20260702 Guitar Hunt Pt1

Part One: Introduction#

I’m on the hunt for a guitar. A slow, cheap hunt.

You’re probably wondering how I got here#

My first guitar wasn’t a guitar. It was a second hand Fender P bass I got off eBay in jr high.

That’s right, I started as a bass player. Get your jokes out now.

I don’t entirelly remember how that happened, but my guess is some friends decided we wanted to start a band, and Gabe already had drums and TJ already had a guitar, so I guess that leaves me playing bass. I actually quite enjoyed it, and some of this whole topic at hand has made me want to slap some bass again. I honestly wouldn’t mind picking one up again at some point.

6 string one cup#

I think it was the summer between jr high and high school (or maybe just some time my 8th grade year) my dad got a guitar from an estate sale. He used to play back in the day, but didn’t still have any of his equipment. I don’t know how he learned of the estate sale, but there were a bunch of guitars up for sale. I don’t believe we set out to get the one we ended up with specifically, or if it was just on the cheap end of the bidding.

In fact, I guess I was in charge of taking notes that day because in the case there was still a sheet of legal pad paper with the auction values on it, in my shitty 8th grade handwriting (it’s gotten better, I swear):

(I don’t recall what the numbers after the model were supposed to mean. I wouldn’t think it was lot number bcause the order is all over the place)

It looked like the person who died was a Gibson fan. And as you can see there, we ended up with the Kalamazoo. At the time we don’t think we knew what it was necessarily.

100% that bitch#

Turns out the Kalamazoo was a Gibson guitar. At least, at the time of production - from what I could piece together, Kalamazoo was its own company before the war, then after the war was bought by Gibson and they brought it back into production for like 5 years before scrapping it again.

So what we have here is a Kalamazoo branded, Gibson produced KG-1 in Flame Red, likely from 1966 (more on that in a moment).

A couple things to call out about this guitar - yes, that’s a piece of duct tape on the back with my name on it. I was a dumb high school kid and that will be removed and cleaned. Otherwise these photos are from earlier this week and the guitar is still in pretty good shape.

That production year though - from what I could find, 1966 was the highest production year for Kalamazoo as a whole, with Flame Red KG-1s topping out at 1020 produced that year.

But with only just over 1900 flame red KG-1s made in total, the serial number gets a bit confusing (see image below). Plugging it into the Official Gibson serial number system gives you jack shit, probably because they don’t care about some secondary branding they bought and scrapped 60 years ago.

I mean, it’s possible it’s a ‘67 Kalamazoo, making it one of 350 produced that year, but I’m still betting the website just doesn’t have any Kalamazoo data because it’s claiming it’s a vintage Gibson. And if we’re going purely sequential numbering, by 1967 there were already over 17,000 Kalamazoos in total produced, so ‘66 seems more likely as that’s where the 8000s would land, serial-number-wise.

The other oddity is the single pickup - if you look closely as this stock image below, then compare it to my Kalamazoo, you might see something a little different:

(stock image) (mine)

That’s right. Whoever died and made me king owned this previously decided to crack it wide open sometime in the ’90s and replace the pickup. Instead of the from-the-factory single coil pickup (which as far as I can tell is unbranded?) they replaced it with an Entwhistle-White pickup pulled from a Hohner Revelation (as you can see in this second stock image).

From what I can find it’s a very niche pickup company founded by one man who is now dead.

At the time Hohner was trying to create the “European guitar standard,” as in, their version of say, the Strat, and wanted Entwhistle, who was a UK ex-pat living in Australia and NZ to partner with them, which is why the pickups list Hohner specifically.

So anyway, this dead guy (the first, estate sale dead guy) decided these cottage industry Euro standard pickups from the 90s were better than the floor model Kalamazoo/Gibson pickups from ‘66/‘67.

So that’s my first guitar.

There is another#

I had a second guitar that I bought in college, a Samick… something. It was a piece of shit, I bought it for $50, played the shit out of it, sold it for $50. I don’t have any additional information about it other than this one photo taken when I was selling it.

And … a third?#

And I guess after college I bought an acoustic electric guitar but maybe had that for a year before I offloaded it? I remember absolutely nothing about it and pretty sure I have no photographic evidence it ever existed.

So where are we now#

Well, when I started looking at getting back into the ol’ gitfiddle business, I had initially thought of getting myself something a little nice - not expensive, but better than Samick. Something in the $300 ranged used Tele or so.

But I also had the thought - I’ve never learned how to change guitar strings (gasp!). And the Kalamazoo needs a little fixing on the 1/4" jack. So I decided to change course a little bit: First plan of action: crack open the Kalamazoo, fix the jack (I’ve been told it’ll be simple), and then restring it.

The hunt#

From there though, I decided I want something cheap and dirty. Not a $300 used Tele that would be “pick-up and play” ready, but instead some pawn shop monster I can get my hands dirty swapping pickups, modifying, or otherwise fucking-with in a way that won’t make me feel guilty in case I mess it up, the way working on my Kalamazoo would. The Kalamazoo isn’t the most rare or valuable guitar (retail in ‘67 was $89.50, I see them going for the $400-$800 range now) but it’s weird and it’s mine.

So after I restring the Kalamazoo I’m going to start looking. It might take a while, because I’m not on a deadline - I can still play my Kalamazoo just fine. But I want to take my time and find something that maybe needs a little love, and I can really get elbow deep in there and play.

Because the only way to learn, is to play, and the only way to play, is by beginning.#

I’ve also decided I hate Gibson/LP bodies.

If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.