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Austin legend Jon Dee Graham plays “This Old Guitar”

Jon Dee Graham’s parts Strat has been his stage and studio mainstay for more than four decades. Assembled by Mark Younger-Smith with a ’64 neck, ’63 pickups, and a Custom Shop reissue body finished in Shoreline Gold that lends testimony to the years and miles. Here, he plays it through a 30-watt Carr, jamming on the lick and lead from “This Old Guitar,” a track from his latest album, “Only Dead For A Little While.” Catch our review in the April issue. Read Now!


Premiere of Seth Lee Jones’ new 110 video!

Filmed at one of our favorite local dive bars, Tin Dog, this is “110.” I played my main guitar, a battle scarred Tele style I built from scratch in 2006. It’s a one piece ash body, one piece birdseye maple neck with single carbon fiber neck reinforcement. The neck is non adjustable and has no radius, it’s dead flat like a classical. The bender unit is a modified Hipshot palm lever unit. It’s loaded with mcnelly pickups, stagger swagger neck and dual blade bridge. It’s tuned open D with a String Joy custom set .017,.017., .026, .032, 0 42., .053 nickel. Keep up with Seth on Instagram!


Austin legend Jon Dee Graham plays “This Old Guitar”

Jon Dee Graham’s parts Strat has been his stage and studio mainstay for more than four decades. Assembled by Mark Younger-Smith with a ’64 neck, ’63 pickups, and a Custom Shop reissue body finished in Shoreline Gold that lends testimony to the years and miles. Here, he plays it through a 30-watt Carr, jamming on the lick and lead from “This Old Guitar,” a track from his latest album, “Only Dead For A Little While.” Catch our review in the April issue. Read Now!


Premiere of Seth Lee Jones’ new 110 video!

Filmed at one of our favorite local dive bars, Tin Dog, this is “110.” I played my main guitar, a battle scarred Tele style I built from scratch in 2006. It’s a one piece ash body, one piece birdseye maple neck with single carbon fiber neck reinforcement. The neck is non adjustable and has no radius, it’s dead flat like a classical. The bender unit is a modified Hipshot palm lever unit. It’s loaded with mcnelly pickups, stagger swagger neck and dual blade bridge. It’s tuned open D with a String Joy custom set .017,.017., .026, .032, 0 42., .053 nickel. Keep up with Seth on Instagram!


Dominic Miller

Team Player, Solo Turn

A longtime member of Sting’s band, Dominic Miller is the quintessential team player, even on his own solo albums. His latest release is Vagabond, a melding of jazz, world music, and pop produced by studio icon Manfred Eicher. The enchanting music is led by Miller’s acoustic guitar, yet he never overplays. Rather, he lets other […]

This could be just what every well-heeled young “Beat” guitarist and singer in Britain needed in the early 1960s – a guitar amp/PA with reverb, tremolo, mic stand, and tape echo all in one! We’re joking, right? Not in the least – although Joker-ing, we are indeed. Put your hands together for the Watkins Joker, […]

Andy Green Pedals’ Seaverb

Endless Reverb

Andy Green offers “basic building blocks” of tone – a concise lineup of effects including distortion, overdrive, fuzz, and reverb. One of those blocks measures 4.75″ x 2.5 x 1.625″ and is painted with a surf scene riffing on the iconic Endless Summer film poster. The Seaverb is a hand-assembled spring-reverb simulation with a slew […]

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 of his Gainster overdrive/boost pedal. Though he was mostly satisfied with the tones it made, he was bothered by the fact it was nearly as […]

Have Guitar Will Travel – 048 Featuring Rod Abernethy

James Patrick Regan speaks with guitarist/composer Rod Abernethy in the new episode of “Have Guitar Will Travel.” A native of North Carolina, Rod teaches musical-composition courses at the UNC School for the Arts. He and James discuss his musical life beginning with that ever-vital first guitar (a Gibson SG Special), playing in rock bands as […]

Dominic Miller

Team Player, Solo Turn

A longtime member of Sting’s band, Dominic Miller is the quintessential team player, even on his own solo albums. His latest release is Vagabond, a melding of jazz, world music, and pop produced by studio icon Manfred Eicher. The enchanting music is led by Miller’s acoustic guitar, yet he never overplays. Rather, he lets other […]

Daniele Gottardo

Bittersweetness

Italian guitar virtuoso Daniele Gottardo’s latest album, Inkblot, combines the whimsy and wonder of the great early-20th-century classical composers with mind-blowing modern-rock guitar techniques. Sitting with a chamber orchestra, Gottardo’s symphonic vision is on display with multidimensional themes, spellbinding counterpoint, and epic pastoral passages. It’s also a banquet of two-handed tapping. More importantly, it’s a […]

Vega Director Model A-60

Enticing Extras

A worthy vintage combo in all regards, there’s sad irony in the fact the Director Model A-60 is representative of the downward trajectory of Vega, the company founded in 1881 by Swedish-born brothers Julius and Carl Nelson. Established as a mandolin and guitar maker, Vega became one of the biggest names in banjos in the […]

Danelectro ’59 Resonator

Book This Dano

While guitar enthusiasts expend a lot of brain power waxing poetic about tonewoods, for many VG readers of a certain vintage, that gateway experience with an electric guitar may very well have involved a fair amount of Masonite. Of course, Danelectro and any of its once-ubiquitous “catalog brands” made ample use of the pressure-molded fiberboard. […]

Joe Osborn photo: Ed Hirsch.

Joe Osborn

A Few (Hundred) Hits

Ed. Note: Joe passed away December 14th, 2018, he was 81. Joe Osborn. His face has never been on a record jacket or album cover. Odds are most have heard his name, but have no idea what his musical accomplishments have meant to contemporary pop music. If you listened to the radio or owned a […]

Pop ’N Hiss: Bruford’s Allan Holdsworth

Landmark Fusion of One of a Kind

Jazz-rock fusion was vastly popular in the mid 1970s, but began to run out of steam as the “smooth jazz” of Spyro Gyra and Chuck Mangione simply became more lucrative. Even the superlative Weather Report had a radio hit with “Birdland.” Bill Bruford was having none of it. The former Yes and King Crimson drummer […]

The Minus 5 and the Monkees

Of Monkees and Men, Good Times, etc.
Monkee Business

The 1960s – that halcyon decade which Americans today are most inclined to reconsider with dewy eyes – is in the midst of a retrospective heyday. Assuming the Stones’ ill-fated NorCal bacchanalia in December ’69 represents the final nail in the coffin for this parade of 50th-anniversary observations, we have another three years of Aquarian […]

The Fender Showman

The Showman

In addition to several significant shifts in style and presentation, for Fender, the transition of the late 1950s into the early ’60s represented a more concerted push into big-amp territory. Having introduced the 80-watt “high-powered” tweed 5F8 Twin (VG, March ’09) in ’58, this rapidly expanding Fullerton manufacturer sought another model to help take it […]

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Joe Bonamassa

Driving

Joe Bonamassa’s latest record, Driving Towards The Daylight, is a return to the blues. After two successful studio albums with the heavy-rock band Black Country Communion, Bonamassa’s latest solo effort explores some of his early influences. While covering Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon, he got help from heavyweight guitarists including Brad Whitford, Pat […]

Epiphone Crestwood

’60s Un-Gibson Solidbody

Gibson’s acquisition of Epiphone in 1957 presented a tremendous challenge to guitar designers and marketers at the company. One challenge was to design a new solidbody instrument that could be produced at the Kalamazoo factory using existing tooling and production lines. Another was to make it visually distinct from Gibson’s Les Pauls. The answer? The […]

L-Guitar Lance Glass

Tweak City

Builders love tweaking the creations of Leo Fender and his squad of ’50s innovators; California luthier Lance McCormick is making his mark with the L-Guitar Lance Glass. It may look like another Strat-style plank, but under the hood are a pile of features worth exploring. And like all L-Glass instruments, our review tester was 100 […]

ToneSpeak 12″ Line

Speaking of Tone...

New to the musical-instrument side of speaker building, but far from neophyte, Misco introduced its ToneSpeak guitar speakers in 2021 with five American- and British-voiced models and a hemp-cone option. We asked the company to send its 50-watt Austin 1250 and New Orleans 1250, the 75-watt Birmingham 1275 and Liverpool 1275, and the 90-watt Manchester […]

PRS 25th Anniversary Swamp Ash Special NF

From Jimi to Eric to Angus

PRS 25th Anniversary Swamp Ash Special NF Price: $3,908 (retail)/$2,329 (street) Contact: PRSguitars.com. The PRS 25th Anniversary Swamp Ash Special NF is a guitar that attempts to thread many needles: depending on your pickup and amp selections, it can cover most tonal bases between Fender and Gibson, and then some. And that’s just for starters. […]

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