Trade #21: 1989 Epiphone Sheraton II for Vintage Fender Bandmaster

Back in the game!

After a bit of a hiatus this project is back up and running. There was never a conscious pause, but my time and attention has been largely elsewhere over the last couple of months, and it meant that trades have taken a bit of a back seat. I’ve been able to spend a little more time on it recently and now there’s been some movement, thank goodness.

I’ll say this: I wasn’t sure about it, but now I think the Gretsch-for-Epiphone was a good trade. Every time I renewed or reposted the Epiphone listing, I received a bunch of new offers. Lots of them were a little too undervalued to be a good trade for me, some of them were way too good to actually happen (which is to say, after reconsidering, the other party backed out). But a ~$700 semihollow guitar with no cosmetic defects was a good pickup, and I was able to find a good deal after a couple false starts (e.g. I spent a recent morning out in Livermore, but the guitar wasn’t to the prospective trader’s liking. He kindly covered the gas for the long trip, though. Kind people are everywhere.)

This one happened over just a couple of days. Ray (not his real name) is a guy who builds amps for fun. He plays guitar and puts amps and amp heads together in his spare time. He didn’t have any semihollow guitars at the moment, but was awash with cool amps. The Bandmaster is a clean, vintage head with a gritty, powerful sound. He played for me in his basement workshop (I stood outside, all masked up, even in a bit of rain) and the sound was deeply impressive.

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Not much more to say. Ray was all too happy to tell me about the condition, the minor modifications (including a dope little raw switch in the back that he added in), the role of all the tubes, switches, ports and so on.

And he loved the Sheraton. He played it for about 30 seconds and was sold. Hardly any questions, he was getting what he wanted and was glad to pass this great little amp head onward.

Looking forward to seeing what comes next from this trade line!