Epiphone does it----for the Children....

Advice on guitar - assuming the proposed buyer can play a full size version - who is your guitar hero?

Buy that guitar and enjoy it...
 
As a young buck in 1965, I needed to buy my own guitar. I'd learned on instruments
belonging to my father, but he was dead set against me taking one of his guitars to
college.

He said, "You'll have to study. If you take a guitar there, you won't study, you'll get into
sex and drugs and rock an roll..."

He was right. So I needed to buy my own, and bypass the permissions issue.
I've always found it easier to get forgiveness than permission.

So I saved up a hundred dollars, and went to the local pawn shop. This was before the
Mastercard was invented. My mother had a Sears Roebuck and Co. 'charge plate."
My dad paid her bills. He'd bitch, but he'd pay it.

By the way, $100 was a lot of money in 1965. I was working for $1.25 an hour.
AND going to high school, and running X-Country.
The only reason I could save up that much was because I didn't own a car.
My parents still fed me and housed me and bought my clothes. Lucky me.
I was 16, turning 17. I had a girl who loved me even though I didn't own a car.
...amazoe...

When I went to the pawn shop, I saw a lot of guitars hanging on the wall. I didn't
know anything about any of them, except that I wanted one, and I wanted one I
could afford. One guitar called me over... it was a Crest ES-335 copy.

There were probably Epiphones hanging on that pawnshop wall. Maybe they would
have cost $88... There were prolly Gibsons hanging on that wall... 1959 Les Paul guitars
for $250... 1964 SGs for the same money... but I didn't look at any of them because I
only had $100. Didn't want to torture myself.

I'm what's called a 'baby boomer..." which means I'm part of the bulge in the 'normal' curve.
There are lots of us boomers, tho' we're dying off rapidly now. Guys coming home from military
service had lots of pent-up love juice ready for their wives and sweet hearts. So lots of us baby
boomers were born in the years following World War ll. Of course we were. That's what the
term means.

Anyway, when we all got to a certain age, many of us wanted guitars. So the marketeers who'd been
eyeballing us made sure they offered us what we wanted. It's been like that all my life. When I was
16, it was Japanese copies of Gibson's ES-335. Retail price, (I don't recall) probably $69...
When I was 17 it was the Ford Mustang. Aimed at my juh juh generation baby... and a solid hit.
But I had no way to buy one of those... I needed my money for college. Some thought it was
important to have a cool car when you went to college, but this wasn't true. It was important to
study hard and get good grades. My father was right about that.

Being young and headstrong, I KNEW I could go to college and succeed, while playing a guitar
that was mine and nobody's business but my own. So I bought the Crest semi-hollow body
guitar. It was a lovely thing (in my young eyes). AND, I could afford it.... AND I didn't need to
buy an expensive amp, because I could practice on the hollow body guitar without an amp...
and save my small money up for a Fender Deluxe. One of those would have cost almost $250 new,
and been WAY beyond my horizons.

I looked... and I didn't find much to post about Crest Guitars. I'm sure they were made at the same
Fujijen plant as lots of other entry level guitars from Japan. Mine was cool to look at but not so cool when the caps start snapping. So I ended up trading my Crest hollow body guitar in on a Gibson FJN acoustic, which was my first "good" guitar and my first step on the path that I'm still walking.

I might have got $50 for it as a trade-in... cain't recall. That were 50 years ago.
 
Col Mustard said:
As a young buck in 1965, I needed to buy my own guitar. I'd learned on instruments
belonging to my father, but he was dead set against me taking one of his guitars to
college.

He said, "You'll have to study. If you take a guitar there, you won't study, you'll get into
sex and drugs and rock an roll..."

He was right. So I needed to buy my own, and bypass the permissions issue.
I've always found it easier to get forgiveness than permission.

So I saved up a hundred dollars, and went to the local pawn shop. This was before the
Mastercard was invented. My mother had a Sears Roebuck and Co. 'charge plate."
My dad paid her bills. He'd bitch, but he'd pay it.

By the way, $100 was a lot of money in 1965. I was working for $1.25 an hour.
AND going to high school, and running X-Country.
The only reason I could save up that much was because I didn't own a car.
My parents still fed me and housed me and bought my clothes. Lucky me.
I was 16, turning 17. I had a girl who loved me even though I didn't own a car.
...amazoe...

When I went to the pawn shop, I saw a lot of guitars hanging on the wall. I didn't
know anything about any of them, except that I wanted one, and I wanted one I
could afford. One guitar called me over... it was a Crest ES-335 copy.

There were probably Epiphones hanging on that pawnshop wall. Maybe they would
have cost $88... There were prolly Gibsons hanging on that wall... 1959 Les Paul guitars
for $250... 1964 SGs for the same money... but I didn't look at any of them because I
only had $100. Didn't want to torture myself.

I'm what's called a 'baby boomer..." which means I'm part of the bulge in the 'normal' curve.
There are lots of us boomers, tho' we're dying off rapidly now. Guys coming home from military
service had lots of pent-up love juice ready for their wives and sweet hearts. So lots of us baby
boomers were born in the years following World War ll. Of course we were. That's what the
term means.

Anyway, when we all got to a certain age, many of us wanted guitars. So the marketeers who'd been
eyeballing us made sure they offered us what we wanted. It's been like that all my life. When I was
16, it was Japanese copies of Gibson's ES-335. Retail price, (I don't recall) probably $69...
When I was 17 it was the Ford Mustang. Aimed at my juh juh generation baby... and a solid hit.
But I had no way to buy one of those... I needed my money for college. Some thought it was
important to have a cool car when you went to college, but this wasn't true. It was important to
study hard and get good grades. My father was right about that.

Being young and headstrong, I KNEW I could go to college and succeed, while playing a guitar
that was mine and nobody's business but my own. So I bought the Crest semi-hollow body
guitar. It was a lovely thing (in my young eyes). AND, I could afford it.... AND I didn't need to
buy an expensive amp, because I could practice on the hollow body guitar without an amp...
and save my small money up for a Fender Deluxe. One of those would have cost almost $250 new,
and been WAY beyond my horizons.

I looked... and I didn't find much to post about Crest Guitars. I'm sure they were made at the same
Fujijen plant as lots of other entry level guitars from Japan. Mine was cool to look at but not so cool when the caps start snapping. So I ended up trading my Crest hollow body guitar in on a Gibson FJN acoustic, which was my first "good" guitar and my first step on the path that I'm still walking.

I might have got $50 for it as a trade-in... cain't recall. That were 50 years ago.
Click to expand...


Like this???

Crest ES335.jpg


Crest Headstock.jpg
 
Now every guitar under $500 is a beginners guitar. I really don't think there are that many beginners. Now all weird computer generated stinker sounds. I do the same songs cuping my paw in my arm pit, damn. Children, only if they are cooked right. Seen and not heard, so give the little bastard a guitar or better a drum set. My dad tied a rope on me and I was tossed down a chimney.
He was the chimney sweep and I be the brush. Once I got me breath back I walked across the town and bought a Silvertone Acoustic for 16.00 dollars American plus vat tax I guess and it cost a good bit more. That horrid thing and Black Diamond strings was my childhood. Damn happy to have lived past that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top