In the late 1980’s, the late guitar legend Rudy Lozano who had played in a lot of APO’s albums sold me his old Fender Telecaster. I was quite happy to have acquired it then even if I hardly played it. I had other guitars and I preferred to play my acoustic ones. It was my son Mio who had just learned to play who ended up taking more interest in it. In fact, he played it a lot.

When we moved to Sydney in 2004, my son joined a band. He used the Fender Telecaster in many gigs. When he lost interest with the band, the guitar was set aside. It was not played for years. About a month ago, I opened the Fender case which had remained closed for a long time and tried to play the guitar. It was in awful shape. It was hardly playable. It sure needed a lot of fixing. One pick-up had stopped working. The strings definitely needed to be changed. And the bridge was very misaligned.

When I brought it to the guitar store and opened the case, the man receiving it exclaimed loudly, ‘Well look what we have here folks!’. He was quite surprised at what he was looking at and he turned ecstatic as he stared at my old guitar. He said it was quite a find. A person beside him started to google to find out what year it was made. It turned out that it was a 1974-75 model. Someone in the store suggested that it could easily sell for 15K Aussie dollars! I could hear ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ everywhere. Everyone in the store had gathered around admiring it.

But the ecstasy changed quickly when an old man who worked in the store asked why I had changed one of the the pick-ups. He asked me if I still had the old one. And he noticed the bridge was not original and that there were changes made in the string apparatus of the guitar. Almost immediately, the speculation about the appraised value of the guitar started to go down quickly from the princely price of 15K to a measly 800 AUD!

Curious about the old man’s comments, I immediately called my son and asked him if he had made any changes to the guitar. He said yes he did. He changed one of the pick-ups to a hum bucking oner. And no, he does not know where the original pick-up wis now. When I turned off the phone, I laughed at the situation . How could luck change so quickly. I told the people who worked in the store that I just wanted it fixed. And no, I was not interested in selling it. The small crowd that had gathered immediately dispersed.

After three weeks, I picked up the Fender Telecaster from the store. I was glad I had it fixed. I played it before paying for it. It felt new and very solid. I loved the feel.

Now that it in great condition, I plan to play my Fender Telecaster as much as I do my Spanish acoustic guitar.

This is one of my resolutions this 2021.