This a blast from the SERIOUS past!  This was the guitar that I bought in January 2010 that got me into collecting guitars!  It all started with this one right here…  :D

BTW it’s a 2009 Fender Road Worn 50’s Telecaster.  I sold it to a friend n 2011.  Now I might need to go out and buy a blonde Tele!

BFTP #25 - 2009 Fender Road Worn 50’s Telecaster, yellow-blonde.  This one goes all the way back to March 21, 2010!

This guitar was the start of “the collection”…many years after I quit playing in the band, it was the first new guitar I had bought since the early 90’s!  I sold it to a good friend of mine 2011.  And like with ALL the guitars I sell, sometimes still miss it…  :D

BFTP #27: This 1978-ish Fender Jazz Bass is for my friends Mike & Mike, of mmguitarbar who appaerently love beat up 1970’s Fender basses!  :D

This is my friend’s 1978 Jazz Bass which he used in our band days WAY back in the 90’s in Montreal.  These photos were taken in his house just outside Toronto, August 7, 2010.

BFTP #3: 2010 Fender Custom Shop ‘63 Stratocaster Relic, shot on January 28, 2012. 

zzzblackswan:

“La única manera de lidiar con un mundo que no es libre es ser tan libre que tu sola existencia sea un acto de rebelión.”

- Albert Camus -

I am so honoured to say that this photo was taken in my city, Toronto, in the summer of 2010 during the G20 conference and the riots that ensued.  In fact, I believe this shot was taken on Queen Street right in front one of Toronto’s major guitar shops, Steve’s Music!  There is another police car on fire out of frame to the left, and that one was close enough to Steve’s Music to partially melt their sign!  This is a VERY uncommon occurrence in Canada - we are usually too cold to go outside and stir up trouble!  ;D

Here is a shot from another angle…you can see Steve’s Music in the background behind the burned out police car…

Hey…any friends out there in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) wanna buy a mint condition 2010 SG Standard for cheap?  Well I gots one and I gots to sell* it!  :D

Check out the ad here:  http://toronto.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-musical-instruments-guitars-2010-Gibson-SG-Standard-mint-condition-W0QQAdIdZ416692842

I don’t want to have to ship it, so unfortunately I can only do business with you if you are in the GTA.  Luckily for me there are 5 to 7 million people in the GTA, and ONE of them has to want this guitar…right??  :D

* the reason I am selling this guitar will appear in a future blog posts over the next few days…I am SO EXCITED to show you the newest toy…!  ;D

Wow…Thanks everyone for the responses re: expensive strings.  Here’s a recap of the comments I received so far via “ask” for the benefit of those who cannot look in my inbox.  And seriously I hope that means ALL of you!  ;D

My response:  .012s???  Wow…you are brave!  

At one point during my “gigging” days I read somewhere that SRV used .013s and so I tried to gradually work my way up to them…I was using .010s at the time so I switched to 11’s…played those for about a month, and then moved up to .012s.  

Then I had a stretch where we played something like 23 nights in a row without a break. And I swear by about night 10 my fingertips were in AGONY!  Every bend was a new lesson in pain!  I suppose if I had a night or two off my fingers could have calloused up enough…but with no break for over three weeks I had to switch back to .010s!

Now I use .010s on everything except my semi-hollows (ES-330 & Casino) where I use .011s…  :D 

My response:  Ok…our good friends at Google tell me the Aussie dollar and the Canadian dollar are roughly equivalent ($1 = $1).  The US dollar is a little bit less but close enough for the purposes of this comparison.  I find two interesting things in your comment:

1. $12 is pretty expensive!  A pack of EB Slinkys or Super Slinkys here in Canada costs no more than 5 dollars.   If you want to take advantage of the lower price on strings in Canada, you should consider a move to British Columbia…either Vancouver or Whistler.  You could buy cheap stirngs and still be no more than a 36 hour flight from Oz! ;)  Actually if you moved to Whistler, I think you’d find that a VERY high percentage of the population there are ex-pat Aussies!  I believe they built a pipeline to pump in all the Fosters that is required on a daily basis!  :D  Here is a little comedy piece from CBC Radio that pokes fun at all the Aussies living in Whistler.  The bit starts at about 1:15.  :D  http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/This+Is+That/Season+1/ID/1536193012/?sort=MostPopular
2. I am SO glad to hear someone else besides me got dirty finger tips form Ernie Ball strings.  I thought I was going mad there for a minute!  :D

Check out this gorgeous headstock inlay from Larrivée Guitars.

Jean Larrivée started making guitars in my current city (Toronto) in 1968. Later he moved to Victoria, British Columbia on the West Coast of Canada, and even later to Vancouver (a city I called home before Toronto, and site of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games).  His guitars are now also made in California. 

http://www.larrivee.com/features/history.php

I only have 2 acoustic guitars but one of those is a Larrivée.  It’s a D-05 and it’s gorgeous!  I do want something smaller however, so I currently have my eyes open for a Larrivée P-05 or P-09.  If I found one out there I would buy it on the spot!  

I am going to take some shots of my Larrivée tonight and post them…  :D

(Source: guitarlust)

2010 SG Standard by Gibson, strap by Jaykco (http://www.jaykco.com).

Toronto, Canada, Feb 5, 2012. 

PS: now that I see these three photos together, I notice that the colour of the guitar looks significantly different in Pic #3.  This was because even though the guitar is sitting in the same spot in all the shots, the first two were taken at night with a halogen lamp shining on it, and the third was taken the next day in ambient sunlight.  There you go.  Just in case you were wondering! 

tbdseventythree:

Still looking for a Fender Custom Shop Time Machine 1963 Stratocaster NOS in Olympic White. Haven’t been able to find one yet but haven’t given up as the web is a powerful thing. They stopped building this model last year.

Ooooh…so close!

I have a 2010 Time Machine ‘63 Strat I would like to sell.  Although mine is black instead of Olympic white…and it’s a relic instead of NOS!  Damn!

Oh well…maybe next time!  Here are some shots of it in B&W:  http://tumblr.com/ZPEQUxFXVhca

This is the “other” Les Paul in my life.  It’s a 2010 Traditional Gold Top bought new at Steve’s Music in Toronto, Canada in November 2010.  

After the floods in Nashville in early 2010, production was interrupted and it was very hard to find Les Pauls up here in Canada! I always wanted a Gold Top and because of the production issues, I waited about 6 months to find one.  Then in Novemebr some “Traditionals” started showing up in stores, and I jumped on the first one I found.  The “Traditional” is one step below the “Standard”…not weight relieved (much to my chagrin!) and the regular tuners and jack (as opposed to locking on the “Standards” starting in 2008.  

This is truly one of the most Beautiful guitars in my collection, and yet I don’t play it very much…mostly becasue it weighs an incredible 9.5 lbs!  Yikes! That kind of weight can give a guy back problems!  In retrospect, I should have waited and bought a Standard!  But at least this one is still visually stunning…and even though I hate the weight, I still like the way it looks…  :D

Toronto, Canada, January 14, 2011. 

Here is a guitar I don’t photograph that often…it’s my 2010 Gibson SG Standard.

At the moment I am sitting down and actually playing this very guitar in a hotel room in downtown Toronto and I am looking out over a foggy Lake Ontario from the 20th floor, but this photo was taken way back in March of 2011 in my kitchen.  As you can see by my last few posts I am cleaning up my old image files…I have filled my hard drives and need to make space, so I am coming across all the photos from before I was Tumblr-er. 

Toronto, Canada, December 6, 2011.

Nature morte avec Les Paul et Mack Gem, Toronto, Canada, samedi le 29 octobre, 2011.

Still life with Les Paul and Mack Gem, Toronto Canada, Saturday, October 29, 2011.

(PS: the little metal box beside the Gem is a hand built 0.5 watt amplifier called the “Li’l Blastard” and available form The Guitar Shop, Mississauga (15km from downtown Toronto) http://www.theguitarshop.ca/)

Mack Gem: http://www.mackamps.com/gem-head-combo/

This morning’s photo is from my trip to France in October 2010.  I was in the old city of Lyon just wandering around with my friend (probably looking for a place to have lunch or get a drink!) when we saw this shop.  

Since it was Sunday the shop was closed, otherwise I would have bought this as a souvenir!  It’s a miniature replica of Jimi Hendrix’s Monterey Stratocaster - the one he famously set on fire!  It was about 3 or 4 inches tall.  I would have also probably bought the Hofner “Paul” bass and the Gold Top Les Paul in the background…so I guess it was actually a good thing the store was closed!  :D

Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, October 3, 2010.