Bill's thread about his guitars got me thinking about doing a posting about one of my favourite guitars, but not hijacking his thread (although I did put my Hooker on there purely because the subject of impressive woodwork came up).
First of all apologies for the poor image quality. The story behind the guitar is that getting on for 10 years ago I saw a Harrier L/H Tele on ebay for £39! I thought well at this price it must be worth a punt, even just for parts. When it arrived undamaged I was impressed by the green sparkle finish, the fact that it was strung through the body and of a good weight. The bad things were poor strings, poor tuners, the bridge wasn't great and the frets were rough with fret sprout. The first thing was to put some new strings on and play it. Well the pick ups were weedy, but that's how Leo Fender would have intended all those years ago. So I thought rather than use the guitar for parts I'd try to improve it. I spent about £40 on Trev Wilkinson tuners and a new Trev Wilkinson bridge with compensated brass saddles. As it was so cheap I addressed the fret problems myself and then set it up.
Result - while the neck might be a bit chunky for some people, I love playing this guitar and there's no way it's going to be used for parts. I might think about pick up improvements one day, but as I'm only playing at home there's really no need.
My other favourite cheap guitar is a Harley benton travel guitar:
https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_gs_travel_e_mahogany.htm
I have the L/H version. At around £100 you get a decent guitar with a piezo p/u and gig bag. Great value and just look at some of the reviews!
That looks very nice to me! I've had two Hondo guitar over the years. The first one I got in the early 80s, a Strat copy. For some reason I can't remember too much about it. Anyway it was replaced by a Tokai Strat, which was sold along with a Sessionette amp in 1986.
My second Hondo, which I still own, is a 3/4 size classical guitar. My partner bought it for me in 2004 when she knew that I wanted to start playing again. She was very ill when she did that for me so that's a guitar that has a special place.
This is the first guitar I ever bought in 1980-81 for £169. It's a Hondo Professional H-1030. The body is Ash with maple centre panel and walnut stripes. It has a coil splitter and is a great sounding, versatile guitar.
I got this Eko Kadett PJ07 bass third-hand a couple of years ago for £80. It had a big chunk of lacquer missing from the top edge of the body and the action was ridiculously high (I have no idea how the girl I bought it from managed to play it at the top end of the neck). Both issues have been sorted and it is now a comfortable nice-sounding bass with all the harmonics ringing clear.
This is the oldest guitar I own. It's an Avon 3403 Les Paul copy by Rose Morris, made in the mid-seventies. I got it from a pawn shop in the early eighties for the princely sum of £35. At the time I had it converted to fretless. It has subsequently had its pick-ups changed a few years back and last year, the bridge. It's a bit battered, but it still plays OK.
Here's a pic of my first real bass guitar. Worked all summer break in the late 70s at an autobody shop to save for this axe 😁
Now that's cool !!!
Wow wee, you did great on the price Roger. It's a beauty 👍👍👍