An electric archtop for Dave:

I think this one is a year or two later than your birth year, but it's worth keeping your eyes peeled for a Country Club from the mid-50s. They're essentially a White Falcon without all the frippery.

I bought this one off of eBay back in the dark ages, based on a blurry picture and the worst description ever. The one thing I could make out in the picture was original gang tags that hadn't been removed. I think it was around $1,200 when average examples were running $2,500 or so. The pickups are incredible.

The second photo shows it being played by a friend of mine shortly after I unboxed it.

Quote from: Nova Constellatio on July 22, 2026, 02:01:43 PMAn electric archtop for Dave:

I think this one is a year or two later than your birth year, but it's worth keeping your eyes peeled for a Country Club from the mid-50s. They're essentially a White Falcon without all the frippery.

I bought this one off of eBay back in the dark ages, based on a blurry picture and the worst description ever. The one thing I could make out in the picture was original gang tags that hadn't been removed. I think it was around $1,200 when average examples were running $2,500 or so. The pickups are incredible.

The second photo shows it being played by a friend of mine shortly after I unboxed it.

Beautiful!  Back when I was looking at that '54, I read that shortly afterwards,  maybe a couple years or so, Gretsch started making humbuckers, predating Gibson (according to the account I was reading).

Ray Butts, who designed the filtertron, wasn't the only one to beat Gibson on that — Rickenbacker had a functional humbucking pickup in some of their Combo guitars in
1955, and Slingerland beat them all with a six-coil humbucking pickup that they used in their Songster in 1935. But Seth Lover gets all the credit...

Some lovely instruments on these pages...
Maybe a bit off kilter here, but I had a fun bit of educating myself...
I recently acquired a Hofner HTC bass from craiglist for $300 on a whim.
Never really liked these basses, even the higher quality german-made ones. To me they always felt kinda dead and sounded too woody and inarticulate for my likes. That said, they do have a particular sound, so decided to give it a shot.
The guy selling it hated the bass ( his words). Upon playing it, I uderstood why, because it was set up terribly - crazy high action, intonation off, pickups very low, and dead large gauge roundwound strings.
I thought maybe this was a poor decision...
Took me a bit of time, but after dialing it in, and some DR ultra light strings, the thing actually plays pretty well.
It was an interesting foray into short scale string tension, the dated floating bridge design, fret wire bridge saddles, my finger pressure, and effects all on intonation.
Fun process, not to mention my once separated shoulder thanks me for the much lighter load!

If you haven't tried them, the LaBella Beatle Bass tape wounds are what McCartney uses — they're also the perfect length for short scale Series basses...