Holy Toledo Batman $%^&_#@Holy Toledo Batman $%^&_#@
Man was this a long time ago. Only knew how to play loudly, rocking in my parents basement. That 70's show for real. Note the ancient record player.
People always gave me a hard time about the brand name of this axe. But it was almost a one of a kind. In fact, I've only seen the same guitar once in Vancouver a few years ago, and that one had a different name and some different hardware.
This is my old 1969 Toledo electric (before I started any modifications on it) leaning on a home made speaker cabinet. The amp is a transistor Heathkit. The guitars was from the second round of Japanese imports. Workmanship of the instrument was ok but the electronics sucked. It had two cheep single coil pickups, and crummy switches. I gave this guitar a few goings over. Eventually it ended up with two Demarzio duel coil pickups, an onboard pre-amp, way to many switches (but that was a 70,s thing) and a new black pick guard .
I
ended up dressing the frets so many times that they got so thin it was like having foil paper for
frets.
Back in the late 70's, the neck was broken off and damaged at the base . I found all the splinters of wood and glued them back in place. It's a bolt-on neck but the hole had been pulled, so I got oversize screws, and reattached it, but it was then just a bit out of line.
During the 90's I almost never played this guitar any more but would not get rid of it because, after all, it was my old guitar (sentimental). I'd practically forgotten how she sounded. Well...
One day a few years ago, I pulled it out of the case... Plugged it in. Turned up the amp to eleven, and WOW. Man, this baby still growls.
That was it. I was down the road to restoring it. Bought some books on fret work. Got some new switches. Got out my wood working tools. And that was a few years before I started building guitars!
Either I'm good or vary lucky, but the results are great. It plays better than ever. The dings are all still there, but they are honest dings. The result of a lot of years of playing. As for the sunburst. Its has never faded, unlike so many more expensive guitars out there.
This colour shot was taken this past summer (1999). As you can see, she's a wild one. I have old recording on noisy old tapes, nothing I'd put on the web site. I still need to get to writing something new that would showcase this guitar. I've also found out recently that the Toledo brand name was one of many contract names used by the ARIA guitar corporation of Japan. If you have a Toledo, check out the Aria web site.
So... I think I'll get off this dam computer and go plug in my old Toledo.
