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Once again, I found a Fender Standard (MIM) Strat for a good price and snapped it up. As with the first MIM Strat I got, this guitar has a super comfortable neck and plays really well. The frets are medium sized, as opposed to the jumbo frets on my main home made strat. The pickups aren’t bad at all. They definitely have that Strat snap to them, but they are less full sounding and weaker than the Kinmans that I have in the neck and middle position of my main guitar. That makes sense though.
As of right now I use this guitar for recording, and it’s my back up for gigging. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to hold on to this one or not.
Somebody locally was selling this guitar for a good price. It was very used. A veteran of the weekend warrior scene. This guitar sounded great and played great. Easily as good as my American strat. The neck is identical in size and feel. I ended up parting this guitar out (even though I hate that) because the frets were so worn. A fret job would have cost about the same as I paid for the guitar, so I didn’t think it was worth it. I probably would have done it if it were a combination I liked better, but the body had dulled to a less than attractive metallic red color.
I got the Powerhouse Strat used because it looked cool. One of my favorite colors – Candy Apple Red. This guitar wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It was like new when I got it. Fret ends were very sharp, the sounds were ok. The Powerhouse electronics use a battery and allow you to go from standard single coil sounds to thicker, more humbucker-like sounds. I was going to gut the electronics and put in something I liked better, but I decided it just wasn’t worth it and sold it again.
This guitar was total extravagence. I found it used for a real good price. I’d always wanted to replace my Univox Les Paul with a “real” one and I’ve missed my Univox since I lost it (long story). While drooling over Les Paul pics in the catelogs I decided that I liked the idea of a Gary Moore model or the Studio Desert Burst model best. Good combination of appearance and reasonable price. Well, more reasonable than a classic. Let me be clear – no Gibson branded Les Paul is reasonable, at least not a new one. As with Fenders, used Gibsons can be absolutely insanely priced. Anyway, I came across this one and got it for about the same price as my used Strat. Heck, a nice used PRS would’ve cost me what the two of them together cost, right?
This guitar was a beauty in appearance. Desert Burst finish with a nice flame maple top and gold hardware. Sounds great too – like a Les Paul. Pickups are pretty hot, and do the Allman Brothers/Gary moore things quite well. Not as hot as the Carvin though, which is actually probably a good thing.
I ended up selling this guitar. I didn’t have it all that long. I had it set up and everything, but it never got really comfortable for me. Too bad, it was a gorgeous guitar. I did end up getting another, even cheaper Les Paul Studio that I find more comfortable to play.
I finally bought one of my dream guitars – and a very reasonable one at that. I had always wanted a Strat strictly from an appearance standpoint – either Candy Apple Red with a Maple finger board, or Natural Ash with a Maple fingerboard. Maybe it’s just me, but the newer Candy Apple Strats don’t seem to have the same vibrant color I remember. And the older ones are insanely priced. Strat prices definitely suffered (and continue to suffer to a degree) from the vintage craze of a few years back. Anyway, I found a great used natural ash strat.
I love Strats for much the same reason I liked the old VW Beetle – they’re basic and parts are readily available and easy to replace. And they’re nearly indestructable! What a deal. The problem for me is that they are way overpriced for what you get – especially if you buy the name brand: “Fender”. Of course, I wanted a Fender American Strat. I wanted to have the “real” thing, after all.
Strats are very comfortable to play – the 25.5″ scale and neck shape work well together. The particular model I got had the two-point trem, but it was blocked with a rosewood block ala Eric Clapton (from what I read at least). I removed the block at one point and set up the trem, but I ended up blocking it again. I’ve really gotten away from using the trem.
There are a few weaknesses in Strats in my mind: Pickups are a biggie. Stock strats just aren’t that flexible. I know, I know, they’ve been used for all sorts of music, but I wasn’t able to get my sound out of it. And the original pickups are noisy. Yes, that’s to be expected, but I had been completely spoiled by humbuckers over the years – they’re dead quiet. First thing I did was get a set of Kinman pickups, which were purported to be among the best. They are outstanding. Huge difference from the originals. I opted for the AvN Blues set, which is a bit hotter than stock. Sound great, completely noiseless.
Still…something was missing…It’s that darned bridge pickup. I just couldn’t get it to really “dig in” like I needed to on a solo. I could plug in my Les Paul or my Carvin and, wow, there it was! But not on the strat. And I really was hoping to make the strat my one-size-fits-all guitar. Soo…First I popped in a tele pickup in the bridge. Not so great by itself (not as good as a real tele), but wait…if I re-wire the switch to get that neck-bridge combination..yes! That’s nice! But still not it. Sooo…swap the bridge for a Seymour Duncan Little ’59. Crap. Sounded awful. Something wrong with the pickup? Maybe. I didn’t care to try that type again. Swapped for a Hot Rails…not bad. Not as rich and full sounding as I’d like, but it certainly is hot. And it drives the amp pretty well. Still not like the Carvin or Les Paul, but much better than before. So, that’s what I stuck with.
My favorite mod that I did on the strat (and have done on every strat I’ve owned since) is to swap the standard 5-way switch for a “mega switch” from Stew-Mac. I wire is so the following pickup combinations are available: Neck, Neck-Middle, Neck-Bridge, Middle-Bridge, Bridge. That has become my favorite Strat switching scheme, and the neck-bridge combo is probably my most used position. Sorta tele-ish, sorta Gretsch-ish, some jangle with some fullness. Real nice even with the Hot Rails in there. And the Hot Rails lets me get into that Richie Sambora/EVH territory a little when needed too. Bonus.
Probably what I love most about Strat-type guitars is that everything is removable. Shim the neck? No problem! Adjust the bridge? Ok! Adjust the truss rod? No problem! New pickups? Easy. New pots and a switch? Sure! I have no fear! Set necks…well…I’ll swap electronics and tuners, but I’m not so certain about adjusting the neck and all properly. My own paranoia.
Eventually I decided that I liked my home assembled strat better than the “real deal” Fender American. I returned the American to it’s original state – original pickups and switching and I sold it. The nice thing about the name brands is that they hold their value – and sometimes even increase over time. I know my home made won’t, but I had to do in favor of the guitar I thought played and sounded better.
I originally bought this guitar as a knock-around beach guitar, but ended up getting much more use out of it than I ever expected. I really wanted a Guild acoustic. I had an old mahogany bodied student sized Guild that I loved, that got completely ruined in a drive out west. Shortly later I fell in love with a Guild that a friend from Denver had – a wonderful big bodied guitar with an arched maple back…that guitar projected, but had a great balance and was beautiful too. Anyway…
I went to 48th Street in New York City to check out guitars, and while there I found two Guilds that I loved. Again, one was an arched maple-back guitar with a cutaway and electronics, and the other was almost identical, but was an all mahogany body. I liked the classy look of the maple guitar, but I liked the mellowed sound of the mahogany. Unfortuntely, they were both way more than I wanted to spend (story of my life), and neither was a “knock-around” guitar. They commanded respect and needed to be treated well, not dragged around on the beach. Soooo…hello Takamine!
While on 48th Steet I took the opportunity to try out lots of guitars (including a few wonderful Les Pauls). In the end the Takamine I picked out spoke to me the best of the acoustics that I could afford. As usual, I knew very little other than what I’d read about acoustic guitars. I went by my hands and by my ears. It turned out what I liked was a laminated top guitar with a maple sides and back and maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. I still love playing that guitar. I’m not afraid to hurt it, but it still looks great. It’s held up very well considering the abuse it has taken.
The great thing is that I had expected to use it around the house mostly, but after not playing in a band for a while I hooked up with a co-worker who also sang and played guitar. After a short while of doing Jimmy Buffet and Eagles tunes we decided to give the Coffee House circuit a go, and ended up playing twice or three times weekly for nearly three years! Just by dumb luck my guitar ended up being the perfect compliment to my partner’s guitar. He had a Solid top Takamine with solid rosewood back and sides. Really a much smoother and better balanced guitar. His primarily rythm sound filled in perfectly against the fills that I did on this guitar. The maple provided a brighter sound with more cut and the two guitars worked very well together.
The Tak is still the only real flat top acoustic I own, and I use it often.
Good Luck Struck! I won this guitar from Guitar Player Magazine a year or so after buying the Carvin DC150. That was so cool. It was billed as being worth $1200, and arrived with a beautiful fusia/pinkish-red metallic finish with a white binding (painted I think). The carved arch-top body and through-neck were mahogany as far as I could tell, and it had an ebony fretboard with sharkfin inlays. It had a Kahler Pro trem installed, and who knows what kind of pickups.
The disappointment was that when it arrived it was in awful shape. It was unplayable due to buzzing etc, and one of the pickups was dead. I talked to the folks at Robin, but they didn’t seem concerned and were not at all helpful. I suppose they were thinking “Whadda ya want for free, kid?” So…I took it to Doctor Bob, who did a wonderful job maintaining my Carvin, and he set it right. He also added some switching options. The guitar came with a S-S-H configuration and he added push-pull switches to the volume and tone controls so I could split the humbucker and run it out of phase. As with the Carvin, I never really found a use for this. It just sounded good at the time to have more options.
The Robin was a very comfortable guitar to play, although I never got used to the pointy reverse headstock. It also had a graphite nut and Bob suggested I didn’t need the locking nut, so eventually I removed it. He was right. A properly setup trem and guitar with a graphite nut and good tuners doesn’t really need the locking nut. Even heavy trem use didn’t throw that guitar out of tune.
The Robin did a nice job pulling off strat sounds in the neck position and the neck-middle position. I was never happy with the bridge pickup. I swapped it out for a Carvin, but still no good. This guitar was also a bitch to set up properly. I lost contact with Doctor Bob after he moved at one point and took the Robin to several different people at various times, but never with very satisfactory results.
I always expected the Robin would eventually become my main guitar because it was so nice to play, but that never happened. Sound-wise it never compared to the Carvin, so I carried it as a backup for years and eventually sold it. In my research prior to selling it I talked to the folks at Robin again (who were very helpful this time) and discovered that the guitar was not actually made by Robin in Texas as I had assumed. It was one of a series of guitars that were built for Robin in Japan. Still, it was a gorgeous guitar that was fun to play.
I decided to semi-retire my Univox, and in 1985 or 86, after much reading and searching and trying out, went with a Carvin DC150. It had all the features I was looking for (plus), and was pretty reasonable. Maple set neck, ebony fretboard, Kahler Pro locking trem, dual humbuckers, and that cool Les Paul Jr. double-cutaway shape that I’ve always liked.
This guitar was a real surprise when I received it. I had high expectations (it was the most I’d ever spent on a guitar after all), but out of the box it was setup incredibly well. Not like most of the partially or poorly setup guitars in area shops. It was in tune with great intonation and incredibly low action with no buzz at all – perfect, really. The Carvin is a machine. It is precise, very heavy for it’s small size, very punchy and bright for a guitar with humbuckers (probably due to the hard maple body?), and it cuts through the mix extremely well. It prefers high gain amps. This guy and a reasonably good high gain amp nail the Santana sound. To this day the guitar does not go out of tune unless I de-tune it. As long as it gets played reasonably regularly and the strings are in halfway decent shape it stays in tune. This guitar has been incredibly stable.
The Carvin was semi-retired a few years ago. I decided the Strat was more suited to the music we were doing and the smokey bars we were playing. The nice thing about a strat is that if something breaks, you unbolt it and put a new one on. Not so with a set neck guitar.
The downsides…As I said, the guitar is an absolute machine, but it’s sound can be characterized as somewhat “soul-less”. It’s very articulate and not at all muddy, and because of that it sometimes lacks character and a voice of it’s own. Carvin guitars of this era were advertised as being able to cover a wide range of sounds, and it certainly can. How many are really good sounds is another story. The humbucking sounds are all excellent in my opinion. I never swapped the pickups because they’ve always done what I’ve wanted them to do: The bridge is hot and can drive an amp well; the neck is much rounder and fuller and the two pickups balance well. The guitar has switches for splitting the pickups and running them out of phase as well. I use those once in a while, but not for long. I have never used anything other than the standard three pickup positions when playing live. The split positions sound weak and nasally in comparison to the standard full humbucker. This is comparable to just about every guitar I’ve played with split humbuckers. It’s not that they sound bad, just that they don’t sound as good. And they don’t really pull off the Strat sound as some would have you believe.
There were a couple of construction issues that turned up over time. First the truss rod was set very close to one end which meant that after a number of years and many setups and adjustments, the truss rod reached its end. It cannot be adjusted any further. Fortunately, the neck has been rock-solid and it hasn’t been a problem, but really the truss rod should have more room to adjust.
The second is more of a finishing issue. My guitar is plain white, and after a few years the neck joint and body joint started to become more visible, just slightly under the paint. If you look at older set neck guitars with solid finishes you’ll see it’s very common. The uncommon thing is that at the bottom of the body near the strap button a dark “crack” appeared. I had Doctor Bob (guitar tech who had done all the setups) check it out and it was only a finish crack with whatever was underneath starting to show through. In the years since the crack has not gotten any bigger, and it never had any affect that I could tell, but it’s a cosmetic flaw that really shouldn’t be there.
The Carvin is a very ’80′s sounding guitar and takes well to effects. It’s relatively high output compared to most other guitars and that is a large part of it’s signature. Very easy to get squeals and harmonics, and even with the Kahler trem it has outstanding sustain.
I read that Carvin started producing the DC150 again…that model seems to have disappeared from their catalogue now. That was a much different guitar, and is most likely not at all like the older model I have. Carvin guitars have changed significantly since then. I have had good experiences with them though and wouldn’t hesitate to at least try one of their models out.
I had always been interested in Hagstoms because they were advertised as having a super-stable neck with a lifetime warranty. I’ve always been big on dependability in products. I bought a 70′s era Viking, which is Hagstrom’s ES-335-alike. I thought it looked incredibly cool, but the guitar never was a really fun guitar to play. It just didn’t sing to me the way I’d hoped. I swapped the cool tuners for a Gibson set, and tried different pickups, but it never became more than a backup. I used it live for one song to get super flange-o-matic feedback (hollow body guitars feedback super easily), but eventually I put the original parts back on and sold it.
My first real, name-brand guitar. I bought the small-bodied student Guild from my friend – I think for $65. It was probably a late 60′s guitar, with an all mahogany (top too), and I believe an ebony fretboard. The small size was super comfortable to play and it sounded great. I used fairly heavy strings to help beef up the sound a bit and it seemed to like those pretty well.
Sadly, the Guild self-destructed on a drive out west. It had been in the car for three days and when I opened the case just about every part on that guitar let loose. The glue had softened, the top curled up, neck pulled away from the body and just about any part that had been glued on was pulling apart. I was pretty much in tears – I really loved that little guitar. If I had it to do over I would now bring it to a repair person, because I’m sure all the parts were in good shape. At the time I had no idea that it might be possible to fix, so I left it in a dumpster. No decent guitar should suffer that fate.
In general I’m a big fan of Guild guitars – especially the older Rhode Island made models. Some of my all time favorite acoustics are Guilds.