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Negotiating the steps into the cellar of Vintage52 is a precarious journey, past a series of cased, exhibition guitars, with amplifiers and electronic music paraphernalia packed tightly against the walls.
Ducking one’s head, the visitor enters a veritable forest of guitars clustered around a thick stack of amps and speakers: it’s enough to power a Deep Purple world tour, with reserves for breakdowns.
There is just enough room for a sales desk, above which hangs a Rickenbacker bass guitar, similar to that used by Paul McCartney in the 1960s. It’s priced at HUF 1.52 million, a bit above the average, says Iván, one of the shop’s assistants.
Attila Horváth, Vintage52’s owner, arrives. He reaches into a corner and unhooks a dark maroon-and-black Jolana Marina, dating from the early 1960s.
“It’s a beat or jazz guitar. It’s a very old style. There’s a funny story about the electronics,” he says, pointing to the buttons for the pickup controls. These were made for typewriters, adopted by the guitar makers presumably out of necessity.
“If you rotate the guitar in the right light, you can read the letters on the inside of the keys,” he says, smiling at the ingenuity of the Socialist-era designer, desperate for lack of materials.
Vintage52 was originally founded in 1994 by Ádám Bíró, since deceased, and Tivadar Csambalik, who, as master luthier (a builder or repairer of string instruments), still heads the repair section upstairs. Horváth, who trained as a technician for fine medical tools (and the innards of mechanical typewriters), joined as a kind of business consultant in 2005, later becoming a partner, then the owner.
“But we don’t use the word ‘boss’ here; we are all colleagues. The customers have no need to know who the owner is,” he stresses.
Most of the guitars are left in care and sold on commission, ranging from 10-20% depending on the price. Horváth says he shifts about 1,000 a year.
Over time, many Hungarian stars, including domestic legends such as Levente Szörényi, János Bródy, and László Tolcsvay, have dropped in to buy or have their guitars repaired. Foreign players, too, are often brought in by local guys hired to look after them for short stays. Frank Sidoris, Marco Mendoza, Gary Moore, and Scott Henderson are among the names on a long list.
The secret to sales, says Horváth, is to match the buyer with their own “special instrument.”
“Some guitars talk to us,” he says. “They have something, the extra 5%. It’s emotion; it’s impossible to define.”
As an illustration, he tells of one well-off guy who came into his shop seeking a Fender Stratocaster.
“I gave him one, a very good one. He played it for a bit and said it was good, but not quite right for him. I gave him a second, and the same thing happened. And a third and fourth. He said, ‘Thank you, I’ll come back in a week or two.’”
Horváth asked him to wait for two minutes and to close his eyes, putting a Gibson Les Paul Studio into his hands.
“And he said: ‘F**K me! This is my guitar! I have to buy it,’” Horváth recalls. “And he hadn’t even played a note!”
One of many historical posters on the Vintage52 walls is for Marshall amplifiers; the observant eye may spot that it is signed by Paul Marshall. This is a clue to a fascinating tale of Hungarian rock ’n’ roll history that Attila Horváth enthuses in telling.
In the distant days of 1969, someone with clout in Hungary had the bright idea of organizing a music industry expo. Among the exhibitors was Marshall, the British company then rapidly gaining global fame for the “stack” of amps and speakers used by bands like The Who to project their decibels from the stage.
According to Horváth, the lure of this electronic wizardry was such that, despite the severe restrictions on foreign currencies, sufficient marks and dollars were assembled by Marshall-craving rockers for the two trucks to return empty to England.
“Abolutely empty! Only one thing stayed in the trucks, that was the [UK] plugs, because they were different,” Horváth says.
The tale becomes especially hazy at this point. Somehow, a well-placed government official, presumably in the Ministry of Culture, inspired by a Marshall brochure and the desire to support the country’s burgeoning rock band scene, found the means to order a bunch of amps and speakers, seemingly on the Hungarian state.
“And one old girl, a woman, who was working at the Trial [company], got the Marshall brochure, and the Communist Party made a phone call to her boss, who told her to order Marshalls for the [best Hungarian] bands like Gemini and Piramis.”
So far, so jaw-dropping for the Communist-era: Except that the lady apparatchik, who, understandably, “didn’t know what she was doing,” inexplicably ordered red cabinets, rather than the standard Marshall color, black.
Fast forward a few decades, and, in the meantime, one of these red amps had found its way into the Vintage52 stack. And one day, so too did Paul Marshall, the stepson of Jim Marshall, the company founder. According to Horváth, Paul was doing a short-lived stint as Marshall CEO after Jim’s death.
“Paul came in, saw my cabinet and said: ‘Hey man, what’s this? It must be fake, we have never built red cabinets.’”
Horváth, naturally, retold the fabulous tale of the Communist-era order. A highly skeptical Paul, still unconvinced, emailed a photo to company HQ in Milton Keynes for confirmation. Indeed, Marshall had produced red amplifier cabinets, albeit “a small number, fewer than 20,” came the reply. Soon after, Paul Marshall signed the company poster for Horváth.
In researching this story, today’s Marshall company told the BBJ it had produced a batch of red amps, but couldn’t confirm they were for Hungary. It added, however, that Paul Marshall had never been the company CEO, but had served as a customer liaison officer.
András Simonyi, “the ambassador with a Strat” (see “When Rock ‘n’ Roll met Communism, There was Only Going to be 1 Winner” on the BBJ website) confirmed the music expo was in 1969.
“I went there. Fender was there, and Gibson. They had some Strats and a white Tele,” Simonyi told the BBJ, referring to the ubiquitous U.S. guitars. “There were some Marshalls around, too. By 1970, [the popular Hungarian band] Omega had Marshalls.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of February 27, 2026.
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