Wierd Guitar History

Subject: Wierd Guitar History
From: Lonesome Gillette
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 12:48 PM

Anybody have any odd stories about an instrument's past?

Here's one: About twenty years ago I bought an old Fender Bronco from a guy at work, it was a cheap little solid body from the 60's. I had it around for a few years until one day I was walking home, guitar in hand, and two guys big guys (I didn't recognize) came running toward me. I thought they were going to pass me but when they got up to me one of them punched me in the face. My glasses fell to the ground, leaving me half blind, when the other guy stepped on the glasses. They took the guitar and ran off. Many years passed and I forgot about the guitar. Wound up playing bluegrass banjo mostly and didn't think about electric guitars much. Then my parents got divorced and sold the house I grew up in, my siblings and I had to go up there and grab any old stuff that was still kicking around that we wanted. Well, you guessed it, the Bronco was in the house, up in the back recesses of the attic under some junk. Most of the hardware was missing and the outside of the guitar had been all heavily burned with a blow torch or something. The pickguard was all melted, the guitar was all black, soot colored. No one in my family knows anything about it. Weird huh?

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 12:52 PM

Good Lord Gillette! You must have gotten mugged by your MOTHER!

Great story actually. Weird. You must have some theories.

Rick

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 01:09 PM

No Rick, its WIERD, not WEIRD............Weird would be if the guitar came back to life as the reincarnation of Bo Diddley's mother.

(Why have we got TWO thread titles running with the word weird in both....and misspelled in both?????????)

Actually Forlorn Blue Blade, that's a strange one alright. So whaddaya' think actually happened??

Spaw

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Lonesome Gillette
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 02:10 PM

Hey, my spelling checker corrects wierd and says it's weird.

But anyway, I really have no Idea what happened in that story I told. My brother had some real "bad" friends around that time, they all disliked me (or just thought I was WIERD), but so did most of my home town. When I saw that guitar last year it really shocked me. This is the stuff that I should write songs about insted of moping around saying there's nothing to write about, I just find it hard to put things into words.

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Grab
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 02:21 PM

That's cos the spell-checker's right...

Grab, being self-righteous. ;-)

PS. Was the guitar salvageable?

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Lonesome Gillette
Date: 24 Oct 00 - 02:45 PM

Was the guitar salvageable? Well, it's hanging in my shop waiting. I want to put it back together but not refinish it, it looks pretty damn cool.

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: rangeroger
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 12:11 AM

It sounds like your mother hired some of your brother's friends to kidnap your guitar and then tortured it. After extracting the wanted information, it was held captive in the attic.

Someone apparently forgot to send you the ransom demand.

rr

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 12:42 AM

I once found an Italian parlour guitar in a second-hand shop and put some money down on it 'cause I was broke at the time, and went to work. The guitar had seen better days, and had been refinished... badly... but it was basicly sound, fourty years old, solid wood top, sides, and binding, and a solid ARCHED back!

Well, I raved about it at work for a week or so, spoke of the incredible fool who was selling it for twenty dollars with a gleam in my eye, and got almost everyone asking when I would "bring it by" and show them...
Well,... when the week was finally over, I hurried out on my break and got it, and proceeded to bring it on in to show it off!
When I got back and layed it out on one of the tables, one my bosses stood there paling visibly, surrounded by five or six co-workers... as I showed off all it's beautiful qualities, and describing in detail how easily the damage could be fixed...

After my boss had asked me a few questions about the inner workings of the instrument, he just walked away...

I was later told that it was his, and he had considered it worthless... and was hoping "SOME SUCKER WOULD BUY IT"!

Still have it, and it just keeps getting better!

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: ddw
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 12:55 AM

I don't see anything weird about it LG. Somebody in your family just hired your brother's friends to stage a mugging so they wouldn't have to listen to an electric guitar. Once you went acoustic, everything was cool.

LOL

david

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Sorcha
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 01:09 AM

Well, it's not guitar, but it is weird,,,,,,The Devil's Fiddle on e-bay. It actually sold to a buyer in Taiwan. I wish I could have had it...........sounds neat to me.

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Lonesome Gillette
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 10:57 AM

That Devil's Fiddle is pretty neat. I'm making a fiddle myself right now, no pentagrams on mine.

hey rr and ddw, this is no laughing matter, kidnapping and mugging are serious charges.

hehe

Subject: Lyr Add: REUNION (Bob Clayton)
From: Songster Bob
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 11:42 AM

Let's try again:

Reunion

[Tune: "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down"]

Long years ago, a younger man, I got my first guitar --
A cheapo-cheapo, it cost me 15 bucks.
It was hard to play, and sounded like a tin can strung with wire;
It made me want to better my poor luck.
Now Martins, so I'd heard, were among the very best,
But they cost an arm and even half a leg.
But I kept looking on till I finally found one, used,
At a price I didn't have to steal or beg.

The model that I found was a big D-28
Made in 1963, the numbers told.
The top was just as snowy as it was when it was new --
You'd never think that it was five years old.
The trouble is, it also sounded new and kind of stiff;
It didn't have that sound I'd hoped to find.
So when I got a better-sounding, smaller Martin box,
I sold that Dreadnought to a friend of mine.

Now, this was 1969, a score-odd years ago,
When hippie-dom held sway among the young.
This friend went to New York, and left his car to go get stoned,
And got ripped off by some damned passing bum.
So that guitar was gone, from his life and from mine,
And I hadn't thought of that old thing for years.
Though I'd owned some nice guitars, I still hadn't found the one
That felt right to my fingers and my ears.

It's 1989, at a festival with friends,
When I see this odd-appearing Martin there.
A '28 from '63, but looking at the top,
You could see that something wasn't on the square.
The musician who was selling it told a tale of woe,
Of a smashed-in top and a luthier of skill.
But then when I played it, it spoke to me, deep down,
And you could say it's talking to me still.

So now I have the Martin of my dreams, or pretty close,
And I play it every time that there's a chance.
The lifelong search I'd made for that particular guitar
Had had me leading such a merry dance.
But the thing is, once I'd bought it, I finally took a look
At the maker's number stamped inside, and lo!
That "196578" rang my memory's bell --
It's the same guitar I sold off years ago!


© 1992, Bob Clayton, Silver Spring, MD


Now, those who attended the Getaway would have noticed that I wasn't playing the Martin any more, but my new "Running Dog" instead. True enough, but the Martin is safely stowed in its hard case, awaiting a time for its reappearance. It's a different sound from the RD's sycamore sides and back, and isn't retired, just on sabbatical.

Bob Clayton

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: mousethief
Date: 25 Oct 00 - 11:50 AM

Bob: a nice story, with or without line breaks!

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Wierd Guitar History
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 26 Oct 00 - 01:44 AM

A lady came to see me one night in a club in Alexandria, VA, and she told me that her mother who had enjoyed my shows had passed away. I conveyed my condolences and she then told me that her mother had left me an old guitar. Apparently her Mom had liked to play a little guitar along with music on the radio 50 or 60 years ago. So I went to her house the next day, and she brought out a dusty, tattered old cardboard case which I opened. There inside was an old dark-brown parlor guitar which had bellied up, with the bridge was coming away. There was no name on the peghead, and I couldn't see inside it for dust and cobwebs. I thanked her (and her mother) and took the guitar home, When I got it home and under a light, I saw that the name had been stamped in the back of the peghead. It was a 1927 Koa wood Martin 00-18 which had been set up as a Hawaiian guitar with the metal nut, and there was an old slide in the case with it as well as a set of really old Black diamond strings. I took it to a Martin repairman in Baltimore who flattened the belly, lowered the action and set it up really nicely for me. And who told me that it was worth about $1800. I called the lady and told her what it was worth and offered to pay for it, but she refused, saying that her mother wanted me to have it. Well, this little beauty just booms. I do a little fingerpicking, and a little lead (light gauge only!) at home or in the studio, I loosen the strings after playing, but I don't take it to gigs with me. And when I go, I'll pass it on to some other guitar-picker! Seamus