This Is The Best Stratocaster I've Ever Played

okay so you can't come to los angeles without coming to norman's rare guitars and um this is the second time i've been here actually uh but first time coming here with a youtube channel so today we're doing a guitar store tour of norman zurich guitars now the reality is if you pay attention to the youtube guitar community you probably already know the store you know their youtube channel but you might not know what they've got in stock right now today so we are going to uh do a tour of norms go to the back room see what they've got in which uh i got a little sneak peek earlier and there's some really cool stuff in that we're gonna play and check out uh and got my good friend philip conrad with me today so we're gonna do some guitars and some vintage basses and uh yeah really really cool guitar [Music] [Music] great [Music] [Laughter] [Music] i am intrigued by these uh little telecaster bases yeah so these are both pretty rad you're right they can be a little temperamental but norm's good about picking the good ones usually yeah um he's kind of red one the good one the norm is pretty uh if he doesn't really like something he doesn't let it in the shop usually so 71 candy apple red that red is awesome what a babe that neck is huge dude it's like baseball bat baseball bat oh yeah which i love that i love bases i don't want to play fast i want to have like a good grip on it it's just like it's there it's like you're holding a sledgehammer yeah um this is awesome [Music] dude that stain is crazy it's like the note almost got louder once i like hit it and it gave it a second and it like sort of blossomed like it's such a cool sustain beautiful instrument you know what what even is this so the wise i've never played a telecaster base from the store before so kind of what happened was um seth lover designed the paf for gibson they sort of dominated that whole decade of the 60s with the new rock thing coming out these high output humbuckers so in 71 um fender also hired seth lover same dude to design a fender style humbucker with the goal of like retaining the fender sound but bucking the hum and having a higher output so what he came up with was the wide range humbucker it's easier to see on one of the 70s telecasters but it's a little bit bigger than a paf would be he splits where the pole pieces are instead of all being in a row and aren't the the pole pieces like the magnetic alloys different than what they make now it's like versus uh el nico yeah all that is really like when you hear el nico it's when you make a magnet it's a mixture of different metals and al nico for instance would be like aluminum nickel and cobalt and then the number el nico 2 on eco3 is the proportions of each metal so there's like all these different ways that you can make magnetic pole pieces for pickups i think these were kunife and then they like ran out of that and so for many years the reissues weren't quite the same yeah and i think just recently fender kind of started making them there's a few boutique pickup builders that were sourcing but the original part of the reason they had trouble with it is because the alloy is very brittle and it falls apart and it's hard to make pull pieces out of and so that's part of the reason they went away from it props to you because like i picked a pretty random base off the wall and you're telling me about like the chemicals that like you really know your stuff man you got it it's crazy i always feel like working here is almost like getting a degree in vintage guitars like it's just every day you learn something new so you said what year 28 to 30 somewhere around there so tricone tri so tricone three cones um style two and a half is kind of smack in the middle of the range of zero to four if you were to get a style four it would be like totally blinged out right kind of like how martin does their d45s yeah versus the 18 or whatever um so this is kind of smack in the middle of fanciness it is a round neck um so we can play it i can play it at least you can i can't play it but you can play it and then uh the tricone is three cones inside so this thing is in really nice shape i mean 100 years old gorgeous guitar it's pretty crazy and just this engraving really is nuts it's just the artistry that goes into this is kind of unlike anything else so it would have come from the factory with that pattern [Music] [Music] this is a prototype it says exp so i think experimental of the gibson barney castle so this was if not the first it's one of the first barney castles that was ever built um this is paf's inside of here so real this would be 1960. so real paf's inside look at that long freaking back heel and this thing is lightweight amazing woods the finish is really rich and it hasn't really faded out for 1960 it's pretty deep finish um and then you know it was some things on it like he changed up the inlays for the official model and i think this pickguard design might be a little different but uh overall it's in stupid clean shape and you can see inside style exp for just experimental so this is one if you're into jazz boxes that yeah this is this is one to play that is a beautiful guitar yeah man give it a give us [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] this is beautiful man [Music] it is you can hear every single note so well yeah sounds great you're playing too thank you did you study jazz uh yeah i went to uh went to jazz school that's cool yeah you sound great man then check out the headstock forgot to mention that that is a super unique headstock yeah i really love it that's super cool so red asked if i had any cool les pauls in the shop and i said no but we'll pull this one out just just to look at it i mean it's all right i don't know which one of us doesn't have a 53 gold top at this point i mean yeah it's pretty pedestal it's a pretty this is like every kid in high school has one i mean it's kind of yeah so the story on these is that 52 was the first year right they had the trapeze tail piece 53 they switched over to the wrap around but early 53 they were still trapeze so this would have to be a very early 53. um p90s you know the neck angle is a little bit different they ended up changing that into the 50s and the les paul sort of went through all of its motions up until 59 where it settled on the sunburst uh two-piece stop tail thing but this guitar is stupid lightweight for les paul i mean usually you hear les paul and your back starts hurting already and this one just like maybe seven pounds it's real light for a less pulse yeah like feels like seven and a half maybe something like that [Music] that bridge does make it pretty like because you're having to reach down yeah to get to yeah the trapping sail piece your hand kind of has to be set more more toward the neck pickup than it usually is or you have to get used to that weird angle right so it's kind of a unique thing to get used to yeah like playing up here [Applause] [Music] you can tell they were like figuring it out that this is not it's there's some things that that need to be changed they ended up i guess changing not long after this they changed it very quickly actually you know they really took the les paul went through kind of rapid changes all throughout the 50s um almost every year there's something different that they changed on the design and it's mostly significant stuff so you know these guitars had a lot of r d in the early days so uh what is this that is a 1965 thunderbird base um very cool base hard to come by sort of the base equivalent of the firebird guitars and they have just a crazy unique sound to them that single pickup being right in the middle is pretty cool sort of like how a single pickup casino is right in the middle instead of one side or the other um so those just have you know a very nice round tone to them and we have flats on that now too so it's extra smooth sounding extra round low end dude this uh this thumb rest is like a crescent moon yeah it's crazy i don't know what to call it if it's not a thumb rest because it's on the wrong side like a grip i don't know what they thought you were going to do there like what i have read i don't know if there's any truth to this but like some of these early bases like some dudes would like play them like this where they would like play with their thumb yeah like that's stupid to me but still [Music] i connected more with that uh that 72 telecaster base you know it's just funny how like this is the cooler thing for sure like it's rarer and but it's just funny how different i think that that tele base is pretty yeah rad it was pretty round yeah yeah the tele base is very cool too i mean this says it's like apples and oranges and they're just different things totally different but it's funny how you connect with different things that aren't necessarily better or worse just like oh man this random slap of wood with these magnets in it i like better than that random slap of wood all right so this is from 1971 uh and it is a fender rosewood telecaster oh george harrison george good old george so this is entirely rosewood body neck the whole deal how much is away not that bad because this one has the pancake construction so if you ever see the center seam they take two pieces of rosewood and i think they chamber out some spots and then put them together um george's the originals they made i think it was 68 or 69 um would be just a slab of rosewood it's going to be like a thousand pounds um this one isn't too bad i would say nine and a half yeah something like that you know and you can't you can't smell in here right now but it is the classic 70s fender smell dude they can smell that neck [Laughter] it dude it has that it has that smell it's like a it's like a an old house with i don't know how to describe it it just smells old it smells vintage yeah it's cool [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] yo this kind of has it's kind of the uh [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it's really just it's hard to beat a telly it really is hard to beat this one's weird though it's like much brighter than i thought it would be being rosewood this is great cause i've got like six shots now of us walking back here all right so in terms of strats kind of hard to beat a 56 this thing is is very nice yeah 1956 i believe that the pickup covers are not original but the pickups themselves i believe are um got your five digit cereal on the neck plate everything is kind of as it should be it's a really nice guitar even got the ashtray bridge cover with it and then this one of course let me see in here also has the bar and looks like we have some original cables those original uh covers there and uh more strings vintage strings foreshadowing and these vintage coily cables so this would have the three position switch this is a three position switch and you can still get the blended ones you just have to do a bit of a balancing act and if you knock it the wrong way it just kind of like pops back um but you know it's very cool a lot of guys now even like the three-way switch on some re-issues they'll get them that way really just personal player yeah when i when i play strats i never go to the two and four yeah if you don't need it then it's so much quicker and easier to just know where you're at yeah because one thing with a five-way switch you can if you're not looking you're kind of soloing just doing it you can get lost yeah like what position am i in so you know and then uh like a lot of these vintage guitars it's the profile neck so real comfortable for the thumb i think this has been refretted but a really good job um and it sounds freaking phenomenal [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] this [Music] [Music] yeah i'm not usually a middle position strat guy but that one that does it for me yeah this position is great for that like uh [Music] hmm [Music] [Laughter] [Music] yeah that does not does not suck see if i can get to one of the middle uh positions here [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 358,943

Keywords: normans rare guitars, les paul, norman harris, guitar of the day, vintage guitar, electric guitar, vintage guitar store, playing guitar, gibson acoustic, martin guitar, Rhett Shull, Philip Conrad

Id: pNZGvR6T8hc

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022