Wired Wood
Guitars
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| Eros Les Paul Copy
A colleague came to the rescue. He wanted to treat himself to Strat for his 40th birthday. (Quite common I believe!) However, his wife thought he already owned too many guitars. As part of his clearance he sold me his Eros Les Paul copy. I only paid £20 for the Eros. Just as well because it was a dog of a guitar when I took possession. That suited me though, because I could happily take it apart and play around with it to re kindle some of the luthier skills I had acquired as a teenager. The body was made out of plywood. What would have been a carved maple top on a real Les Paul was actually a piece of bent hardboard with an air gap between it and the plywood. The neck was OK, but the action far to high. The major fault though was its inability to stay in tune for more than 5 minutes. String bending was out of the question! The refurbishment started when I spotted some Shaller tuning pegs in a local music shop, reduced for quick sale, probably because of the garish colours. For just £20 I could chose between blue, red or black. The girl who served me refused to let me buy the blue or red, overriding my own dubious preferences. With the black set installed and a new set of strings the guitar was brought into tune. It stayed in tune for long enough for me to set the neck relief, lower the action and set the intonation. I now had a very playable guitar. I plugged it in and it sounded pretty good. Closer inspection revealed that, at some point in it’s past, a pair of Epiphone hum-buckers had been installed. The horrid body construction didn’t seem to have had too detrimental an effect. Mind you, look at what Danelectro make their guitars out of … I polished it up and pressed it into service as my main guitar for the 2 years that I was in the swing band. It featured on 3 live performances, which were recorded and released on CD. Playing with the swing band was a great experience. It worked wonders for my timing. Brass instruments play in horrible keys, so my barre chord playing improved immensely. I even got my first experience of singing, when the bandleader heard me mucking about between songs in rehearsal and asked me to sing the song properly. It became part of our live set! I later acquired a couple of proper wooden bodied guitars. The Eros fell out of use in favour of my Pacifica and Westbury. Reluctantly, I sold it. |
This was actually
a very important guitar to me, despite being cheap and cheerful, because I
associate it with an enjoyable period of musical experience. I had not played
for several years and my guitars were lying collecting dust when I was
invited to join the swing band at my place of work. Even though my musical taste was more inclined to rock
and pop I decided that it would be fun and challenging. Initially I used the
Yendor, but grew increasingly concerned that it may get damaged or stolen. I had
to get another guitar, which I would happily lug about and leave lying around
the office when not in use.