Greetings from Crossfolf Corner, everyone!
A friendly bit of advice: If you have a wood-burning stove and a guitar with a natural wood finish, never leave your guitar propped up against your wood supply. You may never find it again...
This lovely old guitar is a late-1960s Hagstrom H-700. Hagstrom is a Swedish guitar maker whose instruments found some popularity in North America in the late 1960s.
Sentimentally speaking, this guitar may be the most valuable thing that I own. My uncle Lloyd bought it new from Joe Suttle's Store here in town and only played it on occasion. I saw it for the first time when I was six years old and already crazy about guitars and the music they make in the hands of a good musician. I had some ideas of maybe doing this myself.
I fell in love with it--the beautiful violin-like shape, the rich, golden wood finish, the cool shape of the headstock and the terraced, curved tuners...I thought: "I'm going to have one just like this someday."
I spent a lot of time with Uncle Lloyd, helping him with chores and whatnot in the hope of getting to at least see this guitar and maybe even getting a few lessons. This went on for years, and I learned a lot.
When I was eight years old I told Lloyd that I wanted to play the guitar like George Harrison of The Beatles (my first childhood Guitar Hero), so he immediately dug through his record collection and threw a bunch of albums in my lap: Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and more.
And, he told me:
"If you want to play the guitar like George Harrison, then you'll have to start with these records, because these are the guys who George learned from."
That just may be the most valuable musical gift I've ever received. When I told Lloyd that we didn't have a record player at home, he loaned me his until I could find one of my own.
Eventually, while I was away, Lloyd got a new guitar and resigned this one to the back room. I found it many years later among a bunch of boxes and junk while helping my cousin Richard clean out the back room. It was covered in green, smelly mold, it had four loose, rusty strings, the original tailpiece was broken, and the lovely brown plastic pickguard had long since crumbled and fallen off. But...it was still basically intact, so I asked Lloyd if I could buy it and get it working again. He gave it to me. That was a happy day!
I didn't want to refinish it or cosmetically restore it; I just wanted to clean it up and fix it up enough to use it. In my opinion, it would be a shame to erase the decades of patina that this guitar has taken on. The Bigsby tailpiece is the one upgrade that I made because the original tailpiece was no longer usable. Otherwise, it's still original, albeit a bit worn.
I wanted a guitar just like this way back when, and now that very guitar is mine. Sometimes dreams do come true...
A Crossfolf Camera Presentation. ^__^
A friendly bit of advice: If you have a wood-burning stove and a guitar with a natural wood finish, never leave your guitar propped up against your wood supply. You may never find it again...
This lovely old guitar is a late-1960s Hagstrom H-700. Hagstrom is a Swedish guitar maker whose instruments found some popularity in North America in the late 1960s.
Sentimentally speaking, this guitar may be the most valuable thing that I own. My uncle Lloyd bought it new from Joe Suttle's Store here in town and only played it on occasion. I saw it for the first time when I was six years old and already crazy about guitars and the music they make in the hands of a good musician. I had some ideas of maybe doing this myself.
I fell in love with it--the beautiful violin-like shape, the rich, golden wood finish, the cool shape of the headstock and the terraced, curved tuners...I thought: "I'm going to have one just like this someday."
I spent a lot of time with Uncle Lloyd, helping him with chores and whatnot in the hope of getting to at least see this guitar and maybe even getting a few lessons. This went on for years, and I learned a lot.
When I was eight years old I told Lloyd that I wanted to play the guitar like George Harrison of The Beatles (my first childhood Guitar Hero), so he immediately dug through his record collection and threw a bunch of albums in my lap: Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and more.
And, he told me:
"If you want to play the guitar like George Harrison, then you'll have to start with these records, because these are the guys who George learned from."
That just may be the most valuable musical gift I've ever received. When I told Lloyd that we didn't have a record player at home, he loaned me his until I could find one of my own.
Eventually, while I was away, Lloyd got a new guitar and resigned this one to the back room. I found it many years later among a bunch of boxes and junk while helping my cousin Richard clean out the back room. It was covered in green, smelly mold, it had four loose, rusty strings, the original tailpiece was broken, and the lovely brown plastic pickguard had long since crumbled and fallen off. But...it was still basically intact, so I asked Lloyd if I could buy it and get it working again. He gave it to me. That was a happy day!
I didn't want to refinish it or cosmetically restore it; I just wanted to clean it up and fix it up enough to use it. In my opinion, it would be a shame to erase the decades of patina that this guitar has taken on. The Bigsby tailpiece is the one upgrade that I made because the original tailpiece was no longer usable. Otherwise, it's still original, albeit a bit worn.
I wanted a guitar just like this way back when, and now that very guitar is mine. Sometimes dreams do come true...
A Crossfolf Camera Presentation. ^__^
Category Photography / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Gender Any
Size 960 x 1280px
Listed in Folders
You can talk about this guitar’s timbre and its timber.
Fantastic photo of a lovely instrument.
Fantastic photo of a lovely instrument.
Thank you good fellow!
I shot a few of my guitars in front of the firewood, and this was the one I liked the most. I was amused by how this guitar kind of disappeared against the wood; that gave me a funny angle that the other pictures didn't have.
I shot a few of my guitars in front of the firewood, and this was the one I liked the most. I was amused by how this guitar kind of disappeared against the wood; that gave me a funny angle that the other pictures didn't have.
And you were sitting by the fire and you heard a 'twang'...
DAMMIT!! I knew I should have taken a closer look at that last big log before I put it in the woodstove!
The picture resembles a photo in a museum's catalog about said instrument, and I love that.
Well done on the centering too, excellent work 😊
Well done on the centering too, excellent work 😊
Thank you my friend! I agonized over the centering and composition of this shot, and it's nice to know that my attention to detail paid off. :)
Yes, indeed! Mine is as nice as any of the Gibson, Gretsch or Fender guitars that I've owned. The build quality is superb, and it sounds awesome.
Sorry for the late reply, but thank you kindly! It took a bit of effort to get this one right, and I'm happy to know that my efforts have been noticed and appreciated. Thank you again! :)
Love the classic look of this body with the f-holes.... and man I love to see a guitar with a little evidence of its years like this one's got. Cool headstock shape too, and THOSE TUNERS.
Coolest-looking tuners ever. They're Van Ghent closed-back tuners, and they kind of look like the old, "stairstep" Grover Imperials, except that the stairs on the Van Ghents are curved. Very stylin' :)
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