sgt_steiner
Member
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2007
- Messages
- 145
Hello All -- the Sgt. here. This is my very first post at LPF and I'm sincerely glad to be here.
At long last, by the grace of the Guitar Gods, I scored my bucket-list '61 SG/LP. Thought I'd take a second to share the long, twisting tale surrounding it with my Gibson-loving brethern here. A bizarre, guitar-addled version of the classic Boy Meets Guitar, Boy Loses Guitar, Boy Gets Guitar Back Again story... sort of.
Pretty much, it all started way back in the day -- 1983. While on vacation in Hawaii, I found a tiny little guitar shop with some cool guitars and promptly hauled ass back to the hotel to convince the folks to help me get one. My Gibson Sonex 180 Deluxe simply didn't rate, and even at fifteen I already had much bigger ambitions in the perfect axe department.
Parents in tow, it came down to a Sophie's Choice between a bumble-bee yellow Partsocaster with black pickguard(think Brad Gillis-style) and a real-deal original '61 SG/Les Paul. The Strat was pretty flashy and in perfectly in sync with the times, but the SG looked like what Angus and Tony Iommi played, and that was also a big deal. The store owner broke my agonizing impasse by suggesting the SG -- it had these old pickups called "P.A.F.'s", came with the original case and would be a better investment in the long run.
That last part sold my Mom. She promptly wrote him a check -- for $625. I still have the yellowed receipt in front of me, even as I write this.
Boy, was (is) my Mom cool! To this day, I've never gotten a better gift. Now suddenly, there I was, a boy and his first serious guitar -- the exact same axe his hard rockin' heroes played! I'm sure the vast majority of you remember that same first killer guitar moment in your own lives as well.
She was Serial Number 133325 (one of the confusing YNNNNN's of the period) and I played that beauty day and night. Drew pictures of her on my Pee-Chee's (Google it, Millennial readers) and wore her around the house even when I wasn't practicing new riffs. The sound was amazing, just like Angus and Tony! The neck was wicked fast and fit my hand perfectly. She'd had a stop tail conversion, tuners swapped out for Schaller's, and I added one of those Gibson "fine tuning" tailpieces. Other than that, she was all stock and straight as an arrow. By all accounts, I was "living the dream", a full twenty years before that even became an overused catch phrase.
When I'd turned thirteen, I was wildly smitten by hard rock and the NWOBHM just as it broke in the States. Late one night on our single-channel cable box ("Visions"), the movie "Used Cars" ended and by chance I glimpsed my very first promotional music video -- live concert footage of Black Sabbath doing "Die Young" on their "Black and Blue" tour with Blue Oyster Cult.
I was dumbfound. Awestruck. Immediately and irrevocably ensorcelled for life. Who were these guys? More importantly, how could I become just like them?
I'd purchased "Back In Black" right off the shelf, the day it hit record stores (low-fi store-bought cassette, actually, remember those?) and crack of dawn next day, I biked to the mall and bought "We Sold Our Souls For Rock 'N Roll". Talk about "gateway drugs". Between that mind-blowing ear candy, the rise of Heavy Metal and my coming find of the '61 SG/LP, it was all over. Thirty years have come and gone, but I've never kicked my addiction to the sound of a scorching guitar... nor do I ever plan to.
Many of us (most of us?) have classic "the one that got away" stories. Semi-tragically, the testimony below now becomes mine.
Guitar fever hit me HARD after I got the LP/SG, dragging my senseless teenage ass straight down the rabbit hole. Abruptly, I wanted to play/own *every classic guitar* from then on. There were so many awesome axes! Remember, this was the mid-80's -- vintage originals were very affordable, most younger players preferring pointy pink headstocks and freshly-routed Kahler's to the prehistoric relics I was digging. Over a three year killing spree, I went through a king's ransom of guitars any sane adult would've given a nut to keep, all paid for by my job at the local radio station and some measly childhood savings.
Among others, these spectacular guitars included (brace yourself, fellas, it's about to get ugly) a pristine cherry red '66 ES 335, an all-original '55 Butterscotch Tele and a '54 LP Goldtop with the hottest p-90's I've heard before or since. Sick, sick guitars. Epic, behind-the-glass in Arlington and Dallas level stuff nowadays.
And somewhere along the way (predictably, I suppose) I began messing with the SG. Most tragic of my "upgrades" was swapping out the P.A.F.'s for some heavy metal "blade" pickups that were big at the time. OUCH. Believe it or not, the sleazy older tech in my small town kept my P.A.F.'s as part of the deal. "Service Charge", he called it. Just snatched 'em right out from under me without even a hint of fair warning.
Insult to injury, sometime after that, for some insane and unforgivable reason I can't clearly remember, I decided to trade away my first love -- that soaring, rip-roaring '61 SG/LP -- for a custom Tele project guitar some clown had. Yep. Traded them straight across, didn't bat an eyelash.
Talk about retarded. WTF was the seventeen year-old version of me thinking???
For a kid as smart as I was then, it was a mind-numbing low-point, no doubt. And as I grew older and the coming decades began to unspool around me, it became a quiet thorn buried in the back of my psyche. Completely out of the blue, new President after new President, I would reopen my investigation and interrogate myself anew about this epic fail. Call it nostalgia, call it pining for lost youth. But silly as it sounds, I never really forgave myself for letting that one crucial, game-changing guitar go.
Sure. Life goes on. It always does. I sold off all my guitars and went to college. The last of 'em -- that fire-breathing '54 Goldtop -- was let go for $550 cash to pay for a car. During my twenties, I quit playing for the most part, content to file that chapter away and concentrate on hot/neurotic chicks, writing movies and smoking the best weed in California (no easy task).
Late '90's, I grabbed a beater SG Special with a headstock break to noodle on. Then somewhere in 2006 I stumbled into the Vintage Room at the Hollywood Guitar Center. They had a very nice '62, factory original, fast neck, all that. I found myself excited. What I didn't know was that the guitar market was MOLTEN HOT right then, enjoying an artificially inflated moon-shot driven by hedge fund managers, foreign investors and non-playing collectors -- a.k.a "tourists" and "douchebags".
I asked what the '62 cost. Straight-faced, the salesman told me $30,000. My own expression collapsed like a poorly built pup tent. Suddenly, I was a gear-loving Rip Van Winkle awakening from his long slumber -- immediately fossilized and foolish all at once. Heart-breaking word of this new guitar economics seemed to drive a last stake through my dream of reacquiring "the one that got away" and making up for my past wrongs.
At long last, by the grace of the Guitar Gods, I scored my bucket-list '61 SG/LP. Thought I'd take a second to share the long, twisting tale surrounding it with my Gibson-loving brethern here. A bizarre, guitar-addled version of the classic Boy Meets Guitar, Boy Loses Guitar, Boy Gets Guitar Back Again story... sort of.
Pretty much, it all started way back in the day -- 1983. While on vacation in Hawaii, I found a tiny little guitar shop with some cool guitars and promptly hauled ass back to the hotel to convince the folks to help me get one. My Gibson Sonex 180 Deluxe simply didn't rate, and even at fifteen I already had much bigger ambitions in the perfect axe department.
Parents in tow, it came down to a Sophie's Choice between a bumble-bee yellow Partsocaster with black pickguard(think Brad Gillis-style) and a real-deal original '61 SG/Les Paul. The Strat was pretty flashy and in perfectly in sync with the times, but the SG looked like what Angus and Tony Iommi played, and that was also a big deal. The store owner broke my agonizing impasse by suggesting the SG -- it had these old pickups called "P.A.F.'s", came with the original case and would be a better investment in the long run.
That last part sold my Mom. She promptly wrote him a check -- for $625. I still have the yellowed receipt in front of me, even as I write this.
Boy, was (is) my Mom cool! To this day, I've never gotten a better gift. Now suddenly, there I was, a boy and his first serious guitar -- the exact same axe his hard rockin' heroes played! I'm sure the vast majority of you remember that same first killer guitar moment in your own lives as well.
She was Serial Number 133325 (one of the confusing YNNNNN's of the period) and I played that beauty day and night. Drew pictures of her on my Pee-Chee's (Google it, Millennial readers) and wore her around the house even when I wasn't practicing new riffs. The sound was amazing, just like Angus and Tony! The neck was wicked fast and fit my hand perfectly. She'd had a stop tail conversion, tuners swapped out for Schaller's, and I added one of those Gibson "fine tuning" tailpieces. Other than that, she was all stock and straight as an arrow. By all accounts, I was "living the dream", a full twenty years before that even became an overused catch phrase.
When I'd turned thirteen, I was wildly smitten by hard rock and the NWOBHM just as it broke in the States. Late one night on our single-channel cable box ("Visions"), the movie "Used Cars" ended and by chance I glimpsed my very first promotional music video -- live concert footage of Black Sabbath doing "Die Young" on their "Black and Blue" tour with Blue Oyster Cult.
I was dumbfound. Awestruck. Immediately and irrevocably ensorcelled for life. Who were these guys? More importantly, how could I become just like them?
I'd purchased "Back In Black" right off the shelf, the day it hit record stores (low-fi store-bought cassette, actually, remember those?) and crack of dawn next day, I biked to the mall and bought "We Sold Our Souls For Rock 'N Roll". Talk about "gateway drugs". Between that mind-blowing ear candy, the rise of Heavy Metal and my coming find of the '61 SG/LP, it was all over. Thirty years have come and gone, but I've never kicked my addiction to the sound of a scorching guitar... nor do I ever plan to.
Many of us (most of us?) have classic "the one that got away" stories. Semi-tragically, the testimony below now becomes mine.
Guitar fever hit me HARD after I got the LP/SG, dragging my senseless teenage ass straight down the rabbit hole. Abruptly, I wanted to play/own *every classic guitar* from then on. There were so many awesome axes! Remember, this was the mid-80's -- vintage originals were very affordable, most younger players preferring pointy pink headstocks and freshly-routed Kahler's to the prehistoric relics I was digging. Over a three year killing spree, I went through a king's ransom of guitars any sane adult would've given a nut to keep, all paid for by my job at the local radio station and some measly childhood savings.
Among others, these spectacular guitars included (brace yourself, fellas, it's about to get ugly) a pristine cherry red '66 ES 335, an all-original '55 Butterscotch Tele and a '54 LP Goldtop with the hottest p-90's I've heard before or since. Sick, sick guitars. Epic, behind-the-glass in Arlington and Dallas level stuff nowadays.
And somewhere along the way (predictably, I suppose) I began messing with the SG. Most tragic of my "upgrades" was swapping out the P.A.F.'s for some heavy metal "blade" pickups that were big at the time. OUCH. Believe it or not, the sleazy older tech in my small town kept my P.A.F.'s as part of the deal. "Service Charge", he called it. Just snatched 'em right out from under me without even a hint of fair warning.
Insult to injury, sometime after that, for some insane and unforgivable reason I can't clearly remember, I decided to trade away my first love -- that soaring, rip-roaring '61 SG/LP -- for a custom Tele project guitar some clown had. Yep. Traded them straight across, didn't bat an eyelash.
Talk about retarded. WTF was the seventeen year-old version of me thinking???
For a kid as smart as I was then, it was a mind-numbing low-point, no doubt. And as I grew older and the coming decades began to unspool around me, it became a quiet thorn buried in the back of my psyche. Completely out of the blue, new President after new President, I would reopen my investigation and interrogate myself anew about this epic fail. Call it nostalgia, call it pining for lost youth. But silly as it sounds, I never really forgave myself for letting that one crucial, game-changing guitar go.
Sure. Life goes on. It always does. I sold off all my guitars and went to college. The last of 'em -- that fire-breathing '54 Goldtop -- was let go for $550 cash to pay for a car. During my twenties, I quit playing for the most part, content to file that chapter away and concentrate on hot/neurotic chicks, writing movies and smoking the best weed in California (no easy task).
Late '90's, I grabbed a beater SG Special with a headstock break to noodle on. Then somewhere in 2006 I stumbled into the Vintage Room at the Hollywood Guitar Center. They had a very nice '62, factory original, fast neck, all that. I found myself excited. What I didn't know was that the guitar market was MOLTEN HOT right then, enjoying an artificially inflated moon-shot driven by hedge fund managers, foreign investors and non-playing collectors -- a.k.a "tourists" and "douchebags".
I asked what the '62 cost. Straight-faced, the salesman told me $30,000. My own expression collapsed like a poorly built pup tent. Suddenly, I was a gear-loving Rip Van Winkle awakening from his long slumber -- immediately fossilized and foolish all at once. Heart-breaking word of this new guitar economics seemed to drive a last stake through my dream of reacquiring "the one that got away" and making up for my past wrongs.
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