I have the opportunity to re-buy my first good guitar, the Electra X140, for around $500.  I played mine for over fifteen years and I loved that guitar.  I eventually got rid of it because the neck was shot.  So naturally, given a chance to buy it again… I’m not going to buy it again.

Let’s rewind the clock to 1982.  I was 17, a senior in high school, and for Christmas my parents got me a Kent Les Paul copy and a Regal 5 watt transistor amp with no gain.  I wondered why I didn’t sound like Ace Frehley… after all, my guitar was shaped like his.  I had a LOT to learn, and over the years, learn I did.

That Kent Les Paul copy… boy, do I wish I still had it.  I swapped out the fixed tailpiece for one with adjustable saddles, which fixed the terrible intonation.  But the pickups were single coils inside of humbucker shells.  I kid you not.  Thanks, Kent.  I’m glad you went out of business.

My next guitar was better – a Hondo II Les Paul Copy (I still didn’t sound like Ace Frehley, dammit) with a bolt-on neck.  And a LOT of fret wear.  I’d bought it used, you see.  It was OK.

My third guitar was the charm – a brand new Electra X140.  Basically a Strat copy.  It sounded, well, like a Strat.  Together with a 20 watt tube amp by Guyatone (12 inch speaker) and an MXR Micro Amp pedal, I got a damn good sound.  I bought a “speaker volume knob” from Radio Shack so I could run my amp on 8 while dialing back the speaker volume, and that gave me a killer tone.  It also eventually blew up the amp.  I still had a lot to learn.

Yup, I loved that Electra X140… until our band’s guitar player got an American Fender Strat, and I played it, and I realized how much better it played.  I then realized for the first time that the X140 was not as good as I thought it was.  I played it for tons of years after that, though.  But eventually the frets were shot and the back of the neck was dinged and I got rid of it.  Which I hadn’t, but I did.

I eventually got a MIM Strat, and then a Partscaster with an American neck, which is my current Strat.  It’s a superior guitar to the X140.  But there’s one for sale on Reverb!  Yeah… no thanks.  I can picture buying it, getting it in the mail, playing it for ten minutes and feeling the nostalgia… and then hanging it on my wall, to be played for five minutes once each year.  No thanks.

It’s fun to go back home and see your childhood bedroom.  But you don’t actually want to go back there, do you?