Monday, July 14, 2008

Fender Libra Amp


So, what's your sign? I'm a Libra. Groovy. Back in 1970, when Fender went way off track, they introduced a line of solid state guitar amps based on the signs in the zodiac. There was the Capricorn, the Scorpio, the Taurus and the Libra. The Libra came with 4 12" JBL speakers, 105 watts (I wonder why not just a nice even 100?), two channels, with reverb and tremolo. The zodiac series was (mercifully) only offered for two years or less and are very rare now. But who really wants them? I guess maybe if you were trying to collect every single amp Fender made it would worth having, but, from all accounts, these things sounded brutal.

What makes the one I had interesting is that it was a head only. Now I'm relatively sure that these were not offered as a head, so that means someone took the time to nicely repackage this amp as a head. It was hard to tell that it used to be a combo amp and I probably would not have known if I hadn't researched it a little and discovered the specs. I found this one at the good ol' Oceanside Swap Meet that I frequently mention...in fact I think I need to get back out there soon. This was one of those things that you spot from about a row over and hope you get to it before some other guy walks up and manages to snake you. It was sitting on some Peavey cabinet (I think)...something crappy anyway. The guy REALLY wanted me to buy the cab too, but the Libra was all I was interested in. He only wanted $50 for it but it wouldn't be a swap meet unless you tried to bargain a little and I ended up getting it for $40. He had no idea if it worked and I figured for $40 any old '70s Fender item is worth it.

I got it home and plugged it in and it came on no problem. I can't remember what speaker cab I plugged it into because I really haven't owned many separate cabs...but I do remember testing it out. It worked great! Which is a nicer way of saying "it sucks." It's reputation was well deserved. I put it up for sale on eBay and had a fair amount of interest. In fact, I think that's actually how I first found out it had been cut down to a cab. A nice guy that eventually ended up winning the auction knew quite a bit about these and was out to collect 'em all. He was positive this shouldn't just be a head, but was interested in owning it just the same. I believe it sold for somewhere around $200

I really am a Libra and it might have been cool in a perfect financial world to have kept it just for fun. But I'm sure it helped fund some other purchase that I've probably written about by now.

Of course, in a perfect financial world I wouldn't be bailing out Fannie May and Bernie Mac (or whatever that other one is) with my tax dollars.

Since I didn't take one of those super tricky, underhanded loans that people didn't really qualify for when I probably could have, couldn't my tax dollars go towards music and art education in schools instead? Something besides old guard politics ruining yet another longstanding institution in the last eight years? Okay, that's the first and hopefully only time I've gone political and I'll try to restrain myself in the future. Rock on.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Cimar Hummingbird Copy


This guitar was the perfect beach guitar and I actually kind of wish I had it back. I went to the swap meet in Oceanside, CA one Sunday and, as I have detailed before, walked directly to a certain aisle that a couple of sellers always camp out on. These two or three sellers always manage to find some interesting, cheap guitars and I'm usually pretty curious about something or other that they have unearthed. On this particular Sunday one of the guys had this Cimar acoustic, which was a knock-off or "lawsuit" version of a Gibson Hummingbird. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong...I like to know the correct story), Cimar was a lesser brand produced by Ibanez, which itself was making less expensive knock-offs at the time, but at a pretty high quality.

This guitar was black with a tortoise-like Hummingbird pickguard that was still in great shape. It had cheap inlays on the neck and headstock and fake inlay all around the body and soundhole, D-41 style. When I picked it up, it actually played great. The action was just right. As I looked more closely at the body I was shocked. The bridge saddle was a good inch high at least. It stuck WAY out from the bridge and the top of the guitar had seriously bellied in. Yet someone had taken the time to exactly size up a really tall piece to make the action just right.

This was actually a pretty cool guitar. At the time, my daughter was away at school and wanted a cheap guitar to play that, if something happened to it, it wouldn't be the end of the world. So I shelled out a whopping $40 for the guitar and took it home. It cleaned up just fine and, since I was scared to take the strings off, I just left them on. I went to Guitar Center to see if they had any good deals on cases and, oddly enough, they had a GIANT stack of Taylor hard plastic acoustic cases they were clearing out for $25. So, for a cool $65 I had a decent playing, inexpensive guitar and hard case for my daughter.

I took her the guitar and, from what I understand, she never once played it.

She brought it back with her when she came home and I took it over to our neighbor's house. Their 15-year old son was learning to play electric guitar and so I donated this acoustic to the cause. That was the last time I saw it. Not sure if he played it either, but hopefully someone sees the odd beauty of this guitar, bellied top and all.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Locobox Choker Pedal


If you've looked at the links to other sites I do, you'll notice a link to www.locobox.com. It's what you might call (for lack of a better term) a "fan site" for Locobox guitar pedals. Although I wouldn't call myself a "fan," I did get pretty obsessed with Locobox pedals at one point. I was reading an article in Tape Op magazine about Jason Falkner, member of the Grays, Jellyfish, etc., and he made a comment about gear he used to make his home recordings sound amazing. He said that he used a guitar effect pedal made by a company in the '70s called Locobox. The pedal was a compressor called The Choker and it just made everything sound great.

Well, who doesn't want that? A magic box that makes all recordings sound great? Sign me up.

Like quite a few other folks out there, I got obsessed with finding a Choker pedal. Problem is, they are really rare and impossible to find. Here's the difference though...I'm a freakin' genius and I will find a way to get one. I checked to see if the domain name locobox.com was taken and found that it was available. I bought it, found some photos of a few Locobox pedals, and started The Unofficial Locobox website. I figured if anyone was going to sell a pedal, they might Google Choker Pedal and find my site. Believe it or not, it worked. Really well. I ended up buying many Locobox pedals and sort of became the accidental Locobox guy.

What I really found is that Locobox made some really cool pedals. In MY opinion, The Choker is not one of them. I say that with full disclosure that I just don't understand how to fully utilize compression. I mess with it. I buy compressors. Pretty good ones. I use them. I don't really know whether what I'm doing is working or why. What I do know is that The Choker was not the "magic box" that I was hoping it would be. I am pleased to have found Locobox Mysto Dysto distortion pedals and Tube Maniax pedals and many others that do sound great.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Buck Owens Harmony Acoustic


In honor of 4th of July weekend I thought I'd post about the Buck Owens red, white and blue acoustic that I once had, but remains in the family. So, technically it did get away, but I know where it is. I walked into a guitar shop in Laguna Beach one day and was checking out the amazing selection of gutiars they had. I walked into the acoustic room and immediatly my eyes were drawn to a really beat up Buck Owens acoustic. When I was a kid, my dad would watch Hee Haw every weekend and eventually Buck Owens and Roy Clarke would do a song. On that show Buck always played his red, white and blue signature Buck Owens Harmony acoustic guitar. That guitar was an absolute icon to me. I won't even go into how cool Buck Owens is...if you're not a country fan and think Buck is just one of those old country dudes, think again. An amazing guy in both music and business and his band back in the day featured one of the all-time most influential guitarists, Don Rich. Now back to the guitar...

I inquired about the price and it was only $250. The guy pointed out some serious cracks on the back of the guitar, and the action was pretty high. The white paint had faded to a yellowish puke color. And the pickguard was missing...though someone had put a generic, cheap white plastic guard on it. Even with all those faults, I wanted it. I wanted to fix it up a bit and give it to my dad. I took it down to Fred at the Repair Zone in San Diego, one the guitar gurus in town, and asked if he could help me find or create an original pickguard. I had found some photos, and you could still see the faint outline on the guitar where the original had been. Fred hand cut a new one for me and we were back to original appearances.

The headstock on these guitars are a thick plastic overlay that seems to be made out of some very brittle material. On MANY of these guitars, the headstock overlay is cracked, pieces missing, peeling away, or just plain missing. The one on mine was in pretty decent shape except that right where the words "Buck Owens" were, was kind of scraped or rubbed off mostly. I didn't really want to pay for a neck reset, especially since my Dad doesn't play guitar, so I left that "as is." It actually had a decent case too and lots of interesting case candy.

I had asked the guy in the store about the stuff in the case and he said "No matter what's in the case when a guitar comes in, unless it's damaging to the guitar, I leave it in. I figure that's part of the guitar's mojo."

I have now adopted that rule myself when buying any guitar. I keep the mojo together. I took the guitar to my dad who really seemed to like the gift. I don't know that he's really attempted to play it, and a few times when I went to visit I found it out in his garage in the HOT summer in Sacramento...probably not the best place for a guitar. I have tried and tried to get him to put it in a safer spot and I have no idea if it's currently in a storage unit or at my dad's place. I'm worried that it's in the storage unit, going from hot summer to cold winter and probably falling apart in the case. But, not much I can do...just hope for the best. It's a really cool guitar, warts and all, and it will forever remind me of being a kid in Tulsa, OK, watching TV with my dad on a Saturday evening.

2014 UPDATE: In this past year, my dad moved in with me as he is getting older and it just made sense. When he moved all his stuff from storage into my garage, I kept waiting and waiting for them to unload a guitar case off the truck. Nothing. Finally I asked him about the guitar and where it was. He said, "Well, I think the guys that helped me move stuff into the storage unit a long time ago stole it. I haven't seen it since then, so I guess it's gone. DOH! I just sort of knew that the fate of this guitar was not going to be good. I guess I'll keep an eye on Ebay and see if I can spot it at some point. With all it's cracks and fading, it should be easy to spot.

Once again, since the guitar is not in my hands, I have found some photos on the internet to use for this story. This is not the actual guitar I gave my dad.