Ok, I have to make a comment on this Blues...cause I do love Teles, they are just great guitars. They're very different than Strats though. A good friend, the Late Ted Greene, played a lot of ES-335s and heavily modified the electronics, but after he grew out of that sometime in the late 70s he started collecting 50s Teles. He could really make them sing. I have a '59 P-Bass, and I used to play it a lot, but I love my upright. My P-Bass is very similar, as it's not 100% original, but it's a players guitar. A collector wouldn't be interested in my P-Bass any more than they would your Tele, for a serious collector anyway, and a dealer who might be interested in them and would pay, would probably end up refinishing them and selling. Mine has a different year body than the neck, the body is a '63 burst, but the burst was different in the 60s with whitish primer, so I can tell with the little paint that is left on it that it's the wrong year. I bought the bass from a guy that was good friends with a good friend of mine (this is starting to sound like a recording contract, heh?) when I owned a vintage guitar store, the body was carved into an eagle, this was pretty common in the 60s and 70s after the summer of love... Anyway, I found a '63 body and put it together. Everything else was in the case, the neck and all the original electronics, bridge, et al, but there is was no finish on the neck, and it didn't have a Fender decal which I added. As you might be able to tell, this is not a bass that a serious collector would want. I also changed the tuners for a newer set of Gotoh that are original style, the reverse turn, as the originals were and I have the tuners in the case, but use a gig bag. Mine is a players bass. I never plan to sell it as it was such an important piece of my life at one point, but now my upright means more...and I hate to admit I bought a 2011 Bourgeois OMC Custom last year to fill a void that I always thought a vintage Martin would. That still might happen, not sure, but I love this Bourgeois, it's the first boutique type guitar I have owned but it sounds amazing and as far as an instrument, I would never feel cheated playing it. I probably told this story in this thread, I tend to follow it whenever I stop by the Antiquated forum, it seems to be popular and hangs around on the top page. I always find some cool stuff in here, damn you guys have some cool amps...
Mannn, I had a few vintage axes and some were straight up original, others with improved tuners, etc. I always liked playing improved vintage better. I had a 62 lp Jr, and it played awesome, but my buddy had a similar year gibby that everyone that played it just hated the neck. When they were still doing um with drawing knives and by hand and all that, variations could be enough to make one good and one suck. My uncle worked at the gibby factory in Kalamazoo when he was a young man. Mom grew up there. Pretty cool....
I don't currently have any amazing vintage items, but I have a '65 Airline Bobkat H-14 and a 70's Custom Tele Deluxe (MIJ) that see a lot of use. My newest electric is an '89.
Good enough for Hank Williams, good enough for you or I. Congrats on the acquisition. IMHO, Martin is the finest acoustic guitar one can own.
Dang, Now I have ANOTHER project to build! LOL. I am a guitar player and woodworker. Got a personalized plate lingering here.
Lets keep it going. The vintage Japanese Les Paul knockoff I found at Salvation Army awhile back. In great shape too. The Peavey I got free as the guy was about to drop it at Goodwill. I ask "Does that still work" ? "Yessir, we're just cleaning up at Church, do you want it" Yessir ! And a cool old National pedal steel my neighbor busted out the other day.
Worked for a factory in the 80's. they ripped out the OLD factory intercom system about '84. I recognized an old Fender tube amp as the power source and saved it. Even had the chrome Fender name on it. Sold for a big $75 shortly after. Newc
Damn son, you are sick! My experience is that you can cheat a little on the traditional date range over here in Antiquated Land. Loving the amp tour.
Gonna revive this thread. Yesterday I checked one off my bucket list and went to the Martin factory and bought a brand new D-35 for myself. I think I've played every model of Martin, Taylor, and Gibson over the years and this is the model I always come back to. It was a great experience dealing directly with the factory and getting one from the source, especially since they were kind enough to put aside several different guitars to play and try so I could pick the one that sounded the best to my ears. Believe it or not, even with modern manufacturing processes and CNC production of parts, there is still a significant difference in the tonal qualities of acoustics, even among same model. This one sounded amazing to my ears, and had a cool, more pronounced grain in the top than the others. I know it's a new guitar and not "vintage", but the D-35 was introduced in 1965 and is still largely the same. Technically HAMB relevant.
Cool guitar! I'm mainly a bass player but I do play guitar a little also. I have an old Ibanez and an Ovation. Maybe someday a Martin.
I've looked for a 60s D-35 for years with Brazillan Rosewood for years, but haven't found one. That's about as much as I would spend. The new Martins from the custom shop are VERY GOOD. Laurance Juber plays a beauty he's had for more than 20 years. When I was in the vintage guitar business, there was no custom shop, so that's a fairly new thing like in the past 25 years. Sure, I'd love to have a pre-war Martin, or even one from the 50s, I was born in '58, but they have gotten too expensive for me. This is what I ended up with, it's not really old, it's a 2011 Custom Bourgeios OMC. That said, I still want an old vintage Martin...would settle for a D-18 even.
Funny, I think I mentioned I'm mostly a bass player also, and I used to have an Ovation guitar, I had a custom scrimshaw truss rod cover with a virgo woman holding the world. I sold it when I went into partnership in the guitar store...wish I had kept it. Mine had a very distinguished vertical grain top on it. No pics unfortunately. My favorite old guitar was a Martin 0-28k (koa), it was a early 1900s, I converted it to silk strings (steel windings) from nylon. I won a raffle with the AMC (cancer society) to buy it. I played that all through college, and got the Ovation later to have something durable. Old Martins are not without maintenance. I would even say that @57JoeFoMoPar's guitar won't have those neck issues that are so typical in old Martins. Guitars are built better today, for certain.
Thanks for contributing to my thread, you have a wealth of knowledge in all things music. Really interesting reading your comments along with all the others. Let's keep this thread going!
Thanks, I wish I had stayed in the music biz, but alas, I guess it was not meant to be. There's a story behind that Bourgeois OMC Custom...a late (unfortunately, he died last year) friend of mine owned a fairly famous guitar store in Palo Alto, CA named Gryphon Strings. His name was Frank Ford, he was one of the best luthiers I've met. I know a few others, but he is exceptional, and he helped me with some inlay work I was doing on handsaws. I have a nice stash of ivory, abalone, and other shells that are commonly inlaid in guitars, any of the older pre-ban material is grandfather'd in, and ivory was used on many guitars. My bridge pins on the Bourgeois are made of Mammoth Tusks...I'm not sure how to verify it...LOL Anyway, I'm very picky about who works on my instruments. I have an old Guild Mark II nylon string guitar, it's mahogany. I bought it in 1977, right after I graduated from high school. I bought it from a small music store in Lynwood, CA not far from my family's liquor store. It had been sitting on a stand in the window for months and was all dusty. Anyway, one of my wife's friends was over and her poorly behaved kids were trying to tune it, and broke 2 or 3 strings and the saddle. I was taking it into Frank to fix, and walked by the Bourgeois, and casually strummed it as I walked by. I shouldn't have done that, I could tell it was an amazing sounding guitar. But Frank took my Guild and gave me a invoice, and I mentioned the guitar...he said he had set it up, and it's quite an amazing sounding guitar. Not a Martin though...which, BTW, Frank's partner in Gryphon is Richard Johnston, considered a Martin authority... I *INTENTIONALLY* didn't play the guitar and left. The price was $3600, I thought not bad, I've seen similar models sell for $9k+ new and this one had really nice wood, I've never seen wood any more beautiful, unless it was from "The Tree", a sunken Mahogany. I call back the next morning when Gryphon opened, it was eating me up inside...I offered $3k for it. The seller came back with $3200. I thought I would let them stew on it, but once again it was eating me up...and I gave in the next morning. Lastly, a tidbit for luthiers out there in the ether! The way I met Frank was not through music, but through metalworking. Frank attended the South Bay Metal Workers and those people were helpful for me to build handsaws and turn split-nuts on my lathe. Frank would drag an entire carts filled with projects and tips, he's give us demos at the Tech Shop where we met, he donated a Samson lathe to The Tech Shop, and fixed broken parts for them twice! Me and Frank had a lot in common, including being married to Japanese women. http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/pagelist.html#Luthier And if that is not enough, this is all of his machinist articles he left for the world. http://www.frets.com/HomeShopTech/hstpages.html EDIT: Here's a good one, with a picture of Frank, there are cartoon shirts with Frank's characture on it. https://www.gryphonstrings.com/pages/frank-ford
Thanks for that! Guys like him are few and far between. We had one in my part of the world but he has since passed away. Stuart Mossman, Mossman guitars. He Was an awesome luthier, and built fine guitars. The bluegrass flattop pickers really liked his work. Thanks again!
I will say this. I have bought and sold many guitars with Norm, even that 0-28k came from him...and he's a great person. I also love Billy Strings. But the truth is he WAS playing a Preston Thompson guitar, but since Preston passed, and he's become more famous, he's mostly playing old Martins. The Mossmans are great guitars, and Norm had one for several years on his site, I don't know if that is it or not...but Billy Strings could play most any guitar and sound great. My $0.02. Dollars to donuts, Billy Strings bought an old Martin from Norm if he bought anything. That said, I'm guilty of whoring guitars to the Japanese that famous artists signed...but Norm is the frickin' King of Pimps! Does it really matter who put their smegma on it?
The Jalopy Journal
