Horse Trading at Guitar Center

Yesterday, I stopped by my local Guitar Center to grab some strings. While I was there, of course, I had to wander around and see what all had come in since my last visit. As I walked around, I saw this:

It's a Monoprice 15 Watt tube amp. These sell for a couple of hundred bucks, new, and sometimes less. This one was priced, accordingly, as a used unit. So, I wanted to check it out and see how it sounded. I had read about these, a while back, and had considered ordering one, but I didn't want to take a $200 gamble without hearing it, first.

So, I looked over at the used guitars display, and I spotted a Burnt Orange Les Paul Special. That's a guitar with which I am very familiar, tone-wise, so I grabbed it to see how the amp sounded.

They sounded so good, I had the sales guy put them aside for me, and went home. There, I reverted my Explorer to stock (reinstalled the stock neck pickup, removed the Bigsby) and loaded it and my SG into the van and went back to GC.

After the deal was done, I had the amp, the Les Paul in a hard case and a few hundred dollars in my pocket.

The picture doesn't quite get the Burnt Orange color, but it's close.

This one is a bit better, on the color.

This is a 2004 model. Cooper, my black, highly modified version, was built in 2003. I think I will leave this one in stock trim, for awhile. I think I might even leave the pickguard on, even though I'm not a huge fan of LP pickguards. 

I won't say that it will stay stock, forever, though...

One of the reasons I decided that I had to have this guitar was that, while I was testing out the amp, I ended up writing a song. Some guitars just do that to me. When I find one, I want to make it mine.

The Explorer was not getting used. I think that the Flying V and my Korean Moderne copy fill that "flashy guitar" niche well enough that the Explorer was just redundant. The SG, while a terrific guitar, had actual cobwebs on it, because it had been so long since I even pulled it off of the wall. Hopefully, the two of them can now go to good homes and get played on a regular basis!

It was nice to make my trades for the guitar and amp. I really don't have a lot of cash to spend on instruments, right now, and I have too many guitars hanging around (the dust and cobwebs on the two I traded in are testament to that). Trading two for one resulted in a net reduction of one guitar.

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