Let the show begin...
The first one is (I think) a Mattel Synsonic black Explorer. I could be totally making this up, but I swear I have a memory of this guitar. It had a 9 volt battery to power the built-in speaker. It took me 30 minutes to tune. I have no idea what happened to it, or even if I had the Explorer or the Strat copy.
NO PICTURE OF THE APPLAUSE - PICTURE AN 80s GUITARIST. CLOSE ENOUGH.
Next up was the Applause "power-strat" copy. It was 200 bucks literally from an ad in the back of Guitar World. No pickguard, 2 single coil, 1 hb, bad floyd-rose knockoff tremolo, impossible action. This guitar got heavily modded - I cut the lower horn off and glued it back on backwards (I don't know...), put LEDs in the middle single-coil position, dumped tempera paint on it, and most importantly, drilled a hole by the back strap holder to accept a model rocket engine and fitted an igniter switch to it. Did not actually set it off during battle of the bands, but did rock it outside in the parking lot. Probably destroyed in some fashion or another, but I don't remember.
Now I got serious, so Stan, Dylan and I went to Daddy's Junky Music in Manchester, and out of all the guitars there, I decided that the best one would be a black Peavey Vandenberg. Reverse headstock, "dinky strat" styling, real floyd rose - what a shred machine. Except that I was not, am not, and will never be a shredder. So I played my usual pentatonic noodlings and "25 or 6 to 4" with the jazz band. It was possibly the most inappropriate guitar imaginable for these purposes. This picture from eBay captures it exactly as I remember it - for all I know this could be the exact guitar. I can even smell the synthetic fur in the case. Must have sold it before going to college at some point.
NO PICTURE OF THE TERRIBLE FLYING V. LUCKY YOU.
At this point I got more into bass, but who the hell wants to look at basses. So we'll just move on to my first pawn shop purchase in Houston - a godawful flying v copy. It met its end by being tossed repeatedly into the air and left to fall on the concrete at one of our house parties. I don't think I played a single gig or anything else with it.
A little later I got involved with The Freshmakers, and we actually played some outside gigs for (no) money, so I needed a real guitar and real amp. I bought a Yamaha Weddington Special, which is a really obscure guitar. I actually went to the financial aid office and got a small loan out for it. The only picture I could find of it is in this ad, beside an equally obscure guitarist. It was pretty nice, really - a Les Paul Special rip with a slightly different shape. I thought I would have it for good, but I needed to pay the rent one day... If you ever come across one, it's probably worth a look.
After leaving college I really had no other electric guitars for quite a while. It was only in California when I accepted a black Squier Strat instead of rent from my roommate that I got back into them. I'm not even going to put a picture up of this. I think if you've ever played guitar, you've played or owned a Squier Strat. They are depressingly mediocre guitars.
Fast forward again to Atlanta, just a couple of years ago, I got a yen to own a decent electric. So I went to Guitar Center, and was really thinking I was going to buy that Epiphone SG. But, I saw this thing called a Blueshawk in the used section and couldn't resist the allure of the weird. Real Gibson, made in the USA, semi-hollow, tiny body, sort-of-P90 pickups, and most bizarrely, 25 inch scale length (Gibsons are usually 24, fenders are 25). I bought it and took it home, but even though you had 15 separate tone options available with the weird switches on it, eventually I deduced that none of them sounded very good. And the fit and finish was pretty awful. And I think I just like maple fretboards better. So I took it back. But, I did write the last song that I have written on it. So there is that.
And now, I am the proud owner of a heavily modified Reverend Hitman guitar. I was lusting after one of these - they're (weird), semi-hollow bodies with like a Formica top and really nice, meaty baseball bat necks. There was a 6 month waiting list for a new one, so I bought one off of eBay, with a "Fat Tele" pickup config. I can't stand Teles, so I made a new pickguard and put in a crapload of pickups so I could select the minihumbucker for jazz, single front coil for Hendrix, single and middle out of phase for Mark Knopfler, and rear hb for ZZ Top. It also has a piezo bridge for nasty, 70s sounding acoustic guitar. That was a mistake. The rest is pretty ok - I don't like the color. I think I'm going to take all the pickups out except the front hb and refinish it or something. Or just buy a new body from Warmoth and have the frets redressed - the neck is the best thing about it.
There you have it - my life in guitars.
