Some of you know who Pete Moreno is, a Gibson employee from 1960 until 1983 or so then the guy in charge of Gibson warranty repairs for another few years. He now has his own luthier shop and, more importantly, decades of stories.
This one I shared before. Gibson was reorganizing its storage. Ted McCarty told Pete to take these boxes of old style pickups to the dump. Pete loaded up hundreds of unused pickups in heavy boxes and threw them in the dump. These were PAFs.
Another one is that Pete got five Crest bodies with the neck attached at a garage sale. New owners of the house found them in the attic above the garage. I think he paid $50 for all of them. He actually was there before the garage sale started. The woman who owned the house was trying to pound a sign into her front lawn and was struggling. Pete was driving by and stopped to help. After the sign was in the ground the lady showed him what she had. He took all five of the Crest bodies and over a period of about 20 years turned them into guitars.
Today I brought in a guitar to him that had a staple pickup on it. That evoked another story. When Gibson was moving to Nashville they offered Pete a chance to buy a lot of things they didn't want to move. For example they had a large number of new cases. Gibson wanted $1 each for the soft shell and $5 for the hard shell. He bought them all. He also bought gallons of guitar finish for spray guns. He still has some of it. The best was that they had 10 boxes all taped up. Gibson offered them to Pete for $25 per box, but he could not open them. All he knew was that they were guitar odds and ends. He bought all 10 of them. One of them was filled with a lot of unused pickups, many being staple single coils. Another box had 11 new original Charlie Christian pickups still in the wrapper. Those he sold for $350 each back then.
It's always fun to visit Pete. He has a large workshop with old guitar parts, like bodies and necks, leftover from Gibson
Has anyone played or had a Supro Amulet ?
Today, 04:44 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos