Guitars, basses and other noisemakers

[mjp]

Those last two are especially painful, since the Junior and Special are my weapons of choice.

I like that the "flying-clusterfuck" is hanging on a guitar shop wall though. Like someone is going to walk in and say, "Oh, jesus, there it is...the guitar of my dreams!" Wonder what the price tag was on that.

 

[Otto jr]

Those last two are especially painful, since the Junior and Special are my weapons of choice.

I knew that would make you cringe.

Like someone is going to walk in and say, "Oh, jesus, there it is...the guitar of my dreams!"

"Someone" like Joe Bonamassa.

No, that's not me in the photo with him. Nothing against tie-dye. He posted this photo on LPF, he probably found the guitar while out searching for bursts to buy.

 

[PhillyDave]

i don't know whether to laugh or cry

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I feel as if I like any of these posts you'll think i'm condoning this craziness.

 

[Skygazer]

http://www.lespaulforum.com/forum/s...-LP-for-sale-at-Music-Ground&highlight=greeny
Early on in this thread I posted a link about the Peter Green burst from the Les Paul Forum, it is a very good read if the mods at LPF haven't deleted it yet. Joe B. who is a member there (JBLPlayer is his name) posts in the thread about the Greeny burst. He played it but didn't love it. Many of us at LPF had the chance to play it when Phil from Maverick guitars bought it off of Gary Moore in 2003 ]
[...It wasn't just the headstock that snapped, the entire neck was cracked through. Unfortunately, it looks like one of the subsequent owners in the UK replaced some of the original parts including the PAFs and pickup rings before it was sold to Kirk..

It didn't read like Bonamassa didn't like it in your link Otto, reading his post there, nor in this one below, (page 8) but perhaps he was being diplomatic and you heard from a more direct source. (But then Peter Green, wasn't hugely in love with it either).http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/vin...lays-peter-green-gary-moore-1959-burst-8.html

In the article about the 2 million dollars, Hammett does say he went in with a lower offer because he knew it would be accepted, doesn't say how much though, so you're comments interesting.The second video in the article and I've seen that video before ( I didn't know who Phil Harris was and had to look him up} it does give you a very clear look at the damage, especially at the back.

Read some of the possible dodgy dealings regarding the guitar, during that period so I'm glad that Kirk has it, he loves it and at least it's getting played, a lot of snooty comments about the fact it's in the hands of a metalhead, which is just dumb, who knows? maybe he sits on his days off playing nothing but 12-bar blues:)... If he gets to.

 

[d gray]

hey guitar guys -

could you do me a huge favour and give me an idea what these are worth?

i inherited them from someone and want to sell them. from left to right -

Sigma
Hagstrom
Hagstrom II
Fender Pre. (made in Mexico)
Fender Tele Squier

thanks alot. sorry if the pic is too big.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Some of those won't change much in value based on age - for example, that Fender Mexico P-Bass goes used for about $300 retail. ebay would be $250-$350. Judging from the sticker and the wine red finish, it's likely less than 10 years old; it's a desirable finish. New these are more like $500. Best bet is to go on ebay and follow similar listings and see what sells for what. There are so many variables on some of these. For example, the black solid body Hagstrom can vary depending on whether all those switches are fully functional and whether it's from the 60s (looks more like 80s to me on first glance). Try the hagstrom website and try to determine year of construction via serial number. These would be helpful in all cases.

The Tele looked promising at first, but since it's a Squier, it's likely a good player but won't command big money. I can't tell of it's reliced or was just played inside an active volcano for the past 20 years. If that's permanent smoke damage it will hurt the value. Dunno; maybe $250? I can't speak to the Hagstrom hollow body or the Sigma.

 

[mjp]

I'd agree the Fenders aren't going to bring much, assuming they're playable, and it's impossible to gauge playability from a picture. But I wouldn't count out that tele, depending on its age and condition of the neck/frets. Some of those older Squiers are good instruments (some of them).

The Hagstroms are interesting. I think that Strat-y one is from the 60s, but it's been extensively modified, so it's kind of lost any value it might have had as a collector's item (and I don't know how much value that was anyway, maybe not much). It's supposed to look like the pic below. The hollow body Hagstrom doesn't look modern either, but I don't really know much about those things.

Selling guitars online is tough. You might consider seeing if a local guitar shop wants to take them off your hands. You won't get what you'd get selling them yourself, but listing those and answering a million questions about them and shipping them is going to be painful.

 

[d gray]

thanks you guys i appreciate it alot.

yeah the online selling would be a bitch. i was thinking local music stores or kijiji. music stores will lowball but it's quick and easy.

thanks again.

 

[mjp]

You might remember this from earlier in the thread:

Well, I can take the bad marker drawings no longer!

I stripped it down, scuffed it up, wiped it down and taped it off, and I'm shooting the sucker with a can of "coral" nitrocellulose guitar paint.

In my custom spray booth...

Now I'm not real handy with a spray can, so I guess we'll see what happens.

The first coat is on, and 2 or 3 should cover the offending drawings. The "coral" color is a little more orange than pink though, so it's going to look different. No way to match the Gibson pink without getting a custom match by a pro refinisher, and the guitar isn't valuable enough to spend that kind of money on it.

And I'm not painting the neck, so it's going to be kind of two-tone.

Whatever happens, it'll be interesting. And one of a kind!

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Guitar in a grotto.

You might want to consider doing some light wet-sanding with 1,000 grit or even finer after each coat. Spray paint has more texture than you'd think.

 

[mjp]

I know it's going to have a little "orange peel" when it's done and I'll probably knock that down with with some wet sanding. But I'm not sanding between coats. I'm just happy to get the coats on with no drips. So far so good.

The finish on the guitar was not great in the first place. Gibson doesn't even fill the grain on guitars that cost less than a thousand dollars anymore, and mahogany really needs to be filled to be flat. I really like the thin modern finishes, but I'm in the minority. Most people think they're cheap and not very durable. Which they are. But I think guitars sound better without those thick, glossy plastic finishes strangling them.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

For what it's worth, when Lennon sanded down his Epiphone Casino during the White Album period, he claimed that it sounded better; more open, or something to that effect.

 

[mjp]

I played a stripped guitar for a few years and really loved the feel of that thing. The raw neck was great. While it lasted. You might think raw wood on a neck would slow you down, but I didn't find that to be the case.

Whether that guitar sounded better stripped was probably anybody's guess, since I had DiMarzio Super Distortions in it and played it through a Marshall with the gain at 10. In that situation the wood is probably not much of a factor in the sound.

I know the Les Paul Special that I have now - with the very thin, not-grain-filled, flat modern finish - sounds great though. My dog already started taking the finish off of that, and my arm is continuing the job.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I'm with you. That '67 Guild I picked up had some serious neck wear, plus a ding or two, so I took some dark tung oil and 0000 steel wool to that neck and worked it over pretty good. I've actually done the same thing to all my non-painted neck backs.

 

[Otto jr]

I once had a black '68 Strat with the big "Hendrix era" headstock and the maple cap neck just like Jimi's Band of Gypsies strat. Black was a rare enough color for 60's Strats and when I bought it at Rudy's on 48th street in around 1984 ($650.00) they gave me the usual crap about how it once belonged to Jimi, but I think they said that about all late 60's maple cap strats so I never paid it any attention.

One day I decided to strip the black and have a natural wood stratocaster. Later on I brought it to have fret work done on it and the guy showed me where the nut had once been inverted (lefty) as well as a slight cigarette burn on the bottom of the headstock where a lefty would have tucked a smoke in while playing. All speculation, of course, and it didn't matter anyway because Karma caught up with me for stripping the original black finish: the guitar was stolen shortly after and fifteen years later these guitars started fetching upwards of $15k without any Hendrix provenance.

With that said, this is one of my favorite guitars of all time: Paul Kossoff's '59 Les Paul with sunburst stripped off. This was his main guitar when he was in Free.

Do you remember Koss's amazing finger vibrato? Check this video for a glimpse.

 

[mjp]

That naked Kossoff Les Paul is wonderful.

Karma caught up with me for stripping the original black finish: the guitar was stolen shortly after and fifteen years later these guitars started fetching upwards of $15k without any Hendrix provenance.

I don't think you suffered any bad karma for losing the finish. Though, obviously, collector-types would disagree. What did it look like under the paint though? Usually the guitars painted black (or any solid color, I guess) were put together from the less beautiful hunks of wood they had laying around.

I had a 1969 "Olympic white" (a.k.a. off-white or cream) Strat that I bought 5 or 6 years before yours for the same amount - 6 or 700 bucks. I never kept any guitars for 15 or 20 years, so I never would have enjoyed selling it at an inflated price.

But if you think your Karma was bad for removing the paint, imagine what mine was for routing the '69 for a bridge humbucker. Or "gouging," I should probably say. I think I opened up the hole with a chisel. I want to say I did that before the first Van Halen album came out, but I'm not 100% sure of the timeline there. It's quite possible I was "inspired" by Van Halen's Charvel. Either way, it sounded like shit when I was done with it.

 

[Otto jr]

I don't think you suffered any bad karma for losing the finish. Though, obviously, collector-types would disagree. What did it look like under the paint though? Usually the guitars painted black (or any solid color, I guess) were put together from the less beautiful hunks of wood they had laying around.

I had a 1969 "Olympic white" (a.k.a. off-white or cream) Strat that I bought 5 or 6 years before yours for the same amount - 6 or 700 bucks. .

It had a RED undercoat! It looked so nice when it was halfway stripped that I probably should have left it like that -- a beautiful red and black mess. The wood was perfect beneath. I had always been told the same as you: the darker opaque finishes were used for the worst chunks of wood. The wisdom used to be that the sunburst strats were better because they had to use better wood with the grain visible to the eye. Today, any custom color including black or white is worth close to double of any sunburst from the vintage era. So much so that forgers have perfected the art of faking Pre-CBS Strat finishes.

I also had an Olympic White '70 maple neck strat that I traded a few years ago for a '58 Gibson double-cut TV Jr. Olympic white is the color to have due to the Woodstock Strat being white. Adding a humbucker route to a strat is a risky task but when it works you are handsomely rewarded.

I once had a fake LP Custom...Well, one day, a guy I used to jam with found a rat skeleton on a glue trap. He took the whole skeleton and crazy glued it to the front of my guitar. Thank god Slash came along right around then making LPs so popular again I was able to sell that hideous thing rat and all.

 

[Otto jr]

How about this for some humbucker blasphemy: '59 LP Special.

What about this '53 Les Paul gold top that was presumably too heavy for its frail owner.

Read 'em and weep...

It had a leather back that was tacked onto the wood with brass upholstery tacks.

Here is another '59 special. With a rather Van Halenesque neck repair...

 

[Otto jr]

Speaking of stripped guitars one last time, here is one of my favorites -- a '59 burst owned by a guy I know. It was a factory black 1959 Les Paul, one of only two known. The owner saw that there was flamed maple underneath the black finish (the single most significant factor to collectors), he proceeded to strip the black and found this:

Getting back to black finishes being used at the factory to hide bad wood, this lends credence to that theory:

Notice the near side of the bridge pup route, the guy working the router must have slipped, creating that gouge you can see. Not wanting to waste inventory they decided to fill in the gouge and paint the whole thing black.

 

[mjp]

So much for the long tenon in that '59 Special. :(

And the other ones - with the "Van Halenesque" neck repair - and the "weight-relieved" gold top - I don't even know what to say about those. People are creative, I'll give 'em that.

The black '59 story is funny. One of two known! Ha. I guess it's not really funny, but it is. Makes sense though that the black ones were a result of a mistake on the top. Or at least that one seems to be. It's also funny because those "flame" or "quilt" tops - ugh, I don't even like them. I know they were all the rage years ago, but they're so common now on the more expensive Les Pauls, and they just look tacky to me.

I could look at and talk about guitars all day. I think I missed my calling, I should be running a guitar shop somewhere. Maybe I still will. Just me sitting there with half a dozen guitars and any time someone comes in to buy one I won't sell it. That would be a cool job. I wouldn't make any money, but it would be cool.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Speaking of stripped guitars one last time, here is one of my favorites -- a '59 burst owned by a guy I know. It was a factory black 1959 Les Paul, one of only two known.

If indeed there are only two known, Robert Fripp has the other and he used it on all of the '69-'74 recordings. (This will no doubt please mjp to no end.) :eek:

 

[mjp]

I think Fripp played Les Paul Customs. They were all black (hence the nickname, Black Beauty). The sunbursts were all Standards.

 

[Otto jr]

Correct. Pre-'61 all LP Standards were Gold (until '58) and Sunburst ('58-'60). The customs were all black until the 70s when Gibson went all Leo Fender on us and started making every guitar in every color.

I could run a guitar store like Red ran a bookstore (I never met him, I only know the lore). After the first day the customers would wear thin. I'd be running them off in droves: "Goddammit! I told you, if you don't stop playing that damn Nirvana riff I'm gonna put a capo on your nuts until you sing higher than Joni Mitchell."

But it would be fun.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Ah, got it. What do you expect from a Fender guy? :rolleyes:

 

[mjp]

I could run a guitar store like Red ran a bookstore...

Yeah, that sounds about right for me too.

Then over on the Les Paul forum, they'd talk about our stores for years...

"I only went there once, that guy was an asshole!"
"I was in there when I was 20 years old and broke and he gave me a guitar!"
"I never had a problem with him, but I bought a lot of expensive things..."

;)

 

[mjp]

Not exactly a precise color match, but it'll do. I'll post the finished product when it's finished. I have some foam buffing wheel pad things and finishing polish coming next week, and the body will be dry for 5-7 days by then. Should be enough time. I know the longer the better with nitrocellulose.

Speaking of nitrocellulose paint, that stuff must be magic, or the nozzles that came with the can must be great, because the paint went on really easily. Like I said, I'm usually a streaky, drippy menace with a rattle can, so I was surprised at how well it came out. The marker "art" is completely covered. I did four or five coats over a few days. The can is still half full, so it could have easily done a whole guitar.

I got the paint here, if anyone is ever in need of a nitro bomb. (Let's see if the NSA finds that text.)

 

[mjp]

The painty, buffy part is done, and now it's nice and smooth like a baby's ass.

Can I say that? It's not weird that I know how smooth a baby's ass is...I had four younger siblings...you couldn't avoid baby ass in the house I grew up in...I don't condone any of you checking a baby's ass for smoothness. It's unseemly if it's not your baby, and not altogether normal even if it is. Thank you.

Now for the no-fun part of putting it all back together.

 

[mjp]

Everything looked so logical and simple when it was coming out...

 

[Andreas]

These pictures, especially the soldering iron, somehow remind me of the radio and TV repair shop of my father...