I first got one back in march of 2011 as a condition 2 discounted musician's friend deal. The problem listed is some light play scratches on the front. When i got it, i couldn't even see it, unless i look 3 inches close and under a bright light, at a very specific angle. Absurd, but i guess some picky people would do that. I prefer to play my guitars, not show them behind a glass cage, and eventually it's gonna have wear. Like it's supposed to!

But i digress. I got a honeyburst, and this looked immaculate. Had all the papers and warranty cards unfilled and the plastic covers and everything. super mint! For a nice discounted price (i never pay full price anymore for anything). Ever since i woke up from my guitar coma, i've trolled around and found the original Gibson nighthawk and had lusted for one ever since. That staggered/slanted bridge humbucker pickup was something i've thought of for a long time now, and seeing it on a production guitar was a pleasant surprise. And reading the specs- it had a longer (fender) scale, an odd one for a Gibson guitar, and the arrangement of the pickups echoes -no , screams!- FENDER! Mahogany body with a non-carved simple book-matched maple top, the 5-way switch for more variety of ...... Read More

The holidays have come and gone, and it's a brand new year! Hello, 2012! And Hello, readers! I guess you can consider this an update. Im not going to fill in the blanks of my absence with boring life-happenings (no, i did not go to jail, unless you consider corporate work to be a prison... which to me it is! ha!). Instead i'll bring you a worthy acquisition: a 1981 GIBSON LES PAUL XR-1, in GOLDBURST! Again a craigslist find, brought about by relentless trolling the site due to boredom.

This is significant to me in a whole host of ways. I have been craving a TRUE Gibson Les Paul since the first fake set-neck les paul i bought. That was what started me in learning how to be a proficient guitar tech. The fake les paul was black with chrome hardware, and it was a dog and a pig. So I tore-apart the cheapo pickups, changed the tuners, replaced the plastic nut and cut up my own bone nut from raw beef bones, peeled and sanded down the paint, cut-up and carved the body, successfully refretted the frets (yes, on a brand new, off the rack guitar), re-radiused and scalloped the fretboard.  It was frankenstein beautiful when i got done. I miss that monster.

Fast forward to 2007, and i revitalized my craving for guitars, and ...... Read More

just a preface to this: Ive been looking at Vox AC30 amps around, to me the only amp that has no other clones, or successful copies around. Marshall or Fender amp copies abound, but the AC30 is very unique and distinctive. One version Vox offers the combo amp in is with the Celestion Blue Alnico speakers. This is the same brand and model speaker the beatles used in THEIR vox amps.  So that alone is why those speakers are expensive. Even after 50 years its still made well enough that it still can approximate the Beatles tone easily.
Anyway, i happen to come across an ad on Ebay that made me double-take. Here is what it says:
http://cgi.ebay.com/MINT-VOX-AC30-CC2-GUITAR-AMP-AMPLIFIER-CUSTOM-CLASSIC-/250726523746

This tank of a pedal comes in a hefty case with the two 12AX7's protruding halfway up but protected by a tubular grill, a nifty way to not only expose and showcase the tube glow, but also to dissipate the heat it normally exudes. And this thing is HOT - figuratively and literally!

The double-barreled twin tubes produce more than enough high-voltage tone that will easily make fun, humiliate, and expose most weak wanna-be poseur fraud distortion pedals. It doesnt eat batteries since it doesnt NEED batteries - it hails its power straight from the AC mains thru a power converter, which allows it to heat up the tubes and pass true high voltages thru it to produce its silky tone.

At moderate settings the british sound can easily be culled from this beast, but tweak a little more, and you CAN get sounds other than what its name alludes to. Whether you want to jam on classic rock, or want to thrash it up with a chunky riff, or just want to have an overdriven amp for that three-chord punk song, this pedal can kill em all! And like any EHX pedal, tweak it a bit more (or a LOT MORE!) and you get hellacious sounds that breathe fire from the its ...... Read More

Another craigslist find.

Though it has NO logo or name anywhere on the body and neck, this is most likely Japanese and made in the mid-70s, simply by looking at the blank headstock- it  looks EXACTLY like that of a Gibson (open-book style). Guitars with this distinctive design usually date back to the pre-lawsuit era in the 70s. Japanese manufacturers in the 60s and 70s at first mostly copied Fender and Gibson guitars to a 'T' (since they were expensive to get overseas, and actually have NO distribution there), looking exactly like their real counterparts, and sometimes surpassing their build quality, differing only in the name (although some outrightly made fake Gibsons and Fenders, copying the name as well). Gibson and Fender later filed a lawsuit with those Japanese manufacturers, hence the name 'lawsuit guitars' from that era.

Fast forward to now. I answered an ad regarding 3 disassembled guitars- 2 hollowbodies and 1 solid body, with matching necks, all for $40. What caught my eye was the red hollowbody. It had no pickups or electronics, and only had little hardware to go with each, if any. The seller said ...... Read More

Another Craigslist gem of a find.

i wasnt really looking for another Mod 6, as ive already gotten a black one over a year ago, and modded it to a baritone (rethinking it now to bring it back to stock...). I got that one for relatively cheap, with its original tweed gig bag. Score!

But this one was special. A rare bird. Most likely the rarest of rare.

Danelectro Mod 6s and Mod 7s comes in a H-S-S configuration. A humbucker in the bridge position, in the form of twin single-coil lipstick tube pickups. By themselves Mod 6 and 7 guitars are hard to come by, and if they get sold, it fetches for a bit of money.

I got this for less than its going rate, and in the not so-often-found purple/eggplant/violet color. But thats NOT what made it SUPER special.

Its only got 3 lipstick pickups, in S-S-S configuration. NO humbucking lipstick pickup in the bridge - JUST ONE PICKUP!

There wasnt an actual picture of it when it was posted on CL, just a stock photo in comparison, saying it WAS a Mod 6, only 3 pickups. I thought it maybe was a DC-3, maybe it was one of those 3 lipstick pickup Danos mistaken for a Mod 6. ...... Read More

A twist on an original Epiphone brand. Instead of a traditional 2pickup configuration, this Riviera has THREE P-90s, providing more tonal options, and along with it, more switching dilemma. More on that in a bit...

This comes by the way of Musician's Friend's unwillingness to fix "damaged" or "broken" shipments or returns, and instead "pass the savings" on to their customers willing to do the extra work to fix it up.

This sounds and IS great, since the used or blemished merchandise is significantly reduced in price, making an especially expensive retail-priced item within reach of those misers like me.

but in truth, Musician's Friend and other companies who do this are not really losing big money by drastically discounting the used or damaged items. Retail companies are alotted damages and returns each year - its a known fact that no shipment in a year will be perfect. There WILL be damaged shipments, customers returning stuff, etc. Thats all already entered in the budget forecasts, its just up to them to control it. Damage control, so to speak. They already "claimed" it, and ...... Read More

Truth be told i havent been updating my guitar acquisitions as often as i should (like everytime i get one!). This breaks that norm, as once in a blue moon you find yourself jumping off a cliff - and diving into the waters and enjoying the cool splash.

The Epiphone Ltd Ed 1954 Les Paul Standard (aka 'Oxblood')

The link from MF here
if thats deleted here is the description:

if it's not guitars, or tube amps...

You know when a dream becomes real? This is one of them.

IVe been lusting after a Fender Prosonic ever since i learned about it a couple of years ago. At that time ive been searching for a "modern" tube amp that employs tube rectifiers. A good 95%+ of all tube amplifiers made today have solid state rectifiers. Why tube rectifiers? "SAG". To put it simply, when a signal goes thru an overdriven amp with a tube rectifier, the signal undergoes something similar to compression. Instead of dying quickly, it dies slowly, and the sound sustains for a little longer. The impression is that it "blooms", the sound seem like its getting louder instead of softer as it decays. This is know as 'sag'. Awful for jazz and metal or aything you need fast articulated notes, but perfect for blues and anything that needs sustain. Which i LOVE.

THE PICKUP
Ive been on the lookout for a cheap one for months now, scouring eBay, always finding them priced beyond what i'd like to pay (and afford!). Until one day on Craigslist, an ad was up for one. It normally goes for an average of $700 to as much as $1600 for ...... Read More

Another great craigslist find, this vintage all tube amp hails from the early 70s (01/05/1972 to be exact, as penciled in under the chassis itself).

As a background, Plush amplifiers were made from 1969 thru 1973, apparently direct copies of either a fender showman or a twin reverb. Its main striking feature is the now identifiable "tuck and roll" covering not unlike that of Kustom amps, instead of the regular tolex coverings. Not surprisingly they were sued, either by Kustom or Fender (not sure), and its been said they went out of business due to bankruptcy from these litigations (but the story goes that they went on to become Earth Sound Amplifiers, who in their early life also had tuck and roll covering on their early amps, though nothing real conclusive to support this Plush-Earth Sound connection other than whats been generated thru forums and posts). Earth Sound also went the way of the dinosaurs eventually.

THE FIND:

Trolling craigslist one night, the ad "PA tube head - $100" immediately caught my eye. "Tube" and "$100" together are usually a good indicator of a possible good ...... Read More

not stupid, but stupid funny! The dude writes an entertaining and amusing ad.
http://southjersey.craigslist.org/for/1753316273.html

in case that ad gets deleted, read below:

I guess its easier for her to hold the guitar up in front of a mirror and then shoot the reflection, rather than simply shooting the guitar laying down, or propped up against, say, a wall.
The guitar is cheap though. But thats not the only reason why she'll get a TON of responses. 
Spelling errors forgiven due to her bellybutton.  

this is a sample of HOW to post a stupid ad.

(c'mon, how can you NOT make fun of this?}

I have been buying and selling items on Craigslist for some time now, and for the most part its been very beneficial. It provides a straight route for selling items locally and fast, and it can be a boon to bargain hunters, waiting for those item(s) that someone just wants to get fast cash for, without the hassle of going to an auction site or waiting for it to appear in the local newspaper (which no one reads anymore). Best of all, its FREE.

But ever so often you do come across some of the dumbest ads ever. Some have seriously misspelled simple words repeated throughout the ad, some whose grammar seems to have been written by a louse (even a 2 year old can sound more coherent). Some have the amazing audacity of posting what they believe is the overinflated sense of value for an easily researchable price and common enough item to be found in stores for cheap, brand new. Its a free market, and people can command whatever price they deem fit for whatever item they post. But as it IS a free market, we also have the freedom to do this: make fun of them.

This section is dedicated to framing those works of (f)art. We aim to put in a capsule the ads that i believe are timeless in their stupidity, whose only worth to the reader is the mirth and ...... Read More

This is my very first tube amp, in my awakening from my guitar coma. Im kinda sad about letting this amp go, as it held a sentimental value, but i dont play it as much, and only used when my buddy comes over and uses it with his modeling guitar unit.

It wasnt a bad tube amp at all. It was very transparent- it allows modeling units and stompboxes come through and flavor its sound nicely. It was quiet at its maximum levels, and it was LOUD.

But one reason that i gave it up was that it was TOO transparent. It had no specific tone to me, especially when i run its Lead Channel. Its Clean Channel was as classic a clean tone as you can get, but once the Lead Channel is kicked in, i had to futz around with its settings a bit much jut to dial in a useful tone. I guess i got spoiled from the other tube amps ive gotten, where getting a great overdriven tone was easy - all i did was turn up the volume and start getting a great tube growl. The kind of distortion and overdriven sound you look for in a tube amp. Dont get me wrong - the great tones are there, just too much dialing takes place when i play it, and i prefer to simply plug and play. Or plug, turn it up, and ...... Read More

This was pretty much an impulse buy, mainly because it was cheap! Also, musician's friend labeled it as Condition 4. The description said " neck needs adjustment". Nothing was said about anything broken, so i pulled the trigger and bought it. 4 days later, it arrived.

It came in pretty much brand new, just without the box. It included the hex screws for the bridge adjustments, a 1/4" phono guitar cord, and an aria manual. It also still had the protective plastic cover on the P-90 pickups and the pickguard.
Upon initial strumming, there was completely no sound but the clunk of the string hitting the neck. I checked the bridge and it was already adjusted as high as it can get. A rifle-hold inspection against the light shows the neck to be arched so far back you can see it bend. NOT GOOD!. Immediately i took off the truss rod cover, and of course, the one hex screw for it is not included. Rummaging around i found one that fit, though it kept slipping as i try to make a turn. Seems that the primer and finish  had gunked up the hole, making the truss rod wrench slip. A simple firm push and a shove got the hex bit to grip, and slight turns ...... Read More