Knock-Offs, Rip-Offs, and Just Plain UGLY!

[1965]

Here's a good one for you

"SHARK GUITAR AS PICTURED, NO CASE.. READY TO PLAY.. COME TRY BEFORE YOU BUY"



http://sacramento.craigslist.org/msg/679343030.html

[jps]

I just read this in TOH magazine:

"...wood is so precious, and so threatened, that it is a crime to make ugly or impermanent things from it."

Thomas Moser, founder, Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers

[jingle_jangle]

Moser's company builds beautiful things from wood. His marketing people are using his quotes to sell those things. But there is an implication here, and it goes like this:

"Can you trust your own judgment as to what is beautiful and what is not? My things are beautiful (and permanent? from wood? hmmmmm...). Why are they beautiful? Don't be silly. They are because I say that they are. Buy them. After all, how can you be sure that any other things are worth purchasing?"

There is a lot of this sort of snob-marketing to insecure but wealthy people, going on in the back pages of The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and similar magazines.

[jps]

That is certainly true. This came from an article showing the workshop and showing how their furniture is built.

I was thinking of all the ugly instruments that have been posted on this thread showing the waste of some perfectly beautiful wood.

[jingle_jangle]

I was thinking of all the ugly instruments that have been posted on this thread showing the waste of some perfectly beautiful wood.

And time, and brainpower that would be better put to use building crooked bookshelves and plastic model kits of WWII Panther tanks...

[jingle_jangle]

BAAACK, after a 6-month hiatus.

I just had to post this after I got my usual Monday email from Elderly with this as one of their for sale items. They bill it as "the guitar Johnny Winter made famous!", but last time I saw JW he was playing a Flying V...has it been that long?

Anyway, this thing creeps me out the same way I got creeped out at age 7 when I saw Pegleg Pete. Another example of a person who might build and repair guitars like a wizard, but suffers from Untrained Eye Syndrome:

http://www.elderly.com/vintage/items/30U-15114.htm

Ughhhh.

The back view shows that chrome ferrule on top, which makes me wonder if that's where it screws on...

You could play ZZTop's "Legs" on it, or "Running on Empty", or...suggestions?

[Scastles]

I think if you rifled out the neck, and cut out a small section in the bodies back, you'd have a miniature chiminea. Or possibly you could stick a hose to it and have hooka pipe.

[cjj]

If you lengthened the body a bit (into the neck) it might make a decent cricket bat...

[melibreits]

Man, that thing just looks WRONG....

[ozover50]

Strewth!!!!

Looks more like the south end of a north bound camel to me!!

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

The owner of the guitar just loves to play.

[kiramdear]

Ooooh, that's a good example of what art school will do to one's mind.

[jps]

Ooooh, that's a good example of what art school will do to one's mind.

Do you speak from experience, Kira?

[kiramdear]

As a student and as an art teacher I speak.

Mustn't say more. Don't wake my inner artiste or we'll never shut her up

[jingle_jangle]

As I sit here writing this from my "office" at an "art school", I can feel my mind is just fine...

...I think...