Harley Benton TE-70 - Upgrade

Before:

After:

Before:

 After:

Samick Valley Arts

The Korean giant Samick aquired Valley Arts guitars back in the 90's and this is one of the many variations of instruments that were built under that label.

Sadly it's quite difficult to find out the specs of those Samicks but I'll keep searching.

Scale length of 628mm oddly enough, considering the shape of the instrument.

I am quite impressed with the built quality of the guitar so putting in two DiMarzio pickups was the only upgrade I would decide upon.

I chose the DP172 "Twang King" for the neck and the DP184 "The Chopper" for the bridge position.

Richie Kotzen is a huge inspiration to me, so I tried to do a kind of tribute by choosing his pickup combination.

Of course there's no way to get his great tone by simply putting some pickups into a random guitar but I this wasn't my goal to begin with - I just wanted to be reminded of his great music whenever I grab the guitar and fool around with it.

Fender Telecaster - Update

The serial number dates it back to 1992 - 1993.

I was lucky when changing the strings today - the string saddles are rusted tight to the point of keeping them where they are or breaking everything in half - but as long as I keep the same string gauge the intonation will be fine. Other option would mean getting new string saddles - I'll postpone that.

Standard tuning with 9.5 to 44 strings.

Ibanez Blazer - Blaze of Glory

Ibanez Blazer Custom, dated to early or mid 80's.

Stock - Humbuckers which sound great in "out of phase - middle position".

Used on "Dancing with Daniela" by Bart Bowles Band, so if you want to know how it sounds, just go and listen to the piece.

Fender Tele - Viva la Mexico!

Mexican Telecaster, 15 to 20 years of age.

Pickups were exchanged for even older original Fender American Tele - PU's.

Flawless guitar, go ahead and twang along.

Can be heard on "Karma & Effect" by the Bart Bowles Band.

Andreas By Infeld - Finesse

It´s an Andreas by Infeld.

Thomastik-Infeld is an Austrian string manufacturer,
well renowned for high quality hand-made strings of any kind.

The instrument was a co-production with Carinthian luthier
Andreas Pichler, who gained some reputation for his
"Shark" models.

Sound-wise this might be described as a cross-over between
a Strat and the ringing of Rickenbacker guitars.

Since it´s not a "Shark" it might be a dolphin...

Anyway it seems to be a endangered species,
chances to find one are slim to none, chances to find
Andreas Pichler are equally small.
He went off to the USA to work for some American
guitar companies.