It was glorious, just getting that little reminder card, that the GUITAR SHOW was coming back. Back from being a victim of the Flying AIDS, just like everything else.
If you were a lefty, you had your choice of exactly one guitar - an old Guild electric that looked like an SG. I forget its designation. Oh, and a 67 Tele, for only $17,500.
But I didn't let that bother me - I was among equipment! Amps. Guitars. Goodies.
There were a few 50s Strats, some for exorbitant amounts. Going by memory (never a good idea), there was an early 54 Strat for $150,000. Lots of expensive vintage Les Pauls too.
Not a lot of real surprises. We missed the t-shirt lady. Many of my monies have gone to her. Mrs. lefty adored her and her collection. I found a booth with ancient Marshalls that were for p.a., plus an empty p.a. speaker cabinet, complete with horn (see below). Can you imagine a 20-50w Marshall p.a.? Over your 100w stacks?
If you only see one booth, Jim's Guitars (Ohio) is the Wow Booth. They always feature certain guitars, this time being very old Les Paul jrs. If you don't like LP Jrs, you could see all sorts of beautiful guitars and very old amps. In the past they had Marshalls that were never made for the US. Old Fender piggybacks, and whatever else you wanted.
People looked happy and there were a lot of them. There weren't as many vendors, but still a lot. There were women. Normally there are about 3, but there were many more. All were spouses except the one with blue hair. Although I like blue, I do not like it on hair. Mrs. lefty felt otherwise. It's a good place to go if you're a female, looking for attention: there's almost zero competition. It's a much better place to go to get gear. Not only were the vendors helpful, so were the other players.
What I learned: the Yngwie Malmsteen pickups don't come with any attitude (or hair) and the Tom DeLonge Gibson doesn't come with a ufo.
I got a rock, Charlie Brown.
A blue DOD FX55 chorus. It was my choice because it's the only chorus with a delay time knob. Chorus sounds interesting when you push the delay time a little. Around 30ms, it becomes flanging. A long time ago, in another guitarverse, I tried out a Deltalab rack delay. It had modulation, so set about building The Ultimate Chorus. It was really delightful at longer delays settings. Eventually I'll get another one, but rack gear is a PITA for me in general. If you crank the speed on a chorus, you can (very cheaply) approximate a Leslie at high speed. It's a trick.
Further out there: last band did Heart's Barracuda. I've never had a flanger pedal, so I made due with a rack box that did chorus, delay, flanger. It sat up against my amp. It made the right noise, but a pedal would have been much better. A different band would have been much better.
If you haven't been to a show, or you have been to a show, make sure to get to one. All that gear....
Type 'guitar show' into a search engine (duckduckgo.com) and find one near you.
No comments:
Post a Comment