• Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Classic Instruments

    Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery

    Jon Butcher tales his Olympic White ’63 Strat for a rip on “Jam,” a track from his new album, “Nuthin’ but Soul.” The disc is an homage to sounds of Motown, Stax, James Brown, and Sly Stone highlighted by Butcher’s mastery of Hendrix-style psychedelia. It was recorded using a ’63 Princeton, a Vibrolux, and a…

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Dan’s Guitar RX: Reviving a ’56 Duo-Jet

Ugly, But An Oldy

Blake Burkeholder, a repair expert in my shop, has always wanted a Gretsch. So, when he found a ’56 Duo-Jet fixer-upper at a reasonable price, he grabbed it. Like other…

Gibson F-5 1923

1923 Gibson F-5. Gibson F-5 mandolins signed by Lloyd Loar from mid 1922 to 1924 are considered the Holy Grail by most American mandolin players. Within that group of grails,…

Sue Foley

Femme Flamenco

In a time when pop-music performers rely heavily on post-recording fix-ups and pre-recorded tracks onstage, it’s refreshing – even admirable – when someone takes the “honest road.” Singer/guitarist Sue Foley…

Perfect Curves Fender’s Stratocaster Turns 60

Perfect Curves

Fender’s Stratocaster Turns 60

Sixty years down the road since its creation, the Fender Stratocaster is the default image of the electric guitar for nearly all the human race. From early adopters like Buddy…

Ibanez Destroyer

Odd Retro Nod

The early/mid 1970s were the “glory days” for imported copies of classic American-made guitars and basses. Back then, the “vintage” vibe as it related to American-made electric guitars was in…

Beat Portraits: Burns Volume 2

The Black Bison Leads the Herd

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled the first three installments for a special edition of VG…

Robin Basses

Robin Basses

A Photo Retrospective

Alamo Music Products holds a unique place in the history of electric guitars and basses. The Houston-based company began its journey in the early ’80s as Robin Guitars, importing retro-influenced…

Ibanez Destroyer II

1985 Ibanez Destroyer II DT-250. Photo: Michael Wright. Back in 1958, when Gibson unleashed its now legendary trio – the Explorer, Flying V, and Moderne – its designers probably had…

The Leo Krebs Tape Echo Amplifier

Twenty-Three and Thee

If you have no recollection of the revolutionary amplifier with 19 knobs, 23 tubes, and built-in tape echo created by Leo in California, chances are you’re thinking of the wrong…

Gibson’s Depression-Era Exports

Many aren’t aware that some of the archtop guitars Gibson produced during the Depression were marketed under different brand names, including Kalamazoo, Recording King, Cromwell, Fascinator, and Kel Kroyden, among…

Classics: February 2022

Chuck Panozzo’s Gibson ES-125

For nearly five decades, Chuck Panozzo has been the bassist in Styx, enjoying the ride as it went from playing garage parties in suburban Chicago through its heyday as AOR-radio…

MORLEYWAH-HOME-MAIN-BIG

The Morley Rotating Wah

Chromed Tone

There was a time in the mythic ’70s when guitarists were real men and lugged around 15-pound Morley Rotating Wah pedals to gigs and studios. And if they weren’t real…

George Ducas: Modern Honky-Tonkin’

Taste of “Long Way From Home” Singer/songwriter George Ducas is a Nashville traditionalist influenced by Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Wynn Stewart. His new album, “Long Way From Home,” was…

Perfect Curves Fender’s Stratocaster Turns 60

Perfect Curves

Fender’s Stratocaster Turns 60

Sixty years down the road since its creation, the Fender Stratocaster is the default image of the electric guitar for nearly all the human race. From early adopters like Buddy…

Sovtek MIG-50

Curtain Call

Given their development in the twilight years of the U.S.S.R. and arrival at the fall of the Iron Curtain, it was a gutsy move to name an amp after a…

Greg Martin John Sebastian’s ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard Vintage Guitar magazine Feature Image

John Sebastian’s ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard

Vintage Guitar magazine Presents Greg Martin's Head Shop

This is a regular series of exclusive Vintage Guitar online features where The Kentucky Headhunters’ Greg Martin looks back on influential albums and other musical moments. On November 30, 1966,…

MIM Hosts Stephen Stills and Ushers in Dragons and Vines Exhibition

On November 5th, Phoenix, Arizona’s Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) celebrated the opening of their newest exhibition, “Dragons and Vines: Inlaid Guitar Masterpieces.” Curators teamed up with Maryland-based Pearl Works to…

Dan’s Guitar RX: Building a From-Scratch Class Project

Rock-And-Roll High School(er)

Students at Federal Hocking High School here in Athens County, Ohio, are given the opportunity to propose internships in work that interests them. Ceil Thompson, a 17-year-old junior who has been…

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…

GIBSON F-7 1934

1934 Gibson F-7

Prior to Gibson’s innovations, mandolins were bowl-back instruments with a lute-like back usually constructed with rosewood or maple back ribs and a bent spruce top with an oval sound hole.…

Kiss-able Gibson

Gene Simmons' EB-0

A ca. 1960 Gibson EB-0 that once belonged to Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. Photo: VG Archive. In the mid 1970s, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons played this heavily reworked second-generation Gibson…

Stromberg G-5

In the world of archtop guitars, the Stromberg name represents the ultimate instrument – in size, at least – in the big-band era of the late 1930s and ’40s. The…

Jimmy Bryant

Country-Jazz Virtuoso

When Leo Fender strode into a cowboy bar on the outskirts of Hollywood one day in 1950, he had no idea the contraption he was toting would become a central…

National Style O

National Style O

Although it has never been the favorite guitar of Hawaiian players, National’s Style O, with its shining metal body and tropical imagery, stands today as one of the strongest icons…

Kevin Keaton’s 1958 Esquire

Swamp Thing

June 10, 2020, was a summer night like most in the life of Kevin Keaton, a postal mail carrier and guitarist who gigs in an acoustic duo and an AC/DC…

Fender Telecaster, Part II

Go Tele It On the Mountain, Part II

Given the simplicity of its design, it’s truly remarkable how much staying power the revolutionary Telecaster has exhibited in the half-century since its introduction. Especially for a slab of wood…

Fender 
Telecaster Thinline

Weight-Loss Trial

Born in turbulent times on the downslope of the “guitar boom,” Fender’s Telecaster Thinline has always existed in the shadow of its classic older sibling. But it does not lack…

The Martin 3K

The continuing appeal of Hawaiian music through the past 100 years is based in part on the music itself, which evokes exotic images of life on a Pacific island, and…

Maestro Rover R0-1

The UFO of Rotating Speakers

To record “Little Wing,” Jimi Hendrix plugged his Stratocaster into his usual amplifier, then did the unthinkable; he ran guitar signal into an organ speaker – a Leslie rotating-speaker cabinet.…

The Höfner Model 485G

At the end of World War II, the town of Schönbach, in western Bohemia, became Luby, Czechoslovakia, and the people of German ethnicity were expelled. The changes affected the fortunes…