Guitar Info

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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There's no point in even attempting to judge a guitar like this, the Washburn Ace Frehley AF-40V. It's a guitar designed with a particular band's image uppermost in mind, and when you're talking about a band like Kiss then the guitar needs to conform perfectly to everything they stand for. But when you know the manufacturer is Washburn, you know that the quality of the instrument is going to be impeccable.

This particular example, signed by Ace Frehley and only ever used as a display item, is currently being sold on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $3,000.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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This is the first in a short sequence of blog posts about electric 12-strings, as found recently on eBay by Jaimie Muehlhausen from The Ones That Got Away blog.

To start us off, we have this prototype Washburn "Andy Parker" model. Jaimie comments:

Not sure what the hell this prototype was...I know I’ve seen some high-end acoustics with this fanned string/bridge thing before...

I think Jaimie must be referring to acoustics made by Babicz, on which the strings fan out on the top behind the bridge. The difference on this Washburn is that these are the 2nd strings in courses on a twelve string and are fanning out to meet tuners at the base of the guitar body. I'm pretty sure this guitar, although supposedly a prototype, did end us as a production model because I have certainly seen one in the flesh even before.

I quite like the squared-off Explorer stylings, although for me the headstock shape doesn't quite work. I'm not sure in practice how user-friendly it would be to have six strings tuned at the head and six tuned at the body end. It also brings to mind the tuning arrangement on the B.C. Rich Bich 10-string.

G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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With reference to the Takamine GE-400 that Bertram posted yesterday, Ed writes:

I had a mid 80's Washburn Tele that must have come from the same factory. Black with Orange/Red accents, including the fret markers. Same tremelo, too. I bought it on eBay because it matched my shoes. Solidly built, but It was the heaviest tele I ever played. I shipped it to someone in the Ukraine last year.

Love your blog,

Ed in Laguna Beach

Thanks for that, Ed. I remember these from back in the day, and thought they were cool then. I suppose it's a Tele in body outline only. It's a Washburn Tour 24 and would have been built between 1982-1985, with solid Ash body, dual humbuckers and tremolo. I'm not sure what the trem unit is in this case, but some of these guitars (most likely the USA-built "Chicago" models) were outfitted with Washurn's proprietary Wonderbar locking tremolo system - which was a much bulkier piece of hardware than that seen here.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

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Yes, I appreciate that this Washburn Mouradian guitar is a rare "one-of-a-kind" prototype model.

I appreciate also that it belonged to Nuno Bettencourt and is the actual guitar that he played it with Extreme at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992.

Nevertheless... a $35,000 Buy It Now price on eBay?

You're having a laugh?

Thanks to Jono for bringing this guitar to our attention. As he says, "You gotta wonder where they pull out those prices from and more importantly, who the hell buys this stuff?"

I've got nothing against Mr Bettencourt, who is a fine guitarist, but I wouldn't have thought he was the kind of guy whose personal instruments commanded those kind of big bucks. That asking price is not quite in Hendrix/Beatles/Elvis territory, but it's close.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!