SFIV1967
Venerated Member
How old is that Shergold Modulator? Second half 70ties ? (still with the truss rod adjustable from the body side)
Ralf
Ralf
Mystery Guitar Game - Tales from the Closet
- Thread starter houseisland
- Start date
Zelja
Senior Member
Correct Ralf- a 1977! Yes adjustable from the body once you remove a smaller plate underneath the main neck plate: http://www.shergold.co.uk/care.html
I'm surprised you guys know about these guitars!
I'm surprised you guys know about these guitars!
houseisland
Member
I am beginning to be not surprised at all. LOL.
Do we get an educational critique of the Shergold? Or an interesting story?
Zelja
Senior Member
Well I bought the guitar in 1988 I think, from a strange little store which although not a pawn shop per se, certainly had that feel - lots of strange items & fair bit of musical instruments, especially violins, cellos etc.
The guitar ended up being my main guitar for the next 15 years, supplanting an Ibanez Blazer & a '66 SG Special as well as warding off the challenges of an '81 Rickenbacker 330 & a '74 Gretsch Rocjet. I mainly used the bridge pickup coil split & sometimes a combo of that and the neck PU out of phase which gave almost an acoustic sound. I found the full pickups to have too much girth but perhaps, in hindsight, I could have used the tone controls on the amp a bit more...
I have used it on a few recordings including a full album. One sound engineer loved it straight to the desk & another (quite well known one here) really liked it & wanted to buy it off me. He usually likes jazzmasters & liked the "blurry" sound of the Shergold as a counterpoint. I have since installed filtertron pickups in specially made surrounds (nothing is standard on this guitar!!). The very cool feature which gives the "Modulator" its name is the tone control modules that you can exchange out of the guitar. I have Module 1 (Basic), Module 4 (Stereo) & Module 5 (Recording). See this link for explanations: http://www.shergold.co.uk/modules.html
Main problem is that it took me so long to realise I like wider necks & the neck on the Shergold is skinny - less than 1 5/8". I don't play it much now as I have discovered Guilds (& a few others) & due to teh skinny neck but I ma finding it difficult to part with as well.
houseisland
Member
Thanks for sharing. A very unusual and interesting guitar.
houseisland
Member
OK. If nobody else is going to have a go.....
Walter, Ralf and Hans, try this one on for size.
Walter, Ralf and Hans, try this one on for size.
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SFIV1967
Venerated Member
That's not easy. It's obviously some kind of Gibson Flying V Melody Maker clone I'd say.
The special things I see are one pickup, no pickguard, the one knob sits pretty low next to the bridge and the guitar has a maple neck without blue lacquer.
And the body seems to be very small, as the bridge sits very close to the edge and there is not much room right of the pickup.
I give up...
Ralf
The special things I see are one pickup, no pickguard, the one knob sits pretty low next to the bridge and the guitar has a maple neck without blue lacquer.
And the body seems to be very small, as the bridge sits very close to the edge and there is not much room right of the pickup.
I give up...
Ralf
houseisland
Member
Good.
You are closer than you think. But clones don't come with 5 year warranties.
19" scale length. Has to be tuned to G, C, F, A+/B-, D, G.
Bridge and machine heads are not original - interesting or funny story here.
Ahhh! That's not like you.
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SFIV1967
Venerated Member
Well, there are many custom makers or small makers who offer "clones" and still give warranty, so I was not thinking any Chinese copy here. But I still don't have any idea. Well, let's see if your additional hints help.
Ralf
SFIV1967
Venerated Member
O.k., as I am not a Gibson expert at all, that was really difficult but I think I found it: "Gibson Maestro Roadie Mini V"
I still don't know when that Roadie version was made, the modern version (without the Roadie TRC) seems to be this: http://www.gibson.com/en-us/divisions/maestro/electrics/mini-v/
That was a good one!
And it's really tiny!
Ralf
I still don't know when that Roadie version was made, the modern version (without the Roadie TRC) seems to be this: http://www.gibson.com/en-us/divisions/maestro/electrics/mini-v/
That was a good one!
And it's really tiny!
Ralf
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hansmoust
Enlightened Member
That's obviously something that was made in the Far East. I know that Epiphone did something like that a little over 5 years ago. It is probably one of those.
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
houseisland
Member
Damn! Not exactly right but right enough. It is a Maestro Mini-V by Gibson. No Roadie designation.
I like this Youtube clip by the same guitarist better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uNpl5p90Yo
And formerly there was another clip floating around by a guy with some serious chops both as a guitarist and as a luthier doing some serious shredding on a yellow Mini-V.
OK so you might well ask why I mention the luthier aspect in the sentence above. Or alternatively, you might suspect my sanity in having bought such a thing (yes, it is mine).
Well .... addressing the second point fist, I must confess that I am sometimes given to very impulsive behavior. I saw the Mini-V in a discount/liquidator's shop and just had to have it; it was so totally absurd. And it was not expensive. And there was a small battery operated amp, unfortunately with no Gibson badging, which as it turns out has two settings - terrible sounding and even more terrible sounding. Well, it seemed like a good deal at the time
The box the guitar came in was sealed, and I did not open it until I got home. My hands shaking with anticipation, I removed the little monster from its box and checked it out. It was immediately apparent that there was something very wrong, very very wrong. It was not tunable. The bridge posts were more than 1/4" sharp of where they should be, and they were too close together. The bridge was jammed in between them so hard that I could not raise or lower the action or turn the compensation screws without risking stripping them. Also the plastic nut was glued on crooked. Also the tuners would not hold tension. I would tune them to pitch G, C, F, A+, D, G, and they would randomly start detuning, some little by little, some all at once.
OK, now let's go into a German tabloid newspaper subjunctive mood kind of groove here, where everything is presented in a grammatical form that indicates that the denotative content of the text is contrary to fact - I mean like none of the following is true, K?
If there were an impulsive kind of guy who might have bought such a guitar as the one mentioned above, one that might have been badged with the name of a major American guitar manufacturer who might have offered a 5 year warranty, this hypothetical impulsive guy might have duly registered the hypothetical guitar with the hypothetical manufacturer and then contacted their hypothetical technical support to put in a warranty claim in which the hypothetical impulsive guy listed all the hypothetical problems with the hypothetical guitar. An then the hypothetical tech support people might have written back to the hypothetical guy telling him to take the hypothetical guitar back to the hypothetical shop and exchange it for a new one. Now if this hypothetical guy were to have followed this advice, he probably would have found that the next guitar was exactly the same, but with the hypothetical nut glued on a little straighter, but only a little. He might then have registered this new hypothetical guitar with the hypothetical manufacturer and made a new hypothetical warranty claim. The hypothetical guy might have a long chain of humorous email correspondence between the hypothetical manufacturer's hypothetical tech support people and himself which might grow progressively more bizarre as it proceeds until the hypothetical tech support people quit responding to his hypothetical email. And if such correspondence were to exist, which it doesn't of course, the hypothetical guy might be able to post it here, except that he might feel that the hypothetical tech support people were decent guys who might have been caught in an impossible situation created by hypothetical stupid and greedy suits in Marketing back at the hypothetical manufacturer's head office, and so the guy might not post such correspondence if it actually existed.
OK. What about the lutier part? Well, the hypothetical guy might have ordered a new bridge from StewMac and then gone up to his local music shop and bought a cheap set of Grover (edit: Schaller) knockoffs (and he might be sorry now that he was impulsive and impatient and did not go further afield looking for machines that matched the screw hole pattern on the hypothetical guitar's headstock). He might have cut a tapered maple shim to raise the hypothetical neck and change its angle to assist the new bridge with compensation issues and to deal with its higher profile than the old bridge. He might have had to take the output jack apart and resolder it and stick it back together using locktite so that it wouldn't keep falling apart. He might also have taken the original bridge posts and milled their diamter down where they contact the bridge so that height and compensation adjustments were possible. The sockets for the original posts might have been a different thread pitch than the posts for the new bridge, never mind that they might have been set too close together, and the hypothetical guy might have been terrified of pulling the sockets out of the body because the body might have been made of such cheap crappy plywood with huge voids in it (that guitar might actually have a sort of chambered sound) and might have splintered. The hypothetical guy might then tried to do a setup on the guitar only to discover that while there might have been an allen key for truss adjustment included with the case, errr box, candy, there might not have been an actual truss rod in the hypothetical neck. The hypothetical guy might have removed the hypothetical big name manufacturer badged truss rod cover only to find nothing. He might have taken an awl and poked around a bit, thinking that a wad of painters tape might have been lacquered over, and still might have found nothing. Anyway the hypothetical guy might have it reasonably playable now, but there might be some things that he should get around to such as replacing the nut, fixing the holes on the back of the head stock, dressing the frets, and setting the radius on the bridge to match the fretboard, but just between you and me, he might be more than just a little bit lazy.
And you might well ask, "Why bother?" And it might be answered that it is insanely fun to play this hypothetical little monster. And if one were to perform live, one might be able to bring the house down by indulging in absolutely shameless grandstanding with this hypothetical little beast.
If one were insane enough to want one, one should watch yard sales and garage sales. One might notice that many of them being offered on CL and EBay are in a convenient "Ooops, I lost the bridge" condition and that there there is a heavy focus on the big name manufacturer association. One might also notice that they might be very seriously over priced. One should probably not spend more than $20.
Now there might might be an issue with quality control or with 3rd party knock offs. One might note that some of these hypothetical guitars on Youtube do play in tune with their original bridges.
But there might also be something absolutely criminal here as well. This hypothetical instrument might have been intended for children. The hypothetical guy above might have cut himself at least once on poorly finished fret ends - not something to put in the hands of children. And there is no greater musical crime possible than to give an aspiring young musician an instrument that is completely unplayable. Shame on you hypothetical big name manufacturer. Shame. Greed and stupidity?
Well Hans, made might be far too polite a word for it.
Edit/Afterthought: The subtext of the hypothetical correspondence from the hypothetical tech support people might have been, "Read between the lines here. Get a refund. Take your money and run screaming."
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SFIV1967
Venerated Member
O.k., there was a 50/50 chance! :star: I thought since the tuners were already replaced it is maybe the older model (means the Roadie), as the new one (with triangular Gibson TRC) is on the Gibson webpage.
But I liked your long story! Amazing! The best part was about the Gibson TRC where there was nothing behind or below!
So maybe the older Roadie version was the better of the two?
Ralf
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houseisland
Member
Hah! There was a 33.33333333333 etc % chance of your being right. As Hans points out above this guitar was also badged as an Epiphone. You are just lucky. Well lucky and good, too good.
I don't know. The guy with the yellow Mini-V had to move his bridge posts, and this was a long time ago. I can't find his clip anymore. He had to chops to do this and refinish the old area to match the original colour and I seem to remember him talking about nut and fret work, as well. I don't remember him mentioning anything about truss rods. I have also seen clips of kids shredding with their Mini-Vs badly out of tune. Again there may be quality control issues - some production runs may be better than others - they may not all be made in the same Chinese factory. Or with anything Chinese, there may be pirated fakes floating about. I don't know. All the ones I have seen have problems, though. And it is highly suspicious that all the ones I have seen on CL here have been offered without bridges - "Ooops. I lost the bridge, but it's a Gibson! Pay me $75 (or more)" - and this without the amp, case/box candy, and original packaging.
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adorshki
Reverential Member
Made me think of Johnny Olenn in 1958's Born Reckless which I happened to stumble across over the weekend.
Found myself scratching my head and wondering "What the h-ll is that ?"
houseisland
Member
I suspect we have turned a corner here and gone down the Mystery Mandolin Game side street.
I think what we see there in the video is a Fender electric 4 string mandolin, a Mandocaster, produced from 1956 to 1976, ref: http://home.provide.net/~cfh/mando.html
This is quite a coincidence, your bringing this video forward, because one of things that I had thought about doing with the Mini-V was redoing it as a heavy metal octave mandolin or mandocello, but the scale length doesn't really suit either and the adding of two extra strings without a truss rod, along with the difficulty/impossibility of finding an electric mandolin bridge that would fit where there is scarcely enough room for the existing bridge kind of put paid to that idea - and I am lazy. :friendly_wink:
And lest anyone start dreaming: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1966-Fender-Mandocaster-Sunburst-FEE0653-electric-mandolin-/330735290360
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da5o9pW7XB4
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houseisland
Member
My sinuses are giving me hell from disturbing so many dust bunnies. Some one else have a go, please?
I cannot believe that at a site like this there are no embarrassing and/or interesting skeletons in other guitar closets.
I cannot believe that at a site like this there are no embarrassing and/or interesting skeletons in other guitar closets.
adorshki
Reverential Member
Bluesypicky bought a Les Paul.
Then he sold his Bluesbird.
I think it kinda knocked the wind out of us.
houseisland
Member
Well... his Les Paul isn't making an appearance it seems. So I will give this another shot.
Me with the mystery guitar last year.
This is cheating a little because I don't actually own this guitar. But some clues ....
There is a lovely hotel in the United States, OK, the western United States, OK OK, the pacific northwestern United State, where the porter looks at one and says, "Sir, you look as if you might play guitar."
One replies, "Indeed I do."
The porter says, "Let me get you a complementary guitar for you to enjoy during your stay with us." He then disappears and returns promptly with a case containing a quite lovely American-made instrument.
What is the guitar? Maker and series will have to do because I do not remember the model.
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adorshki
Reverential Member
I'm gonna say it's Zappa's "Mudshark" being performed on a Martin at the Edgewter Inn in Seattle.
Even if it's not any of the above it's a myth worth remembering.