Gear You’d Like to Have Back?

Oh hell I feel grateful for all the s#it I lost!
My 1990s was straight out of a Tom Waits song, and a whole lot of the $50k worth of gear I rehomed I actually paid money to lose, which is worse than having it stolen or burned in a fire.

How do you pay to rehome gear?
Pawn it for $40 and buy it back for $70 over and over.
Put it in a storage space and pay rent on it for a year before it gets auctioned off.

...wish I had all the money I spent on dope...

 

1967 is my favorite year Telecaster.
Hell it's also my favorite year Marshall and my favorite year for automotive tech.
If stuff history began and ended with 1967 I'd be a happy consumer.

After losing all my music gear and finally getting clean, I went to the NYV vintage guitar show in maybe 1999, with $3000 in my pocket.
All I wanted as a '67 Tele.
No more than 50 feet in there was one laying on a table priced at $2500.
Perfectly worn and correct in every detail.

But VG mag had recently run an ad for a pickup maker that claimed "cannot be told from originals".
It was far enough into the beginning of the guitar fraud market that the guys there I knew and trusted shook their heads and wouldn't say it was or wasn't legit.
The guitar was probably fine but the market had gone South, and dealers were just getting hip to all the ways relic guitars were faked.

I could say walking away from that table with the cash, I lost another guitar.

 

Not much. I had a Tube Screamer and DOD 250, both circa 1983, when I was a young teen, that I would love to have now. I didn’t know what I was doing with them, and probably sold or traded them for very little.

In the late 90s, I had a USA Strat. And a USA PRS Custom 24.
More recently, a Chinese EVH Wolfgang.

Wish I had had the space and funds to just keep things and not sell them in order to acquire other things....

 

I think you made the right decision. I would have done the same thing.

It's very important in life to give and have trust.

One of the great things about my '67 Telecaster was the incredible resonance of the guitar. I played it for hundreds of hours at night when I couldn't play through an amp and when I played I'd press my ear against the top of the body to hear. It was the loudest resonating solid body electric guitar I've ever had. Perhaps in retrospect it was due to the "Smuggler’s" routing Fender did to reduce weight. Anyway, like I always say, my tone back then, the best tone I've ever had, was my Telecaster into a dimed Fender Bassman.

 

I cannot list how many I wish I could have back, way too many ! I've had 6-Telecasters, 8-9 Stratocasters, 3 ES330's, 2 ES335, 1 ES345, 62 Firebird IV, 3 SG Les Paul Jr's. Around Akron, Oh...so many players back in the day. Early to mid 70's anything you wanted was under $350, anything! I traded a guitar player in the Rubber City Rebels a 63 Shoreline gold Stratocaster because the neck bolts were stripped, for a 1966 Telecaster, like Keith's . Of all the ones that have passed through my hands, that's the one. Pictured with a 62 white SG JR in front of my mid 70's Ampeg V2 head and V4 bottom, loaded with 4 Altec Lansings. Notice there was no need to mic it !! Ahhh young AND wild ! All the stories about the 70's ARE true. We played 3-4 nights a week all year around Ohio.
These days, 8 piece blues band (when the **** gets back to normal)
Surprisingly I use a 40 watt Fender Mustang II loaded with a Eminence Swamp Dog 12". Took me a year to learn to program it. If a larger club, run stereo I use a Fender Super Champ XD in a Fender 12' cab with a Celestion 100 watt 12" ran through a Radial Eng. A-B-Y....
It's still a ball playing....I raised triplets , they were more important than the gear. These days Custom Shop Strats, Epiphone Sheraton/w/varitone like ES345....ENJOY THE RIDE ! It's been a good one !
I'll be 70 in November

 

Weston Rainbow ii. That guitar was sweet.

 

almost all of it

 

A 76 blond Tele with a black scratchplate. Bought for $150 brand new in music store in Suva, Fiji as the family passed through on a trip home to Australia from the US in 1978. They had piles of Strats, Teles, P & J basses stacked up to the ceiling! Musos on cruise ships would restock there when in port. By the early 80s I was playing bass and the guitarist in my band kept hounding me for it as I never played it. He kept upping the money and when he go to $500 I gave in and sold it. What the hell was I thinking? Arrghhh...

Funnily enough I've found the guy on Facebook and am fighting the urge to see if he's still got it and would consider selling it back. I figure he'll probably want about Aus$5K (US$3500)

What does anyone reckon? Contact him and if he still has it offer $4K? Is a 76 Tele worth that?

 

Every. Single. Piece.
Good, great, bad, okay; all of it.
In the immortal words of Jayne Cobb: "If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak."

 

I would definitely contact him. Current price on Reverb shows a price of around $2,500 US.

Your sentimental value is of course the primary price guide for you.

The 1967 Telecaster I bought new and sold in 1970 has a very high sentimental value. Current '67 prices on Reverb are $4,900 to $10,700.

I wouldn't buy a used '67 Telecaster owned and played by someone else just to have one, which is why I ordered a new '67 spec Telecaster from the Custom Shop.

Your post and your story made me think again about how much I'd pay to get my own original '67 back. Of course it would be very difficult to ascertain authenticity, Petert's music is long gone and so it would be difficult if not impossible to find the serial number of my guitar, and I never wrote down the serial number.

Bottom line though, I'd gladly pay $20K to buy back my own original 1967 Telecaster. I'd probably go higher than $20K.

 

Bought and sold lots of gear over the past 10 years. The only one that I really miss is my 1966 Princeton Reverb with the original Jensen inside. Just a dumb move letting that amp go.

 

‘79 Strat hardtail w/ Fralins
‘58 tweed Champ (but I still have the Jazzmaster)
‘60s Standel Artist w/ EL84s and Jensen Concert 12” speaker
Custom Vibrolux Reverb - some of the best tones I’ve experienced
‘65 RI Princeton w/ 12” Cannabis Rex
‘90s Am Tele w/ Bardens
Mesa Blue Angel

 

Didn't buy it but I should have. Sometime in the late 1990s a friend of my father's died. My dad was helping the friend's son clean out his dead father's basement. Had a lot of tools and assorted junk and my dad asked if I wanted anything. I said no, and kiddingly added, "maybe an old guitar if you find one down there." Well my dad's friend didn't have an old guitar but it turned out the son did. He'd played a little bit in high school, then went to Viet Nam, came back and stopped playing. Turned out he had a 1961 Stratocaster stored under the bed for all of those years. Near mint condition. I could have bought it. Instead I passed on buying it, told him what it was worth, and told him to take it to Mandolin Brothers and get a fair price for it instead of getting ripped off at the local guitar shop. IIRC Mandolin Brothers sold it on commission for around $8,000 and the owner ended up with about $5,500. Still think about that one...

 

My 1980 Guild F-512 Rosewood, the one on the right.

 

I just wish I knew how to play a pedal steel! Love to hear one crying. Cindy Cashdollar is one of my favs.

 

I wanna be like rz350!

 

Interesting read Dwight. Thx for posting, and sorry about your friend. At least you’ve got some memories.

 

I'd quite like my stolen 1980 Tokai Springy Sound back...

 

....and weighed almost as much.

 

Boy, do I feel that pain. The one I had was bought new at City Music Center in Newark NJ in 1966. In an earlier post I assumed it was a '65 although it could have been a newly delivered '66.

Either way I sold it for not enough money (although I needed it at the time) about 1998.

Worst. Move. Ever.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind having my Guild D40-C back again. I know who has it (had, probably) but I don't think I'd even ask.