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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.…
Classics – March 2021
Scarce and beautiful, Gibson’s Flying V was an ahead-of-its-time marketing failure when introduced in 1958. Made of exotic limba (a mahogany cousin from Africa trademarked in the U.S. as “Korina”)…
Jon Butcher’s psychedelia mastery
Jon Butcher tales his Olympic White ’63 Strat for a rip on “Jam,” a track from his new album, “Nuthin’ but Soul.” The disc is an homage to sounds of…
The Charvel Model 4
Certain guitar brands develop a mystique among aficionados – sometimes it’s even deserved! Somewhere on this continuum lie Charvel USA guitars made in the early ’80s in San Dimas, California.…
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“Boogie Mod” Dual Showman
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…
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Albert King’s THC Flying V
Coterie Complete
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…
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VG Q&A: Parlor Mystery
Plus, a Pro’s List of Repair Glues
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.…
Guild’s S-100/S-200 “Kickstand” Models
Much like several other well-known manufacturers, Guild has, through the years, changed ownership, locations, and identities. Guild was founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a teacher and music-store owner in…
Dad’s Day 2021
VG’s Annual Salute to Fathers Who Inspire
Marty Ashby’s very musical family has been playing together since he was a little kid. Here’s a shot of them in 1969; dad Jim (who operated Ashby Music in Baldwinsville,…
Watkins Joker
Beat-Gen Beaut
This could be just what every well-heeled young “Beat” guitarist and singer in Britain needed in the early 1960s – a guitar amp/PA with reverb, tremolo, mic stand, and tape…
Vox Symphonic Bass
Fender Bender
Despite the way collectors and dealers freely apply the term “lawsuit guitars,” documented examples are few. One time it did happen was triggered by the Vox Symphonic Bass. A report…
Big Beat Boys
Musings on Fab and Gear, 50 Years Ago
Americans tend to link the beginnings of the Beatles phenomenon to a specific date – February 9, 1964, when the group first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” The truth,…
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…
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The story of the Martin F-50
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!
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Veillette-Citron Shark
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…
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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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Classics: Tommy Castro’s ’66 Fender Stratocaster
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…
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Classics: Arena-Rock Alternative Amps
Mad Maxed
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…
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Vivi-Tone “Skeleton
A Master’s Magnificent Misfire
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.…
An Odd Gibson EH-150
10 Strings, Lap-Style
Lap-steel guitars were the first commercially available electrics – ancestors of the guitars we plug in today, regardless of their shape. The popularity of Hawaiian music in the 1930s had…
Westone Genesis
1987 Westone XA6520TBU Genesis. Photo: Bill Ingalls Jr. Instrument courtesy of Rudy Abbott. The relationship between Japanese instrument builders and domestic distributors was critical in the evolution of guitar sales…
’68 Truetone by Kay/Valco
Historical Hodge-Podge
The year 1968 was not a good one for American manu-facturers of stringed instruments.M.C.A. closed the original Danelectro, and what was left of Kay and Valco was locked in a…
JMI Vox AC15 “Two-Tone” 1×12″
TV Star
The permutations of early Vox models remain endlessly fascinating to vintage-amp enthusiasts, and few get us as worked up as a rare transitional version of the hallowed AC15. The “TV-front”…
Electro/Rickenbacher Amps
Pre-WWII Electro/ Rickenbacher Amps
Introduction Experiments at marketing electrified musical instruments and their accompanying amplifiers may have started in the late 1920s, but it wasn’t until the early ’30s that any long term commitments…
Memphissippi Sounds’ Yella P asks “Who’s Gonna Ride”
’59 Stratotone at the Memphis Slim House While Memphissippi Sounds’ Yella P and his ’59 Harmony Stratotone were visiting the Memphis Slim House in the Soulsville neighborhood of Memphis (Stax…
Gibson ES-175 Special Wurlitzer
1955 Gibson ES-175 Special Wurlitzer From Gibson’s early years through the 1960s, the company made many custom instruments that mixed and matched specifications from various models. Few have been as…
Vega Model 120
Viewed from our contemporary perspective, it’s difficult to fully appreciate how different the music scene in general – and the guitar scene in particular – was back in the early…
Classics: December 2021
1967 Rickenbacker 360/12
Live-music fans who roamed South Florida from the early ’80s until the mid 2000s might recognize Craig Ball’s ’67 Rickenbacker 360/12. Ball was lead guitarist in the Rockerfellas, a band…
The Fender “High-Powered” Twin
1958-’59 Fender Twin Preamp tubes: one 12AY7, two 12AX7 Output tubes: four 5881 (6L6 equivalents), fixed bias Rectifier: GZ34 (5AR4) tube Controls: Volume, Volume, Treble, Bass, Middle, Presence Output: 80…
Horses of Another Color
1) This ’57, from batch 253xx, has the added intrigue of a gold G-cutout tailpiece in place of the Bigsby vibrato. In addition to the standard Amber Red stain on…
B.C. Rich Stealth Bass
Electric guitar lore from the 1980s almost invariably includes (sometimes snide) references to hair bands, pointy headstocks, black hardware, and so on. But many of the asymmetrical/angular instruments from that…
Gibson J-45
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…
Fender’s Mid-’50s Precision Bass
The "In-Between" Version
In the world of electric basses, the 1952 Fender Precision is the one that started it all. While it’s true that Gibson, Rickenbacker, and Audiovox all built electric basses some…
Gibson Les Paul Spotlight Special
Unlocking the Mystery
It was 1983, and Gibson was in the throes of its darkest days. Norlin Industries had incurred excessive debt, sales were down, and the Gibson name for sale. Amidst the…
Dumble Garage Band Ripper
Orange Crushed
Through much of his career, Alexander Dumble made amps at his discretion, building one of his hallowed tone machines only if he liked the way you played. But if he…
Hank’s Protos
How Hank Garland Helped Gibson Develop Two Models Not Called Byrdland
There are guitars, there are great guitars, there are great historic guitars and there are great historic guitars bearing deep provenance. And then there are guitars of such immense mystique,…
Classics: Tommy Castro’s ’66 Fender Stratocaster
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…
Penco A-15-JD
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,…
Ovation UKII 1291
Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars
1980 Ovation UKII 1291 If there’s a Rodney Dangerfield of solidbody electric guitars, it would be named Ovation. For more than a decade, Ovation tried unsuccessfully to leverage its achievements…
Rocky Athas’ Texas ’Tude!
Genuine Lone Star Jams Dallas guy Rocky Athas built a career playing blues in the vain of T-Bone and SRV, but his new album, “Livin’ My Best Life,” is more…
