• Zac Schulze gets straight to it!

    Classic Instruments

    Zac Schulze gets straight to it!

    If you’re a fan of Cream, Zeppelin, and Rory Gallagher (who isn’t?), you’ll dig Zac Schulze Gang, a British power trio that’s carrying the torch with both hands; they’ve played Clapton’s Crossroads and the Rory Gallagher Tribute Fest. Here, Zac flies solo on “High Roller,” tearin’ it up on his ’54 Guild Aristocrat M75 through…

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Fender’s 1960 Bandmaster

Power of Three

The earliest renditions of our gear icons are often the most valuable, but on many occasions it’s the transition models – those that bridged one era to the next –…

George Gruhn

How a Zoologist Became a Guitar animal

If you bumped into a bearded, corduroy-jacketed George Gruhn in a Nashville coffee shop, you might think you’d stumbled upon an avuncular college professor – which is fitting, considering that…

Nick Moss – clean and tasty on “Scratch N Sniff”

Instro-rock, fully greased Get ready to have your funtime socks knocked off, ‘cuz this exclusive Nick Moss run through “Scratch N Sniff” is dangerous! A track from his latest album,…

Green Amps

Turning America Green

It hit Joel Wheeler in a flash of white light, a memory fried extra crispy into his brain. Just how you’d picture an epiphany to be, right? A random sentence…

The Travis Bean TB1000S Standard

A Better Idea

Guitar history is littered with “better ideas,” some of which stayed around, went nowhere, or went somewhere before landing in the boneyard to be occasionally reincarnated. A great example is…

Mark Lettieri’s funky finesse

Virtuoso take on “Greenspace” Stepping out from his band, Snarky Puppy, Mark Lettieri exhibits the finesse, funk, and fury that make him such a great player. Here, he jams on…

Park Model 1229

Half-Stack Heaven

Vintage Park amplifiers have long offered happy hunting for those seeking stealthy “Marshall in disguise” kicks. But the maker used the sister brand to try a few nifty circuit changes,…

Univox et al Merson/Unicord

Part 1

While most think of the history of American guitars in terms of American manufacturers, if you’ve followed this column you know the tradition is much richer. Among the major players…

The Gibson L-5

Loyd Loar's Timeless Masterpiece

Timeless elegance. A jazz icon. The inspirational archtop guitar. These are just a few of the descriptions that fit Gibson’s L-5. Add to those a historical antecedent: the L-5 in…

One of Two of a Kind

Gibson’s L-3 Ganus Brothers Special

Making custom instruments has always been problematic for companies designed to manufacture in quantity. Though it had an unenforced policy against one-off projects, this guitar illustrates how the company did…

Marshall 2100 Lead & Bass

Rock Breaker

Adescendant of the legendary “Bluesbreaker” combo that helped launch the cranked-Marshall sound into the annals of rock, the 2100 combo is also one of the rarest post-plexi models – and…

Freddie Green

Artistry in Rhythm

Fellow musicians called him “Pep” or “Pepperhead.” He was also known as “Mr. Rhythm,” and he could drive a band like no other guitarist. His was a subtle yet unmistakable…

John Oates’ Prized Guild F-30

Roots Return

Most people know Hall & Oates as a pop-music hit machine that has sold millions of records. What you may not know is that John Oates is a lifetime student…

Standel 400S

In the early days of the American electric guitar/amplifier industry, Standel was known for building high-quality amplifiers used by the likes of Merle Travis and Joe Maphis. In fact, a…

1843 Martin & Coupa

Retail Rarity

In 1833, C.F. Martin, Sr. and his family arrived in New York City. A trained luthier, Martin had studied under Johann Stauffer in Vienna and for more than five years…

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell

Guitars at Heart for 30 Years

Remember the first time you strummed a D chord or fumbled your way oh-so-slowly through “Walk Don’t Run”? Chances are you wanted to be in the Beatles, or you wanted…

1952 Bigsby Doubleneck

Few instruments combine excellent craftsmanship, historical significance in the development and evolution of the guitar, and memorabilia appeal as much as this Bigsby guitar, custom made in 1952 for the…

Epiphone “Bikini Logo” Amplifiers

Beach Party

Collectors know well the desirability of Epiphone guitars from the years after Gibson acquired the brand. Further off the radar, however, are the amplifiers that accompanied them – especially the…

The Gibson Les Paul Model

Photo: Robert Parks, courtesy George Gruhn. Its official name – Les Paul model – doesn’t do it justice. After all, Gibson has made over a hundred different Les Paul models…

Echoplex

Roots of Echo Part IV

For those of you checking out our Echoplex series for the first time (and regular readers, too), a brief glance back: Part I perused the groundbreaking use of echo by…

Elliot Easton

Star Board: Elliot Easton

Elliot Easton’s “Pedalboard” Though Elliot Easton enjoys his loaded full-size Pedaltrain board, his new band, The Empty Hearts (with Clem Burke, Wally Palmar, and Andy Babiuk), does a lot of…

Gibson J-35

Gibson J-35

Dreadnought guitars originated as early as 1916 with instruments made by Martin and distributed by Ditson, followed in 1931 with guitars sold by Martin under its own brand. The first…

United They Stood, Part 2

Ghosts of Jersey City

In the history of guitars, the tale of United Guitar Corporation is a ghost story – little documented and lost in partially self-imposed obscurity. Operating from 1939 into the late…

National Westwood and Glennwood

'60s Alt-materials Make Short run

Westwood 75 While the mantra for 21st century “alternative material” guitars focuses on carbon fiber (i.e. Rainsong acoustics) and wood/glass/carbon fiber/epoxy composites (i.e. Ken Parker’s Fly line), electric guitars made…

B.C. Rich Guitars

From Flamenco to Heavy Metal

From one perspective, flamenco and heavy metal might seem as far apart as the sun and the moon, but if you think about the hyperbolic emotion involved in both genres,…

Gibson SJ-200

On the Trail to the Original

Is this the first Gibson SJ-200? Maybe. Technically, Gibson called it the Special L-5, but it is also known in guitar lore as the prototype SJ-200. Photos courtesy of Ken…

Familiar Names Create Music as J&B Brothers

Austin-Powered

The J&B Brothers make a sound equal parts Texas country, blues, folkie, rock, jazz, and soul – the spices that make music from the region so damn tasty. They’re also…

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…

LYON_HEALY-HOME-MAIN-BIG

Lyon and Healy

So what is it? Its original black-finished spruce top is simply ladder-braced from within, but its back and sides feature Brazilian rosewood with dramatic bookmatched figure. Its unbound 18-fret fingerboard…

Silver Lining

Gibson and the Master Models

Recognized today as visionary, when introduced in 1922, Gibson’s Master Model L-5 and F-5 were expensive to produce and lacked a market. For a time, they placed a considerable burden…