I am writing this from a motel in Waco, Texas. My eldest son, Chris, is attending a physics doctoral program recruitment weekend at Baylor University; my wife and I went along to check out the campus and tour the town. Brenda is looking for needlework shops, and I, of course, am visiting pawn shops in search of the elusive “perfect” $50 guitar.
Back when Chris was taking his GRE tests in Denton, TX, last fall, I visited college town pawn shops there looking for $50 guitars and found a lot of variety, but no deals. Waco, though, is a very different story. I have visited about half a dozen shops, and there are countless deals and a pretty decent variety, too. My favorite guitar store in Waco is a pawn shop called Praco Gun & Pawn. This shop has an outstanding variety of guitars ranging in price from $79 for an off-brand Strat-copy to $2,500 for a Vintage Fender Stratocaster. I was drawn to a Fender Stratocaster they had for under $500 that was fitted with some sort of unfamiliar locking system…not a Floyd Rose. I also liked one of their Washburn guitars, a B.C. Rich, and one of their Peaveys. All of the guitars I liked were used. It was interesting that this shop mixes in several low-cost brands of new guitars with their used guitars; this method offers an impressive display on their shop floor.
I decided to splurge and spend a little more than my usual $50 limit and bought a guitar with a better-than-usual neck for $85. I don’t know a lot about this guitar. The black body looks like the normal cheap version of a Fender Stratocaster copy with second-rate pickups and a budget bridge, but the headstock has a Jackson Performer logo. The nut is a normal-looking Jackson-style locking nut with the locking part missing. The strings are wound backwards on the tuners. The neck plate has the Jackson logo and a possible serial number. Knobs are loose or missing; the body has many nicks and scars; strap buttons are loose; the tremolo bar and the switch knob are missing. I haven’t checked the electronics yet since I plan to replace them all anyway. I didn’t get a chance to measure the depth of the body, but to the eye it looks to be only 1.5 inches deep. I used the “B-string” test on the guitars at the shop, and this guitar was particularly resonant. Due to the maple neck and light wood making up the body, the overall sound is pitched very differently from guitars with heavier/denser wood like mahogany.
Overall, I wanted this guitar because the neck just feels good when I play it. The fretboard is wide and spacious compared to other guitar fretboards. This is partly because of the thinness of the Jackson neck and partly because of the flat radius at the nut end of the fretboard. I’m expecting the nut to measure out at about 42mm, but right now I don’t have my tools to measure it. Another thing I like about this guitar is the jumbo width of the Jackson style frets. Playing it here at the motel, I notice that the outside E-strings move a little too easily off the fretboard; the relation of the cheap bridge to the nut seems to put the relation of the strings just a little off. When I step back and look at the string ‘lanes,’ I can see that there’s too much space on the treble side toward the body. This did not stop me from choosing this guitar.
Did I make the right guitar choice here in Waco, Texas? Well, only time and my measuring tools will tell me. I’ll post back in a few days and let you know.
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