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Guitar Equipment

Misc Electric Guitar Bits circa 1980

BC Rich Bich advert 1979.  Just in case you weren’t sure what the shape of the instrument is intended to mimic.  

Doing some PD dot com housecleaning today and I came across all of these lil’ orphan-ads for random bits of circa ’80 guitar technology.  Happy Friday.

Joe Perry promotes Bill Lawrence pickups circa 1981.  This would have been during the JOE PERRY PROJECT era.  I have never heard passive pickups with more output than Bills.

Not so much an electric-guitar ad but rather an anti-electric guitar ad.  Guild Dreadnought circa 1980.

Hohner electric guitars circa 1979.  I am guessing that these are Asian-made instruments but I can’t say for sure… that Epiphone-Wilshire-esque thing on the left is pretty intriguing…

Ovation Deacon…

…and Viper circa 1979.

Gibson RD, ES, and Les Paul ‘Artist’ lineup of 1979.  These instruments had active electronics, including an on-board compressor.

2 replies on “Misc Electric Guitar Bits circa 1980”

The only Hohner guitar you can sell any more is the Tele copy, and only because Prince used them. US made Rich Bichs (and Mockingbirds and whatever) are worth something if they are the natural wood pre-headbanger style.

I once cleared a warehouse of pawn shop items out. After a couple of dealers were allowed to cherrypick the precious metals, gemstones and high value stuff, everything else-literally twenty tons of stereo equipment, tools, guns, musical instruments, fishing tackle, baseball bats and gloves, everything, went into a leased SSI Shredder. Must have been a hundred guitars. They decided to take a tax writeoff and did not want any liability for stolen property, ATF or any other issues.

There were an awful lot of these offbrand seventies and eighties guitars in that pile.

The only thing I was sad to have to throw in there was an old Leslie-a single rotor model in beautiful shape. That and a old Hewlett Packard oscilloscope in perfect shape. But since some idiot would have stripped it for the tubes anyway….

I had that Epiphone Wilshire-esque guitar shown on the left of that Hohner catalog. One of my biggest regrets- I’ve never seen another one in person or for sale anywhere online. In fact the only record you can really find of it this picture of the catalog. It was an extremely high quality Japanese build with a carved top, ebony fretboard, leopard tortoise binding and pickguard. Two mini humbucker pickups. As refined as any guitar I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned plenty of high end guitars.

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