Your main guitar and its story.

jd0272

Gassage said:

jd0272 said:

@Gassage drummerist murdered Desperado for the Mrs, love it!!!

I'm sorry to hear Henry was a cock tho, nearly (several years ago pre-wedlock/jam eaters, advertised in AutoMarques if I recall?) bought a C4S from him, seemed 'canny' online. Pesky interweb.

He's pretty much hated in the Porsche world for his bullshit sales antics and basically illegal pricing methods (selling without statutory 3 month warranty.) Cridfords are a much safer bet.

Long past mate, three kids and wifey nowadays!! Plus the gig gear

jd0272

Tho it's all really

dindude

2010 Custom Shop Custom Deluxe is no.1.

My dad passed away pretty suddenly through cancer about 6 years ago. He wasn't a wealthy man by any stretch, he ran a second hand / vintage book shop, didn't make much money and only got into it in his later stages after it being his hobby for years and he was like a pig in shit.

When he died the stock was left to us kids, we (me and my two siblings) sold all the stock up (none of us wanted to become book-keepers!), and by the time everything was settled we made about £2K each. 

Not a lot for someone's livelihood. What do you do with £2k in all honesty, pay off the mortgage for a month, stick into savings to sit there?

Nope, you stick it in your back pocket and go guitar shopping. It was at a time when I couldn't have realistically hoped to spend that much on a guitar, having just moved house, and, so long as I found a keeper, I thought it would be a great way to enjoy the money - cash generated by his passion to fuel my own passion.

I knew, after 10 years playing an American Standard, that I was a Strat man, so just had to go and find the one that would be a keeper.

This was it, CS Custom Deluxe in desert sand, nitro finish (2011 on the CS custom deluxe went poly), nice flame to the neck, CS'69's in middle and neck and texas special in bridge, 2-point trem (well after years of using an American Standard I never had an issue with the 2-point), the perfect combo of vintage and modern for me. 

A few subtle mods, callaham bent saddles replacing the blocks, Seymour SSL-5 in the bridge, and stupid no-load tone control replaced with standard type.

Anyway, it's just turned 4 years old (I'm sure not by design but it happened to be bought on the weekend of Father's Day), and it's still my go to guitar. I had the American Standard alongside it for a few months after I bought it and anyone who says these non-relic CS guitars are just american standards with a higher price tag are well off the mark. It left the Standard for dead in build, feel, and tone.

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/9a8e1ab1610cf989db2835d68c381c6f_zps1144ffa2.jpg

koneguitarist

dindude said:

2010 Custom Shop Custom Deluxe is no.1.

My dad passed away pretty suddenly through cancer about 6 years ago. He wasn't a wealthy man by any stretch, he ran a second hand / vintage book shop, didn't make much money and only got into it in his later stages after it being his hobby for years and he was like a pig in shit.

When he died the stock was left to us kids, we (me and my two siblings) sold all the stock up (none of us wanted to become book-keepers!), and by the time everything was settled we made about £2K each. 

Not a lot for someone's livelihood. What do you do with £2k in all honesty, pay off the mortgage for a month, stick into savings to sit there?

Nope, you stick it in your back pocket and go guitar shopping. It was at a time when I couldn't have realistically hoped to spend that much on a guitar, having just moved house, and, so long as I found a keeper, I thought it would be a great way to enjoy the money - cash generated by his passion to fuel my own passion.

I knew, after 10 years playing an American Standard, that I was a Strat man, so just had to go and find the one that would be a keeper.

This was it, CS Custom Deluxe in desert sand, nitro finish (2011 on the CS custom deluxe went poly), nice flame to the neck, CS'69's in middle and neck and texas special in bridge, 2-point trem (well after years of using an American Standard I never had an issue with the 2-point), the perfect combo of vintage and modern for me. 

A few subtle mods, callaham bent saddles replacing the blocks, Seymour SSL-5 in the bridge, and stupid no-load tone control replaced with standard type.

Anyway, it's just turned 4 years old (I'm sure not by design but it happened to be bought on the weekend of Father's Day), and it's still my go to guitar. I had the American Standard alongside it for a few months after I bought it and anyone who says these non-relic CS guitars are just american standards with a higher price tag are well off the mark. It left the Standard for dead in build, feel, and tone.

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/9a8e1ab1610cf989db2835d68c381c6f_zps1144ffa2.jpg

Nice story.

jd0272

^^^^^^^^

Indeed. Nice Fender too.

Gassage

Blondey Beige Fenders seem an endearing constant already in this thread!

viz

dindude said:

2010 Custom Shop Custom Deluxe is no.1.

My dad passed away pretty suddenly through cancer about 6 years ago. He wasn't a wealthy man by any stretch, he ran a second hand / vintage book shop, didn't make much money and only got into it in his later stages after it being his hobby for years and he was like a pig in shit.

When he died the stock was left to us kids, we (me and my two siblings) sold all the stock up (none of us wanted to become book-keepers!), and by the time everything was settled we made about £2K each. 

Not a lot for someone's livelihood. What do you do with £2k in all honesty, pay off the mortgage for a month, stick into savings to sit there?

Nope, you stick it in your back pocket and go guitar shopping. It was at a time when I couldn't have realistically hoped to spend that much on a guitar, having just moved house, and, so long as I found a keeper, I thought it would be a great way to enjoy the money - cash generated by his passion to fuel my own passion.

I knew, after 10 years playing an American Standard, that I was a Strat man, so just had to go and find the one that would be a keeper.

This was it, CS Custom Deluxe in desert sand, nitro finish (2011 on the CS custom deluxe went poly), nice flame to the neck, CS'69's in middle and neck and texas special in bridge, 2-point trem (well after years of using an American Standard I never had an issue with the 2-point), the perfect combo of vintage and modern for me. 

A few subtle mods, callaham bent saddles replacing the blocks, Seymour SSL-5 in the bridge, and stupid no-load tone control replaced with standard type.

Anyway, it's just turned 4 years old (I'm sure not by design but it happened to be bought on the weekend of Father's Day), and it's still my go to guitar. I had the American Standard alongside it for a few months after I bought it and anyone who says these non-relic CS guitars are just american standards with a higher price tag are well off the mark. It left the Standard for dead in build, feel, and tone.

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n505/dindude/9a8e1ab1610cf989db2835d68c381c6f_zps1144ffa2.jpg

EXCELLENT.

Loobs

My main guitar is a 1976 Ibanez Artist. Bought it in Whitstable from a dealer. It's pretty dinged up but it's a sweet guitar. 

I don't know much else. I like playing it. 

koneguitarist

Loobs said:

My main guitar is a 1976 Ibanez Artist. Bought it in Whitstable from a dealer. It's pretty dinged up but it's a sweet guitar. 

I don't know much else. I like playing it. 

That's good enough as far as I am concerned.

DrJazzTap

PRS DGT is my number one. Previous keeper was more of a strat guy. I asked if he'd consider a px plus some cash. He said yes...So I drove 254 miles to do the deal... He was happy, I was elated

My SG has a better story. I started off on a squire jap strat, I then upgraded to a Strat Plus. My friend had just got an SG, I played his and fell in love with the sound of the guitar. I then Px'd the strat, some pedals (including a Boss CS2 for £20!) and some more money and then walked out with my SG in 1998. I learned my chops and gigged on that guitar for the next 12 years or so. The guitar was signed by Allan Holdsworth in 07/8 and then signed by Guthrie earlier this year. I've just treated the guitar to its first refret. It's the only guitar I'd never sell.

viz

Gassage said:

Not quite the easiest to play, but a flat fretboard, lovely thick deep neck with loads of flame and the best seperation I've ever had on my guitars....SSL1C and 2 red dot CS pups.....

1996 Custom Shop Cunetto finished, 1956 RI Mary Kay masterbuilt by J. W. Black.

I went to the CS in 1996, courtesy of Kent Armstrong who I knew quite well. he intro'ed me to Jay. Jay took me around CS (on his skates!) and showed me the new relics. I ordered one there and then but, because of Fender's policy, had to buy it via Musical Exchanges (sadly defunct now). I asked for it to be very heavily reliced as above, and Jay built it for me- it's signed in pencil in both the neck pocket and the neck heel but standard FCS logo on back of head.

It's pretty much as I got it, save for it has a 'real' 1954 backplate on the trem cavity (I just found it somewhere, honestly can't recall where) and it has a replacement SSL1C bridge pup and a shorter trem.

It's been gigged, abused and used. I played the Le Mans 24 hour race once and we played for as long as we could. At the end I knew every scratch in the neck!

One interesting feature is they 'aged' the tweed case, which was the original intention for the relics but never happened due to cost.

it's let me down once- severing a b string in twain during the opening bends to the CNumb outro solo......

You can hear it here:

That sounds absolutely lovely.

ESBlonde

Nothing new here, you've seen it before. It's a 76 strat and heavy as a couple of bricks. I bought it well used in 81 as a back up. I wanted no trem, rosewood fingerboard and neck profile to compliment my Aria so that swap overs would seem easy. It had been fitted with some kind of DiMarzio hotter strat PU in the bridge but otherwise was straight. It gave me the 'commercial' tones I needed and once I had sorted the sloppy neck join/socket/micro adjuster, stoned/dressed the frets and eventually put a 5 way switch on it, it was very usable. Over time I have played it more and more and it is probably my most used guitar ever.



I know 70s strats get a bad rep, but this one does have a sound of it's own. I lent it to another strat player a month or so back at a jam and listened to it from back in the room. Distinctive for sure but a strat none the less. It will be part of my legacy to my sons.

Grumpyrocker

Back in 2008 Mmy darling wife decided she was going to buy me my guitar of my dreams. How could I say no to that? Not only that, but the plan was I’d get a Saturday off from family duties to go and enjoy the whole guitar buying experience. West Dorset isn't exactly packed with good guitar stores – so eventually I decided I was going to head to Manson’s in Exeter. The store has a great reputation and actually makes the guitar used by the bloke with the stupid wheezy voice in Muse.

My plan was to get up early (not hard as I was on baby duty) and be out of the door at 8am to drive from Dorchester to Exeter. Baby wakes me up at 5.30am and the day doesn’t get much better. He’s in an unusually crabby mood by 9am. And why haven’t I left by then? My three year old daughter is seeming faking being ill but then gets herself in so much of a tiz that she vomits all over our sofa.

Looks like my trip is over before it’s begun. But wifey shoves me out of the door at 10am and says she’ll cope, “go have fun”, she says.

So I head into the now busy traffic with every other car pulling a caravan. Really slow at one point because of some bearded anti-oil loon (according to his banner) is cycling up the hill on a recumbent bike to piss us off.

But finally I get to Mansons. I’m after a Les Paul, I say, furnish me with any example of a 2008 Standard and Traditional please stout yeoman and leave me to pull my bluesy wah face in private.

Now at this point I should say that I believe what I wanted was a 2008 Standard with an iced tea finish. And this is the Standard handed to me. Looks so pretty. But by God it was awful. Not what I was expecting at all.

The Standard felt way too light – it felt like a toy. And the the asymmetric neck made me admittedly small hands ache within moments of trying to play it. Didn’t care much for the tone either. What a terrible disappointment. I thought this would be my dream guitar. I actually preferred my Epiphone LP to this.

And then I played the Traditional. Now this is the stuff. Felt like my memories of playing pre-2008 Standards. Felt like the guitar a band mate had back in the mid-nineties.Had the weight, the tone – felt like a real Les Paul, or at least what I wanted from one.

But this wasn’t quite right either. The neck still felt a bit too big for my hands. And so I wandered around the shop having a good think. Time was running out on my parking meter outside. Seems neither guitar was quite right.

One last go. Asked the guy in the shop for a go of a Honeyburst Traditional. And wow. I didn’t need to even plug it in. My fingers felt at home instantly and the beautifully Plecked fretboard. Big smile on my face just playing some blues licks unplugged. This is the guitar that had been sat waiting for me to come and find it. This was the guitar worthy of my wife’s wonderfully kind gift.

And bonkers though this is I bought it without plugging it in. I just knew this was the one. That it would sound great back home through some 12AX7 and EL84 valves. And I was damn right as it plays like an absolute dream. Lovely top too – quite understated. From some angles it looks like a plain top, with a beautiful grain running along the length. And then turn it and it catches the light, and flames in the maple burn across the top. Never a finish I’d have chosen originally – but this was the guitar that spoke to me and I love it. My wife rocks.

SNAKEBITE

Great story!

GuyBoden

1949 Gibson L4C with the first McCarty type pickup Jason Lollar built. Bought from the USA in late 1990's.

impmann

Hmmm - this is tricky. My Tele is probably the guitar I call number 1 but I've told the story a million times (1972 Tele, imported from the US, first gig on day of receipt smashed the neck...).

Then there's the SG - called 'Tim's Baby' in my house (mainly cos I was so protective over the damn thing). 

But the story I'll tell is the Les Paul...

My first proper guitar was an Antoria Les Paul Gold Top - I bought it in Wing Music in Sidcup in 1985 for £125. This was my inheritance from my great Aunt - it doesn't sound a lot, but to our family at the time this was a fortune (I'm not trying to paint a bleak working class picture - but we were a penniless family living in a middle class area with an alcoholic 'breadwinner'... not great). It had been modded with a late 50s P90 fitted at the bridge (dog ear), a Bowen Handle trem arm and what might be described as a 'relic' finish. Over time I modded it further with a Gibson humbucker pickup (I swapped it for the P90, as it was better for heavy rock!!) and a Double Eagle neck pickup - it also had loads of switches for phase, coil taps etc. It was everything to me, but I needed a loud amplifier for gigging... so I broke my heart, and swapped it in 1990 for a Sound City 50w stack.

I always regretted parting with the guitar and vowed that one day I'd own another Gold Top, but this time it had to be a Gibson. During the 90s, I went out to buy a GoldTop on two occasions... on one of those occasions I came home with a Black 3 pickup Custom (damn that salesman was good) and the other, the car went pop on the way and guess where my GoldTop fund got spent.

I gave up playing in 2000 and sold all my gear. I had a change of life direction and I wanted to concentrate on that... it didn't last long...

By 2002 I was buying guitars again - I got my Tele and my SG, but I couldn't find a GoldTop that I liked that I could afford... by this point, my criteria had altered a little to say it *had* to have P90s. This was after seeing Robert Plant's guitarist rocking a really early one and getting some totally amazing noises out of it...

Then in 2010 Gibson launched the Studio '50s Tribute - the original, limited edition one with the big neck and proper woods. I instantly pre-ordered one from Thomann and sat back to await delivery (quoted as 6-8weeks). Three months went past and still no guitar, so I hassled Thomann and found out that they had boobed... they had sold my pre-ordered one to someone else and that they could not get another, so all they could do was to refund me. I then went mad, phoning every store in the UK - no-one had a GoldTop (loads of that dreadful white colour, though!). I even phoned Gibson in the USA and they told me that they had sold the one they had ear-marked for the Gibson museum because the last one got smashed in transit...

I gave up at that point. 

A couple of months went past and I wandered into PMT in Northampton... my local store. Sat on the counter was exactly the guitar I was looking for... it had been sat in stasis after someone had put a deposit on it and not come in to buy it. They had just had notification to send it to Southend where they had another potential customer for it... I just slammed my card on the counter and said "I'll buy it now". After a conflab with Simon (one of the owners of PMT) they agreed to sell it to me there and there... I was presented with a card machine, I keyed in my pin number and walked out the shop. I didn't even know how much I paid for it... in fact, I'm still not sure nor do I care. 

Walking back to the car I had to have one of those "Darling... er, I may have done something silly..." calls... but all was good. 

Anyway since then that guitar has been responsible for selling three more Les Pauls... it is a brilliant guitar, despite the broo-hah-hah about chambered bodies, bad neck angles, short tenon joints, wrong glue, matt finish, and all the other bollocks you read on the internet. In short, I love it...

Here's a pic before I put the guard back on it...

Panama_Jack666

I love this thread Proper guitar porn!

Danny1969

My main guitar was custom made by Simms in Kent for me. The main gist was a Strat shaped guitar made of Mahogany with a Maple cap fitted with a Gibson scale neck. So although it looks like a Superstrat it's got more in common with a Les Paul. The pickups are EMG's simply cos I do a lot of gigs where the electrics are dodgy, especially outside gigs in the summer. EMG's don't need an earth wire so you don't get the nasty little shocks when things aren't earthed right. They are also great for controlling the gain on your amp, there's no loss of treble when you knock the volume down and I've done many a gig using just the volume pot to go clean \ dirty. The volume pot is a push \ push to switch the neck pickup to single coil. The little red switch is a kill switch. 

The paint job is just a tribute to my favorite beer but it's something people remember and I get people asking to be photographed with it. 

Panama_Jack666

Danny1969 said:

My main guitar was custom made by Simms in Kent for me. The main gist was a Strat shaped guitar made of Mahogany with a Maple cap fitted with a Gibson scale neck. So although it looks like a Superstrat it's got more in common with a Les Paul. The pickups are EMG's simply cos I do a lot of gigs where the electrics are dodgy, especially outside gigs in the summer. EMG's don't need an earth wire so you don't get the nasty little shocks when things aren't earthed right. They are also great for controlling the gain on your amp, there's no loss of treble when you knock the volume down and I've done many a gig using just the volume pot to go clean \ dirty. The volume pot is a push \ push to switch the neck pickup to single coil. The little red switch is a kill switch. 

The paint job is just a tribute to my favorite beer but it's something people remember and I get people asking to be photographed with it. 

That's ace. Love the Wife Beater paint job!

Lixarto

Gassage said:

Le Mans....this is rather plutocratic...<snip>

Yes, yes, where's the guitar you're supposed to be talking about?