Sonic Duo

Introducing my personal link to the past, my 1963 Fender Duo Sonic

To tell the truth, I don’t even remember buying it, but it was in 1971 when, as a poor film student in LA, I was motivated to spend $65 of my hard-won cash on an old, really beat up Fender Duo Sonic electric guitar. It worked OK with it’s two single wound pickups, plastic pic guard and chromed tone/volume knobs. But the paint was chipping off badly in many places. It actually looked like it had been dragged behind a car for a good while with enough road damage to reveal that three different colors had adorned the solid, Strat-shaped alder body during its life.

Of course, today, road worn vintage guitars of many makers get added value for looking “road worn”, and intentionally ding up beautiful, newly-manufactured classic models to increase their values.  I don’t get it. Yes, I admit it increases their value with certain prople who give a shout about that kind of thing.

Well, I’m sorry, but to me, road-worn equals damaged crap and always has, so that’s when I decided to strip the paint off the body and to attempt a “refinish”, I think it’s called.

The original layers of paint were VERY difficult to remove and took hours of applying the remover goo, scraping the nasty stuff off, and continually washing the remover off my hands since it was so corrosive. I remember that I considered quitting trying to remove the paint several times but, being a film student with some free time, I trudged ahead.  My only regret is that I took no pics of the process with my Pentax Spotmatic 35mm.  I do have this one pic taken in my Hollywood apartment of me playing it but it was taken before my “re-finishing” job. The guitar was blue, the last coat anyway. Red and white where below that, but then finally, just wood.

So, in the tradition of the greatest luthiers, I roughly sanded off the wood surface, stained it walnut with cheap house stain, and liked it much better even though, today, with the market for old really “road worn” guitars, the 1963 Pre-CBS Duo Sonic that I have would probably be worth maybe $1,200 or so since, besides the paint removal and subsequent staining default, it is still a working model with stock parts.  So, in my Woody Allen-ish-ness, I’m pretty sure that by removing the old paint and staining the wood, I actually decreased its value quite a bit..

But, I wouldn’t sell it anyway. And, here’s why. 

I really like that little guitar. Originally designed as a student guitar, the Duo Sonic is light, and it has a scaled down maple neck, so with my stubby little digits, it allows me to reach a bit farther on the chords. The other good news is that the Duo Sonic guitars, in 1963, were manufactured in the same plants, by the same people, with the same materials and to the same standards as all the solid body Strats, Teles, and other solid-body guitars in the Fender line at that time. That's not a bad thing.

It’s really a sturdily built guitar, which is really a good thing considering the lack of attention it has gotten in the 40 plus years I've had it, most of the time not even having the comfort of even a gig bag for protection. Poor thing.

It always works and I don’t know why. The only things I have done for the guitar has been an occasional dusting and finally a new set of strings in over 40 years. But, hey, I didn’t want to over-do the care either.

But, recently I have been thinking that I owe that Duo a bit of gratitude for sticking with me all these years of Neil Young jams (with Neil's recordings, of course) and infrequent practicing.

So, I’ve given her a nice cleaning with shea butter (smells nice, too). I took her to see Asheville’s own Guitar Mama for a good going-over, and the new set of stings I mentioned earlier. (I don’t want you to think that I may have changed the strings two times in 40 years. Oh no, only once.) The Guitar Mama, Autumn, said "It's a nice little guitar - you should keep it", which is a pretty generous appraisal since her store is an Authorized Stringed Instrument Warranty Service Center for Fender Musical Instruments and Autumn is a well-qualified luthier.

I am practicing with the Duo Sonic more often now and having some fun with it, but I do respect its age, even though I was in high school when it was born in California, so it couldn’t be that old. 

Could it?

BTW, did I mention that Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn owned and played Duo Sonics?

Part of my stringed collection

Woman on a Mission

Autumn, Asheville's Guitar Mama

Autumn has a great story on her web site about the evolution of her music store, The Guitar Mama, on legendary Haywood Road in West Asheville.

It all began when, as a thirteen year old-to-be she asked for a guitar for her birthday - more particularly, an electric guitar with an amp.  Autumn’s mom took her to a music store, and it changed her life forever.  After her first guitar lesson she went home and almost immediately took all the screws, springs, strings and other shiny bits off the instrument.  Her second guitar lesson was putting the thing back together.

Two years later Autumn was offered a job at the same music store, Tempo Music Center, and worked there for nearly a decade.  During that time she apprenticed for nine months under David Simmons of Simmons Guitars, to learn the skill of a luthier (building and repairing stringed musical instruments).  

At age 18, Autumn started her own business, and five years later went to work for Simmons Guitars full-time building high-end electric basses for two years.  

Then, a bit over a year ago, she opened her own retail sales and repair shop in West Asheville, The Guitar Mama.

The Guitar Mama is not a luxurious place to visit, but if you play guitar it certainly has a rustic rocker charm all its own.  Autumn, usually working hard at something stringed in the back room, hustles out to greet any customer upon entering with a typically friendly but curious, “What you got?”

In my particular case, my last visit was to bring her my little old Fender Duo Sonic short scale guitar that I bought for $60 in Hollywood when I was a college student there in the early 1970s.

“What can you do for this neglected gem?” I chided her, knowing of her interest in breathing life back into abused stringed instruments.

She grabbed the guitar from me and began to play the old strings with great energy, testing for weaknesses, playability and strengths underlying its dirty uncared-for exterior appearance.

“The strings haven’t been changed since I bought it in 1971,” I admitted with a nervous laugh.  This is like a visit to the dentist with popcorn remnants between your teeth, I thought.  Maybe I should have cleaned it up a bit before I brought it in.

It’s not in too bad a shape,” Autumn said, not glancing up from her continuing scrutiny. 

“These are pretty cool little guitars,” she added generously.  

Let’s face it.  This woman probably sees around a hundred guitars a month go through her shop and she said my particular model is pretty cool.  Does that make me pretty cool, too, since I own it?  Er, no.  She didn’t say that.

“How about if I change the strings, set it up for you, clean the volume and tone pots, and clean up and polish the fret board?” she offered.  I hadn’t even noticed that the rosewood fretboard was pretty soiled from years of potato chip-oil-infused fingers attempting chords from about the 12th fret up the neck to the nut.

“That would be way cool,” I managed to blurt out in a feeble attempt at musicians’ lingo.

“I’ll have it ready to pick up on Friday (two days!) and it will be fifteen dollars,” Autumn said with a practiced clip as she returned the little Fender to its gig bag and efficiently made out a work order, a copy of which she handed to me.

“Well, thanks,” said I. “But that doesn’t include the strings, right,” I offered.

“Strings included,” she said over her shoulder as she scurried away to her back work room with my unkempt little baby.

“Wow,” was all I could manage to say.  Fifteen dollars including strings.  Does Autumn run some kind of guitar charity, I wondered?

There was another fellow in the store at the time.  He was a guy about my age and I don’t know if he works there or was a customer just browsing the store. But, as I headed for the front door past him, he said, “Don’t bother trying to give her a tip, either.  She won’t take it.”

                                                                         ********

This afternoon I stopped by The Guitar Mama to pick up my Duo Sonic.  Autumn was working away, as usual, stringing an acoustic vintage guitar.

“Got your guitar finished,” she said with a smile.  “You might be interested to know that the Fender electronics in this Duo Sonic are from 1964 so it was probably manufactured in 1964 or 65." I was a junior in high school in 1964!

“That’ll be ten dollars”, she added.

“Ten dollars?  I thought you told me fifteen,” I responded with surprise.

“It wasn’t as bad off as I thought, so just ten dollars,” she said.

Guitar Mama?  No, no, no.  Guitar Saint, or Guitar Goddess or Guitar . . . , what?

I’ve never run into anyone else like Autumn, especially in a guitar store.

You’d better check her out.