Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Liquid Metal Guitars LMG T WS engraved aluminium Tele

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's another highly decorated Telecaster-type guitar, the Liquid Metal Guitars LMG T WS. The W and S in the guitar's name are the initials of Warren Smith, an engraver and master craftsman in metals, based in Armstrong, B.C., who has been working on jewellery pieces for over 20 years and has recently relished the opporunity of working on the larger canvasses offered by LMG's guitar bodies.

This guitar is being sold via Vintage & Rare priced at €2,999. See Vintage & Rare for more details.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare Guitar of the Week: John Entwistle's Epiphone Embassy Bass

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This 1964 Epiphone Embassy bass in cherry finish was owned by the late John Entwistle of The Who, and is one of the instruments featured in his book "Bass Culture". The bass is said to be in excellent original condition; it features Thunderbird pickups, and is still in the same condition as when John set it up with Rotosound strings.

You'll notice the design similarities with the Epiphone Newport bass we looked at recently, although with the bridge-biased Thunderbird pickups on the Embassy you could expect a more "rocky" sound.

Having said that, it's highly likely that this bass will be bought as a collector's piece or as an investment, given its provenance. It is currently being offered for sale, via Vintage & Rare, priced at €8000.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Zemaitis GZV 500 MF

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This Zemaitis GZV 500 MF is a Japanese-made Greco/Zemaitis guitar rather than one built by the late legendary British luthier himself. Nevertheless it is a very elegant piece, one of the most attractive Flying V style guitars that I have laid eyes on. Metallica's James Hetfield is also a fan having played the exact same model guitar on the World Magnetic Tour. The guitar features a two-piece Mahogany body, engraved aluminium top, DiMarzio DP103 PAF pickups, a 25" scale, and Schaller M6 tuners.

This guitar is currently being offered for sale via Vintage & Rare priced at €3709.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Dommenget Maththias Jabs Acoustic Explorer

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This week our Guitar of the Week - chosen from the thousands of incredible instruments being sold via Vintage & Rare - is this quite stunning acoustic Explorer by Boris Dommenget as designed for Matthias Jabs of The Scorpions.

The guitar features a solid spruce top with back and sides of solid rosewood. Body binding on front and back is abalone and mother of pearl, and the intricate soundhole binding features stars and planets. The neck is Spanish cedar with ebony fretboard inlayed with star position markers. The headstock is the traditional Explorer shape and is fitted with Kluson tulip tuners. The scale length is a Fender-like 25.5" rather than the Gibson scale length of 24.75" that you might expect considering the design.

This guitar is being sold via Vintage & Rare priced at €7990.

Dommenget Guitars are based in Balje, Germany, and are best known for their various guitars built for German rock act The Scorpions. These have included acoustic Flying V guitars for Rudolf Schenker in 6-string, 12-string and doubleneck 12+6 models.

See also: Dommenget Guitars

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar(s) of the week: Deimel Guitarworks Firemaster

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Luthier Frank Deimel of Deimel Guitarworks based in Bautzen, Berlin-Schöneberg, has been building boutique guitars since 1998 and his customers have included such lumineries as Sonic Youth, Nikki Sudden, Shellac and the John Spencer Blues Explosion.

I particularly like the Deimel Firemaster guitar, a hybrid design which melds together elements of the non-reverse Gibson Firebird and the Fender Jazzmaster.

The Glade Green-finished Firemaster pictured above features two Curtis Novak P90s, one of Deimel's own self-made single Coils in the neck position, and a piezo by the bridge "to collect body vibration". There are various switches to activate series/parallel modes, ON-OFF for each P90, ON/OFF for the piezo, plus a killswitch. It also features a Jazzmaster style vibrato. This guitar is currently being sold via Vintage & Rare and is priced at €2850.

The Burgundy Mist-finished Firemaster pictured below is outfitted with an aluminium pickguard anodized in gold, two P90 pickups and a Duesenberg Tremola. Tuners are Kluson type Gotohs with the Magnum Lock mechanism. The body is made out of american red alder, and the neck is riftsawn hardrock maple plus rosewood fretboard. Also being sold via Vintage & Rare, this guitar is priced at €3400.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Prohaszka Silver Sparkle flat-top acoustic

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Balazs Prohaszka is a luthier from Hungary who has been building musical instruments since 1994. He has much experience of repairing and building guitars, violins, lutes and double basses so he surely knows his way around the anatomy of acoustic instruments. Prohaszka's fine guitars are made from exotic and choice tonal woods, and he believes that they are amongst the finest in the world. Employed as a senior craftsman with N. Ireland's Avalon Guitars (formerly Lowden Guitars), he builds approximately six or seven "personal" guitars in his own name each year during his spare time.

This Prohaszka silver-sparkle fronted flat-top acoustic guitar is currently being offered for sale via Vintage & Rare and is priced at £2600.00 (approx. €3101.00). The guitar has an original design that should find favour with electric players whilst still retaining the full acoustic body depth. I particularly like the "split" f-hole and the cut-out 6-in-a-line headstock which is quite elegant.

It's an instrument that you can imagine being played in the hands of the singer of a glitzy rock band. However, it might be considered sacrilege to subject a fine luthier-built instrument like this to the rock 'n' roll lifestyle where perhaps some cheaper generic electro-acoustic guitars would be better suited to the role. (Having said that, it doesn't look as if the Prohaszka Sparkle is actually fitted with any electronics, despite the design. I believe it is purely an acoustic guitar.)

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar(s) of the week: 1968 Fender Telecaster paisley pair

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here we have a pair of original 1968 Fender Paisleys - a Telecaster (as used by Elvis guitarist James Burton) and Telecaster Bass - both in remarkable condition for their age. The paisley design was effectively wallpaper applied to the guitar before being sealed beneath a clear finish with a pink "burst" around the perimeter to hide the edges of the paper. Often with these original paisleys, the finish has cracked badly through to the paper, and the pink finish usually fades to a not unpleasant gold. You'll see in the photo above that the Telecaster guitar suffers from a crack where the right forearm would rest, and the pink burst has begun to turn gold. But look at those necks - hardly a mark on them; they could almost be new. Both guitar and bass are complete with the pickup/bridge covers that players usually remove and use as ashtrays or whatever; their presence here would probably appeal to the collector more than the player.

The pair are currently being sold via Vintage & Rare for $37,000 for the both of them, or $19,500 for the Telecaster guitar and $18,500 for the Telecaster Bass. At those prices we're talking collectors really. For the rest of us who just happen like the look of them, there have been various Japanese re-issues since the late 1980s which you could turn up for a fraction of the price.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Yamaha SG-3 guest blog article over at Vintage & Rare

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I've written a guest blog article for our friends at Vintage & Rare. It's all about what regular readers will recognize as a favourite hobby horse of mine, the Yamaha SG-3 guitar.

You can read all about it (plus siblings, the SG-2, SG-12 and SB-2) here.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Jeff Buckley's Telecaster

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Born in November 1966, Jeff Buckley was a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter who grew up in California and was son to legendary musician Tim Buckley. He spent a decade playing session guitar in Los Angeles and went on to create quite a following for himself playing at various venues in Manhattan's East Village, initially playing covers but gradually performing more and more of his own material. In 1994 he released what was to become his only studio album, Grace. The album was toured for two years before Buckley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997 with the intention to work on his second album, My Sweetheart the Drunk. However, while waiting for his band to turn up from New York, Buckley took a swim in the Wolf River and, getting caught in the wake of a boat, was tragically drowned. Like his father before him, he died far too young.

Buckley used quite a few guitars including a Rickenbacker 360/12, Gibson Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty", Fender Jaguar and others, but his main guitar was this 1983 Fender Telecaster in faded butterscotch finish with chrome pickguard and Seymour Duncan Hot Lead Stack STK-T2b pickup in the bridge position.

This very guitar is being offered for sale via our friends at Vintage & Rare, priced at €42,600 / USD $60,000.

Photos courtesy of Vintage & Rare.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!