The fun in hunting down gear is to find the best pieces in the best condition for least amount of money. Makes perfect sense right? The beauty in all of it is the stories you'll have to tell about landing that magical guitar, amp, pedal, whatever. Consider it reliving the great quest of Moby Dick over and over. It's all about obtaining the unobtainable whether it's a killer guitar for a great price, just some unique equipment that's just hard to get your hands on, or something that was so outrageous that very few have survived into the current era...or a big white whale.
The conditions right now, depending on whose opinion you get, are excellent for picking up gear because of the poor economy. People are just looking to make a buck on their gear to pay the bills so prices are low and a lot of gear is entering the market. If I had more money, I would have a Nigel Tufnel (reference Spinal Tap) guitar collection sitting in my house with the amount of gear that's currently out there and for the prices you can get it at.
So where am I going with this? I'm going to tell you about my HOPEFUL next hunt. I am looking to pick up an original Fender Starcaster. The Starcaster was Fender's "answer" to the Gibson ES-335 but it never quite lived up to that Gibson reputation. It had two humbuckers set in a semi-hollow body, offset "horns," a Fender headstock that would be unique to this guitar, and a bolted on neck typical of the common Stratocaster and Telecaster. On paper, this guitar sounds very similar to the Gibson outside of the neck joint and that's where it ends.
As I wrote, the Starcaster never lived up to the Gibson ES-335 and quickly exited the Fender guitar line. Some believe that the guitar's completely unique tone just never really fit in well enough to become mainstream. Very few Starcasters were purchased during its run from the mid 70's to the early 80's so today they are hard to come by and are not very popular. However, don't be fooled. There is a pretty solid cult following of these guitars.
The first place I looked was ebay, an obvious choice. There seems to always be a few original Starcasters up on ebay but they are typically going for $1500 to $2500. Maybe this is a fair price, but I REFUSE to pay that...so the hunt begins! The factor that makes this hunt so difficult other than the survival rate from the original run is the reuse of the Starcaster name that Fender is using for a really cheap Strat/Starter pack. If one were to Google "Fender Starcaster," the majority of the returned results would be for this starter pack crap. Same goes for ebay. Given this clutter, my conventional search methods are not as efficient and I have become somewhat stuck in matching my required search criteria (such as price, condition, etc...). Remember, the whole fun of the hunt is finding exactly what you want for how much you want to spend. Anyone can throw a ton of money at something but where's the fun in that? Although I may be stuck in this search, I embrace it. I could have one of these guitars in the mail tomorrow but I much more prefer to find as good of a deal as possible. Making the search as close to impossible as you can is what adds the most entertainment value.
With that being said, who knows how long I'll stay on this search before I move onto something else. I'm in no hurry and don't HAVE to get anything right now. Afterall, given the times, saving money is the best option of all, but you never know what's going to cross your path. Since I don't NEED this guitar, I'll wait for the right one to cross by my path, but for now I'll have fun trying to uncover as many Starcasters as I can from around the web.
No comments:
Post a Comment