One of the coolest movements in pedals over the last decade or so is the ‘amp-in-a-box’ pedal. Many have been around a while (Tech 21’s Blonde and the rest of that fine series comes to mind), while others have cropped up in the last five years or so. For just one example, you’ve got pedals that will bring you, say, Neil Young’s Tweed Deluxe sound, or any other Tweed Deluxe sound you might want. But, really…as great an amp as the Tweed Deluxe is meant for aggression (as are its many available copies/clones). If you play in a rock band and need to get over a drummer…well, you bought your Tweed Deluxe (or, a copy out there that costs less than a house) to get…yeah, that Neil Young sound. On that one amp’s sound alone, I can think off the top of my head of the above Tech 21 Blonde, the Catalinbread Formula 55, the Boss Tweed, and Fender series that mimics the amp in question. There are more. And this doesn’t count the clones of the copies. Or the clones of the clones of the copies. Something like the Joyo “American” pedal, which is a total rip of the Tech 21 Blonde pedal and they are dirt-cheap and perform really well. This pedal (like its inspiration) is even a cool backup if your amp dies, as it can go directly into the board, using Tech 21’s great old Sans amp technology with cab sims and so on. None of these are endorsements, just some examples of a growing market trend.

Anyway. That’s the Tweed Deluxe. There are other amps in a box that will give you your AC 30 (top boost switch on nearly all), your various Marshalls, but especially the Plexi’s and Bluebreakers. Pedals to give you the Mesa Boogie sound (for some reason…I apologize to the Boogie folks oy there…yet clearly not enough to erase this). There are impressive Silvertone/Dano pedals, Valco/Supro, and so on.

It would be kind of easy (if also a lot of fun) to pair Eastwood and Airline models with the amp or amps that would sound great with them from our available choices. Say, an Airline H78 with, let’s say, a JHS V2 Silvertone 1484 pedal. But, no…since I don’t have to be bound to reality here, I’m going to have some fun and match some Eastwood/Airlines with pairing of amps I think would be a great choice…whether anyone’s bothered to recreate them in a box or not (I believe the answer is “not” in all cases). Feel free to play along at home and add your idea in the comments section. Remember, I’m just naming some great/funky choices amps to pair with the guitars. The choices are FAR from the last word. Fire away in the comments.

I had to limit the number of models I was going to go through just for brevity and space’s sake. But, there could be another (and another) having fun with these combos. Maybe we’ll expand to pedal boards next. Though that can go insane, as many comments on YouTube display.

But…for these the guitars…the amp-in-a-boxes don’t exist. I am also taking the liberty of hitting these amps with a boost in front, but no overdrive or dirt pedals for this experiment. Just going with the amp and a boost to bring out more texture that’s in there.

• Well…what does the Airline 59 model pair with? Duh. We have a Silvertone/Dano 1484 pedal (since there not a 1485 one, that’s as close as we can get)…but that’s way too easy. And besides, the fine pedal exists. Considering the guitar, in which the humbuckers can run into some trouble going into the off-brand “cheap” amps of the day, as most were pretty dark (no pedals, remember…an EQ alone would change this thought experiment, clearly). So…what’s a good pick? I’m going for something out of left field here…well, about as left field as I can get while still using a major and well-known amp maker. The Ampeg Reverberocket is a fabulous amp. Nearly every version used 7591 output tubs, which have a fabulous breakup all their own in the right circuit. I’m going with those models, even though there was a one year only outlier where Ampeg used 6V6’s in the output of the Reverberocket (I could VERY easily be wrong, but if memory serves, it’s the 1963 or ’64 model). This choice in output tubes, as one might guess, broke up at a lower volume than the others. Everett Hull hated distortion, and put a stop to this design after one year. That circuit would never show up in that model (or any) Ampeg amp again. That version of the amp, however, was justly described by Trainwreck guru (and former Ampeg muckity-muck Ken Fischer as the sleeper amp in Ampeg’s history. I could go either way, as I have both a couple dual 7591 and 6V6 amps coming up on the list in a bit. But I’ll go with the 6V6 Ampeg. Great breakup, but plenty of treble unlike so many of the fabulous bargain (then) priced amps. Great tremolo and distinctive reverb many enjoy more than Fender’s, and you’ve got a really cool combo. 

• The Guyatone L-50. This is a no-brainer for the cool factor alone. Though the glory is somewhat dampened by the fact that there’s very little chance the pedal could look quite as cool as the ampo, but I’m running the L-50 into…yes, the Guyatone GA-530A amp. A 12” speaker driven by two EL 84’s, smooth, slightly trail-y reverb and tremolo. The EL84’s aren’t getting pushed too hard, so there’s more jangle and warm clean to be had on this one. Lovely cleans. It can be pushed to breakup, but it takes a stronger nudge than most on this list. A beautiful amp, by the way. Stunning aesthetics. I’m imagining (since, hell, I’m making it up) the pedal to make the amp proud. *The clean jangle of this pedal would be a fun pairing with the Mandocaster of Tenor or any instrument that loves tto jangle at lower volumes.

• Eastwood Spectrum 5? Here’s where I’m picking something with even more of a killer clean. A late 760-s twin-twelve Sano with dual 7591’s. An amp with a truly distinctive voice—they are not the Ampeg clones some take them for just because of their relation at Sano’s origin and some similar setups (and the use of 7591’s when not many companies were using them). But they have their own thing going…and they have a rich heavy bottom and a clean and not at all harsh treble. Great balance in these amps. It would pick up the underrated bass range and thick bottom of the Spectrum, which allowing for glistening mids and highs. It can rock, but it can really surf or cover any rich clean tones. Also, its (relatively) high headroom threshold takes dirt pedals extremely well, for a tougher rock sound if you like. Add fabulous trem and reverb and it would make a hell of a pedal. Someone should actually get on this one, since it’s a fabulous sounding circuit and the amp is about a thousand pounds. Someone who could lift two SVT cabs at once would hurt themselves lifting a single Sano twin twelve. They could use this amp on ABC’s “World’s Strongest Man” contest. Men race up hills with refrigerators strapped to their back on that show. Why not a Sano 2X12? Fridges would be nothing in comparison. Of course, I have never run uphill carrying either. Perhaps that was clear prior to my admission…so, amp-in-a-box Sano, please.

• Bill Nelson Astroluxe Cadet DLX B…a really crazily cool one-of-a-kind look with an equally cool and slightly whacky amp. One that will never be made into an effects pedal, but should for a couple of reasons (and one dominant one I’ll mention in a moment…stay on the edge of your seat…it’s my Perry Mason surprise victory moment, I promise): the Teisco 100 head and cab. I’m cheating a bit. I’ve heard a Teisco 50…its smaller sibling. And it was a fine amp. A sort of version of a Blackface-era Fender…like a Super Reverb or even a Twin. Takes a fair amount to push the 50 into breakup…I would imagine more for the 100. So…how in the world can I pick an amp I have literally to my knowledge never heard, even on a recording? Because the 50 was really cool at half the power, but it was missing the crucial detail. The 100 has a VU meter! Bam. Case closed. Period. Full Stop. Even though I’m not done. Find me another amp with a VU meter and I’ll consider another pairing with the Astroluxe Cadet DLX B. Actually, I’m not being entirely goofy (well, perhaps mostly). Another clean amp that should take pedals extremely well at low and high volume. Great for the player who wants to work on a wide palate of sounds, while also showing off the coolest amp and VU-equipped amp in a box. VU meter. Or you wouldn’t be on this page. Admit it!

• Airline Tuxedo: going for smooth warmth beyond belief with a little hair, the amp-in-a-box of the Gibson GA-T50 of the early 50’s. I played a friend’s 1951 and did run my Tux through it, and boy would jazz and jump blues players love this combo. Neck pickup and you are in a solid Charlie Christian tone—as close, I’d argue, as one can get without the distinctive pickup of Christian’s. Play with just a thumb, and get a depth the pick doesn’t quite capture at lower volumes. The amp’s slight, but not overly hairy breakup would make it stand out among most of the slight dark early amps. On the bridge pickup, some more bite, but hardly a Les Paul Goldtop hitting a Marshall or something.

So, there are five ideas for Eastwood/Airline guitars with Amp-in-a-Box pedals that don’t, should, yet probably never will exist. Let’s see some of you ideas in the comments. Though not too many, as I have to come up with some new pairings next time around.

The Dating Game, Part One: Guitar, Meet the Perfect Amp-in-a-Box that Doesn’t Exist from MyRareGuitars.com

The Internet has changed major aspects of life for everyone, of course. And it certainly, for our purposes here, has changed the way we buy and sell guitars. This may be a trip down memory lane for some of us. But I can no longer cling to any idea that I’m young. So, while this piece is about the way some of us used to buy used guitars and I suspect that if I do my job, a lot of you…of a certain age…may nod along.

However, for those of you who had the Internet from the start of your buying and selling lives, you might want to know how it was back in the day of classified ads and getting lost (no navigators!) on the way to the stranger’s house and having to call from a pay phone (I’ll explain pay phones later) at a gas station to get directions you would often write on your hand or inner arm.

Sounds exciting, no? Well…let’s pull back the curtain with this trip into the way back machine of guitar geekdom and the risks and thrills it used to entail.

Back in the day (which is what old people said back in the day), there were pretty much two ways to buy a guitar. New or used at a shop (many were even independently owned!), or bought from a stranger you’d contacted through their classified ad for the guitar you were already thinking of as yours on the drive over.

So, here are some of the buying experience perhaps some of us remember well. Or, as I often think in life (and often ask here), is it just me?

Some scenarios were so much more common back in the day…though some of this still exists. People buy guitars in person at a stranger’s house. So…some memories, tips, observations, pointers, and a display of my many pathetic neuroses. All in one!

There’s always a guitar waiting for a new owner… somewhere

Quick thing to know. There is a difference between a Man/Woman Cave and a Cave Cave. It’s best to know the differences. In the days before there even was a name for a “man cave,” there were just rooms guys filled with their crap. And into those dank rooms did we venture because some guy had listed a Travis Bean for $250 (I’m old, ok?) and you would meet him at a door with no outside light, and he would take you into his domestic version of the sewers New York to show you the guitar if he could just god damn it, find wherever the hell I put the damn thing! It’s fun when strangers yell! When this anger rises, be aware. You may start to think there’s not even a guitar here. The guy tells you his studio is non-smoking (I’m kidding, that didn’t even EXIST in 1983…you never heard the phrase “non-smoking studio” until people…you know…actually stopped smoking in studios). Yet the “studio” is so filthy that it looks like in the time of a single guitar overdub, black mold would grow so fast all over your hands like it was time-lapse photography.

The thing is—the few of you readers out there who would have immediately left such a situation—you are the wise ones. But, as we all know, the wise among people with GAS are rare. And you might have missed out on some great guitars instead if you weren’t so much smarter than the rest of us. Wisdom sometimes has a downside.

So…that’s one kind of generic situation. There are variations on this. Some slight, some severe. I’ll only mention things entirely based on personal experience. Sadly, that means I can’t tell the story about getting ripped off in a guitar deal by Johnny Thunders…as it happened a buddy of mine. But that story kind of tells itself.

So—what are some of the possible issues when one buys (or used to) in person with the seller holding the home field advantage?

1) You’re buying from the guy you (i.e., me) liked on the phone, but now you’re growing slightly agitated…you had no idea, but he’s very rich…you have directions to his place…he gets richer and richer with every turn down a new street…houses turn to mansions, mansions turn to Citizen Cane mansions…your irrational resentment grows with every new street and avenue of opulence…damn! This guy is so rich he should GIVE YOU the damn guitar/amp…you enter…the guy is the nicest guy in the world…you remind yourself to be nice…so the guy’s rich…it doesn’t mean he clubbed baby seals in front of children to make his dough…lighten up on the guy…he has a room full of incredible equipment in mint shape. You’re not only jealous. You are now CONVINCED the price you agreed on was foolish because guys with stuff like this don’t get it by being on the bad end of a deal. Rich people don’t get rich selling under value and, besides, who likes the feeling you’re on the short end? That applies to them as well as me. I’d like to think if I were rich I’d be giving out guitars, amps, pedals, strings, and so on like they were stickers at a political rally. But…I’d probably be one of those clowns with a giant room of instruments that doubles as a humidor. Well, no. You have to keep those clean. So, that’s not really my…thing. Clean. Still, I would, I’m certain, not be the Robin Hood I just briefly imagined I’d be.

2) Buying from the guy who seems to have only lured you to his house to listen to how great he is. You find it impossible to play in front of him. You’re a sap. Insecure. It’s YOUR money, damn it. Stand up for yourself! You buy the guitar without barely even playing it, telling the guy you trust him and exiting as quickly as humanly possible. You’re a weak weak person. Hate yourself. Rinse and repeat. *

*This may have only happened to me. Your mileage may vary.

3) The creepy guy (and I’m using the male pronoun here on purpose, as I’ve never bought a guitar from anything but a normal human woman with no crazy warning signs…none of these issues…it’s surely happened…just not to me). May also be, the smelly guy. The smoky guy. The guy who really should wear more than underwear and black socks when he answers his door. The guy who offers you a hit. The guy who wants you to hang around. The (ghastly!) guy who says, “you want to take her for a test drive?” The enormously socially awkward guy who asks you if you want to stay and “jam” yet he shakes with the kinetic anxiety of one of those small dogs. You look around. Everything is a sign. A guitar neck. Part of his new project of making guitars with guitar necks and human skulls in a growing pile he keeps in the mud-room? You just know. The guy you just barely survived escaping. No one knows it, but you could have been just ended tonight and you vow to never, never, NEVER go to a stranger’s house alone ever again to look at a guitar. 

Unless it’s a really good deal and you can’t get someone else to come. We are, it should never be forgotten, fearless explorers. Or at the very least we are sick people with poor impulse control*

4) Buying from the friendly hipster guitar guy (in this case, it’s from a retailer). The curse of retail sellers—Their absolute assault of predatory capitalistic phony kindness. The kind of person who, when you find them following you for the third time, you want to scream, “Get the hell away from me! I’m freaked out. You confuse me! Why are you nice? Knock it off!”

When I was a teenager, the biggest guitar shop in CT was the oddly named “Brian Guitars” (no possessive…your guess is as good as mine). Whenever you went into the place, if you so much as picked up…well, a PICK, this guy would appear out of nowhere, wearing designer jeans, his hair permed, his face and personality remarkably like that spastic Muppet, Guy Smiley. You pick up, say, a Fender Heavy pick and from a burst of powder he would appear and say heeeyyy! That is a GREAT pick! I use those myself! Well, Brian and I seemed to have the same taste in everything, at least according to Brian. I’d pick up a pointy Ibanez just to hold it and see how those pointy 80’s metal players felt when they had to play a Chinese Star with a neck and strings on it.

“Heeeeeeyyy! That’s my baby. My number one at home!”

I’d pick up a Tele. And it would be Brian (I’m skipping all possessives with the man) favorite and he had ten at home just like it. “This is number eleven if you walk away, my friend!”

There’s no great narrative to take away from Brian Guitars except that, as we were leaving one day, I stepped in a rather enormous (I will save you any comparisons for scale, but…memorably large) pile of dog crap. So large I stepped in it with both feet after my second stride. My buddy, our drummer Steve, pointed to my shoe and put on his Brian-sales guy voice and say, “heeeey! That is some handsome shit on your shoes! That’s the exact kind of shit I have on all my shoes! You’ll love it!”

4) A little like, but somehow different answering the man cave guy’s ad. You answer the ad and it’s way more rural than you’d thought (which means, it’s outside the city…which means to City Boy you that it’s a setting for a Wes Craven film). You see farmhouses and a lot of trees—which means you see human sacrifice images in your head. You finally call for directions, and the guy’s got a hard accent and he’s difficult to understand, but you don’t want to sound like an asshat ugly white American and make him repeat himself, but you do so anyway, so you’re already pretty damn neurotic before you even see the place. You end up at his shack that looks like Darrell’s been living in it since season 7 of The Walking Dead. The line between the really frigging weird, from the I need to run for my life is a fine one. But…no risk/no reward. 

I got a good lawsuit era Les Paul at a deliverance-ish cabin once. Sure, it’s possible I could have ended up as a human skin vest. But we intrepid guitar geeks, as I can’t enforce upon you enough, are a rare and brave (and verging in and out of stupid’s borders) breed. 

5) You sit down to try an amp. The house is normal. A woman hands you a guitar to test the amp. You are, as always, nervous to play in front of a stranger. Other players probably aren’t. Maybe they are the one with the chops…go film yourself being so good it hurts other people’s feelings on YouTube, okay…this is for the rest of us. 

You grab the guitar. And. You freeze up. You, for the life of you, cannot tune the guitar. You can tune your own guitars. You have for decades. You can tune with your records, your friends, your bands by ear for 40+ years. Hell, you once tuned a piano in a studio (a, yes, chain-smoking studio…or, as they were known…a studio). But no barrier ever made holds back your walls of insecurities and you freeze. You’re awful. You’re horrified, without remembering this central fact of life: no one gives a crap. They’re too busy thinking about themselves and their life to give a crap whether you can tune the guitar they want to sell. They don’t care if they’re not selling it to Santana. But, you’re giving this person money. If it’s enough money, they will remember you fondly as “the person who bought my old Twin for a lot of money.” Maybe somehow the price favors the buyer (maybe the seller was in a rush, which always turns things to the buyer’s side). In this case, you will be remembered as, “that clown who couldn’t even tune a guitar who STOLE my Twin. Bastard.”

However, if you’re gifted with some core confidence and know how to handle yourself (i.e., if you are my polar opposite and move somehow comfortably through your days and nights), you make any situation turn to a smooth landing. You can’t tune the guitar? Big deal. You might grow slightly condescending and say, “I can’t buy an amp if I’m playing a guitar that can’t hold tune. Best of luck with it, my friend.” Or, if you’re like me… let’s hope you’re not, you’re left with the seller staring at you. Your only hope is that you intentionally and randomly tune the different strings in no relation to the others, tell the person you’re in a band that’s mostly influenced by Glen Branca, Captain Beefheart, and the sounds of jackhammers and taxi horns and just make hideous dissonant noise until finally staring ahead thoughtfully and saying…“I’m just not feeling it. Thanks, though.” 

6) The next hard life lesson in buying gear? KNOW THYSELF!!!!

For me? I always make the same mistake when I fall in love with the look of a guitar and am so blinded I forget fundamental issues of my playing. The pitfalls I always ignore that I need to remember. Be very careful with three pickup guitars. Be very careful with loving all the knobs. And not EVERY SINGLE GUITAR needs a vibrato!

I made the same mistake over and over because I fell in love with an instrument’s look. And look IS important…it’s actually crucial…none of us would be Eastwood people if that weren’t the case. Who doesn’t love a weird and beautiful guitar? But, then, I have to remind myself, I have to PLAY it if I’m going to enjoy it. Thankfully, there are a bunch of Eastwoods/Airlines/Harmonys and Danos and other funky beautiful stuff with two pickups.

Yet…I ALWAYS LOVE the look of three pickups. Then I play it (or, sadly, just bought it) and am reminded again that, in what I can laughingly call my “technique,” the middle pickup is nearly always exactly where I play solos and single lines . That pretty middle pickup is just in the way. And, of course, I feel dumber every time I do this. Maybe it won’t happen when I’m in my 60’s. Hope springs eternal. 

And, as I say, I just love the sight of a gaggle of knobs! I had what was truly, looking back, the perfect guitar for me. A solidbody with a single P90. It’s all I needed. But I’m guessing I traded it for something with more knobs than a PA. Because it was beautiful. Because it played so well. If only someone else had been playing it.

And, then…vibratos. Strat vibratos (even though I didn’t really like Strats…they didn’t have extra knobs and they had—damn them!—three pickups). For a while, I was throwing various vibrato systems on every (at the time) cheap old Chicago guitar I got. I put (along with hot humbuckers) a Bigsby on a 26” scale Kay Jazz II. To be fair, it was already hacked into, and it growled like a monster with a PAF copy. But…did it need a Bigsby? Well…it’s like Everest. It was a hard tail bridge. It was there. Of course it needed a Bigsby! 

Bring it back, Mike Robinson! Bring back the Kay Jazz II, but give it cool buckers and a totally unnecessary vibrato! Pleaaassse?

I have not healed from this. I recently bought a re-issue of the mid-70’s Telecaster Deluxe…a lovely mutation from Fullerton (or wherever Fender was at the tie…forgotten)—a Telecaster body with a Stratocaster headstock. Two Seth Lover Humbuckers, and—yes—a Strat’s vibrato system. Fewer than 100 of the original models had the custom option whammy bars. Fewer than a 100 of the re-issues have them. In total, ever, there are fewer than 200 of this model of Telecaster that have the Strat’s vibrato system. It makes them much more expensive. Of course I had to have that one. I never use it. Great guitar…but, I’d only use a Bigsby or Jazzmaster style and even then WAY less than I ever imagine when I get the guitar.

For nearly 40 years, I have toyed with the idea of adding a Bigsby to my 1969 Telecaster. Thankfully I’m both lazy, often broke, AND I do treat that guitar as sacred. It was my first truly great guitar. And I never sold it, no matter how broke or stupid I was. Really…in many ways, it’s my single triumph in 40+ years of buying and selling. It’s on its fifth set of frets. It’s a relic the way a guitar is supposed to be—the player lovingly beat the crap out of it over the course of decades!

So, my ’69 Tele escaped this vibrato craze of mine. But…over the years, I must have had 40 guitars with various vibrato systems in/on them. Though never, I’d like it noted, any dive-bombing ones. At least I had SOME restraint. But…well over 60% (I’m going light) of the guitars I’ve owned either came with or I added an “idiot stick” as a buddy of mine’s Tal Farlow-gigging father called them. He also, on hearing our first EP said to his son, “it sounds great, Rick. But who taught Rob to play with mittens?”

So…vibratos everywhere. I’m getting better. Yet there was a time I would have put a Bigsby on an acoustic guitar. A Bigsby front door knock! On a kitchen table! People would think it was a meat grinder, but I’d tell them, no…it’s the most incredible part of a guitar!…I would replace all kitchen cabinet knobs and pulls with Bigsbys. 

But, yeah. I don’t tend to use them.

It’s really best to know these things about yourself.

And now…in further offering my repeated issues with guitars, I have, as I touched on above, and with apologies to Mike: A PROBLEM WITH GUITARS WITH LOTS OF KNOBS. No, Mr. Robinson, it’s not your fault. You have made the world richer with very cool guitars with a lot of knobs. They are stunning. They play great until I try to solo (again, never the guitar’s fault). 

Buttons, I’m down with. Buttons, I actually adore. Because I love 60’s Italian guitars, so I’d better love buttons. Even volume and tone wheels I can forgive because I’m one of those really subtle players who pretty much never changes their volume or tone knob all night…I’m not one of “those” “guys/gals” with “great” “tone”…

Actually my tone’s fine…(Tweed Deluxe open full bore)…honestly, I think it’s a great tone, if neither nuanced or versatile…. But the little knobs on beautiful guitars. Good lord I love them. LOVE them. Then I knock four of them out of whack and when I go to solo I often have only a very quiet muddy bass…or whatever…I have ruined how it sounds, having fallen for my “ooohh! knobs!!!!!” fetish again and again.

But. The dictum KNOW THYSELF when it comes to buying guitars MIGHT lead to me avoiding guitars I think I can’t live without. However, if I truly know myself, I’m certain in the awareness that I will buy, for the rest of my life, cool-looking three pickup guitars with so many knobs the knobs and they have knobs next to their buttons and I’ll not only put a vibrato on everything, I’ll toss B-Benders on all the bastards too.

I will fall for all of this again. There are perhaps treatments for this condition. There is no cure. I’m not really sure there are even treatments. Enjoy the nice and reliable and clean world of buying on-line. Trust me. It’s safer, better, smoother. And non-smoking.

Buying Guitars… Old-School Style. from MyRareGuitars.com

Four guitars, 3 basses and one acoustic were stolen from his home in Blackpool, UK, last week.

“The bass guitars are all unique in their own right and are very dear to me. As well as being personal possessions which I have had customised, I have used them over the years in various bands with fond memories.”

Here’s what he said:

In the early hours of Tuesday 8th Jan, some thieves broke into my den/office/rehearsal room and took off with, amongst other personal belongings,  4 guitars. They were as follows – 

1. A substantially modified 1967 Rickenbacker 4001 bass which is now in pale blonde sunburst with chrome hardware, rosewood purfling and custom shading by Fylde Guitars, is now fretless and with stereo active electronics. 
2. An original Status 4 string bass guitar, headless, double cutaway, carbon graphite through neck with body of exotic tropical woods. This has been updated with new parametric controls and fretboard LEDs
3. A Fender 5 string Jazz bass, 50th Anniversary model with gold hardware in traditional dark sunburst. This also has been upgraded with active controls
4. A Fender 6 string Telecoustic electro-acoustic, similar to the Redondo with cutaway and sound hole and bridge piezo pickup in a dark purple-red.

IF YOU ARE APPROACHED OR YOU HEAR OF ANYONE BEING OFFERED ONE OF THESE GUITARS FOR SALE PLEASE INFORM THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY. 

The Incident number is LC-20190108-0115
THEY ARE PRICELESS TO ME

THANK  YOU, LANCE FOGG (01253 302858)

Important Tips On How To Protect Your Guitars From Theft:

You can’t predict those things, and unfortunately instrument theft is a real danger that none of us is ever 100% protected from. However, there are some steps every guitarist should take to help preventing or at least mitigating the situation, should it ever happen to them:

1. Insure your instrument: this sounds like an obvious thing to do, but many guitarists still don’t. If you can afford it, by all means do it.
2. Take hi-res photographs of your guitars: it’s always a good idea to document exactly how you guitar looks. After a while, your guitar might have particular scratches and marks that make it unique, or maybe stickers and other customisations  you may have added to it. Take pics of the whole body, back and front, close ups etc.
3. Take note of the serial number: every guitar has an unique serial number. This is usually how many dealers or the police will be able to identify your instrument. As soon as you get a new instrument, make sure to note the serial number. 
4. When playing a gig, don’t leave your instrument unattended: always make sure your instrument is kept safe or that someone you trust is keeping an eye on it.

HAVE YOU SEEN ANY OF THESE GUITARS? from MyRareGuitars.com

Learning to play guitar won’t be a daunting task for you if you get proper teaching and know the ways of playing it right. It’s quite easy to grow some bad habits unknowingly and if you don’t deal with them at the early stage, it can damage your learning and will be difficult to break. Nevertheless, you should not be afraid of this as every bad habit can be changed and initially, you just need to identify them.

Basically, these damaging mistakes are commonly found with the beginners or self-taught players. Here, we have outlined 11 common damaging mistakes done by the guitar players and how they can avoid them.

1. Ignoring to tune your guitar before practicing

tuning the guitar is important!

Many newbies not only don’t know how to tune a guitar properly but also don’t notice when the guitar needs tuning. And practicing on the out-of-tune guitar won’t help them to progress. If you play a well-tuned guitar, you can keep the pitch of the notes in your mind. Likewise, if you constantly practice on an out-of-tune guitar, you can’t learn to identify the precise pitches.

Solution – Prior to playing guitar, ensure it is tuned. You can utilize an online tuner and check the tuning twice so you can play it right.

2. Not having an expert guitar setup

Your guitar setup sometimes gets impacted by the weather conditions like humidity and heat. Sometimes new guitarists try to set up their guitars by own which doesn’t make their guitar any easier to play. They can even find difficulties while practicing, and therefore improvements also become slow.

Solution – You need a professional setup for your guitar which makes the guitar easier to play and also, you won’t need extra effort for getting good sounding notes as like digital piano.

3. Not replacing strings ever or often enough

Playing on old strings not just spoils your guitar playing enjoyment but also can lead to premature wear of the fretboard and frets of your guitar. [As we wrote on a previous blog, you need to know when to change your guitar strings]

Solution – You must change your own guitar strings as it’s important on a regular basis. Even if you don’t play your guitar regularly, your strings should be replaced at least once in every 6-8 months. You should wipe the strings after practicing so you can maximize their lifespan.

4. Neglecting Barre Chords

You can experience some hurdles while advancing your guitar expertise by learning barre chords. Newbies might be intimidated by these chords as they need lots of effort in their fretting hand. And these chords are really hard to play at first. But if you avoid playing them, you won’t ever learn them.

Solution – Learn barre chords to enhance your guitar playing capacity. It will make your fretting hand stronger if you play them for a few months.

Watch this quick lesson:

5. Guitar practicing without a metronome

Practicing guitar without a metronome is not a good idea as this is the most vital practice tool that’ll give you a clear concept of your advancement while practicing: it can force you to slow down while practicing, and help you to grow a natural sense of rhythm within yourself.

Solution – Start practicing your guitar with a metronome; it will keep your music sense composed.

6. Holding your guitar improperly

Some newbies struggle a lot with playing particular chords and the main issue is that they hold their instrument improperly. Playing the chords is not difficult but they make it harder by holding the guitar incorrectly.

Solution – You can read the blogs written on proper ways of holding a guitar in different standing and sitting positions. Also, you can check out different YouTube videos.

Watch this video:

7. Irregular practice

Memory plays the main role while it comes to playing music. Consistent practice makes your memory sharper so you can make the most difficult techniques, chord shapes etc. smoother and more effortless day by day. Irregular practice will not be advantageous for your learning.

Solution – It’s better to practice guitar playing daily for at least 15 minutes. This consistency should be maintained regularly.

8. Consulting lots of sources

Some newbies take a leap from watching YouTube videos to reading blogs on the web or switching to the different online courses or reading guitar magazines. This doesn’t make things easy for them; hence they get stuck on something and cannot learn the right techniques.

Solution – You must not run towards different information sources for learning the ways of playing guitar. Rather, find a teacher to get a comprehensive lesson.

9. Going too fast

This is another mistake made by beginner guitarists. If you go straight for playing a specific song “at 100%” after learning the position of right notes, it can sometimes impair your progress – you can play the right notes, sure… but are you playing them right?  If you don’t practice perfectly, you won’t get to improve your technique.

Solution – Rather than playing a song at 100% of the speed, try to go first at 50%. You will get better results if you take it slowly…

10. Not cleaning the guitar appropriately

It’s important to know how to clean your guitar

Using furniture polish or standard household cleaners can damage your guitar. These products are unsuitable for your guitar. You don’t need to clean it every day but a good cleaning once a month can keep it durable.

Solution – Use the cleaning products which are specially made for guitars.

11. Not learning music theory

Many newbies make this mistake as they avoid learning proper music theory because they are worried about learning the more technical ways. Some often find it boring and difficult when attempting to learn these concepts – but if you persevere, it can be very rewarding.

Solutions – Undoubtedly, understanding music theory can take much time but it can sometimes quicken your music learning.

Wrapping up

So, these are a few damaging mistakes made by the newbie guitarists. The same happens with the piano artists, drummers or other artists of different instruments. If you are encountering the same issues mentioned here, try to resolve them ASAP to improvise your guitar learning – you will thank yourself later!

11 Bad Habits Beginner Guitarists Need To Avoid in 2018 from MyRareGuitars.com

Before we start a fight, let’s be clear: we LOVE Mosrite here at My Rare Guitars, as Mike himself made clear in previous blogs. They sound amazing, look beautiful, and are some of the most iconic and unique guitars ever made. From a collector’s point of view, it’s a no-brainer: if you can find and afford an original, vintage Mosrite, you should just go for it!

But we all live in the real world, and from a musician point of view, things get a little bit more complicated… and vintage may not be convenient, nor necessarily mean better.

Over the years, there’s been many variations of the Mosrite models: from the Univox guitars in the 70’s, to 80’s and 90’s replicas branded Mosrite, besides other brands making their own versions of the classic design, to varying degrees of success (Hallmark guitars, Danelectro and others).

The thirst for Mosrite guitars has been there for many years – not just because of the Ventures surf-music connection, but also due to it’s connection to seminal rock bands such as The Stooges (Dave Alexander played a Mosrite bass), MC5 (Fred “Sonic” Smith) and, especially, the Ramones (Mosrite was *the* Johnny Ramone guitar).

Fred “Sonic” Smith and his Mosrite

The first problem regarding Mosrite is precisely that – most musicians inspired by those artists, who want to actually rock out onstage, wouldn’t (shouldn’t?) really choose a vintage Mosrite to play. After all, Mosrites are too rare, too expensive for actual rock gigs, now! So no wonder so many copies have proliferated.

And then, there’s the other, more pressing question: were the original Mosrites actually that good?

Some well-known Mosrite issues

Vintage Mosrite guitar

While there’s no question about the build quality of the original Mosrite guitars, and even less doubts about their amazing sound, there WERE some issues which have bothered many players over the years.

Basically, the Mosrite neck were quite idiosyncratic and a big barrier for many, many players who’d otherwise love the guitar: tiny frets, and very thin necks very narrow at the nut – which quite a few players could enjoy but not all – especially if playing lead.

The frets, though, were definitely a big issue. We’ve heard of people who bought original Mosrites and decided to actually re-fret them! Just imagine – you buy a rare, expensive vintage guitar, and feel the urge to actually change its specs – and, by making it not all-original anymore, devaluating the guitar. 

Yep, that’s how bad some people didn’t like those frets.

It’s important to note this because, lo and behold, not even The Ventures were too keen on them! Despite their association with Mosrite (after all, mk I model was called “The Ventures”) they actually preferred to use Fender guitars in the studio, and used Mosrites live just because of their contracts.

The Ventures… and their Fenders!

According to an old blog post we found:

“…remember, it was the Ventures that really started using stringbending….and try to bend a string on an orignal model…there is no fret to use…It’s all but filed off… They had specifically asked that the Mosrite necks have the same frets and feel as their favorite Jazzmaster, Stratocaster and PBass.”

Another interesting thing about Mosrites: they didn’t have a nut!

Mosrite headstock

Instead, Mosrite guitars have a  zero fret that acts as a nut, and behind it, they feature a metallic string slide device to keep the strings in place. Looks weird but, apparently, is a very clever design that helps with the intonation.

Vintage 1964 Mosrite bridge

Another interesting detail is that Mosrites used a roller bridge, not too dissimilar to a tune-o-matic, but the saddles were actually little wheels that would allow for smooth tuning and smooth tremolo action. However, some players say that  that some of them had issues where the bottom of the saddle didn’t conform to the bridge plate, and would cause buzzing – some players would then put a small and thin piece of felt under the saddle!

All told – everything does seem to show that, for such an expensive piece of rock history, the Mosrites (or some of them) did have playability issues most people shelling out thousands of bucks, today, would rather avoid…

Are Eastwood Sidejacks Better Than Mosrite?

Eastwood Sidejack DLX

Now… here’s the million dollar question: are the new Eastwood Sidejack guitars actually better than the legendary Mosrite guitars? As the recent Re-Inventing The Past: From Mosrite to Sidejack blog says, there’s little doubt that the Sidejacks are, today, more popular than the original Mosrites ever were.

Over the past few years, other brands have also jumped on the Mosrite bandwagon,such as Hallmark and Danelectro, who also makes popular Mosrite-style guitars – the Danelectro 64 and Danelectro 66 models, which also look great, though yet again featuring their own take on the famous Mosrite look.

For instance, both the Danelectro 64 and Danelectro 66 feature lipstick-style bridge humbuckers, which can put some players off, as it deviates quite a bit from the original Mosrite look (though it could, of course, appeal to other players who want that kind of tone). They have a less Mosrite-ish headstock, but, on the other hand, have zero fret and Mosrite trem, which some hardcore Mosrite fans might appreciate. 

Mosrite, Danelectro or Eastwood Sidejack?

It’s the same old story – to each their own. Even though Mosrites are legendary, and sound great, not everyone will actually enjoy playing one. Meanwhile, some players will prefer the Mosrite features of the Danos, while others will prefer the different Mosrite features of the Sidejacks, especially of the new Sidejack Pro DLX.

Eastwood Sidejack Pro DLX… find out more

Right now, there’s no question that the Eastwood Sidejacks are the leading models keeping the Mosrite flame alive: they’re not “reissues” or replicas of the Mosrite, but modern, updated tributes to the original.

They definitely feel more playable, and feature a more familar jazzmaster-style tremolo,  besides adjustable bridge. So, while not 100% like an original Mosrite, the Sidejacks are the true heirs, keeping the Mosrite cult alive – and doing it the RIGHT way: by being used by lots of bands who really love to rock out!

While not quite as well-known as the Jazzmaster (yet?), the Sidejack is equally suitable for surf music, punk or indie rock. For fans of the P-90 sound, simply an amazing choice.

Now… better than a Mosrite? Only YOU can tell, really, if you ever have the chance to compare both. Everyone will have their own opinions… but I know which one I’d rather take to my next gig!

Mosrite vs. Sidejack: Which One Is Better? from MyRareGuitars.com

Back in the Sixties, Fender guitars were the holy grail of electric guitars. I knew two people in the valley that had Jazzmasters. But, being a sixteen year old kid, owning a Fender was out of the question. For us, it was the Sears or Eaton’s catalogue and a cheap, poorly built guitar from another land. My first electric guitar was so poorly built it could not be tuned properly, and every time you switched pickups, you got a shock. It soon went back to the catalogue company. I settled for an Italian acoustic and played folk music, but the thought of an electric guitar was never far from my mind. Playing Ventures music on an acoustic just didn’t cut it. After a long and hot summer, I earned enough money working at a chicken farm to head off to the city and see if I could buy some sort of electric guitar.

One sunny morning, I swung my acoustic across my back, stuck out my thumb and headed for the city, about 2 ½ hours away. Pretty soon an old beat up Hudson pulled up, driven by a longed haired hippie, with wife, baby, and sister. Strapped to the roof were their worldly possessions, as they were from California, heading north to the gold fields in Alaska. I got in the back with the sister, guitar across my knees as there was barely room with all the boxes and clothes. We got to talking about their adventure, life, sixties politics, and eventually music. I mentioned that I was headed to the city to see if I could trade my acoustic in on an electric guitar. After a while I learned that he had a Fender electric in the trunk. Of course, I was pretty excited that I met another Fender owner, and we talked different models etc. After a couple hours, he eyed my acoustic and told me that they were a bit short on cash and he would consider selling his Fender, taking my acoustic as part of the deal.

Deep in my heart, I was thinking, “I’ll never be able to afford it, but what the heck, at least find out how much he wanted for his guitar”. He scratched his beard for a few seconds, and said “tell you what…your acoustic and ninety bucks, and you got yourself a deal”. Well, you could have peeled me off the roof of the car. I was in heaven – I was going to buy a Fender! My summer’s work had put $130 bucks in my pocket, so I said I might be interested. Yeah right, I would have given him every cent I had. I wanted that Fender, and I am sure he could tell I was pretty excited. He would get the guitar out of the trunk so I could look at it when we got to where he needed to turn off and go north.

Finally we reached the turn-off, he pulled the car off the highway, and I proceeded to help him unload a well packed trunk. It took a few minutes and finally, laying across the bottom was a beat up old brown fender guitar case. I was so excited, it didn’t matter what was in that case…it was a Fender and that was all that mattered. He slid the case out and onto the ground. He popped the case open and there it was. This beautiful, beat up, old, scratched and chipped, beige colored, ¾-sized, one pick-up, maple neck Musicmaster:

I picked it out of the case, strummed a couple of chords, stood up, shook his hand, and said, I’ll take it!” I pulled the cash out of my wallet, helped him put everything back in the trunk, and then watched as they headed north, the sister smiling in the back seat as she strummed my acoustic.

I crossed the highway, stuck out my thumb and headed back the way I came. I didn’t need to go any farther. I was the proud owner of a Fender.

Written by: Andrew Marr, Coldstream B.C.

My First Fender from MyRareGuitars.com

The Poorboys ’65 (Vintage Silvertone 4 pickup electric guitar)

Approximately 4 yrs ago I had a brainstorm. I thought I would try to find a guitar that was similar to the one I had in Junior High (1963). That would be a four pickup Silvertone solid body guitar. When I was 12 and the Beatles came out, I had decided that I wanted to play guitar. My sister bought me a Stella to learn on, and I saved up enough to buy my own Silvertone guitar and the Twin 12 amp.

Shortly after I bought the guitar I was approached by some guys in my class, and they asked me if I would lead sing for them. Of course I jumped at it. When they heard I played guitar that was a plus.

Our band, the Poorboys, stayed together for about 4 yrs. We then split up. I lost interest in the guitar and sold it to my cousin in 1969. From this point on I never heard anything about the guitar.

Fast forward to 2009. I decided to try to find a guitar that matched to one I had. If the paint didn’t match, that would be okay, as I would refinish it to hang on the wall. I went on eBay and searched for a Silvertone 4 pickup solid body guitar. That particular day there was only one. It was a sunburst paint job. Everything worked. I contacted the guy and asked him about the guitar. He was being quite the butthead, as he acted like I was putting him out. Anyway, he had a ‘Buy It Now’ price of $550. I asked him if he was high or something, as I thought his price was totally out of place . He hung up on me.

Well I bidded on the guitar and won it for $325.00.

Shortly after I bought it, I checked it out and everything worked. It was just ugly with the sunburst paint. I stripped it down and tried to make the paint work but was struggling. I put it up on the shelf.

In September of 2012 I decided to just paint it and hang it up as it was just a memory and that’s it. As I was putting it together I noticed the chrome was perfect on the whammy bar cover. When I looked underneath I found the initials (gB) The day after i bought the guitar in 1963 I took the cover off and scratched my initials on it. When I saw this I just about died. I started thinking about the rest of the guitar. I remember putting a small chip in the volume control knob when I was taking it off. I also remember that one screw that held the tuning knobs on was different as one was stripped. I checked and both were there.

This guitar is the one that I bought in 1963 and played for several years and was a very important part of my rock and roll life. This guitar is home to stay.

Written by: Gary Berdinski

This Silvertone is Home to Stay from MyRareGuitars.com

Mosrite Electric Guitar, The Ventures Model (Blueburst Finish)

It wasn’t long after we moved back to Toronto from California that I acquired this guitar. You have to understand – I’ve bought and sold more guitars in the past 20 years than there are Beatles fans in Liverpool. When you are in the business of buying/selling guitars, you simply cannot afford to get attached to them. Yes, it is hard some times, but in the end this is what pays the bills, so you have to let them go.

That is why this one is so incredibly special. I knew when I first saw her, it might not leave. In fact, in the early years of myrareguitars.com, I used to have a BUY NOW button and a price, just to test my resolve. Every couple of months I would get an offer near my asking price – that would scare the hell out of me – so I would jack the price higher to ward off temptation. But a few years ago I simply surrendered to the fact that I could never part with it at any price. Funny, because I hear stories from guitars players all the time about the guitars they covet and can never let go and I never really had that feeling. But now I did and I completely understand.

It’s not “vintage”, but it is “rare”. In the late 90’s and early 00’s, a Japanese factory was making these incredible Mosrite replica’s. Some had the tailpiece stamped with “excellent” instead of “Moseley” or “Vibramute”. The lower cost ones were selling in the $1,000 range (Excellent) and the “Vibramute” ones were the top end selling for 2-3 times as much. An enterprising young fellow in USA was importing them in low quantities (probably 50 or 60 at a time) and selling them in the early EBAY days. That is how I found this one.

It has a serial number of “0000”, which is cooler than the other side of the pillow. To this day I am still unsure of the factory that made them, but I can tell you this – the quality and craftsmanship is over the top.

There are very few guitars that I keep in my “collection”, this is one of them.
Check out these photos:

Back Catalog Memories: Blueburst Mosrite, Ventures Model from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1980's Harmony Flying V Electric Guitar

Usually, if you’re interested in a piece, the seller is nearby, carefully watching as you look it over…game on. The first thing you need to do is calm down. I have purchased more than one instrument that turned out to be a big old can of worms simply because of my initial eagerness to take it home. I have since learned to put that excitement on hold until I can really check it out, and know exactly what I’m dealing with.

Starting from the top and working my way down, I give the guitar a general inspection. I’m looking for cracks, dings, dents, signs of impact (has the guitar been dropped?), or any broken pieces. I will look especially closely at the headstock area for signs of a repaired break.

Vintage 1980's Harmony Flying V Electric Guitar

I’ll then turn my attention to the tuning gears. The “V” I was looking at had one tuning gear that looked crooked at first glance. Upon further investigation, I found that the gear was not an exact match, and that one of the mounting screws was missing. These were cheap, dust covered, geared tuners, so I figured they would most likely be replaced anyway…not a deal breaker.

I also noticed that all of the pickup ring screws were rusted. Rusted screws can equal more shop time trying to get things apart, so be sure to consider the possibility of having to extract broken or stripped screws.

Vintage 1980's Harmony Flying V Electric Guitar

Once I determined that, aside from some rusty screws and a mismatched tuner, the “V” was in good shape, I started step two of the inspection…the nut. I have found that on guitars like this, the nut can be anything from rough to absurd. With this particular instrument, the latter was the case. This nut was an ugly yellow material, with huge string slots that were filed way too deep, and someone had cut up business cards to use as shim stock underneath. With most used guitar purchases, I’ll typically fabricate a new bone nut anyway, so this wasn’t a deterrent for me, and it even made a nice bargaining tool.

Next on the checklist come the neck and the frets. This is usually the make-or-break point for me when deciding whether or not to buy. I will start by sighting the neck, on both the bass and treble sides, for bow and possible twist in the neck. Too much bow or back bow may be correctable with a truss rod adjustment, or even a heat pressing if necessary, but twisted necks can be more complicated. When I sight the neck, I look straight down the edge where the frets end. I look at it as a continuous plane, all the way to the bridge. I can see back bow, forward bow, and I can spot unlevel frets. The “V” in question had a surprisingly straight neck, with fairly level frets…score!

Vintage 1980's Harmony Flying V Electric Guitar

After determining that the neck itself is in good working order, I’ll look carefully at the neck joint, where the neck meets the body. If the guitar has a set neck, I check the area for cracks or previous repairs. The “V” had a bolt-on neck, which I prefer so that I can shim the neck if necessary to get a proper neck angle. I’ll usually push back and forth a little on the neck to make sure there is no movement. Neck movement can mean loose mounting screws, which will cause tuning problems. Side note: if you haven’t checked your neck mounting screws in a while, you should. Necks can work loose over time and cause problems.

At this point, I take a good look at the body, bridge, controls, and general set-up of the instrument. I’m looking for more rusted screws and parts that may cause problems later, when I do a set-up. For example, bridge saddles can seize up over time, no longer allowing for height or intonation adjustments. While checking the set-up, be sure to check the height of the bridge and individual saddles to determine if the guitar has simply been set up poorly, or if a bigger problem, such as a bad neck set, is present.

My final step in evaluating a used guitar includes plugging it in and playing every note on every fret, to see if I get any buzzing or rattling caused by unlevel frets. I want each note to be clear and in tune. I also check the pots and switches for noise or malfunction. I don’t usually get too bent out of shape with bad electronics, because I will usually upgrade the switch, pots, and sometimes the pickups to a better quality part. This is an area where I usually find that the cheapest products have been used, and a little investment in better electronics can go a long way.

Once I’ve decided what needs to be fixed or replaced, I can begin the bargaining process. My checklist for the “V” revealed a bad tuner, rusty screws, some wonky electronics, and a nut that needed to be replaced. With a bit of haggling, the guitar was mine at a killer price.

I quickly made a new nut, replaced the pots, switch, and jack, and found a Fralin P-92 humbucker to put in the bridge position. After just a few hours of work, I had a killer new “Flying V.” I even had it up and running in time for my wife to play at a show the next night. Looks like I may have to find another one of my own sometime soon.

Happy hunting!

– Dave Anderson

Guitar Assessment Checklist from MyRareGuitars.com

Now don’t be too impressed yet – this wasn’t a “moment of discovery” where record producers and agents saw me and made me an overnight sensation. Tommy was in Toronto doing one of his pre-concert workshops and I was in the audience. He usually ends by asking volunteers to come up and play a song with him. I sat there sweating while friends got up and played, wondering if I would actually have the nerve to do it. Then I impulsively threw up my hand and before I could chicken out I was sitting on stage with one of my greatest guitar heroes.

Dr. Dave Walker on stage with Tommy Emmanuel

This was a moment I had dreamed about for years, and I wasn’t really unprepared. I had been practising one of my favourite Chet Atkins tunes ‘All Thumbs‘ and thought that it would be perfect since Tommy was such a huge Chet fan and knew every one of his songs (or so I thought). So when he asked me what song I wanted to play and I said All Thumbs, imagine my shock when he said: “Oh, I don’t know that one! I’ll have to fake it. You can start.”

Gulp! I took a few deep breaths to calm down before starting, but as I did Tommy addressed the audience. “This one is really hard,” he said to the crowd, “REALLY, REALLY hard!” Just what I didn’t need to hear. Then he turned to me and said: “Go!” One more deep breath and to my amazement my fingers began playing the song, and Tommy joined right in.

It all went well right up to the last few bars. That’s the trickiest part in the song, because Chet plays one of his patented cascades of sixteenth-notes all across the strings, and it had been hit-and-miss almost up to that very day. I was dreading the spot, and sure enough when I got to it, my fingers failed and I stopped. Ouch!

There was a sort of gasp from the audience and Tommy whispered to me: “Keep going! Don’t stop!” But it was too late – I HAD stopped. So I looked up at him with a grin and said: “Wait for it” and to my own (and everyone else’s) amazement I ripped off the cascade perfectly and ended the song. Tommy let out a whoop, jumped up and gave me a huge hug. With his arm still around me he turned to the audience and said: “THAT is how you play All Thumbs!”

I have never been so nervous playing in my life, nor have I been so proud on stage as that day. So do I still dream of doing it again? No way! That one performance was a pinnacle that I doubt I could reach again. And besides, it turns out that it did give me my little niche in posterity after all.

A couple of months later I was at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention in Nashville talking with a group of the guys from Toronto. Tommy recognized us and came over to chat and reminisce about his recent visit. I was to his side and slightly behind him, and was shocked but very pleased to hear him say: “Hey, remember that crazy doctor who got up on stage with me and played All Thumbs? How amazing was that?!”

by “Dr. Dave” Walker
blog.davewalkermusic.com

Dr. Dave Walker is a writer for blog.davewalkermusic.com and for Just Jazz Guitar. A former computer science professor, he has since come to his senses and now teaches music.

Be Careful What You Wish For – You May End Up On Stage With Tommy Emmanuel! from MyRareGuitars.com

David Anderson

So, it’s cold out side and the snow is falling. You decide to sit by the fire with your favorite hot beverage and your guitar for a little one on one time. You give your prized axe a strum, but it seems someone has replaced your instrument with an imposter. This guitar looks like your old friend in every way, but it’s buzzing and rattling, and the frets are sharp. You ask yourself what is going on.

Humidity is what’s going on, or more accurately, the lack of humidity. Guitars and other stringed instruments require 45 to 55% relative humidity in the environment in order to function properly. If your guitar gets below 45%, it will actually begin to shrink. Your instrument can easily loose 1/8 of an inch of mass from shrinkage due to a dry environment, and that means sharp fret edges, notes that buzz, cracks in the wood, lifting bridges, and even failing neck joints. If your instrument is over-humidified, on the other hand, you will notice an immediate difference in the way it plays due to the neck relief changing and the top rising and bellying up. You may even notice a difference in tone.

But don’t “fret”…it’s not too late! You can reverse the condition of your guitar by simply changing the relative humidity of the environment in which it resides. If you have a hard shell case, you can easily add humidity by purchasing a guitar/case humidifier, but you must be sure to keep the guitar in the case while not in use to allow the case interior to act as the immediate environment for the guitar. If you like to hang your instrument on a wall or display it on a stand, you will need to get a cold mist humidifier for your room (home furnaces with built in humidifiers will not suffice). It’s a good idea to purchase a hydrometer so you can keep track of the relative humidity in your area. Expect it to take a few weeks for your guitar to acclimate to its proper environment. This may seem like a lot of effort, but so is humidifying and repairing a top crack or dressing frets due to dryness, fixes not covered by the manufacturer as warranty work. Prevention is key!

So, if you want to give that special stringed someone the gift that keeps on giving, give the gift of humidity. Your guitar will be happy, and you will too.

Written by: David Anderson

Guitars & Humidity: Taking Care of Your Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Story #3 – Musicvox Spaceranger

Musicvox guitars are pretty wierd. But, you never know what will come of a sketch on a napkin and an enthusiastic owner – Matthew Eichen – who was responsible for Musicvox guitars. These were part of a small Korean production run in the mid/late 1990’s. You’ve probably never seen one in your local shop, as the distribution of the brand did not gain any traction, but you may have seen one when New Line Cinema put the guitars in the hands of musicians playing parts in the Mike Meyers/Austin Powers film Goldmember in 2002.

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

The “band” in the film was named Ming Tea:

• Mike Myers (as Austin Powers, vocals)
• Susanna Hoffs (as Gillian Shagwell, lead guitar)
• Matthew Sweet (as Sid Belvedere, bass)
• Stuart Johnson (as Manny Stixman, drums)
• Christopher Ward (as Trevor Aigburth, guitar)

They are best known for their song “BBC”, which appeared after the ending credits of the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, as well as the song “Daddy Wasn’t There”, which Myers’ character Austin Powers sings in Austin Powers in Goldmember. Both songs appear in their respective movie soundtracks.

Check out the original music video of “Daddy Wasn’t There”:

My son Troy and I are big fans of the Austin Powers movies, and also big fans of Matthew Sweet. Matthew has been a customer of My Rare Guitars for many years. He is not only a great singer / songwriter / guitar player, he is also a collector of the very weird and oddball guitars that our website is known for. So, a couple of years after the films release, I traded some cool stuff for a couple of Spacerangers from the movie GOLDMEMBER – a sunburst bass and a 6 string. He was kind enough to have them signed, the bass by himself as “Syd Belvedere” and the 6 string by Susanna Hoffs. We donated the 6-string to a Toronto Charity auction that year, but I kept the bass because it is just so wierd, and it’s a peice of Austin Powers history that I can pass on to Troy.

Here are some photos of the Spaceranger Bass:

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

Musicvox Spaceranger Electric Guitar (from the Austin Powers movie 'Goldmember')

Back Catalog Memories: Musicvox Spaceranger Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

The guitarMatz is an innovative wall mounting system that displays your guitar in front of a 48” x 18” graphic of your choice. The system works with a steel wall mounted guitar hanger that holds a channeled frame. The graphic sits inside the frame and a guitar hook securely bolts into the wall mount. The guitarMatz is designed and built in Canada out of heavy-duty epoxy eCoated steel and it is built to last. The result is a large wall graphic that looks great either with or without your guitar hanging on it. But the best result is, that with this art piece, you may be able to convince your spouse into allowing you to hang your guitar in the family space.

GuitarMatz: Wall Mounting System for Guitars

How did I get here you ask? Well I spent years searching. I looked at all of the available methods of displaying guitars trying to get my guitars out of the basement. First I found the rather overpriced museum style framed boxes that look more like a coffin than a cool place to display your prized Mosrite. They didn’t look right for me. Then I found and purchased a Rockcase by Warrick – with its flightcase aluminum frame and plexi window, it is very cool, but it looks way too much like it just came off the tour bus. My Rockcase is in the basement holding my Johnny Winter autographed Firebird, it never made it over the couch. Then I looked at the giant multi-guitar cabinets that take up half a room and will cost you your vacation to Disney. That really wasn’t my style or in my budget.

But what I did like the most, were the custom framed collectable guitars that fill all the memorabilia shops in Vegas. Big, bold and exciting with photos and graphics relating to the guitar, their only problem was the guitar was just an expensive signed art piece that you couldn’t play. So I put my years of marketing, design and visiting guitar shops together and created the guitarMatz. It is a simple logical way to display your guitar. It looks great because it is a frame and you choose the graphic that best suites you, your guitar and your room. And the best thing about the guitarMatz is that your guitar is right there… just pick it up off the hanger and you can noodle away for hours while everyone else watches some mindless dance contest.

I am very excited about how great the response to guitarMatz has been from guitar players, retailers and their spouses. We are now developing some very interesting licensing deals and some special artist programs for new and exciting graphics. And we also have the flexibility to allow you to create and upload your own photos and graphics. Just jump over to www.guitarmatz.com to check them out.

MyRareGuitars.com will soon be offering the complete line of guitarMatz as one of their ongoing products.

Do yourself and your guitars a favor, take them out of the case and put them up on your walls on a guitarMatz. They will look amazing, you’ll play them more and if you’re real lucky they may even make it to your living room.

Grant Ivens, rgd, is a Toronto musician, writer, creative director, TV producer, married with two talented young daughters, and is currently working on several new products aimed at bringing his ‘brandSimple” design sense to the music industry via his product company ShowOff Gear. You can contact him at grant@showoffgear.com

GuitarMatz: How I Got My Guitars in the Living Room from MyRareGuitars.com

The celebrations took nearly two months to get through. It started early in August with a 2 week getaway vacation with my wife Kay and son Troy. We went to eastern Canada and hit every spot imaginable from Cape Breton to P.E.I. to Halifax and over to Newfoundland. If you have never been to Newfoundland, you should. Here is a picture of Troy and me hiking in Western NFLD:

Troy and me hiking in Western Newfoundland

Here is 10 yr. old Troy in charge of steering the Lobster Boat in P.E.I. He may look calm, but in fact he is very serious because this was a pretty big boat!

Upon returning to Toronto, my brother Peter from California decided to make his second trip up to Canada this summer for the 50th celebrations. We kicked it off with a couple of rounds of golf and more than a couple of rounds of drinks. The big party was Sept 5th, featuring a baseball game with 25 friends from High School – Yes, I said HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS – question: who can round up 25 high school friends on their 50th Birthday? I think not many. That is what I call good friends! Butch came from Texas, Big T came from Vancouver, Heter from California. Amazing that most of us still hang out together all the time. Here is one of the photos:

Who can round up 25 high school friends on their 50th Birthday? I think not many.

The party lasted well into the wee hours, featuring numerous guitars, amps, basses, vocals, and of course cocktails. Good thing the neighbors were out of town. After that we went up north to a friend’s cottage in Muskoka for 3 days of fishing. Here is brother Peter, trolling the shoreline for PIKE:

Peter, trolling the shoreline for Pike

Then back to Toronto for a short sleep and right on through to the Catskills in New York – a total of 8 hours driving – to the ATP Festival. What a blast that was. Take a look at this shot. Yes, I might be 50, yes, I might look 50, but I am dead center in the middle of the mosh-pit acting like a 20 year old, which is how I feel most of the time. This photo was taken during the kick-ass set from legendary JESUS LIZARD. That is David Yow with the MIC, me right in front of him:

Me in the pit at the Jesus Lizard show at ATP (David Yow with the mic)

Also that first night I ran into Nick Cave (who was not on the bill) after sitting in with Warren Ellis and The Dirty Three. Warren and I get to talking about making an Eastwood TENOR guitar. This is really going to happen! Here I am with Nick and his AIRLINE TUXEDO guitar the following week back in Toronto:

Nick Cave with an Airline Tuxedo

Not often you see Nick smile, but somehow it feels like a fitting photograph to cap off the 50th Birthday celebrations. So the partying has finally come to an end and it’s time to get back to work. Summer has also officially ended and the leaves are starting to fall. Here is one final photo from this summer. This is Troy up at our cottage, where most evenings we have a fire and roast marshmallows. Troy decided it would be cool to put a marshmallow on the end of an arrow and fire it out into Georgian Bay. Who has more fun than kids? Looks like the 50 year olds?

Troy decided it would be cool to put a masrhmellow on the end of an arrow and fire it out into Georgian Bay

We’ve Only Just Begun: My 50th Birthday from MyRareGuitars.com

While I spend most of the time in this column writing about very cool pieces that came as they are from budget factories in the 60’s, sometimes a piece begs for modification. Sometimes (adding a Bigsby on anything I can, for instance), the mod is minimal and reversible. Sometimes, a beat up guitar or amp shows up begging for more than a simple mod and they become a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster. Case in point: this Silvertone (Danelectro-made) 1448 (i.e., the one pickup “Amp in Case” guitar).

Danelectro 1448 Electric Guitar Project (Before)

As you can see in the “before” pictures, this one came with no electronics, a smashed in Masonite top and years of major neglect. I grabbed it off Craig’s list for $50, figuring I could at least use the neck. But then, other than the smashed top and no electronics, it seemed like it could be an interesting project on its own—not just a parts donor. What was there to work with/keep? A short but good list:

• One good neck—with Brazilian rosewood we can’t get anymore. Odd to see on such a low rent “cheap” guitar. But Danelectro necks were incredibly study and stayed very straight—which is good, since they didn’t have truss rods, after all. And, it may seem minor, but Dano’s aluminum nut contributes to the tone and is a very cool part.
• One set of tuners. The Dano/Silvertone open back key tuners are not the best ever made but they actually hold tune of the guitar is set up well.
• Original Dano bridge, with the “semi” (emphasis on semi) adjustable rosewood slab for intonation. Or something kinda close to intonation.
• The back of the original guitar and the pieces of wood that all hardware would/could anchor in to. I’m no expert on Danelectros, but the wood used in the Amp-in-Case models (the hollow ones, at any rate, before the solid wood versions of 67 and 68, after the MCA takeover) is usually quoted as pine or poplar. In any case, there’s not much wood in there—enough to anchor a bridge and to hold down the Masonite top.

So what did I need? Electronics and a new top. I had the cracked and beaten old Masonite top, so I used it as a template to cut a new top.

My options were to restore it and find some old Danelectro pickup, if I wanted to keep it original. OR, I could add two lipsticks and make it a custom job, while retaining the materials of the originals.

Or, the option I went with, I could make it a total one-off custom job. A buddy of mine owns a custom car shop and he was headed to a junkyard and then a metal yard and asked if I wanted to come along. Figuring a day at a junkyard and a sheet metal shop were more fun than a day of working on a book, I jumped at the chance.

Along with a bunch of crap I probably didn’t need, I left the yard that day with a nice sheet of brushed aluminum. I used the old, broken top as a template and cut the meal the shape of the top of the guitar. Then I ground down the sides, so no metal would come sharp off the edges.

Danelectro 1448 Electric Guitar Project (After)

On the old Danelectro body, there was about a ¼ inch of wood—perfect for mounting the new metal top with some sheet metal screws, which gave it a cool (to me, at least) industrial look.

Danelectro 1448 Electric Guitar Project (After)

Now for electronics. The first version had some top-mounted old DeArmond Silverfoils off an old Harmony that was broken beyond repair. These sounded ok, but the look wasn’t quite right. So, next, I took off the metal top and cut out its center and mounted a modified after-market loaded Stratocaster pick guard. This took some trimming of the pick guard so it would fit the top properly but, once it did, it looked pretty snazzy. The meal also offered some of the best shielding I’ve EVER heard on a Strat-style guitar. The single coils sounded great with almost no single coil hum or buzz—not even when standing under neon sage lights. Go figure.

And the best thing? Something odd happened when I put the Strat electronics onto the Dano body and neck: the tone became a strange hybrid of both guitars. It sounded sort of like a Strat, but the short scale neck, along with the odd bridge and aluminum nut and (probably the biggest factor) the hollowed-out body made it sound different than any Strat I’d ever heard. It had the twangy jangle and snap of a Dano, but higher output on the pickups. A very cool combo—all for under $100 in parts and a little fun work.

If you’ve got a busted up old Danlelectro, it’s a modification/custom job I’d highly recommend. You’ll have the only one on your block, and it’ll sound pretty darn good, too. Happy hod-rodding!

Odd’s & Mod’s from MyRareGuitars.com

People come out to Joshua Tree for many reasons, but the major ones are: to go to the national park, to be in the presence of so much beauty and peace and quiet, to spot UFO’s at Giant Rock, to scout the best location for their new meth lab (the city’s a better bet, for you Junior Achieving Speed freaks out there), and to do what we do in the staggering heat of our porch: Nothing much.

And people stay at the Joshua Tree Inn, about 14 miles west of our place, for all these reasons, plus one very specific one: to stay in Room #8.

Gram Parsons: His life came to an early end at the Joshua Tree Inn

Because as many know (evidenced by the frequent waiting list for the room), Room #8 is where, on September 19, 1973, Gram Parsons, relaxing after having finished his second solo album, the classic, although laden with too many slow as molasses tunes, “Grievous Angel”, died. He was a amazing singer—listening to Gram Parsons’ cracked beauty of a voice dance over a 7th chord is one of the most painfully gorgeous sounds that has ever been captured on recording equipment. There were singers with better chops, to be sure. Though, as my friend John points out, Doc Severenson had better chops than Miles Davis, who couldn’t play in the upper register. Chops are never the whole story when you’re talking about art.

The thing Gram Parsons had is what all great artists have—he wasn’t cool or ironic. He was willing to stand, metaphorically naked and striped bare to the essential emotions. And, he could sing like no one else before or since. As someone once said about Keith Richards…everybody switches from C to F, but nobody does it quite like Keith Richards. And nobody sounds like quite like Gram Parsons.

Gram Parsons died when he was 26. We are past the 30th anniversary of his death, which means people have been missing Gram Parsons from this Earth longer than he was on it.

The circumstances surrounding his death and burial have been told and retold (most recently mistold in the so-so indie film “Grand Theft Parsons”), but I’ll offer them here in a brief summary to those who don’t know it. Skip ahead, if you do.

Gram Parsons’ stepfather, by most accounts an oily and brutally self-interested man, tried to rush GP’s body to New Orleans for burial. There was some Louisiana loophole that would allow for Bob Parsons to claim Gram was a New Orleans resident and thereby get his hands on the rather lucrative Parsons’ estate.

Phil Kaufman, a friend/hanger-on/road manager to Parsons and, among others, the Rolling Stones stole the body, with help from friend Michael Martin, from LAX, where it was waiting to be shipped to Louisiana. The reasoning was simple: Parsons had told Phil Kaufman, earlier that year at Clarence White’s funeral, that he wanted to be cremated in his beloved Joshua Tree, where he had spent so much time.

Kaufman and Martin then, in an alcohol and drug-induced haze, drove Parsons to somewhere around his beloved Cap Rock in Joshua Tree National Park (then known as the Joshua Tree National Monument in its pre-national park days), poured gas over the coffin and lit it on fire. They high-tailed it out when Kaufman (mistakenly, it turned out) saw park rangers chasing them. The half-charred coffin was discovered the next morning by hikers (and reported as a “big burned log”), and the remains of the remains were then shipped to New Orleans, where a dying Bob Parsons claimed and buried them.

And now, every year, people come to stay in room number 8, where the sad and brilliant life of Gram Parsons came to such an early end. The question is: Why?

There’s maybe the easy reason of people being obsessed with celebrity. But that misses the boat on a couple of scores. One is that Gram Parsons wasn’t that famous, or that much of a celebrity (at least not when he was alive). He was a great singer/musician, but he wasn’t that popular in his lifetime. For instance, Jim Croce was scads more popular, and he died the same week as GP, and yet no one goes to whatever small airstrip it was that Croce died over. There is no pilgrimage to the flat where Jimi Hendrix died (of course, not many people die in a Bed and Breakfast, as GP did, where it’s kind of convenient to pay your respects).

People are macabre, make no mistake. Henry Ford, reportedly, had the last breath of Thomas Edison sealed in a jar (which lead to all sorts of gruesome deathbed breath-collecting images), so there may be the ghoulish desire to capitalize in whatever personal way on someone’s death. It’s a tenuous analogy, the Ford/Edison thing, and the staying in Room # 8, I realize, but maybe it’s a way of claiming the dead as our own when we have these personal rituals after they’ve left.

But, I’m thinking it’s not for such seedy reasons that people come and stay in Room # 8 and walk around Cap Rock, where Gram Parsons’ ashes are said to have been scattered. And sing sad GP songs on their porch in Twentynine Palms like Gayle and I do all the time. I’m thinking, maybe, there’s a sincerity of purpose at work here.

There’s an old African (I think…I’m a musician, not a scholar) folk tail a friend told me one time about a squirrel and a lion. The lion, after a relatively short chase, had caught the squirrel in its mouth. The squirrel said, “I know you’re going to kill me, but would you let me down for just a second beforehand?” The lion did. The squirrel thrashed around in the sand, and then said, “ok.” The lion asked what that was all about. The squirrel said, “I know you’re going to kill me, but at least now, people will come by here and see my marks and know that I struggled.”

Gram Parsons had, by most accounts, a tough life with many demons. Which doesn’t make him unique. But Gram Parsons, whatever else he did or didn’t do, left some of the most beautiful signs of all of our futile struggles in the sand. And maybe that seems to matter somehow, listening quietly to your own breath inside Room # 8, while the high desert winds swirl outside, much like they probably did on the night of September 19, 1973.

Room #8 at the Joshua Tree Inn from MyRareGuitars.com

Rudy's Guitar Stop (New York City, NY)

Here is my son Troy standing out front of the famous Rudy’s Guitar Stop on 48th Street.

Rudy's Guitar Stop (New York City, NY)

Rudy has built one of the most beautiful guitar stores on the planet. You must go there! Here we pose in front of one of his displays, this one dedicated to Eastwood Guitars.

Ludlow's Guitars (New York City, NY)

Can’t get up uptown?

Ludlow's Guitars (New York City, NY)

Well just go one block southeast of First & First to Ludlow’s Guitars.

Ludlow's Guitars (New York City, NY)

Drop in for a visit to Ludlow Guitars, 164 Ludlow St, well stocked with all current Eastwood Guitars models.

Our Trip to Guitar Stores in New York City (March 2007) from MyRareGuitars.com

Wally with Nick Cash, lead singer of legendary punk rockers 999

Two days later my brother Peter (guitarist from Surf Cinema) caught up with us, rented a car, and we drove out to Swindon to see the legendary punk rockers, 999. Here is a picture of Wally with lead singer Nick Cash. Wally had dragged his original Vinyl from Toronto – back in 1981 he had stood in line at a record shop to have the lads from 999 sign his record – 25 years later Nick and the boys would sign it again. We ran into the band at a pub before the show, got the album signed, and proceeded to have a great night of music and laughs!

The historic ROYAL St. Georges Golf Club (host to 12 Open Championships)

The following day we changed hats and moved to the gold courses. We played Walton Heath Golf Club south of London, then drove to Dover for the night. The following day we played the historic ROYAL St. Georges Golf Club – host to 12 Open Championships. It was an unforgettable day for Peter and me.

The next day we headed back to London for a three days of LIVE music, Indian food and a long pub crawl. Another friend – Jimmy Lango – decided to fly in and surprise Peter (Peter lives in California, Jim in Toronto, they are childhood friends). So Jim shows up at the hotel, unannounced, playing a Taylor travel guitar and singing a song that Peter and him co-wrote 20 years ago. What a surprise! Good reason to go for a pint! That night we went to see Lloyd Cole at the Arts Theater where he featured his fantastic new CD, Anti-Depressant. Another great show. The following night was an unbelievable and edgy treat by PERE UBU.

The next morning we headed up North….

The Wedding Present in Wolverhampton. David Gedge played his Eastwood Supro.

Our last show of the tour was The Wedding Present in Wolverhampton. David Gedge played his Eastwood SUPRO at the gig. My brother talked me into getting right up in front of the stage for this show, and as you can see in the next shot, it was a tight squeeze fro the entire show. (I turned my camera backwards over my head for this shot). I’m not sure how to setup my camera, so this video I shot is lousy.

It was a tight squeeze for the entire show.

We caught last-call and hoisted a toast

After the show we caught last-call and hoisted a toast to the country and to the great hospitality we enjoyed. Below is our last walk down London streets before heading home for another year. I look forward to my next trip there; in fact Wally is already lobbying for the upcoming ATP Festival 2007 as Wally is a huge Nick Cave fan. After listening to the new GRINDERMAN CD, I agree with Wally!

Our last walk down London streets

UK Trip (Oct. 2006) from MyRareGuitars.com

Here’s yesterday’s series of events:

I called home and talked to my 8 year old son. He said that some guy named Clint called, but daddy was at work so Chad hung up the phone. I though it was no big deal at the time and said that I’d be home just after 7pm. I got another call from my bass-making- partner telling me that somebody claiming to be part of the Clint Black/Dwight Yoakum tour is inviting me to meet the band if I bring my cardboard box bass.

My partner is invisible in everything I post on the web, so if somebody actually found his phone number and put him with the box bass, then this scenario must be real. I called the number that was given to me, and had a nice chat with a voice that took my name and number and asked me to meet him before 7pm tonight at gate #1. I thanked him politely, but told him that I can’t get there till after 7pm because I’m still at work. I have responsibilities until 6:30pm. He asked if I can leave earlier, I replied no. I’m just a regular guy. He gave me his cell phone number and asked me to call him as I leave work, and again as I get near Pine Knob (DTE) He called me at 7:15pm asking me where I was because he was waiting outside and it was cold. I assured him that I was getting nearer to the venue (I was totally lost and in a party store asking directions) – I told the 7-11 counter guy that Clint Black’s band asked me to join them at Pine Knob today. He said ‘cool’ and I was on my way hoping to get to the gig without pissing off anyone. I pulled into the parking lot and phoned Brad, we met easily and I let him in my minivan as he directed me to park next to the tour buses – dammm this was fun.

Bogdon Box Bass

Dwight Yoakam was playing too, and I was given an all-area-back-stage pass. It was a strange feeling. It was as if everyone knew who I was but I never met anyone here. I just kept repeating the phrase “It’s All About The Bass.” EVERYONE there knew who I was, I was “the cardboard guy” and they were happy that I joined them. I was in the dressing room jamming with the band, talking about our families, food, and music theory…

Bogdon Box Bass

I got a GREAT upright-slapping- bass lesson from a bass legend as we laughed about cardboard and talked of wood density. The keyboardist gigged with Clint Black and all the Nashville great’s, he told me that I’m the ‘latest and greatest’ thing in his house at home and he asked me if I’d take a picture with him. I told him that I’m a mailman at heart and that I just play music for now until I make it big in the Postal bizzness… we laughed and hugged he gave me his cell phone number and we’ll exchange cheap camera pix. I talked to the road crew and asked how long they were on the road and if they had eaten yet, they hadn’t but told me that there’d be a dinner after they tear down the show… the tour has been traveling for most if the year. The monitor guy asked me if I want to plug into the sound system after Clint Black was done, and told me to be here with my box bass before the set ended. The show was fabulous! Clint Black played Hello Goodbye (Beatles), Black Curtains (Cream) and some hip classic country. I was rockin’ with my box bass backstage near the monitor board. Clint Black’s set ended and the house lights came on but the monitor guy said that he was told NOT to bring me on stage. Clint Blacks bassist grabbed my arm told me to hurry up and escorted me onto the stage and plugged my bass into the system… (for a moment I felt like a politician having to scurry after a public speech).

Bogdon Box Bass

Without exchanging a word with anyone, the guy plugged my bass into his rig and I jammed my bass as if I were in Carnegie Hall as the road crew cheered. My cousin Alan got a few pictures and after about 5 minutes I sensed that my time was up, so I politely unplugged myself and thanked the stage crew. I went back to the dressing room to discover that everyone was gone. I gathered up my stuff and quietly left. I was comfortably normal with those musicians. They totally embraced me into their realm and we shared genuine fun. The bass tech asked if I’d sell it for $100, I said that it’s going to be on display in a Birmingham restaurant next week, so ‘no’… He asked if I’d give it to him and we laughed. I didn’t give my bass away. Call me crazy, but I didn’t have to give the bass away. I wasn’t in selling mode. I made a friendly connection with Nashville musicians who spent a few hours with me and I left with a phone number and email addresses. So I think that my sales mode should kick in after this weekend holiday. I’m a Postal Worker and Monday is Columbus Day!

Post by: Chris Badynee

Clint Black’s Band Wanted My Cardboard Bogdon Bass! from MyRareGuitars.com

Bill Nelson, guitarist for Be Bop Deluxe

Here we are 30 years later and after following my passion, I find myself as the president of EASTWOOD Guitars. My enthusiasm for music has not diminished one bit. I still seem to spend more money on CD’s than groceries. I have thousands of LP’s that have not seen a needle in years, due to the fact that I now have thousands of CD’s that for a large part, replicate my LP’s. Of course now that I have my 60G IPOD, the CD’s are getting a rest. Crazy? Perhaps, but I would not give them up for the world. Being surrounded by music and electric guitars, I find myself enjoying life more now than ever. How could it get any better? How about reconnecting with Bill Nelson!

As luck would have it, our paths recently crossed again – this time not through my pursuing an autograph – but through Bill’s on-going interest in Bizarre Guitars. I have followed the career of Bill Nelson since his first release in 1971, Northern Dream (which by the way was the album I had him sign). Most of us were introduced to Bill through the critically acclaimed 70’s band, Be Bop Deluxe. I still play air guitar when listening to riffs from LIVE IN THE AIR AGE, possibly one of the greatest LIVE band recordings from that era.

Bill continued through the next 3 decades with a solo career that amassed a staggering number of releases. I cannot remember a year going by without the purchase of at least one Bill Nelson CD, often two and three. Some of my personal favorites include QUIT DREAMING AND GET ON THE BEAM (1981), CHIMERA (1983), MAP OF DREAMS (1987), AFTER THE SATELLITE SINGS (1996), MAGNIFICNET DREAM PEOPLE (1997) and DEEP DREAM DECODER (1998).

If for some reason you missed the last three decades and are in need of a quick fix, run out and get WHAT NOW, WHAT NEXT?, it is an exceptionally good compilation of the Cocteau Years from 1980-1990. Also pick up SATELLITE SONGS, the perfect companion. More than enough to rekindle the spirit.

I am the proud owner of over 40 CD’s (and a few dozen vinyl LP’s) from Bill Nelson. Thirty years later, now that our paths have crossed again, Bill is the proud owner of an EASTWOOD Saturn ’63. How cool is that!? Imagine the smile on my face when Bill wrote back with the following message:

I’m one of those post-war baby-boomers who were born into the era of rock n’ roll and science-fiction. Like many well-known British musicians of my generation, I attended Art School in the ’60’s and have always had an eye for unusual visual design, whether that be in the realm of cars, clothes or architecture… guitars too. Especially guitars!

I remember standing outside local music store windows as a 12 year old, blown away by the exotic, futuristic designs of many ’50’s and ’60’s guitar manufacturers such as Fenton Weill, Wandre, Hopf, Guyatone and Teisco. These were not the big name, glamorous makes that famous stars played, but they were, for me and my budding young musician friends, even more other-worldly, more electric than the expensive mainstream brands. Their visual appeal went way beyond practical considerations and strayed into the realm of pure fantasy. They were aesthetically ‘out there’, super-modern, ultra-baroque. They embodied the essential, electrical essence of rock n’ roll.

Unfortunately, they were not the most player-friendly instruments in the world, often being manufactured cheaply, despite the avant-garde nature of their visual appeal. Nevertheless, 40 odd years later, these vintage designs have become rare and coveted instruments, (‘though sadly more suited towards the wealthy collector’s cabinet than the recording studio or stage.)

Hats off to Eastwood Guitars for their visionary mission to re-issue some of these rare designs yet keep the guitarists of the 21st Century in mind. Eastwood guitars look just like the original instruments, but with the added bonus of superior build quality, modern playability and a vibey, characterful tonality. These guitars go beyond retro-futurist nostalgia to expand any contemporary guitarist’s tonal palette. And separate you from the herd.

Magically, my Saturn 63 reminds me of just how I felt standing outside that music shop back in the late ’50’s, and confirms just why I fell in love with electric guitars in the first place, all those years ago.

Somehow makes it all worthwhile, don’t it? Well, if you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you know what I’ve been up to lately, but what about Bill Nelson? Quite a lot actually.

In the past 30 years, Bill has released close to 50 CD’s, many of which are double, triple and even quad disk sets. You wonder when he finds time to sleep! He has also worked on film, television and video scores, directed a variety of videos, toured as part of Heroes De Lumiere with his brother Ian, worked with Roger Eno, Gary Numan, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Harold Budd, Flock of Seagulls, John Cooper-Clarke, David Sylvian, Laraaji and Kate St. John under the Channel Light Vessel name and performed as part of the Japanese group Culturemix. Phenomenally busy, driven by his muse and an active imagination, Nelson continues to delight and confound.

No signs of slowing, either. Bill tells me he has got two new albums in the pipeline: ‘Neptunes Galaxy’ and ‘Return To Jazz Of Lights’ as well as some rare, previously unreleased Be Bop Deluxe material, all coming out later this year. You can get in line (behind me) to sign up for these releases on his website, Dreamsville (www.billnelson.com). There are plenty of things to do during your visit to Dreamsville – pack a lunch and have fun!

Here is a short list of recent releases from Bill Nelson (all available at DREAMSVILLE):

• Gleaming Without Lights (CD)
• Getting The Holy Ghost Across (CD)
• Return To Jazz Of Lights (CD)
• The Alchemical Adventures Of Sailor Bill (CD)
• Rosewood Volume 2 (CD)
• Rosewood Volume 1 (CD)
• Atom Shop (CD)
• Crimsworth (CD)
• What Now What Next? (2CD)

I’m an Axe Victim: Reconnecting with Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe from MyRareGuitars.com

I have always been haunted by the sounds of the mandolin family of instruments. From an early age, my father played mandolin in a mandolin orchestra, with, sometimes, as many as 35 members. As a child, I remember going to the concerts. Occasionally, during a practice, I sat beside my father in the middle of the orchestra, listening to the classical or Russian folk tunes, or to popular European melodies, all in tremolo or rhythmic picking styles. The conductor was a high school music teacher and they played well into my father’s 70s. Walter, the conductor, was arranging and conducting for the orchestra right up until the year before he died, in his early 90’s.

In my time, I have collected, and have played, mandolin, mandola and mandocello in various bands and in various styles of music. Below are a few pictures, one is pictured alongside my EASTWOOD Savannah to give you a comparison of the size.

Gibson Mandocello

The mandocello has the same scale length as a guitar but the strings are a heavier gauge and give a deep, mellow, resonant sound like a regular cello. It is tuned, like the cello, C (.074), G (.048), D (.034), A (.022), (low to high). It can also be strung and played as an octave mandolin. It is in the same range as a baritone or bass voice and with a tremolo style of playing, can sustain a note similar to the bowing of its counterpart, the cello.

Being a fretted instrument, the mandocello can be chorded, and the voicings are quite unique in sound. The mandolin has similar chords, being tuned the same, only a 5th higher. However, with a higher frequency, and having a shorter scale length, there is little sustain and the chords are more percussive in sound.

Chords on a mandocello can sound quite full and deep and complement the guitar chords beautifully when played together. Because the notes are different (sort of the reverse of a guitar), access to a different melody line is possible.

In short, it is an instrument of great potential. The drawback, as I see it, is that the double, heavy-gauge strings make chords and playing solos hard on the left hand. You need a gorilla grip to move up the neck with moveable chords and fast solos. As well, the body is not as large as the cello. So the sound is not as deep and resonant as it could be.

Gibson Mandocello & Eastwood Savannah Guitar

Here is where an electric version of this instrument would bring out its many fine and unique qualities and allow it to take its place in a modern context.

The lower action of an electric instrument would make this a faster, easier instrument to play; less force and more sound. The sound can be amplified and processed to bring out that rich deep tone, (close to a baritone guitar but played mando style). The sustained note of tremolo-style picking can offer an expressive harmony line or solo that blends with the human voice, and with any of the violin family, or as a rhythmic drone to a guitar solo.

I have a piezo pickup in my old Gibson mandocello and play it acoustically or amplified. It sounds great and can fit into any style of music I wish to play along with. Even though I have had the neck adjusted and reinforced, and put bass frets on, it still has a hard action to work with. Think of the difference between an acoustic and an electric guitar or a stand up bass and an electric bass.

If there are any readers out there in cyber-land who would be interested in owning an electric mandocello for a reasonable cost I would really love to hear from you. If you are interested, please would you write to Mike Robinson of this newsletter and give him some feedback?

Gibson K4 Mandocello

Should there be such an instrument already in production commercially and available at a reasonable cost, I would like to know about this as well.

Gibson K4 Mandocello

Happy picking.

Post by: Michael Aronoff

In Search of an Electric Mandocello from MyRareGuitars.com

Why would anyone want to live in a garage? Well the answer was easy. Up until that point I was sharing a bedroom with my elder brother, who was learning drums. My brother is two years older, and at that time size and age counted when disputes occurred. We had bunk beds with slide out desk draws that met at the invisible but well defined halfway mark between our beds. Go over that mark and I’d find my possessions dumped on the bedroom floor.

There was one item that lived in the DMZ between our beds; a Crystal Radio Set Dad had made for us. I grew up with the music of the late 60’s penetrating my brain like a form of sleep learning. Years of POP music entering my subconscious head every night because more often than not I would fall asleep with the ear plug jammed in my ear. I remember so many songs from those years. Tunes like Telstar became engraved into my musical soul. It’s true, being exposed to POP Music at an early age can affect young guitar players for the rest of their life.

Dad’s garage was big enough to fit eight cars. My room, inside the garage, was big enough for the bunk bed and a chair and a set of drawers and my guitars. There was no room to swing a cat. I had two guitars at that time. My first guitar, a Maton F10 Classical guitar and an Electric Japanese Strat copy, an Esquire. I saw the Esquire in the shop window of a now long gone Melbourne music store named Sutton’s. I used to stare at it every Saturday, before and after my guitar lessons – until I had saved enough money to buy it. $79.00 well spent. I still have both guitars – 37 years later.

For about two years – I practiced in my room, the tool shed – using my Mum’s old Bakelite Radio as my practice amp for the Esquire. I had to practice in the room – because the guitar lead I had was only 5 feet long. By working as a delivery boy for a pharmacy – I was able to save up enough money to purchase my first real guitar amp [and a long coily cable guitar lead, which let me stand outside my room and in the Garage].

Garage Guitarist: Ian Carter

The day came when I went by train to pick up that first real amplifier – a Vox AC 30 from the famous Australian guitar Luthier, Merv Cargill.

All the way to Seaford and met Merv in his garage [I liked the fact that we both spent a lot of time in the garage involved with guitars], paid the huge sum of $250 [they’re worth 10 times that now] and then lugged the amp – by hand, back to the train station, then all the way home. My house was at least a couple of miles from the nearest train station. I can remember to this day the pain in my arms of hauling the amp by hand all the way home, we only had one car and Dad was at work. I was certain my arms had been stretched at least a couple of inches by the time I got home and wondered whether I had done any permanent damage.

We all know the smell that a new car has – guitar amps have a unique smell too – Tolex covering a wood cabinet, warmed by heat generated from valves. Turning on the Vox AC30 was almost a ritual, a religious experience. Knowing that what was about to happen was like expecting the arrival of the messiah’s voice box. Volume & TONE. Guitar & Amp.

Garage Guitarist: Ian Carter

Teenage dreams fulfilled by the sound created by an electric guitar. Reverb. Tremolo. Guitarists know what this means. The ability to traverse all boundaries, to “go where no one has gone before” play an electric guitar – you’ll arrive at that place on the playing of the first note, in the relative comfort of your bedroom or as in my case my bedroom in the garage.

So there I stood, guitar in hand, my face turned to the opening of the garage – which, coincidentally for all the Led Zeppelin fans, looked to the West. There was no door on the garage. It was too big and Dad couldn’t afford a door so the gate on the property’s side fence was the barrier between me and the world outside. The gate was only five feet high, so anyone tall enough walking past could still see over.

To me – those passers by were my first audience. Whenever anyone walked past, I’d be sure to try and play something tuneful and not make any mistakes. Through many a summer’s day I played guitar from inside the garage and looked the West and pretended and believed that I was performing to an audience, from a stage. An amphitheatre filled the sound of an electric guitar and bathed in the sunbeams of the after school sunlight. I didn’t have to go to Church I was there every day. All I had to do was plug in, turn on and play guitar.

Often, I played like there was someone listening. Mostly, no one was. It was enlightening to find out that my neighbors, an Italian family directly across from the garage, was listening occasionally and the mother did make comment that they could hear me playing my tunes and how I sounded ok and seemed to be improving. Acceptance of my efforts I thought.

They had a daughter who I tried to impress with my playing but Italian girls, who had strict parents, were hard to impress safely with the sounds of a guitar in the early 70’s. This challenge to impress, to gain acceptance, made me strive to play even better.

I played like it was a live performance being recorded for posterity.

Everything was improvised – sounds, tones and composition were more important than playing note for note tunes of songs of the day. Creating a tonal landscape was the daily quest. Getting lost in the vibrations of sounds created was more significant than anything else at the time.

Garage Guitarist: Ian Carter

Teenagers spend most of there teenage years developing the personality traits that will guide what happens to them through young adulthood and even middle age and older. So for a teenage boy possessed by the sound that a guitar makes, a sound which to a teenager has some kind of magical powers that enhance the experience of growing up and finding his place in the world, playing guitar in that garage gave me the base from which many of my life’s experiences grew from.

Trying to re-create and emulate the sounds and songs of the guitarists and bands, popular at the time was important of course. If you played a popular riff or even strummed the chords of a popular song of the day, you became something other than a non-entity. Hero status might be carrying it a bit too far – but I did notice that the better I played those riffs the more localized fame I achieved. Girls noticed me if I played a song they liked. Boys were impressed if you played songs they liked. Go to a party and take your guitar, you were, for a brief part of the evening the centre of attention. How long depended on your repertoire of songs and how well you played them. By the time I was playing in a band regularly I had developed a reasonable list of tunes and could play most of the popular songs, so the guitar was good for improving social standing too!

Being a Garage Guitarist was the basis of this guitar player’s journey. I encourage all guitarists, beginners and advanced to enjoy some time in your own garage or someone else’s if you don’t have one. Play alone, play with fellow musicians – soak up the sounds and play every note like it was your finest performance to the audience just outside the door. Be inspired by whatever sounds you create. Write down the words, record the sounds. Who knows what may happen.

One thing is certain you will have created a lifetime experience that will give you wonderful guitar playing memories to re-visit as the years go by. The glory days are from today onwards so pick up your guitar and go play, live today, play today, start creating your yesterdays so you can relive these creations at the other end of life’s rainbow and look back like I do on those times spent as a Garage Guitarist.

Post by: Ian Carter
Ian is the owner of www.icguitars.com our “Dealer Down Under”
Copyright by Ian Carter 2006

The Garage Guitarist: Ian Carter from MyRareGuitars.com

Slinky: Link Wray & the Wraymen

Link learned the guitar at the age of nine from a carnie named Hambone, in town with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. They began their friendship when Hambone noticed Link strumming an old acoustic on his parents’ front porch. As an army brat, Link was used to a nomadic lifestyle. By the age of fifteen he was paying twenty dollars a night to sit in with country-great Tex Ritter, so he could continue to learn his craft.

Lacking the technical know-how of the jazz luminaries of the day, TalFarlow and Django Reinhardt being his favorites, and unable to sing due to the loss of a lung to childhood tuberculosis, Link began to experiment with his sound. He tried such original ideas as poking holes in his amplifier speakers to get a new kind of distortion. Teaming with his brother Doug and first cousin Shorty, The Wraymenwere born. Prestigious venues and Top 20 success followed in 1958, when Rumble (actually titled Oddball by Link) made the Charts.

Link Wray

This ushered in the era of the guitar instrumental, and Link stayed ahead of the pack by using unique guitars and the electronics of the day, creating probably one of the first home studios. He called it the Three Track Shack because it was housed in a shed and had only one three-track tape recorder, ;state of the art for the time. By merging chugging blues, surf twang, and psychedelia into a sound that was soulful, irreverent, and individual, Link Wray created a new music. Some people call it Rock and Roll.

A friend of mine had every Link Wray album. My education began by playing each of these albums over and over. So when Link came to town, it was the show I had been waiting. We plotted and planned, bought tickets and then lost them, bought them again. Two nights later we were ready to go. I slicked up my shoes and slimed up my hair in true Rockabilly fashion, donning a western shirt embossed with tigers. My friend was dressed to dazzle in a late 50s ruby red velvet dress and a pair of knee-high stiletto boots.

Link Wray with a Supro Dual Tone Guitar

We arrived as Link roared into Rumble. The thrust and the volume of the song was even more powerful live. Link stood firm and anchored the band with ultra-fuzz arpeggio riffs, keeping the trio in tow. With his lanky lumbering frame, a fierce ponytail, and motorcycle jacket, he hunched into his guitar. It was incredible that the man producing this wall of brute sonic strength was in his seventies. As he roared along, I realized that this timeless music has never been more alive. After Jack the Ripper, Rawhide, and Ace of Spades (some were played twice during the evening), he launched into one of his more way-out songs. He cranked it all the way up and I realized this was probably the last song of the night.

Link Wray concert ticket (October 2000)

My friend and I rushed forward to witness the rollicking rave-up. We slid in next to the stage, and with a wail of his guitar he seemed to play off of us alone, looking our way with an expression of childlike wonder. I figured he had his eye on my lady friend. Then something remarkable occurred. He walked over to face me, continuing to play. As the eyes of a shaman stared into mine, he strummed with his right hand and motioned for me to play the neck. And there I was, dear reader, simultaneously reaping the riffage with the legend himself. As tom toms rolled and cymbals crashed and the electric bass pounded to a climax, Link looked directly at me and nodded as though we had shared an intimate secret. In the next moment he was center stage again, commanding the final surge of power and sound to ecstatic applause. My friend also reveled in the moment, a firsthand witness to a dream come true.

Link Wray on stage

All the greats have come across Link at one point in their musical development. He didn’t live to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but was inducted into its Rockabilly counterpart. Bob Dylan, hearing of Link’s death, covered Rumble last week. Neil Young once said, if he could see any band in the world, he would chose Link Wray and The Wraymen. Simply put, the king is gone, but he is not forgotten.

Post by: Devin Patrick

The Night I Played Link Wray’s Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

A group of people immediately came up and asked the guy for his autograph. I didn’t recognize him, so I assumed he was a TV actor. People are always fussing over actors I don’t recognize. (I haven’t watched TV since I was a kid, so I’m often off the grid when it comes to pop culture.)

I forgot about the guy for a couple of minutes. My mind was on a song I was writing, and I was replaying a riff over and over in my head so I’d remember it when I got home. But I couldn’t ignore the guy for long, because more and more people kept stopping for autographs. He was cheery and kind to everyone, even though they were interrupting his meal.

It’s gauche to ask for autographs in L.A., and it struck me as odd just how many people were doing it. I glanced over a couple of times, and the guy smiled at me, but I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to intrude on his space.

Halfway through lunch, I hit on a really great ending for my song. I grabbed my cell phone, planning to go into the restroom and record it before I forgot it. I stood up and accidentally dropped my phone on the famous guy. I apologized and explained that I was going to the restroom to record a song. I realized that this probably sounded weird, but the guy didn’t seem to think so. I remember exactly what he said. He looked at me and said, “Is that so?” with so much interest and friendliness that it made me grin.

I squinted at him for a few seconds, wracking my brain to figure out who the heck he was. It occurred to me then that he might be a musician instead of an actor. I rarely know what musicians look like, even if I love their music. I recently saw a DVD of Led Zeppelin for the first time, and was shocked that Robert Plant was blond and flamboyant. I’d always imagined him dark, brooding and serious, and this new image gave me a mind-spin. The same thing happened the first time I went to a Neil Young concert. I was devastated that this geek with hideous mutton chops was the force behind the most brilliant, haunting music I’ve ever heard. My romantic fantasies were crushed, but it was still the best show I’ve ever seen. Neil Young in concert is f*#*ing awesome.

Anyway, I went to the bathroom and called my home number and sang the ending of my song to my machine. I recorded it a couple of times, to make sure I got all the nuances. When I came out of the bathroom, I asked the waitress if she knew who the famous guy was, and she squealed, “George Harrison, you idiot!”

George HARRISON!!?? My heart lurched to my throat. George Harrison was my HERO!

OK, so he’s everybody’s hero, but you’ve got to understand, I’m a sitar player. The sitar is the love of my life – I love it more than my computer, more than my ’62 Telecaster, maybe even more than my orange tomcat who brings dead things into the house all the time.

Maharishi's Ashram (Rishikesh, India)

I bolted back outside with a smile splitting my face open. There were so many things to talk to him about! I spend a lot of time in Rishikesh, India, which is where the Beatles stayed when they were there. The Maharishi’s ashram is abandoned now, and totally overgrown by jungle. When I’m in India, I trek in there every day and sit on the roof of the house the Beatles built. (It’s the only house on the property. The rest of the buildings are little beehive- shaped meditation huts.) The roof overlooks the Ganges River, and I sit there and play sitar and watch the mist float across the mountains and the monkeys swing in from the jungle. It’s a magical spot – truly beyond description — and it’s easy to see how the Beatles wrote so much incredible music there.

I wondered if George had ever been to the secret caves in Rishikesh or discovered the hidden, white sand beaches down the river. I was curious whether he’d ever encountered wild elephants, and if he fed the big, jungle apes like I do.

Rane Sevin, Sitar (Kings of Jupiter)

Also, I was bursting with sitar questions to ask him. I wondered which tunings he used and if he ever installed pickups. I wondered how he dealt with the feedback problems sitars have when miked. (“Real” sitar people won’t even discuss the idea of pick-ups. Sitar is meant to be played acoustically. Playing rock and roll with electric instruments, as I do, is an apostasy.)

I even had the wild thought that I could invite George over to my house to play my new custom-made sitar. Maybe he would even sign it! That would be so unbelievably cool! Or if he didn’t want to go to my house, maybe he’d wait for me to bring my sitar back to the café.

I abandoned all pretenses and ran right up to his chair…but he was gone! I looked up and down the sidewalk, but he wasn’t there. I sprinted down the steps to check out the parking lot behind the restaurant, but again – nobody. He must have parked in front of the restaurant and driven off while I was in the bathroom.

I felt ill…literally ill! How could he have done this to me? I love his music so much, and I admire what he stood for and who he’d become.

Now that he was gone, his face retroactively snapped into recognition. The only Beatles pictures I’d ever seen were from the 60s and 70s, but now I put that young face together with the older one, and can’t imagine how I didn’t recognize him …especially with the BRITISH ACCENT and the AUTOGRAPH HOUNDS!!! The waitress was right — how STUPID could I BE???

As I drove home, I consoled myself with the thought that I still might meet him someday. Sitar players have a way of finding each other. People have introduced me to a couple of India’s giants — there was a good chance I would run into George someday.

But that never happened. Sadly, he died a few months later. I’ll never get to tell him how much I loved his music. I’ll never get to thank him for bringing the sitar to the west…thank him for changing my life. I had the chance, and I was too polite to grab it.

Lesson learned. If I ever run into Neil Young, I’m gonna tackle him first and make apologies later.

Post by: Rane Sevin

My Lunch with George Harrison from MyRareGuitars.com

Custom Longhorn Guitar by Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Here is one of my solutions to the problem. I bought a 1968 Coral Longhorn Body off of EBAY for 65 bucks. It had never been used, no neck, not even a neck pocket, no routing for pickups, no wiring, no pickguard, nothing but a body. Enclose is a pic of the body as I got it and the guitar I made out of it. I did all the wiring, inlays, designed and made the pickguards by hand, assembly, set up, everything.

My inspiration for this project was the old BIGSBY guitars made by Paul Bigsby back in the late 40’s and early 50’s and also the gaudy Cool Italian guitars of the 1960’s. Also I was thinking of the original handmade Mosrite stuff where Semie Mosley would include a fancy pickguard, arm rest and so forth.

My first step was to decide on pickguard material. I went with the white pearloid, or what I call Mother of Toilet Seat, in other words, fake pearl. My pickguard material came from ALL PARTS. I sell their stuff in my store and it is great quality. I knew that I wanted to cover the entire headstock with it but that presented a problem. The neck is basicaly a generic strat type neck but since you cannot bend the thick pearloid I had to make it two pieces. I decided to make the second piece double as my truss rod cover. The neck came from a low priced strat style guitar called a Palmer. Great neck for almost no cost and it plays like a dream.

Next was attaching the neck and body. Since this body had never had a neck, there was no neck pocket. After observing what I call the First rule of guitar repair, I routed out an area to attach the neck about an inch of so deep and also removed part of the material under the fingerboard to get the proper slant to the neck in relation to the body. Due to the fact that I was going to use a rosewood archtop bridge I did not need to worry about where I placed the neck since I could position the bridge anywhere I wanted after the guitar was together.

What is “The First rule of guitar repair?” For every minute you DO something to your guitar, you THINK ABOUT IT for 20 minutes FIRST. If you take your time and approach guitar repairs this way you will make a lot less mistakes in the long run! After attaching the neck, I started on my Inlays. All it had when I started was the boring and traditional plastic dots. I drilled those out of the neck and replace them with real abalone dots. Next I used diamond shaped abalone pieces that I bought from RESCUE PEARL Company and cut them into triangles. Then I routed the fingerboard and added them to make the pattern you see now. You can do a search and find Rescue Pearl on the net, nice folks and very helpful and reasonable prices too. I then started to design the pickguard. I wanted it to follow the lines of the F-hole rather than hide the F-hole as they do on so many hollow body guitars. I used old file folders and cut the patterns from them with scissors after drawing them free hand and then copied them in pearloid. The arm rests and the control plate were done the same way. I used an old Seymor Rail pickup I had laying around and kept the electronics simple since there is a limited amount of space on the body anyway. I also made sure to position all the electronics where they can be worked on easily from the F-holes in the future.

Finally I strung her up and added the ALLPARTS Rosewood bridge. Incredibly, the intonation on this guitar is perfect, no need for tune-o-matic bridge saddles at all. It has a wonderful warm woody tone that is different than any of my other guitars and I just love it. Add to that the fun of making it myself and I have a guitar that will never leave my collection.

Post by: Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Frankenstein Longhorn Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

The Pizza Guitar Rescue Mission

I guess I should explain who we are first. We are Buddha and the Pests, a group of itinerant musicians who play together whenever the mood or money moves us. Lately we hadn’t seen a lot of movement so the gig at the “Big E” was a blessing. I’m Buddha, the lead singer, songwriter, rhythm guitar and quasi-leader of the clan. You’ll meet the other guys later as they join the stories, but yes, one of our hobbies or “missions”, as Reverend Right calls it, is the rescue of abused instruments. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ’59 semi-acoustic, electric Kay that someone spray painted flat black and decorated with skull and bullet hole decals. Or the ’66 Fender Mustang that someone covered with Elmer’s glue and then sprinkled with a generous dose of silver and gold glitter. Yeah we like to save these orphans and try to rehabilitate them when ever possible.

I’d seen an old beater in the mall the week before, but hadn’t had the time to check it out. Hopefully it would still be there. I worked my way back past the piles of odds & ends, old lamps, tube radios, junk, store fixtures, etc back to Frank’s booth in the very rear of the building. And there it was, lying on top of a stack of old speakers. I’d noticed it there before, but had never really looked at it closely. It appeared to be an old American or Japanese electric guitar from the early 60’s, one of the thousands cranked out in some factory and sold at Sears or Western Auto stores back then. It may have been a mail-order birthday present from “the World’s Largest Store” that made a young West Kentucky boy jump for joy when he ripped open the package for which his parents had scrimped and saved for so long.

It had been a shiny brown sunburst, the color guitar folks call ‘tobacco brown’, but now it was a little worse for wear. It was covered in a layer of dust, but that was the least of its problems. The white pick guard had been broken to pieces and part of it was missing. The electronics-(the pick-up, jack, tone and volume control)-were lying in the hollowed out cavity of the body. They were faded and slightly rusty, but they might still work. One major problem was the piece of bright yellow adhesive tape with the scrawl of $25. There was no way that was gonna happen, at least not from me. If it was all in one piece and not too banged up I might give the ‘list’ price, but not in its sorry state. I’d determined that I would work out a deal for the guitar provided I didn’t have to fork out any actual, physical cash. I could then clean her up and bring her back to the land of the living or at least hang her on the wall.

Frank, the proprietor of this particular stall, preferred cash money but as this piece had been sitting for over a year he might just deal. Amazingly he agreed to swap even for a ¾ size children’s guitar which I’d picked up at a yard sale for $4. What a deal-and no actual cash changed hands! I was quite pleased with my trading prowess. However, on reflection this may have been Frank’s version of what they call in the retail industry a loss leader. You know the 24 rolls of Wal-Mart toilet paper for $3, which is a great deal, but then you wind up spending $37 on junk you never planned on buying in the first place. I left Frank’s booth with the beater and with an early 60’s Teisco bass, but that’s another story. Oh, I also left a trombone and a small chunk of change. Grrrrrrr.

The Pests were standing around in the parking lot at the Dairy Queen:  smoking, farting and discussing the set list for tonight’s show. They looked at my finds, shook their heads in dismay and piled back into the van. I dropped the Pests off at the Executive Inn and then headed for home planning out how to rehabilitate my new patient. I had a couple of hours before I had to get ready to play so I thought I’d jump in to the rehab. The first step was to try to clean off some of the accumulated years of grit and grime. I found an old pizza box to sit the guitar on, (so as not to scratch it), though at this point no one would probably notice any new blemishes. Then I tracked down my special spray bottle of guitar cleaner which was on top of the armoire next to the little xylophone-playing girl wind-up toy. I’d learned early on to use an actual guitar cleaner after accidentally dissolving the decals off of another pawnshop treasure. Who was to know that what I thought was a high school shop project which I’d picked up for $12 in a Galveston pawn shop, was actually a short lived American creation from St. Louis. It looked like a double necked, 6-string/12-string Frankenstein guitar. The “Stratosphere Twin” logo had disappeared in seconds along with about $300 in collector’s value. It still brought $200 from Guitar Emporium so it wasn’t a total bust. But anyway, I started cleaning up the guitar peeling away the layers like an archaeologist on a dig. Most of the major gunk was coming off, but I noticed that the top layer of veneer or more likely plywood was bubbling up in a few places. Elmer’s Carpenters glue and a few clamps would straighten that out. After taking care of the glue job, I set the body aside to dry and took the electronics inside for testing. I plugged the cord into the jack only to be greeted by a loud buzzing roar. Note to self: One should always turn off the volume before plugging in any electronic equipment, especially if you’ve been playing Hendrix the night before. I turned the volume down and tapped on the pickup. It worked. Further tapping and knob turning determined that the volume and tone controls also worked. Wow, this one might not end up as “just a wall hanger” after all.

Let’s see. The electrics work, the body’s somewhat clean; the next task was the pick guard. Pick guards are designed to protect the surface finish of a guitar, but they also often serve as the support for the pick-up and controls. As this guitar’s finish was pretty much finished already, I needed a pick-guard to mount the gear on. The original pick-guard was definitely smashed into pieces. It was missing several good sized chunks so it would have to be replaced. You can buy pre-made pick-guards for some popular models of guitars like Strats or Les Pauls, but this guy was not of the popular school.

Also, as I was trying to prevent having any $ outlay on this project, I began searching for alternative options. Looking up I noticed the fluorescent light above me. The fixture was covered with a sort of crystallized sheet of plastic which served to diffuse the light. Hmmm. My wife probably wouldn’t notice that it was missing, so I stood on a chair and worked the sheet out of the light frame. I placed the sheet on the pizza box, (so as not to scratch it) and traced the shape of the original pick guard with a black magic marker. The guitar was going to look so cool with this sort of shiny crystal like pick guard! However, my exuberance waned when I tried to cut the sheet. Scissors, tin snips even a razor blade-box cutter led to jagged fractures that spread like cracking lake ice during a spring thaw. I then noticed one of my daughter’s old “In Sync” posters hanging on the wall. The glass was actually a thick mylar sheet. Eureka! I put the mylar on the pizza box, (so as not to scratch it) and proceeded to trace the pick-guard again. This would look so cool. You’d be able to see the controls and wires through the clear cover sort of like those Ampex Dan Armstrong guitars from the 60’s. However, once again the material would not cooperate. It would not cut smoothly. I laid the “new” clear pick-guard, with its jagged little edges down on the pizza box. It looked like I was going to have to fork out some boot and buy some real pick-guard material after all, and probably even have to pay someone to cut it out. I stared down at the failed experiment in frustration.

But then, wonderment of all, that little light bulb went off again. The rough, clear, cut-out was sitting on top of the pizza box. The Box was from Homerun Pizza and had the image of a baseball player batting in the center. The way the cut out was laying, the words “Home Run” and the batting figure fit perfectly into the pick-guard shape. With trepidation I traced the shape and then used the razor blade to cut out the guard. It fit.

I screwed the new pick-guard into place and plugged her up. A flip of the switch, a few plunks and the sound of the 60’s beamed out into the ether. Aaah, another successful guitar rescue.

Help BUDDHA and the PESTS! We’re broke! We’ve got CD’s, songs, film treatments, amps and guitars for sale. Contact us today!!! [BUDDHAnthePESTS[-at-]aol.com]

Post by: Buddha and the Pests

Guitar Rescue: A True Story from MyRareGuitars.com

All of this is cronicled in Jeff Lemrichs book – Savage Lost – about the South Florida Garage scene.

Life Magazine, Feb. 1984: The Beatles in my cousin’s backyard swimming pool

Every other weekend I would go to my cousin’s house with my 62′ CAR Strat and Bandmaster to practice in his garage. These were large homes built in what they call {in Florida} a Hammock, heavy vegetation all around so that you could not see the house nextdoor or across the street. Richard was the guy behind my cousins house who had drums and a P.A., so naturally he was our first choice to join our band.

Early 1964 we were playing every weekend, the garage ,backyard parties and the occasional school dance.

On the Wednesday before a Saturday night gig, Richard call’s and says he wouldn’t be able to make it, he has to help his Dad, a Dade County Sheriff on special detail. This Sucked! No drummer, no P.A. no Saturday Night Gig!! That Friday after school we went to see Richard to beg his Dad to let him off…..

We were stopped at the drive-way by two huge Sheriff’s officers and told to Go Away.. Up the drive we could see three black Cadillac Fleetwoods { I know Cars!} We asked them to tell Richard we came by as a last resort. Saturday came and went and we were more than puzzled by what was going on. This was the same neighborhood were Jack “Murf The Surf” Murphy lived during his diamond hiesting days!

Sunday I was getting ready to call Mom to come pick me up and go home. About three in the afternoon Rich calls and says he can’t talk about whats been happening at his house but if we will get dressed in our Sunday clothes he will meet us in an hour with a big surprise that will” make everything right with the world!”

Right on time Mrs. Shindler’s gold 64′ Grand Prix shows up, Rich in the front seat smiling from ear to ear! “Sorry I couldn’t talk to you guy’s this week, but we had house guests and security was tight”. What gives? “We are on our way to Miami Beach to the Deauville Hotel for the tapeing of the Ed Sullivan Show!!”

His Dad, Sheriff Schindler was in charge of Beatles security while they were in Miami!! Our pal, our drummer had The Beatles in his house!! His Pool! His room! And he could’nt tell a soul!! Our lives were changed that weekend. We were already Fanatics and had all the records and had already cut back on the surf music! The show was awesome, you saw it too! I buzzed on this for years! That Life magazine cover story was shot in the Shindler’s pool, on their diving board! In 51 years of living that weekend of laying around totally bummed out and dejected is one of the best couple of days I ever had!

Post by: Mark Harvey from Dallas, TX

The Beatles in My Cousin’s Backyard Swimming Pool from MyRareGuitars.com

Tommy Chong holding my Eastwood Phantom Guitar

Now Tommy Chong had other hits besides the ones with a bong, a joint. He was also in a band called Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers. While performing in a small club in Vancouver, Diana Ross discovered the band’s unique talent and brought them to the attention of Berry Gordy – who signed them to Motown. (Another fun fact: Jimi Hendrix, working as an R&B sideman, joined the group in December-1962 until he met up with Little Richard and left.)

Tommy Chong on stage at Yuk Yuk's in London, Ontario (Jan. 2005)

The group’s debut “Does Your Mama Know About Me” written in ’68 by Tommy Chong and Tom Baird, provided them with a surprise top-40 hit that managed to stay on the charts for ten weeks! Only later in ’69 for Chong to disband and team up with Cheech . A far cry from the stuff we all know Chong for playing; Beaners, Earache My Eye, and Up In Smoke – which he performed at his show.

Me with Tommy Chong

His passion for playing the guitar is what brought my Eastwood Phantom along with me. After the show, I had a chance to meet him. At a lose for words, I remember muttering to him: “Tommy Chong,I love you man!”

We both laughed. Then I asked him if he could sign my guitar with an inspirational message. As I took my guitar out if it’s box, I can hear the ooh’s & ahh’s, and the comments of it being a wicked guitar from the crowd & Tommy! His face lit up, to be given such a thing to autograph. It was the highlight of my life!

Tommy Chong signing my Eastwood Phantom Guitar

So I packed my Eastwood back in its box without looking at the graph and waited until I got home. I wanted it to be a surprise. Now the thing is – when you get something autographed, you are supposed to hide it in a vault and never touch it, or look at it again (so they say). However, it’s not that easy when it’s an Eastwood, and my only guitar. That’s like telling a kid he can’t have candy!

In result, the autograph is smudged and not getting any better, – so time to get a new one -and quick! I must salvage what is left as I leave you with some wise words left to me by Chong on my guitar:

Tommy Chong's autograph on my Eastwood Phantom Guitar

Post by: Ziggy Majewski

Earache My Eastwood: Meeting Tommy Chong from MyRareGuitars.com

I have been collecting guitars for 25 years. Although I have had many different guitars over the years, my preference is for Vintage guitars, which makes eBay a good place to trade because of the wide audience. So consequently you are probably reading this because you saw one of my guitars for sale on eBay. Welcome!

So, what’s up with the phrase, Even Better Than the REAL Thing!???? Read on…..

In Search of Mosrite: The Mosrite Ventures Model circa. 1987

For the past few years I had been looking for a really nice Mosrite Ventures Model Vintage guitar. Prices ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 depending on the year and the condition. Last year an angel descended on eBay with 35 NOS Mosrite guitars that were built in 1987. These guitars were all brand new and were never sold. They were stored in a warehouse for 14 years. Unbelievable! They were auctioned off one by one, week after week, until they were all gone. I bought the 13th one that sold. I was not disappointed.

1987 Mosrite Ventures Model Electric Guitar NOS

The first day I stared at it, the second day I touched it and on the third day I played it. The fourth day I told the family. The fifth day I told the neighbors. The sixth day, everyone came to look at it. The seventh day I rested. What an incredibly beautiful guitar! In fact, I soon realized that it was TOO beautiful! How could I risk pulling it out of the case every day and playing it? It was like having a bad addiction! I needed a fix! It drove me crazy to know that it sat right over there in the corner, taunting me, yet at the same time I could not risk opening the case for fear of damaging such a wonderful instrument! I needed a solution. Then it hit me… Buy a REALLY nice reproduction Mosrite that I could play everyday! EBAY on: search: MOSRITE.

1970's Univox Mosrite Ventures Reproduction Guitar

I started with this UNIVOX pictured above. Nice looking copy but the neck was typical of any reproduction 1970’s guitar and anyone who has played a Mosrite knows, the neck is what it is all about. Next I tried a Teisco model (below).

Reproduction Teisco Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

Much better quality than the Univox, much better neck, and a good deal for a $300-$400 vintage guitar, but I decided to keep looking.

1970's Silvertone Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

This is an early seventies Silvertone. A two notches below in looks, one notch above in feel, but not quite there yet. I also found another Silvertone, different headstock, body a little smoother, similar neck with a white pickguard. I suspect this one was makde by Kawai in the early seventies. Curious how the body and headstock are different, but all the hardware is identical! Here it is…

1970's Silvertone Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar (Kawai)

So, after a significant amount of research, and a great deal of time justifying the outrageous price, I purchased the Japanese made reproduction Mosrite, the one with the “excellent” tailpiece. Here is a picture….

1970's Japanese Reproduction Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

This guitar retails for $1695 and you can get them for around $1000. Pretty pricey for an reproduction Vintage guitar, I must say. Anyway, I’ll be damned if this Japanese Mosrite isn’t one of the nicest guitars I have ever owned! It looks GREAT, the neck feels GREAT and dare I say, it even sounds BETTER than the 1987 Mosrite! Brighter, crisper, it sounds just GREAT. All of this is fine with me because after all, it is NOT a real Mosrite. No sir, I have one of those over there in the corner. The REAL Mosrite is not for playing, so it doesn’t matter anymore what it feels like and what it sounds like, it only matters what it LOOKS like. And so it should be. Who in their right mind would start bashing away on an instrument that can never be replaced? So, when I looked at the situation in this light, it occured to me that the Japanese guitar is arguably… Even Better Than the REAL Thing!

…and so started my quest.

I don’t think I would ever part with the ’87 Mosrite, but I think I have found a way to live with my addiction, and that is to supplement my real Vintage Guitars…. with guitars that feel, look and sound really good, but at a price point that makes it a no-brainer. It’s almost like buying insurance for the ’87 Mosrite. Now I am not playing it as often as I normally would and consequently I’m maintaining the integrity of the Vintage instrument and allowing it to appreciate.

Since then, I’ve been on a quest to find the ultimate in reproduction Vintage guitars that are qualified to add to the list. In so doing, with my efforts and those of others, I hope that this page can serve as a tool for people that are looking for “everyday player” guitars to supplement their Vintage Collection and also for people who would never buy a Vintage Guitar but want The Ultimate Reproduction Vintage Guitars on the Planet.

Please send along your Even Better Than the REAL Thing! guitar stories, along with pictures if possible, and I will include them. Here are a few examples:

Coral Hornet 1960’s

Vintage 1960's Coral Hornet Electric Guitar

For me, love at first sight. A while back I found one in San Diego. That is a picture of it above, a beauty. Unfortunately they wanted $2,000 for it. They probably still have it today. I’ve played one and they are a lot better looking than playing, primarily because the tailpiece is lousy. The intonation cannot be adjusted because it is a vibrato tailpiece with a piece of wood for a bridge that slides around. Every time you change the strings, you wrestle with it to keep it in tune. That aside, I could not get it out of my mind, so I found one on EBAY that had been refinished and needed a little TLC. With a little work, about $200 in parts (Bigsby and Tune-o-matic bridge) and a few hours of guitar love, I ended up with a real nice looking (some say wierd!?)AND a really nice playing 60’s Coral Guitar. The Gibson Bridge combined with the Bigsby Vibrato make this a NICE player. Stays perfectly in tune for days. Compared to an original at $2000, this one cost about $350. Here is a picture of it:

Vintage 1960's Coral Hornet Electric Guitar (Refinished)

Comments from Buyer: “Whooo–it got here! I was jumping up and down, and I was so excited that I dragged it over to a friend’s house last night. Thanks SO much!!!” Ann from CA.

In Search of Mosrite: 1987 Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com