It was a sunny afternoon but I felt a bit out of place. Awkward. I was in the parking lot of a bank, waiting for a stranger to show up. The purchase could go a few different ways. Most of them weird.
The item in question was a short-scale electric. Washburn built a series of guitars licensed to Disney as a kind of a premium kids toy. The bodies were all the same with different designs to match each Disney property they were branded for: High School Musical, Cars, something called Band Camp (I think) and the one I was here to buy, the most common of them, Hannah Montana.
Now, a middle aged man waiting in the parking lot to collect a kids guitar named after a female teen pop sensation could be a creepy thing, believe it or not. Would some soccer-parent arrive and ask how many kids I have? (none) Would that bring up a lot of awkward questions? (many) If an indulgent parent with no experience of guitars started asking why I wanted this guitar, I'm not sure they'd fully process or believe the answers.
What if it wasn't a parent that showed up? What if I was meeting some dodgy perv who wanted to commiserate on an undying love of the young character?
A white van pulled into the parking lot.
Yes, a white van. I thought so too.
Out popped a grizzled, grey bearded dude as I finally processed the custom license plates referring to the blues. Now the van made sense, like the thousands of old beaters hauling gear from gig to gig around the world. He was going to be alright.
He was friendly enough with just a touch of stink-eye as he asked what I wanted it for.
1) It's kind of hilarious
2) These things go cheap
3) I wanted a short scale (25" from the nut to the bridge) that would take heavier strings which I could keep in an open tuning to mess around with slide
He was visibly relieved. "That's a great idea. Some middle-aged pervert wanted to buy it off of me to hang on his livingroom wall because he's a big fan. I don't want some pervert buying this guitar."
Such are the trepidations with an instrument like this.
We did the exchange and he let me know his blues band was playing in my neighborhood shortly. (He had a nice Stingray bass when I went to see them, but maybe that'll pop up in another post.)
Your best bet of finding something like this seems to be Facebook marketplace. They get unloaded quickly for anywhere from $50-$75, depending on the condition and how quickly somebody's wife wants it out of the house. No lie, that's often clear from the listing.
The production quality is about what you'd expect so plan on fixing some 'quirks'. It's probably going to be a bit of a project. I find the tone on these is a bit bass-heavy so you might want to replace the pots with something better. On this particular guitar, the high e doesn't seem to line up with the pole, so that'll be a bit of work. And of course, the fret finish was the kind of thing that would have shredded the fingers of a young kid who tried to play it, but that was some easy filing. One of the nice things about a guitar this cheap is you don't feel like there's a risk of breaking something you can't fix.
