Take a look at your pedalboard. You probably have three or four overdrives and fuzzes hooked up – and are looking to find the cash and real estate to add more. Hold your horses and consider instead Swedish maker Elektron’s Analog Drive. Yes, it’s large and needs 12-volt power. But then again it holds eight …

Preamp tubes: three 6J7, one 6N7 Output tubes: two 6L6 Rectifier: 5U4 Controls: Instrument Volume, Microphone Volume, Bass and Treble Speakers: one 12″ field-coil speaker Output: approximately 20 watts RMS Guitarists playing anything other than big-band jazz or Western swing tend to approach pre-rock-and-roll tube amps with reservation. We’re often fascinated, and might enjoy a …

The Stromberg Master 400, measuring a gigantic 19″, is considered by many to be the ultimate orchestral rhythm guitar. The instrument of choice for Freddy Green with the Count Basie Orchestra and other players who needed the ultimate in power and projection to cut through a brass band or full orchestra without the benefit of …

If you found yourself stranded on that proverbial desert isle with – horror of horrors – just a single guitar at your disposal, the Collings I-30 LC just might make you one blissful castaway. That combo of playability and tone comes courtesy of Collings’ version of a lightweight, fully hollow 335 body shape, a sweet …

“A lot of people…think [blues is] all the same. So I try to take that element out. I don’t want to restrict myself in terms of genre or influence.” It’s not hard to figure out why Larry McCray became a guitarist. “My dad was a musician,” he said. “Grandma played guitar, my other grandma played …

Live albums can be a remedy for contract disputes or a way to stall for time during a creative dry spell. For Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, it’s really the best way to be heard on a recording. Live is their natural habitat. When they’re feeding off each other and the raw energy of an …

“BFG ain’t anybody ’cept BFG,” proclaims ZZ Top co-founder/front man/face Billy Gibbons, discussing his first solo album, Perfectamundo. “What is heard is heard, just like that.” Such idiosyncratic turns of phrase flow readily from Gibbons while discussing the effort, which came about following an invitation to perform at the Havana Jazz Festival. The idea sent Gibbons …

Walden Sean Harkness 12-String, CG4070E Price: $1,100 (Sean Harkness Model); $1,350 (CG4070E-CERT) Info: www.waldenguitars.com. With 16 years of producing attractive, understated instruments, Walden Guitars puts an accent on quality materials and environmental awareness. If you are looking for a heavily inlaid showpiece to hang on your wall, look elsewhere; Walden specializes in guitars that emphasize …

Truly a deserving name in the early era of the “boutique” amp scene, Jim Kelley is also an extremely under-recognized one. After working at Music Man amplifiers and other jobs in electronics in the 1970s, Kelley formed Active Guitar Electronics in Tustin, California, in 1978 and began building tube amps under his own name in …

Worland Prairie Price: $1,950 Info: www.worlandguitars.com. It’s been well-documented how car-crazy vets and teens in postwar America reimagined the American automobile. Some shaved, sprayed, and slammed contemporary two-door sedans, creating the custom car. Others invented the hot rod when they stripped prewar coupes and roadsters to their bare essentials, stroked and bored their Flathead mills, …

The term “vintage” isn’t always literal when it comes to gear, but it certainly can be used to describe attitude. Michael Johnny Walker has spent his career chasing tone and delivering vintage attitude in spades. The riff-laden, self-titled debut of his newest endeavor, Motobunny, as well as the latest Love Me Nots release, Sucker, both …

For players of a certain vintage, there’s something gratifying about an old-school compact Boss pedal at your feet. Even with the evolution of more-sophisticated pedals, those bright, uniform boxes reliably recall a formative time. Boss is celebrating its compact pedal line with Box 40, a special-edition set containing reissues of the three that introduced the …

Stompboxes range from organic, transparent circuits that let a guitar’s natural tone shine through, to effects that intentionally color the signal with gobs of sonic insanity. This trio of pedals from Walrus Audio and Celestial Effects truly covers all of those bases. The Walrus Audio Deep Six, a studio-grade compressor in a little box, was …

Here at VG, we see all manner of guitars – those made out of steel, graphite, even animal shells. But I’d never seen a guitar with a body made of a can until I saw a Bohemian Boho Series guitar. Obviously the novelty factor played a part in Bohemian’s decision to base a series of …

Jimi Hendrix passed into infinity at the tender age of 27. The fact that his influential career lasted only four years over 45 years ago speaks volumes. A visionary former chitlin’ circuit guitarist imprinted the world with his virtuosity and meaningful art. Robert Keeley has created a tool that allows you to summon the textures …

Leon Rhodes 1932-2017 We are saddened to hear of the passing of guitar legend Leon Rhodes, one of the most-beloved players from the golden age of country music. Leon emerged in the early ’60s with Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troubadours, his jazzy style usually played on a semi- or hollowbody thinline that helped create a distinctive …

John Dopyera left National in 1929 to begin work on a secret project – a single-cone resonator guitar he believed superior to the Triolian. His instrument became synonymous with resonator guitars.