Hey folks, ain't been around in quite awhile. I figured I could get the real lowdown here on Kelton Swade.
I had a friend of mine telling me that this cat made some awesome sounding & playing guitars...I've also ran across quite a bit of negative talk around...he's not very well liked in the tdpri forum for whatever reason...
...but I got a real hankering to get my hands on one of these...
These are new guitars, made to look old and beat-up.
For folks who didn't buy one new 50 years ago, or are too young to have bought one, or don't have $ to buy a genuine old used (and abused) instrument.
I've just decided to start a new business, called "Tele-Wacker". Send me your newish Teles and I'll rough 'em up for you at a fraction of what these guys charge. Shall we say $200 each (cigarette burns included upon request; chemical treatment extra)?
I know some of you are laughing but you do realize that there is a HUGE market for pre-washed and even pre-torn jeans, and that people pay big bucks to buy them instead of waiting around for time to take its toll on them. Same thing with Teles. I can get the guitar back to you postage paid and fully wacked within 1 week, guaranteed.
We also offer overnight service for you ladies who would like to surprise your Tele-playing boyfriend or hubby in time for some special gig, birthday, or other special occasion. Imagine his surprise and delight when he opens his case at the gig and discovers that you've had his Tele Wacked out and it now has that unique vintage look he has always coveted, including dings, buckle rash, cigarette burns, and the whole nine yards! I'll bet he will hardly be able to contain his excitement. (Try some soft light and candles to surprise him when he gets home from the gig!)
Jimbeau forgot to mention that for you ladies who take your husbands tele for a beatin', the guitar company will have a divorce lawyer on hand at your expense.
If it plays and sounds a lot better, can we hear this difference immediately and easily on a recording? Or...is this another one of those "Well, you can only hear the difference if you're actually playing it" kind of things?
This is just plain weird.Not only are the six-string manufacturers making spot-on replicas of sixty-year-old instruments,they offer (for a hefty premium) the option of having the replica carefully beat up to look as though it actually were sixty years old.The market for relics is so hot that the boutique guys do it too.
As a naturally relic-ed person,I remember very clearly that the appeal of Fender six-strings was that they looked as modern as the Jetsons,and the only downside was that the finishes would crack/dent/chip/wear off if you looked at them sideways and a maple fretboard would sprout unsightly fingermarks like so many toadstools if you even THOUGHT about playing it.Players griped loud and long about both those shortcomings and a lot of nearly new guitars got aftermarket and factory refins within a few months of purchase.In the late '50s there was so much of it that the Fender factory published the refinishing option on the price list-$80 for body and neck.They wanted as-new appearance and that was that.
Now the whole business is turned on its head.It's as if in 1959 the hottest selling musical instrument was a RI Gibson harp guitar and every hot-rodder's garage sheltered a brand-new hand-built and painstakingly hand-aged Oldsmobile curved-dash runabout.
It's become just another reenactment/costume party, no different than the Civil War guys or the Society for Creative Anachronism, Dungeons and Dragons... except these are for fat old white guys pretending to be deep South roadhouse bluesmen, with all the soulful mojo and "authenticity" of a six-year-old girl in a fairy princess costume with her twinkle wand.
It doesn't matter a bit what I think about the entertainment designed for the 50% of the people in the "educated world" with IQ's of 100 or less, but it is perturbing to see the smart people pandering to moron culture, I guess for fear of being judged "uncool." Is there any point to this? -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEmvBdRL ... re=related
There is so MUCH great music out there, it's just tiring to me to hear the pentatonic scale bent up and down, up and down. I was tired of it in 1975!
