good lord don't get him started...you do not know what it is, that box you just opened ...
from moment to moment it will be reworking a neck, assembling a guitar, resoldering a trumpet...(handy to have around by all means, but comparing the quality of his craftsmanship has a nasty habit of leaving those such as myself feeling a little inferior)
fear this.
hi Simon! Glad you made it!!! (you already know what 3 exclamation points means)
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:
