plucked out blog

Washburn Force 40

Here’s a fantastic Washburn bass from the 80s – through neck, 18V active circuitry, through body stringing – what would you need to pay to get that today?

Well worth checking out, and you’re unlikely to bump into someone else playing one. £220 is a reasonable starting bid – up to £300 would be a reasonable price to pay.

[Full disclosure: I have no connection whatsoever with the seller of this instrument and I do not own any electric Washburn basses, although I do have an old Washburn acoustic bass]

…and want an electric 12 string, you can do a lot worse than one of these

Hohner TE Custom XII

I used to have one of these when I was 15 years old – it was fantastic. Bloody heavy though – solid maple body. Really well made, like a lot of Hohner Professional guitars and quite underrated. I didn’t think much of the pickups though, if I was buying one I’d be tempted to put some humbucker sized P90s on there (Seymour Duncan make some I believe) to get extra jangle.

Vester Les Paul

Sorry it’s been a while. I will kick back into it with a rant; why the hell would anyone pay £450 for a fake Les Paul?  This is a Vester, who admittedly made some pretty good guitars, which has had a fake Gibson Les Paul logo applied. Now if you want to fake a guitar then that’s up to you – I personally don’t know why you’d want to do unless you wanted to defraud someone as if it was for your own benefit you’d always know it was a fake.

What makes this especially irritating for me is that the seller is asking £450 as a starting bid! The guitar itself (if it still had the original Vester logo) would be worth £250 max, probably closer to £200 – but given you can easily find a nice 2nd hand or  Gibson Les Paul Studio for £450 or a decent Epiphone for £250 (either of which  you can easily sell on in the future for a similar amount) why bother with a fake? Are you seriously going to pretend to your friends that it’s a real Gibson?

Steer well clear.