The One(s) That Got Away

[bagman67]

Lately there have been great threads on first amps and first electric guitars. How about the piece of gear you no longer have, and look back on with sincere fondness and regret for having let it go?

My two biggies:

1. I once owned a gorgeous Yamaha SA2100 semi-hollow, blonde with gold appointments, loud as hell, silky smooth, and far more guitar than I could really make the most of at my stage of development then. I had it for about 4 years and then ultimately sold it so I could pay tuition without taking out a loan. I miss that guitar. A lot. I bought it used for $500 in 1989 - a pretty good deal for the time - and they're going for four or five times that now. I'll likely never own another unless I win a lottery. Here's a photo from Reverb, including the teddy-bear-brown-lined case.

No. 2. is the Yamaha T50C amp I got when I graduated from college (see above for how I paid for school). Some of you will recall this was a sort of poor-man's Soldano combo. Mike Soldano designed these amps for Yamaha in 1989 or 90, probably to get some capital to roll into his own boutique amp business. It was my first tube amp and I just loved that thing. This was the amp that taught me how to play the amp as an instrument instead of just a noisemaker.

When Marriage 1.0 went south, I had to sell a bunch of gear, including this amp, to keep the light on - and the attempts I have made to replace it have been unsatisfactory. I got another T50C a few years later that just didn't have the same guts; sold it after two years and got a T100C that was (a) too damn heavy and (b) too damn loud; and now I'm bereft. There's a dark part of my brain where I fantasize about paying someone (Hi, @mayfly !) to build one from its schematic, which is available online. But that's still a lot of shekels, and I'm still raising a family. Sigh.

Let's hear your tales of woe and longing. Photos appreciated.

Bagman

 

[NedRyerson]

I acquired a blue guitar -- don't remember if it was a Jackson or Ibanez, but it was something along that "metal super-Strat" line. It was autographed by all the members of Savatage.

So we're already talking niche-within-a-niche here

This was also about 30 some odd years ago, so no pics available.

The guitar was listed for really cheap because apart from the autographs, it was in rough shape. All the expected problems: corroded screws, rust spots, plastic pickup rings that were cracked and missing sections, shoddy wiring, etc. I bought it and spent some significant time reconditioning it, replacing worn out parts, redoing the wiring, and just generally getting it back into shape. Then I applied a protective top coat to seal in the signatures.

Then I listed it for sale for 3x what I spent on it. It miraculously sold. But then I immediately had seller's regret.

Savatage is one of my favorite bands and had I known then that they'd go into indefinite hiatus soon after the meteoric rise and success of TSO, I'd have held onto that guitar. And then about a year and a half ago, band leader Jon Oliva made the announcement that they're going to do one last album as a farewell and possibly tour on it (yay!), then he cracked his spine (boo!), then he got diagnosed with MS and will be sitting out their Monsters of Rock show in Brazil (BOO!), and maybe (maybe not) they'll play somewhere in the US before finally saying "good-bye" (???)....

So I have no idea if I'll ever get that last chance to see Savatage again, which makes the memory of selling that guitar even more bitter.

While parts of "Lost Christmas Eve," TSO's 3rd album in the Christmas series, along with their non-Christmas album, "Night Castle" were clear love letters to their legacy as Savatage, it's not the same. It's still not Savatage.

The other regrets, I've since made up for.

Again in the '90s, I stumbled across a boutique brand at Guitar Center. Long story short because I've talked about my basses here before, it's the Conklin Groove Tools series. I saw the red GT-4 at GC, missed out on it, found it online again later, bought it, then bought another GT-4 so I could have one tuned to E-standard and one tuned to D-standard. Then I thought that was stupid, so I sold both and replaced it with one 5-string Conklin GT-5 instead. Still have that one to this day, 25+ years later.

Then I missed having a 4-string bass, so I grabbed another GT-4. So I'm back to having two Conklin basses again like I did 30 years ago, but now with one extra string!

 

[mrpinter]

I have a lot of "shouldn't have sold" items I let go of when I was younger and foolisher (at least younger ). In the nineties I owned and ran a boutique advertising and design agency, and was first to do any ads for Matchless when they were also just getting started. I created their ads through a good part of that decade, and ended up with a couple of amps and a Hotbox. The amps were a 1x12 Lightning and a 1x12 Chieftain. Sadly, I sold all of them. I got good money for them, but still...

Another big "shouldn't have" regret is selling my final prototype Novax Fanned Fret Expression series guitar. I'd traded Ralph Novak for designing and handling the printing of a product brochure he needed. That was a sweet guitar. That it was a final prototype makes it even worse.

 

[mayfly]

Lately there have been great threads on first amps and first electric guitars. How about the piece of gear you no longer have, and look back on with sincere fondness and regret for having let it go?

My two biggies:

1. I once owned a gorgeous Yamaha SA2100 semi-hollow, blonde with gold appointments, loud as hell, silky smooth, and far more guitar than I could really make the most of at my stage of development then. I had it for about 4 years and then ultimately sold it so I could pay tuition without taking out a loan. I miss that guitar. A lot. I bought it used for $500 in 1989 - a pretty good deal for the time - and they're going for four or five times that now. I'll likely never own another unless I win a lottery. Here's a photo from Reverb, including the teddy-bear-brown-lined case.

No. 2. is the Yamaha T50C amp I got when I graduated from college (see above for how I paid for school). Some of you will recall this was a sort of poor-man's Soldano combo. Mike Soldano designed these amps for Yamaha in 1989 or 90, probably to get some capital to roll into his own boutique amp business. It was my first tube amp and I just loved that thing. This was the amp that taught me how to play the amp as an instrument instead of just a noisemaker.

When Marriage 1.0 went south, I had to sell a bunch of gear, including this amp, to keep the light on - and the attempts I have made to replace it have been unsatisfactory. I got another T50C a few years later that just didn't have the same guts; sold it after two years and got a T100C that was (a) too damn heavy and (b) too damn loud; and now I'm bereft. There's a dark part of my brain where I fantasize about paying someone (Hi, @mayfly !) to build one from its schematic, which is available online. But that's still a lot of shekels, and I'm still raising a family. Sigh.

Let's hear your tales of woe and longing. Photos appreciated.

Bagman

Hey! If you really want that amp, I'll do it!

In other news, the guitar I wish I didn't get rid of was a Rickenbacker 620 in fireglow. Looked much like this one held by some dude: