It is very nice when you experience a great Charity Shop find. ‘Found guitar’ on the Left and in the process of renovation of a gentle kind. Not too difficult at all.

Had to put new machine heads on it (the housed ones were rusted and the plastic turning knobs were broken). Cleaned the filthy ‘ingrained with muck’ from the fretboard and oiled it. Also get a new fret board top end nut as the one on it had broken spaces. There were three holes in the main body top side where a pick up had been housed, so filled them with plastic bungs. And bought six ebony wood pegs for holding down the strings inside the bridge. Finally, just put some new Ernie Ball strings onto it. A blast of guitar shine spray. Job done.

This charity shop Eko Dreadnought/Jumbo guitar is a nice early 1970s Italian made one. As said, a little renovation needed as it was battered and bruised when I bought it. Sounds nice now. Heard on the video below.

The Eko guitar on the right in the above photo, is the Brother to the charity shop Sister. It was my first decent bought guitar. I got it in 1972 from a Freeman’s catalogue system. You bought items by paying weekly over a 20 week period. Housewives, local ladies, usually ran Freeman’s Catalogue buys. It was a way of gaining household goods, toys and clothing, birthday/Christmas gifts, etc. without paying out in full. My first wage was £10 a week back then. I can’t remember the exact price, but I seem to remember the guitar was around £40. So £2 a week was manageable initially. Now? They fetch a fair few hundred to buy second hand. The Italian made originals, like these two above, are sought after.

An internet search resulted with the ‘every search norm’ now. The Google AI summary up top of answers. It says that in 1985, Eko moved out from Italy and established joint ventures in China and the Czech Republic. I haven’t looked deeper into this. It is really important. Because a subsequent search regarding manufacturing quality and its effect on sound and tonality has some deep dives into ‘Yes!’. It was very different to the original Italian made ones. There is a lot of information regards this on various sites. Because the information states, old and more modern results, depends upon what type of guitar sound expectation is preferred. Both have their particular positives and negatives because, although the same design and model, they are built differently. Types of wood and braces, etc..

Here’s a quick example of how it sounds. Mind you, I was doing an intensive blog clean up, so it was a quick rushed affair to get this example song below done in 5 minutes. Hope you agree though. The guitar does sound nice.

But that buying at a weekly style became a disadvantage when change happened. Myself and my wife (my girlfriend back then) moved into a flat that cost £15 a week to rent. Her wage back then was £5 a week. So £15 took all our combined weekly wages. Basically, we lived off her tips as a hairdresser and my small gig payments from playing in pubs and bars.

We also packed food from the large sacks when delivered into bags for shop shelves in the Healthfood Shop below our flat. What was left over in the bottom of the sacks, that couldn’t fill a necessary bag weight, we had as ‘payment’. Old bartering system basically. Henceforth, learning how to cook as vegetarians became important. I embraced vegetarianism as I am definitely a descendant from herbivore dinosaurs. Slow and bumbling along in nature. Joking! I am still vegetarian after that age of 18. So 52 years now. My wife never, ever wanted to fully commit as a vegetarian.

When in infants school, I definitely gravitated towards making the two papier mache dinosaur choices with the Triceratops and Stegosaurus as my two term time projects. Wish I still had them. They were quite good apparently. No wonder making ceramic mythological pieces became my choice for a career choice after being a musician and stopping the ‘band days’.