Nostalgic 1980's guitar ads: post them!

[Bobby D]

man.....I liked REM as much as I liked Dokken. I don't know why there were so many lines being drawn. REM opened for my band back in the days when all they had was an econoline van and a 45 for "Radio Free Europe". but I loved new wave, alternative, buttrawk, all of it.

the mid-late 80s when I started to play in hair metal bands were freaking CRAZY days and I would not replace them with anything.

there was a lot of tonal variation. not everyone sounded like CC DeVille (thankfully).

check some of the tones on RATT's "Dancing Undercover" or Steve Vai's masterwork on David Lee Roths "Skyscraper".....

honestly - back in the day, I liked and enjoyed someone who had technical ability, tone, and feel - more than someone like Peter Buck who was flogging an old Rick thru some beat-ass amp. Believe me, I was there at the University of Georgia and the 40 watt back in THOSE days, and to see REM when they were ON was a thing of beauty. We all knew they had that "something". But never thought they would be HUGE. ****, I liked Pylon, Let's Active, Love Tractor...any number of other Athens acts just as much or more than REM.

lots of people hated that 80s guitar style because they didn't want to invest the 8-9 hours per day of practice that it took to get there. I ended up with tendinitis after years of daily practice with a metronome for HOURS each day. it's what you had to do to perform.....

 

[IGuitUpIGuitDown]

So was the tendinitis worth it?
I think these shred guys must have their own ART masseuse, or something...
Or you gain a pound, and then lose those skills.

 

[Bobby D]

So was the tendinitis worth it?
I think these shred guys must have their own ART masseuse, or something...
Or you gain a pound, and then lose those skills.

yes, at the time it was. my mom ran a big ortho/sports medicine practice in Tampa, and I had a very good surgeon who was an amateur guitarist who had grown up with Joe Perry, oddly enough. he understood the issue VERY well, and got me to stop using the super thin stainless steel picks and start using the big fat 2mm purple dunlops. and to lay off the scales and metronome for a while, and do stretching exercises, etc.

if I hadn't of put in all that work, I would have never been able to record the two instrumental guitar albums I released in the late 80s and early 90s that helped cement my reputation in Florida back then. and there's stuff on those albums I can't play today, sadly.

but the 90s were a big blues era for me, as well as more experimental stuff and ambient music. yes, I went from big loud butt rawk to ambient music. figure THAT one out....

shred isn't mindless noodling and toneless guitar playing. it CAN be. but then there's Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, so many other technically able players who transcend that stuff. Amir Derakh is a lesser-known player who shredded quite a bit in Rough Cutt, but then ended up in Orgy in the 90s doing some pretty futuristic stuff. Lots of guys who were more than "shredders".

 

[Misterbulbous]

man.....I liked REM as much as I liked Dokken. I don't know why there were so many lines being drawn. REM opened for my band back in the days when all they had was an econoline van and a 45 for "Radio Free Europe". but I loved new wave, alternative, buttrawk, all of it.

the mid-late 80s when I started to play in hair metal bands were freaking CRAZY days and I would not replace them with anything.

there was a lot of tonal variation. not everyone sounded like CC DeVille (thankfully).

check some of the tones on RATT's "Dancing Undercover" or Steve Vai's masterwork on David Lee Roths "Skyscraper".....

honestly - back in the day, I liked and enjoyed someone who had technical ability, tone, and feel - more than someone like Peter Buck who was flogging an old Rick thru some beat-ass amp. Believe me, I was there at the University of Georgia and the 40 watt back in THOSE days, and to see REM when they were ON was a thing of beauty. We all knew they had that "something". But never thought they would be HUGE. ****, I liked Pylon, Let's Active, Love Tractor...any number of other Athens acts just as much or more than REM.

lots of people hated that 80s guitar style because they didn't want to invest the 8-9 hours per day of practice that it took to get there. I ended up with tendinitis after years of daily practice with a metronome for HOURS each day. it's what you had to do to perform.....

What I liked was how you could literally assess each player's skill level relative to Yngwie.

 

[Bobby D]

well, I remember when Yngwie was first featured in Mike Varney's Spotlight column (I never managed to get into that club, tho I tried...). And "Marching Out" was a head spinner. People diss Yngwie all the time, but he's never been anything but cool to me. And the times I have been able to sit with him and get him to show me how to play things off his records, it's simply amazing how he can reel off that stuff even faster than the records. He lives in North Miami, and it would be funny to see him pull into Walgreens with his Ferrari 308 and strut in there in his leather pantaloons and jewelry and shades. He is Yngwie 100% of the time. It's not an act

Hate it or love it, Yngwie changed the face of guitar playing nearly as much as EVH or Jimi. Mike Varney's stable had all the guys that could get close. But no one has done it like Yngwie.

 

[67blackcherry]

The ADA preamps weren't all that bad. I watched a local player at a club one night back in the mid-90's (think Jimi, SRV and Yngwie rolled into one) and he had GREAT tone; during the first break I asked what he was using and he points to his rack and sure enough, there's an ADA.

Well shut the front door...I was blown away....couldn't believe it.

 

[IGuitUpIGuitDown]

yes, at the time it was. my mom ran a big ortho/sports medicine practice in Tampa, and I had a very good surgeon who was an amateur guitarist who had grown up with Joe Perry, oddly enough. he understood the issue VERY well, and got me to stop using the super thin stainless steel picks and start using the big fat 2mm purple dunlops. and to lay off the scales and metronome for a while, and do stretching exercises, etc.

if I hadn't of put in all that work, I would have never been able to record the two instrumental guitar albums I released in the late 80s and early 90s that helped cement my reputation in Florida back then. and there's stuff on those albums I can't play today, sadly.

but the 90s were a big blues era for me, as well as more experimental stuff and ambient music. yes, I went from big loud butt rawk to ambient music. figure THAT one out....

shred isn't mindless noodling and toneless guitar playing. it CAN be. but then there's Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, so many other technically able players who transcend that stuff. Amir Derakh is a lesser-known player who shredded quite a bit in Rough Cutt, but then ended up in Orgy in the 90s doing some pretty futuristic stuff. Lots of guys who were more than "shredders".

Satch, and Vai were the first shredders that I liked after Uli, and Schenker.
But Cacophony were aptly named, for me at least.

So I was right - stretching and hand orthopedics are a large part of being able to continue to play at that level.
So if you can't play it now - how do the famous still retain the ability to play those songs today?
Holdsworth comes to mind as someone who is playing far beyond his years.

 

[Bobby D]

for me personally, I had some experiences and health issues that slowed me down a bit. cocaine is a hell of a drug. especially when it helps you explode a portion of your left frontal lobe

so yeah, I had to rehab my right hand and arm for a while to get back about 85% of my facility. and as I got older and wiser, I played less.....got more into tones and effects....and vibe. played a lot of blues.

if you're gonna be on the level of an Yngwie or Holdsworth or most GREAT players, you are gonna have to dedicate yourself to a lot of consistent practice. muscle memory is where it's at. and you build it up with tens of thousands of hours of practice.

I feel lucky that in over 30 years of gigging, recording, rehearsing, etc - I have done probably 10,000 gigs, along with a couple decades of devoted practicing. I can put the guitar down for a year or two now and pick it back up and still play decently. I put in the time and devoted myself to the guitar for nearly all my life.

College in the 90s also changed my perspective GREATLY, as I went to a very left of center liberal arts university and was exposed to modern 20th century musics, ethnomusicology and world musics, cultural studies, literary theory, and lots of other cool stuff. it made me look at what I do and create in a completely different way. in the 80s, I was just a focused but ignorant guitarist

 

[cram]

I keep a bookshelf in my studio filled with these things. My years go from '85 through '91 mostly with scattered issues through the next 2 decades. I picked these from the first three I picked up.

Hamer was a heavy ad campaign as they went through the 80's.. Ole' Steve Stevens is GLOWING on his GLOWING stool!.. over a guitar neck that's covered in slithering medusa like snake figures!

GIDDIEUP!!! We're goin'a shoot the moon tonight pardner!


This one I love - STINGER!!! See? He's a little guy with a bunch of DANGEROUS ammo and he's the STINGER!

 

[Nurk2]

That's the Marilyn guitar. It just went to auction for $375,000 - $425,000.

http://www.auctionzip.com/auction-lot/Marilyn-Guitar_13B435A8A8/

 

[Misterbulbous]

I'll just leave this here

 

[hellbender]

Looks like the exact same background as above: mud
Where's the stick?

OMG, I was searching for that very one!

 

[sahhas]

this was the dean image i was thinking of:

which i think was featured in guitar mags before i was reading them (early 80s)
to the comment someone said a few pages earlier about girls/ads today vs. girls/ad of 80s (or whenever)
i think think the difference in the world today is internet/reality tv/ etc....there really is just more emphasis on image and looks
of course i'm not sure how this is in the world of guitar ads....since i don't read any anymore...but in the world of today of
all the "real housewives of here or there" and "bachelor", and reality tv etc...there just seems to be a lot more models in the world.
i'm not even sure i could pinpoint today if there was such a thing as "supermodels" anymore....seems like everyone you see
is a supermodel. you could also probably blame a lot of the image stuff of today on photoshop and the ability to digitally
manipulate images, more so than you could 20/30 yrs ago....

 

[gdomeier]

I have one of those stinger pedals still...

This one I love - STINGER!!! See? He's a little guy with a bunch of DANGEROUS ammo and he's the STINGER!

 

[geekocaster]

2 different interviews on the doublestop podcast (steve stevens, and an engineer who's names escapes me) referenced the recording of eat em & smile and how BAD steves carvins sounded (they ended up borrowing steve stevens' marshals to record the album). BTW, the doublestop is a great music podcast.

Yeah, that and Iron Maiden played Gallen Kruger? Yngwie played a Crate? I remember all these ads from the 80's. Guitar mags were all we had, so the articles/ads gave instant credibility.

 

[geekocaster]

Oh, I remeber the beginning of the end for Kramer, when they started selling guitars wit a metal rod implanted in them for weight/sustain

 

[Bobby D]

"Eat Em and Smile" isn't my favorite record - but "Skyscraper" had some of the best guitar tones and production I have ever heard, along with being a masterclass in what the then-new Eventide H3000 could do....

 

[Misterbulbous]

Yeah, that and Iron Maiden played Gallen Kruger? Yngwie played a Crate? I remember all these ads from the 80's. Guitar mags were all we had, so the articles/ads gave instant credibility.

I believe IM were pretty well known for using Gallien Kruger for a while (Somewhere in Time era), but yeah, Crate had a lot of big name endorsers, but never really translated into actual usage I suppose.

 

[geekocaster]

Carvin was pretty genius to post so many ads, and mail free catalogs, yet sell only direct. Many of us never played one but still wanted one for years.

 

[Matman]

"BOB NOT INCLUDED" was one of my favorites. He chuckled when I told him I'd had that up in my high school locker.