My mother was a bit of a hoarder and going through her things has dredged up a few memories and ephemera I thought was lost. Such as this here receipt for my first ever electric guitar:

And this is what I looked like with my Columbus Les Paul copy.

This guitar weighed a ton, but I remember it sounding pretty good through my Fender 15 amp. I used this guitar for a couple of years until I upgraded to a Yamaha RGX121FP in 1993. I think I might have done some early recordings with it, but my memory is a bit fuzzy these days…

The red guitar is a very old 1950s Hopf jazz guitar from Germany. It was given to me as a present from a friend of my mother. I still have it, but the electrics never worked and I nearly got electrocuted by it all those years ago – so I’ve always eyed it with some suspicion. I remember the original strings were like tramlines and cut my fingers to shreds.

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