Any good GUITAR STORIES? | Let me hear them!

[rocknrollstar]

Hi folks,

 

There is nothing more enchanting as a good guitar story! Here is one of mine:

This is my 1982 San Dimas-made Charvel Strat.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-01.jpg

I purchased it brand new at the Hollywood Guitar Center in early March 1982. My Dad took me on my first trip to the USA and we travelled through the complete South West. I saw the Grand Canyon, the Death Valley, lost a couple of bucks in Vegas and desperately wanted to buy a "good" guitar and bring it back home to Germany. In Pheonix, AZ I found a used, totally messed up early 1950's Les Paul Goldtop, which I intended to buy. Due to credit card issues (we only had an American Express card and the dealer did not accept this card), we couldn't buy the guitar. Back in Los Angeles we went to the Guitar Center and they had two Charvel Strats for sale. This is one of them. I had read about these guitars in a German guitar magazine and decided to buy it. I paid full price (!!!) $ 900.00 - they probably ripped me off, but I was 17 and had no clue...

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-4.jpg

At that time I was playing for about 2 years and had NO idea what great guitar I had just bought. This guitar was meant to follow me throughout my hole musical life. Many guitars came and went, but this one stayed with me.

I almost sold it to a student for little money, but fortunately the deal blew...

Due to tuning issues, I changed the original brass bridge to a Wilkinson vintage Tremolo and put Schaller locking tuners with a very short shaft on.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-5.jpg

Later I exchanged the original Duncans to Fralins, had to replace the saddle, get two fret jobs within the years. All original parts are still in a box and the guitar could be put together again as it came from the store in 1982.

I played this guitar on 12-13 albums and in front of 200,000 people. Sometime around 1992-1993 I met the American action painter Denny Dent at the set of a famous German TV show. Denny Dent is part of the opening scene of Jimi Hendrix playing at Monterey Pop (you can see it on the Monterey Pop DVD) when he paints a counterfeit of Jimi while Hendrix rocks on stage.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-3.jpg

I was playing with my band and he did some action painting in the show. He offered to "decorate" my guitar. I gladly accepted. He took six paintbrushes, dumped them in different paint buckets and splashed the latex color all over the guitar. He signed the guitar on the back with a Sharpie. The signature is almost gone today, but you can still see it when you turn the guitar in the light. He also left me his card.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-11.jpg

I always thought the paint would come off over the years, but unless you peel it, it stays pretty well. I guess this guitar has a true Rock'n Roll story...

 

If you want to hear the sound of this guitar, check out my latest post in my video blog. It demonstrates the Jacques "The Wercer Box" germanium fuzz pedal, but there is about 4 minutes of playing on this baby.

Custom Guitar Video Blog

 

I can't wait to hear some of your stories!

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Holger

[desertbluesman]

My best guitar stories are taking lessons from Emily Remler http://www.allthingsemily.com/, and from Bob Aslanian (who was one of Al DeMeola's guitar teachers). Imagine sitting with Emily in her room, jamming with her. She was a skilled player but her musical feeling man that was something else, man what a rush that was.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPUxdhwjKps

[Gifthorse]

"My guitar- Tomothy."

 

There once was a guitar named Tomothy. He lived in modest home and had a good life with his owner Bruce.

 

One time Tomothy sold Bruce a pear of shoes. They didn't fit, and tasted bitter.

 

Eventually Bruce took a trip, he said "goodbye son, I will see you in a year."

 

Then Tomothy broke a string.----To be continued

[Bejeeber]

Cool guitar story, Rocknrollstar.

 

Your dad is one cool cat for having taken you on the cross country trip like that!

 

Condolences on the 50's Les Paul/credit card tragedy.

[picker]

My guitar story(one of many, by the way) Is about Ol' Brown, my Guild D-25-M acoustic. I bought it in 1982, while I was in the Navy. My ship was in the yards at Bremerton, WA., and I had just sold my Goldtop Les Paul Deluxe to a guy. I had also just become a Christian, and felt I needed an acoustic to play that kind of music(I had never heard of Phil Keaggy at that time).

 

So, the next payday I went down to the music store I'd seen on the main thoroughfare outside the ship yard gates with $350 in my wallet, and a plan. I was going to buy one of those inexpensive Yamaha or bolt-neck Epiphone acoustics that you saw everywhere back then. That was what I could afford to buy outright, and I didn't have credit anywhere. But, they had a Gibson acoustic and this Guild acoustic, so I figured I would use one of them as my benchmark. I would find the Yamaha or Epiphone that sounded most like the best of those two. The Gibson was "okay", not horrible but not stellar either. But the Guild, oh my, what a bee-yoo-tiful sound it made! Rich, full, with lots of lovely low mids like a good dreadnought is supposed to have. "This" I said to myself, "is what I want my guitar to sound like."

 

So, I took the first Epiphone off the wall, and strummed it. I thought I was gonna die, it was so bad by comparison. "Well" I thought, "Maybe that one was just bad. I'll try the next one."

 

I went through 6 Epiphones and 5 Yamahas before I realized they just weren't gonna sound as good as I wanted them to. I was really disappointed, because I thought they would be better than that.

 

Then, an idea flashed across my mind; Why not buy the Guild? IT was what I wanted, and it looked really cool, a dark reddish brown mahogany back & sides, and a bookmatched spruce top stained medium brownish red. The tag said $450(with a hardshell case, weren't those the days!), and I didn't know to try and talk the guy down, so I asked him if I could put it on lay away. He looked at me kinda askance and said "Well, you'll need to pay the rest within 3 weeks, and the down payment is not refundable." I guess he'd dealt with flaky sailors before. So,I put my $350 and walked back to the ship.

 

When I got there, one of the guys in my division, a kid from Las Vegas named Frank Samson was there, looking a bit dejected. I asked what was wrong, and he said he'd lost his ID card and was restricted to the ship till his new one came through.

 

Now Frank was a pretty on-fire brother-in-the-Lord, and he was thrilled that I had become one too. Up till then, he'd been the only serious Christian in our division, and believe me, he took a major ration of grief about it from the rest of us. Between that and the fact that we were all stereotypical sailors and our language would peel paint when we were talking about anything from sex to shaving, Frank had been just miserable until I became a Christian too.

 

I didn't know why at the time, but it seemed like the thing to do to ask him if he'd loan me $150 or so till payday. He got a funny look on his face and said "well, I'm not gonna be spending much restricted to the ship, so yeah, sure. That must be why I lost my ID card, so I'd be able to loan you the money."

 

He handed me the bux, and I tore out back to the store, paid off the Guild, and dragged it back to ship. It's been through a lot since 1982, and looks like it, too. But it has been with me ever since I bought it.

 

This is Ol' Brown, the guitar that God put in my hands;

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t274/picker_album/Guitars024_edited.jpg

[rocknrollstar]

God bless you, that's a wonderful story. Thank's for sharing!

Holger

[d halfnote]

Nice paint job, Star, but what's the story behind the numbers 12 & 20 [ did I miss it ?].

 

Their position kinda reminds me o fwhen I got a really close look at Lowell George playing & noticed that he had actually marked his guitar's faceplate with the positions of where the extended frets would be so that he could instantly find those high slide notes he played in some songs...of course many of my fellow Feat fans refused to beleive that he needed to do such a thing (great players being "Godlike " & all)...

 

Anyway, back to "12 & 20"....?

 

[rocknrollstar]

Nice paint job, Star, but what's the story behind the numbers 12 & 20 [ did I miss it ?].

Anyway, back to "12 & 20"....?

 

My cousins kids had these number stickers probably 18 years ago and asked me if I wanted some numbers on my guitar. They randomly put these numbers on. At times I thought it was cute, then I started to look at my car clock ALWAYS at 20:12 (which is European time for 8:12pm) First I did not think anything in particular, but when you see these numbers for the 53rd time within a year, they start to give your life a meaning...

Anyways, somehow I got connected to these numbers. I don't want to take them off, I am kind of superstitious - don't know why...

[Caevan O’Shite]

Nice paint job, Star, but what's the story behind the numbers 12 & 20 [ did I miss it ?].

Anyway, back to "12 & 20"....?

 

My cousins kids had these number stickers probably 18 years ago and asked me if I wanted some numbers on my guitar. They randomly put these numbers on. At times I thought it was cute, then I started to look at my car clock ALWAYS at 20:12 (which is European time for 8:12pm) First I did not think anything in particular, but when you see these numbers for the 53rd time within a year, they start to give your life a meaning...

Anyways, somehow I got connected to these numbers. I don't want to take them off, I am kind of superstitious - don't know why...

 

I knew I had seen those exact same number-stickers somewhere before- I seem to think they were part of a board-game or book or the like aimed at kids, which would make sense, considering how many years I helped look after my friends' kids...

[Billster]

Not so much a guitar, but a story...

 

My grandfather played the banjolin - strung like a mandolin, formed like a banjo. It has the banjo head, and the four doubled strings of a mando. Here's my grandfather posed with said instrument @ 1917 while in the U.S. Army.

 

http://www.billhartzell.com/Resources/miscpics/LutherHartzellweb.jpg

 

Well, my grandfather went on to become a Lutheran minister and was sent to a church in Nova Scotia. In 1935, he died of complications from pneumonia at only 38 years old. The family trekked back to Pennsylvania and continued on with my grandmother raising my father and aunt as a single mother with the help of her parents.

 

And so it came to pass that my aunt ended up in possession of many family heirlooms, including the banjolin. The instrument spent some time as a wall decoration in my cousin's home. Eventually, in 2004, it was passed on to me because of my special interest and participation in music.

 

And here I am last fall, striking a pose similar to my grandfather some 90 years earlier:

 

http://www.billhartzell.com/Resources/miscpics/BillBanjoWeb.jpg

 

[p90jr]

Hi folks,

 

There is nothing more enchanting as a good guitar story! Here is one of mine:

This is my 1982 San Dimas-made Charvel Strat.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-01.jpg

I purchased it brand new at the Hollywood Guitar Center in early March 1982. My Dad took me on my first trip to the USA and we travelled through the complete South West. I saw the Grand Canyon, the Death Valley, lost a couple of bucks in Vegas and desperately wanted to buy a "good" guitar and bring it back home to Germany. In Pheonix, AZ I found a used, totally messed up early 1950's Les Paul Goldtop, which I intended to buy. Due to credit card issues (we only had an American Express card and the dealer did not accept this card), we couldn't buy the guitar. Back in Los Angeles we went to the Guitar Center and they had two Charvel Strats for sale. This is one of them. I had read about these guitars in a German guitar magazine and decided to buy it. I paid full price (!!!) $ 900.00 - they probably ripped me off, but I was 17 and had no clue...

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-4.jpg

At that time I was playing for about 2 years and had NO idea what great guitar I had just bought. This guitar was meant to follow me throughout my hole musical life. Many guitars came and went, but this one stayed with me.

I almost sold it to a student for little money, but fortunately the deal blew...

Due to tuning issues, I changed the original brass bridge to a Wilkinson vintage Tremolo and put Schaller locking tuners with a very short shaft on.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-5.jpg

Later I exchanged the original Duncans to Fralins, had to replace the saddle, get two fret jobs within the years. All original parts are still in a box and the guitar could be put together again as it came from the store in 1982.

I played this guitar on 12-13 albums and in front of 200,000 people. Sometime around 1992-1993 I met the American action painter Denny Dent at the set of a famous German TV show. Denny Dent is part of the opening scene of Jimi Hendrix playing at Monterey Pop (you can see it on the Monterey Pop DVD) when he paints a counterfeit of Jimi while Hendrix rocks on stage.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-3.jpg

I was playing with my band and he did some action painting in the show. He offered to "decorate" my guitar. I gladly accepted. He took six paintbrushes, dumped them in different paint buckets and splashed the latex color all over the guitar. He signed the guitar on the back with a Sharpie. The signature is almost gone today, but you can still see it when you turn the guitar in the light. He also left me his card.

http://www.customguitarvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Charvel-11.jpg

I always thought the paint would come off over the years, but unless you peel it, it stays pretty well. I guess this guitar has a true Rock'n Roll story...

 

If you want to hear the sound of this guitar, check out my latest post in my video blog. It demonstrates the Jacques "The Wercer Box" germanium fuzz pedal, but there is about 4 minutes of playing on this baby.

Custom Guitar Video Blog

 

I can't wait to hear some of your stories!

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Holger

 

Awesome. There might be something you can spray over the signature, and the paint, to stop it from peeling/wearing. I don't think there's any reason to ever take it off.

[Caevan O’Shite]

My grandfather played the banjolin...

 

...And here I am last fall, striking a pose similar to my grandfather some 90 years earlier[/img]

 

Very cool, Bill! Now we wanna hear some banjolin clips!

[rocknrollstar]

There might be something you can spray over the signature, and the paint, to stop it from peeling/wearing. I don't think there's any reason to ever take it off.

 

Quite honestly, you need to really take your fingernails or a razor blade to scrape off the latex paint. There are no worries. The signature on the back is almost gone. You can see some sort of "shadow" of the sharpie, I guess it is the chemical imprint the sharpie left in the clear coat...

 

So I wouldn't mess with anything. I really think the "graphic" is as "80's Charvel" as it gets...

[rocknrollstar]

Not so much a guitar, but a story...

 

My grandfather played the banjolin - strung like a mandolin, formed like a banjo. It has the banjo head, and the four doubled strings of a mando. Here's my grandfather posed with said instrument @ 1917 while in the U.S. Army.

And here I am last fall, striking a pose similar to my grandfather some 90 years earlier

 

That is a wonderful story. Unfortunately I don't have any musical instruments from my grand parents. I've got the Bible though which my great grandfather received when he was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1901 in Prussia.

[skipclone 1]

I tried to post this before but the site wouldn`t let me add pics, I`ll try again.

Anyway not as cool as some stories here, but almost exactly four years ago I was at the Tokyo Music Instrument Fair, an awesome four days of musical heaven that happens every two years. The last day was wrapping up and I heard some guy WAILING, he was doing a performance lap-style, with a guitar I was unfamiliar with. I spoke

to him afterward, he had to leave for a gig in Melbourne the next night. I saw the guitars from this company on the wall, there wasn`t even time to try one but something about them grabbed me. I knew I had to have one. Later I began looking around and when I saw the prices in Japan I said, are you kidding me? it would be cheaper

to fly to Australia and buy one...

CLANG!

I think I hit an overhead lamp or something.

Anyway I started calling stores all over Australia. Most of them tried to sell me a Maton, or didn`t have the model I was looking for. Finally I found one listed as second hand at a shop near Sydney. I took a gamble that I usually don`t recommend and put a deposit on it. I happened to have a friend who lived right on the harbor at the time so I visited her for a weekend. She thought I was nuts. I went to the little town on saturday, about an hour away. Not much at all to see there, including buses or trains.

But when I got to the shop and sat down with the guitar-wow. Whoever owned it before must have barely touched it. Sound, playability, everything was there. Plus it`s all Australian wood, they`re not even using them much now because of the rarity.

Anyway I took this pic at the harbor, with the original pickups:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a236/skipclone1/harbor1kh.jpg

Here it is after I put in a set of Bartolinis, jazz pickup for the neck and rock for the bridge:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a236/skipclone1/SidneyGuitar.jpg