[Brian Krashpad]

Since I think I've run through my vintage amps, now I'll do a thread on my "vintage" guitars. As with that other thread, however, I'll use a very loose definition of "vintage," as per our discussion in the "What is Vintage?" thread.

At any rate, I'll go though the lot roughly in the order I acquired them, when I can remember that. I may even include some ones I used to have but no longer have. As with my amps, don't expect a ton of "collectable" or expensive guitars. Mine isn't so much a "collection" in that sense, as it is just a batch of guitars that'd be classified by serious collectors as "players," that I've ended up with over the years.

The first entry is the guitar I've had the longest, and is also my oldest guitar. It's also the only one I coudln't really gig with in its present state, as it needs some fretwork and other repairs. This one, unlike the others would fit even a narrow definition of "vintage."

This guitar is a 1960 Fender Duo-Sonic. I got it in the late 70's sometime, iirc I paid $67.50 for it (I still have the receipt from Beaches Music in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, somewhere). Some idiot had repainted it, apparently using a brush and house paint! My dad stripped the guitar for me, now it's just the bare wood with some lemon oil:



The pickups are low output Fender single coils. The neck is short-scale, as Fender sold this as a "student" guitar. This was my first "real" electric guitar. I previously had owned a terrible Sears-type no-name electric that later got painted in a checkerboard pattern and was used as a wall hanging in my house in law school.

Questions, comments, and further discussion are encouraged!

[Brian Krashpad]

Next up, c. 1973 Ovation Breadwinner:



Although those look like humbuckers, they're not. They're "torroidal-magnet" (whatever that means) single coils. The Breadwinner was the first large production-run guitar to have active electronics. It has a 9-volt in the back. The combination of single coils and active electronics makes for a lot of hum. A later version of the Breadwinner had mini-humbuckers instead. I'd like to play one of those some day.

I bought O'l Blue from a pawn shop in downtown Jacksonville, Florida around 1979. Iirc I paid $225, with ohsc. I saw the Breadwinner, and my blue Kustom amp, in the shop window from a moving car! The Breadwinner was my first gigging guitar and my main guitar throughout the 1980's.

[Brian Krashpad]

Today's selection is "the one that got away." Of all the guitars I've sold, traded, or lost (to theft, I've never actually just "lost" one before) this one is the one I kinda miss.

This was a black Ric 430.







Mine had some minor playability problems, which probably could've been solved by a little setup work. However, this was back in the 80's when I didn't really know anything about guitars (for the longest time I didn't even know there was a preferred way to wind strings, etc.), so I sold it. I don't remember how much I paid for it or got on resale, probably under $200, definitely not much more than that.

The 430 was designed in part with Forrest White, formerly of Fender. The Fender influence is obvious, as this guitar features a bolt on neck and a simplified, stripped down ("plank" body with no contours or archtop) styling arguably reminiscent of the Fender Telecaster. The original version of this model reportedly actually had a 6-a-side Fender-type headstock, although I haven't ever seen one like that. These guitars were introduced in the early 70's and dropped in the early 80's. One almost never sees them any more. In addition to matte black, they were also available in natural woodgrain and in brown. The pickups were Ric Hi-Gains, the same single-coil that's on the Ric 620 I have today.

The above pics are ones found on the web, as digital photography didn't really exist in the early 80's when I owned this (my best guess is around 1982-83), Here's a scanned pic of me on my front porch that shows the actual Ric, to our left. Other guitars shown are: my Duo-Sonic, an old Vega archtop (subsequently "borrowed" by my brother, who still has it, originally owned by our dad), the Breadwinner, my acoustic, and the Sears guitar mentioned in my first post above, after it had been turned into "wall art."



I won't do a separate post for the Vega. When I had it it was a "project" guitar with no bridge or electronics. Similarly, I don't have any good pics of the Sears guitar, so the above pic will have to suffice for those two.

[Brian Krashpad]

It just occurred to me that the Duo-Sonic posted first above wasn't really my first guitar, but my first electric guitar. I got my first guitar, a no-name MIJ acoustic while I was in junior high school in the early 70's. My dad bought it in Japan and gave it to me when I taught myself to play it.

Here's a slightly better pic than the "porch" picture above:



As I'm not much of an acoustic player, I do't know much about it's construction or what my dad paid for it. I still own it though.

While I'm on the subject of acoustics, my 12-string is also 70's vintage. It's a Yamaha, that I found in a pawn shop for $150 about 5 years ago. It is all beat up. I think made in Taiwan, can't remember. Iirc the model is FG-120, but I could be wrong about that too. At any rate it has good action for an acoustic and a nice rich tone, unlike my 6-string, which sounds rather thin.

[Brian Krashpad]

I've been watching Euro 2008 this week so I haven't posted much, next up is my frist-ever bass, an '80's Hondo II Explorer-style bass. It wasn't a great bass, but at least it played, and when the bassist in the band Camp 7 quit and I had to move to bass from lead, I pretty much bought the first thing I could find that was cheap.

Here's a couple live shots:





Anyhow, I have no idea what the body wood was. Maple neck/board, P-style split humbucker single pickup, and a volume and tone control. Bolt-neck.

This was stolen out of my office years ago.

[MrSandMan]

Wow Brian, I didn't see this thread until now. Those are some amazing pieces of history that you have there. The first one, the Fender, is absolutely beautiful. That bare wood with lemon oil really brings out the beauty. Do you still have any of these?

Is that Checkered coloured Cheap Trick guitar yours?

Unfortunately, I don't have any vintage guitars. I had a couple 1950s Danelectros. They had lipstick pickups... pretty neat guitars.

[Brian Krashpad]

Originally Posted by MrSandMan

Wow Brian, I didn't see this thread until now. Those are some amazing pieces of history that you have there. The first one, the Fender, is absolutely beautiful. That bare wood with lemon oil really brings out the beauty. Do you still have any of these?

Is that Checkered coloured Cheap Trick guitar yours?

Unfortunately, I don't have any vintage guitars. I had a couple 1950s Danelectros. They had lipstick pickups... pretty neat guitars.

I still have the Fender Duo-Sonic. It's the one guitar I need to have work done on. My 2 oldest are the Breadwinner, which I recently had brought up to "giggable," and the Duo. Unfortunately the Duo has some fret issues for the 3 lowest ("cowboy chord") frets, and my luthier buddy (and a former bandmate, briefly) at my local m&p says he doesn't do fretwork any more. I need to get it playable again.

The "Cheap Trick" guitar was mine. It was an awful guitar, as cool as I made it look. Basically I just slathered the whole bastard in white paint, drew out a grid with a ruler in pencil (!), and filled in the black squares as time permitted with a small paint brush. As a kid I built models so I was pretty good at such free-hand painting. It does look good at a distance, I'll admit. I hung it up as a wall ornament over our bumper-pool table in the house I lived in at in law school (the same house from the "porch shot" above). I have a photo of the "game room" of that house (lovingly referred to, for good reason, as "The Pit") somewhere and will see if I can scan it and post it here to show you its final resting place.

I have no idea where the "Sears Special/Cheap Trick" guitar ever ended up.

[Brian Krashpad]

Here's the shot I were thinkin' of, sorry about the poor-quality scan. The poster to the left is for a free show, Spilt Enz and Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. Not sure about the poster in the middle.




The picture across the dart board is Ronnie Reagan gettin' gunned down.

He was no favorite at The Pit.

[Brian Krashpad]

Today's entry is my Squier Precision Bass, made in Japan in 1987.



I bought this one because I needed something more reliable than the Hondo Explorer, and besides the Hondo looked a little too "metal" for the bands I was in. For all of the 90's it was my number 1 bass, which included a stint around '95-'97 where I was the bassist in a band called Allen Wrench.

I bought this around 1990 for $100 from the drummer in Camp 7 (the guy in the Hondo pictures above), along with an old chipboard case I've since replaced with a hardshell. In the late 90's I found a MIM Fender Jazz bass for $250 (w/ohsc) and those 2 are currently my main basses, I go back and forth between them fairly evenly.

[Brian Krashpad]

It just occurred to me that I should include the Peavey Fury bass I got a couple months ago in this thread as well. Should date from 1984-86, according to an online article I found about it's predecessor, the Peavey T-20 bass. Everything appears to be in good working order, not that there's much to go wrong in the first place. Just one pickup, an angled super-ferrite pickup, which apparently is the same as was on the earlier T-20. According to my T-20 source ( http://www.vintageguitar.com/feature...s.asp?AID=2470 ), the pickup is a single-coil. The pickup also has what Peavey called an "integral, mounting ring/thumb rest combination" which is unique if nothing else.

Mine is black-on-black, like my 1980 Peavey T-60 guitar. Since I know it didn't happen if there ain't pics, here are a couple, pardon the sticker gunk, I was still working on getting it off the bass:





Total damage?

$125 USD.