Monday, January 10, 2011

5 Years Experience

Looking for more responses to this one from last year. Post awayyyyyy.......... !!

If I had known 5 years ago what I know now, how would my G.A.S. attacks & collection be different today?

4 comments:

  1. I think I would have avoided the "fad" stuff and just stayed with the vintage guitars. I would have moved alot quicker on some of the procrastinated looks as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm, tricky one. I guess I would own more amps, fewer G&Ls and more Fenders (especially a vintage one or two).

    ReplyDelete
  3. At one time, within this time period, I had almost 20 G&L guitars. For whatever reasons I sold or traded off all but one of them, a favorite George Fullerton signature. I had some very gorgeous instruments, really creamy beautiful stuff. I had an ASAT Special in transparent orange with a flame top, wood binding and a birdseye gunoil neck... oh, it was awesome, and had tone to die for, too. I had a beautiful sunburst Fullerton that was a HARDTAIL and had gold harware, I've never seen another one quite like it. Sold. I had an all-mahogany body Legacy HB in this cool translucent cherry red that G&L only made ten of, they did a small run and were experimenting with the color... sold (umm... DUHHHH).

    Somewhere along the line I finally decided I wasn't going to sell anymore guitars. I did some horse trading for some of the lesser models of Fenders and such that I had acquired (a Tele someone had hot-rodded with a 5-way switch, and a "California" Strat that got me flagged more than once on the CRaigslist because people were accusing me of sticking a "Made in USA" stocker on a Mexican-made Strat). Mostly the goofy ones that had no meaning or no real purpose, except that they had become compulsion buys, which I have found, are always the worst players.

    As a new process, I determined never to buy any more guitars off the Internet. And I made a pact with myslef to only buy a guitar that I could play in person, i.e. "do a test drive" with. Since I made this change to my guitar buying I have not sold any of my guitars, and I now have instruments that I sincerely would not sell for any reason, and of which have great tone for whatever individual reason thay might possess.

    I also made lots of similar choices for stomp boxes. I will not buy a stomp box without test driving it first. I have bought too many "pretty" effects boxes, or got wrapped up in some stupid guitar forum "gotta-have-it-even-for-bragging-rights" and brought home some real clunkers. One was a Home Brew Electronics Tramp Tremolo. Yikes. What a great pedal on paper, but what a stinker once you plugged it in... ooofff. Like somebody punched me in the guts...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Five years ago, my G.A.S. lacked focus. I wanted and Collings, and G&L, and PRS, and Ovation, and etc. Only about a year and a half ago I started to focus on G&L's and ASAT's in particular. I am exceedingly content with the Collings and PRS models that I do have, but I love the ASAT's. Still affordable and interesting history and variations. The only excursion outside ASAT land are G&L's Limited Edition guitars although the Rampage models, both the 2000 model with gigbag(!?) as well as 'Blue Dress', will definitely not be added to my collection. They just aren't my thing.

    ReplyDelete