stonge

There's a borrowed Helix in the other room that pretty much extinguished pedal GAS, but a Bonetender and 200 lbs of fuzz fell into my cart and you know how that goes...

The Pirate Special has wandered to the big city for a bit after relaxing at casa de stonge. The Pirate Special dig get to hang with with Nightwolf's Daytona as shown below.

Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak This was the first rock record that I owned - my best friend gave me his copy. Still sounds cool to me.

The Nashville Sound by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Butcher turns up everywhere with stylin' footwear and killer chops.

"none more black..."

For the last year my junk parts tele; $45 pine reject body with bondo and sharpie (courtesy of Lew Motlow lol) with a old warmoth boatneck and a Duncan broadcaster pickup with the Eldred wiring. Just a mutt lol. ..

Deke Dickerson has a great book 'The Strat In The Attic' full of stories which would have just about any guitar geek stopping at every tag sale or estate sale they see. Cool guitars are still out there in unexpected places. While it would be cool to have the guitar, it's even better that it will stay in the family. The backstory is worth it imho.

Given the amount of repair work to get it back to playable (and you don't really know what that will cost) I wouldn't go above $200. Check the neck to see if it looks straight and not twisted; there might be a little kink where the fretboard meets the face of the guitar and that could effect the string height and action (mine has a little bit of this, and a luthier who checked it out pronounced it "original sin" meaning it was built that way). If it's really off, you might need a neck reset and that will cost much more than the guitar would ever be worth. Since you really don't know if it can be made playable, i would be cautious about getting into the guitar too deep as it could end up a wall - hanger. If it had the original case, that might be worth a hundred by itself. I found a really cool '52 L-7 cutaway in the local GC, but there was a slight twist in the neck and a weird kink where the fretboard joined the body that looked like it would be expensive to correct. It hurt to walk away from that one, but sometimes you need to figure out what you are willing to deal with and that went out of my comfort zone. At the price they wanted, it should have been a lot cleaner and had minimal issues. That being said, I do have a beater L-7 with cracks and slight seam separation that I got into at a fair price (my luthier said "if you like it, play it until it falls apart and then decide whether you want to fix it. It might never fall apart though"). It sounded great, so I bought it and really enjoy it. I'm learning to accept that some things can just be functional and flawed at the same time lol.

really clean ones from about 1950 run about a grand; I have a 1950 L-48 that I picked up last year for just over that - mine is a feather and sounds really nice. They were the 'entry-level' archtops of the Gibson line, but they sound and play pretty nice ("affordable vintage"). From about that timeframe, L-7's run about 3K, and L-5's start about 5K from what I have seen so the L-48 is definitely the 'bang for the buck' model imho. I'd echo hamerhead's idea; get it fixed just enough to be playable and enjoy it and the story behind it. Stew-Mac has press-on tuner buttons that might fit those pegs - I replaced the buttons on a 56 Fender lapsteel where the original crumbled into dust when touched. No need for a pickguard imho. Flatwounds or even acoustic (bronze) strings should sound fine on it. Enjoy!

Mrs stonge saw it on FB this morning, so I requested a quote on an emerald green 4 digit bound and crowned with an ebony board. Yeah, that would do it lol. Best of luck to Mike in this new endeavor, and props to Ted and whoever else is providing assistance on this. Great news!

Gibson wishes they had thought of that first. Another limited edition lol.

California Speedbag "the fire of misery" DBT "Alabama Ass Whuppin" and "English Oceans" Turnpike Troubadors "Goodbye Normal Street" Jason Isbell "Southeastern"

That's a lot of guitar for $1200. If you're holding out for a better deal, I wish you good luck with your pursuit. I would not sell mine that low (so it sits on the shelf for the time being).

No idea. That's the fun of it. But there was this really cool 1952 Gibson L7C at the local GC. the other day... and a couple of 6120's on clearance...

MCChris says it best.

Maiden England ain't doing it (hard to believe this was the same band that did "live after death"). Try BlackBerry Smoke "live at the Georgia theater" or drive by truckers "live at the 40watt" + whiskey instead lol. Rebooting...

Ramones + beer + sunny day if you want to shake a bad mood. Jamey Johnson's "the lonesome song" album + whiskey if you want to auger in and stew it. Any Iron Maiden DVD + whiskey if you want to crash, burn, and sleep it off lol. Not that I speak from experience lol. Watching "Maiden England" tonight (it's no Flight 666 but it'll do for tonight)

This rings a bell. yep. Impersonating another person for the purpose of destroying their reputation and business is about as low as it gets. If the site owner is unwilling to follow up on an IP trace, there really isn't much the victim can do however.

Be careful about the quality of kits; there are a lot of low-priced kits that will produce low-quality instruments (getting exactly what you paid for, or less). If you know basically what you want for wood and features, Warmoth, Musikraft, and USA Customs are pretty safe bets for bodies and necks (I'm not really impressed by Allparts; they're a partial step up from cheesy kits but not in the same league as the above imho). Getting a good finish can be tricky, but I used Birchwood Casey gunstock finish (wipes on easy, steel wool most of it back off so the surface feels smooth). One thing to watch for is to make sure that the wood and hardware match (make sure the tuner holes in the neck are the right size for the tuners you want to use, and that the trem mounting holes in the body match the mounting holes and spacing for your trem. Some of the import parts do not fit vintage-sized routes etc). It is a lot of fun to build your own, and it can be an addictive hobby lol. Just remember to drill pilot holes for the tuner mounting screws; it's impossible to just drive those tiny screws into rock maple necks without snapping the head of the screws off (and then you get to learn about drilling out around the broken screw shaft, doweling the hole, and doing it the right way. Not that I know anything about that...)

usually have a Power Block and a POD stashed in the car in case of emergency when we (seldom) gig. Poor tone still beats silence (but not by much lol).

that is amazing - wow. Congrats!

I have not been able to get an e-mail response from Jonathan since his son was born. I must have pissed him off or something. After not hearing from him for over 2 months I decided to go with dry transfer decals from All Out Graphics in Vancouver. Their service has been exceptional. I can't speak for Jonathan about your case, but he responded pretty quick to me and finished off the design a couple days later after he got back from a business trip. I found his email through one of the other forums, and pinged him directly as I'm never really sure about private messages through forums actually getting there lol. Nice work on the design, and I'm just waiting for the decals to arrive. Then I gotta get something up to the point where it needs a decal (I'm better at starting projects than finishing them lol). always good to know of another source - once you build up the first one you can always think of another few to build. I love Tru-oiled necks and the smaller vintage frets, and building partscasters is the one way to get exactly what I want. Like building PCs.

JBennett from the TDPRI designed up a custom tele label for my builds - mine are all 'bastardcasters' . He did a nice job on the design, and I should get the labels in a couple of days. Highly recommended.