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Monday 12pm - 7pm Tuesday 12pm - 7pm Wednesday 12pm - 7pm Thursday 12pm - 7pm Friday 12pm - 7pm Saturday 12pm - 6pm

Retrofret Vintage Guitars

Name: Retrofret Vintage Guitars
Address: 87 Luquer Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, US
Telephone: +17182374040
Price range: $$$
Rating: 4.8

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Brooklyn, NY
Retrofret Vintage Guitars

Brooklyn's go-to shop for vintage guitars and stringed instrument repairs.
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Welcome to one of the world's great vintage guitar shops -- located in the heart of Brooklyn, New York and serving musicians and collectors from all over the world since 1983! Along with vintage electric, acoustic, and classical guitars, we buy and sell banjos, mandolins, violin family instruments, ukuleles, amplifiers, and even musical ephemera through our companion site, Musurgia.com. The Retrof

ret staff includes skilled luthiers and technicians able to handle everything from routine set-up, to complex historically accurate repairs. Our sales team has decades of experience appraising and authenticating instruments for major museums and working musicians in every geographical location and musical genre. "Entering the serene, light-filled showroom, you are greeted by rows of Martin acoustic guitars propped on stands on a large Oriental rug. To the right is a wall of banjos, and to the left a room of electric guitars, where Fenders and Gibsons hang from the walls like so many lacquered lollipops." - The New York Times

09/04/2026

Just arrived this original 1954 Premier Model 75 Solid Spanish Electric Guitar!
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With several folks here with over 50 years experience (each) dealing with vintage guitars, it’s pretty rare for us to come upon something we’ve never seen before, but here is one! This glittering gold solidbody is a product of New York’s Sorkin/Multivox organization who had several different house brand names. Their flagship was Premier, used from the late ‘40s for amplifiers and from the early 1950s on guitars. Premier amplifiers came in a variety of sizes and often eye-catching styles including some quite original designs like the split-cabinet Premier 88.
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09/03/2026

Just arrived this 1960 Wandre Blue Jeans/Teen Ager Model 900 Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar! https://retrofret.com/products/wandre-blue-jeansteen-ager-model-900-semi-hollow-body-electric-guitar-1960-13981
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This guitar bears a single c. 1960 Davoli-branded pickup with embossed circles on the cover situated in the neck position on a plastic pickguard assembly, which was molded to also allow a second pickup to be cut in. Thie unit is attached to the neck at the front end and runs all the way to the bridge, which is molded to the back end. The entire assembly is adjustable for height on two legs at the rear under the bridge. The bridge itself is a Hofner-style slotted design, but molded directly into the pickguard with 6 fretwire saddles instead of the separate rosewood piece used on earlier models. It also features a snap-on plastic cover, with the strings running on to a sleek minimalist stamped metal tailpiece. The output jack and volume control are mounted directly to the pickguard as well.
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09/02/2026

Just arrived this 1954 Harmony H-44 Stratotone Solid Body Electric Guitar electric ⚡️! https://retrofret.com/products/harmony-h-44-stratotone-solid-body-electric-guitar-1954-14221
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This is a “naturally relic’ed” but nicely original example of Harmony’s primal slab-O-wood solidbody, the H-44 Stratotone. These appeared in the early 1950s not long after the Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul popularized the solidbody concept. Harmony was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon and the H-44 was their first solid offering, a small handy design built around a solid wood center and a diminutive body. This guitar’s original electronics rig is intact with pots coded 304-405 indicating fabrication in the 5th week of 1954, so this is an early example likely assembled and sold that year. The neck seems slightly less huge than some, but still a handful!
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09/01/2026

Just arrived this 1960 Gibson ES-330TC Thinline Hollow Body Electric Guitar in its original brown chipboard case! https://retrofret.com/products/gibson-es-330tc-thinline-hollow-body-electric-guitar-1960-14256
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This is a really clean early example of a first-generation cherry-finish Gibson ES-330TC from 1960, the first year of production. The ES-330T (with no “D”) was the relatively short-lived single pickup version of the popular double-pickup ES-330TD, itself one of Gibson’s big successes in the early-mid 1960s.
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08/30/2026

Just arrived this stunning 1961 Rickenbacker Model 375F Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar! https://retrofret.com/products/rickenbacker-model-375f-semi-hollow-body-electric-guitar-1961-14285
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Rickenbacker has created a number of iconic instruments over the last 90+ years; some have become classics, while others have disappeared into relative obscurity. This Capri Model 375F is one of the latter, and also one of the rarest and more unusual! The Rickenbacker 300 F-series “Full Body” models were originally offered as part of the Capri series starting in summer 1958, but despite remaining on the price lists well into the 1960s were produced in such tiny numbers as to be effectively discontinued almost immediately. This 1961 Model 375F is a late-production example of the top of this line, the fanciest model offered with three pickups, vibrato and a beautiful Fireglo finish.
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08/29/2026

Just arrived this 1960 Fender Jazzmaster in its original white tolex hard shell case! Factory Re-finish.
https://retrofret.com/products/fender-jazzmaster-solid-body-electric-guitar-1960-13791
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This is a cool old Jazzmaster with some stories behind it, a “real relic” but still a great looking and sounding guitar. This is an example of an often-discussed but not that often actually seen Fender phenomenon, a Fullerton factory re-finish. This late 1960 Jazzmaster went back to Fender after some time in the field and for a refinish in Olympic White with a matching headstock. The body and neck heel carry the typical impressed markings Fender used to keep track of the parts while the job was in progress and the decal on the headstock dates to the 1965-66 period. There is no way to tell what color it was originally, but the guitar emerged resplendent in a new flashy paint job just in time for the later 1960s. Fortunately it avoided getting stripped and re-finished again in natural over the next decade as so many did and comes down to us in the 21st century still in its Custom Color state.
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08/28/2026

Just arrived this hot 1954 Gibson Les Paul! https://retrofret.com/products/gibson-les-paul-model-solid-body-electric-guitar-1954-14286
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This is a beautifully weathered original example of one of Gibson’s most important guitars, the early gold-topped Les Paul Model. This one dates to the beginning of 1954 and is the second major variation of this all-time classic solid-body, with the much more player-friendly stop tailpiece replacing the earlier “Les Paul” trapeze the model was introduced with. Les Paul himself was very unhappy with the initial models, constructed so the strings wrapped UNDER the bar of the trapeze unit instead of over it as intended. Gibson president Ted McCarty personally designed the stud-mounted bridge/tailpiece unit used here that both corrected that problem and eliminated the trapeze altogether.
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08/27/2026

Just arrived this 1938 Gibson L-00 Flat Top Acoustic Guitar! https://retrofret.com/products/gibson-l-00-flat-top-acoustic-guitar-1938-13355
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The top finish is a deep sunburst with a brighter orangey center, this area quite a bit larger than the years before as is typical of later 1930s guitars. There is single-ply white celluloid binding around the top and back; the latter a recent upgrade. The top is ornamented with a “firestripe” tortoise celluloid pickguard and a three-ply sound hole ring. The back and sides are finished in dark mahogany, as is the fairly slim “V” profile neck with an unbound rosewood fingerboard.
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08/25/2026

Just arrived this c. 1912 Stahl 10 Sub-Bass Harp Guitar, made by Larson Brothers. Link in our profile.
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This imposing Stahl-branded 16 string harp guitar is, as far as we know, completely unique. That’s not just us; harp guitar Svengali Gregg Miner avers he has never seen another like it, and he has seen more of them than anyone! Nearly 20” wide, with dual round soundholes and 10 sub-bass strings supported on a solid wood stalk rising out of the body this graceful behemoth is sure to stop traffic anywhere it appears!
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08/24/2026

Just arrived this 1966 Gibson Barney Kessell Custom Arch Top Electric Guitar in its original black hard shell case! https://retrofret.com/products/gibson-barney-kessel-custom-arch-top-hollow-body-electric-guitar-1966-14277
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This is a cool example of one our favorite if slightly eccentric 1960’s Gibsons, the relatively rare Barney Kessel Custom. It has a small repair to the upper side of the neck just below the headstock, a crack not a major break but is otherwise a very clean guitar. Another odd feature of this guitar is the pickups are magnetically out of phase, as was standard on the stereo guitars but not the standard mono. We don’t know if this was a factory error (there were a lot of those at Kalamazoo in ‘66-68) or intentional but it gives the guitar an unusual range of sound. This Kessel Custom was a gigging instrument for some time for master jazz guitarist Ed Cherry, acquired by the last owner directly from him.
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Address

87 Luquer Street
Brooklyn, NY
11217

Opening Hours

Monday	12pm - 7pm
Tuesday	12pm - 7pm
Wednesday	12pm - 7pm
Thursday	12pm - 7pm
Friday	12pm - 7pm
Saturday	12pm - 6pm

Telephone

+17182374040

Website

http://www.retrofret.com/

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