In the story of the Fender amp – after the tweedy pre-Army Elvis and before the black-face Deluxe British blues invasion – there appeared the blond, as Leo Fender transitioned his line cosmetically and sonically from righteous crunch to a sophisticated high-fidelity tone suitable for Camelot after midnight – warm and aggressive but in a …

Louis Electric Buster Price: $1,595. Info: louisamps.com Lou Rosano has been building amps in the Fender vein for more than 17 years. His first build wound up in the hands of the late Danny Gatton, and other greats who have played through his Louis Electric amps include Keith Richards, John Fogerty, Jorma Kaukonen, and Hubert …

Dogu Custom Electric Guitars’ MOS-01 Price: $2,200 (list) Contact: www.actionfigurestudios.com Improving upon classic designs is a consistent theme in the guitar-manufacturing community. While many companies take a pragmatic approach to updating older designs for better performance, Mehmet Dogu (pronounced “Dough”) took a wistful one. He was determined to replace the guitar that got away. The …

Durham Electronics’ ReddVerb Price: $219 (list) Info: www.durhamelectronics.com Take it from Redd Volkaert; good reverb is hard to find. And that’s especially true if you’re gigging on the road and don’t want to lug an amp with a built-in spring reverb, let alone a stand-alone tank. Enter Alan Durham. He not only designed the Durham …

The drive to succeed – along with certain workaholic tendencies – revealed themselves early in rock guitarist Gilby Clarke. On the brink of becoming a “problem child,” he turned the tide on misfortune after his parents’ marriage fell apart. Wanting to be closer to family, Clarke’s mother took her children from Cleveland to California, and …

Korg Nuvibe Price: $499.99 (street) Contact: www.korg.com Korg is not known as a guitar company, but to their great credit they worked with Fumio Mieda – developer of the original Uni-Vibe from 1968 – to resurrect his classic modulation effect as the Nuvibe. A late-’60s Uni-Vibe is like the snow leopard of guitar effects; seldom seen and …

So, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and Waylon Jennings walk into a bar… No, wait, they walk into a NAMM Show. And, no joke, when they carry their iconic tooled-leather Firebird and Tele, respectively, past the Homestead HS50, with its eyecatching raised-pattern “Country & Western Brown” cover, they have no choice but to turn around and plug …

Leo Fender once famously said, “A guitar is just a hammer.” If you haven’t yet found a hammer that fits like it should, this may be it. After U2 guitarist The Edge signed on to Fender’s board of directors in 2014, everyone expected a signature guitar was forthcoming – and that it would likely be …

With the death of Robert Lockwood, Jr., the blues world lost one of the few direct links to Robert Johnson as well as one of the studio kingpins of Chicago blues’ heyday in the 1950s and early ‘60s. Born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, in 1915, Lockwood died November 21, a few weeks after suffering a …

Every time Vintage Guitar sets up an interview with the redoubtable Billy F Gibbons, lead guitarist/vocalist of the legendary Texas trio ZZ Top, it’s always a matter of “expect the unexpected.” The L’il Ol’ Band from Texas has been going strong for 30 years, and their latest studio release is the 17-track Mescalero (RCA), which …

At some point, nearly every guitarist realizes they simply can’t function without an effects pedal that creates warm, pulsating modulation. Walrus Audio’s Monument Harmonic Tap Tremolo not only works as a standard tremolo, but its Harmonic Mode provides even more options. The Harmonic/Standard toggle allows the user to change from a “traditional” tremolo sound (Standard) …

James Elkington tweaked the paradigm when he began working at a luthier shop before hitting his stride as a guitarist. Born and raised in a small English village northwest of London, his interest in the guitar blossomed relatively late. “It seemed the coolest instrument on offer and, as most of us guitar players have found …

Sunday, February 9, 1964, was the day that forever changed music and pop culture. “The Ed Sullivan Show” was one of the most popular television programs in the United States and at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, The Beatles made their live debut on American national television before an estimated 73 million people. This single …

“Stack-knob” is a catch phrase that for decades has perked the ears of collectors; these relatively rare examples of the earliest Fender Jazz Bass are among the first electric basses to be “collected” instead of just bought, sold, and played! Along with the ’50s Precision, they stand as the ultimate Fender bass – sought for …

There’s something about the Telecaster – as well as its forerunners and inspired imitators – that attracts musicians whose music then reflects the guitar’s straightforward character. It’s a guitar that speaks to players interested in getting right down to picking. Providing the instrumental spine to Corey “Croy” Baum’s smartly constructed, witty, often moving original songs, …

Sam Phillips didn’t invent tape echo with his mid-’50s recordings of Elvis, but he just as well may have. So influential, so inspirational were those songs – with their warm, glorious slap-back echo created in Sun’s control room by two jerryrigged tape recorders – that budding rock-and-rollers everywhere had to have it. With the arrival …

Mick Jagger admonished the world back in 1968, “What’s the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m A King Bee’ when you can listen to Slim Harpo doing it?” His statement not only summed up the early philosophy behind the Rolling Stones – despite the band’s superlative cover of that song, and later of “Shake …