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Now I'll be the first to admit I know jack about guitars, other than what end you hit. But I was walking past a dingy little music shop about ten minutes ago, and the lad has a Shaftesbury thinline tele copy in the window that I thought was rather fetching. The thing looks either new or in unbelievable nick.

Main question: is the job likely to be ridiculously expensive? I won't bother my ass enquiring about it unless it's reasonable.

Never heard of it, but a quick google suggests they make copies of more or less everything, and have been doing for some time.

Ebay has the following information on some of the amazing features often found on Shaftesbury guitars:

The pickups on the guitars convert the string vibrations into an electrical signal that produces music

http://popular.ebay.co.uk/musical-instr ... esbury.htm

I suspect it's a cheap copy, so go and play it, and ask how much he wants for it, and decide if it's worth that much to you.

They made some decent copies. Along the same lines as Columbus, Avon and Hondo II. They were distributed under Rose Morris as far as i know, the guy at my local guitar shop was a rep for them in the 70s.

I had a shaftesbury LP copy. It looked cool but was shit. There was a 1/2 inch gap between the bent wood top and the rest of the body. I'm pretty sure the pickups were false humbuckers with only one coil.

These days people are spoiled rotten with Yamaha, Squier, Epi, Ibanez guitars for not much dosh that play amazingly, sound great and are made of real materials*. You gotta remember that thirty years ago beginners guitars were fucking crap.

timhulio wrote:These days people are spoiled rotten with Yamaha, Squier, Epi, Ibanez guitars for not much dosh that play amazingly, sound great and are made of real materials*. You gotta remember that thirty years ago beginners guitars were fucking crap.

True that.
There seems to be some nostalgia with brands that were'nt actually that good, they seem to be riding on the 'distant cousin of matsumoku' label. You'll find the odd jem but a lot of them brands dont compare to something like a Westfield but they seem to be cooler for some reason.