Went to a guitar show today...

Denis · September 22, 2012, 03:58:30 PM

...and it was exactly that. It's the second one I've been to here and I bet between the two saw maybe 20 basses. At today's show I bet I saw maybe 7 and NO vintage ones. Disappointing but not unexpected. An all bass show wouldn't make any money, I bet.

Highlander · September 22, 2012, 04:00:07 PM

Depends how many Gibsons and how close it is to Uwe's payday...

Hörnisse · September 22, 2012, 05:45:10 PM

I went to an Arlington show around 1996 with some friends. He had one of those early 80's Gibson Flying V's (solid finish, no pickguard) that he was trying to (unsuccessfully) sell. I told him to let me have the case and he went around the building with the guitar. Mind you, it was just an 80's Gibson black tolex V case. I had about 20 people ask "what's in the case" and I would tell them, "My friend is somewhere around here with the guitar. It is sort of a light brown finish with gold plated parts and a white pickguard. He told me it was from the late 50's." You never saw a group of guys scurrying around trying to find my friend!

Once I took a nice '78 Jazz Bass that had that "soft" finish that some of them had and the first person that wanted to look at it was Norm's. They thought the finish wasn't original (it was) and that the bass may have had a 2 Tek bridge installed and filled (it never had one) After they decided it wasn't worth their time to purchase it I then went around (unsuccessfully I might add) trying to sell or trade the bass. This was around 2002. Seems like word gets around quickly among the dealers. So nobody wanted to touch the bass after Norm's passed. I had luck selling a couple of pieces in '95 but the 2002 show was the last time I've attended one.

Denis · September 23, 2012, 05:59:30 AM

At the last one here I got an old '70s case for my P-bass. I was stopped several times and asked what I had in the case. Vultures!

rahock · September 23, 2012, 07:13:39 PM

The last good one I went to was 7-8 years ago in Dearborn , Mi. I sold my Hagstrom 8 String, bought a beautiful CIJ 51P RI and put $100 in my pocket. Lot of all kinds of basses there and tons of guitars. Probably saw over 20 Stratocasters with 10K and plus price tags and the one that really sticks out in my memory was a 40k firm price on an early 50s Les Paul

. There was a lot of more reasonable stuff too. It was just a really good and large show. Since then there hasn't been anything even worth checking out in town.
I don't know what happened, but what used to be a real nice annual thing just seemed to disappear after that.
Rick

gweimer · September 24, 2012, 09:38:14 AM

The last few shows I went to in Columbus and Cincinnati were really sparse on basses. There was on seller that had a lot of nice high end new basses, but that was it. The shows recently seem heavy with acoustic/electric guitars. Basses and solid bodies aren't the big attraction. I was fortunate enough to hit a show in Cincinnati about 8 years ago where Maverick Music was there. They had 2 Zemaitis guitars and one bass. I got to play a "cheap" Zemaitis. Only $13K.

Big_Stu · September 25, 2012, 09:13:04 AM

I used to go to a few UK shows. One of them gave free entry if you went with a guitar, so I did once. They tagged the case so you couldn't do a switch with something priceless (trusting souls that they were

) I gave up trying to get round the place after keep being stopped to see inside.
The tag just said "Tele".