This past week, in my ongoing desire to simultaneously Kondo Marie and Swedish Death Clean myself (while also socking away money to put toward our solar panel system) I unloaded two vintage guitars and a vintage guitar amp. The guitars I hadn’t owned long. One – a 1962 Les Paul Junior – I bought three years ago as investment and 60th birthday present to myself. It mostly sat in its case as I was too afraid I’d reduce its future value by actually playing it. Those SG-style Gibsons have a notorious reputation for the headstocks snapping off under the correct conditions, for instance, and I wasn’t interested in cutting its value by two-thirds, never mind finding someone to properly repair such a break. The 1976 Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (AKA “Fretless Wonder”) was acquired sometime in 2021, after hounding its owner to sell it to me (I’d previously bought his aluminum-neck Kramer, selling it not long after) over the course of three of four years. Why I thought I needed a Norlin-era Gibson Les Paul — due to cost-cutting measures, often considered inferior to pre-Norlin Gibson Les Pauls – when I own a 1968 Les Paul is beyond me. I suppose I thought I could get it for “a bargain” and hold on to it a few years, then sell it at a profit.
Which is pretty much what I did.
After doing some pricing research on Reverb, both guitars went on Marketplace and Reverb and this past Friday, Alan reached out via Messenger to inquire about the ‘62 Junior. We went back and forth and he mentioned he also wanted to see the ‘76 Custom. Sunday he arrived around 4 PM and spent thirty minutes poring over both guitars in our garage. Alan – coffee roaster by trade, guitar enthusiast by hobby – came equipped with his own micrometer, caliper, screwdrivers, etc. and did a thorough evaluation of each guitar. Then he made me an offer on both. Oddly enough, it was the figure I had in mind, one that would see me make a bit of money, even if I was left feeling I sold too soon. Alan and I haggled a bit and when he mentioned he had cash, I shook his hand and said “Sure.” It was tough to see both guitars go at once but I reminded myself I A) don’t have to pay (substantial) seller’s fees to Reverb or B) deal with double-boxing each guitar, shipping it out, hoping it arrives undamaged or C) a buyer with remorse who invokes Reverb’s money-back guarantee, insisting I accept a return.
Alan, Les Paul collector, came, he saw, he conquered.
Yes, I could’ve held on to the guitars a few more years, made a few more dollars, but I’m seeing otherwise-desirable vintage cars, guitars, etc., sitting on EBay, Marketplace and Reverb for weeks and months, their prices dropped continuously until they sell for a fraction of the initial asking. This economy’s direction isn’t giving me much hope vis a vis the value of old shit, though Gibson Les Pauls might outperform my IRA.
When I opened our garage door to help Alan tote my guitars – umm – his guitars across the street I was taken aback to see his sweet 1992 Mercedes-Benz 300D in a beautiful shade of teal with blue interior.
“Man, I just got rid of my Mercedes. This is a nice color combination.”
Alan told me he owns six cars (he lives in western NJ and has the room) as I pointed to my electric Mini parked out front.
“That’s mine. It’s electric.”
We shook each other’s hands, then Alan put the guitars in the rear footwell, climbed in his Benz and took off.
That was easy. The total opposite of what I went through to unload my 1968 Plush P-1000S tube guitar stack (pictured).
Easily the loudest, gnarliest amp I’ve ever owned, I don’t even remember exactly when I bought it – the early to mid ‘90s – but vaguely recall paying my friend Jim $200 for the head and bottom, largely because it was upholstered in blue metal-flake tuck & roll diamond-pattern Naugahyde, ala Kustom amps (which were solid-state) and matched my blue metal-flake Les Paul, also from 1968. Plush hand-wired and built their tube amps at 629 West 50th Street in Manhattan, if you can believe such a thing, and their amps were endorsed by, among others, the Jeff Beck Group. Famously based on the Fender Bassman circuit (though every third tube amp is also supposedly based on the same circuit), Plush amps were “overbuilt” and featured military-grade transformers hardier than those Fender used at the time. No interior components were so esoteric or unique that a good amp tech couldn’t keep one running forever. Plush was mostly about the cosmetics and presentation, hence the diamond-pleat padding, which was also practical: you could drop a Plush amp and its plushness would cause it to bounce.
I’m not sure I ever used my Plush while playing out... maybe once or twice with Missing Foundation or Wrench. It was too fucking big, too bulky, too loud, pumping out a clean, non-overdrive deafening 100 watts RMS through two fifteen-inch speakers in a baffled, ported cabinet. Not long after I bought it another, more practical combo amp fell in my lap – it might’ve been the Orange Overdrive 80 gifted to me by the late, lamented Stephen “Rhino” Gawryluk of Bedlam fame – and I consigned the Plush with Chris Cush at Mojo Guitar Shop (whose business card, the best I’ve seen, included their address – 102 St. Marks Place – but also helpfully listed Elvis Presley’s weight on all the other planets). Then I utterly forgot about it. Two or more years went by and something jolted my memory – a Plush picture on the internet, seeing another Plush out in the wild – and I called Chris at Mojo.
Oh yeah. I kinda remember that. It must be in storage. It’s not in the store.
Mojo Guitar Shop was a tiny operation, so I believed Chris. But he also had a habit of selling consigned gear and taking his sweet time passing along the proceeds. In this case, he located the amp... but it took another year or more before he alerted me to come retrieve it. It ended up in my Hoboken railroad apartment, then down in our basement, where I couldn’t play it above “1” on the volume pot or objects would rattle off shelves while pictures bounced on the walls. It mostly sat there, its capacitors leaking and breaking down, requiring trips every five years to Dave’s Sound Repair in Whippany for tune-ups. Even sitting there doing nothing it cost me money. I’d pile vintage Tonka toys atop it and the cats would use it as a landing pad between floor and basement window.
Three years ago I decided to sell the Plush, taking copious pictures, shooting video and listing it on Marketplace and Reverb. The price started north of $1,000 – which seemed utterly reasonable for a well-built vintage tube guitar amp of some pedigree – but no one bit. I kept lowering the price until landing on $499 a month ago. A week ago, Axe from down near New Brunswick messaged me via Marketplace, asking a bunch of questions and eventually claiming he’d drive up Thursday to check out the amp. With Marketplace I take an “I’ll believe it when I see it…” approach, due to past bullshitters, but around 6 pm Axe messaged with his ETA, so I rolled the Plush out to our garage, parking it in front of my Mini and plugging it in by the workbench. Axe and Susie, his roommate, arrived in her Subaru around 7, backing into our driveway as directed. I raised the garage door and welcome them in. Axe understandably wanted to try the amp out and from the Subaru grabbed a guitar he’d brought along for the purpose. I got him plugged in and the amp turned on, then had an initial moment of panic when no sound came out of the Plush. Duh. I’d forgotten about the standby switch on the back panel. When I flicked the switch up the Plush came noisily to life. As Axe strummed a series of wildly discordant chords through both channels, twisting every scratchy knob as he went, someone called to us.
Hey! Hey! We’re trying to put our baby to sleep!
I looked out the garage and the couple across the street – her holding a baby, him waving his arms above his head, both with pained expressions on the faces – were advancing towards us. Before they could get much closer I shouted back “He’s buying this! We’re done now!” Then I turned to Axe.
“Great. Now you woke the baby.”
He laughed. It was my fault. I should’ve backed the Mini up a bit and shut the garage door. I switched the Plush off and Axe unplugged his guitar. Then he thrust a hand into one of his pockets and withdrew $500 in cash.
Here. I’ll take it.
Plush: The Amp That Will Wake Your Baby
Selling off guitars, amps, effects, etc. – as Sweet T. reminds – is yet another lesson in the Buddhist concept of impermanence. The older I get, the less value I put on shit I haven’t carried with me from my electric youth in the Nihilistics. My 1968 Les Paul, the one I bought for $225 in 1983, dubbing it “Debbie Gibson”? That’ll be left to someone in my will. Same with the ProCo Rat distortion pedal I bought in ‘82 at Music Land in Lindenhurst and that Fuzz Wah Face (combination fuzz and wah-wah pedal) purchased at a frozen-in-time music store on Sunrise Highway west of Massapequa around the same time and – finally – the Orange Overdrive 80 Rhino (RIP) gave me the night Paul of Adrenalin OD and I delivered at Randall amp to him during one of his smoky poker games.
All else? Make me an offer.