Southpa Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 My solidbody mahogany nechthru has been recovered by a gentleman in Vancouver. He emailed me this morning after doing a search for my name and came across one of the many notices I posted about it being stolen. He only found out my name after pulling off the back plate and seeing the name stamped into the copper foil. Apparently, he bought it from someone he knew who had an honest reputation. That person told him that an acquaintance wanted to borrow money and put the guitar up for collateral. The person didn't return to repay his debt so the guy sold the guitar to my new friend, Steve. I called Steve and had a lengthy chat with him about the guitar and "things" in general. He was impressed with my woodworking and the thick poly finish on the guitar. He says he has done his fair share of woodworking himself, but never on guitars. I told him I would reimburse him for the $200 he paid for the guitar when I head to Vancouver beginning of March. The recovery of my guitar was all a result of my own actions. 1. I stamped my name inside the guitar. 2. I put up notices to as many places (internet, email etc.) as I could dream up. Those are lessons for you all to learn in the event one of your guitars gets lifted. Record serial numbers, take pictures, get the word out fast. Quote Link to comment
Lex Luthier Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 I'm happy for you. So was it the acquaintance that wanted to borrow money the f*ckhead who stole it? Quote Link to comment
westhemann Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 good news! Quote Link to comment
GuitarMaestro Posted February 22, 2004 Report Share Posted February 22, 2004 great news Quote Link to comment
Southpa Posted February 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 No idea Lex, but its quite possible. I will notify the RCMP when I get the guitar in my hands. I doubt if the thief will be caught, and even then whats the use? He'll be back on the street next day even if we could prove that he stole it and had it in his possession. Thats the thing about unique guitars like mine, they can be spotted easily from a crowd of guitars and nobody wants to run the risk of advertizing it if they know its hot. I learned my own lesson here, all guitars come inside with me. There won't be a "next" time. Quote Link to comment
jbkim Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Yeah!!! Good for you Southpa! Quote Link to comment
validpretense Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Your story will teach me a lesson... now i am afraid of mine being stolen Quote Link to comment
tsl602000 Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 congrats! Quote Link to comment
BLS Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Awesome news, i hope its still in good condition. Quote Link to comment
feylya Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 That's cool. 2 things: 1) Obvisously stamping your name and number inside is a good idea 2) There's still nice people in this world. Hope it plays even nicer now. Somehow. Quote Link to comment
Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 That is awesome. I am happy to hear that. let us know how it faired on its kidnapping.... Quote Link to comment
Drak Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 YEEE-HAWWW! Quote Link to comment
FajiiNako Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Great news ^.^ I love guitar recovery events! They really brighten up my day Quote Link to comment
krazyderek Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 that's awsome, i can't beleive you're actually getting it back... i would definitly try and get a description of this sketchy guy... Quote Link to comment
hezochiah Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 Glad to hear you're getting it back. Quote Link to comment
Hotrock Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 It's a pity that you have to pay to get it back, but I suppose the guy who has it has to recoup. Sounds like a decent guy to go through all that to find you. Glad to hear it's going back to it's rightfull owner. Quote Link to comment
Page_Master Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 wow dude, that is really great news. i am really glad to hear you got her back. i hope she is ok! after all that, i think you should give her name or something, like "Lucky" and then stamp that next to your name on the guitar. that gut feeling of losing something is painfull, but when you find that something, it is the complete opposite, it is so glorious. it puts a new meaning to "finding a needle in a haystack" you must be so releived. Quote Link to comment
weezerboy Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 uh oh, not needle in a haystack..we were doing so well anyway, back on topic--- YAY! Quote Link to comment
Saber Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 I love happy endings! Quote Link to comment
canuckguitarist Posted February 23, 2004 Report Share Posted February 23, 2004 You should invite the guy who stole it into the slam thread.....hehehe [evil grin] Quote Link to comment
Brian Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 Excellent news Quote Link to comment
DannoG Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 Alright! We're all happy for ya. Quote Link to comment
pour bleeding me Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 wow im shocked that you got it back! im so happy for you! but i wonder if the guy that is giving it back to you may be the one who stole it...but now feels bad or something....i dunno..it COULD happen...and another thing i wonder tho....if i saw a name in a cavity i would just think its the name of the previous owner...since it is used and all...i wonder how he knew to do a search and all...thats crazy...you owe this guy big time Quote Link to comment
Southpa Posted February 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 No I don't think thats the case. I had a lengthy phone converstaion with him and hes a stand up kinda guy. here is the email he sent: "Hi Alan, Your guitar has been rescued! The story of how I discovered that it was yours follows. I purchased it from a chap I was talking to at a community political forum on Friday evening, who said that he had loaned an acquaintance of his some money on collateral of an electric guitar, and the guy never came back to repay the loan and pick up the guitar. He understood from our conversation that I was a guitar player and wondered if I might be interested in it since he didn’t play and felt that he was out some money and didn’t have much hope of getting it back. He seemed totally straight up and honest to me, and since I am always interested in guitars, I said I would look at it. I saw the guitar yesterday, and could tell only that it was a custom made neck-through instrument with some outstanding woodworking involved, and tried it out on a tiny little practice amp he had. I noticed that the controls didn’t seem to work like a standard setup, since the usual 2 humbuckers and 3 position switch with 4 pots didn’t produce the expected pickup selections or any tone control for the bridge pickup at all (at least that I could tell); since the control cover was siliconed down, I didn’t try to open it right away (I usually would have done so just to see right away if the controls had been tinkered with, as so many of them seem to be). After I got home and finished project number one, installing a sink in my bathroom (an all day job lasting until about 10:30 last night), I carefully cut the silicone and opened the control cavity to see what the internal electronics were, and was surprised to see the multiple connections with white wires to the output jack. I like standard Gibson style setups, and my son builds tube amps and is great with a soldering iron, so as he was helping me rearrange the wiring (!!sorry!!) I noticed your name stamped in the copper foil. I immediately thought that Alan Gendron must be a guitar builder somewhere in Canada who had built this guitar for someone who had later modified it. For some reason Quebec sprang to mind, probably because of the progressive central top mount jack. Much later on last night, after resoldering the tone cap for the bridge pickup, installing a connector to allow it to control the bridge pickup’s tone, and removing a couple of the white jumpers (reconfiguring the controls to standard Gibson style, though the bridge pickup tone cap still seems to be unpredictable) I came upstairs to check my email. While on line, thankfully I was curious enough to run ‘Alan Gendron Guitar” in Google, completely expecting to find that you were a luthier somewhere in Quebec or wherever, and ran into a link to your post about the guitar being stolen. I was so shocked it’s hard to describe…and immediately wished I hadn’t removed those white jumpers. (I haven’t even touched it since, but we can change them back if you would like). Wanting to call you immediately this morning, I tried to look up your phone number in Telus’ online directory but the number I got (250-370-2664) gives a ‘no longer in use’ message, and no new number is listed in Telus’ 411 service. To make a long story short, I am delighted to be able to tell you that I have it here for you, but hope you aren’t upset that I standardized the wiring unwittingly…please call me at your earliest convenience so we can get together and you can recover it. I only paid $200 for it since I didn’t really know what it was at the time and speculated that since the electronics apparently weren’t standard, it might have been set up with coil sweep or stereo, or some combination of unusual phase reverse pickup configurations that would take forever to standardize…I also didn’t recognize the pickups as stock Gibson or Seymour Duncan, Di Marzio, etc. so had no idea of their worth, so all in all, generally didn’t have much of an idea how many owners the guitar had been through and (specially because of the hole in the stainless pickguard and the tuners having been changed) assumed that it had been a custom job that someone had ‘owner-modified’ (common)." Quote Link to comment
Lex Luthier Posted February 24, 2004 Report Share Posted February 24, 2004 "For some reason Quebec sprang to mind, probably because of the progressive central top mount jack." Quote Link to comment
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