My first full size guitar was a Satellite Les Paul - I reached the point of giving up and sold it to a fellow apprentice at work. He asked me to show him both chords I knew, so I borrowed his housemates guitar to teach the little I knew. It was fun playing guitar with someone else so I got a Marlin Sidewinder that was beautifully set up but certainly lacked tuning stability. That was 37 years ago and we're still playing and gigging in the covers band we started back then - These days with rather better guitars.
Ditto my first electric was a black Satellite Les Paul bought it off a friend who had upgraded to an Ibanez Les Paul. Took an age to realize the neck bolts were shot and could never stay in tune :( Happy days :)
My first guitar was an Encore "Satan 666" I got as a straight swap for my PlayStation in 1999. I loved that guitar. I practised four hours every day on it for two years
god yeah - my mate's lad has a harley benton 335 that was about 150 quid, I set it up for him and am now going to get one, sounds good and is great to play
@@murraymusic2633 I was amazed by the 335 type, took some work, but turned out great, I'll bet one after xmas I think, have you sanded/wire wooled the neck? that was the clincher on the 1 I did up
Ye, I spent like $80 on an offshore Tele with dual humbuckers and it’s not awful. Action is simultaneously too high and too low, but there’s no sharp edges and it sounds pretty cool.
The main reason I refuse to believe that vintage guitars are better than modern guitars is that I'm old enough to remember what vintage guitars were actually like.
First real guitar in the Early sixties was a red Futurama bought from Bell Musical Instruments.I used Monopole tapewound strings,I think they were about £1.12 and sixpence a set.They were not cheap as you could get a set of Cathederals for about aight and sixpence.I am now 75 and still love playing but have now gone a lot more upmarket,but still remember those early years,so thanks for the memories.
Sometime around 1967-68 winter, l shoveled a lot of snow for money, l bought a Teisco delrey electric 6-string during an after christmas closeout sale from a mattinglys dime store for $12.95 + tax. Single pickup, cardboard case, I'd actually been playing the guitar since I was about 5, going thru various toy type guitars before I got this one, I even had a tiger guitar they called it, and they were pretty popular back then, I had an old beat up acoustic guitar that was fairly good to play around the house Etc, but I started to play in bands with various people and I needed an electric guitar I got a 50 watt custom amplifier with the tuck and roll blue sparkle that one of my grandparents bought for me, that Teisco guitar and that custom amp is what I learned to play on when l was in my early teens at schools, partys dances etc, we played about every thing from house of the rising sun, wipe out, to crimson & clover, etc later I played semi-professionally for about 20-30 years and I went through numerous guitars and amps, now I'm on the back side of 70 and I have a customized Fender Stratocaster and a Mesa Boogie Mark ll combo amp & tons of misc.stuff lve had since the early 80s collecting dust, an old Fender acoustic guitar that I pluck around on, finally I made a trade of a lot of instruments and amps and stuff that I accumulated on a sound system for the band I was in, that teisco played better than some of the quality guitars like Gibson's and fenders that I owned, and I would imagine its still out there playing somewhere, if you get a good guitar with a good straight neck that fits you well that's all you need, as I always thought that it's not so much the guitar the instrument, but it's the person playing it, now with all the new fangled stuff, digital electronics and everything nowdays thats going on with music, I sort of fell out of touch with playing music, I'd rather listen to whatever l want, guitar playing was my hobbie, lots of fun & memories & most of all the "Mojo"💎
Your "Electric Guitar" was very common amongst early teenage guys in the 60's who couldn't afford anything else. These were sold in big box stores like Sears, Wards and what would become Kmart. There were huge musical depts with drums, record players, organs, harmonicas and guitars. Millions of records and posters, mostly like the Meet the Beatles pic and the latest hot 45's blaring. Two aisles over, you could buy Beatle Boots and have metal taps added to the heels. Three aisles over, there were motorcycles and auto tires. When you were 12 or 13, this was heaven.
My first bass was a Hofner Beatle bass copy. I don’t remember the builder. I gave to my brother and bought a Univox violin fretless bass. It was a Gibson knock off. It was a surprisingly decent instrument. I drooled for years over the Fender Precision basses and finally had enough to buy one. The year was 1976. A friend and I headed from Sacramento to San Francisco to the holy grail of music stores. It was Don Wehr’s Music City. The racks were lined with every imaginable color and style of Fender basses. I found my bass and proceeded to check out only to find out that I was about $40.00 short due to the cost of the case. The friend who I was with had relatives who live in nearby Mountain View. He made a call and secured the $40.00 that I needed. I finally walked out with a black/maple 1975 Fender Precision bass with the Fender case. The grand total ended up being about $325.00. I still have it.
My first in the late 70s was a Japanese-stamped Grant Flying V with twin humbuckers and the dots upto the twelfth fret in the wrong spaces.....I loved it and would love another. Knowing what I know now that I am addicted to modding cheaper guitars, the V was infact a very well made piece of kit and would stand up to any modern Epi equivalent, at least with regards to the woodwork. What amazes me now is the prices some of these junkers you mention are fetching on Ebay, especially the Top 20 and the Sidewinder, the later I saw getting bids over £200 not so long ago! I do agree, the Yamaha Pacifica set a new standard for a school guitar, as did Yamaha, Tokai and Ibanez's double cuts and LPs, which quite rightly now fetch decent money, with many standing upto time better than the Gibsons and Epis.
My first guitar was also a Woolworth's (Teisco?) Top Twenty in 1975 with accompanying 'Audition' 5 or 10W amp which had a tremelo effect on it. Very poor guitar, especially in comparison to today's beginner guitars. As an introduction to electric guitars, it's a wonder I kept with it. Still see them on eBay, going for about £200 - Caveat Emptor indeed.
My first electric was a second hand Hofner Galaxy strat copy which was a really good guitar at the time. After destroying the speaker in the family radio I had nothing left to play ity through. I took it into the local music shop and swapped it for a crappy jumbo acoustic - they must have see me coming. The neck on that became a banana in a few week. You learn by your mistakes 🙂
the same with me i bought a second hand Hofner Galaxy but with me being Left Handed i strugled to play the top strings so i took the neck off and made my own SG shaped body but fited a Demazio super distortion humbucker in it and i still have it and the original body but with it being made of plywood and put in the shed for years it has split
Despite family economic conditions in the early 60's, I got lucky. My first electric was a Greco double-cutaway hollow body, similar to an ES330/335. It wasn't a Les Paul, so I wasn't able to appreciate it to the degree I should have. I just couldn't bond with it. But, looking back, it was a notch, maybe two above the catalogue guitars of the day - guitars that I stupidly pined after because _they weren't hollow bodies._ Hey, I was only 8 or 9, so there's that. Times change, people change, and, most importantly, perspectives change. What a long, strange trip it's been (Garcia reference). Enjoyed sharing your past with you, John. I've been a subscriber. That ain't gonna change.
I worked at Guitar Center for about 8 months and one of the things I told parents looking to get a child interested in an instrument was to buy the best instrument they could afford. I didn't say this to earn a commission or to make GC money but it was a simple yet true statement. An experienced player could, if necessary play on a Hondo guitar and somehow make it work. A brand new player will completely have their spirits crushed by all the difficulties that come with a cheap guitar. Quality instruments are so much easier to play, enjoyable to play, and sound infinitely better than entry level instruments. I flat out told parents to just save their money and buy something else rather than spend it on a cheap instrument.
I started playing in 72, when I was 11. At that time the Jap copies were just starting to come in like a big "flood", and filled the guitar shops. I used to jump on the train as an 11 year old, with my mate, and we'd ride the seven stops up to Charing Cross, and then walk up to Denmark Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, which had Rose-Morris and a few other guitar shops back then. All of them were filled with... Columbus Avon Shaftsbury CMI Antoria Aria Saxon Antoria Arbiter Ibanez ...and on and on. Most were not great, and had plywood bodies, fake humbucking pick-ups, and bolt on necks. A FEW stood out above the throng as better quality... Ibanez Aria Kimbara Antoria Westbury Westone and...Kawai. Thing is...people nowdays, who don't know any better, lump all Jap guitars from that era together, as somehow being "magical". They really WERE'NT. Most were crap. But...they got you started. I skipped the whole "copy" thing, and started in 72 on a Futurama (Musima) III, which I bought off a kid at school for the grand sum of...A FIVER! I played that for 5 years in a band, and for my 16th birthday, my dad bought me a beautiful ash blonde U.S Fender Tele. 😊
We used to do exactly the same and go to the shops in Shaftesbury Avenue, mainly just to look. There was also the Fender Soundhouse on the corner of Euston road that had loads of Hayman parts for sale when the factory closed in 1973.
We had a Marlin Sidewinder bass in our music room in school. It was ok but it broke and the only bass that our head of music could get was an even worse Kay shortscale from the late 60s. I see the prices of these on eBay and wonder why people think they're worth more than £50 at most
Hi again from Spain. I always enjoy your video's. In 1967 my late father bought me a Hofner Ambassador, from memory it cost about £50, but that was two weeks wages for him. This was an exceptional copy of a 335, similar to the Hofner Verithin but a little cheaper. Oh how I wish I had kept that guitar, they were only made for a couple of years and are now very rare, but a great guitar. How things have changed, as you are aware you can buy a decent guitar today for a days wages. Maybe your next video is the 5 best guitars you have bought in the past, kind regards,John(72 years young)
I bought my son a Sakai Telecaster type copy in a sickly yellow sunburst with open gear tuners with plastic buttons ,a neck made of something ,zero fret , a fingerboard made of something with two ovel shaped p 90 type pickups ,a Telecaster style pickguard , slider pickup switches and a top loader style Gibsonish gadget metal tremolo unit with a roller style bridge ,the same one you could buy in the Bells catalogue in 1975 [ my son was 17 at the time] and it cost £25 second hand !.
LOL! Great video! I can't count how many crap guitars I have bought over the years. My first electric was a 1964 Silverstone. I found it in a little music store in '77. I paid 50 dollars. I went from that to a Gibson SG. I smashed it Silverstone Pete Townshend style in '80, and found out about a week later it was worth about 450 dollars to collectors. I've been a stratocaster fanatic since '81, and have owned several. Oddly my all time favorite electric has been my '85 MIJ squire stratocaster. I bought it in '93 and it's been my favorite sense that time. I have other stratocasters but none compare to "Baby". I won't talk about my mandolins. I love your channel!
My first electric was a s/hand Ibanez ST55 which I still have. Worked all summer to get it for £129 in 1983. Compared to the five models you have shown this Ibanez is a dream to play and I feel quite lucky to have got it after first starting to play on a Harmony acoustic for a year or so.
Good Day John, I'm 72 years old and I have to admit that mu journey has been a lot like yours. I've bought and played the same kind of guitars my friend. I admit you are right my best were bought once I had a job to pay for my own but God bless my Dad he got me two that were nice enough i kept them until they just wore out to far to fix them anymore. I have to admit that I probably learned to properly setup and adjust guitars before I could play one properly. I learned by hanging around with a guitar repair tech at a local mom and pop shop. You really had me rolling on the floor laughing with this one sir. Have a great day, and God Bless you and the Misses Sir.
I had a Hohner Strat copy in bright pink with a maple neck. I found out later it had a plywood body. It wasn’t great, but it was a significant step up from the Audition Acoustic (bought from Woolworths) I’d been playing which had a neck break repair (neck pushed back together with two screws and superglue to hold it). Standing in front of the mirror with my cheap Strat at 14 years old I felt pretty amazing I can tell you. Owning cheap guitars is a right of passage. It isn’t a bad thing and helps you appreciate the good ones when you can afford to buy them.
I have an Hohoner Tele copy, it's called a Madcat. Prince played one but mines a little older than his. Just because they didn't cost much at the time doesn't mean they cannot be good Guitars, it's spectacular. Ok it's been modified but they did need it.
If a guitar "eats strings", could that be because there's a sharp edge on the tuning machines that cuts into it? I had a Japanese copy of a Guild jumbo back in the 90s and that had that exact problem, the strings would snap when I tightened or loosened them (the latter really perplexed me) and I took it to the shop I got it from and they found the sharp edge and filed it down and hey presto, no more strings snapping.
My first electric guitar was a 1967(?) Strat copy. I don't remember seeing a brand name on the guitar. The action was so high that even my guitar instructor couldn't play it so he filed down the slots. The string intonation was flat by the time the third fret was reached. It had two Zen-on pickups, each one had a sliding off-on switch on the upper horn and a volume control in the usual place on the body. There was also a tone control which did virtually nothing. The plastic bridge looked like the Rocky mountains with six peaks causing each string to have a different height. This made strumming or plucking with a pick almost impossible. All these features for around $50 CDN at the time.
My first Guitar was a second-hand Aria Pro II Les Paul Custom copy. 3 PU's, Burgandy with gold hardware, hard case that cost £200 that felt like a King's Ransom way back in 1982. In 1985 I traded it up (guitar + £150) for a 1974 Gibson Standard SG with an ebony fretboard which they only produced that year (I had no idea at the time). I still have it.
My first guitar was an aria pro 2LF that was very nice i thought at the time. my shittiest guitar is my Kramer focus. I only have cheaper guitars, epiphones mostly and i like them.
Hey John, not a bad selection of planks. I would just like to tell you about my first electric that I think would make this lot look pretty good. It was a Dallas, fortunately the model name escapes me but it epitomised everything bad about an axe. Very chunky neck, horrendous action, no trem system but constantly drifted out of tune, scratchy tone and volume controls and a strap button that pulled out of the guitar whilst on stage ( I think it was during 'You really got me' by The Kinks ). Shortly after that embarrassment I swapped it for a Burns Vibra Artist, it was like going from Vauxhall Viva to a Triumph Stag. Great video my friend.
In 60,s I used to help a local teen band , The lead gtr was a Hofner verithin,the rhythm gtr was a real 65 fender strat. We used to mock the strat player . What did we know?
I learnt to play on a Sidewinder, upside down, I'm a Southpaw. My late father has a spectacular collection, he was a Customs and Excise officer at Liverpool docks, anyway he was buying Guitars in the late 50's until the early 90's and wasn't about to shell out until he knew i would see it through, So i got a Marlin to play upside down. Already set against it x 2 i proceeded to learn with lessons from my dad. I had the straight Strat copy, just a regular Trem, i still have it and the rest of his collection all heirlooms for my kids as i have my own collection of lefties. Couldn't agree more with your list, it looks like you had it far worse than me, lol. Thanks John.
My first electric guitar was purchased from Woolies for my 15th birthday in 1971. It was vaguely Straty in sunburst with a faux tortoise shell pick guard. The Woolworth's Top 20 that you show doesn't ring any bells with me so maybe it was a different model. For a start, I'm pretty sure that it didn't have a trem but maybe my memory isn't accurate. I remember that I took it apart for some unknown reason some months later but I don't recall putting it back together or what I did with it after that, so maybe I binned it. In any case, the best part of that purchase was the 3 watt solid state practice amp that it came with. It was a real fuzz box and was loud enough to annoy all the neighbours for years afterwards.
I do remember most of these and it brought up a couple more. I remember Sears also had a model. Either unfortunately or fortunately I don’t remember the model. About 50 years ago I picked up a $10.00 American which I believe to be one of them. I put in about $50.00 in parts and had it refinished. It has a nice surf sound and is actually very playable. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. ❤️
I still have my Marlin Sidewinder in the back of the wardrobe somewhere and that is where it’s definitely staying.I actually saw a Jimi Hendrix tribute and the guitar he brought on at the end to set light too was a Marlin Sidewinder!
I recently bought back my old Sidewinder (£30) - the plan is to work in some better hardware, a fun project to learn to work on guitars and for nostalgia. Dismantling it the pressure die cast block in the trem crumbled - literally - so I'm reworking it with a used Floyd Rose. Doesn't matter if it turns out to still be crap as I have several better guitars these days.
I looked at this video just to see if you had a Marlin Sidewinder. Around 1987 I bought a catalogue Marlin Sidewinder to replace my virtually fretless Antoria Les Paul with (gold hardware no less) The Antoria was bought S/H for £40 from a music shop in Leeds. The Marlin was I believe £189 and had a Kahler trem on it (a feature that impressed all my guitar friends at the time no end). I opened the box of the Marlin and was blown away by the glossy paint job. I just stared at it for a few seconds in awe. As I lifted it from the box I was surprised at how light the thing was and my heart sank a little. I then noticed the laminations of the plywood body down the pickup routings and my heart sank further. I plugged the thing in, tuned it and strummed a few chords. In short it sounded awful, earth buzzing everywhere and NOOOOO sustain whatsoever. It was duly sent back and the Antoria stuck with me for a couple of years after that. A valuable lesson was learnt from the Marlin. A nice paint job does not make a good guitar.
Those Epiphone Strat copies were made in the same factory in Korea as Fender was making nearly identical Squiers. There were higher tier Squiers from the same factory which were actually quite good.
I had a Watkins Rapier 33 that i bought from a guy who lived in the flat above mine. I was lucky enough to know someone with the skill and experience to set it up and make it playable.
I have a 1964 Watkins Rapier bass that's really quite good. Got it set up by a local guitar specialist (Jack's Guitars, Hebden Bridge. Top bloke !) and while the action isn't as good as (say) a decent Fender it plays well and sounds great through a good system. Wouldn't part with it for anything !
My first “ electric “ guitar was a Sears and Roebuck catalog “Audition” strat copy in tobacco sunburst. Two single coil pu’s I paid $49.00 US and also a really good tube amp “Audition” also ,stack 60 watt for $60 US. The guitar was a piece of shitte the action was about 8mm off the fret board, the neck was really wide and uncomfortable to press the strings down the tuning pegs were stiff as. It squealed as soon as you turned it up to 6, heaps of acoustic hum from the shitty pu’s. I persevered for 3 years with the sharp fret ends and shitty action until I bought a Kramer. This was 1970 and the kids of today have got it easy and a multitude of choices. I had to learn by listening to records and repeating songs over and over. NFI about tunings or what keys the songs were written in just had to learn by ear.
I remember my first high school band back in the 60's. We didnt have money and terrible equipment. The bass players cheap Beatle bass copy was a better vocal mic than the one we had. The bass player would hunch over and sing into the f hole!
My first electric was a Vox Stroller in 1963. Plywood body and a totally flat plywood fretboard. The bridge was a movable wooden affair with no facility for intonation adjustment. It had what seemed to have been copper wound strings that left your fingertips green. Instead of a standard jack, it had a TV style co-ax input. It was the most appalling guitar ever and I sold it after six months to buy a second-hand Höfner Club 40.
I have a cherry red Marlin Sidewinder. With the pickups replaced it sounds pretty good to me. I have no issues with keeping in tune on mine. It's actually my favourite superstrat in my collection.
My then best mate and I were both starting out on guitar and he got a marlin sidewinder. I was learning on a classical before getting a start a year later. Looking back i don't know how anyone in the 80s actually stuck at it for long enough to become half decent. Today, you can spend the same amount of cash you'd've wasted on a marlin and get a playable, gigable guitar that you could keep as a spare for years. Youngsters today don't know they're born etc. etc.
I bought a Woolworths teisco guitar in 1972 and it cost me £12. Sadly I sold it a few years later but Ive just replaced it with a purchase from EBay. £???
I bought a columbus strat from a charity shop 6 years ago for 8 quid, it's been pretty much rebuilt, new tuners, completely rewired and is a perfectly OK strat now
Same here with that godawful guitar lol - cue "kids today don't know they're born" moan, but honestly, they really have amazing guitars and so many to choose from in the budget starter range. One has to thank CNC manufacturing and the factory workers of the far east for making them affordable. Pity there's not much of a music industry left for kids to make a living in but hey ho, at least they won't be learning on egg slicers 😂😂
Re: The Epiphone Strat copy with the hockey stick, or batwing headstock, were around a lot longer. Japanese Epiphones of that era were high quality instruments. Alder isn’t “plywood”, and I’m restringing & going over a 1983 Batwing Strat. SSH. guitarist wants the whammy non-op, so I’ve blocked it off, Ernie 9’s, a piece of cake to set up. Took me 45 minutes to go over everything. BTW: These”plywood guitars” go for $350-up (U.S.D.).... Your country must’ve been shipped all crap that escaped the wood chipper 😆😆. P.S. Your assessments of the remaining guitars... (that I had played) you’re spot on!
I bought my first guitar from a catalogue in 1979 and blew the output transistors of my music centre by putting the guitar through it great video, brought back some memories, !!
My first guitar was a Series A hair band style guitar with a really crappy floyd rose style bridge, terrible, wouldnt stay in tune for even a minute but I loved it anyway.
Aw man. The first guitar I ever bought was a 57 reissue USA strat in 1988. Cost over 400quid if not 500. Saved up my apprenticeship money. Windows in central arcade newcastle. Up until then for 2 year I had messed about with cheapies borrowed from mates. Only thing is I didnt understand about strats ,it hardly got played, more of an acoustic player and during a time of unemployment in 93 I sold it. For about 180 IIRC. Now Im a better player and I miss that guitar every day. See what they go for now brings a tear to my eye.
I should think it cost you more than £500 because I was working in a guitar shop in 1988 and I wanted a USA vintage reissue Strat. I went up to Soho Soundhouse in London in October '88 to try one out, and I'm pretty sure they were nearly £600, although all the shops were trying to discount them more than their competitors. Anyway, I mentioned it to my boss so he rang up Arbiter (Fender's UK distributors at the time) to see if they'd sell us one. They were happy to, but were waiting for the next batch to arrive. It finally arrived at our shop in Jan '89! I remember the delivery van turning up! It cost me £460 TRADE price! That's the most I've ever spent on a guitar. I've still got it. Mine's a black '62. I always thought they'd be quite collectable but they only seem to go for just over £1000, which is a bit disappointing.
The Epiphone "strat" was my first electric guitar. Bought it with my own money as a 15 year old kid for $150 iirc. And I had to put it on layaway to do it! lol I was a beginner of course, but I don't recall it being as bad as your experience showed. Mine was a three single coil configuration with a strat trem. A friend of mine who was very good at that point had one with a hum/single/single and a locking trem. He played it for a long time and could rip it up on that cheap thing.
I saw a video a while back, of someone restoring a sidewinder, in that silver colour too if I recall correctly. There were even more issues than were initially apparent by the sounds of it, as this video seemed to suggest the bridge assemblies corroded and eventually would disintegrate altogether
They don't corrode, the material ages and then becomes very brittle and develop micro cracking - then they crumble - I have one in front of me right now in pieces. The front plate you see from the outside in fine - its the block behind that the strings are held by, holds the fine tuner sliders, and attaches the springs to the back of the trem.
@@domformula1 It was my first gigging guitar and I just bought it back after selling it to a friend 30 years ago. It's been in a gig bag in a shed for the last 5 to 10 years apparently and it's in surprisingly good shape with virtually no fret wear. The plan is to put a real Floyd Rose on it for the look and the fine tuners (not easy as the post spacing is different) then block it to hard tail and set it up properly and see how it plays - if it feels good then upgrade everything and see how far I can take it. I have a mix of good gigging guitars and sentimental ones - I'd love to make it actually stable and good enough to gig - sold it originally because of the poor tuning stability. Maybe I should make a video of the project.
I had a Satellite Les Paul copy that I bought off a mate for £27.50p. Dreadful guitar. I didn't have it for long. I saved up every penny I had working as a gardner on a military firing range (yes, really), and from getting knifed in an unprovoked attack for which I received the princely sum of £30 in compensation from the attacker, and bought myself a 1980 Ibanez Artist. I still have it today. On a side note, one of the worst guitars I ever played was a 50's or 60's thing that a customer bought in to my studio. It may have been a Hofner, but I'm not sure. Hollow body, but no 'f' holes. It was truly dreadful, but it was insured for half a million pounds due to the fact that it was played on the original recording of You Really Got Me by The Kinks. I don't know how they managed to play anything on it, let alone one of the most iconic songs in history
I kind of miss my fake Les Paul from back then. Sure the G string would never stay in tune but knowing what I know now I could've fixed that issue. The individual I purchased it from even glued the Gibson headstock veneer onto it so definitely looked the part minus the cheap hardware.
My first guitar in the mid 80's was a Westone Spectrum ST. It was black with a coil tap on the tone knob. But a trem system that just wouldn't stay in tune. Gave up on it in the end and lost the trem. Not a great guitar, but certainly a solid work horse beginners model. And affordable to
Westones were well solid - proper wood and brass nuts - but like half the stories on here - we were beginners let down by poor factory setups or the lack of easily available DIY knowledge or local repairmen. How many more Claptons might we have had if only they spent another 10 minutes rounding off the sharp fret ends in the factories?
One of my friends dads has a Woolworth Top 20. The main thing I remember was the neck was extremely bowed. So evidently the neck either didn't have a truss rod or the truss rod was really weak.
My first was a Rosetti Solid 7, which cost 29 guineas in the '60s. It was pretty awful but it looked good. I even went as far as to have Hamilton's in Middlesbrough install a Bigsby trem on it (Ah, the ignorance of youth). My mother gave it away shortly after I emigrated to Canada, sadly.
My first electric was a Fender Jag-Stang, because i was rather obsessed with Nirvana at the time, it wasn't an awful sounding guitar but the bridge/vib set-up is nothing short of garbage, impossible to keep in tune even after locking the vibe and it lacked sustain. Thankfully i sold it for more than what it cost me, ended up having a custom mustang with a tom/stopbar to satisfy my Nirvana itch. These days I mostly just play a Tele though as for me, it is the best choice as my music tastes have changed drastically in the 20 years since i purchased that first electric. Jag-Stang was really the only "crap" guitar that i regret buying and have zero regrets for selling.
My first electric guitar (purchased in 1974) was a National Telecaster copy, which embodied all of the worst characteristics of the five you mention. It was the only guitar I’ve ever owned that only got worse with every effort to try to improve its sound or playability. Ironically, I replaced it in 1977 with a Gibson SG, still the only USA-made guitar I’ve ever owned. Since then, it’s been all Squiers, Epiphones, and MIM Fenders for me.
I started playing guitar in 95 and at one time had a Marlin Sidewinder that I thought was completely amazing, I then had a Top Twenty which we found in my friend's loft, and I also owned a Hondo II Les Paul type guitar. They were all utter crap, but none of them was worse than my very first guitar - a 'Rockster' Strat with Judge Dredd on the front of it. My first brand new guitar was an Encore Strat, and that was crap as well. I don't think I had an actual good guitar until I bought an Antoria 335 from a friend. I wish I'd kept that one, it wasn't expensive but it was a really nice guitar.
From LeoM. Good walk down the memories Mr. Robson. I am a bit older, but I have similar memories from the late 60's. I still have my Taiwan produced Harmony twin pickup solid body. It was awful to play and sounded even worse. Pretty much all affordable guitars were that way. You could have them worked on and get them a little better, not much, and they still sounded the same. You had to pay a dear price for a Fender, Gibson or Gretsch to get anything playable. I was able to purchase an SG in 1971 and shortly after purchased a new Stratocaster, putting an end to the poor guitar frustration. Today, even most of the entry level guitars can be made playable with a 1/2 hour on the work bench. Current prices are like they are giving them away. My first junky Harmony cost 80 hours of labor at minimum wage. You can now buy a playable Squier Bullet Stratocaster for 15 hours working at entry level wages.
My first guitar was some Vester (sp?). It kind of put me off guitar for a few years. When I was once again inspired to pursue guitar I bought a G&L Legacy Special - quite a difference.
An ex work colleague bought a 2nd hand Chinese made Squire Strat (probably originally part of a starter kit) without asking me for advice first. It had a wiring fault on the switch and I had to chisel the bottom of the neck pocket to get the action low enough.
what's worrying is the over inflated prices being charged on ebay for these old 70's plywood guitars, often described as 'lawsuit era' as if they were all as good as the quite average but overhyped Ibanez copies... nostalgia ain't what it used to be
We had a non locking trem Marlin, was good. I tried to rub of the fish but ended up with a scallup fret. Was in Cranes music shop Cardiff many many years ago and around the top highest hooks were hundreds of Marlins around the room, i beĺieve they were stored in that area of s. Wales.
I too had a Hondo Les Paul copy, it was dreadful. I got it from a Bells Musical Instruments catalogue and was about £200 at the time. If only guitars were as good back then as they are today, I'd be a much better player by now!
my first electric was a cheap Behringer strat copy. couldn't have been great but i cant remember.. it didnt take long for me to get an Epiphone g400 and i sold the Behringer. my first acoustic was a cheap Gomez which only ever stayed in tune whenever it felt like. the tuners had loads of play in it and there were several more problems with it. That one got blown up with a firecracker so it would never cause anyone any more frustration
back in the 70s, my neighbor bought a cheap, entry level, single pickup fender for 50 bucks. it was really light and felt downright cheap, cheap, cheap. well, i didn;t know much about guitars other than to know one yearned for a les paul or flying V or even SG, so refined compared this POS i had in my hand. i played a little so i was going to show my friend how he just threw out 50 bucks he could have been saving up for that SG. i picked it up and started showing, realizing early on that this was just a fantastic guitar. i tried to buy it from him for some reasonable figure above 50 dollars, but now that i showed him how great it was, he had no inclination to part with it. i never could get that money together for the les paul, but this tiny music store i'd pass by all the time told me they had a guitar for sale that would bury any les paul and it could be had for just about the amount of money i had saved up. he swore to me it was the greatest guitar he had ever seen, so i was a few hours later the proud owner of a brand new westbury custom. it was a great guitar, just stunning. when i moved out to california with my fiance, i left a lot of my stuff at home, fully intending to pick it up sometime later. well, when that sometime later came, i opened my closet and no guitar. "what happened to my guitar, mom?" oh, well, it was just gathering dust and her friend's son seemed to like it so she gave it him along with 20,000 of my baseball cards. i guess you now know the story of my life
Very Cool. Entertaining, Interesting and Informative. Thankyou My first Guitar was an early 1980's "Fame" Series 760 Strat Style by Hondo. Have recently found it in storage and put strings on it for the first time in 25 years. I have fallen in love with the neck and have really enjoyed playing it again. Cheers
Talking of dogs, i remember buying a used Hondo Les Paul and the least said about it the better, I then talked my mate into buying a Squier Start to learn on and after a couple of months he gave up and lets just say I became the proud owner of a fiesta red strat which I kept for many years and which was absolutely playable.
Had the dreaded Columbus Les Paul. As you tuned it up, the neck would bend slightly, leaving you with that 1/4" action at the 12th fret. Had to detune it by a whole note just to play it beyond open chords. Didn't matter what you played on it, it always sounded like a 4 engined prop plane taking off. Sold it to a friend who was just learning and within weeks he sold on. I'm guessing it has probably been bought and sold several hundred times since then before ending up as land fill.
OMG Lol - so far 1 - I have the Epiphone by Gibson Telecaster copy, not the Strat. The swoopy hockey stick headstock looked even more out of place on a Tele body, so I swapped the neck for one off an Epiphone LP 2. 2 - I have a black Satellite Les Paul copy - I swapped out the singlecoils for the cheap humbuckers off the Epi LP2. Can confirm the body is made of flat plywood with a plastic cap in an approximate shape of a Les Paul carved top . 3 - Weirdly I have recently restored a Woolworths Top20 for a guitarplaying girl who had been given her Grandad's guitar. 4 - I'm pretty sure that Hondo both used licensed branded DiMarzios, licensed unbranded DiMarzios and several grades of their own near identical copies of diMarzios. Either way it makes cheapo old Hondos worth checking out. 5. Marlins are a lot more solid than people realise. They were just let down by leaving the factory with no time spent finishing the setup. I've transformed many of these old copies, marlins, Encores, etc, with half an hour of fret end dressing and a neck shim, into decently usable guitars.
My first electric was the Satellite LP, just like the picture. I must have been lucky , no dead spots, fret buzz or noticeable fret sprout. Biggest problem was the bridge which snapped strings at an alarming rate. Played it through a Marshall 100w superlead which had to be loud to get the sound. My poor old parents and neighbours put up with a lot looking back. My mate had a Kay strat and that was dire and another had a Hondo which wasn't great either.
I got the Epiphone by Gibson Strat when I was in the market for that style of guitar and used it regularly for about 12 years. The only change I made was the pickups - replaced with Kent Armstrong Rainbow single coils which improved the sound. I didn't realise it was a plywood body until I had the pickguard off at one point. Some good memories of gigs where this particular guitar was used.
Have one too, rock solid tuning, fret ends better than my US Gibson's and fenders. Blocked off the trem and put bare Knuckle pickups in it. It's a great instrument
My first electric guitar in 1970 was a used Hofner, a Strat inspired guitar, I can't remember the model name or number. It was £20 which was a couple of weeks work washing dishes during the summer holiday. They were made in Germany, so the build quality was OK. American guitars cost a fortune then, due to some import restriction or something.
John I suspect it was either a Colorama or a Galaxie? I had a Colorama for the same reason, couldn't get US guitars and I couldn't have afforded one anyway.
@@ricardohollisio More like a Galaxie I think. Just had a look online to try and match it. Not as fancy as a Galaxie 176 with all the knobs and switches. More like a simpler version of that. It had the same inlays on the fretboard.
Höfner is a German company but their Colorama and Galaxie was actually made by Strunal in Czechoslovakia. I've tried a few and I absolutely love their tone! They often have horrible necks and tend to hum a lot since the el3ectronics isn't well enough shielded but those issues can be fixed. I wish I had one.
I have a white Epiphone by Gibson that I still play today. It's been gone through over the years and been slightly redone and upgraded as much as a guitar like that can be done. Honestly I enjoy playing it. The best upgrade to it was replacing all but one of the stock pickups. I was actually looking to see if I could find another but they were so bad that most didn't survive....
My first electric was a Harmony Strat copy (I think it was marketed as the "Stratoliner" at one time) that I got from the now defunct Service Merchandise department store and it wasn't bad at first-but I was young and dumb, didn't know any better and it was cheap and available. But the tone started to deteriorate, and it wound up just taking up space in the closet. I gave it to a cousin later, who fixed it up a bit, but it turned me off to guitars for awhile.
I had a Vox Tele in 1974, I paid a tenner for it second hand (a tenner was a reasonble sum then) it was apalling, eventually I saved the neck and made a kind of strat hybrid with a huge lump of Sycamore and some di marzio pick ups, it had awful feedback, next was a Squire strat in 1981 for £90, still got it but play a PRS 24 8 custom SE, at last a reall good one.
I still own a Watkins Hi/Lo vibrato guitar from the 1960/70s. I purchased it in the 70s from a junk shop for £28 as a fifteen year old. A Fender Strat copy, made in England. I still occasionally play it. Decent action and the 3 strange single coil pickups give a unique sound. It's a keeper.
I made my first guitar from a kit - I managed to get a tune out of it so my Mam bought me a real one. My first electric was a Fenton Weill Triplemaster, bought from Bruce Moore's York Road shop - it was awful, but I loved it. I pxd it for a Egmond 335 copy (and I put the CND sticker on the upper bout like Alvin Lee). I sold that and HP'd a Shaftesbury Les Paul Custom copy from Bells in Newton Aycliffe and used that in my then band Lame Gypsy with Pete Flint and Don Ashton. That guitar was set up by Shildon pitman/luthier Trevor Harnby who gave it the fastest neck I've ever played on Later, I saved up 23 quid and bought a Gibson humbucker to fit to the bridge , then 25 quid for a neck humbucker (inflation). That guitar is hanging on my guitar wall above this computer. As I am older and wiser, I now gig with a 93 US Standard Strat while my 57 Black Beauty is reserved for home use s it is too valuable and too heavy. My first proper amp was a WEM ER40. I always wanted a Marshall stack but could never afford one - nowadays I can afford one, but wouldn't be able to carry it. A Boss Katana 50 does everything I need it to.
At least half of the guitars i have had were bad enough to give away. Especially acoustics. Beautiful Gretsch Jumbo Rancher. Big, heavy and not loud unless plugged in. The gloss finish was so thick on top that it wouldnt resonate. Good wall hanger, but not a player.
fate smiled kindly on me for a 1st guitar. late 70's in school, i went to the music store and was checking out guitars and i really liked the les paul of the couple guitars they had, but the price = no way. i asked the guy if they had something that felt like the LP but was cheaper, like way cheaper. he handed me a used cortez black beauty copy and it played just like the LP. it was $165. i borrowed a bit from the folks and i still have it. i wish i could ID it. best guess: japanese pre-ibanez factory1975-ish? the hardware is(was haha) gold plated. it needs a bit of luthier TLC, but it still plays great, and still play it on occasion.
The Marlin Sidewinder, still have mine. Yes, tuning stability wasn’t the best, but not the most unplayable guitar I have ever picked up. Like many people, I hankered after a Gibson Les Paul. Our local music shop obtained a Gibson Marauder. It took me just a few minutes of playing it to realise, it wasn’t for me. I walked out that shop that day, with a Shergold Masquerader. It was half the price of the Gibson, and probably, even to this day, one of the best guitars I have ever owned and played.
Enjoyed the video, what's your impression of the Benson strat ? Sells for about£140, and I'm persevering with it having done some upgrades, better pickups and pickgaurd. It sounds quite cool but I'm only a 73 Yr old intermediate. Still learning 😅!!
Living in the US, I've never seen a Gordon Smith other than YT vids, but I hear they are a really nice guitar for the money in the UK. That must have been a very nice guitar for a beginner. I probably have some LPs with his guitars on them from the 80s.
My first electric guitar was an audition Avon guitar from Woolworths, telecaster copy, £39.99. I also brought the audition amplifier from Woolworths, 3 watts for £12. Then got the 18 watt ? One which had separate amp and speaker cabinet, with tremolo effect. Then bought the 25 watt combo, and finally bought the 50 watt combo with three inputs. Blew that one up by adding an extra speaker!. All audition amps. All pretty rubbish but didn't know that at the time. My guitars and amps are far better now.
After starting out with a secondhand Avon LP custom (yes it too had single coils hidden under humbucker covers), I moved on to a new Eros SG copy with bigsby style trem that looked the part but was a neck diving boat anchor. By the way If you're talking worst guitars history has to offer, Gibsons insane Reversed Flying V has to rank pretty high up there !
I had a Seville a lot like that Hondo, except it had a fairly solid body made up of a mystery wood that was almost ash with strips of walnut laminated into it, as was popular in the late 70’s and 80’s. It was my second guitar, bought at an Army Navy store. Played and sounded like crap, and I modded and rebuilt that thing over and over again. I put a Kahler and a Seymour Duncan Full Shred pickup in it until I broke the neck, then I filled the Kahler route and modified it to fit a Warmoth 12 string neck, then it was a test bed for parts with various necks. It now has some random Ibanez neck with a 3x3 headstock set up like a Les Paul Junior with a really great sounding Filter Tron-type pickup and olive drab paint. My first electric was a plywood Lotus Strat 😆
I had a satellite Les Paul and a much younger me decided to take the pickup covers off to make the thing look cooler, yes mine also had nasty single coils in it and when I tried to put it back together the neck pickup stopped working which was probably a good thing in the end.
I had when playing a little this Guitar that was a First Act black body white pickguard that was 1/2 between a Strat and a Jaguar, that thing never stayed in tune ever as after one song it needed changing, the Pickups that it had, the wiring on them got hot melted a bit and Fused into one piece, The whammy bar was crap and was hard to use, the output jack you had to slam the jack into the output. Oh, and the Soft Maple, labeled as just plain Maple was starting to warp when I traded the guitar in 2007.
A bit surprising. Satellite, Woolworth and Marlin must have been UK-market store brands. I've never heard of them. The Woolworth looks like an old 60s Kawai or Teisco so I'm surprised they were still on the market in the period you're talking about. By the mid-to-late 1970s here in Australia even your average pawn shop had some decent Ibanez or Yamaha guitars cheap so, even though I started playing in 1966, I've never owned a truly dreadful guitar until about 2009 when I bought a cheap Strat knockoff from a Chinese site just out of curiosity. Even then it's reasonably playable, just needs attention to the wiring or a half-decent set of pickups. (and I'm a very low-budget kind of person.)
Most of the comments here are from folks in the UK and Europe, about guitars that were never imported to the States in any great quantity and most of which wouldnt be recognizable to an American. Worst electric guitar I ever owned, briefly, was a Hagstrom, presumably made in Sweden, that I bought at a pawnshop, and which appeared to be designed to look something like the Supro/Valco Resoglas guitars, with a weird extruded plastic pickguard holding the harsh, bright, noisy pickups; and a fretboard that was literally flat as a board with absolutely no fingerboard radius whatsoever.
When I was 13; I had a Hondo Les Paul and a Kay amplifier which had quite a distortion sound whether the guitar was plugged in or not! I wasn't good enough to know whether the guitar was playable or not, if I'm honest. I remember when I got my hands on a Westone Thunder it was like a revelation and my playing started to develop a bit.
Just got a hondo 2 black beauty copy , the one with gibson style headstock and split diamond it's quite good , certainly better than the satellite les paul I had when I was 18
I have the Hondo II bass guitar. The shape reminds me of a Les Paul, but double-cut, sort of like a 70s Gibson melody maker or Ibanez AX series guitar. It is super heavy and has a sort of sticky gloss finish on the neck, and the bridge had bowed upward and cracked: apparently a common issue with imported gibson style 3 point bass bridges. I replaced it with another identical bridge, and it’s already starting to bow as well. It still plays and sounds great though! Looks old and well-played, which I like.
We all had plywood bodies in the eighties! Still have my first electric. A £170 Columbus series3 superstrat. Crappy locking trem system, two awful single coils and inexplicably a dimarzio bucker in the bridge. Fiddly toggle switches and dead spots on 15th and 18th. Bought in Ealing Guitar Workshop, Bond Street, South Ealing run by a big Polish chap, with my first paycheque from a Pizza restaurant in West Ealing in 1988. Very similar to the Sidewinder🤣
That Woolworth Top 20 look a bit like what Sears sold here in the states in the 1960s. Sears' brand was called Silvertone, and I believe they were made by Harmony. My oldest brother had a Silvertone Jazzmaster clone.
One of my first guitars was a black and white Epiphone Coronet and it weighed as much as a dinner table and as fun to play as one also which is to say it wasn’t fun at all but those early mistakes led me to many better choices when I figured out what I didn’t like. Now I see those Coronets are popping back up as vintage gems and was probably a good investment that somebody else has.Or it got thrown in the trash.
My first electric was one of those Silvertones that came in a case that included a little amp. Not bad; I actually still own a different Silvertone that plays quite well. One of my friends had a Zim-Gar: it was totally useless--wouldn't stay in tune, and the action was awful. My worst was a Guild S-G, which also wouldn't stay in tune more than a couple of strums. I tried changing the machine heads and everything I could think of, but nothing improved.
What, you did not mention the Kent Polaris guitars? My first - when new, it had the worst fret work I have ever seen, and was very neck heavy. But I did not know any better at the time, amazing what youth can tolerate in drive to make music. Now many years later, I am modifying it extensively to make it into something decent, just for grins.
My guitar teacher strongly urged me to buy second-hand and procured me an Ibanez ST-50 in the mid-80s. The body was really scratched and battered (and not in a cool, reliced way), but the neck was pretty good, which is the most important thing.. Still have it. But I remember Satellites. Aria guitars were quite popular at the time.
My first electric was a WEM (Watkins Electronic Music) Rapier 33. Strat lookalike, bright red, white scratch plate and yes, it ate strings. Oh, it came with an “S” bend neck!
Has a beginner bass player back then. I used to have a bad Kay bass which was so bad cos of the action my friend got a Kay guitar which fell to bits 😁... infact. A marlin jazz bass copy I had was the best I played 😮. Then eventually I got a Japan made fender jazz bass special 👍
I grew up in the 70's and cheap guitars were VERY bad back then but somehow we always leaned how to fix them up. As long as the wood was solid and straight, we could work miracles...lol
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
My first full size guitar was a Satellite Les Paul - I reached the point of giving up and sold it to a fellow apprentice at work. He asked me to show him both chords I knew, so I borrowed his housemates guitar to teach the little I knew. It was fun playing guitar with someone else so I got a Marlin Sidewinder that was beautifully set up but certainly lacked tuning stability. That was 37 years ago and we're still playing and gigging in the covers band we started back then - These days with rather better guitars.
Ditto my first electric was a black Satellite Les Paul bought it off a friend who had upgraded to an Ibanez Les Paul. Took an age to realize the neck bolts were shot and could never stay in tune :( Happy days :)
The good old “Marlin Sidewinder”, I still have mine, in mint green, lovely maple neck, and yes, stable tuning isn’t its strong point.
gud 4 u mmmmmmm
@@bunston1000 great guitars!
My first guitar was an Encore "Satan 666" I got as a straight swap for my PlayStation in 1999. I loved that guitar. I practised four hours every day on it for two years
Today's beginners are spoilt rotten!! 🤣🤣🤣
god yeah - my mate's lad has a harley benton 335 that was about 150 quid, I set it up for him and am now going to get one, sounds good and is great to play
@frank Carter I have 15 HB's, including a recent purchase of an HB35, excellent guitar all round.
@@murraymusic2633 I was amazed by the 335 type, took some work, but turned out great, I'll bet one after xmas I think, have you sanded/wire wooled the neck? that was the clincher on the 1 I did up
Yep. Reverb, Harley Benton, and AIO have given today's beginner endless possibilities
Ye, I spent like $80 on an offshore Tele with dual humbuckers and it’s not awful. Action is simultaneously too high and too low, but there’s no sharp edges and it sounds pretty cool.
The main reason I refuse to believe that vintage guitars are better than modern guitars is that I'm old enough to remember what vintage guitars were actually like.
First real guitar in the Early sixties was a red Futurama bought from Bell Musical Instruments.I used Monopole tapewound strings,I think they were about £1.12 and sixpence a set.They were not cheap as you could get a set of Cathederals for about aight and sixpence.I am now 75 and still love playing but have now gone a lot more upmarket,but still remember those early years,so thanks for the memories.
George Harrison played a Futurama in the pre-fame Beatles.
Sometime around 1967-68 winter, l shoveled a lot of snow for money, l bought a Teisco delrey electric 6-string during an after christmas closeout sale from a mattinglys dime store for $12.95 + tax. Single pickup, cardboard case, I'd actually been playing the guitar since I was about 5, going thru various toy type guitars before I got this one, I even had a tiger guitar they called it, and they were pretty popular back then, I had an old beat up acoustic guitar that was fairly good to play around the house Etc, but I started to play in bands with various people and I needed an electric guitar I got a 50 watt custom amplifier with the tuck and roll blue sparkle that one of my grandparents bought for me, that Teisco guitar and that custom amp is what I learned to play on when l was in my early teens at schools, partys dances etc, we played about every thing from house of the rising sun, wipe out, to crimson & clover, etc later I played semi-professionally for about 20-30 years and I went through numerous guitars and amps, now I'm on the back side of 70 and I have a customized Fender Stratocaster and a Mesa Boogie Mark ll combo amp & tons of misc.stuff lve had since the early 80s collecting dust, an old Fender acoustic guitar that I pluck around on, finally I made a trade of a lot of instruments and amps and stuff that I accumulated on a sound system for the band I was in, that teisco played better than some of the quality guitars like Gibson's and fenders that I owned, and I would imagine its still out there playing somewhere, if you get a good guitar with a good straight neck that fits you well that's all you need, as I always thought that it's not so much the guitar the instrument, but it's the person playing it, now with all the new fangled stuff, digital electronics and everything nowdays thats going on with music, I sort of fell out of touch with playing music, I'd rather listen to whatever l want, guitar playing was my hobbie, lots of fun & memories & most of all the "Mojo"💎
Your "Electric Guitar" was very common amongst early teenage guys in the 60's who couldn't afford anything else. These were sold in big box stores like Sears, Wards and what would become Kmart. There were huge musical depts with drums, record players, organs, harmonicas and guitars. Millions of records and posters, mostly like the Meet the Beatles pic and the latest hot 45's blaring. Two aisles over, you could buy Beatle Boots and have metal taps added to the heels. Three aisles over, there were motorcycles and auto tires. When you were 12 or 13, this was heaven.
My first bass was a Hofner Beatle bass copy. I don’t remember the builder. I gave to my brother and bought a Univox violin fretless bass. It was a Gibson knock off. It was a surprisingly decent instrument. I drooled for years over the Fender Precision basses and finally had enough to buy one. The year was 1976. A friend and I headed from Sacramento to San Francisco to the holy grail of music stores. It was Don Wehr’s Music City. The racks were lined with every imaginable color and style of Fender basses. I found my bass and proceeded to check out only to find out that I was about $40.00 short due to the cost of the case. The friend who I was with had relatives who live in nearby Mountain View. He made a call and secured the $40.00 that I needed. I finally walked out with a black/maple 1975 Fender Precision bass with the Fender case. The grand total ended up being about $325.00. I still have it.
My first in the late 70s was a Japanese-stamped Grant Flying V with twin humbuckers and the dots upto the twelfth fret in the wrong spaces.....I loved it and would love another. Knowing what I know now that I am addicted to modding cheaper guitars, the V was infact a very well made piece of kit and would stand up to any modern Epi equivalent, at least with regards to the woodwork. What amazes me now is the prices some of these junkers you mention are fetching on Ebay, especially the Top 20 and the Sidewinder, the later I saw getting bids over £200 not so long ago! I do agree, the Yamaha Pacifica set a new standard for a school guitar, as did Yamaha, Tokai and Ibanez's double cuts and LPs, which quite rightly now fetch decent money, with many standing upto time better than the Gibsons and Epis.
My first guitar was also a Woolworth's (Teisco?) Top Twenty in 1975 with accompanying 'Audition' 5 or 10W amp which had a tremelo effect on it. Very poor guitar, especially in comparison to today's beginner guitars. As an introduction to electric guitars, it's a wonder I kept with it. Still see them on eBay, going for about £200 - Caveat Emptor indeed.
My first electric was a second hand Hofner Galaxy strat copy which was a really good guitar at the time. After destroying the speaker in the family radio I had nothing left to play ity through. I took it into the local music shop and swapped it for a crappy jumbo acoustic - they must have see me coming. The neck on that became a banana in a few week. You learn by your mistakes 🙂
the same with me i bought a second hand Hofner Galaxy but with me being Left Handed i strugled to play the top strings so i took the neck off and made my own SG shaped body but fited a Demazio super distortion humbucker in it and i still have it and the original body but with it being made of plywood and put in the shed for years it has split
Despite family economic conditions in the early 60's, I got lucky. My first electric was a Greco double-cutaway hollow body, similar to an ES330/335. It wasn't a Les Paul, so I wasn't able to appreciate it to the degree I should have. I just couldn't bond with it. But, looking back, it was a notch, maybe two above the catalogue guitars of the day - guitars that I stupidly pined after because _they weren't hollow bodies._ Hey, I was only 8 or 9, so there's that. Times change, people change, and, most importantly, perspectives change. What a long, strange trip it's been (Garcia reference). Enjoyed sharing your past with you, John. I've been a subscriber. That ain't gonna change.
I worked at Guitar Center for about 8 months and one of the things I told parents looking to get a child interested in an instrument was to buy the best instrument they could afford. I didn't say this to earn a commission or to make GC money but it was a simple yet true statement. An experienced player could, if necessary play on a Hondo guitar and somehow make it work. A brand new player will completely have their spirits crushed by all the difficulties that come with a cheap guitar. Quality instruments are so much easier to play, enjoyable to play, and sound infinitely better than entry level instruments.
I flat out told parents to just save their money and buy something else rather than spend it on a cheap instrument.
I started playing in 72, when I was 11.
At that time the Jap copies were just starting to come in like a big "flood", and filled the guitar shops.
I used to jump on the train as an 11 year old, with my mate, and we'd ride the seven stops up to Charing Cross, and then walk up to Denmark Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, which had Rose-Morris and a few other guitar shops back then.
All of them were filled with...
Columbus
Avon
Shaftsbury
CMI
Antoria
Aria
Saxon
Antoria
Arbiter
Ibanez
...and on and on.
Most were not great, and had plywood bodies, fake humbucking pick-ups, and bolt on necks.
A FEW stood out above the throng as better quality...
Ibanez
Aria
Kimbara
Antoria
Westbury
Westone
and...Kawai.
Thing is...people nowdays, who don't know any better, lump all Jap guitars from that era together, as somehow being "magical".
They really WERE'NT.
Most were crap.
But...they got you started.
I skipped the whole "copy" thing, and started in 72 on a Futurama (Musima) III, which I bought off a kid at school for the grand sum of...A FIVER!
I played that for 5 years in a band, and for my 16th birthday, my dad bought me a beautiful ash blonde U.S Fender Tele.
😊
We used to do exactly the same and go to the shops in Shaftesbury Avenue, mainly just to look. There was also the Fender Soundhouse on the corner of Euston road that had loads of Hayman parts for sale when the factory closed in 1973.
We had a Marlin Sidewinder bass in our music room in school. It was ok but it broke and the only bass that our head of music could get was an even worse Kay shortscale from the late 60s. I see the prices of these on eBay and wonder why people think they're worth more than £50 at most
Hi again from Spain. I always enjoy your video's. In 1967 my late father bought me a Hofner Ambassador, from memory it cost about £50, but that was two weeks wages for him. This was an exceptional copy of a 335, similar to the Hofner Verithin but a little cheaper. Oh how I wish I had kept that guitar, they were only made for a couple of years and are now very rare, but a great guitar. How things have changed, as you are aware you can buy a decent guitar today for a days wages. Maybe your next video is the 5 best guitars you have bought in the past, kind regards,John(72 years young)
I bought my son a Sakai Telecaster type copy in a sickly yellow sunburst with open gear tuners with plastic buttons ,a neck made of something ,zero fret , a fingerboard made of something with two ovel shaped p 90 type pickups ,a Telecaster style pickguard , slider pickup switches and a top loader style Gibsonish gadget metal tremolo unit with a roller style bridge ,the same one you could buy in the Bells catalogue in 1975 [ my son was 17 at the time] and it cost £25 second hand !.
LOL! Great video! I can't count how many crap guitars I have bought over the years. My first electric was a 1964 Silverstone. I found it in a little music store in '77. I paid 50 dollars. I went from that to a Gibson SG. I smashed it Silverstone Pete Townshend style in '80, and found out about a week later it was worth about 450 dollars to collectors. I've been a stratocaster fanatic since '81, and have owned several. Oddly my all time favorite electric has been my '85 MIJ squire stratocaster. I bought it in '93 and it's been my favorite sense that time. I have other stratocasters but none compare to "Baby". I won't talk about my mandolins. I love your channel!
My first electric was a s/hand Ibanez ST55 which I still have. Worked all summer to get it for £129 in 1983. Compared to the five models you have shown this Ibanez is a dream to play and I feel quite lucky to have got it after first starting to play on a Harmony acoustic for a year or so.
Good Day John, I'm 72 years old and I have to admit that mu journey has been a lot like yours. I've bought and played the same kind of guitars my friend. I admit you are right my best were bought once I had a job to pay for my own but God bless my Dad he got me two that were nice enough i kept them until they just wore out to far to fix them anymore. I have to admit that I probably learned to properly setup and adjust guitars before I could play one properly. I learned by hanging around with a guitar repair tech at a local mom and pop shop. You really had me rolling on the floor laughing with this one sir. Have a great day, and God Bless you and the Misses Sir.
Cheers mate 😁
My first guitar was a red Hondo Strat copy. My second was a Diaz copy of a 335. My Squier felt like a custom shop compared to those two.
I had a Hohner Strat copy in bright pink with a maple neck. I found out later it had a plywood body. It wasn’t great, but it was a significant step up from the Audition Acoustic (bought from Woolworths) I’d been playing which had a neck break repair (neck pushed back together with two screws and superglue to hold it). Standing in front of the mirror with my cheap Strat at 14 years old I felt pretty amazing I can tell you. Owning cheap guitars is a right of passage. It isn’t a bad thing and helps you appreciate the good ones when you can afford to buy them.
I have an Hohoner Tele copy, it's called a Madcat. Prince played one but mines a little older than his. Just because they didn't cost much at the time doesn't mean they cannot be good Guitars, it's spectacular. Ok it's been modified but they did need it.
If a guitar "eats strings", could that be because there's a sharp edge on the tuning machines that cuts into it? I had a Japanese copy of a Guild jumbo back in the 90s and that had that exact problem, the strings would snap when I tightened or loosened them (the latter really perplexed me) and I took it to the shop I got it from and they found the sharp edge and filed it down and hey presto, no more strings snapping.
My first electric guitar was a 1967(?) Strat copy. I don't remember seeing a brand name on the guitar. The action was so high that even my guitar instructor couldn't play it so he filed down the slots. The string intonation was flat by the time the third fret was reached. It had two Zen-on pickups, each one had a sliding off-on switch on the upper horn and a volume control in the usual place on the body. There was also a tone control which did virtually nothing. The plastic bridge looked like the Rocky mountains with six peaks causing each string to have a different height. This made strumming or plucking with a pick almost impossible. All these features for around $50 CDN at the time.
My first Guitar was a second-hand Aria Pro II Les Paul Custom copy. 3 PU's, Burgandy with gold hardware, hard case that cost £200 that felt like a King's Ransom way back in 1982. In 1985 I traded it up (guitar + £150) for a 1974 Gibson Standard SG with an ebony fretboard which they only produced that year (I had no idea at the time). I still have it.
My first guitar was an aria pro 2LF that was very nice i thought at the time. my shittiest guitar is my Kramer focus. I only have cheaper guitars, epiphones mostly and i like them.
Hey John, not a bad selection of planks. I would just like to tell you about my first electric that I think would make this lot look pretty good. It was a Dallas, fortunately the model name escapes me but it epitomised everything bad about an axe. Very chunky neck, horrendous action, no trem system but constantly drifted out of tune, scratchy tone and volume controls and a strap button that pulled out of the guitar whilst on stage ( I think it was during 'You really got me' by The Kinks ). Shortly after that embarrassment I swapped it for a Burns Vibra Artist, it was like going from Vauxhall Viva to a Triumph Stag. Great video my friend.
In 60,s I used to help a local teen band , The lead gtr was a Hofner verithin,the rhythm gtr was a real 65 fender strat. We used to mock the strat player . What did we know?
I learnt to play on a Sidewinder, upside down, I'm a Southpaw. My late father has a spectacular collection, he was a Customs and Excise officer at Liverpool docks, anyway he was buying Guitars in the late 50's until the early 90's and wasn't about to shell out until he knew i would see it through, So i got a Marlin to play upside down. Already set against it x 2 i proceeded to learn with lessons from my dad. I had the straight Strat copy, just a regular Trem, i still have it and the rest of his collection all heirlooms for my kids as i have my own collection of lefties. Couldn't agree more with your list, it looks like you had it far worse than me, lol. Thanks John.
My first electric guitar was purchased from Woolies for my 15th birthday in 1971. It was vaguely Straty in sunburst with a faux tortoise shell pick guard. The Woolworth's Top 20 that you show doesn't ring any bells with me so maybe it was a different model. For a start, I'm pretty sure that it didn't have a trem but maybe my memory isn't accurate. I remember that I took it apart for some unknown reason some months later but I don't recall putting it back together or what I did with it after that, so maybe I binned it. In any case, the best part of that purchase was the 3 watt solid state practice amp that it came with. It was a real fuzz box and was loud enough to annoy all the neighbours for years afterwards.
I do remember most of these and it brought up a couple more.
I remember Sears also had a model. Either unfortunately or fortunately I don’t remember the model.
About 50 years ago I picked up a $10.00 American which I believe to be one of them.
I put in about $50.00 in parts and had it refinished. It has a nice surf sound and is actually very playable.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. ❤️
I still have my Marlin Sidewinder in the back of the wardrobe somewhere and that is where it’s definitely staying.I actually saw a Jimi Hendrix tribute and the guitar he brought on at the end to set light too was a Marlin Sidewinder!
Rare to find nowadays - used to see those in Guitarist mag c. 1984 for sale!
I recently bought back my old Sidewinder (£30) - the plan is to work in some better hardware, a fun project to learn to work on guitars and for nostalgia. Dismantling it the pressure die cast block in the trem crumbled - literally - so I'm reworking it with a used Floyd Rose. Doesn't matter if it turns out to still be crap as I have several better guitars these days.
I looked at this video just to see if you had a Marlin Sidewinder. Around 1987 I bought a catalogue Marlin Sidewinder to replace my virtually fretless Antoria Les Paul with (gold hardware no less) The Antoria was bought S/H for £40 from a music shop in Leeds. The Marlin was I believe £189 and had a Kahler trem on it (a feature that impressed all my guitar friends at the time no end). I opened the box of the Marlin and was blown away by the glossy paint job. I just stared at it for a few seconds in awe. As I lifted it from the box I was surprised at how light the thing was and my heart sank a little. I then noticed the laminations of the plywood body down the pickup routings and my heart sank further. I plugged the thing in, tuned it and strummed a few chords. In short it sounded awful, earth buzzing everywhere and NOOOOO sustain whatsoever. It was duly sent back and the Antoria stuck with me for a couple of years after that. A valuable lesson was learnt from the Marlin. A nice paint job does not make a good guitar.
Those Epiphone Strat copies were made in the same factory in Korea as Fender was making nearly identical Squiers. There were higher tier Squiers from the same factory which were actually quite good.
The Squier showed me I have fingers made for playing the bass.
I had a Watkins Rapier 33 that i bought from a guy who lived in the flat above mine. I was lucky enough to know someone with the skill and experience to set it up and make it playable.
I have a 1964 Watkins Rapier bass that's really quite good. Got it set up by a local guitar specialist (Jack's Guitars, Hebden Bridge. Top bloke !) and while the action isn't as good as (say) a decent Fender it plays well and sounds great through a good system. Wouldn't part with it for anything !
My first “ electric “ guitar was a Sears and Roebuck catalog “Audition” strat copy in tobacco sunburst. Two single coil pu’s I paid $49.00 US and also a really good tube amp “Audition” also ,stack 60 watt for $60 US. The guitar was a piece of shitte the action was about 8mm off the fret board, the neck was really wide and uncomfortable to press the strings down the tuning pegs were stiff as. It squealed as soon as you turned it up to 6, heaps of acoustic hum from the shitty pu’s. I persevered for 3 years with the sharp fret ends and shitty action until I bought a Kramer. This was 1970 and the kids of today have got it easy and a multitude of choices. I had to learn by listening to records and repeating songs over and over. NFI about tunings or what keys the songs were written in just had to learn by ear.
I remember my first high school band back in the 60's. We didnt have money and terrible equipment. The bass players cheap Beatle bass copy was a better vocal mic than the one we had. The bass player would hunch over and sing into the f hole!
My first electric was a Vox Stroller in 1963. Plywood body and a totally flat plywood fretboard. The bridge was a movable wooden affair with no facility for intonation adjustment. It had what seemed to have been copper wound strings that left your fingertips green. Instead of a standard jack, it had a TV style co-ax input. It was the most appalling guitar ever and I sold it after six months to buy a second-hand Höfner Club 40.
I have a cherry red Marlin Sidewinder. With the pickups replaced it sounds pretty good to me. I have no issues with keeping in tune on mine. It's actually my favourite superstrat in my collection.
My then best mate and I were both starting out on guitar and he got a marlin sidewinder. I was learning on a classical before getting a start a year later. Looking back i don't know how anyone in the 80s actually stuck at it for long enough to become half decent. Today, you can spend the same amount of cash you'd've wasted on a marlin and get a playable, gigable guitar that you could keep as a spare for years. Youngsters today don't know they're born etc. etc.
I bought a Woolworths teisco guitar in 1972 and it cost me £12. Sadly I sold it a few years later but Ive just replaced it with a purchase from EBay. £???
I used to sell these guitars back in the day along with audition amps. My first guitar was a black columbus les paul copy which was truly dreadful.
I bought a columbus strat from a charity shop 6 years ago for 8 quid, it's been pretty much rebuilt, new tuners, completely rewired and is a perfectly OK strat now
Same here with that godawful guitar lol - cue "kids today don't know they're born" moan, but honestly, they really have amazing guitars and so many to choose from in the budget starter range. One has to thank CNC manufacturing and the factory workers of the far east for making them affordable. Pity there's not much of a music industry left for kids to make a living in but hey ho, at least they won't be learning on egg slicers 😂😂
expensive guitars are now for idiots and snobs in my view, squiers are great, harley bentons can be, gibsons generally aren't
Re: The Epiphone Strat copy with the hockey stick, or batwing headstock, were around a lot longer. Japanese Epiphones of that era were high quality instruments. Alder isn’t “plywood”, and I’m restringing & going over a 1983 Batwing Strat. SSH. guitarist wants the whammy non-op, so I’ve blocked it off, Ernie 9’s, a piece of cake to set up. Took me 45 minutes to go over everything. BTW: These”plywood guitars” go for $350-up (U.S.D.).... Your country must’ve been shipped all crap that escaped the wood chipper 😆😆. P.S. Your assessments of the remaining guitars... (that I had played) you’re spot on!
I bought my first guitar from a catalogue in 1979 and blew the output transistors of my music centre by putting the guitar through it great video, brought back some memories, !!
My first guitar was a Series A hair band style guitar with a really crappy floyd rose style bridge, terrible, wouldnt stay in tune for even a minute but I loved it anyway.
Aw man. The first guitar I ever bought was a 57 reissue USA strat in 1988. Cost over 400quid if not 500. Saved up my apprenticeship money. Windows in central arcade newcastle. Up until then for 2 year I had messed about with cheapies borrowed from mates. Only thing is I didnt understand about strats ,it hardly got played, more of an acoustic player and during a time of unemployment in 93 I sold it. For about 180 IIRC. Now Im a better player and I miss that guitar every day. See what they go for now brings a tear to my eye.
I should think it cost you more than £500 because I was working in a guitar shop in 1988 and I wanted a USA vintage reissue Strat. I went up to Soho Soundhouse in London in October '88 to try one out, and I'm pretty sure they were nearly £600, although all the shops were trying to discount them more than their competitors. Anyway, I mentioned it to my boss so he rang up Arbiter (Fender's UK distributors at the time) to see if they'd sell us one. They were happy to, but were waiting for the next batch to arrive. It finally arrived at our shop in Jan '89! I remember the delivery van turning up! It cost me £460 TRADE price! That's the most I've ever spent on a guitar. I've still got it. Mine's a black '62. I always thought they'd be quite collectable but they only seem to go for just over £1000, which is a bit disappointing.
The Epiphone "strat" was my first electric guitar. Bought it with my own money as a 15 year old kid for $150 iirc. And I had to put it on layaway to do it! lol
I was a beginner of course, but I don't recall it being as bad as your experience showed. Mine was a three single coil configuration with a strat trem. A friend of mine who was very good at that point had one with a hum/single/single and a locking trem. He played it for a long time and could rip it up on that cheap thing.
I have a friend who has had one of these since the late 80s and he still gigs with it . i've played it and its excellent !
I'm with you on the Epi strat. I recorded with one in '09. It played well but tone was thin, needed different pickups.
I saw a video a while back, of someone restoring a sidewinder, in that silver colour too if I recall correctly. There were even more issues than were initially apparent by the sounds of it, as this video seemed to suggest the bridge assemblies corroded and eventually would disintegrate altogether
They don't corrode, the material ages and then becomes very brittle and develop micro cracking - then they crumble - I have one in front of me right now in pieces. The front plate you see from the outside in fine - its the block behind that the strings are held by, holds the fine tuner sliders, and attaches the springs to the back of the trem.
@@granthostheflatulent excellent, what are you going to do with it, you going for some kind of attempted restore?
@@domformula1 It was my first gigging guitar and I just bought it back after selling it to a friend 30 years ago. It's been in a gig bag in a shed for the last 5 to 10 years apparently and it's in surprisingly good shape with virtually no fret wear. The plan is to put a real Floyd Rose on it for the look and the fine tuners (not easy as the post spacing is different) then block it to hard tail and set it up properly and see how it plays - if it feels good then upgrade everything and see how far I can take it. I have a mix of good gigging guitars and sentimental ones - I'd love to make it actually stable and good enough to gig - sold it originally because of the poor tuning stability. Maybe I should make a video of the project.
@@granthostheflatulent I’d watch it if you did! All the best 👍🏻
I had a Satellite Les Paul copy that I bought off a mate for £27.50p. Dreadful guitar. I didn't have it for long. I saved up every penny I had working as a gardner on a military firing range (yes, really), and from getting knifed in an unprovoked attack for which I received the princely sum of £30 in compensation from the attacker, and bought myself a 1980 Ibanez Artist. I still have it today. On a side note, one of the worst guitars I ever played was a 50's or 60's thing that a customer bought in to my studio. It may have been a Hofner, but I'm not sure. Hollow body, but no 'f' holes. It was truly dreadful, but it was insured for half a million pounds due to the fact that it was played on the original recording of You Really Got Me by The Kinks. I don't know how they managed to play anything on it, let alone one of the most iconic songs in history
I kind of miss my fake Les Paul from back then. Sure the G string would never stay in tune but knowing what I know now I could've fixed that issue. The individual I purchased it from even glued the Gibson headstock veneer onto it so definitely looked the part minus the cheap hardware.
My first guitar in the mid 80's was a Westone Spectrum ST. It was black with a coil tap on the tone knob. But a trem system that just wouldn't stay in tune. Gave up on it in the end and lost the trem. Not a great guitar, but certainly a solid work horse beginners model. And affordable to
Westones were well solid - proper wood and brass nuts - but like half the stories on here - we were beginners let down by poor factory setups or the lack of easily available DIY knowledge or local repairmen.
How many more Claptons might we have had if only they spent another 10 minutes rounding off the sharp fret ends in the factories?
One of my friends dads has a Woolworth Top 20. The main thing I remember was the neck was extremely bowed. So evidently the neck either didn't have a truss rod or the truss rod was really weak.
My first was a Rosetti Solid 7, which cost 29 guineas in the '60s. It was pretty awful but it looked good. I even went as far as to have Hamilton's in Middlesbrough install a Bigsby trem on it (Ah, the ignorance of youth). My mother gave it away shortly after I emigrated to Canada, sadly.
My first electric was a Fender Jag-Stang, because i was rather obsessed with Nirvana at the time, it wasn't an awful sounding guitar but the bridge/vib set-up is nothing short of garbage, impossible to keep in tune even after locking the vibe and it lacked sustain. Thankfully i sold it for more than what it cost me, ended up having a custom mustang with a tom/stopbar to satisfy my Nirvana itch. These days I mostly just play a Tele though as for me, it is the best choice as my music tastes have changed drastically in the 20 years since i purchased that first electric. Jag-Stang was really the only "crap" guitar that i regret buying and have zero regrets for selling.
Just spotted that the pickups look like the same design used on early 70s Wilson/Watkins Rapiers. I own a Rapier 44 and they look the same?
My first electric guitar (purchased in 1974) was a National Telecaster copy, which embodied all of the worst characteristics of the five you mention. It was the only guitar I’ve ever owned that only got worse with every effort to try to improve its sound or playability. Ironically, I replaced it in 1977 with a Gibson SG, still the only USA-made guitar I’ve ever owned. Since then, it’s been all Squiers, Epiphones, and MIM Fenders for me.
My Uncle had one of those Sattelite Les Pauls when I was about 15. It didn't seem to be all that bad.
Time is a great healer, mind.
I started playing guitar in 95 and at one time had a Marlin Sidewinder that I thought was completely amazing, I then had a Top Twenty which we found in my friend's loft, and I also owned a Hondo II Les Paul type guitar. They were all utter crap, but none of them was worse than my very first guitar - a 'Rockster' Strat with Judge Dredd on the front of it. My first brand new guitar was an Encore Strat, and that was crap as well. I don't think I had an actual good guitar until I bought an Antoria 335 from a friend. I wish I'd kept that one, it wasn't expensive but it was a really nice guitar.
From LeoM. Good walk down the memories Mr. Robson. I am a bit older, but I have similar memories from the late 60's. I still have my Taiwan produced Harmony twin pickup solid body. It was awful to play and sounded even worse. Pretty much all affordable guitars were that way. You could have them worked on and get them a little better, not much, and they still sounded the same. You had to pay a dear price for a Fender, Gibson or Gretsch to get anything playable. I was able to purchase an SG in 1971 and shortly after purchased a new Stratocaster, putting an end to the poor guitar frustration. Today, even most of the entry level guitars can be made playable with a 1/2 hour on the work bench. Current prices are like they are giving them away. My first junky Harmony cost 80 hours of labor at minimum wage. You can now buy a playable Squier Bullet Stratocaster for 15 hours working at entry level wages.
My first guitar was some Vester (sp?). It kind of put me off guitar for a few years. When I was once again inspired to pursue guitar I bought a G&L Legacy Special - quite a difference.
An ex work colleague bought a 2nd hand Chinese made Squire Strat (probably originally part of a starter kit) without asking me for advice first. It had a wiring fault on the switch and I had to chisel the bottom of the neck pocket to get the action low enough.
what's worrying is the over inflated prices being charged on ebay for these old 70's plywood guitars, often described as 'lawsuit era' as if they were all as good as the quite average but overhyped Ibanez copies... nostalgia ain't what it used to be
We had a non locking trem Marlin, was good. I tried to rub of the fish but ended up with a scallup fret.
Was in Cranes music shop Cardiff many many years ago and around the top highest hooks were hundreds of Marlins around the room, i beĺieve they were stored in that area of s. Wales.
I too had a Hondo Les Paul copy, it was dreadful. I got it from a Bells Musical Instruments catalogue and was about £200 at the time. If only guitars were as good back then as they are today, I'd be a much better player by now!
my first electric was a cheap Behringer strat copy. couldn't have been great but i cant remember.. it didnt take long for me to get an Epiphone g400 and i sold the Behringer.
my first acoustic was a cheap Gomez which only ever stayed in tune whenever it felt like. the tuners had loads of play in it and there were several more problems with it. That one got blown up with a firecracker so it would never cause anyone any more frustration
back in the 70s, my neighbor bought a cheap, entry level, single pickup fender for 50 bucks. it was really light and felt downright cheap, cheap, cheap. well, i didn;t know much about guitars other than to know one yearned for a les paul or flying V or even SG, so refined compared this POS i had in my hand. i played a little so i was going to show my friend how he just threw out 50 bucks he could have been saving up for that SG. i picked it up and started showing, realizing early on that this was just a fantastic guitar. i tried to buy it from him for some reasonable figure above 50 dollars, but now that i showed him how great it was, he had no inclination to part with it.
i never could get that money together for the les paul, but this tiny music store i'd pass by all the time told me they had a guitar for sale that would bury any les paul and it could be had for just about the amount of money i had saved up. he swore to me it was the greatest guitar he had ever seen, so i was a few hours later the proud owner of a brand new westbury custom. it was a great guitar, just stunning.
when i moved out to california with my fiance, i left a lot of my stuff at home, fully intending to pick it up sometime later. well, when that sometime later came, i opened my closet and no guitar. "what happened to my guitar, mom?" oh, well, it was just gathering dust and her friend's son seemed to like it so she gave it him along with 20,000 of my baseball cards.
i guess you now know the story of my life
Very Cool. Entertaining, Interesting and Informative. Thankyou My first Guitar was an early 1980's "Fame" Series 760 Strat Style by Hondo. Have recently found it in storage and put strings on it for the first time in 25 years. I have fallen in love with the neck and have really enjoyed playing it again. Cheers
Talking of dogs, i remember buying a used Hondo Les Paul and the least said about it the better, I then talked my mate into buying a Squier Start to learn on and after a couple of months he gave up and lets just say I became the proud owner of a fiesta red strat which I kept for many years and which was absolutely playable.
Had the dreaded Columbus Les Paul. As you tuned it up, the neck would bend slightly, leaving you with that 1/4" action at the 12th fret. Had to detune it by a whole note just to play it beyond open chords. Didn't matter what you played on it, it always sounded like a 4 engined prop plane taking off. Sold it to a friend who was just learning and within weeks he sold on. I'm guessing it has probably been bought and sold several hundred times since then before ending up as land fill.
OMG Lol - so far
1 - I have the Epiphone by Gibson Telecaster copy, not the Strat.
The swoopy hockey stick headstock looked even more out of place on a Tele body, so I swapped the neck for one off an Epiphone LP 2.
2 - I have a black Satellite Les Paul copy - I swapped out the singlecoils for the cheap humbuckers off the Epi LP2.
Can confirm the body is made of flat plywood with a plastic cap in an approximate shape of a Les Paul carved top .
3 - Weirdly I have recently restored a Woolworths Top20 for a guitarplaying girl who had been given her Grandad's guitar.
4 - I'm pretty sure that Hondo both used licensed branded DiMarzios, licensed unbranded DiMarzios and several grades of their own near identical copies of diMarzios.
Either way it makes cheapo old Hondos worth checking out.
5. Marlins are a lot more solid than people realise. They were just let down by leaving the factory with no time spent finishing the setup.
I've transformed many of these old copies, marlins, Encores, etc, with half an hour of fret end dressing and a neck shim, into decently usable guitars.
My first electric was the Satellite LP, just like the picture. I must have been lucky , no dead spots, fret buzz or noticeable fret sprout. Biggest problem was the bridge which snapped strings at an alarming rate. Played it through a Marshall 100w superlead which had to be loud to get the sound.
My poor old parents and neighbours put up with a lot looking back.
My mate had a Kay strat and that was dire and another had a Hondo which wasn't great either.
I got the Epiphone by Gibson Strat when I was in the market for that style of guitar and used it regularly for about 12 years. The only change I made was the pickups - replaced with Kent Armstrong Rainbow single coils which improved the sound. I didn't realise it was a plywood body until I had the pickguard off at one point. Some good memories of gigs where this particular guitar was used.
I have several plywood guitars ranging from GTX to Gibson. Nothing wrong with them.
I have a white one. I'd replaced the pickups as well and just recently replaced the tremolo on it as well. It's one of my main guitars to this day.
Have one too, rock solid tuning, fret ends better than my US Gibson's and fenders. Blocked off the trem and put bare Knuckle pickups in it. It's a great instrument
My first electric guitar in 1970 was a used Hofner, a Strat inspired guitar, I can't remember the model name or number. It was £20 which was a couple of weeks work washing dishes during the summer holiday. They were made in Germany, so the build quality was OK. American guitars cost a fortune then, due to some import restriction or something.
John I suspect it was either a Colorama or a Galaxie? I had a Colorama for the same reason, couldn't get US guitars and I couldn't have afforded one anyway.
@@ricardohollisio More like a Galaxie I think. Just had a look online to try and match it. Not as fancy as a Galaxie 176 with all the knobs and switches. More like a simpler version of that. It had the same inlays on the fretboard.
Höfner is a German company but their Colorama and Galaxie was actually made by Strunal in Czechoslovakia. I've tried a few and I absolutely love their tone! They often have horrible necks and tend to hum a lot since the el3ectronics isn't well enough shielded but those issues can be fixed. I wish I had one.
@@tessjuel That's interesting, I didn't know that.
I have a white Epiphone by Gibson that I still play today. It's been gone through over the years and been slightly redone and upgraded as much as a guitar like that can be done. Honestly I enjoy playing it. The best upgrade to it was replacing all but one of the stock pickups. I was actually looking to see if I could find another but they were so bad that most didn't survive....
My first electric was a Harmony Strat copy (I think it was marketed as the "Stratoliner" at one time) that I got from the now defunct Service Merchandise department store and it wasn't bad at first-but I was young and dumb, didn't know any better and it was cheap and available. But the tone started to deteriorate, and it wound up just taking up space in the closet. I gave it to a cousin later, who fixed it up a bit, but it turned me off to guitars for awhile.
I had a Vox Tele in 1974, I paid a tenner for it second hand (a tenner was a reasonble sum then) it was apalling, eventually I saved the neck and made a kind of strat hybrid with a huge lump of Sycamore and some di marzio pick ups, it had awful feedback, next was a Squire strat in 1981 for £90, still got it but play a PRS 24 8 custom SE, at last a reall good one.
I still own a Watkins Hi/Lo vibrato guitar from the 1960/70s. I purchased it in the 70s from a junk shop for £28 as a fifteen year old. A Fender Strat copy, made in England. I still occasionally play it. Decent action and the 3 strange single coil pickups give a unique sound. It's a keeper.
It sounds like you have a Watkins Rapier 33.
I recently restored the 44 version for someone - it has 4 of those pickups!
Wanna sell it Keith? Lol.
@@fongy200 John Mayer wanted to buy it, but I told him it was not for sale.
I made my first guitar from a kit - I managed to get a tune out of it so my Mam bought me a real one. My first electric was a Fenton Weill Triplemaster, bought from Bruce Moore's York Road shop - it was awful, but I loved it. I pxd it for a Egmond 335 copy (and I put the CND sticker on the upper bout like Alvin Lee). I sold that and HP'd a Shaftesbury Les Paul Custom copy from Bells in Newton Aycliffe and used that in my then band Lame Gypsy with Pete Flint and Don Ashton. That guitar was set up by Shildon pitman/luthier Trevor Harnby who gave it the fastest neck I've ever played on Later, I saved up 23 quid and bought a Gibson humbucker to fit to the bridge , then 25 quid for a neck humbucker (inflation). That guitar is hanging on my guitar wall above this computer. As I am older and wiser, I now gig with a 93 US Standard Strat while my 57 Black Beauty is reserved for home use s it is too valuable and too heavy. My first proper amp was a WEM ER40. I always wanted a Marshall stack but could never afford one - nowadays I can afford one, but wouldn't be able to carry it. A Boss Katana 50 does everything I need it to.
My first guitar.....Green shield stamps Hohner with a plastic covered over plywood body.... Yuk, but we all have to start somewhere.
At least half of the guitars i have had were bad enough to give away. Especially acoustics. Beautiful Gretsch Jumbo Rancher. Big, heavy and not loud unless plugged in. The gloss finish was so thick on top that it wouldnt resonate. Good wall hanger, but not a player.
fate smiled kindly on me for a 1st guitar. late 70's in school, i went to the music store and was checking out guitars and i really liked the les paul of the couple guitars they had, but the price = no way. i asked the guy if they had something that felt like the LP but was cheaper, like way cheaper. he handed me a used cortez black beauty copy and it played just like the LP. it was $165. i borrowed a bit from the folks and i still have it. i wish i could ID it. best guess: japanese pre-ibanez factory1975-ish? the hardware is(was haha) gold plated. it needs a bit of luthier TLC, but it still plays great, and still play it on occasion.
The Marlin Sidewinder, still have mine. Yes, tuning stability wasn’t the best, but not the most unplayable guitar I have ever picked up. Like many people, I hankered after a Gibson Les Paul. Our local music shop obtained a Gibson Marauder. It took me just a few minutes of playing it to realise, it wasn’t for me. I walked out that shop that day, with a Shergold Masquerader. It was half the price of the Gibson, and probably, even to this day, one of the best guitars I have ever owned and played.
Enjoyed the video, what's your impression of the Benson strat ? Sells for about£140, and I'm persevering with it having done some upgrades, better pickups and pickgaurd. It sounds quite cool but I'm only a 73 Yr old intermediate. Still learning 😅!!
I've not tried that one. I did try a Benson 335 copy once & it was OK 👍
My first guitar was a Gordon Smith. Great advice from a local store: I wish I had kept it.
Living in the US, I've never seen a Gordon Smith other than YT vids, but I hear they are a really nice guitar for the money in the UK. That must have been a very nice guitar for a beginner. I probably have some LPs with his guitars on them from the 80s.
I went camping with friends many many years ago and took the epi strat to jam with friends .long story short it ended up in the fire to keep us warm .
😅
My first electric guitar was an audition Avon guitar from Woolworths, telecaster copy, £39.99. I also brought the audition amplifier from Woolworths, 3 watts for £12. Then got the 18 watt ? One which had separate amp and speaker cabinet, with tremolo effect. Then bought the 25 watt combo, and finally bought the 50 watt combo with three inputs. Blew that one up by adding an extra speaker!. All audition amps. All pretty rubbish but didn't know that at the time. My guitars and amps are far better now.
After starting out with a secondhand Avon LP custom (yes it too had single coils hidden under humbucker covers), I moved on to a new Eros SG copy with bigsby style trem that looked the part but was a neck diving boat anchor. By the way If you're talking worst guitars history has to offer, Gibsons insane Reversed Flying V has to rank pretty high up there !
I had a Seville a lot like that Hondo, except it had a fairly solid body made up of a mystery wood that was almost ash with strips of walnut laminated into it, as was popular in the late 70’s and 80’s. It was my second guitar, bought at an Army Navy store. Played and sounded like crap, and I modded and rebuilt that thing over and over again. I put a Kahler and a Seymour Duncan Full Shred pickup in it until I broke the neck, then I filled the Kahler route and modified it to fit a Warmoth 12 string neck, then it was a test bed for parts with various necks. It now has some random Ibanez neck with a 3x3 headstock set up like a Les Paul Junior with a really great sounding Filter Tron-type pickup and olive drab paint.
My first electric was a plywood Lotus Strat 😆
I had a satellite Les Paul and a much younger me decided to take the pickup covers off to make the thing look cooler, yes mine also had nasty single coils in it and when I tried to put it back together the neck pickup stopped working which was probably a good thing in the end.
I had when playing a little this Guitar that was a First Act black body white pickguard that was 1/2 between a Strat and a Jaguar, that thing never stayed in tune ever as after one song it needed changing, the Pickups that it had, the wiring on them got hot melted a bit and Fused into one piece, The whammy bar was crap and was hard to use, the output jack you had to slam the jack into the output. Oh, and the Soft Maple, labeled as just plain Maple was starting to warp when I traded the guitar in 2007.
A bit surprising. Satellite, Woolworth and Marlin must have been UK-market store brands. I've never heard of them. The Woolworth looks like an old 60s Kawai or Teisco so I'm surprised they were still on the market in the period you're talking about. By the mid-to-late 1970s here in Australia even your average pawn shop had some decent Ibanez or Yamaha guitars cheap so, even though I started playing in 1966, I've never owned a truly dreadful guitar until about 2009 when I bought a cheap Strat knockoff from a Chinese site just out of curiosity. Even then it's reasonably playable, just needs attention to the wiring or a half-decent set of pickups. (and I'm a very low-budget kind of person.)
Most of the comments here are from folks in the UK and Europe, about guitars that were never imported to the States in any great quantity and most of which wouldnt be recognizable to an American. Worst electric guitar I ever owned, briefly, was a Hagstrom, presumably made in Sweden, that I bought at a pawnshop, and which appeared to be designed to look something like the Supro/Valco Resoglas guitars, with a weird extruded plastic pickguard holding the harsh, bright, noisy pickups; and a fretboard that was literally flat as a board with absolutely no fingerboard radius whatsoever.
My first guitar was a Les Paul model from Hondo. I used it 1-2 years before I bought an Ibanez and Yamaha SG. It wasnt to bad is what I remember.
When I was 13; I had a Hondo Les Paul and a Kay amplifier which had quite a distortion sound whether the guitar was plugged in or not! I wasn't good enough to know whether the guitar was playable or not, if I'm honest. I remember when I got my hands on a Westone Thunder it was like a revelation and my playing started to develop a bit.
Just got a hondo 2 black beauty copy , the one with gibson style headstock and split diamond it's quite good , certainly better than the satellite les paul I had when I was 18
I have the Hondo II bass guitar. The shape reminds me of a Les Paul, but double-cut, sort of like a 70s Gibson melody maker or Ibanez AX series guitar. It is super heavy and has a sort of sticky gloss finish on the neck, and the bridge had bowed upward and cracked: apparently a common issue with imported gibson style 3 point bass bridges. I replaced it with another identical bridge, and it’s already starting to bow as well. It still plays and sounds great though! Looks old and well-played, which I like.
We all had plywood bodies in the eighties! Still have my first electric. A £170 Columbus series3 superstrat. Crappy locking trem system, two awful single coils and inexplicably a dimarzio bucker in the bridge. Fiddly toggle switches and dead spots on 15th and 18th. Bought in Ealing Guitar Workshop, Bond Street, South Ealing run by a big Polish chap, with my first paycheque from a Pizza restaurant in West Ealing in 1988. Very similar to the Sidewinder🤣
That Woolworth Top 20 look a bit like what Sears sold here in the states in the 1960s. Sears' brand was called Silvertone, and I believe they were made by Harmony. My oldest brother had a Silvertone Jazzmaster clone.
One of my first guitars was a black and white Epiphone Coronet and it weighed as much as a dinner table and as fun to play as one also which is to say it wasn’t fun at all but those early mistakes led me to many better choices when I figured out what I didn’t like. Now I see those Coronets are popping back up as vintage gems and was probably a good investment that somebody else has.Or it got thrown in the trash.
My first electric was one of those Silvertones that came in a case that included a little amp. Not bad; I actually still own a different Silvertone that plays quite well. One of my friends had a Zim-Gar: it was totally useless--wouldn't stay in tune, and the action was awful. My worst was a Guild S-G, which also wouldn't stay in tune more than a couple of strums. I tried changing the machine heads and everything I could think of, but nothing improved.
What, you did not mention the Kent Polaris guitars? My first - when new, it had the worst fret work I have ever seen, and was very neck heavy. But I did not know any better at the time, amazing what youth can tolerate in drive to make music. Now many years later, I am modifying it extensively to make it into something decent, just for grins.
My guitar teacher strongly urged me to buy second-hand and procured me an Ibanez ST-50 in the mid-80s. The body was really scratched and battered (and not in a cool, reliced way), but the neck was pretty good, which is the most important thing.. Still have it.
But I remember Satellites. Aria guitars were quite popular at the time.
My first electric was a WEM (Watkins Electronic Music) Rapier 33. Strat lookalike, bright red, white scratch plate and yes, it ate strings. Oh, it came with an “S” bend neck!
Has a beginner bass player back then. I used to have a bad Kay bass which was so bad cos of the action my friend got a Kay guitar which fell to bits 😁... infact. A marlin jazz bass copy I had was the best I played 😮. Then eventually I got a Japan made fender jazz bass special 👍
I grew up in the 70's and cheap guitars were VERY bad back then but somehow we always leaned how to fix them up. As long as the wood was solid and straight, we could work miracles...lol