I have a problem. If a guitar is less than $50, and I see the ad for it, and have even the slightest interest, I tend to buy it.

However, some of my favorite guitars I play have come to me this way. A couple years ago I bought a used Yamaha FG-JR1 3/4 scale kids guitar for my travel guitar. And I kind of got hooked on knocking that thing around and putting it in the overhead bin of the Denver to St. George UT flight I'm on quite a bit.

Well, I found a Mitchell (Guitar Center's store brand) 3/4 scale solid spruce top MDJ-10 for $10 that a local early 20 something was selling. Had Ron-Jon surf shop, Van's stickers on it, hand painting etc. I bought it. It fit the baby taylor case I had picked up for the Yamaha. After lots of elbow grease cleaning it, it sounded like 3 times better than the Yamaha. Sold the Yamaha.

Then I found a 1970 Sears & Roebuck (atomic logo) equivalent of a Harmony Stella for $20. Saddle piece was some kind of dyed black basswood - strings had cut through it like cheese. I fashioned a compensated saddle from a Home Depot Hickory flooring sample (cut the tongue end off the sample, and a little chiseling and you can make a crap Harmony guitar sound really nice and intonate just fine.

Then another guitar came up for 6$ and I went and checked it out. It was another S&R but this one was made in Japan, 1969. I told the lady that it might be worth more.

She wanted it gone.

Then my guitar closet came to overflowing. Time to sell. I put the Stella S&R up for sale for $125 and after some waiting a local slide blues player paid that straight up. I told him I had the other S&R (which was in not so good shape, but it had a sort of banjo-like honk to it that made it pretty rock and roll) and he said he wanted to check it out. He strummed it for just 15 seconds or so, said 'Hell yes!' and handed me another $125.

Latest is a $25 very beat up body Squier Bronco bass. This is a 30" scale bass with a crappy single coil pickup in it. The neck on it is get this: solid maple and probably the nicest neck on any guitar I own. It's also very light - solid Agathis body. As an aging player, I made a decision that I was going to turn this into my main 'playing out' bass. So, the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder P-bass pickup that I had in my former gigging bass came out and is going to make a new appearance in the Bronco. I'm thinking of adding a belly cut and forearm cut in this body but I want to play it so bad. I had to fashion a new pickguard and I've had a stack of HPL samples that I wanted to try making pickguards out of so I picked the wildest one I had. Note to others - HPL is a pain to work with. Anyways, here's a picture of tonight's work on it which was doing a full shielding fit of some sheet copper.



Last edited by rockstar_not; 08/10/20 06:21 PM.
My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud