The Peoples’ Guitar

Gibson’s Depression-Era Exports

Many aren’t aware that some of the archtop guitars Gibson produced during the Depression were marketed under different brand names, including Kalamazoo, Recording King, Cromwell, Fascinator, and Kel Kroyden, among…

Beat Portraits: Burns Volume 5

1964: Solid Heyday

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled installments 4, 5, and 6 for this special edition of…

Eight-String Basses

Sonic Niche

Emerging in ’60s catalogs from Hagström and Framus, eight-string basses occupy a distinct place among musical instruments – their potent, dense sound used to add texture or color. An all-mahogany…

Schecter Yngwie Malmsteen

1986 Schecter Yngwie Malmsteen For most of the 1970s I didn’t listen to or play electric guitar music of any kind, only acoustic music. I did, on occasion, read about…

Wah-Wah Pedals

An Evaluation of Effects and Pedals

The idea for this article came about when I purchased a box of effects pedals from the owner of a music store which had closed in the late seventies. Most…

Intriguing Twosome

A Look at Gibson’s EB-6

As the ’50s drew to a close, Gibson was locked in a heated battle with Fender for a share of the high-end electric-guitar market. But when it came to the…

Gibson EH-150

Quintessential Pre-War Amp

Introduction Gibson’s E-150/EH-150 amplifiers have long been regarded as the quintessential pre-WWII model, one of the most influential and recognizable amps of all time. It wasn’t the first amp Gibson…

Peavey RJ-IV

Peavey RJ-IV bass, serial number 04938996. Photo: Bill Ingalls Jr. Instrument courtesy of Naffaz Skota. Americans by the millions “know” Randy Jackson. But not many realize that his gig as…

Selmer/RSA Truvoice TV10

Shock and Awe

If the British market needed a couple of decades to decide what form the guitar amplifier would ultimately take, we shouldn’t be surprised; well into the rock-and-roll age, the U.K.…

New Lease on Life

The Sound of Rock Gets a Brush-Up

If restoring dusty, neglected old tube amps built more than half a century ago isn’t challenging enough, restoring amps with delicate built-in tape-echo units, no fixed schematic, and quirky hand-wired…

Rickenbacker 4005

California’s Rickenbacker guitar company has a tradition of things a bit differently. One of the earliest electric guitars was their “Frying Pan” solidbody Hawaiian. And the company’s 1930s Spanish and…

1965 Gibson Thunderbird

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.

Rickenbacker 345

Rickenbacker guitars have a look, feel, and sound that is remarkably distinct from those made by any other manufacturers. In fact, artists often find that nothing else works as well…

The Acoustic

Black Widow

In the late ’60s, when Domino guitars were fading away, tube amplifiers were out of vogue. Old technology, man! Cool bands played through solidstate amps that delivered lots of clean…

Ro-Pat-In’s First Electric Spanish

Granddaddy to the Stars!

The story of George Beauchamp’s invention of what would become the first commercially successful electric guitar is shrouded in the mist of murky memory. But one critical element of the…

Vintage Gibson Amplifiers

EH-100 and 125

“No longer is the electric Hawaiian Guitar restricted to professional players – here is a genuine Gibson instrument that costs only $100, complete with instrument, case, amplifier with slip cover,…

The D’Angelico Excel Mandolin

The 1,164 archtop guitars made by John D’Angelico have brought him great renown as the finest individual archtop guitar builder in the history of the instrument. His mandolins, however, are…

Epihone Deluxe Archtop

Head-On With the L-5

Webster’s latest defines the word “deluxe” as “…notably luxurious, elegant, or expensive.” The Epiphone Deluxe archtop guitar was certainly luxurious. When introduced in 1931, it sported a triple-bound top with…

Classics: February 2022

Chuck Panozzo’s Gibson ES-125

For nearly five decades, Chuck Panozzo has been the bassist in Styx, enjoying the ride as it went from playing garage parties in suburban Chicago through its heyday as AOR-radio…

Martin 00-18

They were days, before Kent State, when everywhere you looked, kids sat under trees, singin’ songs and swappin’ licks. Fresh-faced young girls with names like “Star” painted flowers on their cheeks and…

Selmer/RSA Truvoice TV10

Shock and Awe

If the British market needed a couple of decades to decide what form the guitar amplifier would ultimately take, we shouldn’t be surprised; well into the rock-and-roll age, the U.K.…

Gretsch 6130 Round-up

Head ‘em out!

The romantic concept of the “Old West” – an enduring element of American pop culture – was spurred by pulp novels before John Ford introduced the world to My Darling…

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell

Guitars at Heart for 30 Years

Remember the first time you strummed a D chord or fumbled your way oh-so-slowly through “Walk Don’t Run”? Chances are you wanted to be in the Beatles, or you wanted…

The Gibson ES-5

Instrument Profile

Gibson, like all American guitarmakers, had to shut down electric guitar production for three years during World War II. But when production resumed in 1946, Gibson made up for the…

The History of Hamer

High-End Boutique or Budget Vintage?

“We didn’t quite get it,” explains company cofounder Jol Dantzig, discussing the birth of Hamer Guitars. “It was kind of a mistake. When we created Hamer, we created the high-end…

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…

Recording King Ray Whitley

As a maker of high-quality instruments, Gibson was hit hard by the onset of the Depression in the 1930s. Company president Guy Hart, a former accountant, recognized that Gibson could…

The House of Stathopoulo Harp Guitar

Surreal Missing Link

One of the rarest Epiphone instruments in the world, the House of Stathopoulo harp guitar lends a glimpse into a transitional era prior to the formation of what would become…

Hilary Gardner’s jazz/country connection

Classic sounds on “Silver on the Sage” Hilary Gardner and her band are devout fans of classic cowboy (and other types of) songs that they deliver with intimate arrangements. Here,…

VG Q&A: Odd Dots

Import fretboard markers, and Kay’s Model 1961

In the mid ’60s, why did some Japanese electric-guitar manufacturers put the marker on the 10th fret rather than the ninth? – Joe Bigley Very few Japanese makers put dot…