Where did you get your guitar

[MATT]

I am fairly new here and I just got a really old cowboy guitar from my grandmothers basement. After getting my guitar i figured that some of you must hame some strange stories about finding guitars. It would be cool to hear them, So where did you find your guitar?

Matthew

[Michael Ambrose]

One of my two main stage guitars is a 1961 Harmony H-76 (tobacco-burst with a Bigsby).

One of my friends was doing demolition work on a house in North Jersey... found a bunch of junk and boxes in the basement... and in one of the boxes was this guitar... called me up and said, "hey, you like weirdo guitars, right?"... hahaha...

I own a twin to this guitar... a Silvertone S1485... I was working at Guitar Center about five years ago, playing in a few bands at the same time... was supposed to get off of work and go straight to a show... As I'm walking out the door, I see this baby sitting in the sales office, just waiting to be bought in. So I run out to my car where I had a Mexi Strat and an Epi Casino reissue... a quick swap, and I done had myself a new guitbox.

[MATT]

Nice, what where the chances of finding that basement guitar,Slim to none?

[cheepaxes]

I have a few guitars which I've found, or got free as a gift from someone who saw no value in it. One of my current main guitars is a Squier Strat I found in a dumpster of a flooded music store. I have an Applause acoustic from the same dumpster. I have a Univox Ripper that a freind gave me in pieces in a box, along with a Kay Tulip body and a bunch of parts. Another friend gave me a Harmony Rocket:

http://www.vintaxe.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=455

Other guitars I've gotten cheap off eBay or CL. In some cases they were ready to go when I got them. Other times I needed to put a fair amount of work into them.

-Scott

[ighut]

I was headed home one day and stopped at a thrift store, not sure why. I'm just standing there when this beautiful woman walks out of the backroom with a Hondo Revival Series Flying V, looks at me, walks up and says "You look like you could make use of this...and you would be saving me from having to find a way to hang it...30.00?". Then she walked away. So fighting off all the daggers being shot at me from every old lady and "professional" thrift regular, I laid the money down and ran out of there.

[johnnyb]

i was living in seattle, mid 90s, when i found this one. Stopped in a pawn shop that was down the street from where i worked. This thing was covered in punk stickers, had 2 strings, frets were green, fretboard was nasty and the neck looked like the letter c, because the strings were so tight and the truss rod was jiggling in it. Bridge was oxidized and caked with who knows what. I low balled the store owner and said this was barely good for parts. $30. The stickers ended up acting as a protective coating ant there wasnt a scratch on it. Tightened the truss rod and cleaned it up. The thing played awesome. At the time they were going for around $600. ive had it ever since and played many many gigs with it. I love pawn shops.

[ighut]

This one was found back in the 80's, in a small Schmidt music store that mainly sold band instruments and pianos, with lessons in back. With no name on it and not much experience in used guitars, they just rough guessed it at 50.00.

[cheepaxes]

$50 for that 3-pickup Kay ain't bad. :)

-Scott