• Veillette-Citron Shark

    Classic Instruments

    Veillette-Citron Shark

    It’s not often a guitar can be said to have been inspired by a TV show, but that is the case with this 1982 Veillette-Citron Shark, which came about as a result of the success of the program “Welcome Back Kotter.” Well, in a pretty roundabout way, that is! Veillette-Citron guitars were the product of…

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Martin D-28 and D-45

Definitive Flat-tops

Martin’s pre-WWII dreadnought guitars set the standard for the modern flat-top, and thus both have been inducted into the VG Hall of Fame.

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…

Hank’s Protos

How Hank Garland Helped Gibson Develop Two Models Not Called Byrdland

There are guitars, there are great guitars, there are great historic guitars and there are great historic guitars bearing deep provenance. And then there are guitars of such immense mystique,…

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…

The (Way) Back Beat: A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody

Fretted cheesecake advertising through the years, Part One

There are many ways for an advertiser to attract attention, and in the history of 19th- and 20th-century print hucksterisim there have been few stones left unturned in the battle…

Fender Telecaster Custom

Classic tones for little coin

Many players search for that one guitar that can “do it all.” You know what I’m talking about – the axe that covers both single-coil and humbucking tones, and sounds…

Gibson ES-300

King for a Day

Top-of-the-line. The king. Top banana. The mostest. Top dog. The big daddy. All these descriptions apply to the ES-300, Gibson’s first deluxe electric guitar. For a few short years in…

The Guild Starfire Bass

In the mid ’60s, Guild took its knocks for making guitars that looked “inspired by” Gibson models. Fans of the brand think the sterotype is unfair, of course, and certainly,…

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…

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La Baye 2X4

1967, the Summer of Love. Everything still seemed possible, and anything went. No more war, racial and gender equality, Fresh Cream, the Beatles best record ever, the Jimi Hendrix Experience.…

Gibson’s First Cherry Red 335

It came from the Books

Gibson introduced the ES-335T in the spring of 1958 as the progenitor to its double-cutaway,semi-hollow body “thinline” series of guitars. Characterized by the maple block running down their centers, most…

Gibson Style U

Harp Guitar

Gibson Style U. Courtesy Gruhn Guitars. This Gibson Style U harp guitar, made in 1906 or ’07, represents the top level of the Gibson lineup in the company’s first quarter-century,…

Robbie Robertson, 1943-2023

Lasting Legacy

It’s ironic that Robbie Robertson was famous mostly for his songwriting, because beneath the minimal, compositional style that marked his work with The Band hid a true guitar stylist and…

Classics: January 2024

Bill Woodward's 1953 Gibson Les Paul

Gravitational heavyweights in our culture, beyond baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie, few things say “American” more than music and road trips. This guitar is symbolic of both. One of…

Classics: Tommy Castro’s ’66 Fender Stratocaster

Tommy Castro has never been much for sitting with a guitar teacher, preferring instead to rely on good ol’ time in the saddle to hone his craft. But this 1966…

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…

Trainwreck Express “Nancy”

World’s most desirable amplifier? Aside from any “standard” vintage amps that have been elevated through their associations with major artists, the few original-design, made-by-hand amps out there that wear the…

Epiphone Deluxe Archtop

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…

Two Tickets to the Top

Keeley Electronics’ Katana and Flexi 4×2

Any gearhead who’s been paying attention the last seven years knows the name Robert Keeley. Since 2001, he and his staff at Keeley Electronics have produced a variety of boutique…

In Detail: Gibson’s 1954-’58 Les Paul Junior

In 1952, Gibson’s Les Paul model guitar was brand spanking new.  But it wasn’t cutting-edge. True, it was the company’s first solidbody electric guitar, and thus earned a bit of…

Bruce Kulick

Star Board: Bruce Kulick

Bruce Kulick played lead guitar in Kiss for more than a decade, and today stays busy as a solo performer and tours as a member of Grand Funk Railroad. Speaking…

The Collins Kids

Mostly-Moseley Memories

Siblings Lorrie and Larry Collins sprang into the public eye in the mid 1950s – dawn of the television era – on a program called “Town Hall Party.” The big-sister/little-brother…

Gibson Super Jumbo 100

The Super Jumbo 200 is Gibson’s most celebrated flat-top model, and deservedly so, thanks to its use by cowboy movie stars in the pre-World War II years and by country…

Epiphone Coronet

Epiphone Coronet

This Epiphone Coronet from 1959 was probably a shocking sight to a guitar buyer of the late ’50s. Not only was a solidbody guitar out of character for the company…

1949 Bigsby Tenor

By the advent of the solidbody electric guitar in the 1950s, tenor guitarists were a dying breed. Consequently, electric tenors are relatively rare, and a tenor guitar made by solidbody…

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…

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…

VG Q&A: Jimi Flip

Plus, Precision Bass rests and an odd Galliano

I’ve never read why Jimi Hendrix played and set up a right-hand Strat to play left-handed. Surely, he could’ve found a lefty model. Does anybody know? – Garry Curry The…

Guyatone LG-160T

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…

Gibson 1953 GA-40 Les Paul Model

Brown Sound

Gibson landing Les Paul’s name on the headstock of its debut solidbody electric in 1952 was the biggest guitar-star endorsement of its time. And, as was the way, an amp…