bradlee_thedawg's Reviews

Was junk in 1975, and Unfortunately , Still is.

Nostalgia aside, I really wish the Silvertones and Teiscos of the world would go away forever. I have no idea about the "re-issues" - I'm talking about the real things from Sears (Silvertone) and Teiscos (every other barbershop mail order catalog) They were cheaply made 'beginner' guitars back in the day, and time did not improve them. Horrible sounding microphonic pickups, necks with no truss rod and horrible frets, the cheapest electronic components imaginable. The good news is that today, a student guitarist can spend a fraction of the cost of the Silvertone/Teisco route in1970 dollars, and thanks to good old China and Indonesia, can get a much better guitar. I remember being in Jr. High and saving all of our pennies so we could put our "starter" guitars into the dumpster and buy real Gibsons and Fenders. I saved my measly $80/week (yup - $2/hr) wages for the entire 10 weeks of summer break when I was 15 - lived off of $50 of quarters I had saved the winter before - and had my Aunt drive me to Rochester NY to buy my first 'real' guitar from House of Guitars - A brand new ES-335 for $800 on the nose. There was literally no comparison between that instrument and the black Silvertone I had been fighting with up until that point. Of course, being an idiot kid, I traded that perfect axe for "I'm not sure what" a few years later, and wound up playing a $200 SG with a repaired headstock. But even that was 1000x better than the Silvertone.