I'd finished high school in 96 and had spent all of my inheritance on living & instruments. This is definitely one of my big regrets.
Had I invested the cash more wisely, I'd be a lot better off now.
(sigh)
You can't tell teenagers anything. Ever.
Lessons have to be learned the hard way some times.
Anyway, when I saw it in the music store in pride of place, it blew my fragile little mind.
We didn't have "cool" guitars in my town.
There were Stratocasters of course and there were plenty of metal super-strat type guitars (No thank you Anne).
Gibson's were out of reach no matter how much cash I had.
The Telecaster was about as alternative as you could get.
I never had a chance to even look at a Jazzmaster or Jaguar.
The price tag was something ridiculous and was our of reach to me at any age since.
Mind you, I did have one of those Wayne's World "oh yes it will be mine" moments and guess what? It's finally paid off.
Ok so it's not a vintage spec instrument, but its as close as I'll ever get with a big fat mortgage hanging over my head.
My only disappointment is that the chrome hardware isn't on the current unit. No big deal, it can be modded easily enough.
A couple of weeks ago I wandered into one of the guitar stores in town, where everyone knows my name (Dropping the pop culture references today eh?) and saw a black PSVI hanging on the wall.
They kindly/cruelly let me play it.
Uh oh.
Now I have to have one.
Problem is, I've got a big fat mortgage & renovations to pay for.
Where to find the cash?
You, loyal reader, know where I am going with this.
I've had to say goodbye to two trusty instruments.
My Jackson SC1 and my Guyatone LG-127T.
Now, you might say, but you've had one so long and the other is awesome. Well, yeah. It is true on both counts.
I finally got the Surfcaster sounding good and playing nicely. The Guyatone sounds every bit as awesome as it did in the shop.
They were the only candidates hanging on my wall that are worth anything significant and that I would be willing to let go (sentimentality etc).
Oh right, back to the story.
The PSVI that I played felt great, though my technique needs some serious adjustment to make the most of it.
I got to play it at moderate volume through a Fender Deluxe (no Princeton in stock) and each of the pickups had something good to offer.
The lower E & A strings were pretty floppy. This has been widely reported on forums all over the place. In those same forums however, there is a cure. I hear the name La Bella bandied about a bit and have read several independent posts confirming that .026 - .095 gauge fits without modification.
I didn't notice any intonation issues whilst playing, but the store was fairly noisy at the time.
The Bass VI Pawn Shop edition impressed me enough to order one in Sunburst.
I really want arctic white, but they're not available in the PS range and ordering a Crafted in Japan model would set me back the price of two PSVI's locally (plus import duty).
From the performance of my isolation booth with the Princeton at about half way (the whole shed rattles), I anticipate the need for an external strangle circuit (high pass filter) and a signal splitter to direct the low end to my Sansamp VT Bass pedal.
It'll be a few weeks before it arrives, so in the meantime, enjoy these two really good demos by a chap on youtube.
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