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Preach it Deacon! What you wrote is indeed the gospel truth!
Originally Posted by deacon Mark
Joe Pass was/is the icon of Jazz guitar anyone who says otherwise clearly has failed in great book of jazz guitar knowledge. I think some guys give him a hard time because he played solo so much and frankly he did, but also played with small groups. He stunned the guitar world with his Catch Me sessions in the early 60's. The sound of his 175 and level of melodic playing was almost as if he put together the perfect solo lines. In a sense he certainly was able to handle quick tempos and chops but he also was melodic in making almost speech like sentences.
The other side of the coin is he stunned the guitar world 10 years later with Virtuosos probably my most favorite jazz guitar recording and certainly my favorite solo recording. He just manage to swing and make your toes tap. As a 13 year old boy in Mel Bay Book one when I got the record in about 1974 listening to it on my grandmother's old record player. Looking back I was encountering history and the presence of something great. It was like opening the book of the Gospels and saying.............yes I was there when the Lord took us to Mt Tabor. I still listen to this recording often at times,then put it away for awhile and get it back out.
Since this is a gear page Joe manage all of this on his trusty Gibson 175 with, and without an amplifier. If anyone dare trash this in some form it is only because they simply could not pull this off themselves. Certainly I have heard transcriptions of others playing from this recording................sorry Joe did it first and a clone is still a clone not the original. Joe did not do this on the coveted L5 and Fender Twin, he did it on laminated 175 with a Polytone which he then made his sound. Even when the recording dropped the amp as happened on the session Joe actually sounds even better. Joe was a regular fellow and he had a sense of humor and never made guitar playing about himself.
The truth be know his entire audience at times were guitar players because he was so good everyone had to go check him out. Most players playing for a living are working gigs trying to get anyone to listen to jazz guitar. Joe was talented that he had guitar players listen and making a living playing in effect for them I think at times. He played with his fingers, the pick, sometimes he used both and frankly he love tunes. He did not jam he played music and melodies. Check out Beautiful Love he did solo.
Now if anyone wants to trash Joe.............be prepared to take it up in the next life...........one of the 10 commandments of jazz guitar........I shall not trash or dismiss Joe Pass.
Sorry I got rolling
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06-04-2021 03:43 PM
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That is an exquisite recording. I love the tone and sound. His solo on "Another You" is just perfect. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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When I first bought Joes Great Virtuoso I did it because he was a baldy like myself. In those years most album covers had to have people with thick hair.What a pleasant surprise to unleash such greatness on the world. And later to learn Joe had once gone to prison and then 5 years with Synanon for an evil heroin addiction. Im sure glad he recovered so beautifully. He learned from entertaining his fathers card games to play whole songs that people liked!!! Genius level !!!
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I love what this thread has become!
How ironic, but I plan on my next recording to be something from the "Catch Me" sessions, with the very guitar this thread is about. I love Joe Pass. Tied for 1st place in my gallery of the greats!
Thank You everyone for making this thread a really nice experience.
JD
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Charlie Byrd and Jim Hall were pretty bereft of hair in those days as well (we bald guys notice that stuff, huh?). Herb Ellis once told me that Merv Griffin got cross with him for using Joe Pass as a sub and asked Herb if the next time he needed a sub if he could find a guitarist with hair. Originally Posted by steve burchfield
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Joe Pass is tied for first place (with Wes) in my book. Well almost anyway. Originally Posted by Max405
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I must totally agree. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
25.5 belongs on a 17
24.75 belongs on a 16
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For the most part buy 25.5 is great on prewar 16" Epi's, gives them their signature bark. Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
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Sorry to say that I learned to play guitar in my teens but didn’t stick with it through the family/career building years. Now that I’m retired I have the time to pick up where I left off some 50 years ago. I recently took up jazz guitar and just joined this forum last week. I’ve been browsing the various threads and was excited to come across this one about Vestax-built guitars.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, the first acoustic guitar I bought when I was 16 was a Vestax built copy of a 1970s Guild D50. Fortunately I still have the guitar and since it didn’t get much use it’s in great condition. It’s beautifully built and sounds great.
More on the subject of this thread, now that I’ve turned to jazz guitar I’ve been looking around at a lot of gear both online and in local shops, when a few weeks ago I stumbled across the guitar in the attached pics. Of course the look of the guitar was familiar but the brand logo was not so I had to do some digging. I’ve done a fair amount of searching and specifics about the guitar are hard to find since it was built by Vestax, but I’m hoping the guitar wisdom of the ages that I’ve found so far on the Jazz Guitar forum might have something to add to the backstory that I was able to uncover.
What I was able to find out so far is that the guitar is presumed to be a 1990 Vestax built replica of a D’Angelico Excel, branded as a DJArgus AEX Excel (and a beautifully built replica at that). It seems that the Argus brand was created back in the 80s as a high-end guitar company by Kyowa Shokai in Japan with help from Hidesato Shiino, founder of Vestax. My guess is that the Argus brand had licensed the Excel design rights from D'Angelico to allow them to manufacture this guitar under their own brand name and contracted with Vestax to build the guitar. I can’t find any reference to the origin of the "DJArgus" brand that’s on the headstock and tailpiece but my guess is that the company simply added the "DJ" to the Argus brand name for design purposes to more closely resemble the D'Angelico logo.
I came across this reference somewhere on the internet but haven’t been able to verify the information: "Instruments previously built in New York, NY during the early 1990s. Distributed by Rudy's Music Shop in New York City, NY. D.J. Argus archtops featured traditional D'Angelico stylings, solid spruce tops, laminated curly maple back and sides, engraved tailpieces, and Grover Imperial tuners.”
Any additional information from all of your worlds of wisdom would be appreciated. I would post a video of my playing the guitar so you can check out the vintage quality sound but I’ve only been playing since October so my rendition of a melodic or harmonic C-minor scale probably wouldn’t be terribly interesting to anyone and certainly wouldn’t do justice to the guitar.
Cheers,
Andrew
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Originally Posted by ARGewirtz
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During the ‘70’s Japanese companies allowed you to place your own name on the guitar. Might that be the case on your guitar? I’ve never seen a Japanese built D’Angelico built prior to 2000. Interesting. Originally Posted by ARGewirtz
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My D'angelico NYS-2 has a pressed solid spruce top. Amazing little guitar. Kind of like a higher quality Ibanez GB in my opinion. Not sure how to rotate the file below, unfortunately. Sorry about that
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Thanks for the reply. I believe that Vestax built D'Angelicos back in the 80s but I think the question is for whom? I'm not a D'Angelico historian but I do know that the rights to the brand name was acquired in 1999 by Steve Pisani, John Ferolito, and Brenden Cohen. and the company relaunched in 2011 into its current incarnation, which now reproduces mass market versions of their classic models along with some new designs using factories primarily in Korea. As for my guitar, at this point I can only guess how the Argus name ended up on a guitar that for all intent and purposes is a D'Angelico Excel. This guitar was supposedly built prior to the 1999 acquisition of the D'Angelico brand name. Prior to that point Vestax had the expertise to build an original design Excel to D'Angelico specs, so the company could have contracted to do so for Argus under the Argus brand name. At that time both Argus and Vestax had connections to Shiino-san and both companies were committed to making high quality instruments so that would account for the high quality reproduction. But at this point I can only guess. I've reached out to someone at D'Angelico who said he would check around the company to see what he can find out. If I'm lucky they have a company historian who can fill in some of the holes.
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Joe, didn't recognise you with your new avatar and user name?
You were always the nicest guy on this site and I was looking forward to catching up with you.
Really happy for you and your new axe. Very sexy!
Tasty playing as always.
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Nice NYS-2. I can't see the top of the headstock but assume it has the classic finial.
Another oddity about my Argus is it has the Excel name on the headstock but everything else about it, the tailpiece, fretboard and open-book style headstock, all look to me like a late 50s New Yorker.
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Here’s another Argus at Guitars n Jazz. He states it was made by Vestax but doesn’t say what year. It’s interesting that GnJ dropped the price to below $1600.
D'Angelico NYL2 Archtop Guitar | Guitars 'n Jazz
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It's very funny that you would find these pics from Guitars 'N Jazz because that's the same guitar that I now own
. Guitars 'N Jazz, which is in the same town where I worked for the past 20 years before retiring last year, sold this guitar about 3 years ago (October 2017 is the posted sale date in their archive listing). Whomever bought it didn't hang on to it for too long and it found its way to NJ Guitar and Bass in Edison NJ where I found it about 3 weeks ago.
Just by chance, the lead guitar tech at Guitars 'N Jazz, when he's not at the store, works out of his garage about 20 minutes from where I live so I brought the guitar to him to check it out and he replaced the broken pickguard that you'll see in the pics you sent. I also replaced the mismatched knobs with a matching set and gave the guitar a good polishing. Very funny and thanks for posting.
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I could blame Joe D. for this, but it has happened to me before on this forum. I bought a Gibson WesMo after reading a thread about them here. I sold it a while back to finance another guitar.
Or it could be Fred Gretsch's fault. (Anybody but myself.). I bought an early 90's Vestax ghost built Synchromatic from the Gretsch family archives that they had commissioned. I was blown away by the sound, construction, and beauty.
So tomorrow my 1999 Vestax DA NYL-2 will be delivered!
I think it is going to compliment the Gretsch very well. Thanks Joe and Fred!
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Nice to see this thread resurrected and that's a really nice NYL-2; I’m sure it sounds as good as it looks Originally Posted by Easy2grasp
I could blame Joe D. for this, but it has happened to me before on this forum. I bought a Gibson WesMo after reading a thread about them here. I sold it a while back to finance another guitar.
Or it could be Fred Gretsch's fault. (Anybody but myself.). I bought an early 90's Vestax ghost built Synchromatic from the Gretsch family archives that they had commissioned. I was blown away by the sound, construction, and beauty.
So tomorrow my 1999 Vestax DA NYL-2 will be delivered!
I think it is going to compliment the Gretsch very well. Thanks Joe and Fred!
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Since my last post above about my DJArgus Excel, I’ve managed to trace its U.S. roots and I’m happy to say that the history is as advertised.
Back in August when I posted pics of the guitar I wrote “I came across this reference somewhere on the internet but haven’t been able to verify the information: "Instruments previously built in New York, NY during the early 1990s. Distributed by Rudy's Music Shop in New York City, NY. …” Well, I’ve since taken the guitar to meet with Rudy at his newest store in Scarsdale, NY and he gave me the scoop. For those not familiar with Rudy’s Music, it is a legendary New York City music shop founded by Rudy Pensa, who is also the namesake of the Pensa guitar brand.
Rudy remembered the guitar as a design of the short-lived Argus guitar company, one of the many storied 1980-90s MIJ guitar brands. One of Rudy’s MIJ company contacts brought the guitar to him back in the 1980s with the hopes that he would agree to sell the guitar in his then legendary NYC music shop. Rudy is a big fan of the original D’Angelico guitars and he liked this guitar so he agreed to become the U.S. distributor. Rudy said that he sold a few of these guitars, although not many.
It was nice to confirm the history of the guitar, although it got better than that. Not only is Rudy a big D’Angelico fan but he has quite a collection of original D’Angelicos and D’Aquistos. As I sat in Rudy’s showroom watching him play my guitar (for which he gave me a rousing thumbs-up), hanging on the wall behind me was about 7 or 8 original D’Angelico New Yorkers, both acoustic and electric models, while in the display case behind me was handful of original D’Aquisto guitars. Nothing like being in the presence of the real thing, lots of them (nice ?!!!), and it made it easy to confirm the design features of my guitar. One interesting thing that Rudy noticed about the guitar was that despite its resemblance to an old New Yorker, when it came to the finish the flame finish on the back of the guitar was more reminiscent of the 1960s D’Aquisto guitars than it was a D’Angelico, which was evident when Rudy put my guitar next to the D’Aquistos in his showcase to highlight the similarities in backs.
As for the guitar’s manufacturer, there was some question as to whether or not it was made by Vestax since the inside label shows no indication that the guitar was made in Japan. Rudy said that his recollection is that the guitar was made by Vestax.
So, there you have. Now if I can only learn to play the damn thing to the level it deserves all would be well in the world ?.
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I have a NYL-2 as well. It is a blonde one. I agree that these Vestax guitars are very nice.
Is there any idea as from when to when these guitars were made? And is there any knowledge about the serial numbers how to date them. I was told that mine was appr from 2000. But I have no idea how to check these Vestax models.
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I've spent a fair amount of time chasing around for info on MIJ guitars, especially those made during the 1970s and 80s, and I think it's safe to say that there is no master list of serial numbers that would help identify a particular guitar. There was a small group of factories that did the actual manufacturing of these guitars for a menagerie of U.S. and Japanese brands, and another small group of distributors, like Vestax, almost all of which are no longer in business. If any of these companies did keep records of serial numbers, which most commentary suggests they did not, those lists are long lost to history.
I don't know about the more recent vintage of guitars built in the 2000s but I suspect that the answer is the same, particularly for D'Angelico guitars where the company was a mess and the ownership rights to the brand name were in dispute until the brand was acquired in 2014 and the company resurrected to its current version.
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It appears from my research that of the NYL-2's from this era, the first two numbers of the serial number indicate the year built. My serial number starts with 99 so it would be a 1999. Originally Posted by hotpepper01
I have a NYL-2 as well. It is a blonde one. I agree that these Vestax guitars are very nice.
Is there any idea as from when to when these guitars were made? And is there any knowledge about the serial numbers how to date them. I was told that mine was appr from 2000. But I have no idea how to check these Vestax models.
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My NYL-2 arrived and it is a beauty. It seemed to be set up a little high, and when I tried to lower it, I wondered if the truss rod needed tweaked. That is when I decided to just hand it over to my guitar guy and have him do a set up. I also hate the bone saddle, I am a wooden saddle guy. The bone is just too brilliant for my tastes. So he is going to fix that and then I will write up s NGD post. Even the case is over the top!
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[QUOTE=carlescountry;1124842]From a Vestax catalog:
Attachment 82025Attachment 82026Attachment 82027 I have an NYL-2 Natural Yellow - best guitar I ever had.
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I had two Vestax guitars. A blue 2001 and a blonde 2004. I preferred the blonde because it had a beautiful aftermarket pickup replacement that was absolutely perfect for the guitar. I’d only purchased the blonde too from a San Francisco seller for $1700 and it came with an additional Buscarino solid wood tailpiece. That was an excellent buy. Like an idiot I later sold the guitar. There as a location on the internet that dated these guitars but I can’t recall where.
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