|
Friday 5/9/2008
Yesterday I got an email from our second
favorite customer. (Our first favorite is YOU, of course!) He
asked if I could identify a guitar in a youtube video.
If you can get past the two million videos
of guys playing soccer, there are some great music clips on youtube.
It's especially interesting to look at the older videos `cause
you never know what instruments are going to show up... I've
seen bands with one guy playing a mid-1960s Harmony Rocket (2008
value: $595) and the guy next to him is playing a late-1950s
Les Paul Sunburst (current value: Hundreds of thousands of $$$$).
Of course, they weren't "vintage" guitars back when
the videos were shot, but they sure would be nice to have now.
In fact, sometimes when I see old videos of 1960s one-hit-wonders,
I hope that over the years the guys in the band kept their guitars....
since the guitars are now worth more money than they ever made
from the hit song in the first place...
Anyway, the video in question this week
was of a band called The Music Machine,  doing
their super-cool hit "Talk Talk." It's one minute and
fifty-six seconds of pure 1966 punk-rock. The lead singer was
playing an easy to recognize Guild Starfire IV, and the bass
player was using an Italian-made EKO violin-shaped bass. And
sure enough, the lead guitarist was using an unusual guitar...
But I knew what it was immediately! A Martin GT-75.
First we must put on our "look-back"
goggles and visit the late 1950's... Gibson and Fender had been
successfully marketing solid-body electric guitars for nearly
a decade, and rock and roll was proving to be more than just
a passing fad. Music was becoming electrified, literally and
figuratively. As a 125-year-old acoustic-guitar-only company,
Martin wasn't quick to jump on any bandwagon, but by 1958 they
figured they'd better get in the game with something electric.
This, of course, was long before the development of the miniaturized
Fishman pickups that Martin and other companies use today...
so Martin opted to screw large pickups right to the face of their
acoustic guitars. In 1959 they introduced three models, the 00-18E,
the D-18E, and the D-28E.
(MORE)
|