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Super PickupGiveaway 2025
Win Big! 11 Sets! 11 Winners! Win a set of pickups from one of these sponsors: Deadline is March 15, 2026. Complete the survey below to enter giveaway. One entry…

The Gretsch 6120 Tenor
This 1958 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 four-string tenor guitar is a very rare variation of the model. Gretsch built other…

Terry Dolan
44 Years Later
The market is flooded with previously unreleased albums and reissue CDs containing alternate takes. It must be simple to get…

Slim Harpo and Martin Hawkins
Mick Jagger admonished the world back in 1968, “What’s the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m A King Bee’…

Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton
Alt-Blues Summit
Blues is a language of many dialects, and when regionalisms collide, sparks fly. So it has been since Texas six-stringer…

Reverend Billy Corgan
Smashing Sounds
Reverend’s new twist on its Billy Corgan Signature guitar updates several features but remains a stylish retro-meets-modern solidbody. The most…

Dean DeLeo and Tom Bukovac unite on the trip the witch
Cosmic Convergence
At a glance, there’s little reason to connect a guitarist like Dean DeLeo to one like Tom Bukovac. One is…
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Rickenbacker’s Electric 12-Strings
Double-bound for Glory
George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacher founded Electro String in 1931 to manufacture what everyone would soon call “Rickenbacker” guitars. Success came early and their lap steels set standards of quality,…
ARTISTS

Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Blues From the Backroads
Stepping into the spotlight to play the blues with the classic bands that backed Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, most…

Pop ’N Hiss: Lou Reed
Definitive Riffs- Lou Reed’s Rock ’N Roll Animal and Live
Eccentric and enigmatic, composer/singer Lou Reed gained notoriety in the mid-’60s while fronting the NYC band Velvet Underground. Not particularly…

Ten Years After
Woodstock Music & Arts Festival, August, 1969
Click Here to read the Alvin Lee obituary. In the summer of 1968, America was starting to hear about a…

Hands On
Lenser Twists Musician Portraiture
In 2012, photographer Marc Mennigmann conceived of shooting musician portraits in a very different way – looking beyond faces and…
CLASSIC INSTRUMENTS

The D’Angelico Excel Mandolin
The 1,164 archtop guitars made by John D’Angelico have brought him great renown as the finest individual archtop guitar builder…

VG Q&A: Harmony History
And an Archtop Mystery
I recently received two guitars as gifts and am trying to learn more about them. The first is a Harmony…

Molly Miller – top-flight instrumental rock, jazz, and twang
Trio rips on “2 West” Instrumental guitar music is having a moment. Offering a stellar example, Molly Miller and her…
1964 Fender Bassman
1964 Fender 6G6-B Bassman Preamp tubes: four 7025 (12AX7 types) Output tubes: two 5881 (a more-rugged 6L6 type), fixed-bias Rectifier:…
NEWSWIRE
APPROVED GEAR
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Live Wire
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Narrow(field) Win
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Take Flight

Taylor T5z-12 Classic DLX
12-String Tech
Taylor’s acclaimed merging of acoustic and electric guitars continues to evolve with the T5z-12, a thinline 12-string with five-way pickup…

Furch Blue Deluxe SW
Czech Mate
You might not recogonize the Furch brand, but the Czech Republic builder has spent that last 40-plus years gaining a…

EarthQuaker Devices’ Westwood Translucent Drive Manipulator
Ground Shaker
EarthQuaker Devices has a knack for launching pedals that range from ideal tools for those seeking otherworldly sonic textures to…
WHAT ELSE IS NEW
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More Personal
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Rare Pioneer

The Ray Butts EchoSonic
If you want to talk star-user ratio, the Ray Butts EchoSonic is near the top of the heap. Most accounts…

Adrian Belew
Still Going Up
Even after 45 years of guitar heroics with King Crimson, David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and solo, Adrian Belew’s career is…

Bob Weir
Ace: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
When is a Grateful Dead album not a Dead album? When it’s Bob Weir’s solo debut from 1972, also featuring…

Pop ’N Hiss: Dio’s Holy Diver
Divine Metal
Vocalist Ronnie James Dio was on a roll as he formed the band that would record his 1983 album Holy…










































