Guitars From Your Past....Where are they now and has anyone seen them???

Bucket

ICBM said:

boogieman said:

prowla said:

I had a Top Twenty, which was an awful thing, but I sometimes hanker after one. I think I trashed it, so that particular one isn't an option.

I had one too and I sometimes look at them on eBay and think about buying one, just to see if it really was as bad as I remember. I suspect it was tbh.

They are usually pretty bad as they are, but if you’re willing to strip them down and rebuild them completely they can usually be made perfectly good - never great, but properly playable and quite cool-sounding in a punky/Jack White kind of way.

I’ve done quite a few of them - they always sell very easily in the £150-£250 range, mostly to people who had one originally! The price reflects the work put in, not the inherent value - you see people trying to get the same for unimproved ones, which is silly.

The only really insurmountable issue is if the frets are badly fitted, which some of them were - a refret makes the job uneconomical, although if you do it yourself you could just ignore the cost.

My dad has a Top Twenty - not something kept from his youth, he actually bought it for £85 on eBay six or seven years ago. Weirdly, it's actually alright to play - must be one of the rare ones that was built properly (ish) in the first place.

I admit I went into it with very low expectations, but I was surprised by how (relatively) un-shit it was.

guitars4you

boogieman said:

prowla said:

I had a Top Twenty, which was an awful thing, but I sometimes hanker after one. I think I trashed it, so that particular one isn't an option.

I had one too and I sometimes look at them on eBay and think about buying one, just to see if it really was as bad as I remember. I suspect it was tbh. I had the red burst finish one that actually looked quite cool. No idea what happened to it, I think I must’ve sold it on but have no recollection of when or who to. If it’s still around it would be pretty distinctive as it had a homemade wooden case that weighed a ton, was painted white gloss and covered in band stickers and had an orange fun fur lining. Ah the 70s. 

I think I'm right in saying that Top 20 Guitars were only sold via Woolworth's ? - anyone recall otherwise

guitars4you

looks like Robert Smith had one as his first guitar

Strat54

downbytheriver said:

Strat54 said:

downbytheriver said:

I go on about this all the time but it never changes! 

1988 Fender Custom Shop 40th Anniversary Telecaster.  Number 40 of 300. First Custom Shop Guitar I ever saw - in fact I’m not sure I’d even heard of the Custom Shop at this point. It was the first series Guitar they made. I unboxed when it arrived at the shop, played it to death for about 5 years. Sold when I became very close to bankrupt. 

It has turned up a couple of times: I sold it in Edinburgh but next sighting about a decade later was in Poole (eBay) I couldn’t afford it or talk the seller down enough so off it went. Turned up again in Sussex but was already sold before I was aware. Interestingly it was described as hardly used and had a certificate of authenticity (which it did not have when it was new!). Definitely the same guitar - I knew it intimately! It also sold for silly low money. 

I pray for for another shot at it but even if it does turn up now I suspect I would not be able to afford it (times change!). 

Yeah I have pics of that one and the COA is not legit. It should have come with one new, I have jpegs of over a hundred of these 40ths and plenty of COA pics. I guess either Arbiter or the dealer misplaced it.
 Nice guitars, you'd need to pay £3k plus for one I'd guess now (or rather before Covid-19). Good luck.

Only interested in that one! The dealer didn’t open the box, I did! No one really knew about COAs then! 

Three of the ones I owned have since ended up in the USA! The dealers and thus collectors over there were paying silly money for them. I've seen them go for as much as $6k. Good luck, if I see it I'll let you know. I was hoping to get to collect around 200 of these then start publishing them as a Facebook interest page. Still a way to go.

cpcompany

I sold a Fender Strat plus about 8 years ago for a ridiculously knocked down price as I had ruined it with a black paint splatter job when I was about 16. I moved away and it remained untouched at my parents for about 15 years. 

Someone in the Newcastle/Northumberland  area got themselves a bargain. No point in me trying to find it coming up for sale as anyone worth their salt would have got a new paint job on it and I’d never recognise it. 

PhilKing

guitars4you said:

looks like Robert Smith had one as his first guitar

I think you can really hear it on "10:15 On A Saturday Night" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okiCApJeonQ

ICBM

boogieman said:

Ta @ICBM. Worth knowing.

I do remember the frets being quite bad on mine. Likewise the plastic buttons on the machine heads had started working loose from the shafts, but the gears also had a lot of slop in them. I presumed it had had quite a hard life before I bought it, but then they were cheaply made too. My biggest bugbear was the placement of the pick up switches... get a bit too enthusiastic and it was far too easy to knock them both to the off position, inevitably followed by deathly silence. I did that at my first big gig in front of 300 people and nearly died of shame before I figured out what had happened. 

Yes, I will usually replace the machineheads, or at the least rebuild them with better gears and shafts - I have a large collection of such things. The switches-down is a famous problem on Fender Jaguars too! The solutions are to either just turn them round so down is on, or if they're DPDT switches and the pickups have 2-conductor+shield wiring - they often do, surprisingly for such cheap instruments - you can rewire them with a clever circuit so that both-down is both pickups in series, rather than off.

I won't deny that it's a lot of work to do them well though - not only all this, but you usually have to plug every screw hole on the thing and replace most of the screws - they're almost always rusted and stripped, due to the poor quality screws and wood, dress the frets, often alter the neck angle and bridge position or they won't intonate properly, and sometimes a few other things! The electrics are actually usually OK though - at least if the jack hasn't rusted. It's a fair day's job... hence you need to get them for next to nothing.

horsehead

krameree said:

@horsehead That JXG looked very cool! 

Genuinely one of the sexiest guitars that I'd ever owned!

Blueingreen

I don't know what happened to any of my old guitars.  I did try to track down an old LP Custom I would have liked to own again for sentimental reasons, but the buyer had sold it on.  It would have been too heavy for me to gig with nowadays anyway.

Musicwolf

The trouble with guitars from the past is that, like a good yarn, they keep on getting better with age.

There's a few that I miss but, if I tracked them down, would they be good enough to displace one of my existing guitars from the pecking order - or would it just be sentiment?  (probably a bit like ex girlfriends and wives

impmann

Oh... and I’d like my old Shergold Masquerader mk1 back. I got it from someone from the old Music Radar forum, I kept it for years adding a Schaller bridge and sold it to Tim at Sound Affects. 

I’ve owned a couple of others since that weren’t as nice as that one. Sadly Tim was a bit of an arse when I approached him to buy it back. I wasn’t prepared to pay three times the price he paid for it - it even still had the same strings on it. I believe he sold it to someone... 

boogieman

guitars4you said:

boogieman said:

prowla said:

I had a Top Twenty, which was an awful thing, but I sometimes hanker after one. I think I trashed it, so that particular one isn't an option.

I had one too and I sometimes look at them on eBay and think about buying one, just to see if it really was as bad as I remember. I suspect it was tbh. I had the red burst finish one that actually looked quite cool. No idea what happened to it, I think I must’ve sold it on but have no recollection of when or who to. If it’s still around it would be pretty distinctive as it had a homemade wooden case that weighed a ton, was painted white gloss and covered in band stickers and had an orange fun fur lining. Ah the 70s. 

I think I'm right in saying that Top 20 Guitars were only sold via Woolworth's ? - anyone recall otherwise

Pretty sure you’re right, Woolworths definitely sold them anyway. 

Mine was a red to black burst rather than the pic you linked to, also I think it had a black scratchplate? I have a pic somewhere of a very similar one that someone had posted on the old MR forum. 

drwiddly

I've bought and sold loads over the years but I sold a Patrick Eggle Vienna about 8 or 9 years ago that I regretted moving on.

I never thought it would surface but a few weeks ago the current owner (not the guy I sold it to) contacted me via the Eggle forum. He's only just bought it but has given me first refusal if he decides to sell it.

dilbert

I've only 'sold' 2:

• a Squier Hank Marvin strat. Why I got rid of it I don't know, suppose I just fancied something different, sold it to a guy when I was in the Army, don't know where it is now.
• Patrick Eggle LAII, actually traded it in for a Strat+ . This was in my "I sound crap, must be the guitar" phase. I haven't seen an LA, any LA's, in years but I'd like to try it again. 

That's it.......... in 30 years!  

Philly_Q

I've sold many, many guitars over the years including a couple which I've seen turn up in the classifieds here.

Of the ones I've regretted selling, I can think of two which later appeared on eBay and I had the opportunity to buy them back:

1983 Hamer Vector.  This was one of the first few guitars I ever owned, I foolishly sold it when I got pissed off with the EMGs I had fitted (no idea why I didn't just change the pickups again).  I saw it on eBay many years later - still with the EMGs - and was very tempted to buy it back, but I let it slip.

Edwards E-LP-85JB.  This was a copy of the Jeff Beck "oxblood" LP, with the wraparound bridge and in a colour strangely called "Purple Violane".  I bought quite a few Edwards guitars between 2006 and 2011, all now sold, but this was a really good one, I wish I'd kept it.  I saw it on eBay, it had somehow found its way to Spain.  Again I was tempted but they wanted more than I'd sold it for, so I didn't buy it on principle.

adampeter

My first "proper" guitar, a 1990 fender standard strat in pewter with rosewood board, sold it to a mate to buy a PC and it got sold on again.
Would love to own it or at least the same spec/year again

Alex2678

I got left some money when my grandad died and invested in 2 Jackson custom shop rhoads. These are the only photos I have, the gold one had EMGs in when I sold it. Both sold to ‘we buy cash now’ type places to raise quick money when my little boy was on the way. I got ok money for them, the places I sold to specialised in instruments but were a bit closer to cash converters than what you’d consider a regular music shop. I couldn’t buy them back but if anyone’s seen em in the wild id love to know

greggreg66

I had an interesting USA Schecter Hellcat Custom I bought from Sound Control when I worked there. The original price was over a grand (in 2006) and I got it for £345. Sold it a few months later as I didn't really need it, but it seems to be a bit of a rarity as I've never seen another one. It was dark green and I think it had mini humbuckers. I often wonder where that ended up

prowla

guitars4you said:

boogieman said:

prowla said:

I had a Top Twenty, which was an awful thing, but I sometimes hanker after one. I think I trashed it, so that particular one isn't an option.

I had one too and I sometimes look at them on eBay and think about buying one, just to see if it really was as bad as I remember. I suspect it was tbh. I had the red burst finish one that actually looked quite cool. No idea what happened to it, I think I must’ve sold it on but have no recollection of when or who to. If it’s still around it would be pretty distinctive as it had a homemade wooden case that weighed a ton, was painted white gloss and covered in band stickers and had an orange fun fur lining. Ah the 70s. 

I think I'm right in saying that Top 20 Guitars were only sold via Woolworth's ? - anyone recall otherwise

Audition was Woolies’ brand, but I don’t recall that Top Twenty were exclusive to them. 

John_P

Out of the dozens that have come and gone there are 3 that I would love to get back.   

Late 70s mountain 12 string acoustic,  Japanese martin coot that was my dads.   Disappeared after he died and I’d love to track it down.  

1984 Tokai Strat. tst40 blonde rosewood neck, had a hotrails fitted in the bridge and a cig burn on the head.   My first guitar and was stolen from a rehearsal room in Sunderland in 1990.   Super comfy neck and a great guitar.    

Ibanez Jem vsbl blue sparkle.    My main guitar guitar for many years and I stupidly sold it when I had some bills to cover. Really cool guitar that I’d buy back.