• Tommy Castro

    Classic Instruments

    Tommy Castro

    Circling Back

    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,…

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1978 Gibson RD Artist

Throughout most of the 1970s, Les Pauls ruled the guitar roost. But toward the end of the decade, some players became interested in more-sophisticated electronics, especially active circuitry. Suddenly, souped-up guitars…

Classics: July 2022

Jack Jones Doubleneck

In November of 1954, 16-year-old Jack Jones walked into a Seattle pawn shop and noticed a strange doubleneck guitar. “It was like a magnet – I knew it was meant…

1965 Gibson Thunderbird

Cardinal Red Rarity

Looking to finally make a real dent in Fender’s solidbody bass market, in the mid ’60s Gibson launched a line of electric guitars and basses that emulate Fender’s latest designs.

Rex Solidbody

Italian Connection

An internet search for “Rex guitars” will turn up a fair – if confusing – amount of information about the brand used on budget guitars and banjos made by Gretsch…

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…

Tony Nobles Resonator

Museum-Bound Resonator

This guitar is a special project built after I was approached by the new Braunfels (Texas) Museum of Art and Music to show a guitar in an exhibit of Texas…

The Gretsch 6120 Tenor

This 1958 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 four-string tenor guitar is a very rare variation of the model. Gretsch built other tenors, including the Duo Jet, archtop acoustic, and archtop electric…

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…

Pop ’N Hiss: Taste

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…

Mel Bay D’Aquisto

Teacher’s Aid

Melbourne “Mel” Bay (1913-1997) began his musical career at the age of 13 in his hometown of Bunker, Missouri. Largely self-taught, as a teen he performed on guitar, tenor banjo,…

Kid Ramos’ Revelation!

West Coast legend melds blues with gospel Check out Kid Ramos using a ’56 Harmony H62 running through a vintage Fender reverb tank and a Pro Junior to play an…

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,…

Bill Gruggett

Still Buildin' em in Bakersfield

The agrarian area of California that includes such cities as Bakersfield and Tulare has a special significance to country music lovers and guitar lovers alike. The musical mystique, of course,…

’72 Marshall “NARB” Tremolo 100

Mirror Image

When is a Marshall not a Marshall? When it’s a Narb, of course. Long a fascinating footnote to the company’s history, this alternative brand arose as something of a bet…

Hilary Gardner’s jazz/country connection

Classic sounds on “Silver on the Sage” Hilary Gardner and her band are devout fans of classic cowboy (and other types of) songs that they deliver with intimate arrangements. Here,…

Robin’s ’80s Import Basses

While the Robin guitar brand’s reverse “imported then domestic” chronology has been documented in this space, the basses shown here are the first import models marketed by the company (and…

The Story of Nudie’s Mosrite Mandolin

In the mid 1970s, Kosmo and Kathy Cominos collected knives, jukeboxes, wristwatches, etc… But their favorite finds were celebrity-associated musical instruments like this unique Mosrite mandolin, built for Nudie Cohn,…

Coppock Guitars

Vintage Rarities from the Pacific Northwest

The obscure Coppock brand of electric guitars first surfaced in 1994, with the publication of Electric Guitars & Basses: A Photographic History, by guitar historians George Gruhn and Walter Carter.…

Echoplex EP-2 Feature Home Page Vintage Guitar magazine

Echoplex EP-2

Sam Phillips didn’t invent tape echo with his mid-’50s recordings of Elvis, but he just as well may have. So influential, so inspirational were those songs – with their warm,…

Webster-Chicago RMA 375 Model 166-1

Grammy Winner

Modified or repurposed amps generally don’t fit into our monthly discussion here, but some are representative enough of a certain standard to make an exception. Witness this gem from 1952.…

Audiovox and Serenader Amps

An Interview with Bud Tutmarc

We dedicate this month’s column to the “legendary” Seattle line. Having never had the opportunity to play through one or take one apart, we’ll have to let catalog descriptions suffice…

Höfner’s Fledermaus Gitarre

A Bat By Any Other Name

Much like the scant records of almost every large-scale American guitar manufacturer, production logs at Höfner’s headquarters in Hagenau, Germany, aren’t big on details. So when it comes to researching…

Fender Deluxe Reverb

Vintage Guitar magazine Hall of Fame 2011 Instrument

In the June ’07 issue of VG, amp profiler extraordinaire Dave Hunter said of the Fender Deluxe Reverb, “If guitarists were to vote for the one ‘best amp for all…

JOHNNYSMITH-HOME-MAIN-BIG

The Guild and Gibson Johnny Smith Models

The name “Johnny Smith” is synonymous with class, elegance, and style. Most guitar players are familiar, if not with the man or his music, certainly with the guitars that bear…

Daion Headhunter HH-555

The trajectory of the Japanese guitar industry in many ways has mirrored that of the United States, though in a slightly compressed timeframe on the front-end because America had a…

Keith Richards’ 1963 Gibson SG Custom

Ready to Ramble

In 1961, Gibson introduced the double-cutaway Les Paul to replace the original version, which had been endorsed by guitarist Les Paul since being developed in 1952. Redesigned in response to…

Eight-String Basses

Sonic Niche

Emerging in ’60s catalogs from Hagström and Framus, eight-string basses occupy a distinct place among musical instruments – their potent, dense sound used to add texture or color. An all-mahogany…

National Westwood Home Feature Image

National Westwood

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,…

Univox Hi Flyer

Legacy of the Ventures

The Ventures had a powerful impact on both the worlds of rock music and guitars, as reflected in this ca. 1973 Univox Hi Flyer (a.k.a Hi Flier). In the early…

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…