Cool offsets at Norm's

[marqueemoon]

Stumbled on that today. Just wow.

[BK Verbs]

Looks like it. Reminds me of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark!

Exactly what I was thinking too.

[MrFingers]

Excellent business plan as well. All those guitars are very likely already paid for and thus his property. And what he owns, isn't owned by the competition, so he is in the perfect position and has an excellent tool to steer hype, prices,...

A bit sad to see all those gems stored away just to keep the market scarce.

[zhivago]

A bit sad to see all those gems stored away just to keep the market scarce.

But you can actually buy any of these guitars.

Many of the high-end custom colours get seen by appointment...or since we are both in Europe, we could email the store and say "I am looking for a 60s Shoreline Gold Jazzmaster, do you have one?"

He will sell it to us for the right price...they are not out of bounds. In fact, thanks to him, we can buy excellent examples of rare offsets to preserve and pass on to our kids.

Of course they are expensive, but rare, well-preserved objects always are expensive.

I may be looking at this in an upside-down kind of way, but in all fairness most custom colour guitars from the 60s did NOT end up with vintage dealers. They went to normal players...who usually stripped them of their colour in the 70s and/or modded them to suit their styles at the time.

This was sad to me, but it was their property at the time. Some of the ones that survived in such excellent condition did so because of guys like Norm and Gruhn, who saw the value in them as instruments. Of course they should make money for their time, and the decades they stored them for. They provide a service, and they need to be paid for it. I provide a service at my work, and I get paid too...and if we judge it by the hour, I make WAY more than what they do, considering they kept these guitars for years on end.

Pick any guitar from the video...you can buy it...probably within a few hours from now, due to the time difference with California. This is great actually.

Just my view

[StevenO]

These are all beautiful guitars, but I have to say... I don't think I'd ideally want any of them. I'd be way too scared to play them.

There's good condition and then there's mint. Mint ends up being like fine china, a guitar you bring out for when the queen comes for dinner... Just not my thing, really.

[mjet]

I've been there a few times and they're really cool about letting things get played. I was concentrating on the bass wall but if I add up the values of the basses I plunked around on for 15-20 mins it was probably in the $40,000 range.

[kosta]

60's black Jags with matching headstocks?? Who knew. Too good. I dig Mark Agnesi's demos. He always seems like he's having a great time. What a job!

[holty]

But you can actually buy any of these guitars.

Many of the high-end custom colours get seen by appointment...or since we are both in Europe, we could email the store and say "I am looking for a 60s Shoreline Gold Jazzmaster, do you have one?"

He will sell it to us for the right price...they are not out of bounds. In fact, thanks to him, we can buy excellent examples of rare offsets to preserve and pass on to our kids.

Of course they are expensive, but rare, well-preserved objects always are expensive.

I may be looking at this in an upside-down kind of way, but in all fairness most custom colour guitars from the 60s did NOT end up with vintage dealers. They went to normal players...who usually stripped them of their colour in the 70s and/or modded them to suit their styles at the time.

This was sad to me, but it was their property at the time. Some of the ones that survived in such excellent condition did so because of guys like Norm and Gruhn, who saw the value in them as instruments. Of course they should make money for their time, and the decades they stored them for. They provide a service, and they need to be paid for it. I provide a service at my work, and I get paid too...and if we judge it by the hour, I make WAY more than what they do, considering they kept these guitars for years on end.

Pick any guitar from the video...you can buy it...probably within a few hours from now, due to the time difference with California. This is great actually.

Just my view[/quote]

Never thought of it that way, very insightful.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

The cool offsets continue!

I couldn't help but cringe after he showed off the "mint" CAR finish, then proceeded to play it wearing a jacket with zips on the cuffs!

[marqueemoon]

Pretty cringeworthy song selection too.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Pretty cringeworthy song selection too.

At least he apologised

[sookwinder]

I have been hooked on Mark's vids since Yannis pointed me to a Epiphone Frontier vid.
I find them both addictive and entertaining....
I also like the fact that he generally chooses songs to play that I can relate the sound and the song to, rather than some obscure track that only those in the know would know.

yes his zippers are a source of mirth and derision .

All EQs set at noon with a touch of reverb....

[zhivago]

All EQs set at noon with a touch of reverb....

[PorkyPrimeCut]

I have been hooked on Mark's vids since Yannis pointed me to a Epiphone Frontier vid.
I find them both addictive and entertaining....
I also like the fact that he generally chooses songs to play that I can relate the sound and the song to, rather than some obscure track that only those in the know would know.

yes his zippers are a source of mirth and derision .

All EQs set at noon with a touch of reverb....

Heheh!

Agreed about his demos. I actually find him quite inspiring as he generally pics stuff that looks & sounds like it's easy to play. I figured, to begin with, that it was because he was just an average player. The I watch a clip of him playing some amazing Jazz & realised he was actually a very talented guy.

Oh, also, I watched his Epiphone E230-TD demo (amazing sounding guitar) and the first thing that came into my head was you, David, such is the influence of your collection!! Ha!!

[sookwinder]

what amazed me about the Casino:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWqdnHSOHTM
was how red the red is in the burst, especially "on the couch" footage. That guitar must not have seen much sunlight in the past 53 years.
If that is actually how they looked like back in the day, it must have been awesome to walk into a guitar store back then.

One more thing... Mark at Norman's is a very knowledgeable guy when it comes to the minutia of guitars and nerdy stuff (I think he'd fit in here pretty well, well maybe in the non-offset section we have here). But he did get the info on who had what type of Casino wrong.
Keef got his in May 1964 , a short headstock version (from 1962) but with the trem-o-tone vibrato unit
Macca got his in late 1964 (also a short headstock version from 1962) with bigsby.
Then George and John got theirs also long headstock versions, just before the 1965 Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out/ "Rubber Soul" period
Johns had the trapeze tail piece
George's had the bigsby































This is also awesome .... the "Guitar of the Day episode" the day after the US election... there is political humour plus guitar review/playing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuIJRpAZveg