HAVAHART TRAPS, RELCO METAL DETECTORS AND MY TX60, FISHING LURE SPOONS, COFFEE TABLE CATALOGS, PIRATE REGALIA, CLIPPER SHIPS AND SEASCAPES

I have always loved catalogs and I have a small collection of them that are dear to me. My oldest is "Trapping with humane HAVAHART TRAPS." The copyright date on the catalog is 1945, and even I don't date that far back myself -- but I figure that I got it in around 1962 because the inside cover reads "Revised 1962" and that date seems about right. My address is written on it in longhand with a real fountain pen. No zip codes back then. The catalog is a small booklet containing very high quality line drawings of animals and some black and white photos. Aside from these, it is mostly a collection of testimonials from satisfied customers. I remember reading it over and over again.

I never bought one of their humane traps.

I also still have my old Relco Company catalog from around 1971. Relco manufactures metal detectors and I spent hours staring at the different models: the Coin-Ranger at $97.50, the Frontiersman at $129.95, and the Pacesetter -- was $279.50 now only $198.50! The catalog was also full of user testimonials, some of them hand-written, and I read the catalog for months until I finally broke down and sent away for the TX60, the $69 model. I had a lot of fun with that detector although it didn't function as well as it was advertised to because the catalog would have you believe there were more pieces of eight and doubloons around than there really are. Still, I found a lot of pennies and pop tops. Remember pop tops?
I still have my TX60.

A few years ago I went on a fishing lure kick and started collecting spoons -- fishing lure spoons, of course. Lure catalogs range from simple black-and-white booklets to slick brochures with page after page of glossy color photos. Those high quality catalogs always surprised me because I knew they must have cost a fortune to produce and print and while a few companies asked for a dollar to cover expenses more often than not the catalogs were absolutely free. Even at a buck a throw, I viewed them as slim coffee table books and a tremendous value.

I have catalogs for fossil distributors, bird watcher supplies, electronics, books, music instruction, computer software and hardware, and now -- as I look through them -- a fantastic one called "Of Ships & Sea." When the heck did I get that? From it, you can order all your pirate regalia: wall decorations, anchors, sextants, barometers, ships in a bottle, and prints of famous seascape paintings. I realize suddenly that I want one of those prints with the big old clipper sailing along and one of the ones with the raging sea crashing against the rocky shore and a couple of gulls whirling above it all. How hokey can you get? It's so lame it's cool.

THE MUSICIAN'S FRIEND CATALOG, TELECASTERS AND STRATOCASTERS, A 300-DOLLAR GUITAR VS A 1600-DOLLAR GUITAR, MIDNIGHT WINE TELECASTER, THE TORONADO GUITAR, THE EPIPHONE CASINO, JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, RINGO, THE EPIPHONE OBSESSION

Having said all of this, I would now like to go into detail about a current catalog and the current adventure I am having with it. Not so long ago, a catalog came to me in the mail entitled "Musician's Friend."

I began to thumb through it and was surprised to find that you could get a real Fender Telecaster guitar for 314 bucks -- and authorized knock-offs brand new for $149. Stratocasters too.
Now, I already have a Stratocaster -- the classic solid body rock guitar that everyone on earth has seen a million times -- the one Jimmy Hendrix used. Mine's the familiar sunburst color, but it isn't a real Fender; I bought it for 189 dollars in 1981. The purchase was a wise idea because it opened up opportunities and experiences for me. If someone said, "Hey, we're gonna put together a little band for the Halloween party. Have you got an ax?" I could say, sure, I've got one." "What kind?" "A Strat." "Cool."

I played it when the house band for the Halloween party was practicing and one of the guitarists came up and made a big fuss over it. He couldn't believe the sound. My brother later joked that it wasn't the guitar; he didn't think the guy was such a hot player and thought he was impressed whenever good sound came out of a guitar because he'd never experienced it before personally. The next time I saw the guy he had a sunburst Strat just like mine except it was a real one.
Little experiences like that get you to thinking and I began (not for the first or the last time) to wonder how much difference there is in guitars -- especially electrics. I have an expensive acoustic guitar and it is noticeably superior to your 250 to 300-dollar ax. The action is far preferred -- no contest-- but the sound I figure is but 4 to 6 percent better. That's just a wild guess. It's a very hard thing to judge. How much real difference can there reasonably be in this wonderful capitalistic world? A 300-dollar guitar would be absolutely contemptible and virtually unsalable if a 1600-dollar one sounded three times as good. Guitars would just be more expensive instruments. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect someone to buy an instrument that would make him or her sound so poor in comparison to hack players with more expensive equipment.

A 1600-buck guitar doesn't outsound a decent cheapie by a very wide margin. The superiority is there, but it is sometimes subtle. Put brand new strings on any guitar and it will sound fabulous for a day or two. Add to that the fact that the sound also depends on who's playing the guitar. A crummy violin player will make a Stradivarius curdle milk. The same applies to guitarists.
My thoughts about differences in quality among different makes of guitar would become a part of my thinking in the weeks that followed. And these questions about quality would continue to occupy me.

I began to stare at the Musician's Friend catalog and opened it to show pages 54 and 55, which displayed an array of 18 Stratocasters, Telecasters, and two or three other models. As I said, there were Tellies for 314 dollars. The ad read: "Choose Midnight Wine (shown) Brown Sunburst (add $35), black, midnight blue, or Arctic white finish. I wanted Midnight Wine -- a great name and a great color if the picture was right. I knew that tellies could cost as much as $3000 or more so this seemed like a good deal. Soon, however, I began to fixate on the Fender Toronado, a solid body electric whose shape I soon devoutly believed had been designed in accordance with the order of the very cosmos and the music of the spheres.

My God it was a gorgeous guitar -- and the black finish with the tortoise shell pick guard was my favorite. In the ad, there was a big circular insert on the guitar's neck that read: "Guitar Player's Pick!" I showed the ad to my nephew, a professional jazz guitarist, and he said that the Toronado was kind of hip in the Grunge circle as Kurt Corbain used to play one before he offed himself. I used the web to find user reviews and they all loved their Toronados and raved about how they screamed.

These Toronados were bad ass rock guitars, but I am a swing guitarist -- or long to be -- and this wasn't quite the right ax for that style. Traditionally, jazz and western swing have been played on a hollow arch top guitar with F holes like an old Epiphone or a Gibson Super 400 or L-5. And because of this, it wasn't long before I had rid the specter of the Toronado from my mind and begun to concentrate on page 69 -- the Epiphone page. I stared at the Epiphone guitars: the Epiphone Dot, the Wildkat, the Alley Kat, the Sheraton, and the Casino. Fine-looking guitboxes all of them, but it was the Casino that began to prey upon my mind. The ad read: "Ever since the Beatles purchased 3 Casinos back in 1964, these hollow Epi's have taken on a life of their own."

What it means to have a guitar take on a life of its own was lost on me, but I knew I would have an Epiphone Casino or die. It listed for $1049 but Musician's Friend sold it for $599. There was a square drawn over the body of the guitar that read: "BEST BUY!"
I was sold.

I remembered John Lennon playing his Casino and I began to search the web to learn more about the guitar and its Beatles history. It seems McCartney bought a Casino and used it to play the famous lick in Lennon's "Ticket to Ride." (This was news that surprised me as I would have thought that Lennon or Harrison would have played that little guitar bit.) John and George soon had their own Casinos and they used them at the famous Shea Stadium concert and at other gigs. The famous Sergeant Pepper's album is alive with the sound of this guitar as well. People wrote that Lennon couldn't keep his hands off the Casino and it was his preferred instrument to the sad day he died. The user reviews were also glowing.

Pros: Weight, feel, and Tone tone tone !!!!!!
Cons: Not enough time in the day for playing
The Bottom Line: This is a seriously fine instrument. Forget the History, try it
because it is awesome !

People talked all about the P90 pick-ups that could give you the Beatlesque sound and how you could switch between pick-up and tone settings to turn your Casino from a screaming rock banshee into a blues monster or a jazz machine. All of them were impressed with the craftsmanship and attention to detail.
There were only a couple of minor complaints from users:

Dislikes: The only feature I do not like about this guitar is the pick guard constantly vibrated at an aggravating and very noticeable level when I played the guitar unplugged. Since I have removed the pick guard all the bad vibrations are gone. I assume that this may have been a problem for some time since John Lennon removed the pick guard on his Casino.

I knew that was true; just look at the Let it Be album and the rooftop concert. John's playing the Casino, and the white pick guard with the cool Epiphone monogram is gone.
One player also mentioned an internal buzz that seemed to be part of the hardware inside. It was a minor thing that didn't bother him and that couldn't be heard when the guitar was plugged in. And everyone thought the pick-up selector switch was kind of cheap, but easily replaced for a couple of bucks.

Aside from these minor items, the reviews were raves. I studied more about the Casino and found that it was really a copy of the old high-priced Gibson 330, no longer in production. It's a great deal like the present day Gibson 335, but it is completely hollow while most of the others in the Gibson and Epiphone line have solid blocks of wood within them and are semi-hollow. The Casino is therefore very lightweight in comparison.

I also learned that Epiphone is Gibson's low-end branch company. The Epi's are made in Korea and aren't quite as good -- but the word on the street is that they are close enough that spending 1500 bucks more for a Gibson is ridiculous.
The Beatles seemed to have viewed things the same way. Paul's trademark violin-shaped Hoffner bass was a very inexpensive instrument -- but it was hollow and very comfortable, and so he used it in nearly every performance. The old Epiphone Casino used to be American-made but it was still the low end of the Gibson Company -- and that didn't stop John and George from using them -- although Epiphone executives surely didn't just pick Casinos off the shelf and ship them to the Beatles. There wasn't a guitar company in the world that wouldn't have killed their first born to get one of their models into the Beatles hands, so undoubtedly Epiphone sent them the absolute best they had.

John's first Epiphone was a sunburst, but hoping to improve the sound, he had someone sand it down to its natural wood and give it the slightest coating of shellac. His model also had a black ring around the pick-up switch, and, as I mentioned, the pick guard was removed. At the Epiphone web site, you can find the specs for the new John Lennon Casinos. There are two: one the sanded down version and the other the original sunburst. For the sanded down version, they got permission from Yoko Ono to go to her apartment in the Dakota and study the very instrument John played in order to get their reproduction exact. They have removed the pick guard and put in a black grommet ring and they're selling it and the original sunburst model as limited editions for $2,995 each. They even have a downloadable software presentation on the John Lennon Casino. But I didn't know anything about this when the Casino bug bit me. All I knew was that the picture and short description in the catalog had convinced me.

I used to pop into the local saloon, have a beer, and read or write. But now I had become obsessed and I would have that beer and just sit there and stare at the Epiphone Casino in the catalog. I read nothing; I just stared. And stared. The bar maid at the Timber Wolf Pub said, "Why don't you just buy that guitar?" And eventually I thought, "Why don't I?" I hadn't bought an electric in 20 years at least and $599 wasn't that much money. My nephew told me not to buy from a catalog. He said the quality could vary a lot and to play one first before I bought it. But when I tried to find a Casino in local stores I came up with nothing -- and I knew they wouldn't have the cheap price anyway.

I ORDER A CASINO! STICKERS, SET UP IN THE USA! A RATTLY EPI! THE BRIDGE IS A PIECE OF S.....! PLYWOOD IS S.....! THE TUNDRA OF ILLINOIS, IT'S F..... DEFECTIVE! I SEND MY EPIPHONE CASINO BACK

Finally, I called Musician's Friend -- just to inquire about their views on quality. The guy who answered my call was named "Sky." "Sixties Parents? God love 'em! My name's Rain Cloud!" I was tempted to say, but I didn't.

Sky told me, "If you don't like it, just send it back in 45 days. For any reason." That sounded unbeatable, so I ordered the Casino. Natural finish, of course! Just like Johnny's.
The guitar came in one night after work. I was surprised at how beautifully made it was. The natural wood showed an exquisite grain and the white binding gave the whole instrument a two-tone, saddle-shoe look. The neck was mahogany -- darker than the rest of the guitar, but not so dark as not to fit in with the color scheme. And there is no other guitar with a headstock shaped that way -- there is something very classical about the look of that headstock as though it might go as well on a cello or viola. The action was great and the parallelogram inlays on the fingerboard were just plain cool. The pick-ups, bridge and time-honored but seldom-seen V-shaped tailpiece blazed with the brightest of gleaming chrome. Oh, for sheer looks this was hard to beat. Very very hard indeed.

On the pick guard was a cool sticker that said, "Limited Lifetime Warranty." I reluctantly removed it. (I hate to take that kind of thing off something brand new. I bought a 1990 Dodge shadow new, and when I finally sold it in the year 2001, most of the sticker was still plastered on the passenger window.)

Also on the back of the Casino's headstock was a sticker that said, "Set up in the USA by #15." In the user materials was a picture of a long-haired blond technician setting up an Epiphone guitar.

My brother and a friend came over and we played some music. They had acoustics and I played my new Casino. Although an electric, its hollow body had enough acoustic properties for it to be played along with the other guitars. I was surprised that it was loud enough to do that. A Strat or a Tellie could not be heard at all in such a setting.
My new Casino's strings were super slinkies and they buzzed and didn't stay in tune so I put on some new heavier gauge ones and the guitar kept tune great although it seemed that the strings still buzzed. I had to get rid of that rattling buzz and a friend recommended Jenkins' Guitars. He gave them a call and told me they said, "A Casino? It HAS to be set up."

I took it in.

Now, Randall Jenkins is a very portly fellow and boasts to have set up all of Glen Campbell's guitars and Johnny Cash's and everyone else's famous in the whole world. He took the guitar and diddled with it and started tapping it and said, "This thing is rattling all over the place." He wrote "Rattly Epi" on the work order and said it would cost a hundred bucks to try to get it right. Just "try" he emphasized. But I wasn't worried; from what I'd heard this guy could set-up the crates they came in.

But I got bad news when Randall Jenkins finished. He couldn't get rid of the rattle. "You really tried everything?" I asked him over the phone.
His answer was professional and to the point: "I took the whole fuckin' thing apart. That jack was a piece of garbage and so I shit canned it and put in a new one. And that plywood -- that plywood is shit! It's is as cheap as it comes and it's five fucking times thicker than it ought to be. They've carved grooves all under it to make up for the thickness. It's shit. So is the bridge. It's a piece of shit too, but I didn't know if you wanted me to put in a real Gibson one for another hundred bucks. I've laced some rubbery material through the strings beneath it the way some Jazz nuts do when they've got a rattly guitar. You may not like it."
"So my guitar is a lost cause?"

"I didn't say that. You come in and see what you think."

I went in to pick up the guitar and one of the technicians, a guy named Dave, was there. "Is Randall in?" I asked.

"Nah, he's blasted outta here," he replied. "What can I do for you?"

I told him I was the one with the rattly Epi.
"Oh, yeah. Let's plug that baby in!" he said, and got the guitar and flipped on the ever ready Fender amp in the front room. A couple of other guys came over and I played a little and it sounded all right.

"Turn it off and play it," one of them said.

I did and Dave said, "Man, you're too fucking good a player for that guitar." I was both happy and sad to hear this. Happy because these musician types thought I was good -- although I always feel I have suckered people when they think I'm a good musician -- and sad because they were knocking the guitar. "You know," Dave went on, "I've got to learn that swing shit. I'm blasted out with rock."

"The guitar's no good?"
"It's fucking defective, man. Listen to it." He grabbed the guitar away and strummed a C9th. "Shit man, that's no kind of guitar!"
I had to admit that it rattled like hell.
"Just listen to it!" he went on, playing a bunch of complicated rock licks. "I bought a Gibson SG from Musician's Friend a few years ago myself. The prices are great. When my SG came in, I found out that it had been frozen up in the tundra in Illinois. Frozen solid. I sent it back to them and told them it was a piece of shit and they'd better goddamned well send me a good SG or else. The next one came in and the headstock was practically busted clean off. I told them that they sent me another piece of shit and they'd better not do it again. The third one was AWESOME!"
"So you think I ought to send this one back?"
"You're too good a player for this guitar. There's a 95 percent chance that the next one will be perfect. Someone's dropped this thing, or the dumb asses who built it fucked up the laminate. The wood itself is rattling. We took all the hardware off of this guitar and when we tapped it, it still fucking rattled."
One of the other guys said, "We're not knocking the guitar. It's the right kind for the style you want to play. It's just defective."
I got the guitar home and played it and it just rattled too much. You could even hear it when it was plugged in. Unplugged it was far worse. Strum a chord and the guitar crackled with a sustained, echoing rattle like distant thunder. I called Randall Jenkins the next day and said, "Hey, man. This thing still rattles like the devil."
Randall immediately became defensive. "Now, I told you the price and that I might not be able to promise...."
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Relax; I just want to ask a question. You've already got the bread. I want to know whether you think another model like this -- one that doesn't rattle -- is worth a damn."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, for starters you were knocking the plywood."
"I wasn't knocking the plywood," he contradicted. "I said the plywood is SHIT! All plywood is shit!"
"Well, that's what I mean -- that's knocking it." But I couldn't get very far with him. I knew even the finest Epiphone classic jazz arch tops were made of plywood. They all were. I wanted to know if the Casino was a really bad guitar but he was too far into negativity to communicate what I really wanted to know.
"Oh, another thing," Randall said. "There's something about your guitar that I've never seen. Someone's put a sound post in it."
"What's that?"
"It's a little wooden post that connects the top and the back. I looked at it and it was put in professionally -- at the factory. Usually I think they're a good idea -- but here I don't know. They're supposed to improve the sound and also to help with any rattling."
I asked whether Musician's Friend was notorious for poor quality.
"You got it from Musician's Friend?" he said. "Good. Send it back."
So I did.

THE ARTSTAR GUITAR AND THE SHERATON II, ALL THAT IS GOLD DOES NOT LONG GLITTER, MY FRIEND TRIES TO SWAY ME, GET OUT OF MY DREAM! THE CASINO "BLEM," IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JOHNNY SO IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME, MY REPLACEMENT COMES IN, HANG ONTO YOUR DREAMS!

Shortly afterwards, a friend at work picked up my own Musician's Friend catalog and showed me an Ibanez Artstar guitar somewhat like the Casino. It was Japanese made and its ad boasted the super quality it offered and how it was great for swing. It cost only 69 bucks more. The ad read:

AS120 Artstar Electric Guitar
Product #519435
For the guitarists who insist on uncompromised tone. A full-bodied guitar of flawless workmanship and a broader tonal spectrum than any other semi-hollow body out there. It's perfect for jazz, rockabilly, or country swing. Features an all-maple body, medium frets, beautiful abalone fretboard inlays, a Full Tune II bridge, and 2 Super 58 pickups for a warm sound without feedback.

I'd been through this dilemma before though. In the same catalog, for 30 bucks more than the Casino was the Sheraton II. We looked it up on the web and it was absolutely gorgeous. The pick-ups were gold and so was the rest of the metal hardware. The guitar was a flaming red sunburst with white binding and the inlay on the neck was mother of pearl. The headstock had a intricate and spectacular mother of pearl inlay of branching vines all across it. Man alive! It was nearly impossible to beat the guitar's looks, but when I read the user reviews, everyone said the gold wore off in a matter of hours and some complained that the pick-ups weren't that hot. Still, it was tempting.

My friend at work was urging me to buy the Ibanez Artstar. "You want the Casino even though the Artstar might be higher quality?"
"That's right," I told him, without shame.

A couple of times the next week as my guitar was being shipped back to the distributor, he said, "I guess you've still got time to make up your mind about the Ibanez." He was hoping I'd change my mind and have them ship me the Ibanez as the replacement. But there was little chance of that. I knew that neither the Ibanez nor the Sheraton stood up to the rigorous test that I subjected them to. It was the test of the Catalog Dream. I wanted a Casino and nothing, not even the voice of reason could stand up to my living out that dream. How could I get the Ibanez? Every time I looked at it I would think about the Casino!

"Hey, everybody," I thought. "Don't be trying to save me from ruin. I know you've seen the Casino and now you're bored and would just love to see something new. But you won't have to live with a guitar you don't want. This train is bound for glory! Get aboard or get out of my dream!"

While I waited for my new Casino to come in, I went on the internet to look at the Musician's Friend site and found to my surprise that there was suddenly a lower-priced Casino advertised there. It was only available in the natural finish. It was called the Casino BLEM and it cost ninety dollars less. I clicked the button to read more and found that "BLEM" was short for "blemished" and that "blems" were guitars that people had sent back for one reason or another. The company said they might have tiny scratches or other blemishes, but they guaranteed them to be in otherwise perfect condition. I knew that my pick guard had visible scratches on it when I sent the guitar back; you can't really play the guitar without leaving tiny marks like that.
Sending guitars back seemed to be a very common practice. When you call Musician's Friend, one of the first options you hear in the recorded message is the key for returning an item, so they obviously get a lot of guitars returned. Just the same, I worried whether people were sending back natural finish Casinos by the boxes and crateloads because they were all faulty and rattling like mad. That would explain Epiphone's new advertisement. A couple of days later, however, the Casino BLEM was no longer listed on their page, so perhaps by chance it was the very guitar I returned that they had been reselling and some poor slob had bought it.
The two limited edition John Lennon Casinos remained listed on the site along with the regular Korean model available in Cherry, Ebony, Natural, and Turquoise, the last of which is a very unusual color for a guitar. At the bottom of the Casino page they'd written:

If it was good enough for the Beatles, is it not good enough for you? Order today.

Now who could argue with that?

A week or two went by and I checked on the web and saw that the UPS driver had signed the release himself and dumped my new guitar behind my gate. When I got home there was a very battered and half-open box at my house and I opened it up to find the identical twin of the guitar that I sent back -- except, to my relief, it didn't have that awful rattle. If you pressed it, a string would buzz and if you hit a big open E, there was a barely detectable, but faintly familiar rattle but only when the pick-up selector switch was in the middle position. I'd put my thumb on the switch and the rattle disappeared. It was hard to hear. Perhaps that rattle was my imagination.
I tapped the top of the guitar and there was an airy ringing sound faint and beautiful like a thousand tiny bells. I identified its source when I plucked the tailpiece. The strings that attached to it made the light and ethereal ringing sound but it could not be heard when the guitar was played. I liked the sound anyway. It was pretty.

I can't hear any rattles now, even when the pick-up switch is in the middle position. The fifth and six strings sometimes have the tiniest buzz -- but who cares? That can be adjusted if I even think it's worth the effort. There are a couple of tiny chips on the edge of the pick guard. I figure if I make a couple of strokes with a file -- carefully!-- they'll disappear.

My friend at work still thinks I should have gone for higher quality and a Japanese-made Ibanez, but then I find myself back to my question about how much difference there is between two guitars, one considered slightly lower in quality, the other slightly higher. With electrics, the difference is even less important and if I cared enough I would simply buy them both -- or the $2000 Gibson. I've got the bread. But there was no alternative for me; have you ever tried buying something different from what you had first envisioned and for years afterwards felt the tiniest tinge of regret each time you saw the purchase and contemplated your compromise and your weakness and how things might have been?
Hang on to your dreams!

Dreams are the only thing
'Kept me goin' so far
Just dreams and the sound of my guitar!