Rare Vintage Guitars, Custom Gibsons & A Ramones Cover! - CME Variety Show Episode 2

Transcription:

In this episode, we've got some very cool guitars. We always have cool guitars, of course, uh, but we're going to start off with a very cool Gretsch Roundup guitar. Uh, I've never seen one. I may never see one again. That might be the case for you as well. Uh, also, we've got some very cool Gibson Custom Shop Koa guitars—wonderful looking guitars, big fan of them. We've also got a very cool Firebird, one of the best looking Firebirds. How good does that look? Uh, it's still here as of right now. And also, we've got a full band performance uh with some very cool Gretsch guitars as well. So, keep an eye out for that.

So, we're going to kick things off. Uh, Daniel Escauriza is going to tell us all about the very cool Gretsch, and we're going to do it in here.

Hi folks, we are in the vault here at Chicago Music Exchange. We've got a very rare guitar, and we've got a vintage man over here as well. Right? A vintage man. That's what I am. That's quite—I'm the Vintage Man. It is vintage, and you, you're not wrong. I'm not wrong. Let me tell you, look at look at all this white hair right here. You're not old. You're not as old as this. I am not as old as this, no. Um, are you as cool as this? I am definitely not as cool as this. Very few things are as cool as a Gretsch Roundup. Um, 6130 is the model. Every Gretsch has, has a, a, a number model followed by a name of some kind, right? So, okay, 6120, 61—6130, yeah, Roundup. Now, I've never seen one of these. I have. Let's see, I have seen—I've seen more than this, but we have had four in the past 16 years. It's a very rare guitar. Yeah, very, very rare. And, um, it's, it's, it's stunning just to look at. I mean, where do you start with this? Honestly, they really, they set out to make something that was going to be showstopping for sure. And uh they leaned real heavy into the Western motif to achieve that, and they definitely did. Uh, and if you think about it, so this, this model was introduced in 1954, and think about what else was available at the time, right? You have Tele, yeah, right, um, as far as solid body type guitars, right? Right, uh, and I say solid body type because I personally hesitate calling this a solid body, even though it is described as a solid body in catalogs and whatnot. They're so heavily chambered inside. I mean, these electronics, you know, um, have such big chambers that it's essentially somebody could argue that it's a semi-hollow. But whatever, let's call it a solid body guitar. There was a Telecaster, and in '54 was the first year for the Strat—Strat, yeah. So, you have those two guitars, which are obviously beautiful, you know. I'm a Tele person. I love Strats. But then you got this thing, which is just like, "Whoa!" And of course, the Les Paul—Les Paul Gold Top at the time—but all relatively spartan looking instruments compared to this very ornate and, you know, yeah. Well, I was going to say, so obviously at that year, so, like you said, you got the Strat and the Tele. I mean, the Tele fairly simple in its looks, you know. That was part of it. The Strat somewhat as well, a little bit fancy, you could take. But this—there's so much going on here. Was that standard on all of them to come with all these appointments? Um, the Roundups were all—yes, were all basically—they all had these general appointments. Of course, there were other—'cause this, this is essentially—it's a Dual Jet but wearing a, you know, a cowboy tuxedo. Yeah, exactly.

It's a beautiful guitar. I mean, I love the, uh, kind of belt buckle down here. So, did you know—go on—that that is not just a belt buckle looking thing. That is an actual belt buckle, right? Yeah. So, Gretsch uh bought these belts from a company called—I can't remember the name of the company right now. I can't believe I can't remember, but it's like starts with a V. Vco? No, not Vco. Uh, I can't remember. Anyway, it's a—it's you could go to a department store and buy these belts. Yeah. And so, they put the belt—they, they attached the belt buckle to their beautiful G-branded tailpiece. And guess what they did with the actual belt part? No. It rounded it. Oh wow! So, instead of throwing the leather away, they were like, "Huh, let's make a channel across the entire edge of the body." They glued the belt and attached it with those tacks. Those tacks are actually the exact same tacks that they had been using for—actually, I think a couple decades before that—to put the corners or to, to to put down the leather on amplifiers. Oh wow! And also, one thing you got to remember, which I have always found so interesting, Gretsch was not just famous for their guitars. They're actually more famous for their drums before that. They're very famous for their Round Badge drums, right? It's kind of a series of their drums, an era of their drums that were, are really coveted. The badge itself on some of these drums was attached to the shell with these exact same thumbtacks. So, it's just these, these companies finding multiple uses for these materials. Yeah. Oh, it's incredible, all the little bits. Yeah, lots of little, um, yeah, lots of little details. In fact, speaking of details, one thing that's worth mentioning about these guitars—obviously, the G brand is literally branded on there like cattle, right? That's the whole theme there. Uh, this one, somebody decided to kind of touch up with black paint in some spots because it was, uh, it wasn't as dark as other places. So, that's one of the few modifications this has had other than the neck reset, which makes it super playable. It was released as a Pine Top guitar. So, the top was typically pine, and you know how sometimes, for example, with Gibson, a lot of their instruments that they painted a solid color, yeah, they ended up being solid colors because they had some kind of imperfection in the wood, some kind of knot or some kind of streak or something like that, right? Um, and they only reserve natural for their most perfect woods. Yeah, yeah. Well, with this, it was quite the opposite. Some of the most sought-after versions of this guitar are the pine tops that have big knots on them, like literally where branches used to be on the tree. And the more knots—there's two-knot versions, there's four knots, and, and they're more sought after. They're more sought after. Yeah. Some of them have not—sorry, Naughty Pine overlays on the headstock that can be super, really naughty. Yeah. Now, in terms of how many of these were made, then, I don't have an exact number, unfortunately, but, um, I've read in a couple different sources that, especially the first initial run, was only 50 guitars. But that was early on. I mean, this, this model existed—I was introduced in '54, and it was officially phased out, um, in '60—1960. But already for a couple years before '60, they already started dropping it from the catalogs. It wasn't really something that was talked about very much. They were still in production, but they weren't advertised very much. Well, well, yeah, I mean, were they—were they expensive for the time? Great question. Very expensive for the time. Oh, they were. Yes. Uh, Tele was less than half the price or maybe roughly half the price. This, when it, when it was introduced in '54, this was a $300 guitar, which was significantly more than a Strat, almost double what a Tele was. Yeah. So, it was definitely a, uh, something to aspire to for a lot of people for back then, for sure. Yeah.

"Thanks, Daniel, wonderful info on that crazy cool guitar! I did have a cast in that video we shot that's gone, and also the guitar has gone as well, I'm afraid. I'm actually off to have a go with this Firebird here. It's still here currently, so I'm going to check it out. Lovely '64 Firebird, see how it feels, see how it plays.

So, wonderful Firebird! I really like that. You know what? That's probably my personal favorite Firebird that I've played in my time here at the shop, which means it's the best Firebird I've ever played, to be quite honest. It's still here as of now, so you've got to be quick. You've got to come get it! I mean, it just looks amazing. Now, from that, we're going to go to something brand new. We're going to chat with David A. about some Gibson Custom Shop Koa guitars.

We... I've got some special guitars here. I mean, these are quite remarkable. What have we got? Last year, I went to the Custom Shop, and I walk in, and they have the conference room where we normally go and handpick woods. You know, I didn't get invited, by the way. I know a guy. Yeah, I walk in, and to my left, there's like a wall of Koa, just a—which I've never seen before. We did a '58 VOS Koa Les Paul, which is what this guy is. We did a '59 gloss Les Paul. Some people like gloss, some people don't like VOS. We did a Special, which you can see here. Cool. We have in the works a '54 Les Paul coming. We've done a '61 SG, which we haven't seen yet. Those are coming: '61, '63, '64 SG. And for you shredders out there, Les Paul Access Koa Top Gibson tone machine! Oh yeah, blow your minds! Oh, ex—we got SGs that are going to look like this, dude! We got so much stuff. I'm not sure I've seen an SG that looks—there have I? I have never seen one in Koa, and I'm excited to see that. Jonathan, our store manager, the SG fishin'—I think he was born with an SG, like an SG came in his hands and a Marshall just rocking, and then an ACDC t-shirt. That was it. It worked—really works with all of us to craft those SGs. So, I'm really excited to see them. They're going to be hella rare, and I know they're going to be super cool. So, wait, when are they expected to be here? Whenever the tone gods build them, right? Fair enough. Yeah, so it could be a while. It could be, but, you know, they've been—we've been getting these in a pretty good clip.

Right, so you mentioned earlier about going down to Gibson. Is that something you do a lot? Or we do a lot? It's something that we—it's something that—it's something that we do quite a bit, like two to three times a year. I'm actually going in a few weeks. Oh, okay, for my third trip this year. You can simply place orders with the catalog and just say, you know, 'Send us x amount of '59s' or whatever the thing is. But for us, which we've done for many, many years, we want to make these guitars as unique to us as possible. So, part of that process is choosing the woods, which is just a normal part of the process. But in that process, I walked in and saw all this wood, so then we took all that, you know? So, that's why it's important to be there, you know, and to actually see what's going on and talk to your reps and get their ideas and say, 'Hey, you know what do you think if we pair this together with that?' 'Ah, that's...' or 'Oh my gosh, that's a great idea!' Yeah. The other part of it is, you know, the pickups are unique to us. These are underwound potted Custom Buckers. So, they're underwound roughly 10 to 15% Alnico 3 pickups, but you can only get them in our Les Pauls. And I'm going to tell you this as passionately as I possibly can: I'm not just saying this. I love these pickups. I've experimented with other pickups, many other builders, all fantastic. But when I've done shootouts, these have always won, and I'm not the only one who thought that. We have a lot of artists on the road with these guitars for a reason, because these pickups are just incredible. They're super dynamic, a lot of headroom. They do a lot, and they cover a lot of bases. I was going to say—now forgive my naivety—but why would you want them slightly underwound? Is it, like you said, the clarity and to cut through or something like that? Or what? Basically, what we were trying to achieve is the sound of bursts that we have owned in the past. Okay, and through a bunch of trial and error, we decided on magnets and then we decided on a wind. It's not—you know, really, because these are, you know, wound, not all of them will be precisely the same. But it's the same thing with PAFs. Those were certainly never the same, because those were hand, and, you know, there were variances, plus materials were different, of course. But the goal is to get as close to those old pickups as we possibly can. We'll never recreate a PAF. No one ever will. Yeah, but you can definitely try. Yeah, yeah.

So, it seems like you had the run-of-the-mill at the Custom Shop. Is that essentially like you can build whatever you want, like customers can? They do? Yeah, totally, through the Made to Measure program, M2M, if you ever see that, Made to Measure. So, yeah, it's like—the thing I love about Custom Shop is, sky's the limit. There's no, you know, menu per se. So, what I always tell customers is, 'Hey, send me pictures of something that you like. Send me pictures of something you've seen. Give me ideas of a dream you have in your mind about a configuration, and we'll see if we can get it done.' Because, like, 10 out of nine out of 10 times, Custom Shop can get it done. Some things engineering cannot do, but if they can, they will. So, it really is sky's the limit. Like, seriously, if you have a dream that you've been wanting to build, let me know. I build a Custom Shop all the time. I'm very familiar with Made to Measure. I mean, I don't think it's a difficult process. They actually make it quite easy. So, and it's a fun process, and it's a unique guitar that only you have. But I mean, to be able to build your dream guitar, yeah, dude, it's so sweet! I mean, that's crazy, dude. What if you wanted, like, 'I want a Les Paul Access Blueberry Burst Koa Top with jumbo frets and whatever pickups and Grovers and, you know, whatever.' I mean, that'd be quite a mad-looking guitar, but if that's what you want, hey, listen, man, you know, if you got—you got those potbelly gigs, yeah, if you feel like you're not shredding fast enough, you're losing the lunch crowd because you're going too slow, you need to go faster, it maybe you just need some different to get 'em on it, those...

And then we have a Les Paul ESP Special, not to be confused with the Adidas, which we both love quite a bit. Hey, hey girl! So, shout out D.A., always fun doing a video together. Those guitars that we spoke about, they're actually sold. But we are going to have some more on the way, so make sure you check the CME website. Like I said, we're going to have some more, and you can see them. They all look great. I mean, how good does this look? What a wonderful guitar. Anyway, we're going to finish it off with a full band song here at the shop, and it's going to be 'Rockaway Beach.' So, check it out. Let us know what you think, and Episode 3 will be coming up—well, ASAP. But let us know what you'd like to see in it. Until next time, thank you as always, folks. See you."