benecol wrote:Edit: holy moses, this is a long, dull post. Go out and do something less boring instead.
Ooh, good thread Mr Lamp. I was inspired to play the guitar by the twin pillars of watching Hendrix at Monterey, and the episode of The Wonder Years where they form a band (and I
swear it's a Jazzmaster his dad gives him). So, my first guitar was a red
Marlin Sidewinder (terrible strat copy) that I bought off a friend for £60, plus the loan of his Little Giant amp, soon to be replaced by one of those terrible Gorilla amps from my mum's Kays catalogue. The Christmas gift of a Frontline distortion pedal sealed my future financial fate. Had real trouble getting the strat to sound how I wanted (JAMC and Pixies were favourites at the time) so I used to jack the pickups right up so they were almost touching the strings.
Promptly flogged all the above to my little brother (who didn't really want it) in order to buy a
Fender Bullet, ProCo Rat, Pearl Fender twin copy and a WEM vertical 4x10 that a local metaller was selling in the paper for £120. I have detailed at length in the past how I sold this stuff for stupidly low money, but just to open an old wound, I sold the amp and the cab to my mate Jon to raise the £115 necessary to buy a Park G10R practice amp from Tandy. Ho-lee fuck.
Throughout all this, I wasn't happy with my singlecoil noises, and never gelled with the Bullet at all. Our frame of reference then (turn of the 90's), guitar-wise, was pretty fucked: no internet, so had to rely on guitar shop knowledge, pics and posters of bands we liked, and The Guitar Handbook; now, ace as this book is, at the time it was still the 70's edition floating around, so "current" thinking was humbuckers are best, guitars must be heavy as fuck, and preferably have a brass nut because
sustain is all. I set my cap at a 335 - almost bought a beautiful white Epi Sheraton, but they refused me credit as I was a student. Instead, I traded the Bullet in for an
Antoria 330 copy, with bolt on B+B maple neck, no centre block (so it fed back like fuck), and a useless switchomatic, BB King style. I loved it, and wished I still had it.
However, in the neverending search for a guitar that would make me good at the guitar, I traded this in for my
Cimar tele custom (customs were rare as hen's teeth in the UK back then), a guitar I still have. Lost interest in playing much for a few years when I realised how much easier it was to mix records.
Then I played a
Burns Marquee in 2000, and my guitar-love was re-ignited. Really good guitar, wish I knew then how to set up a trem, I might have kept it. Also discovered eBay around this time, and while sat messing around at work, bought a MIJ
tele '69 thinline. It was lovely, and went some way to satisfying the Spiriualized wannabe within me. Still, my buy and sell cravings couldn't be quelled: I swapped the Marquee for a
DeArmond 335-style bass, then sold the thinline and the bass together on eBAy.
With this money, I then made my most ill-considered gear purchase EVER. A brand new
Epiphone Elitist 335 Dot. Totally fell for the guitar mag hype. Paid £750 a fortnight before Coda started selling them off for £399. Oof. Had always wanted a 335, but was disappointed by the reality of having one. Back to eBAy we go. Then followed, in pretty quick succession, the awful
Tele Deluxe, a
MIJ 52 tele (amazing!), then bought the
Jaguar I'd always wanted! It was lovely, shortscale, ice blue metallic made in America, had to sell it just before Benecol Jr was born. Also secretly wished it was a Jazzmaster. Sorry.
Bought an
Eastwood Johnny Ramone Hi Flyer that was so shit I sent it straight back, then a
Tokai SG. This was an ace guitar, too; HEEEEUGE neck, which I learned from the tele I like a lot, and had always fancied an SG - they strike me as the guitar that the evil robot in The Black Hole would play:
realised I was never going to be satisfied 'til I bought a JAzzmaster, so sold my SG and bought a
strat. A 60's classic player. Was fooled into thinking it had a big neck, which it didn't, and just hated the trem as compared to a Jag. Sold it quick, and bought a
Danelectro Longhorn and an
Edwards LP Jr (nice big neck again). Now Benecolette was on her way, and I realised if I didn't buy the Jazzmaster now, I'd never have any money ever, so sold everything and bought my
Jazzmaster, and lived happily ever after.
So, to precis, lessons learned:
1) I like Jazzmasters.
2) I've made some bad gear decisions.
3) Fuck I've had a lot of guitars.
4) I used to think humbuckers were better.
5) This whole affair would have been cheaper for me to build a time machine, travel back to 1959, and buy a Jazzmaster.
ANOTHER EDIT: I'd like a Samick 335 with a resonator cone (just wasn't keen) and my current Dano baritone to be taken into consideration as well please.
