Welcome, simoncroft

simoncroft said:
Well, I don't want to make anyone feel inferior, so I'll post some pics of a guitar I've done nothing to but play (which is what they're for). This is my Gibson Rusty Anderson signature ES335, and it comes from around the middle of a production run that only went to about 350 instruments, I believe.

Unfortunately for Gibson, players didn't really get that this was a really close replica of RA's 1959 335, down to his insistence they use hide glue. As the guitars weren't exactly flying off dealers' walls, they started to make the woods fancier and fancier, in the hope they would sell on eye candy alone. Mine is from about the middle of production. Some of the later ones even have flamed sides.

Now, here's the story. This guitar effectively cost me £60!

In about 1983, I was working in pro audio sales when my co-worker Doug told me there was what we'd call a 'pop-up' shop nearby that was selling old hi-fi gear. When I took a look, there were two valve/tube amps. They were ex-BBC, had very close serial numbers and were designed to drive studio monitor speakers.

Fast forward almost 40 years, on the cusp of a house move. My wife said to me: "Do you really want to take these with us? Every time we move, you just just stash them away, so you might as well take them to the dump. I almost did, but I thought I'd try my luck on eBay. I was offered £50 almost immediately. I declined, because I had a hunch they were worth a little more.

They sold for £4,000!

I didn't realise there was a massively hot market in the Far East for old British valve/tube hi-fi gear. I sold to a rich guy in China, packed with care, and spent most of my winnings on this:

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I put this Strat together more than 10 years ago. The neck is the fattest one Warmoth offers and it's got a really nice birdseye maple grain. I was told the body is B Hefner, and it's faced with book-matched flame maple. The pickups are three different Lace Sensors. None of this was new, apart from a ffew bits of hardware, so it didn't cost a lot to put together. I finished the body with multiple applications of tung oil. As you can probably tell, it's been played a lot!

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This Yamaha FG-365S is getting on 50-years-old and I bought it recently from a guy who lives about a mile from me. There was a little bit of damage to the lower bout, where the the rim had hit something solid, plus a hole for a jack socket. I managed to get a near-invisible mend to the impact damage using superglue.

I filled the jack socket hole, starting from the inside. I threaded a guitar string, with a small piece of rosewood veneer on it, through the hole. Then I pulled the string so the veneer has hard against the side, and quickly applied superglue. A small disk of hardwood made up the thickness, fowwed by a grain matched piece of rosewood veneer. Unfortunately, I didn't have a big enough selection of wood stains to achieve a good cosmetic match, so you can see where the hole used to be.

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This is my 1989 Fender 'longhorn' Jazz Bass. They're actually really great basses, but some people give them a slating, mainly because Fender fitted a bridge that puts the E and G strings very close to the edge of the neck. One Wilkinson bridge and 30 minutes later, problem solved. I even managed to save the strings, so £11 was all it took to fix the problem. This thing growls!

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I'm not sure what model this Japanese Tokai is, but what I do know is it's a better guitar than the Gibson Les Paul I bought for a fortune in 1976. The guy I bought ther Tokai from also has an R9, so he knows what he's buying. It's got fantastic sustain, and that kind of between-the-notes fluidity when you turn the gain up. The onlky downside is it weights a ton because it's not chambered.

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simoncroft said:
I'm not sure what model this Japanese Tokai is, but what I do know is it's a better guitar than the Gibson Les Paul I bought for a fortune in 1976. The guy I bought ther Tokai from also has an R9, so he knows what he's buying. It's got fantastic sustain, and that kind of between-the-notes fluidity when you turn the gain up. The onlky downside is it weights a ton because it's not chambered.

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Some very nice instruments in there posts.
You will fit in here quite nicely.
Cheers
Mitch
 
Thank you all for such a warm welcome – not just from folks I know well from Strat-Talk and FaceBook, but also those of you I've only just met. I do have other guitars, but I don't want to outstay my welcome by posting endless shots of fairly ordinary instruments!

I don't know how big a deal music recording is round here, but my Mac running Logic Pro gets more play time than any particular instrument. As well as my own music, I'm happy to mix other people's tracks.

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