I recently received two guitars as gifts and am trying to learn more about them. The first is a Harmony I believe is from the early ’70s. Its serial number is 6326H6365 and the label is also printed with “B1172.” The second is what I believe is a Goya-made Greco GR1 from the late ’60s with serial number

A silver-spoon teen who loved sneaking into Chicago’s southside blues clubs, Michael Bloomfield reveled in absorbing all he could from the many legendary players he saw perform in the city’s famed joints. The de facto lessons served Bloomfield well as he went on to contribute to the works of many famed performers while forging his…

Season 02 Episode 1 VG’s “Buy That Guitar” podcast opens its second season with host Ram Tuli joined by Alan Greenwood, founder and publisher of Vintage Guitar. They discuss the magazine’s history, the Price Guide, and the current state of the vintage market. Links:Vintage Guitar magazine Subscribe to our “Overdrive” newsletter for the latest happenings…

Gibson Barney Kessel Custom model
This is a guitar which for all practical purposes appears to be a Gibson Barney Kessel Custom model, but the…

Melodious Coterie
Boxcars Among the vast papers, drawings, photographs, and tapes at Texas Tech’s Crossroads of Music Archive is a guitar beloved…

10 Strings, Lap-Style
Lap-steel guitars were the first commercially available electrics – ancestors of the guitars we plug in today, regardless of their…

Jimmie Webster’s Master Showpiece
Mike Campbell: Rick Gould. When it came to fancy electric guitars in the early/mid 1950s, Gibson’s Super 400 was ensconced…

Melding garage rock with glam, punk emerged in the early ’70s, set on stirring society’s pot. From New York to London, Dallas to Detroit, youthful contempt spurred the creation of…

In its early years, the Gibson Les Paul Custom evolved through several body-style and spec changes and was the earliest Gibson solidbody to have a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop tailpiece;…

Rolling on a Post-Pandemic Project
Five years ago, I started making a Tele-style guitar inspired by the Gretsch Roundup. When Covid hit, I was up to my ears in repair work and lost my shop…
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…

Readers of Vintage Guitar occasionally stumble on unique, prototype, or otherwise fascinatingly non-standard amps, and it’s a pleasure to share when they’re made available to us. In an upcoming issue,…

Family Barn Jam! With his ’82 Gibson 335 running into a Headstrong Corduroy (20-watt/6V6) amp, McKinley James shares a taste of his new album, “Working Class Blues,” with this run at “Call Me Lonesome.” In the October issue, he tells us how the album was made in the family barn with the only backing…

Steve Cardenas and Jim Campilongo have been playing guitar together for a long time, though the constellations only recently aligned so they could record. Captured on three nights in September of 2022, New Year showcases harmonic personalities merging through atmosphere, reverb, and ancient acoustic guitars. It’s also a meditation on the beauty and strength of…

Battle-Scarred
B.K. Vaught recently walked into my shop with a vintage Strat that had been modified and refinished. While its changes…

Back in 1958, when Gibson introduced its revolutionary Explorer, Flying V, and mysterious Moderne, the public – rather like Queen…

The Story of Gibson’s Big Archtops
The archtop guitar is a uniquely American instrument which can be traced directly to the creative genius of one person…

In Detail
Fender’s first Spanish-style guitar was a lesson in functional simplicity with its solid body, single pickup, and bolt-on neck. And…

The 1970s is often called “the Copy Era” for the dominating presence and spectacular success of Japanese “copies” of popular American guitars, most notably of the Gibson Les Paul. Indeed,…

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…

Fast and Fretless
Introduced in 1980, the M.V. Pedulla Buzz Bass is one of the most-enduring examples of an upscale model offered fretless. Designed by luthier Michael Pedulla in Brockton, Massachusetts, it was…

The Art of Home Recording
The means to make high-quality home recordings are well within the grasp of every guitarists. But, they can only as good as what you put in. We dig into the…

More is always better, right? Eleven is better than 10 on an amplifier, three pickups are better than two, and so on! That’s the promise of the seven-string. So when…

A Rare Modern Map
Many guitar aficionados are aware of the instruments proffered by Houston’s Alamo Music. The Texas manufacturer has created unique low-end (sonically, that is) items, some as regular production basses, others…
What do you do when the humble blackface Bandmaster you acquired sight-unseen turns out to harbor one of rock’s hottest lead circuits? Celebrate! And then go tracing its connection to California’s seminal high-gain guitar amplifier. Randall Smith’s legendary Boogie lead circuit started as a prank played on an unsuspecting client before he applied it as
Robert Johnson has been a fixture in the vintage-guitar community for more than a half-century. As a player and music producer, he has collected an assortment of instruments and music memorabilia, particularly related to his home town of Memphis. One of his guitars recently became part of a recording project that began at the renowned
My neighbor has an old parlor guitar that he asked me to clean up after years in storage. Inside the sound hole it reads “The American No. 5” and there is no other identifying script. The bridge is a pyramid-type. We’re curious about its age and manufacturer; I’m guessing Lyon and Healy from the 1920s.
Our friend Nate Westgor from Willie’s American Guitars shares the story of Martin’s first step into the booming 1960s electric guitar market. Enjoy, and have a wonderful holiday season from all of us at Vintage Guitar!
It’s not often a guitar can be said to have been inspired by a TV show, but that is the case with this 1982 Veillette-Citron Shark, which came about as a result of the success of the program “Welcome Back Kotter.” Well, in a pretty roundabout way, that is! Veillette-Citron guitars were the product of
In a career spanning four decades, Tommy Castro has crafted a commendable catalog and built a devout following with his soul-infused music, informed by the blues, R&B, pop, and rock and delivered with conviction. Beloved for his guitar work and vocal style, he has carved his own niche. Born and raised in San Jose, California,

Gibson has produced two guitars bearing the “Crest” name. While both designs date to the 1960s, they’re very different instruments. The first incarnation was a single-cutaway with design ties to the L-5CT, while the second looked more like a fancy ES-335 with a shortened neck. In almost every way – size, construction materials, appointments, and…

In 1961, Gibson replaced the single-cutaway Les Paul with a new line of lighter, thinner, mahogany double-cut solidbodies. Developed under the aegis of Ted McCarty and introduced as the “new Les Paul,” it exemplified a new marketing emphasis for Gibson. According to Les Paul himself, it was designed and introduced without his consultation or knowledge.…

Beauties in Black: Two Rare Gibson Les Paul Juniors
Guitar dealers tell guitar stories much like anglers tell fish stories. There are those they “got” and those that got…

’60s Egalitarianism from Japan
Teisco Del Rey basses from the 1960s are exemplary of the Japanese-made instruments that swept into the American market like…
The Martin D-45, offered from 1933 through 1942, is well-known as the Holy Grail of acoustic guitars. While players and…
Though today they are viewed as little more than curious relics of a lost era, during the Great Depression, “mother…