Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby stephen » Wed Nov 05, 2014 4:16 pm

Billyboygretsch wrote:Who carried the amp home and who the bass. Did your dad make you carry the gear back or give you a lift. What did you eventually spend the £500 on. This would make a good story !


Luke and I took turns at holding the bass in our free hand(s) as the other gripped the side handles on the Vox as we struggled the half-mile, with many 'rest/recovery' stops (I think) to the underground. On reaching the Birkenhead side, I somewhat royally hailed a cab to take Luke home, then to Dave's house with my secret stash. From there, I got the bus to my house claiming that I was late due to a detention! Oh, and on the day of my forced, walk-of-shame back in Hessy's, Captain Davies transported myself & gear in his pale blue, two-tone Singer Gazelle. He replaced this with a new green one the following year.
What did I do with that £500 in the end?
Well Captain Davies had ensured that I wouldn't have access to it until I was 21 (in those days, the age of majority). It so happened that a few months before that birthday, I'd managed to escape from fortress Davies and get my first flat over in Liverpool where I worked as a photographer in Littlewoods/John Moores studio and I remember exactly what I spent the money on when I was disdainfully handed that savings book...........

Two stylish, foam 3 seater sofa units from the then fairly new & trendy Habitat; circular dining table & chairs from George Henry Lee (now John Lewis); a snazzy all-white, 2-speaker Dynatron stereo system and finally, fulfilling a small part of my ongoing James Bond fantasy, a second-hand but mint, Rolex GMT Master Chronometer from Watches of Switzerland in Bold Street! At the time I paid £120 for a watch that currently retails for around £6k. How prices of some things have really shot up. Mind you, my 60's vintage one would probably be worth more than that today .Strangely, no thoughts of buying a guitar again entered my head until a couple of years later. Idly glancing through the classifieds section of the Liverpool Echo, I happened upon an ad. for a Hofner Verithin and Watkins Dominator amp complete for £35. On an impulse I bought it, had it for a few months before deciding that I'd only done so because I'd been thwarted by my dad previously, but now didn't really have an interest so I re-sold it without any regrets.
I remained disinterested until my 40th birthday. Coming out of an Indian restaurant after a celebratory lunch, I was idly looking in the window of a music shop to kill time whilst my wife was buying some dress material next door. My eyes fell upon a used Hohner Arbor strat copy in a natural finish and for some reason those teenage aspirations came flooding back. My wife (who knew my dreadful secret) emerged and encouraged me to buy it along with a little Fame 15w amp. And that, dear reader is that! Some 25 years on I type this surrounded by a lovely selection of guitars on the wall and I am content. No great player to be sure, but I do so love all things guitar'y.
Someone mentioned cars they'd wished they'd never parted with..............I've also got a little story in that vein.
It was 1975 and I'd already had a couple of Triumph Spitfires and was a bit into cars at the time. I used to drive past this car showroom on the Wirral called Two Mills and often stopped to have a look at their interesting stock. One day they had a couple of Lotus Europa Twin-Cams and a Ferrari Dino 246GT for sale. Both 2 year old Lotus' were priced at £1,750 and the 2 year old Ferrari was only £1,995! I'd had my wife's permission to buy one of them and ultimately 'rejected' the Ferrari in favour of the black Lotus with the gold pin-striping in the then current ,John Player Special Lotus F1 livery.
At the time, I wish I'd known that people in the know car-wise said that Lotus was an acronym for Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious, as I certainly had my share.
It was a frosty November and I was due to start a new job some 30 miles away and my Lotus stood in the road, un-garaged. The bloody thing just wouldn't start on those icy mornings and the only way I could coax it into life was to remove the spark plugs, heat them under the grill and replace them hot! Additionally, I had the gear stick linkage break off leaving me in 2nd gear to embarrassingly limp to the garage for repair. Investigating a chronic misfire/lack of power, I discovered oil had pooled level with the tops of the twin cam covers and was fouling the plugs! I was late or absent so many times at this new job that my boss gave me the ultimatum that either the car went or me. Sadly, it had to be bye-bye Lotus Europa.............
Have any of you seen a Europa in recent years? I certainly haven't, so how much would one of those be worth today? As for the Dino at £1,995 in '75. What an investment they turned out to be. I think you have to be a Chris Evans to get your hands on one of those these days.
Hope the foregoing hasn't bored you too much.............
Stephen.
Last edited by stephen on Wed Nov 05, 2014 5:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby stephen » Wed Nov 05, 2014 4:23 pm

Uncleboko wrote:On a much smaller scale, I remember that having bought a 45 with my pocket money the week before, I was forbidden to by "another one" by my father the following week. I went out and bought "When Will I be Loved" by the Everly Brothers. When my father heard it being played later that day he ripped it from the "gramophone" , bent it up and threw it in the dustbin!!

I retrieved it and tried in vain to straighten it out :cry: :cry:


Oddly enough, whilst still living at home and using my dad's record player, he once became incensed when I bought and played the 45 of Donovan's 'Universal Soldier'. He came storming into the room, switched the player off and forbade me never to play it in the house again. "That song goes against everything that I fought for in the war!" was all he said. He seemed so enraged, that although once again puzzled, I never did. Having a liking for a black musician (the beautiful voice of Nat King Cole) was as radical as my dad went.
Stephen.
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Billyboygretsch » Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:02 pm

:evil: We lived in a semi with a somewhat troublesome neighbour - she didn't like my brother and I bashing it out night after night. Some people are very inconsiderate. Anyway one Halloween I put the amp next to the joint chimney plugged in the mic through the copicat and started doing scary ghostly noises. More complaints - some people honestly!
By the way just bought a copicat not had one for years now.
I wonder if Hank ever tried or used a Copicat and told us it was a Meazzi. That would put a spanner in How to get that sound works he he
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Uncleboko » Fri Nov 07, 2014 9:07 am

Billyboygretsch wrote::evil: We lived in a semi with a somewhat troublesome neighbour - she didn't like my brother and I bashing it out night after night. Some people are very inconsiderate. Anyway one Halloween I put the amp next to the joint chimney plugged in the mic through the copicat and started doing scary ghostly noises. More complaints - some people honestly!
By the way just bought a copicat not had one for years now.
I wonder if Hank ever tried or used a Copicat and told us it was a Meazzi. That would put a spanner in How to get that sound works he he


Of course he did :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Uncle Fiesta » Sat Nov 08, 2014 3:39 am

I've just realised that I forgot one in my previous post.

About 5 years ago I got a bee in my bonnet about replacing my 1989 Les Paul Standard. I'm still not sure why; there was nothing wrong with it. It could have been the sunburst - it was a little darker than I like. Anyway on eBay I found a nice wine red 1975 one. Now you have to take this with a pinch of salt, because Gibson's own records show only one Standard was shipped that year. So almost immediately I started trying to find out exactly what it was. Emails shot back and forth between me and Gibson, who reckoned the fact that the neck had a volute, plus the cross-banding and one or two other features, marked it as a 68 or 69, which meant it must have been a refinished (and repickupped!) Gold Top.

Now what I should have done at this point was have it restored back to a Gold Top, but I didn't. I just had it cleaned up, kept it for a few months and sold it on eBay. It went to France and I think I made about £100 on it so I was reasonably happy. I wonder what it would be worth now though if I'd had it restored.

Since then, I've also sold both my original '89 and the LPR-9 I replaced it with.
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Billyboygretsch » Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:16 pm

Re the Lotus Europa - I worked for Lotus in Cheshunt on the Mk1 Lotus Cotina and pre assembly of the Lotus 7. When the factory moved to Hethel I started on Elans then moved to the new Europaline. When that was established I moved to Lotus components and built Lotus 47 (the track version of the Europa with a twin cam engine).
The rarest street Lotus I ever saw was a hand built Mk1 Elite by David Lazenby and it took months and was finished off with a twin cam and Élan style interior. Jim Clarke and Graham Hill were our drivers at the time. Great fun and lots of Lotus stories.
I was playing a Vibra Artiste at the time to get it back on a guitar subject and got a 1961Fender Jazzmaster in 1967. Still have the Jazzmaster but never owned a Lotus
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby abstamaria » Sun Jun 24, 2018 5:34 pm

I just stumbled upon this old thread. It's amazing you wofked on 47s, BillyBoyGretsch. I love that model. Thrre is a shop in Japan that recreates them, using standard Europas ss a base. I'm very much a Lotus fan and still have an Elan.

Andy
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Uncle Fiesta » Mon Jun 25, 2018 12:20 am

Well I can't claim membership of the 'I Used To Have A Lotus' Club, but when I had a Porsche 944 one of my driving school pupils kept calling it a Lotus (probably because it was black).

Anyway I'm glad this thread has been revived as I've just remembered another item I should have kept. In 1979 my boss found a Watkins Westminster amp in his attic and gave it to me. It was fantastic particularly when overdriven - sounded just like a Marshall stack! Of course at that time it was regarded as just another old amp; no-one realised that these things would be collectable one day. So it got used as a practice amp, for rehearsals, jam sessions and general messing about. Eventually the inevitable happened - it got lent to someone who I then lost touch with and I never saw it again.
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby dave robinson » Mon Jun 25, 2018 4:41 pm

I recentley purchased a Vox Duotone guitar, identical to the one mum & dad bought me in 1962, as well as the Watkins Dominator amp they got for me at the same time. The first electric guitar I touched was a 1960 Hofner Colorama belonging to a school friend, which I loved the look of and found an identical one on eBay and bought that too.
The point of it all was really to prove myself wrong and get these instruments to do the job, wheras back in the day we were all brainwashed into thinking that a Fender Strat and Vox amp plus Copicat/Binson/Klemt Echolette/Dynacord echo were the minimum requirement to do the business. Notice I didn't include Meazzi echo, that's because we only ever saw Hank in concert using the Binson. The only Meazzi we had was the Factotum PA system with the tape echo on the front and we ditched it as it was aweful,repacing it with a Leek amp, Varislope pre-amp and small four channel mixer and a couple of Vox Columns.
Having used the Colorama on gigs and the Watkins Dominator at our pub gig, I'm more than satisfied that these tools did a good job. I have today fitted a Bigsby type vibrato to my Duotone and it is now useable to play our kind of music so I expect to give it a try very soon. We were ignorant about gear back then and now I understand how to set up a guitar I often get great sounds from cheap guitars, just as long as they stay in tune and play well. At the end of the day it's all in the set up.
Add to this I took out my eTap2hw yesterday and gave that a spin through the Domimtator - the sound is exquisite,though my only complaint is that there isn't a single tap with varispeed included in the menu, but it's every bit as good as anything else on offer at the moment. :)
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Re: Early equipment that I used and wished I kept

Postby Tigerdaisy » Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:54 pm

I sold loads of guitars in my time but struggle to find one I regret selling, maybe in recent years a MIM Telecaster which I thought had a great sound especially for the price- also maybe an Epiphone acoustic (copy of the J200) which was pretty good, again for the price point.
I could probably make a list of guitars I was glad to part with... a couple of Les Pauls, an Ovation and also a Musicman, Hagstrom, PRS SE and a PRS, a Strat Classic 50
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