Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

The infamous Avalon AV-2T Bought this one one today.

Yeah,baby!!Yeah!!!!

YES!!

I'm gonna be hanging out with Dot on Sunday!

Mitch, honestly, how junky is it? I really love the way these things look.

Hahha,thanks John,I don't actually have it yet,it is being shipped. I have wanted one for along time.
I even made a post about the Shaggs guitar 3 years ago.

I first heard about the Shaggs back around 1979. That was when NRBQ rereleased "Philosophy Of The World" on their Red Rooster label. Tom Ardolino often came to my record store.I took the photo below in 1987.Tom actually got be a Shagg when he filled in on drums at Shaggs 30th anniversary concert in 1999(Helen was too ill to play).Sadly, both Helen and Tom are are now deceased so I don't think there will ever be another Shaggs reunion. Terry Adams remembered the Shaggs in this 2011 Examiner article

Far out!

"Oh, the rich people want what the poor people's got
And the poor people want what the rich people's got
And the skinny people want what the fat people's got
And the fat people want what the skinny people's got

You can never please anybody in this world"

All about The Shaggs: http://www.musictory.com/music/Shaggs

You guys need help...

paologregorio wrote:You guys need help...

I was searching for the right words at the beginning of the thread Paul. You have hit the nail on the head, for me at least.

winston wrote:

paologregorio wrote:You guys need help...

I was searching for the right words at the beginning of the thread Paul. You have hit the nail on the head, for me at least.

Mikey makes 3

I'm not saying I would have spent real money on it.

I like the look of that guitar...

...but I remember the first time someone played the Shaggs for me; it was a friend who had just been hired to work in the vinyl section of the record store at which I worked, and he and his wife invited me over for an evening. We were trading album plays, each trying to play something for the other that would blow their mind, and he landed on The Shaggs' Philosophy of the World. He won; my mind was blown.

We didn't hang out again after that.


That's not totally true; we went to see "Japanese New Music Festival together in 2006 (Zoffy, Yoshida Tatsuya, and Tsuyama Atsushi) which was amazing, but for the sake fo he story: The Shaggs soured our relationship.

Haha, here is what Frank Zappa said about the Shaggs in 1976:

Here is my pal "Foot Foot".

Good work!

I would agree with Zappa that The Shaggs are "beyond Captain Beefheart," minding the fact that "beyond" is a distinctly relative term.

Anyhow, what does the Avalon goes for on the market these days?

I don't know because you don't see them for sale often. The ones I have seen sold for between $150 and $1299



Here is an article about this guitar that appeared in the May 2009 issue of Guitar Player Magazine:

"SO MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT THE guitars played by our heroes. Whether we're talking about vintage Les Pauls, Stratocasters, Rickenbackers, or Gretsches, you can literally find entire books devoted to their history. Not much has been written, however, about the mighty 1968 Avalon AV-T2, made famous by the Shaggs.

The Shaggs,a “band,” made up of the Wiggins sisters from New Hampshire, recorded an album back in the summer of ’69. That record, Philosophy of the World would have (should have?) stayed totally under the radar if not for the fact that Frank Zappa once declared in a Playboy interview, “The Shaggs are better than the Beatles.” Hmmm. One thing is for sure: The incredibly strange, atonal, arrhythmic tunes on Philosophy are completely devoid of cliché. If your interest is piqued (and how could it not be?), have fun researching this bizarre group that appears on the favorite albums lists of guitarists as diverse as Kurt Cobain and Ronnie Montrose.

Okay, on to the guitar. At first glance, it’s a cheapie, made-in-Japan, ’60’s solidbody, probably produced by Kawai, Teisco, or maybe Tele-Star. It has two single-coil pickups, a 3-way selector switch (conveniently located in the strum path on the pickguard), two volume and two tone knobs, and a surfacemount whammy. Even though it didn’t catch on—which is probably why there is so little information available about this guitar company— this model was built to be more than an entrylevel student guitar. The headstock has a beautiful mother of pearl inlay logo. The pickguard and back plate are made from high-gloss chrome plated steel, as are the pickup rings, bridge plate, tuners, Strat-style output jack, and the ingenious towel-rack string guide on the headstock. The AV-T2 is finished in a righteous tobaccoburst on a figured flame maple top. The bridge sports six individual rollers and the neck plate has five set screws. Not exactly a kid’s guitar!

Here’s what you don’t see at first glance: This guitar actually plays quite nicely. It has a skinny, multi-laminated “propellerwood” neck with jumbo frets, super-low action, and a tremolo that’s very user-friendly and smooth. Plugged into the clean channel of my old Boogie, the Avalon gives good surf, partly due to the smoothness of the trem system, but also thanks to the tone of the single-coils, which— although not particularly unique—are quite musical, falling somewhere between a Tele and a Jaguar. With distortion, you can get a tone reminiscent of Jimmy Page’s Silvertone work with Led Zeppelin.

With all of the lore surrounding the Shaggs on the 40th anniversary of the release of their first album, this weird guitar isn’t easy to find—and isn’t cheap—but well worth the hunt, although any of us would be hardpressed to duplicate the magic of the legendary Dot Wiggins."

Here is the 1968 Harris Teller wholesale catalog they appeared in.



Here is another one on youtube.

Thanks, Mitch; there's lots of really great information in that post!
I'm definitely adding an Avalon to my guitar radar...

Don't you want a matching bass?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1960s-A ... 1c2f3ff333