So, when I was 16, I took my friend Paul with me to buy my first quality guitar. I started playing on a cheap nylon string when I was 7. When I was 13 I bought a 12-string from Paul's sister, and I later traded that to my sister's boyfriend for a cheap Japanese electric and a small amp.
But at 16, I had a job and I could drive, so we looked in the 1978 equivalent of Craigslist, which was called the newspaper. The classified sections of newspapers were really pretty interesting in the days before eBay and Craigslist -- in big circulation papers like the San Jose Mercury-News, they ran for several pages, and were filled with all sorts of stuff that people felt was worth paying the cost of a For Sale ad to get rid of. Ads ran for a few days only, so you kept checking to find the thing you were looking for.
I was looking for a Gibson SG, I think because Frank Zappa played one. Pete Townsend played one at Woodstock, and Angus Young, but Frank was my guitar hero then. Plus, none of my friends had one, Les Pauls being the preferred rocker guitar. I found a 1970 or so SG Standard with the chrome Gibson Lyre tailpiece and the Vibrola tremolo bar. It looked like the photo on the right when I bought it.
I loved it, but I didn't treat it well. About that time, I saw Adrian Belew play with King Crimson, and he bent his neck while hitting harmonics quite a lot, so I did too. I dropped it one day and the neck cracked at the headstock, so I got that repaired. Later, another drop broke it at the neck joint, so that was another repair. I unsoldered the pickup covers, because that's what we did, and I swapped the tremolo bridge for a standard tailstop, because the thing wouldn't stay in tune. I cut my own plastic pickguard. I took it to the beach a lot, where I'd play through a Pignose, so some of the metal got rusty.
The worst thing I did was give it to my friend Tom to refinish. For some reason, Ford Truck Yellow seemed a good choice, and my friend, an amateur, did a predictably amateur job. No regrets, just a bad decision. Somewhere in there -- maybe 1984 or so -- I dropped it again, breaking it at the headstock again, and I put it back in the case and tucked it away in my dad's rafters. (I had meanwhile taken up bass, so I mostly didn't miss it.)
In late 2008, I traded in a bass amplifier I wasn't using to Subway Guitars in Berkeley, and mentioned I had an old SG that needed refinishing and repair. Subway handed it to Dimitri Tenev, a nice fellow in Albany who took quite a while to refinish it, because of bad weather, vacations, and the difficulty of getting the recent primer coat out of the curvy spots. I mostly wanted it back so I could play it again, so I wasn't worrying about authenticity or perfection. He suggested a tobacco sunburst finish, and I agreed. It's a subtle color that doesn't show well in the photo, but I'm pleased.
After 25 years away, I have my first axe back. I still prefer my Strat, but this is pretty schweet.
