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This particular page was created 07/04/2004 and last updated 23/04/2005
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(Yes, this is how that poor guitar looks!) |
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Sometimes you hear (American) old-timers complain about all those cheap Asian-made instruments the market is flooded by these days.
Lemme tell you something: This 1970s American-made budget guitar and it's horrible!!! Nostalgia and patriotism are both fine, but get real. Since I'm Eruopean myself, I can give you it straight: Asian cheapos beat American cheapos without even raising a sweat and they always have.Well, my Harmony archtop is quite a sight at least. The previous owner had painted it bright green so the first thing I did when I got it was to give it a serious paint-stripping job. I was going to refinish it afterwards of course, but in the end I kind'a liked it the way it turned out - some remains of the green paint, some tobacco-brown stains from the original finish, some white stains from the paint-stripper. Hey! Nobody who ever saw this guitar is ever going to forget it, and besides it still looks much better than it sounds and plays!
Pickup alternativesWell, don't say I didn't try to get a decent sound out of it!
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I'd rather not talk about it. The experience still haunts my dreams. (Actually it's not that bad. It took ages to find a relatively useful spot to place it though, and it was never really good. I think it's more fair to blame the guitar than the transducer.)
An extra Sound Checker helped a lot. With careful positioning I was able to get quite a decent archtop guitar sound out of it. Unfortunaetely that meant putting one of the transducers right where my right hand wanted to be. These Sound Checkers are waaaay too bulky!
K & K worked much better than Sound Checker on this particular guitar. Positioning was extremely critical though, minor changes caused huge differences.