 cents. But if you have always used one to play guitar, you are lost if you don’t have…

First ’Burst

In May of 1958, a worker at the Gibson factory pulled two Les Paul guitars – serial numbers 8 3087 and 8 3096 – off the line and sprayed their…

Hanburt Electric Guitars

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. Nevertheless, the recently documented saga behind this obscure line of…

Revisiting The Jazzmaster

While volumes have been written about its more-famous sibling, the Stratocaster, surprisingly little attention is paid to the Jazzmaster – Fender’s top-of-the-line guitar when it was introduced in 1958. Then,…

Yamaha Weddington Custom

A Better “Classic”

In 1987, classic American guitars like the Les Paul and Stratocaster were still going strong, with few changes since their first appearance in the early ’50s. Thus it was a…

Name that Twang

The Guild-Duane Eddy Connection

The fledgling Guild company scored a coup when it signed Johnny Smith to an endorsement deal in 1956. Perched atop the jazz-guitar scene at the time, Smith helped Guild join…