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Post subject: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 9:52 pm
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When I was a freshman in college in Waco, TX in 1980, I befriended an older classmate starting college later in life (28 at the time) who turned out to share my interest in music. He had this 1960 Strat with an old battered tweed case that you had to wrap one arm around because the hinges were half gone. The Strat itself was almost totally devoid of finish and one of the pickups had a crack in the plastic, but it played and sounded great. He paid $ 300.00 for it in the mid-70's. It wasn't his personal favorite-- he actually liked his old Gibson Melody Maker with a single cobalt bridge pickup better. Anyhow I begged him to sell it to me, but I couldn't talk him into it. Once I talked him into letting me take it home for the weekend (sixty miles away) because I knew a guitar tech who could adjust the action for him, but I wasn't able to get him to sell it to me

Back in 2006 I saw him playing in a blues band in a community where I now live between Houston and Galveston-- during one of their set breaks he walked up to me and handed his Strat to me (which he had since gotten refinished in a clear coat) and asked "Do you remember this guitar?"


Last edited by thx16 on Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Fender Play Winter Sale 2020
Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:04 pm
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Paul Harvey never left his audience dangling.

Where's......the rest of the story?

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Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:07 pm
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I still wasn't able to get him to sell it to me!! :P


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Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:50 pm
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At about the same time I first met the guy with the '60 Strat, a luthier friend of mine got hold of a 1963 Model for around $700.00 that he refinished like new-- he let me play it and it was alright. It wasn't like the earth shifted on its axis or a portal to the 4th dimension opened up-- with the astronomical prices they're getting for them now, you'd think something mystical might've happened.


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Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 10:52 pm
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I guess he ended up loving that guitar too much to part with it :D. Did he still own his Gibson?

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Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:02 pm
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Robin Trower had a 1956 Strat in the mid-70's which he used as a replacement for the new 1974 model he used on Bridge of Sighs because that one later wound up with a warped neck. In an interview in a 1980 Guitar Player issue where he was featured on the cover, he stated that he switched from the '56 model because the maple fingerboard was hard on his fingers-- he replaced it with two rosewood fingerboard 1966 models. Now I see the Robin Trower Signature Strat has a maple fingerboard. Odd how things change over time.


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Post subject: Re: Pre-CBS Brushes and Stories
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:14 pm
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I don't know about the Gibson Melody Maker. I saw him play in College Station in 1992, and he had four or five guitars- Fenders and Gibsons by then, When I knew him in Waco in the early-80's, he just had the Melody Maker, the '60 Strat, an off-brand 6 string and some off-brand 12 string acoustic guitars. By 2001 had actually switched to playing bass to get more gigs-- he was playing guitar that night in 2006 because their regular guitarist was sick.

He had an old Fender Champ and he could make that Melody Maker rock with it. He also had an old Twin Reverb and a Marshall half-stack, neither of which he used much at all.


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