London guitar shops - an afternoon tour

rze99

I had a cancelled event last week in centre of London. So I used it to do a rare tour of the guitar shops for a few hours. All those in Denmark Street (yes there a still a few), in Charing Cross Road and Guitar Guitar in Camden.

I tried a bunch of guitars from MIM Fender Vintage Gibsons and Custom Shop Teles. Some observations:

Staff attitudes have improved no end. Friendly, helpful, some knowledgeable. I'm probably going back too far, but in the past they were largely dreadful.

Shops still don’t do anything to sell their guitars in terms of set-up and strings. Even some upper end guitars had old strings, too much neck relief and high actions. C'mon you shop people, it's hardly tempting to the buyer if it not good to play.

Most of the rosewood fretboards looked so sad even on the Custom shop guitars due to being really dried out. 

Rose Morris brand, Shaftsbury, has been rejuvenated and have some decent T-types.


Guitars

The new Squier Classic Vibes I picked up looked a bit plastic but pretty well put together

I tried a MIM FSR Custom (£850) in natural ash. Pretty nice but pickup screws for the humbucker were loose, the pickup had collapsed on one side and the screws fell on the floor and disappeared when I played it. Why would a shop leave it out like that?

The Jimmy Page Mirror Tele is very nice. Beautiful white blonde finish. Nice neck carve. It payed just like my AVRI '64 but without such a good set-up as mine. The rosewood fretboard is dyed dark.. I'm pretty sure of it. It's way too expensive at £2.6k.

The nicest trad Tele was the Custom Shop Robben Ford type relic (I took a quick phone snap of that) . Mind you even that had old strings and dry as a bone fretboard) That was £3.6k Very friendly chap in Guitar Guitar.

Nice Gibson store Sixty Six Sounds had friendly folk. The new Gibson les Paul juniors with P90s are great. Cheap and play really well. They have a spectacular matched flame top Custom Shop Les Paul Standard in there., like a painting. I didn't dare pick it up - some of these CS Les Pauls are up at nearly £9k. Sheesh.

I tried a lovely old 77 Les Paul Pro Deluxe with P90s in black and cream in incredible condition. But it weighs about 13 Pounds (gulp) and it was £4k

Loads of Custom Shop Les Pauls in Guitar Guitar and Sixty Six Sounds

The best brand new guitar of all of them I played was a Hahr Custom Tele with two "Thornbuckers" and 5 way switch (designed by Pete Thorn) Those Thorn humbuckers are fabulous. Low wind, bright lively and even. Wonderful. Compound radius. Played beautifully. The guitar was £2.2k

The guitar I wanted most was a '63 Relic Custom Shop SG at Macari's. Wow that is fab. It's 3.6k though. They've got an amazing 65 Firebird in there too.

Fun afternoon. Still worth a tour if you have free time.

The Custom Shop Robben Ford type resting on my knee :