If you are lucky enough to have every guitar you’ve evern owned, I envy you.
All but two of mine are most likely lost for all time.
About ten years ago I got the wild idea of trying to find all my guitars, and when that didn’t work very well I got the bright idea to find a guitar exactly like each one I had lost.
When that didn’t work out so well, I thought “Why would I hunt down and buy a copy of a guitar that I didn’t like well enough to keep?”
When paired with my memory of buying at least a few of these guitars because I couldn’t afford what I really wanted at the time, I realized I could now, in fact, buy whatever I wanted.
I bought a whole bunch of very nice guitars from that decision, thank you very much.
But looking for the originals was a pure nostalgia play; I wanted to see if I could remember why I liked the guitar, and why I eventually let it go.
So the hunt continued.
The two actual original guitars of mine in the photo above are the last two: The modified Roland GR70, and the heavily modified 1986 Jackson Soloist.
The Roland was the last guitar I bought prior to 2002. That one I bought at the Hollywood Guitar Center in about 1991. I always liked the wild shape of these, but the controller (not pictured) was a joke. You could buy any synthesizer from the same period and the sounds were infinitely better, and they didn’t have the delay this thing had.
To make a little extra money, I sold the controller, removed that extra pickup, and threw some EMGS in it.
I used this guitar for a lot of demo and some album recording in both Minneapolis and Los Angeles. For sure its on some tracks on this record.
This one is my favorite of all time. You’ll hear a lot more about this one in the coming weeks and months. Suffice to say it is a monster. Anything you plug it into becomes a high-gain killing machine, capable of taking out a charging rhino at 60 paces.
I bought it new in 1986, then gave it to my nephew, who thankfully, gave it back years later.
I went through a decade of modifications on this beast, while playing 4-7 shows a night, f hours every show. It’s been beaten, rode hard, and put away wet.
Yet it still rules.
I recently figured out that this is not the right guitar. I found this one on Reverb some years back, and its actually a year or two newer than mine. Mine did not have the early Foyd Rose – it had a Rockinger, making it a1981, I believe.
When I got this guitar I loved it. It sounded great on stage, but something bothered me about the neck, and I didn’t know what back them, but it was that the frets were kind of flat, and the skin of my fingertops would connect with the wood in between the frets, causeing some friction that I do not care for.
Also the Fender type block holding the neck on made access to the highter frets very difficult. So difficult that at one time, I cut the body back for more access, and I repainted it a burgundy color.
My original was also given to my nephew, but he sold it, wheareabouts unknown.
My first attempt at making my own custom guitar from 1982 or 1983. Pictured is a recent re-creation.
The original was modified into oblivion, and likely thrown in the trash. Too bad, because the original did play and sound good, and was well balanced.
Also it sucks that it is gone, because my dad and both my brothers contributed in helping me make the guitar. The idea was to take a Mighty-Mite star body, and shave the ends to make them sharp like a Randy Rhoad’s Jackson V.
It was heavily used as a back up until around 1984. Whereabouts, unknown.
That’s okay, however. I like this one better and we will talk about it more in the future.
When I graduated high school, I got an unexpected windfall of cash from neighbors, relatives, distant relatives and family friends, so of course I went the biggest guitar store in the area and bought one of the most expensive guitars they had.
This is a re-creation (And I now know not a very good one LOL) of my 1982 Charvel Black and Yellow.
I fell in love with the single pickup, and the black head stock.
My original did not have a Floyd Rose – it had a standard Fender trem that wouldn’t stay in tune to save its life. But man that guitar sounded good!
I sold it around 1983 or 1984 because I needed to get something that did have a Floyd Rose on it. This one was made from an EVH Striped Series Bumblebee.
First guitar I bought with my own money, circa 1978. I wanted a guitar that looked like JImmy Page’s guitar, and I found it. Played it in my first few bands, and it too fell victim to my constant tinkering.
The neck got grafted on to the Brophy Star, and the body was so mangled from other necks that didn’t really fit, as well as pickup changes, that I think I eventually threw it out.
Found this one on ebay, and it is mint, and exactly like what I had.
I remember this playing very well, but not sounding great and that is exactly right.
This was actually my brothers guitar when we had the original. It was $49 from Sears, and whenever Doc Jim wasn’t looking, I was either pretending to be one of the Beatles or the Monkees.
It was also the first guitar I learned to play on. The strings, as I recall, were a good 1/2″ away from the fretboard, so if Iwanted to play a D chord, it din’t take much until my fingers were bleeding.
Of course didn’t know you could adjust that… so when I found this one in fantastic condition and it is setup right – well its not so bad to play at all.
It doesn’t sound great – but it has a particular sound: If you wanted to play the theme from James Bond or Wipeout, this is your guitar.