Awesome Guitar Weekend

I am going to try to keep this in a straight timeline as this might get confusing.  It first started with an awesome craigslist ad.  It seems this guy was selling one of the new Hagstrom Ultra Swede guitars (in trans black) for $195 with a Hagstrom tweed hardshell case.  I thought this was too good to be true, but he had a phone number.  So I gave him a call and got to talking to him.

It turns out this was the same guy I bought my Laney amp from.  If you read my blog then you will know I posted four blogs about it.  Namely about buying it and then cleaning it up, to finally getting it repaired. 

So the good news was I knew the guy.  The reason he was selling the guitar so cheap was that he lives in Winter Haven.  It's too far for people from Orlando to come there, and it's 50 miles from Tampa to boot.  But if you have someone dedicated like me, driving is no problem.  So I drove over there.

We got to talking and I really liked the guitar.  It actually reminded me more of a Gibson Nighthawk than it did a Les Paul.  Due to the basswood body, it's actually pretty lightweight.  It also has a neck that any shredder would enjoy.  Here the picture of it.

I changed out the pickups and added straplocks to it.  The only issue is that it needs a backplate.  I went to both Sam Ash and Guitar Center, and neither one of them had one.  Note:  It takes the wider SG type of backplate. 

Oh, when I pointed out a pretty good ding on the guitar, the guy knocked five dollars off the price.  He didn't have to, but he felt he should.  He really is a nice guy.

So now that I bought one guitar, it was time to sell another one.  I had an Ibanez Artcore that I never really bonded with.  So I decided to put it up on craigslist.  I was mainly looking for cash, but I did say if the right trade came along, I might be interested. 

Here's the Ibanez.

It's in dang good condition.  I can't find a ding on it, so if I was going to trade for something then I would want something pretty good.  Well something pretty good came up.  Namely this:

It's a 1999 Fender MIM Stratocaster WITH!!! a hardshell Fender case.  That's a win for me.  Except for one thing.......  I was supposed to be getting rid of a guitar since I bought one.  Now I have two new guitars.  I can't say I'm really mad at myself, since it's a problem some people would love to have. 

Now comes the fun part.  Deciding what pickups to put in the Strat.  I will say this, the stock ones aren't too bad.  They are usually just the most awful pieces of crap, but I actually played out with this guitar last night.  I had a lot of fun with it. 

So hopefully I'll get another blog out of working on the pickups for this guitar.  I'll make sure to take lots of pictures.