proud new owner of a 70's bassman/sweet guitar shop find for those in MA/RI area

[stevejamsecono]

apparently quite a few people read my post about the 64' bassman I stumbled across at a guitar center recently. I had all intents to buy this one until I was referred to a great little shop in providence, RI. Calling it a shop is almost an overstatement, but the place is utterly great. It's called Empire Guitars, and is essentially the corner of a pawnshop. That being said however, the place is utter gold. They have maybe 30 guitars in total, but they are all old/interesting/offsets (they had a Bass VI reissue which was fantastic), and the prices were pretty fantastic. I happened to go down there to try out a 60s Jaguar they had, and stumbled across this particular amp. It's a Fender Bassman 70 with a really cool 2x15 (yikes!) cab. Playing it for 10 minutes, I knew I had to have it, so I put a downpayment on it and should be taking it home later this month. 600$ in total, I can't wait:

(feel free to ignore the $trat in the picture)
It's REALLLLY clean, both in tone and in physical condition, I'm pretty excited, a nice upgrade from my dying HRDlx

and the place itself:
http://www.myspace.com/empireguitars

[stevejamsecono]

::crickets::

what, no one wants to celebrate with me?

[Jay]

I'm ready to party!  Where do I bring the booze... and there will be hookers right? 

So did they have any vintage offsets?  Sounds like a cool shop.

[Superfuzz]

I see they have a bunch of old kustoms truck'n'roll..COOL!!
Congratulations for the bassman, the amp of my future!

[stevejamsecono]

They had a few offets yeah. A mutt Jaguar made out of a few 60s ones that I really enjoyed (had a strat pickup in it, totally weird), a reissue Bass VI (which was AWESOME) a Coronado 12, and a Competition blue Mustang. Totally sweet.

What made the shop cool was the guy who was running it was really interested in chatting with me and finding out what I was about, we talked about Pink Floyd, the Minutemen and Nels Cline for awhile. Totally cool.

A friend of mine actually just bought a jazzmaster from them too.

He says they are always on the lookout for more guitars, he's a big fan of the offets

-Steve

[glimmertwin]

Looks cool - I bet it sounds nice too.  Just don't ask me to help you load it into the car.  I'm officially on the small amp and a mic bandwagon.

[stevejamsecono]

It's actually not that bad. I'm not a big guy (5" 9 3/4s, 135lbs) and I can carry the Cab by myself, and the head in one hand, so I think I'm (no pun intend) good shape for it.

[OffYourFace]

Empire Guitars is a great shop, was just there a few weeks ago on my way to hang out with James Woods -sorta, that's another story though
It wasn't what I was expecting though....  It's a corner inside a jewelry/pawn & loan shop.  What'd you pay for it?  oh wait, you said so in yr post...
Super Nice guys but like the owner said himself, the guitars are priced to not sell   Did your friend buy that refin'd Jazz?  What color was it again?

[stevejamsecono]

He actually decided he didn't want it, and he said the color was some weird "color changing refin". He figured for that price he might as well just buy an AVRI and have a choice of what color he wanted

[OffYourFace]

He actually decided he didn't want it, and he said the color was some weird "color changing refin". He figured for that price he might as well just buy an AVRI and have a choice of what color he wanted

That's right!  when you looked at the guitar from different angles the colors changed.  Yeah, it was buttass ugly.  yeah, I said buttass...  that means double...  I guess
My favorite guitar that he had was actually hiding in the back storage room.  It's a '62 Gibson SG Jr that was modded with a humbucker in place of the single P90 and had a tunematic instead of a wraparound.  It was a great sounding & playing guitar.  No breaks in the heel or headstock.  It should be a $1500 guitar.  the guy has it tagged at $2450...  But I figured that was good, it kept me from buying another guitar   They had a lot of cool old Danelectro amps and one dyn-o-mite sounding super reverb as well.

[stevejamsecono]

Yeah, I think as far as the guitars go in that shop, its very much as you said "not neccessarily priced to sell". I think I just lucked out with the Bassman. ALthough that Guild Starfire IV is lookin' miiiiiighty tasty right now...