Another one slips away
I sort of promised myself that I would try to buy two guitars if I ever had the opportunity. One was a Yamaha Weddington Custom and, well, I missed my chance at a nice Weddington last week. The second is a Paul Reed Smith EG. No, not the current made-in-Korea SE EGs that are designed to part teenagers from their money with the alure of a PRS guitar for cut-rate prices, but one of the original EGs. PRS made the original EGs in the early ‘90s, from about ‘91 (the first series) or ‘92 (the second series EG) through ‘95 when they discontinued the line in favor of the CE bolt-ons. (By the time PRS stopped production of the second series EG, the EG-II, they were losing money on the guitars.)
The EG was designed to appeal more toward Fender players. It featured a Strat-shaped alder body, either painted or with a maple cap, with a bolt-on maple neck a rosewood fretboard. The pickup configuration was something of a departure for PRS, too. Instead of switched humbuckers, the EG featured various pickup arrangements: three single-coils or two single coils and a humbucker. The later EG-II guitars used Linsey Fralin-designed single coils that were designed to reduce hum. These looked something like the staggered pickups on bass guitars, but in a P-90 size package.
PRS EG-IIs do show up on eBay from time to time, but I wanted a specific color—seafoam green. Why? I owned a seafoam EG that I purchased in ‘93 or ‘94 and sold in ‘99 or 2000. I’m not given over to regret about most things, but I do regret selling this guitar. So I was surprised when I found this one on eBay this week with no reserve.
I though I was in luck, bidding was light most of the week and the price had climed to what I though would be close to the going rate by morning of the closing day. I actually bid shortly before the auction ended, but… so did everyone else. In the last minute of the auction, the bid went from just over $800 to over $1000 very quickly. To quickly for me to up my ante, and the cost had risen a bit out of my comfort zone anyway. There will always be other guitars, right?