Well folks, I've been in Vintage and Rare, they didn't chuck me out on me ear.
And I have seen and touched :o these Mcguire relics. The ones on the website are the very ones in the flesh (or should I say "the splinters") in the shop. The rory one is gone, but the white one, the sunburst, the candy apple red, the bashed up blackface tele, etc... they're all there...
And so is this very cute girl working there who seems to know lots about geetars. She tells me Mr Mcguire makes about four a month, they go up on the website, but they get divided between London and Bath, so phone first... I said it was quite refreshing there being nothing on the headstock. She said that if that were a problem... she, er, knows "where to get the transfers" (shhh... etc).
So what are these things like? Well, I did hear people (one somewhat older than me, one considerably younger) playing some. Both of them were playing through some very dodgy sounding effects they were trying out, so I can't say much about tones, but I have handled them extensively. The nice lady kept pressing them into my arms so that I could, er, experience them. Unlike the custom shop jobbies I've furtively touched in other shops before, these guys really are relic'd. Be very wary about ordering a "Ritchie Blackmore" strat site-unseen, is all I can say, it might well arrive, very authentically, in several different boxes....
The white one, for example has a severely warped scratch-plate, very authentic I understand, but... I feel uncomfortable at the asking price when looking down while playing I can see the pickups from under the scratchplate!
The sun-burst is actually missing the tip of the scratch-plate off the bottom horn, what you can see in the picture is the metal screening.
Plastic parts don't have cracks painted on, they are cracked, metal work is rusting, and where lacquer has worn off on necks and fingerboards, it does feel like you might get splinters until you've worn it in with your own bodily excretions... :?
I don't know, for me they might be a tad over-relic'd, they do feel authentic, but they feel like they've been, I dunno, a bit abused. I'd have to play one without ring-modulating-skunk-fuzz, or whatever it was, blasting away in the corner to find out what they'r like as instruments. But I just get the feeling these things are not for me!! I think I'd rather buy several Jap reissues and see whether my skin falls off before theirs does. But I do suspect that if I had the money in my pocket, that girl could probably talk me into anything, so remind me not to go there again on my own :lol:
