As we remember, it is fall, but the Philly Guitar Show is not held in Philly. It's in Oaks, just past King of Prussia. For some reason, King of Prussia is absolutely hilarious to anyone not from the area. Taking that into consideration, I shall not mention the Philly lane called Street Road.
As happens more often than not, it wasn't exactly a great event for lefties. However, there was still a lot to see to keep things interesting: tons of pedals, vintage and some new amps, and the perennial Greyhound rescue group. The dogs are pretty chilled out and sweet. Drop a few bucks in their jar and help the no longer needed racing dogs.
There were some exceedingly vintage guitars to be seen: some clearly for sale, some without any tags. I felt like a real idiot, taking pictures of them, not that this stopped me. I do this all for you. Do I sound sufficiently genuine?
First thing I almost bought was a leather handle to replace the one that failed catastrophically on a tweed amp. Something about a $50 leather handle forced me to leave it there.
The Taylor booth is always a lot of fun, even for lefties. Martin brought a cutaway lefty too - there is no upcharge for lefties.
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| new Taylor T5 and acoustic |
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| lefty Jimi Hendrix Monterey Strat |
lefty 1965 Strat. Only $6995. A bargain at half the price!
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| lefty 1965 Strat lefty Ric bass - think McCartney post Beatles |
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| lefty Ric bass |
lefty German Hofner bass - think McCartney Beatles
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| lefty Hofner German bass |
a 2004 lefty Gretsch - check out the flame
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| lefty 2004 Gretsch |
Here's a normal recent lefty Gibson SG
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| lefty recent Gibson SG |
This is a one-off lefty PRS conversion, done by Paul Reed Smith himself and documented by a letter from Paul. This was before PRS did lefty guitars.
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| lefty PRS conversion |
PRS just put out a lefty SE series guitar (made offshore, very reasonably priced). Here are two very expensive PRSes, American made, in less than attractive finishes.
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| expensive lefty PRS 1 |
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| expensive lefty PRS 2 |
That does it for the properly-oriented guitars. Next up, the backwards righty guitars.
This is a 1958 Stratocaster in really great shape. It's around the period I really like. I played one and it was pure magic.
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| 1958 Strat |
Here's what's described as a 1958-61 Strat. Perhaps it has multiple personalities. Perhaps some days it identifies as a banjo.
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| 1958-61 Strat |
This is a 1968 Telecaster. It's a rare 2 tone sunburst.
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| 1968 Tele |
vintage Gibson Firebird. No identification.
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| vintage Firebird |
Gibson Les Paul TV Special. It was referred to as TV because it was always played in front of the TV. I make it up as I go along.
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| Les Paul TV Special |
Gibson Les Paul SG - this is a very old, special guitar, with the SG body shape before it morphed to the Les Paul shape we know and love. Referred to as Les Paul because Les Paul, a famous guitar player, got an endorsement. Les was the father of the electric guitar, an inventor and recording genius.
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| Les Paul SG |
Gibson ES-345 (I think). The Custom Made plate was standard. It's in really good shape.
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| Gibson ES-345 |
If you're set on cousins, you can buy this 1961 dot ES-335. Dot denotes the fretboard markers. I believe this is a very desirable year.
The apple of my eye - a 1979 antigua Strat, the mirror image of my #1 guitar. I call it pukeburst. The best of avocado green and harvest gold.
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| 1979 antigua Strat - pukeburst |
You can never get enough pukeburst, so here's a matching acoustic. As you can see, there was a lot of variation in pukeburst. There are actually reissues, but they look even worse, if you can imagine that.
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| acoustic pukeburst |
If the above two are pukeburst, the Japanese produced this shitburst. This is the kind of education one cannot get in school. Even private school.
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| Japanese shitburst |
The expensive stuff starts here. These are two old Les Pauls and an SG
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| Les Pauls and an SG |
You don't see a lot of 1969 Les Pauls
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| 1969 Les Paul |
This guitar is very special: a 1958 sunburst Les Paul so special, it has a name. Charlie. There's a great story behind this but I don't know it. There were about 3 lefties made during this period. I played one and it was decent. A fellow named McCartney has one. The other is in the US. Guitar Loons keep track of this kind of thing, even assigning names to them. These guitars are the Holy Grail: Jimmy Page has a few, Joe Walsh, and anybody who is anybody. One of the most famous Les Pauls of all time was Peter Green's (Fleetwood Mac, when they were a blues band), which he gave to Gary Moore. Gary's estate? (RIP) sold it to Kirk Hammett for about $2 mil.
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| 1958 burst Les Paul - Charlie |
It's a Les Paul. It's old. I can't see the writing on the tag and none of us can afford it. Note the single coil pickups.
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| old Les Paul with single coil pickups |
a 1952 Les Paul. This is a very old guitar. At only $10k, you can afford to buy a few. Why is it only $10k? How should I know.
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| 1952 Les Paul |
a 1960 Les Paul Special, refinished from sunburst. This lowers the value.
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| 1960 Les Paul Special refin |
1959 Les Paul Special - to go with your 1960 Les Paul Special above. Your wife's shoes match - why shouldn't your guitars? Notice the grain.
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| 1959 Les Paul Special |
There's a lot to be said about new Gibsons too, mainly that this rack contains many pointy ones. Flying V, Moderne, and Explorer are some names Gibson used. Notice the split headstock on the first guitar. This came about due to Barry Gibson using the scroll saw while drunk. The founder, Orville Gibson, was a lefty, which explains why they're so hard to find.
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| a rack of pointy new Gibsons |
enough Gibsons - let's see more Fenders
1955 Strats aren't too common. It's one of the first years for them. However, something about this one isn't sitting right - the finish, for one. The bakelite plastic parts tend to disintegrate over time. The pickguard is suspiciously new looking.
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| 1955 Strat |
How about a 1963 Strat. 1963 was a great year. How do I know? I don't. You can tell from the sticky this one has MOJO. Judging by the price ($16k), they charged extra for it. It really does speak to some of us.
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| 1963 Strat with MOJO |
1956 Esquire. Esquires became Telecasters after whoever owned the Esquire name sued Fender. Note that the Esquire only has one pickup, in the rear. Teles have one in the front too. Jeff Beck was a famous Esquire player. Jeff Beck could make a trashcan sound good.
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| 1956 Fender Esquire |
Another Holy Grail: a 1952 Telecaster. At only $55k, it's a steal. It's also a block of 1952 houses. This is so early in production, it still has diapers. Some of the guitars were labeled early or late in the year. Because everybody knows that in 1953, Jose Rosenstein started falling over from the paint fumes, so you want an early 1952 Fender.
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| 1952 Tele |
Danny Gatton (RIP) was the best unsung guitar hero in the world. The man was a master of many genres and entertained people all over the world. He worked with Fender on a Danny Gatton Telecaster and here is his #1. At $50k it's true history. The production guitars had 2 pickups instead of 3, but they were still Joe Barden pickups. These sounded authentic but were no-hum pickups. Next to this was a very early prototype. You'll have to take my word for it because, for some reason, I didn't take a picture. It might've been the guy who kept getting in front of me. If you read anything about anybody getting seriously injured at the show, I had nothing to do with it.
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| Danny Gatton's #1 Tele |
1966 Telecaster is another fairly rare guitar, especially when it could be a 1967 too. The 1966 Tele came directly after the 1965 Telecaster, and was going for $6600. I like the color and condition. It remains backwards on purpose.
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| 1966-67 Tele |
a 1954 Stratocaster is pure unobtainium. Even I am ok with holding off til 1958. This will set you back $32k. Notice the front pickup cover disintegrating. Leo Fender obviously didn't do any age testing on his plastic. Leo was quite a frugal guy and wanted to produce a good product at a reasonable price. Leo also couldn't play an instrument, much like Cobain. This may be the first year for Strats.
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| 1954 Strat |
here's a 1961 Esquire to go with the 1956 Esquire a few guitars up. The finish has more character, which is a polite way of saying it's f-ing trashed. This is not a bad thing with guitars, although the nicer examples will be more expensive. This example is $11k. For your amusement is the 1968 neck for $1850. By way of comparison, you can get licensed Fender necks starting at under $200 (obviously they're NOT THE SAME).
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| 1961 Esquire |
One of the early effects boxes for guitar was the Electro Harmonix Big Muff (and Little Muff - submit tasteless comments to the comments section). This box made your guitar sound like it was roaring out of a cranked Marshall amp. It was incredibly popular. It is said that Jimi used one, which is no doubt due to some kind of time warp: Jimi died in 1970, before the Muff came out.
For some reason, Big Muffs were also made in Russia. What no one will tell you is that this is the beginning of the Russian meddling in elections plan. They started with guitar effects. It turned out to be a piss poor plan because guitar players are frequently stupid and can't always find their way to the polling place. Or even remember what day of the week it is.
Notice the lovely and consistent Russian design ethic. The exquisitely round black knobs. The bigass footswitch. They also run on batteries that you can't even get in Russia anymore (I made that up).
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| Russian Big Muffs |
On the way out of the show, something caught my eye. It was my finger and it hurt like hell.
Also on the way out, I saw this interesting booth. They were displaying some products from 360 Systems, an early synthesizer company. The piece of equipment that blew me away was Frank Zappa's prototype guitar synthesizer. I was in the presence of greatness! The gents at the booth didn't have exact specs or functions but noted that there were definitely 360 Systems products involved inside. It was obviously never completed. They have much more Zappa equipment. I hope we'll all get a chance to see it and hear about it. It has a lot of labeled functions and a keypad whose function no one can guess. Had it gone to completion, it would be called something like the Oral Cement Grungalizer.
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| Frank Zappa prototype guitar synth |
Not to be outdone, this is Steve Howe's (Yes) prototype guitar synthesizer. All of them were described as tracking really poorly, due to the method of conversion.
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| Steve Howe prototype guitar synth |
There were 300 ARP Avatars made. They were specifically for guitar. The giveaways are the lack of keyboard and the guitar input.
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| ARP Avatar guitar synth |
Last but not least is the 360 Systems Guitar Synthesizer, built from lessons learned through the Zappa and Howe experiments.
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| 360 Systems Guitar Synth |
The gents at the booth also mentioned having a bit of Keith Emerson's rig.
More as I find it.
There was every kind of effects box you'd ever want. There were wood guitar shape pick holders, unfinished bodies, ridiculously cheap guitars, effects from one transistor to $450 current technology, parts, a Bludotone head (Carlos Santana uses one now), designed as a copy of the rare and horribly expensive Dumble amp, which can be had on the used market now and then for five figures. The price goes up every time Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, or Stevie Ray Vaughan sneezes. There was the famous SRV Leslie, plus a few smaller varieties. Strings and colored strings could be had, as well as great t-shirts and replacement windows. I suspect someone thought this would be a good idea, and it would be if the gathering included anything but guitar players. It expanded a bit since the last few times and it was a blast.
In the same bleak industrial park-like place were a few food joints. We discovered Cheeseburger Cheeseburger. The burgers were quite good, and we had some real knockout shakes (mine was brownie batter). No Coke - Pepsi. Recommended.
And that ends the Guitar Jones for 2018. The next Philly show is June or July, so if I remember to take pictures and can drag myself to putting them in a page, you'll all see them.
when I hit the spell checker button, it will promptly cough and die
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