Saturday, April 26, 2008

Epiphone Crestwood ET-275


I'm writing this story just a tiny bit prematurely. This one technically hasn't gotten away just yet, but it will in...wait, let me check...21 hours and 27 minutes. It's on eBay right now and I'm hoping the bidding jumps at the end so I can buy a decent Telecaster...again. The funny thing is that I have almost always owned a Telecaster since I bought my first one back in Oklahoma in the mid-'80s. But at this moment I do not and earlier this week I realized that, even though on January 22, 2008 I emailed my friend Rob and said, "I'm a Crestwood guy now. All I need is a Crestwood," I was wrong. Dead wrong and I'm not afraid to admit it.

I thought I was a Crestwood guy. It seems to be a great guitar. Enough so that I believed I had turned the corner on Teles. But something funny happened last Sunday night: I bought a Fender Blues Junior amp and took it home and plugged the Crestwood in. I realized, "Wait just a second here! Something is not right." I knew I was going to have to eat a little crow with my guitar friends, suck it up, and put the Crestwood on eBay to fund the next Tele.

There is really nothing wrong with this guitar. It's me. It's not you. I'm in love with my old girlfriend. You know...Tele. She's back in my life.

There is a previous post about another Crestwood I had that I really liked a lot. For a better description of Crestwoods, read that post...I won't repeat myself here. I think the other one was a slightly more deluxe model. This one is technically called an ET-275. I'm guessing the other one I had to be an ET-290. The 290 has a bound fingerboard and headstock, but is mostly the same. In that story that I wrote I declared that I would probably end up buying another one and I was right. I found this tobacco sunburst model on Craig's List for $225. The guy I got it from had a black one as well and just didn't need two. I was really happy to find it on Craig's List because they're not that easy to find, and not having to rely on a great description on eBay was a nice option. Sometimes you just don't have a clue what you're getting on eBay and you have to hope for the best. My experience has been almost all positive, but when it's not, it's NOT.

There is a small part of me that wishes I could hang on to this guitar and buy a Telecaster without having to sell something. But that's not possible and so the Crestwood goes. It's not really going to even afford me too much to spend on a Tele, but I have been much more impressed with the Mexican Fenders of late, and so I'm hoping to come across a good one. Today I discovered a model I had not previously seen called a Telecaster Special, which is really just like a Tele Custom...the one with the giant pickguard, the humbucker in the neck and the regular single coil in the bridge. However, this one has the humbucker, but visually looks like a regular Tele with the normal pickguard. I guess you could say it's more of a Keith Richards Micawber set-up, but I prefer to keep Keith out of it.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and we'll see how much I end up with from the Crestwood and what I can afford next week. I'll try to update the story with some dollar figures.

Story Update: The Crestwood sold for $365 on eBay tonight and I won the Telecaster Special I was hoping to get for only $340. So, I'm pretty happy right now.

5 comments:

Email us at said...

You and your purchaser got fantastic deals on the Crestwood; they retail out of the Manhattan Guitar Center's "vintage room" for closer to a grand.

Jaimie Muehlhausen said...

Hey Keith...thanks for the comment. I see them advertised for a lot higher prices too but I never see them sell. I actually thought mine would bring somewhere around $425, but since I got it for so cheap I can't be too bummed. They usually go on eBay for $350-450...but I've never seen one from the '70s sell for anywhere close to a thousand bucks.

Email us at said...

I think the ones I've seen are late 60's (there may be 3 or 4 at the room right now), and as you said in the other Crestwood post, those sell for a small fortune.

Unknown said...

did you send the guitar to italy ?
i may be the one who bought it...

ngauget said...

I think I bought your crestwood, and i am getting ready to put it on ebay right now. It's a great guitar, great action, etc, but I bought it for nostalgia and it sits and never gets played thanks to my 9 gibson's and 6 fender's! This one has some definite grind and will rock the house! I bet you love that new amp, I bought one too! it rocks!