Further Proof That I Am Not What You Would Call a "Collector"

I tend to end up with more than one example of things, such as bikes and motorbikes, guitars and amps, records, books, and comics...but I don't consider myself a collector, necessarily.  I'm just a guy with 15 different pocket knives, all of which have been carried and sharpened so they are usable.

Collectors own things simply to own them.  To a collector, a sharpened knife is ruined, and any modification of whatever it is that they collect makes that example inferior to one in a completely stock state.

But, this isn't a post about collectors.  This is a post about a guitar I just bought;  a 1969 Harmony H-82G Rebel, just like the one I owned 30 years ago, when I was in college.

Here I am, playing that guitar circa 1980.

I have a soft spot for the thinline-style Harmony hollow bodied electric guitars.  One of my all-time favorite guitars I have ever owned is a 1966 Harmony H-72, which is a slightly more upscale model than the Rebel.  I bought my H-72 in unused condition back in 1997, and had it sitting in my coffee shop.  Lots of people played that guitar there, and many wanted to buy it.  Luckily, I never made a deal on it.

I've missed my Rebel, ever since the ex-wife talked me into selling it, along with about 10 other guitars, shortly after we bought our first house.  She was of the opinion that all of those guitars were wasting space.

Anyway, I decided, a couple of years back, that I would like to get another Rebel, preferably the rarer Avocado Green model like I had in the old days.  So, I started watching eBay, and bidding on them.  I always seemed to get outbid by $5.00, because I have a maximum amount that I am willing to pay for one of these.  Finally, last week, I ended up winning one.

I was ecstatic that I had finally scored one of these guitars. 

It was a little rough around the edges, but it is over 30 years old.  They can't all be as clean as my H-72.  So, I was fine with it, cosmetically.

What I wasn't too happy with, though, was the tuners.  While they appeared to be stock, they were actually a collection of parts from three different sets of tuners.  Click the picture to make it big, and check out the screws and cogs on each tuner.  The top tuner has a replacement cog (and post, which you can't see from here), but it at least works.  The third tuner down has a replacement cog, which is the wrong size, and is almost impossible to turn.  This rendered the G string virtually non-tunable.

I tuned the rest of the strings to the G, and plugged the guitar into my amp, and tested it out.  The neck is great, the sound is fine, and playing it was like stepping back in time.  It was everything I wanted...except tunable.

That was last Monday.  I spent this week thinking about what I wanted to do.  Should I find a set of six-on-a-plate original-style tuners and keep the guitar "stock", or should I just use the extra set of Telecaster-style tuners I picked up in Waynesboro, Tennessee, last summer?

Here's what I decided on:

I re-drilled the headstock for the nicer tuners and bolted them down, this afternoon.  I'm not worried about resale value:  I don't plan on reselling this guitar on the collector's market.  It has found it's final home, more than likely.  So, rather than replace the non-usable stock tuners with a newer version of what are, after all, sub-par units, I decided to make the guitar easier to deal with when I am playing it.

Here, for comparison's sake, are the Rebel and the slightly more upscale H-72.  Some of the upgrades on the H-72, compared with the H-82 include the block inlays on the fingerboard, as opposed to the dots on the Rebel...

and a bound headstock, where the Rebel's headstock is unbound, along with nicer tuners (though they are still six-on-a-plate).  The tuners on my H-72 are stock, but they still work well and I see no need to replace them until they become problematic.  At that point, I will go with the same style tuners I installed on the Rebel. 

I need to find some knobs for the sliding potentiometers.  That's another place where I will end up with not-as-original parts, mainly because I can't find a source for the originals.  It's unusual to see one of these with all of the knobs there, so it seems like some vintage guitar parts vendor would stock replacements, but none do.  I suppose it's a pretty small market, even if 90% of the owners of these guitars are in need.

I love the green color, and the back of this guitar is in pretty decent shape.  It's not unusual to see a lot of belt-buckle rash on these, as the paint is not particularly durable.

So, here's the full Monty, with the new tuners.  I think we are going to make some interesting, if not beautiful, music, together...

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Progress on the Tele

 A couple of weeks ago, I actually got the Thinline Tele put together.  I used the original bridge, with the string stops cut off and notches cut into it to clear the new Tune-O-Matic style bridge, to mount the bladed humbucker in the lead position.

I accidentally cut the notches a bit too wide, and you can see the pocket for the pickup at one corner of the plate.  I picked up a cheap Tele copy for parts, at the pawn shop, the other day.  So, I have another bridge to use, in order to make it look a little better.  I think I will eventually take this one off, use it as a template (with the correction to fix the problem), then take it somewhere to have it cut with a plasma cutter.  Using the tools I have, it's difficult to make it pretty.

For now, though, I am just going to leave it.  It works, and the imperfection of the pickup mount is of small concern.  I am more interested in how it plays and how it sounds than I am with how the tiny details look.

And, it plays and sounds the way I've always wanted a Telecaster to be.  This is the first one I've had on which I like the sounds of both pickups, and I love the feel and playability of it.  It's definitely a keeper.

I'm eventually going to sand off the decals, and re-varnish the headstock.  I don't want any confusion about this being a Fender, or a Squire, or an anything.  I've mixed and matched and modified the guitar and its parts to the point that I claim it as my own.  For now, the crow sticker from the weird thrift-store acoustic covers most of the stock decal.

Now, I just need to make some music with it...

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Telecaster Project

I was down at Guitar Center, the other day, to get some nylon strings for a Kay classical I repaired, and I stopped by the used guitar rack to check out what was there.  I was surprised to see a guitar I thought had been sold, back on the rack and significantly marked down.

 It is a Raines Thinline Telecaster copy.  I had looked at this guitar, when it was priced at $225.00 higher, and just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on buying it.  But, I wanted it prettry badly.  I have been looking for a Thinline, for a while, but the new versions at the store, whether the $300 Squire-by-Fender models, or the $800 Fenders with the humbucking pickups just don't sound as good as I remember the vintage ones sounding.

So, I pulled the Raines down and plugged it in.  Man, did it sound good!  The neck felt a bit weird, but the pickups were awesome, and the chambered body added some meat to the sound, unlike the actual Fenders I plugged in as comparison.  This guitar sounded like I expected a Thinline Tele to sound!

However, as one of the employees pointed out, there was reason the guitar had been marked down:

No wonder the neck felt a little weird!  It was as twisted as David Lynch's imagination.

Still, the sound was awesome, and I have a Squire Tele I bought a while back, with a bad switch and a horrible bridge pickup that I was planning on modifying.  I thought about it for about 20 minutes, as I bought my strings and took them out to the car.  Eventually, I went back in the store and bought the guitar (for less than the cost of the bare Thinline-style body from a guitar parts supplier), and started planning on the modifications I was going to make.

The first thing I did was pull the neck off of the Squire, and swap it onto the Raines (I have an e-mail request in to Matt Raines to see if he will sell me a replacement neck at a reasonable cost, so I can put the Squire back together).

One of the plans I had for the Squire was to remove the stock bridge/tailpiece combination and replace it with a trapeze-style tailpiece and a standard bridge.  So, I did that with the Raines.  I didn't bother making a plate to cover the pickup cavity, and hold the pickup in place, because I wanted to see if I liked the feel of this combination on the Tele as much as I do on the Harmony, the Gibson ES-125, etc.

It turns out that I do, so I will be working on a cover plate (and a higher-quality, adjustable, bridge) and I'll make it a permanent change.

So, here it is in its new form.  We'll see if Matt Raines comes through with a neck.  If not, I will probably leave this one on here (it's really a nice-feeling neck), and I'll find something else to put on the Squire.

An interesting problem has made itself apparent to me, lately.  For some reason, all of my guitars with single-coil pickups hum like mad, in my house, when plugged into my amp.  Now, I know that humbucking pickups were developed just for curing this problem, but the hum I get in my house is much more noticeable than what I get with the same guitars and amps, elsewhere.

I don't know if the wiring in my house is contributing to it, or if there is a microwave tower close by, irradiating the heck out of me, or what.  I've tried different outlets in the house, to see if it's a bad ground, but I get no difference from outlet to outlet.  Oddly, the Telecasters are the worst offenders, but the Harmony and the Gibson exhibit the same problem, just not quite as pronounced.

I have a humbucking Telecaster bridge pickup I may put in the Raines (I wouldn't change the neck pickup, since it sounds so good).  But, I'd rather find the underlying cause and fix it, so that I can play all of my guitars without all the noise, which is a real problem when I try to record something.  I find myself using the black Tele Custom with the two humbuckers to record, regardless of which guitar I think sounds best for a particular song, simply to get a clean track recorded.

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Teisco Video

                                                               

I shot a short video of me playing "Novocain Blues", just to show what the guitar sounds like.  You can barely hear the vocal, which makes it probably my best recording, ever!

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Another Teisco Guitar!

This one followed me home from Tennessee...

I saw it hanging in the window of a music store in Waynesboro, where my nephews and I had driven 30 miles in order to buy a set of guitar strings.  When I asked about it, the owner of the store said that it was a project that he didn't think he'd ever finish.  It was missing the the tuner for the high E string, as well as the portion of the bridge which the strings actually sit on.  Plus the (probably black/red sunburst) original finish had been removed, at some point in time, and the wood was oiled (you can see the remaining original black paint inside the cutouts).  For a collector, it was close to worthless.

Still, I couldn't turn it down at the $50.00 the store-owner quoted me when I asked if he would sell it.  He assured me that the electronics were in good shape, and I took him at his word.  I've dealt with this fellow, before, and he's always been fair and honest with me.

This is the style of guitar that, 30 years ago, we would buy for ten or fifteen dollars, just to get the neck and pickups, then we would build our own body for it.  The body is a mere 1-inch thick slab of some sort of hardwood (it has that mahogany look, but I'm no expert on woodgrain).  As you can see in the picture, above, the pickup sits on top of the body, rather than sitting in a routed-out pocket.  You can also see the replaced bridge piece which I had in my box of guitar parts.

The pickup, itself, is pretty basic.  No adjustment for height, nor any adjustment for the pole pieces is available.  This particular unit has a nice strong output.  Too bad the trim ring is cracked.

I had the missing pieces for the tuner, as well.  You can see the brass-colored gear and the yellowed plastic on the replacement tuner.

I made a bridge for it out of a report clip, while I was in Tennessee, and strung it up with the five strings we took off of Kyle's guitar (he had broken the high-E, yet again, and we replaced his strings with a heavier-gauge set).  I played it, and the tone was fantastic.  The intonation was crap, though, which was unusual for one of these guitars.  I finally noticed that this is one of the necks with a zero fret, on which the strings should rest.   Someone had installed a standard nut on the neck, which was holding the strings up off of the zero. 

After I got home, I took the nut off, and cut the slots more deeply so that the strings would rest on the zero fret.  I then installed the bridge piece, strung it up and plugged it in.  Even though it has only a single, center-mounted pickup, a pretty wide variety of tones can be had through adjusting the tone and volume pots.  It sounds great and, since I shimmed the neck, slightly, the action is low and easy. 

I had originally thought I'd put it on ebay and flip it, but this is a keeper guitar.  I'll put the guitar I traded my ROAD Amp for on the bay, instead. 

Maybe this weekend, I'll do a short video of the guitar in action and post it up.  I don't have my good amp, right now.  It quit working as I was testing the guitar (no sound, but it still has power and the tubes glow),  so I had to take it back to Guitar Center for them to send to the Fender Warranty Shop.

I have a little 10-watt Marshall practice amp I can use, though, which I bought as a back-up unit.  The guitar sounds good through it (and I haven't tried it through my 1950s Kay tube amp, yet, come to think of it).

I'll get some video, one way or another.

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A Long Long Road

I have been working on a new version of a song, "RockerArm" that I wrote almost 30 years ago.  It was based on a comment Johnny Broyles made about his car, and I always liked the lyrics.  The original music, however, not so much.  Due to some extenuating circumstances within the "band", I had to dumb it down to two chords.

So, as part of my new music project, I wanted to do a better version of this song.  After recording and erasing seven different versions, I finally came up with one I like.  I was singing the song to myself during the 24-hour mountain-bike race, and finally came up with the sound I wanted.

Go here to check it out.

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Invasion of the Japanese Guitars

Warning:  Those of you familiar with my Two Wheels blog know how I can geek out about bicycles.  Be forewarned that I am fully capable of doing the same in regards to guitars.

In the past month, I have acquired three vintage 1960s Japanese electric guitars.  All three were acquired at less than the going market price, for which I am grateful.  I am not the only one who appreciates these things, it seems, and the prices are well above the $5.00 to $20.00 I paid for similar instruments back in the late 70s/early 80s.

The first guitar I got, from eBay, is this nice Teisco ET-220 (Electric Tremelo 2-pickups),  also called the Spectrum 2.  The Teisco DelRey nameplate is missing from the headstock, so I have to assume the previous owner did not know the brand, nor did the "we sell your junk on eBay" company which listed it.  I happened to see the listing, but I think the Teisco collectors must have all missed it, since I got it for less than half of what a similar model sold for in the same week.

The Spectrum guitars have cool pickups with offset treble and bass pole-pieces.  Plus, they have the nice, flower engraved, pickguards for which the Teisco DelRey is famous.

The nicely bound headstock still shows the mark from the missing nameplate.

The ET-220 arrived complete with this cool vintage strap, as well.  I have seen these go for $25.00, on their own, lately.

This is the guitar for which I traded the ROAD amp.  It was presented to me as a Teisco, and while I am sure it was built in the Tokyo Electrical Instrument and Sound Company facility, I don't know if it was branded as a Teisco.  I have never seen a Teisco E-100 with the polished aluminum pickguard, but everything else matches up.  Of course, Teisco sold guitars with many, many different brand names to different importers/department stores/music store chains in the 1960s.

This guitar has the thickest, most baseball bat-like neck I have ever seen, which is good since it has no truss rod.

This mystery guitar, which I got in between getting the other two, shares a lot of features with the E-100-type guitar, above.  But, it also has some differences.

Other than the obvious difference in body profile, and two pickups rather than one, the neck on the mystery guitar is not nearly as thick as the E-100 neck.  And, it is a semi-set neck, rather than a pure bolt-on. 

Under that 5-bolt plate are two bolts holding the neck to the body.  There also appears to be some glue involved in the joint, as well.

Click this picture for the big version, and you can see the difference in neck thicknesses and profiles between the two guitars.

The pickups are identical, between the two, as are the tailpieces.

As usual, the two rocker switches are in bad shape.  I'll probably replace them with toggle switches, since I can't find replacements for the rockers.

I can't find a picture of an exact match for this guitar, but I have found some similar ones branded as "Winston" and "Zen-On".  I suspect that the E-100 was the same, due to the polished pickguard.

I plan on trying to get this one in as good shape as the E-100.  I stuck the one string and a bridge on it, just to see if the electronics work, and the tone is great, as it sits.  I think it will make a nice player, once it's spiffed up a bit.

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