The first electric guitar, or bass, you ever owned?

ICBM

Skipped said:

Always fun to revisit this topic.

My first electric guitar was a Roger 54 model. Exactly like the one in the picture.
My Dad (sadly missed) was an Engineer by trade and was deeply unimpressed with the plywood Egmond or Framus guitars that the salesman was offering to us. 
He suggested to the salesman that surely there must be something better than this.......maybe a second hand guitar instead?
The guy went in the back and came back with the Roger in a Selmer case (green lining). The guitar was very nicely constructed and had the lowest action I have seen in any guitar. My guitar teacher could not believe how easy it was to play. 

I think I've seen you post about that before - I can't remember what happened to it... I'm guessing you don't still have it?

I assume you know about Roger Rossmeisl - after who Wenzel named the brand, obviously - and his later connection with Rickenbacker.

Skipped

ICBM said:

I think I've seen you post about that before - I can't remember what happened to it... I'm guessing you don't still have it?

I assume you know about Roger Rossmeisl - after who Wenzel named the brand, obviously - and his later connection with Rickenbacker.

No I don't have it. It is very strange. I didn't feel sentimental about it but I do feel attached to a year of birth guitar that came along much later.
Yes - I do know about Wenzel, thank you.
I know almost nothing about his son Roger - or indeed about Rickenbacker guitars in any detail.
Was he involved in design and could the Roger guitar tailpiece have been some sort of early influence?

samothy01

Yamaha Pacifica for me, circa 2004. Absolutely fantastic starter guitar 

equalsql

Skipped said:

Always fun to revisit this topic.

My first electric guitar was a Roger 54 model. Exactly like the one in the picture.
My Dad (sadly missed) was an Engineer by trade and was deeply unimpressed with the plywood Egmond or Framus guitars that the salesman was offering to us.
He suggested to the salesman that surely there must be something better than this.......maybe a second hand guitar instead?
The guy went in the back and came back with the Roger in a Selmer case (green lining). The guitar was very nicely constructed and had the lowest action I have seen in any guitar. My guitar teacher could not believe how easy it was to play.

Your dad was a good'n, that's a lovely first electric guitar to own!

ICBM

Skipped said:

I know almost nothing about his son Roger - or indeed about Rickenbacker guitars in any detail.
Was he involved in design and could the Roger guitar tailpiece have been some sort of early influence?

Yes, and I think quite likely - although if anything, the Roger tailpiece is (oddly) more like a Guild! Which as far as I know is completely unrelated.

Voxman

ICBM said:

Voxman said:

I bought it with a 7w  Triumph 'Leo' practice amp which had an 8x12" eliptical speaker, and a tremolo effect (cost £19 and 19 shillings and eleven pence) and a coil guitar lead. Probably go for daft 'vintage collectors' money now:

My Leo had the light grey grille cloth like this:

You did well to survive . Those are horribly badly made, and quite dangerous. No fusing, proper mains cable retention or PCB support, and they're so flimsy that they can easily just fall apart and expose the live circuitry.

The output transformer is certainly large, but very poor quality so they still don't sound any good! Thankfully they don't seem to have acquired "old and ratty-sounding, therefore valuable" status.

However, like the guitars, I do of course take some fun in making them as reliable as I can, and at least tolerably safe - although there's nothing you can do about the crap cabinet really... I reckon a fully-upgraded one is probably worth £150 or so.

Bad spacing in my post. I was referring to the guitar 're silly money. 're the amp it was surprisingly ok.  I didn't have any effects so I used to get a decent crunch distortion by placing the amp speaker side down on my bed.

NPP

like many on here I held on to the second one I bought (seen here after fairly radical modification http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1843749/#Comment_1843749 ) but the first one was utter crap - a 'Marathon' brand lefty superstrat type guitar with a plywood body, crappy pickups, a Kahler locking trem (so all known tone killers assembled in one place) and a pointy headstock. In my defence I can only say that there wasn't much choice for lefties back then in the mid-80s - but even so I could hardly have made a worse choice.

Three-ColourSunburst

TTony said:

My first was a Columbus LP copy.  Though I believe the jury is still undecided as to whether that should really be called a "guitar".

My second, a few months later, was this ...




The Columbus is long gone, the  second hasn't.

My first guitar too, the Kawai KS 12, bought at a knock-down price when they decided to stop making them. Wished I still had it!

Bigsby

Voxman said:

Cost £20 in circa 1971 with a gigbag from the Arcade Music shop in North Finchley 

I remember that shop! Went there to order my third guitar in 1978, a Guild S-60.
Still got it:


My first was an SG-shaped ultra cheap guitar with a plate saying 'WestOne' stuck on the headstock. If I have a photo, it's probably sepia.

SteveF

A sunburst Encore Strat copy. I believe it cost my uncle about 75 quid for my 16th birthday. 

Jason

Hondo || Les Paul Custom, terrible guitar, bought from a man in a shiny suit in Lewis's in 1982 for £90

Sesh

Here's my first:
http://i.imgur.com/4Cx8LAl.jpg
Aria Legend from 1995/6. Cost about £200. Sounded pretty good through my Peavey Rage 15. I dug it out this morning, tuned up and wondered why I don't play it more. Apart from being a bit neck-divey and the frets need some work it's doing alright for it's age.

lasermonkey

My first guitar was this Kawai S170. It was made between 1963-67 and was given to me by my uncle shortly before he died. It has huge sentimental value, so I still have it. The neck feels like the thick end of a cricket bat and the pickups are microphonic as hell, but it sounds great. I've even gigged with it. I have the missing pickup floating around somewhere and I hope to replace the non-original one when I can find an original for a reasonable price.


My first bass was this 1974 Fender Precision, which I bought in 1984. I decided that I needed a bass of my own when I started writing my own tunes and none of my bass playing friends could play in the way I wanted. I remember thinking "how hard can it be?" Ha!

I went down to my local music shop, which was WAM Music in St Neots. I was expecting to come away with a Westone, Aria or some other cheapo Japanese job, but when I walked in, I immediately spied a real Fender on the wall. They didn't come up often in that shop and I was rather drawn to it. After a brief try, I paid the £135 they were asking for it and I was off home. It was several years later that I discovered it was made in 1974.

I put the (admittedly awful) tort scratchplate on it a few years ago, but I'm going to put the original black one on soon. It really is a lovely bass. It has that "piano" tone that people often mention and I'd never part with it.

Skipped

equalsql said:

Your dad was a good'n, that's a lovely first electric guitar to own!

Thank you equalsql.

Never saw another Roger 54 at the time. But then I spotted Mike Millward (The Fourmost) playing the exact same model  and realised that I was so lucky to own such a guitar when I was just a child.......

(Seems only right to mention that Mike died very young, maybe a couple of years after this picture was taken, after he developed leukaemia.)

BeardyAndy

MagicPigDetective said:

BeardyAndy said:

  MagicPigDetective said:

Encore Stat. I recall it being a pretty good first guitar to learn on, but I knew nothing about guitars at the time so don’t really have an idea what it was like. I may have chosen it after seeing Kurt Cobain with a white strat. Traded it for a Washburn MG-42 which I still have. 

We must be about the same age. I've got a picture of me with my old white strat, same hair cut and the same poster on the wall (the one of Cindy Crawford was out of shot!)

Yes the photo is very much of it's time when I worshipped Nirvana. I date this around 93/94 when I was 17ish. Note the guitar stand I made for a woodwork class project!

I did notice the "belt n' braces" stand, good work!