OT The So Cal guitar? Shameless logo promotion!

YES!! I'm all about some Oscar!

 

That's kinda like saying the paint and chrome have deteriorated on your '55 Chevy. That's why people restore old cars. The older Gretsches have the same issues as any old guitar that had celluloid bindings and nitrocell lacquer finish, if it bothers you, you just fix it. Not that I have a problem with the new Gretsches, I don't, though I suppose I might have a problem shelling out a bunch of bucks for a new Gretsch and then have to replace the pickups with TV Joneses which should come stock in the first place. I bought my '53 Club in a hock shop in Reno in 1965 for $285 and I've been playing and touring with it ever since. It might have a few cosmetic issues but it sounds and plays just great, I did have it refretted in '97 since the frets finally wore out. I've owned a couple of 6120s too, one single cut and one double cut but the filter-tron pickups don't kick like the old De Armond 2000s so I sold them to a couple of trendoid collectors that thought they were worth 5 times what I paid for them. There's a reason that Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley and Eddie Cochran had De Armonds on their guitars. As good as the new Gretsches are they absolutely don't sound the same as a real Gretsch that was made in Brooklyn. I also differ with you about Japan made Fenders, they were so good that it forced Fender to improve their US made instruments. BTW, I ain't no collector, I'm a musician.

 

YEAH !

 

Sorry man....the new Selmers are shit....they don't play like a six....they don't sound like a six....

 

Gotta have hotrod guitars on the hotrod board.
So far I haven't seen one.
I'm gonna have to get a picture of my '82 hamer prototype.
She's out of the old chicago factory, and is fitted with two ultra high output bartolini humbuckers ( a 1B beast in the bridge and a 1DE grunge pickup in the neck)
These are running at around 21 and 24 K with a bartolini stacked coil in the middle which is running at 18K.
These drive a Griblin dual range pre-amp which then runs into a griblin super multitone.( Bit like a varitone with switchable ranges )
No volume control.
That is controlled by the pre-amp.
Mahogany body and neck of course, Rosewood fretboard.
Most people can't even play it, it's so wild.
Gotta get a photo, that's a wild guitar, makes the tamest amp go from super sweet and mellow to " Hold that sucker down!" before you even get to turn up the volume.
With the hamer into my crate GXT100 set on Zero, I'm louder than a stock strat into a black faced champ at full bore, when I turn it up Zappa smiles down and clapton bums a note.
I guess I got a power and dominance thing goin' on.

 

Polisher, did you miss the picture I posted? A couple of the amps are reworked, especially the Super Reverb, it was junk when I bought it and it'll take your head off with tone now, course it's like a hotrodded car, needs a lot of attention to keep it running right. The tele is a Fender custom shop piece that I rewired, the Flying V is stock bodied but nothing else on it is, I'm reworking the Tiesco for slide, the P bass on the left I'm building from parts, thinking about painting it flat black with red knobs , but maybe gloss.

 

Sorry but probably as far away from traditional rock'n roll guitars as you can get Mr 80's... BUZZ, BUZZ...

 

I don't care for the So-Cal at all . I did like seeing all the other pics.of cool axes. I'm an old Strat banger myself and it's far out to see these things on the H.A.M.B...Hollywood423

 

Oh yeah, it's a long long way from a rock and roll guitar,
but you can play it clean and clear as a bell,
But krank it up and it's the kind of guitar Billy Gibbons would kill for.
Personally, I like the overdrive poured on,
but I still like to hear what I'm playing.
That's why Bartolini's.
I wish I still had my old Vox AC30.
That hamer and a vox would be drippin honey.

 

That's what I wanted to know. Thanks for the info. I'm playing an old Elkhart now, that was made by Buescher. It's patterned after the Aristocrat model and plays really nice, at least as far as I can tell, being a relative newby on the sax. The thing came from Tacoma Goodwill, by way of of E-gay. It just oozes good vibes. I think an old blues man has played it for years, in a dark smoky club somewhere, and still haunts it with his coolness.

pigpen

 

I've found one of the best ways to find wild old guitarts is to look at the uncollected repairs shelf.
Hofner thinlines, the occasional yamaha, old epiphones, though they are becoming more collectable and less in the "What do I do with this pile?"
Some of it is getting fashionable again.
Orange amps, sound city's, I brought my last AC 30 for $400, nobody really wanted them.
In the US there are so many small guitar luthers that have been and gone, and many still around, there's some fantastic stuff out there.
If you want to hear the real music there's a lot more to it than Gretch, Gibson, Fender, or Hamer come to that.
Bit like the hot rod, the electric guitar is really an american phenomena.
I love this country.

 

Absolutely, buy what the collectors haven't picked up on yet...they just want what all the other collectors think is hip. I bought Gretsches when nobody wanted them. The collectors finally caught on so I sold my 6120s since that what collectors wanted. Kept my Country Club. Old Epi's are cool, even the Gibson ones. I like some of the new Korean ones too, my friend's got a Wildcat...great guitar for rockabilly, poor man's Gretsch...P90 single coils...plays and sounds great! A guy posted his Flamecat and Supernova along with his upright bass...totally cool.

 

I dont think Ive shown this before, but I made it 12 years ago........huge baseball bat neck, rock mapel jazzmaster style body, locking tuners{gotta love em} seymour duncan active pickups......the bastard is nearly all hollow under the plexi scratchplate and it still weighs a ton......it kicks ass though...big big sound.......first attempt at a build and love it to death...I have to keep it in a safe in my house as {obviously} the only one I have, a freind painted the hippy/trippy troll dudes ....................Bert

 

Far out! (I like the chair too.)

pigpen

 

frenz. thats a beautiful 6120 !


the so-cal fender? GAY !

 

g griffin, setzer has a couple of white falcons....nice lookin but i understand the country gentleman/6120's play better/

 

Well since the single cut 6120s and White Falcons have the same body they should play the same depending on what kind of pickups and setup of course. The body affects tone an awful lot. My friend has an old 6120 with Gibson Humbucker pickups and it still sounds and plays unmistakeably like a Gretsch.

 

Nice!

 

I was at a Reverend Horton Heat show in Colorado a few years ago. Rev opened up with what looked like a brand spankin' new White Falcon, seen him numerous times and never seen him play one. Didn't sound horribly great and two songs in it lost the bridge pickup and he finished out with his beater. Ears rang so good.

 

I still say a 6120 and a White Falcon are the same guitar except for trim, color and headstock shape, they should sound and play the same. If Rev's bridge pickup went south it ain't because of some innate fault common to White Falcons, if you believe that then you have to believe that Gretsch screwed up all those White Falcons that they charged more money for than a 6120.

 

More shameless promotion here. As long as this OT thread is still alive......this is a guitar I had a bit to do with. A guy I tech guitars for had an ESP Eclipse the Japanese ESP guys brought down to the gig one day. He loved it, so he decided to have it painted, and we sanded through the layers, al a distressed paint. Named it the "Truckster". The ESP guys loved it, and decided to go with an artist "signature" model. Hammered out the finer points and here we are. The original guitar rips. Haven't plugged mine in yet. More info @

http://www.espguitars.com/guitars_james.htm

Z

 

I don't believe that there is some common problem with them at all -- it was most likely a completely random incident. I was just smiling in the crowd as his white falcon was handed off to a member of the crew and his beater was handed back without even skipping a beat. Kinda just makes ya think about your own "old reliable" whatever that you go back to when things dont quite work out, whether it be a guitar, tool, hotrod, etc.

 

Z

 

Tha's hip.

 

Since there's not really many hot-rodded guitars but there are a lot of hot-rod amps how about some more posts about your hot-rodded amps or just mean vintage amps...and I don't mean Champs on 10 but stage rigs.

 

I play through a mid 50's Ray Butts EchoSonic. From my research I have found that there are only a handfull left. Scotty Moore has two and Deke Dickerson has one...it has a built in tape echo which is what you hear on Mystery Train and Jailhouse Rock amoung others.

There were only 68 ever built...all done by hand by one man, Ray Butts. I lucked into mine. Other poeple who had them were, Chet Atkins, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Gary Lambert, Luther Perkins...

Here's a pic of the knob panel before I found replacement knobs and cleaned it up a bit.

This is one for the true rockabilly enthusiasts for sure.
Tim
MBL

 

Nope, never read the mags.
I just like a guitar that'll do it all.
Couldn't buy what I wanted.
For years I've wanted an AC30 with reverb.
They finally built one.
Went and stuck a damned $1600 tag on it though!
Now how do I get around the wife on that one?!!

 

Pretty hard or even impossible to top that one. I used to have a Premier Model 88 which I used as a club amp for a number of years till it got stolen about 15 years ago. It had a 15" plus 2 3.5" tweeters and had the deepest tremelo ever. About 40 watts. Same kind of amp that Link Wray used on "Rumble". I had replaced the old 15" with a JBL D130 which made it a bit louder. Used to use a Fender tape delay and a Fender spring reverb with it.

 

Right on man...somethin about playin on old shit that seems so much better...you know what it is? The same shit that old cars have....SOUL. It doesn't matter how many crazy asswiper gizmos they tack onto new cars...they'll never tack on a soul....

 

....and that's a true fact!

pigpen