20260804 Guitar Hunt Pt 3

Third charm’s the try#

As mentioned here and here I’ve been looking for a guitar to call my own. I’ve been searching for approx a month (give or take a week and a holiday) and it’s taken a couple of tries.

One local music store didn’t have much in the way of second-hand equipment. The other just up and closed shop without warning. The closest pawn shop had some outragous prices (and a bunch of lefty gear - which, to be fair, I debated going with and just giving it the ol’d flippy floppy but as it was explained to me, it wouldn’t be that easy).

So I did what anyone would do in this situation - took paid time off work and drove a couple towns over to check their pawn shops. I had a couple in mind to seek out while I was in town, but I hit gold on the first go-around and opted not to push my luck driving to the others only to likely have to swing back to the first again (they were spread out around a fairly sizable city).

Behold!#

So what did I find?

A Squier Fender Telecaster in Seafoam Green, very lightly used. While that’s a bit of an assumption, I say very lightly used because it still had the plastic on the back plate, even though it has a slight ding in the front body.

For reasons that they did not explain and I did not ask, it only had 2 strings on it at the time of purchase. (From what context I did get, it sounded like someone might have died and that’s how it ended up in the shop, but that still doesn’t really explain the strings.) The lack of full stringing lead to a little bit of back and forth with the clerk, but it came in under my $200 budget and I even had enough left over to walk over to the thrift store next door and snag a handful of cassettes for some postPOST projects.

A man guitar!#

So on my way back into town I had to make a short pitstop to pick up some extra strings and I’d be all set. I got it on the operating table that same day and returned it to six string glory.

With a full set of strings on it, everything worked great. No more electronics that make random clunking noises as you move the guitar around, no more fret buzz. To be fair, it is heavier than the Kalamazoo (Teles are thicc) and the stock pickups are certainly more “twangy” than the Kalamazoo Entwhistle pickups (more on that in a moment). Fretboard and body size differences are taking some getting used to but I’m enjoying it. Turns out having all your strings sound correctly really gives you motivation to practice.

And I’m on to the next one#

As alluded to earlier, the next step will be to replace the pickups. So far the frontrunners are Seymore Duncan Hot Rails, likely in both slots. That’s not an immediate priority though, I’ll keep using these stock pickups for a bit. Get the reps in before I start digging under the hood.

Now that I have a guitar to call my own, might be time to start looking for a cheap bass again…

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