Man, talk about the lost art of playing with simplicity!
Here's a pic of the Koss burst thats owned by my good friend Arthur Ramm, who just lives down the road from me, I took this 35mm shot back in 91, I'm recovering from an operation at present but soon as I'm firing on all cylinders I'm going to see A.R. to get some new pix's. I'll be sure to post them here, FRANK
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Is this the burst Koss used when he was a member of Black Cat Bone? I read that he had his address and telephone number on the plastic control cavity cover. This guitar was pictured in a book by Tony Bacon a few years back.
I'm really having a tough time accepting that the Isle Of Wight LP was "stripped" at that time. There's too much natural, as well as, "player" wear and aging going on, on the top. Not to mention the rusty/reddish/brown happening on the side of the headstock and body. I saw a "60 out at Lark St. once. Looked a LOT like it (minus the figure of course). The upper and lower bass side bouts were BLEACHED to a very light tan color. :hmmKoss mainly used three different bursts with Free, there may well have been others as Koss owned a lot of guitars throughout his career but these were the main ones that he used with Free.
1958 darkburst (serial number 82453) that he got off Eric Clapton in exchange for a three pickup custom. Paul Rogers owned this guitar for a while and played it with The Firm before giving it to David Kossoff (Paul's father) who auctioned it in aid of drugs charities. If I recall correctly the guitar was sold for around £47000 to an un-named American collector in 2000.
Cherry sunburst Les Paul. This is the one from the Stealer video at the start of this thread. The neck was broken on this guitar when Koss threw it into the air at the end of Free's last gig. The guitar was repaired and is now owned by Arthur Ramm guitarist with Beckett. Beckett supported Free on many of their tours in the 70's and still gig regularly around the north east of England.
Stripped to the wood Les Paul. This can be seen on the video footage from the 1970 Isle of White festival and on the Top of The Pops All Right Now video. Koss sold this guitar to a London Music store in 1974 to fund his drugs habit. It was bought by a young guitarist called Mike Gooch for around £500 and Mike took the guitar along to a Back Street Crawler gig in 1975 to show it to Koss. Apparently Koss's eyes lit up when he saw it and he offered a considerable amount of money to buy it back but it was not for sale. In 1994 this guitar was sold to a guy called Fenton Groover who I know nothing about other than the fact that he wrote an article in the Free Appreciation Society Magazine about Koss's guitars and much of this information comes from that article!