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Vintage Vault

Now priced at $15,319, this 2-pickup variant on the 1968 Gibson Johnny Smith Double would have sold for $1,145 in the year of its release.

Photos courtesy of Reverb/Gitarren Total

Jazz musician Johnny Smith set the bar high when it came to the design of his signature model, doing his own research and hopping manufacturers when his expectations were left unmet.

A giant of mid-century jazz guitar, Johnny Smith had a fastidious style. He could strike rapid solos, embellish ballads with languid lines, and craft complex chords. Whatever he played, his intention and articulation were crystal clear. Smith’s music is “incredibly intricate and detailed, every note he played, there was nothing extra there. It’s just the essential thing,”—or so said the modern great Bill Frisell, when Reverb interviewed him and Mary Halvorson in 2018 around their Johnny Smith tribute album, The Maid with the Flaxen Hair. That same devotion to detail is apparent in the many signature guitar models that bear Smith’s name, like the 1968 Gibson Johnny Smith featured in this edition of Vintage Vault.

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Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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The Accent vibrato, slash soundhole, and distinctive pickguard and control set make for an iconic and distinctive design.

Here’s how a cat named Capri, a German designer, and a whammy-bar inventor fit into the history of a maple-bodied marvel.

Here’s some Rickenbacker history you might enjoy—especially if you’re a fan of the company’s Fireglo works of art. F.C. Hall, the owner of Radio & Television Equipment Co. (Radio-Tel), purchased the Electro String Company from Adolph Rickenbacker in 1953. Hall revamped the business to focus on standard electric guitars rather than the steel guitars the company began producing in the early 1930s, such as the historic “Frying Pan” lap model.

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With its block inlays, neck binding, adjustable bridge, and basic control set, this Ibanez 2662 looks ready to rock.

This Ibanez 2662 is an appealing, two-humbucker copycat design of a Ronnie Wood signature Greco rarity.

If you were to thumb through an Ibanez catalog from 1975, you’d see exactly why this period for the company and other guitar builders in Japan is known as the “lawsuit era.”

The guitars that dot the catalog’s pages look an awful lot like Gibsons, Fenders, and Rickenbackers. And these lookalikes are not mere homages inspired by classic shapes. Ibanez’s offerings represent very specific models within other brands’ then-current lineups. For example, its Les Paul-style guitars represent sunburst Standards, Customs with split-diamond headstock inlays, and even a ’70s oddity—the Les Paul Recording model.

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This refinished and modded 1958 Gibson Les Paul Special exemplifies the plusses of buying a “player’s guitar.”

Sometimes, the easiest route to vintage tone and playability is by finding a guitar that’s had a refinish, or other mods that haven’t disturbed its musical essence. These are called “players” or “player-grade” guitars in the vintage market, versus “collectors' guitars,” which are unaltered from their original state. This month’s featured instrument, a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Special, is a players' guitar—and I’m that player.

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