In a career spanning four decades, Tommy Castro has crafted a commendable catalog and built a devout following with his soul-infused music, informed by the blues, R&B, pop, and rock and delivered with conviction. Beloved for his guitar work and vocal style, he has carved his own niche. Born and raised in San Jose, California,…

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…

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…

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…
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 Stratocaster has taught him a couple lessons. The guitar entered Castro’s universe in the hands of San Francisco music legend John Newton – known on…
As rock started hitting the big time in the mid ’60s, it became clear to guitar-amplifier manufacturers that 100 watts or more was the way to go. The best approach to big power, however, would follow several paths. The stories of the high-powered amps introduced by Fender, Marshall, and Vox through the ’60s have been…
The eternal question “Who invented the electric guitar?” has no single answer. By the late 1920s, many players, tinkerers, and inventors were exploring ways to get more volume from fretted instruments. Steel-string flat-tops from Martin, f-hole archtops from Gibson, and metal-bodied resonators from National were louder than their predecessors, but ran up against physical limits.…
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…
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…

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…
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 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…

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.…
If you’re a fan of Cream, Zeppelin, and Rory Gallagher (who isn’t?), you’ll dig Zac Schulze Gang, a British power trio that’s carrying the torch with both hands; they’ve played Clapton’s Crossroads and the Rory Gallagher Tribute Fest. Here, Zac flies solo on “High Roller,” tearin’ it up on his ’54 Guild Aristocrat M75 through…
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…
Flame-top guitars were fairly common during the 1970s “copy era,” but few reached the levels of figure we often see on modern high-end guitars. Then came the Electra Endorser X935CS, which set new standards for psychedelic woodgrain. “But it’s not a ’70s guitar,” you object. No, but arguably, the Endorser CS – which was only…
“Hillbilly Speedball” sample Since the mid ’80s, Webb Wilder has cranked out consistently fine roots-rock. His latest is “Hillbilly Speedball,” and here he grabs his ’61 Gibson ES-330TD plugged into a narrow-panel Fender Vibrolux to play a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah.” He’s joined by George Bradfute (on a ’50s Epiphone upright) and Bob…
Fresh takes on revered classics Joge Garcia’s “Still Crossing” is a collection of stellar instrumental performances of familiar tunes like “Kashmir,” “Little Wing,” and a classical spin through Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” Here, though, he shows us the title track, which is the only original tune. His ’87 Fender D’Aquisto is plugged into a…
In the November issue, we started to refurbish a doubleneck mandolin/guitar I made for Jerry Schafer in 1977. It needed a new wiring harness, tuners, binding repair, new frets, and a good setup. With teammates Ceil Thompson and Gene Imbody sharing the load, we continued the work. 1) Gene – our go-to guy for tough…

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…

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…

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 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…
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…

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…
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 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…
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…

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…
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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…
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…

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…
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…

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…

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,…

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…
