John on the second Ed Sullivan appearance In 1964, the Beatles burst onto the world stage when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. John was playing a black Rickenbacker guitar that had been his mainstay since he bought it in 1960 from a music store in Hamburg. It was a 1958 Rickenbacker Capri model 325. When purchased, it had a natural finish, huge "stove knobs" on it and a vibrato that didn't work very well and made the guitar go rapidly out of tune. For incarnation 2 of

Original 1931 A-22 The world's first commercially available solid body electric guitar was the Rickenbacker A-22 which debuted in 1932, eighteen years before Leo Fender released his first guitar. It had a small round body which with the neck sticking out of it engendered it's nickname of the "frying pan", The nickname was doubly fitting as the neck and body were cast as a single piece of aluminum. Not many of these were sold because it was the height of the Great Depression

Tom's tribute to Jerry Garcia's Alligator guitar Jerry played many guitars over his career, but one of the most famous was his "Alligator" guitar which was his main go to guitar in the early 1970s including the Grateful Dead's iconic Europe '72 album. Jerry acquired the guitar from Graham Nash when he played on one of Graham's solo albums. It was a 1950s Fender Stratocaster with a nicely grained Ash wood body with a clear stain that really shows off the grain. Ash is also a d

Tom's Coodercaster Tribute One of the most famous slide guitar players of all time is Ry Cooder . He has made significant contributions to various music genres, including blues, rock and world music. Cooder's innovative guitar techniques and rich musical storytelling have earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base over the decades. You can see him in the movie Buena Vista Social Club which helped revive interest in traditional Cuban music. Ry's original Ry's signat

I saw a Univox Ripper inspired guitar on sale at Eastwood Guitars and thought the natural finish looked way cool and so I scooped one up. The setup on this was better than most guitars you buy. No string buzzing, but I still did a little bit of fret leveling just because I'm a perfectionist. Fret ends were perfect. Intonation just required minor adjustment to be perfect. It's definitely a 3 piece body and on mine, the right side of the body has a bit of darker wood along the

The guitar that Jerry used most frequently over the last 16 years of his life was a custom guitar built by Doug Irwin called "Tiger."...

What's more nostalgic than an Etch A Sketch ? Invented in France and marketed in the US starting in 1960, it was on every baby boomer...

I previously wrote about building a cigarette pack-sized amplifier . The inspiration for the one I built came from something called the Smokey amp which was conceived in the 1980s by Bruce Zinky. The original amp came in a couple of different styles. One was in a plastic case and the other was in an actual recycled cigarette pack. So the original Zinky amp looked cool and it could fit in your shirt pocket. It had no volume or tone control and had a couple of other problems. T

Monoprice makes a great 15 watt tube amp, but it has this ugly mashed potato colored Tolex covering on it it which I couldn't stand...

I've been making a lot of mini amps lately and was wondering how small I could go. Like maybe a size that would fit in a shirt pocket...