• 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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Fender Princeton, Deluxe, and Tremolux

Three Small Tweeds

Fender Princeton, Deluxe, and Tremolux

From 1954 through ’59, the Fender Electric Instrument Mfg. Co. built guitar amplifiers with controls mounted atop using “chickenhead” knobs that go to 12, and covered with “the finest airplane…

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…

Classics: December 2021

1967 Rickenbacker 360/12

Live-music fans who roamed South Florida from the early ’80s until the mid 2000s might recognize Craig Ball’s ’67 Rickenbacker 360/12. Ball was lead guitarist in the Rockerfellas, a band…

Freddie King’s ’73 ES-355

Thinline Crown

Influenced by Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, and others including jump-blues saxophonist Louis Jordan, Freddie King was an integral piece of…

Gibson Style J Mando-bass

Decades before Audiovox or Leo Fender dreamed of making a fretted electric bass, Gibson started manufacturing fretted acoustic mando-basses that were tuned the same as an upright bass. Joe Spann,…

Dan’s Guitar RX: Finding An Old Friend

What Goes Around…

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I learned to play guitar during the folk boom that, for me, started with the Kingston Trio in 1959; their music led…

Jim Marshall

Father of the Mighty Marshall Stack

When it comes to guitar amplifiers, two names stand tall beyond the others: Leo Fender and Jim Marshall. Even

Fender Harvard

Given the current craze for semi-small “home” and “recording” amps, Fender’s 5F10 Harvard of 1955-’60 could be the ideal tweed amp, yet, in its day, it fell between two stools…

The Clark Gainster

Trick Your Tweed

Before he got into the effects pedal biz, Michael Clark had a reputation for building killer tweed-inspired amps. In 2001 he utilized his tonal superpowers to devise the first version…

Fender Stratocaster

Aiming High

In 1953, Leo Fender started planning a new standard guitar – the Stratocaster. His partner, Don Randall, who headed Fender Sales, Inc., came up with the name before the design…

National Westwood and Glenwood

'60s alt-materials make short run

Westwood 75 While the mantra for 21st century “alternative material” guitars focuses on carbon fiber (i.e. Rainsong acoustics) and wood/glass/carbon fiber/epoxy composites (i.e. Ken Parker’s Fly line), electric guitars made…

Fresher Guitars

Fresher Guitars

Epic poetry is great, but all these long treatises on the massive guitar pedigrees of Kay and Aria have made me feel a bit like a Milton scholar, a fate…

Rob Allen Custom Basses

As a leading-edge shop owner ca-rrying 26 high-end bass-related lines, I’m regularly approached to become an authorized dealer for many products. I’m fair but skeptical with the inquiries and always…

Gibson J-35

Gibson J-35

Dreadnought guitars originated as early as 1916 with instruments made by Martin and distributed by Ditson, followed in 1931 with guitars sold by Martin under its own brand. The first…

Walter Becker’s Bogner Ecstasy 100B

In 1993, when Bogner was fast becoming the hippest name on the high-gain-amp scene, star guitarists were clamoring for that hot new tone. One who missed out recently brought “his”…

Rickenbacher Model 200A

Several vintage amplifiers that have graced these pages over the years have taken us back to the early days of guitar amplification – the early 1950s, maybe even late ’40s…

Antique Guitar Amps 1928-1934

Which came first – electric guitar or amp?

The influence and restraints of technology on amplifying the guitar Let’s pretend for a moment that former Gibson historian Julius Bellson misinterpreted stories of Lloyd Loar’s experiments with electrified instruments…

The Cost of Protection

100 Years of Instrument Cases

Modern guitars are typically sold with a hard case. But that wasn’t always so. Here, we look at the history of the relationship between cases, guitars, and those who’ve bought…

1978 Steinberger Prototype Bass

1978 Steinberger Prototype Bass

When introduced commercially in 1979, the Steinberger bass was a truly revolutionary instrument employing graphite construction and a minimalist artistic concept in its design. Much like Leo Fender and John…

Gibson Marauder M-1

Every once in awhile, someone in Gibson R&D gets a brainstorm like, “I know! Why don’t we make a bolt-neck guitar!” So they do. And the result is almost always…

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 guitarist who gigs in an acoustic duo and an AC/DC…

The Fender Stratocaster

Aiming High

In 1953, Leo Fender started planning a new standard guitar – the Stratocaster. His partner, Don Randall, who headed Fender Sales, Inc., came up with the name before the design…

Fall Philly 2014

[caption id="attachment_19277" align="alignleft" width="300"] We are here at the Philly show checking out all the killer guitars! Here's a '54 Goldtop Les Paul, 59 TV Junior, '55 Junior, '59 Epiphone…

The Audiovox 736 Electric Bass and 936 Amp

Rare Pair

Eight decades ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer revealed the story of Paul H. Tutmarc debuting his latest invention – a solidbody electric bass. The 1935 article includes a photograph showing the…

B.C. Rich Stealth

1983 B.C. Stealth Bass prototype, serial number 001-87984. Photo courtesy Richie King. Electric guitar lore from the 1980s almost invariably includes (sometimes snide) references to hair bands, pointy headstocks, black…

Saga of Ted Newman Jones

A Guitar for Mr. Richards

The Saga of Ted Newman Jones

For anyone who visited the tiny workshop inhabited by guitar builder Ted Newman Jones in the 1970s and ’80s, two things were obvious – his appreciation for the fine tonewoods…

Fender California Stratocaster

Have you priced ’57 or ’62 reissue Strats recently? The pride of the Fender line ran about $750 when it was introduced in 1982, but today you’d be hard-pressed to…

GRETSCHRANCHER-HOME-MAIN-BIG

Gretsch Rancher

“A spectacular model in real he-man outdoor Western finish with powerful appeal for Hill-billy and Cowboy bands.” This is how Gretsch first introduced the Rancher Jumbo – offspring of the 1940s…

Ted Nugent 1962 Gibson Byrdland

Ted Nugent’s 1962 Gibson Byrdland

Anyone who’s ever caught Ted Nugent on tour has seen this instrument, and during the Summer of 2003 it was intended to be the only guitar used by the Motor…

The Burke Guitar

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 originally has never been a cut-and-dried matter of fact, but…