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GALLERY: Guitar of The Month 2010

A fresh look at the 12 guitars featured in PG''s monthly Guitar of the Month column in 2010.

"Messenger guitars were built in Astoria, OR in 1967 and 1968 by the San Francisco-based Musicraft, Inc, and were the first to feature a magnesium-aluminum alloy neckяa design that preceded those of Travis Bean and Veleno guitars by some seven years. The guitar also features two ahead-of-the-curve appointments for 1967: stereo output and a built-in fuzztone circuit. There are two outputs and the switching system allows for routing both pickups through one output jack or sending them to each jack separately to be hooked up to two separate amps. The fuzztone circuit was referred to as the рTone Messer.с It gave a large signal boost and an incredibly ratty distortion. Indeed, the guitar would vibrate wildly when the рTone Messerс was employed, and the hollow body would break into controlled (usually), endless feedback. The best known player of Messenger guitars was Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad."

A rig meant to inspire! That’s Jerry Garcia with his Doug Irwin-built Tiger guitar, in front of his Twin Reverb + McIntosh + JBL amp rig.

Photo by Frank White

Three decades after the final Grateful Dead performance, Jerry Garcia’s sound continues to cast a long shadow. Guitarists Jeff Mattson of Dark Star Orchestra, Tom Hamilton of JRAD, and Bella Rayne explain how they interpret Garcia’s legacy musically and with their gear.

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Lloyd Baggs made his first acoustic guitar when he was a fine-art lithographer and soon found himself building instruments for Ry Cooder, Jackson Brown, Janis Ian, and other stars. Today he is an innovator in acoustic guitar pickup design.

The master guitar builder and pickup maker explains how our favorite unplugged 6-strings do their thing, for the strumming layperson and aspiring luthier alike.

It’s utterly amazing that a satisfying acoustic guitar can be assembled from a few pieces of wood. That’s magic. And the mystery, magic, and quest to create the perfect guitar tone is what I think drives most luthiers.

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Guest picker Ally Venable

Blues rocker Ally Venable joins PG’s editors to imagine what their dream late-night band would sound like.

Question: What’s your dream late-night show band?

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GTRS Announces the W902, The Latest Update to its Wing-series of Intelligent Guitars
GTRS Announces the W902, The Latest Update to its Wing-series of Intelligent Guitars
GTRS has introduced the W902, the newest release in GTRS’ Wing-series Intelligent Guitar lineup, expanding on the series’ cutting-edge features while maintaining an accessible price point.
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