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…
Gibson J-45 The J-45 is seldom mentioned in the context of such Gibson classics as the Super 400, ES-335, Flying V, Les Paul Standard, F-5 mandolin and Mastertone banjos. And…

Burns Oddities and Ends
In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled installments 9, 10, and 11 for this special edition of…

When you consider their status as a last-gasp instrument made by Gibson in its waning days as a property of Norlin Industries, the ironically dubbed “Victory” series of guitars and…
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!

Just Like Hank
As fascinating as we might find any vintage amplifier, at its heart, it’s often just a dusty box of archaic technology. Occasionally, though, one is a nexus to a point…

“The Magic of Concert Hall Sound”
In the early days of reverb, no one was thinking about surf music; they were striving instead to replicate the warm, resonant, live sound of a concert hall. So, when…
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…

Hey Hey, Tell ’Em About US
Jimmie Rodgers has been called many things; while active from 1927-’33 he was billed as “the Singing Brakeman” and ”America’s Blue Yodeler” but, in the decades since, the “Father of…

This may well be the most desirable Fender Stratocaster on the face of the planet. And it happens to be a beat-up mongrel assembled from parts taken from three 1950s…

When trying to determine originality, guitar dealers and collectors have a tendency to study instruments with the care of a forensic pathologist. Still, modifications can be difficult to detect, and…
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,…
Tommy Castro has never been much for sitting with a guitar teacher, preferring instead to rely on good ol’ time in the saddle to hone his craft. But this 1966 Stratocaster has taught him a couple lessons. The guitar entered Castro’s universe in the hands of San Francisco music legend John Newton – known on…
As rock started hitting the big time in the mid ’60s, it became clear to guitar-amplifier manufacturers that 100 watts or more was the way to go. The best approach to big power, however, would follow several paths. The stories of the high-powered amps introduced by Fender, Marshall, and Vox through the ’60s have been…
The eternal question “Who invented the electric guitar?” has no single answer. By the late 1920s, many players, tinkerers, and inventors were exploring ways to get more volume from fretted instruments. Steel-string flat-tops from Martin, f-hole archtops from Gibson, and metal-bodied resonators from National were louder than their predecessors, but ran up against physical limits.…
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…
Discovered! The World's First Electric Bass Guitar
While there have been lively debates raging in the rare instrument community for many years about any number of puzzling early guitars – not to mention the perennial issue of…

Four-neck Fender From a Friend
Noted in musical history as one of the players who pushed the steel guitar beyond Hawaiian music to more-complex chording and wild interchanges with Spanish-style electric guitarists, Noel Boggs emerged…

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…

Breakout Blues
The ’60s may have been the most musically significant decade in the history of popular music, but very few countries were represented then or in the years that followed. Fronted…
…Revealed!
The Gretsch company rose to the upper echelon of guitar manufacturers in the 1950s with the introduction of a diverse and dynamic array of electric models. Arguably the most identifiable…

Orville Gibson invented the carved-top guitar in the 1890s, and his company refined the design with f-shaped sound holes in 1922, then brought the concept to full potential with larger-bodied…
In 1993, when Bogner was fast becoming the hippest name on the high-gain-amp scene, star guitarists were clamoring for that hot new tone. One who missed out recently brought “his”…

Silver Service
For most guitarists today, glimpsing a vintage Rickenbacker combo elicits a response like, “Wait… Rickenbacker made amps?” But remember, the brand evolved out of the first company founded entirely…
A Guide
When John Dopyera stormed out of the National shop in January 1929, his resignation stemmed from more than a spur-of-the-moment tantrum. For months, the inventor of the resonator guitar spent…
Map-Shaped Mayhem
Anyone who thinks ’60s Valco/National Res-O-Glas electrics look weird now ought to reflect on what the reaction might have been back then. The bodies of this bizarre lineup were molded…
Rare Miss Proves Leo Was Ahead of His Time
Fender broke new musical ground in late 1951 with the introduction of the Precision Bass. This archetype of amplified music’s bottom-end set the stage for rock and roll, and transformed…
What makes these two Martins remarkable is not necessarily their rarity or historical importance, though both would be welcome additions to any serious collection. Martin has offered sunburst finishes as…
No matter how hard they tried

Whether Valco – the company that made National guitars in the 1950s and ’60s – was actually inspired by U.S. geography when it created its legendary “map” guitars is unknown,…
The guitars and basses made by Danelectro in the ’60s epitomized “no frills.” And though they were considered the nadir of American-made electric instruments of their time, many a babyboomer…

B.B. King of the Blues Award winner plays “Liquor Stores and Legs” Winner of the B.B. King of the Blues Award, here D.K. Harrell and his ’76 Gibson ES-355, Christal,…

Durable, Dependable
In his 2003 book, American Basses, author Jim Roberts noted that for all of Peavey’s innovative offerings in the 1990s, “…the company hadn’t forgotten their regular customers,” specifically citing the…

The Gibson company was founded on the belief that carved-top guitars were superior to flat-top designs, and consequently, Gibson was a reluctant entrant in the rising flat-top market of the…
ukulele
The braguinha, forerunner of the ukulele, was a small four-string instrument tuned in fifths. Named after the town of Braga in Portugal, the instrument arrived in Hawaii with the first…

1962 Ampeg R-12-R Reverberocket Preamp tubes: two 6SL7, two 6SN7 Output tubes: two 6V6, cathode-biased Rectifier: 5Y3 Controls: Volume, Tone, Dimension (reverb), Speed, and Intensity (tremolo) Speakers: Jensen Special Design…

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…