Guitars... what you've got / what you want

for any fellow new yorkers in this thread: is there a place somewhere in this city that isn’t guitar center (or sam ash) that has a decent stock, or any stock at all, of new electric guitars? i know a million places to buy vintage. can’t find a single place to buy a new one that isn’t a corporate superstore.

I was going to say Matt umanov but it looks like it’s now a “pure barre” whatever that is

i don’t know what a pure barre is either, but the retail store closed five or six years ago :(

Probably a barre studio. Those popped up a lot in the 2010s whenever another business would move out. Same deal as Spirit Halloween, but for trendy exercise.

Matt Umanov Pure Barre

pure barre chords

haha

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr4XtVAM4hi/

This acrylic Teisco reissue is badass

wow that is something else

Looks great

I like the first comment

Trust me, I owned the heaviest acrylic guitar ever. 1st Gen BCRich Mockingbird Acrylic Ice. Very rare and beautiful but cam in at just about 29lbs.(For Gibson owners that's 3 LP's) Literally heavier than a SG Doubleneck. #HeavyMetalPlastic #chiropractichumor

for any fellow new yorkers in this thread: is there a place somewhere in this city that isn’t guitar center (or sam ash) that has a decent stock, or any stock at all, of new electric guitars? i know a million places to buy vintage. can’t find a single place to buy a new one that isn’t a corporate superstore.

― fact checking cuz, Saturday, 13 May 2023 23:27 (five days ago) link

Rudy's Soho?

I've only been to their suburban outpost, but the Soho location is bigger and they carry new Fender, Gibson, Guild, Reverend, Eastman, and various other brands.

thank you. hadn't thought of rudy's in years because their old 48th street spot was the kind of place you basically couldn't walk thru the front door without at least $10,000 in your pocket. but i should give 'em a shot.

I went to that soho location once about five years ago but couldn’t tell you much about it except that I think Rudy’s daughter is running the place.

I've met Rudy and the daughter at the Scarsdale shop (the D-55 I bought actually belonged to Rudy!). Rudy does seem to always be at Scarsdale so it may be his daughter running it.

I think the shop definitely can give off the impression that it's luxury guitars only, but they do actually stock new midrange and even some cheaper guitars. If you go on the website and filter by new electric guitar, you can see they have a ton of <$1000 and <$2000 stuff.

I am kind of curious now why it's so hard to find new guitars in NYC, I hadn't really thought about it but all the shops I could think of I checked their websites and it's p much all used. Interested in the economic reasons for that.

Um, maybe people buy them at those superstores or mail order or out of the city? Not enough markup to make it worth it in the city? Dunno, grasping at straws.

yeah, i assume guitar center has driven almost everybody out of business except for the vintage shops.

I think it's very hard for small stores to be able to carry the big brands. Not sure if it's like a dealer exclusivity range (such as GC etc is the only dealer for a given product line within 10 miles or something like that) or its simply down to the minimum orders that have to be made to get a wholesale account. I know for a fact the latter was a thing years ago during the rise of Sweetwater etc, there was a TINY guitar store in my tiny hometown but they did stock new Gibsons until they changed the rules to basically only make it feasible for superstores to afford to carry the product line.... as I was told and best I can remember. I think the margins on new guitars are really small, and you probably have a lot of people beating you up to price match GC and whatnot.

And even GC itself seems to do some sort of “strategic bankruptcy” every several years or whatever it is they do.

Buy in for anything in a music store is pretty crazy in how much you have to buy to get even stuff like strings, picks etc. and that stuff has negligible markup.

A few years ago Gibson really pushed up their initial order to something crazy like 1/2 million or a million and you got to take one of nearly everything, including all the wacky shit they put out that very few want.

This is where I repost the bizarrely satisfying video of Gibson driving an excavator over some of its ill-conceived robot guitars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd7ySopIwog

Almost forgot about that one

the crucial comment on that video: "the real tragedy is that they weren't all plugged in for this"

"They must be counterfeit, as the headstocks didn't break."

lolz

oh lordy i want this so bad

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/yPzmsVrJVP2kZXBt9vD2aD-1920-80.jpg

https://www.musicradar.com/news/a-jazzmaster-12-string-squier-steals-the-limelight-from-fender-with-its-new-paranormal-series-guitars?fbclid=IwAR3Q8CwZX6MbUoqPWgyOMN6VroKHN2ric5K54R9VobIbD-RJVFXwE77mP0g

Damn
That’s a lot of tuning

also this tho:

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/25VmU5CeRzmNLFz47sHERD-970-80.jpg

i think the new john 5 tele is stunning but ymmv on that type of thing. and its 3k pricetag is like masterbuilt custom shop pricing lol.
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/ZoomJpg/10001/0111052880_fen_ins_frt_1_rr.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNWjujVuFw

Green funk

fun fact, the Rascal bass above is the only time they've re-used the Bass VI body

damn that john 5 tele is gorgeous.

That Sherwood Green Rascal is gonna be mine at some point, love that Squier is doing cooler stuff than Fender these days. Epiphone's getting there too, Guitar Center had one of the matte green Casinos that are $150 cheaper than a regular one despite better electronics and I thought it was great.

Not a guitar but this Farfisa is the coolest looking keyboard I've seen in a while (also $3000 and 2500 miles away so c'est la vie). My dreams of Kate Pierson and Martin Rev cosplay are still waiting on one to pop up on Craigslist.

https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--8NokleIE--/a_0/f_auto,t_large/v1622743810/oqdjfvsdot5wjnedzu9w.jpg

John 5's Tele has a similar aesthetic as Buckethead's signature Les Paul.

https://guitar-compare.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Gibson-Buckethead-Signature-Les-Paul-Alpine-White_01.jpg

I miss the 90s when you could buy a Farfisa for $250.

And that was expensive for the 90s! My Farfisa Compact was $40 from the Golden West College swap meet in 1996. The Super Continental was a lot more: $180 (from Black Market Music on La Cienega the same year). Both of them have cost a lot more to keep running in the years since, but it's no different than owning an old vintage car.

I recently played a Farfisa, a small orange one that looked awesome. It sounded really cool but was semi fucked up of course. I couldn't believe how heavy it was though! Getting it up and down the stairs with the small, hard handle was tougher than I ever would have guessed. Those big Continentals or the two keyboard ones must be brutally heavy.

can you still buy old teisco’s for cheap? I really wanted to buy one when I was in high school and this shop in Berkeley (Fat dawg) had a bunch of them but the dude at the store kinda refused to show them to me and tried to get me to buy some fancy boring strat clone that was actually “well made”

You probably can in small town pawn shops/thrift stores. Bigger city shops probably have an inkling about the kitsch dollars they can add to the sale price.

When I see '60s Japanese guitars pop up on local classifieds they're still cheap (except for people who think all old stuff found in grandpa's garage = $$$$) but things on Reverb not so much since they've got to be worthwhile to ship.

What songs feature farfisas in prominent roles?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dXp0eF8s0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjAzI5zALo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c0EDM-Yu9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z4lH8XFjGY

(pretty sure about this one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL3O10mNNbs

FWIW, the Yamaha Reface YC has excellent built-in Farfisa and Vox voicing. (I couldn't help but notice that Stereolab's current keyboard player was using one). If you happen to see one under $300, I think it's worth it.

I was gonna say you missed the grandaddy of them all, but google immediately informed me that 96 Tears was recorded with a Vox.