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Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 7:35 am
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:? So...this isn't him playing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyC9V8dHiyU

:?:

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Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 12:58 pm
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Miami Mike wrote:
:? So...this isn't him playing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyC9V8dHiyU

:?:


I think its Gene Simmons!


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 12:30 am
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This stuff is not news. What famous work have you heard him do, most never even new the name until HSN started sell the junk.
The guy made a lot of money selling these things because people don't no any better.

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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:00 am
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straycat113 wrote:
You have got to be $@!&!NG me LMFAO This is amazing that people could actually script this whole thing like to sell a product. So I guess that whole story of how he was in some accident and could not play for ten years is part of the plot. And that Zorro outfit must have been so guys who knew him did not recognise him. WTC where did you find this out .This is Classic, and it is even more mind boggling that there is actually a group called the REAL GUITAR LEGENDS OF TRUTH headed by Allan Holdsworth. It is as if this all came out of a National Lampoon Magazine.


A riot cat


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:17 am
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To be honest the first time I heard of him was in that GEICO insurance commercial.

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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:38 am
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I don't see what was so bad about him selling the guitars because he did include 6 DVD lessons with it all for 200 bucks. I bought into it a couple years back. Yes the guitar could've been better and he could have made the lessons easier to follow but what's the difference in that and some other dude selling lessons that can't play as well but charging more for just the lessons. It happens everywhere every day i'm sure.


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:50 am
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Esteban is not real!!!!??? :shock:


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 12:32 pm
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Sorry to go off topic for a moment, but...

nikininja wrote:
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Guitars made out of discarded telephone books and medical waste... Well we may as well get used to that idea. Sooner or later the green gang are going to completely stop tree felling.


From what I read in the guitar magazines, soon there'll be nothing to cut anyway. I'm glad I bought my Martin 20 years ago...

As for the thread... I never gave Esteban a second thought. Never heard of him until I saw him on TV. I don't know who'd buy one of those guitars. When my daughter needed a guitar for school, I bought her an inexpensive Ibanez acoustic. She still plays it more than the Gretsch Junior Jet II I bought her to fool around on.

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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:17 pm
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"Green guys" are not against using wood. They're against cutting old growth forests without replanting. To say that they will one day stop all tree felling is a silly thing to say

As for Esteban, I've met him. Here's the real story, sans the bad satire.

Stephen Paul is from Pittsburgh, he really was in a bad auto accident that reduced his skills and kept him away from the guitar, and he most likely developed the Esteban look to cover some scarring from that accident.

He gigged around the country, and somewhere along the line attended a concert or a master class where he got an autographed picture of Segovia (he says in LA). Like many artists, Segovia likely asked him who to sign it for, and when Stephen gave his name, Segovia used the Spanish, signing the photo, "To Esteban... one who loves the guitar." While the Maestro was known to sign photos in this way, that fact was obviously not widely known in Arizona....

Which is where Stephen found his fortune. He gigged around Phoenix with a quartet, eventually becoming "Artist in Residence" at the Hyatt Gainey Ranch resort in Scottsdale (where I met him while I was music director on a corporate show at this resort back in 1997). There, Esteban,as he was now known, developed the hat and shades look, and began developing a local legend around himself. The Scottsdale housewives were fascinated by the man-in-black who barely spoke, allowing his guitar to speak for him, and he packed the joint every Friday and Saturday night. His CD's (dozens of them) were available in the hotel gift shop, he commanded ridiculous fees for personal appearances (I talked to him about a party attached to my show, and when he told me his price, I laughed and said, "Esteban, they can hear you for free in the lounge!"). The autographed photo of Segovia became part of the legend... Esteban claimed to have been a student of the Maestro for five years. As many of you have noted, his playing gives the lie to this, as Segovia would not have taught the kind of flamenco techniques that Esteban uses, but he claims he lost his classical chops in the accident. ALso, he is not mentioned in any biography of Segovia.

During this period. Esteban made a comfy living, and was already bringing his daughter the gypsy fiddler into the family biz. He and his band displayed a kind of ossified competence: his right hand was excellent, and he produced a strong and powerful string tone. His left hand technique was adequate for the demands of the music, and, frankly, the crowds went crazy for him. Never mind that he played the same material for years, and still plays it on HSN. Say what you like, but he was an impressive player, and a rockstar within a 50 miles radius of the Hyatt.

Soon after I met him, Joy Mangano at Ingenious Designs (inventor of the Miracle Mop) was in a similar show at the Hyatt and was knocked out by Esteban's persona. She signed him to a development/distribution contract and hawked his albums on QVC. Shortly after, Ingenious Designs was purchased by HSN, who created the products that Esteban now lends his name to, and the rest is history.


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:31 pm
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And that's the rest of the story! Thanks Slapchop!


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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 7:08 pm
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My wife got me the 50 Anv. Impala Edition due to the fact that my first car was a 1958 Impala which is painted on the back and it does look pretty cool. Having said that I am glad this was not my first guitar because I don't think I would have continued to play. It would not stay in tune and the action was about 3/8 of an inch high at the 12 fret. My first attempt ever to shave a saddle ended up in fret buzz. So after a new saddle it does play somewhat better.
The tone is somewhat "muddy" though. I don't get much out of the instructional DVDs that came with it either not really my style. When you look inside the wood looks decent enough, but now that I've had it for a while (Oct 2008) the top finish is starting to look wavy. When you think about it seems odd that they would try and market something like this. I bet that there are very few player who have ever seen a 58 Impala much less owned one. :!:

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Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:48 am
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Even if it was a joke, one fact remains. I still do not like him. He sold crappy guitars and lessons on HSN. I always thought he could play, just did not like the persona and crappy merchandize.

RK

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Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 9:10 am
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I'm with you all on the persona thing. It was just so contrived that it epitomized what is bad in music marketing and even just marketing. The whole mysterious man in black thing just makes me puke.

Having said that, I bought one of his packeges and donated it to a battered women's shelter for a homeless child's Christmas present. I thought that it might be the only opportunity for one of these kids to get exposed to anything other than a beating. The guitar came. It was exactly as advertised - no more and no less. It had everything needed to get a child at least started including the DVDs. I did not watch any of them, so I can't say they were useless or not, but I'm hoping there were not.

I would not buy another, but the one I did buy served it's purpose.


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Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:41 pm
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estebans a fake? i dont think i can return all the zorro outfits i just bought :x

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Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:02 am
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Slapchop so somewhere in the house is a picture of you with your arm around the big E.lol I have to say this was all funny and interesting at the same time. You could see the guy could play but I saw 4 differant infomercials and he played the same songs on everyone. The only thing I doubted was the Segovia story as I had seen a two hour show on him years ago and you had to be fron another planet for him to teach you and he was hard. Ans anyone that plays guitar remotely had to know what they were getting for that price as they threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Hey I bet he got a lot of people playing that never would have.


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