From Johnny Winter and Stephen Stills to Scott Holiday, the Firebird has been turning heads since the early ’60s. Builders Sander de Gier and Ewout Nijman out of the Netherlands are two guitar freaks with a jones for old-school looks and modern appointments. They have a thing for Firebirds too. Their first series for Volt …

When Steve Vai needed a portable preamp to take on the road to emulate his signature amp tones, Carvin Audio obliged. Their VLD1 Legacy Drive is Vai’s Legacy amplifier in a box – and it travels a whole lot easier than a half stack. Using 12AX7 tubes and circuitry found in Vai’s signature amps, the …

Gibson 1941 SJ-100 Price: $3,868 (list)/$2,999 (street) Info: www.gibson.com Sporting a unique “stair step” headstock, the first Gibson SJ-100s began trickling out of the Kalamazoo factory in 1939. This original design lasted only two model years before it was replaced in 1941 with a second version that was itself soon discontinued, this time due to …

For nearly 20 years, Victoria Amplifier Company has been making head-turning retro-styled amps. Mark Baier and his crew recently introduced the Silver Sonic, a lower-watt version of their popular Golden Melody amp that pulls together a host of features and circuit cues from the golden era of tweed amps. The Silver Sonic sports an elegant …

Supro’s Comet 1610RT just may be the perfect desert island amp – a high-gain, low-watt 1×10 combo that maybe doesn’t do it all, but does most everything you’ll ever need on your balmy isle paradise. Think ’30s Gibson EH-150, ’50s Fender tweed Champ, or ’60s Supro Bantam. The Comet is a small amp with big …

In the early days of reverb, no one was thinking about surf music; they were striving instead to replicate the warm, resonant, live sound of a concert hall. So, when Supro launched its two reverb-unit models in 1961, not only did the company’s catalog promise “The Magic of Concert Hall Sound,” the pledge was prominent …

One of Les Paul’s favorite aphorisms when assessing other guitarists was, “Can his mother pick him out on the radio?” Or as Albert Collins put it, “Does he have an identification?” David Grissom passed those tests decades ago. His tone is equal parts crunch and definition. His style melds blues, rock, and country with tinges …

Though its high-point in terms of popular exposure may have occurred when McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison “discovered” the Casino, Epiphone has historically been most known for its archtop guitars. Today, that legacy is largely carried by the Emperor model and its variants. The new Emperor Swingster is based on the popular Emperor Regent, with a …

MXR SF01 Slash Octae Fuzz Price: $129 (street) Contact: jimdunlop.com MXR’s new Slash Octave Fuzz pedal employs three fuzz “flavors” – Sub-Octave, Fuzz, and Octave Up – that offer a palette of distinctive, utilizable sounds. The pedal, built with analog circuitry, true-bypass switching, and a heavy-duty housing, sports custom artwork with Slash’s famed tophatted-skull-and-crossbones motif. …

FireBelly Amplifiers’ Tweed 1955SE, PR3512SE Price: $949 (Tweed 1955SE); $1,595 (PR3512SE) Contact: www.firebellyamps.com The quest for vintage tone continues, and while budgetary concerns might keep many guitarists from owning the real deal, the demand has created a market for affordable hand-built amplifiers with old-school sounds and specs. The father-and-son team of Steven and Scott Cohen …

Saint Blues Bluesmaster/Blindsider Price: $2,399 (Bluesmaster); $2,550 (Blindsider) Info: saintblues.com St. Blues’ history stretches back to the days when its founders customized guitars for the likes of Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, and Duane Allman as their tours passed through Memphis. Today the company has a storefront just a few yards from the legendary Sun Studio, …

Pity the poor right-handed masses. Emulating the vibe of Jimi’s various Strats has always been tough on them. Some players chase down one of the precious few vintage left-handed Strats, flip it over, restring it, and suffer the oddities. Others swap lefty necks onto righty guitars. Either way, it’s never quite right (pun intended). Fender’s …

The Electro-Harmonix Epitome, Tone Tattoo Price: $491.84 list (Epitome) and $292.35 list (Tone Tattoo) Info: www.ehx.com The concept is smart yet so obvious it’s a wonder no one came up with it sooner. With both the Epitome and the Tone Tattoo, Electro-Harmonix manages to cram three effects into a single housing. Did life just get …

If you hung around the audio world’s collective R&D room long enough in the late 1950s and early ’60s, you’d have thought that, very soon, everything would be happening in stereo. And why not? Who wants drab, flat mono when life could be happening in multi-dimensional stereo? And soon, it most often was… other than …

Mastermind effects mad scientist Mike Beigel is back with another re-creation of a classic Musitronics effect. The Mu-FX Phasor 2X is a time machine back to the bad old ’70s that includes several smart upgrades which make the future look a little bit brighter. In case you weren’t paying attention back in ’72, Beigel was …

They were a band like no other – either before or since. That was the inevitable description of the rock trio Morphine, from critics to TV hosts to fellow musicians like Henry Rollins and Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin. The band’s self-described “low rock” hit you in your pelvis instead of your head, as stated by …