EdwardMarlowe

I've never fully lost the GAS, though Mrs Edward's Raised Eyebrow is a powerful motivator for not giving in to it. Interestingly, though, I've found my GAS these days is aimed at much more realistic stuff - cheaper gear. The latest attack is an urge for a Gretsch 2622, in gunmetal, to have it pin-striped and put dice knobs on it... Sure, if we won ten million on the lotto and I could go crazy I'd buy all the top of the line stuff, but it seems as I've gotten older I'm much more secure in choosing VFM budget options rather than feeling I always have to go for "the best" (although "the best" isn't necessarily also the most expensive). Liking F-types and oddball rockabilly / garage stuff helps there, I suspect.

Not sure this applies everywhere, but here in London I've noticed a lot of my old favourite guitar shops gradually disappear. The Guitar Centre (ne BassCentre) moved from Wapping to Shoreditch to online only - gutted, Shoreditch was local, and they did good repair work for me. Leytonstone's Holiday Music - with the best stock of Lefties in Europe, important for me - moved to an industrial estate in Essex (crap for non-car owners), then, afaik, went online only - and now (I assume from lack of website) are out of business entirely. Denmark Street used to be nice for a look (though never lived up to its claim to be the best in London; prices were not always outrageous, but they rarely had lefties in stock and really seemed to specialise more in budget options than what you'd expect from what was supposed to be the height of the guitar shop world per its own publicity....). This has left me thinking - both London *and* elsewhere - would be nice to have a thread where people can flag up shops / repair places/ whatever local to them who do good stuff and are well priced. I'll kick this off with reference to Matchetts in Belfast. Most of the guitar shops I used to hang out in back in the 90s in Belfast are long gone now, but Matchetts are still going strong. Helpful staff (some of them have been there forever as well, which is a good sign its nice place to work) https://matchettsmusic.com/ Good stock of stuff, were always fairly priced in my experience. I dropped in last a couple of years ago; all seemed to be much still the same. Spent a grand or two there during the nineties, including my beloved 1994 US Std (still not my favourite neck profile, and I wish I'd gone for the metallic red over the burst, and maple over the rosewood, but I still love that old guitar and will never sell it). Highly recommended if that's your patch.

Currently GASing bad at the Vintage V6 Reissue line. If they did the maple boarded lefty option in their Candy Apple Blue colour, it could well leapfrog the Tidepool Player Strat on my wants list. Easier to justify the spend on, too. For now, it only being available sunburst is holding me back... Though I will have to ty one if ever I can get to a guitar shop that stocks lefties again. (I've never forgiven Holiday music for moving to Essex and then going online only!)

It does seem that the players I see using them more do tend to be in the hardcore metal arena more often than not. It certainly allows for those really deep tunings a lot of those guys prefer. I suspect that the lower notes available for detuning also work better with string tension -= only so low you can go with a standard low E before it flaps and doesn't resonate... Me, I'd prefer to go the six string baritone route, but I'm sure that has its own differences in feel too. Though an extra string would take some getting used to, I can see that some players (particularly shredders who often prefer a noticeably wider neck anyhow) might prefer the more standard scale length over the slightly longer one of a baritone.

An acquired taste, like any guitar, really. For my money, I'd vastly prefer the Setzer one in a solid colour - I've actually grown to rather dislike figured wood over the years. I suspect, being a left handed player and therefore more often than not being limited to a sunburst option as the lefty default, I've just gotten tired of them...

Fender have dome some pretty cool Custom Shop Teles in the style of Gretsch guitars... Fender owning Gretsch of course makes that easier: http://i.imgur.com/ip31mN1.jpg What I love about these is that they all have a real look of the guitar on which they are based. Barring the last one (disclaimer: I loathe Bono though I always liked his Gretsch. That stupid slogan pickguard would have to go, though...), which I believe was the Pretentious One's own order originally, they look like something specced by a guy who loves Teles, loved the look of the Gretches but couldn't get on with playing one, so.... Bit like my idea above which (the thru-neck aside) is basically a Fenderised LP Junior....

Not sure if I'm the last to see this, but.... I've always looked at Vintage guitars via the JHS website. Googling for some information on them over the weekend, I discovered this: https://vintageguitarsrus.com/ There's a nice history of the brand on there, with a lot of stuff I hadn't realised. In particular, while I was long aware of Encore as a budget brand, I had no idea the original Vintage guitars evolved out of the Encore brand itself. It's nice to see them coming up. Would be fascinating to hear more about their pro-shop; I wonder if that could ultimately provide a bit more of a known-quantity of what the Shi Jie operation are doing? (I know the method isn't exactly the same, but still.... fantasies about ordering a Vintage V6 left hander with a baked or tinted maple neck and a Candy Apple Blue body....). A exciting brand to see develop and get all the buzz about on here, even if as of yet 99% of the model i see and love the look of aren't available left-handed.... Any other cool websites - manufacturers, shops, or anything really for guitar that offer cool information or nice little features beyond 'buy our stuff' ?

Thanks, I'll look into that.

Definitely looks like a nice solution. I'll be interested to hear how you get on with it in the wild.

Where do you guys go to get work done - especially in London? (All my old guitar shop haunts seem to have closed down). I'm still looking into building a 'Black Beauty' project on a budget. Not excessive spending, but I'd like a pretty close look. Considered a Squier Affinity as a base before deciding to go the 'parts' route, but basically I's be looking to keep the whole project well under £500. I have found a nice looking, budget neck supplier (UK based, Chinese manufacture) on eBay that's got the big headstock and - crucially for a 68 - no skunk stripe. The killer is 22 frets.... If I do this, I'm prepared to make some compromises (such as a head-stock end accessible truss rod) - there's no point spending £600 or so on the whole thing, as then I might as well just go buy a CIJ 68RI.... That said, 22 frets bugs me on this. Does anyone know if it would be viable for a repair place to sand off the extension, and pop out and fill the 22nd fret for me? What kind of money would that get into? For a guitar that's intended to be a cheap project and a bit of fun, I'd prefer not to spend the £200-£300 odds most places that will build a 68 neck charge.... Otherwise.... anyone got any views on which is the more glaring no-no for a Hendrix vibed black Strat - a skunk stripe or a 22ns Fret?? AS an aside, it weirds me out that Squier do a 70s-type Strat and various other bits in their Classic Vibe section ,yet they don't seem to have thought to do a late 60s style Strat? (ironically, given they've gone four-bolt with their 70s model, it wouldn't have ben a huge extra effort to do a 66-69ish model.... ).

Looks like an interesting option - what kind of money is in it? I'm very keen on the Mooer series of preamp pedals and the poweramp pedal myself. The poweramp pedal could be constant, then switching in and out the preamp pedals depending on whether I want an AC30 or a Marshall Stack or a Fender Tweed type sound. This sort of thing I am sure will only become more common for live work. A nice 2x12" could be a good addition if you're unsure about what monitors/PA will be available. Something else to carry, but on the other hand the difference in weight between my Vox AD120VT and the matching 2x12 extension cab is phenomenal.

I think that's exactly what it is, tbh.

Very cool. If I were to put together a frankenstrat I might go a similar route. I'm quite tempted, though, to badge up a neck with what looks like a 57-era Fender labelling, til you look close and it actually says something like "Edward Marlowecaster".

It's an economies of scale thing. 10% or thereabouts of the population in the US and Europe are left handed, so automatically that's a vastly smaller niche market. For a company of the sort of size where they want to be selling 100,000 units or it's not worth tooling up for, you can see why the numbers don't add up on paper to provide the full range left-handed. It's not that they can't afford it, more that the market just isn't big enough for them to see it as worth it much of the time. Smaller companies are usually more open to smaller niche markets because they don't 'need' to sell 100,000 of everything to make it viable. Notably, although they don't export Westwards much since the MIM plant opened, CIJ Fender have a much better range of left handed options. The Japanese are unusual compared to the rest of the world in that the proportion of their population that are left handed is closer 20%. Definitely makes a difference. On average, left handers used to be without fail 10-15% more expensive in the UK, though in recent years I've noticed that price premium gradually disappear from most things.

It's a lot better than it used to be when I started. Fender have gotten a *lot* better than they used to be. Not so many years ago, you had to go all the way up the Fender line to the MIA 57 P Bass before there was a left handed option with a maple fingerboard; at a time, there was also no standard P Bass option available left handed south of the US Std one (rosewood board only). Most makers now have at least one token lefty model, though generally smaller brands are better this way than the big boys. You get a lot of limitations on cosmetics. Maple boards are rare at the cheaper end; of a half dozen colour options, you'll often find only one left handed, usually - sigh - yet another sunburst. Quirky models - i.e. anything not aping a Strat, Tele, LP or *maybe* an SG, you can often forget about. Fender have gotten much better for left handers, though I well remember when the first run of Mexican Jagstangs arrived, and the model was not available left handed. Yeah, the Jagstang, as designed by Kurt Cobain... Mn. That said, Squier recently dropped the 50s CV Strat from being available left handed, though they still do the 60s one. Can't be entirely that weird preference for rosewood (or similarly dark) board at the affordable end of the market, though, as they still have the CV 50s Tele lefty. Whenever I get around to the Gretsch 5420, it's going to mean more expense. Gretsch don't do a l/h 5420T because Bigsby don't do a licensed trem in left handed configuration - for a southpaw, there's only the US version. They did a lovely LE run of 5420T L/H a couple of years ago in Pelham blue purely because there was a foul-up in some sort of ordering process and they ended up with a bunch of lefty trems, but they don't do it as of standard because it hits the profit margin at that priceband too hard. I hold out hope they'll do some decent colours lefthanded soon. I mean, the orange is a classic, but it's as overdone now as burst. I might consider the black and get it pinstriped, though... Ironically, I think the left handed market, while still not fantastic, has improved enormously in the last decade in part due to the guitar market shrinking overall, so lefties suddenly matter a bit more in terms of sales. Other than that, it's not so much a big deal. I occasionally wish I could have my pedals re-configured so I could plug the lead in the left so it's not running across my body so much, but that's not the end of the world. The one bonus of the limitations of left handed availability is that it does push you to consider what's available rather than just buying from the Big Brands (e.g. Tokai will often offer a left hander that the "real thing" simply don't make), plus it typically also means you don't get caught up in fads!

I've not tried the 2xxx series yet (not stumbled across any lefties), but at least online they look to be punching well above their price band.

That's a gorgeous guitar. Like a Gretsch knock-off of a Dano, if you follow me.

Oh, yes - they've always been good, but I mean they're now beginning to get the recognition for it. I'm hoping over time they up their left provision; I really would love one of the pale blue, maple boarded Strat type relics, and their relicy Juniors are to die for. They did do the Blackie-type one lefty for a bit. I'd adore to seem them do one that nodded to Steve Jones' LP Custom, or a relic'ed Tele type that had a hint of Joe Strummer's number one. Was largely Joe that turned me on to the Tele.

For this hobby you will mostly need an imagination and to be a bit of a guitar nerd... Take any, one classic guitar type and tell us how you would redesign it, what you would change if you were to have the chance. I'll start with this one: A Les Paul. I'll start with the Studio model, because unbound neck. Stretch that neck up to a Fender scale length. Make it a through neck that sits parallel to the body (rather than the angled, glued-in neck). string-thru bridge as on the Cabronita Tele. P90 bridge, Gretsch Filtertron in the neck. Pots wired V,V, MV & MT. No pick-up switch on the upper bout; two mini-toggles for independent p'up on/off down by the pots (where the selector would be on an SG). No body binding. Blue metal-flake pain body all over. Mahogany body, flat top, maple neck, pao ferro board. Don't know if that really makes it an LP any more, but that's the ide here (think: a brand like Fano and how it reinterprets elements of classic design). What would you do?

What really says to me that Vintage are a brand that has come of age is that they've been able to attract some pretty serious players as endorsees. You don't want your brand associated with crap, as a rule...

What 's the difference? The Hot Rod I seem to recall was a bit more stripped down, less trad - was it also cheaper? I do like the dice. I still have an inkling to do that on my next Strat. It's one of the specs I'd put on my sig Strat... I'm considering treating myself to a 5420 for my 50th in 2024. Probably the black one and have a Bigsby fitted and get it pin-striped... I'd have loved one of those LE Pelham blue 5420T lefties they did a very limited run of a couple of years ago, but I didn't have the scratch at the time. Ah, the Psychobilly Cadillac... I remember a story kicking around about a guy who tired this with a Mini at the old British Leyland factory in the late 70s. Supposedly He had a fully assembled, brand-new Mini in the garage ready to go when he was caught taking the bumpers out.... Back in Nazi Germany, Hitler had people pumping money into the Motorization of Germany scheme. He'd dreamed this up in prison in 1924: have German workers pump money into a government account as a specific saving auto-deducted from wages. When they saved enough, they'd get an order number and be put in line for a cute VW Beetle. Volkswagen: The People's Car. 340,000 Germans signed up for this in 1938. In 1939, the factory was converted to munitions; nobody got their car. A story circulated in Germany about the guy who thought he'd steal one bit by bit. When he'd got all the parts out and assembled it at home, he discovered he'd stolen a tank instead of a car.

Yes, the wattage did sound ambitious to me. I suppose when you look at what the hifi and home cinema world has achieved in recent years in terms of depth of musicality/tone and speaker size, you would think that they should have a better grasp of these things, but I agree that as a guitar player it's instinctively difficult to equate a tiny speaker with big sound and good tone. I know home cinema / hifi stereo still seems like some kind of voodoo to me at time when I hear the quality of sound from some tiny (if not exactly cheap) speakers! Agree with you on knobs. That's long been the big plus to the Vox designs to me - minimal used of LED/LCD, more use of knobs. It's interesting to compare to the all in one. My go-to idea were I to play out again would be one of those Mooer pre-amp pedals and their power-amp pedal, and a separate speaker cam that could do the monitoring if a venue lacked one. That said, I could be lured by such an all-in one if it got to be cheap enough and the form-factor worked. It's interesting to see this sort of thing becoming more mainstream now, given I remember the howling about the original modellers being "fake" from outraged guitarists who reacted as if you'd told them guitars were being banned and replaced with keytar synths... I think practicality will win out for a lot of working musos adopting various 'non-amp' alternatives. Maybe it will even become a norm once there's a new generation of guitar heroes for kids to grow up with where the stack of speakers or big tweedy box aren't an integral part of the romanticised image. In between, we already have a lot of big names using these things on the quiet, but with a huge wall of cabs doing nothing other than looking good on stage. Be interesting to see who is the first to play regular stadium gigs openly using a pedal solution or a tiny amp. I remember years ago seeing the backstage set-up of a guitar player from one of those big name old 70s bands - he was using a tiny 15 watt Marshall through the PA, but from an audience point of view he appeared to be using at least half a dozen 4x12s. If you could go back to 1969 and tell Hendrix one day that would be happening, you know what he'd have said? "SPEAK UP, CAT! I CAN'T HEAR YOU, MAN!" (According to Eddie Kramer's biog, Hendrix was told shortly before he died he'd be stone deaf in two years' time if he carried on standing in front of two or three stacks turned as loud as that....).

Agreed, I think we have a long way to go - price aside - before the inherently conservative guitar market catches up with newer tech. I can see this sort of thing gradually replacing existing digital modellers, though, as the price comes down, but it's a few years away from that I'm sure. Still, an interesting idea in that it combines the 'amp replacements' with a monitor, in effect. The ideas are out there - whether the market can be convinced is definitely another matter!

Saw this on kickstarter, looks like an interesting idea for anyone regularly playing venues that don't supply a monitor. Be interesting to see how this develops. https://www.amonito.com/?fbclid=IwAR0AirFVSzpBCo3M4g6xK9fkKzv2FfFzUvFaH0WQul2x5SrIg74rxyUeuY4

Oh, indeed. I normally significantly prefer Gibson's earlier designs, but the SG just has something that bit more aggressive to its vibe, and in Junior form.... oh, my. Somehow I always seem to find that "Les Paul" sound in my head comes to me much more readily from an SG type (though I don't own an SG, at least not yet. That HB could be the scratch for that itch...).