Tom Murphy goldtop (Shotgun edition)

BlueStrat

Has it been stabbed with a fork?

p90fool

brucegill said:

Ok, we all think it crap, but either it’s fake, or there’s some reason behind that Relic, ah, style. Is it meant to be some strange paint reaction? All his stuff normally looks pretty good as far as ageing goes. Shit, he’s got a name for it for a reason and half the new start ups doing relics wouldn’t have a business doing it if it wasn’t for people like him and fender. I can’t see this just slipped through, there’s got to be more to it. 

Yes, but even though I quite like a good relic, when you have to start explaining the look of a guitar in terms of a fictional back story (like those solid colour over sunburst Strats) things start to get embarrassing very quickly. 

If you have a real guitar with unusual damage it has its own tale to tell, but when it's fake it's just gets a bit weird.

idiotwindow

brucegill said:

either it’s fake, or there’s some reason behind that Relic, ah, style. Is it meant to be some strange paint reaction?

Yes. Presumably he was copying the look of a specific guitar that was badly stored in a garage or, as you say, one that had the paint react with something. Perhaps it is meant to ape woodworm damage (aka natural weight relief)? Fender did something similar recently with some of their tweed amps – relicing them to look as if they had suffered flood or fire damage. There is clearly a market for these back story relics. Not my thing but I don't blame Gibson or Tom Murphy tapping into this part of the collector market. As an aside, I'm slightly surprised that we don't see any Tom Murphy 'headstock break' guitars with an actual repaired broken headstock to give some authentic Gibson mojo.

brucegill

p90fool said:

brucegill said:

Ok, we all think it crap, but either it’s fake, or there’s some reason behind that Relic, ah, style. Is it meant to be some strange paint reaction? All his stuff normally looks pretty good as far as ageing goes. Shit, he’s got a name for it for a reason and half the new start ups doing relics wouldn’t have a business doing it if it wasn’t for people like him and fender. I can’t see this just slipped through, there’s got to be more to it. 

Yes, but even though I quite like a good relic, when you have to start explaining the look of a guitar in terms of a fictional back story (like those solid colour over sunburst Strats) things start to get embarrassing very quickly. 

If you have a real guitar with unusual damage it has its own tale to tell, but when it's fake it's just gets a bit weird.

100% agree. I don’t have a problem with relics (and same here, not the solid over SB). But I’m intrigued now - there must be some story behind this one. 

idiotwindow

p90fool said:

If you have a real guitar with unusual damage it has its own tale to tell, but when it's fake it's just gets a bit weird.

I tend to agree. These heavily reliced back story type guitars are just too contrived for me but I get that they are interesting for collectors as examples of guitar 'art' rather than as musical instruments to play. I also think the same point can be levelled more generally against any kind of heavy relic – i.e. any relic where the amount of relicing work has gone beyond making the guitar more comfortable and lived in. 

ICBM

On the other hand, if you’d seen the old Gibson I’ve just been given to work on which the owner paid an insane amount of money for - although still much less than this - you would probably think this one wasn’t so bad. It’s only a refinish away from being a decent guitar.

There seems to be some sort of collective hysteria about old guitars now, both genuine and fake. I can just about understand eye-watering prices for truly exceptional original examples, but not for knackered wrecks or laughable reproductions of them. It seems that the worse they are, the more the buyers want to pay... I just don’t get it at all.