• 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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Acoustic Black Widow

Black Widow Guitars

In the late ’60s, when Domino guitars were fading away, tube amplifiers were out of vogue. Old technology, man! Cool bands played through solidstate amps that delivered lots of clean…

The Vox/Thomas Organ V-8 Berkeley Super Reverb

Organ Transplant

Most fans of classic British guitar amplifiers have heard the tale of how the great all-tube Vox models of the early 1960s transmogrified into disappointing solid-state Vox-in-name-only creations from the…

Classics: December 2023

Cliff Antone’s 1952 Fender Precision

Texas is known for music, especially Austin, which in the mid ’70s became a hotbed thanks to clubs like Armadillo World Headquarters, Castle Creek, and Soap Creek Saloon, which mostly…

Watkins Rapier 33

If you were an American teenager in the late 1950s or early ’60s, and you wanted to play the new rock music, you likely did not have a solidbody electric…

Fresher Guitars

Fresher Guitars

Epic poetry is great, but all these long treatises on the massive guitar pedigrees of Kay and Aria have made me feel a bit like a Milton scholar, a fate…

Kramer Duke

Shorter Steinberger Syndrome

If you think the headless, downsized Kramer Duke series was conceived and designed as a copy of the groundbreaking Steinberger bass, think again, because that’s not half of the story.…

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Homer Haynes’ ’59 D’Angelico Excel

From 1932 to 1964, independent builder John D’Angelico produced some of the finest jazz guitars. After apprenticing and working in the violin trade, D’Angelico transitioned to building archtop guitars with…

Orville Gibson’s Handmade 1906 Artist Mandolin

Proving a Point

This instrument, bearing a handwritten label reading “Made by O.H. Gibson 1906 Kalamazoo Mich” is arguably the most elaborate scroll-model mandolin ever made by Orville Gibson. The 1906 date is…

Vintage Instrument Research

An Ever-Changing Landscape

Fretted instruments can be examined in much the same way as zoological taxonomist or forensic pathologist would approach them. They fit well into a Linnaean taxonomic order, and in fact…

VG Q&A: Odd Dots

Import fretboard markers, and Kay’s Model 1961

In the mid ’60s, why did some Japanese electric-guitar manufacturers put the marker on the 10th fret rather than the ninth? – Joe Bigley Very few Japanese makers put dot…

Benson Model 300H

Wrecking Ball

Even with all the excellent guitar amps available by the late ’60s, nothing was quite good enough for jazz and studio great Howard Roberts – so he co-designed his own.…

Built to Survive

Gibson and Montgomery Ward in the Great Depression

In our nation’s darkest economic times, one of its most-revered guitar manufacturers was treading headlong toward extinction before an unlikely hero started placing big orders.

The Guild Starfire Bass

In the mid ’60s, Guild took its knocks for making guitars that looked “inspired by” Gibson models. Fans of the brand think the sterotype is unfair, of course, and certainly,…

The Acoustic

Black Widow

In the late ’60s, when Domino guitars were fading away, tube amplifiers were out of vogue. Old technology, man! Cool bands played through solidstate amps that delivered lots of clean…

Steve Wariner’s ’62 Fender Jazz Bass

An eye-popping collectible in its own right, this Olympic White ’62 Fender Jazz Bass scores a few points higher on the scale not only because it has been in the…

Gretsch Model 40 Hawaiian

Short-Lived Flat-top

The Hawaiian guitar style came to the American mainland during the Pan Pacific Exposition of 1915. And while the popularity of Hawaiian music and playing faded in the ’40s, the…

Ampeg A-2

Compressor Pedal

When it comes to effects pedals, compressors and sustain ped-als usually fall into the “love it or hate it” category. Aside from a graphic equalizer, it is probably the least…

Gretsch Country Gentleman

Consider American guitar manufacturers that have been in business during the last 100 years and the different instruments they’ve produced. Only a handful  have become cultural icons – given no…

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…

Antonio de Torres

The Birth of the Modern Guitar

To date, I have covered most of the major schools of guitar construction/design, and some of their contributions to the evolution of the gut/nylon-string guitar. In the April ’96 issue…

The History of Hamer Guitars

High-End Boutique or Budget Vintage, Part II

Hamer was started when Jol Dantzig and Paul Hamer, partners in Northern Prairie Music in the early 1970s, moved from repairing old guitars to making new, improved versions of their…

Vega Model 120

Viewed from our contemporary perspective, it’s difficult to fully appreciate how different the music scene in general – and the guitar scene in particular – was back in the early…

National Bel-Air, Photo courtesy George Gruhn Big thmbnail

National Bel-Air

The idea of Gibson providing guitar parts to another prominent guitar maker is laughable today, but in the 1940s and ’50s, relationships were cozier between some of the major instrument…

Ovation Solidbody Guitars

No matter how hard they tried…

Acurious phenomenon that ac-companies certain guitar compa-nies is an inability to translate success from one medium to another. For instance, Martin has never been able to transfer its reputation for…

1980 Renaissance T-200G Home thumb

Renaissance T-200G

What is it about Plexiglas? It’s so cool. You can see through it onstage. It’s dense, yet resonant. You’d think it would be the perfect medium for a mean rock…

Jake Andrews – “ Apricot Brandy”

Austin Stalwart Goes Full Steam for “Apricot Brandy” Jake Andrews was just eight years old when he sat in at Antone’s with an impressed Albert King, and not long after…

SCOTTY MOORE's GIBSON ES-295 Vinatge guitar Magazine

Scotty Moore’s Gibson ES-295

First Guitar of Rock and Roll

Like a hound dog hit by lightning, the first notes of rock and roll blasted out of radios across the country in July of 1954, courtesy of Elvis Presley’s supercharged-hillbilly…

Meet The GitWik

Cooperative Cognition

When it comes to identifying guitars, basses, amps, and effects, nobody knows it all. Anyone save for the true specialist, whose interest is focused on a particular model, make, or…

Fender’s Tweed-to Tolex Transition

Best Face Forward

Through its 75 years, Fender has been responsible for myriad leaps forward in the history of guitar-amplifier design and manufacture. Arguably the most dramatic was the transition in 1959-’60 from…

Hanburt Electric Guitars

Rarities From the Pacific Northwest

As a brand of American electric instruments, the name “Hanburt” is about the furthest thing from being a household term. Nevertheless, the recently documented saga behind this obscure line of…