“ Fabulously well made ”... “ Always a joy to play ”... “ A sound and sustain more like that from a Les Paul than almost any other Japanes...

Ohhhh yeahhhh! As Gibson themselves put it in 1970, the 1958-1960 sunburst Les Paul Standard design really was the “Daddy of 'em all”. ...

In some ways, the 1980s ruined the Fender copy market . In the 1970s, even the sub-£100 guitars were made in Japan. And working on their o...

The Clonewheel VXK. Unbeatable simulation of that early 1980s analogue clonewheel sound. If you remember seeing a live Squeeze performance...

Above: an image of the very beautiful Yamaha E45 - an ultimate home organ from the analogue era. In 1980, what would it have cost to equ...

Ah, that enduring slogan… How much can you remember? Was the BPI’s infamous anti-piracy campaign a ’70s thing? An ’80s thing? Was the slo...

Watch an old live rock performance from the 1970s, and in the backline you’ll see amps. Just amps; no effects. Right up until the end of t...

The Boss ME-5 was a superb quality, pioneering guitar FX unit, with a very simple layout and, chiefly, analogue processing. It incorporat...

Chorus. What is it? Where did it come from? And how does a musician make the best of it? The chorus effect progressed from being complete...

Whilst trawling through the obscurities of the 1980s the other day, I was reminded of another long-forgotten facet of the period’s UK rock g...

Living in the West Midlands region of the UK – site of manufacture for the Laney range of guitar amplifiers – I was almost inevitably goi...

If you asked a guitarist to name an effects brand today, Vestax and Vesta Fire would probably be among the last answers you’d get. You’d ...

The Sessionette 3 was a step on from the classic Sessionette 75, and is seen here in a 1988 advert. These updates were, however, beginning ...

It’s not rocket science, but the Italian house piano sound , which drove so many iconic dance music tracks from the late ’80s and the ’90s, ...

I remember being incredibly jealous when a mate announced to me back in the mists of time that he’d just acquired a Yamaha electric piano an...

This blog has specialised in unearthing facts about little-known, forgotten or misrepresented musical instruments from the pre-Internet age,...

Some technology companies of the 1980s were great at ensuring that when you bought from them, you’d never knowingly do so again. Others, m...

Ask someone for the name of a 1980s home multi-track recorder brand, and chances are you’re going to get one of three answers: Tascam, F...

What a fascinating time for hi-tech keyboards the mid 1980s was. In many ways, the five short years between 1983 and 1988 would define prett...