• Classic Instruments

     Jason Isbell

    New Vistas, Old Gear

    Jason Isbell’s powerful songs, compelling vocals, and formidable guitar skills have made him one of America’s most-respected singer/songwriters. A charismatic performer, his critically-lauded albums, solo and backed by the formidable 400 Unit, have earned six Grammys and nine Americana Music Awards. With an eclectic style melding country, blues, and Southern rock, his appeal transcends genres.

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Beat Portraits: Burns Volume 3

Backbone Instruments 1962-’64

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled the first three installments for a special edition of VG…

Gibson GA-80T Vari-Tone

In the late ’50s and early ’60s, Gibson was apparently convinced the Vari-Tone switch was the way of the future, with its instant access to six different tones. But a…

Maestro Fuzz-Tone

Fuzz. It’s the sound of fury, aggravation, indignation, and – considering the history of the most famous fuzzbox of all time, Maestro’s Fuzz-Tone – dissatisfaction. It’s also fitting as some…

Gibson’s First Reissue Les Pauls

Gibson’s First Reissue Les Pauls

On the Road to ’59

Strings and Things Les Paul Many articles have been written about how guitarists and dealers in the mid/late 1970s and early ’80s were asking Gibson to build a Les Paul…

Soul-jazz legend Calvin Keys

Exclusive spin on “Six to Seven” Calvin Keys has worked with Jimmy Smith, Ahmad Jamal, and Ray Charles. Here, he and his ’72 Gibson Johnny Smith play “Six to Seven,”…

Italian Smorgasbord

The Goya Rangemaster 116 SB

American guitars made in the 1950s and ’60s constitute an almost-holy canon, yet most players in that era took their first steps on imported instruments – often good and interesting…

Spectrum 5

Joining playful mid-’60s cultural icons such as the Ford Mustang, NBC’s “The Monkees,” the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” and Cassius Clay, the Teisco Del Rey Spectrum 5 was the high-water mark of original…

Muireann Bradley, Old Soul

Vintage Blues, Vintage L-50 Direct from Ireland, 17-year-old Muireann Bradley indulges us (and tugs at our Led Zep heartstrings) with a rendition of Memphis Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks.” She’s…

Tom Petersson’s Gretsch 12-string Basses

Tricked-Out Trio

Cheap Trick fans are aware of his contribution to the band’s songs, but few know he actually invented the 12-string electric bass and has been using one since 1977 to…

The Schaffer-Vega Diversity System

Making Rock Roll

“ The best thing I ever did in the beginning was not use effects,” AC/DC’s Angus Young told VG in his feature interview for the December ’20 issue. And in…

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…

Bigsby Merle Travis Electric Guitar

In it's original configuration

Longtime vintage guitar enthusiasts are probably familiar with one of the icons of solidbody electric guitars – the late 1940s Bigsby instrument built for legendary picker Merle Travis. The guitar…

Music Man’s Hybrid Boogie Amp: The RD-50

Say hey, fellow guitarists! If you live in the Northeast, it’s great to have a hobby that doesn’t require going outside. Two storms in five days of each other dumped…

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…

Danelectro Viscount

1961 Danelectro Viscount Preamp tubes: two 12AX7, one 6AU6 Output tubes: two 6V6GT Rectifier: 6X5 Controls: Volume, Tone, Vibrato Strength, Vibrato Speed Output: 12 watts RMS Amp nuts of yesteryear…

Tokai Talbo

For aficionados of copy guitars – replicas of mostly American classics that give U.S. manufacturers apoplectic fits – perhaps no company is more respected than Tokai, whose 1970s and early-’80s…

Beat Portraits: Burns Volume 2

The Black Bison Leads the Herd

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled the first three installments for a special edition of VG…

Dan’s Guitar RX: Building a From-Scratch Class Project

Rock-And-Roll High School(er)

Students at Federal Hocking High School here in Athens County, Ohio, are given the opportunity to propose internships in work that interests them. Ceil Thompson, a 17-year-old junior who has been…

Boggs' Quad

Boggs’ Quad

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…

Gibson Top Tension Banjos

  Although most bluegrass banjo players consider Gibson’s Mastertone banjos with one-piece flange and flat-head tone ring – such as Earl Scruggs’ Granada and Don Reno’s Style 75 – to…

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…

Freddie King’s ’73 ES-355

Thinline Crown

Influenced by Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, and others including jump-blues saxophonist Louis Jordan, Freddie King was an integral piece of…

Fender Harvard

Given the current craze for semi-small “home” and “recording” amps, Fender’s 5F10 Harvard of 1955-’60 could be the ideal tweed amp, yet, in its day, it fell between two stools…

The 1966 Murph Squire II-T

So-Cal Attention Getter

Despite what many enthusiasts believe, there has been only one really significant “lawsuit” that defined a class of guitars – Norlin v. Elger, 1977 – but there have been plenty…

Vintage Gibson Amplifiers

EH-100 and 125

“No longer is the electric Hawaiian Guitar restricted to professional players – here is a genuine Gibson instrument that costs only $100, complete with instrument, case, amplifier with slip cover,…

’53 Gibson Les Paul Junior

Gibson records say the Les Paul Junior was introduced in 1954. But this instrument has tone and volume pot codes from ’53. It also differs in regard to other specifications,…

Bigsby Merle Travis Electric Guitar

In Its Original Configuration

The guitar built by Paul Bigsby for legendary picker Merle Travis in the late 1940s is one of the icons of solidbody electric guitars. Its single-cut body and pre-Fender, Stratocaster-like headstock…

Gretsch 7680 Super Axe

Most of us are – or should be – aware of the enormous contributions of the late Chet Atkins, the Country Gentleman, to American popular music, from his complex fingerpicking…

National Style O

Industrial Art

National. The name is patriotic! And what else but American inventiveness could have brought about a metal-bodied guitar? The answer lies in the state of the guitar as a musical…

The RFT 12AX7

The Righteous Flame-throwin’ Tube

“…there is a time and place for that out-front spank, but if your mood shifts to slightly more mellow, there is a simple solution…” Those who plug into Fender amplifiers…